SUMMER: TAKING TIME TO REFLECT ON DOING “WHAT IS MINE TO DO”

As Franciscan priest and founder of the Albuquerque Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC), Richard Rohr, frequently says, “God’s plan for us is the same today as it always has been.” Chapter One of the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium, defines that plan of God to be “to raise us to a participation of the divine life.”

At the time of his retirement, Fr. Rohr told those who are carrying on the CAC ministry, “I have done what was mine to do. May Christ teach you what is yours!” These words of wisdom have meaning for us, too, for something must have been in the mind of God when God breathed life into each of us.

To help us remember and dutifully be engaged in “doing what is mine to do,” for centuries now, the Church has offered us the Liturgical Year Readings. (We cycle through three sets of these yearly readings.) They are meant to guide us from our youth to our earthly deaths, so that we may discover “what is mine to do,” in our very personal partnerships with this God who continues breathing life into us – in every step we take each day. And, hopefully, when we draw near the end of our earthly journeys, we will be able to say of those we have met along the way, “I have done what was mine to do. May Christ teach you what is yours!”

EASTER INTO ORDINARY TIME: FOR CHRISTIANS – SPRING  (NEW LIFE) INTO SUMMER (NURTURING AND FRUITION)

Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi (Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ) – one mystical and mysterious feast after another, readying us for a summer of pleasure in the lush beauty opening up once again this year. I am sure that these feasts, carrying us from Easter into Ordinary Time, are meant to move us into a summer of attentiveness to the mystical and mysteriousness – but real – connections that God has with each of us and with all of us – connections that are just as real and mysterious as the shared bondedness of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that allow themselves to come together and form water, so essential to all life on earth. How mystical and mysterious is that? And how many more clues to “what is ours to do” – to “what is ours to be” – is God placing around us?¹

Let’s make this summer a time in which we pay attention to the mystical and mysteriousness of life. What is that strange and wonderful Partner hoping we will learn as we celebrate these Feasts? Let’s use this summer to ponder the mysteries of these yearly Feasts, hoping to learn more about ourselves and our God-centeredness, so that we move back into Ordinary Time with a deeper realization of what truly is happening right here, right now: God is inviting me into a deeper “participation of the divine life.”²

AND WHAT IS “MINE TO DO” RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW?

So, where am I right here, right now and what will I do with my summer? Perhap you and I should put aside some time to slip out of our everyday Martha-minded attentiveness and into the more refreshing, mystical posture of Mary seated at the feet of our Lord of our souls. (Luke 10:38-42)

I suggest praying this song³, not only to God, but also to each other. For I have no doubt that God’s intention is not only that sharing, bonding and cooperation happen among atoms to produce refreshing and life-supporting water, but that something just as mystical and mysterious, refreshing and life-supporting, comes from the sharing, bonding and cooperation that we do with each other.

Then, hopefully, when the ends of our earthly journeys come – and they will! – may we be able to say to those we have met along the way, “I have done what was mine to do. May Christ teach you what is yours!”

Sister Loretta

1. How many things can we learn from the hidden, but very “real,” functioning that is going on right now in nature and in our own bodies and psyches? Why did God, who could have made us differently, chose to make us the way we are? It is interesting that the bonding of the atoms in water occurs only when part of each atom, one of its its electrons, is shared (not taken and given up) with another atom that is completely different in nature.
2.  How much awareness do we (you and I) have of the fact that this “participation in the divine life” has been going on in every person who has ever lived, and will ever live, since the beginning of our existence? God is the absolutely perfect father, mother, friend and companion of every one of us.
3.  In 2010, Martin Hurkens, was an out-of-work baker whose daughter, without his permission, signed up to be a constestant on the Dutch TV program, “Holland’s Got Talent.” The daughter thought he had a chance to win. This is a Youtube video of Martin Hurkens singing ‘You raise me up’, in the city of Maastricht (NL) (2010) (L1.nl is the public broadcaster for the Dutch region of Limburg).