Anointed

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people." -St. Teresa of Avila

YOU are the hands and the feet of Christ. YOU have been anointed to bring the good news to all the world. When we were baptized, we were anointed with holy oil (chrism) to have a share in Christ as priest, prophet, and king. This confers on us a missionary spirit - the anointing to preach the Gospel, to teach people about Jesus, to bring them to Jesus, to BE Jesus to others in a world desperately in need of Him.

How is Christ’s anointing challenging you? We have all been anointed; we are all commissioned by God. In what way is God wanting you to exercise your missionary spirit? What is He giving you an anointing for? Sometimes it is to reach out to a friend we know is having a rough time; sometimes it’s to minister to the poor; sometimes it’s to teach our own children how to pray; sometimes it’s to start something new in our lives that stretches us.

Friends, the world needs Jesus! We are called to be Jesus to the world. How will you be Jesus to someone this week?

Photo Source: https://myhillsongcollegeexperience.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/stock-footage-close-up-of-bottle-pouring-olive-oil.jpg

Do Whatever He Tells You

 

Do we do what Jesus tells us? Mary tells the wedding servers to do whatever Jesus tells them. Their obedience results in a miracle - Jesus’ first recorded miracle in fact.

When Jesus tells the servers to fill several big jars full of water, I like to imagine what the servers might have been thinking: “Um. Jesus, you know it’s wine that we’re out of right? Not water. What good will jugs of water do? This is a waste of time.” Maybe they thought these things, but maybe they didn’t. Regardless of what might have been going through their heads, they did what Jesus told them to without stopping to question Him - no matter how odd or pointless or difficult it seemed.

Here are five important things that Jesus tells us to do:
‘Love one another as I have loved you’ John 15:12
‘Repent and believe in the Gospel’ Mark 1:15
‘Keep my commandments’ John 14:15
‘Love your enemies… do good to those who hate you’ Matthew 5:44
‘Come to me… Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart’ Mt 11:28-29

When people do what Jesus tells them, that is when miracles happen like at Cana - that is when lives are transformed. When Jesus told Mary Magdalene ‘Go, and sin no more’, she did just that, she received a miracle of spiritual healing. When Jesus told the blind man, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ he did, and received a physical miracle of being able to see again. When Jesus told the apostles, ‘Come, follow me’, and they did, their hearts were opened to see the Lord, and their lives were elevated. These requests Jesus made of people (and many others throughout the Gospels) probably seemed impossibly difficult, silly, or strange. But the people had faith. Jesus performed miracles because of the people’s faith. (See Luke 7:50, Mark 10:52, Matthew 9:22, Luke 8:48, Mark 5:34, etc.)

Sometimes doing what Jesus tells us seems odd, pointless, or just downright difficult (doing good to those who hate you, for instance). But that’s exactly when He has a distinct purpose in mind - we just have to do what He says, and trust Him with the outcome. We have to let our faith in Him be our strength.

We too will experience healings, transformations, and miracles (large or small), by doing one simple thing: doing what Jesus tells us. Follow His commandments (all of them); repent of your sins (all of them); love others - including your enemies, and come to Jesus; learn from Him. We are more likely to imitate others the more we spend time with them. Who can argue that we all could use to become a little more like Jesus? Spend time with Him (especially in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament), follow Him, do whatever He tells you, and your life will be made new. Your faith - true, real, deep faith in following Jesus - will save you.


Photo Source: http://www.amyekeh.com/blog/2016/1/12/how-to-pray-for-wine-at-a-party

Make Ready Your Heart…. Travel Back in Time

I’m going on an Advental hiatus (yes, I just made Advent into an adjective). I’m trying to make more room for the Lord in these weeks leading up to Christmas… For the season of Advent, I’m giving up Facebook (the only exception being to post blog links, of course). Most people think that giving something up for a season is something we really only do during Lent… but we forget that Advent is also a penitential season. Like Lent, Advent is a season of preparation. In both seasons, we are anticipating the Lord either in His birth or in His Resurrection.

The word Advent means ‘arrival’ or ‘coming’. What do we do when we are expecting the arrival of a guest? When we know that someone special is coming over? We clean house. We make room for them to stay. In the season of Advent, we are anticipating a coming, the celebration of the arrival of Christ the Savior. He seeks to dwell in us; but we need to make room in the inn of our heart so that we don’t turn Him away. We have to make the space, or we won’t have the space to welcome Him in and give Him room. I humbly admit that I spend too much time on Facebook! It’s easy to scroll and scroll, anticipating the next funny meme, or inspirational post, or that next announcement about an important event in a friend’s life. I’m sure if I kept track, I spend more time on Facebook than I do in prayer. That doesn’t seem like a very Jesus centered life. And I want my life to be Jesus centered. Which means I need to put HIM first and spend more time with Him than I do scrolling mindlessly through a media stream.

So this Advent, I’m choosing to be an innkeeper; to take on the role of one of those innkeepers of Bethlehem, transporting my heart back about two thousand years. Except, when the Holy Family knocks on my door, I want to have room prepared for them. I want to have a place for Jesus to be born in me. So these next 24 days, I’m cleaning my inn. I’m cleaning out those things that crowd Jesus out. How many times I think I’m just going to check Facebook for a few minutes and then pray, and before I know it, I have 5 minutes left before I have to hit the ground running to make breakfast, or get out the door for work, and prayer gets crowded out. I didn’t make room in my inn for Jesus. It's time for that to change.

And so I challenge you too: what can you do this Advent to make the inn of your heart ready to welcome Jesus in? It might be giving something up, or doing something more concrete. Whatever it is, be intentional about it! Be a true innkeeper this Christmas. And whistle while you work :) 

Heroes Do the Hard Stuff

Sometimes life is harder than it should be. The burdens are too heavy; the suffering is too great; the fear is too real; the worry is too consuming.

Right now, every area of my life is causing stress - and it feels too great to bear. It's easy to be angry - even at God. It's hard to understand and trust Him... so hard. I realized yesterday that the way I am reacting and thinking (a way I often unknowingly slip into, but am starting to become more aware of), is that I'm not asking Jesus to walk through the difficulties with me; I'm not just 'being' with Him, trusting Him, knowing that He is taking care of me and will continue to do so; I'm not asking Him to stay with me in the storm - I am just asking Him to fix it. And then I get mad when things don't change. Sometimes we have a really hard time accepting our circumstances and recognizing God's presence. As I say to myself "Lord, I want you to be with me, but right now, I don't just want you to be with me, I want you to fix things! I want you to act! Why does it have to be this way? Can't you just DO something? I know you can, but why won't you?!"

The answer is still one I usually don't like. The answer is that He's not changing things because He wants us to rely more completely on Him, less on ourselves, and less dependent on circumstances to make us happy, so that our contentment comes from HIM. A beautiful concept... but it doesn't feel so very beautiful.

We look at the saints' lives and are captured by the romanticism in a sense... we are intrigued by the level of their intimacy with God - an intimacy that requires serious heroic virtue. Heroes do the hard stuff, make the tough sacrifices, fill the role no one else will. Saints are God's heroes. Their intimacy with God is indeed beautiful and romantic; their lives a seemingly perfectly orchestrated symphony of love, suffering, and holiness. When we see all the facets of their lives come together and can read the whole story, we see that panoramic beauty of their walk with God. But it didn't always feel beautiful. It wasn't always easy. They didn't always like it. But they focused on the LORD, and not on their circumstances (something I have an exceedingly hard time emulating!), and that's what gave them their strength.

They kept their eyes on Jesus. They trusted Him. Their circumstances were hard. Their suffering was real, and awful, and hard to bear. But instead of pointing the finger at God, somehow blaming Him, or accusing Him of not loving them enough to intervene (which is what I like to do), they just kept loving Him. And BELIEVING that He had it all under control; accepting the knowledge of His love for them, and that He was their rescuer.

Heroes do the hard stuff. Heroes take action when it feels the least beautiful. And out of it comes huge reward, immense beauty. I'm working hard today - and in the days ahead - to look at Jesus and not at the stuff in my life that I want Him to fix before I will give Him my all. I may have to give Him my all over, and over, and over again, each time I get distracted and downhearted with life's chaos, and it's HARD. Life is harder than it should be! But heroes do the hard stuff.