Category: Discipleship

Gird

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

Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
May 28, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052824.cfm

Gird up the loins of your mind, live soberly,
and set your hopes completely on the grace to be brought to you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Like obedient children,
do not act in compliance with the desires of your former ignorance
but, as he who called you is holy,
be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct,
for it is written, Be holy because I am holy.

1 Peter 1: 13-16

Our reading from Peter uses strong phrases to direct our hearts fully to Christ.

  • Gird up the loins of your mind
  • Let your hopes rest completely on grace
  • Do not act from your former ignorance
  • Be holy

When my niece was a young teen, she had a placard in her bedroom that read “Put on your big girl pants and deal with it.” I thought it was an amazing charge for a thirteen-year-old kid. But she expected it of herself and proved eminently capable of practicing the advice.

James is giving early Christians the same kind of advice. Our capability to respond lies in the hope we place in the grace of Jesus Christ.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We ask for courage and fidelity in our commitment to Christ and to the Gospel.

Poetry: Don’t Quit – Edgar A. Guest

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low but the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit…
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit!
Life is strange with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many failures turn about
When we might have won had we stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow…
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out…
And you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far.
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Music: Jesus, My Beloved – Jonathan Ogden

Pray

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, holiness, Jesus, Prayer, spirituality5 Comments

Saturday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
May 25, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052524.cfm

Beloved:
Is anyone among you suffering?
He should pray.
Is anyone in good spirits?
He should sing a song of praise…

…The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.
Elijah was a man like us;
yet he prayed earnestly that it might not rain,
and for three years and six months it did not rain upon the land.
Then Elijah prayed again, and the sky gave rain
and the earth produced its fruit.
James 5:13; 16-18

James tells us that prayer must be woven seamlessly into our lives. His remarks may remind us of Paul’s well-known exhortation to “Pray always!”

In our Gospel, Jesus tells us that a childlike innocence is essential to full union with God. In prayer, we are with God the way a child is with a loved and trusting parent. Jesus taught us this when he chose to begin his prayer, “Our Father …”

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We ask for the grace of spiritual innocence, allowing us to trust God’s Presence in every aspect of our lives. Doing this, we keep an inner recognition and dialogue with God – we “pray always”

Poetry: Praying – Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few 
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try 
to make them elaborate, this isn’t 
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which 
another voice may speak.

Music: The Lord’s Prayer – Perry Como

Vow

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality3 Comments

Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
May 24, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052424.cfm

.. do not swear,
either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath,
but let your “Yes” mean “Yes” and your “No” mean “No,”
that you may not incur condemnation.
James 5:12

James lets us know that a vow sworn is a sacred and dangerous thing:

  • sacred because God is always at least the third party in our oaths, and
  • dangerous because it takes lifelong commitment to learn to live fully within the vows we make.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let’s place our spirit close to God’s heart as we pray for insight into our life’s deep vows and promises. In that tender space, let us ask for renewed love, insight, and strength for the journey.

Poetry: 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 leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

Oh, 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.

Music: Every Step You Take – The Police

The song, a longtime favorite of mine, mirrors the tone of James’s exhortation in today’s Epistle. It takes a little imaginative stretch, but I invite you to it. 🙂

Insipid

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
May 23, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052324.cfm

“Everyone will be salted with fire.
Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid,
with what will you restore its flavor?
Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another.”
Mark 9: 49-50

Like James for the past few days, Jesus now has some tough, even startling, words for his followers. He tells them their faith and goodness will be tested, “salted”. But sometimes if the test cannot be withstood, one may become faithless and hard. Their religious practice becomes “insipid”. It loses “heart”, loses meaning.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We ask God for the spiritual honesty and courage to meet our lives with unwavering faith. We ask for the soul’s deep insight that allows us always to be a light for others, never a darkness.

Poetry: Late Sayings  - Scott Cairns reflects on the Beatitudes (to complement today's Responsorial Psalm)

Blessed as well are the wounded but nonetheless kind,
       for they shall observe their own mending.

Blessed are those who shed their every anxious defense,
              for they shall obtain consolation.

Blessed are those whose sympathy throbs as an ache,
              for they shall see the end of suffering.

Blessed are those who do not presume,
              for they shall be surprised at every turn.

Blessed are those who seek the God in secret,
              for they shall know His very breath rising as a pulse.

Blessed moreover are those who refuse to judge,
              for they shall forget their own most grave transgressions.

Blessed are those who watch and pray, who seek and plead,
              for they shall see, and shall be heard.

Music: Lead Me, Lord – John Becker

Puff…

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Prayer, spirituality, suffering, Truth2 Comments

Wednesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
May 22. 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052224.cfm

You have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow.
You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears.
Instead you should say,
“If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.”
James 4:13-15

From the passages of these few days, it appears that James was a “no-nonsense”, fire and brimstone preacher. Instructing against pride and boastfulness, he forcefully reminds his listeners that they have no control over their lives. The only thing they can control is their commitment to God, and their openness to God’s Will.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray in faith and trust to our God who loves us beyond our comprehension. Indeed, we do not know what tomorrow – or even this afternoon – will bring. But we ask for the strength and joy to receive our lives with hope and fidelity.

Poetry: by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you

And know there is more

That you can't see, can't hear

Can't know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren't always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Music: Be Thou My Vision –
The text is based on a Middle Irish poem most attributed to Dallán Forgaill, an early Christian Irish poet born in 530 AD. Since the early 20th century, the text has been sung to an Irish folk tune, known in church hymnals as ‘Slane’.

First/Last

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, ordinary time, Service, spirituality1 Comment

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time
May 21, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052124.cfm

They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house,
he began to ask them,
“What were you arguing about on the way?”
But they remained silent.
For they had been discussing among themselves on the way
who was the greatest.
Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them,
“If anyone wishes to be first,
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
Taking a child, he placed it in their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me.”
Mark 9:33-37

Here we are, friends, back in Ordinary Time after our sacred journey with Jesus through Lent and Eastertide. Drenched in the Spirit of Pentecost, we pick up with the Gospel of Mark which we left back in March.

And what is the first lesson of this reclaimed time? It is one of the many sacred inversions in the Gospel which assure us that the fullness of the Christian life is merciful service – that a holy emptiness is the preferred dwelling of God’s Spirit.

If anyone wishes to be first,   
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.

Today, in God’s Loving Mercy:

We pray for the insight and strength to choose a Gospel-rooted life despite the contradictions of the world. We ask the Holy Spirit, renewed in us on Pentecost, to steep us in the selflessness that is true love.

Poetry: Where Is God? – Mark Nepo

It’s as if what is unbreakable—
the very pulse of life—waits for
everything else to be torn away,
and then in the bareness that
only silence and suffering and
great love can expose, it dares
to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.

Music: Will You Let Me Be Your Servant

More

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, Love, spirituality2 Comments

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 17, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051724.cfm

After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples
and eaten breakfast with them, 
he said to Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
John 21:15

Perhaps we have spoken or heard these questions as we move through our heart’s life:

  • Do you love me?
  • How much do you love me?
  • Will you always love me?
  • Do you still love me?

But true love is immeasurable. It has shades and intensities, but it doesn’t have limits. True love is all; it’s everything – fidelity, forgiveness, delight, hope, chaos, perseverance, sacrifice, joy and generosity.

Jesus knows Peter possesses all these commitments to Him. But He is asking Peter to test himself before Peter is called to take Christ’s place on earth.

The only “more” that ever touched human love was when Jesus took our flesh to live, die, and rise for all of us. Jesus wants to hear Peter say he has that kind of sacrificial Love.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Jesus knows us too, and how we want to love him well; how we may want to love him “more”. Let’s talk with him about that in our prayer today, asking to not let our chances for loving God slip by without our notice.

Poetry: This Paltry Love – Jessica Powers

I love you, God, with a penny match of love
that I strike when the big and bullying dark of need
chases my startled sunset over the hills
and in the walls of my house small terrors move.
It is the sight of this paltry love that fills
my deepest pits with seething purgatory,
that thus I love you, God—God—who would sow
my heights and depths with recklessness of glory,
who hold back light-oceans straining to spill on me, on me,
stifling here in the dungeon of my ill.
This puny spark I scorn, I who had dreamed
of fire that would race to land’s end, shouting your worth,
of sun that would fall to earth with a mortal wound
and rise and run, streaming with light like blood,
splattering the sky,
soaking the ocean itself, and all the earth.

Music: If I Love You – Rodgers and Hammerstein

Consecrate

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, holiness, Holy Spirit, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 15, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051524.cfm

And now I commend you to God
and to that gracious word of his that can build you up
and give you the inheritance among all who are consecrated.
Acts 20:32

Consecrate them in the truth.
Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them,
so that they also may be consecrated in truth.
John 17: 17-19

Both our readings today describe the act of consecration. In Acts, Paul blesses the presbyters in Ephesus, anointing them for Gospel ministry. In John 17, Jesus prays to the Father for his disciples – that they may be blessed and confirmed in the Word which is Truth.

At some point in our lives, each one of us has been consecrated in that same Truth. We may have been baptized, confirmed, blessed, ordained, and professed. Through those consecrations, the Holy Spirit has been breathed into our hearts to form us in Truth which is God’s Word.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Let’s gratefully remember the fullness of our consecration. By the grace of God, we embody the Divine Power of truth, love, and mercy. How often do we remember to call on this Power when life threatens to overwhelm or confuse us?

Poetry: A Blessing for Wedding – Jane Hirshfield
While Hirshfield’s poem is directed toward the marriage vow, it is clearly applicable to all consecrations in which God is the sacred partner.

Today when persimmons ripen
Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow
Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song
Today when the maple sets down its red leaves
Today when windows keep their promise to open
Today when fire keeps its promise to warm
Today when someone you love has died
or someone you never met has died
Today when someone you love has been born
or someone you will not meet has been born
Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness
Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired
Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow
Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace
Today, let this light bless you
With these friends let it bless you
With snow-scent and lavender bless you
Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly
Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days

Music: Sanctus – Jessye Norman

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
Pleni sunt cæli et terra gloria tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis.

Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord:
Hosanna in the highest.

Appointed

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle
May 14, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051424.cfm

You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”
John 15: 14-17

What about Matthias and the story of his emerging role in the spread of the Gospel? He must have been holy and good even to be considered for the office of Apostle. Were there just too many holy people initially to fit him into the biblically magic number of 12? And what about Justus who didn’t make the numerical cut? Was his giftedness lost to the early Church because of a short straw or a muffed coin flip?

In our Gospel, Jesus tells us that we are each “appointed” to bear fruit that will remain. No matter our title or function, we are equally “chosen” to nurture and sustain the life of the community.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Let’s pray with Matthias that, whether recognized or unrecognized, we will be faithful to the Gospel in word and action.

Poetry: Fear of Being Chosen – Sister Natalia, member of Christ the Bridegroom Byzantine Catholic Monastery 

O Matthias, what did you think,
what did you feel,
when you were beckoned forward?
Did your heart race at the idea
of joining ranks with those eleven?
Eleven different types of broken,
all seeking to be whole.

Did you fear the possibility
of secret brokenness revealed?
And did you also feel
the thrill of sure adventure,
after having seen the ups and downs
of the men whose eyes were now on you?

You’d seen their pain, their dying,
and in your heart felt a pull.
One thing you must have known,
known without a doubt
being witness to the resurrection
would mean a life of miracles.

And when you heard your name called out,
and reality sunk in,
did you feel that joyful pain of knowing
that all now know that you are His?

Did your thoughts bounce back and forth
between death and resurrection?
And did you steal one more glance
at Joseph Barsabbas
and wonder, “Why not him?”

Music: Mathias Sanctus – Hildegard von Bingen (chanted by Bella Voce Chicago)

Mathias, sanctus per electionem,
vir preliator per victoriam,
ante sanguinem Agni electionem non habuit,
sed tardus in scientia fuit
quasi homo qui perfecte non vigilat.


Donum Dei illum excitavit,
unde ipse pre gaudio sicut gygas
in viribus suis surrexit,
quia Deus illum previdit
sicut hominem
quem de limo formavit
cum primus angelus cecidit,
qui Deum negavit.

Homo qui electionem vidit –
ve, ve, cecidit!

Boves et arietes habuit,
sed faciem suam ab eis
retrorsum duxit
et illos dimisit.

Unde foveam carbonum invasit,
et desideria sua osculatus
in studio suo,
illa sicut Olimpum erexit.

Tunc Mathias per electionem divinitatis
sicut gygas surrexit,
quia Deus illum posuit
in locum quem perditus homo noluit.

O mirabile miraculum
quod sic in illo resplenduit!

Deus enim ipsum previdit
in miraculis suis
cum nondum haberet meritum operationis,
sed misterium Dei
in illo gaudium habuit,
quod idem per institutionem suam
non habebat.

O gaudium gaudiorum
quod Deus sic operatur,
cum nescienti homini gratiam suam impendit,
ita quod parvulus nescit
ubi magnus volat,
cuius alas Deus parvulo tribuit.

Deus enim gustum in illo habet
qui seipsum nescit,
quia vox eius
ad Deum clamat
sicut Mathias fecit,
qui dixit:
O Deus, Deus meus,
qui me creasti,
omnia opera mea tua sunt.

Nunc ergo gaudeat omnis ecclesia
in Mathia,
quem Deus in foramine columbe
sic elegit.
Amen.

Mathias, a saint through being chosen,
a champion in his victory,
did not know himself chosen before the Lamb’s blood was shed:
he was tardy in knowledge,
like a man who is not perfectly awake.

God’s gift aroused him,
so that for joy he rose like a giant
in his strength:
God foresaw him
as he had foreseen the man
whom he formed of clay
when the first angel,
who denied God, fell.

The man who saw his choice,
alas, alas, he fell!

He had oxen and rams at his bidding,
yet he looked away from them,
turned his back
and abandoned them.

Thus he plunged in the pit of coal
and, kissing his own desires,
in his ardor
he raised them high, like an Olympus.

Then Mathias, divinely chosen,
rose like a giant,
because God set him
in the place that Judas, the lost, rejected:

O wondrous miracle
that shone through him thus!

For God foresaw him
in his miracles,
though he had not yet the merit of accomplishment,
but the mystery of God
had joy in him,
joy that in its original plan
it did not have.

Joy of joys
that God works in this way,
when he lavishes his grace on one who does not know,
so that the child does not know
where the grown man will fly,
whose wings God has given to the child!

For God savors the one
who does not know himself,
because his voice
is crying out to God,
as Mathias cried,
saying:
God, my God,
who created me,
all my works are yours!

So now let all Ecclesia take joy
in Mathias,
he whom God thus chose in the cleft where the dove nestles.
Amen.

Courage

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

Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 13, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051324.cfm

Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived
when each of you will be scattered to his own home
and you will leave me alone.
But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.
In the world you will have trouble,
but take courage, I have conquered the world.
John 16: 32-33

We can fool ourselves about what “courage” really is.

I grew up in a tough inner-city neighborhood. We kids had to have courage to survive the street dynamics our parents were blissfully unaware of. I had a lot of that kind of courage and still do. I’m not even afraid of mice, neighborhood toughs like Big Jimmy (remember him?), nor of monsters hiding under my bed.

But do I have the kind of courage Jesus is talking about?

  • the courage to believe when God seems silent
  • the courage to remain peaceful when spiritual turmoil surrounds me
  • the courage to live truthfully in a culture of lies
  • the courage to be patient with my own limitations
  • the courage to be merciful in the face of repeated affront
  • the courage to love what is not lovable
  • the courage to persevere when circumstances test me
  • the courage to champion and reverence the marginalized
  • the courage to challenge systemic indifference to the vulnerable
  • the courage to say “No” when it is what God would say
  • the courage to live God’s “Yes” in an unreceptive world

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Let’s think about the kind of courage Jesus prayed for in his disciples. Let’s mirror our life against it and ask for more of it where we need it.

Poetry: Courage – Edgar A. Guest (sorry about the non-inclusive language)

Courage isn't a brilliant dash,
A daring deed in a moment's flash;
It isn't an instantaneous thing
Born of despair with a sudden spring
It isn't a creature of flickered hope
Or the final tug at a slipping rope;
But it's something deep in the soul of man
That is working always to serve some plan.
Courage isn't the last resort
In the work of life or the game of sport;
It isn't a thing that a man can call
At some future time when he's apt to fall;
If he hasn't it now, he will have it not
When the strain is great and the pace is hot.
For who would strive for a distant goal
Must always have courage within his soul.
Courage isn't a dazzling light
That flashes and passes away from sight;
It's a slow, unwavering, ingrained trait
With the patience to work and the strength to wait.
It's part of a man when his skies are blue,
It's part of him when he has work to do.
The brave man never is freed of it.
He has it when there is no need of it.
Courage was never designed for show;
It isn't a thing that can come and go;
It's written in victory and defeat
And every trial a man may meet.
It's part of his hours, his days and his years,
Back of his smiles and behind his tears.
Courage is more than a daring deed:
It's the breath of life and a strong man's creed.

Music: Take Courage – Kristine DiMarco