We exist in the infinite embrace of God’s mercy. In mercy, we all were created. In mercy, we all live. In mercy, we all have the hope of eternal life.
The lavish mercy of God pours over us in every sunrise and sunset, in every noon and midnight. With every breath, we draw on mercy. With every thought, we capture its spirit and turn it to our hope. The gift of such divine power in us calls us to lavish mercy with our own lives, to be agents of mercy in all things.
This journal is offered as an act of thanksgiving and celebration for that lavish mercy. It is a gathering of reflections and prayers which sift through our ordinary experience to seek the breath-giving grace of God awaiting us there.
My name is Renee Yann. I am a Sister of Mercy. I love to chase God through the bright blessing of words. I love to discover words in the dark blessing of silence. It is a joy to share with you the humble fruit of those mutual blessings.
Our entire theological tradition is expressed in terms of Mercy, which I define as the willingness to enter into the chaos of others. James F. Keenan, S.J.
June 29, 2026 Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
St. Paul’s in RomeSt Peters Basilica in Rome
Peter and Paul – names that embody the foundation of Catholic magisterium, those who offered initial inspiration and counsel to the early life of the Gospel. The celebration of their feast today engenders deep reflection on the themes of faith, and of authority and tradition in the Church.
That reflection is intended to give believers confidence in all that the Apostles’ Creed proclaims: the Trinity, Incarnation, Paschal Mystery, Baptismal Salvation, and Eternal Life – and of its pristine transmission through the millennia.
Over the course of 2000 years, this confidence has been enshrined in cathedrals and encyclicals, in the declaration of saints and the condemnation of heretics. It has been studied in Scripture and edited in the candlelit scriptoria of the Middle Ages.
It is a living confidence that ever struggles against the mumification of theological reactionaries and misspellings of semi-literate interpreters. It is a confidence that, while hallowed and foundational, bears the taint of uncontested patriarchy and obdurate dogmatism.
For some of us, particularly women, who deeply love the Church, today’s feast can be a source of discomforting reflection.
What if the deposit of faith had been predominantly sourced and interpreted, not only through men like Peter and Paul, but through the experience of Mary, Mother of Jesus and First of the Apostles? Or of Mary Magdalen, Apostle to the Apostles on Easter morning?
What if the women who quietly nurtured the work of the Gospel, who gathered and sustained the churches of the first Christian millennium, had not had their insights disappear in a flood of masculine ink?
What if another four evangelists had been Mary, Mary Magdalen, the woman at the Well and the deacon Phoebe?
What if rampant patriarchy had not been inextricably threaded through Catholic tradition?
How would the Church be different today if any of those things had happened?
Of course, they didn’t happen. But how would the Church be different today if those who held influence had included these testimonies? What if Peter and Paul had demanded that the only true apostolic succession came through Peter, Paul, … and Mary?
Hats off to the great Saints Peter and Paul! And wistful hearts raised to our “Marys”!
Music: What Wondrous Thing – Jann Aldredge Clanton
What wondrous thing is happening here where minds and souls are opening? The scales fall off our blinded eyes; new sight arouses hoping.
A new thing springs forth on the earth with blessing, hope, and healing; the power of woman saves all life, Sophia-Christ revealing.
Epiphany surrounds us now, as we reclaim our wholeness; Sophia-Christ within us all inspires us with new boldness.
Refrain: Look, look, for She is here; Her wisdom words have long been near. Now, now, behold Her grace, Divinity in Her image.
La luz de la fe nos guía y nos sostiene a lo largo de las etapas de nuestra vida.
A mediados de junio de 2015, el querido Papa Francisco publicó su encíclica emblemática, «Laudato Si’». El documento, erudito y práctico, transmite la voz del Espíritu Santo. Más que informativo, es transformador en su capacidad de despertar, inspirar, cambiar y confirmar a quienes oran con él.
Al haberse publicado tan cerca del solsticio de junio, la carta también encarna la voz de la Tierra, que nos llama a hacer una pausa, reflexionar y elegir de manera informada y reverente. Toda la Creación sabe practicar esta pausa respetuosa. Lo hace cada año en sus retiros semestrales conocidos como «solsticio» y «equinoccio».
Hoy, solsticio de junio de 2026, nos invita a hacer lo mismo. Les ofrezco dos bendiciones para elegir, según su hemisferio. Que este día sagrado nos traiga a todos las bendiciones de amor que el Papa Francisco anhelaba con tanto fervor:
Todo el universo material habla del amor de Dios, de su cariño infinito por nosotros. La tierra, el agua, las montañas: todo es, por así decirlo, una caricia de Dios.
Laudatory Si’: 84
Music: Winter by Antonio Vivaldi (arr. Sergio Ercole)
In mid-June 2015, beloved Pope Francis published his landmark encyclical, “Laudato Si”. The document, erudite and practical, carries the voice of the Holy Spirit. More than informative, it is transformative in its power to awaken, inspire, change, and confirm those who pray with it.
Published so close to the June solstice, the letter also embodies Earth’s voice, calling us to pause, reflect, and choose in an informed and reverent manner. All Creation knows how to practice such a deferent pause. It does so every year in its semi-annual retreats known as “solstice” and “equinox”. Today, June Solstice 2026, invites us to do the same.
I offer you two blessings to choose from, depending on your hemisphere. May this sacred day bring all of us the blessings of love Pope Francis so earnestly hoped for:
“The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
Laudato Si’: 84
Music: Summer by Vivaldi (Guitar) arr. Sergio Ercole
Like me, some of you may have thought that the Emancipation Proclamation was a “one-and-done” event. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Like its companions in American history ( the Constitution,the Bill of Rights), the document – and its dynamism – is a complex living reality that, even now, continues to unfold among us.
The Emancipation Declaration was first issued on January 1, 1863, freeing enslaved African Americans in the Confederate States. There were many states, notably some in the North, to which the new law did not immediately apply (border states of Delaware and Kentucky). However, the 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865, made slavery universally unconstitutional throughout the United States.
During the intervening time period, enforcement of the new law rolled out slowly through the post-Confederate South, especially in far western regions like Galveston, Texas. It was not until June 19th, two years later, that freedom reached that resistant enclave:
On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free. (Wikipedia)
Wanting to learn more about the Juneteenth holiday, I purchased a beautifully illustrated children’s book, Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free. I wanted to share it with my grand-nephews and niece when they visit because this history belongs to all of us. We all need to learn from it.
Ms. Lee, who is approaching her 100th birthday in October, has suffered personally from racist terrorists. She grew up in Texas, where her family’s home was burned down by white rioters when she was twelve years old. Resilient and brave, she eventually pursued an extensive education and became a teacher, community leader, and activist. She lobbied particularly for the recognition of Juneteenth as a Holiday, believing it was crucial to the story of African American freedom.
President Joe Biden talks with Opal Lee after signing the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act Bill, Thursday, June 17, 2021, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Chandler West)
In June 2021, at the age of 94, her efforts succeeded as a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. She was an honored guest at the bill signing ceremony, receiving the first of many pens the President used to sign the document. As she sat in the front row, she received a standing ovation, and President Biden got down on one knee to greet her. (Wikipedia)
Music: Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Black National Anthem) – sung by Wintley Phipps
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) June 7, 2026
Piety is a virtue that can get a bad rap. It is sometimes associated with a “better than thou” attitude ostentatiously demonstrated by sanctimonious practices and gestures.
A profound sense of the true meaning of piety captured me when I saw the sculpture “Pietà” in Rome. I had seen a hundred photos of this treasure in previous years, but none touched the beauty and pathos embodied in the marble itself. I was tearful, speechless, and prayerfully united with Mary as she held the broken body of her precious son. What I felt was intense piety, an indescribable oneness with the Holy.
That holy, broken, but resurrected Body of Christ abides with us today in the Church and in the Creation. The redemptive energy of the Trinity, fired in us through the Incarnation, continues in time through Love. Redemption perdures through the love with which we bring the world to God, and God to the world. We are the Body of Christ living in our time.
Over the centuries, many brilliant theologians have approached the mystery of the Body of Christ, each contributing their own insights to help the rest of us grow in faith. For me. Pierre de Chardin, rare combination of scientist and mystic, expressed some of the most beautiful and expansive language about this mystery:
Radiant Word, blazing Power, you who mold the manifold so as to breathe your life into it; I pray you, lay on us those your hands — powerful, considerate, omnipresent, those hands which do not (like our human hands) touch now here, now there, but which plunge into the depths and the totality, present and past, of things so as to reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us.
May the might of those invincible hands direct and transfigure for the great world you have in mind that earthly travail which I have gathered into my heart and now offer you in its entirety. Remold it, rectify it, recast it down to the depths from whence it springs. You know how your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.
Do you now therefore, speaking through my lips, pronounce over this earthly travail your twofold efficacious word: the word without which all that our wisdom and our experience have built up must totter and crumble — the word through which all our most far-reaching speculations and our encounter with the universe are come together into a unity. Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, say again the words: This is my Body. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my Blood.
The Mass On The World – Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, S.J
A century before De Chardin, the grace-filled poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins also experienced the Body of Christ in the glory of Creation. Both of these writers foreshadowed the cosmic wisdom of our beloved Pope Francis who authored the spiritual masterpiece, Laudato Si’.
The New Testament does not only tell us of the earthly Jesus and his tangible and loving relationship with the world. It also shows him risen and glorious, present throughout creation by his universal Lordship: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). This leads us to direct our gaze to the end of time, when the Son will deliver all things to the Father, so that “God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:28). Thus, the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.
Laudatory Si’ (100)
Poetry: The Windhover – Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ
To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
” This poem is focused not on feelings or individuality, but on wording Christ. The kenosis of the Son into matter is the heart of all beauty and it is only in Christ that beauty is to be found and it is to Christ that beauty leads.”
Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. We pray, within this Loving Mystery, to our Creator, Redeemer, and Abiding Spirit. In each Divine Expression, may we praise and thank our generous God.
The Quaker Meetinghouse that William Penn attended is just a short distance from my home. I pass it frequently and read the Penn quote posted above its entrance, “Let us see what love can do.”
Trinity Sunday is a day to see what love can do. We contemplate the mystery of God, Who is Uncontainable Love, Who progenerates in Infinite Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification.
This is a beyond-big mystery that defies human comprehension. So how am I supposed to pray with it, one might ask!
First off, the Mystery of the Trinity can’t be analyzed or solved. Only problems can be addressed in that way. Like cathedrals of the soul, mysteries must be entered, revered, and embraced as they are. In today’s readings, Moses, Paul, and John share their experience of praying within the mystery of the Trinity.
In our first reading, Moses meets the Creator. He bows in profound awe, then comfortably welcomes God’s company. The passage invites us to an unexpected intimacy with Omnipotence. Love wants to be with us. Love wants to create through us.
Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship. Then he said, “If I find favor with you, O Lord, do come along in our company. This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own.”
Exodus 34:8-9
In our Second Reading from Corinthians, Paul instructs that the Redeemer abides with us through our joy, mutual encouragement, and peaceful co-existence. Like the Creator’s kiss that gives us life, the holy kiss of Christian community nurtures the timeless vitality of the Gospel.
Brothers and sisters, rejoice. Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the holy ones greet you.
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
That Redemption, given in the gift of God’s Son for us, imbues us with a share in eternal life – the Holy Spirit living within our redeemed hearts. We ourselves become the vessels where the Trinity chooses to abide eternally.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
John 3:16
So what might this Sacred Mystery mean for me today?
I think it shows us what God Who is Love can do:
Love can create life. Love can redeem life. Love can abide for life.
When you feel overwhelmed by a seemingly lifeless situation, remember what Creative Love can do.
When you encounter someone or something that seems irrevocably lost, remember what Redemptive Love can do.
When you are tested to abandon faith, hope, or charity, remember what Abiding Love can do.
Music: Hildegard of Bingen: De Spiritu Sancto (Holy Spirit, The Quickener Of Life) – sung by St. Stanislav Girls’ Choir
Just a reminder that we are back in ordinary time and that post will be less frequent, probably about one every 7 to 10 days. I hope you enjoyed the post during Easter tide. And I hope you enjoy the beginning of summer here in the northern hemisphere.
In the Northern Hemisphere, many await the day with parched longing for sun-kissed skin, salt water, and cook-outs.
In the swirl of that longing, we may forget the real meaning of the day, a day to honor and mourn lives given in military service. Originally titled “Decoration Day”, the memorial included the practice of strewing flowers, or “decorating”, the graves of fallen soldiers.
Immediately after the tragedy of the Civil War, there was an abundance of American graves to be so decorated, and a nation deeply wounded by its internal rivalries. A striking example is the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, a quiet town of about 2000 residents in the late 1800s. But in November 1864, in the farmers’ fallow fields, 10,000 Americans were wounded by one another, and 2300 died. Even if every resident buried a soldier, there would not have been enough grave diggers!
Confederate soldiers killed in the Battle of Franklin were buried on a two-acre plot of land at the Carnton Plantation donated by the McGavock family. “Widow of the South” Carrie McGavock cared for the cemetery for the rest of her life. Photograph courtesy of the Battle of Franklin Trust
Practical healing was sorely needed. In that hope, Memorial Day was formalized by an order issued by Grand Army of the Republic Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan in 1868. It has been observed ever since to honor those sacrificed to our continuing obsession with war.
Despite the happiness of approaching summer, I find Memorial Day heartbreaking. How profoundly sad that men, women, and children die, even now, in the wreckage of war when the human mind is capable of designing peace.
Each evening, somewhere between the Nightly News and Jeopardy, ads pop up for organizations like Wounded Warriors or Second Chance. The images of young men and women – their broken bodies, minds, and dreams – overwhelm me with a turbulent mix of pity and anger.
Ask yourself: Where do they get the guns?
The human family can change this! To do so would be a truly reverent way to honor our fallen and wounded heroes. World leaders could initiate the dismantling of systems that feed war, and reinforce efforts to establish global agreements for sustained peace. It is each of our responsibilities to demand this of our leaders and of ourselves.
To begin, we must ask ourselves these questions, determining where we fit in the answers:
Who benefits from war?
Who enriches themselves by its machinery?
Who retains power and wealth by appeasing warmongers?
Who pays the greatest price for war, and why are we willing to dehumanize and sacrifice them?
How does the rhetoric of force, retribution, and domination feed the avaricious fears of tyrants and their sycophants? How does such language affect me?
How do my own language, advocacy, and voting patterns reflect my understanding of war and commitment to peace?
Each Memorial Day, each Veterans Day, I do indeed honor our heroes. There are beloved members of my family and friends among them who have been willing to stand in harm’s way for my sake. Still, at a deeper level, I pray that war may recede to an ancient memory and not another name be added to its lamentable honor rolls.
On this sacred day, let us pray with the encouragement offered by Pope Leo on the 2026 World Day of Peace:
Dear brothers and sisters, whether we have the gift of faith or feel we lack it, let us open ourselves to peace! Let us welcome it and recognize it, rather than believing it to be impossible and beyond our reach. Peace is more than just a goal; it is a presence and a journey. Even when it is endangered within us and around us, like a small flame threatened by a storm, we must protect it, never forgetting the names and stories of those who have borne witness to it. Peace is a principle that guides and defines our choices. Even in places where only rubble remains, and despair seems inevitable, we still find people who have not forgotten peace. Just as on the evening of Easter Jesus entered the place where his disciples were gathered in fear and discouragement, so too the peace of the risen Christ continues to pass through doors and barriers in the voices and faces of his witnesses. This gift enables us to remember goodness, to recognize it as victorious, to choose it again, and to do so together.
Music: Where Have All the Flowers Gone – Peter, Paul, and Mary
These reflections during Eastertide 2026 are reblogs from 2023 and 2020.
Our readings for those years were the same as this year’s, and some of the thoughts might be worth rethinking. I hope my long-timers enjoy them a second time, and that my new-timers appreciate a trip back in time. I thank all of you for journeying with me on Lavish Mercy.
Lavish Mercy 