Weekly Reflection 042510AD

Sunday, April 25, 2010AD

Easter Sunday, IV

Jesus Has Some Little Lambs

Every year, on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, we worship Jesus under one of His most appealing titles, the Good Shepherd. Even though we do not live in a pastoral setting around here, the imagery is enticing and people respond.

However, as people in a pastoral setting know, apparently sheep are not the most lovable of animals. They can be very cantankerous and smelly and willful. It could only be a good shepherd that would really love them.

The image of God as the Shepherd goes back into the Hebrew Scriptures. Usually, Psalm 23, the most beloved of all the psalms, comes immediately to our minds. “YHWH is my Shepherd.” In today’s responsorial psalm, which apparently was an entrance hymn to liturgy in King Solomon’s Temple. Although the citizens of Jerusalem were now urban, they still referred to themselves as the “sheep of YHWH.”

In our Gospel today, from John 10, viz., the Good Shepherd chapter, Jesus Self-identifies with His Father’s nickname. Jesus speaks of how His sheep hear His Voice. There is room for reflection here as well for us. First of all, each individual sheep hears the Voice of the Good Shepherd. Second, the flock as a flock responds in unison to the Voice of the Good Shepherd. Third, the individual sheep of the flock have a relationship with one another.

It is for this reason that Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, who resided at Fordham University, down in the Bronx, has referred to the Little Flock of the Good Shepherd as one of the ways in which Catholics identify their relationship to God and to Christ and to one another. Writing thirty years ago, Cardinal Dulles said that because of the development of various lay movements with USA Catholicism, such as Marriage Encounter, the Cursillo Movement, the Charismatic Renewal and other lay ministries, it was a unique gift of the American church to world Catholicism.

The Catholic scene was much different thirty years than it is now, sad to say. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the post-modern phase that so many traditional institutions encounter after the pivotal year, 1968. Most traditional institutions have undergone what has been called “de-construction”. New views of church and family have come into conventional wisdom with the result that many do not take traditional values.

Sadly, the growth of Catholic Communities as Little Flocks of the Good Shepherd has waned sadly in the recent past. With two of the basic traditional institutions undergoing scrutiny, the church and the family, the traditional symbiotic relationship between family and church has weakened. We have generations now of good-hearted Catholics, who do not know very much about what their faith is all about. In addition, certainly, in the past months, with the sad revelations about cover-ups of clergy accused of abuse, our leadership has brought difficult times upon the total Church community. Their public relations staff needs to get a little more real.

Sadly, too, many are so hard pressed for time that it is seen as a burden to require people to do anything more than the attendance at Sunday Mass (and keep it under an hour, please!!)

Every sheep in the flock, at one time or another, has to walk through the dark valley. We call it the Paschal Mystery, when we experience the painful realities of life, (one’s mid-life crisis is only one predictable event!). If there has not been sufficient grounding in faith by both church and family when the going is good (as it is for so many of us in our setting around here), then when the shadow side of life confronts us, then, it might be too late to look for the answers that one should have been gathering earlier.

The image of the Good Shepherd is always appropriate. However, these days, Cardinal Dulles probably would not use it as readily since so much has changed in our Catholic social setting. Still, it is a reminder to us that when we do walk through the dark valley, the Good Shepherd has been there all along. On good days as well as bad, many each of Jesus’ sheep and the entire flock listen in unison to His Voice and respond accordingly. It is then that He will, indeed, lead us to the verdant pasture. He is doing it all along, but most of us are too busy to realize it. 042510AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 041810AD

Sunday, April 18, 2010AD

Third Sunday of Easter

er and Us -- Young and Old

Our Gospel reading this weekend appears as an epilogue to the original concluding chapter of the Fourth Gospel, viz., Jn 20. (You will recall that last weekend, we celebrated Fearless Thomas, who had the courage to be out of the place where the Jesus Movement was in hiding, as were the ladies led by St Mary Magdalene who had the courage to go to the tomb!!) Last week, we heard what were meant to be Jesus’ last words in the original Gospel of John, “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.” (That’s us, folks, if we accept God’s Grace.)

This weekend, we hear of another appearance of the Risen One to a group of seven of “His own.” Now, they go fishing.

After the miraculous catch of 153 fish (who bothered to count?), when the disciples come ashore, Jesus is preparing a breakfast for them. Imagine that. After all that Jesus had been through, He bothers to be both the Chef and the Host for a bread-fish gathering, reminiscent of the loaves and fishes.

Jesus had already greeted His own with “Peace be with you (Shalom aleichem)” in the Gospel last Sunday three times. Now, St Peter was confronted by three questions from Jesus, ‘Do you love me more than these?” When Jesus raises the question a third time, Peter knew where Jesus was heading. This was his triple rehabilitation for his triple denial. (Incidentally, part of the scene provokes another hint at the story, the charcoal fire that was last mentioned on the cold night of Peter’s denial.)

Next, Jesus, Who has just commissioned Peter to feed the lambs warns Peter that his pastoral future resembles Jesus’ Ministry in another way. Peter will experience flaws, failures, falls and forgiveness, (just as we all do!!) Jesus tells Peter that Peter will lay down his life for the sheep in his martyrdom.

In many ways, St Peter is an archetypal Christian. He can be a big talker; he can be a failure; he can be forgiven and rehabilitated, just like all of us. He is always a part of God’s plan.

However, like every human person, St Peter experienced the vicissitudes of life. He had good days; he had bad days. He met disappointment, rejection, absurdity, trouble and sorrows, just as did Jesus and just as we do.

St Peter also went through the stages of life. When he was a young person, he wore what he wanted and went where he wanted. When he was older, he went where he preferred not to go (to martyrdom on Vatican Hill)

Hindu thought tells us that each adult goes through three stages of life. When we are young, we build our tower, we make our mark, we take the world by storm. That is fine and good (but for a Catholic, we always must follow Jesus’ Gospel in our dealings with others.) Then, at one point or another, we experience the onset of discomfort and disillusionment. We come to realize that life is bigger than we are. Our lives are not about us. Jesus in the 40 days in the desert at the start of His public life tells us to trust Him and God the Father. (Hindus call this “forest dwelling”.) When we transcend with God’s Help the shock that we are not the center of the universe, we become “happy, wise folks”, we realize that God’s plan has always been kicking in for us. It is that we have not seen it.

St Peter can remind us of ourselves. Once he was a young man and did what he wanted. Then, when he became older, he realized with God’s Help that he was not the hotshot that he thought he was. He learned that he was not the captain of his own ship. Rather, he was part of God’s family. He was flawed. He fell at times into sin. He was forgiven in Christ Jesus and restored. He did his job and laid down his life for Christ. With God’s Help, we can do the same. Life in Christ is beautiful!!!! 041810AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 041110AD

Sunday, April 11, 2010AD

Second Sunday of Easter

Three Who Didn’t See, but Believed

The patron saint of Missouri, the “Show Me State” makes his annual appearance in our traditional Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter. Thomas represents those who demand empirical verification that belief in Jesus is legitimate. When Jesus meets his demand, Thomas’ response is “My Lord and my God.” (This is the highest title attributed to Jesus in the Gospels.

He is well-known from the Fourth Gospel in which he appears at the time of Jesus’ Last Supper, death and Resurrection. He asserted that he would do to die with Jesus. He asked Jesus “Lord, we don’t know where You are going, so how can we know the Way? Jesus said that He, Jesus, was the medium and the message, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Finally, he became Doubting Thomas when he challenged the others, “unless I put my fingers in the nailprints and my hand into His side, I will not believe.” (You know the rest.)

Many think that the incident of Doubting (Skeptical) Thomas probably represented the last account in the original Gospel of John. If such is the case, Jesus’ words to Thomas at the conclusion of the Gospel today would have originally been the last words of the Risen One in the Fourth Gospel. “You believed, Thomas, because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

Is Jesus talking about us? With the Help of the Holy Spirit, indeed, He is. However, it is not that easy. We all experience, at times, the Left Hand of God. In our lives, there is an assortment of experiences that challenge our faith in the God revealed by our Lord Jesus Christ. Catholics and all Christians should be very circumspect in talking about the depth of our faith. We all want to be strong believers. Still, sometimes the vicissitudes of life can challenge an easy faith and make our “credo’s” a little shakier.

During April each year, Catholics salute some twentieth century figures, who, with God’s Help, tried to believe amid adversity, even though they had not seen. We recall Lutheran theologian, Dietrich von Bonhoeffer, Jesuit scientist-theologian, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the California farm worker, Cesar Chavez.

Bonhoeffer was a young Lutheran professor who was scandalized by how easily so many of the mainline German churches gave into the demands of Adolf Hitler. Germany was almost half Lutheran and half Roman Catholic. The tacit agreement made with many leaders by Hitler was simply to stick with prayers and rituals and don’t say anything about what is going on in Germany now. Bonhoeffer, in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, coined the expression, “cheap grace”, when one waves a baptismal certificate and claims membership and all its privileges when convenient. He also coined the expression “costly grace”, when one’s baptismal commitment to Christ Jesus makes demands upon us, such as speaking out and acting against the injustices of the Third Reich. He spoke of the role of the Church in the world of Nazi Germany, “The Church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the midst of the village.” He came to see, as he wrote, “We have learned to see the great events of world history from below, viz., from the perspective of those who suffer.” A moral rule of thumb for Bonhoeffer (more appropriate now than ever) was, “The ultimate question for a responsible person to ask is how is the coming generation to live.” Bonhoeffer was hanged on April 9, 1945, shortly before V-E Day.

Jesuit anthropologist- theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, saw the unity of creation, as did “the man of the twentieth century”, physicist, Albert Einstein. Teilhard’s simple little book, The Divine Milieu, identified the church, and, through the church in Christ Jesus, the entire world, as the place where God dwells in all things and all things dwell in God. Because he was so ahead of his time, Teilhard was treated with suspicion by church leaders in Rome. Still, much of his synthesis came to be celebrated after his death. Teilhard saw the Incarnation of God as the Omega Point, toward which unity, all things were moving. In his systemization of religion and science, he had expressed a hope that he would die on Easter Sunday, the day of God’s definitive breakthrough in Christ Jesus. He died in NYC on Easter, April 10, 1955.

Thirdly, we remember Mexican American Catholic union organizer, Cesar Chavez, who died on April 23, 1999. Born in the USA, he struggled for the rights of migrant workers (both USA and Mexican- born) in a fashion distinctly shaped by Catholic social teaching. He was motivated by the Gospel to organize non-violently the migrant workers who were exploited in many ways in the Southwest United States in the mid-century. Each union member was expected to pay dues each month as a commitment to the union. (Dues were $3.50 a month. This was a small amount, but it gave a sense of vested interest and dignity to the migrant workers in their efforts.) Even though at times, some growers and rival unions resorted to violence against the Catholic non-violent social effort, the union was committed to work through Gospel non-violence to point out, challenge and correct injustices against farmworkers. Venerable Dorothy Day and Robert Kennedy and others found further inspiration to work for justice through his efforts.

All three did not see, but they believed. With God’s Help, may we who have not seen believe, on good days and bad, in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God.

Thomas saw; Thomas believed. With God’s Spirit, may we all who do not see also believe!! 041110 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 040410AD

Sunday April 4, 2010AD

Easter Sunday

Fifty Days Are Not Enough !!!

This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad! Christians believe that words are incapable of expressing what the Paschal Mystery is all about. It is more than just the vindication and victory of Christ Jesus after His horrific death on Good Friday. Easter is all about each of us and all of us because of Christ Jesus. Each day is Easter when you believe that Christ died and rose and lives.

Quantum theologians tell us that every person in our lives rubs off upon us. We rub off on every person with whom we have contact. Christ Jesus is like us in all things but sin. He still rubs off on us! Why should it be any different with Him?

In the Hebrew tradition, “son of man” meant “everyone”, a generic name for “humanity”. (In Hebrew, the words are ben adam; in Aramaic, the words are bar nasha.) Lately, it has even been translated as the “human one”. However, in the later Hebrew Bible book of Daniel, the term starts to refer “One like a Son of Man (a human one) coming on the clouds of heaven to whom dominion has been handed”.

St Paul teaches us “Christ Jesus is both the image of the invisible God and the archetype of creation”. Our Creed celebrates Him truly divine, truly human.

Christ Jesus, therefore, becomes for us the archetype, the paradigm and the exemplar of what it means to be both truly divine and truly human. He rubs off on us through the Jesus Movement, through the Word of God, through the Sacraments, particularlyBaptism and the Eucharist, and in myriad other ways that only He knows.

Christ Jesus is the archetype of creation (St Paul’s very words!!). We can say in faith that Christ Jesus is in our deepest DNA and our deepest DNA is in Christ Jesus. As St Paul says in other places, we are the Body of Christ. Is it not apt to say that each of us is a cell in the Body of Christ?

Still, as we live our lives in Christ Jesus, we experience the reality of human living. We experience God’s many blessings, the right hand of God. Still, all of us, no matter how long we kid ourselves, experience the painful mysteries of life, the left hand of God. Christ Jesus in us teaches us that all humanity, as part of creation, needs at some point to surrender, let go and trust the Holy Mystery at work within us and within the universe.

In St Luke’s account of the arrival of the ladies at the tomb, the women hear that it was necessary for the son of man to die and rise again. The announcement clearly refers to the Crucified One. However, might the announcement also refer to the necessity of the Paschal Mystery in all human experience. In Christ Jesus, we die and rise and live again, again and again. True, we experience both the right and left hand of God during our earthly life. Still, we live in a New Reality, a New World Order, a New Universe, when we grasp the Paschal Mystery. We rub off on each other!

Our vocations as New York Catholics is to proclaim both in actions and words and attitudes our belief in the Paschal Mystery of Christ Jesus. Through Him, with Him and in Him, Jesus wants us to live the Paschal Mystery as best we can.

Four hundred years ago, St Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no hands but ours; no feet but ours, no lips but ours.” The Crucified and Risen One expects us, New York Catholics, to be “change agents”, “critical mass”, “core groups”, catalysts, channels, instruments of God’s Peace”.

Sadly, our world seems to continue to implode through violence against people and nature. Several say that our nation has lost our sense of justice, fairness, compassion and civility. Today, the Human One asks us to be human by living His Paschal Mystery with all its implications every day of our life through, with and in Christ Jesus. God knows each of us (know, in the biblical sense); loves (love in the biblical sense); forgives us (forgives, in the biblical sense, like the prodigal son and the woman taken in adultery recently and His executioners (Palm Sunday’s Gospel)). Let us ask for the Spirit of a New Vision of our place in the world as we recommit ourselves today as we renew our baptismal commitment to His and our (in Him) Paschal Mystery. Christ crucified and risen lives in me; I live in Christ crucified and risen. 040410AD jfq