Words of Light and Hope from Sue Page LLM

Words of Light and Hope
Sunday February 4th 2024
2nd before Lent

Preparing for Lent

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.                                                                                                          Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.                                                                                                                        Meanwhile the world goes on.                                                                                                                                                          Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.                                                                                            Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things             Mary Oliver

Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God;
we live only as long as God wants us to live;
we can only do as much as God makes us able to do;
we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.                                                                                                                                      – Oscar Romero From his last homily, March 23, 1980

 

Lord Jesus

As You are One with Father God,
And make us one with you by Your Spirit
So draw us together as one Body
Gathering each other in love
Learning from our differences

And rejoicing in what unites us
So that the world might believe
That You are the Christ
Who will unite all things at the last

Amen

 

Give the Vine something to Conquer
There is a barren land which we reach when we have given all we
have to give and feel drained to the last drop, and are plodding on
without life or freshness, and our hearts are crying out for the
quickening touch that renews us inwardly. We cannot live without
that touch, and yet somehow we seem too spent to seek it. But we
can stretch forth our hands. Why don’t we practise prayer more?
Amy Carmichal

 

On the Cross

Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or
her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The
cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands
rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Rest your heart in God, let yourself float on the safe waters, loving
life as it comes, with all the rough weather it may bring. Give,
without counting how many years are left, not worried about
surviving as long as possible.

Brother Roger of Taize No Greater Love

Strengthening God,

Clothe us this week with Your heavenly armour,
That we might stand on the battlefield of life,
With the shield of faith and the belt of truth
In Your strength and care

Amen

Sue Page LLM