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Good and Faithful Servant

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“Well done, my good and faithful servant.” “You wicked, lazy servant.”

Secretly I hope one day to hear the first sentence addressed to me by God and not the second. And you?

One thing we can learn from the parable today, among its many lessons, is the paralyzing effect of anxiety. The one who received only one talent stated he was afraid of his master so he hid his talent in the ground so he could safely return it to him.

This anxiety gnaws at the human spirit as we grow into our middle years, even if we consider ourselves someone who believes in God’s love and mercy. “I just turned 51 last month. I’m beginning to ask myself: Have I done what I was supposed to in this life? Have I wasted too much time? What if I don’t figure out what God wants of me before my life is over?” These questions my friend began asking herself are typical mid-life questions we ponder as we sense that “time is running out.” At 51, those questions started to pop up into my own consciousness unbidden.

“I hope that God doesn’t remember what I did before I got married.…” “I’m praying that God is watching the good things I’m doing now and forgetting about the past.” The variation is as infinite as the hearts that voice them….

In the parable in today’s Gospel, the one thing that is missing is the thoughts, the questions, the excitement or anxiety of those who received the talents from the master who went on a journey. Jesus doesn’t make these explicit in the parable. However, it is this inner world that we are most familiar with, particularly as we grow older. The early heady days of celebrating the adventurous and smart successful things we do with our personal talents and spiritual gifts are long gone. Now our memories stretch over decades as regrets and uncertainties begin to surface around the edges of our grateful and happy memories. And the anxiety shows up with them.

The anxiety, I believe, begins to haunt us because we know clearly now that we can’t control life as we believed we could when we were younger. And we know that judgment approaches with the moment of our death, and judgment, by its nature and in our human experience, implies another having power over us. I know my desire—my urgent need—to have a straight A report card to present at the heavenly door to my Savior has not been achieved. Too much has transpired in 56 years. A weight of struggle, trial, and temptation has accompanied the joyful, beautiful, and grace-gifted events of my life. When I appear before my divine Spouse and infinitely loving Redeemer, it will be now with the empty hands of St Therese, the Little Flower. No, Jesus, I trust myself entirely to your merits. I have no virtue, no merits, no glory. I take yours and that is sufficient for me. I am but a little child…. 

There is a story of St Francis de Sales who was tortured as a young man with the fear that he was going to hell. I don’t remember how long he endured this trial, but I’m sure some of you, as I, have at some point in our life had this perhaps unspoken concern. It was only when Francis finally, at the foot of the Blessed Sacrament, cried out in his pain to the Lord that he found relief. “If I am doomed to hell,” he said at last, “then at least there will I love Thee, my God, so that Thou art loved even in the midst of that place of darkness and pain.” And immediately the weight of sorrow and fear lifted.

If you are experiencing anxiety like this, do not bury your heart in the ground. Reach out to someone you trust. Share your story. Get perspective. Enter a journey of healing. Experience the joy of confession.

This parable convinces me of how serious life is. From beginning to end it is a journey that we make as we emerge from the hands of a loving Father and in our sunset years return it into his hands. A gift that we have carried through the storms and songs of many decades of living in often uncontrollable and incomprehensible situations that weave their way through the lovely experiences that have made our hearts swell with gratitude and love. The gift of this life we invest by making responsible choices to love our Creator and Father, conform our lives to Jesus our Brother, and open our hearts to the sanctifying presence of the Spirit. But in the end, we return to him with the joy of our holiness, yes, but we recognize as the first Preface for the Saints declare:

 “You are praised in the company of your Saints and, in crowning their merits, you crown your own gifts.”

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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.

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Feast of St. Augustine

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My friends, today on the memorial of St Augustine, the Church has given us readings in the Liturgy and in the Office of Readings that focus on the amazing attraction of Jesus on our souls.

St Paul so clearly describes our experience in the First reading. He says that sometimes we are “shaken out of our minds,” “alarmed,” “deceived.” A person in this spiritual space is the one who is fearfully trying to find his or her way to salvation amid the sometimes terrifying realities around them. Paul indicates that the Thessalonians were alarmed at the imminent coming of the Lord. We are alarmed at many things that also strike at that very basic core of fear within the human heart: survival. Take a deep breath. What are you alarmed about? What news upsets your peace of soul? What family matters are overwhelmingly oppressive at this moment? Where do you worry about your or another’s salvation?

Immediately St Paul refocuses our vision: you are called to possess the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what the Gospel calls you to, promises, lays out before you as an infinite horizon toward which you can walk as far as you want, and as quickly as you desire. We are called to a magnificent hope! Promised eternal glory in the Lord Jesus Christ!

I remember assuring some very fearful women who had come into our book center in Metairie, Louisiana to purchase candles in preparation for the imminent three days of darkness prophesied by someone on a television program they had been watching, “Jesus never encouraged us to be afraid of him,” I told them. “He said instead that he was going to prepare a home for us in his Father’s Kingdom and that he would come to take us back there with them.” They exchanged their candles for the Chaplet to the Divine Mercy and left with much peace in their soul.

God our Father has loved us and given us this everlasting encouragement that we might not live in fear any longer, but might have “good hope through his grace,” and experience encouragement and strength so that our lives would flow with every good deed and word.

Certainly, this is a process. It could be that the scribes and Pharisees whom we encounter in the Gospels never had the courage to risk the trust of this adventure in truth. However, Saint Augustine, whom we celebrate this day in the liturgy, did. The reading for the Office of Readings so beautiful describes this journey made by Saint Augustine, and which is documented in his book Confessions of Saint Augustine.

Here we learn from this great convert, the essential ingredients for the spiritual growth Saint Paul calls all Christians to:

 

Augustine “reflected upon himself.”
He entered under God’s guidance into the inmost depth of his soul. This is a journey that God is inviting each of us to. He himself makes this journey possible. Through his grace he is the helper of our soul.

When Saint Augustine entered within the inmost depth of his soul he discovered with the eye of the soul what was beyond him, beyond his spirit. He saw the immutable light of God’s glory shining in him. ”This light was above me because it had made me; I was below it because I was created by it.” Within our soul we find not ourselves, not even our best selves, we discover God himself who wishes us to possess the glory of the Lord and to lay hold of the promises of the Gospel. This, as both Saint Paul and Saint Augustine say, is the truth and beloved eternity.

Discovering this truth within him, creates within Saint Augustine a sighing day and night for the one who was drawing him closer to himself so that he might see him there within him.

This truth, then, burst forth in his entire being as one great cry of love: “Late have I loved you. O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside… You called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness… You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.” This journey of spiritual transformation is not one of personal growth for the purpose of becoming a better person. It is a journey to lose oneself in the ocean of Divine Splendor who touches us and burns our hearts that they might be transformed into one great longing for God himself to the point that we gradually, and finally at last, leave ourselves and self-interests behind.

May this journey that God is right now leading you into, become your chosen path, your only desire, your greatest satisfaction! Amen.

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.

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Have Eyes Only For Jesus

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Much ink has been spilled around Jesus’ words to Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing.” Does this mean the contemplative life is better than the active? That time in prayer is more important than time doing our duties? That there is no way to integrate the battling aspects of our life for solitude and responsibility?

If Jesus was holding Mary up as the epitome of the one who has chosen “the better part,” then what exactly did he mean? If he meant that contemplative life was a more truer form of discipleship than any other, then every other person in the Scriptures who was called as a prophet, priest, king, apostle, evangelist, was invited into a lesser form of discipleship. Jesus himself chose to stay and teach the multitudes rather than take much earned, and much wanted time away with his apostles in prayer and rest. His heart reached out to them who were like sheep without a shepherd. The many nights Jesus spent in prayer were followed by days of intense teaching and healing. Jesus even called his mother into a lifetime of daily chores and hospitality.

Is the life of witness and testimony and servant of less value than sitting at the Lord’s feet? Or is that what the Lord was talking about at all?

Perhaps what the Lord may have been holding up to us all, was Mary’s single-heartedness, her “undistractedness,” her poverty of spirit in the face of her sister’s complaints. Mary’s eyes were only for him, and her ears listened only for his voice. Mary, Jesus’ mother, had a similar round of duties to prepare meals and care for Joseph and Jesus. But I can only imagine the singleness of purpose, the gentle focus, and intentionality, the deep and quiet love, with which the duty of every moment was carried out by the Mother of God. Perhaps Jesus was suffering for all Martha was going through, knowing that the vexation she was experiencing was hurting her, and was not necessary. He wanted so much more for her to be at peace with her soul soaking in his tender love.

So, the Lord sent his apostles to the whole world to baptize people in the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Spirit. However, they were first to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Spirit. Their work was not to be their own, marred by competition, rivalry, anxiety and stress, and other “distracted” emotions. Through the Spirit they were to have their eyes only on him, be the conduits of God’s grace to the world, be obedient servants of the Word, and spend themselves for the Master they loved up to and including their ultimate death.

Therefore, on this Feast of St Martha, let us look to our own hearts that we might have the grace to live without distraction as we eagerly fulfill all that God calls us to do in life.

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.

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Sanctify Your Mind

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Your words, Lord, are more precious than gold.

“Yes, Lord, we agree, we wholeheartedly accept that first reading today…the commandments you have delivered through Moses. Why? Because you, Lord, have the words of everlasting life!”

Imagine this cry rising from the subways, the courtrooms, the board rooms, homes and schools, and industrial parks, theaters, newsrooms, universities and social media posts, comments on blog and news streams.

“You, Lord, have the words of everlasting life! Yes, YOU, Lord, refresh the soul with a law that is perfect, that is trustworthy, that gives wisdom, that rejoices the heart, that enlightens the eye” (from today’s Responsorial Psalm).

Those I know who absolutely would never be caught saying those words about the commandments of God are often, as the Gospel parable of the sower hints, “without understanding.” Their hearts have been taken in by what seems to them to be reasonable or comfortable or fair or compassionate. God’s law seems, by contrast, to be harsh and unbending.

When the seed of the word falls on the heart of one who is without understanding, the parable states that the “Evil One comes and steals it away.” So it seems it is essential to have “understanding” or to sanctify our minds, as Blessed James Alberione, founder of the Pauline Family, taught.

Here are three things you can do to “sanctify your mind” to grow in “understanding”:

1) Spiritual Reading. Devote yourself to reading the Scriptures or a book of spiritual reading several times a week. It is important to confront our human way of thinking with God’s thoughts, to wrestle with God’s word, to bow before the Father, whose every action is perfect.

2) Humility. Ask the Lord to help you understand things from his point of view. When our mind is riddled with distraction and arrogance and fears and inquisitiveness, our mind is ill. We naturally believe whatever we come up with as true or just or right. In this state, it can’t bend in adoration to Almighty God without growing first in virtue of humility. As Bishop Sheen, whose path for beatification has been cleared, once said: “Our intellects do not make the truth; they attain it: they discover it.”

3) Pray to the Holy Spirit for the gift of understanding. Our intellect by itself can only reason humanly, even if it is filled with faith. It is incapable of seizing the infinite, even though it lives of faith. When we receive the Holy Spirit’s gift of understanding we “experience” what is true, we grasp divine mysteries with the knowledge of God himself in a way that profoundly affects us, a spiritual intuition that impresses itself on our soul. This kind of understanding changes us. We can never not know what we have come to see through the gift of understanding.

Your words, Lord, all of them,
“are more precious than gold,
than a heap of purest gold;
Sweeter also than syrup
or honey from the comb.”

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.

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The greatest treasure my dad would never let go of

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Recently I spent a week cleaning out my parents’ house with them so it could be put on the market. Typical of any family home that had been lived in for over 50 years, we had to deal with the expected accumulation of gifts, clothes, family memories, and just “stuff” that was long overdue for a trip to Good Will or to the dump. Lots of memories, loads of laughs, and even a few tears. The dulcimers that we made in elementary school in the early 70s still hung proudly on our basement walls next to a Christmas album cover of a record I had sung on when I was in my early twenties. Endless books that had fortified our faith through decades as well as the rock we had brought back from Sugarloaf mountain in Minnesota during a vacation that our family had enjoyed with my grandparents when I was twelve.

This exercise on cleaning out in order to move into a much smaller home put my parents per forza within the trend toward minimalism. Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, brought minimalism to the mainstream. This movement has inspired people, particularly millennials, to move into smaller homes, cut their wardrobes and regularly give away the possessions they aren’t actively using.

As we gradually focused what my parents would take with them to their new home, I had a clearer sense of the worthlessness of so much of what we don’t let go of along the way, even as the “worthwhileness” of even very humble objects was enhanced. For example, in a corner of one box, I discovered the two tiny wood-carved shoes that were an ornament from my great grandparents’ Christmas tree (and made sure they were in the “to take with us” box), and the plaque commemorating my grandpa’s introduction into the Softball Hall of Fame. Perhaps minimalism is so popular among the millennials because they have a much shorter memory of family history and commitment to relationships across the decades that tie people together through shared experiences of tears and joy.

No, as we worked through the rooms in my parents’ home, it was clear that this was about much more than tidying up so as to live with less. My dad let go of his easy chair so my mom could keep the rocker that had been from her mother’s home. He passed on his own mother’s china to my brother so mom could keep her mother’s china. They were decisions he made on his own and silently implemented without discussion. Even though I knew it was hard for dad to let go of the china cabinets from his mother’s home and the dining room table because they just wouldn’t fit, his greatest treasure he would never let go of was mom.

Focusing your heart on your treasure doesn’t necessarily mean looking away from “earthly” treasure. It means using, loving, giving treasure motivated by love, for love is the greatest gift and the highest treasure of all.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.

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.

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The Bridge between God’s Gracious Giving and our Fearful Hoping

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Lavish generosity and awe-inspiring majesty. The first reading from the book of Sirach offers a view of eternal wisdom that is poured forth without restraint upon all the Lord’s works, “upon every living thing according to his bounty.” Gifts measured out according to the goodness of God’s heart.

Fear, failure, arguing, disbelief, scarcity, frustration… The second reading, instead, paints for us a picture of ourselves when we forget who God is and all that God in his providence lavishes on us. When we live according to the fear in our heart.

Jesus bridges the gap between God’s gracious giving and our fearful hoping against hope that God might be able to do something for us…or maybe he can’t…or won’t….

Take a moment. Touch the vulnerability of your own heart. Each of us has been hurt. Each of us in some way has been disappointed by others…even by others in the Church. Maybe we came to these others requesting help or healing or mercy or understanding. And they, like the Apostles in the Gospel, couldn’t respond to our need. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t have within them the power of the Holy Spirit through a life of union with God. They weren’t schooled in prayer and fasting.

Jesus enters the human drama of each of our lives with majesty, with awe-inspiring authority and dominion, with lavishness and generosity. It is Jesus who assures us that death doesn’t have the last word. And neither does sin. Or betrayal. Or darkness. Or fear. Or any other of the vulnerabilities that plague human hearts and relationships. Jesus is the power of love who keeps us through every last detail of our lives. With Jesus, we need never fear our utter poverty and painful need of him.

All we need do is believe that “everything is possible to one who has faith.”

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.

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May Everything In Me Honor You

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In our readings today, we look in on different people who present themselves before the Lord: Cain and Abel in the First Reading from Genesis, and, in the Gospel, the Pharisees who come forward and begin to argue with Jesus.

Each day I am aware that I too come forward to present myself before the Lord. Like Cain, I could bring a collection of just some of the fruits of my life and labors, or like Abel, I could bring the finest aspects of my being, my talents, my prayers, my work, my life, and consecrate them to his service. The difference lies in the greater awareness and remembrance, deeper devotion and heart-filled honor that characterized the gifts of Abel to his Maker.

Like the Pharisees, I can demand that Jesus prove himself to me by performing for me signs to my satisfaction until I am convinced he is who he says he is, that he will do what he has promised to do. Or I can take Jesus at his word with utter trust and obedience.

Every one of us, every creature, stands before the Maker. How we stand there is what makes the difference. There is no expectation of perfection in these readings. Rather each person encounters God just as he is. Cain with whatever he has gathered in his heart up to that point. Abel with the deep devotion of one who is small but has given all he has to the Lord. The Pharisees whose hearts were slow to open to Jesus as the Messiah. All of them unfolding, changing and deepening, growing through the years. The rest of their stories, unknown to us, are lost to mystery. We too are people who grow beyond who we are at any given moment.

“May everything in me honor you, O Lord.” It is a prayer I have taken to saying quietly during the day. “May my eyes, my tongue, my memory, my imagination, my feet, my hands, and my heart, my thoughts, words, and desires, honor you, O Lord. All of me for you alone, Jesus. You alone.”

Today, when will you stand before the Lord? Will you encounter him in solitary moments of prayer? In struggle? In service to others? In relationships? Will he catch you by surprise as you read a book, watch a sunset, or listen to music? Will you find him on a bed of pain? In the midnight hours when you cannot sleep? Wherever it is this day that you find yourself consciously standing before your Maker, pray, “May everything in me honor you, O Lord.”

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.

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Persecution- A Price Worth Paying

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Three brightly colored threads have woven their way into my spiritual life in this past month.

First thread. Persecution. News reports that Chinese Christians are bracing themselves for persecution. A pastor and 100 members of a Protestant church detained. The words spoken by the pastor jumped out at me: “Persecution is a price worth paying for the Lord.” Another pastor and all 1500 members of his church have been detained, searched and questioned. With their new police records, they will be denied rights to travel, employment, government assistance, etc. In rural areas, the elderly who are dependent on government subsidies have been told to remove Christian symbols from their home or lose the monthly financial assistance they rely on for food and housing.

The letter to the Hebrews which we have been reading over the past couple of weeks was written to a group of Christians who had suffered persecution in the past and who were now threatened with another persecution. Although we experience in the West a growing hatred for Christianity, it is hard for us to imagine what it is like to be forced to choose our faith at the cost of freedoms, providing for our families, and life itself. Yet this is all too real a situation for our Christian brothers and sisters in China…today.

This first thread represents how God is calling me to strengthen my own determination to live with faith.

Second thread. Faith. The letter to the Hebrews is a majestic hymn to Christ who took hold of our humanity in every way, endured every test and temptation so he could help us when we pass through the ordeals of life, made us his brothers and sisters, and became our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Our ancestors grieved God by their unbelief. The author of Hebrews pleads with his readers not to follow in their stead. He urges them to believe that God’s works have been accomplished in Christ. The gracious work of God supersedes the fallen brokenness of what we see in the world around us. “Continue with courage to hold firmly to our bold confidence and our victorious hope.”

Today much of what we in the West once knew of the classical expression of Christian religious practice has broken down or as Bishop Barron has stated recently, “quietly surrendered to the spirit of the age, devolving into one more form of political correctness.” I feel that this thread of faith is God’s call to me to courage, to bold confidence, and to a steadfast belief in our victorious hope.

Third thread. Creative love. In today’s first reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, the author encourages the Christians who are suffering persecution and struggling with their faith to do two things:

·      Support each other and find creative ways to encourage one another. “We must consider how to rouse one another to love and good works.” There is much fear among people I know today, as family, parish, and cultural realities are becoming more uncertain. People seem bewildered, weighed down. The letter to the Hebrews urges us to look out for each other, to look on each other with the excitement of love, for love is contagious, love can do great things.

·      Come together in your assembly. A time of persecution and weakened faith is not the time to pull away and neglect meeting together. The Greek here implies a person who is extremely discouraged. When we are discouraged, and we have so many reasons to feel disillusioned and heartbroken in our Church today, it is in our meeting together around the table of the Lord that we are held, taught, fed, compassioned and led by him. The art and the gift of invitation is so important if we can extend a helping hand to those whose faith is weak.

Persecution. Faith. Creative Love. I’m not sure if I’d have the courage of the Pastor who said that persecution is a price worth paying. Right now, however, I want to redouble my commitment to encouraging my brothers and sisters in the faith, offering a helping hand, raising the light, affirming the Promise, “and this all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

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.

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What Most People Miss About Life’s Journey

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I need to admit to you that I was thinking about this Gospel commentary on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. The month of January opens with the wise men making their way to the manger to offer the new-born King gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Epiphany, sadly for most of us, is the signal that the crèche and Christmas decorations can now be put away for the year.

 The Wise Men from the east, however, in the words of Benedict XVI, “mark a new beginning.” In them, we find “the journeying of humanity toward Christ.” They initiate a human procession that continues throughout history. What I want to draw attention to in these words is Pope Benedict’s sense of an ongoing journeying that is a part of humanity’s reality on our pilgrimage to the Kingdom.

Today, near the end of the month of January, we celebrate the “conversion” of St Paul. Jesus clearly comes to meet Paul on the road to Damascus. He calls him to a mission to proclaim his name to the Gentiles, to be a part of this ongoing procession of humanity seeking Christ and to play a part in proclaiming Christ to humanity across the ages. We can easily make the mistake of viewing the Feast of the Epiphany as a commemoration of something three wise men did two millennia ago, playing their part in the Christmas narrative, an act in the drama that Christmas plays love to include. But we can’t get away with that on this celebration of the Conversion of St. Paul.

The Feast of the Conversion of the apostle Paul, he shows us that we need to be actively a part in this journeying of humanity today. In what way?

  1. Like Paul, we are each pursued by Christ because he has ordained for each of us a mission in the narrative of salvation. We are called for ourselves, but also for the others.
  2. The three Wise Men from the east went back home and probably thought about the tiny Child they had worshipped for the rest of their lives. Paul’s encounter with Christ, however, shows us that our own encounter with Christ is part of a longer story of personal transformation that takes place through the gift of the sacraments, the Christian community, transformation of life, and mission to others in the name of Christ. It has a beginning and a goal, and every day is a step toward, in the words of Paul, “becoming Christ.”
  3. We can never, ever be grateful enough for the unmerited gift of our Baptism. Paul remained in darkness and blindness until he was baptized by Ananias. The moment of his baptism Paul received his sight, but Paul also was admitted into the community of those he had sought to destroy. Our call, our mission, is never carried out alone as if we were some kind of “lone ranger.” We are always members of a community, in communion with others, and, as Paul would write, members of the Body of Christ.

 

So, on this feast of the Conversion of St. Paul take a moment to reflect on how Jesus sees you with a specific mission in this humanity on a pilgrimage to the Father across the centuries. And, as Paul teaches us, may each day of this year may you be more and more filled with Jesus, until you are like him in every way.

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

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Arise My Beloved

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For my young friends, the personal and living God is unknown, someone else’s friend they hear about from time to time from some especially religious person, but someone with whom they have had no personal encounter.

Into this unfortunate and heart-breaking sense of isolation and distance bursts the “lover”:

“Here he comes
Springing across the mountains,
Leaping across the hills.”

Christmas is our celebration of absolute wonder at the awesomely amazing mystery that the Almighty God has stooped down to our creaturely level and reality and become the weakest member of the human race: a baby.

Though for many, their Christmas amazement may end with comments on how beautiful are the manger set and the Christmas decorations, today’s first reading confronts us with the startling words:

“Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one, and come!”

Jesus wants a personal relationship with us on his terms, which are utterly beyond anything we could propose on our own. The other day I sat in a coffee shop and the two women next to me sounded like they were using one of those lists of 20 questions to start conversations with someone new so you really get to know each other. It was a bit comical, and I’m sure since they were carrying on this exchange for a couple of hours or more, they most likely, in the end, did know a lot of details about each other’s lives.

But Christmas is the invitation for us to “arise,” because we are “beautiful” to God, and he wants us to come with him into the Father’s embrace, the Trinity’s life, and eternal joy.

Today’s readings show us that Christmas is a human and very personal event. In the Gospel, Mary sets out in haste to visit Elizabeth, to bring the Christmas message of joy to her elderly relative. We too, when our Christmas celebrations are over, or maybe before we enjoy the holidays, are called to personally reach out to another human being and share Jesus with them. For Jesus depends on you and me to reach others personally so that they too will hear the amazingly wondrous invitation: “Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one, and come!”

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 draws from the spiritual tradition and her own lived experience to lead seekers deep within themselves and through their personal history to deepen their intimacy with and trust in God; live with greater joy, peace, and interior freedom; and encounter the Lord in their past and present life experiences to find healing, grace, and newness of life. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey.

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Let’s Go Together

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The Church in her wisdom immediately reminds us at the very beginning of the Advent season that in these days of expectation, we are not only reliving the waiting of our ancient fathers, the centuries of longing for the promised Messiah.

We are, yes, entering into the journey begun by their longing and expectation, but we are doing so with our eyes wide open. As brothers and sisters of Jesus—God-with-us who took on our flesh with its limitations, sorrows, and joys—our eyes are fixed on the “mountain of the Lord’s house…the highest mountain…raised above the hills.”

Neither am I looking up at this mountain as my own personal salvation. Again, the Church makes clear, “All nations shall stream toward it; many people shall come and say: ‘Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain….’”

There is a joy that rings out from these verses of Isaiah. Come, let’s go! Let’s go together! Let us climb that “he may instruct us in his ways and we may walk in his paths.”

In Advent, then, the Church sets our sights on the highest mountain, the final days when the heavenly Jerusalem will be home to everyone who walks in the Lord’s ways.

The heavenly Jerusalem can seem a long way off, but the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ have brought it quite near. Origen reminds us: “Christ has flooded the universe with divine and sanctifying waves. For the thirsty, he sends a spring of living water from the wound which the spear opened in his side. From the wound in Christ’s side has come forth the Church, and he has made her his Bride” (Commentary on Psalm 77,31, Commentary on Proverbs 31,16).

The Church, in its deepest understanding, is the world in the course of transfiguration. The world, in Christ, reflects the light of paradise. The world-in-Christ is heaven and earth renewed, brought to us in the sacraments. The Didache tells us that the Church in the earliest centuries was praying and hoping at every celebration of the Eucharist that the world would actually be transfigured: ‘May the Lord come and the world pass away,’ that is, the world of death and illusion. It is the Eucharist, then, that constitutes the Church as a people of the Exodus on its way to the Kingdom, already fed by the manna of eternity.

So in these days when relations among nations cause us to worry and the suffering of peoples seems so immense that we feel powerless to help, Advent reminds us that in the end, when the world is transfigured completely in the unquenchable light of the Kingdom to come:

“He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.

O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

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 draws from the spiritual tradition and her own lived experience to lead seekers deep within themselves and through their personal history to deepen their intimacy with and trust in God; live with greater joy, peace, and interior freedom; and encounter the Lord in their past and present life experiences to find healing, grace, and newness of life. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey.

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Love Is Kind

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Love is patient, love is kind.
Love is not jealous, love is not pompous…
It bears all things, believes all things,
Hopes all things, endures all things….

My love? Not.

Why is it that we idealize this type of love, sentimentalize it, even assume this is the way we love others? I do this. I really do. Part of the spiritual journey is realizing that I don’t really love others. Why?

Our hearts are vulnerable. They are insecure. Our ego creates a story, writes a script, provides a mask, produces an alibi so that we don’t have to live with that insecurity about our real selves. We spin a web that convinces even ourselves that we are this person we’ve created, a story that saves us from acknowledging our fears about our own worth.

We can discover that story written consistently across the years of our lives in what we say we value, how we choose to react to situations, our judgments of others, even lifestyle decisions. Looking back, I’ve spun a story about obedience, isolation, quiet holy humility
that I believed was me. I can see the threads of the story originating in grade school and continuing through the next forty years.

The problem is that when we write our stories, we create a frame of reference for what we believe is true and good. We, even unconsciously, judge anyone else who doesn’t fit our story. So the boisterous, the fun-loving, the quick moving, and sensible movers of my companions don’t fit the story of what I live as “virtue.” And…you guessed it…

Love is patient, Love bears all things, Love believes all things, love hopes all things…. Oh, yes, I do these things for the people who fit my story. But if they draw outside my lines? It is really hard.

So for the wife who is neat and efficient to value the spouse who puts friendship over order is hard. She may not be able to “bear” this with love because to do so would mean she would have to face her own deeply rooted insecurity that the efficiency is masking.

Most of us wouldn’t even know where to begin to peel back the layers of the onion that so carefully protect our fearful identities.
Holiness is about working with God on a deeper and deeper level to break the hold the story has over us. The story is ultimately a lie about what is most true about the God who tenderly loves us and a lie about ourselves. Only when that lie loses its hold over us can
we choose the alternate way of love. In fact, as we encounter our true self, we are immersed in a surprising love for ourselves which enables us gradually to love and appreciate others and just let them be, “hoping all things, enduring all things” for their
sake.

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 draws from the spiritual tradition and her own lived experience to lead seekers deep within themselves and through their personal history to deepen their intimacy with and trust in God; live with greater joy, peace, and interior freedom; and encounter the Lord in their past and present life experiences to find healing, grace, and newness of life. She is the director of My Sisters, where people can find spiritual accompaniment from the Daughters of St. Paul on their journey.