Summer Greetings

Brothers,

I hope your summers have been restful, prayerful and fun!  Here in NYC, our summer has been action-packed.   Recently, four of our brother professed temporary vows and five professed perpetual vows.  These professions are a boost for the whole community and a reminder to all of us that God delights in us and that we are made for glory.  In the fall we look forward to welcoming three new postulants!  Please pray for Ben, Joseph and Joshua as they prepare to take the next stage in their discernment.  And stay tuned, the promised series on human formation is delayed, but on its way!

May God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY







 

The Apostles Creed - Part 12

Hello all!  Here is the twelfth (kind of significant, huh?) and final installment of our reflections on the Apostles Creed.  We end on a very hopeful note:  with that hope in our hearts, let us "risk everything on his mercy", everything!  Enjoy!

To be clear, the resurrection-life inside of you will always be invisible in this life. But it will be real. It will grow gradually. Provided you do not resist its action, it will heal you and purify you until you become utterly what God wants you to be. The resurrection-life is nothing less than the Presence of the Holy Trinity living and active in the depths of your being.

If you have faith in his mercy, and if you take advantage of all of these gifts in the Church, and if you do so until the end of your days, they will change you into a saint. Gradually, through these many gifts, Jesus will fill you with all the fullness of God. You will come to know your heavenly Father, and you will learn to love him back with ease and joy. And you will not be alone. You will be in the Church. There will be people of all nations, races, and tongues who will be living through it with you. Some, like you, will still be on the way to becoming saints. Others, living or dead, will already be there. But regardless of whether it is you or others, already there or still on the way, all that belongs to the saints belongs to you. All is yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

And on the last day, when the last trumpet blasts, and when all generations of men and women come forth together to meet our Maker, you will rise with a new and immortal and glorious body. And your new and immortal and glorious body will reveal to everyone the victory of love in your life. For grace has come to you. You have found Christ and his Church. You risked everything on his mercy. And even though the accuser, Satan, prowled around you, and always reminded you of every weakness, sin, and failure of both you and your Church, still you believed his mercy would never fail us. And so the last word on your life, the sentence handed down in the tribunal of love, the pure and simple truth on the last day will be this:

“You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased.”

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, these reflections are not mine.   They were born in the heart of a wonderful priest I only recently met face to face.  Thank you Fr. James for your inspiring words, for feeding us with the fruit of your prayer and study.  In the coming weeks and months I will be offering reflections on human formation and how the necessary healing and development of our human nature helps us to believe in and live everything we have been reflecting on in our Series on the Creed.  Human formation is an indispensable part of every vocation and it is my hope that these reflections will in some way help all of us to open our nature more and more to God's grace.

May God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY 

The Apostles Creed - Part 11

Hello Everybody!  Peace be with you!  Again, I apologize for the hiatus due to a very busy June!  So, picking up where we last left off, we continue to reflect on the great gift of the sacraments.  We finished last time with confirmation and we begin this time with the sacrament of reconciliation:


In reconciliation, he restores this resurrection-life to you if you should weaken it or throw it away by personal sin. His mercy is always there for you. There is no need to fear the impending tribunal of love so long as you believe in his healing love and mercy and put all your trust in him. In marriage, he transforms the resurrection-life into something you live together with a spouse and children. In holy orders, he makes a man into a minister in the Church of these seven great gifts. And in the anointing of the sick, he comes to you when you are in a state of serious illness, seals you again with oil and prayer, and thereby heals you of sin and fortifies your resurrection-life in the midst of your illness and suffering. There are many other gifts in the Church. There is Scripture – the book by which God speaks to you even now. There is prayer – the loving conversation with God in friendship. There are works of love and mercy to carry out for others. And there are more – too many to mention here. All of these things serve to build up and strengthen the resurrection-life within you. These are the ways that Christ, by his mercy, heals you and prepares you for the glorious day of judgment.

May God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 10

Hello all!  Please forgive the two-and-a-half week hiatus.  I had the privilege of visiting our brothers down in Comayagua, Honduras.  I am edified by these brothers and their desire to respond to the challenge of Pope Francis to go out and preach the good news to the poor.  I encountered many people who, while poor in the things of this world, are rich in the things of God; namely, humility, long-suffering, generosity and joy!  Please remember them in your prayer.

This week we continue reflecting on the following words from the Creed:

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
 
In the Church you will find God’s seven great gifts to you. God has given the Church seven ways by which you can personally interact with the risen Lord Jesus and be filled to overflowing with his resurrection-life. In each one of these seven great gifts, we call them ‘sacraments’, the living and true God, Jesus of Nazareth, reaches out and touches you in some way or another. In baptism, he touches you with oil and water and prayer and by that gesture fills you with an initial influx of his resurrection-life. In the eucharist, he reaches out and feeds you with heavenly food, and this heavenly food nourishes and grows and revitalizes the resurrection life within you. In confirmation, he reaches out and seals you with oil and prayer and by that gesture fortifies the resurrection-life within you and makes you ready to give testimony before the world.

Next week we will continue reflecting on "God's seven great gifts" to us.  Until then, God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 9

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Love unites us. Love unites people with God and with each other. But the Holy Spirit is love – the eternal love between the Father and the Son. And the Holy Spirit is now at work in the world. It stands to reason, therefore, that the Holy Spirit is now uniting people with God and with each other. If we look for this unification, where do we find it happening? It is happening in the Church. The Holy Spirit is uniting men and women of every nation, race, and tongue in the Church. The international, intercultural, multimillenial unity of the Church is therefore a sign to you that eternal love really is at work in the world. In the Church, the same love can go to work in you and through you. Next week we'll discuss how this happens...

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY 

To eat is to discern

We interrupt our series on the Apostles’ Creed for a brief reflection.  Recently, in the daily mass readings we have been listening to John 6, Jesus’ bread of life discourse.  The basic thrust of Jesus’ teaching is that faith in Him leads to reception of the Eucharist and reception of the Eucharist leads to eternal life.  Simply put, believing leads to eating and eating and leads to Life.

It could also be said that if eating leads to eternal life, then to eat is to discern.  In fact, according to Fr. Timothy Gallagher in his book Discerning the Will of God, regular reception and worship of the Eucharist is one of the principal means of discerning God’s will (pp.50-52).  Why is that?  Because, Jesus says “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him…” (Jn 6:44).  Where is this draw of the Father felt more powerfully than in the Eucharist?

In the Eucharist we are a gift from the Father to the Son, a gift Jesus promises to protect and to lead to the Father:  “All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.  For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day” (Jn 6:37-39). 

When we eat a nice steak, we don’t become the steak, the steak becomes us.  But through frequent reception of the Eucharist—“the living bread” (Jn 6:51), “the flesh” of Jesus given for the life of the world (Jn 6:51)—we gradually become Jesus.  We gradually enter more deeply into His risen life and His relationship with the Father and we gradually adopt the fundamental disposition of His Sacred Heart:  “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me…” (Jn 6:38).

This fundamental disposition of Jesus is the fundamental disposition of discernment:  openness to whatever God wills (see Discerning the Will of God, pp. 31-49).  To eat is to discern.  To eat is to be drawn by the Father through His Son, the Good Shepherd (cf. Jn 10).  Receive the Eucharist with confidence and know that you are already on the Way (cf. Jn 14:6).

God Bless You,

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 8

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Jesus will return to earth someday – we know not when. He told us that he did not come to condemn the world but to save it. So, when he comes as judge, he will judge us in the tribunal of love and mercy. It is called the tribunal of love because God will put one question to your life. Did you love Me back? And His judgment will be nothing other than the manifestation of the true answer to that question. It is called the tribunal of mercy because God wants to show mercy to all, that is, to heal us so profoundly that we do in truth love him back. His mercy is always there for us, he is eager to show mercy, and he turns away none who ask for his mercy. All who call upon his mercy receive it in abundance, and so long as they call upon it they undergo a gradual transformation that prepares their hearts to hear a glorious verdict in the tribunal of love. Only those who are deliberately skeptical of his mercy, who harden their hearts against his love, need to fear the tribunal. How does his mercy, by being believed, prepare our hearts for the glorious verdict?

To be continued...

For those who are called, religious life is the place or the "state" where we "love Him back."  It is the place where we undergo the "gradual transformation that prepares our hearts to hear a glorious verdict in the tribunal of love."

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY