Category: Jesus

Be Opened!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Faith, healing, Jesus, spirituality1 Comment

Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
February 9, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020924.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, both our readings describe situations in which the fullness of the spiritual life is inhibited by choice or circumstance. In the readings from 1 Kings, we meet human beings crippled by moral incapacities. In Mark’s Gospel, we see a man handicapped by physical limitations.

What can we learn about God’s faithfulness from these passages? What can we learn about healing and spiritual renewal?

The Division of the Kingdom under Rehoboam
by William Brassey Hole

In Solomon’s case, his unfaithful choices have brought him to spiritual collapse. 1 Kings tells us that Solomon committed all the sins forbidden in the Book of Deuteronomy. For example, he had over 700 wives and concubines from many alien nations. He built altars to their gods and allowed their idolatry to seep into Israel’s culture. As a result, God pronounced that the united monarchy, composed of the twelve tribes, would be ripped apart – symbolized in the cloak in today’s readings.

Today’s and tomorrow’s passages foretell the revolt within Israel that created the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, is corrupt. The people revolt against his cruelty. Jeroboam, one of Solomon’s political ministers, assumes kingship over ten of the tribes, creating the Northern Kingdom (the Kingdom of Israel).

However, despite Solomon’s and Rehoboam’s infidelity, God remains faithful to the promise to David, allowing two of the tribes to continue under the leadership of David’s house through Rehoboam – the Southern Kingdom (the Kingdom of Judah)

So, are you bored with these snippets of biblical history? Don’t be. They are included in scripture to offer us lessons:

  • God’s voice comes to us in the unfolding of our lives
  • God expects our fidelity
  • Our infidelity leads to disruption
  • Still, God remains faithful and loving toward us
  • It is never too late to open our heart to God’s grace

Our Gospel can teach us similar lessons. For undisclosed reasons, our central character is hog-tied by the incapacity to speak and hear. Jesus’s healing of this man shows us that we too can be healed from any incapacity to hear God’s truth in our hearts and to speak it in our lives. All that we need do is what this man has done – to place ourselves in God’s Presence with faith and hope.

Notice that Jesus heals this man in a very human way – with fingers, spit, and guttural groans.

Jesus put his finger into the man’s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
“Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”)
And immediately the man’s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly.

Mark 7:33-35

For the most part, healing comes to us in very human ways as well. God works through our circumstances and relationships to offer us renewing grace. As we live out each day, our life challenges us with a silent command: “Ephphatha!” Be opened to God speaking to you in this moment, in this person, in this situation, in this silence!

Sometimes, we just cannot hear the challenge or speak the truth. We are mute and deaf to the grace of the moment. Today is a good time to pray for openness – Ephphatha!

Poetry: At the Kishinev School for Deaf and Mute Children – Katia Kapovich (1960), a bilingual Russian poet. Born in Chişinău, the capital of Moldova, she later lived in Moscow and St Petersburg. Unable to publish her work in the former USSR because she participated in a samizdat dissident group, she emigrated, moving in 1990 to Jerusalem, where she published her first collection, and then in 1992 to the USA. In 2001, US Poet Laureate Billy Collins selected her for a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and she has also been Poet-in-Residence at Amherst College.

My first autumn after college I worked
at the Kishinev School for the Deaf and Mute,
whose voices were not speech,
yet sounded like a language.
A foreign language, muffled and unknown
to the teachers. Its strange vowels,
born in their windpipes,
burned away in their throats.
I wrote the alphabet on the blackboard,
watched them move their lips as they
tried to articulate the sounds of Russian,
but no one could help them.
Yet there was a children’s god in the classroom
who guided them across quicksand
to where the Tower of Babel stood crumbling
and filled their mouths with the ABCs.

Music: I Need Thee Every Hour – in American Sign Language

Turning Always Toward God

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

Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
February 8, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020824.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings leave me wondering about what makes God tick.

We really know nothing about God for sure, except what we have learned and believed in Jesus. The writers of the Hebrew scriptures stretched their imaginations to understand and portray God to the people. Sometimes their metaphors work for us, sometimes not. Today’s, I think, is tricky.

In this first reading, God exacts justice for Solomon’s unfaithfulness, but He does it sort of like a prosecutor in a plea bargain.

I will deprive you of the kingdom … but not during your lifetime
It is your son whom I will deprive … but I won’t take away the whole kingdom.

What’s going on with God in this reading? Well, it’s more like “What’s going on with the writer who tries, retrospectively, to interpret God’s role in Israel’s history?”

The passage is much more than a report on exchanges between God and Solomon.

It is a testament to Israel’s unwavering faith that God is intimately involved in their lives. In every circumstance, the believing community returns to the fact that experience leads to God and not away from Him.

So “Solomon … had TURNED his heart to strange gods” 
BUT God had not turned from Solomon. 
Nor would God EVER turn because 
God has CHOSEN Israel.

In our Gospel, the Syrophoenician woman tries to get the favor of Jesus to turn toward her. And actually, Jesus sounds pretty mean and stingy about it.

The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”

Mark 7:26-30

The writer Mark is portraying, retrospectively, a significant time in Christ’s ministry. Jesus has really gone into hiding in a remote place. Apparently, he wants space to figure some things out. The story indicates that one of those things might be whether or not his ministry should embrace the Gentiles.

The persistence of this woman’s faith is a turning point for Jesus Who evolved, as we all do, in his understanding of his sacred role and meaning in the world.

These passages encourage us to constantly turn toward God Who lives our life with us. Such “turning” helps us to grow spiritually. As we become bigger in heart and soul, so does our concept of God and what God’s hope is for us.

Poetry: All this “turning” brought to mind some favorites lines from T.S. Eliot:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Music: Perfect Wisdom of Our God – The Gettys

Selflessness

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, spirituality6 Comments

Saturday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
February 3, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020324.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings offer us insights into the ministry of leadership. They are insights worth pondering for at least these two reasons:

  • We are all called to be leaders in some way in our lives, be it as parent, teacher, supervisor, team captain, committee lead, board chair … you name it.
  • We need to be able to recognize good leaders in order to follow wisely, otherwise we are following self-interested fools determined to re-create us in their likeness.

In both our readings, leadership is characterized by this key element: selflessness.

Solomon, when given the chance to ask for anything he wants, asks for a gift that will benefit the community.

Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart
to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong.

1 Kings 4:9

Jesus and the disciples, exhausted from the press of the crowd, still respond in mercy to their relentless needs

Jesus said to the disciples,
“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”
People were coming and going in great numbers,
and they had no opportunity even to eat.
So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.
People saw them leaving and many came to know about it.
They hastened there on foot from all the towns
and arrived at the place before them.

When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began to teach them many things.

Mark 6: 30-34

As we daily focus our lives on becoming more like Christ, the practice of selflessness can be tricky – how to live selflessly without losing one’s self; how to foster common and individual good without depleting one’s own spiritual strength. To my mind, these things are important:

Honesty: I think the grounding virtue of a good leader is honesty – with others and with self. Once a leader starts to pretend, deceive, equivocate, feign ignorance, or outright lie, (even to themselves), they are no longer fit to lead.

Spiritual Discipline: When we look at Jesus’s life, we see that he practiced a cycle of ministry and prayer. Several times in the Gospel, Jesus withdraws to commune with the Father. Although Christ was in union with the Father at all times, he exercised his ministry around a personal discipline of solitude and prayer.

Discernment: Solomon understands the importance of this gift. What Solomon actually prays for is the sensitivity to practice the “cardinal virtues” that we learned long ago in catechism class. Remember? Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance.

Prose: Remember the Baltimore Catechism? Well, maybe some of you are too young to remember, Here’s how wikipedia defines it:

A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Prepared and Enjoined by Order of the Third Council of Baltimore, or simply the Baltimore Catechism, was the national Catholic catechism for children in the United States, based on St. Robert Bellarmine’s 1614 Small Catechism. The first such catechism written for Catholics in North America, it was the standard Catholic school text in the country from 1885 to the late 1960s. From its publication, however, there were calls to revise it, and many other catechisms were used during this period. It was officially replaced by the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults in 2004, based on the revised universal Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Throughout my adult life, I have retained an appreciation for what I learned from the now-defunct edition of the Baltimore Catechism. While it conveyed the impression that a recipe for holiness could be compacted into a small manual, its inimitable Thomistic logic left valuable lessons with me to which I often return. Here are a few that informed my prayer today as I reflected on “selflessness”:

Besides the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity there are other virtues, called moral virtues.

These virtues are called moral virtues because they dispose us to lead moral, or good lives, by aiding us to treat persons and things in the right way, that is, according to the will of God.

The chief moral virtues are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance; these are called cardinal virtues.

These virtues are called cardinal virtues because they are like hinges on which hang all the other moral virtues and our whole moral life. The word “cardinal” is derived from the Latin word “cardo” meaning hinge.

  • Prudence disposes us in all circumstances to form right judgments about what we must do or not do.
  • Justice disposes us to give everyone what belongs to them.
  • Fortitude disposes us to do what is good despite any difficulty.
  • Temperance disposes us to control our desires and to use rightly the things which please ourselves.

Music: Song of Solomon – Martin Smith

Rejected at Nazareth

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

Memorial of Saint John Bosco, Priest
Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
January 31, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/013124.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, David gets himself in trouble once again.

King David said to Joab and the leaders of the army who were with him,
“Tour all the tribes in Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba
and register the people, that I may know their number.”
Joab then reported to the king the number of people registered:
in Israel, eight hundred thousand men fit for military service; 
in Judah, five hundred thousand.

Afterward, however, David regretted having numbered the people,
and said to the LORD:
“I have sinned grievously in what I have done.
But now, LORD, forgive the guilt of your servant,
for I have been very foolish.”

2 Samuel 24: 2;10

In the later years of his kingship, David is pretty impressed with himself. The kingdom has grown exponentially. There is peace and prosperity. David wants a census taken so that he can assess his capacity for new expansion.

So why does God get so mad about this census? The Book of Exodus sets out that a person has the right to number only his own belongings. The People belong to God, not to David. David’s pride and self-satisfaction has taken him over.

Ps32_deep waters

However, as usual, David repents. This is probably the best lesson we can learn from him. Then, in a greatly allegorized treatment, God gives David a choice of three punishments.

Passages like this can confuse us if we interpret them literally. Does God really interact and punish like this? 

It helps to remember the purpose of these writings — not to relay a factual history, but rather to tell a story that helps us grow in relationship with God.

What I believe happened here is that a pestilence did fall upon the country. At the same time, David realized that his heart had grown selfish and graceless. He took the natural event as a sign to turn back to God. And then the writers told the story in a way that the ancient peoples could relate to – with a metaphorical image of a God that forgives but gets even.

In our Gospel, Jesus preaches a clearer and true vision of God – a vision of Complete Mercy, especially toward the vulnerable, weak, and sinful. That pretty much includes all of us.

Jesus releases the power of this Divine Mercy by his words and miracles. But his own family and neighbors reject him. They are more comfortable with a God who behaves like they do – meting out more judgement and punishment (preferably toward others!😉) than mercy and inclusive benediction.

In this Gospel, we begin to see Jesus as One who asks not only for repentance but for conversion – for a new way of being with God and neighbor, the way of Love.

How might we have responded had we been in that neighborhood synagogue? How are we responding today?

Film Excerpt from The Chosen: Jesus is rejected at Nazareth

Music: Today’s Responsorial Psalm 32 – Marty Goetz ( Lyrics below)

Psalm 32 – Marty Goetz

These are periled times we live in, trouble everywhere
Weary hearts will often give in to this world’s despair
But high and over all, our Father knows our every care
And in His Book, if you will look, you’ll find His promise there

(Chorus)
He who trusts in the Lord
Mercy shall surround him
He who trusts in the Lord
Mercy shall surround him
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice
You upright in heart, lift up your voice
For great is His mercy toward all who trust in the Lord

Soon will be the time when we will see the Holy One
Oh how sweet to know that He’ll complete what He’s begun
And blessed is the man who stands forgiven in God’s son
And blessed are they who in that day will hear Him say, “Well done”

(Chorus)

Gracious is He and slow to anger
His loving kindness has no end
With love to embrace both friend and stranger
Reaching out to one and all, who upon His name will call

(Chorus)

Mercy is His reward
For all who trust, for the pure and just
Who put their trust in the Lord
For all who trust for the pure and just who put their trust in the Lord

Mercy in the Darkness

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Faith, Jesus, spirituality1 Comment

Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
January 29, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012924.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings are peppered with angst, curses, demons, and rampaging pigs. Not the perfect way to start your day, right? So after quietly reading all the passages, I asked myself if they had anything to offer me this morning, or should I just play Spider Solitaire on my iPad?

As I considered that question, last night’s evening news flashed before my mind – gun violence, assaults, war, hit-and-run accidents! Suddenly I realized that my world is not that different from the mayhem around David or Jesus. My world just wears different clothes and can create chaos faster because of technological power.

The cause of David’s dire situation is clearly defined by Shimei, the curser:

Shimei Curses David – by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

As David was approaching Bahurim,
a man named Shimei, the son of Gera
of the same clan as Saul’s family,
was coming out of the place, cursing as he came.
He threw stones at David and at all the king’s officers,
even though all the soldiers, including the royal guard,
were on David’s right and on his left.
Shimei was saying as he cursed:
“Away, away, you murderous and wicked man!
The LORD has requited you for all the bloodshed in the family of Saul,
in whose stead you became king,
and the LORD has given over the kingdom to your son Absalom.
And now you suffer ruin because you are a murderer.”

2 Samuel 16:5-7

In other words, David is completely out of alignment with the “self” God created him to be. God’s beautiful hope in David has been nearly swallowed up by most of the seven deadly sins. And good for Shimei, who slings every one of them back in David’s face! What a wake-up call!

In our Gospel, the Evil One has taken up residence in the skewed and troubled soul of a tomb-dweller:

… a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met Jesus.
The man had been dwelling among the tombs,
and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain.
In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains,
but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed,
and no one was strong enough to subdue him.

Mark 5:3-4

Swine Driven into the Sea by James Tissot

For reasons the Gospel does not reveal, demons rage inside this pathetic man. Jesus confronts them with an intensity even beyond Shimei’s, casting them into the subsequently nose-diving swine:

Catching sight of Jesus from a distance,
he ran up and prostrated himself before him,
crying out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
I adjure you by God, do not torment me!”
(Jesus had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”)
Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.”
And he pleaded earnestly with Jesus
not to drive them away from that territory.

Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside.
And they pleaded with him,
“Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.”
And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine.
The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea,
where they were drowned.

Mark 5:6-13

Wow! I mean, really, these two readings are Cecil B. DeMille stuff! Certainly there is a lesson for each of us somewhere in all this drama.

  • Might David’s plight remind us to keep our lives in alignment with God’s hope and will for us?
  • Might Shimei’s rage and brutal honesty help us to consider any retained hurts and vengeances we harbor?
  • Might the poor, chained tomb-dweller help us to place our own small demons squarely in the merciful light of God’s healing power before they get too powerful for us to face?
  • Might the devastated pigs caution us that innocent people can get hurt when our sinful inclinations derail us?

Even though many aspects of today’s readings are harsh, they hold a central message of God’s enduring mercy toward us even in times of desperation and apparent hopelessness. May we hold on to this truth if we ever come to a place of darkness in our lives. And may we offer that Light to those we encounter who are bearing such suffering.

Poetry: Excerpt from “Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara” – William Fargason

William Fargason is the author of Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara (University of Iowa Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2020 Florida Book Award in Poetry (Gold Medal). In this collection, Fargason inspects the pain of memory alongside the pain of the physical body. Fargason takes language to its limits to demonstrate how grief is given a voice. His speaker confronts illness, grapples with grief, and heals after loss in its most crushing forms. (from Iowa University Press).

The silence just before and just after,
and the black eyes as you leapt— “
no protest, no acceptance either.

You ran almost in unison,
a dance without music,
a curtain call,
and the crowd standing knowing this is what happens
once we find beauty:

                                      we must watch it leave.

Music: Healing Time on Earth – John Denver

Listen Tenderly

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

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 28, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012824.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 95, once again a call to a holy tenderheartedness – that mix of love, discernment, and generosity that magnetizes us into dynamic relationship with God.

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
    “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
    as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
    they tested me though they had seen my works.

Psalm 95: 7-9

Our other Sunday readings, which Psalm 95 anchors, clarify the reason we seek this tenderheartedness. It is so that we might not only hear, but really listen and respond to the Truth of God in our lives.

Those who will not listen to my words 
which a prophet speaks in my name,
I myself will make them answer for it.

Deuteronomy 18:18

In our first reading from Deuteronomy, the people were confused. They were passing into a new land with lots of rivaling religions and spiritualities. Moses was nearing the end of his life and leadership over them. They wanted to know who to listen to and how to behave in order to stay in God’s favor.

God promises that God’s voice will come through a prophet like Moses:

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin,
and will put my words into his mouth;
he shall tell them all that I command him.

Deuteronomy 18:19

In our Gospel, we see Jesus – the fulfillment of the Deuteronomic Promise. The people witnessing his power are amazed. They struggle with whether they can believe in him when he seems just one of them, a Nazarene, Joseph’s son.

But some could believe – readily. Some, like the disciples, discerned quickly the Truth Jesus was. They heard, listened, believed and obeyed the Word.

Our psalm suggests that such readiness, such tenderheartedness comes from the consistent practice of relationship with God through praise, witness, thanksgiving, prayer, worship, humility, and obedience.

To me, it boils down to this:

  • let your life unfold in God’s Presence
  • be silent under God’s loving gaze
  • thank God for all you have been given
  • realize you are nothing without God
  • listen to your life as God speaks it to you
  • act on what you hear
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
    let us acclaim the rock of our salvation.
Let us come into God’s presence with thanksgiving;
    let us joyfully sing psalms to the Lord.
R. If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us bow down in worship;
    let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For the Lord is our God,
    and we are the people God shepherds, the flock God guides.

Poetry: Rumi

I keep telling my heart,
“Go easy now. 
I am submerged in golden treasure.”
It replies, 
“Why should I be afraid of love?”

Music: Soften My Heart – by Music Meets Heaven

Do You Not Yet Have Faith?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
January 27, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012724.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings say something about Divine Order, about Sacred Balance – and our ability to let go and trust.

Nathan Rebukes David – by James Tissot

In our first reading, the prophet Nathan confronts David regarding his relationship with Bathsheba. The beautiful Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, an elite soldier in David’s army. From far away one day, David spies her bathing in a pool. Full of covetousness and lust, he engineers a heartless plot to have her as his own.

The story is complex, intriguing, and extremely dramatic. You can read it for yourself in 2 Samuel. But the point I would like to draw out for today is about covetousness. What is that, really, and does it play any part in my life?

“Covet” is an intransitive verb that we learned when we were taught the Ten Commandments. Like all the other sins, my six-year-old self decided I would try hard not to commit it … but I had no idea what it even meant! I was pretty sure I didn’t have to be worried about coveting my neighbor’s wife, but I did like Jimmy Clark’s bike enough to covet it. (But, I didn’t steal it.)

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever used the verb “covet” in a sentence before today. So I turned to Meriam-Webster who defines covetousness like this: to desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably

Do we “covet” when we wish we had some of the great things others have? Material things like money, mansions, and limousines? Or immaterial things like talent, beauty, and popularity?

I don’t think so. We may have to deal with the concupiscence of jealousy or envy, but it’s not quite the same as coveting. As Merriam-Webster indicates, coveting implies an inordinance or culpability. In other words, we act on our jealousy or envy in some way, creating an imbalance in our moral life. 

  • We resent, judge, or ostracize the person who has what we want.
  • We plot to take away the other’s prized possession or status.
  • We create a deficit in our own responsibilities by directing essential resources to our plot.
  • And what may be the worst and most likely situation, we use our power to indifferently usurp what belongs to others.

When I examine my conscience I remind myself that the world belongs to me, but it also belongs to others — all others. Peace, a decent level of sustenance, the goods of Creation, the right to life — these belong to me but also to others. I may not be aware of “coveting” these things to the detriment of others, but how do my choices and actions in any way limit that right for others?

It could be as simple as this:

  • Do I vote for leaders who continually foster negotiation over militaristic responses?
  • Do I support trade agreements that establish sustainable practices for producers as well as consumers?
  • Do I recognize that climate deterioration and refugee intensification are inextricably connected to abusive environmental practices and that I have a role in promoting change?
  • Do I have a single-issue or a holistic approach to life concerns for the unborn, impoverished, incarcerated, unhoused, immigrant, and medically needy populations?

When we find ourselves entangled in greed or covetousness, it’s not necessarily that we are bad people. We might be more like the disciples described in today’s Gospel – fearful people, so insecure that we amass material protections around us.

A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.
Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him,
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up,
rebuked the wind, 
and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”
The wind ceased and there was great calm.
Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”

Mark 4: 37-40

Jesus calls us to live a life grounded in faith not material protections. Only faith is invulnerable to life’s storms. Within its eternal securities, we become more deeply aware of our sacred relationship to all creatures and to Creation Itself.

If David had exercised such faith, the taking of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah would have been incomprehensible to him. As we deepen in our faith, what awarenesses will awaken in us?

Quote: Wisdom from Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950) who is considered an Indian Hindu sage and “jivanmukta” (liberated being). He is regarded by many as an outstanding enlightened being and, as a charismatic person, attracted many devotees. I particularly value this quote which leads me to consider my oneness with all beings:

Questioner: How are we to treat others?
Ramana Maharshi: There are no others.

Music: Imagine – John Lennon

Just Listen!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, dying, Faith, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Wednesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
January 24, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012424.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jesus tells us the parable of the sower and the seed.

And he taught them at length in parables, 
and in the course of his instruction he said to them, 
“Hear this! A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, 
and the birds came and ate it up.
Other seed fell on rocky ground where it had little soil.
It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep.
And when the sun rose, it was scorched and it withered for lack of roots. 
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it 
and it produced no grain.
And some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit.
It came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.”
He added, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.”

Mark 4: 2-9

How many times have we heard or read this passage over the years? Maybe so many times that we’ve become a little impervious to it. Maybe we can hear something too much.

For example, as a group of us watched the 76ers basketball game last night, the commercials seemed endless. At one point Anne Marie asked me, “Would you ever buy that?”. Although I was staring at the commercial, I had no idea what it was saying. I had tuned it out and was looking right through it!

Here’s the thing: I could hear the commercial, but I wasn’t listening to it.

I think it’s like that with today’s parable and other scripture passages as well.

We’re probably not farmers. If you’re like me, the best you’ve done is to plant an orange seed in a ten-cent flower pot when you were kindergartners! So the parable might not catch our hearts when we hear it for the 100th time unless we have learned to listen as well as hear!

But when we listen to this parable we might realize that, maybe, for us:

  • the seed fell on the path and got devoured by birds that time when we let up on our dedicated prayer time and took up some useless distraction
  • the seed fell on rocky ground when we failed to study a politically charged issue in the light of the Gospel and instead got caught in a media-spun theory
  • the seed fell among thorns when we allowed our morality to be influenced by gossip, cheap judgments, self-serving agendas, or biased opinion
  • the seed fell on rich ground when we gave our spirits quiet time, prayer, good spiritual reading, the companionship of graced friends, and all the other holy kindnesses that can make us better persons

As I write this blog, it’s so cold where I live that, unless you had a jackhammer, you couldn’t even plant a seed. We don’t want our hearts to be like that. We want supple hearts, ready for the amazing graces God scatters over our lives daily. Let’s do the work to be ready.

Poetry: The Sower – William Cowper (1731 – 1800) was an English poet and Anglican hymnwriter.

One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him “the best modern poet”, whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem “Yardley-Oak”.

Cowper’s religious sentiment and association with John Newton (who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”) led to much of the poetry for which he is best remembered, and to the series of Olney Hymns. His poem “Light Shining out of Darkness” gave English the phrase: “God moves in a mysterious way/ His wonders to perform.” (Wikipedia)

Ye child of earth prepare the plough,
Break up your fallow ground;
The sower is gone forth to sow,
And scatter blessings round.
The seed that finds a stony soil
Shoots forth a hasty blade;
But ill repays the sower's toil,
Soon wither'd, scorch'd, and dead.
The thorny ground is sure to balk
All hopes of harvest there;
We find a tall and sickly stalk,
But not the fruitful ear.
The beaten path and highway side,
Receive the trust in vain;
The watchful birds the spoil divide,
And pick up all the grain.
But where the Lord of grace and power
Has bless'd the happy field,
How plenteous is the golden store
The deep-wrought furrows yield!
Father of mercies, we have need
Of thy preparing grace;
Let the same Hand that give me seed
Provide a fruitful place!

Music: Amazing Grace

Rise and Fall of Kings

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Scripture, spiritualityLeave a comment

Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children
Monday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
January 22, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012224.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings place us at watershed moments in the lives of David and Jesus.

All the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron and said:
“Here we are, your bone and your flesh.
In days past, when Saul was our king, 
it was you who led the children of Israel out and brought them back.
And the LORD said to you, ‘You shall shepherd my people Israel 
and shall be commander of Israel.’”
When all the elders of Israel came to David in Hebron, 
King David made an agreement with them there before the LORD, 
and they anointed him king of Israel.

2 Samuel 5:1-4

In 2 Samuel 5, David fully assumes the kingship through the approbation of the community. The scene marks the culmination of his rise to power and “the beginning of the rest of his life”.

Through our readings in Samuel until now, we have ascended with David to the pinnacle of his life. We are about to begin weeks of moving down “the other side of the mountain”.

Scholars generally see the David narrative in two primary units, the Rise of David (I Sam. 16:1—II Sam. 5:10) and the Succession Narrative (II Sam. 9:1—20:26; I Kings 1:1—2:46). Chapters 5:11—8:18, fall between two larger units. Whereas the first presents David in his ascendancy, the second presents David in his demise and expresses pathos and ambiguity. Our chapters thus come after the raw vitality of the rise of David and before the terrible pathos of the succession narrative. They show the painful process whereby this beloved chieftain is transformed into a hardened monarch, who now has more power than popular affection.

Walter Brueggemann: First and Second Samuel

In our Gospel, Jesus also comes to a sort of “continental divide”. But rather than community approbation, Jesus encounters the condemnation of the scribes who have come from Jerusalem to assess him.

The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, 
“He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and
“By the prince of demons he drives out demons.”

Mark 3: 22

From this moment in his life, Jesus too launches into his “kingship”, one that looks very different from David’s. The ensuing chapters of Samuel will reveal how David struggles and succumbs to the temptations of power and domination. The Gospels, on the other hand, describe Jesus’s “kingdom” as one of humility, mercy, and love for those who are poor and suffering.

Only through faith can we understand the inverse power of God present in the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, and in our own lives. Jesus, the “new David”, is anointed in the Spirit to reveal and incorporate us into the kingdom of God.

Prose: from Immanuel Jakobovits who was the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1967 to 1991.

To those without faith
there are no answers.
To those with faith, 
there are no questions.

Music: King David, music by Herbert Howells, sung by Sarah Connolly from a poem by Walter de la Mare

King David – Walter de la Mare

King David was a sorrowful man:
    No cause for his sorrow had he;
    And he called for the music of a hundred harps,
    To ease his melancholy.

    They played till they all fell silent:
    Played-and play sweet did they;
    But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David
    They could not charm away.

    He rose; and in his garden
    Walked by the moon alone,
    A nightingale hidden in a cypress-tree
    Jargoned on and on.

    King David lifted his sad eyes
    Into the dark-boughed tree-
    ''Tell me, thou little bird that singest,
    Who taught my grief to thee?'

    But the bird in no wise heeded
    And the king in the cool of the moon
    Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness,
    Till all his own was gone.

Grief, Honor, and Mercy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Faith, Forgiveness, friendship, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
January 20, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012024.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings center on the themes of grief, honor, and mercy.

In the passage from 2 Samuel, Saul has been killed in battle. The news is brought to David by a scheming Amalekite who (later verses reveal) hopes to profit from his enterprise. He has stripped Saul’s dead body of its kingly insignia, obsequiously depositing it at David’s feet. The messenger expects David’s vengeful rejoicing and a hefty reward.

Instead David, with reverence and honor appropriate to a future king, launches a deep public mourning for Saul and Jonathan. It is a bereavement necessary to both cleanse and heal the community’s heart from all the strife leading up to it.

David seized his garments and rent them, 
and all the men who were with him did likewise.
They mourned and wept and fasted until evening 
for Saul and his son Jonathan, 
and for the soldiers of the LORD of the clans of Israel, 
because they had fallen by the sword.

2 Samuel 1:11-12

David’s lament is profound; it is ”splancha”, sprung from his innards, like the anguish Jesus felt for the suffering persons he encountered, as described in our Gospel.

A callous or indifferent heart cannot comprehend such pathos. Seeing it in Jesus, even his relatives thought him insane!

Jesus came with his disciples into the house.
Again the crowd gathered,
making it impossible for them even to eat.
When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, 
for they said, “He is out of his mind.” 

Mark 3: 20-21

Our God is a God of boundless love 
and impractical mercy. 
David models a bit of that godliness. 
Jesus is its complete Incarnation.

Poetry: Talking to Grief – Denise Levertov

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.
You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

Music: Lascia Ch’io Pianga (Let Me Weep)- Georg Frideric Handel – a single piece of beautiful music today in two version, an aria and an instrumental interpretation.

Julia Lezhneva – soprano