Where
do we find our riches here on earth? How
do we use our treasures We
heard these themes addressed in the Gospel yesterday when the rich young man
asked Jesus what good he should do in order to gain eternal life. Then,
today, we hear Jesus tell us that a camel could enter the eye of a needle much
easier than a rich man can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
You
know, in our Catholic faith, we have those who have been gone through the
canonization process and who are official saints in our Church’s liturgical
calendar, but we also have members of the community of saints who have not gone
through that process, but are still strong examples of faith for us. Jessica Powers, known with the religious name of Sister Miriam of the Holy
Spirit, grew up in rural Wisconsin in the early 1900s and became a Carmelite
sister. She died on August 18,
1988. I
became aware of Jessica Powers and her poetry through a presentation at my
seminary given by Bishop Robert Morneau of the Diocese of Green Bay. She
did not enter the Carmelite monastery in Milwaukee until she was 36 years
old. With
over 300 published poems and more than 100 that were unpublished during her
lifetime, she has touched many lives and has been recognized for the themes of
discontent, spiritual longing, contemplation, mysticism, and an exploration of
the human condition. Her
poetry and her devotion of living the life of a Carmelite nun in service to God
have spoken as to where she put her treasures. I
want to end this homily with one of her poems -
Creature
of God
That God
stands tall, incomprehensible,
infinite
and immutable and free
I know.
Yet more I marvel as His call
trickles
and thunders down through space to me.
that
from His far eternities He shouts
to me,
one small inconsequence of day.
I kneel
down in the vastness of His love,
cover
myself with creaturehood and pray.
God
likes me covered with my creaturehood
and with
my limits spread across His face
He likes
to see me lifting to his eyes
even the
wretchedness that dropped his grace.
I make
no guess what greatness took me in.
I only
know, and relish it as good,
that I
am gathered more to God's embrace
the more
I greet him to through my creaturehood.
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