Category: spirituality

Two Kinds of Silence

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Creation, Faith, Jesus, justice, spirituality4 Comments

Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 18, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071823.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, silence plays a role in both our readings, but they are silences that differ profoundly from each other.

Moses in the Bulrushes – by Elizabeth Jane Gardner

In Exodus, we see the power of silent resistance to turn the tide of history. It is the resistance of righteousness.

Pharaoh, out of fear, has ordered all Hebrew boy babies drowned at birth. But Moses’s mother (Jochebed), aided by his sister (Miriam), silently resists.

A certain man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman,
who conceived and bore a son.
Seeing that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months.
When she could hide him no longer, she took a papyrus basket,
daubed it with bitumen and pitch,
and putting the child in it,
placed it among the reeds on the river bank.
His sister stationed herself at a distance
to find out what would happen to him.

Her resistance, though silent, was nonetheless active. Look at all the intricate steps she took to assure the success of her plot.

The resistance cited in Matthew is of a different nature entirely. It reflects a hard heart not a determined heart. It is the resistance of indifference.

Christ Preaching at Capernaum – by Maurycy Gottlieb

Capernaum had become Jesus’s own home town. He had moved there as a young adult in order to begin his ministry after his own neighborhood had rejected him. But despite Jesus’s miracles and witness, Capernaum resisted the call of the Gospel:

Jesus began to reproach the towns
where most of his mighty deeds had been done,
since they had not repented.

And as for you, Capernaum:

Will you be exalted to heaven?
You will go down to the netherworld.

For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom,
it would have remained until this day.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.

We might find ourselves anywhere in these stories. We all experience resistances within, around, and toward us – sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not. We just have to fill in the blank to imagine all the resistances we are capable of:

I tend to resist ______________________________.

What did you come up with? Maybe some of these?

  • change
  • work
  • quiet
  • commitment
  • injustice
  • direction
  • strangers
  • programming
  • affection
  • cronyism, and on and on and on……

Jesus wanted to break through the negative resistance of his dearest communities.

Jocebed and her courageous women companions used positive resistance to break through abusive domination.

In our spiritual lives, we must, by prayer and informed reflection, lower our resistance to God’s transforming Word.

We must, at the same time, assume our role in resisting the injustice and violence of our times. Like Jocebed, we might consider our precious world and its peoples as if they were our own children, threatened by fear-blinded tyranny. In that case, what determined steps would we be willing to take to preserve its sacred life?

Poetry: Rosa Parks by Nikki Giovanni

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said
they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago
Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would
know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who
helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight
the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because
even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth-
place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The
Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the
Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both
the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would
know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled
when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954
when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa-
rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in
1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a
doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood
why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer
when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps
and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways
when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the
Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while
the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to
St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept
him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all
summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly
lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand-
children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the
rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money,
Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac-
ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the
sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s
body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago,
where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did
to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is
for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa
Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi-
nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make
history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama,
who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the
moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods
aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in
Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the
Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks
said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would
there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs.
Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system,
the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and
the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young
men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great
voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting
us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the
Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it
was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not
being able to stand it. She sat back down.

Music: Soften My Heart, Lord – Maranatha Singers

Leaving Fear Behind

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, spirituality, suffering2 Comments

Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 17, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071723.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as we continue with Matthew, we begin a nearly three-week engagement with the Book of Exodus. Our companion along the way will be Moses (and, on occasion, Charlton Heston).

The Book of Exodus, a literary masterpiece, has profoundly influenced religion and culture for over 3000 years. Finally written down about 300 years before Christ, it is a gathering of the rich oral traditions and salvation history of the Judea-Christian faith. A total of forty chapters, the Book can be divided into two key parts: the liberation from Egyptian enslavement and the formation of a new, life-giving Covenant with God.

The Book’s enduring influence can be ascribed to these two themes. They reflect the universal life cycles in all of nature and in each one of our lives. The totality of human culture as well as our individual biographies are stories of breaking forth from whatever binds us into the call and promise of fuller life.

Today’s chapter is an introduction or bridge from the time of Joseph, (when Israel thrived in Egypt), to just before the emergence of Moses, (when Israel suffered in Egypt).

A new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
He said to his subjects, “Look how numerous and powerful
the people of the children of Israel are growing, more so than we ourselves!
Come, let us deal shrewdly with them to stop their increase;
otherwise, in time of war they too may join our enemies
to fight against us, and so leave our country.”

Accordingly, taskmasters were set over the children of Israel
to oppress them with forced labor.

Exodus 1:8-11

The theme of suffering also anchors our passage from Matthew:

Jesus said to his Apostles:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.

Matthew 10:34

The suffering imposed upon both “the children of Israel” and true disciples of Jesus generates from the same source – fear:

  • Pharaoh is afraid of what he will lose should the growing Israelite community turn on him.
  • The fear of losing one’s life in Christ inhibits the heart from true discipleship.

As we pray and study these next few weeks with the Book of Exodus, we may be moved to consider the fears both within and around us that prevent us from growing to fuller life.

Our world is full of the fears that induce violence and retribution. Our own spirits may be restrained with the fear of what we might lose by falling deeper into a Gospel life.

Our journey through Exodus offers us a time to consider and examine the fears we perceive. These fears may not necessarily be big spiritual impediments. They may be as simple as the fear of not being right, first, liked, included, or successful. But those very simple fears, left moldering in our hearts, are the seeds of the isolation, domination, and dissolution we see so rampant in our current culture.

Praying with Exodus, may we ask for courage to name and expose our personal and societal fears to God’s healing grace. We might begin with this thought from Paula D’Arcy:

Who would I be,
and what power would be expressed in my life,
if I were not dominated by fear?

Israel finally answered that question by coming into Covenant with God and Community with one another. The path is much the same for us in our lives.

Poetry: Immortality by Lisel Mueller

In Sleeping Beauty’s castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don’t even rub their eyes.
The cook’s right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy’s left ear;
the boy’s tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.
As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can’t be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly:
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and life-span of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.

Music: Fear is a Liar by Zach Williams – in this song, Williams images God as Fire, a Fire upon Whom we can cast our fears for a return of Love.

The Word Takes Root

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn spirituality2 Comments

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 16, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071623.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have three iconic readings from the rich store of Scripture. Any one of them, taken in itself, offers depths for study and prayer. As on all Sundays in the Liturgical Year, there is a theme that ties the readings together and helps us find entrance into their infinite wisdom.

Isaiah, in rich imagery, describes the generative power of God’s Word planted in us and in all Creation:

Thus says the LORD:
Just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down
and do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
giving seed to the one who sows
and bread to the one who eats,
so shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;

Isaiah 55:10-11

For our second reading, Paul inspires us with one of his most magnificent passages – Romans 8:

All commentators agree that Romans 8 is something special. If Romans is a breathtaking landscape, this chapter is a majestic peak towering above its surroundings. …
… Paul’s focus in this chapter is threefold: the divine work of the Spirit, the divine gift of sonship, and the divine purpose of suffering, each in relation to the practical realities of Christian living.

Scott W. Hahn – Romans (Catholic commentary on Sacred Scripture

In today’s verses, Paul describes Creation being transformed by the omnipotent Word foretold in Isaiah. As we read this passage, we must be mindful that we, our experiences, and our material world are the “creation” to which Paul refers:

For creation awaits with eager expectation
the revelation of the children of God;
for creation was made subject to futility,
not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it,
in hope that creation itself
would be set free from slavery to corruption
and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. 

Romans 8:9-21

Indeed, we experience that worldly “futility” every day in our own bodies and in the body of the universe. Life, both within and around us, may sometimes feel like an barren field longing for tillage and rain. We yearn for the healing, wholeness, and fulfillment that Paul calls “the glorious freedom of the children of God”.

In our Gospel, Jesus tells us that this fulfillment will come only through a spiritual patience and discipline like that of the sower sowing his seed. In this detailed parable, Jesus clearly equates effective “seeding” to receptive hearing of the Word.

For God’s harvest to be accomplished in us, we must hear the Word as described in Isaiah, and act in hope as described in Paul. We can do this in two ways:

  • by our prayerful, informed study of the Scriptures
  • our merciful action for the healing of suffering Creation.

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 13:9

Poetry: God Speaks to Each of Us – Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

Music: Spirit of the Living God – Daniel Iverson

Legacies

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, Hope, spirituality, Thanksgiving7 Comments

Memorial of St. Bonaventure
Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 15, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071523.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, both our readings express the character of farewells or life testaments.

In our first reading, we close out our few weeks’ journey through Genesis with Jacob’s instructions to his posterity. These directives attach his passing and their future to Israel’s ancestral roots:

Jacob gave his sons this charge:
“Since I am about to be taken to my people,
bury me with my fathers in the cave that lies
in the field of Ephron the Hittite,
the cave in the field of Machpelah,
facing on Mamre, in the land of Canaan,
the field that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite
for a burial ground.

Genesis 49:29-30

Reading these verses, I remembered two sets of similar instructions that I had once received.

The first set was given to me and my brother.

Our beloved mother had just died after a few months’ illness. We were about the business of preparing for her burial. Our family storage systems were very simple but definite. Confident that no thief would want to do any tailoring while burglarizing the house, we kept important documents in an old tin sewing box. Jim and I knew the cemetery deed would be there, top shelf of the living room closet, under a couple of afghans.

What we didn’t know was that Mom, never much for sad or purple prose, had left us a letter in that box. The letter, penned in a strong hand, anticipated her death and counseled us for a future without her. Surprisingly, her letter had been written long before her terminal diagnosis, prompted no doubt by my Dad’s sudden death about a decade before.

Mom was brief but direct in her hopes and instructions, the core of which was this:

Know that I loved the two of you
more than anything in the world.
Love and care for each other when I am gone.

The second set of instructions was not the fruit of a bloodline inheritance, but of a spiritual one: my call to Mercy. My dear sponsor, realizing at my Silver Jubilee that the years were passing for us both, offered this wisdom so typical of her direct and good-natured style:

In our Gospel, Jesus anticipates a time when his disciples will be without his guiding presence. Like Jacob, and like my Mom and my sponsor, Jesus wants his beloved descendants to recognize, and find courage in, the amazing love which is their inheritance.

Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.

Matthew 10:29-32

As we pray with today’s scriptures, we might give thanks for the blessings we have received from our ancestors, be they of blood or spirit.

Further, we might prayerfully consider those who need and deserve our blessing as they assume the future we will not see — our children, nieces, nephews, sisters and brothers in religious formation — any number of disciples and pupils who look to us for hopeful and grateful witness.

Poetry: My Legacy – Lucy Maude Montgomery
Lucy Maud Montgomery OBE (1874 – 1942), was a Canadian author best known for a collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables.

My friend has gone away from me
From shadow into perfect light,
But leaving a sweet legacy.
My heart shall hold it long in fee­
A grand ideal, calm and bright,
A song of hope for ministry,
A faith of unstained purity,
A thought of beauty for delight­
These did my friend bequeath to me;
And, more than even these can be,
The worthy pattern of a white,
Unmarred life lived most graciously.
Dear comrade, loyal thanks to thee
Who now hath fared beyond my sight,
My friend has gone away from me,
But leaving a sweet legacy.

Music: Standing on the Shoulders – Joyce Rouse

Coming to Forgiveness

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Cross, Faith, Forgiveness, spirituality5 Comments

Memorial of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin
Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 14, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071423.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Gospel describes the suffering to be encountered by disciples as they live and preach the Gospel.

Jesus said to his Apostles:
“Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves;
so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.
But beware of men,
for they will hand you over to courts
and scourge you in their synagogues,
and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake
as a witness before them and the pagans.

Matthew 10:16-18

The suffering is predicted to come from many quarters, but perhaps the most heart-breaking is persecutioin within families:

Brother will hand over brother to death,
and the father his child;
children will rise up against parents and have them put to death.
You will be hated by all because of my name,
but whoever endures to the end will be saved.

Matthew 10:21-22

Our reading from Genesis, on the other hand, describes the loving resolution of a long-standing family rupture as Jacob (now called “Israel”) reunites with his long-lost son:

Israel had sent Judah ahead to Joseph,
so that he might meet him in Goshen.
On his arrival in the region of Goshen,
Joseph hitched the horses to his chariot
and rode to meet his father Israel in Goshen.
As soon as Joseph saw him, he flung himself on his neck
and wept a long time in his arms.
And Israel said to Joseph, “At last I can die,
now that I have seen for myself that Joseph is still alive.”

Genesis 46:28-30

Many of us have borne the pain of similar fractures in our various “families”: family of origin, community, church or friends. Sometimes the cause of these breaks may be contradictions in faith and moral practice. At other times, loving bonds break because of willfulness, arrogance, ignorance, small-heartedness or the many other forms of human limitation.

The outrageous jealousy of Joseph’s brothers cleft their otherwise contented family. But into that chasm, God poured time’s grace and Joseph’s healing. From these gifts, Joseph was able to step into reconciliation, inviting his repentant brothers to join him.

In our own lives, such a step can be inordinately huge. The longer we hesitate to take it, the more it widens, sometimes to the point of apparent no return. But the grace of forgiveness is always available to us even if actual reconciliation is impossible because of the recalcitrance, inaccessibility, or perhaps even death of the other party.

When they hand you over,
do not worry about how you are to speak
or what you are to say.
You will be given at that moment what you are to say.
For it will not be you who speak
but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Matthew 10:19-20

Psalm Poem: Psalm 37 – interpreted by Christine Robinson

The evil prosper, but don’t you wallow in anger.
Do what you can and let it go.
Remember the long arc of the universe
and how it bends towards justice.
Set your feet on that path; it is True.
Be still.
Wait for God’s word to speak to your heart.
Enjoy your life as it is, find your work, love those around you.
Hold your head up and teach your children.
Notice those who are honest.
Join the upright
Make peace where you can
Trust in God.

Music: excerpts from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Andrew Llyod Webber

These two videos capture the story of Jacob’s arrival in Egypt and Joseph’s self-reconciliation. The first ends rather abruptly, but thesecond picks up the action. All lyrics are below.

[NARRATOR]
Joseph knew by this his brothers now were honest men
The time had come at last to reunite them all again

[JOSEPH]
Can’t you recognize my face? Is it hard to see
That Joseph, who you thought was dead, your brother
It’s me?

[ENESMBLE]
Joseph, Joseph, is it really true?
Joseph, Joseph, is it really you?

[NARRATOR & ENESMBLE]
Joseph! Joseph!

——————-

So Jacob came to Egypt
No longer feeling old
And Joseph came to meet him
In his chariot of gold
Of gold
Of gold
Of gold!

————-

[JOSEPH]
I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain
To see for certain what I thought I knew
Far, far away, someone was weeping
But the world was sleeping
Any dream will do

[JOSEPH & CHILDREN]
I wore my coat with golden lining
Bright colors shining, wonderful and new
And in the east, the dawn was breaking
And the world was waking
Any dream will do
A crash of drums

[NARRATOR]
A flash of light

[JOSEPH]
My golden coat flew out of sight

[JOSEPH & NARRATOR]
The colors faded into darkness
I was left alone

[JOSEPH, NARRATOR & CHILDREN]
May I return to the beginning?
The light is dimming, and the dream is too
The world and I, we are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do

Blessed Retrospect!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, Forgiveness, spiritualityLeave a comment

Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 13, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071323.cfm

Joseph Forgives His Brothers – Joseph Von Cornelius

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Joseph forgives his brothers and Jesus commissions his disciples.

The story of Joseph’s forgiveness makes a tender and indelible mark on the prayerful reader. How we wish we could be as magnanimous as Joseph in our forbearance!

Joseph’s experience is one of a long-held hurt that he sets aside to pursue another life. But even though he achieves tremendous success in his new environment, hurts like this are never forgotten. Joseph’s sobs at verse four indicate the painful memory’s depth.

Joseph could no longer control himself
in the presence of all his attendants,
so he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!”
Thus no one else was about when he made himself known to his brothers.
But his sobs were so loud that the Egyptians heard him,
and so the news reached Pharaoh’s palace.
“I am Joseph,” he said to his brothers.
“Is my father still in good health?”
But his brothers could give him no answer,
so dumbfounded were they at him.

Genesis 45:1-3

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free
and discover that the prisoner was you.”

Lewis B. Smedes

So many lessons can be drawn from this passage, but clearly the power of forgiveness is most evident. Joseph has been able to live a fruitful life in Egypt because he has already forgiven his brothers’ treachery, long before they unexpectedly arrive at his palace doorstep. He has chosen not to live under the burden of their treacherous choice.

In the wider perspective of God’s timing, we see that the treachery actually yielded a blessing not only for Joseph, but for all of Israel. We ask for the grace to see how our own need to give and receive forgiveness holds a larger blessing for our lives.

Poetry: Let It Go – e.e.cummings

Let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
 
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
 
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
 
so comes love

Music: Remember Not the Things of the Past – Bob Hurd

Remember not the things of the past;
now I do something new,
do you not see it?
Now I do something new, says the Lord.
 
In our distress God has grasped us by the hand,
opened a path in the sea, and we shall pass over,
we shall pass over, free at last.
 
In our parched land of hypocrisy and hate,
God makes a river spring forth,
a river of mercy, truth and compassion;
come and drink.
 
And who among us is sinless in God’s sight?
Then who will cast the first stone,
when he who was sinless
carried our failings to the cross?
 
Pressing ahead, letting go what lies behind,
may we be found in the Lord, and sharing his dying,
share in his rising from the dead.

Twelve

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality1 Comment

Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 12, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071223.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have the stories of two sets of twelve men:

  • Joseph and his brothers, heads of the twelve tribes of Israel
    (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin)
  • the twelve Apostles chosen by Jesus
    (Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddeus, Simon, Judas)

Joseph Oversees Egypt’s Granaries – Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Each of these pillars of the Judea-Christian tradition had their individual faith stories which have called generations either to imitate or contradict them. We want to be like faithful, fumbling Peter but not like clever, devious Judas. We abhor the muderous jealousy of the 10 brothers, but admire the generous forgiveness of Joseph.

These ageless stories present us with the mysterious beauty of the Scriptures which allow us to find our best and worst selves within them. But more significantly, beyond mirroring all human experience, these stories reflect God’s abiding Presence in the unfolding of human and individual history.

The Joseph narrative, which we have a small part of today, presents a whole new way of looking at God’s relationship with Israel. God is not an overt actor in the narrative as in the early Pentateuch accounts, but rather the hidden Agency in a long and sustained drama.

(The Joseph narrative) urges that in the contingencies of history, the purposes of God are at work in hidden and unnoticed ways. But the ways of God are nonetheless reliable and will come to fruition….
The purposes of God are not wrought here by abrupt action or by (heavenly) intrusions, but by the ways of the world which seem to be natural and continuous.

Walter Brueggemann: Genesis, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

As I read Bruggemann’s commentary, I think of the many times my religious community has come together for story-telling during a Sister’s funeral rites. Within an inspirational hour, the extended history of this Sister’s life is gathered into a powerful statement reflecting both God’s and her long fidelity.

As in Joseph’s story, God has not spoken aloud, but has spoken nonetheless clearly, in and through each remembered life. The grateful community is left in quiet and joyful awe at the end of each ritual, amazed and convinced that God is silently present in every person’s story, even one’s own.

Today’s Responsorial Psalm may capture our sentiments as we consider our own lives in the light of today’s readings. We can take great comfort in the belief that, in the eternal design, all things come to wholeness for those who trust God.

The LORD brings to nought the plans of nations;
and foils the designs of peoples.
But the plan of the LORD stands forever;
the design of God’s heart, through all generations.

Psalm 33:10-11

Poetry: The Thread of Life – Christina Rossetti

The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me: —
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? what hand thy hand?—
And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong and life itself not weak.

2

Thus am I mine own prison. Everything
Around me free and sunny and at ease:
Or if in shadow, in a shade of trees
Which the sun kisses, where the gay birds sing
And where all winds make various murmuring;
Where bees are found, with honey for the bees;
Where sounds are music, and where silences
Are music of an unlike fashioning.
Then gaze I at the merrymaking crew,
And smile a moment and a moment sigh
Thinking: Why can I not rejoice with you ?
But soon I put the foolish fancy by:
I am not what I have nor what I do;
But what I was I am, I am even I.

3

Therefore myself is that one only thing
I hold to use or waste, to keep or give;
My sole possession every day I live,
And still mine own despite Time's winnowing.
Ever mine own, while moons and seasons bring
From crudeness ripeness mellow and sanative;
Ever mine own, till Death shall ply his sieve;
And still mine own, when saints break grave and sing.
And this myself as king unto my King
I give, to Him Who gave Himself for me;
Who gives Himself to me, and bids me sing
A sweet new song of His redeemed set free;
He bids me sing: O death, where is thy sting?
And sing: O grave, where is thy victory?

Music: Air on the G String – J.S.Bach, played by Hauser

Unbound by Mercy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Creation, Faith, Jesus, Mercy, spirituality4 Comments

Memorial of Saint Benedict, Abbot
Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 11, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jacob wrestles with an angel and Jesus cures a man muted by demons.

Jesus Cures a Deaf Mute – Tissot Jacob Wrestles with an Angel – Bonnat

Thinking of these two figures this morning, I was reminded of one of my all-time most influential books, “Womanspirit Rising“. In the late 1970s, I first read this now classic anthology of feminist theology. It changed the whole framework of how I saw the world.

A key concept in the collection is a phrase written by theologian Nelle Morton which describes how women, despite the obstructions of patriarchy, can help one another to self-realization by practicing deep listening to one another. Morton calls this ministry:

“hearing one another into speech”

The point is that when our pain and struggles are truly listened to, we can begin to name and explore our own healing.

I think this is exactly what Jesus did for the man muted by demons. Jesus heard this man’s pain before the man could speak it. The Spirit of Jesus was one so attuned to all Creation that he could hear the “Sound beyond sound” within this man’s suffering.

Jesus’ unspoken response to the speechless man is the same that he offers to all of us …. Infinite, Lavish Mercy:

At the sight of the crowds,
his heart was moved to breaking for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.

Matthew 9:32-36

In our Genesis passage, Jacob is fighting his own form of “demons” — one that, in this case, turns out to be an angel, a giver of blessing!

Some man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.
When the man saw that he could not prevail over him,
he struck Jacob’s hip at its socket,
so that the hip socket was wrenched as they wrestled.
The man then said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
The man asked, “What is your name?”
He answered, “Jacob.”
Then the man said,
“You shall no longer be spoken of as Jacob, but as Israel,
because you have contended with divine and human beings
and have prevailed.”

Genesis 32:25-29

The entire night’s struggle is executed in silence. It is not until dawn that the combatants speak. Like the Gosple mute, Jacob’s true self is liberated by a silent hearing. As a result, he is blessed with a new identity and a new name – “Israel”.

When we were very young nuns, our Mistress of Postulants was filled with unexpected, old-fashioned wisdom. For example, her recommendation to our vocational doubts was to “sleep on them”. She counseled that “everything looks better in the morning.” Simplistic though it may have sounded, she was right!

Some of the turbulent adjustments, which could not be articulated in the dark hours, found expression and resolve in morning light – when we could see one another clearly and listen heartily to each other’s confusions. Such listening helped to either evaporate the troubles or to suggest a clear path through them.

That early experience was a simple time for me of growing in self-understanding. But it offered a more complex truth – that, not only we, but all the suffering world needs to be “heard into speech“. This is the work of Mercy as we see it so tenderly expressed in today’s Gospel.

In such times of deep listening and new naming, the God of miracles is with us. These times in our lives can help us become deep listeners to the world’s pain, re-christeners of the world’s hope, humble architects of God’s tender design for our wholeness:

For Professor Nelle Morton, the hearing to speech is not just a human phenomenon, but one that occurs because of a prior divine hearing and listening. We are able to hear one another into speech (and thus, perhaps, into full humanity) because we are first heard by “a prior great Listening Ear . . . an ear that hears . . . our own”

Dr. Elaine Graham – Professor of Social and Pastoral Theology at the University of Manchester.

Poetry: Listening – from Rumi

What is the deep listening? Sama is
a greeting from the secret ones inside
the heart, a letter. The branches of
your intelligence grow new leaves in
the wind of this listening. The body
reaches a peace. Rooster sound comes,
reminding you of your love for dawn.
The reed flute and the singer's lips:
the knack of how spirit breathes into
us becomes as simple and ordinary as
eating and drinking. The dead rise with
the pleasure of listening. If someone
can't hear a trumpet melody, sprinkle
dirt on his head and declare him dead.
Listen, and feel the beauty of your
separation, the unsayable absence.
There's a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it. Give
more of your life to this listening. As
brightness is to time, so you are to
the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest. I should sell my tongue
and buy a thousand ears when that
one steps near and begins to speak.

Music: Whispering Sea – Tony O’Connor

“Ifs” and “In-Betweens”

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, spirituality6 Comments

Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 10, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071023.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Genesis takes us deeper into the story of Jacob, and Matthew tells of a faith-filled centurion and a hope-filled woman. These are a wonderful narratives painted in images so intense that they have infused the prayers of generations.

Jacob’s Ladder by William Blake

Jacob and his mother have successfully stolen the birthright from Esau. But now Jacob, threatened with muder by his wronged brother, is an exile seeking a place to live out his life.

Jacob is on a journey in between his past and his future, between his choices and his regrets, between his security and his hope. He is in a place of momentous “ifs” because he has no “for sures” in hand.

Pausing at a shrine, Jacob sleeps and dreams of angels, of a laddered freeway to heaven. God appears and speaks to him, reiterating the essence of the Abrahamic promises.

By Divine Graciousness, God has intruded on Jacob’s “in-betweeness”

In you and your descendants
all the nations of the earth shall find blessing.
Know that I am with you;
I will protect you wherever you go,
and bring you back to this land.
I will never leave you until I have done what I promised you.”

Genesis 28:14-15

The experience moves Jacob to make a vow, hinged on a particular word of hope : IF

“If God remains with me,
to protect me on this journey I am making
and to give me enough bread to eat and clothing to wear,
and I come back safe to my father’s house, the LORD shall be my God.
This stone that I have set up as a memorial stone shall be God’s abode.”

Genesis 28:20-22

If I But Touch the Hem by James Tissot

In our Gospel, the suffering woman pivots her hope on the same word: IF

A woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him
and touched the tassel on his cloak.
She said to herself, “If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured.”
Jesus turned around and saw her, and said,
“”Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.””
And from that hour the woman was cured.

Matthew 9:20-22

It is clear from God’s spontaneous generosity in both these passages that Divine Mercy does not swing on an “IF“. God waits for us to open our hearts. God’s Promise is constant, and God’s Will for our wholeness in immutable. The “IFs” are our constructions, not God’s. God is with us no matter what, not if.

Most of our life is spent atwix one thing and another – between youth and old age, sickness and healing, security and contentment, courage and fear, indifference and awareness … beginnings and endings in a thousand forms. It is at these in-between places that God waits for us, as God did for Jacob, as Jesus did for the suffering woman.

“In-between” is usually an uncomfortable place because we are stretched between growth and passivity. But in the stretch, we may find a holy place, as Jacob did. In the reach of our heart for the hem of God’s garment we, like the extravasating woman, may find new life.

Poetry: That Passeth All Understanding – Denise Levertov

An awe so quiet 
I don’t know when it began. 

A gratitude 
had begun 
to sing in me. 

Was there 
some moment 
dividing 
song from no song? 

When does dewfall begin? 

When does night 
fold its arms over our hearts 
to cherish them? 

When is daybreak?

Music: In Between – J.J. Pfeifer (lyrics below)

In between the day and the night
In between the dark and the light
In between what′s wrong and what’s right
I′ll find you

I’m not really sure just why I care
My heart is broken and I’m scared
Walls are coming down
My defense is on the ground
I′m falling

In between the day and the night
In between the dark and the light
In between what′s wrong and what’s right
I′ll find you

I don’t want to lose you
Can′t stand the pain
I wanna feel the sun
Not always feel the rain
Walls are coming down
My defense is on the ground
I’m falling

In between the day and the night
In between the dark and the light
In between what′s wrong and what’s right
I’ll find you (find you)

I′ll find you
Forever beside you (beside you)
I′ll find you
Breathing inside you
I’ll find you

I′ll find you
I’ll find you

God’s Silent Power

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality8 Comments

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 9, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070923.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings lead us to a converted understanding of life, one that couterposes war and peace, flesh and spirit, labor and rest.

Zechariah describes it.
He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim,
and the horse from Jerusalem;
the warrior’s bow shall be banished,
and he shall proclaim peace to the nations.

Paul preaches it.
We are not debtors to the flesh,
to live according to the flesh. 
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,
but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.

Jesus invites us to it.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves. 
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.

What do the prophet, the preacher, and the Messiah ask of us in these readings? What does the Church ask by grouping them for this Fourteenth Sunday?

These readings ask us to turn our lives upside down. By describing what the Reign of God is like, these readings challenge us to confront the commonly accepted misperceptions of our world and turn them inside out.

Zechariah tells us that the Reign of God is not accomplished by war or any other expression of human power over Creation. It is accomplished by the meek and humble justice which pours mercy over all of us:

Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion,
shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king shall come to you;
a just savior is he,
meek, and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Zechariah 9:9

Paul tells us that the Reign of God blossoms from the Spirit of Christ within us and not from any material appearance of success – be it beauty, wealth, physical strength, or wrested power.

If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Consequently, brothers and sisters,
we are not debtors to the flesh,
to live according to the flesh.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,
but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.

Romans 8: 11-13

Jesus, reminiscent of Zechariah, invites us to rest in the mystery of God’s humble love for us – expressed in the very Person of Christ given for our redemption.

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.

Matthew 11:28-30

These passages are dense with meaning and mystery. In holy contradiction to a soulless world, they call us to live in, and witness to God’s Silent Power underlying life’s visible appearances. Within this Power, the peacful are the conquerers, the spiritual are the fulfilled, and those bearing the yoke of Christ are freed.

Poetry: The Ponds ― Mary Oliver, from House of Light

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Music: Invisible Peace – F.C. Perini