So, hi... I guess it has been quiet here lately. My problem with posting is that I'm overwhelmed with this 'noisy world' in general and so why contribute to it with a post? I guess I just feel like there are so many words in this world -too many words. And what people actually need is silence. I wish there was a way to blog silence. Words -any words -especially important words -can only be heard if they are surrounded by silence. If they are just surrounded by other people's words then what is important gets lost. So I guess my contribution to the world is silent love. It just makes for a very boring post.
Its not that I have not thought of posting anything here in the past week (or more). I've had lots of ideas run through my little mind. But I'm sure there are books that are better written and talks that are better given than anything little 'ol Mary would have to say -so I just think my thoughts and keep them in silence. As soon as I try to open them -they just get gobbled up by the noise in this world. At least in silence I can think about them with God.
There actually were a few Sundays here when I felt on fire to write something about the Readings from Mass. But I hesitated and time just got away from me and I thought -who is going to take the time to stop long enough to find the stillness and silence of heart to actually hear and get what I wanted to share? Everyone in America is so busy... everyone in the world is so busy. Sometimes I think God gets lonely -I mean, I know He's the Trinity so He's never alone -but sometimes I wonder if He misses us as we run around doing so much for Him and speaking so much for Him -I wonder if He would rather we'd sit with Him a while instead. I don't know.
Anyway, with Bobby's 'poke' to get someone to write something -I'll share what I've been thinking. But feel free to skip it if you're not in the mood. This is just what has been occupying my thoughts and time lately:
September 6th -23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Thus says the LORD: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God… He comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared…” (Isaiah 35:4-7)
“Jesus took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man’s ears and spitting, touched his tongue; then He looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ that is, ‘Be opened!’” (Mark 7)
How many of us would love to hear these words as a voice from heaven speaking to us? “Be not afraid… Be healed… Be opened… God will save you” no matter what your personal present struggles are? And yet, God IS speaking these words to us directly -through these readings. Of course He does not save us from suffering –instead He teaches us to love and therefore fills our suffering with His strength, His healing, His transformation. Not everyone has a physical sickness (even if all feel a tinge of the swine flu these days) –but all of us have some sin rooted in us that keeps us prisoner –keeps us deaf and dumb and afraid and needing a Savior to help us.
September 13th -24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
The first words of the First Reading pick up from where we left off the week before:
“The Lord God opens my ear that I may hear…”
God wants us healed and opened to His Love, but it is so that we can imitate it. What does it look like? Jesus crucified…
“I have not rebelled, have not turned back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.” (Isaiah 50)
We don’t always want to trust Him and follow Him down Calvary’s road because we still think like the world –as Peter does in the Gospel –yet Jesus corrects his fault as a temptation of the devil calling him to ‘think as God’. He calls us to do that as well. And ‘thinking like God’ is only possible if we stop and shut up long enough to hear His Spirit teach our minds and hearts this new way of thinking. Even though we will be called to “deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him” –to truly “lose our lives” as He calls us to do in the Gospel (Mk 8), He promises to help us: “The Lord God is my help… He is near who upholds me.” We just have to let Him help us.
September 20th -25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Let us beset the just one, because He is obnoxious to us… with revilement and torture let us put the just one to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience!” (Wisdom 2) When people hear this there is a temptation to immediately think –‘oh yes, I’m so just and so persecuted!’ But how humbling when we think of how Christ suffered these words. He is patience, gentleness, love… and when we compare our day to day attempts to His perfection of virtue, we begin to see how maybe we need to be corrected by St. James (in the Second Reading) and instead search out our own sin of ‘jealousy or selfish ambition’, asking Jesus to replace it with ‘the wisdom of above which is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity… always cultivating peace.”(James 3-4) All we need to be like Him is to ask for the grace of His Love –and this Love will help us imitate Him unto suffering and death, being a humble child in this world and the servant of all. (Mk 9:30-37)
September 27th -26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
All the readings talk about jealousy, the selfishness of excess riches and not truly caring for the poor –condemning using one’s life to live in luxury and pleasure instead of ‘helping the little ones…’ –we all could find little pieces of the dust of such sins in our hearts –and Jesus wants us to rip it out.
October 4th -27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
This was the best! Yes, very beautiful readings about the vocation of marriage… but I took it a level deeper as God speaking of His Love relationship with Humanity –especially the Church. I see it in a very personal way –although this personal aspect is repeated over and over in a unique way in the relationship Jesus shares with each member of His Church. The Father ‘cast a deep sleep’ of death upon Jesus on the Cross and from His side, His Heart –the Church was build up. I think of how the Father recreated me to be Jesus’ beloved through my Baptism, through Confession and Communion with Him in the Eucharist –re-creating me from Jesus’ crucified side. And then I am given back to Him and what does He say, “This one at last is bone of My Bone and flesh of My Flesh!” These words are repeated each time we are united in the Eucharist. And then it speaks of how Jesus ‘left His Father’ in heaven so that He could ‘cling to His wife’ –through the Incarnation and through the gift of Himself over and over in the Eucharist. God clings to us through His continual gifts of grace. What an amazing thought! And because of His great Love, He is not afraid to become poor and naked like us (as He was on the Cross) –and therefore I should never ‘hide’ from Him, I should always be willing to be ‘naked’ before Him without shame. For His presence is purity and love.
The Second Reading says that Jesus ‘brought His children to glory… and consecrates them’ through ‘being perfected by suffering.’ (Hebrews 2:9-11) The Cross is the deepest way Jesus could unite with us –and it is the deepest way we can unite with (and cling) to Him.
The Gospel speaks again of how ‘the two become one flesh’ –we unite as such with Jesus in the Eucharist –and ‘what God has joined together, no man must separate.’ We must never allow anyone (or anyone’s opinion) to separate us from Jesus –to whom the Father has united us through the Sacraments and Grace. Each time we sin, we are ‘trying to separate ourselves’ from this unfathomable gift of union with Him. So we must truly recognize the gift we are offered in a marriage union of love with God, and strive never to break this union of grace.
And Jesus at the end of the Gospel makes it easy for us to do all this -He gives us a ‘key’ to help us know how to stay united with Him in spousal love –it is littleness –the life of a child. Yes, we are called to spousal union with God, but it is so pure, so humble, so trusting –that it is living fully as His littlest child as well. Now that is not so complicated or difficult...
October 11th -28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
The First Reading says we should ‘desire Wisdom more than beauty, more than health, more than light.’ Wisdom is the fullness of God’s Spirit of Love living in our soul. It is a ‘listening heart’ –empty and ready to embrace whatever God places in one’s life in thankfulness and trust. Who really in this world is willing to give up beauty or health or the pleasure of feeling ‘spiritual interior light’ in order to gain Wisdom, which is the very presence of God living in the soul in darkness? Not many.
And yet we are called to do this… to allow this ‘word of God’ to be ‘sharper than a sword’ cutting us ‘naked and exposed before the eyes of Him to Whom we must render an account’ (Hebrews 4)–so that He can place His Wisdom in us. We must be like the ‘Rich Young Man’ of the Gospel –willing to give up everything for God –in the way in which He calls each of us to do it in our different vocations. And giving up ‘beauty,’ ‘health,’ ‘spiritual light,’ or ‘wealth,’ or ‘respect,’ etc… is easy if we look to Jesus who is ‘looking at us with Love’ as He looked on the Rich Young Man. His look of Love is enough to transform us, guide us, fill us. But where are we looking…?
October 18th is about the Cross again and our call to share with Him in it…
I could keep going, but I suppose this is enough to keep you all busy reading all week.
This is why I don’t post more. I’m thinking about this. I’m hearing Him question me in Scripture and I’m trying to answer as He speaks.
Now aren’t you glad I don’t post more often?
Wouldn’t it have been easier for Bobby to just put a funny video on?