Category: Love

Suffering

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, Love, spirituality, suffering1 Comment

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion
March 29, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032924.cfm

Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before him,
like a shoot from the parched earth;
there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him,
nor appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by people,
a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:1-4

Good Friday: when we stand awestruck before an Infinite Power Who chooses to suffer for the sake of Love.

We can neither comprehend such Love nor explain it. Before it, the words “why”, “how”, and “if” dissipate in futility. Such Love simply is, has always been, and will always be – Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let us kneel in humble gratitude before this Infinite Love. By our own sufferings, may we learn a holy obedience – an ability to hear the heart of God crying in our world. May we tender God’s heart, broken over the willful selfishness of humankind. May we give ourselves to its healing.

Adoramus Te, Christe,
et benedicimus tibi,
quia per sanctam crucem tuam
redemisti mundum.
Qui passus es pro nobis,
Domine, Domine, miserere nobis		We adore Thee, O Christ,
and we bless Thee,
who by Thy Holy Cross
hast redeemed the world.
Thou, who hast suffered death for us,
O Lord, O Lord, have mercy on us.

Anoint

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Cross, Discipleship, dying, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Love, spiritualityLeave a comment

Monday of Holy Week
March 25, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032524.cfm

Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil
made from genuine aromatic nard
and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair;
the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil…

… Jesus said, “Leave her alone.
Let her keep this for the day of my burial.

John 12: 3;7

Mary knows.
Even though theories bounce back and forth about how Jesus will be received in Jerusalem, Mary knows.

She knows that someone she loves is on the brink of a desperate confrontation, and she cannot change it. What she can do is to cherish his presence by a silent act of love that strengthens both of them with a holy grace.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We know.
We know what Jesus did for us – still does for us. And there are no words adequate for our thanks. But our quiet prayer as we absorb the astounding mystery of Christ’s love – may it be an anointing of gratitude.

Poetry: Anointing at Bethany – Malcolm Guite

Come close with Mary, Martha, Lazarus
so close the candles stir with their soft breath
and kindle heart and soul to flame within us,
lit by these mysteries of life and death.
For beauty now begins the final movement
in quietness and intimate encounter.
The alabaster jar of precious ointment
is broken open for the world’s true Lover.

The whole room richly fills to feast the senses
with all the yearning such a fragrance brings.
The heart is mourning but the spirit dances,
here at the very center of all things,
here at the meeting place of love and loss,
we all foresee, and see beyond the cross.

Music: Pour My Love on You – written by Craig and Dean Phillips

Yours

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, Lent, Love, spirituality6 Comments

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent
March 21, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032124.cfm

I will maintain my covenant with you
and your descendants after you
throughout the ages as an everlasting pact,
to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

Genesis 17:7

Genesis describes the sacred covenant God shares with us. In our Gospel, Jesus asserts the eternal nature of that covenant, made real in our lives by keeping his Word.

God’s promise of eternal love was made to us as well as to Abraham.
In every moment, God says to us, “I am yours.”
In every moment. we are called to respond, “Yes, Lord, and I am Yours as well.”

Poetry: from The Book of Hours – Rainer Maria Rilkë

Although, as from a prison walled with hate,
each from his own self labors to be free,
the world yet holds a wonder, and how great!
ALL LIFE IS LIVED: now this comes home to me.
But who, then, lives it? Things that patiently
stand there, like some unfingered melody
that sleeps within a harp as day is going?
Is it the winds, across the waters blowing,
is it the branches, beckoning each to each,
is it the flowers, weaving fragrances,
the aging alleys that reach out endlessly?
Is it the warm beasts, moving to and fro,
is it the birds, strange as they sail from view?
This life — who really lives it? God, do you?

Music: My God, I Am Yours – Suscipe of Catherine McAuley

My God, I am yours for time and eternity.
Teach me to cast myself entirely
into the arms of your loving Providence
with a lively, unlimited confidence in your compassionate, tender pity.
Grant, O most merciful Redeemer,
That whatever you ordain or permit may be acceptable to me.
Take from my heart all painful anxiety;
let nothing sadden me but sin,
nothing delight me but the hope of coming to the possession of You
my God and my all, in your everlasting kingdom.

Spring Equinox

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Forgiveness, Love, Mercy, Seasons, spirituality4 Comments

The Great Forgiveness

Ah, Equinox!  Today our Earth will put away her winter jewels – her cold snow pearls and glistening ice diamonds stored until distant December.  With them, she lays aside her cool reserve, the stark elegance of silhouetted trees against a white landscape.  She says, “I have finished my silent retreat”.

Instead, Lady Earth unveils her costume jewelry – that improbable mix of pinks, purples, greens and yellows. Even though this morning in Philadelphia, she wraps them in a shimmering chill, we know it hides a riotous, tumbling April.

Every year we wonder if those bare trees and barren hillsides will ever green again. But they do!  Spring is the act of “Great Forgiveness”.  It is the time when Nature mirrors the Infinite Mercy of her Creator and says, “Fear not, Sweet Earth.  I am deeper than your cold.  My resilience has redeemed us both for another chance at life”.

We human beings, too, are capable of such resilience.  I remember my mother’s infinite patience with an annoying neighbor whose seemingly innocent conversation harbored veiled references to her economic superiority.  Little wintry comments like, “It’s a shame you didn’t choose a Hoover.  It would make your life so much easier!”  Even as a child, I was nettled almost beyond tolerance by her chilly comparisons.

But my mother, who was no push-over and who did not suffer fools gladly, was patient and faithful.  She would tell me that Mary never had the love of family and friends that we enjoyed.  She helped me understand that sometimes people can’t help showing the December within their hearts if they have never been kindled by another’s kindness.  My mother wanted me to live from the “Great Forgiveness” that can warm any cold, indifference, or careless judgment.

At one point when I was still very young, my mother became quite ill and after a long hospitalization, returned home for an extended recuperation.  During that time, Mary came every day to cook for our large, working family.  Weekly, she cleaned our house with the same decrepit vacuum she had earlier criticized.  Without a word, Mary challenged me to learn another lesson about the nature of fidelity and true friendship and the opportunity to give it voice without words.

Years later, I read a quote that captured these lessons: “Always be kind.  We never know the battles someone else may be fighting.”  These are lessons I remember with gratitude today in this equinox of another “Great Forgiveness”. It is a largesse we can imitate if we simply remember the mercies we have received from the hand of our forgiving God.

Blessings to you all and a joyous Spring!

Inscribe

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Hope, Love, spirituality1 Comment

Fifth Sunday of Lent
March 17, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031724-YearB.cfm

I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD,
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah 31: 33-34

My Uncle Joe was full of life – a little wildness, a little wisdom, and a lot of love. Only seventeen years older than I, he was more like my older brother. His mother, my grandmother, died when I was almost three and he was twenty. One night months later, after partying with his buddies, he came home with a big tattoo on his upper arm something like this:

There is a whole psychology around why people get tattoos, but I think it boils down to expressing something that’s otherwise inexpressible. The tattoo was Joe’s way of holding on to someone who had anchored his life.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

In our first reading, Jeremiah kind of tells us that if God had tattoos, our name would be one of them. We are inscribed on God’s heart in an inexpressible covenant of love. Let’s live so that, if our hearts became visible, God’s Name would be clearly etched there as well.

Poetry: I carry your heart – e.e.cummings

i carry your heart with me (I carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear ;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Music: Still by Stephen Peppos

Wholehearted

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Faith, Gospel, Lent, Love, spirituality5 Comments

Friday of the Third Week of Lent
March 8, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030824.cfm

The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.

Mark 12: 29-31

Is there even such a thing as a half-hearted love? When we truly love, we love completely. Otherwise, let’s call half-hearted love what it really is

  • convenience: I “love” because it fits my purposes
  • fear: I “love” because I am afraid of isolation and loneliness
  • pretense: I “love” because I don’t trust that I am loved in return
  • habit: I “love” because it’s the way I’ve always done things
  • keeping up appearances: I “love” because I don’t want anyone to know that I don’t really love

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Let’s pray to love God for God’s purposes with a love that is fearless, trustful, passionate, and committed.

Jesus teaches that such wholehearted love of God is demonstrated by merciful love of neighbor. It’s an easy test — or is it?

Quote: from Rumi

A thousand half-loves must be forsaken 
to take one whole heart home.

Music: Wholehearted – by Newsong (lyrics below)

Trying to live in two worlds at one time
Holdin’ on to all the things that I call mine
Sayin’ one thing, but really livin’ two
It’s not just hard, it’s impossible to do

Lord, I want You to know
That this double life is through
And everything, all of me
I’m giving to You

And with my whole heart
I’m gonna love You
And with my whole life
I’m gonna live it for You
Take my heart, every secret part
I’m wholehearted in love with You

Talk about peace and talk about real joy
I’m talking about things I’ve never talked about before
Two roads to go, but only one road for me
I’ve seen both sides and I’m as sure as I can be

But, Lord, I want You to know
That this double life is through
And everything, all of me
I’m giving to You

And with my whole heart
I’m gonna love You
And with my whole life
I’m gonna live it for You
Take my heart, every secret part
I’m wholehearted in love with You

I’m not divided in my heart anymore
(‘Cause I know it’s You)
I said, it’s You and only You that I’m living for
(Only with my whole heart)

And with my whole heart
(Gonna love You)
With my whole heart
I’m gonna love You
And with my whole life
You know, I’m gonna live all it for You
Take my heart, every secret part
I’m wholehearted in love with You

With my whole heart
You know, I’m gonna love You
And with my whole life
I’m gonna live it all for You
Jesus, take my heart, every secret part
I’m wholehearted in love

Wholehearted in love
I’m in love with You, Lord…
You know, I’m gonna live it all for You, Jesus
Take my heart, take my soul
Wholehearted in love…

Measure

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Love, spirituality2 Comments

Monday of the Second Week in Lent
February 26, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022624.cfm

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

“Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”

Luke 6: 36-38

How many times in our lives have we realized that, in giving or serving, we have received much more than we have given? No material recompense can rival the gift of another’s gratitude and trust. When we are merciful as God is merciful, we know a joy beyond measure.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

A wise older friend said this to me long ago, challenging me to live my life by the abundance of Divine Measure. You might like to reflect on her phrase as you pray today’s Gospel:

Never resist
a generous impulse.

Prose: from Gratitude by David Whyte

Thankfulness finds its full measure
in generosity of presence, 
both through participation and witness. 
We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world 
while making our own world without will or effort, 
this is what is extraordinary and gifted, 
this is the essence of gratefulness, 
seeing to the heart of privilege. 
Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence 
meets all other presences. 
Being unappreciative might mean 
that we are simply not paying attention.

Music: Measureless – Shelly E. Johnson

Be!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Lent, Love, Mercy, spirituality4 Comments

Saturday of the First Week of Lent
February 24, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022424.cfm

Moses spoke to the people, saying:
“This day the LORD, your God,
commands you to observe these statutes and decrees.
Be careful, then,
to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.

Deuteronomy 26:16

… you are to be a people peculiarly God’s own, as promised you;
and provided you keep all his commandments,

Deuteronomy 26:18

… and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God,
as he promised.”

Deuteronomy 26:19

Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:48

In our readings today, God calls us to BE in the fullness of grace. For the people of the Old Testament, that path was found in the Law and Commandments. For Christians, that fullness is found in patterning our lives on Jesus. He showed us that God’s perfection is beyond Law. It is absolute Love and Mercy.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

In our prayer, we might ask for a deeper understanding of the “perfection” God asks of us – not a measurable, demonstrable alignment with subjective guidelines, but an unlimited openness to grace. God’s perfection is a Love without boundaries. Jesus is that Love made Flesh. In God, we are called to live in their example.

Poetry: Easy to Love a Perfect God – Shams-i of Tabrizi

Shams-i Tabrīzī (1185–1248) was a Persian poet who is credited as the spiritual instructor of Rumi and is referenced with great reverence in Rumi’s poetic collection. The tomb of Shams-i Tabrīzī was recently nominated to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It’s easy to love a perfect God, 
unblemished and infallible that God is. 
What is far more difficult 
is to love fellow human beings 
with all their imperfections and defects. 
Remember, only you can know 
what you are capable of loving. 
There is no wisdom without love. 
Unless we learn to love God’s creation, 
we can neither truly love 
nor truly know God.

Music: Perfectly Loved – Rachael Lampa

Pray

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Lent, Love, Prayer, spirituality2 Comments

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
February 20, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022024.cfm

Jesus said to his disciples:
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Matthew 6: 7-8

I enjoy when Jesus is bluntly funny with his followers, as in today’s “Don’t babble!“. But my enjoyment wanes when I realize that he’s talking to me too. What about the quality of my prayer? Where do I fall on the “babble scale”?

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: 

We might consider the quality of our prayer, just as we might consider the quality of our conversation with anyone we dearly love. Do we talk with them enough? Do we listen to them well? Do we talk about things that matter? Do we say “the important things” to one another? Do we know and love each other well enough that we can communicate without even speaking?

That deep silent dialogue with God is referred to as contemplative prayer. The site below is a great place to enrich our practice of this type of prayer.

https://mcgrathblog.nd.edu/how-to-practice-centering-prayer-to-pray-and-be-with-god

Poetry: Prayer by Jorie Graham

One of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation, Jorie Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1992 (1995) winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has taught for many years at Harvard University as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, the first woman to be given this position, which was previously held by Seamus Heaney and many other writers dating back to the first Boylston Professor, John Quincy Adams.

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl   
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the   
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
                                                                      infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a   
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by   
minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the   
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where   
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into   
itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly   
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
                                    motion that forces change

this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets   
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,   
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something   
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through   
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is   
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen   
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only   
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.   
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.   
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

Music: The Prayer – written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis

Incomprehensible Love

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Advent, Faith, Love, Mary, Prayer, spirituality4 Comments

Thursday of the Third Week of Advent
December 21, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, the Church sings out to God the warm, familiar Advent invitation:

Our first reading from the Song of Songs vibrates with anticipation of God’s arrival:

Hark! my lover–here he comes
springing across the mountains,
leaping across the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Here he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.

Song of Songs 2: 8-9

When the Divine Lover arrives, the one who waits must be awakened from frost, flood, or barrenness that has drowsed them.

“Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one,
and come!
“For see, the winter is past,
the rains are over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of pruning the vines has come,
and the song of the dove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.
Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,
and come!

Song of Songs 2: 10-12

As we pray with the Song of Songs, we are reminded that relationship with God exceeds our comprehension and expression. We have only our human descriptions to help us explore the infinite dimensions of Grace and Mercy. We image the Holy One as Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Child, Light, Wisdom, Love, Lover, or Beloved – each aspect offering a necessarily limited metaphor for the Incomprehensible One.

As we consider places in our world, and in our own hearts, which are frozen, flooded, or barren of life, let us invite the Passion of God to rescue and reinvigorate us.

As we reflect on today’s Gospel, we can imagine both Mary and Elizabeth filled with that Holy Vigor which changes and restores everything to God’s original hope for Creation. It was into such ready openness that God’s Word leapt in one moment 2000 years ago. May it leap again into our hearts.

Poetry: Love Gaze – Renee Yann, RSM

Caught in the ferocious wind
of my own inadequacies,
I cling by finest web
to the energy You are,
fixing my soul on yours
in that precarious holding.

You are the magnet, gathering
all my emptiness beyond itself.
As if my fears were only stones
to tread upon, You come into the marshes
of my life as stillness, paused
and vibrating like a deer
among the reeds in dusklight.

I cannot word what it is
to swim in the deep pool of your Eyes.
All the universe, and all my understanding
turn reverently aside to offer privacy
for such profound combining.

Music: Veni, Dilecte Mi – Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594), one of the leading composers of the later Renaissance

Latin:
Prima pars
7:11 Veni dilecte mi, egrediamur in agrum, commoremur in villis,
7:12 Mane surgamus ad vineas. Videamus si floruit vinea, si flores
fructus parturiunt, si floruerunt mala punica.
Ibi dabo tibi ubera mea.


Secunda pars
4:11a Favus distillans labia tua, [dilecte mi], mel et lac
sub lingua tua.
8:6a Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum,
quia fortis est ut mors dilectio, dura sicut infernus aemulatio.

English:
Prima pars
7:11 Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field, let us abide in the villages.
7:12 Let us get up early to the vineyards, let us see if the vineyard flourish, if the flowers
be ready to bring forth fruits, if the pomegranates flourish:
there will I give thee my breasts.

Secunda pars
4:11a Thy lips, my spouse, are as a dropping honeycomb, [my beloved] honey and milk are under thy tongue;
8:6a Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm,
for love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell.
(Douai-Rheims)