”Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.”
Psalm 27:14
Read these words, and sit quietly with them.
What is the first thing you think of?
What do they mean to you?
What are you waiting for the Lord for?
Think of all of this, but especially the verse in the context of this week. Holy Week is a special time and it leads to all things, good and bad, and we must encounter and endure them all in order to get to the greatest day – Easter and the Resurrection.
”The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them…”
Isaiah 50:4
How often have we ignored our well-trained tongue and have just spoken whatever’s on our mind? How many have we offended in so short a time? How many times would it have been better to simply not say anything at all?
I am forever giving my kids advice to think first, then speak, but how often am I in need of such advice? Or admonishment?
I’m reminded of a quote from The Walking Dead television series where Rick tells his son, who’s about ten, maybe slightly younger, “Don’t talk. Think.” I know many people, myself included who needs to remember this.
Another quote comes to mind from Aaron Burr in Hamilton: An American Musical when he tells Alexander Hamilton to “talk less, smile more.”
As we follow Jesus, stepping on and side-stepping palms being tossed as his guide, find some solitude and think about his journey and our own journey throughout this week beginning today as he, and we, enter Jerusalem and meet G-d’s will.
A Self-Retreat
Right about now, the middle to end of March, I begin to feel the heaviness. The clouds are fat with moisture, lumbering across a grey sky. When the sky is blue, the air is wintry cold. yesterday was grey, but I didn’t wear a jacket. I did, however have on my snood and gloves. That was enough to trick my body into thinking it was warmer than it was.
It’s not just the weather that’s heavy. Things are picking up for school assignments. Drama club has finally ended, but it’s been replaced by notes to parents for help on those end of year assignments, and how can it be the end of the year already? There’s Easter upcoming, full weekends, bills to pay, taxes to do, and nowhere to escape.
I’ve kept busy with my kids, our weekly television viewing, a church breakfast, reading Chernow’s Grant, tagging along to find The Lost Book of Moses, two days of reflection that were everything I’d hoped they would be, and more, and still not enough.
One or two times a year I try to give myself a retreat. A self-guided retreat, some planned out and some spontaneous, encompassing both spiritual and writerly things and if I’m lucky a tiny bit of travel, too.
I am lucky this weekend to be heading out on a spiritual-slash-writing retreat and I hope to bookend the weekend with two days of my own guidance.
If you don’t have a retreat center nearby, I would highly recommend giving yourself a self-retreat.
Begin by blocking out a few days in a row. I would suggest a minimum of three days. If that’s not possible, try and arrange your regular work days off to be two consecutive days.
Choose a theme. What are you trying to get out of this time “away”? Are you looking to get something done? Are you looking to get nothing done? Quiet time? Or contemplation? Meditation and prayer? Silence and solitude?
Will you bring music along?
Will you bring food or eat out?
Will you return home at times or is one of the objects to get away from home except for sleeping?
Be flexible, but plan your itinerary. You don’t want to spend most of your limited time trying to figure out what to do.
Have a map and/or a GPS.
Have a fully charged cell phone and keep the charger in your car in case you run out of battery power.
Even if you don’t normally use one, bring a journal. You can record where you went, the weather, what you saw, what you ate, what stood out to you, what you were thinking.
If you draw, bring a sketchbook and a pencil.
Dress in layers and bring a sweater or shawl. Wherever you are, you will either be too hot or too cold, I guarantee it.
Unless your phone functions as one, bring a camera. Looking at pictures later can highlight a memory.
Most importantly, know what you hope to get out of it before you go.
For awhile last year, I would take myself out to lunch once a month to “write”, and after awhile, it was rote, and I was getting nothing new out of it; nothing helpful. This kind of self-retreat is a good way to jump-start your creativity, your motivation, but also to jump-start your SELF.
[The above photo is from my first self-retreat. On that one, I had a little guidance from Father Jim Martin’s enhanced ebook, Together on Retreat, which can be found on Amazon.]
Brothers and sisters: It was not through the law that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants that he would inherit the world, but through the righteousness that comes from faith.
Romans 4:13
The righteousness that comes through faith. Where do you personally find that righteousness? Is it the righteousness that draws you closer to G-d, to avoid sin, to make your penitential rites? Or is it drawn through the faith that you have in the Word? In G-d?
I have heard Abraham’s name throughout my entire life. It is the very first Bible story that we hear in religious school, followed quickly by Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel. Those seven forefathers and mothers are called upon almost as often, even more than the geneology of Jesus at Easter time. It is as though they are literally part of our families, just above our great-grandparents.
Where does G-d’s covenant with Abraham fit in with your faith?
I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued men
Psalm 30
This was one of the random Scriptures that greeted me in one of my first visits to the church. I just wandered in. I was not attending mass yet. I also had no intention to at that time. I was in crisis and distress and loved for nothing but quiet. I found that in the empty pews. But I also found a Roman Missal that I would randomly thumb through and sit and read a verse. Every one of those, chosen by chance, had specific meaning for my life. They didn’t speak to me metaphorically but literally. How could these thousand-plus year old words and phrases be so spectacularly, so intensely, so specific-to-my-life relevant?
“But Lent is not a self-improvement program, nor is it a self-denial challenge, with badges to be earned for each day or week I manage not to eat chocolate. Lent is a time for us to be open to G-d’s refashioning of us.”
From Daily Reflections for Lent: Not by Bread Alone 2018 by Michelle Francl-Donnay
Typically I try to write my weekly reflection based on the Scripture readings for today, and I usually wait until after I’ve finished posting to read Michelle Francl’s reflections that I read daily. I don’t want to use someone else’s words as the basis for my feelings. Sometimes it’s inevitable because Lent is so universal sometimes the feelings and emotions brought up within each of us are also universal, and so we can’t help that sometimes we sound repetitive of someone else’s feelings and emotions. However, when I read these two sentences, it hit me so hard as much of her writing does, how she reaches into my mind and pulls out my thoughts. I’ve found someone whose voice I can recognize and understand.
My husband is not a practicing Catholic, and my children are “officially” Jewish even though we have always celebrated both religion’s holidays. I have been more religious than anyone else in my family for as long as I can remember. I grew up, not so much in a temple but in a shul where I learned the holidays, the songs, the traditions of being Jewish, and that is what I’ve followed with my own kind of care. Since becoming Catholic, I’ve become more religious, but it is a personal journey. Sometimes I involve my family, but often it is individual for me. For much of it, they simply don’t understand, and for the most part, that’s okay. When things come up, questions, I do my best.
Lent is hard.
Not the sacrifice or the willpower, but the simple answers of why are not so simple. Does G-d really care if you fast? I don’t think so. Like any other religious experience, it is individual, and it is between me and G-d, but ultimately it is up to me to do the thing and find the answers to the thing.
I gave up bread, so when I have a tortilla I’m asked why I’m eating bread (I really despise gatekeepers). Tortillas are bread nutritionally, but not bread for the purposes of eating bread. I won’t go into what is and isn’t bread, but I’m the one that gave it up and as long as I’m not parsing the definition, I know what I gave up and what I didn’t.
I don’t need a pat on the back when I don’t eat bread and I don’t need a hug when I do. I might include it in reconciliation or I might not.
Sometimes I do think that Lent is a self-improvement program. I can be a better person is I can take control of things. This is a good time to start. That would be great if this were New Year’s or the first day of spring. I have to continuously remind myself that the point of Lent is to grow closer to G-d. To eliminate what is standing between G-d and myself. If I give up bread and lost ten pounds (or thirty like the last time), that is not the focus. It’s a pleasant side effect, but how is not eating bread bringing me closer to G-d. Would giving up chocolate bring me any closer? Or soda? How are these things keeping me from G-d? Are they merely distracting me from Him?
I don’t know all the answers. I can only keep asking them, and hoping that through some discernment and prayer that I will receive those answers, or at least part of them like a puzzle piece to be placed and examined.
It is not self-improvement or self-denial, but for me, it is both and it is neither. It is many things at once, and it is only getting through it to the other side that I can find what I was looking for or see what I was being shown all along for the first time, and then I have the entirety of the Easter season to look back on it and contemplate some more, possibly seeing some of the things I may have missed in the rush to get through the Lenten sacrifice.
[Today’s Readings: 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23, Psalm 137, Ephesians 2:4-10, John3:14-21]
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]
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]
“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?
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6:36
One of the things that I really loved about the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy was the reminder that not only does everyone deserve mercy, everyone has the capability to offer mercy; to others and ourselves.
We were one of the fortunate parish churches that had a holy door for the entire year. I walked over its threshhold a few times over the course of that year, but even on the days that I didn’t cross over and through the doorway, I was aware of it. I almost always read the prayers on the door on a daily basis. I gazed at the picture, and I photographed it more than once hoping to capture all that it offered reflected back in the picture. It was near impossible. You really had to be there.
On the days that I did walk through the door, I would pause at the closed door, read the words on the door, read Pope Francis’ prayer that he provided at the start of the Jubilee, and sometimes say my own prayer, occasionally an Our Father.
I was aware, and I brought that awareness with me everywhere and in everything I did.
The Jubilee Year ended, but the mercy continues.
Prayer of Pope Francis for the Jubilee:
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 