Change is Hard

(Photo: Pedro Lastra/Getty Images)

The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation, the mystery we’re examining, more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart. The pain of something old falling apart—chaos—invites the soul to listen at a deeper level. It invites, and sometimes forces, the soul to go to a new place because the old place is falling apart. Most of us would never go to new places in any other way. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, dark night, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One. Whatever it is, it does not feel good and it does not feel like God. We will do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart. 

This is when we need patience and guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes. Perhaps Jesus is describing just this phenomenon when he says, “It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13–14). Not accidentally, he mentions this narrow road right after teaching the Golden Rule. He knows how much letting go it takes to “treat others as you would like them to treat you” (7:12). So, a change can force a transformation. Spiritual transformation always includes a usually disconcerting reorientation. It can either help people to find a new meaning or it can force people to close down and slowly turn bitter. The difference is determined precisely by the quality of our inner life, our spirituality.

—from The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder by Richard Rohr, OFM

You are Worth More than Many Sparrows

(Image from the www.deccanherald.com)

A dear friend of mine shared this beautiful reflection her father wrote and I'd love to share it with you all on this Father's Day 2020. I hope you all have had a wonderful Sunday. And without further ado ...

“…You are Worth More than Many Sparrows.” by Brian Conroy

My father, an Englishman, would call whomever was the youngest among his brood of grandchildren “My little Sparrow.”  It was a sweet and gentle term of endearment.  To hear it coming from a strong, manly carpenter, as my dad was, made it even more endearing.  He loved his little ones and doted on them unabashedly.

Externally, his life was governed by his sense of duty, order, simplicity, and righteousness, but his heart was wild with love.  He loved his wife with a relentless devotion.  He loved his God the same way.  Each morning, as he prepared for work before the rest of the household awoke, he could be found on his knees – literally – in prayer at the beginning of the day.  A Catholic gentleman in every respect.

I was privileged to have been present at his death after his long encounter with cancer.  He died in such holy peace I was left with the most profound experience of my life.  I became witness to the arc of a life well lived.  A life  balanced between duty and love, between work and the arts.  He was very much as I imagine Saint Joseph to have been – a “righteous man, a working man.”  Tradition holds that Jesus and his mother Mary were present at Joseph’s death.  I am convinced they were there with my father too “…now, and at the hour of his death.”

Here at the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time we are past the Glory of Easter, the Pentecost that concluded it and the beautiful Solemnities of Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi that followed.  Here we are now in Ordinary Time, living ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances: a perplexing, frightening pandemic, intense but necessary social disruption.  It is a time when as Jeremiah says today, “I hear the whisperings of many: ‘Terror on every side.’”

While our days are difficult and many a reckoning is at hand, each and every human being, as daughter or son of God, is assured that he or she should “Fear no one.” The Father knows us, knows our needs; every sparrow falling is held in the gaze and love of God.  “Are you not worth more than many sparrows?” Jesus asks.  And we hear Saint Paul today assuring us of this truth, that Jesus Christ, the love of God made visible, is the gracious gift of God that “overflows” for us. 

The image of falling sparrows in today’s reading reminded me of my own dad and the witness to love and mercy he gave me.  What does that image say about the Heavenly Father we encounter in the Gospel today – God as a severe judge, or God as loving and merciful Father, wild with love for his children?  – If that is the case, how can we in turn treat those around us any other way?  How can we fail to love our fellow human beings the way God loves them; the way the Father knows and loves us?  “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.”

We who are fathers ourselves model for our children who and what God is.  We teach them by who and what we are and what we do; it’s quite a responsibility to live up to.  For me to model the love of God the way my own dad did - this takes grace and mercy itself.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see my father with a little one on his lap and hear him say in his South-of- England accent, “How’s Grandpa’s little sparrow then?”