Category Archives: All Things Catholic

Smiling Eyes

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Lying in the sunshine of Your love,
Recounting humming bird days,
Flitting as flashes flung to the heavens,
I look to the horizon,
For the rising of yet another sun.

I feel I know You.
It is me I doubt,
But I don’t know why.
I have spent my life
Becoming what I think
You want me to be.
Others, though, have always
Seemed to do it better.

Here I am at eve tide,
Recounting the many waters,
That wash these shores.
Your Beauty plays for me,
Painting the setting sun;
I guess, to reassure my clay
Of The Love You are,
As I still look for me,
Reflected in Your smiling eyes.

copyright 2014 Joann Nelander

Thanks be to God

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For what am I thankful? How about that I am.
Yes, I am here, a creature,one among others, willed into existence by the God of All, and He constantly calls me to know Him. I am free, in other words.

Yes, I am free, free to be free of God, if I so choose.
There it is again, scary freedom, free to be ignorant of the One Who calls, the One Who Loves.

He calls through His creation, look at Me, I Am Truth. I Am Beauty. I Am Love. His call proclaims me not one among others, but His one and only. Be not only being but exceedingly blessed. Be, by faith, and “Amen”, My Son. Reign as priest,and prophet and King.

For what am I thankful? I am thankful that I am grateful. With my eyes, I have seen,and with my heart, I have said, “Amen”. I answer “Amen” with my every heartbeat, my very breath. With all the moments of my life, I call to my God, my “Amen”. I am Son, caught up in Triune Being. He wears my “Yes” as eternal glory.

He is, and I am all thanksgiving.

copyright 2014 Joann Nelander

Children of Light

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Give to me of Yourself
That which pleases You.
Unite my emptiness
With Your fullness,
To satisfy and delight
Our Father in heaven.

Here You are,
In me, my Eucharist,
Given for me,
Exulted, above the world,
And yet, Emmanuel,
“God with Us”.

Give grace to all
Children of the Light.
Bestow to Your own,
The Life that is Yours.

In the Light of Your Presence,
Reveal the wonder of our Communion.
Shining forth from all Your little ones,
Light a world in darkness.

© 2016 Joann Nelander

 

Eyes

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How often I beseech
“All the angels and saints”,
Yet, fail to realize
The multitude of the holy,
I call to my side.

They do come.
They come ready to aid,
To do battle,
To protect,
And do bless.

God give me eyes,
That I may see,
For, indeed,
I am, too often,
Blind.

There are wise infrared eyes,
Spying the sky.
We see our universe at its birth.
For eons,
We knew of no such birth.

Blindness of a kind
Can kill.
A child in the womb,
Heart beating for the cameras,
Still fails
To make a Presence known.
How blind the eyes
That refuse to see.

Father of all that is,
Give me eyes of the heart,
That I may
Make a start.

© 2016 Joann Nelander

As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

The Least and the Last,

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May I, the least and the last,
Who labor in Your vineyard,
None the less, bear fruit,
One hundred fold.

I dare such dreams,
And bear such hope,
For though, the meanest,
And the smallest,
Saints and angels attend me,
Together, we labor for Your glory.

Some know You explicitly,
While others simply wonder at Your Creation,
Not realizing that Creation waits on tiptoe,
Willing Your Will.

May all who implicitly perceive You darkly,
Know You in the Light of Jesus, Your Son,
The First Born of Your Love,
That even the least and the last,
May rejoice at Your Coming to claim Your own.

© 2016 Joann Nelander

All Creation waits on tiptoe for the revelation of the sons of God. (Rom. 8:19)

Out of Darkness

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I AM WHO AM,
God beyond my grasp,
Outside of Time and Space,
How am I to know You?

Calling with the cry of a Babe,
You reveal Yourself,
To a people in darkness
That we may behold You.

You bring Light to my blindness.
I see in this Holy Infant,
“The Father and I are One.”,
“Whatever you do for one of the least,
You do for me.”

The heavy weight of Adam’s Sin
Is lifted as the Babe become Man,
Dies for the sons of Man.
You bring Salvation,
Good out of Evil.

I know You in believing.
I know You in repentance.
I know you in my deliverance,
And freedom to cry, “Abba”.

© 2016 Joann Nelander