Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved
I am the one whom Jesus loves.
Let us long
“Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. . . . Thus, what is beyond our own powers to obtain will be granted through their intercession.” (St. Bernard of Clairvaux)
Let not your heart be troubled
Is your heart troubled by some way that you have failed the Lord? Amy Carmichael shows us the truth about how the Lord looks upon our failings:
John 13.38: Jesus answered him, . . . The cock shall not crow until you have denied Me three times.
John 14.1: Let not your heart be troubled.
“After speaking of Peter’s fall, which He foresaw, our dear Lord immediately says, Let not your heart be troubled. He saw across that day of grief to the restoration that would follow. His eyes were not fixed on the sad interruption to fellowship and joy, but on the hour when Peter would be back in love again, never again to grieve his Lord like that. And so to the surprised and surely greatly troubled little company He said, Let not your heart be troubled.
“Most of us have things which would naturally greatly trouble us. Let us face these things as our Lord Jesus did in John 13.38 and then go straight on into chapter 14.1.”
Staring at a Mirror
Fr. Pat McNulty from Madonna House’s reflections on the Gospel reading today:
Staring at a Mirror
by Fr. Pat McNulty.
I don’t understand why you’d do somethin’ like that right out before God an’ everybody.
Well, there was a trend in the ‘60’s to learn how to be at home “in your own skin,” your own emotions and fears. Since all of that was quite new to us bourgeois thinking folk we needed some help.
One of the popular methods in psychology at the time was called, “group therapy”—basically like-minded people working things out together with professional guidance.
Why didn’t y’all just go fishin’ and talk it out with God?
I guess because along the way we learned that some inner lies just don’t get unravelled in your life unless you “talk it out” with another human being who can challenge you and support you. (By the way, that’s really part of the genius of confession in our Catholic tradition.).
So one of the things we did in our group was to sit in front of another person and look into that person’s eyes for thirty seconds while repeating our own name over and over slowly without blinking or turning away. Then we changed places and let them do the same with us.
Afterwards we would come back together in the larger group and talk about what was going on during the eyeball-to-eyeball.
You can read the rest here.
Friday: from the archives
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov wrote this:
Know this: You should judge every person by his merits. Even someone who seems to be completely wicked, you must search and find that little speck of good, for in that place, he is not wicked. By this you will raise him up, and help him return to G-d. And you must also do this for yourself, finding your own good points, one after the other, and raising yourself up. This is how melodies are made, note after note.
The hallway
“I lost my tooth. The Lord has blessed me.”
That’s how Ann Voskamp’s daughter announced it to her:
When she’s in from the barn, she slams that back door, her hair dripping like she drowned in that shower that doused her curls and the smell of hogs, and she comes grinning and looking for me, holding out her hand.
She announces it like a heralding:
“I lost my tooth. The Lord has blessed me.”
In the east, the sun burns away the mist and I come to.
The Lord has blessed me.
How does she do that? How does she fill her gaping with celebrating and who sees blessing in loss and how can you just hold on to some peace and sanity and your half of the quilt even in nightmares?
You can read the rest here: “How to Handle Losses”
They shall sing for love
A Sunday-poem from Christina Rossetti (1830-1894):
If Only
If I might only love my God and die!
But now he bids me love him and live on,
Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,
The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.
My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high;
And I forget how summer glowed and shone,
While autumn grips me with its fingers wan,
And frets me with its fitful windy sigh.
When autumn passes then must winter numb,
And winter may not pass a weary while,
But when it passes spring shall flower again:
And in that spring who weepeth now shall smile,
Yea, they shall wax who now are on the wane,
Yea, they shall sing for love when Christ shall come.
“Regardless of the Homily
Wonderful advice from Fr. Pat McNulty on how to listen to any homily:
Regardless of the Homily
by Fr. Pat McNulty.
September. School. Yuk! I hated going to school and I had to go for 25 years—from age 5 to 30. But I loved learning, and it was a blessing whenever I had a teacher who could connect the two.
After I was ordained, when I thought that I had at last finished going to school, I was immediately assigned to teach in one of our diocesan high schools! And I didn’t know the first thing about teaching.
So that September, feeling like a five-year-old going to school for the first time, I was on the lookout for teachers with a reputation for making learning come alive—hoping I might learn to do the same. One such was Sister Mary Eileen, who taught science.
In those days teachers did a little bit of everything, and one of Sister Mary Eileen’s other jobs was bookkeeping, a job she probably got because she had the gift for making every penny count.
Some of those “pennies” were being wasted by students who left lights burning in empty classrooms at the end of the day. So knowing she would never find out who had left them on, she devised a technique to help everyone learn the cost of electricity.
Whenever the lights were left on, Sister Eileen would go to that classroom. Then, in front of the whole class, she would take the class list, pull a long hatpin out of her sleeve, close her eyes, and take a stab at the list.
To read the rest, go here.
Witnesses to Hope 