#cardinalandersarborelius — Public Fediverse posts

Quote of the day, 7 October: Anders Arborelius, ocd

The responsiveness of Mary is meant for all of us. The Church, the spotless, immaculate Bride of Christ, is always responding to her Bridegroom. In the Church, and thanks to the example and the prayer of Mary, we, too, can learn to be more responsive to Jesus. In the Church, we share all spiritual riches in common among ourselves, so we can use Mary’s responsive heart when we pray.

That’s just what we do when we pray the Rosary. We look upon Jesus with the eyes of Mary, we love Him with her heart, and we listen to Him with her ears. Prayer becomes so much easier when we try to pray in the company of Mary. Jesus becomes so much more alive when she is at our side.

The response to grace, which we seek to express in our prayer, is demonstrated to us by Our Lady in the mystery of her Annunciation…. The image of the young Mary at the Annunciation reveals so much: God’s will to become one of us through the Incarnation and Mary as the icon of human receptivity and responsiveness to God’s grace, or, put simply, Mary as the icon of prayer. She can help us to become prayer — because prayer is not something that we do, it’s something that we are and become.

Cardinal Anders Arborelius, O.C.D.

Chapter 10, To be responsive like Mary

Arborelius OCD, A. 2020, Carmelite Spirituality: The Way of Carmelite Prayer and Contemplation, EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama.

Featured image: In 2016, bishops from the Holy Land Coordination celebrated Holy Mass with Jordanian clergy and the local community in the majority-Christian town of Fuheis. Many of the faithful have adorned this statue of the Virgin with rosaries. Photo credit: © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk via Flickr (Some rights reserved).

#CardinalAndersArborelius #contemplation #inspiration #Rosary #VirginMary

Quote of the day, 3 May: Anders Arborelius, ocd

In Mary, we see the true face of the Church, for Mary wants to prepare us for the perfect union of love with Christ and to give us a part of her own relationship with Him. The scapular is the symbol and sign of this common vocation of all the members of the Church who are all called to holiness. In Mary, the Immaculate One, we see the perfect realization of this universal vocation of the entire Church.

“From the overflowing heart of the Virgin Mary, blessed by God, streamed the exultant hymn of the Magnificat,” Edith Stein says. The core of our ecclesial life is to live in praise and glory of God, just as Mary did.

This vocation to glorify God means that we, through grace, take part in His salvation of mankind. We can also say that letting ourselves be saved by Him means that we participate in His work of salvation—or rather, that His redemptive love given to us overflows to others. In the Church, spiritual treasures belong to all of us in common.

Mary lives this life of continuous adoration that implies a partaking in the act of salvation by letting herself be saved. The holy scapular reminds the Carmelite of this fact of our Faith, helping us to rely upon Mary’s maternal and sisterly care in the midst of all the hardships of life.

The scapular is a sign that we, just like Mary, are totally dependent on Jesus and His redemptive love for us and for the entire world. It helps us to see that life in the Church entails adoration and salvation at the same time.

The very act of adoring God implies an apostolic participation in Christ’s act of redemption. Thus, my more or less self-centered longing for my own spiritual fulfillment can be transformed and healed.

We could even say that the scapular, this humble little sign of Mary’s maternal protection, could help our contemporaries to be healed from the wounds of total independence, the main dogma of the pervasive individualism of our day.

The scapular helps us to find our true happiness in loving surrender and confident dependence on Jesus, through Mary. Of course, this truth needs to be explained very carefully in order to avoid the accusation of being mere sentimental and childish wish-wash.

However, I think it would be worthwhile to help our contemporaries, who desperately long for true surrender to God, to find their way through this humble and simple little object that we venerate in Carmel as the holy scapular of Carmel.

Cardinal Anders Arborelius, o.c.d.

Chapter 11, The Church in the Carmelite Tradition

Arborelius OCD, A. 2020, Carmelite Spirituality: The Way of Carmelite Prayer and Contemplation, EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama.

Featured image: Cardinal Anders Arborelius, o.c.d. is seen in this 2025 file photo, courtesy of the Discalced Carmelite General Curia (Used by permission).

⬦ Reflection Question ⬦
Where is Jesus inviting me to grow in loving dependence on Him, like Mary did?
⬦ Join the conversation in the comments.

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Quote of the day, 8 April: Cardinal Anders Arborelius, OCD

We begin with a poem of St. John of the Cross:

Mine are the heavens, and mine is the earth; mine are the people; the righteous are mine, and mine are the sinners; the angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine, and God Himself is mine and for me, for Christ is mine and all for me. What, then, do you ask for and seek, my soul? Thine is all this, and it is all for thee (Sayings of Light and Love, 27).

Maybe we find this poem of St. John of the Cross somewhat bold and even presumptuous, but faith is bold.

We are immensely rich in Christ. Everything belongs to us, including God Himself. We are His heirs—as St. Paul says, co-heirs—with Christ. This certainty is the doctrinal basis of this poem. We may rejoice and be exultant about all the treasures that belong to us, thanks to Christ.

But at the same time, as St. John speaks about our richness in Christ, he, as all the saints, speaks also about our poverty in Christ.

Jesus Christ came as a poor man among the poor. When God became man, He preferred poverty during His life here on earth. Here we are again—one of these paradoxes of the Faith. God, Who is rich, becomes poor to make us, who are poor, rich.

This fundamental paradox helps us to adore the glory of God, where all the contrasts of ours are reconciled. Poverty and richness are united in God, reconciled in Him Who is everything but owns nothing. He is the Source of everything existing but gives it all away immediately after having created it.

Creation is generosity, prodigality, lavishness. God does not want to be the owner of it. The Creator does not keep what He has created for Himself. God just is what He is.

All through the Old and the New Testament, we hear the same thing — the “I AM” of Adonai , the Ego Sum of Jesus, but never, never do we hear, “I have this; I own this.”

Poverty is always an ideal in Christian life. Spiritual life is to be poor as Jesus, Who relied completely on His Father. Poverty teaches us to have confidence in God’s love and care for us.

Jesus tried to teach His disciples this art of spiritual poverty or, rather, poverty in the Holy Spirit, which also implies material poverty.

But poverty is not at all the same as misery. Only the poor in spirit can adore God as He wants to be adored. True adoration of God, as He is in Himself, is born from our own poverty.

All glory and honor belong to God triune. We rejoice in His glory and in our own poverty. We fall down in adoration of His infinite majesty and accept willingly that we are only poor and frail little beings. Then we become rich in Him.

Jesus became one of us to allow us to participate in His relationship with the Father, and, of course, there is no greater richness than that. Still, we can only receive this gift if we are poor. When we adore God, we grow in spiritual poverty.

Cardinal Anders Arborelius, O.C.D.

Chapter 13, To Adore and Glorify God

Arborelius OCD, A. 2020, Carmelite Spirituality: The Way of Carmelite Prayer and Contemplation, EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama.

Featured image: Nativity scene by BlackMac for Adobe Stock (Stock photo, edited in Adobe Express)

#CardinalAndersArborelius #creation #gloryToGod #JesusChrist #poverty #StJohnOfTheCross #wealth

Jesus Christ has redeemed us on the Cross. The Holy Cross is the sign of our Faith, the sign of hope and grace. We venerate it, and it gives us hope, but when it really comes close to us we are terrified.

Still, as we all know at the bottom of our hearts, we have to carry our own crosses in union with our Savior. The Cross is there, and we have to accept it in whatever form it comes to us.

Sometimes it takes time for us to recognize the loving and adorable face of the Crucified Lord in the horrible and tiresome sufferings that we encounter during our pilgrimage here on earth. Our Lady can help us to see Jesus in the cross of our own existence and in the cross of humanity.

She stood beside the Cross of Jesus, and she also stands beside us when we have to carry our own crosses. As a loving Mother taking care of her beloved child, she is always there.

For many people, it seems easier to look upon Mary standing at the foot of the Cross of Jesus than to look directly upon Jesus hanging on the Cross. Being the Mother of Jesus and of us, she can unite us to Jesus and help us to recognize and adore His holy Cross in our own little cross….

When we really suffer, words cannot console us, however pious and loving they might be. We cannot be consoled in any way whatsoever, except by the simple presence of another person simply sitting down with us or holding our hand.

That is important for us to remember when someone we know suffers. To be present, to sit down at the sickbed or deathbed, to hold someone’s hand is always immensely helpful for those who suffer.

This is also the way of Mary—to be present in our dark night of the soul. She is there. It is all very simple and natural.

She is our Mother and Sister who wants to help us to carry our crosses. She helps us to see Jesus in our night. Just by being there, she points to her Son and makes us aware of His constant presence in our life.

So have confidence. In the dark night of the soul, in our suffering, Mary will be with us, silent but fruitful, because she is the Mother of Christ, the Mother of us.

Cardinal Anders Arborelius, O.C.D.

To Be Responsive Like Mary (excerpts)

Arborelius OCD, A. 2020, Carmelite Spirituality: The Way of Carmelite Prayer and Contemplation, EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama.

Featured image: Crucifixion sculptures like this early 16th-century French Calvaire are found in towns and along byways all throughout Brittany. The ancient village of Rochefort-en-Terre in the department of Morbihan is no exception. This historic Calvaire still stands in the plaza next to the 12th-century collegiate church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Tronchaye in the center of town. It is so picturesque that it has been featured prominently in paintings, such as Le calvaire de Rochefort-en-Terre (or, L’Office du soir) by Ferdinand du Puigaudeau (French, 1864–1930). According to legend, the church was built on the spot where a statue of the Virgin Mary nursing the Infant Jesus was discovered in the 12th century. It is said that the statue was hidden in the trunk of a tree two centuries earlier when the Vikings were attacking the region. Another historic image in the parish is a polychrome statue of Blessed Françoise d’Amboise, the 15th-century Duchess of Brittany who established the Carmelite nuns in France. Image credit: David Matthew Lyons / Adobe Stock (Stock photo)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/07/22/anders-momsis/

#CardinalAndersArborelius #darkNight #faith #grace #HolyCross #hope #inspiration #JesusChrist #MaryOurSister #Mother #OurLady #presence #suffering