All Creatures Great and Small

Although St. Brigid of Kildare (451-525) and St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) lived centuries apart, they were kindred spirits in their compassion for the poor and their friendship with animals. St. Brigid, whose feast is February 1, was born into slavery and, as a child, she herded sheep, pigs, and cattle; she is frequently pictured with a cow and is the patron saint of dairy farmers. As with St. Francis, a story of her friendship with a wolf is part of her legend.

Traditionally, humans have viewed animals in light of what they can do for us: They are sources of food, companionship, transportation, labor, clothing, and inspiration. But according to the Book of Genesis, God created animals, birds, and fish before humans, so God must value them in and of themselves. As the poet Daniel Ladinsky writes in his book Love Poems From God:

Does every creature have a
soul?

Surely they do; for anything God has touched
will have life
forever,

and all creatures He
has held.

Because God has touched all animals with life, we should respect their right to exist (rather than destroying their habitats for our own purposes) and acknowledge them as sources of insight, contemplation, beauty, and diversity. Just as we are happiest when we are in right relationship with God and with other humans, our lives are enriched when we are in right relationship with animals, as Saints Brigid and Francis showed us.

Occasions of Graced Silence

Almost every week several sisters and I gather on Thursday night to read poems to each other. The poems we choose range from the traditional (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Frost) to the contemporary (Mary Oliver, Billy Collins) and from the spiritual (Mary Faith Schuster, Kilian McDonnell) to the silly (Ogden Nash, Brian Bilston). Our love of words and respect for the poets’ craft draws us together, and occasionally a particularly beautiful or insightful poem leaves us sitting in awed silence. As the writer Collette said, “To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”

I wonder if God too finds silence an acceptable and even flattering response after we hear God’s Word. We are adept at praising God, but perhaps God is more pleased by our silence as we take what we hear into our hearts. After all, that is what Jesus did when he withdrew into the desert after hearing God say at his baptism, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

We are given many opportunities to encounter God’s word in creation and in each other, if we choose to notice them. A vivid sunset, the loveliness of a singer’s voice, the resilience of people who have experienced great suffering, and celebration of the Eucharist have the power to reduce us to grateful and awed silence. At such times, silence is the best reflection of our reverence — not our comments, not our desire to capture the moment on our cell phones.

We need to be intentional about creating the space to experience God’s word in a way that speaks to our heart. That may happen through a poetry group, by attending the symphony, or by creating a garden. We’ll know we’ve found the right avenue when we feel called to respond with a graced silence.

Making a Difference

According to the most recent United Nations estimates, as of January 2022, the current world population is 7.9 billion.

Because we are just one person in a sea of 7.9 billion people, it’s tempting to believe that there’s nothing we can do that will make a difference in the world. Psychologist and writer William James disagrees: “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does,” he said.

Deep down, we know this is true, because we have seen it happen. We know it made a difference in our lives when a grandparent, aunt/uncle, or teacher nurtured and encouraged us. We know that civil rights were achieved in the United States because a lot of someones came together to courageously organize, march, and resist unjust laws. We learned that women were capable of being physicians when Elizabeth Blackwell fought to be accepted at Geneva Medical College and became the first female doctor in the United States in 1849.

Furthermore, just as the psalmist says to God, “Rescue us! Your love demands it” (Ps 44:27), Christ’s call for us to love one another demands that we take action on behalf of others in need. This love does not require us to be successful but to be faithful; when we act with the intention of making a difference, we can be at peace, knowing that the outcome is in God’s hands.

Even when it seems as though contacting a senator about a justice issue is a hopeless cause or providing a meal for a family that is facing cancer seems insignificant, we must act. If nothing else, we become more loving when we do loving things, so our actions help us become the type of person we want to be. Taking action also shows our trust that when we make the effort to exert ourselves on behalf of others, through God’s grace, things will come ‘round right.

God's Eternal Welcome

In the Gospel reading on Sunday, we heard about how Jesus returned to his home town, where he was met with curiosity because of his growing reputation as a teacher and preacher. Ultimately the town people rejected him because they couldn’t envision the son of a carpenter as a prophet, and thus they cut themselves off from the healing and wisdom he offered. 

Although Jesus regretted the response he received, he wasn’t crushed by it — either physically by the crowd that would have thrown him off a cliff or spiritually. As Christine Valters Paintner has stated, “Returning home means remembering that there is a source of eternal love and compassion within each of us always available to us.” Jesus drew his strength from his relationship with his heavenly Father, who dwelled within him and thus was always accessible to him.

Jesus helped us understand this source of eternal love and compassion that is always available to us through his parable of the prodigal son. When the wayward son became destitute, he was banking on the same thinking displayed by the husband in Robert Frost’s poem, The Death of the Hired Man: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.” The wife in the poem sees home more as God does: “I should have called it / Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, God does not demand that we earn a home through good behavior or by meeting certain expectations. We always have a welcome from God, whose house has many rooms (Jn 14:2), and who always leaves a light on for us.

How To Be a Prophet

At our baptism we are called to be a prophet, which sounds rather daunting. Just what are our responsibilities as a prophet? Bishop Thomas Gumbleton says a prophet is “the one who speaks for God, not just in words, but by the way we live.” And what does God want us to say? Joan Chittister helps somewhat with her observation, “The prophet says no to everything that is not of God.”

Our next step is to discern what is not of God. Jesus helps us out here, because by observing his life, we know that exclusion is not of God (Jesus went out of his way to spend time with people who were shunned in his day: lepers, poor people, tax collectors, prostitutes, and Samaritans). Self-righteousness is not of God (hence the parable of the pharisee and the sinner praying in the temple). Ignoring a neighbor who needs our help is not of God (as illustrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan). Being attached to possessions is not of God (for love of possessions prevented a rich young man from following Jesus). Refusing to forgive is not of God (for Jesus told Peter to forgive seventy times seven times).

To be a prophet, then, we must say yes to being inclusive, humble, compassionate, detached from worldly goods, and forgiving. By living out these values, we will speak for God and fulfill our prophetic calling. It’s a challenging vocation, but unlike our brother prophet John the Baptist, at least we aren’t called to make straight the way of the Lord while wearing clothing made of camel’s hair and eating a diet of locusts and honey!

Letting Compassion Rule

As I was reflecting on the story of the Wedding Feast at Cana, I suddenly had the following insight: Jesus was an introvert.

Think about it. We know nothing about his life between the ages of 12 and 30; he didn’t adopt the fiery persona of his cousin John, but instead quietly walked along the seashore and invited fishermen (also solitary sorts) to join him in his mission; he was reluctant to perform his first miracle, and only a handful of servants and his disciples even knew about it; he was constantly telling people not to broadcast the miracles he performed; and whenever the opportunity arose, he slipped away to be alone with God. 

Introverts often are slow to act because they tend to overthink things and don’t want to draw attention to themselves. At the time the wedding feast occurred, Jesus was probably struggling to figure out how to begin his public ministry; the problem of a lack of wine would seem like an ideal opportunity, but it arose too suddenly for him to grasp it. His mother, who had been observing her son carefully since his birth, surely knew why her son was hesitant to act and was testy when she drew his attention to the problem. However, she also was aware of the depth of his compassion, which is why she had the confidence to say to the servants at Cana, “Do whatever he tells you.”

It appears that compassion ruled Jesus’ life. He spent long hours healing people and teaching them, against his better judgment, because he knew it would draw unwelcome attention from the high priests. He spent most of his time with the marginalized and downtrodden. In the last hours of his life, as he was suffering on the cross, he had compassion for his persecutors (“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”) and for the man hanging next to him (“This day you will be with me in paradise”).

Jesus’ study of scripture led him to understand that he should be compassionate as his heavenly father was compassionate. Those of us who are followers of Jesus, whether we are introverts or extroverts, also should let compassion be our guide in our encounters with others on the road to everlasting life.

God's Dwelling Place

After God gave the tablets listing the Ten Commandments to Moses, the Israelites built the Ark of the Covenant to house the tablets, along with Aaron’s rod and a pot of manna. The Ark became a symbol of God’s presence and was carried by the Israelites during their 40 years of wandering in the desert, and later in advance of the Israelite army when it marched into battle. It appears that for the Israelites, God was portable — although it can’t have been easy to transport the gold-covered wooden chest topped by an elaborate golden “mercy seat” and two cherubim, along with the heavy veils that concealed it.

With the coming of Jesus, our understanding of God’s presence among us evolved. Jesus understood himself to be one with God the Father and God the Spirit through his relationship with them. When Jesus said to his current and future disciples, “Take and eat: This is my body,” he was inviting us to become the dwelling place of God ourselves.

Paul made this clear when he said, “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?” (1 Cor 3:16) and “For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (2 Cor 6: 17-18).

No longer do we have to lug around a golden ark to be in God’s presence. God dwells in us; you can’t ask God to be portable than that!

Think about the implications: Whenever we desire to be with God, all we have to do is look within ourselves. We need never be lonely or frightened. We have a constant companion to share our joys and sorrows and an ever-present guide we can turn to when we are confused. We don’t have to go out and find Jesus when we or our friends are in need of healing and mercy, as when a paralytic man was lowered though a roof of a house where Jesus was teaching; Christ is already within us. And when we desire the physical presence of God, we need only look to others who also are part of the body of Christ. 

What is asked of us in response to this gift? The prophet Micah has an answer: “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). It’s the least we can offer to God who chosen us as a walking, breathing dwelling place.

Finding the Light

Last week many of us at the Mount were sad and discouraged because of the abrupt death of Sr. Carolyn Rohde and the necessity of new pandemic restrictions. It didn’t help that the skies were gray and the temperatures were frigid. It was easy to long for brighter days. However, today St. Leonie Aviat (1844-1914) reached across the years to provide a response to that desire in a quote provided in Give Us This Day: “You must not wish to live outside the ‘present moment.’ It contains the light that you must follow and the help necessary for each circumstance.”

Sometimes the light of the present moment seems very dim. In his poem about January called Runoff, Stanley Burris says,

Just get on with it,
doing what you have to do
with the gray palette that lies
to hand.

When we look at paint chips in the gray family, it’s easy to see that some are lighter, darker, cooler, or warmer based on how much white or cream is mixed in — but they all contain some measure of light. It might not be as much as we wish, but it is enough to let us recognize the help we require, whether it is birdsong or a silly situation to lighten our hearts or the listening ear of a supportive friend.

Darker days also increase our awareness that the light of God’s love is always with us: “Even in Sheol you are there,” as it says in Psalm 139. There are lessons we can only learn in dimness and darkness, it seems, but in those times we are never alone.

“The sun’s coming soon,” Burris says later in his poem. And we’ll welcome it, while recognizing that its light has been with us all along in another less conspicuous form.

What's In a Name?

During the Christmas season, we hear these words from the prophet Isaiah: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6).

It appears that we humans are able to come up with a lot of names for God. That makes sense, because God told Moses, “I Am Who Am,” which means that God is part of everything that exists. Thus the names of God are as numerous as everything that has being! We could call God “The One who gives the cardinal its song,” “Creator of kaleidoscopes,” and “Maker of sprouting violets.” Individually, we can acknowledge the God who knows us intimately with names such as “The One who laughs at my jokes,” “Hearer of my deepest fears,” and “Lover of my attempts to bake pies.”

Perhaps a good meditation practice in the coming year would be to give voice to a new name for God every day. It would be a way to remind ourselves of God’s presence in all things and to explore some of the facets of the One who is constantly revealing Himself/Herself to us.

What’s in a name? God is inviting us to find out!

Gifts for a Servant King

Artwork by Edward Hays

On the Feast of the Epiphany, we hear the story of how three magi (astrologers) “from the East” pursued a prophecy that a new king would be born in Bethlehem. Persians believed that the rise of a star predicted the birth of a ruler, and myths from their culture described the manifestation of a divine figure in fire and light, so when a rising star led them to the dwelling place of the child Jesus, they took him to be both divine and a king. The three gifts the magi brought reflected their understanding of who he was: gold symbolized a king’s power and wealth; frankincense (incense) was a symbol of deity;  and myrrh, an anointing oil used for embalming, symbolized the death that this king, although divine, would one day face.

When he became a man, Jesus embraced poverty rather than wealth and repeatedly told his disciples that he was not a typical king who embraced human power and glory. When signs of his divinity manifested through his transfiguration on a mountain and his acts of healing, he tried to keep them quiet so he would not be worshipped as the long-awaited Messiah. The one gift of the magi that Jesus accepted was the myrrh, as reflected in his comment when others criticized Mary of Bethany for anointing him with costly ointment: “Leave her alone. She has done this in preparation for my burial” (Jn 12:7).

The magi are not to be faulted for bringing Jesus gold and frankincense, because the concept of a servant king was outside their understanding. Today, we know that the gifts Jesus desires most of us are to follow his teachings: to love God above all and our neighbor as ourself, to act with justice and mercy, and to be humble. These are the gifts that are pleasing to Christ — no wrapping required!