Blue Eyed Ennis: Update Twelfth Sunday Ordinary Time 2013 Who Do You Say That I Am ?

Update Twelfth Sunday Ordinary Time 2013 Who Do You Say That I Am ?

After posting this I came across this post from Clerical Whispers blog which builds on the contents of the letter quoted in my post below earlier today and adds an important perspective and opinion on the Syrian war from the leaders of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches opening synod in Beirut today.

Scripture Readings For Sunday's Mass are here

Click here for The Seven I Am Sayings of Jesus from John's Gospel

Various reflections on the readings from St Louis University Centre for Liturgy are here including this one from Fr. Ron Rolheiser,

"The Three Levels Of Christian Discipleship."

The war in Syria has preoccupied the thoughts and prayers of many for the last three years. All prayer seems hollow and deciding the right action to take by the international community is not an easy one. The anguish of so many people is raw, and all I can do is pray for the killing to stop.

I'm sharing this heartbreaking letter below , titled Peace With A Broken Heart below was written by the Maronite Archbishop of Damascus, Syria, Monsignor. Samir Nasar, to the Pontifical Council For The Family. Source here

1) GUILTY SILENCE:

The more talk there is in Geneva II about peace in Syria, the more the war becomes violent and the suffering great…

We're talking about a typical game, in which each side tries to improve its position on the ground before reaching the final solution. This scenario does not take into account the poor people caught in the crossfire… We are in the third year of this global conflict, sinking into ever greater misery, in the face of the impotence of the United Nations.

This heavy ordeal is crushing THE FAMILY, the basic cell that has withstood the violence… Weakened by the war and by insecurity, the family can neither save nor protect. The Syrian family looks with sadness on the hesitant silence and the indifference of the international society faced by this cruel unending tragedy.

2) LIKE A BEETLE

The father of a family, who has lost everything, came to the church complaining loudly: “I no longer have a home. I’ve lost everything. My family is living scattered with different cousins. I no longer have a job. I'm hungry. I'm sick and without medication. What does the Church do for me? You are not able to protect me, to find me shelter, and you can’t get me a visa so that I can leave the country…”

“I'm like a beetle that’s in the bottom of a cup and can’t get out; it goes around in circles until it dies at the bottom of its hole. That’s what I am”, he said this man as he left the archdiocese with deep anger.

Many Syrians are like this man. They go round and round at the bottom of their hole. All the doors are closed. They face their fate, immersed in accusing silence.

3) THE BROKEN HEART OF A MOTHER

A mother, fleeing the bombing of her village, with four children, was forced, after five hours of walking in the mountains and valleys, to abandon the two youngest on the street. When she got to Lebanon, exhausted, to a place of a refuge, with the two oldest children, she was crying over her two youngest abandoned ones, because she was not able to bring them. She had to choose between the death of all and the survival of only one part. A terrible choice and a cruel situation. How long will this war last? How can we imagine the pain of this mother, forced to abandon two of her children in order to save the other two? Who would better comfort this broken heart than Our Lady of Sorrows? This harrowing scene joins that of Mary at the foot of the Cross.

4) ECUMENICAL SUFFERING

At a meeting of the Bishops of the Middle East, listening to the pain of all these countries, the Apostolic Nuncio evoked ecumenical suffering that unites all Christians of the Orient in the same ordeal. A difficult, painful and providential path of unity. And the disappearance of our two bishops, since April 22nd, 2013, leaves us aghast.

The long list of refugees in the Middle East, which gradually joined by over six million Syrian refugees, is becoming longer. Ecumenism of the exiles without labels, Christians and Muslims… Could this suffering lead to reconciliation between the religions and the peoples of the Middle East? IS IT POSSIBLE TO SEE LIFE AND PEACE WITHOUT THE CROSS?

June 2013

+ Samir Nassar
Maronite Archbishop of Damascus

Who Do You Say I Am?

In the blessed lonely stillness of the night
When neither darkness nor sleep provide
A safehouse for those who would hide
From truth's confrontational guise:
Who do you say I am?

In the maddening rush of the day
When worlds spin and nerves squeal
When big names play big games
And war's lasting image of all that's gone wrong
Is a tiny left footprint
In a blood-muddied field:
Who do you say I am?

In the unfathomable reaches of the sea
Where no earthly spirit can dwell
Myth and mystery and meaning
Wash over swell upon swell
Then out of the blue a whisper
Like a beacon of light in a storm
The question that echoes down centuries:
Who do you say I am?

Amid tyranny, murder and outrage
Avarice, betrayal and war
The enduring words of the Master forge
The same keen edge as before
Cutting through masks of deceivers
Through evil, corruption and sham
The question as probing as ever:
Who do you say I am?

Visitation

I come to you today laden with emptiness
No ready answers to the hows or whys
No deposits of knowledge to soothe the weeping
All too deep the wounding and the sighs.

I come in sorrow,
Though with nothing proffered
As balm for the rawness of your pain
But I pray that in the emptiness I offer
A kernel of beyondness will remain

That in its own good time will find a surface
And blossom in the springtime of its reign.

Taken from Poetry Prayer and Praise Blog.

Image source

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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 Twelfth Sunday Ordinary Time 2013 Who Do You Say That I Am ?

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