Weekly Reflection 072504AD

Sunday, July 25, 2004AD

17^th Sunday in Greentime

Keep It Short & Sweet

Jesus tells us what the Bible tells us again and again. Pray, pray, pray. However, He tells us not to think that we will win our request by a sheer multiplication of words. Pray persistently with the trust that God the Father gives the Spirit to those who ask.

Prayer is a dialogue with God, the Infinite Mystery. All human language about God is limping. How can human language, even the divinely inspired language of the Scripture, describe what happens in prayer?

The haggling which goes on between Abraham and God is the quaint account of God’s stop on His journey. Abraham tries to lower the chances of the destruction of the wicked cities for the sake of the even ten righteous people whom God might find there. This folk story describes God and Abraham’s negotiations. Abraham successfully changed God’s mind for the sake of ten good people.

Jesus tells us something similar in the parable of the persistent neighbor. Jesus encourages us to be persistent in prayer. Just as the neighbor changes his mind and gets out of bed to give his annoying neighbor the bread, so also God wants us to ask, to seek and to knock.

However, Jesus does not guarantee that we will receive the answer to every prayer of petition which we might offer. He does guarantee that the prayer will be heard.

1) Some prayers are heard and answered by God immediately, it seems. We like that!!

2) Some prayers take a little time to be heard and they are answered by God after a while. We’ll take it!

3) Other prayers, at times, are answered by God in a way that was totally unexpected. In fact, God’s point of view in answering the prayer differently reflects the fact that God has a different slant of events and the implications of events upon us and upon the people around us. (If 2 teams prayed for victory in a baseball game, God cannot answer both prayers.)

4) Some prayers are not heard at all, it seems. We pray and we pray and we pray and nothing happens. In fact, things can even get worse. We all experience, at times, the darkest moments of our lives, when we feel the left hand of God, the painful mysteries of life. Even then, Jesus tells us to pray.

In St Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us that God will give good things to those who ask God. However, Jesus in St Luke’s Gospel puts a different spin on all this. It is with a Type 4 prayer that Jesus teaches us that the Father will give us the Spirit. Might we suggest that, in this case, the Spirit is God’s grace to us to enable us to cope and perhaps to transcend the answer which we sought?

At any rate, the Scriptures tell us again and again to pray our heads off. However, we are reminded that God does not respond to us as a business partner. We have come a long way from Abraham’s haggling with God. Haggle, but keep it short and sweet and trust in God’s response on God’s terms, not on ours. Remember to ask always for the grace to start each prayer with the words, “Thy will be done.” 072504AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 071804AD

Sunday, July 18, 2004AD

16^th Sunday in Greentime

Get in Here, Martha !!

This familiar Gospel story is known by all of us. However, we need to read between the lines for some food for thought.

Jesus broke several cultural taboos with his friendly visit. First, in that culture, a single gentleman would not visit 2 single ladies. (Notice no mention of Lazarus in Luke’s Gospel.) Second, a single gentleman would not have dined with 2 single ladies in their home. (Recall that one only ate meals with those with whom one was most intimate, viz., relatives and/or close friends.) Third, family members would never ask an outsider to settle a family quarrel. Fourth, a woman would not have sat at the feet of an itinerant prophet. (Men were the students.)

Jesus was not bashful about expecting dinner invitations. In several places, people invited Jesus to dinner and it was never a dull evening. (One student at Stepinac asked, years ago, if Jesus had a problem with his weight because “the man was always eating!”)

Jesus’ strategy of table fellowship was characteristic behavior in His mission of breaking down barriers between people. (In Acts of the Apostles and 1 Corinthians, we know that table fellowship was pivotal in some of the earliest Christian communities.) This is another reason for the importance of our gathering as a parish for a variety of social events. Table fellowship unites ideally and should not be divisive.)

Jesus violated cultural norms when he accepted the dinner invitation of Martha and Mary. However, His job description, like ours, is to proclaim that the Kingdom is here, even now (though not yet.) Everyone is invited to accept table fellowship in the Kingdom. No one is excluded.

The 3^rd taboo which Jesus violated was to place Himself in the midst of a quarrel between two sisters. However, Jesus was a member of every family, despite cultural mores.

The 4th taboo which Jesus violated had to do with Mary’s sitting at the feet of Rabbi Jesus. Again, Jesus stressed the universality of God’s invitation to listen to Jesus teach about the Kingdom of God (the way it should be now and will be someday, according to God’s promise). Jesus invited women as well as men to hear Him. In fact, Jesus told Martha to cook only one dish ASAP and get into the living room to listen as Mary listened to the Word. Jesus invited her to be a disciple with her sister.

Jesus calls each of us to discipleship, “to hear the Word of God and act upon it.” We are men and women, Type A’s and Type B’s, Jews and Gentiles, young and old, rich and poor, well-educated and not. He calls us to listen to His version of reality and try to model our reality with His view. May we accept God’s forgiveness and forgive one another. May we build better (not perfect, only God can do that and God will). May our world be freer of hunger, violence, cruelty, injustice and inequality. May all those called to discipleship in Christ hear the Teacher and practice what He preaches. “Now is the time; now is the day of salvation,” as St Paul teaches. Do we have more important items on the agenda? 071804AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 071104AD

Sunday July 11, 2004 AD

15^th Sunday in Greentime

If Anyone Knows, It’s Jesus!!

St Paul gives us the verses of a hymn that was sung to Jesus somewhere c. 65AD. The opening verses of the hymn proclaim, “Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”. (Dan Brown, ( author of The DaVinci Code who stated that Christ’s divinity was not declared until 325 AD), please take note!)

The hymn rejoices in the unity of Creator and creation in Christ Jesus.

The Creator comes so close that God assumes a created human nature in Christ Jesus. However, the hymn further indicates that Jesus is the “firstborn of all creation”, so to speak, the archetype of creation. Just as humanity is the pinnacle of creation, Jesus Christ is the pinnacle of humanity. In, with and “through Him, all things were created.”

It stands to reason that Christ Jesus is the One to Whom we must listen most carefully. He asks us to view reality through Jesus’ lenses.

Among other means, Jesus told great stories, known as parables, short, pithy concrete stories that people can envision and which had a trick ending to teach people a new view of reality.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus demonstrates how God views the true nature of religion. A religious scholar tried to test Him and posed a question to test Jesus. (Jesus, however, betrays Irish ancestry of some sort on Mary’s part by answering one question with another.)

The riposte leads into the Parable of the Good Samaritan (To Jewish minds then, the term was an oxymoron.) In the revolutionary parable, Jesus indicates the priest and Levite fulfilled a ritual law by avoiding contact with what appeared to be a dead man. However, the man was not dead. Ritual scrupulosity would have resulted in the death of the mugging victim. One not bound by religious ritual, viz., the rejected “Samaritan, was moved with compassion.”

Commentators have listed 7 distinct actions that the Samaritan performed as an expression of his compassion. To the Semitic mind, the number, 7, is the number for divinity. In essence, what Jesus says is that those who were scrupulous for rituals failed to respond to the man in need. The Samaritan, who did not observe the Law of Moses, fulfilled the call “to love one’s neighbor as oneself.” God worked through someone outside the Law. Those who were expected to observe the Law of compassion neglected to do so for fear of ritual contamination.

St Augustine remarked 1500 years ago that sometimes, the holiest people are outside the church while sometimes, the least holy are within the church. It is only God Who knows what is in our hearts.

The Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, challenges the scholar and us to go and do likewise and treat others with mercy. With His Help, will we do so? 071104AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 070404AD

Sunday, July 4, 2004AD

14^th Sunday in Greentime

Two by Two

Today, St Luke presents us with a story that tells us a great deal about both the beginnings of the Jesus Movement as well as implications for 21^st century Catholicism as well. He presents an interesting scenario to us.

In addition to the Twelve, Jesus sent out a further 72 to proclaim that God has something new and important to share with whoever will listen. Jesus saw the task as so urgent that He stressed the necessity of traveling light and making the rounds to as many households as possible. The message is serious in its implications. “The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.” However, some have wondered that if Jesus’ mission were so urgent, then why did He not send out these missionaries on their own? Why did He opt for 36 teams of two, not 72 individuals?

Several solutions have been offered. First, since the message about the Kingdom of God needed verification, the Semitic mindset was that the testimony had to be given by at least two witnesses. Second, the teams of two suggested that the missionaries on such an all-important and stressful assignment needed the companionship of one another to de-compress from the pressures of the mission effort. Third, probably, the most salient solution might be that the Kingdom of God is not about a solitary relationship between an individual and God. Rather, the proclamation of the Kingdom involves a radical change in one’s relationships with God and with other people. Gospel living is about God and others, not just God and self. (Someone calculated that over 2/3 of what Jesus said, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount in St Matthew’s Gospel, which we just concluded in the daily lectio continua , had to do with getting along with other people along the patterns of behavior demanded by Jesus. A better relationship with God is bound to affect our dealings with other people.)

The format that Jesus used showed that, even in His public life, word was starting to spread to others through the witness of teams of two. Most people back then tended to live very localized lives. Most never traveled very far from the place where they were born and they lived in very circumscribed environs in very structured relationships with very few people. Into this nexus of relationships, itinerant teams of two entered and brought news about the radical new order of things that can be affected by people snapping out of myopia to a new vision of reality. Testifying to the Proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth, these teams of two would back up the power of their testimony by healing infirmities of those who were ill. These healings were not meant to be showstoppers, but rather, audio-visual indications of the veracity of the witnesses’ testimony.

Still, there is the fact that each person is a psychosomatic unity, with a mind-body connection within us, operating for better or for worse of the person. If we took the reality of God’s new plan for us seriously, then, we would, in a sense, be different people. Our worldview would change.

A science news item last week said that people who tried not to nurse grudges or resentments tended to have a longer life span than those who let anger and hostility smolder in their minds and hearts. Jesus has been telling us for 2000 years that attempts at anger management (with God’s Help) are a grace and a good thing.

2000 years after the setting of this Gospel, while times and venues change, people remain the same. The message of the Kingdom brought to us by Catholic faith can continue to work miracles to convince us “The Kingdom is at hand for you.” You might even see it in better health checkups. Trust Jesus. 070404AD jfq