Emmaus Hermitage in Sydney, Australia | Religious organisation

Emmaus Hermitage

Locality: Sydney, Australia

Address: Lalor Park 2147 Sydney, NSW, Australia

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25.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Tuesday, March 30 2021 Week Thirteen: Scapegoating and the Cross... Opposing Evil without Becoming It 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 directionstoward 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 8:2325). 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 (19141943), 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 thatthat 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 workGod by any name, I might addis always healing reconciliation and not retributive justice, resurrection and not death. [1] Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 19411943; and, Letters from Westerbork, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (Henry Holt and Company: 1996), 211212. Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 203204

25.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Week Forty-seven Thomas Merton:... Contemplation and Action Joy and Sadness: A Lesson from Merton's Hermitage Sunday, November 22, 2020 In 1985 my Franciscan guardians (as Francis called our superiors) gave me a year’s leave to spend in contemplation. It was a major turning point in my life, and ultimately led to the formation of the Center for Action and Contemplation. The first thirty days of my sabbatical were spent in the hills of Kentucky, in Thomas Merton’s (19151968) hermitage about a mile away from the main monastery. I was absolutely alone with myself, with the springtime woods, and with God, hoping to somehow absorb some of Merton’s wisdom. That first morning, it took me a while to slow down. I must have looked at my watch at least ten times before 7:00 AM! I had spent so many years standing in front of crowds as a priest and a teacher. I had to find out who I was without those trappingsthe naked me alone before God. In the mornings I would put my chair in front of the door and watch the sun come up. In the late afternoons, I would move my chair to the other side of the hermitage and watch the sun go down. The little squirrels and birds came closer and closer. They’re not afraid when we’re absolutely still. Father William McNamara’s definition of contemplation as a long loving look at the real became transformative for me. The world, my own issues and hurts, all my goals and desires gradually dissolved and fell into proper perspective. God became obvious and ever present. I understood what Merton meant when he said, The gate of heaven is everywhere. [1] I tried to keep a journal of what was happening to me. Back then, I found it particularly hard to cry. But one evening I laid my finger on my cheek and found to my surprise that it was wet. I wondered what those tears meant. What was I crying for? I wasn’t consciously sad or consciously happy. I noticed at that moment that behind it all there was a joy, deeper than any private joy. It was a joy in the face of the beauty of being, a joy at all the wonderful and lovable people I had already met in my life. Cosmic or spiritual joy is something we participate in; it comes from elsewhere and flows through us. It has little or nothing to do with things going well in our own life at that moment. I remember thinking that this must be why the saints could rejoice in the midst of suffering. At the same moment, I experienced exactly the opposite emotion. The tears were at the same time tears of an immense sadnessa sadness at what we’re doing to the earth, sadness about the people whom I had hurt in my life, and a sadness too at my own mixed motives and selfishness. I hadn’t known that two such contrary feelings could coexist. I was truly experiencing the nondual mind of contemplation. Gateway to Action & Contemplation: What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do? Prayer for Our Community: O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen. Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer. Story from Our Community: Almost exactly a year ago today, I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, to walk and be where Thomas Merton lived during his monastic life. It was a very special day as I have read and loved Merton my entire adult life. I even drove into Louisville and stood at the corner of Fourth and Walnut to be where he had a mystical experience. Fast forward to now and I am convinced that these last six months have been my contemplative period. At times I think back to what I asked God a year agoaction or contemplation? As a physician I have never taken the time to sit and meditate or center as much as I have done these past months. So I guess my answer was Yes, and. . . Alex S. Share your own story with us. [1] Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Doubleday: 1966), 142. Adapted from Richard Rohr, What the Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your Deepest Self (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2015), 6163.

25.01.2022 Minute Meditations By Franciscan Media Carry the Light ... In the liturgy we relive the state of mind of the disciples over the news which the women had brought: Jesus is Risen! We have seen him! If only we were so luminous! But this is not just cosmetic! It comes from within, from a heart immersed in the source of this joy, like that of Mary Magdalene, who wept over the loss of her Lord and could hardly believe her eyes seeing him risen. Whoever experiences this becomes a witness of the Resurrection, for in a certain sense he himself has risen, she herself has risen. He or she is then capable of carrying a ray of light of the Risen One into various situations: to those that are happy, making them more beautiful by preserving them from egoism; to those that are painful, bringing serenity and hope. Pope Francis One of Pope Francis’s favorite distinctions is the difference between joy and mere happiness. This is something that’s good to carry with us into the Easter season. His example of Mary Magdalene points to a key aspect of joy: It often follows a time of suffering, of disappointment, of struggle overcome and transformed. If Mary hadn’t cared so much for Jesus, her sense of loss wouldn’t have been as deep, but neither would her joy at their reunion. If we live our lives only on the surface, surrounding ourselves with acquaintances rather than real friends, we will find it difficult to experience deep emotions. Likewise, if our faith is only an intellectual exercise, a list of rules and doctrines instead of a personal encounter with the divine, we will miss the way it can truly change our hearts. One of the hallmarks of a true friend is someone who can accompany us through good times and bad, weeping and rejoicing as circumstances change. A genuine faith offers the same support. We are blessed if we have such friends, graced if we have such faith. Pope Francis reminds us that when we recognize the blessings in our lives, we will have a joy that we can share with others in good times and bad. If someone has done this for you recently, take a moment to let them know. As you reflect on your own joy in this Easter season, find a way to share it with someone who needs a ray or two of Christ’s light in their lives. from the book The Hope of Lent: Daily Reflections from Pope Francis, by Diane M. Houdek

24.01.2022 Wednesday 31st March 2021: Prayer of The Day Almighty and everlasting God, who in your tender love towards the human race sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ... to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross: grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. See more

24.01.2022 Tuesday 24th November 2020: An Australian Lectionary: Revelation 14:14-19; Ps 96:9-13; Luke 21:5-11 MEDITATION: Do I stand firm in faith despite the world's upheavals? PRAYER: Lord Jesus, give me confidence in God's plan in these stress-filled times.

23.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Thursday, April 8th 2021 Week Fourteen: All Will Be Well... A Wisdom for Our Time I believe it is a loss to our Christian heritage that Julian’s mystical teachings have not received more widespread hearing. Matthew Fox points out that she was in many ways ahead of her time. Her voice and writings were sidelined by a patriarchal church and culture unable to hear her nondual message of oneing and her celebration of embodiment as an extension of the Incarnation itself. Perhaps we are finally ready to hear Julian’s wisdom today. Matthew Fox writes: We learn about ourselves, our history and society by asking questions that expose the shadows in which we still live. To me it is obvious why [Julian’s] work was ignored, and in naming the obvious we name the shadows we have inherited from our ancestors. First, she was ignored because she was a woman. . . . Julian found her voiceand wrote the first book in English by a woman. She speaks out about womanhood and about mothering and about the Divine Mother. She insists on the feminine side of God as imbuing not only God the Creator, but God the Liberator, and God the Spirit. . . . She bakes into her entire book the constant theme of nondualism and of oneing. Sensuality and substance are one thing. . . . She talks of the glorious mingling of body and soul, matter and spirit. She insists on the marriage of nature and God, on panentheism [God in all things and all things in God] as the very meaning of faith, and on the marriage of God and the human (for we, too, are part of nature): between God and the human there is no between.. . . We were not ready for her. We were too engrossed with the masculine projects of empire building and discovery doctrines of raiding and destroying indigenous cultures of mother love; we were too busy chasing knowledge, at the expense of wisdom, for the power it brings to buttress our empires through science and technology, too preoccupied with creating capitalist behemoths that demanded we extract whatever goods we could from Mother Earth without asking any questions about paying Mother Earthor future generationsback. . . . Julian’s feminism did not fit the patriarchal agenda at hand . . . and she stands up to patriarchy (including the institutional church) in many instances. But subtly soas a lover, not as a prosecutor. The second principal reason Julian has been ignored for so many centuries, and why we were not ready for her, is that she is so thoroughly creation-centered in her theology that people did not understand her insistence that God is in nature, that nature and grace are one, and that goodness is everywhere but first of all in nature. When the agenda is to exploit nature for all the profits it can deliver, who wants to hear about the sacredness of nature? Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemicand Beyond (iUniverse: 2020), 110111.

19.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Week Forty-seven Thomas Merton: Contemplation and Action... One God of the Earth Wednesday, November 25, 2020 One way that our growth in love becomes stuck is when we identify so much with our group or country that it replaces our faith in the One God of all. As we see in politics in the United States, most people only know how to love people who are like themselves with regard to their race, their nationality, their religion, or their political party. Thomas Merton especially warned about the phenomenon we know in our day as Christian nationalism. When belief in country and religion merge as one, the alternative way of Jesus takes a back seat. I invite you to read Merton’s challenging words with willing mind and heart: A Christian nationalist is one whose Christianity takes second place, and serves to justify a patriotism in whose eyes the nation can do no wrong. In such a case, it becomes Christian faith and Christian heroism to renounce even one’s Christian protest and to obey the dictates of the (unchristian) Nation without question. Instead of that Christian independence which realizes that the Nation itself may come under the higher judgment of God, there arises the notion of a Christian obedience in which the faithful are urged to accept the national purpose on the justification of any and every means. They renounce all judgment and choice in order to follow secular authority blindly since the Government knows best.. . . The great question then is one of clarification. We can no longer afford to equate faith with the acceptance of myths about our nation, our society, or our technology; to equate hope with a naive confidence in our image of ourselves as the good guys against whom all the villains in the world are leagued in conspiracy; to equate love with a mindlessly compliant togetherness, a dimly lived and semi-radiant compulsiveness in work and play, invested by commercial artists with an aura of spurious joy. [1] Richard again: While we can be grateful for any freedoms and privileges protected by our national governments, we cannot allow them to claim that they are themselves the foundational source of those rights. That role belongs to God! Our love and respect for human dignity must be extended to people of all nations, not just our own. I wrote this prayer almost ten years ago on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. We need the grace of universal solidarity to join the One God in our ever-expanding love for the world: God of all races, nations, and religions, You know that we cannot change others, Nor can we change the past. But we can change ourselves. We can join You in changing our only And common future where Love reigns The same over all. Help us not to say, Lord, Lord to any nationalist gods, But to hear the One God of all the earth, And to do God’s good thing for this One World. Gateway to Action & Contemplation: What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do? Prayer for Our Community: O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen. Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer. Story from Our Community: Almost exactly a year ago today, I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, to walk and be where Thomas Merton lived during his monastic life. It was a very special day as I have read and loved Merton my entire adult life. I even drove into Louisville and stood at the corner of Fourth and Walnut to be where he had a mystical experience. Fast forward to now and I am convinced that these last six months have been my contemplative period. At times I think back to what I asked God a year agoaction or contemplation? As a physician I have never taken the time to sit and meditate or center as much as I have done these past months. So I guess my answer was Yes, and. . . Alex S. Share your own story with us. [1] Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice (University of Notre Dame Press: 1968), 203204. Adapted from Richard Rohr, homily, From Self-Love to Group Love to Universal Love, (May 6, 2018); and Prayer of the Day, Sojourners (September 11, 2012), https://sojo.net/articles/prayer-day-5.

18.01.2022 Tuesday 24th November 2020: Prayer of The Day O God, the source and origin of all fatherhood, you kept the blessed martyrs Andrew and his companions faithful to the cross of your Son even to the shedding of their blood.... Through their intercession enable us to spread your love among our brothers and sisters, that we may be called and may truly be your children. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, (one) God, for ever and ever. Amen. See more

18.01.2022 Minute Meditations By Franciscan Media Celebrating God’s Reign ... Christ came and declared a wedding feast, a celebration, at the very center of life. They crucified him not for being too ascetical, but because he told us that we might enjoy life. He told us that life will give us more goodness and enjoyment than we can stand, if we can learn to receive it without fear. But we are still in exile, without wedding garments, looking for the key to the room of celebration. Perhaps we need to be just a bit more earnest and sincere when we say the words, your kingdom come! from the book Prayer: Our Deepest Longing by Ronald Rolheiser

15.01.2022 Minute Meditations By Franciscan Media Sharing the Feast ... Eating is not only an individual delight but also, and mainly, a communal experience. Family reunions mean sharing story after story around the table. The food served becomes the backdrop for a renewal of mutual concerns remembered and new events announced. Those of us who have to travel for business may need to eat alone, but may not relish doing so. Travelers often end up at a local hangout not only to order a beer but to find a bartender or other patrons to converse with. Breaking bread with a friend is why I baked that loaf in the first place. A dinner scheduled to last for perhaps two hours can put us in a zone of leisure that seems to go on without our knowing how so much time has passed. from the book Table of Plenty: Good Food for Body and Spirit by Susan Muto

14.01.2022 Minute Meditations By Franciscan Media How Prayer Nourishes Us... Like eating, prayer is meant to respect the natural rhythms of our energy. As we know from experience, we don’t always want a banquet. If we tried to have a banquet every day, we would soon find coming to the table burdensome and we would look for every excuse to escape, to sneak off for a quick sandwich by ourselves. Eating has a natural balance: banquets alternate with quick snacks, rich dishes with simple sandwiches, meals that take a whole evening with meals we eat on the run. We can have high season only if we mostly have ordinary time. Healthy eating habits respect our natural rhythms: our time, energy, tiredness, the season, the hour, our taste. from the book Prayer: Our Deepest Longing by Ronald Rolheiser

13.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Week Forty-seven Thomas Merton: Contemplation and Action... Merton’s Call for Racial Justice Friday, November 27, 2020 In the midst of the intense struggle for civil rights, Thomas Merton insisted that Christians had a moral duty to address racismon a personal and systemic level. His words were prophetic at the time and continue to be relevant to this day. In Seeds of Destruction, he writes: The race question cannot be settled without a profound change of heart, a real shake-up and deep reaching metanoia [Greek for repentance or change of mind] on the part of White America. It is not just [a] question of a little more good will and generosity: it is a question of waking up to crying injustices and deep-seated problems which are ingrained in the present setup and which, instead of getting better, are going to get worse. [1] The purpose of non-violent protest, in its deepest and most spiritual dimensions is then to awaken the conscience of the white people to the awful reality of their injustice and of their sin, so that they will be able to see that the Negro problem is really a White problem: that the cancer of injustice and hate which is eating white society and is only partly manifested in racial segregation with all its consequences, is rooted in the heart of the white people themselves. [2] In later writings, Merton elaborates on the pernicious evil of systems of oppression and how we must combat them through the use of faith, hope, and love. When a system can, without resort to overt force, compel people to live in conditions of abjection, helplessness, wretchedness . . . it is plainly violent. To make people live on a subhuman level against their will, to constrain them in such a way that they have no hope of escaping their condition, is an unjust exercise of force. Those who in some way or other concur in the oppressionand perhaps profit by itare exercising violence even though they may be preaching pacifism. And their supposedly peaceful laws, which maintain this spurious kind of order, are in fact instruments of violence and oppression. [3] Growth, survival and even salvation may depend on the ability to sacrifice what is fictitious and unauthentic in the construction of one’s moral, religious or national identity. One must then enter upon a different creative task of reconstruction and renewal. This task can be carried out only in the climate of faith, of hope and of love: these three must be present in some form, even if they amount only to a natural belief in the validity and significance of human choice, a decision to invest human life with some shadow of meaning, a willingness to treat other people as other selves. [4] Gateway to Action & Contemplation: What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do? Prayer for Our Community: O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen. Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer. Story from Our Community: Almost exactly a year ago today, I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, to walk and be where Thomas Merton lived during his monastic life. It was a very special day as I have read and loved Merton my entire adult life. I even drove into Louisville and stood at the corner of Fourth and Walnut to be where he had a mystical experience. Fast forward to now and I am convinced that these last six months have been my contemplative period. At times I think back to what I asked God a year agoaction or contemplation? As a physician I have never taken the time to sit and meditate or center as much as I have done these past months. So I guess my answer was Yes, and. . . Alex S. Share your own story with us. [1] Thomas Merton, To a White Priest, Seeds of Destruction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1964), 310. [2] Letters to a White Liberal, Seeds of Destruction, 4546. Note: Minor edits made to incorporate gender-inclusive language. [3] Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice (University of Notre Dame Press: 1968), 78. [4] Faith and Violence, 138. Note: Minor edits made to incorporate gender-inclusive language.

11.01.2022 Wednesday 31st March 2021: WEDNESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. An Australian Lectionary: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Ps 70; Hebrews 12:1-3 John 13:21-32 MEDITATION: How would you describe the coming glorifying of God Jesus finishes this passage pointing too? How is this revealed in Jesus’ suffering and death? Is it revealed differently in the resurrection? PRAYER: Lord, you know my heart, you know me well.... touch my heart and have me listen to what you want to tell me/show me through this Gospel passage today!

10.01.2022 Wednesday 7th April 2021: Prayer of The Day Lord of all life and power, who through the mighty resurrection of your Son overcame the old order of sin and death to make all things new in him:... grant that we, being dead to sin and alive to you in Jesus Christ, may reign with him in glory; to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be praise and honour, glory and might, now and in all eternity. Amen. See more

08.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Week Forty-six Jesus and the Reign of God... The Kingdom's Common Sense Friday, November 20, 2020 My friend and colleague Brian McLaren has thought deeply and practically about what Jesus means when he speaks of the Kingdom of God. He views it as synonymous with the Gospel itself. Jesus proposed a radical alternativea profoundly new framing story that he called good news. News, of course, means a storya story of something that has happened or is happening that you should know about. Good news, then would mean a story that you should know about because it brings hope, healing, joy, and opportunity. . . . The term kingdom of God, which is at the heart and center of Jesus’ message in word and deed, becomes positively incandescent in this kind of framing. As a member of a little colonized nation with a framing story that refuses to be tamed by the Roman imperial narrative, Jesus bursts on the scene with this scandalous message: The time has come! Rethink everything! A radically new kind of empire is availablethe empire of God has arrived! . . . Open your minds and hearts like children to see things freshly in this new way, follow me and my words, and enter this new way of living. At every point, the essence of his kingdom teaching subverts the common sense of the Roman Empire and all its predecessors and successors: Don’t get revenge when wronged, but seek reconciliation. Don’t repay violence with violence, but seek creative and transforming nonviolent alternatives. Don’t focus on external conformity to moral codes, but on internal transformation in love. Don’t love insiders and hate or fear outsiders, but welcome outsiders into a new us, a new we, a new humanity that celebrates diversity in the context of love for all, justice for all, and mutual respect for all. Don’t have anxiety about money or security or pleasure at the center of your life, but trust yourself to the care of God. Don’t live for wealth, but for the living God who loves all people, including your enemies. Don’t hate your enemies or competitors, but love them and do to them not as they have done to youand not before they do to youbut as you wish they would do for you. . . . The phrase kingdom of God on Jesus’ lips, then, means almost the opposite of what an American like me might assume, living in the richest, most powerful nation on earth. To a citizen of Western civilization like me, kingdom language suggests order, stability, government, policy, domination, control, maybe even vengeance on rebels and threats of banishment for the uncooperative. But on Jesus’ lips, those words describe Caesar’s kingdom: God’s kingdom turns all of those associations upside down. Order becomes opportunity, stability melts into movement and change, status-quo government gives way to a revolution of community and neighborliness, policy bows to love, domination descends to service and sacrifice, control morphs into influence and inspiration, and vengeance and threats are transformed into forgiveness and blessing. Gateway to Action & Contemplation: What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do? Prayer for Our Community: O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen. Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer. Story from Our Community: Clink, / This AND that. / My heart. / Mercy. / Now. / I am still, empty. Teresa B., written while sipping tea the morning after the U.S. election. Share your own story with us. Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope (Thomas Nelson: 2007), 77, 99100, 125.

07.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Wednesday, April 7th 2021 Week Fourteen: All Will Be Well... A Sacred Sweetness Today, treat yourself to reading directly from Julian. I am using Mirabai Starr’s wonderful translation of Julian’s Showings, which is also aptly called Revelations of Divine Love. This is from her Long Text, chapter 52. God rejoices that he is our Father. God rejoices that he is our Mother. God rejoices that he is our Beloved and we are his true lover. Christ rejoices that he is our Brother. Jesus rejoices that he is our Savior. These are five supreme joys and he wants us to rejoice in them, too, and praise him, thanking and loving and endlessly blessing him. During our lives here on earth, we experience a wondrous mixture of well and woe. We hold inside us both the glory of the Risen Christ and the misery of the Fallen Adam. Christ protects us in our dying and, through his gracious touch, uplifts us and reassures us that all will be well. . . . We are so fragmented, afflicted in our feelings in so many ways, that we hardly know where to turn for comfort. The various pains and transgressions of this life fill our hearts with sorrow and cloud the eyes of our souls. But we cultivate our intention and wait for God. We have faith in his mercy and grace, and trust that he is working within us. In his goodness, he opens the eyes of our understanding and gives us insight. Sometimes we glimpse more, sometimes we see less, depending on what God gives us the ability to receive. Now he elevates us; now he allows us to come tumbling down. The mixture of sorrow and joy is so powerful that we cannot figure out how to handle it all, let alone assess how our fellow spiritual seekers are doing. The diversity of feelings can be overwhelming. And yet, in those moments when we sense the presence of God, we surrender to him, truly willing to be with him, with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength. This holy assent is all that matters. It eclipses all the wicked inclinations inside usphysical and spiritualthat might lead us to miss the mark. Sometimes, however, that sacred sweetness lies deeply buried, and we fall again into blindness, which leads to all kinds of sorrow and tribulation. So we must take comfort in the essential article of our faith that teaches us not to give into our negative impulses, but to draw strength from Christ, who is our defender against all harm. We need to stand up against evil, even if to do so causes discomforteven painand pray for the time when God will once again reveal himself and fill our hearts with the sweetness of his presence. And so we remain in this muddle all the days of our lives. But our Beloved wants us to trust that he is always with us. With such deep and tender wisdom, is it any wonder that Julian is one of my favorite mysticsand human beings? The Showings of Julian of Norwich: A New Translation, Mirabai Starr (Hampton Roads: 2013), 142143.

07.01.2022 Minute Meditations By Franciscan Media Pain of Betrayal ... There is a poignant passage in the Servant Song from Isaiah that illustrates and prepares us for two betrayals that are about to happen: I thought I had toiled in vain and uselessly, I have exhausted myself for nothing (Isaiah 49:4). Surely that is the human feeling after someone we love turns against us. On some level, we all feel we have made some kind of contract with life, when life does not come through as we had hoped, and we feel a searing pain called betrayal. It happens to all of us in different ways. It is a belly punch that leaves us with a sense of futility and emptiness. And here it happens to Jesus from two of his own inner circle, both Judas and Peter. The more love and hope you have invested in another person, the deeper the pain of betrayal is. If it happens at a deep and personal level, we wonder if he will ever trust again. Your heart does break. It is one of those crossroad moments, when the breaking can forever close you down, or in time just the oppositeopen you up to an enlargement of soulas we will see in Jesus this week. What is happening is that we are withdrawing a human dependency, finding grace to forgive and let go, and relocating our little self in The Self (God), which never betrays us. It can’t! It might take years for most of us to work through this; for Jesus it seems to have been natural, although who knows how long it took him to get there. All we see in the text is that there are no words of bitterness at all, only a calm, unblaming description in the midst of the night, which is almost upon us. Solitary Jesus, you get more alone as the week goes on, till all you have is a naked but enduring hope in God. Do not bring me to such a test, I would not know how to survive. from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent by Richard Rohr, OFM

06.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Week Forty-seven Thomas Merton:... Contemplation and Action Contemplative Responsibility Monday, November 23, 2020 Thomas Merton has been a primary teacher and inspiration to me ever since I read his book The Sign of Jonas as a teenager. He was one of the most influential American Catholics of the twentieth century. It was Merton who reintroduced the Christian contemplative tradition to the Western church in the 1950s and 60s. By living a contemplative life, Merton grew in love for God and all of God’s children and creationso much so that he became committed to doing what he could for the common good. Amidst the societal disruptions of the 1960s, it was not enough for him to simply pray. He also devoted himself to actionwriting, collaboration, and teachingthough he never lost his deep yearning for solitude and contemplation. As Merton began to seriously wrestle with the injustices plaguing the United States and the world, he published Seeds of Destruction, a book urging Christians to reflect on their moral responsibility to take a stand on issues such as racism, war, and poverty. His words speak to our moment as well: The contemplative life is not, and cannot be, a mere withdrawal, a pure negation, a turning of one’s back on the world with its sufferings, its crises, its confusions and its errors. . . . The monastic [that is, contemplative] flight from the world [or what I call the systemRR] into the desert is . . . a total rejection of all standards of judgment which imply attachment to a history of delusion, egoism and sin . . . a definitive refusal to participate in those activities which have no other fruit than to prolong the reign of untruth, greed, cruelty and arrogance in the world of people. . . . The freedom of the Christian contemplative is not freedom from time, but freedom in time. It is the freedom to go out and meet God in the inscrutable mystery of God’s will here and now, in this precise moment in which God asks humanity’s cooperation in shaping the course of history according to the demands of divine truth, mercy and fidelity. . . . Therefore it seems to me to be a solemn obligation of conscience at this moment of history to take the positions which . . . are, it seems to me, in vital relation with the obligations I assumed when I took my monastic vows. To have a vow of poverty seems to me illusory if I do not in some way identify myself with the cause of people who are denied their rights and forced, for the most part, to live in abject misery. To have a vow of obedience seems to me to be absurd if it does not imply a deep concern for the most fundamental of all expressions of God’s will: the love of God’s truth and of our neighbor. Richard again: Thomas Merton knew that contemplation and solidarity with the universal suffering of creation (the planet itself, animals, humans) is to enter into the eternal suffering of God, what Dominican Gerald Vann called the Divine Pity.[1] Gateway to Action & Contemplation: What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do? Prayer for Our Community: O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen. Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer. Story from Our Community: Almost exactly a year ago today, I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, to walk and be where Thomas Merton lived during his monastic life. It was a very special day as I have read and loved Merton my entire adult life. I even drove into Louisville and stood at the corner of Fourth and Walnut to be where he had a mystical experience. Fast forward to now and I am convinced that these last six months have been my contemplative period. At times I think back to what I asked God a year agoaction or contemplation? As a physician I have never taken the time to sit and meditate or center as much as I have done these past months. So I guess my answer was Yes, and. . . Alex S. Share your own story with us. [1] Gerald Vann, The Divine Pity: A Study in the Social Implications of the Beatitudes (Sheed & Ward: 1946). Adapted from Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1964), xi, xii, xiiixiv. Note: Minor edits made to incorporate gender-inclusive language. Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, ed. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books: 2018), 48; and The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis, disc 3 (Sounds True: 2010), CD.

06.01.2022 Tuesday 30th March 2021: Prayer of The Day All-powerful, ever-living God, may our sacramental celebration of the Lord’s passion bring us your forgiveness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,... who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, (one) God, for ever and ever. Amen. See more

05.01.2022 Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation Week Forty-seven Thomas Merton:... Contemplation and Action Recovering Our Original Unity Tuesday, November 24, 2020 What is the relation of [contemplation] to action? Simply this. He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. Thomas Merton Thomas Merton was the first writer I encountered who spoke so clearly about the connection between contemplation and action. I believe that is true in part because he knew it from his own life. If you’ve ever read The Seven Storey Mountain, you know that Merton did not begin his faith journey as an activist. In fact, he lived his first two decades largely concerned with his own advancement, experience, and pleasure. It seems that he began his vocation to the priesthood motivated, at least to some extent, by the same egoic concerns, though pointed in a more holy direction. However, at some point, Merton’s personal agenda for self-improvement must have fallen flat, which allowed him to fall more deeply into God and his True Self. He became far less concerned with the I who prayed than he was with the One to whom, with whom, and in whom he was praying. As Merton reflected: We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are. [1] He had finally recognized that the programs for happiness which he had pursued his whole life were never going to bring him the sense of worthiness he desired. Instead, he embraced this paradoxical statement: In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart. [2] Merton had an uncanny ability to describe the truth of his own heart in a way the rest of us could understand. And he deeply believed that our inner healing was for the sake of the outer world. Near the end of his life, as Merton participated in ongoing dialogue between Eastern and Western monastic traditions, he shared the following prayer. It was radical in its time and remains just as necessary today: Oh, God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. Oh God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is in Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen. [3] Gateway to Action & Contemplation: What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do? Prayer for Our Community: O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen. Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer. Story from Our Community: Almost exactly a year ago today, I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, to walk and be where Thomas Merton lived during his monastic life. It was a very special day as I have read and loved Merton my entire adult life. I even drove into Louisville and stood at the corner of Fourth and Walnut to be where he had a mystical experience. Fast forward to now and I am convinced that these last six months have been my contemplative period. At times I think back to what I asked God a year agoaction or contemplation? As a physician I have never taken the time to sit and meditate or center as much as I have done these past months. So I guess my answer was Yes, and. . . Alex S. Share your own story with us. [1] Thomas Merton, informal talk in Calcutta (October 1968). See The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. Naomi Burton, Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin (New Directions Publishing: 1973, 1975), 308. [2] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions: 2007, 1961), 57. [3] The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 318319. Epigraph: Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, 2nd ed. (University of Notre Dame Press: 1998), 160161.

03.01.2022 Minute Meditations By Franciscan Media Thanksgiving is fully living into our givennessit is the acceptance that our life is a miracle. To be thankful is to ta...ke pleasure in our existence and in the things that make that existence possible. In this pleasure, writes Wendell Berry, we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. Berry is here speaking particularly of the pleasure that comes in our eating and its attendant thanksgiving, but he is also necessarily speaking of the pleasure of membership. Our lives are indebted to other lives and dependent upon them. Through this gratitude and proper understanding of indebtedness, we are able to gain the freedom to become more generous ourselves. When we come to truly understand our givenness, which is also our indebtedness and embeddedness in the whole of the creation, then our response must be to give as we have been given. All pretenses that attend the accomplishments of our own work, all illusions of making value or owning something, is but a debt unaccounted, a gift accepted without thanks. Our first and most profound response should be to fill our days with thanksgiving. It is in that practice that we will finally begin to recover who we are and what we should be about in this world, this creation, this gift. from the book Wendell Berry and the Given Life by Ragan Sutterfield See more

01.01.2022 Wednesday 7th April 2021: WEDNESDAY IN EASTER WEEK. An Australian Lectionary: Acts 3:1-10; Ps 105:1-7; Luke 24:13-35 MEDITATION: Only one disciple (Cleopas) is named in the story. Am I the other disciple?... PRAYER: Risen Lord, help me to recognize your presence in the Mass.