[Sundaycommunity] After Christmas

Mon Jan 11 09:23:02 PST 2021

Thank you Mario for your lovely reminiscence of childhood in Italy.  And,
your comments on how most of us in this community view our lives of faith
at this time in our lives, and in a very different cultural setting.  (My
father used to tell me lots of stories about his father, the United Church
minister and his expression of faith in Alberta in the 20s and 30s.  I'm
quite sure the members of Trinity-Spadina would feel the same way about
Grandpa Smiley's understanding of living out Christianity as many members
of the SC feel about Maria Valtorta do now.)

Brian, if you feel inspired by Maria Valtorta's writings to share a
particular excerpt with the  SC, could I just ask you to NOT attach this to
a People Progress where some other member has taken time and trouble with
writing a reflection?  This is showing respect for that persons' efforts
and their way of faith.

Peace to all, Pat

*Patricia Smiley*

*email:  smileypatricia76 at gmail.com <smileypatricia76 at gmail.com>*

*mobile:  647-517-1599*

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 6:09 AM Brian Shaughnessy via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> MAKING REPARATION FOR SINS & SUFFERING
>
> Mario, thanks for explaining in such detail how you see it.
>
> Us making reparation for our own sins and the sins of others, especially
> souls "in most need of Thy Mercy".
> That is something that Christianity and Catholicism have always recognized
> and encouraged.
>
> We have been told to "offer up".  Both with our prayers, and with our
> sufferings of various kinds.  Even physical
> sufferings that we have voluntarily assumed, as Jesus was the first to do
> on Good Friday.
>
> "His hour".  Some hour!  :(
>
> St. Jean Vianney, "the Cure of Ars", was so great a saint that the Church
> has made him the patron saint of priests.
> He used the scourge on himself and, if you check you will see, many of our
> greatest and most powerful
> saints did also.  St. Jean would boil up a large pot of potatoes and that
> would be much of his food for the week.
> He sometimes used "hard pillows", like wood or stones.
>
> He bemoaned in his later years the decline in his inability to suffer for
> others.  He said, when he was most severe
> with himself, that God would then give him whatever he asked for.  :)
>
> PS:  I grant we have to be careful with this.  There are the mentally
> unbalanced, and then there are the
> outright frauds, and still today there must be the possessed.  All of whom
> serve You-Know-Who's purpose of
> giving mortification a bad name.  :(
>
>         Brian S.
>
> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
>
> [image: image.png]
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 2:07 PM Mario Calla <callamj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Brian,
>>
>> I find the excerpts of Maria Valtorta's writings fascinating because they
>> take me back to my childhood in Southern Italy in the 1950's where I
>> experienced the type of Catholicism of which she speaks. I don't want to
>> misrepresent Catholic life of the time because for the most part it was
>> woven into our daily lives in a positive way as every day was a Saint's Day
>> whose life we would celebrate.  People would stop at noon to pray the
>> Angelus Domini as the church bells would announce the moment. My little
>> friends and I would collect clay from the creek and make little statues of
>> the saints and we would make up stories about them. They were our
>> superheroes. But there was a darker side that is represented by the line
>> you quote from Valtorta: "Suffer Maria, and tell the good to suffer.
>> Everyone of those who immolate themselves is granted to save a few souls."
>> There were people in my town who made sacrifice and piety a central part of
>> their religion, the expression of which manifested itself in
>> disturbing ways.  Some would march in Good Friday processions bleeding
>> profusely from the crowns of thorns embedded on their heads. Men would
>> march bare-chested with a bundle of thorny branches swinging down from
>> their heads, flagellating them as they walked. And then there were
>> those who would crawl from the back of the church to the front dragging
>> their tongue on the floor.  Some did this as penance or as a promise kept
>> for a divine favour received.  Not surprisingly, Maria Valtorta is from
>> Southern Italy and was still alive during my childhood there. The focus of
>> this type of Catholicism is on the Passion of Jesus, the crown of thorns
>> and the Crucified Christ.
>>
>> I find that focusing on the Resurrection and Jesus' commandment to love
>> God and our neighbours to be more fulfilling. There is so much more hope
>> and promise in those messages. I think about how our Sunday Community has
>> lived Jesus' commandment to love our neighbour by sponsoring a Syrain
>> refugee family just three years ago. I think of the three children in that
>> family who are doing brilliantly in school and are full of plans and dreams
>> for their future. That's how we bring light into our often disturbing and
>> disturbed world, by reaching out, by playing a part, by small acts of
>> kindness.
>>
>> Valtorta says that "human beings have preferred hell to Heaven." Brian,
>> don't believe it there is evidence of much goodness all around us.
>>
>> God bless,
>>
>> Mario
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 4:58 AM Brian Shaughnessy via Sundaycommunity <
>> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> JOHN's POST ABOUT "OUR WORK TO BE DONE AFTER XMAS"
>>>
>>> It would be great if Dr. Howard Thurmon's reflection was do-able, but
>>> contrast it with this:
>>> ________
>>>
>>> "The first time My Father, to purify the earth, sent a cleansing by
>>> water.  The second time He sent a cleansing by blood, and by what Blood!
>>> Neither the first cleansing nor the second has availed to turn the human
>>> beings into children of God.
>>>
>>> Now the Father is weary, and to make the human race perish He lets the
>>> chastisements of hell go wild.  Because human beings have preferred hell to
>>> Heaven, and their Ruler, Lucifer, torments them to make them blaspheme Us,
>>> so as to make them completely his children.
>>>
>>> Oh, if people could turn to Me who am salvation!  I desire only that and
>>> I weep, because I see that nothing can make them raise their heads towards
>>> Heaven from where I stretch out My arms toward them.
>>>
>>> Suffer Maria, and tell the good to suffer.  Everyone of those who
>>> immolate themselves is granted to save a few souls.  *Only a few.*  It
>>> should come as no surprise that only a few souls be granted to every little
>>> redeemer if one thinks that I, the divine Redeemer, on Calvary, at the hour
>>> of My immolation, of all the thousands of people present at My death, I
>>> managed to save the thief, and Longinus, and very few others."
>>>
>>> ________
>>>
>>> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
>>>
>>> [image: image.png]
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 8, 2021 at 2:53 AM John MacMillan via Sundaycommunity <
>>> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>> *Second Reading *(Patricia Bradley)
>>>>
>>>> *The work of Christmas,   *a reflection from Dr. Howard Thurman
>>>>
>>>> *When the song of the angels is stilled,*
>>>>
>>>> *when the star in the sky is gone,*
>>>>
>>>> *when the kings and princes are home,*
>>>>
>>>> *when the shepherds are back with the flocks,*
>>>>
>>>> *then the work of Christmas begins:*
>>>>
>>>> *to find the lost,*
>>>>
>>>> *to heal those broken in spirit,*
>>>>
>>>> *to feed the hungry,*
>>>>
>>>> *to release the oppressed,*
>>>>
>>>> *to rebuild the nations,*
>>>>
>>>> *to bring peace among all peoples,*
>>>>
>>>> *to make a little music with the heart…*
>>>>
>>>> *And to radiate the Light of Christ,*
>>>>
>>>> *every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say.*
>>>>
>>>> *The work of Christmas begins.*
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Sundaycommunity mailing list
>>>> Sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
>>>>
>>>> http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sundaycommunity mailing list
>>> Sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
>>>
>>> http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca
>>>
>>
>
> --
> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
> _______________________________________________
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