Category: Eastertide

Praying with Jesus

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eastertide, Eternal Life, Faith, holiness, Jesus, PrayerLeave a comment

Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter 

June 6, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, Jesus continues to pray. What a blessing it is to be able to place ourselves next to Jesus and listen to his prayer!

The flow of this prayer shows clearly that it is part of an ongoing and continual conversation. Jesus is always in a relationship of presence with the Father. He just allows us to listen in John 17.

John17_11 One

By our listening, we may grow in the depth of our own prayer. Jesus prays:

  • for God to be glorified
  • for all to be one in God
  • for the wholeness and perfection of all Creation
  • for eternal, Trinitarian life for his followers
  • for God’s love to live in our hearts

These requests are the same things the Father wants. These are the reasons the Father sent Jesus into the world. So, in his prayer, Jesus is praying for God’s Will of love and wholeness in the world. He is praying for oneness with the Father.

We can grow in this kind of prayer by opening our minds and spirits to God’s heartbeat in our lives. St. Teresa of Avila said it like this:

“Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer he calls to us.
No matter how halfhearted such insights may be, God rejoices
whenever we learn what he is trying to teach us.”
– The Interior Castle

and

“Let the truth be in your hearts, as it will be if you practice meditation,
and you will see clearly what love we are bound to have for our neighbors.”– The Way of Perfection

Through intention and practice, and responsive to grace, there comes a point in our spiritual life when we are never unaware of the Presence of God. The intensity of this awareness will vary, like the volume in a beautiful piece of music, but the Divine music is still always there, even in its necessary rests.

( Rests are intervals of silence in pieces of music, marked by symbols indicating the length of the pause. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value, indicating how long the silence should last.)

Whether we are in a “rest” or a full, resounding note, let us become aware of God’s Presence in us and our presence in God.

Music:   My TOP favorite piece of music. ( P.S. Whoever is in charge, please play this at my funeral.)

Messe solennelle en l’honneur de sainte Cécile: Sanctus – Jessye Norman

Consecrated in Truth

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Discipleship, Eastertide, Faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Love, Prayer1 Comment

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter 

June 5, 2019

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Today in Mercy, we experience both Paul and Jesus praying for their followers. They each use similar words.

Paul:
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.

Jn17_17

Jesus:
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.

Do you pray for others? To protect those you love? To change those who are bound in Spirit? To alleviate those who suffer? To awaken those that are caught in the vortex of selfishness or self-destruction? To increase the blessings of the generous?

Perhaps the greatest prayer we can offer for another is one  like that of Paul and Jesus – a plea for the other to stand Blessed in the Truth of who they are in God — CONSECRATED by their Creaturehood, their Baptism, their faith, and their infinite power for Life in the Holy Spirit.

Today, we might pray like this for our Beloveds, and for those we might like to love better; for those who are unloved, and those unaware of how much they are loved.

The Prayer – Celine Dion and Josh Groban

Farewell

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, dying, Eastertide, Eternal Life, Faith, friendship, Holy Spirit, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter 

June 4, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, we have two farewell readings.

Jn17_2

It’s an appropriate theme at this time of weddings, graduations, retirements, house-hunting, and other temporary or final leave-takings.

Farewells are tough, aren’t they? They are an uneven mix of sadness and joy, one party often more heavily burdened than the other.

I think of the day I left home to enter the convent. I was bursting with joy, enthusiasm, curiosity and wonder. But I was woefully unaware of my parent’s profound sense of loss. It was a stunningly uneven farewell that I only came to understand in my growing maturity.

In our readings today, Paul and Jesus are poignantly aware of their farewells. 

Paul says:

But now I know that none of you
to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels
will ever see my face again.

And Jesus says:

And now I will no longer be in the world,
but (my followers) are in the world,
while I am coming to the Father.

Both Paul and Jesus use their farewells to pray for their disciples, to confirm their strength, and to proclaim that their followers are ready to carry on the mission. You can almost envision these two great mentors releasing their disciples into the fullness of their own call.

Over our lifetimes, we will love and mentor many people: children, friends, students, protégés. There will come times when we must release them into new dimensions of their lives.

Sometimes we are the ones breaking forth to a new horizon, strengthened by the generous direction of those we leave behind.

In each situation, may we treasure the love that is generous enough to give new life. May we bless one another with a magnanimity like that of Jesus when He made his farewell:

I pray for you and …
I will ask the Father
and he will give you his Spirit
to be with you always.

As I look back on that day long ago, standing with my parents at the front door of the Motherhouse, it was that kind of farewell that they unselfishly gave to me.

Music: Spirit of Life by Carolyn McDade

Power Failure?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Eastertide, Faith, Forgiveness, Jesus, Love, Mercy, Prayer4 Comments

Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter
June 3, 2019
Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs

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Today, in Mercy, Acts gives us a brief lesson on the difference between John’s and Jesus’ baptism. John’s is a baptism of repentance, cleansing and preparing the soul for Christ. 

Baptism in Jesus unites us with Christ through the power of the indwelling Spirit. It is a dynamic and life-changing transformation.

But we are often so unaware of its power within us!

Col3_1

We are like the disciples in today’s Gospel. They think that, because they understand Christ’s word,  they have it all together. But Jesus warns them:

Do you believe now?
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.

The distractions of this world can distort and muffle our Baptismal call. Jesus is warning his disciples that it is not easy to live a truly Christian life. Jesus tells them and us to “take courage”, to open our hearts to his power in us. And our Gospel verse from Colossians shows us the way:

If then you were raised with Christ,
seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

We are to make the higher choice always:

  • mercy over harshness
  • justice over retribution
  • forgiveness over vengeance
  • honesty over pretense
  • love over indifference
  • service over selfishness

In this way, our Baptismal power will shine, strengthening not only us, but the world we touch.

Music: The Lord Bless You and Keep You – John Rutter 

Let pray this prayer for one another today, Beloveds. May God strengthen and uplift your hearts in the power of your Baptism.

Good-bye Can Break Your Heart (Open)

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Creation, Eastertide, Faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, justice, Love, Mercy1 Comment

Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

May 28, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, Jesus offers his good-byes as time approaches for him to return to the Father.

Jn16_5

His friends are sad. Wouldn’t you be? What a guy to have known, and palled around with, and loved – in person! But now it’s time for Jesus to return to his role in the Blessed Trinity. And it is time for the Holy Spirit’s continuing role in the world to begin.

Jesus describes the Spirit’s role as one that will set things right by: 

  • showing the world its mistake in rejecting Jesus
  • making clear that Jesus’s teaching was right and just
  • condemning any evil that denies Christ’s teaching

The Holy Spirit will do all this in a different way from Jesus. Jesus was beside his disciples showing them the way to live – and he still is. But the Holy Spirit in within the People of God, working through our communal love, mercy, and justice to transform all Creation.

So Jesus is telling us not to be sad. He is still with us in Scripture and Sacrament. But now our experience of being with God is enriched by the indwelling Spirit who breathes Life to the world through our faith.

What an astounding good-bye Gift! Do we appreciate it, respond to it — even realize we have received it? We are capable of so much more than a small understanding of God. Let us ask to be opened to that Power.

Music: Holy Spirit Rain Down

The New Jerusalem

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Creation, Discipleship, Eastertide, Faith, Jesus, Mary2 Comments

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

May 26, 2019

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(I know you’re having a holiday weekend but, if nothing else, listen to today’s glorious song)

Today, in Mercy,  in our readings, we definitely get the sense of a young Church growing in its self-understanding.

The early Church leaders, most of whom are Jews, grapple with the question of whether new Gentile followers must first be circumcised in order to be baptized.

Over twenty centuries later, the answer seems obvious. But the question nagging the disciples shows us how they experienced their Christianity as emerging from Judaism. They had no concept of the call to Christianity coming in any other way.

It seems it was a huge shift for some of them to realize that God is not Jewish, that God is the God of all peoples – just as some of us today have trouble understanding that God is not Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, male, white, born again or any other human limitation we attach to the Divine.

Rev21_2 Jerusalem

Our second reading reveals how John dealt with navigating this shift. Still cemented in his Jewish symbols, he sees “Jerusalem” coming down out of heaven from God. But it was a new Jerusalem – one without the central symbol of Judaism, the Temple:

I saw no temple in the city
for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb.
The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it,
for the glory of God gave it light,
and its lamp was the Lamb.

For John, the New Creation in Christ included, but exceeded the Jewish narrative.

In our Gospel, Jesus prepares his disciples for life without his physical presence. They, too, need to learn to let go. He encourages them to open their hearts to even greater graces:

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.

Jesus is reminding his disciples, and us, that the graces and learnings of the New Creation are infinite. If we can learn when to let go of our old practices, our material symbols, our impregnable sureties, the Holy Spirit will astound us, and re-shape our understanding of God, just as She did for Mary, Peter, Paul, John and all the many enlightened saints through the ages.

As Pentecost approaches, let us pray for such Enlightenment in ourselves and especially in our Church. For the world grows ever more resistant to the Holy Spirit Whose Gifts are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe of God.

Let us pray for a New Jerusalem where all are one in God.

Music: If you do nothing else with this reflection, please allow yourselves the thrill of listening to the celestial voice of Miss Jessye Norman. (Always gives me goosebumps!)

If … then. Uh oh!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Eastertide, Faith, Gospel, Hope, inclusivity, Jesus, justice, Love, Mercy2 Comments

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter 

May 25, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, our readings challenge us.

Jn15_20JPG

Jesus talks about the kind of blowback his disciples can expect for living their faith in  an inimical world. He gives us some “if … then” statements:

  • If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.
  • If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.
  • If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Reading these verses makes me wonder if I am really living the Gospel, because I don’t feel all that persecuted.

And then I think that this is because I really live in two worlds. I live in first world comfort and security. But there is also a part of me that agonizes daily over the injustice rampant in our shared world. Today’s Gospel challenges me to live more intentionally in that second world.

Walter Brueggemann says this:

Faith is both the conviction
that justice can be accomplished
and the refusal to accept injustice.”
– Interrupting Silence: God’s Command to Speak Out

Jesus was not persecuted simply because he did miracles and preached love. This loving, life-giving ministry confronted the dominant, government-generated culture which relied on the subjugation and despair of those they dominated.

Jesus, just like other prophets, was killed because he gave hope to a people whose freedom threatened the status quo comfort of the dominators. Just like  Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Oscar Romero , Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Wang Zhiming , the Blessed Martyrs of Nowogrodek  (All names are clickable to find more information.)

I don’t aspire to martyrdom. But I do want to be a true disciple of Jesus. The way available to us is to live and act with mercy and compassion for the poor, marginalized people Jesus so loves. We can do this by voting, advocating for, and sponsoring programs and agendas for social justice.  This link from the Sisters of Mercy is a help on how to do that:

Click here for Sisters of Mercy Advocacy page

Brueggemann also says this:

Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion.” (Prophetic Imagination)

May our hearts be moved by grace to the depth of compassion we have learned from Jesus.

P.S. I know that many of you have responded to this request I placed on Facebook. Thank you. For those who don’t do Facebook, this is an urgent request for help for refugees at our southern border. It’s an easy way to do some good things.It was received from Sisters of Mercy Leadership Team in D.C.

Music for today is below this request. 

appeal

Music: Compassion- The Gettys 

Whenever I Call You “Friend”

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eastertide, Eternal Life, Faith, friendship, holiness, Jesus, Love2 Comments

Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter 

May 24, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, Jesus calls us his friends. What a magical, mysterious word! Making friends, being friends, keeping friends – these are some of the essential dynamics of a human life.

Jn15_15_friends

Many years ago, one of our family’s preschoolers was playing with his neighborhood buddies. His mom told him to introduce the boys to us. Very formally, little Charlie announced, “I would like you to meet my shrends.” He was not too sure yet about the word, but he was very clear on the concept. Among all his classmates, these guys shared something special with him.

Like all our relationships, Charlie’s would develop over time by trial and error, by imitation and intention – one confidence, care and joy shared, one after another. Trust and love would build, ultimately giving that irreplaceable gift of true and trusted friendship 

Jesus is telling us today that we share something special with him. Our spiritual life is all about building those mutual confidences and shared experiences that help us to know Christ’s heart and allow him to know ours.

Jesus has given himself fully to this friendship:

I call you my friends, says the Lord,
for I have made known to you
all that the Father has told me.

May we ever grow stronger and more generous in our response to Christ’s amazing gift. May we learn to love as Christ loves.

This is my commandment:
love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Music:  Today’s choice is a popular contemporary song. Ever since I was a young teen, I sometimes, in prayer, choose to sing a popular song to God (mostly in my heart now, because my voice has gone the way of all flesh). Some of these songs can be perfect for what’s in the heart. If you have never tried it, this song might encourage you to. Maybe you have a favorite you’d like to sing to God, your Friend who loves you beyond description.

Whenever I Call You Friend – Michael Johnson and Alison Krause

 

Live in Christ

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Eastertide, Eternal Life, Faith1 Comment

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter 

May 22, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, our Gospel gives us the powerful metaphor of the Vine and the Branches.

John15_2 vine

How do we grow more deeply into God? Or how do we let God grow more deeply into us? Or do we even want those things to happen?

If our lives seem to be riding along on their own, we may not pay all that much attention to God’s Presence in our experiences. And that’s where we miss the opportunity to be grafted on to the Vine.

How unfortunate if we never learn to befriend our own souls, because that is the place where God speaks to us. St. Teresa of Avila put it this way:

What friends or kindred can be so close and intimate as the powers of our soul, which, whether we will or no, must ever bear us company?
— St. Theresa of Avila, The Interior Castle

Some practices to help that “befriending” are the appreciation of quiet, the routine of prayer, the love of scripture, the reverence of nature and humanity, and the practice of charity.

The Little Flower offers us great insight into friendship with God:

I understand and I know from experience that: ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ Jesus has no need of books or teachers to instruct souls; He teaches without the noise of words. Never have I heard Him speak, but I feel that He is within me at each moment; He is guiding and inspiring me with what I must say and do. I find just when I need them certain lights that I had not seen until then, and it isn’t most frequently during my hours of prayer that these are most abundant but rather in the midst of my daily occupations.”
― St. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul – the Autobiography of St. Therese

Lest my men readers fear I’ve gone all girly with these women saints (and by the way, they were not girly.  They were powerhouses of spiritual dynamism!), try this from St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits:

Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our Lord may wish to work in you. it is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy the Lord in different times and different places than in only one.
― Saint Ignatius, Letter to Francisco de Borja, Duke of Gandía

Summary of all this thought: God lives in us and we live in God, as branches live in the Vine. May we let ourselves absorb, cherish and celebrate this astounding Gift!

PS: Sending another personal thought on a little later this evening. 

Music: I Am the Vine- John Michael Talbot

Finding Peace

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Eastertide, Faith, holiness, peace, spirituality, suffering1 Comment

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

May 21, 2019

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Today, in Mercy, our Gospel offers us a profound message: what does it mean to live in the peace of God?

jn14_28 peace

So many things, from the monumental to the trivial, can make us unpeaceful. If we made a list, we might tire before we completed it! This lack of peace takes many forms in us – worry, anxiety, second guessing, distraction, self-doubt and myriad other forms of inner fragmentation.

For some of us, gaining inner peace is more difficult than for others. So much depends on the trust we have felt in our lives. For those who have felt betrayed by family, friends, or God, the journey to a peaceful heart can be a tortuous one.

But Jesus says we can do it because he showed us how.

Don’t you think he might have been confused and bewildered at times by what the Father was asking of him? Don’t you think he was disillusioned at times by the wavering faith of his disciples? Don’t you think he was frightened by the kind of death he faced?

So just how did Jesus grow to such a fullness of peace that he was able to bequeath it to us as our inheritance?

He said:

Not as the world gives peace do I give it to you.

The world gives peace by removing or dominating challenges. God gives peace by accompanying us through challenges.

Jesus came to the point, in his very human life, where he chose not to let his heart be troubled because he had found this accompaniment.

The willingness of Jesus to live, suffer, and die according to the Father’s Will gives us the pattern on which to build our peace.

Throughout the ages, many saints have found and lived this peace according to their own call from God. One of the many who inspire me is Julian of Norwich.  Julian was an English anchorite of the Middle Ages.  She wrote the earliest surviving book in the English language to be written by a woman, Revelations of Divine Love.

Julian was worried about the presence of sin in the world. It seems she wondered, like many of us might, why God didn’t just fix that!

“In my folly, before this time I often wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the onset of sin was not prevented: for then, I thought, all should have been well. This impulse [of thought] was much to be avoided, but nevertheless I mourned and sorrowed because of it, without reason and discretion.

But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’

These words were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.”

This also is a lovely quote from Julian to pray with:

“From the time these things were first revealed I had often wanted to know what was our Lord’s meaning. It was more than fifteen years after that I was answered in my spirit’s understanding. ‘You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold on to this and you will know and understand love more and more. But you will not know or learn anything else — ever.”

Music: Meg Barnhouse’s modern interpretation of Julian’s writing, which Meg has obviously studied.