September 2019
We were caught by surprise this morning while praying Lauds from the Liturgy of the Hours, our daily practice for greeting our day. We pondered the Antiphon phrase, "Radiant Mercy" and now share our reflections with you.
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This Antiphon opened and closed the Canticle from Ecclesiasticus 36: “Lord, show us the radiance of your mercy.” We often see radiance in a bedewed budding rose or in a tropical sunrise. It is the glow in a woman’s skin shining through the birth pangs as she holds her newborn child. Radiance is a brilliance that is difficult to describe in words. Only in today’s Liturgy of the Hours did we notice mercy as being radiant.
Mercy usually arises out of a difficult situation like forgiveness for a misdeed. We are often in a “dark night of the soul” when we recognize mercy like a healing balm on a raw sore. Very seldom is mercy something we interpret as radiant.
Water has always fascinated me, maybe because I grew up in Corpus Christi on the Gulf Coast. The power of surf and swells can change in an instant. It intrigues me how the water’s surface reflects the sky; a cloudy, overcast sky makes of murky-looking waters. Then there are those gorgeous days when diamonds dance on the Microsoft blue buoyant bay. Radiant!
Mercy can sometimes catch us off-guard and we likely would miss it. Even in our darkest days when all we can see is our own murky souls, God is there with divine mercy. Do we recognize it? Bidden or unbidden, radiant mercy is a divine gift. We cannot create it; if we once experience it, we can’t force its repetition. I tend to agree with William Wordsworth, that “though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.”*
It also is good to remember what Dag Hammarskjold once said, “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.”*
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“Be merciful, just as [God] is merciful” (Luke 6:36).
The highest attribute of God is not “all-knowing” or “all-powerful.” The most amazing attribute of God is mercy. And in the eyes of Jesus, the most godly thing we can do is to be merciful.
I am currently reading a powerful novel,
The Storyteller’s Secret
, by Sejal Badani. In the novel, Jaya, a young American woman of Indian descent, travels to India for the first time, seeking to learn more of her family’s history. In truth, she is seeking to better understand herself.
When she reaches the village where her grandparents lived, she meets Ravi, an elderly man who had been a house-servant in her grandparents’ home. As the story unfolds, she quickly discovers that Ravi adored Jaya’s grandmother, Amisha. Before long, she learns why. “I am a Dalit,” Ravi explains: an
“
untouchable
.”
When Ravi was a starving adolescent, turned away from any and every job he sought because of his caste, Amisha offered him work in her home, despite her mother-in-law’s horrified objections and her husband’s grudging, reluctant consent. “It was one of her many gifts,” Ravi says of Amisha, “seeing past the circumstances of one’s life and embracing the person.”
“Mercy. That is the gospel. The whole of it in one word,” says a writer name
E. H. Chapin
. Overstated? Perhaps. But it was Jesus himself who said, “Blessed are the merciful.” Blessed indeed are those whose lives reflect the radiance of God’s mercy.
--by Bill
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Dear Friends, in a recent issue we celebrated 10 years and 200 issues of this newsletter. We also shared with you our dreams and plans for expanding
Soul Windows Ministries. We are so grateful to you for your feedback, support, encouragement, gratitude, and especially those of you who took the time to write us notes, emails, or cards. We appreciate you so much.
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Recent Issues
Issue 203 - Storytelling
Issue 177 - Mr. Rogers
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Copyright (c) 2019 Soul Windows Ministries
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Sincerely,
Bill Howden and Jan Davis
Soul Windows Ministries
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