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Take your troubles to the Risen One

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A long year has sputtered out during the holy season of Lent. Conflicting messages about the end or the resurgence of the pandemic… Life-changes and unexpected transitions… Worries over my parents’ health…

I have found myself feeling exhausted, listless, desolate. 

This Easter, Jesus has come and stood in my immediate presence and I have stood in his.

“Peace be with you,” Jesus has whispered to me, proclaimed to me.

“I have been here all along. I rose from the dead. I live, the Risen One. Why are you troubled about the events in your life? Why do you wonder if I am here? If I can do anything?”

What troubles us…what troubles you…these 2000 years since Jesus burst the bars of death? Why does Jesus have to ask the same question of us as he asked of his disciples in today’s Gospel just days after his Resurrection?

I believe we sometimes don’t even realize we are troubled, we question, we doubt, we worry… Did the Apostles, after all, really get the depth of their confusion, insecurity, guilt, fear?

I believe that an inner suspicion gnaws at our heart today even as we recite the Credo… After all, we breathe the same air as the rest of humanity.

I believe there is this subtle desperation, so subtle we don’t even suspect it is there…

Why?

Even more than a year into the pandemic, we remain surrounded by questions, haunted by emptiness, suspicious about whether our life has real meaning. We have touched the small daily nothingness that often threatens to dominate our days. How much time people admit to scrolling through an endless social media feed without the willpower to stop until they are exhausted? We live in a time where nothing is very strong as we are half-aware of the “dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why,” as C. S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters.

We suffer the absence of something—of Someone—that fascinates us, captivates us, bowls us over, seizes us…. “We are all of us limp” (Leo Tolstoy, The Idiot).

And then there is the Risen One who appears in our midst. There is something that happens right in front of our eyes. Someone who creates something new again and again, in heart after heart that will gaze upon him. 

Jesus, in each encounter with another as recorded in the Gospels, asks only one question, “Will you love me?” 

He doesn’t ask, “Did you get it right?” “Have you really learned how to pray yet?” “Have you converted completely this time?” “Have you succeeded?”

No. Instead, “Look at me. Love me. I am your brother, your Savior, your Shepherd, the One who is risen and at your side.”

I realized this Lent that my heart has been torn apart with this existential nothingness for quite some time. Call it nihilism. Call it skepticism. I believed. I trusted. But how I suffered because something had been taken from me as I breathed in the scary information and the ideology that has passed for the news which has bombarded us for over a year. 

Then this Easter Vigil, Jesus said to me, “I am here, you can touch me, my hands my feet. I am real. My word is a promise. I guarantee it with my life. You can hold onto it and it will truly satisfy all your desire for affection, ultimate meaning, eternal desire and infinite happiness. It will not let you down. Breathe it in. Drink it. Read it not as inspiration. Read it as something that God has done and is doing and will do. They are not words. They are events that cannot be undone.” 

Jesus opened my mind to “understand the scriptures,” to understand that he is acting in his Word for me. Now I am a witness to these things. I believe in this man, Jesus, the Risen Son of God and Savior, the Lamb of God. He has all my heart. 

God so gently and only gradually is building up his story within my history and within world history. I trust him. No matter what happens to me, I shall live because he lives. I. Shall. Live.  

“Peace be with you,” Jesus whispers to you, proclaims to you.

“I have been here all along. I rose from the dead. I live, the Risen One. Why are you troubled about the events in your life? Why do you wonder if I am here? If I can do anything?”

Take your troubles to the Risen One. Doubt no longer, but believe.

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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: Robert Wilhelm Ekman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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What Calvary are you walking away from?

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Emmaus. One of the Easter stories of the risen Jesus appearing to his beloved followers. It has the fresh breeze of a spring morning: “that very day, the first day of the week.” The day of resurrection.

Somehow, however, for these two disciples at least, their gaze was not on the risen, the new, the astounding glory of what “some women from our group” proclaimed to them. The women “were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his Body; they came back with a vision of angels who announced that he was alive.”

However, their minds were filled with other voices. Not the voices of angels, but the voices of people. The voices of people arguing about the meaning of the things that had taken place in Jerusalem that week concerning Jesus that Nazarene. The voices of people speaking to dominate a conversation, voices of power, of fear, of skepticism.

In these two disciples at least, their memories were trying to figure out what had happened to this leader whom they had followed in earlier days of so much promise and hope.

Their gaze was now filled with nothingness and confusion. Their eyes “downcast.” They were “prevented from recognizing” the Lord.

So what Calvary are you walking away from? What disillusioned hope for yourself or others or the world is the subject of conversation with others and inner frustration? What stories are you telling and retelling and rehearsing yet again? Over what situation in your life is your gaze “downcast”? What can you never forgive for entering into your life?

Jesus wants to take you where you cannot bring yourself on your own terms.

Jesus wants to free you from those conversations that trap you in complaint and criticism and certainty.

Jesus is dying to be your conversation partner.

Jesus wants to set your inner being on fire, that you may run with joy to tell others that you too have seen the Lord. Yes. You. Today. Now.

Jesus wants to share with you his secret. He wants to flood your consciousness with his Father. His Father’s presence. His love. His providence. His power. His overwhelming closeness that encompasses us in every detail of our life. At any moment in Jesus life, he was conscious of his Father’s desires for him and his will for his life.

On the road to Emmaus, Jesus told these two apostles that there was a plan. Beginning from Moses and all the prophets he opened their eyes to how they all referred to him. It was a plan of love for them. He revealed to them a plan that Jesus carried out with immense trust in his Father, ultimately breathing forth his spirit into his Father’s hands. 

There are many things about which we disagree these days. We see unthinking online mobs attack people, reducing a human being down to one idea they have had, one deed they have done (or neglected), one word they have said. We may have joined in, taking sides as we listen to the news, or in conversations with colleagues and friends. Prizing being right, being first, being on the right team. In the end, it’s only what we’ve figured out on our own terms, through our own interpretation of events.

Jesus is showing us today that we need to walk with him in order to understand his interpretation of events. To see how this one detail of human history fits into the whole. To reverence how all of human history is part of God’s salvation history that is unfolding and can never be stopped.

This Easter week, Jesus shows us the real words of power, the deeds of authentic greatness, the meaning that gives true value to life. Only if we live as a child of the  Father will we know the fullness of what is true, what is good, what is life.

Walk away from your Calvary’s if you must, but walk away with Jesus at your side. Listen to him along the way, and meet him in the “breaking of the bread.”

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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: Wikimedia: Fritz von Uhde – Der Gang nach Emmaus (1891)

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Joseph Moments

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Today is the Solemnity of St Joseph, the husband of Mary, the man who is called “just.” To call a person “just,” is like saying “he who is virtuous in all things.” Joseph was faithful to listening and responding to the voice of God. He was courageous in carrying out his yes. 

To be “virtuous in all things” makes me visualize a day-by-day, moment-by-moment ascent of a mountain range of choices, trials, unexpected changes, upset plans, new discoveries and challenging opportunities. Every aspect of Joseph’s life could be said to be an unexpected, upset, redirected, turned around…mystery.

Do you have these Joseph moments in your life? 

Moments like moving, changing jobs, starting out on your own….

Saying goodbye at the moment when a loved one or friend walks into eternity….

Discovering that what you thought was true about someone actually wasn’t…

Being challenged to consider a vocation or ministerial possibility for which you don’t feel prepared…

Having to enter into a situation that compromises what others think of you without the luxury of explaining or defending yourself…

Trying hard to do what needs to be done only to have the plans completely changed for an unknown reason, leaving you only with the faith that God is still here whatever happens…

Joseph moments.

Stay close to Joseph in order to in all things live virtuously. 

Joseph will inspire you to silence so that you will hear your angels when God sends you direction for your life.

Joseph will give you the courage of discernment and prudence so that you can listen for God’s voice alone and set aside all the other voices of self-interest, entitlement, or fear.

Joseph will show you the wisdom of openness to change so that you can show up fully and responsibly for your vocation as it unfolds throughout the years of your life.

Joseph will bless you with the trust needed to witness to your faith that God is at work in whatever confusion or reversal life may throw your way.

Joseph will remind you again and again that all his preparations for the birth of the Son of God went to naught as he left for Bethlehem during a census and fled to Egypt to escape the jealous wrath of King Herod. He surrendered all that was his and provided for the Holy Family “on the fly,” so to speak, so that we would know that it is God who does all things, and everything God does he does well. When things fall apart on our end, the failure simply manifests what God had intended all along. Joseph’s story was an endless discovery and embrace of the mystery of God’s plan for him and Jesus and Mary. This father of the Holy Family willingly leaned into mystery no matter what the cost to himself rather than relinquish the vocation given him.

Joseph moments. Our lives are full of them. May this great saint help us be faithful in all things.

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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, https://www.cathopic.com/

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God has never given up on us and never will

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Hosea represents the heart of salvation history. Despite our wanderings and wailings and wonderings, even after our fickleness, our refusals and our settled decisions to do things our way or to just not do things at all, God has never given up on us and never will. God will not let us go. Our Lover is faithful and his love can be trusted. The marriage holds. We are still his.

We remember that in earlier more tumultuous chapters of the prophet Hosea’s story, he was commanded to go and love a woman who is beloved of a paramour…, even as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods (3:1). 

Isaiah realizes how useless is its own self-sufficiency in relying on Assyria and the horses of war, their calling god the idols which their hands have crafted. They are nothing without the God who made them and who loves them. God loves Israel, and us, with a love that is tender. The words Hosea uses for this love are emotional words that express a father’s or a mother’s tender affection. 

I too have faithlessly wandered from the One who has loved me, literally, unto death. And tender has been his search for me wherever I have taken refuge to escape the demands of the relationship he has initiated with me. I am weak. I am poor. I am incurable. And I know beyond a shadow of doubt after so many attempts to improve this relationship on my own terms that it is only God who heals me, who loves me, as he revived and reconciled Israel to himself. 

The images that Hosea uses to describe what God brings about in the life of his loved one are images of nature at the fullness of its beauty and bounty. They are images of the bountiful Giver of goodness, images of freshness, stability, and vigor: 

I will heal their defection, says the LORD,
    I will love them freely;
    for my wrath is turned away from them.
I will be like the dew for Israel:
    he shall blossom like the lily;
He shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar,
    and put forth his shoots.
His splendor shall be like the olive tree
    and his fragrance like the Lebanon cedar.
Again they shall dwell in his shade
    and raise grain;
They shall blossom like the vine,
    and his fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon (Hosea 14:4-7).

No god that I craft with my own hands, my mental acumen, or my gifted ability will ever compare with the endless River of living love that is my God. I am the loved one and now my Lover waits upon my word. What will be my response? What will be yours? 

What a perfect reading halfway through Lent. Pope Francis in his straightforward and sincere homily on Ash Wednesday 2021 sums it up this way: “Return to me, he says, with all your heart. Lent is a journey that involves our whole life, our entire being. It is a time to reconsider the path we are taking, to find the route that leads us home and to rediscover our profound relationship with God, on whom everything depends. Lent is not just about the little sacrifices we make, but about discerning where our hearts are directed. This is the core of Lent: asking where our hearts are directed.”

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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: JillWellington, https://pixabay.com/photos/grapes-vines-grapevines-vineyard-553463/

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How Good is the Good God

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In today’s readings, I can almost feel the excitement and the joy of God as he created the heavens and the earth “in the beginning.” We feel pride and satisfaction when we create something as simple as a poem, a photo on our phones, a new dish to please a friend, or a wall in our home tastefully decorated with family photos. There is a warmth in our hearts as we share something beautiful and meaningful with others. Something we conceptualized and made ourselves. 

“And God saw how good it was….” The world is beautiful, and it is God’s magnificence that is revealed in all that God has created, from the tallest mountain to the tiniest flower. 

In the Gospel, Jesus is creating health, wholeness, goodness, healing. His touch is returning people to community. His touch is making sad faces smile, and filling burdened hearts with laughter. Gratitude is streaming through the people as they scurry about to share Jesus’ love with as many people as possible.

How good is the good God.

When you are creating, healing, holding, you are radiating the goodness of the God who creates, heals, and restores us to life and holds us in his love. 

These days there is much reason for our eyes to be filled with tears and our hearts broken with sorrow. Let us be God-like and not allow the darkness to blind our eyes to the truth of the good God’s heart who is even now unfolding his giving love, bringing about the reign of his heart. 

When I feel alone today, I think I will try to remember that God has personally walked this earth as Creator and Redeemer for me, for us. Today’s Gospel reminds me that Jesus personally reached into the lives of the broken in order to reassure them that their creation was no accident, and nothing can hinder the meaning of their lives. We are each created by the hand of God, saved by the life of Jesus, and sanctified by the breath of the Spirit. 

How good the good God is.  

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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: dae jeung kim, https://pixabay.com/photos/egret-flying-fog-dawn-sunrise-5937499/

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My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation!

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Today is the 25th anniversary of the day of prayer for women and men in consecrated life, instituted in 1997 by Pope Saint John Paul II. The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord is a beautiful day to celebrate the gift of consecrated life in the Church. In the liturgy for the Feast of the Presentation, candles are blessed symbolizing Christ who is the light of the world, and those who have consecrated their lives to God are called to reflect the light of Christ to the world. (The observance of the World Day of Consecrated Life in the US has been transferred to the following Sunday.)

One of the key figures who appears in the Gospel today is Simeon. Of all the people in the Temple that day when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus there to present him to the Lord, only Simeon and Anna recognized the baby as the longed-for Messiah. Luke states three times that Simeon was a man immersed in the power of the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit was upon him,” he knew that he wouldn’t see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord “because it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit.” And finally, that day, “he came in the Spirit to the temple.”

Simeon lived under the guidance and impulse of the Spirit so he could see things that others could not. He could see and proclaim what God was doing. He could see how grace was at work. “My eyes have seen your salvation,” he cried out. Can you imagine the joy of this old man that the mystery he had waited for decades to touch was now held in his arms. 

Last year, on this day, Pope Francis reflected upon Simeon’s words at a Mass celebrated for Religious. I want to use them as the basis for my thoughts here with you. In the dark and chaotic situation in our world today, all of us need to be able to see salvation, to see in our life God’s faithful gift, to witness God’s love at work in the world.

My eyes have seen your salvation! God’s gift even in moments of darkness and powerlessness. It is the tempter that tries to keep us focused on what hasn’t been, what we’ve lost, what we’ve been unjustly deprived of. 

My eyes have seen your salvation! God’s gift in fragility and weakness. It is the tempter who hides the light and whispers to us: “You are no good. God can’t love you. Look at how little you love God. What have you done for him?”

Pope Francis described what happens to us, “We no longer see the Lord in everything, but only the dynamics of the world, and our hearts grow numb.  Then we become creatures of habit, pragmatic, while inside us sadness and distrust grow, that turn into resignation.”

To see correctly, to see in truth, we need to be like Simeon, we need to be able to perceive God’s grace for us. We need to see salvation, to look at what God is doing.

Instead of focusing on thoughts and feelings about what is happening in our lives and within our hearts, thoughts and feelings that disorient us, Simeon shows us how to be led by the Spirit, inspired by the Spirit, filled with the Spirit. It takes a lot of courage to turn our eyes away from ourselves, to turn our attention away from the tempter and to lift them instead to the Lord. It takes courage to believe that God is at work even when everything we see around us seems to be falling apart.

On this Feast of the Presentation, even if you can’t get to church for Mass, light a candle, be warmed by the flame, be filled with the light that burns bravely in the darkness and braves even the wind…. May this candle remind you to see the Lord, the Light of the World, in everything. May it remind you that your life is happiest when it revolves around God’s grace. Courageously hold up the candle to a window, in front of the newspaper or your Twitter account or Facebook page and proclaim, “My eyes have seen, O Lord, your salvation!”

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: Arent de Gelder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Our Damascus Events

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One of my favorite images of the Conversion of St. Paul is found in the Apostolic Palace and is pictured here. It was painted by Michelangelo between 1542 and 1546. January 25 is a big deal for us Daughters of St Paul. St Paul’s conversion is the only conversion celebrated liturgically and it is such a powerful day for us who try to live the experience of St Paul in intimate prayer and courageous evangelization. For this to happen in our own lives, we too need to go through a Damascus event as did Paul.

At the center of our spirituality is Christ, and his desire to possess us entirely. Every thought pattern and attitude and tendency of our personality. Every desire, preference, behavior…. Everything without exception. This is quite different from making New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of January! In the Conversion of St. Paul it is Christ who comes to meet Paul where he is, in his frailty (although Paul thought he was someone important doing something significant).

There are several aspects of this painting of St. Paul’s conversion by Michelangelo which attract me very deeply. At the top of the image, which doesn’t appear here, is the person of Christ reaching down to Paul through a column of light. There are many people milling around in this image, but Paul is clearly the one who is addressed by Jesus. And Paul is the one who must take responsibility, take the risk, and answer. Isn’t it that way with us, in our unique call from the Lord?

Another aspect of this image which attracts me is the way Paul is almost held by one of the characters in the image. The circular image that is created by the arms of the person reaching down to him, as well as the position of Paul’s body, is almost soft, receptive, intimate. This is not Caravaggio’s strong blinded Paul fallen from his horse. This is a Paul who is being drawn into the mystery of God’s plan for his life and the way God will use Paul to announce the Gospel to the world. It was absolutely moving for me to pray in front of this painting in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican a couple of years ago, and to see on the other side of the chapel the depiction of the crucifixion of St. Peter. Two men who were flawed and frail and human who allowed God to do with them all that he desired. 

This is what God desires for you and me. We too have our Damascus events. They aren’t as stunning as what we call the conversion of St. Paul, but they can be nonetheless life-changing. I include here a prayer of our community which reflects on the challenge of our own Damascus events.

Light and darkness,

sight and blindness,

power and weakness,

control and surrender.

The “Damascus event” in Paul’s life is often played out in my own,

though in a less dramatic manner.

Lord Jesus, I meet you in so many ways:

sometimes in silence and prayer,

or by stumbling to the ground of my existence.

As I journey through the days of my life,

stop me,

call out my name,

send me your dazzling light,

and take hold of me as you took hold of Paul.

Even when I kick against the goad,

even when I lack courage or when fatigue overtakes me,

even when I fall again or lose my way—

in all these moments I trust that you are with me

and that your grace is sufficient for me.

Like Paul, let me know how to be companioned by others,

allowing myself to be led by those who can point out the way to you.

Help me to be willing to listen to what you are saying to me through them.

As you sent Paul on mission, I ask that you send me forth,

to those persons with whom I am to share your Gospel.

Give me, like you gave Paul, the words and gestures

that will reveal your mercy to me,

and the love you bear for every person you have redeemed.

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: Michelangelo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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The Last Day. A Sacred Day.

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2020. The last day. A sacred day. A blessed memory of what has been, despite all, a year also blessed. The year when Jesus came. Comes. Will keep coming. Every day. Every hour. Every minute into 2021.

Today’s Gospel shines with “coming” language, connecting words, relationship, loving, living, lighting…

As we end this year, we may be saying good riddance to the darkness, hoping for something better in 2021. Jesus, however, comes into the darkness. He comes to bring life. He arrives with the light. And the darkness cannot overcome him.

When we choose living, pleasing others, reaching out in whatever way possible… we are Christ today, lighting the way through our living and our loving.

When we choose to light up someone’s sorrowful eyes, shed light on a confusing or painful situation, or offer the light of comfort to another… We are Christ. Today. And. Tomorrow.

We can be Christ because Christ has already showered his living and lighting and loving gifts on us.

The darkness brings out Christ in you because Christ is in you,
he came for you,
to melt the darkness with the touch of his presence,
so that through you and all he has touched,
no one might be alone in the world.

Despite isolation, stay with the living, lighting and loving today and tomorrow. Despite foreboding thoughts, believe in the living, lighting and loving today.

Fear less, and live more. Turn on all the lights in your heart and love more. Loving will warm our own hearts even as we give this love away.

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: Exe Lobaiza, cathopic.com

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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.