Category: spirituality

Called to Be Prophets

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Gospel, holiness, Hope, justice, spirituality3 Comments

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070818.cfm

Today, in Mercy, our readings bring us the great prophets Ezekiel, Paul, and the Ultimate prophet, Jesus.

How did they become prophets? When they were little guys, how did they answer the perennial question, “What do you want to be when you grow up”? Unlikely that they responded, “A prophet, of course!” Probably it was something like a camel rider, a carpenter, or a farmer. So what changed them?

All three, by heritage and practice, were steeped in the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. As they grew up into the oppressive, idolatrous worlds of their particular time, the scriptural promises gave each of them hope. They developed, as the theologian Walter Brueggemann describes it, “the capacity to imagine the world seen through the eyes of … God.”

HOPE

This kind of vision is not unknown to our times. A few years ago, it was very popular to ask, “WWJD? – What would Jesus do?” Some people even wore bracelets and medallions of the letters to remind them to look at life through Jesus’ eyes.

Although a bit simplistic, it’s still a good visual reminder. What is less evident is the implied thought that we must KNOW Jesus well enough to UNDERSTAND what He would do. A casual acquaintance won’t do the trick here. Prophets are intimate with God through prayer and the works of mercy. Over years of faithful practice, they have come truly to see the world as God sees it. They beat with God’s heart.

A prophet is profoundly realistic about the world’s ills, heartbroken for those who suffer, but nonetheless convinced that God will make something amazingly beautiful for God’s People. This conviction impels them to live, speak and act  for this Godly vision.

We too are called to live with this kind of prophetic hope. It is not easy in our fractured world. But it is possible. Let today’s three Great Ones inspire and teach us.

Music: A Hymn to Hope from “The Secret Garden”

 

Wine, Anyone?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, holiness, repentance, spirituality2 Comments

Saturday, July 7, 2018

Click here for Readings

Today, in Mercy, in our Gospel passage, some of the Baptist’s disciples come to question Jesus. They are confused that they have been encouraged to fast and repent while Jesus’ disciples are feasting and rejoicing. They put the question to Jesus very directly.

But, typical of Jesus, He doesn’t answer directly. He answers with metaphors. He could simply have said, “They don’t fast because I’m God, and they feel fulfilled in my presence.” But that kind of direct answer is a conversation-ender.

Jesus, like most great teachers, enjoyed metaphors. They’re conversation starters. They open up a whole world of consideration far beyond the initial question.

Mt9_17 wineskin

So Jesus, perhaps fingering the tattered sleeve of someone’s tunic, suggests to  these questioners,  – You know, your faith is like an old piece of cloth. It resists new possibilities. Then, maybe pouring them a cup of wine, He indicates that they need to stretch and freshen their ideas about God. “Old wine skins can’t hold new wine.”

Most people resist the stretching that life brings us. Most times, we prefer things the way they are. We’d rather be comfortable, fasting with a well-defined god than to be stretched and re-woven by the spiritual opportunities of our lives.

But God is always making new wine, always offering a challenging, deeper invitation to holiness. These invitations come in many forms:

  • to shift our inner focus point from self to others
  • to open our minds and hearts to people who differ from us 
  • to change the way we interact with the earth’s resources
  • to deepen our political consciousness with moral understanding
  • to confront toxic habits and policies in ourselves and others
  • to endure difficulty, loss and pain with an Easter confidence

Living with that kind of holy openness to God makes our life a feast, not a fast. What invitation is pouring out of your life today?

Music: New Wine – Hillsong Worship

Abide With Me

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, Gospel, spiritualityLeave a comment

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062718.cfm

Today, in Mercy, Jesus continues his closing instructions on living a good life. Our responsorial psalm captures the whole gist of these several admonitions.

Jn 15_4 Abide

What Jesus is saying is, “Stick with Me, and I will show you the way.” It is the Divine Mother’s invitation to her child. “Come, cradle in my arms. I will protect and guide you.”

As wonderful as Christ’s invitation is, it is hard to accept. Most of us think we can do everything ourselves. Many of us find it tiresome to plumb the Gospel to find its truth. We think we already know the way to happiness: money, prestige, and power.

It often takes a lifetime to teach us how wrong we are. But a test comes into most lives which casts us back into the arms of God. We may eventually learn that joy comes from living Gospel truths, loving as God loves, and abiding faithfully with Him.

It takes courage and spiritual insight to accept Christ’s invitation to abide in Him, especially when we feel invincible. May we grow in that courage, early and late in our lives – in good times and bad.

Music: Abide With Me

What Matters

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Love, Prayer, spirituality2 Comments

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062018.cfm

Mt6_6

Today, in Mercy, Jesus tells us how to pray and do good. He says that it is our deep-hearted intention that matters in these things. It is there, in the hidden heart, that God dwells with us and reads our love for its sincerity.

God is not impressed with any bling in our words or actions. Not impressed with the big, loud, or wow of what we do. God knows whether we truly love, and it is that which touches Him.

Let the words of Jesus today take you to that inner heart-room where God knows and loves you like no one else can. In that precious quiet, enter the silence of prayer. Listen to God with the soul’s ear that needs no sound. Speak to God with the humble love that needs no words.

Music:  Yo Yo Ma playing Meditation from Thaïs by Jules Massenet

The Tangled Web

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Gospel, spirituality, Truth5 Comments

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061618.cfm

Why do we lie? It gets us so mixed up!

I vividly remember a quotation painted along the chalkboard border of my 6th grade classroom. It is from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion:

“O what a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to deceive.”

Perhaps the quote impressed me so much because I was entangled in a juvenile drama over smoking in the girls’ bathroom. Some supposed friend had reported two of us to the principal, a tiny nun who kept an unused  (but nonetheless threatening) cat-o-nine tails in her desk drawer. When confronted, what was there to do but lie?

Mt 5_37 yes_no

But, oh the complexity of it! Would my partner in crime tell the same story? Would any slight discrepancy render us convicted? Would she instead take the part of the informant? Would my smoker parents be brought in as investigators of the behavior they had inspired? Where would the whole quagmire end!

Wouldn’t it have been so much simpler to just tell the truth? So why do we lie? Why do we swear to what is not true? Why do we boast of things we cannot claim? This is the same challenge Jesus puts to his followers in our Gospel passage.

In my young case, as in many others, we lie because our behavior has fractured us from the image of who we are expected to be. We want to be respected, loved, powerful and right. These are conditions that should be earned by the integrity of our behavior. But when our actions cheat, we often lie, pretend, avoid, distract or otherwise compromise the truth.

Our world is full of this kind of lying. Our politics are crippled with it; our leaders unashamedly expert at it. Our culture is so poisoned with a lack integrity, that it seeps into our own relationships and choices almost unnoticed. Lying becomes normalized.

And the situation is not new. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is warning his disciples to avoid just such corruption.

A remedy? Here’s what Jesus says:

“Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’
Anything more is from the Evil One.”

It sounds simple enough. But it requires the hard work of prayerful self-examination, loving mutual correction, forgiveness (even of ourselves), and a good old “firm purpose of amendment”. (Remember that one from the Act of Contrition?)

It was a heck of a lesson I was taught in sixth grade – and, like most great lessons – it wasn’t in any textbook! I only hope I learned it somewhat well.

Music: Tell the Truth ~ Eric Clapton (Get ready to jam! Lyrics below.)

Tell the truth.
Tell me who’s been fooling you?
Tell the truth.
Who’s been fooling who?

There you sit there, looking so cool
While the whole show is passing you by.
You better come to terms with your fellow men soon, cause
The whole world is shaking now. Can’t you feel it?
A new dawn is breaking now. Can’t you see it?

Tell the truth.
Tell me who’s been fooling you?
Tell the truth.
Who’s been fooling who?

It doesn’t matter just who you are,
Or where you’re going or been.
Open your eyes and look into your heart.

The whole world is shaking now. Can’t you feel it?
A new dawn is breaking now. Can’t you see it?
I said see it, yeah, can’t you see it?
Can’t you see it, yeah, can’t you see it?
I can see it, yeah.

Tell the truth.
Tell me who’s been fooling you?
Tell the truth.
Who’s been fooling who?

Hear what I say, ’cause every word is true.
You know I wouldn’t tell you no lies.
Your time’s coming, gonna be soon, boy.
It doesn’t matter just who you are,
Or where you’re going or been.
Open your eyes and look into your heart.

Songwriters: Bobby Whitlock / Eric Patrick Clapton / Robert S. WhitlockTell the Truth lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Music Sales Corporation

Live from Your Abundance

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality7 Comments

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061218.cfm

Today, in Mercy, we read the wonderful story of Elijah and the Widow. Both were in “drought and darkness” situations, but they did not lose hope. Trusting in the Lord, they chose to live out of their abundance rather than their scarcity. And their small, shared abundance sustained them.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus encourages us to live from and to share our abundance, whatever that might be. Sometimes we may feel that we don’t have much to offer to the world. Our personal difficulties may thwart our spiritual energy. But we are children of God, filled with Divine potential. Life will always break through if we live with faith, hope and love. It just may look different from what we had planned or expected.

Light 6_12_18

There is a modern school of “abundance vs. scarcity” thinking, a self-improvement practice presented by the late Steven Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Whether or not he intended it, Mr. Covey delivers scriptural truths in secular language:

“ An abundance mentality springs from internal security, not from external rankings, comparisons, opinions, possessions, or associations.”

“ People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to…rather than detracts from…our lives.”

Bottom line from 1 Kings, Matthew 5, Covey? Trust, and live generously. Be light. Be salt. Doing so will open the space for God’s abundance.

Music: A New Age piece that may be helpful if some negativity is blocking our Light.

I Am Light ~ India Arie

 

Finding Christ at the Ice Cream Freezer

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn dying, Eternal Life, Gospel, holiness, spirituality1 Comment

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060718.cfm

Today, in Mercy, Paul continues to instruct Timothy on how to deepen his life in Christ.  He says,

“If we die with Christ, we shall also live with Him.”

Some of us, when we pray that verse, will picture ourselves on Calvary, literally dying beside Christ. But I think that our actual path to new life in Christ comes to us in much less dramatic ways. It comes to us in opportunities for selflessness, no matter how small.

I was at the supermarket one day, submerged in the ice cream freezer, looking for Turkey Hill Pineapple Sherbet. It is a rare find. 

pineapple sherbet

An elegant, older gentleman joined me, looking for the same thing.  I told him the sherbet had been recommended to me and that I would like to try it.  He confirmed the recommendation, saying it was his favorite.

We found only one carton. He turned to me and said, “You take it, because you’ve never had it before.  I have.” It may have seemed a small kindness, but it was much more.

That man’s selflessness has stayed with me many long years after the ice cream. Whether or not he was a Christian, he had died to himself.  The practice of openness to others’ needs – even a stranger’s – had become customary for him.

Our death to self and new life in Christ will be evident to others in our ordinary acts of selflessness and service.  It will become the customary way we find joy in life, and the way we give witness to a redeemed heart.

Music: Keep In Mind ~ Lucien Deiss

Thirsting for God

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Prayer, spirituality2 Comments

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060218.cfm 

ps63

Today, in Mercy, we pray with the deep longing of Psalm 63. Though God is closer to us than our breath, there is always that small – or large – gap in our comprehension where we feel an emptiness. As humans, we depend on our senses to understand reality. But we are loved by a God Who does not speak, or move, or respond in our language or dimensions. We long for the Divine consolation that comes ever so fleetingly in a wordless prayer, in a subtle melody, a child’s glance, a thunderous rain. The psalmist “gazed toward the sanctuary” to satisfy her thirst. Where will you open your gaze today to experience God?

Music: My Soul Is Thirsting ~ Michael Joncas

Listen for Angels

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

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052918.cfm

1Pet 1_12 Angels

Today, in Mercy, we begin reading Peter’s first epistle. Addressed to Christians dispersed through Asia Minor, the letter reminds them of the revelations of the prophets passed down to them and ultimately realized in in the Person of Christ. Peter instructs these early Christians to persevere in trials because they are now the bearers of this continuing divine revelation.

Today, we are the agents in that evolving revelation of the mystery of salvation. How we live as Christians opens the world’s insight into God’s Mercy and Love. Our testing ground is not a Roman persecution. It is a prevailing culture of death and degradation of the human person. This culture mesmerizes and poisons us to the point that we fail to see the glorious mysteries revealing themselves in our lives.

Peter says that even the angels long to look into these glorious mysteries. And yet, through faith in Jesus Christ, we have been given that blessing. It deserves our continual, grateful and responsive attention.

Listen for the angels circling your life today, singing “Look, the glory of God is here!” – in a child’s smile, a beloved’s hand, a gentle sunset, a raging storm – a call to mercy, justice, forgiveness, or generosity.

Music: Emanuel ~ Tim Manion

Even though this is an Advent/Christmas hymn, it captures the gift of revelation in Christ announced to us by the songs of angels. A lovely hymn.

Clash

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, Gospel, spirituality1 Comment

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052218.cfm

Today, in Mercy, we officially re-enter the Church’s Ordinary Time, those large time frames in the liturgical year which fall outside the major seasons. We have just left the glorious cycle of Lent, Passion and Eastertide. And now we get to show how all those special graces will impact our ordinary lives. It’s rather like coming back from free-floating outer space and landing in the gravity-laden ocean where we have to be rescued.

In our readings today, James and Mark are our rescuers. And they’re tough on us! Both point out that the clash of good and evil in our lives is rooted in our pride and unruly passions. In other words, we tend to focus on protecting and promoting our own interests in this life, sometimes to the point of stepping on others.

Our readings challenge us to place our well-being in the hands of God; to humbly turn our attention outward; to find our wealth and security in service to God’s most needy ones – because that is where God dwells.

It may be called Ordinary Time, but it is by no means ordinary. It is the glorious and dangerous daily journey into the heart of God. Travel in grace, my friends!

Music: Strength for the Journey ~ Michael John Poirier