WE WILL REINHALE WHAT WE EXHALE

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Jesus assures us that the measure we measure out is the measure that we ourselves will receive in return. In essence, that says that the air we breather out will be the air we will reinhale. That is not just true ecologically. It is a broad truth for life in general. If we breathe out miserliness, we will reinhale miserliness; if we breathe out pettiness, we will breath in pettiness; if we breather out bitterness, then bitterness will be the air that surrounds us; and if we breather out a sense of scarcity that makes us calculate and be fearful, then calculation and fearfulness will be the air we reinhale. But if, aware of God’s abundance, we breathe out generosity and forgiveness, we will breath in the air of generosity and forgiveness. We will reinhale what we exhale.

Ronald Rolheiser
Sacred Fire

HOLY SATURDAY

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Most of our lives are spent in Holy Saturday. In other words, most of our days are not filled with the unbearable pain of a Good Friday. Nor are they suffused with the unbelievable joy of an Easter. Some days are indeed times of great pain and some are of great joy, but most are…in between.

Most are, in fact, times of waiting, as the disciples waited during Holy Saturday. We’re waiting. Waiting to get into a good school. Waiting to meet the right person. Waiting to get pregnant. Waiting to get a job. Waiting for things at work to improve Waiting for diagnosis from the doctor. Waiting for life just to get better. But there are different kinds of waiting.

There is the wait of despair. Here we know - at least we think we know - that things could never get better, that God could never do anything with our situations. This may be the kind of waiting that forced the fearful disciples to hide behind closed doors on Holy Saturday, cowering in terror. Of course they could be forgiven; after Jesus was executed they were in danger of being rounded up and executed by the Roman authorities. (Something tells me, though, that the women disciples, who overall proved themselves better friends than the men during the Passion, were more hopeful.)

Then there is the wait of passivity, as if everything were up to “fate.” In this waiting there is no despair, but not much anticipation of anything good either. 

Finally, there is wait of the Christian, which is called hope. It is an active waiting; it knows that, even in the worst of situations, even in the darkest times, God is at work. Even if we can’t see it clearly right now. The disciples’ fear was understandable, but we, who know how the story turned out, who know that Jesus will rise from the dead, who know that God is with us, who know that nothing will be impossible for God, are called to wait in faithful hope. And to look carefully for signs of the new life that are always right around the corner - just like they were on Holy Saturday.

James Martin, SJ

FIRST & LAST DAY

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All the unkept promises if they are ever to be kept have to be kept today. All the unspoken words if you do not speak them today will never be spoken. The people, the ones you love and the ones who bore you to death, all the life you have in you to live with them, if you do not live it with them today will never be lived.

It is the first day because it has never been before and the last day because it will never be again. Be alive if you can all through this day today of your life. What's to be done? What's to be done?

Follow your feet. Put on the coffee. Start the orange juice, the bacon, the toast. Then go wake up your children and your wife. Think about the work of your hands, the book that of all conceivable things you have chosen to add to the world's pain. Live in the needs of the day.

Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace