A JOURNEY THROUGH LENT - SPEAK LORD, YOUR SERVANT IS LISTENING

We are a little late in putting up our Lenten reflections but we trust that they may still be helpful for those who read this blog.  We are united with the whole Church as we journey through this Lenten season towards Easter..

It is that time again, LENT. Like anyone who is bothering to read this blog I am thinking about what I should do for Lent this year. The thought occurs to me that if I rephrase the question I might come up with a more fruitful answer. So I ask myself what do I want Lent to do for me? By the time Easter arrives what would I like to be different about me? How can I make that happen?

The season of Lent is God’s gift to us to renew our lives in holiness. By the end of Lent I want to be more aware of God’s love for me and in response to that love to love God more and to reveal his love to others.

The word Lent comes from an old English word lencten meaning ‘springtime’. Spring cleaning is a term we are all familiar with. Once the days begin to lengthen and get brighter we get an itch to empty cupboards and wash curtains, to get into corners where dust, grime and dirt may have gathered without our noticing it during the dark days of winter. This image might not be very vivid in our time when electricity provides us with light twenty four hours a day . But think back to a time of candle light and gas lamps. Light that focused on one area and left the rest in shadow and it becomes quite a powerful image for the season of Lent. There is so much one does not see in the dark. What a fail-safe programme for Lent- to spend time allowing CHRIST OUR LIGHT to light up all that is hidden in the dark corners of our hearts, so that we may remove the accumulation of sin  that we may not have been even aware of. ‘Purify me then I shall be clean, wash me I shall be whiter than snow’ is the clarion call of Lent as we encounter ourselves. Jesus is our Saviour. During Lent we learn how much we are in need of Him.

Our parents and grandparents depending on our age, observed Lent  with rigorous physical penances and severe austere fasting from food. In some respects we seem to be getting off lightly. But while Vatican 11 eased the severe bodily discipline, it was in order to change our focus during Lent, encouraging us to make it ‘a period of closer attention to the Word of God and more ardent prayer’.

I can think of no more powerful programme for Lent than to make a commitment to spend time each day reflecting on the Word of God, in the readings at Mass, allowing God to speak to us of his love and mercy and bringing his Word to bear on our lives.

I invite you to join with us in being faithful to this commitment. Let us journey together, supporting one another with prayer.

Mary, temple of the Trinity, Mother of the Word made flesh, teach us how to ponder the Word in our hearts and to respond as you did, ‘Be it done unto me according to you will’.

ASH WEDNESDAY

READINGS: Joel 2:12-18, Psalm 50, 2Cor 5:20-6:2, Matthew 6:1-6,16-18

Turn to the Lord again, for he is all tenderness and compassions slow to anger, rich in graciousness and ready to relent.

Two little words in the first reading from the prophet Joel became the focus of my reflection, again and ready. ‘Turn to the Lord again’. God knows we have wandered off. There is no need for us to be afraid. That little word assures us that he is aware of our predicament. No matter how often we have strayed or where we have strayed to, he is inviting us back yet again. He welcomes us, encourages us. “I’m here waiting, ready to relent, watching for your return. My heart is full of tenderness and compassion. Come my beloved, come.”

Who could not respond to someone who makes it so easy for us to return? While we are still a long way off, He sees us. I picture Him coming, rushing out to meet me with outstretched arms, embracing me and then putting his arm across my shoulder and leading back into His House. I have returned home.

Now I am going to remain in his company, allowing Him to speak to me of His Love. 

Thursday after Ash Wednesday.

Readings: Deut. 30:15-20, ps.1, Luke 9:22-25

Happy indeed is the one

whose delight is the Law of the Lord

 and who ponders his law day and night.

He is like a tree that is planted

beside flowing water

that yields its fruit in due season

and whose leaves will never fade

The Gospel for today speaks of renouncing myself and taking up my Cross. It all sounds a bit daunting. It is easy to feel a certain dread. I want to draw back from the inevitable cost. This Word seems more death dealing than life giving. My death to myself and my comforts.  I resist.

 But then I remember my prayer time yesterday, and God’s longing for my return to Him and I think not of what I am giving up but of Who I am giving it up for. I am  being asked to let go of my way in order to remain in His company. There will be hard choices, yes, because I am selfish and I need to take on the responsibility of facing myself. Self indulgence, self centrednes, self will,  all these need to be purified but I see Him standing at a fork in the road, beckoning me to take His path, to remain in His presence, to journey with Him. The psalm puts it so beautifully, in choosing Jesus way over my own will, I am choosing happiness and fruitfulness and He will be with me to guard my way. I do not journey alone. Every step on the journey to Calvary is a step nearer to the Resurrection. In each little death the seed of God’s life becomes more deeply rooted in me.

Reflection on the Readings for the 4th Sunday of Lent

“My son, my child, you are with me always and all I have is yours.”

We can never ever fathom this mystery of God’s unbounded love for us. He has given us everything. God who is love saying to each one of us:  “you are the recipient of my infinite love. I have sent my Son to live among you as one of yourselves; to die a most horrible death so that you might be with me forever --- if only you would listen and turn to him and accept our merciful and forgiving love.”

For me this morning’s readings at Mass help me to appreciate this tremendous gift. In the 1^st reading the Lord says to Joshua, “Today I have taken away the shame of Egypt from you.” Yes in this day of your baptism (remember it is always the eternal now within the Blessed Trinity) we too have been snatched away from the evil one and given a participation in the life of God Himself.

In the gospel the prodigal father, when his son repents of his sinful life, takes away the shame of his life of debauchery and the disgrace as a Jew of feeding pigs, so we in our turn as we draw close to Jesus and the Father are forgiven and clothed in the splendid robe of grace. Let us repeat over and over again, “it is all God’s work” for he has chosen us to be his very own by letting us live in Christ “who for our sake God the father made the sinless One Jesus into sin so that we might become the goodness of God.”

The responsorial psalm invites us, “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Blessed Julian of Norwich, the English mystic, in contemplating this mystery expresses it beautifully: “By His grace and help let us in spirit stand and gaze, eternally marvelling at the supreme, surpassing, single-minded, incalculable love that God in his goodness has for us. Then we can ask reverently of our lover whatever we will. For by nature our will wants God and the good will of God wants us. We shall never cease wanting and longing until we possess Him in fullness and joy. Then we shall have no further wants. Meanwhile His will is that we go on knowing and loving until we are perfected in heaven.”

Dare to Believe?

Inspiration ...

Next Sunday's Gospel from Matthew speaks about 'your virtue' going 'deeper than that of the Scribes and Pharisees.'  This is prompted a very interesting reflection just a while ago, as Sisters in our Community shared a little, the words of this Gospel with which they have been praying during this week.

You will remember that in Luke's Gospel, when the sisters Martha and Mary welcomed the Lord to their home, Mary sat at his feet and listened to Him (cf Lk 10:38-42).

Well, the connection in my head and in my reflection was that Jesus is our virtue - God is our virtue.  We believe and we know that the source of all goodness is in God ... in fact is God working in us, with our free desire to be and to do good.  We are not by any means puppets or marionettes!  But the thought that came to me was simply that Goodness, and consequently virtue and wisdom, along with all that we associate with God ... is a Person: is personified in God Himself.

How amazing!  Jesus, then, is telling us that He is our virtue and more .. He who is God wants us to possess this virtue - to possess Him.  Almost as though He would like to be a marionette for us, 'our puppet.'  He wants to dwell very deeply within us, within YOU ... you are as essential as that to Him.  

Why?
LOVE.  The love of the Lord is utterly mind-boggling, that He would make Himself small enough to fit inside us. 
It is a very amazing gift to have been called like Mary, to sit at His feet and listen to Him.  And when we listen, sometimes what we hear is overwhelming.

Maybe it would be worth giving Him a little extra thought ... who knows?  He might whisper that He loves you; and from where we are here, in the monastery, it seems as though there are not enough of us giving Him the chance to do just that:  and very very very many of us need to hear it. 

Who doesn't like hearing how precious they are?

4th Sunday of Lent - Year C

I think if I had to choose just one Gospel passage to reflect on for the rest of my life I would choose the parable of the Prodigal son. Already I have probably spent more time with it than any other piece of Scripture mainly because it raised issues for me and I knew that if I could stay with it until it revealed God’s word to me, it would change me. For a long time I couldn’t get my head around the idea that the Father could love these two sons so much, that they could be in the presence of such love, and not experience it. How could it be? I can understand it happening with a human parent. Many of us I’m sure only under stood how much our parents loved us, when we got to the stage in our own lives, where we were able to see how much we loved others in spite of our woundedness and oft times the damage our unresolved issues may have caused. But this is God. His love is untarnished by human sin or weakness. There are no projections, no hidden agendas, no demands. Then how is it that one son takes off and the other stays but seems to resent being deprived the very thing he stays for, his Father’s love and approval? He was physically present but was as oblivious to the depth of his father’s love for him as his brother was. And I, when I let the unsettled feelings I had around all this surface, found myself resenting God, blaming God for not getting through to them, or not making it clearer. In my head I knew the fault couldn’t lie with Him but time after time I had to grapple with it. I was identifying, with these sons. I was n’t experiencing God’s love either, not with the certainty I wished to have, not as a felt experience, even though I professed to believe that ‘He loved me with an everlasting love and was constant in his affection for me’. But God doesn’t give up, on them or on us. No matter where life brings us to, God is always present, always active in the situation, always wanting to bring us home. In truth the sole purpose of all our journeying is to bring us to a place where we are confronted with the Father’s unquestioning love , a moment of truth that still contains a choice, Do I enter the Feast or do I remain outside?

God’s love is unconditional and perhaps the reason we don’t experience it is because we are unable to conceive of or receive an utterly gratuitous love. When we are ready to receive freely then we will experience what is freely given. Our motives don’t even have to be pure we just have to know our need. We just have to accept the invite to enter the banqueting hall. There we will discover that his banner over us is love.

These two young men, one a long distance away, the other close at hand, have in fact one and the same journey to make. We are put on this earth to discover God’s love for us, to share that love with others, to be participants in the heavenly banquet. If we are outside whether we are a foot away or miles away God’s eyes will be ever watching, yearning for a glimpse of us, ready to usher us in so that his joy and ours may be complete.

We are left hanging at the end of this story.  Does the elder son hear what the father says? Even as he expresses his anger, jealousy and resentment, are the Father’s coaxing words, that most beautiful affirmation, the words he had so longed to hear, ‘You are with me always’ do they get through? In the very moment when he brings his bitterness into the light is he set free? Can he now hear his Father who is aware of all the negativity in him, telling him that he sees something more. He knows that his son is with him always. We don’t know for certain how the son responded but surely this text is given to us in Lent to provide us with the opportunity to place ourselves in the story and finish the tale.

 

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

What, for me, is the parable of the Vineyard labourers saying?
Firstly, it is a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven. It is telling us the kind of God our God is - the God revealed by our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father in the person of his Son Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is a God who seeks us his fallen human creatures from dawn to dusk i.e. from the dawn of creation to the end of time. His one desire is to reunite the whole human race to Himself in Christ. It is through the Church in the Sacrament of Baptism that we enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the parable we see those called at daybread and right through the day to the 11th hour. At the close of the parable we see how the words of the 1st Reading at Mass are borne out - that God's ways are not our ways. We see the utter generosity and love of God in His payment of the workers - the last comers receiving one denarius like those called at daybreak and receiving it first! The first comers who had borne the heat of the day compared their lot with those who had come at the 11th hour and became very dissatisfied to the point of almost scorning the denarius on which they had agreed. Some of us might have a sneaking sympathy for them!

Where did they, and if so ourselves, go wrong? They were working out of strict duty, obligation and rights - love was lacking. They had not come to know, in the biblical sense, their Master, so did not love Him or His ways. Our brother, St Albert the Great, speaks of the denarius of Eternal Life, which is sheer gift. Listen to St Paul to the Ephesians (2:8) "It is by grace that you have been saved through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift of God; not by anything you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit".

St Paul's response to God's grace was total. As he tells us in the 2nd reading for this Mass, "life to me, of course, is Christ but then death would bring me something more" - eternal life with Christ. He was torn between "wanting to be gone and be with Christ" and staying behind to spread the Gospel "which is a more urgent need for your sake". We too are called to "long to be with Christ" but we have to realise the great opportunity our time on earth gives us to bring others to Christ and to Eternal Life by the grace of God. We must remember especially in prayer the labourers who were called at "daybreak", that is the Chosen People,the Jews, that the Lord will hasten the day when they will be grafted on again to the True Vine, Jesus Christ.

I will leave the final word to St Paul again, "glory be to Him whose power working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to Him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen."

St Mary Magdalene - 22nd July

Today is the feast-day of St Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles, and Patroness of the Order of Preachers. We're lucky to have her! As I think about her now, you know, she's quite an inspiration, a good teacher.

In the Gospel according to John, we read:

"Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb, ..."
(John 20:8-11)

Just these few verses got me thinking - about how the disciples left and she stayed. They went home, but she had no home to go to.
JESUS was her home - that's why.
The disciples had left everything to follow JESUS, but I suppose here you could say that as yet JESUS didn't wholly possess them - they had left everything, but as yet they hadn't given Him their very selves, they didn't realise that they couldn't do without Him. So they went home ... sad? yes; ...lost? yes, probably; ...confused? surely; ...disappointed? I think definitely so. They didn't have JESUS any longer, He was gone. Where were they to go? What to do now? They had homes, they could pick up their lives again, the lives - the everything - they had left and try to keep going ... that would fill the void that JESUS had left in them.

But when JESUS reached out to Mary that first time, and saved her - she had been about as far away from Him as it is possible to be - had given up even on herself. It was a miracle, a wondrous miracle that He would even look at her, not to mind want her. But she saw that He did, and when she saw Him, she saw that He was everything and that now, knowing Him, her life would be nothing ... she would be nothing ... without Him, apart from Him.

He was her home.

He is our home.

He is my home. The ground beneath my feet.

Thank God for St Mary Magdalene, may she pray for us that we may find our way home.

Third Sunday of Advent

This 3rd Sunday of Advent is traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday - The Latin word 'Gaudete' means rejoice! On the Advent wreath the pink candle is lit - there is an air of expectancy that the Lord's coming is near.

The entrance antiphon for the Mass of this Sunday invites us:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! The Lord is near.

1st Reading - Zephaniah 3:14-18
Responsorial Psalm: Isaias 12:2-6
2nd Reading Philippians 4:4-7
Gospel: Luke10-18

Each week we, as a community share our reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings - having spent the whole week prayerfully reflecting on them during lectio divina - here we share two reflections from this evening:

Reflection 1

Last week John the Baptist had "proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" - This week we meet John again in the Gospel. Today there is a feeling of expectancy in the air as the people approach John and ask what they must do? nobody is excluded - all are invited to repent and to show their repentance by their lives i.e. share with the needy, act justly, no imtimidation, be content with our lot etc.

John points beyond himself to Jesus who is coming with His "winnowing-fan in his hand to clear his treshing-floor". When reflecting on these lines of the Gospel I was led to see my own heart as the 'threshing-floor' and the 'winnowing-fan' as the loving breath of the Holy Spirit. God stands at the door of my heart during these last days of Advent and waits for my reponse as He waited for Mary of Nazareth's reponse for His Word to take flesh in her womb. Mary's reponse was a whole-hearted 'Yes' - "Let it be done to me according to your word" and "the Word became flesh and He lived amng us"

In my reading during the past week I came across the following lovely quote from Caryll Houselander's The Reed of God

For what is conversion but the fiat of Our Lady echoed again and the conecption of Christ in yet another heart?

May this Advent be a time of true conversion for all of us.




Reflection 2

The words that were given to me from the first day of my lectio were ‘Be content’. I could not make much of these words at all, especially in the present climate of the Child Sexual Abuse Scandal in the Church. What was there to be content about? In the other Readings what was there to rejoice about?

There is most certainly nothing in our human behaviour to rejoice about but everything in ‘God’s Behaviour’ to rejoice over and so, after the whole week of struggling with the meaning of these words for me, I was led to focus on the Lord – on His Presence in the Readings, His nearness to us in our repentance and misery. This is a time of repentance not only because of the sins of others but because of our own sins too – for none of us can judge another, and all of us are implicated in these sins in one way or another - for are we not all part of the One Body Of Christ? Yet it says: ‘The Lord has repealed your sentence.’ God’s forgiveness is there for all of us, no matter what we have done – this is the only reason for rejoicing.

The passage at the end of the first Reading gives us a beautiful description of God’s Joy – a bit incredible that He could rejoice over us frail creatures. It is worth quoting:

The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior.
He will exult with joy over you,
He will renew you by his love;
He will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival. ( Zeph 3;16-18)

Personally I need the grace of the Holy Spirit to believe this and accept this truth of God’s personal love for me! May God help my lack of faith.

I am much more comfortable praying the lines in the Psalm :

Truly God is my salvation
and
He became my saviour

And I am also more comfortable praying the beautiful opening prayers – both of them but especially the second one, as it says:

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
ever faithful to your promises
and ever close to your Church: ( even amid the scandals)
the earth rejoices in hope of the Saviour’s coming and looks forward
with longing to his return at the end of time.
Prepare our hearts and remove the sadness
that hinders us from feeling the joy and hope
which His presence will bestow,
for he is Lord for ever and ever. Amen

So I now see in these words: ‘Be content’ to mean for me – that I am to be content to continue to pray as is my vocation and as the 2nd Reading encourages us to do. I realise just that if one is really content to pray then one is not anxious or worried, as St. Paul says;

There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus. ( Phil 4: 5-7)

The needs of the Church and of the world are great and are our responsibility as nuns of the Order of Preachers. May we all, accept this word from God and ‘be content to continue to pray’. Perhaps that is what John the Baptist would say to us were we to ask him:
What must we do?’ !

WORD OF LOVE?

The Readings for this Sunday’s Eucharist could be said to be difficult – difficult to understand and difficult to accept – at least the Reading from the Book of Daniel, and the Gospel from St Mark.

Here is just a little ‘piece of my mind’ that I would like to share, on the Gospel, as I tried to see a little more than what at first meets the eye.

I reminded myself that as I hear: ‘This is the Gospel of the Lord’ I must remember that this is a word of love - so if I can’t find the ‘love’, then I must take a closer look. As we were reminded here during the week, we must not only accept the words of Scripture which appeal to us – all Scripture, every syllable, is a communication of the love of God to each of us. So I looked again, and the words which caught my attention were there in the parable of the fig tree:

‘.. know that he is near; at the very gates’..

With the help of our community sharing on the readings for today, what came to me was the conviction and the promise of Jesus, that he is with us – always – to the end of time. The Gospel opens, giving an idea of the end of the world almost, a great depression, a great sense of hopelessness and of nothing to live for – even the stars and the sun and the moon will fail. But why are we told this, if not to be invited to keep our eyes open – ‘see these things happening’ and ‘know that he is near’. Don’t be afraid!

As one of our sisters reflected last night – at the foot of the cross, all these things did happen – Jesus, God himself gave up his life for us – ‘there was darkness over the whole land’ (Mk 15:33); ‘the earth quaked, the rocks were split..(Mt 27:51). All of his followers, his disciples and friends, all but his mother, a few women and the beloved disciple had deserted him in fear – what could be more hopeless?

Where is the word of love in all this? If I look again, the word ‘see’ catches my attention, and I remember that Jesus is constantly inviting me to follow him, to keep my heart set on him, to trust him and to love him. In all this he is asking me to seek HIM, and I remember the first words I noticed – ‘know that he is near; at the very gates’.

Jesus asked his own mother to wait with him at the foot of the cross – to watch her only son die – would you wish such pain on anyone? And she loved him enough to be there, to want nothing other than to be there where he needed her to be. There was Love – His first, because before she existed, He loved her; but hers too, Mary’s pure love – at the worst time you can imagine, the two greatest loves we will encounter, were there in the darkest darkness.

We people who hope in God, and who believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord and Redeemer, we need to keep our eyes open to Him always, and if we do – truly and with the humility to acknowledge that it is not always easy – if we call on Him when we are left with nothing, we will discover that he IS near – ‘at the very gates’.

Think about the gates too – things you pass through to get out of one place and through to another. Jesus – He is there, in the place you are leaving behind and already there where you are going – always waiting for you.

Always waiting for YOU.

‘cups and pots and bronze dishes’

22nd Sunday in Ordinary time Yr B
Gospel from Mark 7:1-8;14-15;21-23

‘cups and pots and bronze dishes’

What are these before the Lord? … nothing …
and not only nothing, but empty.

Why do you hide behind them?
Why do you make them out to be so important?
Why won’t you follow Me?

You – not the cups and pots and bronze dishes – you are the one I want, not these empty, lifeless things. They are only useful for holding and carrying, but I want you to contain Me – I want to live and be alive in you.

We are invited to give up trying to control God, trying to make God out to be what we think He should be. But, we don’t believe in God so as to be able to force His hand, to have control over how He acts, to tell Him how to be God. God is not complicated, as we make Him out to be. He has given us His Son, who is the Way the Truth and the Life. He has given us everything, and still humbly asks us neither to ‘take from’ nor ‘add to’ what we have been given – don’t try to perfect Him who is already perfect, who is God.

When I come to the Lord, then, and don’t know what to do or say, and almost helplessly cry out ‘Lord, all I want is you’, I should remember and believe that they are the same words He speaks to me: ‘My child, My beloved, … all I want is you’.

So, shake off the fear of unworthiness and unclean-ness – or, at least, be an honest hypocrite before God. Give Him the fear, but give Him yourself as well, give Him yourself first, give Him your divided heart – and if you can’t ‘accept and submit to the word which has been planted in you and can save your souls’ – yet – humbly acknowledge it and ask for the grace to receive God in all the ways He wants to love you. …
and it will be yours.