OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Enter Into a New Reality – Enter Into Resurrection
You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new reality that makes the existing reality obsolete.
– R. Buckminster Fuller
Resurrection – The Great Turning
Cosmic change is not cosmetic change. It is radical, meaning ‘to the root,’ and it will mean the upheaval of our cherished customs and the disposal of stories that have provided the basic framework for our lives. We must not underestimate the enormity of what is being asked of us, even as we celebrate with joy the new and salvific. In its initial moments resurrection is indistinguishable from death. At first we are unable to see the great turning that has taken place. All that has been comfortable, all that has held us in place is gone, and there is nothing recognizable to stand on. Everything on which we have planted our feet is swept away.
– Judy Cannato
Easter – The Promise of Resurrection
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
– Martin Luther
In the Darkness of the Tomb, there Is Still Hope
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.
– Anne Lamont
Good Friday Hope
Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.
– George Iles
Prayer Is an Act of Hope – An Act of Faith
A Holy Thursday Prayer
Pray, even if you feel nothing, see nothing. For when you are dry, empty, sick or weak, at such a time is your prayer most pleasing to God, even though you may find little joy in it. This is true of all believing prayer.
– Julian of Norwich
Spy Wednesday
On “Spy Wednesday” – so called because it is the day before Judas, the traitor, sold Jesus out for a bag of silver, these words from Martin Luther King, Jr., are most appropriate.
Through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
– Martin Luther King
Prayer is Hope in Action
To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
– Karl Barth
Recover the Gifts of Faith, Hope, and Endurance
We do not have to sit around immobilized, waiting for help to come. We can learn to care for our society. If our streets are to be redeemed we will have to commit our own human and financial resources to that goal. We will have to recover our gifts of faith and hope and endurance, evoke the gifts of other persons, and thus develop leaders and facilitators for the building of a global network of small, disciplined, self-critical groups whose reflection will issue in purposeful action. This is a way to join in the liberation movement that is going on in all the poor countries of the world. We are not the initiators of this movement. Even the suffering ones of the earth are not the initiators, though they are the genuine leaders. The movement is God’s.
– Elizabeth O’Connor, Source: Servant Leaders Servant Structures
Palm Sunday Hope
Hope continues to hold us during Holy Week.
Palm Sunday Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
– Vaclav Havel
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