Category: Jesus

Stretching for God

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

Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
November 21, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings are about living in the big picture of God’s vision for us.

Lk19_3 forest_trees

Once again, we meet Zacchaeus who, due to his short stature, was unable to get a glimpse of Jesus walking nearby. He wasn’t getting the whole picture but he wanted to!

Zacchaeus ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus,
who was about to pass that way.
When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said,
“Zacchaeus, come down quickly,
for today I must stay at your house.”
And he came down quickly and received him with joy.

Luke 19:4-5

Sometimes we miss Christ in our midst, don’t we? It may be because we’re “short” on time, patience, faith, attention, courage, peace, desire … you name it.

Zacchaeus may have been physically short, but he was tall in will and intention to see Jesus. The trees became his tools, not his obstacles.

In our first reading, Eleazar was a giant in the virtues necessary to “see beyond the trees” of his current circumstances. A more spiritually short-sighted person might have succumbed to the temptation to save himself at the cost of his faith and witness.

But Eleazar’s faith was long, both in years and in depth. He kept the eyes of his heart focused on that faith and was delivered beyond any short-sighted choices.

Eleazar made up his mind in a noble manner,
worthy of his years, the dignity of his advanced age,
the merited distinction of his gray hair,
and of the admirable life he had lived from childhood;
and so he declared that above all
he would be loyal to the holy laws given by God.

2 Maccabees 6:23

It’s hard sometimes to see the forest beyond the trees – to direct our choices, attitudes, and actions by a vision we glimpse only in the stretch of faith and prayer.

Perhaps these two God-seekers can inspire us today by their courage, steadfastness and faith to always live within God’s long eternal vision for us.

Zaccheus – by Richard Medrington

I hope you enjoy this clever poem as much as I did.

Here’s a man we all despise,
Damn his hide and damn his eyes.
Pray that God will some day free us,
From that loathsome leech Zacchaeus.
See him sitting at his table,
Takes as much tax as he’s able,
Stashes some away for later,
Dirty, double-dealing traitor.
Lord of liars, chief of crooks,
Look at how he cooks the books!
Renders what is ours to Caesar,
Cheating, money-grubbing geezer.
He’s the man we love to hate,
Vulgar, vapid reprobate,
Lounging in his lavish house,
Cringing toady, thieving louse.
Wonder how he got so rich?
Greedy, filching, little snitch.
We would lynch the poison gnome,
Were he not employed by Rome.
Then when Jesus comes to town,
See his smile turn to a frown!
Though he’s arrogant and proud,
He cannot see above the crowd.
How we laugh to see him squirm,
Nasty, creeping, crawling worm,
But here’s a thing not seen before:
A sell-out in a sycamore!
Now he’s shouting from the tree,
“Jesus, Jesus look at me!”
Hope he falls, the tiresome tyke,
Falls and lands upon a spike.
Careful Jesus. Don’t be conned,
Just ignore him, don’t respond.
Move on quickly, if you linger
He will twist you round his finger.
Then a voice rings loud and clear,
“Zack mate, get yourself down here!
I spy you in that sycamore,
And you’re the man I’m looking for.”
Now he’s off to have his dinner
With a man who is a sinner
And a traitor to our nation!
He’s gone down in our estimation.
Fraternising with our foe,
Of all the places he could go!
Who would think a man like that
Would take his meals with such a rat?
I beg your pardon, did you say
Zach’s giving half his wealth away?
Dispensing money to the poor?
This too has not been seen before.
And if he’s asked for too much tax
He’s giving fourfold rebates back?
Well, that’s amazing! If it’s true,
There’s going to be a massive queue.
I’m not that easy to deceive.
When I see it, I’ll believe.
He’ll fleece us when the Master’s gone,
It’s just another taxman’s con.
But Jesus says, “It is no scam,
He is a son of Abraham.
Salvation landed here today,
I seek for those who’ve gone astray,
And even though you think it strange,
Occasionally people change,
So do not look at him askance
But give the man a second chance.”
Of course at first this all seemed grand,
The thought of all that cash in hand!
But very soon we came to see
That nothing in this world is free.
In righteous wrath we had estranged him,
Then someone came along and changed him!
Thank you, Jesus. Smashing! Great!
Now there’s no one left to hate!
Since Zach is generous and kind
We’ve nothing left to hide behind.
He radiates with joy and thus
His kindly light exposes us.
His very presence seems to say,
“My life has changed from night to day.
Now tell me what is stopping you
From changing things in your life too?”
So here’s the source of our complaints:
Zacchaeus made us feel like saints,
But now we must admit it’s true
That we are rotten sinners too.
We pray that God will soon restore
Zacchaeus as he was before,
Or Jericho shall rue the day
That Jesus chose to pass this way.

Music: Zacchaeus – An oldie but goodie from Sister Miriam Therese Winter and the Medical Mission Sisters

Well Done!

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

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 19, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111923.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have reached the next-to-last Sunday of Liturgical Year 2023. It’s a time when the Church asks us to step back from our lives and take a good look at them – much in the way we would look at a painting or building project we have almost finished.

When a couple of us moved into a new apartment over thirty years ago, I was still pretty nimble and handy with home improvement projects. I decided to fit out an old closet space with new shelving. The project went really well until near the end when I stepped back and realized that the top shelf was too high for anybody to reach but six-foot me. The “aha moment” called for a lot of reassessment and redesign.

With today’s readings, we are encouraged to step back and take a look at our lives from the perspective of the end times. Have we done our best to make the pieces of our lives fit with God’s design? Are there elements we need to remove or re-order to come into alignment with God’s hope for us?

Kudos to the “worthy wife” from Proverbs! She seems to have gotten it right. Her “worthiness” is rooted in these virtues: goodness, hard work, care for those who are poor, natural sincerity, and reverence for God.

Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her a reward for her labors,
and let her works praise her at the city gates.

Proverbs 31:30-31

Paul’s Thessalonian community seems in good shape too. Paul says that they already are awake and well aware of the coming end times:

But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness,
for that day to overtake you like a thief.
For all of you are children of the light
and children of the day.
We are not of the night or of darkness.
Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do,
but let us stay alert and sober.

1 Thessalonians 5:4-6

Jesus tells the story of a few stewards, some who used their talents well and some who didn’t. He’s alerting us that we too have been given immeasurable gifts against which we will be measured at the end of our earthly lives.

This next-to-last Sunday poses some questions for us:

  • Did we bury our talents in selfishness looking to advantage only ourselves?
  • Or did we “reach out” like the worthy wife?
  • Did we live in light like the Thessalonians?
  • Like the good servant, did we double our graces by using them generously among our sisters and brothers?

Prose: from C.S. Lewis – The Weight of Glory – I will leave the bulk of your time today to this wonderful passage from Lewis, taken from a sermon preached originally in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on June 8, 1942.

When I began to look into this matter I was shocked to find such different Christians as Milton, Johnson and Thomas Aquinas taking heavenly glory quite frankly in the sense of fame or good report. But not fame conferred by our fellow creatures—fame with God, approval or (I might say) “appreciation’ by God. And then, when I had thought it over, I saw that this view was scriptural; nothing can eliminate from the parable the divine accolade, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” 

With that, a good deal of what I had been thinking all my life fell down like a house of cards. I suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child—not in a conceited child, but in a good child—as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. Not only in a child, either, but even in a dog or a horse. 

Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years. prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures— nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. 

I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration. But I thought I could detect a moment—a very, very short moment—before this happened, during which the satisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure. 

And that is enough to raise our thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex for ever will also drown her pride deeper than Prospero’s book. Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself; “it is not for her to bandy compliments with her Sovereign.” 

I can imagine someone saying that he dislikes my idea of heaven as a place where we are patted on the back. But proud misunderstanding is behind that dislike. In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised.

Music: Benedictus – Karl Jenkins

Swooped into God!

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

Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 17, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111723.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our two readings remind us that the journey into God is an ever-deepening passage to which we must continually open our hearts.

The Wisdom writer addresses those who sincerely seek God, but who cannot see beyond God’s handiwork. So they are satisfied to make gods of these created wonders:

All persons were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God,
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is,
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.

Wisdom 13:1-3

The writer seems astounded that these seekers get lost on their way to full knowledge of God:

For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see,
because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?

Wisdom 13: 7-9

I don’t find it so astounding. The invisible God we love and worship can be elusive, and the world through which we seek that God can be deeply distracting. I think it’s pretty easy to get stuck worshipping signs of God (which we can see) rather than God (Whom we cannot see). I think that’s what Jesus might have meant when he said, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

Our Gospel reading gives us a hint about truly seeking God. It’s a reading I have always found a little bit scary. As a child, I envisioned myself, or the dear person next to me, getting swooped up in some unexpected divine tornado. It wasn’t a comfortable image.

I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed;
one will be taken, the other left.
And there will be two women grinding meal together;
one will be taken, the other left.”
They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?”
He said to them, “Where the body is,
there also the vultures will gather.”

Luke 17: 34-37

I mean, really, this is nobody’s favorite scripture passage! But what can it teach us? Maybe this: just like the unfulfilled worshippers in our Wisdom passage, the folks Jesus describes were distracted by the necessities and frivolities of life. In their spiritual journeys, they had not fully opened their hearts to the holy expectation of God. When God comes in a swoop of Infinite Grace, they’re just not ready for the swooping!

In our readings today, both the Wisdom writer and Jesus are encouraging us to meet every life experience as an opportunity to move deeper into the mystery of God.

The Wise One tells us to look beyond the beautiful distractions of our lives into the One Who ordains them:

Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.

Wisdom 13:3

And Jesus very bluntly tells us that our visible experiences hold a deeper meaning that we will never know unless we yield our life fully to God’s transforming grace:

Whoever seeks to preserve their life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it.

Luke 17:33

Poetry: If only there were stillness, full, complete – Rainer Maria Rilke

If only there were stillness, full, complete.
If all the random and approximate
were muted, with neighbors’ laughter, for your sake,
and if the clamor that my senses make
did not confound the vigil I would keep —
Then in a thousandfold thought I could think
you out, even to your utmost brink,
and (while a smile endures) possess you, giving
you away, as though I were but giving thanks,
to all the living.

Music: Jessye Norman – Sanctus from Messe solennelle de Sainte Cécile in G major, by Charles Gounod

I never hear this piece without being awestruck by Ms. Norman’s magnificent voice. I had the great joy of meeting her and working with her briefly on a project over thirty years ago. She was majestic in every way. May she rest in Peace.

In Wisdom …

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, spirituality5 Comments

Thursday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 16, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111623.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have two beautiful readings. Like rich fruit from a fructuous tree, each word and phrase can be savored long and separately.

Our first reading offers the consummate description of Wisdom, the Spirit Who is of and with God. If you can, take time to mentally finger the words in the first reading, the way you would your rosary beads. Let the power of each syllable sink into your heart as you imagine the Unimaginable Beauty who is God:

In Wisdom is a spirit:

And then listen to Jesus as he speaks to the Pharisees (and to us) in our Gospel.

Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come,
Jesus said in reply,
“The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed,
and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’
For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”

Luke 17:20-21

Jesus tells us that this Incomprehensible Divinity, this Reign of Wisdom, is already among us in the Person of Jesus Christ made flesh among us. We are to look clearly and deeply into our lives to find the Face of God.

Prose: from Evolutionary Faith by Diarmuid O’Murchu

“It is time to outgrow . . .

our rational anthropocentric need to impose order, structure, and closure on every sphere of experience. Our fear of wild eroticism, of creative chaos, and of the radically new possibilities often condemns us to the imprisonment of our fretful imaginations, which then drive us to impulsive action and an irrational desire to dominate and control.

“It is time to embrace . . .

horizons that stretch our minds and hearts to their very limits, trusting that the creative Spirit, who breaks down all rigid boundaries and barriers, will spearhead a new relationality in which we and every other organism will rediscover its true cosmic and planetary identity.”

Music: yen of the Universe – Tim Janis

Outrageous Faith

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
Monday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 13, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111323.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have only three weeks left in Ordinary Time before Advent. Today, we begin a week of first readings from the beautifully written Book of Wisdom.

These will be counterpointed by readings from Luke 17, filled with familiar images like millstones, mustard seeds, ungrateful lepers, a grateful one, and the one plowman taken from a field while the shocked other is left.

While our Gospel readings call us to be alert to the end of time and the coming of the Reign of God, our Wisdom readings – while cautionary – stretch us beyond time to the awareness of an Eternal Love rooted in our own hearts:

For wisdom is a kindly spirit,
yet she acquits not the blasphemer of their guilty lips;
Because God is the witness of the inmost self
and the sure observer of the heart
and the listener to the tongue.
For the Spirit of the Lord fills the world,
is all-embracing, and knows what the human heart says.

Wisdom 1: 6-7

In our Gospel, Jesus calls us to model goodness, practice forgiveness, and exercise an outrageous faith.

And the Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”
The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you would say to this mulberry tree,
‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Luke 17: 5-6

Perhaps we’re not really too interested in throwing a mulberry tree into the sea, but let’s desire to live our faith so fully that the world considers us outrageously foolish for the sake of Christ.

Thinking about that this morning, I remember dear Mr. Stein, the owner of the delicatessen where I worked throughout my high school years. The Stein family loved me and all were so kind to me. But when I told them I would be leaving to enter the convent, they were shocked and terribly upset. You would have thought I was leaving for a life sentence in Sing Sing! Mr. Stein took me aside and said, “Renee, please don’t be so foolish and waste your life! I’ll buy you a new car if you don’t go!”

Besides the fact that I didn’t drive at the time, Mr. Stein’s offer didn’t sway me. I knew the treasure I had found. I just hoped that, watching my life unfold over the coming years, Mr. Stein (and quite a few other skeptics!) might recognize the treasure too.
(P.S. I didn’t learn to drive for almost another twenty years!)

Poetry: The Mustard Seed – Meister Eckhart

I.

In the Beginning
High above understanding
Is ever the Word.
O rich treasure,
There the Beginning always bore the Beginning.
O Father’s Breast,
From thy delight
The Word ever flows!
Yet the bosom
Retains the Word, truly.

II.

From the two as one source,
The fire of love.
The bond of both,
Known to both,
Flows the All-Sweet Spirit
Co-equal,
Undivided
The Three are One.
Do you understand why? No.
It best understands itself.

III.

The bond of three
Causes deep fear.
Of this circle
There is no understanding.
Here is a depth without ground.
Check and mate
To time, forms, place!
The wondrous circle
Is the Principle,
Its point never moves.

IV.

The mountain of this point
Ascend without activity.
O intellect!
The road leads you
Into a marvelous desert,
So broad, so wide,
It stretches out immeasurably.
The desert has,
Neither time nor place,
Its mode of being is singular.

V.

The good desert
No foot disturbs it,
Created being
Never enters there:
It is, and no one knows why.
It is here, it is there,
It is far, it is near,
It is deep, it is high,
It is in such a way
That it is neither this nor that.

VI.

It is light, it is clear,
It is totally dark,
It is unnamed,
It is unknown,
Free of beginning or end.
It stands still,
Pure, unclothed.
Who knows its dwelling?
Let him come forth
And tells us what sort it is.

VII.

Become like a child,
Become deaf, become blind.
Your own something
Must become nothing;
Drive away all something, all nothing!
Leave place, leave time,
Avoid even image!
Go without a way
On the narrow path,
Then you will find the desert’s track.

VIII.

O my soul,
Go out, let God in!
Sink all my something
In God’s nothing.
Sink in the bottomless flood!
If I flee from You,
You come to me.
If I lose myself,
Then I find You,
O Goodness above being!

Music: This Ancient Love – Carolyn McDade

“Hate” Enough to Love Completely

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, justice, Mercy, spirituality1 Comment

Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
November 8, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110823.cfm

Roman13_8 owe nothing

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Paul and Jesus seem to give us contradictory messages. Paul talks about love, and Jesus tells us what we must “hate” – a bit of a challenge to untangle the core message.

Here’s one way.

We don’t like Jesus telling us to “hate” anything, as in:

If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:26

Come on, Jesus! You don’t mean that do you – my sweet mom, my precious kids???

No, the scholars say, Jesus doesn’t mean “hate” the way we interpret it in modern English. He is using the common, hyperbolic language of the ancient East which, in this circumstance, would mean “love less or without bias”.

So what is Jesus really saying? 

This.

We love many people and things in our lives. But we must love God, and God’s dream for all people, above and within all things. 

And that’s not easy! Life is a maze of relationships and situations that can get us very confused about what is most important. That’s why Jesus uses such strong language to remind us that there is only one way through the maze: to love as God loves. This is the heartbeat of our life in God!

Paul says this too, indicating as well how to negotiate the maze by keeping Love’s commandments.

We have such a critical example of this love-hate dynamic in our world just now. The terrible situation in the Holy Land has brought out radical feelings in people all over the world. People who love Israel and abhor violence are disgusted and furious over the attack against the Israeli people. People who love and pity the Palestinians, who have been suppressed into human desperation for decades, are equally disgusted and furious over the mass revenge being wrought upon innocents in Gaza and the West Bank.

I think Jesus would say this to us: You must “hate” those human relationships enough to make you not take sides in this horror. You must look past blood ties and religious ties. You must look to the human person, God’s creature like you who is the innocent victim of political forces. You must add to the voice for justice, mercy, and humane solutions.

No matter how far we may feel from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, each one of us is at a point of moral discernment regarding them. As massive funding is poured into weapons of war, how do we respond to the ongoing massacre of innocent people? I ask myself what is required of me as a citizen of the world to make my voice heard in this unspeakable tragedy.

If we love with God’s love, of course we will love those we cherish. But we will love them selflessly, with an infinite generosity that always chooses their eternal good. And we will try always to love all Creatures in the same way, seeking to the degree that is possible their well-being and peace. This is the kind of love Jesus taught us on the Cross. May God give us the courage to learn.

Prose: Remarks of Pope Francis at the Angelus on October 15, 2023

Dear brothers and sisters, I continue to follow with great sorrow what is happening in Israel and Palestine. I think again of the many people … in particular of the children and the elderly. I renew my appeal for the release of the hostages, and I strongly ask that children, the sick, the elderly, women, and all civilians not be made victims of the conflict. May Humanitarian Law be respected, especially in Gaza, where it is urgent and necessary to ensure humanitarian corridors and to come to the aid of the entire population. Brothers and sisters, many have already died. Please, let no more innocent blood be shed, neither in the Holy Land nor in Ukraine, nor in any other place! Enough! Wars are always a defeat, always!

Prayer is the meek and holy force to oppose the diabolical force of hatred, terrorism and war.

Music: Ubi Caritas performed by Stockholm University Choir (texts below)

Latin Text

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exsultemus, et in ipso jucundemur.
Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Simul ergo cum in unum congregamur:
Ne nos mente dividamur, caveamus.
Cessent iurgia maligna, cessent lites.
Et in medio nostri sit Christus Deus.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Simul quoque cum beatis videamus,
Glorianter vultum tuum, Christe Deus:
Gaudium quod est immensum, atque probum,
Saecula per infinita saeculorum. Amen.

English Translation
Where charity and love are, God is there.
Love of Christ has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice in Him and be glad.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And from a sincere heart let us love one.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
At the same time, therefore, are gathered into one:
Lest we be divided in mind, let us beware.
Let evil impulses stop, let controversy cease.
And in the midst of us be Christ our God.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
At the same time we see that with the saints also,
Thy face in glory, O Christ our God:
The joy that is immense and good,
Unto the World without end. Amen.

Phat Phylacteries!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality1 Comment

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 5, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110523.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings perfectly complement one another delivering a clear message: all leadership, including spiritual leadership, requires the disciplines of humility, honesty, justice, mercy, and love.

These disciplines are so easy to lose in the euphoria of power and the delusions of superiority. Malachi, prophet of the 5th century before Christ, vehemently points this out. Speaking for God, the prophet states:

O priests, … I will send a curse upon you
and of your blessing I will make a curse.
You have turned aside from the way,
and have caused many to falter by your instruction;
you have made void the covenant of Levi,
says the LORD of hosts.
I, therefore, have made you contemptible
and base before all the people,
since you do not keep my ways,
but show partiality in your decisions.

Malachi 2:2

Five hundred years later, Jesus echoes the rebuke to his own generation:

Do not follow the example of the scribes and Pharisees.
For they preach but they do not practice.
They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry
and lay them on people’s shoulders,
but they will not lift a finger to move them.
All their works are performed to be seen.
They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.
They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues,
greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’

Matthew 23: 3-7

What are phylacteries anyway, and what is Jesus talking about when he describes them as widened?

The wearing of phylacteries in Jewish practice is similar to Christians wearing crosses or being signed with ashes on Ash Wednesday, All of these devotional acts are intended to demonstrate one’s faith and invite others to faithful practice. But when exaggerated, such practices draw attention to oneself rather than to the faith. It is often an attempt to proclaim the superiority of one’s faith perhaps because, in our hearts, we are unsure of it.

Jesus says that such exaggerated devotion is unnecessary when our lives speak for themselves, demonstrating faith through our works of mercy.

You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers.
Call no one on earth your father;
you have but one Father in heaven.
Do not be called ‘Master’;
you have but one master, the Christ.
The greatest among you must be your servant.
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;
but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Matthew 23: 8-12

We are all leaders at some level in our lives — parents, teachers, supervisors, politicians, clinicians, and everyone who has influence over another’s life. In each of these roles, our soul’s lens can be turned toward ourselves, or it can be turned in merciful care toward the other. The way we effectively turn the lens is to continually deepen ourselves in the greatest commandment: Love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself.

Poetry: Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – Emily Dickinson

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

Music: Where I Find God – Larry Fleet

The night I hit rock bottom, sittin’ on an old barstool
He paid my tab and put me in a cab, but he didn’t have to
But he could see I was hurtin’, oh, I wish I’d got his name
‘Cause I didn’t feel worth savin’, but he saved me just the same

That day out on the water, when the fish just wouldn’t bite
I put my pole down, I floated around, was just so quiet
And I could hear my old man sayin’ “Son, just be still
‘Cause you can’t find peace like this in a bottle or a pill”

From a bar stool to that Evinrude
Sunday mornin’ in a church pew
In a deer stand or a hay field
An interstate back to Nashville
A Chevrolet with the windows down
Me and him just ridin’ around
Sometimes, whether I’m lookin’ for Him or not
That’s where I find God

Sometimes late at night, I lie there and listen
To the sound of her heart beatin’
And the song the crickets are singin’
And I don’t know what they’re sayin’
But it sounds like a hymn to me
Naw, I ain’t too good at prayin’
But thanks for everything

From a bar stool, to that Evinrude
Sunday mornin’ in a church pew
In a deer stand or a hay field
An interstate back to Nashville
A Chevrolet with the windows down
Me and him just ridin’ around
Sometimes, whether I’m lookin’ for Him or not
That’s where I find God

From a bar stool, to that Evinrude
Sunday mornin’ in a church pew
In a deer stand or a hay field
An interstate back to Nashville
A Chevrolet with the windows down
Me and him just ridin’ around
Talkin’, well I do that a lot
Well, I do that a lot
That’s where I find God

But They Kept Silent

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

Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
November 3, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110323.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as we read our scriptures for the day, we sense that both Jesus and Paul suffer heartbreak for those who resist the Gospel.

Brothers and sisters:
I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie;
my conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness
that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ
for the sake of my own people,
my kindred according to the flesh.

Romans 9:1-3

Paul expresses his deep regret that his own people, the Israelites, resist the Messiah who is God’s final gift to them in a long line of unique blessings:

They are children of Israel;
theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants,
the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;
theirs the patriarchs, and from them,
according to the flesh, is the Christ,
who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

Romans 9:4-5

In our Gospel, Jesus encounters a man with a withered hand. From the get-go, Jesus plans to heal the suffering man, but he decides to use the occasion to teach the Pharisees a lesson.

Jesus invites the scholars and Pharisees to move beyond the written Law and into the true practice of its spirit:

Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking,
“Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?”
But they kept silent; so he took the man and,
after he had healed him, dismissed him.
Then he said to them
“Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern,
would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”
But they were unable to answer his question.

Luke 14: 5-6

What Jesus asked was apparently too much for them. They were so encrusted in the worldly benefits the Law had brought them that they couldn’t challenge themselves to hear Jesus’s message. So they were silent – they gave no response to the divine invitation to life-giving change.

And to be fair to the Pharisees, Jesus’s invitation was a huge challenge. Their lives had become entirely dependent on a system that had lost its true meaning. The Law no longer led them to God but to themselves. They had lost the way through the woods, as you will see in Kipling’s poem below.

There are many levels on which we can pray with this passage. We are surely aware of the same kind of resistant silences in ourselves and in our world.

We may be caught in a sort of personal woods where we can’t make our way through to a life-giving choice or, like the Pharisees, to an inclusive, merciful understanding.

Or we may see this kind of entrapment happening in a beloved’s life.

Or we may see the atrophic effects of dead, unreviewed laws in our country, world, and Church. Failing to adapt laws that have lost their true spirit allows us to normalize outrageous behaviors based on manufactured”legality”. The image of a 16-year-old carrying an AK-47 down a neighborhood street, “legally” shooting unarmed protesters, comes to my mind!

All of these situations arise when we are entwined in a system that no longer gives life. The spirit and energy of the Gospel is the key to our un-entwining. Let’s pray for it in ourselves and in our very knotted world.

Poetry: The Way Through the Woods – Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

Music: Dave Eggar – Fallen Leaves

Raised Up!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, healing, Jesus, Mercy, spirituality2 Comments

Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
October 30, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/103023.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 68 which pictures a triumphant God, rising like the sun over the darkness of evil.

Arise, O God, and let your enemies be scattered;
let those who hate you flee.
Let them vanish like smoke when the wind drives it away; 
as the wax melts at the fire,
so let the wicked perish at your presence.

Psalm 68:1-3

This psalm comforts us with a tender picture of God:

Protector of orphans, defender of widows,
the One who dwells in holiness,
who gives the solitary a home
and brings forth prisoners into freedom;
but the rebels shall live in dry places.

Psalm 68: 5-6

It is the same tenderness Paul presents in our first reading:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
The Spirit bears witness with our spirit
that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…
if only we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 8:8-9

And there we have the key line: 
we are to live a life aligned with 
the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.

And what will that kind of life look like? It will look like our merciful Jesus of today’s Gospel – who stepped out to see, comfort, and heal the suffering around him.

Jesus recognized the crippled woman as “an heir of God, and joint heir with him” to the fullness of life in God. We are called to recognize ourselves and all of our sisters and brothers in the same way.

Poetry: WOMAN UN-BENT (LUKE 13:10–17) – by 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.

Video: Jesus Heals the Bent-over Woman

If you’d still like a little music, this one seems to fit: Spirit Touch by Joseph Akins

It’s That Simple

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

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 29, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102923.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings instruct us on how to love God. Now maybe you think you don’t need any help on that topic, and maybe you’re right. But — just maybeeeeee – you and I are a little bit like the folks in our passage from Exodus who sometimes forgot that the way to love God is to love neighbor.

“You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. 
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. 
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry. 

Exodus 22;21-22

It seems that these Exodus folks suffer from spiritual obtusity. They are a little forgetful of who they really are. They forget their roots – that they were once aliens themselves. They forget that widows and orphans matter as much as they do. They forget that their neighbor needs a cloak (or a home) to be able to sleep at night.

So God tells them, “Hey, I love these people you have conveniently “forgotten”. So don’t pretend you love me if you don’t love them.” It’s that simple.

In our Gospel, Jesus basically says the same thing. When the brilliant Pharisee tries to trap Jesus in an obtuse intellectual argument, Jesus disarms him with a clear and simple response:

Jesus said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40

The whole enterprise of the spiritual life is to actualize Jesus’s response in one’s life. In the process of doing that by our response to God’s grace, we might sometimes get caught in spiritual forgetfulness, intellectual excuses, or the blare of a dissonant culture.

In our second reading, Paul commends the Thessalonians for having done well in this spiritual endeavor. They did it by replacing what was idolatrous in their lives with the living and true God:

You turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.

1 Thessalonians 1:9-10

I don’t like to think of myself as particularly idolatrous, but I do have little false gods pop up in my life at times. They tend to wear the deceptive costumes of the seven deadly sins convincing me that I have a right, or at least an excuse, to ignore my neighbor for the sake of my egotism, possessiveness, or spiritual laziness.

May today’s readings wake us up to anything we need to hear within them so that we may freely sing with today’s psalmist:

I love you, my true God, my strength,
my neighbor God, present in my life,
my balance, safety, comforter.
My God, my dear steady God,
my protection, well of my salvation,
my trustworthy Friend!
I praise You because, with You,
I am safe from any false god
and anointed by your grace
for the journey.

Psalm 18: my prayerful adaptation

Poetry: You, Neighbor God – Rainer Maria Rilkë

You, neighbor god, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe
and know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.
The wall is builded of your images.
They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.
And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.

Music: Overcome – Psalm 18 – James Block

This song renders the Psalm in a beautiful melody. The Psalm, however, retains the militant images so prevalent in the culture of ancient Israel (and sadly in our own). Our task, as we listen and pray these Psalms, is to hear those images as metaphors for our own spiritual challenges and blessings, rather than as an approbation of war and domination.