Tag: Jeremiah

Alleluia: An Ageless Love

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, healing, Hope, Love, Mercy, spirituality2 Comments

Wednesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 3, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080322.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
A great prophet has arisen in our midst
and God has visited the people.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings carry the themes of Hope and Restoration.

Jeremiah tells the people that, even after all they’ve been through, God has an age-old love for them and therefore will not abandon them.

Jeremiah continues with a description of the future coming of the Savior, promising that Israel will be restored:

Yes, a day will come when the watchmen
will call out on Mount Ephraim:
“Rise up, let us go to Zion,
to the LORD, our God.”
For thus says the LORD:
Shout with joy for Jacob,
exult at the head of the nations;
proclaim your praise and say:
The LORD has delivered the people,
the remnant of Israel.

Our Alleluia Verse announces that this expected Savior has arrived in Jesus Christ, the Divine Shepherd, Lord, Guardian and Redeemer whom Jeremiah describes in our Responsorial Psalm.

Alleluia, alleluia.
A great prophet has arisen in our midst
and God has visited the people.

Matthew’s Gospel today, which can seem a little contentious in tone, actually demonstrates the surprising truth that Jesus came not only for the sake of Israel, but for all people — for us.

We are all beneficiaries of God’s age-old love for us.

Poetry: You are the future, the great sunrise red – Rainer Maria Rilke

You are the future, the great sunrise red
above the broad plains of eternity.
You are the cock-crow when time’s night has fled,
You are the dew, the matins, and the maid,
the stranger and the mother, you are death.

You are the changeful shape that out of Fate
rears up in everlasting solitude,
the unlamented and the unacclaimed,
beyond describing as some savage wood.

You are the deep epitome of things
that keeps its being’s secret with locked lip,
and shows itself to others otherwise:
to the ship, a haven — to the land, a ship.

Music: I Have Loved You – Michael Joncas 

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.

Seek the face of the Lord and long for him: He will bring you his light and his peace.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.

Seek the face of the Lord and long for him: He will bring you his joy and his hope.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.

Seek the face of the Lord and long for him: He will bring you his care and his love.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.

Alleluia: God’s Word Brings Grace

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Alphonsus Liguori,
Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Monday, August 1, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080122.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings convey compelling stories and life-changing miracles.

The passage from Jeremiah tells the tale of the false prophet Hananiah. He didn’t tell the people the truth. He was a kind of ancient “prosperity preacher” who spun a message similar to one we might hear today.

Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel, the gospel of success, or seed faith)is a religious belief among some Protestant Christians that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for them, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one’s material wealth. Material and especially financial success is seen as a sign of divine favor.

Wikipedia

Prosperity religion in centered on “me” and what I have to do to have “enough” and “more than enough” material goods and spiritual assurances.

Alleluia, alleluia.
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.

In our reading from Matthew, Jesus acts out the true Gospel. It is centered on others,especially those in need.

Picture the moment. Jesus has been gut-punched by the barbarous murder of his beloved friend and cousin John. He wants to be alone to mourn. Watch him, in your heart’s eye, as he rows alone across the lake to a place of longed-for solitude. Every swish and pull through the water is a memory of John, is a hope and fragment of the dream they shared. Every oar’s dipping is a word with his Father to understand the “why”.

And yet, on the lake’s other side, where the needy crowd has found him out, he sets his own need aside. Jesus heals. He feeds. He teaches. He IS for the other not himself.

His words summarize what his actions model. He tells the gathered people that he has fed their bodies – met their material needs. But there is so much more to spiritual wholeness. Every word from the mouth of God — even the word that John had died — every word brings grace, and the call to feed and heal the world around us.

Alleluia, alleluia.
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.

Poetry: Not By Bread Alone – James Terry White

If thou of fortune be bereft,
And thou dost find but two loaves left
To thee—sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

But not alone does beauty bide
Where bloom and tint and fragrance hide;
The minstrel's melody may feed
Perhaps a more insistent need.

But every beauty, howe'er blent
To ear or eye, fails to content;
Only the heart, with love afire,
Can satisfy the soul's desire.

Music:  Not by Bread Alone- M. Roger Holland II

Alleluia: For the Sake of Righteousness

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Discipleship, Faith, spirituality4 Comments

Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 30, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/073022.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are they who are persecuted
for the sake of righteousness
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

( Dear Friends, I have just come home from the funeral of one of our Sisters – a beloved, holy, humble human being – full of love, generosity and joy. I would love to offer today’s reflection based on the power of her Home-Going Ceremony. But I need more time to let that brew in my heart. So, since I am running quite late, I am offering an edited reflection from two years ago for today’s reflection. But, trust me, you will be hearing soon about the miracle of Sister Margery Lowry.)

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jeremiah and John the Baptist are living out the meaning.of Psalm 69.

Each of these great prophets has been ensnared by the civic evil of their times, personified in Old Testament princes and New Testament Herod and Herodias. The power structure surrounding each prophet stood in direct contradiction to their witness to God’s Word. Those structures, when confronted with a sacred truth, tried to overwhelm the messenger, like quicksand swallows an innocent traveler.

Rescue me out of the mire; may I not sink!
may I be rescued from my foes,
and from the watery depths.
Let not the flood-waters overwhelm me,
nor the abyss swallow me up,
nor the pit close its mouth over me.

Psalm 69 raises to our prayer the reality that such struggles continue in our time. We live in a wonderful but still sinful world where every person decides, everyday, where he or she will stand in the contest between good and evil.

The decision is sometimes very clear. At other times, the waters are so muddied with lies, propaganda, greed, fear, bias. and unexamined privilege that we feel mired in confusion or resistance.

But I am afflicted and in pain;
let your saving help, O God, protect me.
I will praise the name of God in song,
and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.

Psalm 69 throws us a rescue line in today’s final verse:

See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds God spurns not.

The steady path to truth lies with those who seek God among the humble and poor. The humble are the ones through whom the Lord speaks. They are God’s own. Jeremiah and the Baptist understood this truth and preached it by their lives.

We might examine our lives today in the light of their witness and the message of this challenging psalm.

Poetry:  Beginners – Denise Levertov

‘From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea—‘


But we have only begun
to love the earth.
We have only begun
to imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
—so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
—we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision
how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,
too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.

Music:  The Cry of the Poor – John Foley, SJ

Alleluia: Friends of God

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Cross, Discipleship, Faith, friendship, spirituality1 Comment

Wednesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 27, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072722.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
I call you my friends, says the Lord,
for I have made known to you
all that the Father has told me.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings begin with Jeremiah’s heartfelt lament.

Woe to me, mother, that you gave me birth!
a man of strife and contention to all the land!

Jeremiah 15:10

The cry reminds us of Isaiah’s words heard during Lent to describe Jesus’s Passion, words which inspired a magnificent aria in Handel’s Messiah::

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with sorrow. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Isaiah 53:3

It is not always easy to be a  “friend of God”. These scriptures paint a clear picture of the prophet’s painful path – whether Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jesus, or today’s prophets like Pope Francis. There will always be enemies who, for the sake of their twisted self-interest, attack good with evil.

But there is also always hope. God is with us, a stronghold of Mercy, as our Responsorial Psalm tells us:

But I will sing of your strength
and revel at dawn in your mercy;
You have been my stronghold,
my refuge in the day of distress.

O my strength! your praise will I sing;
for you, O God, are my stronghold,
my merciful God!

Psalm 59: 10-11; 17,18

Our Gospel assures us that, though at times costly, there is no treasure greater than God’s friendship.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,
which a person finds and hides again,
and out of joy goes and sells everything to buy that field.

Notice that the person patiently plans to buy the whole field, not just the one discovered gem. Friendship with God never exhausts its hidden surprises. There are always more treasures in the field as we grow deeper in God’s love.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Poem: The Bright Field – R.S. Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Music: The Field – Kristene DiMarco (Lyrics below)

What do I have but Jesus
I have found no one Like Him
All the World has 
loses its Appeal
When He Stands beside me

[Chorus]
The World can keep its Praises
All its Riches and its Treasures
‘Cause there’s nothing
Like His Presence to me
And man may give their Favor
All their Fleeting awe and Honor
But there’s nothing
Like His Presence to me

[Verse 2]
What do I have but Jesus
Nothing I’ve gained Compares
His Friendship is all
The Strength I need
To never grow weary

[Chorus]
The World can keep its Praises
All its Riches and its Treasures
‘Cause there’s nothing
Like His Presence to me
And man may give their Favor
All their Fleeting awe and Honor
But there’s nothing
Like His Presence to me

[Outro]
I bought the Field
And I keep digging up
More Treasure
It turns out it’s here in the ground
I could never Measure
Is there even a Cost if I end up
Holding Heaven
Oh, the Beauty of Living
In Your Presence

Alleluia: Innocence!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Mercy, Poetry, spirituality1 Comment

Thursday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 21, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072122.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jeremiah images Israel as a bride, the sacred betrothed of God:

I remember the devotion of your youth,
how you loved me as a bride,
Following me in the desert,
in a land unsown.
Sacred to the LORD was Israel,
the first fruits of his harvest;
Should any presume to partake of them,
evil would befall them, says the LORD.

Jeremiah 2: 1-3

These passionate verses portray a heartbroken and angry God lamenting Israel’s ingratitude and unfaithfulness.

Be amazed at this, O heavens,
and shudder with sheer horror, says the LORD.
Two evils have my people done:
they have forsaken me, the source of living waters;
They have dug themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns, that hold no water.

Jeremiah 2:12-13

This reading from Jeremiah is about a loss of innocence, and the spiritual fragmentation it can bring. Our Alleluia Verse, on the other hand, leads to a Gospel that proclaims the restoration of an “eternal innocence” rooted in “knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven”.

Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are you, God,
Creator of heaven and earth;
you have revealed to little ones
the mysteries of the Kingdom.

There is a human innocence that comes from not knowing any better, a kind of blind trust that hasn’t yet been “burned”.

But don’t confuse “innocence” with naïveté.

The Gospel innocence Jesus describes isn’t blind and it isn’t naive. It does know better. It recognizes and chooses the cost of a faithful life. That recognition and choice yield a profound spiritual freedom that is the ultimate innocence.

Blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Matthew 13: 16-17

Poetry: The Divine Image – William Blake

from The Project Gutenberg
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight 
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, 
Is God our Father dear
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, 
Is man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart ; 
Pity, a human face ;
And Love, the human form divine ;
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress, 
Prays to the human form divine :
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form, 
In heathen, Turk, or Jew,
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, 
There God is dwelling too.

Music: U2 – A Song for Someone from Songs of Innocence

When you listen to this highly poetic song, could God be your “someone”?

Alleluia: Seedlings

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Poetry, Prayer, spirituality3 Comments

Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 20, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072022.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
The seed is the word of God,
Christ is the sower;
all who come to him will live for ever.

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our first reading recounts Jeremiah’s call. Oh, and it has a sovereign ring to it, doesn’t it! You can almost hear trumpets accompanying the words:

The word of the LORD came to me thus:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

Jeremiah 1: 2-3

Long before Jeremiah knew, the Word had been instilled in him. At the appointed time, God called for that Word to bear fruit.

At our creation, God breathed the Divine Word into our hearts too. Jesus says it was like a farmer planting seed. And our humble, patient Creator waits to see if we turn out to be rich soil.

A sower went out to sow.
… some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky ground, 
…. the sun rose it was scorched,

Some seed fell among thorns
which choked it.

But some seed fell on rich soil, 
and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.
(from Matthew 13: 1-9)

When Jeremiah heard about the Word in his heart, he didn’t immediately have “ears to hear”. At first, he resisted:

“Ah, Lord GOD!” I said,
“I know not how to speak;
I am too young.”

Jeremiah

Every day, God continues to call forth the fruitful Word from us. Sometimes we resist. Our lives can be a little rocky, thorny, or we might just be off the path a bit.

We also might make excuses to ignore the call of grace:

  • too young
  • too old
  • too tired
  • too busy
  • too afraid
  • too weak

We might just too … too… too ourselves into spiritual quicksand!

Our beautiful psalm tells what to say instead of our “too”s:

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: 5-6; 15,17

Poetry: Two poems today – one from Wendell Berry and one from me. His is way better. 🙂

The Wild Geese – Wendell Berry

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end.  In time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves.  We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes.  Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here.  And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear.  What we need is here.

If You Are Mother – Renee Yann, RSM

If you are Mother, God
don’t let us hurt ourselves;
keep freedom in us
as freedom,
not as willfulness,
so that we grow
even if we must grow down
like a dark, hidden root.

Remember,
if life dies in us,
You change.  We are not
isolated seedlings
you left somewhere
in lonely hope one spring.
You are the ground, and the
growth, and the growth’s nourishment.
When we green, it is You
who thrive.

Music: Listen and blossom, dears❤️

Lent: Redemptive Suffering

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

April 8, 2022
Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as we inch closer to Holy Week, we meet both a very troubled Jeremiah and Jesus.

V0034343 The prophet Jeremiah wailing alone on a hill. Engraving.
The Prophet Jeremiah Weeping Alone on a Hill (from the Wellcome Trust)

Jeremiah, the Old Testament mirror of Jesus’s sufferings, bewails the treachery even of his friends:

I hear the whisperings of many:
“Terror on every side!
Denounce! let us denounce him!”
All those who were my friends
are on the watch for any misstep of mine.

Jeremiah 20:10

That’s really raw, because you can get through almost anything in the company of true friends.

Jesus weeps
Jesus Weeping Over Jerusalem by Ary Scheffer (1795-1858)

Jesus came as a Friend and hoped to find Friends of God by his ministry. And he did find many. But not all.

It takes some work to be a true friend of Jesus. Some didn’t have the courage, or generosity, or passion, or hopeful imagination to reach past their self-protective boundaries – to step into eternal life even as they walked the time-bound earth.

In today’s Gospel this band of resisters project their fears and doubts to the crowds around them. The evil sparks inflame the ready tinder of human selfishness. The mob turns on Jesus, spiritual misers scoffing at the generous challenge to believe.

Jesus pleads with them to realize what they are doing:

If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me;
but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me,
believe the works, so that you may realize and understand
that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.

John 10:37-38

But Jesus and Jeremiah, though troubled, are grounded in God. Our Responsorial Psalm captures what might have been their silent prayer:

Psalm18 distress

Poetry: The following transliteration of Psalm 18, composed by Christine Robinson, might help us to be with Jesus in his moment, and in our own moments of fear, anxiety, or doubt.

I open my heart to you, O God
for you are my strength, my fortress,
the rock on whom I build my life.
I have been lost in my fears and my angers
caught up in falseness, fearful, and furious
I cried to you in my anguish.
You have brought me to an open space.
You saved me because you took delight in me.
I try to be good, to be just, to be generous
to walk in your ways.
I fail, but you are my lamp.
You make my darkness bright
With your help, I continue to scale the walls
and break down the barriers that fragment me.
I would be whole, and happy, and wise
and know your love
Always.

Music: Overcome – Psalm 18 by James Block

Lent: Stop Pretending

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, Lent, spiritualityLeave a comment

April 2, 2022
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, danger continues to escalate for Jesus.

Our first reading from Jeremiah foreshadows Jesus’s situation. Some powerful people didn’t want to hear what Jeremiah preached. And we can understand why: Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem because of Israel’s unfaithfulness. It’s a message that was hard to swallow.

jeremiah

The core of Jeremiah’s teaching was this:
You people have to change. This is not the way God created the world to be.

But the people couldn’t listen. They had let the skewed reality of their lives become normal and needed. They couldn’t accept the world of mutual love and justice that God imagined for them.

Jesus meets the same kind of stonewalling.

In today’s passage, the hard-hearted rationalize their resistance:

“The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?
Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family
and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”

But their antagonism isn’t really about geography and lineage. It’s about blind comfort in a world balanced toward their advantage. It’s about the fear of grace-inspired change.

Lk8_generous heart


Isn’t it the truth that we’ll use almost any argument to resist what demands our conversion? I understand why these guys “each went to his own house”, as the Gospel says in closing. They took refuge from grace in the little roofed pretense of their own control.

They didn’t have the courage to open their hearts to Jesus. Do we?

Poetry: LOVE IS THE MASTER – RUMI

Love is the One who masters all things;
I am mastered totally by Love.
By my passion of love for Love
I have ground sweet as sugar.
O furious Wind, I am only a straw before you;
How could I know where I will be blown next?
Whoever claims to have made a pact with Destiny
Reveals himself a liar and a fool;
What is any of us but a straw in a storm?
How could anyone make a pact with a hurricane?
God is working everywhere his massive Resurrection;
How can we pretend to act on our own?
In the hand of Love I am like a cat in a sack;
Sometimes Love hoists me into the air,
Sometimes Love flings me into the air,
Love swings me round and round His head;
I have no peace, in this world or any other.
The lovers of God have fallen in a furious river;
They have surrendered themselves to Love’s commands.
Like mill wheels they turn, day and night, day and night,
Constantly turning and turning, and crying out.

Music:  Spirit, Open My Heart –  Alfred V. Fedak

Lent: Pray for the Enemy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Prayer, spirituality4 Comments

March 24, 2022
Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jeremiah begins our readings by describing the evil heart:

… they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.
They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts
and turned their backs, not their faces, to Me.

Jeremiah :24

It is a terrible thing to encounter a truly evil-hearted person – someone who exudes a twisted energy which is the polar opposite of God’s Love.

I believe we are seeing such a individual now in the person of Vladimir Putin. His actions leave us astounded at their arrogance and cruelty. How can such a person face himself, and certainly, how can he face God?

But our Psalm and Gospel Verse, lead me to ask myself the question:

What if we prayed FOR Vladimir Putin?

Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

What if we took pity on the wretched soul he has become and asked God to heal his mind and give him a new heart? He has become sick with evil, and that is a tragic thing to see in a leader responsible for millions of lives!

All of us feel tremendous sorrow and compassion toward the Ukrainian people. But in the end, no matter what, they will triumph through their sincerity, courage and faithfulness.

Putin, on the other hand, is otherwise lost for all eternity.

Will you consider praying today for Putin and those who share his evil culpabilities that they may yet hear the voice of goodness, justice, peace, and reverence for human life?

As we witness the power of God revealed in our Gospel story, let us ask that the evil of war be driven out of the hearts of all those responsible for the outrageous suffering and inhumanity being perpetrated again the people of Ukraine and in all war-infested parts of our world.

Music: Shchedryk by Mykola Leontovich

One of the world’s most famous Christmas songs – The Carol of the Bells – was based on the Ukrainian song Shchedryk, written in 1916 by composer Mykola Leontovich, which was in turn based on the melody and lyrics of a pre-Christian folk song.

This is Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra and Choir’s dedication to brave Ukrainian people who suffer under the brutal Russian invasion. Our musicians performed this beautiful love song a couple of years ago. Tine Bec did an amazing arrangement. It was composed by Mykola Leontovych: Shchedryk (Carol the Bells) with a splendid arrangement, made by composer Slovenian Tine Bec.

This arrangement is magical. It starts like deep sad mourning and continues to strengthen, unitarian voice, which is stronger than any steel, any armoury and any Russian bullet, rocket or trank grande. Music is a winner. It gives hope, unites us in a way, that no aggression will ever win.

Arrangement: Tine Bec
Piano: Monika Podlogar; Cello: Katarina Minatti

Lent: A Heart Become Christ’s

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

March 17, 2022
Thursday of the Second Week of Lent
St. Patrick’s Day

Sláinte means “health” in Irish and Scottish Gaelic

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jeremiah challenges us with this powerful question:

More tortuous than all else is the human heart,
beyond remedy; who can understand it?

Jeremiah 7:9

Fortunately, Jeremiah also provides an answer to the question:

I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
and test the heart,
To reward everyone according to their ways,
according to the merit of their deeds.

Jeremiah 17:10

If we invite God into our hearts, we will be guided to this blessing:

Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
            whose hope is the LORD.
That person is like a tree planted beside the waters
            that stretches out its roots to the stream:
It fears not the heat when it comes,
            its leaves stay green;
In the year of drought it shows no distress,
            but still bears fruit.

Jeremiah 17: 7-8

Poetry: Our dear St. Patrick, on this glorious feast, gives us the perfect prayer to strengthen and direct our hearts:

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.
I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s hosts to save me
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a mulitude.
Christ shield me today
Against wounding
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through the mighty strength
Of the Lord of creation

Music: The Breastplate of St. Patrick – Sara Hart

And an added prayer for the ancestral homeland and the ancestors who have blessed us with its spirit …

There were people of all ages
Gathered ’round the gable wall
Poor and humble men and women,
Little children that you called
We are gathered here before you
And our hearts are just the same
Filled with joy at such a vision
As we praise your name

Golden Rose, Queen of Ireland
All my cares and troubles cease
As I kneel with love before you
Lady of Knock, our Queen of Peace

Though your message was unspoken
Still the truth in silence lies
As we gaze upon your vision,
And the truth I try to find
Here I stand with John the teacher,
And with Joseph at your side
And I see the Lamb of God
On the Altar glorified

Golden Rose, Queen of Ireland
All my cares and troubles cease
As we kneel with love before you
Lady of Knock, our Queen of Peace

And the Lamb will conquer
And the woman clothed in the sun
Will shine Her light on everyone
Yes,
The Lamb will conquer
And the woman clothed in the sun
Will shine Her light on everyone

Golden Rose, Queen of Ireland
All my cares and troubles cease
As I kneel with love before you
Lady of Knock, my Queen of Peace
Lady of Knock, my queen of peace