Weekly Reflection 032909AD

Sunday, March 29, 2009AD

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Some Heavy Lifting (Up)!!

It is important to remember that our four Gospels are literary documents, in which the Evangelist used tools and gimmicks and styles to illustrate the Gospel truth. For example, the fourth Evangelist constantly plays with ironic language to present the paradox of the Christ Quantum. Often, the language can be understood differently by different people.

There is a prime example in our Gospel this weekend when Jesus refers to the modus operandi of the universe in His being “lifted up”, viz., the Paschal Mystery. What is going on here? This is something that you might not pick up with all the televangelists or Chicken Soup books or New Age angelology.

To what does the lifting up refer? Does it refer to the crucifixion and/or the Resurrection and/or the Ascension (called the Exaltation by St Paul)? All three simultaneously?

Who does the lifting up? Is it the powers that be whose thugs carried out the execution? Is it YHWH doing the lifting up? Both simultaneously? The lifting up is the Fourth Evangelist’s way of describing the Paschal Mystery, which is the way the Universe operates. All creation is in process of dying and rising. All creation experiences ascent, descent and transformation. (Even the sun is dying each moment!) Physicists call it the conservation of energy. Catholic physicists call the conservation of energy the Paschal Mystery. Dying and rising involves not only Jesus Himself, the archetype of creation, the image of the invisible God. It involves all of us who live and move and have our being in Christ.

One’s answer depends on where the person is with respect to responding to the Paraclete-Spirit? Faith is God’s Gift. All believers are recipient of the Gift. How you handle the Gift is your decision?

In adult life, people go through two different phases. In early adulthood, most of us make our mark, try to take the world by storm and make the difference. In later adulthood, adults should learn (but do not always) that life is also about bearing pain, leaping in faith, surrendering, letting go and trusting the Paschal Mystery.

The transition point or Paschal Moment usually involves some type of suffering through which we find our egos destabilized. We learn through disappointments, rejections, absurdities, failures, sickness and sadness that a middle class life is not the reason God created us. We learn that these bad things are a part of life. In Christ Jesus, we come to see that life is the greatest good. The paradox of God’s permitting unjust situations to happen confronts thinking men and women through the ages. Why did God send the great flood in the Noah Saga? Why did God permit the Holocaust? Why did God permit the tsunami of a few years ago? Why did God permit Katrina to inundate New Orleans? Something more is involved, Which we call the Incomprehensible, the Ineffable, the Infinite Transcendent, Who permeates and yet transcends our everyday life.

Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus keeps it very simple. “Have faith in God and have faith in Me, the One Whom God sent” and “Love one another as I have loved you.”

The pattern of death and transformation is the key to the universe and the Paschal Mystery of the Creator’s Son incarnate opens the door and reveals a Reality so close that we cannot see it without the Gift of faith.

Two modern theologians put it very simply, viz., the lifting up of the Son of Man (aka the Human One) is a two sided coin. 1) Everything in your life and mine rises and falls with the Cross of Jesus Christ. 2) The most important thing in your life and mine and in the life of the universe is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

St Peter’s first letter tells us that we all experience suffering in one form or another in life. He asks us to do so in Christ Jesus by sharing in the Paschal Mystery and entrusting our lives to the Faithful Creator in every situation. Sooner or later, we all find out that our lives are not about us. Ask Christ Jesus NOW for the Grace to surrender, let go and trust the Paschal Mystery. Whether we know it or not, we are all called to participate in the Paschal Mystery in Christ Jesus. It is the divine, cosmic, universal process. What a lift!! Just what we all need!! 032909AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 032209AD

Sunday, March 22, 2009AD

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Laetare Sunday

Nicodemus, 2009AD

Nicodemus appears only in the Gospel of John three times. However, his appearances come at crucial places. As a result, his name is well known among Catholics.

In today’s Gospel excerpt from Jn 3, we hear some of the principal terms of John’s theology, such as the following: 1)Unless a person is born again, he shall not see the Kingdom of God. 2) The wind (Spirit) blows where it wills; we know not whence it comes and whither it goes. 3) God so loved the world that God gave the Only begotten Son. 4) The Son of Man must be lifted up. Also, John tells us that Nicodemus, with Joseph of Arimathea, buried Jesus.

The ironic question is “Was Nicodemus a disciple of Jesus?” At a recent biblical discussion, a group of Catholics had a prolonged serious discussion on the question. At the end, all agreed that we really cannot tell.

In another curious citation in Jn 12, the Evangelist chides the “many, even among the authorities, believed in Jesus, but …they did not acknowledge it openly in order not to be expelled from the synagogue. They preferred human praise to the glory of God. (Was this a dig at Nicodemus types?

Jesus in John’s Gospel requires a “yes” or “no” from “wannabe” disciples. Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, gives us the strength to say “Yes” to Jesus. When we do so, we are born again and again and again.

However, we are not certain how Nicodemus responded to Jesus’ question. Instead of saying Yes unequivocally, did Nicodemus temporize or waffle with a “Nes” (tentative yes) or a “Yo” (tentative no)?

Is John challenging the “Nicodemus in me” whether or not I temporize or waffle in my response to Jesus? All of us probably hedge our bets when it comes to faith, early and often. Am I readily identifiable as a Disciple of Jesus or do I, at times, obfuscate my faith? Do I make an effort to live with one eye on conventional wisdom and the other on the Gospel of Jesus? As Pilate told the crowd on Good Friday, “Look at the Man”, do we see the God-man Whose Presence in our lives has the most radical implications?

Several years ago, Pope Benedict wrote wondering if there was a difference between believing in Jesus and believing Jesus. It is a relevant question these days because so many are quick telling us that they believe in Jesus. Yet, many of these folks would, in many ways, express attitudes and views that apparently contradict what Jesus stands for. They still condone violence in a variety of issues. Do these folks believe Jesus? For example, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the children of God.” How about I tell you love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your heavenly Father. For God allows the sun to rise on the good and the bad alike, God rains on the just and the unjust? Do they (or you and I) really believe Jesus?

Although our culture is quick to say that we are a Judaeo-Christian culture, contemporary culture tempts us subtly to buy into the Original Lie, viz., “Who needs God?” It stresses the individual at the expense of the group. It measures human worth by what one has, not what one is. It can make us numb to the real problems that others face, close and far away. It values efficiency and speed more than morality, measuring success as a sign of salvation.

The figure of Nicodemus challenges us to answer ourselves if we see God made human in Jesus Christ and if we see the Mystery of Christ Crucified as the basis of life. With the Help of the Paraclete, may any ambivalence of Nicodemus be banished from us!! Do we believe in Jesus; do we believe Jesus? God willing, may we all answer a hearty and healthy Yes when questions get dicey! 032209AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 031509AD

Sunday March 15, 2009AD

Third Sunday of Lent

Not what You Think!!

St Paul had his hands full with the Jesus Movement at Corinth. There were possibly about 200 people (maybe 5 house churches of 40 people or less each) who met in Christ Jesus in the various house churches around the Greek metropolis. Small in number, they were varied in opinions and ideologies. Their viewpoints were causing problems for them 5 or 6 years after Paul founded the Church at Corinth.

St Paul’s methodology was to establish the small house churches of the Jesus Movement in major cities as an audio-visual way to win people over to faith in Christ. His focus seems to have been upon Gentile men and women who were fed up with au currant pagan religions and felt that the Jewish synagogues offered a different view of people (created in the image and likeness of God), a different view of one God Who cared about people, a different code of ethics that was clearly a cut above the mores of the ancient world. Still, they were reluctant to sign on officially as converts to Judaism because of the stringent expectations on Jews. They preferred to worship as “God-fearers”, Gentiles attracted to Judaism, but not members. St Paul felt that the Jesus Movement was a way for these folks to get on board. Not all Jews, not even all Jewish Christians, agreed. However, these Jesus Movement house churches started to develop rifts among themselves. Rather than a united worldview, the Jesus Movement was causing scandal.

Though St Paul had persecuted the Jesus Movement in his youth, his conversion to Christ Jesus brought home several realities that formed his consciousness permanently. 1) This Jesus Who was crucified and rejected by legitimate institutions, viz., the Roman Empire and Temple leadership of the time, was now vindicated by God as innocent. (Paul had been a Pharisee and Pharisees believed in an afterlife and resurrection.) Clearly, God had vindicated Jesus and His message of God’s New World Order (the Kingdom). 2) St Paul came to see that legitimate institutions might be legitimate, but that did not mean they were absolute. Christ Jesus and His worldview were the Absolutes that God had vindicated. State and institutional religion were relativized. St Paul wanted his Jesus Movement to share the vision of a new world view, a new explanation, a new understanding based on what God had done in Christ Jesus. All that Jesus had said and done for the Kingdom of God for which He was crucified and rose again was for real. Jesus’ methodology was peace through compassionate solidarity; the institution’s methodology was peace through victory. Who was correct?

What Paul stood for was the paradox of the cross. He had experienced rejection from most of his Jewish kinsfolk for whom a crucified Messiah was a scandal. He had experienced ridicule from most of the Gentile listeners. Still, as he wrote later on, “the Gospel will not be stopped. “ The One rejected and brutalized and murdered by legitimate institutions was, indeed, the One that the Transcendent God had raised.

Sadly, the paramount reality was the insight that Jesus is Lord. Sadly, the Jesus Movement in Corinth were missing the forest for the trees. They were focusing on one spin of the Gospel (Paul’s, Peter’s, Apollos’??) more than the reality-altering insight that Jesus is Lord, relativizing the World, the System, the conventional wisdom, the way that “they” (in the know!!!) thinks and acts. The Christian Insight and its implications were the important things, not how to present it.

Sadly, many members of the Jesus Movement today focus on liberal vs. conservative, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, born again. Sad, when individual “Christians” snipe at one another, sadder still when Christian groups do the sniping!

This week, we commemorate the 6^th anniversary of the Second Gulf War in Iraq (when will really end??) and we continue the war in Afghanistan. It would behoove Jesus Movement communities to bring the challenge of the Lordship of Christ Jesus to the fore once again. One thing on which Christian churches agree is the Sermon on the Mount (Mtt 5 – 7). Perhaps, a cursory review of the perhaps obsolete criteria of St Augustine’s just war theory by committed Christians might be appropriate for Christian churches who celebrate that Jesus is Lord. We might reach the sad realization that our in-fighting among ourselves and our accommodation to the System cause scandal and missed opportunities. Perhaps, a great awakening about the compromises “Christian churches” have made with the System in the past and present would prompt greater cohesiveness about what unites, rather than divides us. Remember St Paul’s words today, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” 031509AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 030809AD

Sunday March 8, 2009AD

Second Sunday in Lent

Time to Wake Up

For centuries, we hear the Gospel of the Transfiguration on this Second Sunday of Lent. It has been offered to Catholics by way of encouragement that while we anticipate Good Friday, Easter is the flip side of the coin.!

Jesus had just predicted His impending death and Resurrection and has offered some realistic warnings to the disciples that they were not ready to hear. “Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me! Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life?

Theologians have called this middle portion of St Mark’s Gospel, “Mark’s Male Catechism”. (Recall that Jewish society in Jesus’ time was male-dominated and that Jesus challenged His hearers (male and female) to see that the System’s premises.) Conventional wisdom frequently misses the mark big time. We need our commitment and closeness with Christ Jesus to see things as God sees them.

How do Jesus’ disciples (and apostles) these days (that’s us, folks!!) maintain our commitment and closeness with the Lord? In our relationship with the Lord, recall that there are various levels in which we relate with one another. 1) We can maintain an acquaintance with another (the Lord) through a casual association with that person. (For many, it becomes a perfunctory and (sometimes, begrudged) attendance at a Sunday Mass.) 2) We can maintain a familiarity with another (the Lord) through some time spent together now and then, frequently or infrequently. (For many, this becomes an occasional Rosary or something “churchy” when one feels in the mood.) 3) We can maintain an intimacy with another (the Lord) spent with the other in quiet moments. (For many, this becomes the times for quiet prayer in solitude, silence and in slowing down. (As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “When you pray, go to your inner room and pray to your Father in secret.”)

Whatever happened that day in today’s Gospel, Peter, James and John encountered the the insightful words of God, “This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him.” Jesus presents a different agenda than that of the System. The three disciples are dense, as are the other disciples, viz., they obviously don’t understand what they have heard. Indeed, in the original text of St Mark’s Gospel, they never do get the full picture. So we are in good company!

Nevertheless, they were in the intimate Presence of the Lord on the mountaintop in which Jesus conversed with Elijah and Moses. Both reminded Jesus that the destiny of the Paschal Mystery (ascent, descent and transformation) (death and resurrection) was the pattern to which God calls Jesus and all of us in Christ Jesus as well. Jesus had a religious experience, as did the three disciples on the mountaintop with Him and Moses and Elijah.

So can all of us when we allow for time for intimacy in solitude, silence and slowing down in our inner room! As we hear, God speaks supersonic language. We don’t hear God’s Voice and yet, we do hear.

A great difficulty with American Catholics is that we expect immediate results of our actions. Our relationship with the Transcendent in Christ Jesus does not develop in perceivable ways. Frequently, usually, it develops three steps forward and two steps backward. Frequently, usually, it develops in ordinary, mundane events. Frequently, usually, it develops in a post factum, not immediate, manner. It is like the prophet Elijah who experienced the Transcendent in a small, barely noticeable wind. The growth in our life in and with and through God can be traced by reflecting back on what has taken place.

Father Karl Rahner said many times in the twentieth century that believers in the future had to tap into the transcendent Holy Longing that God has placed in every human heart. God orients each of us to God’s Self. We need to learn the techniques of presence to that Holy Longing in solitude, silence, and slowing down. Peter, James and John represent all of us in that they went up the holy mountain with Jesus and then, heard the Voice of God speak to them. Nothing so dramatic will happen in your life or mine. However, God has subtle ways of breaking through with men, women and children who try to attune their hearts to intimacy with the Transcendent God through, with and in Christ Jesus, when we make room for God not just for our hour of acquaintance on a Sunday, but in the intimacy of time spent in the Lord on a regular basis every day of our life. We merely wake up to the Reality in which we live each moment, each Now. 030809AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 030109AD

Sunday, March 1, 2009AD

1^st Sunday of Lent

Temptations in the Wilderness Still Abound!!

A great way to begin the first week of Lent is to recall our solidarity with Jesus Whose temptation in the wilderness is always the first Gospel which we proclaim this Sunday of Lent.

Remember that when we are tempted, “Jesus Himself is able to help those who are tempted because He Himself was tempted.” (Hb 2.18).

Whenever we hear this Gospel, recall that it is always the follow-up of the story of Jesus’ Baptism by John! It seems that the flip side of Jesus’ proclamation as Son of God was that He experienced temptation about what that meant with the ministry that he was beginning. Thus, Sonship and temptation go hand in hand. Strange to think about it. Yet, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness where temptation commences. The wild beasts threaten Jesus; the angels minister to Him. He is in between.

An inaccurate way of considering Jesus is that His life was one of smooth sailing. (I.e., that He knew Who He was and, therefore, He just moved from one scene to another.) Just as the rest of us experience temptation to live God’s Plan for us differently, it appeared that Jesus was tempted to do the same. In fact, in the parallel synoptic Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the tempter prefaces the temptation with “If You are God’s Son, then live your life differently. Change the stones into bread; get a name for yourself; amass the power of the world. Go for possessions, popularity, power! Mentioning both beasts and angels, Jesus is tempted, as we are, to remember that we are capable of behaving like beasts, at other times like angels. Jesus did not succumb; in Christ Jesus we do not need to do so either.

Jesus was challenged in the wilderness to undermine the Plan that God the Father had for Him that was revealed at His baptism by John. “If You are the Son of God, then…” Catholics, indeed, all people, need to take seriously the words of Jesus to us, again and again, to address God as Abba, Father. Jesus tells us all to go ahead and dare to call God our Abba, Father frequently. We do so whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer! When we are tempted to act inappropriately as God’s daughter or son, the tempter is challenging us, “How can God be your Father and you do such things?”

When our Hebrew forebears were exposed to Persian culture about 6 centuries before the birth of Jesus, they became familiar with the peculiarly dualistic system of Zorastrian religion, viz., the religion of Persia at that time. The Persians believed that there were 2 gods, one of good and one of evil, that vied for the control of reality and the victor of the struggle was up for grabs. In addition, there were two forces at work in every human person, one driving the person to good, the other to evil.

In Jewish prayers, there are many references to the way of life, or death, the way of light, or darkness, the way of good, or evil. The pious Jew prayed always to make the right choice. The biblical Hebrews spoke of ha yetzer ratser,” the evil urge”. We all know it as the drive within us to do what should not be done, to choose autonomy from God, to live life on one’s own agenda, not God’s plan of action that God is the Centre of reality and that we all have a unique role to play in that reality contingent on our relationships with others.

Early Christian writers, influenced by their Hebrew matrix, spoke of the “double soul”. We know what we should do, but for a lot of different reasons that we cannot name at the moment, we don’t do so. Greek Christian writers spoke of dipsychia (Frequently, we are people of two minds! Sound familiar?)

More recently, Catholics recall that we were taught that each of us had a guardian angel (by our right shoulder) and a bad angel (by our left shoulder) who encouraged us to behave or misbehave. Temptations take many forms, as we know from experience. The primary temptation is that of pride or arrogance or hubris. (This was the temptation which defeated our first parents in the Garden of Eden, to be like God.) This means that we are tempted to live on our own terms, to do what we want to do and to behave ego-centrically. Other temptations challenge the evenness that we would like to maintain in life. No doubt, there are physical, emotional, chemical, genetic reasons that cause us to move in different directions. Nevertheless, such would have been the same for Jesus of Nazareth.

One thing to remember is that Jesus knows and understands what is going on and why in the lives of each and every one of us. Please God, the Christ Quantum present in, with and through us and one another will always enable us to do the right, to love the good and to walk humbly with our God each day, each “now” of our lives. 030109AD jfq