Shine. Listen. Be unafraid.

I’ve previously written that this summer I have been part of an 8-week retreat with the Ignatian Exercises. This is an at-home retreat where we individually pray through the Exercises and meet weekly as a group to share our prayer experience.  We are finishing our last week, and it feels so good to have received the grace to be faithful to the end. Faithfulness is such a gift from God and spreads so much goodness into the world. As with most retreat experiences, we find ourselves pondering the question: “How now shall we live?” “How do we stay faithful to the gifts God has given us this summer?”

Pope Francis, speaking at the concluding Mass at World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal in August 2023 gives a threefold response that may provide us with some direction:

• Shine. (Matthew 7:2) “Love like Jesus; that is what makes us light…whenever you do works of love, you become light. But the moment you stop loving others and become self-centered, you extinguish the light.”
• Listen. (Matthew 17:5) “Listen to Jesus, for he will show you which paths are those of love. Listen to him.”
• Be unafraid. (Matthew 17:7) “Hear what Jesus told his disciples on the Mount, and in so many other places in the Gospels…Do not be afraid.”

I encourage all of us to reflect and pray on these suggestions as we enter a new season—autumn, back to school, and other activities we engage in during the year.

 I will add my own threefold response. I ask the Lord to:

Still me, fill me, and spill me (pour me out).

The children’s melody, I’m a Little Teapot, comes to my mind. To truly shine, I first become small and let God still me. I am aware of his warm gaze, and I feel his fierce love. The gaze of a good shepherd, attentive to pain and longing. I stand in the waterfall of Divine grace and goodness with my arms stretched out wide in a posture of receiving. I let God fill me. I listen for his continuous attention, consolation, and instruction.  I allow the words of Scripture to form me and to guide my life. Once God has quieted me and filled me with his love and wisdom, He can then spill me–pour me out into a world in need of what only He can offer.  I go with the promise that the Holy Spirit is with me so I need not be afraid. I am free to be me and free to help you. I can even look suffering in the eye confident that I am not alone and trusting that God is laboring for me in all of life’s experiences.

“Live in the present moment filling it to the brim with love”. Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen

There is power in God’s saving grace. We can pray for it and wait for it. There is also power in patience, trusting that God is always laboring for the best in us and in all creation. We enter into that patience when we allow God to still us. We sense His mercy, wisdom, and power as we listen to Him and to one another. This deep listening allows God to freshen our eyes so that we can see all the gifts of the human community clearly—the gifts of the other. Filled with this grace, we can be unafraid to follow in the footsteps of Jesus—to follow the wounds of Jesus into our own wounds and the wounds of this world.

I will close with Pope Francis’ words at the close of World Youth Day in Lisbon in August 2023 to 1.5 million young people. I want to sit with this a bit and I encourage you to do the same:

“I would like to look into the eyes of each of you and say: Do not be afraid. I will tell you something else, something very beautiful: it is no longer I, but Jesus himself who is at this moment looking at you. He is looking at us. He knows you; he knows the heart of each one of you, knows the life of each one of you, he knows your joys, your sorrows, your successes, your failures. He knows your heart. He reads your hearts and he says to you: Be not afraid. Take heart, do not be afraid.”  Pope Francis

Here’s a prayer by Cardinal John Henry Newman that is said to be one of Mother Teresa’s favorites:

Dear Jesus,

Help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly
that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine,
so to shine as to be a light to others;
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You;
none of it will be mine;
It will be you shining on others through me.