Come Away By Yourselves
"Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while." These words of Jesus Christ are an invitation to personal and intimate prayer. The meditations offered in this podcast are intended to help the listener enter into his own prayerful relationship with God. By reflecting on scenes from the Gospel, on other passages from Scripture, and on the insights of saints and spiritual writers, we can strengthen our faith in Jesus and our love for God. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "I have called you my friends." By regular meditation and dialogue with Our Lord in prayer, our life can be transformed into an ever deepening and loving friendship with God.
Episodes
This Sunday's readings show as God as a generous provider. In the book of Isaiah, God invites the people to come to him for their food and drink. In the Gospel, Jesus feeds the crowds with the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish. God's providence is something we are called to place great trust in, especially when times are hard.
"He who loves his life will lose it, he who loses his life for my sake will find it." Finding our true life, and our true selves, means handing ourselves over to Christ. Losing our lives for the sake of Christ is a transformative union with him. This takes work and an acceptance of suffering. There is no resurrection of ourselves in Christ without the cross.
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Jesus doesn't just have compassion on others, he discovers motives for his compassion. Understanding others is an essential ingredient in loving them. This takes humility, patience, and the rejection of an evil, critical spirit.
Jesus' victory over sin is a great cause of joy in heaven and on earth. This victory only happens, however, insofar as sin is recognized and repented of. Paradoxically, therefore, the sorrow of contrition for our sins is simultaneously a great motive for joy at our reconciliation with God. Sorrow for sin lets Jesus' victory be won in us and thus makes of us fertile grounds for joy and celebration.
Sin and evil are real. They are not playing games. To defeat them and be disciples of Christ, we need to take our Christian life very seriously. This takes resolute, decisive choices and clear thinking about good and evil, virtue and vice, love and betrayal.
Jesus's presence in the Blessed Sacrament affords us a wonderful opportunity. Just as we spend time with friends and loved ones just to be with them, our mental prayer is an occasion of simply being present with Jesus. Jesus did this during his earthly life with various groups and individuals. They cherished these days and hours alone with their Friend, Lord, and Teacher. We can do the same in our prayer life.&nbs...
This Sunday's readings remind us of so many important realities. We are God's people and precious to him. He has loved us in our sinfulness, before we merited any goodwill on his behalf. We are an apostolic Church chosen by name and invested with power to do good and proclaim the Gospel. Our ordinary lives are actually quite extraordinary!
The Sacred Heart of Jesus is more than a symbol. Jesus truly loves us with his heart. This love is fully human: emotional, warm, tender, encouraging. This love is fully divine: all powerful, infinite, eternal. To appreciate this love we need to live in it and pray about it. Let's "enter into the Sacred Heart of Jesus," as saints and Popes alike have encouraged us. There we find new strength...
On the Feast of Corpus Christi the Church turns her heart to Jesus's real presence in the Blessed Sacrament. A marvel of love, in the Eucharist the infinite enters the finite, the Creator his creation and the invisible the visible real. Adoration, devotion, and gratitude should mark our response to this great mystery of our Faith.
The Bible often encourages us to a silent, receptive stance before God's reality and goodness. This kind of prayer takes recollection or composure of heart, which in turn requires some trust in God. Our distaste for quiet prayer can be rooted in an unwillingness to cede control or a fear of the changes it might provoke in us. Jesus's advice to the busy Martha is pertinent for all times: "Mary has chosen the better...
The Holy Spirit is God's gift to us. The Spirit dwells within each one of us in the state of grace. We should ask him for help and rely on his presence especially to live the virtue of charity. The fruits of the Spirit are the indications of his activity in our life.
"This is eternal life, that they know you the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." These words of Jesus reveal the importance of coming to know God more and more. We grow in this knowledge in various ways: study and spiritual reading, personal dealings with Him in our prayer life, living in HIs presence. To know Jesus fully, however, we also have to enter into his own experience of loving and trustin...
As we celebrate Mother's Day in the month of May, our minds and hearts naturally go to our Heavenly Mother, Mary. Devotion to Our Lady should be natural and heartful, as is our devotion to our own mothers. Mary is a great ally in the Christian life and May, Mary's month, is a great time to increase our love for her and our dependence on her intercession .
St. Peter says we are a priestly people who offer spiritual sacrifices to God. What does it mean to have a "priestly soul"? How can we make our hearts altars of a burning love of God? How can we be mediators and peacemakers between God and men?
The image of our Lord as Good Shepherd is a challenging one. It means that we Christians are sheep. Our pride and self-sufficiency naturally bristle at this image. Only with deep humility, and contemplating Jesus the Lamb of God, can we embrace being sheep and having a Shepherd.
The two disciples' encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus teaches us so much about prayer and faith. Jesus walks with us whether we realize it or not. He is interested in what is happening in our lives and also in how it affects us. His presence in the dialogue of prayer, in the Eucharist and in Scripture should be places where we regularly seek his companionship and counsel.
When he appears to his apostles on Easter Sunday, Jesus's first and consistent message to them is one of peace. The very presence of Jesus brings us peace as it did the fearful Apostles. Union with the person of Christ is also another source of peace. This is promised to us by Jesus himself, "Peace I leave you, my peace I give to you." Trust in God, especially in God's mercy, is a key to receiving this peace...
Lent is over and with it comes the expectation of Easter Joy. Holy Saturday invites us to anticipate the joy and wonder of the Resurrection of Jesus. The Resurrection is a powerful reality that continues to give life and joy to the world and especially the Church.
As we enter Holy Week, we can ponder Jesus's fundamental motivation. Whether growing up in Nazareth or preaching throughout Galilee and Judea, whether acclaimed by the crowds or nailed to the Cross, Jesus is always doing one thing: fulfilling his Father's will. This is at the crux of our own identity as sons and daughters of God in Christ
Jesus's death on the cross is the supreme revelation of God's love. St. Paul tells us that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ. Christ's death shows us how much he loves us and what the Father's love for Him, and for us, is like. This is a reliable love, upon which we can firmly plant all of our problems and our whole life. The cross fills us with confidence in God and our own cross...
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