The Divine World of Risk (Matthew 9:9-13)

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP3 Comments

As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Matthew 9:9-13

Matthew was a finance guy. Not only did he extort money from his neighbors while collecting taxes, he also wrapped his whole life around the security money can bring.

How many advertisements have you seen lately geared toward people considering retirement: Do you have enough money to survive after you retire? Maybe you need to invest? Buy gold or silver? Take out insurance?

Commercials and posts of this nature lead to a stabbing fear. All the what ifs begin to play on our imagination.

If there is anything we humans cling to it is security. We clutch at anything that seems dependable. We stock up on what promises to sustain us in the crises of our lives. We pour over the stock reports to see how much we have lost. We accumulate what we hope will keep us safe until we die.

How much power do I need to protect my future? What will happen to me if I don’t have extra money to squirrel away? What do I need to ensure my comfort?

Jesus invited Matthew to step out of the security he had been creating for himself into the divine world of risk. He brought him out of the tomb of self-protection into the sunlight of abandonment to divine providence.

Hear these words from the heart of Jesus said to Matthew as said to yourself and do not be afraid: “Leave everything, Matthew, and come. Come follow me. I have no money to offer you. No absolute security to promise for your future. I have nothing but my immense love for you and for the world. I have nothing but my dream for your future in my Kingdom which I have secured for you. I have known you since before the foundation of the world. Matthew [and here say your own name], I will be enough for you. Enough forever. Come. Come follow me.”

Image: Bernardo Strozzi, 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

Meditation on the Two Standards – Being in Jesus (Horizons of the Heart 39)

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP2 Comments

The grace we are asking of God: a growing ability to recognize the weeds and the wheat in my own life, that is, the ways in which I am drawn through grace toward living in the Kingdom of Christ and the ways in which I am deceived by the Enemy in the decisions I make. I also ask for the grace to know Jesus deeply, so that I may immerse myself wholly in his standard: his values, his preferences, his loves, his desires, his self-offering, his compassion and mercy.

Horizons of the Heart is inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and my own notes from my thirty-day Ignatian retreat in 2022. See an index for the whole series.

I started praying with the Two Standards Meditation and realized I would be here quite a while. In a sense, this lens on the way Christ is at work in us is life-changing, and I have recently discovered anew how much change needed to be brought about within me so that my hidden disordered tendencies might be brought into alignment with the values of the Kingdom of Christ.

The traditional image of the Two Standards exercise arose out of the medieval experience of war and it certainly didn’t resonate with me. In fact, it left me striving to “prove” I was good enough for the Kingdom of the good leader: Christ. The meditation is rooted in the method of war during the time of Ignatius: the image of two warring factions of knights in full arms being led onto the battlefield, each clearly serving a different leader and fighting under a large flag or standard. Once the hand-to-hand combat began, however, the two armies would become indistinguishable as the knights were mixed together in mass confusion. It became impossible to tell who was fighting for who as the battle progressed.

The two leaders are Christ and Lucifer. Each of them called to themselves people who were willing to serve in their respective armies under the values of their very different Kingdoms, fighting under their opposing standards: hence the name, Two Standards Meditation.

As I prayed with this, Jesus drew me to the parable of the weeds and the wheat. As I’m entering into this second week of the Exercises, “unfinished business” and inner wounds are surfacing and hitting the fan once again. Jesus reminded me while I was praying that the weeds and the wheat (like the armies of the two kings) will be there until my last breath, and the two sometimes are hard to distinguish. What may be convinced is a virtue might actually be something I’m doing for less than noble reasons. What appears to be a vice might be the best I can do at the moment, even a virtuous struggle as I’m calling out to Jesus to help me be as faithful as I can at this moment to his “standard” or Kingdom.

Jesus brought to my mind the apostles crying out in terror as they bailed water out of their boat capsizing in the winds and rains of an unexpected storm on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, a number of feet away from them, stood on the water, also wet from the rain with his clothes whipped by the winds, calm and reassuring with his presence.

“It’s okay to cry out,” Jesus helped me see. “That’s all you can do sometimes. These burly fishermen, professionals at what they did, were as terrified as toddlers that day as the storm unexpectedly whipped up the Sea of Galilee. And I loved them in all their vulnerability that lay exposed to me at that moment. They were my Father’s children, my brothers, the ones for whom I would give my life…. As their wounds became evident I showed them immediately that I still delighted in them. Even in the continuous need you have for healing and freedom I want you to look at my face now. I am calling you into my Kingdom: so that the way you are and the way you live and what you choose to do will become part of the Kingdom.”

Jesus wants us to know that every time we expose to him our wounds and believe, nevertheless, that God has made something special when he made us and that Jesus delights in us right then, we also join him as those who are willing to live and serve under his standard, as ambassadors of his Kingdom of Love. He calls those willing to be humble, poor, vulnerable, those willing to surrender in obedience and love while serving beside him as he brings to fulfillment the reign of the Kingdom of heaven in the world today.

Here you are entering into the Mystery

In a moment of quiet and prayer, can you believe these words as you say them to yourself: “God made something wonderful when God made me!”

Notice any confusion or resistance or fear or shame. These feelings indicate the presence of wounds, unfinished business waiting for the healing touch of Jesus as he calls us to enter and to serve the Kingdom of Love. Up to now in the Spiritual Exercises, we have been praying through the lens of personal healing, repentance and conversion, and spiritual transformation. In this short meditation we are taking a step back to consolidate our trust in the love of Jesus for us, even in our wounds, as he invites us to become a part of his saving mission in the world.

Pray again: “You, Lord, made something wonderful when you made me! I believe this. My feelings may not resonate with my faith. I may have old tapes of what others have told me about myself that say differently. The voices of shame may try to smother this trust. The Enemy may be sowing weeds of self-hate, but no matter. Regardless of what I feel, you have made something wonderful when you made me, Lord, because you can only make perfectly wonderful things.”

Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a memory or a symbol of a wound that he is ready to heal.

Pray quietly: “Lord, when I expose to you my most vulnerable places, you will still delight in what you have made. Your kindness is bottomless. Your love is endless. Your delight in me reminds me that I am your child.”

Abide in the silence. Feel the attraction of the Kingdom. Offer gratitude.

Reviewing the Graces of Prayer

When you finish praying, write down the main gifts and discoveries from this time of intimate contemplation. What is one concrete thing you can do to solidify these gifts in your life.

The Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacle

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

In this podcast, Sr Emily Beata, Carlos Briceno, and I talk about the amazing gift of loving the Eucharist that we learned from the life of St. Manuel González García.

https://stmaryoldtown.libsyn.com/episode-5-what-are-the-sisters-reading-for-the-month-of-september-1

St. Manuel felt called to the priesthood at the age of 12. After his ordination in 1901, he was sent to preach at a church which he found to be unclean and abandoned. There, praying before a Tabernacle covered in dust and cobwebs, with torn altar cloths and oil dripping onto the floor from the sanctuary lamp, he decided to dedicate his life to providing for Jesus’ needs in the Tabernacle. This poor, abandoned Tabernacle taught the young priest more about the Love of Jesus than his years of theological study. It marked his entire life from that moment. He dedicated himself until his death to spreading devotion to the Eucharist, proclaiming these words which he would go on to choose for his epitaph: “Jesus is here! He is here! Do not abandon Him!” This saintly bishop will help you to receive Holy Communion more fervently and to love Jesus more deeply in Eucharistic Adoration. This book will awaken you to a new experience of Our Lord — that you may see, hear, love, and console “Love who is not loved.”

Blessed are the pure of heart (Mark 7)

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

Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them,
“Hear me, all of you, and understand.
Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;
but the things that come out from within are what defile.

“From within people, from their hearts,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.
All these evils come from within and they defile.”

Mark 7

In this passage Jesus defines purity of heart by telling us what it is not. A pure heart is not a heart from which come thoughts and actions, attitudes and desires for “unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, and folly.”

The heart according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church is “the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God” (CCC 368).

The human heart is wracked by the distortions of concupiscence making it difficult at times to decide for God. Every one of us can testify to the struggles we undergo to be “pure of heart.” How difficult it is to keep our hearts clean when we are standing knee deep in available options for satisfying our lower instincts. Certainly, we could think of the person struggling with an addiction to pornography or lust, but there is also the uncleanness of anger, of greed, of deceit, of envy, of arrogance. Who among us can boast never to have wrestled with these?

Here are some points of spiritual advice when our hearts struggle to put on the mind and heart of Christ:

  • Refuse to let into your mind ideas, memories, and images that lead you to thoughts and behaviors that are angry, lustful, envious, deceitful, and so on. Fill your mind and heart with what is true, good and beautiful through a careful choice of the media you use, how much time you spend on social media, and what you read and decide to look at.
  • Look for patterns and discover the one or two main ways in which you struggle with temptation. Focus your prayer and watchfulness on these.
  • Become intimately aware of the movements of your heart so you can meet an evil thought with a short prayer, for example, Lord Jesus, I love you… Jesus, mercy… Jesus.
  • Increase your love for Jesus through prayer, spiritual reading, and above all the sacraments.

Once after St. Catherine of Siena had been beset with temptations against purity and had struggled for several days without a sense of Jesus being there to help her, she complained to him, “Lord, where were you when my heart was so tormented?” Jesus responded, “I was in the center of your heart.”

In this gospel passage Jesus rejects the legalistic reduction of the virtue of purity to exterior cleansing and focuses on our heart because it is within us that the Trinity abides. “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (Jn 14:23).

Image: Manuel Darío Fuentes Hernández from Pixabay.

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

Jesus Preaches in Nazareth – Being in Jesus (Horizons of the Heart 38)

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

The grace we are asking of God: to discover Jesus in my own personal story so that my personal myth may be transformed in Jesus, as was that of Ignatius, that I will be disposed to hear God’s call and follow it wholeheartedly

Horizons of the Heart is inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and my own notes from my thirty-day Ignatian retreat in 2022. See an index for the whole series.

Begin by relaxing your body, your mind, letting go of anxieties and ambitions and expectations and plans… Lay all that you notice and all that you are bare and exposed before the Father who welcomes you with a gaze that is gently loving. Settle into the silence that runs deeper than emotional turbulence… Move beyond imagination where you wait upon the stirring of the soul and the movement of the heart. Return to Jesus to find the Rest he offers…to welcome the gift…to become a child held in safe arms….

Making Space for the Word

Ask Jesus that every aspect of this prayer will please him and will give glory to God.

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. (Luke 4: 28-30) NIV).

We reach more perfect understanding when we take quality time to feel with Jesus, as he reveals himself, looking and hearing, touching and tasting, in the Gospel Word. Contemplation of Jesus becomes the path to imitate Jesus.

Imagine yourself in the crowd of curious men, pushing, pulling, yelling, gathering momentum as they moved Jesus out of the town and to the edge of the cliff.

Now enter into Jesus, into his heart, into his experience of all this…his experience of being the object of anger, resistance, rejection…his experience of being pushed around, ganged up on….

What is Jesus seeing? How does he gaze on each of these men? What does he see deep within them? What does he feel as he sees in them his Father’s creative beauty and goodness?

Ask Jesus to show you his desires for each of them….

In Jesus, has love cast out all fear?

This prayer changes the way we perceive and experience reality. We learn how to be in Jesus and to imitate him in the way he experienced every aspect of human need and desire…

Rest in that awareness as Jesus helps you to resonate with what he resonates with. As you enter into his feelings and the way he uses his senses, you will gradually lose interest in your own spontaneous reactions, defenses, and self-promotions. Jesus will bring you to his way by attraction, sweetness, and beauty. He will make you feel safety, belonging, and hope.

As Joseph Ratzinger wrote:

From the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the most profound sense to himself, not through what he does, but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift. It cannot be “made” on one’s own, without anyone else; one must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved.

That love represents simultaneously both man’s highest possibility and his deepest need and that this most necessary thing is at the same time the freest and the most unenforceable means precisely that for his “salvation” man is meant to rely on receiving.

If he declines to let himself be presented with the gift, then he destroys himself.

Activity that makes itself into an absolute, that aims at achieving human by its own efforts alone, is in contradiction with man’s being.

Joseph Ratzinger once quoted Louis Evely:  

The whole history of mankind was led astray, suffered a break, because of Adam’s false idea of God. He wanted to be like God. I hope that you never thought that Adam’s sin lay in this … Had God not invited him to nourish this desire? Adam only deluded himself about the model. He thought God was an independent autonomous being sufficient to himself; and in order to become like him he rebelled and showed disobedience.

But when God revealed himself, when God wished to show who he was, he appeared as love, tenderness, as outpouring of himself, infinite pleasure in another. Inclination, dependence. God showed himself obedient, obedient unto death. In the belief that he was becoming like God, Adam turned right away from him. He withdrew into loneliness, and God was fellowship. (Introduction to Christianity, trans J.R. Foster, 267-268.

“To educate our senses and feelings, to become imbued with his way of being and feeling, of resonating with everything that made him resonate, of abhorring everything that he abhorred, of reacting to things and to people as he sed to react, to spontaneously (the goal) feel with Jesus—to be more like him [than ourselves]…” (Imitating Christ our Lord with the Senses: Sensing and Feeling in the Exercises: Antonio Guillen (The Way, 47/1-2, Jan/April 2008), 225-241).

A gift to take with you

Allow an image or object that encapsulates all these experiences to form in your mind. Take some time to speak with God about the meaning or significance of this object.

Ask Mary, Joseph and Jesus to show you one specific gift they wish to give you. Receive it and remain in stillness and quietly relaxed presence under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Reviewing the Graces of Prayer

When you finish praying, write down the main gifts and discoveries from this time of intimate contemplation. What is one concrete thing you can do to solidify these gifts in your life.

Image Credit: ChrisG via Pixabay

We belong to each other (Matthew 18:15-20)

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

“Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth
about anything for which they are to pray,
it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them.”

Matthew 18:15-20

Every time I watch the altar server carrying the cross and leading the procession to the altar while the entrance hymn is sung, I feel slightly overwhelmed. We are being gathered together by Christ himself. It is something that is happening to us, given to us, being done through us. We are entering into the presence of Christ as into a new “dimension” which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life.

We are not gathering together like we gather at a meeting or a club house or a restaurant.

We are doing something more than going to this or that Mass in one parish or other at a time most convenient to us.

We are answering a call to do what is most natural to the human creature: to adore. We are answering an invitation to keep our hearts lifted high. We are plunging in liturgy and sacrament into the new life of the Kingdom. We are approaching the altar which is a sign that we have been given access to the heavenly sanctuary.

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them.”

In the Mass celebrated Sunday after Sunday, day after day, Jesus brings our personal reality into harmony with his own heart, his own truth, his own will. In the assembly, our voices and even our lives are more and more harmoniously united, as we become more and more like Jesus himself. That is why Jesus makes clear that we are responsible for each other, that we are “brother and sister” to each other. If one member of the communion gathered in Christ is having difficulty, or straying, or offending in some significant way, indifference or tolerance is not an acceptable response, since Jesus himself outlines in this passage a process for winning back our brother or sister to live more deeply their new life in Christ.

In the end, we do not belong to ourselves. We belong to Christ. We belong to each other. When we have answered to the initiative of Christ who gathers us together, we grow more completely into one harmonious voice with him and with each other as we offer praise to the Father and intercede for the world.

Image: Felipe Balduino via Pexels

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