We Won’t Get Fooled Again — or Will We?
Maryland has produced new license plates for the year, 2012. On the plates are the words, War of 1812, Bicentennial. That little known conflict was declared in 1812 and concluded on December 24, 1814. It was called the Second War for Independence. What’s up with that?
Every year, our Catholic Church makes January 1 a Day of Prayer for Peace in the year ahead. Pope Benedict has maintained this tradition during his ministry. His New Year’s Message for today is a call to educate young people for peace.
Students (hopefully) study the history of the United States. Students in Catholic schools have the luxury to use critical thinking in analysis of America’s wars through the application of St Augustine’s “Just War Theory”.
As some mark the Bicentennial of a war, New York Catholics might find it worthwhile to apply St Augustine’s criterion to this little known conflict. According to a standard textbook in US History, used in area schools, the causes of the war were fivefold: 1) to seize Canada from England; 2) to take Florida from Spain, England’s ally; 3) to stop British seizure of American ships because of the Napoleonic Wars; 4) to end English aid to Native Americans in the West; 5) to demonstrate the strength of the United States. After two years of sporadic conflict, the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814. The Treaty was status quo ante bellum , viz., the way it was before.
According to traditional Catholic teaching, still in process of evolution, as we recall the words of Blessed John XXIII, “we know more now”. St Augustine taught that for a Catholic to fight morally in a war, certain criteria had to met, each and everyone. If one or more criteria were not met, it would be immoral to fight in such a war.
First, the war had to a war of self-defense. (Preemptive strikes don’t count!!) (NB. This condition was unilaterally rejected by Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 because of American Exceptionalism,(really?)) 2) The war must be a last resort. All efforts for peace had to have been exhausted. 3) The war has to be declared by a legitimate authority. 4) There had to be a reasonable chance of winning. 5) Weapons used had to be just. (Victims question the morality of a just weapon.) 6) Harm done had to be less than any good done. (Again, ask the victims!)
Why 1812? The interpretation has been usually that, indeed, England had violated American interests on the high seas during the European Napoleonic Wars (not to end until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815). In addition, there was indeed evidence of British incitement of Native Americans in what is now the state of Indiana. The British were supplying guns and ammunition to the Native Americans. Someone always makes money when there is a war. There was a battle in 1811 between Native Americans and Americans under the command of General William Henry Harrison. Neither side won, but the Americans claimed that they did. Also, a new breed of Congressmen had been elected in 1810. Many of the group, including Henry Clay and John C Calhoun, appear on the scene. They were militant to assert the young nation’s fighting spirit. There were hopes that if England were defeated, then both Canada would join the USA and Florida would be thrown in by Spain. This would give the USA all east of the Mississippi.
Incidentally, John Quincy Adams was in Ghent, in Belgium, to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which proclaimed a stalemate and a return to existing conditions. In addition, several New England states seriously considered at the Hartford Convention in 1814 the possibility of New England’s seceding from the USA as a protest to what they considered an unjust war. In addition, the Battle of New Orleans, on January 8, 1815, promoted the celebrity of another military leader, Gen Andrew Jackson. New Orleans was fought two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed. 8 Americans and 2000 British soldiers died in the battle. The news arrived in Washington DC that the Treaty had been signed just as the victory at New Orleans. Spinmeisters had a field day with that.
There were so many variables. Was it a war of self-defense (or an opportunity to move while England was engaged in other wars? 2) Was it a last resort or an opportunity to use an advantageous situation for gain? 3) Was the war declared by a legitimate authority? Here, the evidence shows that Congress did vote, but how representative was Congress when women and Blacks were excluded from voting? 4) Was there a reasonable chance of winning? 5) Were just weapons used? 6) Was the good accomplished greater than the harm done? (In # 5 & 6, again, it depends on whom you asked.)
Using Catholic critical thinking, students reached a conclusion that the War of 1812 was probably not a just war in which a Catholic could have participated morally. Still, the sad scenario of “normalcy bias” kicks in, viz., you are weird or disloyal if you don’t go along with the group.
Last month, the USA ended the Second Gulf War, begun on March 19, 2003. (Incidentally, the DaVinci Code was published the same month!) Even after 9 years since the war began, the causes of the war remain unclear. Also, many supported the troops, but didn’t send their own children!
Today, Pope Benedict asks us to teach our children the ways of peace. Maryland celebrates the Bicentennial of a dubious war in 1812. We conclude a nine year war in the Middle East. One can only comment,“Sadly, the more things change, the more they remain the same.” Are the words of Blessed John really XXIII true? Do we know more now? Lord, make us all instruments of Your Peace. God bless the whole world – no exceptions. jfq 010112AD
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Reflection, December 25, 2011AD
Do You Know What We Know?
What is your favorite Christmas carol? These days, it is surprising and sad that many Catholic children do not know too many carols. In politically correct environments, children know about Rudolph, Santa and Frosty the Snowman, but they do not know about the Three Kings, the Shepherds, the little drummer boy or Mary’s Boychild. Sad. It is incumbent upon families and churches to stress again and again the importance of traditional Christmas carols. If they don’t learn them from us, they won’t learn them at all.
The author of the first Christmas carols was also the creator of the first Christmas crèche, St Francis of Assisi. The keynote of his message was the belief in the Incarnation, viz., that God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth Whose birthday we celebrate today. The birth of Jesus establishes what Catholics call the Deep Incarnation or the Divine Indwelling or the Emmanuel (God is with us!).
Our Hispanic sisters and brothers in Christ refer to the “Bethlehem Principle”. If God could be born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, then God can be born (and is, all the time) in any setting. It is a restatement of our frequent silent, contemplative prayer, here at St Patrick’s. God is everywhere; I am somewhere; God is in me; I am in God. God is everywhere; we are somewhere; God is in us; we are in God; God is everywhere; all are somewhere; God is in all; all are in God. The intuition behind the Bethlehem Principle is consolation. God is with me in every moment of my life. Or as King David put it in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Ask for Help to believe always.
We speak around here about retreating in solitude to the monastery of our own hearts. These mini-retreats can last for one second or longer (preferably). We try to re-orient ourselves to be present to the Presence. The rules of thumb for such a mini-retreat are simply, “Show up; slow down”; “Don’t think; just be”; “Let God be God”.
The formal word to describe this prayer is contemplation . The word “contemplation” has contained within it the word “temple” the place where God dwells. Surprise!! As the Patriarch Jacob said, “You were here all along and I never knew it.” This truly can change the way that you look at your own life. It should!!
We need to realize at the same time, that the Bethlehem Principle is applicable in other ways as well. God shows up in the most unlikely places. We think of those with whom we do not identify. On the TV series, Lost, they were called the Others. We call them frequent with more descriptive terms. There are those with whom I have no affinity, whether because of racial, ethnic, religious or political differences or even people who don’t like us or whom we don’t like. Like it or not God is present in them as well. As we say, “God is their Father; Eve is their Mother; Jesus is their brother; earth is their home.” The very realization of this obvious truth, with God’s Help, can lead us to compassion. You did not ask to be yourself; they did not ask to be themselves. You may not take them out for lunch, but you will understand them differently.
Finally, if God dwells in all and God is with us in all scenarios and we are all connected, then Jesus the Emmanuel can bring us to try a new code of conduct. Actually, it is not a new code, but the original code that we forgot about. We call it the Golden Rule. It appears in many forms, but every major religion has a variation of it. Ours is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Jesus sums it up by the fusion of the two great commandments, “Love God totally and love your neighbor (brother and/or sister) as yourself. Notice that three Realities are identified: God, your neighbor and you.
Each year, our parish places our crèche deliberately in front of the Cross on Cox Avenue. It is a reminder of something that our ancestors took for granted in religious art. In many scenes of the birth of Jesus, the image of the Cross is somehow situated in the scene. It is subtle reminder that Jesus died on the cross with His arms extended and helpless just as He was placed in the manger as a helpless baby with arms extended as well. Both the Christmas manger and the Calvary cross were made of wood, taken from a tree, as a reminder of the tree from which Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Genesis myth. The tree reminds us all as well that, indeed, the Christmas tree is a stealth religious symbol because it was a tree was prominent in three crucial biblical stories, viz., 1) the tree in the Garden of Eden; 2) the manger made from the wood of a tree; 3) the wood of the cross made from the wood of a tree.
We Western Catholics tend to be left-brained people, like most Western culture. We tend to think that intellectual knowledge is the only way to know anything seriously. We tend to play down volitional knowing, sensory knowing, emotional knowing, esthetic knowing, imaginative knowing. If it doesn’t qualify as empirically verifiable, it doesn’t count. Hope in Christ Jesus qualifies something perhaps as a subliminal knowledge. 350 years ago, Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician, said after a profound religious experience, “The heart has reasons to believe that the head cannot know.” We catch his drift.
No wonder St Francis got such a charge out of the Christmas. His contemplation of the Incarnation changed his view of all reality. On this Christmas Day and throughout the year, celebrate the Bethlehem Principle, viz., if God can be born in Bethlehem, then God can be born (and is!!!) in every situation. Isn’t it wonderful? 122511AD jfq
What is your favorite Christmas carol? These days, it is surprising and sad that many Catholic children do not know too many carols. In politically correct environments, children know about Rudolph, Santa and Frosty the Snowman, but they do not know about the Three Kings, the Shepherds, the little drummer boy or Mary’s Boychild. Sad. It is incumbent upon families and churches to stress again and again the importance of traditional Christmas carols. If they don’t learn them from us, they won’t learn them at all.
The author of the first Christmas carols was also the creator of the first Christmas crèche, St Francis of Assisi. The keynote of his message was the belief in the Incarnation, viz., that God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth Whose birthday we celebrate today. The birth of Jesus establishes what Catholics call the Deep Incarnation or the Divine Indwelling or the Emmanuel (God is with us!).
Our Hispanic sisters and brothers in Christ refer to the “Bethlehem Principle”. If God could be born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, then God can be born (and is, all the time) in any setting. It is a restatement of our frequent silent, contemplative prayer, here at St Patrick’s. God is everywhere; I am somewhere; God is in me; I am in God. God is everywhere; we are somewhere; God is in us; we are in God; God is everywhere; all are somewhere; God is in all; all are in God. The intuition behind the Bethlehem Principle is consolation. God is with me in every moment of my life. Or as King David put it in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Ask for Help to believe always.
We speak around here about retreating in solitude to the monastery of our own hearts. These mini-retreats can last for one second or longer (preferably). We try to re-orient ourselves to be present to the Presence. The rules of thumb for such a mini-retreat are simply, “Show up; slow down”; “Don’t think; just be”; “Let God be God”.
The formal word to describe this prayer is contemplation . The word “contemplation” has contained within it the word “temple” the place where God dwells. Surprise!! As the Patriarch Jacob said, “You were here all along and I never knew it.” This truly can change the way that you look at your own life. It should!!
We need to realize at the same time, that the Bethlehem Principle is applicable in other ways as well. God shows up in the most unlikely places. We think of those with whom we do not identify. On the TV series, Lost, they were called the Others. We call them frequent with more descriptive terms. There are those with whom I have no affinity, whether because of racial, ethnic, religious or political differences or even people who don’t like us or whom we don’t like. Like it or not God is present in them as well. As we say, “God is their Father; Eve is their Mother; Jesus is their brother; earth is their home.” The very realization of this obvious truth, with God’s Help, can lead us to compassion. You did not ask to be yourself; they did not ask to be themselves. You may not take them out for lunch, but you will understand them differently.
Finally, if God dwells in all and God is with us in all scenarios and we are all connected, then Jesus the Emmanuel can bring us to try a new code of conduct. Actually, it is not a new code, but the original code that we forgot about. We call it the Golden Rule. It appears in many forms, but every major religion has a variation of it. Ours is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Jesus sums it up by the fusion of the two great commandments, “Love God totally and love your neighbor (brother and/or sister) as yourself. Notice that three Realities are identified: God, your neighbor and you.
Each year, our parish places our crèche deliberately in front of the Cross on Cox Avenue. It is a reminder of something that our ancestors took for granted in religious art. In many scenes of the birth of Jesus, the image of the Cross is somehow situated in the scene. It is subtle reminder that Jesus died on the cross with His arms extended and helpless just as He was placed in the manger as a helpless baby with arms extended as well. Both the Christmas manger and the Calvary cross were made of wood, taken from a tree, as a reminder of the tree from which Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Genesis myth. The tree reminds us all as well that, indeed, the Christmas tree is a stealth religious symbol because it was a tree was prominent in three crucial biblical stories, viz., 1) the tree in the Garden of Eden; 2) the manger made from the wood of a tree; 3) the wood of the cross made from the wood of a tree.
We Western Catholics tend to be left-brained people, like most Western culture. We tend to think that intellectual knowledge is the only way to know anything seriously. We tend to play down volitional knowing, sensory knowing, emotional knowing, esthetic knowing, imaginative knowing. If it doesn’t qualify as empirically verifiable, it doesn’t count. Hope in Christ Jesus qualifies something perhaps as a subliminal knowledge. 350 years ago, Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician, said after a profound religious experience, “The heart has reasons to believe that the head cannot know.” We catch his drift.
No wonder St Francis got such a charge out of the Christmas. His contemplation of the Incarnation changed his view of all reality. On this Christmas Day and throughout the year, celebrate the Bethlehem Principle, viz., if God can be born in Bethlehem, then God can be born (and is!!!) in every situation. Isn’t it wonderful? 122511AD jfq
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Reflection, December 18, 2011AD
Mary of Nazareth — Change Agent!!
The Fourth Sunday of Advent is the Sunday to pause and reflect on our Blessed Mother’s Virgin Birth. (Last year, St Joseph, Jesus’ foster father got special kudos; this year, we tip our hats to the Mother of Jesus.)
We hear the story of the Annunciation today. Vatican II said that the two principal titles of Mary are accented in this Gospel, viz., Mary, the Mother of God, and the first disciple of Jesus to hear God’s Word, and to keep it in her heart.
Mary’s response to the mandate of the Archangel Gabriel indicates her (God-given) act of faith in which she consents to the call to discipleship and to give birth to the Son of God Most High. Mary surrendered, let go and trusted that God’s Word to her would be fulfilled , “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your Word.”
The stress upon the Virgin Birth by both St Matthew and St Luke indicates not only the uniqueness of the Birth of this Child. Mary’s Virginity showed a sufficiency with God for her.
The image of the Annunciation to Mary, so popular for such a long time, is an image of Mary at prayer. The image indicates an attitude of watchful waiting for God in her heart and mind and life. Despite the routine of her life, Mary (and Joseph) had to be people who responded to God’s Call to each of us (no exceptions) to slow down, to be silent, to let go and trust God in every scenario.
Clearly, our Blessed Mother must have followed through with her words. One theologian averred that certainly (lest we ever forget) parents are the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith and hope. Values are caught, not taught. A big reason why Jesus turned out as well as He did was that He had experienced such exemplary religious formation from Mary and Joseph.
In different times, God calls each of us to the same challenges. God’s Grace (the Holy Spirit) prompts us to agree to be servants of the Lord in our lives, different than Mary, and yet, similar.
We live today in a world dominated by the media (which dumbs down important news and hypes up trivia for us) on the evening news, if we even bother to watch. We live in a world that has bought into the middle-class, materialistic mirage that just so long as I have what I want and need, then, my life is fulfilled. We live in a world in which we assumed that military and violent solutions to real problems are a natural resource for people, just so long as one throws in the Name of Jesus every once in a while. In some ways, these days, we are paying the price for so much of this. Check the papers, the evening news or your computer.
In the twentieth century, Mohandas Gandhi saw Jesus as an avatar of the Infinite and caught what Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount. However, he never was baptized because he felt that most of us did not take discipleship of Gospel non-violence seriously enough, in large numbers, to warrant Gandhi’s baptism into Christ Jesus. He said that each person should become, with God’s Help, the type of person that we want to see as our world. He said that, if the whole world lived by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, eventually, the world would be populated by blind people who could not eat corn on the cob. He said that the only religion that does not get the non-violent implications of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is Christianity itself. Gandhi did not mince words.
In the 21st century, with God’s Help, we can challenge Gandhi’s accusation by following the example of Mary of Nazareth. God had a plan for her that was creative, life-enhancing, expansive, and abundant. With God’s Grace, Mary said yes.
Earlier this month, we celebrated the Conception of Mary in the womb of her mother, Santa Anna. Mary’s parents did a great job raising their daughter. Through nature and/or nurture, God prepared the mother of the Messiah as the one who mirrored God’s Love in the flesh to her newborn.
The subtleness and intimacy of the love of Mary (and St Joseph the foster father) shaped Jesus’ religious consciousness during those early years of life. Recall Jesus is like us in all things but sin. Certainly, Mary and Joseph did God’s Work!
God has a plan for each of us, as well, that is creative, life- enhancing, expansive and abundant. God gives each of us the Grace to agree to God’s Intention for us. God’s plan is similar to that of Mary’s , the Mother of God. More and more, the word “holiness” has become word like “love” and “nice”. We use them so much that they became drained of meaning. A more appropriate word these days might be the word “integrity”. Holiness is connected to “wholeness”’; integrity is connected to “intergration”. God wants us to live integrated, wholistic, viz., holy lives by acknowledging God as the ever present Center of our lives and of our universe and to try to get our relationships with God, with one another, with our environment and with ourselves in order.
As our Buddhist siblings say, “it is about right relationships”. The call to Gospel non-violence that Mary (and Joseph) , Jesus, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Popes John Paul and Benedict heard is essential to our celebration of the Coming of the Prince of Peace!
So, as Vatican II said, we become disciples of the Lord. We become mothers of God, whenever we bring God to situations where God needs to be brought. What would we say to Gabriel? What would we say to people like Gandhi and the Dalai Lama? What do we say to our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? 121811AD jfq
The Fourth Sunday of Advent is the Sunday to pause and reflect on our Blessed Mother’s Virgin Birth. (Last year, St Joseph, Jesus’ foster father got special kudos; this year, we tip our hats to the Mother of Jesus.)
We hear the story of the Annunciation today. Vatican II said that the two principal titles of Mary are accented in this Gospel, viz., Mary, the Mother of God, and the first disciple of Jesus to hear God’s Word, and to keep it in her heart.
Mary’s response to the mandate of the Archangel Gabriel indicates her (God-given) act of faith in which she consents to the call to discipleship and to give birth to the Son of God Most High. Mary surrendered, let go and trusted that God’s Word to her would be fulfilled , “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your Word.”
The stress upon the Virgin Birth by both St Matthew and St Luke indicates not only the uniqueness of the Birth of this Child. Mary’s Virginity showed a sufficiency with God for her.
The image of the Annunciation to Mary, so popular for such a long time, is an image of Mary at prayer. The image indicates an attitude of watchful waiting for God in her heart and mind and life. Despite the routine of her life, Mary (and Joseph) had to be people who responded to God’s Call to each of us (no exceptions) to slow down, to be silent, to let go and trust God in every scenario.
Clearly, our Blessed Mother must have followed through with her words. One theologian averred that certainly (lest we ever forget) parents are the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith and hope. Values are caught, not taught. A big reason why Jesus turned out as well as He did was that He had experienced such exemplary religious formation from Mary and Joseph.
In different times, God calls each of us to the same challenges. God’s Grace (the Holy Spirit) prompts us to agree to be servants of the Lord in our lives, different than Mary, and yet, similar.
We live today in a world dominated by the media (which dumbs down important news and hypes up trivia for us) on the evening news, if we even bother to watch. We live in a world that has bought into the middle-class, materialistic mirage that just so long as I have what I want and need, then, my life is fulfilled. We live in a world in which we assumed that military and violent solutions to real problems are a natural resource for people, just so long as one throws in the Name of Jesus every once in a while. In some ways, these days, we are paying the price for so much of this. Check the papers, the evening news or your computer.
In the twentieth century, Mohandas Gandhi saw Jesus as an avatar of the Infinite and caught what Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount. However, he never was baptized because he felt that most of us did not take discipleship of Gospel non-violence seriously enough, in large numbers, to warrant Gandhi’s baptism into Christ Jesus. He said that each person should become, with God’s Help, the type of person that we want to see as our world. He said that, if the whole world lived by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, eventually, the world would be populated by blind people who could not eat corn on the cob. He said that the only religion that does not get the non-violent implications of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is Christianity itself. Gandhi did not mince words.
In the 21st century, with God’s Help, we can challenge Gandhi’s accusation by following the example of Mary of Nazareth. God had a plan for her that was creative, life-enhancing, expansive, and abundant. With God’s Grace, Mary said yes.
Earlier this month, we celebrated the Conception of Mary in the womb of her mother, Santa Anna. Mary’s parents did a great job raising their daughter. Through nature and/or nurture, God prepared the mother of the Messiah as the one who mirrored God’s Love in the flesh to her newborn.
The subtleness and intimacy of the love of Mary (and St Joseph the foster father) shaped Jesus’ religious consciousness during those early years of life. Recall Jesus is like us in all things but sin. Certainly, Mary and Joseph did God’s Work!
God has a plan for each of us, as well, that is creative, life- enhancing, expansive and abundant. God gives each of us the Grace to agree to God’s Intention for us. God’s plan is similar to that of Mary’s , the Mother of God. More and more, the word “holiness” has become word like “love” and “nice”. We use them so much that they became drained of meaning. A more appropriate word these days might be the word “integrity”. Holiness is connected to “wholeness”’; integrity is connected to “intergration”. God wants us to live integrated, wholistic, viz., holy lives by acknowledging God as the ever present Center of our lives and of our universe and to try to get our relationships with God, with one another, with our environment and with ourselves in order.
As our Buddhist siblings say, “it is about right relationships”. The call to Gospel non-violence that Mary (and Joseph) , Jesus, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Popes John Paul and Benedict heard is essential to our celebration of the Coming of the Prince of Peace!
So, as Vatican II said, we become disciples of the Lord. We become mothers of God, whenever we bring God to situations where God needs to be brought. What would we say to Gabriel? What would we say to people like Gandhi and the Dalai Lama? What do we say to our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? 121811AD jfq
Friday, December 9, 2011
Reflection, December 11, 2011AD
Don’t Worry — Be Happy??????????
St Paul offers curious words to the house churches in Thessalonica (present day Salonika) and the house churches of Armonk as well. He urges his audience, then and now, to “rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances. This is what God expects of you in Christ Jesus.”
St Paul’s words were preserved by the Jesus Movement and incorporated into the Christian Scriptures (aka the New Testament). His audience, therefore, his words worth saving and worth reflecting upon again and again. Yet, the same words seem utopian and unreal to most people today. How can one rejoice always, for example? What does St Paul mean by the phrase that he used over 150 times in his letters, in Christ Jesus?
In addition, biblical scholars tell us that St Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, whence our second reading today is excerpted, is the earliest preserved document that we have in the Christian Scriptures. It is dated around 50AD, no more than 20 years after the death and Resurrection of the Lord, dated around 30AD). Then, too, again, the audience bought the message, as if they had an insight into its truth.
St Paul’s methodology was to establish house churches of the Jesus Movement in major cities around the Mediterrean Sea. He stayed about two years in the venue and then, moved to another place. He prided himself on going to places where the Jesus Movement had not yet been established. Examples of some of the churches which he established were in Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica and Galatia.
His target audience was the non-Jewish Gentiles who frequented the Jewish synagogues in these cities. We know of a group of Gentiles attracted to the logic of monotheism, the higher ethics and value placed upon the human person, within Judaism, viz., where else in the world was everyone (no exceptions) was seen as created in the image and likeness of God; male and female God created them?
Paul thought of himself until the day of his death as a Jewish missionary who was bringing God fearing Gentiles into the Jewish matrix through their acceptance that Jesus is Lord. (Not all Jews nor Jewish Christians agreed with Paul’s reasoning.) It was in St Paul’s interest as well as the Jesus Movement to maintain a low profile within the “system”. In essence, in their acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus and the proclamation of God’s non-violent New World Order, seen as a leaven or catalyst for change within the Pax Romana (viz., the big lie, back then, was that everyone was happy and there was something wrong with you if your weren’t.
Using modern language, we can update the view of reality that St Paul proclaimed then (and now.) Basically, St Paul and his Jesus Movements in their various house churches believed that God, in Christ Jesus, lived in each and every person. They believed that God, in Christ Jesus, was present in every scenario. Since God was the God of Life and the God of Love, everything ultimately is oriented to Life and Love. This orientation is programmed through the Paschal Mystery of death and Transformation (aka Resurrection) in what modern quantum physicists call the “conservation of energy,” viz., nothing is wasted in the universe. This orientation is lived in a cosmic web in which everyone and everything is connected. Recall Albert Einstein’s “theory of relativity”, that nothing in reality can be understood completely unless it is understood in relationship to everything else in reality. It is not for nothing that the very first paragraph of 1 Thessalonians refers quite unembarrassedly to the Trinitarian relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Thessalonian Jesus Movement had no problem with St Paul’s frequent and favored use of in Christ Jesus in his inspired correspondence. Modern physicists speak of the “Christ Quantum,” the vibrational field established in the Incarnation of the Archetype of Creation, as St Paul calls Jesus. (Col 1.18).
There were three things that the Apostle of Joy (as Jesuit writer, Jim Martin, calls St Paul wanted us all to remember. 1) Never forget that whenever you pray to God “out there”, you miss the point. God lives in you; you live in God. That is the biggie!! 2) Never forget that God can transform every negativity in your life. It is all about consciousness-raising. (A negative experience in one’s past is not necessarily an excuse for a pity-party.) 3) Never forget that God wants you to help transform the negativities in the lives of others. As Lily Tomlin said, “I saw a person in trouble and thought that someone should do something about that and then, I thought, I am someone.”
If a group of people, 2000 years ago, could buy into a new view of reality that transformed their lives, their Catholic descendents today (that’s us) need to ask for the gift of faith in Christ Jesus not to gulp when we hear St Paul says to us, one more time, there is no such thing as a bad day. Everyday is a good one because it is a gift from the God of Life and Love. (That is why we call it “the Present”!!). Granted, some days may be better than others. Our Thessalonian ancestors in the Jesus movement would agree and urge us, their Armonk descendents, to ask for the same faith in Christ Jesus that sustained them. Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus!! Emmanuel! God is with us!!
For the Jesus Movement, then and now, it is always Advent; it is always Christmas!! 121111AD jfq
St Paul offers curious words to the house churches in Thessalonica (present day Salonika) and the house churches of Armonk as well. He urges his audience, then and now, to “rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances. This is what God expects of you in Christ Jesus.”
St Paul’s words were preserved by the Jesus Movement and incorporated into the Christian Scriptures (aka the New Testament). His audience, therefore, his words worth saving and worth reflecting upon again and again. Yet, the same words seem utopian and unreal to most people today. How can one rejoice always, for example? What does St Paul mean by the phrase that he used over 150 times in his letters, in Christ Jesus?
In addition, biblical scholars tell us that St Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, whence our second reading today is excerpted, is the earliest preserved document that we have in the Christian Scriptures. It is dated around 50AD, no more than 20 years after the death and Resurrection of the Lord, dated around 30AD). Then, too, again, the audience bought the message, as if they had an insight into its truth.
St Paul’s methodology was to establish house churches of the Jesus Movement in major cities around the Mediterrean Sea. He stayed about two years in the venue and then, moved to another place. He prided himself on going to places where the Jesus Movement had not yet been established. Examples of some of the churches which he established were in Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica and Galatia.
His target audience was the non-Jewish Gentiles who frequented the Jewish synagogues in these cities. We know of a group of Gentiles attracted to the logic of monotheism, the higher ethics and value placed upon the human person, within Judaism, viz., where else in the world was everyone (no exceptions) was seen as created in the image and likeness of God; male and female God created them?
Paul thought of himself until the day of his death as a Jewish missionary who was bringing God fearing Gentiles into the Jewish matrix through their acceptance that Jesus is Lord. (Not all Jews nor Jewish Christians agreed with Paul’s reasoning.) It was in St Paul’s interest as well as the Jesus Movement to maintain a low profile within the “system”. In essence, in their acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus and the proclamation of God’s non-violent New World Order, seen as a leaven or catalyst for change within the Pax Romana (viz., the big lie, back then, was that everyone was happy and there was something wrong with you if your weren’t.
Using modern language, we can update the view of reality that St Paul proclaimed then (and now.) Basically, St Paul and his Jesus Movements in their various house churches believed that God, in Christ Jesus, lived in each and every person. They believed that God, in Christ Jesus, was present in every scenario. Since God was the God of Life and the God of Love, everything ultimately is oriented to Life and Love. This orientation is programmed through the Paschal Mystery of death and Transformation (aka Resurrection) in what modern quantum physicists call the “conservation of energy,” viz., nothing is wasted in the universe. This orientation is lived in a cosmic web in which everyone and everything is connected. Recall Albert Einstein’s “theory of relativity”, that nothing in reality can be understood completely unless it is understood in relationship to everything else in reality. It is not for nothing that the very first paragraph of 1 Thessalonians refers quite unembarrassedly to the Trinitarian relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Thessalonian Jesus Movement had no problem with St Paul’s frequent and favored use of in Christ Jesus in his inspired correspondence. Modern physicists speak of the “Christ Quantum,” the vibrational field established in the Incarnation of the Archetype of Creation, as St Paul calls Jesus. (Col 1.18).
There were three things that the Apostle of Joy (as Jesuit writer, Jim Martin, calls St Paul wanted us all to remember. 1) Never forget that whenever you pray to God “out there”, you miss the point. God lives in you; you live in God. That is the biggie!! 2) Never forget that God can transform every negativity in your life. It is all about consciousness-raising. (A negative experience in one’s past is not necessarily an excuse for a pity-party.) 3) Never forget that God wants you to help transform the negativities in the lives of others. As Lily Tomlin said, “I saw a person in trouble and thought that someone should do something about that and then, I thought, I am someone.”
If a group of people, 2000 years ago, could buy into a new view of reality that transformed their lives, their Catholic descendents today (that’s us) need to ask for the gift of faith in Christ Jesus not to gulp when we hear St Paul says to us, one more time, there is no such thing as a bad day. Everyday is a good one because it is a gift from the God of Life and Love. (That is why we call it “the Present”!!). Granted, some days may be better than others. Our Thessalonian ancestors in the Jesus movement would agree and urge us, their Armonk descendents, to ask for the same faith in Christ Jesus that sustained them. Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus!! Emmanuel! God is with us!!
For the Jesus Movement, then and now, it is always Advent; it is always Christmas!! 121111AD jfq
Friday, December 2, 2011
Reflection, December 4, 2011AD
Two Ways to Spend a Weekend
Jesus’ warmup act makes his annual Advent appearance today as we hear of the ministry of St John the Baptist. Again, the strange figure has been transformed in a variety of ways over the course of the twenty centuries, so that today we do not get the strange presence that he was on the scene back then – and now as well.
John shook up the crowd and ultimately, he shook up King Herod, the beneficiary and flunky of the System, imposed by Rome. When the System said enough to John’s program, Herod knew that something about John was on the level, even for people like Herod himself.
The basics are clear. 1) You did not have to go to the Jerusalem Temple to hear God. God spoke through John the Baptist in the wilderness, where things were basic and less complicated; 2) John knew that the System was not the way that God envisions; 3) all of the people were enmeshed in the System in one way or another; 4) God could not tolerate the maintenance of the System and change was on the way; 5) the stakes were high; 6) you might have a chance if you were sincere in snapping out of the miasmic dream of the System cleaning up your own act as a sign of good faith; 7) you were baptized by John in the Jordan once and for all, no repeats, as assign of your intention of smelling God’s coffee; 8) hang on tight and hope for the best. 9) Jesus Himself heard John and was baptized by him as an act of solidarity with the Jewish nation confronted by the Baptist; 10) Jesus rejected the fire and brimstone aspects of John and later on, preached a message guaranteeing that God has already forgiven each of us sinners. Would you have gone out to hear John the Baptist speak and act out on the banks of the Jordan? Back then, if you had heard about this strange dude in the wilderness, you probably would have had to walk.
Why would you have gone out to hear John? Perhaps, you might have wanted to satisfy your curiosity. But, might it have been that the spin you were getting on John was that the Baptist had something to say that you might want to hear?
We can safely assume that John’s audience back then – and now – were people who experienced days that were good and days not so good as well. 95% of the people back then were probably tenant farmers and poverty had to have been a problem. We can be sure that people then, as now, experienced the vicissitudes of life. They experienced troubles, sickness, accidents, failures, disappointments, bad luck and reality changers that shake all of us up. These negative experiences of life shake us out of what has been called “normalcy bias”. As bad as it is, most people felt – and feel – that things are what they are; you can’t change it! In addition, biblical historians remind us that in addition to the ups and downs of every human life, the social and economic and political scene was quite unpredictable as well. There were several uprisings against the social-economic-political scene that we know about from other sources besides the Scriptures. People get discontent with the status quo – then and now. The cauldron was bubbling and it indicated that people had reached the limits of normalcy bias. (The very fact that both John the Baptist and Jesus had groups of people following them made both of them dangerous figures that had to be watched. Both had to have suspected that having a following.
We frequently describe Americans as victims of the N- syndrome, viz. pathological behavior described by words beginning with letter “N”. We tend to want to maintain the normalcy bias, why rock the boat, if it doesn’t affect you too adversely. You can’t change the System. We tend to be numb to the needs of people less fortunate than we. (We stop making child-like statements, “That’s not fair” when we are grow up, unless it affects us personally.) We tend to be non-stop. Remember the Puritan adages, “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Think of how we annual loss of control in the pre-Christmas Rush. Whatever, people went out of their way to hear the Baptist. Also, some heeded him. This is one of the reasons that Herod saw John as a threat. Somehow, John the Baptist challenged the System and Herod, the flunky of the System had to put him out of commission.
Today, in our non-stop lives, how many of us would make the journey to hear a John the Baptist like figure? We are not talking about a Therapeutic Moralistic Deism here. Some leave our Catholic midst because they feel that religion must be therapeutic and feel good. They go to the other places where the music is more relevant and they feel good when they leave. What happens when the euphoria wears off. And it will, it will.
John the Baptist, preached to grown ups. Jesus preached to grown ups and blessed children. His message was a serious one, though a compassionate one. It involved a consciousness –shift. The System is not what God wants. God offers an alternative vision or consciousness known as the Kingdom of God. It is yours, even now when you take the vision seriously, acknowledging God as the Eternal Transcendent Constituting Other and try to live as Jesus provides the paradigm. God is with you each now, God can transform your pain, God can help you transform the pain of others.
Would you go to the wilderness to hear John? Would you to stop and listen to Jesus as He passed through your town? Would you be too busy to spare the time? Today, when in Advent (known to the System as the Christmas Rush), in whose parking lot would you end up? Jesus’ or the Mall’s?
120411AD jfq
Jesus’ warmup act makes his annual Advent appearance today as we hear of the ministry of St John the Baptist. Again, the strange figure has been transformed in a variety of ways over the course of the twenty centuries, so that today we do not get the strange presence that he was on the scene back then – and now as well.
John shook up the crowd and ultimately, he shook up King Herod, the beneficiary and flunky of the System, imposed by Rome. When the System said enough to John’s program, Herod knew that something about John was on the level, even for people like Herod himself.
The basics are clear. 1) You did not have to go to the Jerusalem Temple to hear God. God spoke through John the Baptist in the wilderness, where things were basic and less complicated; 2) John knew that the System was not the way that God envisions; 3) all of the people were enmeshed in the System in one way or another; 4) God could not tolerate the maintenance of the System and change was on the way; 5) the stakes were high; 6) you might have a chance if you were sincere in snapping out of the miasmic dream of the System cleaning up your own act as a sign of good faith; 7) you were baptized by John in the Jordan once and for all, no repeats, as assign of your intention of smelling God’s coffee; 8) hang on tight and hope for the best. 9) Jesus Himself heard John and was baptized by him as an act of solidarity with the Jewish nation confronted by the Baptist; 10) Jesus rejected the fire and brimstone aspects of John and later on, preached a message guaranteeing that God has already forgiven each of us sinners. Would you have gone out to hear John the Baptist speak and act out on the banks of the Jordan? Back then, if you had heard about this strange dude in the wilderness, you probably would have had to walk.
Why would you have gone out to hear John? Perhaps, you might have wanted to satisfy your curiosity. But, might it have been that the spin you were getting on John was that the Baptist had something to say that you might want to hear?
We can safely assume that John’s audience back then – and now – were people who experienced days that were good and days not so good as well. 95% of the people back then were probably tenant farmers and poverty had to have been a problem. We can be sure that people then, as now, experienced the vicissitudes of life. They experienced troubles, sickness, accidents, failures, disappointments, bad luck and reality changers that shake all of us up. These negative experiences of life shake us out of what has been called “normalcy bias”. As bad as it is, most people felt – and feel – that things are what they are; you can’t change it! In addition, biblical historians remind us that in addition to the ups and downs of every human life, the social and economic and political scene was quite unpredictable as well. There were several uprisings against the social-economic-political scene that we know about from other sources besides the Scriptures. People get discontent with the status quo – then and now. The cauldron was bubbling and it indicated that people had reached the limits of normalcy bias. (The very fact that both John the Baptist and Jesus had groups of people following them made both of them dangerous figures that had to be watched. Both had to have suspected that having a following.
We frequently describe Americans as victims of the N- syndrome, viz. pathological behavior described by words beginning with letter “N”. We tend to want to maintain the normalcy bias, why rock the boat, if it doesn’t affect you too adversely. You can’t change the System. We tend to be numb to the needs of people less fortunate than we. (We stop making child-like statements, “That’s not fair” when we are grow up, unless it affects us personally.) We tend to be non-stop. Remember the Puritan adages, “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Think of how we annual loss of control in the pre-Christmas Rush. Whatever, people went out of their way to hear the Baptist. Also, some heeded him. This is one of the reasons that Herod saw John as a threat. Somehow, John the Baptist challenged the System and Herod, the flunky of the System had to put him out of commission.
Today, in our non-stop lives, how many of us would make the journey to hear a John the Baptist like figure? We are not talking about a Therapeutic Moralistic Deism here. Some leave our Catholic midst because they feel that religion must be therapeutic and feel good. They go to the other places where the music is more relevant and they feel good when they leave. What happens when the euphoria wears off. And it will, it will.
John the Baptist, preached to grown ups. Jesus preached to grown ups and blessed children. His message was a serious one, though a compassionate one. It involved a consciousness –shift. The System is not what God wants. God offers an alternative vision or consciousness known as the Kingdom of God. It is yours, even now when you take the vision seriously, acknowledging God as the Eternal Transcendent Constituting Other and try to live as Jesus provides the paradigm. God is with you each now, God can transform your pain, God can help you transform the pain of others.
Would you go to the wilderness to hear John? Would you to stop and listen to Jesus as He passed through your town? Would you be too busy to spare the time? Today, when in Advent (known to the System as the Christmas Rush), in whose parking lot would you end up? Jesus’ or the Mall’s?
120411AD jfq
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Reflection, March 10, 2002AD
Could This Be You?
Long ago, biblical scholars saw two levels of the healing of the blind man in today’s Gospel. First, it describes the physical healing of a 39 year old man who was born blind. Yet, in the story, more than physical sight is given. The man born blind us brought to the illumination of faith by Jesus as he gradually comes to accept Jesus as the Son of Man, even more, the Lord.
The season of Lent has, as one of its origins, a 40 day period of intense preparation by catechumens (tyro-Christians) for the reception of the Sacraments of Initation, viz., Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, during the Easter Vigil from Holy Saturday into Easter Sunday morning.
Some of the names by which Baptism was called in early Christianity was the “Sacrament of Illumination and Enlightenment.” The custom of lighting the small baptismal candle from the Paschal Candle is the vestige of this former sacramental name.
Notice the story of the man born blind. The healing takes place bear a pool and it involves a washing with water. While Jesus only appears twice in the story, He is ever the Subject of the story because of the controversy over the identity of the Healer. While Jesus speaks to the man directly twice, the man only sees Jesus once because he was still blind in the first encounter.
Something curious happens as the story unfolds. As more grief is heaped upon the man, he calls Jesus “that man”, then, a “prophet”, then, “from God”, then,”Son of Man”, then, “Lord”. Like the Samaritan woman last week, the blind man’s faith develops because of the influence of Jesus. The blind man is a symbol of what we are all called to be as disciples of Jesus.
In the latter portions of the fourth Gospel, we start to hear of the “beloved disciple”, one who is the model disciple, the one whom we are all called to be. Much conjecture has been made about the identity of the beloved disciple.
Traditionally, the Fourth Gospel has been attributed to the Apostle John (hence, its unofficial name.) However, all the Gospels are anonymous documents as we are not sure of the identity of any of the evangelists. As a result, some thought that the Apostle John was humbly remaining anonymous in his self-description.
Another opinion is that perhaps, Lazarus, the dead man raised to life in John 11 was the beloved disciple. (This last of Jesus’ 7 signs is the immediate trigger which results in the death and Resurrection of Jesus.)Neither Lazarus nor the beloved disciple had been mentioned earlier in the Gospel.
Still, another opinion is that, perhaps, it is our hero, the blind man, in today’s Gospel, who is the beloved disciple. He is favorable presented in the Gospel as a Jewish disciple who receives initial illumination and enlightenment from Jesus (Whom he cannot see) near a pool of water. As the pressure mounts, his faith in Jesus grows. Finally, in the closing scene today, he “sees” Jesus Who obviously loves him and Whom he obviously loves in return.
The question in the Gospel today is not, “Is the man born blind the beloved disciple?” Maybe yes or no.
Rather, the real question is “Am I the beloved disciple?” 031002 AD jfq
Long ago, biblical scholars saw two levels of the healing of the blind man in today’s Gospel. First, it describes the physical healing of a 39 year old man who was born blind. Yet, in the story, more than physical sight is given. The man born blind us brought to the illumination of faith by Jesus as he gradually comes to accept Jesus as the Son of Man, even more, the Lord.
The season of Lent has, as one of its origins, a 40 day period of intense preparation by catechumens (tyro-Christians) for the reception of the Sacraments of Initation, viz., Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, during the Easter Vigil from Holy Saturday into Easter Sunday morning.
Some of the names by which Baptism was called in early Christianity was the “Sacrament of Illumination and Enlightenment.” The custom of lighting the small baptismal candle from the Paschal Candle is the vestige of this former sacramental name.
Notice the story of the man born blind. The healing takes place bear a pool and it involves a washing with water. While Jesus only appears twice in the story, He is ever the Subject of the story because of the controversy over the identity of the Healer. While Jesus speaks to the man directly twice, the man only sees Jesus once because he was still blind in the first encounter.
Something curious happens as the story unfolds. As more grief is heaped upon the man, he calls Jesus “that man”, then, a “prophet”, then, “from God”, then,”Son of Man”, then, “Lord”. Like the Samaritan woman last week, the blind man’s faith develops because of the influence of Jesus. The blind man is a symbol of what we are all called to be as disciples of Jesus.
In the latter portions of the fourth Gospel, we start to hear of the “beloved disciple”, one who is the model disciple, the one whom we are all called to be. Much conjecture has been made about the identity of the beloved disciple.
Traditionally, the Fourth Gospel has been attributed to the Apostle John (hence, its unofficial name.) However, all the Gospels are anonymous documents as we are not sure of the identity of any of the evangelists. As a result, some thought that the Apostle John was humbly remaining anonymous in his self-description.
Another opinion is that perhaps, Lazarus, the dead man raised to life in John 11 was the beloved disciple. (This last of Jesus’ 7 signs is the immediate trigger which results in the death and Resurrection of Jesus.)Neither Lazarus nor the beloved disciple had been mentioned earlier in the Gospel.
Still, another opinion is that, perhaps, it is our hero, the blind man, in today’s Gospel, who is the beloved disciple. He is favorable presented in the Gospel as a Jewish disciple who receives initial illumination and enlightenment from Jesus (Whom he cannot see) near a pool of water. As the pressure mounts, his faith in Jesus grows. Finally, in the closing scene today, he “sees” Jesus Who obviously loves him and Whom he obviously loves in return.
The question in the Gospel today is not, “Is the man born blind the beloved disciple?” Maybe yes or no.
Rather, the real question is “Am I the beloved disciple?” 031002 AD jfq
Reflection, Nov 27, 2011AD
It’s Always Advent
Our concluding hymn last Sunday (the Feast of Christ the King) is our opening hymn this Sunday, viz., The King of Glory comes. The nation rejoices. Open the gates before Him. Lift up your voices. We concluded one liturgical year looking for the coming of the Lord and we open a liturgical year looking for the coming of the Lord.
Albert Einstein taught the world to take seriously the theory of relativity, viz., everything that exists can only be understood in terms of its relationship to everything else that exists. His theory includes the relativity of space and time. It is always Easter, always Advent. We live in the cosmic web known as the universe and we all are in relationship with the crucified and Risen Lord and we are all in relationship with the Coming Christ.
With this turn of a new church year, during which we focus on the Gospel of St Mark in our Sunday gatherings, we turn now to the Christ Who still comes to us again and again. St Mark’s word to the wise today is stay awake, be vigilant. We never know when Christ is coming.
St Paul, moreover, reflects in his letters that God, indeed, is quite unpredictable and, therefore, as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, God will keep us firm to the end…Why? God is faithful, and by God you were called into solidarity with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Both inspired writers encourage us to maintain a frame of mind in which we try, with God’s Help, always with God’s Help, to be faithful to our commitment to Jesus and His Gospel, to expect Christ Jesus to be present with us in our lives, to be patient and longing for this Christ Who is always coming to us.
Using Einstein’s relativity theory, in this Advent, let us adopt a different way of viewing reality. 1) Therefore, God is still creating the universe and still creating each of us. 2) We are still people who are favored and flawed at the same time. As a result, we are still people who are falling into scenarios of evil. 3) God is still forming people as recipients of God’s ongoing promise of fidelity. 4) God is still sending the Messiah into our world and into our lives. Whenever we are touched and effected by the Christ Quantum, Christmas happens. Christ is born. 5) We are still called by God the Father and Christ Jesus to gather as a critical mass, change agents, catalysts for this new worldview, cells of the Body of Christ Jesus. Easter happens. Christ is crucified and Risen.
The world at large was so taken with the trauma of the death earthquakes, tsunamis experienced this year. What happens in one nation is news in another where the enmeshed System does not control the media as much as here.
There is a sad contrast in our own nation. We had an early snowstorm on October 29, but environmental change is still debated by politicians, claiming to be legitimate. We are becoming jaded to the frequency and the regularity of the deaths of American service people in Afghanistan. Even more startling and shocking is the rush to put a Michael Jackson-like story like the conviction of his doctor on page one at any time when the people of our nation should be taken with more substantial and formative issues.
We spoke together often of the “N-syndrome”, viz., that characterize contemporary American society. It has been said that our culture has been non-stop, moving at 101 mph. (So many of us are always on the go that we literally and figuratively run out of gas.) It has been said that our culture has become numb. We are moving so fast that we get numb to the real problems and situations confronting people around us and in the world. It has been said that our culture has become narcissistic, that we are so self-occupied that we cannot be bothered with large problems around us. All of this tends to make us nervous and/or neurotic. Living in such a reality takes its toll upon the individual and the family and the society in general. All three realities are intrinsically related. Sooner or later, a problem in one area will cause problems in related areas.
We begin the season of Advent this weekend. Yes, Jesus came in history 2000 years ago. However, whenever we listen to His Gospel and try, with His Help, to live and to implement His Gospel in our lives, our family’s life, our community life, our world’s life, Jesus comes again to us. May He come into our lives. It should always be Advent.
20th French theologian, Simone Weil, said that her favorite line in the Bible was “We wait in joyful hope.” We can always prepare the Way for the Lord when we leave space for Him in our lives. Sadly, the time of preparing the way of the Lord becomes another example of the N-syndrome, characterized by non-stop, numbing preparations by which we find ourselves trapped. To prepare the Way for the Lord demands silence, solitude and space, all of which are at a premium especially during the pre-Christmas rush (aka Advent.)
We are all addicted, entrapped, enmeshed and compulsed during the frenetic weeks ahead. Try to make a little way for the Lord in the month ahead by doing something counter-cultural. Ask God in the silence for the gift of fidelity, expectation, patience and longing. Our God is the God of Surprises. One of the great surprises is that what we anticipate is already here!
Advent is a great opportunity to tune out the cacophony and bedlam. Remember Jesus is the Reason for the Season; the economy is not the reason for the season; status anxiety is not the reason for the season, no matter what they tell us. 112711 AD jfq
Our concluding hymn last Sunday (the Feast of Christ the King) is our opening hymn this Sunday, viz., The King of Glory comes. The nation rejoices. Open the gates before Him. Lift up your voices. We concluded one liturgical year looking for the coming of the Lord and we open a liturgical year looking for the coming of the Lord.
Albert Einstein taught the world to take seriously the theory of relativity, viz., everything that exists can only be understood in terms of its relationship to everything else that exists. His theory includes the relativity of space and time. It is always Easter, always Advent. We live in the cosmic web known as the universe and we all are in relationship with the crucified and Risen Lord and we are all in relationship with the Coming Christ.
With this turn of a new church year, during which we focus on the Gospel of St Mark in our Sunday gatherings, we turn now to the Christ Who still comes to us again and again. St Mark’s word to the wise today is stay awake, be vigilant. We never know when Christ is coming.
St Paul, moreover, reflects in his letters that God, indeed, is quite unpredictable and, therefore, as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, God will keep us firm to the end…Why? God is faithful, and by God you were called into solidarity with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Both inspired writers encourage us to maintain a frame of mind in which we try, with God’s Help, always with God’s Help, to be faithful to our commitment to Jesus and His Gospel, to expect Christ Jesus to be present with us in our lives, to be patient and longing for this Christ Who is always coming to us.
Using Einstein’s relativity theory, in this Advent, let us adopt a different way of viewing reality. 1) Therefore, God is still creating the universe and still creating each of us. 2) We are still people who are favored and flawed at the same time. As a result, we are still people who are falling into scenarios of evil. 3) God is still forming people as recipients of God’s ongoing promise of fidelity. 4) God is still sending the Messiah into our world and into our lives. Whenever we are touched and effected by the Christ Quantum, Christmas happens. Christ is born. 5) We are still called by God the Father and Christ Jesus to gather as a critical mass, change agents, catalysts for this new worldview, cells of the Body of Christ Jesus. Easter happens. Christ is crucified and Risen.
The world at large was so taken with the trauma of the death earthquakes, tsunamis experienced this year. What happens in one nation is news in another where the enmeshed System does not control the media as much as here.
There is a sad contrast in our own nation. We had an early snowstorm on October 29, but environmental change is still debated by politicians, claiming to be legitimate. We are becoming jaded to the frequency and the regularity of the deaths of American service people in Afghanistan. Even more startling and shocking is the rush to put a Michael Jackson-like story like the conviction of his doctor on page one at any time when the people of our nation should be taken with more substantial and formative issues.
We spoke together often of the “N-syndrome”, viz., that characterize contemporary American society. It has been said that our culture has been non-stop, moving at 101 mph. (So many of us are always on the go that we literally and figuratively run out of gas.) It has been said that our culture has become numb. We are moving so fast that we get numb to the real problems and situations confronting people around us and in the world. It has been said that our culture has become narcissistic, that we are so self-occupied that we cannot be bothered with large problems around us. All of this tends to make us nervous and/or neurotic. Living in such a reality takes its toll upon the individual and the family and the society in general. All three realities are intrinsically related. Sooner or later, a problem in one area will cause problems in related areas.
We begin the season of Advent this weekend. Yes, Jesus came in history 2000 years ago. However, whenever we listen to His Gospel and try, with His Help, to live and to implement His Gospel in our lives, our family’s life, our community life, our world’s life, Jesus comes again to us. May He come into our lives. It should always be Advent.
20th French theologian, Simone Weil, said that her favorite line in the Bible was “We wait in joyful hope.” We can always prepare the Way for the Lord when we leave space for Him in our lives. Sadly, the time of preparing the way of the Lord becomes another example of the N-syndrome, characterized by non-stop, numbing preparations by which we find ourselves trapped. To prepare the Way for the Lord demands silence, solitude and space, all of which are at a premium especially during the pre-Christmas rush (aka Advent.)
We are all addicted, entrapped, enmeshed and compulsed during the frenetic weeks ahead. Try to make a little way for the Lord in the month ahead by doing something counter-cultural. Ask God in the silence for the gift of fidelity, expectation, patience and longing. Our God is the God of Surprises. One of the great surprises is that what we anticipate is already here!
Advent is a great opportunity to tune out the cacophony and bedlam. Remember Jesus is the Reason for the Season; the economy is not the reason for the season; status anxiety is not the reason for the season, no matter what they tell us. 112711 AD jfq
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Reflection: November 20, 2011AD
Where Will We Stand?
As we conclude our church year today we hear the familiar and challenging parable which Jesus spoke on Spy Wednesday, the day before the Lord’s Supper. Familiar yet challenging in the sense that we all know where the parable is going and we all wonder with which group each of us will be numbered that day. To show its import, it is the last of Jesus’ teachings at the conclusion of His preaching ministry. Location, location, location!
The Dalai Lama commented on the commitment that the Roman Catholic tradition has shown for 2000 years to the challenge of providing the fulfillment of the corporal works of mercy. Even in a Europe today that has frequently turned its back on formal Catholic worship, Catholic values have won the day in many ways. Talking about the spate of executions in Texas and Georgia in September, the NY Times spoke about how Europeans tend to focus on the Catholic stress upon the dignity and inviolable nature of every human person and how outraged European nations were at the frequency of the use of lethal injections by states. The Times added, also, that the USA has committed more to a Protestant individual responsibility for one’s actions, despite circumstances that effect one’s human decisions.
One can imagine an imaginary discussion between two of the great Catholic ladies of the twentieth centuries, viz., Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Servant of God, Dorothy Day of New York. Blessed Teresa had been criticized by many during her ministry that she provided bandaids for situations that needed radical surgery. Her response was that we can only love one person at a time. If you cannot feed 100 people, then try to feed one. As she said herself, “Holiness (integrity) is not the luxury of a few, but luxury is a simple duty for you and me.” How one responds to the challenge in today’s Gospel varies upon the circumstances of each person’s existential reality. Do what you can do but do something.
Blessed Teresa’s contemporary, Dorothy Day of New York, saw things in a more nuanced context. Known for her establishment of Hospitality Houses for the poorest of the poor and her commitment to the non-violent challenge of the Gospel of St Matthew, Servant Dorothy was up to her elbows in washing the sores of sick people and praying that Macy’s would send over leftover pastries from its store on Herald Square (which Macy’s frequently did!). Yet asked “Why was so much work done by the saints remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? Where were the saints to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to end slavery?”
Another contemporary of the two holy women was Blessed John XXIII, whose birthday we celebrate this week, on November 25, would moderate the discussion between the two ladies with his sage comment, “Catholics know more now.” Not only do we always as individuals and groups try to fulfill the corporal works of mercy, but we try to change the situations which created the social and economic needs of so many people in our human family. Speaking of globalization, is it really gobblization or is it glocalization? Speaking of world ethos, is it the common good or the bottom line that motivates us. Speaking of human dignity, is it exclusively about our in-group or inclusively about every human person?
Interestingly, a few weeks ago, the Vatican published a document calling for radical reform of the world’s financial systems, including, among other things the creation of a global political authority to manage the global economy. The Vatican proposal also called for a “minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market, lamenting the “overall abrogations of controls” on movement of capital throughout the world. Pope Benedict is on the bandwagon also, it seems.
Apropos of Blessed John’s caveat, an interesting proposal was recently made by a NY theologian. Students in universities, viz., those fortunately to get the funds together to go to college, were challenged to take a semester off from formal classroom education. They would work for the semester in a local fastfood chain, dealing with the demands of hardwork and obnoxious consumers. For twelve college credits, they would donate 50% of their earnings to a charity of their choice, predetermined in advance. Students would certainly get an education in human relations and might also get an insight into the lives of people not so fortunate as they. They might also ask themselves if they do not succumb to conventional wisdom, viz., “I think what everyone else thinks” or ask how do people end up having to become Burger King Moms, where they have their children sit in a booth at BK doing their homework and eating fastfood as staples because Mom needs to work two jobs to try to keep her head above water. The question that children use as a weapon often again their parents is the whining, “Is that fair?” Sadly, most adults stop asking the question as they grow up, unless, of course, it involved them personally.
Our wonderful Catholic trio, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed John XXIII and Servant of God, Dorothy Day of New York, in discussion, would each have a different spin on the implications of today’s Gospel. However, each would know that Jesus is gets to basics with His last parable. The Dalai Lama was quite correct that, for 2000 years, the Catholic Church has been in the vanguard of trying to fulfill and inculcate Jesus’ vision of the Last Judgment. “When you did it to the least of the sisters and brothers, you did it for Me.”. Let us keep the tradition alive in Christ Jesus!! 112011AD jfq
As we conclude our church year today we hear the familiar and challenging parable which Jesus spoke on Spy Wednesday, the day before the Lord’s Supper. Familiar yet challenging in the sense that we all know where the parable is going and we all wonder with which group each of us will be numbered that day. To show its import, it is the last of Jesus’ teachings at the conclusion of His preaching ministry. Location, location, location!
The Dalai Lama commented on the commitment that the Roman Catholic tradition has shown for 2000 years to the challenge of providing the fulfillment of the corporal works of mercy. Even in a Europe today that has frequently turned its back on formal Catholic worship, Catholic values have won the day in many ways. Talking about the spate of executions in Texas and Georgia in September, the NY Times spoke about how Europeans tend to focus on the Catholic stress upon the dignity and inviolable nature of every human person and how outraged European nations were at the frequency of the use of lethal injections by states. The Times added, also, that the USA has committed more to a Protestant individual responsibility for one’s actions, despite circumstances that effect one’s human decisions.
One can imagine an imaginary discussion between two of the great Catholic ladies of the twentieth centuries, viz., Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Servant of God, Dorothy Day of New York. Blessed Teresa had been criticized by many during her ministry that she provided bandaids for situations that needed radical surgery. Her response was that we can only love one person at a time. If you cannot feed 100 people, then try to feed one. As she said herself, “Holiness (integrity) is not the luxury of a few, but luxury is a simple duty for you and me.” How one responds to the challenge in today’s Gospel varies upon the circumstances of each person’s existential reality. Do what you can do but do something.
Blessed Teresa’s contemporary, Dorothy Day of New York, saw things in a more nuanced context. Known for her establishment of Hospitality Houses for the poorest of the poor and her commitment to the non-violent challenge of the Gospel of St Matthew, Servant Dorothy was up to her elbows in washing the sores of sick people and praying that Macy’s would send over leftover pastries from its store on Herald Square (which Macy’s frequently did!). Yet asked “Why was so much work done by the saints remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? Where were the saints to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to end slavery?”
Another contemporary of the two holy women was Blessed John XXIII, whose birthday we celebrate this week, on November 25, would moderate the discussion between the two ladies with his sage comment, “Catholics know more now.” Not only do we always as individuals and groups try to fulfill the corporal works of mercy, but we try to change the situations which created the social and economic needs of so many people in our human family. Speaking of globalization, is it really gobblization or is it glocalization? Speaking of world ethos, is it the common good or the bottom line that motivates us. Speaking of human dignity, is it exclusively about our in-group or inclusively about every human person?
Interestingly, a few weeks ago, the Vatican published a document calling for radical reform of the world’s financial systems, including, among other things the creation of a global political authority to manage the global economy. The Vatican proposal also called for a “minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market, lamenting the “overall abrogations of controls” on movement of capital throughout the world. Pope Benedict is on the bandwagon also, it seems.
Apropos of Blessed John’s caveat, an interesting proposal was recently made by a NY theologian. Students in universities, viz., those fortunately to get the funds together to go to college, were challenged to take a semester off from formal classroom education. They would work for the semester in a local fastfood chain, dealing with the demands of hardwork and obnoxious consumers. For twelve college credits, they would donate 50% of their earnings to a charity of their choice, predetermined in advance. Students would certainly get an education in human relations and might also get an insight into the lives of people not so fortunate as they. They might also ask themselves if they do not succumb to conventional wisdom, viz., “I think what everyone else thinks” or ask how do people end up having to become Burger King Moms, where they have their children sit in a booth at BK doing their homework and eating fastfood as staples because Mom needs to work two jobs to try to keep her head above water. The question that children use as a weapon often again their parents is the whining, “Is that fair?” Sadly, most adults stop asking the question as they grow up, unless, of course, it involved them personally.
Our wonderful Catholic trio, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed John XXIII and Servant of God, Dorothy Day of New York, in discussion, would each have a different spin on the implications of today’s Gospel. However, each would know that Jesus is gets to basics with His last parable. The Dalai Lama was quite correct that, for 2000 years, the Catholic Church has been in the vanguard of trying to fulfill and inculcate Jesus’ vision of the Last Judgment. “When you did it to the least of the sisters and brothers, you did it for Me.”. Let us keep the tradition alive in Christ Jesus!! 112011AD jfq
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Reflection, November 13, 2011AD
Companeros de Jesus!!
This week, we remember (at least, some do) the murder of the Jesuit Martyrs in Latin America. Wednesday is the feast of St Roque Gonzalez, a native-born Paraguayan Jesuit murdered by Indians in the 17th century. He was one of the Jesuits responsible for the establishment of the Jesuit reducciones , planned farming communities, The reducciones were made famous in the Oscar winning movie years ago, The Mission, starring Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons. We remember, ironically and tragically this week as well, the Jesuits and their companions who died in El Salvador in November, 1989.
23 years ago, this weekend, many were shocked by the murder of 6 Jesuits, their housekeeper and daughter in the University of Central America in El Salvador. Their murderers, later discovered, were assassins associated with the military. The massacre symbolized the 75,000+ people of El Salvador who died in the 1980’s in a nation with the size of and population of Massachusetts.
The civil war, waged in El Salvador for so many years, was called a “war of national security”, “low intensity warfare” against the communist menace. (We supply the weapons; they supply the bodies.) (Aside, in 2011, the new buzzword is “unmanned drone attacks”, viz., computerized killing systems which recently misfired and killed several US forces in Afghanistan. Remember another buzzword, “collateral damage” from Gulf War II?) ) Sadly ironic but historically telling, the Berlin Wall, such a symbol of communism, was brought down a mere ten days earlier. China and Cuba notwithstanding, the communist monolith was cracking. In 2011AD, the two communist nations remain, but radical change appears.
The challenge was presented to the Jesuits to send replacements to take the place of the martyred Jesuits at UCA. One of the Jesuit replacements for the Jesuits was an upstate NYer, who adopted the Big Apple when he taught at Fordham in the 1980’s, viz., Fr Dean Brackley. On October 16, last month, Fr Dean Brackley died of pancreatic cancer. JQ had the privilege of meeting Brackley in El Salvador in 2007AD.
In 1988, he published an article, ‘Downward Mobility” Quoting Brackley, Fr Jim Martin wrote in the Jesuit Guide to Just about Everything, “The drive to acquire, the constant striving toward “upward mobility” is at first driven by something healthy, viz., our longing. “All of us have a natural longing for God. But, as Brackley notes, the consumer culture often tells us that we can satisfy this longing through money, status and possessions. Sound crazy?? Just think of the television commercials that promise happiness if you only buy one more thing”. (p. 183)
One of the things that he said was that the biggest influence on his working with the poor in the Bronx and later in El Salvador was the example of South Bronx Catholic priests, particularly Msgr Gerald Ryan and Rev Neil Connolly. While he taught theology at Fordham, for about ten years, he cycled to a job with a church-sponsored organization, South Bronx People for Change, working with drug addicts, tenants’ organizations and mediator between residents and police. He spoke of how the poor were teachers of the more affluent. As someone said, ‘The poor know something that the rest of us don’t and they can teach us”.
In this month of Remember (in which we recall Fr Dean Brackley as well as Servant of God, Dorothy Day of NY, and the Maryknoll Martyrs of El Salvador ( 2 of the 4 were from NYC)) among others, NY Catholicism, through the Holy Spirit, continues to witness to the permanence and the ferment of the Gospel in the reality of NY life and the life of the world in general.
He makes 12 points in his article about the pathology of the consumer culture. One point, he makes, is point 4. One’s personal worth depends on one’s wealth or job (according to the pathology). That’s why discussing salary is, perhaps, the biggest taboo in social settings; it’s the quickest way of ranking people and is society’s prime measure of our worth. (When it comes to money, people are funny.) He concludes that simpler living (downward mobility) is a move to greater freedom from the rat race of the System.
The call was for a Jesuit priest who had a doctorate in theology and spoke Spanish. Brackley said he felt a physical reaction before a spiritual one to the call. He felt that he was one of the ones that Jesus was calling.
In the Catholic month of Remember, November, we are reminded that while God lives in us now and we live in God now, there is a future in which God’s dream of Enoughism will be fulfilled through the process of collaboration. We ask God to hasten the Kingdom; God asks us to build better human communities reflecting even now what God wants. It is a collaborative effort.
Whatever Jesus meant by the parable of the Talents today, the spin has become that we are to use our talents for the betterment of others. St Irenaeus wrote, “God’s greatest glory is a human person fully alive”. God’s gifts (of talents among other things) make demands upon us for the betterment of the lives of one another, not ours. Now is the time, even now, though not yet. Not knowing the day nor the hour for God’s Kingdom remains. What is happening in Thessalonica 20 years after the Death and Resurrection of the Lord still impacts what happens in New York and our world, our global village, 2000 years later. The Kingdom of God is already among us!!! Your Kingdom come!!!!! It is already and will be!! 111311AD jfq
This week, we remember (at least, some do) the murder of the Jesuit Martyrs in Latin America. Wednesday is the feast of St Roque Gonzalez, a native-born Paraguayan Jesuit murdered by Indians in the 17th century. He was one of the Jesuits responsible for the establishment of the Jesuit reducciones , planned farming communities, The reducciones were made famous in the Oscar winning movie years ago, The Mission, starring Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons. We remember, ironically and tragically this week as well, the Jesuits and their companions who died in El Salvador in November, 1989.
23 years ago, this weekend, many were shocked by the murder of 6 Jesuits, their housekeeper and daughter in the University of Central America in El Salvador. Their murderers, later discovered, were assassins associated with the military. The massacre symbolized the 75,000+ people of El Salvador who died in the 1980’s in a nation with the size of and population of Massachusetts.
The civil war, waged in El Salvador for so many years, was called a “war of national security”, “low intensity warfare” against the communist menace. (We supply the weapons; they supply the bodies.) (Aside, in 2011, the new buzzword is “unmanned drone attacks”, viz., computerized killing systems which recently misfired and killed several US forces in Afghanistan. Remember another buzzword, “collateral damage” from Gulf War II?) ) Sadly ironic but historically telling, the Berlin Wall, such a symbol of communism, was brought down a mere ten days earlier. China and Cuba notwithstanding, the communist monolith was cracking. In 2011AD, the two communist nations remain, but radical change appears.
The challenge was presented to the Jesuits to send replacements to take the place of the martyred Jesuits at UCA. One of the Jesuit replacements for the Jesuits was an upstate NYer, who adopted the Big Apple when he taught at Fordham in the 1980’s, viz., Fr Dean Brackley. On October 16, last month, Fr Dean Brackley died of pancreatic cancer. JQ had the privilege of meeting Brackley in El Salvador in 2007AD.
In 1988, he published an article, ‘Downward Mobility” Quoting Brackley, Fr Jim Martin wrote in the Jesuit Guide to Just about Everything, “The drive to acquire, the constant striving toward “upward mobility” is at first driven by something healthy, viz., our longing. “All of us have a natural longing for God. But, as Brackley notes, the consumer culture often tells us that we can satisfy this longing through money, status and possessions. Sound crazy?? Just think of the television commercials that promise happiness if you only buy one more thing”. (p. 183)
One of the things that he said was that the biggest influence on his working with the poor in the Bronx and later in El Salvador was the example of South Bronx Catholic priests, particularly Msgr Gerald Ryan and Rev Neil Connolly. While he taught theology at Fordham, for about ten years, he cycled to a job with a church-sponsored organization, South Bronx People for Change, working with drug addicts, tenants’ organizations and mediator between residents and police. He spoke of how the poor were teachers of the more affluent. As someone said, ‘The poor know something that the rest of us don’t and they can teach us”.
In this month of Remember (in which we recall Fr Dean Brackley as well as Servant of God, Dorothy Day of NY, and the Maryknoll Martyrs of El Salvador ( 2 of the 4 were from NYC)) among others, NY Catholicism, through the Holy Spirit, continues to witness to the permanence and the ferment of the Gospel in the reality of NY life and the life of the world in general.
He makes 12 points in his article about the pathology of the consumer culture. One point, he makes, is point 4. One’s personal worth depends on one’s wealth or job (according to the pathology). That’s why discussing salary is, perhaps, the biggest taboo in social settings; it’s the quickest way of ranking people and is society’s prime measure of our worth. (When it comes to money, people are funny.) He concludes that simpler living (downward mobility) is a move to greater freedom from the rat race of the System.
The call was for a Jesuit priest who had a doctorate in theology and spoke Spanish. Brackley said he felt a physical reaction before a spiritual one to the call. He felt that he was one of the ones that Jesus was calling.
In the Catholic month of Remember, November, we are reminded that while God lives in us now and we live in God now, there is a future in which God’s dream of Enoughism will be fulfilled through the process of collaboration. We ask God to hasten the Kingdom; God asks us to build better human communities reflecting even now what God wants. It is a collaborative effort.
Whatever Jesus meant by the parable of the Talents today, the spin has become that we are to use our talents for the betterment of others. St Irenaeus wrote, “God’s greatest glory is a human person fully alive”. God’s gifts (of talents among other things) make demands upon us for the betterment of the lives of one another, not ours. Now is the time, even now, though not yet. Not knowing the day nor the hour for God’s Kingdom remains. What is happening in Thessalonica 20 years after the Death and Resurrection of the Lord still impacts what happens in New York and our world, our global village, 2000 years later. The Kingdom of God is already among us!!! Your Kingdom come!!!!! It is already and will be!! 111311AD jfq
Reflection, November 6, 2011AD
Be Still (NOT), My Restless Heart
Karl Rahner wrote that each Catholic of the 21st century had to take quite seriously the reality that each person has transcendence hardwired into his or her humanity. Each person is a question that only Transcendence can ultimately answer. It is incumbent upon the Catholic Church to teach all Catholics (not some Catholics) that if we want, we can enter into moments of silence, solitude and surrender within the monastery of one’s heart. Catholics believe that God lives in each of us and each of us live in God each “now”.
Sadly, but realistically, we realize that we live in a world that “eases God out” (EGO) and trivializes the Transcendent Impulse built into our humanity. Stephen Carter, at Yale, wrote a classic book many years ago, The Culture of Disbelief. Carter’s thesis was that, in contemporary America (this was in the early 1990’s!!), conventional wisdom (aka the System which he identified as “government, media, public education” looked upon an Orientation to the Transcendent in one of two condescending ways:1) sneering toleration of a sense of the Absolute as a neurosis at the least, a psychosis at the worst; 2) a privatization in which you do your thing, but don’t expect the system to go along with it. (This predated tele-evangelists who get into politics agreeing with the System.)
Since then, the situation has deteriorated more so with the coming of the Spirituals but not Religious, the SBNR viz., I’m spiritual but not religious. NY Times columnist, David Brooks, wrote a book, On Paradise Drive, in which he described the emergence of Bourgeois Bohemians (or Bohemian Bourgeois) (BoBos). One woman, Sheila, described her religion as Sheilaism, viz., if works for Sheila, then it’s good. (Poor Sheila and those around her!)
Recently, we have seen the emergence of the Church of Benign Whateverism. This is the religion known as Therapeutic Moralistic Deism. 1)Religion exists to make me feel good. If I don’t feel good, it is the fault of the religion and I take a walk. Sound familiar? 2) Everyone should be nice and respect each other. Sound familiar? 3) Yes, there is Something that others might call God, but I turn to that God as needed. Then, God had better deliver or I’m out of here. Sound familiar again?
Both Karl Rahner and Stephen Carter would catch our responsorial psalm today, Psalm 63, “My soul is thirsting for You, O Lord my God.”, reflecting a perennial human yearning, viz., the yearning for transcendence. St Paul wrote that our bodies groan for fulfillment. St Augustine wrote, “You created our hearts, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” St Thomas Aquinas spoke of the call to Mystery, to see Life as Something bigger than we are, but of Which we are all a part. Fr Karl Rahner described this yearning for transcendence in each person, Which is God’s Call to us by the term “transcendent, supernatural existential” as constituent of every human life. French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote of the X-factor in all people, “the call to union with the Creator and creation.” Canadian theologian, Ron Rolheiser calls it the “Holy Longing”.
Another Canadian theologian, Eckhardt Tolle, recently published a book, The New Earth, in which he stresses the need for all of us to realize that the Transcendent God is within each and everyone of us now and always and that each and everyone of us is within God.
He writes that our egoic self (in which we tend to focus on self-image based on past experiences, particularly hurts, and future anticipations, particularly anxieties,) as something which blocks out our realization that God is in us now and that we are in God now. Catholics would recognize our doctrine of the Divine Indwelling, each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit (Remember that??)
He describes the core of the Ego as well as the various roles in which we indulge our Ego, viz., how we would like to come across and how we feel we would like to come across. He describes how we can break free from the pain-bodies that constitute so much ego identity. In indulging our Ego, we Ease God Out (EGO). In indulging our corporate Ego, We Ease God Out (WEGO).
Each of us will experience at least once, if not twice or more times, moments in which the Transcendent intertwines with the temporal. Moments of passage, at the time of a birth of a child or the death of a loved one, becomes critical moments in which we experience reality checks. Also, there are other moments in which we experience a helplessness, in either a positive or a negative way, in which we realize that we are not in control.
All religions exist to help people cope with the sufferings that come our way. Followers of Jesus feel the Cross of Christ, crucified and risen, is our archetype for our own experience of life.
Middle-class Therapeutic Moralistic Deism has a hard time with crisis. We live in a culture that needs to control, understand or to fix all things. However, those who remember frequently that our souls, longing for God, will discover that a frequent visit to the Monastery of the Heart can have a different worldview, a consciousness that God is the Center of My Reality, not my Ego or Wego. With Jesus, King David, St Paul and St Augustine and all Saints, we realize that our hearts were created by God and will not rest until they rest in God. “My soul (not only yours, but mine!) is thirsting for You, my God.” Sheila’s soul as well? 110611AD jfq
Karl Rahner wrote that each Catholic of the 21st century had to take quite seriously the reality that each person has transcendence hardwired into his or her humanity. Each person is a question that only Transcendence can ultimately answer. It is incumbent upon the Catholic Church to teach all Catholics (not some Catholics) that if we want, we can enter into moments of silence, solitude and surrender within the monastery of one’s heart. Catholics believe that God lives in each of us and each of us live in God each “now”.
Sadly, but realistically, we realize that we live in a world that “eases God out” (EGO) and trivializes the Transcendent Impulse built into our humanity. Stephen Carter, at Yale, wrote a classic book many years ago, The Culture of Disbelief. Carter’s thesis was that, in contemporary America (this was in the early 1990’s!!), conventional wisdom (aka the System which he identified as “government, media, public education” looked upon an Orientation to the Transcendent in one of two condescending ways:1) sneering toleration of a sense of the Absolute as a neurosis at the least, a psychosis at the worst; 2) a privatization in which you do your thing, but don’t expect the system to go along with it. (This predated tele-evangelists who get into politics agreeing with the System.)
Since then, the situation has deteriorated more so with the coming of the Spirituals but not Religious, the SBNR viz., I’m spiritual but not religious. NY Times columnist, David Brooks, wrote a book, On Paradise Drive, in which he described the emergence of Bourgeois Bohemians (or Bohemian Bourgeois) (BoBos). One woman, Sheila, described her religion as Sheilaism, viz., if works for Sheila, then it’s good. (Poor Sheila and those around her!)
Recently, we have seen the emergence of the Church of Benign Whateverism. This is the religion known as Therapeutic Moralistic Deism. 1)Religion exists to make me feel good. If I don’t feel good, it is the fault of the religion and I take a walk. Sound familiar? 2) Everyone should be nice and respect each other. Sound familiar? 3) Yes, there is Something that others might call God, but I turn to that God as needed. Then, God had better deliver or I’m out of here. Sound familiar again?
Both Karl Rahner and Stephen Carter would catch our responsorial psalm today, Psalm 63, “My soul is thirsting for You, O Lord my God.”, reflecting a perennial human yearning, viz., the yearning for transcendence. St Paul wrote that our bodies groan for fulfillment. St Augustine wrote, “You created our hearts, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” St Thomas Aquinas spoke of the call to Mystery, to see Life as Something bigger than we are, but of Which we are all a part. Fr Karl Rahner described this yearning for transcendence in each person, Which is God’s Call to us by the term “transcendent, supernatural existential” as constituent of every human life. French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote of the X-factor in all people, “the call to union with the Creator and creation.” Canadian theologian, Ron Rolheiser calls it the “Holy Longing”.
Another Canadian theologian, Eckhardt Tolle, recently published a book, The New Earth, in which he stresses the need for all of us to realize that the Transcendent God is within each and everyone of us now and always and that each and everyone of us is within God.
He writes that our egoic self (in which we tend to focus on self-image based on past experiences, particularly hurts, and future anticipations, particularly anxieties,) as something which blocks out our realization that God is in us now and that we are in God now. Catholics would recognize our doctrine of the Divine Indwelling, each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit (Remember that??)
He describes the core of the Ego as well as the various roles in which we indulge our Ego, viz., how we would like to come across and how we feel we would like to come across. He describes how we can break free from the pain-bodies that constitute so much ego identity. In indulging our Ego, we Ease God Out (EGO). In indulging our corporate Ego, We Ease God Out (WEGO).
Each of us will experience at least once, if not twice or more times, moments in which the Transcendent intertwines with the temporal. Moments of passage, at the time of a birth of a child or the death of a loved one, becomes critical moments in which we experience reality checks. Also, there are other moments in which we experience a helplessness, in either a positive or a negative way, in which we realize that we are not in control.
All religions exist to help people cope with the sufferings that come our way. Followers of Jesus feel the Cross of Christ, crucified and risen, is our archetype for our own experience of life.
Middle-class Therapeutic Moralistic Deism has a hard time with crisis. We live in a culture that needs to control, understand or to fix all things. However, those who remember frequently that our souls, longing for God, will discover that a frequent visit to the Monastery of the Heart can have a different worldview, a consciousness that God is the Center of My Reality, not my Ego or Wego. With Jesus, King David, St Paul and St Augustine and all Saints, we realize that our hearts were created by God and will not rest until they rest in God. “My soul (not only yours, but mine!) is thirsting for You, my God.” Sheila’s soul as well? 110611AD jfq
Friday, October 28, 2011
Reflection, October 30, 2011AD
We Remember
One of the original Quantum theologians, St Paul, understood that Reality is bigger than we can imagine. He says so on more than one occasion in his letters. He understood that the Big Picture is larger than our minds can comprehend, but that the Big Picture lives in God and God lives in the Big Picture.
The Apostle to the Gentiles did not have the scientific language that we have today. Still, he intuited several modern principles. 1) He understood the Macrocosm is contained in the Microcosm and vice versa, the Microcosm is contained in the Macrocosm. He called the Body of Christ; we call the Divine Indwelling. 2) He intuited that nothing is wasted in creation, what we call today the Conservation of Matter and/ or Energy. We call it the Paschal Mystery. God can convert anything into the good that God desires. 3) He intuited that the universe was all related. (He would have probably been a follower of Ptolemy, who said that the Earth was the Center of the Universe.) We call the universe today a relational matrix or a cosmic web. Albert Einstein taught the theory of relativity. Einstein had the language; St Paul had the insight, but not the language.
In his early letters, we catch glimpses of how the Holy Spirit developed the inspired mind of St Paul as he tried to make sense of the question of death of loved ones. In 1 Thess, his earliest letter, written a mere 20 years after the death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, St Paul clearly anticipated that the Second Coming of the Lord (known in biblical Greek, as the Parousia) was going to happen in his lifetime and of his Jesus Movement house churches in Thessalonica. He spoke of the Resurrection of the dead members of the Movement before the arrival of Christ in glory. Shortly, later, his thinking evolved under the Spirit. We read in later Pauline letters that he has reflected on the Paschal Mystery of Iesous Kyrios (Jesus is Lord), applicable in the life and death and transformation of every Christian, even now, but not yet. “If then we have died in Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.”
Our language about God is ultimately inadequate. God is Mystery, Incomprehensible, Knowable, but ultimately Unknowable. Recall the story of St Augustine’s encounter with the child’s pouring the sea into the hole by the shore. St Augustine’s insight was that the child had as much chance of pouring the sea into the hole as the human mind had to understand totally the Transcendence that we call God, viz., the Nameless One.
Humbling yet realistic, even biblical language, while divinely inspired we believe, is still written in human language. The Scriptures are the Word of God in divinely inspired, yet in fallible, human language. As theologians say, the Scriptures lead us to Transcendence.
In addition, many Scriptural theologians, such as Second Isaiah and Paul, speak of the Inscrutability of God. Both ask the same questions, ”Who could ever know the mind of the Lord? Who could ever have been His counselor?” Paul adds, All that exists comes from God; all is by and for God. To God be glory for ever. Amen.(Is 40.13 & Rom 11.34-35)
In divinely inspired, yet humanly incomprehensible language, Jesus spoke to Martha (and us), “I am the Resurrection and the Life. The one who believes in Me will never die.” (Jn 11.25)
We don’t know how Jesus fulfills the Promise made to Martha and to all believers. 21st century people frequently feel that we have gone about as far as we go (in understanding reality and in knowing all we need to know.) Some Catholics feel that their faith (frequently uninformed) works for them and that is good for them. However, it is important to remember that all of us are confronted by the Mystery of God in a variety of settings. Some settings are ordinary or extraordinary; some are planned or unplanned; some are happy or solemn.
Recently, Fr Karl Rahner described God as the Divine Answer to the human question. We are the question; God is the Answer.
As we begin November , the Catholic Month to Remember, the month of All Saints and All Souls, we commend all our faithful departed to the God of Life, the God of Mystery for all eternity. As another theologian said, the first article of our Nicene Creed (soon to be revised on November 27, 2011AD) equals the last article. When we say, “I look forward to the Resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”, we merely re-phrase what we said in the first place, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”
In Celtic Christian thought, Oct 31—Nov 1 represented the reality of thin time, viz., those who have died in Christ entered the Fullness of Divine Presence, the veil between the eternal and the temporal grows porous. It is the awareness that there is a “mystery in your history”, “ a sacred in your secular”, not just those who have gone before us, but ourselves too, even now, but not yet!
Jesus asks all of us to take Him at His word. We try to do so as we think of those who have gone before us in life and in love. Fr Edward Schillebeeckx wrote a prayer hoping that it would be incorporated into our Mass. “In Christ Jesus, “God of Mystery, God of Life, we remember those who have gone before us. We cannot believe that all that they meant to us has been lost forever. You were their Lord then. You are their Lord now!” 103011AD jfq .
One of the original Quantum theologians, St Paul, understood that Reality is bigger than we can imagine. He says so on more than one occasion in his letters. He understood that the Big Picture is larger than our minds can comprehend, but that the Big Picture lives in God and God lives in the Big Picture.
The Apostle to the Gentiles did not have the scientific language that we have today. Still, he intuited several modern principles. 1) He understood the Macrocosm is contained in the Microcosm and vice versa, the Microcosm is contained in the Macrocosm. He called the Body of Christ; we call the Divine Indwelling. 2) He intuited that nothing is wasted in creation, what we call today the Conservation of Matter and/ or Energy. We call it the Paschal Mystery. God can convert anything into the good that God desires. 3) He intuited that the universe was all related. (He would have probably been a follower of Ptolemy, who said that the Earth was the Center of the Universe.) We call the universe today a relational matrix or a cosmic web. Albert Einstein taught the theory of relativity. Einstein had the language; St Paul had the insight, but not the language.
In his early letters, we catch glimpses of how the Holy Spirit developed the inspired mind of St Paul as he tried to make sense of the question of death of loved ones. In 1 Thess, his earliest letter, written a mere 20 years after the death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, St Paul clearly anticipated that the Second Coming of the Lord (known in biblical Greek, as the Parousia) was going to happen in his lifetime and of his Jesus Movement house churches in Thessalonica. He spoke of the Resurrection of the dead members of the Movement before the arrival of Christ in glory. Shortly, later, his thinking evolved under the Spirit. We read in later Pauline letters that he has reflected on the Paschal Mystery of Iesous Kyrios (Jesus is Lord), applicable in the life and death and transformation of every Christian, even now, but not yet. “If then we have died in Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.”
Our language about God is ultimately inadequate. God is Mystery, Incomprehensible, Knowable, but ultimately Unknowable. Recall the story of St Augustine’s encounter with the child’s pouring the sea into the hole by the shore. St Augustine’s insight was that the child had as much chance of pouring the sea into the hole as the human mind had to understand totally the Transcendence that we call God, viz., the Nameless One.
Humbling yet realistic, even biblical language, while divinely inspired we believe, is still written in human language. The Scriptures are the Word of God in divinely inspired, yet in fallible, human language. As theologians say, the Scriptures lead us to Transcendence.
In addition, many Scriptural theologians, such as Second Isaiah and Paul, speak of the Inscrutability of God. Both ask the same questions, ”Who could ever know the mind of the Lord? Who could ever have been His counselor?” Paul adds, All that exists comes from God; all is by and for God. To God be glory for ever. Amen.(Is 40.13 & Rom 11.34-35)
In divinely inspired, yet humanly incomprehensible language, Jesus spoke to Martha (and us), “I am the Resurrection and the Life. The one who believes in Me will never die.” (Jn 11.25)
We don’t know how Jesus fulfills the Promise made to Martha and to all believers. 21st century people frequently feel that we have gone about as far as we go (in understanding reality and in knowing all we need to know.) Some Catholics feel that their faith (frequently uninformed) works for them and that is good for them. However, it is important to remember that all of us are confronted by the Mystery of God in a variety of settings. Some settings are ordinary or extraordinary; some are planned or unplanned; some are happy or solemn.
Recently, Fr Karl Rahner described God as the Divine Answer to the human question. We are the question; God is the Answer.
As we begin November , the Catholic Month to Remember, the month of All Saints and All Souls, we commend all our faithful departed to the God of Life, the God of Mystery for all eternity. As another theologian said, the first article of our Nicene Creed (soon to be revised on November 27, 2011AD) equals the last article. When we say, “I look forward to the Resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”, we merely re-phrase what we said in the first place, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”
In Celtic Christian thought, Oct 31—Nov 1 represented the reality of thin time, viz., those who have died in Christ entered the Fullness of Divine Presence, the veil between the eternal and the temporal grows porous. It is the awareness that there is a “mystery in your history”, “ a sacred in your secular”, not just those who have gone before us, but ourselves too, even now, but not yet!
Jesus asks all of us to take Him at His word. We try to do so as we think of those who have gone before us in life and in love. Fr Edward Schillebeeckx wrote a prayer hoping that it would be incorporated into our Mass. “In Christ Jesus, “God of Mystery, God of Life, we remember those who have gone before us. We cannot believe that all that they meant to us has been lost forever. You were their Lord then. You are their Lord now!” 103011AD jfq .
Reflection, Oct 23, 2011AD
Real Chicken Soup
This week we celebrated the Feast of St Luke, the author of both the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospel of St Luke is considered by many to be the most beautiful of the four Gospels. The Acts of the Apostles, along with St Paul’s letters, give us a view into the life of our ancestors, the Jesus Movement in the first forty years of the New Testament.
One of the principal themes stressed in Luke-Acts is the centrality of prayer. Jesus is the Person of Prayer. In Acts, the earliest community, filled with the Holy Spirit, were clearly Communities of Prayer. St Luke gives us some “real chicken soup”, not like some of those dumb coffee table books we see around.
To use modern parlance, Jesus acknowledged frequently (and urges us to do the same) the orientation of each human life to a contextual, existential transcendence each moment. God lives in me; I live in God. While we cannot spend our entire day conscious of the Divine Presence, (known in traditional Catholic thought as the Divine Indwelling), He teaches us to acknowledge the Deep Incarnation frequently during the day. People speak now of Inter-twining, viz., when the beep goes off on your watch, use it as a moment to reflect “God is in this NOW; this is in God NOW.
St Luke tells us that Jesus prayed before the important moments in His Life. In such decisive moments in His Ministry, viz., His baptism by John (Lk 3), His choice of the 12 (Lk 6) , His teaching the Abba Prayer (Lk 11), before His Transfiguration Lk 9), before His passion, death and Resurrection (Lk 22), Jesus was at prayer.
St Luke also tells us that even in His last breaths, Jesus was at prayer. He always practiced what He preached. In His agony on the Mount of Olives, the night before He died, Jesus prayed a mini version of His signature prayer, in Lk 22.42, “Abba, My Father, not My Will, but Your Will be done!” (Sound familiar??) Even on the cross Jesus united His prayer with His Gift of Self, when He again prayed in Lk 23. 34, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” and ultimately, His dying words, in Lk 23.43, in the quotation of Psalm 31, the Consummate Jew, the Human One, the Mensch, prays, “Father, into Your hands, I commend My Spirit.”
Jesus wants us all to pray with and in the Holy Spirit, the very Life’s Breathe of God, Which Is given to us at baptism and throughout the course of our Christian lives. (Catholics need to remember that Baptism is not a one time infusion of the Holy Spirit). The Spirit is given to us in a variety of ways throughout our lives known perhaps only to God.
Again, three of Jesus’ parables, appearing only in Luke as a strong urge to pray constantly as part of our ongoing journey through life. In the parable of the nagging friend, (Lk 11.5-13) Jesus tells us to be constant and undaunted in our prayer, confident that God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. (One of the ways in which the Holy Spirit can be understood here is as the extraordinary energy given to ordinary people like ourselves to live the Very Life of God.
In the parable of the nagging widow, the unjust judge gives into the non-stop demands of the widow, even to the point of fearing that she may give him a black eye. The disciples of Jesus (that’s us, folks) are told by Jesus to be persistent in our prayers never giving up hope. Jesus tells us something similar in the parable of the persistent neighbor. Jesus encourages us to be persistent in prayer. Just as the neighbor changes his mind and gets out of bed to give his annoying neighbor the bread, so also God wants us to ask, to seek and to knock.
(However, Jesus does not guarantee that we will receive the answer to every prayer of petition which we might offer. He does guarantee that the prayer will be heard. 1) Some prayers are heard and answered by God immediately, it seems. 2) Some prayers take a little time to be heard and they are answered by God after a while. That is all right. 3) Other prayers, at times, are answered in a way that was totally unexpected by God. In fact, God’s point of view in answering the prayer differently reflects the fact that God has a different slant of events and the implications of events upon us and upon the people around us. (For example, if 2 teams prayed for victory in a baseball game, obviously God cannot answer both prayers.) 4) Some prayers are not heard at all, it seems. We pray and we pray and we pray and nothing happens. In fact, things might even get worse. We all experience that, at times, frequently in the darkest moments of our lives.)
In the third Lukan parable on prayer, the Pharisee and the Publican, Jesus tells us that God is more pleased with a sincere and humble act of contrition than with a catalogue congratulating God on how good we are. (Lk. 9-14). This parable reminds the very pious that our Church is meant to be a “hospital for the sinners, not a hotel for the saints.” This parable contains a trap in it because we usually identify ourselves with the second man, viz., the tax collector, when we say that we have an attitude like his. However, the minute we do so, we become like the Pharisee because we say that we are better than the Pharisee. Jesus is smarter than we are.
What type of prayer did Jesus Himself offer to God? He would not have said the Rosary, not yet been invented, nor read the Bible because He would have had to bring the scrolls with Him to His place of prayer.
A great way to understand what Jesus wants to share with us is Transcendental Existentialism or Existential Transcendence, as a way to envision the Kingdom of God. Chances are that He spent the time in contemplative calisthenics (aka transcendental aerobics). Whether He monitored His breathing, or repeated a simple mantra or quietly prayed a mantra when His mind wondered (remember that He was like us in all things but sin) and just maintained a moment in which His beta waves were engaged and His alpha brainwaves were moderated.
Prayer is communication in, with and through the Nameless One. Maintenance of a Sunday association is keeping in touch cannot adequately sustain a real friendship. Frequent familiarity through intentional communities of Church involvement helps, but still does not adequately sustain the deep relationship. The intimacy of time spent with one’s Ultimate Significant Other is what Jesus is talking about in the language of the Third Evangelist. St Teresa of Avila said many years ago, “The greatest mistake people make when they try to pray is to think of God as separated from us.” God is there and I am here, so to speak. Not so!! God lives in me and I live in God. Jesus, St Luke and St Teresa of Avila wants us to take that seriously. 102311AD jfq
This week we celebrated the Feast of St Luke, the author of both the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospel of St Luke is considered by many to be the most beautiful of the four Gospels. The Acts of the Apostles, along with St Paul’s letters, give us a view into the life of our ancestors, the Jesus Movement in the first forty years of the New Testament.
One of the principal themes stressed in Luke-Acts is the centrality of prayer. Jesus is the Person of Prayer. In Acts, the earliest community, filled with the Holy Spirit, were clearly Communities of Prayer. St Luke gives us some “real chicken soup”, not like some of those dumb coffee table books we see around.
To use modern parlance, Jesus acknowledged frequently (and urges us to do the same) the orientation of each human life to a contextual, existential transcendence each moment. God lives in me; I live in God. While we cannot spend our entire day conscious of the Divine Presence, (known in traditional Catholic thought as the Divine Indwelling), He teaches us to acknowledge the Deep Incarnation frequently during the day. People speak now of Inter-twining, viz., when the beep goes off on your watch, use it as a moment to reflect “God is in this NOW; this is in God NOW.
St Luke tells us that Jesus prayed before the important moments in His Life. In such decisive moments in His Ministry, viz., His baptism by John (Lk 3), His choice of the 12 (Lk 6) , His teaching the Abba Prayer (Lk 11), before His Transfiguration Lk 9), before His passion, death and Resurrection (Lk 22), Jesus was at prayer.
St Luke also tells us that even in His last breaths, Jesus was at prayer. He always practiced what He preached. In His agony on the Mount of Olives, the night before He died, Jesus prayed a mini version of His signature prayer, in Lk 22.42, “Abba, My Father, not My Will, but Your Will be done!” (Sound familiar??) Even on the cross Jesus united His prayer with His Gift of Self, when He again prayed in Lk 23. 34, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” and ultimately, His dying words, in Lk 23.43, in the quotation of Psalm 31, the Consummate Jew, the Human One, the Mensch, prays, “Father, into Your hands, I commend My Spirit.”
Jesus wants us all to pray with and in the Holy Spirit, the very Life’s Breathe of God, Which Is given to us at baptism and throughout the course of our Christian lives. (Catholics need to remember that Baptism is not a one time infusion of the Holy Spirit). The Spirit is given to us in a variety of ways throughout our lives known perhaps only to God.
Again, three of Jesus’ parables, appearing only in Luke as a strong urge to pray constantly as part of our ongoing journey through life. In the parable of the nagging friend, (Lk 11.5-13) Jesus tells us to be constant and undaunted in our prayer, confident that God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. (One of the ways in which the Holy Spirit can be understood here is as the extraordinary energy given to ordinary people like ourselves to live the Very Life of God.
In the parable of the nagging widow, the unjust judge gives into the non-stop demands of the widow, even to the point of fearing that she may give him a black eye. The disciples of Jesus (that’s us, folks) are told by Jesus to be persistent in our prayers never giving up hope. Jesus tells us something similar in the parable of the persistent neighbor. Jesus encourages us to be persistent in prayer. Just as the neighbor changes his mind and gets out of bed to give his annoying neighbor the bread, so also God wants us to ask, to seek and to knock.
(However, Jesus does not guarantee that we will receive the answer to every prayer of petition which we might offer. He does guarantee that the prayer will be heard. 1) Some prayers are heard and answered by God immediately, it seems. 2) Some prayers take a little time to be heard and they are answered by God after a while. That is all right. 3) Other prayers, at times, are answered in a way that was totally unexpected by God. In fact, God’s point of view in answering the prayer differently reflects the fact that God has a different slant of events and the implications of events upon us and upon the people around us. (For example, if 2 teams prayed for victory in a baseball game, obviously God cannot answer both prayers.) 4) Some prayers are not heard at all, it seems. We pray and we pray and we pray and nothing happens. In fact, things might even get worse. We all experience that, at times, frequently in the darkest moments of our lives.)
In the third Lukan parable on prayer, the Pharisee and the Publican, Jesus tells us that God is more pleased with a sincere and humble act of contrition than with a catalogue congratulating God on how good we are. (Lk. 9-14). This parable reminds the very pious that our Church is meant to be a “hospital for the sinners, not a hotel for the saints.” This parable contains a trap in it because we usually identify ourselves with the second man, viz., the tax collector, when we say that we have an attitude like his. However, the minute we do so, we become like the Pharisee because we say that we are better than the Pharisee. Jesus is smarter than we are.
What type of prayer did Jesus Himself offer to God? He would not have said the Rosary, not yet been invented, nor read the Bible because He would have had to bring the scrolls with Him to His place of prayer.
A great way to understand what Jesus wants to share with us is Transcendental Existentialism or Existential Transcendence, as a way to envision the Kingdom of God. Chances are that He spent the time in contemplative calisthenics (aka transcendental aerobics). Whether He monitored His breathing, or repeated a simple mantra or quietly prayed a mantra when His mind wondered (remember that He was like us in all things but sin) and just maintained a moment in which His beta waves were engaged and His alpha brainwaves were moderated.
Prayer is communication in, with and through the Nameless One. Maintenance of a Sunday association is keeping in touch cannot adequately sustain a real friendship. Frequent familiarity through intentional communities of Church involvement helps, but still does not adequately sustain the deep relationship. The intimacy of time spent with one’s Ultimate Significant Other is what Jesus is talking about in the language of the Third Evangelist. St Teresa of Avila said many years ago, “The greatest mistake people make when they try to pray is to think of God as separated from us.” God is there and I am here, so to speak. Not so!! God lives in me and I live in God. Jesus, St Luke and St Teresa of Avila wants us to take that seriously. 102311AD jfq
Reflection, Oct 16, 2011AD
God Trumps Caesar (No Pun )
Jesus does not seem to have been in it for the money. When money is involved, He was forced to ask others to provide it. (He asked St Peter to pay the temple tax for Him; He had Judas carry the money bag for the Itinerant 12; the ladies who went from Galilee picked up part of the tab for the journey. There is no record of Jesus’ carrying money of His Own. The only indication that Jesus held any property at all was the indication that it was in His house in Capernaum that Jesus’ welcomed Levi the tax collector to dinner.)
As we hear this famous story today, now more pertinent than ever, it is interesting that Jesus asks them to show Him the coin (He doesn’t have any!) Still, there is more to that. Roman coinage at that time bore the image of Tiberius Caesar, who claimed among his titles Soter (Savior), Son of God, Lord. According to Jewish tribalism at the time, the very touching or handling the Roman coinage would make the individual ritually impure.
It is important to note that the two groups that challenge Jesus today are the Pharisees (who could have been legitimate in their question, but were not, according to St Matthew today) and the Herodians (the flunkies around Herod who was a puppet of the Roman Empire). In their hypocritical concern about religious orthodoxy, they are both un-orthodox themselves!)
It was embarrassing in the beginning for the Jesus Movement proclaim that the Jewish Messiah was a “felon” crucified by the System, the cabal of Empire and vested interest religion. How to explain that for the first three hundred years?
As we said a few weeks back, St Paul saw the “revolutionary” implications of the Kingdom of God vis a vis the Kingdom of Caesar (aka the System). In those early days, the Jesus Movement did not expect that it would have been so long before Jesus returned in triumph and tried to stay off the radar screen.
The problem appeared to be solved when Christianity was legalized by the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, on October 28, 312AD in the Edict of Milan. Even later in the fourth century, Christianity was declared the state religion in 395AD by the Emperor Theodosius in the edict, All the Peoples. You had to be a good Catholic to be a good Roman; you had to be a good Roman to be a good Catholic. Maybe!! Some spoke of Christendom; others spoke of caesaropapism (church and state in collusion and/or sometimes at odds maintaining each’s own agenda).
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of priorities. First, Caesar has the right to obedience, but God trumps Caesar. As Pope John Paul II said, “There are no moral free-zones for individuals or systems. All stands under the scrutiny of God’s Gospel in Jesus.” Pope John Paul also legitimized the concept of systemic sin when he wrote that there were 4 types of sin: 1) venial sin; 2) serious individual sin; 3) serious corporate or systemic sin; 4) mortal sin. Again, Pope John Paul stresses that there are no moral free-zones.
Blessed John XXIII made the famous statement when Catholic thought in evolution seemed to contradict earlier ideas. He said honestly, “We know more now.” Hence, while Catholic thought had tolerated such things as slavery and capital punishment, we know more now.
Starting in 1891, Pope Leo XIII began what is called the best kept secret in Catholic thought, viz., the development of Catholic socio-economic theory, based on our Judeao-Christian tradition, preceding even Jesus Himself. As it has developed in the American Catholic Church in the 20th century, there are seven points that are linchpins of Catholic socio-economic theory. 1) The absolute respect for every human life as God’s gift. (Like it or not, we have to deal with it). 2) The primacy of the family; 3) Each human right brings a concomitant human responsibility; 4) There should be a cooperative effort among government and workers and industries to provide for the common good (not the bottom line); 5) The preferential option for the poor and helpless and needy in society (this one goes back to the Code of Hammurabi); 6) A sense of solidarity and subsidarity ( that level of approach closest to the people is preferable); 7) Care for the environment as a trust (not a commodity) to be passed on to future generations. And all of the above undergirded by the non-violent teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.
In difficult days, people like Pope Leo and Blessed John XXIII were challenged for new directions in Catholic socio-political theory. Pope John Paul II (who commented that after the fall of the Eastern bloc, “capitalism had no right to gloat over its victory because frequently it made the worker into a cipher of the system”,) was too lofty a figure to chide in his time, but he was clearly in the tradition of Pope Leo XIII. He said that the common good trumps the bottom line.
In these difficult days, it is important to remember that both individuals and systems are to observe the seven principles emanating from our American bishops and the Vatican. Not all socio-economic thought from Europe is evil. Many on local and national levels need to remember that. The West has come a long way from the fourth century. More and more, people honestly admit that Caesar has been given too much of a moral pass for political expediency. What does it really mean to say, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s; render to God what is God’s”? As Blessed John said, “We know more now.” Some do! 101611AD jfq
Jesus does not seem to have been in it for the money. When money is involved, He was forced to ask others to provide it. (He asked St Peter to pay the temple tax for Him; He had Judas carry the money bag for the Itinerant 12; the ladies who went from Galilee picked up part of the tab for the journey. There is no record of Jesus’ carrying money of His Own. The only indication that Jesus held any property at all was the indication that it was in His house in Capernaum that Jesus’ welcomed Levi the tax collector to dinner.)
As we hear this famous story today, now more pertinent than ever, it is interesting that Jesus asks them to show Him the coin (He doesn’t have any!) Still, there is more to that. Roman coinage at that time bore the image of Tiberius Caesar, who claimed among his titles Soter (Savior), Son of God, Lord. According to Jewish tribalism at the time, the very touching or handling the Roman coinage would make the individual ritually impure.
It is important to note that the two groups that challenge Jesus today are the Pharisees (who could have been legitimate in their question, but were not, according to St Matthew today) and the Herodians (the flunkies around Herod who was a puppet of the Roman Empire). In their hypocritical concern about religious orthodoxy, they are both un-orthodox themselves!)
It was embarrassing in the beginning for the Jesus Movement proclaim that the Jewish Messiah was a “felon” crucified by the System, the cabal of Empire and vested interest religion. How to explain that for the first three hundred years?
As we said a few weeks back, St Paul saw the “revolutionary” implications of the Kingdom of God vis a vis the Kingdom of Caesar (aka the System). In those early days, the Jesus Movement did not expect that it would have been so long before Jesus returned in triumph and tried to stay off the radar screen.
The problem appeared to be solved when Christianity was legalized by the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, on October 28, 312AD in the Edict of Milan. Even later in the fourth century, Christianity was declared the state religion in 395AD by the Emperor Theodosius in the edict, All the Peoples. You had to be a good Catholic to be a good Roman; you had to be a good Roman to be a good Catholic. Maybe!! Some spoke of Christendom; others spoke of caesaropapism (church and state in collusion and/or sometimes at odds maintaining each’s own agenda).
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of priorities. First, Caesar has the right to obedience, but God trumps Caesar. As Pope John Paul II said, “There are no moral free-zones for individuals or systems. All stands under the scrutiny of God’s Gospel in Jesus.” Pope John Paul also legitimized the concept of systemic sin when he wrote that there were 4 types of sin: 1) venial sin; 2) serious individual sin; 3) serious corporate or systemic sin; 4) mortal sin. Again, Pope John Paul stresses that there are no moral free-zones.
Blessed John XXIII made the famous statement when Catholic thought in evolution seemed to contradict earlier ideas. He said honestly, “We know more now.” Hence, while Catholic thought had tolerated such things as slavery and capital punishment, we know more now.
Starting in 1891, Pope Leo XIII began what is called the best kept secret in Catholic thought, viz., the development of Catholic socio-economic theory, based on our Judeao-Christian tradition, preceding even Jesus Himself. As it has developed in the American Catholic Church in the 20th century, there are seven points that are linchpins of Catholic socio-economic theory. 1) The absolute respect for every human life as God’s gift. (Like it or not, we have to deal with it). 2) The primacy of the family; 3) Each human right brings a concomitant human responsibility; 4) There should be a cooperative effort among government and workers and industries to provide for the common good (not the bottom line); 5) The preferential option for the poor and helpless and needy in society (this one goes back to the Code of Hammurabi); 6) A sense of solidarity and subsidarity ( that level of approach closest to the people is preferable); 7) Care for the environment as a trust (not a commodity) to be passed on to future generations. And all of the above undergirded by the non-violent teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.
In difficult days, people like Pope Leo and Blessed John XXIII were challenged for new directions in Catholic socio-political theory. Pope John Paul II (who commented that after the fall of the Eastern bloc, “capitalism had no right to gloat over its victory because frequently it made the worker into a cipher of the system”,) was too lofty a figure to chide in his time, but he was clearly in the tradition of Pope Leo XIII. He said that the common good trumps the bottom line.
In these difficult days, it is important to remember that both individuals and systems are to observe the seven principles emanating from our American bishops and the Vatican. Not all socio-economic thought from Europe is evil. Many on local and national levels need to remember that. The West has come a long way from the fourth century. More and more, people honestly admit that Caesar has been given too much of a moral pass for political expediency. What does it really mean to say, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s; render to God what is God’s”? As Blessed John said, “We know more now.” Some do! 101611AD jfq
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Reflection October 9, 2011AD
Our Jewish sisters and brothers have always treated the Sacred Name, YHWH, with an admirable deference. We Catholics have been cautioned to treat the Sacred Name with the awe that is due God’s Self-designation. You may notice that YHWH is not used so frequently as we might have in the past.
The Sacred Name appears 6000 times in the Hebrew Bible and yet, Its pronunciation has been circumvented by the use of other terms, Adonai (the Lord) or HaShem (the Name). The reasoning was that to say a person’s name is to indicate a knowledge of the person with the name. Since YHWH can never be known completely, it is inappropriate to mention the Name.
Today, some refer to the Sacred Name as The Nameless One. 700 years ago, Dominican contemplative, Meister Eckhardt, that the very word God was idolatrous. Our usage of it indicates again we all know clearly of what we speak. Eckhardt referred to the God beyond God.
The Awe for the Sacred Name is particularly evident in the most popular of Hebrew prayers, today’s Responsorial, Psalm 23. Not for nothing. It has been prayed by people for over 3000 years. Its staying power is that it appeals to people’s religious consciousness even if one never saw a shepherd.
We know that, during the Vietnamese Conflict, Christian prisoners would gather for a prayer service when one of the prisoners prayed King David’s words. Several said that it was the way in which God helped them keep their sanity in inhuman situations. We know that some on their way to Hitler’s ovens in the prison camp prayed the words as they entered the “dark valley”.
The rediscovered Awe for the Sacred Name, YHWH, creates a problem because YHWH is mentioned in print (not spoken, though) a few times in the first part of Psalm 23. Still, the sentiment of the Psalm is maintained and in one way, is augmented because of its verification in one’s own life. Who knows how to describe the Reality, the Holy Mystery that both frightens and attracts us at the same time.
Rabbi Kushner, author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, wrote a book of meditations on Psalm 23. One point that he stresses is that the Nameless One is referred to in the third person in the first part of the Psalm, when King David is talking about God’s role in our lives. However, in the second part of the Psalm when the going gets tough, the Psalm speaks of God in the second person, in a address to, rather than a statement about the Nameless One.
Recently, one scientist made the statement, “Sometimes things that count cannot be counted and sometimes that really don’t count can be counted. Think about it. Another made the statement, “We can only measure what is measurable”. Even Einstein said, “There might be a Great Unifying Theory to Reality and if someone were to uncover it, the Answer would be both beautiful and simple. He also said, “The person who has not experienced the Awesomeness of Reality is already half dead.
Human experience indicates that the Nameless One can be experienced in moments of love and suffering. It was Karl Jung who said that the archetype behind Christ Crucified is both love and suffering in the death of the Crucified One. God breaks through in moments of both agony and ecstasy. Family members say that they experience the Nameless One in limit moments of birth of a baby as well as death of a loved one. Celtic theologians call it “thin time.”
Recently, the Dalai Lama spoke of the image of Mary’s holding Jesus in the Madonna and Child and in the Pieta. In both cases, suffering and love bring the Presence of the Awesome into clearer focus. He says that many Roman catholics do not realize how deeply embedded in their consciousness is the Image of the Nameless One in the depiction of Mother and Son.
In our own lives, too, we continue to ask for faith that Jesus is Lord in all our personal experiences. Whenever we are confronted by negative diminishments (evils that befall us), we ask for faith to believe that Jesus is Lord in my life,
Sadly, Psalm 23 is a prayer that frequently is associated with memorial cards for Protestants who have died. The prayer is meant to be prayed everyday. Maybe, each can add Psalm 23 to his or her own daily repertoire along with the Prayer of St Francis five times a day.
Life and faith are two basic human rights. Life without faith would be intolerable. King David, St Paul, prisoners in both Auschwitz and the Hanoi Hilton, as well as Jesus of Nazareth Himself, were nourished by Psalm 23 often, on good days and days not so good, when he tried to behave and act on his belief that God supplies what we need in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, we pray, as folks like ourselves have prayed for 3000 years, with our friendly reminder.
The Nameless One is my shepherd. I shall not want.
In verdant pastures, the Nameless One gives me repose.
Besides restful waters, the Nameless One leads me.
The Nameless One refreshes my soul
You guide me in right paths for Your Name’s sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley, I feel no evil
For You are at my side with Your rod and Your staff that give me courage
You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes; my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life
And I shall dwell in the house of the Nameless One now and forever.
Even with the Awe that refraining from the usage of the Sacred Name cautions, the Psalm still brings consolation and peace. Once again, try to add this most popular of prayers to your repertoire. It is worth a try, isn’t it?
The Sacred Name appears 6000 times in the Hebrew Bible and yet, Its pronunciation has been circumvented by the use of other terms, Adonai (the Lord) or HaShem (the Name). The reasoning was that to say a person’s name is to indicate a knowledge of the person with the name. Since YHWH can never be known completely, it is inappropriate to mention the Name.
Today, some refer to the Sacred Name as The Nameless One. 700 years ago, Dominican contemplative, Meister Eckhardt, that the very word God was idolatrous. Our usage of it indicates again we all know clearly of what we speak. Eckhardt referred to the God beyond God.
The Awe for the Sacred Name is particularly evident in the most popular of Hebrew prayers, today’s Responsorial, Psalm 23. Not for nothing. It has been prayed by people for over 3000 years. Its staying power is that it appeals to people’s religious consciousness even if one never saw a shepherd.
We know that, during the Vietnamese Conflict, Christian prisoners would gather for a prayer service when one of the prisoners prayed King David’s words. Several said that it was the way in which God helped them keep their sanity in inhuman situations. We know that some on their way to Hitler’s ovens in the prison camp prayed the words as they entered the “dark valley”.
The rediscovered Awe for the Sacred Name, YHWH, creates a problem because YHWH is mentioned in print (not spoken, though) a few times in the first part of Psalm 23. Still, the sentiment of the Psalm is maintained and in one way, is augmented because of its verification in one’s own life. Who knows how to describe the Reality, the Holy Mystery that both frightens and attracts us at the same time.
Rabbi Kushner, author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, wrote a book of meditations on Psalm 23. One point that he stresses is that the Nameless One is referred to in the third person in the first part of the Psalm, when King David is talking about God’s role in our lives. However, in the second part of the Psalm when the going gets tough, the Psalm speaks of God in the second person, in a address to, rather than a statement about the Nameless One.
Recently, one scientist made the statement, “Sometimes things that count cannot be counted and sometimes that really don’t count can be counted. Think about it. Another made the statement, “We can only measure what is measurable”. Even Einstein said, “There might be a Great Unifying Theory to Reality and if someone were to uncover it, the Answer would be both beautiful and simple. He also said, “The person who has not experienced the Awesomeness of Reality is already half dead.
Human experience indicates that the Nameless One can be experienced in moments of love and suffering. It was Karl Jung who said that the archetype behind Christ Crucified is both love and suffering in the death of the Crucified One. God breaks through in moments of both agony and ecstasy. Family members say that they experience the Nameless One in limit moments of birth of a baby as well as death of a loved one. Celtic theologians call it “thin time.”
Recently, the Dalai Lama spoke of the image of Mary’s holding Jesus in the Madonna and Child and in the Pieta. In both cases, suffering and love bring the Presence of the Awesome into clearer focus. He says that many Roman catholics do not realize how deeply embedded in their consciousness is the Image of the Nameless One in the depiction of Mother and Son.
In our own lives, too, we continue to ask for faith that Jesus is Lord in all our personal experiences. Whenever we are confronted by negative diminishments (evils that befall us), we ask for faith to believe that Jesus is Lord in my life,
Sadly, Psalm 23 is a prayer that frequently is associated with memorial cards for Protestants who have died. The prayer is meant to be prayed everyday. Maybe, each can add Psalm 23 to his or her own daily repertoire along with the Prayer of St Francis five times a day.
Life and faith are two basic human rights. Life without faith would be intolerable. King David, St Paul, prisoners in both Auschwitz and the Hanoi Hilton, as well as Jesus of Nazareth Himself, were nourished by Psalm 23 often, on good days and days not so good, when he tried to behave and act on his belief that God supplies what we need in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, we pray, as folks like ourselves have prayed for 3000 years, with our friendly reminder.
The Nameless One is my shepherd. I shall not want.
In verdant pastures, the Nameless One gives me repose.
Besides restful waters, the Nameless One leads me.
The Nameless One refreshes my soul
You guide me in right paths for Your Name’s sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley, I feel no evil
For You are at my side with Your rod and Your staff that give me courage
You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes; my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life
And I shall dwell in the house of the Nameless One now and forever.
Even with the Awe that refraining from the usage of the Sacred Name cautions, the Psalm still brings consolation and peace. Once again, try to add this most popular of prayers to your repertoire. It is worth a try, isn’t it?
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Reflection 10/02/2011AD
He Can’t Be for Real!!
St Paul spent a lot of time in jail. He did not mean to cause trouble. His methodology was “to stay off the radar screen” as much as he could. However, plans don’t always work out. Although St Paul knew the radical implications of the Gospel and the threat that ultimately, the Gospel of the Kingdom would have posed to the System of Empire, he tried to maintain a low profile. However, sometimes, people read between the lines and jail was in store for the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Interestingly, St Paul wrote his most joyful letter, viz., the letter to the Philippians from a jail cell, in which he speaks of being chained to his guard. His message to the house churches of the Jesus Movement in Philippi (and in Armonk) was upbeat. Recall what he tells us today. “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. … Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard from me. Then the God of peace will be with you.” Is he for real?
Apparently, he was. For this reason, the letter to the Philippians made it into the Christian Scriptures (aka the New Testament). St Paul’s faith in God revealed in Christ Jesus was palpable enough for people to hold on to this letter and try to implement it in their lives in Christ Jesus.
One of those who definitely took St Paul seriously is the man from Assisi whose feast we celebrate this Tuesday, October 4. Many years ago, when I first came to St Patrick’s, a retired gentleman from my home parish in White Plains, who had formerly worked at the United Nations, asked me to try to convince the Jesus Movement at St Patrick’s that believe it or not, most of them were already honorary Franciscans. (In his retirement before God called him home, he worked at an NGO (non- government organization) at the United Nations called, ‘Franciscans at the UN.) He cited three principal ways in which Catholic people can adapt a Franciscan vision of life each day. He told you to tell you to be conscious that you are probably already honorary Franciscans without knowing it.
First, he spoke of a concern for the poor. No Catholic today is unaware of the special love which Jesus has (and St. Francis has) for the poor in their midst. While the term, the preferential option for the poor, is a relatively new term, it expresses our belief that while God loves everyone, there is a special place in God’s Heart for the less fortunate of the sisters and brothers. The tremendous on-going response of this parish community to the various campaigns presented to us shows how well we grasp the first of these Franciscan principles. Pope John Paul mentioned many who fell into this group, “the very young and unborn, the very elderly, sick and dying, the very poor, the very marginalized.” Catholics understand the need. Our question is to teach our children (and ourselves) as Dorothy Day said, “Not only to help the poor, but to learn how the system made them poor in the first place and how to remedy the situation.”
Second, he spoke of a concern for the environment. We are all aware of our responsibility to the world of nature about us. We know about the global effects on the environment of little or large acts of conservation or abuse in our world. We try to keep our trash in the proper receptacles and to recycle cans, plastics and newspapers can be understood as a response to our concern and care for the environment. (For example, we know now that there is area twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific Ocean that is polluted by POPs, viz., (perpetually, organic pollutants, cut up into what resembles a toxic minestrone soup). When St. Francis spoke of “Mother Earth” and “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon”, we know that he was on to something very big. When we accept what he is describing, our commitment to a Franciscan vision of Catholicism is depended and enhanced.
Third, he spoke of a concern for peacemaking and non-violence. Most Catholic people want to believe the words of our Savior from the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers (viz., doers of shalom) for they shall be (called) the children of God.” Most people most of the time, one would hope, want to be peaceful and non-violent in word and deed in our dealings with the situation which we face. With God’s help, sometimes we succeed; other times, we fail. However, the process and the desire to commit ourselves to Jesus’ (and Francis’) vision is what is important. Most Catholics want to be this way and we ask God for further help in our efforts to behave as Jesus in situations of anger and confrontation.
(During the Middle Ages, enough people joined the Third Order of St Francis, a lay community that lived in the world that evolving city-states had to take into account that large numbers of their citizenry were sharing an alternate non-violent worldview, the vision of the Kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus updated by the Franciscan Movement.
In the 21st century, each of us has all it takes (with God’s Help) to be Honorary Franciscans as well. Recently, Dr Gerard Vanderhaar, one of the founding members of Pax Christi USA, suggested ways in which we can all practice Christian non-violence by adapting with God’s Help some behavior modification in mundane areas. For example, we can adopt non-violent dialogue with one another. (Recall how Fr Jim Martin suggested that the three forms of violence that with God’s Help, we need to transcend include the following: non-violence of action, non-violence in word, non-violence in thought, the most difficult of all. This week, as we remember that with God’s help, some have been successful, we recall the words of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, “Integrity is the not the luxury of a few; it is a duty of all.”
From his prison cell, St Paul counsels us in today’s reading; people like St Francis and Blessed Teresa challenge us existentially to try to take seriously the Catholic doctrine of the Deep Incarnation, viz., God is present in all situations or God is present in none. It’s all or nothing with the God with us on days good, and not so, dealing with people easy to be with or not so easy. This God is a God of Life Who can transform any scene into something salvific. St Francis in Assisi said yes. How do we respond? Are we honorary Franciscans, at least “works in progress”? 100211AD jfq
St Paul spent a lot of time in jail. He did not mean to cause trouble. His methodology was “to stay off the radar screen” as much as he could. However, plans don’t always work out. Although St Paul knew the radical implications of the Gospel and the threat that ultimately, the Gospel of the Kingdom would have posed to the System of Empire, he tried to maintain a low profile. However, sometimes, people read between the lines and jail was in store for the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Interestingly, St Paul wrote his most joyful letter, viz., the letter to the Philippians from a jail cell, in which he speaks of being chained to his guard. His message to the house churches of the Jesus Movement in Philippi (and in Armonk) was upbeat. Recall what he tells us today. “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. … Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard from me. Then the God of peace will be with you.” Is he for real?
Apparently, he was. For this reason, the letter to the Philippians made it into the Christian Scriptures (aka the New Testament). St Paul’s faith in God revealed in Christ Jesus was palpable enough for people to hold on to this letter and try to implement it in their lives in Christ Jesus.
One of those who definitely took St Paul seriously is the man from Assisi whose feast we celebrate this Tuesday, October 4. Many years ago, when I first came to St Patrick’s, a retired gentleman from my home parish in White Plains, who had formerly worked at the United Nations, asked me to try to convince the Jesus Movement at St Patrick’s that believe it or not, most of them were already honorary Franciscans. (In his retirement before God called him home, he worked at an NGO (non- government organization) at the United Nations called, ‘Franciscans at the UN.) He cited three principal ways in which Catholic people can adapt a Franciscan vision of life each day. He told you to tell you to be conscious that you are probably already honorary Franciscans without knowing it.
First, he spoke of a concern for the poor. No Catholic today is unaware of the special love which Jesus has (and St. Francis has) for the poor in their midst. While the term, the preferential option for the poor, is a relatively new term, it expresses our belief that while God loves everyone, there is a special place in God’s Heart for the less fortunate of the sisters and brothers. The tremendous on-going response of this parish community to the various campaigns presented to us shows how well we grasp the first of these Franciscan principles. Pope John Paul mentioned many who fell into this group, “the very young and unborn, the very elderly, sick and dying, the very poor, the very marginalized.” Catholics understand the need. Our question is to teach our children (and ourselves) as Dorothy Day said, “Not only to help the poor, but to learn how the system made them poor in the first place and how to remedy the situation.”
Second, he spoke of a concern for the environment. We are all aware of our responsibility to the world of nature about us. We know about the global effects on the environment of little or large acts of conservation or abuse in our world. We try to keep our trash in the proper receptacles and to recycle cans, plastics and newspapers can be understood as a response to our concern and care for the environment. (For example, we know now that there is area twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific Ocean that is polluted by POPs, viz., (perpetually, organic pollutants, cut up into what resembles a toxic minestrone soup). When St. Francis spoke of “Mother Earth” and “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon”, we know that he was on to something very big. When we accept what he is describing, our commitment to a Franciscan vision of Catholicism is depended and enhanced.
Third, he spoke of a concern for peacemaking and non-violence. Most Catholic people want to believe the words of our Savior from the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers (viz., doers of shalom) for they shall be (called) the children of God.” Most people most of the time, one would hope, want to be peaceful and non-violent in word and deed in our dealings with the situation which we face. With God’s help, sometimes we succeed; other times, we fail. However, the process and the desire to commit ourselves to Jesus’ (and Francis’) vision is what is important. Most Catholics want to be this way and we ask God for further help in our efforts to behave as Jesus in situations of anger and confrontation.
(During the Middle Ages, enough people joined the Third Order of St Francis, a lay community that lived in the world that evolving city-states had to take into account that large numbers of their citizenry were sharing an alternate non-violent worldview, the vision of the Kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus updated by the Franciscan Movement.
In the 21st century, each of us has all it takes (with God’s Help) to be Honorary Franciscans as well. Recently, Dr Gerard Vanderhaar, one of the founding members of Pax Christi USA, suggested ways in which we can all practice Christian non-violence by adapting with God’s Help some behavior modification in mundane areas. For example, we can adopt non-violent dialogue with one another. (Recall how Fr Jim Martin suggested that the three forms of violence that with God’s Help, we need to transcend include the following: non-violence of action, non-violence in word, non-violence in thought, the most difficult of all. This week, as we remember that with God’s help, some have been successful, we recall the words of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, “Integrity is the not the luxury of a few; it is a duty of all.”
From his prison cell, St Paul counsels us in today’s reading; people like St Francis and Blessed Teresa challenge us existentially to try to take seriously the Catholic doctrine of the Deep Incarnation, viz., God is present in all situations or God is present in none. It’s all or nothing with the God with us on days good, and not so, dealing with people easy to be with or not so easy. This God is a God of Life Who can transform any scene into something salvific. St Francis in Assisi said yes. How do we respond? Are we honorary Franciscans, at least “works in progress”? 100211AD jfq
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Reflection September 25, 2011AD
Our Attitude in Christ Shapes Our Action in Christ
In the near future, we will be enhancing our physical plant with the re-paving of our parking lot around the “domus ecclesiae”, “the home of the church”. The Church of St Patrick in Armonk is the community of persons baptized in Christ (the “Jesus Movement” here in Armonk) (those appear on one of the postcards which are souvenirs of our parish.)
However, we realize that our parish campus, particularly our parish church, is only a secondary point of our life in Christ Jesus. The most significant place should be our own homes, our domestic churches. Our parish church becomes a meeting place, a “church-ing” (as a verb) place for all your domestic churches, viz., your own homes, as we re-enforce one another as we gather each weekend.
In our “ahead of the curve” homeschooling model, viz., family programs for our third and fifth grade families, we re-inforce our commitment to this basic scriptural and sociological given, “Where 2 or more gather in My Name, I am present there as we heard a few Sundays back.” We remember the adage, “Values are caught, not taught.”
Around the year 55AD, in the city of Philippi (in present day Macedonia), the Church of the Jesus Movement met on the Lord’s Day in their domus ecclesiae, probably the house of an affluent Christian. Today, St Paul quotes a hymn that apparently the (churched, viz., gathered) Jesus Movement sang there to Christ Jesus, in which the career of Jesus was juxtaposed to the career of Adam and Eve, our first parents.
We hear today the excerpts of that hymn that St Paul quoted in our second reading today. He presumed that his adult audience would have been familiar with the lyrics of the hymn and that the hymn would have been explained to your Christians as best the parents could.) We can be certain that same symbiotic relationship between individual Christian family (24 hours 6 ½ days a week) and the communal Eucharistic churching or gathering on Saturday evening (1/2 a day at most weekly). We can be sure that Christian parents explained to their children what was said and what had happened at the weekly gathering of the Jesus Movement.
The point of the hymn (known as the Carmen Christi) is that Jesus lived a human life the way that the Creator wants all of us to live our own humanities in Christ Jesus. Recall that the temptation to which Adam and Eve succumbed was the temptation to “be like God”. They opted to disobey God through the subtle suspicious suggestion that maybe, one can go one’s own way and that we really do not need God. (One wag suggested that the god our first parents opted to follow was the god, EGO (an acronym for “Easing God Out”).
On the other hand, Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but took the form of a slave (with God as the Ultimate Master). He was like God (in the parlance of Adam & Eve’s temptation) but chose for our sake to live a life of humility and obedience to God’s Will for Him for us.
With God’s Help, two attitudes of Christ grow in us. First, we will become people of humility. (Humility is based on the same etymological root as humanity. The root word is humus, a Latin word for soil or earth.) Humility is a reminder that no matter what, we are dust and to dust we shall return. If this is not humbling and human, what else can be? However, the great proviso in all this is the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ that we share through our baptism into Christ.
The second attitude that will grow in us is obedience to God. (Obedience is based on the same etymological root as audial. The root word is audiere, Latin verb “to hear”.) Obedience is behavior in accordance to what we have heard. We hear the Gospel of Christ. With God’s Help, we try to behave so as we obey the Gospel.
It is difficult for us to be humble and obedient in a culture that claims to be God-centered and whose motto is “In God we trust”. When people refuse to live humbly and obediently on God’s terms, then sooner or later, greed and violence start to rear their heads in their midst.
Every mature Christian somewhere along the way is treated like a grown-up by God once or twice in life. It becomes the moment to realize humbly and honestly that God runs my show, no matter what they tell me or I think; then, he or she needs to surrender, let go and trust the Holy Mystery in Which we live and move and have our existence and then, find the gift of integrity and trust in God’s Presence in one;’s life. It is never too early to share that with the children. A decision has to be made in faith to follow either Adam’s approach to be like God or Jesus’ approach to empty oneself in humility and obedience and integrity and courage to God. At any age, Catholic children can see faith in action.
The Church of Jesus Christ, the Jesus Movement in Armonk (as in Philippi, as in the rest of the world) has to choose 24-7-365 that we opt for Christ’s Way and not Adam and Eve’s in the lives we live daily. When we gather to celebrate weekly at our domus ecclesiae, our presence in Christ Jesus with one another ratifies the choice that hopefully all of us try to make with Christ’s Help daily. 092511AD jfq
In the near future, we will be enhancing our physical plant with the re-paving of our parking lot around the “domus ecclesiae”, “the home of the church”. The Church of St Patrick in Armonk is the community of persons baptized in Christ (the “Jesus Movement” here in Armonk) (those appear on one of the postcards which are souvenirs of our parish.)
However, we realize that our parish campus, particularly our parish church, is only a secondary point of our life in Christ Jesus. The most significant place should be our own homes, our domestic churches. Our parish church becomes a meeting place, a “church-ing” (as a verb) place for all your domestic churches, viz., your own homes, as we re-enforce one another as we gather each weekend.
In our “ahead of the curve” homeschooling model, viz., family programs for our third and fifth grade families, we re-inforce our commitment to this basic scriptural and sociological given, “Where 2 or more gather in My Name, I am present there as we heard a few Sundays back.” We remember the adage, “Values are caught, not taught.”
Around the year 55AD, in the city of Philippi (in present day Macedonia), the Church of the Jesus Movement met on the Lord’s Day in their domus ecclesiae, probably the house of an affluent Christian. Today, St Paul quotes a hymn that apparently the (churched, viz., gathered) Jesus Movement sang there to Christ Jesus, in which the career of Jesus was juxtaposed to the career of Adam and Eve, our first parents.
We hear today the excerpts of that hymn that St Paul quoted in our second reading today. He presumed that his adult audience would have been familiar with the lyrics of the hymn and that the hymn would have been explained to your Christians as best the parents could.) We can be certain that same symbiotic relationship between individual Christian family (24 hours 6 ½ days a week) and the communal Eucharistic churching or gathering on Saturday evening (1/2 a day at most weekly). We can be sure that Christian parents explained to their children what was said and what had happened at the weekly gathering of the Jesus Movement.
The point of the hymn (known as the Carmen Christi) is that Jesus lived a human life the way that the Creator wants all of us to live our own humanities in Christ Jesus. Recall that the temptation to which Adam and Eve succumbed was the temptation to “be like God”. They opted to disobey God through the subtle suspicious suggestion that maybe, one can go one’s own way and that we really do not need God. (One wag suggested that the god our first parents opted to follow was the god, EGO (an acronym for “Easing God Out”).
On the other hand, Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but took the form of a slave (with God as the Ultimate Master). He was like God (in the parlance of Adam & Eve’s temptation) but chose for our sake to live a life of humility and obedience to God’s Will for Him for us.
With God’s Help, two attitudes of Christ grow in us. First, we will become people of humility. (Humility is based on the same etymological root as humanity. The root word is humus, a Latin word for soil or earth.) Humility is a reminder that no matter what, we are dust and to dust we shall return. If this is not humbling and human, what else can be? However, the great proviso in all this is the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ that we share through our baptism into Christ.
The second attitude that will grow in us is obedience to God. (Obedience is based on the same etymological root as audial. The root word is audiere, Latin verb “to hear”.) Obedience is behavior in accordance to what we have heard. We hear the Gospel of Christ. With God’s Help, we try to behave so as we obey the Gospel.
It is difficult for us to be humble and obedient in a culture that claims to be God-centered and whose motto is “In God we trust”. When people refuse to live humbly and obediently on God’s terms, then sooner or later, greed and violence start to rear their heads in their midst.
Every mature Christian somewhere along the way is treated like a grown-up by God once or twice in life. It becomes the moment to realize humbly and honestly that God runs my show, no matter what they tell me or I think; then, he or she needs to surrender, let go and trust the Holy Mystery in Which we live and move and have our existence and then, find the gift of integrity and trust in God’s Presence in one;’s life. It is never too early to share that with the children. A decision has to be made in faith to follow either Adam’s approach to be like God or Jesus’ approach to empty oneself in humility and obedience and integrity and courage to God. At any age, Catholic children can see faith in action.
The Church of Jesus Christ, the Jesus Movement in Armonk (as in Philippi, as in the rest of the world) has to choose 24-7-365 that we opt for Christ’s Way and not Adam and Eve’s in the lives we live daily. When we gather to celebrate weekly at our domus ecclesiae, our presence in Christ Jesus with one another ratifies the choice that hopefully all of us try to make with Christ’s Help daily. 092511AD jfq
Monday, September 12, 2011
Reflection September 18, 2011AD
Crazy Farmer and/or Sly Fox
Many years ago, Father Andrew Greeley, sociologist and novelist, published a major article about Jesus’ methodology as a story teller. Then as now, stories have a way of illustrating a point more clearly than other means. He entitled this parable, The Parable of the Crazy Farmer. His point was that the landholder in today’s gospel was crazy by human standards. A landholder would not succeed in business with such business practices. That is the point, viz., God is crazy by human standards when it comes to God’s Gifts. Many Protestant and Catholic sisters and brothers find much consolation in the fact that God’s mercy is divine. Forgiveness is a gift freely given and totally undeserved. Understood this way, the parable is a parable of God’s Radical Grace. At any rate, God’s ways are different than our ways. Thank God for that. However, we American Catholics feel a tinge of discomfort because it doesn’t seem fair.
However, there is a way of interpreting the same gospel from a different slant. More and more, biblical scholars are using the tools of sociology and anthropology and psychology to understand the Scriptures, both Hebrew and Christian.
We know now that most of the populace whom Jesus addressed represented the most marginalized of people in society. We know that probably 5% of the population would be what we might call super-affluent. The next 5% would have been middle management, who tried to be the apparatchiks for the super-affluent on top. (This 5% would represent what we might call today the middle class.) This would leave 90% in the lower classes, tenant farmers whose land might have been seized by the wealthy 5% for debts owed and unpaid.
We know that Jesus lived in Nazareth which was about 4 miles from a city named Sepphoris that was the stronghold of the top 10%. Sociologists note that the city is not even mentioned in the Gospel, which means probably that Jesus did not preach there. In addition, because of its physical proximity to Nazareth, Jesus could have walked there in a hour. (Did He and St Joseph work there on the construction of the city?)
We know now as well that Jesus probably used the same parables and teachings over and over on multiple occasions. He did not have make up new material for the same crowd because He was on a walking tour of both Galilee and later, Judea (when He went to Jerusalem.) If stories click, repeat them to illustrate one’s key message.
Now the story takes on a different character. Chances are that 90% of the people listening to Jesus might have been migrant workers or day laborers such as Jesus describes in the parable today.
Granted, the landholder goes out to get the workers at 6 in the morning. However, he only hired a few. (Was he trying to get a few to do a lot of work? (It still happens today.) Then, he needed more and went out accordingly and hired more. Finally, he hires the last group at 5 in the evening. However, he berates them because he implies that they were lazy, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” One could read into the comment about standing idle as a dig that they were not working doing something. (It still happens today.) However, remember he didn’t hire them in the morning. Did he think that maybe, he could get blood from a stone (bigger profits with smaller payrolls.)? In addition, the denarius would have been barely enough for any day laborer to support one’s family, barely enough for survival. Was the landholder implying that he was a philanthropist by paying the group at 5 the same wage (which was a pittance) as the group from the morning? The resentment of the earlier workers might be justified because of the motives of the landholder.
Seen this way, the landholder is not a crazy farmer, but a shrewd exploiter of poor tenant farmers (who might have owned the land in the beginning. Jesus might have been telling this parable to let people know that the system is not the way that God wants it. It is unfair that one person hold so much land, it is unfair that he pits one groups of exploited people against another, it is unfair that the wages paid even to the last group at 5PM were “coolie wages.” This is not what God intends. This injustice needs to be addressed.
One does not know which intention Jesus of Nazareth had when He spoke the parable. Either way, its point was true. First, God is crazy by humans standards by extending the same gift to people who worked different amounts of time. Second, God ‘s Son made human indicts an unfair social-economic system that exploits the powerless. As Marcus Borg puts it, “It a story about a compassionate God and/or about a system that lacks compassion.” We need always to remember that Jesus is smarter than we are.
Neither church (Jerusalem Temple leadership) nor state (the Roman procurator) did liked Jesus. Was it the compassionate God part or the unjust social system part or both that raised their hackles so much that Jesus was seen as a threat?
Today, American Catholics might ask ourselves whether the givens of so many entrenched in the System have about social and economic realities really coincide with Catholic Gospel Values. 1) There must be a just relationship between government, management and labor. 2) The measure of the morality of an economic system is how well it takes care of the most vulnerable. 3) There must be a care expressed because the powerless, the most vulnerable, fall between the cracks sometimes. As Pope John Paul told us, “God did not even bother to reply to Cain’s question, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” 091811AD jfq
Many years ago, Father Andrew Greeley, sociologist and novelist, published a major article about Jesus’ methodology as a story teller. Then as now, stories have a way of illustrating a point more clearly than other means. He entitled this parable, The Parable of the Crazy Farmer. His point was that the landholder in today’s gospel was crazy by human standards. A landholder would not succeed in business with such business practices. That is the point, viz., God is crazy by human standards when it comes to God’s Gifts. Many Protestant and Catholic sisters and brothers find much consolation in the fact that God’s mercy is divine. Forgiveness is a gift freely given and totally undeserved. Understood this way, the parable is a parable of God’s Radical Grace. At any rate, God’s ways are different than our ways. Thank God for that. However, we American Catholics feel a tinge of discomfort because it doesn’t seem fair.
However, there is a way of interpreting the same gospel from a different slant. More and more, biblical scholars are using the tools of sociology and anthropology and psychology to understand the Scriptures, both Hebrew and Christian.
We know now that most of the populace whom Jesus addressed represented the most marginalized of people in society. We know that probably 5% of the population would be what we might call super-affluent. The next 5% would have been middle management, who tried to be the apparatchiks for the super-affluent on top. (This 5% would represent what we might call today the middle class.) This would leave 90% in the lower classes, tenant farmers whose land might have been seized by the wealthy 5% for debts owed and unpaid.
We know that Jesus lived in Nazareth which was about 4 miles from a city named Sepphoris that was the stronghold of the top 10%. Sociologists note that the city is not even mentioned in the Gospel, which means probably that Jesus did not preach there. In addition, because of its physical proximity to Nazareth, Jesus could have walked there in a hour. (Did He and St Joseph work there on the construction of the city?)
We know now as well that Jesus probably used the same parables and teachings over and over on multiple occasions. He did not have make up new material for the same crowd because He was on a walking tour of both Galilee and later, Judea (when He went to Jerusalem.) If stories click, repeat them to illustrate one’s key message.
Now the story takes on a different character. Chances are that 90% of the people listening to Jesus might have been migrant workers or day laborers such as Jesus describes in the parable today.
Granted, the landholder goes out to get the workers at 6 in the morning. However, he only hired a few. (Was he trying to get a few to do a lot of work? (It still happens today.) Then, he needed more and went out accordingly and hired more. Finally, he hires the last group at 5 in the evening. However, he berates them because he implies that they were lazy, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” One could read into the comment about standing idle as a dig that they were not working doing something. (It still happens today.) However, remember he didn’t hire them in the morning. Did he think that maybe, he could get blood from a stone (bigger profits with smaller payrolls.)? In addition, the denarius would have been barely enough for any day laborer to support one’s family, barely enough for survival. Was the landholder implying that he was a philanthropist by paying the group at 5 the same wage (which was a pittance) as the group from the morning? The resentment of the earlier workers might be justified because of the motives of the landholder.
Seen this way, the landholder is not a crazy farmer, but a shrewd exploiter of poor tenant farmers (who might have owned the land in the beginning. Jesus might have been telling this parable to let people know that the system is not the way that God wants it. It is unfair that one person hold so much land, it is unfair that he pits one groups of exploited people against another, it is unfair that the wages paid even to the last group at 5PM were “coolie wages.” This is not what God intends. This injustice needs to be addressed.
One does not know which intention Jesus of Nazareth had when He spoke the parable. Either way, its point was true. First, God is crazy by humans standards by extending the same gift to people who worked different amounts of time. Second, God ‘s Son made human indicts an unfair social-economic system that exploits the powerless. As Marcus Borg puts it, “It a story about a compassionate God and/or about a system that lacks compassion.” We need always to remember that Jesus is smarter than we are.
Neither church (Jerusalem Temple leadership) nor state (the Roman procurator) did liked Jesus. Was it the compassionate God part or the unjust social system part or both that raised their hackles so much that Jesus was seen as a threat?
Today, American Catholics might ask ourselves whether the givens of so many entrenched in the System have about social and economic realities really coincide with Catholic Gospel Values. 1) There must be a just relationship between government, management and labor. 2) The measure of the morality of an economic system is how well it takes care of the most vulnerable. 3) There must be a care expressed because the powerless, the most vulnerable, fall between the cracks sometimes. As Pope John Paul told us, “God did not even bother to reply to Cain’s question, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” 091811AD jfq
Reflection September 11, 2011AD
Where were you that day
and where are you now?
Our city and our nation and our world pauses today to remember the tenth anniversary of the events that changed so much of our lives on Sept 11, 2001. We here in our parish community suffered losses in the tragedy; memories persist.
How do I, as a New York Roman Catholic, who knew at least three people who died on that day commemorate the events in light of belief that St Paul expresses today in our second reading, “None of us lives for oneself and no one dies for oneself…so then, whether we live or die we are the Lord’s.” Jesus the Lord makes a total claim upon me. How do I respond?
As we mentioned last weekend, Jesus is what God looks like and God wants us all to look like, as well. And, Jesus does what God wants done and what God wants us to do as well.
What does Jesus look life and what does He do? 1) Jesus clearly centered His life totally on His relationship with God the Father, to Whom He referred as Abba, Papa. 2) Jesus proclaimed a vision of a world in which God’s Will be done (and could be done, even now, with God’s Help!)
His calling God Abba Father was a challenge to Tiberius Caesar who claimed the title of Father of the Pax Romana for himself. His uncle Augustus Caesar had claimed the titles “God from God” and ’Savior of the World” earlier (Sound familiar? It should). Slogans worked well for this family because whether or not, you agreed, conventional wisdom maintained an embedded codependency. “You can’t change the system. It has always been this way.” Jesus begged to differ and hence, He was crucified as a political subversive.
Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God was also a dig at the system embedded by patriarchal Rome. Again, the Caesars claimed that the kingdom was theirs. Jesus again begged to differ. His vision was a world that would be one in which people would do what God wants us to do. The System and its codependents challenged Him. Jesus again begged to differ and hence, He was crucified as a political subversive.
By sheer coincidence, we hear several readings today which challenged the conventional wisdom of the System. As we hear the first reading and the Gospel today, we hear them on two levels, viz., on the personal level (what is this saying to me about my own relationship and on a political level (because each of us is a social and political animal, as Aristotle correctly said 400 years before Jesus).
Jesus would have heard the same reading that we heard today from Sirach many times. (Since Jesus apparently could read, maybe He was the Lector in the Nazareth Synagogue Who proclaimed these questions, “Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord? Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins? If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins?” In all the questions sum up the introductory line, “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”
To indicate that Jesus had processed the first reading Himself, St Matthew tells us that Jesus taught the parable of the unmerciful servant, our Gospel today. There is every reason to believe that Jesus had a repertoire of stories that illustrated His Gospel and that He would have used this parable more than once. One thing that we should remember is that Jesus preached basically to the marginalized people of Galilee back then (probably 90-95% of the total population!). The audience would have had a resentment of every character in the story, including the King, the unmerciful servant and the victim of the unmerciful servant. Still, Jesus tells the story about resented people to resentful people.
The king in the parable was the most hated of all and yet, the king not only did not imprison the servant at first but also, forgave the entire debt. The first debtor got off scott-free. However, he did not act similarly to the second debtor who owed him the small amount. The moral of the parable is clear, “So will My heavenly Father do to you, (viz., resentful tenant farmers) unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”
Again, Jesus challenged the personal views of the group who heard the parable. However, one’s personal views affects one’s politics (at least, it should). At what is Jesus driving in the parable?We hear an echo from the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We say the prayer daily. What does that line mean to me when I say it?
Somebody calculated that 2/3 of what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke was about people trying to process their anger and their bad feelings toward others. Granted that we live in a world characterized by worry, fear, anxiety and insecurity, we need to be aware that our reptilian brain’s impulse to fight or flee needs to be re-programmed. Jesus’ Gospel is an effort thereat!!
In a recent blog, Fr Jim Martin speaks of three levels of forgiveness that with God’s Help, we might work at. 1) Forgiveness in action is when we refrain from physically assaulting an enemy. Jesus might be throwing the eye for the eye ethic out the window. Apparently this can be done with God’s Help, 2) Forgiveness in word is when we refrain for the opportunity to zing or barb an enemy. Again, this can be done with God’s Help. 3) Forgiveness in thought, the most difficult to achieve (even with God’s Help), is to try to refrain from harboring resentful thoughts toward others.
It is difficult to implement what Jesus expects by my personal response to His teaching today. Yet, Jesus the Lord (that’s what we say when we gather in His Name) does not ask the impossible of us. Even more difficult to implement what Jesus expects by my political response to His teaching today. If, indeed, we are a culture whose motto is “In God we trust”, how do the readings affect me personally and politically? As someone said recently, we are fast becoming not a Jesus Movement of convention, but rather a Jesus Movement of intention. The One that we acknowledge as Lord was crucified and rejected by both church and state systems for teaching these things. He was rejected by the System and He (and His message) is vindicated by God. What do I think of all this on the tenth anniversary of 911? In Christ Jesus, where am I vis a vis where I was ten years ago today at this hour? 091111AD jfq
and where are you now?
Our city and our nation and our world pauses today to remember the tenth anniversary of the events that changed so much of our lives on Sept 11, 2001. We here in our parish community suffered losses in the tragedy; memories persist.
How do I, as a New York Roman Catholic, who knew at least three people who died on that day commemorate the events in light of belief that St Paul expresses today in our second reading, “None of us lives for oneself and no one dies for oneself…so then, whether we live or die we are the Lord’s.” Jesus the Lord makes a total claim upon me. How do I respond?
As we mentioned last weekend, Jesus is what God looks like and God wants us all to look like, as well. And, Jesus does what God wants done and what God wants us to do as well.
What does Jesus look life and what does He do? 1) Jesus clearly centered His life totally on His relationship with God the Father, to Whom He referred as Abba, Papa. 2) Jesus proclaimed a vision of a world in which God’s Will be done (and could be done, even now, with God’s Help!)
His calling God Abba Father was a challenge to Tiberius Caesar who claimed the title of Father of the Pax Romana for himself. His uncle Augustus Caesar had claimed the titles “God from God” and ’Savior of the World” earlier (Sound familiar? It should). Slogans worked well for this family because whether or not, you agreed, conventional wisdom maintained an embedded codependency. “You can’t change the system. It has always been this way.” Jesus begged to differ and hence, He was crucified as a political subversive.
Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God was also a dig at the system embedded by patriarchal Rome. Again, the Caesars claimed that the kingdom was theirs. Jesus again begged to differ. His vision was a world that would be one in which people would do what God wants us to do. The System and its codependents challenged Him. Jesus again begged to differ and hence, He was crucified as a political subversive.
By sheer coincidence, we hear several readings today which challenged the conventional wisdom of the System. As we hear the first reading and the Gospel today, we hear them on two levels, viz., on the personal level (what is this saying to me about my own relationship and on a political level (because each of us is a social and political animal, as Aristotle correctly said 400 years before Jesus).
Jesus would have heard the same reading that we heard today from Sirach many times. (Since Jesus apparently could read, maybe He was the Lector in the Nazareth Synagogue Who proclaimed these questions, “Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord? Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins? If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins?” In all the questions sum up the introductory line, “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”
To indicate that Jesus had processed the first reading Himself, St Matthew tells us that Jesus taught the parable of the unmerciful servant, our Gospel today. There is every reason to believe that Jesus had a repertoire of stories that illustrated His Gospel and that He would have used this parable more than once. One thing that we should remember is that Jesus preached basically to the marginalized people of Galilee back then (probably 90-95% of the total population!). The audience would have had a resentment of every character in the story, including the King, the unmerciful servant and the victim of the unmerciful servant. Still, Jesus tells the story about resented people to resentful people.
The king in the parable was the most hated of all and yet, the king not only did not imprison the servant at first but also, forgave the entire debt. The first debtor got off scott-free. However, he did not act similarly to the second debtor who owed him the small amount. The moral of the parable is clear, “So will My heavenly Father do to you, (viz., resentful tenant farmers) unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”
Again, Jesus challenged the personal views of the group who heard the parable. However, one’s personal views affects one’s politics (at least, it should). At what is Jesus driving in the parable?We hear an echo from the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We say the prayer daily. What does that line mean to me when I say it?
Somebody calculated that 2/3 of what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke was about people trying to process their anger and their bad feelings toward others. Granted that we live in a world characterized by worry, fear, anxiety and insecurity, we need to be aware that our reptilian brain’s impulse to fight or flee needs to be re-programmed. Jesus’ Gospel is an effort thereat!!
In a recent blog, Fr Jim Martin speaks of three levels of forgiveness that with God’s Help, we might work at. 1) Forgiveness in action is when we refrain from physically assaulting an enemy. Jesus might be throwing the eye for the eye ethic out the window. Apparently this can be done with God’s Help, 2) Forgiveness in word is when we refrain for the opportunity to zing or barb an enemy. Again, this can be done with God’s Help. 3) Forgiveness in thought, the most difficult to achieve (even with God’s Help), is to try to refrain from harboring resentful thoughts toward others.
It is difficult to implement what Jesus expects by my personal response to His teaching today. Yet, Jesus the Lord (that’s what we say when we gather in His Name) does not ask the impossible of us. Even more difficult to implement what Jesus expects by my political response to His teaching today. If, indeed, we are a culture whose motto is “In God we trust”, how do the readings affect me personally and politically? As someone said recently, we are fast becoming not a Jesus Movement of convention, but rather a Jesus Movement of intention. The One that we acknowledge as Lord was crucified and rejected by both church and state systems for teaching these things. He was rejected by the System and He (and His message) is vindicated by God. What do I think of all this on the tenth anniversary of 911? In Christ Jesus, where am I vis a vis where I was ten years ago today at this hour? 091111AD jfq
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)