Category: Eternal Life

Every

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, Mercy, Prayer, Psalms, spirituality1 Comment

Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
September 26, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092624.cfm

Lord, you have been our refuge
from one generation to another.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or the land and the earth were born,
from age to age you are God.

You turn us back to the dust and say,
“Go back, O child of earth.”
For a thousand years in your sight
are like yesterday when it is past
and like a watch in the night….

…. Satisfy us by your loving-kindness
in the morning;
so shall we rejoice and be glad
all the days of our life.
Make us glad by the measure of the days that you afflicted us
and the years in which we suffered adversity.
Show your servants your works *
and your splendor to their children.
May the graciousness of the Lord our God be upon us;
prosper the work of our hands; prosper our handiwork.
Psalm 90:1-4;14-17

Our beautiful Responsorial Psalm today allows us to reflect on our grateful past and our hopeful future. God’s mercy is with every person in every age of our lives.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ponder this infinite blessing so that we can open our hearts to its amazing grace.

Poetry: On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate – Mary Oliver

Every morning I want to kneel down on the golden
cloth of the sand and say
some kind of musical thanks for
the world that is happening again—another day—
from the shawl of wind coming out of the
west to the firm green
flesh of the melon lately sliced open and
eaten, its chill and ample body
flavored with mercy. I want
to be worthy of—what? Glory? Yes, unimaginable glory.
O Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.

Music: Psalm 90 – Marty Goetz

Bubbles

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

Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
September 24, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092424.cfm

To do what is right and just
is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
Haughty eyes and a proud heart–
the tillage of the wicked is sin.
The plans of the diligent are sure of profit,
but all rash haste leads certainly to poverty.
Whoever makes a fortune by a lying tongue
is chasing a bubble over deadly snares.
Proverbs 21:3-6

King Solomon is credited with writing this portion of Proverbs. His wisdom wrapped in wit is both inspiring and enjoyable. But his admonitions are not humor – he is dead serious about what is “acceptable to the Lord“.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray for the grace to erase the frivolous from our lives – the “bubbles” that fool and distract us from the centrality of God.

Poetry: from Emily Dickinson

So has a Daisy vanished
From the fields today --
So tiptoed many a slipper
To Paradise away --
Oozed so in crimson bubbles
Day's departing tide --
Blooming -- tripping -- flowing
Are ye then with God?

Music: Bubbles over the Ocean
You may want to listen to just a few minutes or maybe to all of this reflective music. Enjoy!

Resurrection

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Hope, Jesus, Mercy, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs
September 20, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092024.cfm

If Christ is preached as raised from the dead,
how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead,
then neither has Christ been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching;
empty, too, your faith.
1 Corinthians 15:12-14

Paul takes his listeners to the foundation of their faith – the Resurrection. Believing in it, we are freed from our greatest common fear – the fear of Death.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
In rising from the dead, Jesus changed Darkness to Light. Every dawn transforms our nights to Easter if we allow Christ to rise in us, making all things new.

Poetry: excerpts from The Exultet

O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
O truly blessed night,
worthy alone to know the time and hour
when Christ rose from the underworld!
This is the night
of which it is written:
The night shall be as bright as day,
dazzling is the night for me,
and full of gladness.

Music: The Exultet

Flint

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Cross, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spirituality1 Comment

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 15, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091524.cfm

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.

The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
Isaiah 50:5-7

This solemn reading from Isaiah follows appropriately on yesterday’s honoring of the Holy Cross.

Isaiah writes of the prophet who, during the Babylonia Captivity, suffers for his testimony to the Truth.

The passage foretells Jesus’s embrace of his suffering for the sake of our Redemption.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
As we pray with Isaiah and Jesus, we ask to deeply reverence God’s participation in the suffering of Creation – both in the human and the natural world.

Poetry: The Grandeur of God – Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Music: Pie Jesu – Gabriel Fauré

The French creator of the soul-stirring Pie Jesu, Gabriel Fauré, was one of the premier composers and directors of the 19th/20th centuries though, surprisingly, he was not a man of deep faith. Yet, he must have had a mystical soul. The Pie Jesu is the centerpiece of Fauré’s Requiem, which he completed in 1890, and which is often considered his greatest composition. It is undoubtedly imbued with the deepest sentiments of devotion.

A requiem, as such, is a distinct musical genre and a Christian liturgical art form. In essence, it is a small symphony meant to provide deep solace to mourners at the loss of a loved one, although it is rarely played at funerals. Full requiems are generally too long for that! Nonetheless, all the great composers from the 15th century onward created their own requiems.

It is believed that Fauré composed this piece in honor of his own father a few years after the elder Fauré’s death, but the composer never revealed his motive. This Requiem was, fittingly, performed at Fauré’s own funeral in 1924.

Notes on the Requiem itself
Fauré’s Requiem has seven sections, and the Pie Jesu (Merciful Jesus) is easily the most beautiful of the seven, but not by much. The Agnus Dei and In Paradisum are exquisite in their own right.

It is interesting to note that Fauré replaced the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) of traditional requiems with the Pie Jesu, emphasizing mercy rather than judgment, and also anticipating in some way the Divine Mercy devotion of the 20th century.

In the video below, the incomparable lyric soprano, Kathleen Battle, performs her ravishing interpretation of the lovely Pie Jesu.

Recompense

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Cross, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Hope, spirituality1 Comment

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 8, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090824.cfm

Thus says the LORD:
Say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you.
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.
Streams will burst forth in the desert,
and rivers in the steppe.
The burning sands will become pools, 
and the thirsty ground, springs of water.
Isaiah 35:4-7

Isaiah’s prophecy foretells the time when God will turn the world upside down. It will be time of vindication for all those who have suffered. In God’s realm, even nature will be blessed by the recompense of salvation – by what they earned by their faithfulness.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We look to the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus – to guide us so that we may foster this recompense for all people and in our own time. Those tied only to material values do not understand the infinite hope of a world turned upside-down by Jesus.

Poetry: Ain’t I A Woman – Sojourner Truth

A formerly enslaved person, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. In this poem she gives us an insight into her view of the world turned “upside-down”.

That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a best place…
And ain’t I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me…

And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man —
when I could get to it —
and bear the lash as well
and ain’t I a woman?

I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother’s grief
none but Jesus heard me…

And ain’t I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman can’t have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn’t a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.

Music: Upside Down – Jonny Diaz

Lord

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

Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
September 7, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090724.cfm

While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath,
his disciples were picking the heads of grain,
rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.
Some Pharisees said,
“Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”
Luke 6:1-5

A religion, like any other social construct, makes rules to define its character. The process can be as simple the “club” rules we made in elementary school (with the accompanying
“All Others Keep Out” sign.) Or it can be as complex as who qualifies, by their behavior, as a certified Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc.

But humanly constructed rules can be easily degraded when the purpose of their design is forgotten or ignored. This is what Jesus wanted his listeners to understand. He did not come to redefine the Old Law. He is Lord of the New Law whose definition is mercy and love not regulation.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
A sainted Mother Superior, in my young religious life, once offered me this insight: “The rules are for those who need them.”
Did she mean that religious rules should be ignored? Certainly not.
The maxim suggests that those who live the true spirit of the Gospel have no need of a list of rules to guide them.

Thought: from Joan Chittister, OSB

The spiritual life… is not achieved 
by denying one part of life 
for the sake of another. 
The spiritual life is achieved 
only by listening to all of life 
and learning to respond 
to each of its dimensions 
wholly and with integrity.

Music: Lord of the Sabbath – Keiko Ying

Holy Spirit

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

Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
September 3, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090324.cfm

The Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God.
Among men, who knows what pertains to the man
except his spirit that is within?
Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God.
We have not received the spirit of the world
but the Spirit who is from God,
so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.
And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom,
but with words taught by the Spirit,
describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.
1 Corinthians 2:10-13

When Jesus lived, God was present to us in the flesh. With Pentecost, God became present to us in the Spirit. But we who are bodily may be challenged to perceive the invisible Spirit. The Spirit becomes visible only in our works of mercy, justice, and love.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask that we may grow in our relationship with the Holy Spirit, and that we may allow God’s Omnipotent Power to work through us for the continued sanctification of the world.

Poetry: In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being – Denise Levertov

Birds afloat in air's current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It's we who breathe, in, out, in, in the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled -- but only the saints
take flight. We cower
in cliff-crevice or edge out gingerly
on branches close to the nest. The wind
marks the passage of holy ones riding
that ocean of air. Slowly their wake
reaches us, rocks us.
But storms or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.

Music: Hymn to the Holy Spirit – Nicholas Echeveria, OSA

Lyrics are taken from a prayer attributed to St. Augustine

Pure

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Gospel, holiness, Jesus, Love, Mercy, spirituality1 Comment

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 1, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090124.cfm

Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
and is able to save your souls.

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this:
to care for orphans and widows in their affliction
and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
James 1:21-22;27

In his epistle, James is reiterating some strong words from Jesus.

In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees are all whipped up about hand-washing. They have succumbed to the temptation to live a religion of appearances. Jesus basically tells them that no one ever gained eternal life by washing their hands.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Jesus tells us, and so does James, how we stay clean and pure in God’s sight. Let’s take a look in the mirror to see how squeaky clean we look.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this:
to care for orphans and widows in their affliction
and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
James 1:21-22;27

Poetry: from Rumi

If you will be observant and vigilant,
you will see at every moment
the response to your action.

Be observant if you wouldst have a pure heart,
for something is born to you
in consequence of every action.

Music: Salvation – Michael Hoppé, Martin Tillman & Tim Wheater

Walk

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, holiness, justice, Mercy, repentance, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
August 28, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082824.cfm

Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
Psalm 128:1-2

In today’s Gospel, Jesus really slams the Pharisees! They had to walk away from his condemnation thinking twice about the pretense of their lives!

Paul advises his followers not to “walk in disorderly way” – a little bit gentler admonition, but still a call to get one’s act together.

Our instructive psalm tells us why we should pay attention to the reproofs of Jesus and Paul. It reminds us that to walk in the way of the Lord brings us eternal blessing and favor.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask to continually learn how to walk in God’s grace for there is always a new challenge on Life’s pathway.

Thought:

As you start to walk on the way,
the way appears.

Rumi

Music: Walk in the Light – Aretha Franklin

Jesus is the light of the world
Come on choir

Walk in the light (walk in the light)
Beautiful light (well it’s a beautiful light)
Come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright (Oh Lord)
Shine all around us by day and by night
Oh oh oh oh, Jesus is the light of the world

I wonder, do you know that this evening
Yeah yeah yeah

Walk in the light (we’re walk in the light)
Beautiful light (well it’s a beautiful light)
Come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright 
Oh Lord, shine all around us by day and by night
Oh Lord, Jesus is the light of the world

Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh, yeah

Walk in the light (we’re going the distance, yeah)
Beautiful light (we’re going the distance where the light)
Come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright (of mercy shine bright)
Shine all around us by day and by night
(Oh Lord) Jesus is the light of the world (the Lord is the light of the world)

He’s shining (Yes, he’s shining)
He’s shining (oh yes he is, he’s shining)
He’s shining in my soul (oh yes he is, oh yeah)

Tithes

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, spirituality1 Comment

Memorial of Saint Monica
August 27, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082724.cfm

Jesus said:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin,
and have neglected the weightier things of the law:
judgment and mercy and fidelity.
But these you should have done, without neglecting the others.
Matthew 23:23

Today’s Gospel is about the sincerity of our faith. Jesus accuses the Pharisees of shallow practices not motivated by sincere faith. They are surface believers, practicing a religion of appearances.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We place our own practice of faith before God, asking for the grace to face these questions. Is our faith only a visible display, or is it grounded in the deep virtues of honest judgment, generous mercy, and steadfast fidelity?

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: We Walk by Faith – Marty Haugen