Sundays in Lent – 3rd Monday

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​From time immemorial. we assign the responsibility of our emotions to the messenger. Good news receives accolades. Bad news, the messenger gets blamed.[. We even have cliches and axioms referencing it. I, for one hadn’t realized it was part of the Gospel also. “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place” [Luke 4:24] We see it in so many of the messengers sent to proclaim the good News – they are disbelieved, ignored, run out of town, murdered, and martyred. They also traveled far from their homes to proclaim and spread the Word.

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum”

Maybe that’s why we leave home for school – less judgment, less parental interference. I see it in my own son. I’ll ask twenty questions and he’ll answer two. I also saw it when I returned home from college. My nother tried to give me a curfew. I was not having that. Looking back now, I think she may have been saying it tongue-in-cheek. I say things to my son tongue-in-cheek and he gets it. He may be smarter than I was.

We expect a certain safety in our homes and hometowns. It is familiar. We are forever children among our neighbors. I always felt funny cooking in my parents’ house; my mother-in-law’s also. I felt that I shouldn’t be touching certain things; it wasn’t my place to be the grownup despite being a grownup with a small child. In other ways, I took initiative. When my mother sent me grocery shopping, if her item was overpriced or not on sale, I substituted another or skipped it entirely. My sister would get everything on the list regardless of price. 

I am certainly not a prophet, but how are my messages received? Are they seen equally with others? How nervous am I to deliver any news to the people I know rather than new acquaintances at retreats and writing groups?

Jesus spent so much time in Capernaum. Why isn’t he Jesus of Capernaum? He’s Jesus of Nazareth. Who am I? Kb of my hometown? Of my college town? Where I live now? Which is my native home? How will I be received?

[Today’s Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-15b, Psalms 42;43, Luke 4:24-30]

Sundays in Lent – 3rd Sunday

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​Brought out of slavery, and in exchange given the Ten Commandments to follow. A fresh start for the Israelites, as it were. We are continuously shown how G-d’s mercy is greater than his punishment.

“…the weakness of G-d is stronger than human strength,” and our strength is stronger than our weakness, if only we could see that ourselves and show mercy to ourselves first. We are also each other’s weakness, but we are make up for that by also being each other’s greatest strength. When we fall, we help the other one up.

Today’s Gospel shows us to think first, to curb our anger in favor of deed. John tells us that Jesus “overturned the tables but not in anger.” [Emphasis mine.]

I think sometimes we need to overturn the tables in our own lives.

Our tables get piled with stuff – mail, newspapers, tea cups, grocery lists, bread crumbs. We need to take a moment or two and clear the table until it’s emptied. Take another moment to wash away the dust, brush the bread crumbs into the trash, and look at the potential of the empty table, of where we can go from here.

What tables in your life could use some overturning?

Are there any places you want to start over, begin again?

Take a fresh look and a deep breath.

[Today’s Readings: Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19, 1 Cor 1:22-25, John 2:13-25]

Sundays in Lent – 2nd Friday

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With his feast day happening yesterday, this second week of Lent brings us to pilgrimage at St. David’s Cathedral in Wales. It is a part of the Church of Wales and its new bishop is the first woman: Canon Joanna Penberthy is the 129th bishop of St. David’s.

Pilgrims have been coming to St. David’s since the 6th century.

Here a few links to ge you started. I really enjoyed the video that I’ve posted lastly.

Virtual Tour of St. David’s Cathedral

What you’ll find at Ty’r Pererin [the Pilgrim’s House] –

March: Blustery, Green, Wet

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​Blustery.

Green.

Wet.

No longer does March come in like a lion and out like a lamb. It is just as likely to come in like a lamb and go out like a a lion. What is happening with our climate and climate changes? Back in 1997, my son was born on March 21st. He had to stay in the hospital for a little less than two weeks, but while he was there, during the first week in April, we had what amounted to a blizzard. In April?

Last week in upstate New York it was seventy degrees. Two days ago it was fourteen. Today it is thirty-five. The sun is shining, the sky is blue after two days of rain, freezing rain and snow. I wear my capri pants year round now.

But despite the wind, the rain, the leftover snow, and of course, mud season, we think of March as green. It really isn’t, but it still has that perception. I think St. Patrick’s Day has a hand in that. We’re also wearing our bright colors before we have to don our duller and sullen Good Friday wear. Even for non-Christians, the feelings are there: attempted brightness and joy until we look outside and see the mud, the carnage in the snow. Right now, my backyard looks like a Bil Keane cartoon.

(c)2018


Courtesy of The Comic Journal, 2011. (c)Bil Keane, Jeff Keane, 2018


But after a couple of weeks of forgetting that February is over, and with the wind dying down, we plan our gardens, we don our green apparel, we prepare our palms and our matzo, and at the end of our holidays and feasts and prayers, we remember that spring always follows winter, and in twenty more days, we will have spring and I will have a twenty-one year old.

The climate may change, and we need to change with it, but the seasons will set their own agenda, and they will arrive like clockwork.

Blustery to green in twenty-one days.

Sundays in Lent – 2nd Thursday

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Hapus Sant Dewi Dydd

Translation: Do the little things in life. Quotation from St. David. Art, mine. (c)2018

Be joyful.

Keep the faith.

Do the little things.

Contemplate on the words of St. David and a small thing I drew on his feast day. Three simple suggestions, easily done, yet greatly appreciated.

Sundays in Lent – 2nd Wednesday

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The people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem said,
“Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah.
It will not mean the loss of instruction from the priests,
nor of counsel from the wise, nor of messages from the prophets.
And so, let us destroy him by his own tongue;
let us carefully note his every word.”

Heed me, O LORD,
and listen to what my adversaries say.
Must good be repaid with evil
that they should dig a pit to take my life?
Remember that I stood before you
to speak in their behalf,
to turn away your wrath from them.

Jeremiah 18:18-20

Read the above Scripture from Jeremiah. Can you think of a time when you stood up for someone in your life only to have to ask them to defend you later? Jeremiah didn’t speak up for G-d as a pre-payment for Him to rescue him later, but he does remind G-d that he was there for G-d and these people who have turned against him.

Find something in the above passage to journal on, whether it be service to G-d, friendship, betrayal, or anything that comes to your mind.

Sundays in Lent – 2nd Tuesday

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“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;

but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Matt 23:12

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Meditate on this.

How do you pray?

Public or private?

I think for most of us it’s a combination of both – not intentionally bragging about our prayer life, but we wear our religious symbols, religious clothes, headgear, we pray in communion. There is a rosary group at my church that meets daily after the mass to pray the rosary. Many of them go home and pray the rosary in private as well.

How can we balance the communion and community of religion without being hypocrites and/or showing off our supposed or perceived piety?