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Reflection on Trinity Sunday: 16 June 2019

In the beginning was relationship

In the beginning was relationship. “Let us create in our image” (Genesis 1:26-27). When we start with God as relationship, we begin the spiritual journey with an awareness that there has to be a “DNA connection,” between the One who creates and what is created. The energy in the universe is not in the planets, nor in the atomic particles, but very surprisingly in the relationship between them. The energy in the Trinity is not in any precise definition or in the partly arbitrary names of the three persons of the Trinity as much as in the relationship between the Three. We must reclaim Relationship as the foundation and ground of everything. The Trinitarian revelation starts with the nature of loving—and this is the very nature of being! We are intrinsically like the Trinity, living in an absolute relatedness, standing inside a continuous flow which we call love. Jesus invites us to a Trinitarian way of living, loving, and relating—on earth as it is in the Godhead.

When we describe God, we can only use similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We absolutely must maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery; otherwise, religion worships itself and its formulations instead of God. Yet Mystery isn’t something we cannot understand. Mystery is endlessly understandable. “The Spirit of truth will guide you into all the truth”

John 16:13

God for us, we call you Father.
God alongside us, we call you Jesus.
God within us, we call you Holy Spirit.
You are the eternal mystery that enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things,
Even us and even me.
Every name falls short of your goodness and greatness.
We can only see you in what is.
We ask for such perfect seeing—
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Richard Rohr (adapted)

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Reflection on Pentecost: 9th June 2019

A Pentecost Blessing

May the enthusiasm of Spirit leap incessantly within you and help you to live a vibrant life.

May the warmth of Spirit’s fire be extended through your concern and care for all those who need your love.

May the blaze of Spirit’s courage enable you to speak the truth and so stand up for respect, dignity and justice.

May the undying embers of Spirit’s faithfulness support you when you feel spiritually dry and empty.

May the strength of Spirit’s love sustain your hope as you enter into the pain of our world.

May the clear light of Spirit’s guidance be a source of effective discernment and decision-making for you.

May Spirit’s patient endurance be yours while you wait for what is unknown to be revealed.

May the steady flame of Spirit’s goodness within you convince you every day of the power of your presence with others.

May the joyful fire of Spirit dance within you and set happiness ablaze in your life.

May the spark of your relationship with Spirit catch fire in the hearts of those with whom you live and work.

May you be mindful of the eternal Flame within you. May you rely on this Source of Love to be your constant ally and your steady Guide.

Joyce Rupp


The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to reveal to us the truth of our being so that the way of our being can match it.

Wm. Paul Young

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Reflection on 7th Sunday of Easter: 2nd June 2019

Oneness

“That they may be one, as we are one.” These are Jesus’ words of farewell to his disciples and he repeats this prayer several times. When Jesus talks about oneness, what he has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual inter-abiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love. As Thomas Merton reflected, “We are already one.” We just need to start becoming what we already are. All that is absent is awareness. To be one with everyone and everything is to have overcome the fundamental optical illusion of our separateness. Awareness opens our eyes to the reality of our oneness, and our openness to the Spirit allows this awareness to transform us.

On Thursday, we celebrated the feast of the Ascension, a celebration of oneness. In the story of Christ’s ascension as told in Acts (1:9-11), angels appear next to the disciples as they gaze after the rising figure. The angels ask, “Why are you standing here staring up into heaven?” Most of Christianity has been doing just that, straining to find the historical Jesus “up there.” Where did he go? We’ve been obsessed with the question because we think the universe is divided into separate levels—heaven and earth. But it is one universe and all within it is saturated with the presence of God. The whole point of the Incarnation and Risen Body is the revelation that the Christ is here—and always was! The Ascension is the revelation of the final reunion of what appeared to be separated for a while: earth and heaven, human and divine, matter and Spirit. Jesus didn’t go anywhere. He revealed himself as the universal omnipresent Body of Christ. That’s why the final book of the Bible promises us a new heaven and a new earth, not an escape from earth. (Revelation 21:1), We focused on “going” to heaven instead of living on earth as Jesus did—which makes heaven and earth one. It is heaven all the way to heaven. What we choose now is exactly what we choose to be forever.

Various sources: David Benner, Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, Richard Rohr

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Reflection on 6th Sunday of Easter: 26th May 2019

The Holy Spirit will remind you of all I have told you.

 Jesus said these words to his apostles at a time of transition in their lives, at a time when they must have felt that all their dreams were about to be shattered, that everything that mattered to them was about to be lost.

‘One of our greatest fears, and the cause of so much resistance to change, is that we think that we are on the verge of losing irrevocably what we have valued from the past. Don’t be afraid that in letting go you are losing anything at all, because everything that matters, from all the experiences and encounters in your life, has been internalised and is firmly lodged in your heart. It is yours. It is part of you. It travels with you and can never be lost. It will continue to enrich you. Walk on with empty hands so that you will be able to receive the gifts that are still to be given to you.

We internalise what matters. When we realise this, we find a new freedom to move forward. We internalise what matters. We can safely let go of what doesn’t matter, just as our own bodies absorb all that is good and life-giving from what we feed them and let go of the waste.

When we are in transition, we cling to small tokens that remind us of the past. Holding that cherished item may be an excuse to wallow in regret for what has been lost. Or it may be a gentle reminder that all those memories have become part of who we are now and we have every reason to revisit them with gratitude but no reason to let them swallow us up in fantasies about how the grass was always greener in the field we left behind.

Margaret Silf. The Other side of Chaos

“The Holy Spirit will remind you of all that I have told you.”  A definition of remind is ‘to awaken memories of something’ God speaks to us in so many ways: in the words of Scripture, in the people we meet every day, in the circumstances of our lives, in the places we have visited and in the wonders of Nature. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to awaken in us the many treasured memories which we have internalised and which nourish us and remind us of who we are. When holding these life-giving memories, may we feel more fully alive in the present moment, more hopeful for the future and may we experience true peace. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”

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Reflection on 5th Sunday of Easter: 19th May 2019

“Love one another just as I have loved you.”

Surely Jesus’ command to love one another was nothing new for the disciples and those of their time. The commandment is well known in the Old Testament: Love God with your whole heart and your neighbour as yourself.’ So what is new?  — “Love as I have loved you.” This is how we are to love. Love is not what we do, it is how we do it.

When we reflect on the words ‘…as I have loved you’, what are our thought processes?  Do we look for various Scripture references which speak of God’s love for us and in them find a God who loves unconditionally, a God whose love is indiscriminate: a God who is loving, caring, forgiving, compassionate, understanding and self-sacrificing. We find so many qualities of love for us to emulate. We are constantly looking for ways in which we can do this, ways in which we can show that we love as Jesus loved. Do we have the correct starting point? We are familiar with the story of the traveller who stopped to ask someone the directions to his destination. “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here,” was the reply. Jesus’ starting point was his awareness that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” (John 14:11)

How we embark on our journey of loving others is rooted in our personal experience of who we are. Love is not something we decide to do now and then. Love is who we are.  We are created in the image of God and God is love. We were created by a loving God to be love in the world. When we get the “who” right and realise that who I am is love, then we will do what we came to do: Love God and love all that God has created. It is not really what we do that matters. It is the energy we do it with. We can tell immediately if there is love energy coming from the person we are with.  When we truly experience God who is Love, when we know that our heart keeps beating with His energy, then we become Love. We also know this to be true of others as well as ourselves. “To love another person is to see the face of God.” (Les Miserables)

Various sources

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Reflection on 4th Sunday of Easter: 12th May 2019

Eternal Life

The verses that follow today’s reading tell us that Jesus’Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, not for “any good work, but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’? [Psalm 82:6] If he called you ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be wrong—then why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I say that I am the son of God?’

The Jews did not know Jesus. They were not ready or willing to believe that what God has done in Jesus, he has done everywhere: putting together human and divine. In today’s first reading, Paul and Barnabas also met with a similar resistance from the Jews when they preached the good news. “Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles.” When the Gentiles (the outsiders) heard this, “as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers.” For the Jews it was all too much to believe, just as it is for us. We are a creation of God from all eternity. Our DNA is divine yet we are born in human form. How can we believe this when there is so much evidence to the contrary? We are so aware of our limitedness. How can we be sons and daughters of God? Yet that is the assertion that Jesus makes and he says that we are to follow him in believing this.

To follow Jesus is to know who we objectively are from all eternity, to know that we are created with the same personhood, the same identity, the same combination of divinity and humanity as he was. Nobody achieves this to perfection. It’s not a question of being perfect. It’s a question of our deepest core identity. We are created in God, by God and for God. The main difference between Jesus and the rest of us is that Jesus believed it and most of us don’t. He knew, he trusted and allowed himself to be God’s Son. Let’s allow our daughterhood, our sonship to be a daily choice; to daily allow and surrender to this glorious good news of who we objectively are in God from all eternity. This is the eternal life experienced by those who hear the voice of Jesus and follow him.

Richard Rohr (adapted): Homilies

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Reflection on 3rd Sunday of Easter: 5th May 2019

He looked just like everybody else

After the Resurrection we are dealing with a newly revealed presence. In every story we notice that the people involved do not recognise Jesus. Mary Magdalene thinks he is the gardener; the disciples on the way to Emmaus think he is another traveller, walking along the road; in today’s story, he is another fisherman standing on the shore. He looked like everybody else. The limited presence we called Jesus has become a universal presence available beyond all the limitations of space, time, ethnicity, nationality, class and gender.  Jesus has now become a universally available presence whom we call the Christ in whom “were created all things in heaven and earth; everything visible and invisible.” ( Col. 1:16)  The Christ Mystery is the indwelling of the Divine Presence in everyone and everything. All is an apparition of the Divine.

Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” We opt for the latter when we learn to offer a daily ‘Yes’ to the forgotten reality that all creation is both the hiding place and the revelation of God.  Faith in God is to have confidence in reality itself, to believe that God is in the reality of our lives, that God is revealed in everything and everyone. Then, like John we can truly say, “It is the Lord.”

Richard Rohr ( Adapted): Homilies; The Universal Christ

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Reflection on 2nd Sunday of Easter: 28th April 2019

Living the Resurrection

A week ago we celebrated the Resurrection. There comes a time, however, when we must live the resurrection. One week after Easter, is our life different? Where are we living: in the freedom and joy of resurrection or behind locked doors? What do we believe about Jesus’ Resurrection? If we want to know what we believe, we need to look at our life and how we live. Our beliefs guide our life and our life reveals our beliefs. We’re not all that different from Thomas. We each live with at least one “unless clause.” Unless I see, unless I touch, unless I feel, unless I experience, I will not believe. It reveals our struggle and desire to believe. It also reveals our misunderstanding of faith and the resurrection. The resurrection of Christ does not meet our conditions. Each condition becomes just another lock on the door. Resurrection empowers and enables us to meet our conditions. It lets us unlock the doors and step outside even when we don’t know what is on the other side.

Resurrection does not undo our past, fix our problems, or change the circumstances of our lives. It changes us, offers us a way through our problems and leads us into a future. God cannot lead us into the future until we are ready to let go of the past. That is why forgiveness is so central to the Easter mystery. We understand what it means to forgive others and even ourselves. Can we also forgive reality? To receive reality is always to “bear it,” to bear with reality for not meeting all of our needs and our conditions. To accept reality is to forgive reality for being what it is, almost day by day and sometimes even hour by hour.

Regardless of our circumstances Jesus shows up bringing life and peace, offering life and peace, embodying life and peace. Life and peace are Resurrection reality. The life and peace of Jesus’ Resurrection enable us to live through our circumstances. He gives us his peace, his breath, his life and then sends us out. We are free to unlock our doors, step outside and fully live.

Michael Marsh and Richard Rohr ( adapted)

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Reflection on Easter Sunday: 21st April 2019

Easter is a Faith Moment

We might identify with the women through the events of that first Easter morning. They came to search and found an empty tomb. Then they were told they were looking in the wrong place: ‘Why look for the living among the dead?’ Finally they had to adjust to the staggering good news that Jesus was alive when they thought he was dead. Does their story remind us of our journey when we found life again where we thought there was none? We discovered that we had been looking in the wrong place.

No one saw the resurrection because there was nothing to see. The crucifixion is an historical event; the resurrection is a faith event. Easter is more than a feeling moment. It is a faith moment.

We can know little Easters all year round and if we develop a recognition of and a taste for them, they will deepen our faith in the Resurrection even when we do not feel the joy at the time of its celebration.

Our little Easters are those moments when we feel hope press against our spirit. Our little Easters are those moments when something that has died in us is raised to life again. They provide quiet reassurance that God keeps raising dead parts of our spirit to life.

We live the Resurrection when we try to live in the present moment, when we allow the Resurrection to change us now.

Taken from a variety of sources

“How does one become a butterfly?”

“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

‘Hope for the Flowers’ by Trina Paulus

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Reflection on Passion Sunday: 14th April 2019

Thanksgiving

If we are to be transformed by our reflection on the mystery of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection, it will be helpful to focus on one aspect so as to avoid becoming overwhelmed by so many images. This can be a difficult choice to make but the opening verses in today’s Gospel reading offer a very powerful image. Jesus takes bread and wine, His Body, His Blood, and he gives thanks.

Can we take our full life in our hands, even ‘those things which cannot be fixed but can only be carried.’ (Megan Divine) Can we then give thanks? “Thanksgiving is inherent to a true experience of wholeness. Thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life. How do I fully live when life is full of hurt? How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest of life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out? For forty long years, God’s people daily ate manna – a substance whose name is said to derive from the question man hu, seemingly meaning “What is it?” Hungry, the Israelites chose to gather up that which is baffling. For more than 14,600 days they took their nourishment from that which they didn’t comprehend. They found soul-filling in the inexplicable, on that which has no meaning. They ate the mystery. They ate the mystery. And the mystery, that which made no sense, was like ‘wafers of honey’ on the lips.” What mysteries have I refused, refused to let nourish me, and in so doing have been unable to taste the flavour of honey they contain, unable to find the wonder they contain?

Ann Voskamp. Adapted

“Where there is wonder there is thanksgiving.” Ann’s life became one of openness to the wonders which surrounded her, finding joy in the midst of trauma, drama, pain, loss and daily duties. She learned to slow down, catch God in the moment and give thanks.

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank you’ it will be enough.”

Meister Eckhart