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

“Then Peter approaching asked him, ‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.'”

(MATTHEW 18:21-22)

The Gospels, as we know, reveal a God who is prodigal beyond all our standards and beyond our imagination. The God of the Gospels is the Sower who, because he has unlimited seeds, scatters those seeds everywhere without discrimination: on the road, in the ditches, in the thorn-bushes, in bad soil, and in good soil.

Moreover, that prodigal Sower is also the God of creation, that is, the God who has created and continues to create hundreds of billions of galaxies and billions of human beings. And this prodigal God gives us this perennial invitation: come to the waters, come without money, come without merit because God’s gift is as plentiful, available, and as free as the air we breathe. 

The Gospel of Luke recounts an incident where Peter, just after he had spent an entire night fishing and had caught nothing, is told to cast our his net one more time and, this time, Peter’s net catches so many fish that the weight of the catch threatens to sink two boats. Peter reacts by falling to his knees and confessing his sinfulness. But as the text makes clear, that’s not the proper reaction in the face of overabundance. Peter is wrongly fearful, in effect, wanting that overabundance to go away. Rather, Jesus wants him – in the face of too much – to go into the world and share with others that unimaginable grace” (24).

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).