Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us”.

(ROMANS 5:7-8)

“Anyone who has ever watched a fire knows that, at a point, the flames subside and disappear into smoldering coals that themselves eventually cool and turn into cold, gray ash. But there’s a moment in that process, before they cool off, that the coals can be stirred in order to make them burst into flame again.

That’s the image St. Paul uses to encourage us to rekindle the fires of our faith when they seem to be burning low: “I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God” (2 Timothy 1:6). It’s a meaningful image. Our faith sometimes needs some stirring at its roots to make it alive again. How do we do that?

We stir our faith bak into flame by resituating ourselves inside its roots. Even though faith is a divine gift, it can be helpful sometimes to journey back and examine what earthly forces helped plant the faith inside us.     

Who and what helped give us faith? That’s a deeply personal question that each of us can only answer for himself or herself. It could be the faith and witness of our parents, our church community, our teachers, or others who helped us find ways to hear God’s voice and left deep, permanent roots in our souls.

But sometimes God’s voice can feel completely silent. Sometimes our imagination can run dry so that we don’t feel God’s presence. It’s then that we need to stir the seemingly smoldering coals of our faith by making a journey back to reground ourselves to where our faith found its roots.

This kind of journey can be helpful for most everybody, with one cautionary flag. The seeming silence of God in our lives as adults can in fact be a deeper modality of God’s presence rather than a sign of a deteriorating faith. The voice of God often seems clear at times but later on that clarity gives way to what the mystics call the “dark nights of the soul”, where God’s seeming absence is not a question of a loss of faith but of a new, richer, less-imaginative mode of God’s presence in our lives. Fervor is not always a sign of a deep faith, just as the seeming absence of God is not necessarily a sign of a weakening faith. God must be patiently waited for and will arrive in our lives only on God’s terms, not ours.

Even so, St. Paul’s advice remains: ‘I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God'” (23).

Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easterby Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your heritage,that lives apart in a woodland,in the midst of an orchard.Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead,as in the days of old;as in the days when you came from the land of Egypt, show us wonderful signs”.

(MICAH 7:14-15)

Orphans, widows, and strangers! That’s scriptural code for who, at any given time, are the three most vulnerable groups in society.

Today, without doubt, we are facing the biggest humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War. Millions upon millions of people, under unjust persecution and the threat of death, are being driven from their homes and homelands with no place to go and no country or community to receive them.

As Christians, we may not turn our backs on them or turn them away. If Jesus is to be believed, we will be judged spiritually more by how we treat refugees than by whether or not we are going to church. When we stand before God in judgment and ask in protest, “When did I see a stranger and not welcome him?” Our generation may hear God reply, “I was a Syrian refugee, and you did no welcome me.”  

The issue of refugees and immigrants is highly sensitive and complex. But as we – our churches and our governments – address them, we must remain clear on what the Scriptures, Jesus, and the social teachings of the Church uncompromisingly teach: we are to welcome the stranger, even when it’s inconvenient and even if there are dangers” (21).

Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit”.

(MATTHEW 21:43)

“St Augustine teaches that we can never be morally neutral. We are either growing in virtue of falling into vice. We never have the luxury of simply being in a holding state. Either we are growing in goodness or sliding in the opposite way. That’s true for all of life. 

So also with our attitude toward justice and the poor: either we are actively reaching out to the poor and being more drawn into concern for them or we are unconsciously hardening our hearts against them and unknowingly sliding into attitudes that trivialize their issues and distance ourselves from them. If we are not actively advocating for justice and the poor, it is inevitable that at a point we will, with completely sincere hearts, downplay the issues of poverty, racism, inequality, and injustice.

We can, in all good conscience and with a good heart, be blind toward justice and the poor (Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus: cf. Luke 16:19–31). As I have stated before, we can be moral men and women, pious churchgoers, generous donors to those who seek help from us, and warm to our own families and friends. Yet at the same time we can be blind to ourselves, though not to the poor; be unhealthily elitist, subtle racists, callous toward the environment, and protective of our own privilege. We are still good persons no doubt, but the absence of compassion in one area of our lives leaves us limping morally” (20).