This was a woman (Joan Chittister)

This was a woman who made up her mind outside the law, alone, independent of keepers or guides.  This was a woman who risked everything to do what she knew her God required of her, whatever its cost socially, publicly, spiritually.  This was a woman who acted alone, outside the permission of the systems and the tradition around her.  This was a woman who inserted herself into a public situation and directed Jesus to do the same, despite the fact that he said he was not ready to do so.  She had a strong will, a strong faith, a strong sense of self, and deep spiritual stamina.

The Creed says that women do marvelous things, all of them far beyond the physical.  The Creed... shows us woman in all her glory:  woman rational, spiritual, strong, essential, decisive, and ordained to participate in the outpouring of divine life.  It shows us woman -- loving, giving, holy, in communion with God, and filled with the spirit of Jesus... a spiritual partner to the greatest spiritual event of all time.

--Joan Chittister, In Search of Belief

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Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond (Mary Oliver)

So heavy 

is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, 

always it is a surprise 

when her smoke-colored wings 

open 

and she turns 

from the thick water, 

from the black sticks 

of the summer pond, 

and slowly 

rises into the air 

and is gone. 

Then, not for the first or the last time, 

I take the deep breath 

of happiness, and I think 

how unlikely it is 

that death is a hole in the ground, 

how improbable 

that ascension is not possible, 

though everything seems so inert, so nailed 

back into itself— 

the muskrat and his lumpy lodge, 

the turtle, 

the fallen gate. 

And especially it is wonderful 

that the summers are long 

and the ponds so dark and so many, 

and therefore it isn’t a miracle 

but the common thing, 

this decision, 

this trailing of the long legs in the water, 

this opening up of the heavy body 

into a new life:  see how the sudden 

gray-blue sheets of her wings 

strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
                  takes her in. 

--Mary Oliver

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A Sonnet for Ascension Day (Malcolm Guite)

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory 

Whilst we were rooted still in time and place 

As earth became a part of Heaven’s story 

And heaven opened to his human face. 

We saw him go and yet we were not parted 

He took us with him to the heart of things 

The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted 

Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings, 

Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness, 

Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight, 

Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness 

And sing the waning darkness into light, 

His light in us, and ours in him concealed, 

Which all creation waits to see revealed. 

Poem source:  Malcolm Guite

Image 1 source:  L'Ascension, School of Philippe de Champaigne, 1636, Val de Grâce, Paris
Image 2 source:  Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, Mill Valley, CA

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 17, 2015: When the Holy Spirit comes upon you...

When the Holy Spirit comes upon you...

Then what?

After many days of intimate contact with his disciples after the Resurrection, Luke tells us in Acts, Jesus ascends to heaven:  he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.  Mark’s version is not all that different:  So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God, fulfilling Psalm 47: God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy, amid trumpet blasts… And then the disciples are left alone.  Or are they?

Jesus’ physical presence on earth did indeed end with the end of his earthly mission.  However, his tangible presence continues through the Church, a Church that is filled with the same Spirit that filled Jesus throughout his life:  you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, he tells the disciples.  Writing to the Ephesians, Paul knows that, although he is a prisoner for the Lord, he continues to live in a manner worthy of the call he has received.  His faith is recognizable; it has an effect.  Like Paul, we too are equipped for the work of ministry, equipped with humility and gentleness and patience, with faith and hope and grace, the hope that belongs to his call.  It is these gifts that allow us to give witness, because the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, so that we might build up the body of Christ.  We are all gifted by Christ so that we might gift the Church, and thereby gift the world, supporting, leading, energizing the entire Church.  If Jesus in his physical body is no longer with us after the Ascension, Christ in the Body of the Church certainly is… He is present, that is, in you and me, and in all who profess the same faith, faith in the one hope of our calling, so that we might be his witnesses… to the ends of the earth.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class. 

Image source:  Wordle

Mary (Patty Griffin)

Mary, you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ashes, 

You’re covered in rain, 

You’re covered in babies, you’re covered in slashes, 

You’re covered in wilderness, you’re covered in stains, 

You cast aside the sheet, you cast aside the shroud 

Of another man, who served the world proud 

You greet another son, you lose another one 

On some sunny day and always stay, Mary... 

Jesus says Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer, 

Flies right by me, leaves a kiss upon her face 

While the angels are singing his praises in a blaze of glory 

Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place 

Mary she moves behind me 

She leaves her fingerprints everywhere 

Every time the snow drifts, every way the sand shifts, 

Even when the night lifts, she’s always there 

[Refrain]

Mary you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ruin, 

You’re covered in secrets 

You’re covered in treetops, you’re covered in birds 

Who can sing a million songs without any words 

You cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud 

Of another man, who served the world proud 

You greet another son, you lose another one 

On some sunny day, and always stay 

Mary, Mary, Mary 

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I love you

 I love you – how many times in your life have you wanted to hear someone say that?  We want to hear it from our friends and family, our spouses and children.  But imagine what it would feel like to hear it from God… directly.  And yet Jesus says just this in this past Sunday’s gospel!  I love you, he tells his disciples.  We tend to focus on the fact that Jesus is issuing a commandment here, and so his own confession of love can go unnoticed:

I love you…  

Love one another as I love you…  

This is my commandment:  love one another as I love you…  
I love you...  

One wonders if the disciples heard it? Or if they just heard the word command-ment? And one wonders if they realized the full import of Jesus’ calling them friends?  After all, friendship means, literally, the state or condition of being loved…  So when Jesus says, I call you friends, he is saying that they are dear to him; for them, he will give up everything, including his life:  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  It is a radical promise of gift to other.

We are all called to be gift to other, to love one another, as we heard in this Sunday's reading. And when we do, we are also demonstrating our love for God above all things for his own sake, repaying the Lord, in our own small way, for all the good he has done for us, and, in our own small way, saying I love you back to God.  Surely God wants to hear those words, too.

Image source:  Divine Love, Our Lady of Pity Catholic Church, Swaffham, UK

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 10, 2015: Love is of God...

Love is of God...

It’s a topological paradox!

When, in this Sunday’s Gospel from John, Jesus says to his disciples, Remain in my love, he’s asking them to come and live in him, just as he lives in the Father’s love; Jesus, in turn, promises to remain in us.  To remain in Jesus is to experience his love as one with him, with no separation; the joy of Jesus – he speaks so that my joy may be in you, he says – is the union that love brings, the connection that binds us to one another, and to Jesus.

It is this love that the First Letter of John calls us to as well:  let us love one another.  To do so is to mark the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives, for the Spirit is manifested by our love, our care, our concern for one another, and the love in our lives is a manifestation of God.  It truly is a topological paradox:  we are in God and God dwells in us, simultaneously!  Recognizing our brokenness, God sent his only Son into the world to heal it; Jesus then sends the Spirit so that we might continue to participate in that great love by letting God act in this world through us.  To know we are loved infinitely, without limits, changes us, dramatically alters our openness to God’s activity in us… and in everyone we touch when we share that love.

And it is precisely this love dwelling in Peter that brings him to the house of the Gentile Cornelius in our reading from Acts:  while Peter was still speaking these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word.  The Spirit affirms the belief already present, filling them with God’s love, with God’s presence, so that that love might dwell in them and they in it.  It is the fulfillment of the salvation that the Lord has made known, the covenant of kindness and faithfulness promised so long ago in Psalm 98.  That covenant knows no limits, no boundaries – which is precisely why the topological paradox is possible, manifest in us as we open to God dwelling in us, and promise, in turn, to dwell in God.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle