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The Serenity Prayer: Lenten Wednesday Reflection Week Four

Todays reflection is centered on this line of the Serenity Prayer: “Trusting that You will make all things right, If I surrender to Your will.”

There are three invitations: To trust, to surrender, to align our hearts with the will of God.  Each of these become real to us as we grow in our “Surrender To Love.” As David Benner has said:

Surrender is foundational to Christian spirituality and is the soil out of which obedience should grow. Christ does not simply want our compliance. He wants our heart. He wants our love and he offers us his. He invites us to surrender to his love.

The Serenity Prayer is a rich source of spiritual guidance for our daily living. May you find it to be true!

With you on the Journey, 

Rob+

 

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Lent IV: The Fathers Heart+The Fathers Hands, The Prodigal Son

Jesus’s ultimate parable of the return of the Prodigal Son speaks truth at every part of our journey through life. Jesus himself is the “parable of God” who is aways revealing the heart of the Father.  
 
The heart of the Father is compassion and he sees us as we are and can be: made in original goodness, in God’s image. Returning home, we can grow in God’s likeness as well.  This is no denial of our choosing the way of sin. However, sin is not our essence or our origin. Rather than low anthropology, we are of infinite value  and worth. Our nature is the very image of God. The grace of God received heals, releasing us to grow “into his likeness” as we follow in his way. 

In this Parable, we see how God loves us as his beloved children. This is our nature, our ontology, the truth of our being. And when we fall into sin and death, God is running towards us to welcome us home. This is captured so tenderly in Rembrandts magnificent painting of The Return of The Prodigal Son.  In the very center, the Father extends his healing compassionate hands, and places them on the kneeling son. That image is God’s relentless love and welcome home.
 
I will die standing upon the truth of this more Christlike God whom Jesus has continually revealed. 

The Picos De Europa in Cantabria, Spain
With you on The Journey, 
 
Rob+ 
 

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The Serenity Prayer: Lenten Reflections Week Three

Taking as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trevor Hudson, shares these words in today’s reflection from the Serenity Prayer: 

“How can we live in a positive way in the midst of the evil and sin that surround us?”
 
This part of the Serenity Prayer meets us right at the center of this question. It begins by acknowledging the reality of a sinful world.
 
It also proposes adopting a particular attitude toward it, a stance that springs from the way God relates to our world.”
 
God hates nothing he has made. God so loves this world, that he sent  his only Son not to condemn the world, but to heal, save, and redeem it. To accept, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, is to start with a foundational yes and embrace it. He acted not from the small ego, but from the largeness of his soul.
 
May we “take this world” as God loves it, and seek to be those who do not condemn, but bring healing and mercy. 
 
With you, 
 
Rob+
 

 
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The Serenity Prayer: Lenten Reflections Week Two

Here is my second reflection on the wisdom and guidance of The Serenity Prayer. In these challenging days, I hold the suffering people of Ukraine in my heart and prayers. At the same time I continue to proclaim the way of Christ, the way of God’s Reign, doing what I can to bring goodness and peace into the world.   Courage and strength of heart to you this day. 

With you on the Journey, 

Rob+

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Advent III: Joy And The Guarding of God

My sermon today is taken from Philippians 4:4-7. It is a letter from jail to God’s people and it is saturated with joy. What helps me as I contemplate Paul’s advice to “rejoice always” is remembering that he writes his letter from prison, while awaiting trial and anticipating death.
 
It requires that we hold onto two realities at once: the reality of the world’s brokenness in one hand, and the reality of God’s love in the other.
 
Joy.  It is growing in the attachment love of God for us, shifting our awareness to Christ in prayerful silence and words, and living in the peace and guarding of God.
 
With God, there is always joy. You always belong. You are always loved. You are deeply accepted by God. God will never leave you.
 
The guarding of the God of Life, Be on you,
The guarding of the loving Christ be, On you,
The guarding of the Holy Spirit, Be on you,
To aid and uphold you each day, And night of your life.
The guarding of God, The guarding of Christ, The guarding of the Holy Spirit,
Be upon you.
 
With you on the Joyful Journey, 
 
Rob+
 
 

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The Communion of Saints: Undying Relationships In Christ

This past All Saints Sunday I had the gift of preaching on the meaning and healing power of the Communion of Saints, an article of the Christian Faith in The Apostles Creed. 
 
Yet, it is much more than a doctrine or theological commitment. It is a reality we can encounter, experience, and grow toward with greater confidence and assurance. 
 
We have lost loved ones in recent weeks in this community. It is hard, it brings sorrow. I offer this simple podcast to friends and family.
 
The following words from the gifted Celtic Poet and Priest, John O’ Donohue  and have touched me deeply this All Saints remembrance. They express the reality of The Communion of Saints and ongoing fellowship with those who have died.
 
You can also hear me read them in the audio below. 
 
John O’ Donohue, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace
 
“The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence.
 
This alteration of form is the reason we cannot see the dead. But because we cannot see them does not mean that they are not there. Transfigured into eternal form, the dead cannot reverse the journey and even for one second re-enter their old form to linger with us a while. Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness.
 
When we ourselves enter the eternal world and come to see our lives on earth in full view, we may be surprised at the immense assistance and support with which our departed loved ones have accompanied every moment of our lives. In their new, transfigured presence their compassion, understanding and love take on a divine depth, enabling them to become secret angels guiding and sheltering the unfolding of our destiny.”
 
With you on The Journey,
 
Fr. Rob+
 
 
 

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“The Ultimate Concern” – Sermon For October 10, 2021

I’m after a deep, authentic, and healthy Christian spirituality and life. It is my deepest longing. Spiritual formation and growth are my hearts desire. It has been my true north in parish ministry and my earthly pilgrimage. It still is. 
 
Over the years, pastors have become many other things: visionaries, entrepreneurs, community organizers, social activists, social media experts—not all bad.  Leadership today requires these kinds of skills. 
 
Yet there is something  more ancient, timeless: curer animarum, “the Physician of Souls.”  
 
This is the heart and core of my Ordination Vows, to be a spiritual guide, to awaken the souls desire and longing, and to induct others into the spiritual life. This is the central role of the life of a priest. 

The Gospel story of the Rich Young Ruler, Mark 10: 17-31, reveals our deepest longing as human beings made in the Image of God.  My sermon approached it with three dynamics: 
 
1. DAWNING AWARENESS SOMETHING IS MISSING: THE GIFT OF LONGING
2. THE SACRED GAZE OF GOD: JESUS LOOKED AT HIM AND LOVED HIM.
3. ULTIMATE CONCERN – FOLLOW ME
 
As C.S.Lewis wrote in his magisterial book, Mere Christianity:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
 
May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.
 
– John O’Donohue
 
With you on the Journey, 
 
Rob+ 

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