Patrick ~ Man of Courage, Man of Myth!

 

St. Patrick

 

May your troubles be less
And your blessings be more
And nothing but happiness
Come though your door

The Blessing of Light, Rain and Earth

May the blessing of Light be on you
light without and light within.

May the blessed sunlight shine on you
And warm your heart till it glows
Like a great peat fire, so that the stranger
may come and warm himself at it
and also a friend.

And may the light shine out of the two eyes of you
Like a candle set in the windows of a house
Bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.
And may the blessing of the Rain be upon you, the soft sweet rain.
May it fall upon your spirit so that all the little flowers may spring up
And shed their sweetness on the air
And may the blessing of the Great Rains be on you
May they beat upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean
And leave there many a shining pool where the blue of heaven shines
And sometimes a star.

And may the blessing of the Earth be upon you, the great round earth
May you ever have a kindly greeting for them you pass
As you're going along the roads
May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it
Tire at the end of the day
And may it rest easy over you
When at the last you lay out under it
May it rest so lightly over you
That your soul may be out from under it quickly
And up, and off, and on its way to God.

(Author Unknown)

God of Sunset . . .

May the blessing of the Sunset make your heart burn with gratitude to God for the graces of the waning day. May the beauty of the brilliant sky be a reflection of God's infinite love and mercy. As the sun slowly sinks below the horizon, may it put to rest whatever fears or doubts you have and gently cradle you in the loving arms of God. May the blessing of the God of Sunset be upon you. 

--Maxine Shonk, OP

A new perspective on Life: The Fourth Sunday in Lent 2026

  

March 15, 2026

www.johnpredmoresj.com | predmore.blogspot.com

 

Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-8; John 4:5-42

 

These readings show us that God views the world differently the way humans do, and we are invited to see as God sees. We first glimpse this when we hear that story of the call of David who was deemed insignificant by his family. The prophet Samuel scrutinized the older brothers and determined that the youngest, the one almost forgotten, was the one who would lead them forward. The Gospel then shows us the story of the blind man who comes to faith and achieves greater consciousness. 

 

The coming to sight story begins with real human experience. Jesus takes dirt from the earth, spits into it and makes clay, reminiscent of the Creation story in Genesis. Jesus re-enacts that he is aware of God’s original plan in Eden and he recreates this man with fuller sight. He then smears it onto the man’s eyes and instructs him to wash in the pool of Siloam. The man continues his evolving process of coming to full sight.

 

The human reactions to his evolution produce great ambivalence. Some neighbors disbelieve, his parents are cautious to speak, and some Pharisees concluded that the one who healed him could not come from God. It is quite rich that so many people stayed in the conversation with the man. At first, it was an interrogation, but that it developed into an authentic dialogue about wanting to understand. The people move from condemnation to inquiry to possible conversion.

 

Think of the conversations that you have had at home when you have formed your children in the faith and they no longer attend worship services. Or that someone in the family that staunchly adheres to one political party comes to see the world through the lens of a different party. How does this happen that people brought up with the same formation come to see differently. What a mystery this is! It causes bewilderment. We wonder what we did wrong. How did this happen? How do people see things so differently? Sometimes, we wonder, “How can someone I love so much be so blind to what is happening in the world? How can they hold such beliefs?” We have the same conversations as we heard in the Gospel passage. 

 

What is this Gospel trying to teach us? We have responsibility for our own formation. We have to go down to the pool of Siloam to wash our eyes and gain sight. It teaches us that faith is a process. It is something that grows with trust, through questioning, through doubt, and it is often experienced alone. It can be a cause of tension that leads to separation from some and acceptance by others. We search for reasons. We want answers. Jesus assures us that the questions are important for our full coming to faith because he asks: Do you believe in the Son of Man? We respond: Show me who God is, and I will believe. When Jesus reveals who he is we can respond in full worship.

 

Jesus wants us to see that he proposes a radically new perspective on life, and he gives us an alternative perception to the consciousness of the dominant culture around us. He invites us into a more inclusive way of things and into a metanoia, a change of heart, in which we can see God’s work in action all around us. He sees an evolutionary world created by love and for loving. God stands ahead of us in time beckoning us forward. God works in our lives by inviting us to take our next steps in growth and to accept the loving, all-embracing consciousness of God. God’s love unites all humanity, and we are united to Christ by entering into communion with all people. We continue to evolve as your sight becomes clearer. At the end of the day, all we can do is to stand tall and worship. 

 

Timing is everything . . .

 

 

O God of all seasons and senses, grant us the sense of your timing             
to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the seasons.

In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of endings;
children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying,
grieving over,
grudges over,
blaming over,
excuses over.

O God, grant us a sense of your timing.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born—
something right and just and different,
a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love—
in the fullness of your time.

O God, grant us the sense of your timing.

Taken from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder

 

Good-bye Winter ~ Hello Spring!

 

Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged.

Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are waking up.

Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.

The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival.

Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it. 

(Thresholds/To Bless the Space Between Us by
John O’Donohue)

Streams of Hope!

Help Us to Hope 

O loving God,
we thank you for bringing us the rivers and streams of this world.
May the rivers we know be an image of the stream
that you want to flow within each one of us.
Teach us now, take away all fear,
dare to let us believe that we could really be a small part
of a reconstructed society, that we could build again.
Take away our cynicism.
Take away our lack of hope.
Take away our own anger and judgments.
We thank you for the faith and the desire that is in our hearts.
You have planted it there. Now help us to preserve it,
protect it and increase it.
We long for vision, God.
We need vision and we know we will perish without it.
Help us open each new day to a new meaning,
to a new hope, to a deeper desiring.
Show us your face, loving God, and we will be satisfied.
We ask for all this in Jesus’ name.
AMEN. (Richard Rohr, ofm)

Prayer for hope, healing, peace . . .

 

Father, Mother, God,

 Thank you for your presence

 during the hard and mean days.

 For then we have you to lean upon.

 

 Thank you for your presence

 during the bright and sunny days,

 for then we can share that which we have

 with those who have less.

 

 And thank you for your presence

 during the Holy Days, for then we are able

 to celebrate you and our families

 and our friends.

 

 For those who have no voice,

 we ask you to speak.

 For those who feel unworthy,

 we ask you to pour your love out

 in waterfalls of tenderness.

 For those who live in pain,

 we ask you to bathe them

 in the river of your healing.

 For those who are lonely, we ask

 you to keep them company.

 For those who are depressed,

 we ask you to shower upon them

 the light of hope.

 

 Dear Creator, You, the borderless

 sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the

 world that which we need most—Peace.

 

Prayer - Maya Angelou