Tag Archives: scripture

On Trust

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trustThis morning, the prayer booklet I use for my morning prayer included a reading from Proverbs 3.  This was one of the readings that I used for my final vows liturgy, and it played quite a role on the retreat I took before requesting to profess my final YES. (The picture is one I took on that retreat, which I then included on the cover of my final vows liturgy program).

Today during my morning prayer, as I sat with this passage, my heart gave me this:

Trust in God with all your heart.
When all your heart is in the mix,
you open yourself to truly loving,
with all the beauty and challenge,
vulnerability and sweetness,
companionship and loss,
wanting so much to hold on
even as we move toward being able to let go.
With all your heart
you open yourself
to God’s love
to God’s plan
to the hope that points beyond itself
to the fullness of time.
Love makes it all possible,
God’s love for us
our love for God and
one another.
Trust in love.

Retreat Prayer – Love is the Way

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I found myself in the company of the disciples on this retreat, sometimes caught by their bumbling attempts to get the message of Jesus, as told in the scripture.  For example, Thomas in the Gospel of John when he does not know where Jesus is going, so how can they know the way?

This retreat in many ways was simple, in the gentle ways that God was present to me and the movement of the heart.  Yes I bring my anxieties and worries and wonderings and vulnerabilities and insecurities and challenges and realities and unknowns to the mix. Yes I often do not get it. Yet my loving and persistent and patient God is there. And the answer is simple … Love. Love is the way.

Words again don’t do the movement of the heart justice, hence this video prayer set to “Perpetual Self” by Sufjan Stevens.

Global Sisters Column: Easter People

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My latest column on Global Sisters Report has been posted- Help Wanted: Easter People. It is a reflection on being Easter people in a mixed up world, in conversation with Pope Francis, Gustavo Gutierrez,  and the founder of my religious community, Margaret Anna Cusack.

In the face of such suffering, against the backdrop of fear-mongering and terrorism, and with the soundtrack of an oftentimes toxic political debate, we celebrate Easter.

Christ is risen. Alleluia!

If Easter and the Resurrection are to mean anything, then we must be Easter people in such a world. …

As Easter people, we are called to find joy, to create hope, and to build peace.

Through us, the Easter story continues.

Click here to read the whole column.

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Me, Sister Camillus, and the Easter Bunny

Here and Now with Mary & Martha

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MaryMarthaI am back from my visit with our sisters and associates in the United Kingdom. It was a wonderful trip and always so good to be with our community in the various regions where we minister.

Transatlantic travel means I woke up very early this morning. By nature I am not a morning person, although these days I am becoming more so. I am coming to appreciate the quiet of the morning. For one thing it is a good time for prayer.

In the little booklet I use for prayer and reflection, today there was a reflection by Henri Nouwen:

Somehow we don’t fully trust that our God is a God of the present and speaks to us where we are. “This is the day the Lord has made.” When the people of Nineveh heard Jonah speak, they turned back to God. Can we listen to the word that God speaks to us today and do the same? This is a very simple but crucial message: Don’t wait for tomorrow to change your heart. This is the favorable time!

I came back to New Jersey yesterday with a very long running to do list in my mind. It was great to be with our UK community for a few weeks, to sit at the feet of wisdom women and experience the movement of God in their lives and ministry. But my practical side is anxious to get busy about many things.

How fitting then that today we have the Gospel of Mary and Martha, one sitting at the feet of Jesus, the other anxious and busy about many things. If sit in the quiet of the morning and listen to the word that God speaks to me today, I realize it is good to be here, it is good to be in the present moment. It is good to sit and be present to my sisters. It is also good to be about the work I have been called to do for the community. God is here, now, with me. God is with us, always, if we but pay attention!

And so this morning I pray in gratitude for the Mary moments of the past few weeks, even as I get ready to face my to do list and channel Martha for a bit. I also hold the promise of many Mary moments with our Sisters and Associates in our two US regions. I am feeling very blessed for the opportunity to soak in the presence of such amazing faith filled people. Fairly often these days, I give thanks to God who broke through all my resistance to religious life a decade ago and led me to this community of peace. I am all the better for it, and have come to know and love and serve God in a whole new way in the process.

God is good.

Peace.

Morning Star Rising

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When I professed my perpetual vows as a Sister of St Joseph of Peace four years ago this November, I felt great joy planning the liturgy and carefully chose  the readings and songs. For the meditation song after communion,  I chose a somewhat unusual song: “We Are” by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

This morning as I prayed with the readings for today’s Feast of the Transfiguration,  I remembered that moment, sitting in the chapel at St. Mary-on-the-lake, surrounded by community and family and friends, after proclaiming my forever yes, after remembering together Jesus as bread broken for us, in the silence, the song played.

“For each child that’s born, a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.”

It was a powerful moment of the love of God for me, and I wanted that song to help the moment sink in for all those present, to reflect a bit on the light they bring to the world, that we are called to bring together.

In today’s second reading from Peter we hear about Jesus and the “unique declaration:” This is my son, my beloved,  with whom I am well pleased.

That is powerful enough, especially when we imagine that declaration being proclaimed from the heavens, to the universe,  that each of us is indeed a beloved son or daughter pleasing to God by our very existence!

This morning I spent more time with what follows in the reading. “Moreover we posses the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

God is love, and we are invited into that love by our very existence, pleasing to God. We are called to share in that love, to share that love ever more deeply and widely, that it may rise in our hearts like the morning star.

God’s love is altogether reliable, and we are part of that love.

Prayer on waking

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Sometimes like Jacob I wrestle

with my demons, my doubts, my frustrations,

my wondering how it will all work out.

But maybe that is what it takes,

those moments of struggle to make it

through to the other side,

to joy and wonder and awe and light and love.

And laughter. Don’t forget the laughter.

Or the tears.

God is present to us and with us and for us

through it all.

God is present through our friends and family

and community.

Together we struggle. Together we live.

And on waking I am content

in the loving

 (if sometimes mischevious)

presence of God.
Inspired by Genesis 32 and Psalm 17

Rise and Walk

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Paralytic (1)Today’s gospel story is both a powerful and perplexing one (Matthew 9:1-8). It is one of many stories of healing by Jesus where he heals in the face of challenges by the powers that be or prevailing wisdom.

It is also quite simple in a way. Friends brought a paralyzed man to Jesus. Jesus knows what is possible. “Courage,” he says to the man. He lifts the weight of sin from the man, telling him that his sins are forgiven. That draws the ire of some scribes, who thought Jesus to be presumptuous at best and blasphemous at worst. So Jesus draws on his practical side and tells the man to do what he knows he can now do. Rise and walk. And he does.

It is a story recorded long ago of a healing from a physical ailment, paralysis. Yet it speaks to me and maybe it speaks to you. My own inner critics doubt whether I am really healed, whether I can really rise and walk into whatever lies ahead. Sometimes it is as if I am paralyzed by my own ailments which weigh me down, anxieties or self doubt or any other mix of worries and woes and wounds. Am I paralyzed by what I am sure is not possible, or do I  choose to live in the light of possibility and hope that is the way to peace?

One key to the story for me is that the man is brought to Jesus by his friends. He is strengthened and supported and brought to new life by community. He also responds to the loving action of Jesus, stepping literally into possibility.

And so I pray for faith, to truly live as if I believe that all things are possible through Jesus. I pray that I may stand with those close to me on their path to freedom, and accept their love and accompaniment on mine.

Rise and walk.

Worry

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I cannot help but worry. I might worry about a particular situation. I might worry about people I love. I also find myself worrying on a grander scale, such as about the state of our collective hearts and the manifestations of our woundedness that we seem to inflict upon one another writ large (a la the shooting in South Carolina and the abysmal state of racial justice in our society). Ok, so some amounts of worry is warranted.

But yet, I find myself returning again and again to these words Jesus said on a mountain all those thousands of years ago:

“Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes?  Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”

As it happens, this is the liturgical reading for today. It always stops me in my tracks and slows down the pace of my worrying. It gives me perspective.

And it helps me to realize that the path forward is not worrying about all the little nitty gritty details ad nauseum (which in my case I know can lead to a never ending worry loop), but in seeking to build the reign of God and seeking God’s peace through justice–in essence, seeking to live with the heart of God today and every day.

That, my friends, is the path to life, and when we step onto that path, Jesus tells us, tomorrow will indeed take care of itself.

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Peace is the word

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peacescrabblePromoting peace has been central to the mission of my religious congregation, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace from our very beginnings. Our original 1884 Constitutions tell us that we were founded “to promote the peace of the Church both by word and work. The very name Sisters of Peace will, it is hoped, inspire the desire of peace and a love for it.”

Promoting peace is also central to the mission of the Church. This has been true from the very beginnings of the Christian community. This morning as I was praying with the Scriptures in my morning prayer book, I ran across this quote from a homily by St. John Chrysostom (ca. 347-407), one of the early Church fathers and a Doctor of the Church:

So as far as a human being can, you must do what Christ the Son of God did, and become a promoter of peace both for yourself and for your neighbor. Christ calls the peacemaker a child of God. The only good deed he mentions as essential at the time of sacrifice is reconciliation with one’s brother or sister. This shows that of all the virtues the most important is love.

Sometimes, when I tell people that I am a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace, they ask if we are a new community. In conversation with these folks, this seems to be because we have a notion that concern for peace is something new.  Hence, a community founded to promote peace must have been formed recently. And yet, as these words from an early Christian leader tell us, and truly as the example and peaceful witness of Jesus constantly remind us, peace is central to our mission as Christians.

This morning as I was praying with this reflection and the Scriptures, I found myself remembering a song from my childhood – Grease from the movie of the same title with John Travolta and Olivia Newton John.  My sister Monica and I used to spend hours in our bedroom, hairbrush in hand, singing the lyrics along with our vinyl recording of the sound track (the G-rated version of course!).  In prayer today, I playfully changed the words of the song, simply replacing the word “grease” with the word “peace.”

They think our love is just a growing pain
Why don’t they understand, it’s just a crying shame
Their lips are lying, only real is real
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel
Peace is the word
It’s got a groove, it’s got a meaning
Peace is the time, is the place, is the motion
Peace is the way we are feeling
Peace is the word my friends.  We are the motion. Go … be peace today!

Video Prayer Reflection: If Not Now

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As I prayed with today’s Scripture readings this morning, I was reminded of this video prayer reflection I created last summer as I was facing the possibility of major changes in my life. It is set to “If Not Now” by Tracy Chapman, a song that has had great meaning to me ever since I first heard it as a 16 year old (this album was constantly in the tape deck of my first car). It’s also a song with meaning that has grown for me over the years. Even now, in a new context, the meaning shifts and deepens.

I’m not quite sure why the story (John 4: 43-54) of the royal official who asked Jesus to heal his child made me think of this video prayer. Perhaps it had something to do with my suspicion that while the official did believe that Jesus could bring about healing, and he took the step to ask him to do so, he also wondered how it could be so.

So much in our life and in our world cries out for healing. In the words of Isaiah 65, may we too believe that God is about to create something new, something which will be the cause of great rejoicing and happiness.

Our job is to show up, here and now. The rest, my friends, is up to our loving and creating God.