Tag: Indwelling

The Heart’s Temple

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Holy Spirit, spirituality1 Comment

November 19, 2021
Friday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with a passage from Chronicles as our Responsorial Psalm:

Yours, O LORD, are grandeur and power,
    majesty, splendor, and glory.
For all in heaven and on earth is yours.

1 Chronicles 29:11

This passage inclines us to worship God whose “temple” is all of Creation.

Both readings today speak about the “Temple”. After the victory of Judas Maccabeus, the Jewish people restore their physical Temple with exuberant celebration, recognizing it as a symbol of God’s Presence with them.

In today’s Gospel. Jesus also “restores” the Temple by driving out the merchants who have diverted the Temple’s purpose as representative of God’s Presence.

Our bodies too are temples of the Holy Spirit. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians tells us:

Do you not know
that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit,
who is in you, whom you have received from God?
You are not your own; you were bought at a price.

1 Corinthians 6:19

Through our Baptism into the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in us. We are called to be transformed by this Indwelling. As in any relationship, this transformation is accomplished through transparency, communication, listening and acting on behalf of the Beloved.

Poetry: Go Not to the Temple – Tagore

Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God,
First fill your own house with the Fragrance of love…

Go not to the temple to light candles before the altar of God,
First remove the darkness of sin from your heart…

Go not to the temple to bow down your head in prayer,
First learn to bow in humility before your fellowmen…

Go not to the temple to pray on bended knees,
First bend down to lift someone who is down-trodden. ..

Go not to the temple to ask for forgiveness for your sins,
First forgive from your heart those who have sinned against you.

Music: In the Temple Garden – Aaron Kenny

Two Prayers

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Jesus, Love, Poetry, PrayerLeave a comment

swan

Indwelling

You choose to own me
despite and within everything,
in a place
at the core of my life,
both removed and essential.

At that wordless
unwordable pool,
I bless You, singular
and whole,
and bow before Love as
it laps at the edges of my soul,

as it breaks
in pure revelation
that holiness
exceeds any act of will;
that grace is a desirous God
who possesses me there.

Union

Still ourselves, we are more one
than separate now,
Heart over heart, heart within Heart,
like a word’s meaning
caressed within its sound.

I drink from that union
like the verdant earth drinks
from its deep reserve of water.
It is Your color that flushes the shape
of every blossom sprung from me.

But that water, once tasted
precludes satiety by any other water.
There is no return for me now
to a season not fed by you.

What I have given you, then
is the whole seed of my life.

Love it in that way.

Music: Magnum Mysterium ~ Voces 8

God’s Indwelling Love

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

Monday, April 30, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/043018.cfm

Today, in Mercy, we are with Jesus as he continues to prepare his disciples for his departure. Jesus assures them that, if they keep his commandments, they will never be alone. Their faithfulness will allow the Presence of God to infuse their lives. We know when we have encountered someone whose life is filled with God. They don’t have to preach it – it pours out from them in kindness, peace and strength. May we welcome that Presence into our hearts by loving God and our neighbor.