September 20, 2015

25^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Wisdom 2: 12, 17-20; James 3: 16 - 4: 3; Mark 9: 30-37

What am I living my life for? This is a question I can respond to with little thinking or it’s one that I can reflect on with the intention of discovering wisdom for continued living.

What is important to me? Is it family and friends? Is it success and accomplishments? Is it providing for and caring for those who depend on me? Is it realizing God’s closeness and His gifts bringing me to my eternal home?

The Book of Wisdom was written about 100 years before Jesus. The author was a member of the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. His faith community had experienced much suffering and cruelty from Jews who had turned away from their religion. So he responded by writing about God’s wisdom and the wonderful events of the Exodus coupled with God’s mercy and the ridiculousness of idolatry. Today he presents two contrasting viewpoints about life in the world: one, placing God above all else in life and the other pursuing worldly values because they think there is nothing to be gained by placing all one’s trust in God. As a result those apostate Jews are attacking the righteous even condemning them to death saying there is nothing God can do for you. Life is measured for them only by this world. They can’t see that God fashioned people for immortality. How close this is to the remarks against Jesus on the cross in Matthew 27: 41-44: “”Likewise the chief priest with the scribes and elders mocked Him and said, ‘He saved others; He cannot save Himself. So He is the king of Israel! Let Him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He wants Him. For He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ The revolutionaries who were crucified with Him also kept abusing Him in the same way.” So the ‘just one’ in Wisdom isn’t simply killed, but publicly shamed in an execution, trying to reduce the person to less than human. I can see so much loneliness and isolation…and when I see this in my own life, where does trust in God come in?

The second reading is taken from the Letter of James and it also focuses on the wicked but it’s really the wickedness within myself. James zeroes in on the depravity of jealousy...were I am not satisfied with what I have nor do I realize my own gifts but I am ‘angry’ at another’s gifts. He brings out selfish ambition…emphasizing it’s all about me and what I want and even how I get what I want. So what happens as a result of these ‘drives’? St. James tells us that they lead to wars on the big level and on the individual level. He summarizes this well, “You covet but do not possess. You will and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” In the Greek the word, ‘passions’ is better translated as ‘pleasure’. There is nothing wrong with my pleasures, but is life all about myself? The next verse (v4) in James ties this together, “Therefore, whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” And three verses later he adds, “So submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” So am I working on my own relationship with God? What do I do when the temptations come to bypass God and think only of me? These will come, many times in torments, until the day I die.

Jesus predicts His passion and resurrection three times in Mark, today’s reading focuses on the second of these. In each prediction, the apostles misunderstand what Jesus is saying, necessitating a further teaching from Jesus on what discipleship means. Today, not only do the disciples not understand but they don’t even care enough to ask for some clarification. They are way too concerned with themselves: ‘what’s in this for me? What ‘position’ of power/authority am I going to come away with? I’ve given up so much, I really need to be compensated big time.’ Maybe they are wondering since Jesus is dying, who is going to take His place, who is going to take the lead? And Jesus responds on leadership: who is a leader? What are the qualities of a leader? Jesus says, ‘The leader is one who serves!’ He uses a child as His ‘poster’. The child represents for the disciple of Jesus the vulnerabilities, fears and doubts that I experience and what others experience. And the child reminds me that to help, I have to take up the work of reaching out to those who are overwhelmed by such anxiety and gloom. Am I doing this? This is what I am called to do. There is not option in this; it is why God created me…am I listening?

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality gave a wonderful example of ‘a life worth living’. “In a talk given a few years ago at the University of Notre Dame, the activist and poet Fr. Daniel Berrigan talked about his ministry at the time at a New York hospice for the terminally ill. Each week, he told the audience, he would go to spend some time sitting by the bed of a young boy who is totally incapacitated, physically and mentally. The boy could only lie there. He could not speak or communicate with his body or in any other way express himself to those who came into his room. He lay there mute and helpless, by all outward appearances cut off from any possible communication. Berrigan then described how he would go to sit by the boy to ‘hear’ what the boy as saying in his silence and helplessness.

For Father Berrigan, the way this child lies in our world, silent and helpless, is the way God lies in our world. To hear what God is saying, we must learn to hear what this child is saying. God’s presence in our world is like that of the boy: It does not overpower anyone or anything. It lies quietly, at the deep moral and spiritual base of things. It does not overpower with strength, or attractiveness, or brilliance, or intelligence, as does the speed and power of an Olympic athlete, the physical beauty of a model or movie star, or the gifted speech or rhetoric of the brilliant orator or author. While we can behold God in strength and swiftness and beauty and brilliance and harmony, God first reveals Himself in the silence of humility and simplicity and peace – in the silence and vulnerability of a child.” And I am called to ‘get out of myself’ and see and hear and love and care and forgive. So I reflect on:

• ‘If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) Where am I missing the mark?
• Respond as if this was a personal question from Ernest Hemingway, “He was a success at everything except life.”
• One of the earliest accounts of Saint Francis, the "Legend of Perugia," quotes him as telling the first friars that "You only know as much as you do."

Sacred Space 2015 shares: “The gospel reveals the disciples as slow and dense: they do not understand the implications of following Jesus. Fear deters them from asking the core questions. Instead, they are preoccupied with false ambition, self-seeking, and rivalry.” How much are these a part of my life? Where do they creep in? When do they creep in? Can I hear Jesus in this?

September 13, 2015

24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Isaiah 50: 5-9, James 2: 14-18; Mark 8: 27-35

Jesus asks the question today: “Who do people say that I am?” That’s a very nondescript question. All I have to do is respond with what I’m hearing from those around me. I do not have to make any judgment. There is no call for me to say that the responses are right or wrong, clear or confusing, simple or complex, close to being accurate or very far from the truth. All I have to do is to respond. Jesus doesn’t leave it there…He turns to ME and asks, But who do you say that I am?”

Alice Camille in Exploring the Sunday Readings, shares some beautiful, direct, forceful thoughts: “Here’s my confession, Jesus. If You really want to know who You are to me, I have to admit You’ve played a lot of different and sometimes conflicting roles in my life. For the first twenty years, You were that man in agony on the cross: terrible to look at, heart-breaking but also mystifying. Why would You do that? I couldn’t imagine You loving me that much. Because who am I?

For decades more I wrestled with Your identity. Friend, Lord, Savior, Brother? I settled on Teacher, and sought to learn from Your school. You teach with words and stories. You teach with healings and wonders. But most of all, You teach with Your extraordinary compassion and forgiveness. It was through practicing Your hard lessons on forgiveness that I glimpsed how love suffers for love’s sake. If love isn’t willing to suffer, it isn’t love.”

Now Jesus didn’t leave the question and go on to other things. Someone had to answer and Peter volunteered a response which showed where his faith was at: “You are the Christ.” What did Peter mean by this? Another accurate translation is “You are the Messiah” ‘Messiah’ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word ‘Christ’; it literally means ‘anointed one’. Now in Judaism many of the prophets, priests and kings were ‘anointed’. The popular thought at the time of Jesus was that the looked-for Messiah would have political and national aims. It was very widely held that the Messiah would liberate Israel from the Romans. So we could say that Peter gave the ‘correct answer’. But he definitely does not understand what this means. Jesus had further teaching to do and He does it right away. Those around Jesus felt as most did that the Messiah would be a KING, but this would open up an accusation of sedition. The trial of Jesus revolved around the title ‘king’. So Jesus silences the disciples.

Then Jesus gives His first passion prediction in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is showing the disciples how inadequate their understanding of who Jesus is. Up to now, Jesus has preached and healed throughout Galilee and even made trips into Gentile territory. Those who experienced healing or exorcisms were ‘commanded’ by Jesus not to tell anyone who He was. Why did Jesus quiet them? Again we can see that different Jewish groups anticipated different types of messiahs: a Davidic king…a warrior…an apocalyptic figure as in Daniel 7: 13-14. NO ONE expected what Jesus said next. He explains exactly what kind of messiah He is. Like the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, Jesus is the Son of Man who will suffer and be rejected. He will be killed. He will be raised after three days. Peter says, ‘Oh no you won’t.’ Jesus’ response is good for me to reflect on. I need to see that there is too much of ME in my belief…there is too much of the pharisaic way of ‘I’m right…so you are wrong’ in my thinking. Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

The first reading from Isaiah presents sufferings of a “Servant of the Lord” who has willingly allowed Himself to be beaten and spit upon. Isaiah introduces The Suffering Servant four times: Isaiah 42: 1-4…Isaiah 49: 1-7…Isaiah 50: 4-11 and Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12. In each one the hardships of the Suffering Servant is increased until in the last one, the Suffering Servant is killed. There are a number of scholarly interpretations of who the Suffering Servant refers to. Some scholars say it may have been the author of Second Isaiah; others a representation for the Israelites in exile. Christians see Jesus and His sufferings in these verses. I have found that each of these have provided many hours of getting closer to God’s love and the supreme total act of Jesus’ love. “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15: 12-14)

James in the second reading brings this right back to me, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” So if I see a hungry person and tell them to ‘eat well’ and don’t feed them…I’m not committed at all. Paul puts it so beautifully in Galatians 5:6, “…faith working through love” is my constant goal. So it comes down to HOW am I living my faith? Am I taking up MY CROSSES?

Dr. Bonnie Bowman Thurston, a Marcan scripture scholar puts ‘the cross’…’my crosses’ into a deeper perspective. She writes in Preaching Mark, “Verse 34b (“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”) Is one of the most misused verses in the New Testament. It does not mean stoically accepting the difficulties that come unbidden in life, as in ‘arthritis is my cross to bear’ or ‘my mother-in-law is my cross to bear.’ To ‘take up the cross’ is voluntary. It is a choice, not something that comes because of circumstances beyond one’s control or that is forced upon one; and it is always as verse 35 makes clear, for Jesus’ sake and out of fealty to him…It is good to remember that people who carried crosses in Jesus’ day (and in that of Mark’s first audience) were people on their way to gruesome execution—their own. To ‘take up the cross’ is to choose death.” So what do I have to do to die to myself…what do I have to give up that keeps me from loving God…how do I love as Jesus commands…?

So I reflect on:

• I love to hear that I am forgiven, but I do not like to hear that I must change my ways, forgive others and as Jesus says in John 5: 14 “do not sin anymore.”
• Is the Christianity that I live one that offers comfort, consolation and peace and mind and feel no call to love others in a meaningful way?
• Jesus calls me to embrace the life that HE chose, one in which He sought only to do the Father’s will, to love others, and to give Himself for the Kingdom of God. It was the way of the cross. How am I doing?
• Jesus calls me to share His life, to renounce my own ways, to embrace the cross and to follow Him. Do I?

Sacred Space 2015 says,

“…On a surface level, Peter gets Jesus’ identity right. But he is reprimanded for his earthbound vision: he seeks to bend Jesus’ words and ways to his own all-too-human thinking. He learns that compromise has no place in Jesus’ life.

Lord, your question to the disciples echoes down the centuries and I hear it addressed now to me. Strengthen the bonds between us. Keep me close behind You, as I pick up the crosses and burdens that come from being Your disciple.”

September 6, 2015

23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Isaiah 35: 4-7; James 2: 1-5; Mark 7: 31-37

Pope Francis is coming to the United States. He will be speaking in Philadelphia, New York City at the United Nations, and at the joint session of Congress in Washington. I believe that all of America is excited that the Pope is coming. I also find it very interesting that different writers and correspondents are ‘predicting’ what the Pope will be saying. Others are not exactly predicting they are writing in the vein that they ‘hope’ what the Pope will be saying. Some hope he will not bring up certain ‘sensitive’ areas. Along with these ‘predictors’ are those who say that the Pope will affirm what their belief is.

I want to listen. The Pope has the whole Church under him and he knows all the problems and especially the acute needs of the people in all areas. He also knows how the Church is surviving and what is needed. His global knowledge is far more encompassing than my New York Times and CNN knowledge etc. He knows, he cares, and he is sharing what it means to live as a Christian for all peoples of all cultures.

I bring this up because of the tone of today’s readings. Isaiah is sharing what God has done and continues to do. What does God want for all people: a life of freedom, a life of realizing they are gifted and blessed and a life of generosity! Problems arise when fear enters life. This can take so many forms but fear disrupts and leads to doubt, squashed dreams, anger, deep hatred, revenge and living for oneself and striking out against others. Each one of us can easily say, ‘I’m not afraid…maybe only once in a while.’ Exploring the Sunday Readings says, “How much of your life is dedicated to fear? Most of us don’t have an image of ourselves as cowering or trembling, so we may dismiss the idea that fear plays much of a role in our lives. But every defensive word betrays our insecurity, and each angry outburst reveals our distress at seeming vulnerable or weak. The more invincible our outer shell appears to others, the more likely it’s shielding a frightened child inside.” Isaiah says, “Thus says the Lord: say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not!” There is an interesting twist in this reading. God doesn’t just tell the people not to be afraid, but He wants them to share this truth with the people around them. Because God knows how helping someone else to overcome their fear is one of the best ways to get the better of it in our own life.

James is reminding us that we are all in the same boat. As the footnote in the New American Bible states:” In the Christianity community there must be no discrimination or favoritism based on status or wealth.” The needy and the outcast must be welcomed as each person is to be welcomed. This is the hallmark of what it means to be a follower of Jesus who welcomed all and loved and cared for all. The meditation message is that each one is expected to treat the poorest person with the same courtesy and respect as the ‘great ones’ in my life are treated. I’m obliged to value the person sleeping under the cardboard as much as Warren Buffet. James’ principal concern in this letter is how are my personal relationships with each person in the community—am I living in and with love or is anger, jealousy, slander and criticism, lethargy and the lack of appropriate care of the poor overriding the Lord’s teaching on love.

Jesus’ behavior in the gospel may seem at first sight to be shocking: sticking His fingers in the mute man’s ears and touching his tongue with spit. But it is very important to remember that “deaf and dumb” is also a metaphor for the inability to hear and understand and to be in touch with the world around me. The setting for this miracle is the Gentile area of the Decapolis, so the deaf man is a Gentile. The healing is done in stages perhaps suggesting the gradual coming to faith of future ‘pagan’ disciples. The Jewish people who watched Jesus did not agree on what the Messiah would be like. Some thought that the Messiah would influence the whole world, not just Israel. Many felt the Messiah would bring an end to history and the world as they knew it, ushering in a new age in which God would reign supreme. When the crowd saw Jesus healing the deaf and mute man, they felt that the Messiah had come. The king to come they felt had come. But Jesus was not a king who would take dominion over the world. He didn’t come to bring an end to history but to bring God’s plan to fruition.

Am I paying attention to God’s plan as it is manifested by Jesus? The Jewish people were too set in their own ways to recognize the Messiah. Am I so set in my ways that I’m not hearing and understanding the signs of the times but interpreting them according to the idols that are so much a part of my life and are counter to Christ? Am I being Jesus?

Faith Catholic illuminates this mission of being Jesus: “The mission of proclaiming the good news, salvation through Jesus Christ, is a mission without end, and it has been handed down to today’s Christians. Unfortunately, as has been the case all too often throughout history, many members of the Church fail to fully respond to the call to be faithful and effective witnesses to the Gospel.

Each of us is called to share the good news. We know the good news because we know the message of Jesus, confirmed in word and sacrament. We cannot be afraid to proclaim it to rich and poor alike. Our knowledge and faith in Jesus Christ is not a secret to be kept, it is a proclamation to be shared so that salvation may be brought to the ends of the earth.

What is it that keeps us from fully embracing our mission of discipleship? Do we not fully believe that all are in need of salvation? Do we not fully believe that our Christian message is good news? Do we not believe that we are entrusted with the mission of evangelization? This is why Jesus constantly calls His disciples to faith. If we really believe, then we will proclaim it. We will not be afraid to talk about it with friends and strangers alike. We will not be afraid to teach it to our children and grandchildren at home, around the dinner table. When discipleship is lived, the good news is proclaimed and the Christian faith thrives and grows.”

I reflect on:

• How has God’s Word moved me? Has it left me cold?
• Has it consoled me or moved me to act in a new way?
• When have I been distracted by someone’s appearance and missed the person inside?
• When have I been ignored by someone or ‘left out’? How did I feel?
• Imagine a banquet at which the homeless are the hosts and the wealthy stand in line? Where is Jesus in this? Where am I?

Sacred Space 2015 says:

This man is doubly afflicted—as a foreigner he suffers isolation, and he is also excluded by his physical impairment. Jesus’ action initiates a new age. He comes close enough to touch us, one by one. He indeed does all things well.

Lord, I hear your words to me, ‘Be open!’ Unblock my ears, that I may listen to Your Word. Open the door of my heart, that I may grow in sensitivity to the suffering of others. Liberate my tongue, that I may speak in gratitude of Your loving kindness.”