Help me to rest in your love (A Prayer)

God of Goodness, 

   I come into your presence so aware of my human frailty and yet overwhelmed by your love for me. 

   I thank you that there is no human experience that I might walk through where your love cannot reach me. 

   If I climb the highest mountain, you are there and yet if I find myself in the darkest valley of my life, you are there. 

  Teach me today to love you more. 

  Help me to rest in that love that asks nothing more than the simple trusting heart of a child. 

In Jesus’ name. 

Amen. 

Image source: Solomon Raj, The Good Shepherd, India, https://artway.eu/artway.php?id=584&action=show&lang=en
Prayer source

Trusting the good shepherd (Dr. Tom Neal)

   Once one embraces his manner of loving, God’s unlimited strength evokes not fear but trust. He is the good shepherd whose response from the cross to our butchering was tender mercy. 

--Dr. Tom Neal, 

‘Abba, Father’: 

The Gentleness from Jesus’ Lips 

Image source: Marion Honors, CSJ, Finding the Lost Sheep, https://csjcarondelet.org/about/ministries/artists/

The miracle of your being (Frederick Buechner / John O'Donohue)

The grace of God means something like,
Here is your life. You might never have been,
but you are because the party wouldn’t
have been complete without you.

--Frederick Buechner 

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,

Illuminating all the faces and voices 

That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth. 

Praised be your father and mother,
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be. 

Blessed be those who have loved you 

Into becoming who you were meant to be, 

Blessed be those who have crossed your life 

With dark gifts of hurt and loss 

That have helped to school your mind 

In the art of disappointment. 

When desolation surrounded you, 

Blessed be those who looked for you 

And found you, their kind hands 

Urgent to open a blue window 

In the grey wall formed around you. 

Blessed be the gifts you never notice, 

Your health, eyes to behold the world, 

Thoughts to countenance the unknown, 

Memory to harvest vanished days, 

Your heart to feel the world’s waves, 

Your breath to breathe the nourishment 

Of distance made intimate by earth. 

On this echoing-day of your birth, 

May you open the gift of solitude 

In order to receive your soul;

Enter the generosity of silence 

To hear your hidden heart, 

Know the serenity of stillness 

To be enfolded anew 

By the miracle of your being. 

—John O’Donohue, For Your Birthday, 

from To Bless the Space Between Us: 

A Book of Blessings 

Happy Birthday, Fr. Pat! 

We are so blessed by the
miracle of your being! 

Image source 1: https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/why-did-god-create-everything.html 

Image source 2: Fr. Pat in India, 2023, courtesy of Paul Venables

Quotation source 

Poem source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, April 30, 2023: Whoever enters through me will be saved...

Whoever enters through me will be saved…

Will you remain close to the shepherd? 

    For the most part, King David did his best to stay close to the Lord. Psalm 23 reminds us that, as David’s shepherd, the Lord provides David with all he needs: I shall not want, David sings. He asks to be guided in right paths, that he might dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come. This is covenant relationship at its best: David trusts in the Lord, who is at his side, goodness and kindness incarnate; David allows God to work in him, shepherding him rightly. 

    In Jesus’ time, however, the Pharisees have closed their minds to Jesus, refusing to see him as the one God sent to bring salvation to all. Instead, the Pharisees hold to their traditional spiritual practices, based on careful observance of 613 laws that, over time, have come to stand between them and God. They are the thieves and robbers to whom Jesus refers in John’s Gospel, the strangers whom the sheep will not follow. Yet Jesus proclaims to all that access to God will be possible thanks to his passion, death and rising. It is his suffering, the First Letter of Peter tells us, that allows us to experience God’s forgiveness and love. Jesus himself is the gate for the sheep, the gate through which we must enter to stay close to God. 

    In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter clearly explains to the whole house of Israel that this Jesus whom they crucified was both Lord and Christ. Upon hearing this, the people are cut to the quick, and ready to repent and be baptized. Only by changing direction can they get close to the Lord, and allow him to work within them. They may have gone astray like sheep, but they must return to the shepherd, surrendering themselves to Christ, believing in him, and in the access to God that his suffering and death made possible. The Lord is our shepherd, so long as we allow ourselves to be guided in right paths, that we might follow in his footsteps and dwell forever in his presence.  

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class. 
Image source:  www.wordclouds.com 

Meeting Christ (Fr. Steve Grunow / Susan Delaney Spear)

In each day, in each encounter,
there is the possibility of
meeting and serving Christ.

--Fr. Steve Grunow

Homily, May 30, 2020 

I run in oddly warm December air
and chase the orange, evanescent sun.
Inhale, exhale (a runner’s form of prayer),
I run in oddly warm December air.
A stranger joins me on the asphalt trail.
We speak in measured rhythm, then—he’s gone.
I run in oddly warm December air,
My heart burns like the evanescent sun. 

--Susan Delaney Spear, Emmaus 

Image source: https://www.revelationwellness.org/2021/10/tips-to-run-with-jesus/
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Jesus finds us on that road (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   We’re often like the dispirited disciples walking to Emmaus in Luke’s Gospel. When faced with the kind of pain that brings us to our knees, we are often too discouraged and too disheartened to grasp the lesson that’s being taught. We feel tempted to walk away from what’s hurting us and move instead towards some human consolation, towards something in the world that promises earthly compensation to replace our crucified dream of faith. The good news is that Jesus finds us on that road, too. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser,

 Facebook, April 15, 2020

Image source: James Tissot, The Pilgrims of Emmaus on the Road (1886-1894), https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/13524

This love unto death (Bishop Robert Barron)

    Jesus enlightens the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Have you ever tried to solve a puzzle and then were surprised when the various pieces suddenly fell into place? Well, this is what happens to these disciples as Jesus begins to speak: How slow of heart [you are] to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? The whole of Christianity is hanging here in the balance. 

    The disciples didn’t get it at first. They didn’t get the secret, the mystery, the key, the pattern. And what was that? God’s self-emptying love, even unto death. God’s act of taking upon himself the sins of the world in order to take them away, the mystery of redemption through suffering. 

    Jesus explains this first by reference to the prophets; but then, he makes it as vividly present to them as he can: He took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. And that’s when the pieces fell into place—that’s when the puzzle was solved. The Eucharist made present this love unto death, this love that is more powerful than sin and death. The Eucharist is the key. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Gospel Reflection, April 7, 2021 

Image source: Sr. Marie-Paul Farran, OSB, The Road to Emmaus, icon, https://artandtheology.org/2017/04/28/the-unnamed-emmaus-disciple-mary-wife-of-cleopas/

Our journey of discipleship (Mary J. Novak)

  So what does Jesus do as he joins them? He focuses on their harm. He enters into their pain in a way that invites them to share deeply on this long, seven-mile trek. This is so important because what is not named cannot be healed. Jesus listens to their specific pain, pain that is different from the pain of his mother, of Mary Magdalene or of Peter. He lets them share their experiences, their understanding of what happened, their dashed conventional messianic hopes. 

   Only then does Jesus begin the delicate process of putting the disciples’ story within the context of the wider story told in Scripture. This is brought more fully into their conscious imagination when they come together in the breaking of the bread, finally seeing Jesus and healing enough to find their way back to community. 

   In our journey of discipleship, our vision of faith and hope, our understanding of God, Christ and community will be crucified and humiliated, probably more than a few times. We may even walk away. But somewhere on that road, as we walk away from our pain, Christ will appear, in a new guise, and we will be unable initially to recognize him. 

    Eventually, that encounter restructures our imagination and our faith so we recognize Christ in a new and much deeper way. That recognition turns us around and sends us back. What we can find on our own road to Emmaus is a deeper vision and meaning of God, Christ, and our faith community. 

--Mary J. Novak, J.D., M.A.P.S. 

Image source: Sadao Watanabe, The Walk to Emmaus (1965), https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/The-Walk-to-Emmaus/D5A15A585D1F5892 Quotation source

Nature speaks of the Creator's love (George Washington Carver / Henri Nouwen)

I love to think of nature as an
unlimited broadcasting station,
through which God speaks to us every hour,
if only we will tune in.

--George Washington Carver 

    All nature conceals its great secrets and cannot reveal its hidden wisdom and profound beauty if we do not listen carefully and patiently. John Henry Newman sees nature as a veil through which an invisible world is intimated. He writes: The visible world is… the veil of the world invisible… so that all that exists or happens visibly, conceals and yet suggests, and above all subserves, a system of persons, facts, and events beyond itself.

    How differently we would live if we were constantly aware of this veil and sensed in our whole being how nature is ever ready for us to hear and see the great story of the Creator’s love, to which it points. The plants and animals with whom we live teach us about birth, growth, maturation, and death, about the need for gentle care, and especially about the importance of patience and hope… 

    It is sad that in our days we are less connected with nature and we no longer allow nature to minister to us. We so easily limit ministry to work for people by people. But we could do an immense service to our world if we would let nature heal, counsel, and teach again. I often wonder if the sheer artificiality and ugliness with which many people are surrounded are not as bad as or worse than their interpersonal problems. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Today is Earth Day!
 Spend some time listening to our natural world, 
and hear the Author of all Creation
speaking through it! 

Image source: https://theophanymedia.com/god-speaks-everything-faith-in-creative-media/ 
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Can we recognize his presence? (Henri Nouwen)

    The world in which we live today and about whose suffering we know so much seems more than ever a world from which Christ has withdrawn himself. How can I believe that in this world we are constantly being prepared to receive the Spirit? Still, I think that this is exactly the message of hope. God has not withdrawn himself. He sent his Son to share our human condition and the Son sent us his Spirit to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life. It is in the midst of the chaotic suffering of humanity that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love, makes himself visible. But can we recognize his presence? 

--Henri Nouwen

Image source: Rowan LeCompte and Irene Matz LeCompte, Third Station of the Resurrection: The Walk to Emmaus (detail), 1970. Mosaic, Resurrection Chapel, National Cathedral, Washington, DC. https://artandtheology.org/2017/04/28/the-unnamed-emmaus-disciple-mary-wife-of-cleopas/
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, April 23, 2023: He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread...

He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread…

How will the risen Lord be revealed to us? 

    Is it so surprising that, in John’s gospel, the two disciples Jesus encounters on the road to Emmaus do not recognize the risen Lord immediately? Even though every one of Jesus’ Passion predictions included his resurrection, no one expects to see Jesus walking the earth again. He must therefore guide them through a progression from confusion to discovery to insight. First, Jesus encourages the two disciples to verbalize their grief: What are you discussing as you walk along? he asks them. This simple question allows the two to speak of their hopes that have been disappointed. Jesus then draws them together through the use of the word of God: beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures. Finally, Jesus takes bread, says the blessing, breaks it and gives it to them, and they immediately know through this sacrament that he is with them, before he vanishes from their sight. 

    How will we encounter the risen Lord? How will he be revealed to us? In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter speaks a harsh truth to all staying in Jerusalem, making clear their participatory role in the crucifixion of the Messiah: This man you killed, he says. Their response is forceful; shortly after the passage we hear, we learn that they are cut to the heart (Acts 2:37) by the realization of their own culpability. Here, God is giving all of them a possibility in the midst of difficulty: God is nudging the crowds to see things differently, to accept a new vision from God, and to allow it to direct their choices and their lives. The First Letter of Peter also reminds us that we have much left to comprehend as we pass through this life, and thus we must conduct ourselves with reverence during the time of our sojourning, as we come to open to all that God has to reveal both to and in us. For, as Psalm 16 reminds us, the Lord does show us the path of life; we have but to open to him, present in both word and sacrament, in the scriptures and the breaking of the bread. In so doing, we too can come to recognize Jesus Christ as our risen Lord, the consummate source of our faith and hope in God. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class. 

Image post: www.wordclouds.com

Good things for all (St. Oscar Romero)

   There are not two categories of people. There are not some who were born to have everything and leave others with nothing and a majority that has nothing and can’t enjoy the happiness that God has created for all. God wants a Christian society, one in which we share the good things that God has given for all of us. 

--St. Oscar Romero

Image source 1: Engraving by A. Caprioli after M. de Vos, The early Christian community placing all property at the apostles’ feet, Wellcome Collection, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hk5qftdd/items 
Image source 2:  Seven men selected for the equitable distribution of food in Acts 6, https://www.retrochristianity.org/2012/08/19/selecting-the-seven-in-acts-6-biblical-precedence-for-congregational-election-of-deacons/
Quotation source

Keeping the flame of hope alive (Henri Nouwen)

   Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us when we are together that allows us to live in this world without surrendering to the powerful forces constantly seducing us toward despair. That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love even when we see hatred all around us. That is why we can claim that God is a God of life even when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other. Waiting together, nurturing what has already begun, expecting its fulfillment—that is the meaning of marriage, friendship, community, and the Christian life. 

--Henri Nouwen

 

 

Source of images: Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, Easter Vigil Mass, April 8, 2023, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5202234946504552&set=a.5183331415061572 

Quotation source

Holding that house down (John Lewis)

    About fifteen of us children were outside my aunt Seneva’s house, playing in her dirt yard. The sky began clouding over, the wind started picking up, lightning flashed far off in the distance, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about playing anymore; I was terrified…  

    Aunt Seneva was the only adult around, and as the sky blackened and the wind grew stronger, she herded us all inside. Her house was not the biggest place around, and it seemed even smaller with so many children squeezed inside. Small and surprisingly quiet. All of the shouting and laughter that had been going on earlier, outside, had stopped. The wind was howling now, and the house was starting to shake. We were scared. Even Aunt Seneva was scared. 

    And then it got worse. Now the house was beginning to sway. The wood plank flooring beneath us began to bend. And then, a corner of the room started lifting up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. None of us could. This storm was actually pulling the house toward the sky. With us inside it. 

    That was when Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands. Line up and hold hands, she said, and we did as we were told. Then she had us walk as a group toward the corner of the room that was rising. From the kitchen to the front of the house we walked, the wind screaming outside, sheets of rain beating on the tin roof. Then we walked back in the other direction, as another end of the house began to lift. And so it went, back and forth, fifteen children walking with the wind, holding that trembling house down with the weight of our small bodies. 

     More than half a century has passed since that day, and it has struck me more than once over those many years that our society is not unlike the children in that house, rocked again and again by the winds of one storm or another, the walls around us seeming at times as if they might fly apart. It seemed that way in the 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement, when America itself felt as if it might burst at the seams—so much tension, so many storms. 

     But the people of conscience never left the house. They never ran away. They stayed, they came together and they did the best they could, clasping hands and moving toward the corner of the house that was the weakest. And then another corner would lift, and we would go there. And eventually, inevitably, the storm would settle, and the house would still stand. But we knew another storm would come, and we would have to do it all over again.

    And we did. And we still do, all of us. You and I. Children holding hands, walking with the wind....

--Rep. John Lewis (1940-2020)

Might this not be an apt metaphor 

for our life as church as well?  

Image & story source: https://orsl.stanford.edu/news/be-service

The parish is a beacon (Pope Benedict XVI)

   The parish is a beacon that radiates the light of the faith and thus responds to the deepest and truest desires of the human heart, giving meaning and hope to the lives of individuals and families. 

--Pope Benedict XVI    

Image source: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Vally, rose window, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=421472057914222&set=a.421471351247626 

Quotation source

The power of gathering (Alice Waters)

   This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive. 

--Alice Waters   

Image source: OLMC St. Patrick’s Day Dinner 2019, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2250963621631714&set=a.2248483978546345
Quotation source

The function of church (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

    Family and home consists of the everyday, sometimes drab, business of staying together, eating together, praying together, sharing money and material things together, celebrating occasions together, being mutually accountable to each other, challenging and correcting each other, and carrying each other’s pathologies and weaknesses. Such are the functions of home and family. Such too is the function of church. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI, 

Facebook, August 24, 2022 

Image source: https://valuedvoicestherapy.com/play-with-a-purpose/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, April 16, 2023: They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and to the prayers...

 

They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread
 and to the prayers…

What defines our life shared together in Christ? 

   It’s not surprising that, after Jesus’ death, the disciples were afraid, remaining together behind doors that were locked for fear of the Jews, uncertain what to do next. Although they had faith, they did not really know what to expect. But when they see the Lord, the disciples rejoice. And while, at first, he doubts – Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, I will not believe, he says – Thomas, too, will come to have faith, even more rapidly than his friends did, recognizing Jesus immediately when Jesus returns a week later to the upper room. 

   By the time John is writing his Gospel, Christian witness is essential to the community, for the persecutions are underway and there is great pressure to not believe, to renounce their faith in Christ. Christians know that it is essential to live every day as though they have been conceived for the first time, for they live for a future event that is unfolding in them. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Christian community knows this, and all devote themselves to a life fulfilled in Christ Jesus. Even simple communal dinners are cause for rejoicing: They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God, perhaps with Psalm 18, My strength and my courage is the Lord. Acts provides us with an idealized picture of the Christian community, in which all live with and care for one another, having one another’s interests at heart – the essence of any community of faith. 

    Why gather in community? Why hold beliefs in common? When we come together as a community, there is a power in our spiritual presence to one another that is greater than we can measure, born of faith, a power out of time and space, epitomized by the joy that fills us at Eucharist. We have, as the First Letter of Peter tells us, a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, a hope born of faith, imperishable, undefiled, unfading, indescribable. We believe in the power of the resurrection to forgive sins, to create us anew; like the apostles, we must know, we must believe, that it is essential to live every day as though we have been conceived for the first time. We too live for a future event that is unfolding in us, and that shared faith defines our life together in community. Our faith may waver, it may ebb and flow, but ultimately, may the genuineness of our faith indeed prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

What lies before us (Henry Knox Sherrill)

   The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.

--Henry Knox Sherrill

Image source: https://thecinemaholic.com/where-is-the-chosen-filmed/
Quotation source

I shall rise (M. Luther / Ph. Brooks)

Our Lord has written the promise

of the resurrection, not in books alone,

but in every leaf in spring-time. 

--Martin Luther 

   Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, “Christ is risen,” but “I shall rise.” 

--Phillips Brooks 

Image source: The Resurrection, https://www.lynchburgstainedglass.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Resurrection-5.jpg
Source of quotations

What wakes us up? (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   What wakes us up? Peter woke up when he heard the cock crow, saw Jesus’ face, and realized that love stays even after you betray it. On learning that, he never fell asleep in that way again. As the Gospels make plain, it’s new light, a risen body, an empty tomb, a resurrection, a rainbow breaking in after the storm, an unexpected forgiveness, and a second change that wake us. And, as our faith assures us, we have an infinite number of second chances even if we have, for most of our lives, settled for second best. 

 --Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI 

Facebook, April 20, 2022

Image source 1: Sadao Watanabe, St. Peter’s Denial (1959), https://www.davidsongalleries.com/products/st-peter-s-denial-matthew-26-69-75 

Image source 2: https://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather-ology-bridge-to-the-heavens-15430

Easter Song (C.M. Crowe / George Herbert)

Easter is the demonstration of God that
life is essentially spiritual and timeless.

--Charles M. Crowe 

I got me flowers to strew Thy way,
I got me boughs off many a tree;
But Thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st Thy sweets along with Thee.
The sun arising in the East,
Though he give light and th’ East perfume,
If they should offer to contest
With Thy arising, they presume.
Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever. 

--George Herbert, Easter Song

Happy Easter from
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley! 

In celebration of Easter, enjoy Hear the Bells Ringing as performed by The 2nd Chapter of Acts by clicking on the video below:

Image source: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/image/sunrise-flowers-fcc6488?lang=eng
Quotation source
Poem source
Video source

Christ the Lord is risen! (W. Nee / St. John of Damascus)

Our old history begins with the Cross.
 Our new history begins with the Resurrection.

 --Watchman Nee 

Now let the heavens be joyful,

Let earth her song begin:

Let the round world keep triumph,

And all that is therein;

Invisible and visible,

Their notes let all things blend,

For Christ the Lord is risen

Our joy that hath no end. 

--Saint John of Damascus 

Image source: https://www.ncregister.com/features/live-easter-joy-these-50-days
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God loves above and beyond (Rachel Cornec)

   Saturday. After the dramatic crucifixion of Jesus, you get a Saturday. If you think that loving Jesus is only about Christmas and Easter Sunday, let's take a closer look at this Saturday. Some people call it the day of waiting, or the in-between time, but I would offer that this is who Jesus really is, and the whole point of His message. 

   Saturday was a day of shame and failure. When hopes and plans and dreams and promises were dead and done. Jesus' own friends and family, hating him, betraying Him, lying, and abandoning Him. Watching Him die and be buried. Slinking back to their old jobs. Yes, hypocrites, every single one. Saturday was a day of joy, relief and peace for those who wanted Jesus dead. Those who sought to preserve their own positions, prestige and power even if they had to destroy to achieve it. They called it legal. They called it justice. Hypocrites, every single one. 

   Jesus is the only one who can and will love you on the Saturdays of your lives. When you have utterly failed, destroyed every thing you ever planned, hoped, believed or loved. When you have stood proud and loud for the destruction of others. When you have alienated everyone. That is the true message of Jesus. 

   Plans? They can fail. People? They also fail in every way. God loves you. He comes for you when you trashed your life and slink into the shadows. He comes for you when you are caught up in your own reflection and are lauded for your selfish actions. 

   Saturday. When you and I would be long, long gone, Jesus comes loving, saving, forgiving, healing. Not for who you are or aren't. Not for what you did or didn't. He came for us because He wanted to: loving us. 

   Consider how a loving God can and will love you, and you can't talk Him out of it. Yes, people run. Horrible choices are made every minute. Plans and dreams fail. But God loves above and beyond. I encourage you to seek Jesus, even on a Saturday. 

--Rachel Cornec 

Facebook, April 17, 2022 

Image source: Josef Hermann?, Apostles, https://jamestabor.com/the-first-easter-when-angels-and-apostles-wept/

I believe (Mark Miller)

As we segue from Good Friday through Holy Saturday to the Easter Vigil, we might contemplate the poem below, written by a Jewish prisoner on a cellar wall in a World War II concentration camp, and set to music by Mark Miller.

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining
And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God, even when He is silent. 

To hear Mark Miller’s song, I Believe, based on this poem and performed by the Northern Lights Chorale, click on the video below: 

Image source: Icon, Christ Opening the Gates of Dachau, http://ww1.antiochian.org/souls-aflame
Video source

The Lamb of God, sacrificed for sin (Bishop Robert Barron)

    What enabled the first Christians to hold up the cross, to sing its praises, to wear it as a decoration is the fact that God raised up and ratified precisely this crucified Jesus. The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead. Therefore, God was involved in this terrible thing; God was there, working out his salvific purposes. 

   But what does this mean? There have been numerous attempts throughout the Christian centuries to name the salvific nature of the cross. Let me offer just one take on it. It became clear to the first Christians that somehow, on that terrible cross, sin had been dealt with. The curse of sin had been removed, taken care of. On that terrible cross, Jesus functioned as the Lamb of God, sacrificed for sin. 

   Does this mean God the Father is a cruel taskmaster demanding a bloody sacrifice so that his anger might be appeased? No; Jesus’ crucifixion was the opening up of the divine heart so that we could see that no sin of ours could finally separate us from the love of God. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Gospel Reflection, August 9, 2021

 

Image source 1: https://www.simplycatholic.com/christology-101-why-the-cross-is-salvific/ 

Image source 2: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/09/26/explainer-the-cross-an-eternal-symbol-of-love-thats-been-tragically-twisted-by-terrorists-war-criminals/

In that hour of darkness, new light was seen (Henri Nouwen)

   God is beyond, beyond our heart and mind, beyond our feelings and thoughts, beyond our expectations and desires, and beyond all the events and experiences that make up our life. Still God is in the center of all of it. Here we touch the heart of prayer, since here it becomes manifest that in prayer the distinction between God’s presence and God’s absence no longer really distinguishes. In prayer, God’s presence is never separated from God’s absence and God’s absence is never separated from God’s presence. God’s presence is so much beyond the human experience of being together that it quite easily is perceived as absence. God’s absence, on the other hand, is often so deeply felt that it leads to a new sense of God’s presence… 

    My God, my God, why have you deserted me? (Psalms 22:1)… When Jesus spoke these words on the cross, total aloneness and full acceptance touched each other. In that moment of complete emptiness all was fulfilled. In that hour of darkness new light was seen. While death was witnessed, life was affirmed. Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was most profoundly revealed. When God, through the humanity of Jesus, freely chose to share our own most painful experience of divine absence, God became most present to us. It is into this mystery that we enter when we pray. 

--Henri Nouwen    

Image source: Fr. Patrick Michaels, Crucifixion (1973), https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=704549103060620&set=a.704548209727376
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The real struggle (Sr. Bernadette Reis / Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

I do not know Jesus’ experience.

But I know my own. And that is

where I can meet Jesus,

who also went through the experience of anguish 

— whose sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane

and the few words he managed to gasp out

were the way he shared what he was going through
with his Father. 

--Sr. Bernadette Reis, FSP 

    The real struggle for Jesus as he sweated blood in Gethsemane was not whether he would allow himself to die or invoke divine power and escape. The question was only about how he was going to die: In bitterness or love? In hatred or forgiveness? 

    That’s also our ultimate moral struggle, one which won’t just confront us at the moment of death but one which confronts us daily, hourly. In every situation in our lives, small or large, where we are unfairly ignored, slighted, insulted, hated, or victimized in any way, we face a choice of how to respond: Bitterness or understanding? Hatred or love? Vengeance or forgiveness? 

 --Fr. Ron Rolheiser

Facebook, April 8, 2019

Image source: Luca Giordano, The Agony in the Garden (17th c.), with a thorough study of the painting here: https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/beholding-beauty-giordanos-agony-in-the-garden/ 

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The Welcome Table (Dr. Kim R. Harris)

When I think of Holy Thursday and the Eucharistic table, [the song I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table] always comes to mind.

In which direction are we looking? Are we looking toward freedom?

Are we sitting comfortably and restfully at the table? Or do we have our shoes, on our feet and our walking sticks in hand, eating like people who are in flight… ready to create and heed the call, looking toward freedom?

I’m gonna sit at the welcome table… ready to go. In which direction are we looking?

Are we looking and bending down, to wash the feet of a neighbor? Or even allowing our own feet to be washed in the ritual…? While feeling other than, feeling above or even feeling disdain for those who are in deep need. Unhoused, underfed, unremembered?

Do we see, as we look at our table, not only who is there, but who is not there? Who is not invited? Who is invited but cannot gain access?

All God’s Children gonna sit together… In which direction are we looking?

Are we looking up, in adoration of Jesus present in the Eucharist? Are we looking up, yet not remembering, as they say in my community, that God sits on high but looks low. And as we read in the biblical book of Exodus, God sees and hears the cries and the oppression of the people. And as we know in our own time, God sees and hears the bombs of war and the cries of Her children fleeing for their lives.

I’m gonna tell God how you treat me, In which direction are we looking?

On this Holy Thursday let us fix our gaze, let us train our attention toward freedom, toward our neighbors near and far off, toward our Savior and our brother. Who hears our cries and guides our feet.

We sit at the welcome table, let us also set a welcoming table… and be the ones who expand the welcome with courage. 

--Dr. Kim R. Harris 

To hear one version of I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table performed by The Anointed Straughter Sisters, click on the video below: 

Image source: Sadao Watanabe, Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples (1970), https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2864T/lots/1139
Image source 2: Pope Francis washing the feet of prisoners, 2022, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250969/pope-francis-will-wash-feet-of-12-prisoners-on-holy-thursday-2022
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Video source