Today, in Mercy, our readings empower us for unbounded possibility!
John’s letter tells us why:
In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that God loved us…
God has loved me!
There is nothing more I need to be whole — if I will only believe it, absorb it, and live from it!
There is nothing more I need to become a force for love in the world.
Jesus demonstrates this powerful love in our Gospel reading.
It has been a long day of teaching, and the disciples see that the crowds are hungry and tired. They know the solution, which Jesus has apparently overlooked : let them go home and get something to eat!
But Jesus very simply responds, “Feed them yourselves!”
He invites his disciples to realize the power released within them by God’s supernatural love. He challenges them to envision a way to respond to their challenges other than the tired, limited solutions we anxiously depend on.
Jesus calls them to imagine the world as God imagines it – transformed by an Unconditional Love which refuses the measurements of fear, control, and self- preservation.
Can you just visualize the scene that afternoon as the five loaves and two fish miraculously multiplied over the crowd of five thousand!
Can you see the expressions on the disciples’ faces as they allowed themselves to believe that, because of God’s Love, they were the vehicle of miracles!
We are too! There is no good we are incapable of if we will just believe in the power of Divine Love within us. Our miracles may not be as dramatic as the multiplication of the loaves. But they will be no less important.
They will be the miracles God planned for us to work in God’s name – for our circumstances, our challenges. They will be the way we carry God’s unimaginable grace to the tired hungers of our times.
Picture yourself starting out today, carrying that basket with just two fish and five loaves into the famished world. Imagine what happens when you open your heart to God grasping the basket with you!
Music: Imagine – John Lennon – I love this song in which Lennon imagines a world free of all the human constructs by which we limit it – a world as God might see it.
(I published this reflection on last year’s feast. It seemed to touch people deeply, so I thought it bore another look. God bless you all, dear readers, and God bless your families here and in heaven.)
Today, in Mercy, our prayer is turned to the Holy Family, that unique configuration of love which nurtured the developing life of Jesus. Can you imagine how tenderly the Father shaped this triad, this nesting place of love for God’s own Word?
We look to the Holy Family so that we might be strengthened in the virtues that will help us build our own families: sacrificial love, reverence, courage, unfailing support, committed presence, shared faith, gentle honesty, unconditional acceptance.
“Family” is the primordial place where we learn who we are. The lessons it teaches us about ourselves – for better or worse — remain with us forever.
Not everyone is blessed by their family. Family can ground us in confidence or undermine us with self-doubt. It can free us from fear or cripple us with reservation. It can release either possibility or perpetual hesitation within us.
Some families are so dysfunctional that we spend the rest of our lives trying to recover from them. But some, like the Holy Family, allow God’s dream to be nurtured in us and to spread to new families, both of blood and spirit.
The challenge today is to thank God for whatever type of family bore us. Lessons can be learned from both lights and shadows. Let us spend time this morning lookingat our own families with love, gratitude, forgiveness, understanding. Where there are wounds to be healed, let us face them. Where there are belated thanks to be offered, let us give them. Where there are negligence and oversights to confess, let us use them as bridges to a new devotion.
For some, it may seem too late to heal or bless our family. Time may have swallowed some of our possibilities. But it is never too late to deepen relationships through prayer, both for and to our ancestors.
May this feast strengthen us for the families who need us today.
Music: God Bless My Family ~ Anne Hampton Calloway (Lyrics below)
GOD BLESS MY FAMILY Words and music – By Ann Hampton Callaway
1. It’s Christmas time
Outside the snow is falling
Like a million stars
Like a million dreams
All dressed up in white
I’m writing Christmas cards
A joy that’s tinged with sadness
As I think of friends
Some are here and some are gone
But our love goes on and on
Like the snow tonight
CHORUS
And oh, what a family My life has given me
From the corners of the earth
To the reaches of the sky
We touch eternally
And though my heart aches ev’ry day
This Christmas I will find a way
To let each face I’ve ever loved
Shine out in me
God bless my family
2. As years go by
The carols we sang as children
Gather memories
What was just a song
Now feels like a pray’r
Welcoming us home
To fathers, mothers
Sisters, brothers ev’rywhere
Some we’ve lost and some we’ve found
As love circles us around
In the songs we share
CHORUS
So fly, angels of my heart
We’ll never be apart
Tonight I say a pray’r
For loved ones ev’rywhere
CHORUS/CODA
You’re a part of my family
That life has given me
From the corners of the earth
To the reaches of the sky
We touch eternally
And though my heart aches ev’ryday
This Christmas I will find a way
To let each face I’ve ever loved
Shine out in me
God bless my family
You’ll always live in me
God bless my family
How we need to lean on You,
to be upheld by You,
to be embraced by You,
Compassionate Lord, who
leads us through a life
that can be unbearable
alone.
We pray, with longing hearts,
that You uplift all the fallen –
whether into pain, or loss,
confusion, or the sad distress
we inflict upon ourselves
and one another.
Adonai, Beautiful One,
set a fire before us,
as You did for Moses.
Lead the way for us with Flame of Love
and Light of Faith
into your outstretched Mercy.
Around us,
and at times within us,
there is a foolishness
that has forgotten You.
There is a shallowness
that skims this
sacred well of life
on the thinest surface of
our pretenses,
our distractions,
our frightened preoccupations.
Take us to the depth
where Your Wisdom
dwells within us.
There let us find
peace
undisturbed by circumstance;
justice
fed by lavish mercy;
Love
beyond boundaries,
beyond definition,
beyond imagination,
beyond time.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!
Music: Who Has Known – John Foley, SJ
O the depth of the riches of God;
and the breadth of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
For who has known the mind of God?
To Him be glory forever.
A virgin will carry a child and give birth,
and His name shall be called Emanuel.
For who has known the mind of God?
To Him be glory forever.
The people in darkness have seen a great light;
for a child has been born, His dominion is wide.
For who has known the mind of God?
To Him be glory forever.
I so loved my great-aunt Peg. She was that perfect mix of elegance and earthiness that made one both comfortable and inspired.
Aunt Peg on Her Wedding Day to Uncle Frank – 1929
Her husband, Uncle Frank, loved her totally. And to boot, he was a romantic which led him to proclaim that love often. One summer, in the 1950s, he surprised her with a second honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls.
Upon return, they visited us and Uncle Frank brought a movie of their trip.
Now, taking a movie and eventually showing it was quite an accomplishment in the ‘50s. Not only were the camera and lights cumbersome, so was the screening equipment.
But that effort on my Uncle Frank’s part yielded a long-lasting blessing for me. It came in a brief scene still indelibly etched on my mind.
Aunt Peg, dressed in her Sunday best, stood looking over the rail at the majestic falls, her back to the camera. There was no sound on the film, but you could tell Uncle Frank had called to her to turn around. Knowing him, my guess was that he said something like, “Peg, you are as beautiful as the falls!”.
Aunt Peg turns and clearly, despite the silent film, mouths a bashful response,
“O, Frank!”.
Those two words, given with a slight blush and demure smile, carried the whole story of their very special love. And they left me, even at a young age, with such a profound message.
Every time I have thought of that short phrase over these sixty years, this is what I hear:
O, Frank!
how blessed am I to be so loved
how good you are to show that love so clearly
how grateful I am that you share your life with me
please know how much I love you in return
Tomorrow, we will enter one of the loveliest times of the Liturgical Year – the proclamation of the O Antiphons.
The great O Antiphons are Magnificat antiphons used at Vespers on the last seven days of Advent. They are also used as the Alleluia verse on same days. The importance of the O Antiphons is twofold. First, each one is a title for the Messiah. Second, each one refers to Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming of the Messiah.
As we prepare for this beautiful and sacred time, I am reminded of my dear Aunt Peg standing before both the magnificent Niagara Falls and my Uncle Frank’s tremendous love.
We, dear friends, are standing in awe at the passage of time into eternity. Our God calls to us to turn around and look into God’s loving face. As we pause in silent, grateful adoration, the great thunder of life silenced behind us, we respond with awe:
17 December: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
18 December: O Adonai (O Lord)
19 December: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
20 December: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
21 December: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
22 December: O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)
23 December: O Emmanuel (O God With Us)
As we stand in the shadowed eve of these profound prayers, let’s prepare our hearts to gratefully experience God’s tremendous love.
O Beloved God
how blessed am I to be so loved
how good you are to show that love so clearly
how grateful I am that you share your life with me
please know how much I love you in return
Music: Peg of My Heart – sung in full here by Charles Harrison
I hope you might enjoy this tribute to Uncle Frank. This is a very early version of the song he always sang to Aunt Peg. We did a lot a singing when the family gathered back then– an activity sadly lost today. There are more mellow, later versions, but this is the way Uncle Frank sang it, straight from the Ziegfeld Follies Of 1913.
Oh, my heart’s in a whirl over one little girl
I love her, I love her, yes, I do
Although her heart is far away
I hope to make her mine some day
Ev’ry beautiful rose, ev’ry violet knows
I love her, I love her fond and true
And her heart fondly sighs, as I sing to her eyes
Her eyes of blue, sweet eyes of blue, my darling
Peg o’ my Heart, I love you
We’ll never part, I love you
Dear little girl, sweet little girl
Sweeter than the Rose of Erin
Are your winning smiles endearin’
Peg o’ my Heart, your glances
With Irish art entrance us
Come, be my own, come, make your home in my heart
When your heart’s full of fears
And your eyes full of tears
I’ll kiss them, I’ll kiss them all away
For, like the gold that’s in your hair
Is all the love for you I bear
Oh, believe in me, do
I’m as lonesome as you
I miss you, I miss you all the day
Let the light of live shine from your eyes into mine
And shine for aye, sweetheart for aye, my darling
Peg o’ my Heart, I love you
We’ll never part, I love you
Dear little girl, sweet little girl
Sweeter than the Rose of Erin
Are your winning smiles endearin’
Peg o’ my Heart, your glances
With Irish art entrance us
Come, be my own, come, make your home in my heart
Today, in Mercy, our readings are about spiritual wealth, stewardship and Godly generosity.
Paul starts us off by proclaiming that the wealth/riches of salvation belong to ALL humanity. He presents himself as a unique “steward “ of those riches to the Gentiles.
Our Gospel gives us a second interpretation of “stewardship” in the parable the wily steward. This fella’ gets called on the carpet for squandering his employer’s resources. Pink slip time!
So the steward calls in some of the debtors and reduces their debt by the amount of his own commission. By doing this, he hopes to make some friends to support him in his impending unemployment.
Many years ago, there was a Talbot’s outlet in the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philly (I know. Heaven, right?) You could get an amazing deal on the clearance items. But you got an even better deal if you went to a certain cashier for your checkout.
He was a tall, flamboyant and loudly funny guy. If a price tag was missing on an item, you got it virtually for free. He would make outlandish comments like, “Oh, honey, this isn’t your color so let’s discount it 50%.” If you bought two of the same item, he might announce,”Two for one today”, charging for only one. He was a living example of the Biblical steward! Over time, he developed a devoted buying community – those who had learned the secret of why people waited in his long line!
In today’s parable, Jesus isn’t advocating that we cheat our employers. The parable isn’t really about that at all. It is about the way he wants his disciples to be profligate in preaching the mercy of God.
Remember that this parable comes in between two blockbusters about Mercy- the Prodigal Son and Lazarus and the Rich Man. In a way, you might say Jesus is on a tear about the unbounded generosity of God in forgiveness and hope for us. He makes clear that the wealth of Divine Love is delivered to us by our unbounded Christian love for one another.
So today, maybe we can think about the Talbot’s guy. We have been abundantly blessed by God’s love for us. Let’s pay it forward over and over today… and every day. Let’s generously share the infinite discount of Mercy.
Music: Jesus Paid It All – Elvira M. Hall (1865) This rendition of the hymn by Kristian Stanfill (born 1983) is so interesting. Offered here with modern instrumentation, the words date back to the era of the US Civil War. Past and present meld in the ever eternal love God has for us.
Today, in Mercy, Paul exults in God’s love and Jesus suffers the full burden of his impending passion. And the two are tied tightly together.
Let me tell you a story that symbolizes that tight knot.
It was in the late 1960s. A group of us had traveled to Atlantic City for the National Catholic Education Convention. Weather forecasting was not so advanced in those days, or at least, we were not so attuned to it. We went to our various sessions early one morning, only to come out of them a few hours later into a hurricane!
I remember walking, obliviously, up to the boardwalk, on my way to the next session in another hotel. The wind became so heavy that I was blown, motionless, against the boardwalk railing. A plexiglass window pane blew by me, cutting me just below the eye. For a short while, that seemed very long, I feared for my life. A strong, young man actually pulled me into a nearby lobby where I tried to calm my fears.
But the next morning, there was a beautiful rainbow and a brilliant, calm sky. I walked back to the bay to survey the previous day’s damage. It was significant. But one image remains in my mind these fifty years later: the front quarter of a battered boat still attached to a half-sunken dock by a thick, sodden rope that wouldn’t let go in the storm.
I think that, in today’s Gospel, Jesus might have felt a little bit like that boat. He has been battered by the resistance of his enemies. He knows it is an ill wind for his message.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!
Still, like that strong, unrelenting rope, he is held sure by the love of God:
But I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Paul, through his baptism, inherited that faith, hope and love purchased for us all by the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ.
Whenever a storm rises up around your soul, whether expected or not, remember that knot which ties you to the steady and enduring love of God:
No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Music: Nothing Can Separate Us – First Call (Lyrics below)
Today, in Mercy, we celebrate St. Thérèse, popularly venerated as The Little Flower. She propagated a spirituality that has become known as “The Little Way”.
Rev. John F. Russell, O.Carm. describes the Little Way like this: The Little Way is an image that tries to capture St. Thérèse’s understanding of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, of seeking holiness of life in the ordinary and the everyday.
Saint Therese based her “little way” on two fundamental convictions:
God shows love by mercy and forgiveness
She could not be perfect in following the Lord.
Both our readings today also talk about a “way”.
Zechariah has a vision of all nations following the way to a New Jerusalem.
Thus says the LORD of hosts: In those days ten men of every nationality, speaking different tongues, shall take hold, yes, take hold of every Jew by the edge of his garment and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”
In our Gospel, Jesus begins his way on his final journey. He knows now that the way will be through suffering and death yet, He dared…
When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely set his face toward Jerusalem…
Grace makes a way in our lives too. As with Thérèse, the ancient Jews, and Jesus, our particular way will unfold before us through prayer and a listening heart. It is the way of love that leads away from selfishness to God and God-in-Others.
Rumi’s poem captures it:
The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they’re given wings.
(In a later post today, I will share a poem by Amy Lowell which I feel could describe “the journey “ — Christ’s, mine, yours… and perhaps offer further food for prayer.)
Today, we pray for the courage and freedom to follow the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Music: from the musical Godspell – By My Side
The song conveys the desire of Jesus’s disciples, all but Judas, to accompany him on his Way. They were not perfect – but they dared. As we consider our lives, have we dared? What “pebbles” have we willingly “put in our shoes” to follow Jesus?
Today, in Mercy,Zechariah channels God, with the most intense of human emotion.
The prophet wants Israel to have some understanding of God’s infinite love and hope for them, so he puts these words in God’s mouth:
I am intensely jealous for Zion, stirred to jealous wrath for her.
Like a spouse longing for a lost beloved, God longs for the restoration of Israel to the Divine embrace.
Wherever our relationship with God is frayed or broken, God is jealous for us too. If we can turn our hearts in repentance, prayer, and hope, we too will hear God’s longing for us.
In our Gospel, Jesus tries to refocus his disciples on that loving call. In a classic example of missing the obvious, they are distracted over who is the most important. Here is the Lord of all sitting beside them, and they are arguing about their personal status!
By pointing to a child in their midst, Jesus reminds his followers of the innocence and transparency we need in order to open ourselves to God.
Let’s pray for that openness today so that we can hear and rejoice in a promise such as Israel heard through Zechariah:
You shall be my people, and I will be your God, with faithfulness and justice.
Lavish Mercy 