Tag: Jessica Powers

God’s Promises

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Faith, Scripture, spirituality2 Comments

Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
June 26, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062623.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we begin a pilgrimage with the ancient believers who first received God’s call into a community of faith.

Today’s liturgy initiates a seven-week reading of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), starting with three weeks of Genesis.

Walter Brueggemann, renowned Hebrew Scriptures scholar, writes that Genesis tells the story of two Divine calls:

  • the call of Creation as God’s handiwork (Genesis 1-11)
  • the call of the faith community as God’s witness (Genesis 12-50)

Gen. 1—11 concerns the affirmation that God calls the world into being to be God’s faithful world.
Gen. 12—50 concerns the affirmation that God calls a special people to be faithfully God’s people.
Genesis is a reflection upon and witness to these two calls. It is concerned with the gifts given in these calls, the demands announced in them, and the various responses evoked by them.

Walter Brueggemann – Genesis: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

Our three weeks of readings, from Genesis 12 to 50, focus on that second call of the faith community and can offer us graced insights into our life in the Church and in the world.

As Genesis 11 closes, the condition of the world is rather dire. The descendants of Adam and Noah had been wandering around the Middle East, finally trying to settle down in ancient Babylonia. There they decide to build a city and a tower which they think will make them self-sufficient enough to avoid a second flood. God isn’t pleased. God wants them to be faithful and depend on God not themselves.

So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth,
and they stopped building the city.
That is why it was called Babel,
because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world.

Genesis 11:8-9

Then, in Genesis 12 (our reading today), God reaches into the scattered chaos with an astounding promise for two elderly, barren, and probably hopeless people. It is a call to renewed and deeper relationship, a call that God has been offering again and again since the beginning of time:

The LORD said to Abram:
“Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk
and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.

“I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you
and curse those who curse you.
All the communities of the earth
shall find blessing in you.”

Genesis 12:1-3

In prayer, we can take any scripture passage and separate its wordy threads to find ourselves. Each one of us, at least at some time in our lives, has been Abraham or Sarah – maybe a little bit alone, confused, feeling disconnected from God and neighbor. Or maybe feeling the weight of aging, tangled in familial labyrinths, or wounded from accumulated miscalculations in our life’s wanderings.

In whatever scattered chaos we may find ourselves, today’s first reading tells us to listen. God’s irrevocable promises are encircling and guiding us to renewed stability. Hearing God’s voice, “Abram went as the LORD directed him”. As we begin these weeks with Genesis, we are invited to do the same.

Poetry: from Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers

    I love Abraham, that old weather-beaten
unwavering nomad; when God called to him,
no tender hand wedged time into his stay.
His faith erupted him into a way
far-off and strange.  How many miles are there
from Ur to Haran?  Where does Canaan lie,
or slow mysterious Egypt sit and wait?
How could he think his ancient thigh would bear
nations, or how consent that Isaac die,
with never an outcry or an anguished prayer?
I think, alas, how I manipulate
dates and decisions, pull apart the dark,
dally with doubts here and with counsels there,
take out old maps and stare.
Was there a call at all, my fears remark.
I cry out: Abraham, old nomad you,
are you my father?  Come to me in pity.
Mine is a far and lonely journey too.

Music: The Yearning – Nicholas Gunn

To Live in the Holy Spirit

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Eternal Life, Faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 22, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052223.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we begin a week of final and powerful readings which close both the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John. These readings proclaim the inherent centrality of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and of every Chrisitan believer.

In Acts, Paul has traveled deeper into the heart of Asia Minor, where he meets “disciples” who have never even heard of the Holy Spirit. They have much to learn about the faith and how it will live in them now, after the conclusion of Christ’s life on earth.

“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”
They answered him,
“We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
He said, “How were you baptized?”
They replied, “With the baptism of John.”

Acts 19:2-3

The baptism of John was a sacred ritual of the Old Testament which prepared its recipients to open their hearts to a new understanding of God. That new understanding is manifested in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus. It is then in Jesus’ Name, and in our communion with him, that we are able to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit, just as the disciples did on Pentecost.

So the process looks like this:

In Scripture: In our lives:
Baptism of Johnwe desire to believe and deepen our life in God
Incarnation of God in Christwe learn what God is like and how to love God through the life and teachings of Jesus
Manifestation of God on Pentecostwe are immersed in the Holy Spirit, God’s life living eternally within us

In our Gospel today, Jesus continues to lead his disciples to the awareness that he is returning to God and that the Spirit will come. They express their reliance on him, but he tells them that that is not enough. In his physical absence, that reliance will be sorely tested and they will retreat into their own fragile securities.

However, Jesus assures them that his transcendent relationship with the Creator in the Holy Spirit will sustain him. His disciples should find peace in that knowledge and the strength to overcome whatever has weakened and “scattered” them.

(the disciples said)
“Now we realize that you know everything
and that you do not need to have anyone question you.
Because of this we believe that you came from God.”
Jesus answered them, “Do you believe now?
Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived
when each of you will be scattered to his own home
and you will leave me alone.
But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.

John 16:30-33

As we read these profound and pivotal passages, we must remember that every word in Scripture also speaks to us. We too are approaching the great epiphany of Pentecost when our hearts are renewed in God’s incandescent Eternal Love. Filled with the peace Jesus offers in our Gospel, let us respond in synchonicity with our Alleluia Verse today:

Alleluia! Alleluia!
If then you were raised with Christ,
seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Colossians 3:1

Poetry: To Live with the Spirit of God – Jessica Powers

To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener.
It is to keep the vigil of mystery,
earthless and still.
One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit,
strange as the wind’s will.
The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows
turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love.
It may lament like Job or Jeremiah,
echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove.
It may rejoice in spaciousness of meadow
that emulates the freedom of the sky.
Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing;
it has cast down forever from its hand
the compass of the whither and the why.
To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.
It is becoming love, and like to Him
toward Whom we strain with metaphors of creatures:
fire-sweep and water-rush and the wind’s whim.
The soul is all activity, all silence;
and though it surges Godward to its goal,
it holds, as moving earth holds sleeping noonday,
the peace that is the listening of the soul.

Music: Veni Sancte Spiritus – Mozart

Her Morning

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Advent, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Mary, Poetry, spirituality1 Comment

Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 18, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121822.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our scripture readings roll out before our prayer the long line of salvation history. It is a line that we can walk in wonder, winding from Isaiah’s prophecy, through the House of David, down to Joseph dreaming in the Nazarene night, and Mary fully waking to God in the Nazarene morning.

line

It is a story filled with words we love because, ever since our childhood, they have carried to us the fragrant scent of Christmas. These readings are the thrilling stuff of prophecies and dreams, all the more wonderful because we know them now fulfilled.

Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign:
the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall name him Emmanuel.

Isaiah 7:14

Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.
She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins.

Matthew 1:20
O Emmanuel

This long wick of Promise, burning slowly through the biblical years, bursts into light with the birth of Jesus Christ, the Fire of God.

Through our faith, that Divine Light kindles us – we who now, through our Baptism, carry the sacred DNA of Jesus into our times.

On this final Sunday of Advent, when the world’s “crazy Xmas” tries to hijack our  souls, let us be very intentional about the true meaning of these days. Let us take the time to “go into our heart cave” and prepare for Jesus.

Poetry: And in Her Morning – Jessica Powers

The Virgin Mary cannot enter into
my soul for an indwelling. God alone
has sealed this land as secretly His own;
but being mother and implored, she comes
to stand along my eastern sky and be
a drift of sunrise over God and me.

God is a light and genitor of light.
Yet for our weakness and our punishment
He hides Himself in midnights that prevent
all save the least awarenesses of Him.
We strain with dimmed eyes inward and perceive
no stir of what we clamored to believe.
Yet I say: God (if one may jest with God),
Your hiding has not reckoned with Our Lady
who holds my east horizon and whose glow
lights up my inner landscape, high and low.
All my soul’s acres shine and shine with her!
You are discovered, God; awake, rise
out of the dark of Your Divine surprise!

Your own reflection has revealed Your place,
for she is utter light by Your own grace.
And in her light I find You hid within me,
and in her morning I can see Your Face. 

Music: Emmanuel – Tim Manion (Lyrics below)

Baby born in a stall.
Long ago now and hard to recall
Cold wind, darkness and sin,
your welcoming from us all.

 How can it be true?
A world grown so old now, how can it be new?
Sorrow’s end, God send,
born now for me and you

Emanuel, Emanuel
What are we that You have loved us so well?
A song on high, a Savior’s high, angel hosts rejoice
Thy glory to tell

 Lord, lead us to know.
You lay like a beggar, so humble, so low;
no place for Your head and straw for a bed,
the glory of God to show.

 Babe on mother’s knee,
child so soon to be nailed to a tree;
all praise, till the end of our days;
O Lord, You have set us free