Today’s Thoughts: “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”
(Thomas Merton) In today’s first reading Job, the image of the sea in the midst of a storm takes center stage. This image of the sea is important in Israelite history. They were not a sea fairing people. The sea was something to be feared. Yet, as God tells Job today he is the master of the seas. In the middle of a fierce storm, Job has been complaining to God – complaints that God described as Job’s “proud waves.” The overwhelming humbling of Job is the way God brings humility to him: “Here shall your proud waves be stilled!” Very often we have a tendency to blame God for problems and as God points out to Job, it takes honest to goodness humility to realize that God is God. God loves us, this love is often mystery, but it is a love that will calm hearts – but only if we have faith and hope. As the opening line of our first reading tells us, “The Lord addressed Job out of the storm.” It’s easy to feel prayerful and faith filled when all is going well. However, it’s in the middle of the storm where we are most likely to listen to God speaking to us. In our Gospel from Mark today, Jesus and his disciples have gotten into their own storm. While the wave and the wind threatens to swamp the boats, Jesus is calmly sleeping at the back of the boat. Jesus has a calm and a peace we so long for because Jesus lives with faith, hope and trust in the Father. Sometimes we find ourselves in that graced place, feeling cherished and held closely to God’s heart, and we have a sense that there is nothing that we can’t face with that sense of God at our side. Then the crisis is over and our humanity asserts itself again, and we struggle, we fear, and our reliance on God fades. Jesus’ fear filled friends ask a question that is ironic when we know the rest of the story: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus is, in fact, inviting us to die with him. Die to our fears. Die to ourselves. Die to our needs. Die to the past and the future and live in the moment. He’s asking us to be bold and have faith. Once we realize that we don’t need to know precisely what is happening or exactly where we are going. Once we take up the challenges and recognized the possibilities of the moment with faith and hope and really live our lives. We will never really be the same. We can then follow Jesus into the deep waters impelled by his love! The old things have passed away; behold, new things have come,” as St. Paul tells us. Being a disciple means pushing ahead into the newness of each and every moment. Have a blessed, holy and healthy Sunday – and Happy Father’s Day to all fathers!
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Today’s Thoughts: First let me say I am sorry I have been missing since June 15th. I began a retreat for the brothers and priests of the Trinitarian Community Monday evening in Baltimore, MD. In my haste, however, I left home Monday morning without my laptop, meaning I had no computer all week. The only thing I had was my phone. So, I am sorry to those of you who check in each day to see what I have to say. Being away from my itinerant preaching ministry for a year and a half has made me a little rusty in preparation. But I am back and hopefully will be a little more responsible the next time I hit the road!
So, back to a few thoughts for the day… Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel provides us with a spiritual blueprint for living life. He invites us to disconnect ourselves from the things that the world finds important like material goods and wants, and become more trusting of God, like the birds of the sky and the flowers of the fields. Jesus invites those listening and us to focus on things that really matter and not those that are distractions. Jesus challenges those listening and us to live more simply, less materialistically, and more spiritually. Jesus encourages us to be more faith-filled and less troubled by the things we are powerless to change. In other words, it is not the temporary and fleeting things in life but the consent presence of God that can help us come to the source of real power. It is coming to the realization that we cannot serve two masters. It is making the conscious choice to put God at the center of our life. It is trusting in the reality that when we are weak we are strong. It is not worrying about tomorrow but living today! Have a blessed, holy and healthy Saturday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Given the negativity, anger, misinformation, violence of our world and the bad things that often seem to happen to good people living with a generous and willing heart is not always easy and sometimes is downright frustrating. At least it seems that way to me. I truly want to follow the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel (Matthew 5: 38-42), “Give to the one who asks of you and do not turn your back on the one who wants to borrow.” Yet, time and time again I struggle with the Gospel way that Jesus outlines today.
At times I want justice or maybe more so revenge, yes, I want an eye for an eye. I don’t like to get hit at all and I certainly don’t want to turn the other cheek. I am happy at times to go the extra mile but not always. You can have my jacket or coat as long as it is an old one and I have another. And it seems at times there are people on every street corner and subway stop if I give to everyone I will be broke within a day! Yes, often I fail when it comes to Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel and that bothers me! How can I be a person of faith, how can I be a Christian, a Catholic and fall so short? Jesus’ words are haunting words today and I have no answers. Sure, I have often rationalized – I can’t give to everyone; the money will surely be used for drugs or drink; they got what they deserved; somebody has to teach them a lesson; it’s too cold; I don’t have time; somebody else will help them; and on and on! But Jesus doesn’t give conditions or excuses he just says offer no resistance, turn the other cheek, give your coat, go the extra mile and don’t turn your back! So, I am still faced with my imperfection, I am still face with how to act and live. I have no intelligent answer, no sage wisdom of many years. All I can say is that it is perhaps good to pause and listen to or read Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel today knowing that we are not perfect but also reminding ourselves that there is still much to learn, much to do. Perhaps, Jesus’ words make sure that we see the world around us and that we don’t close our eyes to it! Have a blessed, holy, and healthy Monday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: In our Gospel today, Jesus is taking some time to prepare his disciples, and us, for the journey ahead. God's reign, God’s kingdom, Jesus explains, is not the way the disciples or we think of kingdom, reign and power.
It is like the farmer who sows seed, but doesn't really know how they grow, even with the right combination of sun, rain and good soil. It just grows. And, it's like a mustard seed which is not very impressive or powerful looking. The results, however, are wonderful. Jesus’ teaching is not to oversimplify our relationship with God by saying, "God will make everything the way we want it to be, and now." No, each of us knows moments of sadness when something did not work well in our life, or perhaps when a few things did not work well or are not working well now. Difficult, and challenging moments, that have made it hard to have hope. Moments and experiences that tempt us to lose courage, to be discouraged, so much that we can't imagine that God is here or that God is able to bring saving grace into our situation. We don't know, can't foresee, how there can be light anywhere in this darkness, or how this loss, this death, this struggle, this difficulty can result in life. However, as Paul reminds us we “walk by faith not by sight.” We are to see things through the eye, the lens, the filter of faith. Jesus’ parables or images in our Gospel today are asking us to see things differently. His images of the reign of God are asking us to be faithful companions on the journey. Have a blessed, holy, and healthy Sunday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Today we celebrate the second half of the Church’s focus on the heart. Yesterday we celebrated the Sacred Heart of Jesus and today it is Mary’s Immaculate Heart that we honor. There are many things we can say about Mary’s heart but the virtue that stands out most to me about Mary is strength. I think Mary’s heart was truly a heart of strength.
In the Gospel today, Luke tells us that Mary kept all the experience of Jesus in her heart. She kept the joys and sorrows, the miracles and the opposition, the quiet moments and the great crowds, the mother and father moments of family and the community moments of discipleship. Mary kept the triumphant moments of shepherds, angels, kings and palms and failing moments of whips, nails, wooden crosses and death on a hill. Yes, Mary kept all things in her heart, so she needed a very strong heart to hold all the experiences of life that she encountered from early on. Mary was truly a woman, a mother of great strength, a strength that came from and was nourished, feed and supposed by her heart. The heart is central to who we are as a human being. Whether we are speaking about our physical, emotion or spiritual life the heart plays a central role in how we live our life. Mary’s heart was a heart of strength carrying the grace of God’s presence in her life. Her strength enabled her to say “yes” to God and then watch as that “yes” unfolded in the life, passion, death and resurrection of her son, Jesus. Mary, woman of strength, hold us in your heart that we too may be strong in living our journey of life! Have a blessed, holy, and healthy Saturday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: Our focus today is the “heart,” the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The heart is the center of who we are, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is the place where we often think of God’s presence within us.
Think for a moment, in a physical way the heart is the center of who we are. It is the pump that pushes life through us. Without it we can do nothing. All our other organs, muscles, bones, and assorted other things are important, but it is the heart that keeps us alive that makes everything we do, say, and feel possible. Emotionally the heart is central to what we feel. It is the home of the emotions. On February 14th we do not receive or send a card with a gallbladder on the front that says, “I love you!” No, we send or receive a card with a heart on the front. The heart is the place of feelings and emotions. If we were to write a song, a poem, or a story about love we would talk about the heart. A broken heart means we have lost at or been hurt by love. In a spiritual way the heart is important too. The heart in a spiritual sense is the dwelling place of God. In the Old Testament, the psalmists and prophets talked about the community or individual who was without God as having a stony heart. A stony heart has no room for God, is closed to the presence of God. So, we might say the heart sits at the center of who we are as human beings. Today’s feast reminds us of just how important the heart is to us. Jesus’ heart led him through his journey of life. Jesus’ Sacred Heart teaches us about love. It is a heart full of the kind of love and mercy that leaves no one behind. Jesus’ Sacred Heart enables him to be the Shepherd in the Gospel today who goes in search of everyone who is lost. Sometimes this love and mercy seem foolish to us but not in the eyes and heart of Jesus. Every person is valuable, ever person is important; every person is worth searching for. Now this does not mean that everyone will be found because some of us do not want to be found and some of us even when found do not want to return. But the love of Jesus’ Sacred Heart will always look, will always search, and will always wait. This Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is about love, but it is also about hope; the hope that God is always searching, looking, and waiting for us because we are that special, that important. The question for today is, “Can we believe in our value, can we believe in our specialness, can we believe in God’s love for us, can we hope in the fact that God will find us and through his mercy bring us home?” Have a blessed, holy, and healthy Friday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: I ran across a quote by David Benner the author of Healing Emotional Wounds, “Forgiveness…is letting go – letting go of the anger, letting go of the right to retaliate, and letting go of the right to savour any of the emotional consequences of the hurt."
I have always reflected with people who were struggling with forgiveness that forgiveness is about letting go. It is about moving beyond the hurt. Yet often people think that forgiveness means forgetting. The wisdom in Brenner’s reflection is that he is not saying that we forget that we let go of the experience itself but that we let go of the human effects of being hurt that can often paralyze us. Perhaps said another way we need to let go so we can get beyond being a victim. I think this is what Jesus is getting at in the God today (Matthew 5:20-26). In order for the commandment of love, which we reflected on yesterday, to fully be part of our life we have to let go of the anger, retaliation and the victimization that being hurt can often bring about. Jesus talks about taking the high road. Jesus speaks about being the bigger person. Jesus teaches us the importance and power of love. However, there is one thing we always need to remember none of this is easy and sometimes taking the high road, being the bigger person, living by love can open us up to be hurt once again. It can also mean being rejected. The commandment of love requires that we be forgiving people, to seek forgiveness and to offer forgiveness whether it is successful or not. So, we pray for the strength and the grace to be people willing to seek forgiveness and be forgiving! Have a blessed. holy, and healthy Thursday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: After reading today’s Gospel (Matthew 5:17-19) one might ask the question, “What law is Jesus speaking about?” At first glance we might be tempted to say that Jesus was about abolishing the law rather than fulfilling it. His life and ministry often seemed to challenge Jewish law rather than support it or fulfill it.
However, we might think about a conversation Jesus had with a scribe in Mark 12:28-34, the scribe asked Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus’ responds “to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself, these are the two great commandments.” Now, if we think of this conversation considering today’s Gospel then we might begin to have a real understanding of what law Jesus is talking about. All of law flows from these two great commandments, love of God and neighbor. Jesus’ life was about fulfilling these commandments, his life, his actions, his teaching and his ministry all centered on living a life in love of God and others. All that Jesus said and did was to bring fulfillment to the great law of love. Jesus showed us the way to fulfill the law, to change the world. Thus, the challenge for us in today’s Gospel is about how we live our life. Do we live our life to help bring fulfillment to the law of love? Do we live life loving God, others and ourselves? Have a blessed, holy, and healthy Wednesday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: In Matthew Jesus uses the wonderful example of salt and light in asking the disciples, in asking us to reflect on our lives. I have often preached on this Gospel using the image not of the Sermon on the Mount but of Jesus talking with his disciples one evening as they rested at an inn. They have traveled with him and Jerusalem in not far away and Jesus isn’t sure that they are ready for what is ahead, he isn’t sure their answer is “yes.” How can he help them trust in their relationship?
Then an idea comes to mind. He calls them together. Before he speaks he looks at each one of them and then says, “You are the salt of the earth! But what if salt loses it flavor? What is then good for?” Then he looks at each of them intently again and says. “You are the light of the world! People don’t put a lamp under a bushel basket, they put it on a stand so that it gives light to the whole room. In the same way your light must shine, your flavor must be tasted!” Now I know I am being a bit free and easy with Jesus’ words, but the point is that in order for us to say “yes” to God we need to trust in the gifts and talents God has given us. We need to realize that we have something to offer no matter how ordinary our gifts, abilities and talents seem. Salt and light were everyday staples of life, yet as Jesus tells us they were also very valuable and so are we. However, it is up to us. We can hide our light, we can lose our flavor, or we can give light to the whole room and add flavor to life! Perhaps the first place to start is to begin our day asking God to let his face shine upon us so that our flavor isn’t lost and our light shines! Have a blessed, holy, and healthy Tuesday everyone! Today’s Thoughts: I have a couple of thoughts about the Gospel today (Matthew 5: 1-12). The Beatitudes are one of my favorite Gospels but also one of the most challenging Gospels for me. Often after hearing it proclaimed, I am energized yet also humbled. I am ready to encounter the world, yet I am also ready to head to the confessional. I want to be a true disciple, yet I know I am far from it!
Fr. James Martin, S.J. writes “What does it mean to be poor in spirit?” I must admit I have always struggle with an understanding of this first beatitude. Fr. Martin’s answer, “Poor in Spirit is to know one’s reliance on God, to understand one’s dependence on God and to grasp one’s humanity.” I guess we might say that to be “poor in spirit” is to let go and let God. The other challenge of the beatitudes is that to live fully any one of the beatitudes, you will almost automatically begin to live them all. Perhaps to put it another way, “You can’t live just one!” In order to be a peacemaker, we need to also be meek, merciful, clean of heart, righteous and poor in spirit. In order to be merciful, we need to be clean of heart, meek, poor in spirit, righteous and a peacemaker. They go hand in hand. However, living the beatitudes is not easy because they will make us vulnerable to insult, persecution, and the evils of our world. They will open us up to the insecurities of the world which can be troubling, harsh, insensitive, and hurtful. In other words, living the beatitudes can open us up to be stepped on, hurt, and not valued as a person. Living the beatitudes almost always put us in tension with the ways of culture, society, and the world. Yet, during all this Jesus tells us to rejoice and be glad. The challenge of the beatitudes has been going on since the beginning of time. Women and men before us have faced the challenge and their prize, the Kingdom, awaits us. Perhaps all the beatitudes can really be proclaimed and lived in the phrase, “Let go and let God!” Have a blessed, holy, and healthy Monday everyone! |
Fr. Paul R. Fagan, C.P. "Preacher on the Run"Just a few thoughts to help you on your journey through life...let me know from time to time what you think... Archives
May 2023
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