Prayer: "Beloved" by Toni Morrison

There's a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind - wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet seem to come from a far-off place.

Const.: GC 34, Decree 4: “Our Mission and Culture”, par. 9

Our ministry of evangelizing culture will be a ministry of consolation when it is guided by ways that bring to light the character of God’s activity in those cultures, and which strengthen our sense of the divine mystery. But our efforts will be misguided, and even destructive, when our activity runs contrary to the grain of his presence in the cultures which the church addresses, or when we claim to exercise sole proprietorial rights over the affairs of God.

The First Scrutiny

Lord, you call these chosen ones to the glory of a new birth in Christ, the second Adam. Help them grow in wisdom and love as they prepare to profess their faith in you. Grant this through Christ our Lord.

Spring is coming!

Prayer: Elizabeth Johnson – Consider Jesus p. 123

There is excessive suffering of the innocent, the undeserved suffering of millions of people at the hands of other people who gain advantage from this. The suffering is like a surd in history. It does not make sense; it wrecks every theory constructed to explain it. This is the deep mystery of evil at work in the world.

Notes from a Recent Retreat

These are notes I used recently in a retreat talk.

Reconciliation

• What is reconciliation? It is to accept ourselves as we were made, to acknowledge our choices, and to allow God's glory within us to be held by Christ. Reconciliation is integrating who we are with what we have done and allowing Christ to befriend us and make us the creation that God intended. We establish right relations.
• Fruit: peace, comfort, feeling settled, confident that you've done your best.
• Christ wants to help you love yourself.

1. Re-imagine Jesus Christ

• Learn to behold Christ. Contemplate him. Is he flat and one-dimensional? Is he the only one in prayer? I guarantee you that you will be satisfied. Ask that you come to a deeper, more intimate knowledge of the man.
• Our starting point is to behold the man. It is a good practice for us to separate Jesus of Nazareth from our Christ of faith. We model our lives after Jesus, the man, the one who was like us in our humanity. It is because he was a man that makes him so extraordinary.
• We really do have to get to know him and the best way for that to happen is to challenge our assumptions. Challenge what you know about Christ. We have to learn how to meet Jesus again as if for the first time.
• Personally intimate; If the heart of Jesus isn't there, then think of another image.
• Read the Gospels and pay attention to the feelings of Jesus or of the disciples. When you come to an emotion, just linger. Wonder about it. Align your feelings to theirs. Ask Jesus to share his feelings - even if they are dark or negative.

2. Rehabilitate our image of God.

• God has to be accessible. Ponder over the characteristics of God and God's abiding presence throughout salvation history. Focus on what God desires.
• To whom do we pray? We often don’t know and blur the distinctions. We know that when we pray to one we pray to all, but it is helpful to develop our friendship with each unit of the Trinity.

3. Cherish your Friendship with God.

• And so we behold the man. Just as we gaze upon a painting in a museum, we gaze upon Jesus and appreciate who he is. We notice the tiny details of his life that reveal and hide something special. It is in these distinctions that we find God’s glory.
• Beholding is like falling in love. You see new details and you become fascinated. You find something distinctively personal. Your heart has to fall in love with Jesus.
• When we pray, we look into his eyes so one day we can see through his eyes. Facial expressions, tone of voice, body language and posture. Is he relaxed? Glancing away? Does he look at your with love and compassion?
• Know what he is feeling. Ask him. Remember that we relate to God as we relate to other. If we have patterns of communicating that are problematic with others, we will replicate the same tendencies with God.
• You will become what you behold. When we contemplate his humanity, we see his divinity. It is being transfixed. Our senses and understanding are transported to a new realm where we cannot go one our own.

4. Be Gentle

• For God's sake, be gentle with yourself. You are not perfect. You can't achieve much in prayer, so take the pressure off yourself. Many people think they are responsible for their own progress.
• Love yourself enough to let Christ love you. In prayer, after you have beheld Christ, let him behold you. Let him tell you how beautiful you are to him, that he misses you and wants to spend more time with you. Let him caress your face with his hands or massage an aching or hurt part of your body. Give him the opportunity to actually speak tender, caring words to you.
• God does not act through force. God acts in the gentlest of ways (1 Kings 19). God will not appear with trumpets sounding, but in that small sweet voice or the appearance of a tiny bird or butterfly. You will notice God's message, but it is not going to bang you over the head.

5. Heart over Head; Feelings and Desires

• Prayer is effective when your heart wins out over head. You need both, but we suppressed our heart so much that it distrusts that we want it to do its job. We have to find ways to open it up once again. It yearns to be free, and our head bullies it and dominates.
• Name your desires; know your feelings; this is very difficult to do. We have so many feelings at one time, we get too confused and we cannot begin to isolate our strongest feelings and needs. Refrain from judging them.
• Culture, movies, books.

6. Let Christ Act and Speak First

• What do we want?
   o To be cared for. To matter. To have meaning.
   o We want our voices heard.
   o To belong, to feel honored, and to be respected
   o To have an intimate touch by someone who loves us
   o We crave intimacy

7. Distractions in Prayer

• When we gaze upon Ignatius of Loyola tells us that true contemplation is when you gaze upon Christ and all the stuff of March 2011 rushes to the foreground. And we all need the consoling, reconciling presence of our Christ of faith. These are not distractions, but the core of our prayer. These are areas Christ wants you to let him into.
• Experience of forgiving parents; I cannot achieve it on my own; Christ has to give it to me; and it only comes through a deeper love, a deeper affection. Reason won’t do it.

8. Memories

• How does Christ see me? How does Christ feel about me? Where was he present in my life's events?
• Some memories are too painful to touch. Our will is too strong.
• Environmental project: pruning the vines.

9. Our Bodies; Our Selves

• Bring sexual self into prayer. Intimacy is found here. Free yourself from the constraints you put on yourselves. See yourselves as lovable sexual beings – glorified by God.
• You won't be free until you accept your humanity. Jesus had it too. Desires are good and life-giving.

10. Beg

• Beg for what you want; at each prayer, ask for a grace. At the end of the prayer, we check to see if we received the grace. Get over your timidity. Christ wants to tell you that you are worth it. Let Christ spoil you with his generosity.

11. Healing and Reconciliation of Sins

• Know what Jesus Christ thinks of our sins. They often are not what we expect them to be. What do we normally think of sin? Anger, masturbation, impure thoughts, speaking a bad word. All sin has to deal with relationships, with transgressing boundaries.
• We also have to look at the ways our boundaries are transgressed. This is where we need healing and to receive forgiveness from others. We need to know that what happened to us should not rightly have happened. The problem is that we develop.
• Often what happened to us is not our fault. We confess our sins when in fact we were sinned against.
• Give him a chance. We are not God. Christ is God. This is not an easy lesson, but we put ourselves in the place of God when we control and judge our actions and those of others. Let go of your need to be in control.
• Don’t try to change another person. Respect a person's free will.

12. Be Open (The Last, and a very important one)

• Be opened to the possibilities.
• Daydream. Often. Notice them.
• Look at all the ways we say no to invitations. Be opened. I have come across this as the most significant part of our spiritual formation. We are unaware of how many times we stop ourselves from receiving grace.

Know that we are in this for the long haul. We may not change overnight. We can have the joy of coming to know Christ again for the first time if we only behold him and let him behold us. We spend our time in fascination.

Song: The Deer's Cry

The Deer's Cry incorporates the words of Saint Patrick into the song. It can be played by clicking the link below

The Deer's Cry on Youtube.

Prayer: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A blessing is the visible, perceptible, effective proximity of God. A blessing demands to be passed on - it communicates itself to other people. To be blessed is to be oneself a blessing.

Poem: The Annunciation by Edmund Muir, 1956

The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.

See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on its wings.

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way.
Sound’s perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.

But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

Third Sunday of Lent

March 27, 2011

Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42

We see the transformation life-giving water can bring when we pit the first reading from Exodus against John's fourth chapter. In the desert the ancient Hebrews search for water after their exodus from Egypt. Dissatisfied with their fate, they test Yahweh to see if he is present or not. Meribah means 'to quarrel' and Massah means 'to test.' As Moses follows Yahweh's command to strike the stone, water flows forth. Yahweh does not rebuke. Yahweh gives bread from heaven and water from the rock and thereby proves his mastery over hostile environments.

         

In John's Gospel, Jesus has retreated from a hostile place into Samaria and will provide an insight to the Samaritans that he is the "Savior of the world." It is an unusual encounter for Jesus and the woman at noontime at Jacob's well. The strained relationships between the Jews and Samaritans are evident. The woman is speaking at a literal level which shows how she progresses from ignorance and lack of belief to full faith. Jesus tells her that he is a "gift from God" and the source of "living water" to show he is superior to Jacob.

The imperative of Jesus to "call your husband" sets us a honest response from the nameless woman. When she confesses her past, Jesus is not preoccupied with her sinfulness (living with a man after having five husbands.) She calls him a prophet, but the Samaritan tradition expects a prophet to uncover the lost Temple vessels and to vindicate the tradition of worship on Mt. Gerizim in place of Jerusalem. Jesus counters by telling her that all believers will worship God in spirit and truth. For John, Jesus is the truth since he is the revelation of God. When the woman suggests he might be the messianic prophet, Jesus answers, "I am," which indicates the divine being. Jesus is greater than Abraham, their common father in the faith. Jesus is equal to God.

The theme of mission arises as Jesus' disciples arrive as the woman goes into town to bring others to him, the Messiah. They want Jesus to eat nutritious food. For Jesus, doing the will of the one who sent him is his "food." He needs nothing else. The disciples will have to take up his ministry, which is to complete his work of bringing others to God. This completion happens at the time of his death on the cross.

The Samaritans come to belief first on the basis of the woman's word and then through their own experience of Jesus' words. The Samaritans have transcended their own messianic expectations. Through their discourse they come to see Jesus as Savior of the world.

The power of conversation is immense. Entering into dialogue with generosity of heart and with a desire for enrichment will help others in their pursuit of the truth. The way Jesus discussed and unfolded the truth about himself is an attractive model for us. Conversation is progressive. When both our head and heart are engaged in dialogue, many opportunities for finding God's truth comes about more easily. We can benefit from the model of discourse shown to us by Jesus in this passage. Many in the world will set up their camps in the war of words. We need to tear down those walls and build new ones built upon seeking the truth through understanding and compassion.

Themes for this Week’s Masses

First Reading: In 2 Kings, Naaman, the leper, seeks out Elisha, the prophet, who tells him to wash in the Jordan River seven times to cure his malady. Naaman was expecting something miraculous and doubted the ordinariness of the healing routine. However, his servant-daughter convinced him to follow Elisha’s commands that healed him. In Daniel, Azariah feels forsaken and abandoned by God, but continues to offer sacrifices with a contrite heart in hopes of God’s deliverance. In Deuteronomy, Moses gives the law that promises life when the people move into the Promised Land of milk and honey. In Jeremiah, the prophet commands the people to listen to his words that come from God, but they did not obey or heed his words. Faithfulness has disappeared. The Lord in Hosea beckons the people to return with all their heart because the Lord is the only one who can love them freely. The Lord continues to beckon until Ephraim and Judah return home.

Gospel: Jesus explains that a prophet is not accepted in his native place. Take, for instance, Elijah’s efforts to sustain the widow of Zarephath or Elisha’s cure of Naaman, the Syrian leper. Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness by describing the unjust actions of a man who received incredible mercy from the man who owned his debt. The wicked servant, whose debt was forgiven, could not forgive his fellow servant. Jesus says God will judge us on the mercy and forgiveness we meter out to others. Jesus warns people that the laws of Moses are strictly in place. He doesn’t abolish the law, but becomes the perfection of it. As Jesus cures a deaf mute, the religious leaders wonder about the source of his power. They wonder if it comes from Beelzebul. Jesus explains that a house divided against itself cannot stand. When asked about the greatest of all commandments, a scribe answers in a way that shows Jesus he is not far from the kingdom of heaven. Jesus tells a parable of the Pharisee and tax collector who go to the Temple to pray. The one who humbly prays for God's mercy is justified.

Saints of the Week

No major saints are celebrated on the calendar this week. This week on the calendar is usually a time taken up by Holy Week.

This Week in Jesuit History

· March 27, 1587: At Messina died Fr. Thomas Evans, an Englishman at 29. He had suffered imprisonment for his defense of the Catholic faith in England.

· March 28, 1606: At the Guildhall, London, the trial of Fr. Henry Garnet, falsely accused of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot.

· March 29, 1523: Ignatius' first visit to Rome on his way from Manresa to Palestine.

· March 30, 1545: At Meliapore, Francis Xavier came on pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle.

· March 31, 1548: Fr. Anthony Corduba, rector of the College of Salamanca, begged Ignatius to admit him into the Society so as to escape the Cardinalate which Charles V intended to procure for him.

· Apr 1, 1941. The death of Hippolyte Delehaye in Brussels. He was an eminent hagiographer and in charge of the Bollandists from 1912 to 1941.

· Apr 2, 1767. Charles III ordered the arrest of all the Jesuits in Spain and the confiscation of all their property.

Lenten Scrutinies

Candidates and catechumen who have been preparing this past year for their sacraments during the Easter season will be scrutinized by their church and their community of faith. This first of the three scrutinies begins this week.

The year (Cycle A), the first scrutiny is taken from John 4: The woman at the well; the second is from John 9: The man born blind; the third is from John 11: Raising Lazarus from the dead.

We continue to pray for the 'Elect' of our church.

Japan

Perhaps you can find time this week to offer silent prayer for the devastated people of Japan.