The ethic of love (Lindsey Appiah)

   Cornel West famously said that Justice is what love looks like in public. We, the other Christians, agree. It is this ethic of love, rooted in the Christian command to love others because God is love, that causes many of us who claim the Christian faith to seek policy solutions to systemic injustice. Not for our power, status, or the protection of our position. But for the extension of systemic justice rooted in love for others.

--Lindsey Appiah    

Image source: https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/theology-en-la-plaza/sins-racism-and-family-separation-erode-sanctity-life
Quotation source

We must act (Sr. Nicole Trahan)

   Not many of us like to rock the boat. We’re often unsure. Afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. When faced with the same doubts, St. Julie Billiart encouraged her sisters, Better mistakes than paralysis.

   This is good advice. We can see that paralysis is not a valid option. We must act. But never without prayer and discernment. Not only will this enable us to know what to do, it will give us the strength to continue on when we are faced with obstacles, ridicule, and push back. 

--Sr. Nicole Trahan, FMI 

Image source: Ernst Zimmerman (1870-1944), Christ and the Pharisees, http://thinkfaithfully.blogspot.com/2016/02/jesus-was-pharisee-seriously-he-was.html
Quotation source

To look like the shape of God's heart (Ellie Hidalgo)

   We are each called by God to construct the Beloved Community to look like the shape of God’s heart. Every other false authority that doesn’t prioritize how we treat the least, the most vulnerable, and the stranger will fall apart and crumble by the weight of its own untruth.

   Jesuit Fr. Greg Boyle says, Kinship is God’s dream come true. It’s about imagining a circle of compassion and then imagining no one standing outside that circle.

    I believe children are born knowing the shape of God’s heart. A sense of justice is innate in young ones.

  As Catholics, what we believe to be the shape of the heart of Christ determines how we respond and the kinds of communities we construct. And if in our communities we have laws that treat the lives of the hungry, the poor, the sick, the stranger, and the imprisoned unjustly, then it is up to us to take courageous stands and change those laws. The kinship community is constructed when we allow ourselves to be guided by the eyes and the heart of the Good Shepherd who sees each one of us and loves each one of us.

   God has no hands or feet but ours, so when we work together with people different from us, to make good laws and good policies happen, we are helping to build a reino de Dios, that place where we all belong to one another, no one left outside our circle of concern. We put our faith into action – because that’s where the joy is.

--Ellie Hidalgo          

Image source: https://www.slideteam.net/blog/25-best-powerpoint-backgrounds-for-church-to-rekindle-the-faith-in-god
Quotation source

Pharisee (A. W. Tozer)

A Pharisee is hard on others
and easy on himself,

but a spiritual man is easy on others
and hard on himself.

--A. W. Tozer          

Image source: https://nakedpastor.com/blogs/news/love-versus-the-bible
Quotation source 

To let the Word penetrate into the hidden corners of our heart (Henri Nouwen)

 

   To take the Holy Scriptures and read them is the first thing we have to do to open ourselves to God’s call. Reading the scriptures is not as easy as it seems, since in our academic world we tend to make anything and everything we read subject to analysis and discussion. But the word of God should lead us first of all to contemplation and meditation. Instead of taking the words apart, we should bring them together in our inmost being; instead of wondering if we agree or disagree, we should wonder which words are directly spoken to us and connect directly with our personal story. Instead of thinking about the words as potential subjects for an interesting dialogue or paper, we should be willing to let them penetrate into the most hidden corners of our heart, even to those places where no other word has yet found entrance. Then and only then can the word bear fruit as seed sown in rich soil. Only then can we really hear and understand (Matt. 13:23).

--Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out

Image source: Marc Chagall, Ezekiel Window, Union Church of Pocantico Hills, New York, http://www.magpiemusing.com/2012/10/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, August 29, 2021: Be doers of the world and not hearers only...

Be doers of the word and not hearers only…

Why do we do what we do?

   The people of Israel lived by the law. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses invites them to hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you do observe. The commandments represent God’s ongoing encouragement to understand who they are as a people, but as importantly, the law is wisdom from God that the people need to keep entering into and learning from and growing in. The commandments are God’s direction for their lives, teaching the people how to be faithful to God. But the people, for their part, must take the law into their heart, absorb it, engage with it, that they might reveal God to the world: Observe them carefully, Moses tells the people, for thus will you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations and so serve as light to the world, revealing God’s work in you and in your lives. Psalm 15 further details God’s wisdom and commandments: One who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord, the psalmist sings. We are to walk blamelessly and harm no one; we are to bring grace to our world, honoring the Lord and those who fear the Lord.

   In Jesus’ time, the Pharisees and scribes have hardened the law of Moses into 613 commandments that, they believe, must be followed in order to be in right relationship with God. Mark's Gospel speaks of commandments related to purification rites:  the scribes and Pharisees are outraged because Jesus’ disciples do not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands. This is one of many rules that limit others’ lives without making them any better. In response, Jesus quotes Isaiah: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Jesus wants the people to hold not to what makes them comfortable but to what give meaning; we are to be focused on what God calls us to, rather than what human tradition calls us to, and to act on that call.

   The Letter of James states that all we have is gift from God, and that all we have to give in turn is also from God, including God’s Word, communicated to us through Jesus. Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you, James encourages his readers, that the Lord’s grace might flow through us. We must take that Word, along with Jesus’ commandments to love God and one another, to heart; we must let it enter into our very being and transform us. It can only do so if we absorb it and engage it, and then allow it to flow through us, to our world. 

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

We are at our best when we serve others (Amitahb Bachchan)

--We are at our best when we serve others.

    Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

     But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that, in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink, or hunt food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken the time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety, and has tended the person throughout recovery.

    Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said, We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

--Amitahb Bachchan     

Image source: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-that-tell-a-story-of-compassion.html 

Quotation source

Everybody can serve (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

    Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.  You don't have to have a college degree to serve.  You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.  You only need a heart full of grace.  A soul generated by love.

--Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.     

Image source:  https://www.marinij.com/2007/12/25/christmas-spirit-spreads-through-st-vincent-de-paul-dining-room/
Quotation source

Totally committed (Kay Arthur)

     If you don’t plan to live the Christian life totally committed to knowing your God and to walking in obedience to Him, then don’t begin; for this is what Christianity is all about. It is a change of citizenship, a change of governments, a change of allegiance. If you have no intention of letting Christ rule your life, then forget Christianity; it’s not for you.

--Kay Arthur    

Image source: https://imgbin.com/png/zfVrygdV/pentecost-sermon-png
Quotation source

We will serve the Lord (Rory Cooney)

Wealth can be an idol, built of gleaming gold,
bringing dreams of paradise, of futures bought and sold.
Some will choose to gather it, all that they can hoard,
but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. 

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

We will serve the Lord, we will serve the Lord.

Pleasure is a siren, promising the flesh,

brief relief from emptiness, a hiding place from death.

Some will choose to chase it until it leaves them bored,

but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. 

Refrain

Power is a hunger, burning in the breast,

to walk among the mighty and trample on the rest.

Some will choose to gain it by lie or guile or sword,

but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Refrain

Father of all mercy, giver of all life,

here we speak our covenant above the noisy strife.

Hear us shout in glory above the pagan horde:

as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Refrain 

To hear We Will Serve the Lord performed by Rory Cooney and Theresa Donohoo, click on the video below. To purchase Cooney’s CD Change Our Hearts, click here. The history of this hymn’s composition (and composer comments) can be found here. 

Image source: The Israelites Enter the Promised Land, mosaic panel, Santa Maria Maggiore, Italy (5th c.), https://www.christianiconography.info/staMariaMaggiore/arkAcrossJordan.html 

Lyrics source: https://dh8zy5a1i9xe5.cloudfront.net/shared/pdf/preview/30113723.pdf
Video source

Thoughtful, committed people (Margaret Mead)

        Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

--Margaret Mead, anthropologist         

Image source: Duccio Buoninsegna, Jesus Sending Forth the Apostles, https://nwbible.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/matthew-10-the-apostles-first-mission-trip/ Quotation source

Give yourself fully to your endeavors (Epictetus)

    Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore, give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast and one day you will build something that endures: something worthy of your potential.

--Epictetus      

Image source: Marc Chagall, Joshua, https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/73568749_marc-chagall-joshua-signed-etching
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, August 22, 2021: As for and my household, we will serve the Lord...

As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord…

How strong is your commitment?

   When, shortly before his death, Joshua gathers together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem, he wants them to make a commitment for the future. His own household is committed to the God of Israel: As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord, he tells them. The people of Israel have taken over the promised land and made it their own, but Joshua wants to know their plans moving forward. Their collective response is promising: we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God. The community is in agreement, united in their intention to remain committed to their relationship with the Lord who, as Psalm 34 says, consistently delivers the just one from all of his troubles.

   John’s Gospel reflects the status of his community, which was facing persecution at the time of his writing. Many followers contemplate abandoning their commitment to the faith, as Jesus himself witnesses among his own disciples in the Bread of Life discourse. This saying is hard; who can accept it? they ask. Jesus needs them to understand that the spirit gives life, and that he is offering them his words that are Spirit and life. But, rejecting Jesus’ proclamation that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. The Twelve, however, remain committed to their relationship with the Lord. When Jesus asks them, Do you also want to leave? Peter responds, Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

   In making that commitment, the disciples ultimately accept a life of service to others, as Paul describes in his Letter to the Ephesians: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. We are all called by our baptism to be subordinate to Christ, first and foremost – the church itself is subordinate to Christ, Paul says; if we are one in his Body, we should see Christ in one another, and we should be Christ for one another. By dying for our sins, Christ accepted to be subordinate to mankind; his was a life of service to other, a commitment made from the moment of the Incarnation. We are called to no less: a commitment to our relationship with the Lord, lived out in loving service for all.

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

Your will is done (Timothy Chappell)

Nothing is left me here. The world’s a corridor,

vacant, echoing the great ones’ passage through.

It is closed doors in rows: behind them, murmuring

of a second generation’s other businesses.

Once I felt the kick of God within:

nothing else seemed great once that had been.

Your will is done,

and henceforth I will be

a silent smiling lady in a tapestry.

Your will is done,

and henceforth I am known

as a painted tiptoe figure in a pointed arch of stone.

Your will be done,

and henceforth I watch with all

God’s heroes in their sad unsleeping vigil

for earth’s ball.

--Timothy Chappell, Assumption –
Mother of All on High, Pray for Us Yet

Image: Duomo in Como, Tapestry of the Burial and Assumption of the Virgin Mary, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114707375534?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338722076&toolid=10001

Her most holy soul went immediately to Heaven (St. Francis de Sales)

   Some will wonder at this and say: How is it that Our Lord, who loved His Holy Mother so tenderly and so deeply, did not grant her the privilege of not dying? Since death is the penalty for sin and she had never committed any, why did He permit her to die?

   O mortal, how different are your thoughts from those of the saints, how distant are your judgments from those of the Divine Majesty: Do you not know that death is no longer ignominious but precious, since Our Lord and Master allowed Himself to be attached by it on the tree of the Cross? It would not have been an advantage or a privilege for the Holy Virgin not to die, for she had desired death since she saw it in the arms and in the very heart of her most sacred Son…. 

   When the hour came for the most glorious Virgin to leave this life, love made the separation of her soul from her body, death being only this separation. Her most holy soul went immediately to Heaven. For what, I ask, could have penetrated it, since she was all pure and had never contracted the least stain of sin?

--St. Francis de Sales,

Sermon on the Assumption of 

the Blessed Virgin Mary

Image source: Maurice Denis, Monument Jamot, Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris (1920), https://www.theartstory.org/artist/denis-maurice/artworks/

What would your Magnificat be? (Fr. James Martin)

What would your Magnificat be?

[Mary’s] Magnificat is a kind of overview of what the reign of God would be like, or is like, a reign that her son would inaugurate thirty years later. All the things that she mentions, her son would do.

But it’s something else, which we see in the beginning of her song of praise. It’s about God’s mercy on her as well – it’s a highly personal gift. Mary is praising God not simply for helping his servant Israel, but for reaching down and helping her, as an individual. God has not simply lifted up Israel, he has made a young woman pregnant.

So the Magnificat is a very public proclamation
as well as a personal and intimate song of praise.

   Earlier, at the Visitation, Elizabeth utters the same kind of praise of God: Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Who am I? It is impossible to imagine these women, even in the midst of what they must have known was something that would change history, not thinking of how much God had done for them personally.

   This is a good reminder of how much God has done for all of us. How God blesses us in so many ways, and with so many gifts and talents, not simply for the People of God, that is, so that we can help others, but also for us. It’s both public and private. For others, but for us too.

   So one question for meditation today might be: If you had to sing your own Magnificat, praising God for what God has done for you, what would it sound like?

--Fr. James Martin, Facebook, August 15, 2020

Image source: Br. Mickey McGrath, The Visitation, with the artist’s explanation at: https://globalworship.tumblr.com/post/135752970110/the-visitation-art-book and available for purchase at: https://www.trinitystores.com/artwork/windsock-visitation

Our Lady went into a strange country (G. K. Chesterton)

Our Lady went into a strange country, 

   Our Lady, for she was ours, 

And had run on the little hills behind the houses, 

   And pulled small flowers; 

But she rose up and went into a strange country 

   With strange thrones and powers. 

 

And there were giants in the land she walked in, 

   Tall as their toppling towns, 

With heads so high in heaven, the constellations 

   Served them for crowns; 

And their feet might have forded like a brook the abysses 

   Where Babel drowns. 

 

They were girt about with the wings of morning and evening, 

   Furled and unfurled, 

Round the speckled sky where our small spinning planet 

   Like a top is twirled; 

And the swords they waved were the unending comets 

   That shall end the world. 

 

And moving in innocence and in accident, 

   She turned the face 

That none has ever looked on without loving 

   On the Lords of Space; 

And one hailed her with her name in our own country 

   That is full of grace. 

 

Our Lady went into a strange country 

   And they crowned her queen, 

For she needed never to be stayed or questioned 

   But only seen; 

And they were broken down under unbearable beauty 

   As we have been.

--G. K. Chesterton, Regina Angelorum         

Image source: Enguerrand Charonton, Coronation of Mary by the Trinity (1454), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Heaven#/media/File:Enguerrand_Quarton,_Le_Couronnement_de_la_Vierge_(1454).jpg
Poem source

Our Lady (J.R.R. Tolkien)

   All my own perception of beauty, both in majesty and simplicity, is founded upon Our Lady.

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Image source:  Assumption of the Virgin Mary (Anonymous, 15th c.), 

https://www.boutiquesdemusees.fr/en/history-scenes/anonyme-assumption-of-the-virgin-mary/5693.html
Quotation source

Mary was indeed a tabernacle for the Divinity (Elizabeth Scalia)

  Mary was created with the graces that would render her a fit Ark for the New Covenant, and not only for the time of Jesus’ gestation within her womb but throughout her entire life.

   This is a fact the Church might appreciate even more today than at any time previous, thanks to science and the discovery of microchimerism. We have learned that within the process of microchimerism, every baby conceived by a a woman leaves within her a microscopic bit of his or her cellular being, even if gestation is interrupted, and remains with her forever.

   Mary, then, was indeed a tabernacle for the Divinity – not for a limited time but for all of her life, as these invisible but real reserves of the Christ remained within her. Were Mary not be-graced by God for that very purpose of holy containment and development, she would have been crumbled into dust by the immensity of it.

   And this relates directly to the Assumption of Mary. In the Psalms we read: You will not suffer your beloved to undergo corruption (Psalm 16:10). Christ’s divine body did not undergo corruption, but ascended into heaven; it follows that his mother’s body, which contained the cellular components of that divinity – and a particle of God is God, entire – would not be permitted to undergo corruption either.

   It could not be otherwise. The God particle, commingled with humanity, necessarily preserves humanity and calls it to himself. This is Incarnational. It is Eucharistic, from the beginning.

   It is our life, conceived in light.

--Elizabeth Scalia              

Image source: Amberose Courville, Mary, Ark of the New Covenant, available for purchase at: https://pixels.com/featured/mary-ark-of-the-new-covenant-amberose-marie-micallef.html

Sunday Gospel Reflection, August 15, 2021: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it...

Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it…

How do you participate in the life of the Lord?

   The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which includes both a set of Vigil readings and a set of readings for Sunday, is first and foremost about who we are as a Church.

   The Vigil readings focus on Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant. In the First Book of Chronicles, the Ark of the Covenant is set within the tent David has pitched for it in Jerusalem. The Ark contains the Decalogue (the law of Moses, which represents both the old covenant and Israel’s identity as a people), a golden vase with manna (which represents wisdom), and Aaron’s rod (which represents Christ’s sacerdotal role). Like the Ark, Mary is the vessel that carries Jesus; the manna is a parallel for the Body of Christ. David is uniting Israel around the Ark in Jerusalem, developing the people’s corporate identity, just as Christ unites us as a people. Psalm 132 charts the movement of the Ark from Ephrathah to Jaar to Jerusalem; the Lord has chosen Zion as a hill on which the temple is to sit forever; here, the parallel is to the image of Mary as the Church, the resting place in which God dwells forever. The physical object leads to a spiritual concept that unites the people in covenant with God. The Gospel of Luke reminds us that Mary is blessed because she hears the will of God and observes it; she believes in God and that belief shapes the way she lives. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul reminds us that we are baptized into the death and rising of Jesus; we are more than just flesh, we are clothed in immortality. To have faith is to be open to and aware of the Holy Spirit working with us, and aware of God’s infinite love that will redeem us. Mary was born without original sin; she is mortal yet clothed in immortality her whole life long because God is at work in her her whole life long.

   Our Sunday readings, on the other hand, point to all the ways in which Mary participates in the life of God. Luke’s Gospel recounts Mary’s visit to Elizabeth; moved by the active power of God within her, Mary reaches out to her kinswoman, participating in salvation history from the very first. We are also called to participate by opening our hearts, and must choose to do so, always recognizing that it is not we who accomplish great things, but God active in us, as he was in Mary. The Book of Revelation describes a woman in labor, wailing aloud in pain, threatened by a huge red dragon who would take her child, but God saves her, redeeming the Church. Evil will not be victorious because Christ dwells forever in the hearts of those who live their baptism; his rule is absolute. Mary shares fully in what it means to be God’s creation. Paul reminds the Corinthians that Christ has been raised from the dead; Mary is the first to share in Christ’s immortality, an immortality promised to us as the Body of Christ, the Church, on earth:  all shall be brought to life. In the person of Mary, we see Christ victorious; ever loyal to her King, Mary will be Queen of Heaven, echoing Psalm 45: The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

   The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary clearly lays out for us our identity as church; it also reminds us that Mary represents the promise that we too will one day rise and be one with Jesus. Mary, God’s vessel, will be crowned Queen of Heaven for her commitment to the Lord. Our beliefs must similarly shape the way with live – with the same integrity, the same commitment, the same love for the Lord that Mary had, that we too might hear the will of God and observe it.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s 2010 Scripture class for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Running frighteningly low on the Bread of Life (Rachel Held Evans)

   In an age of information overload, the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the Bread of Life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God. 

--Rachel Held Evans      

Image source: https://dm.greenville.edu/2017/11/god-and-technology-the-good-bad/
Quotation source

In a state of anger (Unknown)

You cannot see your reflection in boiling water.

Similarly, you cannot see the truth in a state of anger.

When the waters calm, clarity comes. 

--Author Unknown         

Image source: https://peasi.com/2018/02/13/boil-water-advisories-the-4-stages-to-boiling-water/
Quotation source

To pattern one's whole life on that of Christ (Thomas à Kempis)

   For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone. If we wish to be truly enlightened and free from all blindness of heart, let our chief effort be to study the life of Jesus Christ. The teaching of Christ is more excellent than all the advice of the saints, and he who has His spirit will find in it a hidden manna. Whoever wishes to understand fully the words of Christ must try to pattern his whole life on that of Christ. Try, moreover, to turn your heart from the love of things visible and bring yourself to the invisible.

--Thomas à Kempis,
The Imitation of Christ

Image source: https://www.hcparishtx.com/be-compassionate-jesus-did/

So that our joy may be complete (Pope Francis)

   The life of a family is filled with beautiful moments: rest, meals together, walks in the park or the countryside, visits to grandparents or to a sick person… But if love is missing, joy is missing, nothing is fun. Jesus always gives us that love: he is its endless source. In the sacrament he gives us his Word and he gives us the bread of life, so that our joy may be complete.

--Pope Francis, Pilgrimage of the Families, Oct. 23, 2013

Image source: http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Pope:-The-everyday-pilgrimage-of-the-family,-an-important-mission-which-the-world-and-the-Church-needs-now-more-than-ever-36248.html

Strength (Gabriela Mistral)

       Give me, Lord, the strength of the waves of the sea, which make each retreat a new starting point.

--Gabriela Mistral        

Image source: Claude Monet, Receding Waves (1883), https://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/receding-waves

Quotation source

A journey into the desert of our own silence (Fr.Ron Rolheiser)

   The spiritual journey, the pilgrimage we most need to make, doesn’t require an airline ticket, though an experienced guide is recommended. The most spiritually rewarding trip we can make is an inner pilgrimage, into the desert of our own silence.

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Facebook, August 19, 2019

Image source: Daniele Volterra, The Prophet Elijah in the Desert (ca.1550-1560), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Daniele_da_Volterra_001.jpg

Sunday Gospel Reflection, August 7, 2021: I am the living bread that came down from heaven...

I am the living bread that came down from heaven…

What sustains you on the journey?

   When, in the First Book of Kings, Elijah journeys into the desert, he is ready to die. Indeed, he prays for death, because he feels as if he has failed in the mission God has given him, and when God sends a hearth cake and a jug of water as food to sustain Elijah on his journey, the prophet, lost in depression, goes back to sleep. Of course, the angel of the Lord comes back a second time, and the prophet is ultimately strengthened by the food God sends. Elijah needs to realize he’s not finished with his work until God says so; the prophet must learn to trust in the Lord, who knows Elijah’s potential far better than the prophet himself does. Elijah has not yet gained the trust we see in Psalm 34, which reminds us to maintain our confidence in God: we are to taste and see the goodness of the Lord, knowing that, in our affliction, God is always there to sustain us.

   Jesus wants the Jewish crowds to realize that he himself comes to sustain us on our journey. In John’s Gospel, the crowds lack faith and murmur among themselves, unwilling to believe Jesus when he says, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. That bread is God’s revelation, the good news that nothing is stronger than God’s love for us. Jesus comes to reveal that love through his death and rising; he gives us the opportunity to live, providing food for our souls, food to sustain us and strengthen us in our belief. The words he has to share with the crowds will feed them forever – but they are unwilling to open themselves to God’s revelation in their midst. Their barriers are not all that different from those of the Ephesian community, who grieve the Holy Spirit through their bitterness, fury, anger and more. The Ephesians are not filled with the love Jesus came to reveal, the love that will sustain them on their journey; bitterness and like emotions are a barrier to God’s love and forgiveness, isolating those who cannot open to the revelation Jesus came to bring. If their life is in Christ, then it needs to look like Christ’s life: they must be imitators of God and live in love, as Christ loved us. In the end, it is only by taking him into ourselves – his words, his body, his actions, his very self – that we will be sustained on our journey by the living bread that came down from heaven. Only then will we thrive.

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

Self-absorbed (Natalie Merchant)

Would that we had died at the Lord's hand
in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots
and ate our fill of bread!
-- Exodus 16:3

People down-cast in despair 

See the disillusion everywhere 

Hoping their bad luck will change 

It’s a little harder every day 

People struggle, people fight 

For the simple pleasures in their life 

The trouble comes from everywhere 

It’s a little more than you can bear 

 

I know that it will hurt 

I know that it will break your heart 

The ways things are 

The way they’ve been 

And the way they’ve always been 

 

People shallow, self-absorbed 

See them push and shove for their rewards 

When nothing else is on their minds 

You can read about it in their eyes 

People ruthless, people cruel 

The damage that some people do 

Full of hatred, full of pride 

It’s enough to make you lose your mind 

 

Refrain (2x) 

 

Don’t spread the discontent 

Don’t spread the lies 

Don’t make the same mistakes 

With your own life 

You know it’ll always come back 

 

Refrain 

 

Don’t spread the discontent 

Don’t spread the lies 

Don’t make the same mistakes 

With your own life 

And don’t disrespect yourself 

Don’t lose your pride 

And don’t think everybody’s 

Going to choose your side 

Oh no… 

To hear Natalie Merchant perform Break Your Heart, click on the video below: 

Image source: James Tissot, The Gathering of the Manna, https://www.learnreligions.com/what-is-manna-700742

Video source

In God's time (Marcus Lamb)

Stress makes you believe 

everything has to happen now.

Faith reassures you that 

everything will happen in God’s time.

--Marcus Lamb

Image source 1: Jacopo Tintoretto, The Gathering of the Manna (Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, San Marco, Venice), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Gather_of_the_Manna_by_Jacopo_Tintoretto
Image source 2: Jacopo Tintoretto, Last Supper (Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, San Marco, Venice), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper_(Tintoretto)#/media/File:Jacopo_Tintoretto_-_The_Last_Supper_-_WGA22649.jpg 
Quotation source

Faith, trust, hope and love (Author unknown)

   Once, all the villagers decided to pray for rain. One the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one boy came with an umbrella. That is faith.

   When you throw babies in the air, they laugh because they know you will catch them. That is trust. 

   Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but we still set the alarm to wake up. That is hope. 

  

   We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That is confidence. 

   We see the world suffering, but still, we get married and have children. That is love. 

   On an old man’s shirt was written a sentence: I am not 80 years old; I am sweet 16 with 64 years of experience. That is attitude. 

    May your day be full of faith, trust, hope and love… and a little bit of attitude!

Image source 1: https://www.thebump.com/a/kids-umbrellas

Image source 2: https://www.dailycompass.org/2012/12/27/up-in-the-air/
Quotation source