Susanne Timpani's Blog, page 11

Listen

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Word of God with a prayerful heart.By Susanne Timpani (No.196)

Reading:  " My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me." John 10:27

We listen to God's voice in the stillness of our quiet time. He is present in His Word.
We listen to God's voice amidst the anxieties of the day. From Him nothing is hidden.
We listen to God's voice in the chaos of activity. He helps sort our priorities.
We listen to God's voice in times of change. He leads us through.
We listen to God's voice when we need to choose. He reveals His will.
We listen to God's voice in crisis, sadness and grief. He soothes our pain.
We listen to God's voice when He celebrates our joy.
We listen to God's voice in every corner of our life.
We just need to practice in order to hearAnd follow Him.



Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you.
Susanne Timpani











Read the Daily Gospel in between Reflections

I am the Bread of Life

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Daily Gospel with a prayerful heart.By Christine Coombe (No.195)
Reading: John 6: 35,40 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…"40 This is indeed the will of my Father that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” 

Bread sustains life.  Without nourishment life can’t go on.  A life of fulfilment is possible only through the nourishing relationship of Jesus.  Apart from Him, no one can enter into this new life.  Without Him there may be existence but not life. 
He is the essential bread of life.  The hunger of man ends when we know Christ and through him know the Father.
When we accept Jesus as the Bread of life, we experience a new and deep satisfaction in life – our desperate, inner hunger and thirst disappear.
The heart finds what it was searching for, Who it was searching for, and life ceases to be mere existence but one of peace. 
The greatest news of all is that His nourishment is for all Eternity. On that last day when all things end, He will raise us up.
Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you.

 Christine Coombe








Read the Daily Gospel in between Reflections

Come and have Breakfast with Me

Read the Word of God with a prayerful heart. (No.194)Reading:  John 21: 9-14 When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. 
Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.   
Lent is over and many of us have returned to our pre-lenten routine. We've stored away those extra prayers and acts of good will for another year. Likewise, after Jesus died the disciples returned to their fishing business.
Yet the Resurrection changes everything.  Today we read how Jesus returns to His disciples, not as a vision or a ghost, but as the Risen Lord. 
He calls His disciples from their work and over breakfast explains how their life as His disciples can never be the same. They have His mission to continue. 
Jesus extends the same invitation to us.To join Him for 'breakfast' - per daily prayer – and discover new possibilities for a deeper relationship with Him, the Resurrected Lord.
Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you.











Susanne Timpani
Read the Daily Gospel in between Reflections

John 3:16

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Daily Gospel with a prayerful heart.By Malcolm Davies (No.193)  Reading: John 3:16-17
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.


God is not the creator who occasionally decides to love.
Love is the very nature of God and God is one who cannot not love!
God has been revealed to us as a Trinity of shared life and God invites us into that life. The invitation to a relationship is a complete free gift that we call grace.
Whenever you want to know how to love, you can ask yourself the question: How does God love me?
Love is a decision to live like Jesus who laid down his life for us. We are called to love one another and to bring salvation and healing to the world by the way we love like God loves.
Love is not a feeling but a decision on how we live and act. Challenge yourself this week to be energised by grace and to make a decision to love and care for someone in the way that God loves and cares for you.

Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you.
Read the Daily Gospel in betweenReflections
Malcolm Davies

Sunday Reflection by Susanne Timpani

Read the Word of God with a prayerful heart.
(No.192)
Reading: "…As the Father sent me so I send you." John 20:21


The Father's plan relied on Jesus' obedience. Our salvation depended on it. Jesus tells us today that He sends us out in the same way as the Father sent Him. With expectations of obedience.
Jesus had every right to say no. The account of His passion and death in the Gospel reflects rejection, hatred, ridicule, physical suffering, and a humiliating death.
He relied on the Father to sustain Him. On the night before He died, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed. He poured out His desperation and honest fear. He received His Father's power to carry out God's plan.
When we stumble on our journey of faith and forget why we follow Him and feel powerless, Jesus left us an example. We return to a place of prayer.
Jesus relies on our obedience to pass on His message of salvation. He provides the power for us to carry out His plan. And like Jesus, we receive the greatest gift of all: Eternal Life.
8  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8

Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you.
Susanne Timpani










Read the Daily Gospel in between Reflections

Wednesday Reflection by Jane Borg

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Daily Gospel with a prayerful heart.By Jane Borg (No.191)
Reading: Luke 24:13-25
25 “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken”
 
The Easter Tridium is over but we remain in the celebratory season of Easter for eight weeks as we contemplate the resurrection of Jesus and the new life that is available to each of us as a result.
Yet in the midst of this we can still find ourselves questioning how this can really be. Visiting the Holy Land last year, and especially in Jerusalem, I found myself struggling to connect the reality of Jesus and his story with the place today. Did I have expectations not met? At the time, maybe. In retrospect, no. I have had time to reflect on what I saw and experienced.
These disciples had expectations! A dead Messiah did not meet them. They were disheartened and their hearts closed because they had not understood the Messiah as promised by God through the prophets. They did not understand the Messiah would win their eternal freedom not end their earthly oppression.
So it can be with us. We can miss the plot by concentrating on who we think God should be and what he should do for us. We are seeing the world through our eyes, that are often weighed down by earthly worries – just like these disciples.
Living as a disciple of the risen Christ calls us to look at our lives in the light of Christ. The cross is ever present but the resurrection won us victory over the cross. So even though it can be easy to see only the struggle we need to remember it is only a little bump on the hill towards eternal life.
We can help keep this perspective by asking God to remind us each day that he has won the big battle and he is there to help us fight the little ones each day. Join me in asking Jesus to open our hearts to His good news – He has beaten death and invites us to live a new life in Him. In this Easter season, let’s choose life.

Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you.

Jane Borg









Read the Daily Gospel in between Reflections

16th Century Ode to Easter

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Word of God with a prayerful heart.
(No.190)
Jesus Has Risen
24 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
    ‘Christ the lord is risen again!Christ hath broken every chain,Hark, the angels shout for joy,Singing evermore on high,Alleluya!
He who gave for us his life,Who for us endured the strife,Is our Paschal Lamb today!We too sing for joy, and sayAlleluya!
He who bore all pain and lossComfortless upon the Cross,Lives in glory now on high,Pleads for us, and hears our cry.Alleluya!
Now he bids us tell abroadHow the lost may be restored,How the penitent forgiven,How we too may enter heaven. Alleluya!’
Michael Weisse c. 1480-1534Translated by C. Winkworth 1829-78

Ancient Homily on Holy Saturday

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Word of God with a prayerful heart.(No.189)From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday, 'The Lord descends into hell.'Office of Readings
'Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. 
The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
  
I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.
For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. 
The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.'
Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you.
Susanne Timpani










Read the Daily Gospel in between Reflections

Good Friday Reflection by Sr Melanie Edwards

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Word of God with a prayerful heart.(No.196) Reading John 18:1 19:42 19:1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.


How can I enter into the story of the passion in a new way? One suggestion is to choose a scene and read it imagining yourself to be Mary. What was it like for her when Jesus was arrested, scourged, crowned with thorns, made to carry a cross and crucified?Was Mary present when Jesus was flogged and scourged? The scriptures do not tell us, but if we enter the scene imagining what it was like for her, we can gain precious new insights.I imagine it consumed all her senses – that she heard the flogging and her son’s cries of agonized pain as the soldiers thundered steps around him, that she tasted salty tears streaming down her face, that she smelt his bloodied wounded body, and that she could feel every lash ricocheting through her own body – even if she did not see it with her own eyes.  Which scene of the passion is Jesus inviting you to pray with today, perhaps imagining it from the eyes of Mary?
Read the scripture slowly.Reflect on its meaning for you. Listen for God's voice in the stillness. Pray for God's blessing upon you. 

Holy Thursday Reflection by Susanne Timpani

10 Minute Daily Retreat - Read the Daily Gospel with a prayerful heart.(No.128) Repost 2015
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark 14:22-25 and Mark 14:1-31


In today’s Gospel, we return to the Upper Room. The mood is sombre and there are a few ‘elephants in the room’. Jesus acknowledges the imperfections of his fellow dinner guests; predicting a betrayal and a denial.
Being His Last Supper, He has much to say. When you read today’s Gospel, enter the Upper Room. Is there a particular text that speaks to you?  
The final scene spoke to me. The Last Supper ended with prayer.
After the psalms had been sung they left for the Mount of Olives. Mark 14:26
As I exit the Upper Room, I glance at the mess we have left behind. A lamp flickers to aid a servant clear the table, tidy away the cushions, foot towels and basin.
While everything appears ordinary, my heart tells me this Supper was significant. I turn around and catch up with the rest of the Disciples as they disappear into the darkness.
Much of what Jesus told us during the Supper, I don’t understand.  I do recognize the path to the Mount of Olives. He is leading us to one of our favourite places to pray.
This final act of the night summarizes everything for me. No matter how uncertain I am, all Jesus asks is to follow Him into a place of prayer.

Susanne Timpani