Closeness, compassion and tenderness (Pope Francis)

    Jesus, who goes towards wounded humanity, shows us the face of the Father. It may be that within us there is still the idea of a distant, cold God, who is indifferent to our fate. On the contrary, the Gospel shows us that, after teaching in the synagogue, Jesus goes out, so that the Word he has preached may reach, touch and heal people. By doing this, he reveals to us that God is not a detached master who speaks to us from on high. On the contrary, he is a Father filled with love who makes himself close to us, who visits our homes, who wants to save and liberate, heal from every ill of the body and spirit. God is always close to us. God’s attitude can be expressed in three words: closeness, compassion and tenderness. God makes himself close to accompany us tenderly, and to forgive us. Do not forget this: closeness, compassion and tenderness. This is God’s attitude. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2023-04/ing-017/buddhists-and-christians-healing-wounded-humanity-and-the-earth.html
Quotation source

Once you let go of the world (Sr. Joan Chittister / Bishop Robert Barron)

Life is a journey whose endpoint
is always a stretch away.
The more we have, the more we grasp.
And then the realization dawns:
Even if we have gained
everything worth having in life,
none of those things will ever
satisfy the emptiness within.

 --Sr. Joan Chittister 

    [In Sunday’s] Gospel, the Lord explains why it’s hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Don’t think in terms of some specific measurement of wealth. Think in terms of a frame of mind. A rich person is convinced that joy will come from filling up the ego. 

    So Peter asked: "We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?" And Jesus replied, "Everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life." It’s so important to note that this is not a sort of capitalist calculation: just make a good investment and you’ll get a spectacular return; you’ll have all the houses and money you want. 

    Once you let go of the world in a spirit of detachment, once you remove the things of this world from your grasp and see them without distortion, you will really have them. They will appear as they are, as God intended them. They will no longer be objects for your manipulation or possession but beautiful realities in themselves. 

--Bishop Robert Barron,
 Gospel Reflection, August 17, 2021 

Image source: School of G. Hoffman, Jesus Christ with a Rich Man, https://asanefaith.com/what-must-i-do-to-inherit-eternal-life/
Quotation source 1

Love stems from commitment (Meghan Larsen-Reidy)

   Love stems from a commitment. Jesus’ commandment is to form relationships – a relationship with God and relationships with people. Loving relationships require time and effort and are not always convenient. They ask us to prioritize the Divine and people over material possessions or appearances. This commitment to others and to God changes our actions. It effects how we spend our time, where we put our money, how we pray, how we care for our common home, and how we serve the most vulnerable. Jesus modeled this love throughout his life. He sat with the sick, dying, poor, outcast, lonely, and forgotten, and entered into relationship with them so they knew love. In turn, Jesus calls us to do the same. 

    Sometimes we get in our own way. The lure of wealth, power, knowledge, and prestige hinder our ability to love. David Brooks writes about the difference between résumé virtues and eulogy virtues. We often worry about appearing the best that we forget we should simply love the best. 

    

    When we open our eyes to see the expansiveness of God’s love in the people that surround us, we draw into a deeper relationship with the Divine. We cannot always anticipate the impact that each new relationship will have on our lives and vice versa. God is calling us to be open to the love that is waiting for us and to share that love with others. Our small acts of love may make an impact that we only hear about from heaven. 

--Meghan Larsen-Reidy 

Image source: Georges Rouault, Christ and Mammon, https://emuseum.vassar.edu/objects/5494/christ-and-mammon-by-roger-lacouriere-for-passion
Quotation source

Wisdom, God's creative energy (Patricia Smith, RSM)

   At its deepest level, Wisdom is a female symbol for the very mystery of God. She is the personification of God’s presence and activity in the created world. She lures God’s creatures along the right path in life. She delights in human beings. She is God’s creative energy, involved with the world. 

   May Wisdom enlighten all of us to the power of God’s gracious, patient love already enveloping us in her open arms today. 

--Patricia Smith, RSM 

Image source: Full-page illustration of Sapientia (Wisdom),12th century. Wisdom is the central figure, between the figures of Christ (above), Zechariah, father of John the Baptist and the patriarch Jacob (below), David and Abraham, Malachi and Balaam, Isaiah, and Daniel (to the left and right, respectively), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Wisdom
Quotation source

The way of wisdom (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   The way of wisdom is the way of pondering, the way of holding every kind of pain, suffering, delight, and contradiction long enough until it transforms you, gestates compassion within you, and brings you to your knees in a thousand surrenders. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI,

Facebook, March 27, 2024 

Image source: Pieter de Grebber (c. 1600-1652/1653), King David in Prayer, https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-secret-of-happiness-is-surrender
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 13, 2024: The word of God is living and effective...

The word of God is living and effective…
Do you need God in your life? 

     Early in his reign, King Solomon recognized his need for right relationship with God. Given the chance to ask God for anything, Solomon chooses wisdom: I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me, he says in the Book of Wisdom. Indeed, nothing is as precious to Solomon as wisdom: I preferred her to scepter and throne, and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her. Solomon’s bond to wisdom establishes his bond to God; Solomon does not look elsewhere, but wisely accepts an exclusive relationship with the Lord who created him. Solomon knows that he needs, in the words of Psalm 90, wisdom of heart. The psalm is the people’s invitation for God to reenter relationship with them when their tendency has been to exclude God: May the gracious care of the Lord our God be ours! 

    The young man who comes to Jesus in Mark’s Gospel and asks, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? believes he has covered all bases, since he has observed all of the commandments Jesus mentions from his youth. But Jesus is clear: You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. What is missing from this man’s journey is God; it is God who gives salvation, and the man must surrender to God’s power rather than cater to his own wealth and desires. But the man does not recognize this, and goes away sad. 

    We often feel competent without wisdom, without constant access to God and to God’s insight into who we are. Yet, we too need God, the word of God, living and effective, as the Letter to the Hebrews says. God sees more clearly into our hearts than we can; God is able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. We need God’s wisdom to be in right relationship with God; we come together at Eucharist to deepen our understanding of God in our lives and in the lives of those around us. A passing, occasional relationship simply isn’t enough – we too need the wisdom of heart that allows us to see the true value of a carefully cultivated relationship with our Lord. To ask God to teach us to number our days aright is as much as to say, we see our lives before us; teach us how to live, how to continue on our journey, and all that we need to know along the way, that we might draw closer to you. Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy! 

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

Getting closer on our journey (Fr. Greg Boyle / Sean Wild)

How do we tame this status quo [the us vs. them mentality]
that lulls us into blindly accepting the things that divide us
and keep us from our own holy longing for the mutuality of kinship
—a sure and certain sense that we belong to each other? 

 --Fr. Greg Boyle, Barking to the Choir

    A deacon at my church once shared a metaphor from earlier Christian times that can be traced back to the sixth-century monk and hermit, Dorotheos of Gaza. It goes like this: Think of a wheel or circle. (In our modern times, we can think of a bicycle wheel.) Imagine the spokes of the wheel. As the spokes travel from the outside tire towards the hub in the center of the wheel, they necessarily get closer to one another. In this metaphor, the center of the wheel is God and the spokes are each of us on our own path to God. It does not matter at what point on the circumference you start, as one continues on their journey to the center, one must get closer and closer to other people on their own paths. 

    The beauty of the two-fold nature of the greatest commandment, to me, is that we are all given many, many opportunities to convey our love and gratitude to God through how we treat others. This can range from the time we spend with our family and friends to the mundane interactions we all have with strangers in our daily lives and everything in between. God calls us all to be in communion with him, and at the same time, to be in communion with each other. “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it,” as it is written in the Book of Proverbs (3:27). Love is a gift God has freely given to all of mankind… and that is something I hope to keep in mind next time I see my neighbor. 

--Sean Wild

Image source 1: OLMC Summer Potluck, July 14, 2024, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=909845881180827&set=a.909848687847213
Image source 2: The North Rose Window, Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, https://blogcathykellyphotography.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/notre-dame-de-paris-rose-windows-survived-the-fire/
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

The light of relationship (Fr. Michael Metz)

 

    I want to relish the friendships and faces that God has given me. I need reminders about the fulfillment and support I find in family and friends. Sure, in its brilliance, the light of relationship can initially blind us, but the vision it affords later is heavenly. 

--Fr. Michael Metz,

 “Friendship: It’s Essential

to the Heavenly Life”

Image source: https://www.facebook.com/BigPandaAndTinyDragon/posts/i-have-quite-a-lot-on-at-the-moment-and-so-am-posting-the-company-as-i-have-not-/386927926552381/
Quotation source

To welcome God-Love (Francis Chan / Pope Francis)

We never grow closer to God when we just live life.
 It takes deliberate pursuit and attentiveness.

 --Francis Chan 

   And this is faith: to welcome God-Love; to welcome this God-Love who gives himself in Christ, who moves us in the Holy Spirit; to let ourselves be encountered by him and to trust in him. This is Christian life. To love, to encounter God, to seek God; and He seeks us first; He encounters us first. 

 --Pope Francis, June 7, 2020 

Image source: Marc Chagall, Song of Songs IV (1958), https://www.wikiart.org/en/marc-chagall/song-of-songs-iv-1958-6
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

When I love my God (Kyle Winkler / St. Augustine)

He who speaks light into darkness,
breathes life into dry bones,
and creates out of nothing
is with you and for you.

 --Kyle Winkler 

But what do I love when I love my God?...
Not material beauty or beauty of a temporal order.
not the brilliance of earthly light;
not the sweet melody of harmony and song;
not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices;
not manna or honey;
not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. 

It is not these that I love when I love my God.
And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace;
but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self,
when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space;
when it listens to sound that never dies away;
when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind;
when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating;
when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire.

This is what I love when I love my God. 

--St. Augustine, Confessions 

Image source: https://www.flavorchem.com/trends/spicy-fragrances-heating-up-summer/
Quotation source

Fear and love (John Lennon)

   There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer… Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of a people who embrace life. 

--John Lennon 

Image source: John Lennon, cover, Walls and Bridges, 3 drawings by the composer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_and_Bridges
Quotation source

Return to the heart (St. Francis of Assisi / Pope Francis)

If you have men who will
exclude any of God's creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity,
you will have men who will deal likewise
with their fellow men.

 --St. Francis of Assisi 

    Brothers and sisters, let us not be afraid to strip ourselves of worldly trappings and return to the heart, returning to what is essential. Let us think of Saint Francis, who after stripping himself embraced with his entire being the Father in heaven. Let us acknowledge what we are: dust loved by God, called to be dust in love with God. Thanks to him, we will be reborn from the ashes of sin to new life in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit. 

--Pope Francis

Today is the Feast of St. Francis,
one of the patrons of our Archdiocese!

Bring your pets to be blessed at 5:30pm today!

Image source: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/changing-places-2019-11-15/
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 6, 2024. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh...

Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh…

Do you choose to be in relationship with God? 

    In the second creation story in the Book of Genesis, the man recognizes the woman as bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. It is a reference to kinship, to a connectedness so profound as to create true union, in which the two of them become one flesh. The stories of creation are all about relationship: relationship between the man and the woman, relationship between all things created and the Creator, relationship between humankind and all of creation. Relationship is God’s desire and God’s purpose. We see this reflected in Psalm 128, where the Lord blesses humankind all the days of our lives, generation after generation: your children shall be like olive plants around your table, their identity firmly grounded in their relationship with Lord who created them. 

    When, in Mark’s Gospel, the Pharisees challenge Jesus’ understanding of the relationship between man and woman, Jesus cites the Book of Genesis to demonstrate that God’s intent was always that the man and woman should be one: from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female and the two shall become one flesh. In a true marriage, God is the bond between the man and woman, the power that makes them one. But as Jesus is well aware, humankind’s hardness of heart has sometimes allowed for the dissolution of this relationship. The choice is ours: whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it. It is up to us to choose relationship, not only in the day to day, but with God over all else. 

    The most extraordinary example of God’s desire for relationship is the Incarnation, when Jesus became fully human and took on flesh, that he might experience death on behalf of all. And, having become fully human, Jesus can take all of creation with him through death to everlasting life. Moreover, Jesus is the origin of all things, for it is he from whom and through whom all things exist, the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us. The union Jesus shares with all humanity through the Incarnation enables him to call us brothers and sisters; he chooses relationship with us. Will we choose relationship with him? 

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

Like only You can do (Gloria Gaynor)

I've had my fortune, had my share of fame
Been around the world, I guess I've played the game
Put my attention into everything but You, mm-mm
It's taken me this long to understand
It's taken being broken time and again
To realize that all I really need is You, only You

 When all hope is gone, when it's out of my reach
I will hold on, I will believe
That You've got my heart and You won't let go
I feel You liftin' the weight off of my soul 

Like only You can do, yeah
Like only You can do, Jesus 

 Every time I try to do it all alone
Every time I try to make it on my own
That's when I realize no matter what I try to do 
I still need You 

And when all hope is gone, when it's out of my reach
I will hold on, I will believe
That You've got my heart, You won't let me go
I feel You liftin' the weight off of my soul 

 Like only You can do, yeah
Like only You can do, Jesus 

 Only You can turn my night into day
Break through the prison walls and rescue me
No one else can change a heart the way You do
Only You, yes You 

 When all hope is gone, when it's out of my reach
I will hold on, I will believe
That You've got my heart, You won't let me go
I feel You liftin' the weight off of my soul 

 Like only You can do, yeah (Only You can do, only You can do) 

To hear Gloria Gaynor, vocalist most well-known for her hit, "I Will Survive," sing this song from her new gospel album, “Only You Can Do,” click on the video below: 

Image source: https://www.sharlafritz.com/2021/08/why-god-wants-your-heart-2/
Video source

If we take the time to notice (Mirza Inayat Khan)

   There is a story of the renowned violinist, Joshua Bell. The day before his sold-out concert, he played the very same songs in the subway. But everyone was too busy to notice and walked right by. 

   This week, flowers are blooming around us. The air is sweet with spring. The earth is reawakening. And we can too … if we take the time to notice! 

   Yes! The springtime needs you. Often a star is waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolls toward you from the distant past. 

    Or as you walk under an open window, the sound of a violin calls out to you. All of this has a purpose. But can you recognize it? 

    Or are you constantly distracted by your own expectations? 

    (Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies) 

 --Mirza Inayat Khan,
Lenten Reflection,
March 13, 2024

To hear Joshua Bell perform Vivaldi's Four Seasons, click on the video below:

Image source: https://awesomevideomakers.com/joshua-bell-subway-video/
Video source
Video of Joshua Bell's subway experiment