Scripture:
Reflection:
Daring to Enter the Conversation
As Jesus concludes speaking of Himself as the Bread of Life, John notes that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
In Houston, Texas, the Rothko Chapel – dimly lit and quiet, with paintings by Rothko on the walls – is an inviting space where you can be enfolded in silence for reflection and prayer.
At the University of Texas at Austin, a building that offers space, explicitly described as not a chapel or religious space by artist Ellsworth Kelly, fills with color as the sun comes in through stained glass windows during the day and glows at night from within. It is a joyful place where mystery can be encountered in light.
A final and fourth space is spoken of by Edith Stein, St. Benedicta of the Cross, who would die in the Auschwitz concentration camp with her sister Rosa and many others of ‘her people’. She says that, of her own volition, as a young Jewish woman, she stopped praying. She brilliantly moved through school, served in a field hospital during WWI and graduated summa cum laude with her doctorate in 1917. During that time, she went to Frankfurt Cathedral and saw a woman with a shopping basket go in and kneel for a brief prayer. “This was something entirely new to me. In the synagogue and Protestant churches I had visited, people simply went to services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot.”
Edith would become a Catholic and a Carmelite religious. How such a simple act of faith and prayer by a woman, stopping by a church to pray, so profoundly influenced her. It is something she never forgot!
Today, Jesus speaks to Saul of Tarsus. What a surprising gift that changes his life for the better. Unimaginable. In the spaces of a synagogue, a chapel and a simply sacred space, God speaks to the hearts of people who seek, and knock and ask.
But Edith was sensitive to a woman whose prayer was an ‘intimate conversation’. In that church the Eucharist was celebrated, reserved in reverence and for the ministry to the sick. It was a place of meeting with Jesus the Bread of life, the one who promises us that we will not go hungry or thirsty.
The Holy Spirit is at work guiding the Church along its path following Christ; taking our offering of bread and wine along with ourselves to the Father, giving us the Body and Blood of Jesus as our spiritual food; and yesterday blessing and surprising us with our new Pope, Leo XIV. No space is so empty that our God cannot fill it, or our hearts with the surprise of overflowing love. Not all continued to walk with Jesus; they found his words hard. Let us listen to the one who is here to share himself with us. Let us notice those in empty places. God is there. But especially may we see those who come into the church on shopping day for a brief visit. Like them let us enter the conversation.
Fr. William Murphy, CP, is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Jamaica, New York.