This is a tremendous story of hope and grace and love: The Story of Ian and Larissa. (Scroll down to see the video.) I’m going to be thinking about it for a long, long time. It’s a story that is worth “going viral.”
Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved
I am the one whom Jesus loves.
The sturdiness of God
From Fr. André Louf:
“The Hebrew word for faith (emûnah) derives from the stem emeth, faithfulness, one of God’s greatest attributes. God is merciful and faithful (hesed we’ emeth, Gen 24.27). We might as well say, tender and tough. For emeth evokes the image of a rock on which we can lean or build. God will not move; we can always count on him. Our faith is a the act of leaning on the toughness or ‘sturdiness’ of God. The liturgical word ‘Amen’ has the same stem. To say ‘Amen’ is above all to believe; it is the act of affirming the sturdiness of God as it comes through to us from his Word or from the person of Jesus. The Apocalypse of John says of Jesus that he is at once amen and pistos — faithful (Rev. 3.14). He is faithful in two directions. It is his privilege boundlessly and, as it were, recklessly to lean against his Father, because he as no other may count on his Father’s power and ‘sturdiness’. Similarly in his relation to us he becomes the eminently sturdy and powerful one against whom we on our part may lean just as recklessly and boundlessly.”
Be reckless today!
“God Speaks in Blue”
Our Sunday-poem today comes from Luci Shaw:
God Speaks in Blue
My friend hands me a gift
from overseas. “Here,” she says.
“For you.” The small packet rustles
with dry particles. Through thin paper
my fingers feel the nubs. I thank her,
turning over the plain brown envelope.
There from the other side a photo–
the vivid, blunt cross of Mecanopsis Betonicifolia,
a Himalayan Blue Poppy–looks at me with
its gold eye, four azure petals blazing.
A blue to color a dream. The blue
of Mary’s mantle according to Raphael.
The blue at the heart of a gas flame, within
an ice cave, one a cerulean door in a white wall
on Santorini, a kind of blue that
catches my heart ajar and blows it wide open.
Dry seeds and a picture, until next spring.
But, oh, if only I could be alive enough
to burn like this flower. If only
I could bloom as blue as this.
A Mary word
A “Mary word” for today, Saturday, her day:
All the sins of your life seem to be rising up against you. Don’t give up hope! On the contrary, call your holy mother Mary, with the faith and abandonment of a child. She will bring peace to your soul. ~St. Josemariá Escrivá
And I did not know it.
In Genesis 28, Jacob, after his dream of the ladder, says a very profound thing: “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” How many of us do not recognize that the Lord is in the very places of our lives. We wonder: “Where are You?” Or we shout: “Where are You?” And like Jacob, we fail to see that He is surely in this place.
In a marvelous little book, Into Your Hands, Father, Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen writes:
“There is not a single moment when God is not communicating himself to us. Most of what occurs in our lives seems to happen accidentally and at random. Now and then God reveals his presence. At times we see the thread and we thank him, but he is always there; everything speaks of him.” There is an unbroken continuity in God’s action. ‘He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep’ (Ps 121.3-4). We sleep for the most part. Yes, our faith sleeps. We do not notice anything extraordinary. In reality, everything is extraordinary.”
May God bless each of you as you go about your extraordinary days!
In my “Dorcee-ness”
The other morning I woke up, got dressed, and went into the chapel. As I started to pray, “Lord, I come to you in my lowliness . . .”, I felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit to pray instead: “Lord, I come to you in my ‘Dorcee-ness.” It was a nudge from the Holy Spirit to me to start thinking less of myself as “Dorcee=lowliness” and more of myself as “Dorcee=lowliness+His child whom He created and loves+all the gifts that God has given me+all that He loves about me.” It’s amazing how just a slight shift in thinking can make a big difference. I have been practicing gratitude for the last year, thanking God for so many things, those that are wonderful and those that are hard. But I guess I haven’t been thanking Him very much for me. And I would guess there are others of you out there who think that same way. Take some time today to come to the Lord in your “Ann-ness” or “Lucy-ness” or “David-ness,” and thank Him for all that you are. Think about who you are as uniquely yourself and the gift that that is to so many others . . .especially Him.
Especially if you’re too busy, read this . . .
A short but to the point post by Ann Voskamp that speaks to those of us who can be too busy to pray: When You Need to Quietly Reflect. (I especially like the Corrie ten Boom quote. . . .)
Being willing to undertake the journey
I am reading a remarkable book by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, a Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible. This volume concerns the book of Genesis and contains many insights and reflections by this wonderful man, such as this one:
Faith is the ability to live with delay without losing trust in the promise; to experience disappointment without losing hope, to know that the road between the real and the ideal is long and yet be willing to undertake the journey. That was Abraham’s and Sarah’s faith, and that of Moses and the prophets and those who came after them. And surely it must be ours. God delivers all He promises, but not always when we expect. . . . To wait without despair, to hope and keep on hoping: that is the faith of Abraham and Sarah’s children, the faith that they themselves lived. And though it was shot through with disappointments, and though they themselves sometimes gave expression to their doubts and fears, it did not prove in vain.”
You do not suffer in vain
For those of you who are suffering . . . even in this Easter season . . . here is a word from John Paul II:
You have not suffered or do not suffer in vain. Pain matures you in spirit, purifies you in heart, gives you a real sense of the world and of life, enriches you with goodness, patience, and endurance, and–hearing the Lord’s promise reecho in your heart: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Mt 5.4)–gives you the sense of deep peace, perfect joy, and happy hope. Succeed, therefore, in giving a Christian value to your suffering, succeed in sanctifying your suffering with constant and generous hope in him who comforts and gives strength. I want you to know that you are not alone, or separated, or abandoned in your Via Crucis; beside you, each one of you, is the Blessed Virgin, who considers you her most beloved children. (Pope John Paul II, Address at Lourdes, France, May 22, 1979)
A place of comfort
A homily on yesterday’s gospel (John 6:16-21) by Fr. Ken McKenna on Jesus coming to the disciples in the storm. A great followup to my talk last Monday at Witnesses to Hope. Click here. (It’s only about 10 minutes long.)
(You can find more of Fr. Ken’s excellent homilies by going to the “Talks” tab above and clicking on “Other Talks”. Then scroll down.)
Witnesses to Hope 