RESPONDING TO GOD'S CALL

Today Sr. Heather Jean shares her response to God's call in her life. You are invited to reflect on yours as we move closer to the holy Feast of Easter!

Through the Waters of Baptism

Sr. Heather Jean Foltz

Spring is a time of new beginnings.; creation comes to life after remaining dormant for months, we celebrate Christ’s resurrection and welcome new members into our church.  It is also a time when we are reminded of God’s calling in our life that began on the day of our own baptism.  April 15, 1984 was the day that I was baptized in the name of the trinity into the Christian community of faith and the day that God began calling me to a new way of being.  I have come to realize that God does not call once, but continues to call us throughout our life.  The first piece of our calling begins at baptism and as we enter more fully into our baptismal promise we begin to realize the personalized call that God has for us.  This personalized call has two dimensions.  The first is a more intimate relationship with God and the second is a mission that will help extend God’s love to the world.   God has invited me to my calling as a Benedictine Monastic. 

Monastic life is centered on seeking God.  Prayer is central and all other aspects of life flow from our life of prayer.    It is within those intimate moments of prayer both privately and communally that I am filled with God’s love, which, through grace, helps me to love others in a more substantial way.   Living monastic life involves living as a part of a larger group.  I am one of many called to live out the Rule of Saint Benedict at Our Lady of Grace Monastery.    It is within the context of community that I am able to see both the strengths of the body of Christ and also the division that can be created as a result of our humanity.  Living in community calls me to embrace the beautiful and the broken aspects of human nature found within my sisters and myself.  It is through embracing the human parts of ourselves and others that we learn to love.           

            Monastic life has an impact on the greater community and its presence is needed in the world today.  A life centered on prayer, work, and hospitality is different than the values of our world. Our Monastic presence in our world offers others the opportunity to pray with us, to be prayed for and provides a space for respite for those seeking God.    Our ministries within the greater community also help bring a glimpse of our Benedictine values into the work place.  We are teachers, administrators, nurses, librarians, musicians, and social service providers.  Through each of these ministries we share our values with those we come into contact.  Our co-workers watch to see how we respond to different situations and rely on our prayers for strength and support in their own journey.  God touches others through our acceptance of God’s invitation to live the monastic life.

            On June 9, 2012, deepened my commitment to following God When I made my First Monastic Profession.  On the day of my profession, I stood before God, my community, friends and family to profess to live a life of stability, fidelity to the monastic way of life and obedience.  These vows are unique to Benedictines.  Stability is a commitment to live out our monastic vocation in a specific community.  It is a stability of place and heart.   This stability is allows us to be known by those who we live with in a deeper way and calls us to conversion.  Obedience is a commitment to listen to and remain faithful to God, our superiors, one another and to the monastic way of life.  We do not journey alone in monastic life, but together.  It is through a life of mutual obedience that we learn to listen to how God is calling us to grow in love .  Monastic obedience is the process of cultivating a listening heart.  Fidelity to the monastic way of life is a commitment to live faithfully our monastic practices and values as well as to remain open to conversion within our hearts.

            Our calling is not stagnant.  It does not happen at one moment, but it is a continual turning back to God.  We are each called to a specific community and a specific ministry, but the call to continue to love God and others in deeper ways continues throughout our life on earth.  We are called to continue through grace to heal the wounds that keep us from loving God, others, and ourselves.  We are continually called back to the waters of our baptism to enter more deeply into a loving relationship with our Triune God.

Reflection

Reflect on how God is calling you to follow at this time in your life.  Is there something you need to be about to respond to God’s call ?  As we journey toward Easter, we remember our baptismal call and once again commit ourselves  to God.

Prayer

Gracious God,

Through our baptism you call each of us to holiness.

Help me to respond to this call by living each day centered in you.

May all I do and say bring me closer to you.  Amen.

LOVING FOR REAL

In the Gospel for today the scribe asks Jesus which is the first of all the commandments.  Jesus responds, “Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength.  The second is this:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no other commandment greater than these.”  Well wait a minute!  The scribe asked which is the first of all the commandments so why does Jesus respond with two commandments.   Is it because Jesus want are love to be made real.  We are not to love only in theory but we must love in practice.  If we truly love God, our love will be made real in the concrete ways we reach out in love to others.  Not only those that are easy to love but those that call us to stretch in our understanding of love.  We are called to keep widening the circle to include all of those that God loves.  That’s a mighty big circle!

Reflection

Where are you called to stretch yourself so that you can widen the circle of your loving?  How does this feel to you?  Take time to pray and ask for God’s grace to help you on this journey in growing in the practice of loving.

Loving God,

You are Love and you call us to love.

Our love for you is made real in the concrete actions

of love in our lives.

Help us to open ourselves to all people

so that we might be stretched in our capacity to love.

May our love for you shine as we reach out to others in love.

We ask this in the name of your son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

SEE WITH NEW EYES

Snow started falling late afternoon in Beech Grove, Indiana.  It looked liked powdered sugar as it dusted the earth and soon covered it.  It was absolutely beautiful and made me want to get outside and embrace its beauty.  So I did!  Around 9:30 p.m. I put on my coat and boots and stepped outside into God’s wonderland.  The trees were draped with snow and my feet had to push against the snow that was covering the earth.  Since the snow was still coming down, I could feel it in my hair and on my face and it was WONDERFUL! 

You might ask, what does snow have to do with Lent?  I asked myself that question too.  As I walked through God’s creation last night, I was reminded of the call to be fully awake and open to the wonder of God’s creation.  We get so busy with life that we forget to look at what is always right around us.  Wake up, God says!  Look with new eyes!  Yesterday’s snowfall made me look with new eyes.  Through God’s grace may I look at each day in this way.

Lent is a time of stripping away all that hinders us from seeing God more clearly and responding to God more fully. God is always active in our lives and in creation.  May we have eyes to see it.

Reflection

How are you awake to God’s action in your life?  Take some time today to walk in God’s creation.  Do so fully awake to what God offers you!  Then be thankful for all the many graces God gives.

Gracious God,

Just like the snowfall blankets the earth

your grace covers us and leads us to life.

Open our eyes and hearts to your love and grace

so that we might be made new and live life fully awake to your presence.

We ask this in the name of Jesus.  Amen.     

EVERYONE GETS BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS

Commentary on Luke 13:1-9

March 3, 2013

      The message in this Gospel is everyone gets by with a little help from their friends.  

     Repent, repent, repent, Jesus says, if not you will perish…but then he tells a story of salvation.  God seems to be looking for those who do not “exhaust the soil.”  I’d hate to be thought to be in that category but, essentially, I am…and, so are you.  There are periods in our lives when we do not produce much.  Maybe we are weighted down by illness or fatigue or depression.  Maybe the weight of the world creates in us a dark night of the soul.  Maybe our joys do not balance our afflictions.  Maybe, just maybe, we have decided this life is too hard and there must be an easier way.

     We are like the fig tree barren of fruit, day after day or month after month or even year after year.  But, if we are lucky, someone comes along who is willing to cultivate the ground around us.  A trusted friend, a mentor, an example of kindness and compassion, a circumstance, an experience fertilizes our thirsty, barren soil of a soul and brings us back to life. 

     God puts people in our path like the gardener in today’s Gospel who see in us a grain of hope.  They come to our rescue when we need them the most.  All we need do is trust them.  I’m reminded of the story of a person stranded on the top of a house during a flood with the waters rising.  A canoe comes along and invites him in.  “No, he says, God will save me.”  Then a rowboat offers assistance. “No, he says, God will save me.”  Then a motorboat. “No, he says, God will save me.”  He drowns then chastises God

for not saving him.  To which God replies…“My dear child, I sent you three boats!”

     Our rescuers don’t always come in nice little packages.  Sometimes they have to say hard things and issue challenges we don’t want to hear.  The one necessary thing is that all is done in a spirit of love and true concern.  We don’t get by with a little help from our enemies…we get by with a little help from our friends.

     Cultivate good friends then look to them to help you grow and bear fruit that will last.  They will help you get by.

Sr. Mary Luke Jones, OSB

    

    

A SIX YEAR OLD GETS IT RIGHT

Sr. Ann Patrice of our community has a beautiful Godchild named Clare.  Clare’s mom, Annie, and Sr. Ann Patrice are lifetime friends.  Annie had told Sr. Ann Patrice that Clare had given up chocolate for Lent.  Sr. Ann Patrice was surprised as Clare LOVES chocolate.  The next time Sr. Ann Patrice saw Clare she said, “Clare, I heard that you have up chocolate for Lent.  I’m so very proud of you.”  Little Clare looked up at Sr. Ann Patrice and said, “A (that’s what she calls her) I want to show God how much I love him.”

Amazing words from a little girl – I WANT TO SHOW GOD HOW MUCH I LOVE HIM.

That’s what Lent is all about!  Making space and taking time for God so that we can grow more deeply in our love for the One who loves us more than we can fathom!

Reflection

How are you showing God how much you love him?  Where do you need to make space or take more time for God?  Let’s each try to do a little something extra during the third week of Lent.

Loving God,

Our hearts are filled with gratitude for your deep love for us.

We love you and desire to love you even more.

Open our hearts to your grace so that

            Our lives might be filled with desire for you.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

FIRST IN LINE

First In Line

When I taught elementary school, I would always smile at how the children loved to be first: first in line, first in the bus, first in the front seat.  I would smile and think how common this desire is for all of us.  The desire to be first can stand in the way of being for others.  In today’s Gospel the mother of the Sons of Zebedee asks Jesus that her sons sit on his left and on his right in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus tells her that this is not his to give.  He also says,  the one who is great is the one who serves.  

As Christian disciples we are called to serve in the kingdom.  This calls us to reach out beyond our tiny world and see to the needs of all people.  By putting others in first place, we create a space where the good news of Jesus Christ can be heard.

Reflection

How do you serve Christ in the people you meet?  Do you feel called to serve in a new way.

God of all people,

Help us reach beyond our tiny world

            so as to open our hearts to all your people.

May our service in your Name

            Be a gift in your world that is so in need of your mercy.

We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

HOLDING ONTO JESUS EACH AND EVERY DAY

            Today we have the powerful story of the Transfiguration.  Jesus takes Peter, John and James up the mountain to pray.  While Jesus is praying his face change in appearance and his clothing become dazzling white.  Moses and Elijah are conversing with Jesus when Peter and the others wake from sleep.  It is not surprising that Peter wakes up with an action plan.  That bold disciple who is always ready to jump in or speak out is overcome with the glory of it all and declares, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”   Of course he did not know what he was saying.  He did not know what would come next.   A voice from heaven says, “This is my chosen Son, listen to him.”            

            We, like Peter, have all had mountaintop experiences.  Those moments in our lives when we are so deeply aware of God’s shining presence in our lives.  Knowing that Christ is the chosen One and, that in listening to him, we become his chosen disciples.  I think it is natural to want to stay on the mountaintop, to freeze those moments, to make them last forever.  It is interesting to note that this encounter comes as the disciples are on their way with Jesus to Jerusalem.  We, too, are called to walk with Jesus, not only on the mountaintop but also on the road of life and sometimes that’s difficult and painful.  We are called to make real the gift of the mountaintop experience in our everyday life.  It is when we can hold onto the experience of knowing God’s light so clearly even in the midst of our road Jerusalem that Jesus’ message becomes real in our lives.

            As I prayed with this Gospel it had a meaning for me that it has never had before.  Maybe it’s because it will be read at Mass tomorrow, which is also my parents’ 51^st Wedding Anniversary.  Last year we celebrated their Golden Anniversary with great joy and celebration.  Their love for one another was so evident and we rejoiced in it and thanked them for their faithful witness to the vows they had made to one another.  God’s presence in their love for one another was so very clear. It was a wonderful celebration and it was good to be there.  This year my mom will go to visit my dad and he won’t recognize her.  As she shares memories of their life together, he won’t remember that he was a part of all those memories.  Tomorrow when my mom goes to spend time with my dad it won’t be the mountaintop experience that it was last year.  She now walks that difficult road that we are all called to walk in different ways and in different circumstances.  She must hold onto the promise that God is just as present to her in these painful times as God was on the mountaintop.  The blessing and grace in all of it is that the One who is part of those mountaintop experiences, the shining light that holds us all in love, walks with us on the road to Jerusalem.  We are never alone and can count on the Chosen one who chooses us to walk beside us companioning us along the way.

            As we journey through this season of Lent, may we remember the mountaintop experiences of our lives.  Let us be grateful that just as God was with us then, God is with us now holding and sustaining us in love.

Reflection

What are some of the mountaintop experiences of your life?  How do you take those experiences into your daily life even when some days are difficult?

God of all time,

We thank you for those mountaintop times in our life

That help us know your deep presence to us and your powerful love for us.

Give us the grace to not forget this same presence and love

As we journey through each day of our lives.

We ask this through your Son in whom you are well pleased.

Amen