Faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God (Bishop Robert Barron)

   Faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God. Faith is openness to what God will reveal, do, and invite. It should be obvious that in dealing with the infinite, all-powerful person who is God, we are never in control.

   That is why we say that faith goes beyond reason. If we can figure it out, calculate precisely, predict with complete accuracy, we’re in charge…

  One of the most fundamental statements of faith is this: your life is not about you. You’re not in control. This is not your project. Rather, you are part of God’s great design. To believe this in your bones and to act accordingly is to have faith.

--Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, February 17, 2020 

Image source: The Sacrifice of Isaac, Catacombs of Via Latina, Rome, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abraham_Isaac.jpg

Faith reassures (Sherrie Dunlevy)

Stress makes you believe 

that everything has to happen now. 

Faith reassures you 

that everything will happen 

in God’s timing. 

--Sherrie Dunlevy     

Image source: Alexandr Ivanov, Transfiguration (1824), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfiguration_of_Jesus#/media/File:Alexandr_Ivanov_015.jpg
Quotation source

Faith in the giver of all good things (Henri Nouwen)

   When we live with hope, we do not get tangled up with concerns for how our wishes will be fulfilled. So, too, our prayers are not directed toward the gift but toward the One who gives it. Ultimately, it is not a question of having a wish come true, but of expressing an unlimited faith in the giver of all good things… Hope is based on the premise that the other gives only what is good. Hope includes an openness by which you wait for the promise to come through, even though you never know when, where, or how this might happen. 

 --Henri Nouwen 

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac#/media/File:Abraham_about_to_sacrifice_Isaac.jpg
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 28, 2020: I will bless you abundantly...

I will bless you abundantly… 

Do you have absolute confidence in God’s promise? 

    Abraham has complete confidence in God’s promise, even though he does not know how God will follow through. When, in the Book of Genesis, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham does not hesitate: he is willing to do as God commands. Here I am, Abraham says, present to you, ready to listen, to hear your word, to act upon what I hear. Although he knows that the sacrifice of Isaac would mean that the hope of generations to come would be sacrificed, Abraham is willing to comply because he has great trust in God and in God’s intent to prosper what God has made. And God blesses Abraham abundantly for his faith: I will make your descendants as countless as the stars in the sky and the sands of the seashore.. Abraham might well have prayed Psalm 116, To you I offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Whatever held the psalmist back was a kind of binding, yet he sings, you have loosed my bonds. The psalmist believes, even at his most difficult moment, as Abraham believed and had faith in God’s promise.

    In a similar way, the disciples are called to have faith, even when Jesus predicts his own death. In Mark’s version of the Transfiguration, God says, This is my beloved Son; listen to him. The Transfiguration is a revelation of what is to come; the disciples must have faith and trust and confidence in the promise. In similar fashion, Paul tells the Romans to have confidence, no matter what life might bring. If God acquits us, who will condemn? We are to see in the death and rising of Jesus an absolute hope, and have absolute confidence in the promise. We are all called to the faith of Abraham, according to which God’s love will be victorious. We have nothing to fear, so long as we have confidence in that absolute love.

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

I run to the Father (Cody Carnes)

I’ve carried a burden 

For too long on my own 

I wasn’t created 

To bear it alone 

I hear Your invitation 

To let it all go 

Yeah, I see it now 

I’m laying it down 

And I know that I need You 

 

I run to the Father 

I fall into grace 

I’m done with the hiding 

No reason to wait 

My heart needs a surgeon 

My soul needs a friend 

So I’ll run to the Father 

Again and again 

And again and again 

Oh, oh, oh 

 

You saw my condition 

Had a plan from the start 

Your Son for redemption 

The price for my heart 

And I don’t have a context 

For that kind of love 

I don’t understand 

I can’t comprehend 

All I know is I need You 

 

Refrain

To hear Run to the Father by Cody Carnes, click on the video below:

Image source: http://thefaithpal.blogspot.com/2010/03/prodigal-son-and-forgiving-father.html

Quotation source

If you knew who is with you (St. Macarius the Great)

   Believe me, if you knew who is with you, you would not fear anything the world has to offer.

--St. Macarius the Great 

Image source: https://llerrah.com/footprints.htm

We can nowhere evade the presence of God (C.S. Lewis)

 

   We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.

--C.S. Lewis 

Image source: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/March-for-Life-brings-crowd-to-San-Francisco-12530684.php?ipid=amp-related-link

God is present (A.W. Tozer)

Always, everywhere,
God is present,
and always He seeks
to discover Himself
to each one.

--A.W. Tozer            

Image source: https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-new-class-of-collision-neutron-stars-2020-1

We are not alone (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

     Sometimes it’s easier to succumb to our misery than it is to realize we are not alone.

 --Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Scripture Class, 

February 2018 

Image source: https://www.al.com/living/2012/05/if_god_is_good_why_does_evil_h.html

The straightest path to Him (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

   God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill His promise, leading us along the best and straightest path to Himself. 

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

Image source: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-is-the-meaning-of-the-rainbow-in-the-bible.html

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 21, 2021: Your ways, O Lord, make known to me...

Your ways, O Lord, make known to me… 

How open are you to the Lord’s presence? 

   When God establishes his covenant with Noah in the Book of Genesis, he places his bow – a rainbow – in the heavens as a visual reminder that God is with God’s creation – every living creature – always. God’s promise – never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood — is made without requiring anything in return, foreshadowing the salvation that will come in the incarnation of Jesus. Psalm 25 recalls God’s faithfulness: Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant. But our relationship with God requires ongoing learning, and we have to make an effort at comprehension: Your ways, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your paths. God seeks relationship with us; the psalm speaks of God’s kindness and compassion and goodness, while 1 Peter reminds us that God patiently waited in the days of Noah. We, for our part, need to open to God’s Word, that we might know where he leads us, aware of his kindness and compassion, his goodness and patience on our journey.

   The same Spirit that appeared at his baptism leads Jesus out into the desert in Mark’s Gospel. The passage suggests that Jesus can endure this lengthy period among wild beasts, tempted by Satan, because he knows God is with him and he is with God. Although the Spirit drives Jesus there, it does not abandon him. At the conclusion of his forty days in the desert, Jesus knows that now is the time of fulfillment. The promise made to Noah and to so many after him will be fulfilled in Jesus’ death and resurrection, allowing humanity to find peace in God, to abide in God even in the midst of beasts and temptation. As 1 Peter reminds us, Christ suffered for sins once. But now is the time of our fulfillment: now, as our Lenten season opens, is the time to draw closer to the Lord, aware that he is with us, present to us, no matter what we face. The kingdom of God is at hand!

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

Act from your heart, not your pain (Lori Deschene)

Be the person who breaks the cycle. 

If you were judged, choose understanding. 

If you were rejected, choose acceptance. 

If you were shamed, choose compassion. 

Be the person you needed when you were hurting, 

not the person who hurt you. 

Vow to be better than what broke you – 

heal instead of becoming bitter 

so you can act from your heart, not your pain.

 --Lori Deschene               

Image source: https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/17479646.ash-wednesday---celebrate/

Our souls are cleansed (Fr. Patrick Michaels with Fr. Brian Howard)

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation,
placing his hands on your head,
the priest receives your brokenness and mends it,
restoring you to community. 

 --Fr. Patrick Michaels, 

Scripture Class, February 2018 

   If you’ve been around the Catholic Church very much, then you’ve surely noticed a priest imposing hands over or laying hands on some object or person, for example, when he’s blessing something or someone, or in the sacraments. In the Mass the priest holds his hands over the bread and wine during the epiclesis of the Eucharistic Prayer, in the ordination of a priest or deacon, the bishop lays his hands on their heads before praying the Prayer of Ordination, and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation the priest holds his hand over the person while praying the Prayer of Absolution.

   In the Sacraments, whenever the priest imposes hands over something [or someone], he calls down the Holy Spirit and that thing [or that person] changes. In the Mass, the Holy Spirit changes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. In the Sacrament of Holy Orders, a man becomes a deacon, priest, or bishop. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, our sins are forgiven and our souls cleansed.

--Fr. Brian Howard     

Image source: https://gracelutheranrialto.com/2017/04/06/corporate-confession-individual-absolution/
Quotation source

The worthiness of the object (Marilynne Robinson)

Love is holy because it is like grace – 

the worthiness of its object 

is never really what matters. 

 --Marilynne Robinson, Gilead 

Image source: Paolo Veronese, Jesus heals the Centurion’s Slave (16th c.), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing_the_centurion%27s_servant#/media/File:JesusHealingCenturionServant.jpg

Love frequently and readily (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

    John Powell once said that there are only two potential tragedies in life: To go through life without loving, and not to express love and affection for those who love us. We need to make better friends with our friends. We need to express affection, appreciation, contrition, and love frequently and readily. Thank those who love you, tell those whom you love that you love them.

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Facebook, March 20, 2020 

Image source: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/love/philia-love-in-friendships/

The lives we touch (Judy Blume)

   Our fingerprints don’t fade 

from the lives we touch. 

--Judy Blume          

Image source: https://www.becomebodywise.net/importance-of-human-touch/
Quotation source

An attitude of worship (Bishop Robert Barron)

    In our sickness, our weakness, our shame, our sin, our oddness, many of us feel like the leper [healed by Jesus]. We feel as though we’re just not worthy, that we should keep our distance.

    That the leper came to Jesus tells us the world about this man’s courage, determination, and perhaps his desperation. He was an outsider, a despised figure – yet he came to Jesus.

    Once in the Lord’s presence, the leper did him homage – he worshiped him. The suffering man realizes who Jesus is: not one prophet among many, but the Incarnation of the God of Israel, the only one before whom worship is the appropriate attitude. Whatever trouble we are in, we have to come to Jesus in the attitude of worship. He is the Lord and we are not. This is the key step in getting our lives in order: right praise.

    Then comes the beautiful phrase, essential in any act of petitionary prayer: If you wish, you can make me clean. He is not demanding; he is acknowledging the lordship of Jesus, his sovereignty. Thy will be done is always the right attitude in any prayer.

--Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, June 26, 2020 

Image source: James Tissot, Healing of the Leper (1886-1894), https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4483

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 14, 2021: Be made clean...

Be made clean… 

When have you known the healing forgiveness of God? 

   The Book of Leviticus is categorical in its description of the treatment of the man identified as leprous: declared unclean by the priest, he shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp. The people of that time believed that illness was a sign of God’s displeasure due to sin. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus, moved with pity, stretches out his hand, touches a leprous man, and makes him clean. It is a radical gesture, for in the eyes of those around him, Jesus risks impurity himself, but ultimately, in so doing, Jesus restores the man to community – he reestablishes the connection, making human contact possible again. God wants for us to be in community, connected to one another, open, so that we can celebrate what God is about, namely, infinite love and connection. Moreover, in extending himself in love to another, Jesus gives glory to God by making God’s love manifest.

     Psalm 32 calls us to turn to the Lord in times of trouble. To do so is to open ourselves to God’s action, God’s forgiveness in our lives. When we seek forgiveness and acknowledge our faults, as the psalmist does, all the barriers that have accumulated between ourselves and God fall away, as do all the barriers that stood between us and our community. For sin is not just a barrier between God and man – sin also impedes our communion with those around us. We can’t do away with sin; only God can do that. But we can open our hearts and seek forgiveness so that sin no longer defines us and we can give witness to God’s love in our community. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul places high value on living peacefully in community: avoid giving offense, whether to the Jews or Greeks or to the church of God. All we do is meant to reveal the glory of God, as Jesus did, and that glory is his love – but first, we must seek forgiveness, that we might be glad in the Lord and rejoice, confident in connection with God and other.

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

When nothing helps (Carrie Newcomer)

Go ahead and sit on the floor 

When you can’t outrun it anymore 

When nothing helps that did before 

Like a river that finally floods the shore 

Someday this will be the past 

And blow away like bones and ash 

But today is no different than the last 

That’s the way things go 

That’s the way things go 

But I’m not lost I’m only wandering 

I’m not adrift, I’m just at sea 

I’m not sure, I’m only guessing 

This is right where I need to be 

In the distance I hear a train 

That keeps rolling on as though nothing has changed 

As if the world could ever be the same 

Refrain 

I saw the sun set up over the ridge 

Shaped like a heart on a knife edge 

And I remembered the last thing you said 

That’s the way these things go 

That’s the way these things go 

Yesterday three golden leaves 

Fluttered down in front of me 

And for a moment I felt the whole world breathe 

For a moment I felt the whole world ease 

So be kind to everyone that you meet 

No matter what you see on the street 

You don’t know what people live down deep 

That’s the way these things go 

That’s the way these things go 

That’s the way these things go 

To hear That’s the Way These Things Go by Carrie Newcomer,
click on the video below: 

Image source: https://rootsrated.com/stories/7-most-stunning-sunset-hikes-around-knoxville 
Video source

We can do for each other what Jesus did for us (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   Part of the wonder of the incarnation is the astonishing fact that we can do for each other what Jesus did for us. Jesus gives us that power: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven… Whose sins you forgive they are forgiven.

   If you are part of the Body of Christ, when you forgive someone, he or she is forgiven. If you love someone, he or she is being loved by Christ because the Body of Christ is not just the body of Jesus but is also the body of believers. To be touched, loved, and forgiven by a member of the body of believers is to be touched, loved, and forgiven by Christ. Hell is possible only when someone has put himself completely out of the range of love and forgiveness so as to render himself incapable of being loved and forgiven. And this is not so much a question of rejecting explicit religious or moral teaching as it is of rejecting love as it is offered among the community of the sincere.

 --Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI       

Image source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201109-what-other-cultures-can-teach-us-about-forgiveness
Quotation source

God makes up for what we don't have (Laura Stephens)

   Jean Valjean becomes Christ-like after his own figurative dying to his old life and rising to God’s love. He has a scene of struggle, which mirrors what my internal struggle so often looks like. He sits in a church, realizing what he has become and the bitterness which has filled his heart. He knows inside that this isn’t what he was meant for. He goes back and forth between anger and openness to God until that crucial moment. Something changes in his heart.

   He decides to forgive himself.

   In my pride I want to do it all myself, yet alone we can never hope to reach our ideal. But that’s not bad, because God makes up for what we don’t have. Rather than concentrating on perfecting my self-image and public image, I should concentrate on letting God love radically through me. The rest will follow.

   Later on in Les Misérables, Javert marvels at Valjean’s actions. He can’t fathom. how a criminal could be so good. Valjean’s response is startlingly simple: I am a man no worse than any other. Valjean doesn’t hate himself or have delusions of grandeur. He simply is what he is before God, nothing more, nothing less. He loves the best that he can. Wiser people than me have called this what it is: humility.

--Laura Stephens, Being Jean Valjean in Today's World 

Image source: Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, https://www.galileeumc.org/grace-of-les-miserables/
Quotation source (Busted Halo)

May your prayer of listening deepen (John O'Donohue)

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore, 

May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul. 

As the wind loves to call things to dance, 

May your gravity be lightened by grace. 

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth, 

May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect. 

As water takes whatever shape it is in, 

So free may you be about who you become. 

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said, 

May your sense of irony bring perspective. 

As time remains free of all that it frames, 

May your mind stay clear of all it names. 

May your prayer of listening deepen enough 

To hear in the depths the laughter of God.

--John O’Donohue, For Equilibrium         

Image source: http://steinberglove.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-wind-is-boss.html

His unforgettable gestures of healing (Bishop Robert Barron)

   It is Christ – in his uncompromising call to repentance, his unforgettable gestures of healing, his unique and disturbing praxis of forgiveness, his provocative nonviolence, and especially his movement from godforsaken death to shalom-radiating Resurrection – that moves the believer to change of life and gift of self.

 --Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, July 6, 2020 

Image source: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda (1668), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9191554#/media/File:Curacion_del_paralitico_Murillo_1670.jpg

The One who can do in us what we can't do for ourselves (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   How do I really love and forgive as Jesus did?

   How did he retain peace of mind, warmth in his heart, graciousness in his speech, joy in his life, resiliency in his efforts, the capacity to be grateful, and a sense of humor in the face of misunderstanding, jealousy, hatred, and death threats?

   He did it by recognizing that this was, singularly, the most important challenge of his life and mission, and, under the weight of that imperative, by falling on his knees to ask for the help of the One who can do in us what we can’t do for ourselves.

 --Fr. Ron Rolheiser, Facebook, March 23, 2016 

Image source: James Tissot, The Healing of Peter’s Mother-in-Law, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Healing_of_Peter%27s_Mother-in-law_(La_gu%C3%A9rison_de_la_belle-m%C3%A8re_de_Pierre)_-_James_Tissot_-_overall.jpg

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 7, 2021: For this purpose have I come...

For this purpose have I come… 

Is your heart open to God’s absolute love? 

   Job believed he had done everything right: he had lived the life of a righteous man and had tried hard not to sin. And yet he is allotted months of misery and troubled nights; he is left without crops or flocks, children or health, indeed, without hope, because God saw fit to test him. Consequently, Job is having difficulty finding God in any aspect of his life. Moreover, although he talks to God frequently, it’s really a one-sided conversation in which Job has no real connection to God, he simply projects onto God all that he has in his own heart. Job has an idea of who God is and what God is about and God is violating that idea. And so, Job’s heart is closed. He is not ready to understand, as Psalm 147 explains, that The Lord heals the brokenhearted. Job is not ready to praise the Lord, though ultimately the Lord will be good to Job.

   In Mark’s Gospel, having spent days healing and preaching and teaching, Jesus remains open to the need before him, healing not only Simon’s mother-in-law but also all who were brought to him, even after the sun has gone down. Jesus’ first action upon rising very early before dawn is to pray, opening himself to his Father and being empowered for the day to come; he is armed with infinite love, and opens his heart in love to all. His ministry begins in love; people follow him because there is absolute love here. Jesus is the very presence of God, revealing God to all whose lives he touches, open to all who are in need. Following in the steps of Jesus, Paul tells the Corinthians that the grace of God is all gift: he is there, preaching to them, teaching them, revealing God’s love in work in him as well, free of charge to all who need it. God is a mystery we can never get enough of, a revelation we will never entirely plumb the depths of – yet, so long as our heart remains open to his revelation, ready to receive his love, we may continue to have the hope that so eludes Job, hopeful that we, like Paul, may have a share in redemption.

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

The entrance place of wonders (William Stanley Braithwaite)

I am glad day long for the gift of song, 

For time and change and sorrow; 

For the sunset wings and the world end things, 

Which hang on the edge of tomorrow. 

 

I am glad for my heart, whose gates apart 

Are the entrance place of wonders; 

Where dreams come in from the rush and din, 

Like sheep from the rains and thunder.

 --William Stanley Braithwaite        

Image source: M. Blackthorne, Gates Open Inward, https://spiritualclimate.com/blog/2016/10/07/caution-gates-open-inward/
Poem source

The space where God speaks to us (Loyola Institute for Spirituality)

   We get in touch with our deepest self, the space where God speaks to us, through discernment. Discernment is not only necessary when serious problems have to be solved, it is an instrument of struggle to follow the Lord better day by day and hour by hour. 

 --Loyola Institute for Spirituality      

Image source: Rembrandt, Paul in Prison (1627), 

https://coauthoryourlifewithgod.com/category/discernment/page/15/

The Word has a face (Bishop Robert Barron)

   Jesus is not just one more in a long line of prophets but rather the personal and perfect embodiment of the transformative speech of God. As Pope Benedict XVI puts it in Verbum Domini, “Now the word is not simply audible; not only does it have a voice, now the word has a face, one which we can see: that of Jesus of Nazareth.”

   Therefore, we are not surprised that the Gospels consistently portray Jesus’ words as irresistibly powerful. At the tomb of his friend, “he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’” and “the dead man came out. Precisely because Jesus is the divine Word, what he says, is. Origen of Alexandria said that just as all of Jesus’ acts were like words, so all his words were like acts.

   The Church, which is Jesus’ Mystical Body, is the privileged bearer of his Word to the world down through the ages until the Lord returns. This is why the Church continues to unleash transformative power.

--Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, July 31, 2020 

Image source: Eleventh century fresco, Christus heilt einen Besessenen (Exorcism at the Synagogue in Capernaum), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_the_synagogue_of_Capernaum#/media/File:Christus_heilt_einen_Besessenen.jpg