Category: Discipleship

Psalm 119: Come, Sweet Mercy!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Forgiveness, Gospel, Mercy, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer4 Comments

Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

October 13, 2020

2018 Reflection on Gospel
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 119 whose refrain is beautiful to the ears of those who love Mercy.

We can invite Mercy in many ways.

One way is to ask Mercy to heal the fractured circumstances of our lives – the outside of the cup, if we would borrow an image from today’s Gospel:

  • to strengthen us against any pain or fear in our own lives
  • to deliver us and those we love from all that overwhelms
  • to forgive our inexcusable retreats into selfishness
  • to repair that which seems irrevocably broken 

But another, deeper way is to invite Mercy to the inside of our “cup”:

  • to indwell our hearts
  • to transform, within us, the place where we encounter life
  • to inspire us to respond always with the heart of Jesus
  • to flow from us in continual witness to God’s Mercy

Today, in our prayer, let’s spend some time with Mercy, the most beautiful Face of God.

Poem:  Blest are the undefiled in heart (Psalm 119)
by Isaac Watts – (1674 – 1748) was an English Christian minister (Congregational), hymn writer, theologian, and logician. He was a prolific and popular hymn writer and is credited with some 750 hymns. He is recognized as the “Godfather of English Hymnody”; many of his hymns remain in use today and have been translated into numerous languages.

Blest are the undefiled in heart,
whose ways are right and clean;
who never from your law depart,
but flee from every sin.

Blest are the ones that keep your word,
and serve you with their hands;
with their whole heart they seek you, Lord,
obeying your commands.

Great is their peace who love your law;
how firm their souls abide!
Nor can a bold temptation draw
their steady feet aside.

Then shall my heart have inward joy!
I’ll keep my steps from shame;
your statutes help me to obey,
and glorify your name.

Music- Sanctuary by Secret Garden

Psalm 105: God at the Center

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Faith, Love, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

October 10, 2020

2018 Reflection on Readings
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 105, a recounting of the marvelous works God has done from the Abrahamic covenant to the Exodus.

Sing to God, sing praise,
proclaim all God’s wondrous deeds.
Glory in the Holy Name;
rejoice, O hearts that seek the LORD!

Psalm 105: 2-3

Our psalm today enjoins us to remember God’s faithful mercy to us and to praise God as we remember.

Such sacred “remembering” is an act of radical faith which, first, recognizes God as the Center of our life, and second, acts from that radical awareness.

The word “obedience”, so commonly misconstrued as subservience, is another way of describing this radical faith which hears, listens, acknowledges, responds and centers itself on the voice of God. The word “obedience” comes from the same root as the word “listen”.

This freely-given and continually deepened obedience allows us to hear and discern the loving truth God weaves through our lives.

The counter-world of the Psalms contradicts our closely held world of amnesia and mediates to us a world of lively remembering….
… In Psalm 105, a long recital of the great deeds climaxes, “in order that they might keep his statutes and observe his laws” (v. 45). The purpose of remembering is thus to evoke a contemporary practice of obedience in the wake of the memory. The implied negative is that when the inventory of miracles is forgotten, there will be no contemporary obedience .

Walter Brueggemann, From Whom No Secrets Are Hid

In the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis points out how this obedience, (this holy remembering, listening and acting), is tied to the course of human affairs. Francis quotes JPII here:

In this regard, I wish to cite the following memorable statement: “If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which the human person achieves full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class, group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at their disposal in order to impose personal interests or opinion, with no regard for the rights of others… The root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by very nature the subject of rights that no one may violate – no individual, group, class, nation or state.

St. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus (1 May 1991)

Rootedness in this “remembering obedience” begins with each person’s own sincere prayer. With the psalmist, let us remember God’s loving fidelity to us and, in grateful response, live that Love faithfully into our conflicted world:

Look to the LORD’s strength;
seek to serve the Lord constantly.
Recall the wondrous deeds that God has wrought,
the signs, and the graces God has spoken in your life.

Psalm 105: 4-5

Poem: Called to Become – Edwina Gateley

You are called to become
A perfect creation.
No one else is called to become
Who you are called to be.
It does not matter
How short or tall
Or thick-set or slow
You may be.
It does not matter
Whether you sparkle with life
Or are as silent as a still pool.
Whether you sing your song aloud
Or weep alone in darkness.
It does not matter
Whether you feel loved and admired
Or unloved and alone
For you are called to become
A perfect creation.
No one's shadow
Should cloud your becoming.
No one's light
Should dispel your spark.
For the Lord delights in you.
Jealously looks upon you
And encourages with gentle joy
Every movement of the Spirit
Within you.
Unique and loved you stand.
Beautiful or stunted in your growth
But never without hope and life.
For you are called to become
A perfect creation.
This becoming may be
Gentle or harsh.
Subtle or violent.
But it never ceases.
Never pauses or hesitates.
Only is—
Creative force—
Calling you
Calling you to become
A perfect creation.

Music: Psalm 105 – Give Thanks – Sean Dayton

Fratelli Tutti

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Creation, Discipleship, Faith2 Comments

Celebrating the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi
October 4-5, 2020

This year, in normal liturgical custom, our Sunday celebration supersedes the Feastday of Francis. But I can’t let this special day go by without notice. Therefore, I am publishing tomorrow’s reflection early, hoping that you will read some of it today. I write with warmest greeting to all Franciscans, especially my dear Sisters in Aston. PA. (The Franciscan Spiritual Center has designed some wonderful programs and made them accessible even during the pandemic. Here is a link to explore their wonderful offerings.)

https://fscaston.org/events-retreats/
St. Francis Preaches to the Birds – Giotto

For reflection, I plan to spend this evening and tomorrow morning with Pope Francis’s new encyclical Fratelli Tutti (Brothers and Sisters All), issued on this feast. St. Francis inspired the world with a renewed Gospel vision. Our Holy Father seeks to do the same with this ground-breaking teaching.

These will be the first of many prayerful days with this powerful document which Michael Sean Winters, in the National Catholic Reporter, describes:

What is clear is that Pope Francis has given the church a testament of authentic solidarity at a time when our president — and his nationalistic allies abroad — offers a counterfeit of solidarity. Both varieties of solidarity are responses to the excesses and the poverties created by neo-liberalism. Yes, poverties, it is clear, … that the material wealth neoliberal economies generate is precisely coincident with the generation of spiritual and moral poverty. The whole world groans to move beyond the moral slovenliness of laissez-faire ideas. But only the pope’s version represents an authentically Christian version of solidarity and, I would add, an authentically human version. This text challenges Christians in unique ways, but it challenges all….
…. If this pandemic does not shake us out of our post-modern cultural and moral and spiritual lethargy, what will? Pope Francis is throwing the Catholic Church and the whole world a lifeline. Will we grab it?

If you would like to pray with this profound and challenging instruction from Pope Francis, here is a link to it.

Click here for Fratelli Tutti on the Vatican website

A second opportunity for prayer over today and tomorrow comes from our Mercy Sister Eileen Dooling. On our Sisters of Mercy blog, Eileen offers a lovely reflection on the Franciscan-Mercy connection. I’m sure you will enjoy it.

http://www.sistersofmercy.org/blog/2020/10/02/francis-assisi-beyond-birdbath/

As you can see, there are so many ways to reflect, pray and grow on this beautiful feast. May your prayer be blessed by Francis (both of them) and by this amazing music!

Music: St. Francis Preaching to the Birds by Franz Liszt, played by Kotaro Fukuma 

Psalm 25: God’s Will?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Cross, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, Love, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, repentanceLeave a comment

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 27, 2020

Read a great reflection by Sister Mary McGlone on today’s Gospel
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 25, set perfectly in the midst of a few readings that speak to us about, among other things , “the Father’s Will”.

I think there is no greater spiritual mystery than the meaning of  “God’s Will”, (and not wanting to show up Thomas Aquinas, I’ll resist explaining it here. 😂🧐)

But we’ve all heard attempts at explaining it, haven’t we, especially as it relates to suffering— as in:

  • everything that happens is God’s Will, so we must accept it
  • God wills our suffering to test us
  • if God wills that we suffer, He will give us the strength to endure it

I just don’t think so … not the God I love and Who loves me.

But these attempts to explain suffering are understandable because we want to rationalize the things we fear. Most of us, I think, struggle with the problem of evil and suffering in the world. We want to know what to do when, as Rabbi Kushner wrote, “… Bad Things Happen to Good People”.

Our first reading from Ezekiel shows us that even the ancient peoples met this struggle. The prophet seems to suggest that if you’re bad, you’ll suffer. If you repent, you won’t. Well, we all know that’s not quite the reality! But nice try, Ezekiel.

Our psalm gently leads to another way of facing suffering as the psalmist prays for wisdom, compassion and divine guidance. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus himself prayed like this as he confronted his impending suffering.

In our second reading, Paul places before us the example of Jesus who, in the face of suffering, was transformed by love:

Praying with these readings, each one of us must come to our own peace with the mystery of suffering. What we can be sure of is this: God’s Will is always for our wholeness and joy as so simply taught to us when we were little children:

God made me to know, love, and serve God, 
and to be happy with God in this world and forever.

Our Gospel tells us that such happiness comes through faith and loving service, through responding to “the Father’s Will”.  May we have the insight, the love and the courage!

Poetry: Of Being by Denise Levertov 

I know this happiness
is provisional:

       the looming presences—
       great suffering, great fear—

       withdraw only
       into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

       this mystery:

Music: To You, O Lord (Psalm 25) Graham Kendrick

Psalm 119: A Lamp

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, Priest … also commonly known as Padre Pio.
Padre Pio died during the night of 23 September 1968, at the age of 81. On 16 June 2002, he was proclaimed a saint by Pope John Paul II. In his homily, the Pope said, “The life and mission of Padre Pio prove that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted out of love, are transformed into a privileged way of holiness, which opens onto the horizons of a greater good, known only to the Lord.”

September 23, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we continue praying with Psalm 119 which, with its 176 verses, is the longest psalm as well as the longest chapter in the Bible. So this could go on forever, right?

Well, it doesn’t. Even though Psalm 119 is used for the Responsorial a total of 22 times during the total liturgical cycle, we won’t see it again for a week or so.

However, the liturgical frequency of this psalm should alert us to the importance of its teachings. Although long and somewhat complex in its acrostic structure, the psalm is direct and simple in its message:

Learn, love and live God’s ways.

Today’s verses liken such pursuit to finding a lamp in the darkness:

Praying with this refrain, we might be able to recall a time we were enveloped in darkness, either material, emotional, or spiritual. Most of us become at least a little frightened by such conditions. We get disoriented. We don’t know if we will be able to find our way out.

The psalmist attests to similar experiences, and voices a confident call on God for deliverance. That confidence grows from the psalmist’s desire and commitment to walk in holy discernment:

From every evil way I withhold my feet,
that I may keep your words.
Through your precepts I gain discernment;
therefore I hate every false way.
Falsehood I hate and abhor;
your law I love.

In this beautiful verse, the psalmist’s confidence is confirmed by God’s faithful endurance:

The law of your mouth is to me more precious
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
Your word, O LORD, endures forever;
it is firm as the heavens.

Poetry: One, One, One – Rumi 

The lamps are different. 
But the Light is the same. 
So many garish lamps in the dying brain's lamp shop, 
Forget about them. 
Concentrate on essence, concentrate on Light. 
In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire, 
The Light streams toward you from all things, 
All people, all possible permutations of good, evil, thought, passion. 

The lamps are different, 
But the Light is the same. 
One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind, 
Endlessly emanating all things. 
One turning and burning diamond, 
One, one, one. 

Ground yourself, strip yourself down, 
To blind loving silence. 
Stay there, until you see 
You are gazing at the Light 
With its own ageless eyes.

Music: Beati Quorem Via – Charles Villiers Stanford, sung by voces 8
The title of this hymn is the first verse of Psalm 119 in Latin. Translation below.

Blessed are they whose road is straight,
who walk in the law of the Lord.

Beati quorum via integra est:
qui ambulant in lege Domini

Psalm 19: Declare God’s Glory

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, holiness, Jesus, joy, ordinary time, Poetry, PsalmsLeave a comment

Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

September 21, 2020

Reflection on St. Matthew
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 19, one of the unique “Torah Psalms” (1, 19, 119) in which Israel celebrates the divine structure of life in all Creation, including ourselves.

James Luther Mays, in his article The Place of the Torah-Psalms in the Psalter, suggests that these psalms serve as a guide to how all the other psalms are to be read, interpreted and prayed.

Walter Brueggemann describes life without God as “normless” – without the structure of grace and relationship with God that holds all Creation in abundant Life. He refers to the Torah as a “norming” dynamism, and writes:

And when Israel … used the term “Torah” (never meaning simply or simplistically “law”), it refers to the entire legacy of norming that is elastic, dynamic, fluid, and summoning. The outcome of that legacy in the Psalter is the great Torah Psalms in which Israel celebrates, with joy, that the creator God has not left the world as a normless blob but has instilled in the very structure of creation the transformative capacity for enacted fidelity. That is why Psalm 19 juxtaposes the glory of creation that attests the creator (vv. 1–6) with the commandments that are the source of life.

Our verses today for the Feast of St. Matthew include this phrase…

Their message goes out through all the earth.

… perhaps equating the universal ministry of the Apostles to the transformative power and witness of the heavens to God’s immutable glory.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day pours out the word to day,
and night to night imparts knowledge.
Not a word nor a discourse
whose voice is not heard;
Through all the earth their voice resounds,
and to the ends of the world, their message.

The teaching of the Apostles is codified for Catholics in the Apostles Creed. We might want to pray it slowly today, attentive to those “norming ” beliefs – our sort of fundamental “Torah” – which hold our lives in graceful relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, 
Creator of Heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, 
born of the Virgin Mary, 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into Hell; 
the third day He rose again from the dead;
He ascended into Heaven, 
and sits at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; 
from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, 
the holy Catholic Church, 
the communion of saints, 
the forgiveness of sins, 
the resurrection of the body 
and life everlasting.
Amen.

Poetry: XIX Caeli Ennarant by Malcolm Guite

In that still place where earth and heaven meet
Under mysterious starlight, raise your head
And gaze up at their glory:  ‘the complete

Consort dancing’ as a poet said
Of his own words. But these are all God’s words;
A shining poem, waiting to be read

Afresh in every heart. Now look towards
The brightening east, and see the splendid sun
Rise and rejoice, the icon of his lord’s

True light. Be joyful with him, watch him run
His course, receive the gift and treasure of his light
Pouring like honeyed gold till day is done

As sweet and strong as all God’s laws, as right
As all his judgements and as clean and pure,
All given for your growth, and your delight!

Music: Wonderland – David Nevis

Psalm 145: Always Mercy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Mercy, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, repentanceLeave a comment

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 20, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 145 which, with our Sunday readings, ties together the themes of call and commitment.

In our first reading, Isaiah proclaims a repentant urgency to that call:

Seek the LORD 
while he may be found,
call him 
while he is still near.

In our second reading, Paul confirms his own ultimate commitment to that call and urges his followers to imitate him:

Christ will be magnified in my body,
whether by life or by death….

Only, conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear news of you, that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind struggling together for the faith of the gospel.

But our Gospel reveals that not everyone responds immediately to God’s voice in their lives. Some of us come late to the call of grace. Nevertheless, our generous God seeks us, time and again, and embraces us fully no matter how close to the evening.

The early hires chafe against this system, imagining themselves somehow deprived by the Master’s abundance. Perhaps we heard attitudes like theirs expressed in self-sufficient phrases like:

  • but I’ve worked hard for everything I have
  • you need to earn your way in life
  • it’s not a free ride
  • if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

Walter Brueggemann writes that the Psalms refute such an attitude:

The counter-world of the Psalms
contradicts our closely held world of self-sufficiency
by mediating to us a world confident in God’s preferential option
for those who call on him in their ultimate dependence.

Psalm 145 lifts us beyond our selfish imaginations. It expresses the grateful praise of one who, swaddled in God’s lavish blessing, recognizes that Divine Justice looks like Mercy not calculation.

The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.

Poem: by Rumi

By the mercy of God,
Paradise has eight doors.
One of those is the door of repentance, child. 
All the others are sometimes open, 
sometimes shut, 
but the door of repentance is never closed. 
Come seize the opportunity: 
the door is open; 
carry your baggage there at once.

Music: I Will Praise Your Name – Marty Haugen, David Haas

Psalm 33: Convinced!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Love, Mercy, ordinary time, Poetry, PsalmsLeave a comment

Memorial of Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with verses from Psalm 33, the whole of which is the steadfast prayer of a person convinced of God!

As we read through Psalm 33, there is no hem and haw, no grey! It’s about God as the center of the psalmist’s, and the nation’s, life:

Know that the LORD is God;
Who made us, Whose we are;
God’s people, the flock God tends.

Our first reading grows from a similar conviction. Paul tells the Corinthians that our rootedness in God is not about spiritual eloquence, knowledge or holy detachment. He allows that it’s a little bit about faith and hope. But, over all things, it’s about love.

Lesson: We can’t be like the Gospel’s marketplace children. There should be but one song in our hearts – the same one Love sang as Love created each one of us in Her image.

For upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.

Poetry: Great Heart of God – (Nicholas) Vachel Lindsay (1879 – 1931), an American poet who is considered a founder of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted.

O great heart of God, 

Once vague and lost to me, 
Why do I throb with your throb to-night, 
In this land, eternity? 

O little heart of God, 
Sweet intruding stranger, 
You are laughing in my human breast, 
A Christ-child in a manger. 

Heart, dear heart of God, 
Beside you now I kneel, 
Strong heart of faith. O heart not mine, 
Where God has set His seal. 

Wild thundering heart of God 
Out of my doubt I come, 
And my foolish feet with prophets' feet, 
March with the prophets' drum. 

Music: Coulin – James Last – just a lovely instrumental to pray with today. ❤️

Psalm 139: Lord, You Know Me

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Prayer, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Thursday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Thursday, September 10, 2020

2018 Reflection on Gospel
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 139, such a deeply personal and beautiful meditation. It is all we need for our prayer today.

Psalm 139
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.
1 
You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
2 
You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 
You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
4 
Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
5 
You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
6 
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.
7 
Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
8 
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
11 
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
12 
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.
13 
For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
15 
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
17 
How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
18 
Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.
19 
If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 
They speak of you with evil intent;
    your adversaries misuse your name.
21 
Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 
I have nothing but hatred for them;
    I count them my enemies.
23 
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

O God, You Search Me and You Know Me- Bernadette Farrell

Psalm 45: God Longs for Us

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, holiness, ordinary time, Poetry, PsalmsLeave a comment

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 45 which scripture scholars interpret as a Davidic wedding song. Many believe it refers to the marriage of a king to the daughter of a royal foreign house.

The psalm is set today between two powerful readings. 

In our first reading, Paul gives an extended opinion piece on celibacy and marriage, a reading which has spawned countless academic interpretations. Our Gospel, pivotal to our understanding of holiness, also has generated abundant scholarly commentary.

We may finish today’s readings wondering who must I be to become the person God wants me to be? Celibate? Poor? Hungry? Sorrowful? Persecuted?  Like Francis Thompson in his famous poem, The Hound of Heaven, we may feel pursued by a God we might rather ignore!

For, though I knew His love Who followèd, 
        Yet was I sore adread 
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside

Indeed, the answer is not simple. Each person’s path to God’s heart is different. The readings don’t give us a foolproof map. Instead, they give us prompts about where we might go off the path.

In other words, the readings spread the stars across our heavens. But we must find our own bearings in life to allow us to continually deepen our relationship with God. If our current circumstances and choices prevent that in any way, we must reorient ourselves.

For me the lesson is this. God desires our complete love and worship. God wants to be the center of our lives. That’s why we exist. All the rest is incidental.

Our psalm captures it in this way:

Hear, my child, and see; turn your ear,
forget those things to which you are accustomed.
So shall the Lord desire your full commitment;
the Lord Whom you must worship with your life.

Our Gospel is uncompromising in its warning that obsession with material goods, personal comfort, and selfish success blocks our awareness of how distant we can grow from God:

But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
But woe to you who are filled now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will grieve and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false 
prophets in this way.

We are blessed if we are free of these woes, but it is hard in a culture spiritually crippled by these obsessions.

Psalm 45 calls us to “bend our ear” toward God’s invitation. By sincere prayer and loving vigilance, we can hear the Divine whisper within our circumstances, leading us to fullness of life with God. We will recognize it by this: it always calls us to justice, mercy, and charity.

You love justice and hate wrongdoing;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness above your peers.

Poetry: Excerpt from The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson

The entire poem may be found here

( It’s a little “frilly” with early 20th century Romanticism, but – oh my! – some of its lines get burned into the memory!)

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; 
I fled Him, down the arches of the years; 
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears 
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 
Up vistaed hopes I sped; 
And shot, precipitated, 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears, 
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. 
But with unhurrying chase, 
And unperturbèd pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 
They beat—and a Voice beat 
More instant than the Feet— 
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’ 

Music: I Long for You – Ro Atilano