Christ the Lord is risen! (Douglas Horton / St. John of Damascus)

 

On Easter Day the veil
between time and eternity
thins to gossamer.

--Douglas Horton

Now let the heavens be joyful,
Let earth her song begin:
Let the round world keep triumph,
And all that is therein;
Invisible and visible,
Their notes let all things blend,
For Christ the Lord is risen
Our joy that hath no end. 

--Saint John of Damascus 

Happy Easter from
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley! 

Image source 1: Mikhail Nesterov, Resurrection (c. 1892), https://agapecatholicministries.info/family-life/christ-our-hope/ 

Image source 2: https://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/online-resources/quote-archive1/easter#:~:text=%22Let%20the%20resurrection%20joy%20lift,strength%20and%20beauty%20and%20happiness.%22 

Source of quotations

Christians are a Holy Saturday people (Kody W. Cooper)

   In some real sense, the Holy Triduum teaches us that Christians are a Holy Saturday people because we cling to a hope for the coming light precisely when the night is darkest. As his first followers awaited his promised rise from the pit, so we believers in the Resurrection now await the Second Coming and the fulfillment of his promise of a New Jerusalem where there is no more sorrow and pain, where former things have passed away. Christians are a Holy Saturday people because we embrace the simultaneously sorrowful and joyful tension toward the divine ground of being in this vale of tears. 

   The Paschal light has spread through the congregation, as if lighting the bedchamber in preparation for the Bridegroom’s coming. And the somber anticipation turns to an excited yearning, like that felt by Peter and John when they sprinted to the empty tomb. And then the brilliant flash of light before the Gloria is sung. He is coming. 

--Kody W. Cooper 

Image source: https://www.acatholic.org/easter-vigil-reflection/
Quotation source

A great silence over the earth (Ancient Homily)

   Today there is a great silence over the earth, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled. 

--A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday 

Image source: Vallmitjana Barbany, Agapito, The Dead Christ (1872), https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-dead-christ/38b9ccaa-8846-4927-a8cf-00a93a997ce5
Quotation source

Into Thy hands I commend my spirit (Michael Haydn / St. John Paul II Schola Cantorum)

The deeper sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.

--Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

    On this Good Friday, we commemorate Christ's suffering and death on the cross for our sake. As a subject of meditation, we share this setting of Tenebrae Factae Sunt by Michael Haydn, which the St. John Paul II Schola Cantorum recently performed at Blessed Trinity Church in Buffalo: 

Tenebrae factae sunt, dum crucifixissent Jesum Judaei:
et circa horam nonam exclamavit Jesus voce magna:
Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?
Et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum.
Exclamans Jesus voce magna ait:
Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum.
Et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum. 

Darkness fell when the Jews crucified Jesus:
and about the 9th hour Jesus cried with a loud voice:
My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.
Jesus cried with a loud voice and said,
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.
And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. 

Click HERE to be taken to Youtube, if you would like to hear St. John Paul II Schola Cantorum perform Tenebrae Factae Sunt. 

Image source: https://kmooreperspective.blogspot.com/2016/07/father-into-your-hands-i-commit-my.html 
Video source

Redeemed by the blood (Johnny Cash)

From the hands it came down
From the side it came down
From the feet it came down
And ran to the ground
Between heaven and hell
A teardrop fell
In the deep crimson dew
The tree of life grew 

And the blood gave life
To the branches of the tree
And the blood was the price
That set captives free
And the numbers that came
Through the fire and the flood
Clung to the tree
And were redeemed by the blood 

From the tree streamed a light
That started the fight
'Round the tree grew a vine
On whose fruit I could dine
My old friend Lucifer came
Fought to keep me in chains
But I saw through the tricks
Of six-sixty-six 

Refrain 

From his hands it came down 
From his side it came down
From his feet it came down
And ran to the ground
And a small inner voice
Said "You do have a choice"
The vine engrafted me
And I clung to the tree 

Refrain 

From his hands it came down
From his side it came down
From the feet it came down
And ran to the ground 

To hear Johnny Cash’s meditation on the Cross of Christ, Redemption, click on the video below:

Image source: St. Francis Kisses the Feet of Christ, Crucifix, Arezzo, Italy, https://www.stephenmorrisauthor.com/st-francis-takes-refuge-in-the-cleft/
Video source

What do you do with your wounds? (Pope Francis)

   The cross displays the nails that pierce his hands and feet, his open side. But to the wounds in his body are added those of his soul. How much anguish, Jesus is alone, betrayed, handed over and denied by his own – by his friends and even his disciples – condemned by the religious and civil powers, excommunicated, Jesus even feels abandoned by God (cf. v. 46). We too are wounded – who isn’t in life? Who does not bear the scars of past choices, of misunderstandings, of sorrows that remain inside and are difficult to overcome? God does not hide the wounds that pierced his body and soul, from our eyes. He shows them so we can see that a new passage can be opened with Easter: to make holes of light out of our own wounds. 

    And I ask you: what do you do with your wounds, with the ones only you know about? You can allow them to infect you with resentment and sadness, or I can instead unite them to those of Jesus, so that my wounds too might become luminous. Our wounds can become springs of hope when, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves or hiding them, we dry the tears shed by others; when, instead of nourishing resentment for what was robbed of us, we take care of what others are lacking; when, instead of dwelling on ourselves, we bend over those who suffer; when, instead of being thirsty for love, we quench the thirst of those in need of us. 

--Pope Francis, April 7, 2023 

Image source: The Measure of the Side Wound and the Body of Christ, wood cut, Rosenwald Collection (ca. 1484-1492), https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.4046.html

Radical love (D. Haas)

   This version of the Last Supper story from John is centered not on a satisfying meal of bread and wine, but on the action and example shown by a servant. This is the command we are given. We are not called to possess or own anything for our own sake. We are being asked, actually commanded and given a mandate (“mandatum”), to follow and divest ourselves of all that keeps us from loving. 

   

   At the heart of this mandate is more than merely inconveniencing ourselves to bend down to wash feet. It is a command to bend more than our knee, but also our hearts - our very lives - to touch the most vulnerable places in one another; to help to make clean those places and bruises that are in most need of washing and purifying. It is to decrease so that others may increase; it is to be as loving as Jesus with a liberating and radical love that makes us all as full, complete, and holy as he is. 

   This washing of the feet is transubstantiation made real – a true change and transformation not brought about by magic, but made concrete by radical love. 

--D. Haas, Facebook,
April 18, 2019 

Image source: Sieger Koder, Jesus Washes Peter’s Feet, https://camandstinchcombe.wordpress.com/2020/04/09/the-washing-of-feet-by-sieger-koder/

In the agony of Gethsemane (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

    In the words of Karl Rahner, in the agony of Gethsemane and at the crucifixion, Jesus lets himself “sink into the incomprehensibility of God.” He surrenders to God whom he cannot at that moment feel or understand but only trust. Here’s where Good Friday turns from bad to good, Jesus surrenders himself not in bitterness, grasping, or anger, but in trust, gratitude, and forgiveness. In that surrender, the struggle between good and evil, the most epic of all battles, is won. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI,
Facebook, Good Friday, 4/19/19 

Image source: Giovanni Bellini, Agony in the Garden (ca. 1459-1465), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agony_in_the_Garden_%28Bellini%29#/media/File:Giovanni_Bellini_-_Orazione_nell'orto.jpg
Quotation source

Did Jesus forgive Judas? (Nelson Mandela)

When you learn to sit at the table with your Judas, 

you will have learned the love of Christ.
 

--Unknown

   Nelson Mandela told this story: "After I became president, I asked one day some members of my close protection to stroll with me in the city, have lunch at one of its restaurants. We sat in one of the downtown restaurants and all of us asked for some sort of food. After a while, the waiter brought us our requests, I noticed that there was someone sitting in front of my table waiting for food. 

   “I told then one of the soldiers: go and ask that person to join us with his food and eat with us. The soldier went and asked the man to do so. The man brought up his food and sat by my side as I had asked, and began to eat. His hands were trembling constantly until everyone had finished their food and the man went. 

   “The soldier said to me: ‘The man was apparently quite sick. His hands trembled as he ate!’"

   "No, not at all," said Mandela. 

   "This man was the guard of the prison where I was jailed. Often, after the torture I was subjected to, I used to scream and ask for a little water. The very same man used to come every time and urinate on my head instead. So, I found him scared, trembling, expecting me to reciprocate now, at least in the same way, either by torturing him or imprisoning him as I am now the president of the state of South Africa. But this is not my character nor part of my ethics. The mentality of retaliation destroys states, while the mentality of tolerance builds nations.” 

Did Jesus forgive Judas? What do you think? 

Image source: Judas’ Betrayal of Christ, Goreme, Cappadocia (13th c.), https://www.cappadocianguide.com/destinations/goreme-open-air-museum. 
Notice that Judas has a halo in this image.
Quotation 1
Quotation 2

Step into the sacred space of Triduum!

It's difficult to find the right words to describe the Easter Triduum –– its beauty and solemnity, its pregnant meaning... Those who have experienced it just once find themselves waiting impatiently for these three days throughout all the season of Lent. Triduum is the goal, the culmination, the extraordinary endpoint of our journey through forty days in the Lenten desert. It is unlike any other moment in the Church’s liturgical calendar – it’s almost like stepping over a threshold, out of chronological time and into kairos time, into a sacred space unique in the depth of engagement it offers, and in the beauty of liturgy that graces it. Nothing, nothing, is like the Triduum liturgy, three awed days of total immersion, body, heart, and soul, into the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord. If you have never participated before, now is the time: you will never forget this incredible experience of time-out-of-time. 

    Join us first on Holy Thursday evening for the Feast of the Lord’s Supper and recall Jesus kneeling humbly before his disciples to wash their feet, then blessing, breaking, and sharing bread – the first Eucharist – with his disciples… Process afterwards with us to O'Brien Hall for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament… 

    Follow in Jesus’ footsteps on the Way of the Cross Friday afternoon, and venerate the Wood of the Cross in remembrance of his death at the most extraordinary Communion service of the liturgical year… 

    Witness the Light of Christ as it slowly fills Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Holy Saturday evening, and hear the story of salvation history, from Genesis to Romans… punctuated with a joyful Gloria that tells us that Resurrection is at hand… 

    And then, at last, on Easter Sunday, join in the joyful proclamation of Jesus Risen and know in the depth of your being God’s faithful and abiding love…. Alleluia! Come, step into the sacred space of Triduum!

Image source:  Cathedral Beach, Spain, https://www.tourismontheedge.com/spain-playa-de-las-catedrales

This Holy Week we sit with Jesus (Cecilia González-Andrieu)

   As we step out of our comfort into the starkness of what is real, we transcend fear to see clearly that we must continue on to Jerusalem because that is where change happens. This Holy Week we sit with Jesus in the underground cistern, where he was likely kept overnight as he awaited trial and try to fathom how it is that he continued to love and work for love in spite of so much evidence that he should just give up. Humanity must have broken his heart. They were hopeless, mired in their own self-preservation, and yet, there were those women, his mother, the Magdalene, the others. Fearless they pushed on, wanting him to see them, to know their nearness. Like in so many of the stories of his Jewish community, they enacted God’s reign, the few who made visible God’s love, showing that humanity was not without hope. 

   Jesus is the last person in history who will die with the question of God’s abandonment. Where was God? In his flesh, because he stared down reality and transcended it through stubborn hope for who we could be, he forever transformed history. The God of love and of life was indeed present, real and alive in history, taking Jesus up into God’s arms, raising him for all to see: “this, humans, this unstoppable belief in your potential is the key to transformation. Jesus is leading the way, now follow him.” 

--Cecilia González-Andrieu 

Image source 1: James Tissot, Jesus is taken from the cistern (1886-1894), detail, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Jesus_Taken_from_the_Cistern_(J%C3%A9sus_tir%C3%A9_de_la_citerne)_-_James_Tissot.jpg 

Image source 2: A cistern much like the one Jesus might have been imprisoned in, https://rememberedplaces.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/between-caiphas-and-calvary-where-did-jesus-spend-his-time-as-condemned-man/
Quotation source

Jesus suffers in almost every way possible (Fr. James Martin)

   The perhaps more spiritual reason for the extended Passion Narratives was to show that the Son of Man suffered. The word “passion” comes from the Greek word paschō, meaning to suffer or experience. And it is here that Jesus’s life powerfully intersects with ours. 

   Jesus’s suffering is not confined simply to Good Friday. He would have suffered as any human being does—from illness and physical pain (after all, he had a human body) to the normal emotional suffering that accompanies any human life. Here I often think of the death of his foster father Joseph. When Jesus begins his public ministry, Joseph is not on the scene. Why not? Most likely he had already died. And so we can presume that Jesus suffered in that way too. 

   But on Good Friday we see that he suffers in almost every way possible. Emotionally, as he is betrayed by one of his closest friends and abandoned by his followers. Physically, of course, as he is nailed to a cross. But also spiritually, as he cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” 

   Jesus suffers. So when you pray to him, remember that you are praying to someone who understands you. And Jesus understands you not simply because he is divine and knows all things, but because he is human and experienced all things. 

--Fr. James Martin,

Outreach, April 1 & 2, 2023 

Image source: Norman Adams, Third Station: Jesus falls the first time, St. Mary Catholic Church, Manchester, England, photo courtesy of Fr. Patrick Michaels, https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=2290516807797167&set=pcb.3525178114425932
Quotation source

The Master has need of your gifts (Bishop Robert Barron)

   In the Palm Sunday Gospel reading proclaimed before the procession, the Lord instructs two of his disciples to go into the village and untether a donkey. If there is any protest, they are to say, “The Master has need of it.” This is true of every baptized person: the Master has need of your gifts, of you, of the whole of your life. Once we understand this principle, everything is revolutionized—and we are liberated to be of service to Christ and his people. 

--Bishop Robert Barron,
 Gospel Reflection, April 10, 2022 

Image source: https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/what-is-the-importance-of-the-triumphal-entry.html

Jesus as Scapegoat (René Girard)

   Jesus is presented to us as the innocent victim of a group in crisis, which, for a time at any rate, is united against him. All the sub-groups and indeed all the individuals who are concerned with the life and trial of Jesus end up by giving their explicit or implicit assent to his death: the crowd in Jerusalem, the Jewish religious authorities, the Roman political authorities, and even the disciples, since those who do not betray or deny Jesus actively take flight or remain passive. 

   

   We must remember that this very crowd has welcomed Jesus with such enthusiasm only a few days earlier. The crowd turns around like a single man and insists on his death with a determination that springs at least in part from being carried away by the irrationality of the collective spirit. Certainly nothing has intervened to justify such a change of attitude. 

   It is necessary to have legal forms in a universe where there are legal institutions, to give unanimity to the decision to put a man to death. Nonetheless, the decision to put Jesus to death is first and foremost a decision of the crowd, one that identifies the crucifixion not so much with a ritual sacrifice but (as in the case of the servant) with the process that I claim to be at the basis of all rituals and all religious phenomena [that is, the scapegoat]. Just as in the 'Songs' from Isaiah, though even more directly, this hypothesis confronts us in the four gospel stories of the Passion. 

   Because it reproduces the founding event of all rituals, the Passion is connected with every ritual on the entire planet. There is not an incident in it that cannot be found in countless instances: the preliminary trial, the derisive crowd, the grotesque honours accorded to the victim, and the particular role played by chance, in the form of casting lots, which here affects not the choice of the victim but the way in which his clothing is disposed of. The final feature is the degrading punishment that takes place outside the holy city in order not to contaminate it. 

--René Girard,

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World 

Image source: Jacopo Tintoretto, Crucifixion of Jesus (1565), detail & full canvas,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_(Tintoretto)#/media/File:Jacopo_Tintoretto_021.jpg
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 24, 2024: He emptied himself...

He emptied himself…

Does the Passion of Jesus change how we see ourselves? 

   A paradox occurs when two facts that are both true and conflict are nevertheless true at the same time. Scripture starts with a paradox: God who is a power beyond description creates all things out of nothing, and God who is described like one of us, shaping man out of clay, breathing life into his nostrils. Both images are true. Wherever we come across a paradox, we are entering into the realm of mystery. We celebrate a paradox this week: a juncture of two facts that are both true but which conflict with one another. Jesus is God, therefore he says, I AM, which in Hebrew is the name for God (YHWH). And yet Jesus is also fully human, otherwise he could not effect salvation for us. 

   Paradoxes begin to pile up this week – all to emphasize the fact that this week is a mystery that we are a part of. In Isaiah, the Suffering Servant speaks of the cruelties that are happening to him – his beard his plucked, his face is buffeted and spit upon, and so on. All of these could bring disgrace and shame upon him and yet he claims tht he will not be disgraced, he will not be shamed, because he has confidence in God’s ability to save him. He stands for the truth that God has sent him to stand for, and so all of this will be temporary. It will pass, but God’s love for him will not. Jesus stands at this juncture. 

   In the Passion narrative, Jesus says little in the second half, once he reveals who he is, once he knows his death will be certain because he declares himself to be God’s Son – a blasphemy to the high priest found only in Mark’s Gospel. The people do not recognize the Messiah God has sent; they struggle with the paradox that God has sent a human being to effect salvation, because it’s only through our humanity, our brokenness, that salvation can come. This is part of the truth that we celebrate this week. 

   Pilate releases Barabbas to the crowds; he is bar (son of) Abbas (father) – the same term Jesus uses in his prayer during his agony in the Garden. Pilate releases one whose name is son of the father instead of one who is Son of the Father. We, through baptism, are made God’s children, Bar-Abbas in truth. We have to choose whether we live it as if it were truth or if we live it as if it were just a name. It’s easy to wear the name of Christian without living as if it meant something. Does Barabbas learn anything? Do we? Does the Passion of Jesus change how we see ourselves – as those who are subject to his mercy? 

   As we celebrate this week, we gather together in this paradox, in this mystery that is our faith in salvation, that through sin, we have been redeemed. For our own sin, Christ forgives us and we find mercy, so that we might be mercy – a paradox we are asked to live every day. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s 2021 Homily on Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Write your name across my heart (Kenny Rogers)

I can't help smiling when I look at you,
To keep from going crazy is all I can do.
I'm so defenseless with you so close,
The walls have crumbled from my body and soul. 

Write your name across my heart.
I want the world to know that I am yours forever.
And I will wear it like a shining star.
Write your name across my heart. 

To you my life is an open door.
Everything I have is yours.
I'll try to give you everything you need,
But as far as love goes, there's a life-time guarantee. 

Refrain 

In all my thoughts, in all I do, in all I say, 
I belong to you with every breath I take.... 

Refrain 

To hear Kenny Rogers sing Write Your Name (Across My Heart), click on the video below:

Image source 1:  https://wau.org/resources/article/re_jesus_loves_me_as_i_am/ 

Image source 2:  https://nazarenesoftheworld.info/nazarenes-and-the-name-yhwh/

Video source

Abandon yourself to God (St. Anselm of Canterbury)

   Come now, insignificant man, fly for a moment from your affairs, escape for a little while from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside now your weighty cares and leave your wearisome toils. Abandon yourself for a little to God and rest for a little in him. Enter into the inner chamber of your soul, shut out everything save God and what can be of help in your quest for Him and having locked the door seek Him out [Mt. 6:6]. Speak now, my whole heart, speak now to God: “I seek Your countenance, O Lord, Your countenance I seek” [Ps 27:8]. 

--St. Anselm of Canterbury 

Today we remember St. Joseph!

Image source: St. Joseph, detail of Journey to Bethlehem, fresco by the Maestro di Castelseprio (9th or 10th c.), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castelseprio_(archaeological_park) 
Quotation source (an excellent article about what it means to go to our hearts)

A HEART alone (George Herbert)

A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,
Made of a heart and cemented with tears;
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workman's tool hath touch'd the same.
                       A HEART alone
                       Is such a stone,
                       As nothing but
                       Thy pow'r doth cut.
                       Wherefore each part
                       Of my hard heart
                       Meets in this frame
                       To praise thy name.
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine. 

--George Herbert, The Altar             

Image source 1: https://mybrightideasblog.com/heart-shaped-beach-stones-pebble-art/
Image source 2: Altar, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1732773300117418&set=a.1726464817414933
Poem source

The Lord is greater than all (St. Patrick / Pope Benedict XVI)

The Lord is greater than all:
 I have said enough.

 --St. Patrick 

    If we look to the saints, this great luminous wake with which God has passed through history, we truly see that here is a force for good that survives through millennia; here is truly light from light. 

--Pope Benedict XVI 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 

Image source: Patrick banishes the snow and darkness with which a druid has cursed the land, Scenes from the Life of Saint Patrick, https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-and-artists/highlights-collection/scenes-life-saint-patrick
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Feeling with our hearts (Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan)

   The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. 

--Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan 

Image source: https://designshack.net/articles/trends/fractal-art/
Quotation source

The voice that speaks to our heart (Henri Nouwen)

   In the biblical understanding, our heart is at the center of our being. It’s not a muscle, but a symbol for the very center of our being. Now the beautiful thing about the heart is that the heart is the place where we are most ourselves. It is the very core of our being, the spiritual center of our being. Solitude and silence, for instance, are ways to get to the heart, because the heart is the place where God speaks to us, where we hear the voice that calls us beloved. This is precisely the most intimate place. 

   In the famous story, Elijah was standing in front of the cave. God was not in the storm, God was not in the fire and not in the earthquake, but God was in that soft little voice (see 1 Kings 19: 11–12). That soft little voice... speaks to the heart. Prayer and solitude are ways to listen to the voice that speaks to our heart, in the center of our being. One of the most amazing things is that if you enter deeper and deeper into that place, you not only meet God, but you meet the whole world there. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: https://parpools.typepad.com/notes/2012/01/prayer-101-silence-solitude-2.html
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 17, 2024: I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts...

I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts…

What has God written upon our hearts?

    Jeremiah prophesies during the time of the demise of the kingdom of Judah, but the people of Judah resist his message of doom. Yet, even as their exile is upon them, the Lord promises the people that one day, there will be a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, a covenant more intimate than all previous covenants, for, the Lord says, I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts. The new covenant will bind the people from within rather than from without; it will reside at the center of their beings, moving them from the depths of who they are to attend to their relationship with God. They might well pray Psalm 51, Create a clean heart in me, o God, expressing their desire to start over with a clean slate, that they might know the joy of God’s salvation. Their faith may have ebbed for a time, but they can regain that faith in the God who loves them, through prayer. 

    In John’s version of Jesus’ agony in the garden, Jesus acknowledges that he himself is the grain of wheat that will fall to the ground and die, but yet will produce much fruit. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus knew very human struggles; when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to his Father. Through prayer, Jesus was able to go to his own heart, as we must learn to do, for to pray is to open ourselves to the God who loves us. As he falls to the ground and dies, Jesus is leading us to our own transformation, a dying to self, that we might follow him. What is written on our hearts can win out. 

    As in Jeremiah’s prophecy, Jesus’ promise also looks to the future: Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. The joy of the eternal salvation Jesus obtains for us lies in our recognition that this life is not what it’s all about; we endure its difficulties, but the promise of life to come makes it possible for us to endure them. Our access to faith ebbs and flows throughout our lives, as does our access to our own hearts. A closed heart is a sign of the ebbing tide of faith. At such times, the covenant God wrote upon it is still there; we just don’t have access to it. What God writes is that he loves us, and that love is absolute. To access the absolute love of God, we need to be willing to go to our hearts, where he dwells, and we do so as we open, turning to him in prayer, and journeying with him, through death to new life. 

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

The same kind of mercy (Rudy Francisco)

She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away. 

If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy. 

―Rudy Francisco, Helium                   

Image source: 
https://www.reddit.com/r/spiders/comments/qvpkbg/im_allowing_this_spider_to_live_in_my_kitchen/
Poem source

If we walk in the light (Fr. Patrick Summerhayes / Henri Nouwen)

They say that in faith, the longest journey
you will ever take is
from your head to your heart.

--Fr. Patrick Summerhays,
 Homily, OLMC, Mill Valley,
December 11, 2022 

    Trusting in the unconditional love of God: that is the way to which Jesus calls us. The more firmly you grasp this, the more readily will you be able to perceive why there is so much suspicion, jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, hatred, violence, and discord in our world. Jesus himself interprets this by comparing God’s love to the light. He says: 

Though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God. 

    Jesus sees the evil in this world as a lack of trust in God’s love. He makes us see that we persistently fall back on ourselves, rely more on ourselves than on God, and are inclined more to love of self than love of God. So we remain in darkness. If we walk in the light, then we are enabled to acknowledge that everything good, beautiful, and true comes from God and is offered to us in love. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Lauren Wright Pittman, Born Again, https://www.churchsp.org/nicodemus-in-art/
Nouwen quotation source

Speak in the light (Cameron Bellm)

   When Jesus tells us to speak in the light what we have heard in the darkness, he uses the same Greek word that John’s gospel uses to describe him: Phos. The light that shines in the darkness, the light that the darkness will not overcome. And that’s why it’s so startling when Jesus tells us in Matthew’s gospel that WE are the light of the world. Yes, that’s right, us. Phos. 

   We are deeply, fiercely, tenderly loved, all of us, not just my family but the entire human family, by the God who is light and who calls us to be light ourselves—to the world, yes, but also to each other. 

--Cameron Bellm 

Image source: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/science-features/let-there-be-light
Quotation source

To rise from the ashes (Pope Francis / Dr. Tom Neal)

The Church is not a museum of saints,
but a hospital for sinners.

 --Pope Francis 

   While we never bend the moral law to accommodate human weakness, we do confess faith in a God who bends down (descéndit de cælis) to meet the fallen sinner on the ground in order to love her into life, to heal her and raise her up. We have no need for God to canonize or condemn us, but to have compassion on us so we can carry on each day with hope. 

    I need this God. 

    Mercy is the most human aspect of our faith. It embraces our broken human condition and empowers us to rise from the ashes. 

--Dr. Tom Neal

Image source: https://www.salt1065.com/stories/faith/2018/the-god-who-bends-down/
Source of both quotations

God's handiwork (Anne Lamott)

   Our visiting pastor talked about how, when people are called God's handiwork in Scripture, the ancient Greeks would have translated that as God's poems. This may have changed my life--that we are creativity, depth, condensed truth and light, made to throw off light and truth for others, as poems do. 

--Anne Lamott 

Image source 1: https://www.etsy.com/listing/765813832/feeric-vi-gourd-lamp-decorative-lamp?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_-home_and_living&utm_custom1=_k_EAIaIQobChMIwbe3_8zMggMVpkpHAR3tHwylEAkYASABEgKC8vD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_17434234701_144283651144_602523314340_pla-303628061699_c__765813832_142951456&utm_custom2=17434234701&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwbe3_8zMggMVpkpHAR3tHwylEAkYASABEgKC8vD_BwE 
Image source 2: https://biblicalisraeltours.com/2016/08/the-potters-wheel/
Quotation source

Through faith (Lee Strobel / Henri Nouwen)

Only in a world where faith 

is difficult can faith exist.

--Lee Strobel 

   The word faith is often understood as accepting something you can’t understand. People often say: “Such and such can’t be explained, you simply have to believe it.” However, when Jesus talks about faith, he means first of all to trust unreservedly that you are loved, so that you can abandon every false way of obtaining love. That’s why Jesus tells Nicodemus that, through faith in the descending love of God, we will be set free from anxiety and violence and will find eternal life. It’s a question here of trusting in God’s love. The Greek word for faith is pistis, which means, literally, “trust.” Whenever Jesus says to people he has healed: “Your faith has saved you,” he is saying that they have found new life because they have surrendered in complete trust to the love of God revealed in him. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source:  Jesus meets with Nicodemus, The Chosen,  https://www.wsj.com/articles/fans-pour-fundingand-faithinto-a-hit-drama-about-jesus-11637989204
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 10, 2024: Everyone who believes in him may have eternal life...

Everyone who believes in him may have eternal life…

Do we believe in the promise of salvation? 

    The last chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles contains an abbreviated history of the last four kings of Judah, a time during which the people turn toward the gods of other nations, adding infidelity to infidelity, violating their covenant with God. The Lord sends his messengers to them, for he has compassion on his people, but his dwelling place, the temple, is ultimately destroyed when the people are carried captive to Babylon. There, they pray Psalm 137, Let my tongue be silenced, if ever I forget you, fearing that they cannot sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land. Their memory of Jerusalem, Zion, is all they have while in exile. And yet the Lord is ultimately merciful, allowing Cyrus, King of Persia, to send the people home: Whoever belongs to any part of the Lord’s people, let him go up, and may his God be with him! Saved by the Lord, the people of Israel embrace the opportunity to rebuild the temple and worship once again in Jerusalem. 

    This episode is not unique in Jewish history; time and again, the people of Israel were unfaithful to covenant, and yet the Lord was ultimately merciful, each and every time. When, in John's Gospel, the Pharisee Nicodemus visits Jesus in the night, Jesus reminds him of the story of Moses who lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert so that all who looked upon it might be saved, healed from the bites of the seraph serpents. Their salvation involved an act of faith; Jesus, too, must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life; those who look upon him in faith and believe will live the truth and come to the light. 

    God is rich in mercy, Paul tells the Ephesians: by grace you have been saved. Ultimately, God is defined by mercy, compassion, care, and by the great love he has for us – so much so that, even in our sin, God showers us with the immeasurable riches of his grace. Unlike Nicodemus, who visits Jesus in the dead of night, not wanting to be seen, we must come toward the light of Christ and allow his grace to fill us with faith. For God sent his Son that the world might be saved through him. We have but to believe. 

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

Living through major change (Rose Marie Berger)

   There is a Shinto community in Japan that burns down its temple every 20 years. But the process of rebuilding begins years before the fire. The choosing of trees for wood, the training of apprentices in building techniques, the preparing a foundation for the new shrine. This community is always preparing for the end of this particular shrine and the building of the new one. In this way, the community has practiced resilience in the face of major change for more than 1,300 years. This is how members of a community live through major change well. 

--Rose Marie Berger

Image source 1: Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple (ca. 1550-1575) , https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaubitsejate_templist_v%C3%A4ljaajamine.jpg. For a discussion of this painting, see https://aleteia.org/2018/03/14/jesus-temple-tantrum-what-in-the-world-is-going-on-in-christ-cleansing-the-temple/ 

Image source 2: https://medium.com/knowledge-stew/the-japanese-shrine-that-is-rebuilt-every-20-years-4882ce9a1b0f
Quotation source