Love

I was asked, how do I understand the charism of the Society of the Sacred Heart?

My answer:

Knowing that God loves each of us,
and sharing that love to those we encounter.


The Society's official language: "to discover, live, and make known the love of the Heart of Christ."


Feel the Love! Pass it on!

A Homily on Vocations

Today, in the Roman Catholic world, Good Shepherd readings were brought together with vocations awareness.

The homilist at my parish took the opportunity to discuss vocations of the ordained type, completely ignoring all other vocations.

What's a good Catholic woman to do? Well, apparently, my role is to get on my knees and pray that "our children and grandchildren" might hear a call to ordained ministry.

[My inner voice was screaming, "you mean 'our sons and grandsons'"! Now is not the time to use inclusive language!]

The homilist was very passionate about this topic--to the point of tears, in fact. You could tell that he really believed in his message, and that it was very important to him. I understand that. In fact, it was encouraging to hear such passion from a Catholic pulpit. However, he was speaking a message that was meaningful only to a small group of the hundreds who sat in that church.

So, as I left the church today, I was thinking about what I would write in a homily, given the topic of Good Shepherd and vocations. Here are some of the points I would talk about:

1. Every Christian is called - that's what "vocation" means.
2. Every Christian is called to follow Christ, to do our best to walk his path and trod in his footsteps. It's not easy, and very few of us feel that we succeed.
   
3. So, if Christ is the good shepherd, leading his flock by the sound of his voice, then we too are called to lead others to Christ by what we say and do.
4. That includes those who are called to full-time church ministry, whether they are ordained, religious, or laity.
5. That also includes all other Christians, whether they work in business, education, social services, the government, the home, or are retired.
   

The point is this: an ordained minister might be passionate about his ordination and the responsibility that it brings, but not everyone is called to ordained ministry. In fact, many people are barred from ordained ministry.

So if you are going to stand in front of a congregation and talk about vocations, you might want to think about what message those who listen are going to hear. I heard, "pray - that's all the ministry you need to give."

And that is way off target.

Imagining

As I prayed with Acts 9 today, the conversion of St. Paul, I couldn't help but think about what that conversation would have been like with me....

On her journey, as she was nearing the next curve in the road,
a light from the sky suddenly flashed around her.
She saw that light, and heard a voice saying to her,
“Daughter, daughter, why are you ignoring me?”
She said, “Who are you?”
The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are ignoring.
Now go and pray, and you will know what you must do.”

...

Something like that.

A Moving Five

From Mother Laura at RevGalBlogPals:

We are right in the middle of a move--only twenty minutes away, but we're still a mix of busy, excited, nervous and surprisingly full of grief about what we're leaving, for me at least. So this week's Friday Five asks about your experience of the marvels and madness of moving...

1. How many times have you moved? When was the last time?
How many times....That's sort of hard to tell. During college alone, I lived in 7 different houses/apartments/dorms...but I just won't count each of those. I think besides those moves, I've moved 9 times. Hard to tell, really--does it count if you only live in that place for a few months?? Among those many moves, I've lived in 4 different states and 6 different cities. Latest move was last summer. Before that, I had lived 7 years in the same place.

Seems like a lot for a 29-year-old!

2. What do you love and hate about moving?
I love finding new places, getting "lost" in new cities as I find my way around. I hate the actual process, and the lack of community support that always happens at the beginning. In fact, I'm still working on that from my latest move.

3. Do you do it yourself or hire movers?
Last time: movers. All other times: myself. Fortunately, I have great friends and family.

4. Advice for surviving and thriving during a move?
That's a hard one. I think, be easy on yourself. It's hard to move because you always end up leaving things behind (metaphorically and literally). Don't stress it if you lose your way on the road, or if something breaks. Something is going to break--at least one thing always does.

5. Are you in the middle of any inner moves, if not outer ones?
No outer ones. Inner movement is constantly at work, though.

Bonus: Share a piece of music/poetry/film/book that expresses something about what moving means to you.
You know, I have the reading from Acts for today in my head--the conversion of Paul. What a huge move--and it's both inner and outer!

Spring is definitely here

Yep, definitely. Today, I spotted the first two house lizards outside my apartment. Kind of cute--they look something like this, only smaller I think.


Not as cute: the humongous cockroach in my classroom this weekend. It must have been 4 inches long. Fortunately, not in or near my home. I won't post an image of that. I was fine until a student mentioned that it might have wings.

I'm all for spring, but I could do without the creepy crawlies.

Revelation Friday Five

From RevGalBlogPals:

With this Sunday's gospel reading in mind, that wonderful revelation of Christ to the companions on the Emmaus road. I wonder where you might have been surprised by God's revelation recently.

So with no further waffle I offer you this weeks Friday 5:

How has God revealed him/herself to you in a:

1. Book
I am reading a very inspiring little book right now--Anthony de Mello's The Way to Love. I am constantly finding new understandings of the world and how I relate to it and God. It's challenging, asking me to rethink some of the concerns that I have always had.

2.Film
I'm a big fan of classic films.... most recently I rented Imitation of Life from 1959. It's a beautiful film about people and relationships, and also racism in the U.S.

Lots of films come to mind... One of my favorites for revealing truth is Finding Neverland. I love how life and death become intermingled at the end. There's also a great foreign film, Children of Heaven, and then Everything Is Illuminated.

I think I better stop at four...

3. Song
I just wrote about this.... check out my post on Natasha Bedingfield's Wild Horses below here.

4. Another person
That's a tough one... I have a lot of support! I'll have to point to my recent stay with the Sisters, who accept all as they are and offer them love and respect. In answer to the "bonus" below, their way of opening their home to me was humbling--I felt so welcome and loved.

5. Creation
With God, all things are possible, right? The other day, it was about 80 degrees, the wind was howling, and there was a tornado watch and warning issued in the area. I looked out my office window--where the sun was shining. And it was raining. At the same time. God makes me laugh.

Bonus answer: your choice- share something encouraging/ amazing/ humbling that has happened to you recently! See above, question 4.

Books!

Oh, I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted.

I guess that means that life has been busy after returning from the time away.

But here I am again! To start off, I thought I would discuss some of the books that I managed to get through. First, I listened to Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice in the car on the way home, beginning Easter day. It is a fascinating novel written from the point of view of Jesus as a seven-year-old boy.


There are some negative aspects to the work, which I will discuss in a moment, but the positive characteristics outweigh them. Jesus is a young boy here, and so he doesn't have complete knowledge of who he is, and who is Father is. He is learning throughout this book the story of his birth as he grows in knowledge that he is divine. I think it is valuable because it presents a believable story to help us understand how Jesus is both human and divine--that he didn't know everything from the moment of his birth, but came to know himself just like each of us must.

The most prominent negative aspect is this: Rice uses the apocryphal gospels alongside the canonical gospels to explain these events. For instance, it comes up several times that Jesus brought clay birds to life (from the Proto-Evangelium of James). It's an odd story, and one that we do not accept as authentic to the gospel tradition.

Having said that, I understand the purpose of including the story of birds come to life in this work: it illustrates how Jesus learns of who he is. As a small child playing with clay, he wishes for his toys to come to life. He doesn't yet understand that his wishes are within his power because he is divine! The use of that image for this novel makes sense to me, even if I don't really believe it happened.

Theologically, everything else in the novel is faithful to the Catholic tradition.

I'm excited to read the second installment... Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana.


(Photo credits: St. Joseph and the Child Jesus from www.katsuya-art.com)