The Last Supper, John August Swanson
Lectio Divina with the Words of Óscar Romero
From The Violence of Love by Óscar Romero
Compiled and translated by James Brockman, SJ
Full text at the Romero Trust
This is the Christian’s joy:
I know that I am a thought in God,
no matter how insignificant I may be –
the most abandoned of beings,
one no one thinks of.
Today, when we think of Christmas gifts,
how many outcasts no one thinks of!
Think to yourselves, you that are outcasts,
you that feel you are nothing in history:
“I know that I am a thought in God.”
Would that my voice might reach the imprisoned
like a ray of light, of Christmas hope –
might say also to you,
the sick,
the elderly in the home for the aged,
the hospital patients,
you that live in shacks and shantytowns,
you coffee harvesters trying to garner your only wage
for the whole year,
you that are tortured:
God’s eternal purpose has thought of all of you.
He loves you,
and, like Mary, he incarnates that thought in his womb.
DECEMBER 24, 1978
Lectio (read): We center ourselves. A member of the group reads the passage above, slowly, in part or in its entirety. Others in the group listen with our hearts, noting a word or phrase that might stand out to us.
Meditatio (reflect): As the reader reads the passage again, we spend time lingering over the word or phrase that stand out to us. Perhaps we name those words or phrases aloud.
Oratio (speak): The reader reads the passage once more, leaving space for the group to reflect on the words or phrases. Perhaps we share what about those words or phrases strike us, about how God might be speaking to us in those words or phrases.
Contemplatio (contemplate): The group takes time a few minutes—in silence or perhaps with instrumental music—to rest in what God is sharing with them, individually and as a community.
Dixie Miguez’s Prayer
Servicio de Comunión en Casa/Communion Service at Home
Como muchos de nosotros buscamos maneras de poder orar en casa, sería bueno si tuviéramos acceso al texto para un Servicio de Comunión. Aun cuando no nos enfrentamos a una pandemia, un laico o diácono puede presidir un Servicio de Comunión en la ausencia de un sacerdote. Por lo general, en los Servicios de Comunión se usan hostias consagradas previamente. Puede encontrar el texto para un Servicio de Comunión en español aquí. También, podemos encontrar las lecturas del día aquí. Haga clic en la fecha escrita en español. En vez de distribuir hostias consagradas previamente, muchas personas hacen una oración de Comunión espiritual, escrita por San Alfonso María de Ligorio. Podemos entonar nuestros cantos preferidos en los lugares habituales (por ejemplo, entrada, el salmo, Comunión, salida), también. Si prefiere no dirigir el canto, tal vez le gustaría utilizar música sagrada de YouTube. Agradezco a Richard McCarron de Catholic Theological Union por compartir estos documentos conmigo, para poder tenerlos disponible aquí. Agradezco a Francisco Castillo de RCL Benziger por su apoyo, también.
With so many of us looking for ways to pray at home, it seems helpful for more of us to have access to the text for a Communion Service. Even when we’re not in the midst of a pandemic, a lay person or a deacon can preside during a Communion Service in the absence of a priest. Usually, Communion Services use previously consecrated hosts. Please find a PDF of the text for a Communion Service in English here. We can find the readings of the day here, as well. In the place of the distribution of the previously consecrated host, many communities are saying a prayer for spiritual communion, attributed to St. Alphonsus Liguori. We can sing our favorites songs in the usual places (like the gathering, the psalm, communion, sending), as well. If you would not like to lead the singing, maybe you would like to use sacred music on YouTube. Thank you to Richard McCarron of Catholic Theological Union for sharing these documents with me, that I might make them available here.
Mural honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe in South Austin
Finding My Parish Home
I’ve lived in Austin for a little over a year now. It is no secret that I have struggled to find a church where I feel comfortable enough to pray regularly and build community. The felt absence of a parish in my life has been a significant source of desolation since I moved to Texas. When I first arrived in Austin, less than a week after the publication of the Pennsylvania Report, I prioritized this search for a new parish. In the midst of a major life transition, I craved the sense of deep belonging that comes from participation in communal prayer born of the faith tradition members of my family have held dear for generations. In spite of a series of honest attempts, I left too many Masses feeling a kind of disappointment that was wholly unfamiliar to me. At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I have been blessed and lucky to have been a part of life-giving parish communities since I was a child. This isn’t to say that they were free of the challenges that accompany real community, but each of them in their own ways was a home away from home to me, especially during divinity school and my doctoral studies. Not having that in my new surroundings, I felt unmoored.
The irony of this situation is hardly lost on me. My vocation includes teaching theology and ministry, and integral to doing so is spiritual self care. I did that as well as I could on my own, but I am a traditional enough Catholic that I feel the need to receive the sacraments in community regularly. Teaching in mainline Protestant seminaries, I was immersed in intentional community in my professional life, and that immersion did and does feed me spiritually…but it is does not satisfy the whole of my spiritual needs.
It wasn’t until this fall that I became acquainted with a Catholic parish where I feel both comfortable and challenged. Ushers and people sitting near me in the pews welcomed me. The congregation sings with the choir. The homilies break open the word in ways that speak to my life. At the start of last night’s Mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the danzantes aztecas began to move in rhythm with the beat of the drums, and tears began to roll down my cheeks. Fleeting thoughts crossed my mind—about the diversity of expressions of Latinx Catholicism, how much I have come to love its tradition of flor y canto, and how curious I am about what communal worship might look like in this postcolonial moment. While I participated in the movements of the Mass, I mostly felt present to the depth of emotions that had been bubbling under the surface but I had not been able to express. I experienced a sort of freedom in those familiar movements of the Mass; it felt like home.