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

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore, 

May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul. 

As the wind loves to call things to dance, 

May your gravity be lightened by grace. 

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth, 

May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect. 

As water takes whatever shape it is in, 

So free may you be about who you become. 

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

May your sense of irony bring perspective. 

As time remains free of all that it frames, 

May your mind stay clear of all it names. 

May your prayer of listening deepen enough 

To hear in the depths the laughter of God.

--John O’Donohue, For Equilibrium         

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

His unforgettable gestures of healing (Bishop Robert Barron)

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

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

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

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

   How do I really love and forgive as Jesus did?

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

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

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

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

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

For this purpose have I come… 

Is your heart open to God’s absolute love? 

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

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

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

The entrance place of wonders (William Stanley Braithwaite)

I am glad day long for the gift of song, 

For time and change and sorrow; 

For the sunset wings and the world end things, 

Which hang on the edge of tomorrow. 

 

I am glad for my heart, whose gates apart 

Are the entrance place of wonders; 

Where dreams come in from the rush and din, 

Like sheep from the rains and thunder.

 --William Stanley Braithwaite        

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

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

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

 --Loyola Institute for Spirituality      

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

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

The Word has a face (Bishop Robert Barron)

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

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

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

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

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