Thoughts on prayer

 

Open Yourself to God

To pray means to open your hands before God. It means slowly relaxing the tension that squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive. Above all, prayer is a way of life that allows you to find stillness in the midst of the world where you open your hands to God’s promises and find hope for yourself, your neighbor, and your world. In prayer, you encounter God not only in the small voice and the soft breeze, but also in the midst of the turmoil of the world, in the distress and joy of your neighbor, and in the loneliness of your own heart. Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life that gives you freedom to go and to stay where you wish, to find the many signs that point out the way to a new land. Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in a time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday mornings or mealtimes. Praying is living. It is eating and drinking, acting and resting, teaching and learning, playing and working. Praying pervades every aspect of our lives. It is the unceasing recognition that God is wherever we are, always inviting us to come closer and to celebrate the divine gift of being alive. In the end, a life of prayer is a life with open hands—a life where we need not be ashamed of our weaknesses but realize that it is more perfect for us to be led by the Other than to try to hold everything in our own hands. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on produce

 Bearing Fruit

In Sunday's Gospel Jesus uses a grape vine and its fruit to teach about his relationship with his Father and ours with him. The sap flows from the vine through the branches and produces grapes. God's very life which is Love flows through Christ and into us, his fruit. His command to us who follow him is to love one another and thereby produce more fruit. Ignatius reminds us that true love shows itself in deeds rather than words. Our goal is to love the other into the best version of themself. That's the vocation of a spouse, a parent, a relative, a neighbor, a true friend. It's usually not in the big ways but the small everyday ones: a smile and a greeting, an awareness of and focus on the other, an act of kindness, a loving and reassuring touch, an apology and forgiveness. That's how the Lord treats us; let us bear that same fruit.

Fr. Ralph Huse, S.J.

Thoughts on contemplative prayer

 

Stay Awake

The practice of contemplative prayer is the discipline by which we begin to “see” the living God dwelling in our own hearts. Careful attentiveness to the One who makes a home in the privileged center of our being gradually leads to recognition. As we come to know and love the Father of our hearts we give ourselves over to this incredible Presence who takes possession of all our senses. By the discipline of prayer we are awakened and opened to God within, who enters into our heartbeat and our breathing, into our thoughts and emotions, our hearing, seeing, touching, and tasting. It is by being awake to this God within that we also find the Presence in the world around us. Here we are again in front of the secret. It is not that we see God in the world, but that God-with-us recognizes God in the world. God speaks to God, Spirit speaks to Spirit, heart speaks to heart. Contemplation, therefore, is a participating in the divine self-recognition. The divine Spirit alive in us makes our world transparent for us and opens our eyes to the presence of the divine Spirit in all that surrounds us. It is with our heart of hearts that we see the heart of the world. . . . Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on faith

 

Trust Unreservedly That You Are Loved

The word faith is often understood as accepting something you can’t understand. People often say: “Such and such can’t be explained, you simply have to believe it.” However, when Jesus talks about faith, he means first of all to trust unreservedly that you are loved, so that you can abandon every false way of obtaining love. That’s why Jesus tells Nicodemus that, through faith in the descending love of God, we will be set free from anxiety and violence and will find eternal life. It’s a question here of trusting in God’s love. The Greek word for faith is pistis, which means, literally, “trust.” Whenever Jesus says to people he has healed: “Your faith has saved you,” he is saying that they have found new life because they have surrendered in complete trust to the love of God revealed in him. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on the Risen Lord

 The Risen Lord

    Ignatius notes that the Risen Jesus plays a particular role; he is the Lord as Consoler appearing to his friends and followers with the message of peace and hope. In Sunday's Gospel Jesus comes to his apostles to reassure them that he is no longer dead but fully alive. His resurrection reveals that love is stronger than death. Jesus had endured and embraced his death with love, mercy and compassion and has transformed it into passage into the fullness of the Father's presence. The Easter mystery is that nothing dies forever and that all that has died will be reborn in love. Jesus teaches us that we shouldn't be afraid of death but embrace it as he did with faith and trust. He is no longer in the tomb but now wherever we are. God is here and Christ is now.

Fr. Ralph Huse, S.J.

Thoughts on pain

 

Distinguish Your Pain from the Pain of Others

There is a real pain in your heart, a pain that truly belongs to you. You know now that you cannot avoid, ignore, or repress it. It is this pain that reveals to you how you are called to live in solidarity with the broken human race.  You must distinguish carefully, however, between your pain and the pains that have attached themselves to it but are not truly yours. When you feel rejected, when you think of yourself as a failure and a misfit, you must be careful not to let these feelings and thoughts pierce your heart. You are not a failure or a misfit. Therefore, you have to disown these pains as false. They can paralyze you and prevent you from loving the way you are called to love. It is a struggle to keep distinguishing the real pain from the false pains. But as you are faithful to that struggle, you will see more and more clearly your unique call to love. As you see that call, you will be more and more able to claim your real pain as your unique way to glory. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on self esteem

 

Claim God’s Love for You

For a very long time I considered low self-esteem to be some kind of virtue. I had been warned so often against pride and conceit that I came to consider it a good thing to deprecate myself. But now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on mission

 

Saturday within the Octave of Easter

Mark 16:9–15

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus commissions his disciples to “go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” The Church doesn’t have a mission; the Church is a mission. A passionate Catholicism brings people to Christ, like the four people who lowered the paralytic through the roof to get him to Jesus. An evangelizing Catholicism shouts from the rooftops, grabs people by the lapels, and speaks with urgency and energy about Jesus.  Obviously, this has to be done with great respect and love; but very often, obstacles that come from our “get-along” culture, and perhaps from an exaggerated ecumenism, keep it from getting done at all. We have not been successful in our Christianity unless and until we have brought others to the Lord.  Bishop Robert Barron

Thought on the Apostle Thomas

                 

     Doubting Thomas

The second Sunday of Easter always has the Gospel story of Jesus' appearance to the apostle Thomas.



For some reason he wasn't with the others on Easter when Jesus first came to console them in their grief at His death. They excitedly told Thomas how Jesus had come to them with a greeting of Shalom, Peace, and a blessing of the Holy Spirit. It was just too much for Thomas, too good to be true, to be real. He puts his conditions for faith in words demanding the opportunity to put his finger into the nail holes in Jesus' hands and his hand into the wound in His side. His doubts got him a personal appearance from Jesus. He came back just for Thomas. The Gospel doesn't tell us whether Thomas did as he had demanded but I don't believe he did. He didn't have to. This was clearly Jesus putting himself at Thomas' disposal, treating him with love as He always had. Thomas is overwhelmed and cries out, "My Lord and my God."

    As we age and mature, we too may experience times of doubt, wanting and needing reassurances of the Lord's victory over our sins and death. That's when we can expect a personal appearance as the Lord comes to us in His Eucharist, speaks to us in creation and silence, hugs us with the arms of our loved ones who share our destiny and faith in our loving and merciful Lord and God.

Fr. Ralph Huse, S.J.

Thoughts on the resurrection

 

God’s Faithfulness

The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life’s struggle, nor is it the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the expression of God’s faithfulness to Jesus and to all God’s children. Through the resurrection, God has said to Jesus, “You are indeed my beloved Son, and my love is everlasting,” and to us God has said, “You indeed are my beloved children, and my love is everlasting.” The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost — not even our mortal bodies. The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our curious questions about life after death, such as: How will it be? How will it look? But it does reveal to us that, indeed, love is stronger than death. After that revelation, we must remain silent, leave the whys, wheres, hows, and whens behind, and simply trust. Henri Nouwen