Feb 1, 2017
by Kara McNamara, Precious Blood Volunteers Alumna
In my work for the past two years at an afterschool program for at-risk teenage boys, I got to see my students at their very best, at their screaming, fighting worst, and at every emotional stop in between. They certainly saw my full range of days too! I saw them go through hard times, saw them achieve great honors, saw them demonstrate resilience and ownership over their lives, saw them hurl ugly words at other children when they were hurting too badly to control themselves. I also, every so often, would have a luminous moment with a student in which I thought, This moment, right now, is exactly how God sees this child all of the time. I can think of an example in which one of the boys (who had been in foster care from a very young age and generally held himself apart from other people) celebrated his 18th birthday with us. We got him a cake with his name on it and sang to him and cheered his name (some of the students also tried to give birthday punches when I wasn’t looking). He was such a reserved, quiet young man, but in that moment, he couldn’t bite back his smile any longer, he couldn’t hold in the bright light inside him, and he let us see love and joy in his eyes. He quietly thanked everyone and mumbled something that sounded an awful lot like, “Love you guys.”
In looking at the transformation of this young man for those fleeting moments, I can remember thinking, This is why it’s so easy for God to love us. He must see us like this all of the time, with all of the potential for such good on full display.
In considering that moment, I was brought to thinking about all of the times that I’ve seen people at their best. Those moments are so inspiring, when you can see the purpose and joy living in a person. And I also thought about all the times I didn’t allow people to be their best or didn’t try to find their Creator in them. I missed so much beauty and joy in those missed opportunities!
Kara McNamara with some of the kids she worked with as a Precious Blood Volunteer
In times of lack of unity and tension as we are seeing now on a large scale, we as Precious Blood people know that we must seek reconciliation, and as an initial step towards this, I am recommitting to seek Christ in those I meet, to encourage those around me to be the best version of themselves, and to recognize my own identity as God’s creation when I’m not at my best. If we could even begin to see each other as God sees us, our world could be a place of such healing and love, not division and hopelessness. If we can find that commonality, we can then begin to do the hard work that must come to address pain and inequality: standing in the margins, holding steadfast as peacemakers in the midst of tension, and starting the work of realizing God’s vision for the human family and environment.
After all, as Mother Teresa shared, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other.” I hope you’ll join me in working and praying for reconciliation and recognition of God’s presence in those around us.
Kara McNamara served as a Precious Blood Volunteer in Crownpoint, New Mexico in 2013. She is a graduate of the University of Dayton.
To learn more about Precious Blood Volunteers go to www.preciousbloodvolunteers.org or contact us at volunteers@preciousbloodkc.org.
To apply to become a Precious Blood Volunteer go to https://preciousbloodkc.org/pbv-apply/
Nov 28, 2016
By Former Precious Blood Volunteer Ryan Cornelissen
One of the most identifiable themes of Advent is preparation. But preparation for what? The birth of Jesus? The Catholic tradition of Christmas includes the season of Advent, because we are to understand how the radical truth of Jesus’ message provokes conversion and change of behavior. In the readings for the First Week of Advent-Year A, both St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans and Matthew’s Gospel point to the urgency and necessity to prepare ourselves to best interact with the body of Christ in the world as Jesus did. Of course, it is important to be mindful of the actions and behaviors we should avoid—as Paul mentions in the second reading—as an effort to condone proper conduct. But, in my opinion, the Gospel reading from Matthew better points us to a lifestyle of being awake! Instead of merely avoiding attitudes and practices, the conscious choice to be awake promotes a proactive searching and preparation for the truth that we are to live out.
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Ryan Cornelissen in front of a Habitat for Humanity home
As a Construction Site Supervisor for Habitat for Humanity in Boston, I lead volunteer groups through the process of building homes for those in need in the greater Boston area. In addition to working with volunteers, I have the pleasure of working alongside the families who are selected for each home to complete their 300 hours of “sweat-equity” on their future home (the equivalent of a down-payment on their house). Working alongside the mothers and fathers, I have the privilege of hearing stories of the reality of life before Habitat for these families.
This month, two new families were selected for the final duplex of a three duplex development in Roslindale, a Boston suburb. Felipe, one of the selected fathers, continues to share with me different pieces of the complex puzzle that is his life. Living in a 700 square foot apartment with his wife and two daughters (ages 3 and 8) was not exactly his dream. Felipe’s family is originally from the Dominican Republic, but he grew up in the United States. He works as a maintenance supervisor for a homeless shelter and rehabilitation support center in the Boston area, and when describing his job speaks of the importance of allowing people to share their stories and be listened to. Sitting there with my jaw wide open, I wished Felipe knew that his story is also worth listening to.
Earlier this week, up on the scaffold with Felipe installing siding on the gable wall of his future home, I decided to ask some simple questions to get to know him a bit better.
I asked him jokingly, “So, do you have any hobbies that you used to enjoy before having kids?” Felipe responded, “Can I be completely honest with you?” “Sure!” I said. “Well, my hobby has been preparing my family for where we are today,” Felipe stated.
Every minute that he has, Felipe is working at his job, and on-site with Habitat, to obtain a better life for his family. Before Habitat, every waking moment Felipe had outside of work he spent trying to learn about the daunting world of home ownership and financial responsibility. Felipe uses his time, effort and gifts for the benefit of his family; most days he doesn’t even eat lunch, so that his children can. Being connected to Habitat for Humanity is like a dream come true for Felipe and his wife. When they complete their hours, they will be the first members of their families to own a home.
The sense of urgency and attentiveness Felipe embodies as he puts the futures of his wife and daughters above his own is the type of preparation God has in mind for Advent. Christ is coming into the world as a human being, prepare! Each day God is coming to you in human form, will you be prepared? Will you give your best self no matter who is sent and what the circumstance? Felipe’s desire to give and serve his family is lived out each day as he works towards the goal of home ownership and a better future for his two daughters. The same goes for us that each day we are called to endlessly pursue a deeper relationship with God to better adjust our vision to Jesus’ vision and humbly expose our wounds and flaws in hopes of being held and healed by our loving God.
Just as Felipe gives of his life daily for his wife and daughters, we come to find that this journey is not about us, but instead the bringing about of God’s glory in the world. As you reflect this Advent, know that now is the time to prepare yourself and respond to God’s call for you to humbly carry the message out into the world.
To learn more about Precious Blood Volunteers go to www.preciousbloodvolunteers.org or contact us at volunteers@preciousbloodkc.org.
To apply to become a Precious Blood Volunteer go to https://preciousbloodkc.org/pbv-apply/
You can also read another one of Ryan’s reflections at https://preciousbloodkc.org/thanks-and-giving/
Oct 15, 2015
October 2015 Reflection
Scripture Reading
Acts 2:42-47
John 13:1-17
Additional Reading
Community Life and the Apostolate- Rev. Barry Fischer, C.PP.S.
When we reflect on arriving at a proper perspective of what community life means for us, it is important to clarify the nature of our community life together. Community life will mean one thing for the Trappists or for cloistered religious, while it will mean something quite different for our congregations engaged in the active apostolate. We need to recognize the apostolic nature of our community.
Community implies much more than just living under the same roof, eating a meal together, even praying together; it must become a place of honest communication in trust and mutual respect. Community life should be a space in which we can share our deepest dreams and hopes which shape our identity, just as Gaspar and Maria de Mattias had dreams and were able to enthuse others with their dreams. That is how our communities were formed in the first place! And it is in the sharing of our histories and traditions and in transmitting them from one generation to another that we grow in communion and we reaffirm time and again who we are and what are the values which we share as a community. Living community life is about sharing in a profound respect and gratitude for the dreamers of yesteryear. In the Eucharistic Table whose dreams are shared and put onto the Table to be celebrated and remembered.
Often in community life, we have inflicted wounds on ourselves. The younger members at times in their impatience do not recognize the contributions and lifetime of hard work and dedication and Christian witness of their predecessors, and at the same time, it can be that the older members criticize and find fault with the ideas and initiatives of the younger members who search for new ways of expressing the charism and spirituality for this day. We need to somehow heal these wounds which, if left alone, can fester and embitter the spirit.
As religious communities under the title of the Blood of Christ, we are called to mission through the Blood. How important it is that we discern together where we hear and see the Cry of the Blood in today’s world and in our day-to-day living! We are not mavericks. We are not individualists. We are in a community-with-a-mission. Too often we go about our business completely oblivious as to what the other person is doing. And unfortunately, sometimes we don’t even care. We are so concerned about doing a good job ourselves!
We often boast that hospitality is a characteristic of our communities. Strangers and guests feel welcomed in our midst as we open our doors to receive them as we would receive Christ. Indeed living a true spirit of hospitality is an important part of our life in community.
Living hospitality in community life is much more than being good hosts to visitors, although this is important! But much more basic to the concept of hospitality is that of “breaking and sharing the bread of the Eucharist in our daily life together”. It is about being hospitable with those with whom we live. It is about opening the door of our hearts in order to invite our sisters and brothers in and inviting them to share themselves with us. It is about sharing with the other in our relations in community in the totality of our everyday life. This type of hospitality is not easy. It is surely much more difficult to be “hospitable” with the sister or brother with whom I live everyday than with a guest who is just passing through! How can we maintain an attitude of hospitality towards our fellow sisters and brothers without putting a label on them and boxing them in, often not permitting them to change or to grow? Are we hospitable with one another at the end of a long day when we gather together? Do we invite others with our attitudes and openness to share their stories and their experiences with us? Our spirituality invites us to be “Eucharist communities” opened to that quality of communication in the totality of our lives.
We are an apostolic community which wishes to model our lives on the ideal of community proposed in the Acts of the Apostles (2:42-47). The yearning for communion is engraved in the soul of every human being of all times. We are a people marked by a Trinitarian God who is communion and relationship. Married couples, bound in the sacrament of Matrimony, are called to witness to the world and to all of us religious, the fidelity and the nature of God’s love for all of us. And we are called also to be “sacraments of communion” for a broken and fragmented world. Reconciliation in community life is not an option which we can leave or take. It is a must! It is essential to our call. This call to prophetic witness is more important today than ever.
We are called to witness to the project of communion which God has for all of Creation! “I pray, Father, that they may be one, as You and I are one!”(John 17:21) This is God’s plan for all of humankind, spoiled by our sin and selfishness, but reconciled in the Blood of Christ! The quality of our communitarian witness is an important aspect of the “new evangelization” to which John Paul II summons us. We have been called to community for a common mission and our life shared in community will give authenticity to our apostolic lives of service. We might call our “fraternal life in community” our first apostolate.
We are called to be prophets of a new humanity, witnesses and constructors in the world today of that divine Project for all. We must become living sacraments of reconciliation giving radical witness that the Reign of God and the community that God wills is possible! We give witness to this possibility, as we grow in communion with one another, even though as human beings we each have our own unique character, our different options, our different theologies and church models, our different talents and gifts, and yet we can live together in true love and respect. The competitiveness which so characterizes society today is discarded and replaced by a deep respect and gratitude for the differences which mark us and which only add to our collective beauty.
We celebrate this sacramentality especially when we gather at the Eucharistic Table and when we can look each other in the eye and we know deep down that we are brothers and sisters. In a world where racism and prejudices abound and divide people and breed hatreds, we celebrate our cultural diversities and are reconciled in them when we share a Common Cup at the Eucharistic Meal. Then, and only then, can we say with Jesus: “This is my body and my blood given freely for you!” We promise each other fidelity and mutual care. We promise “to be there for one another” in one’s need and we commit ourselves to forging unity and communion as we drink from the Cup, the Blood of Reconciliation. We thus become witnesses of reconciliation in diversity.
Living true community is both a gift and a task. It is a gift because Christ has opened the way for us with His death and resurrection. He has shown us the way and has conquered the sin that destroys community. Through His Blood we are healed and we are reconciled.
We are called to look upon Community in its proper perspective, as the place where we will find the Lord. We will learn to see our sisters and brothers as mediations of God’s revelation to us and then we will never be too busy to open our hearts in hospitality to invite them in and to share the bread of life together. We need patience as God is patient with us, affirming us with His love, in spite of our shortcomings and repeated failures. We must love one another with that same unconditional and endless love with which God loves us. And reconciling ourselves in community is also about forgiveness. We have all been hurt at one time or another. We all carry our wounds. And we have all hurt others and are still capable of doing it again.
But we should not be discouraged. The tensions, difficulties, misunderstandings and lack of unity we sometimes encounter in our imperfect communities also form part of God’s Project of Communion for us. The road to a reconciled community necessarily endures the experience and the participation in the Passion and Death of Christ. The Paschal Mystery continues to be at the heart of the dynamics of community building. It is only in dying to our individualism and our selfishness that we will be able to be reborn to a new community life which will be a light in the mist of a fractured and divided world.
(Rev. Barry Fischer, C.PP.S., “Towards a Reconciled Community Life,” an address given at an International Spirituality Workshop for the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, Rome, September 1995. Published with permission)
Questions for Reflection
- What are the events in your day that prevent you from being hospitable when you gather in community?
- What are the events in your day that help you to be hospitable when you gather in community?
- In the reading Father Fischer states that, “living true community is both a gift and a task.”
- How has community life been a gift?
- How has it been a task?
- Where have you found the blessings in both?
- How has community life helped you hear the “Cry of the Blood?”
Sep 15, 2015
September 2015 Reflection
Scripture Reading
Numbers 11:25-29
Mark 9:38-41
Additional Reading
“God is most completely revealed to us where we would least expect it. Rather than affirming values held as essential by society or revealing the divine presence at the center of public interest, God appears on the fringes, in situations and actions beyond the pale of established values and ideals. God appears among the detritus of society, that which has been rejected and cast off. What this means is that God can best be comprehended among the broken and rejected rather than among the powerful and respected. God’s dwelling place is not in some sanctuary cut off from the strident cries of those who are broken and call out for justice and mercy.” –Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S. In Water and In Blood: A Spirituality of Solidarity and Hope, pg. 67
I can occasionally be a snob. I’m not sure if this is a product of my fairly sheltered suburban upbringing, my all-boys prep school, the constant barrage of marketing from my alma mater about how smart we were for going to school where we did, or if this is just part of who I am. I fight against my pretentiousness, but sometimes the struggle does not go well. When it does come out it’s an ugly look for me!
One of the ways my snobbishness comes out is who I listen to. I have a tendency to listen more intently to people with a title. Reverend, Doctor, and Professor are all titles usually indicating the level of education and perseverance a person has committed to. It is wise (and usually prudent) to put faith into people who have dedicated their lives to studying certain subjects or have put the time and effort into understanding the world around us. However, I will every so often not listen to someone for some reason or another.
I do take solace in knowing I’m not the only person who does this! Sometimes we completely ignore or push away what people are saying because of their gender, their race, their ethnicity, the way they dress, the way they talk, their economic situation, their political positions, or where they come from. In the readings from Numbers and the Gospel of Mark there are people in places of authority who question the call of others. Joshua is Moses right hand man and John is a close disciple of Jesus. In both cases they are corrected. Moses even says it would be good for all of God’s people to be prophets!
Precious Blood spirituality calls us out to the margins. We are called out to the edges, not just simply to serve, but also to listen. Our listening will give us a better chance to hear the wisdom and truth of God’s voice, wherever it comes out. God’s voice calls out not just in a circle of disciples, not just in a gathering of elders, not just among the wealthy, the well educated, the connected, the ordained, but also in places we don’t expect to hear it. Even more troubling is when it comes from places (or mouths) we don’t want to listen to. Those people are usually among the “broken and rejected.”
Pope Francis used the example of Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day in his recent address to Congress. Both of these people were prophets calling those around them to better follow Jesus Christ. Day was told by the Cardinal Archbishop of New York not to use the name “Catholic” with the Catholic Worker movement and Merton was silenced by his religious superiors. Both of them heard God’s call in unusual places and were called to a more radical way of living because of their intent listening. May we be that open to God’s call and to the prophetic voices of people in surprising places.
Questions for Reflection
- Who are some of the people you have tried to silence in your own life who have provided some sort of wisdom for you?
- Where are some unexpected places you have heard God’s wisdom and truth?
- Describe times when you have had someone from an unexpected place be a voice of the divine.
- Who are people (or groups) our community, society, church, and world refuses to listen to because of who they are? What are some ways to better listen to God’s voice calling through them?
Aug 15, 2015
August 2015 Reflection
Scripture Reading
Psalm 46
Additional Reading
“Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps then we will come to understand it.”
-St. Augustine of Hippo
“Place yourself in a state of silence. Do nothing, but only listen to the voice of God.”
–St. Gaspar del Bufalo
Early this past spring a strong thunderstorm rumbled through my neighborhood. It blew through at about 2 am leaving tree limbs and power lines down throughout the Kansas City area. This tempest was loud! There was frequent lightning, thunder, heavy rain, and howling winds. The power went out in the midst of the squall.
There was an eerie calm in the house when I woke up later in the morning. My home’s normal sounds had been silenced because of the power outage. The hum of the refrigerator was absent, the air conditioner was not pushing air through the house, and the desktop computer was not giving off its normal whir. The stillness was unnerving!
The noise in our lives can be so persistent we are flummoxed when the world goes quiet. I’m sure this is why I was bothered by the stillness during the power outage.
I recently stumbled across a quote from St. Augustine of Hippo saying we should “leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence.” It sounds great to have some time for meitation and quietude. However, I usually fill this time with finding something to fiddle around with in my garden, some sort of idle chatter, and increasingly with one of my electronic devices. If I had access to cable TV I’d spend most of my summer evenings watching baseball. There are times when I could have quiet, but instead choose to listen to music or a podcast, or spend inordinate amounts of time on Facebook or Twitter.
None of these things are inherently bad. Seemingly pointless banter can lead to hearing God’s presence in another person. We can see a glimpse of God’s creativity through the imagination of others in music, art, film, and literature. Social media can help us connect with friends and hear, and be challenged by, perspectives not our own. Even baseball can be a worthy escape from the challenges of the day!
The question then becomes are we using these things to avoid God’s call in our life. Giving ourselves time for stillness can help us more appreciate God’s presence in the joys, challenges, and sufferings in our lives. I don’t believe our inability to be still is a modern phenomena. The Psalmist gives the instruction to be still at least 700 years before Christ. Jesus is described as going off on his own to pray some 2000 years ago. St. Augustine writes about it in the 4th or 5th Century and St. Gaspar tells us to quiet down and listen intently just 200 years ago.
Our challenge is to be still. It is difficult to carve out the time and providing space for God to speak intimately to us can be intimidating. Not having the comfort of noise around us can feel odd in a world with so much of it. So be bold (or let the power go off) in turning everything off for at least a few moments and being open to hearing God’s voice.
Questions for Reflection
- What are some of the ways you avoid silence and reflection?
- What are some of the ways you “leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence?”
- What has surprised you about your time in silence and reflection?
- What was the fruit of your time spent in silence and reflection?
