Tag: Merton

No Sign Will Be Given Except…..

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, Prayer, spirituality4 Comments

Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 24, 2023

Today’s Reading:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072423.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jesus is pestered by scribes and Pharisees who want him to prove himself by a sign.

Jesus answers their jibing in a kind of spiritual code.

Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
He said to them in reply,
“An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights,
so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth
three days and three nights.

Matthew 12:38-40

So what exactly is “The Sign of Jonah”? Sounds like the title of a Dan Brown novel, doesn’t it?

Well, it is the title of a wonderful book, but not one by Dan Brown.

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with the writings of Thomas Merton. The fire was ignited by my freshman homeroom teacher who gave me a copy of his “Seeds of Contemplation” — another book that changed my life. Inspired by that first read, I slowly made my way through Seven Storey Mountain, No Man is an Island, Thoughts in Solitude … finally coming, in a veil of limited understanding, to “The Sign of Jonas”.

I didn’t understand the title. What I did begin to understand, as Merton journaled his daily life in the Abbey of Gethsemane, was that we discover God not by any external revelation or intellectual acquisition, but by our choices for love in the pattern of Jesus.

In today’s Gospel, the scribes and Pharisees seek an external demonstration that Jesus is all powerful. But their seeking is an insincere attempt at self-satisfaction, not a choice for Gospel love.

So what does Jonah have to do with the Pharisees’ insincerity? Jonah, given a mission by God, could not initially align himself with God’s call. At God’s irresistable invitation, Jonah spent three days of solitude in a whale’s belly contemplating his circumstances. By the graces gained in his solitude, Jonah emerged as a prophet for God.

As recounted in his book, the whale’s belly for Merton was his life in Gethsemane Abbey where he found the profound meaning and deep awareness of his vocation.

Let me rest in Your will and be silent.
Then the light of Your joy will warm my life.
Its fire will burn in my heart
and shine for Your glory.
This is what I live for. Amen, amen.

It may not sound all that inviting, but every one of us is called to the “whale’s belly”. Our transformation there is accomplished by our congruity with Christ’s sojourn in the tomb. Like Jesus, we must die to self for the sake of others. Like Jonah, we must abandon our fears and conveniences to become signs of God’s love in the world.

The Pharisees didn’t get it. And, God help them, I understand. It’s hard to get it! Life seems so much easier if we run away from this deep call like Jonah did at first. But the call remains: to be God’s Word in the world – to “shine for God’s glory“.

The editorial staff of the National Catholic Reporter wrote this about Merton’s Sign of Jonas:

Thomas Merton wrote in his early journals that the “sign of Jonas” — the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection — is “burned into the roots of our being.” Sooner or later, everyone faces the universal truth that only through death to self do we find life. Merton embraced this sign and described himself as one like Jonah, because “I find myself traveling toward my destiny in the belly of a paradox.”

We may need to choose a little “whale-belly” time to get our hearts straight with this astounding yet universal call to be “for God” in our paradoxical world.

Poetry: two poems from “You! Jonah!” by Thomas John Carlisle

THE GREAT INTRUDER
It is exasperating
to be called
so persistently
when the last thing
we want to do
is get up and go
but God
elects
to keep on
haunting
like some
holy ghost.

———————–

COMING AROUND
And Jonah stalked
to his shaded seat
and waited for God
to come around
to his way of thinking.
And God is still waiting
for a host of Jonahs
in their comfortable houses
to come around
to His way of loving.

Music: Jonah and the Whale – Louis Armstrong – lyrics below

Jonah was a man who got a word from the Lord
Go and preach the Gospel to the sinful land‿
But he got on a ship and he tried to get away
And he ran into a storm in the middle of the sea

Now the Lord, He made the waves just roll so high
The ship begin to sink and they all begin to cry
So they pulled ole Jonah out of the hole
And they jumped him in the water just to lighten up the load

Now the Lord made a whale, long and wide Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
And he swallowed up Jonah, hair and hide Lord, Lord waddnat a fish,
Mmm, Lord, mmm, Lord

Now Jonah started to pray in the belly of the whale
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
He repented of his sins like a man in jail
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
Mmm, Lord, mmm, Lord

Now Jonah must o’ been a bad man, he must o’ been a sinner
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
Cos when the whale got him down, he didn’t like his dinner
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
Mmm, Lord, mmm, Lord

Well he swum around the ocean, sick as he could be
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
And after three days, whoops! he had to set him free
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish, mmm

So the whale spit Jonah out onto dry land
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
And went on to preaching like a righteous man
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish

Then the people quit their sins when they heard him the town
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
So when you hear the call, don’t you turn the Gospel down
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish, mmm?

Psalm 40: The Will to Love

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Lent, Love, Poetry, Psalms2 Comments

Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

March 25, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, on this feast of the Annunciation, we pray with Psalm 40. We hear Mary proclaiming its refrain which echoes down through the ages:

Psalm 40:8-9

We are all here to do God’s Will. That’s why God made us. But sometimes, we struggle so hard either to learn God’s Will or to avoid it.

Praying with Mary this morning, I thought this about “God’s Will” – It is not a plan we must discover, or that unfolds in surprises throughout our lives. It’s not a set of circumstances meant to test our faith. If we think of it this linearly, we cripple and diffuse its power.

Because God is Love, God’s Will is simply this: 

Love. 
Always love. 
Love always as God would love. 
Choose always what Love would choose.
Love.

That’s what Mary did.

Annunciation – Henry Ossawa Tanner

Poetry:  Aubade: The Annunciation – Thomas Merton
(An aubade is a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning.)


When the dim light, at Lauds, comes strike her window,
Bellsong falls out of Heaven with a sound of glass.
Prayers fly in the mind like larks,
Thoughts hide in the height like hawks:
And while the country churches tell their blessings to the
distance,
Her slow words move
(Like summer winds the wheat) her innocent love:
Desires glitter in her mind
Like morning stars:
Until her name is suddenly spoken
Like a meteor falling.
She can no longer hear shrill day
Sing in the east,
Nor see the lovely woods begin to toss their manes.
The rivers have begun to sing.
The little clouds shine in the sky like girls:
She has no eyes to see their faces.
Speech of an angel shines in the waters of her thought
like diamonds,
Rides like a sunburst on the hillsides of her heart.
And is brought home like harvests,
Hid in her house, and stored
Like the sweet summer's riches in our peaceful barns.
But in the world of March outside her dwelling,
The farmers and the planters
Fear to begin their sowing, and its lengthy labor,
Where, on the brown, bare furrows,
The winter wind still croons as dumb as pain.

Music: Ave Maria – performed by Daniela de Santos

A Second Chance

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

Wednesday of the First Week in Lent

March 4, 2020

Click here for readings

Jonah3_1another chance

Today, in Mercy, one line from our readings hit me like a lightening bolt:

The word of the LORD
came to Jonah
a second time.

Yes, it’s the truth! God will keep coming back again and again to encourage us to hear his true message for our lives.

Our Gospel gives us a hint about how resistant we sometimes are to this deep listening:

This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.

 

What is the sign of Jonah anyway?

res and life

To put it simply, it is the witness of the Resurrection – that overarching event that changed everything for believers. For just as Jonah was able to return from certain death in the whale’s belly, so Christ conquered death and rose to new life, promising us the same power.

This is the central, life-changing belief for Christians. It should make a difference in how we live.

By our Lenten repentance, we can be like Jonah, grasping the second chance God always gives us to respond to our life circumstances with faith, hope, and love.

I would bet there is something in your life right now that is calling you to such a response. Someplace in your life, you may be caught in a bit of a “whale’s belly 🐳” about some issue, am I right?

God makes us ask ourselves questions most often when He intends to resolve them. He gives us needs that He alone can satisfy, and awakens capacities that He means to fulfill. Any perplexity is liable to be a spiritual gestation, leading to a new birth and a mystical regeneration.” ― Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas

Today’s readings remind us that we already have the glorious sign of the Resurrection to inspire us to leap from that dark “belly” into God’s hope for us!

Music:  a fun song “In the Belly of  Whale” – The Newsboys

Vigil

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Advent, Community, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, Hope, Lent, Prayer, Seasons1 Comment

Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

July 20, 2019

Click here for readings

Today, in Mercy, we keep vigil with the “Children of Israel” as they begin the great Exodus.

Ex12_42 Vigil

Even the youngest of us understands what it means to “keep vigil”. Toddlers, on Christmas Eve, keep vigil for the sound of Santa’s footsteps on the roof.

Throughout our lives, the kinds of vigils we keep deepen in meaning. Any given night holds an array of vigil-keepers:

  • A nervous student pulls an all-nighter before a big exam.
  • An anxious parent watches over a feverish child.
  • A faith-filled soul sits in pre-dawn prayer.
  • A vigilant elder prays quietly at the death bed of a long-beloved.

As families and communities, we wait together for each other’s lives.

  • Together, we expect the births of each generation’s babies.
  • We wait and hope for college acceptances and new jobs.
  • We wait for test results of all kinds.
  • We wait to listen to one another’s stories of success or disappointment.
  • We wait and prepare for the dawning of great feasts like Christmas and Easter

When we keep vigil, we live in expectation of something or someone coming to us. But there is another important aspect to every vigil.

As we wait, something is also happening within us.
In the deep quiet of our waiting, we are transformed.

Thomas Merton, monk of Gethsemane, was assigned to keep a particular type of vigil at the abbey. It was called “fire watch”, a night-long lookout to ensure that no fire erupted in the old wooden buildings as the other monks slept.  Merton writes about that watch at the end of his book The Sign of Jonas:

The fire watch is an examination of conscience in which your task as watchman suddenly appears in its true light:  a pretext devised by God to isolate you, and to search your soul with lamps and questions, in the heart of darkness.
“Fire Watch, July 4, 1952”

Today, as we pray with Israel’s Passover vigil, let us consider our own vigils – current or past. Beyond their apparent meaning, to what secret transformation might God be inviting us? What is happening deep in our soul as we watch far out to the horizon of our hope?

Music: Firewatch – Chris Remo