Strength for the Week

Strength for the Week

In the late 1980’s I spent the summer in our Staten Island convent. At the same time, Father Bruno Forte, a young theologian and professor, was our guest for a month. He would spend each year’s vacation in another country to hone his language skills and to be immersed in a different culture. He had already spent time in dirt poor South American areas with priests working with the poor. Every morning Father celebrated Mass for us and offered a meditation on the day’s gospel. I was impressed that he made a calculated effort to see the whole Church: the very poor, the wealthy and those in the middle. Professor that he was, he was not afraid to connect with people in every strata of life. He was learning how to penetrate society with the truth of the gospel. I remember being edified each evening when we came home from our days in the New York book center. We would find him in the chapel, focused and fervent. After that month’s time in New York, Sister Mary Agnes and I had a brief and joyful meeting with him in South Carolina. When I read about his becoming an Archbishop I felt a bit sorry for him since his work as an archbishop leaves little time for study. Yet, I am happy for his flock who will learn the gospel from one who has studied and lived it for many years.
I often wonder what an Archbishop like Forte would say in the face of tragedy. Besides the suffering of conflicts in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, tragic deaths mar the light of this Springtime. The missing Malaysian jetliner, the tragedy of mudslides in Washington state, the loss of two heroic firefighters in Boston—all of these realities are hurled at us by news media. After a short time even the most tragic of events fade from the front pages. Yet if a person is deeply involved in a tragedy, the pain of loss does not disappear. Last year my brother-in-law Dennis was snatched away from us by a sudden allergic reaction. His wife, my youngest sister Kelly, still has on-again-off-again bouts of grief. She was just a year old when I entered the convent. Now she is the widowed mother of two young adults. There are times when I would like to go back and hold her tight as I did when I helped my Mom take care of her. When emotions tug at me, then I get in touch with God. I am convinced that prayer not only draws us closer to God, it also can surround our loved ones with his grace.
Archbishop Forte’s newest book, Face to Face with Jesus takes us with him into the core of Mark’s gospel. For Kelly and for all who struggle to say yes to God in hard times, Forte’s reflections on Jesus in the Garden gently invite us to draw closer to this Jesus who loves us so deeply. Reflecting with Archbishop Forte on Jesus’ love for the Father and for us we can face the tragedies of life with peace and strength.
Sr. Mary Peter Martin, FSP


Excerpt from Face to Face with Jesus, by Bruno Forte

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The prayer in the Garden of Olives


The choice to obey the loving plan of the Father in complete freedom until the end is confirmed by Jesus in the dramatic hour that preceded his passion and death. It is the prayer in the Garden of Olives, Gethsemane:

They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” He came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him. He came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand” (Mk 14:32–42).

…The “yes” of Jesus is the fruit of love without reservation; his is the freedom of love! In the final hour, he still chooses to give of himself, and he places himself back into the hands of his Father with an infinite trust. He experiences his freedom as liberation: liberation of himself for his Father and for others. It is the freedom of those who find their life by losing it (see Mk 8:35), the capacity of risking everything for love, the audacity of those who give everything. Thus, the fundamental aspiration of Jesus emerges, the choice on which he bases every choice, the vocation of his life. It is what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews faithfully translated from the words of Psalm 40:9, “See, I have come to do your will” (Heb 10:9). In the profound plan of liberty—the radical desire that gives meaning and unity to everything in life—Jesus presents himself as a man free for love, totally aimed toward the Father and others. He testifies that no one is so free as the one who is free from their own freedom because of greater love. Free of himself, Jesus exists for the Father and for others; this is his fundamental choice, the one that makes him truly a free man. The basis of his life is to exist for the kingdom that comes. This is his vocation, and it makes of his entire existence a liturgy to God. For this reason, he asks the disciple: are you free from yourself? Free to obey God? Are you free to obey God alone? Are you free to love to the point of the greatest gift? Do you know how to recognize that next to each disciple is the Master, and so, as a Christian you are never alone, in joy and in sorrow, in peace and in trials, in life as in death?