Blue Eyed Ennis: Third Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Mass Reflections

Third Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Mass Reflections

Scripture readings for today's Mass are here

Some reflections on The Gospel here from The Edge of Enclosure

and plenty more reflections here and resources from St Louis University,

where this especially good one from Fr. Ron Rolheiser talks on the need for re-imaging Jesus.

The final paragraph says :

"Jesus has been depicted in many ways, more recently even as a laughing Christ whose laughter mocks death and tragedy. There is truth in that image, though we must be careful too to not make Jesus, who knew only too well the depth of loneliness and suffering, into someone who is distant from depression, exclusion, tragic circumstance, and death.

On the other hand, we must be equally as careful not to confuse Jesus with Hamlet or any other tragic anti-hero who lives without the resiliency, hope, faith, forgiveness, capacity for enjoyment, sense of humour, and abandonment to the dance that comes from believing in God and the resurrection."

and this one from Fr. John Foley S.J examines the first reading from the Old Testament and compares the response of Jonah to God's call, to the apostles' response in the Gospel when Jesus calls them.

The sacred call of the disciples

Gospel Mark 1: 14-20

After John had been arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:

"This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel."

Painting by HeQi calling of disciples

As he passed by the Sea of Galilee,

he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea;

they were fishermen.

Jesus said to them,
"Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Then they abandoned their nets and followed him.

James Tissot. Calling of Peter and Andrew

He walked along a little farther
and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.

They too were in a boat mending their nets.
Then he called them.

So they left their father Zebedee in the boat
along with the hired men and followed him.

As we know, eventually the four became twelve after Jesus spent a night at prayer Oh, yes and a few women tagged along too. :-)))

Image above From here

Twelve apostles cushion from the Moone Cross in Co. Kildare, Ireland - an 8th/9th Century Celtic cross from here.

Faith as cushion and me as couch potato.

You may have heard this before. It’s a letter from a management consultant to Jesus about his selection of the twelve.

----------------------------------------------------------

Jesus, Son of Joseph

Carpenter Shop

Nazareth

Dear Sir:

Thank you for submitting the resumes of the 12 men you have picked for management positions in your new organization. All of them have now taken our battery of tests; we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant.

It is the staff opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education, and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the " team" concept.

We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability.

Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper.
Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership.
The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty.
Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale.

We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau.

James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings. They registered a high score on the manic depressive scale.

One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious, and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man.

All of the other profiles are self-explanatory.

We wish you every success in your new Venture.

Sincerely yours, Jordan Management Consultants

from Greg Ogden, "Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time."

Above from here and it has some more entertaining points of encouragement ..

"That’s one of the great values of reading the saints. They had this utter vulnerability to fail by human standards. (Foster)

"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."

Sean O'Casey

But of course, they hardly knew any of that when they started out on their journey with Jesus.

Wonderful Photo "Twelve Apostles" above taken by Conor Byrd at Inch Strand on Dingle Peninsula County Kerry Ireland from here

Ron Rolheiser divides the spiritual journey into three distinct phases:

• Essential discipleship
• Generative discipleship
• Radical discipleship

You can read more about them here :a lot is in brief note form but the gist of it is clear.

Who Am I ? by Casting Crowns

From Today's Psalm : Teach Me Your Ways O Lord

Psalm 25

Teach me your ways, O Lord.

Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
teach me your paths,
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my saviour.

R. Teach me your ways, O Lord.

Remember that your compassion, O LORD,
and your love are from of old.
In your kindness remember me,
because of your goodness, O LORD.

R. Teach me your ways, O Lord.

Good and upright is the LORD;
thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice
and teaches the humble his way.

R. Teach me your ways, O Lord.

A FEW REFLECTIONS

Whatever it was about Jesus that caused the apostles to drop everything and follow him has occupied the thoughts, imagination and actions of mankind for over two thousand years : the saints the sinners, the good, the bad and the indifferent and much in between.

Many of us amble along on the edge of some great realisation of what Christ's life, death and resurrection mean, while others go out and get lost in it, living it like the few special sung and unsung"holy fools."

The powerful transformative force of Jesus as teacher, prophet, shepherd and saviour is there for us always.

The church has an innate capacity and incarnational impulse to grow : This is how God calls : ever outward with deepening impulses. We are all apostles who now have heard the news of the resurrection but can only learn it by living it first hand.

As Merton said, "there is in each of us always a doubter who is a twin or Other of every believer, torn between here and there, between doubt and faith, between the testimony of others and the testing ground of our own unique circumstances and contexts where we try to live out our faith."

Wisdom of faith can only be gained by knowledge and through direct experience.

To meet and listen and respond to people where they are is difficult when people are swimming away.

In this post the author describes how Jesus empowered his disciples :

"When Jesus sent the disciples, he said: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16). We are given a description of a disciple who embodies the spirit of vulnerability, shrewdness and purity. Jesus anticipated threats and resistance to the Gospel message. He also expected challenges from people who were hostile, skeptical, unbelieving and double-minded.

Thus, Jesus empowered the disciples to be prudent and circumspect; to be discerning and wise; to be careful and yet risk-takers; to be gentle and yet tenacious; to be intentional and yet authentic.

I am persuaded that our young people will be inspired to live as street-smart disciples if we demonstrate the quality and character of being disciples who are “shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.”

A street-smart disciple is a streetwise and prudent person who understands the ways of the world but who decides to live the Jesus way without losing his or her way in the world. A street-smart disciple discerns the values and purposes of God’s Kingdom and intentionally lives out the message of grace, love and mercy. A street-smart disciple engages in the stories of people’s lives while sharing a personal narrative of faith commitment, perseverance, suffering and sacrifice.

In other words, a street-smart disciple is someone who has integrity both in the world and in the community of faith. It is an integrity of character, values, choices, and lifestyle. However, we need to remember that the street-smart disciple is not always right, not always strong.

But the street-smart disciple is someone who continues to experience forgiveness, spiritual direction from God’s Word, and who practices the grace of being present to God and to others. Street-smart disciples display wise judgment, deep insight, great foresight, and steady resilience."

In my own life, faith is something that has been both absent and present, at times awesome and life affirming, at others elusive and faltering.

There is something in Jesus that keeps allows me to soar in the transcendent peaks of the transfiguration but also keeps me grounded in the foothills and valleys of everyday life experiences.

At this stage of my life there are days when I am content just to be able to spend time sitting in the company of good friends and Jesus: to listen and chat to each other over a meal ....to drink the sap and savour the live giving food that fills the hungry soul.

Perhaps this poem by David Whyte says it better than I can....

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

Image above from here

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

Mary Chapin Carpenter : The Calling

Deep in your blood or a voice in your head
On a dark lonesome highway
It finds you instead
So certain it knows you, you can't turn away
Something or someone has found you today

Genius or Jesus, maybe he's seen us
But who would believe us
I can't really say
Whatever the calling, the stumbling or falling
You follow it knowing
There's no other way, there's no other way

There are zealots and preachers
And readers of dreams
The righteous yell loudest
And the saved rise to sing
The lonely and lost are just waiting to hear
Any moment their purpose
Will be perfectly clear

And then life would mean more
Than their name on their door
And that far distant shore that's so near
They'd hear the calling
And stumbling and falling
They'd follow it knowing
There's nothing to fear
Nothing to fear

I don't remember a voice
On a dark, lonesome road
When I started this journey so long ago
I was only just trying to outrun the noise
There was never a question of having a choice

Jesus or genie, maybe they've seen me
But who would believe me
I can't really say
Whatever the calling, the stumbling and falling
I followed it knowing there's no other way

Jesus or genie, maybe he's seen me
But who would believe me
I can't really say
Whatever the calling, stumbling and falling
I got through it knowing there's no other way
There's no other way

No comments:

More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Third Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Mass Reflections

Wonderful Photo "Twelve Apostles" above taken by Conor Byrd at Inch Strand on Dingle Peninsula County Kerry Ireland from here

Ron Rolheiser divides the spiritual journey into three distinct phases:

• Essential discipleship
• Generative discipleship
• Radical discipleship