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 Gospel reading leaves us with a question: are God and I really friends? Are we more than vague acquaintances who might pass by each other on a Sunday morning, maybe even wave from a distance?
Jesus talks about such people in today’s Gospel. They used God’s name a lot. They claimed that God supported their words and actions. But their actions were rooted in themselves not in the Word. Their faith was a pretense to justify their own agendas.
We human beings are very clever. We can take a scripture snippet and twist and turn it to our own designs. We can bastardize the Word of God to make it vindicate our prejudices. But Jesus says that if we do this, we will hear these dreaded words when we meet Him in eternity:
I never knew you.
How terrible that would be! Let the thought of it inspire us to open our hearts and souls to the deep truth of the Gospel. May that truth convert any selfishness and sinfulness in us into mercy and justice. May it turn our gaze from ourselves toward God and God’s dear Creation.
It is a continual transformation, but God is waiting, lovingly, to lead us.
Music: Lord, You have Searched Me and Known Me ~ Bernadette Farrell
Today, in Mercy, Jesus continues his closing instructions on living a good life. Our responsorial psalm captures the whole gist of these several admonitions.
What Jesus is saying is, “Stick with Me, and I will show you the way.” It is the Divine Mother’s invitation to her child. “Come, cradle in my arms. I will protect and guide you.”
As wonderful as Christ’s invitation is, it is hard to accept. Most of us think we can do everything ourselves. Many of us find it tiresome to plumb the Gospel to find its truth. We think we already know the way to happiness: money, prestige, and power.
It often takes a lifetime to teach us how wrong we are. But a test comes into most lives which casts us back into the arms of God. We may eventually learn that joy comes from living Gospel truths, loving as God loves, and abiding faithfully with Him.
It takes courage and spiritual insight to accept Christ’s invitation to abide in Him, especially when we feel invincible. May we grow in that courage, early and late in our lives – in good times and bad.
Today, in Mercy, Matthew begins to wrap up the long series of instructions related to the Sermon on the Mount. Three familiar, and very direct, closing points punctuate today’s reading:
Pearls before swine
Do unto others
Enter by the narrow gate
They sound a bit like what a wise parent might say to a child as he or she goes off to the wide worlds of college, business or marriage. But the core of their message works for us at any age:
Today, in Mercy, Jesus tells us not to judge. Certainly, He does not mean never to exercise good judgement. We are all called to do that.
What we need to avoid is that critical, and hypocritical, manner of dealing with people in which we think ourselves better than they. Some of us are inclined to think the worst of others and their motives, while failing to examine our own motivations.This is the kind of judgement Jesus counsels is to avoid.
Today, we hear so much categorization and stereotyping of people. We hear people condemned for their race, economic level, and lifestyle. We hear people called “criminals” simply because of their nationality. We see people denied normal human services, like cake baking and restaurant services, because of who they love or what their job is. We live in a world where these sinful judgements are used to immobilize, isolate, and control people.
We might pray today for wisdom to be delivered from making, or being the object of such judgements.
We might pray for the generosity to give others the benefit of the doubt, without giving up our wise and honest discernment based on Christian love and mercy.
(Sorry for the late publication. Got caught up in my life today!)
Today, in Mercy, we celebrate John the Baptist of whom Jesus said, “no man greater has been born of women”.
Today’s Gospel talks about the surprise conception of John, and all the drama surrounding his birth. Several other Gospel passages tell us about John’s preaching, his challenges to Herod, and his eventual martyrdom at the request of Salome. These are worth a read today, if you have a little time, just to be reacquainted with this extraordinary man.
John the Baptist was the living bridge between the Old Law and the New. He was the doorway from a religion of requirements to a religion of love. That bridge and doorway were built on a baptism of repentance in order to clear one’s heart to receive the Good News.
The magnificent Greek word for repentance is “metanoia” which indicates a turning of one’s mind and heart after realizing a new truth. Metanoia is to have awareness dawn on us, and to feel sorrow for our former blindness or hardness of heart.
May our prayer today help us to receive the grace of metanoia wherever our spirits are hardened or closed – or just plain deadened by routine. May we hear the Baptist calling to us, “Prepare your hearts – EVERYDAY- for the Lord. There is always room for you to be surprised by God.”
Music: Ut Queant Laxis( English translation below)
“Utqueant laxis” or “Hymnus in Ioannem” is a Latin hymn in honor of John the Baptist written in Horatian Sapphics and traditionally attributed to Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century Lombard historian. It is famous for its part in the history of musical notation, in particular solmization (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do). The hymn is sung to a Gregorian chant, and introduces the original do-re-mi music.
1. O for your spirit, holy John, to chasten
Lips sin-polluted, fettered tongues to loosen;
So by your children might your deeds of wonder
Meetly be chanted.
2. Lo! a swift herald, from the skies descending,
Bears to your father promise of your greatness;
How he shall name you, what your future story,
Duly revealing.
3. Scarcely believing message so transcendent,
Him for a season power of speech forsaketh,
Till, at your wondrous birth, again returneth,
Voice to the voiceless.
4. You, in your mother’s womb all darkly cradled,
Knew your great Monarch, biding in His chamber,
Whence the two parents, through their offspring’s merits,
Mysteries uttered.
5. Praise to the Father, to the Son begotten,
And to the Spirit, equal power possessing,
One God whose glory, through the lapse of ages,
Ever resounding. Amen.
Today, in Mercy, Jesus once again blows all our human instincts to smithereens! He says don’t worry about what you’ll eat or wear. Seek God’s Kingdom and all your needs will be filled. Really?
We may be tempted to picture a hippie type, bird-watching and sun-bathing in a field of of flowers – all agog with the Kingdom, but not too swift with the world!
But that’s probably not what Jesus envisioned. After all, Jesus himself worked hard to secure the necessities his family needed in Nazareth. He worked hard at his ministry throughout the Holy Land, and cared deeply about the success of his message.
What He didn’t do was worry.
Worry is what happens when we think it all depends on us. It’s what happens when it’s all about us. Worry is a windowless, doorless room where we run around aimlessly. Even God has a hard time getting in to reason with us.
To break out of that room, Jesus says seek God’s way of looking at things. Work hard and do your best – but make sure it’s for important stuff like love, honor, mercy, justice, charity, and peace. Make sure it’s not for “mammon” stuff like greed, selfishness, domination, prejudice and a host of other sins that love to worry us.
If we can make these distinctions in our life, we will have a freedom like the beautiful lilies and the unfettered sparrows. It will be an amazing liberty that the evil-hearted cannot understand or compromise.
Music: Consider the Lilies of the Field (Words below)
Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow, how they grow.
Consider the birds in the sky,
How they fly, how they fly.
He clothes the lilies of the field.
He feeds the birds in the sky.
And He will feed those who trust Him,
And guide them with His eye.
Consider the sheep of His fold,
How they follow where He leads.
Though the path may wind across the mountains,
He knows the meadows where they feed.
He clothes the lilies of the field.
He feeds the birds in the sky,
And He will feed those who trust Him,
And guide them with His eye.
Consider the sweet, tender children
Who must suffer on this earth.
The pains of all of them He carried
From the day of His birth.
He clothes the lilies of the field,
He feeds the lambs in His fold,
And He will heal those who trust Him,
And make their hearts as gold.
He clothes the lilies of the field,
He feeds the lambs in His fold,
And He will heal those who trust Him,
And make their hearts as gold.
Today, in Mercy, Jesus continues to teach us how to live a truly Gospel life. He does it with two small sermons and closes each with a blockbuster statement.
Have you ever sat in church, suffering through a rambling sermon that never got to the point? Then you can understand the beauty and effectiveness of these statements of Jesus:
Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
If the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.
The first statement leaves us to ponder what really matters to us. Where do we spend our time, talent and treasure? If we say we love God and God’s vulnerable ones, do our “investments” prove it?
The second statement challenges us to be profoundly honest, to stop naming as “good” only that which is self-serving. We see blatant examples of this in our political life: policies and tactics tied to greedy, prejudiced outcomes – outcomes fed by the suffering and oppression of vulnerable human beings. These tactics challenge us to look at our own heart and test what we proclaim as “light”.
Today, in Mercy, our readings are a study in contrasts.Our first reading from Sirach describes the fiery majesty of the prophet Elijah. Everything about Elijah was thunder and lightning.He toppled kings and raised the dead, and generally cast a path of fire as he preached. At the end of his life, he passed into heaven in a chariot of flames.
The Gospel presents a Prophet of a gentler stripe – Jesus, who is teaching us how to pray.
Jesus says to pray simply, humbly, to ask for forgiveness, and freedom from temptation. He tells us to forgive others, avoid evil and be content with our daily bread.No fiery chariots; no tumbling governments.This gentle man will die in the agony of the cross.
No wonder those who hoped for a Messiah like Elijah were disappointed in Jesus.No wonder we still struggle to understand the contradiction of the Cross.
However, Walter Brueggemann says this:The crucifixion is
“the ultimate act of prophetic criticism
in which Jesus announces the end of a world of death…
and takes the death into his own person”.
Still, the witness of Calvary would remain nothing but a contradiction without the transformative act of the Resurrection.
Through the combined witness of Good Friday and Easter, Jesus not only confronts the old order, he embraces and transforms it.He takes to himself the same suffering and death that we all must face, but he shows us that it cannot destroy us. He proves that, ultimately, death has no power over those who believe in Him and in the Father Who has sent Him.
Indeed, the Our Father is a most powerful, prophetic prayer. It teaches us how to be in the presence of God even in the midst of our daily life. It shows us how to express our faith in God’s Kingdom even as we live in our earthly one. It helps us to become a little more like gentle, powerful Jesus.
Music: Aramaic Our Father – in the orgs that Jesus likely used.
Today, in Mercy, Jesus tells us how to pray and do good. He says that it is our deep-hearted intention that matters in these things. It is there, in the hidden heart, that God dwells with us and reads our love for its sincerity.
God is not impressed with any bling in our words or actions. Not impressed with the big, loud, or wow of what we do. God knows whether we truly love, and it is that which touches Him.
Let the words of Jesus today take you to that inner heart-room where God knows and loves you like no one else can. In that precious quiet, enter the silence of prayer. Listen to God with the soul’s ear that needs no sound. Speak to God with the humble love that needs no words.
Music: Yo Yo Ma playing Meditation from Thaïs by Jules Massenet
Today, in Mercy, Jesus continues to instructus in the way of Christian perfection. As we look back over history, and contemplate the present, we realize that these are instructions many Christians have chosen to ignore.
Love your enemies.
Do good to those who hate you.
But WHY, for God’s sake??? Why should we love our ENEMIES???
And that’s exactly the answer: for God’s sake.
Jesus tells us that this is the way God loves, and that if we want to be like God, we must love that way too.
God lets his rain – his grace – pour out to everyone. God does not withhold the hope for good from any creature. It doesn’t mean that God, or we, don’t recognize evil and sin in another. It means that we love despite it.
We may have a few people in our hearts whom we consider so evil or mean-hearted (people who hurt us or the world so egregiously) that we have withdrawn our respect and love from them.
These are the very people Jesus tells us to pray for today. May they be opened to God’s grace. May they be healed by Love. And may we.
Lavish Mercy 