19th Sunday Short Reflection

Short Reflection for the 19^th Sunday in the Ordinary Time (B)

Readings: 1 Kings 19: 4-8; Ephesians 4: 30 - 5: 2; John 6: 41-51

Selected Text: “It is written in the prophets: 'They shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.”  (John 6: 45)

Meditation: Do we truly allow ourselves to be taught by God? Do we listen to God and learn from the Lord in our work and life?  When we partake of the Bread of life - Jesus himself - we are in communion with him - being one with him!

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…

God as Victim

GOD AS VICTIM

God is not to be confusedly identified with the myths of success, power, glamour, and popularity. Never confuse God and what is holy with current cultural religion which, antithetical to Christ, worships the included, the glamorous, the ones who aren’t shamed and ridiculed, and the ones who seem important and indispensable.

The God of our culture and the God that is preached in so many of our churches is not the God who dies on a cross, is hated, spat upon, and is excluded and scapegoated in ignorance. No, our culture does not worship a crucified God. The God Jesus revealed, is still, in our very own culture, excluded, mocked, scapegoated, made expendable, and often killed, mostly in the name of God and truth. Where do we see this?

Our own culture, like every other culture past and present, creates a category of persons that it deems expendable and then subsequently victimizes through exclusion, ridicule, scapegoating, and often through actual death. Who constitutes that category shifts slightly from time to time, but there is always a common denominator, it includes always those who are the weakest.

Thus, for instance, our culture, marginalizes and scapegoats the sick, the poor, the handicapped, the unborn, the unattractive, the non-productive, and the aged. These we deem expendable and subsequently decertify in terms of full status within the human race. Worse still, we identify God and holiness with those who are doing the excluding. But that is antithetical to true religion – and true wisdom.

Where is God? God is on the side of the victim, standing with the one who is excluded, especially present in the one being ridiculed, and dying in the one who is being put to death.

True Christianity knows this: It worships the scapegoat – the one who is surrounded by the halo of hatred.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser
http://ronrolheiser.com/god-as-victim/#.WzECZxJKhmA
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17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Short Reflection for the 17^th Sunday in the Ordinary Time (B)

Readings: 2 Kings 4: 42-44; Ephesians 4: 1-6; John 6: 1-15

Selected Passage: “A large crowd followed Jesus, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick.”  (John 6: 2)

Reflection: Do people, likewise, see the signs we are performing in the name of Jesus on the poor, the migrants and the excluded in the way we live and minister? Jesus fed a large crowd with five barley loaves and two fish - all they can eat and with surplus.  We can perform the same signs if we share the bounty of God’s gifts with those in need.  We will not run out of supply, if we keep on sharing and distributing food to the hungry. There will be more than enough.

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…

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Short Reflection for the 16th Sunday in the Ordinary Time (B)

Readings: Jeremiah 23: 1-6; Ephesians 2: 13-18; Mark 6: 30-34

Selected Passage: “When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” (Mark 6: 34)

Meditation: Jesus’ challenge to us, today, is to do likewise, that is, to have compassion for the people we are sent to minister. In the midst of uncertainties and insecurities, the real pastors accompany the sheep and stay with them. “Pastors must have the smell of sheep.” (PP. Francis) This means that Pastors must live side by side with the people.

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…

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Short Reflection for the 15^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (B)

Readings: Amos 7: 12-15; Ephesians 1: 3-14; Mark 6: 7-13

Selected Gospel Passage: “He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick - no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic.”  (Mark 6: 8-9)

Reflection: Jesus’ instruction to his disciples continues to challenge us both in our life style and ministry. This is a call to a simple life-style! Yet, we have perfected the art of giving ourselves comfort, privileges and entitlements in carrying the mission entrusted to us. The preaching and the living of the Gospel are not tied to any material possessions.  While these possessions may enhance the proclamation of the Word, they may also hinder the genuine witness to it. Beware!

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…

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Short Reflection for the 14^th Sunday of the Ordinary year (B)

Readings: Ezekiel 2: 2-5; 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10; Mark 6: 1-6a

Selected Gospel Passage: “When the Sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!  Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.” (Mark 6: 2-3)

Reflection: In life’s often mysterious journey, God reveals his/her wisdom and power in people and events that we least expect.  It is akin to that “gentle breeze” that reveals God’s “passing by”. Thus beware that we take no offense at the way God’s reveal him/herself.  At times, we take offense as a kind of “ jealousy” - complex that does not acknowledge the giftedness of the other, and we try to destroy it. BEWARE!  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…

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Short Reflection for the 13th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (B)

Readings: Wisdom 1: 13-15. 2: 23-24; 2 Corinthians 8: 7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5: 21-43

Selected Gospel Passage: “She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.’ Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.” (Mark 5: 27-29)

Reflection: In our journey through life, we, too, have experiences of healing touches. Like the woman in the gospel, we do say… ‘if but I touch his clothes, I shall be cured.’ We should have that faith of the woman, then our healing begins…!www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

The Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist

June 24, 2018:  Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist

Readings: Isaiah 49,1-6; Acts 13,22-26; Luke 1,57-66.80

Selected Passage:  "What, then, will this child be?" For surely the hand of the Lord was with him. The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.” (Luke 1: 66. 80)

Meditation.   John was full of the Spirit. He baptized with water – the turning away from sin and opening to accept the way of the Lord.  He was NOT the Messiah. He was the one who was destined to prepare the way for the Lord. 

We, too in our Baptism, are filled with the Holy Spirit. We are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ – not only cleansing us of our sins, but transforming us to become God’s sons and daughters in Christ.  We become LIKE unto Christ! www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

The Haunting Equation

A HAUNTING EQUATION

I remember my novice master challenging us with the notion that there is no recorded incident in scripture of Jesus laughing; the idea being that all of Jesus’ depth took its root inside his suffering. Laughter and lightness of heart are to be seen as superficial.

Any good psychologist, spiritual director, or mentor of soul, will tell you that most often, real growth and maturity of soul are triggered by deep suffering and pain in our lives. It’s not so much that God doesn’t speak as clearly to us in our joys and successes, but we tend not to be listening in those moments. Suffering gets our attention.

As C.S. Lewis once said, pain is God’s microphone to a deaf world. There is, undeniably, a connection between suffering and depth of soul.

We must be careful not to read too much into this. When we look at Jesus, and many other wonderfully healthy people, we see that depth of soul is also connected to the joyous and celebratory moments of life. Jesus scandalized people equally in both his capacity to enter into suffering and renounce worldly joys and in his capacity to thoroughly enjoy the moment, as is evident in the incident where a woman anoints his feet with a very expensive perfume. His depth of soul arose both from his suffering and from his joy. And his gratitude, I suspect, arose more out of the latter than the former.

In his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the Czech writer, Milan Kundera, weighs the equation: What is of more value, heaviness or lightness?  His answer: heaviness can crush us, but lightness can be unbearable: “The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground.  But … the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.  Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant."

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? … That is the question. The only certainty is: the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all."

Truly it is. 

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/a-haunting-equation/#.WwxcLVMvy9Y
www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser

Corpus Christi

Short Reflection for the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ (B)

Readings:  Exodus 24: 3-8; Hebrew 9: 11-15; Mark 14: 1-16. 22-26

Selected Passage:  “While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, ‘Take it; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it.  He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many’.” Mark 14: 22-24)

Meditation:  Corpus Christi Sunday reminds us that we are truly “partakers” of Jesus’ Body and Blood.  As he is broken and shared for the many, so are we.  In the Eucharist – the breaking of the bread among brithers and sisters Chruit becomes present, once again, in our midst and the same breaking of the break is the bond that unites us all together in faith and fellowship love and service. 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…