Category: Courage

The Wisdom of God

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 8, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, the Church links three readings which, at first glance, seem unrelated.

  • Our first reading from Wisdom reminds us of God’s infinite wisdom, incomprehensible to our human minds.
  • Paul, in his letter to Philemon, begs for the loving inclusion of Onesimus, an enslaved person, into the Colossian community.
  • In today’s Gospel, Jesus  makes the harsh pronouncement:

If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.

How might we interpret these disparate passages to find a message of wholeness for our prayer?

Wis9_13 gods mind

Let’s start with Jesus. In no uncertain terms, he challenges his disciples to move out of their small worlds into God’s big world. That Godly world is not defined by family, nor by any condition other than our common Creaturehood in God … not by:

word gram

Jesus says the sacred community is defined only by shared and irrevocable commitment to the Gospel of love and mercy.

Paul knows and loves Onesimus, the slave, as a brother in this community. In his letter, Paul encourages Philemon to do the same.

Sometimes as human beings, filled with all kinds of insecurities, we tend to build enclaves that make us feel safe. We like to be with “our kind”. We invent borders to filter out those whose differences we don’t understand. We allow fear to grow out of that lack of understanding. Within the enclosure of our self-protectionism, we eventually forget that we are all one, equal, precious, beautiful and beloved by God.

Such toxic attitudes are the soil for slavery, war, ethnic cleansing, racial supremacy,   human trafficking, destructive nationalism, and all the other sacrileges committed by humans against the human family.

Wisdom reminds us that only God can open the tight circle of our fears, judgments and isolations – only God whose infinite love encompasses all. Jesus tells us that we find that love only by lifting up the cross and following him.

Wisdom tells us to put it in God’s hands, and to respond to God’s challenge in the preaching of Jesus Christ.

Who can know your way of thinking, O God
… except you give us wisdom
 and send your Holy Spirit from on high
 thus stretching the hearts of those on earth

Today I pray, may God do this for me, and for all our tight, convoluted and troubled world.

Music: Who Has Known (an Advent hymn, but perfect I think for today’s readings)

God is a Sliding Board!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

September 7, 2019

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Today, in Mercy,  Paul references some pretty mean-spirited Colossians:

You once were alienated and hostile in mind
because of evil deeds.

Whoa! Where did these meanies come from amid all the blessed populace?
They must have been nice to be around!

All of us have been in the presence of such off-kilter people. They seem all twisted in their own negativity and judgmentalism. There is no joy in them, no warmth, no kindness. Unhappily, we may even have such a person at times.

Paul is clear on the cure for such ill-temper:

  • Reconciliation through a persevering faith
  • Stability in hope, grounded the Gospel

If you have ever used a GPS device while driving, you have probably had the same experience as I have. At least five annoying times per journey, the gal is my dashboard shouts:

Recalculating route!

Paul says that with our reconciliation through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, there is no need to recalculate. As our Responsorial Psalm tells us:

I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.

Once again in our Gospel, the Pharisees try to distract from the clarity of Jesus’ message. They worry about the tiniest grains rather than the Radiant Truth in their midst. They keep trying to recalculate a route through their circuitous laws rather than opening their hearts to the Way.

It’s easy to get infected with such running around in circles. The bigness of God can be scary. We sometimes make up useless curves to avoid God’s awesomeness.

Jn14_6slide

Indeed, God is a sliding board with no handrails! But, Paul assures us that we are riding it in Christ’s arms.

Music: I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life – Bob Hurd

Our Laboring Mother

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Courage, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, SeasonsLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Tuesday, September  3, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, Paul again affirms the faith and prudence of the Thessalonians:

Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters,
you have no need for anything to be written to you.
For you yourselves know very well
that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night.

He paints a dire picture of those “times and seasons”, likening them to the onset of labor pains. But like a mother’s labor, these pains ultimately yield life:

For God did not destine us for wrath,
but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So Christ, our Laboring Mother, delivers us – even through seasons of suffering and evil – to a new day. And we – we are the midwives to one another’s salvation:

Therefore, encourage one another
and build one another up,
as indeed you do.

This honest encouragement is so essential for us in our faith communities because, without it, the mystery of suffering and evil overwhelm us. 

Ps27_13

It is both awesome and fearsome to truly encounter Mystery. In its presence, we are rudderless: we cannot explain, control, or humanly rationalize it. Mystery can only be comprehended by greater Mystery. Suffering can only be plumbed by the greater Mystery of Love.

And we know Love’s Name: Jesus by Roc O’Connor (Lyrics below)

Refrain:

Jesus, Jesus
Let all creation bend the knee to the Lord.

1. In Him we live, we move and have our being;
In Him the Christ, In Him the King!
Jesus the Lord.

2. Though Son, He did not cling to Godliness,
But emptied Himself, became a slave!
Jesus the Lord.

3. He lived obediently His Father’s will
Accepting His death, death on a cross!
Jesus the Lord.

A Passion Like Christ’s

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, justice1 Comment

Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082919.cfm

Today, in Mercy, we commemorate the Passion of John the Baptist who, besides Mary, was the greatest saint embracing both the Old and the New Testaments.

When I was young, the memorial was simply referred to as “The Beheading of John the Baptist”. The term “passion” captures its meaning so much more clearly:

  • it inclines us to realize the similarities between John’s passion and death and that of Jesus.
  • it shifts the power of the event to John, who chose his fate by the courage of his witness, rather than to see Herod, the “beheader”, as the agent of the story.

John’s whole prophetic life was part of his “passion”. It inevitably led him to this ultimate confrontation with evil.

Walter Bruggemann, in his transformational book “The Prophetic Imagination” writes about prophets. He indicates that prophets emerge in the context of “totalism” – those paralyzing systems which attempt to control and dominate all freedom and possibility.

Totalism kills ideas, hope, freedom, choice, self-determination, and creativity for the sake of controlling reality for its own advantage. Totalism is the ultimate “abusive relationship “.

Brueggemann defines the prophet as one engaged in these three tasks:

  • the prophet is clear on the force and illegitimacy of the totalism.
  • the prophet pronounces the truth about the force of the totalism that contradicts the purpose of God.
  • the prophet articulates the alternative world that God has promised, and that God is actually creating within the chaos around us.

Every age requires prophets because every age is infected with “Herods” trying to thwart God’s reign of love, mercy, truth, freedom, and joy. In our own time, the poison of totalism is quite evident in those systems fueled by racism, militarism, financial duplicity, desecration of the earth, and the sad array of other ideologies that cripple humanity.

Today, as we pray with this great saint, may we be inspired to respond to our own prophetic call – to be prophetic signs of love, mutual reverence, joy, Gospel justice,and lavish mercy for our world.

Music: I think of this song by Simon and Garfunkel as the modern day song of John the Baptist.

https://youtu.be/XgbBLKet14E

Faithful Monica

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Conversion, Courage, Faith, Forgiveness, Gospel, Jesus, PrayerLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Monica

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, we celebrate St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine of Hippo.

Monica
Santa Monica e Sant’Agostino by Giuseppe Riva (This work is in the public domain n its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright is the author’s life plus 100 years or less.)

Monica had a difficult life, burdened by an autocratic pagan husband. She was forbidden to have her children baptized. Augustine worried her deeply because he developed into a wayward and lazy young man. Eventually he was wooed by the Manichaean heresy which denied Christ as God. This was too much for Monica. She asked him to leave her house.

But Monica continued for seventeen years to pray for and encourage Augustine to return to a faithful, moral life. Finally through the influence of St. Ambrose, Augustine was converted.

How many mothers and fathers, friends and spouses have prayed like this for someone they love? How many of us have had a “lost sheep” right in the center of our family but beyond its touch?

Monica’s great love and faithful devotion to her son are reminiscent of Paul’s love for his Thessalonian flock:

… we were gentle among you,
as a nursing mother cares for her children.
With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you
not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves as well,
so dearly beloved had you become to us.

This is the way God loves us and draws us to himself. It is the way that we, who carry God’s love in the world, must be with one another.

Our Gospel gives us another example of how disgusted Jesus is with those who pretend the “exteriors” of faith but on the inside are “blind hypocrites… full of plunder and self-indulgence”.

Instead, we need a faith like Monica’s, humble and generous but at the same time tenacious and persevering in seeking good.

Music: Give Me the Faith Which Can Remove – written by Charles Wesley, younger brother of John Wesley, founder of Methodism

Wherever … with Love

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Conversion, Courage, Faith, friendship, Gospel, Hope, joy, LoveLeave a comment

Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

August 23, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, I thank God that we have gotten to the Book of Ruth. The wars and subterfuges of the Judges we’re sorely testing me!😂 But the beautiful story of Ruth and Naomi, familiar and beloved, offers us a more spontaneous inspiration for prayer.

Naomi’s husband and only two sons have died. Her only remaining family are her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpha. Naomi, resigning herself to a lonely death, urges these two young women to return to their kinsmen and begin new lives. Orpha acquiesces. 

Naomi RuthJPG
Ruth Swearing Allegiance to Naomi by Jans Victor (1619-1676)

But Ruth abides. Together, she and her mother-in-law return to Bethlehem, Naomi’s homeland. There, by her humble and steadfast work to support Naomi, Ruth attracts the love and admiration of Boaz, whom she eventually marries.

On the surface, and appropriately, we may read the story to be about Naomi and Ruth, their response to devastating bereavement, and their ultimate, fruitful devotion to each other.

However, on a deeper level, we may see Naomi as a symbol of suffering and need, and Ruth as an icon of God. In that manner of reading:

  • God suffers our diminishments with us
  • God refuses to abandon us 
  • God accompanies us to a new understanding of ourselves
  • God works to feed our poverty of mind, heart and spirit
  • God brings our brokenness to wholeness by loving fidelity to us

What a different kind of message from Judges the Book of Ruth brings us – a tender and merciful God more like the God of the Gospel. Although the author of the Book of Ruth is unknown, some think – because of the tone and characters – that it was written by a woman. I like that thought.

May our prayer today take us to the place where God abides with us in any suffering or spiritual longing we hold. May God’s faithful companionship heal and transform us. May God’s song of fidelity thrill, delight and sustain us. May we return it with generosity and joy.

Music: Covenant Song – Rory Cooney and Gary Daigle (Lyrics below)

Wherever you go, I will follow, Wherever you live is my home.
Though days be of blessing or sorrow, though house be of canvas or stone,
Though Eden be lost to the past, though mountains before us be vast,
Wherever you go, I am with you. I never will leave you alone.

Whatever you dream, I am with you, when stars call your name in the night
Though shadows and mist cloud the future,
together we bear there a light.
Like Abram and Sarah we stand, with only a promise in hand.
But lead where you dream: I will follow. To dream with you is my delight.

And though you should fall, you will find me, when no other friend can you claim,
when foes beat you down or betray you, and others desert you in shame.
When home and dreams aren’t enough, and you run away from my love,
I’ll raise you from where you have fallen. Faithful to you is my name.

Wherever you die, I will be there to sing you to sleep with a psalm,
to soothe you with tales our journey, your fears and your doubts I will calm.
We’ll live when journeys are done forever in mem’ry as one.
And we will be buried together, and awaken to greet a new dawn.

Wherever you go, I will follow. Behold! The horizon shines clear.
The possible gleams like a city: together we’ve nothing to fear.
So speak with words bold and true the message my heart speaks to you.
You won’t be alone, I have promised. Wherever you go, I am here.

On That Day & This One

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Mercy5 Comments

Many things live, not just the plants, animals and humans that grace our world.  Memories and promises live.  Vows live. So do grudges and prejudices. Unlike our physical life, these less tangible realities become stronger with time.  Tales of valor and achievement live, often becoming epic with the passing of the years.

Simple kindness lives too, blessing not only the current receiver, but the unseen generations to whom it is passed. Every morning, old fears and new hopes wake up within us all.  They vie with each other to become the engines of our lives.  The happy ones among us have learned to let hope win.

mother Patricia with flower
Mother Patricia near her death in 1915

On this date in 1861, a small group of just such happy, hopeful people came to Philadelphia. On that hot August afternoon, the first Philadelphia Sisters of Mercy, led by 26-year old Patricia Waldron, arrived at Broad Street Station in North Philadelphia. They carried no worldly possessions. They came with only a dream for Mercy.  It was a dream so alive in them that it still inspires us today, over 150 years later.

 

Can’t you see them standing on the busy platform, the hissing steam trains encircling them in mist?  They must have felt “be-misted” themselves, these mostly Irish country girls engulfed in a big city.

Union troops heading south crowded the platform.  Busy Broad Street crackled with news of the burgeoning national strife.  Lincoln himself would visit the city in the coming weeks.

And hidden within the seams of this bustling city’s garment lay the poor – the ones for whom they had come.  How to reach them?  How to help them change their lives?

Ranging from sixteen to twenty-seven years old, these brave young women had been charged with establishing a kind of “new nation” themselves – not of politics, but of mercy.  I am sure they, like the young stout-hearted soldiers surrounding them, were also a little weak-kneed. They too had their battles to face. They too would see starvation, illness, attack and death – but they would endure for the sake of the Mercy dream, God’s dream for the poor.

cemetery
Today we honor our beloved foremothers who led the way in faith and commitment.

Enduring dreams begin with small first steps.  So, hailing a horse-drawn carriage, Mother Patricia Waldron led her young band to their new lives.  Thus she began the grace-filled saga many of us know so well and of which we are a part today.  Their dream lives in us who love Mercy:

  • in our continued effort to find those who are poor and sick in a world that ignores them
  • in our choice to be compassionate in a world that often chooses violence
  • in our commitment to care in a world of treacherous indifference

On that sultry August day 1861,  and on this one 2019, people have choices to make.  They have vows to keep. Some choices live forever.  In the name of Mercy, what will you choose today?

Vow

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Eternal Life, FaithLeave a comment

Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

August 22, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, the Book of Judges offers us the story of Jephthat and his daughter – and it is a doozy!

885
The Daughter of Jephthat – Edgar Degas

Again, in a nutshell, Jephthat is recruited to lead an army against the Ammonites. He makes an obviously unconsidered vow that, if he is victorious, he will make a burnt offering to God of “whatever comes first out of his door” upon his return. Unfortunately, the first thing out his door is his only daughter. After giving his daughter the time she requests to “mourn her virginity”, Jephthat fulfills his vow.

Treatises have been written about how to interpret this troublesome passage – from St. John Chrysostom, to St. Ambrose, to modern Biblical scholars. No clear, single answer emerges. And for the purpose of prayer, it needn’t.

One thing the passage does make clear is that vows are critically important and have consequences.

Danielle-signing-vows
Sisters of Mercy – Perpetual Profession of Vows

We make all kinds of “vows” in our lives. Some are foolish ones, like Jephthat’s, where we promise God something simply to get our way. We glorify such promises by calling them vows. They are really one-sided bargains we make to fuel our self-interested goals.

A true vow is the tying of our heart and soul to a Love, Truth, and Hope beyond ourselves.  It is the binding of our life and future to a power we will understand only with the long fidelity of time and shared experience. It is a giving that, even if rescinded, still will change our character forever. It is a giving that, if sustained, will transform us into the very Love, Truth, and Hope which first embraced us.

Our Gospel makes clear that God takes our vows seriously.  They are our invitations to the banquet, whether they come in the form of Baptismal vows, marriage vows, religious vows, or others forms of commitment to love and service.  Once we have engaged these vows, we need to respond and to enflesh the Spirit of God within them. If we don’t, if we ignore the holy invitation within our life circumstances, we will end up in a “darkness” outside of God’s hope for us.

But if, as God hopes, we fully embrace the spirit and depth of God’s invitation, we become whole in God, “the chosen”, the beloved.

I have always loved this poem by Alice Meynell, “ The Neophyte”. It fills me with a holy awe and exuberant joy at the mysterious power of being in love with God

The Neophyte – Alice Meynell

Who knows what days I answer for to-day?
   Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
   This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.

 Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
   Give one repose to pain I know not now,
   One check to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

 O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
   I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat
   I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
   And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

(Appropriately, as we talk about faithfulness to vows, this date marks the anniversary of the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy in Philadelphia in 1861 – our Philadelphia Foundation Day. In a later post today, I will share a brief reflection of thanksgiving and challenge for this anniversary.)

Music: Center of My Life – Paul Inwood

Better Look Under Your Terebinth!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

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Today in Mercy, on this feast of St. Bernard, the liturgy offers us a little bit more of the Books of Judges. The reading for today is about Gideon, warrior judge, who delivered the Israelites from the oppression of the Midianites.

Judges6_11 terebinth
What the heck is a “terebinth” anyway? – a small southern European tree of the cashew family that was formerly a source of turpentine.

For me, these passages about wars and deliverers create conflict. Believing in Christ’s message of peace and mutual love, we have a spiritual abhorrence for war and a resistance to taking sides in confusing civil conflicts.

covers

But as our wonderful retreat guide last week (Clare D’Auria, OSF) told us, with the Scriptures, as with writings from cultures not our own, we have to “get under the language” to find the deeper spiritual meanings.

 

Here’s what I find “under the language” of Gideon’s story.

  • A person unafraid of transparency with God:

The angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth.
Gideon said to the Lord, “My Lord, if the LORD is with us,
why has all this happened to us?

  • A person open to God’s Presence in his ordinary daily circumstances:

The angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth
… where Gideon was beating out wheat 

  • A person who is unaware of God’s astounding power within him:

The LORD turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have
and save Israel from the power of Midian.
It is I who send you.”
But Gideon answered him, “Please, my lord, how can I save Israel?

  • A person whose faith continued to be shaky even in the presence of God:

Gideon answered the Lord, “If I find favor with you,
give me a sign that you are speaking with me.

  • A person awestruck by God’s willingness to be personally present to him:

“Alas, Lord GOD,
that I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!”

  • A person who responds to God in loving worship and visible witness:

The LORD answered him,
“Be calm, do not fear. You shall not die.”
So Gideon built there an altar to the LORD
and called it Yahweh-shalom.

God visits each one of us in our daily experiences. We want to be transparent with God in both our joys and sorrows, our needs and our abundance. We want to give over to God our hesitancies and fears as we respond wholeheartedly to God’s invitation to grace. By the witness of our faith and good works, we want to give God praise for being in our lives – under our terebinth.

Under the language, I found a lot of Gideon in myself. You?

Music: In honor of the great St. Bernard of Clairvaux, please enjoy this beautiful him attributed to him – Jesu, Dulcis Memoria (translation below)

The sweet memory of Jesus
Giving true joy to the heart:
But more than honey and all things
His sweet presence.

Nothing more delightful is sung,
Nothing more pleasing heard,
Nothing sweeter thought,
Than Jesus, the Son of God.

O Jesus, hope of the penitent,
How gracious you are to those who ask
How good to those who seek you;
But what [are you] to those who find?

No tongue may tell,
No letter express;
He who has experience of it can believe
What it is to love Jesus.

O Jesus, may you be our joy,
You who are our future reward.
May our glory be in you
Throughout all eternity.
Amen

 

Do or Do Not

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality1 Comment

Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

August 19, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, our readings are about possessions – in every sense of that word.

In today’s reading from Judges, the first of a few this week, we see Israel in the years between entering the Promised Land to the rise of Saul as king. During these four hundred years, a series of judges tries to keep Israel on track with God. It is a frustrating assignment!

As today’s passage describes, the Israelites get caught in an endlessly repeating cycle:

  • worship false gods
  • get zapped by true God
  • feel really bad, say sorry
  • be forgiven
  • repeat cycle

Hmm! I’ve seen this pattern somewhere before. Oh, yeah! It’s just like the one describing all my good intentions that never quite materialized!

do or do not

Many of us can identify with the rich young man in the Gospel. We want to take our relationship with God up a notch. We would like to be better, holier people. But we may also, like the young man, like the ancient Israelites, be caught in a cycle of behaviors and choices which inhibit us.

Mt19_22many possessions

Jesus tells this young man to get rid of his possessions, freeing him to really follow Jesus.

What possesses us, holding us back from that radical following? 

It is not always material goods. They are easy to identify and dispatch. It is our tightly held and hidden illusions, resentments, prejudices, assumptions, entitlements, fears, jealousies, disappointments, angers. These are the heavy chains that cling to us as we try to move deeper into God.

May we be inspired by Matthew’s young man to recognize and break through the cycles that bind us by hearing God’s invitation to wholeness – an invitation always deep within our life circumstances.

Music: Out of the Deep – Julie Bernstein