Posts Tagged ‘Prayer’
Turning to God for the help we need – Br. David Vryhof
Br. David Vryhof
It can be difficult to rightly interpret a text when we’re given just a snippet of it, as we are in today’s gospel reading. To better understand it, we need to see it in its broader context.
These verses are part of Jesus’ farewell discourse, given to his disciples after the Last Supper and before his betrayal and trial. He has told them that “in a little while” they will not see him and “in a little while” they will see him again. Naturally, the disciples are confused about what this could mean and struggle to grasp the reality that he is about to leave them.
It is unclear, too, what John is referring to when he records these words of Jesus that he will go away and then come again. Does this refer to Jesus dying and then being raised? Does it refer to his ascension into heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit (a major theme in the farewell discourse)? Does it refer to Jesus coming again in glory at the end of time? We’re not sure. It may refer to all three. John is used to speaking to his readers on different levels, so he could have all three of these possibilities in mind.
Notice that there is a kind of apocalyptic reversal here: when he goes away, Jesus says, his disciples will “weep and mourn” but the world – i.e. Jesus’ enemies – “will rejoice” (16:20). It will seem for a time as if Jesus’ enemies have prevailed, but then, Jesus promises them, “Your pain will turn into joy.” He likens it to childbirth, noting that a woman in labor has pain, “but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world” (16:21). In the same way, says Jesus, “you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (16:22). Read More
Saint Monica, Praying Her Heart Out – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
Saint Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo
1 Samuel 1:10-20
Psalm 115:12-18
Luke 7:11-17
In the calendar of the church we remember today Saint Monica for her patience, and perseverance, and faithfulness. She was born in north Africa about year 430, and became an ardent Christian. Not so for her husband, Patricius, a Roman administrator known for his temper and infidelities, nor by their son, Augustine, who took after his father. Monica prayed and prayed for them, and a miracle happened. Shortly before his death, her husband converted to Christianity, and thereafter, the wild son, Augustine, also. Some years later, Augustine would write in his Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Very autobiographical.
The three lessons from the Bible appointed for today all tell stories about prayer for children. Whether or not we be parents, most likely all of us carry in our hearts people who have garnered our heart’s attention. We carry a deep concern for them, a fear for them, a hope for them, a love for them. We may pray for them, perhaps ardently, either because they have asked us to pray, or because we have been drawn to pray for them. Perhaps we pray because there is nothing else we can do. We are otherwise powerless to make a difference in their lives. So we pray.
Prayer is a mystery, a mystery that begins in God. Our prayer is always in response to God’s initiative. It is God who has caught our attention. Mysteriously, in our prayer for others, we invoke God of the heavens meanwhile being grounded in God’s love, God’s healing light, God’s presence here on earth. It is like we complete a triangle: God, our own self, these other persons for whom we pray. In my own prayer for others I often remember the image given to us by Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century abbess and mystic. Hildegard said we are like mirrors, catching God’s light and then mirroring that light onto the countenance others. Whatever prompts us to pray for others, we are always responding to God’s initiative.
Who Monica’s son, Augustine, would become held a stature far beyond all that she could have asked for or imagined, especially given what a bad, bad boy he was. Monica sets a very high ceiling for hope in how we and others can change, amazingly, miraculously for the better. So we pray our hearts out.
Blessed Monica, whom we remember today.
What’s next? – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
What’s next? Much anxiety stems from what we don’t know. Fearing uncertainty, we often grasp what we know and have. Nicodemus, a religious leader, came to Jesus sounding confident. “We know who you are.” We know what is possible and impossible. By what you’re doing, “you must be a teacher from God.” Jesus replied, “No one can see the kingdom without being born from above.” How is that possible? Nicodemus asked. “Can one enter the womb again?” Jesus said, “One must be born of water and spirit.” How is that possible? Nicodemus came thinking he knew what’s possible and what’s true. Nicodemus came at night, a sign that he’s in the dark, that he cannot see, and does not know.
We, too, are often in the dark, trapped, thinking we can see. We get trapped by the certainty that someone will act a particular way. We assume from experience and claim our knowledge. Perhaps you’re like me finding yourself grasping with assumptions, holding so tight that you cannot hear another possibility about that person, or about yourself, or about God. Out of anxiety we construct containers of limiting expectations. We grasp at knowing Jesus and like Thomas we want to see. We want evidence and think we know what we must have. Read More
Relax Trusting – Br. Luke Ditewig
Br. Luke Ditewig
“Are you greater than our father Abraham?” They were confused and upset. How could those who kept Jesus’ word not see death? They clung to what they knew, to being Abraham’s children, so much that they could not see and understand Jesus who was with them.
In our own confusion and pain, it can be hard to hear, hard to see God with us. What might you be clinging to so tightly that you’re not seeing? What’s getting in the way of receiving Jesus?
Sometimes we cling to who we are or what we have: heritage, group-identity, connections. We cling to the people we love or who love us best, our meaningful relationships. We cling to comfort or privilege, standard of living, status, or success. We cling to abilities, gifts, how we serve, what we do well, including for God. Read More
God’s Conditional Love; Why It All Matters – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
When I was a teenager I heard a chaplain say that God’s love for us is “unconditional.” On the surface, this sounded fabulous to me because I was a very mixed bag. Actually, I was a mess. And the thought that God actually loves me – me! – unconditionally was something I desperately (though very secretly) needed to know. By that point I was in high school, and it so happens I had trained to be a lifeguard. In actuality, it was like I who was drowning in my own stuff. I needed to be rescued; I needed to be saved from my self-disdain. That’s an adult term, “self-disdain.” As a teenager, I hated myself. So if it were true that God’s love for me, for us, is unconditional, then sign me up.
God’s love for each of us is vast and so personal. Who we are, what we are, however it is we’ve gotten to be where we are, God knows, God lures, God loves. Rather than calling this God’s “unconditional love,” I now think of this as God’s “conditional love.” Because life is inescapably full of conditions and circumstances, changes and chances, and God’s love for us is neither theoretical nor generic. God’s love for us is real and personal, woven into the fabric of our lives from the very beginning. God so loves our own world. Read More
The Divine Rule of Prayer – Br. James Koester
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One of Father Benson’s less well-known books is a small volume entitled The Divine Rule of Prayer or Considerations upon the Lord’s Prayer. It was published in 1866, the same year he, Father Grafton, and Father O’Neill made their professions as the first members of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist.
What is fascinating, in part, about this book, is that in two short chapters, both about 2500 words long, he lays before the reader his understanding of the nature and purpose of prayer. He does this by constantly rooting himself in Lord’s Prayer, of which he says as prayer is the great work of life, so the Lord’s Prayer is the great form and model of [all] prayer.[1]
Many of the themes which Father Benson introduces to his audience in this book, he picks up repeatedly over the course of his life, in his other writings. Reading things published many years after The Divine Rule we hear echoes of what he says within it, perhaps reminding us that most, including it would seem Father Benson, have only one or two things worth saying, and we spend the rest of our lives saying them in different ways. Read More
Stay near to Jesus – Br. Todd Blackham
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Br. Todd Blackham
Exodus 24:12-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
Psalm 2 or Psalm 99
When’s the last time you were good and truly dazzled? Was it a big budget movie in a state-of-the-art theater, or the big game on an ultra-high def TV? Was it the majestic beauty of a sunrise or the sparkle in a beloved’s eyes? You know the feeling of delighted awe. But, we live in a culture that chases the next dazzling thing so fast that it’s hard to keep pace. We become bored so quickly that it takes increasingly more to wow us again.
The disciples were good and truly dazzled that day on the mountaintop with Jesus. Something was revealed to them that they had not previously apprehended and they reacted in powerful ways. To describe the phenomenon, the gospel accounts use words like dazzling, brilliant, whiter than anyone could bleach, and one translation uses the word glistering. Like a combination of glistening and blistering. Glistering, it makes me think of something that you can see and feel all at once. There’s a kind of excitement that sets in at first. Peter blurts out excitedly about building canopies to mark the place. That eagerness though is only a first response. Soon something else sets in. As the bright cloud enveloped them they were overcome by fear. This has turned into a very different experience than simple amazement.
Some of the artwork depicts the scene with the disciples gazing with a stoic arm up against the light, but I love the more honest depictions with some of the disciples flipped completely upside down, contorted and sprawled out on the ground, terrified. Read More
Namedropping Jesus – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
The Holy Name of Jesus
The federal government tracks a lot of information, including “The Top 10 Baby Names” for any given year.[i]For baby girls, currently the most popular name is Olivia, followed by Emma, then Charlotte, Amelia, Ava, Sophia… and on it goes. For baby boys, currently the most popular name is Liam, followed by Noah, then Oliver, Elijah, James, William… and on it goes.
The naming of a baby is no accident, don’t you know? The child’s given name or names may be the continuation of a family’s heritage, or the opposite: a sign of a family’s wanting to start afresh with the birth of this child. The child’s name may express identity, or dignity, or hope, or gratitude. Sometimes names demarcate a family’s history. One of my nephews has a middle name “Taif,” which is Saudi Arabian, because he was born while his father (my brother) was working in the Persian Gulf. We are known, remembered, identified, and called by name.
As children grow up, they will name their belongings, and they will be in relationship with everything they name. Children will often take on new, imaginary names for themselves, and with the names, new exploratory identities. I remember one summer as a young camper far away from home, I told all my cabin buddies that they should call me “Butch,” because I was tough. (That’s probably hard to imagine….) It worked pretty well for a week at camp, but my new identity disappeared when I returned home to face my little brother. He certainly did not know me as “Butch”; he was still struggling to simply say “Curtis” or “Curt,” which he could not pronounce. What he could say was “Dirt.” “Hi Dirt!”, which hardly suited someone trying to be “Butch.” For names to last, they need to fit. Read More
Seeing and Being Seen – Br. David Vryhof
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When I was a child, I learned a song about Zaccheus. I won’t sing it for you, but the words went like this:
Zaccheus was a wee little man; a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see…
The fascination of the story for children, of course, is that this small but important man clamored up a tree to get a better look at the popular preacher who had come to town. He was curious and determined, and he didn’t let his small stature deter him from realizing his goal.
We can picture him running ahead of the crowd, climbing into a tree, and looking down the road as Jesus approached. He hides himself among the leaves, wanting to see the prophet, but not expecting to be seen by him. And yet this is exactly what happens. Jesus stops the procession, looks up into the branches, and summons Zaccheus to come down. He already knows who Zaccheus is – not only that he is a tax collector, but that he is a chief tax collector – but he also perceives that there is far more to this little man than what his title and role might suggest. Perhaps he senses Zaccheus’ present dissatisfaction with his life, or perhaps he recognizes his hunger for God. Whatever it is, he sees something and invites Zaccheus to a life-changing conversation. Read More
The Comparable Parable – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
The Blessed Virgin Mary, God-Bearer
Jesus’ story about the widow and the judge is one of his parables. This is a made-up story Jesus told, which is to say it did not really happen. Except that it did happen. Every day.
Widows were everywhere, and most of them were dirt poor. The Old Testament prophets and the early church continually named the suffering widows because their needs were as great as their numbers. They were as common as chattel, and often treated the same on the streets and in the courts. The Hebrew word referring to a widow literally means “an empty house.” No one home; nowhere to belong. You will know about this emptiness if you have been widowed… or, for that matter, if you have been orphaned from your parents; or separated from people, or places, or things where you belonged… or never belonged; or if you intercede for other people who live with estrangement, poverty and injustice in our suffering world.
Which is why parables are comparable, because they imply a comparison, an analogy, an elaboration, or an illustration.[i] So how is Jesus’ parable comparable to your own life, or to your life’s concerns? How is this your story? How is Jesus’ parable about the suffering and importunate widow and the jaded judge – the ultimately-converted judge – your story? What does Jesus’ parable invite from you and your own needs, or your concerns for others? The answer is yours.
This parable is surely an invitation to cry out our hearts, and bang on the gates of heaven. Jesus’ parable invites and provokes that. And if God-the-judge seems too intimidating, or too distant, or too much of a male for you to safely cry out your heart, then tell the Blessed Virgin Mary, who seems to have God’s ear.
[i] The New Testament Greek word parabolē, means, literally, “that which is tossed alongside,” implying a comparison, an analogy, an elaboration, or an illustration. From “Biblical Parables” by Fred B. Craddock in Interpretation; Luke (John Knox Press, 1990; pp. 108-110.