More thoughts on solitude

 

Hear the Voice that Calls You the Beloved

Solitude is listening to the voice that calls you the Beloved. It is being alone with the One who says, “You are my Beloved, I want to be with you. Don’t go running around, don’t start to prove to everybody that you’re beloved. You are already beloved.” That is what God says to us. Solitude is the place where we go in order to hear the truth about ourselves. It asks us to let go of the other ways of proving, which are a lot more satisfying. The voice that calls us the beloved is not the voice that satisfies the senses. That’s what the whole mystical life is about; it is beyond feelings and beyond thoughts. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on solitude

 

Be Alone with God

Solitude and silence can never be separated from the call to unceasing prayer. If solitude were primarily an escape from a busy joy, and silence primarily an escape from a noisy milieu, they could easily become very self-centered forms of asceticism. But solitude and silence are for prayer. The Desert Fathers did not think of solitude as being alone, but as being alone with God. They did not think of silence as not speaking but as listening to God. Solitude and silence are the context within which prayer is practiced. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on the Pentecost

 

Breathing with God

The gift of the Holy Spirit—whom Jesus called the “promise of the Father”—was given to the apostles at Pentecost. And in the miraculous events that accompanied the sending of the Holy Spirit, it became quite clear that the saving action of God would compellingly move forward. Those present in the Upper Room were recreated according to the order of grace to share the life of God, who is love. They were able to, as it were, “breathe with God.” This love poured into their hearts by the Holy Spirit is no mere human sentiment but the indwelling presence of the divine. It courses through them as gently and imperceptibly as the air they breathe. The Holy Spirit is the unseen power that fuels the ministry and activity of the apostles and gives them the courage to speak in Jesus’ name.

— from the book Inspired: The Powerful Presence of the Holy Spirit
by Fr. Gary Caster

Thoughts on community

 

Community is Heart Calling to Heart

Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every other form of community is solitude greeting solitude, spirit speaking to spirit, and heart calling to heart. It is the grateful recognition of God’s call to share life together and the joyful offering of a hospitable space where the re-creating power of God’s Spirit can become manifest. Thus all forms of life together can become ways to reveal to each other the real presence of God in our midst. Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological makeup, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. . . . The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on The Word of God

 

The Word of God Remains Forever

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God remains for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). The Word of God is powerful indeed. Not only the Jesus Prayer but many words from the Scriptures can reshape the inner self. When I take the words that strike me during a service into the day and slowly repeat them while reading or working, more or less chewing on them, they create new life. Sometimes when I wake up during the night I am still saying them, and they become like wings carrying me above the moods and turbulences of the days and weeks. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on the Ascension

 Ascension of the Lord

In Sunday's readings, we hear two versions of the risen Jesus's departure and return to His and our Father. He tells His followers that they are to continue His work, to preach in word and example His Good News that God is our loving and forgiving Father. They are to be His witnesses that the Kingdom of God has been established here and now on our earth.

In the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius has us pray the Meditation on the Two Standards. He encourages us to compare and contrast the instructions that Satan and Jesus speak to their followers. Satan sends out demons and I would expect Jesus to send angels but He doesn't. He sends His disciples, He sends us. Like the apostles at His ascension, He tells us to continue His work, His mission of proclaiming and living out the Kingdom of God in our daily lives. He wants others to recognize Him in us, in our love and compassion, our forgiveness and reconciling, our peacefulness and efforts to foster justice.

Let us take consolation and confidence from Mark's description of their experience: "But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs."

-Fr. Ralph Huse, SJ

Thoughts on prayer

 

Something Has Happened

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you stay with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place. Isn’t this true of all really important events in life? When I am together with someone I love very much, we seldom talk about our relationship. The relationship, in fact, is too central to be a subject of talk. But later, after we have separated and write letters, we realize how much it all meant to us, and we even write about it. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on light

 

Endless Light

It was the light she remembered. Even now, in all this darkness that attends aging, it is the light she remembers. The light. It is without horizons and yet most of the time it seems just beyond the horizon, the invisible presence that though it is inside her, is just beyond the horizon she became when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. It is her hope, this light, especially in the deepest night. The memory of it now as then, just after the angel’s light, the words like the static of lightning disappearing and light remaining like a gentle rain falling, the room as quiet as before, the silence returning as light.

The closeness of the dark night. The memory of yesterday’s dawn making the dark light, the light dark, all because of that other Light out of the invisible, the place of the angel’s arrival and departure.

— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM

Thoughts on St. Joseph

 

St. Joseph the Worker, Pray for Us

While the work of raising a child is not always easy, Joseph’s task was even weightier. Mary and her son didn’t need just any man; they needed this one, the one whom God had chosen for them. Joseph gave himself completely to this holy undertaking. Was he aware of what was taking place? We don’t know. We do know that every opportunity Joseph had to instruct Jesus was an opportunity to grow in the knowledge of God. Imagine being the one to teach the Son of God how to use a hammer or the one to watch anxiously the first time Jesus used a saw. The work in Nazareth, while truly the stuff of ordinary life, was carried out by an extraordinary man. This work wasn’t only for Mary and Jesus but also for all women and men united with God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph continues his work for us in the Church today.

— from the book Joseph, the Man Who Raised Jesus 
by Fr. Gary Caster