Reflection, April 15, 2012AD

Our Best Kept Secret
(Tho’ Not from the Start)
There is no evidence that the PCC considered communal ownership of goods as a sine qua non for participation in the Jesus Movement. (The theory of Fr Raymond Brown is that the Jerusalem Community chose to live in such an arrangement much like a modern religious community would. (It sounds so socialist!) We know this because later on as a sign of solidarity with the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem, St Paul made a point of collecting funds for them when the Jerusalem community was experiencing difficulties.
In the section in today’s first reading, we hear that some did surrender goods but did so as a voluntary gesture when related to the needs of others. (It was not mandatory with the Jesus Movement as a group.) Still, there is a resonance with Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel where He said, “Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasures in heaven that no thief can reach, nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is there also will your heart be.” (Lk 12.33). Jesus to the rich young man (not to everyman, but to him, “Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, you will have treasure in heaven. Then, come follow me.” (Lk 18. 22). One’s responsibility to the needy was germane to the Jesus Movement in any time and place.
Throughout the 2000 years of the New Testament, the Catholic Jesus Movement has seen compassion to the poor as essential to participation in the group. St Lawrence the Martyr was the chairman of the finance committee of the Jesus Movement in Rome in 258 AD. When he was asked to deliver over the wealth of the Church, he brought in the poor of the city of Rome and announced that the poor were the wealth of the church. The police were not amused.
The Dalai Lama has commented many times on the contribution of the Christian churches (He stresses Roman Catholicism in a special way!) to the assistance to the poor and vulnerable throughout history. He speaks of the various hospitals or orphanages or refuges which the Church provided as essential to our nature as the Body of Christ incarnate. Before he died, John Cardinal O’Connor said, “The Church cannot not be a church without compassion for the needy.”
In modern times, it was the ministry of Pope Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century that was the beginning of the development of modern Catholic social-economic-political theory, based on the tradition of the Church. Popes like Leo, Pius XI, Blessed John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, have spoken of the social economic political nexus. In addition, various conferences of Catholic bishops have taught their flock the implications of the church’s social-economic-political theory in a number of documents. In addition, the Second Vatican Council stressed so much in Gaudium et Spes, the “Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World”. Gaudium et Spes said, “the dichotomy between one’s values and one’s social-economic and political values is decried as one of the greatest errors of Western civilization.” In our country, in 1979, USA bishops acknowledged the challenge of racism in our world (Brothers and Sisters to me) when softcore (and hardcore) bigotry still thrives. The USA bishops also published the Challenge of Peace (on the morality of the arms race) in 1983. In the Economy in the Modern World in 1986, they made conscientious observations about what is good and bad about our economic lives. One of their remembered lines has been adopted in other Catholic and humanistic thought, “A significant measure of the morality of any economy is how well it takes care of the most vulnerable in its midst.” Much for a Catholic to think about this year!
In an election year, in which both politicians and voters talk about Catholic values and how Catholic they are (and we should be), the USA Catholic bishops have synthesized the principles into 7 basic principles. 1) They stress the life and dignity of the human person. 2) They stress the call to family, community and participation in these social institutions. 3) Each of us has rights (and yes, responsibilities!!). 4) They stress the dignity of work and the rights of workers (This went all the way back to Rerum Novarum in 1891!!) 5) They stress the preferential option for the poor and the vulnerable. 6) They stress the call to solidarity with all our sisters and brothers in the human project. 7) They stress the care for God’s creation. Read Sharing Catholic Teaching: Challenges and Directions. Check out how each of our candidates in the years ahead shape up in terms of what we stand for as Catholics. Someone said recently that the first and foremost shaper of social and economic and political values should be the Gospel of Jesus Christ mediated through the social teaching of the Catholic Church (called the best kept secret of the Catholic Church!) Hopefully, in the best of all possible worlds, both politicians and voters would form their opinions and consciences in deference to a consideration of what has evolved.
A NY Catholic theologian recently wrote that we all miss the mark on everything. One thing that is consistent is that we show up at Eucharist regularly. We still get that right. We need to listen to what we need to do better. Get God’s spin.
Certainly, we all are not called to the communal ownership of goods to which the Jerusalem community might have done, but the care of the indigent (preferential option of the poor) certainly is basic to the Gospel Message of Jesus, Whose Proclaimer and Proclamation are alive and well in our world today. Are we hearing Christ Jesus when we form our opinions? Really? 041512AD jfq

Reflection, April 8, 2012AD

From Life to Faith to Your Life in Christ Jesus Curiously, we are recovering the vision that our ancestors had of a relationship universe. Everything is related to everything else. One quantum physicist speaks of the very universe itself as a relational matrix or a cosmic web. Our ancestors in the Medieval World understood when they established, under Church auspices, the university system. Truth was one and yet, there were varieties of ways in which the one Truth, viz., could be approached in the pursuit of knowledge. Popular NY Catholic historian, Tom Cahill, commented that the role of the medieval university was to teach a young person a coherent view of the universe. (Today, he speaks of the de-evolution of higher education into a job factory, if you are lucky!)
On this Easter Sunday, we can learn from our ancestors as we try to celebrate what the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ means to me and to mine personally and existentially. Our ancestors would tell us that Easter is about us, not just Jesus.
First, again, we intuit that the universe is a mesh of relationships. Nothing exists on its own. (Autonomy is a untruth of the Western Enlightenment.) Now, Catholics celebrate a Trinitarian God, One in three. There is relationship in the Creator. Is it any wonder that reality is a nexus of relationships. Catholics have celebrated this for 2,000 years. Granted, we cannot understand God. Still, can we understand other people? Can we understand ourself? We are always learning something new. Just like God!
Second, physicists have spoke for a long time of the principle of the conservation of matter and/or energy, viz., nothing is wasted in the universe. Everything, everything goes through the process of ascent, descent and Transformation. Think of the Yule log at Christmas. We Catholics refer to the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the Paschal Mystery, in which we all participate. Just as Christ Jesus, the archetype of creation, according to St Paul, lived, died and rose again, He triggered the process that brings meaning and authenticity to the process that everything, most particularly, the human person, in Christ Jesus in Whose Pattern we are all created. Just as Christ Jesus died and rose in transformation, that pattern is in process in every single atom in creation. That pattern is in process in every single atom in you.
Third, quantum theory speaks of the wholon, the entity is more than the sum of the parts and the sum of the parts is greater than the entity. In each particle of reality, the pattern of the entire entity is contained and the entire entity is contained in each of the parts. Quantum physicists tell us that it’s true. Catholics have been saying this for 2000 years now. The DNA of Christ Jesus exists in each of us and all of us exist in the DNA of Christ Jesus. As St Luke said in the Acts of the Apostles, “In God (and Christ Jesus) we live and move and exist.”
Easter is about you and yours! It is only in the most serious moments of human existence that people ask the most basic questions. What is it all about? What am I to do? Where is it all going?
Jesus wants us to cast our lot completely into His, that the Divine Presence of God is the Fourth Dimension in which we exist. As the Patriarch Jacob said in Genesis, “God, you were here all along and I didn’t know it.” As St Luke put it, “In God, we live and move and have our being.”
The image of the cross moved into clearer focus now in the second half of Lent. Franciscan Incarnational (God with us) spirituality can be a great assist to us always, but especially this time of year. St Francis of Assisi said that the Crucified One should be portrayed artistically with eyes half-open, half closed, between life and death with a gaze looking at each of us. St Anthony of Padua said that Christ died on the cross so that whenever you looked at a crucifix, it would be as you were looking into a mirror. Blessed John Duns Scotus said that the Crucified One gave His life to show you how much God loves you. Think about it.
The test of faith frequently arises when one is confronted by the left hand of God, viz., when something goes wrong with the middle class, bourgeouis way of life to which I feel an entitlement. What happens when one loses one’s job, when a child gets sick or gets into trouble, when one experiences an expected loss? Jesus’ Promise to be with us in all things – how does faith in Christ Jesus kick in then?
Today, the responsorial Psalm is different, Psalm 118. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia!” God has flipped the coin. God fulfills the promise of fidelity to Christ Jesus (and through, with and in Him) to all of us.
As one theologian in the area said, there is no such thing as a bad day. Each day is a gift of the Incomprehensible God of Life and of Love. True, some days are better than others. We would be wrong to say otherwise.
All creation (that means you and me) is participating in the Paschal Mystery. All creation experiences the divinely ordained process of ascent, descent and transformation. Nothing new happens without the transformation of what already existed. (Catholic physicists call the reality, the conservation of energy. Nothing is lost in the universe. Everything is the result of something else.)
What modern science is teaching is what God wants us to live our lives by each day. God operates in all settings. This Incomprehensible God of Life and Love is always faithful. We perceive God’s actions differently because we are changing. God’s job is to create and to unify all. God continues to create and to unite in life and love in all, including each of us, when we feel that all we can say is “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” As well as when we feel that all we can say is “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia.”
Pope John Paul II said that every Sunday is an Easter Sunday when you believe in the death and Resurrection of the Lord. On this Easter Sunday, no matter how we feel, we ask for the grace to believe that every moment of our life is an Easter moment when we believe in the death and Resurrection of the Lord. Easter is about Christ Jesus. As a result, Easter is about you. God has the final say of the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and Resurrection. As a result, God has the final say in the meaning of your life, death and Resurrection in Christ Jesus. (Recall -- Mystery – infinitely knowable and infinitely unknowable, at the same time!!) “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia.” From life to faith to Life in Christ Jesus, Alleluia.” Happy Easter. It’s an enchanted universe!!! It’s a Catholistic universe!!!! It is good to be alive!!!!!. 040812AD jfq