A Holy Waiting . . .

 

 

Keeping Watch

 

In the morning

When I began to wake,

It happened again –

 

That feeling

That You, Beloved,

Had stood over me all night

Keeping watch,

 

That feeling

That as soon as I began to stir

 

You put Your lips on my forehead

And lit a Holy Lamp

Inside my heart.

 Hafiz

Remembering Surfside, FL . . .

 

Blessing the Questions

 

Let them come:

the questions

that storm through

the crack in the world.

Let them come:

the questions

that crawl through

the hole in your heart.

 

Let them come:

the questions

in anguish,

the questions

in tears.

Let them come:

the questions

in rage,

the questions

in fear.

 

Let them come:

the questions

that whisper themselves

so slow,

the questions

that arrive with

breathtaking speed,

 

the questions

that never entirely leave,

the questions

that bring

more questions still.

 

Let them come:

the questions

that haunt you

in shadowy hours,

the questions

that visit

in deepest night,

the questions

that draw you

into rest,

into dream,

the questions

that stir

the wakening

world.

Author: Jan Richardson

From: The Cure of Sorrow

https://www.janrichardson.com/

God speaks in unexpected places. . .

 

The Auction
A wealthy man and his son loved to collect rare works of art.  They had everything in their collection from Picasso to Raphael. When the Vietnam conflict broke out, the son went to war. He was very courageous and died in battle while rescuing another soldier. The father was notified and grieved deeply for his only son.

About a month later, just before Christmas, there was a knock at the door.  A young man stood at the door with a large package in his hands. He said, “Sir, you don’t know me, but I am the soldier for whom your son gave his life. He saved many lives that day, and he was carrying me to safety when a bullet struck him in the heart, and he died instantly.  He often talked about you, and your love for art.” The young man held out his package. “I know this isn’t much. I’m not really a great artist, but I think your son would have wanted you to have this.”

The father opened the package. It was a portrait of his son, painted by the young man. The father was so drawn to the eyes that his own eyes welled up with tears. He thanked the young man and offered to pay him for the picture. “Oh, no sir, I could never repay what your son did for me. It’s a gift.”

The father died a few months later. There was to be a great auction of his paintings. On the platform sat the painting of the son. The auctioneer pounded his gavel. “We will start the bidding with this picture of the son. Who will bid for this picture?” There was silence. Then a voice in the back of the room shouted, “We want to see the famous paintings.  Skip this one.”

But the auctioneer persisted. “Will someone bid for this painting? Who will start the bidding? $100, $200?” Another voice shouted angrily, “We didn’t come to see this painting. We came to see the Van Goghs, the Rembrandts. Get on with the real bids!” But still the auctioneer continued, “The son! The son! Who’ll take the son?”

Finally, a voice came from the very back of the room. It was the longtime gardener of the man and his son. “I’ll give $10 for the painting.” Being a poor man, it was all he could afford. “We have $10, who will bid $20?” “Give it to him for $10.  Let’s see the masters.” “$10 is the bid, won’t someone bid $20?” The crowd was becoming angry. They wanted the more worthy investments for their collections. The auctioneer pounded the gavel. “Going once, twice, SOLD FOR $10!”

A man sitting on the second row shouted, “Now, let’s get on with the collection!”  The auctioneer laid down his gavel. “I’m sorry, the auction is over.” “What about the paintings?” “I am sorry. When I was called to conduct this auction, I was told of a secret stipulation in the will. I was not allowed to reveal that stipulation until this time. Only the painting of the son would be auctioned. Whoever bought that painting would inherit the entire estate, including the paintings. The man who took the son gets everything!”

(Author Unknown)

Be ready for the God of surprises . . .

The Grace and the Wound . . .

Once there was a wound

It was no ordinary wound

It was my wound

We had lived together long.

 

I yearned to be free of this wound

I wanted the bleeding to stop

Yet if the truth be known

I felt a strange kind of gratitude

          for this wound.

 

It had made me

tremendously open to grace

vulnerable to God’s mercy.

 

A beautiful believing in me

          that I have named Faith

kept growing, daring me

to reach for what I could not see.

This wound had made me open.

I was ready for grace

And so one day, I reached.

 

There I was thick in the crowd

          Bleeding and believing

and I reached.

 

 At first I reached for what I could see

the fringe of a garment.

 But my reaching didn’t stop there

for Someone reached back into

me.

A grace I couldn’t see

flowed through me.

 A power I didn’t understand

began to fill the depths of me.

 Trembling I was called forth

to claim my wholeness.

The bleeding had left me.

The believing remained

And strange as this may sound

I have never lost my gratitude

for the wound

that made me so open

to grace.

Bleeding and Believing by Macrina Wiederkehr (Seasons of Your Heart)

https://macrinawiederkehr.com/

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062721.cfm 

Common, John Legend - Glory

Prayer for Summertime

Loving God, Creator of all times and places,
we thank you for the gift of summertime,
the days of light, warmth and leisure.

Thank you for the beauty that surrounds us everywhere we look:
the multi-colored flowers,
the deep blue of the sky,
the tranquil surface of lakes,
the laughter of children at play,
people strolling in park,
families gathered around picnic tables and
the increased time to spend with family and friends.

As we open our eyes and ears to the landscape of nature and people,
open our hearts to receive all as gift.
Give us that insight to see you as the Divine Artist.
Help us to realize and appreciate that you are laboring
to keep all in existence.
And warm our souls with the awareness of your presence.

Let all the gifts we enjoy this summer
deepen our awareness of you love
so that we may share this with others and enjoy
a summertime of re-creation.

Amen

Author Unknown

From Faith at Marquette

Giving Thanks For Summer

God, Creator of all, thank You for summer!
Thank you for the warmth of the sun
and the increased daylight.
Thank You for the beauty I see all around me
and for the opportunity to be outside and enjoy Your creation.

Thank You for the increased time I have to be with my friends and family,
and for the more casual pace of the summer season.
Draw me closer to You this summer.

Teach me how I can pray
no matter where I am or what I am doing.
Warm my soul with the awareness of Your presence
and light my path with Your Word and Counsel.
As I enjoy Your creation, create in me
a pure heart and a hunger and a thirst for You.

- Author Unknown

A “Reflection” of Prayer in a Puddle! . . .

 

One summer, I had the opportunity to spend a few days at the Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse, WI, for meetings involving the Spiritual Direction Program, delightfully unaware that an unexpected blessing would appear with the previous night’s rain showers amid the quietly scattered puddles of various sizes throughout the garden walks.  Early that morning, I ventured into the back garden with my trusty camera, seeking unique photos of God’s beautiful artwork for my upcoming calendar.

The sun had just spread its warm brightness above the imposing rooftops of the surrounding buildings, and the early morning dew had kissed the lush green grasses and blushing pink roses, each one eager to pose.

However, to my delight, I discovered nearby, a humble puddle smiling up at me with the reflection of the Mary of the Angels Adoration Chapel upon its face – a natural mirror emanating the unique image of this beautiful and sacred structure.

Pondering this simple yet profound discovery, I recalled that the Sisters have provided prayer “24/7”  since August 1878, spreading spiritual inspiration along highways and by-ways, streets, and sidewalks, to trails and pathways in every walk of life, where the sorrowful and joyful mysteries of humanity happen throughout the world. Their prayers, like the rain and gentle puddles, spread and reflect the image of the loving Divine for all who seek support, healing, discernment, hope, and peace.

We are all invited to be “people of the puddle,” reflecting from our hearts to all who come to us, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, and deep listening.  May this our prayer mirror the Divine and ripple forth!

A Celebration of God's Love!

 

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

The story is told that once a young boy was about to have open-heart surgery.  To prepare him the surgeon said, “Tomorrow I will look at your heart.”  Smiling, the boy interrupted, “You’ll find Jesus there.”  Ignoring his remark, the surgeon continued, “After I have seen your heart I will try to repair the damage.”  Again, the boy insisted.  “You are going to find Jesus in my heart.”

The surgeon who had suffered losses in his own family and was still in pain from a failed marriage, felt very distant from God. He replied in a chilling tone, “No, what I’ll find is damaged tissue, constricted arteries, and weakened muscle.”

The next day he opened the boy’s chest and exposed his heart.  It was worse than he expected – a ravaged aorta, torn tissue, swollen muscles and arteries.  There was no hope of a cure, not even the possibility of a transplant.  His icy anger at God began to surface as he thought, “Where is God? Why did God do this?  Why is God letting this boy suffer and cursing him with an early death?”

As he gazed at the boy’s heart, he suddenly thought of the pierced heart of Jesus, and it seemed to him that the boy and Jesus shared one heart, a heart that was suffering for all those in the world experiencing pain and loss; a heart that was redeeming the world by love. 

Struck with awe at such goodness, such redemptive, unconditional love, tears began rolling down the surgeon’s cheeks, hot tears of compassion for the little boy.  Later, when the child awoke, he whispered, “Did you see my heart?”  “Yes,” said the surgeon.  “What did you find?” the boy asked. The surgeon replied, “I found Jesus there.” (Source Unknown)

The heart can be understood as a physical part of each of us – that hidden yet vital organ that circulates the full human blood supply three times per minute and whose hundred thousand beats a day are often taken for granted.  The heart is the very core of a person.  When that very center is deeply affected, one’s whole way of thinking about the world, one’s whole way of feeling it, of being in it is profoundly altered.  As in our opening story, the doctor experienced a conversion of heart – a healing from heartlessness to heart-fullness. And the child – who was all heart and shared in the heart of Jesus – had a heart filled with redemptive and unconditional love.

Today’s feast is the celebration of the “enlarged heart” of God as it was enfleshed in the heart of Jesus through the womb of Mary – a heart filled and overflowing with unconditional love and mercy.  Today is not necessarily a feast of our devotion to the heart of Jesus, but it is a celebration of God’s devotion to us by offering us a heart of love beyond our comprehension, a heart of love beyond any Hallmark card expression, and a heart full of love that is unfathomable. Our God’s love is tender; Our God is totally in love with us, and desires to be of one heart with us.  For as John writes: God is Love!

As we celebrate this feast today of God’s love for us it was different in the Middle Ages – as the devotion was not to the heart of Jesus but to the wound in the side of Jesus.  In later times, especially rising from the visions of St. Margaret Mary, the focus shifted more to the Heart of Jesus.

In the writings of Margaret Mary, she describes what happened one day as she was praying when she received a vision of Jesus:   “For a long time he kept me leaning on his breast, while he revealed the wonders of his love and the mysterious secrets of his Sacred Heart. Till then, he had always kept them hidden; but now, for the first time, he opened his Heart to me.”

Margaret Mary continued to describe in her writings how Jesus revealed his heart as a heart on fire with love as he said: “My divine Heart is so passionately fond of the human race, and of you (Margaret Mary), that it cannot keep back the pent-up flames of its burning love any longer.”  She then reveals what followed. “Next, he asked for my heart. I begged him to take it; he did, and placed it in his own divine Heart.  He let me see it there – a tiny atom being completely burned up in that fiery furnace.  Then, lifting it out – now a little heart-shaped flame – he put it back where he had found it.”

In Scripture we find a number of examples of how Jesus’ love was lived out. . .
• Let the children come to me . . .then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them
• At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them.
• Moved with pity, Jesus touched their eyes and immediately they received their sight.
• (Rich man) Jesus looking at him loved him.

So what is the good news for us today?
Let us through our daily reflection imagine ourselves resting in the heart of God hearing the heartbeat of God in the intimacy of our own prayer. 

(Nouwen)- “when we come to hear the heartbeat of God in the intimacy of our prayer, we realize that God’s heart embraces all the sufferings of the world.  We come to see that through Jesus Christ these burdens have become a light burden which we are invited to carry.  . . It is in the heart of God that we come to understand the true nature of human suffering and come to know our mission to alleviate this suffering not in our own name, but in the name of Jesus.”
For God’s heart goes out to us and God’s love is always there for us –

Covenant

 

God
knocks at my door
seeking a home for his son:
Rent is cheap, I say.
I don’t want to rent. I want to buy, says God.

I’m not sure I want to sell,
but you might come in to look around.
I think I will, says God.

I might let you have a room or two.
I like it, says God.  I’ll take the two. You might
decide to give me more someday. I can wait, says God.

I’d like to give you more but it’s a bit difficult.  I need some space for me.
I know, says God, but I’ll wait. I like what I see.

Hmm, maybe I can let you have another room.  I really don’t need that much.
Thanks, says God.  I’ll take it.  I like what I see.

I’d like to give you the whole house but I’m not sure . . .Think on it, says God.  I wouldn’t put you out. 
Your home would be mine and my son would live in it. You’d have more space than you’d ever had before.

I don’t understand at all.I know says God, but I can’t tell you about that. 
You have to discover it for yourself. That can only happen if you let him have the whole house.

A bit risky, I say.
Yes, says God, but try me.

I’m not sure  . . .  I’ll let you know.
I can wait, says God. I like what I see.

     Margaret Halaska, osf

And it was GOOD!

  

 

 

 

In the aeons of time
there came a moment
when God said: "NOW!"
Light sprang from darkness,
order from chaos,
and where there was no life before
life teemed.
God saw that it was - GOOD!
So every once in a while
God does it again
God's "NOW" breaks planets open,
bursts stars apart,
shifts the continental plates,
moves mountains and valleys,
melts the ice-caps,
sends forth a Sun.
It is incredibly disturbing -
adjusting, adapting,
stroking the fires of passion
for God's endless possibilities,
But a Word keeps calling:
"LIFE!" Be in it with me,
any moment, every moment,
alert for God's "NOW!"

Raphael Consedine PBVM

 

 

 

 

NASA photo of the Helix Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope has been dubbed the 'Eye of God'

 

"Herald" Was His Name!

 Feast of John the Baptist - June 24

The story is told that in Valladolid, Spain, where Christopher Columbus died in 1506, stands a monument commemorating the great discoverer.  Perhaps the most interesting feature of the memorial is a statue of a lion destroying one of the Latin words that had been part of Spain’s motto for centuries. Before Columbus made his voyages, the Spaniards thought they had reached the outer limits of earth.  Thus their motto was “Ne Plus Ultra,” which means, “No More Beyond.”  The word being torn away by the lion is “Ne” or “No” thus it reads “Plus Ultra.”  Columbus had proven that there was indeed “more beyond.”

Today, we celebrate the feast of John the Baptist, whose witness and voice called his hearers to a baptism of repentance and to recognize the “more beyond” in his prophetic message; the “more beyond” rules, regulations and religious customs,  the “more beyond” predictable practices, and certainly the “more beyond” an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!

From the beginning of his life to the end, John the Baptist was a living witness to God’s unconventional and unpredictable ways of acting.  Elizabeth, his mother, was “more beyond” the age of childbearing when she conceived.  Her relatives and neighbors rejoiced at God’s intervention on her behalf, but they had very definite ideas about how things should go after that.  Religious convention prescribed how the rite of circumcision and naming were to proceed.  

Here in our Gospel, all of Elizabeth’s family and friends gathered around her for the purpose of circumcising the child.  But they also decided that her newborn child would be named Zechariah Jr., after his father.  And then in this awkward moment, Elizabeth’s voice is heard in the wilderness of promise and possibility, and she says: “No, no, the child’s name will be John.”   Which translates, Yahweh is gracious. 

These people are faithful Jews, good people and lovers of God.  But at this moment, God is about to reveal a mystery that has never as much as entered their minds or hearts.  God was preparing to do something new.  Something “more beyond” their imaginations.  God and not social convention was to give John his name.  Perhaps the miraculous and unusual circumstances surrounding John’s conception, birth, and naming are clues as to God’s plan for this child who will be a prophet – one chosen to be voice and heart, call and sign of the God whose design for the world is justice, compassion, forgiveness, love and peace.

In every age God sends prophets to remind us how God desires to be involved in our lives.  Prophets do as much as they can to carry out their purpose, which is to interpret the will of God and to proclaim it to the people.  They stand in our midst and tell it like it is, speaking disturbing words that people don’t like to hear.

We might ask - Who are those in our time who have been called to be the prophetic voices to speak disturbing words that people don’t like to hear?

Let us remember, Sr. Dorothy Stang -  a Notre Dame de Namur sister, who worked among the peasant farmers in the Amazon and who was assassinated in February 2002.  In her journal she wrote, “O God, we have given all.  I have even sacrificed my home, country, family, my trust to work among your people.

God, my lover and Creator, I love You but I don’t understand why they (ranchers and military) seek to destroy our simple life-joy-caring among the people.  I never came to create hate or division but to build love, confidence and caring among a beautiful abandoned people.  Does this have to be part of life’s struggle?”

So what is the Good News for us today?
Let us be open to the graces of these powerful readings.
Let us pray for all who are called in our time to be prophetic and speak words of challenge that people don’t want to hear.
And let us pray that John will intercede for our world today so that we, too, will choose to live “more beyond” violence, greed and power and truly live peace, be peace.  

Readings:  https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062421.cfm

Gina Scaringella, OP Preaches for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (...

Prayer for the Road Ahead

 

I seek you, God, in the spaces of my life.
The spaces between what I’ve done
and what I’ve left undone.
The spaces between my convictions
and my actions,
the spaces between all that I hoped to do,
and what I’ve actually done.
I come with humility,
knowing that I can’t always see
the way I’ve disappointed you,
nor can I always see
the long-term effects of the good I’ve done.
This is a prayer for the road ahead,
which is an empty space stretching before me.
Fill me with a burning compassion
for my brothers and sisters,
a love that will not let me go.
Give me courage to to give boldly,
love simply,
hope deeply,
risk greatly.
My light is small,
my time is short,
but let it shine for you,
always, ever, all for you.
Amen.

Copyright Carol Penner www.leadinginworship.com

Used with Permission

Connecting at the level of the sacred. . .

Prayer: Anselm of Canterbury

God of love, whose compassion never fails, we bring you the grief and perils of people and nations, the pains of the sick and injured, the sighing of prisoners and captives, the sorrows of the bereaved, the necessities of the homeless, the helplessness of the weak, the despair of the weary, the failing powers of the aged. Comfort and relieve them, O merciful God, according to their several needs and your great mercy. Amen.

Breathing Out Goodness Upon a Weary World . . .

 

Heart of Love, source of kindness,

Teacher of the ways of goodness,

You are hidden in the minutes of daily life

waiting to be discovered among us.

Heart of Gladness,

Joy that sings

in our souls,

the Dancer and the Dance,

You are Music radiating in our

cherished times of consolation.

 

Heart of Compassion,

the Healing One weeping

for a world burdened and bent,

You are the heart we bring

to the wounded and weary world.

 

Heart of all Hearts,

You are the Gift living

in the depth of our lives,

connecting us with others.                                                        

 

Holy One, in every moment we live in your expansive love and your tender embrace.  All around us we behold your presence.  May we continue to expand our lives and our living, accepting the responsibility to be co-creators with you.  May we live in such a way that generation to come will and say, “Radically Amazing!”

 

(Judith Cannato)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Cannato