Homily for Mass
Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Vows of Our Mother
Foundress:
Mother Adela Galindo, Mother Foundress, SCTJM and FCTJM
“Let Us Make Room for God in Our Hearts – Much Depends on
It!”
Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe
August 13, 2010
Homily by Fr. Joseph
Rogers
Dear Mother and
Sisters – Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Apostles of the Family of the Pierced Hearts, brother priests
associated with the Family, fellow pilgrims, brothers and
sisters:
As a Family gathered
beneath the living image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Star of the New
Evangelization, we “make memory” today of that particular event 25
years ago on August 15, 1985, at the Marian shrine of Shoenstatt,
Dominican Republic, when our dear Mother Foundress, Mother Adela
Galindo, spoke her definitive and total fiat to the Lord – “Yes! May
it be done!” – an act of mature simplicity, virginal trust, and
total availability – a total oblative gift of herself in response to
the Lord’s words spoken to her at Mass: “Let me pierce your heart so
that others may have life.” The Lord’s words were a gift and a task
entrusted to Mother for her to enflesh the particular identity and
mission revealed a year earlier at the same shrine: to live the
vocation of the pelican – to be a living image of Marian-Eucharistic
Love so that many hearts may have life. Because of her simple,
total, and complete fiat, and the faithful holding and keeping of
that fiat for 25 years, we are gathered here today in this Basilica,
in this Marian home, where we have also come to give thanks to Our
Lady whose fiat has brought God to us all and through whom He
continues to visit us. In our readings we can discover the essential
reason for our celebration today.
In our first reading
from the prophet Ezekiel we hear of the covenant fidelity of God and
the infidelity of Israel toward her divine Spouse. For Ezekiel and
many prophets of the Old Testament, the covenant of the Lord with
Israel was a sacred bond, a marriage, beginning with the betrothal
of Israel as a young girl in Egypt, the exchange of vows at Sinai,
the maturing of their union in the desert, crossing the Jordan, and
finally entering into the Promised Land. God had taken Israel to
himself and “made room” for her, given her a place to dwell, to be
free, “to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth and subdue
it.” Ezekiel, who writes some 700 years later during the Babylonian
exile, is a priest who once ministered in the Temple of Jerusalem
and now sits on the shore near the Euphrates River with other exiles
far from the Holy Land. He sees with the eyes of his heart that
Israel has been exiled from the land in reparation for her sins. The
exile is an outward sign of the inward reality that Israel has been
unfaithful to her divine Spouse: years before Israel had already
left the land in her heart. Israel had broken the covenant with the
Lord and now suffers for her sins, but Ezekiel hears the Lord
promise his beloved: “I will remember the covenant I made with you
when you were a girl, and I will set up an everlasting covenant with
you.” God will return Israel to the land. In the psalm Isaiah speaks
a similar word of hope: Israel will one day “draw water with joy
from the fountain of salvation.” Israel will receive again the
blessings of her Lord’s covenantal love from the Holy Temple, but
for this to happen she will need to put her trust solely in “the
Holy One of Israel” to “sing praise to the Lord for his glorious
achievement.” What Ezekiel and Isaiah foresee is that Israel must
acquire again a pure, virginal heart for her Lord to sing a
“magnificat” for Him.
In our Gospel today, the
command of Our Lord in Greek is “o dunamenos xorein xwreitw,” which
literally means: “whoever can make room, make room.” This is not an
option – it is a command. Make room for God in your life! The Greek
words likely are derived from the Hebrew verb raham, which in
common speech was associated with the particular vocation of woman,
who, by the gift of motherhood, “makes room” for a new human life in
her womb. The womb of woman was thus referred to as the “rahamim”
– the sacred place where “room is made” for human life to be
conceived, to be nourished, and to grow safely. As Israel
experienced the covenantal, tender love of God, rahamim
became identified with the “compassion of God” – God who always
makes room in His Heart for His beloved. These words of Our Lord
then, in a particular way, bring us before the One whose living
image we contemplate in this Basilica. Our Lady is the Immaculate
Virgin whose fiat made definitive, irrevocable room for God in the
world: because of her yes, God is truly with us! When the angel
revealed the will of God to Our Lady, she “made room” for His plan:
she entrusted her entire person and life to Him. By her fiat –
which was the perpetual path of her “pilgrimage of faith” from the
hidden years of Nazareth and ultimately to Calvary, the Cenacle, and
to Her Glorious Assumption – Our Lady “made room” for God in Her
Immaculate Heart and Womb, and through Her, God has “made room” for
us in His Sacred Heart and Wound. Mary gave herself to God, and
through Mary, God gives Himself to us. Through the “compassion”
of Our Lady, the passion of Our Lord saves us. By the mystery of
God’s desire to elevate the human heart to full and total
cooperation with his salvific plan, redemption reaches its fullness
in co-redemption. God’s salvific operation, his working in history,
reaches its fullness in our mature and selfless cooperation with
Him. Redemption reaches its fullness in Mary. Thus, the words of Our
Lord in Matthew 19 and the prophetic hope of Ezekiel and Isaiah find
their total and complete human response in Mary – She who is the
type and figure of the People of God, the living image and presence,
the perfection of the Church in person.
“Whoever can make room,
make room.” These words of Our Lord reveal the Marian silhouette of
the Church and reveal the shape and form of the anniversary we
celebrate: we are a Marian charism – born of the rahamim of a
woman – because this Family is a particular gift of Our Lady’s
Heart. In the mysterious designs of divine providence, our Mother
Foundress was invited to live an “exchange of hearts” with Our Lady.
As an ecclesial Family we are spiritually united with this exchange
through the gift of a charism: by living according to the spirit,
mind, and purpose of Our Mother Foundress, we follow a path of
holiness and mission in the Heart of the Church to live according to
the Spirit, Mind, and Purpose of Our Lady. Contemplating the fiat of
Our Lady, we can conclude with the logic and strength proper to the
simple of heart that we must “make room” for the will of God in our
lives because more than we can ever imagine depends on it: because
Our Lady “made room” for God in Her Heart and Womb, the Church, the
Family of Jesus, exists; because our Mother Foundress “made room”
for God in her heart and womb, our ecclesial Family exists. As we
give thanks today, we do so to more responsibly hold and guard,
understand and live the gift and task of this Marian charism – to
love to the extreme.
“Whoever can make room,
make room.” As we hear these words of the Gospel and give thanks for
the fiat of Our Mother Foundress, we also “make memory” of another
fiat, a fiat that continues to resonate in our hearts within this
Marian home that is so much his home, a fiat enfleshed with the
words: “Be not afraid! Go out into the deep!” My brothers and
sisters, here in this Basilica, Our Lady “made room” for our beloved
John Paul’s Petrine mission in the Heart of the Church and in the
heart of the world. She communicated to him the gift and task of his
Marian pontificate to be a pilgrim pope: like Her, to go across the
mountains and oceans of history and humanity bringing Christ to
others and proclaiming the Gospel. In these verses of Matthew 19 –
the foundational text for his magisterial Theology of the Body –
our beloved spiritual father, Ven. John Paul, continues
to invite us to return to the “beginning” – to safeguard the
originating grace of our Marian charism, to “make room” in our
hearts for this gift of God in the Heart of the Church – for this
path of holiness and mission – and, having done so, with renewed
gratitude, maturity, and determination, and in loving, faithful
communion with the heart of our Mother Foundress to fix the gaze of
our hearts joyfully and serenely on Our Lady of Guadalupe, Star of
the New Evangelization. From this Marian home, on this anniversary,
in the bark of Peter we entrust ourselves to Her – to be Her
presence, to carry Christ in us – to go out into the deep of the
Third Christian Millennium to “make room” for God in the world, and
with a renewed ardor and vigor to be witnesses, servants, and
apostles of Love to the extreme and to cooperate with God’s salvific
work of building a new civilization of love and life. All for the
Heart of Jesus through the Heart of Mary so that Love may always
triumph! +
Homily of Archbishop Thomas Wenski and
photos of the celebration...
Testimonies...
