We also celebrate on this special occasion, the Reception into Canonical Year of Genie, Laura and Linda, as they continue to deepen the journey that they began with Maryknoll as Sister Candidates just last year.
Without a doubt, each of these young women is a special blessing to the greater Maryknoll community, who welcomes them and commits to help nurture their vocation.
These women have heard that same call from God as Samuel, crying out in the inner depths of their being. They have had to discern the voice of God calling by attuning their hearts to listen for a deeper meaning of life.
And they have responded, “Speak God, your servant is listening!” In the Gospel reading they chose for today, Jesus tells us: “If you obey my commandments, You will abide in my love.”
Interestingly enough, the root word for obedience means “to listen.” Have you ever noticed that many children start to get earaches at around the same time that they’re learning to obey their parents? This is indicative of the fact that “to learn to obey” We must adjust our ears to better listen.
Listening and attuning our ears to hear God’s call isn’t the easiest thing to do in this day and age. When we receive so many false messages from the media and the world around us about what will make us happy and bring us fulfillment in life.
In the Gospel passage from John today, Jesus says “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.” It’s clear, Jareen, Genie, Laura and Linda, that you have heard the voice of God calling and that you have chosen to respond
with open hearts, “Here I am!” You know that the Way of Love is the path to the fullness
of life and true joy.
Incidentally, the
first name for Christianity was “The Way.” Those first Christians made a conscious
decision to follow an alternative way of life, the Way of Jesus Christ, the
way of love and justice.
This past week I
had the privilege to sit down with these four exemplary young women
and hear about their life
experiences, which have led them to
respond to God’s call to love and service.
Jareen had already
been teaching about the history of the Maryknoll Sisters in the Philippines, but she said that what attracted her to join
the Maryknoll Sisters was the “vibrancy of life”
that she found in the living history of those Sisters she
met.
Laura, Linda and
Genie expressed how through their respective ministries last year, they came up against their own limitations and were challenged to go beyond
“self” and learn from those with
whom they ministered. Each of them spoke of
how much they grew in patience and
love through their ministry.
They were each
able to listen to the voice of God speaking to them through their life
experience. This is what “true obedience” to
the Holy Spirit means. When we are able to listen,
we’ll learn and grow more deeply in love with God and
all of God’s creation.
Jesus says that
when we learn to listen to God’s voice within we are not mere servants, but friends. And friends don’t spend time
together out of obligation, but they enjoy being in one
another’s company, walking together and
sharing life with one another.
The words from the
prophet Micah 6,8 say it so well: "Only this does God ask of us: to love tenderly, to
act justly, and
to walk humbly with God.”
When I began
preparing my thoughts for what I was going to say today, I paid a visit to the grave of Mother Mary
Joseph to seek some guidance. While spending some time
there, I was struck by the
sculpture of the Mother of the
Thorn Crowned.
I noticed the
water flowing out from the side of the cross, and the deer crouched down at the foot of
the cross with its mouth open ready to drink up that life giving
water. I was reminded of Psalm 42, one of Mother Mary
Joseph’s favourites: “As
the deer thirsts for running waters, so my
heart yearns for you, O God.”
What better image
have we of the central meaning of religious life, the witness that we are all yearning for
the fullness of love and life that only God can satisfy. This same spirituality must
have been what inspired MMJ in the quote that we find on the
back of our booklets for today’s Mass: “There is nothing more astonishing than life, just
as it is, nothing more miraculous than growth and change and development, just as
revealed to us. And as happens so often when
we stop to regard God’s work, there is nothing to do but wonder and thank God, realizing how little we planned, how little we achieved, and yet how much has been done.”
And so as God said
to Samuel in days of old, so God too, must be saying to us on this
special day of welcoming and reception of these young
women: “See,
I am about to do something new in Maryknoll that
will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.”
And so let us
attune our ears to the voice of God speaking to us today through the lives of Genie, Linda, Laura
and Jareen, and let’s give thanks for the
special blessing they are to us.
August 11, 2008
Fr. Dennis Moorman, MM
August 11, 2008
Fr. Dennis Moorman, MM
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