Weekly Reflection 073105AD

Sunday July 31 – 18^th Sunday 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. Time & space are not a problem for God!!

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.

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 by faith, not by 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. Yet, we believe God near, no matter what.

We change; the faithful and loving and life-giving God remains the Same. Praise God, all you nations, glorify God all you people. Steadfast is God’s Kindness; God’s faithfulness endures forever!! Let us rejoice!!! 073105AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 072405AD

Sunday, July 24 – 17^th Sunday in Greentime

Across the Tiber (and the Byram)

On the west side of the River Tiber meandering through Roma is a district known as Trastevere, viz., “Across the Tiber”. (This is the side of the river on which St Peter’s Basilica is located, north of Trastevere.) At least 200 years before the Gospel of Jesus arrived in Roma, Jewish merchants lived and thrived in the district because of its proximity to the Tiber. As early as 41AD, there is evidence that the Gospel of Jesus had already arrived in the Eternal City. This stands to reason because news back and forth from Jerusalem and Roma and throughout the Meditterrean had to have circulated. Tacitus, a Roman historian, wrote that some Jews were expelled from Rome in 49 AD because of a dispute over a Jew named “Chrestus” (Guess Who that probably is?) When the great fire in Roma broke out in July, 64AD, the Jewish ghetto was spared because it was across the river. Nero and his flunkies blamed the fire on urban terrorists, known as Christians, “followers of the Messiah” and the battle between the Gospel and Rome began. One waggish biblical theologian said that Rome won the battle with the legalization of Christianity by Constantine in 312AD.

St Paul tells his original Roman audience (about 55AD, 9 years before the conflagration and us (his Armonk audience today) in our second reading, “If God is with us, then who could be against us? How many of those men, women and children who died for their belief in Jesus after the Great Fire remembered those words?

In the middle of the Tiber adjacent to Trastevere is the Isola Tiburtina, a small island just where rapids develop in the Tiber. Obviously, it had to have been important in Roma’s history. Located on the island is a beautiful church, San Bartolomeo de Isola. The church has become a focal point of 21^st century Catholicism.

During WW2, when the Nazis rounded up Roman Jews before their transportation to prison camps, the Isola and the Church were used as a concentration camp for the Jews to be deported. (A movie years ago was made, “The Garden of the Fonti-Continis”.) Deportation of the Jewish victims began on October 16, 1943.

A group of young Roman layfolk have formed an association known as the “Community of San Egidio”. They meet regularly in the evening after a day’s work for prayer and study at the Church of Santa Maria Trastevere, built over an ancient Jewish and Christian cemetery) and then, a late Roman dinner. (Author Tom Cahill wrote about them in his book about Jesus, Desire of the Everlasting Hills.)

Every year on October 16, Catholics gather at Santa Maria Trastevere for a procession across the Tiber, past the Church of San Bartolomeo and conclude at the Roman synagogue (visited by Pope John Paul) just south on Luongotevere.

In the church which the Nazis held Roman Jews, the Community of San Egidio has established a shrine for the martyrs of the Twentieth century. As Pope John Paul wrote, “The Blood of the Martyrs is still the Seed of the Church.” Twentieth century martyrs for Jesus were on many continents.

In 2000AD, Robert Royal wrote, Martyrs of the Twentieth Century. The chapters of the book discuss the following: Miguel Pro, SJ and the Mexican Tragedy, the Terror in the Ukraine, the Spanish Holocaust in the 1930’s, the Nazi Juggernaut, the Martyrs of central and Eastern Europe, including Albania, Lithuania and Romania, Archbishop Oscar Romero and the Latin American Martyrs (often murdered by Catholics!!!), Asian Martyrs of China, Korea and Vietnam, and finally, African Martyrs of the last century.

In the very venue where Christians paid with their lives 2,000 years ago, Catholics pay tribute to those who paid the price for their faith in God and God’s Son Incarnate in the most violent of centuries, just gone by. Please God, their faith was bolstered by St Paul’s question today, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

It is important for us to remember that no matter where or when, for Catholic followers of Jesus, “God always comes first.” In our part of the world, it has become a slogan to remind Confirmation candidates and their parents that active membership in our Catholic communities involves at the minimum giving God 1 hour out of 168 hours in a week in a public act of Thanksgiving, known as Eucharist. Sad, isn’t it? 072405AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 071705AD

Sixteenth Sunday, Greentime -- July 17, 2005AD

Let the Spirit Do the Talking

When we were growing up, we learned from our parents (our primary educators in Catholic living) and then from our parish religious education that prayer was to be a dialogue with God. A specific definition was “prayer is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God”. We learned that there were 4 reasons why people prayed. Recall the acronymn., viz., the word “PACT”. The reasons were petition, adoration, contrition and thanksgiving.

However, prayer was a talking with God, not just a talking at God. We did not learn clearly enough that during our time with God, we should also be silent. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said, “God speaks to us in the silence and our job is to listen to the Silence and translate what we hear with the way we live our lives.”

St Paul continues to speak to the Roman (Armonk) Catholics in our second reading today. However, he confuses many, if not most. Granted when we pray, we usually have something specific on our minds. Will we get a job, a decent grade, an opportunity to meet someone new, a cure for an illness, and easing of a heartache? The list goes on and on.

That is all right because God takes us as where we are at just then. However, St Paul tells us that the Spirit within us takes over if we allow the Spirit to do so and say the prayer for us.

What might St Paul mean? Jesus teaches us that when we pray, we are to say, first of all, “Thy Will be done.” That is not easy when you have something big on your mind. Of course, Jesus always practices what He preaches. Recall the story of the Agony in the Garden, when Jesus resigned Himself to God’s Will with the very words He teaches us, “Not My Will, but Your Will be done.” Did not Mary say the same thing with her response to Gabriel’s message of the Incarnation, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” (Maybe, Mary and Joseph (the Righteous Man) taught Jesus that themselves?)

We all learned many years ago that the Spirit of God is everywhere. Ergo, the Spirit of God is in each of us. It is this immanent and transcendent Spirit about Which St Paul speaks.

Might St Paul be saying to us that if we follow the prompting of the Spirit in silence and solitude, our words would cease and as we are present to and in God’s Spirit, the Spirit says the prayer we need to say better than we can ourselves with human words.

In the Letter of St James, a relative of Jesus, the inspired author gives us what has come to be called the Jacobean proviso. In James 4. 15, Jesus’ relative tells us, “Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.” In essence, he says, “Thy Will be done.”

On our own, St Paul realizes that this is impossible for us to do. However, we are not alone because we exist in and through the Spirit of God and Jesus Christ. Therefore, follow what Jesus’ family teaches and ask the Spirit with and in you to bring you to silence and solitude in the Presence of God and allow the Spirit to say the prayer for you, “Not my will, but Your will be done.” 071705AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 071005AD

Fifteenth Sunday Greentime --July 10, 2005AD

She Caught What He Said

The Christian community to which St Paul writes his mighty letter probably resided largely west of the Tiber River, in an area known today as Trastevere. (St Peter’s Basilica is also across the Tiber north of Trastevere.)

In the mid first century, this was the Jewish section of the city. Curiously, the Good News about the Paschal Mystery of life and death and life in Christ reached Roma quite early. There is evidence that a noble Roman lady was buried in AD 41 in a casket that had the fish symbol on it. (The fish symbol which we see frequently on bumper stickers and other places was one of the original Christian symbols.)

Hence, the lady had become a Christian sometime before her death.

This makes sense because news traveled with commerce. Jewish people were very much at the center of commerce in the capital of the Empire!

The “Jesus Movement” in Roma was made up of ordinary folks like ourselves, both from Jewish or Gentile background. Yet, St Paul gets quite heavy with them as he teaches them and us (his audience now) about the Great Mystery.

He offers us a view of reality that is quite startling in its breath. He describes the universe and all life as we experience it now as a transitional stage. To use modern language, then, we, as part of the universe, are in process. As a theologian writes, the universe is a “text in travail”. Evolution, according to God’s Plan, is still in process. Each of us, a part of the universe, is also in process; we are “all texts in travail.”

Sr Elizabeth Johnson, a theologian teaching at Fordham, and who has been a Vatican representative at ecumenical gatherings, develops the image that St Paul used today of the “universe’s groaning in labor pains even until now.” She uses the image of the universe as the unborn child in the womb of God. The universe is developing as gestation continues.

The same holds true for us, as parts of creation. Each of us is a “work in progress”. We are all still in process, becoming the person in Christ that God wants us to be.

The process at work in the universe is the ever-present process of death and new life (in Christ). Death and Resurrection in, through and with Christ Jesus continues in our lives 60-60-24-7-365, whether we realize it or not. We Roman (Armonk) Christians are called and graced to announce this Good News to all the world. Bad things happen in life; but they are part of life. Life is the greatest gift. St Paul asks us, with God’s Help, to “surrender, let go and trust the Mystery at work in the Universe and in daily living.”

Once, a young student at Maria Regina HS floored her teacher and class with the analogy of birth and death. She spoke of the time when an unborn child is to be born and how frequently, birth is a tough process where the unborn child does not want to surrender the security of the mother’s womb for the unknown. The young student asked whether the conclusion of our life in the world is the same way. We are loathe to leave the security of the world we know. However, in both cases, when we do “surrender, let go, and trust the Mystery”, we enter a better reality that we could ever imagined. St Paul must have smiled and thought to himself, “She caught what I said”

St Paul’s words to our Christian forebears are the same to us. In Christ Jesus, the Son of God and the archetype of creation, the universe (and we as part of it) groan as we wait for the redemption of our bodies.” St Paul felt that if Christians in the capital of the world lived this value, more ight get the message like the young lady at Maria Regina. Ask for the grace to live so everyday!!! 071005AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 070305AD

14^th Sunday Greentime – July 3, 2005AD

George and Jesus and Augustine

The bestseller in non-fiction this week is David McCullough’s 1776, a great book which many should read. It begins and ends with speeches of King George III to Parliament about the rebellion begun at Lexington and Concord, in April, 1775. It relates George Washington’s siege and the British evacuation of Boston (on March 17, 1775!!!!) as well as the movement of war to our own NY metropolitan area in the summer of 1776. (Did you know about the Battle of Brooklyn on August 27 or the Battle of White Plains on October 28? Did you know that the Redcoats landed at Orchard Beach?) It concludes with George Washington’s victory at Trenton on December 26. It was a significant year. (Curiously, the author barely refers to the proceedings at Philadelphia on July 4.) King George III and Christ, the King, are two monarchs about whom we think this weekend. As our nation celebrates Independence Day, much will be said about America then and now. However, American Catholics worship Jesus Christ as our King. As we hear in our first reading from Zechariah today, our “King shall come, meek and riding on an ass, on a colt (Think Palm Sunday!)… His dominion shall be from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Our King asks us to live a different Worldview to acknowledge God is our Security. How do we reconcile war rhetoric, then and now, with the Gospel proclaimed by Christ the King?

In the fifth century, St Augustine of Hippo attempted to answer the question of when a Christian should use violence, in the “just war theory”.

Catholic high school students were asked to apply St Augustine’s “just war theory” to the American War for Independence. Not unanimously, most arrived at the following consensus. (They recalled that the colonists were divided 1/3 for independence, 1/3 for continued allegiance to England (who were harassed for their opinions), 1/3 probably did not care one way or another. Slaves were not consulted for their opinion!) 1) Was the war of war of self-defense? They said not necessarily when the standard of living in the colonies was three times better than it was in England. 2) Was the war a last resort? They said no, when as late as fall, 1776, the British offered and many accepted reconciliation. 3) Was the war declared by a legal authority? No, they responded that the Second Continental Congress had no legitimate authority to speak for each of the colonies. 4) Was the weapons used “just means”? The consensus was that they probably were. 5) Was there a reasonable chance of winning? They said that there was, because, indeed, the rebels did win. 6) Was the good accomplished greater than the harm inflicted? They said that it was because even the English agreed that it was good for them in the end. (Again, the slaves and native Americans were not consulted on this question.)

Since the Catholic tradition always stipulated that all 6 points of the just war theory had to be answered affirmatively, most Catholic students polled agreed that the American War for Independence was not a just war according to the criterion established by St Augustine.

We commemorate the end of King George III’s reign in the thirteen colonies this weekend. Still, US Catholics worship Christ as our true King.

Jesus Christ’s Kingship is radically different from King George’s or any other king’s. Jesus Christ teaches that our ultimate security is in the Centrality of God in our lives and the resultant living of Jesus Christ’s Gospel as an expression of our Security in God.

As part of Christ’s Hegemony, St Augustine left us the just war theory. How do American Catholics apply this 1500 year old moral teaching with regard to wars, then and now? 070305AD jfq