Claire Smith

Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

Scripture:

Numbers 21:4b-9
Philippians 2:6-11
John 3:13-17

Reflection:

Today, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, we are reminded of so many elements that make up our Christianity’s core.

The readings today inspire a Novena-style prayer which draws us towards the theological gift and virtue of Hope. Where we cannot just live in a confident expectation of Christ’s presence in our lives but can bathe in the grace already delivered through His salvific mission.

Let us celebrate this wonderful day for Passionists (and all Christians) around the world.

A Prayer for the gift of Hope

• DAY 1—MOVING CLOSER. Dear Lord, let my understanding of Hope move from a desire to receive my wishes and personal needs to those which bring my heart closer to you.

Recite ten times:
(Lord, open my heart to your most wondrous gift of Hope, this day, and every day of my life.)

• DAY 2—NEVER DESPAIR. Jesus, let me not despair in my times of need. Let my heart have the confidence that you will always provide. Let me recognize the gift of Hope, which eternally flows towards me, even when I do not see it. Turn my heart towards you, so I will do, or be ready to do your will.

Recite ten times:
(Lord, open my heart to your most wondrous gift of Hope, this day, and every day of my life.)

• DAY 3—DURING TIMES OF SPIRITUAL DRYNESS. Holy Spirit, you are always in my life, ever-present but not always recognized by me. So let me greet you like the unexpected visitor who comes just when they are needed. I am grateful for the gift of Hope, which always connects me to you, and let me bask in Hope during those unexpected times of spiritual dryness when often I need you most.  

Recite ten times:
(Lord, open my heart to your most wondrous gift of Hope, this day, and every day of my life.)

• DAY 4—OFFERING OF HEART AND MIND. God, help me surrender my soul to you in the only way I know-how. Dear Lord, I offer my mind and heart to you in all things, no matter how difficult I find it, to make this humble and vulnerable offering.

Recite ten times:
(Lord, open my heart to your most wondrous gift of Hope, this day, and every day of my life.)

• DAY 5—A BROKEN HEART IS AN OPEN HEART. Jesus, my broken heart is an open heart, which faces you fully and with the love you have donated. Let my heart be open and bleed to your liturgy of love, which you give me daily through the channel of Hope.

Recite ten times:
(Lord, open my heart to your most wonderful gift of Hope, this day, and every day of my life.)

Michael Cunningham, OFS, is the Director and CEO of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

1 Timothy 2:1-8
Luke 7:1-10

Reflection:

Over the next few days, we will mark the special feast days in the Passionist calendar. Tomorrow will mark the feast of the exultation of the Holy Cross and the following day will mark the feast of our Mother of Sorrows.  The scripture today is pointing the way and acting as a guidepost announcing this special week. In the first reading from Timothy, where the author is exhorting his community to live peaceably. A plea to make no enemies among the community. It comes as a very egalitarian plea. Scripture scholars refer to 1^st Timothy as a preeminent example of a Christian raised in faith. The author suggests that the community promotes faithful instruction and pay heed to the laws. The author warns his community to be careful of those who teach false doctrines.

Our Gospel story shows Jesus being surprised by the faith of another pagan. Throughout the synoptic Gospels, Jesus consistently finds faith “not even in Israel.” We hear from the mouth of the centurion a familiar verse recited before our Eucharist celebration.

This is the feast of St. John Chrysostom; he was considered in his day to be a great preacher. While far from teaching false doctrine, he was declared a Doctor of the Church.

Today, we stand on the shoulders of those who have wrestled with doctrine and the interpretation of Scripture within their time. So many people were raised by the Holy Spirit in all ages. Like the psalm suggests, “Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard my prayer.” Today’s scriptures offer us an insight that while the times in which we live may feel like challenges to our faith. May we reflect as the psalm offers, “In him my heart trusts, and I find help.”

May the Lord, bless and console us as we face the challenges of today in trust. Amen.

Jean Bowler is a retreatant at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre, California, and a member of the Office of Mission Effectiveness Board of Holy Cross Province.

Scripture:

Isaiah 50:4c-9a
James 2:14-18
Mark 8:27-35

Reflection:

In Passionist chapels, you will see Christ on the Cross with his eyes open. There is no piercing in his side. He is looking out on the world. He looked out on the world on September 11^th, 2001, and we know what he saw. This is His Passion as He looks out on a broken world. Broken is traumatic and paralyzing.

“9/11” was a continuation of the atrocities among innocent families caught in the middle of the cauldron of war. September 11^th was an orchestrated attack of retaliation that launched another cycle of the fruitlessness of war throughout the region.

This is Our Lord’s Passion, witnessing the destruction and disregard for God’s Creation – human and natural. The Love of God responds with the mercy of the Resurrection, that which is embedded within us in our Oneness with Christ through our baptism.

Can you put yourselves into the persons of the disciples as Jesus asks them if they know who He is? Jesus would be the Suffering Servant for the world. He would undergo great suffering, rejection and death, and after three days rise through the power of the resurrection.

The disciples need to set their minds on God’s merciful and loving ways of seeing and doing things to counter the evil causing such trauma.

Jesus does not pretend to be “saving us” by using divine power to change whatever it is in society, whatever it is in other people’s behavior that is threatening us. Jesus tells us that the challenge in our world is to do one thing – we do not love one another.

If we accept to learn from him how to love as the solution, all other problems will find solutions.

Love must be our guiding principle. Selfishness destroys – love gives life. In the words of W.H. Auden, American poet, “we must love one another or die.”

The only power Jesus promises to use for us is the power that enables us to love as He loves.

This is the only power that saves….

I ask you before Mass is over today, to make a commitment to work deliberately on one habit, just one habit to love someone in a deliberate manner.

Make that the habit during your week and then when you return next week, put your work of love during the past week into the bread and wine and let God’s grace renew that habit to love.

Fr. Alex Steinmiller, C.P., is a member of the Passionist Community in Detroit, Michigan.

Scripture:

1 Timothy 1:1-2, 12-14
Luke 6:39-42

Reflection:

Jesus often calls out those who are “blind”, who cannot see God’s truth. Almost exclusively, they are righteous people who judge or marginalize others – those whose very belief in their integrity and “rightness” is what makes them blind. Paul relates well. He was an ardent, much-feared persecutor of Christians who believed he was doing God’s work. God had to make him physically blind before he “saw,” and became a crusader for those he previously oppressed.

So where am I blind? I find that I need to ask two related questions.

1. Where is my belief in my own rightness or innocence blinding me to how God wants me to change?

2.  In what ways do I only associate with, read, or get to know people who believe what I believe, risking that the blind lead the blind?

Example: Although I consider myself open and accepting of other ethnicities, I realized I wasn’t as knowledgeable as I thought. I attended an event at which a Black priest spoke about times he was without his collar while walking down the street in a nice neighborhood when he was stopped by police who wanted to know what he was doing there. A Black professional colleague told me that every time her honor-roll teens leave the house, especially if they wear hooded sweatshirts, she worries in ways I never had to about whether they will return home. A successful Black financial advisor told me he has to work three times as hard as others in his office to be taken seriously. These and others opened my eyes to ways that people of color are marginalized, judged, and excluded, and the different levels at which I take part in that. I couldn’t see it if I associated only with people like me – white, suburban, middle-class America. I would have remained blind.

Another example: My brother is gay, I know scientists have proven it is a genetic trait, and I considered myself open and accepting. But I found out I was too insulated. Many years ago, I was hired to coordinate liturgies for a meeting of the National Catholic AIDS Network. Throughout the weekend, I was surrounded by the amazing talents, gifts, and perspectives of dedicated, faithful, gay Catholic people. As I listened to their stories, I was transformed. My eyes were opened to the depth of their pain, and the exclusion and violence they often experience, as well as to the beauty and joy of being with them. If I had been afraid or had turned down this opportunity, I would have remained contentedly blind.

In these are so many other areas, God is calling us to remove the beams from our eyes and search for the truth. We have to reach out beyond our comfort zone. Connect with others and hear their stories. Let the love that God has for each one of those we define as “others” fill our hearts, so together we can work to bring justice to our world.

Please, Lord, help us to see!

Amy Florian is a teacher and consultant working in Chicago.  For many years she has partnered with the Passionists.  Visit Amy’s website: http://www.corgenius.com/.

Scripture:

Colossians 3:12-17
Luke 6:27-38

Reflection:

Love is…., yes, visible.

Today Luke gives us his teaching on the law of love, and Paul tell us that we who are God’s chosen ones who reflect love in so many ways. More than explain love to us, the readings invite us to to open our eyes to love around us. Learn from it.

In the hospital I visited an elderly religious sister who had spent a long career teaching first graders. I can still see her large eyes, and the sheet pulled up to her chin. I ask, ‘What do you like to read’, expecting her to name some children’s story books. She answered, ‘The Bible’. I thought, ‘She fooled me’. Then, as if going to confession, she added, ‘I also read love stories.’ She was obviously one of God’s love stories!

So is a picture of a little girl drinking some nourishing food out of a bowl. She is dirty, barefoot, and shabbily dressed. An arm with delicate fingers reaches out to her holding the bowl. A piece of jewelry that makes the arm beautiful contrasts not only with the child’s poverty, but says the suffering that seizes another’s body, can rob it of the chance to be beautiful? The woman who reached out to the girl nourished her not only with food but with hope. “One day you will grow, you are beautiful and are meant to be able to stand and show your beautiful self to the world”. ‘Give and it will be given to you. For the measure you measure with will be measured back to you.’ I save a lot of the beautiful pictures of faces from the Sunday Magazine sections and fashion magazines. Among the pictures I hold most beautiful is the one who shows me only her hand and bracelet encircled wrist.

Our pandemic continues. On the nightly news we see people whose special gift, vocation, love, is to heal the sick. We improve our gifts when we are challenged when we struggle to defend them. I remember a nurse so sad when her patient went AWOL. There was no goodbye, no appreciation of the care and investment to make him well.

I see love every night from those who deal with people denying the value of vaccines and suffering from Covid. The medical personnel sorrows no less for them and their families. Is this the love that you give when someone slaps you on the cheek, and invites you to turn the other, continuing to give of yourself in caring love?

As school begins, I read a beautifully illustrated children’s story for the little ones who will be tearful. ‘A Kiss in my Hand’ by Audrey Penn. A mother raccoon’s little boy tells her that he wants to stay with her and not go to school. She tells him to expect good things, and that she has a secret for him. She takes his little paw into hers and turns it palm up and separating the fingers a bit. She kisses it, closing the fingers back into a fist, saying, if he feels a little sad just open his hand and put it against his cheek. He will feel the warmth of her love with him. Before he climbs the tree with the other little ones of the forest to meet the awaiting owl (teacher), he says to his, mom, Mom, give me your hand…We see his mom with her hand against her cheek as he walks along a branch to the first day of school. There is a picture of a heart in the center of the little boy’s palm. Luke and Paul would say yes to that. We usually draw a nail mark, but a heart might do. Our love is sacrificial like that of Jesus. All stories are love stories.

Fr. William Murphy, CP is the pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Jamaica, New York.

Scripture:

Micah 4:1-4 or Romans 8:28-30
Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23

Reflection:

Happy Birthday, Mary!

Today we celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We should be flowering her with gifts of love today. We should be thanking God for the gift of her birth. Today is the day that God gave us our new Eve. Today is the day the vessel to carry our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ was created. The time when she who is to give birth has borne.

When the most holy Virgin was born, the whole world was made radiant; blessed is the branch and blessed the stem which bore such holy fruit. The Root of Jesse has blossomed; the Star has risen out of Jacob. At the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the new Eve enters the world, she who by her total obedience to the will of God is to crush the serpent, becoming the Mother of our Redeemer—God’s own Son—by her Fiat!

“This is, in fact, the day on which the Creator of the world constructed His temple; today is the day on which, by a stupendous project, a creature becomes the preferred dwelling of the Creator” (Saint Andrew of Crete). We give glory to God this day in celebrating the perfect humility and love of Mary, his masterpiece of grace and the Ark of the New Covenant.

Even though it’s Mother Mary’s birthday and not yours, the Lord wants to give you a birthday present. The present of new birth and new life in Jesus. Will you receive the birth-present of new birth and new life, even in impossible circumstances? Like Mary, will you believe that “nothing is impossible with God”? (Lk 1:37)

How happy is she who is both mother and spouse of God, the gate of heaven, the loveliness of paradise, lady of angels, queen of the universe, joy of the saints, advocate of believers, courage of those who fight, the recaller of those who wander, medicine of the penitent. Happy Birthday, Mary!

Deacon Peter Smith serves at St. Mary’s and Holy Family Parish in Alabama. He is also the Athletic Director and Facility Manager at Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Birmingham, Alabama, and a member of our extended Passionist Family.

Scripture:

Colossians 2:6-15
Luke 6:12-19

Reflection:

“Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:” (Lk 6:12-13)

The other morning, I was having breakfast with a friend at a local restaurant, sitting outside enjoying a beautiful Midwest early summer morning. A young father who stood about six feet four or five inches tall, with his three or four-year-old son sat down at the table beside us. I couldn’t help glancing over periodically to watch the two enjoy their meal together. From my vantage point, I saw that the little boy had French Toast with strawberries and whipped cream. It looked so much more tempting than my order of an omelet with a side of sliced fresh tomatoes.

Scott (my breakfast companion) and I were still enjoying our coffee when the father and son got up to go. The little boy finished very little of those delicious looking French Toast, so his father had asked the waiter for a container to take the leftovers home. The father gave his son the container and they got up to leave. The little boy dropped the container and OMG, the toast and strawberries spilled all over the sidewalk. The little boy started bawling and despite the heroic efforts of his father attempts to minimize the accident, his son kept bawling. Only when this six-foot-tall dad, got down on his knees and with his child gathered up the fallen treasure, and replaced it in the take home container, did the little boy quiet down.

I wonder if this is what Jesus expects of his apostles today, to do as this father did, get down on a level with his child and help him amend the “disaster” all the while, not belittling his son or telling him he should have…but just lovingly amending what the child saw as a total disaster. I wonder if the apostles Jesus names in today’s gospel selection were as surprised as this father would be if he was identified as one of Jesus’ twelve?

Jesus, choose me to be your apostle in my world today, spreading the good news that we are all loveable and we can love no matter how clumsily we go about that task.

Dan O’Donnell is a Passionist Partner and a longtime friend of the Passionists.  He lives in Chicago.

Scripture:

Colossians 1:24-2:3
Luke 6:6-11

Reflection:

The scribes and Pharisees weren’t all wrong. In today’s Gospel their motives were definitely suspect, wanting to trap Jesus in their scrupulous interpretations of the Law. But their desire to protect the Sabbath carried some weight, a weight that deserves our attention.

The Sabbath had been set in Jewish Law since the days of Moses, and for very good reasons. In toiling seven days a week, the Hebrew people could easily lose perspective about what they did and did not control in their lives. To work endlessly, God recognizes, leaves humans spiritually and physically depleted and distorted in our relationship to all creation, especially our relationship to God.

Today in our Western culture we ignore the Sabbath more than at any time in human history. Sundays are days, in many people’s lives, for packing in as much activity as possible. Some work long hours on Sundays out of necessity like medical or security personnel. But many others see Sunday as just another day to add more hours to their work schedules to make a few more dollars.

Others, driven to accomplish more or craving more entertainment, sports practices and events, fill Sundays with back-to-back activities.

As I reflect on the Biblical meaning of keeping sacred the Lord’s Day, I realize that the commandment is intended to strengthen our dependence on God. Pausing one day a week, not driven to complete another project or assignment or attend another event, gives us the mental and physical space in our lives to understand in a deeper way how totally dependent we are on God for everything.

Not letting the many external pulls and tugs of the swirling world about us direct us, but letting God direct us on Sundays, happens when we collect ourselves in silence and sit in God’s presence for a spell. When we add to this silence attendance at the source and summit of our lives, the liturgy, God leads us into a serenity and joy that we can carry into the new week.

Jim Wayne is a board member of the Passionist Solidarity Network (PSN), and author of The Unfinished Man. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.