Category Archives: Passionists

St. Athanasius: Creation Speaks of the Word

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May 2nd is the feast of St. Athanasius, the 4th century  bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, an important figure in the early Christian disputes about the Trinity. He defended the divinity of Christ against the Arians who claimed that the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, was created by God the Father and so was not eternal.

The Word was God, eternal, consubstantial, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Athanasius taught. Humanity and all creation were brought into being by the Word.  We are made in the image of God, the saint says in his treatise “Against the Arians”; we are made in the image of the Word of God who became flesh.

“Our Lord said: ‘Whoever receives you, receives me.’ The image of the Word through whom the universe was made, the Wisdom that made the sun and the stars– is in us.”

The  saint carries this thought further:

“The likeness of Wisdom has been stamped upon creatures in order that the world may recognize in it the Word who was its maker and through the Word come to know the Father. This is Paul’s teaching: ‘What can be known about God is clear to them, for God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature has been there for the mind to perceive in things that have been made.’”

All creation has been stamped with “the likeness of Wisdom.” The universe can be traced to the Word; and it draws us to the Word. Creation is hardly secular, divorced from God, an entity of its own, or to be seen as worthless. The Word of God, Jesus Christ, came among us that we might discover the divine image not only in ourselves, but in the things that are made. Creation leads us to its Creator, and to Jesus Christ.

We make Jesus Christ too small if we see him only as a human being, the saint argues. We also make creation too small if we see it separate from its Creator. Jesus immersed himself in the waters of the Jordan at his baptism and he was proclaimed God’s only Son in the waters. At the last supper, Jesus took bread and wine, blessed them and gave himself to us through them. He gave himself to us through these signs of creation. Water brings life to creation; bread at Mass is the “fruit of the earth” and the wine “fruit of the vine.”  Creation brings the Word to us; Creation brings Jesus Christ to us.

Pope Francis asked for this same recognition of the dignity of creation in his encyclical “Laudato Si.” Creation brings us to Jesus Christ.

Father, you raised up  St. Athanasius, to be an outstanding teacher of the divinity of your Son.  May we grow to know and love you through his wisdom and through the world made in his image. Amen.

Good Friday: Pope Francis

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Good Friday

Through the texts of Sacred Scripture and liturgical prayers we are called to Calvary to commemorate the redemptive Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. 

The Crucifix will be presented to us to adore. Adoring the Cross, we relive the journey of the innocent Lamb sacrificed for our salvation. We carry in our minds and hearts the sufferings of the sick, the poor, the rejected of this world; we will remember the “sacrificed lambs”, the innocent victims of wars, dictatorships, everyday violence, abortions.

 Before the image of the crucified God, we bring, in prayer, the many, the too many who are crucified in our time, who’d receive comfort and meaning in their suffering only from him. And nowadays there are many: do not forget the crucified of our time, who are the image of Jesus Crucified, and Jesus is in them. 

Ever since Jesus took upon himself the wounds of humanity and death itself, God’s love has watered these deserts of ours, he has enlightened our darkness.

 Let us make a list of all the wars that are being fought in this moment; of all the children who die of hunger; of children who have no education; of entire populations destroyed by wars, by terrorism. Of the many, many people who, just to feel a bit better, need drugs, the drug industry that kills… 

He enters into the abyss of suffering, he enters into these calamities to redeem and transform them. to free every one of us from the power of darkness, of pride, of resistance to being loved by God.

 By his wounds we have been healed (cf. 1 Pt 2:24), the apostle Peter says, by his death we have been reborn, all of us. And thanks to him, abandoned on the cross, no one will ever again be alone in the darkness of death. Never. He is always beside us: we need only open our heart and let ourselves be looked upon by him. 

Pope Francis


For today’s homily, please play the video file below:

For a commentary on John’s Passion narrative by Fr.Donald Senior, CP. seehttps://passionofchrist.us/commentary/

Thursday, 4th Week of Lent

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Readings

In the final weeks of Lent the readings from John’s Gospel describe Jesus’ various visits to Jerusalem to celebrate different Jewish feasts. In John’s gospel today, Jesus is in Jerusalem celebrating the Jewish feast of Pentecost, which took place 7 weeks after Passover. (John 5, 31-47)  Our Pentecost comes from the Jewish feast.

The Jewish feast of Pentecost goes by different names. It’s called Shavuot, meaning weeks, which originally celebrated the beginning of the barley harvest, but also recalls Moses handing on the law to the Jews as he comes down from Sinai. This year the Jewish feast begins at sundown, June 11. The Christian feast of Pentecost falls on Sunday, June 19th, this year. 

Our first reading today recalls the descent of Moses from Sinai to an unbelieving people.”I see how stiff-necked this people is. Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them.Then I will make of you a great nation,” God says to him. (Exodus 34:7-14)

But Moses pleas for his people, lest Egypt be convinced the God of Israel is cruel. Moses also recalls God’s covenant made to Abraham. Jesus appears as the new Moses on this feast, pleading for forgiveness for his people and promising to open the graves of their dead. 

The miracles and his works of healing testify to him, Jesus says. The scriptures, long searched by the Jews as the way to eternal life also “testify on my behalf,” Jesus says. Above all, his heavenly Father, who through an interior call draws to his Son those who are humble, speaks for him.

Faith in Jesus still comes in these ways. The Jewish scriptures still point him out. On their feast of Shavuot, Jews study the Torah, the law of Moses. One Jewish custom is to stay up all night and read the Torah.

Our heavenly Father draws us to his Son in lent. The voice of the Father says once more: “listen to him.” We listen to him in the scriptures.

We’re reminded by scholars that in these passages from John’s Gospel, “the Jews” who condemned Jesus are not the Jewish people but a powerful group that turned against him at that time. We approach the mystery of God together with our Jewish brothers and sisters..

Prayer

O God
I come to you
who have given so much to me. You know “my inmost being” and “all my thoughts from afar.” I want to listen to you
and be changed by what I hear.

Help us all to be changed by you. Amen.

Cyril of Jerusalem: The Power of the Cross

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St. Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386) was bishop of Jerusalem when that city was a popular center of Christian pilgrimage.  Ordinary Christians, as well as scholars like St. Jerome and St. Paula, came to the Holy Land at the time to visit the places where Jesus was born, died and rose again. “The whole world is going to an empty tomb,” St. John Chrysostom remarked. 

The church in Jerusalem influenced the liturgical, catechetical and devotional life of Christian churches throughout the world.. Visiting Christians, hearing Cyril’s sermons and masterful catechesis brought devotional and liturgical practices,, like the Stations of the Cross,  to their own churches back home. 

Cyril preached and celebrated the liturgy in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built by the Emperor Constantine  and his mother, Helena, over the tomb of Jesus and the place where  he died. The church still stands in Jerusalem today. 

St, Cyril and the church of Jerusalem are remembered, appropriately on March 18, usually during Lent.  

Here’s an excerpt from one of Cyril’s catechetical sermons, preached in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where the relic of the cross and the tomb of Jesus were honored. Siloam, the pool where the blind man was cured, Bethany where Lazarus was raised, the precious relic of the cross were not far away, they were nearly, easily seen and visited.

“The Catholic Church glories in every deed of Christ. Her supreme glory, however, is the cross. Well aware of this, Paul says: God forbid that I glory in anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!

“At Siloam, there was a sense of wonder, and rightly so: a man born blind recovered his sight. But of what importance is this, when there are so many blind people in the world? Lazarus rose from the dead, but even this affected only Lazarus: what of those countless numbers who have died because of their sins? Those miraculous loaves fed five thousand people; yet this is a small number compared to those all over the world who were starved by ignorance. After eighteen years a woman was freed from the bondage of Satan; but are we not all shackled by the chains of our own sins?

For us all, however, the cross is the crown of victory. It has brought light to those blinded by ignorance. It has released those enslaved by sin. Indeed, it has redeemed the whole of mankind!”

The relic of the cross, rescued from the refuse of Calvary, honored by Cyril in the Jerusalem church. was not just a grim reminder of the suffering of Jesus; Encased in gold, it was bathed in the glorious memory  of Jesus’ resurrection celebrated close by in his empty tomb.

Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem

For Morning and Evening Prayers today, 4th week.

Noah and the Ark: Genesis 6-7

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Where did the story come from?

A few years ago Nova on PBS featured a program called“The Secrets of Noah’s Ark.” In early times, floods were common in the “Fertile Crescent,” the area in Mesopotamia {modern Iraq} where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the ancient city of Babylon were located. Floods, sometimes great floods, occurred, so the people had to be ready. You had to keep your boats handy, and a big boat also– you never knew..

But people then, as now, had short memories. “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.” (Matthew 24, 37-38)

I suspect some Babylonian priests then– meteorologists and story tellers of the age– came up with a flood story thousands of years before the Noah story in Genesis, to keep people on their toes – and maybe challenge some early climate change deniers too. It reinforced important advice: “ Keep your boats in shape and make sure a big boat’s around for ‘the big one.’”

Jewish priests and scribes in 6th century Babylon saw the story a perfect fit for the story of human origins they were telling their people. For them the take-away from the story was not to keep a big boat handy, but to be faithful to God like Noah and Abraham and their families. If they were faithful, God would save them from the flood and bring them  to the Promised Land.

The Nova program showed evidence from today of those big boats there “just in case.”

The story gave hope to the Jews driven from Jerusalem to exile in Babylon where, “By the rivers of Bablyon, we sat ad wept, remembering Zion.” (Psalm 137)  Christians– the pictures in the catacombs remind us (above)– saw Noah as a sign that the waters of baptism saved them from death and brought them the promise of paradise lost by Adam and Eve.

So the story of Noah and the ark is more than a myth.

Building a City: Genesis 11: 1-9

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Tower of Babel. Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 16th century

After the deluge, God renews a covenant with creation, and the descendants of Noah begin to fulfill God’s command “to increase and multiply and fill the earth.”

But then something else happens: human beings want to be together, so they build a city. A common origin and language draws them together, not just as families or clans, but in a larger society. They look for human flourishing in a city. (Genesis 11,1-9)

Unfortunately, they overreach. They want to get their heads into the heavens and so they plan a tower into the sky. Like Adam and Eve reaching for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they want to be like gods, “presuming to do whatever they want,” Their tower becomes a Tower of Babel. It collapses and they’re scattered over the world, leaving their city unfinished.

It’s important to recognize that the Genesis story does not claim God’s against human beings building a city. The bible, in fact, often sees the city as a place favoring human flourishing. In the Book of Jonah, God values the great city of Nineveh. Jesus sees Jerusalem, the Holy City, cherished by the Lord, the place where he dwells. The Spirit descends on his church in the city. The Genesis story sees the city as good, but it can be destroyed by sin and human pride..

The picture at the beginning of this blog is a painting of the Tower of Babel by the 16th century Dutch artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It’s situates Babel in Antwerp, one of the key seaports of the time. Its shaky structure suggests it’s too ambitiously built. Still incomplete, it may not last. So the painter offers a warning against ambition and not caring for people, especially the needy.

It’s interesting to note that Pope Francis encourages mayors from cities to plan well. Commentators say the pope, conscious of a rising isolationism that’s affecting nations and international bodies today, sees cities to be agents for unifying peoples. They’re important places for humans to flourish. The United Nations also sees cities as key resources in the challenge that comes with climate change.

The picture at the end? You don’t have to be told. A great city. Still, its greatness will be judged, not by its big buildings or businesses, but how it encourages human flourishing.

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The Prayer of Abel: Genesis 4: 1-15

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Cain and Abel. James Tissot. Brooklyn Museum

God was pleased with the sacrifice of Abel, rather than that of Cain. St. Ambrose explains why:

“Jesus told us to pray urgently and often, so that our prayers should not be long and tedious but short, earnest and frequent. Long elaborate prayers overflow with pointless phrases, and long gaps between prayers eventually stretch out into complete neglect.

Next he advises that when you ask forgiveness for yourself then you must take special care to grant it also to others. In that way your action can add its voice to yours as you pray. The apostle also teaches that when you pray you must be free from anger and from disagreement with anyone, so that your prayer is not disturbed or broken into.

The apostle teaches us to pray anywhere, and the Saviour says ‘Go into your room’ – but you must understand that this “room” is not the room with four walls that confines your body when you are in it, but the secret space within you in which your thoughts are enclosed and where your sensations arrive. That is your prayer-room, always with you wherever you are, always secret wherever you are, with your only witness being God.

Above all, you must pray for the whole people: that is, for the whole body, for every part of your mother the Church, whose distinguishing feature is mutual love. If you ask for something for yourself then you will be praying for yourself only – and you must remember that more grace comes to one who prays for others than to any ordinary sinner. If each person prays for all people, then all people are effectively praying for each.

In conclusion, if you ask for something for yourself alone, you will be the only one asking for it; but if you ask for benefits for all, all in their turn will be asking for them for you. For you are in fact one of the “all.” Thus it is a great reward, as each person’s prayers acquire the weight of the prayers of everyone. There is nothing presumptuous about thinking like this: on the contrary, it is a sign of greater humility and more abundant fruitfulness.”

We’re Not Alone: Genesis 2: 18-25

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genesis man alone copy 2
The LORD God said:
“It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a suitable partner for him.”
(Genesis 2,18)

We usually rush on when we hear these words to the creation of Eve, who becomes “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh” for Adam, and the human story begins.

But the Genesis account  we read today and the medieval artist above remind us that God first “formed out the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man… but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.” (Genesis 2,19 ff)

Adam signals to God these new creatures are not enough, but does he dismiss them altogether for Eve?

Whether we realize it or not, we are not meant to be isolated individuals on this planet. We look for human companionship and friendship. But are human beings our only relationship. Besides caring for each other, we have destiny to care for all the creatures Adam names. They’re our partners too and we share this common home with them.

What’s Inside? Mark 7:14-23

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In Wednesday’s Gospel reading (Mk 7: 14-23), Jesus says: ” Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.”

    Later on, He tells His disciples: ” Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine (thus He declared all foods clean). But what comes out of the man, is what defiles him. From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

    Our Lord is once again talking about the pettiness and superficiality of so many of the rules and regulations that the scribes and Pharisees were always harping on. He asks us to focus rather on that “beam” in our eyes, the sinful, destructive tendencies that exist within us, and that we try to cover up.

    But this passage leads me to ask so many questions. In many of the Psychology courses that I took, the issue of ” nature vs. nurture” would come up, and makes me think of this Gospel. So many disturbing, horrible things can ” enter from the outside ” and damage or ” defile ” a child so that he or she grows up and displays many of these sinful behaviors listed by the Lord. Do we learn these evils, or did they already come within us at birth? How extensive is the power of our “original sin?”  Why do some people turn out ” nicer” than others?

    No matter what the answers to these questions, our Lord certainly wants people to be cleansed of ” all their evils” . Can we do it by following a set of rules and prescribed behaviors that our Church so lovingly provides? ….. Follow the Commandments, participate in the Eucharist, celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation,  fast, avoid the sinful influence of the media for us and our children, control our “dirty language” and “dirty pictures” in our minds, practice tolerance and forgiveness, and so on?

    Many, many people, like me, who received Catholic upbringing and instruction when young, failed to follow these rules. Others, by the Grace of God, gave these rules a good try and are still trying. Why? Was it God’s arbitrary choice?

    I really cannot answer these questions either. All I know is that after 43 years in the wilderness, after hurting God, myself, and others so many times, my Lord Jesus Christ came my way and struck me with his Love and Mercy. The gift of His Light helped me to see His Light in me, along with the many dark, dirty spots that would cloud my vision of Him.

    So I no longer try to analyze what harmful events in my life led me to so much sin, nor how my “inside”  got filled with so much darkness (although I try to spot those bad influences when they threaten my grandchildren, and carefully talk about it with their parents!). All I know is that God loves me so much, that I can’t help but try to be”better”, because I love Him. There is this beautiful sentence that I read in the magazine THE WORD AMONG US: ” It’s the relationship, not the formula that matters.”

    In his book, FALLING UPWARD, Fr Richard Rohr, talks about the importance of “shadow work” in the spiritual journey. It is a matter of careful ” seeing through ” our self-deception, as well as through all of those inner things that “defile” us: ” You come to expect various forms of halfheartedness, deceit, vanity, or illusions from yourself. But now you see through them, which destroys most of their game and power.” What are you looking at as you see through them? Rohr believes that you are looking into your innermost self at  the One who loves you.

   ” This self cannot die and always lives, and is your True Self.”

Orlando Hernandez   

Learning from Genesis

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tree-of-life-2


Pope Francis, in his encyclical Laudato Si, , invites Christians to turn to the Book of Genesis to understand how they’re related to the earth.

Genesis makes clear in its first chapter that the earth, “our common home,” is God’s work. God works for 5 days to create the world; only on the 6th day does God create man, whom he gives dominion over creation– but not absolute dominion. God made this world, not us, and every created thing enjoys a distinct relationship to its creator.

The dominion we have from God is a gift and is not absolute. We’re to help, respect, understand, tend, care for creation: creation isn’t ours to do what we want with it.

eden-2

The 2nd chapter of Genesis describes the creation of man. The earth is dry dust, but water wells up making a soft wet clay from the dust. God, like a potter, fashions man from the clay, breathing the breath of life into him and making him a living being.

We’re creatures of the earth, the story says.  As we’re reminded on Ash Wednesday, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

After creating man, God places him in a garden filled with all kinds of plants and trees. Two trees are singled out, the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man is forbidden to eat from that tree.

What’s the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Why is it forbidden to eat its fruit?  There are different interpretations. Some interpret eating from the tree as a decision of moral autonomy. By eating its fruit, I claim a knowledge of good and evil; I say what’s right or wrong.

Not unusual to hear that today, is it? Some believe they’re in absolute control of their lives. They choose what’s right or wrong, good and evil, rejecting the limits of the human condition and the finite freedom God gives human beings.

Another interpretation sees eating from the tree as a decision to trust only in human experience and human knowledge that we gain as we grow and progress individually and as a people. Like children distancing themselves from their parents, we must be self sufficient, gaining a wisdom on our own. The danger is that human experience and human wisdom become absolute.  We distance ourselves from God.

Can we see both these approaches harmful to our environment? The first leads to a possessiveness of created things;  they belong to us alone and we can do anything we want with them.

The second way also leads to harming our environment. Pope Francis speaks of the danger of “anthropocentrism,” putting human beings at the center of everything, a trend he traces back to the beginnings of the Enlightenment in the 16th century. Trusting human knowledge and human creativity, some are convinced that science and technology alone can bring about a perfect world.

Technology isn’t enough to meet our present environmental crisis, the pope says, we humans need to change. We need to humbly accept our place in creation, as God meant it to be.

What about the tree of life in the Genesis narrative? In the garden the tree was a promise of continuing life. Once banished from the garden,  human beings face death.

tree-of-life

When Christ came in the fullness of time, he brought life to the world, Christians believe. In his death on the cross, the sign of death was replaced by a sign of life. His cross is a tree of life.

Here’s Pope Francis from Laudato si:

“The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical reality. They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin. The harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This in turn distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). As a result, the originally harmonious relationship between human beings and nature became conflictual (cf. Gen 3:17-19).

It is significant that the harmony which Saint Francis of Assisi experienced with all creatures was seen as a healing of that rupture. Saint Bonaventure held that, through universal reconciliation with every creature, Saint Francis in some way returned to the state of original innocence.[40] This is a far cry from our situation today, where sin is manifest in all its destructive power in wars, the various forms of violence and abuse, the abandonment of the most vulnerable, and attacks on nature.”

Pope Francis, Laudato SI  66