Weekly Reflection 082502AD

Sunday, August 25, 2002 AD

21^st Sunday in Green

Who Knows??

As we have said many times, it is humbling and consoling to remember that human language about God and about our relationship with God is ultimately inadequate. Even biblical language which is divinely inspired is human language and is only a (God-given)road marker in God’s direction. St Paul hints at all of this today in his prayer of thanksgiving (eucharist) at the conclusion of this section of Romans. Paul has just tried to interpret where his fellow Jews who have not accepted Jesus stand in relationship to God’s Plan. Paul expresses his hope that his fellow Israelites will somehow be brought to faith by the God Whose judgments are inscrutable; Whose ways, unsearchable.

St Paul reminds us several times that God’s faithfulness can always be counted on, even when we are unfaithful. He expresses his wish to the Gentile part of the Roman audience that he is addressing in this letter that God will never rescind the covenant with Israel, even though the covenant has been offered to all, Gentile and Jew, alike. God will work out the salvation of the people of the covenant. God is always faithful.

It is important for us in the pitfalls of our own lives to remember that none of us knows the mind of God, still we can rely on God’s Presence in our lives. Garry Wills in Why I Am a Catholic reminds the reader that the Catholic vision of faith in Jesus focuses on the future, even now. In a carefully and thoughtfully written chapter on God’s Ultimate Victory in creation, he writes of Jesus’ signature prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.

Throughout the chapter, Wills speaks of his belief that the prayer is aimed at God’s fulfillment of the Divine Plan, viz., Hallowed Be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be Done. Only God can effect these things in creation ultimately. The second part of the prayer expresses our hope for a share (even now, but not yet) in God’s fulfillment of creation. We want to share in the Messiah’s Banquet (an image of God’s ultimate victory) (even now at the Sacramental Table). We want God to forgive our sins as we forgive others (even now). We want to be protected from the Breaking Point of surrendering in despair (even now). We want to be protected from the Evil (One?) (even now).

In his own way, Peter in the Gospel fulfills the role of Everyone in the Church. He is the know it all big talker that we all are at one time or another. Yet, he caves in at times and denies that he even knows the Lord. Still. “Rocky” was the very human person through whom God works. (Was Jesus making a pun on Peter’s character with this name?)

St Paul cannot fathom God’s plan and neither can we. St Peter can come up with suggestions, and so do we. Neither Peter nor Paul knew the Mind of God. Nor do we. Yet, Jesus teaches again and again to trust that God’s Ultimate Victory is already ours to share. 082502 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 081802AD

Sunday, August 18, 2002AD

20^th Sunday in Greentime

Paul Speaks to Us in Armonk

Most of the summer, we have been hearing excerpts from Paul’s mighty Letter to the Romans. The letter is dated approximately 55 AD. Paul was sending a letter of self-introduction to the Christian community that had begun as early as 40 AD, about 10 years after Easter. In the letter, Paul stresses several important themes that Roman Catholics, almost 2,000 years later, need to hear and integrate into our daily lives with God’s Help. If we rehearse these themes again, our recitation of the Letter to the Romans will be even more beneficial.

Paul speaks to his Roman audience, both Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian, about the faithfulness or righteousness of God to all whom God created. He quotes the Psalm 117, “Praise God, all you nations, glorify the Lord, all you peoples, for steadfast is God’s kindness to us and the fidelity of God endures forever.”

We thank God for God’s fidelity to us because all of us stand in need of God’s forgiveness, for all of us have sinned. Yet, God forgives us and gives us the Strength to resist evil if we want. God’s constancy is reflected in the necessary constant infusion of the Spirit to all of us baptized into the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Our intimacy with God is through our baptism into Christ, through Whom and in Whom and with Whom we live from moment to moment to moment. This intimacy with the Faithful God is something which unites us with Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, the New Adam. Just as all of us are children of the First Adam who sinned, we share in Adam’s heritage. For the Christian, we are conformed to the Image of the Second Adam and share in His victory.

Our response to this faithful and gracious God is the liturgy of our daily life. We are asked to offer our existence in Christ to God 24-7-365 as a liturgical sacrifice of thanksgiving for God’s Faithfulness, manifested in the death and Resurrection of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Spirit to all baptized into Christ.

However, the faithful God Who has joined us to the Body of Christ and the Life of the Spirit is also the God Who raises the dead. Stakes are higher than any of us imagine. “Eye has not seen; ear has not heard what God has in store for those who love God.”

Paul continues to speak to Jesus’ people in Rome in the mid-50’s and in Armonk in 2002 AD. He continues to remember and celebrate several truths. 1) God is always faithful. 2) All of us have sinned and need God’s faithfulness, manifested in forgiveness. 3) To prevent us from sinning, God infuses the Spirit of Jesus Christ into those baptized into Christ. 4) Our response to this is to hitch our wagons to the Second Adam. 5) We are to live daily lives of thanx or Eucharist for all that God is doing for us. 6) Our final history is not yet complete. The God of Life will have the final say. Let us rejoice!! 081802 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection August 11, 2002AD

All in the Family
The eighth chapter of St Paul’s Letter to the Romans is considered by many to be the mighty culmination of the Apostle’s argumentation. Paul was sending a letter of introduction to the Christian house churches in Rome. He hoped to make a stopover there for a time as he anticipated a missionary journey to Spain.
It was St Paul’s bold strategy not to evangelize cities where Christian communities had already been established. Rome would have to be an exception because there appears to be evidence of Christianity in Rome as early as 41 AD, a mere eleven years or so after the death and Resurrection of Jesus. This makes sense because, of course, Rome was a commercial center for the Empire. There was a large Jewish population in Rome at least, 200 years earlier than Paul’s letter. Word about the events surrounding the “Jesus movement” and the tragic and strange events of the crucifixion of its Founder certainly had to have reached Rome early on. We read in the Roman historian Tacitus, that around 49 AD, Jews were expelled from Rome by the Emperor Claudius because of controversies surrounding a certain person named “Chrestus” (sic). It is probable that when Claudius died and Jews and Jewish Christians were allowed to return top Rome, returning Jewish Christians found that many Gentiles became Christians.
St Paul sent this letter of introduction to Rome because they were misunderstandings surrounding his Gospel.
While St Paul felt that Baptism was sufficient for admission to the Christian community for Gentiles interested in Jesus, more traditional Jewish Christians begged to differ. Paul’s enemies said that he was teaching a Gospel in which nobody had to do anything but believe in Jesus. Some Jewish Christians felt that Paul was teaching a lawlessness that they could not tolerate.
Since Jewish Christians already lived in Rome, he wanted to set the record straight. He taught that all of us were sinners in God’s eyes because, for a variety of reasons, all (Jew and Gentile) had sinned whether against the dictates of the Torah (if they believed in the Torah) or not.
Paul tries, in today’s readings, from Rom 9, to offer an apologia for his mission to the Gentiles. It is important to remember that Paul and many of the Jewish Christians still considered themselves (Messianic, viz., Christian) Jews. Paul saw his mission as the fulfillment of the Jewish prophet Isaiah who taught that Israel would be a light to the nations, that through Israel, the Gentiles would be brought to faith in God.
Despite the fact that most of Israel did not accept Jesus, Paul still saw Jesus and His movement as the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny as a light to the nations. Therefore, it was incumbent upon him to fulfill Israel’s mission to the Gentiles.
Paul stresses God’s faithfulness to Israel in Rom 9 – 11. At one point, he expressed his conviction that Gentiles coming to faith in Jesus as Lord would prompt the rest of Judaism to come to faith in Jesus.
It is important to remember that Christianity is a daughter of Judaism. Jesus lived and died as a Jew. Peter, Paul and Mary (not the Folksingers Three) also considered themselves Jewish Messianists. So much of our liturgy, Scriptures, customs emanate from Judaism. It is important for us to understand that Jews and Christian (and Islamics) worship the same God under different Names, viz., YHWH, Abba, Allah. Greater studies and knowledge of one another in the future is a necessity. 081102 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 081102AD

Sunday August 11, 2002AD

19^th Sunday in Greentime

All in the Family

The eighth chapter of St Paul’s Letter to the Romans is considered by many to be the mighty culmination of the Apostle’s argumentation. Paul was sending a letter of introduction to the Christian house churches in Rome. He hoped to make a stopover there for a time as he anticipated a missionary journey to Spain.

It was St Paul’s bold strategy not to evangelize cities where Christian communities had already been established. Rome would have to be an exception because there appears to be evidence of Christianity in Rome as early as 41 AD, a mere eleven years or so after the death and Resurrection of Jesus. This makes sense because, of course, Rome was a commercial center for the Empire. There was a large Jewish population in Rome at least, 200 years earlier than Paul’s letter. Word about the events surrounding the “Jesus movement” and the tragic and strange events of the crucifixion of its Founder certainly had to have reached Rome early on. We read in the Roman historian Tacitus, that around 49 AD, Jews were expelled from Rome by the Emperor Claudius because of controversies surrounding a certain person named “Chrestus” (sic). It is probable that when Claudius died and Jews and Jewish Christians were allowed to return top Rome, returning Jewish Christians found that many Gentiles became Christians.

St Paul sent this letter of introduction to Rome because they were misunderstandings surrounding his Gospel.

While St Paul felt that Baptism was sufficient for admission to the Christian community for Gentiles interested in Jesus, more traditional Jewish Christians begged to differ. Paul’s enemies said that he was teaching a Gospel in which nobody had to do anything but believe in Jesus. Some Jewish Christians felt that Paul was teaching a lawlessness that they could not tolerate.

Since Jewish Christians already lived in Rome, he wanted to set the record straight. He taught that all of us were sinners in God’s eyes because, for a variety of reasons, all (Jew and Gentile) had sinned whether against the dictates of the Torah (if they believed in the Torah) or not.

Paul tries, in today’s readings, from Rom 9, to offer an apologia for his mission to the Gentiles. It is important to remember that Paul and many of the Jewish Christians still considered themselves (Messianic, viz., Christian) Jews. Paul saw his mission as the fulfillment of the Jewish prophet Isaiah who taught that Israel would be a light to the nations, that through Israel, the Gentiles would be brought to faith in God.

Despite the fact that most of Israel did not accept Jesus, Paul still saw Jesus and His movement as the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny as a light to the nations. Therefore, it was incumbent upon him to fulfill Israel’s mission to the Gentiles.

Paul stresses God’s faithfulness to Israel in Rom 9 – 11. At one point, he expressed his conviction that Gentiles coming to faith in Jesus as Lord would prompt the rest of Judaism to come to faith in Jesus.

It is important to remember that Christianity is a daughter of Judaism. Jesus lived and died as a Jew. Peter, Paul and Mary (not the Folksingers Three) also considered themselves Jewish Messianists. So much of our liturgy, Scriptures, customs emanate from Judaism. It is important for us to understand that Jews and Christian (and Islamics) worship the same God under different Names, viz., YHWH, Abba, Allah. Greater studies and knowledge of one another in the future is a necessity. 081102 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 080402AD

Sunday August 4, 2002 AD

18^th Sunday in Greentime

Come What May!

We need to remind ourselves that human language is ultimately incapable of expressing adequately the Mystery of God, the Mystery of the Absolute and Transcendent. We understand mystery as that about which we can know something, but which we can never know totally.

St Paul remains absolutely convinced that God is always faithful. (The shortest Psalm, 117, sums up the Hesed YHWH, the Faithfulness or Righteousness or Justice of God). We change; the situations of our lives change; God never changes; God is always faithful.

That is why St Paul is so emphatic in proclaiming the lyrics of a hymn to God’s constancy. Nothing this worldly, whether it is anguish, distress or whatever, can separate us from the love of God revealed through Our Lord Jesus Christ. More, nothing nondescript, neither angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, can separate us from God either.

St Paul is absolutely a realist in the sense that he states, in many places in his letters, that his life in proclaiming the Good News was not an easy task. He was arrested, beaten, shipwrecked, and harassed. (Ultimately, in the very city that St Paul addressed in Romans, he was to be executed as a subversive terrorist during Nero’s scapegoating of Christians for the “urban renewal” which Nero began with his fire in July 64 AD.)

In addition, Paul knew that both he and his audience were at the whims of the negative aspects of human living, such as sickness, accident, old age, death of loved ones as well as one’s own imminent demise. It is important for Catholics in the 21^st century to realize that in addition, to all the problems the first followers of Jesus faced, they still experienced the same human problems which confront us now as well. Yet, in all of this, St. Paul absolutely insists that God remains faithful. This faithful God is the same God Whom we identify and celebrate as the very God of Life. This faithful God is the same God Who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

All of us are receivers of God’s many gifts, not the least of which are the gifts of life and the gift of faith. God’s free gift is offered to us in the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ in which we share through Baptism.

While human language is incapable of expressing adequately the gift of faith to believers, Catholics trust in this God, come what may. As one theologian wrote many years ago, what we celebrate each Sunday in the Creed of Nicaea, originally written in 325 AD is our (God-given) faith that God is “Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”. However, we re-phrase the same belief in the 14^th article of the Nicene Creed, “I believe in the Resurrection of the body and life in the world to come.” Simply put, if we believe in God who is God here and now and Who raises the dead in Jesus Christ, what is to prevent us from radicalization of the same faith in God who is God then and there, viz., when categories of space and time end for us.

Just as human language limped in Rome, when Paul’s letter was read in the various house churches which constituted the Church of Rome, so also human language limps in 21^st century America as well. Still, thank God, we continue to walk in faith, not in sight. With the gift of faith in the God of Life shared with us by Jesus Christ, we do not need to walk by sight. For we believe God near, no matter what.

We change; the faithful and loving and life-giving God remains the Same. Let us rejoice!!! 080402 AD jfq