Today, in Mercy, our readings are filled with the sanctifying unrest of the Holy Spirit.
In Acts we read that, despite the internal peace of the early Christian community, they faced a hostile surrounding environment. Nevertheless, they were impelled by the Spirit within them to continue to proclaim Jesus Christ.
Our Gospel remembers Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. Grace burned in him too, but it was a subtle light shaded by his early fear. He came to Jesus in the shadows of the night to test the flame in his soul.
Jesus answered and said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
Again and again in salvation history, the world is “turned upside down and shaken” by God’s renewing power.We human beings find ourselves struggling to get our feet under us again as circumstances spin to a new truth. Like graceful ballet dancers pirouetting in space, we must keep our eyes on the fixed point of God’s immovable love.
The early disciples did this. Nicodemus did this. As our world now shakes into a changed reality, it is our turn to lock our hearts on God, opening to the new dream God has for all Creation.
Music: Shake – by Mercy Me (You been sittin’ in that chair a while? Here’s a song you can get up and dance-pray!)
Today, in Mercy, our readings offer us a snapshot of the infant Church – a joyful, loving, generous community confidently sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Our Responsorial Psalm, written centuries before their time, prophetically captures their grateful Resurrection prayer:
R. Alleluia. The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. By the LORD has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes. This is the day the LORD has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.
Our second reading from Peter voices the community’s amazed gratitude:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Friends, how we need that living hope today, in these times that test our souls!
It is true that everyday of our lives we are reborn in God.New grace, new challenge, new blessing comes to us daily. But the need for that newness has seldom felt so momentous as it does in these pandemic times.
We are challenged:
to find God in clouded realty
to be a channel of God’s love even in suffering
to build the generous community despite isolation
to be the touch of Mercy in a touchless world
We may feel a little like Thomas as we pray with these challenges. It must have been so hard for him to touch the wounds of Jesus! And it must have been shocking for him to feel them — these apparent talismans of suffering –now charged with an infinite transformative power!
What changed for Thomas to make him a devout believer? Not his circumstances. Not the reality around him.Not the challenges before him.
The change came within him because he believed. By looking through suffering to glory, Thomas believed.
May we have that kind of faith in these times that so hunger for it! That kind of faith allows us to be reborn!
(Speaking of being reborn, I am sending a short second reflection today. Today is my 75th birthday and the Psalm is my way of celebrating with all of you.)
Music: Thomas Song – Halleal (Lyrics below)
Thomas’ Song – Hallal
Jesus you were all to me,
Why did you die on Calvary?
O Lamb of God, I fail to see
How this could be part of the plan.
They say that you’re alive again
But I saw death and every sin
Reach out to claim their darkest whim
How could this part if the plan?
If I could only
Hold your hand
And touch the scars
Where nail were driven,
I would need
To feel your side
Where holy flesh
A spear was riven,
Then I’d believe,
Only then I’d believe
Your cruel death
Was part of a heavenly plan.
Holy presence, holy face
A vision filling time and space
Your newness makes my spirit race
Could this be part of the plan?
I see the wounds that caused the cry
From heaven, ocean, earth, and sky
When people watched their savior die
Could this be part of the plan?
Reaching out
To hold your hand
And touch the scars
Where nails were driven
Coming near
I feel your side
Where holy flesh
A spear was riven
Now I believe
Jesus now I believe
Your cruel death
Was part of a heavenly plan
I proudly say
With blazen cry
You are my Lord and my God!
Late April and the sweet fullness of a spring morning pours down on the silver water. It had been a fruitless night for the weary fishermen, but not an unpleasant one. They had distracted one another from their labors by singing their ancient folksongs and telling the stories of their recent epiphanies. As dawn cracked through darkness, they trailed their fingers in the gentle wake and turned their tired souls towards shore.
And He stood there, misted in diffused radiance. “The starboard side”, he called. “Why?,” they thought; and then again, “Why not?”. With just that small opening in the closed door of their hopelessness, they were overwhelmed with the stunning presence of possibility.
How could these seasoned fishermen have failed to notice the abundance swimming at their side? How could they, so accustomed to the rocking sea, have been narcotized by its lulling darkness?
When we have abandoned hope and tired of the rolling waves; when we have turned the bow toward shore in acquiescence to a hungry morning, remember these disciples. Like them, may we listen for the soft suggestion, “Children…the starboard side…”.
There is always another side, another path to the fullness of life. The hopeless dirges we repeat in our darkness are the devil’s deceptions. The truth is that life runs beside us and with in us, just below the surface of our fears. Love stands on the shore and encourages us to go back for a moment into the darkness, to look again for the hidden blessing, and then to come to the feast in Love’s abiding presence.
Today, in the midst of pandemic’s long night, we are the Apostles. What bold command is Jesus calling to us in the morning mist?
Music: Edward Elgar – The Apostles – a long, beautiful piece you may want to play in the background if you have a quiet space in your day.
Today, in Mercy, Jesus asks his disciples, “Why do questions arise in your heart?”
Honestly, Lord? How could they not? You have, after all, just RISEN FROM THE DEAD! We’re not used to that, and we’re not sure how to handle it!
And about that Last Supper, when you said the bread and wine were your Body and Blood? It’s a pretty amazing statement, and we’re still trying to comprehend it.
Besides all that, Lord, just now the whole world is languishing in the midst of a pandemic, and we’re not sure exactly where You are!
We’re just human beings, Lord. Our minds naturally work to solve problems. That’s why we have questions – we like answers.
Only now, as Resurrection People, are we beginning to learn that you are much more the “The Answer”.
You will always be “The Mystery” – the Infinity we are invited to – where there is no end, only deeper, always deeper.
Help us to learn that our faith and our doubts are the same thing – they are our attempts to embrace the Question. Help us transform our doubts to faith by our unequivocal trust in your Mystery.
For God does not want to be believed in,
to be debated and defended by us,
but simply to be realized through us.”
― Martin Buber
Mystery is not to be construed
as a lacuna in our knowledge,
as a void to be filled,
but rather as a certain plentitude.
— Gabriel Marcel
Today, in Mercy, our readings present us with a picture of the nascent Church as it works toward understanding itself in the physical absence of Jesus.
Throughout the Gospels, we see a Christian community forming around a Leader they can see, hear and touch. Acts reveals how that community awakens to itself when Jesus is no longer materially present.
Acts shows us a Church like us. We have never seen Christ, nor heard him, nor touched him. And yet we believe, or want to believe.
In our reading today, Peter preaches with brutal honesty:
Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
Peter’s message gets through to the assembly, to the point that, when they hear it, they are “cut to the heart”. This phrase indicates a profound conversion in the way they believed. Peter tells them that their faith, like Jesus’ life, must now become a sign of contradiction to a “corrupt generation “.
What might this powerful passage say to us?
For one thing, the reading calls us to be honest about the sincerity of our faith. Is it the core of our lives? Or is it, at best, a Sunday hobby? Does it pervade our relationships and choices, giving witness to Christ’s commission to love? Or is it a tool to judge and vilify those who differ from us?
Now, in these pandemic times, as we are distanced from the opportunity to worship in community, we may be struck by all that we had taken for granted until now. Faith matters. We need it to be whole human beings.
The reading doesn’t demand that we “preach our faith out loud”. It calls us to a much deeper and more courageous witness:
to be Truth in a world of lies
to be Peace in violence
to be Justice in the face of abuse and domination
to be Servant rather than be served
to be Love for those deemed unlovable
in other words, to be like Jesus
And to do it all because we have been “cut to the heart” by the witness of the Cross and Resurrection.
Today, in Mercy, worlds are splitting apart, but the Word of God comes to heal them.
In our first reading, we share in the experience of the prophet Ezekiel.
Ezekiel and his wife lived during the Babylonian Captivity on banks of the Chenab River which is in modern day Iraq. He lived during the siege of Jerusalem in 589 BC. In Ezekiel’s day the northern kingdom had been conquered and destroyed 150 years earlier.
In other words, Ezekiel, like his contemporary Jeremiah, had his heart torn apart along with the homeland they cherished as God’s promise to them.
The Valley of the Dry Bones – artist unknown
In today’s reading, which comes immediately after his vision of the Dry Bones, Ezekiel prophesies a message of hope and restoration to a fragmented and devastated nation.
In our Gospel, Jesus is the new Ezekiel. He stands in the midst of the bigger “nation” of all God’s Creation which has been fragmented by the failure to love. Like Ezekiel, Jesus offers a message of hope and restoration to sinners.
In this Gospel, Jesus himself is the “Temple” about to destroyed. The prophecy of its destruction is unwittingly delivered by the high priest Caiaphas:
Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to the Pharisees and Sanhedrin, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.” He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.
Within Christ’s new law of love, these “children of God” go far beyond the Jewish nation. They are you and me, and every other creature with whom we share this time and universe. The fragmentations which separate and alienate us are dissolved in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Holy Week will begin tomorrow when all believers will intensify their desire to join Christ in his final journey to Resurrection, to understand our own lives anew in the power of Paschal Grace.
This is a somber and surreal time for all of us, and we will miss our ability to join one another in our beloved Holy Week Services. But there are some helpful alternatives. I’ve listed some of my favorites below. Click on any of these three links below to explore.
Music:Make Us One – featuring James Lorne’s. Written by Sally DeFord
(Lyrics below)
Lyrics
How shall we stand amid uncertainty? Where is our comfort in travail? How shall we walk amid infirmity, When feeble limbs are worn and frail? And as we pass through mortal sorrow, How shall our hearts abide the day? Where is the strength the soul may borrow? Teach us thy way.
Chorus:
Make us one, that our burdens may be light Make us one as we seek eternal life Unite our hands to serve thy children well Unite us in obedience to thy will. Make us one! teach us, Lord, to be Of one faith, of one heart One in thee.
Then shall our souls be filled with charity, Then shall all hate and anger cease And though we strive amid adversity, Yet shall we find thy perfect peace So shall we stand despite our weakness, So shall our strength be strength enough
We bring our hearts to thee in meekness; Lord, wilt thou bind them in thy love?
(Repeat chorus)
Take from me this heart of stone, And make it flesh even as thine own Take from me unfeeling pride; Teach me compassion; cast my fear aside. Give us one heart, give us one mind Lord, make us thine Oh, make us thine!
(Repeat chorus)
Abraham Looks to the Heavens from Bible Pictures by Charles Foster (1897)
Today, in Mercy, Yahweh is very clear with Abram that he is now in a life-changing situation:
My covenant with you is this: you are to become the father of a host of nations. No longer shall you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I am making you the father of a host of nations.
Having witnessed how young fathers are upended by the news of impending fatherhood, I can’t even imagine what Abraham felt like when he heard this:
I will render you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings shall stem from you.
But aside from the practical ramifications of God’s promise, what Abraham is invited to is a whole new outlook on the world.God lays out before him a vision of the ages, infinitely beyond the confines of Abraham’s current understanding.
It is an existence beyond time and human definition. It is the infinite place of God’s timelessness, where we all exist, but forget when we are born. Our lifetime is a spiritual journey back to remembrance.
In our Gospel, Jesus uses a rather cryptic phrase as he challenges his listeners to look beyond their circumscribed perspectives:
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death…. Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.
By fully embracing his covenant with God, Abraham saw beyond death.The vision of heaven was opened to him and he lived his life by its power. He lived then within the Day of the Lord, not within any small confined reality.
Jesus offers us the same invitation. We can choose to see with God’s eyes, or with only our own. We can choose to live within God’s infinity, or in only our own earthbound borders.
In our current global situation, when time has lost its shape and days silently morph into one another, it may be a good time to remember the eternal character of our heart.It may be time to have a sit-down with God about our covenant, like the conversation God had with Abraham.
In our first reading, three young men stand convinced of God. Even the threat of a fiery death cannot shake them from that conviction.
And their faith is not a quid pro quo – a case where they say to God, “I’ll believe if you do ‘X’ for me.” No, their commitment is unqualified and complete:
If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue.
When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are cast into the furnace, a fourth figure appears with them, an angel of God who delivers them safely through their trial.
In our Gospel, even “the Jews who believed” in Jesus begin to quibble with him. They stand with him at the threshold of his Passion and Death, the great fire that will test them all. Like the three young men at the furnace, they face the ultimate choice:
Who do you really believe in?
What God will you give your life to?
Jesus challenges them to follow him into the fire that faces him:
Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you … … if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free. I know that you are descendants of Abraham. But you are trying to kill me, because my word has no room among you. I tell you what I have seen in the Father’s presence; then do what you have heard from the Father.
Throughout our lives, our faith will be tested many times. That’s why it’s called “faith” and not “certainty ”. Our life circumstances will ask us, again and again, if our faith is strong enough to stand in the fire, to walk the Calvary road with Jesus.
Let the testimony of the ages inspire us with courage. We know the fire hid an angel. We know the road continued past the bloody hill and on to the Resurrection. We know that every storm will pass and leave us washed anew in grace if we make that ultimate choice to be faithful.
Today, in Mercy, we end the month of March in a very different place from where we began it.On March 1st, I didn’t expect to be in midst of the Corona Desert did you?
Neither did the Israelites in today’s first reading expect to be in their particular desert. They had left the oppressions of Egypt with no certainties, but nonetheless with expectations. Now, after decades wandering the desert, those expectations turned into some typical complaints:
Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!
They even go so far as to blame a coincidental snake infestation on God, demanding that Moses get God to fix it.
What’s going on here with our wandering ancestors? I think that, in our current circumstances, it might be worthwhile to consider that question. Our Gospel reading points us toward an answer.
Jesus has invited his community to a journey too – a journey away from the oppressions of injustice, selfishness, and lovelessness; to a place where “law” is not used as an excuse for domination; to a new community where all Creation shares equally in the Bread of Life.
But the Pharisees don’t get it. They are lost in a desert of their own illusions, needs, and fears. They can’t see past the sandstorms of their own construction.
That’s why Jesus tells them:
I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.
…. because you just can’t trust enough, let go enough to see that the journey is so much deeper than your present concerns. It is a journey of the soul from oppression to freedom, from selfishness to love, from blindness to light.
Jesus invites us too, even as we negotiate our desert journeys, to release our hearts to a world beyond appearances.
You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world.
Indeed, we must pay attention to the exigencies of our earthly journey, but today’s readings remind us that the true journey is infinitely deeper. That faith should inspire our hope, choices, and attitudes in what certainly seems like an awfully big desert.
Deserts can make us desperate, if we let them. Or they can shear us of everything that blocks our soul’s sight.
We may not see clearly beyond this momentary desert, but we are the children of an eternal and merciful God. May we trust our journey to that Immutable Loving Presence and allow ourselves to be made new.
Music: Everything is Holy Now – Peter Mayer
(Thanks to Sister Michele Gorman for sharing this beautiful song on Facebook)
Today in Mercy, we encounter the stories of Suzanna and the woman taken in adultery. Both these stories always make me mad. Even though their ultimate lesson is the justice and mercy of God, I can’t help nettling every time I read them.
Here’s why. Still today, in so many instances, women continue to endure the same kind of assault, objectification, suspicion and blame — and still at the hands of judges, clerics, business and political leaders. Just let the newsreels of the past few years run through your mind. You’ll be as angry as I am.
So to save you from a continuing diatribe, I have gone back to a piece I wrote for the Catholic Health Association several years ago. It looks at the themes of this week in Lent. It helps us to break through the stories to their point of redemption, to go through death to life, sin to forgiveness, judgement to mercy, darkness to light.
Reflection for the Fifth Week of Lent
I will keep my covenant with you … to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. ~Genesis 17:7
photo by Chi Pham
The golden June morning had broken bright and warm through the hospital windows. With its breaking, the attending physician and chaplain had received a page. Dorothy had taken an unexpected turn. She was struggling both to live and to die.
As they attended and comforted her, Dorothy managed to whisper ” … wait for Henry.” Henry, her husband of fifty-eight years, had arrived promptly at 7:00 AM daily for all the weeks of Dorothy’s hospitalization. Glancing at her watch, the chaplain saw that it was just 6:50 AM.
When, after ten eternal minutes, Henry appeared at the door, he carried a small bouquet of yellow roses from their beloved garden. Quickly apprehending the changed situation, he laid the roses aside and hurried to hold Dorothy for the last few minutes of her life. In the loving, covenanted presence Dorothy had waited for, she finally embraced a peaceful death.
It had not been easy for Dorothy to die nor, from then on, had it been easy for Henry to live. Still, through many bereavement visits, the chaplain watched their long, honest love arise to heal Henry. Through prayer and the benediction of memories, Henry realized that their love, like the roses still blooming in their garden, was both fragile and perpetual.
In this week’s readings, God again calls us to such a love. As God brought Lazarus, Suzanna and Shadrack out of darkness and death, so God promises to bring us. “I will keep my covenant with you,” God says. “Whoever keeps my word will never die.”
Accompanying Jesus, as he nears Jerusalem, let us trust and cherish these promises in our own darknesses and bereavements. Let us ask God to deliver us from both our sins and our judgements of others.
Again and again in salvation history, the world is “turned upside down and shaken” by God’s renewing power. We human beings find ourselves struggling to get our feet under us again as circumstances spin to a new truth. Like graceful ballet dancers pirouetting in space, we must keep our eyes on the fixed point of God’s immovable love.
Having witnessed how young fathers are upended by the news of impending fatherhood, I can’t even imagine what Abraham felt like when he heard this:
Lavish Mercy 