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“The Divine Heart is an ocean full of all good things, wherein poor souls can cast all their needs; it is an ocean full of joy to drown all our sadness, an ocean of humility to drown our folly, an ocean of mercy to those in distress, an ocean of love in which to submerge our poverty.”— St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
“Do you want to be healed?…Then stand up, pick up your mat and walk!” —John 5:7, 9
In John’s Gospel we see an image of fruitful and healing water, fittingly called Bethesda or “house of mercy.” We have the healing waters available and bubbling, a house of mercy for sure, but a man who is right there not making use of it! He is paralyzed as much in spirit as in his body. This is the real “sin” and tragedy that he must be healed of. He is playing the victim: “I have no one to plunge me into the pool. By the time I get there someone else has always beaten me to it.” And he has been saying this for thirty-eight years! So Jesus orders him up, and tells him to pick up his mat and walk for himself. Jesus mirrors his best self for the man, he empowers him, and gives him back his own power, he “images” him, he gives the man back to himself by giving him His self. This is the way it has to happen, because we all begin to see ourselves as other people see us—for good and for ill. With Jesus, it is always for good, but such perfect mirroring also carries further relationship and responsibilities with it. He warns the man not to turn back to his paralysis, “or something worse will overtake you.” This “regressive restoration of the old persona” is a very common pattern when we are sent out into new and risky worlds when we have to take responsibility for ourselves, when we must courageously face our own lives and stand on our own courageous feet. There are few honest guides, like Jesus, at this point. Most will tell you to “take good care of yourself” and pad your false self. Jesus never does that. We need healing images and courageous people to image us at our best. Nothing else will invite us into the flowing waters from the temple and the always bubbling pool of divine mercy. Many never take the risk, and remain spiritual infants even much beyond “thirty-eight years.”
“Healing God, give me the courage to move forward, and help me to see that my deepest sin might be my unwillingness to keep growing.”
— from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
There’s a poster that reads, “Let us begin again,” St. Francis of Assisi, with a speckled bird soaring above the looping letters. Us, not me. Begin again. It doesn’t say “begin again while looking back at the past that still hurts and confounds us” or “begin again while worrying about the bad things that might happen in the future.” I’ve been studying psalm-words—Lord, refuge, mercy—and isolating them, but now I need to put them back together. I disassembled the psalms to examine them closely, like a leaf under a microscope, finding the opening and closing of the stomata. But the true beauty of a leaf, like our human lives, exists when you watch it bud, grow, and fall with all the other leaves. Together. So I am looking out over the breathtaking view of the psalms as I hope we never forget to begin, again and again. To know, no matter what, that we are walking in love and beauty when we seek.
— from the book What Was Lost: Seeking Refuge in the Psalms
by Maureen O’Brien
//Franciscan Media//
How dramatic and alluring is Micah’s statement that “God, who delights in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, will tread underfoot all of our guilt, and will cast into the depths of the sea all of our sins.” What kind of experience of God allowed a peasant prophet to say such things on his own authority and eight centuries before Jesus said much the same? You have got to know this is quite amazing and game-changing. Which leads to the pièce de résistance of all of Jesus’ teaching, today’s Gospel: the story that is strangely called “The Prodigal Son,” even though it is much more about “The Prodigious Father” who is seemingly loving to excess! All scholars seem to agree that this story most perfectly represents Jesus’ active and operative image of his personal experience of God.
— from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//The Catholic Company//
//Spirit Food for Thought//
One of Pope Francis’s favorite themes is mercy. He writes, “God’s mercy transforms human hearts; it enables us, through the experience of a faithful love, to become merciful in turn. In an ever new miracle, divine mercy shines forth in our lives, inspiring each of us to love our neighbor and to devote ourselves to what the Church’s tradition calls the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. These works remind us that faith finds expression in concrete everyday actions meant to help our neighbors in body and spirit. On such things will we be judged.”
Again and again Jesus shows that God is merciful, loving, waiting to give us everything that is good. “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” We read a passage like this one from Matthew’s Gospel ,and we can’t believe that it’s that easy. But the revelation of the Gospels is that our God is bigger and greater and more loving and trustworthy than even the best human being we have known. Once we realize the great truth in this, we let God’s mercy overflow to everyone we meet.
—from the book The Hope of Lent: Daily Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek
//Franciscan Media//
“As the rain and snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth and making it yield…so the word does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do” (Isaiah 55:10–11).
Isaiah is writing in the fullness of the Babylonian exile, Jerusalem has fallen, no end in sight, and still he (some say “she”!) can speak with totally calm inevitability, kind certainty, and even joyful trust. (Treat yourself and open your Bible to 55:12–13 to see the final exclamation point, which is not included in the Lectionary reading.)
Then we have Matthew’s version of the “Our Father,” preceded by a warning against “rattling on” with too many prayers, and ending with a promise of a perfect and fair equivalence between how you forgive and how you will be forgiven. Jesus made the essential requirement for the forgiveness of sin rather clear and definitive here: As you do it, it will be done to you. If you do not do it, it cannot be done to you.
We are merely and forever inside of the divine flow, just like Isaiah’s “rain and snow.” Forgiveness is not some churchy technique or formula. Forgiveness is constant from God’s side, which should become a calm, joyous certainty on our side. Mercy received will be mercy passed on, and “will not return to me empty, until it has succeeded in what it was sent to do.”
—from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
“Tell the people their actual wickedness, let the people know their real sins…. ‘Is this the kind of fasting I wish? Do you call this a fast day acceptable to God?’” (Isaiah 58:1, 5).
Isaiah says explicitly that God prefers another kind of fasting which changes our actual lifestyle and not just punishes our body. (The poor body is always the available scapegoat to avoid touching our purse, our calendar, or our prejudices.) Isaiah makes a very upfront demand for social justice, non-aggression, taking our feet off the necks of the oppressed, sharing our bread with the hungry, clothing the naked, letting go of our sense of entitlement, malicious speech, and sheltering the homeless. He says very clearly this is the real fast God wants! It is amazing that we could ever miss the point. It is likely that what we later called the corporal works of mercy came from this passage.
—from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Blessed Bartholomew of Olmedo (1485-1524) was a Spanish Mercedarian priest, and the first priest to arrive on Mexican soil in 1516 at the age of 31. He was chaplain for the expedition of Spanish Conquistador Fernando Cortés, who began the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the downfall of the Aztec empire. Bartholomew was well-liked by the native people. He taught them the Christian faith and exhorted them to end their practice of human sacrifice. He also defended them against injustice and restrained Cortés from acting out in violence against them. Bartholomew taught the native Mexicans devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Mercy, which they embraced. Blessed Bartholomew of Olmedo baptized more than 2500 people before he died in Mexico in 1524 at the age of 39. He was buried in Santiago de Tlatelolco. His feast day is February 11.