One word keeps coming to me in my prayer these first days of Lent in 2022: Love.
In our first reading today from Leviticus we hear the great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
I have long wondered if the greatest crisis in our world today isn’t that we don’t realize how much we are, each of us, worthy of love. We are all God’s own beloved. God loved us into being. God calls us to love one another as God has loved us.
This morning I prayed with a booklet created several years ago by a group in my religious Congregation focused on growing in nonviolence. Each week the booklet explores Lent with the Principles of Nonviolence. The principle for the first week of Lent is: Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
Our founder Margaret Anna Cusack wrote in 1874: “Force was no longer to be the rule, except, indeed, the force of love.”
In 2020 Philadelphia singer songwriter Joy Ike released a song called “Wearing Love.” It is a song I return to again and again to reground myself on this journey. (It is also good to dance to.)
Slow your breathing No more scheming Quit competing Just love
And everyone will wonder You did not go under You were undercover Wearing love
Keep your words They won’t fix anything All that works is the love that you bring
This Lent, and beyond, may I find my ground and center in God’s unconditional love. May I bring the force of that love into my actions and relationships. May I wear love always. Just love.
Today is our CSJP Community Day of Thanksgiving – marking our 137th anniverary. It is also the day after the shameful insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. I shared the following reflection on today’s liturgical readings during our word and communion service today.
During the many tumultuous moments of 2020–the coronavirus pandemic, political upheaval, the beginning of our belated recokoning with white supremacy, and so much more — I found myself wondering what things would be like if people truly understood themselves, and everyone else, as beloved children of God.
In today’s first reading, John tell us it is so. “Beloved, we love God because God first loved us.”
Morover, John says, “we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey God’s commandments.”
Is it really that simple?
God loves us. We love God. God loves everyone. We love everyone. God loves all of creation. We love all of creation.
It really is that simple, and yet, we humans make it so much more complicated. Just look to what happened yesterday in our Nation’s capital.
The Gospel gives us a clear roadmap for our response in times like these as we follow Jesus. Jesus calls us to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free. Jesus calls us to love as we seek peace.
Even amidst the chaos of political events, even in the difficult moments of our own lives, we, God’s beloved, are called to love one another and hold fast to the path to peace.
Our Lady Chapel St. Barnabas Cathedral
137 years ago today, in Nottingham, England, Bishop Edward Gilpin Bagshawe presided in Our Lady Chapel, St. Barnabas Cathedral, as the first Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace professed their vows. This is a day for which we give thanks for the gift of community and God’s blessings for our community.
Listen to the words that Bishop Bagshawe shared with our first Sisters:
“Our Divine Lord is called the Prince of Peace, and He gave peace to his disciples as his special gift, saying, ‘Peace be with you.’ … To secure this divine peace for ourselves, to procure its blessings for others in the midst of the sin and strife and turmoil and restless anxiety of this modern world is the object of your institute.”
He said those words on January 7, 1884.
Just imagine what Bishop Bagshawe would have thought of the turmoil that unfolded yesterday in Washington, D.C., or the restless anxiety so many felt as they watched our democracy be threatened like never before in our lifetimes.
We, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, are called to procure the blessings of peace in the midst of times such as these.
The psalmist apparently knew about the type of turmoil that happened at the Capitol Building yesterday.
“From fraud and violence he shall redeem them and precious shall their blood be in their sight. May they be prayed for continually; Day by Day shall they bless them.”
We are blessed with our charism of peace, not in spite of the restless anxiety and turmoil of our modern world, but because of it, for it.
And we believe that peace is possible, that peace points beyond itself in time.
Let us join our hearts and prayers for our community, church, nation, world, and Earth. That we may spread the blessings of peace, in faith, hope and love. That peace may come. That we may truly understand ourselves, and help others to understand themselves and everyone else, as beloved of God.
At the Corner of Susan and St. Joseph 