Category: Gospel

Alleluia: My Redeemer Lives

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, spirituality5 Comments

Feast of St. Mary Magdalen
July 22, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072222.cfm

Edited in Prisma app with Huawei HiAI

Alleluia, alleluia.
Tell us Mary, what did you see on the way?
I saw the glory of the risen Christ,
I saw his empty tomb.

Modern scripture scholarship recognizes Mary Magdalen as a disciple and companion of Jesus.  She is present in stories throughout all four Gospels, and most notably, as one who remained with Jesus at the foot of the Cross. Mary is the first witness to the Resurrection who then announces the Good News to the other disciples.

Over the centuries, Mary Magdalen has been confused with the many other Marys in the Gospel, as well as with the unnamed repentant woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears. These confusions have inclined us to think of Mary Magdalen as a reformed prostitute. This erroneous concept has supported a diminished understanding of the role of women in the ministry of Jesus and done a huge disservice to Mary’s vital role as beloved disciple.

The Gospel passage for the feast captures the powerful moment when the Resurrected Jesus is first revealed to the world. The scene also portrays the deep love, trust and friendship between Jesus and Mary Magdalen – a relationship which serves as a model for all of us who want to be Christ’s disciples. I imagined the scene like this in an past reflection:

 Rabbouni

 The Upper Room on Holy Saturday evening: a place filled with sadness, silence and seeking. Jesus was dead. Believers around Jerusalem, scattered to their various houses to keep Shabbat, murmur their shocked questions under their shaky prayers.

 We have all been in rooms like this. They enclose a special kind of agony – one teetering between hope and doubt, between loss and restoration. It may have been a surgical waiting room or the hallway outside the courtroom. Sometimes, such a space is not bricks and mortar.  It can be the space between a sealed envelope and the news inside. It is the hesitant pause between a heartfelt request and the critical response. In each of these places, we exist as if in a held breath, hoping against hope for life, freedom, and wholeness.

 It was from such a room that Mary Magdalen stole away in the wee hours. A woman unafraid of loneliness, she walked in tearful prayer along the path to Jesus’ tomb. Scent of jasmine rose up on the early morning mist. Hope rose with it that his vow to return might be true. Then she saw the gaping tomb, the alarm that thieves had stolen him to sabotage his promise. She ran to the emptiness seeking him. She was met by angels clothed in light and glory, but they were not enough to soothe her.

Turning from them, she bumped against a gardener whom she begged for word of Jesus, just so she might tend to him again. A single word revealed his glory, “Mary”. He spoke her name in love.

As we seek the assurance of God’s presence in our lives, we too may be unaware that God is already with us. The deep listening of our spirit, dulled with daily burdens, may not hear our name lovingly spoken in the circumstances of our lives. God is standing behind every moment. All we need do is turn to recognize him.

 Turn anger into understanding. Turn vengeance into forgiveness. Turn entitlement into gratitude. Turn indifference into love. All we need do is turn to recognize him.

For a comprehensive and enlightening lecture on the current theological and scriptural thinking on Mary Magdalen, follow this link to an Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ lecture at Fordham.
There is a long intro, but you can slide to the 14 minute mark for Elizabeth’s start.

https://www.library.fordham.edu/digital/collection/VIDEO/id/824

Music: I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

Alleluia: Seedlings

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Poetry, Prayer, spirituality3 Comments

Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 20, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072022.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
The seed is the word of God,
Christ is the sower;
all who come to him will live for ever.

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our first reading recounts Jeremiah’s call. Oh, and it has a sovereign ring to it, doesn’t it! You can almost hear trumpets accompanying the words:

The word of the LORD came to me thus:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

Jeremiah 1: 2-3

Long before Jeremiah knew, the Word had been instilled in him. At the appointed time, God called for that Word to bear fruit.

At our creation, God breathed the Divine Word into our hearts too. Jesus says it was like a farmer planting seed. And our humble, patient Creator waits to see if we turn out to be rich soil.

A sower went out to sow.
… some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky ground, 
…. the sun rose it was scorched,

Some seed fell among thorns
which choked it.

But some seed fell on rich soil, 
and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.
(from Matthew 13: 1-9)

When Jeremiah heard about the Word in his heart, he didn’t immediately have “ears to hear”. At first, he resisted:

“Ah, Lord GOD!” I said,
“I know not how to speak;
I am too young.”

Jeremiah

Every day, God continues to call forth the fruitful Word from us. Sometimes we resist. Our lives can be a little rocky, thorny, or we might just be off the path a bit.

We also might make excuses to ignore the call of grace:

  • too young
  • too old
  • too tired
  • too busy
  • too afraid
  • too weak

We might just too … too… too ourselves into spiritual quicksand!

Our beautiful psalm tells what to say instead of our “too”s:

For you are my hope, O Lord;
my trust, O God, from my youth.
On you I depend from birth;
from my mother’s womb you are my strength.

My mouth shall declare your justice,
day by day your salvation.
O God, you have taught me from my youth,
and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.

Psalm 71: 5-6; 15,17

Poetry: Two poems today – one from Wendell Berry and one from me. His is way better. 🙂

The Wild Geese – Wendell Berry

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end.  In time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves.  We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes.  Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here.  And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear.  What we need is here.

If You Are Mother – Renee Yann, RSM

If you are Mother, God
don’t let us hurt ourselves;
keep freedom in us
as freedom,
not as willfulness,
so that we grow
even if we must grow down
like a dark, hidden root.

Remember,
if life dies in us,
You change.  We are not
isolated seedlings
you left somewhere
in lonely hope one spring.
You are the ground, and the
growth, and the growth’s nourishment.
When we green, it is You
who thrive.

Music: Listen and blossom, dears❤️

Alleluia: Imperative Mood

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, holiness, spiritualityLeave a comment

Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 18, 2022

Today’s Readings

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071822.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
If today you hear God’s voice,
soften your hearts.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, the readings heighten the familiar imperative of our Alleluia Verse with several more injunctions:

  • Hear
  • Soften
  • Arise
  • Answer 
  • Do
  • Love
  • Walk

God is not shy in telling us what to do in order to grow in holiness – in mutual relationship with God.

We have to DO something, to be responsive in order to unite with God. We can’t be just passive lumps of inactive devotion.

Don’t Be a Spiritual Couch Potato

Each instruction has its own vitality which is meant, in turn, to vitalize our spirits and to make us agents of the Holy One in the world.

Our first reading carries this message clearly to the people of Micah’s time. It’s not about contrived sacrifice. It’s about love and compassion.

With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow before God most high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with myriad streams of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my crime,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
You have been told, O Creature, what is good,
and what the LORD requires of you:
Only to do the right and to love goodness,
and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6: 6-8

The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’s time demand a sign before they will listen. Jesus says the only sign they will get is to remember that the Ninevites listened when Jonah delivered God’s message. 

At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah;
and there is something greater than Jonah here.

Matthew 12:42

We don’t have a Micah or a Jonah coaching us to holiness. What we have is the Word present to us in the Gospel and in the community of faith. That Word reveals itself in the circumstances of our lives to which we must respond by:

Hearing God’s invitation 
Softening our hearts from judgments 
Arising from our self-absorption 
Answering the call to holiness
Doing good
Loving compassionately 
Walking humbly with our God

Poetry: from Rumi

Discard yourself 
and thereby regain yourself. 
Spread the trap of humility 
and ensnare Love.

Music: Act Justly – Pat Barrett

Alleluia: Blessed Mary

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Books, Church, Faith, Gospel, Mary, spirituality5 Comments

Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 16, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/0716-memorial-our-lady-mount-carmel.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have the option of celebrating the Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in place of the 15th Saturday in Ordinary Time. And since it is Saturday, traditionally Mary’s day, I have chosen to pray with those readings.

Our Alleluia Verse captures in a short sentence exactly why Mary is the perfect model for a Christian life: she heard and acted on God’s word.

Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are those
who hear the word of God
and observe it.

Many of you will have been introduced to Our Lady of Mt Carmel as young children. Perhaps you, as I did, received a brown scapular when you made your First Communion. My second grade teacher convinced me that, by wearing that scapular, I had become a very dedicated Christian and friend of Jesus and the Blessed Mother.

According to the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, the Brown Scapular is “an external sign of the filial relationship established between the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of Mount Carmel, and the faithful who entrust themselves totally to her protection, who have recourse to her maternal intercession, who are mindful of the primacy of the spiritual life and the need for prayer.

Wikipedia

My little brown scapular is long gone, set aside perhaps when my maturing fashions were inhibited by it in seventh of eighth grade. But the devotion to Mary which it initiated has never left me. It has grown, changed and deepened over these seventy years, but its roots are still entwined with that sepia necklace Sister Grace Loretta once placed in my little hand.

When I entered the Sisters of Mercy in the early 60s, I was so delighted that Our Lady of Mt. Carmel was honored as one of our patron saints. We did it up big back then by wearing our church cloaks and special habit sleeves to Mass on her feastday.

As I pray the Magnificat in today’s Responsorial Psalm, I reflect that Mary has become not only a trusted friend and model for my spiritual life. Her profound faith and poverty of spirit challenge and inspire my deeper understanding of the Gospel in today’s world.

The Mary I love today is a very different woman from the one I idealized in my youth. This change in perception has come about through reflection on the works of modern theologians such as those referred to below. Some of these books are out of print and/or expensive but reviews and excerpts are available online and can be helpful to one’s prayerful study.

For today’s prayer, let us open our hearts to the deep inspiration of Mary of Nazareth. I have referred readers to this excellent article by Elizabeth Johnson — and I do so again — as a great place to start:

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2000/06/17/mary-nazareth-friend-god-and-prophet

Elizabeth Johnson: Truly Our Sister

Rosemary Radford Reuther: Mary, The Feminine Face of the Church

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/mary-the-feminine-face-of-the-church_rosemary-radford-ruether/518678/#edition=3756081&idiq=2966758

Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer: Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor

Leonard Boff: The Maternal Face of God

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-maternal-face-of-god-the-feminine-and-its-religious-expressions_leonardo-boff/659742/?resultid=049700e1-d931-4a46-9355-80798be6fa08#edition=4542616&idiq=8472570

Music: Tota Pulchra Es, Maria –

Alleluia: Shadows

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
July 15, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071522.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord;
I know them, and they follow me.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings are woven through with themes of life and death, time and eternity. These are fundamental realities at the core of our lives. Yet they are so huge in scope that they elude our comprehension.

Photo by Rui Dias on Pexels.com
  • How often do we ask ourselves, “Where did the time, the day, the years go”?
  • Despite all our acts of faith, aren’t we still undone by death and bereavement in our lives?
  • When we try to imagine heaven, doesn’t the image slip through our efforts like a wet sunfish lost back to the sea?

In our first reading, Hezekiah faces the same kind of bewilderment. Informed that he is about to die, he laments:

“O LORD, remember how faithfully and wholeheartedly
I conducted myself in your presence,
doing what was pleasing to you!”
And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Hezekiah’s pleading gains him another fifteen years. (Would that our prayers could so prevail!) His bonus is delivered accompanied by a sign:

This will be the sign for you from the LORD
that he will do what he has promised:
See, I will make the shadow cast by the sun
on the stairway to the terrace of Ahaz
go back the ten steps it has advanced.

In our Gospel, Jesus doesn’t need bonuses or signs. Jesus himself is the embodiment of Life over death, Eternity over time. In today’s passage, the Pharisees try to judge and limit Jesus’s spiritual freedom by invoking the old law against him:

Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath.
His disciples were hungry
and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them.
When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him,
“See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath.”

Jesus tells them clearly that he is the new law of mercy and love. He is beyond time, death, and the judgments of human law:

I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. 
If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
you would not have condemned these innocent men.
For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.

Let’s pray today with our God Who is greater than time, death or human judgments. Let us trust that God has power over any shadow that might darken our lives.

Poetry: The Shadow of Thy Wing – Susan Dickinson (Emily’s sister-in-law)

Weary of life's great mart, its dust and din,
Faint with its toiling, suffering with its sin,
In childlike faith my heart to Thee I bring.
For refuge in "the shadow of thy wing."

Like a worn bird of passage, left behind
Wounded, and sinking, by its faithless kind,
With flight unsteady, seeking needed rest,
I come for shelter to Thy faithful breast.

Like a proud ship, dismantled by the gale,
Her banners lost and rifted every sail,
In the deep waters to Thy love I cling,
And hasten to the refuge of Thy wing.

O Thou, thy people's comforter alway,
Their light in darkness, and their guide by day,
Their anchor 'mid the storm, their hope in calm,
Their joy in pain, their fortress in alarm!

We are all weak, Thy strength we humbly crave;
We are all lost, and Thou alone canst save;
A weary world, to Thy dear arm we cling,
And hope for all a refuge "'neath Thy wing."

- "Original Poetry." Springfield Daily Republican, March 1, 1862

Music: Cavatina’s “The Shadows” played by 2Cellos

Alleluia: Be Mercy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Mercy, spiritualityLeave a comment

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 10, 2022

Today’s Readings

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071022.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings take us on a centuries-long journey from Sinai nearly to the foot of Calvary. 

Our guideline for the pilgrimage is the Word:

  • given first to Moses
  • cherished in Psalms
  • and finally revealed in the full glory of the Incarnated Christ.

Throughout the ages, each of us receives the same direction to holiness as that given by Moses thousands of years ago:

If only you would
heed the voice of the LORD, your God…

The young man in today’s Gospel requests such direction straight from the mouth of Jesus. And he receives it in the form of an iconic story which holds in simplicity all the ponderous theology of the ages:

Which of these three, in your opinion,
was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”
He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

With this story, Jesus translates into action that age-old Biblical Word:

  • Hear Mercy
  • Love Mercy
  • Do Mercy
  • Become Mercy

Poetry: Ramadan –  Erik K. Taylor

It was the month of Ramadan, 
the month when Muslims fast. 
From the day’s first light, 
when they could tell a white thread from a black one, 
until evening hid the difference again, 
they did not eat, did not drink, and 
– here in rural Liberia – 
did not even swallow their own spit.

We were three thousand miles from home 
when the telegram came. 
My mother’s father had died. 

From Gbapa, three miles away, 
five dark-skinned Mandingo men 
came walking to our house. 
Students from her English class, 
a class in a building with mud-brick walls 
and a tin roof that pinged in the rain. 
She drove to them several nights each week, 
teaching them to write “hut” and “mat” and “cat,” 
drawing little pictures beside the words. 

But this day, they came to her, 
walking over dusty, rust-colored roads, 
under the African sun. 
They came to sit with her, 
to offer what comfort they could.

We could not offer them water or coke or tea. 
For a few hours they sat, talking in soft voices, 
stepping out occasionally to spit. 
Then home again… 
waiting for black and white to merge back into one.

Someone once asked Jesus 
what it meant to love our neighbor. 
He said it was to be those men.

Music: Kyrie ( Lord, have Mercy) – Robert Gass

Alleluia: Insulted Yet Blessed

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Faith, Gospel, spirituality3 Comments

Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 9, 2022

Today’s Readings

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070922.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Alleluia Verse captures the mixed and even contradictory conditions awaiting a dedicated disciple of Christ:

Alleluia, alleluia.
If you are insulted for the name of Christ,
blessed are you,
for the Spirit of God rests upon you.

This brief verse immediately brought to my mind the image of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. He had wonderful, faith-filled dialogues with God about his seemingly contradictory “blessings”.

So here’s a snapshot of how I prayed with our verse today:

God: You’re going to be insulted for your faith, but consider it a blessing. 
Me: What! Wait a minute! Maybe I’d prefer some more obvious blessings!
God: No, you’re going to be insulted for your faith, but it’s a sign that my Spirit rests upon you.
Me: ….. Crickets

I have been insulted and harassed for my faith, but not too often. Usually that occasional insult has come from a sad or dysfunctional source who caused more harm to themselves than to me.

The greatest insult to my faith has come from within the Church itself. The clerical sex abuse scandals and cover-ups of recent years deeply shook the investment I had made in service of the Church. The revelations mocked the innocent trust I had unquestioningly placed in the institutional Church. They invited public insult toward me and toward all of us associated with that now exposed institution.

Although my pain cannot be compared to the trauma of survivors of abuse, it has been a seismic insult and has forced me to a deeper discernment of my faith. While profoundly painful, this “insult” has, indeed, been a blessing which has helped me to separate my true Catholic faith from any misplaced institutional devotion.

The closing verses of today’s Gospel are both a warning and a pledge for those who commit themselves to Christ:

And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;
rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna.
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
But whoever denies me before others,
I will deny before my heavenly Father.

Poetry: The Break of Faith – Renee Yann, RSM

My father walked with me each day in Lent
past neighbors’ homes with names
and histories like mine,
to church, where laborers in solid faith,
received a Host before the Mass began
and left to be at work on time.

Some days, my father left but I remained
secure among the faithful whose
religion was a sure as rock.
I trusted and believed their saying
salvation was reserved for those
within the Church, praying
at ten or twelve to be like
the elite who held the ancient definitions
of the God I longed to know.  
Those devoted people were 
the heroes of my youth.
I beat my breast with secret joy and knelt
beside them in the unexamined truth.

Some were robed in black and wafted
scents of incense and of candle wax
that were to me like fine, intoxicant perfume.
Through them, I chose the worship of a God
who was the slim abstraction of my mind
the mute extension of my whim.

But my mind is not the tender thing it was.
The years have passed and I have hardened 
to them, like a lone, maturing tree.
The deeply venerated guides I loved
have journeyed with my father to the pale,
expanded universe of memory.

That I stand questioning them now is jeopardy
against the very pegs that ground my life.
I am outside the Church they held for me
because it seems a box remote from God,
who, with the years, assumed Creation’s face,
became a fire in my heart, consuming
those securities I designated once as faith.

The theologian says we walk in footsteps of a God
who comes to us from futures we cannot define.
That God of paradox is breaking in my mind
like lava breaks from stolid earth 
to recreate the world. But,
with an utterly profound regret,
I leave the heroes and the saints of youth behind.

Music: Renouncement – Michael Hoppé

Alleluia: Heaven’s at Hand

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

Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 6, 2022

Today’s Readings 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070622.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our first reading and Responsorial Psalm encourage us to seek God. 

Sow for yourselves justice,
reap the fruit of piety;
break up for yourselves a new field,
for it is time to seek the LORD …

And our Gospel proclaims that we have already found God through Jesus Christ.

Jesus sent out these Twelve
after instructing them thus,
…. “As you go, make this proclamation:
‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”

The word “seek” is one we don’t use frequently, except to describe games that hide things from us – “Seek and Find”, “Hide and Seek”. In these games, someone is trying to fool us or outwit us.

But God is not trying to hide from us. Our scriptures are about a whole different kind of seeking. We might think of it like this:

Have you ever opened a kitchen drawer looking for a particular utensil but been unable to find it? You might exclaim aloud, “Where’s that darn corkscrew???!!!”, just as your sister leans in and picks it out of the drawer for you.

It was right there in front of you all the time. You just couldn’t see it — couldn’t put your hand on it.

Jesus tells us it is like that with the Kingdom of Heaven. We may be seeking it with all our effort while all the while it is right at hand. We sometimes fail to see the “touchable grace” in our lives because we throw a camouflage of unawareness or ingratitude over it.

Alleluia, alleluia.
The Kingdom of God is at hand:
repent and believe in the Gospel.

The poet Mary Oliver offers the antidote to that kind of blindness:

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

Today, let’s pay attention to the wonder of our lives. Let’s seek God’s face in our ordinary circumstances. God is not hiding – we just have to look with the insightful eyes of faith, love, and hope.

Poetry: Rumi

Your task is not 
to seek for love, 
but merely 
to seek and find 
all the barriers 
within yourself 
that you have built 
against it. 

Music: Seek God’s Face – Jules Riding

Alleluia: Arise

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, healing, Jesus, Prayer, spiritualityLeave a comment

Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 4, 2022

Today’s Readings 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070422.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, the power of eternal life flows in an Almighty Current through our readings.

Hosea imagines an amorous God who allures the beloved to full and faithful relationship.

Beautiful Psalm 145 might be read as the grateful response of that redeemed beloved … of us as we are continually gathered back into God’s heart.

The Alleluia Verse assures us that the ultimate “gathering back” has occurred through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are forever allured, redeemed, arisen in Christ!

Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel.

Today’s Gospel, tells the miraculous stories of two women – one young, one old – touched to new life by Jesus. Each of us could linger in these stories at the thousand places where our own lives might mirror the needs of that breathless little girl or that exhausted woman. We pause with one or the other of them today, have a little talk in our prayer, see how the power of Jesus covered them.

In our scriptures today, all kinds of death are destroyed through the infinite gift of God’s love and mercy. What deathly threats might we bring to God’s touch as we pray today?

Poetry: WOMAN UN-BENT (LUKE 13:10–17) – Irene Zimmerman, OSF

That Sabbath day as always
she went to the synagogue
and took the place assigned her
right behind the grill where,
the elders had concurred,
she would block no one’s view,
she could lean her heavy head,
and (though this was not said)
she’d give a good example to
the ones who stood behind her. 

That day, intent as always
on the Word (for eighteen years
she’d listened thus), she heard
Authority when Jesus spoke. 

Though long stripped
of forwardness,
she came forward, nonetheless,
when Jesus summoned her.
“Woman, you are free
of your infirmity,” he said. 

The leader of the synagogue
worked himself into a sweat
as he tried to bend the Sabbath
and the woman back in place. 

But she stood up straight and let
God’s glory touch her face.

Music: He Touched Me – Gaithersburg Brothers 

This extremely popular American Gospel song was written by Bill Gaithers in 1963. It has been recorded and released over 10 times by artists such as Jimmy Durante, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Lawrence Welk and Elvis Presley.

Alleluia: Peace and Abundance

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Discipleship, Gospel, Jesus, peace, repentance, spirituality4 Comments

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 3, 2022

Today’s Readings 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070322.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Alleluia Verse encapsulates the message of the readings: Christ is the Source of our peace and our abundance.

Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the peace of Christ control your hearts;
let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Colossians 3:15-16

Isaiah describes that peace and abundance like this:

For thus says the LORD:
Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river,
and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent.
As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms,
and fondled in her lap;
as a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.

Isaiah 66: 12-13

In Galatians, we meet a community that has been arguing over a few things, but especially whether circumcision should continue to be a mark of faith. Paul sounds a little frustrated with the argument.

He claims his “peace and abundance” from the marks of his long ministry and what he has suffered for Christ:

From now on, let no one make troubles for me;
for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.

Galatians 6:17

In Luke, Jesus indicates that “peace and abundance” will be spread in the New Creation through the sometimes difficult ministry of his disciples:

Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter, first say,
‘Peace to this household.’
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.

Luke 10: 3-9

The Gospel message meant to bring peace will, no doubt, bring fear and judgement to those hostile to it:

The kingdom of God is at hand for you.

If we sincerely open our hearts to this message, how might it affect our daily lives? Peace and abundance? A frantic need for repentance? Or maybe just an angry, indifferent, or deaf ear?

Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the peace of Christ control your hearts;
let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Poem: one of my favorite poems, The Heart Cave by Geoffrey Brown

The Heart Cave

I must remember
To go down to the heart cave
& sweep it clean; make it warm
with a fire on the hearth,
& candles in their niches,
the pictures on the walls
       glowing with a quiet light.
       I must remember
To go down to the heart cave
       & make the bed
with the quilt from home,
strew
the rushes on the floor
hang
lavender and sage
         from the corners.
         I must go down
                                           To the heart cave & be there
                                           when You come.

Music: Dwelling Place – John Foley, SJ