Category: Creation

Do You Not Yet Have Faith?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
January 27, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012724.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings say something about Divine Order, about Sacred Balance – and our ability to let go and trust.

Nathan Rebukes David – by James Tissot

In our first reading, the prophet Nathan confronts David regarding his relationship with Bathsheba. The beautiful Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, an elite soldier in David’s army. From far away one day, David spies her bathing in a pool. Full of covetousness and lust, he engineers a heartless plot to have her as his own.

The story is complex, intriguing, and extremely dramatic. You can read it for yourself in 2 Samuel. But the point I would like to draw out for today is about covetousness. What is that, really, and does it play any part in my life?

“Covet” is an intransitive verb that we learned when we were taught the Ten Commandments. Like all the other sins, my six-year-old self decided I would try hard not to commit it … but I had no idea what it even meant! I was pretty sure I didn’t have to be worried about coveting my neighbor’s wife, but I did like Jimmy Clark’s bike enough to covet it. (But, I didn’t steal it.)

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever used the verb “covet” in a sentence before today. So I turned to Meriam-Webster who defines covetousness like this: to desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably

Do we “covet” when we wish we had some of the great things others have? Material things like money, mansions, and limousines? Or immaterial things like talent, beauty, and popularity?

I don’t think so. We may have to deal with the concupiscence of jealousy or envy, but it’s not quite the same as coveting. As Merriam-Webster indicates, coveting implies an inordinance or culpability. In other words, we act on our jealousy or envy in some way, creating an imbalance in our moral life. 

  • We resent, judge, or ostracize the person who has what we want.
  • We plot to take away the other’s prized possession or status.
  • We create a deficit in our own responsibilities by directing essential resources to our plot.
  • And what may be the worst and most likely situation, we use our power to indifferently usurp what belongs to others.

When I examine my conscience I remind myself that the world belongs to me, but it also belongs to others — all others. Peace, a decent level of sustenance, the goods of Creation, the right to life — these belong to me but also to others. I may not be aware of “coveting” these things to the detriment of others, but how do my choices and actions in any way limit that right for others?

It could be as simple as this:

  • Do I vote for leaders who continually foster negotiation over militaristic responses?
  • Do I support trade agreements that establish sustainable practices for producers as well as consumers?
  • Do I recognize that climate deterioration and refugee intensification are inextricably connected to abusive environmental practices and that I have a role in promoting change?
  • Do I have a single-issue or a holistic approach to life concerns for the unborn, impoverished, incarcerated, unhoused, immigrant, and medically needy populations?

When we find ourselves entangled in greed or covetousness, it’s not necessarily that we are bad people. We might be more like the disciples described in today’s Gospel – fearful people, so insecure that we amass material protections around us.

A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.
Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him,
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up,
rebuked the wind, 
and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”
The wind ceased and there was great calm.
Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”

Mark 4: 37-40

Jesus calls us to live a life grounded in faith not material protections. Only faith is invulnerable to life’s storms. Within its eternal securities, we become more deeply aware of our sacred relationship to all creatures and to Creation Itself.

If David had exercised such faith, the taking of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah would have been incomprehensible to him. As we deepen in our faith, what awarenesses will awaken in us?

Quote: Wisdom from Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950) who is considered an Indian Hindu sage and “jivanmukta” (liberated being). He is regarded by many as an outstanding enlightened being and, as a charismatic person, attracted many devotees. I particularly value this quote which leads me to consider my oneness with all beings:

Questioner: How are we to treat others?
Ramana Maharshi: There are no others.

Music: Imagine – John Lennon

Mothers of Kings

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Advent, Creation, Faith, Mary, spirituality1 Comment

Friday of the Third Week of Advent
December 22, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122223.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray a heartfelt antiphon beseeching God to transform our world.

Our readings strengthen our prayer because they vibrate with luminous faith deepened by a palpable humanness like our own. We pray with these spiritually powerful women:

Mary and Hannah
courageous mothers
shining believers
agents of worship
prophets in common disguise.

Our first reading once again foreshadows Christ’s life. Hannah, a mother like Mary, gives her only son fully to God’s work. Notice that Hannah, not her husband, brings Samuel to the Temple and initiates the ritual of his dedication. It is Hannah who, claiming her womanhood, utters the simple canon that dedicates Samuel’s life.

Hannah brought Samuel with her,
along with a three-year-old bull,
an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine,
and presented him at the temple of the LORD in Shiloh……

I am the woman who stood near you here, praying to the LORD.
I prayed for this child, and the LORD granted my request.
Now I, in turn, give him to the LORD;
as long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the LORD.”
She left Samuel there.

1 Samuel 1:24-28

Hannah Leaves Samson at the Temple

But how poignantly the reading ends! Do not miss the human emptiness that filled her heart as she returned to her childless home.

She left Samuel there.

1 Samuel 1:28

In our Gospel, Mary offers us her Liturgy of the Word as she proclaims the liberated dimensions of a redeemed world.

My soul proclaims your greatness, O God! 
My heart rejoices in you, my Savior,
because you have showered your servant with blessing! 
From now to the end of time,
all generations will know the great things you have done for me.
Mighty One! Your name is holy! 
In every age, your compassion flows to those who reverence you! 
But all who seek to exalt themselves in arrogance 
will be leveled by your power.
You have deposed the mighty from their seats of power, 
and have raised the lowly to high places. 
Those who suffer hunger, you have filled with good things. 
Those who are privileged, you have turned away empty-handed.
You have come to the aid of your people, 
in fulfillment of the promise you made to our ancestors 
when you spoke blessing to Sarah and Hagar 
and all their descendants, to the utmost generation!

from the Cortona Altarpiece by Fra Angelico

After her courageous declaration, Mary spends three months with Elizabeth in a mutually-directed matriarchal retreat. She then goes back, alone but not alone, to the life she has yet to shape for the coming God. Once again, the striking solitude of this young mother as she travels home:

Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months
and then returned to her home.

Luke 1:56

What can we learn from these women today as we make a place for God in our hearts and in our world? Like Hannah, to what liturgies of giving am I called? Like Mary, does my life proclaim my faith in God’s transformative intention for Creation?

Poetry: The Eternal Feminine by Pierre de Chardin

When the world was born, I came into being.
Before the centuries were made, I issued from the hand of God. . .
God instilled me into the initial multiple 
as a force of condensation and concentration.
In me is seen that side of beings by which they are joined as one,
in me the fragrance that makes them hasten together and leads them,
freely and passionately, along their road to unity.

Through me, all things have their movement and are made to work as one.
I am the beauty running through the world, 
to make it associate in ordered groups;
the ideal held up before the world to make it ascend.
I am the Eternal Feminine.
I was the bond that held together the foundations of the universe. . .
I extend my being into the soul of the world. . .
I am the magnetic force of the universal presence 
and the ceaseless ripple of its smile.
I open the door to the whole heart of creation: 
I, the Gateway of the Earth, the Initiation. . .

In me, the soul is at work to sublimate the body — 
Grace to divinize the soul.
Those who wish to continue to possess me 
must change as I change. . .
It is God who awaits you in me!. . .
If, God, then, was able to emerge from himself,
he had first to lay a pathway of desire before his feet,
he had to spread before him a sweet savor of beauty.
It was then that he caused me to rise up,
a luminous mist hanging over the abyss—
between the earth and himself—
that, in me, he might dwell among you. . .

Lying between God and the earth, 
as a zone of mutual attraction,
I draw them both together in a passionate union.
. . . I am the Eternal Feminine.

Music – Magnificat – Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788), commonly abbreviated C. P. E. Bach, was a German Classical period composer and musician, the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach.
Throughout his lifetime, Bach worked on the Magnificat in D, Wq. 215. J. S. Bach was alive to hear it in 1749, and C. P. E. continued to revise and perform it as late as 1786. The work clearly shows the influence of J.S. Bach’s own Magnificat, including the striking resemblance of the Deposuit movements in both works.

This is the track list for the album Magnificat, taking the various phrases of the Latin prayer and expressing them in melody. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, you might like to take a portion or two at a time.

Tracklist:
00:00:00   Symphony in G Major, Wq 173:  I.    Allegro assai
00:02:59    Symphony in G Major, Wq 173:  II.   Andante
00:05:34    Symphony in G Major, Wq 173:  III.  Allegretto

00:08:38    Symphony in G Major, Wq 180:  I.    Allegro di molto
00:12:50     Symphony in G Major, Wq 180:  II.  Largo
00:17:12      Symphony in G Major, Wq 180:  III. Allegro assai

00:20:26    Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215:  I.    Magnificat (Chorus)
00:23:18     Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215:  II.   Aria. Quia respexit (Soprano)
00:29:35    Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215: III.   Aria. Quia fecit (Tenor)
00:33:40    Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215: IV.   Et misericordia eius (Chorus)
00:41:28     Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215: V.    Aria. Fecit potentiam (Bass)
00:45:14     Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215: VI.  Duet. Deposuit potentes (Contralto, Tenor)
00:51:00    Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215: VII. Aria. Suscepit Israel (Contralto)
00:56:31     Magnificat in D Major,  Wq 215: VIII. Gloria (Chorus)
00:58:17     Magnificat in D Major,   Wq 215: IX.   Sicut erat (Chorus)

Fuller Every Day

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Advent, Creation, Faith, Hope, Prayer, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday of the Second Week of Advent
December 15, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121523.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Isaiah paints a poetic picture of the soul fully taught by God. He describes that sacred obedience, or heart’s listening to God, which leads to fullness of joy, peace, and eternal life.

I, the LORD, your God,
teach you what is for your good,
and lead you on the way you should go.
If you would hearken to my commandments,
your prosperity would be like a river,
and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand,
and those born of your stock like its grains,
Their name never cut off
or blotted out from my presence.

Isaiah 48:17-19

When looking for music to complement Isaiah’s passage, I found a hymn written in 1876 by Frances R. Havergal, an English Anglican poet and hymn writer.

Her hymn Like a River Glorious, although written in older style language, spoke to me. It contains several beautiful metaphors, many reflective of today’s passage from Isaiah.

You might want to pray with one or two of these images today as you think about your own relationship with God and the Advent hopes flowing in your heart:

river
A river of grace – perfect, yet deepening
stand_anchor
Our hearts “stayed” upon God, anchored in faith
chick
Being hidden in the hollow of God’s hand
wind
“no blast of hurry” to disturb our peace (so appropriate to this busy season)
sundial
Our joys and sorrows falling like shadows
across the sundial of our lives

Throughout the ages, believers have used images to open their hearts to the graces of prayer. Think about the magnificent stained glass windows in the world’s churches — and of the centuries of our ancestors who have prayed beside them.

I hope you enjoy praying with this hymn, and the accompanying pictures, as much as I did.

Music: Like a River Glorious – Frances R. Havergal – 1876; performed here by the Parkview Mennonite Church. Follow the images and verses below.

river
A river of grace – perfect, yet deepening

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,
Over all victorious, in its bright increase;
Perfect, yet it floweth fuller every day,
Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.

stand_anchor
Our hearts “stayed” upon God, anchored in faith

Refrain:
Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest
Finding, as He promised, perfect peace and rest.

chick
Being hidden in the hollow of God’s hand

Hidden in the hollow of His blessed hand,
Never foe can follow, never traitor stand;

wind
“no blast of hurry” to disturb our peace (so appropriate to this busy season)

Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care,
Not a blast of hurry touch the spirit there.

sundial
Our joys and sorrows falling like shadows across the sundial of our lives

(Refrain then …)

Every joy or trial falleth from above,
Traced upon our dial by the Sun of Love;
We may trust Him fully, all for us to do;
They who trust Him wholly find Him wholly true.

A Message in Crisis

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Creation, Faith, Hope, Scripture, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
December 1, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Responsorial Psalm from Daniel gives us a beautiful prayer. But, in the first reading, we pray with some pretty dramatic passages from the Book of Daniel. I mean, it’s the stuff of a rather scary special effects movie!

Even Daniel indicates how disturbing his visions are:

Because of this, my spirit was anguished and I, Daniel,
was terrified by my visions.

Daniel 7:15

So does the Church, or maybe even God, want us to be disturbed in our prayer today and tomorrow with our last two readings before Advent?

Listen! If you’re not disturbed already by the strain of unholiness in the world, then Daniel isn’t going to rock your boat! But if you, like most good people, have trouble even watching the evening news without anguish, then Daniel is speaking to you.

The writer of Daniel was delivering a message to the people of their time. The visions of chapters 7–12 reflect the crisis which took place in Judea in 167–164 BCE when Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Greek king of the Seleucid Empire, threatened to destroy traditional Jewish worship in Jerusalem.

The message was:

  • pay attention to the changing world
  • focus on God in the disturbing change
  • choose to be faithful, hopeful, and brave
  • God will always remain faithful to us and most important of all:
  • God is coming to deliver us!

As with all Scripture, texts that spoke to an ancient people continue to speak to us. Our world suffers and hopes in the same way Daniel’s did. For us, the elements of today’s passage can serve as pre-Advent encouragements. Trusting them, we are moved to pray with all Creation which is ever steadfast in praising God:

Give glory and eternal praise to him!
“Mountains and hills, bless the Lord;
    praise and exalt him above all forever.”
“Everything growing from the earth
“You springs, bless the Lord;
“Seas and rivers, bless the Lord;
“You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord;
“All you birds of the air, bless the Lord;
“All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord;
    praise and exalt him above all forever.”
R.    Give glory and eternal praise to him!

Poetry: The Second Coming – William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Music: Michael Hoppé – Shadows Fall

The Midnights of Our Lives

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality3 Comments

Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 18, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111823.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we are blessed with some of the most beautiful passages in scripture.

Psalm 105 invites us to sing praise as we confidently seek God in our lives, and to always remember God’s merciful goodness to us:

Sing to God, sing praise,
    proclaim all God’s wondrous deeds.
Glory in the holy name;
    rejoice, O hearts that seek the LORD!
Remember the marvels the Lord has done!

Psalm 105: 2-3

Our first reading from Wisdom gives us one of the most gloriously imaginative images in Scripture.

Although the passage is a poetic recounting of the Exodus experience, it always makes me think of Christmas. 

  • Midnight on a starry night
  • Peaceful stillness over the earth
  • The all-powerful Word transformed 
  • Appearing among us like a comet in our darkness
  • Hope renewed for an otherwise doomed land

Praying with the passage this morning, I realize that my “Christmas lens” on the reading is right on target.

The Christmas event begins our Exodus story, a story completed in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

Just as the God of Moses reached into ancient Israel’s life to free them, transform them and make them God’s People, so God reaches into our lives. God does this not only on Christmas, but in every moment of our experience.

As our media and consumer culture bombards us, all too early, with all the secularized images of Christmas, let today’s verses bring us back to the true startling grace of our own Christ/Exodus stories:

We are not alone in the midnights of our lives. 
Listen underneath all the distractions 
to the, at first, softly emerging sound of Love 
humming under all things. 
Watch for the small lights of heaven 
longing to break into our human darkness. 
Give yourself to their Light.

No matter where we are in our lives right now, 
no matter the joy or pain of our present circumstances, 
God wants to use these realities to be with us 
and to teach us Love. 
Let us invite God 
into our willingness
to learn that Love, 
to become that Love.

Music: Winter Cold Night – John Foley, SJ

Yes, it is an Advent/ Christmas song. But it fits so perfectly. Please forgive me if I am rushing the season too. 😉

Oh, the depth of the riches of God
And the breadth of the wisdom and knowledge of God
For who has known the mind of God
To Him be glory forever

A virgin will carry a child and give birth
And His name shall be called Emmanuel
For who has known the mind of God
To Him be glory forever

The people in darkness have seen a great light
For a child has been born, His dominion is wide
For who has known the mind of God
To Him be glory forever

Swooped into God!

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

Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 17, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111723.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our two readings remind us that the journey into God is an ever-deepening passage to which we must continually open our hearts.

The Wisdom writer addresses those who sincerely seek God, but who cannot see beyond God’s handiwork. So they are satisfied to make gods of these created wonders:

All persons were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God,
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is,
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.

Wisdom 13:1-3

The writer seems astounded that these seekers get lost on their way to full knowledge of God:

For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see,
because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?

Wisdom 13: 7-9

I don’t find it so astounding. The invisible God we love and worship can be elusive, and the world through which we seek that God can be deeply distracting. I think it’s pretty easy to get stuck worshipping signs of God (which we can see) rather than God (Whom we cannot see). I think that’s what Jesus might have meant when he said, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

Our Gospel reading gives us a hint about truly seeking God. It’s a reading I have always found a little bit scary. As a child, I envisioned myself, or the dear person next to me, getting swooped up in some unexpected divine tornado. It wasn’t a comfortable image.

I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed;
one will be taken, the other left.
And there will be two women grinding meal together;
one will be taken, the other left.”
They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?”
He said to them, “Where the body is,
there also the vultures will gather.”

Luke 17: 34-37

I mean, really, this is nobody’s favorite scripture passage! But what can it teach us? Maybe this: just like the unfulfilled worshippers in our Wisdom passage, the folks Jesus describes were distracted by the necessities and frivolities of life. In their spiritual journeys, they had not fully opened their hearts to the holy expectation of God. When God comes in a swoop of Infinite Grace, they’re just not ready for the swooping!

In our readings today, both the Wisdom writer and Jesus are encouraging us to meet every life experience as an opportunity to move deeper into the mystery of God.

The Wise One tells us to look beyond the beautiful distractions of our lives into the One Who ordains them:

Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.

Wisdom 13:3

And Jesus very bluntly tells us that our visible experiences hold a deeper meaning that we will never know unless we yield our life fully to God’s transforming grace:

Whoever seeks to preserve their life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it.

Luke 17:33

Poetry: If only there were stillness, full, complete – Rainer Maria Rilke

If only there were stillness, full, complete.
If all the random and approximate
were muted, with neighbors’ laughter, for your sake,
and if the clamor that my senses make
did not confound the vigil I would keep —
Then in a thousandfold thought I could think
you out, even to your utmost brink,
and (while a smile endures) possess you, giving
you away, as though I were but giving thanks,
to all the living.

Music: Jessye Norman – Sanctus from Messe solennelle de Sainte Cécile in G major, by Charles Gounod

I never hear this piece without being awestruck by Ms. Norman’s magnificent voice. I had the great joy of meeting her and working with her briefly on a project over thirty years ago. She was majestic in every way. May she rest in Peace.

Beyond Fear

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Creation, Faith, holiness, spirituality3 Comments

Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours, Bishop
November 11, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, there is a graceful coincidence of several themes calling me to prayer. I share them with you:

  • On November 11th, Sisters of Mercy throughout the world commemorate the death of our beloved founder Catherine McAuley.
  • This year that commemoration falls on the feast of the beautiful St. Martin of Tours.
  • Our readings for the day prompt us to consider our beloved companions on our spiritual journey who provide a harbor of blessings in a fearsome world.

Not just today, but often, I think about what Catherine would be like if she lived among us today. In her day, she was ever practical, focusing on healing the greatest unmet needs around her.

Her “un-technologized” world was smaller than ours. She encountered need simply by a walk through Dublin’s neighborhoods. Were she here today, need would pour into her awareness from every corner of the earth via technological means. How would she focus the power of her merciful heart for our times?

Our readings prompt me to think that Catherine would do the same three things she did almost two hundred years ago:

  • She would gather her companions on the journey
  • Together, they would empty their spirits of anything that was not of God
  • In that profound spiritual clarity, they would see where God called them to be Mercy for the world.

In our first reading, Paul names a number of his companions, those who strengthened and assisted him in life and ministry. Catherine too had beloved companions without whom she could not have met the challenges of her call.

In our Gospel, Jesus affirms that our hearts must be emptied of the undue love of anything that distracts us from God and God’s Way:

No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.”
The Pharisees, who loved money,
heard all these things and sneered at him.And he said to them,
“You justify yourselves in the sight of others,
but God knows your hearts;
for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.”

Luke 16: 12-15

While in her times, Catherine encountered the ravages of material poverty, I think that something much less tangible, but exponentially more destructive, would capture her ministerial awareness today.

Our world suffers from an intrinsic and debilitating fear which inclines us to amass power and possessions to the impoverishment of those around us. The fear of not being or having enough drives the systemic predation of the rich upon the poor, and the powerful over the weak. It is a fear that grows in a heart emptied of God.

While Catherine would continue to address the needs of those suffering from poverty and disenfranchisement, I think she would reach out in a new way to the healing of those underlying fears. These fears fester in a culture of spiritual ignorance endemic to our modern society. The naming and healing of that ignorance is deeply congruous with Catherine’s charism and calls to us urgently today.

About St. Martin de Porres, Pope John XXIII said this:

“He loved his neighbors with the benevolence
of the heroes of the Christian faith.”

So did Catherine McAuley. So must we.

Poetry: Where the Mind is Without Fear – Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let us awake.

Music: There is No Fear in Love – The Bible Project

Leaven!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Faith, Jesus, Poetry, spirituality1 Comment

Friday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
October 20, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102023.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have a Gospel passage which is both scary and beautiful!

I tell you, my friends,
do not be afraid of those who kill the body
but after that can do no more.
I shall show you whom to fear.
Be afraid of the one who after killing
has the power to cast into Gehenna;
yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one.
Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins?
Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God.
Even the hairs of your head have all been counted.
Do not be afraid.
You are worth more than many sparrows.

Luke 12:4-7

Jesus, with radical clarity, tells us that God is both a relentless judge and a tender parent. Who God is toward us depends on our choices in life, because our choices either open or close us to know God.

Jesus says that we will be condemned if we choose to live a hypocritical life like the Pharisees.

There are many images of “Gehenna”, both within and outside of the Gospel. For some of us, that condemnation is represented in hellfire, brimstone, devils, and pitchforks.

But today’s Gospel might incline us to consider that the condemnation is more a personal choice for spiritual alienation from God – in other words, sin. By that choice, we isolate ourselves from God’s tenderness choosing instead selfishness, prevarication, and hard-heartedness. We become less than we were created to be, and that in itself is a tragic self-condemnation.

Jesus says that when that kind of choosing becomes a habitual part of our lives, it is like leaven that permeates our very personhood. It changes us from God’s child to our own biggest fan. Like the Pharisees, we live a lie of who we pretend to be. And, especially from a position of power, we can infect others with our deception. They become “leavenized”: they “drink the kool-aid”.

Ironically, at the end of this tirade, Jesus gives us two of the tenderest images of God: God the Hairdresser and God the Bird Lover. Praying with these images, I remember my mother tenderly fingering my hair as I sat beside her in the evening. I picture my father spreading birdseed on the frozen patio when the winter juncos struggled to find food.

In our prayer today, Jesus invites us to encounter God with this kind of tender familiarity.

Poetry: The Creation of the Birds – Renee Yann, RSM

O, the wonderful mood that seized You
God, as you created birds;
you dancing there, twirling in light,
flinging your crystal arms to infinite music,
flicking your hands like magic fountains,
feathers and colors splashing out from your fingertips,
chattering, rainbowed profusions
of your Boundless Life.
Your depthless, joy-filled soul laughing out
the soaring beings into the still universe,
peals of you infusing them each
to their measure with notes of your inner song.
O, I see your Holy Eyes flash color to them
as they fly, strobing their feathers
with shards of your prismed white light.
This morning, seeing only one,
free and jubilant in a thin sycamore,
I consume it as
part of your Delightful Essence,
this day’s communion with you, grey
and orange wafer filling me with mysteries
of the primal dance from which
we both began.

Music: His Eye Is On the Sparrow

The Lie and The Truth

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Creation, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality, Truth1 Comment

Memorial of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr
Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
October 17, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101723.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, both Paul and Jesus speak forcefully against an endemic human fault: dishonesty.

Paul castigates “those who suppress the truth by their wickedness”:

The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven
against every impiety and wickedness
of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
For what can be known about God is evident to them,
because God made it evident to them.
Ever since the creation of the world,
his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity
have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.

Romans 1:18-20

These “truth suppressors” are guilty for one reason – they know better! God’s Truth is evident to them in Creation yet they deny and pervert it for the sake of their own selfish ends.

As a result, they have no excuse;
for although they knew God
they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks.
Instead, they became vain in their reasoning,
and their senseless minds were darkened.
While claiming to be wise, they became fools
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God
for the likeness of an image of mortal man
or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.

Romans 1:20-23

Jesus defines this untruth more clearly. He says that it presents itself in pretense – the external dissimulation which masquerades narcissistic motivations:

The Pharisee (who had invited Jesus to dinner) was amazed to see
that Jesus did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.
The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees!
Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish,
inside you are filled with plunder and evil.
You fools!
Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?
But as to what is within, give alms,
and behold, everything will be clean for you.”

Luke 11:38-41

Jesus indicates that charity is the perfect “cleanser” for dirty cup interiors (and dingy moral codes). Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not so easy but certainly clear and simple.

Charity is rooted in the interior recognition that we are all children of our Creator and that we have a responsibility for one another’s welfare. Acting on that recognition is “almsgiving” which comes from the same Greek root, “eleemosyne“, as the word mercy.

Our world, like Paul’s, is challenged by the suppression of truth. Much of our visible culture is based on lies and pretense. Political hoodwinking, media non-objectivity, economic duplicity, and exploitive advertising conspire to convince us that:

  • we ourselves never are or have enough
  • anyone not “like us” is a threat to our insufficiency
  • foreigners are dangerous
  • power grants sovereignty
  • the poor are solely responsible for their poverty.

Jesus and Paul tell us that we must resist such lies, purify our hearts of their influence, and live a Gospel life of truth, charity, and mercy.

Prose: from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

I found this definition of almsgiving very thought-provoking because it indicates that “almsgiving or “mercy” is more than an act or actions. It is an attitude and lifestyle, a lens through which we consider all things in the light of the Gospel for the sake of the poor:

Any material favor done to assist the needy, and prompted by charity, is almsgiving. It is evident, then, that almsgiving implies much more than the transmission of some temporal commodity to the indigent. According to the creed of political economy, every material deed wrought by humans to benefit the needy is almsgiving. According to the creed of Christianity, almsgiving implies a material service rendered to the poor for Christ’s sake. Materially, there is scarcely any difference between these two views; formally, they are essentially different. This is why the inspired writer says: “Blessed is the one that considers the needy and the poor” (Psalm 40:2) — not the one that gives to the needy and the poor.

Music: The Prisoners’ Chorus – from Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio

Fidelio is inspired by a true story from the French Revolution. It centers on a woman, Leonore, whose husband Florestan has been unjustly imprisoned by his political rival – the villainous Don Pizarro. In the magnificent “Prisoners’ Chorus”, the prisoners sing powerfully about the gift and need for freedom.

Oh what joy, in the open air
Freely to breathe again!
Up here alone is life!
The dungeon is a grave.

FIRST PRISONER
We shall with all our faith
Trust in the help of God!
Hope whispers softly in my ears!
We shall be free, we shall find peace.

ALL THE OTHERS
Oh Heaven! Salvation! Happiness!
Oh Freedom! Will you be given us?