New announcement. Learn more

Blog

TAGS

Spiritual Reflection - January 2023

Ki te tuohi koe me he maunga teitei:
If you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.

I grew up in south Taranaki with the mountain staring at me as I stood at our backdoor. My memory has me seeing myself positioned right in the middle of this beauty pondering Phantom’s Peak, the mountain in miniature, displaying equal majesty, halfway from the top. A liberal smattering of snow seemed always to decorate what nature had provided for our eyes a long time ago. In my naivety as a child I didn’t think this mountain was anything special and thought all mountains were like that! One day, while driving home after a lengthy absence Mt Taranaki came into view in all her glory. I think then I uttered for the first time: “Beautiful!” For me these days, Mt Taranaki is a real mountain, the others are just hills with snow on them! It is a sacred icon on the landscape. I happily bow before it. 

What is it about human beings that when looking at our own lives we fail to see beauty right before our eyes?

  • We seek to be someone when we already are
  • we strive to be rich when we already are
  • we crave power when we already have it
  • we choose slavery when we can be free
  • we thirst for meaning but drink from dry wells
  • we seek lasting intimacy from the finite when the infinite is within
  • we expect to love and be loved but walk from the difficult stages

A Gospel Perspective: 

  • I am made in God’s image
  • Consider the lilies of the field … not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.
  • He did not consider his divinity a thing to be clung to
  • If you make my word your home, you will learn the truth and truth will make you free
  • The water that I shall give will turn into a spring inside you, welling up to eternal life
  • Make your home in me as I make mine in you
  • Take and eat, this is my body. Take and drink, this is my blood.

Discuss how the two lists relate to each other. What in the above helps you as a Vincentians?

Jesus,
You gave until you could no longer take
Finally
You said: Take and eat this is my body…this is my blood.
You lived in the freedom of surrender
Owning nothing.
Teach us freedom
Teach us wisdom
Teach us love
For
You bowed your head
To honour
The Invisible Mountain
Help us do likewise