Fr Ben Garren

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.
—Matthew 19:29

Dear Siblings in Christ,

Let us start with just a moment to make sure that we have taken a deep breath and truly coming to a place of reflection. What I want to invite us to do today is visualize a space where we can place pictures of those who are close to us. Maybe this is a mantel piece or a scrap book page. Begin by just letting the space be empty, maybe go ahead and put some decorative details come into play. Slowly think about whose picture you would first desire to place in the space.

What is truly important here is to connect with whose photo you desire to have amidst this space. There shouldn’t be any feeling of obligation involved, there shouldn’t be any sense of shame for not having a person’s photo in the space, this photo, and every other photo, should be put on our imaginary mantel piece or scrap book page with a deep sense of joy. Slowly populate the space with other pictures, sorting in the same way… importantly there should be no sense of burden, there is no person whose picture ‘has’ to be amidst this space.

Some of us may form in our mind a very traditional mantel piece or scrap book page that reflects general expectations about who is in a ‘family’, others may have gathered pictures from a kaleidoscope of individuals they are not related to, for some there will be a blending of the two… maybe the mantel or page has remained empty. This meditation exercise hopes to connect us with our current chosen family, the individuals in our lives who provide us a sense of being beloved and who we can readily belove.

There is a joy when we are raised in families who live out the summary of the law, who nourish us to learn how to love with our heart, our soul, our body, and our strength ourselves, others, and God. The commission we have from Jesus is to live out this commandment, to form our family grounded amid this law. For many this requires leaving houses, siblings, and parents to enter into the Love that is Jesus’s name. Our responsibility is consistently to create family grounded in the love of Christ, to choose a life of Loving God, Loving Self, and Loving Neighbor over the expectations and obligations that a family or community might have.

When we are reborn in Christ we are reborn to something new, a family chosen by our commitment to love. Once we are set on that path all other worldly burdens become secondary. This is how we thread the needle of Christian discipleship.

Pax,
Ben