The bond that unites (Pope Francis)

They had no child,
because Elizabeth was barren,
and both were advanced in years.

Luke 1:7 

    The Feast of the Visitation invites us to reflect on the bond that unites young and old. The Lord trusts that young people, through their relationships with the elderly, will realize that they are called to cultivate memory and recognize the beauty of being part of a much larger history. For the elderly, the presence of a young person in their lives can give them hope that their experience will not be lost and that their dreams can find fulfillment. Mary’s visit to Elizabeth and their shared awareness that the Lord’s mercy is from generation to generation remind us that, alone, we cannot move forward, much less save ourselves, and that God’s presence and activity are always part of something greater, the history of a people. 

--Pope Francis,
Message for the 3rd World Day
for Grandparents, July 23, 2023

Happy Feast of the Visitation!
May Jesus be born in our hearts!

Image source 1: Jacques Daret, Visitation, altarpiece, St. Vaast, Arras, France (1434-1435), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Daret
Image source 2: The Visitation, attributed to Master Heinrich of Constance (ca. 1310-20). This image was created for the nuns of Katharinenthal in Germany.  Elizabeth and Mary face each other, and, in the middle of their bodies, near their hearts and above their wombs, a crystal marks in each woman the place of the gestation of their sons, John the Baptist and Jesus.  https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/464596
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 2, 2024: This is my blood of the covenant...

This is my blood of the covenant…

What does sacrifice have to do with salvation? 

    Moses desperately wants the Israelites to obey the commandments of the Lord. When, in the Book of Exodus, Moses relates all the words and ordinances of the Lord to the people, they all answer with one voice: We will do everything that the Lord has told us. To solemnize this moment, Moses creates a formal covenant by means of a sacrifice: taking the blood of young bulls, Moses splashes half on the altar, then sprinkles the rest on the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you. A blood sacrifice was traditionally a way to ask for forgiveness of sin; when the people are marked with the blood of the covenant, they agree to participate as one body, bound together in a binding contract with the Lord. Therein lies their salvation. 

    Jesus’ disciples also participate in a covenant established in and through blood. At the Last Supper, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus breaks bread and then, when all have drunk from the cup, Jesus says, This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. His words, echoing Exodus, are meant to help the disciples to realize that they too are bound up in a covenant in which they must participate. In this, Christ is, as the Book of Hebrews tells us, the high priest who offers himself unblemished to God, the perfect sacrifice, offered freely, once and for all. Through the sacrifice of his own blood, Jesus washes away our sin, cleansing our consciences, and thereby making possible the salvation of the world – all this, that we might, as Psalm 116 suggests, offer the only sacrifice remaining to us: a sacrifice of thanksgiving in gratitude for the cup of salvation that is ours. Christ’s blood binds us; his sacrifice trumps all sacrifices. We too are called to participate in this covenant by obeying the commandments of the Lord, and by offering a sacrifice of praise for the tremendous gift of the Body and Blood of Christ, sacrificed on the cross. 

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

Mary, cathedral of silence (David Maria Turoldo)

You are the palm of Cadiz, a garden sealed for holy dwelling.
You are the earth that flies full of light into our night.
Virgin, cathedral of silence, ring of gold,
Of time and of eternity, you bring our flesh into Paradise
and God into flesh.
Come and go through spaces impenetrable for us. 

You are the splendor of the fields, the thicket, the white Church
On the mountain… 

May our tables no longer lack wine, o Vine amid clouds of perfume. 
May the girls come to you to draw the sacred drink,
And let women conceive again, and offer you their children
As you offered your fruit to us.
Lovingly you attend the fulfillment of our fabulous story,
Creation finally free.

--David Maria Turoldo, Servant of Holy Mary

In May we celebrate Mary...

Image source: The Assumption of Mary, Ark of the Covenant, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, https://www.nationalshrine.org/blog/5-works-of-art-celebrating-the-assumption-in-the-basilica/
Poem source

The name of God on our lips (St. Teresa of Avila / Sandra Thurman Caporale)

We need no wings to go in search of Him,
but have only to look upon Him present within us. 

--St. Teresa of Avila 

   There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and the name he gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH. Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels. 

    But scholars and Rabi’s have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing. YH (inhale): WH (exhale). 

    So, a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God. A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words. Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breath is giving constant acknowledgment to God. Likewise, a person leaves this earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filing their lungs. 

   So, when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name? Being alive means I speak His name constantly. 

    So, is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest? In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs. In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst. In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down. When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage. 

   When I think about it, breathing is giving him praise. Even in the hardest moments! This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought. 

   God chose to give himself a name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive. 

    All of us, always, everywhere. 

    Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips. 

-- Sandra Thurman Caporale,
Memorial Church of Christ, Houston

Image source: https://www.regnareproject.com/o-lord-open-our-lips-and-our-mouth-shall-proclaim-your-praise/
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Make the Sign of the Cross (St. Vincent Pallotti)

One died for our Freedom

One died to set us Free

One died on the Battlefield

The other One hanging on a Tree

One of the took a bullet

The other One a piercing sword

But both of them gave their lives

And so the Story is told

--Robin Bartholomew

  Immediately after rising and throughout the day, make the Sign of the Cross and renew your faith in God: to be strengthened by the power of the Father, to be enlightened by the wisdom of the Son, and to be sanctified by the love of the Holy Spirit. And as you bless yourselves, you may say: Of myself I can do nothing; with God I can do everything; I want to do everything for the love of God. 

--St. Vincent Pallotti

On Memorial Day, we pray for all those 
who have died in the cause of freedom,
that they may be brought safely to
God's Kingdom of justice and peace.

Image source:  https://aleteia.org/2020/11/11/in-times-of-war-this-is-what-catholic-soldiers-did-when-they-couldnt-go-to-mass/
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

A fierce, fiery, energizing, transforming love (Joann Melina Lopez)

   Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, and move from the Easter Season back into Ordinary Time – the days of discipleship as a church. As we cross this threshold, we root ourselves in the truth of who God is, and who we are called to be. 

   At the center of our faith is this Trinity who is, in God’s very self, deeply in relationship; Three Persons, united as One in love. This God, who is Abundant Love, pours forth into our world and into our lives, yearning for loving response, calling us to participate in the mission of inviting all of creation into that dance of loving unity. Each and every one of us is made in the image and likeness of this relational God, and we are called to be in loving relationship with God and with one another. 

   This isn’t a trite, saccharine kind of love. It’s not the kind of love that helps us fall asleep at night, warm and cozy in our beds. It’s a fierce, fiery, energizing, transforming love, that calls us to awaken every morning and go about our days as enfleshers of freedom, and disruptors of every system that obscures God’s love. 

--Joann Melina Lopez

Image source: https://vivatdeus.org/library/blog0066/
Quotation source

God is love (Bishop Robert Barron)

   Only Christianity says that God is love. Then it must entail a lover, a beloved, and a shared love must belong to the very essence of God. This is exactly what the doctrine of the Trinity is naming. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Image source: Hendrick van Balen, Baroque Trinity, Sint-Jacobskerk, Antwerp (1620), https://www.dolr.org/article/father-son-holy-spirit-are-united-love
Quotation source

The names of the divine Persons (Pope Francis)

  Let us think of the names of the divine Persons, which we pronounce every time we make the sign of the cross. The Trinity teaches us that one can never be without the other. We are not islands; we are in the world to live in God’s image: in need of others and in need of helping others. Is that sign of the cross we make every day a gesture for its own sake, or does it inspire my way of speaking, of encountering, of responding, of forgiving? May Our Lady, daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Spirit, help us to welcome and bear witness in life to the mystery of God-Love. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: https://www.trinitysa.org/blog/2021/2/11/signofthecross
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 26, 2024: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…

What does our relationship with the Trinity call us to? 

    In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses makes it clear that the Lord God seeks a relationship with his people. God, Moses states, continues to support and sustain the people with strong hand and outstretched arm; the people, for their part, must remain faithful to God: You must keep his statutes and commandments, Moses tells them, that you and your children after you may prosper. Most importantly, Moses stresses the fact that the Lord is God in the heavens above and the earth below, and there is no other. It is this one unique God that Psalm 33 portrays in all his goodness: Upright is the word of the Lord, and all his works are trustworthy. God has been with God’s people from the beginning, delivering them from death and preserving them from famine. Faith in this one true God is essential to the survival of the people of Israel. 

    Our understanding of the one true God deepened significantly with the coming of Jesus who, at his Ascension, promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to remain with his disciple to the end of the age, as he says in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is the key that opens access to God to all of humankind, wedding heaven to earth through his death and rising, when the barrier between the two was destroyed. Thus, the disciples can go forward in his name, baptizing all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. By invoking this clear Trinitarian formula, Jesus is asking his disciples to bring the faith they have to bear on others’ lives, allowing God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one – to be witnessed to through them. 

   As disciples of Christ, we who are led by the Spirit of God are sons and daughters of God, as Paul reminds the Roman community. We are called to embrace the Spirit of adoption that is ours through baptism, when God took us to himself and enclosed us in his infinite love, that we might enter into and accept the grace of God. The Spirit is one with us, bearing witness with our spirit, with the very essence of who we are as adopted sons and daughters, joint heirs with Christ. We gather at Mass in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and depart in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, entering into union with them and leaving in union with them. Heirs to the promise, we are children of God, and all power – the power of his love – is ours, that we too might bring our faith to bear upon our world as we witness to the power of the Trinitarian God in our own lives. 

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

The Mother of Yeshua, the Christ (Elizabeth Scalia)

The small tortures of motherhood was what I had thought Simeon had prophesied for me.

Now, I followed a constant sword, which lingered over Golgotha, where it waited for me. And you, yourself a sword will pierce. 

Enough, Simeon. Enough. 

My son had done no wrong, and he was murdered. He died before my eyes, ripped apart, jeered at, gambled over. And at that moment, the earth trembled in anguished sorrow, and the sword sliced into me, impaled my heart, although no one could see. 

No one could see me bleed as I beheld my beloved son, all drained of blood, like a lamb at sacrifice. 

His blood. My blood. 

Both of us drained, in our ways. 

I kissed his perforated brow, his pierced hands. 

My tender babe, my whole reason for being. 

My husband’s duty and delight. 

My beloved son, so greatly wounded. 

And then, there he was, in my room. A blaze of light, an outreached hand, onto which I laid my own, only for a moment, and it was enough. 

My son, my God, in startling glory. My Meshiḥa! Returned to me, from his Father’s house, his Father’s right hand. 

And from my breast, the sword was lifted, and I became once more the Mother—strong and ready to proclaim “I am here!” The Mother of Yeshua, the Christ. The Mother of the living. 

--Elizabeth Scalia 

To read more of Elizabeth Scalia’s remarkable meditation on the sword that pierced Mary’s heart, click here. 

Image source: Hans Memling, Triptych of Jan Crabbe, center panel (1470), https://uploads2.wikiart.org/images/hans-memling/triptych-of-jan-crabbe-1470.jpg
Quotation source and complete meditation

Our inner Pentecosts (Sr. Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ)

   I invite you to remember those inner Pentecosts in which you were able to experience, like the apostles, these gifts of the Spirit. Maybe some moments when you received a burning of the heart that makes love, charity, and hope grow; or you felt an inexpressible joy that can only be shared. Maybe you will remember a gentle light that makes it possible to grasp and name what you were experiencing, or the smooth sound of a wind that moved you inwardly and gave you the ability to recognize and speak the language of others. Yes, let us take the time to give thanks to the Lord for these experiences of the Spirit that have marked our lives in the daily life of our relationships or in more extraordinary events. Let us thank the Lord who has given us the opportunity to become more and more Pentecostal pilgrims, missionaries of the Risen Lord walking together to be in this broken world the Church of Christ called to be sign and instrument of the unity of the human family. 

--Sr. Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ

 

Image source 1: https://horizonpointechurch.com/blog/2013/5/30/a-gentle-breeze
Image source 2: https://dailytheology.org/2012/05/26/leave-room-for-the-holy-spirit-pentecost-as-the-source-of-religious-freedom/
Quotation source & full article

Welcoming an experience of the Spirit (Sr. Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ)

   This story of Pentecost tries to express something of a profound experience that in fact goes beyond any words. But what we know is that, without the event of Pentecost, which led the apostles out of the Upper Room to announce the Good News of the Risen Christ to the Jewish pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem, we would not have received the Gospel. We would not be here today celebrating this great feast of Pentecost in our parishes, communities, and families. 

   If we are Christians today, if we are meditating on these readings given to us by the liturgy, it is because we ourselves, like the first apostles, have experienced inner Pentecost which has brought us out of the cenacle of our fears and confinement to gather as Church, a communion-in-mission. We are connected today because we have welcomed in our lives an experience of the Spirit that made us feel the gift of faith, the strength of God's love, the peace of heart when we turn to Him, the missionary impulse to go out to meet others and announce to all the hope that life is always stronger than death. Yes, if the Church still exists today, it is because so many baptized have experienced and recognized these true fruits of the Spirit which are joy, love, peace, goodness, faithfulness, forbearance… 

--Sr. Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ 

Image source: Michael Stevens, Pentecost, created for the Word on Fire Bible. Prints available at: https://bookstore.wordonfire.org/products/the-pentecost-after-maino. Read the story of the creation of this image here: https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/fellows/fully-alive-at-the-easel-a-conversation-with-michael-stevens-part-i/?fbclid=IwAR0mxsEId7jfj-1jPDv8cSqbvDCd312H8TSSWkpvkCit7zU9CFQKEY6Bsqo
Quotation source & full article

This Spirit breathed from the Father and the Son (Fr. Patrick Michaels / St. Francis de Sales)

Compassion is the hallmark of community.
 Jesus comes from the community of Father, Son and Spirit,
the perfect community,
where the compassion is full, complete and shared.
Jesus brings that compassion to bear upon the world;
that is the substance of what he has come to preach. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels, Homily, February 4, 2024 

    The Father breathes this love and so does the Son; this spiration of love is but one spiration, or one only spirit breathed out by two breathers. 

    This Spirit breathed from the Father and the Son is true God: and since there neither is, nor can be, more than one only God, He is one only true God with the Father and the Son. Since this love is an act which proceeds mutually from the Father and the Son, it can neither be the Father, nor the Son, from whom it proceeds, though it has the same goodness and substance of the Father and the Son, but must necessarily be a third person, Who with the Father and the Son is one only God. And because this love is produced by manner of breathings or spirations, it is called the Holy Spirit. 

--St. Francis de Sales,
Treatise on the Love of God,
Book III, chapter 13 

Image: Holy Spirit Rose Window, St. John Neumann Catholic Church, Sunbury, Ohio, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_John_Neumann_Catholic_Church_%28Sunbury,_Ohio%29_-_stained_glass,_Holy_Spirit_rose_window.jpg

To live in the Father's embrace (C. Baxter Kruger / Pope Francis)

     The Holy Spirit discloses Jesus to us
so that we can know and experience
Jesus' own relationship with his Father,
and be free to live in the Father's embrace with Jesus.

--C. Baxter Kruger, The Shack Revisited: 
There Is More Going on Here
Than You Ever Dared to Dream

   The Holy Spirit wants to stay with us: he is not a passing guest who comes to pay us a courtesy visit. He is a companion for life, a stable presence. He is Spirit and desires to dwell in our spirits. He is patient and stays with us even when we fall. He remains because he truly loves us; he does not pretend to love us, and then leave us alone when things get difficult. No. He is faithful, he is transparent, he is authentic. 

--Pope Francis, Regina Caeli, May 14, 2023 

Image source: Veni, Dator Munerum, mosaic detail from one of the side chapels in the Rosary Basilica of Lourdes, https://thejesuitpost.org/2022/08/catholic-101-gifts-of-the-holy-spirit/ 
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The Spirit of the Lord (Bishop Robert Barron)

    Jesus first says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” [in his] inaugural address in his hometown synagogue. The Ruach Yahweh, the breath of God, the Spirit that hovered over the surface of the waters at the beginning of time, the life energy of God—this is what has seized and animated Jesus. 

 

    Animated by the Ruach Yahweh, what does Jesus do? He brings “glad tidings to the poor,” “liberty to captives,” and “recovery of sight to the blind.” In other words, he brings God’s love to those who are marginalized by injustice, freedom to those who are imprisoned in sin, and healing to those whose very self has been broken. 

    [At last,] after the Paschal Mystery and Resurrection, he breathed on his disciples, communicating to them something of this Spirit—and drawing them into this mission. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Image source: Holy Spirit, Holy Redeemer Church, Madison, Wisconsin, https://www.madisoncathedral.org/
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 19, 2024: Receive the Holy Spirit...

 

Receive the Holy Spirit… 

How do we come together as the Body of Christ? 

    Taken together, our readings for Pentecost (both Vigil and Sunday) give us a sense of God as life-giving restorer of God’s people. And the people need it! The story of the Tower of Babel, in the Book of Genesis, points to the growing wickedness of the people migrating in the east, who build themselves a ziggurat as an exercise in arrogance, a condition that has plagued humankind over the ages. But God will intervene over and over to save God’s people from themselves. In the Book of Exodus, God sends a message to the people via Moses, assuring them that, if they hearken to his voice and keep his covenant, they shall be God’s special possession. Ezekiel speaks of a vision of dry bones transformed by the Lord God by means of sinew and flesh, that the Lord might breathe life into them. In the Book of Joel, the Lord similarly pours out his spirit upon all flesh. It is an extraordinary promise of restoration, one that offers the hope of salvation to everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. Thus can Psalm 104 come to pass: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth. 

    It is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is the fulfillment of all of the prophecies in salvation history. In John, Chapter 7, Jesus proclaims that anyone who longs for the life God has promised can find it in Jesus himself: Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink, he says. Faith, hope and love are byproducts of the living waters of Christ – the Spirit of truth itself that proceeds from the Father, John 15 tells us, going forth and being shared. That Spirit or Advocate is meant to guide all to the truth; it is through the Spirit that Jesus, once he has ascended to the Father in Acts of the. Apostles, continues to be present to the disciples, allowing them to say Jesus is Lord. It is through them, as they come together in the Body of Christ, that the Lord himself will be revealed, as first happens at Pentecost, when tongues as of fire rest on each of them, and they are all filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to proclaim. 

    It is this same Spirit, as Paul tells the Romans, that perfects our prayer, coming to the aid of our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought. All of creation is groaning in labor pains, waiting to receive the fullness of life, longing for something, yet unable to identify what precisely it seeks… But we can, because we have the firstfruits of the Spirit, which gives us an intimation of the fullness of life that is possible in Christ. Moreover, every spiritual gift, Paul tells the Corinthians, every gift from the Spirit, exists to benefit the whole, gathered together in one Body, united in Christ, bringing Christ’s love to bear upon the world. It is the Spirit, in short, dwelling with us, that makes it possible for us to be Church and to function together in a way that benefits our world. Peace be with you, Jesus says to the disciples in John’s Gospel, breathing on them as they receive the Holy Spirit – their access to salvation, and ours, ours to share. Peace be with you! 

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

The heart of Mary (St. John Vianney)

   The Father takes pleasure in looking upon the heart of the most holy Virgin Mary, as the masterpiece of his hands… The Son takes pleasure in it as the heart of His Mother, the source from which He drew the blood that ransomed us. 

--St. John Vianney 

In May we celebrate Mary...

Image source: Leopold Kupelwieser, The Heart of Mary (19th c.), https://www.bowers.org/index.php/collection/collection-blog/the-immaculate-art-of-mary
Quotation source

Proclaiming with humility (Henri Nouwen)

   Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: https://www.australiancatholics.com.au/article/prayers-of-the-people---proclaim-the-good-news

Taken up into heaven (Bishop Robert Barron)

   Mark [offers a] very laconic account of the Ascension: "Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God." 

   Now, don’t literalize this language—there aren’t chairs in heaven—but take it very seriously indeed. What Mark is suggesting is that Jesus is now reigning; he’s in the attitude of a king on his throne. This means that he is directing the things of earth from his place in heaven. Again, don’t think of this spatially, as though heaven were a long way away. Think of heaven as a dimension that overlaps with earth, that impinges on earth. 

   And this is why the Ascension forces us to come to grips with a key question: Whom do we finally obey? Whom do we finally serve? Who, finally, is the king of our life? We legitimately obey all sorts of figures—political, cultural, artistic, etc.—but there is always an ultimate king, someone (or something) from which we take our definitive marching orders.

--Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, April 25, 2023 

Image source 1: Ford Madox Brown, The Ascension (19th c.) https://aleteia.org/2018/05/15/analyzing-art-the-iconography-of-the-ascension-through-the-ages/
Image source 2: Ascension, Drogo Sacramentary (ca. 850), https://aleteia.org/2018/05/15/analyzing-art-the-iconography-of-the-ascension-through-the-ages/

A temple, a sanctuary, an altar, a tabernacle... (St. Marie Azélie Guérin Martin)

    Above all, during the months immediately preceding the birth of her child, the mother should keep close to God, of whom the infant she bears within her is the image, the handiwork, the gift and the child. She should be for her offspring, as it were, a temple, a sanctuary, an altar, a tabernacle. In short, her life should be, so to speak, the life of a living sacrament, a sacrament in act, burying herself in the bosom of that God who has so truly instituted it and hallowed it, so that there she may draw that energy, that enlightening, that natural and supernatural beauty which He wills, and wills precisely by her means, to impart to the child she bears and to be born of her. 

-- St. Marie Azélie Guérin Martin,
mother of St. Thérèse of Lisieux 

Happy Mother's Day to all who fulfill that role!

Image source 1: Roger Van Der Weyden, The Visitation, detail (15th c.), https://www.kellybagdanov.com/2017/12/10/van-der-weydens-visitation/
Image source 2: St. Thérèse of Lisieux with her parents, https://fatima.org/news-views/catholic-apologetics-114/
Quotation source

Spread light! (Flannery O'Connor / St. Catherine of Siena)

To the hard of hearing you must shout.

--Flannery O'Connor 

Start being brave about everything.

Drive out darkness and spread light.

Don’t look at your weaknesses.

Realize instead that in Christ crucified,

you can do everything. 

--St. Catherine of Siena

Image source: https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/10-things-every-christian-should-know-about-the-cross.html
Quotation 1 source
Quotation 2 source

Go! Proclaim! (Megan Effron)

    Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature… Jesus does not actually ask us to do this work; he commands it. GO! PROCLAIM! Those are imperative verbs. 

    As my students might ask, Is this assignment required? Yes; yes, it is. This is not extra credit. Jesus does not suggest or encourage, he commands. And this responsibility does not belong to a small fraction of our church – it’s not just for ordained bishops or lay ecclesial ministers – it is the responsibility of all baptized believers. We are called to be witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)! 

--Megan Effron 

Image source: https://stonethepreacher.com/why-go-and-preach-the-gospel/
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 12, 2024: Proclaim the gospel to every creature...

Proclaim the gospel to every creature…

Are you ready to go out and proclaim the good news? 

     Like many songs in the psalter, Psalm 47 calls upon the people of Israel to proclaim that the Lord, the Most High, the awesome, is the great king over all the earth. In a sense, Jesus is following in this tradition when, at the end of Mark’s Gospel, he instructs his disciples to go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. The disciples will do so, bringing grace to bear upon the the lives of all who hear them; their proclamation is an opportunity for all to embrace the love of God. The disciples will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, Jesus tells them in the first chapter of Acts of the Apostles, and will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. With this final instruction, Jesus is lifted up, taken from their sight. 

    While the promise of signs may give the disciples courage – the ability to drive out demons, speak new languages, and pick up serpents with their hands, among others – the true power given to the disciples is the power of God’s love. Jesus deems the disciples ready, and indeed they do go forth and preach everywhere! 

    Are we ready to do as Jesus instructs all of his disciples? Are we ready to go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature? We may hesitate on our own, until we are able to see ourselves as God sees us. Like the disciples, the Apostles and the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we are called to get on with the task of revealing Christ’s life, death and resurrection to the nations, starting with our own families and friends. Paul prays that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ give the Ephesian community a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him, so that the eyes of their hearts may be enlightened. Knowing, as the Ephesians knew, that God is nothing short of mercy, forgiveness, and infinite love, we are called to allow the Spirit to draw us more closely into relationship with the Lord, not only as individuals, but as his Body, the church. Our union with that Body enables us to share in the fullness of all Christ has to offer us. It is when we know, when we have clear vision into, the surpassing greatness of his power, the power of love that enabled Christ to die and rise for us, that we can share God’s vision and bring that good news to all the world! 

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

Mary, wellspring of goodness (Pope Benedict XVI / Ruben Ortega)

You abandoned yourself completely
 to God’s call and thus became
a wellspring of the goodness
that flows forth from him.
Show us Jesus. Lead us to him.

--Pope Benedict XVI 

     A large part of Mary’s days were, without doubt, completely normal. She spent many hours on domestic tasks: preparing food, cleaning the house and clothing, and ever weaving wool or linen tailoring her family’s clothing. She would arrive exhausted at the end of the day, but with joy of one who knows that this apparently simple tasks had a wonderful supernatural efficiency and that by doing well her work she was carrying out one of the first works of the Redemption. 

--Ruben Ortega 

In May we celebrate Mary...

Image source: Piotr Stachiewicz, Sobotni Promyk (Saturday’s Ray), https://www.ncregister.com/blog/everyday-mary-our-mother
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A God who wills the salvation of everyone (Julian of Norwich / Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

The person who loves everything
and everyone God made,
loves God because God is in every person.
God is in all things.

 --Julian of Norwich 

      The God whom Jesus reveals is a prodigal God, a God who isn’t stingy; a God who wills the salvation of everyone, who loves all races and all peoples equally; a God with a preferential love for the poor; a God who creates both genders equally; a God who strongly opposes worldly power and privilege. The God of Jesus Christ is a God of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness, and a God who doesn’t condemn and send people to hell according to our limited human judgments. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI,
Facebook, January 18, 2021 

Image source: https://craigtowens.com/2010/06/25/judge-or-father/
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Remain in my love (Bishop Robert Barron)

   Jesus instructs us in the way of loving others with God’s love: “Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” 

    Much hinges on that little word “remain”—menein in the Greek—which John uses frequently in his Gospel. God’s love is given unconditionally as a grace, but remaining in that love is indeed a matter of keeping certain commandments. 

    Here is how it works: God’s love can truly dwell in us and become our “possession” only in the measure that we give it away. If we resist it or try to cling to it, it will never work its way into our own hearts, bodies, and minds. But if we give it away as an act of love, then we get more of it, entering into a delightful stream of grace. If you give away the divine love, then it “remains” in you. 

    This is the great Catholic doctrine of grace and the cooperation with grace. We don’t drive a great wedge between law and grace, as some of the Reformers did. Rather, we say that law and commandment allow us to participate in the love that God is. It’s a play, if you want, of both conditional and unconditional love. And it’s precisely why we can grow in love. 

--Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, May 19, 2022 

Image source: https://sermonquotes.com/honest/14137-we-cant-give-away-love-freely-if-what-were-really-looking-for-is-approval-bob-goff.html

Everything that estranges us from one another (Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II)

   By your Spirit, you move human hearts; that enemies may speak to each other again, adversaries join hands, and peoples seek to meet together. By the working of your power, it comes about, O Lord, that hatred is overcome by love, revenge gives way to forgiveness, and discord is changed to mutual respect. 

   Heavenly Father, we humbly beseech you to accept us also together with your son, and in the saving banquet graciously to endow us with his very spirit who takes away everything that estranges us from one another. 

--Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II

Image source: Fr. Pat celebrates Mass at OLMC, February 2, 2024, https://www.facebook.com/mountcarmelmv/videos/1773602463149955
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Love unites us (St. Francis de Sales)

   Love not finding us equal, equalizes us; not finding us united, unites us. 

--St. Francis de Sales

Treatise on the
Love of God

Book III,
Chapter 13 

Image source: Anja Rozen, winner of the International Plakat Miru Competition, Peace. "My drawing represents the land that binds us and unites us.  Humans are woven together. If someone gives up, others fall. We are all connected to our planet and to each other, but unfortunately, we are little aware of it. We are woven together. Other people weave alongside me my own story; and I weave theirs," said the young designer. https://www.facebook.com/ThisBlewUpMyMind

Overflowing love (St. Augustine / Martin Luther King, Jr.)

God loves each of us as if
there were only one of us.

--St. Augustine 

     Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. 

--Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Image source: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/christian-terms/what-does-agape-love-really-mean-in-the-bible.html
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 5, 2024: Remain in my love...

Remain in my love…

What is Jesus calling us to? 

    Love is of God, the First Letter of John tells us. Love originates in God and God’s love for us precedes anything we might bring to the table. God has loved us, and sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. Our love for other flows from God’s love for us; when we share in that love through baptism, we know God. In John’s Gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples, now beautifully named friends, that love connects: Remain in my love. Love one another as I have loved you, he tells them. In the Mystical Body of Christ, every church community is bound to God and to each other by the love of God. We are to remain in him, in his love, and therefore in one another, that his joy may be in us, and our joy might be complete. If we respond to God’s love for us in this way, then we dwell (or remain) in this love with one another forever. Love binds us, weaves us, makes us into one Body, eternal and joy-filled. 

    Of course, our love for neighbor is not limited to other members of the Body of Christ. Peter encountered this truth when, in the Acts of the Apostles, God prepares him to eat in the house of the Gentile Cornelius, and Peter comes to understand that God shows no partiality. Remarkably, while Peter is still speaking these things, the Holy Spirit falls upon all who are listening to the word, fulfilling Psalm 98’s dictum, The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power. In Jesus’ time, such an act of inclusion would have meant not only Jews and Gentiles but also the enslaved. All those loved by God (everyone, in other words!) are called to sing to the Lord a new song, for to them, and to us, the Lord has made his salvation known, and that salvation is nothing short of love. What is Jesus calling us to? Simply to remain in his love, forever! 

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