Spirituality

 

Spirituality is the unfolding pattern in a person's life that integrates vision and action, contemplation and service, ministry and life. It is the sum of who we are before God and others, as shaped by our tradition and by our life-experience. Spirituality is what moves and motivates us to be Christ-bearers to others.

Vincent Pallotti integrated many spiritualities in himself and welcomed every spirituality. Below you will read about the person of Vincent Pallotti and what it was that motivated him. We also present a variety of spiritualities that are bible-based, communal and personal.

Other spiritualities are found in the section on Ministries and Groups.

 

 

 

top

---

 

St Vincent Pallotti

ST VINCENT PALLOTTI (1795-1850)

Vincent Pallotti was born in Rome, 1795, six years after the French Revolution that sent shock waves throughout Europe, much as September 11th did to our world. Vincent knew war, the occupation of Rome by Napoleon, the breakdown of society and popes having to flee or being taken prisoner as Napoleon sought control of the Papal States. Pallotti died in 1850, one and a half years after national uprisings in Italy, France, Germany and Poland.

It was a time of democratic revolt, when ordinary people were clamouring to have their say. Vincent’s programme responded to those cries, 160 years ahead of his time. His was the programme of Vatican II: All are needed in the Church to share the mission of Jesus with an equality of dignity, giftedness and a variety of ministries.

Vincent had a wonderful way with people. He was found among the poor. He founded night schools for young tradesmen, a farm school, and two orphanages for girls whose parents had died in the 1837 cholera epidemic, that claimed 3,000 out of a population of 60,000. He had an empathy with condemned prisoners when other chaplains could not get through to them; he was called to people dying in hospital, hardened through rough living, and won them to God. He cared for people from every strata of Roman society, youth, soldiers, sisters, young farmers, seminarians (he was spiritual director to five seminaries in Rome).

Vincent would stop at nothing to bring people to God. On one occasion he dressed up in woman's clothes to reach a dying revolutionary who vowed to shoot a priest on sight.

There was no good work in Rome at that time that did not have Vincent Pallotti as its initiator or main collaborator. But he did not do it alone. He invited people, gave them an equal share in the work he was doing, and even stood aside to let them take the credit. He taught that everyone has an active part to play in Church, a share in the mission of Jesus "All are called to be apostles, at a time when the lay people were merely spectators. He accorded them equality of dignity and diversity of action that flowed not just from Baptism, but from each one’s creation in the image of God.

Vincent Pallotti was not just a man of action. He was a mystic, a great yet hidden saint. He wanted this. Like Padre Pio, he had the gift of bi-location, able to be in two places at the same time. In the confessional he seemed to go off to sleep, but was, at the same time, at the bedside of a dying man, ministering to him. Vincent had the gift of healing, of reading hearts and souls. On one occasion he insisted that a young man go to confession. One hour later the young man dropped dead. There are many incidents like this of Vincent acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Pallotti had an obligation to love people as God loved them. His sole quest was the God of his heart and the heart of his God. He lived in intimate union with the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He wanted infinite love to be released in our world. Vincent loved God by infinite desire. It was one aspect of his rich spirituality. He prayed, Expand, O Lord, at every infinitesimal moment, my desire for You and the things that please You.

Desire is knowledge set on fire by love. He desired a Church come alive; he yearned for unity among Christians, “that there may be one flock and one shepherd.” Where there is a united desire among us, there is a powerful church. Finally, Vincent wrote, “Love never says enough, and so I believe that no-one whose desires are without limit can be called crazy.” Pallotti encountered a Jesus, "crazy with love for him" and prayed "Jesus, you have become a fool of love for me. How could I not become a fool of love for Thee, in the work, words and deeds I do."

top

---

 

Pallottine Spirituality Groups

Vincent Pallotti saw clearly the need to call all to apostolate and to holiness. It is an obligation that flows from one's creation in the image of an infinitely loving God.

Pallottine spirituality groups begin with the basic call of each person, in view of the signs of the times, and future hopes. This call is realised in groups of people who share a similar vision. Community leads to an ever growing Covenant with the Lord. Through open-ended discussion and prayer, people grow in their faith and community belonging. Gifts are discovered and this leads to contemplative action.

These groups are organised to meet the needs of the participants and their time restraints.

Contact Sr Joy or Fr Pat on 9802 8538.

top

---

 

Prayer Guide Formation

 

Prayer Guides Ministry offers a way of meditating on the Scriptures. Prayer Guides meet on the second Saturday of each month for on-going formation at St Christopher's. This is in preparation for a “Journey into Scripture with a Prayer Guide” in a Parish setting. Those who take part are called “pilgrims” and are led into a period of prayer, song and meditation, followed by a time in which the guide helps the pilgrim reflect on his / her own prayer experience.

The prayer guides are trained to offer the ministry of a listening ear to people who are struggling to articulate what has happened to them in prayer. Listening to the prayer experience of another makes that person more attentive to what is going on within him / her. It is only by listening that we can hear God seeking us.

The Prayer Guide community is ecumenical. Prayer Guides welcome anyone who feels called to this ministry.

Contact: Sr Joy Shelley: 9802 8538,  Email: joyshelley@telstra.com

top

---

 

Small Church Communities

 

Small Church Communities are neighbourhood-based groupings which bring the Gospel to bear on people's ordinary lives, their struggles, issues and celebrations. As people work together, close friendships are formed which flow into the larger Sunday Eucharist. The Church is really a community of communities, which reaches out to society in effective ways.

We are working towards establishing these Small Church Communities and are open to parishioners' ideas and interest. Contact the parish for ideas or your desire to form or join a Small Christian Community. A number of these are already present in our parish of St Christopher's, some are seasonal, others are long term.

 

top

---

 

Stories of Faith

 

 

My Shaking Palsy - An attempt at understanding

Written by Pat Cummings when told she had Parkinson's Disease and its disabling effect

---

 

Brilliant Thoughts

We all must die. That is how things are. The next generations have to have their turn, and we have to prepare for them and then make way for them. The Creator Spirit, who sustains all life, and indeed everything that exists, has decreed it thus. As the psalmist says:

Although I am not thrilled to be one of those who "fades and withers" of the Palsy at my age, I have in my possession the death certificates of most of my grandmothers, and I feel I have no right to cry "why me?". I am no more special than my maternal great great great grandmother Mary Malloy who died at 55 or her daughter Jane Elizabeth who died at 56. Neither am I more special than my paternal Irish great grandmother Johanna Maher who died at 42, or. my father's mother who died at 62. Admittedly my Shepheard great grandmother lived to 90 and my Spinks great grandmother until 96 and my own maternal grandmother to 83.

And even though I am fading and withering prematurely, I have had a very good life. I was born to parents who loved me and gave me the best start in life that they could including a first rate education and my Catholic faith. I have enjoyed the love of a good man and am the mother of three fine sons. I have also been blessed with two grand daughters and have acquired potentially two more grand daughters and a grandson through my sons' relationships. I have never been to Rio nor have I seen the Eiffel Tower, but I have seen and heard President Sukarno, and I have seen the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia, the Borobodur temple in Indonesia and Chichen Itza in Yukutan, Mexico. I have also kissed the Blarney Stone.

I accepted, with a reasonable degree of equanimity and some sadness, my father's diagnosis of the palsy. Things like that just happened to old people. I do not mean l am being punished but that I do not have the right to expect special treatment. The doctor treating my father said, when he died, "You should be happy that Paddy was spared the Parkinson's which is a disgusting and degrading condition". "Thank you, God", I dutifully said. But what do I say now?

On Tuesday, along with my husband, I saw my neurologist who looked at me with kindly professional interest. He replied to a question I cannot remember asking that he could only guess how long before I had completely lost mobility, and my husband would have to consider a heavier type of total care for me but thought six months a reasonable figure. He also thought I might have had a couple of slight strokes because he could detect an increase in my facial asymmetry. Last Sunday, at the suggestion of my good friend Judy, Father John Flynn gave me a special healing blessing and anointing.

So what do I make of all of this? There is a very moving prayer by the late Jesuit writer, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, called the "When" prayer. It puts the physical and mental disintegration of ageing and death in a positive light, and seems to be the completion of the lovely Psalm 139.

Teilhard believed that all creation is evolving by working towards the "Omega Point" which is Christ. We are naturally essential to this process because we are the highest form of life that has evolved. We are to be creative and to resist evil whether moral or physical evil on a large scale or in our daily lives. We are indeed to "divinize" our lives offering to God, both our "activities" and our "passivities". The passivities are more or less our given qualities, good and bad, our circumstances in life, our physical and mental health, intelligence, the things that happen to us. By being offered to God, with the wine at Mass (which Teilhard says represents our "passivities", with the bread representing our "activities") and therefore linked to Christ's sufferings, they are given value. They can be offered for others - our loved ones and all who need our prayers. It is possible to see an answer to a situation like having the Palsy.

Teilhard addresses God in his "When" Prayer saying that when the signs of disintegration and diminishment appear in his body or mind he should remember that it is God who is:

So the Creator Spirit who knit me together in my mother's womb is unravelling his handwork and in Resurrection will re-make me.

---

 

 

For more information about the author see: http://www.wwwombat.com

 

top

---

Copyright © 2002-2007
St Christopher's Catholic Parish
Last modified: Mar 17 2007

Website Design: John Cooney

Maintained by: David Whalan