Weekly Reflection 123106AD

Sunday, December 31, 2006AD

Holy Family

Happy B-Day to Whom?

Several years ago, we moved our Christmas crèche to a new locale immediately in front of the Armonk Cross on Cox Avenue. First, happily, Cox Ave is now, more than ever, a major bypass from Main St in Armonk, as our population continues to grow. Second, the illumination on Cox Ave is more adequate than the former site inside our campus. Finally, while the crèche appears brilliant, the Crucified Jesus peers atop the creche as a reminder of why Christ was born.

Jesus has many Names. Matthew calls Him Emmanuel (God with us). Luke calls Him Savior, Christ and Lord. John calls Him the Word become flesh.

Earlier, in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet First Isaiah spoke of Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. Second Isaiah called Him Suffering Servant.

Throughout two millennia, Catholics have rejoiced and responded to the symbol of the birth of this Child. We know that our imagination is never able to exhaust what the Coming of Jesus Christ means.

However, we must always be on guard to prevent the saccherinization of Christmas by focusing on beautiful imagery alone. Hence, both on Cox Avenue as well as in our Church, the figure of Christ Crucified dominates behind the creche. The birth of this Child demands a response to the total Gift of Jesus Christ. We never forget that His Gift brought Him to the cross.

Therefore, stakes are high. On Dec 26, we celebrated St Stephen’s Day, the Proto-martyr, who died, like Jesus, forgiving his murderers. On Dec 27, we celebrated St John’s Day, the Fourth Evangelist, who teaches us that God is Love and the person who abides in love abides in God and God in that person. He also teaches us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. On Dec 28, we commemorated the Holy Innocents, the silent helpless slain by the Herods of the world, then and now. (Pope John Paul spoke of the very young, the very unborn, the very poor, the very sick, the very old, the very marginalized.) Now, we include all the earth, the ”other-beings” whom humans treat with apartheid attidudes. On Dec 29, we recall the murder of St Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, during Vespers in the Cathedral by forces of Catholic King, Henry II. At stake, by the way, with Becket and Henry II was the position that accused clergy should be accorded by church and state both !!! (Tom Cahill calls Henry’s wife, the good Catholic queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in his new book, Mysteries of the Middle Ages an archetypal Eleanor Roosevelt!) Some gave all!!

Catholics focus on the Incarnation as our central doctrine, viz., that God became human. Not surprisingly, the One called the Prince of Peace died on the cross, was rejected by church and state. Sts Stephen and Thomas Becket challenged by Temple (church) and state, respectively. The Innocents were discarded as a threat by Herod. All of this, because God became human. What implications are there for us at the beginning of this year? We put the creche in its proper venue. Weekly, in 2007AD, come and remember and give thanks!! 123106AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 122506AD

Monday, December 25, 2006AD

The Birth of the Messiah

Is This Lady For Real??

A new Christmas favorite is a song by Rob Thomas entitled, “A Merry New York Christmas.” In it, the singer prays that we will become more peaceful people as we rejoice in the Gift of the Incarnation, viz., that the Creator has become One with creation in the birth of Christ Jesus. If Catholics in New York (the capital of the world, as described by Pope John Paul II and others) lived the reality, with God’s Help, in our daily lives, then, in addition we receive the gifts of understanding and compassion for others. All these gifts make Christmas an ongoing reality for ourselves and our own worlds. Still, it is not easy for us and we are afraid.

Someone counted up the number of times that people in the Bible have been urged, “Do not be afraid!” Approximately, 365 times, the call to encouragement has been made by the God, the Father of Christ Jesus, Who is both the God of Life and the God of Love. Still, we fear.

In the fourteenth century, Blessed Juliana of Norwich, an English woman in the fourteenth century, who rejoiced in the human orientation to Transcendence, wrote of the fears that people experience. She said there were various types of fear.

1) People fear what could go wrong with their world. In Juliana’s world, mirrored in Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, in 1983, wrote that the fourteenth century reflected problems that we face in our world today. First, there was prolonged war between England and France (the 100 Years’ War) which did not conclude until the Battle of Crecy in 1415. Second, the European scene was ravaged by the Black Death which might have killed as many as 1/3 of Europe’s population around 1350.Third, there was class warfare in England with the Peasant’s Revolt (that the elite put down with gusto). Fourth, there was church-state conflict over church court jurisdiction. Fifth, there was discontent within the church over the need for reform.

2) People fear what could go wrong with them. The problems of the heartaches of life confront all people. We fear disappointments, rejections, accidents, failures, tragedies and suffering and sickness in our lives and the lives of those around us. It is only the mature (not the immature) adult who senses the Paschal Mystery at the heart of all creation who can, confidently, with God’s Help, trust the Holy Mystery at work in their lives and the life of the universe.

3) However, Blessed Juliana also spoke of the “Fear of the Lord”, the principal gift of the Holy Spirit. (Actually, the word “fear” is inappropriate here because she was not talking about terror at the hands of an angry God capriciously dispensing curveballs into people’s lives. More suitable words might be “Awe of the Lord” or “Respect for the Lord”). Mature adults , with God’s Help, realize that ultimately, every one of us has to bear pain, to make leaps of faith and finally, the surrender, let go and trust the Holy Mystery. With the God-given gift of faith in a God of Life, Who is the God of Love, and Who is always Emmanuel “God with us”, Blessed Juliana says that we should follow the “365 mandate”, “Do not fear externals and/or internal threats.” However, celebrate and ask for Fear or Awe or Respect of the Lord.

On Christmas, we remember that the God-Man Who was born in a stable has seen it all (without sinning) and has reality under His sway. We are embraced by the Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans.

Let us try to share this confidence in life with our children and our families and friends. The greatest gift of all is a life of faith in God (pace, the current television ad of the child’s opening the Christmas package in a sportscar commercial.) Teach your children and family and all that “the Fear (Awe) (Respect) of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.” As Blessed Juliana said, “All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.” Then, teach your children to allay the aches and pains of those less fortunate than we”. It is a bigger world than here.

We ask for the gift of Fear of the Lord this Christmas and everyday for ourselves and our children, and family and friends and our troubled world. We need it badly!!

Then, our wish for a “Merry New York Christmas” becomes a reality even now, but not yet, completely, for a world of peace, understanding and compassion.

122506AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 122406AD

Sunday, December 24, 2006AD

4^th Sunday of Advent

Sunday of the Virgin Birth

Micah Speax Then and Now:

A contemporary of Isaiah, the prophet from Jerusalem c. 750BC, Micah of Moresheth (whose name in Hebrew means, “Who is like YHWH?) was a country dweller. Still, he had the same spin of what was happening as his city cousin.

Things needed to change among God’s people. Still, God is faithful to God’s promise. It is we who have to change.

Both Micah and Isaiah were equal opportunity prophets. They both challenged socio-economic injustices among the people. They also saw that religion was becoming a luxury item for the elite in the cities who ran the show. Both felt that the leaders enacted the “King Jeroboam Principle”, viz., Say “God bless Israel” once in a while and then go ahead and do what you planned doing anyway (in God’s Name). Do we ever change?

People tended to think more communally then than today. They thought in terms of the family, clan, tribe, rather than nation-state. (We are finding out today the hard way that many in the Mid East still do.) Nevertheless, the prophet Micah offers God’s challenge to each individual Jew, “Do the right, love the good and walk humbly with your God each day.” (Mi 6.8) We cannot make the world perfected, only God can do that. Still, we can make our own worlds better. And we will be held responsible for what we do or do not do.

Today, the idea of personal responsibility gets qualified despite the fact that we praise our “rugged individualism” as a cultural value. 1) We offer excuses of nature and/or nurture factors in why we really are not responsible for things. 2) We buy into the bigness of “structural sin”. Since large institutions get away with so much, why can’t I? 3) We are affected by the Mainsream-syndrome, dominated by mass media –driven materialism and middle class values. Why change?

Today, Micah proclaims that YHWH is faithful and that from (least) Bethlehem, the town of David, would come a leader to shepherd the people. We believe that the leader did appear. We celebrate His birthday tomorrow. We celebrate his mother and his foster father this weekend. They did a great job teaching the Christ Child through their efforts to do the right, love the good and walk humbly with YHWH each day. With God’s Help, let us drive to do the same with our children and family during this Christmas Season during which we celebrate the Christ Quantum as God’s constant irreversible breakthrough O Come, let us adore Him!! 122406ADjfq

Weekly Reflection 121706AD

Sunday, December 17, 2006AD

Third Sunday of Advent

(Gaudete Sunday)

Not Quite the Kook!!

Once again, St John the Baptist (aka Jack the Dipper) challenges audiences, then and now. He continues his role as the “Warm-up Act” or the Precursor (Forerunner) of the Main Event, our Messiah.

The Dipper has been described as an apocalyptic, viz., “fire and brimstone” preacher who used strong language to confront his audience. It is no small thing to call people a brood of vipers. Recall, as well, that the hearers were the folks who bothered to go to the banks of the Jordan to hear this counter-cultural figure. What did the Baptist think of those who couldn’t be bothered making the journey to be told to snap out of it, to smell God’s coffee and to get a (new) life (style). Yet, his challenges are rather simple. Or are they? He tells the crowds to share with one another, whether it is an extra jacket or extra food. It is just the Golden Rule in concrete circumstances. If one needed extra clothing or food, one hopes that another with extra would share. Yet, sadly, folks have to be reminded of that 2,000 years after the Baptist made his pitch. Thank God, so many respond as we should.

It is the challenges hurled at the soldiers and the tax collectors that scripture scholars have focused special attention. The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who wrote later in the first century, that King Herod had John arrested because “others were listening to John’s message.” Some conjecture that John was winning hearers among the soldiery and the tax collaborators who propped up Herod’s oppressive system of institutional violence. What would have happened if his agents of institutional terrorism (mercenary soldiers) and his tax farmers who cheated people realized the errors of their ways? The Baptist might have had more listeners than we imagined.

Today, the Baptist might challenge a compulsed society. Several years ago, Ann Wilson Shafe, a sociologist, wrote a book entitled, When Society Becomes an Addict. She wrote that Western civilization had become addicted to the “System”. We know that things are not the way they should be. We know deep down in our minds and hearts, that a world in which 2% of people own 50% of the land in the world that something is wrong. We know that billions of people do not have proper diet or medical care. We know that something is happening to our very environment that by 2040AD, Arctic ice may disappear each summer. We know that war is obsolete as an apt means of conflict resolution and yet, we tolerate sending the children of other people to risk death for a questionable cause.

The Baptist’s cry might have shaken up a few more folks than we thought. Maybe, more snapped out of it then, smelled God’s coffee and got a new life style. With God’s Help, in Christ Jesus’ alternate universe, the World Order of the God of Life, the Kingdom, others still can do so. Imagine!! 121706AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 121006AD

Sunday, December 10, 2006 AD

Second Sunday in Advent

He’s Back!!

Jack the Dipper is back at the River Jordan. We meet John the Baptist on these Sundays of Advent as we continue, with God’s Help, to prepare the Way for the Lord.

He should generate now, as then, a lightning rod of response. However, we tame religious figures and the “Word of the Lord (that) came to John in the wilderness.”

He was a challenge then and should remain a challenge now. He did not go to Rome or Jerusalem to proclaim his message of metanoia , viz., snapping out of the Big Lie and realigning ourselves on the Way that God wants us to travel. He wants us to welcome the One Who is to follow. John offers the opportunity to see that we need to snap out of it, to be realigned and to live as God wants. Sociologists have said that human behavior is mimetic. We don’t want to be left out of the crowd. We accept unquestioningly the conventional wisdom of culture. We allow others to determine who and/or what is important and/or desirable and unimportant and/or undesirable. Hence, if we participate in a culture that accepts unchallenged what is fed to us because everyone else does as well, then, the sociologists are correct.

In addition, sociologists tell us that human tend to be conscious of “in crowd/out crowd.” With whom do we identify? Do we use ethnicity, race, religion, socio-economic class as determinants of those with whom we want to associate.

This tendency to distinguish in group and out group can be sadly coupled with a propensity to violence and vengeance that the Book of Genesis presented in the Cain and Abel story in Genesis 4. Those with whom we do not identify might tend, in our opinions, to be less human.

If we have recognize anything of ourselves in the three observations of the sociologists, then we need to “snap out of it.” John the Baptist, the warmup act for the Main Attraction, challenges us to “smell God’s coffee”. He tells us to “get a new life”. 1) We do not have to go along with conventional wisdom. 2) Our particular, cultural story collapses into the Human Story. 3) We need to stop the downward spiral of violence because people close to us (9-11-01) were victimized by the vengeful violence of others. How the manipulation of that sad reality lead to the mess which we face now!

The System (the Human City, named by St Augustine) has created a dysfunctional system that so many buy into and idolize. We need another System, Jesus’ System, the City of God. The Baptist was Jesus’ advance man. NOW is an invitation to snap out of a dysfunctional worldview into a worldview of the Creator of the Universe and the Creator’s Son Incarnate. However, there is a vital first step introduced by St John the Baptist in Luke’s Gospel. Into human history, calculable by imperial and religious dates, John’s call to snap out of it is based on our seeing that we even need to do so. How do we snap out of a dysfunctional worldview when we don’t even realize that we live in one? 121006AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 120306AD

Sunday, December 3, 2006AD

First Sunday of Advent

A Word to the Wise!!

We calculate the beginning of our new liturgical year based on the Sunday nearest the Feast of St Andrew, November 30. Although we were cajoled into thinking that the Christmas Season (dare we call it that?) begins with the sad display of frenzied shopping sprees beginning at 5AM on Black Friday, the day after TXG.

Earlier this week, an article appeared in the paper juxtaposing the madness of early Christmas shoppers on Black Friday with the killing of 200 civilians TXG Day in Iraq. The author commented on the absurdity of the situation in no uncertain terms.

On the same day, another article appeared with the title “Atheists Agonistes”. The author spoke of the several books on the best seller lists that “debunk” belief in God. However, the author of the article turns the tables on the debunkers by commenting on how even science is showing us that the universe is probably infinite and that the mystery of reality can never be cracked. The Western notion of the Enlightenment which used the human brain as the arbiter of reality since the seventeen century now has to defend itself on its own terms. One author recently commented on how he feels that atheists are loaded with arrogance (hubris, in Greek), while at the same time, he has a deep respect for agnostics who, at least, are willing to concede the fact that their own brain is not the center of the universe.

Jesus speaks to His disciples today (that’s you and me now). He continues to warn us of the temptation to treat the Gospel like a luxury item. In the West in the 21^st century, we live generally contented lives. Still, the de-stablization of our worlds, individual and corporate, rocks the boats of all of us at one time or another. (Recall how many people found religion after 911, for about a month!!) As Jesus tells us today, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. Be vigilant at all times…”

Strong language is proclaimed by our Head today. Still, someone calculated that the words, “Do Not Be Afraid!!” appear approximately 365 times in the Bible.

Throughout the year, ask Christ for the Grace to balance the paradox in the life of every person. Yes, we pray Jesus is with us now and yet, we also pray, Come, Lord Jesus Christ.

If there is a God, then, that God must be everywhere. Where God is, Christ Jesus is. However, I am somewhere. Therefore, Christ Jesus is with me and I am with Christ Jesus. Every single moment of my life, no matter how mundane, is filled with the Divine Presence of Transcendence, Infinity and Immanence. Each “Now” is a sacrament of Eternity. Don’t try to understand; just celebrate it! During Advent, pray for the Gift of Faith, Expectation, Patience and Longing.

Then, at least, in our minds and hearts, the absurdity of Christmas spree shopping and hundreds of daily death in Baghdad will become clearer to us. Maybe, we will challenge the hubris

(the arrogance) of a human mind that sees itself as the arbiter and center of the Universe. As St Paul tells us, then, with God’s Help, we can live in constant hope, be patient in tribulation and persevering in prayer. The Lord Jesus is with us; Come, Lord, Jesus. 120306AD jfq