Category: justice

Happy Mercy Day!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Gospel, justice, Mercy, spirituality6 Comments

Monday, September 24, 2018

       Readings: Click here for readings

Today, as the Mercy Family throughout the world celebrates Mercy Day, we praise and thank God for the call given to Venerable Catherine McAuley to respond to God’s grace by founding the Sisters of Mercy.

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On September 24, 1827, Catherine used an unexpected inheritance to open a house for poor and homeless women in Dublin. It began with two, Catherine and Mary Ann Doyle – and that small, vibrant fire has lit the hearts of millions ever since.

Many of you, dear readers, carry that fire and will know Catherine’s story well. But some still unfamiliar with her life might want to explore this website:

https://www.mercyworld.org/catherine/introducing-catherine/

For those of us who treasure a share in Catherine’s call, today’s readings from Proverbs and Psalms offer a picture of what mercy in action looks like. Luke’s Gospel exhorts us that our Mercy light should be raised up to shine for all those seeking refuge from a darkness- whether it be poverty, sickness, ignorance or any kind of isolation or oppression.

To gain courage and energy for that shining, let us reach through time for Catherine’s hand, telling her how we share her dream for God’s Mercy for all Creation. Let us ask her to enliven us each morning with the same passion for justice, the same compassionate tenderness, the same welcoming heart by which she showed others the love of God.

Are there not moments when we are overwhelmed by the Mercy of God welling up within us and around us, flowing from good hearts over the world’s needs? We see and bless this grace in each other, dear Family, as we thank God this day to be called “Mercy”.

May each of your lives be richly blessed and marked by Mercy!

Today, I thought you might enjoy this powerful poem by Denise Levertov.
The music link is beneath it.
❤️ Happy and blessed Mercy Day to all.


To Live in the Mercy of God

To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
before ribs of shelter
open!

To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.

And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.

To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.

To float, upheld,
as salt water
would hold you,
once you dared.

To live in the mercy of God.
To feel vibrate the enraptured
waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
to clenched fists of rock.

Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.

To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?

Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
flung on resistance.
———-

Music: Mercy ~ Matt Redman

Does God Have Favorites?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, justice, Mercy, spirituality, suffering2 Comments

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

       Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091218.cfm

Lk6_beatitudesJPG

Today, in Mercy, our readings might lead us to wonder, “Does God have favorites?”

I think Luke’s Gospel today says, “Well, yes, kinda’!”

This passage from Luke is a parallel to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Matthew includes the familiar Eight Beatitudes, delivered in spiritual tones which allow most of us find ourselves somewhere among them. Matthew talks about the “poor in spirit”, the meek, mourning and merciful. At least once in our lives, we probably fall into one of Matthew’s “blessed” categories. Doing so let’s us think we might be among God’s favorites or blessed ones — at least sometimes, right?

But hold up, here comes Luke with a whole different take on blessedness. Luke says just the plain poor, hungry, weeping and hated are blessed. Luke’s sanctifying suffering is material, not just spiritual. Luke suggests that the destitute, bereft and ostracized are clearly God’s favorites.

What does that say to us? I don’t know about you, but I’m not real anxious to join Luke’s blessed group. I don’t like the feeling of poor, hungry, weeping and hated! On the other hand, I do want to be one of God’s favorites, don’t you?

What I think we can do is this: 

  • to love the poor and materially broken as God loves them
  • to do all we can to bring them comfort and healing, mercy and justice 
  • to learn from them what it is like to stand before God with nothing between us but longing and hope
  • to look at our own materially abundant life with a critical eye and discerning heart
  • to see any darkness we endure in the light of God’s illuminating promise
  • to be grateful, humble, and open to the transforming graces God might offer us even in suffering

Music: Blessings ~ Laura Story

Would God Divorce Us?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, Holy Spirit, justice, repentance, spirituality1 Comment

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072818.cfm

Today, in Mercy, we hear from Jeremiah, a “sock-it-to-‘em” prophet. He lived in a disastrous time for Judah, and had to deliver some difficult challenges to the people. Today’s passage is called the Temple Sermon. It confronts his listeners with the fact that there is a big difference between their professed faith and their daily practice. In other words, they are living a lie.

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The people seem to think that no matter how idolatrous or immoral their choices are, the Temple building will protect them from God’s anger. It’s a mentality that might remind us of the film “The Godfather”, where the mafioso kill and cheat all week but always fulfill their sacramental obligations.

God tells Jeremiah to go stand at the Temple gate and tell the people that their fake piety won’t work. Instead they are to:

  • thoroughly reform their ways and deeds
  • deal justly with their neighbor
  • no longer oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow
  • no longer shed innocent blood in this place (cease human sacrifice)
  • or follow strange gods to their own harm

Otherwise, Jeremiah says, they risk losing God because God will not live in a desecrated Temple.

The message to us that comes wrapped in the ancient words of Jeremiah?

  • Examine your life.
  • Is our faith sincere, proven by our practices?
  • Do we give others not only the benefit of the doubt, but also the benefit of our kindness?
  • Do we support and foster immigrants, orphans, widows … in other words the vulnerable?
  • Do we stand against the suffering of innocents caused by war and unjust policy?
  • Do we resist the “gods” competing for our souls — all the destructive isms and addictions of our time?

Otherwise, Jeremiah says, we risk losing God because God will not live in a heart-temple that is desecrated.

Music: Fill This Temple – Don Moen

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r1CIpLFywdc

Called to Be Prophets

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Gospel, holiness, Hope, justice, spirituality3 Comments

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070818.cfm

Today, in Mercy, our readings bring us the great prophets Ezekiel, Paul, and the Ultimate prophet, Jesus.

How did they become prophets? When they were little guys, how did they answer the perennial question, “What do you want to be when you grow up”? Unlikely that they responded, “A prophet, of course!” Probably it was something like a camel rider, a carpenter, or a farmer. So what changed them?

All three, by heritage and practice, were steeped in the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. As they grew up into the oppressive, idolatrous worlds of their particular time, the scriptural promises gave each of them hope. They developed, as the theologian Walter Brueggemann describes it, “the capacity to imagine the world seen through the eyes of … God.”

HOPE

This kind of vision is not unknown to our times. A few years ago, it was very popular to ask, “WWJD? – What would Jesus do?” Some people even wore bracelets and medallions of the letters to remind them to look at life through Jesus’ eyes.

Although a bit simplistic, it’s still a good visual reminder. What is less evident is the implied thought that we must KNOW Jesus well enough to UNDERSTAND what He would do. A casual acquaintance won’t do the trick here. Prophets are intimate with God through prayer and the works of mercy. Over years of faithful practice, they have come truly to see the world as God sees it. They beat with God’s heart.

A prophet is profoundly realistic about the world’s ills, heartbroken for those who suffer, but nonetheless convinced that God will make something amazingly beautiful for God’s People. This conviction impels them to live, speak and act  for this Godly vision.

We too are called to live with this kind of prophetic hope. It is not easy in our fractured world. But it is possible. Let today’s three Great Ones inspire and teach us.

Music: A Hymn to Hope from “The Secret Garden”

 

The Fifth of July

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, justice, Thanksgiving9 Comments

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070518.cfm

(May I digress today with a reflection I wrote a few years ago?)

The Fifth of July

Any fireworks in your neighborhood tonight?  Any parades outside your window? Probably not.  After all the speeches, sparklers and spectaculars, the “Next Day” dawns.  I wonder what it was like for Jefferson, Franklin and Adams on Jul7 5, 1776.  Did they wake up thinking, Declaration of Independence – signed.  Now, make it happen?

Angry Cartoon Colonial Man

When you get right down to it, most of our days are 5ths, 6ths, 7ths and 8ths of July.  They are the days after graduation when we need to get a job.  They are the days after the honeymoon when somebody needs to cook dinner and take out the trash.  They are the days after the promotion when the first deadline looms and a bunch of faces are looking to you for the plan.

If the 4th of July is Independence Day, the 5th is Dependability Day, a day to celebrate the people we can always count on.  They are there for the parades but they also stay around for the clean up afterward. They light the spark for the fireworks, but they have a hose nearby just in case. They put their “John Hancock” on the brave new dream, and they show up the next morning to design its daunting execution.

The 5th of July is a day to celebrate our own sense of responsibility or “Dependability” – to realize that most of us really do try to be good spouses, parents, employees, neighbors, sons, daughters and friends; that we do keep making the effort every day to be someone for others and not just for ourselves. It is a day to look around at the people in our lives and be grateful that most of them are trying to do the same thing.

Like Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, we all need to wake up the next day, consider the “dependabilities”in our lives, and put our shoulders to the task of making a better world. Each of our lives is its own small country where the future really depends on how we show up on our 5th of Julys. The fact that you get up every day and engage that challenge is cause for its own celebration.  So if you have a little sparkler left in your back yard, light it for yourself tonight – and for your spouse, your boss, your kids, your colleagues – who all showed up today to do the best they could on the 5th of July.

Music: To wake you up for this July 5th, the inimitable Andre Crouch – You Can Depend on Me, Lord

 

 

God Bless America

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Gospel, inclusivity, justice5 Comments

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070418.cfm

bike wheel

The Fourth of July in 1955 looked like this to me:

• red, white and blue crêpe paper strung through my bicycle wheels
• an open fire hydrant at the height of the hot afternoon
• about six firecrackers, fizzling off a neighbor’s doorstep
• hot dogs, Kool-Aid and catching fireflies after sunset

We gathered our families, hoisted the flag, prayed for loved ones lost in a war too fresh to reflect on. We listened to music by John Philip Souza. We felt safe, strong, comfortable and grateful to be Americans. But my 10-year old America was very small.

It was an America before Civil Rights, Medicare and Medicaid; before the Kennedy and King assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate. It pre-dated Roe v. Wade, drug wars, mass shootings, 9/11, global warming, and marriage equality. It was a world without internet, cable news and Twitter.

It was a simple, circumscribed world that we will never see again. So we should stop trying, because it was not a perfect world.  Its wounds and warts were about to fester. We have spent the intervening half-century doctoring ourselves for its recurring symptoms, never able to acknowledge the systemic cause of our pain.

For what it’s worth, here’s my diagnosis: Americans are afraid of God, and it’s making us sick.

But why are we so afraid?

Contrary to the long-held opinions of some, modern evidence suggests that God is not male, not white, not a warrior, not rich, and not even American! And this scares some of us to death! We need that kind of God to justify our greed, domination and global arrogance.

Zora

So we keep creating the God we need. He carries an AK-47 and has a nuclear button under his fingertip. He builds walls to control people who are poor, hungry, and shades of brown. He stratifies people based on wealth, whiteness and worth to the system. He believes America should be first, and the rest of the world last. He reshapes religion into a vehicle for his own heartless caricature.

If we could just gain our independence from this idolatrous God, we might have better reason to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Today’s reading from the Book of Amos tells us what this liberating God wants:

Seek good and not evil, that you may live;
Then truly will the LORD, the God of hosts, be with you as you claim!
Hate evil and love good, and let mercy prevail at the border;
Then it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will have pity on you.

I hate, I spurn your feasts, says the LORD; I take no pleasure in your solemnities;
Your false prayers I will not accept. Away with your noisy songs!
But if you would truly honor Me, then let justice surge like water,
and mercy like an unfailing stream.

Music: God Bless America

Where Is Your Treasure?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Gospel, Jesus, justice, Truth3 Comments

Friday, June 22, 2018

Readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062218.cfm

Today, in Mercy, Jesus continues to teach us how to live a truly Gospel life. He does it with two small sermons and closes each with a blockbuster statement.

Mt6_19_23

Have you ever sat in church, suffering through a rambling sermon that never got to the point? Then you can understand the beauty and effectiveness of these statements of Jesus:

Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

If the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.

The first statement leaves us to ponder what really matters to us. Where do we spend our time, talent and treasure? If we say we love God and God’s vulnerable ones, do our “investments” prove it?

The second statement challenges us to be profoundly honest, to stop naming as “good” only that which is self-serving. We see blatant examples of this in our political life: policies and tactics tied to greedy, prejudiced outcomes – outcomes fed by the suffering and oppression of vulnerable human beings. These tactics challenge us to look at our own heart and test what we proclaim as “light”.

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Peaceful Defiance

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Gospel, justice, Mercy, peace3 Comments

Monday, June 18, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061818.cfm

Today, in Mercy, we encounter one of the most difficult passages of the Gospel – the admonitions to turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile. 

Wow, these go against every natural instinct (at least mine! 👿) If someone slaps me, I’m slapping back! If someone grabs my goods, forces my labor, or has the guts to borrow my necessities, I’m gonna’ resist! What about you? Even the Book of Exodus supports “an eye for an eye” kind of justice, right? Well, Jesus says, “No, not right!”. 

In this passage, Jesus shatters our natural inclinations for retribution, retaliation and even self-preservation. 

He says that when we are struck or insulted, we should not respond in kind. Rather we should continue to stand our ground without being diverted into the violence of the attacker.  

He says that when laws are used unjustly against us, we should not respond in kind. Rather, we should stand our ground and expose the unjust law by our willingness to engage it in the public forum.

He says that when unrecompensateded work is demanded of us, we should give it and more, thus doubly exposing the demander’s offense.

He says that to turn our back on a borrower, no matter how inopportune, is a form of violence against the borrower.

What Jesus is asking of us is a non-violent response to the insults and outrages thrown at us. But He is not asking us to be victims or doormats. Each of the admonitions instructs us not to ignore evil, but to respond to it with positive, peaceful strength.

defiant

Jesus himself is the quintessential example of this prophetic, non-violent lifestyle. He condemned evil for what it was, but he did not adopt its methods to do so.

Eileen Campbell

Sister of Mercy Eileen Campbell, arrested at the White House
for peaceful protest of inhumane immigration policies.

Recent history offers us stellar examples of individuals who have understood and practiced this Gospel passage: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, Berta Cáceres, and other modern peace activists – ordinary Christians like you and me.

They have heard and responded to today’s Gospel. Can we?

Radical Benediction

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Faith, Gospel, holiness, Jesus, justice1 Comment

Monday, June 11, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061118.cfm

Today, in Mercy, we begin several weeks of readings from Matthew’s Gospel. In today’s passage, Jesus starts out by turning the world upside-down!

Blessed 6_11_18

In the earlier chapters of his Gospel, Matthew has set the tone for the announcement of Jesus’ message – a new reign of grace and glory. The crowds gather in great anticipation. Most are overwhelmed and beleaguered by life under Roman occupation. Many hope for a political Messiah who will deliver them from their current circumstances, returning to them the material control of their lives. 

Instead, Jesus announces that:

“The kingdom of God can only be received by empty hands. Jesus warns against
(a) worldly self-sufficiency: you trust yourself and your own resources and don’t need God
(b) religious self-sufficiency: you trust your religious attitude and moral life and don’t need Jesus.”
~ Michael H. Crosby, Spirituality of the Beatitudes: Matthew’s Vision for the Church in an Unjust World

We are so used to hearing the Beatitudes that they may have become tamed for us — lovely consolations to the downtrodden that things will eventually be OK. On the contrary, the Sermon on the Mount proclaims a shocking message to those gathered with Jesus — AND to us. The radical blessedness of life is to be found within our ordinary joys and sorrows, embraced humbly, faithfully and joyfully.  It is to be found in right-relationship with all Creation, not in any kind of dominance by one over another – political, economic, or personal.

The poor in spirit, the meek, the bereaved, the justice-seekers, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted: Jesus says these people are blessed – even FORTUNATE – because there are no barriers between them and the fullness of God. Power, prestige and possessions block us, perhaps even cripple us, from our shared immersion in God’s ever-present love and grace.

It is likely that many who gathered on that Galilean Hill didn’t want to hear Jesus’ astonishing message. Their myopic vision of prosperity was turned upside down. They were challenged to an unexpected, comfort-shattering, radical blessedness. Would they accept the challenge? Will we?

Music:  Blessings ~ Laura Story