Dear Friends,

  I am writing to you at the close of a day (Sunday, June 15, 9 PM)that has turned out to be quite, quite blessed for me.  I hope you bear with me in what I  say here.  Some of you may think I have gone "off the edge".  I cannot help it.  And I really want to say what I am going to say, it has so grabbed me.  I am not losing it, I know who I am and what I will share is real and authentic.  I hope it invites you, the reader, to your own experience and to a renewed or new sense of how rich is this life going on in our own depths.

  My effort to pray this morning was in and out of attention to God, somewhat distracted and not all that "satisfying."  After I came back from breakfast, I got taken by a strong sense of how precious God is, how utterly precious Christ is.  It so hit me that I began to feel tears welling up inside me.  I had to sit down and just let this surprising awareness "run its course".  I am reminded of the words in a psalm, "taste and see how God is the Lord."  Later in the morning, while I had a break between my second and third retreatants, I took a walk over to the Stations of the Cross and was walking through a section of our grounds where we are extending the stations to make for a wider walk.  In the new section someone planted lots of sunflowers and they have grown up so fast, as they usually do.  Two were in blossom and standing about 7.5 feet tall, about a foot or more above my face.  They were turned to the sun, which we have had little off during these cold days that anticipate the start of winter.  It felt so good to feel the sun on my back, so I stopped and stood there to admire these sunflowers in bloom, remembering all the times I grew them myself in my garden at Manresa.  Immediately I associated them with ourselves seeking the love and warmth and security that only God is capable of giving us to the depths we have been made for.  I felt these same tears rush up inside me, just overwhelm me with a strong sense of the unqualified, unlimited love of God for each and all of us.  I had heard the day before so many sad stories of violence and death to many people in this part of the world and recently in Iraq and Syria too, a fresh reminder of how broken are so many parts of the world.  This sudden awareness was very strong  and helped me immediately see everything in perspective:  that this love is stronger than all the hate and violence humans can do to each other; that it will prevail, because it is so very strong and cannot be killed.  The gift of Jesus, especially of His 'yes' at Calvary on that sad day of His being rejected and His unqualified, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" came to mind.  I am so taken by this kind of response!  It is just astounding!  It is so unexpected and undeserved, some say stupid and idiotic, yet it is there all the time for us to accept and reverence, or rationalize away or simply ignore.  It is never forced upon us.

   I have been feeling quite tired these last two days, have gotten a lot of extra sleep, and feel better for it.  I napped about 1.5 hours after lunch today (2.5 hours yesterday morning after breakfast!!) and then got ready for leading today's 5:15 PM mass celebrating the Holy Trinity, the essence of the God Jesus reveals.  So many have no sense of the richness of this statement about what God and God's life are like.  Only if we have had a great friendship or love in our life can we appreciate something of what is celebrated on this feast day; that is, that God is a trinity of persons relating in total mutuality.  Only if we are moved by a great relationship to give and receive everything with another person can we begin to appreciate what is the centerpiece of this feast: total gift of one's own self and great patience and care to listen to and receive all that the other person is and communicates.  Not many people, it seems to me, are capable of that deep a friendship or quality of presence to another person, nor desire to give such time to a relationship.  Its beauty and the joy that wells up because of such a discovery in one's life escapes so many people.  Our capacity for appreciating this divine mystery of God's inner life and joy, of its immense beauty is pretty limited as a result.
 
   Anyway, the "visitations" of God this morning as I walked back from breakfast and then later in the area of the Stations of Cross where I enjoyed  those sunflowers in bloom and was strongly moved when I was there were a remote prep for me to lead today's liturgy with energy and great enjoyment.  For communion I played a CD version of the song "Everyday God."  Many of you have heard it and like it alot.  Its lyrics reflect each person of the triune God in the everyday aspects of our life: a God who is very "down-to-earth" while at the same time transcending so much our abilities to understand or explain this God of unbounded love.

   Like last Sunday, the music during the other parts of the liturgy were amazing:  drums, tongue trilling cries, clapping in rhythm and  bodies moving in sync with the music.  From what I could see, all of us had a good experience of praying and honoring God on this beautiful feast day.  I even had two pictures, one of the trinity in the manner of the Good Samaritan kneeling, hovering, and praying over a beaten person (representing humanity) and showing such compassion and care; another picture of the apostle Thomas putting his finger in the open side of the risen Jesus and being visibly shocked at the reality of such love--these two pictures as the ultimate expression of love of this triune God.  I placed them on the altar at the end of my homily and let everyone come up in silence to view these pictures.   Something only I could see during the mass was a gecko clinging upside down to the ceiling of the chapel all during the mass.  For me this little lizard represented all of creation coming to honor in its own way its Creator on such a great day.

   It is 10 PM and I am off to bed.  Have a great week.  Summer starts for you on Saturday, winter for us, longest day of the year for you, shortest day of the year for us.  Have you seen the full moon last night and the night before?  Incredible its size and fullness!

Bernie Owens