A Splash of Autumn . . .

O sacred season of Autumn, be my teacher, for I wish to learn the virtue of contentment.  As I gaze upon your full-colored beauty, I sense all about you an at-homeness with your amber riches.

You are the season of retirement, of full barns and harvested fields. The cycle of growth has ceased, and the busy work of giving life is now completed. I sense in you no regrets; you've lived a full life.

I live in a society that is ever-restless, always eager for more mountains to climb, seeking happiness through more and more possessions.  As a child of my culture, I am seldom truly at peace with what I have.

Teach me to take stock of what I have given and received; may I know that it’s enough, that my striving can cease in the abundance of God’s grace.

May I know the contentment that allows the totality of my energies to come to full flower. May I know that like you I am rich beyond measure.

As you, O Autumn, take pleasure in your great bounty, let me also take delight in the abundance of the simple things of life which are the true source of joy. With golden glow of peaceful contentment may I truly appreciate this autumn day.

 (Ed Hays, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim)

Our Extravagant God!

Waken in Me a Sense of Joy
By Ted Loder

O extravagant God,
in this ripening, red-tinged autumn,
waken in me a sense of joy
    in just being alive,
joy for nothing in general
    except everything in particular;
joy in sun and rain
    mating with earth to birth a harvest;
joy in soft light
    through shyly disrobing trees;
joy in the acolyte moon
    setting halos around processing clouds;
joy in the beating of a thousand wings
    mysteriously knowing which way is warm;
joy in wagging tails and kids’ smiles
    and in this spunky old city;
joy in the taste of bread and wine,
    the smell of dawn,
    a touch,
    a song,
    a presence;
joy in having what I cannot live without –
    other people to hold and cry and laugh with;
joy in love,
    in you;
and that all at first and last
is grace.

(From: Guerrillas of Grace)

The Companioning of Leaves . . .

 

Poem: A Leaf Treader by Robert Frost

I have been treading on leaves all day until I am autumn tired
Lord knows all the color and form of leaves I have trodden on and mired
Perhaps I have put forth too much strength or been too fierce from fear...
I have safely trodden underfoot the leaves of another year
All summer long they were overhead more lifted up than I
To come to their final place in earth they had to pass me by
All summer long I thought I heard them whispering under their breath
And when they came it seemed with a will to carry me with them to death
They spoke to the fugitive in my heart as if it were leaf to leaf
They tapped at my eyelids and touched my lips with an invitation to grief
But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go...
Now UP MY KNEE to keep atop another year of snow.

 

TAKING UP THE CROSS Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings:

Is 50:5-9a

Ps 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

Jas 2:14-18

Mk 8:27-35

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34)

 

Some years ago, I was teaching a course on the Gospel of Mark. We got to the midpoint, chapter 8, and I was waxing eloquent on the portion we hear in today’s Gospel, reflecting on what taking up the cross might mean for us, in a context where literal crucifixion was not a danger. One of the students raised her hand insistently and I reluctantly stopped my lecture and called on her.  She declared this to be the most dangerous text in the Bible and wished we could rip it out. I had the presence of mind to ask her to explain further why she felt that way. She went on to describe how a majority of the women with whom she worked in a shelter for battered women and children had internalized this text in such a way that they thought that by enduring every kind of suffering, including physical and verbal abuse from their batterers, they were faithfully carrying their cross with Jesus. I was appalled at such a misunderstanding of the meaning of “taking up the cross.” I soon discovered that my student’s experience was replicated in vast numbers in most every corner of the globe.

 While such a spirituality of the cross has enabled many women to endure great suffering and to give meaning to it, Jesus’s invitation to take up one’s cross actually refers to a very different kind of suffering. He is speaking to his disciples about the suffering that is likely to befall a person for being his follower. Illness or disease is not “the cross” in the sense in which Jesus speaks of it in today’s gospel. There is nothing particularly Christian about this kind of suffering; it can happen to anyone. Nor is suffering that comes from abuse or injustice something that one should “take up.” Jesus confronted and tried to stop that kind of suffering whenever he encountered it. The cross consists rather in the negative consequences to which Jesus’s followers willingly expose themselves as the cost of being his disciples.

 Hand in hand with taking up the cross is denial of self. This does not refer to ascetic acts, like giving up something you enjoy during Lent. Such practices can feed a spirituality of denial of self; but when Jesus enjoins denial of self, he speaks of a spirituality by which one chooses daily to place the common good and Christ at the center, not one’s own desires. It is a free choice to live a life of ever-deepening self-surrender to love.

 Just as people who commit themselves to one another for life must constantly give of themselves out of love for the other, so the love into which Jesus invites disciples is a costly one that asks more and more of us. It is a freely chosen self-surrender in love, which implies that only those who have a healthy sense of self and the freedom to choose to surrender themselves can authentically deny themselves and take up their cross. The cross of which Jesus speaks is not a suffering imposed on persons who are downtrodden.

 The second reading today gives some concrete examples of this kind of costly love. If one encounters a brother or sister without adequate clothing or food or shelter, to deny oneself and take up the cross demands letting go of time and resources in self-surrender to the neediest ones. Simply talking about faith but not making it visible in concrete deeds of self-surrender is not authentic discipleship. Trying to skirt the cost of such love, as Peter did when he insisted to Jesus that the cross was not necessary, is an all too-human way of thinking. To think as God does results in godly action, a lifelong surrender to a free and costly love.

 

These reflections are adapted from Barbara E. Reid, Abiding Word. Sunday Reflections for Year B.  Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011. Pp. 104-105.

 

Remembering . . .

 Lord, take me where You want me to go;

Let me meet who You want me to meet;

Tell me what You want me to say; and

Keep me out of your way.

father mychal judge - FDNY - died 9/11/01

Fr. Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Dept., died in the process of giving the last rites to a fire fighter who perished in the tragedy at the World Trade Centre on Sept. 11, 2001. This prayer was found in his pocket.

A Seeker's Prayer . . .

 

A Prayer by St. Anselm of Canterbury

  O my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You,

where and how to find You.

You are my God and You are my all and I have never seen You.
You have made me and remade me,
You have bestowed on me all the good things I possess,
Still I do not know You.
I have not yet done that for which I was made.
Teach me to seek You.
I cannot seek You unless You teach me
or find You unless You show Yourself to me.
Let me seek You in my desire,
let me desire You in my seeking.
Let me find You by loving You,
let me love You when I find You.

Amen

---

A Franciscan Prayer for Peace

 

      Lord, make us instruments of your Peace.  In a world all too prone to violence and revenge, we commit ourselves to the Gospel values of mercy, justice, compassion, and love.

 

We will seek daily to promote forgiveness and healing in our hearts, our families, and our world. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, let us cultivate peace.

 

Fear and distance prevent people from recognizing all as brothers and sisters; tensions lead to violence and mistrust; We will strive to honor the dignity that God places in each and every human person.

 

Grant that we may not seek to be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. Our failure to understand the other can create exclusion in all its negative forms – racism, marginalization of those who are poor, sick, the immigrant; it can also create situations of domination, occupation, oppression and war.

 

We pledge to seek the way of solidarity, to create hearts, homes, and communities where all people will experience inclusion, hospitality, and understanding.

For it is in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned and in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

 

Let us Pray:

Lord God, create in us:

-the Capacity to hear and understand the voices of those who suffer from every form of violence, injustice, and dehumanization;

 

-the Openness to receive and honor people from other cultures, languages, religious traditions, and geographical regions;

 

-the Creativity to explore new ways of communication and dialogue through

      music, poetry, performing arts, and the mass media;

 

-the Audacity to undertake the building of communities of forgiveness, healing,

      and reconciliation.

To God who is above all and in all are the glory and the honor. Amen