Learning from Jonah's mistakes

 

Image credit: https://www.mosaicsite.org/

Adapted from homily by Deacon Steve.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Jonah. God wants Jonah to warn the Ninevites that they have forty days to straighten out or God is going to overthrow them. After resisting God's call because he doesn't want the people of Nineveh to be shown any mercy, Jonah finally heads to Nineveh and gives them God’s message. Deep down inside Jonah can hardly wait to see what God does to the Ninevites. But, sure enough, “the people of Nineveh believed God,” and turned from their ways and put on sackcloth and fasted. They in fact change their ways and so, God relents and does not bring destruction down on them. Jonah goes away sulking and angry over God’s kindness to his enemies.

This story points out that God is not the fearful One, that we sometimes call the “Old Testament God”. The God of Jonah is in fact the God of Jesus, the God who is loving and merciful to all people. God’s mercy is not limited to one or two groups of people, but extends to all people beyond any limits we may conceive.

Jesus proclaims in our Gospel reading, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

In the minds of most Christians, the primary meaning of "repent" is to look back on past behavior with "sorrow, self-reproach, or contrition" for what one has done or omitted to do - sometimes with an amendment of life. However, the English word “repent” is used to translate the Greek word “Metanoia”. Scholars believe the translation of metanoia as repentance is "an extraordinary mistranslation". In fact, translators only use it because there is no English word that can adequately convey the meaning of the Greek word.

The real meaning of metanoia is not about a superficial change of mind. Rather it involves a complete transformation of consciousness, a change in the trend and action of our whole inner nature, including intellectual, affectional and moral. It is an overwhelming change of mind, heart and life. And this, we know, is only brought about by allowing the grace of God and the Spirit of God to open our hearts and minds.

In a writing from one of the Church Fathers called “On Spiritual Perfection” the author writes, “Anyone who loves God in the depths of their heart has already been loved by God. In fact, the measure of a person’s love for God depends on how deeply aware they are of God’s love for them... When this awareness is keen it makes whoever possesses it long to be enlightened by the divine light, and this longing is so intense that it seems to penetrate their very bones. The person loses all consciousness of themselves and they are entirely transformed by the love of God.”

Thus our 'metanoia' occurs only through the grace of God, by our constantly and gradually becoming aware of God’s love for us. Our gospel writer is trying to tell us, in the stories of the apostles as they were called by Jesus, that in encountering the Lord, the apostles were entirely transformed by the love of God, by Christ. And so they lose “consciousness of themselves” and “immediately” follow Christ. The immediacy of the conversion of the apostles in our story, is meant to dramatize the effect of God’s love in our lives, when we are truly open to it.

Our world today, as we no doubt are aware, is in need of this transformation. The world needs to see followers of Christ who are truly transformed by the love of God. For us to be that transformative presence to our brothers and sisters it is important for us to grow and experience the love of God in our hearts. A love that is always offered to us by God’s grace. Not only in our private and liturgical prayer. More importantly, we can experience that love of God as we learn to contemplate each person we encounter, especially those people who suffer in poverty, addiction, imprisonment, illness, loneliness and dying.

Let us remember that our Eucharist celebrates the love of God for every person in the world. It is a reminder to us to not only contemplate the divine, the mystery in this sacrament, but to also go out and contemplate the divine and the mystery of God in every person we encounter, but especially those who suffer. 

The Light Which God Intends to Kindle

 

Image credit: https://unsplash.com

Spiritual Reading - selected by Deacon Steve

“Humanity, made in God’s image, is placed in the paradise of the world, a world which is still paradise, but which we have lost, by becoming alienated from ourselves and from the Creator.

In this world from which we are alienated, humanity can come to find ourselves and recover our right relation to the world, and to God, by the work which God has given us to do. Our worship, our liturgy, should rightly be not only worship but a theology of life, a theology of work, planting in us the seeds of understanding and wisdom which will flower in our work. But this means that our work must be purified of titanism, of self-will, of aspirations to self-assertion and power. And this means that it must be delivered from obsession with what we are not, with our past and future, what we have ceased to be and have not yet become and is based on what we are in our present reality. For only in the present can we come in full contact with the truth willed for us and in us by God. Thus, creation will become once again a lampstand, and humanity the lamp will be placed on it in order to be lit with the light of truth. For this is the light which God really intends to kindle in us. When we are in communion with other people and with the cosmos by our will, the light of truth is kindled in us.

The Book of Proverbs says: ‘The light of God is the human spirit, penetrating to the depths of our being.’ (Proverbs 20:27)”

from Merton, Thomas, “Seasons of Celebration” p. 132 – 133, Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, 2009

Titanism: 
A spirit of revolt or defiance, like that of the Titans, against established order, social conventions, etc.

 

Questions for reflection:

As Vincentians, what is our "work" that needs to be purified?

Am I stuck, trying to live according to an identity locked into my past, who I used to be?

Am I pretending to be someone I would like to be in the future?

… or am I OK with letting people see me for who I am right now, warts and all, not perfect, but beloved by God?

Do I really believe that God loves me now, as I am?

Do I consciously remind myself that God deeply loves each of the families we serve, as they are?

The Feast of Feasts

 

Spiritual Reading selected by Deacon Steve

The Feast of Feasts!

“Easter – the resurrection of Christ! The feast of feasts! The final proof of Christ’s divinity! Easter – the first feast of the early Church, around which all the other feasts grew like stars around the sun.

We celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something absolutely, fantastically beautiful that has happened, and is still happening. The fact that there is an Easter is something to be grateful for. It is such a happy feast. What can be more beautiful than this passage from death to life, real life? Now death has become a passage. A passage to what, to where, to whom? It is the passage of you to God and me to God. You walk into it and there at the end is Christ and Our Lady, the life that lasts forever and that is lived with God and his blessed Mother. Christ’s resurrection is the most joyous feast in the calendar of the Church, the one in which everything comes together. It is the greatest feast…

Christ’s Resurrection is the earth in which the seed of faith can grow. His Resurrection, when we look at it, opens the tombs of our hearts. Can you hear the stone of doubts, of fears, of expectation, of loneliness, roll away from his tomb? You and I are transfigured and resurrected, too, in an inner resurrection that is like a fire, like an exploding sunrise.”

“Season of Mercy: Lent and Easter – Meditations and Traditions from Catherine Doherty”, Marian Heilberger, ed., Madonna House Publications, Combermere, p 92 & 99

The Wedding at Cana – From a Sermon by Faustus of Riez, bishop

 

Stone water jars. Image credit: Jerusalem Perspective

“To those who only see with the outward eye, all these events at Cana are strange and wonderful; to those who understand, they are also signs. For, if we look closely, the very water tells us of our rebirth in Baptism. One thing is turned into another from within, and in a hidden way a lesser creature is changed into a greater. All this points to a hidden reality of our second birth. There water was suddenly changed; later it will cause a change in all people.”

The water in the jars is not less than it was before, but now begins to be what it had not been; so too the law is not destroyed by Christ’s coming, but is made better than it was.

When the wine fails, new wine is served: The wine of the old covenant was good, but the wine of the new is better.”

From a Sermon by Faustus of Riez, bishop - from the Office of Readings for Saturday before the Baptism of the Lord. Selected by Deacon Steve

Power made perfect in infirmity - a reflection

Suspended over the abyss

“…Easter is the mystery of our redemption. We who have died and risen with Christ are no longer sinners. Sin is dead in us. The Law has no further hold on us.

And yet this is not as simple as it sounds. Our new life in Christ is not a permanent and guaranteed possession, handed over to our control, a “property” which we now definitively have. We are still suspended over the abyss, and we can still fall back into that awful dread of the alienated person who has lost trust. But the fact remains that if we consent to it, grace and trust are renewed from moment to moment in our lives. They are not a permanent possession but an ever present gift of God’s love. For this liberty to continue, we must really believe in the power of God to sanctify us and keep us saints. 

We must dare to be saints by the power of God. We must dare to have a holy respect and reverence for ourselves, as we are redeemed and sanctified by the blood of Christ. We must have the courage to grasp the great power that has been given to us, at the same time realizing that this power is always made perfect in infirmity, and that it is not a “possession.”

Merton, Thomas, “Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts”, Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, p 120 – 121

Reading selected by Deacon Steve Pitre

An Easter Reflection by Deacon Steve

 

“Why was the Easter proclamation “good news”? What did it mean to those who first heard the message?” Does it still pack the same punch today as it did Easter morning? If not why not?

These are questions that we must always bring to our celebration of Easter, for so often it is merely another feast on the liturgical calendar with little practical impact on individual lives. Peter relates the original proclamation with a sense of joyful wonder. The story is about this incredible God-filled man named Jesus… [and how] what could have been a crushing and tragic end was transformed by the hand of God who raised Jesus from the dead. And now Jesus stands astride all human history as its life-giving power and final judge.”

“…humankind is discovering in Jesus that God is impartial. Rather than being the property of any person or group, God offers grace and mercy to all. We need fear nothing-not even death itself. God was showing humanity not a way to escape the miseries and struggles of the human condition, but how to pass through them transformed.”

- Lewis, SJ, Scott, “ God’s Word on Sunday Year B” Catholic Register Books, Toronto, 2011, p51

Each time we are present to the people who request our services we bring our Lord’s grace and mercy to the people and they experience hope. In turn our Lord’s abundant grace and mercy transform’s us.

May you and your families and loved ones be transformed by the grace and mercy of our Lord as you celebrate the Easter mysteries together or apart! May Christ‘s Easter hope, peace and joy fill your hearts.

God bless

Steve

Conference Reading - Sharing what we have been given

 

"Let the people we encounter know about God through the lives we lead..."

Conference spiritual reading selected by Deacon Steve.

“If we have to tell people about God, let us tell them about what he has done for us, about what we have personally experienced; the transformation of our fears, the freedom from the prisons of false myths, the passion of our hunger and where it has led us. That is, if we have to speak. Otherwise, let the people we encounter know about God through the lives we lead: by our willingness to bear the pain of forgiving, by our joy in the humblest of tasks, by our laughter even in the darkest moments.

“What we have been given is not only given for us. It is given to be shared. Only in that sharing do we experience what it means to be Church, and if we are truly Church, then we can transform the institutions we now have and thereby create open spaces - those temples and sanctuaries - in which God who promises to be ever with us, can dwell and in which others who are now lost and alienated and searching can dwell and fulfill themselves creatively.”

Williams, S.J., Monty. “Stepping into Mystery: Four Approaches to a Spiritual Life” Novalis Publishing Inc., Toronto 2012, P. 52