The Word of God speaks to each of us in so many ways. Scripture approached daily… reflectively brings the confusion of this life into a clearer focus, embraced by God’s grace. A slow, contemplative praying of the Scriptures enables the Bible, the Word of God, to become a means of union with God. From this “listening” and “meditating” on the Word of God comes true reflection.
To proceed on a path to Christian reflection and unity, it is necessary to “listen together to the word of God; to practice ‘lectio divina’ of the Bible,” and to “allow oneself to be surprised by the novelty, which never grows old and is never exhausted, of the word of God.” (Pope Benedict XVI at the close of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 26 January 2007)
In these posts I share some of those reflections… Please feel free to share yours as well.
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In vain is your earlier rising…
Reposted 14 July 2008
Over the past several years of praying the Office, the sacred liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church apart from the Mass and sacramental rites (see Unceasing Ripple of Prayer, posted 7 Feb 2007), I’ve found that the Grail translations of the Psalms (1963) are at once both incredibly easy to recite and also lend themselves to memory. In a matter of months, certain verses become not just a part of one’s vocabulary, but also, integral to one’s outlook on life.
Psalm 127 is a good case in point, particularly verse 2:
In vain is your earlier rising,
your going later to rest,
you who toil for the bread you eat:
when he pours gifts on his beloved
while they slumber.
This evening during Vespers, I encountered Psalm 127 in the Common of Virgins, today
being the Memorial of St. Lucy, Virgin and Martyr.
A former student of mine commented in a note in her Christmas card to me that she didn’t know how I find time to keep up this blog. Good point! Perhaps the Psalm points to the reason: HE truly does “pour gifts on his beloved while they slumber”! So many days I’ll awaken with a great idea for a post–not my thought really, but His.
We work too hard… play too hard… yet rarely PRAY hard enough! Through a regular prayer life, based upon the inspired Word, anyone can benefit from the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Quiet time, set aside making room for small miracles…
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Signposts
Posted 23 August 2007 by Tim McNerney
Categories: Reflections, Religion
I look forward to the signs at many of the churches of our Protestant brothers and sisters. The
thought for the week or warm-up to the coming Sunday’s sermon is prominently displayed to provoke some reflection on the part of passersby.
Driving into Downsville recently, the sign at the Christian Alliance Church caught my eye: “To live without God… means to die without hope.” Hmmm… I could do something with that for a sermon in the future, I thought. However, work at school summoned and I dove into the day ahead of me.
Yet the Holy Spirit was at work. At mid-morning I took a break to unload my car at the Holy Family Rectory and to say Morning Prayer. The morning reading, from the Common of Several Martyrs, was 2 Corinthians 1:3-5. “Praised be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation! He comforts us in all our afflictions and thus enables us to comfort those who are in trouble, with the same consolation we have received from him.”
I was touched by the second verse. The thought that He comforts us in all of our afflictions and thereby makes it possible for us to console others hit close to home. Hours after prayer, I was still turning Paul’s words over in my mind when I drove past the Christian Alliance Church as I left town. That’s when I made the connection between consolation and hope.
Think of it this way, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:13, “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Hope is that ever-present consolation from God. Hope is enabled by faith and sustained by His love for us. Metaphorically stated, “faith and love are the bookends on the bookshelf of life that hold up the volumes of Hope that we require throughout our lifetime of afflictions, challenges and troubles!”
“To live without God… means to die without hope.” More than just another sign; instead, an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to speak to my heart and to open God’s Word to a deeper meaning. A meaning that can enable me to live a life with God, knowing fully that he is with me, he sustains me, he loves me. That’s hope!
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The Rhythms of Life
Posted July 24th, 2007 by Tim McNerney
Categories: Reflections, Religion
What does it really mean to set time aside? We do it all the time for the pursuits, in
terests and obligations we each have. Time to learn something new… time to participate in a sport or just watch a favorite television show… time to be with family and friends… time to work. Are these really what setting aside time is all about? Should we judge the quality of time saved for a particular activity based upon some measure of its worth? Is watching TV not nearly as good as taking a college course? Is work time more important than leisure time?
These are some of the questions that I’ve been reflecting upon during my Cycling Retreat. Certainly, I made a decision about my time, how I wanted to spend it and then created an “event” that integrated work, leisure and prayer time. At the time, it seemed like a great idea. Today, as I spend quiet, contemplative time in prayer in this monastic community, I’m questioning the wisdom of this mix.
Here’s the rub: at more than several junctures in the Cycling Retreat life intruded on my “creation”. A few examples might help. First, the weather! Should I complain; I live in upstate New York and I know what to expect when any weather dependent event is planned. Yet each day, until this evening (the end of the Downsville-Windsor leg), the weather has dictated my start/stop times, challenged me with rain and wind… enough!
Then the server at Downsville: it needed some extra maintenance last evening after hours. I adjusted my schedule, carefully ran the maintenance, and then after a restart, no web services! Did I need that intrusion of reality? No! In the end, the resolution was simple, but it was just the disruption of the rhythm, I guess.
Perhaps that’s what my musings are all about: the rhythms of life. When we set aside precious time–for any reason–we’re also creating expectations. And these anticipated moments carry with them a corresponding rhythm that we expect. Whether from past experience or future expectations, we “forecast” the rhythm of that time set aside. Any foul “weather” that disrupts the forecast is seen as a spoiler.
I believe that our sacred scripture captures this notion better than I ever could. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 – verses quoted so often, set to song and popularized in ways not truly representative of their meaning. However, in Ecclesiastes, we are pointed by the inspired Word to rhythms:
“A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away.
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to be silent, and a time to speak.”
[NAB, Ecclesiastes 3:6-7]
Time, rhythms, expectations. These are all here–embodied in the terse prose of the Hebrew scriptures. And while the New Jerusalem Bible notes speak to the main theme as “the utter emptiness of human existence and the futility of life in which the good and the bad must come to exactly the same end”, I can’t help but to instead view the the positive side of how our choices fit into the rhythms of our lives.
How am I feeling about my Cycling Retreat now? Much, much better, because I’ve taken TIME to pause, reflect & pray about the meaning of it all.
Tim McNerney
Transfiguration Monastery
Windsor, NY
July 20, 2007
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“..giving thanks always and for everything..”
Posted 2 July 2007 by Tim McNerney
Categories: Reflections, Religion
We should be “filled with the Spirit, addressing one another [in] psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.” [NAB, Ephesians 5:19-20] So writes St. Paul in his letter to the Christian community in Ephesus.
Who, why, how? The questions just keep coming…
For the past several months I’ve been wrapping up my research and writing projects for Eschatology and New Testament Letters. At times my nose was so deeply thrust into sacred scripture or into scholarly argument about the meaning of those inspired words that the cares of this world seemed a small matter by comparison.
I’m back in this world now, though. “Smelling the roses” once again and noticing, listening and watching the world chase its iPhones, explosive laden Mercedes and accumulations of presidential campaign donations. And the questions still keep coming…
“WHO really needs an iPhone?”
“WHY would anyone wish to blow innocent theater goers in London to bits?”
“HOW can any country continue to spend, accumulate and expand at one end, while continuing to ignore those left behind?”
If we are truly a Spirit-filled people, the answers are so easy:
NO PERSON needs an iPhone.
NO PERSON who loves his neighbor could blow him up.
NO PERSON could ignore those in need if they looked beyond their own need.
Perhaps the truly awesome gift to us from the inspired authors of the Bible are words, thoughts and ways of being that we can call our own. With the help of the Holy Spirit, each of us has the God given potential to be thankful… despite the hardships.
Biblical scholar and commentator Raymond E. Brown points out that St. Paul’s (or the author’s) thrust in the Letters to the Ephesians is “an example of ‘Early Catholicism’ [..] the initial stages of high ecclesiology, sacramentalism, hieracrchy, ordination, and dogma–in short the beginning of the distinctive features of Catholic Christianity.” [Introduction to the New Testament, p. 625] That may well be the case, but for now, these verses from Ephesians–on their own–speak a world to me.
Instead of pondering the meaning of scripture in a scholarly environment of debate, I’ll be making these words my words, letting the Holy Spirit guide me and “giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.”
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Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle
Acts 22:3-16
25 January 2007
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
If you were to look back on your life, could you pinpoint a single event that completely changed your future? For many of us, a life event–a birth or unexpected death–may have changed the course of our lives. And yet, these were NATURAL events. They occurred in the normal course of daily life. We’ve all encountered a life-changing moment, or even several events that helped to shape our direction.
However, today we commemorate a SUPERNATURAL event that changed the life of the Church’s most influential apostle, St. Paul. Paul’s entire life can be explained in terms of one experience—his meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Even though he had never seen Jesus, St. Paul had acquired a zealot’s hatred of all Jesus stood for, as he began to harass the Church: “…entering house after house and dragging out men and women, he handed them over for imprisonment” (Acts 8:3b).
Just the one sentence that Jesus spoke to Paul determined his theology: “I am Jesus the Nazorean whom you are persecuting”. Jesus was identified with the loving group of people Saul had been running down like criminals. Jesus, he saw, was the mysterious fulfillment of all he had been blindly pursuing.
And in realizing that fulfillment, Saul, now converted to Paul, executed Jesus’ commands–instead of executing his believers: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;” Because of Paul’s fervor and zeal for the Gospel, the “Good Word” of salvation, we are praying as Christians today.
One fully committed believer… one completely dedicated missionary… one person confidently in love with Jesus.
