Blog Archives

Grace, Mysterious Grace

30/11/2023

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:
First Sunday of Advent

1 Corinthians
1.3-9

Brothers and sisters: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind — just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Before I was a Christian, I could never understand why anyone would thank God for winning a race or an award, when it was clearly by their own hard work, skill, and perseverance that they had won. Now, I see it as giving credit where credit is due… we can only accomplish so much on our own, and now that I have experienced the reality of God’s grace in my own life, I can attest to this firsthand.

Saint Paul speaks here of the beauty and freedom that come with surrendering to the call of God’s creative and generous gift of grace. Strength, power, and effectiveness are considered good things by secular standards but, like everything, they are multiplied by grace – they take on a new and different quality. Think water into wine, loaves and fishes, the scandalous extravagance of the welcome home of the squandering son.

What does this mean?

It means that grace is the difference. Grace is what sets Christianity apart. Acknowledging that all things, including our free will, have their origin in God, and giving them back to Him in gratitude is the difference. Understanding that our own power is insignificant compared to His, but that He wants to share His power with us. It only benefits us to give the glory of our accomplishments to God, because His desire is to enrich and strengthen and improve and deepen and beautify all of us to make the world a better place.

It takes courage to surrender to a mysterious power that is outside our own control, because it requires a trust in the goodness of this power that is beyond our understanding. But whenever I reach the end of myself, in whatever I try to do – whenever I face that inevitable thought “I can’t do this” – my next breath must be the prayer, “Lord, help me.”

And by the power of His mysterious grace, I can be sure that He will.

“Grace perfects nature.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas

Lindsay Elford

4 Comments

Rhythms of Grace

29/11/2023

8 Comments

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:
First Sunday of Advent

Psalm 80

R. Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth. Stir up your might, and come to save us.

R. Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand has planted.

R. Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

But let your hand be upon the man at your right, the son of man you have made strong for yourself. Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.

R. Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

This weekend, we enter into the liturgical season of Advent. A time of waiting. A time of anticipation. Before Christ, the majority of the northern hemisphere spent this time awaiting the winter solstice – the longest night of the year. The bleakest day of the bleak midwinter. The solstice acknowledged the midpoint in the cruel, cold season of winter.

But as Christians, we’re not waiting for the midway point in our battle against the elements. We’re waiting for something far more beautiful. Far more precious. We join in the cry of the ancient Jewish people – “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” We call out for the same Messiah – remembering His first arrival as a helpless babe born in a barn and awaiting in joyful hope His return. We are caught in the liminal space after that longest night of creation. The space where death has been defeated, where our God was born, lived, died, and was resurrected from the dead, and where we long for His second coming.

Through the seasons of the liturgy, we get to bind our lives to that heavenly rhythm of wondrous waiting and glorious triumph – Advent, and then Christmas; Lent, and then Easter.

We are called to long for that Christ – the Christ who not only deigned to take on our human flesh but also to die for us in due time. With the trust of the Psalmist David, we still believe God is for us and that He will “look down from heaven” and “have regard for this vine.”

But do I truly surrender to the rhythm of this season? Or am I tempted to get caught up in the glitz and glamour of the secular world’s take on Christ? Even when the secular perspective has the patina of Christianity, it’s far too caught up in the one moment in time – that moment in the manger. Stripped of the absolute scandal of the incarnation and completely separated from the reality that we are waiting for Jesus to come again in victory.

It can be easy to get swept away by the presents and baking and sparkling lights, Mariah Carey dominating the radio waves and visions of sugar plums. We want to make our waiting into something shiny, with an immediate reward. It would be easier to have a date on the calendar to be aiming for before we get back to the grey days of our regular work, school, and activities.

We are called to reject all attempts to make banal what is meant to be infused with the rhythms of grace. This time of waiting in which we find ourselves is incredibly important. It is not just a remembering of a particular moment in history, but a time of tremendous anticipation. While we make room in our hearts for the gentle power of the Christ child, we are also called to make room in our hearts for the awesome majesty of the glorified Christ.
A holy waiting. A reminder that our hope remains, no matter the season.

Stéphanie Potter

8 Comments

Hold On

28/11/2023

4 Comments

A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:
First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah
63.1617; 64.1, 3-8

You, O Lord, are our father;
“Our Redeemer from of old” is your name.
Why, O Lord, do you make us stray from your ways
and harden our heart, so that we do not fear you?
Turn back for the sake of your servants,
for the sake of the tribes that are your heritage.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence.
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.

You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.

But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Gosh. It’s the first week of Advent, and the theme is “Hope.” I feel like Isaiah didn’t get the memo here. Hope is hard to spot in Isaiah’s words.

He describes the people of Israel and, spiritually, they’re not in great shape. No one is worshipping God with integrity. No one seems to remember that He alone is their salvation. They might be obeying laws, going through the motions, and saying the right words. But no one has faith.

Again and again, Isaiah’s words had me thinking about the woman who hemorrhaged for twelve years, whom we meet in the Gospel of Saint Mark. She embodies Isaiah’s Israel. She is an “unclean” person, with her “polluted rags” (menstrual cloths). Each of her twelve years of bleeding is one of the tribes who have abandoned God. Her fruitless efforts to be healed are like the Hebrews turning to other idols and worshipping false gods.

Ah, but all is not lost. She hears that Jesus is coming, and she enters the throng. She, as Isaiah says, “rouses” herself “to cling to” God. In fact, when Jesus asks “Who touched me?” the word in Greek He used for “touched” is from haptomai, which can mean “to cling to.” Pseudo-Chrysostom, an anonymous early Church writer, says Christ’s healing comes out of Him through His own will – but the person must “touch Him by faith.”

When the woman touched Him, clung to Him, Christ knew the difference. He knew that, despite dozens or hundreds of people touching Him, someone had clung to Him. Pseudo-Chrysostom explains: “But the Lord asked, who touched me, that is in thought and faith, for the crowds who throng me cannot be said to touch me, for they do not come near to me in thought and in faith.”

I wonder how many times I have been with Jesus and “touching Him” but really only been a member of the crowd. Jostling Him, not clinging to Him.

Because she roused herself to cling to Him, the reality of her wholeness comes to her. Christ tells her that her faith has healed her – not that her faith “will” heal her, but that it “has” healed her. “That is, in that thou hast believed, thou hast already been made whole,” says Saint Bede the Venerable.

So therein lies our hope in this gloomy passage from Isaiah. Despite our uncleanliness and waywardness, our faith has healed us. We have believed and been made whole. We will stand out from the crowd when we cling to Him in thought and in faith.

Kate Mosher

4 Comments

Our King Is Come

24/11/2023

4 Comments

A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday, November 26th, 2023:
The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Matthew
25.31-46

Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the Angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

“Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

This Sunday (the last Sunday of Ordinary Time) we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, a reminder that earthly authorities and governments will rise and fall but the kingship of Christ our Lord is eternal! The beauty of this Solemnity is that it leads us to Advent and our time to prepare for the coming of the true king.

The Gospel reminds us very clearly that this kingship is not about the pomp and circumstance we generally attribute to monarchy. Rather this kingship is about love, and how I live the reality of love in this life will determine how I live eternity with my king! We never want to forget the love and mercy that God has for His people, but we cannot forget that we will be judged on the life we live here, the love we live here. What does that mean? This Gospel tells us: feed the hungry, give drink to those who thirst, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned. This is the love God calls me to live out in my daily life. I will not be judged on my pius reflections, my holy prayers, or my great organizational skills. These are good things but, at the end of this life, I will be judged on the love I have shown my neighbours: my family, friends, enemies, and strangers.

St Teresa of Calcutta said, “We cannot do great things in this world; we can only do small things with great love.” It is not my job to feed every hungry person but to feed the one God puts before me and to do it in the way I am able in my circumstances. I may have time to volunteer somewhere, or I may be able only to hand out little care packages to those who panhandle at the stoplight but, both of these are a response of love for the person God has brought before me. My life here and now is to be lived in such a way that, one day, I may stand before the king and hear him say, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Amen.

Sr. Teresa MacDonald

4 Comments

<<Previous

Grace, Mysterious Grace

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:First Sunday of Advent

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Rhythms of Grace

​A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:First Sunday of Advent

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Hold On

A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:First Sunday of Advent

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Our King Is Come

A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday, November 26th, 2023:The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Archives

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:
First Sunday of Advent

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:
First Sunday of Advent

A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday, December 3rd, 2023:
First Sunday of Advent

A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday, November 26th, 2023:
The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe