{"id":4272,"date":"2012-10-26T07:24:49","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T07:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/2012\/10\/surrendered-to-the-power-of-fr\/"},"modified":"2017-08-09T21:38:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T20:38:31","slug":"surrendered-to-the-power-of-fr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/2012\/10\/surrendered-to-the-power-of-fr\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrendered to the Power of Fruitful Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nevers<\/a>Richard to the Rescue<\/em><\/strong>
\nRichard Chonak, Vultus Christi<\/em>‘s genial webmaster and a dear friend, was kind enough to put his gifts at our service by translating into English the homily that I delivered in French last Sunday for the Jubilee of Mother Jeanne-Fran\u00e7oise at Saint-James in the Channel region of France. Thank you, dear Richard, for the quality of your work and for the gentle charity of your heart.<\/p>\n

Sunday, October 21, 2012
\nMonast\u00e8re Saint-Jacques
\nHomily on the Occasion of the Jubilee of
\nMother Jeanne-Fran\u00e7oise de l’Assomption
\nfor the 60th Anniversary of her Monastic Profession
\nin the Congregation of the Benedictines of Jesus Crucified
\n<\/small>
\nMy very dear Mother [Jeanne-Fran\u00e7oise], sixty years ago
\nyou gave yourself to Jesus crucified,
\nsaying to Him: Suscipe me, Domine<\/em>;
\nthat is: “Receive me, Lord,
\ntake me with you on the Cross;
\nunite me to your sacrifice to the Father;
\nmake of me a single offering
\ndelivered unto the fire of the Holy Spirit
\nupon the altar of your Heart.”
\nAnd the Lord answered you:
\n“I receive you as my spouse:
\nall that is mine shall henceforth be yours;
\nI am taking you with me into all my mysteries.
\nWith you I will share my great Passion;
\nWith you I will share my deep wounds;
\nWith you I will share my shedding of blood,
\nmy death suffered in all bitterness,
\nmy descent into Hell,
\nmy awaking on the morning of the Resurrection,
\nmy Face all illumined by the face of the Father,
\nmy ascension to His right hand in glory,
\nand my hidden, humble, silent life in the Sacrament of my love.
\nAll this is yours because you are mine,
\nand nothing will ever separate you from my love.”<\/p>\n

Sixty years ago as well you spoke to the Father, saying:
\nFiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum.<\/em>
\nAnd forty years ago, you explained to me
\none day at the Priory of St. Paul
\nthat you insisted that the word Verbum<\/em> in your motto
\nbe written with the capital letter.
\nBy this you wished to signify that,
\nas a spouse of Jesus crucified,
\nyou wished to be conformed to Him,
\nmade like unto the Word,
\nto receive in yourself the ineradicable imprint of his holy Face,
\nthat is, of his Face fully turned to the Father,
\nof his sorrowful Face,
\nand of his glorious Face.
\nSurely the mystery of the Face of Christ,
\nthe mystery of his holy Face,
\ndwells at the heart of the vocation of every spouse of Jesus crucified.
\nAnd this countenance is revealed to us today
\nin the First Reading, drawn from the Song of the Servant,
\nor, if you will, from the Passion of Jesus Christ according to the prophet Isaiah.
\n“And the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity.”
\nFiat mihi<\/em>, you say, secundum Verbum tuum<\/em>.
\n–May it be done unto me as was done to the Word.
\nAnd Isaiah continues, saying:
\n“He laid down his life in expiation for sin.”
\nAnd there too, as a spouse of Jesus crucified,
\nyou are obliged to respond:
\n“May it be done unto me as was done
\nin thy Word, to thy Word, and for thy Word.”<\/p>\n

Expiation is nothing other than reparation,
\nand what is reparation if not Love that repairs,
\nLove that repairs the wounds of sin;
\nLove that makes pure what was soiled;
\nLove that gives beauty to what evil has deformed;
\nLove that gives the fullness of life to souls
\nthat the world, and the flesh, and the Enemy are dragging toward death.
\nYour conformation to Jesus crucified has opened you, Mother,
\nto the mystery of a great supernatural fruitfulness.<\/p>\n

So often you have prayed:
\n“Lord, I surrender myself to the power of your fruitful love.”
\nEvery mother receives life within herself to bring it into the world,
\nand then, having brought life into the world,
\nshe dispenses her life day after day, hour after hour,
\nwith every beat of her heart,
\nbecause the work of a mother goes on until death, and beyond death.
\nYour heaven, Mother, will not at all be rest,
\nbecause you will have work to do on the earth:
\nin your family, in your Congregation, and in me.
\nYou must not be shocked, dear Sisters,
\nthat the Lord repeated to his spouse
\nthe words that he had said first in relation to his mother beside the Cross:
\n“Woman, behold your son”; and then, “Behold your mother.”<\/p>\n

Jesus has called you to spousal union and to motherhood.
\nHe himself did not come to be served, but to serve.
\nYou, as spouse and as mother, have not come to be served, but to serve.
\nHe gave his life in ransom for the multitude,
\nand you could do no differently,
\nfor the life given to the mother is given to be shared,
\nto be dispensed, to be handed on by love.
\nMother, we have known each other for forty years.
\nWhen I saw you for the first time,
\nyou were 49 years old, and I was 21.
\nToday you have sixty years of consecrated life, spousal life,
\nand I have just 60 years of life in all.<\/p>\n

I allow myself to see in this a sign of the providence of God.
\nIt is as though your life and mine
\n— your life as spouse and mother,
\nand my life as a priest —
\nwere braided together by a virginal hand
\nand by the will of an immaculate Heart, that of Mary, Mediatrix of all graces.
\nSo it is together, not just you and I, mother and son, Host and priest,
\nbut we, united with all those around us,
\nwith Nanou, with Zizon, with Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, and Florence,
\nunited with your sisters in community,
\nunited with all who are not here,
\nand united with all who have gone before us in death,
\nthat we offer the Holy Sacrifice today.<\/p>\n

We dare to present ourselves before the altar
\nin thanksgiving and in joy,
\nfor “the high priest we have
\nis not incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us,
\nbut has been put to the test
\nin exactly the same way as ourselves, apart from sin.
\nLet us, then, have no fear
\nin approaching the throne of grace to receive mercy
\nand to find grace when we are in need of help.”
\nAmen, Alleluia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard to the Rescue Richard Chonak, Vultus Christi‘s genial webmaster and a dear friend, was kind enough to put his gifts at our service by translating into English the homily that I delivered in French last Sunday for the Jubilee of Mother Jeanne-Fran\u00e7oise at Saint-James in the Channel region of France. Thank you, dear Richard, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paVypq-16U","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15987,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions\/15987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}