May the eyes of your heart be enlightened

We are called to live differently in our world by allowing God's light to be in our hearts. In a time when we are bombarded by bad news, it is hard to believe that there is a different way of looking at how we are called to be present to others. We often feel pushed to react and feel outraged at the latest headline but there is often an associated sense that we cannot do anything else. We are struck by the repetition of a view that such is our life that we can fall into a fatalistic way of living believing that nothing can be done. The problems seem too big that they seem insurmountable.

Yet the way of viewing the world is changed through the celebration of Ascension. The first is that Jesus does not desert us to retreat into a safe haven he promises to send the Holy Spirit which allows us to continue to be present to Him. The second is that he enables us to be ministers of reconciliation who seek forgiveness, healing and nourishment as our way of listening to the way we are called to live. We find this both in our celebration of sacraments of Penance, Anointing and Eucharist. They are what bind us together as a community and which we celebrate in the Mass. We come to know and be known the person of Jesus Christ who walks close by our side.

It is from this incarnational way of living that we start to discover how we become people who seek reconciliation, restoration and renewal which nourishes the body and the spirit. It becomes food and drink for us in the way we are called to discover that we become what we eat. This is not just how we sit at the table, or even the communion we receive at Mass but rather how we seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit in every action of our lives. As St Peter Claver prayed, "Seek God in all things and we shall find God by our side."

Where do I feel most at home?

In an age where it is possible to travel to another country in under a day and where our communication with the world allows us to be instantly present to what is happening on the other side of the world, we often wonder where am I most at home? This ability to access the lives of many different people broadens our minds but does it enlarge our hearts? There can often be paradoxes which seem to confront us: we can travel to many parts of the world while at the same time making it more difficult for people from other countries to make a home with us. There is a feeling of connection and alienation which confuses us where we want to be hospitable but also we don't want to be taken advantage of. When we put out the welcome mat do we actually mean it?

This is the story which stays with us when we listen to the Gospel passage this weekend. When we hear the passage about Jesus asking us to make our home in Him. This can catch us unawares and we can give a theoretical response where we say both yes and no. We have a deep desire to allow Him to be at home with Him and for Him to be at home with us. Yet at the same time, we can develop a sense of resistance bred out of fear and ambiguity where we somehow doubt to take him on His Word.  How can he bring about a peace the world cannot give and how do we allow His life to become our own? We want to surrender everything and hold on to everything at the same time. We want Him to be the tenant but not the landlord!

This is the mystery of the Easter journey where he seeks to take up residence not by force but by desire. He wants us to discover how much value our lives have so that we can value the relationship that He has with God. When we discover this gift of life opened up for us we start to acknowledge that this homecoming allows us to surrender our lives to Him and receive our lives back for the good of the place where we live. We start to discover that our minds can be broadened and our hearts enlarged in our own space and time. We discover that our relationships make a difference and allow us to sit with the contradictions we find within us. By being at home with Christ we discover that God does not treat us like a doormat where he wipes His feet on our welcome sign and takes possession but rather allows us to discover how he deeply respects every human person and the whole of creation. He builds the kingdom by offering everything of Himself to us so that we can do the same in return. He desires to make His home in us but do we desire to make our home in Him?

Who is opening the doors for you?

When we seek to pray we often tempted to set the agenda and step out in faith. We seek to approach God as though we know everything and God knows nothing. We can seek to convince, cajole and influence God to seeing the world as we see it. We then become disappointed when God does not seem to pay attention to our heartfelt cries and our deepest need. At times when we are in our greatest need, we can behave as though God was deaf to our pleas by shouting louder for a result which will be rewarded for our intense effort. At times in the midst of this prayer, we can also sense a spirit of discouragement which can catch us unawares.

Yet we know that it is God who actually initiates and draws us into prayer in the first place. God seeks to draw us closer to the life which will fill our greatest desire. This is the reason why we need to keep on praying about the things that are important to us. By becoming aware of how they influence our lives we become more open to praying about them with a different level of intensity which invites us to surrender our lives to what God seeks to engage us with in life. This is not about a senseless banging our heads against a brick wall but rather a deeper longing for what will open the doors of faith to the grace God wishes to impart. It calls us to be encouraged in the lives we are already living which God is always aware of. God is not absent from us where we need to shout louder or work harder. God stands at our side in the person of Jesus seeing where he establishes a home amongst us. 

In this discovery, we find all creation is made new and God helps to experience a love which is not ethereal but is a revelation which draws us closer to Him. It leads us in a way of life which is holistic and holy. God is glorified in the lives we are called to live. No longer do we hold God at arm's length but allows us to open doors which have for too long seen Him as a stranger distant from our lands. Jesus helps us to know that God always abides with us and opens the whole of our life to his loving presence. Our life becomes a prayer and our prayer becomes our life.

Listen to my voice!

We are living through a time where the political climate has become more adversarial and partisan. This has probably been as true in how we vote for politicians as it is how we choose to believe in what is God is saying to us. It feels like a great divide has been created within humanity which can threaten to tear us apart. We can start to feel hidden violence and antipathy which seeks to destroy us. In listening to that voice we start to notice how it can lead to disharmony, intolerance and prejudice on both sides of the divide. The hidden force seems to revel in what will dampen our enthusiasm, confuse our best intentions and leave us believing that we are only destined for destruction. It is easy to see how this bad news can draw our attention and drive our lives. It can cause us to become paralysed, fearful and reactive in making instinctive choices which are not ours to control. In this atmosphere, we need to be careful that we do not succumb to false images of what is successful, esteemed and relevant either in our private or corporate life.

What we are seeking is eternal life and the voice which rings true to the reason for which we are created. We know that when politics enters into the spiritual life we can adopt positions which only reinforce what we already know or which play to our worst fears. They can even start to portray our image of God as a dulled vision of ourselves. It can affect the way we read scripture, listen to theological arguments and how we seek to live our lives. We can easily become consumers of religious things rather than people called into a life-giving relationship. In this environment, our religious practice becomes more about what makes us comfortable, safe and secure rather than encountering the person of Jesus in our own vulnerability and need.

Yet Jesus is the only person who can meet us in this poverty where we acknowledge who it is that we hunger and thirst for. We want food that can satisfy us and drink that quenches our thirst. This is more than just filling ourselves on our own terms but rather allowing God to meet us in that place of deep need. The Gospel we are called to proclaim is not a cleverly argued text but a living relationship which wells up to eternal life within us. It is from that place where we have to acknowledge that we have had a gutful of suggestions which sound good but do not sustain us. It means that we need to sit with those things that stew within us and which cannot be easily resolved just through our own efforts. That we can be honest with God with our whole self in our prayer and in the way we live. It is from this place that we discover a way of incarnational living which befriends us and calls us to proclaim the Good News. This will change the way we live because it is a political statement but it is one in which we seek life, not death!

Have you caught anything my friends

There is often a temptation in life to measure the success of our relationship with God on the tangible results produced. We want to know that we are not 'wasting' our time or our money on something or someone who does not produce the goods. Such an emphasis on success can cause us to work hard and endeavour to produce spiritual benefits through our own efforts. There can be an emphasis on working as though everything depended on us and praying as though everything depended on God. In adopting this attitude we tend to yield to a view of obedience which asks God to dance to our tune and to praise us for our own efforts. What we discover is that our lives become hard work and our relationships become transactional where we seek something good on our own terms.

In the midst of this daily story, Jesus calls to us from the shoreline, have you caught anything, my friends? What would often seem so clear to us and to Jesus that the question almost appears to answer itself in the asking? Yet we still adopt the same approach that carried us in our other relationships, God will praise me for my hard work and will reward me for my efforts. Yet what is revealed in this story is that what makes the difference is the willingness to fish on the other side. Literally to turn our lives around to see that what we are seeking is very close to us and within our reach. This is not about profoundly changing our circumstances or about a radical change of our environment but rather a discovery that God is intently interested in helping us discover how fruitful our lives can be. This is not about living a different story but seeing our story in a new light.

This is shown when Jesus addresses Peter and asks him three times do you love me? This is not about humiliating Peter but helping him discover the three degrees of humility to which we are all drawn. In discovering that our lives can give testimony to God in our daily lives we see how we can live the Gospel at the heart of everything. This is the Easter message not just to clothe ourselves in Christ but to allow Christ to draw out of us the words which change how we seek to enter into a relationship with him. In this way no longer is our worth gauged by how hard we work or how much time we spend performing good works but rather how we become present to Christ in all things. In this way, the voice we listen to is that of Christ who changes how we view our story and how we live our lives.