Sunday, July 7, 2002AD
14th Sunday in Green
What Juliana Says about Jesus
Jesus tells us that the person who tries, with God’s Help, to acknowledge that God is the Center of one’s life is moving in the right direction. He asks us, as ever, to trust in His Word. A God-inspired process to attempt to arrive at this point in one’s life is what Jesus asks of each of us today.
Once again, Blessed Juliana of Norwich can teach us an insight into what Jesus is saying with His invitation to us to come and learn from Him. She uses the very lowly image of a hazelnut or acorn. She tells us in her Showings, “God creates (the hazelnut); God preserves (the hazelnut); God has a purpose (for the hazelnut). Her point was that God creates the hazelnut and keeps it in existence from moment to moment to moment and has a purpose for its existence.
Juliana asks us to think about the hazelnut when we think about ourselves. Borrowing Jesus’ thought about the lilies of the field and the sparrows in the sky, she teaches us that each of us is worth more, in God’s eyes, than a lily, a sparrow or a hazelnut. There is something to think about for ourselves in all this.
In the Gospel today, Jesus begins by praying to God the Father in joy because God’s Way is not the (fallen) human way. Conventional wisdom expects that it is the learned and the clever who arrive at the truth about the ultimates in human life. Jesus rejoices that God is not restricted to human logic in God’s Plans for us. On the contrary, it is frequently to those who are aware that, while it might be good to be learned and clever, it does not guarantee that one will grasp the truth that Jesus proclaims. Once again, God is the center of our lives, whether we admit or not.
Jesus does not urge immaturity upon us in saying it is to the merest children that God makes Revelation. Jesus does not want us to be fools. It is not a childishness which He urges, but rather a child-likeness.
A child trusts and depends totally upon one’s mother and father for security and support. The child knows that the child is loved. The child knows that the parent will attend to his or her needs. The child sees the parents are the mainstays of existence. The child is correct.
Jesus asks us to acknowledge that all of us are beneficiaries of many gifts from God Who is our loving Parent. Life, family, heritage, intelligence, physical talents and traits, all are gifts to us, ultimately from God. We are all receivers, whether we care to admit it or not. Even, at this moment, each of us is here because God creates us (in this moment); God protects us (in this moment); God has a purpose for us (in this moment). Evaluating God’s track record as a Giver of good things, Jesus can certainly teach us that we are ultimately totally and radically dependent upon the God of Life from moment to moment to moment. Living our lives with this inspired insight is what Jesus is invites us to do in our Gospel.
In the world of Jesus, children were part of the group, not the center of the group. Families tended to be extended; nuclear families were not the order of the day. Several generations might live together under one roof. The needs of the various generations could be tended to by those of other generations. Elderly parents might be tended by their children. Young children were tended by their elders. One thing to be said about the situation is that the family unit did not rotate around the child or the child’s schedule. Rather, the child was a part of the family unit who needed care until the child reached maturity. The child still knew that parents loved children and that they were dependent upon loving parents for their needs. This attitude was totally realistic.
Jesus asks us today to see ourselves, not only as a lily of the field, a sparrow in the air or a hazelnut, but as a child of a totally loving Parent who will tend to our needs in love. He asks us to understand that existence is God’s Gift to us and that God’s Gift of Life comes with countless other blessings as well. We might not always feel the surety of God’s Loving Providence, but Jesus asks us to live on in that certainty nevertheless. Himself, as ever, as One Who practices what He preaches, experienced this basic, anxious question as He hanged upon the cross and screamed, “My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me? God the Father’s answer was the Resurrection 3 days later.
Jesus and His disciple, Juliana of Norwich, teach us that those who trust in God’s Loving Centrality in every human existence. Juliana teaches us to listen to Jesus and trust, “All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.” 070702 AD jfq