"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people." Carl Jung in a "Letter to a former student on reassessing religious values outlined to Sigmund Freud a half century earlier, quoted in Gerhard Adler ed Letters, Vol 1 Princeton 73" . Found on page 189 in Webster's II New Riverside Desk Quotations, James B Simpson, Home and Office Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, New York, London, 1992
Saturday, September 14, 2013
CROSS
Quote for Today - September 14, 2013 - Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross "The Cross does not abolish suffering, but transforms it, sanctifies it, makes it fruitful, bearable, even joyful, and finally victorious." Joseph Rickaby, An Old Man's Jottings, 1925
Friday, September 13, 2013
FATHER, FORGIVE ME,
FOR I DON’T KNOW
WHAT I’M DOING!
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever hurt someone that you didn’t know you hurt
them and then you found out about it a long time afterwards?
The title of my homily is, “Father, Forgive Me, For I Don’t
Know What I’m Doing!”
EXAMPLES
For example, it might have been a comment we made that the
other heard as a reject slip. Or it might have been something we were doing
that drove the other person crazy, the way we drive, or the way we clear our
throat - and we never knew it bothered them.
Just listen to people. We’re always talking about others and
often it’s about how they are driving us nuts. Well, there has to be someone
out there who is complaining about us and we don’t know it.
TODAY’S FIRST READING
In today’s first reading from Paul to Timothy, he says, “I
was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man filled with arrogance but because I
did not know what I was doing in my unbelief, I have been treated mercifully,
and the grace of our Lord has been granted me in overflowing measure, along
with the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.
Isn’t that so powerful?
We all have “used to’s”. We all used to do this and do that.
Hopefully - if what we used to do - bothered others - we have
changed.
Hopefully, as we age - there will be a lot more insights -
about bothersome behaviors.
Isn’t Paul’s message of God’s overflowing compassion to
Timothy so moving? It fits in with
yesterday’s gospel about compassion overflowing into our lap -- if we are compassionate.
TODAY’S GOSPEL
Today’s gospel indicates that we can be so blind. We can
forget these great truths.
Today’s gospel has the famous saying about seeing specks in
our brother’s eye and missing the plank in our own.
Jesus knows people. We don’t want to smell our own stink, so
we smell other’s. We don’t want to hear about out selfishness, so we block that
out, by using our energy in spotting it in others.
CONCLUSION
The day we admit our blindness, the day we are as honest as
Paul, can be the day we experience God’s compassion to us, a compassion we can
then share as we can forgive each other. Amen.
WORK
Quote for Today - September 13, 2013 - Feast of St. John Chrysostom
“Work is a powerful medicine." St. John Chrysostom [c. 347-407] in a Homily.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
WHAT ARE MY
LIFE PRINCIPLES AND
BASIC SAYINGS?
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily is, “What Are My Life Principles and Basic Sayings?”
Today’s 2 readings have many prayer leads for personal prayer - as well as bringing up life principles and inner sayings.
Colossians 3: 12-17
Luke 6:27-38
Suggestion: read today’s readings and let what’s being said sink into your mind and soul.
Then see which saying, which word, keeps bopping up to the top of our mind from the bottom of our soul, from out of our depths.
Hidden in the first reading is an excellent suggestion: “Let the word of Christ, rich as it is, dwell in you.”
We might add or ask: Which word? Which sentence of Christ, should we let dwell in us?
Once more I would suggest spending some time simply pouring these words into our soul through our eyes and our ear and into one's mind, into one's soul, into one's depths.
TODAY’S GOSPEL AND ALL 4 GOSPELS
All 4 gospels, but especially today’s gospel which gives part of Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, have great words of Christ to dwell on.
We might call them one liners. We might call it bumper sticker theology. Yet, sometimes it only takes a word or a few words for something someone says to us for a new word to begin to dwell within us. It can be a positive or a negative word!
If it’s a hurt or an attack, it might act like a poison or an acid that eats at the inside of our mind and feelings. If it’s a compliment, it might change our attitude towards ourself. It might help heal us.
TWO EXAMPLES
Augustine, whose feast we celebrated at the end of last month, kept hearing the words, “Take and read. Take and read.” So he took and read the Letter of Paul to the Romans and read 13:13-14.
Augustine then turned over the words of Paul in his mind and changed.
Before that he kept on saying two sentences: “I can’t do it. How can you give up sex?” That’s the first tape recording. The second was, “Well, if these young people can be chaste, why can’t I do it as well.”
Haven’t we all had someone say to us, “You know something you said to me ten years ago, really helped me. I never forgot it. Thank you.”
PROVERBS: LIFE PRINCIPLES, ETC.
If it’s a positive suggestion, a saying, a proverb, it can become part of our basic life principles.
Have you ever noticed that some people clearly have life principles that they go by? You know this because you often hear them quote these principles as they face a situation in which they are called upon to act.
For example, “A stitch in time saves 9.” “Buy cheap, buy twice.” “People who live in a glass house shouldn’t throw rocks.”
EXAMPLES FROM TODAY’S GOSPEL
How many times have we heard people say,
“Turn the other cheek.”
“Do to others what you would have them do to you.”
“Do not judge, and you won’t be judged.”
“Do not condemn and you won’t be condemned.”
“The measure you measure with will be measured back to you.”
CONCLUSION
My suggestion is you take both readings to prayer and see what saying pops to the surface. Make it your own. Own it. Then live it. Then send out old words, unwholesome words to get lost, to become homeless - from from your mind.
COMPLAINERS
Quote for Today - September 12, 2013
"Dogs bark at every one they do not know." Heraclitus [c. 535 - c. 475 BCE]
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
SEPTEMBER 11th
Quote for Today - September 11, 2013 “The moment to spend with a husband who loves me, or a sick
friend, or a delicious new grandchild is here and now. Not some time later .... The nation learned this lesson all at once that horrible day in September 2001. The pictures stay with us -- the fires and falling debris, and, most
hauntingly, the faces. Look how young so many of them were, people who thought
there would be much more time, a lot of 'later' when they could do all the
things they really wanted to do. I grieve for their families -- especially for
those, like me, who haven't found any trace of the people they loved. But I
grieve even more for the people who died that day. They couldn't know what we
know now about the precious gift of time.” Cokie Roberts - contributing senior news analyst for NPR News
