Growing up, I gained a lot of experience with death, or at least, with funerals; my mother took me to every funeral we had in our church. Also, when I was not yet two years old, my younger brother died prematurely, only hours after his birth. I remember many times in my elementary school years: sharing with other children on the playground, or wherever else we had our serious conversations, about my younger brother who had died. How much my brother’s death and all those funerals impacted me, I cannot say, but death was always a topic of great significance to me personally.
Continue reading “Do We “Go to Be with Jesus” or Not?”Going the “Extra Mile” in Forgiveness
The Gospel passage mentioned in the last post said, …if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. But, going the “extra mile” in forgiveness, in his first epistle, St. Peter says:
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. And James echoes this same idea of “covering” the sins of others: …whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
This covering others’ sins is something we don’t think about much, though it has been around a while…in Proverbs, love covers all offenses, and elsewhere in Proverbs,
Whoever covers an offense seeks love,…
We not only are called to forgive, but to actively use love to cover sins.
Continue reading “Going the “Extra Mile” in Forgiveness”We Determine How Strictly We Are Judged
So much of our society trains us to focus on ourselves, on our rights, and to judge others as respecters or offenders of those rights. This past weekend, in Bend, some alleged social media posts from the shooter who took the life of two innocents revealed this to the extreme. Remembering wrongs others commit against us and the lack of forgiveness is toxic. What we see in Christ’s Gospel is quite the opposite, not focused on the wrongs of others, but on our own spiritual state.
After the story of the man forgiven a massive debt, who turns around and requires someone else to repay him a much smaller debt, resulting in his re-judgment with the same harshness he used, the passage ends: So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
So, we know what not to do. But what should we do? How should we act?
Continue reading “We Determine How Strictly We Are Judged”Our Daily Offerings
The Gospel passage this past Sunday was the Matthew passage of the feeding of the five thousand. What struck me most was the concern of the disciples. Their hearts are in the right place. The multitudes are out in this deserted place, and the disciples are concerned about their welfare.
Jesus surprises them by suggesting they find something for the multitudes to eat. Not at all out of stinginess, but just seeing the impossibility of the situation, the disciples say they only have five loaves and two fish. Jesus takes this meager offering, and does the impossible.
Christ is not asking us to do more than we are able, not asking us to give more than we have, not asking us to be more than we are. He is just asking for our five loaves and two fish.
Continue reading “Our Daily Offerings”Silence is the School of the Soul
First looking at St. Basil’s three hundred and something letters, I was afraid I would not find direction toward the spiritual life for quite some time. Well, I was wrong. In Letter II: Basil to Gregory, that is St. Gregory of Nyssa, a friend of his, I hit a key word that really sparked my curiosity and which did lead to some of St. Basil’s “secrets” to the spiritual life.
He went on to say, “For it is no more possible to write in wax without first smoothing away the letters previously written thereon, than it is to supply the soul with divine teachings without first removing its preconceptions derived from habit.” For to reach that end, “solitude gives us the greatest help, since it calms our passions and gives reason leisure to sever them completely from the soul.”
He said, “We must try to keep the mind in tranquility.”
Continue reading “Silence is the School of the Soul”