Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
May 1, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/050124.cfm

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Jesus said to his disciples:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
John 15: 1-4

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What a tender and comforting passage! When we are invited to “remain” somewhere ( as in, “Please stay for dinner.”), it indicates that we have already arrived into that inviting presence.

Jesus tells us that we are already living in God’s Presence and that he wants us to always remain there in God’s Love. He tells us that we are established in that Presence – that we are already “pruned” for God.

We don’t realize how holy we are. I live with almost 100 spiritually noble women. I have the joy of knowing Mercy Associates, dear family, and personal friends who enrich my life by their desire to live in God’s Light! They would probably never describe themselves as “holy”.

But they are. They have spent their lives steeping themselves in the things of God, and God has delighted in them – invited them to “remain” in Love.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Let’s take time to think about our holiness, not in pride but in humble thanks for the gift God has given us. Each of our lives has “pruned” us in a particular way to reflect God’s glory. Let’s remain – let’s linger – in that blessing as we pray today.

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Poetry: To Live with the Spirit of God – Jessica Powers

To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener.
It is to keep the vigil of mystery,
earthless and still.
One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit,
strange as the wind’s will. 

The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows
turns like a wandering weather vane toward love.
It may lament like Job or Jeremiah,
echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove.
It may rejoice in spaciousness of meadow
that emulates the freedom of the sky.
Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing;
it has cast down forever from its hand
the compass of the whither and the why. 

To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.
It is becoming love, and like to Him
toward Whom we strain with metaphors of creatures:
fire-sweep and water-rush and the wind’s whim.
The soul is all activity, all silence;
and though it surges Godward to its goal,
it holds, as moving earth holds sleeping noonday,
the peace that is the listening of the soul.

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Music: Return to the Heart – David Lanz