Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 11 May 2025

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

At our priests’ convocation last week our speaker, Dr. Anthony Lilles of St. Patrick Seminary in Menlo Park, CA, talked a lot about renewal in the Church and the virtue of hope during this jubilee year of hope named by Pope Francis. Pope Francis knew, he said, that hope is what our world needs most now. I thought I would include some of my notes from his talk on hope and memory, and the healing power of mental prayer.

Hope, he says, is our right relationship to the present. It heals the anxiety of the future as well as the regret or pain of the past. It is beatitude: blessedness, or the foundational gift of the Father in our creation. The Father loves us into existence all the time, and the meaning of our life is to come to terms with it. It lives in the personal dimension, not just a concept, but interpersonal pure life. It is the mutual delight of the Father and the Son which is the Holy Spirit.

Have you ever experienced a peace which comes inexplicably in the middle of the most hopeless, impossible situations? Hurdles in life that are just too high to jump? You pour out your heart completely to God. The peace which endures is only a moment for now in life, but it is also that moment in heaven that never ends. It is to totally love, and know love. With hope we can choose to love, anyway. It is the moment of Jesus on the cross.

This pouring out your heart is mental prayer, and healing comes. Dr. Lilles says that every time renewal happens in the Church, it is always preceded by a renewal of mental prayer in the Church. Based in hope, it is the remedy of discouragement. So many people today are discouraged and need to know a genuine solidarity of hearts.

To encounter the beauty of something meditated upon, you exercise your love desiring it (eros) and at the same time, in beholding it (agape), you know it and somehow become it. You become one with it.

This kind of prayer is anything but passive. (Too many people pray God! Entertain me!) Many people, he says, pray like they are watching TV.

The Psalms were the heart of Jesus, and he prayed them with his entire being, constantly in communication/communion with the Father. It is a kind of passive reception that at the same time requires tremendous attention and openness. John of the Cross calls it mystical wisdom, the living knowledge and love of the presence of Christ in the soul.

His divine indwelling makes us burn brighter, releasing greater charity. He saturates more and more of our humanity. Saint John says it leads us to the death of Christ – you want to go there – not simply a suffering that you must endure to get what you want. You want the cross knowing that life follows from encountering his wounds, and ours, together. Saint John Paul II said that this mystical wisdom is ecclesial, we also get caught up into the life of the Church that is the indwelling Trinity.

This word, this union of hearts with Christ completes his Creation through you and your prayer. Through your heart he makes all things new.

Movements of the heart in prayer shape our hearts, healing memories caused by our sins or the sins of others which affect us, healing our wounds. The mercy of the Father is the healing: literally his healing the misery of the heart (miseri-cordia) of the Church. It all begins with our pouring out our hearts to him, and he pours his into us.

Mental prayer is an intense conversation/sharing with the One who loves you perfectly. Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity says she prays by searching her heart for where Jesus is, and looks especially in all the corners where he seems least present

The Lord be with you.