On Thursday we begin reading in our lectionary from Chapter 15 of the 1st Letter to the Corinthians, an important source about the resurrection of the body. “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

Some Corinthians denied the resurrection, and so In response Paul quotes a basic summary of Christian teaching that he and others received regarding the death and resurrection of Jesus. “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”  ( 1 Corinthians 15, )

Our preaching is empty, meaningless if there is no resurrection, Paul continues. To deny it means  “ those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished…If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”

It’s going into fall in the Northeast USA now. Flowers are beginning to shrivel into dark balls, losing their beauty and going to seed. Flowers in our Mary Garden are falling to the ground and dying. But their seed says “We’ll live again.” 

Good to spend awhile in a garden now, because seed is the analogy Paul uses in speaking of the resurrection of the body. Like the flower, we have our time, then we die. But we will live again. 

We’re children of Adam, from dust, returning to dust. Yet, we’re members of Jesus Christ, who  through the mystery of his death and resurrection gives us life, Paul says. 

We’re children of the flowers too, let’s not forget. We came after they evolved 140 million years ago. Without the food, medicine and beauty they provide we cannot live.  Is that why, I wonder, we call on them in times of death and celebrations of life? Maybe too, in times of uncertainty, like now, they give us wisdom.

Paul used them as a teacher, reminding the Corinthians that what “ is sown corruptible is raised incorruptible; what is sown dishonorable is raised glorious; what is sown weak is raised powerful;  what is sown a natural body is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.”

Not only will we rise, but creation itself will rise again.

Commentators say that the 7th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, our lectionary readings this week, is where you can see Luke’s  theology best expressed. He is not following  Mark or Matthew in his presentation of Jesus. His arrangement of stories about Jesus and his teaching is entirely his own.  In fact, Luke adds a story in this chapter found nowhere else in the gospels– Jesus raises a widow’s son to life.

It happens at Naim, not Capernaum or the other towns around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus ministered. Not Nazareth, his hometown. Not Bethany, where Jesus responded to friends like Martha and Mary when their brother Lazarus died. We are not sure where Niam was. 

 The woman has no name, no influential friends or family connected to Jesus; she is a widow with no resources. She is a nobody. Yet Jesus performs this great miracle for her. He raises her only son from death and gives him to her.

Monday’s reading is the account of the centurion, whose beloved servant was cured by Jesus and whose faith amazed him. The story emphasizes Jesus call of the gentiles.

On Thursday we will read of the sinful woman who anoints his feet weeping and dries his feet with her hair in the house of a pharisee. Again, Luke presents Jesus reaching with mercy to someone, a woman, whom his society rejects. 

Jesus prefers  the poor and welcomes all in Luke’s Gospel.  Surely, Luke wrote his gospel for a community like 1 Corinthians, which we’re reading now with Luke’s Gospel, where the poor seem excluded and only the well-off are welcome at the Table of the Lord. 

On Friday Luke again mentions women as he describes Jesus evangelizing one town after another in Judea. (Luke 8:1-3) He’s  accompanied by the Twelve, but also some women. They’re obviously not women like the poor widow, but women with resources and talents. One of them is even connected to the court of Herod. They are vital to the mission, Luke insists. They stay with Jesus through his passion and are witnesses of his resurrection. 

Sometimes the history of a feast of our church helps us appreciate what the feast teaches us. That may be true for this feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, which we celebrate September 15th.

This feast developed from a number of older feasts that centered around one of the gospels  recommended for today:  John 19:25-27. “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” 

The picture of Mary at the foot of the cross of Jesus captured the imagination of medieval Christians and western Christians afterwards. After being mostly absent from the gospel stories, Mary suddenly appears as Jesus is crucified and dies. She stands beneath his cross on Calvary and shares intimately in his suffering and death. 

The medieval devotion to this mystery entered the church’s liturgy in masses on the Compassion of Mary at the Cross.

In the 17th century the Servites https://servite.org/about/history/ promoted devotion to Mary’s Seven Sorrows, extending her experience of suffering beyond Calvary. The devotion recalls Mary’s first three sorrows at the birth of Jesus as Simeon tells her a sword shall pierce her heart. (Luke 2: 33-35) )She carries the Child Jesus into Egypt in fear of Herod.( Matthew 3: 13-23 ) She loses him in the temple as a little boy. (Luke 2:41-52) ) Her last four sorrows take place on Calvary:  she meets Jesus carrying his cross, she stands beneath his cross, she assists as Jesus is taken down from the cross and as he is buried. 

Devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Mary entered the liturgy as the Mass of the Seven Sorrows of Mary.  In 1727 Benedict XIII extended the mass to the entire church. In 1913 it was moved its present place, September 15, following the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

Today’s mass in our calendar is similar to the older masses, but a number of options are offered in the latest reform of the liturgy. Luke’s account of Simeon’s prophecy is offered as an optional gospel reading. The Stabat Mater, a medieval poem honoring Mary standing at the cross has become optional. The feast is now called the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, instead of the feast of The Seven Sorrows of Mary. Slight changes, but what do they mean?

They extend reflection on Mary’s participation in the mystery of the Passion of Jesus as the Servites have done. Her experience of sorrow goes beyond Calvary. Her life changed dramatically after the angel invited her to be the mother of Jesus Christ. “How can this be?” Mary asks the angel. Years of reflection, questioning and uncertainty followed.  Her faith was tested again and again. The sword Simeon promised struck her long before its final thrust on Calvary.

The gospels indicate the sorrows Mary experienced at the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem along with the joy. The years that followed in Nazareth raising her Child were not without worry and concern.  She was there when her Son returned to Nazareth after his ministry had begun. She saw Jesus  rejected and threatened with death. On fleeting visits and through others she knew of his rejection by the Galilean towns, his disputes with the Jewish leaders, the death of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod. All dangerous signs.

On their way to Jerusalem before his death, James and John saw a kingdom ahead and asked Jesus for high places in it. Peter could not conceive of Jesus dying on a cross. What did Mary think as she joined the other women from Galilee who made their way with Jesus to Jerusalem? 

Her faith was certainly better shaped by reality than that of his disciples. She stood by the cross of Jesus, while they “left him and fled.” Her faith was shaped by standing up to other sorrows in life, which made her stand bravely before this one. She believed in the promise God made to her. Her sorrows inspire us to be brave.

“Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows is a good example how devotions enter the liturgy and how the liturgy, as the center of our prayer,  anchors devotions.  

The feasts of the Exaltation of the Cross and Our Mother of Sorrows begin this week, Monday and Tuesday. Saints Cornelius and Cyprian occur on Wednesday. Even as feasts of saints occur, it’s good to follow the gospels assigned to this week for the perspective they bring.

Readings from Luke’s 7th and 8th chapters this week sum up  Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. Certain themes from Luke’s gospel appear in the readings.

Luke wants us to know that Jesus reached out to the gentiles even in his early ministry in Galilee, and so he relates the cure of the centurion’s slave -Monday’s usual reading. “I have not found faith like this in Israel,” Jesus says, praising the gentile centurion.

Luke then tells us Jesus raised the widow’s son to life-Tuesday’s usual reading. Jesus takes care of the poor. 

On Wednesday we have Jesus’ short description of the reception Jesus receives from his generation. They are like children playing in the marketplace, so intent on their own games that they pay little attention to him. Does that also describe our generation today too? In the western world it seems Jesus himself, not just his church, receives scant attention. Jesus’ answer to John’s disciples, who ask if he is the one who is to come.The blind, the lame, the deaf are healed and the poor have the gospel preached to them, Jesus tells them.

 On Friday, Luke offers an interesting picture of the followers of Jesus. As he journeys from one town to another some women, Mary Magdalene is most prominent among them, follow him and support him from their resources. Now only twelve men, but women are his followers. Another theme of Luke’s gospel.

Like our ancestors, we live near water. The Genesis story describes water welling up from the earth bringing a garden to life: plants, animals, human beings. From the garden four mighty rivers bring life to other parts of the earth (Genesis 2), even reaching New York, NY.

We bless water in our prayers,:  “All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord…All you seas and rivers, bless the Lord.” (Daniel, 3, 57-58) The baptismal fount in our churches honors water. Some say it’s from the faraway Jordan River. We take it in our hand and bless ourselves with it as we go in and out of church. Water brings blessings from God.

We need “ to thank the Creator for the impressive and marvellous gift of the great waters and all that they contain (cf. Gen 1:20-21; Ps 146:6), and to praise him for covering the earth with the oceans (cf. Ps 104:6), “ Pope Francis says.

Unfortunately, we lose the blessings of water when drought dries up our lands and pollution poisons our rivers and oceans.

Now, wars and disputes over territorial waters increasingly threaten the waters uniting the peoples of the world, endangering the 90% of the world’s trade that takes place by sea– much of it food and necessities for life. We’re also seeing an increase in plunder of the seas as resources become scarce on the land. 

“We cannot allow our seas and oceans to be littered by endless fields of floating plastic”, Pope Francis says.  He calls for the ” development and application of international regulations on the seas in order to safeguard individuals, countries, goods, natural resources – I think, for example, of marine fauna and flora, and coral reefs or sea beds – and to guarantee an integral development in view of the common good of the entire human family and not particular interests.”

The map above shows the intricate water system that enables life on the land where I live, the United States of America.The waters near us here in New York are part of that intricate water system. They should bring life. Do they bring about a garden of life?

In my 91 years I’ve watched the waters of New York harbor suffer from massive industrialization during World War 11, unregulated real estate development afterwards along the Newark Bay, the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers. The waters have experienced human greed and neglect. I can remember, way back as a little boy, when you could fish and swim in those waterways. No more.

“Blessed be God for Seas and Rivers.” Pope Francis asks for more than words of a prayer. “Here too, our active commitment is needed to confront this emergency. We need to pray as if everything depended on God’s providence, and work as if everything depended on us.”

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