Friday, May 02, 2008

Friday, May 2, 2008

Today’s text

John 17:7-11

Now at last they have recognized that all you have given me comes from you for I have given them the teaching you gave to me, and they have indeed accepted it and know for certain that I came from you, and have believed that it was you who sent me. It is for them that I pray. I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. All I have is yours and all you have is mine, and in them I am glorified. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us.

Prayer

Like us … . Two small words spark joy and tears for which I am thankful. They tell me my soul is neither dead nor dull but still able to taste your goodness.

You pray, Jesus, that we be one like you and the Blessed Mystery are one, sharing all that you are so that to see the one is to know the other. And in this case, the Totally Other, the face of God.

You are glorified in us, Jesus, as we hold you fast, abiding in your love and loving to the end of our souls, the end of our abilities, the end of our days. In the loving, we taste and know the goodness of all you share with the Holy One.

It is a feast we shall know when our breath here stops--and now, in the sweetness of sharing, made sweeter by the endings which rush at us: the end of lives, the end of school, the departure of friends and treasured colleagues, the great exodus that takes our souls down the roads you appoint for us.

As we prepare to go, be glorified in us, my brother.

Be glorified in the love you pry out of your hearts to share with those with whom we have been privileged to share our lives. Be glorified in us as we leave to find fresh connections with faces far off for whom you also pray.

Be glorified that we may taste what it is to be like you, one with the Blessed Mystery whose love never departs, even when we must.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Today’s text

John 17:4-6

And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. Now, Father, glorify me with that glory I had with you before ever the world existed. I have revealed your name to those whom you took from the world to give me. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

Prayer

You reveal your glory, Holy One. And it brings us joy when you do.

For your glory is the love that courses through the heart of your Triune life. And you reveal this glory in humble circles of loving care where human souls are truly human.

Drawn into circles of sharing, we name our cares and the places where, amid noise and silence, we know you. We listen and learn we are not alone. Such exquisite knowledge opens our hearts, and you join as one.

We share in common the loving mystery of your life. It flows among us. We see the beauty you are in the face of another you love more than we can know. And we love them too, knowing you in that love.

This is the glory of your life, O three-personed God, to be joined with you and each other in the community of loving care you are. To taste the glory of your life in unity of soul with other souls who know you.

And there, finally, to know you and eternity as well.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Today’s text

John 17:1-3

After saying this, Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you; so that, just as you have given him power over all humanity, he may give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him. And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Prayer

Grant us your greatest treasure, O God. Pour out your riches and lift us above our poverty of soul. Give us the immensity of your enormity that we may longer scrape by.

For I do. I have ample wealth for food and clothing and shelter. But I scrape through many situations with my soul no longer intact. My actions and words are barren and poor of Spirit. They lack generosity and depth, and fail to voice the joy that marks true knowledge of you.

And all because my mind and heart dwell far from the places where I know you. I dwell in the land of my insufficiency, the territory of anxiety over unfinished tasks and too little time.

I scrape by but fail to thrive and bless. Conversations wind to an end without a word of joy and generosity passing my lips to enrich the poverty of another.

For my soul is poor. I am bedeviled by the next thing I must do, not on sharing the love that gives true knowledge of you and builds community of heart and mind.

This I confess. But much more: I seek to drink the fullness of your Fullness. My great joy is to brim with the elation of this love that fills me as I am here with you. It fills and spills from my soul, running over, a current of life and joy.

So keep me mindful of you and of the love you are. Fill me with knowledge of you that I may live with largess. Give us this, your greatest treasure, and we will be poor of soul no longer.

We shall live, and all we touch will be more alive for the treasure we bear.

Pr. David L. Miller