Month: October 2023

Remembering the Saints

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn spirituality1 Comment

Solemnity of All Saints
Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Synaxis of All Saints – Anonymous Russian icon

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 24, an exultant song of praise and celebration whose opening lines leave no doubt of God’s overarching Supremacy

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, 
the world and all who dwell therein.
For it is God who founded it upon the seas
and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.

Psalm 24: 1-2

The psalmist then asks and answers the burning question of all spiritual seekers: who may come into the presence of this Omnipotent Being? Who may live in Eternal Love?

Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord,
and who can stand in the holy place of God?
Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, 
who have not pledged themselves to falsehood, 
nor sworn by what is a fraud.
They shall receive a blessing from the Lord
and a just reward from the God of their salvation.

Psalm 24: 3-5

It is these successful seekers whom we celebrate today, 
the ones already embraced in everlasting glory.

As we consider their lives, we might ask the further question:
how did they do it; how did they achieve holiness?

John, in our second reading, says the key to holiness is to honor the gift already given to each of us at our creation and confirmed in our Baptism:

Beloved:
See what love God has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
Yet so we are.
The reason the world does not know us
is that it did not know God.
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like God
for we shall see God as God truly is.
Everyone who shares this hope seeks a heart purified in God.

We honor all the Saints today, especially the multitudes whose names are unknown to us. They are the ones who lived lives of Beatitude among us, as our Gospel teaches. May they help us to learn the lessons of:

  • a liberated spirit
  • an unpretentious persistance
  • a hopeful endurance
  • a thirst for righteousness
  • a merciful and pure heart
  • a gentle but relentless peace-making
  • and a courageous pursuit of justice

These are the keys that will lift up the gates of Heaven for us, allowing the Holy One to make us holy:

Lift up your heads, O gates;
lift them high, O everlasting doors;
and the One who reigns in glory shall come in.

Psalm 24: 7

Poetry: In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being – Denise Levertov 

Birds afloat in air’s current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled—but only saints
take flight. We cower
in cliff-crevice or edge out gingerly
on branches close to the nest. The wind
marks the passage of holy ones riding
that ocean of air. Slowly their wake
reaches us, rocks us.
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.

Music: two songs for the big feast🤗

Psalm 24: Lift up your heads, ye gates – Georg Friedrich Handel
Sung by the Gramophone Chorus – Ghana

Give Us Clean Hands – Charlie Hall

Welcome, November!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Poetry, Prayer, Seasons, spirituality1 Comment

I love this beautiful poem, The Shepherd’s Calendar by John Clare. Placing myself in its lovely artistic images, I have a grateful and deep appreciation of Earth and of her changing seasons. I like to pray with the poem in the spirit of Laudato Si, praising God for the beauty of Creation.

It’s a bit long, so you might just want to come back to it several times throughout the month, taking just one small stanza that seems to fit you day or mood.

Click the little white arrow in the bar below for accompanying music as you pray. You can re-click any number of times you wish.
To see each of the ten slides at your own pace, click the very small arrowhead > to the right of the slide.

November blessings to all of you, dear readers.

The Glory Yet to Come

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality1 Comment

Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
October 31, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/103123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 126, a song of hope fulfilled:

When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
    we were like men dreaming.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
    and our tongue with rejoicing.

Then they said among the nations,
    “The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us;
    we are glad indeed.

Psalm 126: 1-3

In our readings, we are called to be people of hope – to live in gratitude for hopes fulfilled, and to live in confidence of future blessing.

Paul blesses us with some of his most powerful words:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing
compared with the glory to be revealed for us.

Romans 8:18

How often, over the ensuing centuries, have these words uplifted and bravened a struggling heart! Paul reminds us of what he so passionately believed – that we are not here for this world alone; that we, with all Creation, are being transformed for eternal life in God.

Jesus too reminds us that our life in faith is so much bigger than we perceive. We see a tiny mustard seed, but God sees the whole tree of eternal life blossoming in us.  We see a fingertip of yeast, but God sees the whole Bread of Life rising in us.

Paul tells us to be People of Hope who do not yet expect to see the object of their hope but who, nonetheless, believe and love with all their hearts.

May we pray this today for ourselves, and for anyone burdened by suffering or hopelessness at this time in their lives.

Poetry: Hope – Czeslaw Milosz – poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in Polish. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who “voices our exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts”.

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
that sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all thing you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.
Some people say that we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
There are the ones who have no hope.
They think the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hand of thieves.

Music:  Living Hope – Phil Wickham

Raised Up!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, healing, Jesus, Mercy, spirituality2 Comments

Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
October 30, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/103023.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 68 which pictures a triumphant God, rising like the sun over the darkness of evil.

Arise, O God, and let your enemies be scattered;
let those who hate you flee.
Let them vanish like smoke when the wind drives it away; 
as the wax melts at the fire,
so let the wicked perish at your presence.

Psalm 68:1-3

This psalm comforts us with a tender picture of God:

Protector of orphans, defender of widows,
the One who dwells in holiness,
who gives the solitary a home
and brings forth prisoners into freedom;
but the rebels shall live in dry places.

Psalm 68: 5-6

It is the same tenderness Paul presents in our first reading:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
The Spirit bears witness with our spirit
that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…
if only we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 8:8-9

And there we have the key line: 
we are to live a life aligned with 
the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.

And what will that kind of life look like? It will look like our merciful Jesus of today’s Gospel – who stepped out to see, comfort, and heal the suffering around him.

Jesus recognized the crippled woman as “an heir of God, and joint heir with him” to the fullness of life in God. We are called to recognize ourselves and all of our sisters and brothers in the same way.

Poetry: WOMAN UN-BENT (LUKE 13:10–17) – by Irene Zimmerman, OSF

That Sabbath day as always 
she went to the synagogue 
and took the place assigned her 
right behind the grill where, 
the elders had concurred, 
she would block no one’s view, 
she could lean her heavy head, 
and (though this was not said) 
she’d give a good example to 
the ones who stood behind her. 
 
That day, intent as always 
on the Word (for eighteen years 
she’d listened thus), she heard 
Authority when Jesus spoke. 
 
Though long stripped 
of forwardness, she came forward, nonetheless, 
when Jesus summoned her. 
“Woman, you are free of your infirmity,” he said. 

The leader of the synagogue 
worked himself into a sweat 
as he tried to bend the Sabbath 
and the woman back in place. 

But she stood up straight and let 
God’s glory touch her face.

Video: Jesus Heals the Bent-over Woman

If you’d still like a little music, this one seems to fit: Spirit Touch by Joseph Akins

It’s That Simple

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, repentance, spirituality3 Comments

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 29, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102923.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings instruct us on how to love God. Now maybe you think you don’t need any help on that topic, and maybe you’re right. But — just maybeeeeee – you and I are a little bit like the folks in our passage from Exodus who sometimes forgot that the way to love God is to love neighbor.

“You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. 
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. 
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry. 

Exodus 22;21-22

It seems that these Exodus folks suffer from spiritual obtusity. They are a little forgetful of who they really are. They forget their roots – that they were once aliens themselves. They forget that widows and orphans matter as much as they do. They forget that their neighbor needs a cloak (or a home) to be able to sleep at night.

So God tells them, “Hey, I love these people you have conveniently “forgotten”. So don’t pretend you love me if you don’t love them.” It’s that simple.

In our Gospel, Jesus basically says the same thing. When the brilliant Pharisee tries to trap Jesus in an obtuse intellectual argument, Jesus disarms him with a clear and simple response:

Jesus said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40

The whole enterprise of the spiritual life is to actualize Jesus’s response in one’s life. In the process of doing that by our response to God’s grace, we might sometimes get caught in spiritual forgetfulness, intellectual excuses, or the blare of a dissonant culture.

In our second reading, Paul commends the Thessalonians for having done well in this spiritual endeavor. They did it by replacing what was idolatrous in their lives with the living and true God:

You turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.

1 Thessalonians 1:9-10

I don’t like to think of myself as particularly idolatrous, but I do have little false gods pop up in my life at times. They tend to wear the deceptive costumes of the seven deadly sins convincing me that I have a right, or at least an excuse, to ignore my neighbor for the sake of my egotism, possessiveness, or spiritual laziness.

May today’s readings wake us up to anything we need to hear within them so that we may freely sing with today’s psalmist:

I love you, my true God, my strength,
my neighbor God, present in my life,
my balance, safety, comforter.
My God, my dear steady God,
my protection, well of my salvation,
my trustworthy Friend!
I praise You because, with You,
I am safe from any false god
and anointed by your grace
for the journey.

Psalm 18: my prayerful adaptation

Poetry: You, Neighbor God – Rainer Maria Rilkë

You, neighbor god, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe
and know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.
The wall is builded of your images.
They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.
And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.

Music: Overcome – Psalm 18 – James Block

This song renders the Psalm in a beautiful melody. The Psalm, however, retains the militant images so prevalent in the culture of ancient Israel (and sadly in our own). Our task, as we listen and pray these Psalms, is to hear those images as metaphors for our own spiritual challenges and blessings, rather than as an approbation of war and domination.

Leaders of the Faith

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Discipleship, Faith, spiritualityLeave a comment

Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles
October 28, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102823.cfm

Brothers and sisters:
You are no longer strangers and sojourners,
but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household of God,
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.

Ephesians 2:19-20

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we celebrate the feast of the Apostles Simon and Jude. Not much is really known about either of these men. One tradition suggests that after the Ascension, they went together to carry the Gospel to Persia where they were eventually martyred.

simon_Jude

Since we have so few facts, many legends and interpretations have grown up around these saints. Probably the strongest and most familiar of these is of St. Jude as the patron of hopeless cases.

There are probably very few of us who haven’t asked at least one favor from St. Jude in our lifetimes. This probability begs the question of why and how do we pray with the saints.

Our tradition holds that we exist in the Communion of Saints with all of God’s creatures, and that we inspire and support one another by the sharing of our lives. This sharing is not limited by time, nor is it constricted by death.

When we pray with the saints, we draw on their faithful witness to inspire, motivate and sustain us in our lives.

Today, we might pray within the spirit of these two great Christians whose witness, though historically muted, transcends time. May they inspire in us the passion and joy to speak Christ in our lives.

Prose: Since we celebrate two Apostles today, we might want to slowly and carefully pray this prayer. The Apostles’ Creed is a statement of Christian belief that is used by Western churches, both Catholic and Protestant. While it is explicitly affirmed only in Western churches, it reflects traditions that were affirmed officially by the entire Church in the Nicene Creed. Although its roots are much earlier, in its present form it dates to about the eighth century.

apos creed

Music: Apostles’ Creed – sung here by Rebecca Gorzynska, a beautiful and talented artist (Latin and English text below.)

latin creed

The Right Thing

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Faith, justice, Mercy, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 27, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102723.cfm

Today, in God’s Mercy, Paul sounds a lot like someone approaching the microphone at “Sinners Anonymous“:

I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.
The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.
For I do not do the good I want,
but I do the evil I do not want.

Romans 7:18-19

Paul basically attests to the fact that for human beings, even him, will and actions often don’t synch up. Sure, we want to be good people, but as Nike says, do we:

Do itJPG

Paul says no, we don’t. The only way we do the good we will to do is by the grace of Jesus Christ.

In our Gospel, Jesus affirms the slowness of the human spirit to act on the realities around us. In some translations, Jesus uses a phrase which caught on with the architects of Vatican II: the signs of the times.

You hypocrites!
You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky;
why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
“Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?

Luke 12:56-57

Jesus is telling his listeners and us that we need to be alert to the circumstances of our world. It both weeps and rejoices. Where it weeps, we must be a source of mercy and healing. Where it rejoices, we must foster and celebrate the Presence of the Spirit.

In the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World), we read:

In every age, the church carries the responsibility
of reading the signs of the times and of
interpreting them in the light of the Gospel,
if it is to carry out its task.
In language intelligible to every generation,
it should be able to answer the ever recurring questions
which people ask about the meaning
of this present life and of the life to come,
and how one is related to the other.
We must be aware of and understand the aspirations,
the yearnings, and the often dramatic features
of the world in which we live.

While we look forward hopefully to the communications that will come from the current Synod on Synodality, the Documents of Vatican II have everlasting meaning for the Church. Although written in the 1960s, these powerful words hold true today. We are the Church of which the document speaks. We are the ones whom Jesus calls to respond with authentic justice and mercy to the signs of the times. Read the newspaper in that light today. Watch the news in that light. Meet your brothers and sisters in that light today.

Poetry: The Right Thing – Theodore Roethke

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —
The right thing happens to the happy man.

The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.

God bless the roots! Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Child of the dark, he can outleap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,

And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Music: The Times They Are A’changin’ – Bob Dylan whose songs in the 50s and 60sbecame anthems for the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defied popular music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. (Wikipedia) (Ah, it was a good time to be young!)

The Swedish Academy awarded Dylan the 2016 Nobel Prize inLiterature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.

Bear Witness to the Light

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality1 Comment

Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 26, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102623.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy,  Jesus says he has come to set fire on the earth! He says that, because of him, there will not be peace but division, setting households against one another. It’s not a comforting Gospel.

“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.

Luke 12: 49- 1

We don’t live in a comforting world, do we? We see human beings set against each other in war, political corruption, economic despoiling, human trafficking, ecological crime, and other deeply ingrained systemic abuses.

Pope John Paul II in his encyclical EVANGELIUM VITAE refers to these realities as a “culture of death”.

Some threats come from nature itself, but they are made worse by the culpable indifference and negligence of those who could in some cases remedy them. Others are the result of situations of violence, hatred and conflicting interests, which lead people to attack others through murder, war, slaughter and genocide.

And how can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? And what of the violence inherent not only in wars as such but in the scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts which stain our world with blood? What of the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the world’s ecological balance, by the criminal spread of drugs, or by the promotion of certain kinds of sexual activity which, besides being morally unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life? It is impossible to catalogue completely the vast array of threats to human life, so many are the forms, whether explicit or hidden, in which they appear today! 

Paul says that, through our Baptism, we are called and strengthened to bear witness against such a culture:

But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God,
the benefit that you have leads to sanctification,
and its end is eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:22-23
poor child

Every day, each of us has the opportunity to stand up for mercy and justice by the choices we make, the attitudes we affirm, and the values we stand for. But sometimes it’s hard, because doing so can set us against some of the people around and close to us. That’s when the rubber meets the road! Do we belong to Christ, or not?

Poetry: A Blessing – Bob Holmes

May the quiet fire of God’s love
arise within you.
May its flames of joy and peace
Enlighten your steps in this world,
And may you be like the burning bush,
The presence of God for each other,
That holy healing of light of love,
The breath of God made manifest
In you.

Music: Gabriel’s Oboe – written by Ennio Morricone, played by Hauser

Obedient Heart

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spirituality1 Comment

Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 25, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102523.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Paul and Jesus both instruct and challenge their listeners and us.

Rm6_17 obedient heart

… thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin,
you have become obedient from the heart
to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted.
Freed from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.

Romans 6:17

Paul wants us to understand that, through our Baptism, we are living in a whole new power for goodness and grace. The world may look the same as it did before we belonged to Christ, but it isn’t. 

To use a phrase from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins,

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

If we see with the new eyes of grace, we will be able to respond to Jesus’s challenge:

Stay awake!
For you do not know when the Son of Man will come.

Matthew 24:42

Stay awake. See the world and your life as they truly are  – places where God awaits you in every moment. Incline your heart to listen lovingly to the sound of the Holy Spirit in your life. That obedient heart is precious to God!

Poetry: Immersion – Denise Levertov

There is anger abroad in the world, a numb thunder,
because of God’s silence. But how naïve,
to keep wanting words we could speak ourselves,
English, Urdu, Tagalog, the French of Tours, the French of Haiti…
Yes, that was one way omnipotence chose
to address us—Hebrew, Aramaic, or whatever the patriarchs
chose in their turn to call what they heard. Moses
demanded the word, spoken and written. But perfect freedom
assured other ways of speech. God is surely
patiently trying to immerse us in a different language,
events of grace, horrifying scrolls of history
and the unearned retrieval of blessings lost for ever,
the poor grass returning after drought, timid, persistent.
God’s abstention is only from human dialects. The holy voice
utters its woe and glory in myriad musics, in signs and portents.
Our own words are for us to speak, a way to ask and to answer.

Music:  Speak, O Lord – Kristyn Getty

Be Brave!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Hope, Jesus, spirituality7 Comments

Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 24, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102423.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Paul contrasts the sin of “Adam” with the gift of Jesus, demonstrating the specifics of Christ’s redemptive act.

Adam

A key phrase for our prayer might be the following. The concupiscence of human nature will always make the sinful choice a possibility. But we can gain courage and strength from this powerful line from Paul:

Where sin increased,
grace overflowed all the more….

Romans 5:15

In our Gospel, Jesus teaches a lesson about perseverance in the spiritual life. He says if we stick with it, God will welcome us the way a generous master thanks and embraces a loyal servant. He adds a comforting thought for those of us of “a certain age”.

And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.

Luke 12:38

Speaking personally now, I find that moving into “the second or third watch” can be a little scary. As various physical functions occasionally fail me, and some of my joints are replaced with earth minerals, a line from Yeats’s poem comes to mind – “things fall apart“:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

As I look through my reading glasses at the information for my new titanium knee, I remember the young athlete who could drive a basketball down the lane for an explosive layup, often being knocked on her nethers by a powerful opponent. Nevertheless, she would jump up for the next rebound. What happened to that girl?

This Gospel reminds me that she is still inside me, but she is golden now — lifting her spirit, by God’s grace, to deeper challenge.

 I am beginning to understand that aging is its own life phase, not just a final comfortable fixity in one’s maturing. Just as every other life phase requires a gradual mastery of its challenges, so does aging. Toddlers must conquer balance and language skills. Teens must gain confidence and self-direction. Young adults work for greater wisdom and meaningful life relationships. Those “post-50” evaluate and may be challenged by the “successes” of their past years. And those in the sometimes not-so-really golden years are still doing all these earlier tasks while meeting the unique challenges of aging. One must be brave!

I hope some of you are Harry Potter fans. The books have powerful little encouragements tucked in their magical dialogue. One of my favorites is this. Harry, encouraging his elderly and fearful teacher to make a courageous choice, says, “Be brave, Professor… Otherwise, the bowl will remain empty… forever.”

The bowl of our life is never filled until it’s filled. Jesus reminds us that none of us knows when that day of fulfillment will come and we must be vigilant for it until it does.

Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.

Luke 12:37

We draw courage for that vigilance not from Harry Potter of course, but from Christ’s own promise to us that there is a special blessing especially for us 2nd or 3rd watchers:

And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.

Luke 12:38

I believe that if we prayerfully listen, we will find that this blessing already suggests itself this side of Christ’s final arrival. As Paul indicates in our first reading, when we remain open to graceful relationship with God, we already live in the peaceable kingdom.

… how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace
and the gift of justification
come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ…

Romans 5:17

Poetry: Sailing to Byzantium – William Butler Yeats

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Music: Candlelight – Ottmar Liebert

Liebert is a German classical guitarist, songwriter and producer best known for his Spanish-influenced music. A five-time Grammy Award nominee, he is also an ordained Zen monk.