reflection

Sundays in Lent – 5th Monday

Standard

​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?

Sundays in Lent – 4th Monday

Standard

​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?

Sundays in Lent – 4th Sunday – Laetare Sunday

Standard

​“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]

Sundays in Lent – 3rd Monday

Standard

​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

Standard

​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 Tuesday

Standard

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;

but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Matt 23:12

——————————

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?

Sundays in Lent – 2nd Monday

Standard

“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:

Continue reading

Sundays in Lent – 2nd Sunday

Standard

Readings: GN 22:1-2, 9A, 10-13, 15-18, PS 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19, 2 ROM 8:31B-34, MK 9:2-10

G-d calls and we answer. I honestly don’t know what my response would be if G-d asked me to sacrifice my first-born, or any of my children. I wonder if it would have been different had Sarah been asked.

A few things struck me from today’s readings and we begin the second week of Lent.

I hadn’t noticed before how the sacrifice of Isaac parallels G-d’s own sacrifice of His Son. It’s more than mere coincidence. As any parent knows, it takes many forms to show the same lesson and for children to absorb it. Abraham and Isaac were the first in a long line of sacrifice and covenant. Not blind faith, but trusting in G-d, waiting to see the path before us.

In the second reading, Paul asks, “If G-d is there for us, who can be against us?” is a parallel to the Angel’s conversation with Mary, “for nothing will be impossible for G-d.” [Luke 1:37]

And finally, G-d’s announcement, his acknowledgment that Jesus is his son before witnesses. His direction to listen to him [to Jesus]. The confirmation by having the two revered prophets, Moses and Elijah, both from Exodus as if to offer a new exodus fo the followers of Jesus.

Where will this week take you?

Are you escaping something monumental or mundane? Have you explored or at least introduced yourself to the three pillars of Lent – fast, pray, almsgiving?

Is there a way to include those three every week, or every day if youo’re able rather than a ticky box of accomplishments?

Can you make them part of your post-Lent life?

Maybe.

If nothing is impossible for G-d, then nothing is impossible with G-d.

This is the path I had to take to reach the holy well of St. Elen in Dolwyddelan in Wales. I had come to this place especially to visit the well. I guaranteed seeing the well by staying at the adjacent hotel, named for Elen, although it’s debatable with Welsh Elen it’s named for. This was my pilgrimage, my mission, and when I encountered this steep, muddy, slippery path, I paused. Three thousand miles, a rental car, a ferry across the Irish Sea, a FERRY for two hours through WATER, and this steep, obviously exhausting path was going to stop me. I hesitated for only a moment. It was an impossible task, but I would not let it stop me. For nothing is impossible with G-d. (c)2018

Continue reading

Where Does The Road Lead?

Standard

​“…the road that we seek is often the road we have already found.”

 – Fr. James Martin, SJ, My Life with the Saints

I sometimes find that I need to get away, but I still want some familiarity. It’s less running away and more running to. Or strolling. It’s not always hurrying along, but slowing, not sloth-like but cautious optimism, observant, and taking it all in.

In those familiar places, taking it all in comes in spurts, a little at a time. At first, we see the big things, the vibrant colors, the loud sounds, the people’s clothes, and then each time after, we pick up something new. The running water of a stream, the steepness of a hill, the beep of the French fry fryer, the cheek’s freckles, the light that won’t stop flickering.

For some, familiarity breeds contempt; for others, comfort.

We have two nearby shrines – four saints that I’ve tried to visit each year. I’ve heard talk that it may be sold. That would make me sad.

While I was in Ireland, the chapel was unfamiliar but the shrines, while different in saint and location was familiar enough. I lie a candle fort the first time in prayer.

In Wales (and Ireland) I gathered my own holy water. The feel of the water was familiar as was the air I breathed and yet, still new.

My three favorite eateries are familiar even when I travel away from my regular joints.

Our habits can make the places familiar and they are different, changed enough to make the experience e, the visit, the meditation something new.

A breeze in a community park can feel the same as at a shrine or at St. Patrick’s Park in Dublin.

The feeling conjured by the 9/11 memorial in Belfast can be just as moving as others away from New York City.

Signing a condolence book as I did as an American in Belfast for Barcelona joined me with the prayers of others across the world and across City Hall.

When I’m not seeking I often feel that I should have just stayed home, made a pot of tea, lit a candle and sat in my office that I modeled so carefully. Easy chair and ottoman, tea mug, and flickering candle guiding the reading or the writing or the praying.

The candle doesn’t light the darkness, but guides the holy spirit to where it is needed, requested, its purpose unknown until it arrives.

Visit a few of your familiar places: the shopping mall, the library, your church in the off hours, a porch chair on a quiet morning, the sun glimmering through bare branches or glowing through full green ones.

Where is that road that you seek?

Where does it lead?

Is it rough or easy terrain?

Is it new yet familiar? Or so new it sets your heart pounding, your breath quickening?

Have you found what you’ve been looking for?

Are you still continuing to look?