Jesus is LORD! Thoughts on a Lenten Ember Day 3

Jesus is LORD! And he will remain so no matter what. Councils of the Church come and go as do General Synods. We get it right and we get it wrong. Consistently. Participating in the Councils of the Church can be discouraging.

Not long after we accepted the call to St Barnabas in Medicine Hat in 1999 I decided (I hope with The LORD’s prompting) I needed a Spiritual Director. Since I could find no one who had set up shop in The Hat and didn’t want to drive to Lethbridge or Calgary, I decided I’d just approach one of the Roman Catholic priests in town and ask if he’d take me on. Why Catholic? Because Spiritual Direction is in their DNA. When a postulant for the priesthood arrives at a Catholic seminary he is assigned a room and a Spiritual Director. So I approached Fr Wendolin Rolheiser at what was then Christ the King Roman Catholic Church. He wasn’t keen on the idea and no wonder. Catholic priests tend to deal with huge congregations. They have more than enough on their plate. Eventually, praise God, he agreed to take me on and he was excellent. A great blessing.

Why am I telling you this story? Because, in one of our early sessions he gave me a book to read that his brother, Ron, had written. “Oh, no!” I thought. Now I have to read this book by somebody I’d never heard of and I probably wouldn’t like it and I’d have to say nice things about out of politeness for Fr Wendolin’s sake. The book was Seeking Spirituality: Guidelines for Christian Spirituality for the Twenty-First Century (Hodder & Stoughton, 1998) and it was excellent! Ron Rolheiser is also a priest. He and Wendolin were born and raised in Saskatchewan. Fr Ron is now the President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, and the author of many books. He continues to write columns of spirituality and faith on his blog (http://ronrolheiser.com/en/) and for publications all over the world.

In a recent column Rolheiser wrote about how a group of Christians were discouraged when something they’d planned didn’t work out whereupon William Stringfellow, a lay theologian and activist of the time, told them that in their disappointment he wasn’t hearing anything much

about the Lordship of Jesus. We talk as if we need to save the world, as if everything depends on us. Well, it doesn’t. In the resurrection of Jesus the world is already saved, the powers of death and darkness have already been vanquished. We, we only need to live in such a way so as to show that world that we believe this. (Read the whole column here.)

It’s true, of course. The Lamb wins. So let’s enjoy that truth as we pray through Lenten Ember Day 3 today. The Church waxes and wanes in its faithfulness. So do you and I, but never Jesus.

Father Ron Rolheiser on Sabbath

First class, as usual...

Biblically, this is the pattern: We're meant to work for six days, then have a one-day sabbatical; work for seven years and have a one year sabbatical; work for seven times seven years (forty-nine years) and have a Jubilee year; and finally work for a lifetime and have an eternity of sabbatical. The idea is that our pressured, hurried, working days should be regularly punctured by times of rest, celebration, enjoyment, non- work, non-pressure, and that ultimately all work will cease and we will have nothing to do except to luxuriate in life itself.And what's supposed to happen on a sabbath? What constitutes sabbath time?

The Mothers in My Life: Thoughts on Mother's Day

This prayer was compiled by my wife, Jude, to be prayed in our worship service today.

Lord Jesus, today we lift to you all women. Thank you that you made us in your image. Help us to remember that. Help us to remember the example of your mother, Mary – her obedience, her strength, her quiet faithfulness. Lord, look with your love and mercy on all mothers. Rejoice with those mothers who are called blessed by their children. Support and encourage those mothers who struggle with the responsibility of raising children, those whose children have disappointed, those who will not hear from their children today. Have mercy on all those women who want to be mothers and are not, on those who are mothers, but don’t want to be and on those who have never had the opportunity to be mothers. Have mercy on all those who miss their mothers and on those whose mothers have died. Help us to put a new value mothers and motherhood – not as a sweetly sentimental role, but as a vocation, a high calling from you, worthy of our support.

Amen.

I am amazed and enriched by the mothers in my life; my own, my wife, my daughter, my sister and my friends. They are all intelligent, strong, capable, beautiful women who navigate through the joys and sorrows of their calling with such grace. The determined faithfulness they bring to the task, despite the sleep deprivation, frustrations, fears, self-doubt and riskiness of it all humbles me greatly.

I love you all. God bless you.

Betraying Jesus as Peter Did: from Father Ron Rolheiser

This is a brilliant writer! What follows is part of his Lenten series

March 12, 2006

[Third in a six-part Lenten series on "Mystical Images"]

Anthropologists tell us that men and women have different congenital flaws. For men, it would seem that the flaw that's more particularly encoded in our DNA is betrayal. We have a history of running away when things get tough, of not keeping promises, and of selling out in the face of temptation.

It's not that women are immune from this, but as even the gospels highlight, men have a history here. In Mark's gospel, for instance, all the men betray Jesus, without a single exception. Indeed, in his gospel, the final words that Peter, the head of the church, speaks are words of betrayal: "I do not know the man!"

Read the rest.

I have a permanent link to these articles under "Wise Catholics" over there on the right.