Sunday Gospel Reflection, December 3, 2023: We are all the work of your hands...

We are all the work of your hands…

Are we letting God’s love work in our lives? 

    Toward the end of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the people of Israel are nearing the end of their exile in Babylon. Knowing they have incurred distance from the Lord, their God, they pray, Return for the sake of your servants. Although they recognize their own sin – our guilt carries us away like the wind, they admit – they still don’t realize that it’s not God who hardens their hearts, but they themselves who need to allow God in, that their hearts might be softened. Where love is allowed to work, hardness of heart cannot exist. Their error is similar to that described Psalm 80: Lord, make us turn to you. The distance of the people from the Lord is their own choice; they are not who he made them to be, but who they themselves have chosen to be. Our salvation depends on our own choice to be obedient to God’s will; the change required needs to happen in us, not in the Lord. Only once we become clay in the hands of God our Father, accepting of his will, can love truly be at work in us. 

    The Corinthians were notorious for going in their own direction, rather than accepting the will of God. Paul’s first letter to that community calls them to something that they are not currently participating in: union in Christ. God has bestowed grace on them; have they received it? Or are they still relying on their own spiritual gifts as they wait for the revelation of Christ? Paul reminds the Corinthians that God is faithful, and that they were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. But they must choose to open to his love revealed in their lives, and accept the union, the fellowship, he offers. Are they ready? 

    Be watchful! Be alert! Jesus says to his disciples toward the end of Mark’s Gospel. We don’t know when the Second Coming will occur, when the lord of the house is coming, as Jesus puts it, but so long as we are who God made us to be, servants commissioned to love the human race, so long as we live the faith, we can rest assured that we will be ready for all God calls us to. The Lord calls us back to love again and again and again; we have but to be watchful over our hearts, open to his love at work in us, letting go of all that keeps us from God, that we might be one in him. 

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

I have the beat of His Heart in my chest... (Bishop SJ)

Where do you call home
when you’re always on the move
and you always fall in love
with the folks in front of you
how you keep your cards close
when you give away your heart every day
watch your hopes and dreams float away
that’s okay
God provides new focus
new motives
new graces unnoticed
he sets me in motion
keeping me moving
He makes me a new man
I’m wounded
he uses me all
miracles coming
and they will not stop 

if home where the heart is
it’s getting way harder
discerning the borders
of sister and brothers
and fathers and mothers
and all of the others I 

Am beginning to think that my heart
is burning with more than a spark

I laid down my life for the Light of the World and
now I am merely the salt 

To all of the world that says I lost it all
I am confident saying you’re wrong
Foxes have dens, and the birds have nests
you may have comfort and I may lack rest
But I have His life in this world and the next
I have the beat of His Heart in my chest 

What do you say
when you’ve run out words
You’re trying your best but you’re just not sure 

If you’re living the way that you hoped you would 

But your friends all tell you that you should 

Relax
You’re on the right path
You’re on the right track
He gave you his all
And He won’t take it back.
Relax. 

Believe me I’m trying
I’m don’t think you’re lying
But I am
slow to learn
Quick to turn
Skip to burn it all
down on myself when I fall 

Attempt to attain the perfection I’m aiming
forget I need saving and well he is savior for all 

Who are broken and battered and beaten
Who’ve stolen and lied or have cheated
I offer my anthem repeated
If you’re with me then go head and sing it

I laid down my life for the Light of the World
and now I am merely the salt
To all of the world that says I lost it all
I’m confident saying you’re wrong
Foxes have dens, and the birds have nests
you may have comfort and I may lack rest
But I have His life in this world and the next
I have the beat of His Heart in my chest 

To hear Bishop SJ (aka Fr. Timothy Bishop SJ) sing Heart Beat, click on the video below:

Image source: https://thejesuitpost.org/2022/03/music-release-heart-beat/
Video source
Bishop SJ’s website

Listen to your heart (Henri Nouwen)

    Listen to your heart. It’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t thrust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of a gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart. This listening must be an active and very attentive listening, for in our restless and noisy world God’s so loving voice is easily drowned out. You need to set aside some time every day for this active listening to God if only for ten minutes. Ten minutes each day for Jesus alone can bring about a radical change in your life. 

  

    You’ll find it isn’t easy to be still for ten minutes at a time. You’ll discover straightaway that many other voices, voices that are very noisy and distracting, voices that do not come from God, demand your attention. But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you’ll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Edward Hopper, Morning Sun (1952), https://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hopper/morning-sun. See also https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/mar/27/we-are-all-edward-hopper-paintings-now-artist-coronavirus-age for a fascinating reflection on the relevance of Hopper’s art in recent years.
Quotation source

We are all just sheep (Fr. Greg Boyle)

   In John’s gospel, when he speaks of the “sin of the world,” it is singular. And the sin is the division we create, the scapegoating, the otherizing, the striking of the high moral distance. But Christian love resists the scapegoating agenda by remembering the humanity, “the other.” 

    We hear about the separation of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Surely, this is a pretty good list of things to embrace and do and care about (hungry, thirsty, stranger, in prison, etc., and you tended to these folks. Which is to say, you were tender to them). But it’s the “separation” that departs from how God sees. Inclusion IS God. Separation ISN’T. There are no goats, just sheep – all sheep. 

    It is a message of radical, mystical kinship that addresses the singular sin of the world: To fail to see with God’s eyes. To see goats when, really, we are all just sheep. 

--Fr. Greg Boyle, The Whole Language:
The Power of Extravagant Tenderness 

Image source: https://globalanimalpartnership.org/about/news/post/how-can-you-tell-the-difference-between-sheep-and-goats/

We dream for him to reign (Fr. Fernando Torres)

With the celebration of this day a liturgical cycle ends.
It is not only the days that pass, but it is a story that is born;
of the encounter with Christ and the Good News of him.
It is not only the Mysteries that we celebrate but it updates them;
in each Christian who makes Christ the center of his life. 

The Mystery of Christ becomes present in our lives.
to sanctify the moments, the days and the weeks,
to actualize the Mystery of him in our pilgrim life,
to experience the encounter with eternal love
that makes us disciples, witnesses and friends of his Kingdom. 

On this day we celebrate Christ the King of the Universe:
our faith professes that He is the center of the Church.
We work so that it reigns in each soul and in each family. 
we dream for him to reign in every town on earth,
and may it fill the lives of those who suffer and cry out for justice. 

We remember the Holy Gospel about the Eternal Judgment
to discover Christ in the needy of the world,
to live the mandate of his love through service,
to contemplate our life and that of our world:
that he responds to his love, with brotherhood and charity. 

We ask Christ to dwell in our world,
where justice has been lost and peace is longed for,
where war and power fight brotherhood,
where buying and selling denigrate humanity,
and where we have all forgotten that you will call us. 

To be the blessed ones who reign for eternity,
to be the unfortunates who die in solitude,
to receive reward for loving the suffering Christ,
to understand that the pain of man and the world,
they are the call to change our present and our happiness 

We ask on this feast that the Kingdom of God come to us
with his peace and his justice, with his love and his truth.
May he bless all peoples in your holy unity,
so that our praise to Christ the King may be heard in heaven
and may your holy Mother be the intercessor of all humanity. 

Amen. 

--Father Fernando Torres, Diocese of Raleigh, N. Carolina

Celebration of Christ King of the Universe 

Image source: Egino Weinert, Mercy Seat, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2202038683311647&set=pb.100005166090077.-2207520000&type=3

The only scars in heaven (Cicero / Casting Crowns)

The love you gave in life keeps
people alive beyond their time.
Anyone who was given love
will always live on in another’s heart.

--Marcus Tullius Cicero 

If I had only known the last time would be the last time
I would've put off all the things I had to do
I would've stayed a little longer, held on a little tighter
Now what I'd give for one more day with you
'Cause there's a wound here in my heart where something's missing
And they tell me that it's gonna heal with time
But I know you're in a place where all your wounds have been erased
And knowing yours are healed is healing mine 

The only scars in Heaven, they won't belong to me and you
There'll be no such thing as broken, and all the old will be made new
And the thought that makes me smile now, even as the tears fall down
Is that the only scars in Heaven are on the hands that hold you now 

I know the road you walked was anything but easy
You picked up your share of scars along the way
Oh, but now you're standing in the sun,
you've fought your fight and your race is run
The pain is all a million miles away 

Refrain 

Hallelujah, hallelujah Hallelujah, for the hands that hold you now
There's not a day goes by that I don't see you
You live on in all the better parts of me
Until I'm standing with you in the sun,
I'll fight this fight and this race I'll run 
Until I finally see what you can see, oh-oh

Refrain

In November we remember All Souls… 

To hear Casting Crowns sing Scars in Heaven, click on the video below: 

Image source: Jacques Stella, Risen Christ Appearing to the Virgin, oil on onyx (ca. 1640), http://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2020/05/paintings-on-agate-onyx-marble-slate.html
Video source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 26, 2023: When the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will sit upon his glorious throne...

When the Son of Man comes in his glory,

he will sit upon his glorious throne…

Who is the king of your heart? 

    Jesus knew that, in order for humankind to join him in eternal life – that final victory banquet spread before us, as Psalm 23 describes it – we need a little direction. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus offers his disciples just that: instructions on how to live in right relationship with the Lord, so that when the Son of Man comes in his glory, they will be able to demonstrate that they received the Word of God with open hearts, with care and concern and love for other. He will then be able to say to them, Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. To live in this way is to recognize Jesus as king of our hearts, allowing him to direct our lives, that he might lead us to eternal salvation. 

    In this, Jesus follows in the tradition of salvation history. From the time of Ezekiel, God promised that he himself will look after and tend his sheep; he will rescue them from every place where they are scattered when it is cloudy and dark. Ezekiel calls out the shepherds of Israel who failed to take care of the sheep, who landed them in exile in Babylon: the sleek and the strong I will destroy, shepherding them rightly. God, however, offers justice to the lost and the strayed and the injured and the sick, providing the direction and care that they need. We must, like the psalmist, recognize that the Lord is our shepherd, in order to live in right relationship with the God who loved us into existence. 

    The sleek and strong of Ezekiel’s time are not unlike every sovereignty and authority and power that Jesus seeks to subject to his own rule, the arrogant of the earth, in other words, whose presumption of power puts them into direct conflict with God. As Paul tells the Corinthians, only once Jesus has put all enemies under his feet, making his rule universal, will he surrender all to God. At that moment all will be brought back to God, whose love is for all, so that God may be all in all. Our hope and prayer is that Christ will be King of the Universe in truth because all have accepted him as such. We must never lose confidence in the fact that he does rule our hearts, in order that he might lead us from death to resurrection, so that in him, all shall be brought to life. 

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

The doorway into thanks (Marcel Proust / Mary Oliver)

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy.
They are the charming gardeners
who make our souls blossom.

--Marcel Proust 

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch 

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak. 

--Mary Oliver, Praying

Happy Thanksgiving to all from
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Mill Valley! 

Image source 1: https://www.wholeblossoms.com/wedding-flowers-blog/fresh-cut-wholesale-flowers-for-thanksgiving/ 

Image source 2: https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/fellows/the-eucharist-as-thanksgiving/?fbclid=IwAR0TeBhHxPnIDm9xbfIIl-6AVhis7U10VAnemsEklx9Hb_3FUZfgPsj2Pyg
Quotation source
Poem source

Eucharist means thanksgiving (St. Gianna Beretta Molla / Dr. Richard Declue)

The secret of happiness is to
live moment by moment and
to thank God for all that He,
in His goodness, sends to us day after day.

--St. Gianna Beretta Molla 

    The Eucharist truly is the sacrifice by which we give thanks to Almighty God for saving us from death and giving us new and eternal life. As such, it is infinitely more important than our venerable federal holiday. We should therefore celebrate every Divine Liturgy with an even greater sense of gratitude and sincerity of heart. I encourage all of us—especially during this month of Thanksgiving—to contemplate this oft-neglected aspect of the Eucharist. May these reflections lead to a deeper appreciation for what the Eucharist truly is. And may we who are blessed to participate in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Altar humbly and sincerely give thanks to Almighty God, the source of all grace and goodness! 

--Dr. Richard Declue 

 Thanksgiving Mass at OLMC
will be at 7:45am today.
 Join us! 

Image source: https://www.teachingcatholickids.com/eucharist-means-thanksgiving/
Quotation 1 source
Quotation 2 source

Gratitude (Brandon Lake)

 

All my words fall short 
I got nothing new
How could I express
All my gratitude?
I could sing these songs
As I often do
But every song must end
And You never do 

So I throw up my hands
And praise You again and again
'Cause all that I have is a hallelujah
Hallelujah
And I know it's not much
But I've nothing else fit for a King
Except for a heart singing hallelujah
Hallelujah 

I've got one response
I've got just one move
With my arm stretched wide 
I will worship You 

Refrain

So come on, my soul
Oh, don't you get shy on me
Lift up your song
'Cause you've got a lion inside of those lungs
Get up and praise the Lord
Oh come on, my soul
Oh, don't you get shy on me
Lift up your song
'Cause you've got a lion inside of those lungs
Get up and praise the Lord
Come on, my soul
Oh, don't you get shy on me
Lift up your song
'Cause you've got a lion inside of those lungs
Get up and praise the Lord, hey
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord 

Refrain

Thanksgiving Mass will at 7:45am tomorrow!
Join us to Praise the Lord!

To hear Brandon Lake perform Gratitude, click on the video below: 

Image source:  https://www.christianity.com/wiki/christian-terms/bible-meaning-of-hallelujah-praise-the-lord.html#google_vignette
Video source

To be happy (Pope Francis)

   You can have flaws, be anxious and even be angry, but do not forget that your life is the greatest enterprise in the world. Only you can stop it from failing. You are appreciated, admired and loved by so many. Remember that being happy is not having a sky without storm, a road without accidents, a job without effort, a relationship without disappointments. 

   To be happy is to stop feeling like a victim and become the author of your own fate. It's walking through deserts, but being able to find an oasis deep in the soul. It is thanking God every morning for the miracle of life. It’s kissing your children, cuddling your parents, having poetic moments with your friends, even when they hurt us. 

   Being happy is letting the creature that lives in each of us live, free, joyful and simple. You have the maturity to be able to say: "I've made mistakes." It's having the courage to say I'm sorry. It's having the sense to say "I need you". Is having the ability to say "I love you". May your life become a garden of opportunities for happiness... that in spring he may be a lover of joy and in winter a lover of wisdom. 

   And when you make a mistake, start over. Because only then will you be in love with life. You'll discover that being happy isn't having a perfect life. But use tears to irrigate tolerance. Use your defeats to train your patience. Use your mistakes with the serenity of the sculptor. Use pain to tune into pleasure. Use obstacles to open the windows of intelligence. Never give up... 

   Above all never give up on the people that love you. Never give up on being happy, because life is an incredible spectacle. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source 1: https://nighthelper.com/nooooooo-dont-kiss-baby-think-twice-letting-strangers-kiss-baby/
Image source 2: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/oasis/
Quotation source

Our God-given talents (Rose Lue)

   Today we speak of a “talent” as a natural ability or skill. Very much God-given. How are we called to take care of the talents given to us? Certainly, we are to use them without fear. To claim what God has given us, to make use of it, and to live boldly in trust. And when we do, the “talent” is multiplied. What might that be for you? What is the gift given to you for you to take care of... to share with the world... so it can be multiplied by God? 

   But the MORE and the DEEP of it is this: our own very life is a gift entrusted to us by God. What have you done with your life? What are you doing with your life? What ought you be doing with your life? 

   Consider the Gospel’s invitation to share the talents entrusted to you, to share your authentic self with the world. Claim what they are. Live it. Share it. Boldly… in trust and without fear. Know that when we live and share in this way, there’s a promise of being multiplied by God! And if we all used our God-given talents, our God-given life in this way, we would be, in fact, cooperating with God in building…in realizing…a world where love, peace and justice reign. 

--Rose Lue

Image source: Andrew feeding the 5,000, The Chosen, Season 3, Episode 8, https://www.thebibleartist.com/post/the-feeding-of-the-5-000-exploring-the-chosen-season-3-episode-8-with-youth-or-small-group
Quotation source

A share in the mercy of God (Bishop Robert Baron)

   [Regarding] the parable of the talents, I want to share the interpretation of Fr. Robert Schoenstene, the best I’ve ever heard. He says that in ancient times a single talent might represent as much as fifty pounds of silver or gold. 

   This heaviness would have brought to the mind of a Jewish reader the heaviest weight of all, the kabod of Yahweh. The kabod was to be found in the temple, resting upon the mercy seat within the Holy of Holies. Therefore, what was heaviest of all was the mercy of God, which abided in infinite abundance in the temple. 

   So the talents are a share in the mercy of God, a participation in the weightiness of the divine love. But since mercy is always directed to the other, these “talents” are designed to be shared. They will increase precisely in the measure that they are given away. 

  Buried in the ground, hugged tightly to oneself, such a talent necessarily evanesces. And this is why the master’s seemingly harsh words should only be read as an expression of spiritual physics: the divine mercy will grow in you only inasmuch as you give it to others. 

--Bishop Robert Barron,

Gospel Reflection, November 2020 

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&app=desktop&v=5PDUbCZzAjw

Fear trumps faith, if we let it (Tim Butler)

    The servant who received 5 talents had everything necessary to produce 5 more. The servant who received 2 talents had everything necessary to produce 2 more. The servant who received 1 talent had everything necessary to produce 1 more. But out of fear, he chose to do nothing. 

    Fear trumps faith, if we let it. 

    When we you attempt to follow what God has entrusted to you it is not always easy. That’s why it is so important to stay faithful and let God take care of the success. Never so true as when a new life has been entrusted to you, called a baby. Even though God gives us everything we need, to be the parent he wants us to be, the role of a faithful parent will have plenty of pushback and opposition until adulthood is accomplished—sometimes beyond! 

    The key is to stay faithful and let God take care of the success. Just like the servant who—out of fear—did not invest his talent, so too with parenting, fear of our child’s response can make us back away from the mission. 

    Fear trumps mission if we let it. Fear makes cowards of us all, if we listen to its message more than God’s Words. 

--Tim Butler 

Image source: Willem de Poorter, The Parable of the Talents or Minas (17th c.), https://www.liturgytools.net/2017/11/pictures-33rd-sunday-ordinary-time-year-a-parable-talents-faithful-servants.html
Quotation source

Fear (Florence Nightingale)

How very little can be done

under the spirit of fear. 

--Florence Nightingale 

Image source: Clayton & Bell, The Parable of the Talents, created for St. Edith's Church, Bishop Wilton (late 19th c.), https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/matthew-25-14-30-2023/
Quotation source

The best solace (Fyodor Dostoevsky / Heidi McCarthy)

The darker the night, the brighter the stars,

the deeper the grief, the closer is God!

--Fyodor Dostoevsky,

Crime and Punishment 

     Johann Sebastian Bach lost his little daughter and then three sons and then his wife. Then he remarried and then he and his second wife, Anna-Magdalena, lost four more daughters and three sons. Eleven beloved children of twenty... predeceased the composer. 

    Many researchers have wondered: how did Bach manage to handle these losses? How did he not stop breathing; how did his heart not stop? And most importantly, how could he continue to write music? Cantati, cello suites, Masses, concerts... The most beautiful music the world has heard. 

    Do you know how he did it? At the end of his music, he always wrote SDG, Soli Deo gloria, or Glory to God alone, and at the beginning, JJ, for Jesu juva, or Lord, help. Therefore, you can pray during Bach's music because the music itself is prayer. You could, then, consider Bach's music a conversation between man and God. 

    How do you deal with pain? Worship is the best solace. 

--Heidi McCarthy 

In November we remember All Souls… 

Image source: Edvard Munch, The Sick Child (1907), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/munch-the-sick-child-n05035
Quotation 1 source
Quotation 2 source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 19, 2023: Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.

Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more...

Are we ready to invest the gifts God has given us? 

    As Jesus approached the end of his life on earth, it was essential to him that he prepare his disciples for the new age that was to come. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus shares with his disciples the parable of the talents, in which a man gives each of three servants a sum of money, expecting that they will invest and increase it. Two of the three do so; the last, however, buries his master’s money in the ground, earning no interest whatsoever on what might have been an easy investment. 

    The parallels in the life of the disciples must have been obvious to them. The faith and insights the disciples have been given through Jesus have already made them spiritually rich. Revelation is a gift; if they recognize this, the disciples will share it; they will invest it in the service of others, proclaiming the good news. Everyone who has received revelation from God and accepted it becomes a conduit through which more revelation will come. Like the woman in the Book of Proverbs whose industry is a service to her community and whose works praise her at the city gates (she is a fruitful vine, in the words of Psalm 128), the disciples must invest the gifts God has given them for the benefit of others, putting these gifts at the service of others. 

   God gifts each of us with many blessings, most notable among them a capacity of heart that allows us to open in love to others; God has also given us light, and it is our responsibility to share that light, as Paul reminds the Thessalonians: you are children of the light and children of the day. It is up to us to let that light be a revelation to all. To do so, we must stay alert and sober, ever conscious that blessed are those who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways! God has infinite hope in us; God invests in us God’s perfect love, infinitely. We have but to remain faithful to the gifts and talents with which we ourselves are blessed, that all might be blessed, through us, by the infinite love of a God who invests everything in each of us. 

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

How big is God? (Fr. Anthony De Mello & Unknown)

I heard this story about a fish.
He swims up to an older fish and says,
 “I’m trying to find this thing they call ‘the ocean.'”
“The ocean? the older fish says,
“That’s what you’re in right now.”
“This?” says the young fish. “This is water.
 What I want is the ocean!” 

--Adapted from Fr. Anthony De Mello,
The Song of the Bird 

      A boy asked the father: How Big is God? 

    Then the father looked up to the sky and seeing an airplane asked the son: "What's the size of that airplane?" 

    The boy answered: "It's very small. I can barely see it."

   So the father took him to the airport and as they approached an airplane he asked: "And now, what is the size of this one?" 

    The boy answered: "Wow, daddy, this is huge!" 

    Then the father told him: "God is like this, His size depends on the distance between you and Him. The closer you are to Him, the greater He will be in your life!" 

--Author unknown

Image source: Banggai cardinalfish, https://hakaimagazine.com/article-short/five-aquarium-fish-best-left-ocean/
Story 1 source
Story 2 source

I loved the beyond (Pope Francis / Mark Strand)

[Jesus] prepares for us that embrace with the Father,
the place for all eternity…
Jesus does not separate from us,
but has opened the way for us,
anticipating our final destination:
the encounter with God the Father,
in whose heart there is a place for each one of us. 

--Pope Francis,

Homily, May 14, 2023

In the days
When it could be said I was one of you, I loved
The beyond as somebody only can who is bound 

By the earth. All that I wrote was a hymn to desire,
To the semblances and stages of bliss. 

--Mark Strand, Wallace Stevens Comes

Back to Read His Poems at the 92nd Street Y 

Image source: https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/did-christ-really-go-to-prepare-a-place-for-me.html

Coming home to God's love (Henri Nouwen)

    Our life is a short opportunity to say yes to God’s love. Our death is a full coming home to that love. Do we desire to come home? It seems that most of our efforts are aimed at delaying this homecoming as long as possible. 

    We are challenged once again to look at our lives from above. When, indeed, Jesus came to offer us full communion with God, by making us partakers of his death and resurrection, what else can we desire but to leave our mortal bodies and so reach the final goal of our existence? The only reason for staying in this valley of tears can be to continue the mission of Jesus who has sent us into the world as his Father sent him into the world. Looking from above, life is a short, often painful mission, full of occasions to do fruitful work for God’s kingdom, and death is the open door that leads into the hall of celebration where the king himself will serve us. 

   It all seems such an upside-down way of being! But it’s the way of Jesus and the way for us to follow. There is nothing morbid about it. To the contrary, it’s a joyful vision of life and death. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Pompeo Batoni, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1 773), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son#/media/File:Pompeo_Batoni_003.jpg
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The limitless draws me (James Finley)

      Sometimes, when we’re quite young, we’re granted something we spend the rest of our lives learning to be faithful to. This is all about not breaking faith with what my awakened heart knows as true, that in my most childlike hour I was intimately graced and accessed by what I cannot comprehend […], and the limitless that I cannot comprehend is drawing me toward itself. 

--James Finley, Meister Eckhart’s Living Wisdom:
 Indestructible Joy and the Path of Letting Go

Image source: https://theconversation.com/how-many-stars-are-there-in-space-165370

To build a world of peace and justice (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. / National Shrine)

True peace is not merely
the absence of tension;
it is the presence of justice.

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

   Because of his love of peace, St. Martin of Tours’ feast day has traditionally been used as a day to sign peace treaties. One of the most significant of these treaties was the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. As we celebrate Veterans Day, we remember him and others who have fought to protect us and restore peace in the world. 

   [Pope Benedict XVI once said,] May St. Martin help us to understand that only by means of a common commitment to sharing is it possible to respond to the great challenge of our times: to build a world of peace and justice where each person can live with dignity. This can be achieved if a world model of authentic solidarity prevails which assures to all inhabitants of the planet food, water, necessary medical treatment, and also work and energy resources as well as cultural benefits, scientific and technological knowledge. 

   May we look to the example of St. Martin of Tours, willingly making sacrifices for the good of our neighbors and seeking peace during troubled times. On this Veterans Day, we thank all of the individuals who have served in the United States Armed Forces, fighting for justice and working to restore peace in our world. 

Image source: https://www.oblates.org/updates/humbly-we-pray-on-veterans-day
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Quotation source 2

I did not die (Clare Harner)

     Do not stand
          By my grave and weep,
     I am not there,
          I do not sleep—
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
     Do not stand
          By my grave and cry–
     I am not there;
          I did not die. 

--Clare Harner, The Gypsy 

In November we remember All Souls… 

Image source: https://www.reconnectwithnature.org/news-events/the-buzz/nature-curiosity-why-some-snow-sparkles/
Poem source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 12, 2023: Resplendent and unfading is wisdom...

Resplendent and unfading is wisdom…

What will impel us to step beyond our own limitations? 

    Humankind longs utterly and completely for God. Psalm 63 summarizes this sentiment well: for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts. For the psalmist, as for many of us, access to God comes in a particular place at a particular moment: Thus I have gazed toward you in the sanctuary. To be with God – which we will one day be, when we enter into perfect union with the Lord after we die – is preferable to any other option: your kindness is a greater good than life itself, the psalmist writes. But to arrive at this understanding requires us to step beyond what we know and to embrace the God for whom we long. 

    To long for God is to long for the Wisdom of God: Resplendent and unfading is wisdom; she is found by those who seek her. To know God’s Wisdom, or Sophia, requires being open to God’s guidance and direction, always, that we might enter into that intimate relationship with the Lord whom we seek, here on earth, for she hastens to make herself known in anticipation of our desire. To gain Wisdom, we must learn to step beyond our natural boundaries, our limitations, and to step closer to God or allow God to step closer to us, meeting us with all solicitude. We will find Wisdom on all the paths on which we follow God, for she will graciously appear to us in the ways, that we might live more clearly, understanding our own place in the world and all that it calls us to. 

    In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus shares with his disciples the parable of the ten virgins in order to give them a model of what it means to step beyond our own limitations, that we might be prepared for any situation. All of the ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom fall asleep while waiting for him, but only half of them brought flasks of oil with their lamps. They are prepared for the unexpected, open to whatever comes, without limitations, no matter the day or the hour. Likewise, we must be invested, living our faith, rather than simply relying on the fact that we are baptized to get us to heaven, that perfect union promised by God. Paul consoles the Thessalonian community regarding those who have already died, for God will, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep (the dead), that they too might be always with the Lord, and know that perfect union that we all long for. 

    We have an imperfect notion of heaven. We focus on the idea of reuniting with our loved ones; we don’t want to let go of the relationships we have on earth. And, of course, we can still love those who have passed, pray for them, and open to them. But our faith tells us that perfect union with Christ will be so much more, a union in which there will be no separation, no differentiation between ourselves and all others, only a state of being in the presence of God, united with all, for all eternity. We will appreciate this only if we can step beyond the limitations our human minds so often impose, and embrace as best we can God’s vision for union, perfect union, in Christ. 

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

To let go of the ego (Bishop Robert Barron)

   [In the Gospel, Jesus] exposes the pride of the Pharisees and concludes with the prescription of humility. I want to reflect on this virtue.St. Augustine said that all of us, made from nothing, tend toward nothing. We can see this in our frailty and sin and mortality. St. Paul said, “What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it?” 

   To believe in God is to know these truths. To live them out is to live in the attitude of humility. Thomas Aquinas said humilitas veritas, meaning humility is truth. Humility is living out the deepest truth of things: God is God and we are not. 

   Now, all of this sounds very clear when it’s stated in this abstract manner, but man is it hard to live out! In our fallen world, we forget so readily that we are creatures. We start to assume that we are gods, the center of the universe. 

   The ego becomes a massive monkey on our backs, and it has to be fed and pampered constantly. What a liberation it is to let go of the ego! Do you see why humility is not a degradation but an elevation? 

--Bishop Robert Barron,

 Gospel Reflection, March 7, 2023 

Image source: Timothy P. Schmalz, Christ Washing Peter’s Feet, https://www.sculpturebytps.com/portfolio_page/christ-washing-peters-feet/

A binding force (Dr. Tom Neal)

   The word “religion”—from the Latin religare, meaning “to bind fast”—among other things communicates religion’s binding force that links us to a people—many or even most of whom we would not otherwise freely choose to identify ourselves or associate with. But for Christians this is the heartbeat of religion, a uniting all humanity together as one family, in love, under one common Father. Heaven would be hell for any who wish it otherwise. 

   This is all bloody hard, which makes it very tempting to opt for becoming “spiritual, not religious.” Religion binds us to the whole sordid lot of humanity, heroes and hypocrites, and then demands that we journey back to God together. Fixed to the cross by his neighbors, Jesus exposes the redemptive cost of religion’s binding force, as he obeyed love’s logic to the very end. “This is my Body, which is for you” subverts the idolatrous logic of a culture which exalts the autonomous self that seeks its fulfillment in the construction of god and neighbor in its own image and likeness. 

--Dr. Tom Neal, “Holy (Unchosen) Family” 

Image source: Michael receives his First Communion, accompanied by Cyd and Paul, First Communion Mass, 2023, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=627708542727897&set=a.627712242727527 Quotation source & full article

They are not God (Chief Red Eagle / Thomas Sowell)

Angry people want you to see
how powerful they are.
 Loving people want you to see
how powerful you are.

--Chief Red Eagle 

         Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God. 

--Thomas Sowell 

Image source: Sebastiano Ricci, Heads of Two Men (A Scribe or Pharisee and an Apostle), ca. 1725-1730, https://www.rct.uk/collection/403979/heads-of-two-men-a-scribe-ornbspa-pharisee-and-an-apostle
Quotation 1 source
Quotation 2 source

Let us reimagine this (Henri Nouwen)

    When I bring myself into the presence of God, I imagine him in many ways: as a loving father, a supporting sister, a caring mother, a severe teacher, an honest judge, a fellow traveler, an intimate friend, a gentle healer, a challenging leader, a demanding taskmaster. All these “personalities” create images in my mind that affect not only what I think, but also what I actually experience myself. I believe that true prayer makes us into what we imagine. To pray to God leads to becoming like God… 

    The more we come to depend on the images offered to us by those who try to distract us, entertain us, use us for their purposes, and make us conform to the demands of a consumer society, the easier it is for us to lose our identity. These imposed images actually make us into the world that they represent, a world of hatred, violence, lust, greed, manipulations, and oppression. But when we believe that we are created in the image of God himself and come to realize that Christ came to let us reimagine this, then meditation and prayer can lead us to our true identity. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Charles Bartlett, Hawaiian Mother and Child, watercolor (ca. 1920), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_W._Bartlett_-_'Hawaiian_Mother_and_Child',_watercolor_and_pastel_on_art_board,_c._1920.jpg
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Hard questions (Archibald Macleish)

     Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else. 

--Archibald Macleish 

Image source: James Tissot, The Chief Priests Ask Jesus by What Right He Acts (1886-1894), https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/images/opencollection/objects/size4/00.159.204_PS2.jpg
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