Sunday Experience Archives - Full-of-Grace

Watchman’s Vigil: A Somatic meditation for 1st Advent

A guided somatic meditation for post-communion adoration or personal Advent practice Introduction (spoken by the leader or read privately): In our Advent waiting, Christ invites us to keep watch with him. Not with anxiety, but with the peaceful vigilance of one who knows the beloved is coming. Let us place ourselves now in that liminal hour - the predawn time when watchmen stand guard, when night is ending but day has not yet broken. Find a...

TWELVE NAMES FOR JESUS – Post-Communion Experience 33rd Sunday OT_C

TWELVE NAMES FOR JESUS: CHOOSING HOW TO ADDRESS HIM THIS WEEK Introduction This is the last Sunday we will see Jesus in his wholeness for nearly two months. As we prepare to meet him next week as Christ the King, and then enter Advent's focused waiting, we're invited to choose one name—one way to address Jesus personally—that we will carry with us through the coming week. Below are twelve names for Jesus from Scripture, spanning the Old...

PENITENTIAL RITE: Two Bags & Laying All Down

FOR THE LEADER: We're doing this practice WITH the community, not TO the community, so let us use "we" language throughout. Let us warm, even playful tone at the beginning. This isn't heavy penance—it's honest inventory. We're creating space for encounter, not inducing guilt. Key principle: We're PARKING things, not discarding them. They'll be there after Mass if people want to pick them back up. This isn't permanent transformation—it's...

Holding and Being Held: A Post-Communion Sensory Prayer

Post-Communion Reflection - 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) We have just received the Body of Christ. We did nothing to earn this gift - Christ came to us freely. He placed himself in our hands. Let us close our eyes or lower the gaze. Let each of us focus on our hands. Notice where your hands are right now. Resting in your lap? Folded together? Don't change anything yet. Just notice. Feel the weight of your hands. Are they heavy or...

Saved by Collapse: From Rejected to Beloved

Reflection for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C Running in the Dark The city empties under evacuation orders. Every screen flickers blue against abandoned streets while mechanical voices drone their endless loop: "There are no more shuttles out of the impacted zone. Please remain at home and await further instructions." I choose shadows over searchlights, slipping through medieval corners while patrol units circle city hall. My heart...

Into the Mud: About a Prophet, an Ethiopian, a Nuclear Waste Repository and the Permission to Read the Gospel

Reflection for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C What if the most dangerous thing in the world isn't nuclear waste that stays lethal for 100,000 years, but a Gospel that stays troublesome for 2,000 years and counting? Join me as we follow a prophet into the mud, learn warning signs from nuclear scientists, and discover why sometimes the person who saves us is the last one we'd expect. Jesus the Troublemaker As I opened the readings for...

The impossible promise and Insomniac servants – journeying from the crossroads to the Promised Land.

A Reflection for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C There are crossroads in this world that even biblical fathers never dared to leave behind, purposedly settling down between grief and abundance. We also may get stuck halfway to heaven, camping at intersections of performance and grace, oscillating between trying too hard and not trying at all. And yet this Sunday maps out the invisible path from a simple tent to the Promised Land, from a...

A Silver Mirror and Biting Serpents – Solving the Bible’s First Murder Mystery

A Reflection for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C What if Abel, the "good" brother in the Bible's first murder story, was actually disobeying God's instructions? What if Cain, the "bad" brother, was trying his hardest to follow them? And what if solving this ancient murder mystery is the key to understanding why we may feel gut-punched this Sunday when the first reading suddenly declares, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!"? The Sunday...

From Betraying Father to Loving Daddy – Reflection on Sunday 17OT_C

A Reflection for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time What Do We Remember from Our Baptism? I was three months and four days old when I was brought to the church for my baptism. Like most of us, I have no memory of that sacred moment when water poured over my tiny head, when I was claimed as God's beloved child, when I was wrapped in white cloth and given a candle to symbolize the Light of the World now dwelling within me. We tend to say "I was...