Halloween (Henri Nouwen / Steve Garnass-Holmes)

One of the most powerful experiences
in a life of compassion is the
expansion of our hearts into
a world-embracing space of healing
from which no one is excluded.

--Henri Nouwen 

Halloween: a day when we get it right.
Strangers come to us,
beautiful, ugly, odd or scary,
and we accept them all without question,
compliment them, treat them,
and give them good things. 

Why don’t we live like that? 

--Steve Garnass-Holmes 

Image source: https://www.sfgate.com/mommyfiles/article/Bay-Area-s-best-Halloween-hoods-for-10299399.php
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

The only thing worthy of you is compassion (Thich Naht Hanh)

The only thing worthy of you is compassion –
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.

And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.

Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road
the sun and moon will continue to shine. 

--Thich Naht Hanh,

Recommandation (excerpt) 

Image source:  https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/25/697052006/anger-can-be-contagious-heres-how-to-stop-the-spread
Poem source & discussion

To love with all our heart (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton / Pope Francis)

God is like a looking glass in which souls see each other. 
The more we are united to him by love,
the nearer we are to those who belong to him.

--St. Elizabeth Ann Seton 

   To love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength and my neighbour as myself.” Let us ask ourselves: does this commandment truly orient my life? Does this commandment resonate in my daily life? 

   It would be good this evening, before going to sleep, to make an examination of conscience on this Word, to see if we have loved the Lord today and if we have done a little good to those we happened to meet. May every encounter bring about a little bit of good, a little bit of love that comes from this Word. May the Virgin Mary, in whom the Word of God was made flesh, teach us to welcome the living word of the Gospel in our hearts.

--Pope Francis, Homily, July 30, 2023

Image source: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/04/08/through-window-world-shaped-coronavirus/2949871001/
Quotation 1 source 
Quotation source 2

Compassion as covenant (Fr. Greg Boyle / William Faulkner)

Compassion is not a relationship
between the healer and the wounded.
 It’s a covenant between equals.

--Fr. Greg Boyle 

      Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth. 

--William Faulkner 

Image source 1: https://www.kpbs.org/news/2022/12/13/revolution-of-the-heart-the-dorothy-day-story
Image source 2:  All the Way to Heaven is Heaven, which depicts Dorothy Day serving in a soup kitchen.  This image is hanging in O'Brien Hall, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley.
Quotation 1 source
Quotation 2 source

We can hear, see, and touch him (Henri Nouwen)

    The poor we see every day, the stories about deportation, torture, and murder we hear every day, and the undernourished children we touch every day, reveal to us the suffering Christ has hidden within us. When we allow this image of the suffering Christ within us to grow to its full maturity, then ministry to the poor and oppressed becomes a real possibility; because then we can indeed hear, see, and touch him within us as well as among us… 

    Once we have seen the suffering Christ within us, we will see him wherever we see people in pain. Once we have seen the suffering Christ among us, we will recognize him in our innermost self. Thus, we come to experience that the first commandment, to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, resembles indeed the second: “You must love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39–40). 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Ilya Ovcharenko, Christ Carrying the Cross (20th c.), https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2013/06/christ-carrying-cross-painting-from.html
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 29, 2023: Which commandment in the law is the greatest?

Which commandment in the law is the greatest?

... and how does it reflect our obligations
to God and to one another? 

   Many chapters of the Book of Exodus are devoted to the covenant and to the laws designed to help the people of Israel maintain that covenant. The Lord clearly informs the people that, in order to be in right relationship with him, the people must also be in right relationship with their neighbor: You shall not molest or oppress an alien. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. Take care of one another, in other words: the neighbor who has no legal rights is still your responsibility! If the people want to remain in covenant with the Lord, they must act as the Lord does, with compassion and love: If your neighbor cries out to me, I will hear him, the Lord says, for I am compassionate. Acting in imitation of the God they worship, the people will become the compassionate neighbor each other needs. 

   The law laid out in Exodus was complicated. In Matthew’s Gospel, a scholar of the law tests Jesus with what seems to be a simple question: which commandment in the law is the greatest? Jesus’ response distills all 613 precepts of the Pharisees into two straightforward statements: love the Lord, your God and love your neighbor as yourself. Imitation of the Lord is participation in God’s life, as Paul reminds the Thessalonians, who became a model for all the believers in their region. God loves all God created; if we imitate the Lord, we too must be conduits of that love for all. 

   It’s one thing to love God with all that is in you, and to say, as in Psalm 18, I love you, Lord, my strength. It’s quite another to love your neighbor as yourself. We can only do this if we are compassionate as God is compassionate; we must embrace our responsibility for our neighbor as profoundly as the Lord does. Like the Thessalonians, we must strive to be a living example to our world, through imitation of Christ, in all we do and say, and in all we live. Which commandment is the greatest? The commandment of love.  

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

God alone (Sr. Joan Chittister)

Train yourself to let go

of everything

you fear to lose. 

--Yoda 

    The grail we seek is God alone. We must seek God in the right places: within the sanctuary of the centered self. 

 --Sr. Joan Chittister,
Monastic Wisdom
for Seekers of Light 

Image source: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Damsel of the Sanct Grael (1874), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Grail#/media/File:Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Damsel_of_the_Sanct_Grael_(1874).jpg

Salvation as a way of life (Mother Angelica)

   Faith enables us to see God in everything and everyone. Hope enables us to see God bringing good out of everything, and Love enables us to respond to the virtue of the Moment with joy. This is salvation at work – working and growing until it enjoys the perfect freedom of the sons of God in His Kingdom. It is ever active, and seeking ways of becoming stronger, for salvation is a way of life. 

--Mother Angelica,
Mother Angelica on Prayer &
Living for the Kingdom 

Image source: https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/disneys-encanto-teaches-us-see-god-ourselves-and-others

Saved by faith, hope and love (Reinhold Neibuhr)

   Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness. 

--Reinhold Neibuhr,
The Irony of American History

Image source: Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, The Crucifixion, oil sketch (ca. 1675), https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437172

There is only one Glory (Alfred Lord Tennyson / St. Teresa of Avila)

Our little systems have their day:

They have their day and cease to be;

They are but broken lights of thee

And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

--Alfred Lord Tennyson 

    Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life to live, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and there is only one Glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing. 

--St. Teresa of Avila 

Image source: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/prayer/glory-be-prayer-words-and-meaning.html
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

God's currency (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

One’s life is God’s currency,
to be spent with
faith, hope, and love. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Scripture Class, October 15, 2020 

Image source: Ancient Cyrenaic coin, https://www.thehairpin.com/2012/02/possible-origins-of-the-heart-shape/

God wants my whole life (Henri Nouwen)

   I am growing in the awareness that God wants my whole life, not just part of it. It is not enough to give just so much time and attention to God and keep the rest for myself. It is not enough to pray often and deeply and then move from there to my own projects… To return to God means to return to God with all that I am and all that I have. I cannot return to God with just half of my being. As I reflected this morning again on the story of the prodigal son and tried to experience myself in the embrace of the father, I suddenly felt a certain resistance to being embraced so fully and totally. I experienced not only a desire to be embraced, but also a fear of losing my independence. I realized that God’s love is a jealous love. God wants not just a part of me, but all of me. Only when I surrender myself completely to God’s parental love can I expect to be free from endless distractions, ready to hear the voice of love, and able to recognize my own unique call. 

--Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak 

Image source: Joachim Wtewael, The Tribute Money, oil on copper (1616), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joachim_Wtewael_-_The_Tribute_Money_-_WGA25913.jpg

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 22, 2023: I am the Lord and there is no other...

I am the Lord and there is no other…

Do we recognize the one Lord of our hearts? 

    How odd that, in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah the Lord anoints a foreign king, Cyrus, whose right hand God grasps, subduing nations before him. Cyrus, King of Persia, allowed the Jewish people in exile to return to Jerusalem and gave them the wherewithal to rebuild their city, asking only that they put in a good word with their God in return. God calls Cyrus by his name, it is true, and for a reason, but God also makes one thing very clear: I am the Lord and there is no other, he tells Cyrus, I am the Lord and there is no other, he repeats. Even if Cyrus doesn’t hear this message, the people of Israel do; they know that their God is God alone – there is no other! Their prayer of praise and gratitude might well have been Psalm 96: a new song, one they haven’t sung before, sung in a way they have not sung before, with greater insight into the awesome nature of their Lord and his wondrous deeds! He is the Lord, and there is no other. 

   The Pharisees seem to continue to struggle with this notion in Matthew’s Gospel. They want to test Jesus, to entrap him, and so they send emissaries to challenge him by asking, Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Jesus’ response is not only ingenious; it is also a reminder that their shared God is God alone: repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God. The census tax is part of life; Rome needs to maintain order and pay its soldiers. But what is, or should be, most important to the Jewish people is to do what serves God. 

   The Thessalonians know this lesson. Paul recalls their work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ. These are not passive states of being but active effort on behalf of the kingdom of God. Their work is driven by faith, their labor is driven by love, and their endurance is driven by hope – all manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Is our work imbued with faith? Is our labor done out of love? Do we hope with endurance? This will be so if only we recognize that Jesus Christ is Lord and there is no other. 

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

We have to cooperate with grace (Bishop Robert Barron)

   [Matthew’s Gospel] likens the kingdom of God to a king who gives a wedding feast for his son. The biblical authors couldn’t find a more apt metaphor for the coming together of divinity and humanity than a wedding banquet. God and humanity are married, and they are surrounded by joy, peace, celebration, and good food. 

   What was Jesus’ strategy? Open table-fellowship; outreach to all, to the righteous and the unrighteous, to the healthy and the sick, to the mainstream and the marginalized. Here comes everybody. You don’t have to be good to receive God’s grace; that’s why they call it "grace." 

   But then something puzzling emerges. When the king comes to welcome his guests, he finds someone not properly dressed: "The king said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’" It was customary at the time (as it still is) for people to come to a wedding dressed up. 

   The play here is between grace and works. We can refuse the invitation altogether, or we can refuse the transformation that should follow from grace. We have to cooperate with grace, donning the wedding garment of love, forgiveness, peace, and nonviolence. 

--Bishop Robert Barron,

Gospel Reflection, October 11, 2020 

Image source: https://atxcatholic.com/index.php/2016/09/wedding-garment-matt-2211/

Congratulations, you are being rescued (K-2SO / Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

Congratulations,you are being rescued.

Please do not resist.

 --K-2SO, in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 

    We can’t give ourselves life, meaning, love, immortality; and, when we understand this, we’re opened, soul, mind, body, to the gift of life and salvation that can only come from God. God can give to us what we can’t give to ourselves. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser,

Facebook, November 5, 2022 

Image source: K-2SO saves Jyn Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/08/star-wars-a-new-droid/496052/

Jesus had no trouble with otherness (Fr. Richard Rohr)

   Through Jesus Christ, God’s own broad, deep, and all-inclusive worldview is made available to us. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the point of the Christian life is to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by the cross, which is God’s great act of solidarity instead of judgment. This is how we are to imitate Jesus, the good Jewish man who saw and called forth the divine in Gentiles like the Syrophoenician woman and the Roman centurions who followed him; in Jewish tax collectors who collaborated with the Empire; in zealots who opposed it; in sinners of all stripes; in eunuchs, pagan astrologers, and all those “outside the law.” Jesus had no trouble whatsoever with otherness. 

   If we are ready to reclaim the true meaning of “catholic,” which is “universal,” we must concentrate on including—as Jesus clearly did—instead of excluding—which he never did. 

   The only thing Jesus excluded was exclusion itself. 

--Fr. Richard Rohr 

Image source: Brunswick Monogrammist (anonymous Netherlandish painter), Parable of the Great Banquet, c. 1525, https://stephencook.com.au/2021/07/09/jesus-and-non-resistance-the-parable-of-the-wedding-garment/
Quotation source

I will rescue you (Lauren Daigle)

You are not hidden 
There's never been a moment
You were forgotten
You are not hopeless
Though you have been broken
Your innocence stolen

I hear you whisper underneath your breath
I hear your SOS, your SOS
I will send out an army to find you
In the middle of the darkest night
It's true, I will rescue you

There is no distance
That cannot be covered
Over and over
You're not defenseless
I'll be your shelter
I'll be your armor 

I hear you whisper underneath your breath
I hear your SOS, your SOS
I will send out an army to find you
In the middle of the darkest night
It's true, I will rescue you 

I will never stop marching to reach you
In the middle of the hardest fight
It's true, I will rescue you
I hear the whisper underneath your breath
I hear you whisper, you have nothing left
I will send out an army to find you
In the middle of the darkest night
It's true, I will rescue you

I will never stop marching to reach you
In the middle of the hardest fight
It's true, I will rescue you
Oh, I will rescue you 

To hear Lauren Daigle sing Rescue, click on the video below: 

Image source:  L. L. Swindle, Against the Wind, available for purchase at: https://havenlight.com/collections/jesus-walking-on-water-paintings
Video source

How can we come to know God? (C.S. Lewis)

   [God] shows much more of himself to some people than to others—not because he has favorites, but because it is impossible for him to show himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. 

--C.S. Lewis       

Image source: The Pharisee Shmuel, from The Chosen, https://www.angel.com/blog/the-chosen/posts/who-were-the-pharisees
Quotation source

Many are invited (Bishop Robert Barron)

   [In Matthew’s Gospel,] Jesus tells the parable that compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. The guests invited to the feast refuse to come. There are a number of sayings and parables of Christ that emphasize the difficulty in attaining the kingdom of heaven. Thus, Jesus declares: “Many are invited, but few are chosen.” 

   These sayings represent one of the great paradoxes of the Gospel: though the kingdom dwells in every one of us—though it is closer to us than our breath—we remain in danger of missing it. 

   It is no wonder that Jesus often compares the spiritual struggle to a battle to the death: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.” “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” It is a terrible and heart-rending inner warfare that must be endured in the process of metanoia. 

--Bishop Robert Barron,

Gospel Reflection, August 18, 2022 

Image source: Konstantin Makovsky, A Boyar Wedding Feast, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/dont-be-a-wedding-crasher

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 15, 2023: I fear no evil, for you are at my side...

I fear no evil, for you are at my side…

Do we have confidence in God’s promise of salvation? 

    In Matthew’s Gospel, after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the ire of the chief priests and elders becomes particularly fierce, but they do not immediately arrest Jesus because they fear the response of the crowds. Jesus replies to each of their challenges to his authority with parables. One of these is the parable of the nuptial banquet, in which a king gives a wedding feast for his son, sending his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast. But one after another, these guests find excuses not to come; eventually, the man orders his servants to invite to the feast whomever they find, so the servants return with good and bad alike. The bad, in the eyes of the chief priests and elders, would have included both tax collectors and prostitutes, all of whom Jesus was known to have dined with. The invitation offered by the king is an offer of mercy; the chief priests and elders fail to recognize their own need for mercy and, by extension, salvation. In fact, however, we need to be open, willing to accept God’s invitation, that we might be saved by his mercy. 

    Upon hearing this parable, the chief priests and elders would doubtless have recalled God's promise of deliverance in Isaiah: On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines; they might even have realized that they were the ones who refused to come to the feast. Isaiah promises a time when the people will no longer fear death, but they must be open to and accept the salvation the Lord offers them. King David would remember, in his trials, that the Lord was with him through every difficulty: Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil, for you are at my side, he sings in Psalm 23. David trusts in God’s promise of salvation. Likewise, Paul’s trust in the Lord’s care and concern is manifest: I can do all things in him who strengthens me, he writes to the Philippians. Paul is sustained by his faith in Jesus Christ, both in humble circumstances and in moments of abundance. 

    How confident are we in the Lord’s promises? How convinced are we that the Lord’s salvation is ours, if only we are open to it? How grateful are we when we know, in the depths of our being, the extent of his care and concern, and believe with all our core in the salvation he offers? How ready are we to come to the feast? 

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

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Hi, Daddy (Jessica Hurlbut)

   One morning, my husband discovered Mara snuggled in bed next to him with a pen in hand, scribbling all over his Bible. As he reached for the pen, Mara looked up and uttered the phrase, “Hi, Daddy.” 

   This would be a typical response for a three-year-old. But our daughter Mara is severely autistic and non-verbal. 

   So, when those words rolled off her tongue, my husband’s eyes welled with tears. He found himself overwhelmed with emotions. He was ecstatic to hear his little girl’s voice. But this moment poked a hole in the dam walls he built years prior. 

   You know the walls I’m talking about. 

   The ones we build around our hearts. 

   No one gets in and nothing comes out. 

   The floodgates broke as he mourned the loss of the daughter he envisioned. He spoke of the pain a father feels when he doesn’t even know his own child. He complained to God how Mara lived in her own world and rarely acknowledged his presence. 

   God interrupted Greg’s lament and spoke these words to his heart: 

   I know your pain. I too am a Father, and oftentimes, my children fail to acknowledge my presence. Day-in-and-day-out, they repeat the same routine: Breakfast. Work. Dinner. Netflix. Bed. They too live in their own little world. A world entrenched in hobbies, sports, materialism, binge-watching sitcoms, and Instagram surfing. I try everything imaginable to get their attention. I send people into their lives to interrupt their routines. I answer big and small prayers in hopes they will know my heart. I even went to the extreme of sending my Son, as an attempt to convey my love for them. I don’t NEED them, but I desperately WANT them. They desperately NEED me, but don’t WANT me. My greatest desire is for them to stop what they are doing and look into my eyes. I don’t have a list of rules for them to follow or a regimented agenda for their lives. 

   I just want a relationship. 

   And I’m not mad. 

   I don’t care how many times they have scribbled all over my story. 

   I'm the original author of their lives and I'm crafting a beautiful tale—if they would only hand me the pen. 

   Until then, I will patiently wait for my child to look up and utter the words that cause my heart to skip a beat…. “Hi, Daddy.” 

-- Jessica Hurlbut 

Image source: https://bartelart.com/arted/wallscribblers.html
Story source

Bear fruit (St. Basil the Great)

Imitate the earth, O mortal.

Bear fruit as it does;

do not show yourself 

inferior to inanimate soil. 

--St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice 

Image source: https://goodnessofgodministries.international/2018/08/23/the-fourth-soil-of-the-heart-the-good-tilled-and-fruitful-soil/
Quotation source

A conversation with God (Fr. R. Garrigou-Lagrange / Connie Rossini)

The interior life is precisely an elevation
and a transformation of the intimate conversation
that everyone has with himself
as soon as it tends to become a conversation with God.

--Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange,

The 3 Ages of the Interior Life 

       Most of us talk to ourselves mentally all day. This interior monologue is a gift! Little by little, it should become a dialogue with God. This reality highlights one of the problems with mindfulness and other Eastern techniques, which tend to suppress the interior monologue, focusing instead on the sensory world. We don’t want to suppress it; we want to use it as a means of growth. Human nature (minus the Fall) is our friend and helper in our relationship with God… So, start turning that interior monologue into a dialogue with the Lord. Such a dialogue is a key to spiritual growth. 

--Connie Rossini,
Authentic Contemplative Prayer

Image source: https://theswaddle.com/is-it-normal-to-talk-to-yourself-out-loud/

Our fruitfulness (Fr. Ron Rolheiser / Pope Francis)

Our fruitfulness is often the result not so much
of the great things we accomplish,
but of the graciousness, generosity,
and kindness we bring into the world.

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser 

   In the Genesis account, God commands Adam and Eve to be fruitful. Humankind has a mandate to change, to build, to master creation in the positive sense of creating from it and with it. So, what is to come doesn’t depend on some unseen mechanism, a future in which humanity is a passive spectator. No: we are protagonists, we are – if I can stretch the word – co-creators. When the Lord told us to go forth and multiply, to master the earth, he’s saying: Be the creators of your future. 

--Pope Francis,
Prologue, Let Us Dream

Image source: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/246606/jewish/The-Story-of-Adam-and-Eve-in-the-Bible.htm
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

When we cooperate with grace (Frank Scully / Bishop Robert Barron)

 

Why not go out on a limb?

That's where the fruit is.

--Frank Scully

   When we cooperate with grace, we flourish, that’s the point. When we don’t cooperate with that grace, when we refuse it, this beautifully cultivated vineyard falls into ruin. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Image source 1: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/plum/plum-fruit-thinning.htm
Image source 2: https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/820910-10-best-california-wineries-with-a-view
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

God never ceases to love us (Pat Marrin)

   The rejection of Jesus was the ultimate, tragic love story. Jesus puts the question to his audience: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do?” It is here that human logic would answer, “God will destroy his ungrateful and violent enemies. Their arrogance and selfishness deserve punishment." 

  Yet the essence of the Gospel is that even with the crucifixion of Jesus, God is still the God of mercy and forgiveness. It is an astonishing revelation and an overwhelming and extravagant response to human sin that God never ceases to love us. Even great evil cannot exhaust God’s mercy, and sinners who repent and return to God are welcomed. 

  If the Gospel seems too good to be true, it is when we really need this kind of second chance that we begin to understand the depth of God’s love for us in Jesus. He willingly underwent rejection and death on a cross, not just for his friends but also for his enemies, so that no one could doubt God’s unconditional love. 

  This love is available to us at every moment of our lives, no matter what we have done or how far we have distanced ourselves from God. Imagine how rich our lives can be if instead of resisting this love we opened our hearts to it. This is the joy of the Gospel. 

--Pat Marrin       

Source of images: James Janknegt, The Wicked Tenants, https://bensternke.com/repenting-is-easy-and-hard/
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 8, 2023: What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?

What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?

Are we ready and open to producing good fruits for the Lord? 

   Jesus faced a lot of resistance from the Jewish community of his time. In Matthew’s Gospel, when the chief priests and elders come to challenge Jesus’ teachings, Jesus offers a series of parables. In one, the owner of a vineyard sends his servants to obtain his produce from his tenants, but the tenants wreak violence upon the servants. The owner then sends his son, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But in fact, the tenants seize the son, throw him out of the vineyard, and kill him. The chief priests and elders are forced to see themselves in the role of the tenants, indicted by their own reading of the story, and Jesus makes his point clearly, saying the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit. Jesus offers them every opportunity to turn this situation around and repent. Will they? Are they listening? 

   In that moment, the chief priests and elders would no doubt have been recognizing echos from the song of Isaiah, which was itself an indictment of the people of Isaiah’s time. Faced with a vineyard that yields only wild grapes, its owner decides to let it be trampled! God has cared for God’s people, planting the choicest vines, vines that showed promise; the wild grapes that come forth are like those who reject relationship, relying solely upon themselves. Isaiah, too, called the people to repent. Did they? Were they listening? Are they truly open to God? Could they really promise, as Psalm 80 does, that if the Lord protects what his right hand has planted, they will no more withdraw from him? 

   When we face the unknown, we can become fearful, anxious. But, as Paul reminds the Philippians, they have only to make their requests known to God by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, and God will sustain them. We have but to go to that place where we are in Christ, focusing on all that is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and gracious, opening ourselves to God, and we will find strength in being one in Christ, and thus able to produce good fruits. Unlike the chief priests and elders, unlike the people of Isaiah’s time, we must be ready, open, so that God can act in and through, offering us that peace that surpasses all understanding, that we might share that peace with our world. 

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

Make me an instrument of Thy peace (Terre Roche)

My patron saint's a man who went
From town to town and paid no rent
The things he owned besides his soul
Were shoes a gown and a begging bowl

What struck me first when I was young
Was how he never got bit or stung
Though bears and snakes he did befriend
Real bears and snakes not just pretend 

And I knew this wasn't easy stuff
Because I tried it myself enough
But bears and snakes they ran from me 
Though dogs and cats came willingly 

Deep within the wooded calm
He sang a song a simple psalm
"Make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Let love be sown and hatred cease." 

Now me I live beyond my means
In the city of lost and broken dreams
With too many pairs of shoes
That take me round and round the blues 

And the price of things is never low
Or else it isn't worth the go
And taking time turns out to give
The time it takes to really live 

You may not know who you are
Until you get hit by a star
Like I did and lived to say
It happened on my saint's feast day 

So I'm still here where I belong
And many years have come and gone
Since that dance
Since that kiss
Francis 

Happy Feast of St. Francis of Assisi!

To hear Terre Roche perform Francis, click on the video below: 

Image source: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2018/09/st-francis-of-assisi-eucharistic-mystic.html
Video source

To become an image of Christ (Thomas Merton / Fr. Billy Swan)

Speak words of hope. 

Be human in this most inhuman of ages.

Guard the image of man,

for it is the image of God.

--Thomas Merton 

    [T]he power of God’s Spirit active in our nature… seeks to conform us to God’s nature, maturing us in the art of love and shaping us to become an image of Christ himself. It is the Spirit of God that revives anything dying inside us, illuminates any darkness, heals every wound, and forgives every sin. 

--Fr. Billy Swan 

Image source: https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-are-we-the-image-and-likeness-of-god
Quotation 1 source
Quotation 2 source

Jesus as our model (St. Francis de Sales / St. Bonaventure)

Live Jesus!

--St. Francis de Sales

   In all your deeds and words, you should look upon this Jesus as your model. Do so whether you are walking or keeping silence, or speaking, whether you are alone or with others. He is perfect, and thus you will be not only irreprehensible, but praiseworthy. 

--St. Bonaventure 

Image source:  https://www.bobcornwall.com/2017/01/eating-with-sinners-sermon.html
Quotation source

A total, fearless listening to the Father (Henri Nouwen)

   Everything we know about Jesus indicates that he was concerned with only one thing: to do the will of his Father. Nothing in the Gospels is as impressive as Jesus’ single-minded obedience to his Father. From his first recorded words in the Temple, “Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs?” (Luke 2:49), to his last words on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46), Jesus’ only concern was to do the will of his Father. He says, “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19)... 

   Jesus is the obedient one. The center of his life is this obedient relationship with the Father. This may be hard for us to understand because the word obedience has so many negative connotations in our society. It makes us think of authority figures who impose their wills against our desires. It makes us remember unhappy childhood events or hard tasks performed under threats of punishment. But none of this applies to Jesus’ obedience. His obedience means a total, fearless listening to his loving Father. Between the Father and the Son there is only love. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: https://blogs.crossmap.com/stories/the-mind-of-christ-%28podcast%29-%28philippians-2%29-g1nWIjV9cWdFwGd0Hqg0X
Quotation source & fascinating podcast on building community