Category: Eternal Life

To Whom?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality3 Comments

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 25, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082524.cfm

Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe
and the one who would betray him. 
And he said,
“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me
unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer accompanied him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” 
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? 
You have the words of eternal life. 
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:64-69

In the name of the disciples, Peter proclaims their absolute faith in Jesus as the Messiah. It is a challenge to ask ourselves if our faith is absolute or conditional. Do we believe only when things work out as we wish? Or can God depend on us, and we depend on God, no matter the “weather”?

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray for an ever stronger faith and give thanks for its gift to us.

Poetry: Prayer – Jessica Powers

Prayer is the trapdoor out of sin.
Prayer is a mystic entering in
to secret places full of light.
It is a passage through the night.
Heaven is reached, the blessed say,
by prayer and by no other way.
One may kneel down and make a plea
with words from book or breviary,
or one may enter in and find
a homemade message in the mind.
But true prayer travels further still,
to seek God’s presence and God’s will. 

To pray can be to push a door
and snatch some crumbs of evermore,
or (likelier by far) to wait,
head bowed, before a fastened gate,
helpless and miserable and dumb,
yet hopeful that the Lord will come.
Here is the prayer of grace and good
most proper to our creaturehood.
God’s window shows his humble one
more to the likeness of His Son.
He sees, though thought and senses stray,
the will is resolute to stay
and feed, in weathers sweet or grim,
on any word that speaks of Him. 

He beams on the humility
that keeps its peace in misery
and, save for glimmerings, never knows
how beautiful with light it grows.
He smiles on faith that seems to know
it has no other place to go. 

But some day, hidden by His will,
if this meek child is waiting still,
God will take out His mercy-key
and open up felicity,
where saltiest tears are given right
to seas where sapphire marries light,
where by each woe the soul can span
new orbits for the utter man,
where even the flesh, so seldom prized,
would blind the less than divinized.

Music: To Whom Shall We Go – Carolyn Arends

Garment

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, holiness, Mary, spirituality2 Comments

Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
August 22, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082224.cfm

But when the king came in to meet the guests
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
He said to him, “My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?”
Matthew 22:11-12

Today’s readings for the day do not mention Mary, although a second set of readings retells the account of the Annunciation.

I chose instead to pray with the concept of the “garment” which the wedding guest lacked, but that Mary wore in magnificence. The garment is God’s grace given to all of us as it was to Mary, but sometimes abandoned or forgotten as it was with the wedding guest.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray in thanksgiving for the garment of God’s grace and ask to wear it with honor and love.

Poetry: Suspended – Denise Levertov

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted.

Music: Clothed with Light / Kyrie Eleison – from a Russian Hymn

First

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

Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church
August 20, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082024.cfm

And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters
or father or mother or children or lands
for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more,
and will inherit eternal life.
But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.
Matthew 19:29-30

Today’s Gospel builds on yesterday’s theme: what is it that we have to give up to inherit eternal life? We might interpret this Gospel passage to mean that we have to give up everything to achieve perfection – “houses, brothers, sisters…”.

But I think it means not so much what we have to give up as what we need to acquire. We need to acquire that absolute thirst for God that allows us, when necessary, to put everything else aside.

Thought:

“A thousand half-loves must be forsaken
to take one whole heart home.”

Rumi

Music: Kyrie from Missa Solemnis – Beethoven

Sad

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

Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
August 19, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081924.cfm

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go,
sell what you have and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven.
Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad,
for he had many possessions.
Matthew 19:21-22

All of us who pray the Gospel have probably, at one time or another, put ourselves in the place of this young man. We don’t want to “go away sad” from the invitation of Jesus. We’re good people who want to be even better. What is that final gift that we must give to God to become the full person God created us to be?

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We listen to God speaking in our lives. There is always a call to greater intimacy with God through our living out of the Gospel. May we have the grace and courage to hear this infinite call.

Poetry: The Call of the Far – Rabindranath Tagore

Ever I am restless
I am athirst for the far.
My time passes by
And in an absent mind
I keep waiting at my window
Hoping and hoping you will come.
O how my entire being
Is eager for your intimate touch!
O you far, O you boundless far
So irresistible is the call of your flute
But I forget I have no wings
I am bound to one place.
I am listless, I am indifferent.
At the sun-tinged lazy midday
Among the rustling of the trees
In the play of light and shade
In the blue of the sky
I get a glimpse of your fugitive form.
O you far, O you boundless far
So irresistible is the call of your flute
But I forget my doors are barred.

Music: The Lark Ascending – Ralph Vaughn Williams

Wisdom

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

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 18, 2024

Today’s Reading:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081824.cfm

Wisdom has built her house,
she has set up her seven columns;
she has dressed her meat, mixed her wine,
yes, she has spread her table.
She has sent out her maidens; she calls
from the heights out over the city:
“Let whoever is simple turn in here;
To the one who lacks understanding, she says,
Come, eat of my food,
and drink of the wine I have mixed!
Forsake foolishness that you may live;
advance in the way of understanding.”
Proverbs 9:1-6

Proverbs offers us the beautiful image of Divine Wisdom setting a table of grace for our nourishment.

In our Gospel, Jesus tells us that he is the divine nourishment foretold in Proverbs. Some resist Jesus’s invitation. Their faith languishes even while there is sacred food before them.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We give thanks for the Bread of Life given to us in Eucharist, Gospel, Creation, community, and merciful action. We ask for the grace to see God’s nourishing Presence right before us in our daily lives.

Poetry: I Am the Bread of Life – Malcolm Guite

Where to get bread? An ever-pressing question
That trembles on the lips of anxious mothers,
Bread for their families, bread for all these others;
A whole world on the margin of exhaustion.
And where that hunger has been satisfied
Where to get bread? The question still returns
In our abundance something starves and yearns
We crave fulfillment, crave and are denied.

And then comes One who speaks into our needs
Who opens out the secret hopes we cherish
Whose presence calls our hidden hearts to flourish
Whose words unfold in us like living seeds
Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete,
I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat.

Music: Bread of Life – Bernadette Farrell

Unless…

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Creation, Cross, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality3 Comments

Feast of Saint Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
August 10, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081024.cfm

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat;
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
John 12:24

The great paradox of existence is that, in order to live, we must die. It is a truth endemic to all Creation. It is a reality lived out in all relationships.

Jesus cites this universal truth to teach his disciples the key to eternal life. We must die to self to find our life in God.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We prayerfully reflect on the times when this truth has been evident in our lives. When have we found new life? When have we experienced the freedom to grow? What had to die in us before these graces could transform us?

Poetry: Unless a Grain of Wheat – Malcolm Guite

Oh let me fall as grain to the good earth
And die away from all dry separation,
Die to my sole self, and find new birth
Within that very death, a dark fruition,
Deep in this crowded underground, to learn
The earthy otherness of every other,
To know that nothing is achieved alone
But only where these other fallen gather.

If I bear fruit and break through to bright air,
Then fall upon me with your freeing flail
To shuck this husk and leave me sheer and clear
As heaven-handled Hopkins, that my fall
May be more fruitful and my autumn still
A golden evening where your barns are full.

Music: Unless a Grain of Wheat Shall Fall – Bernadette Farrell

Deny

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Conversion, Courage, Creation, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 9, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080924.cfm

Jesus said to his disciples,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 16: 24-25

This passage from Matthew is one of the most astounding challenges Jesus gave his disciples: deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me.

What does it really mean to deny oneself? Does it mean to become a doormat or a Milquetoast? Does it suggest repressing one’s personality or ambitions? To act like a nobody?

Of course not! So many places in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures assure us that we are unique, precious, and beloved of God. God doesn’t want us not to be ourselves because that’s who we were created to be!

I think denying oneself means not getting caught in the mirror of selfishness. Instead we are called to focus on Jesus and his absolute care for all Creation, especially those who are poor, sick, outcast, and troubled. We can’t really do that if we are consumed with self-interest.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask for the grace to be aware, brave, and faithful enough to put the good of others first for the sake of Christ.

Poetry: As the Ruin Falls – C.S. Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.

I see the chasm.
 And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man.
 And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls.
 The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Music: Deny Yourself – Paul Melley

Deny yourself.

Take up your cross
.
Despite the pain

Despite the cost.
Leave all behind

and follow me.

Deny yourself,

be free.

For what will it profit to gain the world
and lose your life? 

Those who would save their life will lose it.

What can you give in return for your life?

For those would lose their life will find it.

Deny yourself.

Come, take up your cross and daily follow me 

and you will have rich reward in heaven.

Those who have left their home and family for his sake

inherit one hundred fold,

inherit eternal life.
Deny yourself.

What can you give in return for your life?
For those who would lose their life,

lose their life will find it

Deny yourself

Lord, you reveal the depth 
of your life and your love
in your everlasting covenant.

Strengthen the faith we share,
fill our work with your love,
and bring all of us to grace,
to the grace you promise.



Glory

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, holiness, Love, Praise, Prayer, spiritualityLeave a comment

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord
August 6, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080624.cfm

Beloved:
We did not follow cleverly devised myths
when we made known to you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For he received honor and glory from God the Father
when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory,
“This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven
while we were with him on the holy mountain.
Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable.
You will do well to be attentive to it,
as to a lamp shining in a dark place,
until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
2 Peter 1:16-19

This beautiful passage from Peter shines with faith, adoration, and praise. It invites us to let go of our “thinking” about God and, instead, to bask in the Divine Glory of which our faith assures us.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
The Feast of the Transfiguration beckons us to be with God in the way we would be with someone we deeply love – not analyzing the bliss, but resting in it gratefully and contentedly.

Poetry: Transfiguration – Malcolm Guite

For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’,
On that one mountain where all moments meet,
The daily veil that covers the sublime
In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.
There were no angels full of eyes and wings
Just living glory full of truth and grace.
The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope
Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.
Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar
Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.

Music: Transfiguration – by Wren and Manalo

False

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality, Truth2 Comments

Monday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 5, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080524.cfm

Remove from me the way of falsehood,
and favor me with your law.
Take not the word of truth from my mouth,
for in your ordinances is my hope.
Psalm 19:29,43

The passage from Jeremiah tells the story of the false prophet Hananiah who offered a counterfeit hope because he did not have a true relationship with God. Jeremiah’s message, which called for sincere repentance, was honest but not popular.

Today’s Psalm 19 is a prayer for the courage to listen to and live in God’s Truth, not to ascribe to a false message just because that is the one we want to hear.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray for the courage to hear God’s Word in the truth of our hearts, a truth created by living a life of prayer, spiritual honesty, repentance, and mercy.

Poetry: Tell All the Truth – Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Music: Great Is Thy Faithfulness – written by Thomas Chisholm (1866–1960)

Bread

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

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 4, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080424.cfm

Then the LORD said to Moses,
“I will now rain down bread from heaven for you.
Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion;
thus will I test them,
to see whether they follow my instructions or not.

“I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites.
Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh,
and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread,
so that you may know that I, the LORD, am your God.”
Exodus 16:11-12

In both our readings, God recognizes physical hunger and ties it to spiritual strength.

In our Gospel, Jesus makes the connection clear. He tells his followers:

“For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.”

No matter how much we are “fed”, we will never be satisfied until our nurture blesses the rest of the world as well as ourselves.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask to be more aware of, grateful for, and generous with the blessings we have received.

Poetry: Bread – Richard Levine

Each night, in a space he’d make
between waking and purpose,
my grandfather donned his one
suit, in our still dark house, and drove
through Brooklyn’s deserted streets
following trolley tracks to the bakery.
There he’d change into white
linen work clothes and cap,
and in the absence of women,
his hands were both loving, well
into dawn and throughout the day—
kneading, rolling out, shaping
each astonishing moment
of yeasty predictability
in that windowless world lit
by slightly swaying naked bulbs,
where the shadows staggered, woozy
with the aromatic warmth of the work.
Then, the suit and drive, again.
At our table, graced by a loaf
that steamed when we sliced it,
softened the butter and leavened
the very air we’d breathe,
he’d count us blessed.

Music: Bread for the World – Bernadette Farrell