Author: DVO

In today’s reflection verse from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells us: “The measure you measure out is the measure you will be given.” Another way of putting this is “the air you breathe out is the air you will re-inhale.” If that’s true, Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that it would explain many things, though not necessarily to our liking. Fr. Rolheiser says we are perennially caught up in pettiness, jealousy, and a lack of forgiveness. Why are we inhaling so much bitter air? Perhaps it has to do with the air we’re breathing out. What are we breathing out? Mary Jo Leddy, in her excellent book “Radical Gratitude,” claims that one of the great principles innate within reality itself is this: “The air you breathe into the universe is the air that it will breathe back, and if your energy is right, it will renew itself even as you give it away.” We’d like, of course, to think that we’re breathing out the air of gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, honesty, blessing, self-effacement, joy, and delight. We’d also like to believe that we are breathing out the air of concern for the poor, the suffering, the unattractive, the bothersome. And, we’d like to think too that we’re big-hearted people, breathing out understanding and reconciliation. Would it be nice if that was the true reality of our lives? The real air we’re breathing out is fraught with self-interest, jealousy, competitiveness, pettiness, fear, and less-than-full honesty. And Jesus takes this even further when he adds: “To those who have much, even more, will be given; and from those who have little, even what they have will be taken away.” That sounds so unfair; the innate cruelty of nature and the survival of the fittest applied to the gospels. But Jesus is only challenging the reality of our humanness and inability to be true love, agape love to others. To the big of heart, who breathe out what’s large and honest and full of blessing, the world will return a hundredfold in kind, honesty and blessing that swells the heart even more. Conversely to the miserly of heart and dishonesty of spirit, the world will give back too in kind, pettiness, and lies that shrink the heart still further. That’s the deep mystery at the center of the universe: The air we breathe out into the world is the air we will re-inhale.

Blessed are you…Clarence Jordan writes that he has tried everywhere to find an English word that would actually translate this Greek word makarios. Some translate it as “happy.” Some translate it as “fortunate.” Some translate it as “blessed.” All those elements are in this word but they still do not fully contain it. It really means to be in a relationship, not a state of joy or happiness, but in a relationship. It means to have the deep security that comes from loving and being loved. It means to have the deep soul-satisfying experience of being in a fellowship of which you feel that you are a part and you’re carried along with it. To be in union with God and with the other brothers on the team. It’s the joy of being on a team that’s playing and going somewhere. It isn’t just fortunate or happy or blessed. It’s deeper, much deeper than that. Jordan goes on to say, “I just don’t know an English word that will translate it. I translated it, ‘to be God’s people,’ that is, to be in a fellowship of brethren who both love one another and love God. That is the joy. That is the blessing that’s talked about here.”

Paige Byrne Shortal reflects on today’s Gospel as she speaks to the nature of seeing potential in people. When her sons were teenagers, they invited their pastor over for dinner, and during his visit, they gave him a tour of their rooms. Now these were typical boys who struggled to keep the room from being messy and of course, it was during the pastor’s visit. But something interesting happened. After he made the tour, he spoke of “how cool” one of them was. Paige couldn’t believe anything was cool in those “pig sty’s.” Later she went up to look for herself and for the first time saw what the pastor saw. Every inch of the wall and ceiling was covered with cartoons, paintings, quotes in calligraphy, and her son’s own photographs. Paige learned that it is important to see beyond the dirty laundry of our lives. Consider how ill-suited the Twelve were for the job of apostleship. Yet Jesus saw something in them – he saw their potential. It’s so very important for the potential to be noticed by the right person – the teacher, the counselor, the coach, or the pastor or parent. It can make all the difference in someone’s life. 

Jesus tells us that we were not made for the sabbath; the sabbath was made for us. Simply put, the sabbath prefigures the end times, the world that is to come, and heaven. The precept to keep the sabbath holy asks that we, individually and collectively, regularly have a sabbatical (notice the root of that word) by stopping our normal work and activities to try to taste a little of what the final state will be like. We stop work once a week not just to rest and worship God but also to forgive debts and to bring ourselves more into a general sympathy with everything. To observe the sabbath means to cancel debts, to forgive others, and to let go of our hurts. Observing the Sabbath is a critical observance, both religiously and psychologically. Unless we pull back from our everyday lives regularly, one day a week, and rest, worship, and forgive, we lose perspective on what is essential and become compulsive, driven persons caught up in the rat race. Likewise, we become ambitious, greedy, and resentful, unable to pray, forgive, and enjoy life. It is no accident that today, as Sunday observance is slipping, we find ourselves ever more trapped and pressured, always behind, unable to rest, and unable to delight in the deep joys of life. What this means is that we are not observing the sabbath. The Sabbath is our day. Once a week, we have a chance to taste a wee bit of heaven: to rest, worship God, forgive each other, and feel more sympathy with all things.

Here is a series of thoughts from Mark Comer’s book Practicing the Way – Be with Jesus; Become like him; Do as he did, and what we should be doing as “fools for Christ.”

Most people think they will grow to be more like Jesus through trying hard rather than through training hard when the exact opposite is true. You don’t run a marathon by trying hard, you do it through training. Training, not trying, is the secret to becoming more like Jesus. What do monks do in a monastery? They fall and get up again, fall and get up again.

You cannot apprentice under Jesus and not have it interfere with your life. To follow Jesus requires that you leave something behind. For Peter, it was fishing nets. What is it for you? Following Jesus will cost you, but not following him will cost you more, that is, it will cost you happiness and peace. Quoting missionary/martyr, Jim Eliot: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

Our generation is witnessing a cosmic shift in human history, the shift from the industrial revolution to the digital world. The digital age has us more connected than ever before. But sociologists tell us that we are the loneliest generation ever. Could the way forward be as simple as meeting people in the place of pain? Regarding the use of electronic media: Choose your own constraints or they will be chosen for you.

Nine rules of life for Practicing the Way: (1) Practice Sabbath in a culture of hurry and exhaustion. (2) Practice solitude in a culture of anxiety and noise. (3) Practice prayer in a culture of distraction and escapism. (4) Practice community in a culture of individuality and superficiality. (5) Practice scripture in a culture of ideological infection and compromise. (6) Practice fasting in a culture of indulgence. (7) Practice generosity in a culture of consumerism. (8) Practice service in a culture of injustice and division. (9) Practice hospitality in a culture of hostility.

Here is a series of thoughts from Mark Comer’s book Practicing the Way – Be with Jesus; Become like him; Do as he did, and what we should be doing as “fools for Christ.”

– Most people think they will grow to be more like Jesus through trying hard rather than through training hard when the exact opposite is true. You don’t run a marathon by trying hard, you do it through training. Training, not trying, is the secret to becoming more like Jesus. What do monks do in a monastery? They fall and get up again, fall and get up again.

– You cannot apprentice under Jesus and not have it interfere with your life. To follow Jesus requires that you leave something behind. For Peter, it was fishing nets. What is it for you? Following Jesus will cost you, but not following him will cost you more, that is, it will cost you happiness and peace. Quoting missionary/martyr, Jim Eliot: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

– Our generation is witnessing a cosmic shift in human history, the shift from the industrial revolution to the digital world. The digital age has us more connected than ever before. But sociologists tell us that we are the loneliest generation ever. Could the way forward be as simple as meeting people in the place of pain? Regarding the use of electronic media: Choose your own constraints or they will be chosen for you.

– Nine rules of life for Practicing the Way:

1. Practice Sabbath in a culture of hurry and exhaustion.
2. Practice solitude in a culture of anxiety and noise.
3. Practice prayer in a culture of distraction and escapism.
4. Practice community in a culture of individuality and superficiality.
5. Practice scripture in a culture of ideological infection and compromise.
6. Practice fasting in a culture of indulgence.
7. Practice generosity in a culture of consumerism.
8. Practice service in a culture of injustice and division.
9. Practice hospitality in a culture of hostility.

All talk of the sacred is limited by our imaginations and our language. We are finite creatures trying to picture and talk about the infinite, an impossible task, by definition. We have no way of picturing the infinite or of adequately speaking about it. God, by definition, is ineffable, beyond conceptualization, beyond imagination, beyond language. The Christian belief that God is a trinity helps underscore how rich the mystery of God is and how our experience of God is always richer than our concepts and language about God. So, as Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes, any God who isn’t more intelligent, more powerful, and more enterprising than we are is not worth believing in, nor is any religion that doesn’t go beyond our imagination. Faith, if it is to have any depth and sustain us for long, has to ground itself, precisely, in something beyond our own imaginations and our own powers. God, by definition, is ineffable. Right off the top, that already tells us that everything we can imaginatively picture or rationally say about God is inadequate. Scripture tells us that we live, and move, and breathe, and have our being in God. We are in God’s womb, enveloped by God, and, like a baby, we must first be born (death as our second birth) to see God face to face. That’s faith’s darkness. John of the Cross submits that the deeper we journey into intimacy, the more we will begin to understand by not understanding than by understanding. Our relationship with God works in the same way. Initially, when our intimacy is not so deep with God, we feel that we understand things and we have firm feelings and ideas about God. But the deeper we journey, the more those feelings and ideas will begin to feel false and empty because our growing intimacy is opening us to the fuller mystery of God. Paradoxically this feels like God is disappearing and becoming non-existent. Faith, by definition, implies a paradoxical darkness, the closer we get to God in this life, the more God seems to disappear because overpowering light can seem like darkness.

Our reflection verse today comes from Psalm 24, attributed to David that was describing the ceremony of the entry of God (invisibly enthroned upon the ark), followed by the people, into the Temple. The Psalms are often looked down on as something we should pray with due to the hatred, anger, and violence, that speak of the glories of war and of crushing one’s enemies in the name of God. Fr. Ron Rolheiser calls on us to reflect on one classical definition of prayer that suggests it is the “lifting mind and heart to God.” Simple, clear, and accurate. Our problem is that we too seldom do this when we pray. Rather than lifting up to God what is actually on our minds and in our hearts, we treat God as someone from whom we need to hide the real truth of our thoughts and feelings. Instead of pouring out our minds and hearts, we tell God what we think God wants to hear – not murderous thoughts, desire for vengeance, or our disappointment with him. But expressing those feelings is the whole point. What makes the psalms great for prayer is that they do not hide the truth from God and they run the whole gamut of our actual feelings. They give honest voice to what is actually going on in our minds and hearts. And that is truly what God seeks from us, the openness of what lies in our heart for only then are we open to hear and receive his counsel.

Henri Nouwen writes that he found it very important in his own life to try to let go of his wishes and instead live in hope. He discovered that when he let go of his sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that his life was precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something new, something beyond his own expectations, began to happen in him. To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear. Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us that are far beyond our imagination or prediction. This is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control. The newness and oneness we seek are found in the depths of our souls—a soul waiting and longing for the Lord.

Thomas Aquinas once defined the Holy Spirit as “the love between the Father and the Son.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that this definition is valuable, though more theologically than spiritually and pastorally. In terms of appropriating the Holy Spirit more personally, the biblical definition of the Holy Spirit is more described than defined. There are various ways, all of them rich, in which the Spirit is described in scripture. For example, St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, tells us that there are two kinds of spirit: the spirit of the sarx (a spirit that opposes God) and the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. The former is the spirit of envy, anger, gossip, factionalism, idolatry, impurity, self-centeredness, and bitterness. Conversely, there is the Holy Spirit, the spirit of charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, mildness, faith, fidelity, and chastity. In terms of personal renewal, one of the things we might do is to stop deluding ourselves about what spirit we often live within. Suppose my life habitually contains more envy than admiration, anger than joy, gossip than praise, factionalism than community, impurity than chastity, and impatience than perseverance. In that case, I am not living in the Holy Spirit, irrespective of whatever religious or liturgical activities I am involved in and might feel good about. But that is the Holy Spirit at one level. John, in his Gospel, describes the Holy Spirit as a paraclete, an advocate, a lawyer for the poor. John tells us that the crucifixion of Jesus will set free the paraclete and that it will convict the world of its wrongness in crucifying an innocent person, Jesus. Among other things, then, the Holy Spirit in John is the defender of the accused, of the victim, of the scapegoat, of anyone whom society deems expendable for the sake of the culture. To live in the Holy Spirit, therefore, is to be an advocate, a lawyer, for the poor, and for those who are being victimized and scapegoated by the culture. Living in the Holy Spirit is not just a state of being, but a transformative journey. It is the person and the principle both of private renewal and of social justice. By living in the Holy Spirit, we are not only filled with selflessness and joy, but we also become advocates for the poor, bringing hope and justice to those in need.