Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with the beautiful word “Remain“. Jesus’s use of the word indicates that we are already in God, in the heart of Jesus. All we have to do is to remain there by our choice to live in grace.
Alleluia, alleluia. Remain in me, as I remain in you, says the Lord; whoever remains in me will bear much fruit.
The Alleluia Verse also blesses us with the assurance that Jesus chooses to remain in us! Wow! What an astounding gift! Just hold it in your heart for a while in prayerful gratitude.
Our verse, with its profound confidences, leads to a no-nonsense Gospel in which Jesus makes discipleship clear:
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them
Matthew 7: 18-20
We pray to REMAIN and to bear good fruit
A Quote and a Scientific Explanation:
Quote from John Bunyan. This quote reminds us that in order for the soul to bear fruit, it must experience some cold and dark times as well
It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is no winter there.
Scientific Explanation from Carnegie Museum of Natural History:
Many of our fruit and nut trees require a cold period to produce fruit. Without cold this winter, we won’t have fruit this fall. If our fruit trees don’t get enough cold, then the flower buds may not open in the spring. If the flower buds don’t open, they can’t get pollinated
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our verse reminds us that God knows us completely, better than we know ourselves.
Alleluia, alleluia. The word of God is living and effective, able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
If we want to align ourselves with the truth that God sees and loves in us, there is a simple way. We can immerse ourselves in scriptural prayer, bathing our hearts in the Word. Within that wash of grace, our true selves are revealed and released into the gentle love and mercy of God.
As our Gospel indicates, when we deepen in that core integrity, we become more like God Who does not judge, but instead always loves. As Matthew said in a chapter preceding today’s:
Be perfect (compassionate) as your Heavenly Father is perfect (compassionate).
Matthew 5:48
Prose – Rev. Vima Dasan, SJ
The word “perfect” represents the Hebrew word for “whole” or “integral”. This verse is conflated from Dt 18:13 where the word “holy” is used. It is the love of one’s enemies that assures the integrity of Christian morality distinguishing it from merely ethical morality. It is by this love of one’s enemies that we come nearer to the perfection of God’s own compassion. The special aspect of perfection in this verse therefore is not moral perfection so much as perfection in kindness, sympathy and generosity.
If someone does some good to me, I do him or her some good in return. This is conventional. But Jesus’ followers are not to remain content with conventional standards of goodness. Jesus expects us to go still further. Even if one does harm to me, I must do that person good in turn. It is only after saying, “If you confine your good deeds to your own kith and kin, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Mt 5:47), that Jesus adds, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Why should the disciples of Jesus repay evil with good? Because, God himself sets us an example in this regard, by bestowing his gifts both on the just and the unjust. It is in this respect, we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we ask God to help us set our hearts in the right direction — toward God in all things.
And we express the blessed insight that to live within God’s Law is to be favored.
Alleluia, alleluia. Incline my heart, O God, to your decrees; and favor me with your law.
Here’s the way I picture this prayer.
Life is like a rip tide. It can capture us and pull us under its breakers when we least expect it. But as any good ocean swimmer knows, when we are caught in a rip tide, we must relax, lean into it, and swim perpendicular to its force.
Our Alleluia Verse today is kind of a “rip-tide prayer”. We ask for the courage to lean into God’s power in our lives, to trust it, and to swim with it even though it contradicts a godless culture.
God promises that there is always a current of grace to carry us to the Divine Heart, but our efforts alone cannot sustain us. As in Psalm 86, we can ask God to do a little leaning toward us to help us out in a tough sea! 🙂
May we ever incline our hearts to God’s Love already leaning over us in Mercy.
Poetry: You are so weak – Rumi
You are so weak.
Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave ’til it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Alleluia Verse gives us a powerful encouragement– “Shine”. That’s it – just shine because the Word of God has charged you with Light and Life.
Alleluia, alleluia. Shine like lights in the world, as you hold on to the word of life. ( Phil. 2:15-16)
As our verse so clearly indicates, the more we absorb the beauty of the scriptures into our hearts, the more we shine.
And it’s not just about reading the Bible. It’s about sitting down with the Word just like we would with an old and dear friend. It’s listening, not only to what is said, but the immensity that is unsaid or whispered – both by the scriptures and by our own self-examination.
It is taking what our heart hears and letting it change or deepen our lives. It is letting go of so much that doesn’t matter in order to hold on the the Word that does matter.
It is becoming a sanctuary where others see that Word shining and are strengthened.
May we shine with a Holy Light that draws others to God’s Brilliant Love.
Poetry: I found this little poem on the internet, author unknown. I think it works for today’s meditation.
You don’t have to tell how you live each day; You don’t have to tell if you work or play; A tried and true barometer stands in its place— You don’t have to tell, it will shine in your face. … If you live close to God and God’s infinite grace— You won’t have to tell, it will shine in your face.
Music: Walk in the Beautiful Light
I think this video is amazing. The hymn is being sung by a German speaking choir!
(Lyrics below — I especially like those “dewdrops of mercy”)
Walk in the light, beautiful light, come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright. Oh shine all around us by day and by night, Jesus is, Jesus is the light of the world;
Oh we shall walk in the light, beautiful light, come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright. Oh shine all around us by day and by night, Jesus is, Jesus is the light of the world;
No need to worry, no need to fret, all of my needs, the man named Jesus has met. His love protects me from hurt and from harm, Jesus is, Jesus is the light of the world.
If the gospel be hid, it’s hid from the lost, my Jesus is waiting to look past your faults. Arise and shine, your light has come, Jesus is, I know that He is the only light of this world.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Alleluia Verse holds the complete essence of Jesus’s life. If there ever was glorious “nutshell”, this is it:
Alleluia, alleluia. I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. (Jn. 13:34)
Our motherhouse chapel is breathtakingly beautiful. Thinking of it as a “chapel”, people who first walk through its doors are astounded at itscathedral-like dimensions. I know I certainly was as a wonder-struck eighteen-year-old on my first visit.
Our Chapel in the 1950s
For the next almost three years, I often sat in my little pew pondering the chapel’s central mural — and especially the words framing it.
The words are an invitation and a command. The painting beneath is the whole instruction on Love… “…love as I have loved you.”
After those initial years, I chose those precious words for the motto to be engraved on my ring. I have prayed ever since that it might someday be engraved on my heart. In a culture that can so misunderstand the nature of love, I always appreciate the chance to visit that altar or to look at that ring.
May we have the courage to be “Alleluia Lovers” in this love-hungry world!
Poetry: from one of the greatest poets, Paul in his letter to the Corinthians
If I speak in the tongues in human or angelic tongue but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I grew up, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Alleluia Verse is, in a sense, a dangerous prayer. Think about it: do we really want to learn God’s ways?
Alleluia, alleluia. Teach me your paths, my God, and guide me in your truth. (Mt. 5:17-19)
I remember, as a young person, thinking that “the path of life” would be pretty straight. You know like school, job, relationships, achievements over the years, and eventually maybe I would even die, but .. you know, probably not. 🙂
In my young head, life looked something like this:
Well, now that my “golden years” are actually turning a little bit burnt orange, I look back and see that my life has been more like this:
How can we possibly find God along such swirly paths?
Our verse today from Psalm 25 offers us the answer.
We ask God to teach us how and to guide us.
It sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? And it is simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. Within each of life’s twists and turns, God has a wisdom to teach us. That gift opens to us as we immerse ourselves in the Truth of the Gospel, just as Jesus encourages his listeners to do in today’s reading from Matthew.
May we open our hearts and say “Yes!” to the “Alleluia Walk” to which God invites us over the course of our switchback, zigzag lives!
Poetry: “Yes” is a world – e.e. cummings
love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places
yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds
Music: Marty Goetz – Jeremiah 29:11 which seems to fit so well with today’s Alleluia!
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we come back to the shore of Ordinary Time. Fresh off the glorious voyage with Jesus through Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide and Pentecost, we arrive grace-filled for the ordinary days of our lives.
( During this next Liturgical Season, I would like to focus us on our Alleluia Verse each day. This short snippet of scripture serves like a doorman opening the way into our Gospel for the day. It helps us to focus on a truth that might be most meaningful in the sacred Word awaiting us. It alerts us that Jesus wants to speak to us, and it gives us a hint of what He might want to say.
Of course, we do not read the Alleluia Verse in isolation, but rather in the context of the lessons of our first reading and the reinforcements of our daily psalm. But it still might help us to take the small gem of the Alleluia Verse and hold it up to a longer, more reflective light.
For those who wish to meditate further on the readings or Psalm, I will try each day to give you links to earlier reflections on these readings, as you see with the buttons above.)
Today’s verse is an invitation to the light and energy of the Holy Spirit. It is a call to be like suns and stars in the world’s shadows. It is a reminder that we are satellites circling God’s Brillance … that the brightness we reflect is a sprinkling of Divinity… that no shadow can withstand our “Alleluia ”.
So if we are brave, let’s look in the mirror each morning, maybe after a cold splash and a sip of coffee and let’s tell ourselves the amazing truth: “You are called to be Light in the darkness.”
That darkness takes the form of the obvious evils of our times: war, violence, hatred, rampant militarism and all other forms of contempt for another’s life.
But it comes in subtler patterns as well that may be harder to discern in ourselves.
To name just a few – the infamous “ins” such as:
Intemperance
Ingratitude
Insincerity
Injustice
inaction
and I think, worst of all, Indifference
May we invite and welcome the “Alleluia Light” into our every darkness. Amen.
Poetry: Bearing the Light – Denise Levertov
Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 117. Consisting of only two verses, it is the shortest psalm and also the shortest chapter in the whole Bible. But it is packed with spiritual meaning.
Our Responsorial Psalm, anchored on Mark 16:15, sums up the whole mission of Jesus with which we have been gifted and entrusted.
There is Good News – the “goodest” possible news – In Jesus Christ, God has fulfilled the Promise to redeem us.
Steadfast is God’s kindness toward us, and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever.
We should totally rejoice in this Good News
Praise the LORD, all you nations; glorify him, all you peoples!
We are charged to preach this Good News to the whole world.
Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
I think it is worth noting that as an alternative to this final verse, the liturgical directions indicate that we may respond simply with the word, “Alleluia”.
When we live in vibrant faith, our life is its own preaching – our life is an “Alleluia!” Our whole life proclaims the Good News”.
Today, in Mercy, we move out of the intense blessings of Easter’s Octave into a time called “Eastertide”. For the next six weeks, we will continue to pray with Acts and John’s Gospel.
Eastertide is a time of great joy in the Church. This joy takes voice in special prayers used only, or with greater frequency, during this time, for example:
Vidi Aquam
Te Deum
Regina Caeli
and a proliferation of Alleluias
We, as Church, are celebrating our rebirth in Christ. It is a miracle even to have been given the gift of life. But, as Jesus tells Nicodemus in today’s Gospel, it is a gift beyond description to be reborn in the Spirit of God:
What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you, “You must be born from above”.
Let’s pray in thanksgiving today for the gift of life for ourselves and all those we love. Let us pray for the continual rebirth of our spirits in the abundant Easter grace of the Risen Christ. (Below the music is a Birthday Prayer that you might save for your own birthday celebration.)
Music: Gradual and Alleluia – Catholic Songs, Gregorian Chant
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you… (Jeremiah 5:1)
On this, the day of your birth, God says to you:
Of all the myriad gifts of my creation, this is the day I made you. Rest in that thought. I made you – For this time in history, to be in the world with these people, to live in this place, to know these times, these cultures, this evolution of my creation.
On the day I made you, I made thousands of other creatures. Human beings, each reflecting some facet of my infinite image. Beautiful birds, riotous monkeys, infinitesimal ants. My lava broke through earth’s crusts to form new islands. I folded unseen mountains into yet undiscovered gorges, bent rivers into surprise journeys, washed entire beaches onto new shores. I was busy the day I made you. War raged and I welcomed its many victims into heaven. More creatures died on your birthday than were born. More came home to me than went out to begin their journey.
But you were one who went out. When I opened my hand and breathed your journey into you, I smiled. I saw the wonders that could bless the world because of you. I saw a rainbow of love, generosity, mutuality, happiness, encouragement, and faith gathered like an unhatched egg in your heart. I saw the storms and winds that would release that prism in your soul. I saw it spread across a wide sky because of all the years and experiences that I would give you.
I saw the hint of sunrise in you. Its name was mercy. It was a gift fired by the energy of My own heart. I looked beyond you to the cold and shadowed world that you would comfort with its light and warmth.
I was happy on the day I made you. I was filled with hope for the blessing you would be. I am still filled with joy, hope and love for you on this your long-after birthday. You have tried to live my sacred dream for you.
As the sun rises glorious in the eastern sky, I promise you a future full of love. Notice that the western sky reflects the brilliance of the sunrise, just as all the years now past assure you of my presence at the core of your life. You have been and are infinitely loved. Be love in return. Your days are replete with mercy. Be mercy in return. Be born again this day!
Lavish Mercy 