Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Lent

You Fill-in the Blanks

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The story (I believe) calls each one of us to examine what mountain we must climb to see God’s glory.  I trust you have been using our assigned Lenten Lectio book.  So you are hearing daily about protection with a blue ribbon as you climb your Lenten mountain.  You can call the mountains whatever you will – it’s your personalize mount to climb: hurdles, challenges, enticing temptations, near occasions of sin, quirks of personality, Lenten resolutions, pet peeves….  Some days they are like just a little pebble on our path that we kick aside.  Other days, they can be like a grain of sand inside your shoe – no bother when you are sitting still but the instant you start to move it quickly makes itself felt.  Other days, they are like boulders we can’t move with a backhoe.  Everyone’s mountain is different; but, to witness God’s glory, we must climb our “mountains.”

When we reach the mountaintop, we must stay alert, have the insight to know that we are at the top.  The disciples could have missed Jesus’ transfiguration if they:

  • had been too busy taking in the view
  • gloating over their status or talking about those left behind
  • wondering about what was on the agenda for tomorrow
  • how long were they going to be up on this mountain anyway
  • would there be time to finish what they had started when Jesus summoned them
  • bickering over who was going to get to use the walking stick going down the mountain
  • and, who’s going to provide the fish for tonight’s supper?

You fill in the blanks…you know what it is that keeps you from seeing God’s glory.  What causes you to miss the “small miracles,” the “everyday transfigurations” in yourself, in each other, in nature.  We need to thank God when we get to the top of the mountain; but we can hardly stay there.  There are more mountains to climb.  While you are at the top, if only for an instant, don’t miss the transfiguration.

Jesus did not become “more God” that day on the mountain.  I don’t think the change was so much in Jesus, as it was in the disciples.  They were ready.  They had climbed the mountain.  And their eyes were open to witness the miracle of the moment.  Transfigurations we sometimes call “miracles” are all around us IF we but have the eyes to see.

  • Miracle of God’s graciousness when a person holds a door open for another
  • Miracle of God’s loving-care when a chair is vacated to give another a seat
  • Miracle of God’s inclusion when we make space at table
  • Miracle of God’s mercy when a mistake is not challenged in public
  • Miracle of God’s hospitality when an open invitation is extended
  • Miracle of God’s steadfastness when day after day we gather for communal exercises
  • Miracle of God’s perseverance when we come through tough times – individually and as a community
  • Miracle of God’s humility when reconciliation occurs
  • Miracle of God’s generosity when we give from our need
  • Miracle of God’s compassion when an offer is extended before the other has to ask
  • Miracle of God’s humor when it rains on our picnics
  • Miracle of God’s artistry in the beauty of nature that surrounds us
  • And always, God, thank you for the miracle of tomorrow: the gift of a new sunrise, a new slate, a new beginning.

Make your own litany of miracles.  God is already there, is here.  Jesus invites us up the mountain and leads the way.  We just need to open our eyes to witness the transfiguration.

Reflection By Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress
Mark 9: 2-10   [Vigil of the Second Sunday in Lent  3.16.19]

 

 

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First Sunday of Lent 2018

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In the liturgical cycle of readings, this Gospel from Mark was originally only 2 verses – later the church added 2 verses – but it is still the one of the shortest Sunday readings.  It tells us only that Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit immediately after his baptism to be tempted by the devil for 40 days.  Why do the evangelists make a point of 40 days?  You know that: it recalls the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the desert.  And remember the prophet Elijah journeyed in a desert for 40 days and nights, making his way to Mt. Horeb.  Some say that 40 is simply a symbolic number.  Even if it is, Jesus chose to follow that symbolism as a lesson to us.  We set aside 40 days for our season of Lent, to travel through a wilderness of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer.

According to St. Benedict the purpose of Lent is to purify our way of life and to wash away negligences of the past, to make reparation for what we have done or failed to do.   He names five practices to help change our hearts

  • refuse to indulge in evil habits,
  • devote yourself to prayer,
  • holy reading,
  • compunction of heart and
  • self-denial.

We’ve heard the expression “practice makes perfect” so often that the full meaning may have lost its impact on us.  But consider the Olympic skater who has to forego serious practice for close to a year due to an injury.  Then only last month found out he would be in the Olympic competition.  In two rounds he fumbled, fell – he received a creditable score but did not do his personal best.  Until the third round, the fourth round … then he shone!

Each year at the beginning of Lent we may feel like that skater.  We’re not doing our personal best.  Lent gives us a “third round.”  As Benedict says in Chapter 49, during Lent we are called to be the kind of person we should be every day.  Lent gives us a jump-start of courage to pick up the practices that will support the values we profess to believe in.  The biggest temptation most of us have to face is to “give up” because we stumble, maybe fall – like that skater we may have to put a hand on the floor once in a while to balance ourselves.  The only way  to rise to the challenge of Easter is to persevere … in doing what we know is right, in being faithful to what we’ve promised God, in heeding that first word in the Rule – “listen” – and in loving others as God loves them, and us.

This evening at the close of prayer we will ask God’s blessing on our attempts to be what we were created to be.  We promise to pray for each other and ask God’s gift of strength and courage to persevere in our Lenten resolutions.

 

BLESSING RITE (for resolutions papers)

Aware that Lent is not merely a time of atoning for sins but a time of preparation.  We prepare throughout Lent to become at Easter what we were once baptized into: Christ’s own body.  We will practice habits which will break us open, let God in, and train us to love like Christ.

Therefore, our loving God, we come before you at this time in our lives to bring, praise – a plea – and a promise – that we will gently remind ourselves that (all) “Lent is a process of rending our hearts, filling the broken places with God’s love, and fearlessly loving as Christ loved.

We place before you, O God, our sincere promises to use your grace to become the people You call us to be.  Trusting in your all-powerful goodness, we dare to ask:

  • L) Give us renewed fervor to be faithful to our commitments. AMEN
  • L) Help us to be compassionate and supportive to one another.  AMEN
  • L) Bless our efforts to make a good Lent.  AMEN
  • L) And support us to be faithful to our Lenten resolutions.  AMEN
 ~by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress
Genesis 9:8-15         1 Peter 3:18-22         Mark 1:12-15
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Thoughts on Lent

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This year on February 14th our liturgical “stars” will be in a strange alignment!  Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday coincide!  No one set out to plan it that way but now it’s ours to figure out how to combine the spirit of “heart” day and the penitential spirit of the beginning of Lent.  On second thought, maybe it’s not so strange.  But it is curious.  Lent calls us to a change of heart and Valentine’s Day brings gifts of flowers, chocolate and little candy hearts with expressions of love printed on them.  I suspect that Mardi Gras festivities, too, will have generous servings of Valentine’s sentiments and Ash Wednesday will still have the aroma of Valentine’s chocolates.  Then, six weeks down the road, guess what?  Easter Sunday coincides with April’s Fools Day – and that’s no joke!  The coincidence of dates reminds of to be “fools for Christ.”

In the spirit of Ash Wednesday’s repeated refrain: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return” let us ponder how we might turn from simply being creatures of “dust” to being creature of love.  If we pick up the Scriptures each day of Lent we will quickly realize that the Good Book is filled with expressions of love: God’s call to us is to be open and ready to change so that our love, and our loving ways, may increase.

We can’t prescribe for another HOW to go about being more loving … Oh, we may think we could if they’d let us.  But, loving comes from inside out.  It comes from God who IS love.  We can SHOW each other what love looks like.

Let us always meet each other with a smile, for a smile is the beginning of love. (Mother Teresa)

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress
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2017 Fourth Sunday in Lent

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First Reading   1 Samuel 16:1b,6-7,10-13a   Second Reading   Ephesians 5:8-14
Gospel John 9:1-41 (shorter form: John 9:1,6-9,13-17,34-38)

 

Today’s headline above the fold … and TV scrolling Breaking News:

It’s a Miracle! Man Born Blind Can Now See!

Earlier today a man, blind from birth, encountered the man they call Jesus of Nazareth and apparently now he can see! It was Jesus who stopped and spoke to the man, rubbed clay on his eyes, and then instructed him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. Like magic, the blind man then could suddenly see! Of course, some of the authorities spoke out in dismay since this so-called healing took place on the Sabbath. Even his parents had very little to comment out of fear of repercussions. However, what’s the bottom line? Man born blind now can see!

Fake news for sure!  Like my mother always said, “If a story is too good to be true, it probably is.” There are just so many fake news stories nowadays it can be very difficult knowing truth from fiction. We need to be very careful.

I don’t blame those Pharisees for being overly cautious. Someone spreading such news could have really upset things to the point of creating chaos. But of course, everyone is drawn to sensationalism.

There is an overwhelming flood of news and information that can wash us away if we are not careful. Unfortunately, much of it is commentary disguised as factual news coverage. Then there is the phenomenon of fake news stories that so often mislead well-intentioned people. With all this inundating us, it is easy to become overly skeptical of anything we hear, or even simply deaf to all news, fake or real.

Of course, once you cut away all the junk you can find truth out there. In living out our faith, we are dependent on knowing truth. Yet too often we act like the facts of our faith story are up for debate. We begin to see the account of Jesus in the Gospels as just another series of tales like they were written for a grocery store aisle magazine.

The story of the healing of the blind man tells of an encounter with Jesus that leads to freedom and healing. Jesus was and is real and the fact that he can heal us should be undisputed. But too often we live our lives in desperation and despair, seemingly unaware that we can take our burdens to Jesus. We act like the Bible story is just a nice tale to be told at church and not one that exists to change our lives.

My fear is that too many Christians hear the stories of Jesus but they don’t listen to them. When we hear something we take in sound and physically react. When we really listen we internalize what we hear and then form a real opinion that can motivate us for a response. Indeed, in our world we are lacking a good bit of response to the Gospel.

These Gospel readings of the three weeks in which we find ourselves, from the Samaritan woman at the well to the raising of Lazarus, are proclaimed every year at the liturgies that feature Scrutinies for those in RCIA. They are meant to truly form and change the person who listens to them. They tell of a Jesus who offers us new life in him. Our Savior offers living water, dispels the darkness, and conquers the power of death. These are not simply the climaxes to good stories. This is real truth.

The Son of God is alive and well and we are all called to testify to that truth with our lives. We must step out of the shadows and be bold in our testimony. We must proclaim to a world in dire need that Jesus is Lord. We must take seriously the call to evangelize all who can hear and to spread the good news to the ends of the earth.

After all, it isn’t fake news. It isn’t alternate facts.   It isn’t even simply factual news. It is the GOOD news.

Borrowed mainly from LPI Reflection by Tracy Earl Welliver
Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress
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Soul-shaking Change

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2017 Third Sunday in Lent

First Reading  Exodus 17:3-7              Second Reading  Romans 5:1-2,5-8
Gospel  John 4:5-42

This unnamed but well-known woman experienced a major change in her life.  She was engaged in the longest recorded conversation with Jesus.  The most starting aspect of the conversation is that it happened at all.  Jesus, an observant Jew, was expected to avoid conversation with women in public.  Move than that, to begin with, the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans would have prevented the conversation in the first place.  The woman herself mentions it, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Yet Jesus not only converses with her, he also asks her to share her drinking vessel, an action that, according Jewish law, makes him unclean.

The high point of the conversation is when Jesus reveals himself to her as the Messiah.  As this, the woman becomes a disciple.  She, an outcast and not a Jew, returns to her town to round up people to come meet Jesus for themselves.  This personal encounter has both a social and an educational dimension.  The woman became an evangelist to her own people and Jesus uses the incident to incident to teach the disciples a lesson in mercy.

Don’t you love how Jesus gently converses with this woman!  In the view of his disciples she was the wrong gender, from the wrong place, and lives a wrong life.  But, this day, Jesus is tired and thirsty.  Then, this lady (though her neighbors would never have called her a lady) approaches.  No one went to the well at high noon – it was just too hot.  She is skittish at the sight of a strange man.  She had to get her water when she thought no one else would be around.  She’s grown accustomed to suffering two extremes:  guys’ catcalls as she walked down the road or she’d been ignored.  Her defenses were up.  She wasn’t going to take any guff (she may have thought another word for it).  But, she wasn’t stupid; she was gutsy.  Despite the taboo of tradition, she talked back to Jesus.  And Jesus in the words of Psalm 34 “watched over the righteous and listened to her cry; He rescued her from her troubles and drew near to this one who was discouraged; He saved her who had lost hope.”  “Give me a drink.”

The exchange continued between the two of them.  He offered her living water.  This must have sounded GREAT!  She wouldn’t have to go to that well anymore!   She wouldn’t have to suffer the jeers, the whispers, the stares and finger-pointing.  She took in all Jesus said, pondered his words, digested it and then insisted the townspeople listen to her.  It was such an amazing, remarkable experience she couldn’t keep it to herself.  She ran shouting: “Come, see a man who told me everything that I did.  Can this be the Christ?!“    In the end, they answered for themselves, “This is indeed the Savior of the world.”

In Joan Chittister’s blog this week there is an excerpt from her book ILLUMINATED LIFE.  Joan reminds her readers that there is a lot more involved than may at first appear in making a soul-shaking change in our lives.  In Joan’s words:

Changing the way we go about life is not all that difficult. We all do it all the time. We change jobs, states, houses, relationships, lifestyles over and over again as the years go by. But those are, in the main, very superficial changes. Real change is far deeper than that. It is changing the way we look at life that is the stuff of conversion.

Metanoia, conversion, is an ancient concept that is deeply embedded in the monastic worldview. Early seekers went to the desert to escape the spiritual aridity of the cities, to concentrate on the things of God. “Flight from the world”—separation from the systems and vitiated values that drove the world around them—became the mark of the true contemplative. To be a contemplative in a world bent on materialism and suffocated with itself, conversion was fundamental. But conversion to what? To deserts? Hardly. The goal was purity of heart, single-mindedness of search, focus of life.

We do not need to leave where we are to become contemplative. “Flight from the world” is not about leaving any specific location. (Remember the Samaritan woman didn’t leave town – she ran back to the villagers. Joan continues:)  “Flight from the world” is about shedding one set of attitudes, one kind of consciousness for another. We simply have to be where we are with a different state of mind. We have to sit at home … with the good of the whole world in mind…

What needs to be changed in us? Anything that makes us the sole-center of ourselves. Anything that deludes us into thinking that we are not simply a work in progress… all of those professional degrees, status, achievements, and power are no substitute for the wisdom that a world full of God everywhere, in everyone, has to teach us.

To become a contemplative, a daily schedule of religious events and practices is not enough. We must begin to do life, to be with people, to accept circumstances, to bring good to evil in ways that speak of the presence of God in every moment.

[from Illuminated Life by Joan Chittister]

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Palm Sunday 2016

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palm-sunday1There’s a saying you’ve surely heard:  “something just has to be said.”  In our Palm Sunday readings we discover those who are eager to say it, those who would say it if no one else did, and we see those who were determined that it not be said.

Let’s start with those who were eager to say it. The crowds who had seen Jesus’ ministry, his miracles, heard his teaching, even partially comprehended the meaning of what he was saying. Their lives had been touched and they were eager to speak and cry out “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  Their words were an acknowledgment that they were placing their hope in Jesus – their future, their security, their salvation.  They expressed that hope by throwing their cloaks in front of the donkey Jesus was sitting on. Loud words were on their lips in acknowledgement of Jesus as the Chosen One, the Messiah come to deliver them.   The palm branches that padded the path were, in and of themselves, but a symbol; their worship was in their words and actions.

We know there were also those in the time of Jesus who were determined that some things not be said – those who just had no stomach for acknowledging that Jesus was the Messiah – the one who deserved what they considered a bunch of “hoopla.”

That spirit is in our culture today to. We hear voices that say “Just keep your religion to yourself. And, whatever you do, don’t be loud about it.”   We hear it expressed in choices to ignore history, disbelieve the evidence of global warming, choose to turn their backs, or worse their hearts, against persons of other cultures, upbringing, and color. Modern-day Pharisees have learned not to listen to it; to remain silent – to let the chips fall where they will as long as they don’t land in their back yards.

Thank God for the Thomas Mertons and the Joan Chittisters and Pope Francis in our day; for websites and blogs like “Climate change” and others that keep us alert to issues of injustice and crimes against humanity and the very earth itself: immigration and trafficking and fracking and the list goes on.  If those who are divinely gifted with the ability to speak remain silent, then the voice-less gifts of creation will cry out in “silent speech.”   We recall that Scripture tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, the Pharisees did not want it acknowledged that this Jesus they’d crucified was the Son of God. Even the disciples had turned silent, fled and hid.

But, what did happen? The Sun cried out the only way it could – by becoming dark from the 6th to the 9th hour.  The rocks cried out the only way they could, the earth shook, graves were opened and saints arose to give glory to God.  The temple cried out in the only way it could by tearing in two, top to bottom, the curtain that separated the holy from the unholy rendering it a useless monument to a ministry that was no longer valid.

Even the cross on which Jesus was hanging spoke out, proclaiming to all who saw it:  “This is the king of the Jews.”  Now unbelievers like the Centurion would cry out “surely this was the Son of God

The point is this: If we remain silent, as they say: “to keep the peace” – if we refuse to put our faith into words, creation will have to speak out. Some things just have to be said, and they will be said even if we do not say them.  Will those who are gifted with words use that gift, or will the rest of creation have to do it the only way that it can, by upheaval?

Palm Card PicWhen you participate in the Palm Sunday procession, pray for those who have no sense of who Jesus is and what marvelous things He has done for us.  We’ll wave our palms: We’ll sing Hosanna and look ahead to the Easter miracle.  Keep the palm and use it to remind yourself of who you were on Palm Sunday.

Gaze on your palm frond this week as you take assessment on your personal Lenten resolutions.  Note its color, its tapering shape, its flexibility – think about what it can become: a decorative cross, a floweret or hat to shield us from the sun’s penetrating rays.  Did you see a difference this year in your participation in our community activities?  Was it as whole-hearted as it might have been?  Did you make generous donations to our collections for Daystar and AIM?  Did the Corporal Works of Mercy get a little more attention this Lent?  How do you foresee yourself carrying forward the changes that, with the help of God’s grace, you have practiced for 6 weeks – that’s how long it takes to form new habits.  So the question is: Did it take?  Will it be a lasting change?

When times get tough, gaze at your palm frond to remind yourself of who you could be. Not the person in the crowd who yells out what everyone else is yelling, but that person who believes what she said on Palm Sunday, and who will follow Christ on the journey wherever it leads.

~Reflection by Prioress, Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB
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