Pope Leo is dedicating his Wednesday audiences to the Second Vatican Council and its meaning today. An important source for how he sees our church today. Here’s yesterday’s catechesis. I’ll try to follow him every Wednesday: 

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!

We have started the cycle of catechesis on Vatican Council II. Today we will begin to look more closely at the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum, on the divine Revelation. It is one of the most beautiful and important of the Council and, to introduce it, it may be helpful to recall the words of Jesus: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15). This is a fundamental point of Christian faith, which Dei Verbum reminds us of: Jesus Christ radically transforms man’s relationship with God, which is henceforth a relationship of friendship. Therefore, the only condition of the new covenant is love.

Saint Augustine, commenting on this passage of the Fourth Gospel, insists on the perspective of grace, which alone can make us friends of God in his Son (Commentary on the Gospel of John, Homily 86). Indeed, an ancient motto stated: “Amicitia aut pares invenit, aut facit”, “friendship is born between equals, or makes them so”. We are not equal to God, but God himself makes us similar to Him in his Son.

For this reason, as we can see in all the Scripture, in the Covenant there is a first moment of distance, in which the pact between God and mankind always remains asymmetrical: God is God and we are creatures. However, with the coming of the Son in human flesh, the Covenant opens up to its final purpose: in Jesus, God makes us sons and daughters, and calls us to become like Him, albeit in our fragile humanity. Our resemblance to God, then, is not reached through transgression and sin, as the serpent suggests to Eve (cf. Gen 3:5), but in our relationship with the Son made man.

The words of the Lord Jesus that we have recalled – “I have called you friends” – are reprised in the Constitution Dei Verbum, which affirms: “Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself” (no. 2). The God of Genesis already conversed with our first parents, engaging in dialogue with them (cf. Dei Verbum, 3); and when this dialogue was interrupted by sin, the Creator did not cease to seek an encounter with his creatures and to establish a covenant with them. In the Christian Revelation, that is, when God became man in his Son in order to seek us out, the dialogue that had been interrupted is restored in a definitive manner: the Covenant is new and eternal, nothing can separate us from his love. The Revelation of God, then, has the dialogical nature of friendship and, as in the experience of human friendship, it does not tolerate silence, but is nurtured by the exchange of true words.

The Constitution Dei Verbum also reminds us of this: God speaks to us. It is important to recognize the difference between words and chatter: this latter stops at the surface and does not achieve communion between people, whereas in authentic relationships, the word serves not only to exchange information and news, but to reveal who we are. The word possesses a revelatory dimension that creates a relationship with the other. In this way, by speaking to us, God reveals himself to us as an Ally who invites us into friendship with Him.

From this perspective, the first attitude to cultivate is listening, so that the divine Word may penetrate our minds and our hearts; at the same time, we are required to speak with God, not to communicate to him what He already knows, but to reveal ourselves to ourselves.

Hence the need for prayer, in which we are called to live and to cultivate friendship with the Lord. This is achieved first of all in liturgical and community prayer, in which we do not decide what to hear from the Word of God, but it is He Himself who speaks to us through the Church; it is then achieved in personal prayer, which takes place in the interiority of the heart and mind. Time dedicated to prayer, meditation and reflection cannot be lacking in the Christian’s day and week. Only when we speak with God can we also speak about Him.

Our experience tells us that friendships can come to an end through a dramatic gesture of rupture, or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost. If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded. Let us welcome it, let us take care of this relationship, and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation.

The Leper

As Jesus’ exciting first day of ministry in Capernaum ends,  “the whole town was gathered at the door”. The next morning “ very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed,” Mark’s Gospel notes. (Mark 1: 29-39)

Jesus often went by himself to deserted places to pray, but in today’s gospel (Mark 1:40-45) a “deserted place” is where he meets a leper.  Lepers were banished to deserted places then, outside the towns, for fear their disease, their “uncleanness”, might infect others.  “Social distancing” at its extreme. 

Rembrandt (above) has a wonderful sketch of Jesus and the leper. Peter and another follower seem to be hiding behind him, keeping their distance from it all, but Jesus reaches out and touches the leper kneeling before him.

Jesus is keenly aware of human suffering wherever he finds it, in the towns and villages he visits or in deserted places where people hide from it. Like Peter and the others we’re often afraid of people like lepers, people suffering so much we think we’re going to be overwhelmed by their suffering. 

And so we avoid the deserted places where the lepers are. (Maybe too the desert place of prayer where we met God) We hide from the sufferings of the world. “Keep it away,” we say.

But Jesus leads us to the leper. He helps us see suffering and then reach our hands out to it. 

Notice the last line of today’s gospel reading: “He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere. “(Mark 1: 45) Mark says a lot in a few words. Is Mark saying Jesus is always in deserted places; they’re privileged places where we can find him?

Jesus begins his ministry, according to Mark’s Gospel, in the synagogue at Capernaum facing someone with an “unclean spirit.” You would expect a synagogue to be a quiet, orderly place, but it was a place of shouting and confusion that day. Like the messy world we live in today.

What’s a unclean spirit anyway? Here’s an explanation from a commentary on Mark’s gospel by John R. Donahue, SJ, and Daniel Harrington, SJ.

“In this context ‘unclean’ (akatharton) primarily connotes not a moral (even less a sexual) fault), but something opposed to the “holy.” In the command of the Old Testament to be holy (Leviticus 11,44) it implies life, wholeness and completeness,( Leviticus 21, 17-21) whereas uncleanness implies something that should not be, something out of place ( e.g. soil in a farmer’s field is productive, while in a house it’s dirt). The opposite of the realm of the holy is the demonic, hence the spirits there are “unclean”. Physical defects or psychological aberrations can make a person “unclean”in a sense of incomplete, imperfect and out of order.”(The Gospel of Mark, Sacra Pagina, Liturgical Press 2002 page 80.)

Jesus did not engage primarily the intellectual establishment or the religious establishment when he came. He engaged the chaotic world of the “unclean spirits.” He set up a “field hospital” to use a phrase dear to Pope Francis. That’s the messy, scary world we live in.

Just think of the poor man in the tombs further on in Mark’s gospel, chained and hurting himself. Who wants to deal with him? But Jesus gives his disciples “authority” over unclean spirits. His followers have the power to take them on, to deal with the “messy” world they belong to.

And when they’re done? They’re never done. That’s the world we live in..

We read for almost three weeks at Mass from the two books of Samuel. They begin with a woman praying for a child. She will become the mother of Samuel who, along with another prophet, Nathan, will deal with the great Jewish kings, Saul and David. The books describe times of intrigue and wars. We read about places and names we can hardly pronounce, but they begin with a woman, Hannah, praying for a child.

Why read old stories from the Jewish scriptures? Why not stick to the gospel and the story of Jesus, maybe adding the Acts of the Apostles and the story of the early church?

We read stories from the Old Testament because they make us aware that God acts in time and God’s plan unfolds in time. They help us understand our own time as well. 

The Books of Samuel recall the change that took place as the Jews moved from a loose association of tribes to a people ruled by kings. The change wasn’t easy; it was messy, slow and typically human. Though the books begin with the birth of a prophet, Samuel, the prophet’s role–and God’s role as well–seems obscured by human history that seems beyond divine control. 

Yet, God’s plan unfolds and the prophet speaks his word. It unfolds in a tension between the human and divine, the political and the spiritual, human slowness and divine patience, sin and grace.  It unfolds as it does in our time, in our world and our church, in ourselves.

Just look around while reading the Books of Samuel

We read the Books of Samuel along with the Gospel of Mark the next few weeks. A study in contrasts. Samuel is slowly recognized as a prophet, beginning with his mother Hannah’s reception in the temple as she prays for a son. His times seem asleep. Totally human.

Jesus, on the other hand, arrives in Caphernaum, like a bolt of lightening. All come to see what he does and listen to what he says.

But then, they turn away. Human slowness.