Sr Kym Harris – Page 5 – Benedictine Monastery

July 25, 2020

2. Just what is our neediness?

Comfort my people: speak to their heart.

This is the second in a series of reflections on God’s comfort and our neediness.

2. Just what is our neediness?

Many of the things that cause us suffering come from our own personal habits and weaknesses. These can undermine our lives, destroy our relationships and give us a sense of unhappiness.

Often these reveal themselves in habits that we don’t take seriously: gambling problems, an inability to talk about our problems, being demanding or rude…the list can go. You probably know some of your own…and maybe over the years have tried to deal with them. If you have been ‘successful’ you will have discovered that the real issue is not the problem you first thought you had but actually it had a deeper, and often different, cause.

I had a grandmother, who would put up with a lot and then explode over what seemed like a small incident to others. She would then say or do something hurtful, often with long term effects. Looking at her behaviour, I came to realise that the issue was not her anger but the continual putting up with unjust treatment. She needed to take a stand earlier when too much was being demanded of her. For her, stating her case when she was calm was harder to do than when angry. But for her own happiness, and others, it was needed.

When we are stuck in negative behaviour and wonder why God isn’t giving us the strength to overcome it, we may need to ask: what is the real issue here? What is the underlying problem causing this pain and failure. When we come to face squarely the root cause, then we may discover God’s comfort finally strengthening us to deal with it.

Loving God, you know that often we feel our lives are a mess and that we are overcome by our weaknesses. Send us the strength of your Spirit and the wisdom of Jesus to know how to face our pain and failure and turn it into a place where your love abounds. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

July 25, 2020

Comfort my people: speak to their heart.

This is the first of series of reflections God’s comfort and our neediness.

1. What is comfort.

One of the strongest images of God in our Christian faith is that of ‘Comforter’. In the person of Jesus, God has come into our midst to be with us and to console our broken hearts. When people turn to God in prayer, they often do so because they are in distress. Yet God doesn’t seem to take away our pain and difficulties so we can rightly ask: how does God comfort us.

Firstly, just what is this ‘comfort’? Well, it is not being relaxed and comfortable, snoozing in an easy chair, no pain, no problems. The word comes from two Latin words for ‘with’ and ‘strength’. So when God wants to comfort us, it isn’t to take challenges away but to strengthen us through our pain and suffering to grow as human beings. Much as we don’t like it, these are an integral part of maturing and learning to love.

God’s comfort is directed to helping us face the challenges of life. At times, these just happen to us: we lose our job, get cancer, are bashed up. These things we often don’t deserve. But more often than not our distress comes from our own personal liabilities, in traditional terms our human tendency to sin. When we hear the word ‘sin’ today, we tend to absolve ourselves saying “Hey, I’m not really a sinner, I’m a good person. I haven’t killed anyone”, yet we all have personal habits and weaknesses that undermine our lives, damage our relationships and cause unhappiness to ourselves and to others and these we need to face. In order to receive the comfort of God, we need to first be honest about the reality of our need.

Loving Father, you sent your son Jesus, to come amongst us and speak to our hearts. We know our pain and struggle. May your Holy Spirit guide us through the maze of our problems so that we may share your comfort with our family and friends. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 25, 2020

Making life’s choices!

The Bible frequently offers values in black and white, even though life is lived in colour. The either/or option is a good way to teach us what effect our life choices make. However complicated the background to the civil unrest in England is, there we see clearly the difference between choosing to act selfishly and choosing to act lovingly. Smashing, stealing, even killing, come from choosing solely for oneself. Caring, defending, forgiving, having compassion, working together as a community are the result of loving others. Neither response shown was a spur of the moment decision but rather was the culmination of choices made earlier in life.

As parents and guardians we can learn from this situation in England and consider what values we are modelling to our children. They note when we are courteous, or not; forgiving, or not; courageous, or not. But we need to do more than just model; we need to actively teach them in practical ways the values of caring for others.

Helping around the house with regular chores is one way of doing this. I noticed neighbours involving their young daughter in the painting of her room. Oh, it would have been easier for an adult to do it alone but, working with others, look what she is learning: sharing, patience, resilience when work gets hard. Later in life, where she is faced with a choice, it will be her choice, but her family will have given her a good education in making choices that give life.

Loving God, Father, Son and Spirit, you are a community of love and we are made in your image. We come to a full and rich life caring for each other. Teach us to make wise choices that we may seek the good of each other in loving service. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 25, 2020

So you want to be a celebrity!…or at 1east special.

I write this on the Feast of the Transfiguration. “Come again?” you well may ask, ‘What is that?” This is a day in the Church’s year when we celebrate that time in the life of Jesus when his divine glory shone through in his human flesh and the Father’s voice was heard declaring that Jesus was his beloved Son and that he found his delight in him. His disciples were simply blown away by the glory of it all.

So what has that to do with you, with your parenting, with the challenges you may have at work. A lot. We are made for glory. Made in God’s image we desire greatness, we desire full and passionate love, we desire someone to find delight in us. And God wants this for us as well. But this isn’t something we can just take – we have to learn how to receive it from the hands of others. When we grab, when others grab, all sorts of problems come about. People become selfish and demanding, thoughtless and rude. The result may look like power but it certainly is without glory.

My grandfather was a man whose glory shone through. He was very old when he died, 96 years, and many people, especially young people were at his funeral …, “because he was so good to us.” He was a poor man so he had nothing to give except interest, courtesy, love, conversation. His life had been spent in love and care of his family and friends. He knew the way to true glory – love of those that God had given him.

Loving Father, you showed your love and delight of Jesus your Son when glory radiated through him. Send us your Spirit to shine through us as we love our family, friends and wider community. You know how restless our hearts can be, may they rest in your love. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 25, 2020

Why are we allowed to do the things we shouldn’t?

Yesterday, I heard of someone who said he couldn’t believe in God, given what had happened in Norway. How could a loving God allow such a horrific killing spree to take place? The question is a valid one and one that could be made of many situations concerning suffering that is caused by people. It is also one that can be made of many situations in our life. Why are people allowed to cause us such deep suffering and why are we allowed to cause others suffering? Because God has given us free will and God respects that freedom even when we abuse it and act in ways that are profoundly inhuman, even violating the sacredness of others’ lives. This is difficult for us to comprehend.

Parents have some insight into this. You can spend yourselves giving the best example and teaching your children to make right choices but part of becoming adult is for them to make choices that differ from yours. Good parents know they have to relinquish control, usually as the children become adults, and that they are not responsible for all the choices their children make as adults. How awful the parents of mass murderers must feel. Even if they had given their children a tough childhood, that is no excuse for depravity.

In our use of free will, we can be most like God: loving, caring, creative; or most devilish: hating, vindictive, destructive. While we are horrified by what happened in Norway, this can also be a wake-up call to us: how do the choices I make each day, give life or destroy life? If we allow ourselves to just drift through life, we are not using our free will and harm can come of this. We are made to knowingly and willingly share in God’s passionate love of the world.

Loving God, at times we are horrified by the terrible actions of people. We pray for grieve the loss in recent tragedies of family or friends. May we learn to treasure those we love and carefully consider the effects that our own choices will have on their lives. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

July 25, 2020

Excelling in Education: Heart, Mind and Spirit

Excelling in Education

Heart, Mind and Spirit.

This theme for this Catholic Education Week (Excelling in Education Heart, Mind and Spirit) goes to the heart of what Catholic Education is about if it is looked at the right way. The word that might let us astray is the word ‘excelling’. In the pursuit of excellence, we can too easily treat life like an Olympic race where virtually all praise goes to the gold medal winner – as for place-getters, who cares! Even if we prize ‘Personal Bests’, God isn’t really interested in them because we are then competing against ourselves and when we don’t beat our previous goal, we often beat ourselves up.

The excellence we are promoting in this week is the excellence that God desires for our lives. We invite God to come and love within our hearts that we may show the extraordinary courteous love which Jesus showed. We invite God to guide our thoughts and imagination so that our minds grow in awe and wonder of the world in which we live. We invite God’s Spirit to guide our lives, so that buoyed up, we can face the life’s challenges and difficulties with hope.

When our hearts, minds and spirits are shaped by this excellent God, all the other things that we would like from Catholic Education fall naturally into place: pursuit of academic excellence, enjoyment in sport, love of art and culture, personal discipline.

Loving God, enter our hearts, minds and spirits. May your Spirit lift us up in love that we may show the life of Jesus to our family, friends and community. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 25, 2020

The Companion we really need.

Companion is a lovely word. Coming from the Latin roots it means ‘with bread’. A companion is a person with whom we share the events of life, especially the ordinary daily events. When this happens over a length of time, even over a life time, we build up a depth of friendship that can have a profound influence in our lives. From such a friend we get comfort (meaning: with strength) and communion (meaning: with union).

This coming Sunday the church celebrates the Feast of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, the feast of the presence of Jesus in the Bread and the Wine of the Eucharist. He comes to us in this way as he desires to be our companion in life, desiring to share with us his divine life and being close to us in all the events of our lives. If Jesus had come with all the grandeur of God, we would not feel that we could come close to him with our joys, concerns and problems. He comes in this humble way that we might open our lives and our hearts to him. As we let him be our ‘companion’ in life, we will find that he offers us comfort and communion, both with God and with others. If the presence of Jesus is unfamiliar to you, you may wonder how you can do this. Simply begin by letting him know your concerns, speak simply from the heart. Then, most likely in the ordinary events of life, Jesus will come – maybe not in the way you expect – but he will come and be a companion to you.

Loving Father, you showed us the depth of your love in the person of Jesus and he continues to show that love in the Eucharist. Send us your Spirit that we may make Jesus the companion of our life. We ask this in his name confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 25, 2020

Who are you?

Learning about who we are is a life-long learning curve. Sometimes the curve is steep and painful – when we have to face aspects of ourselves we don’t want to admit, like our addictions or our anger. Sometimes it is a delight – like when a friend who brings talents out of us that we never knew were there. As parents and teachers, one of our greatest callings is helping our children discover who they are. What we discover in these situations in that we do not grow, do not come to maturity, do not come to who we really are except in relationship with other people.

This is because we are made in the image of God and the God that Jesus came to show us was a community of persons. While we speak of one God, this God is really Three Persons passionately in love with each other – so much in love that Love is who they really are. While we Christians use the names, ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Holy Spirit’, these are such inept names in the face of this mystery of God. We sound like small children trying to explain nuclear physics. But we have a sense of what this is about, not from our head but from our gut. From the depths of our being we want to love and we want to give ourselves in love and we want our love to be creative. Usually these passions find expression in the love of marriage and the rearing of children.

This Sunday we celebrate this mystery of God in the Feast of the Holy Trinity. Over this week, ponder on what are the best yearnings in your life and how these are a reflection of God’s life…and as you ponder may you grow into the person God wants you to be.

Loving Father, our hearts are made for love and as we love we live by your life. Send us your Spirit that, listening to the words of Jesus, we may live by your love. We ask this in his name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 25, 2020

Come Holy Spirit

We all love passion –young love, a grandparent’s delight, winners at the Olympics, medical professionals finding a cure – the story of these people light up our hearts and give us joy. We all love passion – but if we are sensible, we also fear it – marital affairs, money lost through gambling, children neglected because of parents’ other interests – we know the grief and heartache that comes from passion gone awry. We all love passion – because the alternative is a dreary life, bogged down by boredom, and crippled by sadness.

The secret to having good passion is to look to the source. When our passions are based on our own selfish desires, even though they may feel ‘good’ at the beginning, they will end in grief. But if they are based on love of God and care of others and of our own selves, we will grow into the fullness of love and life and, even though our circumstances may be difficult, we will have joy.

The source of good, even great, passion is the Holy Spirit, the gift of God’s love to us. This coming Sunday we celebrate Pentecost, the feast of this Holy Spirit. Now is a good time for stocktaking the passions in your life. How do you do that? By actually noting what you do and asking yourself what are your habits. Not the ‘gunna dos’ by which we often make our self image, but what we really do. As we see who we are, we can ask the Holy Spirit to give us the wisdom and courage to embrace passions that will actually make us the work of art God wants each of us to be.

Loving God, send into our hearts and lives your fire of love, the Holy Spirit. In the wisdom of the Spirit may we love our family, friends and community, as Jesus would love them. We ask this in his name confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 25, 2020

Values for Life

In the coming weeks, the church celebrates two of it major feasts: the Ascension and Pentecost. In the first, we celebrate when the risen Jesus left the disciples, and in Pentecost, we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit.

Come again?!? We celebrate Jesus leaving us! Why on earth would we do that? Wouldn’t you think that as Christians we would much prefer him to stay around on earth to lead and guide us, telling us what to do. No, because then we would remain dependent and immature. Strange to say he has become absent physically in this world so that he might be present in our lives, within our own selves. God became human in Jesus that we might become like God. We are meant to ‘grow up’ to salvation and have the maturity to show forth the presence of Jesus within our own lives.

Strange to say we can see how this dynamic works in parenting. While children are young we need to be constantly with them teaching them values to live by so that when older, they can live those values in their own way. Passing on good values is not easy. It is often so much easier to do the chores ourselves, that to teach them how do them; so much easier to give them free use of the internet and mobile phones, than to teach them boundaries and self-respect. It is a challenge to teach them how to be responsible on Facebook, to understand that not everything ‘about me’ has to be shared with the world. As a parent or guardian, these challenges will stretch you…and that is when we can call on the gift of the Holy Spirit to impart to our children values they can internalise and guide them later in life.