Reflection, July 29, 2012AD

BYOF?

             Bring your own food? Rugged individualism may be an American virtue, but it is an aberration in the Jesus Movement. Everyman (sic) for himself may be a cultural norm for some, but the Jesus Movement begs to differ. Instead, followers of Jesus speak of solidarity, the vision of the Kingdom of God, Who did not bother to give a  response to Cain after Abel, " Am I my brother's keeper?"

   Today we hear from St John about one of Jesus' show stoppers, viz., the loaves and the fish. The account of such "share meals" hosted by Jesus appear six different times in the four Gospel, which  hints that Jesus' “mass meals” occurred often.

   Interestingly, each account seems to follow a similar pattern. 1) Jesus is concerned about people's needs. 2) Jesus gets His people to get on the case. 3) They collect the food that is available and do so in an orderly fashion. 4) Everyone gets fed enough to eat. 5) Jesus tells His people together the fragments -- and there is an abundance!

   Why is this so important? First, we know, back then,  that one only ate meals with one's own family or most intimate friends. A “mass meal”  was a "mind blower" for sensitivities of the pious.   Also, we know from contemporary sources at the time of Jesus that,  were there to be a scene such as this, what about religious rituals such as hand washing and kosher blessings? In addition, the Roman authorities had to wonder about a mass meeting at which food was served in abundance to 5000 plus people. And, then they want to make Jesus a King. What's up with that? Remember the inscription over Jesus' Head on Good Friday, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews". Somebody took these “mass meals” very seriously!

   Sociologists speak about the symbolism of food sharing.  There is an unspoken relativization when food is shared by people from different strata. An equality is hinted at when people all eat and drink the same food and drink. No matter if anyone were to say anything, everyone at one of Jesus' Mass Meal would catch the drift, even if offended.   Our Islamic sisters and brothers have entered the month of Ramadan during which they fast from food, drink, sex, and smoking during the daytime.  Many non-Islamics entered into Ramadan in solidarity to learn what the Great Fast is.

We Catholics frequently have sanitized and neutralized many of our religious traditions.  Around here, many of you constantly respond to the weekly "no brainer" linking up the Eucharist with sharing food with the poor in the area. It is fittingly symbolic when many of the bags holding the food have the words, “Thank you” written on them. Thank Whom at our “Mass Meal!”

   Honestly, we should recall that the Romans did not crucify Jesus because He told people to be hospitable, generous and charitable. Rather, Jesus demonstrate that we are responsible for one another and that solidarity, not individualism, is the name of the Gospel . For insisting that people share their food with one another, the bread and wine end up becoming the flesh and blood that Jesus pours out for us once and for all.

   People speak of Jesus' cultural, social, economic, political theory is "Enoughism", achieved that a nonviolent process of collaborative justice in which we try to effect God' dream that all God' children have enough on which to survive. You find them something to eat.  Another term that is used inherit comes to food is commensality, that is, common table. If we have the right to life, we have the right to food and water.

    Catholics have to learn better the art of critical thinking (something that the Texas state legislature was talking about as not to be taught in Texas schools.) Why are there hungry people in the world when most agree that this is just about enough to feed all if the food were distributed adequately? Why do 25,000 people die daily of hunger related causes.

   Teach your children why you bring food to church with you to feed the poor each week. Children get it. Don’t be bashful about bringing the food up onto the altar either before Mass or during the Offertory when it is symbolic (sacramental?).

   Encourage and learn with your children how it came to be that there is such a gap between what people eat depending upon the circumstances of their lives. In a word, follow the money.

    Think about encouraging children to study economics another fields that will share the bread and fish with generations of their peers yet to be born. Learn that the poor are not to be blamed for being poor. Learn compassionately, as the Dalai Lama would put it, to see that everyone (including you and the poor) have a story  and frequently it is not people' faults that they are in the situations of injustice into which they were thrown.

   Remember when the British singers did "Band-aid" and the USA emulated it with "We Are the World".  Recall the good will generated then.

    In essence, what Jesus hinted at with his mass meals was the creation of a nonviolent army of those who learn to share justly and fairly the basic necessities of life with one another. Ask why there is such a need.  In the Eucharist, we hear Jesus' hint as we all eat the same, all equal here!

   Back then, and now,  the System said peace through superiority. The Jesus Movement and it's founder (crucified and risen) said it was peace through justice, as Pope Paul VI said so long ago.

   The system says “Everyman from himself.” Jesus answers Cain' s question in his Mass Meals. “Yes, we are our brothers and sisters keepers.” Read between the lines on Jesus methodology and  one of the reasons why Christians from the beginning associated worship of God with feeding the poor, not as charity, but as justice.  072912ADjfq

Reflection, July 15, 2012AD

An Early Quantum-Physicist Saw It Then!!

              On July 15, our Church salutes St Bonaventure, the “Seraphic Doctor”.  In addition, two great events this July resonate with the message of St Bonaventure. His message and these two events connect with reading today.

              St Paul quotes the words of a hymn that both his Jesus Movement in Ephesus and he would have been familiar. Written perhaps 40 years after Jesus’ death and Resurrection, the hymn speaks of the centrality of Christ Jesus as the focal point of creation. In an astounding Spirit-energized insight, St Paul and his Ephesian house churches see the Big Picture focused on Christ Jesus, not the Roman Empire (aka the System), as the measure of what is ultimately important.

First, in a few weeks, the London Olympics open. The flag of the Olympic rings will fly throughout London and the world. The Olympic rings symbolize the various continents linked together in the worldwide celebrations.

800 years ago, St Bonaventure described reality in an image that will become familiar to us in the next few weeks.  While all metaphors concerning God and our relationship to God are inadequate, his ideas can illuminate our consciousness.

St Bonaventure saw reality as a series of 7 linked rings. Link one is the Creator. Link two is the universe. Link three is the angelic world. Link four is the human person. Link five is the animal world. Link six is the vegetative world. Link seven is terra firma.  All the links are connected. God is the source of the connection. The earth is the terrain in which God’s plan is unfolded.  Directly in the middle of the linked rings is the human person, the child of the Creator and the child of Adam (the clay of the earth). The human person is the median point between the Creator and the Creation. The imperfect image that St Bonaventure proposes hints that the human person is the pinnacle of God’s creation, not the Lord of nature (God is the Lord!!), but rather nature’s caretaker and steward. The ultimate point is that all reality is relational.  We exist in relation to our Trinitarian (Relational) Creator and with each other and with creation in toto. The Olympic flag is a primitive spin of St Bonaventure’s idea that all reality is one, just as St Paul hints in our second reading.

Second, on July 4, the world rejoiced and wondered at the announcement from Switzerland, from the CERN laboratory. Physicists humbly said that they had arrived at a 99.9999999% certainty of the existence of the God Particle.  The Higgs Boson (as they call it) provides a basis for subatomic particles to become mass (as opposed to energy). One physicist said it was comparable to a “molasses of thick fog in which energy can congeal into matter”.  In another interesting statement, another physicist said that while the God particle has not been observed, still we have seen its footprint and thumbprint and shadow in the world of creation. It is there, but not manifest. The God particle is omnipresent, yet invisible. Although hidden and unmanifest, its power is experienced. The God particle lives in you; you live in the God particle.

St Bonaventure said, 800 years ago, in images that are hauntingly similar to what the CERN scientists say today.  The Seraphic Doctor said that “all reality bears the thumbprint and footprint of God. We don’t see God, but we know where God is at work by the evidence God leaves.”

   One of the great spinoffs of all this is that the physicists are so humble in their announcement.  They are virtually certain, but the unknown is still present. They remind us of the words at the start of the Fourth Gospel, “no one has ever seen God.” St Bonaventure made a similar comment about humility when he said that the cleaning lady in the monastery of the university could be closer to God in her humility that someone who feels that he has all the answers.

One of the great works of St Bonaventure was a meditation called the Journey of the Mind into God.  He speaks of the need for simplicity and silence and solitude in a hectic world to hear the Unheard Voice of God in Contemplation.  More and more, all the major religions come to see that the call to the contemplative dimension of human transcendence is a sine qua non if that religion is to survive healthily in the 21^st century. The very desire to Ask for the gift of letting go, and letting God in a gesture of silent surrender is God’s gift to you that leads you to poverty in spirit, viz., the grace to say (and mean) God’s Will be done.

St Bonaventure was on target in ways that he could not have imagined. When you see the Olympic flag and hear more about the God particle and the humility of its namees, realize what St Paul hinted at in the hymn that our ancestors in the Jesus Movement sang at Easter. 

Many comment on the physicists’ humility  announcing the almost certain discovery of the “God Particle”.  They said that they were 99.9999999999% certain that the God particle exists, even though invisible.  Put another way, they said there is one chance in 375 million that they might be wrong!!! For his part, St Bonaventure said that one could have all the knowledge of theology and philosophy, but if that person lacked humility, he or she would lack the faith of the cleaning lady  who, with God’s Help, can say, “Let go, let God”.

We rejoice when we see a greater reconciliation between science and faith.  The Medievals knew that Truth was One and that there were several ways to arrive at Truth. The Olympic Flag, the announcement of the God Particle and its discovers’ humility parallel the joy that St Bonaventure spoke of and that St Paul and his Ephesians sang.

God is smarter than we are!! Thank God!    071512AD  jfq  

Reflection, July 8, 2012AD

How Honest Was Abe?             

              On USA Passports, there is a quotation from President Dwight Eisenhower that is reprinted on a visa page. It says, “What the United States wishes for all the world, we must secure for ourselves first.”  As we gather on this weekend after Independence Day, the Word of God challenges us to examine how well we fulfill our commitment as USA Catholics.

              The past week saw the death of Rodney King in Los Angeles, who was at the center of the riots there after the video of King’s treatment was aired. One of the cries that emerged as a result of the Rodney King Affair was his question, “Why can’t we all just get along?”       

We do not hear too much about the 150^th anniversary of the War Between the States these days. Still, several anniversaries from the War Between the States challenge us to see how well we respond today both to the challenge of President Eisenhower, and more importantly, of God in the Second Letter of St Paul, from which our second reading is excerpted today. Can we learn about we are today by looking at the way we were 150 years ago?

Embedded is the midst of the history that we are learned in school (hopefully) were the Draft Riots in NYC in July 1863,  apparently larger in size than what happened in USA history since (including the riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King incident).  Official estimates were never provided, and they vary from 84 to over 1,000 people who died those days in NYC.

Perhaps, the best known depiction of the civil unrest of the Draft Riots is Martin Scorcese’s  “Gangs of New York”. It is a presentation of the playing off by the rich white Establishment of the poor (nativist) whites, led by Daniel Day Lewis and the Irish immigrants, led by Leonardo deCaprio. 

Folks here can easily imagine the summer of 1863 in NYC.  We can be sure that it was hazy, hot and humid.  (We know that air conditioning, a sine qua non for life now, was not yet invented.) We know that the poor for the most part lived in tenements in the midtown and lower parts of Manhattan. We know that they did not have buses and subways, so that the best they could do to cool off was to take a quick dip in the East River or the Hudson.  (There were no subways to Coney Island or Rockaway or Orchard Beach.) Think about it.

Think of poor folk both native born and immigrant Irish who had been notified that Congress had just past the Conscription Act. Every male between 20 and 45 was to register to fight in the War Between the States to raise a standing army of 300,000 men.  Bad enough but, both had to wonder why men whose family provided $300 could buy an exemption or find a substitute who would take the money himself. (Even President Lincoln paid $300 for his son’s exemption!) The refrain, “other people’s children and parents” goes way back.)  It was the first time that the refrain was coined, “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Think about it.     

Historians see several dynamics at work in the Draft Riots. Recall that the Emancipation Proclamation had (theoretically, at least) make the War a war to end slavery. Remember reasons for going to war vary sometimes from day to day depending on how things are going.  The poor started to think that if the slaves were freed, then they would be taking the jobs of the poor whites. Think about it.

In addition, the poor couldn’t help but see that the effects of war were unequal. Recall the scene in the Gangs of NY when the rock comes into the dining room on Fifth Avenue while the rich were sharing their Sunday dinner, as if nothing were wrong with the picture.  Any 20 year old there could muster the $300 to avoid the draft. Think about it!

The lyrics of a song dedicated to Lincoln’s role in all this, composed in 1863,  remain relevant today.

We’ re coming, Father Abraham (Lincoln, i.e,), 300,000 more.

We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore

Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree;

We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty.

Sadly, and tellingly, soldiers who had just fought in the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, were ordered into NYC to end the riots.   In addition to American military patrolling NYC, it was not uncommon for officials to deny basic Constitutional rights such as habeas corpus, viz., the right to have charges filed or a hearing before being jailed. President Lincoln said that he could do so “in some cases, when the public safety may require it.”  Think about it.

In our second reading today, St Paul speaks of the equity that God intends as reflected in a supposedly Christian society as the Church at Corinth. “there may be an equality among all.” This sounds very much as what President Eisenhower was describing in his vision for America as America’s vision for the whole world. Think about it.

In this Independence Day Season in an Election Year, listen carefully to the speeches that many will give.  Think about the Big Picture as God sees it in the enoughism in the programmatic of the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. Re-read the UN Declaration of Human Rights in your meditation. Does it all click? Think about it. 070812AD jfq     

Reflection, July 1, 2012AD

What Are We Celebrating?

              This week, as we commemorate the 236^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and as we are in an election year, there will be much rhetoric about the Declaration. In 1976, the bicentennial year, a question proposed on the USA History Advanced Placement exam was about the purpose of the Declaration. Among the suggestions were an appeal to get a French Alliance in the rebellion against King George III, an effort to unite dissident colonists in a war for liberation and a statement of universal rights aimed at nations of good will against the tyranny of the British. To be sure, the answer could be any and all of the above, plus other reasons as well.

“Among these rights are the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men (sic) deriving their authority from the consent of the governed.” Many wonder what happened to America’s role in the pursuit of human rights since 911.

Another declaration of which the USA was an initial signatory back in 1948, is the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  (Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of President Franklin Roosevelt was one of the craftspersons.)  Writes President Jimmy Carter, Noble Peace Prize winner in 2002AD, “as a foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, the Declaration of Human Rights was a bold commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and to establish equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.”       

In America, we become comfortable with words, like “kill lists, post traumatic stress suicides, (both on duty and after duty), signature drone strikes, extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation, executive privilege, cyberwarfare,” et al., one must stop as a Catholic American to wonder how we got from 2001 to today.  How do American Catholic handle all this.

In our first reading this weekend, when the biblical author says, “God does not rejoice in the destruction of the living. God fashioned all things so that they may have being.” We recognize that what followers of Christ Jesus call the Paschal Mystery is our understanding of the physical principle of conservation of energy and/or matter.  All reality from the outermost rim of the universe to the innermost spot of the microcosm experiences the process of ascent, descent and transformation. Each of us, as a mesocosm in the universe, experience this universal process at every moment of our life. We are always in process of transformation. Sometimes, it is subtle; sometimes it is blunt.  It is an ongoing process.

American Catholics have to be careful of being mesmerized by a System that gets us comfortable with the violation of the human rights of other people, in which we are all complicit.  Government leaders have to respond to the suggestion that we are possibly violating what we once agreed to in 1948, as one of the initial signatories, when we condone and support human rights violations.

(The little nation of Costa Rica in Central America has become a popular vacation destination and it is worth a visit to see something unique happening there.  Costa Ricans flaunt t-shirts which brag that after an ongoing civil war that ended in 1948, Costa Rica disbanded its army in favor of a national police force. Since the police force maintains the peace, national finances are used for other purposes.  When almost every Central American nation was involved in strife (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua), the President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, was awarded the Noble Peace Prize for supervising the theoretical end of systemic killings in Guatemala and El Salvador.  The efforts of the Costa Rican  team was called the Contadora Process. 

When military arms were not involved, people focused their attention in other directions. Costa Ricans made a concerted effort to build up their nation with specific goals of energy conservation, ecological soundness, economic fairness, equality of all the citizens. As a result, Costa Rica is a happy place to visit; we can learn a lot from them while enjoying a vacation. Try it and see.

One curiosity that marks Costa Rica is that each day one of the 30 listed basic human rights from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a crawler along the morning and evening news.  People are reminded of their human rights by the television network on a regular basis.)

Log onto the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights; compare the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence as well as the USA Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the US Constitution). You might be surprised how the way universal your human rights are recognized (at least, in theory) by the United Nations. This weekend, Article 25 is particularly noteworthy.

Catholic theologians, including Blessed John XXIII and Pope John Paul II, used the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the basis of some of their social-economic-political statements since 1948. One theologian wrote in 1975, “God’s agenda is the human agenda.”  Or as the Wisdom author wrote 2000 years ago, “God does not design the destruction of the living. Rather, God fashioned all things so that they might live.”

Words to ponder. As we reflect on July 4, one wonders why December 10 is not also a holiday when, in 1948, a more comprehensive statement of rights was proclaimed by our nation and the nations of the world.      070112AD jfq