Sunday April 13: Jesus is Still Dying

Practices 

• As an act of remembrance, sometime this week gather with friends (perhaps people in a Centering Prayer or another support group you attend) for a meal. You might want to begin the meal by calling to mind the lives of farmers, animals, migrant workers, truck drivers and grocery store employees who were involved in getting the food to the table. Perhaps write a blessing or recite something along these lines: In gratitude for Love that binds us, I pray that this food and the love we share might nourish and strengthen us to live with greater awareness and deeper compassion and thus enable Divine Love to walk this earth. Amen 

• In his book, The Healing Path, James Finley reflects on “God’s sustaining presence, which protected me from nothing, even as it inexplicably sustained me in the … traumas that pervaded my life in those days.” Consider difficult times in your own life. What sustained or sustains you?

• You are invited to participate in an online silent prayer vigil for Good Friday and Holy Saturday, sponsored by Extensión Contemplativa Internacional, the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking community of Contemplative Outreach. As the vigil is completely silent and online, language and location do not matter. You may drop in at any time, as much as you would like. The vigil begins Friday, April 18, at 3pm Eastern (New York) time and goes on until Saturday, April 19 at 3pm Eastern (New York) time. The Zoom ID is 305-673-6206, passcode 121314.

If you wish, you may re-read the full email reflection here: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2025_word-of-the-week-april13

 

I sat this week with this devotion alongside the Gospels, trying “to avoid minimizing the trauma or sanitizing the horror.” A few points spoke deeply to my soul. Thank you for including all of them.

Jon Stotts: Do you see Christ dying in our world? Me: Lord, how can I not? Many Still Search for the One.

Barbara Brown Taylor: “Pain leads down to the ground floor where all the real things are: real love, real sorrow, real thanks, real fear.” Me: Grounded by the Real Love, I pray with real fear “use me, Lord.”

Ruth Burrows: “Divine wisdom…persuades us to surrender control and to abandon ourselves blindly to love.” Me: Help me overcome my fears and abandon myself to love.” <3 linda

 

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