Keynotes for March 2008

March 2, 2008
Fourth Sunday of Lent

1Samuel16:1-b,6-7,10-13a
Ephesians5:8-14
John9:1-41

The apostles, the Jews and the Pharisees were all pretty good at mistaking God's intentions and limiting His choices. The apostles presumed that afflictions like blindness were payback for some previous sin.The Jews were fanatical about God's desire that nothing interfere with the sabbath rest. The Pharisees made it known that if anyone acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, he would be expelled from the synagogue. The elders could not accept the healing powers of Jesus because they did not know where he was from. Repeatedly it's the sin of confinement, of humans putting their own restrictions on the infinite wisdom, the power and the goodness of the Supreme Being. And brothers and sisters, if we think the people of Jesus' time were good at it then, we ought to be taking a hard look at ourselves now.

This Sunday Paul encourages us to, "Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth. "Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord," he says. In the Lord's perview, the primordial darkness that He changes into light is composed of our selfishness, ignorance and rebellion. We can discover our own tendencies toward darkness by testing them against the choices which the blind man in the gospel makes. If you are that blind man, standing by the roadside as Jesus and the apostles pass by, you will sense very quickly that you are the subject of their conversation and are about to be recruited for an object-lesson, for your listening skills are extremely sharp. Might this talk of "whose-sin-caused-the-blindness" make you self conscious? self-protective or even resentful? at the very least, cautious about cooperating? (Maybe a first step at sharing God's view point is the knowing and sharing of a handicapped person's feelings).This man offers no resistance. He seems to submit eagerly to the mud and spittle that Jesus thumbs across his eyelids. He also obeys a direct order without the slightest hesitation. But how can he be sure he is not heading into deeper darkness?

Throughout his subsequent interrogations, this man gifted instantaneously with the ability to see, answers every question frankly, openly, honestly. In him there is no subterfuge, which tends to bring out the suspicions in those around him. But how would you handle being called on the carpet a second time? after your parents have ducked and run for fear of social reprisal? Amazingly he first stands up the Jews, and then takes them to task for not listening: "Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?" Where is this sudden audacity coming from? One so long percieved as debilitated, an outcast, a no-account, what could he hope to gain by such an offensive? Lets admit it. Neither you nor I would have the guts to blaze forth from a personal "darkness" like this. Miracle/gift or not, here is a level of righteousness and truth that will measure us cowards. Very likely, I would reason to myself, "Oh, but God would not want me to speak out like that" You see how my diffidence keeps Him confined.

Next, where would you and I get the courage, as this man does, to mount an assault on the Jews' prejudices? What impels him to speak out undaunted, I think, is his knowing 1. that he himself is devout, 2. that he does God's will, and 3. that God hears him. These were the habits that instilled confidence in him long before he was cured of blindness. We discover that the Jews are no match for him because, from an early age, he has been so much more astute at listening. When prompted as to an oath, "Do you believe in the Son of Man," he can scarcely contain his eagerness to respond, "I do believe, Lord." It was not the curing of his blindness that induced his faith; it was his faith that brought about the curing of his blindness. What a beautiful illustration of Thomas Aquinas's lyrics that we sing in the Adoro Te:

Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur
Sed auditu solo, tuto creditur
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius
Nil hoc verbo veritatis verius.

Sight, touch, taste fail Your immanence to perceive
But my hearing, taught by faith, always will believe.
I accept whatever God the Son has said
Those who hear the word of God, by the truth are fed.

Our attempts to find out the will of God for ourselves are called "discernment." And it may take us seven or eight tries, as it took Jesse and Samuel to hit upon David, the one whom God wanted for their next king. Only when we overcome our tendency to judge by appearances, to jump to conclusions, to impose our cherished illusions upon people and situations, only then shall we begin to emerge from the darkness. Only when we open ourselves to the mysteries of how God uses human frailties and shortcomings to advance His kingdom, only then shall we enjoy the confidence to glory in our infirmities and the courage to boast in our handicaps.

Ezekiel37:12-14
Romans8:8-11
John11:1-45

"And Jesus wept," says John.

Jesus was a profoundly compassionate man. We know he also wept for Jerusalem as he prayed for the people from a nearby hillside. While bearing his cross he actually consoled the grieving women along the way, and urged them to weep for themselves and for their children. We also know of Peter's bitter remorse for having denied Jesus three times, of his mother, mater dolorosa, and her sorrow as she took her son's dead body into her arms. Today we hear of Mary's tears, ie., of her drying Jesus' feet with her hair.These people knew what deep feelings Jesus had for them. Yet in today's story, what was going through Jesus' mind? Precisely what could have caused him to be so "perturbed and deeply troubled" when he met the crying sisters of Lazarus, and again when he approached the tomb? Was he shouldering a responsibility for Lazarus' death? Knowing the man was dying, Jesus nonetheless deliberately delayed his own visit until after the man had passed away. Why?

Could he have been feeling an intense outrage, as do our soldiers today when a buddy in their squadron is killed by a sniper's bullet, or blown up by a land mine?

Was it the same sense of futility, of "why did this have to happen?" This is so insanely wrong! Jesus has to stand by while his best friends suffer through their grief; he neither conceals his own hurt nor apologizes. Over and over he repeats the same explanation for his behavior: that all may believe that he is the Savior! He says it first to the objecting Thomas, then so emphatically to Martha when she comes out to meet him, and again to her at the tomb, and once more before he called Lazarus forth:

Did I not tell you that if you believe
you will see the glory pf God?

It is only when Mary repeats the exact words of her sister, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," only then is he so overcome with sorrow that he cannot not bring himself to the insistent message one more time. He just burst into tears.

At the time of Jesus the world looked upon death as a mystery, as it still does today. But people then could see it in only two ways, either as penalty/exit or simply as exit. This is demonstrated most clearly in Socrates' life, in the scene where as he leaves the court. A devoted but dim admirer calls out that the hardest thing for him to bear is that Socrates was being put to death unjustly. What? said Socrates, trying to comfort him. Would you rather I was put to death justly? (Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason, p.142). To Socrates there was nothing more than an "either. . or," either death imposed by government for some crime or vice, or death met by such courage as might preserve one's reputation for virtue. He had no way of knowing about the new take on death that Jesus brought to the world, that is, death as admission to a share in the fullness of divine life. But Jesus faced a tremendous problem: how could he get anyone to accept such a possibility, one so revolutionary and so unheard of?

All of this comes into focus during the events of Lazarus' death and his restoration to life. Looking back today we can see how these events were deemed necessary by Divine Providence 1.to prepare the people mentally for a divine resurrection that was genuine, not fake, and 2. for reinforcement of their faith (and ours) in all of God's ways. Today we think of Jesus as bound to the providential plan for Lazarus even though he saw no way to avoid the anguish it might bring to Lazarus' loved ones. And with no regard for the adverse feelings his own dear friends might later experience because of the suffering he put them through. At the moment Lazarus stepped out of his bandages, the whole scenario could have struck them as histrionics, like a grand rehearsal staged for reasons beyond their ken. But no, this was not playacting. Those tears of Jesus were for real! The sense of hurt and loss, it seems, has to be an indispensable prelude, a means of getting us ready for the magnificent life that God wants to restore us to and share with us. Otherwise that Life, being so inconceivable and unattractive, would remain foreign to us.

A tiny hint of how God-filled souls might live on into eternity comes up in Ezekiel's vision of dead forefathers rising from their graves. "I will put my spirit in you that you may live," promised their God. But this is no more than the danse macabre, a ghostly ritual of ancestors adumbrated in the imaginations of nearly every primitive tribe and culture, a nighttime choreography seen as through a glass, darkly, with the reminder of Jesus' caveat: "if one walks (read dances?) at night, he stumbles." A much bolder and absolutely unequivocal declaration of how the souls filled with God's life will live on into eternity comes from Paul to the Romans:

If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also. . .

Each of us knows how Jesus wept, and each of us will one day hear our name called: "__________, come out!" But that which awaits us then will depend on what we believe now. The choice is up to us, you and me, individually. Therefore,

Let us build the city of God,
may our tears be turned into dancing,
for the Lord, our light and our life,
has turned our night into day.

March 16, 2008
Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

Isaiah50:4-7
Philippians2:6-11;
Matthew26:14-27:66

In Matthew's gospel, two chapters prior to where today's account of the Passion begins, Jesus repeats a warning four times. It is one that would have us recall and reflect on the events of the Passion whenever a major crises comes our way. He says, "See that no one lead you astray," ". . and they will lead many astray." "And many false prophets will arise, and will lead many astray." They "will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." (Matt24:4,5,11,24). These words of caution suggest that in his forthcoming passion Jesus anticipated how the faith of his followers would be assailed from every direction, and few, if any, would withstand the assault. The events of alarm from Matthew are filled with misguidance, truancy, cowardice, disloyalty and outright scandal. We must read them as a course of instruction on how, given similar circumstances in our own lives, we might keep from being lead astray.

Of our hero Paul says ". . .he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Jesus never flinched. Steeled in his conviction to stay the course, he was driven by an adamantine resolve to fulfill the role of Isaiah's suffering servant, even to his last breath:

The Lord God is my help
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
The truths of all previous prophecies converge upon Jesus when he tells his cohort: This night all of you will have your faith in me shaken
for it is written: I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed.

This night the devil was unleashed, and all hell broke loose as he set off blast after blast of mayhem and confusion, scattering everyone and driving them to scurry for cover. Matthew's story of the passion is our opportunity to look for the steadfast ones, and to ask WHY they did what they did. As we watch the cast of characters in action and listen to their testimonies, the unravelling story can prepare us for when the trial turns upon ourselves.

The first group is the band of prosecutors and rabble rousers. A common bond draws together such disparate types as the Sanhedrin, the arresting mob, Pilate, the bloodthirsty crowd, Barabas, the two revolutionaries on their crosses, and the soldiers who crucify, jeer, and cast the dice. How widely they miss the point of God's intent; how flagrantly each diverges from holiness and yet contributes unwittingly to the plan of salvation. Some speculations may be beneficial if we try to imagine ourselves in each of their places, examining their beliefs and motives.

Next come the neutered and impotent apostles. Foremost among them are Peter-in-denial and the conniving Judas. The traitor premeditates his scheme so carefully, and then becomes so upset at the surprising result that he can no longer bear to live with himself. Spontaneous Peter, by contrast, shoots from the mouth: "Though all may have their faith in you shaken, mine will never be," and yet he somehow withstands regrets more horrible than any man should have to live with. The events of the Passion, in seems, reveal in endless exposure an ever-expanding sphere of human aberrations.

In a third group are several who, instead of being steered off course, came forward in one guise or another to lend support to Jesus in his plight. Most obvious was the stranger, one Simon the Cyrenian who willingly carried the cross. Another was Joseph of Arimathea who took charge of Jesus' burial. Still others were the centurion and his men, whose perceptions of this extraordinary scene nudged one of them to admit: "Truly, this was the Son of God." And the saints who rose from their graves and visited many in the city are seen as dramatizing a mysterious purpose to it all.

There is one last group. As the sun begins to set on the windswept Golgotha, some assistants are busily but silently removing the last corpses from the crosses, so that none remains out on that hill during the Sabbath. The Arimathean benefactor likewise goes about his task of wrapping Jesus' body with spices in the clean linens and laying it in his own new tomb. The shadows settle in. The quiet becomes nearly palpable, when the slam of a huge rock against the tomb's entrance suddenly shatters the peace. Joseph departs. "But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary," notes the narrator, " remained sitting there facing the tomb." He omitted just one little detail: that their faces, too, were set like flint.

March 20, 2008
Holy Thursday: Mass of the Lord's Supper

Exodus12:1-8,11-14
1Corinthians11:23-26
John13:1-15

Nihil enim nobis nasci profuit, nisi redimi profuisset.

What good is life to us unless it is life redeemed by Christ? The great Exsultet hymn coming up in the Saturday Easter Vigil proclaims, "There is really nothing for us to be born for, unless we are born to be redeemed." Tonight's liturgy memorializes the mandatum novum, the profound new order of relationships that God from many long ages past kept promising He would confer upon the human race, and finally did. He could not have done this all at once, as with a sudden smack-down, because our human nature is ever so slowly inured, ie. "by prolonged subjection made used to something undesireable," And yes, God's fellowship was, and to many still is, undesireable. He had to give humans time to get habituated, by running the previews of His intimacy through a long line of prophets. He still has to allow us the time necessary to get accustomed to what His Son wanted for us:
And now I give you a new commandment (mandatum novum). . .

As I have loved you,
so you must love one another (Jn13:34).

You want us to LOVE these other guys around this table in the same way you have loved us? Each of us frowns in the faces of several undesireables, and to this day we continue to find this new command hard to live by.

Regarded as "acclimatization" or adjustments to a higher altitude, the lessons in today's readings nevertheless make sense. There were perhaps fifty different ways that God could have released the Hebrew people from the bondage of the Egyptians. The one he chose was the blood-on-the-doorposts method, a most graphic foreshadowing of the ritual sacrifice of His own Son. The Exsultet also announces:

This is our passover feast, when Christ, the true Lamb, is slain
whose blood consecrates the dwellings of all believers.

The hard part for them was to have to pull up stakes so suddenly and drastically. And adhere so strictly to every letter of the instruction. In this test of obedience the Israelites were being pushed to their limits. But the Hebrew God would hold back no punches; he insisted they be engagement-ready: loins girt, sandles on their feet, staff in hand. The gods of Egypt would pay a dismissable price for the Isrealites escape, but the liberation would be seared in the saved peoples' memories for all generations to come. The passage from Exodus concludes:

This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your
generations shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a
perpetual institution.

The avenging angel that God sent through the Egyptian ranks would be a first sign to the Isrealites that they were born to be redeemed.

At the last supper John relates how Jesus washed the disciples feet. A gesture of some sort? No. More like a statement of, Can you grasp what my love for you is doing to you? I wait on you hand and foot only to be bound in turn, hand and foot, to perpendicular timbers, to an asphixiating torture. Well, I can take whatever you have to dish out, but are you able to absorb what I do for you in return? Obviously only in small sips. Definitely only one drop at a time.

A few decades later, when Paul is writing his letters, the Corinthians have already begun to subject the Lord's supper to irreverence. In the lines preceding the excerpt in the Mass, Paul reprimands them for abuses, for using the congregate meal to air their differences, "divisions and factions among you," "Each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk." (18-21). Paul is obviously shocked and outraged, and in the passage quoted he stresses how cherished and precious did Jesus' regard the giving of his very own body and blood to us human beings. Since Paul himself was not present at the last supper, why then does he put so much emphasis on Jesus mandatum: "Do this. . . in remembrance of me"? Now we know. Because it keeps reinforcing that new order of relationships, Jesus' command that we share his love, that we encourage, boost and support everyone who needs it. Actions such as these make so abundantly clear the reasons why we were born.

Apparently God has felt all along that humans are compatible with Himself, or else He would not have created us in the first place. So what makes it so hard for us to find our compatibility with Him? Yes, we are capable of living harmoniously with our fellow man. We do strive to turn ugly situations into agreeable and congenial ones. But it is their obstinancy, their meanness, contempt, derision and cruelty that so often grinds upon us. The process of endearing ourselves to them (or them to us) is agonizingly slow, and continuously taxing of both our endurance and God's patience. But that realization of itself can make us all the more grateful, first for our very existence, and then for that redeeming mandatum that gives our existence a purpose. For, as St. Thomas Aquinas once said, "if this goodness be achieved, nothing is lost; but if this be lost everything is bitterly lost." (Walter Farrell, O.P. My Way of Life, 1952, p.9)

Indeed it can be said without exaggeration, the man deprived of His saving body and blood has truly never lived.

March 23, 2008
Easter Sunday

Acts10:34a,37-43
1Corinthians5:6b-8
Luke24:13-35

"The Christian life," says Father Leonard Foley, "is the transformation of human beings by the power of Jesus' death and resurrection."(Believing in Jesus, p.59) If the power of Christ is not transforming you, you are not truly alive. Today we begin celebrating the season wherein Christ Jesus refashioned natural human life into eternal life. Father Foley, in his discussion of the post-resurrection apparitions of Jesus, takes note of how a "recognition" paradigm brings about this makeover. He says there is first, bewilderment on the part of people who are not expecting anything; then, the initiative of Jesus, enabling them to be aware; finally, their expression of faith (p.57).

We see this pattern unfold when Mary, weeping at the tomb, is met by one she thinks is the gardner. A similar development happens to Thomas, when Jesus confronts him with the indisputable proof of pierced hands and feet. And in today's readings, Peter, Paul and the Emmaus disciples all give testimony to the same experience. When we come to grasp how profound is the change in one human heart, then God's bestowal of Easter upon the whole world begins to loom as a monumental, a most staggering event.That is, the conversion of hundreds into thousands into millions down through the ages is seen as the Resurrection's mega-miracle.

We start by examining any fledgling enterprise, whether it be Alexander's idea to conquer Asia, or the discovery of the atomic fission, or the lift off of a new business, or simply a child's entry into school. In these we tend to gauge whether or not that enterprise will succeed by the amounts of curiosity and control, intentionality, confidence and social capital that we estimate to be invested in it (see Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intellgence, p194 ff.), for these are the engines of HOPE. When God had to gauge whether the Resurrection would succeed in redeeming a sinful world, I suspect He chose to use the same "engines," already implanted in human beings. The curiosity and control are certainly present in Peter's listeners, people who may have caught a previous glimpse of Jesus, maybe even sat before his preaching, and who no doubt heard how "He went about doing good." Peter by his speech and actions is having an influence upon them because they want to be influenced. The Corinthians who form Paul's audience do likewise. With eagerness they choose to imagine themselves at this new seder Passover, putting aside the yeast of malice and wickedness and celebrating a wondrous new feast filled with the divine gifts of sincerity and truth. Paul is always in control.

And the curiosity of the two Emmaus disciples leads to their own rapture. They toss out the leading question,
Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem
who does not know of the things
that have taken place there in these days?

But having reprised the scenario of the crucifixion and the empty tomb, they just as quickly become enthralled with his account of the prophets, their command of his attention bartered away for his capture of their imaginations. The insurgence of hope in all of these hearers is so strong as to seem almost palpable. Each may have started with some bewilderment, but from Jesus' teachings they grow in awareness and confidence as the Spirit enables them.

Intentionality, says Goleman, is "The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective." That Jesus' acts of redemption would have their impact on the human race was never in question.What is exciting to watch is the dawning of competence among his followers, of seeing them move from ineptitude, bewilderment, frustration, to where some tiny embers of confidence glow in their hearts and suddenly burst into flames. From Peter, who underwent terrible remorse after his triple denial, comes forth the steel and stamina to stand before crowds and declare "We are witnesses of all that he did," and to flat out promise forgiveness of sins to those who come to believe in Jesus. From Paul, the former Pharisee and persecutor of Christians, we sense one who recognizes his own hand in the sacrifice of the Pascal Lamb, but also of one who is lifted above a crushing guilt through the use of his own gifts for teaching, preaching, travel and writing, to the point where the crowded churches of Corinth, Ephesus, Colossus, etc. were seizing the words of the gospel en mass and acting upon them with fervor and persistence. And among the many who became disciples during Jesus' public life, what disillusionment and despondency must have followed the crucifixion, only for them to hear from "witnesses. . . who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." Surely among these disciples Thomas had plenty of company.

Yet despite all this adversity, a kind of social capital regenerated their faith, as their faith in turn yielded more social capital, i.e., their relatedness, capacity to communicate and cooperativeness all changing so drastically as to intensify and solidify the bonds of their unity. After Jesus vanishes from the table we hear the two Emmaus disciples checking signals with one another:

Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way
and opened the Scriptures to us?

And we envision exchanges and reinforcements of this kind happening a thousand times over, just in the first year or two after Jesus' ascension, to say nothing of the era in which Peter and Paul finished their careers. The chain reaction of the God-man's victory over death became a world wide explosion of hope and healing, as imagination after imagination seized upon the enterprise, saying to one another, "Yes, this will work! Our champion has won! Now WE can get the job done." Those earliest converts could see, hear, feel, even taste and smell the power of Jesus transforming them. If they could reveal to us today all that happened then, no doubt they would say, "If you don't feel the power, you are not truly alive."

When our weakness causes discouragement
let your compassion fill us with hope
and lead us through a Lent of repentance
to the beauty of Easter joy. (Divine Office. p.318)

March 30, 2008
Second Sunday of Easter

Acts2:42-47
1Peter1:3-9
John20:19-31

In today's readings we have one of the earliest blueprints for stewardship within the church community. Today we learn how stewardship underpins and supports the growth, development, and generational transmission of our faith. It all began with the fellowship among the apostles. A slightly different translation of Acts 2:42 in the Catechism (949)calls this to our attention. Is says, In the primitive community of Jerusalem, the disciples
"devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers."

Notice, it is an expanding group of disciples who begin to imitate and augment the fellowship of the nucleus, the original twelve. A surprising strength and solidarity among them is revealed "on the evening of that first day of the week" in John's account. If we take for granted that they would stick together as a group, then we must ask ourselves what real reason would prompt them to do so, with their leader assasinated and his cause so thoroughly discredited and scattered. The locked doors (not unlike the Cardinals in conclave) served much more to bolster the bonding of their fellowship than to bar the Jews. This meeting, where Jesus materializes to show his hands and his side, contains all the necessary ingredients for a mass launching and sustaining (stewarding) of the Christian Faith: charity, charisms and sacraments. Thomas apparently missed out on the first commissioning to forgive and retain sins, so the belated invitation to him to actually touch the Savior's hands and side reinforces the sacramental nature of that commission. Here is where we witness the Divine One still in a flesh and bone presence, ie, a human conduit of all graces, instituting reconciliation with visible signs, the first of which to become one of the Seven conduits of grace that each subsequent generation of ordained ministers shall conserve, care for and pass on. The Catechism says "the name 'communion' can be applied to all of the sacraments, for they unite the faithful with one another and bind them to Jesus Christ."(950)"Do this in remembrance of me" is his explicit intent that their custodial care be to sustain this communion through the end of time.

The charity of the original fellowship began to spread and to energize the many other disciples and followers who came on board. In an echo of Jesus' assertion, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed," Peter's letter welcomes these newcomers with "Although you have not seen him you love him." He is preparing them for the various trials they might have to suffer, and how these will prove the genuineness of their faith, an idea later amplified again in Catechism remarks: "If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. . . .the least of our acts done in charity redounds to the profit of all." (953) The charity that must constantly permeate the Body of Christ thus entrenched itself beyond our imagining as the essential and indispensable substratum of the new church.

Charisms are the special graces distributed among the faithful of every rank for the building up of the Church (951). These are referred to in Acts as "the many wonders and signs [which] were done through the apostles." One of the most noteworthy occurred in the scene where Peter healed the ankles of the crippled man who then leaped up to run and dance. (Acts3:6-8). Charisms tend to distinguish the gift-bearers among stewards.

Sacraments, charity, charisms--the triad that arose from apostolic fellowship
-- was taken by the ministers as their sacred legacy out of a custodial sense of responsibility.We see the earliest signs in their communal way of life:

All who believed were together and had all things in
common; they would sell their property and possessions
and divide them among all according to each one's need.

The communal way of life laid out the first designs of stewardship. Material possessions came to be regarded as necessary safeguards and even as the treasures by which the faith could be handed on. The Church had determined right from the start that ours must be a poor-in-spirit attitude of detachment:

Everything the true Christian has is to be regarded as a good
possessed in common with everyone else. All Christians should
be ready and eager to come to the help of the needy. . . and of
their neighbors in want. A Christian is a steward of the Lord's
goods. (Catechism, 952)