it's not time yet

because coming back from my 8-day silent guided retreat made me realize 1) damn. i want to be a jesuit. 2) i love jesuits. 3) trust in God 4) no need to worry or anxiously anticipate. God's got this. and 5) there is a holiness in waiting. and so, the prayer goes...

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
     to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
     to something unknown,
         something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
     by passing through some stages of instability
         and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
     as though you could be today what time
         -- that is to say, grace --
     and circumstances
        acting on your own good will
     will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
     gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
     that his hand is leading you,
     and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
         in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
     our loving vine-dresser.

Amen. 

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

profound thirst

from Secret Fire by Father Joseph Langford, MC, co-founder of Mother Teresa's priests' community...

"Friends, allow yourself (as did the Samaritan woman) to feel Jesus' thirst for you:
I thirst for you. Yes, that is the only way toe ven begin to describe my love for you.
I thirst for you. I thirst to love you and to be loved by you - that is how precious you are to me.
I thirst for you. Come to me, and I will fill your heart and heal your wounds...
I thirst for you. You must never doubt my mercy, my acceptance of you, my desire to forgive, my longing to bless you and live my life in you.
I thirst for you. If you feel unimportant in the eyes of the world, that matters not at all. For me there is no one more important in the entire world than you...
I thirst for you. All I ask of you is that you entrust yourself to me completely. I will do the rest."

included in the march 27, 2011 edition, reflection written by Fr. James H. Kroeger, MM, of the sambuhay publication (a pastoral ministry of the priests and brothers of the society of st. paul)

on the journey

found this...

we are pilgrims

we are pilgrims, we are missionaries
we are journeyers.
we are called to the two-fold journey of going within,
deeply and courageously into our hearts
and of going out compassionately
and justly to the world.

this call to be a pilgrim
is a call to make the world our home,
to learn the truth and to do the truth.
it is a call to contemplative action
to make all space and time sacred
and to make sacred space and time
to know with the heart
that the Word is not beyond our strenth
nor beyond our reach;
to know that flight is not the life of a missionary
but rather the invitation
to give up control and enter into the unknown.

it is a call to travel the road of conversion
and not to fear the truth,
to live the way of simplicity
and live the daily with less.
it is a call to embrace the shared life,
to collaborate with all persons,
to claim nothing as our own -
time, money, space, gifts, ministry.
it is a call
* to be with the poor and the powerless,
* to stand in solidarity with those who have none
* to live with limitations
* to empower for alternative living
* to experience the suffering of others as our own

it is a call to be a pilgrim people,
to know we are unfinished,
to be in awe at the mysteries of life,
to risk trust, intimacy, transparency,
to be known in truth.
we are beacuse the God of our life is faithful
and will finish what God has set out to do in us.
amen.