Friends, many feel that these times have been and continue to be like a great storm. Maybe you do also. You might wonder where Jesus is? He might seem asleep amidst the sorrow and the pain, the uncertainty and the loneliness. I offer you this meditation on a scripture passage that is sure to bring us comfort. I pray you meet Jesus here in prayer.
In today’s Gospel we witness the freedom Jesus brings to the possessed man who lived among the tombs, a frightening and violent man who was kept outside the community in the places of the dead.
I wonder what the man dwelling among the tombs with an unclean spirit experienced on the “inside.” We know how other people experienced him: he was a scary, out-of-control, possessed, and violent man. As I prayed with this passage, however, I entered within this unsubdued man bound with chains and shackles. What was it like to be this man? What did he feel? Desire? Fear?
I sensed that this person, deep within his spirit, could have felt shame, abandoned, powerless, hopeless, rejected as he dwelt away from the community, possessed by thousands of demons. (The name “Legion” refers to a Roman regiment of six thousand soldiers.)
Perhaps his heart was crying out, “Even though I’m screaming, no one hears ME. Even though people see me crying out and bruising myself with stones, no one sees ME.”
When life throws me unexpected detours shot through with loss and grief, my response can be public, embarrassing, insecure, out of character. I feel shame as people see my problems, mistakes, tears, reactions.
Yet at these times I too cry out from the deepest places of my heart, “No one sees ME.”
They hear my attempts to understand, analyze, and fix.
Responses such as, “I heard you already,” “You can’t do it,” “You’re too identified with your role,” “You’re out of the picture now,” can leave any of us crying out as the man who gashed himself with stones on the mountainside, ostracized from the community, our hearts broken open with the longing to be seen and heard and touched with gentle reverence.
In this Gospel reading, it is clear that Jesus saw this man. Jesus saw the external behavior that so frightened everyone who knew about this man. He also, though, could hold in his vision the heart and soul of this man created by his Father, this Beloved of his Heart. Jesus saw him. Jesus knew him. Jesus restored him to wholeness and truth. Jesus returned him to the community.
Jesus knows your true self and can understand and heal the parts of you that still cry out for wholeness and truth.
When we see ourselves and others in this beautiful and gracious way, we too can bring wholeness and truth to others and ourselves in the midst of any suffering.
Image Credit: Luis Ca from Pixabay
“Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?”
Stillness is tranquility of the inner life, the quiet at the depths of its hidden stream. Stillness is a collected, total presence, a being all there, receptive, alert, ready. ~ Romano Guardini
If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence, like the sunlight, will illuminate you in God, and will unite you to God. Love silence: it brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an expression of this “something” that is born of silence. After a while, a certain sweetness is born in the heart, and you are drawn almost by force to remain in silence. ~ from True Prayer by Kenneth Leech
A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence, If the noises become for us the echo of the presence of God. When we speak of ourselves and are filled with ourselves, we leave silence behind. When we repeat the intimate words of God that are within us, our silences remain intact. ~ from Poustinia by Catherlne de Hueck Doherty
I said to my soul, be still, and wait… In the darkness shall be the light And the stillness the dancing. ~ T. S. Eliot
All I am is a capacity to be filled with thee. This is truly who I am. This is my glory.
Obedience is to belong to thee with no desire other than yours regarding anything.
Adoration is to go forward in the surety that your divine plan is unfolding in the darkness.
“The Father himself loves you.” This beautiful assurance of Jesus is recorded in the Gospel of John. (Jn. 16:27) And how our hearts are relieved to know that we are loved because the Father has decided to love us freely and generously and forever and ever.
Before you were created, God has loved you.
From your very birth, God has loved you. At every moment, in every place, through every valley and over every mountain, in every dark hole and corner of your life, in every bright and sunny joyous celebration, God is in you and you are in him.
When you feel beautiful and when you feel there is nothing in yourself to love, God loves you. Your Father ever and forever loves you.
He loves you tenderly. He never lifts his eyes from you. He never leaves your side.
“See, I lead everything to the end I ordained for it from without beginning by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How would anything be amiss?” In these words, God assured Julian of Norwich that he himself would make all things well because his love is so great.
I hold on to this promise, especially when I’m not feeling particularly beautiful. When I feel lost and confused about where I am or where I’m going. Or where the world is and where the world is going.
I hold on to my Father’s hand when I doubt my worth and on the occasional days when I dance beside him knowing what delight he finds in loving me. My Friend, if you struggle as I, I encourage you to trust. Don’t try to figure out his outrageous kindness or understand his tender mercies. Just receive them. Just trust them. Just let yourself be loved.
Sr Kathryn J Hermes, FSP
Today’s first reading and Gospel from the Liturgy gave me great pause. The first reading narrated the familiar story of David and Goliath. The Gospel recounted the story of the man with the withered hand in the synagogue. The Pharisees were watching to see if Jesus would heal him on the Sabbath in order to have something to accuse him of and seek his death. Jesus did indeed cure the man.
These Scripture passages forced me to think about two questions that are as important today as they were at the time that these events took place in the life of David and of Jesus.
Who has the power?
Who speaks for God?
In the first reading, King Saul, the anointed King of Israel, was responsible for leading his soldiers into battle. Instead, he cowered with his army for over forty days until a boy offered to fight the mighty Goliath.
Who had the power here? It seemed that Goliath had the raw power of size and strength. King Saul had the power of authority. David, who would be called “a man after God’s own heart,” had the power of trust in God, of truly knowing God’s heart. In the Responsorial Psalm we almost hear King David’s heart sing of his dependence on and trust in the Lord his rock:
Blessed be the LORD, my rock,
who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war….
My shield, in whom I trust,
who subdues my people under me….
You who give victory to kings,
and deliver David, your servant from the evil sword.
For Saul to engage the situation with Goliath with complete responsibility he would have had to go into battle, relying on a God who was faithful and not on his own devices. He would have had to risk engaging the enemy troops even at the possible cost of his own death for the sake of securing the safety and sovereignty of the Israelites. David was absolutely sure that the Lord who delivered him from the claw of lion and bear would keep him safe while he engaged Goliath in battle. He looked not at the seeming power Goliath possessed, but at the power of God who had shown the shepherd David that he was never alone, that he couldn’t save himself, and that God would continue to deliver him.
In the Gospel, it appears that the Pharisees would have the power. They, the appointed shepherds of the people, used the man with the withered hand as a tool to trap Jesus. Their minds were set regarding what they thought about Jesus and the text says, “their hearts were hardened.” And indeed after Jesus heals the man in the synagogue that day, they join with the Herodians in plotting Jesus’ death.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, reaches out to heal, showing us the heart of God for us all. Jesus doesn’t change his story out of fear of the consequences for his own safety. Instead, Jesus, who does always what the Father tells him to do, enters into battle ultimately with the power of sin and darkness. Even through his death, he ultimately is victorious in the power of God.
The Pharisees and Jesus would have talked about the situation in the synagogue that day in very different ways. While there was a blindness on the part of the Pharisees who had hardened their heart to Jesus and his teaching, there was in Jesus an openness, an obedience to God even unto death. Imagine sitting at table with the Pharisees later that evening, and then later around the campfire with the apostles and their Master. Two different narratives would have emerged.
Who has the power?
Who speaks for God?
JD Flynn, Editor-in-chief of The Pillar, in his article “Competing realities, ecclesial division, and ecclesial renewal,” talks about a similar situation in which we live today. “Right or wrong, we’ve learned in the past two years that before history can be written, there is sometimes a period in which wildly divergent narratives compete to account for even the most basic sequences of events.” (See The Pillar newsletter on January 4, 2022.)
It isn’t easy to live in these times of uncertainty. It can be disconcerting when we discover that family and friends with whom we ordinarily get along have very different conceptions of the reality around us. That experience is jarring, particularly in a situation in which everyone is sifting through information to determine as best as they can what is true and what is fake. What would have two years ago been an interesting conversation has turned into an attempt to convince the other of what each believes to be real, as each entrenches themselves more and more in their own camp.
Who has the power?
Who speaks for God?
I am taking away from these readings today three touchstones in living through this continued uncertain time, and I offer them for your consideration:
Image Credit: Davide con testa di Golia (opera di Bernardo Castello) via Wikipedia
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