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Archive for August, 2023

Another Source of Faith’s Power Is Humility

Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , , on August 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

This week’s readings:

Photos by Lulu Rutledge
  1. Isaiah 22:19–23
  2. Psalm 138:1–2, 2–3, 6, 8
  3. Romans 11:33–36
  4. Matthew 16:18

What this week’s readings say to me:

This week’s readings say to me that the power of faith comes not only from perseverance, as I was reminded last week, but also from humility. A person in with a humble mindset is able to trust even when he or she doesn’t understand a situation. Trust isn’t rooted in knowing all the details. It’s rooted in hope, and not speaking and acting on behalf of oneself but on behalf of God. Not speaking and acting on behalf of God as if we have God’s perspective — more like making room in and around us for God to speak and act through us, for it is God who “builds up strength within” us — if we allow the construction (Psalm 138:3). “For from him and through him and for him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). The “servant” in the reading from Isaiah understands this (Isa. 22:20). His understanding of this must be why God gives the trappings and responsibilities of authority to him, after apparently having removed it from someone people recognized as a leader (22:21-22)

From what I understand about Jewish culture when Jesus walked the earth, the family, friends, and community of the man eventually called Peter wouldn’t have seen spiritual leader material in him. Before Jesus called him, he wasn’t studying with a rabbi. He must not have been considered a skilled enough student to do that. He was working in his earthly father’s business. And yet, the Holy Spirit gives Peter the heart knowledge that Jesus is the Christ and gives him the grace, the humility, to acknowledge who Jesus is.

Outside of the grace of humility, he can’t acknowledge needing a Messiah — the Messiah — knowing him, or trusting in him. When Peter doesn’t have room for the gift of humility because his fear and/or pride crowds it out, Jesus doesn’t refer to him as “the rock on which [He] builds [His] church” (Matt. 16:18). Instead, Jesus tells Satan to “get behind” Him (16:23). At these times, he knows Peter is relying on his own mind to make sense of the world around him — not God’s — as the Holy Spirit allows him to do when his fear and pride don’t get in the Spirit’s way.

When he doesn’t start to think that his fear is more powerful is than God is, he not only can recognize Jesus as the Christ, but also he can walk on water, and he can share the message of Jesus’s ministry and his resurrection despite the risk to his earthly life, a life that he will eventually hand over as a result of the mission that Jesus gives him. It’s a mission that, thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit in him and his spiritual siblings and descendants, we can be bound together by what gives life and freed from what doesn’t.

What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:

While this week’s readings spoke to me about humility as another fuel for faith, for the ability to recognize Christ, along with perseverance, Mary Margaret Schroeder invites us to explore how each of us recognizes Christ personally. She invites us to recognize Christ in our everyday experiences rather than by relying only on knowledge and ways of talking about that knowledge that have been handed down to us.

Beyond this week’s readings:

So who do I say Christ is:

  • the ultimate storyteller, the hero of that story, and the author of my story within that master story.
  • the One who walks ahead of me, beside me, stands behind me, and lives within me.
  • the One who carries me
  • The experience I have when I read a book and
    • relate to what we find there — pain, joy, fear, and every mixture of emotion
    • don’t relate to what I read, but what I read makes me appreciate what I have
    • long for the friendship, love, transformation, and growth I find there
  • the experience of driving alone in my neighborhood — not in a car, but in my wheelchair — and I feel the sun warming my neck, back, and shoulders. I feel the breeze, too, and I see roses blooming in front of my neighbors’ houses. Flowers spill over the brick retaining walls between the sidewalks and the streets.
  • the experience of my family and my neighbors throwing a surprise party for my birthday
  • the experience of wanting to say something that, at best, won’t help a situation, and might make it worse and actually succeeding in not saying it.
  • the experience of seeing a task through rather than putting it off for another day and instead playing games on my phone
  • the experience of not pretending to be somebody someone other than God wants me to be
  • The relief of being able to acknowledge to myself and God that I’m not the person God plans to love me into becoming, and yet experiencing that God loves me anyway

Now I have this list. Maybe I’ll revisit these memories when God feels distant. Maybe I’ll think of things to add to this list over time. Help me, Lord, Amen.

Who is Christ to you, personally? Maybe you’d like to journal or to pray about this yourself. Share your thoughts here, if you’d like.

Work cited

Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 27 August 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.181, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 8 Aug. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.

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Return and Persevere to Learn that God’s Has No Limits

Posted in Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , on August 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

This week’s readings:

  1. Isaiah 56:1, 6–7
  2. Psalm 67:2–3, 5, 6, 8
  3. Romans 11:13–15, 29–32
  4. Matthew 15:21–28

What this week’s readings say to me:

This week’s readings say to me that God’s love knows no limits. It plays no favorites. It operates to the extent that trust in it allows it to operate. Therefore, because both the Canaanite woman in this week’s Gospel and Jesus trust in it, it works through both of them. No geopolitical border or cultural distinction can limit this love. Only lack of trust born of human frailty can.

But this week’s readings remind me that Good News can be found in the midst of this unfortunate reality. People’s egos and fears give God an opportunity to show just how boundless divine love is. When I see this love causing barriers to disappear, when I see it at work around me as it is in the Canaanite woman of this week’s Gospel, persevering in a life that reflects faith feels possible.

The third reading tells me Paul understands this relationship between love and growth. It’s why he has hope that the people who nurtured him, who taught him and with whom he studied and worshipped would come to reap the rewards of the covenant God had with them, even though his ministry had taken him far from them.

Lord, I ask you for this hope for myself and for the people in my life, especially for the people who have shaped and continue to shape me. I also ask that the people who seem furthest from me, the most different, also receive this hope, the hope that is the reassurance of God’s mercy. Amen.

What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:

Prof. Margaret Susan Thompson reminds us that we ask God for mercy at every Mass. She also helps us understand the Gospel reading in light of the cultures that gave birth to it, as well as helping us find inspiration in the reading for the cultures in which we find ourselves today.

Beyond this week’s readings:

I told you I was eager to see where the Spirit would lead, and as you can probably tell based on the fact that the content of this post doesn’t relate to the book I recommended last week, that Spirit is already leading me somewhere I didn’t expect.

When I heard last week’s readings, I wished I had at least briefly written about what they said to me. They included some of my favorite passages. The readings were:

  1. 1 Kings 19:9a, 11–13a
  2. Psalm 85:9, 10, 11–12, 13–14
  3. Romans 9:1–5
  4. Matthew 14:22–33

The truth is, other commitments mean that I’m just not able to spend as much time working on this blog each week that I have in the past. This reality is the reason it makes sense not always to reflect on the weekly readings. I’m giving myself permission to publish posts that are influenced by the calendar. I still want to publish a post every week, but that may not always happen, and I need that to be okay with myself and with you. It means so much to me that you’ve taken the time to follow this blog, whether by subscribing or by checking in occasionally. Whatever interaction with this blog works for you, I’m glad that it does.

I’m wrestling with the relationship between acceptance and action in the spiritual journey. In future weeks, I may sometimes use God, I Have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel by Fr. Mark Thibodeaux, as a guide in this process, or I may write about some quotations relating to the subject. I may also post my general reflection on Scripture readings, or I may link to someone else’s more developed reflection on them. Thank you for coming along with me while I work on keeping an open mind and heart about the ways we can find grace in this space on the web that we share.

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God’s Love Has More Power than Fear and Pain

Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , , , , on August 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Sara Fairbanks, OP, reflects through this week’s readings on love’s power to sustain us in the midst of fear and pain.

Yet pain can feel consuming and take so many forms – physical and emotional, yes. But emotional pain can be named more specifically. I tend to name it resentment, envy, anger, frustration, anxiety, and negativity-filled longing. These are the names I’ve learned to give my spiritual struggles. So that these struggles don’t overwhelm me, I need clarity, renewal, and strength the Holy Spirit can provide when I’m open to receiving these gifts.

I’m going to turn to Fr. Mark E. Thibodeaux’s God: I have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel to shine the light of the Holy Spirit on the feelings I listed above. In doing so, I trust that with time and persistence, I will more often recognize light and love as more powerful than any emotion darkness tries to use to make me unable to recognize its opposite.

I also trust that making this book a companion to this blog for the time being will remind me to invite God into and recognize God’s presence in my pleasant, joyful, and simply routine experiences as well as my unpleasant ones.

Fr. Thibodeaux’s book is a guide to living and praying through the gamut of human emotions. Each chapter is dedicated to a different emotion or life experience and begins with a story from the author’s life about when he experienced or shared in someone else’s experience of that emotion.

After each introductory story, which is imbued with relatability and often humor. comes a long list of related scripture passages taken from both the Old and New Testaments.

After this list comes the “Prayer Pointers” section. I’ve consulted this book on and off for years, and while I’m not offering a professional perspective here, I would say that this section combines the wisdom of counseling, meditative, and pastoral approaches. Fr. Thibodeaux often suggests imaginative prayer and visualizations. This section also makes clear that the issues each chapter touches on are not resolved in one day. They are wrestled with in a healthy way by praying to be open to a shift in perspective and practice and by giving helpful habits a chance to become deeply rooted in daily life.

After the “Prayer Pointers” come inspirational or thought-provoking quotes. These are from sources other than scripture.

At the end of each chapter is a list of other chapters that might be related to the one I’ve just worked through. This section acknowledges that emotions are complex. (For example, grief can involve a mixture of sadness, anger, and guilt.) The index is also helpful when I’m not sure which chapter is most relatable to whatever I’m currently experiencing. In it I can look up experiences that weren’t used in the chapter titles.

Maybe in some future posts I’ll share a story of my own that the author’s story made me think of. Maybe I’ll share how his story got me thinking. Maybe I’ll reflect on one of the suggested scripture passages using approaches similar to those of used in the past. Or maybe I’ll share my experience with a visualization. Whatever happens, I’m eager to see where the Spirit leads and to hear what God has to tell me — and us.

Work cited

Thibodeaux, Mark E. God, I Have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005.

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God’s Invitation to Do a “Gut Check”

Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, tagged , , , , , on August 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo by Elena Joland on Unsplash

That’s what the Transfiguration is, according to Julie Vieira, IHM, MA. Click here to read her explanation and reflection on this week’s Gospel passage.

The question I’m currently wrestling with, courtesy of the daily spiritual writing prompts from the Hallow app is:


Where do you need the light and grace of the Holy Spirit in Your life today? Write to yourself as if you are God. What does He tell you? What do you want to say back?

I’m going to copy these questions and paste them into a blank post, so I can begin using writing to reflect on them there. Perhaps you’ll find it helpful to reflect on this prompt and/or to journal about it along with me.

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