In one of Dr. Barbara Holmes’ (1943–2024)final teachings for CAC’s Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation, she focused on joy as a practice and presence:   

Joy as embodied presence is an abiding awareness of the gift given to each and every one of us, no matter our circumstances in life. I want to begin talking about joy embodied from scriptural sources. In John 15:11, Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.” In 1st Thessalonians 5:16–18, we read, “Let your joy be your continual feast. Make your life a prayer, and in the midst of everything, be always giving thanks, for this is God’s perfect plan for you in Jesus Christ.” In James 1:2–3, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” 

Brothers and sisters, true joy is a limitless, life-defining, transformative reservoir waiting to be tapped. It requires only the utmost surrender and like love, it’s a choice to be made that ultimately transcends time. True joy is not circumstantial. It doesn’t require that things be going well. You can have joy during imprisonment as Nelson Mandela did, or while impoverished, as many do in Haiti. Joy is even available in war-torn parts of the globe today.  

Make no mistake about it, there’s a real difference between happiness and joy. The sources of happiness are very fleeting. Buy something new and see how fleeting it is. That new car, that new house, they lose their luster in a mere few weeks. True joy is foundational. It’s a basis of God’s love for us, sealed with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Could there be any firmer foundation? 

Holmes reveals how our egos keep us from experiencing true joy:  

Finding your joy may also require that you dismantle the false construct that your life is about you. Now, it’s not our fault that we believe that the journey is all about us. From the moment we’re born, all eyes are on us. Attention is necessary to make certain that we’re breathing, that we have a safe passage through the womb, and adoring parents who continue that focus or not. Somehow, we begin to believe that everything is about our comfort, our future, our well-being, our pain. As I’m entering the latter phase of my life, I’m finally beginning to realize that the scaffolding of self that was erected from birth was a necessary but temporary support. It was a place I could hang my dreams and my visions, but it was never meant to be permanent. It’s only by faith and by our journey through a few dark nights of the soul do we relinquish the overwhelming chatter of ego, a feat that is all struggle and many setbacks.  

Friends, Jesus’ parable in this  Gospel is one of the most psychologically and spiritually insightful remarks in the New Testament. Let’s face it: a favorite pastime of most human beings is criticism of others. 

We delight in pointing out the shortcomings, moral failings, and annoying tendencies of our neighbors. This is, of course, a function of pride and egotism: The more I put someone else down, the more elevated I feel. 

But it is also, oddly, a magnificent means of turning a mirror on ourselves, to see what usually remains unseen. Why, we ought to ask, do we find precisely this sin of others particularly annoying? Why does that trait or sin of a confrere especially gall us? 

Undoubtedly, Jesus implies, because it reminds us of a similar failing in ourselves. I remember a retreat director asking each of us to call to mind a person that we found hard to take and then to recount in detail the characteristics that made the person so obnoxious to us. Then he recommended that we go back to our room and ask God to forgive those same faults in ourselves. His words were as unnerving and as illuminating as these words of Jesus.

Bishop Barron 

I went hiking this month in The Rockies near Banff.   Most of my pics were of water, and I had to figure out what was real, and what was a reflection.

 

Father Richard Rohr explains how the Gospels impart a message of liberation, particularly for people pushed to the margins of society: 

The vast majority of people throughout history have been poor, oppressed, or in some way “on the margins.” They would have read history in terms of a need for change, but most of history has been written and interpreted from the side of the winners. The unique exception is the revelation called the Bible, which is an alternative history from the side of the often enslaved and oppressed people of ancient Israel, culminating in the scapegoat figure of Jesus himself. 

In the Gospels, the poor, people with disabilities, tax collectors, sinners, and outsiders tend to follow Jesus. It’s those on the inside and the top—the Roman occupiers, the chief priests and their conspirators—who crucify him. Shouldn’t that tell us something significant about perspective? Every viewpoint is a view from a point. We must be able to critique any winner’s perspective if we are to see a fuller truth. 

Liberation theology—which focuses on freeing people from religious, political, social, and economic oppression—is often dismissed by official Christianity. Perhaps that’s not surprising when we consider who interpreted the Scriptures for the last seventeen hundred years. The empowered clerical class enforced their own perspective instead of that of the marginalized, who first received the message with such excitement and hope. Once Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire (after 313 CE), we largely stopped reading the Bible from the side of the poor and the oppressed.

When Scripture is read through the eyes of vulnerability—what Catholics call the “preferential option for the poor” or the “bias from the bottom”—it will always be liberating and transformative. Scripture will not be used to oppress or impress. The question is no longer, “How can I maintain the status quo?” (which often happens to benefit me), but “How can we all grow and change together?” We would have no top to protect, and the so-called “bottom” becomes the place of education, real change, and transformation for all. 

The bottom is where we have no privilege to prove or protect but much to seek and become. Jesus called such people “blessed” (Matthew 5:3). Dorothy Day said much the same: “The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.” [2] From that place, where few would choose to be, we can be used as instruments of transformation and liberation for the rest of the world. [3] 

Fr Richard Rohr

Look who celebrated special milestone birthdays this year!  Youthful Fr. Rajan, Paulette, and Irene!

Cecelia (absent) turned 100!  Congratulations to all- that’s a lot of experience and wisdom!

Neither do you light a lamp, and put it under a measuring basket, but on a stand; and it shines to all who are in the house. Even so, let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

— Matthew 5:15–16   Fr. Rajan gave us such an inspiring message at the June wind-up.  Here we are all lighting the room!

We had so many beautiful ceremonies on June 10th:  

-New member and our CWL pledge renewal,
-Installation of the Spiritual Advisor
-Prayers for a deceased member - Anne Sedo
-Years of service pins.

As we pass the one week of the summer solstice, I wish you a wonderful and safe and blessed summer.  We have so much to be thankful for- especially each other.