This Sunday, the 21st Sunday-Year A, we hear the oft quoted passage from Matthew about Jesus, His Most Important Question , and Simon Peter’s inspired response. Deacon Mike has pulled together the thoughts and words in video format of a couple of very inspiring theologians-spiritual writers of this era to help us reflect on the question that Jesus posed to his first followers, and continues to pose to all today. May they be an inspiration of the ‘living God’ in your response.
Fr. Jim Martin, S.J. recently wrote a down to earth book that helps make God relevant and personal in every day life. Harper Collins Canada provides this description of the book on their website: “A practical spiritual guidebook based on the life and teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by the Reverend James Martin (My Life with the Saints) shows us how to manage relationships, money, work, prayer, and decision-making, all while keeping a sense of humor about it all.” The following YouTube Videos (compliments of bustedhalo.com) with Fr. Jim are a fantastic introduction to a fantastic book by fantastic teacher.
This weekend we celebrate Trinity Sunday. It can become every preachers nightmare, If it is approached from the point of view of doctrine and theology. Ultimately, no matter how hard we try, we always fall short when we try to explain and make sense of ‘three persons in one God.” Preachers and meditators might consider approaching this feast from the point of view of spirituality. Trinity Sunday can be a time to explore the mystery of God, being human, and something that Fr. Ronald Rolheiser calls, ‘the divine fire within’. He states: "We humans are infinite spirits in a finite situation, and that’s a sure formula for restlessness. You want to make love to the whole world, you want to consume the planet but you’re confined to one person, one place. … These energies — this divine fire —make up our spirit. How we direct that spirit is spirituality. Our spirit is restless because it’s divine and insatiable."
I haven’t totally figured out my homily for this Sunday, but after listening to Fr. Rolheiser interview on the NCR website, I think that with a little thought, prayer and meditation, his words and insights will be a great help. Anyway, I hope many of you will find this two part interview to be insightful and spiritually inspiring.
If you looked up with your own eyes from the Planet Mars, this is what we would look like. Nasa’s OPPORTUNITY ROVER captured this picture of PLANET EARTH from the surface of Mars. I find the picture rather mysterious and humbling. It sort of puts a lot of things in perspective, doesn’t it?
There are a few other YouTube presentations on priests’ retreats. Some of you might be interested so I am posting the links. If I find any more, I will add to the list.
A few words from Sister Joan in her latest Newsletter seemed extremely pertinent to me. I thought I would relay her words:
You Will Do Quite Well
When the phone call came, I remember the shudder of intuition that went down my arms. Sister Theophane, they told me, one of the strongest, most intelligent, most formative people in my life, the woman because of whom I had finally recovered from polio, had collapsed at one of our small houses in the inner city. The ambulance was on its way, they said. From ten miles out of town, I made it to the house before the paramedics did. “I’m going now, Joan,” she said when I dropped to my knees beside her. A nurse before she entered, a caretaker all her life, I had no doubt that she knew what she was saying.
“Sister,” I pleaded like any young disciple in the throes of fear at the loss of a mentor. “Hang on. Please hang on. Don’t go.”
She was lying on the floor beside the bed with her eyes closed, her hands clutching her chest. “No, it’s all right,” she said. “It’s over now.”
I was desperate. “But, Sister,” I could hear myself getting more insistent, “you can’t go.” I was fairly shouting now. “What about me!”
Her eyelids flickered for a second, she gave a long, tired breath, and she said very quietly, “History records, dear, that you will do quite well.” Sister Theophane lingered for forty days, but those were the last words she ever said. I have carried them in my heart ever since. They were a life lesson of immense proportion that simply went on growing and growing and growing in me.
The fact is that history records that we all really do quite well, however we do. Transitions complete us. We ripen. We learn. We hurt. We survive one thing after another. And we go on, whatever the odds against us. Then, in the end, we gain what we came to get—a kind of well-worn, hard-won wisdom. One way or another life batters us until we get the unavoidable. Sometimes we get it with glory; sometimes we get it in disgrace. Whatever the circumstances, the problem is that we all too seldom bother to stop and notice how much we have become in the process.
–from Called To Question by Joan Chittister (Sheed & Ward)
More so today, than in the recent past, people discuss and explore ways of praying. Here is a You Tube video-conversation from Loyola Press – by two Christian women: Vinnie Hampton Wright and Alice Camille. In this short video we hear of their personal prayer life: devotional prayer, biblical prayer, liturgical pray, Ignatian Prayer, and about praying always.
VIDEO: A CONVERSATION ABOUT PRAYER
This picture says it all as far as I am concerned. This is what we hope and pray for everyday and for one brief moment in Nazareth on May 15th, 2009 God’s peace was celebrated. According to Reuters it was an impromptu moment started by a Rabbi singing, “Shalom, Salaam, Lord Grant us Peace.” Within moments Jews, Christians, and Moslems held hands in a song of joy and peace. John Allen of the NCR describes the event this way: “The setting was an inter-faith meeting among Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Druze in Nazareth. Toward the close of the meeting, a song specially composed for the occasion was performed: "Salam, Shalom, Lord Grant Us Peace." It was a rousing number, and by the end, the religious leaders on stage were singing along, including the notoriously reserved Benedict XVI. For the last stanza, the rabbis, muftis, sheikhs, and bishops, with the pontiff in the middle of the group, stood on the stage and held hands.”
