April 21, 2013AD

Jesus Has Some Little Lambs

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

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

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

In our Gospel today, from John 10, viz., the Good Shepherd chapter, Jesus Self-identifies with His Father’s nickname.  Jesus speaks of how His sheep hear His Voice. 

There is room for reflection here as well for us.  First of all, each individual sheep hears the Voice of the Good Shepherd.  Second, the flock as a flock responds in unison to the Voice of the Good Shepherd.  Third, the individual sheep of the flock have a relationship with one another. 

It is for this reason that Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, who resided at Fordham University, down in the Bronx, has referred to the Little Flock of the Good Shepherd as one of the ways in which Catholics live their relationship to God in Christ Jesus and to one another.  Writing thirty-five years ago, Cardinal Dulles said that because of the development of various lay movements with USA Catholicism, such as Pax Christi, USA, Contemplative Outreach, Marriage Encounter, the Cursillo Movement, the Charismatic Renewal,  and other lay ministries like the Community of San Egidio and  Voice of the Faithful, USA Catholics offered a unique gift to world Catholicism.

The rediscovery  of intentional communities is  an example of the resourcement , viz., restoration of apostolic roots from the Primitive Christian Communities (PCC), which Blessed John XXIII said was one of the reasons why the Holy Spirit invoked  Vatican Council II (1962-1965).

Some see the recovery of these intentional communities is the Spirit’s way of transforming the Jesus Movement in new ways. Up until recently, many dedicated Catholics formed religious communities, such as communities of sisters and brothers for specific ministries in the emerging Jesus Movement at the turn of the Millennium.  Now, dedicated women and men form intentional communities to work for a specific ministry in the Church.             

The Catholic scene was much different thirty years than it is now, sad to say.  For a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the “post-modern” phase that so many traditional institutions encountered after the pivotal year, 1968. Most traditional institutions underwent what has been called “de-construction”. New ways of viewing government, church, education, family have come into conventional wisdom with the result that many do not take traditional values promulgated by established institutions as givens anymore.

Sadly, the growth of Catholic Intentional Communities as Little Flocks of the Good Shepherd has waned sadly in the recent past.  With two of the basic traditional institutions undergoing scrutiny, the church and the family, the traditional symbiotic relationship between family and church has weakened. We have generations now of good-hearted Catholics, who do not know very much about what their faith is all about.  Sadly, too, many are so hard pressed for time that it is seen as a burden to require people to do anything more than the attendance at Sunday Mass (and keep it under an hour, please!!)

We speak of 4 levels of the Jesus Movement in the Contemporary Jesus Movement. First, the acquaintance level, Mass attendance on most Sundays, will do, thank you. Second, the familiar level, viz the intentional communities are developing now.  Third, the familial level, the recovery of the central role of the (nuclear) family as the domestic church, where 2 or 3 gather together in the Lord’s Name, your family, in other words. Fourth, the individual response to the call of the Transcendent More is our personal prayer life and spirituality, i.e. how I try personally to process my life.     

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

The image of the Good Shepherd is always appropriate.  However, these days, Cardinal Dulles probably would not use it as readily since so much has changed in our Catholic social setting.  Still, it is a reminder to us that when we do walk through the dark valley, the Good Shepherd has been there all along.  On good days as well as bad, many each of Jesus’ sheep and the entire flock listen in unison to His Voice and respond accordingly.  It is then that He will, indeed, lead us to the verdant pasture.  He is doing it all along, but most of us are too busy to realize it.  042113AD jfq              

  

April 28, 2013AD

  The Challenge Of Peace: Thirty Years  On            

             May 3, 2013AD, will be the thirtieth anniversary of the publication by the American Catholic bishops of the Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. This landmark document, which both John Cardinal O’Connor of New York and Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago authored, was a watershed moment in the development of Catholic moral teaching on the fifth commandment, viz., “Thou shalt not kill”  during the height of the Cold War in the post World War II era.  (In fact, Pope John Paul II borrowed much of its material in what many consider his greatest statement, The Gospel of Peace, Evangelium Vitae  on the Feast of the Annunciation 1995.)

One of the remarkable things about the bishops’ statement was the extensive consultation that they had with experts in a variety of fields related to the topic.  Secondly, while some claimed that Catholics would have a problem with much of what the bishops were saying about the application of the Gospel message to the question of morality in the Cold War, most Catholics listened to what was being suggested by the bishops because they had been consulted first.  Many said that their thoughts of certain issues were influenced very much by the insights that the Challenge of Peace presented to its readers.

Three terms became part of Catholic vocabulary since the Challenge of Peace was published. First and foremost at that time was the consistent life ethic (aka the seamless garment theory).  The bishops asked us to be consistently pro-life on every human life issue.  Since life was God’s unique gift to each human person, it was only God’s to give and only God’s to take away.  Many were taken by the stunning logic of the seamless garment theory and tried to be more consistent on championing life on every issue. (Pope John Paul adopted this idea in the Gospel of Life.) Second, the bishops asked us to practice “disarmament of the heart”, which morphed into a disarmament of the fist, the tongue, the mind, viz., anything that could do violence to another person.  The bishops called us to a personal pilgrimage or journey to non-violence 60-60-24-7 in our lives, They reminded us that this was a life-long process in which each of us was energized by the vibrational field of the Christ Quantum (aka the Paraclete Spirit??). Then, several said that they thought that this was going to be the most difficult thing for USA Catholics to shallow.  Still, so many of us have said that, with God’s Help, we intuit that it leads to a fuller, more human life.

Thirdly, the bishops taught us that we were living in a new moment in human history.  Since 1965, the development of MAD (mutually assured destruction), weaponry by the USA and the USSR could destroy life on this planet as God has been creating it since the dawn of time. Never before in history, has the possibility ever existed. (Again, Pope John Paul used the same imagery in his talk at Ground Zero in Hiroshima, in February 1983.) 

However, sadly, a prime example from thirty years on us the impact made by weaponry upon the world and the threat to the environment is clearer than it was then. Are we listening? To whom do we listen?  During the Argentine-Anglo War over the possession of the Islas Malvinas in 1982, the world became aware of not only nuclear weaponry, but also computerized and technological warfare. The Argentine military had used a French computerized weapon, the Exocet, to sink a British naval vessel from 75 miles away. The advent of teleological warfare, viz., killing from a distance, began to be a concern.  Now thirty years  later, drone weaponry has come to be accepted by so many as an advance in military science because now you don’t see your enemy. In addition, we further become aware of drone surveillance in even non-military settings. “1984” has come and gone.  New applications of the new moment has entered reality since the Challenge of Peace. Now we face serious moral problems with the development of new weaponry such as “smart bombs” and non-nuclear conventional weaponry that can inflict “collateral damage” on innocent civilians. 

In addition, we face serious moral problems with human cloning and with human stem cell research. (Just because we can do something does not necessarily give us the moral right to do so.)

In addition, again, now we face serious moral problems with the resources.  With the growth of the human population, there are some who say that the wars of the twenty-first century will be over potable water in areas, where water resources are shrinking for whatever reason.  Finally, we face serious moral problems with the perceived change in the environment.  For whatever reason, even if most scientists say that 90% of global warming is attributable to human causes, we face a new moment in deciding what we can do to stem the global warming.  (Some say that global warming is a hoax and not a problem.  A serious challenge can be offered to such individuals by reasoning with them and saying, “Yes, you may be correct, but what if you are wrong and global warming is a reality, what is going to happen to your own children’s grandchildren?” One way or another, we are living in a new moment, a prophetic term developed in the Challenge of Peace, Using terms like “consistent life ethic, seamless garment, disarmament of the human heart, and the new moment in human history”, our bishops named a new reality into which our world has hurtled since 1983.  To paraphrase a term for a politician many years ago, “in our hearts, we know that they were right.” Now what can we do with God’s Help to respond to the Challenge of Peace,  a Gospel of Life?  042813AD jfq               

April 7, 2013AD

Three Who Didn’t See but Believed

The patron saint of Missouri, the “Show Me

State” makes his annual appearance in our traditional

Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter.

Thomas represents those who demand empirical

verification that belief in Jesus is legitimate. When

Jesus meets his demand, Thomas’ response is

“My

Lord and my God.”

(This is the highest title attributed

to Jesus in the Gospels.

He is well-known when he appears at the

time of Jesus’ Last Supper, death and Resurrection.

He said that he would die with Jesus. He

asked Jesus

“Lord, we don’t know where You are

going, so how can we know the Way?”

Jesus said

that He, Jesus, is the medium and the message,

“I

am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

He became

Doubting Thomas when he said,

“unless I put my

fingers in the nailprints and my hand into His

side, I will not believe.”

(You know the rest.)

The incident of Doubting (Skeptical) Thomas

probably represented the last account in the

original Gospel of John. If such is the case, Jesus’

words to Thomas at the conclusion of the Gospel

today would have originally been the last words of

the Risen One in the today’s Gospel.

“You believed,

Thomas, because you have seen. Blessed

are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

Is Jesus talking about us? With the Help of

the Holy Spirit, indeed, He is. However, it is not

that easy. We all experience, at times, the Left

Hand of God. In our lives, there is an assortment of

experiences that challenge our faith in the God revealed

by our Lord Jesus Christ. Catholics and all

Christians should be very circumspect in talking

about the depth of our faith. We all want to be

strong believers. Still, sometimes the vicissitudes

of life can challenge an easy faith and make our

“credo’s” a little shakier.

During April each year, Catholics salute

some twentieth century Christian figures, who,

with God’s Help, tried to believe amid adversity,

even though they had not seen. We recall Lutheran

theologian, Dietrich von Bonhoeffer, Jesuit

scientist-theologian, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

and the California farm worker, Cesar Chavez.

Bonhoeffer was a young Lutheran professor

who was scandalized by how easily so many of the

mainline German churches gave into the demands

of Adolf Hitler. Germany was almost half Lutheran

and half Roman Catholic. The tacit agreement

made with many leaders by Hitler was simply to

stick with prayers and rituals and don’t say anything

about what is going on in Germany now.

Bonhoeffer, in his book,

The Cost of Discipleship,

coined the expression,

“cheap grace”, when one

waves a baptismal certificate and claims membership

and all its privileges when convenient. He also

coined the expression

“costly grace”, when one’s

baptismal commitment to Christ Jesus makes demands

upon us, such as speaking out and acting

against the injustices of the Third Reich. He spoke

of the role of the Church in the world of Nazi Germany,

“The Church stands, not at the boundaries

where human powers give out, but in the

midst of the village.”

He came to see, as he wrote,

“We have learned to see the great events of

world history from below, viz., from the perspective

of those who suffer.”

A moral rule of

thumb for Bonhoeffer (more appropriate now than

ever) was,

“The ultimate question for a responsible

person to ask is how is the coming generation

to live.

” Bonhoeffer was hanged on April 9,

1945, shortly before V-E Day.

Jesuit anthropologist- theologian, Teilhard

de Chardin, saw the unity of creation, as did

“the man of the twentieth century”, physicist, Albert

Einstein. Teilhard’s simple little book,

The

Divine Milieu,

identified the church, and, through

the church in Christ Jesus, the entire world, as the

place where

God dwells in all things and all

things dwell in God.

Because he was so ahead of

his time, Teilhard was treated with suspicion by

church leaders in Rome. Much of his synthesis

came to be celebrated after his death. Teilhard

saw the

Incarnation of God as the Omega Point,

toward which unity, all things were moving. In his

systemization of religion and science, he expressed

a hope that he would die on Easter Sunday, the

day of God’s definitive breakthrough in Christ Jesus.

He died in NYC on Easter, April 10, 1955.

Thirdly, we remember Mexican American

Catholic union organizer, Cesar Chavez, who died

on April 23, 1999. Born in the USA, he struggled

for the rights of migrant workers (both USA and

Mexican- born) in a fashion distinctly shaped by

Catholic social teaching.

He was motivated by

the Gospel to organize non-violently the migrant

workers who were exploited in many ways in the

Southwest in the USA in mid-century. Each union

member was expected to pay dues each month as a

commitment to the union. (Dues were $3.50 a

month. This was a small amount, but it gave a

sense of vested interest and dignity to the migrant

workers in their efforts.) Even though at times,

some growers and rival unions resorted to violence

against the Catholic non-violent social effort, the

union was committed to work through Gospel nonviolence

to point out, challenge and correct injustices

against farmworkers. Venerable Dorothy Day

and Robert Kennedy and others found inspiration

to work for justice through his efforts.

All three

did not see, but they believed.

With God’s Help, may we

who have not seen believe,

on good days and bad, in the Resurrection of

Jesus Christ,

our Lord and our God.

Thomas saw; Thomas believed.

With God’s

Spirit, may we all who do not see also believe!!

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April 14, 2013AD

Peter and Us -- Young and Old

             Our Gospel reading this weekend appears as an epilogue to the original concluding chapter of the Fourth Gospel, viz., Jn 20.  Last week, we heard Jesus’ last words in the original Gospel of John, “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.” (That’s us, folks, if we accept God’s Grace.)

This weekend, we hear of another appearance of the Risen One to a group of seven of “His own.” Now, they go fishing in the Sea of Galilee (aka today as Sea of Tiberias.)

After the miraculous catch of 153 fish (who bothered to count?), when the disciples come ashore, Jesus is preparing a breakfast for them. Imagine that. After all that Jesus had been through, He bothers to be both the Chef and the Host for a bread-fish gathering, reminiscent of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, mentioned earlier.  Jesus had already greeted His own with “Peace be with you (Shalom aleichem)” in the Gospel last Sunday three times. Now He is cooking a meal for them. One theory is that 153 stand for the known fish known at the time. That would include both Jaws and Orca and Flipper and 150 other types. It is a universal number. 

Jesus confronts St Peter with three questions from Jesus, ‘Do you love me more than these?”  When Jesus raises the question a third time, Peter knew where Jesus was heading.  This was his triple rehabilitation for his triple denial.  (Incidentally, part of the scene provokes another hint at the story, the charcoal fire that was last mentioned on the cold night of Peter’s denial.) Now, Jesus forgives Peter, as Jesus forgives us all.

Next, Jesus invites His own to share in a bread-fish meal, which represents the commitment to sharing which is basic to the Jesus Movement. Interestingly, one young parishioner brings up his food contribution to the local food pantries, as he comes up weekly for Holy Communion. (This young man got it!!!)

Next, Jesus, Who has just commissioned Peter to feed the lambs warns Peter that his pastoral future resembles Jesus’ Ministry in another way.  Jesus tells Peter, obscurely, that Peter himself will lay down his life for the sheep in his martyrdom years later.

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

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

St Peter also went through the stages of life.  When he was a young person, he wore what he wanted and went where he wanted.  When he was older, he went where he preferred not to go (to crucifixion on Vatican Hill, c. 67AD). 

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

St Peter can remind us of ourselves.  Once he was a young man and did what he wanted.  Then, when he became older, he realized with God’s Help that he was not the hotshot that he thought he was. He learned that he was not the captain of his own ship. Indeed, he never had been all along!) Rather, he was part of God’s family. He was flawed. He fell at times into sin. He was forgiven in Christ Jesus and restored. He did his job and laid down his life for Christ.  With God’s Help, we can do the same. Life in Christ is beautiful!!!!  

The chapter in the Gospel from which we hear our Gospel reading today is, in the consensus of many biblical scholars, an addendum to the Gospel of Doubting Thomas from last Sunday.  The end of this chapter says beautifully in words that we never hear on Easter Sundays, but we should, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think that the whole world would contains all the books that would be written.” What are the things that God does in your life each moment?  Each of us is a book that we are writing.  May its beauty be a description of the many things Which Jesus is doing in your life!! Again, life in Christ is beautiful.     041413AD jfq