On Friday night, my religious community shares the joy of celebrating the lives of such witnesses, our Sisters marking 25, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80 and 85 years of faithful, merciful service. I list their names with two poems I used while praying for them this morning. Please join us in grateful prayer for these dear Sisters today.
25 years Mary Paula Cancienne
50 years Anna Salzman
60 years Kathleen Boyce
Joan Freney
Kathleen Gennett
Janet Henry
Maryann Horan
Marie Bernadette Kinniry
Louise Marie Luby
Eleanor McCann
Maureen Murray
Barbara Ann Newton
Katherine O’Donnell
Anne Quigley
Joan Scary
Margaret Taylor
Anne Woodeshick
70 Years Joan Donahue
Muriel Kershaw
Miriam Theresa Lavelle
75 Years Margaret Kelly (RIP last week)
Mary Rita Robinson
Helen Cahill
80 Years Elaine Buckley
85 Years Mary Berenice Eltz
Poem 1: The Neophyte by Alice Meynelle ( This poem was given to me decades ago by one of our old Sisters. The poem describes how, at first profession, the young novice – in faith – gives ALL her years to God, even before she lives through them.)
Who knows what days I answer for to-day?
Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way
Give one repose to pain I know not now,
One check to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.
O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat
I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.
Poem 2: Silver by Jeannette Encinias
( This beautiful poem makes me think about what God would say to our dear sisters as they are blessed to age into God’s Love over decade upon decade.)
“How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and the children come
to find their own history
in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?
This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.”
A blessed and happy Easter and passover to all of you!
Easter and Passover, because they are feasts of life, are family celebrations. It is a time to reconnect and gather with those who share our life story, with the tribe we were born into.
Each Pasch, we join our family with a renewed heart, setting aside any small or large fractures of the intervening year.
Dear Friends at a Long-Ago Easter
This freshness of spirit may be symbolized in a brand new Easter outfit or the spring cleaning of the house.
When I was young, Easter bonnets we’re still the thing, and maybe a new pair of Mary Janes. My little brother wore his first bow tie at Easter, although he wasn’t too happy about it as I recall. 🤗
Though we may have missed their deeper meaning, the house abounded in symbols of the Resurrection: jubilantly-dyed eggs, little chocolate bunnies, rainbowed jelly beans in a sea of papery grass, and elegant lilies.
Most importantly, the family shared a meal, often built of contributed elements from each participant. We waited expectantly for Aunt Peg’s pineapple filling and Mom’s chocolate pie. On occasion, Uncle Joe contributed a wondrous ham that had “fallen off the truck” as he made his rounds in North Philly. ( I learned only later in life that a few of our delicious meals were centered on heisted ham.)
This Easter and Passover offer us an invitation to reconnect with our families which we have been given either by nature or by grace. Not all families are bound by blood. They are are tied through the heart by mutual love, hope, vision, surmounted suffering, shared experience, and a host of other fragments that we shape into life’s mosaic.
Our families are the people we have laughed and cried with, the people we turn to when we’re afraid. They’re the ones who pray for us, look out for us, and yell (softly) at us when we are really stupid. They’re the ones who, no matter how long since we have spoken, we pick up a conversation right in the middle. They’re the ones who bring us flowers, ricotta pie, and a rotisserie chicken when we feel punk. They are beyond blood and genes.
May we reach out in renewed love and appreciation to those who have been “family” to us. May we be grateful and generous with those who look to us for life. May the gift and practice of family rise up in us this Easter morning!
How easily I let you go
when the final note was played,
with force as soft
as fracture of the chrysalis,
a breaking web collapsing
mutely in the shadowed night.
How easily it seemed
you slipped into another life,
as if it were familiar to you,
a practiced dance that I
was unaware you’d learned.
You fell in step with music
the living cannot hear.
Instead, I hear your absence
beating like a vacant drum
against the void you left behind.
I know I contradict the peace
with which you said goodbye.
It is as if, in me,
two different people loved you:
one was full of grace and gratitude,
and one still questions why.
Music: Lux Aeterna – Edward Elgar – sung by Voces8
Today, in Mercy, as Holy Week deepens, so does confusion, fear, and even betrayal among Christ’s disciples.
In today’s Gospel, we see Judas turn from his own truth to a disastrous treachery.
We see John and Peter full of questions, confused by the turn of events. Jesus foretells the impending denial by Peter, his chosen successor.
The great trials of Christ’s Passion and Death emerge from the shadows of rumor and deception. Jesus makes it clear that the end is near.
As we read the passage, we can feel the fear mounting in everyone but Jesus. In him, we see see Isaiah’s description strengthening- the Lord’s Glorious Servant rising as the Light of Nations.
Fear destroys while trust and hope liberate.
Praying with this Gospel this morning, I remember the face of a woman I had seen on the evening news. At a contentious political rally, she was loudly shouting her preference to live under a dictator rather than live in a country “full of filthy immigrants”. She thought her raging made her strong. But I saw a person filled with ignorance and fear.
I can’t forget her face. It so saddened me to see the child of a beautiful God so distorted by weakness, prejudice and fear. She could no longer see the face of God in another human being. I think hers would have been the face I saw on Judas, had I met him as he left the Last Supper.
Fear is a disfiguring disease. It seeps into our heart and mind to blind and deafen us to God’s power in our life. It cripples our graced potential. It eventually kills the “glorious servant” we too have been called to become.
Paula D’Arcy says this:
Who would I be, and what power
would be expressed in my life, if I were not dominated by fear?
It’s a powerful question.
How does fear keep me:
from loving?
from hoping?
from believing?
from giving?
from receiving?
Today’s Responsorial Psalm, filled with beautiful phrases, offers us a heartfelt prayer as we place our fears in God’s hands:
R. I will sing of your salvation. In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your justice rescue me, and deliver me; incline your ear to me, and save me. R. I will sing of your salvation. Be my rock of refuge, a stronghold to give me safety, for you are my rock and my fortress. O my God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked. R. I will sing of your salvation. For you are my hope, O LORD; my trust, O God, from my youth. On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength. R. I will sing of your salvation. My mouth shall declare your justice, day by day your salvation. O God, you have taught me from my youth, and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds. R. I will sing of your salvation.
Today, in Mercy, we have, from Isaiah, one of most beloved and comforting passages in Scripture:
But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.
Not to forget is to remember. And to “re-member” is to put back together all the pieces that have fallen apart.
Because God “remembers” us at every moment in our lives, we are held together in that Divine Memory through all the exigencies of time. We are held together in the wholeness of our Creation, in the fullness of grace that God imagines for us. Even when we cannot feel or believe it, God continues to dream us into Eternal Life.
Whenever we feel in our hearts a lament like Zion’s
“The Lord has forsaken me…”
let us place ourselves in the heart of our Mother God Who cradles us with infinite, unconditional affection and tenderness, Who is alway re-membering us.
Music: God Our Mother – The Litugists
This song, though short, is a good one to repeat as a mantra as we pray. Lyrics below
God our Father
Giver of daily bread
Blessing our hands and covering our heads
God our Mother
Leading us into peace
Drawing and comforting all those in need
Hallowed, hallowed be thy name
Hallowed, hallowed be thy name
Hallowed, hallowed be thy name in all the earth
Jesus, brother, guiding our very step
Deliver us and grant places of rest
Jesus, savior, grabbing us from the grave
Cheating the fall and bringing the light of day
Looking at my graphic for today, you may wonder how I’m going to connect that command to baseball’s Opening Day. Watch! 😊⚾️
There’s no better feeling than an “opening day” feeling. No matter how bad you were last year, you have a clean slate for the new season. You’ve had a chance to assess your weaknesses and rehab them. You’ve been able to add some strengths you needed but had neglected. You’ve got another carte blanche chance to be everything you were born to be! Now you’re standing in the batter’s box just listening for that thrilling phrase, “Play ball!”
Guess what! You’ve been doing all the same things throughout Lent. You’ve taken a look at your life and straightened a few things out. You’ve dusted off the plate, so to speak, and you’re ready to start fresh as Easter approaches.
Today’s readings are telling us to tune in, listen, for God’s coaching in our lives. The game of life plays out for us in ways we could never imagine. But God imagines- and will guide us through to home plate if we just “hear God’s voice and harden not our hearts”.
Today, in Mercy, our readings describe God’s lavish mercy and the expectation for our reciprocity.
The passage from the Book of Daniel, written in lilting prose, quotes the prayer of Azariah. It gives us several phrases to savor in our own prayer, depending on the particular disposition of our heart on any given day:
To whom you promised …. like the stars of heaven, or the sand on the shore of the sea. What has God promised you to give you hope in your life? Can you call on those promises today in your prayer?
For we are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation… Are you feeling sad, disconnected, humiliated or depressed? Can you give these feelings to God and open your heart to healing?
We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader, no burnt offering, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you. Do you ever feel abandoned by the institutions we all once depended on, whether Church, government, law etc.? Can we pray for the courage to depend only on God in all things?
Now we follow you with our whole heart… Have our life circumstances brought us to the point of placing ourselves totally in God’s care? Can we pray with that peaceful and holy abandonment?
Deliver us by your wonders, and bring glory to your name, O Lord.Can our prayer be one of giving glory to God for all the blessings in our lives?
God has been so good to us! Our Gospel enjoins us to be reciprocally good to others.
Music: Give Me Your Eyes – An interesting song by rock singer Brian Heath. As his plane is landing one night, he receives a grace to pray for new eyes — eyes that see and love all humanity as God does.
Today, in Mercy, in our reading from Deuteronomy, God tells the People that they are loved in a unique way. So are you!
God says: And today the LORD is making this agreement with you:
You are to be a people peculiarly his own
The word “peculiarly” may strike us exactly as it says. It is a word whose usage has changed over the centuries. We think of it today as “odd” or “unusual”, a meaning given it only since the 18th century.
The word’s actual derivation is this:
Mid-15th century: “belonging exclusively to one person,” from Latin peculiaris “of one’s own (property),” from peculium “private property,” literally “property in cattle” (in ancient times the most important form of property).
So Deuteronomy is telling us that we are to God as the herdsman’s possessions are to herdsman. We belong to God Who has invested everything in us. God will protect, nurture and strengthen us in a relationship of mutual investment and harmony — IF we do our part which is:
… provided you keep all his commandments, he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations he has made, and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God, as he promised.
In our Gospel, Jesus outlines exactly how to do this.
Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
In today’s world, so full of hate, greed and retribution, I suppose we are “peculiar”, in both senses of the word, when we live as Jesus asks.
Music: How He Loves Is ~David Crowder Band ( The Song may not resonate with at first, but stick with it. There is something deep in this melody..)
( This poem was given to me decades ago by one of our old Sisters. The poem describes how, at first profession, the young novice – in faith – gives ALL her years to God, even before she lives through them.)
Lavish Mercy 