Though the Christian
may pray alone,
he has the choir of the saints
standing with him.
--St. Clement of Alexandria, ca. 200
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Friday, October 30, 2020
Do you pray to the saints? (Fr. James Martin)
Do you pray to the saints much? I know that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if you don’t pray to the saints, let me encourage you to do so. In the Catholic tradition, the saints are both our patrons and our companions. As companions, they show us the way to live a Christian life, by their examples. The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner said that a saint shows us what it means to be holy in this particular way. But the patron model is also an important one. The saints pray for us in heaven. And if you have trouble with that, like many people do, you might think about it this way: you probably ask for people on earth to pray for you – you might ask a friend for his or her prayers. Why wouldn’t you ask for someone in heaven to pray for you too? There’s nothing strange about that. If you’re in trouble, or even if you need help in your spiritual life, ask the saints for help. Try it. I do it all the time. Besides, they’re praying for you already!
--Fr. James Martin
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 1, 2020: What we shall be has not yet been revealed...
Are you waiting to be transformed?
We long for transformation. Before the Christian era, Psalm 24 pointed to a human desire for transformation through a powerful encounter with God: Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face, the psalmist sings. Christians would read back into Psalm 24 a longing for transformation through our own death and dying; death and resurrection represent the ongoing transformation of our lives. And it is through our own ongoing death and resurrection that Christ is revealed in us, as he is revealed in the saints whom we celebrate this weekend on the Solemnity of All Saints. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus reveals the Beatitudes to his disciples after going up a mountain, a place of transformation and of revelation. The Beatitudes define our existence; they explain how our relationship with God is lived out in the context of one another. Our success in so doing is to be cause for rejoicing, for, as Jesus tells the disciples, our reward will be great in heaven.
The early Christian community hoped for that reward even as they knew what it meant to struggle to maintain their faith against forces pushing against that faith. In the Book of Revelation, the servants of God are marked for Christ, and bear a seal on their foreheads. They have been transformed inwardly by the pain and suffering of life – this is the journey of the Christian. The community addressed in 1 John is looking forward to that same reward: what we shall be has not yet been revealed; we do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him. This is the ultimate transformation, to be like him, a transformation that results from our entering more deeply into relationship with the Lord, from our becoming children of God, true to the will of the Father, open to every expression of God’s love in our lives, and willing to be transformed by it into its very source, in anticipation of seeing that face we long for in perfect union with God in heaven.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Be kind anyway (The Roches)
People are often unreasonable, illogical,
and self-centered;
forgive them anyway
If you are kind, people may accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives;
be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
be honest and frank anyway.
When you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
they may jealous;
be happy anyway.
The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have
and it may never be enough;
give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them, anyway.
--Maggie & Suzzy Roche (aka The Roches), Anyway
To hear The Roches perform Anyway, from their album Zero Church, click on the video below:
Image source: Still from the French film, Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément (Blind Date) in which two neighbors sharing a common wall cannot stand the other's presence:
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Divinely appointed opportunities (Dr. Tom Neal)
These nigh neighbors whom God sets alongside us to love intensely, whom we ourselves likely would never have selected had we been given opportunity, are precisely the divinely appointed opportunities we have – daily – to synergize with the God who so loved our wretched world.
--Dr. Tom Neal,
Thrown By Love
Image source: A still from the film, A Man Called Ove, the story of a man who has great difficulty accepting his neighbors, shutting down their attempts to show him neighborly love...
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/man-called-ove-review/
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/man-called-ove-review/
Monday, October 26, 2020
Love is all there is (Fr. Greg Boyle)
And love is all there is, and love is all you are, and you want people to recognize the truth of who they are, that they’re exactly what God had in mind when God made them. Alice Miller, who’s the late, great child psychologist, talked about we’re all called to be enlightened witnesses: people who, through your kindness and tenderness and focused attention of love, return people to themselves. And in the process, you’re returned to yourself.
--Fr. Greg Boyle, interviewed for On Being with Krista Tippett
Image source: https://www.trafalgar.com/real-word/kindness-proverbs/
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Love is a participation in the love that God is (Bishop Robert Barron)
The Lord says that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.
Love is not primarily a feeling or an instinct; rather, it is the act of willing the good of the other as other. It is radical self-gift, living for the sake of other. To be kind to someone so that he might be kind to you, or to treat a fellow human being justly so that he, in turn, might treat you with justice, is not to love, for such moves are tantamount to indirect self-interest.
Truly to love is to move outside of the black hole of one’s egotism, to resist the centripetal force that compels one to assume the attitude of self-protection. But this means that love is rightly described as a theological virtue, for it represents a participation in the love that God is.
Since God has no needs, only God can utterly exist for the sake of the other. All of the great masters of the Christian spiritual tradition saw that we are able to love only inasmuch as we have received, as a grace, as share in the very life, energy, and nature of God.
--Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection
Saturday, October 24, 2020
A voice of compassion (Mary Davis)
We can’t heal the world today.
But we can begin with a voice of compassion, a heart of love, and an act of kindness.
--Mary Davis
Friday, October 23, 2020
Compassion challenges us (Henri Nouwen)
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out to those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
--Henri Nouwen, Daily Meditation, August 10, 2019.
Image source: Carl Wilhelm Huebner, The Mourning Widow, https://the-end-time.org/2013/02/27/care-of-widows/
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 22, 2020: You shall love the Lord, your God, and your neighbor as yourself...
What does right relationship look like?
When, in the Book of Exodus, God establishes his covenant with the people, God mandates social laws that prescribe the compassionate care of those less fortunate. Widows, orphans, resident aliens, the poor: all of these live in a state of utter dependence, and the compassion the people should extend to them has its origin in God himself. If your neighbor cries out to me, I will hear him, for I am compassionate, God tells the people. The people must live in right relationship with other – with neighbors and alien residents alike – in order to live in right relationship with God. Moreover, to be in right relationship with God makes life extraordinary because it means that God is involved in our lives, supports us, and blesses us, as Psalm 18 recognizes: I love you, O Lord, my strength, O Lord, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. We are to embrace our absolute dependence on God and, in it, our absolute love for God, our foundation in all things, a love that flows out from us to other.
That love for God and for other is at the center of Jesus’ response to the Pharisees, who challenge him in Matthew’s Gospel to identify the greatest commandment. His response is the Shema Yisrael: You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. No aspect of our self is excused from relationship with God; we are to love with the whole of our being. And that absolute love for God is the context for loving our neighbor as ourselves thanks to that love that overflows abundantly to other. The Thessalonians were, in this sense, a model for all believers; their embrace of the kingdom, their acceptance of God’s perfect love, allowed them to give witness to that love. From them the word of the Lord sounded forth as a joyful witness to the blessings to be found in right relationship with God and with other. May we give similar witness to the power of that love in our lives and the joy it brings to be in right relationship with the Lord.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
You are there (Loyola Institute for Spirituality)
God of Goodness,
I come into your presence so aware of my human frailty and yet overwhelmed by your love for me.
I thank you that there is no human experience that I might walk through where your love cannot reach me.
If I climb the highest mountain you are there and yet if I find myself in the darkest valley of my life, you are there.
Teach me today to love you more.
Help me to rest in that love that asks nothing more than the simple trusting heart of a child.
--Author unknown,
shared on Facebook by the Loyola Institute for Spirituality
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Finding God in mosquitoes (Cara Callbeck)
I think we struggle more to find God in the everyday nuisances like mosquitoes – like children who keep losing things, bad traffic, or an irritating co-worker. It seems as though the harder life gets or the darker the moment, the more challenging it is to find God within it.
Why do we tend to put God outside of bad experiences and dark moments, even though that’s where we need God most? God keeps faith forever, though, so I know He is undoubtedly in those moments, even when we fail to recognise Him. It’s when we do recognise God in the nuisances and in the darker times that we can find greater comfort and strength to get through those moments. If we can learn to find God in the not-so-great every day, perhaps it will build our trust that God is with us when things are looking really bleak.
--Cara Callbeck
Monday, October 19, 2020
Did you find God? (Donna Ciangio OP)
I recently heard a lovely story of a small boy who packs his backpack with Twinkies and juice boxes and goes to leave the house.
His Mom says, Where are you going? The boy says, I am going to find God. So off he goes.
He ends up in a local park and sits on a bench next to a homeless woman.
He takes out a Twinkie and a juice box and starts to unwrap them.
The woman watches and smiles at him and he laughs and offers her a Twinkie and a juice box. They both eat, talk, laugh, and enjoy each other.
Soon, the boy says goodbye and sets off for home. The woman leaves and goes off to find her friends.
When the boy gets home, his mother asks, Did you find God?
He says enthusiastically, Yes, and God is a woman!
The homeless woman meets up with her friends and says, I met God in the park today – and he is a little boy! […]
We bring Christ wherever we are.
--Donna Ciangio, OP
Sunday, October 18, 2020
To find God (Becky Eldredge)
There are the thin places that occur in my life that are unique, special places that I do not get to visit very often, but when I do, the felt presence of God is almost overwhelming. Many of mine are places in nature, such as the beach, my grandparents’ farm, and being in the North Georgia Mountains, and they invite me to understand the vastness and creative power of our creator. As I stand and soak in the beauty of nature these places offer, I also find that I understand that my mere presence in life is but one piece of God’s magnificent, ongoing creative work.
Over time, I [have begun] to realize that there are some very basic rhythms and routines of my life that allowed me to readily and easily find God: snuggling with my daughter, Abby, while sipping my morning coffee; sitting down to lunch with my kids after preschool to hear about their day; reading to my kids and our night time ritual of prayer; and savoring the few quieter moments with my hubby after the last door of my kids’ room was closed. I was surprised to find that the rhythms of my life are spotted with moments that easily allow me to find God. Without realizing it, these moments are checkpoints to see how the ones I love are doing and even more importantly, still points that allow me to savor the gifts in my life and to deepen my awareness of God in all things.
--Becky Eldredge, Thin Places
Image & quotation source: https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/thin-places/
Saturday, October 17, 2020
May the Master reveal His divine presence (St. Elizabeth of the Trinity)
May the Master reveal to you His divine presence – it is so pleasant and sweet, it gives so much strength to the soul; to believe that God loves us to the point of living in us, to become the Companion of our exile, our Confidant, our Friend at every moment.
--St. Elizabeth of the Trinity
Image source: William Brassey Hole, Jesus and Nicodemus, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicodemus#/media/File:William_Brassey_Hole_Nicodemus.jpg
Friday, October 16, 2020
God will become known to us (Henri Nouwen)
Deep silence leads us to realize that prayer is, above all, acceptance. When we pray, we are standing with our hands open to the world. We know that God will become known to us in the nature around us, in people we meet, and in situations we run into. We trust that the world holds God’s secret within and we expect that secret to be shown to us. Prayer creates that openness in which God is given to us. Indeed, God wants to be admitted into the human heart, received with open hands, and loved with the same love with which we have been created.
--Henri Nouwen
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 18, 2020: I am the Lord, there is no other...
Do you recognize God at work in the world around you?
When, in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God calls upon Cyrus, the King of Persia, to return the people of Israel to their lands, the gesture is extraordinary: a foreign king is being called by name to achieve God’s ends, and so Cyrus sends the people back to Israel with the wherewithal to rebuild. Moreover, God is explicit about God’s own role in this project: it is I who arm you, though you know me not. When God works through Cyrus to benefit the people of Israel, God makes it very clear that the power lies with God: I am the Lord, there is no other. God wants the people to know that there is none besides God who merits the glory and honor referred to in Psalm 96. The people are to sing to the Lord a new song, one not sung before, from a place they haven’t been before, from a place of understanding and appreciation for all that God has done and continues to do, in holy attire, prepared, heart open, ready to do good. Psalm 96 calls for an intentional recognition of God at work in the world around us.
The Pharisees and Herodians, on the other hand, do not recognize God at work in the world around them, not even with Jesus standing right before their eyes. When, in Matthew’s Gospel, they test Jesus, asking, Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?, the Pharisees and Herodians are failing to recognize God’s hand in Jesus, failing to give God his due. Jesus’ reply goes to the heart of this: repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. Remain focused on God, in other words, see what God is doing in the world right in front of you, keep God ever before you. God blesses us by being with us in good and in bad; we must be open to the revelation, open to God acting in ways we might not expect. We see in Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians that the early Christian community exists in union with Christ, and through Christ in God: Grace to you and peace, Paul says to them – may God dwell among you and bring you peace. The gospel came to them not in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit; the Thessalonians responded to God’s call in the affirmative, ever aware of God at work in the world around them. We are called to no less.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Break ourselves open and love our way through (Christen Rodgers)
From here there’s only one thing left to do –
break ourselves open and love our way through.
Love every wound till it begins to heal,
Love hardened hearts ‘til they begin to feel,
Love until violence turns to shudders and sobs,
Love ‘til light breaks through shadows and fogs,
Love until wings sprout from deep pits of fear,
Love until the truth is perfectly clear.
From here there’s but one place left to go,
surrendering to love’s unstoppable flow.
--Christen Rodgers
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Daring to stay open (Henri Nouwen)
The immense difference that exists between hope and wishfulness is revealed in the remarks of a student who wrote: I see hope as an attitude where everything stays open before me. Not that I don’t think of my future in those moments, but I think of it in an entirely different way. Daring to stay open to whatever will come to me today, tomorrow, two months from now, or a year from now – that is hope. To go fearlessly into things without knowing how they’ll turn out, to keep on going, even when something doesn’t work the first time, to have trust in whatever you’re doing – that is living with hope.
--Anonymous student quoted by
Henri Nouwen in With Open Hands
Monday, October 12, 2020
Barriers you have built (Rumi)
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
--Rumi
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Only when we are ready to receive (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
Whatever we are waiting for – peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance – will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and grateful heart.
--Sarah Ban Breathnach
Saturday, October 10, 2020
The inward work (Meister Eckhart)
The outward work
will never be puny
if the inward work
is great.
--Meister Eckhart
Friday, October 9, 2020
The invitation of God (Bishop Robert Barron)
In the Parable of the Wedding Feast as recounted by Matthew, notice that the father (God the Father) is giving a banquet for his son (God the Son), whose bride is the Church. Jesus is the marriage of divinity and humanity – and we his followers are invited to join in the joy of this union.
The joyful intimacy of the Father and Son is now offered to us to be shared. Listen to Isaiah to learn the details of this banquet: On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.
Now, there is an edge to all of this. For it is the king who is doing the inviting, and it is a wedding banquet for his son. We can see how terribly important it is to respond to the invitation of the King of Kings.
We have heard the invitation of God to enter into intimacy with him, to make him the center of our lives, to be married to him in Christ –and often we find the most pathetic excuses not to respond.
--Bishop Robert Barron,
Gospel Reflection, November 5, 2019
Image source: Brunswick Monogrammist, Parable of the Great Banquet (ca.1525),
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 11, 2020: Many are invited, but few are chosen...
What happens when we accept God’s love for us?
True faith means opening to God’s love for us and giving witness to the power of that love in our lives. When the prophet Isaiah tells the people that God will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines and destroy death forever, he is calling them to a deeper faith, so that they will rely upon God to love them and reveal his love through them. Our victory banquet comes when we put our faith in that love and its power in our lives. Psalm 23 echoes the image of the victory banquet – you spread the table before me, my cup overflows – as an affirmation of the psalmist’s complete dependence on the Lord who walks this journey with him, guiding him so long as he remains open to the love of God.
The inverse of the victory banquet is described by Jesus to the chief priests and elders in the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew's Gospel, a story in which many ignore the king’s invitation and go away; one guest even comes in not dressed in a wedding garment, utterly unprepared. When we are prepared to let our lives be changed by the Lord’s love for us, a state evident not externally by our garment but inwardly in terms of our internal disposition, then we are open and can put our faith in the power of that love in our lives. Paul describes his own internal disposition of openness to God’s providence to the Philippians: I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, but knowing regardless that I can do all things in him who strengthens me. Paul can endure anything because God’s love is with him; he wants the Philippians to have the same hope and the same trust in the power of that love. We are likewise called to believe that that love is enough for us, and to accept that love, that we might be strengthened and transformed, and thus ready to endure all things because we are open to all the Lord has to reveal.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
The question is: Are you going to bear fruit? (Henri Nouwen)
You have to be really aware of the difference between fruitfulness and success because the world is always talking to you about your success. Society keeps asking you: Show me your trophies. Show me, how many books have you written? Show me, how many games did you win? Show me, how much money did you make? Show me….
And there is nothing wrong with any of that. I am saying that finally that’s not the question. The question is: Are you going to bear fruit? And the amazing thing is that our fruitfulness comes out of our vulnerability and not just out of our power. Actually, it comes out of our powerlessness. If the ground wants to be fruitful, you have to break it open a little bit. The hard ground cannot bear fruit; it has to be raked open. And the mystery is that our illness and our weakness and our many ways of dying are often the ways that we get in touch with our vulnerabilities. You and I have to trust that they will allow us to be more fruitful if lived faithfully. Precisely where we are weakest and often most broken and most needy, precisely there can be the ground of our fruitfulness.
That is the vision that means that death can indeed be the final healing – because it becomes the way to be so vulnerable that we can bear fruit in a whole new way. Like trees that die and become fuel, and like leaves that die and become fertilizer, in nature something new comes out from death all the time. So, you have to realize that you are part of that beautiful process, that your death is not the end, but in fact it is the source of your fruitfulness beyond you in new generations, in new centuries.
--Henri Nouwen,
You Are the Beloved:
Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living
Image source: Leratiomyces ceres (Redlead Roundhead), photographed by Steve Axford, https://www.demilked.com/fungi-mushroom-photography-steve-axford/
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