Weekly Reflection 022209AD

Sunday Feb 22, 2009AD

7^th Sunday in Green

Catch the Big Picture

St Paul was an optimist. He believed that small groups of committed members of the Jesus Movement were capable of changing the world. He felt that the leaven, the virus of the Gospel, in small doses in critical places, viz., the port cities of the ancient Mediterrean, in time would be sufficient to win the world for God in Christ Jesus. Certainly, his timing was off, but 2000 years later, we celebrate St Paul’s 2000^th birthday and the Gospel of Christ Jesus will not be stopped. Go figure!!

St Paul’s methodology was to keep the group identity strong and secure. As he addresses his audience (and us as well) today, he wants the Jesus Movement to remain loyal to our commitment to the Christ Quantum.

He wants the Jesus Movement to be united. The Hebrew word that he would have used was echad (the one-ness, the unity). The Greek word was koinonia (community). In English, it is solidarity. All are one in Christ Jesus. The Jesus Movement should bring people together, not alienate them.

One of the key ideas in St Paul’s thought is that there still exist what he calls the “Powers and the Principalities” , viz., the System, the Worldview, the conventional wisdom, the way “they” all behave. St Paul understood then as well as now that one person was powerless against the system. There is strength in numbers. As Margaret Mead said in the twentieth century, “Never doubt that small groups of people can change the world. Indeed, they are the only ones who ever do!”

Something bolsters people when they share a common vision. We sense that we are not alone. Others see reality differently as I do. We do not have to go along with the crowd.

Sadly, many live very individualistic lives. They think of themselves as the center of reality and as a result, lead what can be isolated, delusional, sad lives. We find our fulfillment through our response to the Holy Longing of Transcendence, built into the human mind and heart. When I am the sole arbiter of reality, I am headed for trouble. Many sadly find themselves in such a dilemma.

Others find their meaning in a group, whether it is one’s ethnicity, nation, religion. We have a group identity, but unless the group acknowledges that the Holy Longing for Transcendence is bigger than that group’s identity, the group will not survive in a healthy mode. Ethnocentrism. chauvinism, racism, religious intolerance make for dead-ends.

St Paul understood that there is something bigger than group identity. After all, not everyone belongs to your group. He felt that the Jesus Movement within Judaism was pointing to the Big Picture. All were included in God’s plan; all were the apple of God’s eye; in Christ, there was no Jew or gentile, slave or free, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus! St Paul would join us, “God bless the whole world -- no exceptions”.

It was the role of the Jesus Movement within Judaism that Israel would be a light to all nations. St Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians was probably addressed to a group of about 200 people from a very eclectic background. God knows, they were far from perfect, but God and St Paul loved them.

The important thing that St Paul stresses today is that even though life is unpredictable at times (his, yours, theirs and mine) , God is always faithful. God asks us to trust God on days good and not so good. The God of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Self-identified on Mount Sinai at the time of the liberation of the Chosen People from slavery in Egypt as YHWH. The Sacred Name can be legitimately translated as the God of Life and also, the God of Mystery (infinitely knowable and unknowable simultaneously). God is the Ground of Existence but is Incomprehensible, Ineffable, Infinite. In the Incarnation of Christ Jesus, God adds to the Self-Naming as St John tells us in 1 John, that this life-giving, incomprehensible “God is Love and that those who abide in Love abide in God and God abides in them.”

This is the Holy Mystery, the Holy Longing that drives the human person to Transcendence. Other forces, the System, the Worldview, the conventional wisdom that seems to answer the question, can get in the way. St Paul felt it was important to trust in the God of the Big Picture, no matter what. We need to share the Vision and to build one another up. That is why we need groups of mutual support, called para-oikias, “other homes”, of the Jesus Movement, to build up ourselves and one another as well as others with whom we share our lives. God is to be trusted on God’s terms, not on ours. God is always faithful. We are the ones who see things differently. We need mutual support in Christ Jesus. Don’t you agree? 022209AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 021509AD

Sunday February 15, 2009AD

6th Sunday in Greentime

Lepers? Then and Now

Last week, our daily readings recounted the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis. We heard two pivotal accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and again, in Gen 2. The Creation stories are as relevant today as then.

These stories are told in literary, mythical language. We are not to interpret them as scientific history. We get in trouble fast if we do. Heard properly, there is much to learn.

The human person is the apex of creation. Only after the creation of the human person, male and female, does God declare that creation was very good.

We also heard as a responsorial psalm, Psalm 8, which was possibly written by the same inspired author. In Psalm 8, we hear of the human paradox, viz., that, of all God created, the human person is very frail, fragile and insignificant and yet, the human person alone is created in the image and likeness of God. This human paradox is the birthright of all.

All people are created in the image and likeness of God. We should remember this inspired insight when we hear the Gospel healing of the leper in today’s Gospel.

According to the erroneous opinion of the time, the leper was somehow responsible for his condition. Whatever, the leper needs to be shunned. The leper was a zombie, viz., living dead on the fringes of society. (Written off.)

Yet, Jesus knew what the Creation story and Psalm 8 meant by the human paradox. YHWH and Jesus of Nazareth see the divine image in the leper. Jesus responds by flaunting convention and touching and healing the leper.

The basic Judaeo-Christian value of the absolute dignity of the human person is the basis of Jesus’ healing today. Hopefully, with and in and through Christ Jesus, this value motivates our thinking and actions.

It is wise to recall that God views all God’s sons and daughters differently than we might. God loves all, not some. God loves even the people whom we can’t stand. Those whom we deem unlovable or hurtful or burdensome, God sees as VIP’s, viz., God’s Own daughters and sons! (Hard to swallow, but true!!)

This value has to be operative not only on the personal level, but also on the cultural level. According to Pope John Paul’s Gospel of Life, 1) God wants us to be mindful of the silent and helpless. 2) God wants us to be the voice of the silent and helpless. 3) God loves and wants us to love the ones rejected or burdens to society. God loves lepers. God loves the unborn, the very sick, the very poor, the very forgotten, the very elderly. Jesus wants us to do so as well in thought and actions. God wants us to see them as God sees them and to act accordingly.

One of the great ladies of NY Catholicism took God’s Word literally and is now on the track to canonization in the Catholic Church. Dorothy Day, a well-known Catholic, who died on Nov 29, 1980 AD in NYC, caught the Gospel here in NYC. She tried to balance the tension of the holy longing of contemplation with the drive “to make the world a place easier for people to be good.”

She tried to live her life, with God’s Help, in conformity to the teachings of Jesus, particularly, the Sermon on the Mount in St Matthew’s Gospel. (Maybe the Sermon on the Mount was the original “Straight Talk Express”?) Jesus reminds us in the Beatitudes that the person who, with God’s Help, acknowledges God (not the false god, EGO (Easing God Out) as the Center of Reality, is moving in the right direction. She understood that we have all been blessed with many gifts by God in our lives. However, she realized that one’s life was not about oneself, but rather about one’s place in God’s plan for reality. She knew that she had to use her gifts in service to others to acknowledge God as her Center.

Whether it was her protesting air-raid drills (when she sat in Central Park and fed the pigeons), her non-violent demonstrations, based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, mediated by St Therese’s Little Way, her care for homeless people at the many hospitality houses, beginning in NYC, that she established, her editing of the Catholic Worker, beginning in 1933, she believed that she was doing God’s Will by trying to view reality from God’s perspective, not “the system’s”.

Come to meet Dorothy in a one-woman one hour show here at St Patrick’s on Tuesday evening, February 24 at 7.30PM. The play is called “Fool for Christ”; it has received great receptions in many prominent Catholic venues.

Her ministry in NYC and throughout the world was to show concern as a voice of the silent and helpless. She showed her concern for those labeled the lepers by reaching out and touching those rejected by the system, the “least of the sisters and brothers”. She understood that Jesus tells us in the Gospel which she treasured so much, that final judgment is based on our response to the hidden Christ in our midst, even in those we sometimes categorize as “the lepers”. 021509 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 020809AD

Sunday, February 8, 2009AD

5^th Sunday in Greentime

Where Jesus Is, Evil Ain’t

From now until the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, we hear excerpts from the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. The stories constitute the beginning of Jesus’ announcement of the Kingdom of the God of LIfe.

The stories are told in a staccato fashion. The action moves fast. To dramatize the significance of Jesus’ opening salvo against whatever it is that diminishes the quality of human life, St Mark even uses the “historical present”. (Now, right away, Jesus does this; Now, right away, Jesus does that.”)

We hear the account of Jesus’ cure of St Peter’s mother-in-law, the cure of a leper, the cure of the paralytic lowered through the roof of Jesus’ house. In response, we hear the negative reaction of some. Jesus’ disciples don’t fast as other Jews did. Jesus concludes that vignette by politely telling those shocked that something radically new is happening in the ministry that Jesus expedites. God has a habit of surprising!

Today’s Gospel has several interesting aspects to it. 1) We are told that Jesus entered the house of Simon (Peter) and Andrew. Jesus cures St Peter’s mother-in-law. This tells us that St Peter was a “married” Pope. In fact, St Paul tells us in 1 Cor 9. 3, that “Mrs” Simon Peter traveled with her husband on missionary journeys as late as 55 AD!!

(In addition, there was a legend that St Peter’s wife also died as a martyr as well. There was also another legend that their daughter, St Petronilla, hosted a house church in Rome.

Clearly, we can only speculate. However, since St Peter’s wife was still on the scene 25 years after the death and Resurrection of the Lord, it is safe to assume that she too were a believer in Jesus. Did she meet Jesus in the healing of her mother? Did she experience the Christ Quantum through her husband?

2) However, the Gospel passage concludes today with Jesus’ retreat into the deserted place to pray (to YHWH, God the Father) Jesus here shows the necessity of prayer to re-charge His Own batteries. Like us in all things but sin, Jesus was a Man of Prayer. Just as He wants for us, He is both a Person of Prayer and a Person of Action for others. He wants each of us to balance the tension in our lives of prayerful activist or an active pray-er. In the process that He established, Jesus reminds us in essence of the great commandment, love God totally and love one’s neighbor as oneself.

American Catholics are programmed by a culture to be always “on the move”. Silence and solitude and slowing down are almost viewed as “neurotic” by some. It is important for American Catholics to remember that the Founder of our Religion was an activist who practiced silence, solitude and slowing down. However, He can also be described as a pray-er who was a person of action. He maintained the balance in His life; so should we.

One of the realities that Catholics are absorbing these days is that we live in Christ Jesus, it is His life, death and Resurrection that in which we co-exist. Jesus meant His message and His non-violent methodology to be lived by the Jesus Movement. He energizes us to view reality, viz., the Big Picture, from God’s slant, not from our own or from conventional wisdom’s, the system, what St Paul would later call the Principalities and the Powers.

It is important for us to recall that Jesus asks us to view life through what people called “Gospel lenses”. He wants us to live and behave as He lived and behaved. However we do so will vary from person to person because the existential realities of each of our lives varies. So, in the life of each American Catholic, there must be a balance of prayer and activity. It will be our way of fulfilling, with God’s Help, the great commandment to love God and our neighbor as ourselves.

Jesus sent the Jesus Movement, two by two, in the early days of His ministry in Galilee to do what He was doing, viz., proclaiming, healing and exorcizing demons. We are called to continue that work today by 1) pride in our Catholic faith in Christ Jesus; 2) bringing solace and consolation to real people in our lives in their hurts; 3) naming reality as Christ Jesus sees it. The system is not the Big Picture; the Kingdom is the Big Picture. In the Kingdom of God, we try to let God clean up the mess in the relationships that we have with others, with the environment, with ourselves and with God.

The use of the word, euthus, “immediately” as well as the historical present, reminds us of the urgency of co-existence in Christ Jesus. Where Jesus is, evil ain’t. This Truth continues if we make time and space for Jesus in our lives. 020809 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 020109AD

Sunday, February 1, 2009AD

4^th Sunday in Green

Who Needs an Exorcism?

Beginning in 1970, Roman Catholics (and other Christians, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians) began to hear the Sunday Scriptures proclaimed over a three year cycle. Still, some Scripture readings appeared weird.

In those years, when Catholics became more familiar with the Gospel of St Mark, many were put off by the exorcisms that Jesus performed. Who needed such stories in the 20^th century?

That all changed in 1974 with the release of the motion picture, The Exorcist, based on a novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty, a NYC author. Now people were listening intently and they made phone calls to rectories asking about symptoms of exorcism, possibly manifest in one’s spouse. (It’s true!!) Blatty said, in an interview, that he, indeed, did believe in demonic possession. When asked why we don’t see much of it in the modern world, he answered that it served evil’s purpose better to have a low profile in modern, “enlightened” cultures that feel such thoughts ridiculous. “Why should the devil run around with a tail and a pitchfork, when he can do so in a three piece suit and seem so real?”

Today, people go one better than Blatty by demonstrating that maybe not only individuals, but families and cultures, can be possessed by the demonic as well. All one has to do is to use the words “addiction, compulsion and enmeshment” for “demonic possession”. One might see reality differently. There is a nexus between the individual and family and culture. If an individual is addicted, compulsed or enmeshed in something bigger than oneself, sooner or later that affects the family. In addition, the same holds true for addicted families affecting both individuals. addicted cultures affect constituent families. St Paul wrote about the “principalities in the air”. He was probably talking about forces that were bigger than an individual or a family or a culture could handle on its own. Whatever contributed to addictions, compulsions and enmeshments qualify for what St Paul was saying. The demonic today might be the unbridled quest for power, prestige, profits, popularity, pleasure. The list goes on.

Jesus, in His startling, but not quaint, exorcisms demonstrated that God’s Power is stronger than that of evil. Modern Catholics (and other Christians) need the encouragement of these exorcism stories very much, because of our neurotic, non-stop, noisy, narcissistic, numb culture. We might be more in need of an exorcism than we might think.

In and through and with Christ Jesus, we believe that God is in us and we are in God every nanosecond. We cannot overcome addictions, compulsions and enmeshments (viz., possessions) on our own; we need support groups. That was one reason why Jesus formed the Jesus Movement.

As Pope Benedict says, “Jesus brings us God in a special way.” However, God is personal and originates traits of healthy persons. Healthy persons have, at least, three types of relationships, viz., acquaintances, familiarities and intimacies. Catholics become acquainted with our personal God through our Sunday gatherings of the Jesus Movement. Fine, but is it sufficient? Catholics become familiar with our personal God through reading of Scripture, of mature Catholic theology or saying a Rosary or a novena. Fine, but is it sufficient? Catholics can become intimate with our personal God through contemplative moments of silence, solitude and slowing down. This is what we call “Quality Time.” God speaks supersonic language. God speaks but we cannot hear God’s Voice. It is only post factum usually that God’s silent Words resonate in our minds and hearts. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta stressed this in so much of her thought.

Dorothy Day had these three relationships with God on the streets of NYC. She was acquainted with God through attendance at Sunday and weekday Mass. She was familiar with God through frequent Scripture reading, lives of the saints, particularly St Therese, the Little Flower, the Rosary, Lauds and Vespers in the morning and evening. She was intimate with God though a regular time spent daily in silence, solitude and slowing down, whether at home or in her local church on East 12 Street in NYC. It gave her the strength to march with Suffragettes in 1919 in Washington DC and on Grape and Lettuce boycotts in 1974 in California. Through her relationship with the Transcendent and Intimate, initiated and nurtured by God through the Jesus Movement, according to her own words, she said, “(She) wanted to live so close to the bottom that when the system collapsed, she would not have far to fall.”

Who needs exorcisms these days? Maybe, in a sense, we all (individuals, families and cultures) could use an exorcism or two. Call it as you see it. Something has gone wrong with the way things are. Jesus says that God will fix it if we believe God can do so (or even, has to do so). 020109AD jfq