To be grateful for purifying fire (Ernest Hemingway)

  The world breaks everyone or nearly everyone, of their childish illusions, assumptions and wishes, often painfully and afterwards, due to the personal growth in practical experience, insight, and the resulting wisdom, many are strong at the broken places just like mended bones often are, and some people even have the great insight to be grateful for the purifying fire.

--Ernest Hemingway     

Image source:  https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/ss/slideshow-break-bone-what-happens

Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 2, 2020: My eyes have seen your salvation...

My eyes have seen your salvation…

Are we ready to see Jesus revealed?

  When, in Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Joseph take the child Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, they encounter two righteous souls:  an old man named Simeon and the prophetess Anna.  All four of these adults, being in right relationship with God, are open to God’s revelation, as described by Simeon:  My eyes have seen your salvation.  Simeon knows that the child Jesus is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted.  As the Letter to the Hebrews explains, God must become human, incarnate in the humanity of Jesus, and subject himself to death in order to conquer death, that through death he might destroy the one who has power of death.  Because of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, death is not a barrier to us, not the final moment, not the end of the journey, but is rather a path to perfect union with the Father.  We can grasp this truth only if we are open to Jesus revealed in our midst.

  But how do we open ourselves, open our hearts, as Simeon and Anna, Mary and Joseph, did, that we might see the Lord revealed as well?  Psalm 24 suggests that we lift up our gates, that the Lord of glory may come in! The whole community is asked to respond with openness to the arrival of the universal king, the God of Israel.  Moreover, the prophet Malachi urges a path of radical purification:  when the Lord whom we seek arrives at the temple, he will be like the refiner’s fire, or like the fuller’s lye, that he might purify the sons of Levi.  When the child Jesus, the Lord of glory, is presented to us, we must be prepared for radical change, radical renewal, radical openness, that we might participate fully in salvation here and now, free of any fear of death, ever giving thanks, fully open, as we await our redemption in the Lord, Jesus, revealed to us, once and for all, in all his glory.

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

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

They trusted their vocations (Henri Nouwen)

   Look at Rembrandt and van Gogh.  They trusted their vocations and did not allow anyone to lead them astray.  With true Dutch stubbornness, they followed their vocations from the moment they recognized them.  They didn’t bend over backward to please their friends or enemies.  Both ended their lives in poverty, but both left humanity with gifts that could heal the minds and hearts of many generations of people.  Think of these two men and trust that you too have a unique vocation that is worth claiming and living out.

--Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

Image source:  Rembrandt, Christ Preaching (c. 1652), Philadelphia Museum of Art, https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/272384.html?mulR=992