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.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
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.
Beyond 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.
. . . 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, 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.
2:6-11
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.
This week’s readings prompt me to imagine a high wall with a door in it. I’m on one side of that door, and God is on the other. God is knocking, asking me to open that door, to come in and work in the parts of God’s vineyard that occupy the space outside my body and soul. Opening this door will also allow God to work in the parts of the vineyard that God placed within my body and soul. God planted the vineyard, and the human tendency to sin created the weeds in the vineyard and the wall around it. This tendency also created walls within it. These are the walls of pride, anger, and envy.
I couldn’t enter the vineyard, and God couldn’t enter the vineyard of my body and soul if God hadn’t created doors into both. Why? Because “[God’s] thoughts are not [my] thoughts, nor are [my] ways [God’s] ways” (Isa. 55:8). The psalm goes so far as to describe God’s “grandeur” as “unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3). Yet God has created doors so that if I let God move freely in in the vineyards within and around me, whether I live or die, I won’t do so alone, but with God. And if I live or die with God, I do so for God and in God, as the end of Philippians 1:20 says.
The same door stands that stands between me and God stands between God and everyone else. It’s up to each of us how wide we open that door. What can be found through that opening is the same for everyone, regardless of when each person opens the door while he or she lives on this earth. Once we no longer live on this earth, we live on, we are eternal, in God to the extent that we have allowed God, the Eternal, to live in us.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
In Darlene Jasso’s reflection on this week’s readings, she asks how our world would be different if we treated each other the way God treats us. As last week’s readings told us, God doesn’t treat us the way we sometimes treat God and each other. God doesn’t draw close to us only when He asks something of us or only in difficult times. God doesn’t give us back only what we give to God. God withholds no part of Himself that we are open to receiving.
Beyond this week’s readings:
Ms. Jasso makes important and thought-provoking points about God and us. She says God shows everyone the same generosity. This truth can be difficult to keep in mind. I don’t know about you, but when I don’t make a conscious effort to alter my mindset, I tend to think that God loves and answers the prayers of the people who do the things that God wants when He wants and doesn’t do the same for the people who don’t do what He wants.
And it’s a worthy ideal for me to show everyone the same generosity. I suppose the true ideal would be to withhold nothing good from anyone. It’s easiest to want to do this with nonmaterial goods, such as justice and mercy. But my mind can’t quite ignore that what the landowner in the parable offers is monetary payment.
I realize that parables are highly metaphorical, that what the landowner, who represents God, gives represents more than money. Yet parables also don’t shy away from teaching us about what we should do with our material goods — material goods that none of us have an unlimited supply. Most of us have far less than an unlimited supply of material goods, and some of our brothers and sisters don’t have even what they need to survive, let alone be healthy.
Imagine if all of us found ourselves in this situation of need. Imagine if we all received the same level of generosity that too many societies show those who like the most basic necessities — which is not enough. On the other hand, what if we showed everyone unlimited material generosity? My human mind says resources would run out, that God has unlimited resources, but the physical world doesn’t. Another preachy voice in my head says that this reality is the reason we need to trust God to supply what we lack. And yet God doesn’t always supply what people lack, materially. Otherwise, food insecurity and famine wouldn’t exist. Yet they do, so God wants us to provide for each other and to share what we have.
God also knows having everything we want wouldn’t be good for us because excess lets us believe that we don’t need God and each other, that what we have is a substitute for interdependency on each other and dependence on God. God also knows that once humans have more than we need, we tend to want even more than that, and the more we have, the more we want, and we tend to confuse what we want what we need and to fear losing what we have wanted and received.
I suppose the realization I’ve come to as I write this post is that generosity means discerning what we truly need versus what we want and sharing what we have but don’t need. That which gives some of us what we want can supply what others need.
God doesn’t need us or any other part of creation, but God wants us, and so He distributes what He doesn’t need — all of creation — among various members of His family.
Lord, help me to discern the difference between what I want and what I need and to share my surpluses. This is the generosity you ask of me. Help me to practice it. Amen.
Work cited
The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
The theme of this week’s readings is forgiveness — how it’s God’s nature and why extending it to others is important. The first reading asks me a question: how can I expect forgiveness if I can’t forgive others, especially considering that they are subject to the same weaknesses I struggle with? The second reading offers reassurance, conveying that God isn’t like me. God is “slow to anger” (Ps. 103: 9). God doesn’t “requite us according to our crimes” (103:10). “As far as the east is from the west/so far has he put our transgressions from us” (103: 11). “[S]o surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him” (103: 13).
Now I don’t believe in being asked to be afraid of God. What I am being asked is to recognize that I’m not God. God shares some knowledge with me, but not all knowledge. God’s ways are not my ways (Isa. 55:8).
The third reading offers a lesson in how to respond to this reality: remember whom you and everyone else around you was created in the image of — God. So I ask God to help that image be reflected in me. The result of allowing God’s image to be reflected in me would be living for God and for others in God rather than for myself. It would mean forgiving others because I want God to forgive me. And He does if I acknowledge my sins to Him. Doing so hands might sin-wounded soul over to Him for healing. Confessing my sins to someone who has been given the ministry of this healing helps me hand my sins over. I’m more likely to struggle with the weight of something when I carry it without the help of someone who is being God’s ears and voice. In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable with a tough message for anyone who doesn’t approach the wrongdoings and shortcomings of others with God’s forgiving ears and voice.
Let’s see what someone else has to say about that message.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Caitlin Morneau’s reflection reminds me that forgiveness isn’t something a person can snap his or her fingers and make happen. It takes a conscious decision to forgive, and then even once the decision to forgive is made, it takes time and effort to put into practice. Her perspective also reminds me that not being able to take that time and make that effort is a punishment in and of itself.
Beyond this week’s readings:
As I typed that last reminder, I wondered if there would be a way to reconcile it with the message of the Gospel reading. I had my doubts. I remembered the message of the Gospel reading being that I needed to forgive others as God has forgiven me, and if I don’t, God won’t forgive me.
I struggled with this understanding because I couldn’t make it mesh with the message I was getting from the psalm. I didn’t expect the tension I was experiencing from the struggle to resolve because, let’s face it, sometimes passages in the Bible just don’t agree with each other. Different scriptures were written at different times. Even within a single culture, understandings of God and God’s will evolve over time, and the differences between passages may reflect that evolution. Different books that are included within the biblical canon were also written with different audiences and purposes in mind. Some of them are poems; some of them are more like folktales. They have morals just like an Aesop’s fable or a Grimm’s fairy tale does. Others have more in common with legal documents than with a poem or a story.
So sometimes the differences between Scripture passages just are what they are, and I have to sit with the tension, the unanswered question, or the challenging lesson, and ask myself what words from a reading session stand out for me on a given day. I use the answer to that question to help me discern what God has to say to me at that moment.
Surprisingly though, when I went back to the Gospel after reading Caitlin Morneau’s reflection, the king in the parable no longer seemed as punitive. It isn’t the king who punishes the servant who doesn’t forgive the debts of others. Rather, the translation I’m using says that the king “handed [the servant] over to torturers (Mat. 18:34) What are the torturers? What is the debt but the effects of unforgiveness on the person who shoulders them?
Unforgiveness might be the sin I struggle with the most. In God I Have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel, Fr. Mark Thibodeaux describes an approach he learned to use to free himself from the torture of unforgiveness:
Adapting the insights from a particular style of psychological therapy called Gestalt, I prayed in my chair with two other chairs in front of me. I sat Jesus in one of those chairs and my offender in the other. With Jesus present, I would say anything that I wanted to my offender. I might yell at him or curse him or tell him all sorts of despicable things. But at the end of my prayer time, I allowed both of my two guests to speak to me as well. At the end of our conversation, regardless of whether my heart felt it or not, I told my offender, “You hurt me, but I forgive you and I love you.” And one beautiful sunny morning, I said it and realized that there was no part of me that didn’t genuinely mean it, not even my heart!
loc. 1149-1157
A book I just finished, Things You Save in a Fire, by Katherine Center, offers other tips for practicing forgiveness:
“Just saying the words ‘I forgive you,’ even to yourself, can be a powerful start…” “Forgiveness is about a mind-set of letting go… “It’s about acknowledging to yourself that someone hurt you, and accepting that… Then it’s about accepting that the person who hurt you is flawed, like all people are, and letting that guide you to a better, more nuanced understanding of what happened. … And then there’s a third part… that involves trying to look at the aftermath of what happened and find ways that you benefited, not just ways you were harmed.”
112
I can imagine some people saying the above approaches and tips aren’t applicable to all situations, and I understand that reaction. All feelings are valid. It’s what we do with them, and what we let them do to us that matters. No one’s journey is exactly the same, and everyone’s journey unfolds at a different pace. However, these excerpts resonate with me. They’re applicable to my situation.
Lord, I invite you into the process of making these steps to forgiveness part of my life. Amen
Works cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 17 September 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.
Center, Katherine. Things You Save in a Fire. Kindle edition, St. Martin’s Press, 13 Aug. 2019.
Thibodeaux, Mark E. God, I Have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel, Kindle edition, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005.
This week’s readings unpack concepts that the English language zips into a suitcase its speakers call love. The first reading tells me that one concept that love suitcase holds is looking out for each other. The first reading goes on to remind that the drive within us to protect each other is often painful because we don’t always appreciate protective efforts or recognize them for what they are. We especially bristle against warnings, advice, and other kinds of help when we didn’t ask for it.
If is looking out for each other is one half of a pair of glasses that go into the love suitcase, not harming each other is the other half. Maybe a better metaphor for these concepts is a set of hearing aids rather than a pair of glasses. Or maybe the love suitcase contains both a set of hearing aids and a pair of glasses. To look out for each other, we have to be able to see our surroundings through God’s eyes and to hear through God’s ears. Wearing God’s glasses and God’s hearing aids also allows us to recognize and appreciate the protective efforts of God and our neighbors in our lives. This is one message I get from the second reading.
The third reading points me to several ways we harm each other when we don’t wear God’s glasses and hearing aids, when all we can see is our own desires rather than what’s best for us and the people and resources God has given to us. Not wearing the assistive devices God wants to give us doesn’t just result in blurry vision or distorted hearing. It results in a variety of wounds or diseases. The preventative medicine and treatment for these is love. Like an antibiotic, acting with love provides an answer to numerous problems. The fourth reading first recommends that when someone wounds us, we try to treat the injury ourselves. But sometimes we run out of bandages or ice packs and have to get some from a neighbor — or a store. Then there are the times when these over-the-counter treatments don’t do the trick, and we have to seek professional help and sometimes prescription remedies. This is the extended analogy that came to my mind when I read the Gospel reading’s guidance about what to do when someone “sins against” me (Matt 18:15). So maybe this container that represents self-giving love holds not only a special pair of glasses and hearing aids but also special bandages, ice packs, and the ultimate prescription drug — one that doesn’t cease to be effective if we turn to it too much. Instead, I’m told, the more we rely on it, the more powerful it becomes.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
The reflection on this week’s readings offered by Carolyn Jacobson, MSW, PhD doesn’t use my analogy of the suitcase of love and its contents. Frankly, I’m glad because making that analogy work involves quite a stretch. However, if Dr. Jacobson’s reflection had used my analogy, it would say that we aren’t meant to use the items in the suitcase in a vacuum. Their power lies in their ability to facilitate connection.
Beyond this week’s readings:
My first reaction when I thought about what to write for this section was that the first reading is really uncomfortable to read. Reading it doesn’t give me the cushion of forgetting the passage’s commission and warning as I move on to the next part of the Mass.
And it’s warning is unpleasant to hear. Why? Because it’s easiest to warn someone when there is physical evidence that something he or she is doing clearly hurts himself or herself and/or others. But spiritual harm can be harder to detect than physical harm. I hate even the thought of telling people what I think they won’t like hearing if I can’t prove that what I’m warning against is harmful.
Sharing and being open to correction is especially difficult today when so many voices have access to audiences, and not all opinions can coexist in healthy, productive ways. I wonder if the amount of access many people these have these days to a variety of opinions and information means there are fewer incidences of innocently not knowing something. I wonder if there’s choosing not to find out or choosing to ignore is more common now than these responses have been at other times. Or has humanity simply ignored different individual and societal ills in different ways at different times in different places?
On one hand, I recognize not making assumptions is important, but if I’m reasonably sure that someone has access to the same information about what’s right and wrong and I do, it doesn’t seem helpful to, or warn him or her, even if I haven’t done so before and I don’t know whether someone else has.
I’m wrestling with part of the Gospel reading too. It says that if someone wrongs me and doesn’t want to make amends, even when other people, including those in authority tell him or her to, I should treat the person like a Gentile. To many characters in the Bible, treating someone else like a Gentile means avoiding them as much as possible. And yet, while Jesus might challenge Romans and Sumerians, He doesn’t reject them. Maybe the message is that He doesn’t reject people who are open to Him but that I don’t need to feel responsible for the choices of people who reject my concern. I don’t need to keep opening my concern to dismissal. Rather, the time to consider reopening that door is when the person opens it a crack him or herself.
I want to close this post with a prayer for parents, guardians, teachers, and mentors. God bless advisers and caregivers and grant them Your wisdom, courage, and consolation. Amen.
Work cited
The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
This week’s readings say to me that the room within me created for faith by humility and perseverance is not a comfortable space. It’s a space the Holy Spirit fills with its fire, and fire burns, and this fire cannot be contained. So it doesn’t let people who carry it be still in the place where they were before the fire sparked. People within whom it burns cannot help but move as it moves. They can’t help but spread it because their movement feeds it, and they give it room to spread. Spreading it means the next person who makes room for and fuels the fire can’t stay where he or she is either. As we witness this these effects of the spread, our inclinations toward convenience and self-preservation tell us to stop it. We don’t want to move. We don’t want to change. We don’t want to be different from earlier versions of ourselves or from the people around us. And we can’t stop these processes. We can increase our discomfort with the Spirit’s transformative power by resisting it, or we can find a peace that comes from freedom by accepting and participating in its transformative power.
The Good News is this transformative power. Its burning isn’t one that destroys but one that gives life. That life just won’t look the way our desires for convenience and self-preservation want it to because it changes us from the inside out and changes our relationship with our surroundings, including how we think about them, see them, and interact them. This change won’t let a person blend in, and the reading from Romans encourages us to ask for the grace not to want to blend in — at least not just for the sake of blending in. Any blending a person might do must be done for the Spirit. And any work done for the Spirit can only be done in cooperation with the movement of the Spirit.
The Gospel tells us not even to let fear for our lives get in the way of the movement of the Spirit. It says caving to such fear won’t save us, even though we may feel as if listening to fear will save us.
I used to think of this reading as being only about the importance of living faith and sharing it regardless of any risks that living it and sharing it might pose to my life. Of course, this is the literal message of the reading. However, I’ve come to want to apply it more broadly to life’s difficult situations. I wonder if my broader understanding will relate to someone else’s reflection on these readings. Let’s find out in the next two sections.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
God called Phoebe and Gregory to bring the Gospel to others in word and action. We are called to do the same, though not always by using the texts and trappings of our faith.
There are people all over the world for whom living their faith costs them their freedom and even their earthly lives. I hope none of us seeing these words ever have to pay those prices.
But even if we never have to, each of us dies and finds life regularly, but if we don’t surrender to these smaller deaths, we miss opportunities to find life.
For me, as a person with anxiety and cerebral palsy, one of these smaller deaths can mean doing things my mind says are not safe to do, such as:
Joining a group with whom I might share an interest or a goal when I don’t know any of the members or when I don’t know how accessible the place where then be is going to be
Having the courage to be who I am and share my perspective when I don’t fit totally into one camp or another in a world that’s divided and subdivided into camps.
Having the courage to get to know someone whose experience is different from my own and may make me uncomfortable and encourage me to ask myself questions about my own views.
Not avoiding situations that remind me of difficult ones I have faced in the past. Please understand that with this example, I’m not advocating that anyone stay in abusive situations. I’m saying that there’s a difference between an unpleasant or uncomfortable situation and an unhealthy or unsafe one. I’m also saying that anxiety likes to lie to me and tell me that these two types of situations are the same. They aren’t.
I’ve also come to believe that losing my life to save it encompasses surrendering control and ideas of what I want various situations and people to be like. I think this is such a difficult thing for all of us to do. I don’t know whether the difficulty of doing this increases depending on how great a sense of independence a person is used to having or if the desire and frustration are equally strong regardless of a person’s circumstances.
Either way, I can think of a few different ways to express the ironic truth in this week’s Gospel passage:
However tightly I cling to life on earth I cannot make it last forever.
Surrounding myself with different types of walls or with metaphorical bubblewrap might save my body, for a time, but these actions won’t save my soul. In fact, they might kill it. Furthermore, a withering soul withers the body, eventually – in one way or another. (I’m pretty sure too much isolation and too few contacts are unhealthy for the body and the soul. And eating one’s emotions, an attempt at treating the pain of the soul, I’d say, can kill the body if it isn’t moderated.)
Staying alive is not the same as living; surviving is not the same as thriving.
Lord, help me neither to fear my death to earthly life, nor the precursors to this death that I face each day so that I can live in the freedom of the life you have planned for me. Amen.
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.
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.
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.
This week’s readings are about the value of wisdom, what wisdom looks like — and what it doesn’t look like. They tell me that wisdom means wanting to know right from wrong. It also means knowing that without God’s grace, I can’t know right from wrong. It means having hope because the ultimate form of the many forms this grace takes is that God was carried and delivered by a woman, entering personally into the human experience. God entered into the darkest parts of that experience, giving everything possible to those darkest experiences so the Light could overpower them. Nowhere the Light breaks through can remain as dark as it was before Light’s entry, and the more Light is allowed in, the more darkness is pushed out. The way I’m thinking about this in terms of Jesus is that once the Spirit had left his human body, suffering and death no longer had metaphorical fingers on God.
They still have fingers on God’s creation, but those fingers no longer have a chokehold on it because the darkness cannot be stronger than unfettered Light. Because Light’s now unfettered, it shines on all of creation — or it would if it could shine through everyone.
But we all block the Light in some ways; I know I do. My desire to have only what I want when I want it and nothing I don’t gets in the way of the light shining through me. This desire lets ingratitude and covetousness spread in my heart. From my heart, it spreads to my mouth and comes out as criticism and self-righteousness fueled by unchecked anger and resentment. Fears about not getting only what I want when I want also get in the way of me being a conduit for the Light.
Such desire and fear is selfishness. It’s the result of looking at myself, others, and God only through the lens of my own pain and my desire to avoid it. I can’t honestly say I’m willing to sell everything that seems to allow me to avoid it so that I can make room for the Kingdom of God that Jesus has purchased for me. I don’t honestly trust myself to protect the treasure of the kingdom that is within and around me. I’m not even sure I can honestly say I want to. But I know that I want to want to. So my prayer for this week is for the Spirit to give me true wisdom so that I can recognize in a personal, heart-based way what a treasure the Kingdom of God is. Amen.
I sense that I received one answer to this prayer before putting it into words here. I sense that I may find what I’m seeking by approaching this blog differently in the future. One part of my idea – we’ll see if it’s God’s idea too — is to post links to others’ reflections on the readings each Sunday after this one. I don’t mean to say that I envision this blog becoming merely a place where I post links to other people’s writing and videos. On the contrary, the other part of my idea is to make this blog a place where I journal and pray through what ever form of expression seems most meaningful at a given time.
I feel called to shift what I write here from being focused on interpretation and application to being focused on conversation with God and with you. I suspect I’ll find it helpful to use prayer journaling prompts as inspiration for some future posts here. I hope they’ll inspire me to ask questions and to listen to and look for God. I also hope my exploration will encourage you to explore with God too. I’m discerning that I need more time for this exploration.
Taking this time may mean posting links to weekly reflections from others here and sharing journaling prompts and responses of my own more or less often than I have posted so far. I don’t know which. How often I post will probably vary what I’m wrestling with or sitting with. I’m looking forward to this new approach, this approach of noticing how the Spirit moves within and around me and not being in a rush to interpret what I notice or to tie it up in a very defined bow. Join me on this new adventure of following where the Wind blows and seeking the Light within and at each end of every tunnel. Lead me, Lord. Help me to dive deeper into love of You and everything and everyone that You love. Amen.
Sitting with the Sacred 