To You, O Lord, I Lift Up My Soul

Deacon Tom writes

“To you, O Lord, I lift my soul”

First Sunday of Advent, Year C

In the silence of our Advent reflection, the words of the Prophet Jeremiah can stir our hearts with expectant hope and longing for promises to be fulfilled, for the days when, “all shall be safe and dwell secure”.  This deep longing for safety and security is shared by all humanity in the aftermath of the Paris tragedy and the ongoing suffering countless victims of war, violence, poverty, and illness throughout our hurting world. For this to become a reality we must first, however, place ourselves in the presence of the Lord and breath the prayer we hear in the Responsorial Psalm today, “To you, O Lord, I lift my soul”.

Every year we all face the challenge of Advent; we need to get everything ready for Christmas, the shopping, the cooking, the visits to family and friends, the writing out of Christmas cards. And when do we stop to put it all in perspective and reflect upon the “Reason for the Season”?

This year can be different. We can break the cycle of insanity….if we want to. We can take a tip from St. Paul and ask the Lord to make us, “increase and abound in love for one another and for all”.   How our lives would change!  So some questions to ask during this Holy Season are these:  What holds us back?  What prevents us from seeking the holy?  Are we afraid of the changes that an injection of love into the fabric of our lives would cause?  Are we afraid of what the newborn Babe would ask of us? Are we afraid of the confrontation with self that can take place in the time we spend in holy solitude?  There are a lot of reasons that we avoid silence and fill our lives with business. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This year can be different!!!

Jesus tells us to, “Be vigilant at all times and pray… to escape the tribulations….and to stand before the Son of Man”.  This Advent gives us another chance to renew our efforts to center our lives around prayer and to create a quiet space where we can go and rest awhile with a friend, Jesus, who comes to us as a little child bearing many gifts to all who come before him singing the refrain, “To you, O Lord, I lift my soul”.

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom

My Kingdom Is Not Of This World

Deacon Tom writes

“My Kingdom Is Not Of This World” 

The Solemnity Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Pope Benedict XVI wrote the following comment about today’s Feast of Christ the King:

“Jesus of Nazareth is so intrinsically king that the title ‘King’ has actually become his name. By calling ourselves Christians, we label ourselves as followers of the king. God did not intend Israel to have a kingdom. The kingdom was a result of Israel’s rebellion against God.  The law was to be Israel’s king, and, through the law, God himself. God yielded to Israel’s obstinacy and so devised a new kind of kingship for them. The King is Jesus; in him God entered humanity and espoused it to himself. This is the usual form of the divine activity in relation to mankind. God does not have a fixed plan that he must carry out; on the contrary, he has many different ways of finding man and even of turning his wrong ways into right ways.  The feast of Christ the King is therefore not a feast of those who are subjugated, but a feast of those who know that they are in the hands of the one who writes straight on crooked lines”.

This reflection from the former pontiff challenges us to decide which of the many paths we will follow in this life. A few words from St. Matthew’s Gospel serve as a guide: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:21).  How we pursue the treasures we seek in this life is an expression of the divine activity within us. Let’s face it! We have so many choices today and hardly any reigns on how we pursue them.  How do we set priorities between our spiritual and physical needs? To whom will we pledge our loyalties during this life and at what cost?  Will we be serving the spirit of this world, thinking only of our own selves and needs, acting as if it’s all about me, declaring to those with different opinions “it’s my way OR the highway”?  Or, will we choose a different path, and live in solidarity with the poor, advocate for the weak and oppressed, seek shelter for the homeless and food for the hungry, be mindful of the plight of refugees and orphans?  Will we see ways to build relationships with those who oppose us or will we seek to annihilate them? This is the ultimate freedom we have today, the freedom to choose to be subjects of the creator and ruler of the cosmos who has … “set us free...to share in the glorious freedom of the children of God”  ROM 8:21.

Jesus was right to tell Pilate that “his kingdom does not belong to this world”. But, the way to the kingdom is here and is a conscious choice whenever we serve those who lack power, privilege and prestige, those very people Christ identified with, served, and redeemed. When we serve them, we declare with our lives where our treasures lie and we give witness to others of our deliberate choice to follow the man whose kingdom is not of this world.

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom 

Image credit: Flickr.com

Shine Like The Stars

Deacon Tom writes

Shine Like The Stars

Thirty –third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Our Liturgical Year comes to a close next Sunday on the Feast of Christ the King. As we reflect about the passing of another year, our readings today focus our attention on the “End Times”. The physical laws of the universe tell us that all things must come to an end. That pertains to our world as well. Today we read a prophetic account of those days and they paint of pretty grim picture. The Prophet Daniel says, “it will be a time unsurpassed in distress”.  Jesus tells his disciples, “the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give it’s light”. 

Hollywood has tremendous imagination when it comes to world-ending cataclysms. Our readings today, however, challenge us to see these apocalyptic signs through a much different filter, through the eyes of faith guided as we are by the two Prophets who speak to us today, Daniel and Jesus.

Daniel tells us that during these devastating days, “the wise shall shine brightly….and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever”.  Jesus tells his disciples that, “they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds… and he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds”.

Today’s readings tell us some truth about the future. Hollywood imagines the “how”; our Christian focus is on the “what”. For each of us must consider how we live our lives and prepare ourselves for that day which will be our last.   Through the eyes of faith we know that we have nothing to worry about on our “last days” if we have been faithful to our Baptismal promises and if we have let our light shine brightly to all around us so that in the words of St. Paul, we may “…shine among them like stars in the sky” Phil 2:15.

Aware of our shortcomings in this life, we place our trust in God and his abundant love, mercy and compassion in fervent hope that, at the appointed time, he will come and gather  to himself all who have let his light shine in their lives to be with him forever.   

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom

Image Credit -wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Brilliant_star_Merope.jpg

Only In God

Deacon Tom writes

“Only In God”

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

In the course of today’s readings we encounter several women who have remarkably strong faith. They are women whose actions demonstrate their dependence upon God to provide for all their needs, even for the most basic necessities of life!  We know neither of their names only that they share a common bond, that of widowhood. Being a widow was tantamount to being assigned to a most difficult and arduous station of life in the patriarchal society of the bible, and it remains such to this day. The loss of a husband meant a life of poverty. It reduced a woman to a life of begging and dependency upon the acts of charity from others in the community.

Despite her direful plight, the first widow we encounter in the Book of Kings offers the Prophet Elijah hospitality. She and her young son have only a “handful of flour… and a little oil” and that’s it. The widow and her son are themselves far beyond the bounds of destitution and yet she willingly makes “a little cake” for the Prophet leaving nothing for herself and her son!  Yet, “the jar of flour did not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry!”

In the Gospel Jesus notices what’s taking place at the Temple offering. “Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents”.  Jesus comments that this woman did not contribute from her wealth as the others did, “but from her poverty…she contributed all she had, her whole livelihood”.

These women teach us of a deep and trusting faith in God, lessons very appropriate for us today. They teach us not from their head, but from their heart and from their deep-seated experiences of life. Do we give to others from our surplus or from our need?  This is a difficult question for us to wrestle with, but one that is certainly worth the effort. If we spend some time thinking about this question it may lead us to reflect on an underlying struggle we face often in this life – that is, how much do we really trust that God will be there in our time of need, whatever that “need” might be.

There is an aspect to these widow’s faith that reflects Christ’s complete self-giving, his pouring himself out completely for our sake, Christ’s “kenosis” as St. Paul writes in Philippians 2:7, in which Christ surrenders his own will to the divine will of his Father.  This complete giving of self is a gift from God that scripture reveals mostly in the lives of the poor and lowly ones, such as these widows we encounter today.  They teach us that God cannot be outdone in generosity.  Their strong faith enables them to trust God completely, to trust “only in God” in all things, not only for all the necessities of the present moment but for all future needs also.

May our faith grow to be like theirs so we too willingly give all …even our whole livelihood…for the greater glory of God. 

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom

Image credit: wikimedia.org-Hand_gottes.jpg