Emmaus ~ journey into light and fire!

Emmaus Journey by Irene Zimmerman
All was chaos when he died.
We fled our separate ways at first,
then gathered again in the upper room
to chatter blue-lipped prayers
around the table where he’d talked
of love and oneness.

On the third day Cleopas and I
left for the home we’d abandoned
in order to follow him.
We wanted no part of the babble
the women had brought from the tomb.
We vowed to get on with our grieving.

On the road we met a Stranger
whose voice grew vaguely familiar
as he spoke of signs and suffering.
By the time we reached our village,
every tree and bush was blazing,

And we pressed him to stay the night.
Yet not till we sat at the table
and watched the bread being broken
did we see the light.
 

Emmaus ~ "Aha"-lleluia!

This Sunday’s Gospel is the account of the disciples walking to Emmaus.  After the experience of the crucifixion of Jesus, they headed out of town ASAP!  They were disappointed, disillusioned, disoriented, and disbelieving of the women’s message of Jesus’ resurrection. They expected Jesus to do great things and overtake the political and religious leaders – their hopes in Jesus were sealed away in the tomb with a two ton rock positioned at its entrance.  

As they were walking, they were extroverting, debating, and probably taking part in “global-whining” as to what they had recently experienced with shock and terror in Jerusalem. Along the road, Jesus meets them and they are described as having eyes cast down and hearts slow to believe. In other words, these disciples were probably experiencing their own unique form of post traumatic stress. But it is Jesus who gets them to attend to what they experienced, to recall and remember what was written in the Scriptures, and to stir up their juices of empowerment once again.  The rock was slowly being moved from their hearts, and  their eyes were gently opening to the Mystery that was walking with them.  Then, noticing that it was nearly evening, they asked Jesus to stay with them, and they would chip in for the supper at the near-by inn.  

It was then at table, in the blessing of the bread, and it’s being broken and shared once again, that they recognized him.  And what’s more, they noticed that their hearts were on fire!! I am told that someplace it is written that the Jews at that time believed that there was a “connection” between one’s eyes and one’s heart – So eyes cast down leads to sad and slow to believing hearts.  Yet, in the presence of the blessing and bread breaking – their eyes were opened and their hearts were set on fire! Jesus – “aha” “aha-lleluia” – He is alive – just as the women said! So they set out at once to return to Jerusalem, and “the rest is history” as the saying goes.  

So what is the Good News for us?  “There are times when we too have our hopes and expectations disappointed. We may feel that God has not treated us fairly or has abandoned us, and we are left in a state of bewilderment and confusion. Our challenge then is to accept, perhaps with difficulty, that God has not abandoned us, but is leading us to a new understanding of what our life is about. To a greater or less extent an experience of disorientation is inevitable until we get our bearings again.”

Sister Helen ~ bread baker sharing her bread!

Come, Spring!

A Springtime Prayer by Joyce Rupp

Ever-renewing and energizing Creator, 
Come, stir in my dormant spiritual limbs.
Wake up my tired prayer.
Revive my weary efforts of care.
Sing hope into my discouragement.
Wash my dusty, drab attitude
with the cleansing rains of your vision.
Go deep to my roots and penetrate my faith
With the vibrancy of your grace.
Shake loose the old leftover oak leaves
Of my tenacious ego-centeredness.
Coax joy to sprout from my difficulties.
Warm the buds of my relationships
so they bloom with healthy love.
Clear out my wintered debris
with the wild breeze of your liberating presence.
Nudge me, woo me, entice me, draw me to you.
I give you my trust and my gratitude
as you grace my slowly thawing spirit.
Light-filled Being, my Joy and my Hope,
Let the greening in me begin!

Catherine of Siena ~Doctor of the Church, theologian, philosopher, spiritual writer, and one who could "speak truth to power"

April 29, the feast day of St Catherine of Siena, a lay Dominican,

 Doctor and Reformer of the Church

St. Catherine of Siena was the 25th child of a wool dyer in northern Italy.
She started having mystical experiences when she was only 6, seeing guardian angels as clearly as the people they protected. She became a Dominican tertiary when she was 16, and continued to have visions of Christ, Mary, and the saints.
St. Catherine was one of the most brilliant theological minds of her day, although she never had any formal education. . Her spiritual director was Blessed Raymond of Capua. St, Catherine's letters, and a treatise called "a dialogue" are considered among the most brilliant writings in the history of the Catholic Church.
She died when she was only 33, and her body was found incorrupt in 1430.

Sarcophagus of St. Catherine of Siena - Rome, Italy

http://www.st-catherine-medal.com/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Siena

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlUFaRC6VlI

Catherine’s Prayers:

• You, God, are a fire that always burns without consuming. You are a fire consuming in its heat every compartment of the soul’s self-absorbed love. You are a fire lifting all chill and giving all light. In Your light You show me Your truth. You’re the Light that outshines every Light. You, God, give the mind’s eye Your divine light so completely and excellently. You bring lucidity even to the light of faith. In that faith, I see my soul has life, and in that light, I receive You who are Light itself. 

• God is a bright ocean that distills and reveals hidden truths so that my soul has a better understanding of how to trust Love, and the water is a mirror in which You, Eternal Trinity, give me knowledge.

• I want you to be a tree of love, grafted into the Word who is love, Christ crucified – a tree with its roots in deep humility. If you are a tree of love, sweetly rooted, you’ll find the fruit of patience and strength at the tips of your branches, and crowned perseverance nesting within you. You’ll find peace and quiet and consolation in suffering when you see yourself conformed with Christ crucified. And so, by enduring with Christ crucified, you’ll come with joy from much war into much peace. Peace! Peace!

Arise ~ photo courtesy of S. Doris Klein, CSA

And then there were two - Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II

“There's a lovely church that has a bank of stained glass windows that runs the entire length of the nave; those windows depict many great Christians throughout the centuries. Among them are martyrs, bishops, priests and nuns, to be sure, but also artists, poets and politicians. The rector of that parish tells a story of a young boy whose mother explained the windows to him, saying that the people pictured there were saints. The little boy quickly responded, ‘Oh, I get it. Saints are people that the sun shines through.’"

On this Sunday, April 27, the two late popes, Blessed Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII, will be canonized saints. This will mark a historic day for the Catholic Church. 

How does one officially become a saint?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUGRdpRJWYA

Quotes of Pope John XXIII:

• Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what is still possible for you to do. Pope John XXIII
• I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart. Pope John XXIII
• See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little. Pope John XXIII
• It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope. Pope John XXIII
• Anybody can be Pope; the proof of this is that I have become one. Pope John XXIII

Quotes of Pope John Paul II:

• Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. Pope John Paul II
• Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create. Pope John Paul II
• Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it. Pope John Paul II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII

http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/john-xxiii-accidental-saint

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/04/19/what-canonizations-popes-john-xxiii-and-john-paul-tell/9wo73vBZo2HeUGN5ICcpOM/story.html

https://thejesuitpost.org/2013/07/worth-reading-saints-john-paul-ii-and-john-xxiii/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/05/-john-xxiii-sainthood_n_3549910.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/22/john-paul-ii-canonization_n_5191127.html

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/04/20/will_sainthood_for_john_paul_ii_john_xxiii_unite_church.html

Women, why are you weeping?

In honor of Earth Day, American Masters on PBS aired the documentary, A Fierce Green Fire: . . .
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/a-fierce-green-fire/watch-the-full-film/2924/
presenting in graphic detail the development of the environmental movement. In Act 2 of the film, narrators told the story of Love Canal (Niagara, NY) and how the residents cried out to the powers that be that 21,000 tons of toxic waste was buried underground and that it was affecting their everyday lives. It was the mothers that rose up to confront the “experts” on environmental control and produced evidence that their babies were born with defects, i.e., a third ear, missing or deformed limbs, and later in life, an extra row of teeth would develop.  This documentary was very riveting, and I marveled at the tenacity of the mothers who demanded being heard, noticed, and believed.  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

It reminded me of the homily I gave about the women of the first century who were considered not reliable witnesses according to the Rabbinic Law. According to Mathew’s Gospel, the two women who came to the empty tomb after the Resurrection were the first witnesses and ran to tell the hiding disciples that Jesus had risen from dead - just as he said. Apparently God broke the rules and had women be the first witnesses of the Resurrection event, but  they were not immediately heard, noticed, or believed. 

So as I prayed this morning, the Scriptural phrase that came to me was, “Women, why are you weeping?” So what I share below are my random thoughts and feelings in light of this documentary, the 36 homes destroyed and 41 victims of the mudslide in Oso, Washington, the people of Malaysia flight MH370, the victims of the South Korean ferry boat, the victims of the Ebola virus in West Africa, and the 16 Sherpa guides and other climbers killed in the avalanche on Mount Everest. For me, these days, I see the faces of so many women weeping.

So let me begin with this short story by Sue Monk Kidd: 
“Once when I was going through a difficult time, my husband touched his finger to the tears winding down my face, then touched his wet finger to his own cheek. His gesture spoke volumes to me. It said: ‘Your tears run down my face, too. Your suffering aches inside my heart as well.  I share your wounded place.’”

So let us pray:
Women, Why Are You Weeping? ~ We share your wounded place.

The women of Oso, Washington ~ We weep for our husbands, wives, sons, daughters, friends, other family members, co-workers, and our community. The rain-soaked hills collapsed. Now the  faces of the peoples of Oso are tear-soaked and their spirits are collapsed.  Your tears run down our faces, too. Your suffering aches inside our hearts.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-visits-mudslide-hit-community-washington-state-000114602.html?.tsrc=o2de

The women of the victims of Malaysia flight MH370 ~ We weep for our families and friends, buried in the depths of the Indian Ocean.  Your tears run down our faces, too.  Your suffering aches inside our hearts. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html

The women of the victims of the Korean ferry boat disaster ~ We weep for our children, our only sons and daughters – The tents of sorrowful mourning are not large enough to hold the pain and sadness of our families.  The waters of the sea once again claim the lives of this unfathomable happening. Your tears run down our faces, too.  Your suffering aches inside our hearts.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/19/world/asia/south-korea-ship-sinking/index.html

The women of the victims of the Ebola virus ~ We weep for the 140 victims of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. We pray that the World Health Organization will detect the origin of this virus and have the resources to rein it in from being transmitted any further.  Your tears run down our faces, too.  Your suffering aches inside our hearts. 
http://www.inquisitr.com/1207986/ebola-outbreak-2014-aid-organizations-take-emergency-measures-in-west-africa/

The women of the victims of the Sherpa guides ~ We weep for the 16 guides who are now held in the frozen embrace of the ice and snows of Mount Everest.  May their voices echo in the valleys so that justice for their families and other guides be honored. "It is just impossible for many of us to continue climbing. While there are three of our friends buried in the snow, I can't imagine stepping over them. We want to honor the members we lost and out of respect for them we just can't continue.”   Your tears run down our faces, too. Your suffering aches inside our hearts.
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/549145/20140423/everest-sherpas-climbing-season-nepal.htm

Women, why are you weeping? ~ We share your wounded place. Amen.

In God's Heart . . .

Photo courtesy of  S. Doris Klein, CSA

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing –
Each stone, blossom, child – 
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
To earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart,
they have never left God.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that 
before she can fly.
-Rainer Maria Rilke