Category Archives: Inspiration

The Numbers are Down:Mark 4:24-34

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The Sower. Jame Tissot

Numbers seem to indicate power and popularity. We think that way; Jesus’ disciples must have thought that way too. In Mark’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry in Capernaum before an enthusiastic crowd. At the end of his first day, the whole town gathers at the door of Peter’s house and word reaches out to other towns and places that a prophet has come. The numbers go up. (Mark 1, 21-34)

But then enthusiasm dies down as Jesus’ authority is questioned. Religious leaders from Jerusalem and the followers of Herod Antipas cast doubts about him. His own hometown, Nazareth, takes a dim view of him.. Gradually, Capernaum and the other towns that welcomed Jesus enthusiastically turn against him. His numbers go down.

Why are the number going down, his disciples must have wondered? It didn’t make sense. Jesus’ answer comes in Mark’s gospel today. God’s kingdom is coming; God is at work in the world, but human beings are mostly unaware of it:


“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.” (Mark 4, 28-34)

Great power is at work in the scattered seed, but we know little how it grows. The seed takes time, with its own law of growth; a great harvest will come, but still there’s mystery we don’t see. We sleep.

Meanwhile, we worry about numbers. Why are growing numbers giving up going to church or synagogue? Why are there so few vocations to our religious communities? So many of the good things in this world seem to be diminishing.

What can we do? Look into the signs of the time. Treasure the seed we have. Scatter it as we can. Be patient as we sleep. The Kingdom of God comes.

The Land Where Jesus Lived

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Bethany, outside Jerusalem

“To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?”  ( Mark 4, 30)  Jesus turned to the land where he lived and the life around him to answer that question.

So what was the land where he lived like? It was a land of olive trees near Bethany outside Jerusalem, but if you went eastward to Jericho and the Dead Sea, it was mostly a barren desert. Then, from Jericho to Galilee the land turns from desert to lush farmland. A changing land.

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Jordan Valley

Jesus experienced a changing land from Nazareth to the Jordan River and then the Sea of Galilee. Like us, he was influenced by the place and life around him.

In a book written in the 1930s Gustaf Dalman, an expert on the geography and environment of Palestine, observed that when Jesus went from the  highlands of Nazareth, 1,100 feet above sea level to the fishing towns along the Sea of Galilee, 680 feet below sea level, he entered a different world.

For one thing, he ate better – more fish and nuts and fruits were available than in the hill town where he grew up. He looked out at the Sea of Galilee from the towns he visited. Instead of the hills and valleys around the mountain village of Nazareth, he saw a great variety of birds, like the white pelicans and black cormorants challenging the fishermen on the lake. He saw trees and plants and flowers that grew abundantly around the lake, but not around Nazareth.

Instead of the chalky limestone of Nazareth, Jesus walked on hard black basalt, which provided building material for houses and synagogues in the lake region. They were sturdy structures, but they were dark and drab inside. They needed light. Light on a lampstand became one of his parables. (Mark 4,21)

Basalt also made for a rich soil where everything could grow. “… here plants shoot up more exuberantly than in the limestone district. Where there are fields, they yield a produce greater than anyone has any notion of in the highlands.” (Dalman, p123)

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Farmland in Galilee

The volcanic soil on the land around the lake produced a rich harvest. The Jewish historian, Josephus, praised that part of Galilee for its fruitfulness, its palm trees, fruit trees, walnut trees, vines, wheat. But thistles, wild mustard, wild fennel grew quickly too and could choke anything else that was sown. The land around the Sea of Galilee was fertile then; even today it has some of the best farmland in Palestine.

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Soil near the Sea of Galilee

The weather in the Lake District was not the same as in the mountains, warmer in winter, much hotter and humid in summer, which begins in May. “It is difficult for anyone used to living in the mountains to work by day and sleep by night…Out of doors one misses the refreshing breeze, which the mountains along the lake cut off…one is tempted to think that Jesus, who had settled there, must often have made occasion to escape from this pitiless climate to his beloved mountains.” (Dalman, p. 124)

You won’t find these observations  in the gospels, of course, but they help us appreciate the world in which Jesus lived and the parables he drew from it.  He was influenced by where he lived, as we are.

And what about us? What wisdom do we draw from the world we live in? What do we see day by day? What’s life like around us? We’re experiencing climate change now, aren’t we? It’s going to influence our spirituality, how we see, how we live, how we react to life.

May we gain wisdom from our time and place.

Saint Hilary of Potiers: January 13

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Hilary

Besides  the scriptures, the saints are companions on life’s journey, revealing  the wisdom of God from age to age.  “A cloud of witnesses,” the Letter to the Hebrews calls them.

January 13th we remember St. Hilary of Potiers, who lived in the early 4th century, a crucial time for the church, when the Emperor Constantine and his successors ended years of persecution and welcomed Christians as allies in governing the empire. They were considered subservient allies, however.

Hilary was born in Gaul into a wealthy family, but he wasn’t brought up in a Christian environment. He came to baptism (about the year 345 AD) through personal study of the scriptures. He was married and had a daughter. Then, about ten years after his baptism he was elected by the people of Potiers as their bishop. An unusual path to become a bishop!

A bishop’s role changed after Constantine gave the church freedom in 312 AD. More and more, they became agents of the emperor and his administration, and that brought temptation. Hilary and one of his friends, Martin of Tours, thought a good number of the bishops in Gaul were after worldly power and prestige rather than a spiritual ministry.

Many bishops closely associated with the emperors– both in the eastern and western parts of the empire– were also influenced by Arianism, which was favored by the emperors Constantius ( 350-361) and Valens (364-378). Arianism claimed that Jesus was human and not divine. He was only godlike.

Arianism is Christianity lite; it dismisses the claims of Jesus to be divine and makes him like us, only better and more powerful. Probably the emperors and  bishops sympathetic to the Arian doctrine felt it made Christianity more palatable for unbelievers. A good political option

Hilary strongly upheld the divinity of Jesus, basing his faith on the scriptures  he read and the sacrament of baptism he received. His stand brought him exile in Asia Minor, but he continued to teach and write in defense of orthodoxy and eventually he was restored to his diocese.

Hilary’s counterpart in the eastern church, St. Athanasius, was another big opponent of Arianism and imperial control of the church. Both bishops suffered exile and helped the church hold to the faith professed at the Council of Nicea in 321 AD. St. Jerome expressed the gravity of the situation: “The world groaned, amazed that it had become Arian.”

Hilary in Gaul, Athanasius in Egypt and Basil in Asia Minor argued for Catholic orthodoxy from the scriptures and church tradition. They also strongly encouraged religious life in the church. Athanasius saw the spirituality of the desert, exemplified by St. Anthony ( we remember him later next week) as a remedy for the increasing worldliness of Christians. Hilary was the teacher of Martin of Tours, founder of religious life in Gaul.

The two saints promoted religious life which played an important part in promoting sound faith in the church. Christianity always needs communities of dedicated believers as well as sharp-minded leaders for its journey through time. Say a prayer for our religious communities, including my own. We need them in the church.

And let’s not forget to pray for good bishops too.

January 1: Mary, the Mother of God

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Mary sorrows copy
Mary. El Greco

Today we celebrate the oldest feast in the Roman calendar honoring Mary, the mother of God.  We celebrate it in the Christmas season because she is the unique witness who guarantees the mysteries of Jesus, born of Mary.. 

Who else but Mary could tell us about the early life of Jesus? It had to be her. “Mary kept all these things in her heart,” Luke says in his gospel. 

Mary and Joseph are our key witnesses to the early life of Jesus. People after the resurrection of Jesus must have asked Mary about those early years: How was he born, what was he like growing up? They must have questioned her. 

She must have told them of God’s invitation to bear his Son, of his birth in Bethlehem, the shepherds, the strangers from the east, Herod’s attempt to kill her child, the old people in the temple who recognized him, their flight into Egypt. 

She would have told them he grew up like other children, She and Jospeh were mother and father to him. They held him in their arms, fed  him, clothed him, taught him his first words, helped him take his first steps, brought him to the synagogue, instructed him in their tradition, taught him to pray, listened to his questions. Angels didn’t bring him up. They did. 

The words we hear in Luke’s story of their journey to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover are surely hers: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you.”

Yet, he was a Child beyond others. Her witness to that was so important. All looked to Mary for her word. He was God’s Son. She was God’s humble servant, She was the Mother of God. 

This ancient feast celebrates Mary’s witness to the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. Churches of the Byzantine and Syrian rites celebrate this feast on December 26. The Coptic rite celebrates it on January 16.

From earliest days to later councils, the church turned to  Mary when it asks “Who is  Jesus?” We call on her this Christmas season to tell us who he is.

“Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, we praise, bless, and glorify your name on the Solemnity of the Motherhood of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary.  For by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit she conceived your Only Begotten Son, and without losing the glory of virginity,  she brought forth into the world the eternal Light, Jesus Christ our Lord. “ (Preface for the feast)

The papal Mass for her feast in Rome begins with this chant:

Hail Mary, most beautiful of our human race,                                                                          Virgin worthier than all others,                                                                                            enthroned in the heavens above.

Hail Mary, Virgin bearing the Child                                                                                           who sits at the Father’s right hand,                                                                                      ruling heaven and earth and all things,                                                                                            once hidden in your womb.

Hail Mary, the Uncreated God created you,                                                                                 the Only-Begotten Son loved you deeply,                                                                                      the Holy Spirit made you pregnant in a wholly divine way.

God wonderfully made and called you,                                                                                     his hand-maid, to be the mother of his Son.                                                                                        No other was made like you.

Be our mother, our comfort, our joy,                                                                                          and after this our exile,                                                                                                                    may we be with you in heaven forever.

December 18: Joseph, Son of David

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Nativity

In the gospel of Matthew  Joseph, the husband of Mary, has an important role in Jesus’ birth and early years. Mary points to him to tell the story of the birth of Jesus in the illustration above.

Matthew’s gospel calls Joseph  a just man, someone who listens to God rather than to himself. He does God’s will. He’s a carpenter, the gospels say, certainly not someone privileged – but he’s a “son of David” from the royal family who gives the world a Messiah.

During their betrothal, which in Jewish tradition was more than the modern engagement we know, Joseph finds that Mary is pregnant. A just man, he struggles to find a way to divorce her quietly when, in a dream, an angel of God tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife.

Here is the key part of the angel’s message: “For it is through the Holy Spirit 
that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Like Mary, Joseph believes God’s message. Like Mary, he sees more than human eyes and a human mind sees. “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.” He believed what we say in our creed: “(Jesus) was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.” Jesus became one of us, God was with us.

Artists early on pictured Joseph with his head in his hands, listening in sleep to the angel’s message. In a dream later he heard the angel telling him to take the child and his mother to Egypt to escape Herod, the king. He was a man of great faith.

The medieval artist who painted the picture above has Mary pointing to Joseph as a witness to whose Child this is who’s’ born in a stable. They are the first to believe and they will care for Jesus with all the love and care they can give him.

Joseph has his hand on his head.. The angel spoke to him in dreams. Faith is like a dream where God speaks to us in another way.

O Leader of the House of Israel,
giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai:
come to rescue us with your mighty power!

The gospels for the remaining days until Christmas are from St. Luke, recalling the angel’s visit to Mary and her relative Zechariah. Matthew’s gospel will be read again after the birth of the Child, when Joseph will be warned of danger and takes the Child and Mary to Egypt and then to Nazareth..

Wednesday, 2nd Week of Advent

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Isaiah


In yesterday’s first reading for Advent, Second Isaiah repeats to the exiles in Babylon words he hears from God: “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.” In today’s gospel reading Jesus says:“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” A favorite reading for so many of us.

Notice Jesus speaks to the “crowds” in Matthew’s gospel, not just to the disciples who know him, or the Jewish Christian church Matthew wrote for at the end of the first century.  God’s love and God’s promises reach far beyond the circle of disciples or the church.  Jesus Christ came to refresh the world that labors and is burdened, even if it doesn’t know him.

 Second Isaiah in today’s readings appeals to Jewish exiles to remember the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. Do not to abandon God for the Babylon’s gods who are too small, he tells them and us all.  

“To whom can you liken me as an equal?
says the Holy One…
Do you not know
or have you not heard?
The LORD is the eternal God,
creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint nor grow weary,
and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.”

God still holds us in his hands, sustains and comforts us, even if we do not know him or seem to care. God’s Spirit does not faint or grow weary

Feast of The Immaculate Conception

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Why does Mary, the Mother of Jesus, have such a big place in our church? The words of the angel in Luke’s gospel, words we often repeat in prayer, are an answer: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.”

Mary is filled with God’s grace, gifted with unique spiritual gifts from her conception, because she was to be the mother of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son.

She would be the “resting place of the Trinity,” and would give birth to, nourish, guide and accompany Jesus in his life and mission in this world. To fulfill that unique role she needed a unique gift. She would be free from original sin that clouds human understanding and slows the way we believe God and his plan for us.

“How slow you are to believe” Jesus said to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. Jesus made that complaint repeatedly as he preached the coming of God’s kingdom. “How slow you are to believe!” “What little faith you have!” “Do you still not understand!” Human slowness to believe didn’t end in gospel times. We have it too.

Mary was freed from that slowness to believe. “Be it done to me according to your word,” she immediately says to the angel. Yet, her acceptance of God’s will does not mean she understood everything that happened to her. “How can this be?” she asks the angel about the conception of the child. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.”  But the angel’s answer seems so incomplete, so mysterious.

Surely, Mary would have liked to know more, but the angel leaves, never to return. There’s no daily message, no new briefing or renewed assurance by heavenly messengers. The years go by in Nazareth as the Child grows in wisdom and age and grace, but they’re years of silence. Like the rest of us, Mary waits and wonders and keeps these things in her heart.

That’s why we welcome her as a believer walking with us. She is an assuring presence who calls us to believe as she did, without knowing all. She does not pretend to be an expert with all the answers. She has no special secrets she alone knows. “Do whatever he tells you,” is her likely advice as we ponder the mysteries of her Son.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated 9 months before the feast of the Birth of Mary (September 8). The feast  was extended to the universal Church by Pope Clement XI in 1708.

 Pope Pius IX solemnly proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin” (Ineffabilis Deus, 1854)

Do Whatever He Tells you

Advent: Tuesday, 1st Week

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Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom

“The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” (Isaiah 11,1)

A child stands atop Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom in Tuesday’s first reading at Mass. Edward Hicks, the Quaker painter, made over 100 copies of this scene from Isaiah, carefully indicating in the far left the peace treaty between William Penn and the native peoples of Pennsylvania in colonial America.

It takes a child to believe the astounding promises Isaiah makes. Adults, hardened by the experience of life, struggle with the prophet’s words. That’s why Advent invites us to become children, not physically, of course, but spiritually.

Become like little children. That’s what Jesus told his followers,  and he praised the childlike:

“I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike.” Luke 10

Only the childlike believe in great promises.

What does being “childlike” mean? Here’s what St. Leo the Great said about Jesus’s teaching on spiritual childhood: To be a child means to be “free from crippling anxiety, to be forgetful of injuries, to be sociable and to keep wondering at all things.”

A little child in its mother’s arms has no worries. It’s a good place to be, free from anxieties and a mother’s voice promising all will be well. Advent brings that grace back  to us; a grace we can lose so easily.

Jesus experienced that grace in Mary’s arms. Herod’s soldiers, like Isaiah’s Assyrian armies, were on their way. It’s a poor place where he’s born, no room in the inn, but the Child in his mother’s arms has no fear. All will be well.

Injuries come. The world can turn hostile. The promises may seem far away, but from infancy to his death, Jesus knew he was a child of God, his Father, in God’s caring hands and destined for God’s kingdom.

Help us, Lord to become like children

Saving Santa Claus

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Santa came to town for Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Parade. From the parade he went into the store for Black Friday and he will be there for the rest of the days till Christmas.

More than a salesman, Santa’s a saint– Saint Nicholas– and he reminds us Christmas is for giving rather than getting. His quiet giving mirrors God’s love shown in Jesus Christ.

Telling his story is one of the ways we can save Santa Claus from being captured by Macys and Walmart and all the rest. First, take a look at our version for little children, which has over 200,000 views on YouTube. How about telling that story to a real little kid you know? Wouldn’t you rather they know someone like him than the guy in the store in a red suit?

Then, you might want to go on to our  modest contribution for bigger children– like us:

The Maccabees: Restoring the Temple

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This week’s Mass readings from the 1st Book of Maccabees tell the story of the re-dedication of the temple of Jerusalem three years after its profanation  by Antiochus Epiphanes.  About the year 167 BC,  Jews under Judas Maccabeus took up the weapons of their time, re-conquered Jerusalem and restored the temple, the heart of their religion.

The first reading on Friday describes the rededication of the temple to its former glory. The Jews continue to celebrate it in the feast of Hannukah. (1 Maccabees 4,36-61}

The New Testament writers, certainly aware of this historic event, recall Jesus cleansing the temple.(Friday’s gospel) Entering Jerusalem after his journey from Galilee, “ Jesus went into the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, ‘It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.’” Then, “every day he was teaching in the temple area” until he was arrested and put to death. (Luke 19,45-48)

Cleansing the temple was a symbolic act. By it,  Jesus signified  he is the presence of God, the Word made flesh, the new temple of God.

Luke says Jesus taught in the temple “every day.” Even from his early days he taught in the temple, Luke writes. As our eternal high priest, he teaches us every day and brings us every day to his Father and our Father.

Jesus is the indestructible temple, the indestructible Presence of God among us. Witnesses at his trial before he died were half right when they said he spoke of destroying the temple. He was speaking of the temple of his own body. Death seemed to destroy him, but he was raised up bodily on the third day.We share in this mystery as “members of his body.”

Still, as sacramental people we need places like temples and churches to come together, to pray and to meet God who “dwells among us.” We need churches and holy places and instinctively revolt seeing them go, or not frequented.

Old stories, like the story of the Maccabees, carry lessons and raise questions. The Maccabees took the military option to restore and pursue the Kingdom. What are our military options today when we have atomic weapons, drones, cryptoweaponry at our disposal? New laws? Persuasion?

Old stories raise questions.