Our friend Widodo Budi from Indonesia tells us that the Indonesian edition of “At God’s Pace” is now out. “We wish that from this biography, our apostolate in Indonesia will be more stable and fruitful”, he says.

Our friend Luis Velasquez shares with us the first audiobook (mp3) in English of the meditation “Life in Nazareth” in “In Conversation with God” Thanks, Luis!

In order to be decisive, we must first know what we want; then, we have to make a conscious decision. If we want to “live freedom decisively,” we first have to learn how to be free. Many of the suggestions in the Congress webpage give ideas of how to do precisely that.

What is UNIV?

UNIV is a meeting in Rome that brings together thousands of university students from all over the world. It began thanks to the initiative of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei.

In the last few centuries, nothing has been more valued than freedom.  At the same time, however, nothing has been more threatened. Together with an exaltation of personal liberty on the part of many, there have also appeared schools of thought which limit and even deny human freedom. Some thinkers thus understand personal decisions merely as side effects determined by one’s culture, by economic factors, or even by physical processes. Others, by contrast, affirm freedom but understand it as a completely undetermined capacity. Freedom thus comes to mean being entirely unbound and all forms of personal commitment or determination consequently become viewed as hindrances and limitations of one’s freedom.

The 2011 UNIV Forum wants to contribute to the ongoing contemporary reflection on freedom, commitment, and the value of personal convictions, while doing so from a perspective which is both profound and practical. The following are possible fields of enquiry:

- daily personal decisions: their necessity and relevance, especially in fields like medicine, business, public opinion, etc.;

- freedom’s dimensions: freedom from and freedom for, What role do personal convictions and the moral virtues play in making daily choices?;

- business ethics: responsible decision making, the value of loyalty;

- university education and the formation of convictions;

- freedom and history: big and small decisions that have changed history, concrete examples: the dedication of Petrarch or of Alexander Fleming; work and inspiration: their role in the great scientific, artistic, cultural and social revolutions;

- the youth and serious decisions: Can young people make important and lasting decisions?; concrete examples: George Washington, L. Braille, Thomas Edison, Alexander the Great, etc.;

- freedom and service: personal commitment and the “new narcissism.”

Main Ideas

• The Birth of Freedom. What is the historical origin of the concept of freedom?  Classical views of man and the cosmos.  The concept of freedom in Oriental cultures.  Is our fate fixed, or determined by our free choices?  The Christian understanding of man: rational, free, responsible, child of God.
• The Value of Making Decisions.  The responsibility of having one’s own convictions.  How to distinguish between important and negligible decisions.  Ways of understanding the relationship between freedom and truth: truth as liberation, freedom’s search for meaning, freedom as a creator of values.  Freedom’s dimensions: ‘freedom-for’—‘ freedom-from’, choice, intention, and self-gift.
• Freedom and commitment. Do commitments limit or positively channel one’s freedom?  Freedom and service: is serving others a way of developing one’s freedom?  The impact of commitment: free choices that have changed the course of history.  Great successes begin with small decisions—the importance of exercising freedom in everyday life.
• Freedom and Youth. Is it possible to make important and difficult decisions in one’s youth?  Outstanding historical examples: George Washington, Ludwig von Beethoven, Louis Braille, Alexander the Great, etc.
• Freedom and Time. Human freedom as a continued process of self-determination.  Freedom’s faithful ally: perseverance.  Having an end in mind—essential for writing novels and for the novel of life.  The importance of rectifying (while there’s still time).
• Interior Freedom. Living free commitments in the face of opposition.  Recent historical examples: Ernest Shackleton, Edith Stein, Viktor Frankl.
• Emotional Freedom. Freedom and self-dominion.  Freedom and personal toughness.  Christian freedom as freedom from sin.

The UNIV Forum has some very interesting articles. I will post here a brief summary of a few of the most recent posts (unfortunately, some of the most interesting are in Spanish!)

Culture and University Life

Friendship: The Key to the Evangelization of Men.

By John McCloskey

Our society must recovery the sens of friendship. Besides the joy of its existence, friendship reveals itself as a key to evangelization, from the early times of Christianism. The exemple of saints let us know the two senses of this essential way of human relationship.

The Ways of Denial

Karol Wojtyla

In 1976 the man who would become John Paul II analyzed contemporary culture’s tendency towards a general denial of God. In light of the Bible’s account of original sin, Cardinal Wojtyla warned that the desire for absolute freedom can turn against contemporary man even more drastically than at the beginning of human history.

John Paul II and the UNIV

In 1985, talking to UNIV Participants, John Paul II said: “It’s a great idea to have this annual international meeting of students from around the world and it’s good that you have the chance to get together in this way and to sing together. It’s a great joy. For me, it’s a great joy.”

Filosofía y Libertad (Philosophy and Freedom)

La filosofía ha sido entendida desde antiguo como la más libre de las artes liberales. Quien filosofa no reconoce más restricciones que las que derivan de su compromiso serio con la búsqueda de la verdad. From ancient times, philosophy has been known as the most free (liberal) of liberal arts. The philosopher does not recognise restrictions other than those that derive from his own firm commitment to the search for truth.

Laicidad y pluralismo (Laicism and pluralism)

La laicidad del Estado se invoca con frecuencia de manera ambigua e impropia y, a veces, hasta para enmascarar actitudes o recursos poco respetuosos hacia la sensibilidad religiosa de los ciudadanos. Sin embargo, la laicidad constituye un valor positivo, que no debería generar desconfianza o sospecha. Lo mismo cabe decir del pluralismo político, consecuencia inmediata de la libertad, que el Estado reconoce a todos los ciudadanos y la Iglesia católica a sus fieles. State laicism is frequently invoked in an ambiguous and improper sense and, even with the aim of hiding attitudes or means disrespectful towards the religious sensitivity of citizens. Still, laicism is a positive value, which should not cause mistrust or suspicion. The same might be said of political pluralism, an immediate consequence of freedom, which the State recognises for all its citizens and the Catholic Church for all its faithful.

Yesterday I found this message in my Inbox. It came for one of those “Daily Quote” services,  in Spanish:

“Cada vez estoy más persuadido: la felicidad del Cielo es para los que saben ser felices en la Tierra.” Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer.

The English version goes:

“I am every day more convinced that happiness in Heaven is for those who know how to be happy on earth.” THE FORGE, 1005.

I am copying a few more ideas which may help us make good new year’s resolutions, taken from the writings of St. Josemaría.

From:

www.escrivaworks.org

St Josemaría Escrivá

Love Our Lord passionately. Love him madly! Because if there is love there — when there is love — I would dare to say that resolutions are not needed. My parents — think of yours — did not need to make any resolutions to love me: and what an effusion of tenderness they showed me, in little details every day!

With that same human heart we can and should love God. THE FORGE, 503

Let us ask our Lord then to make us souls devoted to the blessed Eucharist, so that our relationship with him brings forth joy and serenity and a desire for justice. In this way we will make it easier for others to recognize Christ; we will put Christ at the centre of all human activities. And Jesus’ promise will be fulfilled: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” CHRIST IS PASSING BY, 156.

If we really want to sanctify our work, we have inescapably to fulfil the first condition: that of working — and working well! — with human and supernatural seriousness. THE FORGE, 698.

A few more quotes from:

“Don’t judge without having heard both sides. Even persons who think themselves virtuous very easily forget this elementary rule of prudence.”
— Josemaría Escrivá (The Way)

And a few more, from other writers and sources:

A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. ~Author Unknown

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it’s twice as onerous a duty.  ~John Selden

Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.  ~Hal Borland

The merry year is born
Like the bright berry from the naked thorn.
~Hartley Coleridge

New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.  ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

Every man should be born again on the first day of January.  Start with a fresh page.  Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.  ~Henry Ward Beecher

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past.  Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.  ~Brooks Atkinson

Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.
~Walter Scott

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty?  I live according to twenty-year-old habits. ~Andre Gide

We meet today

To thank Thee for the era done,

And Thee for the opening one.
~John Greenleaf Whittier

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this:  To rise above the little things.  ~John Burroughs

A happy New Year! Grant that I

May bring no tear to any eye

When this New Year in time shall end

Let it be said I’ve played the friend,

Have lived and loved and labored here,

And made of it a happy year.
~Edgar Guest

It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I didn’t have regrets.  ~William Thomas

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.  ~Ellen Goodman

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.  It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.  Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.  Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. ~G.K. Chesterton

I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the year’s. ~Henry Moore

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year.  Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.  ~Thomas Mann

The lyrics of the Christmas carol “Joy to the World” go:

Joy to the World , the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Our hearts are filled with JOY as we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ The following is just one of the many e-greetings available on catholicgreetings.org!

• Here are the various references to JOY in the works of the Founder, St Josemaría Escrivá
• MERRY CHRISTMAS!
• Humor, Rest & Recreation
• You can play and listen to “Joy to the World” here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR to one & all!

]]> http://opusdeitoday.org/2010/12/joy/feed/ 0 http://opusdeitoday.org/2010/10/rosary/ http://opusdeitoday.org/2010/10/rosary/#comments Thu, 07 Oct 2010 02:01:45 +0000 Aliza Racelis http://opusdeitoday.org/?p=872 Holy Rosary

“The beginning of the way, at the end of which you will find yourself completely carried away with love for Jesus, is a trusting love for Mary,” says St Josemaría Escrivá in the book “Holy Rosary”.

Here’s the entry on the Rosary from the Catholic Encyclopedia: “The Rosary”, says the Roman Breviary, ”is a certain form of prayer wherein we say fifteen decades or tens of Hail Marys with an Our Father between each ten, while at each of these fifteen decades we recall successively in pious meditation one of the mysteries of our  Redemption.” The same lesson for the Feast of the Holy Rosary informs us that when the Albigensian heresy was devastating the country of Toulouse, St. Dominic earnestly besought the help of  Our Lady and was instructed by her, so tradition asserts, to preach the Rosary among the people as an antidote to heresy and sin. …

Here’s a video of a filmed get-together with the Founder of Opus Dei where he talks about the Holy Rosary:

Click here for the official Josemaría Escrivá channel on YouTube.

We likewise share here the first part of a series of “May Feelings” videos. This one’s “I pray the Rosary: Do you?”

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