Posts by BGUAW
Saints
Saints were men and women who understood the challenge of living the gospel in the context of their own place and time. They are remembered because they lived it with imagination and devotion. They used what they had been given to live their lives into the freedom of the kingdom.
-Br. Robert L’Esperance, SSJE
Vocation
During my novitiate here, there were times, more than once, when I faced the question, “Am I really called to this life?” “Can I continue to follow the call?” At the beginning it sometimes took several days of mulling over the question, later it became a matter of a few hours, and ultimately, whenever that question entered my mind, even in the years after I was professed, I was able within a matter of minutes, or even seconds, to answer myself, “I am able.”
-Br. David Allen, SSJE
Living Word
Biblical texts with contradictions or harsh dissonance can be frustrating, embarrassing, confusing. But the absence of clarity and certainty in the texts can also be God’s way of drawing us away from easy pieties and premature certainties—away from these untruths and to God’s self, the Living Word.
-Br. Mark Brown, SSJE
Kingdom
From the destitute and homeless we hear the message that what is to be is not yet. Our humanity is incomplete, unfulfilled, until none are left out in the cold.
-Br. Mark Brown, SSJE
Resemblance
By recognizing how similar my failure to love is to my enemy’s failure to love, I begin to see that we are in the same boat, we are suffering the same universal malady. I may not be capable of warm fuzzies toward my enemy, but I can at least begin to respect his or her dignity as a human being. I can at least begin to see that we are probably more alike than we would want to think.
-Br. Mark Brown, SSJE
Good News
The program set out in the Gospels is clear: love God and neighbor, heal the sick and raise the dead (at least figuratively), pursue justice, feed the hungry, let the oppressed go free, have faith in the reconciling power of God, live in confident hope of the resurrection to even greater life.
-Br. Mark Brown, SSJE
Reward
We should not seek external reward for service to God and to others because we could easily be distracted from the true reward. The greater satisfaction, the greater gratification, the greater reward is God. God promised to be with us always; God promised to abide in us as we abide in God.
-Br. Mark Brown, SSJE
Ministry
God does not need our prayers in order to call others to ministry, but I believe that God wants our prayers so that we may be aware of the needs of the Church and the world – and be aware of the role of every one of us to help guide, nurture, and encourage those whom we know who are responding to God’s call.
-Br. David Allen, SSJE
Music
God invites us to inhabit love, as we might inhabit music. Love is a kind of silent music—a still, small voice, a sound of sheer silence—that surrounds us on every side. The music of a still small voice that can so easily be overwhelmed by the cacophony of our lives.
-Br. Mark Brown, SSJE
Poverty
As human beings, we have nothing that we can hold up before God. Being human means to be “poor” in the face of God’s total claim on us. By accepting that poverty, Jesus began the process of our salvation; he held back nothing, he clung to nothing.
-Br. Robert L’Esperance, SSJE