“Something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing
for a moment to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day.”
- Kent Nerburn
(What do you hope to
be able to say about today at day's end?) |
Acts 8:26-40; 66:8-9, 16-17, 20; Jn 6:44-51
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Bless our God, you peoples,
loudly sound his praise;
He has given life to our souls,
and has not let our feet
slip.
Hear now, all you who fear God, while I declare
what he has done for me.
When I appealed to him in words,
praise was on the tip of my tongue.
Blessed be God who refused me not
my prayer or his kindness!
Reflection on the Scriptures |
I like to imagine a world where God’s activity is easily identifiable, even if I am not looking
for it. Unfortunately, in the current moment I seldom feel this is the case. I want to live in a world where I can have an unwavering trust in Divine Providence and prayers are routinely seen as answered. I want to live in culture of trust and respect. I want to be in an environment where if my faith weakens it is quickly restored. The imperfect world in which I live seems in some ways to find parallels in the world of that first Easter season. There is hope when faith is strong and there is
doubt when it is not. That period between the first Easter and Pentecost was a time when the first Christians also suffered with fear and questioning until they had a set of clear-cut signs (those of the kind that I desire). Jesus was with them again, but often they did not recognize him. They were worried and concerned about the events that had transpired in the world in which they lived. The Easter season is often portrayed as the time of salvation and renewal. For me, and for many of those in
the early Church, I do not think this is (or was) the necessarily case. When I am able to recognize God’s hand in what is happening I find moments of great consolation, but this is a faith that is subject my perceptions and my moodiness. I look forward to another feast that is still a month away. I find myself more grateful for the gift of the Spirit. I find (like many of those in the early Church) it is through the experience of Pentecost that I better recognize and can hold in my heart that
which the Easter season brings.
- by Mike Cherney
Revelations of Divine Love - by Julian of Norwich
Eighth Revelation, Chapter 16 “A Part of His Passion”
AFTER this Christ shewed a part of His Passion near His dying.
I saw His sweet face as it were dry and bloodless with pale dying. And later, more pale, dead, languoring; and then turned more dead unto blue; and then more brown-blue, as the flesh turned more deeply dead. For His Passion shewed to me most specially in His blessed face (and chiefly in His lips): there I saw these four colours, though it were
afore fresh, ruddy, and pleasing, to my sight. This was a pitiful change to see, this deep dying. And also the [inward] moisture clotted and dried, to my sight, and the sweet body was brown and black, all turned out of fair, life-like colour of itself, unto dry dying. For that same time that our Lord and blessed Saviour died upon the Rood, it was a dry, hard wind, and wondrous cold, as to my sight, and what time [all] the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefrom,
yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ, as it was shewed.
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