Weekly Reflection 052905AD

May 29, 2005AD – Corpus Christi

Today Is about Us

We celebrate this weekend the Corpus Christi, a holyday last Thursday in many countries of the world).

The Body of Christ means the following: 1) the Resurrected Body of Jesus Christ now; 2) the Church, Who are Christ’s Body in space and time; 3) the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is the outward sign of the Body of Christ Which constitutes the Church. It’s all about us!!

At the start of another summer season, please remember that no matter where you are, GOD COMES FIRST, even on summer Sundays. In the Holy Spirit, the Sunday Eucharist is our way of re-alignment with God the Father, Jesus and with one another throughout the world and the ages. God is the Ground of our Being every moment of our life. Our personal God likes to be remembered and thanked periodically. Our God has told us that the Lord’s Day is significant for this purpose. An hour a week is not much.

“Familiarity breeds contempt”, as Courtney Randall writes, and we should remember certain protocols. 1) Please try to come on time for Sunday Mass. (YOUNG PARENTS, WE ARE NOT SPEAKING ABOUT YOU HERE!! DO THE BEST YOU CAN). When adults consistently come late to the Sunday celebration, what might they be saying, not only about God, about the Word of God,(Which late arrivals are not hearing) and for the Church already gathered and whose hearing of the Word late arrivals might disturb?

In addition, bathroom needs should be addressed in advance, if possible. (Emergencies obviously occur.) However, if one anticipates a bathroom visit, perhaps another spot in the church closer to exits accessible to bathrooms is the courteous thing to do. (Recently, at a Lutheran funeral that lasted 45 minutes, not one person left the church. Can Catholics match that or is there a physiological problem with Catholic kidneys?)

A sign of reverence, upon arrival at church, (either a genuflection or a bow to the tabernacle) is appropriate and traditional. However, after one has received the Eucharist there is no need to genuflect or reverence the tabernacle or altar because YOU HAVE NOW BECOME THE TABERNACLE YOURSELF.).

With God’s Help, make an effort to join in congregational singing. As St Augustine says, “The one who sings prays twice.” God must surely be pleased with your efforts.

Thank God and you, the Community of St Patrick in Armonk remarkably remains (95%, at least) until the end of Mass. We love it when you remain as long as you want.

Our celebration of Corpus Christi is multivalent. Our Christian ancestors shared the Eucharist in catacombs, upper rooms, basilicas, hidden hedges and in mud huts. The Eucharist unites us with Jesus’ disciples throughout the world and the ages. A reminder of our connection with some who risked life and limb at times for what is available at our convenience should make us more aware of the need that we never neglect our weekly gatherings or we downplay its significance in our lives. 052905AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 052205AD

Trinity Sunday – May 22, 2005AD

Yet………

On June 6, 1994, a young girl stood on a dock in Dover, England as an honorary flotilla to Calais, France was about to set sail in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. She said a prayer which our community prays every weekday morning after Holy Communion. It is called the Universal Prayer for Peace.

Jesus, lead us from death to life.

Jesus, lead us from falsehood to truth.

Jesus, lead us from despair to hope.

Jesus, lead us from fear to trust

Jesus, lead us from darkness to light.

Jesus, lead us from hatred to love.

Jesus, lead us from war to peace.

Prince of Peace, give Your Peace to our hearts, our nations, our planet, our universe.

We still need to offer the prayer which the young girl offered. Sadly, our world offers us negatives from which we need true liberation. We live in a world of violent death, falsehood, despair, fear, darkness, hatred and war.

We believe, as Catholics, that Jesus can, indeed, lead us to where God wants us to be. Yet, the Way seems difficult.

On Trinity Sunday, we are reminded that ultimately each of us is created in image and likeness of God. Yet, despite our apparent insignificance compared to the wonders of nature, God made us little less than the angels and crowned us with honor and glory.

The Trinity reminds us of three realities about ourselves, since we are created in that divine image and likeness. Early on, Church writers spoke of the Process of Perichoresis (literally, a dancing around) in the Trinity. The Trinity exists in mystery; the Trinity exists in relationship; the Trinity exists in equality.

We are created in the image of the Trinity. We exist in mystery; we exist in relationship; we exist in equality. As St Luke tells us, “In God, we live and move and have our being.” The Triune God exists in us; we exist in the Triune God.

If each of us, as disciples of Jesus, takes our humanity and His Gospel seriously, then, with God’s Help, we can try not to change the world. We can try to change ourselves.

We can never know ourselves completely. We know that we thrive in relationships. We say that we are all equal in God’s eyes, although we do not always take that seriously.

We can use a reverse human image to understand God. We can imagine God with two hands. God’s right hand showers us with countless blessings, for which we occasionally express gratitude. However, God has a left hand as well. It is sometimes through the painful mysteries of life that are sent our way that we can become the person created in the divine image and likeness that God wants us to be.

Yet, Christians speak of the Paschal Mystery. It is through the process of dying and rising again and again in our journey through life that our old selves can die to illusion and be born into the Life that God has intended for us all from the beginning.

Let us try to live by the Three Noble Truths, viz., 1) Life will get hard for us someday and someday, we will die. 2) We are not the center of the universe. 3) Our lives are not about us; our lives are about Something greater. Our lives are about Life in Christ died and Risen.

Let us rejoice. If we let go and try to take our divine image and Jesus’ Gospel more seriously, the vision expressed in the Universal Peace Prayer might be closer, at least, for ourselves. 052205AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 051505AD

Pentecost Sunday – May 15, 2005AD

Let’s Take It from the Top

We complete our celebration of the 50 days of Easter on this, the 50^th Day. Today, Catholics celebrate the Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost is a most democratic event. No distinctions were made between slave or free, male or female. (Distinctions came later.) We ask you to celebrate that reality today with your red attire.

All human language limps when it comes to describing God’s dealings with us. After all, God is infinite and transcendent. God’s dealings with us cannot be adequately expressed, even in inspired biblical language.

In Hebrew, the word for Spirit is ruach, which is feminine. In Greek the word is pneuma , which is neuter. In Latin, the word is spiritus, which is masculine and/or feminine.

In biblical Hebrew and Greek, the words can mean 1) the wind; 2) the life-breath; 3) extraordinary energy, enabling ordinary folks to do extraordinary things.

In addition to this, even divinely-inspired biblical God-language is incapable of expressing the eternal vs. the temporal. All of us have already received the Spirit in baptism and throughout our lives. All of us receive the Spirit now when we gather, as the Community of Jesus Christ, to hear the Word of God and to celebrate the sacraments. (All of us receive the Spirit in times maybe when we ourselves do not realize it.) All of us receive the Spirit which is why we continue to invoke the Spirit upon us. It is a sense of the biblical “even now, but not yet”!

21^st century AD Catholics re-examine our biblical roots. We are a community called by Christ to one, holy, catholic and apostolic. More and more, in line with Scripture and tradition, we should scrutinize accretions through the centuries to assure that they, indeed, reflect what the New Testament documents have in mind. Are they in conformity with the way things were and the way that they should be?

The universal call to holiness, re-affirmed by Vatican II, is a reminder to us of what the Pentecost experience described in Acts and in John 20 (John’s original Easter chapter). We need to be reminded that, within our Catholic tradition, all, not some are called to live the Gospel and not just in Church. There are not meant to be super-Catholics.

All of us are called to live our lives in Christ’s Spirit, 60-60-24-7-365. All of us are called to be engaged seriously and responsibly in the dialogue with our culture. As the ancient Roman Christian wrote to Diognetus, “Christians are in the world what the soul is in the body.” Just as a human body needs an animating principle, we are called to be animators of society. Sadly, too often, we sit back and let others run the show.

Your red clothing today mirrors your baptism in the Holy Spirit. With God’s Help, may we answer the call! Not just in the church does Jesus need us, but He needs us engaged actively and intelligently in an outside arena that needs the insight of the Gospel of Life very much now more than ever. Christians, a secular culture needs us just as the human body needs a soul. 051505 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 050805AD

7th Sunday of Easter --May 8, 2005 AD
Who Decides?

In our 1^st reading today, Luke tells us that the Primitive Christian Community re-assembled in the upper room (where the Last Supper had occurred) and prayed for 9 days after Jesus’ Ascension. The Jesus Movement consisted of the 11 and His mother as well as His brethren and the women who had come up from Galilee with Him. This was the group upon whom the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost.

This is why we ask the Catholic community to wear red clothing on Pentecost Sunday. If you or I were there on Pentecost in 30 AD in the upper room, the Holy Spirit would have been given to us as well. The coming of the Holy Spirit is, indeed, a democratic experience for all in our baptism. All, not some, are included by God. Think about it!

There is some food for thought. In the very next section of Acts, Peter addresses the 120 (!!!!) gathered in the upper room and speaks of the predicament caused by the treachery of Judas. Since the 12 represented the original 12 patriarchs (the sons of Jacob), Jesus meant to reestablish the True Israel. Now the 12’s ranks were thinned. Therefore, it was necessary to select one who had been with Jesus from the beginning of His ministry. Two were selected as possible candidates. First, Joseph (called Barsabbas as well as Justus) seemed to be the one since he is set up with all his nicknames. The other possibility was the totally unknown Matthias.

It was the group of 120 who prayed and then, cast lots (picked out of a hat) and Matthias was the winner. Notice what Luke tells us in the story. It was the entire group of 120 who prayed and then, picked out of the hat. (We celebrate the Feast of St Matthias this week.)

This notion is known as the “Matthias principle”. What is important is the entire group’s choice of the 2 candidates, the entire group’s prayer involvement and, then, the entire group’s leaving it up to God symbolically through casting of lots.

It appears a bit simplistic, but it is, nevertheless, quite biblical and quite within Jewish tradition. We know that in ancient Rome, the Christians gathered together and prayed and selected a layman, St Fabian, as Pope. We know that the people of ancient Milan selected a non-Christian, viz., Police Commissioner of Milan, St Ambrose, as their bishop, one of the most important bishops of the early Church. They made a good choice.

Our second reading has been excerpts from 1^st Peter, a letter to strengthen all Christians in Northwest Asia Minor harassed for their faith in Jesus Christ. It was the entire group that was addressed as the “priestly people, the holy nation, the people set apart.” In these times, in which there are already calls for structural changes within our Church, recall the Matthias principle, the selection of St Fabian and St Ambrose. It was legitimate then. Can it not be legitimate once again? 050805 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 050105AD

Sixth Sunday of Easter -- May 1, 2005 AD

The Church at the Center of the World

In 2004AD, historian, Russell Shorto published a history of the Dutch colonization of New Netherland (aka New York) during the years, 1623 – 1664. The Island at the Center of the World is an interesting read and has been published in paperback. His theme is that the things that make NY great were already in place under the Dutch, before the British takeover.

Among the traits which he cites are the comparative religious toleration that had to be granted by the Dutch after the persecution that they had experienced in Europe.(The first Mass celebrated in New Amsterdam was offered by St Isaac Jogues.) In addition, New Amsterdam was a polyglot settlement because it was a commercial enterprise from the beginning. The struggle between Adrian van der Donck (the Yonk –Herr) after whom the Terrace City is named and Peter Stuyvesant over efforts at self government is worth noting. Shorto’s theory is that the Britisn were smart to keep in place the institutions already established by the Dutch.

Manhattan Island is still at the center of the world, now more than ever. Even, Pope John Paul, in his 1995 Mass in Central Park, spoke of the fact that he was celebrating the Eucharist in the capital of the world.

Both St Peter in our second reading and Jesus in St John’ Gospel today address New York Catholics in a special way. The methodology of the early Church was to establish small audio-visual communities in the cities around the Meditterrean in which people would live in an effort to “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts” and “Keep Jesus’ commandments to believe in God and in Jesus and to love one another as He has loved us.”

It is edifying to know that Catholic behavior was notable in Rome, the ancient capital of the world, when people really commented, “See how they love one another.” Do they say that now about Catholic behavior in the 21^st century capital of the world?

Do NY Catholics get their marching orders from talk-show hosts’ monologues or news commentators (either on the left or on the right) who all look the same? Do we subscribe to conventional wisdom? Do our deepest heart wishes amount to keeping up with the Jones’, (aka coveting our neighbor’s goods)?

This week, we celebrate the 22^nd Anniversary of the US Catholic Bishops’ Challenge of Peace -- God’s Gift and Our Response. The term, “consistent life ethic” has become part of universal church teaching in the writings of Pope John Paul. In addition, two other terms now are also worth reflecting upon, viz., “the new moment in history” and “disarmament of the heart.” 1) We live in the first generation in human history that can insult God by destroying life as we know it through modern weaponry and/or environmental pollution and also, by creating life through cloning and other technologies that are here now. 2) We are members of a religion that is basically called to non-violence (cf. the Sermon on the Mount and the personal example of Jesus of Nazareth).

The Chinese proverb has been fulfilled for NY Catholics who live at the center of the world. We do live in interesting times. Do we follow the crowd or do we follow the alternative worldview of Jesus of Nazareth? 050305AD jfq