Reflecting on Romans 8:35, 37-39

Have you ever felt the absence of the love of Christ?  Because Paul promises us in that beautiful second reading today (Romans 8:35-39) that nothing can take us from his love.

Let’s see.  Not chronic migraines or sciatic pain.  Not rheumatoid arthritis.  Not bald heads and nausea.  Not even the recurrence of cancers we had prayed were gone.

Not the loss of our house. Not the loss of our retirement fund. Not the loss of our health, our strength, our vigor, even our memory.

Not sadness for our children who don’t go to church.  Not the loss of our sense of safety for ourselves and the world.  Not our horror as we read about atrocities towards children.  Not the loss of those we love.  Not the loss of love itself.  Nothing can take us from his love.

I like to think about Paul.  By the time he wrote this letter to the Romans (probably the spring of 57 AD) he himself had already endured danger from rivers, danger from bandits, …danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea… sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold and naked (2 Corinthians 11: 26-27).

It sounds like Paul was remembering his own suffering throughout his courageous missionary journeys.  It comforts me that the author of these words―For I am convinced that neither death nor life…neither present things nor future things…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord—suffered so deeply himself.

Nero executed him for this faith.  And now he, and his words of comfort, lives forever.

In what ways have you been sustained by the love of Christ?

My dear friends, this might be a good time for us to remember all whom we love who are struggling to feel the power of God’s love.    Where do we begin?  Where do we end?  Let’s do something different this week.  Let’s use the collective power of the hundreds of prayerful people who visit this site to pray for those who are suffering.  Maybe we could just place their names here and we can all pray for them this week.  I’ll start: please pray with me for the lioness of  faith and solidarity with those who are poor, Dorothy Leonard.  Dorothy has had a recurrence of an early stage ovarian cancer from 9 years ago.  Lord, the one you love is sick.  We ask you to hold her and heal her in your way.  And touch all whom we love who struggle to find your love today.  We trust your Word.  Nothing can take us from your love.  AMEN.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Matthew 13:44-52

It’s easy to spot the pearl of great price in people’s lives.  Each of us signals, just by getting up in the morning (or not), what we are willing to give up in order to have what we have.

Parents are the perfect examples of grace-filled people willing to give up much in order to have children.  I watch them in fascination.  The intense love they have for their kids, and their lifelong presence and support of them, provides a daily meditation for me on the depth and breadth of love, and of course its Author.

I’m also fascinated with what professions require of people.  Think back on the days when you were a student.  Can you remember your desk, filled with textbooks, and all those fun novels shoved to the side while you pursued your pearl of great price? And that sacrifice was worth it, wasn’t it?

Good health is another pearl that requires immense sacrifice in order to attain.  There are hundreds of delicious foods that must be ignored every day in order to feel and look better.  And there go those novels again, determinedly shut, and the gym shoes come on for another lovely walk in the park.

Could we take a minute to reflect on those who have chosen priesthood or Religious life?  Think for a moment of the sacrifices made every step of the way towards that goal, and then the daily sacrifices to live those vows.  They had to walk away from so much in order walk into the grace of ordination or Religious life.  Today might be a good day to thank them.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Matthew 13:24-43

The most inspiring experience in my life is the Greenwood Gallery.  My friend Dr. Dan Feiten and his partners at Greenwood Pediatrics began this beautiful gallery in the lobbies of their medical offices decades ago.  Each season they choose several children who have experienced some childhood disease and have them photographed in a beautiful studio.  Their pictures are then hung in the lobbies of the offices, and I write the story about the child and that particular illness.  It’s a way of educating the parents who are in the waiting room about various childhood illnesses, and also to show the resilience and courage of the young patients.

But it’s the conversation with the parents that always gets me.  Here is the mom, exhausted but utterly in love with her autistic child who also has a sleep abnormality that gets him (and her) up several times every night.  Here is the dad, the great champion of his little daughter who has a congenital heart defect.  And here is the child, utterly unaware that he is smaller or slower or sicker than his classmates, laughing and running and loving his life, every, every minute.

When you think about it, the wheat in our lives will always be growing right next to the weeds.  Our talents will be honed through the sting of competition.  Our health will lose its battle with time.  Our perfect children will have to face a world that may not love them as much as we do.  But we all soldier on towards the sun.  Such is our painful, joyful journey back to the Garden.

What tensions of wheat and weeds do you sense in your life?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Matthew 13: 1-23

Don’t ask us what we were thinking.  In this challenging economic climate, and with big chains just blocks from us, my pharmacist-husband Ben and I bought a beautiful retail space and opened up an old-time drugstore/coffee shop.

Ben Lager & Kathy McGovern

I’m not sure I could really articulate why we needed to do this until the other day.  I looked around and saw neighbors who live just houses away from each other finally meeting and enjoying their children together out on the front sidewalk.

Some generous and kind new friends from the neighborhood sat outside, talking to another friend and me about the bitterness they feel when religion is forced on them, when people carry Scripture signs to football games, when businesses put religious quotes on their billboards.  Now, I actually like these things, and was getting ready to say so.

But a dear and wise friend of mine happened to be in the store right then.  She moved closer to them and said, “Tell me more about your pain.  Tell me why you resist faith.  Let me help you touch your wounds.”

And then the floodwaters opened, and all their frustration, and feelings of isolation, and confusion and resentment poured out.

A few days later they returned to the store for a prescription.  Jane (not her real name) hugged me and said No one has ever asked me about my loss of faith before.  That conversation was more healing than three years in the religious setting of my childhood.

And it happened just because some faithful sower took the time to plant a seed in fertile ground, to listen, and then to be brave enough to invite strangers into the intimacy of their own struggles.

And I’ll bet that seed bears fruit and yields a hundredfold.

In what ways have you seen the fruits of the seeds sown in your life?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Matthew 11:25-30

Have you ever had the blissful experience of having a burden lifted from your shoulders?  Maybe you’ve been worrying something to death, and a friend finds the perfect words to set your soul at rest.  Or maybe it’s a physical comfort, like having someone stronger take your heavy grocery bags, or grab your snow shovel and say, “Let me clear your walk for you.”

That’s grace.  That’s Jesus, lifting away your sad spirit and replacing it with His yoke, which is always peace, consolation, perfect rest.

So here’s your summer assignment.  Ride your bike to the park.  Find a spot under a big, leafy tree.  Lie down on your back and look up.  Now, here’s the blissful part.  Just stay there.

Ah.  Can you feel it?  That is the rest that Jesus invites you to today.  Do you labor under the stress of family problems?  Just lie there.  Let the sun warm you.  Look in awe at the thousands of astonishing things going on in that tree as it stretches to the sky.

Are you heavily burdened with illness, or unemployment, or bitter disappointment?  Don’t move.  Let Jesus give your soul a perfect rest as you soak in all the grace that exists in a single tree.

Let your eyes take in just a fraction of the breathless beauty that is summer, our Creator’s gift of grace.  Can you hear that bird, singing in the branches?  Here are the words she is singing:

Come to Him.  Find rest in Him.  He has already left your burdens under the Tree.

What experience have you had of a burden lifted?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

I know that I’ve never been actually hungry. Food is all around me and I can take it at any time.  But when I hear Moses say “He let you be afflicted with hunger, then fed you with manna….that you might know that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word from the mouth of God” I really resonate with that.  I have counted calories and dragged myself away from the table and fought off food cravings just about every day of my adult life.  I think I know what it is to be hungry, to go to bed hungry, to fixate on food and dream about it.

Today Moses tells the Hebrew people who lived and hungered with him in the desert all those years to remember what it was like when they were utterly dependent on God for the astonishing manna—a food unknown to their parents—sent from the sky six days a week to heal their hunger.

That’s where hunger can take you—weak enough to be ready to accept the gift of healing which God alone can give.  This manna wasn’t what they were used to.  It came from the sky and was probably some sort of chewy dew.  They were grateful to accept it, and their bodies were made strong with it, and there are no accounts of a single one of them dying of hunger during the 40-year sojourn.

So on this day of gratitude we process, hungry, towards the Body and Blood of Jesus.  We remember our hunger, and who alone can heal it.  Come to the feast.

Can you remember any experiences of the power of the Eucharist in your life?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

We were sitting out on the porch with our adorable nieces and nephew when I finally understood the theology of the Trinity.  The three older kids (9, 7 and 5) had set up their special picnic bench, a few feet away from the grown-ups and right next to the swing set so they could jump up and play while eating their hot dogs.

They belong to each other

Their baby sister Lauren, up until this moment eating her dinner propped up on a chair next to her dad and mom, suddenly climbed down from her chair, toddled over to the kids’ bench and sat down.  Her delighted sisters and brother moved over to make room for her.

In that huge developmental step she demonstrated that she knew who she was.  She was a member of a family. She had a loving mom and dad and lots of other adoring family members.  She had a brother and two sisters.  She was a child, and her place was at the child’s table.  She could leave the safety of mom and dad and place herself right there on the bench with her siblings.  And somebody pass the potato chips.

That’s when I got it.  Our hearts are restless until they rest in God, and God isn’t solitary.  God exists in a relationship of Three.  We are made to find our place in the world, always in relationship with others.  We leave that place of infant unconsciousness and firmly place ourselves at the table, where we belong to others and they belong to us.

And of course none of those relationships happen without fathers.  Thanks, dad.

In what ways did your father help you find your place in the world?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

A PENTECOST SEQUENCE

Come, oh Holy Spirit, come!

And make us ever more your own.

In flooded farmlands, send relief.

And where faith falters, send belief.

Where tornados maim and kill

Let us feel your presence still.

Touch the unemployed once more

With strength to find that open door.

And where assassins lurk and prey

Bring them to the light of day.

Touch our own hearts too, we pray

To see the ways we’ve turned away.

The blind eye cast, the hardened heart,

Help us, Spirit, see our part.

Renew the earth, renew us too!

In Jesus’ name, we beg of you.

In what ways can you sense the gifts of the Holy Spirit active in your life?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Matthew 28:16-20

First, we should probably talk about the strange disconnect between Luke’s account of the Ascension in the first reading (Acts 1:1-11) and Matthew’s account in today’s Gospel (28:16-20).  Although he doesn’t specifically state it, the site of the Ascension in Acts has to have been in Jerusalem. Why?  Because they are enjoined not to leave Jerusalem until the gift of the Father (the Holy Spirit) comes upon them.  So the Ascension must have taken place in Jerusalem.

The Ascension of Christ (Rembrandt)

But Matthew says that the Eleven gathered in the Galilee for Jesus’ Great Commission.  It was on a mountain—which of course reminds us of the mountain at Sinai and the mountain of the Beatitudes —where Jesus promised that he would be with us always, even to the end of the age.  Mark’s Gospel (16:7) sets this in motion when the angel at the empty tomb tells the women to tell the other disciples to go to Galilee, where they would see the risen Lord.

But here’s what’s interesting: it seems that in the Gospel today, Jesus appears to them as a manifestation of his already ascended state.  There is no mention, as in Acts and Luke’s Gospel (24: 36-53), of Jesus ascending to heaven as they watched.

So even in the earliest memories of the Church the specifics of the when and where of Jesus’ ascent to heaven are purposely clothed in mystery.  What a perfect metaphor for our own journeys.  Crazy predictions of the end of the world will go on. But our deepest intuition and faith that our Christ is with us always, right up to the end, lives on.

In what ways do you sense that he is “with you always”?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on 1Peter 3:15-18

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.

The Martyrdom of St. Peter

Isn’t that beautiful?  The author of the second reading today is talking to the earliest converts to the faith, urging them to have a good reason on hand for why they are hopeful in their terrifying first-century world.

I like to think about those earliest Christians.  According to tradition, every single one of the apostles listed in the Gospels (except for Judas) experienced torture, and most of them martyrdom, because of their hope in Christ.  They “took on Christ” during the most violent years of the Roman Empire.  They faced up to Nero and Trajan and Domitian, and often converted their own jailers, who went to their deaths with them.

I recently saw the shatteringly beautiful movie Of Gods and Men.  It tells the true story of eight Cistercian monks who chose to stay with their Muslim friends in a besieged Algerian village in 1997.  Two eyewitnesses who survived recorded their memories of the agonizing community meetings that took place before the abduction and murder of the other members.

Why did they stay when they knew their lives were in imminent danger?  We know from the survivors that the love of Christ compelled them.  Their love for their neighbors, whom they doctored, and cared for, and worked side by side with, gave them the strength to face their radical Islamist assassins when they came for them one dark and freezing night.

The Christ who called them to Himself was the reason for their hope.  And hope does not disappoint.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).