One of my favorite shopping “spree” while I was in the Philippines this past July happened on my way to Mass in front of San Antonio church. I had a few pesos with me and I spent almost all of them on goodies being sold by this tindera or street vendor.
I bought one of each of the five sweet rice desserts\ concoctions she had. My favorite is the tamales. It was soft and sweet. I never had it before. It had hard boiled egg in the middle.
The others were the two familiar variety of suman or sticky rice cakes with cylindrical shapes and wrapped in banana leaves. One was white and bland while the other was sweet and purplish in color. There was also an unwrapped patty smothered with sugar, shredded coconut and anise. Another concoction is triangular-shaped and wrapped in banana leaves. This was not as sweet as the others.
I was able to interview her and her story was very interesting. She made all the rice delicacies herself. To top it all she came all the way from Pampanga which was three hours from Malabon where she was peddling her desserts. She traveled in the back of a motorcycle that her husband was driving. I was impressed with their patience and determination to earn a living. Her husband went to another church in our town to distribute the same delicacies to another seller in the public market.
As you can see in the photo, she had a cheerful face with a wide smile. She seemed to love her job and her attitude was infectious. Buying from her was a good start to my Sunday morning
Heavenly Father, so many voices clamor for my attention. It’s easy to be distracted. I want to be more sensitive to Your voice so I can sense Your will.
Help me tune in to the Spirit’s quiet voice. Make me more careful about the voices I allow to speak into my life. Fill my thoughts and light my path with Your truth.
Make me more aware of the subtle leadings of the Spirit that I might miss if I’m too preoccupied with the things of this world. Quiet my heart, Father, so I can hear Your words of love as I wait for direction. Amen.
We ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord. —Colossians 1:9–10
For Father Richard, contemplation cultivates an ability to discern right action:
Our goal consists in doing the will of God, but first we have to remove our attachment to our own will so that we can recognize the difference between the two. Throughout history, many people who did horrible things were convinced that they were doing God’s will. That’s why we have to find an instrument to distinguish between God and us. Paul calls this gift the discernment of spirits. We have to learn when our own spirit is at work and when the Spirit of God is at work.
The most convincing social activists in our country were and are people of prayer, like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., Sister Simone Campbell, John Dear, and Jim Wallis. It’s important that we bring the contemplatives and the activists together in the Church and in the world, because neither group is credible without the other. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days; only after that did he begin to preach the reign of God and to heal the sick. And along the way he kept reminding his disciples to withdraw and rest in quiet, peaceful places (see Mark 6:31).
With this withdrawal and this emptiness, we are, so to speak, cultivating fertile soil where we can be receptive to the seed of God’s word. I don’t believe that Jesus dumps the harvest into our laps. Rather, he shows us a process of growth. He shows us a way we can learn to hear God, a path of self-surrender and forgiveness. He trusts that his followers, as they practice this way of prayer, will learn to hear the truth ever more clearly. The great truth will always lie beyond us. The great truth of God will never underpin a small world. This means that the Christian life must be a constant journey back and forth between the radical way inward and the radical way outward. [1]
Dutch priest and author Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) views discernment as a gift that comes from our intimacy with God:
I can see no other way for discernment than a life in the Spirit, a life of unceasing prayer and contemplation, a life of deep communion with the Spirit of God. Such a life will slowly develop in us an inner sensitivity, enabling us to distinguish between the law of the flesh [ego] and the law of the Spirit [soul]. We certainly will make constant errors and seldom have the purity of heart required to make the right decisions all the time. But when we continually try to live in the Spirit, we at least will be willing to confess our weakness and limitations in all humility, trusting in the one who is greater than our hearts. [2]
References: [1]Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 142–143.
[2] Henri J. M. Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2013), 170.
"God our Father, You have a plan for each one of us, You hold out to us a future full of hope. Give us the freedom of your Spirit, to seek you with all our hearts, and to choose your will above all else".
O Lord, you who command us to bless our enemies, protect us, we pray, from turning our neighbors into enemies, worthy only of hatred and deserving of nothing but insults and curses, and grant us instead the heart of Jesus, so that we might love our neighbor as you love them. We pray this in the name of the One who causes the sun to rise both on the evil and on the good. Amen.
A Prayer for Loving a Hurting Neighbor:
O Lord, you who do not look away from the pain of this world,open our eyes, we pray, to see the pain of our neighbor and, by grace, to become the healing presence and power of Jesus to them, so that our hearts might be kindled with your neighbor love this day. We pray this in the name of the Merciful One. Amen.
The mystery of the cross teaches us how to stand against hate without becoming hate, how to oppose evil without becoming evil ourselves. We find ourselves stretching in both directions—toward God’s goodness and also toward recognition of our own complicity in evil. In that moment, we will feel crucified. We hang in between, without resolution, our very life a paradox held in hope by God (see Romans 8:23–25).
Over the next three days, I share a few examples of women who have understood the mystery of the cross in a personal and embodied way. They have known great suffering; they have been victims of oppression and cruelty and yet they sought to respond consciously, not reactively. Today, I offer a journal entry from Etty Hillesum (1914–1943), a young Jewish woman who was killed at Auschwitz. In her diary, she recreates a conversation with her friend, writer Klaas Smelik, about the hatred and bullying she saw within her own community:
Klaas, all I really wanted to say is this: we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. We are hurtful enough to one another as it is. And I don’t really know what I mean when I say that there are bullies and bad characters among our own people, for no one is really “bad” deep down. I should have liked to reach out to that [bully] with all his fears, I should have liked to trace the source of his panic, to drive him ever deeper into himself, that is the only thing we can do, Klaas, in times like these.
And you, Klaas, give a tired and despondent wave and say, “But what you propose to do takes such a long time, and we don’t really have all that much time, do we?” And I reply, “What you want is something people have been trying to get for the last two thousand years, and for many more thousand years before that, in fact, ever since [humankind] has existed on earth.” “And what do you think the result has been, if I may ask?” you say.
And I repeat with the same old passion, although I am gradually beginning to think that I am being tiresome, “It is the only thing we can do, Klaas, I see no alternative, each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable.”
And you, Klaas, dogged old class fighter that you have always been, dismayed and astonished at the same time, say, “But that—that is nothing but Christianity!”
And I, amused by your confusion, retort quite coolly, “Yes, Christianity, and why ever not?” [1]
Richard again: It is a truth of the world’s major religions that the goal of God’s work—God by any name, I might add—is always healing reconciliation and not retributive justice, resurrection and not death.
References: [1] Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941–1943; and, Letters from Westerbork, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (Henry Holt and Company: 1996), 211‒212.
Holy Spirit, I invite You to work within me, bringing freedom from the chains of bitterness. Transform my heart, renew my mind, and lead me on a path of healing and reconciliation. I surrender my pain to You, trusting that Your grace is sufficient for all things. May Your peace, which surpasses all understanding, guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.
Help me to live your goodness and kindness each day. Remind me that my actions express who I am even more than my words. May I love as you love. Let me be good to those who wish me harm, forgive those who need forgiveness, and reach out in kindness to all I meet so they can experience the unconditional love of God.
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson summarizes the prophetic path as following a merciful God who abounds in kindness:
Abounding in kindness, the holy mystery of God is love beyond imagining. Not enough people seem to know this, even those who practice the Christian religion. But the drumbeat of this good news resounds throughout the history of ancient Israel where, from the start of their liberation from slavery, people encountered “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). The drumbeat becomes unmistakably intense in Jesus Christ who preached and enacted divine compassion in startling ways, all the way to the cross and beyond. Its volume ramps up in the church wherever this word is heard and practiced amid the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of people of this age.
This is not a word that returns to its Maker empty. Working creatively for peace amid horrific violence; struggling for justice in the face of massive poverty and military oppression; advocating ecological wholeness for the earth’s life-giving systems and stressed-out species; educating the young and the old; healing the sick and comforting those in despair; creating beauty; taking joy in nourishing children; promoting freedom for captives: the list could go on because the needs are enormous. Even a simple cup of cold water given in Christ’s name symbolizes how the abounding kindness of God becomes effective in this world. [1]
For Johnson, God’s compassion and solidarity for those who are suffering requires us to show the same:
If the heart of divine mystery is turned in compassion toward the world, then devotion to this God draws persons into the shape of divine communion with all others: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). To deny one’s connection with the suffering needs of others is to detach oneself from divine communion.
The praxis of mercy is propelled by this dynamic. So too is committed work on behalf of peace, human rights, economic justice, and the transformation of social structures. For those who engage in this work out of deep contemplative experience, it is far from mere activism or simple good deeds. Rather, solidarity with those who suffer, being there with commitment to their flourishing, is the locus of encounter with the living God. Through what is basically a prophetic stance, one shares in the passion of God for the world.…
The preferential option for the poor must now include the vulnerable, voiceless, nonhuman species and the ravaged natural world itself, all of which are kin to humankind. Loving these neighbors as their very selves, committed religious persons develop moral principles, political structures, and lifestyles that promote other creatures’ thriving and halt their exploitation. For the prophetic passion flowing from contemplative insight, action on behalf of justice for the earth participates in the compassionate care of the Creator God who wills the glorious well-being of the whole interdependent community of life. [2]
References:
[1] Elizabeth A. Johnson, introduction to Abounding in Kindness: Writings for the People of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), viii.
Dear God, I come before you today with a humble heart and a desire to be more like you. Fill me with your Spirit of kindness and compassion so that I may be a light to those around me. Help me to remember Philippians 2:3 as I go about my day. Remind me to do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but to value others above myself.
Lord, I know that kindness is not always easy, especially when I encounter difficult people or situations. I pray that you would give me the strength and wisdom to respond with grace and love. May I be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
I also ask that you would help me to see the needs of those around me. Sometimes people are hurting, and they don’t know how to ask for help. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear so that I can be a source of comfort and support to those in need.
As I go about my day, I pray that you would help me to be intentional about showing kindness to others. Whether it’s a smile, a kind word, or a simple act of service, may I be a reflection of your love and grace.
Finally, Lord, I ask that you would bless me with a heart of gratitude. Help me to recognize the blessings in my life and to be thankful for them. May my gratitude overflow into acts of kindness and generosity toward others.
Thank you, God, for your love and grace. I pray that you would help me to be more like you each day. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
