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Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Welcome to the First Sunday of Advent!
Today’s Gospel reading is from Mark 13:33-37.
Jesus said to his disciples:”Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come. It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch. Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!'”
Say Thank You Until You Mean It
I love this piece by Melody Beattie, and read it often, so as to remind me to the wisdom of Gratitude. We used it as part of our morning prayer yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, at St. Margaret Convent before going to the Ultimate Celebration of Gratitude: Eucharist. For the word Eucharist means Gratitude.
Say thank you, until you mean it.
Thank God, life, and the universe for everyone and everything sent your way.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Gratitude makes things right.
Gratitude turns negative energy into positive energy. There is no situation or circumstance so small or large that it is not susceptible to gratitude’s power. We can start with who we are and what we have today, apply gratitude, then let it work its magic.
Say thank you, until you mean it. If you say it long enough, you will believe it.
Melody Beattie in The Language of Letting Go
Happy Thanksgiving
Prayers of Thanksgiving
In the words of Meister Eckhart, a Dominican mystic:
If the only prayer you pray in your life is thank you, it will be enough.
Giving Thanks is Preaching
Friends of Silence newsletter, December 2008 – from Gratefulness.org
Sometimes Poetry Is Preaching
This morning a poem by e.e. cummings provided a sense of gratitude.
Timely, any time, but even more so this week of Thanksgiving.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
~ e.e. cummings ~
(Complete Poems 1904-1962)
Feast of Christ the King
On this Feast of Christ the King we recall that Jesus came to serve, not to be served, and calls us to do the same. When He was asked by Pilate whether or not He was King of the Jews, his reply was, “You say that I am.” So we learn that claiming Christ’s Kingship is not as meaningful as living Christ’s Kingship, which is a life of service. We might also remember that when we truly claim the Kingship of Christ, it ultimately leads to the cross.
This statue is found in the chapel of the Dominican Nuns of Prouille, France. This was the original site (though not the original buildings) of the first convent of Dominican Nuns, founded by St. Dominic in 1206. Dominic founded the nuns first; the Dominican Friars were founded in 1216.
Dominicans for Peace and Justice
When I pray for peace,
I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war,
but above all that my own country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.
– Thomas Merton
We pray for peace.
We pray for an end to violence and the teaching of violence.
Let us not study war any more.
We pray for all those who will be gathered this weekend at Fort Benning.
We pray for those who ask that we close the School of the Americas.
We pray for those who will cross the line.
Our Responsibility to this House of Prayer in which we dwell
In today’s Gospel passage from Luke we read: Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, “It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”
Isn’t all of God’s creation sacred? How do we profane it? What is our responsibility toward this house of prayer in which we dwell?
Do We Live like We’re Looking for an Escape Clause?
No Christian escapes a taste of the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
“No Escape” by Evelyn Underhill
I’ve been thinking about this as I witness and experience the fragility of life all around me. I wonder how it is that we seem to approach life as if we had some guarantee that everything would go well, and we would “live happily ever after.” Then I read this morning’s quote from Gratefulness.org. I guess I’ll just keep working on letting go and trying to welcome the present moment . . . with the help of the Spirit.
I try to remind myself that we are never promised anything, and that what control we can exert is not over the events that befall us but how we address ourselves to them.
The Earth House
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