presented by fr. richard s. jones - liturgical publications · pdf filepresented by fr....

presented by Fr. Richard S. Jones Pastor, St. Joseph Church, Coraopolis, PA

6:45 pm to 8:00 pm

Monday, September 11, 2017 – Spirituality

Monday, September 18, 2017 – Self-Esteem, Wonder, Friendship,

Courage

Monday, September 25, 2017 – Teachability,

Tolerance, Joy, Interdependence

Monday, October 2, 2017 – Perseverance, Freedom, Love, Generativity

Monday, October 16, 2017 – Balance, Prayer, Forgiveness, Gratitude

Monday, October 23, 2017 – Playfulness, Commitment, Hope,

Restlessness

Week 3

Table of Contents

Opening Prayer 3

Opening Song – Lord, I Offer My Life to You (by Don Moen)

4

Scripture Readings – Sirach 6:5-17 and John 15:11-17

5 – 6

Teachability – Definition, Bible Quotes & Talking Points

7 – 8

Teachability Bell Curve 8

5 Ways to Wellbeing 9

Tolerance – Definition, Bible Quotes & Talking Points

10 – 11

The Triangle of Tolerance 11

Song - Forever God is Faithful (by Michael W. Smith)

12

Joy – Definition, Bible Quotes & Talking Points 13 – 14

Quotes from The Gospel of Joy by Pope Francis 14

Prayer for Parish Priests 15

Joy Map 16

Quote from Pope Benedict XVI 16

Interdependence – Definition, Bible Quotes & Talking Points

17 – 18

Theology of Interdepence 18

Dupont Bradley Curve 19

Interdependence Quote by Thomas Merton 20

Closing Prayer 21

Opening Prayer

Dear God,

You have done such a marvelous job

of creating us and the world around

us.

You have placed this creation,

including all the people we meet, in

our care.

We come to you now asking for the

grace and strength to be tolerant of

others.

We admit that we can never fully

know your plan for the people

around us.

Grant us the strength to admit that

our role is to invite others to

participate in your saving plan and

then to accept the choices they make

in their own lives.

We ask this in the name of Jesus, who

lived to show us your way. Amen

Opening Song

Lord, I Offer My Life to You (5:30) by Don Moen

Verse 1 All that I am, all that I have I lay them down before you, O Lord All my regrets, all my acclaim The joy and the pain, I'm making them yours

Verse 2 Things in the past, things yet unseen Wishes and dreams that are yet to come true All of my hopes, all of my plans My heart and my hands are lifted to You

Verse 3 Lord, I offer my life to you Everything I've been through Use it for your glory Lord I offer my days to you Lifting my praise to you As a pleasing sacrifice Lord I offer You my life to you

Repeat Verses 1, 2 & 3

Final Verse Lord, I offer my life to you Everything I've been through Use it for your glory Lord I offer my days to you Lifting my praise to you As a pleasing sacrifice Lord I offer you my life Lord I offer you my life

Week Three – Scripture Readings

Sirach 6:5-17

Pleasant speech multiplies friends, and gracious lips, friendly greetings. Let those who are friendly to you be many, but one in a thousand your confidant. When you gain friends, gain them through testing, and do not be quick to trust them. For there are friends when it suits them, but they will not be around in time of trouble. Another is a friend who turns into an enemy, and tells of the quarrel to your disgrace. Others are friends, table companions, but they cannot be found in time of affliction. When things go well, they are your other self, and lord it over your servants. If disaster comes upon you, they turn against you and hide themselves. Stay away from your enemies, and be on guard with your friends.

Continued on next page

http://www.usccb.org/bible/sirach/6

Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price, no amount can balance their worth. Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; those who fear God will find them. Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship, for as they are, so will their neighbors be.

John 15:11-17

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.

Teachability is the ability to learn by instruction.

Instruct the wise, and they become still wiser; teach the just, and they advance in learning. (Psalms 9:9) We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms. Now the natural person does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually. (1 Corinthians 2:12-14) Make known to me your ways, Lord; teach me your paths. Guide me by your fidelity and teach me, for you are God my savior, for you I wait all the day long. (Psalms 25:4-5) Listen to counsel and receive instruction, that you may eventually become wise. (Proverbs 19:20)

Three pillars of learning (by Benjamin Diraeli – (1804-1881))

1. Seeing much

2. Studying much

3. Suffering much

Mistakes and Failure

o If we have a healthy spirituality in life, we will have a healthy attitude

towards the falls we take

o And if our spirituality is healthy, we will not be devastated when we

experience failure

o Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., who lectures on spirituality said, “The mistakes

we make are the best teachers in the world.”

o Don Shula, former head coach of the Miami Dolphins said, “Success is

not forever; failure is not fatal.”

Teachability and the Gospels

o Gospels tell us that Jesus himself was teachable

o Jesus was always using his disciples to “study” life and thus learn from it

o Jesus shows us teachability through his willingness to suffer

o Teachability is the prerequisite for conversion

Joy is a condition for the possibility of virtuous living.

Joy may be a byproduct of a loving, cheerful, and generous heart.

If we lose joyfulness, we risk becoming depressed, suicidal people for whom existence holds little or no meaning.

When we reduce who we are to what we do, joy begins to melt away.

from freeyourmindga.com

from http://jodiegale.com/addiction-recovery-the-starting-point-for-recovery-is-hope-

not-abstinence/

http://jodiegale.com/addiction-recovery-the-starting-point-for-recovery-is-hope-not-abstinence/

http://jodiegale.com/addiction-recovery-the-starting-point-for-recovery-is-hope-not-abstinence/

Tolerance is the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the

existence of opinions or behaviors that one does not necessarily agree with.

Instruct the wise, and they become still wiser; teach the just, and they advance in learning. (Psalms 9:9) We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms. Now the natural person does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually. (1 Corinthians 2:12-14) Make known to me your ways, Lord; teach me your paths. Guide me by your fidelity and teach me, for you are God my savior, for you I wait all the day long. (Psalms 25:4-5) Listen to counsel and receive instruction, that you may eventually become wise. (Proverbs 19:20)

Ambiguity

o On more than one occasion, Jesus urged his disciples to keep an open

mind and not to jump to conclusions

The Gift of Diversity

o One indication of how open-minded and patient we are is how tolerant

we are of diversity

Celebrating Diversity in People

o Ways in which Human beings have great diversity:

Physically

Size

Body

Structure

Skin Color

Facial Features

Mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually

o Challenge of healthy spirituality is learning to tolerate the differences we

find in each other and not to view these differences as threats to

ourselves

— by Scott Lively, American activist and attorney

Song

Forever God is Faithful (5:37)

by Michael W. Smith

Give thanks to the Lord, Our God and King

His love endures forever

For He is good, He is above all things


Sing praise, sing praise

With a mighty hand and outstretched arm


For the life that's been reborn


Sing praise, sing praise [2X]

Forever God is faithful

Forever God is strong

Forever God is with us

Forever and ever, forever

From the rising to the setting sun


By the grace of God we will carry on



[CHORUS] 2x

His love endures forever [8X]


Forever You are faithful

Forever You are strong

Forever You are with us

Forever and ever. [4X]

Forever

[CHORUS:]

Joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

The hope of the just brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked perishes. (Proverbs 10:28)

When cares increase within me, your comfort gives me joy. (Psalm 94:19)

. . . For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

He continued: “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared; for today is holy to our LORD. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the LORD is your strength!” (Nehemiah 8:10)

Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. (John 16:20)

One of the hallmarks of our christian faith is joy

Joy was a major theme of Jesus’parables

o Cal Samara, in his book, The Joyful Jesus said, “There is an old saying

that says ‘He who laughs last, laughs best’.”

o Fr. John Powell, SJ said, “If you are happy, let your face know.”

o St. Teresa of Avila said, “From silly devotion and from sour-faced saints,

God Lord, deliver us.”

Faith and Humor

o True humor sees the incongruities of life against the backdrop of the

mighty incongruities of life

Growing in joy and laughter

Pope Francis’s First Encyclical, The Gospel of Joy

Quotes from The Gospel of Joy by Pope Francis

“Sometimes we are tempted to find excuses and complain, acting as if we

could only be happy if a thousand conditions were met. To some extent this is

because our ‘technological society has succeeded in multiplying occasions of

pleasure, yet has found it very difficult to engender joy’.”

“An evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!”

Let us recover and deepen our enthusiasm, that “delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when it is in tears that we must sow.”

“Instead of imposing new obligations, (Christians) should appear as people

who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite

others to a delicious banquet.”

“Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born

of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are

infinitely loved.”

Finally an evangelizing community is filled with joy; it knows how to rejoice

always.”

Prayer for Priests

The following is a prayer Fr. Rich prays daily:

No matter where he is located, the parish priest has to be the

sharer of secrets, the carrier of burdens, the fountain of

consolation and the pillar of strength. Solitary, he is called father

by thousands; poor, he enriches the lives of thousands; weak, he

gives strength to thousands; unimportant, he does things each day

whose importance cannot be told in any tongue on earth. He is

never too busy to hear another’s sorrows; often too busy to realize

his own burdens. He is a 24-hour-a-day man. He is called from his

dinner; wakened from his sleep; disturbed at his prayers. He is at

the beck and call of any of his people. He is the target of God’s

enemies; the magnet of God’s needy. Occasionally, he attracts

attention; but usually he works unnoticed and unacclaimed while

he does the noblest work on earth – keeps Christ in the lives of

people.

— from Healing Through The Arts

When joylessness reigns,

where humor dies, the

spirit of Jesus Christ is

assuredly absent.

—Pope Benedict XVI

Interdependence is the dependence of two or more pople or things on each other.

Instruct the wise, and they become still wiser; teach the just, and they advance in learning. (Psalms 9:9) The whole world had the same language and the same words. (Genesis 11:1)

Then the LORD said: If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach. (Genesis 11:6) Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

All creation is interconnected

New sin, new virtue

o New sin is the inability, or the refusal, to look at the implications of

everything we do in a very much wider context than in the past

o New sin is our refusal to be mindful of interdependence

o With every new sin comes the need for a new virtue

Three ways to practice this new virtue

o Listening

the stoic philosphopher Epictetus said, “God gave us two ears and

one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we speak.”

The well known psychiatrist Karl Menninger believed that not to

listen actually made people unwell.

o Living in community (we live in a culture that deifies autonomy and self-

sufficiency in a world that downplays the common good, narcissism runs

rampant)

o Growing in compassion (Jesus’ greatest attribute is compassion,

especially for the hurting, the wounded, the little, the lonely and the lost)

from: HTS Theological Studies

Bradley Curve

from the Society of Petroleum Engineers

Baker Hughes incorporated elements of the Bradly Curve, a safety consulting tool,

into its health, safety, and envinronment strategy

The whole idea of compassion is based

on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all

involved in one another.

— Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Closing Prayer

Father,

Please help me to rest in your happiness,

To allow a smile to linger on my lips,

To dwell within a wonderful memory,

To walk back through sunlit places.

Please help me to awake with hope,

To engage with life in all its variety,

To take in the beauty of others joys,

To touch the souls of those I meet with thankfulness.

Please help me to sing with faith,

To carry the truth close in my heart always,

To rejoice at new life and

To have peace as I age.

Please help me to indulge in love

To breathe in the sweetness of intimacy,

To taste the kindness of friendship,

To feel the warmth of embrace.

Please help me not to miss

A single drop of heaven,

To catch each moment

And drink in the great joy of life.

Amen.

Join us next week (October 2)

as Fr. Rich discusses

This series has been based on: Traits of a Healthy Spirituality by Melannie Svoboda, SND

Filled with the utter fullness of God: Caring for the one who ministers by Sr.

Carla Przybilla, O.S.F., Ph.D. (1935-2004)

presented by fr. richard s. jones - liturgical publications · pdf filepresented by fr....

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