THE UNBROKEN WORD

Firstly, let me wish everyone a very Happy New Year. While still in the octave of Christmas, we are often more focused on resolutions in these first few days of the New Year.

The New Year is a time when we often look to change something in our lives. Often something personal, losing weight, dropping a bad habit, or picking up something virtuous which has fallen off the radar during the past year. Like Lent, we are called to do some self-examination and see what might be better with a different outlook for the future.

Perhaps this year, as St. Ignatius of Loyola instructs us, we can involve God in the decision-making process. Is what we are changing going to benefit our relationship with God or others? Is it self-serving? Did I reflect on the decision, or just merely reenact some older one?

Well, not to pour cold water on some great new initiative you may have started for the year; but it is worth recalling the only thing God wants from us is to be closer to Him. Seems rather simple when we consider it in those terms.

A Happy and Blessed New Year to you.

At many times I pinch myself in gratitude as I “feel” God’s presence in my life. Thanksgiving is one of those times. It gave me pause for the many in the world who do great works, show great love, yet have little or no recognition of God in their lives.

We all have those who we want to be closer to God, perhaps nevermore so than those in our families. We “want” them to come to Mass, pray and generally recognize God in the same way we do. Yet we might be missing an important point.

For those wonderful people we know, who love their family dearly, help others, do good deeds and yet seem to be “non-believers.” Because we cannot imagine living in a world bereft of God, we feel sorry for them, as if God is not present in their lives.

Yet we know this to be untrue. God is present in all lives and is manifest through natural virtues as well as the theological ones from our faith. Anyone who loves is loved, gives love knows God; or at least encounters God through this grace. The natural virtues (look them up if you are not familiar with them) are also a gift from God, as are all things which emanate from His love.

For myself, meeting these people daily in everyday lives I continue to be amazed at how God operates through others even without their knowledge. How many people in your life display the virtue of love, yet don’t worship in the traditional sense as we know it.

While of course, our goal as Christians is to bring others to Christ, to save souls, we also must recognize the Holy Spirit is hard at work in all the others we pray for, work with, give to, and share with.

Again, we can be grateful for our own faith, one of the theological virtues, but we also should recognize God’s love in others, and acknowledge they may not be as far from God as we might have thought.

 

The Congregation awaits

XXX

God is Missing … I don’t think so

XXX

God is never missing

XXX

Always on

Always present

XXX

Yet the greatest faith

Is the lack of it

Practicing love when it’s unreturned

Or so it seems

XXX

Giving to the ingrate

Who seems to always want more

Living a life of servanthood

When all desires pull me elsewhere

XXX

These are the marks of love unleashed

A love hidden deep in the dark night of the soul

Richer than the mystic who has affirmation

Stronger than the preacher with perceived truth and waves it like a flag

XXX

For the lover who loves quietly and silently without reward

Is the truer one

Where sadness is felt but not transmitted

Where the recourse is another visit to the well

XXX

In the hope Jesus will be there someday

THE UNBROKEN WORD

Thanksgiving. This wonderful time of the year where we get to meet with all the relatives we love. (And some perhaps less so ) It is a time for community, sharing, renewed relationships, understanding and most of all gratitude.

So much of Thanksgiving is focused on the second part of the word. The giving part. Retailers encourage giving like an Old Testament prelude to the coming of Christ at Christmas. When I first moved the USA, I could not believe Santa was visible so early in the season. It is the season of selling as much as it is of giving.

I have nothing against the giving part, it is often required for sharing and showing how we care for others; however, the first part of the word is sometimes less well serviced by us. The “thanks” part is to which I refer.

For the Thanks part to work, we need to have a position of gratitude. Gratitude is something which has to be in place for a true Thanksgiving to be in place. For it is in this embodied surrender and thankfulness to God that real gratitude is located. Gratitude which is an explosive combination of God’s grace-filled love captured in a loving embrace which is palpable, something we can feel. As real as the hug of our nieces, children, and grandchildren at Thanksgiving dinner.

Gratitude requires more than a simple “thanks” to God. It requires a dedicated celebration of what we have been blessed with and shared with those around us if we are lucky enough to have them near during this wonderful time.

It is a time to be grateful for the simple things, a roof over our heads, food on the table, relationships, friends, community, the ability to be able to help others and the love of God which surrounds us always.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving! But more than that embrace gratitude for the gift it is, and our God who provides us with the ability to hold it entirely in his love.

Joshua Tree National Park at Dusk

ARRIVED

Another destination

Appeared without looking

Found by merely walking in the woods

Without a flashlight

How wonderful is that.