Thursday, September 19, 2019

Lord of Love....

Lord of Love, there are so many times in life when I doubt my decisions.  Help me to remember that, no matter which path I choose, I should put my trust in You.  I can't go wrong with You by my side.  Amen.

Luke 7:36-50

A certain Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him,
and he entered the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table.
Now there was a sinful woman in the city
who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee.
Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment,
she stood behind him at his feet weeping
and began to bathe his feet with her tears.
Then she wiped them with her hair,
kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself,
"If this man were a prophet,
he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him,
that she is a sinner."
Jesus said to him in reply,
"Simon, I have something to say to you."
"Tell me, teacher," he said.
"Two people were in debt to a certain creditor;
one owed five hundred days' wages and the other owed fifty.
Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both.
Which of them will love him more?"
Simon said in reply,
"The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven."
He said to him, "You have judged rightly."
Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon,
"Do you see this woman?
When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet,
but she has bathed them with her tears
and wiped them with her hair.
You did not give me a kiss,
but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered.
You did not anoint my head with oil,
but she anointed my feet with ointment.
So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven;
hence, she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven loves little."
He said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."
The others at the table said to themselves,
"Who is this who even forgives sins?"
But he said to the woman,
"Your faith has saved you; go in peace."


Refection question: How do you forgive?

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Almighty God, on this special day we remember that the Cross is the universal image of Christian belief.  Of the Cross, Theodore of Studium said, "How splendid the Cross of Christ!  It brings life, not death; light, not darkness; Paradise, not its loss.  It is the wood on which the Lord, like a great warrior, was wounded in hands and feet and side, but healed thereby our wounds.  A tree has destroyed us, a tree now brought us life."  Help us to remember the importance of this simple yet powerful symbol of our redemption.  Amen.

John 3:13-17

Jesus said to Nicodemus:
"No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.

Refection question: How do I see God as the center of my life?


Monday, September 9, 2019

Shadowboxing - Father Richard Rohr, OFM

Shadowboxing
Sunday, September 8, 2019

 
 
Our shadow self is any part of ourselves or our institutions that we try to hide or deny because it seems socially unacceptable. The church and popular media primarily focus on sexuality and body issues as our “sinful” shadow, but that is far too narrow a definition. The larger and deeper shadow for Western individuals and culture is actually failure itself. Thus, the genius of the Gospel is that it incorporates failure into a new definition of spiritual success. This is why Jesus says that prostitutes and tax collectors are getting into the kingdom of God before the chief priests and religious elders (see Matthew 21:31).
Our success-driven culture scorns failure, powerlessness, and any form of poverty. Yet Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount by praising “the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3)! Just that should tell us how thoroughly we have missed the point of the Gospel. Nonviolence, weakness, and simplicity are also part of the American shadow self. We avoid the very things that Jesus praises, and we try to project a strong, secure, successful image to ourselves and the world. We reject vulnerability and seek dominance instead, and we elect leaders who falsely promise us the same.
I can see why my spiritual father, St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), made a revolutionary and pre-emptive move into the shadow self from which everyone else ran. In effect, Francis said through his lifestyle, “I will delight in powerlessness, humility, poverty, simplicity, and failure.” He lived so close to the bottom of things that there was no place to fall. Even when insulted, he did not take offense. Now that is freedom, or what he called “perfect joy”! [1]
Our shadow is often subconscious, hidden even from our own awareness. It takes effort and life-long practice to look for, find, and embrace what we dismiss, deny, and disdain. After spending so much energy avoiding the very appearance of failure, it will take a major paradigm shift in consciousness to integrate our shadow in Western upwardly mobile cultures. Just know that it is the false self that is sad and humbled by shadow work because its game is over. The True Self, “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), is incapable of being humiliated. It only grows from such supposedly humiliating insight.
One of the great surprises on the human journey is that we come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing our own contradictions, and making friends with our own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably superficial and uninteresting. We tend to endure them more than appreciate them because they have little to communicate and show little curiosity. Shadow work is what I call “falling upward.” Lady Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) put it best of all: “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. And both are the mercy of God!” [2] God hid holiness quite well: the proud will never recognize it, and the humble will fall into it every day—not even realizing it is holiness.


Saturday, September 7, 2019

Do you help people at any time and place?

The Tau House Community is an on-line Blog Christ-centered faith community in the Roman Catholic tradition, open to all in the spirit of Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi.

Our mission is to support each other in our journey with Christ. We give special attention to all who feel disenfranchised and outside the usual care of the Church.


To this end, we provide a blog for prayer, friendship, and service within the community. Feel free to send us your prayer requests, and topics of interest. The email address to send anything to is eja1951@gmail.com



The Orginal Tau Hosue Friary on Governor Nicholls, New Orleans, LA


Luke 6:1-5

While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath,
his disciples were picking the heads of grain,
rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.
Some Pharisees said,
“Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”




Refection question: Do you help people when it's not convenient for you?


Daily Prayer:

Heavenly Father, in a world where technology is literally at our fingertips, it can be difficult to step away from the temptation of our - gadgets - to spend time in prayer with You.  Help us all to remember what is truly important in life.  Amen. 







Friday, September 6, 2019

John 8: 12

I am the light of the world, says the Lord;
whoever follows me will have the light of life.

Father Ralph, OFM sent this and it is worth reading!

To rescue a sinking church, think mission not membership


The American Catholic Church is at a crossroads. Will it choose safety or discipleship?

By Jack Jezreel | Print this pagePrint | Email this pageShare
ARTICLE YOUR FAITH
In Louisville, Kentucky, my hometown, there is a lifesaving parish called St. William. Every week, the single Sunday liturgy in the modest church building in an impoverished neighborhood is filled to capacity with a passionate mix of young and old; black, white, and brown; and religious and lay from dozens of zip codes. 
St. William is a missional church. Everything on Sunday—from the opening song to the 20 minutes of announcements inviting action—is about mission. What the parish does in between Sundays is equally important. With over a dozen active ministries and projects that have evolved into important and impactful nonprofits, St. William has changed the city of Louisville. 
It is exactly what Pope Francis would hope for. The parish Pope Francis is hoping for can happen. If it doesn’t, we will have to satisfy ourselves with being members of an exclusive club or find somewhere else to go. Sadly, data show that finding somewhere else to go is exactly what millions of Catholics, especially young people, are doing and will continue to do. 
In 2019, after six years of leadership by Pope Francis and 50 years of beckoning by the Second Vatican Council, the American Catholic Church is at a crossroads. Will it choose the path of Jesus, St. Francis, Dorothy Day, and now Pope Francis—the path of discipleship? Or will it preoccupy itself with “house rules,” self-contained recipes for salvation, and clerical fetish? In many ways, everything is at stake: the future of the church’s social mission, the future of the parish, and even the future of the planet. 
Think of the church as a lifesaving station on a dangerous seacoast with frequent shipwrecks. The building was originally just a hut and there was only one boat, but the completely devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea and went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many were saved by this station, so it became famous. Some of those saved and others in the surrounding areas then gave their time and money to support its work. New boats were bought and crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew. 
Time passed. Some members of the lifesaving station became unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. So they replaced the cots with beds, put in better furniture, and enlarged the building. Soon the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its proud members; they redecorated it beautifully and used it as a kind of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club decorations, however, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where club initiations were held. 
About this time, a large ship was wrecked off the coast and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty, wounded, sick, and some had different colored skin. The beautiful new club was left untidy and muddy. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where shipwreck victims could clean up before coming inside. 
At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Some leaders wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities, seeing them as an unpleasant hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some of the members insisted that lifesaving was their primary purpose. But they were voted down and told that if they wanted to save the various people shipwrecked on those waters, they could start their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did. 
But as the years went by the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that seacoast today, you find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.
As with the life station, over time the church’s mission, initially so inspiring and life-changing, gradually atrophies into something much less than it had been in its origin. The seemingly innocuous choices—perhaps reasonable, maybe well‑intentioned, but ultimately uninspired—of generation after generation can steer what had been a heroic project into a cozy but irrelevant organization. In time, there is little left that resembles the courage and sacrifice of the original narrative. 
That movements, organizations, missions—and churches—can lose their way and vitality is not surprising or unusual. Indeed, it seems that transformative causes, ignited by passion, religious enthusiasm, and remarkable generosity, must sooner or later mutate into an institutional form that can sustain the work; otherwise, these causes often die with the founders and their followers. However, the risk of institutionalizing is that the potency of the original cause can fade in the busyness and distractions of budgets, buildings, power, self-preoccupation, and lesser goals. Discipleship is replaced by membership. Lifesaving is replaced by club picnics. 
One intention of Vatican II was/is to steer the Catholic community back to its origins, back to its “lifesaving” narrative. One could argue—I would—that the momentum toward Vatican II starts with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor) in 1891, which marks the official beginning of Catholic social teaching. In Rerum Novarum, the church navigates the danger and exploitation of the Industrial Revolution and speaks to matters of workplace safety, the proper treatment of children, just wages, and the needs of the poor, to name only a few. It explores—without saying so exactly—what love means in this time and place. 
What happened between Rerum Novarum in 1891 and Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home) in 2015 is the unfolding story of a step-by-step embrace of the gospel call to love, justice, peace, and mercy. It hasn’t been a perfect reckoning—uneven in passion, focus, and strategy—but it’s a reckoning nevertheless. It chronicles the rebirth of the language of discipleship in the Catholic lexicon. It is an effort to remember and reclaim the memory, legacy, and mission of lifesaving. 
Francis’ message is part of this continuing unfolding. Many have been surprised by his words and actions, but all that Francis has been/spoken/done is resonant with Catholic social teaching, the witness of saints, and the best work of Catholic agencies. What is distinctive and compelling about Pope Francis—as the church’s primary communicator—is that he has dedicated himself to crafting a message and vocabulary that are fresh, provocative, and enticing as concerns the church’s mission of engaged love and discipleship. 
Moreover, he has integrated this message in all matters of the church. No longer can social mission be considered an optional menu item on the smorgasbord of church life; it is central. It is not only central to Catholic social ethics, but also to Catholic identity, leadership, the terms of salvation, and even the survival of the planet.
It is also central to the parish; at least it ought to be. 
In Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), the first and most startling message of Francis’ papacy, he invites a rethinking of parish life so that discipleship and mission, not just membership, are etched into the DNA of parish programming. He writes, “I hope that all communities will devote the necessary effort to advancing along the path of a pastoral and missionary conversion which cannot leave things as they presently are.” I’m ready. 
The challenge facing the “conversion” of parishes is a legacy of overemphasis on membership. The heart of Catholic identity and community has come to be identified with its sacramental life. Sacramental language and practice, like all religious language and ritual, is elastic; that is both a strength and weakness. Positively, the history and theology of sacraments can accommodate both belonging and commissioning. At its best, Catholicism does both. Unhappily, the legacy of sacramental preparation and language on the parish level has essentially denuded the life of faith of its missional opportunities through an overemphasis on membership. 
This is why, for example, Catholic social teaching remains the “church’s best kept secret,” to quote an oft-used phrase. Catholic social teaching, to be clear, is a critical part of the blueprint for Catholic discipleship. It is not a specialized vocabulary for nuns, missionaries, activists, and Catholic Relief Services; it is a tool for translating the gospel mandate to love into real-life action in a world of poverty, abandonment, disparity, tribalism, war, climate change, and greed. To follow Jesus requires a good map and some dedicated preparation; love, like lifesaving, is hard. 
When faith is disconnected from discipleship, mission, justice, and compassion, religious commitment becomes small, disconnected, and potentially narcissistic and otherworldly. It’s not that we should expect perfection from the baptized and ordained, but it seems reasonable to think that the formation of believers and leaders must include a robust reckoning with the invitation to simplicity, the responsibility of wealth, the call to compassion, and solidarity with the poor. 
Several years ago, a few parishioners at St. William proposed the renovation of an underused building into an inner-city retreat ministry for young people. For almost two decades, high school and college students have been invited to week- or weekend-long retreat experiences that emphasize encounter with the marginalized of the inner city, theological reflection, and prayer. Every year, hundreds of young people walk in the footsteps of Jesus, learn and pray together, and are profoundly impacted by the experience. Besides providing an important formation opportunity for the church’s next generation—essentially equipping them to do the work of compassion and justice—the impact of this ministry is a growing parish population of young people and families. 
During a very lively JustFaith justice formation session at my parish, one of the participants remarked that he was being profoundly impacted by the experience. But he went on to ask, “How could it be that I am 59 years old, have gone to Mass every Sunday of my life, and I’ve never heard any of this [Catholic social teaching] before?” He continued, with tears welling up in his eyes, “I can imagine I would have lived a very different life. I would have raised my children differently and made choices that only now seem imaginable.”
The real crisis of divorcing parish from mission is that it effectively shortchanges the invitation of faith. Religious education, sacramental preparation, assumptions of parish membership, and parish staffing and budget must reflect that its mission is to heal the world into fullness. The church will only survive and thrive by living and proclaiming a message that invites the community to be a witness to social and spiritual transformation, by embodying, sacramentalizing, and celebrating a love that can feed the hungry, clothe the naked, save those lost at sea, and make justice roll like a river. 
This article also appears in the September 2019 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 84, No. 9, pages 25–27).

How do you prepare daily for the Bridegroom of your life?

Loving God, watch over everyone who is experiencing financial hardships.  Give them hope for change in their lives and help them through these difficult times.  May they put their trust in You.  Amen.   

Luke 5:33-39

The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
"The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers,
and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same;
but yours eat and drink."
Jesus answered them, "Can you make the wedding guests fast
while the bridegroom is with them?
But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
then they will fast in those days."
And he also told them a parable.
"No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one.
Otherwise, he will tear the new
and the piece from it will not match the old cloak.
Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins.
Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins,
and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.
Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.
And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new,
for he says, 'The old is good.'"

Refection question: How do you prepare daily for the Bridegroom of your life? 

How can we pray for you?

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