Fr Philip Carter offers a ministry of spirituality, with a series of meditations on some questions that we may ponder as we consider our life in God.
You will find here his reflections and questions for meditation, images, music and poetry to enrich your life’s journey.
Forgiveness is for giving.
How I approach Jesus is crucial to my learning or experiencing him. I need to be open, trusting and receptive. I need to be patient, to take time for silent reflection, and to be prepared to suffer as I open myself to the challenges and changes that new truths bring. I recognise too that learning Jesus happens in the company of others, my contemporaries in the community of faith, across the ages.
Seek first God’s reign and God’s justice and all these things will be given you besides.
Matthew 6:33
“What you fall in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.” (Pedro Arrupe) Jesus offers us a controlling or defining vision, a vision that will meet our deepest fears and nurture our grandest hopes. Jesus as God’s dream holds out for us a way of reading reality, in such a way that we find a purpose for living – freely and hopefully – and not just for ourselves, but for others too.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Luke 6:37
God’s forgiveness, according to Jesus, isn’t conditional. Julian would go so far as to say God doesn’t forgive, for there never has been a time when God hasn’t forgiven! Forgiveness just is. And it is premature. It doesn’t wait. It doesn’t calculate. It’s not strategic. And once we’ve been grasped by this forgiveness – not the idea of it, but the lived experience of its reality – we will practise it. Forgiveness is for giving.
Image: The prodigal returns, Cara Hochhalter,
from her book A Challenging Peace in the Life and Stories of Jesus
Whatever you did for one of these least sisters or brothers of mine, you did for me.
Matthew 25:40
What matters is our life for others. And not because we are told to, or from self regard – but from a vision which has captured us. And this vision is based on our experience of being forgiven and being loved ourselves. Thomas Merton describes the experience as a “hell of mercy”, where we experience our nothingness in a spirit of repentance and surrender to God. It is out of this experience that we can act in love for all the little ones.
Image: The good Samaritan, Cara Hochhalter,
from her book A Challenging Peace in the Life and Stories of Jesus
The images in this post are of linocuts by Cara B Hochhalter. The image at the top of the post illustrates Jesus’ image of a hen gathering her chicks under her wings.
The Rev. Cara B. Hochhalter is a United Church of Christ (UCC) minister. She received her Masters of Divinity from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, where she studied the intersections of art, theology and justice. She served the Charlemont Federated Church in Massachusetts for ten years and now lives in Hyde Park, New York.
“Over the last thirty years, through my work as a Christian Educator, a seminary student and UCC minister, I have created images that interpret the powerful stories around the life of Jesus. These stories hold universal truths not limited to Christianity but relevant for all our lives and times. I find that art provides a very special means to break into these texts.”
Source: Vanderbilt University
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the following link.
