Psalm 71: A Long Trust

On March 29, 2021March 29, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, dying, Faith, Jesus, Lent, Poetry, PsalmsLeave a comment

Tuesday of Holy Week

March 30, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 71, a prayer of yielding and confident faith.

Often thought to be the prayer of an aging David, Psalm 71 recalls a long and steady relationship with God. Even as his youthful vigor wanes, the psalmist declares that his true strength rests in God’s faithfulness.

For you are my hope, O LORD;
   my trust, O God, from my youth.
On you I depend from birth;
   from my mother’s womb you are my strength.
My mouth shall declare your justice,
   day by day your salvation.
O God, you have taught me from my youth,
   and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
Psalm 71: 15-17

David witnesses to a powerful faith, one that we all might cherish in our human diminishments. It is hard to lose things in our life – youth, health, relationships, reputation, enthusiasm, hope, direction, security. But all of us face at least some of these challenges at some time in our lives.

Judas Iscariot (right), retiring from the Last Supper,
painting by Carl Bloch, late 19th century

In our Gospel today, Jesus acknowledges the loss of trust in a close disciple:

“Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant.
John 13:21-22

That betrayal is a sign to Jesus that the great dream of his earthly ministry is coming to an ignominious close when even those dearest to him slip into betrayal and denial.

What is it that holds Jesus together, heart and soul riveted on the Father’s Will, as he moves through these heart-wrenching days.

Jesus is the living sacrament of complete obedience and union with God. Every choice of his life has brought him to a readiness for this final and supreme act of trusting love. Like the psalmist today, Jesus’s whole life proclaims:

I will always hope in you
and add to all your praise.
My mouth shall proclaim your just deeds,
day after day your acts of deliverance,
though I cannot number them all.i
I will speak of the mighty works of the Lord;
O GOD, I will tell of your singular justice.
God, you have taught me from my youth;
to this day I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
Psalm 71: 14-17

As we accompany Jesus today, let us pray this psalm with him, asking for an ever-deepening faith, hope, and love.

Poetry: Jesus Weeps – Malcolm Guite

Jesus comes near and he beholds the city
And looks on us with tears in his eyes,
And wells of mercy, streams of love and pity
Flow from the fountain whence all things arise.
He loved us into life and longs to gather
And meet with his beloved face to face
How often has he called, a careful mother,
And wept for our refusals of his grace,
Wept for a world that, weary with its weeping,
Benumbed and stumbling, turns the other way,
Fatigued compassion is already sleeping
Whilst her worst nightmares stalk the light of day.
But we might waken yet, and face those fears,
If we could see ourselves through Jesus’ tears.

Music: Long Ago – Michael Hoppé, Tom Wheater, Michael Tillman

Monday of Holy Week

On March 28, 2021March 28, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, Psalms3 Comments

Monday of Holy Week

2019 Reflection of all today’s readings

March 29, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 27 which is a cry for help from one who is confident of God’s care.

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
Psalm 27:1

Despite these verses, the psalmist obviously is afraid, otherwise why pray? As we begin Holy Week, we might imagine Jesus voicing such a prayer. Confident of the Father’s participation in his life, Jesus nevertheless must face daunting realities with courage – but not without fear.

We can learn so much from Jesus in this.

It is a very unusual, and perhaps non-existent, person who has no fears. We all fear something… maybe many things. It is human to fear that which we cannot see, control, or withstand. Even the one touting his great fearlessness is likely afraid of being seen as weak.

What Jesus teaches us is not to let our faith, love and hope be dominated by fear; rather, to engage our lives courageously with these three virtues despite our normal human fears. In so doing, we become the person God hopes for us to be, just as Jesus did.

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

The triumph is in resisting that domination, not in being fearless. Nelson Mandela has written, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

I think Jesus was afraid during these final days of his life, but he pushed through to the truth of God’s Will for his life. We can ask Jesus to help us in our fears by praying as he might have with Psalm 27:

You are my light and my salvation
   Whom then shall I fear?

You are the strength of my life
  of what shall I be afraid?

Trials, enemies, changes, difficulties—
  they rise up and they resolve

Therefore–
   I will trust you
   I will wait for you
   I will seek you.
transliteration of Psalm 27 by Christine Robinson

Poetry: from T.S. Eliot, Four Quartet, East Coker

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away--
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing--
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Music: Be Still My Soul – Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel, born 1697

Palm Sunday 2021

On March 27, 2021March 27, 2021 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith2 Comments

Today’s Readings

Today, in Mercy, we enter the sacred embrace of Holy Week.

Last year, about this time, as Jesus began his Paschal journey, we too began a journey whose end we could not foresee. It was a terrible, frightening, and disorienting time. It was also a time of amazing nobility and courage.

Now, this long year later, each one of us has come to a new place, both blessed and tragic. So many have not made it here with us — so many lives lost across the globe, some at our own table. And a way of life, for better or worse, has been left behind forever.

Many of us continued to make this past year’s journey with Jesus, long after Easter had passed. In some ways, all of 2020 was a extended “Passion” with its very real:

Foot Washings

Eucharists

Gethsemanes

Deaths and Burials

As we come to the beginning of
Holy Week 2021,
let us be honest with ourselves
about both our sadness and gratitude.
Let us begin the journey again
asking to share in the courage of Jesus.

Palm Sunday is a feast with two faces.

Jesus rides in triumph into Jerusalem, but his deep heart realizes that the road ultimately leads to his death. Jesus, who once called himself the Vine, knows that the bright green branches waved in adulation will soon be trampled to the ground.

In these final days of Lent, we are faced with the question, “What turns green hope to crumbled brown in us – and how can it be green again?”

Many years ago, I sat in a marbled, flowered funeral home with a bereaved father.

“There are things worse than death,” he said. After several absent years, his drug-addicted son had been found dead in an alley, under the cardboard box where he lived. “At least I know where he is now. Finally, we can all be at peace.”

Jack’s son had been lost to him. In the stranglehold of heroin, the great hope of his young life had degenerated into profound suffering. The vigor of his early dreams had withered, like broken tendrils on the once hopeful vine. It was, in every sense, a human tragedy.

Jesus understood such withering. He prayed for his disciples that they would not suffer it. He knew what would face him and them in the week following the lifted palms. He knows what will face us as we try to discern the honest path to joy, peace and fulfillment.

The enticements of evil are deceptive. Greed comes clothed as entitlement. Lust masquerades as passion, addiction as pleasure. They entwine and choke us in a false embrace that whispers, “This is for you.” Fed by the fear of never having or being enough, we resort to these very catalysts that will destroy us. Even the voice of love struggles to reach someone locked in this cycle of self-absorption. Like every barren branch, they wilt and sever themselves from all that could enliven them.

Jesus acknowledges that the choice for life is not always easy. He tells the disciples that, indeed, they will be pruned. No life escapes the incisions of hard experience. Like his followers, we too will face loss, pain, frustration and diminishment. But if our hearts have been fed by his word, we will hold to grace and we will thrive.

Much of the Palm Sunday crowd shifted gears by Friday, becoming a rabble of accusers. They could not follow Jesus through Calvary to his Resurrection.

But there is no true life apart from God. There is no path to perfection and joy but through God’s Will. The Passion and Death of Jesus have already set our roots in this blessed soil. May we cling by grace to that treasured Vine.

Music: J.S. Bach – Cantata; Himmelskönig, sei willkommen / King of Heaven, be Thou welcome – BWV 182

Palm Sunday: We begin the journey

On April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, dying, Faith, JesusLeave a comment

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

April 5, 2020

Click here for readings

Today, in Mercy, we begin a familiar journey.

palm sunday

In these times that feel so unfamiliar, so surreal, the rites of Holy Week offer us a reassuring pattern for our prayer. As we begin these rituals, we already know where we will joyfully finish. It is a feeling so opposite from our current global concerns which leave us questioning how this nightmare will ever end.

Through the solemnities of Holy Week, we are reminded that there is nothing we experience not already patterned in the Paschal Mystery. There is nothing we suffer or hope for not already etched on the heart of Jesus Christ.

These liturgies are an invitation to enter into that Sacred Heart, to place our experiences beside those of Jesus. No matter where we find ourselves on the journey, Jesus is with us:

In the confusion of Palm Sunday, tossed between loyalty and betrayal
In the suggestive silence of Holy Monday and Tuesday, when plotters whisper and friends weaken
In the discomfort of Spy Wednesday, when we realize suffering is inevitable
In the profound communion of Holy Thursday
In the loneliness of a decisive Garden and the angst of a resisted outcome
In the inexorable solitude of dying and death
In the other-worldly contemplation of a silent Saturday
In the sunrise of a promise, longed for and believed in

Even though we cannot attend services in community, let us not allow this pandemic to isolate us from the blessings of this sacred week. Let’s be intentional about the time and practices we will give to these mysteries.

We are invited into the Life and Passion of Jesus Who, in turn, wants to be with us in our experience of this journey. Each day, let us listen – let us become “obedient” (which means “listening”) – for the very personal whisper of grace in our souls. And even though we may pray alone, let us pray for the whole world suffering and rising with our beloved Savior.

phil cantic

I think today’s reading from Philippians is the most beautiful and pregnant passage in all of scripture. May it guide our prayer during this unique Holy Week when we all so hunger for God’s presence and healing.

Music: Philippians Hymn – John Michael Talbot
(Lyrics below)

And if there be therefore any consolation
And if there be therefore any comfort in his love
And if there be therefore any fellowship in spirit
If any tender mercies and compassion

We will fulfill His joy
And we will be like-minded
We will fulfill His joy
We can dwell in one accord
And nothing will be done
Through striving or vainglory
We will esteem all others better than ourselves

This is the mind of Jesus
This is the mind of Our Lord
And if we follow Him
Then we must be like-minded
In all humility
We will offer up our love

Though in the form of God
He required no reputation
Though in the form of God
He required nothing but to serve
And in the form of God
He required only to be human
And worthy to receive
Required only to give

This is the mind of Jesus
This is the mind of Our Lord
And if we follow Him
Then we must be like-minded
In all humility
We will offer up our love
In all humility
We will offer up our love

Worlds Falling Apart

On April 3, 2020April 3, 2020 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, JesusLeave a comment

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent

April 4, 2020

Click here for today’s readings

Today, in Mercy, worlds are splitting apart, but the Word of God comes to heal them.

In our first reading, we share in the experience of the prophet Ezekiel.

Ezekiel and his wife lived during the Babylonian Captivity on banks of the Chenab River which is in modern day Iraq. He lived during the siege of Jerusalem in 589 BC. In Ezekiel’s day the northern kingdom had been conquered and destroyed 150 years earlier.

In other words, Ezekiel, like his contemporary Jeremiah, had his heart torn apart along with the homeland they cherished as God’s promise to them.

In today’s reading, which comes immediately after his vision of the Dry Bones, Ezekiel prophesies a message of hope and restoration to a fragmented and devastated nation.

In our Gospel, Jesus is the new Ezekiel. He stands in the midst of the bigger “nation” of all God’s Creation which has been fragmented by the failure to love. Like Ezekiel, Jesus offers a message of hope and restoration to sinners.

In this Gospel, Jesus himself is the “Temple” about to destroyed. The prophecy of its destruction is unwittingly delivered by the high priest Caiaphas:

Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year,
said to the Pharisees and Sanhedrin,
“You know nothing,
nor do you consider that it is better for you
that one man should die instead of the people,
so that the whole nation may not perish.”
He did not say this on his own,
but since he was high priest for that year,
he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,
and not only for the nation,
but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.

Within Christ’s new law of love, these “children of God” go far beyond the Jewish nation. They are you and me, and every other creature with whom we share this time and universe. The fragmentations which separate and alienate us are dissolved in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

holy week

Holy Week will begin tomorrow when all believers will intensify their desire to join Christ in his final journey to Resurrection, to understand our own lives anew in the power of Paschal Grace.

This is a somber and surreal time for all of us, and we will miss our ability to join one another in our beloved Holy Week Services. But there are some helpful alternatives. I’ve listed some of my favorites below. Click on any of these three links below to explore.

Resources for observing Holy Week at home from Liturgical Press

The Holy Week services at the Vatican will also be available on line. This link explains how to join them in prayer.

EWTN television station also has a full schedule of Holy Week prayer opportunities.

Music: Make Us One – featuring James Lorne’s. Written by Sally DeFord
(Lyrics below)

Lyrics

How shall we stand amid uncertainty?
Where is our comfort in travail?
How shall we walk amid infirmity,
When feeble limbs are worn and frail?
And as we pass through mortal sorrow,
How shall our hearts abide the day?
Where is the strength the soul may borrow?
Teach us thy way.

Chorus:
Make us one, that our burdens may be light
Make us one as we seek eternal life
Unite our hands to serve thy children well
Unite us in obedience to thy will.
Make us one! teach us, Lord, to be
Of one faith, of one heart
One in thee.
Then shall our souls be filled with charity,
Then shall all hate and anger cease
And though we strive amid adversity,
Yet shall we find thy perfect peace
So shall we stand despite our weakness,
So shall our strength be strength enough
We bring our hearts to thee in meekness;
Lord, wilt thou bind them in thy love?

(Repeat chorus)

Take from me this heart of stone,
And make it flesh even as thine own
Take from me unfeeling pride;
Teach me compassion; cast my fear aside.
Give us one heart, give us one mind
Lord, make us thine
Oh, make us thine!
(Repeat chorus)

Fearful Tuesday

On April 15, 2019April 15, 2019 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, dying, Faith, Gospel, Hope, Jesus, joy, Lent, Love, Prayer2 Comments

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Click here for readings.

Today, in Mercy, as Holy Week deepens, so does confusion, fear, and even betrayal among Christ’s disciples.

fearful tuesday

In today’s Gospel, we see Judas turn from his own truth to a disastrous treachery.

We see John and Peter full of questions, confused by the turn of events. Jesus foretells the impending denial by Peter, his chosen successor.

The great trials of Christ’s Passion and Death emerge from the shadows of rumor and deception. Jesus makes it clear that the end is near.

As we read the passage, we can feel the fear mounting in everyone but Jesus. In him, we see see Isaiah’s description strengthening- the Lord’s Glorious Servant rising as the Light of Nations.

Fear destroys while trust and hope liberate.

Praying with this Gospel this morning, I remember the face of a woman I had seen on the evening news. At a contentious political rally, she was loudly shouting her preference to live under a dictator rather than live in a country “full of filthy immigrants”. She thought her raging made her strong. But I saw a person filled with ignorance and fear.

I can’t forget her face. It so saddened me to see the child of a beautiful God so distorted by weakness, prejudice and fear. She could no longer see the face of God in another human being. I think hers would have been the face I saw on Judas, had I met him as he left the Last Supper.

Fear is a disfiguring disease. It seeps into our heart and mind to blind and deafen us to God’s power in our life. It cripples our graced potential. It eventually kills the “glorious servant” we too have been called to become.

Paula D’Arcy says this:

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

It’s a powerful question.

How does fear keep me:

from loving?
from hoping?
from believing?
from giving?
from receiving?

Today’s Responsorial Psalm, filled with beautiful phrases, offers us a heartfelt prayer as we place our fears in God’s hands:

R. I will sing of your salvation.
In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your justice rescue me, and deliver me;
incline your ear to me, and save me.
R. I will sing of your salvation.
Be my rock of refuge,
a stronghold to give me safety,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
O my God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked.
R. I will sing of your salvation.
For you are my hope, O LORD;
my trust, O God, from my youth.
On you I depend from birth;
from my mother’s womb you are my strength.
R. I will sing of your salvation.
My mouth shall declare your justice,
day by day your salvation.
O God, you have taught me from my youth,
and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
R. I will sing of your salvation.

Music: Where Feet May Fail – Hillsong

Poem: The Anointing at Bethany

On April 14, 2019April 14, 2019 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith2 Comments

John 12_3 jar

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

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

(Malcolm Guite: The Anointing at Bethany)

Will You Anoint Him?

On April 14, 2019April 14, 2019 By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Discipleship, dying, Faith, Jesus, Lent, Mary, suffering1 Comment

Monday, April 15, 2019

Click here for readings.

Today, in Mercy, as we set out with Jesus on the path to Calvary, we might consider his companions who accompanied him.

John12_3 Mary

Closest to Christ’s heart on this journey is his Father. Today’s first reading gives us some insight into that profound divine sharing:

Thus says God, the LORD,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spreads out the earth with its crops,
Who gives breath to its people
and spirit to those who walk on it:
I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
To open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

In other words, “Have courage, Son, I am with you.”

His disciples, women and men committed to the Gospel, also share the dramatic events of these days. Our Gospel today gives us Mary of Bethany, a leader and gatherer of the early Christian community. Her heart is broken at the now obvious prospect of Jesus’s death. In the name of their primal church, Mary offers Jesus the first sacrament of anointing.

In other words, “Have courage, Beloved Leader, we are with you.”

On this Monday morning of Holy Week, where are we in the community gathered around Jesus? How are we speaking to him, comforting him, loving him?

Jesus’s Passion is enfleshed in our time in the suffering of the poor, the refugee, the sick, the disenfranchised, those called “vermin” by the powerful. How am I with Jesus in his anguish today?

Music: Two offerings today, one classical, one modern.

Timor et Tremor – from Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (Four Penitential Motets) by Francis Poulenc

Pour My Love on You – Phillips, Craig & Dean

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

In other words, “Have courage, Son, I am with you.”

In other words, “Have courage, Beloved Leader, we are with you.”

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