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Thoughts About My Father…

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Christmas, when you come down to it, is about family. When we look into our nativities at Christmas time, we see a family. We live in a family. The Father has invited us into the heart of the Trinity, the community where we know we belong, are loved, are truly ourselves in Christ, hidden in God. St. Ambrose wrote that Jesus lived on earth that we might live among the stars. He was a slave to make us God’s children. We are his brothers and sisters and co-heirs.

This Christmas we may or may not have been able to gather as family. But this isn’t exactly what I was thinking of as I read the readings for this Feast of the Holy Family.

I’m thinking of my father, and his absolute fidelity to my mom. For just over a year they have lived in an independent living complex that she might be safe. You see, she suffers with Alzheimer’s. I noticed this year that the First Reading sounds one way when we hear it as a child, another way when we hear it as a young adult, and still another when we hear it in our fifties, as we watch the two dearest people in the world who gave us life, begin to struggle, and stumble, and hold each other to the end.

It’s no longer about obedience. It’s no longer about having to take care of them when they are old. It is about reverencing all that they have become.

In the Second Reading, the letter to the Colossians reminds us of how to live in the family instituted by Jesus, as his brothers and sisters… and in any and every family.

“Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.
And over all these put on love,
that is, the bond of perfection.”

With every day my love for my parents grows deeper as I watch them heroically stand by and for each other through these years, even as I suffer not being able to be with them or make things just a little easier for them.

I understand that your feelings about family may be different than mine, your experience, your history, your own memories, may perhaps be tainted with sorrow. But for all of us, in our own unique ways, we can receive the words of Simeon spoken to Mary as spoken in some mysterious way to us: “…and you yourself a sword shall pierce….”

On this Feast of the Holy Family may we find our own way to reconciliation with our own families, as best we can. May we have new eyes to wonder at the courage and the love we witness, a new heart to hold the suffering and the weakness, a new will to be there for them as best we can.

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

Feature Image Credit: Vanesa Guerrero, rpm, cathopic.com

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The Way of the Redeemed

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Both readings today could provoke us to ask ourselves the following questions:

In what ways am I blind?

In what situations am I deaf?

How am I lame?

In what way is my tongue mute?

Isaiah proclaims:

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
Then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing (Isaiah 35:5-6).

Then. When?

The Gospel announces that Jesus Christ is the One who gives us sight, who opens our ears, who gives us the strength to stand and walk, who releases our tongue so we can proclaim.

If we reflect on the Gospel story, Jesus did indeed heal the paralyzed man. Not a word is spoken by this person or his friends. In this passage, they are mute. The paralyzed man is lame. As Jesus speaks to the paralyzed man, it is clear that he can hear and that he can see something so mysterious and beyond his expectations that at the word of Jesus, he stands up immediately, picks up his mat as he is instructed, and goes home as he had been ordered. The tongues of all those present, well almost all, were freed as they began to praise God, “We have seen incredible things today.”

One group of people in the room that day, a number of scribes and Pharisees, questioned what Jesus was doing. He did not fit into their perception of a man from God, a rabbi faithful to the Law. They were already blinded, unable to hear words that didn’t match the ideas of the echo-chamber of their personal group. They were lame, unable to leap at the voice of God in their midst, and their tongue was not loosed with awe and praise. They remained mute, blind, and deaf at the end of the passage, while everyone else acclaimed Jesus.

So we truly might ask ourselves the very crucial questions:

In what ways am I blind?

In what situations am I deaf?

How am I lame?

In what way is my tongue mute?

What echo-chambers do I stay in so that I only willingly listen to the ideas that are already in my mind and heart?

Where am I missing the glorious work of God at work all around me so that I remain mute, paralyzed, and blind instead of praising God and obeying his commands?

What causes me to remain endlessly wrapped in this world’s concerns that I cannot hear the voice of God breaking in on a different topic as he did for the paralyzed man: “As for you, your sins are forgiven”? For sure he was hoping to hear the words, You are cured!

Friends, at the end of today, at the end of Advent, we don’t want to be among the ones who remain mute, blind, deaf, lame.

Advent reminds us of the promise that is also ours:

Streams will burst forth in the desert,
and rivers in the steppe.
The burning sands will become pools,
and the thirsty ground, springs of water….

A highway will be there,
called the holy way.…

It is for those with a journey to make,
and on it the redeemed will walk.
Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy (Isaiah 35:6-7, 8, 9-10).

Willingly, freely, joyfully, make that journey, walk on the way of the redeemed, that you may be crowned with everlasting joy.

Contact the author

Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

Feature Image Credit: Milagre da “cura do paralítico em Cafarnaum” (Mateus 9:1-8;Marcos 2:1-12; Lucas 5:17-26). © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 3.0 

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Cry out: Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!

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Today is the last day of the liturgical year. For a whole year we have journeyed and struggled and wrestled and wondered and wandered with humanity as we have liturgically made our way from creation through re-creation to this day. I believe the Church wants us to rejoice, to tremble with the excited conscious wonder at what has been given to us, what is our destiny in Christ.

The First Reading begins:

“An angel showed me the river of life-giving water,
sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God
and of the Lamb down the middle of the street,
On either side of the river grew the tree of life
that produces fruit twelve times a year, once each month;
the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations.” (Revelation 22: 1-2).

In the end-times, the final river that will flow forever from the throne of God and the heart of the Lamb, the eternal city, the new Jerusalem hearkens back to Genesis, the primordial  garden where we first encounter a river: “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens … a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground” (Genesis 2:4, 6).

However, in the fullness of time and in life everlasting, the river of life-giving water will not rise from the earth but, sparkling like crystal, it will flow from the throne of God and the Lamb, and flow through the middle of the street of the city.

In the garden, leaves became the means for Adam and Eve to hide their naked shame from God, from the Creator who loved them, sustained them, desired their complete and forever happiness. They used fig leaves to cover themselves after they had eaten of the fruit at the bidding of the serpent. In everlasting time, as the book of Revelation tell us, leaves are no longer associated with sorrow and sin and the craftiness of the serpent that brings death and destruction. The leaves of the trees are now the means of healing and health and wholeness and holiness. They serve as medicine for the nations.

We, my friends, know this. The Church places this mystery squarely before our praying hearts and open eyes. The darkened confusing clouds that swirl around people today break the hearts of our brothers and sisters, blinding them to this vision. Too many have never heard it preached to them.

But we have. We have! Today! In this very liturgy! Or if we cannot participate in Mass, in this moment of meditation on the Word. We too live in the confusing chaos of our times, but we have heard of the Fountain of living water that rises within us and the city of Jerusalem that awaits us!

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent. This culminating glory that overflows our hearts spills out into the beginning again of our liturgical remembrance and celebration of the One who has saved us, who reversed our sickness and death and heals us, fills us with life, and washes us in his blood.

In the Responsorial Psalm let us truly cry out: Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!

Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy! Begin Advent with joyful excitement and cry out:

Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!

Contact the author

Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

Feature Image Credit: Gerd Altman https://pixabay.com/photos/sky-clouds-clouds-form-3335585/

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Carry Out the Mission You Are Charged With For the Building Up of the Church

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Today is the feast of the Dedication of St John Lateran in Rome. The Lateran Basilica is called “mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world.” In fact, this basilica was the first to be built after Emperor Constantine’s edict, in 313, which granted Christians freedom to practice their religion. It is the oldest church in the West and was the church where everyone was baptized in ancient Rome.

I’ve been in Rome a couple of times for congregational meetings. The last time one of the sisters from the US currently working in the Vatican took us on a special “insiders” tour of Rome. She knew just the right place to stand to see the perfect view of buildings and Churches and statues and monuments that had stood the test of history for a couple thousand years. Her stories unfolded the magic and the faith of Christians as the streets came alive with their names and faces, their sufferings and triumphs…and their utter and complete belief in Jesus Christ.

As we made our way through the streets of the city, I was in awe that I was walking where two thousand years of saints had walked before me. Popes. Priests. Martyrs. Parents. Children. And I had the privilege of walking the same old roads as they did that day. I wondered if my poor heart would ever measure up to their courage and love and faith. The churches, certainly, we can still visit. They stood on every corner inviting us into the specific part of the story that had been played out within their walls. But equally present to me were the people, the living stones of God’s building, still there in Rome and throughout the world. A river of Christians stretching from the apostles Peter and Paul to that very moment when I was walking where they had once trod.

The Second Reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians reminds us that it is not only the stones of marble that build up the Temple of God. Benedict XVI stated that “the temple of stones is a symbol of the living Church, the Christian community, which in their letters the Apostles Peter and Paul already understood as a ‘spiritual edifice,’ built by God with ‘living stones,’ namely, Christians themselves, upon the one foundation of Jesus Christ, who is called the ‘cornerstone’ (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:9-11, 16-17; 1 Peter 2:4-8; Ephesians 2:20-22). ‘Brothers, you are God’s building,’ St. Paul wrote, and added: ‘holy is God’s temple, which you are’ (1 Corinthians 3:9c, 17)” (Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, November 9, 2008).

The last afternoon of our tour, we approached Chiesa Nuova along Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II. Chiesa Nuova is the Church where St. Philip Neri founded the Oratory in 1575. As I listened to my Sister and tour guide share interesting information about the history connected to the Corso, all I could wonder was how many times St. Philip Neri must have walked on this street. In fact, how every street in Rome had logged countless footsteps of numberless holy women and men throughout the centuries. I reflected on how each of us in our own way contributes to building up this living Church. Certainly I could not measure up to St. Philip Neri, neither in humor nor holiness! But yet, there I was, equally a part of God’s Temple, called, chosen, loved, kept by God’s tender power, the only thing that I can rely on. Both St. Philip and I–and you–are led by the same love and the same grace.

Paul in this reading talks about himself as a master builder of God’s community. He calls himself an architect who worked with skills that were not developed through study and practice and talent, but rather received as a gift, as a blessing. He carried out the mission he was charged with through the grace of God that had been given to him.

Any of us, all of us, can say nothing greater of ourselves than that we have lived and worked and loved “according to the grace of God given to me.” You have a mission. You are a builder of the temple of God, of the Christian community, the living Church. What is the grace given to you? Perhaps today you might take a moment to ask God to help you see what that gift is and what he has intended you to do with it, because we have each been given a charge in building upon the one foundation that is Jesus Christ.

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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Grow Strong in the Lord

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Finally, grow strong in the Lord, with the strength of his power.

According to tradition, the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians while he was in prison in Rome (around AD 62). While in Rome, I was blessed to visit the restored “house” where Paul was held under house arrest. Thinking of the great Apostle confined in those rooms, I can imagine this giant of a man whose missionary activity had touched the entire then-known world reflecting upon the purpose of life and the larger mission of Christianity in the world. I resonate, at least in a small way, in a similar time in my life in the weeks and months after my stroke when I had to come to grips that without God’s permission I could do nothing: I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t walk. As super as I had thought I was, busy, effective, bursting with ideas and energy, in reality I learned I was totally dependent on God.

People who are blessed with the ability to get things done, to envision the future, to organize and administrate—all of which were gifts Paul himself had received and which sustained him in his years of labor for and in Christ—know intimately that lightning-quick inner movement that constructs a roadmap for arriving at solutions and resolutions to issues when they arise. I like to think that Paul, in this reading, is showing us what he had gradually learned about living “in the Lord,” a truth that makes all activity fruitful.

He is telling the Ephesians and us, “Be empowered through your union with Christ, draw from Christ—and not yourself—the boundless strength he provides. For our strength as Christians cannot subsist outside of Christ. In Philippians he had written: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (cf. 4:13)

This is important to note because the armor which is described in the following verses as our proper attire is therefore of divine workmanship. The armor of God is given to us. It isn’t something we take up by creating it or choosing it ourselves. A soldier wears armor to protect and defend himself, whereas the armor that is described by Paul here, which God gives to us, consists of virtues which are useful for 1) defending us against the attack of the enemy, and 2) giving us strength in battle against the skillful, experienced, and malicious enemies which are the devil and his angels. A soldier’s armor protects him, but is powerless to strengthen him on the battlefield.

Therefore, put on the armor which God himself provides you: truth, righteousness and integrity. Run with stability and promptness to announce the Gospel of peace. Cover yourself with faith and wield the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. Be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming you can stand against the wiles of the evil one with your natural strength.

“In all your prayer and entreaty keep praying in the Spirit on every possible occasion….”

No matter how virtuous we think we have become, how zealous we as missionaries, ministers, and Christians may be, how fantastic our projects and successful our plans, Paul is calling us through prayer to jettison self-reliance and to rely wholly on the Spirit’s enablement. Prayer is the very air we breathe. Prayer keeps us spiritually alive. Prayer makes us one with Christ.

What the Church and the world need today are people mighty in this battle of spiritual warfare, people who are filled with the Spirit and who run to do the Spirit’s bidding. Without prayer, to return to the imagery of the soldier’s armor, we shall be defeated in battle. And if we look to God in prayer, we shall triumph in the battle against every evil.

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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God’s In-Pouring love

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“Be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks.”

Weddings are wonderful events, celebrations when we somehow are able to set aside the past and hope for the future of a couple with whom we have in some way shared the journey of life.

However…

What would be some reasons why a wedding feast wouldn’t be a joyous celebration?

Think about it for a minute…

I’ll name a few hypothetical reasons why we may not be thoroughly and completely delighted at a wedding feast:

The bride has a more beautiful wedding dress than I did.
The wedding feast is larger than what my spouse and I would be able to have.
I don’t approve of the marriage.
I’m worried about the future of the couple.
I wish I could be that happy in public like the groom. Instead I shrink with fear or shame for some reason I can’t understand.
My marriage or vocational choice has gone through the wringer with sorrows and setbacks. It’s not fair that they have everything going for them.
I have been slighted or hurt or unjustly treated by one of them and hope they get what they deserve.

Whoa. Suddenly the feasting is no longer shining with joy. It is distorted and darkened with jealousy or fear or anger or…

…Or hurt…

In the Gospel today Jesus tells us to be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast. He says they should have their belts done up and their lamps lit, that is to be actively getting ready for his return.

So what are some reasons why we may not be actively, excitedly preparing ourselves for the Lord’s coming?

Here are some hypothetical possibilities…

I’ve lost a child and no matter how much I prayed, God did nothing.

My life hasn’t turned out the way I had hoped.

Others have gotten ahead of me and I resent that I’m not more talented, more positioned for success, more wealthy.

Trauma in my early years has left me struggling to trust, to hope, to love anyone and even God himself. I’ve shut down to protect myself.

I can’t remember the last time I was happy.

My experience of love in my formative years was conditioned on my good behavior or good grades. I never seem good enough for God. I can’t believe he would love me.

I pray but I don’t think God listens to me.

I think that God will come to punish me. I’m not even sure there is a place for me in heaven. I’m still worried about something I did when I was a teenager and if God has forgiven me.

Something similar lies at the root of both of these hypothetical lists.

Hurt.

The wounds we have sustained in life deeply affect us…at the level of the heart. We certainly get absorbed in the thoughts and memories and feelings that swirl within us on a conscious level. Just think of these hypothetical situations and all the drama that they create within a person and in relationships. Our small mind’s antics are just ways to distract us from the utter pain we each carry in some way in our deeper heart, pain from past wounds accumulated over the years.

Friend, I encourage you to hold that hurt and honor that wound. Know that deeper than the wound itself, however, is the spark of God’s in-pouring love that sustains your life on every level. We all have to struggle with the small-minded antics that get played out within us and which drive us then to act in small-minded ways. Hurt does that. The readings today, however, call us to look deeper. To actively seek to hold up the lamp in the dark begging for God to show us his face. To reveal how through all the pain we “in him are being built up into a dwelling-place of God in the Spirit.”

It begins with being aware of what is holding us back, what is small-minded and pain-filled and welcoming both the wound and the healing. As the wound heals, the light is released and the delicious joy of the wedding feast invades our life, pushing away the small-minded narrowness with the amazing discovery of Jesus’ promise: “In truth I tell you, he will do up his belt, sit them down at table and wait on them.”

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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May The Angels Lead You Into Paradise

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Today is the feast of the Guardian Angels. The first thing that comes to mind for me, and probably for you, is the famous image of an angel protecting a child as he or she walks across a bridge. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of “each believer” having a guardian angel, a special guardian from the time of baptism to accompany us through life. Benedict XVI in an Angelus Address on October 2, 2011 called guardian angels “ministers of the divine care for every human being. From the beginning until the hour of death, human life is surrounded by their constant protection.”

Therefore, on this feast, we are celebrating our faith in God’s enduring love and his providential care extended to us each and every day until life’s end. Some of the saints had the blessing to actually see their guardian angel. Whether we can see our angel or not, belief in the guardian angel who accompanies us through life is an act of faith in the God who accompanies us on our way through life and into eternity. We can pray to them for assistance, or we can simply speak with our angel as with a friend.

In the Gospel, Jesus states: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”

Our guardian angels remind us that our eternal home, the destination to which we are journeying under their protection, is heaven. Saint Bernard said that we have only to follow our angels, to stay close to them, and then at our death we shall dwell with them in heaven.

I never fail to be moved to tears at the end of the Funeral liturgy when those of us who remain on earth gather around the body of our dear sister and sing this farewell hymn from the Rite for Christian Burial:

“May the angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs come to welcome you
and take you to the holy city,
the new and eternal Jerusalem.”

Our guardian angel is a protector, a shepherd who leads us into life. In a way, when we are devoted to our guardian angel we are beginning on earth the life that will be ours in eternity when we will stand in the company of the angels singing with them to the glory to God.

Our veneration of the angels in heaven transforms our hearts in three ways:

  • It leads us to honor and respect ourselves and others who are watched over through the goodness of God by an angel from heaven. We and others are never alone. We and others are never outside of the watchful eye of this angel who sees everything.
  • It leads us to gratitude that God has given us a companion through life to enlighten us, defend us, guide us, and intercede for us, and ultimately to bring about our total dedication to God’s glory in our life.
  • It leads us to hope. The fact that everyone has a guardian angel reminds us that the history of the world is in God’s hands and that the angels who watch over us are at work in each person’s heart to turn them to truth, goodness and beauty, that they might make decisions that will allow God’s loving plan for the world to unfold.

Our guardian angels are always before the face of the Father. We can turn to our own guardian angel in every need, and we can always pray to the guardian angels of others. When someone needs a reminder, comfort, conversion, or strength, turn to their guardian angel because this heavenly minister is right beside this person wherever they are and in whatever situation they find themselves. When you cannot be near someone in need, their angel is always right there with them.

Contact the author

Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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Before You Rest Your Head

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 “The Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head…”

I don’t know about you but I am happy when I can lie down in my bed at night. I’m safe. I’m warm. I’ve eaten during the day…. And there is nothing wrong with that.

My heart, however, wonders at these words of Jesus.

“Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”

Jesus is not sugarcoating his expectations of those who would be his disciples. He asks for everything. To give up every security. Every excuse. To make a complete break with all loyalties and attachments that hinder our relationship with him being total, complete, entire.

“No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

To follow Jesus we have to abandon everything that we have put into building up a “kingdom” that revolves around us in order to take up residence and to minister in God’s Kingdom.

What is this “everything” that we need to abandon? If we confine ourselves to the words and events presented in the Gospel today we can feel that we are pretty safe. We probably aren’t going to be asked to be homeless if we follow Jesus. If our parents are sick no one is going to begrudge us time off for caring for them, even if we are in full-time ministry. And as to saying good-bye to our family at home, we have a thousand ways of staying in contact now with them between texting and video calls, and watching their lives play out before us daily on our Facebook feeds. We probably won’t miss a minute of their lives even if we are a thousand miles away.

The call of the “all” woven into this Gospel reading can be unconsciously reduced to a problem that the people speaking to Jesus that day had to deal with.

So what is the “all” that we might be called to abandon in order to follow Christ?

In these days of protests and the struggle for racial justice and harmony Pope Francis gives us one direction where this “all” might actually force us into conversion if we wish to be Jesus’ disciple.

In his encyclical, Joy of the Gospel, he spends over twenty paragraphs reflecting on some of the challenges of today’s world (nos. 50-75). As I read these numbers I could feel Jesus pointing out the stark options I had before me if I wished to follow him:

“You need to say no to an economy of exclusion if you wish to follow me. Think about where you shop. What are your needs. What you can’t do without. Go first and say no to the new idolatry of money and then come and follow me. Those decisions that put money before people….employees, the disenfranchised, the people “in the way” of progress. The one who contributes to and profits from a financial system which rules rather than serves is not fit for the Kingdom of God. Only after committing yourself to counter policies that promote inequality and spawn violence, can you come and follow me.”

As I listen to these invitations in my heart, I begin to shift in my seat. This hits home much more than “he who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.”

The “cost” of following Christ today, the “all” that must be abandoned in order to be fit for the Kingdom of God is, in one way, the whole system we keep propped up—personally and as a society—to make sure that we are taken care of at the expense of others. The cost of being Christ’s disciple is detachment from prejudices, entitlement, wealth, prestige, fixing the system so we get ahead, carrying forward and acting out of polices which imprison individuals and peoples in situations of inequality, poverty, and violence, excluding others, turning a blind eye to those caught in the spiral of poverty so deep that they are excluded from the table….

We all know at least one of these situations. We might find it in our heart, in our families, in our parishes, in our cities, in our schools….

Now is the time to “put our hand to the plow” and make a decision to “say no” to systems that have formed us through our life, perhaps, but which now we know are so totally inadequate for life in the Kingdom. The world needs to take a giant leap forward in respecting the human dignity of each of God’s children.

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

So I may still go to sleep tonight, safely in my bed. But my heart has been disquieted by Jesus who calls me as his disciple to be the voice of love in this world, to choose humility, to repent of prejudice, to push others ahead of myself, praying that they will have more than I, determined to address any situation of inequality I encounter in my personal circle.

And you?

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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Seen by Jesus

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“Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening,
and he was greatly perplexed…

…And he kept trying to see him.”

This line always makes me chuckle. I understand there was no possibility of connecting with Jesus on Zoom in first century Palestine. Herod couldn’t jump in the car and drive over to an evening seminar. Or follow Jesus on Facebook or Twitter. But, really, it couldn’t have been that hard for Herod to catch up with Jesus to see him.

If, that is, the king really wanted to be seen by Jesus.

Hearing others talk about Jesus. Thinking about him. Reading about the spiritual life. Attending a Bible study or book club. All these things are wonderful and can be important aspects of one’s spiritual journey. They are ways in which Jesus draws us closer to him, and begins to unify our flighty and fidgety senses and distracted thoughts around his gaze where we bask in a love we could never imagine.

Perhaps Herod was hoping to meet Jesus in order to prop up his own power and protect his own authority. He wasn’t really hoping to encounter Jesus in the way Zacchaeus did, or the Magdalene, or Peter, or the lepers. So maybe he didn’t try that hard. These others were men and women who had the desire and the capacity to enter into a sustained relationship with Jesus that was prolonged and deepened through time, that changed their lives, that taught them that indeed life comes and goes in the blink of an eye, as the Teacher and Ecclesiastes writes. The First Reading helps us reflect on life’s repetitiveness, its elusiveness, the shortness of our days on earth, the way in which things slip through our fingers and in the light of eternity are but a whisper in the wind. And thus to treasure the gift of knowing the Lord and being known by him.

These readings rouse my sleepy and distracted heart. I don’t want to be chasing vanities so that like Herod I miss out on the most important relationship that will be mine now and for all eternity. I want to see and be seen by the Lord.

In a world of enticing and exciting options for diversion and pleasure and power, our hearts have to be capable of true attention and concentration if we are not to get caught up in just trying to see Jesus. Simone Weil, the Jewish French philosopher saw this oneness of vision, the ability to keep our attention on one single task in the moment, as a spiritual practice. This practice gradually opens our deeper consciousness so that we learn to meet the gaze of Christ and live from his presence within. Here are four ways to unify the sometimes somewhat scattered way in which we pursue trying to see the Lord:

  1. Find 20 minutes each day for meditation. Read the Bible or a favorite spiritual book to lead you closer to the Lord.
  2. Practice doing one thing at a time. Put all your focus on what you are doing, staying in the present moment at least a couple times a day.
  3. Find some time each week to unplug from social media and turn off your phone.
  4. Ask Jesus what he’d like from you at this time in your life. Tell him that you want to see him.

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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Do Not Be Afraid

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“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid…”

Right now I am afraid. Where I once had meaningful work, now I am in a liminal space where I can’t hide in what I do. The world is uncertain. The safety of loved ones is in jeopardy. And my emotions are on a roller coaster that I cannot understand no matter how much I try to stuff what is happening to me into some pre-made psychological explanation.

I’d love someone to talk to. Someone outside the situations in which I live where I could pour out my heart. I struggle with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and the radical emotional ups and downs that are part of the illness. I want to hide. Hide the shame of not having it all together. Hide the humiliation that comes with loss and replacement and transition. At story lines changed…. At personal images cracked…. At the uncertainty of how it will all turn out… At the weakness exposed in my surrender to the Lord…

These words, the images they evoke, the feelings they express are way larger than the situation I am living calls for. But everyone knows what it’s like when we can’t seem to fit what’s happening in our lives into the previous plan we’ve had for ourselves and others.

The Gospel today offers a lifeline for times such as these when they happen to us. Joseph was in such a dilemma. The plans he had made with Mary, the expectations, the idea he had of her and the image he had painted in his heart for the rest of his life suddenly no longer made sense in the face of the inexplicable and undeniable fact that Mary was with child.

It is part of our responsibility as adults to plan, to project the future, to prepare for it. We think we know who we are and what God is asking us to do and we do our best to make that happen. And at the very moment when we feel sure, secure, pleased with ourselves, the plans break down, mercifully so.

As beautiful as Joseph and Mary’s plans may have been, and they remain in the secret conversations they must have had, they were based on what they knew and wanted at the moment they made them, and on what they believed God wanted of them.

At our birth, however, God’s pristine plans for our good and his delight are imprinted in our destiny. Again and again I have to remind myself to let my plans go in order to let the eternally-desired destiny willed by God for me to unfold.

Today is the feast of the Nativity of Mary. There is a long venerable tradition since the sixth century of celebrating the birth of Mary, the mother of Jesus, the woman who, in the words of Augustine, “is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley.”

Joseph, at the words of the angel and the desire of God, dropped his plans and expected future in order to perfectly conform their life together to the mystery that had been inscribed in Mary since her conception.

“Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.
She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill
what the Lord had said through the prophet:

Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,

which means “God is with us.”

This saint chosen to play such a key role in the story of salvation solicitously looks after each of us as he looked after the Son of God. Joseph teaches us to sing the “Let it be as you will” in a patience that waits for the storm of emotions to subside, suffering to deepen into union, and love to raise us up in spirit. The solitude and slowly transformative work of grace in these difficult situations carve out our greatness of spirit.

So today, if you are wondering what your life is meant to be—or that of someone else you care about—if carefully laid plans or self-images are falling apart, look back to the moment of creation and birth. The Trinity sang a song over you, has a plan for you, desired you, delights in you even now and will forever. The breaking apart of all we think should be is often the divine path back to the source of our own beauty, call, and happiness.

Ask Mary and Joseph for the courage to say your own Fiat—Let it be….

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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Unless You Become As Little Children…

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Today’s Gospel reading can be summed up in this warning: “Beware the paparazzi!” Of course, 99% of us aren’t that high profile that we have to worry about a crowd of photographers chasing after us to document our every move in order to sell the photos to media outlets for thousands of dollars. Instead we have interior paparazzi in our hearts. We snap virtual photos of us in the form of memories that we hold up like mirrors in order to admire ourselves.

“Just look at me!” “Wasn’t that good of me to do?” “See how I dealt with that situation?” “How holy I look when I’m praying….”

Is everyone noticing me?

The scribes and Pharisees had fallen into the danger that is ever-present for anyone who sincerely wants to be a good person. As Simon Tugwell, OP put it, “The danger with our good works, our spiritual accomplishments, and all the rest of it, is that we shall construct out of them a picture of ourselves in which, effectively, we shall situate our happiness. Complacency in ourselves will then replace delight in God.”

One can imagine individuals to whom Jesus is referring going home at night gazing at their own contentment, reliving every inch of footage from the day, admiring themselves from every angle.

“All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor…and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’”

Jesus advises the crowds to turn their attention away from themselves and from authorities on this earth who can look at us approvingly and mentor, shape, and guide our lives to God in their own images.

You have only one Father in heaven. You have but one master, the Christ.

If our eyes are on our Father, we re-assume our proper place before him as creature. “The greatest among you must be your servant.”

It is little children who do not self-consciously admire themselves as they carry on the drama of their lives. The “scribes and the Pharisees” and anyone who keeps the interior paparazzi busily snapping self-conscious images want to keep themselves in the picture. They want to get something. They want to become something for their own benefit. They want to buy their way into eternal life.

It is as children that we remain before the Father, students before the Master, humble servants before our brothers and sisters.

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Sr. Kathryn J. HermesKathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey. Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/ For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.

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The Lot Marked Out For Me Is My Delight

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The lot marked out for me is my delight. This was a passage from Psalm 16 that was written on a piece of paper given to me in a meeting around the year 1996.

For the past almost twenty-five years, this simple verse of scripture has kept me wondering about the mystery of life, the wonder of choosing one’s stance toward life’s events that can bring both joy and pain.

How can we find delight in situations that have been “marked out for us”?

How can we find our joy in forsaking our own way in order to delight in what we end up with in the seemingly random events that direct the outcome of who we are and what we have in life?

In other words, how can we be happy being the clay, when our frightened grasping selves would be happier, we presume, if we were ourselves were the potter?

The image of the potter and the potter’s wheel appears through scripture, an apt and beautiful expression of God’s faithful, tender, loving action in our lives.

When Jeremiah went down to the potter’s house, what did he see? The ancient potter would scrape the clay from the earth, and throwing it on the ground would trample on it. He would soften the brittle and resistant clay with water and knead it until it softened into a paste. This kneaded clay would be slapped firmly onto the center of his potter’s wheel, which was a flat disk mounted on a rod. By holding the clay as the wheel turned and manipulating it with his fingers and palms, the potter would transform the lump of clay into a vessel, any vessel of his choosing.

We are the clay, not the pot but the clay. In process. Being formed, shaped, reformed,  transformed.

If we are the clay under the expert work of the divine Potter, we can be sure that he intends to do something with us and in us. We are beautiful to him. We have a purpose. We have a meaning in life that brings him joy. We are a part of his great plan.

Life’s sorrows and burdens are the trampling that brings forth the tears that soften the clay. Even the moments of pain are part of the process of becoming.

The clay has no idea what the Potter is trying to create. It yields itself completely to the expert and loving kneading of the One who envisions for it the fullness of life.

After the clay has been pushed and prodded and pulled and shaped on the potter’s wheel, it was baked in a kiln, a special furnace that might easily reach 2700°F. Different types of pots require different types of heat. The divine Potter, like any good potter, doesn’t arbitrarily submit the clay pot to a degree of heat that is beyond the endurance of the vessel. No vessel receives more heat than it needs. The most beautiful clay pots require the greatest heat. The most beautiful souls are often those who have suffered the most and have become kind, gentle, and courageously loving in the process.

The divine Potter never gives up on the clay. He is endlessly inventive and creative.

When I think of how solicitously the divine Potter has bent over me as he transforms my life into the beautiful life he has had in mind for me from all eternity, I can absolutely cry out, “The lot marked out for me is my delight.”

Contact the author

Kathryn James Hermes, FSP, is the author of the newly released title: Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments, by Pauline Books and Media. An author and spiritual mentor, she offers spiritual accompaniment for the contemporary Christian’s journey towards spiritual growth and inner healing. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey.

Website: www.touchingthesunrise.com

Public Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/srkathrynhermes/

For monthly spiritual journaling guides, weekly podcasts and over 50 conferences and retreat programs join my Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/srkathryn.