Just a little extra thought today…. Hang on! Spring is Coming
Author: Renee Yann, RSM
Sister Renee Yann, RSM, D.Min, is a writer and speaker on topics of spirituality, mission, and ethical business practice. After twenty years in teaching and social justice ministry, she served for over thirty years in various mission-related roles in Mercy Health System of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Choose Life
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Today, in Mercy, our first reading gives us Moses’ compelling speech to the newly covenanted Israelites:
Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom…
Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live.
We might ask ourselves, “Who wouldn’t choose life over death, for Heaven’s sake?”
Really? Well then ask yourself these questions:
Do I ever ignore health warnings, cancel doctor’s appointments, eat unhealthy food, smoke, drink and drive, drive and text, skip daily medicine, fail to exercise and get enough sleep … Should I go on?🧐
But even deeper than these external choices are the choices we make for the life of our souls.
- Do we pray daily, take quiet time to hear God in our lives?
- Do we recognize any toxic relationships or habits in our lives and work to remove them?
- Do we challenge our negative attitudes and try to grow beyond them?
- Do we call ourselves to generosity, forgiveness, gratitude, hope and other life-giving attitudes?
God has given us the gift of life. But it is up to us to LIVE our lives in the fullness of their possibility.
Music: Choose Life ~ Big Tent Revival (Lyrics below)
A choice is set before you now
living or dying, blessing or cursing
You know, the time has come around
to turn from your fighting
and rest in his mercy
Choose life, that you might live
the life that He gives
He gives you forever
Choose life, the way that is true
from the one who chose you
your father in Heaven
Choose life
Trust the Lord with all your heart
all of your soul and all of your being
Hold on, listen and obey
surrender your life into His keeping
And the weight you’re under
will be lifted away
And the world will wonder
what happened here today
then you’ll stand right here and say
With Your Whole Heart
Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Today, in Mercy, as we begin the holy season of Lent, this one question might lead us on our 40 Day journey:
What wholeness does God
imagine for me?
Lent is about bringing to wholeness in God all the fragmentations within us. It is about finding completeness in a journey of infinite love – a journey that passes through Calvary but triumphs in Resurrection.
Jesus has both made the journey for us, and will make the journey with us. Our challenge this Lent is to discover how Jesus makes these steps within our lives.
We are called to open our hearts and circumstances to the transformation of Paschal grace – a grace offered to us within the joys and sacrifices, miracles and challenges of our own lives.
What fragments do we bring before the healing touch of Christ this Lent?
- Broken or lifeless vows, promises, dreams
- Severed relationships, responsibilities
- Closed doors and hopes, ungiven forgiveness
- Despair with our Church, our communities, our families
- Despair with ourselves, our smallnesses, our addictions, our spiritual procrastination, our stingy souls
We need only make a singular, determined commitment: in each day’s scriptures, let us find a word or phrase that mirrors our own life. Let us seek Christ’s face beside ours in that mirror. Let us listen to the wholeness He imagines for us and make the choices to achieve it.
Music: Return to Me ~ John Michael Talbot
What Return Can I Make?
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Today, in Mercy, our readings challenge us to consider what we might offer to God in return for all the good we have received.
When I was young, and on a stressful occasion still, I have been known to bargain with God. It goes something like this:
“Dear God, please, if You will only do X, I promise to do Y.”
The process reminds me of a game my Uncle Joe played with me when I was a toddler. He would give me some pennies to buy candy from him that he had just purchased at the corner store. He intended to teach me simple math. But I also learned what is was like to have resources, to possess buying power.
The glitch in the process was this: none of the resources really belonged to me. Everything belonged to Uncle Joe who allowed me to use his resources to learn and grow.
When we think about what we can offer God, it’s sort of a similar model. We have nothing that doesn’t first and already belong to God. We can give God nothing to “buy” God’s love and grace. God gives these freely and without restriction.
All that we really have to offer God is our love, demonstrated by our charitable actions. That’s what Sirach is talking about today.
In our Gospel, Peter – ever a guileless and simple soul – wants to make sure Jesus knows how much Peter has given up for God. Jesus affirms Peter’s offering, but says that God’s generosity exceeds it a hundredfold.
We live in loving relationship with an infinitely generous God. Our only currency in this relationship is the return of love, praise and thanksgiving.
When I regress to my bargaining stance with God, I think God smiles at me the way Jesus probably smiled at Peter. The smile says, “I am already giving you everything you need. Let yourself rest in Me.”
Music: To God Be the Glory ~ Andrae Crouch
Turn To Me
Monday, March 4, 2019
Today, in Mercy, our readings are steeped with the scent of Lent, coming this week.
Sirach appeals to us to be penitent, to turn around and look at the Lord with new eyes. Mark describes the entrance to God’s Kingdom as smaller than a needle’s eye!
The word “penitent” comes from a Latin root paenitere which carries a sense of being filled with regret at what is missing or lacking in our lives.
In Mark, Jesus meets a good young man longing for something more in his life.
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
“You are lacking in one thing.
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
These readings set us up perfectly for the coming Lenten season. It is a good day to think about what is lacking in our spiritual life, what it will take for us to follow Jesus more wholeheartedly.
Let us turn our hearts to look at Jesus who loves us as much as he loved that young man. Let us ask Jesus to accompany us on the coming journey, giving us the courage to change whatever in us needs change in order to pass through the needle’s eye.
Music: Turn Around – The Vogues
Being Ourselves with God
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Today, in Mercy, our readings invite us to spiritual honesty with its accompanying transparency.
In a fabulous metaphor, Sirach tells us that under stress, the measure of our honesty will be evident:
When the sieve is shaken,
the husks appear.
Don’t we try to hide our weaknesses, fears, worries, and doubts? Sometimes we even hide them from ourselves! And God! But under stress, these “husks” rise to the surface and affect our behavior and interactions. Sometimes we create a life-long attitude that attempts to conceal these negativities but causes people – even ourselves – to wonder why we’re so mean, aloof, distracted or angry all the time.
Luke likens this concealment to a “plank”in our inner eye, a blindness which will not let us see ourselves as we are before God – beautiful, beloved and whole. We myopically see instead all our own and other’s annoying fragmentations.
Corinthians tells us that this kind of negative thinking is death-dealing; that it is a product of living only by law and not by spirit. Paul says:
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ
These readings help us to deepen our understanding that only when we open our lives to God will we fully be open to ourselves. Then, as our Psalm explains:
The just one shall flourish like the palm tree,
like a cedar of Lebanon shall they grow.
They that are planted in the house of the LORD
shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall bear fruit even in old age;
vigorous and sturdy shall they be,
Declaring how just is the LORD,
my rock, in whom there is no wrong.
Music: O God, You search Me and You Know Me By Bernadette Farrell
Let the Children Come to Me
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Today, in Mercy, let this picture carry home the message of today’s Gospel for our time. Let us consider our moral and civic responsibilities to this child and the thousands like him throughout the world. Let us pray in the spirit of Jesus to understand what Mercy requires of us.
Enough said.
If you would like to help our Sister Anne Connolly working directly at our southern border with refugee families:
Gifts may be sent to:
Sisters of Mercy
(Please mark “Border Aid”)
c/o Sisters of Mercy-Border Aid
Development Office
515 Montgomery Avenue
Merion, PA. 19066
If you would like to connect directly with Sister Anne:
(215) 539 7393
annecbba@yahoo.com
Music: Take All the Lost Home
Friendship Poems
Because You Were Kind
I suppose
it was the utter simplicity
of your self – gift
that clothed it so
with grace
and made it a door
for the Holy One
to walk through.
Had you noticed
God’s sacred footfalls
under your tender words;
do you await
the gracious return
of the Giver
to replace, a hundredfold,
the loving gift you gave to me?
Unshelled
Immediate friend,
enduring friend,
where my vulnerability
is so finely echoed
I will allow it
to exist
unshelled.
Re-Planting
(Written after my mother’s death)
That afternoon,
winter framed sunlight
in the cold windows.
I watched you spread small greens
across a wooden table,
fingering their thready roots
like harp strings.
A song fell from that,
like quiet, nurturing rain.
Unable to sing,
I let the song seep quietly into me,
bathing my uprooted soul
in the warm silence between us.
There, in that comfort,
the small cutting at my core
sought earth,
sought healing.
Finally, I spoke
and laid the whole parched root
upon the table of your mercy. And
you, ever-tender gardener, lifted it
and blew the dust away, and
spitting gently in your hand,
massaged the feeble life it hid
before you stood it carefully in soil.
You said, “Life is like this sometimes.
Be gentle with it. It will bloom again.”
Old Friend
When I saw you gathered like a sigh
in your cornflower velvet chair,
quilted against a passing winter flu,
I hurt to see you,
weak like half-drawn tea,
but knew
we did not yet sail
the catastrophic sea.
What I did know as I had not before
is that, dear friend, you do grow old,
and the day on which I will not find you,
warm and easy near the window’s cold
fell into my heart like sudden, heavy rain
that drowned my voice so unexpectedly,
I dove beneath the wave
to find myself again.
When you are gone from me,
I’ll gather somewhere in a sigh,
near fragile things of earth,
near leaves that turn to lace before they fall,
or snow, whose symmetry is yielding,
even as it lay,
and I will love you
as completely as I did today.
Near fragile things of earth, I’ll love you
as silently and as completely
as I did today.
Music: Joe Bongiorno: Walk with Me
The Blessing of Friends
Friday, March 1, 2019
Today, in Mercy, our beautiful reading from Sirach reminds us how blessed we are in our friends.
To have a true friend, loving, honest and concerned for us is a gift beyond description. In modern parlance, such friends are often referred to as BFFs – “Best Friends Forever”.
Pray in thanksgiving for your BFFs today.
Some you may not have seen in many years. Still they are nestled in a place of eternal thanksgiving within you.
Some you may not speak to every day. You still carry and can depend on their strength and love.
Some may have been present to only a small part of your life. Still their impression lives in you.
Some may have grown old and gone home to God. Their eternal life rises in you.
Let us all give thanks today for the precious gift of friendship. Let us pray to be good and faithful friends ourselves.
(A second posting today with a few of my poems on friendship. Thank you to all of you, my friends, for the gift of your friendship.)
Music: More Than You’ll Ever Know – Watermark
Rely on the Lord
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Today, in Mercy, Sirach advises us to rely on the Lord and nothing else – not our own strength, not endless forgiveness for our poor choices, not deceitful wealth. These, the reading admonishes, will not help when we are judged.
Our Psalm confirms that we should place our reliance – our HOPE – in God:
Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
They are like trees
planted near running water,
That yield fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever they do prospers.
Mark describes what happens to those who choose a merciful life, and to those who don’t!
Neither of these readings spares any harsh words. They are so confronting that we may be tempted to “read over them”, not really engaging their message to our lives.
Do we have any hard choices to make about
- where we place our confidence?
- the integrity of our choices?
- how we use our wealth and resources?
- how we respond to others’ needs?
- the example we are offering for those who depend on us?
I know I want to do all I can to avoid any millstones around my neck! Right?
Let’s take a deep look at our hearts today for any trace of merciless choices or sinful self-reliance, thinking we might even know better than God! Sometimes, when we are frightened or unsure, we forget to lay it all down before the Lord. But we can trust God completely, and doing so will bless us. What we have to learn is that God may take us, by a different route, to our joy.
Music: Trust in the Lord
Lavish Mercy 