Category: Cross

Awesome Expectations

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Cross, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, spirituality, sufferingLeave a comment

Holy Saturday
April 4, 2026

We expect things, don’t we? Things as simple as rain. Things as complex as babies. We expect to wake up tomorrow, to have a safe drive home from work, to complete the to-do lists stuffed in our pockets. We expect life. We even expect death. We expect much of the in-between.

But it is the things we don’t expect that profoundly change our lives. These things shatter our routine and make a passageway for extraordinary grace. You have had such moments. During them, you were like the ancient Jews standing at the fracture of the Red Sea. Your soul was in a battle between fear and awe.

These moments came to you in various disguises: tragedy, surprise, celebration, disappointment, betrayal, or forgiveness. From the vantage point of time, you may be able to see how these moments freed you, redeemed you. Or, now within such a moment, you may still be struggling to discover its Divine Potential.

The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein (c. 1522)

We are not unlike the disciples experiencing the Passover of Jesus’s life. They, even He, may not have expected the Thursday of Transubstantiation – the giving of his body into the eternal bread and wine. They did not expect the cleavage of their sacred world by an unholy crucifixion. They did not expect a dislodged stone to yield a golden resurrection.

All that they did not expect we now call “Easter” – a rebirth in the steadfast assurance that God’s life ever triumphs. May we all be broken and blessed by this astounding and unexpected grace!

Spend some time today considering your hopes. Look for the things yet hidden behind the stone of expectation. Are they worthy of the awesome soul God gave you, and the immense invitation within the Paschal Mystery? Are we looking into an empty tomb, expecting new life? Or, on this hollow and hallow Saturday, are we quietly listening for whatever unexpected grace Easter will offer us?

Music: Exsultet – setting by Ryan Clouse

(And yes, I was annoyed by what I thought was a misspelling of “Exultet”. However, I did some research and this is an acceptable, though archaic, version of the word. There is an unfortunate ad near rhe end. Hit “skip” in lower right to view end of video. It’s worth it.

Suggested Scripture: Isaiah 53:1-12

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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?

The Sacred Passage

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

Good Friday
April 3, 2026

All life is about journey and passage.

At some time in each of our lives, we yearn to pass:

  • from emptiness to abundance
  • from loneliness to love
  • from exhaustion to renewal
  • from anxiety to peace
  • from burden to freedom
  • from confusion to understanding
  • from bitterness to forgiveness
  • from pain to healing
  • from mourning to remembrance

The sacred mystery of Good Friday assures us that God accompanies us in our torturous journeys. But we must name whatever darkness surrounds us, and reach through it to the hand of God outstretched from the Cross. Like a parent leading a child in from the storm, the God of Resurrection longs to bring our hearts home with Him to Easter joy.

Music: When I Remember – Kevin Kern

Suggested Scripture: John 14:2-3

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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?

I Am the Truth …

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Cross, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Lent, spirituality, TruthLeave a comment

Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 15, 2026

Veracity is the virtue of being truthful in all things.

Recently, I heard our culture referred to as “The Post-Truth Age”. I found that statement to be both accurate and frightening. In a world completely entangled in lies, veracity is a lonely virtue. Jesus knew that. As he nears Jerusalem, it becomes increasingly apparent that those who live by the Lie will seek to exterminate him. But, in Jesus, Truth is eternal. Through his Resurrection, we are welcomed into that infinite Veracity.

Throughout this week, the Word of God is leading us – out of darkness, out of blindness, out of fear, out of all that inhibits the eternal life of grace within us. Time is drawing close to Calvary, when our faith will be tested. Jesus wants us to remember the miracles and words of this week so that our faith will not be shaken by the days to come.

Like Antonia, in the story below, Jesus wants us to find the Truth that supersedes circumstances. It is a Truth that rests in full and honest relationship with him.

“End stage melanoma,” the doctor pronounced, after Antonia requested complete honesty.

It seemed unfair to those who knew her: an ebony spot, unnoticed on her back, soon would bleed its ink across her death certificate. For Antonia, though, the irony lay not in her diagnosis, but in the thought that so few people really knew her or would care.

An unmarried, retired teacher, Antonia was an only child. With only distant cousins, she had made the parish her family. She was a daily communicant, a generous contributor, and a respected neighbor. Antonia knew this. But, for decades, she had still gone home each night to a lonely house and a solitary life.

How surprised she was when, during her final weeks in hospice, visitors came in waves to comfort her. Students spoke of her steady influence; neighbors of her charity. Colleagues remembered her patience. When one visitor lamented Antonia’s situation, she stopped him, mid-sentence. “I have never been happier,” she said. “I had no idea so many people loved me.”

Life’s circumstances can conspire to convince us that we are unimportant, unloved, even useless. Sometimes, these perceptions are self-imposed. At other times, they are pressed on us by hostile forces, as they were on Jesus at the end of his life. But Jesus assures us in this week’s readings: “The one who believes in me will never die.” He touches the blind man with light and the royal official’s son with resurrection. Jesus calls us to trust that we are infinitely loved. Believing it, we have the strength – even the joy- to go with him to Calvary.

Music: Jerusalem, My Destiny – Rory Cooney

Suggested Reading: Ephesians 5:8-14

Click for scripture

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?

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

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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