Food For The Journey
Paul to the Philippians
If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but [also] everyone for those of others.
Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
"Emmaus Poem"
A strange place to make a new beginning
here
on a dusty road
not leading
much of anywhere
in a time when the ritual seasons
have already turned
and at dusk
almost dark, in fact
what an unsuitable place and time
to begin
And the two of us
plodding along
dull-headed
wet-witted
after three days of regretting
and recounting losses
Our bodies
hobbled and our souls brokered
we moved like confused moths
near an extinguished wick
The fire was gone.
And now we mourned
Was it sorrow
for ourselves or him that we most
valued
The answer?
we may never know
nor does it matter now
We were teachers who planned too closely
parents who engineered the form
We left no room to enjoy the exploration
and the moment of the child
Now in this twilight of being
we were voiceless
Our metaphors and tropes
failed us in this sullen grief
No hope, but God
and to hope in Him
seemed hopeless
missed the opportunity provided
Why would God knock twice
Then, at this point
a stranger
joined us
Did he make a third
or were we still just two?
We were not sure ourselves
but know for certain
when bread was broken
time was fractured, too
And when we rose and left the table
we were different
ourselves yet more than selves
rose up to leave
Bones of fire now support us
so full of love that
it hurts our lungs to breathe
These the bodies
which the third one left us
we dare not guess the features
of our souls
This road to nowhere goes
on forever
out from Emmaus into a waiting world
Who is this that we carry now
in witness
What names does He bear
that we can call Him in the night
It is a secret
But this we share with you
O children
When you see Him
you will recognize the face
Nancy McDonald
"Christ Has No Body"
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)
"All that is necessary is to love and to accept the present moment as the best."
Let us become attuned to that Transcendental Being imparted to all things by divine action. It deserves our attention, and those who heed it with an open heart and with confidence and courage need not fear. For divine action has always been the source from which flows a torrent of grace which spreads over everything. Our lives flow unceasingly in that unknown deep where all that is necessary is to love and to accept the present moment as the best, with perfect trust in God’s universal goodness.
- from SACRAMENT OF THE PRESENT MOMENT by Jean Pierre de Caussade SJ
INSIGHT
The disciples were involved in a heated discussion on the cause of human suffering.
Some said it came from selfishness. Others, from delusion. Yet others, from the inability to distinguish the real from the unreal.
When the Master was consulted, he said, "All suffering comes from a person's inability to sit still and be alone."
- Anthony de Mello, SJ
"The Kingdom"
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
"The Trouble"
Christ came into my room and stood there
And I was bored to death.
I had work to do.
I wouldn’t have minded if he’d been crippled or something
-I do well with cripples-
but he just stood there, all face,
and with that damned guitar.
I didn’t ask him to sit down;
He’d have stayed all day.
Let’s be honest. You can be crucified just so often –
Then you’ve had it.
I mean you’re useless; no good to God,
Let alone to anybody else.
So I said to him after a while,
Well, what’s up? What do you want?
And he laughed, stupid,
Said he was just passing by
And thought he’d say hello.
Great, I said. Hello
So he left.
And I was so mad
I couldn’t even listen to the radio. I went
And got some coffee.
The trouble with Christ is
He always comes at the wrong time.
- John L’Heureux
It is God’s will that we should rejoice with him in our salvation and that we should be cheered and strengthened by it,
He loves us and enjoys us, and so he wills that we love him and enjoy him, and firmly trust him; and all shall be well.
He is quick to clasp us to himself, for we are his joy and his delight, and he is our salvation and our life.
Our lover desires that our soul should cling to him with all its might, and that we should ever hold fast to his goodness. For this above all pleases God and strengthens the soul.
When a soul holds on to God in trust - whether in seeking him or contemplating him - this is the highest worship it can bring.
Our soul rests in God its true peace, our soul stands in God its true strength, and is deep-rooted in God for endless love.
The simple enjoyment of our Lord is in itself a most blessed form of thanksgiving.
The love that God most high has for our soul is so great that it passes understanding.
- Julian of Norwich
Romanesque Arches
Tourists have crowded into the half-dark of the enormous
Romanesque church.
Vault opening behind vault and no perspective.
A few candle flames flickered.
An angel whose face I couldn’t see embraced me
and his whisper went all through my body:
“Don’t be ashamed to be a human being, be proud!
Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.
You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be.”
Tears blinded me as we were herded out into the fiercely sunlit piazza,
together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Herr Tanaka and Signora Sabatini; within each of them vault after vault opened endlessly.
- ‘The Half-Finished Heaven’ by Tomas Transtromer
(Winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature)
Full of Grace
Archbishop Carlo Maria Martini wrote that “full of grace” means
“You have been loved for a very long time.”
How long have you been loved?
Give me your age and add nine months.
That’s how long.
At this very moment – now-
you are being loved,
loved into existence,
loved unto death.
We’ve all heard the common expression”
“He/she just doesn’t get it.”
I’m one of those.
When will I get it –
get the insight that I
have been loved for a very long time?
Get the fact that all of us
are full of grace,
beloved and cared for?
Maybe tomorrow?
- The Color of Gratitude, Bishop Robert Morneau
'Heart Speaks to Heart'
Perhaps the reason why the standard of holiness among us is so low, why our attainments are so poor, our view of the truth so dim, our belief so unreal, our general notions so artificial and external is this, that we dare not trust each other with the secrets of our hearts. We have the same secret, and we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union.
- Blessed John Henry Newman
LOGOS
Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into the many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don't worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it was all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.
- Mary Oliver
A PRAYER FOR GRACE
That I live
That I breathe
That I see and hear, even a little.
That I have a heart to feel
A mind to know and remember by,
I thank you most bountiful and close God.
Made one with us in Jesus Christ
And present to us.
Even in the million ways I forget
- John Kavanaugh, SJ (teaches Philosophy at St. Louis University)
Give Me Strength
This is my prayer to thee, my lord—strike,
strike at the root of penury in my heart.
Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.
Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.
Give me the strength never to disown the poor
or bend my knees before insolent might.
Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.
And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love
- Rabindranath Tagore
The Assumption
Perhaps time is the keeper of distance and loss,
Knowing that we are but able for a little at a time.
And the innocence of fragments is wise with us,
Keeps us from order that is not native to our dust.
Yet, without warning, a life can suddenly chance
On its hidden rhythm, find a flow it never knew.
Where the heart was blind, subtle worlds rise into view;
Where the mind was forced, crippled thought begins to dance.
As if this day found for her everything she lost.
Her breath infused with harvest she never expected
From the unlived lives she had only touched in dream;
Her mind rests; memory glows in a stairs of twilight.
Her hair kisses the breeze. Her eyes know it is time.
She looks as young as the evening the raven came.
- John O’Donohue
Glorious Lord Christ:
the divine influence secretly diffused and active in the depths of matter,
and the dazzling center where all the innumerable fibres of the manifold meet;
power as implacable as the world and as warm as life;
you whose forehead is of the whiteness of snow, whose eyes are of fire,
and whose feet are brighter than molten gold; you whose hands imprison the stars;
you who are the first and the last, the living and the dead and the risen again;
you who gather into your exuberant unity every mode of existence;
it is you to whom my being cries out with a desire as vast as the universe:
“In truth you are my Lord and my God.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J
image @ MCHC Archdiocese of Melbourne
We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks…
It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this, but actually they are disdaining God's 'crooked yet straight path.'
Dietrich Bonhoeffer - "Life Together"
If God is supremely good and wise, why do evil and the suffering of innocents exist? And the Saints themselves asked this very question. Illumined by faith, they give an answer that opens our hearts to trust and hope: in the mysterious designs of Providence, God can draw a greater good even from evil, as Julian of Norwich wrote:
“Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly hold me in the Faith ... and that ... I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in ... that ‘all manner of thing shall be well”’ (The Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 32).
Yes, dear brothers and sisters, God’s promises are ever greater than our expectations. If we present to God, to his immense love, the purest and deepest desires of our heart, we shall never be disappointed. “And all will be well”, “all manner of things shall be well”: this is the final message that Julian of Norwich transmits to us and that I am also proposing to you today
Pope Benedict XV1, December 1st, 2010
Moving Water
When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you,a joy.
When actions come from another section,
the feeling disappears
Don't let others lead you
They may be blind or, worse, vultures.
Reach for the rope of God
And what is that?
Putting aside self-will.
Because of willfulness people sit in jail,
the trapped bird's wings are tied,
fish sizzle in the skillet.
The anger of police is willfulness.
You've seen a magistrate inflict visible punishment
Now see the invisible.
If you could leave your selfishness,
you would see how you've been torturing your soul
We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?
Don't insist on going where you think you want to go
Ask the way to the spring.
Your living pieces will form a harmony.
There is a moving palace that floats in the air
with balconies and clear water flowing through,
infinity everywhere,
yet contained under a single tent.
