Weekly Reflection 092505AD

September 25, 2005 AD – 26^th Sunday, Greentime

Our Attitude in Christ Shapes Our Action in Christ

In the near future, we will be enhancing our physical plant with the re-paving of our walkways around the “domus ecclesiae”, “the home of the church” and with moving of Mary’s shrine to a more convenient venue, near our vestibule. The Church of St Patrick in Armonk is the community of persons baptized in Christ (the “Jesus Movement here in Armonk) (those appear on one of the postcards which are souvenirs of our parish.)

However, we realize that our parish campus, particularly our parish church, is only a secondary point of our life in Christ Jesus. The most significant place is our own homes, our domestic churches. Our parish church becomes a meeting place, a “church-ing” (as a verb) place for all your domestic churches, viz., your own homes, as we re-enforce one another as we gather each weekend.

Around the year 55AD, in the city of Philippi (in present day Macedonia), the Church of the Jesus Movement met on the Lord’s Day in their domus ecclesiae, probably the house of an affluent Christian. Today, St Paul quotes a hymn that apparently the Jesus Movement sang there to Christ Jesus, in which the career of Jesus was juxtaposed to the career of Adam and Eve, our first parents.

The point of the hymn (known as the Carmen Christi) is that Jesus lived a human life the way that the Creator wants all of us to live our own humanities in Christ Jesus. Recall that the temptation to which Adam and Eve succumbed was the temptation to “be like God”. They opted to disobey God through the subtle suspicious suggestion that maybe, one can go one’s own way and that we really do not need God. (One wag suggested that the god our first parents opted to follow was the god, EGO (an acronym for “Easing God Out”).

On the other hand, Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but took the form of a slave (with God as the Ultimate Master). He was like God (in the parlance of Adam & Eve’s temptation) but chose for our sake to live a life of humility and obedience to God’s Will for Him for us.

With God’s Help, two attitudes of Christ grow in us. First, we will become people of humility. (Humility is based on the same etymological root as humanity. The root word is humus, a Latin word for soil or earth.) Humility is a reminder that no matter what, we are dust and to dust we shall return. If this is not humbling and human, what else can be? However, the great proviso in all this is the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ that we share through our baptism into Christ.

The second attitude that will grow in us is obedience to God. (Obedience is based on the same etymological root as audial. The root word is audiere, Latin verb “to hear”.) Obedience is behavior in accordance to what we have heard. We hear the Gospel of Christ. With God’s Help, we try to behave so as we obey the Gospel.

It is difficult for us to be humble and obedient in a culture that claims to be God-centered and whose motto is “In God we trust”. When people refuse to live humbly and obediently on God’s terms, then sooner or later, greed and violence start to rear their heads in their midst.

The Church of Jesus Christ, the Jesus Movement in Armonk (as in Philippi, as in the rest of the world) has to choose 24-7-365 that we opt for Christ’s Way and not Adam and Eve’s in the lives we live daily. When we gather to celebrate weekly at our domus ecclesiae, our presence in Christ Jesus with one another ratifies the choice that hopefully all of us try to make with Christ’s Help daily. 092505AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 091805AD

September 18, 2005AD -- 25^th Sunday in Greentime

Three Citizenship Tips

St Paul wrote his beautiful Letter to the Philippians during an imprisonment for proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Roman world. He dared to use the “L- word” (“Lord”) for Jesus when he quoted a familiar hymn that was sung about Jesus, “Jesus is Lord”.

Most folks today would ask, “What was the problem?” It was that the Emperor (either Claudius or Nero) claimed that title, absolutely, for himself. In addition, Philippi has been compared to San Diego, California because of the number of veterans who retired there. St Paul was implicitly challenging imperial loyalty.

He reminds his hearers then and now (in Philippi and in Armonk) to “conduct ourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel.” In our dealings with one another, he urges us to live our faith that Jesus is Lord.

In the 1980’s, America’s Catholic bishops tried to share, not only with Catholics, but all who would listen their vision of how Christians might conduct ourselves in contemporary America. They published three pastoral letters to anyone who would read them. They issued a statement on racism, Brothers and Sisters to Me, in which they said that racism is a sin. (Has anyone ever confessed it?)

They published The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. Here, three important words came into contemporary American Catholic argot. 1) We heard of the new moment in human history when, now since the mid-1960’s, we are capable of “humanicide”, capable of undoing in God’s Creation what the Creator has been doing. They urged us to a life-long graced-filled process of disarmament of the heart. Finally, they urged us to adopt a consistent life ethic, seeing every human life issue as a seamless garment.

Their “Big Mo” reached an apex in 1986 with their third pastoral letter, Economic Justice in Our Time.

They taught that every human institution (and they spoke specifically of the economy with this as a human institution) was to be judged as morally viable by how well it takes care of the poor and helpless in its midst. (Later Pope John Paul said that their were no moral free zones in corporate morality. To their extent that we have responsibility for the human institutions in our midst, we are under Gospel scrutiny for their response to the Silent Helpless in our midst.) The bishops also warned that by the mid-1980’s, that third worlds ghettos of underdevelopment were growing in the center of American cities.

In Philippians, he tells to the members of the Jesus Movement, “our true citizenship is in heaven.” In the interim, we are resident aliens (paroikoi is the etymological root of “parochial”) in the world. Since Christians, then and now, live, even now but not yet, as the Citizens of the Kingdom of God, our best methodology is to live our faith in Jesus the Lord by conducting ourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel. How do US Catholics do this today? 091805AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 091105AD

24^TH Sunday in Greentime

70 X 7 & Then Some…

The “Everyone” figure of St Peter appears on the scene again today. We ask how many times we must be willing to forgive one who sins against us. Seven times seem more than generous. Once again, Jesus teaches us (all capable of greatness or baseness) that it is something more than numbers to discuss.

Jesus does not want His disciples to be enablers by constantly overlooking injuries. We need to stand up for what is best both for the perpetrator as well as ourselves. That is why Jesus has just explained how we are to deal with deviant behavior in our community (both for the sake of the perpetrator as well as the community). However, the protocol that He gave us in last weekend’s Gospel is bracketed by 2 parables of God’s Forgiveness, viz., the Lost Sheep and today’s Gospel, the Unmerciful Servant.

This parable speaks of an Oriental relationship between the king (the patron) and the employee (the client). In traditional societies, patron-client is a powerful relationship. The employee could be compared to middle-management today, people who climbed the economic ladder, frequently in a survival of the fittest style of behavior. The implication is that neither servant was a “blushing rose” .The first employee owed what someone calculated was 100,000 days wages (the talents mentioned) to his patron. He did not have a chance ever to repay what he owed. However, something happened to the king. “His heart was moved with pity”, says Jesus. God touched the king’s heart and gave him a two fold grace (extraordinary gift), viz., 1) he had pity on the servant and 2) he cancelled the entire debt. In a sense, the king was living Jesus’ petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The first servant lucked out.

However, he did not extend the same mercy to a second servant, who owed him a mere fraction of what he himself owed. It was also calculated that the second debt was tantamount to 100 days wages. (Here, the first servant was the patron; the second servant was the client.)

The first servant should have rejoiced in the King’s grace-filled generosity by doing the same with the second servant. He suffered the consequences of the King’s wrath when the King discovered what happened. Now, the first servant was worse off than he had been before because he was imprisoned until he did the impossible.

Jesus’ moral is that God our heavenly Father might do the same to Peter (and Everyone) if we do not reciprocate God’s pardon of us with our pardon of others. This is serious business.

Some say that violence is the blind-spot of Christianity. Mohandas Gandhi said that the only ones who do not get it that Christianity is a non-violent religion are Christians themselves. WW2 hero, General Omar Bradley said that Christians have cracked the atom, but we have not cracked the Sermon on the Mount.

However, sadly, we might go one step further. Jesus teaches us that whoever nurses anger in his (or her) heart has broken the fifth commandment because grudges can lead to violence. In addition, almost directly in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, which is directly in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is the petition that God forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us. If the “as” is understood numerically, many of us might be in big trouble. Frequently, grudges last for years. 091105AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 090405AD

SEPTEMBER 4, 2005 AD – 23^RD SUNDAY, GREENTIME

+Brother Roger Schutz

Just last month, two prominent Protestant ecumenical figures were in the news. The sad and scandalous thoughts of Rev Pat Robertson about what to do about the President of Venezuela sadly prompted the question, ”Whom would Jesus assassinate?” The other, lesser known figure was Brother Roger Schutz, a Swiss Protestant monk who established an ecumenical monastery at Taize, in eastern France in 1940 and which still thrives 65 years later. Brother Roger was stabbed to death by a mentally disturbed pilgrim. He was 90 years old.

Brother Roger’s ministry was to pray and work for peace in an ecumenical setting that began in 1940, just at the start of WW2. The monastery was tolerated by the Nazis until 1944 and it was re-established immediately after the war to bring French and German, Protestant and Catholic, lay and monastic, together to pray and act for peace.

The monastery grew in the past 65 years and it has become a spot of pilgrimage, particularly for young Europeans to whom the Taize monks have a special ministry. One problem that naturally grew out of this polyglot, ecumenical group was the question of how to pray in unison. The Taize monks developed a variety of chants and songs from various Christian traditions to find that the music itself, even in the form of a line or two that was rehearsed beforehand did much to generate a prayerful environment. Recall St Augustine’s words, “Those who sing pray twice.”

Brother Roger believed in the Presence of God in every person. “God is united with every human being without exception.” Whatever motivated the violence perpetrated by the 36 year old Romanian woman who stabbed him to death during an evening prayer service at Taize, that Divine Presence was in her as well. Brother Alois, the successor of Brother Roger, said at the funeral Mass offered by Walter Cardinal Kasper, who had been suggested as a possible Bishop of Rome in the April election, “God of goodness, we entrust to Your Forgiveness Luminita Solcan who, in an act of sickness, put an end to the life of Brother Roger. With Christ on the cross, we say, “Father, forgive her, she does not know what she did.”

How much does that prayer echo in our readings today! Ezekiel tells us that the call to reconciliation is part of a believer’s vocation. St Paul tells us that love of neighbor what God’s Law is. “Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the Law.” Jesus tells us that “when two or three are gathered in Jesus’ Name (for the rehabilitation of a sinner), there am I in their midst.”

Pilgrims at Taize this weekend will probably have to reflect on these Scriptures as all of us. The motto at Taize is “Refusing to look back, and joyful with infinite gratitude, never fear to rise to meet the dawn, praising, blessing and singing, “Jesus is Lord.”

Learn more about Brother Roger and Taize on www.taize.fr/en.

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