With you I am well pleased (Danny O'Regan)

    The Baptism of the Lord is that gentle moment when the spirit comes to take away our insecurities, quiets us, and assures us, With you I am well pleased. That isn’t just a message to Jesus, it is a message to all of us. We no longer have to prove our love and overcompensate; we live out our Baptism as we live out our understanding of being loved. It is often by our gentleness and peaceful spirit that we encounter the prince of peace in one another. 

    We celebrate this feast day with a recognition that it is the calming waters of our own Baptism and our continued call to be a people in the world that offers this peace to one another.

--Danny O’Regan, Former DRE, OLMC
 January 13, 2019

Image source: Ivanka Demchuk, Baptism of Christ (2015), https://artandtheology.org/2018/01/06/contemporary-icons-of-the-baptism-of-christ/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 9, 2022: The grace of God has appeared, saving all...

The grace of God has appeared, saving all…

Are you living out your faith, at one with Christ?

   The people of Israel had a hard time holding onto their faith during their time of exile. But the prophet Isaiah has words of encouragement for them: Here comes with power the Lord God! Isaiah wants them to hold onto their faith, that they might speak comfort and hope to a city destroyed. The prophet reassures them that the Lord will do extraordinary things for them: every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low to facilitate their return home at the end of their captivity. They need to restore their own faith in the power of God at work in them, though they may not be where they think his power works. Psalm 104 reminds us that the Lord is great indeed; everything that happens, happens because of God’s will and care for his people. Though all God does may be beyond our comprehension, still, we hold to our faith, dependent on God’s mercy and generosity, always.

   In Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist similarly calls the people back from their wayward ways, offering them hope for a messiah: one mightier than I is coming… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Like the people of Israel hundreds of years before, John’s community is called back to faith, and must restore their hope and trust in God who loves them, for the one who is sent is God’s beloved Son, who will himself be baptized, not because he needs a radical transformation of heart, as the people do, but because it offers him a connection to humankind, an entrance into our humanness that will allow him to take our sin to the cross with him. The Letter to Titus reminds us that Jesus gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness, and to cleanse for himself a people as his own. Our own baptism has made us one with Christ; through our faith, we are heirs, but we must ever maintain that faith, restoring it when necessary, and most importantly, living it, giving evidence of that faith to our world. The grace of God is at work in us; that is extraordinary. If we live with an awareness of that gift, we can live as one with Jesus, trusting in God’s promise and hoping that one day, he will bring us home as well.

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

The Magi teach us to move (Bishop Robert Barron)

   The story of the Magi is a summary of the principal dynamics of the spiritual life. Watching the night sky with scrupulous attention for signs of God’s purpose, the Magi evoke the importance of alertness in the spiritual order. We must keep our eyes open to see what God is up to. 

   Once they saw the star, they moved, despite the length of the journey. Sometimes people know what God wants them to do, but they don’t act, either out of fear, laziness, or the influence of bad habits. The Magi teach us to move. 

   When they spoke to Herod of the birth of a new King, he tried to use them to destroy the baby. When you walk the path that God has laid out for you, expect opposition. 

   The wise men came to Bethlehem and gave the child their precious gifts. When you come to Christ, break open the very best of yourself and make it a gift for him. 

   Finally, they returned to their home country by another route. As Fulton Sheen commented so magnificently: of course they did, for no one comes to Christ and goes back the same way he came! 

--Bishop Robert Barron, Gospel Reflection, January 3, 2020 

Image source: Edward B. Webster, The Nativity (1956), https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/nativity-27046

They fell down and worshipped (Fulton Sheen)

Coming from a land
that worshipped stars…
they fell down and worshipped
him who made the stars.

--Venerable Fulton Sheen

Image source: Egino Weinert, Adoration of the Magi (1967-1968), https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/art-villeroy-boch-galerie-adoration-of-the
Quotation source

The Light and Spirit of this small and vulnerable babe (Barbara R. Quinn)

   When the light of the Epiphany star sears our souls, it also casts a beam of light across and beyond any horizon we might have imagined before, calling us to a new vision. Yes, our days are punctuated by normal, everyday common doins’, but when we make space for God’s grace to inhabit us and soak us through to the depths of our hearts, we are amazed and drawn out of our everydayness to see and do the unimaginable. God’s light will show us amazing possibilities for our world.

   [So many things are possible] if we let the Light and Spirit of this small and vulnerable babe penetrate our hearts, allowing us to see beyond the darkness of our too small worlds, the shrunken horizons of our own making… if we are faithful to our everyday calls like shepherds and ever ready to travel towards new and wider horizons like the wise Magi sojourners… if we trust that God teaches us to see to the inside of our daily realities where the power of God is at work, always beckoning us deeper and forward.

--Barbara R. Quinn, RSCJ

Image source: Gentile da Fabriano, The Adoration of the Magi (1423), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi#/media/File:Gentile_da_fabriano,_adorazione_dei_magi.jpg 

Quotation source (and full article)

Will you come and see the light? (Brian Wren)

Will you come and see the light from the stable door?
It is shining newly bright, though it shone before.
It will be your guiding star, it will show you who you are,
Will you hide, or decide to meet the light?

Will you step into the light that can free the slave?
It will stand for what is right, it will heal and save.
By the pyramids of greed there’s a longing to be freed.
Will you hide, or decide to meet the light?

Will you tell about the light in the prison cell?
Though it’s shackled out of sight, it is shining well.
When the truth is cut and bruised, and the innocent abused,
Will you hide or decide to meet the light?

Will you join the hope, alight in a young girl’s eyes,
of the mighty put to flight by a baby’s cries?
When the lowest and the least are the foremost at the feast,
will you hide, or decide to meet the light?

Will you travel by the light of the babe new born?
In the candle lit at night there’s a gleam of dawn,
and the darkness all about is to dim to put it out:
will you hide, or decide to meet the light? 

--Brian Wren        

To hear Will You Come and See the Light? performed by Michael Joncas, Marty Haugen, and David Haas, click on the video below:

Image source: Epiphany window, Epiphany Catholic Church, South El Monte, CA, 

https://www.facebook.com/epiphanycatholicchurch/photos/a.556966041107251/2127113537425819
Video source

Mary, the mother through whom all things were given new life (St. Anselm)

   To Mary, God gave his only begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary, God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God. God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.

  God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the recreated world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed. 

--St. Anselm              

Image source: https://www.motherofallpeoples.com/post/god-the-father-and-mary-co-creator-in-the-light-of-theology-of-the-body 
Quotation source