A reflection on the second reading for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Just a short reflection on yesterday’s second reading from James. It struck me as I was reading it that I am that “poor person in shabby clothes”–perhaps not so much exteriorly, but definitely interiorly–but I can have great hope for when I come to Christ’s “assembly”, he will pay attention to me (and to you) and say, “Sit here, please.”
“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature . . . for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance.” (1 Samuel 16.6)
A wonderful poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar (best read aloud . . .):
The Little Black Sheep
Po’ lil’ brack sheep dat strayed away,
Done los’ in de win’ an’ de rain–
An’ de Shepherd He say, “O, hirelin’,
Go fin’ my sheep again.”
An’ de hirelin’ say, “O, Shepherd,
Dat sheep am brack an’ bad.”
But de Shepherd He smile, like dat lil’ brack sheep
Wuz de onliest lamb He had.An’ de Shepherd go out in de darkness
Where de night wuz col’ and’ bleak,
An’ dat lil’ brack sheep, He fin’ it
An’ lay it agains’ His cheek.
An’ de hirelin frown, “O, Shepherd,
Don’ bring dat sheep to me!”
But de Shepherd He smile, an’ He hol’ it close.
An’–dat lil’ brack sheep–wuz–me!
Mary is a shelter for the shelterless.
A quote about Mary, on this Saturday, her day:
“Our Lady’s heart is the most empty of all human hearts, the most empty of self and empty of pride, and therefore the most ready to give a heart’s welcome and shelter to those who are shelterless.” (Fr. Joseph Langford, Mother Teresa in the Shadow of Our Lady, p. 42)
How a little boy loves his dying grandfather.
I am reading through a book by a retired Catholic hospice nurse, Trudy Harris, Glimpses of Heaven. In it she recounts forty-four of her experiences with people she helped during their last days from a six-week old baby to folks in their nineties. Her main focus is on the hope and peace each experienced as they drew nearer to their final moments on this earth. I just wanted to share two short extracts from one story that touched me very much:
Jess, in his early seventies, had been married many times and had children and grandchildren he did not even know. Contacting his youngest daughter, he asked if he could come to her house to die. The daughter he barely knew immediately said yes. There were lessons for all of us to learn. We watched this youngest daughter not only care for her dying father with love and tenderness but also teach her own family, by example, to do the same.
Jess was about to be loved in a way he had never known before and did not believe possible. There were many children in the home, but his six-year-old grandson, John, took charge. Putting a mat on the floor so he could sleep next to Grandpa’s hospital bed and using a clothesline as a make-believe door, he transformed the family room into Grandpa’s new bedroom. John seldom left Jess’s side, and if and when he had to be away from the house, he would always run first thing to check on Grandpa when he got home.
Each day, John would sit close to Grandpa’s bed, touching him gently and watching TV with him. Slowly but surely, Jess’s life was ebbing away, but not before finding the unconditional, all-forgiving love he had been seeking his entire life. He found it all through John.
“How does he feel?” John asked moments after Grandpa died.
“You can touch him if you want to,” I said as he reached out gently to feel his grandpa’s face.
“What is in his eyes?” he asked.
“You can open them up and look to see if you want to,” I said.
Slowly, John lifted himself up onto the bed, and opening Grandpa’s eyes he said, “I think he sees Jesus!” This seemed very natural to one so young and untouched by the world’s need to interpret everything. Grandpa was in heaven now, and it made good sense to John that he was looking at Jesus. Out of the mouths of babes oftentimes come gems.
Seeing that John was not yet ready to leave and wanted to spend more time with Grandpa, we left the room and closed the curtain, separating him from the rest of the house. About fifteen minutes later when I had completed all the funeral arrangements, I peeked around the clothesline that was his door, and there on top of the bed was little John, straddling his grandpa, with arms wrapped around his rotund belly, sound asleep.
“Have you noticed that, from the place where you stand, there is always a shining way on the water, in the sunrise or sunset, or in moonlight, or when a bright planet like Venus is rising or setting?” (Amy Carmichael)
Continued from yesterday:
How can we reach the place where we can say “More than”?
Have you noticed that, from the place where you stand, there is always a shining way on the water, in the sunrise or sunset, or in moonlight, or when a bright planet like Venus is rising or setting? There may be a hundred people on the shore, and yet each one sees that path beginning just where he or she stands. I shall never forget my astonishment when I saw this for the first time.
It is like that with the Bible. Wherever you are reading you will find a path that leads you from that place straight to the heart of God, and the desires of God.
Perhaps some are puzzled about the path which I said leads straight from whatever part of the Bible you are reading, to the heart of God, just as the shining path on the water leads from the place where your feet are standing across to the other side.
I was reading the Psalms, especially Psalms 3 and 4, when I wrote that, so I will take these as our starting point–the place on the shore where we are standing.
In both psalms there is that clear honesty in prayer that we find in all Bible prayers. David was not thinking of making the kind of prayer people would talk about, and call beautiful or earnest or anything of that sort. He was keen to tell his God the truth about things, as far as he knew it, even about the miserable noise of words [Ps 3.2; Ps 4.2, 6]–a thing that very advanced Christians would have told him he really ought not to mind at all. Then there was a restful committal of things in general and all that unkind talk in particular, and then the will to trust and not be afraid; and as the fears rolled up, prayer again, honest prayer.
I want to remind myself and you that we never get anywhere if we only look at the shining path. These notes will have been entirely useless if they have not helped to bring us to the place where our happiness does not depend on the work we are doing, the place we are in, our friends, our health, whether people notice us or not, praise us or not, understand us or not. No single one of the circumstances has any power itself to upset the joy of God, but it can instantly and utterly quench it if we look at the circumstances instead of up into the Face of light and love that is looking down upon us–the Face of our own God.
This is the shining path, stretching away from the place were we stand today to the very heart of God. This is the shining path that shineth more and more as we walk into it.
Let us ask God to show us the shining paths in our lives today and to give us the grace to look up from them to His Face of love that is looking down upon us today, in this moment.
Well, no one has told me that they’re tired of my Amy Carmichael quotes (or maybe you’re all just being nice to me), so I’m going to share a couple more today and tomorrow. They tie in nicely with yesterday’s post, “Being honest with God.”
Ps 4.7 Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.
Psalms 3 and 4 were written when David fled from [his son] Absalom [cf. 2 Sam 13ff]; and if, as some think, Psalm 4 was written at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, the harvest and the vintage were over, and the rich stores of corn and new wine were at Absalom’s disposal, while David had nothing or very little. It was in every way a hard time for David, and it was not surprising that many said there was “no help for him in God” and “Who will show us any good?” We all know times of trial when the voices within and without talk like that. But David’s faith breaks through, and he can honestly say, Though hast put gladness in my heart more than when corn and wine increased. It is not difficult to have gladness in our hearts when we have what we want–corn and wine may stand for whatever we most enjoy doing or possessing–but God asks for something far more than this. He wants what David offered Him when he wrote those words more than.
What David offered to his God was a heart that was utterly satisfied with His will. There were no private reservations, no little whispered “if”–if only I can be where I want to be, and have what I want to have, then there will be gladness in my heart, O God; he did not say that–he did not even say, By Thy grace I am glad, I am as glad as I should be if I had those stores of corn and wine. He went further, he flew right out of all the restricting thoughts that might have caged his spirit, up and up into the free air of God, and he said, Thou hast put a new kind of gladness in my heart. It does not depend on what I have, it is more than that sort of gladness. It is a joy that is entirely independent of circumstances.
To be continued tomorrow . . .
If you can’t be honest with God, how can you truly be honest with yourself?
I was just conversing with Diane H. re: the post, “This God–His Way is Perfect.” (See comments on that post.) This morning the Scripture reading for the Office of Readings was Jeremiah 20:7-18, a long passage which I will not quote in its entirety here. It starts with:
You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day long I am an object of laughter;
everyone mocks me. . . .
The word of the Lord has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.
An honest statement if ever I’ve heard one. Jeremiah, of all the prophets, lived a life of great foreshadowing of the Suffering Savior. Not just his words, but his very life was an icon of Christ in His suffering. And, as we read here, he was obviously very honest with God.
Then, in this passage, he continues to speak with honesty:
But the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion:
my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph . . .
Sing to the Lord,
praise the Lord,
For he has rescued the life of the poor
from the power of the wicked!
Jeremiah was able to rise above his experience at the moment to proclaim what is true–and honest–despite his circumstances. A few verses later, we find him again crying out to the Lord, telling it like it is:
Cursed be the day
on which I was born! . . .
Why did I come forth from the womb,
to see sorrow and pain,
to end my days in shame?
I couldn’t help thinking of Jesus’ own struggle in the Garden and His honesty with His Father at that time. If you can’t be honest with God, how can you truly be honest with yourself? Jeremiah was working through his circumstances, looking for God’s perspective, and that requires complete honesty. It takes a lot of trust to be completely honest with God.
It bothered me for months that the body of my brother had not been found until ten days after he died.
This morning I was remembering a story I first heard about three years ago. It was told by Fr. Basil Nortz during a series of talks about the angels that we have on CD. The story was told to him by another priest and goes something like this: The priest’s mother died suddenly and unexpectedly one day, collapsing on the street after coming out of a store in which she had been shopping. The priest, upon hearing about her death, was able to accept it in peace, except for one fact: that she had died so publicly on the street, a public spectacle–his mother was a very private person and would never have wanted to have died in such a public manner. This was very disturbing to him. Why did God allow such a thing to happen?
A few weeks after the funeral, he happened to be in the neighborhood of the store and stopped in. The woman who worked there knew him and asked how he was doing. He relayed his concern about the circumstances of his mother’s death. She said, “Did no one tell you?” Apparently a young man who had been present came up almost immediately, put his coat around her, and held her in her arms until the EMT folks arrived. The young man helped her into the vehicle and then took his coat. The priest was so relieved that the young man had been with her, and, of course, wanted to know who he was so he could thank him. The woman did not know, nor did others that had been present at his mother’s death. Still he wanted to find him and thank him.
Sometime later when the priest was praying, he heard a very distinct voice: “I am the one you are looking for. I am the guardian angel of your mother.” He realized that the Lord had allowed his mother’s guardian angel to appear in bodily form in order to protect his mother, even after she had died.
The reason I share that story is very personal. As some of you know, my brother, Tim, took his life in March of 2006. I experienced God’s presence and comfort in untellable ways during those first few days after he died. But like the priest in the story, in the midst of my grief something continued to disturb me. My brother died on March 17, but his body was not found until ten days later, and that bothered me–that he was alone for those long ten days, and that haunted me for many months. Until I heard Fr. Basil’s story. As soon as he recounted the part where the priest heard the voice saying: “I am the one you are looking for. . .”, I began to weep because I knew the same was true for my brother–that his guardian angel had not left him alone during those ten days. God’s mercy is so great. “If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! . . . Even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me” (Ps 139.8,10).
That is the heart of Christ for us and for all those we love. He will not leave us alone.
I don’t know why that story came to mind this morning. Perhaps one of you really need to hear it . . .
“Will not the end explain the crossed endeavor?” (Amy Carmichael)
Will not the end explain
The crossed endeavor, earnest purpose foiled,
The strange bewilderment of good work spoiled,
The clinging weariness, the inward strain,
Will not the end explain?
Meanwhile He comforteth
Them that are losing patience. ‘Tis His way:
But none can write the words they hear Him say
For men to read, only they know He saith
Sweet words and comforteth.
Not that He doth explain
The mystery that baffleth; but a sense
Husheth the quiet heart, that far, far hence
Lieth a field set thick with golden grain,
Wetted in seedling days by many a rain:
The end–it will explain.
~Amy Carmichael
I read this piece by Amy Carmichael this morning. Sometimes her language can feel a bit stilted, but it’s always worth it to me to plow through. This one is on an obscure–at least, I would consider it obscure–passage in Zechariah, chapter 1, verses 18-21. Here are verses 18-19: “And I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, four horns! And I said to the angel who talked with me, ‘What are these?’ And he answered me, ‘These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.'”
Amy comments:
“I see such difficulties, I hardly know how to go on.” Most of us have said this, or felt it, at one time or another. We have it here: “I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and behold four horns.” “I saw . . . four horns’–those powers that scatter and shatter and spoil, the cruel powers that blast good work, and discourage souls, ‘so that no man did lift up his head”–“I saw” them. [The Scripture passage continues:] “And the Lord showed me four carpenters”–those powers that put right what is wrong, that frighten away, terrify the evil powers–“the Lord showed me” them.
We see the horns ourselves, but until the Lord opens our eyes we do not see the carpenters, and yet they are as truly present as the horns.
“All power is given to Me in Heaven and in earth . . . .and lo, I am with you always” [Mt 28:18,20]–“all the days and all the day long.” “Is this not the Carpenter?” [Mk 6.3]
“Is this not the Carpenter?” . . .
