In today’s reading from Hosea we hear: “I will heal their defection, says the Lord, / I will love them freely.”
God loves freely. We who are made in the image and likeness of God are called to do no less.
In the words of this song by Joy Ike (Wearing Love).
Slow your breathing No more scheming Quit competing Just love
Silly humans that we are though, we limit our God given ability to love, whether it is ourselves, those who annoy us, those who hurt us, those we disagree with, those we just don’t particularly like.
Jesus reiterates this central call to love in today’s Gospel (Mark 12):
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Love God. Love neighbor. Love yourself.
Freely and with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength.
As Joy Ike sings in her song: “All that works is the love that you bring.”
In today’s reading from the Book of Exodus (3: 13-20) God is revealed to Moses as I AM. Years ago my spiritual director helped me to appreciate this in a particular way. God does not reveal God’s self as I was or I will be but rather I AM. Here and now in this present moment. In every present moment.
This morning as I prayed with this passage, my attention was caught by what Moses is told to tell the people.
“Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and tell them: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me and said: I am concerned about you and about the way you are being treated in Egypt; so I have decided to lead you up out of the misery of Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
God is concerned about us, in our present, always. We are God’s concern.
Sit with that a minute.
As I sat with that realization this morning I was reminded of a video prayer I made a few years ago while on retreat, set to I Am by singer songwriter Jill Phillips.
I am constant, I am near I am peace that shatters all your secret fears I am holy, I am wise I’m the only one who knows your hearts desires Your hearts desires
Amen.
What would it be like if we knew this truth in the depths of our hearts … and acted accordingly? Sharing the concern of the Great I AM for ourselves, each other, and our wounded world?
I have an affinity for those Scripture passages where the people or disciples complain to God. Because, who hasn’t? In today’s first reading Moses is also a target, the fate of leaders throughout history. (Numbers 21)
From Mount Hor the children of Israel set out on the Red Sea road, to bypass the land of Edom. But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!”
Disgusted. Wretched. Very descriptive. And real.
The story continues that God sent serpents to bite the people as punishment for their complaints! Which spurred the folks to apologize, and then God helped Moses get everyone to chill out by making a bronze serpent on a pole, and everyone who looked at it lived.
The nitty gritty reality of the complaining is what sticks with me. And makes me laugh every time this reading comes up in the lectionary. Because if I am honest, my own conversations with my loving creator sometimes fall into the complaint variety. Sometimes they are substantive and grounded in true issues. Sometimes they are of the more petty variety. Most often probably in the middle? And if I am to be real before God, I can’t stuff it down or pretend I don’t feel all the feelings.
When my Mom was dying of cancer twenty years ago, I had my first true (adult) crisis of faith. It was accompanied by a lot of complaining of the substantive variety. I had a valid beef with the reality of suffering and most particularly the suffering my Mom was going through, and how God was seemingly ok with it. Still do all these years later, truth be told. A wise priest friend encouraged me to spend some time with the psalms. They were filled not only with complaining, he told me, but even anger at God. And anger, he pointed out, is a pretty intimate emotion.
Somehow reading those ancient complaints and screeds against God brought me closer to God in the midst of the reality of suffering. Here’s the thing … while in today’s story from Numbers, God may have punished the people first, the story ends with mercy. The story always ends with God’s mercy. God listens. God is with us. And God wants to hear our complaints! As we hear today in Psalm 102:
Let this be written for the generation to come, and let his future creatures praise the Lord:
“The Lord looked down from his holy height, from heaven he beheld the earth, To hear the groaning of the prisoners,to release those doomed to die.
So go ahead. Groan. Complain…. God has heard worse. We won’t find the way through by ignoring the death dealing realities of life, real and figurative. We might miss life giving opportunities if we do. God invites us always to bring our realities to our relationship with our loving creator. And for that I am very grateful.
Prompt our actions with your inspiration, we pray, O Lord, and further them with your constant help, that all we do may always begin from you and by you be brought to completion.
The above words come from the collect for today’s liturgy on this Thursday after Ash Wednesday. As we begin this Lenten journey, there is so much in need of constant help.
The wars raging in Ukraine and so many other parts of the human family.
The cries of Earth as temperatures rise and our planet’s ecosystem struggles to keep up with harm caused by human activity.
The cries of people who are living in poverty or otherwise on the margins, wondering how they will provide just the basic necessities for their loved ones.
The divisions between and among us that deny human dignity and prevent us from treating each other as the beloved of God we are.
This is the context as we begin Lent. And we are called to begin the Lenten journey in our own hearts.
Purify my heart! May every word, every thought! Every motive, every intention! Be pleasing in your sight O God! Be pleasing in your sight O God!
This song by Jess Ray, based on Psalm 119, rings true of my heart’s desire for this Lenten journey.
May my heart, my every, word, every thought, every motive be pleasing to God. A high order, but all things are possible with, through, and for God.
In our CSJP Constitutions we say that prayer leads to action, while action leads us to pray. As we hold the many needs of our world crying out for help, may our heartfelt prayer lead us to actions for peace through justice.
“I am,” a new-to-me song by Jill Phillips, speaks deeply to me of the invitation to let God be God. So I did what I do, and made a video prayer.
Lyrics by Jill Phillips:
Oh, gently lay your head upon my chest, And I will comfort you like a mother while you rest The tide can change so fast, but I will stay The same through past, the same in future, the same today
I am constant, I am near I am peace that shatters all your secret fears I am holy, I am wise I’m the only one who knows your hearts desires Your hearts desires
Oh weary, tired, and worn Let out your sighs And drop that heavy load you hold, ’cause mine is light I know you through and through There’s no need to hide I want to show you love that is deep, and high, and wide
Oh, gently lay your head upon my chest And I will comfort you like a mother while you rest
We nurture our life of prayer by reflective reading, particularly scripture, by periods of solitude and silence,and by an annual retreat. (CSJP Constitution 30)
It has been my privilege and joy to spend the last week on my annual retreat. My planned directed retreat at a retreat house was of course cancelled, this being 2020 when everything has been disrupted. So instead I met with my spiritual director virtually and retreated within driving distance to a quiet spot to make a private retreat.
It has been a week of gentle surprises, holding the intentions of our mixed up world close to my heart, and experiencing the presence and deep love of God. In addition to spending quiet time with God and reflective reading, I took some contemplative photos on my walks with God in the beauty of creation. Prayer in action all around us!
Some contemplative surprises found in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (June 2020)
God of love, source of all that is good, thank you.
Your creation reminds us of beauty, goodness, wonder and awe.
You are our creator, our companion, our center.
You desire us to ground ourselves in your goodness and gift one another with love, justice, and peace.
Help us to see goodness when it is hidden, even in ourselves.
Inspire us to spread goodness.
Guide us to read the signs of the times and respond by building right relationship between and among all peoples and creation.
I want to continue to believe in the presence of God, the one who strengthens, cheers, and encourages me at all times. – St. John XXIII
I have a little prayer booklet I use sometimes from Twenty Third Publications called Walking with St. John XXIII: 30 days with a good and beloved Pope. This morning I turned at random to a page, which happened to be the second to last page, and read this quote.
Interestingly enough, just a few minutes earlier, I had read this post on our current Pope’s Twitter feed:
In the midst of all those passing things in which we are so caught up, help us, Father, to seek what truly lasts; your presence and that of our brother or sister. – Pope Francis
And I was reminded, instantly, of this quote in our CSJP Constitutions:
We value the ministry of presence as an important dimension of the gospel of peace. In the hope of continuing our tradition of gracious hospitality, we welcome others to our communities and also try to be present to people in their own situations. – CSJP Constitution 18
We are so in danger of disconnection and tuning out all the noise and chaos and bad news and suffering, when truly the invitation is to see God present with us in and through and and beyond all that. Emmanuel, after all, means God with us. God created us, Jesus became one of us, and the Spirit is present among us. Ours is to grow in understanding what this means. Ours is to be open to the presence of God in our day to day moments, not only those precious aha spiritual moments, but in the messy bits too. And I don’t know about you but I have a lot more messy bits than spiritual highs. Our is to be the presence of God for others, and to experience (and accept) the presence of God in others.
At least that’s what my morning prayer time led me to ponder, and I join John XXII in praying and trusting in my loving God who strengthens, cheers, and encourages me/us at all times. If we but listen.
When I was a novice, we participated each week in an intercommunity program with novices from other religious communities–men’s and women’s communities across the entire spectrum. We gathered each week to learn about the various aspects of religious life. When it came time to learn about the vows, the presenter shared unique perspectives present in the Constitutions of each community. That is when I realized that the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace “recognize the value of leisure as contributing to restorating and wholeness.”
Now, of course, this is both common sense and good self care. But we put it in our Constitutions! Not only that, we placed it in the section on the vow of poverty and in the context of work.
In solidarity with our sisters and brothers
we engage in human labor
as a means of service and sustencance.
We recognize the value of leisure
as contributing to restoration and wholeness.
In these ways we come to share
in the creative power of God.
(CSJP Constitution No. 54)
For Apostolic religious women, leisure is not the aim or the goal or the norm, but it is critical, so critical that it enables us to live our vow of poverty and be about the mission of peace with joy, and from a place of wholeness. I write these words a few days into my annual summer vacation, this year a solo adventure to a spot that’s been on my bucket list for years … Prince Edward Island.
Yesterday when I was driving around a part of the Island where one of our CSJP Sisters was born, this view caught my eye and so I pulled over to take this picture:
The perfect juxtaposition of the value of human labor, leisure, and the creative power of God.
Work is the norm, but sometimes we just need to stop and soak in the beauty to remind us that in the end it’s not up to us, but to the creative power of God. And besides, we all need to stop and take some time to just soak in the sheer beauty and wonder of the world God has created, including us!
Eyes open in a strange room
rested (but not)
ready for what comes next
filled with a wondering
bubbling up
encompassing me in possibility, promise, a wee bit of trepidation.
What if?
What if God is inviting us?
What if God is inviting us, through it all, to return home to one another?
What if, through the movement towards smallness, God is inviting us to reach out to those we did not need in our exceptional BIG moments?
What if, through the roller coaster of our geopolitical sphere, not to mention the soap opera of our national whatever is the opposite of civil and reasonable discourse, God is inviting us to love each other out of the fear and division?
What if, through the reckless disregard of our very planet–our common home–and our disposable attitude toward people and things, God is inviting us to bless what is near and dear while we make all of God’s creation our own concern?
What if our Triune God–Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier–is beckoning us, cheering us, drawing us near one another despite ourselves so that we can be one in all our wonderful crazy-making diversity?
Just as the Abba is always that, and the Son is always that, and the Ruah is always that …
Just as together they are also more …
Just as together they transform …
Just as together they bless and permeate and dance the story of all that is and was and will be.
This is my prayer upon waking, that I … that we … live into the questions, wonder at the wondering, and embrace the invitation to dance.
Amen.
Leaders of all 3 conferences of religious men and women in the United States bless those gathered at the 2017 Leadership Conference of Women Religious in a powerful moment of communion at the closing liturgy.
At the Corner of Susan and St. Joseph 