I thought I was going to write about Week 28 this morning, but as it turns out, I’m not. So you’ll have to wait until tomorrow, or maybe we’ll just wait until Sunday and let the Passion soak in for another week. What do you say?

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The Week 27 guide for the Online Retreat in Everyday Life is here.

The first time I experienced Holy Thursday Mass, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, I was a fairly new Catholic and I had a pew full of family, because Holy Thursday that year coincided with the anniversary of the first of the babies we remember, but who preceded me in the family by quite a few years, Darren (who I wrote about here and here). My sister-in-law and her kids, who were then wee ones and much fun during Mass (the youngest was four, the oldest eight), and my mother-in-law were there with me in the back row. When the foot-washing procession started, the older of my nieces looked at me.

“Aunt Sarah,” she whispered, “can we go up there?”

How could I say no? It was open to everyone (though I’ve read since that there’s debate in some circles about the appropriateness of women and/or children having their feet washed), and there was no excuse — except my pride — to keep us from going.

Up we went, from far in the back of church to the front. Father knelt over, despite his bad knees, and gently, lovingly washed our feet. He thanked us, quietly, for being who we are.

Every year, Holy Thursday has been a Mass I try to attend. It’s hard, every year, to participate in the foot-washing, and without a small child to persuade me, I’m more likely to stay put in the pew. My feet are as stinky as anyone else’s, and it is a bit embarrassing to feel Father’s hands on my foot, and then…to have him kiss it! Every year, it’s almost more than I can take.

I started to understand humility a little better that evening, and Holy Thursday remains a time for me to better appreciate humility and be inspired to give it a go in my own life, a little more, a little better.

My nieces and nephew — and, in recent years, my children — were so eager to have their feet washed, so accepting of the kiss Father gave their feet, so excited about the whole process. No, they didn’t understand it.

But do I?

Do I really understand what it takes to allow someone else to help me? Do I really appreciate how much work humility is? Do I really strive to be humble, or am I trying, instead, to simply appear humble?

In this week of the retreat, I also reflected on the Eucharist and how it’s often at Mass that I cry. No, it’s no the music (good or bad). No, it’s not something in my personal life. No, it’s not that I think myself to tears. It’s simply the Eucharist. It made me cry before I could receive it as a Catholic, and it makes me cry now. Something in me just gives, something just lets go.

This week, though we’re a few weeks away from Holy Thursday, I’m going to resolve to wash the feet of someone, just one person, to be servant as Jesus was servant, to be a witness to the power of the Eucharist.

The Week 25 guide for the Online Retreat in Everyday Life is here.

It’s the story of the woman at the well that struck me this week, that stayed with me during my quiet times and came back to me, again and again. I don’t usually like the contemporary English versions of the Bible, but it’s helpful, throughout this retreat, the way the different language makes me reexamine old familiar Bible passages.

I know the story of the woman at the well. I’ve known it for years. But, this week, I suddenly found myself at the well, facing Jesus. In the scene as I imagine it, I became the woman. We’re not so very different, that Samaritan woman and I. I am often out at the well when I think no one will notice me, when I hope not to get teased or ridiculed or questioned. I am also aware of many of my sins, the ones that are waiting in the wings for me to go to confession and be free, really free.

Jesus looks at me with such love at the well. He speaks softly and gently, but with authority. He knows what he’s talking about, there’s no question about that.

And every time I go through this scene in my head, though the Gospel account doesn’t include it, I know there are tears. In that time and place, the Samaritan woman probably didn’t lay her head on Jesus’ shoulder and sob.

But I do. I lay my head down, for just a brief moment, and I let all that poison out of my system. I cry cleansing tears, right there on Jesus’ shoulder.

The Samaritan woman probably didn’t pause for a hug before running, elated, back to the village, not caring, for once, about the stigma associated with her life. The good news is too great to care any longer about shame. She has been forgiven! She has been released! She has been touched by God!

This week, I’ve needed Jesus’ shoulder. I’ve been stretched and pulled and trampled by my everyday life. Mentally, I’ve felt like I’m at my limit.

And there he was, waiting for me at the well.

Feeling his arms around me, when I finally got around to going to the well, was just what I needed, just what I always need.

Photo of Prince Charming and his Toddlerina (who was then an Infantina) by the fabulous Heather

The Week 24 guide for the Online Retreat in Everyday Life is here.

I resist change, and, if I’m truthful, I resist authority. I don’t mean to…it just seems to be how I’m wired.

During my Christian, and particularly my Catholic, journey, I’ve been shocked to experience the freedom that comes from trust in God. I was an enlightened woman, after all, and I remember so well the convictions that (a) I didn’t need anyone else to make my life complete and (b) I could do it all myself. In my journey with God, I’ve found that letting go and letting God, though easier said than done, truly frees me.

In the “rules,” those things I always thought were restrictive before, I find the burden removed from my shoulders and placed on the shoulders of the One who can carry it with ease. When I look to Jesus, in light of the theme of confrontation, I don’t hear arguing and screaming as I would have in the past; instead, I see sadness in his eyes as he tries, patiently and persistently, to present Truth.

Jesus experienced conflict, and as I look to him in his times of conflict, I need to take lessons. He didn’t back down, but at the same time he never stopped loving those he was in conflict with. He looked them in the eye, and he was always open to their acceptance of the Truth he presented. Though he is angry, and he had to be frustrated as well, he does not let the feelings propel him over the edge.

This week, Lent begins. Our journey in this retreat is going to intensify, and we know where it will lead, don’t we? Lent leads to the Passion and the Crucifixion. There’s a temptation to duck away, to avoid the pain. Jesus reminds us, this week, that our fears — and our anger, temptation, and opposition — must be faced squarely.

“This week,” we read this week, “we let ourselves be inspired by the heroic in Jesus.” While we are inspired, what in us will change and shift, allowing us a closer and deeper relationship with Jesus?

The Week 23 guide for the Online Retreat in Everyday Life is here.

“Jesus is able to heal because love heals.” Those words struck me the first time I read them this week.

And then, on Tuesday afternoon after a pleasant day spent in Mommy Therapy with a friend and her girls, my fifteen-month-old Toddlerina started throwing up. The adventure continues through today, while my husband lies on the couch, alternately sleeping, sipping Gatorade (and hopefully in a while, some chicken broth), and watching TV. We’ve all been touched by this bug, and it’s made me reflect on these words differently than I started the week.

At the beginning of the week, I was thinking of internal healing. I was thinking of the many ways I was — and still am — broken inside, and how Jesus touches them, when I let him, and how his love heals. Before Tuesday, the healing properties of love smelled like roses and chocolate, which was fine with me, because Saturday was not only Valentines Day, but also a long overdue Date Day.

Once my gag reflex started fighting back, though, love seemed less rosy and more…real. With the small heads rotating on my shoulders, jumping up in the wee hours to the alarm of a coughing noise from the other room, and serving the sick ones in my house, love has been a lesson, in service, in commitment, in compassion.

When I found myself hugging the toilet and groping for sanity and washcloths, love wasn’t on my mind. No, I was not thinking in the proper sense of the word, but I was heading for the cool cotton pillowcase upstairs and the relief that only sleep would bring. But, on the day I couldn’t move, I felt the healing touch of love in the form of help from both a friend and a mother.

I find myself, so often, trying to do it all myself. I’m the first one in line to give help, if I can, but accepting it…not so much. Isn’t independence the highest virtue? And this week, I’m reminded, through our sick bay experience and through our week in the online retreat, that no, no it’s not.

In First Corinthians, Paul writes, “faith, hope, love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love” (13:13). I’ve known that chapter and verse for as long as I can remember; I think my mom once made me read it when I’d made her angry. And then there are all the weddings where you hear 1 Corinthians 13 read. It’s easy to blow love off as, well, something just for kids, for weddings, for holidays in February.

The truth of the matter, as we see in our reflections this week, that love is exactly where Jesus wants us to focus our energy. Love heals. The service of reaching out to someone in need and thus forgetting ourselves, the commitment of giving to another again and again and thus sacrificing our time and energy, the compassion of holding close the outcast and the leper and thus stepping closer to Jesus…it is in this that we find the healing power of love.

And you know what? I was as healed this week by the love I received as by the love I gave.

“Jesus is able to heal because love heals. The more complete the love, the more profound the healing. Jesus’ love is penetrating. He doesn’t hold back any of himself in loving. He is neither put off by disfigurement or fear of contamination or even religious conventions that place limits to his loving. He is not afraid to touch and touch deeply. His heart is full of compassion. Jesus can so suffer-with the one who suffers that he enters into the depths of – even the roots of – the pain of those he loves. Jesus loves so deeply he can understand and love the paralysis that causes the paralysis, the blindness that underlies the blindness, the leprosy that breaks out in leprosy. Jesus heals by embracing. Jesus embraces the inner illness that seems so untouchable or rigid or is hidden in the darkness of denial. Jesus can love the whole person into wellness, precisely because he loves the whole person in brokenness. With such great love Jesus the Lover can say, “Get up and start moving freely again,” or “Open your eyes and see again.””

Guide for Week 23

The Week 22 guide for the Online Retreat in Everyday Life is here.

As I have been journeying through this online retreat, I find myself touched by its relevance to my everyday life. This should come as no surprise to me; I’ve done this retreat before. However, it DOES surprise me…and maybe that’s how it is when you stop and find Jesus HERE, right beside you.

“You see us, not as a crowd, but as individuals, each struggling to be freer people, poor in spirit and wanting something more — wanting to be closer to you. And you give us the answer to that desire. You offer us yourself, your friendship, and ask us to join in your life of serving the poor — others like ourselves.”

Jesus knows me. Oh, I’ve heard that before, but I rarely appreciate what it implies. He created me, and of all the people who know me, he knows me BEST. That doesn’t just mean that he knows my favorite color, appreciates my obsession with lists, smiles at the amount of chocolate and coffee I would like to consume. Jesus knowing me isn’t just a cute phrase that I can sing during Mass and walk away from later.

It’s a fact that changes my life, once I embrace it. It’s a reality that can affect everything I do, everything I am, everything I represent, if I let it.

Jesus knows me, and in knowing me, he loves me.

“I love what you say about being merciful, helping those who grieve and being a peacemaker. Yes, I will do that with and for you. Then you ask me to be humble and I want to balk at that. Humble? Poor of spirit? And yet I know so well that when I am capable and self-sufficient and independent, I don’t turn to you, my loving friend, for help. Now I want something different — to turn to you more, always, for help and support and friendship. Teach me to be humble. Show me what it means to be poor of spirit. I don’t always know how to change the way I live to become more poor, but that is my desire now. Please show me how to be humble. Give me the grace to want to be humble. Let me bring all the ways I resist being poor and humble to you. I know only that this is the way to be closer to you and your love.”


When I am humble, when I let go of my own desire to control my life, then I can start to understand what Jesus’ love means for me. When I open myself, make myself most vulnerable, trust with my eyes closed and my defenses down, it is then that I can start to see what it means to be known by Jesus.

Humility isn’t easy for me. It is a battle I fight every single day. Pride and independence were prized traits of mine in the past. They became a habit, a way of being, a lifestyle. Letting go of the allure they offer is hard. It takes work and discipline.

But I’m not doing it alone. Right beside me, holding my hand, patting my back, stroking my temple, is my friend Jesus. He knows. He understands. And he loves.