Jesus said this of John the Baptist: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist.”(Matthew 11:11). Today, we celebrate the memorial of John’s Passion, his death. John’s life as well as his death reflected the beauty of a life given completely over for God’s purposes.
If you’ve ever read the scriptural accounts of John or pondered his life, I’m sure you could recognize the inferno of passion that was burning within him, propelling him on step by step. And, this glorified God because it pointed to the source from which this passion came…the very heart of God. The people who traveled to hear John the Baptist must have easily intuited that this passion they were witnessing was not merely of human origin. His passion was pointing to the One who was coming, Jesus Christ, who was the incarnation of passionate love Himself. Jesus who reveals the heart of the Father, reaching across all divides to come to us, to be near to us.
“Zeal”, might be another word to describe this passionate drive in John the Baptist. The simple definition of the word ‘zeal’ is this: “fervor for a person, cause or object; enthusiastic diligence, eager desire”. Or another definition, “a passion or determination that makes someone do something”.
I think if we are honest with ourselves, perhaps we notice that sometimes we have some negative association with the word “zeal” and sometimes even some fears: fear of standing out from the crowd, fear of being seen as too ‘over the top’, fear of being rejected because of our convictions.
But, an authentic, holy, missionary zeal is something God desires for us to all receive. Because, this missionary zeal is quite simply a passion to love who Jesus loves and love what Jesus loves. Jesus desires to share this part of His heart with us. And when we open our hearts to let the Holy Spirit reveal to us this love, He also has the ability to move us from fear to response. SHARED LOVE propels us forward. And when we are made aware of who Jesus loves and we respond through our actions then, like John the Baptist, our very life begins to point to the source of passionate love, Himself. We become a conduit of a love that labors with passion to draw all of humanity to Himself, forever.
In the encyclical Mission of the Redeemer, St. Pope John Paul II points out that this zeal is to part of the missionary disciple’s experience. He says, “those who have the missionary spirit feel Christ’s burning love for souls, and love the Church as Christ did. The missionary is urged on by “zeal for souls”, a zeal inspired by Christ’s own charity, which takes the form of concern, tenderness, compassion, openness, availability and interest in people’s problems.” (Redemptoris Missio 89.)
A ‘zeal for souls’ isn’t something that normally just ‘happens’, but, it comes when we take time to examine our hearts and notice, first, if we are open to let God fill us with this sort of love. We need to come to Jesus and ask Him, “Lord, help me to love who and what you love”. We need to take a little time each day and ask Him, “Lord, please show me, who do you want me to reach out to today?” It is one thing to simply consider this in our thoughts but it another to sit with God in prayer, with an open heart and let Him show us… to let Him share with us.
Today, perhaps some questions we can ask ourselves: Is my heart filled with this fire of divine love? Is my heart fueled with love for the people God has already placed in my life? Is my heart fueled with love for the people I will randomly encounter during this particular week? Have I taken the time to let Him fill me with this fire of passionate love.. to show me how, and who and what He loves?
Perhaps this week, we try to take even a short time each day to examine our hearts in this way. And to daily, ask Jesus for the grace to love who and what He loves.
St. John the Baptist, pray for us!
Written by Kristin Niedbala
'The Preaching of John the Baptist' by Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1486-1490
Today’s reflection I want to humbly offer specifically to us in this Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, as we continue to move forward in this process of Strategic Planning.
I lived next to dear friends of mine when I first moved to Thibodaux. They are a beautiful family with 6 children, each with their own unique gifts and personalities. It was a great blessing for me to be a part of their lives and the kids definitely were great teachers for me, simply by the nature of their just being children. I remember a particular reminder that came through little Mabrey one day.
Mabrey was 5 years old at the time. She had dressed as St. Joan of Arc for All Saints day months earlier and everything about the saint really stuck with her. Nearly every day she would put on some part of the costume and would often say, “you know, I AM Joan of Arc”! One day she was marching through the yard wearing her full ‘Joan of Arc’ gear…. helmet; sword; breastplate; quite serious demeanor. She was intensely moving her sword back and forth while marching, as she was yelling “I’m here to slay the dragon. I’m here to slay the dragon”! Well, right on the heels of this procession, she came to stand next to me. As we stood there, this little gecko ran up right in front of her, as if it was looking right at her. Well that serious ‘dragon-slaying Joan of Arc’ quickly returned to an alarmed little girl as she jumped behind me, wrapping her arms around my leg and yelling “get it, get it”!
I think often as we take the daily journey of becoming missionary disciples, we can be a lot like Mabrey was that day. Perhaps there is some means by which Christ offers us a perspective of the goodness and the horizon that is before us and we are filled with hope. Sometimes through a word of scripture, a conversation, a homily, we are filled with enthusiasm for what is possible with God. And, this enthusiasm often can fuel a zeal in our hearts, which is from God. Like Mabrey, we feel like marching through the yard with her sword, we are READY! As I’ve talked to many people on various Commissions, I hear this zeal, this excitement for the possibilities of where God is leading us. And our hearts long for this renewal and are filled with hope that it is happening.
Then, we can go back to our parishes with the real challenges that remain there or what seems like limitations in our resources. Or we experience difficulties in our families or work and in all of these situations, we come face to face with our weakness or the weakness of others. Our weakness has a way of moving us from feeling the strength we felt in the zeal to simply being utterly in touch with how very small we are.
As a follower of Jesus Christ, the question is, when we recognize our weakness, what do we do with that? Do we allow the accompanying whispers of temptation to lead us into discouragement, or even frustration with ourselves or those around us? Or do we simply look to the Lord, trusting He is one who will act and provide for all that we need? The Lord helps us to remember, we need not be afraid of our weaknesses, personally or communally. For the Lord is near to us in those places, in fact His compassionate heart is drawn to the sweet fragrance of our weakness. Perhaps to help us, we could all look to St. Paul whom the Lord used in a mighty way, clearly as one of the greatest missionary disciples of all time. St. Paul never boasted of his outward achievements or what he had accomplished. He never listed off all of his successes. Rather, he always pointed to what God had worked in and through him…. what it was that GOD had accomplished. In a General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI said of St. Paul, “he does not boast of his own actions but of the activity of Christ who acts precisely through his weakness.” He later says, “Therefore, to the extent that our union with the Lord increases and that our prayers become more intense, we also go to the essential and understand that it is not the power of our own means, our virtues, our skills that brings about the Kingdom of God but that it is God who works miracles precisely through our weakness, our inadequacy for the task. We must therefore have the humility not to trust merely in ourselves, but to work, with the Lord’s help in the Lord’s vineyard, entrusting ourselves to him as fragile “earthen vessels”.
In 2 Corinthians Chapter 12, St Paul says, “I will rather boast most gladly of my weakness, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.” It is PRECICELY there, in our weakness that we can boast! Not in our strength but, in our weakness and in our need. Because when we recognize our need, our weakness, we can come to the most truthful realization, that we are in need of God… that His grace IS sufficient. May we remember that any desire we have of a renewal in the Church, is a desire of ours because it was first a desire of His. He can be trusted.
Houma-Thibodaux, may we remember that God loves Bethlehem. In other words, He chose to come and dwell with us in the smallest, most humble of places. He teaches us that we too must become small in posture. In Bethlehem, He shows us that He chose to provide when the outward circumstances seemed impossible. This is God’s nature. He shows us that every difficulty can be overcome by opening up to trust in His action! As we remain small in posture, imagine how He is looking at us, here in this little Bethlehem, this small diocese, in need of Him. How much His heart is ready to respond to us in our every need!
Today, may we pray for the grace to remain small in posture and faithful to Him in all things. Today, can we all begin to ask Him more intensely to respond to our needs here in this diocese. Today, can we all trust that He is ready to respond to our need!
I realize that hockey is not widely popular here but, growing up near Pittsburgh, I definitely came to appreciate the sport and hold an allegiance to our local team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. In case you weren’t aware, a week ago Sunday, the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the San Jose Sharks to win the Stanley Cup. For anyone unfamiliar with the sport, the Stanley Cup is to hockey what the Super Bowl is to football.
The entire week following the win, every single phone call that I had with anyone back in Pennsylvania was animated with the happenings surrounding the Stanley Cup win. In Pittsburgh, it was the talk at work, at the check out line in stores , on the radio, around dinner tables, … the whole city was buzzing with excitement and people were excited about the excitement. Even national news was reporting about the excitement surrounding the city.
Pittsburgh itself has 300,000 residents and last Wednesday the city packed in 400,000 people who came out for the parade and celebration of the team’s victory. Those 400,000 people did not include the tens of thousands of people glued to the t.v. watching and the many satellite parties happening in nearly every surrounding town.
As I watched the footage of the celebration of the Stanley Cup win on Wednesday and I listened to so many people sharing about what was happening in the city, I couldn’t help but notice how this great win, the triumph of this team that so many came to rally behind, had a way of focusing everyone’s attention, of prioritizing and reordering people’s energies. After all, last Wednesday, in Pittsburgh, over 400,000 people had reoriented their day in response to the Penguins win. I think this offers some beautiful insight into our human nature. And I think can be a springboard for us with the question… what is it that has determined my day today?
One of the 8 aspects of the missionary disciple is Conversion: that my relationship with the person of Jesus Christ reorients everything in my life. A missionary disciple allows this relationship with Jesus to reshape their lifestyle. This can means my relationship with Jesus has effected what my conversations are like, how I spend my time, what the driving purpose is behind what I do or don’t do is, how I relate to the world around me. And, as a missionary disciple, I no longer just live for me, or live as I want, but I seek to center my life around a person whom I love.
We can all have practical questions about how we are to live, how we are to spend our time, how we are to relate to the world around us. We need only look around a little to see the many programs and self help books trying to offer practical advise for living a happy life. Fr. Pedro Arrupe, who was the Superior to Jesuits at the time, perhaps offered the best practical advise to these questions when he said:
“Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”
This ‘falling in love’ and this ‘staying in love’ with God is the center of the Christian life, precisely because this love has a way of ordering our desires, our actions, our priorities. If we allow it, this love determines everything. If we allow it, this love leads us on the path to life!
Perhaps we can take some time this week to reflect and be sure we’ve made some time and space for the One we love. Are we present to Him as we go about our day? Have we related everything going on in our lives to Him… and have we allowed for Him to respond to us? Have we allowed the One who beholds us with great love to do so’?
And if we notice there are other things or people that have taken a ‘first place’ in our lives, we need only share that with Jesus in prayer and ask Him to help us.
Perhaps this week, we ask Him, “Lord give me the grace to desire you more than anyone or anything else.”
The suggested scripture reading for today is Psalm 63
If you haven't yet listened to Bishop Fabre's Chrism Mass Homily from this year, we'd encourage you to do so. Here, he speaks of the meaning of being a missionary disciple. The text of his homily follows here:
I have learned that nothing threatens the sacred more than familiarity. Families know this; married couples know this; clergy know this. When we become too familiar with someone, or something, we loose our awe, our wonder at being a part of their life. When we become too familiar, we cease beholding the other as they are and we begin seeing them solely through our own experience, our own expectations and our own categories. Family members can become too familiar with one another. When they do it is easy to hold on to the past rather than being present to each other in the current moment. Married couples can become too familiar with each other. When they do it is easy to take each other for granted. Clergy can become too familiar with “the call.” When they do it easy to forget the fervor they once had at ordination and eventually they become too comfortable.
Yes, nothing threatens the sacred more than familiarity. Nazareth was a community familiar with Jesus. In today’s Gospel St. Luke writes: “Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up.” The people of Nazareth are so familiar with the person of Jesus that they fail to see WHO He is and fail to fully understand WHAT He says. As “this Scripture passage is fulfilled in (their) hearing”, they miss the Truth of the MESSENGER and miss the importance of the MESSAGE. In today’s Gospel Jesus outlines His mission, and Nazareth is so familiar with the sacred they miss the message; they miss the revelation of Jesus’ mission. I pray we never get too familiar with the sacred that we make the same mistake. I pray that today, at this particular time in our Diocese’ history, we do not miss the revelation of our mission.
Jesus’ revelation of the mission, His mandate, is as relevant to us today as it was when he first announced it two thousand years ago. We have a mission. I repeat … we … you and I … all of us together … we all have a mission. It is the mission of Jesus Christ. It is the mission of the Catholic Church. It is the mission for all the Baptized. In his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, our Holy Father Pope Francis writes: “The bishop must always foster this missionary communion in his diocesan Church … To do so, he will sometimes go before his people, pointing the way and keeping their hope vibrant.” I am standing before you today in order to “point the way,” wanting to “keep our hope vibrant,” praying that we never get so familiar with the person of Jesus Christ that we miss His mandate; that we miss His revelation of the mission. Pope Francis continues: “Evangelization takes place in obedience to the missionary mandate of Jesus: ‘Go therefore and make disciples.’” To make disciples: this is the mission. It is the mission OF Jesus; it is a mission FROM Jesus.
Yes, we have a mission. And, there’s a lot at stake with the mission. If we’re not careful, the Church can grow so familiar with the mission we can cling to structures, doing things because we’ve always done them. If we’re not careful, the clergy can grow so familiar with the mission that we get too comfortable with routine and settle for what is. If we’re not careful, the Baptized can grow so familiar with the mission that we forget that we even have one. Returning to Pope Francis’ Joy of the Gospel, he writes: “I am aware that nowadays documents do not arouse the same interest as in the past and that they are quickly forgotten. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences. I hope that all communities will devote the necessary effort to advancing along the path of a pastoral and missionary conversion which cannot leave things as they presently are. ‘Mere administration’ can no longer be enough. Throughout the world, let us be ‘permanently in a state of mission.’”
Before speaking specifically about our role in the mission, I would like to paint an image of the mission on the canvas of what it means to be a missionary. After all, if the mission is to make disciples, the disciples themselves need a vision of who they are called to BE before they can be clear on what they’re called TO DO. What does it mean to be a disciple? Or, as Pope Francis writes, what does it mean to be a missionary disciple? As I prayerfully reflect upon the writing of the Holy Father, I see three things clearly articulated in his vision of missionary discipleship: one: encounter … two: conversion … and, three: response. For us to understand what Pope Francis is calling us to we must embrace those three things: encounter, conversion, and response.
What is the mission? What does it mean to be a disciple? What kind of missionaries do we need for the mission? Perhaps we can best imagine a disciple as one who has encountered the person of Jesus Christ; has allowed Christ to reorient their life; and wants to respond to Christ with the totality of their life.
Encounter. Again, in Joy of the Gospel Pope Francis writes: “I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI also referenced this as he wrote: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” A missionary disciple is one who has had an ENCOUNTER with the person of Jesus Christ.
That’s what Jesus did. He called. He called people to follow Him, to get to know Him. He called Peter to follow Him, to get to know Him, and before sending Peter on mission he asked him: “Do you love me?” This encounter, the forming of a deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ, is the heart of every missionary disciple and it is what propels the missionary on to share this love with others. This intimate relationship with Jesus Christ is what bears fruit in the missionary disciple’s life. The first step in becoming a disciple, in forming disciples, is encountering the person of Jesus Christ and developing a personal relationship with Him.
However, the hard work of discipleship isn’t starting a relationship as much as it is staying committed to the relationship. We need CONVERSION. We have to choose to choose. Married couples understand this. The hard part of being a spouse isn’t the wedding, it’s the marriage. Clergy understand this. The hard part of being ordained isn’t giving your life to God but resisting the urge to take it back. A mature relationship with Christ requires that I learn to say “No” so that I can continue to say “Yes.” Disciples learn how to persevere through the refinement of conversion. Disciples learn how to “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” Disciples learn how to “no longer live (and think) as the Gentiles do”, shedding the standard of “the world” and thinking with the mind of Christ – and the Church – so as live in the light.
Encounter. Conversion. Response. Missionary disciples want God to guide their lives, they are open to being led. Disciples yield to the Holy Spirit. They do not go before Jesus and simply say "come bless this effort" but, they learn to first listen to Him, to recognize the path that He points out, and then they respond in generosity of heart. Discernment – discerning the little things – becomes a new way of life such that the words of Jesus in some way become the words of the disciple: “I only do what I see the Father doing.” Of course, when I fall in love with God, I begin to SEE as God sees, I begin to WANT what God wants. Therefore, every mature disciple sheds the facades of individualism, relativism, and consumerism and begins to see Christ in others … in those I live with … in those I’m estranged from … in the poor and marginalized. Love for Christ propels me out of myself and the disciple cannot help but share the Good News with others. Thus, evangelization is no longer seen as a program, or reserved for a few zealots. Rather evangelization is a response to a person and His Church whom I love, and a person that I want the whole world to know.
There is a mission … a mission to form disciples … a mission to help all people encounter the person of Jesus Christ … persevere in the process of true conversion … and respond to Christ however He calls. Each of us has a role in the mission, so now allow me to speak directly to three aspects of the mission.
First, I would like to speak with my brother priests. I again hearken back to the fact that nothing threatens the sacred more than familiarity. My brothers, there’s a lot at stake in the mission and I urge us – as your Bishop I beg you – to recommit today to the MISSION. In just a few moments I will ask you to recommit to promises made at your priesthood ordination. We do so because when we forget the importance of the QUESTIONS, we struggle to live the reality of the ANSWERS. Therefore, let me remind us all of what we promised God, and His people, at BOTH our diaconate and priestly ordinations:
We were asked “Are you resolved … to live with humility?” Humility is a posture, it’s a way of thinking. The enemy to humility is pride, control. And, so because the mission is so important, I ask both you and me: Who’s in charge of our lives? In reality, in our daily decisions, who’s in charge?
We were asked “Are you resolved … to proclaim this faith in word and action?” Pope Paul VI reminds us: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” Are our lives living testimony of our homilies? Do our parishioners SEE in us what they HEAR from us?
We were asked “Are you resolved … to maintain a spirit of prayer appropriate to your way of life?” The enemy of prayer is production. Do we pray … daily … not simply for the sake of preparing a homily, but the sake of a communion with Christ so personal that it animates and gives meaning to our celibacy? Are we still praying?
At our diaconate ordination we were asked “Are you resolved … to shape your way of life always according to the example of Christ?” At our priesthood ordination we were asked “Are you resolved … to unite yourself more closely every day to Christ the High Priest?” The enemy of configuration is complacency. Do we see ourselves as in persona Christi capitis on our “day off” … when it’s “our” time … when we’re in private … is the totality of our life – every relationship, every motive, every decision resolved to be in accordance with Christ and Christ alone?
We were asked “Are you resolved … to obedience?” The enemy of obedience is independence. Are we resolved to doing whatever God asks of us? Do we struggle with any aspect of the Church or Her teaching? Is my first instinct to think “What do I think” rather than “What does Christ teach?”
Each of these questions begins with “Are you resolved?” My brother priests, today the Church asks you are you resolved … to the mission? Are you resolved to your own personal encounter, your own on-going conversion, and your own unbridled response?
My dear brother priests, I hope you know the great affection I have for you in my heart. I am deeply grateful for the ministry that you undertake in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and his Church. I am truly grateful for your service in the name of the Lord to the Church here in Houma-Thibodaux.
Next, I would like to address the faithful here present and in our parishes. Returning to Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis writes: “The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity. While certainly not the only institution which evangelizes, if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be ‘the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.’” The mission of forming disciples happens in the parish. Our parishes are schools of evangelization. The Holy Father continues: “All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization .... Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are ‘disciples’ and ‘missionaries’, but rather that we are always ‘missionary disciples.’” Jesus Christ has given the Church a mission and that requires all of us to be a part of the mission. Just as I implored the priests to recommit to their promises, I now ask all of us – all of our parishes – to commit to the mission of making disciples. To our parishioners I ask: Are you resolved to the mission of assisting other parishioners with their personal encounter, committing to their on-going conversion, and nurturing their free response?
Finally, I address our diocesan leadership. The Holy Father continues: “To make this missionary impulse ever more focused, generous and fruitful, I encourage each particular Church to undertake a resolute process of discernment, purification and reform. … Pastoral ministry in a missionary key seeks to abandon the complacent attitude that says: ‘We have always done it this way.’ I invite everyone to be bold and creative in this task of rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of evangelization.” I would like to thank the hundreds of men and women who daily give themselves so generously to the work of the diocese. I cannot do this without you. As you receive my gratitude, let us recommit today to the MISSION, to the person of Jesus Christ … and whatever Jesus may ask of us. To our diocesan staff I ask: Are we ready for the “discernment, purification and reform” that our Holy Father asks? Are we resolved to a corporate encounter, an institutional conversion, and a diocesan response?
Nothing threatens the sacred more than familiarity. Today’s most sacred Chrism Mass invites us to ask for a renewal in our posture before the sacred. May we never become too familiar with the awesome mission entrusted to us by God. May we be forever SHAPED by the mission. May we forever BURN with the mission. May we forever LABOR in the mission. And, may the words from the Rite of Ordination guide all of us today: “May God who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfillment.” AMEN.
-Bishop Shelton Fabre
March 24, 2016 | Cathedral of St Francis de Sales, Houma, LA
As we continue reflecting on the meaning of being a missionary disciple, we are invited today into the wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI.
In the first paragraph of his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est - GOD IS LOVE, Pope Benedict XVI writes: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
Being Christian is the result of the encounter with a person. Being Christian is the result of the encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ, true GOD, and true man.
Sure, in living a Christian life, one is certainly called to make ethical choices. A Christian is called to work with GOD in becoming a virtuous person. But the very core of being Christian is not the result of doing these things. The very core of being Christian is the result of encounter… an encounter with a person. Its the result of an ongoing encounter with Jesus… the result of a relationship with Him. This relationship with Christ is the heart of being Christian. Being a disciple of Christ is first about communion with Him… spending time with Him, listening to Him, sharing with Him.
And then, as our relationship with GOD grows, He and His Church invites us into a journey of holiness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines holiness as the ‘perfection of charity’. As Christians, as men an women who have encountered, and continue to encounter, the person of Christ, we are all called to holiness… to the ‘perfection of charity’. We are created to love. And specifically called to love like GOD loves, as Jesus invites us to “love one another as I have loved you.” This is our ultimate mission. This is our highest calling… our fundamental vocation… to love like GOD.
We cannot love like GOD without GOD. We cannot give what we do not have. We cannot give what we have not received. But as we encounter Him again and again, spending regular time with the GOD who is love, He strengthens us and teaches us how to love as He does. And this is fundamental in being a missionary disciple.
A wise man once said that we are not free to look outside ourselves and take care of the person in front of us until we ourselves are taken care of. If we want to be missionaries and be able to love well the people in front of us, we must allow ourselves to be continually taken care of by the LORD and His family - His Church.
Do you believe that GOD wants to take care of you?
Do you feel taken care of by Him?
Do you feel as though you're allowing Him to take care of you?
+LORD, I ask today for the grace to know deeply your desire to take of me. Please increase my confidence in your desire …your willingness …and your excitement to take care of me. Please help me to not be afraid to ask you everyday to take care of me, confident that it is your desire. And as I feel more and more taken care of by You, help me to look outside myself, and with You, take care of the person in front of me. Amen+
During a visit with my family not long ago, my brother and I took his kids in the back yard for a good competitive game of ‘hide and seek’. Well, as competitive as it can be with the average age between 4 and 6 and limited hiding spots. My brother was the first to be “it” and I watching as he counted, and the kids scrambled for the best hiding spot. My brother’s daughter, Isabel, was 6 years old at the time and as the oldest, found a particularly great spot behind a large tree.
As my brother was finding the other kids with excitement one after another, Isabel was watching closely. Then, there was a point where she was visibly torn between keeping to the aim of ‘hiding’ and this obvious desire in her that she be ‘found’. So, she squirmed about, growing more and more impatient, until she obviously couldn’t take it any more… at which point she jumped out from behind the tree, jumping up and down and yelling, “find ME Daddy! FIND ME!” What a precious moment.
“Find Me Daddy! FIND ME!”
I share that story, because I think what I witnessed that day in little Isabel’s heart really does reveal something in all of our hearts… that we desire to be found.. we desire to be found by God. And not just generally ‘found’, but personally, because to be found by another means to have an encounter with another.
As we reflect on living as a missionary disciple, how important it is that we remember that if we are ‘disciples’ of Jesus Christ, it because we have had an encounter with Him. We have been found by Him. HE has seen us and loved us. And that encounter, that being ‘found’ is something we need to remain open to every day. It is something for us today.
We can notice this desire to be found but, I think if we pay attention to ‘within’ we can find that when life gets busy and when we are just dealing with difficult things that occupy our attention, and situations that we want resolved that we are still enduring, it can feel like all the burden is on us … to FIND God.
And the reality is, God desires more than us to show us where He is.. to show us that He has FOUND US.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph #2567 it states ““God calls man first. Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer.”
God calls man first
God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer
Can you let yourself rest in the truth that if you are desiring to be found.. to have that encounter with Him today… He desired it first. And that no matter how far it seems He is or how far you seem to have gone from Him… GOD IS NEAR And He is tirelessly calling you back to that encounter with Him.
Today, the encouragement is that whether God feels close or not…whether you feel right in step with Him or lost… that you don’t have to do anything other than stop, look to Him and ask Him “could you come and find me!”..
In the midst of the busyness and demands of work… FIND ME. In the messiness of this relationship I’m dealing with.. FIND ME. In the midst of this situation that I don’t know how to handle… FIND ME.
Today, allow yourself to be FOUND by God.
Today’s suggested scripture passage to pray with is Psalm 139
