What Marvels the Almighty Has Done For Us
Although Mary spoke only a handful of times in the New Testament, her personality and character have spoken to countless believers ever since. And not only to Catholics. Mary draws millions of people to shrines across the world. In addition to well-known shrines such as Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima, there are many other Marian shrines around the world which attract believers of other faiths.
Mary’s life was about a yes in reply to a love beyond all her dreams of love. Mary made a decision in response to a gift. She received the gift of an encounter with God who drew so near to her that the human flesh of his only-begotten Son was knitted together in her womb. At the heart of Mary’s life was this love story with God, a love story that ideally can be at the heart of our lives as well.
Like any good mother, Mary gets us in touch with the affective dimension of our lives and frees us up to be receptive to God. The first step to God is not a matter of theory. Neither is it an exercise in willpower alone. More often it’s about opening up the basic flow of our lives so that we are ready to move towards trust, goodness and love. We easily get stuck in tired ways of doing things. But encountering the depth of Mary is a humbling invitation to live out of the depths of ourselves. She helps us to go deeper than our surface selves, and to anchor ourselves in a rootedness that goes back through the generations to Abraham and Sarah, and even predates them. She helps us see what marvels the Almighty has done for us. She enables us to rejoice in God our Saviour.
Thomas G. Casey SJ, Mary in Different Traditions
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Be Open to the Grace of Knowing the Divinity and Humanity of Christ
Mount Tabor is the place where Peter, James and John saw Jesus in the brightness of his glory. They saw the divinity that was hidden by humanity. This day is the dawn of the faith of the apostles in who Jesus is, and his divine life. In his humanity and his total identity, he is the image of God. They recognised him because they knew him as a man. And then they heard the voice which said, ‘This is my beloved son’ (Matthew 17:5).
That voice had spoken before – at the baptism of Jesus. But then it was heard only by Jesus. Now Jesus is being revealed to his disciples as the Son of God. ‘This is my beloved son’. It’s interesting what follows. God then says, ‘listen to him’. Listening to the word of God is one of the most important graces of a Christian. At Mass, we bow to the place of the Word – it is Christ who is speaking in the reading of the Word – as we bow to the bread and wine on the altar. In word and sacrament, Jesus is speaking and present in the Church.
Jesus also spoke of the future, letting the apostles know that this day would be appreciated only when he was raised from the dead. Then they would grasp the full meaning of the Transfiguration and could allow themselves for some time to wonder what ‘rising from the dead’ would mean.
Peter, James and John would remember this day forever. In fact, Peter wrote about it in his first letter. We can open ourselves to this grace of knowing the divinity and humanity of Christ and of believing deep down in our hearts that one day we will be transfigured, so that our mortal bodies will be like his.
Donal Neary SJ, The Sacred Heart Messenger, August 2024
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Our Goal Is To Live Fully In God’s Presence
When we are in a good relationship with God, the evil spirit tries to unsettle us by making us anxious, frustrated, dissatisfied and sad. We shouldn’t enter his playing field by engaging with the temptation or arguing with these unhelpful thoughts or promptings. If we do, we’ll probably lose the battle. Instead, we should return calmly into God’s presence. As the Book of Exodus puts it: ‘The Lord will fight for you; you only need to be still’ (Exodus 14:14).
Mary’s example teaches us that genuine joy comes from being united with the source of all true joy: God. The more we’re one with God, the less we are disturbed by anxieties, fears and pains. We don’t need to defend ourselves against these incursions, because God’s presence itself is our defence. Even while Mary was on earth, it was as though she were already in heaven, because she was fully in God’s presence, always adoring the one who filled her with light and with joy. And as her life approached its end, the light that had always shone in her heart became more and more intense. It drew her whole being upwards, as though it wanted to snatch her from the earth and draw her upwards where her spirit already soared, so that she could sing her beautiful Magnificat in gratitude to God forever and ever.
Thomas Casey SJ, Smile of Joy: Mary of Nazareth
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Contemplation – A Long Loving Look At the Real
We are watching out for sightings of God all around us, and we try to find the divine life at the heart of reality. Ignatius left no detailed rule about how much prayer his followers should undertake. Instead, he asked that we should keep God always before our eyes. This is contemplation in action. It is a tall order, yet we know what it is like to be doing something, whether pleasant or distasteful, with someone else in our mind. I came across migrants working in the diamond mines of South Africa. They endured long hours in the depths of the earth in order to send money home to their families
Contemplation has been described as ‘a long loving look at the real’. This is how God looks at our world. Then God ‘gets going’ and intervenes on our behalf. In this sense, God is THE ‘contemplative in action’. So, of course, is Jesus. He prays, he works, he suffers, but always in the presence of his Father. He has a discerning heart, which is why he can say, ‘I always do what is pleasing to him’ (John 8:29). As his companions, we try to imitate him. It is no accident that the first Jesuits wanted to be known as ‘companions of Jesus’.
Brian Grogan SJ, Finding God in All Things
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God Promises to Be Always With Us
We should keep an eye and an ear open in the liturgy and in our reading of the Bible to pick up the many references to God being ‘with’ us and his other chosen servants, so that we can appreciate their full theological significance. This should encourage us to appreciate the depth and all the implications of the apparently simple universal greeting with which we Christians are so familiar that it glides off our minds regularly without our appreciating it: ‘The Lord be with you’. Hearing this from the priest at Mass should stop us regularly in our tracks: it is not just a blessing; it is always also a challenge. As we see throughout the Bible, it implies a previous particular commission that we have personally received from God. It should remind us that God promises to be always ‘with’ us, as the risen Jesus promised his disciples (Matthew 28:20), regardless of – even because of – our inadequacies, so that God can bring about through us what he is asking of us at this moment in our lives. That’s the point.
Jack Mahoney SJ, Glimpses of the Gospels
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Relish, Delight and Wonder at the Reality We Live In
Our inner and outer senses play an important role in living a full human existence. Babies in their first months of life largely ‘learn’ through their senses. Adults have a tendency to rely overly on their intellect when searching for truth. As a consequence, we fail to draw on the enrichment that a keen awareness of the senses offers. For some, the latter can be missing yet not missed. Living life to the full is more likely when one is fully rooted in the everyday world that we find ourselves in, while using both rational and sensory abilities. If we desire to live at greater depth, then attention to our senses is essential. In other words, we need to create moments when we consciously just ‘stand and stare, listen and feel, smell and taste’.
Incidents in our lives are often lived automatically as opposed to consciously. In certain activities and circumstances, that has to be so. For example, when driving the car, we cannot be conscious of every move we make with the brake or steering wheel. However, we do need moments, hopefully several daily, when we deliberately allow ourselves to relish, delight in and wonder at the concrete reality we actually live in. Examples could be the following: noting the sounds around one in a busy street, the view from an office window, the texture and/or flavour of the food we are eating, the inner beauty of the person I am conversing with as well as acknowledging the beauty of who I am. In summary, we need to allow our inner and outer sensing worlds to nourish us through the ordinary moments as well as the more extraordinary ones. Hidden moments can prove to be the gems that make life worthwhile, maybe even ‘wonder-filled’. Catherine McCann, Spirituality and the Senses: Living Life to the Full
Science, the Starting Point of Faith
Faith gives an answer to questions like: Why do we exist? What is the meaning of life? Why is there something instead of nothing? Nuclear physics, chemistry or mathematics can’t answer those questions. That is not their domain. The question the scientist wants to answer is how our world works. For centuries, people thought and believed that they could find the answer to that question in the Bible. It has only been a few centuries since Christians started to disassemble these questions, an unravelling that is still going on.
Many people say that they believed as a child, but that they lost their faith when they discovered science. One of the reasons for this is that many people’s knowledge of faith has been limited to the knowledge they had of it when they were children. It is not surprising that such a belief is undermined by the confrontation with scientific thinking. For others, it is precisely the practice of science that is the starting point of a path of faith: Who or what is at the origin of this incredibly beautiful cosmos?
Nikolaas Sintobin SJ, Did Jesus Really Exist? And 51 other questions
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We Have Been Graced
In his letters, Paul often speaks out of a sense of having been greatly graced by God. Although ‘less than the least of all the saints’ (the baptised), he has been entrusted with a ‘special grace’. The grace Paul speaks about is the Gospel, which unveils the mystery of Christ. Paul is overawed by ‘the depths that I see in the mystery of Christ’. He is very aware that this grace that has been entrusted to him carries with it a responsibility. He is called to be a servant of this Gospel with which he has been graced, responsible for proclaiming it to those who have never heard it, and sees himself as a ‘steward’ who has been given much by his master and who now needs to show that he is worthy of what has been entrusted to him. We have all been graced in various ways by the Lord. We have been baptised into Christ; we have been given a share in his Spirit; we have been entrusted with the Gospel; we are members of Christ’s body, the Church; we receive his coming as bread of life in the Eucharist; we are touched by his merciful presence in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Like trustworthy stewards, we have been entrusted with a great deal by the Lord. As ‘faithful and wise’ stewards, we need to keep treasuring the many graces we have received from God and live out of what has been entrusted to us. We have been graced by the Lord so that we can grace others with what we have received.
Martin Hogan, The Word of God is Living and Active
Only God Knows What’s Next
The current global action to protect and restore Planet Earth is being prompted and enabled by the Spirit of God, the Giver of Life. ‘The Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings’ (G. M. Hopkins). Humankind is not alone, fighting a helpless cause. Prophetic voices from all sides are supporting our unique historical moment of grace and challenge. We are discovering that what seems lost and beyond recovery can come to life again, as with species being rescued from extinction and with the planting of a great green wall of trees across African deserts. The boundless wisdom and dynamics of the universe, which have shaped things thus far, are available to us: we are not adrift in cosmic isolation but immersed in a sea of divine energy beyond all comprehension. We must do all we can, and pray deeply, and be willing to suffer much, knowing that divine power is at work within us to carry out God’s purposes beyond our hopes and dreams (Ephesians 3:20). In our global crisis, we are also witnessing the surprising growth, even if fragile, of the community of humankind. People of all faiths and none are joining hands in the common cause, and this meets God’s underlying desire, that we all may be one in universal harmony (John 17:11).
The divine covenant with creation endures forever: ‘When the rainbow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my everlasting covenant with every living creature on the earth’ (Genesis 9:16). ‘When you send forth your Spirit, you renew the face of the earth’ (Psalm 104:30). As Bishop Desmond Tutu says, ’Only God knows what’s next!’
Brian Grogan SJ, Creation Walk: The Amazing Story of a Small Blue Planet
Dreaming God’s Dream
St Ignatius said that we can find God in our deepest desires. That’s a remarkable statement if we carry it through to practice. Spending time dreaming about our deepest desires might just bring us into a sacred space.
Here’s another remarkable thought. A very wise friend said some time ago that if we say ‘Yes’ to God, God will make that ‘Yes’ happen, even if what we are saying ‘Yes’ to is something we hadn’t planned for in life or something that we don’t feel capable of doing. In other words, our ‘Yes’ from a position of faith is fertile ground for God to be at God’s work. Think of Mary’s ‘yes’ to the angel that brought about Jesus’ coming into the world.
None of this has anything to do with us; it has nothing to do with us getting things. It’s way more profound and way more meaningful for our lives and the lives of those around us. We might not even see ourselves ‘gaining’ anything at all in a worldly sense. We simply align ourselves with God. We dream God’s dream.
Putting this together, if we dream God’s dream for our lives, find our deepest desires, way beyond surface wants, and say ‘Yes’ to God, we can see God’s dream for us and our world come true. Now that is Good News!
Brendan McManus SJ and Jim Deeds, Emerging from the Mess
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