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.
Today, in Mercy, our readings bring us the great prophets Ezekiel, Paul, and the Ultimate prophet, Jesus.
How did they become prophets? When they were little guys, how did they answer the perennial question, “What do you want to be when you grow up”? Unlikely that they responded, “A prophet, of course!” Probably it was something like a camel rider, a carpenter, or a farmer. So what changed them?
All three, by heritage and practice, were steeped in the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. As they grew up into the oppressive, idolatrous worlds of their particular time, the scriptural promises gave each of them hope. They developed, as the theologian Walter Brueggemann describes it, “the capacity to imagine the world seen through the eyes of … God.”
This kind of vision is not unknown to our times. A few years ago, it was very popular to ask, “WWJD? – What would Jesus do?” Some people even wore bracelets and medallions of the letters to remind them to look at life through Jesus’ eyes.
Although a bit simplistic, it’s still a good visual reminder. What is less evident is the implied thought that we must KNOW Jesus well enough to UNDERSTAND what He would do. A casual acquaintance won’t do the trick here. Prophets are intimate with God through prayer and the works of mercy. Over years of faithful practice, they have come truly to see the world as God sees it. They beat with God’s heart.
A prophet is profoundly realistic about the world’s ills, heartbroken for those who suffer, but nonetheless convinced that God will make something amazingly beautiful for God’s People. This conviction impels them to live, speak and actfor this Godly vision.
We too are called to live with this kind of prophetic hope. It is not easy in our fractured world. But it is possible. Let today’s three Great Ones inspire and teach us.
Today, in Mercy, in our Gospel passage, some of the Baptist’s disciples come to question Jesus. They are confused that they have been encouraged to fast and repent while Jesus’ disciples are feasting and rejoicing. They put the question to Jesus very directly.
But, typical of Jesus, He doesn’t answer directly. He answers with metaphors. He could simply have said, “They don’t fast because I’m God, and they feel fulfilled in my presence.” But that kind of direct answer is a conversation-ender.
Jesus, like most great teachers, enjoyed metaphors. They’re conversation starters. They open up a whole world of consideration far beyond the initial question.
So Jesus, perhaps fingering the tattered sleeve of someone’s tunic, suggests tothese questioners, – You know, your faith is like an old piece of cloth. It resists new possibilities. Then, maybe pouring them a cup of wine, He indicates that they need to stretch and freshen their ideas about God. “Old wine skins can’t hold new wine.”
Most people resist the stretching that life brings us. Most times, we prefer things the way they are. We’d rather be comfortable, fasting with a well-defined god than to be stretched and re-woven by the spiritual opportunities of our lives.
But God is always making new wine, always offering a challenging, deeper invitation to holiness. These invitations come in many forms:
to shift our inner focus point from self to others
to open our minds and hearts to people who differ from us
to change the way we interact with the earth’s resources
to deepen our political consciousness with moral understanding
to confront toxic habits and policies in ourselves and others
to endure difficulty, loss and pain with an Easter confidence
Living with that kind of holy openness to God makes our life a feast, not a fast. What invitation is pouring out of your life today?
Today, in Mercy, our Gospel reading introduces Matthew, a Jewish tax collector. The setting is a dusty Galilean square, crowds bustling by after midday marketing. These are Matthew’s neighbors, and he knows them by name. He calls any tax delinquent passer-by to his customs post, bent on collecting the levies due to the Roman occupiers.
Matthew is not a popular guy. He may have gotten his government job through the influence of his father Alpheus, a man a little better off than his acquaintances. His fellow Jews may have resented Matthew’s education, economic status, and certainly his apparent complicity with a tyrannical government.
Matthew was probably treated like Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Red Hen Restaurant.Maybe that’s why Jesus noticed him that day.
But buried deep in Matthew was an unlit wick of messianic hope that only Jesus could discern. With the small spark of two words, “Follow me”, Jesus lit that hidden wick. And all the ensuing ages have been blessed by Matthew’s telling of the divine story!
When Jesus dined with Matthew’s other tax collector friends, the “righteous” Pharisees, entwined in their own sinful complicities, criticized Jesus for his choice of friends. Jesus makes his position clear: I did not come to call the righteous but sinners. His words imply that “the righteous” are irredeemable.
Jesus reminds us that God desires Mercy not sacrifice. Our holy words, laws, and rituals are empty if our actions impede God’s merciful love for all Creation.
We might want to sit at Matthew’s table ourselves today, and ask him to teach us more about that tender-hearted, transformative Mercy.
(May I digress today with a reflection I wrote a few years ago?)
The Fifth of July
Any fireworks in your neighborhood tonight?Any parades outside your window? Probably not.After all the speeches, sparklers and spectaculars, the “Next Day” dawns.I wonder what it was like for Jefferson, Franklin and Adams on Jul7 5, 1776.Did they wake up thinking, Declaration of Independence – signed.Now, make it happen?
When you get right down to it, most of our days are 5ths, 6ths, 7ths and 8ths of July.They are the days after graduation when we need to get a job.They are the days after the honeymoon when somebody needs to cook dinner and take out the trash.They are the days after the promotion when the first deadline looms and a bunch of faces are looking to you for the plan.
If the 4th of July is Independence Day, the 5th is Dependability Day, a day to celebrate the people we can always count on.They are there for the parades but they also stay around for the clean up afterward. They light the spark for the fireworks, but they have a hose nearby just in case. They put their “John Hancock” on the brave new dream, and they show up the next morning to design its daunting execution.
The 5th of July is a day to celebrate our own sense of responsibility or “Dependability” – to realize that most of us really do try to be good spouses, parents, employees, neighbors, sons, daughters and friends; that we do keep making the effort every day to be someone for others and not just for ourselves. It is a day to look around at the people in our lives and be grateful that most of them are trying to do the same thing.
Like Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, we all need to wake up the next day, consider the “dependabilities”in our lives, and put our shoulders to the task of making a better world. Each of our lives is its own small country where the future really depends on how we show up on our5th of Julys. The fact that you get up every day and engage that challenge is cause for its own celebration.So if you have a little sparkler left in your back yard, light it for yourself tonight – and for your spouse, your boss, your kids, your colleagues – who all showed up today to do the best they could on the 5th of July.
Music: To wake you up for this July 5th, the inimitable Andre Crouch – You Can Depend on Me, Lord
The Fourth of July in 1955 looked like this to me:
• red, white and blue crêpe paper strung through my bicycle wheels
• an open fire hydrant at the height of the hot afternoon
• about six firecrackers, fizzling off a neighbor’s doorstep
• hot dogs, Kool-Aid and catching fireflies after sunset
We gathered our families, hoisted the flag, prayed for loved ones lost in a war too fresh to reflect on. We listened to music by John Philip Souza. We felt safe, strong, comfortable and grateful to be Americans. But my 10-year old America was very small.
It was an America before Civil Rights, Medicare and Medicaid; before the Kennedy and King assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate. It pre-dated Roe v. Wade, drug wars, mass shootings, 9/11, global warming, and marriage equality. It was a world without internet, cable news and Twitter.
It was a simple, circumscribed world that we will never see again. So we should stop trying, because it was not a perfect world.Its wounds and warts were about to fester. We have spent the intervening half-century doctoring ourselves for its recurring symptoms, never able to acknowledge the systemic cause of our pain.
For what it’s worth, here’s my diagnosis: Americans are afraid of God, and it’s making us sick.
But why are we so afraid?
Contrary to the long-held opinions of some, modern evidence suggests that God is not male, not white, not a warrior, not rich, and not even American! And this scares some of us to death! We need that kind of God to justify our greed, domination and global arrogance.
So we keep creating the God we need. He carries an AK-47 and has a nuclear button under his fingertip. He builds walls to control people who are poor, hungry, and shades of brown. He stratifies people based on wealth, whiteness and worth to the system. He believes America should be first, and the rest of the world last. He reshapes religion into a vehicle for his own heartless caricature.
If we could just gain our independence from this idolatrous God, we might have better reason to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Today’s reading from the Book of Amos tells us what this liberating God wants:
Seek good and not evil, that you may live; Then truly will the LORD, the God of hosts, be with you as you claim! Hate evil and love good, and let mercy prevail at the border; Then it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will have pity on you.
I hate, I spurn your feasts, says the LORD; I take no pleasure in your solemnities; Your false prayers I will not accept. Away with your noisy songs! But if you would truly honor Me, then let justice surge like water, and mercy like an unfailing stream.
Has doubt ever dogged you, or at least nipped at the edges of your soul?All kinds of doubt, I’m talking about! Doubt yourself. Doubt your loved ones. Doubt the Church, the government, the media. You get the idea.
Some doubt is good. It’s more like “discernment”, and it saves us from misplaced trust. A skill that’s honed through a lifetime, it can eventually be exercised prudentially, without skepticism or aloofness.
But another type of doubt can be crippling. Call it the “not enough” type: I am not good enough, smart enough, good-looking enough, experienced enough, – so on and on – to take on a challenge or make a contribution. Ever felt that kind of doubt?
There is third type of doubt which I call “the flip side of faith”. It’s that fine line where we balance between wanting to believe and wanting to know. This type of doubt whispers things like this in our minds: “You don’t really know if there is a God, so how can you believe?” But isn’t that the whole point of faith? If we really knew, for certain, of God’s existence, we wouldn’t have to believe!
What’s the difference between these flip sides of the coin?
With faith, we give our love and service unreservedly, even though we have not seen. With doubt, we skimp or reserve these until given proof.
So today, we meet “doubting Thomas”. He needed the touch of nail marks and lance wounds before he could believe. And it’s not hard to understand why.
The Resurrection of Jesus was mind-blowing. It changed history for all time to come. It conquered the one unconquerable – DEATH itself. Thomas had not yet seen proof of the Resurrection. The other disciples had. No wonder his coin was spinning between heads and tails!
What about us? Have we seen the Easter Power in our lives? Have we let God win the toss up between our faith and doubt? Today, on this feast of St. Thomas, we might ask his help to let us learn from the wounds of Christ exactly how that Power can assure us.
Music: Blessed Assurance ~ a well-known Christian hymn. The lyrics were written in 1873 by blind hymn writer Fanny Crosby to the music written in 1873 by Phoebe Knapp.
Today, in Mercy,our readings are harsh. We don’t want to think about our sinfulness, do we? We’re doing the best we can. Right?
Well, maybe not.
Our Old Testament brethren thought they were doing fine, too. But today’s reading from Amos lashes out at the societal sins of Israel: slavery, prostitution, systemic oppression of the poor, obstinate immorality, and idolatry. Beloved Israel – the nation that God had delivered from Egypt – had lost its way!
The prophet Amos demands that the people look in a mirror to see what they have become. He tells them that they are not doing OK, that they are a selfish mess, that they face the crushing wrath of God!
Today’s psalm reinforces the dire warning:
~ You use religion to justify your misdeeds ~ You deal with thieves and adulterers ~ You lie and provoke violence by your words ~ You slander and spread rumors in order to keep power over others Remember this, you who never think of God!
Sounds kind of familiar, maybe? Describes our 21st century reality too, doesn’t it?
Many of us read these passages and think, “Thank God I’m not doing any of this terrible stuff!” But that’s not enough. What we must ask ourselves is how we passively contribute to any of these societal sins by a myopic faith, plastic morality, prejudiced politics, and unexamined cultural choices.
Do we approve, or at least stay silent, when religion is used to ostracize people? When political power crushes the rights of those we disagree with? When our entertainment relies on violence and dehumanization of people?
It is painful and difficult to do this deep examination of conscience. We might all find ourselves complicit, in some way, with the evils we hate and fear.
Let the closing words of today’s psalm encourage us:
“Consider this, you who forget God, lest I rend you and there be no one to rescue you. The one who offers a sacrifice of praise glorifies me; and to the one that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”
Music: Sacrifice of Praise ~ Alvin Slaughter
Lord I lift a song of worship
For Your glory and Your grace
Let my heart reveal all my words fail to say
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
On the mountain in the valley
As I wait in my secret place
I will trust trust in the name of the Lord
Now receive this sacrifice of praise
Now receive this sacrifice of praise
You’re my shield. You’re my shelter
From the storm and from the rain
Cover me beneath the shadow of Your wings
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Hallelujah hallelujah
Hallelujah to Your name
For all You’ve done
You are and evermore will be
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Today, in Mercy, our readings tell the story of the woman with the hemorrhage, and the little girl raised to life. I wrote the following homily about this passage for the Catholic Health association in 2015. I hope you find it worth reading.
For more inspiring prayer and scripture resources from CHA, please see:
Healing of the Daughter of Jairus and the Woman with a Hemorrhage
It is a soft, summer morning in Capernaum and Jesus is in the height of his ministry. Large crowds follow him wherever he goes, crowds hungry with hope; crowds fired by his counter-cultural words and miraculous deeds. This morning, Jesus prepares to speak to them, to translate into language they can comprehend the Eternal Life that lives in his heart. His back is to the gentle, sunlit sea. The hubbub softens to a murmur, finally stilled by the lapping waves.
But before Jesus can begin, a distressed man bursts through the gathered crowd. His robes fly about him as he runs to Jesus and falls at his feet. This man is important, so important that we all have known his name for two thousand years. This is Jairus who lives nearby and organizes the worship in the synagogue. Now breathless and swallowing sobs, Jairus pleads with Jesus: Please! My daughter! You can give her life!
Every loving father has been Jairus at least once in his life. We know these fathers. We are these fathers. They are the ones who burst into emergency rooms with a seizing infant in their arms. They are the ones who stare blankly at the pronouncement of a stillborn child. They are the old men in war-ravaged countries who kneel at the sides of their fallen sons and desecrated daughters. They are all the men throughout history rendered helpless by the forces of unbridled power, greed and death.
The merciful heart of Jesus understands this man and his desperate urgency. Without even a word, Jesus gets up and accompanies Jairus to the place of his pleading.
But there is another urgency pushing forward from the crowds: a woman, apparently of low importance for we have never known her name. She is a woman whom the ages have defined by her affliction. She is “The Woman with the Hemorrhage”. Without the status of Jairus, she approaches Jesus as such a woman must. She crawls behind him at his heels, reaching through the milling masses to even scrape the hem of his garment.
This is a troubled woman, a stigmatized woman. Her life has been spent, literally, in embarrassment, isolation, fatigue and, no doubt, abuse. For twelve years – coincidentally the life span of Jairus’ s daughter – her vitality has bled out of her. Her face is gaunt; her eyes sunken. Her soul’s light is all but extinguished. She is a woman who knows a particular kind of scorn.
We know these women. We are these women. They are the ones filled with remorse for an aborted baby. They are the ones who miscarry their longed-for child. They are the women whose beautiful young sons are profiled, stereotyped and hunted on the violent streets. They are the mothers of “The Disappeared”. They are the women who suffer disproportionately from war, poverty, hunger and violence. They are trafficked women, prostituted women, women victimized by the long saga of domination. They are the women whose children have been torn from them at the borders.
It is just such a broken woman who stretches her fingers through the Galilean dust in a last reckless reach for healing. She finds only the hem of his robe. Touching it, she is transformed, like a parched meadow in the spring rain. Her whole being reaches up to receive the holy restoration. She knows herself to be healed. And it is enough; it is everything. She retreats into the resignation of her otherwise lonely life.
But Jesus wants more for us than just the practical miracles we beg for. We ask for one healing; Jesus wants our eternal salvation. We ask for one blessing; Jesus wants our entire lives to be filled with grace. We ask for one prayer to be answered; Jesus wants our life to become a prayer.
Jesus feels the electrical touch of her hope. He feels the secret healing she has extracted from him. He turns to seek her. Can you see their eyes meet? Yes, the bleeding has been stemmed, but he sees the deeper wounds that scar her soul. His look of immense mercy invites her to tell him “the whole truth”. By her touch, she has commandeered a physical healing. But by his gracious turning toward her, her entire being is renewed. In this sacred glance, her history has been healed. Her future has been pulled from darkness into light. Her capacity to love has been rekindled. She now and forever will remember herself as a child of God.
Jairus waits, no doubt impatiently, at the edge of this miracle, anxious for such power to touch his daughter’s life. He fears they have lingered too long with the woman. His servants arrive, confirming his fears. He receives the dreaded report, “Your daughter has died.”
Jesus now pushes Jairus to the gauntlet of pure faith. In the face of this devastating news, Jesus tells him, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” Is this not an almost impossible command? Like Jairus, we all know what it is to worry for our children:
Fathers of color teach their sons behaviors to protect them from profiling.
Immigrant parents fear their children will be ripped from them in a pre-dawn raid.
Famine-ravaged mothers watch their children disappear into hunger.
In hospitals and doctors’ offices, devastated parents summon the courage to accompany their critically ill child.
And Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. Have faith.”! What can he possibly mean?
Perhaps it is this simple. In Jairus’s home, Jesus takes the dead girl’s hand. He says, “Talitha, koum – Little girl, arise.” His call to her heart tells her there is no darkness, devastation or death from which God cannot draw us into life. This is the truth Jesus brings to the little girl and to us. But it is a truth that, in our fear and need, we cannot always see.
For the moment, this girl lives. But at some time in history she, like all of us, will die. So the miracle is not the restoration of her life. The miracle is that her eyes, and her parents’ eyes, are opened to the power of God over death. Despite all appearances, God’s life endures eternally.
This is the revelation of this Gospel passage. If we live by faith, we live beyond cure into healing. If we live by faith, even death can bring life. If we live by faith, we are free to release all worry into the abundant mercy of God who grants us healing even beyond our asking or desire.
Man or woman, old or young, at some time in our lives each one of us has been Jairus. Each one of us has been one or the other of these two women. Within their stories of woundedness and deep faith, our stories shelter. Jairus and the afflicted women – unnamed like so many women throughout time – believed there was a way to new life. They reached for it. They begged for it. What is it in us that cries out for such healing? What is it in us that, without the touch of Jesus, teeters on the verge of death?
Simply by believing, these three Gospel figures became new beings. Simply by believing, their orientation changed from darkness to light. By their example, let us lift up those wounded and deadened places in our hearts and world before the loving gaze of Jesus.
To what suffering in our souls is God whispering the encouragement, “Talitha, koum”? What is the “whole truth” Jesus is inviting us to confide? Let us arise and respond to him in the full energy of our faith. Let us gaze with boundless confidence into the eyes of God’s mercy.
Today, in Mercy, we encounter a rare -in fact, singular- reading from the Book of Lamentations. While passages from the book are used in the Lenten Tenebrae service, today is the only time we will meet Lamentations during the Mass readings.
So, let’s give it special attention.
This tenderly written and grief-filled Old Testament poem laments the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem nearly 600 years before Christ’s birth. The disaster is seen as God’s punishment against a faithless people, who have listened to false prophets. These prophets, rather than confronting the people with their sinful blindness, enabled their guilt in order to be popular and accepted.
What does Lamentations have to say to us?What, in particular, can it teach our religious leaders about their political voice?
Many of us recognize that we live in a toxic world. Terrorism, perpetual war and militarism, rampant consumerism, political isolationism, environmental destructionism are just some of our global “Babylons”. There are numerous local and personal ones as well.
We all play some role in the fostering or impeding of these systems in our culture. A sincere and active faith helps us see our role and responsibility more clearly. We need faith leaders who are not afraid to call us to insight, lamentation, and prayerful action. We, and the political leaders we choose, need to build a world where we live in balanced relationship with God. This is a world where all God’s people live in peace, sustainability, mutuality, and freedom.
While the Book of Lamentations is filled with sadness and regret, it also contains one of the most beautiful and hopeful verses in Scripture:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his mercies never fail.
They are renewed each morning;
So great is God’s faithfulness.
`~ Lamentations 3:22-23
Some of us may feel that our our current socio-political world is irredeemable, but Lamentations says we are wrong. Vibrant faith, active hope, and limitless courage will prove it.
Today, in Mercy, we celebrate the great Apostles Peter and Paul. The stories of these men embody all the hills and valleys of a Christian life: call, conversion of heart, ministry, miracles, sacrifice, suffering, failure and glory.
Every human being passes through these hills and valleys. Why do some emerge as saints for the ages and others not?
Today’s readings would suggest this answer: they believed, and submitted their hearts to God’s unimaginable grace and power. Through that faith, they ultimately were led to the heights of holiness and carried the rest of us believers with them.
Paul says,
“The Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
so that through me the proclamation of the Word
might be completed.”
When Jesus asks Peter what he believes, Peter says,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Ordinary men responding with a clear and extraordinary faith.
One June morning, about forty years ago, I sat in a sun-filled field in the Golan Heights of Israel at a spot named Caesarea Philippi. Thirty other pilgrims composed the group as we heard today’s Gospel being read. Listening, I watched the rising sun grow brilliant on the majestic rock face in the near distance. I thought how Peter might have watched his day’s sunplaying against the same powerful cliffs.
Jesus said to him,
You are Peter (which mean “Rock”), and upon this rock I will build my Church.
A few years later, I stood at the center of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Looking up, I saw these words emblazoned on the awesome rotunda dome:
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram
aedificabo ecclesiam.
On that lazy afternoon, two thousand years ago, Peter could never have imagined what God already saw. Yet, Peter responded – with his whole life. This is what makes a Saint.
Lavish Mercy 