Tenth Sunday Ordinary

Tenth Sunday Ordinary
June 5, 2005

"In their affliction, people will say: "...He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth." (Hosea 6:3-6). "Jesus said, "... I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:9-13)

The Prophet Hosea speaks words of comfort to the lowest segment of society. Jesus' teaches by word and example about who needs God's presence and healing.

Our communities of faith have always struggled to understand how this works. Who really needs God? The tradition of the prophets, culminating in Jesus, has been to speak for those who really need God the most, the "sick" who need healing. I read recently about a controversy in Butte, Montana, over whether the sad lives of thousands of prostitutes during the town's mining boom of the past should be remembered. Some apparently would rather forget about the misery of these unfortunate women. The "righteous" and "godly" have no need of rescue from anything. How then have we come to exclude them and include our righteous selves? Perhaps part of the issue is holding on to the apparent contradiction between our common sinfulness and our dignity and blessedness. It is not either/or but both/and as my brother and I remind each other regularly. We get into weird kinds of thinking when we do not embrace the "both/and". We can all be "prostitutes" in our own secret lives and attitudes.

I remember as a teenager having friends who, when I allowed it, could get me into bad situations. As parents many of us have worried about our children as they grow up. We want to protect them from "bad influences". But during that awkward stage in between childhood and adulthood, they often have other ideas about friends and loyalty in spite of our best advice. We sometimes have to learn by difficult experience how to stay connected and loyal while maintaining our own values and ideas. Nowhere do we hear that Jesus condoned destructive attitudes and behavior. Neither do we hear that he ever gave up on or left anyone behind, even those who apparently weren't interested in doing anything about allowing their lives to be changed.

Jesus was quite clear, as in this week's gospel selection, about avoiding any sense of moral superiority. I wonder if we don't all sometimes sink into being content with what is socially acceptable. True humility is accepting ourselves as we are with all of our strengths and weaknesses, mistakes and successes. This is a lifelong project. From the perspective of humility we all need the divine physician. As the prophet Hosea says, those who acknowledge their own need, and identify with the social outcast, will be the ones who receive the soaking rain of divine mercy and presence.

Body and Blood of Christ

The Body and Blood of Christ
May 29, 2005

"... not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Deuteronomy 8: 2-3, 14-16) "The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10: 16-17) "Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven." (John 6:51-58)

Yahweh provides food for his people in the desert and Moses reminds them that their souls need nourishment also from the divine word. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that their Eucharistic meal unites them in the sufferings and glory of Christ. Jesus instructs his disciples about what it means to feed on him.

The Eucharistic bread and wine has been our spiritual sustenance, the sacramental presence of the living God among us, ever since Christ sent the Holy Spirit. Ironically it has also been a source of contention and disunity among Christians who have argued about its nature and importance in the life of the community of faith. Apparently we have not read these passages with much understanding. We Catholics are reminded by the Vatican II fathers that the word of God is as rich a spiritual food as the bread and wine of the sacrament.

Six months ago, as I reported to you previously, at the recommendation of my doctor, but sooner than I would have wanted, I had a small plastic tube inserted in my stomach through which liquid nourishment can be delivered directly when I am no longer able to swallow. A standard procedure for people with ALS. I have compared it to an umbilical cord for adults. Between this and my new fancy respirator, I will be as nearly completely hooked up as when I was a child in my mother's womb. There is a metaphor for the Eucharist here somewhere. As my son said so wisely sometime ago, "we all have our cosmic spacesuits connected for whatever time we have given to us." Aren't we all on life support directly from God through Word and Sacrament? None of us utters a word, has a thought or takes a breath without divine life in and around us. We Catholics call this "the sacrament", but by whatever name, it is the reality of divine life in, through and among us.

The people of God, the word of God and the Eucharist are the life of the Spirit. The very same people who care for me so tenderly will eventually feed me through this tube. They are the living Word and Sacrament, nourishing body and soul. The very heart of our faith is here. We are the sacrament, made possible by the death and resurrection of the son of God. This is the blessing of divine life streaming to us through food, speech and each other.

Holy Trinity 05

Holy Trinity
May 22, 2005

"... Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out, "The LORD... a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity... "If I find favor with you, O LORD, do come along in our company... pardon our wickedness...and receive us as your own." (Exodus 34:4-9).

The Most High, on the sacred mountain of Sinai, tells Moses his name, passes in front of him and speaks to him of his true nature, "rich in kindness and fidelity". Moses invites God to pardon his people's failings and to "come along in our company". Our God is a lover, "merciful and gracious", not a wrathful, punisher. Our God wants to come along with us, rather than to be feared from far. There is only one God, the one who loves and welcomes us and wishes to be loved and welcomed in return. This was a revolutionary new idea about the relationship between God and human beings and it is the basis of our faith to this day. This is the foundation of all authentic religion and spirituality.

Many, if not all, of us have our own stories of religious experiences in which we see clearly, if only for a moment, the closeness and goodness of God. I have remarked often in these reflections of how I experience this in the presence of people I love and who love me. That is a typical religious experience of a grade A extrovert. Many of us will have similar visions of in solitude, in church, in some beautiful spot at the ocean, mountains or desert. Religious experiences are where they are to be found.

Our faith from Moses onward to the present day has acknowledged how poorly we often maintain this link between God's presence and our response. We seem to have a way of turning something good (religion) into something divisive and destructive. Contrary to Freud and Marx, religion is not the enemy of human progress; ignorance and perversity is. Religion is far more than or denomination. "A religion" is not something to which one "belongs". And we give religion a bad name when we use it to justify the rightness of our own nationalistic identities, social class values, or cultural and political prejudices. The purpose of religion is not to ensure public order or even public morality. This civic religion has little to do with true religion, unless it is based on a mystical intimacy with God and corresponding ties of mutual love and respect.

St. Thomas defined religion as the virtue (habit) "by which one gives God what is due to God and lives in appropriate relationship to God". Religion in spirit and truth is the pure gift of God's own self to us, and our response to it. It is our privilege and responsibility to acknowledge our dependence on and partnership with our creator. The One God (Father, Son and Spirit for us Christians) is the only source and purpose for all religious organizations, rituals and traditions.

Pentecost 05

Pentecost
May 15, 2005

"...And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues... Are not all these people.who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of them hear us speaking in their own language?" (Acts 2:1-11) There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. (1 Corinthians 12:3-13)

Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world. These remarkable passages express a familiar theme found throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. God's life and love are available for all human beings, not just for our own people. Our communities of faith have always had a difficult time accepting this truth in our Scriptures.

The Holy Spirit's gifts are as numerous and diverse as all human beings and cultures. We all find ourselves at times criticizing people who talk, think and act different than we think they should. We seem to operate on the assumption that the world would be a better place if everyone was just like me. The multiplicity of gifts among us, an infallible sign of the Holy Spirit's presence, ought to have just the reverse effect.

Of course we cherish our own traditions of faith, with which we are most familiar. The challenge is to try to imagine what the world would be like if we really embraced the idea that truth is not completely contained by any single theology or religious tradition. If we could, perhaps we might not be so concerned about drawing tight theological boundaries around our own little versions of religious rightness, and then claiming that it must be so for all. The Catholic tradition, expressed recently by Vatican Council II, is quite clear about this. All those who sincerely seek the truth (God) are linked to the church. Religious diversity is a sign that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in the human community just as it is within our own religious families.

The more we learn about the natural world, the more we are impressed with its incredible diversity of life. We human beings are quite successful at adapting to life all over the globe. Sometimes this success seems to be at the expense of this diversity in nature and culture. Competition to improve automobile performance, for example, has made all of them look pretty much the same. Success in producing enough food for everyone threatens the natural variety of crop species. In spite of this, variety and diversity will abound thanks to the promise that the Spirit will always be with us. The Holy Spirit reveals much to us when we are willing to keep our minds and hearts open to the multiplicity and unity of truth and love.

Ascension of Christ

Believed Ascension of Jesus
May 8, 2005

"... In a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit... as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight." (Acts 1:1-11) "... And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age." (Matthew 28:16-20)

Many years ago one of my history professors not so sagely commented on the Christian belief in the Ascension of Christ that if it were true we ought to be able to find his body out there somewhere in space. In spite of his naïveté, it is an interesting question. Where did Jesus go? Where is "heaven"?

Much of our tradition about heaven seems to reflect the ancient cosmology based on the idea that earth was surrounded by a dome ("vault") above which heaven was thought to be located. The planets and stars rotated about on this dome, guided by spiritual beings. In one version of this cosmology the farther up one went, through increasing layers of perfection, the closer one approached (but could never reach of course) the perfect One (God). Recall St. Paul's vision of being taken up into the "seventh Heaven". In this cosmology we go "up" into this heaven to a place of light and perfection. We know now that the heavens spread out in all directions from earth. There is no "up". The heavens as we know them are nothing but cold dark space, dead stars and galaxies, black holes and exploding nebulae. Not exactly the kind of comforting place we would associate with "heaven".

I wonder if all of this does not distract us from the meaning of the Ascension. Jesus was preparing his disciples for a new and different kind of heaven, in which God would be present with us here and now in the Holy Spirit. Whatever happens when the life of earth is over, perhaps it is not any kind of "place" like what we now know in time and space. Much of our problem here is that we cannot think or imagine in any other terms. Our context of time and space is entirely inadequate to embrace the reality of Jesus' words. The same is true of our entirely inadequate thoughts and language about God to which we often cling with inordinate conviction.

The two angels who appeared to the disciples after Jesus was taken from their sight wondered why they were standing there looking up into the sky. The heaven that Jesus proclaimed, and where he "went", is in the heart of the Most High. Not out there, but in here, where we now already live, and will live eventually in its perfection. I often imagine heaven as the extension of the warmth, intimacy and love which I already experience here and now. I don't have to go anywhere to be with the Most High. Heaven, our destiny in the Holy Spirit, is much nearer than we can possibly imagine.