Weekly Reflection 032804AD

Sunday, March 28, 2004AD

5^th Sunday of Lent

Mary Magdalene – NOT!!!!!!!!

In the movie, “Passion of the Christ” a flashback depicts Jesus’ defending the woman taken in adultery. Unfortunately, the movie says that the woman was Mary Magdalene. This misidentification goes back to the days of St Gregory the Great (590 – 604 AD). It has taken years for people to try to clarify the misidentification; unfortunately, the movie which is a “must-see” for most adult Catholics will re-introduce the error widely once again.

The memorable story which constitutes our Gospel today appears in John 8. However, for years, biblical scholars have felt that this Gospel would be more appropriate to the Gospel of Luke (which is the Gospel that we hear from this liturgical year.)

There are two salient reasons for feeling this Gospel was really divinely inspired in St Luke. First, the clear championing of the woman hints at Luke’s preference for depicting Jesus. Jesus appears again and again as the One Who prefers those looked down upon by Meditterrean culture as the special objects of God’s amazing love. Such people include the following: the rejected, the old left behind, the lepers, the shepherds, the Samaritans, the poor, the sinners and women.

The woman represents several of these categories in today’s Gospel. Male dominated Jewish society sees her as a criminal, a sinful woman, who deserves punishment for upsetting the good order of society. (Did you ever wonder about the man in this story?) The entire picture portrays cultural values that are stacked in favor of some and in opposition to others.

Jesus cuts through the hypocrisy of such boundaries. He establishes the “Sphere of the God of Life”.

Second, Jesus believes that when some see others as bad, that does not automatically make them good. The very fact that the crowd was going to stone the woman, they were indicating that, through a violent action, a society can purge itself of evildoers, thus maintaining its societal purity. (Some states in our country still go through this ritual periodically to purge themselves of evildoers (who are frequently poor and non-white)).

Jesus understands then, as well as now, that not only individuals, but more importantly, groups (of any size) buy into a self-righteousness that tends to identify another or others as bad and hence, dehumanized. Ordinary folks do that all the time with negative feelings about others. Groups, cultures and even countries do the same thing all the time as well. When you label others as deviant for any reason, you tend to de-humanize them. When you de-humanize them, you do not feel the obligation to treat them the same way that you treat others who are in your (Oh! so human) camp.

People, groups, ethnic and racial and religious entities, as well as nations can learn a valuable caveat from Jesus in this very beautiful Gospel story. Jesus wants us to treat everyone as God sees us – all in-group, all flawed, all-loved. 032804 Ad jfq

Weekly Reflection 032104AD

Sunday March 21, 2004AD

4^th Sunday of Lent

The Gospel of Life (revisited)

Pope John Paul’s publication of Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) on March 25, 1996, was no accident. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ, celebrated on March 25, is a fitting kick-off point for the letter which might possibly be considered Pope John’s magnum opus a thousand years from now at Jubilee 3000.

The first of the four sections of the papal encyclical is an extended meditation on the biblical legend of Cain and Abel. Many of the themes which have become so familiar to us as Roman Catholics in the USA in the recent past are contained in this portion of the papal letter.

The Pope reminds us that God created a good world. In fact, before sin, it was very good. However, because of choices which people have made, sin entered the human landscape. This began with the sin of Adam and Eve, in which they were challenged “to be like God” by the tempter. The snowball effect of the sin of disobedience by our first parents continued with the first murder, recorded in the fourth chapter of the Bible. How quickly the human race has devolved. Cain tried “to be like” YHWH the God of Life by the violent murder of his brother. Fratricide quickly appeared on the human scene because of the choices which some people have made. In addition to the fratricide, Cain also introduced the “bare-faced lie’ and the “value of rugged individualism” to the human scene. When YHWH asks Cain, “Where is your brother?” Cain tells a direct lie when he says, “I do not know!” He knows fully well where Abel is, viz., dead out in the field. Secondly, rugged individual that he is, Cain denies personal responsibility for his brother when he asks smugly, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

How sadly familiar the scenario of this legend is! People, through free choices, bring violence, lying and denial of personal responsibility onto the human scene. This is not what God intended when God saw that “everything was good.”

YHWH had told Cain that if he did well, then he should hold his head high. But, sin is always lurking in the shadows, but sin does not have to control Cain.

Neither Adam nor Eve, nor Cain, has absolute freedom to do what he or she wanted. Neither have we. Each person has to learn that lesson. No matter how much we stress freedom and choice, it does not mean that we always have them as absolutes in our lives. We do not have the right to choose to do what violates the absolute rights of other people.

In our society, we sometimes created structures which exploit defenseless people. Examples from today would be the “economic imperialism” which continues with the dependence of the un-developed nations on the developed nations on earth. (In other places, Pope John Paul has compared the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man to the situation of the poorer and wealthier nations in our world. People here and throughout the world work for less than human wages to supply more cheaply the goods of the more developed nations.) The problems of hunger and poverty and need in our own economically booming society cause us to wonder about the relevance of Pope John Paul’s words of warning. But, we do not always this in our immediate world.

Classes of people develop who are unable to defend their rights when others would violate them. The Pope’s list is familiar to us: the very young and unborn, the very elderly, the very poor, the very sick, the very rejected and despised. He asks Catholics to re-commit ourselves to the voice of the Silent Helpless in our very midst. He urges other men and women of good will to join in the promotion of a “Culture of Life” to offset the “Culture of Death”, characterized by violence and vengeance and anything goes, if you think you are right.

More and more, the Jesus Movement is becoming a peripheral movement in Western Culture. As we hear the Gospel of the “Dysfunctional Family” (aka the “Prodigal Son”) this weekend, recall that Catholics are commissioned by Baptism and Confirmation to proclaim the Gospel of Life in the midst of the devolution of the dysfunctional family that is our world 032104AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 031404AD

Sunday, March 14, 2004AD

3^rd Sunday of Lent

21 Questions:

This weekend, God Self-identifies to Moses as YHWH in the scene on top of Mount Sinai in Ex 3. Several translations of the Sacred Name (called the Tetragrammaton – because there are 4 consonants in the Name. There are several ways to translate YHWH into English. Let us settle on two of them, viz., God of Life and God of Mystery (both derivative from the Name. The God of Life is as close to us as our heartbeat, our life breathe, the film over our eyes. The God of Mystery is always on the horizon and can never be known totally. With this dialectic, let us ask ourselves some questions about our experiences of YHWH. (cf. Michael Warren. Youth and the Future of the Church (NY: Seabury, 1982)).

1. Who are the people with whom we argue the most? Often, the ones we argue with are the very ones that we care to expend energy upon.)

2. Who is the one with whom after fighting , you feel the most remorse?

3. If you had to pick out the 3 most important people in your life, who would they be?

4. Of those three, whom do you need to have known the most to be the person that you are today?

5. If you could back in your life abe find 1 person from your past whom you never see anymore (but who is still alive), who would that be?

6. What death has pained you the most? (The more the death hurt, the more you know that that person is still in a sense very much a part of you, still lives in you.

7. Who are the ones that you would have been better off never knowing?

8. Who, in your opinion, is the greatest world leader today?

9. Who challenges you the most to be better than you are?

10. Who was your favorite teacher?

11. What has been the most beautiful place you have ever visited?

12. Where do you do outside your home to find peace?

13. Where did you feel the most secure as a child in your home?

14. What choices in your life have really made a difference?

15. What have been the 3 greatest joys of your life?

16. What have been the 3 greatest disappointments?

17. Besides Christmas and your birthday, what calendar day each year is particularly significant to you alone?

18. What is your favorite memory from Christmas long ago?

19. What would you want to say about yourself that is truly a depiction of where your heart is right now?

20. If you had to say “Thanks” for one thing in your life, what would it be?

21. One m ore question -- the most important one. Can you really say that YHWH, the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of Life/God of Mystery, has not been present in your life? Here’s a follow-up question. How has YHWH been (present) immanent and yet (beyond) transcendent in your life? How has YHWH been there for you? Speak to God in silence about the Divine Presence in your life now! 031404AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 030704AD

Sunday, March 7, 2004AD

2^nd Sunday in Lent

Citizens of What?

One of the big questions that folks have asked one another recently in the last week or two is “How did you like the movie, Passion of the Christ?” One either loves it or hates it. One cannot be indifferent to it.

There is much food for thought about the movie that is most provocative for us during the Lenten Season. One thought is “How did Jesus end up on the cross? What provoked such cruelty against Him?”

There are several indisputable facts about the career of Jesus and His proclamation of the Kingdom of God. 1) He freely used language that was potentially threatening to the public order imposed by the violent domination of Rome. He had a vision in which people would treat one another differently. He envisioned a world freer from hunger, violence, cruelty, injustice and inequality. Jesus’ New World Order was an indictment and a threat to the Roman Empire, which boasted of a Pax Romana . There was no problem so long as people towed the line and paid their taxes. Push the envelope and one was in trouble. Examples were made of aberrant behavior.

Next, Jesus had a large following. Crowds were friendly in the beginning. In all 4 Gospels, Jesus fed multitudes with loaves and fishes. In one account, they wanted to make Him King. However, there already was a King in Rome. Examples had to be made of deviant behavior.

On Palm Sunday, two processions ended Jerusalem. Pontius Pilate came to police the Passover festival, in which talk of liberation from oppression and hopes for the future abounded and needed to be controlled. Jesus of Nazareth entered the city for the same festival. The itinerant preacher of God’s New World Order, seated on a colt, was hailed as the Son of David and palm branches were waved. David was a king. Jesus had to be watched. Examples had to be made of subversive behavior.

Almost immediately, Jesus rocked the religious establishment with His cleansing of the Temple and His proclamation that the place had become a den of thieves. The Temple was adjacent to Pilate’s residence. All Pilate had to do was to look out the window and see the disturbance. Examples had to be made of disorderly behavior, even in the Temple. Whatever happened in the end, the rap was political. The king was crowned with thorns; the cross was His throne. Examples had to be made.

To the passer-by, Jesus was a sad wreck of a man who was deluded and had to be made an example for others not to go the same route. To believers, Jesus is the King, the Lord, the Founder of a New World Order. All the charges were correct. Pilate was a lot smarter than we think. He still is.

Paul speaks of this when he tells the Philippians that our citizenship is in heaven. Talk of citizenship in other Kingdoms was subversive. Is it such anymore? 030704 AD jfq