A garden of solitude (Henri Nouwen)

   To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. This requires not only courage but also a strong faith. As hard as it is to believe that the dry desolate desert can yield endless varieties of flowers, it is equally hard to imagine that our loneliness is hiding unknown beauty. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is a movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Ryan Mountain, https://www.hikespeak.com/ca-desert/
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Lent is a time to recenter (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

   Our faith journey is to try and clarify where our focus is. Lent is an attempt to try and focus our energies, to focus our lives. We come at this season as people who know sin. We do know sin. It’s not just a past reality for us; it’s something we struggle with every day. We struggle to make good choices. We struggle to do what’s going to be the most loving thing possible, and yet we do fail, because our focus goes out of whack. When we’re sinning, our focus, our center, cannot be Christ. It’s not possible. 

   So, we need to refocus, recenter. Lent is our time to recenter, to put ourselves back in that place where what we decide comes from the depths of our hearts where Christ dwells in us, so that we know the difference between the delusions of our egos and the truth of our hearts, and so that we choose rightly. 

   This journey is a gift, a time to walk together, to join with one another, in finding our center and letting it be the center of our lives as a community and our lives as members of that community, so that the love of Christ might fill our world. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, March 9, 2025

Image source: https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/diy-dictionary-plumb-bob/?srsltid=AfmBOor3E_DXIePk1MXztWRa9Nk-BPM1DejfWiHNdphTy6AASsm31-Re

God leaves them free (Marilynne Robinson)

   I think that right through Scriptures, God’s intention is to humanize humanity, to give you a heart of flesh rather than stone. The thing that God does that is so striking is stand apart. He wishes people would — for their own sake, for the sake of the other people, whom he also loves — he wishes they would not kill and not steal and so on. But God leaves them free. He tells them what he considers good and right. But they always have the freedom to transgress, if that’s what they choose to do. And I think that can be understood as God’s loyalty to the idea of their being human, being free, acting creatures. And it’s in the way they are able to act on their own, even in departing from what God wills for them, they have one of the qualities of God: freedom. I think that’s very profound. 

--Marilynne Robinson 

Image source: William Blake, So Judged He Man, Illustration 10 for John Milton's Paradise Lost (1807),  https://emuseum.huntington.org/objects/58/illustration-10-to-miltons-paradise-lost-the-judgment-of
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The only way out is through (Fr. Mike Schmitz)

   Why couldn’t God just take the people of Israel from the place of slavery to the place of promise? Why did they have to go through the desert? Because they needed training. They didn’t know how to live as free people. 

   God is giving us this desert of Lent because we are like the people of Israel: I just want to be done: Lord, just tap me on the head and make me look like Jesus, automatically! But we need this training; we need this place of the Way, because we are called to be people we are currently not, able to do something that we currently cannot. 

   So God is leading us into the desert, where all the things we trusted are finally put down. That’s what Lent is. We’re led into the desert where we are just invited to put down all of the things we trusted in. The desert is a place of training. The desert is a place of testing. The desert is a place of trial. But it’s also the place where all the things I’ve trusted in are absent. All our crutches, all our comforts, are absent. We put down those things we use to buffer between us and life, the distractions, the noise, the diversions, all the things we hold onto that will help us from having to acknowledge that we are not yet who we should be. 

   And so here, at the beginning of Lent, you are entering into a place of training, of testing. So it can’t just be the usual. It can’t just be the status quo. It can’t just be the normal thing I always give up. I can’t just do the same thing I always have done and expect a different result, because we are called to do something new, to go somewhere new, and that means putting down something old. 

   Whenever we find ourselves trusting in ourselves rather than in God alone, that’s what we have to be willing to put down. It will be difficult. It will be difficult. 

   What am I training for? What am I trying to become? 

    I want to be able to live like Jesus. I want to be able to love like Jesus. I want to be able to trust like Jesus. That means I have to go from not-knowing to knowing. That means I need to go from not being able to being able. It is frustrating. 

   And the only way out is through. 

--Excerpt from
Fr. Mike Schmitz’s homily,
Hallow App, Lent,
March 2, 2025

Image source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/christ-in-the-desert/iwEnS8zpRy4qzw?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.663783236351296%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.734523311575076%2C%22height%22%3A1.2374999999999994%7D%7D

Make friends with the desert (Bishop Robert Barron / Fr. Ron. Rolheiser)

Deserts are places of no distractions,
when we get down to spiritual basics
with nothing to divert us from the great questions.

--Bishop Robert Barron

    The Gospels invite us to make friends with the desert, the cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation, with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death itself. We grow by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing cherished dreams to accept the cross, by letting the humiliations that befall us deepen our character, by having the courage to face our own deep chaos, and by making peace with our own mortality. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Facebook, November 5, 2025

Image source: https://cathopic.com/photo/57450-jesus-christ-in-the-desert 
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He took upon himself the shame of Adam (Pope Francis)

    Adam, after his sin, experiences shame, he feels naked, he senses the weight of what he has done; and yet God does not abandon him: if that moment of sin marks the beginning of his exile from God, there is already a promise of return, a possibility of return. God immediately asks: "Adam, where are you?" He seeks him out. Jesus took on our nakedness, he took upon himself the shame of Adam, the nakedness of his sin, in order to wash away our sin: by his wounds we have been healed. Remember what Saint Paul says: "What shall I boast of, if not my weakness, my poverty? Precisely in feeling my sinfulness, in looking at my sins, I can see and encounter God’s mercy, his love, and go to him to receive forgiveness. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: La Tentation d'Adam et Eve, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de l’Assomption, Clermont-Ferrand, France, http://luc.greliche.free.fr/Mathieu/clermontferrand0402.html 
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 22, 2026: Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert...

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert…
Are we ready to enter into the desert of Lent? 

   In the Creation story of the second chapter of Genesis, the Lord God forms man out of the clay of the ground and blows into his nostrils the breath of life. It is a moment of striking intimacy, an action on God’s part to make of his creation man, a living being, a being created to love God. But God also creates the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden in Eden and tells the man that he is free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except this tree. The man thus has a choice, the free will to choose what is right or what is wrong. Free will is necessary to human existence, for, if God created us to love God, we need to be able to choose. But humankind is tempted by a desire for control, and thus both the woman and the man, tempted by the serpent, eat some of its fruit. Together, they choose to disobey God’s command, and the consequences will be grave indeed. One can imagine them singing Psalm 51, Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned, as they leave paradise in shame. 

   Thus, as Paul reminds the Romans, Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death. The trespass of Adam is a transgression that led to human mortality. But, Paul goes on to say, just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. Jesus came in order to surrender his life to God, taking our sins to the cross. Unlike Adam, Jesus brings life. 

   But first Jesus himself must experience temptation and choose. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. All three of the devil’s temptations – to command that stones become bread, to throw himself down from the parapet of the temple, and to prostrate himself and worship the devil – ask Jesus to rebel against God. But Jesus, God-made-man, steadfastly refuses: Get away, Satan! Jesus has journeyed into the desert to solidify his dedication to God’s will. In Lent, we are called to do the same, to take that very same journey into the desert, that we might learn obedience, rejecting sin in recognition of the gracious gift of the Lord, so that that grace, in turn, might overflow for the many. 

   Our journey begins! Are we ready?

This post was based on OLMC’s Scripture Class 2023.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

God calls us to action (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

   When God appears to people, almost every time, he gives them directions as to what to do. He calls them to action. What’s curious is that, so often, we don’t respond with action. We respond with hesitation. 

    When they called a fast in Joel’s time, it was meant to be immediate. People weren’t to stop for anything. Even if you’ve just been married, you were to leave the wedding chamber. Everything was to be done in that moment, so that you could respond with repentance to God. Whenever something bad happened, they believed it was because they had sinned, and when the locusts came in to devour their crops, they were certain that they needed to repent, and so they called a fast. They called for repentance from the whole group, and the whole group responded. God called, and they responded. 

   God called, and Paul responded as well, as God calls each of us to respond: as ambassadors of Christ. To be ambassadors of Christ means that we are the ones going out to make him present in the world, and that is where our energies need to be expended. Too often we expend our energies spinning on things we think we are supposed to be doing, when in fact the one thing we’ve been called to do is to make him present in the world, to bring the Eucharist we receive to bear upon the world in all of its brokenness, to bring mercy to bear. 

   Jesus has a great explanation for how we are to go about doing the various things that we might do as a Lenten observance. Yet the main thing here is, make sure you know why you’re doing it. Make sure you know why you’re giving up Brussels sprouts. Make sure you know what it has to do with being an ambassador for Christ, so that whatever you have chosen to do for Lent, it’s going to make you a better ambassador, more dedicated to the Word, to the mercy that has been shown you, so that you might show it to others. 

   Whatever we do needs to serve his will. He has called us to action, not to complacency. He has called us to more, so that he might live more profoundly in the world. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, Ash Wednesday,
February 14, 2024

Today is Ash Wednesday!
Don't forget to fast!

Image source: Bayeux Tapestry, Feast of William the Conqueror panel, https://www.oursundayvisitor.com/whats-the-point-of-fasting-during-lent/

Your heart equals my heart (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

In a circle of mountains
it’s easier to remember
we belong to the mountains,
belong to high-pitched cheep
of pica, belong to the cliffs,
to the path, to the unpath,
belong to the blue,
blue reach of sky. 

We belong as much to each other
as we belong to ourselves,
each of us a poem read by strangers
and beloveds in ways only they can read us,
each of us constantly rewriting
our lines, while in the meantime
we are constantly rewritten
by a great and unnamable
is-ness that rhymes us each to each other. 

We belong to the truth
that all belongs, even when we
are most lonely, even when
we would rather push away
from the world. 

In a circle of mountains,
it is easier to practice belonging—
easier to notice this math:
your heart equals my heart,
and all this opening, opening, opening
to what we cannot know,
that equals what a life is for. 

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,
In a Circle of Mountains

Image source: OLMC’s “Chosen” group prays for the world at the end of its last 2025 meeting. Photo by Danny Gutierrez, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1328667335965344&set=pb.100064662700877.-2207520000&type=3
Poem source 

We are to love (Thomas Merton)

I once asked an old man:
 Which is more important, to love or to be loved?
 He replied: Which is more important to a bird?
The left wing or the right wing? 

 --Author unknown

   Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy. 

--Thomas Merton

Image source: https://bmtrust.org/event/valentines-nature-heart-hunt/
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The lens of love (Fr. Patrick Michaels / Rachel Marie Martin)

Discernment is God's information
that teaches us what love really is.

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
OLMC Scripture Class

   When my kids were little and they’d leave for school I ask them if they have their sunglasses on. Not real sunglasses, but imaginary sunglasses, glasses of love. I wanted them to see the world through that lens, not the lens of negativity, self-doubt, criticism, worry, fear or comparison. 

   But the lens of love. 

   Sometimes they chuckled at the idea, but it was and is a powerful reminder to take stock in how you see the world. 

   We cannot control all the circumstances.
   We cannot control other people.
   But we can control our response.
   We can control how we see others.
   We can control how we treat others.
   We can control how we view ourselves. 

   When we look through the lens of love it gives us a great gift - margin, space, a breath. It allows us a split second moment to respond differently, to gather courage, to be brave, to be kind, to make a difference, to breathe. 

   Sometimes those "glasses" fall off.
   But the beauty is we can always put them back on again. 

   Love teaches us to have grace for ourselves and others.
   Love teaches us to look beyond fear.
   Love teaches us to have courage and bravery.
   Love teaches us to be kind. 

    So even if it is silly, I’d remind them.
   "Wear your glasses today." 

   You too. Dare to see the world through the lens of love. Dare to put on your own glasses. It doesn't mean it will be perfect, easy, and bubble gum and rainbows. It simply means that you aren't pushed around by the waves of life and that you have decided your heart, your mind, your life is greater than just random. 

   Love matters.
   Love wins.
   Love cares. 
   Love conquers.
   Love heals.
   Love well. 

-- Rachel Marie Martin         

Image source: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/all-about-perception-lens-love-or-fear/
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Love is our vocation (Fr. Patrick Michaels / James Baldwin)

Love is our vocation –
it’s all we have been called to do.
 We’ve been given very, very different lives,
and very different ways in our lives,
but they all boil down to this one call,
this vocation to love.

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, October 1, 2025 

    The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another. 

--James Baldwin 

Image source: https://in.pinterest.com/2beamscotty/the-artistic-bird/
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Standing before he who is love (Pope Francis)

   Here then is some advice for making important choices. When I do not know what to do, how to make a definitive choice, an important decision, a decision that involves Jesus’ love, what must I do? 

   Before deciding, let us imagine that we are standing in front of Jesus, as at the end of life, before he who is love. And imagining ourselves there, in his presence, at the threshold of eternity, we make the decision for today. We must decide in this way: always looking to eternity, looking at Jesus. It may not be the easiest, it may not be the most immediate, but it will be the right one. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: Quentin Massys, Christ Blessing (ca. 1500), https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clydxld8k80o
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 15, 2026: Give me discernment...

 

Give me discernment...
What does God’s order look like? 

    For the people of Israel, the answer to this question lay in the Law, which the Book of Sirach invokes as the primary source of order for those who opt for it: If you choose, you can keep the commandments; they will save you. As Wisdom literature, Sirach is full of instructions on proper behavior, directing readers away from chaos (which is frequently the choice of human beings, thanks to free will) and toward a world in which love rules. Participating in the order set out by the commandments was perceived as aligning oneself with God; obedience leads to right relationship. These sentiments are echoed in Psalm 119, which focuses on the human capacity to learn God’s ways, to walk with the Lord: Open my eyes, that I might consider the wonders of your law, the psalmist asks. In other words, help me to be internally disposed, bearing the power of discernment, so as to be open to God, because it is in God that I will find life. 

    From a Christian perspective, the coming of Jesus represents a new kind of order, one still focused on relationship, but based first and foremost in love. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus invokes a variety of Jewish laws (about murder, adultery, and false oaths, in this week’s reading), deepening the implication of Jewish law from the literal – the letter of the law – to an internal and more profound understanding. For example, it’s not enough, Jesus says, not to murder; we need to protect our relationships with one another through compassion and kindness, building each other up, treating each other with reverence. In each case, constant attention to relationship is in order, particularly as concerns our internal disposition to that relationship. If we embrace one another in love, with our whole beings, we can’t help but maintain God’s order, for God’s order is love.

    This is the new wisdom of this age of which Paul writes to the Corinthians, a wisdom that applies not to a select few (like the Corinthians, who wanted to feel “special”), but to all: God has revealed the full force of his love, sending first his Son to die and rise, and then the Spirit to dwell in and with us, Love, in its most perfect form, known imperfectly by us, yet still, the principal source of God’s order in today’s world. 

    What does God’s order look like? Seek to live your life immersed in God’s Love, serving as a conduit of that Love to others, and you will find the answer! 

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

We don't see them (Dan Evon)

Share your bread with the hungry,
 shelter the oppressed and the homeless.

 --Isaiah 58:7

    On the first day of shooting his new movie, [Time Out of Mind,] director Oren Moverman had an unusual task for his star, Richard Gere: He wanted the famous actor to stand in New York City's bustling Astor Place with an empty coffee cup begging for change. 

   Moverman needed the scene for "Time Out of Mind," in which Gere radically goes against type to play a homeless man. But the filmmaker soon realized it served another purpose. 

   "Richard stood there for 40 minutes‎. No one gave him a cent. No one even recognized him," Moverman said. "And that proved the whole point: The homeless are all around us and we don't see them." 

--Dan Evon 

Do we see the hungry and the homeless?
Do we help?
Or do we turn away? 

Image & quotation source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/richard-gere-homeless/

Acts of kindness (Maya Angelou)

My wish for you is that you continue.
 Continue to be who and how you are,
to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.
Continue to allow humor
to lighten the burden of your tender heart.

 --Maya Angelou

The owl stirs cake with wings so wide,
A cat in a monocle, with dignified stride,
A puppy wags, a happy bark,
A day for fun from dawn till dark!
May you leap like a deer through meadows green,
As playful and joyful as you've ever been.
May you find treasures, shiny and sweet,
Like a squirrel with nuts, a tasty treat!
With a lion's roar, let your laughter ring, 
And the grace of a swan, let your spirit sing.
May your day be filled with furry friends,
And happy adventures that never end.
So blow out your candles, let the wishes fly,
Like birds soaring high in the bright blue sky!
Happy Birthday to you, a creature so grand,
The best animal lover in all the land! 

(A poem after Edward Lear…) 

OLMC parishioners wish our Priest-in-Residence
(and secret animal whisperer),

Fr. Bill Brown, a very happy birthday!

We are so grateful that you are

a part of our parish family –

you are a blessing to us all!
 

Image source 1: Fr. Brown blesses the animals on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 2025, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=5097555260353039&set=pb.100002958458217.-2207520000&type=3
Image source 2: Fr. Brown with one of the feral cats he befriended in Tiburon, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1261250759373669&set=a.1261251466040265
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Learning to have a heart that is moved (Pope Leo XIV)

    If Christ shows us the face of a compassionate God, then to believe in him and to be his disciples means allowing ourselves to be changed and to take on his same feelings. It means learning to have a heart that is moved, eyes that see and do not look away, hands that help others and soothe their wounds, shoulders that bear the burden of those in need. 

--Pope Leo

Image source 1: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-07/pope-leo-hope-is-source-of-joy-no-matter-our-age.html
Image source 2: https://www.today.com/parenting-guides/want-raise-empathetic-children-here-s-what-know-t177606
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Fiercely kind (Laura Jean Truman)

God,

Keep my anger from becoming meanness.

Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity. 

Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking. 

Keep my anger turned towards justice, not cruelty.

Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love. 

Keep me fiercely kind. 

--Laura Jean Truman 

Image source 1: https://www.facebook.com/groups/387096378163324
Image source 2: https://fiercekindness.com/introducing-key-fierce-kindness-practice-tool-the-kindometer/
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The way to right wrongs (Ida B. Wells / St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata)

The way to right wrongs is
to turn the light of truth upon them.

 --Ida B. Wells

    When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. 

--St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata 

Image source: A Missionaries of Charity nun talks with a man at a home for the dying in Kolkata, India, Sept. 4. The lunch took place during Mother Teresa’s canonization in Rome. https://catholicphilly.com/2016/09/news/world-news/mother-teresa-do-small-things-with-great-love-2/
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We bring God's life to others (Bishop Robert Barron)

    Friends, in [Sunday’s] Gospel, Jesus uses the images of salt and light to show how we are to bring salvation to the world. In our rather privatized and individualistic culture, we tend naturally to think of religion as something for ourselves designed to make our lives richer or better. Now there is a sense in which that is true, but on the biblical reading, religiosity is like salt, light, and an elevated city: it is meant not for oneself but for others. 

    Perhaps we can bring these two together by saying that we find salvation for ourselves precisely in the measure that we bring God’s life to others. The point is that we followers of Jesus are meant to be salt, which effectively preserves and enhances what is best in the society around us. We effectively undermine what is dysfunctional in the surrounding culture. 

    We are also light by which people around us come to see what is worth seeing. By the very quality and integrity of our lives, we shed light, illuminating what is beautiful and revealing what is ugly. The clear implication is that, without vibrant Christians, the world is a much worse place. 

--Bishop Robert Barron

Image source 1: https://maymanamarket.co.uk/food-cooking/enhance-flavour-with-salt-how-a-sprinkle-transforms-taste-in-seconds-2904/
Image source 2: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/09/why-salt-enhances-flavor/
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 8, 2026: You are the salt of the earth...

You are the salt of the earth...
 But what does it mean to be salt? 

    When Jesus, in our reading from Matthew’s Gospel this Sunday, tells his disciples that they are the salt of the earth and light of the world, he wants them to believe that they themselves are able to enhance the lives of others as they bring God’s love to bear on those lives. Salt enhances flavor; light brings life. In all that we do, Jesus suggests, we are called to live our lives for others, enhancing their lives. We are graced so that we can bring the love of God to all we meet, by living the gospel in their midst, thus revealing God’s love in action. 

    In fact, Jesus is echoing a key idea in Isaiah, where the Lord reveals that true social morality results in life-giving justice for all: Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless, clothe the naked when you see them, and do not turn your back on your own. We are called to live lives of compassion, seeing the need around us, and meeting it in such a way as to equalize the situation at hand. But it means we can’t just talk about justice: we have to do justice, participate, act. Moreover, to be authentic, such behavior must come from the depths of who we are, and must reflect our own openness to and trust in God. Such a person—one who is in right relationship with God—is described more fully in Psalm 112: s/he is gracious (the source of grace and blessing for other), merciful, and just. When our compassion recognizes our source and our commonality, we respond out of that commonality. We can thus be a blessing to other, and God is revealed in us. 

    For Paul writing to the Corinthians, such knowledge of God is focused first and foremost on Jesus Christ and him crucified. The paradox of the Cross lies in the fact that salvation comes from a criminal: the love of Jesus dying for our sins transcends the embarrassment and humiliation of a crucified Savior. If you know this, know it not only in your mind but in your heart, you will experience God’s love in the depths of your being, and can only respond to the experience of such love with faith and humility, in complete service to other. Enhancing the lives of others, you are salt. It’s as simple as that. 

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

The preferential choice for the poor (Pope Leo)

          The preferential choice for the poor is a source of extraordinary renewal both for the Church and for society, if only we can set ourselves free of our self-centeredness and open our ears to their cry. 

        Those who follow Jesus must tread the path of the Beatitudes, where poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy, hunger and thirst for justice, and peace-making are often met with opposition and even persecution. Yet God’s glory shines forth in his friends and continues to shape them along the way, passing from conversion to conversion. 

--Pope Leo      

Image source: Br. Mickey McGrath, The Preferential Option for the Poor, https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/option-for-the-poor-and-vulnerable
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To 'inherit the earth' (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

    What does it mean to ‘inherit the earth’? To be a superstar? To be rich and famous? To have power over others? To walk into a room and be instantly recognized and admired as being significant and important? Is that the way we ‘inherit the earth’? Or, do we ‘inherit the earth’ when a coldness is melted in our hearts and we are brought back to our primal goodness by the smile of a baby? What does it mean to you? 

 --Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI 

Image source: https://www.todaysparent.com/baby/baby-development/when-do-babies-smile-2/
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Blessed are (Henri Nouwen)

   "Blessed are the poor,” he said. Jesus is poor, not in control, but marginal in his society. What good can come from Nazareth? 

   “Blessed are the gentle,” he said. Jesus does not break the bruised reed. He always cares for the little ones. 

 

   “Blessed are those who mourn,” he said. Jesus does not hide his grief, but lets his tears flow when his friend dies and when he foresees the destruction of his beloved Jerusalem. 

   “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice,” he said. Jesus doesn't hesitate to criticize injustice and to defend the hungry, the dying, and the lepers. 

   “Blessed are the merciful,” he said. Jesus doesn't always call for revenge but heals always and everywhere. 

   “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he said. Jesus remains focused only on what is necessary and does not allow his attention to be divided by many distractions. 

   “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he said. Jesus does not stress differences, but reconciles people as brothers and sisters in one family. 

   “Blessed are those who are persecuted,” he said. Jesus does not expect success and popularity, but knows that rejections and abandonment will make him suffer. 

   The Beatitudes give us Jesus' self-portrait. It is the portrait of a powerless God. 

--Henri Nouwen

 

Image source: https://jacksoncommunitychurch.org/reflections-on-beatitudes-and-blessings-themes-from-matthew/
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Consider your calling (Beth Ford McNamee)

    In today’s readings we are given an invitation to become a part of God’s reigning of justice. An upside down, turn your world around, reigning of justice. Where the lowly are raised up, the blind see, the hungry are fed, and the imprisoned are set free, the psalmist proclaims. Where God chooses the foolish of the world to shame the wise and chooses the weak of the world to shame the strong, Paul tells us. Seek justice, seek humility, the prophet Zephaniah exhorts us. Seek humility that no human being might boast before God. Seek humility, for we are in Christ Jesus, the wisdom of God. Seek humility, the very ground and birth of our being from God's fierce and tender love, a radical love that does justice, a justice that we are called to work for with others, especially learning from those on the margins. 

    Consider your calling, Paul says. Can we show up for this upside-down reigning of God? Can we place ourselves in spaces where we are not trying to be first, best, or boasting before God and others? Can we place ourselves instead in marginal spaces, place ourselves in humility before the sacredness of one another, to become people of authentic encounter, kinship, and relationship? 

    Consider your calling. God is calling us.... Welcome to your calling. Welcome to your calling that is blessedness, that is humility, that is fierce and passionate love, that is encounter, kinship, and relationship, that is collaborative and creative restructuring of our societies. So that the oppressed are set free, the lowly are lifted up, the mourning are comforted, and the hungry are not hungry in the first place. So that we may celebrate and join together in the Eucharistic banquet where no one is outside of God’s overflowing, abundant, and compassionate love. For this, let us rejoice and be glad! 

--Beth Ford McNamee    

Image source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/why-you-should-literally-look-at-the-world-upside-down/
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