But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Matthew 13:23
How appropriate, on this feast of Anne and Joachim, that the Gospel describes the abundant yield of love and fidelity. Those virtues in Anne and Joachim shaped the heart of Mary as the Vessel of God.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We gratefully remember those in our own lives who helped shape us by their faith, guardianship, and generosity – parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, trusted mentors, generous friends.
Poetry: The Splendor Falls – Alfred Lord Tennyson
The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O, sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying, Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river; Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
I found a reference to this poem in a lovely reflection by Franciscan Sister Kathleen Murphy which you may read here:
Chorus: We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us. They are giving us their courage, and they say we are glad you’re in this world.
May the strength of the ancestors encircle you. May the strength of the ancestors encircle you. And may this strength stay with you your whole life through. May the strength of the ancestors encircle you.
We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us. They are giving us their courage, and they say we are glad you’re in this world.
Refrain: May you have all your choices. May you have all your voices. May your wisdom now be heard. They say we are glad you’re in this world.
May the trust of the ancestors be healing you. (2x) And may this trust stay with you your whole life through. May the trust of the ancestors be healing you.
We are lifting up our vision to the ones who will come after. We are sending them our courage, as they wait to come into this world.
Refrain: May you have all your choices. May you have all your voices. May your wisdom now be heard. They say we are glad you’re in this world.
In all wisdom and insight, God has made known to us the mystery of the Divine Will in accord with the favor set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth. Ephesians 1:9-10
In this tiny passage from Ephesians, Paul describes infinite realities – that our Creator has shared with us a Divine Mystery that we will never fully understand in this life. The Mystery has been embodied in the life and Person of Jesus Christ so that we may see and imitate what Divine Love looks like. That alignment with Love is the Will of our God for us.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask that our simple faith may open itself to the Mystery of God’s Love. God is not a problem to be solved. Nor are God’s ways fully comprehensible to us. But Jesus has lived Love in our midst so that we can see the only thing we need to understand.
Poetry: Love’s Choice – Malcolm Guite
This bread is light, dissolving, almost air, A little visitation on my tongue, A wafer-thin sensation, hardly there. This taste of wine is brief in flavour, flung A moment to the palate’s roof and fled, Even its aftertaste a memory. Yet this is how He comes. Through wine and bread Love chooses to be emptied into me. He does not come in unimagined light Too bright to be denied, too absolute For consciousness, too strong for sight, Leaving the seer blind, the poet mute; Chooses instead to seep into each sense, To dye himself into experience.
Music: The Mystery – Michael Card and John Michael Talbot
Could you be findin’ the mystery You have been lookin’ for A kingdom where servants will come to be kings Are you lookin’ for And you’ll know That the sweet paradoxes unfold And the mystery will clearly show And you’ll know And you’ll know
Jesus, paint my life (Could you be findin’ the mystery) Jesus, paint my life (Could you be findin’ the mystery) Jesus, paint my life (Could you be findin’ the mystery)
And we know You are the Master of painters Comin’ the true Prince of Peace And we know You are the Tue Creator Comin’ the King of kings
Jesus, paint my life with charity Paint my life with mercy Paint my life
Can you be the light of the world Can you be the light Then take the light that’s given to you Can you be the light
Can you give your love to the world Can you give your love Take the love that’s given to you Can you give your love
Jesus, paint my life with charity Paint my life with mercy Paint my life Paint my life
Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:32-38
Have you ever felt your heart constrict or your belly drop in the face of deep sadness or shock? If so, you have felt “splancha”, the Greek word for that profound compassion that wells up from our innards for the sake of a suffering person.
Matthew tells us that Jesus felt “splancha” for the crowds because they were troubled and abandoned. They had lost their way to God and had no one to help them find it. Thus he reaches out to heal and teach them about God’s Lavish Mercy.
Today, in that same Lavish Mercy: By the grace of God may we, and all who are in need of grace, be healed of trouble and abandonment to find our way to God through the Mercy of Jesus.
Poetry: Mercy by John F. Dean
Unholy we sang this morning, and prayed as if we were not broken, crooked the Christ-figure hung, splayed on bloodied beams above us; devious God, dweller in shadows, mercy on us; immortal, cross-shattered Christ— your gentling grace down upon us.
Music: Merciful God – The Gettys and Stuart Townend
I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the LORD. Hosea 2:21-22
The prophet Hosea is a consummate poet. He uses the metaphor of espousal to convey the profound and merciful love of God for the people. Hosea contemplates his own life and his experience of marital infidelity to more deeply understand the relationship between a forgiving God and a false-hearted people. The language is beautiful, powerful, at times unsettling. It is intended to turn Israel’s heart – and ours – fully toward God’s love in repentance and fidelity.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy
God is the Lover and Spouse of our souls, of the whole Church, and of all Creation. In trust and openness, let us give ourselves to that Divine Mercy in every aspect of our lives.
Poetry: Hosea and Gomer by John Piper
This beautiful poem helps us more deeply understand the Book of Hosea.
The old man and his wife sat by The winter fire and looked out high Above the plains of Ephraim, And saw around the last regime Of Israel the shadows snake Their way from east to west and take Possession of Samaria. “How long until Assyria,’ They thought, “would break Hoshea’s rod, And violate the wife of God?”
But strange as it may seem, the doom They saw across the land left room For hope. And when they looked into Each other’s eyes, as they would do At night, they knew, as none could know But they, that God would bend his bow Against the charms of foreign men, And take his faithless wife again. They knew it could and would be done, As surely as the rising sun Drives darkness back unerringly, And drowns it in the western sea. They knew, because they had rehearsed The tragedy and played it first Themselves with passion and deceit.
“It’s true that life is far more sweet,” Hosea thought, “when it is lost, Then bought again at dreadful cost; And love grows strong when it must wait, And deep when it is almost hate.”
Such things as these he often said To Gomer as they watched the red And crimson echoes of the sky Descend Mount Tabor’s cliffs and die In darkness far below. And she Would say to him, “Your love for me Was like a mountain waterfall, And I the jagged stone. Of all The knives and hammers once applied None made me smooth or clean. They tried, But harlotry was in my blood, Until your love became a flood Cascading over my crude life And kept me as your only wife.”
They knew as none but they could know What it would mean that long ago The Lord allowed his love to swell, And married faithless Israel.
The passing of the years now found The children grown and gathered ’round This night: Jezreel and Loammi, Hosea’s sons, and at his knee Loruhamah. The room was sweet With memories, and each replete With pleasure and with ample pain. Among the memories one main Experience above the rest Embraced them all. It was the best; Indeed it was the mountain spring Of every happy stream from which The family ever drank, and rich With hope. It was Hosea’s love. The children stood in wonder of The way he loved, and Gomer too. But this had not always been true.
Hosea used to say, “It’s hard To be a seer, and prophet bard. The price is high when he must sing A song of ruin over everything In lyrics written with his life And lose his children and his wife.”
And so it was, Hosea heard The Lord. It was the strangest word A holy prophet ever got: And every pointed precept shot Like arrows at Hosea’s life: “Go take a harlot for your wife,” Thus says the Lord, “And feel with me The grief and pain of harlotry. Her father’s name is Diblaim; He makes fertility with cream And raisin cakes. He will not see Her go without a price, for she Has brought him profits from her trade. Now go, and let her price be paid; And bring her back and let her bear Your son. Call him Jezreel. For there Is coming soon a day when I Will strike and break the bloody thigh Of Jehu’s brutal house, and seal With blood the valley of Jezreel.
And after that, though she’s defiled. Go in, and get another child, And make your tender face like rock. Call her Loruahmah and lock Your heart against all sympathy: `Not pitied’ is her name. No plea From faithless Israel will wake My sympathy till I forsake My daughter in the wilderness.
Now multiply once more distress: Hosea, go beget a son, For there is yet one child to shun, And call him Loammi, in shame, For `Not My People’ is his name.”
Hosea used to walk along The Jordan rim and sing the song His father Beeri used to sing. Sometimes the tune and truth would bring Him peace, and he would pause and look At all the turns the Jordan took, To make its way down to the sea, And he would chant from memory:
Think not, my son, that God’s great river Of love flows simply to the sea, He aims not straight, but to deliver The wayward soul like you and me. Follow the current where it goes, With love and grace it ever flows. The years went by, the children grew, The river bent and Gomer knew A dozen men. And finally She left and traveled to the sea, And sold herself to foreign priests Who made the children serve at feasts Until they had no shame. And then The God of grace came down again, And said, “Hosea, go, embrace Your wife beside the sea. And place Your hand with blessing on the head Of Loammi, and raise the dead Loruhamah to life in me, And tell Jezreel that I will be For him a seed of hope to sow In righteousness. Hosea, go, The gracious river bends once more.”
And so the prophet loved these four Again, and sought them by the sea, And bought them with the equity Of everything he owned. That was The memory tonight, because Hosea loved beyond the way Of mortal man. What man would say, “Love grows more strong when it must wait, And deeper when it’s almost hate.”
Jezreel spoke softly for the rest, “Father, once more let us be blessed. What were the words from long ago That gave you strength to love us so? Would you please bless us with your rhyme, And sing it for us one more time?”
“Think not, my son, that God’s great river Of love flows simply to the sea, He aims not straight, but to deliver The wayward soul like you and me. Follow the current where it goes. With love and grace it ever flows.” “And children,” Gomer said with tears, “Mark this, the miracle of years.” She looked Hosea in the face And said, “Hosea, man of grace, Dark harlotry was in my blood, Until your love became a flood Cascading over my crude life And kept me as your only wife. I love the very ground you trod, And most of all I love your God.”
This is the lamp of candle four: A bride made ready at the door. A shabby slave waits her embrace, Blood-bought and beautified by grace.
Last week, a great tree was felled at the edge of our Motherhouse lawn. Having stood for decades near the Guardian Angel, it had shaded many generations on their way to Mercy: students, staff, visitors, and the Sisters themselves on their many ins and outs to this common home.
The whole community which gathers here daily felt a pang at the hewing, knowing that we had shared the very breath of this tree for so long. Its leafy embrace offered us a place to cool in the present, a way to remember the beauty of the past, and a security about the future. Seeing it disassembled by necessity gave a bittersweet pain. But there was a peace in knowing that our tree had come to completion with honor and dignity.
We drew so much from the presence of that tree, but perhaps we can draw even more from its absence. The lines of Gregory Norbet’s hymn “Hosea” come to mind:
Trees do bend, though straight and tall. So must we to others’ call Long have I waited for your coming home to me, And living deeply our new life.
Our tree, even in its retreat, still speaks to us – a truth becoming profoundly evident these days as we mourn the passing of our sister and friend Marie Ann Ellmer. She stood straight and tall among us, but another call came precipitously in the early morning last week.
When a beloved dies, one with whom we drew the same breath and hope, part of us dies. Whether a great tree or a magnanimous soul, they take something with them of the life we shared. When we mourn them, it is that which is taken that we pine for. But as we fold their lives under Love’s eternal blanket, it is that which they have left us that gives joyful peace.
That glorious tree and dear Marie Ann seem to be one now in the solemn aura that follows death. Both, in rare beauty, brought others to the precious gift of Mercy. Both remain treasured in its Everlasting Power. And both have given back to Creation the blessed graces that made them shine among us.
But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret.
But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you. Matthew 6:3-4;6;17-18
In these verses, Jesus tells us that our relationship with God – through almsgiving, prayer, and fasting – is private, personal, and intimate. When we commune with God through these actions, it is secret – a love shared between you and the Divine Beloved.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let’s think about our acts of generosity, prayer, and spiritual discipline as gifts given to God, even though they are offered through our service to others. Living a grateful life, we are delighted by God’s gifts to us given from an Infinite Love. May we respond by our humble efforts to delight God in return.
Poetry: from St. Teresa of Avila
Christ has no body on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours!
Music: God Has No Body Now But Yours – David Ogden based on Teresa of Avila
The just one shall flourish like the palm tree, like a cedar of Lebanon shall they grow. They that are planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. Psalm 92:13-14
This verse from Psalm 92 ties together all our readings for today.
In the passage from Exodus, God takes a tiny twig, protects and nourishes it, and it flourishes. The analogy describes God’s relationship with Israel and with us. We are called to flourish in the Kingdom of God.
In Corinthians, Paul expresses the conviction that we will receive our recompense according to how we flourish in response to God’s grace.
And in our Gospel, Jesus teaches that our faith – God’s gift to us – is the small seed that flourishes into eternal life, the fullness of life in God.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We realize that each of these flourishings begins with a tiny hope – a twig, a courageous aspiration, a mustard seed.
Such is life. It is the small but consistent acts of faith, hope, and love that eventually yield abundant harvest. – embracing us with all Creation in God’s complete Love.
Poetry: 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: The Ride of the Valkyries – Richard Wagner
I love to listen to this masterpiece when I imagine God opening heaven to all Creation at the end of time.
When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer. Hosea 11:1;3-4
Our readings today invite us to pray with the profoundly beautiful image of the Sacred Heart, the mystery of divinity and humanity united in the person of Jesus. The tenderness of Hosea flows into Paul’s description of the “inscrutable riches of Christ”. These passages culminate in John’s depiction of the unbroken body of Jesus on the Cross.
Together, these readings present us with the mystery of love fulfilled by sacrifice, a reality we may resist in our lives, but one that is nevertheless true. All love entails sacrifice. Jesus loves us completely and sacrificed his Sacred Heart completely for that Love.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to grow in our understanding of the Cross and of the mystery of Love as revealed to us in the Sacred Heart.
Poetry: To the Sacred Heart of Jesus – Thérèse of Lisieux, translated by Donald Kinney, OCD
At the holy sepulchre, Mary Magdalene, Searching for her Jesus, stooped down in tears. The angels wanted to console her sorrow, But nothing could calm her grief. Bright angels, it was not you Whom this fervent soul came searching for. She wanted to see the Lord of the Angels, To take him in her arms, to carry him far away.
Close by the tomb, the last one to stay, She had come well before dawn. Her God also came, veiling his light. Mary could not vanquish him in love! Showing her at first his Blessed Face, Soon just one word sprang from his Heart, Whispering the sweet name of: Mary, Jesus gave her back her peace, her happinesss.
O my God, one day, like Mary Magdalene, I wanted to see you and come close to you. I looked down over the immense plain Where I sought the Master and King, And I cried, seeing the pure wave, The starry azure, the flower, and the bird. “Bright nature, if I do not see God, You are nothing to me but a vast tomb.”
I need a heart burning with tenderness Who will be my support forever, Who loves everything in me, even my weakness… And who never leaves me day or night.” I could find no creature Who could always love me and never die. I must have a God who takes on my nature And becomes my brother and is able to suffer!
You heard me, only Friend whom I love. To ravish my heart, you became man. You shed your blood, what a supreme mystery!… And you still live for me on the Altar. If I cannot see the brilliance of your Face Or hear your sweet voice, O my God, I can live by your grace, I can rest on your Sacred Heart!
O Heart of Jesus, treasure of tenderness, You Yourself are my happiness, my only hope. You who knew how to charm my tender youth, Stay near me till the last night. Lord, to you alone I’ve given my life, And all my desires are well known to you. It’s in your ever-infinite goodness That I want to lose myself, O Heart of Jesus!
Ah! I know well all our righteousness Is worthless in your sight. To give value to my sacrifices, I want to cast them into your Divine Heart. You did not find your angels without blemish. In the midst of lightning you gave your law!… I hide myself in your Sacred Heart, Jesus. I do not fear, my virtue is You!…
To be able to gaze on your glory, I know we have to pass through fire. So I, for my purgatory, Choose your burning love, O heart of my God! On leaving this life, my exiled soul Would like to make an act of pure love, And then, flying away to Heaven, its Homeland, Enter straightaway into your Heart.
After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples and eaten breakfast with them, he said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” John 21:15
Perhaps we have spoken or heard these questions as we move through our heart’s life:
Do you love me?
How much do you love me?
Will you always love me?
Do you still love me?
But true love is immeasurable. It has shades and intensities, but it doesn’t have limits. True love is all; it’s everything – fidelity, forgiveness, delight, hope, chaos, perseverance, sacrifice, joy and generosity.
Jesus knows Peter possesses all these commitments to Him. But He is asking Peter to test himself before Peter is called to take Christ’s place on earth.
The only “more” that ever touched human love was when Jesus took our flesh to live, die, and rise for all of us. Jesus wants to hear Peter say he has that kind of sacrificial Love.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Jesus knows us too, and how we want to love him well; how we may want to love him “more”. Let’s talk with him about that in our prayer today, asking to not let our chances for loving God slip by without our notice.
Poetry: This Paltry Love – Jessica Powers
I love you, God, with a penny match of love that I strike when the big and bullying dark of need chases my startled sunset over the hills and in the walls of my house small terrors move. It is the sight of this paltry love that fills my deepest pits with seething purgatory, that thus I love you, God—God—who would sow my heights and depths with recklessness of glory, who hold back light-oceans straining to spill on me, on me, stifling here in the dungeon of my ill. This puny spark I scorn, I who had dreamed of fire that would race to land’s end, shouting your worth, of sun that would fall to earth with a mortal wound and rise and run, streaming with light like blood, splattering the sky, soaking the ocean itself, and all the earth.
Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. John 15:9-11
What would it be like if we loved as the Creator loves – eternal life flowing out from Trinitarian Love to sustain all of us for always?
Jesus says that this is how the Father loves, and how Jesus loves all of us. He says that we abide in this Love when we indeed love God above all and our Neighbor as ourselves.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Honestly, can there be a more ubiquitous word than “Love”, and yet we find so little of its true practice in our increasingly self-absorbed and violent culture!
If, when we “love”, it does not strengthen sacred life in another or in the world, then we have not truly loved. We may have desired, admired, adulated, or ingratiated, but we have not loved as God loves.
Let’s pray to be open and responsive to the gift of God’s Love flowing into our hearts.
Prose: from Embodied Love in John of the Cross – Richard P. Hardy, Ph.D.
For John of the Cross, being wholly converted into divine love means actually living God's own life: The soul lives the life of God.
And the will, which previously loved in a base and deadly way with only its natural affection, is now changed into the life of divine love, for it loves in a lofty way with divine affection, moved by the strength of the Holy Spirit in which it now lives the life of love. By means of this union God's will and the soul's will are now one.
Finally all the movements, operations, and inclinations the soul had previously from the principle and strength of its natural life are now in this union dead to what they formerly were, changed into divine movements, and alive to God.
Lavish Mercy 