4th Sunday of Easter (B)

Dhikr for the 4^th Sunday of Easter (B)

Gospel Reading: John 10: 11-18 Good Shepherd

Selected Passage: “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep." (John 10: 14 - 15)

Reflection: We are, indeed, called to become THAT GOOD SHEPHERD… with people entrusted to our care and service. “..knowing the sheep… and laying down one’s life for the sheep.”

Visit www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...

Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:

1.  Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…

2. Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips. 

3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!

It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…

3rd Sunday of Easter (B)

Dhikr for the 3^rd Sunday of Easter (B)

Gospel Reading: Luke 24: 35-48

Selected Passage: “And he said to them, thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things." (Luke 24: 45-48)

Short Reflection: We are, indeed, witnesses of the life, teachings and deeds of the Risen Lord, specifically the forgiveness of sins and LIFE!

Visit www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...

Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:

1.  Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…

2. Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips. 

3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!

It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…

AND THE ATOMS MOVED

AND THE ATOMS MOVED

In essence, what he is saying is that Christ did not come just to reshape human history and save human beings, he came to reshape the earth and to save it as well.

That is a profound insight and it is nowhere more true than when we try to understand all that is implied in the resurrection of Christ. Jesus was raised from death to life. A dead body was resurrected and that has dimensions that are not just spiritual and psychological. There is something radically physical to this. When a dead body is brought to new life the very physical structure of the universe is being rearranged, atoms and molecules are being changed.

But the resurrection gives a new future to the earth, the physical planet, as well. Christ came to save the earth, not just human beings, and his resurrection is also about the future of the earth. In a proper Christian understanding of things, the earth is not just a stage for human beings, that is, a thing with no value in itself, apart from us. Like humanity, it too is God's work of art, God's child.

Physical creation has value in itself, independent of humanity. We need to recognize the intrinsic value of the earth because ultimately it is sister earth, destined to share eternity with us.

 (Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI)

2nd Sunday of Easter (B)

Dhikr for the 2^nd Sunday of Easter (B)

Selected Passage: “Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." (John 20:29)

Short Reflection: Believing is not a question of seeing and touching… It is a question of TRUST!

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD...

Dhikr is an Arabic word for remembrance. In the “tariqa” (the way) movement, dhikr developed into a form of prayer… It is a prayer of the heart… following three simple steps:

1.  Write in one’s heart a certain passage of the Holy Writ…

2. Make the same passage ever present in one’s lips. 

3. Then wait for God’s disclosure on the meaning of the passage…that interprets one’s life NOW…!

It takes a week of remembering (dhikr)…or even more days to relish the beauty of this method…

LIVING BEYOND OUR CRUCIFIXIONS

LIVING BEYOND OUR CRUCIFIXIONS

What is Galilee? Why go back? In the post-resurrection accounts in the gospels, Galilee is not simply a physical geography. It is, first of all, a place in the heart. Galilee is the dream, the road of discipleship that they had once walked with Jesus, and that place and time when their hearts had most burned with hope and enthusiasm. And now, just when they feel that this all is dead, that their faith is only fantasy, they are told to go back to the place where it all began: "Go back to Galilee. He will meet you there!" 



And they do go back, to Galilee, to that special place in their hearts, to the dream, to their discipleship. Sure enough, Jesus appears to them there. He doesn't appear exactly as they remember him, nor as often as they would like him to, but he does appear as more than a ghost or a mere idea. The Christ that appears to them after the resurrection no longer fits their original expectation, but he is physical enough to eat fish in the presence, real enough to be touched as a human being, and powerful enough to change their lives forever.



Ultimately that is what the resurrection challenges us to do, to go back to Galilee, to return to the dream, hope, and discipleship that had once inflamed us but that now is crucified.

(Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI)



A STRING OF EMPTY TOMBS

A STRING OF EMPTY TOMBS

We celebrate many things with Easter. The resurrection is not just the mystery of Christ rising from the dead and of our future rising from the dead. It's life's spring, the event and power that brings new life out of what's been crucified by winter, from what's died, from what lies frozen and lifeless. Like nature needs spring each year, so, too, we need regular resurrections. Much in us lies frozen, crucified, lifeless.

So we live on, far from fully alive, on automatic pilot, the Christ in us lying in the tomb, what's most precious in us frozen under bitterness. There is darkness at the end of the tunnel, save for one thing: Spring and resurrection! Every spring, a warm sun reappears and nature and ourselves are given the opportunity to unthaw, to resurrect. 

Some years back, I received an Easter card that contained only these simple words: “May you leave behind you a string of empty tombs!” That's the challenge of Easter: To resurrect daily, to leave behind us a string of empty tombs, to let our crucified hopes and dreams be resurrected so that, like Christ, our lives will radiate that, in the end, everything is good, reality can be trusted, love does triumph over apathy and hatred, togetherness over loneliness, peace over chaos, and forgiveness over bitterness. 

We need regular resurrections. Spring and the resurrection are the season to let ourselves be unthawed, to revirginize, to come to second naiveté, to think young again, to give the child in us scope again, to be open again to new possibilities, to surprise, to a new frolic under the sun after a cold bitter time.

Nature, all of it including us, is incredibly resilient, incredibly resurrectable. Given any chance, life wins out, brokenness heals, bitterness melts, new seeds form and life bursts forth from what once appeared to be dead.

(Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI)

THE CROSS AS REVEALING THE PASSION

THE CROSS AS REVEALING THE PASSION

We tend to think that "passion" here refers to intense sufferings, as in "passionate suffering". This is not wrong, but misses a key point. Passion comes from the Latin, PASSIO, meaning passiveness, non-activity, absorbing something more than actively doing anything. The "Passion" of Jesus refers to that time in his life where his meaning for us is not defined by what he was doing but rather by what was being done to him.

The public life and ministry of Jesus can be divided into two distinct parts: Scholars estimate that Jesus spent about three years preaching and teaching before being put to death. For most of that time, for all of it in fact except the last day, he was very much the doer, in command, the active one, teaching, healing, performing miracles, giving counsel, eating with sinners, debating with church authorities, and generally, by activity of every sort, inviting his contemporaries into the life of God.

From the time he walked out of the last supper room and began to pray in Gethsemane, that activity stops. He is no longer the one who is doing things for others, but the one who is having things done to him. In the garden, they arrest him, bind his hands, lead him to the high priest, then to Pilate. He is beaten, humiliated, stripped of his clothes, and eventually nailed to a cross where he dies. This constitutes his "passion", that time in his life and ministry where he ceases to be the doer and becomes the one who has things done to him.

What is so remarkable about this is that our faith teaches us that we are saved more through his passion (his death and suffering) than through all of his activity of preaching and doing miracles.

The cross teaches us that we, like Jesus, give as much to others in our passivity as in our activity. When we are no longer in charge, beaten down by whatever, humiliated, suffering, and unable even to make ourselves understood by our loved ones, we are undergoing our passion and, like Jesus in his passion, have in that the opportunity to give our love and ourselves to others in a very deep way.

(Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI)

Good Friday Reflection

The Science of the cross

On Good Friday, let us remember a Jewish woman, Edith Stein, who loved the cross and embraced its contradiction and mystery throughout her own life. There is a marvellous, life-size, bronze sculpture of Edith Stein in the centre of the German city of Cologne, close to the archdiocesan seminary. The sculpture depicts three Edith Steins at the three critical moments of her life. The first moment presents Edith as the young Jewish philosopher and professor, a student of Edmund Husserl. Edith is presented deep in meditation and a Star of David leans against her knee.

The second depiction of the young woman shows Edith split in two. The artist shows her face and head almost divided. She moved from Judaism to agnosticism and even atheism. Hers was a painful search for the truth.

The third representation is Edith as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and she holds in her arms the crucified Christ: “Teresa blessed by the Cross” as her name indicates. She moved from Judaism, through atheism, to Christianity.

In her biography, we find a poignant moment from the critical period in her life, in Breslau, when she was moving beyond Judaism. Before her official entrance into the Carmel of Cologne, she had to face her Jewish mother. Her mother said to her daughter: “Edith, You can be religious also in the Jewish faith, don’t you think?”

Edith responded: “Sure, when you have never known anything else.”

Then her mother desperately replied: “And you, why did you know him? I don’t want to say anything against him; certainly he was a very good man; but why did he become God?”

The last weeks at home and the moment of separation were very painful. It was impossible to make her mother understand even a little. Edith wrote: “And yet I crossed the threshold of the Lord’s house in profound peace.”

Like Edith Stein, we encounter Jesus and his cross, and we have known something else. We have met Someone else: the Man of the cross. We have no alternative but to go to him.

After Edith had entered the Cologne Carmel, she continued to write her great work on the cross: Kreuzwissenschaft – the science of the cross. From Cologne she and her sister Rosa were deported to Echt in Holland and then rounded up with other Jews only to be sent to Auschwitz where she and her sister were burned to death by the evil Nazi regime on August 9, 1942.

On Good Friday we gather together as the Christian community to “behold the man” – Ecce Homo – and to gaze upon Jesus, who took upon himself all of our sins and failings so that we could experience peace and reconciliation with the One who sent him. If we have not truly encountered and embraced the Man of the cross our efforts are in vain. The validity of all of our efforts is determined by our embracing Jesus and his cross each day, by allowing the Paschal Mystery to transfigure our lives.

The cross of Jesus teaches us that what could have remained hideous and beyond remembrance is transformed into beauty, hope and new life. On Good Friday, may the cross be our true science, our comfort in time of trouble, our refuge in the face of danger, our safeguard on life’s journey, until the Lord welcomes us to our heavenly home. Let us continue to mark ourselves daily with the sign of the cross, and be ever mindful of what we are truly doing and professing with this sign:

“In the Name of the Father” We touch our minds because we know so little how to create a world of justice, peace and hope.

“In the Name of the Son” We touch the centre of our body to bring acceptance to the fears and pain Stemming from our own passage through death to life.

“In the Name of the Spirit” We embrace our heart to remember that from the centre of the Cross of Jesus, God’s vulnerable heart can bring healing and salvation to our own.

Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB
CEO, Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation

GETHSEMANE AS LIMINAL SPACE

GETHSEMANE AS LIMINAL SPACE

The Garden of Gethsemane is, among other things, "liminal space". Anthropologists use that expression to refer to special times in our lives when our normal situation is so uprooted so that it is possible precisely to plant new roots and take up life in a whole new way. That's usually brought about by a major crisis, one that shakes us in the very roots of our being.

There are times, perhaps soon, we will, like Jesus in the Garden, have to make peace with the fact that we are soon to exit this life, alone, but for our hope in God.

Our own prayer there, I suspect, will be less about necessity than about timing: "Lord, let this cup be delayed! Not yet! I know it's inevitable, but just give me more time, more years, more experience, more life first!"

To feel that way is understandable. Nobody should want to die or want to give up the good things of this life. But Gethsemane awaits us all. Most of us, however, will not enter this garden of liminal space voluntarily, as did Jesus ("Nobody takes my life, I give it up freely!"). Most of us will enter it by conscription on that day when a doctor tells us we have terminal cancer or we suffer a heart attack or something else irretrievably and forever alters our lives.

When that does happen, and it will happen one way or the other to all of us, it's helpful to know that we're in liminal space, inside a new womb, undergoing a new gestation, waiting for new birth - and that it's okay to sweat a little blood, ask God some questions, and feel resistance in every cell of our being.

(Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI)