Holy Family

What makes a family holy?

In today's readings, we have two "holy" families: Hannah's son, Samuel, is a blessing that ends her infertility, whom she returns to God by dedicating him to the priesthood.  Our second holy family is the holy family of Mary and Joseph.  What can these families possibly teach us about the nature of what makes a family holy?

Hannah's dedication of Samuel to God seems odd and completely counter-intuitive. Just when her prayers had been answered, and she had given birth, she gives the child to Eli, the local priest, to raise him dedicated to the priesthood. Hannah's prayer was answered not in her having a life with Samuel, but in simply being able to bear Samuel. Her gratitude to God was in letting go of her most precious gift to become a gift to her people.  Samuel goes on to become chosen of God to be both a priest and prophet of his people.

A woman's sterility in those times was a serious problem that many regarded as a sign of God's disfavor.  Even today, among couples trying to conceive a child, being childless is disheartening. Mary and Joseph's experience of Jesus, who "increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men” might seem ideal, but consider the growing awareness of the burden of letting such a child face the eventual scorn, rejection, and crucifixion as Messiah.  Mary "keeping all these things in her heart", patiently enduring the death of John, and likely foreseeing the road to the crucifixion her son was traveling must have been a test of faith few would readily embrace.

Even without the heroic sacrifice of Hannah and Mary, facing the initial distancing of adolescence, and later the "empty nest", couples can find family life too stressful to be considered “holy”.

The quality of holiness is built around a life dedicated to serving God through the family.  A holy family, then, is a family whose dedication moves beyond the typical familial ties to a sense of serving as a family the God whom they worship.  In such a family, children are regarded as a gift whose ultimate purpose is not service to the family itself, but to God.  Likewise, a couple's love, when animated by holiness, is ordered not only to mutual fulfillment but is itself a gift from God that reaches beyond family, tribe or national boundaries.  

When, like the holy family, Christ is at the center of the family made holy by God's gift of the couple's love, the love of God becomes embodied in the life of the children.  Family constitutes a great sacred potential for revealing God's love to humanity.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

“Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Mary believed the words of the angel.  She didn’t demand proof, sign a contract to cover all reasonable contingencies in case the whole mother-of-the-Messiah thing didn’t work out.  Her response to the word: “May it be it done to me according to your word.” In our faith, we have Jesus as the Word--the embodiment of God as human—Emmanuel, “God with us”. 

We also have the word of holy scripture that is our link to the living tradition of our brothers and sisters in faith, used by the Church as a tool of furthering the inspiration of the original community of believers. Unlike Mary’s time, we are overwhelmed with words.  It is estimated that nearly 300 million books will have been published this year alone!  That doesn’t include the words of advertising spoken on television, splashed across computer screens, covering bus shelters, billboards, and car bumpers.  It is hard to set your eyes on an object that doesn’t ask you to read something.  We are awash in more words than at any other time in history, yet we seem to have less and less to say. 

Cutting through this clutter is one righteous quest to enter the Christmas season that begins Tuesday (Christmas, for us, begins on Tuesday). In today’s gospel, John the Baptist as an infant still inside Elizabeth, responds to Elizabeth’s hearing of Mary’s greeting.  This chain of events reveals something important about how we exist in relationship to God and to one another.  

 Since baptism, each of us has been comforted, protected, educated by, and imbued with the presence of the Holy Spirit residing within us.  Like Mary and Elizabeth, pregnant with promise and God’s Spirit, our bond with God and one another is powerful. Our spiritual journey of Advent, distinct from Lent, is essentially communal—we prepare as a community, much the way both Elizabeth and Mary were in a strong bond of having received and believed God’s promise.  Each gave birth to the fulfillment of that promise, but also had to be sustained by it because of the difficulty to remain faithful during the rough times ahead for each woman.

We receive the Word if we are open to its life within us as a community who listens, who is attentive to God's promises.  Holy scripture can only become Word through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and our willingness to, like Mary, have it transform our lives.  With Mary, our faith-filled response is "May it be done to me according to your Word".

Third Sunday of Advent

"Stay Awake!"

 Today begins Advent, a time of preparation to receive Christ at Christmas, but it is more than referencing the past, it also connects with our sure hope of Christ’s return and the inauguration of God’s reign. Jesus proclaims in Matthew: "Therefore, stay awake!" What are we watching for? Are our heads turned heavenward searching the skies for Jesus returning in glory? Remember the angel's advice after Christ’s ascension?

And as they [his disciples] were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven (Acts 1:11).

     Our mission as watchers involves looking for the dwelling of Christ among us now by the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to be alert because it is often difficult to see Christ through the layers of sin that surround others that are unappealing. Perhaps we may have difficulty seeing Christ in others because we first must acknowledge Christ within ourselves as the lowly beggar, the control freak, or other undesirable.

     Let that be our beginning, then. Let us look for Christ where he is least likely to be found, both in others and those places in our lives that need healing from sin. Let us not be afraid of venturing out into the dark, or inwardly into the dark places in ourselves.  Let Holy Scripture be a place to start, and let your prayer proclaim “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (Ps.110:105). On this path we will encounter Christ in the most unexpected ways as we journey in Advent for Christ’s appearance over two thousand years ago was equally hidden and unlikely. Who would expect God among us in a backwater town, among farm animals, shepherds, and pagans in the middle of the night?

The Solemnity of Christ, the King of the Universe

"My kingdom does not belong to this world"  --Jesus, The Gospel of John

There is that famous line from Mel Brooks's movie History of the World: Part I, "It's good to be king!"  Being king brings up beautiful imagery of elaborate court ritual, absolute authority, and feasting; sounds a lot like the institutional church!   But Jesus' words to Pilate betray this image of opulence.  When asked about his kingdom, Jesus replies, "My kingdom does not belong to this world" (New American Bible).  Another translation has it as "My kingdom is not of this world"(New International Version).  The sense of Jesus' reply is that his kingdom is neither the kingdom of Rome nor the kingdom envisioned by the religious authorities; both groups lose.

The Solemnity of Christ the King that embraces Jesus as king is relatively new.  It was established in 1925 to counter what the Church saw as an increasing tendency to worship human wisdom and power, which was loosely defined as modernism.  By later positioning the solemnity at the end of the Church's liturgical year in 1969, it further enhanced its standing as the summit of Christ's rule, and, implicitly, the Church as Christ's kingdom.

The songs and imagery associated with this celebration, however, often blunt the irony of Christ as king.  The usual image is of a resurrected, non-bloody, Jesus hovering (rather than being nailed) on the cross.  The image of Christ as king is ironic because he is the king with a crown of thorns with a procession of humiliation and a knightly court of cowards.  It seems, as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians  "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

The image of Jesus as king nailed to the cross speaks of a different kind of power than the power of earthly kingdoms.  In a general audience at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI suggests ". .the Cross reveals ‘the power of God’ which is different from human power; it reveals, in fact, His love.” 

The power of God's kingdom as embodied by Jesus' death isn't exclusively revealed by the resurrection, although the saving power of God is most apparent here. It is the magnitude of God's love for His creation in self-sacrifice that shows Christ's true power as king.  

The ultimate love is the love that sacrifices self for another. This is the true power that defines Christ's kingdom.  This is why evil can never ultimately triumph over good; evil avoids self-sacrifice.  Evil always seeks what is best for the self over and against the other.  It destroys community and ultimately destroys itself.

Self-sacrificing love, on the other hand,  is the ultimate Christian act where one falls into the opened arms of Christ on the cross, trusting in the power of God's ability to bring life from death.  Christ's kingdom, indeed, is not of this world, but it is for this world.  Nothing is of more importance than conforming ourselves to this likeness of Christ as King.

Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost

The End is Near

The list of “apocalyptic” world-ending prophecies is a storied history of disappointment beginning with Simon Bar Girora, an Essene, around 70 C.E. to Warren Jeffs in 2012.  It is probably not unreasonable to suggest that humanity has been predicting the “end times” since we could conceive of such a thing.as revealing something hidden (the meaning of apocalypse). Declaring an apocalypse seems to be a way of expressing an ending one can control, a way of assuring the suffering that someday “every tear will be wiped away”.  Far from gloom and doom, the “end times” seem to suggest a great reconciling; good for the insiders, but bad for the ones who aren’t part of the “in-crowd”. That’s the problem with much of how we understand modern apocalyptic predictions: we’re always saved.  Malachi’s vision of the apocalypse, however, brings judgment on his own people as many of the Old Testament prophets did.  The difficulty of remaining faithful is the history of salvation.

It is easy to condemn “the other” whoever the “other” may be. Less comfortable is it to find unity with the outsider by accepting that when it comes to righteousness, we all stand condemned equally.  Salvation has less to do with being saved from the fires of Hell, and more to do with being saved from the hell of our egoism.

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

From Barrenness to Blessedness: Giving from One's Poverty

Today's gospel is a couple of stories sewn together by Mark.  The first story is about the victimizing of the poor by the religious authorities of Jesus' time, the scribes.  The poor were represented by the widows who had no social standing and were even less reputable if not associated with a man (husband, older brother, or father).  They were truly "the least and the last".  The focus of this story is the ostentatious behavior of the religious elite whose worship was more show than substance in their grand robes and places of honor at worship (as a priest, this part of the gospel always gets a little uncomfortable).  As is written: "They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation".

Juxtaposed with this narrative is the account of the widow who gives what little she has, but is accorded greater praise than those who give much more but give from their abundance. The widow's gift is truly a sacrifice; the gift of the rich is simply for show.  These two elements of the narratives complement one another: sacrifice versus show.

Unfortunately, the deeper meaning of this gospel is often lost in how it is used to elicit more money from congregations--"Give till it hurts, like the widow."  But what Jesus is getting at is more profound than being generous with one's money. 

As our lives are gifts, it is incredible to realize that our blessedness lies not only in our talents and riches but also in our sheer incompetence.  I'm not suggesting that our gifts are worthless, but too often our gifts are where we find gratification for our egos.  We can easily lose our gratitude by hiding our incompetence and displaying our gifts, so that communities take on a competitive nature for a type of ego-gratifying perfection, whereas Gospel perfection comes in our vulnerability to one another---our willingness to share our weaknesses as well as our strengths.  God's great love of humanity resulted in his self-sacrifice in Christ.  Love compelled this.  We, too, when we are living from our love for one another don't hide behind our strengths and make a show of our competencies, but allow others to see our in-competencies as well; giftedness embraces both our strengths and weaknesses.  Paul's famously paradoxical statement now is a bit less paradoxical: "That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2Cor. 12:10).

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Unworthiness is not Worthlessness: "Go your way; your faith has saved you."

Faith is a gift, freely given, immeasurably valuable, but rarely embraced. Why? Consider Bartimaeus in today’s gospel. He is blind and wants to see. In his blindness, he yells out in his darkness at the passing healer, Jesus, whom he knows will save him. The folks around him probably wondered what he had done to displease God such that he was blind; and what does Bartimaeus do? He makes a scene—a very annoying distraction for those trying to get a glimpse of Jesus. Bartimaeus seems also to attribute his blindness to sinfulness because he doesn’t yell out “Make me better! Over here, Jesus. I’m blind. Make me better”. Bartimaeus gets Jesus’ attention by yelling "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me." He yells this out twice. By addressing Jesus as Son of David, he implicitly acknowledges Jesus as successor to David and Messiah. Jesus’ reply is intriguing: “Go your way; your faith has saved you." Jesus didn’t say “I have healed you”, but rather focuses on the power of Bartimaeus’ faith. There is no recording of Bartimaeus even having been touched by Jesus. Jesus simply declares him healed by Bartimaeus' faith and to “Go your way….”

Bartimaeus’ healing is a wonderful instruction in faith, healing, and mission. In leading with the phrase “Have mercy on me”, he understands healing begins establishing the correct relationship between himself and Jesus. He, perhaps more than anyone else in the crowd, knows he is the least entitled; but his faith in the nature of Jesus’ compassion gives him the courage to call out. If our sense of unworthiness doesn’t compel us to call out, our real need isn’t healing, but faith. Realizing our unworthiness isn’t the same as worthlessness. God’s love gives us our worth; we cannot generate it ourselves. William Sloane Coffin, a famous preacher, wrote of this dynamic eloquently:

“Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.”

Bartimaeus understood the source of his worth by faith, and this is what gave him the courage to call out for healing from Jesus. Approaching God in a humility that is based upon establishing this right relationship is essential. Too often a sense of worthlessness keeps our prayers silent or redirected towards a favorite saint. We might be unworthy, but we are far from worthless. God’s love establishes our worth for all time, independent of our actions. Recognizing God’s love can allow us to cry out to God “Have mercy on me, a sinner….unworthy, but not worthless, because you love me, God!” Faith, then, at its essence is letting God know you’ve received the gift and want to claim it despite all the negative voices telling you to “be silent.” Get up. Jesus is calling you!

—Fr. Todd

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

“...whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.”

Mark’s community faced many struggles.  This community was likely made up of Jews living outside Palestine, and Romans. It is this reason that many have suggested that “Mark’s” community was in or near Rome. More important, though, is this community faced persecution from outside and division from within; it was a community under siege. One source of internal division seems to be over positions of prestige and honor within the community as reflected in James and John jostling for position. It is interesting to note that in Matthew, it isn’t the disciples seeking position and prestige, but rather their mother interceding on their behalf! Although such concern for ranking was not exclusive to Gentiles, Jesus’ response suggests the Kingdom will not be about the exercise of authority, but about the exercise of humility. Jesus’ identification with the Suffering Servant Messiah of Isaiah was difficult to accept, and the motif of the journey to Jesus’ death on the cross is central to following him both in a figurative and literal sense.

            How, then, do we regard the admonition to be servants? How far do we take this? Once again, Jesus gives us a standard of living that seems absurdly idealistic. And, once again, we see how far we are from that ideal. Following Jesus, the greatest cross for many is the cross of failure when one comes to understand the demands of love and sacrifice asked of us. Rather than becoming disheartened, however, it should remind us of the need for God’s grace, and our humble response of humility and gratitude.

            If we could but picture ourselves in a long retinue of followers, tripping constantly and falling farther and farther behind on this journey to Jerusalem, only to discover at the end of the line Jesus, offering us water and encouragement by telling us we were not the last after all; Jesus will be just behind us all the way.

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

All things are possible for God

           I grew up with this Bible story of the Rich Young Man's entreaty for eternal life. Sadly, the Young Man, cannot part with his possessions.  Jesus then uses this as a teaching moment, not to excoriate the rich, per se, but to show how powerful we cling to that which impedes us from entering the Kingdom.
           There is a popular story that attempts to deflate the hyperbole of a camel struggling to go through the eye of a needle. Without any historical evidence, some claim that there was a lesser gate in the wall surrounding Jerusalem that was opened at night, and to be able to move a camel through it, the camel had to crouch and kneel; it becomes inconvenient, but far from impossible. The rich feel better.
            Both the Jerome Biblical Commentary (Catholic commentary) and the Interpreter's Bible (Protestant) dismiss this "urban legend". What is telling isn't that this myth of the "eye of a needle" has had so much traction. This parable, however, isn't a story about the rich, but a story about the nature of faith.

The power of the hyperbole is essential for this parable. It is more comfortable to believe that God rewards Christians who "do their duty", who obey the ordinances of the institution; however, Jesus is asking us to live this impossibility of dispossession---to get rid of anything that stands in the way of living the gospel.

Sometimes this can be rather a spectacular grace, but more often than not, it is "whispering grace", grace that comes through a "chance encounter" with a stranger, or a growing sense of being loved by others who have experienced God's grace.  We then enter the Kingdom; we breach the impossibly narrow gates we've constructed to keep God's riches out.

Later in this gospel passage, Jesus declares to his disciples: "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God".  The nature of the Kingdom isn't an earthly institution we can control, or through our wits and gain an advantage.  The Kingdom is ubiquitous.  It is all around us; we are swimming in it.  The Kingdom is revealed when we open our eyes to the grace of our poverty in Christ.  There is no greater act of downsizing than committing oneself to following the way of Christ rather than the commands of the Church. 

The wealth we need to jettison is the wealth of the false faith that is the security of conforming ourselves to the will of the Church, rather than the will of God.  When the institution doesn't reveal the Good News, we must live the Good News, not by fighting the church, but by modeling to the church what the Good News looks like.  We must live for the sake of Christ and the gospel, not the institutional grace of following rules and spending time trying to enter the Kingdom with what we refuse to leave behind. 

Ninteenth Suncay after Pentecost

Thirst-Slakers, Children, and Prophets

           The gospel reading in Mark unites two completely different events and renders a fascinating connection.  The first excerpt, or pericope, is Jesus reproving John for preventing a man who is not Jesus' disciple from casting out demons by declaring "...whoever is not against us is for us."  The second pericope is taken from the context of warning his disciples not to scandalize children (the pais), or "little ones."  By linking these two passages together, Mark gives the moral force of punishment for those who lead astray the least and last (those in need of healing) with the "outsider" exorcist.  Remember last week when I told you that the word for child and servant was the same?  Today, we get an explicit linking between the two.

           The Old Testament scripture is also about cautioning against limiting God's work to only "approved" sources.  Moses remonstrates Joshua of Nun for complaining that there were two outside of God's chosen seventy elders who were prophesying (Eldad and Medad).  Moses asks, "Are you jealous for my sake?  Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets.  Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!"

These readings suggest quite clearly that the true authority does not reside in human institutions as such, but in what is done in God's name.  Gospel authority is doing the will of God.  Period.

           How does one, then, discern who is working in God's name?  Paul helps us with recognizing the "fruits of the Spirit" in " "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."(Gal.5:22-23).  In a sense, when you recognize goodness, there God's Spirit is at work.  The other element besides the work is time.  Are these works true and good over time?  The ruse never lasts; the wolf must eventually shed its sheep's clothing to breathe.

           At the conclusion of all the Eucharistic prayers, the priest declares "...from whom all good things come." God is not only the source of all that is good, but God is also perfect goodness in essence.  Much of what is good is apparent, but finding the Resurrection looking at the Cross can be a bit more difficult.  Again, time reveals all.  Given enough time, the Cross becomes the Resurrection.  How long do we wait?  How deep is your faith?

—Fr. Todd

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

"Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me."

The Spirituality of Imperfection

                We continue this week with the second of three passages where Jesus describes his fate of persecution and suffering that awaits him.  Last week we took a look at the cross from a different angle, the "Tao" of the cross emphasizing sticking it out until the end with Jesus as being the cross of discipleship.  This week we look at the cross of servanthood and humility.

                Mark's gospel resonates with the Suffering Servant of Second Isiah where biblical scholar Reginald Fuller notes that in verse 13 (not included in the reading), God's suffering servant is called pais, a term used to denote both servant and child; both were at the very bottom of power in society.  So then Jesus uses children as an example of the types of people whom the disciples must embrace (Jesus embraces the child).  For us, who exalt children, this may not seem unusual, but in Jesus' time, such an act of concern for the least and last was profound. 

                After being told to get in line last week, Jesus addresses the rest of the herd as they vie to be " the first disciple".  Jesus tells them to become servants (pais).  In a sense, they should compete to become last and least.

                In Matthew, this discourse about humility and greatness occurs in chapter 18 and more fully develops the concept of "receiving these pais".  Jesus declares that beyond "receiving", the disciples, one must become as pais to enter the Kingdom.  Clearly, Jesus' words speak as much against the triumphalism rampant in the church today as it did for Jesus' disciples in the First Century C.E.
                Simon Tugwell writes eloquently about the need to not count the success of the church with the world's standards of power and domination.  In his book Ways of Imperfection, Tugwell writes 

"There is a kind of unsatisfactoriness written into her [the church’s] very constitution, because she is only a transitional organization, keeping people and preparing them for a new creation . . . .Christianity has to be disappointing, precisely because it is not a mechanism for accomplishing all our human ambitions and aspirations, it is a mechanism for subjecting all things to the will of God"(1)

                Inevitably, our human ambitions always creep into our communities, and into the church as a whole, but today's gospel reminds us how Jesus regarded such attitudes of a triumphalist church.  We need to become like pais, servants/children, who, as Tugwell has written, are not valued by Jesus for their innocence, but by their vulnerability.  They receive everything as a gift.
                Imagine the transformation from a church of control and power to a church as vulnerable as the wounded Christ; the vulnerability that grows gratitude becomes the mechanism for being Good News.  When people turn away from the church because they can't abide such a powerless institution unable to be an extension of their need for power and control, we shouldn't change to accommodate that sinful need.  The church's real gift is its witness of the Suffering Servant of Christ---vulnerable and committed to distributing God's grace to the least and last, and inviting transformation into that life of vulnerability, compassion, and gratitude.

Fiftheenth Sunday after Pentecost

A Matter of the Heart

                Purity is a word that few would consider pejorative; it sits alongside other words we associate with virtue such as honesty, courage, etc.  It is even more effective as a marketing tool to entice the consumer that you are getting 100% of what you are expecting.  The other word associated with this one is perfection. In a sense, purity is a type of perfection, and when you begin an endeavor, it is common to hope for perfection.

                It is this struggle to be perfect before God that the Jews turned to the Torah (the first five books of the Bible).  These books contain a little over six hundred laws that were composed between 600 and 400 BCE.  These laws were extended to interpretive texts that were designed to help people apply these laws to everyday life to keep better the original six-hundred or so laws in the Torah.  By Jesus' time, some of these laws became impediments to the spirit that informed them.  Like so many good ideas, when people who have lost sight of why the law exists simply follow the law "because it is the law", the spirit suffers the ignorance of the law-abiding.

                In today's gospel, those whose job it was to interpret and admonish adherence to the Law (Pharisees and scribes) were incensed that Jesus seemed oblivious to the demands of the Law.  He did not seem to chastise those among his disciples that did not wash before meals in violation, not of the law, per se (Leviticus 15:11), but explicitly from the Talmud, a group of interpretive statements to apply the Law.  When questioned as to why Jesus seemed such a scoff-law we get a two-part answer:  You are like the hypocrites of whom Isaiah speaks "They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me", and the spiritual insight that "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person, but the things that come out from within are what defile."

                Jesus' statement in the fifth chapter of Matthew intends not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and now he seems clear as to how the Law is fulfilled: intention.

                The other day, I had a rather distressing conversation with a man who insisted that undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to receive any public services such as education and a driver's license. He said this about the poor entering our southern border.  He felt quite confident that his view wasn't obstructed by racism, but that "it was the law".  He insisted that acting unlawfully was the fundamental transgression that could only be remedied by these people returning to their native country and following the procedure for properly entering the United States. He was so focused on the violation of the law that the broader question of justice seemed to him as a distraction from the core issue of these folks breaking the law.

                The law serves justice, but so many today have it reversed thinking that if it is a law it presupposes being just.  Needless to say, in recent memory laws that kept blacks segregated from society, women from voting, and prohibiting consenting adults who are gay from marrying are examples of laws most would find difficult to reconcile with concepts of justice.

                Jesus understood this insidious tendency to focus on law rather than justice. This focus provides a false sense of comfort to those who don't want to deal with the messiness of justice and opt for the simplistic purity of law. For many Christians, the Bible has become the modern equivalent to the religious law--studied to discover transgression rather than compassion in the false promise that by doing so one may become perfect.  But perfection does not lie in the observance of the law, but in its fulfillment as Christ fulfilled it: love of God and love of neighbor--the two most important commandments according to Jesus. 

                The standard of civil justice for us as Americans is the Constitution, and the standard for Christian justice is love.  The Good News must be received and dispensed from the heart.  Reading the scripture to discover "what to do" is ignorant. We read scripture to become more like Christ.  It isn't so much searching the Scriptures to see "what would Jesus do" as much as it is searching scripture to see "what Jesus did".  Holy Scripture doesn't interpret itself but only comes to life in the circumcised heart of someone who loves aided by the Spirit.

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Practice of Discernment

In both the Old Testament and gospel readings, people were asked to make a decision. In Joshua, the people were asked to choose between worshiping a foreign god or worshiping God. In the gospel, Jesus’ revelation about himself as “the one who has come down from heaven” turns away some, but it also generates Peter’s confession: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

Making choices is at the core of a moral and ethical life. Now that we have “come to believe and are convinced” that Jesus is the Christ, we must continue to make choices that are consistent with our commitment to follow Christ.

An excellent way to make these choices, or to “discern” what is consistent with our spiritual welfare, is the time-honored approach of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.  Taken from the site developed by the Valparaiso Project from the University of the same name, it is an adjunct to the book Practicing our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People. As the website, PracticingOurFaith.org describes: “Both book and website explore twelve time-honored practice shaped by the Christian community over the centuries and still richly relevant to contemporary experience.  These Christian practices are shared activities that address fundamental human needs and that, when woven together, form a way of life that is faithful and has integrity.”

Here is an excerpt from that site meant to guide a Christian in discernment:

Discerning the Spirit as an individual 
Ignatius of Loyola, founder of Jesuits, offered a model that includes these requisites: a passionate commitment to follow God, an attitude of indifference toward all other drives and desires, and a deep sensitivity to the ways and being of God. 

1.     Become aware of as many aspects of the decision as possible.

2.    Consider the negatives, the decision you feel least inclined to choose.

3.    Repeat the process of consideration with the side you feel most inclined to choose.

4.    Take action to see if your decision is resulting in the desired outcome; if it is not, re-evaluate your decision.

One essential addition I’d like to make: All decisions involving your spiritual welfare should be made in dialogue with a spiritually mature friend or mentor. In the Christian life, discernment has a communal element as well.  Needless to say, prayer is part of all the steps of the process.

Fr. Todd

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him"

This line taken from John's gospel is the core of what Catholics believe about unity. However, this unity of which John speaks is sometimes confused with uniformity by the institutional Church. Case in point: last year’s doctrinal investigation by Rome of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious assessing how well the organization is aligned with Church teaching on matters of "feminist issues"(op. cit. NCR). Specifically, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is concerned that the LCWR is silent in matters of birth control/abortion and marriage norms set by the institutional Church, and that it gives dissenting voices from Church teaching, some of them quite radical (i.e. espousing a post-Church spirituality, post-Jesus, spirituality [op. cit. Bishop Leonard P. Blair]). The name of this investigation is formally called a "doctrinal assessment". The goal is to have the LCWR align what they say (or what they allow their members to say publicly) with official Church teaching; for Rome, having holy people saying different things about what it means to be an ecclesiastical community undermines the Faith for all believers. However, it is this mistaken notion of uniformity for unity that I believe is a threat to the Faith. Pope Benedict wrote

"We cannot keep to ourselves the words of eternal life given to us in our encounter with Jesus Christ: they are meant for everyone, for every man and woman. ... It is our responsibility to pass on what, by God's grace, we ourselves have received."
- Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 2010

This is precisely what the sisters of the LCWR are attempting. In their mission statement, they declare that bringing the Good News, " to further the mission of the Gospel" to the "world today" is the animating nexus of their community. The Good News is often messy, because everyone who has been transformed by this "encounter" with Christ has, as part of her or his story, the uniqueness of the encounter. Different that these encounters may be, we seek community to share our stories and listen to the stories of others from the founding of the Church in the first century down to the present. It should not be surprising, then, that the meanings attached to these personal experiences diverge in many places--good for spiritual health, bad for institutional uniformity.

Jesus said I am the "living bread" because he established a relationship with his disciples that continues as "living bread", a nourishing relationship through the Holy Spirit. The unity, of which the Church speaks so much about, is borne from this living and dynamic relationship, and yields poorly to the box-building structures of institutional rule-making; unity is full of dissent, divergent understandings, and practices, and embraces everyone who claims a relationship with Christ within and without the institutional Church. The keeper of uniformity is doctrine; the keeper of unity is dialog. It takes greater faith to live to work with unity than simply abandoning the responsibility of communion by blind obedience to institutional decrees; one's conscience must be given the ability to speak truth to authority.

Dialogue is communion because it presupposes sharing rather than declaring. That isn't to say that there can be no doctrine or statements of definition, provided they are a product of this dialog, something the Church increasingly is seeing as a threat to its centralized authority. To be a living church is to allow the messiness of relationships and espouse the humility to seek a new direction when the old one no longer speaks Good News to the world. If we seek the eternal in human institutions, we worship a false god.

Jesus' admonition in today's gospel to "stop murmuring among yourselves" because "no one can come to me unless the Father, who sent me-draw[sic] him." He then goes on to cite Isaiah 54 "They shall all be taught by God." Our first and primary teacher in our spiritual journey is not the decrees of church, per se, but God, or more specifically, our living and dynamic relationship with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit that is tested not against a rigid authority, but against a sensus fidelium--honoring the experiences of the faith-filled as a foundation of expressing what we believe and understand to be true. When Church doctrine no longer speaks to the faithful, it becomes bread with bleached flour, void of sustaining nutrition, not the Bread of Life from which one may eat and never go hungry.

—Fr. Todd

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

The Good Shepherd

As the metaphor goes, we are the sheep, Christ is our shepherd.  Since the resurrection and ascension, those following in the tradition of the Apostles are the appointed shepherds and are supposed to be "good".  What we find, however, is corruption of every kind, with islands of hope; in short, we are not so much focused today on "separating the sheep from the goats" as the good shepherds from the malevolent ones.  We should also be challenged to move beyond our hierarchical concept of the shepherd as found in the Church and look for shepherds among the sheep.  Sheep make excellent shepherds.

Jesus calling to be a shepherd was in response to his "pity", but the translation loses the deeper sense of empathy Jesus feels for the crowd's need. The crowds of Jesus' time, like ours, represent people hungry for hope.  They hope for healing, hope for inclusion into God's kingdom, for the Shepherd who is their Lord who will provide for their needs, "from nothing I shall want".  In short, the expectation is that Jesus is the possibility of a better life.

The Gospel of Prosperity is a perversion of Jesus' good news, but people fill congregations to hope for a better life.  In our culture, a better life usually implies a life filled with more things and greater power.  Jesus' good news wasn't that you would get rich following him, or that one would become more powerful in society, but that there was a pathway to God's kingdom that he was walking and invited others to experience in his response to "come and see".

In Mark's gospel, this section serves as a transition between the return of the 12 from having been sent forth (last week's gospel reading) and the next section of Jesus feeding the 5,000.  It is plausible that some in the crowd had followed the disciples who had returned from their mission, people who wanted to meet Jesus and see, first hand, who this person was.  But the crowds were vast, the disciples tired from the mission, so Jesus invited them to "rest a while".  But people followed the progress of the boat and crowded the shore ahead of them.

Unlike the popular "Gospel of Prosperity", Jesus' call wasn't material empowerment, but his good news was that the Kingdom of God/Heaven was possible now, among those who seek it.  This was the core of Jesus' message.  Making Jesus relevant to the crowds who come to Christianity out of desperation (is there really any other way?) isn't a matter of telling them how wealthy and great everything is going to be, how powerful they all will become, how their stock investments will be fruitful after prayer; Jesus' relevancy is hidden in finding community and telling our stories, in sharing graces and, as Paul says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn."  Salvation is here among us.  It isn't a beam of light from the cosmos; it is a journey of vulnerability and celebration.

Jesus' shepherding led people to shepherd; the sheep became shepherds.  Following the Good Shepherd gives us value not because we are excellent sheep, but because we are loved by our shepherd who is good.  From this love, we are called to shepherd one another, to respond to the need of our brother and sister, and to open the Kingdom to everyone.  The Good News is that you are loved; you count.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Companions for the Journey

Many scholars believe Jesus' sending of the twelve was a post-Easter addition to the gospel.  Frankly, it doesn't matter much, I suppose because we have inherited that tradition of mission from Jesus' ministry and vision of God breaking into our lives on earth as a healing presence.  The missioner facilitates this "inbreaking" (to use a phrase I have always disliked, but use anyway).

An acquaintance from a former career whom I had not spoken with in years telephoned me the other day.  Since we talked last, she had endured two bad marriages and cancer.  She felt that God was punishing her, and she wanted to know if God could forgive her.  I went over God's single-mindedness to reach out and heal and forgive though this often rocky relationship He has had with humanity.  Essentially, God is all about healing and forgiveness, of moving as close to us as our free will allow; that the phrase "the Kingdom of God" isn't a posthumous reality, but something we can help build today, in our daily life.  I recalled the verse from Jeremiah "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." She didn't need me to find God because he desire was sufficient; she has already been found.  I helped her with a confession and assured her of God's love.  In short, my mission was to heal, because of God's great grace poured out on the Cross.

The disciples were sent out in pairs.  This was genius, having suffered the loss last year of our pastor and my friend.  We offered each other support and encouragement when it seemed our small mission church was a failure.  This last year, we ordained a deacon for our small parish, and I have a new companion in the ministry.  I think God knows me well enough that I could never do this on my own--this is a great grace I am thankful for each and every day.  The point is, God, heals, he forgives and works incredibly hard to offer this to everyone.  The detail from "Creation" by Michelangelo shows two arms: one God's one man's  I have this detail hanging above my bed.

For years, I reflected on man's hand reaching out to touch God's half-hearted reach, until one day I recognized that it was man's half-hearted reach, not God's.  So much of the mission is stretching to reach.  At some point, leaving and "shaking the dust from your feet" isn't resignation, but rather allowing someone else to pick up where you left off.  Very often, working alone it is much more difficult to know when to leave, but with a companion, God's voice is made an audible, if not visible, reality.  This is why the person who refuses both the blessing and burden of community is much more likely to have every whim validated by one's desire.

Our mission, then, is the delivery of God's graceful presence; we are all missioners who can do this if we can first find the grace that has been given us to share.