Theme: Discipleship… growing closer with God

Naming My God

Grace: My Lord Jesus, I beg for the grace to know you and your ways most intimately, so that I can see
you more clearly, follow you more nearly and love you more dearly and live out your Gospel truths in my
daily life.

SCRIPTURE TEXTS:

 Mark 8:27-38 – “Who do you say that I am?”

 Jn 14: 1-21 – “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”
 1 Cor 13:1-13- Discourse on Love
 Psalm 62- God alone is my rock and salvation

POINTS FOR PRAYER AND REFLECTION:

 Prayerfully examine your life and behold how God has been loving you and blessing you. What
particular blessings stand out? What particular patterns of God’s loving and blessing in your life
come into view?
 Israel used many names and metaphors to describe her God. We see many of these names and
metaphors in the Book of Psalms. Some examples of these are – my rock, my salvation, my
shepherd; one who guides me in the right paths, one who anoints my head with oil, etc.
 Given God’s patterns of loving in your life, what names would you give your God to describe his
unique manner of relating you? Why these names (or titles, or metaphors, or adjectives, or
verbs) in particular?
 Go back to those moments in your life when the Lord loved you and blessed you in the way that
you have named and described him.
 Pray over 1 Cor 13:1-13, Paul’s Discourse on Love.
 Here the word “love” (agape) is mentioned about ten times. After praying over the original text,
take the word “love” and replace it with “My Lord”
 When doing this, reflect on how the Lord himself has been “patient,” “kind”, “not jealous” to
you personally and realize how without him in your life “you are nothing”.
 Take all these points above and dialogue with God on these.

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CONCLUDING PRAYER

Eternal Lord of all things, I feel your gaze on me. I sense that your Mother stands near, watching, and
that with you are all the great beings of heaven- angels and powers and martyrs and saints. Lord Jesus, I
think you have put a desire in me. If you will help me, please, I would like to make my offering: I want it
to be my desire, and my choice, provided that you want it too, to live my life as you lived yours. I know
that you lived an insignificant person in a little, despised town; I know that you rarely tasted luxury and
never privilege, and that you resolutely refused to accept power. I know that you suffered rejection by
leaders, abandonment by friends, and failure. I know, I can hardly bear the thought of it all. But it seems
a toweringly wonderful thing that you might call me to follow you and stand with you. I will labor with
you to bring God’s reign, if you will give me the gift to do it. Amen

- Joseph Tetlow SJ

Excerpt from Fragments of your Ancient Name

I read it here in your very word,

In the story of the gestures

With which your hands cupped themselves

Around our becoming- limiting, warm.

You said live out loud, and you die you said lightly,

And over and over again you said be.

But before the first death came murder.

A fracture broke across the rings you’d ripened.

A screaming shattering the voices

That had just come together to speak you,

To make of you a bridge

Over the chasm of everything.

And what they have stammered ever since

Are fragments

Of Your ancient name.

- Rainer Maria Rilke