Peter, A Success Story

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Acts of the Apostles, church, gifts, Holy Spirit, power of God, St. Peter, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Chapter 9 of the Acts of the Apostles speaks of the many miraculous happenings as the Church was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord, and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit she grew in numbers. (vs. 31) As I read those lines from today’s lectionary text and the following examples of healings by Peter (vs.32-42) I tried to catch the feeling of power that must have accompanied their work. I thought then of Peter’s history and wondered if it was difficult at that point for him to remember that the power came from the Holy Spirit and not from himself.

Sometimes it takes awhile for us to truly wake up to the gifts that we have been given for good. Like Peter, some of us are impetuous and dive into things without much thought. Our intentions are good but we jump too fast without considering all of the consequences. On the contrary some of us are too slow to move for fear of making a mistake. There comes a time, however, if we are motivated by pure love, when something shifts within us and we can look in the mirror and see our true face. At that moment – and ever thereafter – we are certain of the power of God that is our heritage and our strength. We let go of the desire to be someone extraordinary and are content and able to listen for what some have called “the still, small voice of God” that works in us and companions us in our every moment.

I trust that as the Church grew, Peter grew as well in humility, trust and confidence. I believe that we, too, have the possibility of such “success.”

A Sacred Day

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church, day of reflection, ever present in the now, keep holy the Sabbath day, pace of life, Sabbath, sacred, Sunday dinner, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, visit

Sometimes lately I have to look at the events scribbled in my calendar to remind myself of the date and what day of the week it is! I guess I could say that’s because of my advancing age, but I think it has as much or more to do with the pace of life now. Today is Sunday – for Christians, the Sabbath Day, set aside for rest and reflection on the spiritual side of life. I’ve been known to hear in my head the dictum “No unnecessary servile work on Sunday!” if I set about doing laundry or some other household duty. I was always grateful for that precept of the laws of the Church that guided our family life in that simpler time that was my youth.

Sunday really was a quieter day then, a time to go to church, to visit, have Sunday dinner and then sometimes to squeeze all of us (5 kids and two fathers in the early days) into Uncle Charlie’s station wagon and go for ice cream after feeding the ducks at Norumbega. I didn’t know that the dual purpose of those trips with our fathers gave the mothers – sometimes home with a baby or two – a bit of a respite and some quiet too.

For most of us, times have changed radically as the pace of life picked up and three-shift jobs became the norm. It’s more difficult now to allow ourselves a day of the week that is set apart from the others. Perhaps a more novel idea would be to train our hearts to a mindset of every day being a Sabbath – a sacred day of reflection. It wouldn’t need to mean staying home from work or ignoring necessary tasks at home. Maybe setting our inner clock to an hourly “stop!” to remember and give thanks to God would be enough to make each day as holy as the last and as anticipated as the next while staying ever present in the now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buried Treasure

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church, compass, consciousness, God, interior experience, joy, kingdom of God, love, Matthew, presence, stay awake, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, treasure, truth, wake up

When I think of buried treasure, images of pirates or shipwrecked vessels at the bottom of the sea come to mind. This morning’s gospel from Matthew 13 would seem to make the search easier as the treasure is to be found “buried in a field” or in a jewelry store (“a pearl of great price”) but “not so fast”, I say to myself as a cartoon figure appears with a shovel on the edge of a huge expanse of rolling fields. And I’m not a great judge of the quality of gems either!

So how to find the “kingdom of God” has to be a different kind of search. Jesus gives the answer somewhere else, as we know, when he says: The kingdom of God is within you. Looking inside for God is not normally where we go first. Many of us were taught to look in church, where God actually does live, of course. But we need to spend our time there not complaining about less than stellar preaching or wondering why parents don’t teach their children proper attire for church services. We need to be consciously seeking the interior experience that is available to us in the ritual itself and in the community as it is engaged with our own moment of recognition of God’s presence.

And how is it that we miss that pearl of great price as we walk down the street and see God passing by in the eyes of a child or a person disguised as someone different from ourselves? Consciousness is the key, I think. We have not arrived here on earth to walk alone toward that field and we don’t even have to come equipped with our own shovel. We have everything we need to find God; we just need to wake up – first to the field and then to the treasure when we see it. For some – maybe most – of us it takes a lifetime. Maybe that’s how it should be since the treasure is so great a reward.

Today I am thinking that our greatest task, when we understand how willing God is to give us the map, is to wake up ourselves and then share the directions to the treasure with others, especially younger people who are searching and ripe to find what we know. There’s another reason to stay awake: to look into young eyes and recognize a yearning for truth and love – and to share the joy of that treasure every day of our lives.

Wait For It…

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children of God, church, Gospel of Thomas, Luke, Pope Francis, Romans, something is happening, spirituality, St. Augustine, St. Paul, suffering, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

In conversations lately about spirituality or Church, I have often heard – and occasionally said myself, “It feels like something is happening…” That’s a rather bland statement that is generally followed, however, by examples of an energy that cannot be easily explained but is felt as a growing thing – where people are gathering to discuss the newly recognized convergences of science and spirituality or a discovery of something Thomas Merton said 50 years ago that now makes sense or an exploration of the Gospel of Thomas…It is the same hopeful sense that St. Augustine had almost 2,000 years ago, that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Wanting to participate in that nearness of God is likely what drew millions of people to the streets to see Pope Francis pass by in Washington, DC and New York City and Philadelphia. It touched people in the Congress, the United Nations Assembly and the families chosen to represent us in Philadelphia. It brought tears to the eyes of people watching those events on television as surely as if the Pope were in their living rooms. Clearly we want more of God in our lives and in our world.

This is the same arising that I think Paul knew when he said to the Romans and to us this morning,  “I consider the sufferings of the present time are as nothing compared to the glory to be revealed for us. For creation waits with eager expectation for the revelation of the children of God.” (ROM 8:18-25) I am disappointed in that text which used to say that “all of creation stands on tiptoe to see the children of God coming into their own.” Jesus knew it could happen – this bursting forth of the Kingdom of God in the world – when he compared it to a mustard seed or yeast, small and imperceptible at first but in the end the largest of all the trees or the impetus for the dough to rise to full capacity. (LK 13:18-21) Where are we now? How close to the revelation of God in our time? What are we doing to “bring it on?” Have we forgotten how to be so eager as to stand on tiptoe to see it revealed?

Uncle Walter

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church, confession, confessional, God, Irish Catholic, pastor, priest, St. John Vianney, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Early in my life I came to know that God and Church were two realities that merged and were the center of life for my family. Living in what could perhaps be called an Irish Catholic “ghetto” made it easy: we lived about a half-mile from the church and went to the parish school (as did all my friends), my parents volunteered and socialized at the church, most of our holidays began with church services…and we claimed one of “God’s own,” my mother’s brother, our uncle Walter who was a priest. Reverence for my uncle was widespread, springing both from his person and his vocational ministry. It was said especially that “he was good in the box.” That meant that there were lines of people, usually on Saturdays but other times as well, who waited to meet him in a small structure in the church called a confessional (somewhat bigger than a box!) where he would sit on one side of a screen and they would kneel on the other to tell him their sins and wait for the forgiveness of God, mediated through him. His compassion and love for people was a great gift and he gave it willingly.

Today our Church celebrates the feast of St. John Vianney, a humble Frenchman who had one desire: to become a priest. His lack of education was a stumbling block, however, and failure to understand the Latin lectures made him withdraw from the seminary. He was so determined, however, that he sought private tutoring and was eventually ordained. John Vianney was a holy and humble man whose work as a confessor became legendary. It is said that he spent 10 to 16 hours a day in the confessional reconciling people with God.

Times have changed since the nineteenth century when John Vianney lived. Many people who receive the sacrament of penance/reconciliation these days have never been inside a confessional “box” because we understand that we needn’t hide behind a screen declaring our sinfulness: we are all sinners of one stripe or another. Even the priest shares this common trait of humanity. The sacrament has become a relational event, a conversation about the unconditional love of God and the forgiveness that is always accessible to us so it makes sense that it is a “face-to-face” meeting.

Today I pray for all the priests and pastors who try their best to mediate God’s love through whatever ministerial gifts they have received and are willing to share, asking God’s blessing on them and all who receive their care.

Sabbath Praise

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church, Earth, faith formation, full of song, God's artistry, God's presence, listen, mosque, praise God, Psalm 95, Sabbath, shepherd, shout with joy, synagogue, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, the voice of God

As I read Psalm 95 this morning I had images of families bustling about getting ready for Church. The subtitle of this psalm in one of my favorite translations names it Remembering the Past, Holding the Present and it got me thinking about how we celebrate the Sabbath. For some of those bustling families it’s about making sure their children participate in the faith formation classes that accompany the Sunday morning ritual, but the words of the psalm call me to reflect on the dispositions with which people come to those rituals.

Come, let us go into God’s presence full of song, and standing on the rock of our salvation, shout with joy. And in that presence let praise and thankfulness be offered there, for our God is greater far than any gods we claim to know or understand. God holds in care the earth we walk upon, from its deep caverns to mountain summits which meet the sky. For the waters of the oceans deep and the lands which stand above the seas, all these are God’s own finest act of artistry. So come, then, let us bow before this God of ours, and offer up our beings to the Lord. Listen deep within yourself to hear the voice of God who shepherds you and leads you forth to life.

So whether in church or mosque or synagogue, in a tiny cell or great cathedral or out in nature among the praising trees, let us come with all our hearts to a Sabbath day praising the God who holds us dear in life and love.