Blue Eyed Ennis: Update Tuesday Fifth Week Lent 2012

Update Tuesday Fifth Week Lent 2012

Scripture readings for today's Mass are here

which includes one of the "I AM" sayings of Jesus from John's Gospel.

My reflections from 2011 which contain "I AM" verses from Thursday's Gospel from St John are here.

Refrain from Today's Psalm 102 is:

O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.

The beautiful Taize Chant Oh Lord Hear My Prayer.

(Check out my side bar for other Taize chants/videos for Holy Week.)

Oh Lord hear my prayer
Oh Lord hear my prayer
when I call answer me
Oh Lord hear my prayer
Oh Lord hear my prayer
came and listen to me

Mosaic Jesus
Click on image for larger version

Gospel : John 8 :21-30

Jesus said to the Pharisees:
"I am going away and you will look for me,
but you will die in your sin.
Where I am going you cannot come."

So the Jews said,
"He is not going to kill himself, is he,
because he said, 'Where I am going you cannot come'?"

He said to them, "You belong to what is below,
I belong to what is above.
You belong to this world,
but I do not belong to this world.

That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.
For if you do not believe that I AM,
you will die in your sins."

So they said to him, "Who are you?"

Jesus said to them, "What I told you from the beginning.
I have much to say about you in condemnation.
But the one who sent me is true,
and what I heard from him I tell the world."

They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.

So Jesus said to them,
"When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM,
and that I do nothing on my own,
but I say only what the Father taught me.

The one who sent me is with me.
He has not left me alone,
because I always do what is pleasing to him."

Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

Images of Jesus

Just after completing this post I logged onto the excellent Ignatian Prayer Adventure Week Six site which I have been following this Lent and came across this great post from Vinita Hampton Wright which nicely complement the images above and the I AM sayings for this Tuesday's Gospel. Thanks Vinita !

Vinita writes :

"Each person comes from a unique background, family, culture, and time, and so no two people will perceive Jesus in quite the same way. From the New Testament accounts of him we can relate to Jesus in various ways. Like each of us, Jesus’ personality was multifaceted, and he played many roles in one life.

Vinita asks us to consider these various aspects of Jesus below and then adds some questions for reflection.....

(and as I work through them myself, I recall the phrase Jesus asked his disciples "Who Do You Say I Am ?"

Wisdom figure / sage: he gives us the Sermon on the Mount.
Radical / activist: he clears the Temple; breaks religious rules to help others; interacts with women, lepers, and others on the margins or without power.
Healer / exorcist: he heals many people and casts out many demons.
Prophet: he tells the painful truth, even to leaders—“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.”
Master of debate: he avoids being trapped in argument—“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
Teacher: he teaches through parables, storytelling, and example.
Messiah: he proclaims, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Friend: he says to his disciples (and to us) “I call you my friends.”
Mystic / shaman: he is able to manipulate physical elements (calms the storm) and exist between space and time in mystical union with Moses and Jeremiah (transfiguration).

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

What aspect of Jesus do you relate to best, or with the most comfort?

Why do you think this is so?

What aspect of Jesus do you relate to least, or makes you least comfortable? Why do you think this is so?

My own response...

For my own part I love everything Jesus is in this list.

It's my response to his death that is the problem.

I still do not fully understand why Christ had to die in the way he did.
I also know I just need to accept it .... it's like love and death- two things we all need to surrender to !

But then I do believe in the Resurrection and I believe in the Living Eucharist .

This song says all I hope and hold onto ....... that He makes ALL things new.
and I love this man's smile !!

All Things New
Andrew Peterson

How about you ???

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

Update Tuesday Fifth Week Lent 2012

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