Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged Break from the Blog, Love, Mission, Ordinary Time, Scripture Readings on October 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Good morning! I hope you’re having a great Sunday, and I hope you have a great week. I’m taking a break from the blog this week.
Here are today’s Scripture readings:
I welcome your comments if you’d like to share what the readings are saying to you.
Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, Who Am I in God, Who is God, tagged Environmental Concerns, Ordinary Time, Scripture Reflections from Others, Social Justice, Trinity on October 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »
This week’s readings praise and honor God and advocate for my never ceasing to do the same. They also remind me that everyone and everything exists because of God’s power and with God’s consent. Without this power and consent, nothing would exist and nothing would be held together. But there is life, and there is relationship because God is life and relationship. There is life through relationship to God and one another.
The third reading continues to praise God while also highlighting the relationality of life in God. It also highlights how virtues are related to one another, saying:
We [Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy] give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen.
1 Thessalonians 2-4 [italics mine]
While nothing exists without God allowing it to, God wants us to love freely, and anything not done freely isn’t done in the love, so God doesn’t force us to bend to the Divine will. God gives us the freedom to be co-creators. The result of this freedom is that God isn’t the creator of everything. Some things are created by the tempter and accuser. Others are created by humans. We can use the things humans have created for good or ill.
Upon this reading of the Gospel passage, I feel like Jesus is asking me to think about what I value and to ask God to help me value my life-giving relationships more than the things I can use to benefit those relationships. It also challenges me to discern how the things I use affect my relationships with God and others. To what extent are these effects positive and negative?
Chanelle Robinson’s reflection offers one possible response to the question with which I ended the previous section.
Lord, grant me the grace to recognize what belongs to you and to employ it to bring myself and others into union with you. Give me a deep awareness that this union is the source of all beauty, growth, and peace. Help me to remember to thank you for inviting everyone to share these gifts. Thank you, Lord. Amen.
Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, Who Am I in God, Who is God, tagged Encouragement, hope, Ordinary Time, Reflections on Scripture, Scripture Reflections from Others on October 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »
This week’s readings and Casey Stanton’s reflection on them offer me five different lenses through which to find hope. I’ve heard the spiritual understanding of hope defined as “joyful expectation.” I’m not sure who I received this understanding from — maybe my spiritual director. So if you’re reading this, and you shared this understanding with me — thanks — because that understanding of hope comes to mind as I read this week’s readings.
The Old Testament reading gives me a glimpse of the future — when everything reflects nothing but God’s nature, which is love, and which I sometimes grasp partially — as justice and mercy — with the line between the two virtues being indistinct because one can’t be separated from the other. This reading contains one of those verses familiar both to people with a lot of background in Scripture and without that background. The verse says:
The Lord GOD will wipe away
Isaiah 25:8
the tears from every face;
the reproach of his people he will remove
from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.
The psalm this week is also familiar favorite, Psalm 23. As I’ve written in a series on this blog, I see this psalm as a proclamation of faith and a promise, and faith and promises are founded on the joyful expectation that is hope. If you’d like to visit or revisit that series, it starts here.
The third reading tells me that holding onto hope allows a person to maintain trust in God’s love regardless of what his or her circumstances are. The third reading also includes a verse that can be helpful for inspiring hope:
I can do all things in him who strengthens me.
Philippians 12:13
Now no one is called to do everything. Rather, we’re called to have hope and faith that we can do what each of us is called to do. Each of our vocations involves some activities and experiences that others also share in and other activities and experiences that are unique to each of us. So the third reading urges me to have confidence that when I trust in God, I’ll be able to do and be what I’m called to do and be, whether I find myself in pleasant or unpleasant circumstances. This message gives me hope.
As I read this week’s Gospel passage with the theme of hope in mind, its words remind me that authentic hope comes from accepting God’s invitation to a healthy relationship with God and one another. Hope comes from viewing whatever I do in terms of how it contributes to the health of those relationships. Nothing I do or want can replace a healthy relationship with God, and I can’t have healthy relationships with others, or with my goals if I don’t have healthy relationship with God.
The passage also tells me that an authentic — a.k.a. healthy — relationship with God can’t be faked. Hope can’t be faked either — at least not in the eyes of God. This is important to keep in mind because it’s authentic hope that solves problems and allows for harmony with one another and with God.
Lord, please strengthen my hope; help me cling to it regardless of my circumstances. Amen.
While I looked at the Gospel passage as I considered the theme of hope, I’ll be honest — I’m bothered by the amount of violence the featured parable includes. So was Casey Stanton. Then some current events inspired her to relate to the parable differently than she had before. Click here to find out how.
Ms. Staton reflects on events unfolding in the Catholic Church. Her reflection prompts me to ask how a listening and sharing approach to relating to others, how an attitude of stillness and openness with regard to my circumstances, can be lived outside those events. Lord, open my senses, my heart, and my soul. Amen.
Work cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 15 October 2023 28th Sunday in Ordinary time: 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.
Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections from Other Writers and Speakers, Reflections on Scripture, Social Justice, tagged Ordinary Time, Questions, Reflections on Scripture, Social Justice on October 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »
This week’s readings use the imagery of the vineyard to illustrate what cooperation with and lack of cooperation with God looks like. The first reading looks at the vineyard of Divine will and work from God’s perspective, while the second looks at this vineyard from the perspective of a child of God. The third reading, the epistle, gives advice on how to cooperate with God, saying:
. . . whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Phil 4:8
The tenants in the Gospel parable don’t live by instruction like that given in Philippians 4:8. They seem to be impatient, greedy, and even violent in their pursuit of what they want.
Carmen Ramos reflects on this week’s readings by focusing as much on the experience of the servants in the parable as on the experience of the tenants. She closes her reflection with some questions to bring to prayer. These questions, which follow are helpful for living the lessons of this week’s readings.
You have been given the gift of dignity; you have a purpose in this world. Do you acknowledge it?
You are baptized; you have a stake in this Church. Will you claim it?
Were you rejected for speaking the truth? You are an heir to the Kingdom. Will you build it?
Carmen Ramos
To me, it feels easiest to answer “yes” to the first question, but am I fully understanding and responding to what my purpose is? Probably not. As the days grow shorter, I feel like I have less energy to recognize and to live that purpose and to feel like I have that “stake in this Church.” This experience seems ironic — even as I don’t think I’m alone in having it — because wouldn’t it make sense for harvest time, more than any other time, to bear fruit?
Have I been “rejected for speaking the truth?” Maybe sometimes, but when I was rejected, was I really speaking the truth, or was I instead speaking fear or anger masquerading as the truth? And when did I let fear keep me from speaking at all?
Lord, energize me with the Spirit so that I say “yes” to helping to “build” the Kingdom Ms. Ramos reminds me about. Energize me so I can get to work on the action that accompanies that “yes.” Help me to remember that what the epistle encourages me to think about isn’t always easy or pleasant, and yet these things are sources of truth. They can be the sources of energy behind my “yes and the actions that accompany it. Amen.
Work cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 8 October 2023 27th Sunday in Ordinary time: 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.
Posted in Ordinary Time, Reflections on Scripture, tagged Humility, Justice, Ordinary Time, Reflections on Scripture, Who Am I in God, Who is God on October 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »
The third reading says the following:
. . . humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.
Philippians 2:3
I think this clause ties together this week’s readings. It takes humility to trust and to be in harmony with others and God and to be at peace when situations don’t go the way I want them to. So far, I’m sorry to say, I don’t seem to have given the virtue of humility the upper hand in my life.
The first reading tells me that if I did, I wouldn’t complain to God that what happens to me is unfair. My vision doesn’t have the expanse that God’s vision does, so who am I to make a judgment about what someone else deserves and what I deserve. When I cooperate with God, God lives in me and works through me. When I don’t, the Holy Spirit has to carve an alternate path within and around me. And even when I cooperate, I do so only with the help of the Holy Spirit. I wouldn’t be alive without the Spirit, and so I don’t deserve anything.
I don’t say this to be negative and self-effacing. Another way to frame this sentiment would be to say that there is nothing that I alone am entitled to. I have dignity because I live, and I live because of God. So does every other living thing. Every living thing lives because God’s nature is relationship, and relationship requires more than one. That’s why I’m thinking that I don’t deserve anything. I may or may not be prevented from receiving something good by one factor or another. Sometimes that factor is me; sometimes it isn’t, and my perception of what would be good for me is often distorted and is always limited. Given this distortion and limitation, how can I say what I or anyone else deserves?
One part of the Good News is that God doesn’t operate in terms of what’s deserved. I didn’t need to deserve to live before I came into being. And if I humble myself, God doesn’t let any negative consequences that may spring from my actions or anyone else’s to destroy me. Instead, if I ask Him and accept the crosses that will come with the answer, He’ll show me how to turn unpleasant or even painful consequences into something positive — in other words — in other words something that cooperates with His will, Hs work. As the psalm puts it, He guides the humble to justice / and teaches the humble his way (Psalm 25:9).
Another part of the Good News is that, while God wants us to know that making room for Him in our lives means humbling ourselves, he doesn’t ask us to do it alone. He does it with us. As Philippians tells me:
Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
2:6-11
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
The Gospel reading offers a lesson in contrasts to teach me how to live with an attitude of humility. It teaches me that to live with an attitude of humility means to understand that no group I belong to and nothing about my past determines whether God works in my life and whether that life reflects God. It’s humility that makes room for God in my life. So if I keep returning to humility, eventually when death puts its fingers on me, its grip won’t be able to contain the truth and power of who I am in God. For me, this image of the fingers and the grip unable to stay closed is one way of thinking about eternal life. I saw a quote on the Hallow app today that gave me another way of thinking about eternal life. The quote advises me to:
Begin now to be what you will be hereafter.
St. Jerome.
Lord, help me to remember that intentions and plans mean nothing and do nothing if they aren’t put into action — and not just in the future but now. After all, though I can’t understand how, for You, everything is happening now. Help me to live in union with You and Your other children, not just some time today but at this moment and in the next. Amen.
Works cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 1 October 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.182, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 21 Sep. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.
St. Jerome. “Begin now to be what you will be hereafter.” 30 Sep. 2023, https://hallow.com/daily-quote/2023-09-30/.
Sitting with the Sacred 