Lives that show the miracle of God's love (Pope Francis)

    Today we need prophecy, but real prophecy: not fast talkers who promise the impossible, but testimonies that the Gospel is possible. What is needed are not miraculous shows. It makes me sad when I hear someone say, We want a prophetic Church. All right. But what are you doing so that the Church can be prophetic? We need lives that show the miracle of God’s love. Not forcefulness, but forthrightness. Not palaver, but prayer. Not speeches, but service. Do you want a prophetic Church? Then start serving and be quiet. Not theory, but testimony. We are not to become rich, but rather to love the poor. We are not to save up for ourselves, but to spend ourselves for others.

 --Pope Francis 

Image source: Beth Peck, Illustration for Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, http://www.bethpeckillustrations.com/harpdetails.php
Quotation source

Choose love (Henri Nouwen)

One way to pray
in a fear-filled world
is to choose love
over anxiety. 

 --Henri Nouwen      

Image source: https://atiqahzulfanadia.com/2017/11/05/keep-calm-and/ 
Quotation source

Aware of our calling (Pope Benedict XVI)

     Only if we are aware of our calling, as individuals and as a community, to be part of God’s family as his sons and daughters, will we be able to generate a new vision and muster new energy in the service of a truly integral humanism. The greatest service to development, then, is a Christian humanism that enkindles charity and takes its lead from truth, accepting both as a lasting gift from God. Openness to God makes us open towards our brothers and sisters and towards an understanding of life as a joyful task to be accomplished in a spirit of solidarity. 

 --Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate 

Image source: https://beautifulnow.is/discover/wellness/awesome-openings-beautiful-timelapse-flowers-blossoming-gifs-by-yutaka-kitamura-and-alexander-reeder

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 31, 2020: If today you hear his voice...

If today you hear his voice… 

How receptive are you to the Word of God? 

    By the time of Moses, the people of Israel fear direct communication with God; at Horeb they state categorically: Let us not hear the voice of the Lord, our God, lest we die. But, because he desires an ongoing relationship with his people, God devises a system of go-betweens to enable open communication, sending them prophets to deliver his messages to them. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses is the first prophet to bring the word of God to the people, and he promises more to come: A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin, he tells them. The people will need to learn to listen to the word of God, not blindly, but with discernment, opening their hearts, that they might hear without fear. Psalm 95 reminds them, If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Most of all, we need to recognize our need for God and our position before him: come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord who made us. Rather than standing in our own arrogance, we must be receptive to the Lord, who guides us in all things, if only we can learn to listen. 

    In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus, himself the Word of God, enters the synagogue at Capernaum and casts out an unclean spirit. When he speaks, not only the spirit listens to him, but his words draw the people to him so that they identify him as one having authority. Jesus has the ability to open them, speaking through their fears, through their feelings of inadequacy, through any distance; as an authority, he speaks directly to their hearts. It is up to the people to open their ears (and hearts) to hear, to listen and obey. Paul likewise encourages the Corinthians to be sure to be focused on the things of the Lord, whether they be married or unmarried, for anxiety is not productive. We simply need to remain open: open to those with whom we have established relationships, within our families and communities, but most especially with God, listening, receptive, open to his will in all we do.  

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

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

I'm looking for courage (Louise Glück)

You want to know how I spend my time? 

I walk the front lawn, pretending to be weeding. 

You ought to know I’m never weeding, 

on my knees, pulling clumps 

of clover from the flower beds: 

in fact I’m looking for courage, 

for some evidence my life will change, 

though it takes forever, checking 

each clump for the symbolic leaf, 

and soon the summer is ending… 

Or was the point always 

to continue without a sign? 

 --Louise Glück, Matins
2020 Nobel Prize in Literature

Image source: https://www.preen.com/articles/white-clover-common-outcompetes-lawns 
Poem source

You become (Margery Williams)

   He said, You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. 

 --Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit 

Image source: William Nicholson, Spring Time, an illustration from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html

From 'I love you' to 'I love you' is the journey of a vocation (Chris Williams, SJ)

I love you
Comes to birth, subterranean,
Underneath hardened layers of earth.
Moving tectonic plates patiently
Occasionally erupting spectacularly
Other times shifting ever so slightly, building tension,
Until a massive break
Sends a seismic shock through unsuspecting rock,
Unsettling settled states of thought.

I love you
Forms new mountains at which to marvel
And opens deep canyons
Bearing hidden crystal caves.
Laboring,
Out of primal core forces
Bearing new creation.  

I love you
It was the most believable utterance of that phrase I’ve ever heard, while sitting in an utterly unremarkable conference room transformed with incense and song into a place open to worship; somehow breaking through the stubborn habits of conventional self-assurance I felt forced to carry.

I love you
Carried me to demanding moral commitments
And difficult decisions.
It took over a decade
For me to admit my resentment;
To have the courage to question whether I could honestly say yes
To where I love you had led,

I love you
Now felt like a snare
Its beauty commanding my commitment
But its demands bearing dissatisfaction;
The doldrums between I love you and I love you

From I love you to I love you
Is the journey of a vocation.
Our attempt to respond to love
Reveals the truth
That we are not what we ought to be.
We see, eventually,
That we don’t love that which has loved us freely
Or that we don’t love the ways of love
When it has lost its luster.

From I love you to I love you
Is the journey of faith;
To believe
That if you allow every other love
To stand in submission
That you are not letting everything that matters go
In a deranged act of self-immolation
But are instead selling all
For the pearl of greatest price.

From I love you to I love you
Requires transformation
Of amorous emotions.
Metanoia
Means more than abandoning sin;
This is only where to begin.
Metanoia
Means mining deep desires;
Ploughing through old pleasures.
And as farmers and miners know
It takes painstaking patience
To turn rough rock
And hard land
To a new life
True
To its destined end.

From I love you to I love you
Is a pilgrim’s journey.
But blind
Not knowing
(Even if you think you know!)
What you will find,
What you must leave behind,
Or who you will become.
Persevere through the growing pains
Because the promise
Is it’s better thank whatever you planned.

--Chris Williams, SJ, From ‘I Love You' to ‘I Love You’

Image source: Jesus Calls the First Disciples, mosaic, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy, 6th c., https://www.raydowning.com/blog/2016/6/3/jesus-calls-his-first-disciples
Poem source

We need prophets (Bishop Robert Barron)

   We need prophets, especially now. We need people who speak the Word of God: yes, in the public place; yes, in the media; yes, in the universities; yes, in the places where the culture is transformed. And if we don’t do it, it’s not going to get done. 

 --Bishop Robert Barron 

 Gospel Reflection, June 2020 

Image source: https://knowingscripture.com/articles/a-primer-on-the-old-testament-prophets

Change (Adrienne Rich)

Change is not a threat to your life,
but an invitation to live.

--Adrienne Rich                

Image source: Gjon Mili, Multiple Exposures, http://www.fubiz.net/en/2015/12/14/black-and-white-movements-photography-by-gjon-mili/ 

 Quotation source

God doesn't call the qualified (Unknown)

Jacob was a cheater, 

Peter had a temper, 

David had an affair, 

Noah was a drunk, 

Jonah ran from God, 

Paul was a murderer, 

Gideon was insecure, 

Miriam was a gossiper, 

Martha was a worrier, 

Thomas was a doubter, 

Sara was impatient, 

Elijah was moody, 

Moses stuttered, 

Zacchaeus was short, 

Abraham was old, and 

Lazarus was dead. 

God doesn’t call the qualified, 

He qualifies the called. 

You are not perfect, 

But God has a plan for you. 

 --Author unknown                  

Image source: Seidel, Jonah's Sermon at Nineveh,  https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/woodcut-jonahs-sermon-nineveh-sign-seidel-127-c-c9145199db
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 24, 2021: Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men...

Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men… 

Are you open to radical transformation? 

    The prophet Jonah is truly not thrilled with the idea of going to Nineveh – a pagan city – to do the Lord’s bidding. He is sure his message, Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed, will fall on deaf ears and actually he’s fine with that. Jonah can’t conceive that God would give this enemy people the opportunity to repent, yet repent they do, and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth and turn away from their evil ways and toward the Lord. It is a striking moment of metanoia in a completely unexpected place and time, resulting in the great gift of God’s mercy. The Ninevites have opened to the ways of the Lord described in Psalm 25: from a state of distance from God, they seek to bridge that gap and accept the call to repentance, so that they might receive forgiveness. Guide me in your truth, the psalmist sings, that I might turn to you, O Lord – another reference to the metanoia to which we are all called. 

    In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus comes to Galilee to proclaim: The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Jesus, the manifestation of the kingdom of God’s rule, comes to call people to metanoia, so that God can rule their hearts. This is the time of fulfillment, Jesus says: his presence is the fulfillment of God’s promises, and something about him causes the fishermen Simon and Andrew, James and John, to abandon their nets and follow him. They too abandon their way of life in a radical moment of metanoia, a complete shift of how they see themselves and the world, a new sense of what is important. Paul asks the Corinthians to focus on what is important as well: not this world and its activity, but God’s activity, what God is doing in them. Like them, we too are to participate differently, focused on where the Lord is leading us. For those who have wives to act as not having them is to love past this world and its expectations, to have a new vision, to see life as a new life of possibilities. 

   We are all called to metanoia, to a radical change that comes of repentance of our past ways and embrace of God’s ways. That change is for this moment, now, not for the future, not for the past: metanoia takes place in the here and now. Like all of the figures in today’s readings, we too can know radical change, radical transformation, so long as we let go of what has been and what will be and embrace the will of God in this moment, always. 

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

Vanished into something better (Mary Oliver)

 

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

 --Mary Oliver, Sleeping in the Forest                   

Image source: Felice Casoati, Dreaming of Pomegranates (1912), https://www.wikiart.org/en/felice-casorati/dreaming-of-pomegranates-1913

We are are his body (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   Was the incarnation only a 33-year experiment, a one-shot incursion by God into human history? No! The marvel of the mystery is that God took on human flesh and has never since ceased to have human flesh. 

   In St. Paul’s words, We are the body of Christ. We don’t replace Christ’s historical body, we are not like his body, nor are we even his mystical body, we are his body; flesh, blood, tangible, in history, and to the extent that we live in grace, the on-going incarnation, God in flesh in history. 

 --Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Facebook, October 23, 2019 

Image source: Icon of the face of Christ, Church of the Assumption, Deptford, http://www.rcsouthwark.co.uk/paul_deptford.htm

The ultimate measure of a man (Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

     The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

 --Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Strength to Love (1963)

Image source: The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., leading a 54-mile march for voting rights in 1965; at far right is recently deceased Georgia congressman John Lewis, who was 25 years old at the time. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/john-lewis-martin-luther-king-jr/552581/
Quotation source

I abandon myself into your hands (Brother Charles de Foucauld)

Father, I abandon myself into your hands, 

Do with me what you will. 

Whatever you may do, I thank you. 

I am ready for all; I accept all. 

Let only your will be done in me, 

and in all your creatures. 

 I wish no more than this, O Lord. 

Into your hands I commend my soul; 

I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, 

for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, 

to surrender myself into your hands without reserve, 

And with boundless confidence, for you are my Father. 

 --Blessed Charles de Foucauld 

 Image source: https://letgodbefoundtrue.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/gods-hands.jpg
Quotation source

To live is to change (St. John Henry Newman)

 
In a higher world, it is otherwise, 

but here below, to live is to change, 

and to be perfect is to have changed often. 

 --St. John Henry Newman
 

Image source: When they come into contact with water, the flower Diphylleia grayi’s petals become translucent. They are also known as skeleton flowers. 
http://tiavatie.blogspot.com/2018/02/diphylleia-grayi-captivating-skeleton.html 
Quotation source

The call of God (Oswald Chambers)

  The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude. 

--Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) 

Image source: N.C. Wyeth, Eli and the Boy Samuel, https://www.artsy.net/artwork/nc-wyeth-eli-and-the-boy-samuel
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 17, 2021: Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will...

Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will… 

What transformation is the Lord operating in you today? 

    The transformation the Lord works on Samuel is extraordinary. The young man has been raised since the age of three by the high priest Eli, and all he knows of God, he knows because he grows up in the presence of God, with the Ark of the Covenant, in the temple. But Samuel’s first personal encounter with God is transformative: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening, Samuel says to the Lord. Samuel’s open reception and willingness to listen will cause him to play a special role in salvation history; as he grows up, the Lord is with him, not permitting any word of his to be without effect, and Samuel will henceforth speak the Lord’s truth. One could say that God puts a new song into Samuel’s mouth. Psalm 40 tells us that when the Lord does something in our life that he hasn’t done before, we can’t sing using the old words – we need new ones that describe how we now understand the Lord’s transformative role in our life. When the Lord’s words are written upon us, we can’t escape them; they are an indelible sign of that transformation that occurs when we open our ears, and our hearts, to the Lord. 

  When two disciples – most likely Andrew and John – meet Jesus in John’s Gospel, they will follow him without question. Andrew tells his brother Simon Peter, We have found the Messiah, the Anointed One, a reason for hope. Jesus will operate a transformation in Peter by giving him a new name, Cephas; the name is a sign of a radical change in who Peter is and how he will come to understand himself. For Jesus’ call is precisely that: a call to change who we are, a call to radical transformation in which we are open to his Word written upon our lives. We thus, as Paul reminds the Corinthians, become members of Christ, members, that is, of the Body of Christ, and we must participate in full awareness that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within us. That identity – our identity in Christ, indelible, written upon our flesh – is what we celebrate in Eucharist, our connection to the greater Body, radically transformed by the call, and the will, of the Lord. 

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

River (Elaine Dempsey)

This is a debut of a work in progress inspired by the power of single photo to shift hearts and expand world views. May it be a recognition of the short-lived lives of Oscar and Valeria Ramírez of El Salvador.

My intention is to quench a thirsty soul
My reflection’s meant to show you all the world
Every good deed you toss into the drift
Ripples out into a hundred other gifts

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh – as the river flows,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, a story yet untold
I’ll be the muse, I’ll be direction,
I’ll be your playful recollection
I’ll be the bend that sets your course straight
And in the end open to all that’s great, in you

I am borrowed from the heart beats yet to come
I am sorrowed from the recklessness of some
I am current, if you blink time slips away
Ever urgent that we act without delay

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh – as the river flows, 
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, a story yet untold
I’ll be the muse I’ll be direction
I’ll be the guide for your intention
I’ll be the bend that sets your course straight
And in the end open to all that’s great in you

My ambition is to wash away the pain
Never thought I’d be the source of death and blame
For a father and his daughter washed ashore
What the hearts sees rips us to the core
This is not who I am

They walked a thousand miles to find
The bridge was closed, access denied
The Rio Grande moved swiftly by
A family mourns. A nation cries.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh – as our attention drifts
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh – we are better than this
I’ll be the muse I’ll be direction
I’ll wash away your apprehension
I’ll be the hope that sets your course straight
And in the end open to to all that’s great,
Open to all. That’s great.
Open to all.
Open.

To hear Elaine Dempsey perform her tribute to the lives of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria (© 2020), click on the video below. To read their story, click here; please be forewarned that the image that inspired this song is profoundly disturbing.

Image source: Rio Grande Bend near Boquillas Canyon, Big Bend National Park, Texas, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Grande#/media/File:Rio_Grande_in_Big_Bend_NP.jpg
Video source 
Article source

Born into a deeply dysfunctional world (Bishop Robert Barron)

    Listen to the great theologian Gregory of Nazianzen: Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift… It is called gift because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty. Jesus said, It was not you who chose me but I who chose you. Baptism is the sacramental ratification of that choice. 

   And this is why we speak of Baptism as justifying us and washing away our sin. We are – all of us – born into a deeply dysfunctional world, a world conditioned by millenia of selfishness, cruelty, injustice, stupidity and fear. This has created a poisonous atmosphere that conditions all of our thoughts and moves and actions. 

   Do you see why the stress on grace is so important? Baptism is the moment when the Holy Spirit draws us out of this fallen world and into a new world, the very life of the Trinity. That’s why Baptism involves being born again, lifted up, enlightened, transformed, saved – and why the Church speaks of the baptized as a new creature. 

 --Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, January 12, 2020 

Image source: https://www.holytrinityankeny.org/baptism.html

With you I am well pleased (Danny O'Regan)

    The Baptism of the Lord is that gentle moment when the spirit comes to take away our insecurities, quiets us, and assures us, With you I am well pleased. That isn’t just a message to Jesus, it is a message to all of us. We no longer have to prove our love and overcompensate; we live out our Baptism as we live out our understanding of being loved. It is often by our gentleness and peaceful spirit that we encounter the prince of peace in one another. 

   We celebrate this feast day with a recognition that it is the calming waters of our own Baptism and our continued call to be a people in the world that offers this peace to one another. 

--Danny O’Regan, 

Director of Religious Education, 

OLMC January 13, 2019 

Image source: Baptism of Jesus, Byzantine icon, Chiesa Santa Maria Asunta https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64265936

The breath of God is on the waters (Malcolm Guite)

Love’s hidden thread has drawn us to the font,
A wide womb floating on the breath of God,
Feathered with seraph wings, lit with the swift
Lightening of praise, with thunder over-spread,
And under-girded with an unheard song,
Calling through water, fire, darkness, pain,
Calling us to the life for which we long,
Yearning to bring us to our birth again.
Again, the breath of God is on the waters
In whose reflecting face our candles shine,
Again, he draws from death the sons and daughters
For whom he bids the elements combine.
As living stones around a font today,
Rejoice with those who roll the stone away.

 --Malcolm Guite, St. John the Baptist: 2, Baptism   

Image source: Perugino, Baptism of Christ, https://www.tripimprover.com/blog/baptism-of-christ-by-perugino (This site includes extensive commentary on the painting.)

Poem source: https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/john-the-baptist/

Baptism (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Baptism is the door to the spiritual life, and the gateway to the sacraments. 

 --St. Thomas Aquinas 

Image source: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, baptismal font, https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=mountcarmelmv&set=a.1769598993101515 
Quotation source

The work of Christmas begins (Howard Thurman)

When the song of the angels is stilled, 

When the star in the sky is gone, 

When the kings and princes are home, 

When the shepherds are back with their flock, 

The work of Christmas begins: 

To find the lost, 

To heal the broken, 

To feed the hungry, 

To release the prisoner, 

To rebuild the nations, 

To bring peace among people, 

To make music in the heart.

 --Howard Thurman (1899-1981) 

Image source: https://www.uua.org/worship/words/affirmation/now-work-christmas-begins

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 10, 2021: All you who are thirsty, come to the water!

All you who are thirsty, come to the water! 

Do you thirst for relationship with the Lord? 

   When writers of the Old Testament want to talk about God’s love for God’s people, they commonly use language that refers to the ways their needs are met. All you who are thirsty, come to the water! Isaiah tells a desert people for whom food and water are often a struggle to acquire. But in fact, God is providing them with something they have not before realized in its fullness: God’s love for them and the infinite identity that love provides – the only requirement being that the people must thirst for God in order to open to God’s work in them. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation, the canticle from Isaiah proclaims, giving thanks to the Lord and acclaiming his name, in gratitude for that relationship to which he calls us, thanks to the everlasting covenant promised to David, and to us. 

   The eschatological banquet requires that we thirst for relationship with God; our identity comes from that shared relationship, for the relationship entails a shift in how we see ourselves and others. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus chooses to be baptized in the Jordan by John, freely accepting to be one with the people, entering into the fullness of our reality, that he might make us new. Jesus needs to be baptized if he is to embrace our humanity fully, for all time, that we might ultimately share in divine life with him. When John the Baptist shows up, the people are thirsting for this relationship; by entering into our lives, Jesus allows us to enter in turn, through baptism, into his life. Baptism is thus, for us, a participation in that relationship cemented when we accept Jesus Christ who, as 1 John tells us, came through water and blood, that we might become one with him and reveal his love to all. 

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

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Reges Tharsis (Liber Usualis)

    The story of the kings of Tarshish and Sheba who travel to bring tribute to “the king’s son” (Psalm 72) has inspired composers throughout the ages, including those who published their work in the 11th-century Liber Usualis, a book of commonly used Gregorian chants composed by the monks of the Abbey of Solesmes in France. 

Reges Tharsis et ínsulae munera offerent:
 reges Arabum et et Saba dona adducent:
 et adorabunt eum omnes reges terrae,
omnes gentes servient ei. 

The kings of Tarshish and the islands shall offer gifts,
the kings of Arabia and Seba shall bring tribute.
 All kings shall pay him homage,
all nations shall serve him. 

You can hear this Epiphany offertory performed in Latin by the Schola des Moines de Montserrat by clicking on the video below. 

Image source: The Adoration of the Magi, figural group, probably Flanders ca. 1525, carved of walnut. https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2013/01/06/when-scents-were-as-precious-as-gold-and-wood-carving-told-the-tale-the-adoration-of-the-magi/ 
Video source

They are traveling again (Louise Glück)

Toward world’s end, through the bare
Beginnings of winter, they are traveling again.
How many winters have we seen it happen,
Watched the same sign come forward as they pass
Cities sprung around this route their gold
Engraved on the desert, and yet
Held our peace, these
Being the Wise, come to see at the accustomed hour
Nothing changed: roofs, the barn
Blazing in darkness, all they wish to see. 

 --Louise Glück 

(Nobel Laureate 2020)

 

 

Image source: Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), The Journey of the Magi (ca. 1433-1435), https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437611 

Poem source

A calm radiance of wonder and joy (Henry Van Dyke)

   In 1895, Henry Van Dyke published The Story of the Other Wise Man, a tale about a man named Artaban who misses his opportunity to accompany the three magi who go off in search of Jesus because he stops to help a dying man. When he eventually arrives in Bethlehem, he is yet again too late – the family has had to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath. For many years Artaban travels far and wide, hoping to find the King and pay him tribute, doing good for others at every step of the way, but in the end, he is fatally injured in the earthquake that accompanies Jesus' Crucifixion. Lamenting his failed quest, he is about to die when he hears a voice… The following is the story’s conclusion, but if you’d rather read the whole text, you can find it on Project Gutenberg’s website by clicking here.

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     What had he to fear? What had he to live for? He had given away the last remnant of his tribute for the King. He had parted with the last hope of finding Him. The quest was over, and it had failed. But, even in that thought, accepted and embraced, there was peace. It was not resignation. It was not submission. It was something more profound and searching. He knew that all was well, because he had done the best that he could, from day to day. He had been true to the light that had been given to him. He had looked for more. And if he had not found it, if a failure was all that came out of his life, doubtless that was the best that was possible. He had not seen the revelation of "life everlasting, incorruptible and immortal." But he knew that even if he could live his earthly life over again, it could not be otherwise than it had been. 

     One more lingering pulsation of the earthquake quivered through the ground. A heavy tile, shaken from the roof, fell and struck the old man on the temple. He lay breathless and pale, with his gray head resting on the young girl's shoulder, and the blood trickling from the wound. As she bent over him, fearing that he was dead, there came a voice through the twilight, very small and still, like music sounding from a distance, in which the notes are clear but the words are lost. The girl turned to see if some one had spoken from the window above them, but she saw no one. 

     Then the old man's lips began to move, as if in answer, and she heard him say in the Parthian tongue: 

     "Not so, my Lord! For when saw I thee and hungered, and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw I thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? When saw I thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee? Three-and-thirty years have I looked for thee; but I have never seen thy face, nor ministered to thee, my King." 

     He ceased, and the sweet voice came again. And again the maid heard it, very faintly and far away. But now it seemed as though she understood the words: 

     "Verily I say unto thee, inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me." 

     A calm radiance of wonder and joy lighted the pale face of Artaban like the first ray of dawn on a snowy mountain-peak. One long, last breath of relief exhaled gently from his lips. 

     His journey was ended. His treasures were accepted. The other Wise Man had found the King. 

--Henry Van Dyke, The Story of the Other Wise Man  

Image source: https://suzannesmomsblog.com/2017/12/25/the-other-wise-man/ 
Text source

In the bleak mid-winter (Chanticleer)

In the bleak mid-winter 

Frosty wind made moan; 

Earth stood hard as iron, 

Water like a stone; 

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, 

Snow on snow, 

In the bleak mid-winter 

Long ago. 

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him 

Nor earth sustain, 

Heaven and earth shall flee away 

When He comes to reign: 

In the bleak mid-winter 

A stable-place sufficed 

The Lord God Almighty – Jesus Christ. 

Enough for Him, whom Cherubim 

Worship night and day, 

A breastful of milk 

And a mangerful of hay 

Enough for Him, whom Angels 

Fall down before, 

The ox and ass and camel 

Which adore. 

Angels and Archangels 

May have gathered there, 

Cherubim and seraphim 

Thronged the air; 

But only His Mother 

In her maiden bliss 

Worshipped the Beloved 

With a kiss. 

What can I give Him, 

Poor as I am? 

If I were a Shepherd 

I would bring a lamb; 

If I were a Wise Man 

I would do my part, 

Yet what can I give Him, 

Give my heart. 

 To hear this song performed by Chanticleer, click on the video below. 

Image source: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Census at Bethlehem (1566), https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-census-at-bethlehem/JwGxiyxYTZZEog?hl=en 

Video source

If everything around you seems dark (Rumi)

If everything around you seems dark, 

look again: you may be the light. 

 --Rumi                  

Image source: https://faithandleadership.com/rhonda-mawhood-lee-hold-one-another-light
Quotation source

The womb of one woman (St. Augustine)

   Him whom the heavens cannot contain, the womb of one woman bore. She ruled our ruler; she carried him in whom we are; she gave milk to our bread.  

--St. Augustine 

Image source: Michelangelo, The Madonna of the Steps (Casa Buonarroti, Florence), https://100swallows.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/michelangelo%E2%80%99s-only-low-relief/ 
Quotation source