Growth – Frassati Reflections

Slow and Steady

He said,
“To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
With many such parables
he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it.
Without parables he did not speak to them,
but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.
—Mark 4:30–34 ¹

Let us not be deceived by the smallness of a mustard seed to think that its impact must be insignificant. What matters is not its size—however little it may be at the beginning, it can grow into a great tree. What matters is whether it dares to bury itself underneath the soil and undergo the process of growth.

Who we are now does not determine who we are to become. We are not defined by the sum of our past successes and failures. The thing that will determine our path—whether we will flourish or wilt—is our openness to grace, our willingness to grow.

Whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve endured, whatever sorrows weigh upon your heart: these do not define your story. God is not finished with the work He has begun in you; we are not meant to stay as seeds. Growth is not easy, and it certainly isn’t quick. True, lasting growth takes time,² and it causes us to stretch far beyond our comfort zones. But it is also the only way we can fulfill the potential within us, to become who we were created to be.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. John Bosco, who had a gift for nurturing souls and seeing great potential in small seeds. He was devoted to educating disadvantaged children, including poor, homeless, orphaned, and troubled young boys in the city of Turin.³ Unlike his contemporaries, he refused to use corporal punishment; instead, he gave fatherly guidance and sought to instill in his students the knowledge that they were loved and valued. Where other teachers had given up on these rowdy young boys, John Bosco saw the gift of who they were and helped them to recognize the seeds of grace within their souls. One of his students, Dominic Savio, even became canonized himself.

St. John Bosco had reverence for the divine potential within each young soul—in the lost, the troubled, the neglected and forgotten. He created a place where they could grow and thrive, becoming men of God. And he had the patience to walk with them on that journey, even during those times when their progress must have seemed unbearably slow. May his example remind us that each and every one of us has the capacity to transcend our humble beginnings and bloom into something truly beautiful if we are tended to with love.

^—

1 You can see past reflections I’ve written on this Gospel reading here and here.
² Audrey Assad’s song “Slow” is a great meditation on how God’s grace works slowly within us. It’s worth a listen!
³ A saint dedicated to serving the poor and disadvantaged in Turin…sound familiar? I think St. John Bosco and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati have quite a bit in common.

Embracing Seasons

A few weeks ago, our first son, Leo, got his first haircut. And for many weeks prior to that, Aidan had been telling me over and over again that Leo needed one. I had been putting it off because I KNEW I would be so sad when he would come back looking like a little man and not my little baby with super blonde tips and a curly mini-mullet from the hairs evidencing his babyhood.

The slowness of motherhood can feel so arduous sometimes, but it also gives me space to listen closely to His voice. When I was rocking Leo back to sleep in my arms after he woke up very upset from a nap, I could feel God shifting the perspective of my heart. As I truly enjoyed and savored being Leo’s comfort in that moment, God was teaching me that He gives us seasons, stages (ways to help us make sense of time and our existence) primarily to delight us and teach us about Himself in different ways we don’t have the same access to in other seasons.

All too often, I have made the mistake of defining seasons by what I could NOT do or receive in that season (e.g. here, toddlerhood as the solemn absence of babyhood, and let’s not forget, dating as the “no-sex-before-marriage” stage). We often are overwhelmed by crippling nostalgia or sadness for what is past (or only exists in imagined ideals!), longing for it, while we miss what He is doing and offering right in front of and within us.

And so, when I read the verses for today, there is a similar struggle among God’s people through salvation history. We see parallel verses of Moses and Jesus from the Old and New testaments, exhorting those listening to follow and abide in the Law God sets forth for His people. Moses, a great prophet and leader of Israel, is about to talk about the Ten Commandments and other commands about keeping the covenant with God. Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, has just preached the Beatitudes. The people Jesus spoke to hear what is different, how Jesus is seemingly changing what God had said in the past, but Jesus knows their hearts and addresses those fears by proclaiming and clarifying Himself as the fulfillment of what those laws and prophets said. Jesus is connecting these seasons of salvation history and God’s revelation of Himself to mankind; the crowds can only see the differences and, as a result, lose trust in Jesus as the Messiah.

Just like the crowds, we often resist the cusp of a new season. Many times, we are afraid of what it might bring, but I find most often for myself, the prospect of finding a new way and rhythm of life is most challenging and daunting. But, as Jesus reminds us, each season is meant to fill us more and more, not taking away from or “abolishing” the season that came before.

It is very important to take note that the way God tells us about Himself in the Old Testament is paramount to understanding how His Son fulfills them. I encourage us all to read the Old Testament readings during the Easter vigil and really meditating on what each has to offer in terms of telling us how God is revealing Himself in salvation history. We cannot understand the Son without the Father, and vice versa. We worship a Trinitarian god Who has revealed Himself over time, and the order in which this has happened is integral to how each word informs the other, culminating in The Word of God, Jesus, our Messiah. The God who called for bloody animal sacrifices and holy temples and a priestly nation set apart for Him is now a Person, a Son, speaking to the crowds of fulfilling the words of His Father.

May we receive the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to understand and fully embrace our current season of life, and live with the expectant hope that there is unique joy in this season to be uncovered and savored.

Pax Christi,
Alyssa

Dig Deep

“To the penitent God provides a way back,
he encourages those who are losing hope
and has chosen for them the lot of truth.
Return to him and give up sin,
pray to the LORD and make your offenses few.
Turn again to the Most High and away from your sin,
hate intensely what he loathes,
and know the justice and judgments of God,
Stand firm in the way set before you,
in prayer to the Most High God.

Who in the nether world can glorify the Most High
in place of the living who offer their praise?
Dwell no longer in the error of the ungodly,
but offer your praise before death.
No more can the dead give praise
than those who have never lived;
You who are alive and well
shall praise and glorify God in his mercies.
How great the mercy of the LORD,
his forgiveness of those who return to him!” -Sirach 17:20-24

Well friends, Lent is coming. And if you’re like me, that means that over the weekend you listened to as many worship songs as possible with “Alleluia” in them. Just kidding. Well…sort of…haha.

On a more serious note, I have two thoughts to share with you as we prepare to enter into Lent on Wednesday:

Dig deep.

I feel like sometimes we can tend to set the bar way too high or way too low for Lent. I’ve marched into Ash Wednesday before with my mile-long list of added prayer and books to read and email devotionals subscribed to and fasting upon fasting. Not that any of these things are bad, but too many of them usually leads to crashing and burning 2.5-3 weeks into Lent, like a New Year’s resolution gone wrong. Or the temptation comes to set the bar low and not really walk with Jesus through Lent because life is too busy and I’m already doing enough “Lent” things in ministry. Friends, I want to recommend what’s possibly an unpopular or uncomfortable opinion here: I want to dig deep this Lent. I want to get to the heart of what Jesus really wants me to sacrifice and focus on this Lent. You see, sometimes we can even distract ourselves with great spiritual things to avoid what Jesus is crying out from the Cross to our hearts. What is that one thing that Jesus is really calling you to receive His mercy in this Lent? What is your heart aching for Him to redeem? What’s the one thing you know you really need to cut back on that is preventing you from saying a fuller yes to Him? Perhaps a bad habit or an addiction, maybe a sin you really need to address and let Jesus uproot, maybe a lot of fear or self-hatred. The rich young man in today’s Gospel was afraid to go there with Christ, and he went away sad. Let’s learn from him and have the courage to go there knowing that Christ went there first. It could get messy to really go there, but take heart in that the redeeming “mess” of Jesus’ blood spilled out from His broken body for you covers a multitude of our messes of sins, wounds, and the parts of ourselves that are most difficult to face. Jesus is greater than any of the darkest, most buried parts of your heart. And He’s already there. He’s already taken all of your mess into Himself on the Cross with so much love for you. He would’ve died for you if you were the only one left on earth.

Focus on the goodness of God’s mercy.

One of my favorite verses from the Psalms is, “Surely Your goodness and mercy will pursue me, all the days of my life” (Psalm 23:6). Jesus’ mercy is good, loving, and is nothing to be afraid of. He gazes at you with such love—His bleeding, pierced heart aching for yours on the Cross. When He cried out, “I thirst!” on the Cross, His cry was not just for a drink but for your soul. He loves you that much. I feel that sometimes in Lent if we miss a day of what we planned to do, or if we fail all together, we can give into despair and think we are a failure to God. But just like when Jesus fell under the weight of the Cross, we can get back up and keep going when we fall. His mercy is always available for us, and we are not defined by how “good” our Lent is, or that this person did more prayer and fasting than we did. God writes straight with crooked lines, and maybe He will reveal to you a greater plan for your Lent where He wants to transform something in your heart. Don’t fret. Take it day by day, little by little, eyes fixed on our Lord. Give Him your whole heart as best you can each day. Keep going.

So let’s dig deep and keep our hearts turned towards our merciful Savior this Lent. You will all be in my prayers.

Toward the Light

He said,
“To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
—Mark 4:30–32

I have two plants sitting on my windowsill that have been there for two years now, and quite honestly, I’m very surprised that they’re still alive. It’s safe to say that I do not possess a green thumb, and my apartment doesn’t get a lot of sunlight. But somehow these plants have persevered—sometimes looking a little worse for the wear, yet thus far still surviving my neglect and horticultural ineptitude.

It amazes me how tall these plants can climb, upward toward the sunlight. To think that they started as just a tiny seed—a seed that contained within itself the capacity to grow and flourish—is incredible. They’ve even survived being repotted after outgrowing their containers. Their growth is not really any credit to me, as I’ve done less than the bare minimum to keep them alive. It is more a testament to the design of God, who has created beautiful things to flourish even amid adverse conditions.

In Jesus’s parable of the mustard seed, we hear how God brings tremendous growth out of tiny beginnings. We, too, are small; and yet we are created completely whole. Within each soul is the capacity for greatness. All it needs is to be nurtured by water and light, to be broken open so that roots may stretch out from its core and new buds may blossom outward into the day. We are created as tiny seeds, but we are not meant to stay that way. We are meant to climb toward sainthood.

But growth happens slowly. We must learn to be patient with ourselves and with others; our transformation will not happen overnight. We must place our trust in the Master Gardener and let Him do His work. Sometimes it may seem like we won’t survive in new soil, but really we only need to extend new roots. If we have patience through the spiritual dry spells and cold fronts (and even, perhaps, a polar vortex), God will guide us to adapt and grow through every circumstance. All we have to do is keep craning our heads upward toward the light.

“Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched.”
—Pope Benedict XVI

New Wine

“No one pours new wine into old wineskins.
Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins,
and both the wine and the skins are ruined.
Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.” -Mark 2:22

Sometimes in seasons of transition and growth, I find myself thinking, “Once x, y, or z happens, then things will go back to normal.” But what is “normal,” really? And is it the Lord’s will that I go back to how things were, or do I allow Him to change me?

In the crushing, in the pressing, You are making new wine…*

I think this mentality of longing for how things once were is to try to put the new wine into old wineskins. In the literal sense, putting new wine into old wineskins would ultimately lead to the destruction of the wineskins and the wine. So it is with our hearts. When we try to grasp at things, people, a job, etc. that God, in His infinite goodness and mercy, does not want in our lives in the season we find ourselves in, we are fighting against His loving kindness and the things He wants to reveal to us. We get stuck, focusing on the past rather than having our eyes fixed on where the Lord is leading us.

So I yield to You and Your careful hand. When I trust You I don’t need to understand…

It can also be a temptation to think, “If only ____________ would happen, then I would be happy.” This again, is trying to put the new wine in to old wineskins. It is a turning away from God and is an unhealthy attachment to whatever the other thing is. We look to other things to satisfy us rather than our Lord, and we fail to trust in our Father who knows what’s best for us, whose plans for us are far better than our wildest dreams, and who will never lead us to destruction. Even when we don’t understand.

Make me Your vessel. Make me an offering. Make me whatever You want me to be…

There is something so beautiful in surrendering our capacity to the Lord. We can be His vessel, His open jar that He can pour new wine into, even when we think that it would be impossible, that His plans for us are forsaken or won’t happen. New wine takes time to make, and we can trust in the slow work of God. Will you give Jesus your capacity to make new wine out of you? What do you need to surrender today? Where are you trying to pour yourself into things of the past? The Lord has glorious things in store for you. It will not be easy; it will involve the crushing of the grapes of unhealthy attachments and sin in our lives, but the new wine will come, and we can put our hope and trust in the Lord in the process.

Jesus make new wine out of me.

*New Wine by Hillsong Worship