https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-5gcn7-1539c60
Celebrating the Magi who followed a star in their search for the newly born King is a great opportunity to reflect on the stars we follow, the searches we have made during our life, what we have found, where we are, and where we are going.
“In your life you have also given me birth. I am grateful to you for that.” Words heard in my heart during the Christmas Octave.
Me? Really? I asked. When? How? You? My Infant King?
Jesus’ words, his gaze, it was piercing, sweet, simple.
Is it true?
Imagine the angels bowing to you in gratitude for the way you extend Jesus’ Incarnation even now.
Name 3 moments in your life when you have loved, given, rescued, been a refuge for someone, or brought light that gave another freedom or relief or joy… Moments when you have shed on someone’s path light, hope, peace, delight….
Only Jesus knows what that gift of yours led to… how Jesus was born in someone’s soul because of the perhaps ever-so-small gesture of presence that you once offered another….
A smile through tears, a flash of hope, a first prayer, conversion, return to the practice of the Faith, a whispered prayer moments before meeting their Maker… We never know, but Jesus remembers how you have made him present to someone he was eager to encounter, how you gave him birth in the world today.
Receive now this gratitude of his Heart: “You also have given me birth on earth. I am grateful to you for that…” Taste the thoughts, movements of your heart, memories, desires… Hold them close to your own heart. Remember that in the heart of Jesus, this is how you are seen, this is how you are loved.
Image: rastellimelina from Cathopic.
One last glance at Christ the King before Advent. I was so taken by this verse of Crown Him with Many Crowns that we sang on Sunday:
Crown him the Lord of peace.
Whose power a scepter sways
From Pole to pole, that wars may cease,
Absorbed by prayer and praise.
His reign shall know no end,
And round his pierc-ed feet
Fair flow-rs of paradise extend
Their fragrance ever sweet.
How our world needs His crucified and merciful love and the firmness of his authority!
Image credit: Alvaro Jose Jimenez
“We are a capacity, a pure capacity for Jesus; none can actuate and fill it but He…. We must not suffer ourselves to be in ourselves, except to see to it that Jesus Christ be living in us, and that He may use and enjoy possession of all that is within us.” (Cardinal Pierre de Berulle)
Image credit: Luis Carlos Bonilla Soto from Cathopic
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-7znhx-140eec3
Highlights:
Questions about life’s meaninglessness, about the way in which our days pass like vapor, about how all that we do and accomplish seems to vanish without a trace as we age, these burden not just the heart of Qoheleth in today’s first reading, but at certain points in our lives these questions haunt us too. I once heard that the book of Ecclesiastes identifies the question to which the whole of Revelation is the answer. In this quickly changing world, all that our life has been seems to slip through our fingers, and our heart longs for life, true life, life that is a treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy.
There is something cyclical in this description of continual, unending, “coming and going” of things. In this reading there is no sense of the enduring, of divine gift and guidance and mission, of an end which has been ordained for all things by God. Instead, the more things change, as the saying goes, the more things stay the same, endlessly repeating to seemingly no purpose.
Today many experience life in this way. Not being grounded in the fertile soil of God’s action and love, much of what constitutes activity in our world seems to have no real meaning. I believe that during the pandemic many began to feel this way. The tasks they had been doing in their jobs were now no longer satisfying to them, no longer seemed purposeful, no longer worth devoting their whole life to. They began to seek something more meaningful to do with their careers.
It is ultimately only God who truly defines us and the purpose of our lives, their unending purpose.
I hope you stay in touch. Sign up for my newsletter here: https://touchingthesunrise.com/newsletter/
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-2nuuz-140eeae
Highlights:
In the Gospel passage that recounts the calling of the tax collector, Matthew Jesus shows us that he is where we are. Whether we are living a holy life, struggling with temptations inundating us like a hurricane, or lost in the mire of vice or sin, Jesus is always passing by.
Jesus is not passing by intent on avoiding us. He is passing by in order to see us, to show us that we are seen with the eyes of respect and love. Jesus sees us, as we most deeply are. He delights in us, for he has made all things good.
There are many reasons why I want to avoid your gaze, Jesus. I don’t feel worthy. I don’t know how to respond to you. I’m afraid. But here you are, passing by, seeing me as you saw Matthew.
I hope you stay in touch. Sign up for my newsletter here: https://touchingthesunrise.com/newsletter/
Touching the Sunrise 