La luz de la fe nos guía y nos sostiene a lo largo de las etapas de nuestra vida.
A mediados de junio de 2015, el querido Papa Francisco publicó su encíclica emblemática, «Laudato Si’». El documento, erudito y práctico, transmite la voz del Espíritu Santo. Más que informativo, es transformador en su capacidad de despertar, inspirar, cambiar y confirmar a quienes oran con él.
Al haberse publicado tan cerca del solsticio de junio, la carta también encarna la voz de la Tierra, que nos llama a hacer una pausa, reflexionar y elegir de manera informada y reverente. Toda la Creación sabe practicar esta pausa respetuosa. Lo hace cada año en sus retiros semestrales conocidos como «solsticio» y «equinoccio».
Hoy, solsticio de junio de 2026, nos invita a hacer lo mismo. Les ofrezco dos bendiciones para elegir, según su hemisferio. Que este día sagrado nos traiga a todos las bendiciones de amor que el Papa Francisco anhelaba con tanto fervor:
Todo el universo material habla del amor de Dios, de su cariño infinito por nosotros. La tierra, el agua, las montañas: todo es, por así decirlo, una caricia de Dios.
Laudatory Si’: 84
Music: Winter by Antonio Vivaldi (arr. Sergio Ercole)
In mid-June 2015, beloved Pope Francis published his landmark encyclical, “Laudato Si”. The document, erudite and practical, carries the voice of the Holy Spirit. More than informative, it is transformative in its power to awaken, inspire, change, and confirm those who pray with it.
Published so close to the June solstice, the letter also embodies Earth’s voice, calling us to pause, reflect, and choose in an informed and reverent manner. All Creation knows how to practice such a deferent pause. It does so every year in its semi-annual retreats known as “solstice” and “equinox”. Today, June Solstice 2026, invites us to do the same.
I offer you two blessings to choose from, depending on your hemisphere. May this sacred day bring all of us the blessings of love Pope Francis so earnestly hoped for:
“The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
Laudato Si’: 84
Music: Summer by Vivaldi (Guitar) arr. Sergio Ercole
Like me, some of you may have thought that the Emancipation Proclamation was a “one-and-done” event. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Like its companions in American history ( the Constitution,the Bill of Rights), the document – and its dynamism – is a complex living reality that, even now, continues to unfold among us.
The Emancipation Declaration was first issued on January 1, 1863, freeing enslaved African Americans in the Confederate States. There were many states, notably some in the North, to which the new law did not immediately apply (border states of Delaware and Kentucky). However, the 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865, made slavery universally unconstitutional throughout the United States.
During the intervening time period, enforcement of the new law rolled out slowly through the post-Confederate South, especially in far western regions like Galveston, Texas. It was not until June 19th, two years later, that freedom reached that resistant enclave:
On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free. (Wikipedia)
Wanting to learn more about the Juneteenth holiday, I purchased a beautifully illustrated children’s book, Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free. I wanted to share it with my grand-nephews and niece when they visit because this history belongs to all of us. We all need to learn from it.
Ms. Lee, who is approaching her 100th birthday in October, has suffered personally from racist terrorists. She grew up in Texas, where her family’s home was burned down by white rioters when she was twelve years old. Resilient and brave, she eventually pursued an extensive education and became a teacher, community leader, and activist. She lobbied particularly for the recognition of Juneteenth as a Holiday, believing it was crucial to the story of African American freedom.
President Joe Biden talks with Opal Lee after signing the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act Bill, Thursday, June 17, 2021, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Chandler West)
In June 2021, at the age of 94, her efforts succeeded as a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. She was an honored guest at the bill signing ceremony, receiving the first of many pens the President used to sign the document. As she sat in the front row, she received a standing ovation, and President Biden got down on one knee to greet her. (Wikipedia)
Music: Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Black National Anthem) – sung by Wintley Phipps
As in the prayer of petition, every event and need can become an offering of thanksgiving. The letters of St. Paul often begin and end with thanksgiving, and the Lord Jesus is always present in it: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you”; “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” ~ from The Catechism of the Catholic church
In the 1980s, when we worked together at Misericordia Hospital, my friend Jude and I had an annual custom that we practiced for a few years. On each of our birthdays, we accompanied the other to the Free Library of Philadelphia, a magnificent Beaux-Arts building on Logan Circle, reminiscent of Place de Concorde in Paris. Both our birthdays occur in the early spring, so the trip was particularly lovely on the beautifully landscaped Ben Franklin Parkway.
Inside the vast building, we climbed the impressive marble staircase to the newspapers and microfiche center that used to be tucked in a balcony upstairs. Our objective was to find the newspaper of the celebrant’s actual birth day, and to marvel at the world in which our lives began.
I have often reflected on that delightful ritual and the multidimensional meaning it held for me.
It allowed me to see myself as a particular part of history – to recognize a past beginning, a present reality, and a future hope for my existence.
It gave me an awareness of the world my mother carried with her to the maternity ward, and into which she hopefully and protectively welcomed me.
It allowed me to honor time as an energy that offers not only unsolicited change, but the opportunity for chosen growth and depth.
It reinforced the mutuality Jude and I shared in being grateful for one another’s birth and friendship.
Of course, a birthday requires a bit more frivolity in celebration, so there was a second essential part to our annual outing. We finished up the day by going “all-Philly” at the renowned Reading Terminal Market with a stop at some of our favorite vendors: Pearl’s Oyster Bar, Bassett’s Ice Cream, Termini’s Bakery, or a Pennsylvania Dutch pretzel and a Yuengling beer.
One’s birthday is a sacred juncture in the long unfolding of time. It is the moment when God imagined us and the power of our lives into being – the moment when God’s hope was given our face, our soul. It is a miracle that summons humble awe and reflective gratitude.
Psalm 139 offers an apt thanksgiving on any morning, but especially on one’s birthday. These verses capture the essence of that prayer. (BTW, I turned 81 today. A birthday prayer would be greatly appreciated.)
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.
Music: For the Beauty of the Earth – John Rutter, performed by Gracias Choir
For Your Reflection:
What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
The theological virtues are faith, hope, and love (charity). These are considered supernatural gifts from God that cannot be earned through human effort alone, but are received at Baptism and help guide a person’s moral life by directing them toward God.
In our readings during this third week of Lent, we travel the distances between despair and hope, hard-heartedness and repentance, law and mercy. We enter the experience of Hosea as he longs for the return of grace, of the courageous woman at the well, of Peter as he matures in faith, of the Pharisee and tax collector at prayer. Again and again, we are offered the threads of repentance, mercy, and hope that knit us into God’s heart and eternal imagination for us.
During Philadelphia’s harsh winter, Joe lived on a steam grate in center city. George had met him there while volunteering with a homeless outreach program. Joe, articulate and engaging, was easy to befriend. Nevertheless, he was afraid to come in to the shelter.
One morning, on his way to a downtown meeting, George stopped to pick up coffee. He decided it would be nice to take a cup to Joe on his way. Sitting down on Joe’s grate, George offered him the steaming coffee. “Oh, thanks anyway, but I only drink tea,” Joe said. George burst out laughing at his noble mistake. “You didn’t think homeless people had choices, did you?” Joe countered. George, a good-hearted, generous man, learned a lesson that day about the human dignity often hidden under accretions of poverty, neglect and disenfranchisement.
Jesus made no such mistake when he met the woman at the well. Instead, he peeled through her accretions by respectful engagement and questioning. The woman, heartened by him, responded wholeheartedly.
This week, God invites us to strip away any pretense or fear keeping us from coming home to Mercy. The readings remind us to hear, observe, and teach the Divine Law. They encourage us to soften our hearts for God’s voice.
God knows our brokenness and hard-heartedness. Yet, God invites us to repent and to believe that we are not far from the kingdom. This week is a good time to seek God’s feedback on our lives by a sincere examination of conscience and a fearless request for healing. It is a perfect time to come home to Love.
Contrition is an act of the will, not just an emotion, involving grief for past sins and a desire to regain God’s friendship. There are two types: perfect contrition, motivated by a love for God, and imperfect contrition, motivated by a fear of punishment or hatred of sin.
“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God Who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, Who relents from overwhelming us.
Joel 2:12-13
“Even now…” – two of the most powerful words in scripture. Picture yourself saying them to a long-lost friend, or that friend to you. Even now – after all these years, after all you took for granted, after all your ingratitude, forgetfulness, pretense, indifference. Even now, I love and forgive you.
With the touch of sacred ashes, God reiterates that assurance to us … Even now, God waits and wants to restore us to wholeness, as in this story where you might even find yourself.
She had arranged to visit with an old college friend. They had been separated too long by the distancing choices that life often demands. She wanted to reconnect to that rare experience of shared transparency found just once or twice in a lifetime – the gift of a real friend.
They sat on a porch overlooking a gentle pond. The day was bright, the coffee hot, the chairs comfortable. But the magic was gone. Only half her friend had arrived for the cherished conversation. The other half – joy, adventure and the excess of youthful hope – had been lost. Somewhere in the intervening years, her friend had suffered a wound she did not share. This one afternoon would be too short a time to give that wound a name.
The ministry of healing requires time, whether it is to our own soul or to another’s that we bring the sweet ointment of restoration. It requires the quiet listening of a loving spirit. It requires the honest naming of wounds and the ardent desire to be made new.
As we begin our Lenten experience, God is waiting to receive us. God already knows the wounds we will bring to the conversation, already sees where our heart’s light has dimmed. God holds our half-heartedness next to his own heart and yearns to heal us.
Can we hear God’s unique invitation to us in this Lenten season? Can we confidently expose to the Divine gaze the depth of our need for grace and transformation? Can we journey with Christ, through his passion and death, to the wholeness we are called to?
Music: Parce Domine – 6th-century Latin antiphony sung here by A Capella Catholic Choir
Have you ever been told not to get your hopes too high? The kind admonisher is trying to protect you. But you, like all human beings, still hope for everything, no matter the odds!
What would it be like if someone told us instead, “Hope for everything! The fulfillment of your hope is guaranteed!”
This is the jubilant assurance carried to us by the Word of God in the fourth week of Advent. • Luke tells us that God has indeed remembered his promise of mercy. • The eloquent Song of Songs guarantees us that the winter is past; that the rains are over and gone. • The psalmist encourages us to lift up our heads and see. Our salvation is near at hand.
After our prayerful Advent, we now stand at the threshold of the sacred, transforming Nativity. As we lift our eyes to behold this glorious God, what shall we see – a miracle, a change in the world around us?
Marianne Williamson, spiritual teacher and author, says this: “A miracle is just a shift in perception from fear to love.” The transformative change is within us, not around us.
As we open our hearts for the coming of Jesus, might we be surprised to see that nothing, yet everything is changed? Will we see Him now in the beggar we bypassed just a month ago? Will we sit gratefully beside Him now in the church where we had ignored our neighbors? Will we recognize Him fully now in an aging parent, a distressed spouse, a demanding child? Will we meet him now in our own peaceful silence where before we had obliterated him in a flurry of distractions?
“Behold your God!” is clearly an invitation to bask – awestruck – in Christ, the fulfillment of our hope. It is also a profound invitation to free ourselves of any graceless complacency which hides the ever-incarnate God from our daily sight.
Music: O Come – The Porter’s Gate
[Verse 1] For those who walk in darkness The sun is rising… rising, rising The shadow dies Our anguish flies From dawn on high Oh, Lord Jesus, come!
Oh, come! Oh, come!
[Verse 2] The yoke upon our shoulders Is finally breaking… breaking, breaking Our burdens gone In that bright dawn When He has come Oh, Lord Jesus, come!
Oh, come! Oh, come! Oh, come!
[Verse 3] The Son to us is given And we are waiting… waiting, waiting Emmanuel Oh Wonderful! Your peace to tell Oh, Lord Jesus, come!
For Your Reflection
What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
As we draw close to the Holy Season that will close our year, let’s welcome each final day as an extraordinary gift, grateful for the faith, hope, and love that sustain our lives.
Music: “Your Love” from “Once Upon A Time in the West” ” – by Ennio Morricone – performed by Hauser
For Your Reflection:
What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
September has barely poked its nose through the door, but already we see signs of Autumn. A slight gold shimmers on the trees. Geese gather in noisy expectation. Early morning sheds its night veil in slower layers of magenta and blue. There have even been a few sweet nights when we can open the windows wide and sleep in the suggestively crisp air. All the signs are there — it is a new season – “The Season of Freshness”.
“Fresh” is a powerful word. Who can resist the crisply-aproned waiter suggesting, “Fresh ground pepper?” Who can ignore the aroma of fresh baked bread? Some of us even remember with appreciation the scent of linens fresh from our mother’s clothesline.
Let this beautiful season remind us that each day the Creator shakes out a fresh beginning for every one of us. With every radiant morning, the slate is clear with mercy. The opportunity to re-create the world awaits us. Our lives, our work, our relationships are the fresh bread of God’s hope for us. Within them, we are invited to reveal the powerful grace which runs just under the visibility of the ordinary. It whispers to us, “You are Beloved, and I want your life to be a fountain of joy.”
September is for fresh beginnings: a sparkling season, an unmarked semester, a turning of the garden, a clean page. It is nature’s way of saying forgiveness is possible, life is resilient, hope is eternal. Imagine September as the white-aproned waiter inviting you to freshness. At the Creator’s table, the tablecloth is clean and the sacred menu is forgiveness, hope, mercy and renewed beginnings. Don’t miss this opportunity to assess what needs refreshment in your life. Feast on September’s graces! They can be life-changing!
Music: September Song – Alexis Ffrench
For Your Reflection
What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
Silver and Gold from the movie “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
In the Spring of 2009, the “Voice of Philadelphia” passed away. Harry Kalas, long-time sports announcer for the Phillies and a commentator for NFL films, died suddenly just before the baseball game. Besides having a golden mellifluous voice, Harry was a good man. The outpouring of love and respect for him was huge.
At the same time, but on a much lighter note, Susan Boyle, a matronly, unassuming woman from a small Scottish village, blew the world away with her soul-stirring singing voice, debuted on Britain’s version of “American Idol”. Her voice is not just good – it is molten silver against the cold darkness. It is a rich and powerful contradiction to the whining nasality of so many willowy stars. It is a victorious testimony to the truism that you can’t tell a book by its cover.
I remember that these events left me thinking about the gift of our voices. This gift, like many others, is one we tend to take for granted. It is only when a voice we love is silenced that we truly appreciate how we had loved to hear it.
Six or seven years after my mother died, my brother Jim and I were playing some old videos of his kids, looking for clips for a graduation tribute. Unexpectedly, my mother appeared in one of the videos, talking to the children in her gentle, grandmotherly tones. Jim and I hadn’t heard that precious voice since Mom had died. We were stunned to tears with the sweet memory and the poignant loss.
The human voice is one of the clearest expressions of God’s Power. It can lift people into the light of hope and reassurance, or it can push them to the edge of despair. It can set someone on the path to self-worth, or it can crush them under the weight of a hasty, intolerant word. It can carve someone a way out of loneliness, or it can imprison them in their own exaggerated sense of difference. The voice can bless or it can curse.
We are powerful people who are sometimes wrapped in a paralysis of unawareness. Often, we don’t realize the power of our words or the force of our silence. Such powers demand and deserve our attention. Our words may never be repeated in tribute like Harry’s and Susan’s have been. But our words can rest forever in the recesses of someone’s heart. Someday — when they draw up that memory, the way my brother and I did — let them be holding silver and gold.
Music: Two songs for your enjoyment, certainly of different musical merit, but both very moving. Enjoy!
For Your Reflection
What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
Lavish Mercy 