Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.
John 10:1-4
The “gate” is the place where life flows in and out of our spirits. “Thieves and robbers” – all that is unloving – tries to break in to that sacred place. But it is only when we hear the voice of Love and Truth that we should allow our hearts to follow.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let’s examine our heart’s gate – that place where we discern the spirit motivating our lives. To guard our hearts for grace, that “gate” must be secured and oiled with prayer and a Gospel-catechized life.
Poetry: from Rumi
Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates At the first gate, ask yourself, “Is it true?” At the second gate ask, “Is it necessary?” At the third gate ask, “Is it kind?”
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said: “Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ …
Acts 4:8-10
The early Church understood that the miraculous grace in their lives came only through the power of Jesus. They lived in his Name.
No doubt they continually said that precious Name in prayer, remembrance, hope, and longing.
As we pray the precious Name today, let us think of how it sounded when spoken by his loving mother.
Think how brave Peter called to him in prayer.
Hear Steven say the Holy Name as he faced death.
Hear the tenderness of Mary Magdalen‘s “Rabboni”.
Listen to your own heart, and all that it means to you as you repeat the precious Name, Jesus.
Prose: from St. Bernard of Clairvaux
The sweet Name of Jesus produces in us holy thoughts, fills the soul with noble sentiments, strengthens virtue, begets good works, and nourishes pure affections. All spiritual food leaves the soul dry, if it contain not that penetrating oil, the Name Jesus. When you take your pen, write the Name Jesus: if you write books, let the Name of Jesus be contained in them, else they will possess no charm or attraction for me; you may speak, or you may reply, but if the Name of Jesus sounds not from your lips, you are without unction and without charm. Jesus to me is honey in the mouth, light in the eyes, a flame in our heart.
When he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs where all the widows came to him weeping and showing him the tunics and cloaks that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter sent them all out and knelt down and prayed. Then he turned to her body and said, “Tabitha, rise up.” She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up. He gave her his hand and raised her up, and when he had called the holy ones and the widows, he presented her alive. This became known all over Joppa, and many came to believe in the Lord.
Acts 9:39-42
In our readings today, we see people’s lives turning forward or backward based on the power or weakness of their faith.
Peter prays and then turns toward Tabitha to restore her life by the power of his faith.
In our Gospel, those disciples whose faith is too weak to receive Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist, return to their former uninspired life.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to have a committed faith that grows stronger with the inevitable turns of our life. May our Eucharistic faith power our lives to witness Christ.
Poetry: The Waterwheel – Rumi
As I read this poem, I can hear Jesus asking his friends to believe and stay with him in the turns of life.
Stay together, friends. Don’t scatter and sleep.
Our friendship is made of being awake.
The waterwheel accepts water and turns and gives it away, weeping.
That way it stays in the garden, whereas another roundness rolls through a dry riverbed looking for what it thinks it wants.
Stay here, quivering with each moment like a drop of mercury.
As Paul was nearing Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He said, “Who are you, sir?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”
The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could see no one. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus.
There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight and ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is there praying, and in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, that he may regain his sight.”
Acts 9:3-7
Acts describes all kinds of “sight” in this familiar passage. We can see with our eyes, with our minds, with our hearts, and with our spirits. Or these magnificent gifts can be blinded in us by our ignorance and prejudice, as they were in Saul.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We think of times in our lives when truth or reality “dawned” on us. We may have been shocked that we had, until that time, missed the point! Surely you’ve asked yourself at sometime, “How did I ever miss that?!”
We pray for the grace to SEE God’s Presence in our circumstances by living a prayerful, spiritually receptive life. God may be calling us, comforting us, challenging us – but God is there, loving us.
Poetry: St. Paul – Thomas Merton
When I was Saul, and sat among the cloaks, My eyes were stones, I saw no sight of heaven, Open to take the spirit of the twisting Stephen. When I was Saul and sat among the rocks, I locked my eyes, and made my brain my tomb, Sealed with what boulders rolled across my reason!
When I was Saul and walked upon the blazing desert My road was quiet as a trap. I feared what word would split high noon with light And lock my life, and try to drive me mad: And thus I saw the Voice that struck me dead.
Tie up my breath, and wind me in white sheets of anguish, And lay me in my three days’ sepulchre Until I find my Easter in a vision.
Oh Christ! Give back my life, go, cross Damascus, Find out my Ananias in that other room: Command him, as you do, in this my dream; He knows my locks, and owns my ransom, Waits for Your word to take his keys and come.
Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, that is, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury, who had come to Jerusalem to worship, and was returning home. Seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit said to Philip, “Go and join up with that chariot.” Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone instructs me?”
The encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian official holds many lessons. For today, we focus on both men’s willingness to build an interdependent faith relationship. Such relationships open us to new wisdom and knowledge. Unless we build them, we remain isolated in a deceptive arrogance that limits our spiritual life.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray in thanksgiving for the spiritual guides we have met and for the opportunities we have had to share faith. We teach one another by our spiritual hospitality, humility, and generosity.
Quote: from Rabindranath Tagore
The main object of teaching
is not to give explanations,
but to knock at the doors of the mind.
Music: We Believe- Newsboys
I don’t know if Philip sang to the Ethiopian, but if he had it would have been something like this😉.
There broke out a severe persecution of the Church in Jerusalem, and all were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria, except the Apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made a loud lament over him. Saul, meanwhile, was trying to destroy the Church; entering house after house and dragging out men and women, he handed them over for imprisonment.
Now those who had been scattered went about preaching the word. Thus Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Christ to them.
Acts 8:1-6
Those who persecuted the first Christians expected them to be obliterated by the subsequent “scattering “. Instead, like sparks cast widely into dry tinder, the Gospel exploded through the world in Power and Light.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to recognize ourselves and our whole Church as those same sparks cast into the ages for the sake of the Gospel. We are the ongoing fulfillment of the words Jesus spoke in today’s reading:
And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”
John 6:37-38
Prayer: Thinking about the legacy of faith passed down to us through the centuries, I came across this prayer of St. Alphonsus to St. Teresa of Avila.
O Seraphic virgin, St. Teresa, beloved spouse of the Crucified, you who burned with such great love of God while on earth, and now burn with a still purer and brighter flame in Heaven; you who so greatly desired to see God loved by all, obtain for me too, I pray, a spark of that holy fire, whereby I may oppose all that opposes God, and grant that all my thoughts, desires, and affections may be ever employed in pursuing, whether in the midst of joys or of sufferings, the will of the Supreme Good, Who deserves our unbounded love and obedience. Oh, obtain for me this grace, you who are so powerful with God, that, like you, I may be all on fire with divine love. Amen.
The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:
He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” …
… Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
from John 6:30-35
Jesus is present to a crowd demanding a sign in order to believe. He tells them that he is “the Sign” standing right in their midst.
Rather than a sign being a prerequisite for faith, it is faith that must come first in order for us to reverence the signs of God in our lives.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Jesus lives with us at the center of our lives. We might find it hard to believe that when life is frightening or painful.
Let’s pray today to receive God’s revelatory grace in whatever form it comes to us. Every moment of our lives is an invitation to the Truth.
Poetry: from Rumi
When His light shines — without a veil — neither the sky remains nor the earth, not the sun, nor the moon. God embraces all…there is nothing that is not a part of him already.
Remember God! His remembrance is the strength in the wings of the bird that is your soul
The souls of all friends of God are connected with one another
You must seek anything that you wish to find Not so with the Friend… You begin to seek after you find him.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.
John 6:24-27
In today’s Gospel, the people come to Jesus because of the food! They come because of the instant miracle! Jesus knows this but he wants them to come in the full commitment of their hearts to life in him.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
God knows all our “becauses”. God sees our heart’s motivations.
But God can crack through our old and deadened self-definitions and hungers to bear eternally surprising life in us.
There is nothing … nothing … that God cannot transform with mercy, forgiveness, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Poetry: Because There Is No Coffee in Heaven – Andrea Potos
What I will miss the most: that rich- incense scent of morning, nut-brown ever-so-slightly discernable bitterness flowing as part tonic, part promise of good to come, though also as reminder that now, this now of the moment--sip, taste and swallow--is the only moment there is.
You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses. Now I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did; but God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.”
Acts 3:14-18
In our first reading, Peter excuses the ignorance of his listeners and invites them to repentance.
Our Gospel describes a certain kind of “ignorance” in the Emmaus disciples who are unable to see Jesus because of their worried agitation.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We don’t like to think of ourselves as “ignorant “, but we are. There is so much we don’t know about ourselves, others, and certainly about God. Yet sometimes we choose to act, or fail to act, out of our ignorance.
But just as with the Emmaus couple, Jesus does walk with us, offering the bright grace of recognition and repentance to us, over and over again.
And as with them, that grace comes through prayer, reflection, community, service, and sacrament.
Poetry: Emmaus Journey – Irene Zimmerman, OSF
All was chaos when he died. We fled our separate ways at first, then gathered again in the upper room to chatter blue-lipped prayers around the table where he’d talked of love and oneness. On the third day Cleopas and I left for the home we’d abandoned in order to follow him. We wanted no part of the babble the women had brought from the tomb. We vowed to get on with our grieving. On the road we met a Stranger whose voice grew vaguely familiar as he spoke of signs and suffering. By the time we reached our village, every tree and bush was blazing and we pressed him to stay the night. Yet not till we sat at the table and watched the bread being broken did we see the Light.
It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they began to be afraid. But he said to them, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.
John 6:17-21
Today’s reading packs in all the elements of a crisis: darkness, unknowing, resistance, shock, fear, powerlessness. We can imagine the disciples caught in the whirlwind and suddenly tossed up on shore astounded!
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Life’s like that sometimes, isn’t it? Our reading tells us how to make the passage through such storms: listen for the voice that loves you unreservedly, and do not be afraid. It is then that we might find the miracle which the storm hides.
Poetry: from Rumi
Be empty of worrying Think of who created thought
Why do you stay in prison When the door is wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear thinking. Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always Widening rings of being.
Lavish Mercy 