Category: Lent

If…

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, Lent, spirituality3 Comments

Saturday after Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021724.cfm

Thus says the LORD:
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.

Isaiah 58:9-11

So many critical aspects of our lives hinge on the word “If”!

  • If not
  • If so
  • If only
  • If I had
  • If I hadn’t
  • If just

That critical “if” reminds us that all life is about relationship. It is about how we and the one with whom we are in relationship respond to each other. It is about choosing and deciding. And remember, as one of my early favorite theologians famous said:

Not to decide is to decide.

Harvey Cox in “On Not Leaving It To the Snake”

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We are in constant relationship with God Whose Breath is the source of our life. Our life should be an act of reverence for that gift, responding always to God’s hope for us. Isaiah puts some of those hopes into words for us today. In our prayer, we might hear God whisper special “ifs” to us as we open our life and heart before God’s love and mercy.

Poetry: If by Rudyard Kipling

I know this poem came to your mind as soon as you saw today’s picture – right? Well, here it is.

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
   With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
 and you will be a Woman, precious one! (my addition, I think Rudyard would be grateful))

Music: Whispering Sea – Tony O’Connor

Fasting

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Discipleship, Faith, Lent, spirituality2 Comments

Friday after Ash Wednesday
February 16, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021624.cfm

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

Isaiah 58:6-9

In today’s passage from Isaiah, we are given clear instructions about fasting – some forms of this practice matter more than others.

Depriving oneself of physical comforts is an ancient practice of penance. It is intended to make us more prayerfully aware of the dynamic of sin and grace in our lives. But obviously, it is a self-centered spiritual practice.

Our reading tells us that God desires an other-centered fasting – the practice of mercy toward our sisters and brothers. And Isaiah is clear about who those needy brethren are.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy

In order to practice this mercy-centered fasting, there must be touch-points in our lives where we meet those in need. Today, we might examine our lives for our degree of insulation or isolation from society’s needy ones. We may isolate them by our attitudes, by our prejudices, by our physical distance, or perhaps just by our indifference.

Let’s ask ourselves today, “How might I reach out in prayer, service, and tenderness toward those who are in need of mercy?”

Poetry: Fasting – translated from Rumi

There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.

Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Spirit. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents,
Jesus' table.

Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

Music: Forty Days and Forty Nights

Forty days and forty nights
You were fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled.

Shall not we your sorrow share
And from worldly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Strong with you to suffer pain?

Then if Satan on us press,
Flesh or spirit to assail,
Victor in the wilderness,
Grant we may not faint nor fail!


So shall we have peace divine;
Holier gladness ours shall be;
Round us, too, shall angels shine,
Such as served You faithfully.


Keep, O keep us, Savior dear,
Ever constant by your side,
That with you we may appear
At th’eternal Eastertide

Choose!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Lent, spirituality3 Comments

Thursday after Ash Wednesday
February 15, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021524.cfm

Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God,
heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.
For that will mean life for you,
a long life for you to live on the land that the LORD swore
he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

The capacity to choose is a Divine gift that enables us to will our relationship with God. God desires the gift of our free choice to love Him.

What an act of divine courage for God to place hope in us! God does not demand our love. God waits for us to choose.

And God does not punish us if we choose otherwise. The choice is its own punishment because it is a rejection of the gift of divine life.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

As we give thanks for the gift to choose, and for God’s desire for our love, we do so in the light of today’s Gospel. It clarifies the character of a sincere choice for Jesus Christ:

Then Jesus said to all,
“If anyone wishes to come after me, they must deny themselves
and take up the cross daily and follow me.
For those who wish to save their lives will lose them,
but those who lose their lives for my sake will save them.
What profit is there for us to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit ourselves?”

Luke 9:23-25

Poetry: from Kahil Gibran

Do Not Love Half Lovers.
Do Not Entertain Half Friends.
Do Not Indulge in Works of the Half Talented.
Do Not Live Half a Life,
And Do Not Die a Half Death.

If You Choose Silence, 
Then Be Silent.
When You Speak,
Do So Until You Are Finished.
Do Not Silence Yourself to Say Something,
And Do Not Speak To Be Silent.

If You Accept, 
Then Express It Bluntly,
Do Not Mask It.
If You Refuse, 
Then Be Clear About It,
For an Ambiguous Refusal
Is But a Weak Acceptance.

Do Not Accept Half a Solution.
Do Not Believe Half-Truths.
Do Not Dream Half a Dream.
Do Not Fantasize About Half Hopes.

Half a Drink Will Not Quench Your Thirst
Half a Meal Will Not Satiate Your Hunger
Half the Way Will Get You Nowhere
Half An Idea Will Bear You No Results.

Your Other Half Is Not
The One You Love,
It is You in Another Time
Yet In the Same Space
It is You when You Are Not.

Half A Life Is a Life You Didn’t live,
A Word You Have Not Said,
A smile You Postponed,
A Love You Have Not Had,
A Friendship You Did Not Know.

To Reach And Not Arrive,
Work And Not Work,
Attend Only To Be Absent.
What Makes You A Stranger
To Them Closest To You
And They Strangers To You.

The Half Is a Mere Moment Of Inability,
But You Are Able,
For You Are Not Half a Being
You Are A Whole That Exists
To Live a Life
Not Half a Life.

Music: I Choose God – Gospel Light Baptist Church

Ashes

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Lent, spirituality2 Comments

Ash Wednesday
February 14, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021424.cfm

But when you fast,
anoint your head and wash your face,
so that you may not appear to be fasting,
except to your Father who is hidden.
And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.

Matthew 6:17-18

Ashes are a sign to remind us that our bodily life is impermanent. Someday we will return to the earth, just as Jesus did. But the grace of our Baptism assures us that we will also rise again, just as Jesus did.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
As we bear the sign of ashes on our foreheads today, we also carry the joy of that Baptismal assurance. Therefore, in a joyful spirit, we offer our hidden prayer of thanksgiving to God for the times in our lives when “ashes” have been transformed to glory.

Poetry: Blessing the Dust – Jan Richardson

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
Did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.

Music: Ashes by Tom Conry

Lent 2024

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Lent, spiritualityLeave a comment

Dear Friends,

The sacred season of Lent opens before us. Ash Wednesday is the first step in our journey with Jesus into the mystery of the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection.

Lent is an annual journey that most of us have taken for many years. We are familiar with the readings and rituals which lead us through these forty days. They are rich, complex, and profound – to the point that sometimes we may get lost in their complexity.

For the Lavish Mercy blog this year, I would like to simplify each day’s reflection by choosing only one word from the readings as the focus of each day’s prayer and meditation. My hope is that we receive that word in whatever manner it speaks to us in our particular circumstances.

You will notice that each day’s picture of the chosen word is overlaid on a repeated template:

The Word of God takes flesh in the person of Jesus and in our own lives. The purpose of our prayer is to become more and more one with that Word which comes to us in many forms each day – scripture, nature, relationships, events, the fruit of prayer, the gifts of silence….

I hope our Lenten reflections, and the single word they offer, will inspire us as we accompany Jesus through the dark and light journey to Easter morning.

Holy Thursday 2022

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, Jesus, Lent, spirituality1 Comment

April 14, 2022
Holy Thursday

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as supper time falls slowly from east to west over the Earth, so will Christians worldwide seek communion with Christ and the believing community.

A great surge of intentional communion will join us in an irrepressible wave of faith. The evening skies will echo with the precious words that, despite whatever distances, gather us into one people in Christ:

Jesus took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

Our Gospel reminds us that there are two equally significant dimensions to a full understanding of Eucharist:

  • the Body and Blood we share in Eucharist
  • the sacrificial service we live daily among the People of God
    who are the living Body of Christ for us.

In these times of worldly suffering and war, that second dimension sustains us.

foot

Eucharist is offered when we wash the feet of our sisters and brothers:

  • by those who tend and comfort the sick, poor, war ravaged, and desolate.
  • by the suffering themselves who endure in faith and hope 
  • by those who serve other’s needs for sustenance and safety
  • by those who pray for the healing, courage and restoration of all Creation 
  • by each one of us as we turn from self toward the good of the Whole

As Jesus leans to wash the feet of his disciples, so may we lean in service over our suffering world. Jesus asks us:

Do you realize what I, your Lord and Master, have done for you?

bowl

We do not realize fully, Lord, what You have done for us.

But we are daily learning a new depth of understanding.

The realization rises like a slow dawn over the shadows of our selfishness.
It is a sunrise which continues throughout our lives.
Please help us to rise with You no matter how the darkness weighs on us.

Like the fragile bread and fluid wine which hide your Omnipotent Presence,
may we become holy nourishment and joy for one another
– a true and living memorial to your infinite act of love for us.

Prose Prayer: excerpts from Mass on the World – Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, SJ

Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing host which your whole creation, moved by your magnetism, offers you at this dawn of a new day.

This bread, our toil, is of itself, I know, but an immense fragmentation; this wine, our pain, is no more, I know, than a draught that dissolves. Yet in the very depths of this formless mass you have implanted — and this I am sure of, for I sense it — a desire, irresistible, hallowing, which makes us cry out, believer and unbeliever alike:
‘Lord, make us one.’

You have come down, Lord, into this day which is now beginning. But alas, how infinitely different in degree is your presence for one and another of us in the events which are now preparing and which all of us together will experience! In the very same circumstances which are soon to surround me and my fellow-men you may be present in small measure, in great measure, more and more or not at all.
Therefore, Lord, that no poison may harm me this day, no death destroy me, no wine befuddle me, that in every creature I may discover and sense you, I beg you: give me faith.

Music: Pange Lingua – Chant of the Mystics
Written by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century
English lyrics below

Sing, my tongue, the Saviour’s glory,
Of His Flesh, the mystery sing;
Of the Blood, all price exceeding,
Shed by our Immortal King,
Destined, for the world’s redemption,
From a noble Womb to spring.

Of a pure and spotless Virgin
Born for us on earth below,
He, as Man, with man conversing,
Stayed, the seeds of truth to sow;
Then He closed in solemn order
Wondrously His Life of woe.

On the night of that Last Supper,
Seated with His chosen band,
He, the Paschal Victim eating,
First fulfils the Law’s command;
Then as Food to all his brethren
Gives Himself with His own Hand.

Word-made-Flesh, the bread of nature
By His Word to Flesh He turns;
Wine into His Blood He changes:
What though sense no change discerns.
Only be the heart in earnest,
Faith her lesson quickly learns.

Down in adoration falling,
Lo, the sacred Host we hail,
Lo, o’er ancient forms departing
Newer rites of grace prevail:
Faith for all defects supplying,
When the feeble senses fail.

To the Everlasting Father
And the Son who comes on high
With the Holy Ghost proceeding
Forth from each eternally,
Be salvation, honor, blessing,
Might and endless majesty.
Amen.

Lent: Through Fire and Storm

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, Jesus, Lent, spiritualityLeave a comment

April 6, 2022
Wednesday of he Fifth Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we see faith tested by fire.

7SRCYZFA2A

In our first reading, three young men stand convinced of God. Even the threat of a fiery death cannot shake them from that conviction.

And their faith is not a quid pro quo – a case where they say to God, “I’ll believe if you do ‘X’ for me.” No, their commitment is unqualified and complete:

If our God, whom we serve,
can save us from the white-hot furnace
and from your hands, O king, may he save us!
But even if he will not, know, O king,
that we will not serve your god
or worship the golden statue.

Daniel 3: 17-18

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are cast into the furnace, a fourth figure appears with them, an angel of God who delivers them safely through their trial.

fire

In our Gospel, even “the Jews who believed” in Jesus begin to quibble with him. They stand with him at the threshold of his Passion and Death, the great fire that will test them all. Like the three young men at the furnace, they face the ultimate choice:

Who do you really believe in?
What God will you give your life to?

Jesus challenges them to follow him into the fire that faces him:

Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you …
… if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free.
I know that you are descendants of Abraham.
But you are trying to kill me,
because my word has no room among you.
I tell you what I have seen in the Father’s presence;
then do what you have heard from the Father.

John 8: 34-36

Throughout our lives, our faith will be tested many times. That’s why it’s called “faith” and not “certainty ”. Our life circumstances will ask us, again and again, if our faith is strong enough to stand in the fire, to walk the Calvary road with Jesus.

Let the testimony of the ages inspire us with courage. From our scriptural heritage, we know the fire hid an angel. We know the road continued past the bloody hill and on to the Resurrection. We know that every storm will pass and leave us washed anew in grace if we make that ultimate choice to be faithful.

Poetry: Touched by an Angel – Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage 
exiles from delight 
live coiled in shells of loneliness 
until love leaves its high holy temple 
and comes into our sight 
to liberate us into life. 

Love arrives 
and in its train come ecstasies 
old memories of pleasure 
ancient histories of pain. 
Yet if we are bold, 
love strikes away the chains of fear 
from our souls. 

We are weaned from our timidity 
In the flush of love’s light 
we dare be brave 
And suddenly we see 
that love costs all we are 
and will ever be. 
Yet it is only love 
which sets us free.

Music: Praise You in This Storm – Casting Crowns

Lent: Will We Be Able to See?

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

April 5, 2022
Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, there are some common threads running through our readings.

Jn8_28 sign

In the passage from Numbers, we have a restless crowd, confused and hungry, feeling directionless in a vast wilderness. They demand an answer from Moses:

Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert,
where there is no food or water?
We are disgusted with this wretched food!”

To make things worse, God, annoyed at their complaints, sends a bunch of snakes to hassle them.

In John’s Gospel, a disgruntled gathering of Pharisees pesters Jesus for a resolution to their questions. Even after all Jesus’ signs and preaching, they ask Him, “Who are you?”

  • In both instances, it is impossible for the questioners to receive the answer they seek because they lack faith.
  • In both instances, they are told that a sign will be lifted up before them and that then they will understand.

We’re on a life’s journey, at times confused and disgruntled, just like those ancient Hebrews.

We may be locked in faithless expectations of God, just like those debating Pharisees.

In our difficulties and challenges,
will we be able to see
the sign that God offers us?
Not the one we design or demand –
but the unexpected one rising up
out of the depths of our faith?

Poetry: The Crosse – George Herbert

What is this strange and uncouth thing?

To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,

Untill I had some place, where I might sing,

          And serve thee; and not onely I,

But all my wealth and familie might combine

To set thy honour up, as our designe.

          And then when after much delay,

Much wrastling, many a combate, this deare end,

So much desir’d, is giv’n, to take away

          My power to serve thee; to unbend

All my abilities, my designes confound,

And lay my threatnings bleeding on the ground.

          One ague dwelleth in my bones,

Another in my soul (the memorie

What I would do for thee, if once my grones

          Could be allow’d for harmonie):

I am in all a weak disabled thing,

Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting.

          Besides, things sort not to my will,

Ev’n when my will doth studie thy renown:

Thou turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,

          Taking me up to throw me down:

So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,

I am to grief alive, to them as dead.

          To have my aim, and yet to be

Further from it then when I bent my bow;

To make my hopes my torture, and the fee

          Of all my woes another wo,

Is in the midst of delicates to need,

And ev’n in Paradise to be a weed.

          Ah my deare Father, ease my smart!

These contrarieties crush me: these crosse actions

Doe winde a rope about, and cut my heart:

          And yet since these thy contradictions

Are properly a crosse felt by the Sonne,

With but foure words, my words, Thy will be done.

( George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was a Welsh poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as “one of the foremost British devotional lyricists.” He was born into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University’s Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He served in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.

After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him “a most glorious saint and seer”.[4] He was never a healthy man and died of consumption at age 39. ~ from Wikipedia)

Music: By Grace Alone – David Ward

Lent: Trust the Light

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Lent, spiritualityLeave a comment

April 4, 2022
Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our first reading offers us one of the most captivating, and perhaps infuriating, stories of the Bible – the story of Susanna. This is a tale that can offer us many points of reflection. Rather than offer you my own, I would like to refer you to this excellent article by Dr. Malka Zeiger Simkovich is a the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and the director of their Catholic-Jewish Studies program.

The Tale of Susanna – A Story About Daniel

Our Gospel for today picks of the themes of knowledge, truth and judgement we have found in Daniel.

Jesus in facing mounting harassment and criticism from those threatened by his message. In today’s passage, a group of Pharisees engages in a verbal duel with Jesus:

The Pharisees said to him,
“You testify on your own behalf,
so your testimony cannot be verified.”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Even if I do testify on my own behalf, my testimony can be verified,
because I know where I came from and where I am going.
But you do not know where I come from or where I am going.
You judge by appearances, but I do not judge anyone.

Jesus makes it clear that such mental gymnastics, devoid of heart and spirit, are nothing but a journey in darkness:

Jesus spoke to them again, saying,
“I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life.”

We’ve all met people who want to make faith into a mental Rubik’s cube. But deep faith will never fit into blocks and clever twists. Deep faith releases us from the need to have everything fit – from the futile imagination that we are in control of anything but our power to love.

As we pray with the little pieces of Susanna, Pharisees, and wicked elders we might discover in our own lives, let’s ask for the courage and grace to relax into the Light that Jesus offers us today.

Poetry: Peter Quince at the Clavier – Wallace Stevens

  I 

Just as my fingers on these keys 

Make music, so the selfsame sounds 

On my spirit make a music, too. 

Music is feeling, then, not sound; 

And thus it is that what I feel, 

Here in this room, desiring you, 

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, 

Is music. It is like the strain 

Waked in the elders by Susanna: 

Of a green evening, clear and warm, 

She bathed in her still garden, while 

The red-eyed elders, watching, felt 

The basses of their beings throb 

In witching chords, and their thin blood 

Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna. 

                                              II 

In the green water, clear and warm, 

Susanna lay. 

She searched 

The touch of springs, 

And found 

Concealed imaginings. 

She sighed, 

For so much melody. 

Upon the bank, she stood 

In the cool 

Of spent emotions. 

She felt, among the leaves, 

The dew 

Of old devotions. 

She walked upon the grass, 

Still quavering. 

The winds were like her maids, 

On timid feet, 

Fetching her woven scarves, 

Yet wavering. 

A breath upon her hand 

Muted the night. 

She turned— 

A cymbal crashed, 

And roaring horns. 

                                           III 

Soon, with a noise like tambourines, 

Came her attendant Byzantines. 

They wondered why Susanna cried 

Against the elders by her side; 

And as they whispered, the refrain 

Was like a willow swept by rain. 

Anon, their lamps’ uplifted flame 

Revealed Susanna and her shame. 

And then, the simpering Byzantines 

Fled, with a noise like tambourines. 

                                             IV 

Beauty is momentary in the mind— 

The fitful tracing of a portal; 

But in the flesh it is immortal. 

The body dies; the body’s beauty lives. 

So evenings die, in their green going, 

A wave, interminably flowing. 

So gardens die, their meek breath scenting 

The cowl of winter, done repenting. 

So maidens die, to the auroral 

Celebration of a maiden’s choral. 

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings 

Of those white elders; but, escaping, 

Left only Death’s ironic scraping. 

Now, in its immortality, it plays 

On the clear viol of her memory, 

And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Music: Bach: Prelude in C Major, BWV 846, The Well-Tempered Clavier

Lent: Stop Pretending

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

April 2, 2022
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, danger continues to escalate for Jesus.

Our first reading from Jeremiah foreshadows Jesus’s situation. Some powerful people didn’t want to hear what Jeremiah preached. And we can understand why: Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem because of Israel’s unfaithfulness. It’s a message that was hard to swallow.

jeremiah

The core of Jeremiah’s teaching was this:
You people have to change. This is not the way God created the world to be.

But the people couldn’t listen. They had let the skewed reality of their lives become normal and needed. They couldn’t accept the world of mutual love and justice that God imagined for them.

Jesus meets the same kind of stonewalling.

In today’s passage, the hard-hearted rationalize their resistance:

“The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?
Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family
and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”

But their antagonism isn’t really about geography and lineage. It’s about blind comfort in a world balanced toward their advantage. It’s about the fear of grace-inspired change.

Lk8_generous heart


Isn’t it the truth that we’ll use almost any argument to resist what demands our conversion? I understand why these guys “each went to his own house”, as the Gospel says in closing. They took refuge from grace in the little roofed pretense of their own control.

They didn’t have the courage to open their hearts to Jesus. Do we?

Poetry: LOVE IS THE MASTER – RUMI

Love is the One who masters all things;
I am mastered totally by Love.
By my passion of love for Love
I have ground sweet as sugar.
O furious Wind, I am only a straw before you;
How could I know where I will be blown next?
Whoever claims to have made a pact with Destiny
Reveals himself a liar and a fool;
What is any of us but a straw in a storm?
How could anyone make a pact with a hurricane?
God is working everywhere his massive Resurrection;
How can we pretend to act on our own?
In the hand of Love I am like a cat in a sack;
Sometimes Love hoists me into the air,
Sometimes Love flings me into the air,
Love swings me round and round His head;
I have no peace, in this world or any other.
The lovers of God have fallen in a furious river;
They have surrendered themselves to Love’s commands.
Like mill wheels they turn, day and night, day and night,
Constantly turning and turning, and crying out.

Music:  Spirit, Open My Heart –  Alfred V. Fedak