Category: Cross

October Blue

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Cross, dying, Eternal Life, friendship, spirituality3 Comments

October 14, 2025

That long-ago October was particularly brilliant. It was one of those rare seasons where each morning was filled with sunshine and promise. It was a month that measured up to the poet, Helen Hunt Jackson’s, description:

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather.

I remember that October so well because one of my friends was dying, stricken suddenly and irrevocably by a severe pneumonia. Only two of us could visit at a time, so I, along with her many other friends, would gather at times on the bench outside the hospital where she struggled to survive. We would watch that bright blue sky and turn over and over in our minds those questions that have no answers. Why so young, why now, why her?

Starling Murmuration – Joe Hisaishi

Flocks of starlings were in their seasonal dance, bold against that brilliant blue sky. Maybe you have noticed a few already this month, swerving through the air in their perfectly balanced helix, like smoke at the wind’s disposal. I remember watching them during that distant October, wondering if we had told Gail often enough how precious she was. She was a small, humble, and joyous person – very quiet and unassuming. I wondered if people fully understood the powerhouse of generosity and goodness underneath that humility.

Gail De Macedo, RSM
August 11, 1937 – October 14, 1995

I found the answer at her funeral. Hundreds of people jammed the lanes to our Motherhouse and filled the chapel with their song to celebrate her life. She had quietly made her mark – and what a mark it was! Now, years later, the sharp edge of her loss has dulled somewhat, but her bold, quiet, courageous legacy has only deepened. In times when I need the gifts of humility, patience, generosity, and kindness, I pray to her. She always helps me.

Over this weekend, we should begin to see that “bright blue weather”. Watch for the graceful starlings, pirouetting their way to a winter refuge. Above all, as you wonder at Creation, reflect on love and kindness. Honor these virtues where you find them in yourself and your neighbors. They endure beyond all seasons.

Music: No More Goodbyes – Tom Dermody

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Revelation 21:1-4

Click for Scripture

Holy Saturday

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Creation, Cross, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spirituality6 Comments

April 19, 2025

Tears of the Earth- Michael Hoppè and Tim Whheater

The Buriers of Jesus

In this world, we know much of dying.
It is the inverse of our living.
It is what we do here,
alone, and with each other.

What we do not know
is death itself. We think we know,
but these are death’s imposters:
isolation, self-absorption, dark despair.

The only persons who,
living, may have fathomed death
were the buriers of Jesus
who carried him through space
immediately bereft of God.
All creation was a tomb,
and they within it, tombed.

Those buriers of Christ
watched God’s own Body blanch
to white, to blue,
distancing Itself to pallor
on the far horizon that is
all lost possibility.

They listened, paralyzed,
as Life sucked Breath
from the miracle of Christ,
in horror at the blasphemy
Rejected Gift had turned to.

Left with just the ivory casing
of a once warm God,
the buriers of Jesus
tendered it in perfumed cloths.

The rest of earth was dry,
unscented. Herbs and flowers
closed against the giving
of themselves to air that
held the final breath of Christ.
They dared not fracture
the least of his remains.

Even earth, unbreathing,
accepted Christ into her womb,
a mother turned within to mourn
her own Stillborn Redemption.

No other moment
anywhere in time
has known a death like that.
It was so infinite, so huge
it ripples now to every life,
a nameless anguish,
distancing itself to pallor
in the pining soul.

Music: In Paradisum – Michael Hoppé

In paradisum deducant te angeli;
in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres,
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,
et cum Lazaro quondam paupere
æternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs receive you at your arrival and lead you to the holy city Jerusalem.
May choirs of angels receive you
and with Lazarus who once was poor,
may you have eternal rest.

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Luke 23:50-54

Scripture

Good Friday

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Discipleship, dying, Gospel, Jesus, Poetry, spirituality, sufferingLeave a comment

April 18, 2025

Chopin: Nocturn in C Sharp Minor, played by Hauser. (Listen to it all – lovely.)

Calvary was a glass box where God,
confined, no longer touched the world.
It was a white plain, without sound,
not the groaning, blood-soaked hill
the scriptures leave us.

I know.
Calvary hewed itself inside me once
with the chisel of a long sorrow
that fell, persistent, merciless
like cold, steel rain.

It was a place bereft of feeling.
Only the anticipation and
the memory of pain are feelings.
Pain itself is a huge abyss,
bled by a silence that mimics death,
but is not as absolutely kind.

Calvary is the place where
all strength is given
to the drawing of a breath
to linger in it unfulfilled.

God, now I go quietly inside
where you are dying in a glass box, still.
I release all definitions
to pass through and companion you.
I watch the rain, itself like glass,
crashing to an unknown life 
beneath the earth. Where love roots
absolute, unbreakable, I cling to you
in a transparent act of will.           

Agios O Theos
Agios Ischyros
Agios Athanatos
Eleison Imas

Holy God
Holy Strong One
Holy Deathless One
Have Mercy On Us

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Luke 23: 44-49

Scripture

Ash Wednesday

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Cross, Discipleship, Faith, Lent, repentance, spirituality2 Comments

March 5, 2025

Make Me a Channel of Your Peace

Penance and self-denial are not generally popular concepts. Yet all major religions include them as means of spiritual enrichment. Why do you think that is? Here’s my take on it.

Most of us live within the illusion of many boundaries. We are bound by space, time, circumstances, choices, and perceived abilities or inabilities, to name a few. Sometimes we get terribly caught in our boundaries. We are afraid to try something new; to shed a dangerous but comfortable habit; to break a debilitating, co-dependent relationship; to choose a life-giving but challenging road. Too often, we say “no” to our graced potential.

But God is beyond boundaries. God is limitless, everlasting, infinite possibility and hope. Fasting and self-denial are human attempts to prove to ourselves that we can break through what binds us to live in God’s infinite “YES!”.

Giving up candy, smoking, or mindless TV is a small way of doing that. But attending to our tendencies for gossip, meanness, negativity, and self-centeredness is a great alternative way. Whatever our religious tradition, Ash Wednesday can remind us that God made us for freedom, unconditional love, and unending life. May our choices reflect that.

Music: Take These Ashes – Sarah Hart

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Proverbs 6: 16-19

Click for Scripture

Wept

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, peace, spirituality, suffering3 Comments

Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
November 21, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112124.cfm

As Jesus drew near Jerusalem,
he saw the city and wept over it, saying,
“If this day you only knew what makes for peace–
but now it is hidden from your eyes.
Luke 19:41-42

When we think of Jesus’s suffering, we often think only of his Passion and Death. But, like us, Jesus suffered in many ways throughout his life. Certainly, he suffered misunderstanding, hatred, marginalization, and rejection. In today’s reading, Jesus suffers heartbreak. The ones for whom He took flesh have failed to understand the peace he offers.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to understand that the Spirit of God runs in an infinite current through all of life, calling every dimension to deep union with Divinity. This union is achieved by living as Jesus lived in peace, love, obedience, justice, mercy, and joy. Until we can let the rest go, I think Jesus still weeps.

Poetry: Jesus Weeps by Malcolm Guite

Jesus comes near and he beholds the city
And looks on us with tears in his eyes,
And wells of mercy, streams of love and pity
Flow from the fountain whence all things arise.
He loved us into life and longs to gather
And meet with his beloved face to face
How often has he called, a careful mother,
And wept for our refusals of his grace,
Wept for a world that, weary with its weeping,
Benumbed and stumbling, turns the other way,
Fatigued compassion is already sleeping
Whilst her worst nightmares stalk the light of day.
But we might waken yet, and face those fears,
If we could see ourselves through Jesus’ tears.

Music: Pie Jesu – Gabriel Fauré
The Pie Jesu is the centerpiece of Fauré’s Requiem, which he completed in 1890. Many consider it his greatest composition.

Love

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Conversion, Courage, Cross, Faith, Love, spirituality1 Comment

Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 15, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111524.cfm

But now, Lady, I ask you,
not as though I were writing a new commandment
but the one we have had from the beginning:
let us love one another.
For this is love, that we walk according to his commandments;
this is the commandment, as you heard from the beginning,
in which you should walk.
2 John 4:5-6

The Motherhouse chapel is impressive, more like a cathedral than a chapel. I remember being led into it for the first time when, at 18 years old, I came for my initial interview. It took my breath away. You can imagine the intensity of my prayer as I knelt for the first time at the altar rail, realizing that my young, inscrutable choices were about to change my life irrevocably.

I looked up to the Gospel command emblazoned above the apse thinking, “That’s what this is all about. Let me begin.”

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Perhaps, remembering a long-ago choice in your life, you will see how it has unfolded in love over the years. This is a good day to pray those memories and blessings with God.

Poetry: Slowly – Macrina Wiederkehr

Life unfolds
a petal at a time
slowly

The beauty of the process is crippled
when I try to hurry growth.
Life has its inner rhythm
which must be respected.
It cannot be rushed or hurried.

Like daylight stepping out of darkness,
like morning creeping out of night,
life unfolds slowly a petal at a time
like a flower opening to the sun,
slowly.

God’s call unfolds
a Word at a time
slowly.

A disciple is not made in a hurry.
Slowly I become like the One
to whom I am listening.

Life unfolds
a petal at a time
like you and I
becoming followers of Jesus,
discipled into a new way of living
deeply and slowly.

Be patient with life’s unfolding petals.
If you hurry the bud it withers.
If you hurry life it limps.
Each unfolding is a teaching
a movement of grace filled with silent pauses
breathtaking beauty
tears and heartaches.

Life unfolds
a petal at a time
deeply and slowly.

May it come to pass!

Music: The Faith – Leonard Cohen

Name

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Cross, Faith, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
November 5, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110524.cfm

Jesus emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and, found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:7-11

We are accustomed to these words, having heard them multiple times over the years. But read them slowly today. They are stunning! That the Son of God took flesh to restore us to the fullness of grace! All Creation must bow to that Infinite Love.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We let the immense truth of this reading sink into our souls. We rest gratefully in its reality, its daily Presence and invitation to us.

Poetry: On the Mystery of the Incarnation – Denise Levertov

It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.

Music: Jesus, the Lord – Roc O’Connor

Cup

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Discipleship, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality, sufferingLeave a comment

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 20, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102024.cfm

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him,
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 
He replied, “What do you wish me to do for you?” 
They answered him, “Grant that in your glory
we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” 
Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. 
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” 
They said to him, “We can.” 
Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized –
Mark 10:35-39

In this familiar passage, Jesus calls James and John to a new level of discipleship. They may not have fully realized the implications of their enthusuastic request. Jesus makes it clear: there is no easy road to glory but he will accompany us throughout the journey.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ponder what God may be requiring of us to go deeper into our spiritual life. We are already spiritual people, but are there small things, unnoticed things, that would bring us more into alignment with the Gospel? Or, perhaps, are there big things that we must face and change in order to be true disciples?

Poetry: Hymn – Micah Mattis

“Great is thy faithfulness,” 
Say the leaves to the light. 
“Oh God, my father,” 
Says darkness to night. 

“There is no shadow,” 
Says the eye to the sun. 
“Of turning with thee,” 
As tears start to burn. 

“All I have needed,” 
Says the sand to the storm. 
“Thy hand has provided,” 
Say the combs to the swarm. 

“Great is thy faithfulness,” 
Says the cup to the brim. 
“Lord unto me,” 
Say I to him.

Music: Great Is Thy Faithfulness – Thomas Chisholm and William Runyan

Death

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Cross, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Saturday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
September 28, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092824.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Savior Christ Jesus destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel.

Today’s readings may strike us as grim. The Book of Ecclesiastes acknowledges our discomfort with the darkness inherent in faith. We believe because we do not know. If we knew, there would be no need for faith. But at times our believing is challenged by our life circumstances. Thus is the story of Ecclesiastes – all in life that confronts our faith.

In our Gospel, Jesus introduces the hard reality of his impending death. He challenges the faith and commitment of the disciples as the time of testing approaches.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Acknowledging the truth of today’s readings, we choose to pray with them in the light of the Resurrection as it is so beautifully and simply stated in our Responsorial Psalm.

Poetry: from John Donne’s Holy Sonnets – Death Be Not Proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Music: Cantata, BWV 31 – “The Heavens Laugh” – J.S. Bach

The heavens laugh! The earth shouts with joy
and what she bears in her bosom.
The creator lives! God most high triumphs
and is free from the bonds of death.
He who has chosen the grave for rest,
the Holiest, cannot decay.

Flint

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

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 15, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091524.cfm

The Lord GOD opens my ear that I may hear;
and I have not rebelled,
have not turned back.
I gave my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;
my face I did not shield
from buffets and spitting.

The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
Isaiah 50:5-7

This solemn reading from Isaiah follows appropriately on yesterday’s honoring of the Holy Cross.

Isaiah writes of the prophet who, during the Babylonia Captivity, suffers for his testimony to the Truth.

The passage foretells Jesus’s embrace of his suffering for the sake of our Redemption.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
As we pray with Isaiah and Jesus, we ask to deeply reverence God’s participation in the suffering of Creation – both in the human and the natural world.

Poetry: The Grandeur of God – Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Music: Pie Jesu – Gabriel Fauré

The French creator of the soul-stirring Pie Jesu, Gabriel Fauré, was one of the premier composers and directors of the 19th/20th centuries though, surprisingly, he was not a man of deep faith. Yet, he must have had a mystical soul. The Pie Jesu is the centerpiece of Fauré’s Requiem, which he completed in 1890, and which is often considered his greatest composition. It is undoubtedly imbued with the deepest sentiments of devotion.

A requiem, as such, is a distinct musical genre and a Christian liturgical art form. In essence, it is a small symphony meant to provide deep solace to mourners at the loss of a loved one, although it is rarely played at funerals. Full requiems are generally too long for that! Nonetheless, all the great composers from the 15th century onward created their own requiems.

It is believed that Fauré composed this piece in honor of his own father a few years after the elder Fauré’s death, but the composer never revealed his motive. This Requiem was, fittingly, performed at Fauré’s own funeral in 1924.

Notes on the Requiem itself
Fauré’s Requiem has seven sections, and the Pie Jesu (Merciful Jesus) is easily the most beautiful of the seven, but not by much. The Agnus Dei and In Paradisum are exquisite in their own right.

It is interesting to note that Fauré replaced the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) of traditional requiems with the Pie Jesu, emphasizing mercy rather than judgment, and also anticipating in some way the Divine Mercy devotion of the 20th century.

In the video below, the incomparable lyric soprano, Kathleen Battle, performs her ravishing interpretation of the lovely Pie Jesu.