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Those Kings or Whatever They Are
We celebrate today the Feast of the Epiphany. “”We Three
Kings of Orient Are” is the favorite Christmas carol, but liturgically, at Mass
today, it is the only day that it can be sung. The carol is loaded with
symbolism, fraught with St Matthew’s vivid account.
One of the most memorable aspect is the appearance of the
star. Many years ago, New York Bible scholar, Fr Ray Brown, commented that the
star was the Gospel’s way of saying that the birth of the child Jesus had
cosmic meaning, not just salvific meaning for the Jewish people. Was it truly a
new star that made its appearance then? Was it a vague recollection of Halley’s
Comet, whose flyby had occurred recent to the Gospel (written around 75AD)? Was
it a supernova dying in outer space that was seen on earth? Was it the
configuration of three planets that occurred about 80 years before the Gospel’s
appearance?
Yet, another key aspect of the story is the fact that the
star indicated the birth of a king of the Jews. “King-talk” was unsettling to anyone running
the show, either church and/or state, in 75AD. Remember the accusation over the
head of Jesus on Good Friday?
How was this child a threat to the system, personalized in
Caesar? How was the universe reconfigured with the birth of this newborn king? Think
of the propaganda machine or spinmeisters of the Roman Empire. They referred to the Pax Romana, which was a
euphemism for keeping the lid on people.
Systems, such as the Roman Empire,
operate with certain similarities. First, refer to the System as the “best of
all possible communities”. (Who wouldn’t
want to be a Roman?) Second, try to create a received common tradition, stressing
the superiority of the System. Third,
label anyone who challenges the received common tradition as weird or subversive. Fourth, divide people who should be allies
into conflicting groups with the other as the enemy. Fifth, divert the people
with “bread and circuses”, viz., diversions that keep them from thinking about
basic questions such as, “is the System fair?” Can it be changed? Sixth, use religion as a System of
complacency, to keep people from experiencing the transformation that true
religion should bring. Seven, keep the people from thinking about the common
good shared by the broader human family. Eight, keep the System as the focus of
serious attention, rather than Big Picture. Any of this sound familiar?
Whatever the agenda of this newborn
king of the Jews, it certainly involved several salient points. First, there is the belief that a benevolent
Creating-Uniting God, revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, runs the show, not just in
your life, but the very life of the cosmos. Second, this God dwells both within
you and beyond you and is readily at hand, delighting in our humble and
grateful (eucharistic!) recognition.
Third, the Deep Spirit of God is present in all reality, in the process
of ascent, descent, transformation that is universal in the cosmos. Fourth,
Jesus’ social-economic-political theory
was summarized in mutual relationship and responsibility for the common good,
enoughism, equality. Fifth, there is a cosmic unity, represented by the star on
Christmas, that the universe is reconfigured by the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
His birth and message augurs the way that Creator wants the world to be.
A positive response to the Gospel of
God’s Kingdom would reconfigure one’s reality into the proper intention that
the Creator had intended from the get go.
(Was Jesus speaking tongue in cheek in comparing “Caesar’s kingdom” (the
system of patriarchy, purity and patronage) with “God’s Kingdom”, the Vision
that God had truly intended but had gotten temporarily sidetracked?
In a very real sense, the Epiphany
story is subversive of the System. The visit of the Magi (non-Jews, the first
to worship the Christ child in this Gospel!) broadens the horizon to include
the Big Picture. The birth of this Child
was setting creation aright with the archetype of creation with the
social-economic-political Vision that represents what the Creator intends for
reality now.
Two of the ways in which folks called
to be citizens of the Kingdom of God (rather than just pawns of the System) is
to make two New Year’s Resolutions, along with the usual ones to lose weight,
and to exercise regularly. First, try with God’s Help to practice the Golden
Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” which is almost
universally taught in major religious systems throughout the world. Most significantly, try to practice the
Golden Rule of non-violence, viz., you don’t want anyone hurting you, so don’t
hurt them either. We all need some work on that one!
Second, soon, Pope Francis will be
publishing an encyclical on the environmental question, making the question of
ecology a clear, not moot, moral question. Pope Francis is terse, not verbose.
Therefore, plan to read that encyclical. Prepare for it now by greater
consciousness of environmental everyday matters. He has already linked
consumerism and the environment. He wrote, “False cultures or systems breed
materialism and consumerism have created in our world: 1) a culture of comfort
that makes us think only of ourselves; 2) a culture of waste that seizes the
goods of the created order to savor for
moment and then discard them.” Time to do some “out of the box
thinking”!
Something is still afoot with the
coming of Jesus Christ. A correct response to these two challenges in 2015AD
are appropriate responses to the Gospel of the three Kings and the star of
Bethlehem today to the real problems we face today, right here in our own world
of the Big Apple. Happy New Year (of the
Lord??) 010415AD jfq
You Never Stop Learning in the Master’s School
Hindu
tradition sees four stages of human development. First, there is the student
stage, from conception to one’s leaving the home. Two, the householder stage
when one becomes a young adult and plans to take the world by storm. Third, the
forest dweller stage in which one experiences the midlife crisis, as one comes
to see that there is more to life than householding. This stage is normally
triggered by an event in which we realize that we are not the masters of the
universe that we thought we were. Last, hopefully, is the wisdom stage, known
as the sanyasi, in which one realizes that life is not about oneself alone, that
none is the centre of the universe, that one is contingent, viz., somehow, life
will go on without me someday. We try to balance the paradox of Psalm 8, in
which we ask “what is the human person that You should care for him. Yet, you
have made the person alone in your image and likeness?’
Many
years ago, Dr Erick Erickson built on the work of Dr Benjamin Spock (who had
mapped out childhood until 18 years old) with predictable stages of adult
psychological development. Erickson saw three, distinct stages of adult
development. First, early adulthood in which the primary life question is “who
am I?” viz., the identity question.**** Second, in middle adulthood, the question
is “what am I doing with my life?” viz., the generativity question. Third, in
later adulthood, the primary question becomes “was it all worth it?”viz., the
integrity question.
****(Note that there
is one significant proviso named in the early adulthood stage. Psychologists
speak now of emerging adulthood and then, early adulthood.)
For many
reasons, in the USA, Catholics have emphasized Catholic elementary school
education as the norm. At best, religious education programs were a stepsister
or brother who was tolerated but didn't necessarily fit in. Forget about when it came to adult religious
education. All of this is changing. Indeed, the loss of Catholic elementary
schools in inner cities is a terrible loss.
Jesus
was thirty years old when He got His act together. Yet, we had expected our
kids to be committed Catholics in the early days of high school! We assume that
everything that we need to know has been infused by the time of confirmation.
God help us! How can a person in midlife crisis (a walk in the woods, forest
dweller) handle such stress with a rudimentary religious education? We never
should stop learning!
It was in the days of St
Augustine that the church started baptizing infants because of the doctrine of
original sin. Obviously, it is still the trend of Roman Catholicism to practice
infant baptism. However, we hear more and more about alternatives
However, in
the early days of the Jesus Movement, baptism was an adult rite. One decided
whether one wanted to join the Jesus Movement or not. It represented a response
to Jesus’ call in the gospel, “Repent
and believe the good news. Today, it might translate “Snap out of it. This is not the way GOD wants
it and you can, with GOD’s help, do your part to repair the landscape.”
Pope Francis speaks of his
wish for all of us to accept the call to live the gospel as committed
evangelists at all times, at any age. In the Gospel reading today, notice that
it is Jesus Who heard the
Voice of God, not the bystanders. Yet,
we expect our kids to be committed Catholics in the early days of high school!
We assumed that all that we need to know has been infused by the time of
confirmation. God help us!
How can people in midlife
crisis and beyond (a walk in the woods, forest dweller) handle it when they
have only received at best, the student’s education before adulthood! Yet, this
is basically the paradigm that we have used for about 150 years in this nation,
at best.
Jesus was still learning
when He was thirty years old. The norm here is that the work is done when you
hit the road after Confirmation. We need to re-assess.
You can do your part! Pope Francis praises Mercy, a book by
Walter Cardinal Kasper that most adult Catholics could read. James Martin’s Jesus
or the Jesuit Guide to Just About Everything are both very popular and
readable. Jesus only got His act together when he was thirty. His religious
education did not conclude with His Bar Mitzvah. Why not learn from His example! What can we
still learn from the Master? 011115AD jfq
Everyone’s
Confirmation Name?
We don't hear too much about St Andrew!
He always seems to be playing second fiddle to his brother, (Simon, aka
Rocky). He was not included in the inner circle of 3 (Peter, James and John)
among the 12. Yet, he is a pivotal figure in the gospel accounts in which he is
mentioned.
One of his titles is the “protoclete”,
viz., “first of those called”. This refers to our gospel story today, as well
as the initial call stories of Jesus in the Synoptic gospels, viz., Mark,
Matthew, and Luke. Andrew was one of the
first four to hear directly Jesus call to “Follow Me”.
Today, in John’s Gospel, we see that he was
the very first called by Jesus, along with another disciple (Who? You?Maybe? ). They answer a very basic question
posed by Jesus, “For what are you looking?” Their response is “Where are you
coming from?” Jesus’ response is “Come
and see”. In a sense, the encounter between Andrew and Jesus represents what we
all must do in our lives! Jesus asks each of us, “For what are you really
looking? What is really on your mind?” In
Christ Jesus, our response should be, “where are you coming from? His response
to us is the same, “Come and see!”
Andrew shows us all that he is mature in
his response to Jesus. He knows his job
and does it.
Andrew also demonstrates another aspect of
our relationship with Jesus. He is a big
boy, who knows that it is all not about him. His job is to bring others to
Jesus, so that Jesus can have the same encounter with them.
There are three times in which Andrew
appears in the Gospel of John. In addition to today's Gospel, in John 6, it is
Andrew who brings the young boy to Jesus with the five loaves and the two fish
to Jesus and Jesus takes over. We know the rest of the story.
(There
is some indication that both Andrew and Peter knew a little Greek in addition
to Aramaic. The northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee was on a trade route and
since Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman world, there probably was a
little Greek in their communication with traders. This would explain the
missionary efforts of St. Peter, who probably spoke Greek.)
Finally, in John 12, it is Andrew who brings
Greek speaking Jews to Jesus when Jesus arrives for Holy Week? Their request to
Andrew is “We would like to see Jesus”. (The name “Andrew” is a derivative of
Greek word for “male”.)
Andrew’s role is to be bring others to Jesus
and then, step back. That is our role as well. Curiously, that is just what Pope
Francis said recently about our Catholic mission efforts. He says that the Catholic
faith is to spread through attraction, not through proselytization. What the ancient
Romans said of the Jesus Movement, back then, people should still say today “See
how Catholics love one another!”(????)
Hang
on tight! In a sense it is through the
sacrament of confirmation, that we are commissioned by the Jesus Movement to be
“apostolic disciples”. A disciple is a student; an apostle is one sent. True, we
are not called to stand on soapboxes. You can do so if you want, but there are
other ways to live our Christian vocation.
Through baptism and confirmation, we are
all missioned to testify to our faith by our lives. As St Francis said, “In all situations, preach the gospel. If
necessary, even use words!” There
were three big items on the agenda of the Man from Assisi. First, we are challenged to practice the preferential option for the
poor. (God loves all God’s children, has a special concern for those in
trouble and expects all of us to do the same. Second, we are challenged to practice the Golden Rule of Non-violence, viz.,”
Do not do to another person what you do not want not done to you”; 3) God has
given us the garden planet of the universe as our common home. Treat
it with respect and pass it on the your grandchildren.!
We are all called to be 21st century “Andrews”
or “Andreas” in our Catholic lives. Remember the old adage, “Values are caught,
not taught!”
Jesus asks Andrew and us, “For what are we
looking?” Andrew’s and our response is “Jesus, where are you coming from?” Jesus response is “come and see”. Andrew got it, do we? He brought others to Jesus. Do we in our own
lives? 011715AD jfq
That
List Continues to Grow
We speak today of “All Saints of New York” in our
prayers. Obviously, some who come to
mind immediately would be St Elizabeth Seton, St John Neumann, St Isaac Jogues,
St Kateri Tekakwitha (the Lily of the Mohawks).
However, the Big Apple, aka the Island at the Center of the World, has
surely given to the world countless other men and women, who have responded to
the Grace of GOD to meet the demands of GOD in their relationships with one’s
family, friends, neighbors and world community. We have all known many Saints
of New York in our relationships.
When we were in the seminary in the
late sixties, there were two living New York Catholics at that time, whose name
we vaguely knew, but about whom they didn’t tell us much, viz., Dorothy Day and
Thomas Merton. Dorothy Day’s cause for sainthood (which she would have
discouraged) has been introduced. Thomas
Merton whose 100th birthday, would be celebrated this Saturday,
January 31, still makes his impact felt as well.
Today’s Gospel concerns the call of
the first four disciples. It is
appropriate that we see how GOD continues to call to “ongoing conversion” to
all who want to hear the call and respond to it by meetings its demands in
their lives. Such folk can learning much from Merton, this son of New York, who continues to
inspire.
Merton was born into a non-believing
family and raised with no religion. His
parents died while he was young. However, he “came from money.” He studied at
Columbia University and it was there that he started to look at life
differently. He was baptized at Corpus
Christi Church, near Columbia, as a young adult.
However, his baptism as a Catholic was
only the beginning. He felt the call to
a monastic life and became a monk at Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky. His great work of conversion was the Seven
Storey (sic) Mountain and it was well read in the late
forties and early fifties. Indeed, it has never gone out of press.
Some criticized his early writings
because they felt that the spirituality, the way one interprets one’s life, tended
to be what is called “solipsistic”, mainly about his developing relationship
with GOD which concerned solitude, contemplation, asceticism, monasticism, on
his own singular relationship with GOD.
Gradually, he came to understand that
there was one great commandment, but it had two parts, Love of GOD and neighbor.
From the monastery, he started to see that religion was wholistic, meant to
bind all reality into a coherent worldview.
More and more, he started to understand the connectedness of moral
questions such as warfare (and who fights?) and racism (and who gets the short
end of the stick?) and poverty( and where does all the money go?) He understood
that, indeed, all issues are connected and needed, in a Christian context, to
be addressed honestly.
More and more, his writing became
oriented to linking one’s personal relationship with GOD to one’s relationship
to the world in which one lived. Many of his Trappist confreres did not get the
transition, so in 1962, he was forbidden to publish anything on moral
questions. This is dutifully obeyed.
However, he continued to write letters to people privately in which he
expressed his ongoing thought. (Ethel Kennedy, for example, was one of the
recipients of his letters.)
Vatican II changed the tone when the
bishops adopted Gaudium et Spes,
the Pastoral Constitution for the Church in the Modern World, in which many
of Merton’s themes were adopted as Church teaching. Merton hoped for a greater understanding with contemplative
activists in other religions. Near the tragic end of his life, he spoke to a
group of monks from various religious traditions, “My dear brothers, we are
already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our
original unity. What we have to be is what we already are.” Shortly
after, he died, when a fan fell into the bathtub while he was taking a bath. In 1968, so rife with several assassinations
and widespread unrest about the triad of war, racism and poverty, his death, in
the opinion of some, “sorta makes ya wonder!”
His followers coined a term to
challenge us today. “Slacktivism” means that many of us minimally involve
ourselves in moral issues, but do little else.
One challenge that Merton offers to his followers (old and young) is to
do something out of the ordinary to pursue at least one goal which one feels is
important to make the world a better place.
Young people, especially, are challenged to avoid the temptation to slacktivism,
but we elders need to self-assess also.
Conversion to the Gospel is ongoing. 012515AD
What
Movie Will Jesus Catch This Weekend?
Lots of self-congratulating entertainment galas are airing on
television these days, which give talking heads on TV opportunities to comment on the “Hollywood
movie elite’s foisting their values” upon us.
They have us convinced that it is the glorification of loose sexual
foibles (usually, of others) that is bringing our culture down. Really?
Last week, I had the chance to see “Selma”, which is a must-see for those who need to be re-acquainted
with civil rights struggles during the 1960’s. (A friend of mine, Msgr Gerry
Ryan, was one of the USA clergy who responded to the call to join the march
across the Pettus Bridge under the leadership of Rev Martin Luther King. It was
quite a reminder that not all the protestors returned from Selma alive!) Unfortunately,
the portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson was not the way that many remembered
those days. That is the putative reason
why Hollywood is downplaying it. Do they really care?
The movie still is worth seeing. Even high school and college students who
study USA History would certainly profit from watching the movie. But will they
be encouraged to do so?
At the showing of Selma,
there were seven trailers of upcoming movies.
All seven of the trailers (all seven!) were about movies that involved
violence, mass extermination, pay-back revenge killings. Some of the upcoming movies feature movie
stars who should know better, but money talks! Indeed, one of the movies
possibly going for recognition with an Oscar involves a sniper, whose father
had trained him as a young boy to shoot and who taught his own son to shoot as
well.
Maybe, the sixth commandment (Thou shalt not commit adultery)
is not the problem; maybe it is the fifth (Thou shalt not kill). Is the real culture elite pushing violence,
greed, superficiality subtly when they hint that sex is the biggest problem?
How can any TV reporter seriously ask the question with a straight face, “How
could this shooting in the movies and/or the school and/or the mall?” How can anyone seriously ask about the
plethora of gun violence in our nation when a movie probably headed for an
Oscar is all about gun violence and the upcoming trailers that all feature
violence as their attraction. Maybe, we
are not seeing the total picture.
In our first reading today, Moses tells the people that, in
the future, “GOD will raise up a prophet like him. To this prophet
the people must listen”.
The Jesus Movement in the first century saw the fulfillment of the prophecy in
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “Repent (viz., snap out of it), GOD’s
World (viz., the way GOD wants it) is at hand.” The prophet
obviously is Jesus Christ.
In biblical language, a “prophet” is one through whom GOD
speaks, the one who names reality as GOD sees it. Certainly, Jesus is the One about whom Moses
was speaking and, through Whom, GOD continues to speak. Many see the “Sermon on
the Mount” as His program for GOD’s new world order. It seems that Jesus was
more concerned with violence and greed and grudges than He was about sex.
Think about what Jesus
is most concerned in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the
peacemakers”, they shall be called the children of GOD” for example. Another one that gets
short schrift as well is “Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you”. The big one
is “Love
your enemies.” Do we
even consider those teachings as operative today? Were they operative in Jesus’
world either? Yet, that is what He still teaches!
Interestingly, it is
in St Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus says in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Those
who live by the sword shall die by the sword.” (Mtt 26. 52) Some biblical scholars say that these
words have basically lie dormant and neglected for the last 1700 years since
Constantine legitimated Christianity in 312AD. Some feel that that was Jesus, the New
Moses, the
prophet whom GOD will raise up, calls all His disciples (that’s us, folks) to take those words as
normative for all of us, not some of us.
In a world where so
much stress is placed upon narcissism, pragmatism, restlessness and
superficiality, one really wonders who really are the cultural elite? If Jesus were to go to the movies this
weekend, what picture do you think He would want to see? Possibly, Selma,
even though the cultural elite in Hollywood say that it is historically not
that correct. Probably, Jesus might stay home and read. 020115AD jfq
Dom Helder Camara and
St Paul
Several years ago,
in 1982, Father Peter Gelsomino and I were invited to an informal gathering in
upper Manhattan with Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999). It was so informal that we sat on the floor
and ate NY pizza as he spoke with about fifteen NY priests. His special day is February 7, yearly, as we
recall his memory. He was the Archbishop
of Recife, Brazil and he was staying in NYC overnight as he was journeying to
Toronto for a meeting there.
His place in the
Catholic Church was ambiguous in 1982. He was one of the earliest Brazilian
bishops to respond to the call of Vatican II to implement the vision of “aggiornamento”,
viz., to update the Church to keep ourselves in line with the Vision of Jesus
Christ. His enemies (fair and balanced, even then) brought up the fact that in
his earlier years he had joined an organization in Brazil, patterned on the
vision of Benito Mussolini in Italy. He quickly left the group. Since the election of Pope Benedict XVI, who
was a member of a Hitler youth group, that fact about Dom Helder has been
chucked. And since the election of Pope Francis, Dom Helder is coming into vogue
again.
As St Paul says in
our second reading today, “Although I am bound to
anyone, I made myself the servant of all so as to win over as many as possible.
To the weak I became a weak person with a view of winning the weak. I made
myself all things to all to save at least some of them. In fact, I do all that
I do for the sake of the Gospel in the hope of having a share in its blessings!”. Much the same could have been said by Dom Helder himself. He worked with the poor in Rio and in Recife,
but he developed his view of the role of the Jesus Movement in the injustice of
Brazil in several books. Few remember
him now (Pope Francis, however, would be one of them), but Dom Helder developed
a non-violent view of the Catholic Church’s role in Brazil to such an extent
that someone hired a hitman to take him out.
The hitman could not do so.
Dom Helder spoke of
the “downward spiral of violence” in which violence is met by
counterviolence, which is met by counterviolence, etc. You get it. In the process, everyone goes deeper into a
culture of violence, as a given (Witness today’s world!)
To counter the
downward spiral, Dom Helder encouraged the develop of the still-existent “comunidades
de base”,viz., “intentional communities” in which small groups would gather
as Catholics to analyze the situation of their lives in light of primarily the
Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the effort, Dom Helder coined the term “conscientization”,
to raise people’s understanding on how their present situation came into
being. It was an effort at Catholic critical
thinking, in which the Jesus Movement would analyze their lives and envision
non-violent ways of working for transformation. (Today, people speak of
development of “her-story”, history interpreted by those on the fringes then
(and now?). An example would be of how a poor, Black, Brazilian woman might
interpret the story of the “rich man and Lazarus” in St Luke’s Gospel.)
Granted that not
everyone went along with the vision of Vatican II about the role of the church
in the world in the 1960’s and ff.
Indeed, many wonder about the role of faith in the formation of a
non-violent political, economic, social, cultural, and the result sadly has
been the phenomenon of the “evaporation of faith”, where people just turn off
the idea of religion’s place in the modern world. Dom Helder said that the
Jesus Movement was becoming an “Abrahamic minority”, a small group of
believers in Jesus who hung on to the Gospel as a critique of the world (aka
the System).
One of his great
lines was that if Dom Helder were ever to pray the Magnificat of Mary in
public, “GOD has cast the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the
lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and the rich God has sent
away empty. Dom Helder “if Mary sang
it, she could get away with it, but if I
sang it, they would throw me in jail”.
Now the appearance
of Pope Francis on the scene, please GOD, we will hear more of Dom Helder
Camara. At the conclusion of the
informal pizza party with him, one of the priests asked what could have been
done to signal an honest effort of transformation by the Catholic Church in the
post-Vatican II world. He said, “They
should change the name of the Vatican Bank!”
One priest asked him the
name of the Vatican Bank. He responded, “Il Banco de Espiritu Santo.” Recognized
martyr of the Jesus Movement, Archbishop Oscar Romero is officially on his way
to canonization. That honor probably
will not be bestowed upon Dom Helder Camara (not that he would care!) However,
in light of the Petrine Ministry of Pope Francis, Catholics might pay attention
to the thought of Dom Helder Camara. In
the words of St Paul today, “ he did all
that he did for the sake of the Gospel in the hope of having a share in its
blessings!”
020815ADjfq
Who Are Our Brothers
and Our Sisters?
Religion, in Jesus’ time, provided Jewish people with a
necessary means to maintain themselves in a pluralistic world. The big identity markers for Jewish folks all
began the letter “t”: the Torah, the Temple, the Territory
of Israel, Table fellowship of a Kosher diet, sacred Time, viz.,
the Sabbath, the clear identity of those one might Touch (Jew vs.
unclean Jew or Gentiles, (All this provided parameters through which Jewish
people were able to survive in a frequently hostile world.)
However, mature adults (children cannot do this) need to
learn where the identity markers are pointing.
As a mature, Jew, Jesus came to see that religion existed for people and
that people do not exist for religion. He even said so, “The Sabbath was made for
the son of man (an idiom for everyone!).”
Jesus’ agenda is called the Kingdom of God. As Hans Kung
said in 1975, “God’s agenda is the human agenda; the human agenda should be
God’s agenda”. Jesus proclaims a universal, (cat)holistic,
(aka catholic), integral view of life.
Everything is connected to everything else, as quantum physicists tell
us now. Jesus is probably saying, “Now
some of them are getting it better!” And, as St Paul urges us in our 2nd
reading, “we
are to be imitators of Paul, as he was an imitator of Christ.”
In the Gospel today, Jesus heals the leper who was ritually
unclean, prohibited from ordinary life. (Fear of contagion had so much to do
with touch and contact, as well as the opinion of some that the leper had done
something bad to merit such a life.)
However, Jesus touched the leper. Thus,
Jesus ended up ritually impure Himself by the touching! As a result, Jesus was
unable to enter towns or villages either because He had violated the taboo of
touch. Jesus was inconvenienced and disabled by His own mercy.
Pope John Paul II spoke frequently of the need for us to be
champions of life and spokespersons and advocates for the silent helpless in
our midst. He reminded us that when we forget about people (for whatever
reason), we will soon forget about GOD,and when we forget about God, we forget
about people. He told us that whether we care to admit or not, we are
all family. In response to Cain’s dishonest question, Yes, we are our brother’s
(and sister’s) keepers!” We worship the God of Life when we are lifegivers
to those less fortunate than we.
Pope John Paul proclaimed in 1995 the Gospel of Life. Among the principles of this Gospel he
pointed out 1) GOD wants us to be advocates of the silent, helpless. 2) GOD
loves (and wants us to) love the ones those rejected or burdens to society. God
loves lepers. GOD loves the unborn, the very forgotten, the very elderly, the
very rejected. GOD loves those from womb
to tomb, from Park Row to Skid Row to Death Road. GOD wants us to do the same.
Pope Francis is pushing a book by Walter Cardinal Kasper of
Germany entitled Mercy. Cardinal Kasper reminds us that we need to
distinguish between the letter of the Law and the Spirit of the Law. Quoting St Thomas Aquinas, re-stressing
Aquinas’ principle of epikeia, Cardinal Kasper (and Pope Francis, who read
the book) stresses that we need to know what the law is about and ask ourselves
honestly if the law is applicable under the circumstances in which I (we) find
ourselves. In essence, the Aquinas’
principle of epikeia morphed
into the principle of freedom of conscience, proclaimed officially as dogma by
the Bishops of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
New
Yorker, Dorothy Day tried to balance the human tension of longing for
transcendence with the drive “to make the world an easier place for people to
be good.” She tried to live her life, in Christ Jesus, in conformity with
Jesus’ Vision of the Kingdom of God (clarified re-clarified as the Gospel of
Life). She understood that we have all been blessed with many gifts by GOD.
However, she realized that life is not about her, that she is about life. She
knew that she had to use her gifts in service to others (lepers, then, the
Silent Helpless now) as an act of adoration. Indeed, when she is canonized,
there are those who say that she should be named “Patroness of those on the
periphery”!
Today, Jesus solidarity with the marginalized leper seems
to us as a kind action. However, it was a cultural bombshell, hinting that
there are no boundaries among people with GOD.
As Pope Benedict said “Since GOD is agape (Self-giving
Love), the Jesus Movement cannot not love.”
How do we hear that, viz., the Gospel today? Do we express ideas like this when we are
involved in discussions with people about real social, economic, political or
cultural problems? Since parents and
godparents are the first teachers of their children, how do we share this with
the children? Is it the Kingdom of God
or the Kingdom of Gold, about which life is concerned? 021515ADADjfq
Lent
2015AD… Here We Go Again
Everyone has a worldview. However, not everyone has a
personal worldview, when many forfeit their own thinking to others, frequently media
hateriots (sic). Hopefully, the Jesus Movement tries, with GOD’s Help, to have
a worldview with Gospel lenses. Do we always do so?
Traditionally, on the First Sunday of Lent, we hear an
account of the temptations of Jesus at the beginning of His public ministry. On
the one hand, remember that He is like us in all things but sin. What worldview
does Jesus have?
On the other hand, we
sometimes think that since Jesus is GOD, He only goes through the motions of
being human. Traditionally, even in the New Testament, this is the heresy of
Docetism, viz., Jesus only seemed to be human. (Dokein is the Greek word!) Many
of us are Docetists and don’t realize that we are.
St Mark tells us subtly today in the Gospel of Jesus’
temptations, that Jesus is in the company of the wild beasts and/or the angels.
Just like us! We all live with the wild beasts and with the angels. We can,
with GOD’s Help, choose how to live with the wild beasts or with the angels.
Lent is an opportunity to get back to basics in a Catholistic
sense. What does it mean to be an integral, whole, entire human person in right
relationship with reality, after the paradigm of the Archetypal Human One (the
Son of Man!!)? Lent is a chance to do a reality check on how I measure up to
the human (and divine) expectations of Jesus.
In the third century Egypt, long ago and far away, St
Anthony the Abbot made some relevant statements as we begin our Lenten
pilgrimage. 1)”The planet Earth is insignificant when compared with the
universe. Indeed, the greatest Empire in the world is insignificant when
compared with the universe.” 2) Once when St Anthony received a letter from the
Roman Emperor while he was in contemplative prayer, he remained in prayer.
Later on he said, “Marvel rather that we all receive word from GOD’s Son daily
in the Scripture than I got a letter from a king”. 3) Humbly and honestly, and
consolingly, he wrote, “The problem is not necessarily the world, but rather
the complacency, laziness and arrogance (hubris) that life in the everyday
world can generate.” (The more we change, the more we remain the same???)
Pope Benedict XVI reminded us that there are three things
that each member of the Jesus Movement needs to see as basic. 1) The human
person is oriented to transcendence. (That means you and your neighbor and your
enemy, as well.) If we really took that seriously, then our worldview would
change. 2) With this orientation to transcendence, viz., that we are dependent
on and different from a “Constituting Other”, we must make a preferential
option for those in our midst whose lives are less than human. 3) We need to
evangelize, viz., announce through how we live that our Catholistic worldview
us the way to go for an integral human life. As St Francis said, “In all you
do, preach the Gospel. If necessary even use words!”
Theologians tell us that the archetypal sin of humanity,
mythologized in the story of the fall of our first parents, is arrogance, hubris,
the desire to be like GOD, to be the center of the universe. Our first parents
have had many children and grandchildren.
Human experience shows us that one of the most primitive
parts of the human brain is the fright-fight-flight dynamic of the reptilian
brain, deep within each of us. If we operate only on that level of operation,
-- and nations operate with a corporate reptilian brain also –then we quickly
descend to the level of the wild beasts in the wilderness. The ongoing saga of
the first eleven chapters of Genesis (known as the Primordial History, from
Creation to the Tower of Babel) us a constant devolution of GOD’s plan. (Dom
Helder Camara said that this was the “downward spiral of violence”. In today’s
readings, we are reminded of the destruction that humanity brought upon itself
through sin, culminating in the Flood.
(Notice that GOD relented
and promised humanity that a flood again would never destroy the earth. (NB God
changed God’s Mind about something. What’s up with that?) Interestingly, “in
this new moment of human history”, quoting the USA Bishops statement on the
Arms Race in 1983, some caution that while GOD will not destroy the world, that
does not mean that we won’t. (Fr Karl Rahner said many years ago that he
personally believed that GOD had too much invested in the planet earth to allow
such a thing to happen. However, that doesn’t
mean that we won’t destroy through our arrogant hubris! Let us trust Rahner’s
hope. )
Modern physics reaffirms that Catholistic intuition that
all reality is in relationship. Nothing can be understood completely unless it
is understood in relationship to everything else. Whatever we do, effects everything else.
The Jesus Movement needs to remember this reality as well
as to share this Catholistic insight with the world. Rev Jim Wallis, in the Great
Awakening, several years ago quoting the USA Catholic Bishops, named 4
principles that should guide Catholistic engagement with GOD’s agenda. 1) As an
institution, the Church is called to be political, but not partisan. 2) The
Church is called to be principled, but not ideological. 3) The Church is called
to be clear, but also civil. 4) The Church is called to be engaged, but not
used.
Once again, this Lent, Jesus invites us, as individuals
and, as the Jesus Movement, to share His Catholistic worldview. God’s agenda is
the human agenda; the human agenda should be GOD’s agenda. However, the temptation
is always there for us to do it our way.
Just as Jesus lived with
the wild beasts and the angels, we are challenged by the wild beasts as well.
When we try to live GOD’s agenda, we dwell with the angels, even now, though
not yet. 022215AD jfq
Listening (with Our Hearts
and Minds????)
I
heard a story by a local priest in White Plains in which he spoke of a child
who was tried to get his mother’s attention, while she was preparing
dinner. The mother asked what was it the
child wanted and after his tugging on her apron again, she said,” I am
listening to you, but I am busy.” The child responded, “Listen to me with your
eyes!”
In a sense that is what GOD is saying to us today on the
Second Sunday of Lent when the Voice from heaven tells Peter, James, John (and
us), “This is MY beloved Son, in
Whom I am well pleased Listen to Him!” About what is GOD
talking?
Jesus has just told His disciples that He was to suffer and
die (and rise on the third day). St Peter, ever the speaker, says to Jesus, “God forbid that anything like that
should happen to you!”
(He probably was thinking at the moment, “What will happen to me?” Jesus needed
to talk more.
Jesus starts to talk to His Jesus Movement that life gets
tough, even for Him (and for us as well). Among His words are the familiar, “What does it profit a person if he or
she should gain the whole world?” Or “What
would one give for one’s life?”
Jesus offers His disciples an alternative universe in which
to live. It is one in which Madison Ave,
Park Ave, Wall St and the Pentagon, are relativized. The System, viz., the
“world” is not the Absolute. He calls
His universe “the
Kingdom of GOD”, not
the Kingdom of Gold.
Many years ago, contemplative activist, Fr Thomas Merton,
whose 100th birthday we celebrated on January 15, published a book,
entitled, Confessions of a Guilty Bystander. He wrote that most of us
are not actively involved in any type of structural sin (which Pope John Paul
defined as human institutions that damage the humanity of people. The priest in
America wrote recently that the System, the culture in which we live has
much work to do on specific areas of structural sin. He spoke of the ongoing problems with racism,
which most Catholistic people (though not all!) seriously try to eliminate
from our lives. He spoke also of the ongoing problems with violence, which most
Catholistic
people (though not all!)
seriously try to eliminate. He spoke of the ongoing problems with the
environment, which most Catholistic people (though not all)
seriously try to eliminate from our lives. Finally, others would speak of the
ongoing problems with greed, which most Catholistic people seriously try to
eliminate from our lives.
Many years ago, Fr Karl Rahner whose birthday we celebrate
this week said that every time he ate a banana, he was complicit in the
structural sin of the world. (One woman, a few years ago, said that Rahner,
therefore, should not eat bananas if it bothered him so much. (She obviously didn’t get the point. Maybe,
she didn’t want to get it!)
Recently recognized as the martyr that people knew he
was Archbishop Oscar Romero (whose death
has been compared by some with the death of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury,
another martyr.) spoke of what he called the eschatological proviso, viz.,
obviously none of us can do everything to make the world the way GOD
wants it to be. However, all of us can do something! The world, as it is, is
not the Vision that Jesus proclaims (to those who listen) is the best starting
point to transformation.
Each of us can refrain from telling ethnic or racial jokes
which polarize even more a polarized society. Each of us can re-think the
violence that the entire world associates with us as the quick fix that GOD
prefers to make things better. Each of us can re-think our involvement of the
environment as a serious moral issue, in which each of us can participate by
the simple acts of not wasting food and of not polluting the environment
anymore than it is. (Pope Francis
apparently is planning to come on strong on this one in the next few months.)
Each of us can refrain from choosing the things we want to choosing the things
we need. (Some speak of advertising’s leading to consumerism’s leading to
addiction. Something to think about for all of us!
GOD’s Voice
from heaven tells us to listen to Jesus, Who just has told us. “What does it profit a person if he or
she should gain the whole world?” Or “What would one give for one’s life?” Basic questions avoided by the
world! Jesus’ alternative universe is here even now, though not yet, whenever
we try to taking Jesus’ view of reality seriously and to relativize, as
provisional at best, the System from which we all benefit. 030115ADjfq
It Goes Way Back to Constantine
(There
is little doubt that the incident that our Gospel describes today is a real
event in the life of Jesus. However, it is not meant to be interpreted in an
anti-Semitic spin. Rather, it is applicable to any religion (then and now!)
that starts to worship itself more than GOD)
What
Jesus did that day in the cleansing in the Temple was a big item in His
crucifixion. Jesus really rocked the boat of the religious establishment back
then. However, it is a statement about what can happen when any religion starts
to live for itself and for its own self-preservation. (One local
theologian coined the term “ecclesiolatry, viz., worship of the church.) St
John tells us that His disciples did not understand what Jesus did until after He had
risen from the dead. Jesus speaks of the temple of His body. Jesus
is where we worship GOD now.
We know
that the Church survived the first three hundred years when the Jesus movement
lived on the fringes of society. Some times were better than others.
However,
it all changed in the fourth century. In the beginning of the fourth century, the
Emperor Diocletian tried seriously to stamp out the Jesus Movement. However, on
October 28, 312, Constantine changed the game when he decreed that the Jesus
Movement was a licita religio,
a lawful religion. Moreover, by the end of the fourth century, the Jesus Movement
had morphed into the state religion. By then, one had to be a Christian whether
one liked it or not. Whatever was in Constantine’s mind, the Jesus Movement
went from the catacombs to the basilicas.
One
result of this change was that the Church became property owners, very differ
from the Agenda of the Mentor. Another result of this turn of events was that there
were more members and there was need organizational machinery. (St Ambrose of
Milan published a book, De Officiis, on organizing diocese around the year 390. He
had been a civil official (almost like the police commissioner, so he was into
organization.))
Fr
Richard Rohr quotes a sociological paradigm that describes how a mentor with a message begins a movement. The
movement attracts membership who
hear with their minds and hearts the message of the mentor. However, for
several reasons, such as increased
membership, after a while the
movement, needs some legitimate organization and as a result, a machine develops. Realistically, many machines tend to be self-preserving and
the focus gets changed to keeping the machinery
oiled and efficient. In the process, sometimes,
the machine forgets about the message of the mentor. Without the original
focus, the machine can become a musemn
and even worse, a mausoleum.
Since the close of Vatican II, the Holy Spirit has offered
us guidelines for the years ahead. For fifty years, the promptings of the Spirit
offered insights of aggiornamiento, “keeping up with to the signs of the times” and
resourcement,
“getting back to apostolic roots,” as reflected in the earliest days of the
Jesus movement, whenever possible. Some insights we have followed. Not all,
however.
For
example, several years ago, the archdiocese started a program to promote
ongoing religious education for adults. Many felt that too much attention was
focused on Catholic elementary schools, to the neglect of religious education
programs for public school children, to the neglect of family catechesis, and to
ongoing serious adult religious education. The Church in New York should have
been more aware of the signs of the times and rethought early apostolic
guidelines on how to exist in a changing world.
By and
large, we did not promote the vision of the apostolate of the laity, as expressed in Vatican II, and relied too
much on traditional models, even though as early as 45 years we knew that there
would be a dearth of priests in the years ahead.
Pope
Francis said in “The Joy of the
Gospel”, “There is nothing wrong with the local parish, but bishops and pastors
have not been creative enough to utilize the talents and apostolic call of many
parishioners”. However, the diocese relied too much on the one priest
per parish model. When Pope Francis visits us in September, he will experience
the changing times and place of the Catholic Church in New York and possibly
shake his head in sorrow.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross spoke of the five stages
of accepting loss in one’s life. Among reactions to loss are the following:
anger, then denial, then bargaining, then depression, then acceptance. The
traditional paradigm that dates back to St Ambrose is undergoing a shift, and
many devoted and faithful Catholics have been broadsided.
Other
dioceses throughout the world saw a splendid opportunity to examine lay
apostolate in an evolving church throughout the world. Sadly, some of the
suggestions made both by Vatican II then and by Pope Francis now could have
been seriously implemented in New York and other dioceses throughout the last
half-century. Things change. As a few
clergy said over the last 50 years is, “Our Church is transforming.
In the
earliest days of the Jesus Movement, the Mentor’s message became the earliest
creedal statements, “Jesus is Lord and
GOD raised Him from the dead” and “Destroy
this Temple (of His Body) and He will raise it up on the third day.” For
several legitimate reasons, the Movement morphed into a machine, which perhaps
became too much concerned about self-preservation. In the difficult days that
the Church is experiencing right now, we all need to recall that, no matter
what, “Jesus is Lord;He is with us always, even to the end of the ages.” 030815ADjfq
Nicodemus – a Nes or Yo
Man?
Strangely, Nicodemus appears only in the
Fourth Gospel, according to St John, and, only three times. However, his
appearances come at specific and crucial places. He appears in today’s famous and iconic scene
of his visit to Jesus at night. Later, in Jn 7, he attempts to guarantee that
Jesus gets a fair hearing in the Sanhedrin.
In Jn 19, along with Joseph of Arimethia, he buried Jesus. As a result, his name is well known to
Catholics.
In today’s Gospel excerpt from John 3, we hear some of the
most familiar quotes from the Fourth Evangelist. 1) Unless a person is
born again, he shall not see the Kingdom of God. 2) The wind (Spirit) blows
where it wills; we know not whence it comes and wither it goes. 3) God so loved
the world that God gave the Only begotten Son (famous at sports events). 4) The Son of Man must be lifted up.
In a little known reading, John 7, “You are not one of
this man’s disciples, also, are you. We all know that no prophet arises in
Galilee.”
By his burial of Jesus ,Nicodemus can be making a public
profession as a member of the Jesus Movement. However, he could also be seen as
a compassionate Jewish leader performing an act of mercy.
However,
there is one other reference that may refer to Nicodemus even though he is not
named specifically. “Many,
even among the authorities, believed in Jesus, but…they did not acknowledge it
openly so not to expelled from the synagogue. They preferred human praise to
the glory of God.” We are not certain how
Nicodemus responded to Jesus’ question in today’s Gospel. Instead, equivocally,
does Nicodemus temporize? Was he or
wasn’t he a disciple of Jesus?
Jesus, in John’s Gospel, requires a “yes” or “no” from
wannabe disciples. Catholics believe
that the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, gives us the strength to say “yes” to
Jesus. When we do so, we are born again (and again and again and again!!!)
Still, all of us can answer Jesus (and frequently do) with an ambiguous Nes or
Yo.
The Fourth Evangelist is hinting at the question, “Are you
a Nicodemus?” Do I waffle or equivocate in response to Jesus? All of us hedge
our bets when it comes to faith, early and often. Am I readily identifiable as
a Disciple of Jesus or do I, at times, obfuscate my faith? Do I make an effort
to critique conventional wisdom (the System) with the alternative wisdom of the
alternative universe that Jesus embodies and describes? As Pilate told the
crowd on Good Friday, “Look
at the man”. Do we see the God-man Whose
Presence in our lives changes the way we look at reality?
Several years ago, Pope Benedict wrote about the difference
between believing in Jesus and believing Jesus. Many say they believe in Jesus,
but don’t always behave like they really believe Him or take His Gospel
seriously. It is a relevant question these
days when the System, in so many ways, have sold good people the idea that we
are a Christian nation and yet, we pay little or no attention to the
alternative wisdom of Jesus? How does the System respond to Jesus when He says,
“Blessed
are the peacemakers, they will be called the children of God.” How do we respond when Jesus teaches, “Love
your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the children
of your Heavenly Father. For God allows the sun to rise on the good and the bad
alike, God rains on both the just and unjust?” How do we respond to “I was
hungry and you fed Me…?” How do we respond when Jesus tells us “We must be
willing to forgive our brother’s sins seven times, or seventy-seven times?”
What happens when a culture that brags about family values
doesn’t have a problem when dividing families by deporting the illegal aliens
who are parents of American by birth children?
What happens when ordained Christian ministers publish
books and go on TV, hawking their books, such as “God, Gravy, Grits and
Guns”?
What happens when a culture in which the bottom line is
more important than the common good?
What happens when we face questions about our attitudes to
racism, violence, care for the environment, greed or superficiality about
serious moral questions?
Although our culture is quick to say that we are a
Judaeo-Christian culture, yet it subtly tempts us to buy into the Original Lie,
viz., Who needs God”, we can take care of ourselves. It stresses the individual
at the expense of the group. It measures human worth by what one has, not what
one is. It can make us numb to the real problems that others, close and
faraway. It values efficiency more than morality, measuring success as a sign
of salvation.
Nicodemus challenges us to ask ourselves if we see God made
human in Jesus Christ and if we see the Mystery of Christ, crucified and Risen,
as the basis of life. With help of the Paraclete, may any of the ambivalence be
banished from us!! Do we believe in
Jesus; do we believe Jesus? God willing, may we all “are asked are you
one of this man’s followers” a healthy
and healthy Yes, even when life gets dicey!!
031515AD jfq
Some
Heavy Lifting!!
It is
important to remember that our four gospels are literary documents. Each
evangelist used tools and gimmicks and styles to illustrate Gospel truth.
For
example, our fourth evangelist constantly plays with ironic language to present
the paradox, viz., apparent contradictions, of Christ Jesus, The Word
made flesh. Often the language can be understood differently by different
people.
There
are several examples of St. John's paradoxical use of irony to illustrate the
big point. What is going on in today’s Gospel? How do I hear it on 2015AD?
There are points here that you may not pick up with televangelists or dumb “chicken
soup books” on coffee tables.
First,
to what does “lifting up” refer? At first glance, it might refer to the crucifixion. At
another, it may refer to Jesus' Resurrection. Still others think that it may
refer to Jesus exaltation or ascension. Which one? All three? Your answer?
Second,
who is doing the lifting? Is it the system, the powers that be, whose thugs
carried out His execution? Is GOD transforming the brutal work of the thugs
into the portal of Resurrection. Is it both? Your answer?
Third,
the” lifting up” is the fourth evangelist's way of describing the Pascal
Mystery, viz., the process of death and transformation, which the entire
universe experiences. All creation experiences ascent, descent and
transformation. (Even the sun will someday burn out?) Physicists call it the
conservation of energy or matter Nothing is lost in the universe. Death and
resurrection involves not just Jesus Himself, the archetype of creation,
the image of the invisible God. Your
answer?
Fourth,
Jesus refers to Himself in all four gospels as the “son of
man”, (barnasha, in Aramaic.) However, barnasha is also an
idiom for “everyone”, all of us. Each and every human person is a barnasha. Is
Jesus referring to Himself? Does His Death and resurrection involves not just
Jesus Himself, the archetype of creation, the image of the invisible God? Does
it involves each and every one of us who live and have our being in,
through and with Christ Jesus. Is He referring to Himself or everyone of
us? Your answer?
How does
the lifting up of Jesus affect me personally? Pope Francis tells us that there
are, at least, three ways in which each of us can answer that question. First,
does Jesus mean a reorientation of thoughts and attitude about our place in the
universe? Jesus offers a new vision. Am
I a monad, a rugged individual, who just is concerned with what is happening in
my life? Am I a part of a cosmic reality in which Christ Jesus is archetype,
paradigm and for humans, exemplar? Your answer?
Second,
does Jesus mean a reorientation of action in the ways we act out our place in this
new vision? Is it just about me and mine? Is it about us and ours? Who are the “us”
and who are the “ours”? Is it my
immediate world or is the world in general? Problems near and far affect us
all. We suffer (and sometimes, contribute) to the violence, the racism, the
greed, the environmental crisis, the superficiality. Your answer?
Finally,
does Jesus mean that we should look at life differently? We speak as Catholics that GOD and thus
Christ Jesus and Holy Spirit dwells within us and that we dwell in GOD. We used
to say that we were “tabernacles of the
Holy Spirit”. Do we take that seriously? Do we take seriously today that
the presence of GOD within us?
Who is the son of man who is lifted up by
whom and where is it all going? The fourth evangelist hints to
us, in ironic language, that existence is not what it seems at first glance.
More is going on in my, your, our lives than we can imagine.
Jesus
tells us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Medium and the Message. How do
I react to that and, if necessary, how do I adjust my actions accordingly? Your
answer? 032215AD jfq
Been There, Done That!
As we begin Holy Week
today, the haunting words of Psalm 22 confront us from now until Easter.
However, in our responsorial psalm today, from Psalm 22, we get the gist of where
the Passion of Jesus is headed. St
Mark’s use of Psalm 22 is evident in both the Responsorial Psalm as well as the
Passion narrative that we hear today.
Someone said that the
account of the Passion that we hear today is a Cook’s Tour of human cruelty. Think
of the betrayal of Judas, the lethargy and cowardice of the 12, the denial of
Peter, as starting points in the last day of Jesus when He experienced, under
the two most sophisticated legal systems of the time, viz., Roman and Jewish, all
of the following: night arrest, interrogation (without a lawyer), torture, and
ridicule by the very “sheeple” who hailed Him on Palm Sunday and have now
turned on Him, and finally, his death. Is Jesus experiencing the desolation of
YHWH, the Presence of YHWH in his dying words? Jesus’ last words on the cross
have troubled people since the Gospel appeared around the year 70AD. However,
even in its condensed form today, three of the four verses from Psalm 22 speak
of the desolation of Good Friday, including Jesus’ the last words, “My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?” However, the
key is in the fourth verse of the Responsorial Psalm today.
In many ways the last
day of Jesus life on Good Friday represents the roller coaster ride of faith that
all of us experience throughout our lives. Psalm 22, when read in its entirety,
reflects the crises of faith that confront all of us at one time or another.
Some days we experience good days, other days, not so good. Sometimes, our
faith is strong and sometimes faith is weak.
All of us experience
the two hands of God in our lives. The right hand gives all the blessings to
us, usually for which we do not say “Thank You” enough to GOD and frequently, in
a middle class society, to which we sometimes feel an entitlement. However, the
left hand of GOD deals us the painful mysteries of life, the realization at
times that we will never be completely happy in our humanity as well as those
negative threshold moments in which we experience the shadow side of life,
viz., the sorrows, the trouble, the failures, the absurdities, the rejections
and the disappointments we all experience at times. Both our faith (and now,
science) tell us, despite experiences
that seem to contradict so, that the creation of which we are a part is heading
to a good place.
St. Paul hints at it
today in our secnd reading today, the early hymn of the Jesus movement, known
as the Carmen Christi, in which Paul adverts to the universal process of
descent and transformation that all creation, and all people, therefore,
experience. Commentators tell us that the introduction to the first verse of
the Hymn says it all. “Our attitude must be the attitude of Christ!”
Richard Rohr calls
Christian life a participation in the Pauline paradigm of the Paschal paradox.
All things experience ascent, descent and transformation. We are no exception. Why should Christ Jesus, the archetype,
paradigm, exemplar of creation, as St. Paul tells is and yet, one like
us in all things but sin
not experience life as we all experience it? (Some people in good faith think
that Jesus, in the Gospel today, is a Teflon person, that this isn’t really
happening to Him. He is not really like us! But, St Mark says, “Au contraire in
our Gospel today!”
The key seems to be
the audience to whom Psalm 22 is addressed (then and now). Throughout Psalm 22,
emotions of despair abound, too many to list here, but each of us will hear
them in the gospel today. However, Psalm 22, reflecting the ups and downs of
all our lives, ends up with the fourth part of our responsorial today. “I will
live for The Lord, my descendants will serve you”. Hope triumphs in Psalm
22. Whoever St Mark’s original audience was, they were people who were familiar
with Psalm 22, and they would recognize the opening line of psalm on Jesus lips.
They knew where this psalm was going,
the ultimate Victory of GOD, hinted at in the fourth verse of the Psalm today.
Recall also that the tradition is that St Mark’s Gospel was written to folks
under imminent persecution!!
Throughout Psalm 22,
there is an ascent, descent and transformation, the Paschal Mystery (aka the
conservation of matter and/or energy) implied in our responsorial psalm today.
When we hear the Gospel on Palm Sunday, we recognize many of the thoughts
expressed in Psalm 22, too many to list here, but each of us will hear them in
the Gospel today. However, Psalm 22, reflecting the ups and downs of all our
lives, ends up with the fourth part of our responsorial today. I will
live for The Lord, my descendants will serve you. Hope triumphs in Psalm 22. Tune
in this week and finally, next Sunday, to hear how it all turns out. 032915AD
jfq
It’s Always Easter If You Believe Jesus!!
Curiously,
we are recovering the vision that our ancestors had of a relational universe.
Everything is related to everything else. One quantum physicist speaks of the
universe as a relational matrix or a cosmic web. It might have been Albert
Einstein himself who said, “You can’t understand anything completely without
understanding its relationship to everything else!”
Our ancestors in the Medieval World understood this truth
when they established, under Church auspices, the university system. Truth was
one and yet, there were variety of methods in which the one Truth could be
approached in the true 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. (Remember the etymology of the word “universe” is “to turn around one
point”! Sadly, he speaks today of the
de-evolution of higher education into a job factory, if you are lucky to get
one. (Interestingly, also, NY Times columnist, Frank Bruni, recently published
a book saying basically the same thing.)
On this Easter Sunday, we can learn from our ancestors as
we celebrate the death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus and its implications mean
to me and mine, personally and existentially, here and now. The first thing our
ancestors would say is that Easter is also about us, not just about Christ
Jesus.
As scientists tell us, (and St Paul, years ahead of them),
is that universe is the relational mesh. (Autonomy or rugged individualism,
scientists tell us now, is an untruth of the Western Enlightenment. Catholics
celebrates a relational GOD (we say Trinitarian). One in three; three in One!
Is it any wonder that reality is a nexus of relationships if GOD is relational?
Granted, we cannot understand GOD. Still, can we understand others? Can we even
understand ourselves? We are always learning something new.
Next, scientists tell us that since, there is a principle
of conservation of matter and/or energy, nothing is wasted in the universe.
Everything, everything goes through the process of ascent, descent and
transformation. Just so, Christ Jesus grew, descended (in His death) and transformed
in His Resurrection. Recall that St Paul has been telling us for 2000 years
now, that Christ
Jesus is the archetype of Creation. The
human person, indeed, all creation, is created in, through with Christ Jesus.
Just as Christ Jesus died and rose in transformation, that same paschal process
is in every atom in creation, including yours!
Finally, Scientists speak now of the “wholon”. The entity
is more than the sum of the parts. The pattern of the entire entity is
contained in each of the parts. The DNA of Christ Jesus is in you and each of
us exist in the DNA of Christ Jesus. As
St Luke tells us, “In
Him we live and move and have our being.”
Easter is about Christ Jesus and about you and yours! It is only in the most serious moments of
life that people ask the most basic questions.
What is life all about? What is my place in life? Where is my life all
going? Hopefully, Easter helps us arrive at some answer!
Christ Jesus wants us to cast our lot completely with His,
viz., the Divine Presence of the Trinitarian GOD is the Fourth Dimension in
which each of us exists. As the
Patriarch Jacob said, “God,
You were here all along and I didn’t know it!”
The image of Christ Jesus Crucified and Risen was the focus
of Medieval Franciscan theology. St
Francis said that the Crucified One should be portrayed artistically with eyes
half closed (dying), half opened (rising), gazing at each of us. St Anthony of
Padua (he who finds what was lost – and he does!) said that Christ Jesus died
on the cross so that whenever you look at the crucifix it would be like looking
into a mirror! Franciscan Blessed John
Duns Scotus said that Christ Jesus died and rose to show you how much GOD loves
you. Think about it.
The great test of faith comes when we are confronted by the
painful mysteries of life, when we experience the left hand of GOD. For
example, what happens when someone loses a job, when a child gets sick or gets
into trouble, when one experiences an unexpected loss? Jesus’ Promise is that
He (and therefore, the Trinitarian GOD) is with us in all that happens. How
does faith in Him kick in? He is involved in it.
Today, the Responsorial Psalm is Psalm 118, “This is the Day
that Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia!” Last Sunday, our responsorial was “My God, My God,
why have you abandoned me? Now GOD flips the coin! GOD fulfills the promises of
fidelity to Christ Jesus (and through Him, with Him and in Him) to all of us.
Pope John Paul II said that every Sunday is Easter Sunday,
when we take the Death and the Resurrection of the Lord seriously. This Easter Sunday, no matter what is going
on with us, we ask for the Energy, the Help, the Grace of GOD, to trust that
every moment in one’s life is a Paschal Moment. GOD has the final say in Christ
Jesus and therefore, the final say in you in Christ Jesus.
Happy Easter to all. It is a connected, relational,
Catholistic universe in Christ Jesus, heading to something good, and so are you!
It is good to be alive! 040515AD jfq
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Have We Lost Something Along the
Way?
Fr Ray
Brown and Fr John Meier wrote a book about thirty years ago, called Antioch
and Rome. They delineated at least four ways in which the earliest Jesus
Movement tried to answer the question of its relationship with Judaism, (which at
the same time was not as monolithic as we might think). However, in every major
tradition in the Christian Bible, there is a variation of the great
commandment, “Thou shalt love their neighbor as thyself.”
Whatever else each of the earliest Jesus Movement communities thought about their
connection with Judaism, they agreed unanimously that the Jewish commandment,” Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” was the operative moral
guideline for their ethical behavior.
Something
in what Jesus preached obviously clicked in the minds and hearts of the Jesus
Movement about their relationships with one another. There was a solidarity in
respect to their obligations to the needs of the group. In today’s idealized
picture, St Luke stressed the sense of obligation that the earliest Christians
had for one another. Certainly, St Luke describes an idealized portrait. While
we hear of St Barnabas’, as an example, selling a field and kicking in the support the
needy in the group, we also hear the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who claimed
to do the same, but they saved a bit for a rainy day, dishonestly from the Movement.
As the story unfolds, this was not a wise move!
Solipsism
(“me and my JC”) was not a primary concern then. Group identity clearly was a
mainstay for the first Christians! (That certainly was not unusual for groups
at the time.) However, the thing that united the Jesus Movement was their
commitment to the agenda of Jesus, for which He was crucified (and they
believed rose from the dead).
Jesus
economic theory seems to be the principle of Enoughism. Everyone was to have
what he or she or they needed to live with dignity. Some of the basics would be
basic education and health care, and safety nets as needed just as the church
in the Middle Ages tried to provide.
In his
effort to promote a common ground for a world religion to which everyone could
subscribe, the Dalai Lama cites the consistent efforts of most Catholics throughout
the 2000 years of the ongoing New Testament to provide medical care, education,
consolation and hope to those in need. Even today, even though Catholicism has
waned for several reasons in Europe in the 20-21st centuries, the agenda of so
many political parties is welfare for the needs of the community. So much of
the UN declaration of universal human rights of 1948 is taken as sine qua non
for government agendas in Europe despite the decline of organized religion. The
residue of the Agenda of the Kingdom of God and the resulting givens taken for
granted even by post Catholics indicates the Gospel sank in in so many minds
and hearts.
Jesus
and the original Jesus movement whose vision, St. John XXIII and Vatican II and
Pope John Paul II, and now, Pope Francis want us to recover is not
philanthropy, but as basic human obligation to be naturally met by the group. Worthiness tests were not operative. What is
the responsibility we hold toward the widows, orphans and aliens? One practical way of implementing the
Apostolic Vision is that stresses solidarity, not suspicion and division
between the “worthy” needy and the “unworthy” needy. Who determined the
“worthies? In much of the Catholic past,
there were few hatemongers who favored polarization. Maybe, not now!
Sadly, some
Catholic publicists who have the ears of Sheeple buy into an ideology of
cynicism about Judaeo-Christian principles going back to the Exodus and the
biblical prophets, including Jesus Himself. Recall that Jesus was snuffed out for
proclaiming the kingdom (perhaps, the commonwealth of God), viz., the
inscription on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Anyone reading between the lines know that
Jesus offered an alternative agenda or vision than the Pax Romana implemented
through high taxes collected through violence, if necessary. The biblical triad was widow, orphan and
alien.
Sadly,
maybe, many others, on both sides of the Atlantic, have bought into the notion
of rugged individualism, viz., every man (sic) for himself. The notion became popular,
that the needy are somehow are responsible for their own condition. The poor
are blamed for being poor. How does that translate in contemporary America
today? Sadly, many Catholics prefer to listen to popularizers today than to
Jesus and the Jesus movement for 2000 years or so.
In the
past, Christians, by and large, have been cited as a primary example in Western
civilization for our commitment to practical aspects in the Kingdom agenda of
Jesus of Nazareth. Are we losing that today when we focus on “me and my JC” and
let the poor take care of themselves. Pope
John Paul reminded us that YHWH did not bother to answer Cain’s question, “Am I my
brother’s keeper?” What does Jesus think about this today? What do you think? 041215AD jfq
Why Was
It Necessary?
The necessity of the
suffering, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus was a predominant theme in
the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, which St Luke wrote as his
follow up of his Gospel. The allusion to the necessity of the death and
Resurrection of the Lord is in both our first reading and our Gospel from
Luke's Easter chapter, (Luke 24.) The idea is the “must” of the first reading and the “it was necessary” in the Gospel today. The necessity of Jesus’ death and
resurrection principally has been interpreted since the beginning, with St.
Paul, as the price that had to be paid to GOD for our sins.
However, this has been
another tradition that supplements the principal theory of atonement. It has been
championed by the Franciscan tradition for many years. It goes back to St
Francis himself, whose emphasis upon the incarnation out of God’s love (God’s
becoming human) influenced later Franciscans.
Blessed John Duns Scotus, a
Franciscan rival of St Thomas Aquinas, reasoned that GOD the Creator is also the
GOD of Love. Therefore, it was logical that the Creator, out of love for
creation, would have been joined as closely with creation as possible, to be
one with creation. Hence, even if our first
parents had not sinned, then GOD still would have become human. (Because of
sin, the payment of the debt to GOD was an add-on.) The beauty of this theology
is that it doesn't challenge the traditional theology of the church; rather, it
augments it.
It was St Anselm, whose
feast we celebrate this week, who stated the teaching in Cur Deus Homo, Why
the God- Man? Our sins are against an infinite GOD, but sins are committed
by finite people. Hence, the only way sin can be atoned for is through the
action of One who is both divine and human. (Critics of St Anselm’s theory from
the beginning as Anselm shapes God as a feudal lord, whose honor has to be
vindicated. Karl Rahner challenged the presentation by saying that St Anselm
forgot that GOD was a loving and forgiving GOD.
However, St Paul' letter to the Colossians
quotes the lyrics of a hymn to Christ with which his audience would have been
familiar. It speaks of Christ as the archetype
of creation.
Interestingly, today,
cosmologists tell us that there are certain universal characteristics of life
that corresponds with the Colossians Hymn and Duns Scotus’ theology of
Incarnation as Love of Creator for creation.
First, all creation
experiences relationality. The law of gravity, things in relationship to one
another, is as applicable on the farthest a rim of the universe, as well as in
the innermost atom. In both, relation exists, that is a given! Hence, the Creator
would want a close relationship with creation. It was necessary that Christ
experience relationship!
Second, creation
experiences the universal process of ascent, descent and transformation. (Buddhists
call it Annicca, the mutability of all creation, viz., nothing remains the
same.) The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, spoke of the truth that in
the world, Panta rei, “everything
is flowing”. The famous example is that one can't stand in the same river
twice. The atoms in one’s body changes from moment to moment, as do the atoms
in the river itself. Hence, if the Creator were to be united with creation in
the fullest sense, than the Creator as part of creation in Christ Jesus, would
have to undergo the same paschal process of ascent, descent and transformation.It
was necessary that Christ experienced the paschal mystery.
Third, scientists tell us
that somehow, creation is driven by a process that moves to a greater
complexity through a variety of ways. As Teilhard de Chardin wrote in the last
century, “Something is afoot in the universe”. This process is the plan by
which the Creator becomes one with creation. Catholics call it divine
providence.Thus, it was necessary that Christ was part of the process.
Fourth, honest scientists
adopt the principal of docta ignorantia,
learned ignorance, viz., we learn through learning that the more we know, the
more we know that we don't know. We will never crack the mystery of reality.
Einstein spoke of the Grand Unifying Theory, but he wondered whether it could
ever be found. Since the day on Mount
Sinai, when YHWH revealed to Moses the Sacred Name, one legitimate way of
translating it is the GOD Who can't be named, or known. GOD is a GOD of
surprise. Surprised? It was necessary for Christ to experience mystery on the
cross.
The mainline tradition
since the days of St. Paul has been that Christ had to die because of our sins.
However, another tradition in the church since the days of St Francis never
seriously challenged, but tolerated, is
that it is logical that the archetype of
creation would want to be united
with creation in the fullest way possible, viz., by becoming one with it. If
so, then, Christ Jesus had to be in relationship with his world, a variation of
the law of gravity. He had to undergo the paschal process because, universally,
everything grows, develops and changes. He had to be with us with a loving goal
in mind. What this all means for Jesus and us, is the unfolding of the ineffable
Mystery, something infinitely knowable and unknowable at the same time.
In a sense, therefore, what
Jesus might be saying today, is repent (snap out if it) and get rid of the old
baggage of sin. Learn to look at your life in a new way. Live a new mindset in,
with and through Christ Jesus. Vatican
II spoke of each Catholic person as Christifidelis,
one faithful to Christ. Are we? 041915AD jfq
The Lord Still
Is Our Shepherd
Recently,
I had a letter and newspaper clipping from a former Armonk parishioner, who now
lives in Florida. It was an article about the quality of faith in the lives of
older people in the Sunshine State.
My parishioner
is a healthy 102 years old. Her husband and most of her relatives and friends
have died. The couple had no children. The lady had some health issues which
were addressed. She said that she feels more close to GOD now than she ever
had. God didn't disappoint her, she said. In a sense, she quotes the patriarch
Jacob when she said, "God was with me all the time, and I didn't know it!"
Like
most Catholics, the lady in Florida had to be acquainted with Psalm 23,
referred to in our Sunday readings this weekend. For Catholics, Psalm 23 and
the Our Father are two of the best known biblical prayers in our prayer
collection.
There
is a little know story from the Vietnamese conflict about a group of prisoners
in the infamous Hanoi Hilton who were gather during the small yard time they
were allotted in a corner and one of the POWs said Psalm 23. One released
prisoner said that prayer was what helped him stay together.
Rabbi
Kurscher, the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, wrote
many years ago a book about Psalm 23, a
favorite of many of our Jewish sisters and brothers as well. The rabbi noticed
that the first part of Psalm 23 is in the third person, almost a creed. YHWH is
my shepherd. However, he noticed when the psalm describes some of the
negativities of life, then the Psalmist shifts into the second person, “you
spread the table; you anoint my head with oil.” He concluded Psalm 23 was an
expression of hope that GOD is always with us and in us, but, perhaps, it is frequently only
in crises that we experience the Divine Presence as men and women of faith.
In some
Jewish theology, people say that each of us should have a fourfold relationship
with GOD, one of reliance on God, one of resonance with God’s Presence in our
lives, our responsibility to God for the gift of life in the world, finally a
return to the centrality of God in our lives. One rabbi of Jewish mysticism
said that every person is a prayer, when we try with God’s Help, “I am the
prayer”.
Back in
the 1980's, Avery Cardinal Dulles wrote an article that many Catholics in the
USA, because of our greater involvement, in intentional communities, were, developing
a new model of church, viz., the little
flock of the Good Shepherd. Each of us is called to relationship with the
shepherd and a relationship with the other sheep of the flock. He said that the
American Catholic Church, in the great days after Vatican II, that the image of
the little flock of the Good Shepherd
was a good image at the time.
However,
sadly, much water has flown under the bridge. One senses today that Catholics
are changing. Granted, the institutional church itself has created much of this
change because of how so many bishops handled the scandals of the recent past.
Sadly, however,
in the great days immediately after Vatican II, there were so many
opportunities to envision the possibilities offered by the Holy Spirit at
Vatican II. There should have been
greater (and serious) lay participation on the local level of the parish. There
should have been more serious efforts at adult religious education, rather than
limiting adult religious education to a 10 minute sermon. There should have
been serious refocus on parish transformation, especially since as early as
forty years ago, the priest shortage we experience today was already foreseen.
If there had been taking more serious consideration of the signs of the times
in our world, the poor planning that should have been done 50 years ago after
Vatican II will soon alienate others in the near future here in NY.
Third, we
focused so much on the sixth commandment, in a culture where violence, greed,
arrogance, dishonesty and superficiality were not recognized as the negative
forces that they are. There were many teaching moments lost in conscience
formation on many other areas that we are germane to the Gospel of Jesus
Christ.
Catholics
are experiencing an evaporation of faith, a spiritual amnesia, a prayer
challenge when we forget the transcendent orientation of every human person,
hence ourselves. A middle class lifestyle that so many (though not all) share
make many of us feel quite comfortable, thank you. Until!!!
In
1995, Pope John Paul II spoke of the eclipse of GOD and the resultant eclipse
of the human person. When we play down GOD, we play down the dignity of other
people. Pope Francis is adding to that now when he speaks of the environmental
negligence of which our human family. When you forget God, you forget the human
person, you forget the world that God has given to our human family. Not good,
as honest people are now acknowledging.
Catholic
religious education sadly makes a mistake when religious education usually
means preparation up to confirmation. Children cannot know how to cope with the
negativities of later life, the ascents and descents and transformation that
all creation experiences. As Richard Rohr said many years ago, “God’s school is always open, even to the
last breath we take.” Sadly, we are mostly out to lunch.
The
102 year old lady in Florida had received the gift of faith many times during
the course of her life. She came to recognize that God was with her all along.
Maybe, she didn't learn Psalm 23 by heart, but she caught the Spirit. Maybe, we
can learn Psalm 23 each day. She and all of us, still, the little flock of the Good Shepherd, can interpret life that
the Lord still is our Shepherd. 042615AD
jfq
O the
Times, O! the Customs
One of
the hallmark days of the USA Catholic Church is May 3, 1983AD. This was the day of the publication by the
Catholic bishops, so wonderfully alive back then, of the peace pastoral, “The
Challenge of Peace: God’s Demand, Our Response”. Our own John Cardinal O’Connor, was one of
the principal authors of the statement. After much discussion, revision and
consultation (taken seriously back then), the American bishops offered a
program for USA Catholics to live as disciples of Jesus during the days of the
Cold War with mindfulness.
Perhaps
the most famous terms to emerge from the bishops’ peace pastoral were the
expressions, “Consistent life ethic” or “the “Seamless Garment”. One of the famous declarations was the mighty,
“Only GOD gives life; only GOD can take it away.” The spectrum covered by the
consistent life ethic included the following: abortion, euthanasia, capital
punishment, and other terms as well.
Sadly, many Catholics then and now, for example, were anti-abortion and
pro-death penalty. Others, then and now, for example, were pro-choice and anti-
death penalty. In essence, the bishops were saying that Catholics had to be
pro-life on every issue. (This was the
moment at Cardinal O’Connor’s funeral in 2000 when the preacher said, “Cardinal
O’Connor taught us to be pro-life on every issue, not just some.” Most of the
Church stood, except notably, politicians of both parties. (Aside, it is
interesting to hear some of the opinions of Massachusetts Catholics on the death
penalty for the convict in the Boston Marathon Bombing!)
Another
term emerging from the peace pastoral was “the call to disarmament of every
human heart”. They challenged each
Catholic to do the best he or she could to refrain from a violent response,
word or action, when one feels a surge of anger. One proposal to do so was in a moment of
anger to say the prayer, “maybe, next time, but this time give me peace by
refraining from a violent response”. Another suggestion was the recitation of
the Buddhist Metta Prayer, viz., “May my life (and the lives of
those I love) be peaceful and calm and then saying the same thing for the one
provoking my rage. The Metta Prayer has been around a long time and Catholics
would be wise to practice the Metta Prayer whenever angered. A third suggestion
is to think of the Golden Rule in a negative way, “Do not do to others what you would not want done to you.”
The
third term emerging from the Challenge of Peace was “the New Moment in Human
History”. The Earth apparently has been around for 4 billion years. We are the first generation “capable of
un-doing the creation that GOD has been doing for 4 billion years.” At the
time, the bishops were thinking about MAD, mutually assured destruction, where
the USA and the old USSR had enough nuclear capability to destroy their
neighbor’s planet. (Sadly, we still have that power and others have it as
well.) We have gotten comfortable with this reality, although prophetic
Catholics still alert us that then is the same as now, maybe worse.
However,
“a new moment in human history” is happening with the environmental crisis that
honest people around the world acknowledge. Remember when we heard that the
flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world could contribute to
the formation of a hurricane in another part of the world. (We thought they
were crazy. Now scientists are telling us that through force fields in which
all reality exists, such a possibility could happen!) Others speak of the fact
that the cutting down of the Brazilian rain forest is contributing to the
depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere.
Still, more, the polar icecaps in the Arctic and Antarctic are melting
at an alarming rate. Coastal regions could be submerged. Island nations in the
Indian and Pacific Oceans could be submerged totally. In addition, the depletion of petroleum as
well as, the depletion of potable water in a world of rapid population
explosion have to be acknowledged honestly.
This
summer, Pope Francis will issue an encyclical on “exploring the relationship
between care for creation, integral human development, and concern for the
poor.” The contributers, among us, include UN Secretary General, Moon Ban. Pope Francis is making care for the
environment a key item on the Catholic agenda.
An
unofficial leak of the final draft is quoted below, “Unsustainable
consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate
technologies are causally linked with the destruction of the world’s
sustainability and resilience. Widening inequalities of wealth and income, the
world-wide disruption of the physical climate system and the loss of millions
of species that sustain life are the grossest manifestations of
unsustainability. … The Catholic Church, working with the leadership of other
religions, can now take a decisive role by mobilizing public opinion and public
funds to meet the energy needs of the poorest 3 billion people, thus allowing
them to prepare for the challenges of unavoidable climate and eco-system changes”
050315ADjfq
Now More Than Ever, We Need to Hear
There is little doubt that racial tensions in our
nation have been simmering for a long time.
With the events following Baltimore, and earlier, Ferguson and Staten
Island, racism is no longer a dirty
little secret, among others, about the problems we face in the USA.
Back in 1968, and again in 1979, the Bishops of the
United States issued statements about the sin of racism. Sadly, about 95% of the American Catholic
people never heard of these statements. Not their fault!!
During the great days of Vatican II and post-Vatican
II, the bishops addressed many moral issues that got very little coverage
and/or Sunday catechesis. The landmark Challenge of Peace, which we
saluted last weekend on the anniversary of its publication on May 3, 2015AD, is
perhaps the best known of these statements when they published it as a caveat
to the mounting arms race between the USA and the old USSR. (We should read it
again!!)
Three years later, in 1986 the bishops published Economic
Justice for All, which was played down and ridiculed by many on television,
including prominent Catholic “know it alls” and even in Catholic pulpits. It addresses many economic questions, just as pertinent
today and sadly, just as neglected, as well.
Four years earlier, in 1979, the bishops published
their teaching letter, Brothers and Sisters to Us, about the question of
rampant and now, more subtly, racism beneath the surface. Sadly, perhaps
98% of the USA Catholic population never even heard of the statement, let alone
consider it.
Next weekend, we remember the historic decision Brown
vs Topeka Board of Education in 1954. It called for integration with all
deliberate speed in our nation. Now people
question whether ZIP codes are replacing subtle forms of segregation.
In light of the simmering racial tensions surfacing so
recently again in our nation, several quotes from Brothers and Sisters to Us
are quoted below. Try to pick a statement or two from the selections and think
about it in the week ahead.
Racism is a sin in that divides the human family,
blots out the image of GOD among
specific members of GOD’s Family, and violates their fundamental human
dignity…Racism is a sin that implies that some humans are inherently superior
and others essentially inferior because of their race. Racism is a sin that
makes race the determining factor for the exercise of basic human rights.
Racism mocks the very words of Jesus, “Treat others the way that you would
have them treat you.” Racism is more than
a disregard for the Words of Jesus; it is a denial of the truth of the dignity
of each human person. (page 3)
Racism has been part of the social fabric of America
since its European colonization. It is the tragic past of Native Americans,
Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, or the Blacks, the story of slavery, peonage, economic
exploration, brutal repression and cultural neglect.(page 6)
Racism itself persists in covert ways. It is manifest in
the tendency to stereotype and marginalize whole segments of the population
whose presence is perceived as a threat. It is manifest also in the
indifference that replaces open hatred. The minority poor are seen as the dross
of a post-industrial society. Today’s racism flourishes in the triumph of
private concern over public responsibility, individual success over social
commitment, and personal fulfillment over authentic compassion. (page 7)
Each of us, as American Catholics, must acknowledge a
share in the mistakes and sins of the past. Many of us have been prisoners of
fear and prejudice. We have preached the Gospel while closing our eyes to the
racism it condemns. We have allowed conformity to social pressures to replace
compliance with social justice (page 9)
We should become more sensitive ourselves and thereby
sensitize our family and acquaintances by learning more about the social
structures which inhibit the economic, educational and social advancement of
the poor. We should make a personal commitment to join with others in political
efforts to bring about justice for the victims of such depravation. (page 9)
The prophetic voice of the Church, which must be heard
in every generation and even to the ends of the earth, must not be muted –
especially not by the counter witness of some of its own Catholic people!!
(page 10)
As individuals, we should try to influence the attitudes
of others by expressly rejecting racial stereotypes, racial slurs and racial
jokes. We should influence the members of our families, especially our
children, to be sensitive to authentic human values and cultural contributions
of each racial grouping in our country. (page 12)
Take a quote or two
from some of the excerpts and reflect upon them personally and/or with others
during these days in which racial problems are again so evident. Even better, go
on line and read the seventeen page statement, maybe more needed now than ever. 051015AD jfq
No Stopping the Gospel!
Not so long ago, many (both clergy, religious and laity) said that
the vocation of the modern American Catholic was “to pray, to pay and to obey”. Realistically, we know now that, for many, the
vocation of the modern American Catholic is “pray but stay”. For several
reasons, these days, many say, “I’m out of here! Sorry ‘bout that’”. An article in several newspapers showed recently
that there is noticeable slippage in the ranks of USA Roman Catholics and USA mainline
Protestants, viz., Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, et al.
Years ago, people spoke of bourgeois religions becoming “therapeutic,
moralistic deisms”. Nominal Christians (not just Catholics) started to see
religion as a means 1) to be healthy in mind and soul and it is someone else’s
fault if I am not; 2) to be nice; 3) and to acknowledge that there probably is
a God somewhere. One theory is that these Nominals became the SBNR’s or the
Nones. The result is the growth of the new category, the SBNR or the Nones,
people with no religious affiliation at all. There are many reasons for this,
to be sure.
In the nineteen-fifties, sociologist Will Herberg’s great book, Protestant,
Catholic, Jew, thought that the three major religions were merely three expressions
of the emergence of an American civil religion. If you are going to be
American, then, you are going to be identified (to a greater or lesser degree)
with a Protestant, Catholic, Jewish pedigree. For Catholics, our religion was
an effort to show how much we really, really, really were like other
Americans. (Recall that over so many of
our Catholic schools were the words “For God and Country”? Nobody ever thought
that God and country could ever disagree on anything!) Certainly, for many of us
as USA Catholics, the clerical scandals of 2002 was just one of the reasons given
by many Nominals an excuse for their getting out. The “pay and obey” part of
the formula went bye-bye!
Interestingly, today’s Gospel is a portion of a prayer that Jesus
said at the end of the Last Supper known principally as the “Prayer of the High
Priest”, but now called more frequently, the “Prayer of the Good Shepherd” for
the flock. In quantum theological terms, this prayer, including, indeed, all
prayer, is about relationship, viz., the relationship between the Father and
the Son, the Son and His Own (at the Last Supper) and through the Holy Spirit,
with all of us. In reality, in Christ Jesus, there is really only one
relationship!!!! Teilhard de Chardin
said, “There is only one Holy Communion!”
Still, what happened after Jesus’ prayer? We missed many points
along the way. Child psychologists tell us that the first five years of life
are most formative in shaping one’s view of reality. Therefore, a child’s
religious imagination should have been well in formation before long. However,
in the USA, also, we have focused on Catholic religious education (preferably, in
a Catholic school) as the principal way in which faith is communicated.
Contrary to that, the blessing of the Dad at the baptism said since 1970, “He
and his wife will be the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith
and hope. May they be the best of teachers bearing witness to their own in what
they say and do!” How many Dads have heard those words since 1970?
As the follow-up of this, then, we should focus more on the
ongoing Catholic religious education for the parents, indeed, all adult Catholics.
In the recent past, there have been two generations of Catholics that have not
received an ongoing Catholic education as adults, viz., the Babyboomers and Gen
X-ers. Our Church has been changing (transforming for years). Yet for many
reasons, Church leadership focused less on evangelization than upon maintaining
the store, paying bills and keeping the plant going. (One area theologian said
that we made our bishops into caretakers looking after the physical plant.) We made no serious efforts to keep the faith
of adult Catholics up to speed, when all we usually offered was a ten minute
talk, tailored for all, on Sunday.
True, after Vatican II, many parishes started serious adult
theology programs. Sadly, not all kept
up with the efforts. It might have been the negative side of the Herberg theory
coming home to roost. We needed to belong somewhere, but that was that.
However, these days, the Spirit of God, the Unifying Relationship,
continues to work in subtle ways. As
Father Karl Rahner SJ said in a remark (used by other Church leaders), the
Church of the future will be different.
He listed five non-negotiables that will describe believers in the
twenty-first century. First, faith will always be the acceptance of Jesus and
of Jesus’ death into the abyss and incomprehensibility of GOD that will be
pivotal for us. Second, the Catholic
way of living in the future will be focused more on the significance of the
Sermon on the Mount and what it means in 24-7 reality for each of us. Third, we
can see already that cultural support to Catholic faith in Jesus continues to
decline. However, there will be the greater realization that the GOD of Jesus
lives in us and we live in GOD of Jesus each moment. Fourth, however, a new
level of Catholicism is emerging, that of intentional communities. These are
communities of Christians who gather together in the Name of Jesus Christ, when
it is not mandated. (In many cases, it is the naming of the reality that
already exists. Examples are the following: religious communities, daily Mass
attenders, CCD teams of staff and teachers, (serious) biblical study groups,
lectio divina, contemplative prayer, men’s and women’s adult religious
discussion groups, members of pro-life activities, such as Pax Christi, assistance
on soup kitchens and programs for the poor, (whom we do not blame for their
poverty!), organizations stressing the consistent life ethic, organizations
stressing the non-violent message of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount.) Fifth,
faith in the future will be about the basics, not the extras. What is germane
to Catholic faith? Vatican II spoke of the “hierarchy of truths”!
Once again, in many unintentional ways, the Church has let Jesus
and the Catholic people down. From the days of mass conversions in earlier
centuries, when people went with the king, until today when we check boxes off
on baptism, penance, communion, confirmation, implying that the individual has
been fully equipped to live a life of faith in Christ Jesus, we need to
re-stress that we should be an ecclesia
discens, ecclesia docens, a learning church, a teaching church!
Still Jesus Christ is still involved in the process. Earlier in
Jesus’ Last Supper talk, He mentioned whatever we ask the Father for in
prayer, the Father will do for us. How much more will the
prayer of the Good Shepherd, from which we hear an excerpt this weekend, be
heard. Jesus Christ is still in an upbeat mood despite all the mistakes we have
made in good faith. However, we have to learn more seriously what the Gospel
means before we can share Jesus more seriously what the Gospel means
today.
Many are walking in different directions, not from malice, but
from an evaporation of faith and of disappointment. What can we do to convince to stay? Please
GOD, during the Petrine ministry of Pope Francis, we will be more successful in
convincing many to stick around and hear the Voice of the Good Shepherd. 051715AD jfq
It Is Always Pentecost.
Later this year, our Catholic Church will begin "The Year of
Mercy", asked for by Pope Francis. He has suggested that each of us might
get a copy of Walter Cardinal Kasper's book, Mercy, and read it during the year.
Cardinal
Kasper has even been called the Pope's theologian. Several years ago, in
another work, the “pope's theologian” referred to the Holy Spirit, whose
Presence in our lives we celebrate today, as the "Cinderella of the Trinity",
the stay at home Who was silently doing the work while the two others were out
and about.
In so
many ways, “Cinderella's” place in our lives usually comes to the fore this
time of year. Chapels in high school noted a significant increase in Mass attendance
when Regent’s week was approaching. Fine to pray for the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, but were you studying all
year long? More importantly, of course, our feast of Pentecost today is the
commemoration of the strange event that happened fifty days after Easter
Sunday, in coincidence with the Jewish feast of Weeks, that the Jewish folks were coming to the
temple to observe that morning. (If, indeed, 30AD were the year of the Lord’s
death and Resurrection, Pentecost would have been around 9AM, May 27, 30AD!
(The significance of this date is hinted at also by St Paul in 1 Corinthians,
c. 55AD.)
As
Elizabeth Johnson wrote many years ago and Cardinal Kasper agreed, the Holy Spirit
is the forgotten person of the Trinity. The Spirit is an elusive Presence. More
and more, the Spirit is described as the God of surprises. Remember the book, The
Shack that so many read a few years ago, the symbolic character
representing the Spirit changed appearances and changed names throughout the
novel.
The elusive presence of the GOD
of Surprises has been described in a variety of ways. In a non-exhaustive list,
theologians see the Holy Spirit as a taskmaster, a taunter, a tease, a
surprise, a nudge, a defense attorney, a coach, a stealth friend, a soul
friend.
The Holy
Spirit, we now are stressing, is the continuous Presence of GOD within the
universe and within you and me. We are here because the Holy Spirit is here.
Recall every Sunday when we pray the Nicene Creed, we call the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Vivificantem, the Lord
and the vivifying or enlivening One. We have prayed this creed since 325AD. We
are only beginning to unpackage its meaning for us in the Jesus Movement in the
Third Millenium.
The
Holy Spirit has been around since the beginning! In primitive but exact
language, the first verse of the Hebrew Bible says so, in the beginning when GOD created the
heavens and earth, the Spirit hovered over the abyss. Recall
that in the Hebrew biblical tradition, the word used most commonly for spirit
was ruach, an ambivalent word.
It can mean several things, all of which are applicable to the Spirit of GOD.
First, it means the wind, that blows where it wills, whence it comes and
whither it goes, we don't know. Next, it means one’s life breath. You are alive
as long as you are breathing. Third, it means the extraordinary energy that
gives ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
During
a particularly reactionary time in the post Vatican II era, they told us that
in translating biblical texts, we were to stick with the gender of the noun
used. Interestingly, the word ruach
in Hebrew is a feminine noun! Interestingly again, the word pneuma in Greek, the language of
the Christian bible, the word, pneuma,
is neuter. Even in a non-biblical language like Latin, the word spiritus can be either masculine
or feminine. Traditionally, a patriarchal church stressed the masculine and
downplayed the feminine. (In one possible reading today, the Spirit is referred
to Paracletos, Advocate, a
masculine noun. However, the same Gospel further refers to the Spirit, pneuma,.a neuter noun! ) The
Spirit cannot be defined.
Like
all reality, for a Catholic, the Spirit is a mystery, viz., something that is
ultimately knowable and unknowable simultaneously. Greater honesty in the
church today speaks, now, more of the spirit as Cinderella, the one who is
always there and doing the everyday work. Obviously, the Spirit is where the Trinity
is, hence the Father and the Son are always present as well, but it is Spirit
whom the church addresses as “the Lord, the giver of life, the vivifier!”
In the
universe, of which we are a part, we observe a connectedness, a continuousness,
a transformation, as well as a serendipity. The Spirit blows where the Spirit
wills. Expect a spirit of surprises and of quantum leaps! Despite what seems to
be happening at the moment, the Jesus Movement believes that it we are all
headed in a positive direction and each of us is not excluded! Tough sometimes
to say yes to that, but in, with
and through Christ Jesus, we try to say, yes! Lord each day. 052415AD jfq
Neither Knowable, Nor Unknowable,
Simultaneously!!!!!!
In the opening verses of the Christian Bible, 1 Thess 1.1-3,dated
about 51AD, St Paul refers to the
Trinitarian God as Father, Son and Spirit in one paragraph. He didn’t bother to
explain the terms because he presumed that the Thessalonians caught his drift. In today’s Gospel, again, St Matthew, writing
about c. 75AD refers to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, presuming the Jesus
Movement knew of What he spoke. In fact, it was not until the third century
when North African theologian, Tertullian, first used the Latin word
“Trinitas”, a non-biblical language.
They all walked by faith.
How do we describe
the Mystery of GOD, One in Three, Three in One?
Basically, Catholics should not think of mystery as a whodunit that will
be solved in one hour. One way to understand the word “mystery” as something
that can be infinitely unknowable and infinitely knowable. Let’s be honest! All
human language about GOD is incomplete and sufficient. One cannot crack the
Mystery, but we can ponder the paradox.
As Mrs Moses said in the epic movie so many years ago, The Ten Commandments, “GOD is the ONE
Who cannot be named. As Islamic mystics
said, “What makes you think that your little mind can wrap itself around and
grasp the Mystery of Allah”?
Later, theologians tried to ponder the mystery more deeply. In the
fifth century, St Patrick used the shamrock; St Augustine used the equilateral
triangle; St Basil used the Circle Dance. They walked by faith.
800 years ago, St
Bonaventure said, “Everything is a thumbprint or fingerprint of the Trinitarian
GOD.” Believers, now as ever, look at the beauty of creation, at dawn or at any
time of the day, what is called “God’s primordial revelation”. (Fr Richard Rohr
says that St Bonaventure said that there were three incremental ways of
pondering (not cracking) the Mystery of GOD: 1) creation; 2) Christology and
the theology; 3) contemplation in silence. Each day is GOD’s gift; that is why
we call it the “Present”.
In the Middle Ages,
Meister Eckhardt said, “The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father;
Their mutual love is the Holy Spirit.” He also said, “The Father gazes on the
Son; the Son gazes on the Father; Their mutual gaze is the Holy Spirit”. He
also said “the Father dances with the Son; the Son dances with the Father;
Their dance is the Holy Spirit.” He walked by faith.
In our own time,
modern American Catholic theologians speak of the Father as the architect with
a building, the Son as the blueprint of the Architect’s imagination, the Spirit
as a building made using the blueprint. Others speak of the Father as a song
composer with a melody in mind, the Son is the written score of the melody, the
Spirit is the rendition of the song. Others yet speak of the Father as the Sun,
the Son as the sunbeam coming from the Sun, the Spirit is the suntan. They walk
by faith.
(Probably not a coincidence,
other religious systems see the number three as significant when dealing with
the Mystery of Reality. In ancient Egypt, people worshipped Isis and Serapis
and Horus. In Hindu traditions, the
triad was Satay (the Creator), Chat (the Communication) and Ananda (the energy,
enthusiasm and enjoyment of life). In Buddhist traditions, they speak of the
Silence, the sound and the space between the two.
The Christian
doctrine of the Trinity speaks of the relationships of the one God. Scientists tell us that all reality is
relational. We are because of our
relationships, even on the rim of the universe. If Creation is relational and
bears the mark of the Creator, it is logical to assume that the Creator is
relational!
The Christian
doctrine of the Trinity speaks of the equality of the three divine Persons.
True humanists talk of the equality of every human person. Human rights
advocates that that truth be implemented for every human person. We have lots
of work to do.
The Christian
doctrine of the Trinity speaks of the Mystery of the three divine Persons. Each
of us is ultimately knowable and unknowable even to ourselves. We are always learning new things about
ourselves. (We tend to forget that the other person is ultimately a mystery to
himself or herself when we pass judgments on others so quickly. We don’t know what
makes ourselves tick and yet, we presume to know what makes the other person
tick.)
All efforts to
explain the Trinity are efforts made in good faith. They are examples of fides quaerens
intellectum (faith seeking understanding). St Bonaventure’s three ways of
revelations teach us that creation, the intellect and silence in Contemplation
of the Mystery (known as apophatic prayer).
Ironically, St Paul and St Matthew and the original Jesus Movement
praised the Trinity without any formulae. They followed the advice of the
Psalmist, ‘Be still and know that I am GOD now”. In another place,
the Psalmist says, “The heavens proclaim the glory of GOD;
the earth proclaim GOD’s handiwork”. Ironically, science is telling us now that the
universe does, indeed, proclaim the glory of the Creator. Or, as St Thomas
Aquinas sang, “Though the feeble senses
fail, faith believes nor questions how”.
05315AD jfq
You Are the Monstrance !!!
One time, I was in Mexico on Corpus Christi, on “retreat”
in Ixtapa. Corpus Christi is still a holyday throughout much of the Catholic
world. Part of the custom of Corpus Christi is the procession by the people at
Mass afterwards through the streets with the priest’s carrying the monstrance
with the Eucharist exposed. It was a memorable experience. Even those who did
not participate that evening stood in reverence as we passed by.
Karl Rahner, many years ago, gave a sermon on Corpus Christi, in
which he suggested that, perhaps, the procession should stress the processing
community as the Body of Christ. He said that each Catholic should carry
something that identified himself or herself with one's vocation, viz., something
that identified a parent, something at identified a profession, such as
medicine or education, something that identified someone as a neighbor. The
purpose was to stress that we are the Body of Christ.
Recall the famous story of the roadside cross in France after World
War II where the arms of the Crucified One were blown off in an explosion. The
question was whether or not to repair the statue at all. The conclusion reached
was not to repair it, to leave it the way that it was.
The reason for this might
have been St Teresa of Avila’s reflection, “Christ has no hands, no mouths, no
ears, no eyes, but yours.” As Teilhard said in the last century, “we are Christ
in space and time”. He also said that there is only Holy Communion, that we
constantly take part in.
When Catholics use the expression Body of Christ, Corpus Christi,
it takes on a variety of meanings. Does it refer to the Body of the Crucified
and Risen One as It is now, or does it refer to the church, or does it refer to
What we receive at Mass? The answer is yes! Everything is connected. In a
simplistic way, the Body of the Crucified and Risen one is the church, who are
nourished by the Body of Christ in Holy communion. As St Augustine said, “we
are what we eat.”
Before 1964, the priest (the “have”?) distributed Holy Communion,
usually to people (the “have-nots”?) kneeling behind a communion rail (the
priest was within the sanctuary!) and the priest said the words, “May the body
of our lord Jesus Christ lead you to eternal life.” You didn't say anything!
Who were you?
Now, there is a dialogue among believers over what is happening.
The words “Body of Christ” are not a question, they are a statement. The
statement of faith might be summed up, “this is the Crucified and Risen Christ
Whose Body and Blood you share, as a cell of His Body.” Your “Amen” is a
response of faith.
The change of the gesture of reception of Holy Communion changed
during Vatican II, in 1964. There were several reasons for the change at the
time, that maybe, we need to remind ourselves again. First, it stresses the
germane role of the Christian community in the celebration of the Eucharist. We
don't watch it, but we participate in it. (This is another reason for Mass
facing the people!) Second, it brings into clearer focus that you, as an
individual cell of the Body of Christ, consciously assent to your recognition.
Third, it demonstrates the sacramental presence of Christ at that moment in
Holy Communion.
The body of Christ is what we share as we, the Body of Christ,
share the one Bread, one Body! Infinitely knowable and unknowable,
simultaneously. Each time, you leave Mass each Sunday remember that "you
are what you eat", a line that Charley Brown, borrowed from St Augustine,
who paraphrased St. Paul. There is work to be done living the gospel in the
week ago. We all need to be fed.
One of the many outrageous things we hear these days from
scientists is the famous statement to the effect that the flapping of a bird's
wings in one part of the world might have something to do with a tsunami in
another part of the world. This is science. All life is in process of ascent,
descent and transformation. All life is relational. Everything exists because
of something else. All life is impermanent. Even the sun will burn out. All
life is ultimately a mystery. Will anyone ever arrive at a Grand Unifying
Theory?
Likewise, as part of the universe, the life of every human person
is paschal (up and down and up)' is relational (no person. Is an island), is
impermanent (we are all just passing through) and mysterious (infinitely
knowable and unknowable simultaneously). Our common sharing in the Body of
Christ is an expression that we are all in this together in Christ Jesus. From
Ixtapa to New York, we are all cells in the Body of Christ, nourished and built
up by the body of Christ to build up the Body of Christ. We are all called to
be the monstrance of the Body of Christ. 060715AD jfq
The Commonweath of GOD!!!
As St
Paul tells us, Christ Jesus is for us the “archetype of creation”. Whatever creation is about is
personified in Christ Jesus. What does
archetype of creation mean today? Many of us think that we can fully understand
Christ Jesus and His Gospel. How naive and/or arrogant we are! Mystery is infinitely knowable and unknowable
at the same time. We are only twenty-one centuries since the Lord Jesus walked
on earth with us. We will be unpackaging His Gospel indefinitely. Twenty-one
centuries are insignificant in the life of the earth, 4 billion years old(!),
and in the life of the universe (13.7 billion years, give or take a few million
years).
We know
that Jesus campaign slogan for His ministry was, “Repent, the kingdom of God is near!” Or in
modern lingo, “Snap out of it. No matter what they tell you, the “system” is
not what GOD intends.” He offers us the paradox of “Thy kingdom come” and “The kingdom is among you even now.” How
can that be?
On top
of that, for modern people, even the word “kingdom” is off putting. Most of us
come from backgrounds which have rejected kingship. Surely, we salute Christ
our king (what does that mean today?)
at the end of the church year. However, when one speaks of the king, one
usually think first of Elvis! For many of us, the “kingdom of heaven” refers to heaven as the place
you go if you have been good. Others think that it refers to the Church. (Vatican II tried to clarify that opinion by
saying the kingdom of Heaven subsists in the church, not a total
identification.)
We know
the term “kingdom” was
taken quite seriously by Jesus’ opponents in the political and religious
system. 1) We know from John's Gospel that, after the multiplication of loaves
and fish, the crowds wanted to make Him king, but He went on the lam. 2) As Jesus
entered Jerusalem, He rode a donkey, the beast of burden, that peasant folks used
back then. 3) We know that His real enemies, the religious and political
systems, took the term quite seriously when He was crowned with thorns and
acclaimed, Jesus of
Nazareth, king of the Jews Jesus is an integrated right-brain,
left-brain person.
Interestingly,
the Primitive Christian Communities shed away from the use of the term The
Kingdom of God. They probably feared reactions like Good Friday if they
persisted in talking of kingdoms (aka empires). As one critic said, Jesus
proclaimed the Kingdom of God, while the PCC proclaimed Jesus Christ.
Jesus was and still, is an integrated
right-brain, left-brain person. His archetypal image becomes “The kingdom of GOD is like the. The Kingdom
of GOD is like a....you figure it out. Use your imagination. How does GOD want the
world to be? Obviously not the System, then what?
The
Greco-Roman culture, then and even still around, demand logical answers to
logical questions! It was and is definitely left-brain predominant, viz., the
logical and rational. However, the right-brain, viz., the emotional and
transrational (not irrational) constitutes the human person. Jesus does not
explain the term kingdom of GOD in logical, rational terms. Rather, the right
brain kicks in with analogies and metaphors. Since Jesus is the archetype of
the way GOD wants the universe to be. His archetypal image becomes “The kingdom
of GOD is like the. The Kingdom of GOD is like a....you figure it out. Use your
imagination. How does GOD want the world to be? Obviously not the System, then
what?
The
Greco-Roman culture, then and even still around now, demand left brained
logical answers to questions! It was and still is definitely left-brain
predominant, viz., the logical and rational. However, the right-brain, viz.,
the emotional and transrational (not irrational) constitutes the human person. Jesus intergrated both hemispheres of the
brain! Fr. Richard Rohr said that Jesus was asked over 160 questions in the
four Gospels. Curiously, He only answered three directly or logically. Rather,
the right brain kicks in with analogies and metaphors. The kingdom of GOD is
like the..The Kingdom of GOD is like a....you figure it out
Perhaps,
a better term for twenty-first century ears and sensibility, instead of
kingdom, Fr Mike Crosby suggests that we substitute the word “Commonwealth”, a system in which
everyone wins, really! The “Commonwealth” is a more conducive way of
understanding what Jesus' Vision was and still is! People follow GOD's lead and
example, seen in Jesus of Nazareth of caring for the needs of all, not some.
This commonwealth personified in Jesus is one free from war, oppression and
exploitation, one concerned with the needs of the marginalized, oppressed and
excluded. Also, a few years ago, Fr. Crosby started to use the term “Kindom” (sic) of God, instead of Kingdom. We are all God’s children, hence
all kin. We have responsibility for our kinfolk.
Whatever
it means, the Kingdom of God imagery shows that GOD has a better way, that the
present way is hardly the way that GOD wants it to be. GOD has a better plan,
personified in Jesus Christ.
This “commonwealth is here, even now though not
yet”. It is present whenever we, through the Energy of the Spirit, try
to pattern our lives on the example of Jesus Christ, the archetype of creation.
The commonwealth of God unmasks
whatever it is that convinces us that the system is the way GOD wants it to be.
Even some of us fall for the mirage when we speak of “American exceptionalism
or Zion on the hill”.
As
Diarmuid O'Muirchu, Irish sociologist, says, the shift in emphasis (he uses companionship, instead of commonwealth)
means two things. First, the notion of authority changes from “power over to power with”, and from “unilateral domination to communal
collaboration”. Second, God expects Jesus’ kinfolk to behave the same way. Whenever
one hears the expression, kingdom
of God in the next weeks, remember.” The Kingdom of GOD is like…a. Use your imagination. How would GOD want us to make the Commonwealth or Kindom or Companionship a greater reality in our global
household. More directly, since you and I won’t change
the whole world, we can, with GOD’s Energy (aka Holy Spirit) will aid each of
us to change our little worlds.
Remember that scientists tell us today that it is true, the butterfly’s
fluttering in one part of the world, can cause a hurricane someplace else.
Imagine what one mustard seed can do!
061414AD jfq
What’s Going On Here??
American
Catholics during the week gone by have been confronted with the question of
evil. Earlier in the week, the six Irish students fell off the balcony when it
collapsed in Berkeley, California. However, on Wednesday night, we heard of an
act of domestic terrorism in a Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The
first question (ludicrous when raised) is “How can things like this happen
today? (With regard to the Charleston situation, honest people know that the
demons of racism and violence have become quite manifest in our midst. By the
way, this week also, a Catholic candidate for President of the USA closed a
speech with the words, “God bless the USA! God bless the NRA!”) Can you make
this up when we try to figure what causes racist domestic terrorism?
The
second question is the serious one, “Where
was GOD when these things happened?”
Many
years ago, when I was studying at Fordham, we had a professor for Hebrew
Scriptures, who was engaging in many ways.
When we studied Job, whence our first reading this weekend, he described
the Book of Job as 1) one of the ten greatest examples of world literature and
2) a crabmeat sandwich! The crabmeat sandwich image was that the middle of the work
contained great thoughts (the crabmeat) about serious questions, but wrapped
between beginning and an end (the two
slices of bread that were just
there to provide opening and closure of the masterpiece).
Today’s
first reading is an excerpt from the “crabmeat” (Job 38), in which GOD blusters
through with a series of questions which do not answer Job’s questions about
the inequities and absurdities of life. GOD, in a sense, never answers the
question. Three of the responses to the moaning of Job in the crabmeat portion
include the following, “Where
were you when I created the universe? Could you have done a better job? Who
shuts within doors the sea, when it burst forth from its womb?”
When
teaching biblical studies, I expected the students to memorize three quotations
from Job, 1) “We
accept good things from GOD, should we not accept the not so good things as
well?; 2) The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be The Name of the
Lord; 3) Naked came I forth from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return to the
earth! I told the students that these quotes may seem
morbid to them then. However, in the
future, remember when crisis confronts them, try to think about Job’s
statements because they might take on a different meaning. Middle-class culture does not deal with such
problems. Frequently, it launches the sufferer into a pity party (known
scientifically as “hedonic adaptation”), Why me? It’s not what I am entitled to
have. When high school and young adult life goes well, most do not get serious
about such problems. However, everyone has a midlife crisis which theologians
and sociologists call “liminal or
threshold moments”, viz., stepping into a new phase of one’s life (and
hopefully understanding).
Hopefully,
all know the scenario of Job. The good
man, who has not sinned, is tested by GOD to see if Job would still love GOD
when times get tough. Three of his friends come to “hold his hand” in his
troubles. All three basically hint at
Job that somehow, Job’s fate is the result of sin on Job’s part. Job denies that he has sinned. Finally, a bright young rabbi fresh out of
seminary comes along and says to Job the same thing, “GOD must be punishing you
for something you did.” Job’s suffering and exasperation only increase with the
arrival of the newly ordained bright light who knows everything. Still, in all his troubles, Job never curses
GOD. Job only wants to know why this is
happening to him. Finally, GOD speaks to Job and, more or less, dresses Job
down for his arrogance in even asking the question. GOD is portrayed as a bully who asks
unanswerable questions. Finally, in the closing slice of bread, Job is blessed
by GOD and lives happily ever after. It
is as if the author is saying to you the reader, “Yeah! Right!” Job never found
out why he experienced the sorrows of life and yet, Job never cursed GOD.
What
the author hints at is the basic biblical truth which appears numerous times in
both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, “Who
knows the Mind of God?” Even our Islamic sisters and
brothers grapple with the same question.
Averroes, one of the Islamic philosophers from whom St Thomas Aquinas
borrowed responded to the question of suffering with his opinion, “Allah knows everything, but we don’t know
everything that Allah knows.”
One
of the ways that Catholics interpret the pains of life is in terms of the Cross
of Christ. Again, Jesus’ death indicates
that He is there with us in our suffering and pain. The Franciscan tradition within the church
offers several thoughts, which don’t answer the question of evil, but try to
contribute to the conversation. It was the Man from Assisi himself said that
crosses in the future should portray the eyes of the Crucified with eyes half
open, half closed, to portray Jesus’ solidarity with the suffering. Remember the familiar quote from St Anthony, “Christ
died on the cross so that whenever you look at a crucifix, it is as if you are
looking in a mirror”. Blessed John Duns Scotus, another Franciscan, taught an
alternate theory to St Anselm’s traditional atonement theory, viz., Christ died
to pay the price of our sins. Duns
Scotus taught that since GOD
is Love and it stands to reason that the Creator would
want to be united as fully as possible with creation, experiencing all that we
experience from birth to death, as an act of solidarity. Simply put, the
Creator is united with creation in all the events of life. The Creating GOD suffers with creation in
turmoil. (Imagine how GOD the father felt on Good Friday!) Christians call it
the Paschal Mystery. All creation experiences ascent, descent and
transformation. (Physicists call it the “conservation of matter and/or energy”.
Nothing is lost in the universe.) St
Catherine of Genoa, another Franciscan, tells of a vision she had in which she
asked Jesus why He had to die on the cross. Jesus’ response was, “Catherine, if
there were any other way, I would have jumped on it.”
The newly liberated
rehabilitation of the liberation theology (maligned and slandered in some cases
in the past!). For example, the great Peruvian liberation theologian, Fr
Gustavo Gutierrez, wrote a book, entitled Job.
Among his conclusions are that the question of suffering is unanswerable and that
just as you don’t look for suffering in your life, neither do other people. Therefore,
it is a human, compassionate demand to tend the suffering of others. Humanity
is all in this together.
The
question of the suffering of the innocent remains unanswered. Years ago, in a
Catholic magazine, there was a cartoon of Job’s being consoled by a bishop
(wearing a miter and with a waiting chauffer in the background). The caption
was “Keep a stiff upper lip, Job!” The Book of Job challenges us in many
ways. Families in Ireland and in South Carolina as
well as Jesus Himself, Job personified, and, eventually, all of us ask the
question of suffering of the innocent. We
don’t know why the innocent suffer. Who
knows the Mind of GOD? Catholic
theology sees the image of Christ Crucified and Risen as a symbol, that no
matter what is happening, GOD is with us in every scenario! Lord, we believe. Help our lack of
faith. 062115AD jfq
A Woman with Chutzpah!!!!!!
The worldview and power structure during which the
scriptures were written was shaken by Jesus of Nazareth. Most of those in
control used several ways to stay in control. Two of the social controls
employed to keep the lid on were: patriarchy and purity. Jesus had a different
spin on reality.
Irish sociologist, Diarmuid O Murchu has a different
spin with the story of the lady in the Gospel suffering from the hemorrhages
for 12 years. St Mark placed her story within
the bookends of Jarius' daughter, apparently dead at 12 years of age. What
message was St Mark trying to convey today? How would folks back then have
understood what happened? How do folks today understand what happened?
Most of the world back then (and still now) is male
dominated. Many offer reasons from history for this. For example,
anthropologists tell us that things might have been a bit different up until
about 8000BC when the Agricultural Revolution became a watershed event in human
history. In a new environment with a new worldview, the men were out in the
fields with greater contact with people. The woman stayed at home tending the
children (the thought even reflected in
Aristotle and in the culturally conditioned Hebrew Scriptures). Her job was
to raise children (preferably boys, who could help out in the fields). Even up
until the present, the adage "the woman's place is in the home" hangs
on for some.
The men, especially the elite, made the rules and
everyone obeyed or else exerting their control of power. Then another control
kicks in, viz., purity. Who is worthy to be included as a part of our
community? We make the rules; you obey them.
The woman with the hemorrhage for 12 years was in a
difficult experience. There are no men mentioned connected to this woman. St
Mark tells us that she spent her savings in vain with doctors(!) She was not
even allowed to go to the synagogue on the sabbath because she was ritually
unclean with the flow of blood.
One might wonder about her mental state. Depression
and anxiety and anger certainly formed a backdrop to her world. How could she
keep it together psychologically?
Then and now, neighbors must have opined why this sad
scene happened to her. Back then, folks felt that either. Your setback in life
is caused by something you did or your parents did. People got what they deserved.
(Last week, Job put the lid on that. But do all listen?)
“They” saw the
lady was seen as an outsider. Imagine what her self image must have been.
Yet, something happened to her. She was prompted by
the Holy Spirit to go see Jesus. Her chutzpah was such that she went through
the crowd, making all she touched ritually unclean, like herself. Finally, she
gets to Jesus and makes Him ritually unclean by touching Him as well. Jesus'
response to the episode are the calming words, "Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace".
We don't know what happened to the woman. How did her
life change after this? Did the neighbors respond to her good fortune
favorably? Probably, some, but not all did, still hidebound to a system which
sets visible markers of who makes the rules and who is in crowd or out crowd?
Our reaction can be either way as well. Can we say,
with Jesus, welcome to the community-movement who is Jesus. Welcome to Jesus
Who is His community-movement. No matter what conventional wisdom tells you,
remember the system that runs the show (Ask
President Eisenhower in 1961!!!) it gets its steam from playing one group
off against another, viz., Charleston. One group is purer than others in subtle
signals.
As those called to be the community-movement that is
Jesus, we should get our spin, our worldview from Him, not from talking heads
on television, even fair and balanced ones! We must leave to the judgment of
GOD about who is in and who is out, about who is in communion or who is
excommunicated. Hard for a patriarchal and ritually pure church to surrender
this role. And yet... Pope Francis asks, “Who am I to judge?”
When there is a contradiction between the system and
Jesus, with whom do we side? Do we, as individuals, accept the conventional
wisdom of the system or the alternative wisdom of Jesus Christ? How would we
respond when the woman with the hemorrhage came home after meeting Jesus? How
do we respond when comparable situations confront us today? Are patriarchy and
ritual or ethnic purity still active forces in our own individual lives? “Sorta makes ya’ wonder!” 062815AD jfq
What Do Prophets Do?
With so
much of the English language, we throw terms back and forth at one another. We
presume that everyone agrees on what the words mean! Clear examples are words
like "nice", and " interesting". Each word means different
things to different people. There are more serious words. The presumption is
that everyone knows and agrees on what something means. Not so! One of the
clearest examples is GOD. Meister Eckhardt said, 750 years ago, the word “GOD” is idolatrous
because we think we know the meaning of the word and so, know who GOD is.!
In our
readings this weekend, the word that is bantered about, but needs clarification
is the word "prophet". The Hebrew word for prophet is Nabi. What the biblical term means
probably are not what conventional wisdom and usage mean when we use the term.
Today, in English, the word prophet has morphed to a synonym for a seer of the
future, one who predicts what is yet to be. The Jesus Movement begs to differ!
The
Hebrew concept of Nabi is
based etymologically on the image of someone standing on a mountain and
describing what he or she sees, viz., an overseer and overlooker. He is not
looking at the same reality as people see it from ground level. However, the
presumption is that the Nabi is
speaking what YHWH sees when GOD, the Silent Witness, looks on a situation from
a different vantage point. On the one hand, Ezekiel speaks today that the people will know that a Nabi has
appeared among them. On the other hand, Jesus says that no Nabi is without honor except in his native place among his own
people.
People
are already describing Pope Francis as a “prophetic pope”. He names reality
clearly from a different point of view. The Jesus Movement (at least, a sizable
number thereof) believes it is the viewpoint of the Father of Christ Jesus.
His one
liners have become classics in two years’ time. His statement when he became
pope, Evangelii Gaudium, the Gospel
of Joy, was used in some parishes as a real introduction into the mind and
heart or our Argentine shepherd.
If
there were no other encyclical that Pope Francis publishes, Laudato Si, will
certainly be seen as a watershed statement about Catholics' responsibility for
the moral question of the environment. Everyone should read the encyclical. It
is 80 pages long, easy to understand and logical, no matter what TV
spinmeisters say to play it down, even in a fair and balanced presentation.
The
evolution of the socio-economic teaching of the Catholic Church began with Pope
Leo XIII and his 1891 encyclical Rerum
Novarum, a statement about the abuses of the industrialization impetus in
Europe and North America in the late nineteenth century. Rerum Novarum addresses in 14 pages the new situation in an industrialized
system. He spoke of such things as the rights of labor to organize, the right
to a decent wage, as well as the right of private property. Many reacted at the
time with the question, "Why is the Pope speaking about things
that are not his concern?" (Sound
familiar?)
In the
introduction to Laudato Si, Pope
Francis mentions earlier, modern successors of St Peter, since the days of Pope
Leo. Among those whom Pope Francis quotes on the transformation of the Catholic
Church's socio-economic teaching, he mentions Pope John XXIII with his great
letter after Cuban Missile Crisis, Pacem
in Terris, Pope Paul VI with his great letter, Populorum Progressio, Pope
John Paul II with several quotes from encyclicals such as Laborem
Exercens (1981), Solicitudo Rei
Socialis, (1989) and Centisimus
Annus, his great encyclical in 1991 on the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Benedict who
proposed in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est "eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the economy
and reacting to models of growth which
have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment. The book of
nature is one and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social
relations and so forth. It follows that the deterioration of nature is closely
connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence”.
Critics
challenged Pope John XXIII ( remember the statement “Mater Si, Magistra No”, by
a very prominent USA Catholic).They also challenged and accused Pope Paul, Pope
John Paul and Pope Benedict of naïveté that made the Popes incapable of
commenting on the state of the world. Note the arrogance.
It will
be very interesting when Pope Francis visits us in September. His speeches at
the Capitol to Congress (Will the lobbies
and PAC’s be listening?) and at the United Nations, here in NYC, will
certainly have some telling statement to make.
In
short, the encyclical Laudato Si, at
first read, calls for serious efforts to make the world equitable for all,
economically fair to all, ethically sound for all, environmentally safe for
all, and efficient for the good of all the sisters and brothers in God's
family. Any takers?
The
question is whether or not, Pope Francis is a prophet. Will the reaction be to
that of Ezekiel, there is
a prophet in their midst or the reaction that Jesus received, no prophet is without honor except in his
native place and among his own people.
Please
download or get a copy of the new papal encyclical. Read it. You'll get it. He
is a brilliant writer. Think about encouraging your parishes and networks to
organize discussion groups on all age levels to discuss a multigenerational,
global issue. It is not enough to teach kids not to waste food. We all need a
refresher on that one and many other basic realities that we tend to take for
granted. 070515AD jfq
