Keynotes for July 2007

July 1, 2007
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

1Kings19:16b,19-21
Galatians5:1,13-18
Luke9:51-62

Paul tells the Galatians to stand firm and not to submit again to the yoke of slavery. "For freedom Christ set us free," he proclaims; "you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters." When we think about freedom, what usually occurs to us is freedom FROM certain things: freedom from an oppresive job, freedom from family problems, freedom from taxes, tornadoes, cancer, and dementia. Flesh wants many "freedoms from." But the freedom Paul is talking about is a freedom TO. . ., to pursue without exception the designs of God, to assist others, and to become the persons of eternity we were born to be. The human spirit needs many "freedoms to.".

Along Jesus' journey to Jerusalem several unidentified bystanders offer to follow him. But notice that each of their offers has strings attached. They first must be free from family ties, for the saying of goodbyes, even so as to see the relatives to their graves. These would-be followers seem to have scant notions of the second kind of freedom. Their "freedoms-from" are their pre-conditions. When we consider what Jesus did for us, we must realize that he gave us a greater measure of BOTH freedoms. Our natures are relieved of the pressures of original sinfulness and of tendencies to be drawn into sin. By paying the price with his blood, Jesus gave us reasonable countermeasures, as it were, against temptations. In that sense our thralldom to concupiscence has been modified. But we are also free to exercise new potentials within ourselves. With newly acquired faith we can be more proactive at endeavors we previously thought impossible. Our new freedom opens to us ways that we might set higher examples to our family, friends and neighbors. Now we are empowered to bring new order to others' lives, to show greater mercy, to forgive unreservedly, to make lasting peace.

The unfettered volunteer has young Elisha for a model. Elisha takes Elijah's investiture of himself with the mantle as a sign that he is to be Elijah's successor. But when Elijah's cavalier indifference ostensibly puts Elisha to the test, Elisha makes the decisive move to sacrifice irrevocably the very means of his livlihood so he can have total freedom to follow the senior prophet. For Elisha there were no conditions, no prerequisites and no turning back.

Jesus acts in similar fashion. In today's gospel he decides to journey to Jerusalem, resolutely, says Luke. Here is patent evidence of his fierce determination to set us free. He envisions the hardships in his path ahead, but these do not deter him. The sacrifice will be worth it, because it will liberate us and put us above "biting and devouring one another." We in our struggles, on the other hand, are tempted to call fire from heaven down upon our opponents, as was the apostles wont. But Jesus is ever wary of such snares of the flesh. He knows that such actions will only pull us back into spiritual slavery. Throughout this passage from Luke, Jesus' unwavering determination makes the cagey Elijah look even more vascillating. To one prospective adherent Jesus shot back, "the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." Its his way of saying, If you still expect freedom from discomfort, don't bother. Shelters are for those concerned about a respite from exhaustion or severity of the weather. "Freedom to" begins with a mind fixed on the objective and a singularity of purpose. In the last sentence of the passage this intent is rendered unmistakable:

No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was
left behind is fit for the kingdom of God

If we are to be worthy of admission to his fellowship, Jesus wants you and me to don the mantle of the proactive loyalist and stay the course. This avenue offers us a freedom greater than most of us dare to reach for. Quite often we are going to be lured back into the role of distractor/self-seeker, like the bystanders outside Samaria. But suppose for a minute that our efforts at thwarting Jesus from Jerusalem were to succeed. How then could we ever attain freedom in any sense?

July 8, 2007
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah66:10-14c
Galatians6:14-18
Luke10:1-12,17-20

Today we consider evangelization, and the tests of its fulfillment.

Jesus' campaign for the salvation of the world must inexorably run its course. In today's gospel he sets forth a prescription for travel, visitation, preaching and healing that he wants seventy two selected disciples to follow. We can view it as a kind of boot camp from which all subsequent evangelists might acquire some training and instruction. At first the mission incites ardor and enthusiasm in them. They discover unrealized talents for curing people and driving out demons; they are bedazzled by their own power over snakes and scorpions. But they also have to deal with the grim realities of unsatisfied hunger, frustration, and rejection. When the lambs sense they are being circled by the wolves, their lack of sticks and sacks, sandals and money must make them feel very vulnerable.

This was the phase of Jesus' campaign that Paul knew best. He went back into the fray day after day, year after year, bent on convincing his own people and others that crucifixion, which the Jews considered a sign of God's ultimate curse, was instead THE sign by which they must boast. Be proud of that crucifixion which Jesus underwent, he keeps shouting. It is the means he chose in order to save us and the sign of our redemption. Imagine what would have happened had the seventy two, going forth before Jesus death, tried to spread that kind of "good news." Evangelization had to undergo stages of development before man's ingenuity for torture could eventually put the cross itself to the test. By the time Paul finished his contribution to the volumes of world preaching, the cross had indeed begun to put humanity on trial. Thus we come to understand that there can be no evangelization without testing, and no fulfillment without sufferance of the discomforts that evangelization brings. This is the way Jesus set it up.

In the end our reward will come, and it will be something like Isaiah's prediction, a heavenly Jerusalem extending the maternal affection of her welcome-back to all her progeny. She will lavish upon them one more time all the nourishment, prosperity and comfort they once enjoyed as children. So today we grasp the cycle and realize that what Jesus founded cannot be thwarted. We simply have to decide, you for yourself and me for myself, is the reward going to be worth our travail through the testing? Maybe I should just take a seat on the sidelines, and leave the spreading of the good news to others. After all, being a patient guest, accepting gratefully whatever the host offers, seeking out peaceful persons, and "stamping off the dust" wherever I am not welcomed, these actions seem to hold neither the promise of excitement nor the prospect of much imaginable reward. But then, what if my name has already been added to those "written in heaven," and now, by dropping out, I should let it be erased? Perhaps the conclusion for any and all of us should be this: spreading the gospel is not so much a spectacular neutralizing of Satan, like causing lightning to fall from the sky, but more a matter of bearing silently the marks of Jesus on our bodies.

July 15. 2007
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deuteronomy30:10-14
Colossians1:15-20
Luke10:25-37

It is in God's very nature to help people. His capacity is infinite, the variety of His resources are boundless, and His willingness to help is a constant. We humans, on the other hand, even though made in His image and likeness and prone to regard ourselves as helpful beings, we are actually of a different nature. Our situation is almost the reverse of His. First off, we cannot reciprocate with God because He needs no help. He is the absolute and supremely self sufficient Being. Thus, we are left to the helping of one another. Moreover, our capacities are very limited; our ways and means, sometimes meagre and confined; our willingness to help others mostly falters under the burdens of just doing for ourselves. But this is precisely where the good Samaritan in Luke's gospel and Paul's word to the Colossians inject a great encouragement. Paul arouses in the Colossians a tremendous hope from the good news of Jesus Christ already instilled in their hearts. This would be the hope of leading joy-filled, productive lives, the hope of learning to love God through loving others, the hope of being saved into an everlasting life. And Paul prays fervently that his listeners not allow themselves to be shaken from this hope.

In Luke's account, the story invented by Jesus is an imaginary, hypothetical case. But Jesus has a reason for each of the cast members he chooses. He deliberately draws the dispenser of the extraordinary saving help from a despised minority, so as to filter for self-examination at the outset whatever prejudices the apostles (or we ourselves) might harbor. Then, so as to emphasize resources, personal capability, and the extent of his willingness to provide for the man beaten by robbers, Jesus has the Samaritan 1)administer first aid, 2)provide ambulance service, and 3) prepay the cost of medical attention, and 4)arrange for his extended stay at an urgent care facility. From that there can be no question as to who is the victim's neighbor. But that's not the point. What Jesus wants us to confront are our own capacities, our possessions in reserve, and our willingness to share-- every time a chance to help comes our way. Do you and I ever regard ourselves as having stockpiles of generosity as huge as the Samaritan's? Jesus does. Otherwise he would not have said, "Go and do likewise." He who was "the firstborn of all creation," to use Paul's words, he took on human flesh and blood and lived among us on this earth. It was the One in whom "were created all things in heaven and on earth" who awakens in ourselves a capacity for kindness and donation that we could not have imagined otherwise. The range and variety and power of our human resources comes home to us when we consider that

He is the beginning, the first born from the dead,
that in all things he himself might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.

His rising from the dead and assuming a presence that encompassed all of creation was done not for himself, we come to realize, but so that we might lavish his healing graces upon our peers and the rest of humankind. It is through him that we reconcile all things for him. Thus the lending of our hands, the coming to the aid and assistance of our needy brethern flows from spirits striving to satisfy certain compulsions way beyond those of the Samaritan. The blood of his cross pushes our hopes of helping one another to such intensity as to where we can virtually see the Godlike nature of what we do. We have to nod an assent to Moses when we hear him say, "For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you."

So, having discovered our true abilities and readiness, we must now keep a close monitor on our willingness, for our wills are ever so volatile and pivotal. Reminders from the parable are the priest and the Levite, who deliberately crossed to the other side of the road.

July 22, 2007
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Genesis18:1-10a
Colossians1:24-28
Luke10:38-42

Christ in ourselves and we perfected in Christ--this is the ideal hidden in a mystery from all ages and generations past, but revealed to Paul, the Gentiles and the Colossians. Thomas Merton illustrates the mystery in this manner:

As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper,so the mystery of Christ in the gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. . . Through the glass of His Incarnation He concentrates the rays of His Divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.
New Seeds of Contemplation,150.

Many go about their lives oblivious to this experience; others show signs of its working within them, and a few become genuinely excited or even consumed by it. Martha, "burdened with much serving," might exemplify the first category. As she goes about her chores, the privilege of stewardship seems to have become a drudgery for her. It is pretty obvious that she feels she is dishing out more than her share of the hospitality. Even though Jesus is present to her body, soul and spirit, Martha does not come aglow from any divine rays.

Abraham is a more animated example. He visibly delights in the opportunity to show his finest welcome. And to whom? To God, to his family, to friends?. No, to wayfarers, total strangers! He literally runs out, bows to the ground and begs them not to pass him by. In expectation of what? Some reward for himself? No, simply that he might enjoy the giving of his own choice steer and of his wife's best baking. He even waits upon them as they eat. Is this not someone who lives much closer to the concentrated rays of the mystical experience? And how does the Lord show approval for Abraham's extraordinary generosity? Though well beyond their childbearing years, He sends them a son who will become progenitor of a vast nation.

Next there is Mary. She revels in the opportunity for a face-to-face, eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart talk with her Master, and consequently she is gifted with "the riches of the glory of this mystery." How often are you and I offered the same invitation? Do we shy away from rays of too much intensity? Instead we feverishly chase those many things that induce worry and bring on anxiety attacks. Routinely our prayer is more like: "Lord, this is a burden greater than I can take on. Please get someone to help me" when in fact we could all be Abrahams, filled with the fervor, singing "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord," and seizing every chance to spread God's bounty.

Lastly comes Paul, who does surely "feel the burn" of the mystical experience. He readily admits to rejoicing in his sufferings, and to "filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ or behalf of his body, which is the church." These testimonies have to be coming from a great agitation within himself. Yes, he is excited, flabberghasted if you will, at the prospect of God's stewardship, hidden from previous ages, and now being laid upon his shoulders.The whole of his message pleads with us to invite Christ in. After Paul's experience there can be no question.The mystery of God's intense rays, focused through Christ upon our hearts, kindle such perfection in ourselves as will be the better part, if we but choose it.

July 29, 2007
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Genesis18:20-32
Colossians2:12-14
Luke11:1-13

What if you were, just once, to sit down and add up all the promissory notes you ever signed? You know, for cars, furniture, student loans, mortgages, health care, co-borrowers. Most people, I think, would be staggered by the total. Then what about all the SINS we have committed in our lifetimes? That debt, represented by a single pile of cash, would make a telling artifact, like ALL our personal misdeeds stacked up into one monument. Such a mass of unrequited offenses so graphically displayed might prove overwhelming. If we had the determination to do an objective assessment of our own transgressions, then maybe the "sin so grave" of Sodom and Gomorrah would look a lot less scandalous. We expect the legendary dens of iniquity to incite some horrendus retaliation from God, yet we are also aware that He keeps giving in to Abraham, the daring negotiator, for Abraham has that keen sense of the softest spot in God's heart. He knows it is owned by those last ten innocent people. And among these will be found the one who is himself most willing to forgive and to ask for forgiveness.

Yes, if we were to muster the bravado to collect the sins of our many years into one account, that could make us despondent and reel us off into despair. Paul knows that the hyperbole of "you were dead in transgressions" is an upsetting thing to say, but he deliberately goads the Colossians to face the enormity of their offenses. Before Jesus buried us in his baptism and then brought us to new life, our credit with our Creator was dismal. Our plight was desperate. But Jesus tore up the bond against us with its legal claims. This is like saying he took the written document and deliberately obliterated it, erasing each letter one by one. When he nailed it to the cross, he erected, as it were, a humongous global billboard that did a broadcast worldwide of his new doctrine of forgiveness. It touched off an avalance of plenary indulgence beyond the sum of mankind's dreams.

If we had nerve enough (and time) to examine the whole long list of our offenses, from heinous crimes to petty picadillos, then it should come as no shock to hear Jesus address us as "you who are wicked." Au contraire, by laying down his very life for us, he showed more confidence in us than Abraham the bargainer had in God. Jesus is aware of that potential soft spot in our hearts for the disadvantaged, the disabled, the victim of misfortune. In the prayer improvised by himself he authorizes us to say: "as we ourselves forgive everyone who is beholden to us." But how often and to whom do we say it? Monetary obligations merely scratch the surface of human relationships. Some deeper balance must be struck. Have I ever had a legal debt that was flat cancelled out? And how do I regard those IOU's owed to me by others? When others offend me, how eager am I to say in response, "Let bygones be bygone"? And what about those deeper grudges that I still continue to nurse? Is the strife, the hurt, the pain I have absorbed really anything compared the raw anguish I have inflicted upon my peers? Am I truly as willing to to seek forgiveness as I am to pardon? Today Jesus teaches us

For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Whatever our petitions, when we confidently pray the words: "do not subject us to the final test," then, no matter how black the hole of our million vices, it will be our penchant for begging, pleading, asking, like the torque of Abraham's ratchet, that will find its way to the Lord's soft spot. Why? Because it will be driven by our own willingness to say to our offenders, "Forgiven--forgotten--forever." Moreover and above all this, it will well up from our prostrated sorrow before those we have injured, with such words as "I hope you can forgive me."