God’s blessings to all of you, my readers, in this beautiful month of May! These days bring the full blossoming of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the grape harvest in Australia, and the close of the rainy season in Peru. May all these gifts, and the special love of Mary, brighten these days.
Please enjoy this beautiful and elegant music, reminiscent of May:
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/043024.cfm
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
~ John 14:27
Jesus did a lot to prepare his disciples for his suffering and death – sort of an “anticipatory grief” workshop! And the essential coping gift he gives them is peace. Not a peace that means free from trouble or conflict, but rather a peace like his own – one of being resolutely grounded in God.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to be so deeply rooted in God that we see all experience through the lens of God’s peaceful abiding in our hearts.
Poetry: Making Peace – Denise Levertov
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
Music: Inner Peace – Hennie Bekker
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042924.cfm
Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love them,
and we will come to them and make our dwelling with them…
I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit
whom the Father will send in my name —
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.
Through the gift of Baptism, the power of the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts — a Waterfall of Grace to nourish us throughout our lives. This is the promise Jesus gives in today’s reading.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to recognize and open ourselves fully to the Spirit Creator’s desire to be in our hearts.
Prayer: The Holy Spirit Prayer of Catherine of Siena
Holy Spirit, come into my heart;
draw it to You by Your power, O my God,
and grant me charity with devoted awe of You.
Preserve me, O beautiful love, from every evil thought;
warm me, inflame me with Your dear love,
and every pain will seem light to me.
My Father, my sweet Lord, help me in all my actions.
Jesus, love, Jesus, love. Amen.
Music: Ablaze – Ken Walther (Lyrics below)
Inspired by the wisdom of St. Catherine of Siena, Ben Walther composed an upbeat song to encourage today’s generation to set the world on fire with God’s love.
[Verse 1]
By His grace, we are conceived
To be mercy, to be peace
To be light amidst the darkness
In His image, we are made
To be brilliant, to be great
To present the world His likeness
[Chorus]
Let’s set the world on fire
Let’s raise His banner higher
Let’s set a broken world ablaze, oh
Let’s hear a generation
Proclaiming His salvation
With every breath and endless praise
And set the world ablaze
[Verse 2]
All aflame but not consumed
We are burning with the truth
For His presence makes us holy
Fanning flicker into flame
Till His love is what remains
For to Him belongs all glory
[Chorus]
Let’s set the world on fire
Let’s raise His banner higher
Let’s set a broken world ablaze, oh
Let’s hear a generation
Proclaiming His salvation
With every breath and endless praise
And set the world ablaze
Set the world ablaze
Set the world ablaze
Let’s set the world on fire
Let’s raise His banner higher
Let’s set a broken world ablaze, oh
Let’s hear a generation
Proclaiming His salvation
With every breath and endless praise
And set the world ablaze
Set the world ablaze
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042824.cfm
Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us,
we have confidence in God
and receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
1 John 3:18-22
John makes it so clear and simple, doesn’t he? It’s what we do that matters, not what we say. Jesus said the same thing once when he pointed out a tree to his disciples and said, “By their fruits, you will know them..”
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let’s take a good look at our lives, and the lives of those we allow to influence us. Are we like trees bearing good fruit – good deeds of charity, peace, forgiveness, mercy, honesty, respect, encouragement, hope, and fidelity?
If our deeds reflect the opposite of these virtues, John says they condemn us. He calls us to Gospel faithfulness in what we do as well as what we say.
Poetry:
How far that little candle throws his beams!
William Shakespeare
So shines a good deed in a weary world.
Music: Good Tree – Hillbilly Thomists (I thought these guys were fascinating! See more about them on their website: https://www.hillbillythomists.com/about)
You can’t gather grapes from a bramble bush
Or pick a fig from thorns
What I’d like to be
Oh, to be a good tree
Some fall in the rocks, on the beaten path
Some sink into great soil
From a tiny seed
Oh, to a good tree
Like a cedar high
And mustard wide
Where all the birds of the air can hide
Find rest inside
Oh, a good tree
The beetle bites
The black rot strikes
From the inside
Have your enemies
Oh, if you’re a good tree
High and dry
Some branches die
From time to time
A prune’s required
If you wanna be
Oh, a good tree
Even when I’m old
I still will be
Still full of sap, still green
That’s what I want to be
Oh, to be a good tree
By Your word
The dark is light
The tree of death becomes the tree of life
So let it be
Oh, to be a good tree
Oh, to be a good tree
Oh, to be a good tree
Oh, to be a good tree
Oh, to be a good tree
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042724.cfm
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to Jesus,
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me, Philip?
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
Philip is like a lot of us. He is more comfortable with knowledge than with faith. He wants to be shown the Father, the way we might ask to be shown the facts, the details, the plan for something. But faith can’t be boiled down to facts and blueprints. Faith can’t be described or detailed in a presentation or an image.
Jesus challenges Philip to give himself fully to relationship with Jesus. In that shared love, wisdom, trust, and acceptance, Philip already knows the Father. Jesus is the human revelation of the Infinite Love, Wisdom, and Goodness of the Trinity.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray for the spiritual freedom to release our hearts from any doubt or reservation in our faith. We ask for the grace to trust the Presence of God in our lives and to respond in love to that ineffable Loving Presence.
Prayer: from Julian of Norwich
God, of thy goodness, give me Thyself;
for Thou art enough for me,
and I can ask for nothing less
that can be full honor to Thee.
And if I ask anything that is less,
ever Shall I be in want,
for only in Thee have I all.
Music: Expecting Miracles – Velma Frye and Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB
Midnight moon, let your soft light fall gently,
Gently upon all that has grown dim in our lives.
Midnight moon, pour yourself into places
Where we are weary,
Midnight moon, refresh our bodies
And our hearts.
Let us watch throughout the long night as ones,
As ones expecting miracles.
Morning sun, let your soft light fall gently,
Gently upon all that has grown dim in our lives.
Morning sun, pour yourself into places
Where we are weary,
Morning sun, refresh our bodies and our hearts.
Let us step into this new day as ones,
As ones expecting miracles.
May we live this day
With the presence of disciples of joy!
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042624.cfm
Jesus said to his disciples:
John 14: 1-6
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The disciples today, especially Thomas, remind me of myself on my first day of kindergarten. I had never done anything without my mother beside me, (except when, early one morning before the adults awakened, my three-year-old self tried to escape our front door to capture myself a pet pigeon.)
The disciples now face a life without Jesus’s physical presence. They’re scared. But Jesus assures his nervous followers that, in Him, they now have all they need to move forward with the Gospel. If they hold to his Way, his Truth, and his Life, they have nothing to fear.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy,
We ask to trust Christ’s assurance to us as well, focusing our days on his Way, Truth, and Life by our sincere study and practice of a Gospel spirituality.
Prose: ― Thomas Keating – from Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit
St. Teresa of Avila wrote: ‘All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.’ This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.
Music: Here’s a little “cardio-prayer” for your enjoyment! 😀
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042524.cfm
Beloved:
Clothe yourselves with humility
in your dealings with one another, for:God opposes the proud
but bestows favor on the humble.So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,
1 Peter 5:5-7
that he may exalt you in due time.
Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.
In Peter’s inspiring letter, he lovingly mentions his “son” Mark. No doubt Mark has earned this intimate affection by living a life such as Peter describes – one clothed in humility and trust.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Humility, that grateful self-understanding which recognizes itself as completely dependent on God, opens us for God’s favor, as noted by Peter.
As we grow in that holy knowledge, worries abate and trust upholds us.
Poetry: Humility- Jessica Powers
Humility is to be still
under the weathers of God’s will.
It is to have no hurt surprise
when morning’s ruddy promise dies,
when wind and drought destroy, or sweet
spring rains apostatize in sleet,
or when the mind and month remark
a superfluity of dark.
It is to have no troubled care
for human weathers anywhere.
And yet it is to take the good
with the warm hands of gratitude.
Humility is to have place
deep in the secret of God’s face
where one can know, past all surmise,
that God’s great will alone is wise,
where one is loved, where one can trust
a strength not circumscribed by dust.
It is to have a place to hide
when all is hurricane outside.
Music: Act Justly – Bernadette Farrell
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042424.cfm
I came into the world as light,
John 12:46-49
so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.
And if anyone hears my words and does not observe them,
I do not condemn him,
for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.
Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words
has something to judge him: the word that I spoke,
it will condemn him on the last day,
because I did not speak on my own,
but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak.
Today’s message is pretty clear and a little scary: it is our own words and actions – not anyone else’s, not even God’s – that will condemn us if we do not choose the Light!
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to be honest with ourselves as life presents its many challenges, to seek the confidence that comes with living those choices in God.
Quote: from St. Ignatius Loyola
“Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.”
Music: Suscipe – Luke Rosen
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042324.cfm
And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon.
John 10:23-28
So the Jews gathered around him and said to him,
“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe.
The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.
But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We may find ourselves not unlike the crowd in today’s Gospel: impatient for answers we already have!
Sometimes, if the apparent answer isn’t what we want, we persist in believing we haven’t been answered at all.
Jesus says what makes the difference is faith which opens us to a logic beyond this world – the Logic of eternal life.
Prose: from Rainer Maria Rilkë
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Music: Unanswered Prayer – Garth Brooks
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042224.cfm
Amen, amen, I say to you,
John 10:1-4
whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate
but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.
But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice,
as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has driven out all his own,
he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him,
because they recognize his voice.
The “gate” is the place where life flows in and out of our spirits. “Thieves and robbers” – all that is unloving – tries to break in to that sacred place. But it is only when we hear the voice of Love and Truth that we should allow our hearts to follow.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let’s examine our heart’s gate – that place where we discern the spirit motivating our lives. To guard our hearts for grace, that “gate” must be secured and oiled with prayer and a Gospel-catechized life.
Poetry: from Rumi
Before you speak,
let your words pass
through three gates
At the first gate,
ask yourself,
“Is it true?”
At the second gate ask,
“Is it necessary?”
At the third gate ask,
“Is it kind?”
Music: Passage – Mike Wall
Lavish Mercy 