Kim Panaro, ARCWP, led the Upper Room Liturgy for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Kim’s homily starter follows the readings.
WELCOME AND THEME
This week we will celebrate the feast of St. Valentine. Valentine was a 3rd century priest. Valentine was an evangelist known for his illegal and subversive acts of spreading the gospel. He performed marriages for Christians thus opening the possibility of married Christians making more baby Christians. Like most early saints, Valentine was ultimately beaten and beheaded for his beliefs. Like many legends in Christian tradition, Valentine’s story is pretty grim but we use it as inspiration to celebrate the joy of love. We are a tradition of paradox. As we listen to the gospel of Simon Peter’s call, we will consider the question “What Is The Net?”. Perhaps another paradox.
LOVE MEDITATION
Begin now by taking a slow deep breath in and exhale gently. Allow your shoulders and body to relax.
Bring your awareness to your heart. As you breath in and out, visualize the petals of your heart gradually opening. Feel your heart filling with light and love.
Visualize this love expanding out from your heart and permeating every cell of your being.
A feeling of love and peace washes over you.
Your body is filling with light and love.
Send this love to yourself
your family
friends
this community
and out into the world.
Send your love to the people who grew and harvested the food you eat
sewed the clothes you wear
built your home
and to all who are part of our lives.
Love connects all of us for God is love.
When you are ready, gently bring your awareness back to the room. You can open your eyes and feel the love surrounding you.
OPENING SONG
Companions on the Journey by Carey Landry
https://youtu.be/dDfCXa6b06Q
OPENING PRAYER
We gather in the presence of the Holy One, who is Love itself. We open our ourselves to the sharing and love we celebrate whenever two or more are gathered in the name of our Brother Jesus. We accept the invitation to expand our hearts and our minds so that we may better love others, the Holy One and ourselves. Amen
FIRST READING: How to LoveIf you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.
When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness. Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.
These are the inspired teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Community affirms them by saying Amen
A LITANY OF HEARTS
Reader 1: Let
us pray together for all hearts held in unity.
After
every three petitions, respond,
All:
We pray that this be so.
Reader 1: That broken hearts be mended
That
young hearts stay wonder-filled
That old hearts discover their
wisdom:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader 2:That embittered hearts let go of hurt
That
compassionate hearts find strength
That big hearts know their wealth:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader 1:That betrayed hearts recover trust
That
soft hearts not be wounded
That hardened hearts begin to soften:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader 2:That sensitive hearts be vigilant
That
happy hearts announce their joy
That courageous hearts keep risking:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader 1:That passionate heart tend the flames
That
arrogant hearts learn humility
That sympathetic hearts benefit others:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader 2:That determined hearts lose their grip
That
jealous hearts accept what they have
That lost hearts find their way home:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader 1:That loving hearts reach out to others
That
generous hearts receive in return
The fearful hearts turn toward trust:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader 2: That empty hearts befriend loneliness
That
tepid hearts stretch into action
That faithful hearts remain
steadfast:
All:
We pray that this be so
Reader
1:
Kindhearted
Holy One, you gather all these hearts into your one great love. Thank you for reaching our heart through the
hearts of others. The genuine love of
each person reflects your divine affection.
Keep us aware, when we hesitate or question our ability to share our love
with another and that you dwell within our hearts. Amen.(Adapted from Prayer Seeds. Joyce Rupp)
One day, Jesus was
standing by Lake Gennesaret, and the crowd pressed in on him to hear the word
of God. He saw two boats moored by the side of the lake; the fishers had disembarked
and were washing their nets. Jesus stepped into one of the boats, the one
belonging to Simon, and asked him to pull out a short distance from the shore;
then, remaining seated, he continued to teach the crowds from the boat.
When he had
finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Pull out into deep water and lower your
nets for a catch.”
Simon answered,
“Rabbi, we’ve been working hard all night long and have caught nothing; but if
you say so, I’ll lower the nets.”
Upon doing so, they
caught such a great number of fish that their nets were at the breaking point.
They signaled to their mates in the other boat to come and help them, and
together they filled the two boats until they both nearly sank.
After Simon saw
what happened, he was filled with awe and fell down before Jesus, saying,
“Leave me, Rabbi, for I’m a sinner.” For Simon and his shipmates were
astonished at the size of the catch they had made, as were James and John,
Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s partners.
Jesus said to
Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you’ll fish among humankind.” And when
they brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
These are the
inspired words of Luke The Evangelist and the Community affirms them by saying
Amen.
KIM’S HOMILY STARTER
Valentine’s Day brings joy for some and
misery for others. Couples get engaged or even married. They celebrate their
love with gifts of candy, flowers, dinner, or other material goods. For others,
Valentines Day may be a sad day because a loved one has passed on, a
relationship once cherished has ended in separation or because it marks another
year of frustrated longing to find that special someone. Valentines Day and our
readings today have so much more to teach us.
The gospel from Luke is a very familiar
story about the call of Jesus to Simon Peter. Impressed by the teachings
and the ability to fill empty nets with fish, Simon Peter drops everything and
at that moment begins a life of discipleship. Conversion stories in scripture are
meant to portray a sense of calling specific to that person and ultimately, to
each of us.
This story about becoming a fisher
among people led me to ponder the question “What Is the Net?”. In other words,
what is the way that Peter, Mary, James, Matilde, Julian, Dorothy Day, you and
I are to become fishers? To fish, there must be a net to do the gathering.
In the past, religions have used the fear of damnation as the net to fill
the pews. Come on in or face the
consequences for eternity. We do not follow that path. No, our net I would
suggest, is Love. We seek to live in the kindom here and now by sharing the
message of love. It is our net. We celebrate Love in religious language
in so many ways. God Is Love, God Loves
Us, We are called to Love God and Others as Ourselves, we are called to Love
ourselves as sons and daughters of God. But this always sounds so good.
Deceptively simple in its language, daunting in its challenge.
It is of course easy to love those who
love us and think like us. But what about loving those we don’t like, don’t
agree with, who have hurt or abused us, who wish us ill? How can we love them?
We may not have any desire to even try to. That person who is just so annoying
at work, so irritating or narrow in their thinking, so destructive. Is there
any way we can make ourselves love them? When we face with honesty, the limits
of our current capacity to love, it is like discovering the dry bones. A
tightly folded, carefully put away dry closed net.
Thich Nhat Hanh offers us the “how” to
open our nets. That is through learning
to love ourselves and expand our capacity to see beyond the small I that is our
ego, our limited perceptions, our feelings and agendas for others. It is to make our net bigger by loving
ourselves enough to build our capacity to love others more than ourselves. This
is not a call to codependency. It is an invitation to holiness and wholeness.
Simon Peter knew that he was limited. He admitted this when he called himself a
sinner. We are all limited but called.
As adult believers we cannot just dismiss or brush past the requirement to
allow God to love in and through us. We cannot simply love where and when it is
easy. Our call, like that of Jesus, Simon Peter, Mary and all who have been
touched by a deep experience of Sophia Wisdom is to love when love seems
foolish, makes us look ridiculous, makes us confused and makes us let go of our
small-minded beliefs and agendas.
So, like St. Valentine who loved others
and the gospel more than his own life, we may pay a price for love. In
our faith tradition, the ability to have changed hearts and minds is an act of
free will and a movement of the Spirit. We believe that in community, we
encourage one another and we experience the movement of Sophia Wisdom in our
lives. We get the paradoxical message to relax and “Be Not Afraid” but
simultaneously, go to the edge and love in a way that does not seem possible
and is never easy or comfortable.
What did you hear in our readings
today? What will you do? What will it cost you?
COMMUNION SONG
Love
Changes Everything sung by Anthony Warlow
CLOSING SONG
Lean On
Me by Bill Withers
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