Thoughts on hope

Thoughts on patience

Jesus invites us this Sunday to reflect on the patience of God.  God allows weeds to grow up with the wheat.  In that area of the Middle East there exists a type of weed, lolium, which much resembles the wheat plant until the time of harvest.  To pull it out by the roots too early would involve pulling out seedlings of wheat also.  We must wait.

To be patient is not easy for us, especially when we sense something wrong around us.  It is a suffering of sorts, and the word "patience" literally means a "suffering".  But Our God is patient.  As a friend of mine once told me, "God's time is different than ours, and His is usually much slower."   True enough.  We must move only on God's time.  

May we then surrender the mess around us and inside of us to God's patient working.  He takes the broken glass fragments of my life and of our society and is such an artist he can create the most beautiful mosaics in a temple ever, like our Cathedral Basilica.

-Fr. Anthony Wieck, SJ

Thoughts on freedom

We will not appreciate Jesus’ loyalty to the Law and the Prophets if we do not accept his deeper understanding of freedom. I’m afraid that the cry of the French Revolution, “Liberty, equality and fraternity,” has formed us much more than the Jesus Revolution. His cry might instead be “Identity, justice and community.” Think about the difference. We also tend to think of freedom as freedom of movement and the liberty to choose between options. This is surely a good and important freedom. There is no indication that the great spiritual teachers, Jesus included, see it as essential, however. They seem to recognize that the world of preferences and possibilities does not of itself lead to wisdom, truth or even depth of experience. In fact, in the spiritual life the rule seems to be that less is more. There is almost no correlation between the amount of options and the amount of truth or goodness that one attains.

—from Jesus' Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount  by Richard Rohr, OFM

Thoughts on charity

Thoughts on perspective

It’s All How You Look at It

The great conversion in our life is to recognize and believe that the many unexpected events are not just disturbing interruptions in our projects, but the way in which God molds our hearts and prepares us for his return. Our great temptations are boredom and bitterness. When our good plans are interrupted by poor weather, our well-organized careers by illness or bad luck, our peace of mind by inner turmoil, our hope for peace by a new war, our desire for a stable government by a constant changing of the guards, and our desire for immortality by real death, we are tempted to give in to a paralyzing boredom or to strike back in destructive bitterness. But when we believe that patience can make our expectations grow, then fate can be converted into a vocation, wounds into a call for deeper understanding, and sadness into a birthplace of joy. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on family and Independence Day

Prayer on the Fourth of July

Grant us, Lord God, a vision of our country as your love would have it: a country where the weak are protected, and none go hungry or poor; a country where the riches of creation are shared, and everyone can enjoy them; a country where different races and cultures live in harmony and mutual respect; a country where peace is built with justice, and justice is guided by love.

Give us the inspiration and courage to build it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.