Thoughts on evangelization

 

Listen to the Voice of Love

From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

As a reaction to a very aggressive, manipulative, and often degrading type of evangelization, we sometimes have become hesitant to make our own religious convictions known, thereby losing our sense of witness. Although at times it seems better to deepen our own commitments than to evangelize others, it belongs to the core of Christian spirituality to reach out to the other with good news, and to speak without embarrassment about  what we “have heard and … seen with our own eyes…. Watched and touched with our hands”(1 John 1:1).

Reflection Question: When was the last time you had the opportunity to reach out to the other with good news?

“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”   - 1 John 1: 1-3

Thoughts on MLK

 

MLK

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thunder cloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on him
So let it be
So let it be

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him

Bono - U2
from The Unforgettable Fire album released in 1984

Even more thoughts on baptism

 

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

John 1:29–34

Friends, in our Gospel today, John the Baptist gives witness to the role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’s baptism. Baptism is the moment when the Holy Spirit draws us out of this fallen world and into a new world. And with this in mind, we can understand the relationship between baptism and the other sacraments. Baptism is birth in the spiritual order, the beginning of a properly spiritual life. The other sacraments represent specifications of that life. For instance, a living thing needs to be nourished. This is the role that the Eucharist plays. But do you see why only baptized people can receive the Eucharist? If you’re not alive, there is no point in feeding you. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the liturgical year

Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord: just as we recover from Thanksgiving, the seasons, feast days, and mysteries follow one another in rapid succession. As the old year gives way to the new, the Church directs our attention to another calendar – the liturgical year – her own cycle of time that sanctifies and gives meaning to our daily lives, already ordered by the cosmic and civic rhythms of time. The seasons and feast days of the liturgical year shape our minds and hearts according to the Christian mysteries and thus help us live the faith with greater focus and interior devotion.

Saint John the Baptist also orients us and focuses our attention, pointing us to the very Heart of the world. When the Baptist proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” he directs us to follow Jesus, the Crucified Lamb, whose side is pierced and through whom God saves his people. To follow Christ Jesus, to be his disciple, is both gift and vocation: a gift given at Baptism, and a call, in the words of Saint Paul, “to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Our growth in holiness is largely a matter of how we use our time – how we inhabit our days. To offer our weeks and days to God, indeed all our activities, is to sanctify time itself. To unite our daily prayers, works, joys, and sufferings to the Heart of Christ and to his intentions is to draw closer to his pierced Heart. This self-offering allows him to shape and form our hearts, making us holy with all the saints before the face of his heavenly Father.

In Christ,



Fr. Hermes 

Thoughts on healing

 

First Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 1:29–39

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals many of the townspeople of Capernaum. His healing of physical ailments points to his spiritual healing—to his being the doctor of the soul. The Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus’s healing encounters with those whose spiritual energies are unable to flow. Much of Jesus’s ministry consisted in teaching people how to see (the kingdom of God), how to hear (the voice of the Spirit), how to walk (overcoming the paralysis of the heart), and how to be free of themselves so as to discover God. Jesus was referred to in the early Church as the Savior (Salvator in Latin). The term speaks of the one who brings healing—indeed, our word salve is closely related to salvus, meaning health. When the soul is healthy, it is in a living relationship with God. When the soul is sick, the entire person becomes ill, because all flows from and depends upon the dynamic encounter with the source of being and life who is God. We heal the soul by bringing to bear the salvator, the healer, the one who in his person reconciled us with God and opened the soul to the divine power. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on good intentions

 

Remembering Our Good Intentions

From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

Our heart might desire to help others: to feed the hungry, visit the prisoners and offer a shelter to travelers; but meanwhile, we have surrounded ourselves with a wall of fear and hostile feelings, instinctively avoiding people and places where we might be reminded of our good intentions.

Reflection Question:  What good intentions do you need to act on today?

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”   - James 1: 27

Thoughts on hospitality

 

Restoring Hospitality

From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

If there is any concept worth restoring to its original depth and vocative potential, it is the concept of hospitality. It is one of the richest biblical terms that can deepen and broaden our insight in our relationships to our fellow human beings. Old and New Testament stories not only show how serious our obligation is to welcome the stranger in our home, but they also tell us that guests are carrying precious gifts with them, which they are eager to reveal to a receptive host.

Reflection Question:  Think back to a time when you were blessed by someone you extended hospitality to.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”   - Hebrews 13: 2

More thoughts on baptism

 

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Matthew 3:13–17

Friends, Matthew’s account of Jesus’s baptism points to the significance of this foundational sacrament. Listen to the great theologian Gregory of Nazianzus: “Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . . It is called ‘gift’ because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; ‘grace’ since it is given even to the guilty.” Jesus said, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” Baptism is the sacramental ratification of that choice. And this is why we speak of baptism as justifying us and washing away our sin. We are—all of us—born into a deeply dysfunctional world, a world conditioned by millenia of selfishness, cruelty, injustice, stupidity, and fear. This has created a poisonous atmosphere that conditions all of our thoughts and moves and actions.  Do you see why the stress on grace is so important? Baptism is the moment when the Holy Spirit draws us out of this fallen world and into a new world, the very life of the Trinity. That’s why baptism involves being born again, lifted up, enlightened, transformed, saved—and why the Church speaks of the baptized as a “new creature.”  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on John the Baptist

 

Saturday after Epiphany

John 3:22–30

Friends, today’s Gospel focuses on John the Baptist. I think it’s fair to say that you cannot really understand Jesus without understanding John, which is precisely why all four evangelists tell the story of the Baptist as a kind of overture to the story of Jesus. John did not draw attention to himself. Rather, he presented himself as a preparation, a forerunner, a prophet preparing the way of the Lord. He was summing up much of Israelite history but stressing that this history was open-ended, unfinished. And therefore, how powerful it was when, upon spying Jesus coming to be baptized, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” No first-century Israelite would have missed the meaning of that: Behold the one who has come to be sacrificed. Behold the sacrifice, which will sum up, complete, and perfect the temple. Moreover, behold the Passover lamb, who sums up the whole meaning of that event and brings it to fulfillment. And this is why John says, “He must increase; I must decrease.” In other words, the overture is complete, and now the great opera begins. The preparatory work of Israel is over, and now the Messiah will reign. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Baptism of the Lord

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord brings the Christmas season to a close. It is a true Christmas mystery because it belongs to the larger mystery of Epiphany. Just as the star revealed Christ to the Magi, so too the Lord’s Baptism manifests the Savior to the world. Jesus’ descent into the waters of the Jordan at the age of thirty inaugurates the public mission that began with his humble birth.

At the Jordan, Jesus stands among the multitude – not only of Judea, but of all sinful humanity. John’s baptism is a sign of repentance, calling for conversion and newness of life. Jesus submits not out of his own need, but in humility and solidarity. From the cave of Bethlehem to the river Jordan, he stands where humanity stands, bearing our burdens of sin.

The descent into the water signifies death: death to sin and life apart from God. Rising from the water signifies forgiveness and the beginning of new life. These signs become fully clear only in light of the Cross and Resurrection. Jesus’ baptism already anticipates the Paschal Mystery, when the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world. In our baptism, we confess our sins and seek freedom; in his baptism, our Lord takes that burden upon himself.

The Father’s voice – “This is my beloved Son” – and the Spirit descending like a dove reveal the mystery in its depth. Baptism opens the way from isolation into communion, drawing the baptized into the life of the Holy Trinity. As Christmas draws to a close, the Baptism of the Lord points us toward Lent and Easter, reminding us that the Child born in the manger leads us into the waters and, through them, into eternal life.


Fr. Richard Hermes, S.J.

Thoughts on solitude

 

Solitude of Heart

From: Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

It is probably difficult, if not impossible, to move from loneliness to solitude without any form of withdrawal from a distracting world…. But the solitude that really counts is the solitude of the heart; it is an inner quality or attitude that does not depend on physical isolation…. It seems more important than ever to stress that solitude is one of the human capacities that can exist, be maintained and developed in the center of a big city, in the middle of a large crowd and in the context of a very active and productive life. A man or woman who has developed this solitude of heart is no longer pulled apart by the most divergent stimuli of the surrounding world but is able to perceive and understand this world from a quiet inner center.

Reflection Question: What is one distraction you will practice withdrawing from today?

“Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God.”   - Luke 6: 12