Today, in Mercy, we encounter a scriptural passage that is often designated as the Golden Text of the Bible.
God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.John 3: 16-17
Exegetical volumes have been written about this single verse.
But for our prayer this morning, it may be enough to simply bask in God’s love for us. Within that grateful delight, remember that God loves every creature with the same divine intensity – enough to breathe God’s own Life into us each one, enough to give Jesus for our redemption.
Just those astounding thoughts may lead us to where God wants to meet us in prayer today.
Music: God So Loved the World – John Stainer (1840-1901] – sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whoso believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world
to condemn the world;
but that the world through him might be saved.
Today, in Mercy, we read about the Love which unified the early Christian community.
Their love and faith so satisfied their needs that they voluntarily disposed themselves for the good of others. That mutual self-donation generated a shared abundance beyond expectation. And the witness of radical community inspired new generosity:
Thus Joseph, also named by the Apostles Barnabas (which is translated Ason of encouragement”), a Levite, a Cypriot by birth, sold a piece of property that he owned, then brought the money and put it at the feet of the Apostles.
Our Christian communities today may never experience the simple unity of the early Church. The complexities and sophistications of centuries now impede us. But the principle within that simple unity is still available to us:
We are One Body and the basic needs (both material and spiritual)
of all should be met through our mutual generosity, so that everyone may be free to worship in peace.
That principle must never be obscured by institutionalization, divisive interpretation of dogma, or pharisaical religious elitism.
May God inspire us to be a generous and merciful Church!
Music: One Heart, One Mind – David Haas ( Lyrics below)
May we be of one heart, one mind
Giving our lives for each other
All that we are, we hold in common
By the grace of the Lord
May there be no one among us
Who is need or alone
May we be of one heart, one mind
Grounded in hope, strong by faith
Filled with joy, led in peace
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
Courage lived, wisdom shared
Mercy shown, truth be told
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
Wonders and signs, day by day
One in love, offering praise
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
4.Unity, generous hearts
Table spread, breaking bread
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
5.Kingdom bound, blind now see
Hungry fed, poor no more
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
No more tears, fear has fled
Dead are raised, justice reigns
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
Silver or gold, we do not have
Only the name of the Lord
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
Spirit poured, prophecy sung
Visions and dreams by old and young
Blest by God, one in the Body of Christ!
Today, in Mercy, we move out of the intense blessings of Easter’s Octave into a time called “Eastertide”. For the next six weeks, we will continue to pray with Acts and John’s Gospel.
Eastertide is a time of great joy in the Church. This joy takes voice in special prayers used only, or with greater frequency, during this time, for example:
Vidi Aquam
Te Deum
Regina Caeli
and a proliferation of Alleluias
We, as Church, are celebrating our rebirth in Christ. It is a miracle even to have been given the gift of life. But, as Jesus tells Nicodemus in today’s Gospel, it is a gift beyond description to be reborn in the Spirit of God:
What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you, “You must be born from above”.
Let’s pray in thanksgiving today for the gift of life for ourselves and all those we love. Let us pray for the continual rebirth of our spirits in the abundant Easter grace of the Risen Christ. (Below the music is a Birthday Prayer that you might save for your own birthday celebration.)
Music: Gradual and Alleluia – Catholic Songs, Gregorian Chant
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you… (Jeremiah 5:1)
On this, the day of your birth, God says to you:
Of all the myriad gifts of my creation, this is the day I made you. Rest in that thought. I made you – For this time in history, to be in the world with these people, to live in this place, to know these times, these cultures, this evolution of my creation.
On the day I made you, I made thousands of other creatures. Human beings, each reflecting some facet of my infinite image. Beautiful birds, riotous monkeys, infinitesimal ants. My lava broke through earth’s crusts to form new islands. I folded unseen mountains into yet undiscovered gorges, bent rivers into surprise journeys, washed entire beaches onto new shores. I was busy the day I made you. War raged and I welcomed its many victims into heaven. More creatures died on your birthday than were born. More came home to me than went out to begin their journey.
But you were one who went out. When I opened my hand and breathed your journey into you, I smiled. I saw the wonders that could bless the world because of you. I saw a rainbow of love, generosity, mutuality, happiness, encouragement, and faith gathered like an unhatched egg in your heart. I saw the storms and winds that would release that prism in your soul. I saw it spread across a wide sky because of all the years and experiences that I would give you.
I saw the hint of sunrise in you. Its name was mercy. It was a gift fired by the energy of My own heart. I looked beyond you to the cold and shadowed world that you would comfort with its light and warmth.
I was happy on the day I made you. I was filled with hope for the blessing you would be. I am still filled with joy, hope and love for you on this your long-after birthday. You have tried to live my sacred dream for you.
As the sun rises glorious in the eastern sky, I promise you a future full of love. Notice that the western sky reflects the brilliance of the sunrise, just as all the years now past assure you of my presence at the core of your life. You have been and are infinitely loved. Be love in return. Your days are replete with mercy. Be mercy in return. Be born again this day!
Today, in Mercy,our readings continue to show us the rising power of Christ after the Resurrection.
Acts demonstrates how powerfully He lives in his disciples, and in the faith of the emerging Church.
… the people esteemed them. Yet more than ever, believers in the Lord, great numbers of men and women, were added to them. Thus they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and mats so that when Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on one or another of them.
Our Gospel recounts two Post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus where He bolsters that faith for these still fledgling followers. They were gathered in the Upper Room, doors locked and fearful. When Jesus appears, the first thing he says is, “Peace”, because that is what his little flock most needs.
In the course of the reading, we discover Thomas’s adamant doubt unless he can see and touch evidence of the Christ he once knew in the flesh. His doubt is so strong that his faith, when it comes, overwhelms him.
My Lord, and my God!
In these first sainted founders of the faith, we can find a mirror image of our own call to witness Christ. We are delegated to be his presence in the world, to cast a shadow that bears his blessing in the midst of suffering and confusion.
But in the locked room of our hearts, we may still be afraid. We may feel, like Thomas, that we were absent when the affirmation and courage were distributed!
Knowing our own weaknesses – and captured in the maze of their little dramas – we may be skeptical that Christ desires to rise in us, to preach by our lives.
What Jesus said to these very fragile witnesses, he says to us
Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me,
so I send you.
Let us look around today in awareness of those who fall in the shadow of our faith: our children and families, our religious communities, our elders, our neighbors, our friends and co-workers. As we pass through life together, does our presence bless them with a trace of God?
As we pray today, let us place our doubts, fears, weaknesses and self-concerns into Christ’s sacred wounds. Let us leave them there in confidence as we humbly choose to be his Presence and Mercy for others by the simple, selfless choices of our lives.
On Friday night, my religious community shares the joy of celebrating the lives of such witnesses, our Sisters marking 25, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80 and 85 years of faithful, merciful service. I list their names with two poems I used while praying for them this morning. Please join us in grateful prayer for these dear Sisters today.
25 years Mary Paula Cancienne
50 years Anna Salzman
60 years Kathleen Boyce
Joan Freney
Kathleen Gennett
Janet Henry
Maryann Horan
Marie Bernadette Kinniry
Louise Marie Luby
Eleanor McCann
Maureen Murray
Barbara Ann Newton
Katherine O’Donnell
Anne Quigley
Joan Scary
Margaret Taylor
Anne Woodeshick
70 Years Joan Donahue
Muriel Kershaw
Miriam Theresa Lavelle
75 Years Margaret Kelly (RIP last week)
Mary Rita Robinson
Helen Cahill
80 Years Elaine Buckley
85 Years Mary Berenice Eltz
Poem 1: The Neophyte by Alice Meynelle ( This poem was given to me decades ago by one of our old Sisters. The poem describes how, at first profession, the young novice – in faith – gives ALL her years to God, even before she lives through them.)
Who knows what days I answer for to-day?
Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way
Give one repose to pain I know not now,
One check to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.
O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat
I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.
Poem 2: Silver by Jeannette Encinias
( This beautiful poem makes me think about what God would say to our dear sisters as they are blessed to age into God’s Love over decade upon decade.)
“How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and the children come
to find their own history
in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?
This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.”
Today, in Mercy, in our reading from Acts, we see how the courage and inspiration of the disciples amazed to surrounding community.
The disciples had been known as ordinary women and men, but the power of their new-found witness was stunning:
The leaders, elders, and scribes were amazed, and they recognized them as the companions of Jesus. Then when they saw the man who had been cured
standing there with them, they could say nothing in reply.
This powerful witness in the disciples was not a showy, self-promoting swagger.
Rather, they had been radically transformed by their faith in Jesus Christ. The power poured out of them, like light from a Star.
What would it be like if the witness of our faith were so vibrant that we moved the world to wonder! What if our lives could not help but speak through our actions of mercy, justice, truth and peace?
Music:I Will Stand as a Witness of Christ
(Please see note below song. Thanks.)
On Friday night, my religious community shares the joy of celebrating the lives of such witnesses, our Sisters marking 25, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80 and 85 years of faithful, merciful service. In an additional post, I will list their names with two poems I used while praying for them this morning.
Please join us in grateful prayer for these dear Sisters today.
Late April and the sweet fullness of a spring morning pours down on the silver water. It had been a fruitless night for the weary fishermen, but not an unpleasant one. They had distracted one another from their labors by singing their ancient folksongs and telling the stories of their recent epiphanies. As dawn cracked through darkness, they trailed their fingers in the gentle wake and turned their tired souls towards shore.
And He stood there, misted in diffused radiance. “The starboard side”, he called. “Why?,” they thought; and then again, “Why not?”. With just that small opening in the closed door of their hopelessness, they were overwhelmed with the stunning presence of possibility.
How could these seasoned fishermen have failed to notice the abundance swimming at their side? How could they, so accustomed to the rocking sea, have been narcotized by its lulling darkness?
When we have abandoned hope and tired of the rolling waves; when we have turned the bow toward shore in acquiescence to a hungry morning, remember these disciples. Like them, may we listen for the soft suggestion, “Children…the starboard side…”.
There is always another side, another path to the fullest of life. The hopeless dirges we repeat in our darkness are the devil’s deceptions. The truth is that life runs beside us and with in us, just below the surface of our fears. Love stands on the shore and encourages us to go back for a moment into the darkness, to look again for the hidden blessing, and then to come to the feast in Love’s abiding presence.
Today, we are the Apostles. What bold command is Jesus calling to us in the morning mist?
Music: Edward Elgar – The Apostles – a long, beautiful piece you may want to play in the background if you have a quiet space in your day.
Today, in Mercy, Jesus asks his disciples, “Why do questions arise in your heart?”
Honestly, Lord? How could they not? You have, after all, just RISEN FROM THE DEAD! We’re not used to that, and we’re not sure how to handle it!
And about that Last Supper, when you said the bread and wine were your Body and Blood? It’s a pretty amazing statement, and we’re still trying to comprehend it.
We’re just human beings, Lord. Our minds naturally work to solve problems. That’s why we have questions – we like answers.
Only now, as Resurrection People, are we beginning to learn that you are much more the “The Answer”.
You will always be “The Mystery” – the Infinity we are invited to – where there is no end, only deeper, always deeper.
Help us to learn that our faith and our doubts are the same thing – they are our attempts to embrace the Question. Help us transform our doubts to faith by our unequivocal trust in your Mystery.
For God does not want to be believed in, to be debated and defended by us, but simply to be realized through us.” ― Martin Buber
Mystery is not to be construed as a lacuna in our knowledge, as a void to be filled, but rather as a certain plentitude. — Gabriel Marcel
Today, in Mercy, our passage from Acts describes a sacred practice of the early Church – the invocation of the Name of Jesus as a source of spiritual power.
Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”
These first Christians were so invested in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that they claimed the right to act in his Name. They also clearly believed that they had no power themselves, but only in that blessed Name.
To call someone by their given name is an act of familiarity, if not intimacy. For those closest to us, we often have nicknames or pet names, conveying a unique understanding of each other.
Calling God by name is an act of both intimacy and worship. In the book of Exodus, God takes the first step in that deeper friendship:
God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name “the Lord” I did not make myself fully known to them.
With the Incarnation of Jesus, God took the ultimate step in loving friendship with us. To help us understand the nature of this friendship, Jesus gives himself some “nicknames” throughout the Gospel:
Good Shepherd
Lamb of God
the Vine
the Way, the Truth, the Life
the Bread of Life
the Light of the World
Each of these names helps us to enter more deeply into the infinite love God has for us.
Do you have a special name for God? Sometimes, early in the morning when First Light touches my window, I pray with that Name. I ask my Bright God to light my life and the lives of those I love this day. At night, that same window is full of Sweet Darkness, a Name I call God as I ask that we all find a peaceful, protected sleep.
We might also ask if God has a special name for us. At different moments and moods of your life, does God speak to you with a personal, loving “nickname”? If you haven’t heard it yet, why not ask God to whisper it to you in your next prayer?
Music: Jesus the Lord – Roc O’Connor, SJ
Jesus, Jesus
Let all creation bend the knee to the Lord.
1. In Him we live, we move and have our being;
In Him the Christ, In Him the King!
Jesus the Lord.
2. Though Son, He did not cling to Godliness,
But emptied Himself, became a slave!
Jesus the Lord.
3. He lived obediently His Father’s will
Accepting His death, death on a cross!
Jesus the Lord.
Today, in Mercy, our readings present us with a picture of the nascent Church as it works toward understanding itself in the physical absence of Jesus.
Throughout the Gospels, we see a Christian community forming around a Leader they can see, hear and touch. Acts reveals how that community awakens to itself when Jesus is no longer materially present.
Acts shows us a Church like us. We have never seen Christ, nor heard him, nor touched him. And yet we believe, or want to believe.
In our reading today, Peter preaches with brutal honesty:
Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
Peter’s message gets through to the assembly, to the point that, when they hear it, they are “cut to the heart”.
This phrase indicates a profound conversion in the way they believed. Peter tells them that their faith, like Jesus’ life, must now become a sign of contradiction to a “corrupt generation “.
What might this powerful passage say to us?
For one thing, the reading calls us to be honest about the sincerity of our faith. Is it the core of our lives? Or is it, at best, a Sunday hobby? Does it pervade our relationships and choices, giving witness to Christ’s commission to love? Or is it a tool to judge and vilify those who differ from us?
The reading doesn’t demand that we “preach out loud”. It calls us to a much more courageous witness:
to be Truth in a world of lies
to be Peace in violence
to be Justice in the face of abuse and domination
to be Servant rather than be served
to be Love for those deemed unlovable
in other words, to be like Jesus
And to do it all because we have been “cut to the heart” by the witness of the Cross and Resurrection.
( This poem was given to me decades ago by one of our old Sisters. The poem describes how, at first profession, the young novice – in faith – gives ALL her years to God, even before she lives through them.)
Lavish Mercy 