Tag Archives: Passionists

My Thoughts are not Your Thoughts

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Last Sunday religion played a part in the tenth anniversary of 9/11, though some wanted to be silent about it. At the anniversary ceremonies, we heard words of belief among the questions and the tears.

Religion always has a role when something tragic like 9/11 happens. That’s because a tragedy like that– and it was tragic on a grand scale– is something we can’t measure or understand, and so we look for meaning and support in a power and a wisdom beyond our own.

People from many religious traditions died in that tragedy, and many turned to their own religious traditions for support. Of course, some had nothing to turn to.

As Christians we believe that God’s not silent in tragedy. God speaks to us through Jesus Christ, his Son. Yet, even so,  God’s wisdom is not so easy to understand.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.

As high as the heavens are above the earth,

so high are my ways above your ways

and my thoughts above your thoughts.”  Isaiah 55, 8-9

In situations as simple as that described in today’s gospel, the parable of the workers in the vineyard, God’s ways are not our ways.  They’re higher and deeper.

At the heart of the tragedy of 9/11 is the mystery of death,  a reality common to all that lives.  Nature in our part of the world is now  experiencing a kind of dying as leaves turn and fall. We human beings die too, but death for us is different than it is for the rest of the natural world. We have a strong unique desire for life within us, for our lives to continue, and that makes us different.

Death happens to us in many ways. Some of us will die from natural causes, like sickness or old age. Some may die in accidents, earthquakes, floods. And then, some die because other human beings cause their death. That’s what happened at 9/11. That’s what makes that event so tragic; an evil injustice caused them to die.

Over the ages, there’s been a lot of reflection about death. Of course, today we don’t like to talk much about it. It’s become a taboo in our society.

But for Christians, death is important. The heart of our faith is about death and resurrection, which we see in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We hear about  it over and over in our liturgy. And we reflect on it.

Some theologians, reflecting on sources like  St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Chapters 4-5), speculate that in the beginning God planned death of another kind for the human race, before sin intervened. If human sin had not entered the world, they suggest , maybe human beings like us would reach a climactic moment in the normal course of our lives when God would invite us to another higher life. It would be an invitation we’d welcome, we’d freely choose it, sure that a new and better existence waits for us with our Creator.

But it was human sin that darkened that moment in the beginning and made it the death we know now. So, instead of an experience of joy and adventure and new beginnings,  death became for the human family a moment of fear and suffering.

We believe Jesus came as our Savior and Redeemer to enter that dark, fearful moment and change it to a moment of salvation. “Dying, you destroyed our death; Rising, you restored our life,” we say in our liturgy.

To save and redeem us, Jesus truly experienced death in all its ferocity. The gospels clearly say he did.  Jesus faced a death,  not from old age or from sickness, not from some act of nature, but from sinners. He was put to death by evil injustice. It was death at its worst that he faced.  But when he died, he conquered death and evil and gave us hope by rising again. He “destroyed our death” we say.

He gives us now the power to face death, to go through the moment of death, even at its worst, and to know resurrection. He’s there at the moment of our death; he’s there with all who die; he’s there as our Savior and Redeemer. None of us dies alone.

After the tragedy of 9/11 you may remember they found a cross of twisted steel from the   wreckage of the World Trade Center and placed in the ruins. I think that cross hangs now outside St.Peter’s Church a few blocks away. For religious reasons, of course, it probably will remain there.

But the wisdom of that Cross, hard as it is for us to understand, speaks to that tragic place. His ways are not our ways, his thoughts not our thoughts, but God is not silent, God speaks  in the death and resurrection of his Son.

22nd Sunday

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Don’t miss the way the Prophet Jeremiah talks to God in our first reading today and the way Peter the Apostle in our gospel gets the message of Jesus all wrong. They’re examples of what faith in God is really like. Without people like them, we might think faith is a ticket to a wonderful life and endless sweet dreams.

Jeremiah is fed up with God:

“You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped;

you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.

All the day I am an object of laughter;

everyone mocks me.”

The lonely prophet lived in hard times when Babylonian armies were sacking Jerusalem and everyone was calling him a deceiver because of a message they didn’t want to hear– God was going to let his holy city be completely destroyed and his people led away in chains.

The message sours the prophet’s mouth and breaks his heart. He feels like a fool.  Yet listen to him:

“I say to myself, I will not mention him,

I will speak in his name no more.

But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,

imprisoned in my bones;

I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”

He’s faithful to God no matter what.

Peter, a believer,  gets the message of Jesus wrong. He can’t accept the prediction of the Cross, but wants success instead.

Yet God works with this apostle whose faith is so imperfect and  prizes this prophet whose faith is so tried. Since our faith may be like theirs, let’s hope God will work with us.  “We believe; help our unbelief.”

Shelter Island Thoughts

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I spent this past week on vacation with two other members of my community on Shelter Island at a retreat house for youth that we’ve recently closed and now are in the process of selling. It’s a place of memories for us, a summer paradise for swimming and sports and a vibrant place where thousands of young people over the years found spiritual nourishment in programs for the young.

Now, like so many other good places devoted to spiritual purposes throughout the county, it’s closing. You have to feel a sense of failure and disappointment. What’s happening, we ask?

Finances and personnel are the reasons we point to, but these don’t answer the question adequately. Our society has lost its interest in God. Not everybody, to be sure, but for many the search for God has fallen down the list of their priorities. As I write, I’m watching an instructor teaching children how to play tennis in this place where young people were once taught to pray.

Religious people like ourselves, supposedly the guardians and promoters of religion, wonder if we are to blame. On EWTN the other night, Fr. Benedict Groeschel seemed to think so; he criticized religious communities for their “worldliness” and there’s some truth in his criticism, but it’s not the complete answer by any means.

I’m reading Pope Benedict’s book “ Jesus of Nazarth” these days and there are two sections in it I find particularly helpful. The first, is his section on the Kingdom of God, and as I read it this place came to mind.

The Kingdom of God is a complex concept; the first disciples of Jesus were not sure what it was. They had  kingdoms of their own in mind that they thought might fit the bill. But Jesus said his kingdom was not like theirs. If it were, his followers would have risen up to stop his enemies putting him to death, but his kingdom was not of this world.

Our kingdoms tend to be like those of Jesus’ first disciples. They may be treasured, holy,  wonderful places in themselves, but they’re kingdoms of the world. Our temptation, like the last temptation of Jesus in the desert, is to hold on to them as if they were the Kingdom of God. But God lets them pass away so that we may search again. Is that what God is doing now?

“Thy Kingdom come,” we say in our prayer, not “My Kingdom come.”

The second section of the pope’s book I found helpful was his thoughts on “Resurrection Thinking,” (my phrase, not his). After the resurrection the disciples of Jesus did a lot of thinking about what had happened before. “When he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.” (John 2,22) Over and over the gospels tell us his disciples remembered something he said or did, sometimes they were terrible things like the events of his passion and death, but now they saw them in a new light.

They didn’t even delete their own sinfulness and lack of faith from the remembered story.

“The Resurrection,” the pope says, “teaches us a new way of seeing.” (p.232) We can look into ruins and see another life rise in them. “Behold, I make all things new.”

What will be the new life we see rising from here? The pope says “all” the disciples were involved in this “Resurrection Thinking.” It takes place through prayerfulness.  A guide, the Spirit of Truth, is there to point our way to the future.

What’s involved today here at Shelter Island, and in so many other places like it, is more than waiting for a buyer.

 

 

Who Do You Say Jesus Is?

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“Who do you say I am?” is the question Jesus asks his disciples at Caesaria Philippi. It’s a question  at the center of Matthew’s Gospel, which we read today in our liturgy.  Before this, Jesus has taught and done marvelous things in Galilee, mostly around the Sea of Galilee.  Now he’s going up to Jerusalem. “Who do your say I am?”

He asks the question at Caesaria Philippi, a place we don’t know much about, because the city fell into ruins after Jesus’ death and resurrection,  but it’s a place that has an important role in our gospel story.

Caesaria Philippi was located about 40 miles from the lake area where most of Jesus’ ministry took place. It was a gentile city, devout Jews tended not to go there, so we might ask why Jesus took his disciples there to ask this important question.

Caesaria Philippi was located right at the base of Mount Hermon, the great mountain that was the origin of most of the water that flowed into the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. It was a large Greco-Roman city built  in Jesus’ time as part of a big economic boom going on in Galilee. Under the Herods, especially Herod Antipas, a number of large cities like Tiberias, Sepphoris and Caesaria Philippi were built in Galilee to handle the developing trade in agriculture and fish from the Sea of Galilee. The Herod’s wanted this area to be a supplier of food for the Roman Empire.

Some scholars think that Joseph moved his family to Galilee from Judea to get work in this new economy. Sepphoris, one of its booming cities, was only four miles from Nazareth.

“Who do people say I am?”  Jesus’ disciples answer his question in typical Jewish terms. “Some say you are Elijah, John the Baptist, or Jeremiah, or one of prophets.”

In sight of Caesaria Philippi, Jesus’ question might also be posed: “Who do these people say I am?”  The unspoken answer might be “Nobody.”

Would that be the answer we would give if we were asked what any of our great cities think of Jesus Christ today? “They think he’s nobody.”

“And you, who do you say I am?”

“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

Pope Benedict’s “Jesus of Nazareth”

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Are old voices speaking out anew? What about the voice of Holy Scripture, the books of the Old and New Testament? What about an old pope?

I’ve just finished reading Pope Benedict’s  Jesus of Nazareth, volume 2. I think this book may be his greatest contribution to the church. He’s regularly described as a traditionalist, but in this book he approaches Jesus listening, not to voices from earlier church commentaries, but to new voices speaking through modern biblical studies.

Recent popes  have acknowledged and approved of modern biblical scholarship, but none use it so thoroughly as Benedict does in this work. He opens the scriptures and let’s them speak of Jesus and his mission to the world.

His insights are profound and make you want to look at the scriptures more closely yourself  for the wisdom they contain. One recent European study said that Catholics there don’t read scripture much; I think the same could be said about this side of the Atlantic too. People prefer sermons.

My challenge is not to get people to listen to my sermons, but to help them prayerfully read and reflect on the scriptures themselves in a regular way. That’s what the pope himself recommended recently. Take up the scriptures; they speak of Christ.

He never says read my book, but I’m going to read it again too. It’s very good.

Lessons from Miracles

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The miracle of the loaves and the fish is one of the most important miracles of Jesus mentioned in the New Testament. It’s in all four gospels: Mark reports it twice. Most people who know anything at all about Jesus know this story in some form or another. We read Matthew’s version at Mass last Sunday.

Miracles teach us many things. Defying reasonable explanations, they’re signs that God is present in our world and not distant or uninvolved in human affairs. They’re striking acts of divine love and mercy breaking the usual quiet and unseen presence of God among us. In the life of Jesus, miracles are one of the ways God confirms his divine mission.

Miracles teach us other things too. For instance, the story of the loaves and fish reminds us of  the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament in which Jesus through signs of bread and wine nourishes and supports us on our journey through life.  Just as God sent heavenly food,  manna, to the Jews as they made their way through the desert to the Promised Land, so Jesus gives this Bread as food on our way to eternal life.

Miracles invariably involve ordinary human beings as they unfold. Unfortunately, we sometimes overlook their human dimension.

A little boy had five loaves and two fish, John’s account of the miracle relates. (John 6, 9) He evidently gave them to Jesus. No one seems to remember his name. A small detail in the story, we may say. In this same miracle, it’s the disciples of Jesus who alert him to the hunger of the crowds and after the miracle distribute the bread and the fish to them. Minor details of the story, we may think.

Yet, it’s good to keep in mind that in every miracle Jesus seems to involve people,  who cry out their need, like the blind men along the road, or bring him a request for someone else, like the Roman soldier asking for his servant, or bring him the sick and the needy,  like the care-givers who followed him wherever he went.

The cure of the paralyzed man is one of the most colorful stories in the gospel. Those who brought him to Jesus  (how many were there anyway?) carry the helpless man  to the house where Jesus was and when they can’t get through the door because of the crowds, they climb onto the roof, cut a hole in it, and lower him down before Jesus.

The man was cured and walked out of the house carrying his mat with him. It was a miracle, truly,  but what about those who brought him? Some human cooperation like theirs is found in almost all of the miracle stories of the gospel.  A rare exception may be the story from John’s gospel of the paralyzed man who sat for 37 years near the Pool of Bethsaida and had no one to help him enter its healing waters. No one brought him to the attention of Jesus, it seems. so Jesus spontaneously heals him, because he’s so helplessly on his own.

God seldom acts alone, the miracle stories tell us; he invites human cooperation. Our challenge, then, is to respond and do our part in God’s work in this world.  That response may be as small as the little boy’s response who gave over his five loaves and two fish. But it’s important just the same.

How do we prepare ourselves for this role? I think  by daily prayer.

Martha

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Martha and Mary were not just related  by blood, St. Augustine says, they were related by the same holy desire.  “ They stayed close to our Lord and both served him harmoniously when he was among them.”

Martha served him as the “Word made flesh,” who was hungry and thirsty, tired and in need of human care and support. She longs to share what Mary enjoys, his presence, his wisdom and his gifts. And she will find her desires fulfilled.

“You, Martha, if I may say so, will find your service blessed and your work rewarded with peace. Now you are much occupied in nourishing the body, admittedly a holy one. But when you come to the heavenly homeland you will find no traveller to welcome, no one hungry to feed or thirsty to give drink, no one to visit or quarrelling to reconcile. no one dead to bury.”

“No, there will be none of these tasks there. What you will find there is what Mary chose. There we shall not feed others, we ourselves shall be fed. What Mary chose in this life will be realized there in full.  She was gathering only fragments from that rich banquet, the Word of God. Do you wish to know what we will have there? The Lord himself tells us when he says of his servants, Amen, I say to you, he will make them recline and passing he will serve them.”

Jesus in the Temple, 2

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It’s important to remember that Jesus, as well as being a humble native of Nazareth, was also was a regular worshipper in the temple at Jerusalem and was nourished by the great ideas and vision that radiated from this holy place.

Indeed, the Second Temple was admired throughout the world of his time. Whatever the Jews thought of Herod the Great, the unpredictable ruler of Judea, most would be proud of the magnificent temple he built. It was one of the world’s wonders.

Yet, when some spoke to Jesus about its beauty, how adorned it was with gifts, he replied “As for these things you see,  the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Luke 21,6)

The temple was not just a cause for national pride for the Jews; it nourished their spirituality. God, who was honored here, was no household god with limited power, or a national god concerned with one people. The Divine Presence honored here was the Lord of heaven and earth, the God of the nations.

That belief was expressed in the psalms that Jesus and his disciples would have prayed. Two psalms we pray in the Liturgy of Hours Wednesday and Thursday of this week (week 1) are prayers from the temple and its worship:

Psalm 47

All you peoples, clap your hands; shout to God with joyful cries.

For the LORD, the Most High, inspires awe, the great king overall the earth,

Who made people subject to us, brought nations under our feet,

Who chose a land for our heritage, the glory of Jacob, the beloved.

God mounts the throne amid shouts of joy; the LORD, amid trumpet blasts.

Sing praise to God, sing praise; sing praise to our king, sing praise.

God is king over all the earth; sing hymns of praise.

God rules over the nations; God sits upon his holy throne.

The princes of the peoples assemble with the people of the God of Abraham. For the rulers of the earth belong to God, who is enthroned on high.

Psalm 48

Great is the LORD and highly praised in the city of our God:

The holy mountain, fairest of heights,

the joy of all the earth,

Mount Zion, the heights of Zaphon,

the city of the great king.

God is its citadel, renowned as a stronghold.

See! The kings assembled, together they invaded.

When they looked they were astounded; terrified, they were put to flight!

Trembling seized them there, anguish, like a woman’s labor,

As when the east wind wrecks the ships of Tarshish!

What we had heard we now see in the city of the LORD of hosts,

In the city of our God, founded to last forever.

O God, within your temple we ponder your steadfast love.

Like your name, O God, your praise reaches the ends of the earth.

Your right hand is fully victorious.

Mount Zion is glad!

The cities of Judah rejoice because of your saving deeds!

Go about Zion, walk all around it,

note the number of its towers.

Consider the ramparts, examine its citadels,

that you may tell future generations:

“Yes, so mighty is God, our God who leads us always!”

The temple proclaimed God who rules over creation and the nations, but as Jesus reminded his disciples a place can pass away but the God proclaimed there does not pass away. In fact, Jesus spoke of himself as the new temple, who replaces this building and who cannot be destroyed,

Isaiah offered a similar message, which we also read today (Thursday morning, week 1)

“Thus says the LORD: The heavens are my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me; what is to be my resting place?

My hand made all these things when all of them came to be, says the LORD. This is the one whom I approve: the lowly and afflicted man who trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66,1-2)

After the destruction of Jerusalem, Jews who had been banished from the city by the Romans were allowed at set times to stand on the Mount of Olives and mourn for the temple and their great city. Christians also would go there to remember that cherished institutions and human  endeavors can pass away, but Jesus Christ does not pass away.

I was with the people in the picture above, who looked out  from the Mount of Olives to the temple mount and Jerusalem across the Kidron Valley. Good place to put things in perspective these days.

Ignatius and Polycarp

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Years ago I visited Izmir, Turkey, with a classmate of mine. We were searching the city, formerly Smyrna, for traces of St. Polycarp, one of its first Christian bishops, who was martyred there in AD 153. With difficulty, we found a small Catholic church named for him surrounded now by a large Muslim neighborhood, and also the ancient agora where he was condemned and put to death.

I think of him today because today’s Office of Readings offers St. Ignatius of Antioch’s  “Letter to the Magnesians,” which was written in Smyrna early in the 2nd century and mentions Polycarp, its bishop.  Under arrest on his way to Rome where he will be executed in the Colisseum , Ignatius writes to the Magnesians urging them to be faithful disciples of Christ and imitate him. Polycarp gave him support on his way to death.

One sentence of his letter caught my eye. “Be moved by his goodness,” he writes, “for if Jesus were ever to imitate the way we behave ourselves, we would be truly lost.”

For Ignatius, then, when the scriptures say Jesus “ was like us in all things except sin” they do not mean that he embraced our mediocrity, our compliance with evil, our pursuit of success and fame–all temptations he faced in the desert. He was uniquely human. A unique messenger from God.

Human goodness as we know it is weighed down by weaknesses in the best of us. Human behavior as we experience it suffers from their presence.

Christ came that we might imitate him, the “way, the truth and the life.” He offers an example of what we as human beings should be.

Ignatius’ letter indicates a certain forgetfulness of Jesus Christ taking place in his day. The apostles and other eyewitnesses have passed on, and other teachers are taking their place. They have rivals: some are traditional Jews, who are enticing Christians  back to the ancient wisdom and practices of Judaism. Others are from popular religious and philosophic groups, like the gnostics,  a rising power who taught then.

What Ignatius’ time needed were Christian leaders with links to the first followers of Jesus and could vouch for him and pass on their witness, especially through the gospel writings that reported what he said and did. “What was he like?” “What did he say?” “What did he do?” The gospels had recently been written.

“Be convinced of the birth and passion and resurrection which took place at the time of the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate; for these things were truly and certainly done by Jesus Christ, our hope, from which God grant that none of you be turned aside.”

Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch are key figures in our Church. Both not only taught about Jesus Christ but imitated him in their deaths. Later Christian writers recognized their importance. In the late 2nd century, Irenaeus wrote:

“Polycarp was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna by apostles in Asia…He always taught what he had learned from the apostles, and the Church has handed down that teaching which alone is true. His successors testify to this. ( Adversus Haereses. Book III, Chapter 4, Verse 3 and Chapter 3, Verse 4)

Tertullian wrote about AD 208:

“Heresies are novelties with no connection to the teaching of Christ. Some may claim they come from apostles. We say: where did your church come from? Give me a list of your bishops from now till the apostles or to some bishop appointed by him. The Smyrnaeans go back to Polycarp and John, and the Romans to Clement and Peter; let heretics come up with something to match this.” (De praescripione heret.)

It was a dangerous century, a transitional time, when big changes were taking place. Maybe we’re facing something like it today?

Rembrandt

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Among the books we have in our library are some art books from the years when The Sign Magazine was published here and books were accumulated for their illustrations. One of them is “Rembrandt’s Drawings and Etchings for the Bible.”

Though he’s known best for his portrayal of the Dutch world of his time, Rembrandt was very interested in stories from the Bible, both from the Old and New Testament. Possibly one third of his work is devoted to biblical subjects, about 700  drawings among them.

What led him to paint and draw biblical events? It wasn’t mainly a patron’s commission, as was the case of  his contemporaries– Rubens, for instance.  Rembrandt seems genuinely attracted to the bible and felt compelled to draw something from the biblical narrative, not because he could make money on it, but because it said something to him and his situation in life.

“Rembrandt’s relation to the biblical narrative was so intense that he repeatedly felt impelled to depict what he read there. These sketches of Rembrandt have the quality of a diary. It is as though he made marginal notes to himself…The drawings are testimonies, self-revelations of Rembrandt the Christian”  ( p. 6)

It seems he got this interest in the bible from his mother, a devout woman, who had a Catholic prayerbook that featured  the Sunday gospels with illustrations on facing pages. As she prayed from this book, did she show them to her little boy growing up?

His portrayal of the scriptural stories are so insightful. Just look at his portrayal of Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman, which is found in John’s gospel. Jesus deferentially asks for a drink of water, bowing to the woman as he points to the well. And she stands in charge, her hands firmly atop her bucket. She’s a Samaritan and a woman, after all. He wont get the water until she says so. Jesus looks tired, bent over by the weariness of a day’s long journey.

Certainly, this is no quick study of a gospel story. Obviously, Rembrandt has thought about the Word who made our universe and the Savior who came to redeem us. Perhaps he’s also thinking of the way Catholics and Protestants were clashing among themselves, their picture of Jesus a strong, vigorous warrior. There he stands humbly outside a little Dutch village that the artist’s contemporaries might recognize. Some of them may be pictured looking on at the two.

Artists have a powerful role in relating truth and beauty.

And what about Rembrandt’s mother? A 19th century French Sulpician priest, Felix Dupanloup, who had a lot to do with early American Catholic catechetical theory said,

“Till you have brought your children to pray as they should, you have done nothing.”

Looks like she did her job.