Month: September 2024

Bubbles

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality2 Comments

Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
September 24, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092424.cfm

To do what is right and just
is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
Haughty eyes and a proud heart–
the tillage of the wicked is sin.
The plans of the diligent are sure of profit,
but all rash haste leads certainly to poverty.
Whoever makes a fortune by a lying tongue
is chasing a bubble over deadly snares.
Proverbs 21:3-6

King Solomon is credited with writing this portion of Proverbs. His wisdom wrapped in wit is both inspiring and enjoyable. But his admonitions are not humor – he is dead serious about what is “acceptable to the Lord“.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray for the grace to erase the frivolous from our lives – the “bubbles” that fool and distract us from the centrality of God.

Poetry: from Emily Dickinson

So has a Daisy vanished
From the fields today --
So tiptoed many a slipper
To Paradise away --
Oozed so in crimson bubbles
Day's departing tide --
Blooming -- tripping -- flowing
Are ye then with God?

Music: Bubbles over the Ocean
You may want to listen to just a few minutes or maybe to all of this reflective music. Enjoy!

Light

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Creation, Discipleship, Faith, inclusivity, Jesus, spirituality1 Comment

Memorial of Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, Priest
September 23, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092324.cfm

Jesus said to the crowd:
“No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel
or sets it under a bed;
rather, he places it on a lampstand
so that those who enter may see the light.
For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible,
and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.
Take care, then, how you hear.
To anyone who has, more will be given,
and from the one who has not,
even what he seems to have will be taken away.”
Luke 8:16-18

Jesus indicates that the only way to spread light in the world is to do it together. Some have been given more, some less. But pooling all we have creates a Divine Fire illuminating a shadowy world.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask for the courage to recognize, claim, and offer our light in a world that longs for it. We ask for the humility and insight to encourage holy fire in others.

Poetry: I Understand This Light to Be My Home – Mai Der Vang, the author of Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), which recounts the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. The book received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.

In the awareness, I am brought closer
to my being from long before.
In my
awareness, there is only what I can take
from the small spaces of

knowing, an earnest ascendance imparted
by way of transmissions from the grid,
a voice calls
out unbroken below and above as the aura
of faraway light.

There is a light that

shimmers so deep it never goes anywhere
but to shimmer.

Light assumes its job is to shimmer,
and so it is,
but more than that, light is ancestral.
Light is witness. Light is prehistory,

blueprint of vibrations shifting through
all directions of time.

Light as hidden winter that leads to
shadow as the growth.
Light as first
language of source. Light as both terrestrial
and celestial. Light of long nights far up

in the sky, I stare to the heavens and
weep for
the stars whose light I have always known
and understood to be my rooting.

I once shared a life with the name of
this light as I know it in the stars who
gave me

my body. As I know it in the frequencies
of my footsteps,

as I hear it in the code of a landscape
imprinted on my fingers,
as I spirit
my eyes open from the inside,
as I know and understand this light
to be kin.

Consider then the pain of leaving
this light, of losing the stars to spaces

no longer lit by its truth.
I am shaped
in the spaces where the light does
not reach, a need for what does not
shimmer

but opening to the shadow to receive
just as much light.
I miss this
light always.

Then more light.

Ever more light. Deficit of light to bring
more light.

Template of light to bring more love.

That is my one true wish, as I know
and
understand

this light to be my home, as a knowing
up there in the galaxy is me,

and I am up there
in my bones built from stars.

Music: Dark Sky Island – Enya – a beautiful song in which she names some of the stars.

Cultivate

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Jesus, Mercy, peace, spiritualityLeave a comment

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 22, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092224.cfm

Beloved:
Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,
there is disorder and every foul practice. 
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure,
then peaceable, gentle, compliant,
full of mercy and good fruits,
without inconstancy or insincerity. 
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace
for those who cultivate peace.
James 3:16-18

It appears that the moral tumult of our world already existed in James’s world over 2000 years ago. And no doubt it has existed in every age in between. Jealousy and selfish ambition drive so much of our public life. It takes great insight, patience and wisdom to cultivate peace:

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to be agents of peace in our world despite the inverse image of our culture offered by politics and media. We want to lessen the influence of these negative factors in our lives and open ourselves to the promptings of faith and goodness.

Prose: Cultivating Peace from Pope Francis

War begins in here, in the heart, inside the person, and finishes out in the world. The news we see in the papers or on television… Today so many people die, and that seed of war, which breeds envy, jealousy, and greed in my heart, is the same – grown up, become a tree – as the bomb which falls on a hospital, on a school, and kills children. It is the same. The declaration of war begins in the heart, in each of us. For this reason, the following question arises: ‘How do I care for peace in my heart, in my interior, and in my family?’. The answer is: Care for peace; not only care for it, but make it with your hands every day. Just so, will we succeed in spreading it throughout the whole world.

Music: Peace Train – Cat Stevens

Mercy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Jesus, Mercy, spiritualityLeave a comment

Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist
September 21, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092124.cfm

As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
Matthew 9:9-13

From their very first encounter, Jesus clarifies for Matthew the essence of his mission: mercy not sacrifice. Jesus uses a phrase from the Hebrew scriptures with which Matthew and all of his listeners are familiar:

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
    and acknowledgment of God
rather than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6:6

Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

1 Samuel 15:22

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray for a deeper understanding that to live in loving obedience to God is to live in mercy toward all Creation.

Prose: from “The Climate of Mercy – For Albert Schweitzer” by Thomas Merton

Thus, Law without mercy kills mercy in the hearts of those who seek justification solely by socially acceptable virtuousness and by courting the favor of authority. This legal holiness, in its turn, destroys the hope of mercy in those who despair of the Law.

We must, therefore, remember the religious and Christian importance of not implicitly identifying external “Law” with interior “Mercy,” either in our doctrine (and in this we usually manage to keep them distinct) or in our lives (here we tend in practice to confuse them by making the fulfillment of the Law’s inexorable demand either a condition for receiving mercy or a guarantee that one has received it).

Music: Beautiful Mercy – sung by Jaye Thomas

Resurrection

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Hope, Jesus, Mercy, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs
September 20, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092024.cfm

If Christ is preached as raised from the dead,
how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead,
then neither has Christ been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching;
empty, too, your faith.
1 Corinthians 15:12-14

Paul takes his listeners to the foundation of their faith – the Resurrection. Believing in it, we are freed from our greatest common fear – the fear of Death.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
In rising from the dead, Jesus changed Darkness to Light. Every dawn transforms our nights to Easter if we allow Christ to rise in us, making all things new.

Poetry: excerpts from The Exultet

O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
O truly blessed night,
worthy alone to know the time and hour
when Christ rose from the underworld!
This is the night
of which it is written:
The night shall be as bright as day,
dazzling is the night for me,
and full of gladness.

Music: The Exultet

Alabaster

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, friendship, Hope, Jesus, Love, spirituality2 Comments

Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
September 19, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091924.cfm

Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment,
she stood behind him at his feet weeping
and began to bathe his feet with her tears.
Then she wiped them with her hair,
kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment….

Simon, when I entered your house,
you did not give me water for my feet,
but she has bathed them with her tears
and wiped them with her hair.
You did not give me a kiss,
but she has not ceased kissing my feet.
You did not anoint my head with oil,
but she anointed my feet with ointment.
So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven;
because she has shown great love.
Luke 7:37-38;44-47

Mary (identified in John’s Gospel as Mary of Bethany) loves Jesus beyond words. Sensing that his Passion and Death are near, she pours out that love in silent tenderness.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Prayerfully imagine the alabaster jar, holding it gently in your hands. It is fine and delicate, easily broken unless handled tenderly.

As we express our love for God and for God’s Creation, we carry it in delicate wrappings, like alabaster. Sometimes, we may doubt our capacity for love, faith, and hope. We may see our “sinfulness” rather than our spiritual strength.

But if we, like Mary, focus our hearts on God, and fearlessly pour our love over God’s Creation, our fragility becomes our strength.

Poetry: Anointings at Bethany – Irene Zimmerman, OSF

Solemnly, Mary entered the room,
holding high the alabaster jar.
It gleamed in the lamplight as she circled the room,
incensing the disciples, blessing Martha’s banquet.
“A splendid table!” Mary called with her eyes
as she whirled past her sister.

She came to a halt at last before Jesus,
bowed profoundly and knelt at his feet.
Deftly, she filled her right hand with nard,
placed the jar on the floor,
took one foot in her hands
and moved fragrant fingers across his instep. 

Over and over she made the journey
from heel to toes, thanking him
for every step he had made
on Judea’s stony hills,
for every stop at their home,
for bringing back Lazarus. 

She poured out more nard,
took his other foot in her hands
and started again with strong, rhythmic strokes.
She felt her hands’ heat draw out his tiredness,
take away the rebuffs he had known
—the shut doors, the shut hearts. 

Energy flowed like a river between them.
His saturated skin gleamed with oil. 

But she had no towel! 

In an instant she pulled off her veil,
pulled the pins from her hair,
shook it out till it fell in cascades
and once more cradled each foot,
dried the ankles, the insteps,
drew the strands between his toes.

Without warning, Judas Iscariot
spat out his anger, the words hissing
like lightning above her unveiled head:
“Why was this perfume not sold
for three hundred denarii
and the money given to the poor?” 

“Leave her alone!”
Jesus silenced the usurper.
“She bought it so that she might keep it
for the day of my burial.” 

The words poured like oil,
anointing her from head to foot.

Music: Pour My Love on You – Craig and Dean Phillips

I don’t know how to say exactly how I feel
And I can’t begin to tell you what your love has meant
I’m lost for words
Is there a way to show the passion in my heart
Can I express how truly great I think you are,
My dearest friend.
Lord, this is my desire:
To pour my love on You

Chorus:
Like oil upon your feet
Like wine for you to drink
Like water from my heart
I pour my love on you
If praise is like perfume
I’ll lavish mine on you
Till every drop is gone
I’ll pour my love on you.

Love

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Discipleship, Faith, Hope, Jesus, Love, spirituality1 Comment

Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
September 18, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091824.cfm

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.
At present I know partially;
then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:12-13

In this often recited and glorious passage from Corinthians, Paul recounts the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. He tells us that without love, the rest of the spiritual life is meaningless. And Jesus told us that to love only those who love us is not sufficient.

For if you love those who love you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners love those who love them.

Luke 6:32

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Real love is not easy. We pray to grow better at loving as God loves – universally, selflessly, and limitlessly.

Poetry: Love’s As Warm As Tears – C.S. Lewis

Love’s as warm as tears,
Love is tears:
Pressure within the brain,
Tension at the throat,
Deluge, weeks of rain,
Haystacks afloat,
Featureless seas between
Hedges, where once was green.
Love’s as fierce as fire,
Love is fire:
All sorts—infernal heat
Clinkered with greed and pride,
Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,
Laughing, even when denied,
And that empyreal flame
Whence all loves came.
Love’s as fresh as spring,
Love is spring:
Bird-song hung in the air,
Cool smells in a wood,
Whispering ‘Dare! Dare!’
To sap, to blood,
Telling ‘Ease, safety, rest,
Are good; not best.’
Love’s as hard as nails,
Love is nails:
Blunt, thick, hammered through
The medial nerves of One
Who, having made us, knew
The thing He had done,
Seeing (with all that is)
Our cross, and His.

Music: The Greatest of These Is Love – Tina English and Jay Rouse

If I speak with the tongues of men and angels
but have not love, I am just a noise.
And if I have the gift of prophecy,
know all knowledge, have all faith,
understand all mystery, or remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I have to feed the poor,
but have not love,
nothing is gained, nothing gained.
Love is patient, love is kind.
Love does not brag, and is not arrogant.
Love is not proud, boastful, rude.

Love does not seek its own.
Love rejoices in the truth.
It keeps no record of wounds.
Love bears all things,believes all things.
Love hopes all things,
endures all things.

These three remain:
faith, hope, and love.
But the greatest of these is love.

Pity

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Mercy, spirituality1 Comment

Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
September 17, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091724.cfm

Jesus journeyed to a city called Nain,
and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him.
As he drew near to the gate of the city,
a man who had died was being carried out,
the only son of his widowed mother.
A large crowd from the city was with her.
When the Lord saw her,
he was moved with pity for her and said to her,
“Do not weep.”
He stepped forward and touched the coffin;
at this the bearers halted,
and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!”
The dead man sat up and began to speak,
and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Luke 7:11-15

In today’s Gospel, we read the deeply moving phrase, “… the only son of his widowed mother“. Reading it, we can feel that same pity Jesus felt as the small group of mourners passed him in the road.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We assess our own hearts to measure our Christ-like tenderness for those who are suffering – often, right before our distracted eyes. As Irene Zimmermann suggests in the poem below, in attending to these suffering people we also attend Christ.

Poetry: First Born Sons and the Widow of Nain – Irene Zimmerman, OSF

Jesus halted on the road outside Nain
where a woman’s wailing drenched the air.
Out of the gates poured a somber procession
of dark-shawled women, hushed children,
young men bearing a litter that held
a body swathed in burial clothes,
and the woman, walking alone.

A widow then—another bundle
of begging rags at the city gates.
A bruised reed!

Her loud grief labored and churned in him till
“Halt!” he shouted.

The crowd, the woman, the dead man stopped.
Dust, raised by sandaled feet,
settled down again on the sandy road.
Insects waited in shocked silence.

He walked to the litter, grasped a dead hand.
“Young man,” he called
in a voice that shook the walls of Sheol,
“I command you, rise!”

The linens stirred.
Two firstborn sons from Nazareth and Nain
met, eye to eye.

He placed the pulsing hand into hers.
“Woman, behold your son,” he smiled.

Music: Tender-Hearted – Jeanne Cotter

Be tender-hearted as you love one another
as I have loved you
And forgive one another with endless compassion
as I forgave you.

Clothe yourself with kindness,
patience, and humility.
Let the peace of Christ live in your hearts
and above all else, put on love.
And be tender hearted.

Be tender hearted as you live a life
worthy of your calling.
You are God’s work of art, holy temple.
The Spirit is at home in you.

Walk always as children of Light
Keep the flame of faith alive.
God’s love has been poured into your heart.
You are reborn by that love.

So be tender hearted
for you’ve put on a new self
hidden with Christ in God.
You are no longer stranger.
You’re one of the chosen
holy and beloved

Say

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Mercy, spirituality2 Comments

Memorial of Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs
September 16, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091624.cfm

And Jesus went with them,
but when he was only a short distance from the house,
the centurion sent friends to tell him,
“Lord, do not trouble yourself,
for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.
Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you;
but say the word and let my servant be healed.
Luke 7:6-7

Jesus is amazed at the faith of this centurion who has such confidence in Christ’s power and mercy that he needs nothing but a word to confirm his trust.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We listen with open hearts to God’s Word in our own experiences. We ask for ever-deepening trust that God is willingly working miracles of mercy through our faithful lives.

Poetry: The Say-but-the-Word Centurion Attempts a Summary – Les Murray

How might the faith-filled centurion have felt at the death of Jesus?

That numinous healer who preached Saturnalia and paradox
has died a slave’s death. We were maneuvered into it by priests
and by the man himself. To complete his poem.

He was certainly dead. The pilum guaranteed it. His message,
unwritten except on his body, like anyone’s, was wrapped
like a scroll and dispatched to our liberated selves, the gods.

If he has now risen, as our infiltrators gibber,
he has outdone Orpheus, who went alive to the Shades.
Solitude may be stronger than embraces. Inventor of the mustard tree,

he mourned one death, perhaps all, before he reversed it.
He forgave the sick to health, disregarded the sex of the Furies
when expelling them from minds. And he never speculated.

If he is risen, all are children of a most high real God
or something even stranger called by that name
who knew to come and be punished for the world.

To have knowledge of right, after that, is to be in the wrong.
Death came through the sight of law. His people’s oldest wisdom.
If death is now the birth-gate into things unsayable

in language of death’s era, there will be wars about religion
as there never were about the death-ignoring Olympians.
Love, too, his new universal, so far ahead of you it has died

for you before you meet it, may seem colder than the favors of gods
who are our poems, good and bad. But there never was a bad baby.
Half of his worship will be grinding his face in the dirt

then lilting it up to beg, in private. The low will rule, and curse by him.
Divine bastard, soul-usurer, eros-frightener, he is out to monopolize hatred.
Whole philosophies will be devised for their brief snubbings of him.

But regained excels kept, he taught. Thus he has done the impossible
to show us it is there. To ask it of us. It seems we are to be the poem
and live the impossible. As each time we have, with mixed cries.

Music: Amazing Grace – John Newton (sung by Rosemary Siemens)

Flint

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

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 15, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091524.cfm

The Lord GOD opens my ear that I may hear;
and I have not rebelled,
have not turned back.
I gave my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;
my face I did not shield
from buffets and spitting.

The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
Isaiah 50:5-7

This solemn reading from Isaiah follows appropriately on yesterday’s honoring of the Holy Cross.

Isaiah writes of the prophet who, during the Babylonia Captivity, suffers for his testimony to the Truth.

The passage foretells Jesus’s embrace of his suffering for the sake of our Redemption.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
As we pray with Isaiah and Jesus, we ask to deeply reverence God’s participation in the suffering of Creation – both in the human and the natural world.

Poetry: The Grandeur of God – Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Music: Pie Jesu – Gabriel Fauré

The French creator of the soul-stirring Pie Jesu, Gabriel Fauré, was one of the premier composers and directors of the 19th/20th centuries though, surprisingly, he was not a man of deep faith. Yet, he must have had a mystical soul. The Pie Jesu is the centerpiece of Fauré’s Requiem, which he completed in 1890, and which is often considered his greatest composition. It is undoubtedly imbued with the deepest sentiments of devotion.

A requiem, as such, is a distinct musical genre and a Christian liturgical art form. In essence, it is a small symphony meant to provide deep solace to mourners at the loss of a loved one, although it is rarely played at funerals. Full requiems are generally too long for that! Nonetheless, all the great composers from the 15th century onward created their own requiems.

It is believed that Fauré composed this piece in honor of his own father a few years after the elder Fauré’s death, but the composer never revealed his motive. This Requiem was, fittingly, performed at Fauré’s own funeral in 1924.

Notes on the Requiem itself
Fauré’s Requiem has seven sections, and the Pie Jesu (Merciful Jesus) is easily the most beautiful of the seven, but not by much. The Agnus Dei and In Paradisum are exquisite in their own right.

It is interesting to note that Fauré replaced the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) of traditional requiems with the Pie Jesu, emphasizing mercy rather than judgment, and also anticipating in some way the Divine Mercy devotion of the 20th century.

In the video below, the incomparable lyric soprano, Kathleen Battle, performs her ravishing interpretation of the lovely Pie Jesu.