18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 18^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A): The Feast of the Transfiguration

 

Readings:  Daniel 7: 9-10. 13 – 14; 2 Peter 1: 16 -19; Matthew 17: 1-9

 

Selected Passage: While he was still speaking, behold a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “ this I my beloved Son, whom I am well pleased; listen to him." (Matthew 17: 5)

 

Meditation: The challenge of the Gospel today is to experience our own transformation. This is primarily a gift from God - a grace given to make us turn to the Lord by LISTENING to his beloved Son, Jesus Christ.  We need to experience our own transfiguration – that is being like to God!

Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

Syria's Cathedral - Symbol of Hope

Syrian cathedral, a glimmer of hope in the midst of chaos

By Xavier Le Normand

Aleppo has long been a martyred city.

In the nine years since the outbreak of fighting in Syria, it has been at the heart of the clashes.

As a consequence, it has lost four-fifths of its diverse Christian population.

There are only about 30,000 people left from the various denominations. Most of them are elderly. Most of the younger Christians have fled the war torn country.

Despite this dramatic situation, Aleppo's newly restored Maronite Cathedral was due to be re-opened on July 20.

St. Elijah's Cathedral suffered severe damage from bombings. Its roof had been totally destroyed.

"It is a sign of hope after the feeling of having lost everything," rejoiced Archbishop Joseph Tobji, Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo.

"We need to send a message of faith to show that Eastern Christians still exist in Aleppo and that death does not prevail over us," he said.

(Le Croix Internationale, July 22/20)

Our 3 Temptations

OUR THREE TEMPTATIONS

We are all made in God’s image and likeness, blessed, and our private secret that we are special is, in fact, the deepest truth. However, that isn’t always easy to believe. Life and circumstance often tire us in ways that tempt us to believe its opposite. It happened to Jesus. 

During his baptism, Jesus heard his Father say: “You are my blessed son, in whom I take delight.”

But throughout his life Jesus struggled to always believe that. For instance, immediately after his baptism, we are told, the spirit drove him into the desert where he fasted for forty days and forty nights – and afterwards “he was hungry”. Obviously what scripture is describing here is not simply physical hunger. Jesus was empty in ways that made him vulnerable to believe that he was not God’s blessed child.

Jesus was first tempted by the devil in the desert, to this effect:  “If you are God’s specially blessed one, turn these stones into bread.” In essence, the devil’s taunt was this: “If you believe that you are God’s specially blessed creature, why is your life so empty?” Jesus’ reply, “One doesn’t live on bread alone!” might be rendered: “I can be empty and still be God’s blessed one! Being blessed and special is not dependent upon how full or empty my life is at a given moment!”

It is good to remember, namely, that we are God’s special, blessed sons and daughters, even when we lives seem empty, anonymous, and devoid of any special privileges because then we won’t forever be putting God and our restless hearts to the test, demanding more than ordinary life can give us.

To read about Jesus’ other two temptations in the desert click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/our-three-temptations/#.XvDdwPJ7k_8

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17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 17^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A): Parables of the Kingdom

 

Readings: 1 Kings 3: 5. 7-12; Romans 8: 28 - 30; Matthew 13: 44 – 52

 

Selected Passage: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13: 44)

 

Meditation: The Kingdom of God is treasure is hidden in each one of us. The kingdom (reign) of God is a mystery. We cannot have a complete picture of it.

Thus, the real challenge is to find it within us and in others and let the reign of God flourish and shine before all.

 

The first reading gives us the prayer of Solomon: “Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong. For who is able to govern this vast people of yours?" (1 KIi9ng 3: 8) Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

When What Is Precious Is Taken from You

WHEN WHAT IS PRECIOUS IS TAKEN FROM YOU

Our kids grow up and leave home, friends move away, loved ones die, we lose our health, and eventually, we die too. Moreover even what is precious to us in terms of our faith and values suffers in the same way: things change, thoughts and feelings shift, rock foundations that once anchored us unassailably give way, doubt creeps in, the bottom falls out, and we are left wondering what we really believe in and what really can be trusted.

Happily, this is only half the equation: Everything we lose is eventually given back to us, and in a deeper way. Our kids become wonderful adults who begin to parent us, new bonds of friendship form across distance, we reconnect in a deeper and more permanent way to our loved ones who have died, we find something deeper and more permanent than physical health, death opens us up to the infinite, and the bottom falling out of old beliefs sends us free-falling to a place where we land on bedrock, on a foundation so secure that it can never be shaken again.

We see the pattern for this in scripture in the story of the Jewish community and the Babylonian exile. After arriving in Palestine (“the Promised Land”) it took a number of generations to establish control over the land, unite all the various tribes into one nation, and build a temple in Jerusalem as center for worship.

But then the Assyrians came and conquered the land, deported all the people to Babylon, killed the king, and knocked down the temple to its last stone. With that, the loss of land, king, and temple, the bottom fell out of their world, religiously and literally. How to you continue to believe, trust, and live in joy when all that once anchored these has been taken from you?

God’s answer was this: You will find me again, when you search for me in a deeper way, with your whole heart, your whole mind, and your whole soul.

God gives us that same answer today whenever we feel betrayed, orphaned, and disoriented in this same way.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser
http://ronrolheiser.com/when-what-is-precious-is-taken-from-you/#.XwsyMpNKh0s

God's Ineffability

GOD’S INEFFABILITY – WHAT’S REVEALED IN JESUS’ EYES?

That means that we can know God, but never adequately capture God in a concept. God is unimaginable. If God could be understood, then God would be as limited as we are.

But God is infinite. Infinity, precisely because it’s unlimited, cannot be circumscribed. We don’t even have a way of picturing God’s gender. God is not a man, not a woman, and not some hybrid, half-man and half-woman. God’s gender, like God’s nature, is intellectually inconceivable. We can’t grasp it and have no language or pronoun for it. God, in a modality beyond the categories of human thought, is somehow perfect masculinity and perfect femininity all at the same time. It’s a mystery beyond us.

But while that mystery cannot be grasped with any rational adequacy, we can know it intimately, and indeed know it so deeply that it’s meant to be the most intimate of all knowledge in our lives. It’s no accident that the bible uses the verb “to know” to connote sexual intimacy. There are different ways of knowing, some more inchoate, intuitive, and intimate than others. We can know God in a radical intimacy, even as we cannot conceptualize God with any adequacy.

So, where does that leave us with God? In the best of places! God may be ineffable, but God’s nature is known. Divine revelation, as seen through nature, as seen through other religions, and especially as seen through Jesus, spells out what’s inside God’s ineffable reality. And what’s revealed there is both comforting beyond all comfort and challenging beyond all challenge.

Nature, religion, and Jesus conspire together to reveal an Ultimate Reality, a Ground of Being, a Creator and Sustainer of the universe, a God, who is wise, intelligent, prodigal, compassionate, loving, forgiving, patient, good, trustworthy, and beautiful beyond imagination.

God cannot be deciphered, circumscribed, or captured in human thought; but from what can be deciphered, we’re in good, safe hands. We can sleep well at night. God has our back.  In the end, both for humanity as a whole and for our own individual lives, all will be well, and all will be well, and every manner of being will be well. God is good.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/gods-ineffability-whats-revealed-in-jesus-eyes/#.Xv8-5JNKh0s
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6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 16^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A): Parables of the Kingdom

 

Readings: Wisdom 12: 13, 16-19; Romans 8: 26-27; Matthew 13: 24-43

 

Gospel Passage: “Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn’.” (Matthew 13: 30)

 

Meditation: Meditating on the weed and the wheat, we pray that we become the wheat and not the destructive weed that is destined for burning…

 

It is a mystery why God does NOT immediately prune society or community of weeds but waits until each person’s nature is revealed.  This would allow us to recognize the process that transforms others and us from what look bad at the beginning into something good. It is the awesome and miraculous transformation from sinners to Saints. Thus we need to be OPEN and be patient…! Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

 

 

 

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Short Reflection for the 15^th Sunday of the Ordinary Time (A):

 

Readings: Isaiah 55: 10 -11; Romans 8: 18 -23; Matthew 13: 1-9

 

Selected Passage: “Some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear."(Matthew 13: 8-9)

 

Meditation: The challenge is to provide fertile soil for seed sown in us at Baptism so that we can produce fruit in plenty – both in words and in actions. Through our good deeds, we make the soil fertile  for the Word of God to bear fruit abundantly. Do not let the Word of God fall on deaf ears. Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

 

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

 

Dhikr is an Arabic word which means REMEMBRANCE.

1st step: Write the text in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

 

 

Everyday Life as Sacrament

EVERYDAY LIFE AS SACRAMENT

Our belief is that the universe shows forth God’s glory. That means each of us is made in God’s image, that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, that the food we eat is sacramental, and that in our work and in our sexual embrace, we are co-creators with God.

In Christianity “the word becomes flesh”, God enters into the physical and thus everything that is physical is potentially sacramental. It’s noteworthy that scripture does not simply say that God became a human being. It says more: “God becomes flesh” - physical, earth. 

There are many reasons why we aren’t more habitually alert to the fact that we are standing on holy ground. Although our everyday activities come laden with sacrament, most of them are rooted in the fact that we are human, that life is long, and that it isn’t easy to sustain high symbols, high language, and high ideals in the muck and grime of everyday life.

Eating, working, and making love should be holy, but too often we do them more for survival than for any sacramentality and “getting by” is about as high a symbol as we can muster on a weekday. I say this with sympathy. It isn’t easy, day by day, hour by hour, to experience sacrament in the ordinary actions of our lives.

But there’s another reason why we have lost the sense of sacramentality in our lives, namely, we have too little prayer and ritual around our ordinary actions. We too seldom use prayer or ritual to connect our actions – eating, drinking, working, socializing, making love, giving birth to things – to their sacred origins.

Generally, we don’t connect our food to its sacred origins, don’t consider our work as co-creation with God, don’t bless our workplaces and boardrooms, and would shrink at the very thought of blessing a bedroom where sex takes place.

We are the poorer for that, not just religiously, but humanly.

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/everyday-life-as-sacrament/#.XvDYMPJ7k_8
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