Memorial Of St. John Chrysostom

On September 12, 2021September 12, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Gospel, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms, spirituality1 Comment

Monday, September 13, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 28, a prayer of nine succinct verses in which the psalmist rides a seesaw emotion.

My prayer is like that sometimes. I try to pray the way Jesus would pray — the “Our Father” type of goodness and all.

But to be honest, “Thy Will be done” and “as we forgive those who trespass” are not always easy sentiments for me. How about you?

Our psalmist seems to have some trouble too … but with points of light and redemption in the end:

O Lord, I call to you; my rock, do not be deaf to my cry; lest, if you do not hear me, I become like those who go down to the pit.	FEAR
Hear the voice of my prayer when I cry out to you, when I lift up my hands to your holy of holies.	PLEADING
Do not snatch me away with the wicked or with the evildoers, who speak peaceably with their neighbours, while strife is in their hearts.	JUDGEMENT
Repay them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their actions. According to the work of their hands repay them, and give them their just deserts.	VENGEANCE
They have no understanding of your doings, nor of the works of your hands; therefore you will break them down and not build them up.	PRIDE
Blessed are you, O Lord! For you have heard the voice of my prayer.	FAITH
O Lord, you are my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in you, and I have been helped; therefore my heart dances for joy, and in my song will I praise you.	TRUST
You are the strength of your people, a safe refuge for your anointed.	SECURITY
Save your people and bless your inheritance; shepherd them and carry them for ever.	PRAYER

What I learn from this psalm is to tell God the truth when I pray – but the real truth -the truth that we hear back from God when we listen in our prayer. And that listening should always be done in sync with the Gospel. It is as if we cup the Gospel around our prayer the way we bend an ear to the faint but longed-for sound.

Poetry: Lost – David Whyte

Stand still. 
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you 
Are not lost.

Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. 
Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying 
Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you.”

Music: The Golden Forest – Tim Janis

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

On September 11, 2021September 11, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, ordinary time, spiritualityLeave a comment

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Sunday readings increase in dramatic tone. The passage from Isaiah describes a Savior bent on his mission despite mounting resistance and expressed hatred.

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.
Isaiah 50:5-6

Psalm 116 paints a person set upon by suffering and death threats, still trusting in the Lord’s saving grace.

The cords of death encompassed me;
   the snares of the netherworld seized upon me;
   I fell into distress and sorrow,
And I called upon the name of the LORD,
   “O LORD, save my life!”
Psalm 116: 3-4

In the Epistle, James says we must demonstrate our faith by our works — by putting our money where our mouth is.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
James 2:14

And in our Gospel, Jesus says we demonstrate our faith by following him, renouncing ourselves and taking up our cross.

This is heavy stuff. Jesus wants us to be like him — and it would be so much easier not to be! It would be so much easier to think that our life is all about ourselves, and that we have no responsibility for Beloved Creation.

It would be so much easier not to give our lives to Christ to allow Him to bless the world through our love.

But if we wish to “save” our lives like this, we will — in the end — lose them for eternity.

Let us pray today for the grace to take our life and lay it down over the Cross of Christ.

In that laying down, to conform ourselves to the pattern of his love, to place the weight of our burdens and hopes on the crossbeam of his strength.

Let us ask for the strength to live

for God
for others
for good in the world
and never for self when it injures or lessens others or our Sacred Home.

This is the way we will keep our lives in Christ.

Music: Renouncement – Michael Hoppé

Friday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

On September 9, 2021September 9, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday, September 10, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 16, complementing as it does today our first reading from 1 Timothy.

Both these scripture passages
speak to us
of finding
– and being found by –
God.

Paul, in guiding his beloved disciple Timothy, defines the phenomenon as “Grace”:

Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant,
along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
1 Timothy 1:14

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Grace is a participation in the life of God, which is poured unearned into human beings, whom it heals of sin and sanctifies.”

Paul agrees:

I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man,
but I have been mercifully treated
because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief.
1 Timothy 1:13

But how do we open ourselves do the gift of grace? How do we engage God’s desire to deepen us in holiness?

Psalm 16 offers us wisdom:

I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
Psalm 16: 7-8

We invite God’s counsel

by an ardent study of scripture
by a sacramental faith
by a prayer that listens more than it speaks
by a life centered on the works of mercy
by a reverence for all Creation
by a love that loves as God loves

I have set the Lord always before me;
because you are at my side I shall not fall.
My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices;
my body also shall rest in hope.
For you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor let your holy one see destruction.
You will show me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy,
and in your hand are graces for evermore.
Psalm 16: 8-11

Poetry: BELOVED IS WHERE WE BEGIN —Jan Richardson

from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.

But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.

I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

Music: Lead Me, Lord

Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

On September 6, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Jesus, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 145 in which the psalmist, filled with gratitude and joy, makes a prodigious promise:

Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Everyday! Forever and ever!
Psalm 145:2

Such a promise requires all one’s attention, discipline and practice. We must learn to see all experience in God’s Light so that everything becomes a reason for praise.

Paul, guiding the Colossians to live that kind of life, tells them:

As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him,
rooted in him and built upon him
and established in the faith as you were taught,
abounding in thanksgiving.
Colossians 2:6-7

Powerful words:
~ walk in Christ
~ be rooted and built in Christ
~ be established in faith
~ be abundant in thanksgiving

God is gracious and merciful toward us as we pray for the psalmist’s prayer to be fulfilled in us and in our lives:

Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.
Psalm 145:10-11

Poetry: from the Book of Hours – Rainer Maria Rilke

You are the future, the great sunrise red
above the broad plains of eternity.
You are the cock-crow when time’s night has fled,
You are the dew, the matins, and the maid,
the stranger and the mother, you are death.

You are the changeful shape that out of Fate
rears up in everlasting solitude,
the unlamented and the unacclaimed,
beyond describing as some savage wood.

You are the deep epitome of things
that keeps its being’s secret with locked lip,
and shows itself to others otherwise:
to the ship, a haven — to the land, a ship.

Music: Psalm 145 – Travis Cottrel

Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

On September 5, 2021September 5, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, peace, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Monday, September 6, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 62 and the heart of its prayer of confidence, verses 6-9.

Carroll Stuhlmueller, revered Old Testament scholar, places Psalm 62 among the Wisdom psalms – those which “seek the harmonious, stable order of life”. They do this by presenting a kind of curriculum for spiritual happiness.

That teaching is clear in Psalm 62: we find our soul’s fulfillment “only in God”.

Does that mean nothing else in our lives matter? That we should push all but God to the margins?
No. The psalm encourages us to look deeply at all of life and to find God in every aspect.

Often, a spiritual director will ask this question of the directee:

“Where is God in this situation, in this moment?”

The question points us to the realization that we can’t compartmentalize God to our “prayer time”, or Sundays, or “religious experiences”.

God lives within us, and lives every moment of our lives with us. Until we align ourselves with God’s loving Presence, we will not find complete peace.

Trust in God at all times, O my people!
Pour out your hearts before God;
God is our refuge!
Psalm 62:9

Prose: from the Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 1, Chapter 1

Great are You, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; 
great is Your power, 
and of Your wisdom there is no end. 
And we, being a part of Your creation, 
desire to praise You….
You move us to delight in praising You; 
for You have made us for Yourself, 
and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.

Cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in Te.

Lord, teach me to know and understand 
which of these should be first: 
to call on You, or to praise You; 
and likewise to know You, or to call on You.
But who calls upon You without knowing You? 
For the one that knows You not 
may call upon You as other than You are. 
Or perhaps we call on You 
that we may know You.

But how shall they call on Him
in whom they have not believed?
Or how shall they believe without a preacher?
Romans 10:14

And those who seek the Lord shall praise the Lord.
For those who seek shall find God,
Matthew 7:7

and those who find God shall praise God. 
Let me seek You, Lord, in calling on You, 
and call on You in believing in You; 
for You have been preached unto us. 
O Lord, my faith calls on You — 
that faith which You have imparted to me, 
which You have breathed into me 
through the incarnation of Your Son, 
through the ministry of Your preacher ¹.
¹ (Here Augustine is referring to St. Ambrose, his mentor)

Music: Only in God – John Michael Talbot

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

On September 2, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, Prayer, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday, September 3, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 100 which both invites and commands:

Come with joy into the Presence of the Lord.

Psalm 100:2

To know and honor this Presence is the sole pursuit of the Christian life.

Understanding is the reward of faith.
Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe,
but believe that you may understand.
Augustine of Hippo

Our first reading from Colossians offers a beautiful hymn for our meditation as we pray to open ourselves to a deepening awareness of Jesus, present in our lives:

Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God,
   the firstborn of all creation.
For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,
   the visible and the invisible,
   whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;
   all things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
   and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the Body, the Church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
   that in all things he himself might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell,
   and through him to reconcile all things for him,
   making peace by the Blood of his cross
   through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.
Colossians 1:15-20

Prose: Jesus Prayer – John Henry Newman

Dear Jesus,
Help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,
that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in
contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine,
so to shine as to be a light to others;
The light, O Jesus will be all from You;
none of it will be mine;
It will be you shining on others through me.

Music: Jesus the Lord – Roc O’Connor

Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

On September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Hope, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 98 which we reflected on just this past Saturday on the feast of St. Augustine. Here’s a refresher if you’d care to glance back.

Memorial of Saint Augustine

Because they proclaim God’s faithfulness, today’s psalm verses ready us to receive the Gospel’s expansive injunction:

As we pass through the waters of life, we each meet our own “deeps”. Sometimes we do not recognize them as the sacred places where we are to meet God’s call.

Sometimes we see only their choppy surface, their tangled riptides, their frightening shadows.

Sometimes we miss the bounty held in the mystery of these moments. We fold our nets and try to sail away.

As he did for the weary disciples, Jesus

lovingly contradicts our fear,
releases our hope,
fills the flimsy net of our faith to bursting …

… if we will just trust his Word, and cast out with him over the waters of our lives.

A little visual “poetry” today:

Music: Cast Your Net – Timothy R. Smith

Memorial of Saint Augustine

On August 27, 2021August 27, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Creation, Discipleship, Faith, Poetry, Psalms, spirituality2 Comments

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 98, the scripture which inspired “Joy to the World”.

Psalm 98 describes God’s redemption of Israel and the jubilation that will ensue. In other words, it is a song of “rejoicing in the future tense”. When the community sang it for their great occasions, they had not yet seen the Savior. But their profound faith allowed them to celebrate in spirit what they believed would be accomplished – as the psalm’s concluding verse asserts:

In righteousness shall God judge the world
and the peoples with equity.
Psalm 98:8

We too are called to let our lives sing to the Lord in hope and confidence because we know that what we believe is true. That kind of faith in action is called “witness”. And we, my dears, in ALL circumstances of our lives, are charged to be WITNESSES!

Like the seas who sing in either still or storm
Like rivers who clap in ebb or the neap
Like the mountains who sing in all seasons

Let the sea and what fills it resound,
the world and those who dwell in it;
Let the rivers clap their hands,
the mountains shout with them for joy.
Psalm 98:7-8

Like our hearts that believe even through life’s intermingled joys and sorrows

This is your life,
joys and sorrow mingled,
one succeeding the other.
Catherine McAuley: Letter to Frances Warde (May 28, 1841)

Poetry: Flickering Mind – Denise Levertov

Lord, not you
it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places:
a quick glance, and away -- and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop
to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river's purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn.  Not you,
it is I am absent.
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow.
You the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the fountain's heart
the sapphire I know is there?

Music: Let Your Heart Sing – Young Oceans

Memorial of Saint Monica

On August 26, 2021August 26, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Cross, Discipleship, Faith, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday, August 27, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 97, one of several psalms categorized as “enthronement psalms”. These psalms celebrate God as king, a king exponentially greater than any human sovereign.

But Psalm 97 shows us that this Divine Ruler is also exponentially different from the flawed and often oppressive human rulers Israel (and others throughout history)has/have experienced.

For that reason, God is the only one who should rule our lives, and all human authority should mirror God’s perfect balance of love, mercy, and justice.

The psalm indicates how God is uniquely supreme:

JUSTICE – God’s reign is founded on justice, not domination

The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice;
let the many isles be glad.
Justice and judgment are the foundation of his throne.
97:1-2

UNIVERSALITY – God’s power moves earth and heaven, beyond any human ability

The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the LORD of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory.
97:5-6

GOODNESS – God loves goodness, not evil; uprightness, not power plays

The LORD loves those who hate evil;
he guards the lives of his faithful ones;
from the hand of the wicked he delivers them.
97:10

JOY – God’s reign brings universal joy, not subjugation. It inspires gratitude, not fear:

Light dawns for the just;
and gladness, for the upright of heart.
Be glad in the LORD, you just,
and give thanks to God’s holy name
97:11-12

Psalm 97, though constructed on a metaphor that doesn’t speak to many of us, still has much to teach us.

How do we image God?
How does that image inspire, define, or control our behaviors and choices?
In whatever form we exercise authority, how do we reflect God’s authority?
Especially in our influence over younger, or vulnerable persons, what image of God would they learn from us?

For Christians, Psalm 97 points to a most contradictory “king”, one who loves the “beatitude person” and is willing to suffer and die for them. The psalm so clearly foreshadows Christ that it is the psalm prayed at Mass on Christmas Day.

In Christmas the Church does not simply celebrate the birth of a wondrous baby. Through that birth we celebrate the cosmic reality that God has entered the process of the world in a decisive way that changes everything toward life. The entry of God into the process of the world is the premise of the poem in Psalm 97.
Walter Brueggemann, Psalm 97: Psalm for Christmas Day

Poetry: The Kingdom – R. S. Thomas

It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.

Music: The Servant King – Graham Kendrick

Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle

On August 23, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Prayer, Psalms, spirituality2 Comments

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 145, a luxuriant song of praise to a God who overwhelms us with generosity.

I will extol you, my God and king;
I will bless your name forever and ever.

Every day I will bless you;
I will praise your name forever and ever.

Great is the LORD and worthy of much praise,
whose grandeur is beyond understanding.
Psalm 145: 1-3

Citing verses 13-20 which are structured around the word “all”, Walter Brueggemann says:

The image is an overflow of limitless blessing
given without reservation
to all who are in need
and turn to the Creator.

Which brings us to Nathaniel and how this prayer might have sung in his heart.

I got to be friends with Nathaniel over 50 years ago when, at my reception in our community, Mother Bernard decided to give me his name. And after an initial shock, I came to love it.

Nathaniel and I have spent countless hours under his fig tree sharing both our lives. I’ve asked him many times what he was thinking about when Philip came to invite him to meet Jesus. Nathaniel always has a different answer… one amazingly similar to whatever happens to be preoccupying me at the time.😇

a favorite old book that started some of my conversations with Nathaniel

One element remains constant in every circumstance: in his quiet moment, Nathaniel sought God’s Light. As our Gospel shows, that Luminous Word came to him and he responded.

I think that in our “fig tree moments”, we have finally sifted through all that we are capable of in order to find Grace in our lives. Now we wait, in the shade and quiet of prayer, for the True Answer.

When that answering Word comes, it shatters our doubts and pretenses like an egg. And like a shattered egg, the Word releases new life in us. We move deeper into the unbreakable Wholeness and Infinity. Like Nathaniel, even in our ordinary lives, we begin to “see greater things” than we had ever imagined.

Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”
Nathanael answered him,
“Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“Do you believe
because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?
You will see greater things than this.”
And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will see heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

After that momentous afternoon when he was drawn from the shade into the Light, Nathaniel’s life became a hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.

Poem-Prayer from Christine Robinson

Psalm 145 – Opening Heart

I exalt you, Holy One, and open my heart to you
by remembering your great love.
Your expansiveness made this beautiful world
in a universe too marvelous to understand.
Your desire created life, and you nurtured
that life with your spirit.
You cherish us all—and your prayer
in us is for our own flourishing.
You are gracious to us
slow to anger and full of kindness
You touch us with your love—speak to us
with your still, small voice, hold us when we fall.
You lift up those who are oppressed
by systems and circumstances.
You open your hand
and satisfy us.
You ask us to call on you—
and even when you seem far away, our
longings call us back to you.
Hear my cry, O God, for some days, it is all I have.

Music: I Will Praise Your Name – Bob Fitts

Lord I will praise your name

I will praise your name

I will praise your name and extol You

I will praise Your name (I will praise Your name)

I will praise Your name

As I behold You

I will magnify, I will glorify

I will lift on high Your name, Lord Jesus

I will magnify, I will glorify

I will lift on high Your name, Lord Jesus

For Your love is never ending

And Your mercy ever true

I will bless Your name Lord Jesus

For my heart belongs to You

I will praise Your name

I will praise Your name and extol you

I will magnify, I will glorify

I will lift on high Your name, Lord Jesus

For Your love is never ending

And Your mercy ever true

I will bless Your name Lord Jesus

For my heart belongs to You

I will praise Your name

I will praise Your name and extol you

I will magnify, I will glorify

I will lift on high Your name, Lord Jesus