Category: Jesus

Cross

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Faith, Jesus, Love, spirituality, suffering2 Comments

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
June 7, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/060724.cfm

When Israel was a child I loved him,
out of Egypt I called my son.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
who took them in my arms;
I drew them with human cords,
with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
they did not know that I was their healer.
Hosea 11:1;3-4

Our readings today invite us to pray with the profoundly beautiful image of the Sacred Heart, the mystery of divinity and humanity united in the person of Jesus. The tenderness of Hosea flows into Paul’s description of the “inscrutable riches of Christ”. These passages culminate in John’s depiction of the unbroken body of Jesus on the Cross.

Together, these readings present us with the mystery of love fulfilled by sacrifice, a reality we may resist in our lives, but one that is nevertheless true. All love entails sacrifice. Jesus loves us completely and sacrificed his Sacred Heart completely for that Love.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We pray to grow in our understanding of the Cross and of the mystery of Love as revealed to us in the Sacred Heart.

Poetry: To the Sacred Heart of Jesus – Thérèse of Lisieux, translated by Donald Kinney, OCD

At the holy sepulchre, Mary Magdalene,
Searching for her Jesus, stooped down in tears.
The angels wanted to console her sorrow,
But nothing could calm her grief.
Bright angels, it was not you
Whom this fervent soul came searching for.
She wanted to see the Lord of the Angels,
To take him in her arms, to carry him far away.
Close by the tomb, the last one to stay,
She had come well before dawn.
Her God also came, veiling his light.
Mary could not vanquish him in love!
Showing her at first his Blessed Face,
Soon just one word sprang from his Heart,
Whispering the sweet name of: Mary,
Jesus gave her back her peace, her happinesss.
O my God, one day, like Mary Magdalene,
I wanted to see you and come close to you.
I looked down over the immense plain
Where I sought the Master and King,
And I cried, seeing the pure wave,
The starry azure, the flower, and the bird.
“Bright nature, if I do not see God,
You are nothing to me but a vast tomb.”
I need a heart burning with tenderness
Who will be my support forever,
Who loves everything in me, even my weakness…
And who never leaves me day or night.”
I could find no creature
Who could always love me and never die.
I must have a God who takes on my nature
And becomes my brother and is able to suffer!
You heard me, only Friend whom I love.
To ravish my heart, you became man.
You shed your blood, what a supreme mystery!…
And you still live for me on the Altar.
If I cannot see the brilliance of your Face
Or hear your sweet voice,
O my God, I can live by your grace,
I can rest on your Sacred Heart!
O Heart of Jesus, treasure of tenderness,
You Yourself are my happiness, my only hope.
You who knew how to charm my tender youth,
Stay near me till the last night.
Lord, to you alone I’ve given my life,
And all my desires are well known to you.
It’s in your ever-infinite goodness
That I want to lose myself, O Heart of Jesus!
Ah! I know well all our righteousness
Is worthless in your sight.
To give value to my sacrifices,
I want to cast them into your Divine Heart.
You did not find your angels without blemish.
In the midst of lightning you gave your law!…
I hide myself in your Sacred Heart, Jesus.
I do not fear, my virtue is You!…
To be able to gaze on your glory,
I know we have to pass through fire.
So I, for my purgatory,
Choose your burning love, O heart of my God!
On leaving this life, my exiled soul
Would like to make an act of pure love,
And then, flying away to Heaven, its Homeland,
Enter straightaway into your Heart.

Music: Only You – Michael Zabrocki

Corpus Christi

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

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ 
Corpus Christi
June 2, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/060224.cfm

While they were eating,
Jesus took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, gave it to them, and said,
“Take it; this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them,
and they all drank from it.
He said to them,
“This is my blood of the covenant,
which will be shed for you.
Mark 14: 22-24

Prose: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – ‘The Priest’, in Writings in Time of War

Your life is so much stronger than ours
 that it dominates us, 
absorbs us, 
and assimilates us to itself…. 
Although I might have imagined 
that it was I 
who held the consecrated Bread 
and gave myself its nourishment, 
I now see with blinding clarity 
that it is the Bread 
that takes hold of me 
and draws me to itself.

Music: Ave Verum Corpus – attributed to Pope Innocent (13th century); set to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (18th century); performed here by The Romanian Foundation for Excellence in Music

Ave verum corpus, natum
de Maria Virgine,
vere passum, immolatum
in cruce pro homine
cuius latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine:
esto nobis praegustatum
in mortis examine.

[O Iesu dulcis, O Iesu pie,
O Iesu, fili Mariae.
Miserere mei. Amen]

Hail, true Body, born
of the Virgin Mary,
having truly suffered, sacrificed
on the cross for mankind,
from whose pierced side
water and blood flowed:
Be for us a sweet foretaste
in the trial of death!

[O sweet Jesus, O holy Jesus,
O Jesus, son of Mary,
have mercy on me. Amen.]

See

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, healing, Hope, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Thursday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
May 30, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/053024.cfm

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd,
Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus,
sat by the roadside begging.
On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth,
he began to cry out and say,
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” 
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”

Bartimaeus threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.
Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?”
The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.”
Jesus told him, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.”

Bartimaeus wants to be healed. He wants to see. But Jesus tells him that he is not healed by his desire, or his begging, or his good fortune in running into Jesus. Bartimaeus is healed by his faith because that faith draws forth from Jesus the Divine Power which transforms.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We can be blind in many ways.

  • Often we can’t see what’s right in front of us.
  • We can’t see why others may think differently from us
  • We can’t see the underlying reasons for our circumstances.
  • We can’t see the path to wholeness that may be obvious to others.
  • We can’t see the suffering world around us
  • We can’t see the invisible support that others give us, perhaps over our lifetime.
  • We can’t see the abiding presence of God in our lives

Like Bartimaeus may we call out to Jesus in faith so that he will be moved to help us SEE all that may bring us closer to the Divine Heart.

Poetry: Bartimaeus – John Newton

John Newton was an English Anglican clergyman, abolitionist, and hymn writer. He is best known as the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” one of the most beloved and widely sung hymns in the English language. Newton’s life was marked by a dramatic conversion experience, after which he abandoned his career in the slave trade and became an outspoken advocate for the abolition of slavery.

Mercy, O thou Son of David!
Thus blind Bartimaeus prayed;
Others by thy word are saved,
Now to me afford thine aid:
Many for his crying chid him,
But he called the louder still;
Till the gracious Saviour bid him
Come, and ask me what you will.
Money was not what he wanted,
Though by begging used to live;
But he asked, and Jesus granted
Alms, which none but he could give:
Lord remove this grievous blindness,
Let my eyes behold the day;
Strait he saw, and won by kindness,
Followed Jesus in the way.
O! methinks I hear him praising,
Publishing to all around;
Friends, is not my case amazing?
What a Saviour I have found:
O! that all the blind but knew him,
And would be advised by me!
Surely, would they hasten to him,
He would cause them all to see.

Music: The God Who Sees – Rachel Barrentine

Fix

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
May 26, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052624.cfm

Moses said to the people:
“Ask now of the days of old, before your time,
ever since God created man upon the earth;
ask from one end of the sky to the other:
Did anything so great ever happen before?
Was it ever heard of?
Did a people ever hear the voice of God
speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?

…This is why you must now know,
and fix in your heart, that the LORD is God
in the heavens above and on earth below,
and that there is no other.
Deuteronomy 4:32-33;39

Moses invites the people to fix their hearts on God Who amazes us in Divine Self-revelation.

With the solemn celebration of Trinity Sunday, the Church acknowledges the fullness of this revelation in Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Have you ever heard the expression, “I will cover you in prayer”? When a friend says that, we are blessed with the gifts of presence, comfort, accompaniment, hope, and love.

In revealing the Trinity to us, God has covered us with the same gifts. We are called to “fix” our faith and living on this indescribable blessing, the way one would fix a tent by placing the pegs with care and attention.

Prose: from Pope Francis

We can study the whole history of salvation, 
we can study the whole of Theology, 
but without the Spirit 
we cannot understand. 
It is the Spirit that makes us realize the truth 
or — in the words of Our Lord — 
it is the Spirit that makes us know 
the voice of Jesus.

Music: O Lux Beata Trinitas – An Ambrosian Hymn, arranged by Ola Gjeilo, sung by ACJC Alumni Choir (Singapore)

The Ambrosian hymns are a collection of early hymns of the Latin liturgical rites, whose core of four hymns were by Ambrose of Milan in the 4th century.
The hymns of this core were enriched with another eleven to form the Old Hymnal, which spread from the Ambrosian Rite of Milan throughout Lombard Italy, Visigothic Spain, Anglo-Saxon England and the Frankish Empire during the early medieval period (6th to 8th centuries); in this context, therefore, the term “Ambrosian” does not imply authorship by Ambrose himself, to whom only four hymns are attributed with certainty, but includes all Latin hymns composed in the style of the Old Hymnal.

Pray

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, holiness, Jesus, Prayer, spirituality5 Comments

Saturday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
May 25, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052524.cfm

Beloved:
Is anyone among you suffering?
He should pray.
Is anyone in good spirits?
He should sing a song of praise…

…The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.
Elijah was a man like us;
yet he prayed earnestly that it might not rain,
and for three years and six months it did not rain upon the land.
Then Elijah prayed again, and the sky gave rain
and the earth produced its fruit.
James 5:13; 16-18

James tells us that prayer must be woven seamlessly into our lives. His remarks may remind us of Paul’s well-known exhortation to “Pray always!”

In our Gospel, Jesus tells us that a childlike innocence is essential to full union with God. In prayer, we are with God the way a child is with a loved and trusting parent. Jesus taught us this when he chose to begin his prayer, “Our Father …”

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We ask for the grace of spiritual innocence, allowing us to trust God’s Presence in every aspect of our lives. Doing this, we keep an inner recognition and dialogue with God – we “pray always”

Poetry: Praying – Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few 
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try 
to make them elaborate, this isn’t 
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which 
another voice may speak.

Music: The Lord’s Prayer – Perry Como

Insipid

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

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
May 23, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052324.cfm

“Everyone will be salted with fire.
Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid,
with what will you restore its flavor?
Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another.”
Mark 9: 49-50

Like James for the past few days, Jesus now has some tough, even startling, words for his followers. He tells them their faith and goodness will be tested, “salted”. But sometimes if the test cannot be withstood, one may become faithless and hard. Their religious practice becomes “insipid”. It loses “heart”, loses meaning.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We ask God for the spiritual honesty and courage to meet our lives with unwavering faith. We ask for the soul’s deep insight that allows us always to be a light for others, never a darkness.

Poetry: Late Sayings  - Scott Cairns reflects on the Beatitudes (to complement today's Responsorial Psalm)

Blessed as well are the wounded but nonetheless kind,
       for they shall observe their own mending.

Blessed are those who shed their every anxious defense,
              for they shall obtain consolation.

Blessed are those whose sympathy throbs as an ache,
              for they shall see the end of suffering.

Blessed are those who do not presume,
              for they shall be surprised at every turn.

Blessed are those who seek the God in secret,
              for they shall know His very breath rising as a pulse.

Blessed moreover are those who refuse to judge,
              for they shall forget their own most grave transgressions.

Blessed are those who watch and pray, who seek and plead,
              for they shall see, and shall be heard.

Music: Lead Me, Lord – John Becker

First/Last

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, ordinary time, Service, spirituality1 Comment

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time
May 21, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052124.cfm

They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house,
he began to ask them,
“What were you arguing about on the way?”
But they remained silent.
For they had been discussing among themselves on the way
who was the greatest.
Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them,
“If anyone wishes to be first,
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
Taking a child, he placed it in their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me.”
Mark 9:33-37

Here we are, friends, back in Ordinary Time after our sacred journey with Jesus through Lent and Eastertide. Drenched in the Spirit of Pentecost, we pick up with the Gospel of Mark which we left back in March.

And what is the first lesson of this reclaimed time? It is one of the many sacred inversions in the Gospel which assure us that the fullness of the Christian life is merciful service – that a holy emptiness is the preferred dwelling of God’s Spirit.

If anyone wishes to be first,   
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.

Today, in God’s Loving Mercy:

We pray for the insight and strength to choose a Gospel-rooted life despite the contradictions of the world. We ask the Holy Spirit, renewed in us on Pentecost, to steep us in the selflessness that is true love.

Poetry: Where Is God? – Mark Nepo

It’s as if what is unbreakable—
the very pulse of life—waits for
everything else to be torn away,
and then in the bareness that
only silence and suffering and
great love can expose, it dares
to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.

Music: Will You Let Me Be Your Servant

More

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, Love, spirituality2 Comments

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 17, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051724.cfm

After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples
and eaten breakfast with them, 
he said to Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
John 21:15

Perhaps we have spoken or heard these questions as we move through our heart’s life:

  • Do you love me?
  • How much do you love me?
  • Will you always love me?
  • Do you still love me?

But true love is immeasurable. It has shades and intensities, but it doesn’t have limits. True love is all; it’s everything – fidelity, forgiveness, delight, hope, chaos, perseverance, sacrifice, joy and generosity.

Jesus knows Peter possesses all these commitments to Him. But He is asking Peter to test himself before Peter is called to take Christ’s place on earth.

The only “more” that ever touched human love was when Jesus took our flesh to live, die, and rise for all of us. Jesus wants to hear Peter say he has that kind of sacrificial Love.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Jesus knows us too, and how we want to love him well; how we may want to love him “more”. Let’s talk with him about that in our prayer today, asking to not let our chances for loving God slip by without our notice.

Poetry: This Paltry Love – Jessica Powers

I love you, God, with a penny match of love
that I strike when the big and bullying dark of need
chases my startled sunset over the hills
and in the walls of my house small terrors move.
It is the sight of this paltry love that fills
my deepest pits with seething purgatory,
that thus I love you, God—God—who would sow
my heights and depths with recklessness of glory,
who hold back light-oceans straining to spill on me, on me,
stifling here in the dungeon of my ill.
This puny spark I scorn, I who had dreamed
of fire that would race to land’s end, shouting your worth,
of sun that would fall to earth with a mortal wound
and rise and run, streaming with light like blood,
splattering the sky,
soaking the ocean itself, and all the earth.

Music: If I Love You – Rodgers and Hammerstein

Will

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, Prayer, spirituality, sufferingLeave a comment

Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 16, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051624.cfm

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
“I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.
John 17:20-21

Over several Gospel readings, we have been blessed to pray with the prayers of Jesus. Just before today’s passage, Jesus has consecrated those sitting around him who are his friends. In today’s extraordinary moment, Jesus blesses us – and all those down through the ages – who will to believe in Him.

Of course, faith is a gift we cannot acquire through our own effort. The consolation of faith, the feeling of faith, is something that sometimes evaded even the greatest saints. St. John of the Cross writes extensively about the “dark night of the soul” during which he had no emotional awareness of faith. At times, St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Mother Theresa and even Jesus himself suffered a sense of isolation from God:

Jesus cried out in a loud voice,
“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:46

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Even when we find ourselves in a spiritual desert, we still can will to believe by opening our heart and experience to the grace God offers us – by our trust, our perseverance in prayer, and our patience with our own uncertainty.

Spiritual darkness, received as a gift, can reveal an otherwise undiscovered dimension of God’s Love for us.

Poetry: The Uses of Sorrow – Mary Oliver

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Music: One Dark Night – John Michael Talbot

In this beautiful music, Talbot recants lines based on the Song of Songs and the writings of St. John of the Cross – poetic imagery that strives to describe encounter with God.

One dark night
Fired with love’s urgent longings
Ah, the sheer grace
In the darkness
I went out unseen
My house being all now still

In the darkness
Secured by love’s secret ladder
Disguised
Oh, the sheer grace
In the darkness
And in my concealment
My house being all now still

On that glad night
In the secret, for no one saw me
Nor did I see any other thing at all
With no other light to guide me
Than the light burning in my heart

And this light guided me
More surely than the light of the noon
To where he lay waiting for me
Waiting for me
Him I knew so well
In a place where no one else appeared

Oh guiding night
A light more lovely than the dawn
A night that has united
Ever now
The Lover now with his beloved
Transforming two now into one

Upon my flowering breast
There he lay sleeping
Which I kept for him alone
And I embraced him
And I caressed him
In a breeze blowing from the forest

And when this breeze blew in from the forest
Blowing back our hair
He wounded my soul
With his gentle hand
Suspending all my senses

I abandoned, forgetting myself
Laying my face on my Beloved
All things ceasing, I went out from myself
To leave cares
Forgotten with the lilies of the field