Each week, Lisa reflects on the Sunday readings, inviting you to encounter Christ in Scripture and discover how His word speaks to your life today.
Each day we are invited. Invited to the banquet of the Lord, to spend quality time alone with Him. How easy it can be to come up with a list of excuses! We hear in the Gospel of Matthew about some of these excuses. We may refuse or ignore the invitation, we can use busyness as an excuse, prioritizing our work or running errands over the invitation of feasting with the Lord.
Lately, the Lord has been inviting me to spend my prayer time with Him differently. I usually enjoy spending time with Him, reading books, often by the saints or Spirit filled writers. I seek the nuggets of wisdom and then excitedly move on to receive the next inspiration. But lately He has been inviting me to slow down. To actually meditate and reflect on each nugget as I encounter it, gnaw on it slowly, let it sink in and sustain my appetite, not moving on to the next delectable thought so ravenously. It has been challenging, especially at first. He has continuously invited me to be present, to be, to enjoy the time with Him, to rest with Him. He has revealed to me that when I am set on my own agenda of reading for the next nugget, I am not being open to receiving all the graces He wants to reign down upon me. I am denying the abundance of His love, His strength, His favor from moving from my head to dwelling in my heart. That comes with resting in Him. I have the opportunity to dwell in the house of the Lord by saying yes to His invitation of being present with Him.
I have seen the fruit that has come with saying yes to this feast of the Lord. It has become easier to just be, the more I answer yes. I desire it more and look forward to it. The time together starts to go fast, and sometimes I am jolted because of a noise, that startles me, because I was so comforted and at peace in His Presence.
Today, my meditation was on the importance of mental prayer, and how it is necessary for allowing knowledge of God to move from my head to my heart. It is truly spending time with Him, in silence, allowing Him to hold me and to speak to me. It is where my cup fills so that it overflows, like we hear in today’s Psalm. It’s where we know in our heart that He is at our side, giving us the courage we need to live boldly in His abundance. What are your excuses for not feasting with the Lord? Ask Him for the grace to say yes to His invitation to rest with Him in a quiet place each day.
Are there any areas of your life in which you are producing sour grapes? As I reflect upon this question God placed on my heart, after reading today’s Scripture from the Prophet Isaiah, the answer is yes. There is an activity or job at the retreat center which I do not enjoy. I try to avoid it until I can’t, because someone is needed. Beforehand, I grumble to myself, it effects my mood and can block all the graces God wishes to bestow upon me. But God reveals to me, that it is actually something I am good at, something which allows me to build comradery and teamwork, something that helps build up the culture at St. Clare, something in which I have ideas and practices which can help this vineyard be fruitful, be bountiful, when I am not the landowner on that particular day, something that helps me produce good fruit in this vineyard.
When we enter into an environment, especially one in which we are not too thrilled to be in, we can produce sour grapes and trample over all the good fruit, or we can allow God to prune us of our desire and our will and unify it with the Lord’s to make that environment fruitful. Our attitude has an effect on our vineyard. As I drive to the retreat center on these days, I invite God into this place, asking Him to help merit graces for me, those who are working alongside me and those we are serving and He helps change my mindset, knowing there is fruit which He wants to bring to that vineyard through me. Saint Paul shares how we are called to bring bountiful harvests to the land we work, dwell and encounter others, so that we may have peace, gratitude and a heart and mind focused on Jesus. Be true, just, honorable, pure, gracious and praise God in everything. So I praise God that He allowed me to turn my sour grapes attitude into one in which He allowed me to be a part of a fruitful harvest and He let me witness that and the fruits it bears!
Sometimes it is hard to get out of that mindset, so that is why it is so important for me to bring these things to God, my anxiety, my request to help me be a vessel of a good harvest and not a sour grape distributor. While I let myself get into a negative head space beforehand, I thank God I had an awareness and that I brought it to Him, before I arrived at the vineyard because as we hear in today’s Gospel from Matthew, He wants us to produce good fruit. What situation are you producing sour grapes in your life? Ask God to help you be a vessel of a fruitful harvest in that situation.
Life is just not fair! That is a statement often made when talking about many situations that we face. We desire one outcome and another occurs. Why didn’t I get the promotion? Why did I have a setback in my recovery? Why Lord, did you let this happen to me? But the truth as we hear from Isaiah is: As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts. While God permits things to happen to us, because he lovingly gives us free will, He brings about our good through them. Often, we are blinded to this possibility when we are faced with the challenge, especially initially, but His ways are above our ways. These obstacles are actually opportunities to grow in holiness, to grow in virtue, to grow closer to the One who wants to carry us through the rocky soil. It is an opportunity to surrender to Him.
We can change our question of why, to how are You calling me into deeper relationship with You, Lord? What virtue are You calling me to grow in, to displace this vice? Where are you leading me to serve You? The Psalm tells us, The Lord is near to all who call upon him. Calling on Him and asking how, where, what questions, can help us to understand that a door that is closed, is an opportunity to be redirected deeper into His embrace, to trust that there is a greater plan than we cannot see at the moment, but to trust that there is goodness that can come from it. An opportunity to magnify the Lord, as Saint Paul states in his letter to the Philippians.
Saint Paul who was shipwrecked several times, beaten, imprisoned, sought to magnify Jesus to others. We can do the same, especially when we share our brokenness, our weaknesses and how God uses them to glorify Him. Think of Jesus’ wounds, they glorify God and the same can be said of our wounds. When we invite the Divine Love of Jesus into those areas of hurt, He redeems them and brings glory to Himself through them. These wounds can help us empathize with others, move us to compassion to minister to the brokenhearted, be a loving ear to those around us. Our relationship with Jesus is our first apostolate. When we place Him first, we are moved to who He desires us to serve.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us that all service ranks the same with God. It is not the amount of service given, but the love in which it is given which matters. A very powerful message, as the whole point of work, is the Spirit in which it is done. In our outcome-based society, let this be a door to enter into. An opportunity to ask, Lord, am I serving with love?
A few weeks ago, the Lord convicted my heart after reading the Gospel of the Canaanite woman. The apostles wanted to send the woman away, some commentators say they wanted Jesus to give her what she asked for out of annoyance, but Jesus always serves from love and compassion. I realized I was annoyed that I had to clean up the garbage at the retreat center because the group that was there that weekend, did not. The Lord revealed that I was not doing this from a place of love, but that I should be rejoicing that people are spending time at the retreat center growing closer to Him. I should be thankful for large amounts of trash because that means a large amount of people were there seeking a deeper intimacy with Him. I am called to glorify God by picking up trash with love, not saying this is not fair, why was the trash not picked up. Call upon the Lord, so that your work may be an opportunity to serve with love and magnify Jesus.
Forgiveness – it can be really hard. When we hold on to unforgiveness, we are hugging wrath and anger tight. The prophet Sirach says, Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord? How true this is! Bitterness, anger, resentment – these are all feelings that may bubble up from deep within us when we see or think about that person who hurt us. Those things block the grace that God wants to fill us with that will give us the strength to make a choice to forgive. A lack of forgiveness only hurts us.
There was a person who I struggled to forgive for years. As I grew closer to Jesus, I began to understand that the Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion, as we hear in today’s Psalm. The Lord is compassionate and merciful with me and all the times I mess up, all the times that I fall. Through a deeper relationship with Him, I realized that I am called to forgive the person who hurt me.
I returned to the Sacrament of Reconciliation after decades away, experiencing firsthand the power of forgiveness the Lord bestowed upon me, knowing as hard I as I was struggling, I was also called to forgive. I would constantly bring the sin of unforgiveness to my confessor, and my penance was always to pray for the person, offer the Mass for the person. Through the Sacramental Grace of Reconciliation, spiritual direction and a deeper understanding that I am the Lord’s, as we hear from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, I was no longer imprisoned by the prison sentence of unforgiveness.
In the Gospel, we hear how the master tortured the wicked servant, but we are actually the ones tortured when we fail to forgive. We live with hardened hearts; we react from a place of hurt instead of confidence that we are beloved children of the Most High King.
I was watching a movie, called We Believe. In it, the town pastor shares with one of the high school football players, that forgiveness soothes, it cleanses our souls. How true! When we can forgive others as our heavenly Father does, it brings healing to our soul, a freedom that comes only from the Lord, whom we belong.
This morning I spent time outside, taking advantage of the cool shade, reading and reflecting. I heard a familiar sound of a bird. I could not place it, but I did not investigate any further as I was wrapped up in my reading. An hour or so later, I got up and began to walk around my yard, admiring the blooms and beauty of God’s creation, stopping every few moments to pull some weeds.
As I was walking along one of my garden beds, I heard that familiar bird sound, looked up and saw a majestic bald eagle swoop down from the pine tree above me. All that time I had been outside, a bald eagle was perched in my pine tree and I did not see it and disregarded its call. How many times have I failed to see God’s presence in a situation? How often do I fail to recognize God’s voice?
God spoke to me through this eagle. He revealed to me the importance of spiritual mentorship, the value of Christ centered friends in my life and the lives of everyone who desires a deeper relationship with Him. In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, we hear God call Ezekiel a watchman. A spiritual mentor or friend is like a watchman, pointing us to God, helping us to hear the Voice of Truth, when so often, we listen to the lies of the world, the evil one and the false truths we believe because of our own woundedness.
We often don’t recognize God’s voice revealing to us, who we really are and more importantly whose we are. We are called to love others, as we hear from Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans. Often, we are in a situation we want to be different, so we try to fix that situation. Maybe we aren’t happy with people’s decisions and so we try to offer them a better option, or different choices they should be making, but that causes a division between us. A spiritual mentor or friend can point us to Jesus and what He calls us to do…love them.
A mentor can remind us of the power of prayer and sacrifices offered on another’s behalf and the great graces that can be merited in our life and others’ lives. A deeper trust and dependence on God and in His goodness can result when we surrender our desire for control, our desire to fix a situation, our desire for things to be different.
Where two or more are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, Jesus tells us in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Spiritual mentorship is a gathering of two people who are seeking to hear God’s voice. It is an opportunity to gather in the Name of Jesus to grow closer to the Lord, to surrender, often unfixable situations, to Him. It is a conversation that includes Jesus and His desire to reveal His presence in tough situations. It is an encounter for a hardened heart to be healed.
Today’s Psalm reminds us, if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Let us pray for Jesus to send us another person, whether it is a spiritual mentor, a Christ centered friend, a prayer warrior, into our lives, so that when we are gathered in the Name of Jesus with that person, we may be pointed to His presence in our lives, we may be more aware of His voice calling us into a more intimate relationship with Him.
I was reflecting on my friend, Jack, today. He was a spiritual friend who faced a lot of hard trials. We developed a spiritual connection because, I obeyed God’s voice one day, despite my reluctance, when I heard Him tell me to pray for Jack. The result of that offer of prayer revealed God’s power and love to both me and Jack in a deep way.
A few months ago, Jack shared that he was really frustrated. He was thinking of no longer going to Mass, because what’s the point? He was believing lies that God was not with him in the daily trials he was constantly facing. I told Him that encountering Jesus in the Eucharist at Mass was the most important thing to strengthen him in facing the battle ahead. A few days later, he sent me a text saying, “thanks for listening, you are a true friend and I will continue to go to church, especially to receive the Eucharist.” He later told me of the peace he always receives while at Mass.
I was reflecting on my spiritual friendship with Jack today, because he passed on to his Eternal Reward a few days ago. God revealed His Love and Prescence to me through Jack. May we all be open to encounter God’s Voice and Love in our lives through spiritual friendships.
