HI, Friends,
Things are acting up here. It is almost dinner time (which is 6:45 PM) and it took me a long time to get through so I could post a new letter on this blogsite. anyway, here I am. This morning we finished with our more than 50 retreatants. They all went home after being here for 8 full days, nine nights, most if not all really happy--certainly mine were, or I should say 4 of the 5 were. I want to add a little to what I wrote two days ago about "Sister Anna," a fictitious name for one retreatant, and another one whom I guided.
Sister Anna explained to me that her step-mother, the second wife of her father, gave birth to ten children, not just to two as I had said earlier. And the clan was not sure her father was the father of them all. In any case he claimed and gave a homelife to ten children in addition to the 10 or 11 from his first wife; having many children is a sign of power and influence. Some women like being married to a "powerful man with influence." They like the security that comes with it, so they are comfortable being married to such a man, even if they are one of numerous wives. Sister Anna said of her father, "More children means more votes when it comes time for being re-elected." At the same time she said this practice is becoming less prevalent in Kenya, even though one of her brothers recently took a second wife and this evoked much criticism in the family.
As her retreat came to an end and as she spent the last three days on Henri Nouwen's classic, "The Return of the Prodigal Son," she came up with brilliant insights about the dynamics in the family of the two sons and their father. She saw, by comparison, some very loving moments between herself and her father and said, "he initiated me into how to be as the father of the two sons, and this is what I now must do in my own family, in the spirit of that father. He taught me how to father, to mother my siblings, and now I am ready to do as he taught me." One touching memory she shared was when she was about 8 or 9 years old, she was invited by her father to go and fetch a spoon so that she could eat off the same plate he was eating from. She said, "I just loved to connect with my father this way." She also related how when she shared in the family that she was joining a religious order instead of getting married, many relatives and friends came to her father and strongly counseled him not to allow her to do that. She said he said, "the Lord gave, and the Lord takes. Let her do what she wants to do." She spoke with such loving gratitude for her father in that big moment in her life some 30 or so years ago.
So over the 8 days this woman came to so much healing , peace with and renewed love for her father who now, as she said, is in the resurrection, forgiven by the Lord. Death ends a life but not the relationship!! It is better than ever! Oh, the power of reconciliation!
Another retreatant was also a nun celebrating two weeks from now her jubilee, 25 years in her religious family She is a nurse by profession and works largely with patients who have the HIV virus. She is also at times a nurse on duty to tend to the babies born of HIV infected mothers. She mentioned to me how much joy she witnesses and shares in with patients who were experiencing much improved health thanks to the anti-AIDs medicines they were taking. "Also," she said, " so much joy in finding many of the infants to be free from the virus," even though their mothers are infected. What was so remarkable with this impressive Kenyan nun was how God led her during her retreat to a new depth in prayer, being free to be very present to God, without thinking, imagining, or remembering . . . simply being quiet in the present moment with her eyes closed and attentive to the Lord who was so beautifully present to her. Four times a day for about an hour each time she would pray this way and exclaimed to me, "I have never prayed this way before nor have I prayed as deeply as this has taken me." Wow, I was so happy for her and again amazed when witnessing how powerfully God was acting in her. It was so, so beautiful to see her this lifted up and brought this close to God. She truly has been given the gift of contemplative prayer. What a privilege and gift for me to witness this sacred event in her life.
I learned at the dinner table this evening that the woman religious who was our nurse here at Mwangaza for about six months and was transferred just five weeks ago to a community near the Somali border east of here by about 250 miles, had the community living quarters for herself and fellow sisters burned to the ground. Of course, everyone suspects pro-Al Shabaab Muslims living in that area of doing this. We shall hear about who for sure did this in the next few days, I trust. All the sisters were away when this happened. None of them got hurt.
I have a Jesuit friend, an Austrian, who is today going to Germany for some medical help. In the meantime he says he will be trying to get my book translated into German. He says he knows someone who can do this. He was with us for about 10 days and during that time read all of my book. He loved it, especially chapter 6 on suffering and loss. Next summer one of the Jesuits in this community will be going back to Chile for three months and plans to stop over in Madrid on his way there. He wants to get it translated into Spanish by someone he knows in Madrid. Wouldn't this be nice!!
I need to go. Tomorrow, the 31st, is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, our founder. He died in 1556. What a legacy he left!! Join me, please, in thanking God for so many blessings through the Jesuit family. Thanks. (Oh, is the full moon striking in our evening's sky here!)
Bernie Owens
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Monday, July 27, 2015
Greetings, Friends,
I have planned twice in the last five days to write something here, only to have our connection to the Internet go off and no electricity at all during much of the daytime. What frustration around here with Kenya Electric. They have no competition, but enjoy a monopoly in supplying electricity in this nation. And you know what that leads to: laziness, no real push to improve the quality of their service. BAHHHH! It makes me appreciate the trustworthiness of the power service provided in the US.
Last Tuesday evening we had a new group of retreatants come here for eight days, 54 or 55 of them. They will finish this coming Thursday morning. I am guiding five of them. We have 10 directors, some taking up to 6 or even 7 retreatants. That is a lot of listening, up to 45 minutes for each person!! I realized as I began that I have not directed anyone in a retreat here at Mwangaza since early March before I returned to the States. That is more than 5 months. Wow, a long dry spell! I will say that I have been deeply touched by the stories and what has been happening in the retreats of these people I am guiding! What a privilege to witness God's workings in these people. I so wish many Americans with such busy lifestyles and sometimes frenetic activity characterizing their days would make themselves available for such. It could be life-changing, but of course, I am reminded that many people really do not want to change their life-style, that getting close to God and having a vital relationship with God is not a priority for them. And so their spiritual life is rather feeble, and their awareness of and response to God are hardly a part of their life. As one tastes the gifts of God and the indescribable goodness and lovableness of God, it leave you shaking your head at how many have no idea what they are missing out on. In various formats this is available to everyone, yet many say "I'd rather be sailing, " or "I just don't have the time nor money for that," oftentimes meaning they are not that interested or just plainly fear God and where God might take them if they got close.
I wish to describe briefly one such retreatant and tell a little of what has happened to her during this retreat. There is no way any of you would ever know who I am talking about, so I feel the freedom to share something of what God has done in her these past five days, with three yet to go. It is a story of extraordinary reconciliation.
Sister Anna, I will call her, is one of eleven children, the first daughter to be born after four brothers. When Sister was about 10 years old, her father, having been elected to a government post and thereby having come into significant money, decided to take a second wife. There were now two mothers in this clan; two children came from the second wife. The second wife lived in a home nearby but separate from the family from the first mother. The tensions, the anger, the hurt were something else. The father/daughter relationship was full of pain, and the daughter, the future Sister Anna, strongly blamed her father for the chaos in their family. The second wife fought back, using even witchcraft to control and get even with her "step-children" who resented her presence.
Sometime after Sr. Anna entered the religious order she is a member of, her father took to being seriously ill. He expressed the desire to return to the sacraments of the church but died just before the pastor could do this for him. Still, he was given a church funeral and burial. When Sr Anna got word about her father's illness and eventual death, she did not leave her teaching responsibilities and travel back to her village. She was so torn, so conflicted. She did manage to get herself to join her family during the wake but could not bring herself to stay for the funeral. While her father's funeral mass was going on, she was back here in Nairobi engaged in her work.
On the first day I met with Sr. Anna, I introduced myself and asked her what she wanted to happen for herself during the coming 8-days. Immediately she began talking about her father, and talked a lot! I could hear in her story an affection for her father, a grieving for something big that she had lost in her life, a sadness about how she had handled her broken heart, about not going to her father's funeral, and missing what she once had with her father during her first 10 years. There is a certain toughness, a strong persona in her personality, and this made her hold back many emotions when in my presence. Later, when alone with God, she let much of these feelings go, thank God! She opened up greatly.
Intuitively, I saw an opening in her, a readiness to deal seriously with her state of soul. I loaned to her two pictures, one of a woman curled up, almost in a fetal position, in a dark dungeon, with her back to an opening in one of the walls of the dungeon. She had great apprehension on her face. Coming in the opening of the dungeon was the hand of the risen Jesus extended to this woman, inviting her to come out. The picture showed only the hand of Jesus, nothing more of his body. The other picture is a painting or copy of a mural of the risen Jesus with a nun (St. Margaret Mary Alacoque) knelling with great awe before Him, with total attention. Shining through His wounds (his two hands, two feet and side) were shafts of intense light, obviously a hint of His divinity flooding through His wounds of love. His whole body was shrouded in circular patterns of red, orange and yellow, expressive of the overwhelming power of God's love shown in Jesus risen. I gave these pictures for her to pray with, to look at closely, and to "find" herself in and through them.
She spent a half day with the first picture, owned herself to be in that dungeon of anger and hurt and self-pity, frozen in spirit, unable to reconcile. With the second picture she spent a half day and grew to feel a great desire to break out, to finally get free from the slavery of her past and to come into the light of Jesus risen. She will be marking 25 years as a woman religious come August 15. It is meant to be a great, festive celebration for her and numerous other members of her community marking their Jubilee year. She did not want to stay in the dungeon as that day approaches. She begged for the power to break out her tomb and come home to God, to come into His glorious light and joy. And her prayer was answered. but let me not get ahead of myself in this account.
So the next day she spent in her room talking with both her father and Jesus present to her. It was an amazing trilogue. She heard and owned that she had blamed her father for the disunity and pain in the family, that she had to take responsibility for her own actions of contributing to family pain and disunity before setting herself over against him. This turned out to be a great "freeing" moment, a moment of father and daughter coming to peace and mutual forgiveness, She could now truly believe her father is in the resurrection, saved and freed by Jesus to be with Him forever, forgiven as only He can do. She had such gratitude for this moment, this gift.
Then in her prayer she turned her attention back to Jesus in His dying moments saying, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." She kept repeating this saying. And she gave her father the benefit of the doubt that in many ways he did not know what he was doing in taking the second wife (it is such a common action in this African culture that when men get money they take one or more additional wives. It is a sign of power and prestige for the man, and security for the woman. There is so much cultural pressure for men to do this. There is much polygamy in this culture, even among men who have been baptized and still want their children to be in the sacramental life of the Catholic church. They will come to church but sit in the back during Sunday mass or funerals. Many families resist any of their children becoming priests or nuns because family and having children are so highly regarded. To not have children is to be considered really odd and anti-family, anti-African. Family is everything here for most Africans.) I have found it very moving to witness this woman go through this process. There are few spiritual events as powerful or beautiful.
I then showed her two additional items, one a copy of a painting of St Francis of Assisi kissing the bleeding feet of Jesus crucified, with the nail marks clearly visible. All one can see in this picture are the lower legs and pierced feet of Jesus, with Francis in such tenderness and overwhelmed love showing gratitude and infinite care for Jesus. This picture was painted about 70 years after Francis' death. The other picture was a copy of Caravaggio's painting of the apostle Thomas being invited by the risen Jesus to place his finger into the open side of Jesus, pierced by the Roman soldier; to no longer be partially believing but truly believe and proclaim this Good News of the resurrection and reconciliation (which Thomas did with the rest of his life, going all the way to India to proclaim this amazing Jesus and the difference He makes in the lives of those who believe.) The details of this picture, the various shadings of light and dark, the emotion of the scene, the tension of that moment are so strong and riveting. Sr. Anna herself could not but be taken up into the power and tenderness of both pictures. She recognized the parallel between her own wounds and those of her father as well, over against the wounds of Jesus. It was truly powerful, so healing, so spiritually engaging for her. For her it made sense to bring her whole family, even the second women her father married, INTO the Heart of Jesus and allow Jesus, as only He can, to reconcile her family and care for each member. She said often, "I now know I am being sent by Him to go back to my family and be a caring presence for each and everyone of them, to love them and myself too as best I can, to accept them and myself as genuinely as I can, to not absent myself anymore from any of them." The power of God's mercy and how it cuts across so many seemingly impassible barriers, is very moving to witness. For the last three days of the retreat time, Sr. Anna is reading and pondering Henri Nouwen's classic, "The Return of the Prodigal Son." It is one of the greatest works ever written in English on reconciliation. She had said she wants to understand better her "mission" back to her family. I said to read this book of Nouwen and especially the role the father of that family of those two sons, namely, to be a constant presence of love, vulnerable, yes, to risk being taken advantage of, but steady with a love that can transcend personal hurts and can let the love of God flow through him in his forgiveness, trust, and unconditional love.
I need to stop there. I need to get some physical exercise this afternoon before our mass at 5:15 PM. I am so glad the internet came back around noon so that I could write this. God bless all who read this.
I am happy to close by saying the feedback I am receiving on my recently published book is most, most encouraging. One of these days I think the sales will really take off, probably after New Years when it gets advertised at two national bookmarts, one in Los Angeles and the other in Atlantic City.
Peace!
Bernie Owens
I have planned twice in the last five days to write something here, only to have our connection to the Internet go off and no electricity at all during much of the daytime. What frustration around here with Kenya Electric. They have no competition, but enjoy a monopoly in supplying electricity in this nation. And you know what that leads to: laziness, no real push to improve the quality of their service. BAHHHH! It makes me appreciate the trustworthiness of the power service provided in the US.
Last Tuesday evening we had a new group of retreatants come here for eight days, 54 or 55 of them. They will finish this coming Thursday morning. I am guiding five of them. We have 10 directors, some taking up to 6 or even 7 retreatants. That is a lot of listening, up to 45 minutes for each person!! I realized as I began that I have not directed anyone in a retreat here at Mwangaza since early March before I returned to the States. That is more than 5 months. Wow, a long dry spell! I will say that I have been deeply touched by the stories and what has been happening in the retreats of these people I am guiding! What a privilege to witness God's workings in these people. I so wish many Americans with such busy lifestyles and sometimes frenetic activity characterizing their days would make themselves available for such. It could be life-changing, but of course, I am reminded that many people really do not want to change their life-style, that getting close to God and having a vital relationship with God is not a priority for them. And so their spiritual life is rather feeble, and their awareness of and response to God are hardly a part of their life. As one tastes the gifts of God and the indescribable goodness and lovableness of God, it leave you shaking your head at how many have no idea what they are missing out on. In various formats this is available to everyone, yet many say "I'd rather be sailing, " or "I just don't have the time nor money for that," oftentimes meaning they are not that interested or just plainly fear God and where God might take them if they got close.
I wish to describe briefly one such retreatant and tell a little of what has happened to her during this retreat. There is no way any of you would ever know who I am talking about, so I feel the freedom to share something of what God has done in her these past five days, with three yet to go. It is a story of extraordinary reconciliation.
Sister Anna, I will call her, is one of eleven children, the first daughter to be born after four brothers. When Sister was about 10 years old, her father, having been elected to a government post and thereby having come into significant money, decided to take a second wife. There were now two mothers in this clan; two children came from the second wife. The second wife lived in a home nearby but separate from the family from the first mother. The tensions, the anger, the hurt were something else. The father/daughter relationship was full of pain, and the daughter, the future Sister Anna, strongly blamed her father for the chaos in their family. The second wife fought back, using even witchcraft to control and get even with her "step-children" who resented her presence.
Sometime after Sr. Anna entered the religious order she is a member of, her father took to being seriously ill. He expressed the desire to return to the sacraments of the church but died just before the pastor could do this for him. Still, he was given a church funeral and burial. When Sr Anna got word about her father's illness and eventual death, she did not leave her teaching responsibilities and travel back to her village. She was so torn, so conflicted. She did manage to get herself to join her family during the wake but could not bring herself to stay for the funeral. While her father's funeral mass was going on, she was back here in Nairobi engaged in her work.
On the first day I met with Sr. Anna, I introduced myself and asked her what she wanted to happen for herself during the coming 8-days. Immediately she began talking about her father, and talked a lot! I could hear in her story an affection for her father, a grieving for something big that she had lost in her life, a sadness about how she had handled her broken heart, about not going to her father's funeral, and missing what she once had with her father during her first 10 years. There is a certain toughness, a strong persona in her personality, and this made her hold back many emotions when in my presence. Later, when alone with God, she let much of these feelings go, thank God! She opened up greatly.
Intuitively, I saw an opening in her, a readiness to deal seriously with her state of soul. I loaned to her two pictures, one of a woman curled up, almost in a fetal position, in a dark dungeon, with her back to an opening in one of the walls of the dungeon. She had great apprehension on her face. Coming in the opening of the dungeon was the hand of the risen Jesus extended to this woman, inviting her to come out. The picture showed only the hand of Jesus, nothing more of his body. The other picture is a painting or copy of a mural of the risen Jesus with a nun (St. Margaret Mary Alacoque) knelling with great awe before Him, with total attention. Shining through His wounds (his two hands, two feet and side) were shafts of intense light, obviously a hint of His divinity flooding through His wounds of love. His whole body was shrouded in circular patterns of red, orange and yellow, expressive of the overwhelming power of God's love shown in Jesus risen. I gave these pictures for her to pray with, to look at closely, and to "find" herself in and through them.
She spent a half day with the first picture, owned herself to be in that dungeon of anger and hurt and self-pity, frozen in spirit, unable to reconcile. With the second picture she spent a half day and grew to feel a great desire to break out, to finally get free from the slavery of her past and to come into the light of Jesus risen. She will be marking 25 years as a woman religious come August 15. It is meant to be a great, festive celebration for her and numerous other members of her community marking their Jubilee year. She did not want to stay in the dungeon as that day approaches. She begged for the power to break out her tomb and come home to God, to come into His glorious light and joy. And her prayer was answered. but let me not get ahead of myself in this account.
So the next day she spent in her room talking with both her father and Jesus present to her. It was an amazing trilogue. She heard and owned that she had blamed her father for the disunity and pain in the family, that she had to take responsibility for her own actions of contributing to family pain and disunity before setting herself over against him. This turned out to be a great "freeing" moment, a moment of father and daughter coming to peace and mutual forgiveness, She could now truly believe her father is in the resurrection, saved and freed by Jesus to be with Him forever, forgiven as only He can do. She had such gratitude for this moment, this gift.
Then in her prayer she turned her attention back to Jesus in His dying moments saying, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." She kept repeating this saying. And she gave her father the benefit of the doubt that in many ways he did not know what he was doing in taking the second wife (it is such a common action in this African culture that when men get money they take one or more additional wives. It is a sign of power and prestige for the man, and security for the woman. There is so much cultural pressure for men to do this. There is much polygamy in this culture, even among men who have been baptized and still want their children to be in the sacramental life of the Catholic church. They will come to church but sit in the back during Sunday mass or funerals. Many families resist any of their children becoming priests or nuns because family and having children are so highly regarded. To not have children is to be considered really odd and anti-family, anti-African. Family is everything here for most Africans.) I have found it very moving to witness this woman go through this process. There are few spiritual events as powerful or beautiful.
I then showed her two additional items, one a copy of a painting of St Francis of Assisi kissing the bleeding feet of Jesus crucified, with the nail marks clearly visible. All one can see in this picture are the lower legs and pierced feet of Jesus, with Francis in such tenderness and overwhelmed love showing gratitude and infinite care for Jesus. This picture was painted about 70 years after Francis' death. The other picture was a copy of Caravaggio's painting of the apostle Thomas being invited by the risen Jesus to place his finger into the open side of Jesus, pierced by the Roman soldier; to no longer be partially believing but truly believe and proclaim this Good News of the resurrection and reconciliation (which Thomas did with the rest of his life, going all the way to India to proclaim this amazing Jesus and the difference He makes in the lives of those who believe.) The details of this picture, the various shadings of light and dark, the emotion of the scene, the tension of that moment are so strong and riveting. Sr. Anna herself could not but be taken up into the power and tenderness of both pictures. She recognized the parallel between her own wounds and those of her father as well, over against the wounds of Jesus. It was truly powerful, so healing, so spiritually engaging for her. For her it made sense to bring her whole family, even the second women her father married, INTO the Heart of Jesus and allow Jesus, as only He can, to reconcile her family and care for each member. She said often, "I now know I am being sent by Him to go back to my family and be a caring presence for each and everyone of them, to love them and myself too as best I can, to accept them and myself as genuinely as I can, to not absent myself anymore from any of them." The power of God's mercy and how it cuts across so many seemingly impassible barriers, is very moving to witness. For the last three days of the retreat time, Sr. Anna is reading and pondering Henri Nouwen's classic, "The Return of the Prodigal Son." It is one of the greatest works ever written in English on reconciliation. She had said she wants to understand better her "mission" back to her family. I said to read this book of Nouwen and especially the role the father of that family of those two sons, namely, to be a constant presence of love, vulnerable, yes, to risk being taken advantage of, but steady with a love that can transcend personal hurts and can let the love of God flow through him in his forgiveness, trust, and unconditional love.
I need to stop there. I need to get some physical exercise this afternoon before our mass at 5:15 PM. I am so glad the internet came back around noon so that I could write this. God bless all who read this.
I am happy to close by saying the feedback I am receiving on my recently published book is most, most encouraging. One of these days I think the sales will really take off, probably after New Years when it gets advertised at two national bookmarts, one in Los Angeles and the other in Atlantic City.
Peace!
Bernie Owens
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Dear Friends,
Half way through July as of today, the 15th! Wow, time is flying fast!
I am feeling much improved, although my doctor can do no better with my acidic stomach than to give me a daily pill to neutralize my stomach. Tests confirmed my blood is fine, cholesterol is normal, EKG shows my heart is fine, further tests show no parasite or amoeba or aggressive bacteria inside me. My energy is back since increasing my physical exercise. (Oh why do I have to be pushed to do that, regularly??!!) Still, a week ago and soon after I returned from the States three weeks ago, I was hit with dull headaches in the back of my brain and a lot of sleepiness.
Today I had two Missionary of Charity sisters come to visit, each for an hour, one for spiritual direction, the other for supervision in her training to become a spiritual guide. One is from Italy, the other from France. Remarkable, truly admirable people they are. As sisters from what Mother Teresa of Calcutta started, they are most amazing. Our conversations were quite substantial and engaging. I felt we were talking about the most fundamental, vital issues in the entire spiritual walk. Just a pleasure to talk about their life with God and see in them such a thirst to live for God, to give everything to the great Love of their life.
I am very happy to say that the Study Week with the Carmelites last week went very, very well. thank you for anyone of you who prayed for us. I had as few as 32 and as many as 40 people attending. The core group were young male seminarians, in their late 20s. Then there were also a significant number of young sisters and some nuns in their later years. I think they were all amazed that a Jesuit was teaching them about the famous Carmelite, Teresa of Avila. One said I was a Carmelite under the cloak of a Jesuit. Ha! Tomorrow I am joining them at their invitation for their mass and big meal for their big feastday, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I hope their food is better than what I experienced during the Study Week. I was so glad to come home to the food we have here. But what a great group of people. I truly enjoyed meeting them and discussing Teresa's works for five days.
The weather here now is rather cold, in the 50s or so at night with blustering winds too at times. July is our coldest month! The birds still come in numbers to my window sill as I feed them broken up pieces of white bread. What special friends they are, some of them with really strikingly colored feathers.
I don't have much to say beyond this, except to mention that a number of Kenyans are excited that Obama is coming to visit here a week from Friday. The pope too is supposed to come for a visit here, one or to days after American Thanksgiving, in late November.
OK, goodnight, friends.
Bernie Owens
Half way through July as of today, the 15th! Wow, time is flying fast!
I am feeling much improved, although my doctor can do no better with my acidic stomach than to give me a daily pill to neutralize my stomach. Tests confirmed my blood is fine, cholesterol is normal, EKG shows my heart is fine, further tests show no parasite or amoeba or aggressive bacteria inside me. My energy is back since increasing my physical exercise. (Oh why do I have to be pushed to do that, regularly??!!) Still, a week ago and soon after I returned from the States three weeks ago, I was hit with dull headaches in the back of my brain and a lot of sleepiness.
Today I had two Missionary of Charity sisters come to visit, each for an hour, one for spiritual direction, the other for supervision in her training to become a spiritual guide. One is from Italy, the other from France. Remarkable, truly admirable people they are. As sisters from what Mother Teresa of Calcutta started, they are most amazing. Our conversations were quite substantial and engaging. I felt we were talking about the most fundamental, vital issues in the entire spiritual walk. Just a pleasure to talk about their life with God and see in them such a thirst to live for God, to give everything to the great Love of their life.
I am very happy to say that the Study Week with the Carmelites last week went very, very well. thank you for anyone of you who prayed for us. I had as few as 32 and as many as 40 people attending. The core group were young male seminarians, in their late 20s. Then there were also a significant number of young sisters and some nuns in their later years. I think they were all amazed that a Jesuit was teaching them about the famous Carmelite, Teresa of Avila. One said I was a Carmelite under the cloak of a Jesuit. Ha! Tomorrow I am joining them at their invitation for their mass and big meal for their big feastday, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I hope their food is better than what I experienced during the Study Week. I was so glad to come home to the food we have here. But what a great group of people. I truly enjoyed meeting them and discussing Teresa's works for five days.
The weather here now is rather cold, in the 50s or so at night with blustering winds too at times. July is our coldest month! The birds still come in numbers to my window sill as I feed them broken up pieces of white bread. What special friends they are, some of them with really strikingly colored feathers.
I don't have much to say beyond this, except to mention that a number of Kenyans are excited that Obama is coming to visit here a week from Friday. The pope too is supposed to come for a visit here, one or to days after American Thanksgiving, in late November.
OK, goodnight, friends.
Bernie Owens
Friday, July 3, 2015
My Friends,
Something brief for this evening, Friday, July 3. Today's gospel reading was the account of Thomas, the apostle, encountering the risen Jesus. A week before, when told by his fellow apostles that they had seen the Lord he scoffed at this statement and said he would believe only if he could touch the wound marks in Jesus' body. So then came the embarrassing moment for him when the risen Jesus comes to him and the rest of the apostles and invites Thomas to experience directly the reality of Jesus now in His risen state. Specifically he is invited to touch, to know through experience the wounds and the love of the Lord expressed in those wounds, to no longer doubt but believe. And so it happened for Thomas. He risked, he encountered, and he came to believe . . . and to know something of the joy of the risen state, the good news that love is stronger than death, overcoming it and ensuring that Love lasts forever.
I sit here waffling back and forth in how much next to say to you because this evening, before supper, as I sat for my usual 20 minutes with God I got utterly overwhelmed with the power of this good news, tasting in my spirit the sweetness of this Love, in how precious it is and how we each are precious to God, and what an overwhelming reality there is contained in experiencing His Person through these wounds, It is just so overwhelming, so, so overwhelming. These wounds (and He) are always there for us to approach, in any 'now' moment. In faith we can do the same thing that Thomas did and come to know Him like never before. Without a doubt, this is the one thing that overcomes the sadness of our world and any and all voices of defeat and discouragement. "Fear not for I have overcome the world," He says. How very true and reassuring such words. May He be praised now and forever!
Good nite.
Bernie Owens
Something brief for this evening, Friday, July 3. Today's gospel reading was the account of Thomas, the apostle, encountering the risen Jesus. A week before, when told by his fellow apostles that they had seen the Lord he scoffed at this statement and said he would believe only if he could touch the wound marks in Jesus' body. So then came the embarrassing moment for him when the risen Jesus comes to him and the rest of the apostles and invites Thomas to experience directly the reality of Jesus now in His risen state. Specifically he is invited to touch, to know through experience the wounds and the love of the Lord expressed in those wounds, to no longer doubt but believe. And so it happened for Thomas. He risked, he encountered, and he came to believe . . . and to know something of the joy of the risen state, the good news that love is stronger than death, overcoming it and ensuring that Love lasts forever.
I sit here waffling back and forth in how much next to say to you because this evening, before supper, as I sat for my usual 20 minutes with God I got utterly overwhelmed with the power of this good news, tasting in my spirit the sweetness of this Love, in how precious it is and how we each are precious to God, and what an overwhelming reality there is contained in experiencing His Person through these wounds, It is just so overwhelming, so, so overwhelming. These wounds (and He) are always there for us to approach, in any 'now' moment. In faith we can do the same thing that Thomas did and come to know Him like never before. Without a doubt, this is the one thing that overcomes the sadness of our world and any and all voices of defeat and discouragement. "Fear not for I have overcome the world," He says. How very true and reassuring such words. May He be praised now and forever!
Good nite.
Bernie Owens
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