Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP

We Are Being Transformed from Glory to Glory (Lke 9:28b-36)

Published on August 6, 2025August 3, 2024 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
Luke 9:28b-36

The nearest experience I have had of “transfiguration” was the first evening at the Eucharistic Congress last year in Indianapolis, Indiana in the US. I was one of the last ones to arrive at Lucas Oil Stadium and slipped into a seat on an upper level just as exposition of the Blessed Sacrament was beginning. The entire stadium was in darkness, and silence had settled on the minds and hearts of everyone as we turned our gaze to the altar. The only lights in the stadium were directed to the center of the stadium where Jesus was exposed in the Blessed Sacrament. 50,000 voices quietly began to sing reverently, O Salutaris Hostia.

All of us that night felt surrounded by the hosts of heaven as we adored the King of kings and the Lord of the universe. On our knees, like Peter, James, and John, we were overwhelmed by God’s glory. (Although I certainly had no inclination to build a tent there in the Stadium!)

That night I was given just the tiniest of glimpses of the potential for the restoration and transfiguration of the entire world in Christ. I can’t remember that evening, or re-live it by watching it on YouTube, or re-enter it as I receive Holy Communion at Mass on any given day without tears of joy.

In the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, we see Christ’s human nature filled with splendor. What has happened to the human nature in Christ can happen also to our human nature as his followers. The glory that shown on the face of Christ shows us the glory which, by God’s grace, will transform our fallen human nature, restoring its original glory. As Christ’s disciples, we have the potential of participating in the glory of Christ’s Transfiguration.

Each time we participate in the Mass, we enter into the dimension of glory. Each sacramental encounter continues the mystery of the Transfiguration. Through the sacraments we venture into eternity. We discover ourselves and our world transformed by the gift of Jesus’ love and mercy. Through baptism we are radically transformed into a new creation. Through the sacrament of Reconciliation we are restored to life when we have been wounded by sin. Through the Eucharist we are united to Christ, take our place at the banquet of the Lamb, and get a glimpse of what awaits us in the life to come.

Every day, as we behold the Transfigured Christ in prayer and sacrament, we are gradually transformed, as Saint Paul said, “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18).

Image Credit: Titian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Praying with this Passage of Scripture

Lectio Divina is a way of listening to God as he speaks in his Word. It is a practice of communicating with God through Scripture and attending to God’s presence and what he wishes to tell us. In this slow and prayerful reading of the Word of God, we allow ourselves to be transformed by the Spirit who forms us into the image of Christ. There are four movements in Lectio Divina: Read (lectio), Meditate (meditation), Pray (oratio), Contemplate (contemplation).

Begin by finding a still space to pray. Breathe deeply and become quieter within. Abandon any agenda, worries or thoughts you bring to this prayer and entrust these things to the merciful care of God. Ask for the grace to be receptive to what God will speak to you through this Scripture reading. Grant me, Jesus Divine Master, to be able to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God and your unfathomable riches. Grant that your word penetrate my soul; guide my steps, and brighten my way till the day dawns and darkness dissipates, you who live and reign forever and ever Amen.

Read (lectio)
Begin by slowly and meditatively reading your Scripture passage out loud. Listen for a particular word or phrase that speaks to you at this moment and sit with it for a time.

Pray (oratio)
Read the text a third time. Listen for what God is saying to you. Speak heart to heart with God. Notice the feelings that this conversation with God raises up within you. Share with God what you notice about your response to this conversation. You may wish to return to repeating the phrase quietly and gently, allowing it to permeate you more and more deeply.

Contemplate (contemplatio)
Read the text a final time. Now be still and rest in God’s embrace. Ask God to give you a gift to take with you from this prayer. You might ask God if he is inviting you to do some action, for instance, make some change in your thoughts, attitudes or reactions, in the way you speak or how you treat others. Thank God for this gift and invitation as you conclude your prayer.

Image: Myriams-Fotos; pixabay.com

Photo by Mohan Nannapaneni: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-bird-on-brown-nest-6959441/

Being the Child God Made You: Like the Little Sparrows

Published on July 27, 2025June 20, 2025 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

Sparrows, in the biblical sense, are birds of freedom. Israel has long been a home for sparrows; the earliest fossil remnants of house sparrows anywhere in the world were found in Israel in caves in the Carmel Mountain range near Haifa and also in caves near Bethlehem, just to the South of Jerusalem.

Sparrows don’t live in deserts or deserted places and they don’t migrate. Instead they plaster mud nests in the Temple eves near the altar. They are swift in flight and it is impossible to retain them in captivity. Sparrows are songbirds and utter a sweet, slow note that is pleasing to the ear (contrasted with the harsh and incessant chatter of other birds in biblical times such as the swift).

O Lord my God, my heart and soul, like the sparrow, cry out for you! (see Psalm 84)

Most likely we rarely pay attention to the common sparrow. Birds with more flashy colors and extravagant markings are more likely to be photographed and shared. Yet Jesus chose the sparrow, not the parrot or the ostrich or the blue jay, to convince us that God will take good care of us:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Mt 10:30-31).

As children, my sister and brother and I loved watching a nest full of newly hatched chicks. Whenever my mother discovered one she would call us over to carefully peek inside. Newly hatched songbirds are blind, featherless, and helpless. Immediately after hatching, these types of birds can do little more than open their mouths to beg for food. The hungrier they are the louder they cry and the more they open up their beaks. For the first two to three weeks of life they remain in the nest and the parents feed them every fifteen minutes during the day. At first the chicks cannot control their own body temperature and must be constantly kept warm by their parents. While the mother and father are searching for food and flitting back and forth to their nest, they are also watching for predators. As the newly hatched chicks eat almost constantly during the day for the first ten days or so their growth rate is incredible.

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

“Acknowledge your hunger and cry out to the Lord…”

You’ve probably seen nests packed tightly with baby chicks, their heads held up high, cheeping loudly, with their mouth open as wide as possible, showing off the interior of their brightly colored mouth. The inside of a baby’s mouth is called a “gape,” and red, orange, yellow, and pink are common gape colors. The chick gaping with a wide-open beak and the high-contrast colors trigger something in the parents who are biologically wired to put food into gaping mouths. The hungrier the baby birds are, the more enthusiastically they beg for food, and they don’t stop cheeping until they are full and satisfied. The parents only stop feeding the chicks when all of them are sitting quietly in the nest at the end of the day.

These days I live in a convent in a city, so birds’ nests are not something I ever see. But I do build my own “nest,” so to speak, near the altar of the Lord of hosts, in the convent chapel. There is the place where we can all open our mouths and tell the Lord of our hunger to know him, our hunger for life, our hunger for eternity. Like the baby birds, I am learning to never stop begging to be fed.

How lovely is your dwelling place,
    O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints
    for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
    to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home,
    and the swallow a nest for herself,
    where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
    my King and my God.
Happy are those who live in your house,
    ever singing your praise (Psalm 84:1-4).

One thing that will help you become the Child you are…

God has made us for himself. He is providing for us, nourishing us, protecting us, warming us, delighting us… As long as we keep our hearts open, begging for him and his life, we will receive all he is giving us.

What gets in the way of this inbuilt hunger for God? For each of us there would be a different list. One of the habits in the following list might be on yours: hours of scrolling through social media feeds, trying to do what only God can do, attempting to change people around you instead of changing yourself, numbing habits, grasping for empty fillers like higher salaries, success, possessions, status… When we are satisfied with what can never satisfy us….

One thing we can do to increase our hunger for God is to avoid these ultimately unsatisfactory fillers and meditate instead on these famous words of St. Augustine who said:

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

“Who will grant it to me to find peace in you? Who will grant me this grace, that you should come into my heart and inebriate it, enabling me to forget the evils that beset me and embrace you, my only good? What are you to me? Have mercy on me, so that I may tell. What indeed am I to you, that you should command me to love you, and grow angry with me if I do not, and threaten me with enormous woes? Is not the failure to love you woe enough in itself?

Alas for me! Through your own merciful dealings with me, O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Let me run towards this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed.”

St. Augustine’s Confessions (Lib 1,1-2,2.5,5: CSEL 33, 1-5)

Image credit: Photo by Mohan Nannapaneni

“Like a little child, I keep myself”: Retreat Reflection

Published on July 25, 2025 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

I was building a sandcastle.

Jesus was running along the beach, throwing sand up into the air.

I was serious.

Jesus was laughing.

I was facing away from the ocean and the sunshine, busy with my project in the sand, my face in shadow.

Jesus gazed into the horizon, his face lit by the sun, as he sat in awe at the edge of the water.

Retreat always begins with a “before,” and ends with an “after.”

In my inspired imagination, as I prayed on the first day of my 8-day annual retreat this year, Jesus showed me that my “before”—my approach to life as a responsible and serious project-conscious adult—was no longer satisfying me. And he showed me in prayer that what he wanted for me was “delight,” his way of both delighting in the Father’s love for him and knowing that he was the delight of his Father.

In Psalm 131 there is this lovely line in the Jerusalem Bible translation: “Like a little child, so I keep myself.”

As I watched the ocean gently wash away the cares of the very important work of creating my sandcastle, Jesus helped me to feel on every level of my being what I have been created for: to be a child of the Father, as he himself is the Child of the Father. In fact, Jesus’ urging us to lay aside our self-importance to become like little children is rooted in his very way of life. Jesus wanted me to feel what he felt going about his life on this earth, what he felt in prayer on the mountains, connecting with his Father, indeed, what he feels before the Father for all eternity.

Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote in the book Unless You Become Like a Child that as a grown man, Jesus never leaves the “bosom of the Father.” His identity is inseparable from his being a Child in the bosom of the Father. In one place in the book he imagines the child Jesus becoming conscious of the world around him … “When the Mother awakens him, the opening up of the whole horizon of reality is experienced not only as something holy but as the realization that in the depths of this opened fullness of being there radiates the personal Face of his Father, personally turned toward him.”

Jesus draws us in prayer to sit beside him as he gazes into the Face of his Father who is “personally turned toward him,” personally turned toward us. This is the one thing necessary, this sitting, this receiving, this allowing oneself to be seen, to be loved. It is this that Mary had discovered and Martha’s heart—and mine—still yearned to know.

There are many things in our lives that frighten us into hiding from love, that paralyze parts of us so that we are hesitant to open up to receive the welcoming smile of God and of others. Retreats are often the long stretch of quiet healing that make it possible for us to accept being loved.

After all, Jesus was showing me, isn’t that what a tiny child longs for, needs, depends on, and trusts in? No matter what has happened in our lives, the eternal Father’s love heals and holds us until we are warmed with the gaze of his Face and are confident in the strength of his tender care for us.

Jesus didn’t ask us to be smart, accomplished, successful, organized. Nowhere in the Gospel do we find him suggesting that anything depends on us alone, especially this very important work that we were invited to share: the salvation of the world. There is only an insistence on spiritual childhood, this transformation of heart and mind made possible through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

“The child has time to take time as it comes, one day at a time, calmly, without advance planning or greedy hoarding of time. Time to play, time to sleep. He knows nothing of appointment books in which every moment has already been sold in advance.” Instead, every moment “we should receive with gratitude the full cup that is handed to us … And only with time of this quality can the Christian find God in all things, just as Christ found the Father in all things.”

This is my “after,” the gift of my retreat, the first day of the rest of my life. This is the joy Jesus has desired for me to know, the delight that is now mine forever.

Image credit: Christ with Martha and Maria by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1886 via Wikimedia, in the public domain.

Jesus, I Am Coming to You (Matthew 11:28-30)

Published on July 17, 2025August 6, 2024 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30

Not so long ago a woman approached me while I was exiting a church and asked me to pray with her. When I asked her what she would like me to lift up in prayer with her, she started to cry. Just days before the only daughter of a dear friend of hers, a deacon serving in her parish, had taken her life. She was in shock. Her heart was broken. She was still grappling with the reality of what had happened. That woman’s heart was simply crushed at the news, knowing how much her friend was suffering the loss of their daughter.

She came with her heavy heart for prayer. She came with a burden that was too much for her to carry to ask Jesus for his rest and his peace.

Sometimes the burdens we carry are so heavy we fear they will overwhelm us. They can be physical burdens of health, financial struggles, devastating ruptures in relationships or losses from which we fear we will never recover.

We can grieve under the weight of spiritual obstacles and moral dilemmas.

Jesus calls us to himself. He calls us away from anxiety and the way it keeps us fixated on things we can’t control.

Jesus calls us to himself as the only certainty in life that we can absolutely trust. Worries shake our confidence in what we know to be true of God.

Jesus calls our mind to himself and away from the fearful imaginations of worst-case scenarios that paralyze and defeat.

Jesus calls us to himself to rest, far from the stress of the to do lists and endless tasks to remember and complete.

When we feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, Jesus calls us to himself because he wants to give us a clear mind and a peaceful heart from the assurance that he has overcome the world (John 16:33).

So when conflicts rock a relationship, remember Jesus is calling you to himself so he can carry you in his arms.

When hearts are broken and you have no real way to make things right, remember Jesus is calling you to himself, and he will calm your heart.

When you are lost in the darkness of what-ifs and defeat, remember Jesus is waiting with open arms for you to lay down your head on his heart.

Going to Jesus can be our first response instead of what we do when nothing else seems to be working. One of the most powerful prayers you can say is simply this, Jesus, I am coming to you. Help me!

Image Credit: Leiloeira São Domingos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Praying with this Passage of Scripture

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Being the Child God Made You: How Beautiful You Are

Published on July 10, 2025June 20, 2025 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP4 Comments

Lunch period was always my most dreaded class period in school. While others couldn’t wait to be set loose for 40 minutes to be with their friends, this favorite part of most kids day was for me a torment. For many reasons I won’t go into here, I didn’t sync with the other kids in my class.

I knew when I walked into the cafeteria that it would be an embarrassing experience scanning the tables crowded with jostling and laughing kids for a place where I might be able to fit in. I wasn’t friendless, certainly, but I knew I wasn’t the one that everyone wanted on their table. Far from the life of the party I always felt outside and boring. It is an image I have had of myself that has remained with me through the years.

Recently on retreat I found myself asking Jesus: “Will you leave me, drop me, because I am not interesting enough?” Isn’t that the fear we all have. That somehow God won’t be so captivated with love for us that he’ll decide we are not worth being with for the long haul?

These were Jesus’ words I felt that he said in my heart:

“It is I who have planted my tent on your land. It is I who have desired to possess your soul… It is I who have chosen you. My choice is irrevocable. I choose to love your story—all of it. It is not a journey from bad to good. It is a life from seed to blossom. You have survived the blights and bugs, the storms, the bending and breaking, MY mending and molding. And now in MY garden, you are blossoming. It is ALL good.”

“Acknowledge your journey and all you’ve survived….”

In the Song of Songs the Lover whispers his love to his Beloved repeatedly: “How beautiful you are.”

This little book of the Bible is really all about her beauty, a beauty that the Lover has bestowed on her. Her beauty, even a passing glimpse of this beauty which he has given her, captivates his heart. As I was reading the Song of Songs on retreat, it struck me that the Lover, God, tells the Beloved, the soul, that she is precisely this, only this: beautiful. This is the one thing most of us in this culture want where so many are fixed and tucked and airbrushed to appear more beautiful.

When I heard my Dad say of my Mom, who had lived four years in memory care with late-stage Alzheimer’s, “Mom is so beautiful. She is still beautiful. She was always beautiful,” I am deeply moved. At that point, Mom wasn’t interesting to be with, she hadn’t done anything for him in a decade, and she most likely didn’t actually know who he was when he faithfully visited her at least twice a day.

After sixty years, Mom had gone from seed to blossom. She had become entirely the one God loves and cares for and fusses around, like a mother would a child. Her journey has taken her through many sufferings and much heartache, joys and laughter and love and sacrifice and care. She has survived. Indeed, she has triumphed. She passed into eternity several months ago, and now she enjoys what we struggle to understand and so often get wrong.

One thing that will help you become the Child you are…

For the Church, we are persons who live before God. What constitutes us is our relationship with God, the fact that God loves us, that God loves ME, that God loves ME with such a singular, passionate love that he called ME into being, each of us, called into being to exist forever before him.

The child who can do nothing but cry, the mature woman or man at the peak of their life, the person sunk in old age, or even lost to the world in dementia, are all the same person before God: beautiful.

We are beautiful when we are successful and when our lives seem torn apart into shreds. We are beautiful when we are surrounded by love and when we wander along, fearing no one wants us. We are beautiful to God, as Mom was still and always beautiful to Dad, as we survive the blights and the bugs, the storms, the bending and the breaking, God’s mending and molding… We are beautiful in God’s beautiful garden. And it is all beautiful.

One thing you might do in a moment of prayer with Jesus after Communion or before the Eucharist in adoration, is to make a list of the things that you try to hide even from yourself, those things that you have decided “aren’t beautiful.”

At the bottom write:

“It is I who have chosen you, I, Jesus. My choice is irrevocable. I choose to love your story… All of it… Every last inch of the woven tapestry of your life is beautiful to me.”

Is there one thing on your list that Jesus begins to open up for you to see in a new way? Allow Jesus to say to you these words,

“I enjoy being around you. I want to spend time with you. I love wasting time with you. From forever I have lavished my Heart’s attention on you.”

Image Credit: Photo by Garon Piceli

Being the Child God Made You: Royal and Loved

Published on June 29, 2025June 20, 2025 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP2 Comments

One of my sisters likes to post on Instagram stylized pictures of Jesus. He is often depicted as a King and the “soul” as a princess. There is something endearing and captivating about this artistic way of depicting something so true about who we are: we are adopted into the family of the King. With our baptism we truly are royalty. We are princes and princesses who are loved by the King of Kings.

So amazing! Yet this reality, this truth that is hinted at on every page of God’s word, is so hard to remember about ourselves and about others. Jesus, the Son of God, loves us. Jesus chooses us. We belong to the King of Kings and the Lord of the Universe. In Isaiah there is more than a hint:

“You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

…You shall be called My Delight Is in Her” (Isaiah 62:3, 4).

And in the Psalms there is a beautiful psalm that speaks of the marriage of the King and the princess:

My heart overflows with a goodly theme;
    I address my verses to the king;
    my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.

You are the most handsome of men;
    grace is poured upon your lips.

The princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes;
    in many-colored robes she is led to the king (Psalm 45:1-2, 13-14).

And in the Song of Songs we hear the voice of the King and Bridegroom as he speaks to his bride:

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride,
you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.
How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride! (Song of Songs 4:9-10)

These prophetic words are fulfilled in Jesus who says in the Gospel of John: “You did not choose me but I chose you. I have chosen you out of the world” (John 15:16, 19).

“Remember you have been made a ‘partaker of the divine nature’….”

Baptism is what makes us royalty. I follow the royal family in Great Britain. There people are born into royalty. We, instead, through Baptism, having no claim on being a part of the Royal Family of God, have been made a “partaker of the divine nature,” member of Jesus Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Baptism … makes the neophyte ‘a new creature,’ an adopted son of God, who has become a ‘partaker of the divine nature,’ member of Christ and co-heir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1265).

“Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . .We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God’s Lordship” (St. Gregory Of Nazianzus, Oratio 40,3-4:PG 36,361C., quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1216).

One thing that will help you become the Child you are…

This old adage is actually not true: “The memory is the faculty that was made to forget.” Yes, the memory forgets a lot, a lot of the time. But it was not made by God to do that. That wouldn’t make sense.

We were given a memory so that we could remember God and remember who we are. Instead, it gets really good at remembering past hurts or grievances, has little recall of how God has been present in our life and how he has shaped us and our lives in his love. We have hardly the focus and intention to call to mind that the infinite and transcendent God is always calling us to become more, to become our true identity, united with Christ in God’s own life. We are called to union with and within the divine life itself.

These things just seem to vanish from my mind. It doesn’t help that the Enemy is determined to wipe away any remembrance of God’s mercies from our mind, and to fill them with distractions and remembrances of grievances. I have to really work at using my memory the way it was made to be used. Do you find this to be true?

One thing you can do then is simply this: remember! Read these passages of Scripture and the Catechism over and over again day after day. At the beginning of the day visualize the situations you know you’ll encounter and picture yourself going through them as royalty. At the end of the day bring clarity to your soul by clearing out any memories that don’t reflect the truth of who you are and renew your commitment to live as one who is loved.

I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you (Jeremiah 31:3).

Image Credit: Photo by Church of the King on Unsplash