“Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; this is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.”
—St. Teresa of Calcutta
Please share the Good Word with your friends!
Please share the Good Word with your friends!
As a young Jesuit, I have often struggled with feeling anxiety about doing something wrong, or of harming my relationship with God. This is exhausting, and makes life become a perilous dance of trying to avoid making a mistake.
This way of following God is fundamentally wrong. We are called to live out of love for God, and love of others, not out of fear of messing up. This is the call the apostles experienced, and that we also receive. Love is not about fearful obligation, or making sure everything is done right. Love is about freedom, thanksgiving, and generosity.
So today, if you are being hard on yourself, turn to Jesus and imagine if he really thinks the same way. Let him embrace you, tell you how he loves you, and then walk with you as you get beyond your guilt and fears to love him, to yourself, and others.
—Chris Williams, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic of the Wisconsin province, is studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.
…is an unusual word for this passage from Paul, yet it is the one word that I believe best sums up its meaning.
I recently had a mammogram, and the very next day, I received a call from my doctor’s office informing me that more images were necessary. As I sat in the waiting room with the other women who received similar calls that week, I realized that we were all struggling with the reality of our situations. Some of us were going to learn that we had a battle to fight, ready or not.
As luck would have it, I was reading the chapter on “Surrendering to the Future” in James Martin’s The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything. In this chapter, Martin explains how his spiritual mentors helped him come to terms with his reality and to accept it for what it is. Paul’s words about readying for battle read the same to me. Instead of a triumphalist tone in the passage, I hear resignation. In today’s language, he’s saying, “This is the situation, and we have to deal with it, like it or not.”
Fortunately for me those additional images confirmed that the suspected tumors were actually tiny lymph nodes. While I was trying to make sense of my situation, I asked my spiritual director, “How does one surrender to such a reality?” I received the wise and simple answer—together. Battles are not fought alone.
—JoEllen Windau-Cattapan is the Atlanta area director for the Contemplative Leaders in Action, a program of the Office of Ignatian Spirituality, USA Northeast Province.
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Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.
In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
“Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” It can be hard to sum up the mission of an entire university in a single action, but when pressed, I offer this. If you can look at another student and see the face of Christ in him or her, then Jesuit education is surely doing its job. Sometimes we do not get our way. Sometimes we must yield to the needs of others. When we do so, we do it not just out of love, but out of reverence for Christ, as today’s first reading invites us.
Can subordination possibly be an invitation for you, today, to seek Christ in a relationship? Might a softer approach be just enough to allow Christ’s presence to be more surely felt? Can you look at a spouse, partner, brother, sister, classmate, colleague, employee, or friend as you might Christ?
—Patrick Hyland, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic of the Chicago-Detroit province, is currently studying philosophy at St. Louis University.
“I will be with you!” That is my promise.
“I will be with you forevermore.”
Trust in my love. Bring me all your cares,
For I will be with you forevermore.
—James E. Moore, Jr. “I Will Be With You,” © GIA Publications, Inc., 1996
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”
When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
I was on retreat many years ago during which the retreat director repeated a line that has stuck with me ever since: the world wounds us and prayer heals us.
The woman in today’s Gospel was so wounded by the spirit that crippled her that she was “bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.” This is a good image for us to pray with today. What are the evil spirits in our lives that leave us bent over, crippled, and wounded?
Another good image to pray with today is that of Jesus laying his healing hands on the woman and her standing up straight to praise God. Sometimes I approach prayer as if I am trying to “accomplish” or “fix” something. But I have found that my best moments of prayer are when I open up my wounded self to Jesus’ loving embrace. God’s unconditional love is the balm that heals our wounds and enables us to stand up straight again.
—Dave Lawler is the Director of Campus Ministry at Creighton Preparatory School in Omaha, NE.
How do we welcome the tenderness of God? Do I allow myself to be taken up by God, to be embraced by him, or do I prevent him from drawing close? “But I am searching for the Lord”—we could respond. Nevertheless, what is most important is not seeking him, but rather allowing him to find me and caress me with tenderness. The question put to us simply is: do I allow God to love me?
—Pope Francis, Dec. 24, 2014
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He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Sirach tells us “The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds.” The Psalm response echoes this theme: “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.” And in the gospel, it is the prayer of one who knows himself a sinner that is heard. God accepts the prayer of the tax collector because he acknowledges God as his Lord and Savior. He does not compare himself with anyone else. He does not judge anyone else; only himself.
During this Year of Mercy, we have been challenged to turn to the Lord in prayer much as the parable’s tax collector did, in all humility. And like the tax collector, we have found a God whose love is shown in mercy, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness.
—Fr. Don Petkash, S.J. serves as Vice-President for Mission and Identity at Walsh Jesuit High School, Stow, OH.
You are the visible face of the invisible Father,
of the God who manifests his power above all by forgiveness and mercy.
May we, who have benefited from your Father’s forgiveness and mercy
be ministers, in turn, of your mercy, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness.
Like you, may we bring good news to the poor,
proclaim liberty to captives and the oppressed,
and restore sight to the blind.
—Father Petkash
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But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.” (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.)
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.
But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
St. Paul reminds us to treasure and nurture those special gifts and talents God has shared with each of us. How boring life would become if we were all the “same.” Rather, the rich variety of our talents (and even our personal quirks) bring flavor to our lives, energy to our families, and unique service to our world. Indeed, like the vinedresser in today’s gospel parable, the Lord invites us to nurture these gifts and talents in all the “worlds” we daily inhabit.
The challenge of course is not to hoard our gifts, but rather to share them in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. So— as each of us goes about this weekend’s routine—what insight can I bring to a family meal or neighborhood gathering? What chore can I pick up to help someone else succeed? What email can I send or conversation can I share with someone in need of a laugh, a shoulder to cry on, a smile to keep going in the midst of this weekend’s many demands?
—The Jesuit prayer team
“Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity.
Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
Please share the Good Word with your friends!
