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Homily of Fr. Peter Pojol, S.J. at Cenacle Retreat House on September 14th, 2019 (Saturday) I think it may be safe to say that everyone has had an experience of recoiling at something horrible, of being so distressed by something that it makes us turn away in order to, momentarily at least, block out whatever evil confronts us. It could be the replay of that crucial helmet-and-glove catch by David Tyree, if you’re a New England Patriots fan. It could be a scene of extreme violence, or of a loved one suffering in sickness. It could be a reminder of anything depressing, or anything frightening, anything that threatens life, anything that seems to assert the victory of death, of the anti-life. Have you ever, in such an instance, fought against your instinct to turn away and to forget, and instead steeled your resolve to face that evil squarely and not let it determine your choices or your life, not let it have the last word? If you have, you may have experienced the power of paradoxically drawing life from death, of gaining strength from fear. The story of Moses and the Israelites in our first reading from the book of Numbers illustrates how God saved them from their deaths precisely by having them confront the cause of their death. I must admit that it is a mysterious account written with many of the mythical elements of story-telling and faith proclaiming that was standard practice at that time. But what we can glean from the story is that the Israelites were dying in the desert, whether literally or figuratively from snake bites, and recognizing their fault for turning against God in their distress, they sought the forgiveness and help of God. What is interesting in this account is the way God saved them. Rather than introducing something different to counter the serpents, God instructed Moses to make an image of the serpent, and to tell the people to look at this image, a stark reminder of their ills. Rather than giving them something to take their attention away from the source of their death and destruction, God as it were made them stare death in the eye and in this way enabled them to defeat death and to have life. There is something to be said about gazing on evil that threatens to envelope and overwhelm us. The wisdom of staring death in the eye is not simply to desensitize us or to make us numb, which is what seems to drive some trends in popular media and culture. For even when we have become desensitized and numb, we can still die, just as we can die running away from death. Rather, the wisdom of gazing right at death is to see what we had not seen before: that is, the power of God that surpasses death and evil—not just death and evil in the abstract, but this death and this evil that taunts me; and not just the power of God in general, but the unrelenting power of this God who loves me persistently no matter how many times I have foresaken him. We may have become desensitized to the paradox of bannering the very cause of death as the promise of deliverance, from the sheer repeated exposure to the image. In fact, one of the universal symbols of medicine derives, I think, from the Old Testament story we just heard: the image of a serpent on a pole, especially as it is being carried by the figure of the greek god Mercury symbolizing the speedy delivery of cure. The other ubiquitous paradoxical symbol of cure and life, whose power to jolt us into recognizing the profound truth of “life through death” is easy to lose, is the cross of Jesus Christ, the exaltation of which we celebrate today. It is easy to forget the impact of raising high the symbol of the standard instrument of torture and death that was the very same one used to kill the one we proclaim as Messiah and Savior. If Jesus had been executed by an electric chair, we would be adorning all our Churches and altars with it. By exalting the cross, whether by the crucifixes we place prominently in our homes and places of worship, or by the habit of the sign of the cross with which we call upon God to bless us in prayer, we not only remind ourselves of our death and of the death of the one who came to save us, but more importantly, we recommit ourselves to the truth that Jesus exemplified and willingly gave up his life to tell: that God is love and love is the final word, not death, not failure, not evil. By exalting the cross we humbly beg the Lord to help us make our own the saving mystery that plays out from death to life. By living by the sign of the cross, we hope to embrace whatever makes us cringe and cower in fear and in so doing to find God embracing us and leading us from darkness into light. As the evangelist John set down in those immortal words we heard in our gospel today: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
“What Retreatants Say” is a platform to allow our in-house retreatants share testimonies of their encounters with Jesus, in so enriching our hearts and spirits. We are happy to welcome and receive your “thanksgiving symbol/expression” be it artwork, poetry, story, prayer or reflection (max 1 page). What Retreatants Say
This essay first appeared on print on Pentecost 14 years ago in Sr. Cecille’s column “Solid Places” in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. ONE of the simple joys of “maidenhood” is the occasional chance to visit the family and babysit one’s little nieces and nephews. The longing makes one receptive to what these kids have to teach us faded and jaded grown-ups, with the added bonus that when their angelic dispositions expire and they turn cranky, one can always return them to their parents without qualm or conscience. (My harried sister, taking back a squirming toddler in her arms, once lamented: “I wish they came with batteries!”) I was babysitting my 10-month-old niece, who was at that climbing and exploring stage when I was momentarily distracted. Before I knew it, she had discovered the marvels of the dining table’s underbelly, and was now examining the intricacies of our dog’s fur. Our dog, a gentle and affectionate German Shepherd, suffered the indignity with calm resignation. I hastily plucked the sticky-fingered pint-sized explorer and carried her off to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. I held her in front of me, and seated her on the rim of the sink with her feet on its cool surface. As I held her tiny hands under the tap and turned the faucet on, she blinked in surprise and slowly turned to look at me, her eyes big as saucers, lips half parted, with the most beautiful expression on her face. It was pure rapture. Rapture filled her entire being, and it took my breath away. The memory of my baby niece’s rapturous face lingered with me for several days, and brought me to the birthday of the Church which we celebrated last Sunday. Perhaps one way of reflecting upon the feast of Pentecost, when the Spirit came upon the disciples and Mary in the Cenacle (which we Catholics commemorate as the third glorious mystery of the rosary), is to consider this experience of rapture. Three points: First, rapture means being awakened by glory into wondrous joy. From the drudgery of mere existence, we wake up to the stunning truth that, in the words of the poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Perhaps this is why they call childhood “the wonder years”——children have not lost their innocence, which is actually an innate sense of God’s goodness permeating the world, waiting to be discovered. The journey into faith involves the same awakening: the God who came, “pitched his tent among us”, suffered, died and rose again, and will stay with us forever. Life, as we knew it, is turned gloriously upside down, inside out, and made new. Second, rapture is not just surprise at some pleasant discovery. The glorious awakening by which rapture bursts upon us leads to an overflowing, joyous gratitude. It is sheer gift marked by unbelievable abundance. The disciples at Pentecost were filled with the Holy Spirit, impelling them to proclaim and bear witness to what they had experienced. So, too, shall we, when we find the grace to live life gratefully, and therefore, joyfully and passionately. Lastly, when my little niece turned to me with her rapturous smile, she did not (and could not) use words. Nor did I need any: I spontaneously responded with delight at her delight, drawn irresistibly into her joy. Perhaps that is why the disciples could speak different tongues and yet be understood by the people around them. Rapture needs no translation. Joseph Campbell, the famous anthropologist who spent his whole life studying the wisdom of the world’s cultures, was once asked what he thought people looked for in life. He surprised his interviewer by saying that, in his opinion, people were not really after the meaning of life. He said, instead: “I think that what we’re seeking is an expression of being alive. . . so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” Pentecost is about awakening to the glory and gratitude of a God who restores and sustains us into life in abundance. Live the rapture.
The resurrection isn’t simply about getting the message out in the most efficient way – it is about individual transformation, one person at a time. That’s why the risen Jesus took the time to console Magdalene and walk with a couple of discouraged disciples to Emmaus.. appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem, he came back just to appear for Thomas who missed the chance to see him.. Our Lord always deals with us in a very personal way. He knows each of us so well and he understands our deepest desires and he knows what we truly need.
Near the end of my more than three years of intensive psychotherapy, I had a very vivid dream. In that dream, I was in a strange house completely dark and foreboding. I was slowly moving from one room to another, lighting a candle in each room, haunted and terrified by an intense, suffocating loneliness. In therapy, the meaning of the dream gradually unfolded: I was afraid that no matter how much light I can muster, the house of my childhood will forever be empty. Henceforth, I must learn to live with the void. We fill up that void by busyness and noise, by a surfeit of passing pleasures, by a horror vacuii that cuts deep into our very being, such that we cannot name who we are apart from what we do or what we have. Such is our need, such is our fear. It was a painful lesson to learn. I had grown up precisely doing the opposite: filling the void with achievement, in the tragic childish belief that maybe if I do good, I will be loved. And yet in this I am not alone. We all have experienced loss. Heartbreak, suffering, pain, disappointment—even the natural wear and tear of our bodies as we age—all the promise of life inexorably slipping through our trembling fingers, the daily little dyings that foreshadow our last breath. And still we run away: filling that emptiness through various means: achievement, efficiency, popularity, an unending accumulation of lovers, friends, titles, money, fame, the latest gadgets or even facebook likes. We fill up that void by busyness and noise, by a surfeit of passing pleasures, by a horror vacuii that cuts deep into our very being, such that we cannot name who we are apart from what we do or what we have. Such is our need, such is our fear. Thus, in an acutely existential way, we are running on empty, most of our lives. We are just blind to it. Then Lent arrives, with its no nonsense, in-your-face beginning: Ash Wednesday. Nothing can so completely disarm us of our denial than the ashes on our foreheads, and the reminder that we are, and will sooner or later become, dust. And yet, in this rather brusque beginning, we are given unguent for our wounds, and a fallow time of forty days of deep, deep grace, in order to prepare us for the shining truth of Easter. Lent tells us that the only way out is through: through that emptiness, through that pain, through that deep gnawing ache that no person or object or experience can completely assuage. What is this balm of Lent that heals our emptiness? Lent begins with this resounding call from the prophet Joel: “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God.” Lent tells us that the only way out is through: through that emptiness, through that pain, through that deep gnawing ache that no person or object or experience can completely assuage. We must face the truth that we are radically incomplete this side of heaven, and we must therefore rend our hearts and mourn our losses. And yet that is not the whole truth, nor the more important one, in fact. Joel makes it very clear: we are to return to the Lord with all our hearts. Therein lies our balm, therein lies the core of our truth: only God can fill us, only God can bring love and light and joy into the most secret recesses of our hearts. Only God can give us the fullness of life that is our birthright. The journey of Lent marks this return: we sin and run away, God searches for us and brings us home. In this homecoming to God, which finds its summit in the Easter Triduum, we are shown the way. Jesus points out that we are to give alms, to pray and to fast. He tells us that we are to do all these “in secret,” because the Father “sees in secret.” What does this mean? And how can these three help to heal our emptiness? When we open our hearts to God in prayer, we are brought to the truth of our own poverty, of our radical need for God. In a counterintuitive move that could only come from God, almsgiving, praying and fasting heal our emptiness precisely by bringing us face-to-face with the depth of our insufficiency. We open our hands to help another in need, thereby reminding ourselves that we are never too poor to give, and that whatever we give away will never diminish us, because our worth is not found in what we own. When we open our hearts to God in prayer, we are brought to the truth of our own poverty, of our radical need for God. In prayer we receive that deeply felt knowing that, in the memorable words of the Psalmist, “the Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing that I shall want (Ps 23).” When we fast from what we want, when we surrender our needs and desires, be they physical or otherwise, we learn the value of self-transcendence. Self-transcendence is nothing but saying “no” to something desirable and perhaps even good, for the sake of a greater “yes” which is grounded in God. In short, to fast is to stop running after that which satiates us, in order to listen to our deeper longing for God. Finally, Jesus tells us to give alms, to pray and to fast “in secret.” Clearly, there is a lesson in humility here. But perhaps what the Lord desires to deepen in us is also single-heartedness, that purity of intentions that the presence of an audience for all our good work can becloud. When we embrace these practices of self-emptying deprived of other people’s acclamations, we experience the depth of God’s
A reflection by Sr. Cecille Tuble, rc in Maryam Community for the month of February 2019: A million years ago, when I was growing up in the 80’s, my ideas of love revolved around Barbara Cartland-inspired damsels in distress being rescued by stern, inscrutably attractive older noblemen, or their more modern equivalents in Mills and Boon novels. Later there were movie versions too: Richard Gere overcoming his fear of heights to offer flowers and his undying love to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Love, according to these early guides, involved basically being a helpless girl without money or a future, swept off her feet and given, not only a lover/husband, but a whole new identity (of course connected to her man). Love was a once-in-a-lifetime romantic boon: there was only One. True. Love. Too bad if you can’t find yours, honey. Your life is a dismal empty solitude deserving the sincerest commiserations. In my twenties, I was too busy being a self-conscious intellectual feminist, and I thought, with arrogant ignorance, that the guys who pursued me were pitifully blinded by the illusions of romantic love. At that time, my early, largely-unconscious notions of love acquired a quasi-intellectual veneer, an odd and haphazard contradictory mix of adolescent romantic idealism and post-modern ideologies of the impermanence and futility of love. Needless to say, I was blind as a bat when it came to real, flesh-and-blood relationships. I couldn’t recognize love even if it sat on my nose and bit me. Then, in perhaps the most enduring mystery of my life, I fell in love. With God. I was radiant, daring, bursting with joy. I would do anything for God, follow Him anywhere. Of course, in the early years of my religious life, I didn’t actually say this simple truth when asked why I became a nun. I was embarrassed by its unabashed romanticism, its quiet passion simmering over the edges. So I tried to hedge it with more intellectual and spiritual terms. But my journal at that time bore witness, and from time to time whimpered at my denial, like an aggrieved puppy. God, on the other hand, being love and goodness Himself, patiently and tenderly stayed by my side as I explored this disconcertingly alien country called love. What made it so disconcerting is the fact that loving God pushed me outwards, towards the ones that God loves. And since God is incorrigibly indiscriminate in His loving, that meant He constantly called me to love those I found hard to love, those for whom I erected barriers of prejudice and fear. It was, indeed, a “school of love.” Then the darkness came. And again. And yet again. It bore the name Depression, and like a ravenous ogre, it devoured the light and everything that I had carefully constructed which I called “self” and “life.” There were intervening years of being okay, productive, busy with ministry. But each time that dark monster came I fell apart, and I would lose everything, including a healthy self-love. And yet, paradoxically, even then, love stayed. Simply because God stayed. In my journal entry of February 2013 during one of those times of darkness, I wrote: “My God, my love, 19 years na tayo. Thank you. You’re the only sturdy, stable, lasting thing in my life, and I will follow you anywhere. Please give me the grace to follow you even if it takes me through despair. I know you won’t abandon me. ‘The thief of happiness,’ — that is what depression is called. Remind me, Lord, that You are my deepest joy.” And God heard and stayed and led me through and out of that shadowed valley. And the God of love taught me this luminous lesson in the midst of that darkness: love stays. “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” St. Paul thunderously proclaimed to the Corinthians (1 Cor 13: 7). Love will always stay. But I must not look for it in fuzzy romantic feelings, or in ecstatic prayer, or in idealized “soul-mates forever” friendships. Love, in all its wondrous variety, is breathtakingly ordinary. Love is the symphony of spontaneous laughter at community meals, and love is the tearful, solitary confrontation in prayer with one’s sinfulness. Love is my two sisters, harried and exhausted, yet with careful tenderness, cleaning and washing our sick father. Love is doing that day and night, for months until he died. Love is Sunday pasta dinner, a walk under the stars, and a blue dress sewn with pride and affection. Love sits beside you outside the psychiatrist’s clinic, and reminds you to get a haircut. Love is a pair of gnarled and trembling hands reaching out in need, love is a banana offered by younger hands to the old. Love is a puppy, soft and warm and affectionate in your arms. Love is Google Translate and cobbling together emails in Portuguese, love is a dog-eared French-English Dictionary. Love sits across you with glowing triumphant eyes, as your retreatant discovers, with tearful amazement and tremulous joy, that he is, against all odds, God’s beloved pala. Love, indeed, is breathtakingly, joyously ordinary. In this vision, there is no such thing as unrequited love. One day, while I was recovering from my latest foray into depression, my heart stretched out its arms wide and declared: “I love him!” At which my mind yelled, “WTF?!?!” And what followed was a long battle, in which my well-medicated mind, afraid of a relapse triggered by unrequited love, alternately argued and pleaded, cajoled and threatened, all to no avail. My heart dug its heels, and after five months, won the battle. Throughout the years that followed, my heart would announce: “oooh, I love her! (sister),” “Yeah, him too (friend),” “Awww, and you (dog)!” Finally, it dawned on my mind what the whole love-thing was, contrary to my early schemas (Mills and Boon died hard). That it was, after all, an overflow of God’s love, a love that
Taken from “Prayers for the Domestic Church” by Edward Hays: Lord , You who live outside of timeand reside in the imperishable moment, we ask Your blessing this New Year’s Day upon Your gift to us of time. Bless our clocks and watches, you who kindly direct us to observe the passing of minutes and hours. May they make us aware of the miracle of each second of life we experience. May these our ticking servants help us not to miss that which is important, while You keep us from machine-like routine. May we ever be free from being clock watchers and instead become time lovers. Bless our calendars, these ordered lists of days, weeks and months, of holidays, holydays, fasts and feasts – all our special days of remembering. May these servants, our calendars, once reserved for the royal few, for magi and pyramid priests, now grace our homes in our lives. Me there reminders of birthdays and other gift days, As they teach us the secret that all life is meant for celebration in contemplation. Bless, Lord, this New Year, each of its 365 days and nights. Bless us with new moons and full moons. Bless us with happy seasons and a long life. Grant to us, Lord, the new year’s gift of the year of Love. Amen +
A reflection by Sr. Meny, rc for the New Year: I recently rediscovered a book by Fr. Karl Rahner entitled “Everyday Faith.” It was published in 1968 so it turned 50 years old this year. I had a vague memory that I was moved by one of his reflections on the new year, so I had to search again for the book. For those of us who “know” Karl Rahner, he seems so totally out of reach for us ordinary mortals. His sentences can be kilometric to say the least, and one has to delve deeply into his words to even have an initial understanding of what he is talking about. Yet, some of his reflections come across to me as profoundly simple in its beauty, in spite of the many words. This is true for me in his new year’s meditation, “Spiritual Balance Sheet of a Year” (pages 47-51, Everyday Faith). As I look back at the past year and welcome a new one, I once again found myself moved by his words: “Who preserves the past, enduring, irrevocable year for us? God. He knows it, and in his sight, it remains present.” He says no matter how we feel about the past year with its sorrows and failures, and joys, we thank God for it because all have been blessed and graced. For it is God who has given us all the days of the year. So we bid farewell to the past year with deep gratitude because God has been; was there. And we welcome the new year because God is coming with us; because we know, He will also be there in each day of the new year. Karl Rahner says “ we can take ourselves heartened into the new year because He takes responsibility for what He has made. He answers for world history and the life of each one of us. He has encompassed us with His goodness, his love and His fidelity.” God is coming with us into the new year. So we are able to enter into the new year with deep faith, hope and courage because He comes with us.
Homily of Fr. Silvino L. Borres, Jr., SJ on the FEAST OF ST. THÉRÈSE COUDERC on Sept 26, 2018 Our readings this morning are beautiful . They are carefully chosen to give us a glimpse into the richness of the life and spirituality of St. Thérèse. Three things or themes stand out for me from these readings, namely: desire for God, vulnerability and fecundity. First, DESIRE FOR GOD: The 1streading (Ex. 33:18-23) talks of an ancient desire for God and sung for all ages, from one generation to the next: “Lord, show us your face.” This is echoed by the responsorial psalm where we hear the psalmist’ heartache for God. “My soul is thirsting for the Lord, when shall I see him face to face?” St. Thérèse shares the same desire. She would refer to herself as “this poor soul who is always hungry for her God, and will always sigh for him until she is entirely united with him. But she had accepted the fact that the realization of such desire can’t be on earth. But nonetheless, there was never moment she would not pine for her beloved.” She recognized that it was this desire which launched her on a spiritual adventure and one which transformed her, as this desire deepened, into a devoted servant of God, available to Him, at every moment of her life, be it a mission, a daily challenge or occasions for suffering. She had wished the same thing for all the people she encountered. I think she wished everyone to be closer to God. She must have seen the hunger and thirst for God among the pilgrims, particularly the women, visiting the shrine of Saint John Francis Regis. Years later, under her influence, these women would receive guidance to deepen their prayer and grow in their spiritual life. Second, VULNERABILITY. Like other Christian mystics, Saint Thérèse Couderc experienced from her own life and prayer that the path to happiness is handing oneself over to God, in union with the self-giving of Christ. In 1864 she writes:. “To surrender oneself is more than to devote oneself, more than to give oneself, it is even something more than to abandon oneself to God. In a word, to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God.” (St. Therese Couderc: Her Writings) To surrender oneself to God is to accept the call to dispossession, to embrace a life of vulnerability as the gospel we just read reminds us: Unless a grain of wheat dies, it will not bear fruit. Fr. Florencio Segura, SJ calls this surrender to God as “tough, terrifying, and radical”. It is because it is a call “to lose one’s life,” to the most radical dispossession of our certainties, of everything that supports our life. It is a call not to rely on anything. It is to relinquish the security of material things, the comfort and affection of our loved ones and family, and the assurance of control, power and self-sufficiency. This notion, of course, of dispossession, would sound ridiculous and absurd to a world long accustomed to violence and coercion as a way of proceeding. St. Thérèse would experience this vulnerability in her own life, welcoming the call to dispossession. She underwent humiliations during her time as a nun. She was removed from her office and replaced with a new novice as the “Foundress Superior” in a severe humiliating move. And even long after this superior-novice was replaced with another, the humiliation of St. Thérèse continued. Finally, FECUNDITY, FRUITFULNESS. Unless a grain of wheat dies, it will not bear fruit. Henri Nouwen, well-renowed spiritual writer, gave an exquisite observation on the mystery of suffering. He said that “where vulnerability is experienced, ours or those of others, we see life bursting forth!” As ancient wisdom reminds us, sufferings and deaths are conditions for fruitfulness or fecundity.They are occasions of growth and bearing fruit. It is God’s vulnerability that won for us our redemption and salvation. Jesus brought us new life in ultimate vulnerability. He came to us as a small child, dependent on the care and protection of others. He lived for us a poor preacher, without any political, economic or military power. He died for us nailed to a cross as a common criminal. Long before Henri Nouwen articulated it, it had been a consoling thought for St. Thérèse as she faced her own crosses, prompting her to say: “I cannot ask God to deliver me from these sufferings but only strength to suffer …” It is easy to mistake fruitfulness or fecundity for efficiency and productivity given contemporary society’s pre-occupation with accomplishments and success. However, the call to live a fruitful life does not necessarily imply a call to be productive. You can still be flourishing and fruitful even in the midst of pain and suffering as Jesus did, as St. Thérèse Courderc did. From its humble beginnings in La Louvesc, France, the spiritual ministry of the Religious of the Cenacle continues, kept alive by more than 400 sisters in over 17 countries throughout the world. Pius XII talked about how the prayers of St. Thérèse had saved thousands, sanctified them, raising them even to heroism of virtue and zeal. (Beatification, 1951). And so, we have here before us a heart of a saint that is devoted to God,accepting the summons of vulnerability and self-surrender as a path to discipleship and fruitfulness. As she has served God faithfully, we join Him in honoring St. Thérèse today. St. Thérèse Couderc, pray for us.