The Communion of Saints

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Perhaps we had hurt that person, or he or she had hurt us, and it was never fully reconciled. Or we feel guilt, because while that person was alive, we should have given more of ourselves to him or her but were too busy with our own lives to reach out.

Worse still, perhaps someone has died for whom we had felt hatred and we should have made some gesture of reconciliation and we never did. Now it’s too late! Death has separated us, and some painful bitterness now lies irrevocably unresolved and we live with the guilt, wishing we had done something before it was too late.

But it’s not too late. It’s never too late if we take seriously the Christian doctrine of the communion of saints.  To believe in the communion of saints is to believe that those who have died are still alive and are linked to us in such a way that we can continue to talk with them, that our relationship with them can continue to grow, and that the reconciliation that wasn’t possible before their deaths can now occur.

“Today you will be with me in paradise!” Jesus speaks those words to the good thief on the cross and they’re meant for every one of us who dies without yet fully being a saint and without having had the time and opportunity to make all the amends and speak all the apologies that we owe to others. There is still time after death, on both sides, for reconciliation and healing to happen because inside the communion of saints we have privileged access to each other and there we can finally speak all of those words that we couldn’t speak before. We can reach across death’s divide.

It can be a great consolation to die a happy death, snug and reconciled in the arms of love, with no unfinished business. But, happily, there’s time still after death for this to happen for those of us who aren’t so lucky and who end up dying with some bitterness, anger, wound, and frustration still gnawing away.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/the-communion-of-saints/#.X5HERFl7k_8
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Prayer for Stillness

A PRAYER FOR STILLNESS

God of stillness and of quiet …

• Still my anxiety, my heartaches, my worries, and stop me from always being outside the present moment. Give me the grace to know that you have pronounced my name in love, that my name is written in heaven, that I am free to live without anxiety.

• Still my unrelenting need to be busy all the time, to occupy myself, to be always planning for tomorrow, to fill every minute with some activity, to seek distraction rather than quiet. Give me the grace to accept what circumstance and failure have dealt me.

• Still in me the fear I feel in the face of the powerful, dark forces that unconsciously threaten me. Give me the courage to face my darkness as well as my luminosity. Give me the grace to not be fearful before my own complexity.

• Still in me the congenital fear that I’m unloved, that I’m unlovable, that love has to be earned, that I need to be more worthy. Give me the grace to know that I’m a beloved child of a God whose love need not be earned.

• Still in me my false fear of you, my need to treat you like a distant and feared dignitary rather than as a warm friend. Give me the grace to relate to you in a robust way, as a trusted friend with whom I can jest, wrestle, and relate to in humor and intimacy.

• Still in me my doubts, my anxieties about your existence, about your concern, and about your fidelity. Give me the grace to trust, even in darkness and doubt, that you will give me immortality.

Still my heart so that I may know that you are God, that I may know that you create and sustain my every breath, that everyone, myself no less than everyone else, is your beloved. Nothing falls outside of your love and care, and that everything and everybody is safe in your gentle, caring hands, in this world and the next.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/a-prayer-for-stillness/#.X5HzhUJKg_8
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November 1st - Feast of All Saints

 Short Reflection for the Feast of All Saints

Readings: Revelations 7: 2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3: 1-3; Matthew 5: 1-12a

The Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor; Blessed are they who mourn; Blessed are the meek; Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness; Blessed are the merciful; Blessed are the clean of heart; Blessed are the peacemakers;  and Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness…” (Matthew 5: 7-9)

Meditation: The Beatitudes remain the daunting challenges for every disciple of Jesus Christ. They are the keys to true happiness and true HOLINESS that we all seek as sons and daughters of God. 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…

 

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

 Short Reflection for the 31st Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A)

 Readings: Malachi 1: 14b – 2:2b; 1Thessalonians 2: b – 9; Matthew 23: 1-12

 Selected Passage: “They tie up heavy burdens (hard to carry) and lay them on people's shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. (Matthew 23: 4)

 Meditation: Three things to remember: Never put a heavy burden on people; Never ask people to do something that we never bother lift a finger to do it; and Never judge others that we shall not be judged! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees.  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

Mary - a Model of Faith

MARY AS A MODEL OF FAITH

Looking at how Mary gave birth to Christ, we see that it’s not something that’s done in an instant. Faith, like biology, also relies on a process that has a number of distinct, organic moments. What is the process by which we give birth to faith in the world?

First, like Mary, we need to get pregnant by the Holy Spirit. We need to let the word take such root in us that it begins to become part of our actual flesh.

Then, we have to lovingly gestate, nurture, and protect what is growing inside us until it’s sufficiently strong so that it can live on its own, outside us.  Eventually, what we have nurtured and grown inside of us, when it is ready, must be given birth outside.

However, birth is only the beginning of motherhood. Mary gave birth to a baby, but she spent years nurturing, coaxing, and cajoling that infant into adulthood. The infant in the crib at Bethlehem is not yet the Christ who preaches, heals, and dies for us.

Finally, motherhood has still one more phase. As her child grows, matures, and takes on a personality and destiny of its own, the mother then must let herself be painfully stretched in understanding, and in letting go.

All of this is what Mary went through to give Christ to the world: Pregnancy by the Holy Spirit; gestation of that into a child inside of her; excruciating pain in birthing that to the outside; nurturing that new life into adulthood; and pondering, painfully letting go so that this new life can be its own, not hers.

Our task too is to give birth to Christ. From Mary we get the pattern: Let the word of God take root and make you pregnant; gestate that by giving it the nourishing sustenance of your own life; submit to the pain that is demanded for it to be born to the outside; then spend years coaxing it from infancy to adulthood; and finally, during and after all of this, do some pondering, accept the pain of not understanding and of letting go.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/mary-as-a-model-of-faith/#.X3YQull7k_8
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28th Sunday in Ordinary nTime (A)

 Short Reflection for the 28^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A)

 Sunday dedicated to REMEMBER and PRAY with our Indigenous Peoples

 Readings: Isaiah 25: 6-10; Philippians 4: 12-14; Matthew 22: 1-14

 Selected Passage: 'The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.' (Matthew 22: 8-9)

 Meditation: The Parable tells us of God’s invitation to ALL! One caveat is finding ourselves NOT WORTHY TO COME. We are preoccupied with other concerns, thus we miss God’s invitation… Cuidado!

 In responding to God’s call, we should do it properly. It is not enough to be present. We should show respect to the host, as well as, exhibit self-respect and exhibiting good behavior. We do not take the invitation for granted and neither do we trivialize God’s invitation. BEWARE! Cf. www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

Thinking of Death...

SOME LIGHT-HEARTED THOUGHTS ON A VERY HEAVY SUBJECT

Some were old, some were young; some were prepared, some were not; some welcomed it, some met it with bitter resistance; some died from natural causes, some died through violence; some died surrounded by love and loved ones, some died alone without any human love whatsoever surrounding them; some died peacefully, some died crying out in fear; some died at a ripe old age, some died in the prime of their youth or even before that; some suffered for years from seemingly meaningless dementia with those around them wondering why God and nature seemed to cruelly keep them alive; others in robust physical health with seemingly everything to live for took their own lives; some died full of faith and hope, and some died feeling only darkness and despair; some died breathing out gratitude, and some died breathing out resentment; some died in the embrace of religion and their churches, some died completely outside of that embrace.

Every one of them somehow managed it, the great unknown, the greatest of all unknowns.

Most people, I suspect, have the same experience that I do when I think about the dead, particularly about persons I have known who died. The initial grief and sadness of their loss eventually wears off and is replaced by an inchoate sense that it’s alright, that they are alright, and that death has in some strange way washed things clean.

In the end, we have a pretty good feeling about our dead loved ones and about the dead in general, even if their departure from this earth was far from ideal, as for instance if they died angry, or through immaturity, or because they committed a crime, or by suicide. Somehow it eventually all washes clean and what remains is the inchoate sense, a solid intuition, that wherever they are they are now in better and safer hands than our own.

Our faith tells us that, given the benevolence of the God we believe in, happiness awaits us.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser
http://ronrolheiser.com/some-light-hearted-thoughts-on-a-very-heavy-subject/#.X2zZIZNKg_8

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 23^rd Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A)

 

Readings: Ezekiel 33: 7-9; Romans 13: 8-10; Matthew 18: 15-20

 

Text: “Again, (amen,) I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18: 19-20)

 

Meditation: There is the call to gather in his name – to break bread, to pray and to act – together! The Church is, precisely, this assembly in his name. Integral to the Christian Community is to fraternally correct the erring brothers and sisters.  In our communities, we don’t tolerate evil deeds and behaviors unbecoming of a Christian. www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Dhikr for the 22^nd Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A)

 

Readings: Jeremiah 20: 7-9; Romans 12: 1-2; Matthew 16: 21 -27

 

Selected Passage: What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? (Matthew 16: 26)

 

Meditation: The Gospel challenges us to take a second hard look at our values and integrity. Our words and deeds have become so “flexible” and “ambiguous” these days.  We NO longer draw the line between values and belief we stand by, on one hand, and our words and deeds, on the other. We, too, have our price tags. The passage above tells us to draw the line between what we believe and our deeds. We cannot put our life for sale or barter it for anything! www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

The Death of Innocence

THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE

We pride ourselves on our experience, our sophistication, and our lack of naivete. And we are ashamed to admit that we aren’t experienced, that we haven’t been everywhere, and that we don’t know everything.

Innocence is identified with naivete and is generally looked upon either with condescension or with positive disdain. Lack of sexual experience particularly is stigmatized. We see innocence as ignorance.

Moreover, our culture extends this equation to faith in God. Most of the culture, consciously or unconsciously, believes that contemporary experience and present development and insight, have unmasked faith as a superstition, an ignorance, a lack of nerve, a lack of sophistication, a narrowness, a fear, and even a bias.

The common perception, especially among intellectuals, is that contemporary experience has brought about a collective loss of faith because, at the end of the day, faith is an ignorance that is cast out by a fuller experience. To believe in God is to be naive, however sincere.

The French philosopher and historian Paul Ricoeur, whom nobody could ever accuse of being naive, tells us that as adults, the real goal of our lives is to come to something which he calls “second naivete”. Real maturity is ultimately about revirginizing and coming to a second innocence.

This however is not to be confused with first naivete and natural innocence. We are born naive and innocent and the task of growing up is precisely to move beyond this childishness to adulthood. This is done, as our culture rightly intuits, by growing in experience and sophistication.

For a while, this is good. First naivete in an adult is not innocence but ignorance.

Unfortunately, our culture misunderstands that growth beyond the natural ignorance of a child. Becoming sophisticated is itself meant to be a temporary step. Our real task is ultimately to become post-sophisticated – childlike and virgin again. 

Jesus tells us that children and virgins enter the kingdom of heaven quite naturally. A world that prides itself on its adultness, sophistication, and experience might want to ponder that.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/the-death-of-innocence/#.Xx8QkPhKg_8

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19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 19^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A)

 

Readings: 1 Kings 19: 9. 11-13; Romans 9: 1-5; Matthew 14: 22-33

 

Selected Passage: When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. "It is a ghost," they said, and they cried out in fear. At once (Jesus) spoke to them, "Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid." (Matthew 14: 26-27)

 

Meditation: When we find ourselves in turbulent waters or when we are afraid, Jesus also appears to us in various ways telling us: “take courage, it is I and do not be afraid.”

 

Courage is one of the gifts of the Spirit.  For us to receive this gift, we need to TRUST the Lord. It is believing with our heart that whatever happens and whatever the challenge, the Lord is there at our side and he shares the load so we can dispel our fear, because with him we can carry our cross, too.

 

Visit: www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 18^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A): The Feast of the Transfiguration

 

Readings:  Daniel 7: 9-10. 13 – 14; 2 Peter 1: 16 -19; Matthew 17: 1-9

 

Selected Passage: While he was still speaking, behold a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “ this I my beloved Son, whom I am well pleased; listen to him." (Matthew 17: 5)

 

Meditation: The challenge of the Gospel today is to experience our own transformation. This is primarily a gift from God - a grace given to make us turn to the Lord by LISTENING to his beloved Son, Jesus Christ.  We need to experience our own transfiguration – that is being like to God!

Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

Our 3 Temptations

OUR THREE TEMPTATIONS

We are all made in God’s image and likeness, blessed, and our private secret that we are special is, in fact, the deepest truth. However, that isn’t always easy to believe. Life and circumstance often tire us in ways that tempt us to believe its opposite. It happened to Jesus. 

During his baptism, Jesus heard his Father say: “You are my blessed son, in whom I take delight.”

But throughout his life Jesus struggled to always believe that. For instance, immediately after his baptism, we are told, the spirit drove him into the desert where he fasted for forty days and forty nights – and afterwards “he was hungry”. Obviously what scripture is describing here is not simply physical hunger. Jesus was empty in ways that made him vulnerable to believe that he was not God’s blessed child.

Jesus was first tempted by the devil in the desert, to this effect:  “If you are God’s specially blessed one, turn these stones into bread.” In essence, the devil’s taunt was this: “If you believe that you are God’s specially blessed creature, why is your life so empty?” Jesus’ reply, “One doesn’t live on bread alone!” might be rendered: “I can be empty and still be God’s blessed one! Being blessed and special is not dependent upon how full or empty my life is at a given moment!”

It is good to remember, namely, that we are God’s special, blessed sons and daughters, even when we lives seem empty, anonymous, and devoid of any special privileges because then we won’t forever be putting God and our restless hearts to the test, demanding more than ordinary life can give us.

To read about Jesus’ other two temptations in the desert click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/our-three-temptations/#.XvDdwPJ7k_8

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17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 17^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A): Parables of the Kingdom

 

Readings: 1 Kings 3: 5. 7-12; Romans 8: 28 - 30; Matthew 13: 44 – 52

 

Selected Passage: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13: 44)

 

Meditation: The Kingdom of God is treasure is hidden in each one of us. The kingdom (reign) of God is a mystery. We cannot have a complete picture of it.

Thus, the real challenge is to find it within us and in others and let the reign of God flourish and shine before all.

 

The first reading gives us the prayer of Solomon: “Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong. For who is able to govern this vast people of yours?" (1 KIi9ng 3: 8) Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

When What Is Precious Is Taken from You

WHEN WHAT IS PRECIOUS IS TAKEN FROM YOU

Our kids grow up and leave home, friends move away, loved ones die, we lose our health, and eventually, we die too. Moreover even what is precious to us in terms of our faith and values suffers in the same way: things change, thoughts and feelings shift, rock foundations that once anchored us unassailably give way, doubt creeps in, the bottom falls out, and we are left wondering what we really believe in and what really can be trusted.

Happily, this is only half the equation: Everything we lose is eventually given back to us, and in a deeper way. Our kids become wonderful adults who begin to parent us, new bonds of friendship form across distance, we reconnect in a deeper and more permanent way to our loved ones who have died, we find something deeper and more permanent than physical health, death opens us up to the infinite, and the bottom falling out of old beliefs sends us free-falling to a place where we land on bedrock, on a foundation so secure that it can never be shaken again.

We see the pattern for this in scripture in the story of the Jewish community and the Babylonian exile. After arriving in Palestine (“the Promised Land”) it took a number of generations to establish control over the land, unite all the various tribes into one nation, and build a temple in Jerusalem as center for worship.

But then the Assyrians came and conquered the land, deported all the people to Babylon, killed the king, and knocked down the temple to its last stone. With that, the loss of land, king, and temple, the bottom fell out of their world, religiously and literally. How to you continue to believe, trust, and live in joy when all that once anchored these has been taken from you?

God’s answer was this: You will find me again, when you search for me in a deeper way, with your whole heart, your whole mind, and your whole soul.

God gives us that same answer today whenever we feel betrayed, orphaned, and disoriented in this same way.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser
http://ronrolheiser.com/when-what-is-precious-is-taken-from-you/#.XwsyMpNKh0s

God's Ineffability

GOD’S INEFFABILITY – WHAT’S REVEALED IN JESUS’ EYES?

That means that we can know God, but never adequately capture God in a concept. God is unimaginable. If God could be understood, then God would be as limited as we are.

But God is infinite. Infinity, precisely because it’s unlimited, cannot be circumscribed. We don’t even have a way of picturing God’s gender. God is not a man, not a woman, and not some hybrid, half-man and half-woman. God’s gender, like God’s nature, is intellectually inconceivable. We can’t grasp it and have no language or pronoun for it. God, in a modality beyond the categories of human thought, is somehow perfect masculinity and perfect femininity all at the same time. It’s a mystery beyond us.

But while that mystery cannot be grasped with any rational adequacy, we can know it intimately, and indeed know it so deeply that it’s meant to be the most intimate of all knowledge in our lives. It’s no accident that the bible uses the verb “to know” to connote sexual intimacy. There are different ways of knowing, some more inchoate, intuitive, and intimate than others. We can know God in a radical intimacy, even as we cannot conceptualize God with any adequacy.

So, where does that leave us with God? In the best of places! God may be ineffable, but God’s nature is known. Divine revelation, as seen through nature, as seen through other religions, and especially as seen through Jesus, spells out what’s inside God’s ineffable reality. And what’s revealed there is both comforting beyond all comfort and challenging beyond all challenge.

Nature, religion, and Jesus conspire together to reveal an Ultimate Reality, a Ground of Being, a Creator and Sustainer of the universe, a God, who is wise, intelligent, prodigal, compassionate, loving, forgiving, patient, good, trustworthy, and beautiful beyond imagination.

God cannot be deciphered, circumscribed, or captured in human thought; but from what can be deciphered, we’re in good, safe hands. We can sleep well at night. God has our back.  In the end, both for humanity as a whole and for our own individual lives, all will be well, and all will be well, and every manner of being will be well. God is good.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/gods-ineffability-whats-revealed-in-jesus-eyes/#.Xv8-5JNKh0s
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