Weekly Reflection 062908AD

SUNDAY, JUNE 29, 2008AD

SAINTS PETER AND PAUL

Sincerely, Peter & Paul

Sts Peter and Paul, who both professed “Jesus Christ is Lord”, according to the ancient tradition, died in Roma the same day, June 29, possibly 67AD. St Peter died to the left of the Pope’s altar in St Peter’s Basilica and his tomb apparently is under that altar as well, based on evidence done by the National Geographic Foundation. St Paul died on the Via Ostiense and his tomb apparently has been discovered under the altar in the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. If you are in the Eternal City, don’t miss either of these holy places. You’ll feel their aura. Their bones are in there someplace.

The first papal encyclical, First Peter, appears in the Christian Bible (aka the New Testament) and it was apparently written to members of the Jesus Movement in Asia Minor (present day Turkey). St Paul’s mighty Letter to the Romans was written by the Apostle to the Gentiles as a letter of introduction, prior to his first visit to the Eternal City, before his mission effort to Spain.

At the conclusion of each of their letters, Peter and Paul offer sound sage moral principles for Christian behavior, known as paranesis, applicable in 1^st century Rome and/or 21^st century Armonk. Both use a short staccato rapid list of moral do’s and don’t’s, then and now.

1 Peter writes, “All of you should be like-minded, sympathetic, loving toward one another, kindly disposed and humble. Do not return for evil or insult for insult. Return a blessing instead. This you have been called to do!” Let you love for one another be constant, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be mutually hospitable without complaining. Put your gifts at the service of one another, each in the measure that each has received. (Is he for real?? With God’s Help, he is!!)

St Paul writes, in the Letter to the Romans, to them and to us, “Your love must be sincere. Detest what is evil, cling to what is good. Love one another with the affection of brothers. Anticipate each other in showing respect. Do not grow slack, but be fervent. The One you serve is the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient under trial, persevere in prayer. Look on the needs of the saints as your own; be generous in offering hospitality. Bless your persecutors, bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same attitude to all. Put away ambitious thoughts and associate with those who are lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never repay injury with injury. See that your conduct is honorable to all. If possible, live peaceably with everyone. Do not avenge yourselves; leave that to God’s wrath…Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.” (Rom 12, passim) Again, one asks, “Is this one for real also??” Again, with God’s Help, he is!!)

Since Pope Benedict has asked us to begin a Pauline Year of special reflection as we commemorate the approximate 2000^th anniversary of St Paul’s birth, let us focus on the introduction to St Paul’s do’s and don’t’s. He speaks to the Roman (and Armonk) Christians, one and all. He begs us to offer our bodies (viz., our daily lives) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship.” (The word he uses for worship is leiturgia, the etymology of “liturgy”.

Modern Catholic theologians use the words “Christification” or the “Christic Life”. With God’s Help, Sts. Peter and Paul ask them, then, and us, now to try to be in small ways to the critical mass, the change agents, the channels, the catalysts of the “Virus” of the Gospel in our world. Recall Jesus’ words to St Peter, “The Gates of Hell will not prevail against the Jesus Movement”, then and/or now. Remember the words of sociologist, Margaret Mead, with which Jesus, Peter and Paul heartily agree, “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” With God’s Help, we continue to try!!! 062908AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 062208AD

Sunday, June 22, 2008AD

12^th Sunday in Greentime

Meet St Paul – Part 4

St Paul had a very high self opinion in his youth. He was apparently well-educated and privileged. In addition, during his young life, his “roots and wings” years, he picked up the basics of Judaism and felt that, as a Jew, he was doing quite nicely, thank you. We don’t know from anything that he wrote during his early adulthood, as he was making his mark and taking the world by storm, but in his youth, his prayer to YHWH might resemble that of the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the publican who go to the temple to pray. Saul of Tarsus (aka St Paul’s name) probably prayed something like, “O God. I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector.” God was smart creating him!

However, God’s grace, the Holy Spirit, confronted St Paul and he came to understand that in his zeal for the Law of Moses, he had become “not a nice person”. He himself admitted later on that he persecuted the Church of God. As he wrote in Philippians 3.6-7,” in zeal I persecuted the Church of God, in righteousness based on the Law of Moses, I was blameless. But whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ.”

Becoming a religious zealot, Saul of Tarsus had persecuted Christ Jesus, as the Voice of Christ said to him on the Damascus Road.

St Paul came, through the gift of faith to understand things differently. 1) He came to realize that the Crucified Jesus was alive and well and intimately identified with His followers in the Jesus Movement. To give them a hard time was to give Jesus a hard time as well. Somehow, through God’s grace, St Paul came to see that the Crucified and Risen Jesus was now a vibrational field, a force field, a Reality Who continues to live and be present with His people. 2) He came to understand that Christ Jesus existed in His movement and that His movement exists in Him. As quantum physicists teach us now, the whole exists in each of its parts and each part somehow contains the whole. 3) He came to see that reality was more than matter and energy and space and time. Relationships have an existence as well, real, although, not as calculable as tangibles. St Paul called the Jesus Movement, “the Body of Christ.” Christ Jesus exists in His Movement; His Movement exists in Him. Words cannot express the truth totally. The gift of faith says that it is so.

Nevertheless, there are realities that exist that are both intangible and harmful. Their influence makes an impact on us as well. These forces are baneful, yet real. In one place, St Paul describes them as the powers that rule the air. We think of the effects of addictions, of compulsions and of enmeshments and entanglements that become so much a part of reality that we tend to think of them as givens, identified as reality or the “System.”.

St Paul understood that one’s life could not be lived as a “rugged individual”. Nobody, the best Jew or gentile, who ever existed could survive for long as a moral individual in the world so effected by the “rubbish” or “junk” that has accumulated of all subscribing in one way or another to the Original Lie, posed by the tempter to Adam and Eve, our first parents. The temptation remains arrogance. (The Original Lie remains the temptation, “You, too, can be like God.” You can control the reality of one’s own life. ) The original sin ultimately remains the sin of arrogance, viz., when push comes to shove, one stands on one’s own. Sadly, the Original Lie still is alive and well.

However, cultures and groups can fall for the original lie as well. Whenever a government promises absolute security for its people, then, that government and its citizens are subscribing to the Original Lie. The world of the Roman Empire was the prime example in the First Century of the New Testament. They claimed a Pax Romana existed in the world, that peace was a reality under the force of Roman law and order on the one hand and the institutional and personal violence that frequently accompanied “law and order”, on the other. Empires, then and now, can become addicted, compulsed and entangled with drive to name and to determine what constitutes Reality (both for oneself and for others).

St Paul saw that everyone succumbed to the Force of Sin in one way or another. Individuals were helpless. We receive our salvation from God in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ becomes the Force Field, the Vibrational Field, that brings this free gift of salvation to us. Nobody can earn it; nobody can achieve it on his or her own. It is God’s Free Gift to all, Jew and Gentile alike. With God’s Help, believe it and live a life of Eucharist (thanksgiving) each day for what God has done for you and for all of us in Christ Jesus’ death and Resurrection. 062208AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 061508AD

Sunday, June 15, 2008AD

Eleventh Sunday in Greentime

Meet St Paul – Part Three

The Apostle to the Gentiles continues to offer his letter of introduction to the Jesus Movement in Rome in our second reading this weekend. Recall that biblical scholars think that the mighty Letter of St Paul to the Romans was written around 57AD, as St Paul was planning journey to the capital of the world as a stopping off point in a mission effort to bring the Good News as far west as Spain. (St Clement wrote about 40 years later that, indeed, St Paul achieved his goal of reaching Spain, although we know nothing about such a mission effort.)

The problem was that St Paul was characterized as easy-going on the question of the Law of Israel (aka the Torah) observance by gentiles who were entering the Jesus Movement.

Did they have to observe the Law of Moses and then, receive Baptism or was Baptism sufficient for admission for the then still identified Jesus Movement? The two moderates on the question were Peter and Paul, who felt that baptism was sufficient for admission to the Body of Christ.

An important thing to remember is that the Jesus Movement was more or less centred in individual house churches throughout the city. Some of these house churches were in the homes of Gentile Christians and other house churches were in the homes of Jewish Christians. We can tell from the various names of Roman Christians of whom he had some awareness were names that were both Gentile and Jewish.

The question is how did one house church (for example, of Jewish Christians who still observed the Torah in some form) relate to another (Gentile) house church which did not observe the strict details of the Torah. What would happen when people from different house churches socialized and prayed with people of other house churches? A big problem, but St Paul offered his solution in what he said in this Letter of introduction to Roman Christians, both Gentile and Jewish.

His strategy was to stress that no one can say that he or she is guiltless in God’s sight. Jews had the Law of Moses and did not follow it. (Paul stressed in another place that when it came to keeping the Law, he was a 9.99, not 10.)

Gentiles had the law of reason built into their consciences and yet, they ended up worshipping everything but God. “They became vain in their reasoning and their senseless minds were changed. While claiming to be wise, they became fools.” (Rom 1.21-2) To his own Jewish kinsfolks, he asked, “You who boast of the Torah, do you dishonor God by breaking the Torah?” (Rom 2.24)

“There is no one just, not one, there is no one who understands , there is no one who seeks God. All have gone astray.” (Rom 3 . 11-12) The addiction, the compulsion, the entanglements of the system (then and now) affects everyone. We are one person in face of a convoluted reality. We are all in the same boat, Jew and Gentile.

Even today, our understanding of the ensnarement of sin evolves. Catholic teaching speaks now of venial sin, serious sin, structural sin and mortal sin. There is an development of the corporate conscious and sub-conscious that abates and plays on the individual conscious and sub-conscious, and vice versa.

The reality that St Paul came through God’s grace was that, ultimately, everyone, Jew or Gentile, stands before God with hands that are both empty (what can we do to enhance God?) and soiled (all of us miss the mark!). However, God has taken care of this scenario by offering us His Son. St Paul says of Christ Jesus, in another place, in Him, “We have redemption by His Blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of His Grace, that He lavished upon us.” (Col 1.7)

God has taken care of our dilemma through His Son. Christ Jesus offers us – free of charge – acquittal, validation, re-alignment, re-orientation through the Gift of faith. Salvation, ergo, is a free and universal and available to all, Jew and Gentile alike, through God’s Infinite Love and Mercy. Our response is the response that comes with the Gift of faith in Christ Jesus and living a life of obedient faith in thanksgiving (Greek word, Eucharistia!) to say that we accept the free gift that God offers in God’s Son. Nobody has the right to brag or to boast about his or her achievement of a moral life. In fact, one of the greatest sins that St Paul could imagine is the sin of boasting (Kaukasis), saying or acting that one is doing all right, thank you. Who needs God? It would be subscription to the Original Lie, viz., you don’t need God if you are a good enough person already.

Whether one was a Jewish Christian or a Gentile Christian, who gathered for the breaking of the bread on Saturday evening in either a Jewish Christian or Gentile Christian house-church, the reality remained the same. All have missed the mark; all have sinned; all are forgiven; all are to live with faith, hope and solidarity in Christ Jesus. 061508AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 060808AD

Sunday June 8, 2008AD

10^th Sunday in Greentime

Ciao Roma!!

St Paul tells us in his letters that he was reluctant to found a Christian community (para-oikia, pronounce it the way you would say “karaoke”!) in cities where Christians already were. He wanted his communities to be small audio-visual communities in which Christ Jesus lived and would ultimately bring the rest of humanity to salvation in the Vibrational Field known as the Body of Christ. Through Christian communities, established in beachhead communities, it was just a matter of time before all would acknowledge, “Jesus is Lord”. (His timing was off, but his methodology is still in process. Christian communities exist throughout the world!! The Body of Christ is alive and well, thank you!!

The Roman community was different, because it was established by others than St Paul. His magnum opus, the Letter to the Romans, was meant to be a letter of introduction to the Roman house churches. Most biblical scholars are fairly certain that St Paul wrote this letter from Corinth, in Greece, probably in late 57/58AD. St Paul reveals his plan to travel via Roma to Spain to establish beachhead Christian communities, surrounding the Mediterrean Sea. Roman Christians had heard conflicting reports about Paul and Paul wanted to elicit their help in his mission effort. To do so, he had to introduce himself to Roman Christians, explaining his spin on the Gift from God we know as Christ Jesus.

The Christian house churches in Roma seem to have been founded by Jewish Christians from Jerusalem as early as 40AD, about ten years after Jesus died and rose. (There was discovered a sarcophragus (casket) of a Roman woman from the time. Inscribed on it were names the two consuls of Rome around 40AD and the symbol of the fish (the ichthus), a sign that has co-opted by “born again” groups today. The Greek letters represent an acronym for an early Christian creed, Ieusos Christos, Theou Huiou, Soter , translated as Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Son and Savior.

The theory is that Jewish merchants and family members who lived in Roma (generally across the Tiber River in the area known as Trastevere today, just south of St Peter’s Basilica) brought the Good News about Jesus from Jerusalem early on. The core groups of the earliest Roman house churches were Jewish people who celebrated Jesus as Lord. However, the common language in the Roman Empire was Greek (not Latin). There were also Jewish Christians who worshipped God in a Greco-Roman context. We know from other places in the Christian Bible that many of these Greek-speaking Jewish Christians (such as St Stephen in Acts) had a more tolerant attitude to admission of Gentile folks who frequently were attracted to Judaism because of its ethical monotheism and its view of the human person as created in the image and likeness of God. As a result, there probably developed house churches of Jewish Christians who felt that a Gentile had to become Jewish and then, baptized into the Jesus Movement. Other house churches in Rome probably felt that baptism was sufficient and therefore, Gentiles did not have become Jewish first and then, baptized Christian. Finally, there would have been a third group of people, Roman Jews aggravated that there was serious contact with Gentiles in Jewish matters.

We know this probably what happened because in 49AD, the Emperor Claudius expelled many Jews from Rome because there was a controversy among them about a man named Chrestus (sic). When Claudius died in 54 AD, the ban was lifted by the new Emperor Nero, who had a Jewish girlfriend, named Poppea. When Jewish Christians returned to Roma, they found that new house churches had arisen that were basically Gentiles. Were these Gentile house churches on a par with Jewish Christians? Were they even Jews?

Since St Paul had a reputation for being a moderate at best with the observance of Jewish Law, he needed to state where he stood on the question before he came to the Eternal City. The mighty Letter to the Romans was probably that letter of self-introduction.

His main argument is that whether one followed the Torah or not, Jew and Gentile alike, all were saved through the Paschal Mystery. Nobody was capable of sinless living on his or her own, whether Jew or Gentile. Salvation for all is won through the free gift of God to all who believe in the Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus,

In today’s second reading today, from the early part of his letter, St Paul addresses the question through the figure of Abraham, the father of many nations. It was not because of any good works that Abraham did, but rather that Abraham believed, hoping against hope…He did not doubt God’s promise; he was strengthened by faith and it was credited to him as righteousness.

It was not a question of good works that Abraham was blessed, but that Abraham believed. With God’s help in the Holy Spirit, Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, in Trastevere or in Armonk, let us say yes to God in faith to what God did in the Paschal Mystery, to believe in the One Who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our transgressions and was raised for our justification. That should unite the Roman Christians. It should unite all who are called to say yes to what God did for us in the death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus. 060808AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 060108AD

JUNE 1, 2008AD

Meet St Paul – Part Two

165 times in his letters, St Paul uses the phrase “in Christ Jesus”. It is loaded with meaning and we wonder whence it came into the consciousness of the Apostle to the Gentiles.

When St Paul referred to his life, when he persecuted the Church of God, he seemed to be demonstrating a fierce concern for the Jewish religion. (Some have said that Saul of Tarsus might have been an example of Jewish Taliban, purists who feel that everyone else should see what they see and how they see it.) Apparently, in his youth and he must have been in his twenties at the time, Saul was going to set the record straight with the newly emerging Jesus Movement as a group within a multivalent Judaism. Somehow, he saw a real threat to his view of reality in the followers of the Way, one of the names the new group.

St Paul does not describe his own conversion in his letters. He presumed that his audience in the various churches where the letter was to be read would know all about what happened to bring about the turn around, the conversion of St Paul. (There are three different accounts of his Damascus Road Experience in the Book of Acts (of the Apostles Peter and Paul.) Much of the popular imagery of Saul’s being knocked off the horse appears from three accounts by St Luke in Acts.

However, in the account in Acts 9, it is curious that Jesus said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I am Jesus and you are persecuting me.”

As Saul was reflecting on the surprising insight that he received, he must have said to himself, “I am not persecuting that man, Jesus, who died 5 or 6 years ago; I am persecuting His followers, who insist that Jesus still lives.” The graced insight might have been that Jesus, indeed, did still live in his transformed state of the Resurrection, which Saul, as a Pharisee, probably bought into within his Jewish background. Not only was Jesus alive, but He was alive within His followers as well.

One of the strong images that St Paul uses in his letters is the Church as the Body of Christ. How many times does he speak of Christ as the Head of the Body and we, the Church, as parts of the Body? (Along with St John’s imagery of the Vine and the Branches and of the Little Flock of the Good Shepherd, the Body of Christ imagery is most significant in our understanding of our relationship through, with and in Christ Jesus to Him and to one another.)

The beauty of these three biblical images of Church is that each has reference 1) to Christ and His relationship to each person; 2) to Christ and His relationship to the entire group; 3) to the relationship of each in the group with one another in Christ Jesus and vice versa.

There is also evidence that St Paul’s reflection on the Church as the Body of Christ brought him to deeper insights. In two of the later letters, which may or may not have been written by St Paul, he speaks in a form that we might call today Catholic Quantum Theology when he quotes a hymn that apparently was sung in early Christian communities in present day Turkey. Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation; for in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth….all things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him, all things hold together. He is the Head of the Body, the Church He is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, that in everything He might be pre-eminent. For in Him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether or earth or in heaven, making peace by the Blood of His cross.

The identification of Jesus with His persecuted Movement fermented in the Holy Spirit in the mind and heart of St Paul. In Christ Jesus, the Apostle to the Gentiles came to a deeper insight that physicists are proposing now, viz., that all is related. Many psychologists remind us that we are effected (either positively or negatively by every encounter we have with others. In addition, everyone whom we have encountered has been effected by us (either positively or negatively). We literally “rub off on one another. In a sense, one way in which we can understand church is the gathering of people on whom Christ Jesus has rubbed off.

Christ is everywhere now; we are somewhere now; Christ lives in us now; we live in Christ now. The 165 references to our lives in Christ Jesus point to a reality that is infinitely knowable as well as infinitely unknowable. In Christ Jesus, let us live that reality every moment of lives. How life-giving it would be if each of us could slow down in silence and in solitude to be present to the Christ Presence within us and allow the Christ Presence to be present to us. In the past, frequently people would be called to prayer with the admonition, “let us remember that we are in the Holy Presence of God.” We are, whether we realize it or not! 060108AD jfq