Friday, 7/1/11
In then First Reading Moses told us, “The Lord set his heart on you, and chose you.” The Second Reading follows that up by saying, “If God so loved us, we also must love one another.”
Those are good thoughts for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. My thoughts have always gone in another direction on this day. I have always remembered Jesus telling Margaret Mary, “Behold this heart that has loved men so much, and has been loved so little in return.” That had me concentrating on the heart of Jesus. It had me stirring up the desire to love him back. I never got far with that, so I welcome the idea that that S. John gives us of showing my love for Jesus by loving other people.
In the Gospel Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” I always thought of a yoke as a kind of wooden harness that fits over a beast’s shoulders, but that’s not it. A yoke is a kind of wooden harness that fits over the shoulders of two beasts!
Jesus tells you he has an opening for you under the other side of the yoke on his shoulders. He invites you to slip under it, and to pull away without kicking back. He wants you to join him by opening your heart to the unfortunate.
This canceled sacrifice of a son was a dress rehearsal for the sacrifice of a son that would be carried out.
Thursday, 6/30/11
The story of Abraham sacrificing his beloved son is a parable rather than the narrative of an historic event. It was on the third day that Abraham and Jacob caught sight of the place for the sacrifice. For the Bible the number three alerts us to the mysterious nature of what it is telling us. The place, Moriah, was Zion’s twin hill that was leveled for the building of the temple. This sacrifice of a son that was canceled there was a dress rehearsal for one that would no be canceled. Here too the son carries the wood for the sacrifice.
The scene in Genesis is a haunting one: the God fearing Abraham, a torch in one hand, an axe in the other, leading the only son who meant more to him than life itself.
For all that dreadful reality, we see the tale as a parable. When the boy asks, “Where is the sheep for the sacrifice?” and when Abraham answers, “God himself will provide the sheep” we see this as the Bible’s foreshadowing the fearful events of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
The story of Abraham sacrificing his beloved son is a parable rather than the narrative of an historic event. It was on the third day that Abraham and Jacob caught sight of the place for the sacrifice. For the Bible the number three alerts us to the mysterious nature of what it is telling us. The place, Moriah, was Zion’s twin hill that was leveled for the building of the temple. This sacrifice of a son that was canceled there was a dress rehearsal for one that would no be canceled. Here too the son carries the wood for the sacrifice.
The scene in Genesis is a haunting one: the God fearing Abraham, a torch in one hand, an axe in the other, leading the only son who meant more to him than life itself.
For all that dreadful reality, we see the tale as a parable. When the boy asks, “Where is the sheep for the sacrifice?” and when Abraham answers, “God himself will provide the sheep” we see this as the Bible’s foreshadowing the fearful events of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
Peter and Paul faithfully handed the teachig of Jesus on to us.
Wednesday, 6/29/11
Today is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. What we particularly celebrate today is what those two did for Christianity in faithfully handing the teaching of Christ on to us. Paul brought that teaching down to earth by carefully mapping the way it applied to human situations. But for all his mastery of the Christian message he acknowledged the superior role of St. Peter.
Yesterday, in honoring St. Irenaeus, we credited him with insisting that the authenticity of Christian teachings can be established by demonstrating that it is in accord with what Peer and Paul taught when they came to Rome. Let me quote a short paragraph from “Irenaeus Against the Heresies.”
“It is in the power of all to contemplate clearly with the tradition of the Apostles manifested throughout the world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the Apostles instituted bishops in the churches, to demonstrate the succession of these men. . . Since, however, it would be very tedious to reckon up the succession of all the churches we will indicate that tradition derived from the apostles of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. It is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church.”
Today is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. What we particularly celebrate today is what those two did for Christianity in faithfully handing the teaching of Christ on to us. Paul brought that teaching down to earth by carefully mapping the way it applied to human situations. But for all his mastery of the Christian message he acknowledged the superior role of St. Peter.
Yesterday, in honoring St. Irenaeus, we credited him with insisting that the authenticity of Christian teachings can be established by demonstrating that it is in accord with what Peer and Paul taught when they came to Rome. Let me quote a short paragraph from “Irenaeus Against the Heresies.”
“It is in the power of all to contemplate clearly with the tradition of the Apostles manifested throughout the world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the Apostles instituted bishops in the churches, to demonstrate the succession of these men. . . Since, however, it would be very tedious to reckon up the succession of all the churches we will indicate that tradition derived from the apostles of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. It is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church.”
Irenaeus traced our Catholic teachings back to Jesus and the Apostles.
Tuesday, 6/28/11
Today is the feast of Irenaeus, a saint worth knowing. Around the year 100 he was born in Smyrna on the shore of the Aegean Sea where as a boy he was devoted to an old priest called Polycarp, who as a boy had been devoted to the Apostle John. He
loved every story about John and Jesus that he heard from that “Grand Old Man, Polycarp.”
Now, the port of Smyrna had a trading relationship with the French city of Lyons, and Irenaeus’s life as a merchant had him moving to Lyons where he found the Christians in confusion. A Christian named Montanus, along with a woman named Priscilla had spent a year with them, telling them versions of the Bible that differed from anything they had heard. Montanus and Priscilla swore they were receiving new Bible stories directly from the Holy Spirit. The Christians of Lyon who believed Montanus broke away, coming to be known as the Montanists.
Irenaeus assured the old Christians that the stories and the teachings they lived by were completely in accord with the tales of Jesus and St. John he had heard from Polycarp. However, he respected the sincerity of the Montanists, and by openness with them he brought them to live at peace with the Christians. His solid foundation in Christianity along with his understanding ways meant so much to all factions that they came together demanding that he become their bishop. He reluctantly accepted, but he was not left in peace.
The Pope heard about Irenaeus’s ability to deal with Christians with odd ideas, and he sent for him to come to Rome to deal with a strange group who were different from the Montanists, and who were splitting Roman Christians into factions.
This strange group were something like astrologers. I understand Astrology to be a belief that the stars and planets by their relative positions communicate good and bad news to people. This Roman group went further than that. They were saying that angels of more and less power controlled the stars and planets, and they were communicating new versions of the Bible to their followers. They produced several new gospels that conflicted with what had been handed down through the Church.
Those people were known as the Knowing Ones. The Greek word for “I know” is gnosco. They remind me of three-year-old girls who get the idea they can’t be told anything new. Whatever you say to one of them she insists, “I know. I know.” In Greek that would be, “Gnosco, gnosco.” Those Romans were called Gnostics.
Irenaeus spent a few years visiting with groups of Gnostics, reporting on what they were saying, leaving us more than a hundred pages of notes that gathered in a book is called, “Irenaeus Against the Heresies.”
His great service to the Christian cause is that he was a direct link to John and Jesus through Polycarp. As such he established the value of Christian teachings that have been handed down from the Apostles, assigning special value to traditions handed down from Peter and Paul in Rome.
Today is the feast of Irenaeus, a saint worth knowing. Around the year 100 he was born in Smyrna on the shore of the Aegean Sea where as a boy he was devoted to an old priest called Polycarp, who as a boy had been devoted to the Apostle John. He
loved every story about John and Jesus that he heard from that “Grand Old Man, Polycarp.”
Now, the port of Smyrna had a trading relationship with the French city of Lyons, and Irenaeus’s life as a merchant had him moving to Lyons where he found the Christians in confusion. A Christian named Montanus, along with a woman named Priscilla had spent a year with them, telling them versions of the Bible that differed from anything they had heard. Montanus and Priscilla swore they were receiving new Bible stories directly from the Holy Spirit. The Christians of Lyon who believed Montanus broke away, coming to be known as the Montanists.
Irenaeus assured the old Christians that the stories and the teachings they lived by were completely in accord with the tales of Jesus and St. John he had heard from Polycarp. However, he respected the sincerity of the Montanists, and by openness with them he brought them to live at peace with the Christians. His solid foundation in Christianity along with his understanding ways meant so much to all factions that they came together demanding that he become their bishop. He reluctantly accepted, but he was not left in peace.
The Pope heard about Irenaeus’s ability to deal with Christians with odd ideas, and he sent for him to come to Rome to deal with a strange group who were different from the Montanists, and who were splitting Roman Christians into factions.
This strange group were something like astrologers. I understand Astrology to be a belief that the stars and planets by their relative positions communicate good and bad news to people. This Roman group went further than that. They were saying that angels of more and less power controlled the stars and planets, and they were communicating new versions of the Bible to their followers. They produced several new gospels that conflicted with what had been handed down through the Church.
Those people were known as the Knowing Ones. The Greek word for “I know” is gnosco. They remind me of three-year-old girls who get the idea they can’t be told anything new. Whatever you say to one of them she insists, “I know. I know.” In Greek that would be, “Gnosco, gnosco.” Those Romans were called Gnostics.
Irenaeus spent a few years visiting with groups of Gnostics, reporting on what they were saying, leaving us more than a hundred pages of notes that gathered in a book is called, “Irenaeus Against the Heresies.”
His great service to the Christian cause is that he was a direct link to John and Jesus through Polycarp. As such he established the value of Christian teachings that have been handed down from the Apostles, assigning special value to traditions handed down from Peter and Paul in Rome.
Irenaeus traced Catholic teaching back to Jesus and the Apostles.
Tuesday, 6/28/11
Today is the feast of Irenaeus, a saint worth knowing. Around the year 100 he was born in Smyrna on the shore of the Aegean Sea where as a boy he was devoted to an old priest called Polycarp, who as a boy had been devoted to the Apostle John. He
loved every story about John and Jesus that he heard from that “Grand Old Man, Polycarp.”
Now, the port of Smyrna had a trading relationship with the French city of Lyons, and Irenaeus’s life as a merchant had him moving to Lyons where he found the Christians in confusion. A Christian named Montanus, along with a woman named Priscilla had spent a year with them, telling them versions of the Bible that differed from anything they had heard. Montanus and Priscilla swore they were receiving new Bible stories directly from the Holy Spirit. The Christians of Lyon who believed Montanus broke away, coming to be known as the Montanists.
Irenaeus assured the old Christians that the stories and the teachings they lived by were completely in accord with the tales of Jesus and St. John he had heard from Polycarp. However, he respected the sincerity of the Montanists, and by openness with them he brought them to live at peace with the Christians. His solid foundation in Christianity along with his understanding ways meant so much to all factions that they came together demanding that he become their bishop. He reluctantly accepted, but he was not left in peace.
The Pope heard about Irenaeus’s ability to deal with Christians with odd ideas, and he sent for him to come to Rome to deal with a strange group who were different from the Montanists, and who were splitting Roman Christians into factions.
This strange group were something like astrologers. I understand Astrology to be a belief that the stars and planets by their relative positions communicate good and bad news to people. This Roman group went further than that. They were saying that angels of more and less power controlled the stars and planets, and they were communicating new versions of the Bible to their followers. They produced several new gospels that conflicted with what had been handed down through the Church.
Those people were known as the Knowing Ones. The Greek word for “I know” is gnosco. They remind me of three-year-old girls who get the idea they can’t be told anything new. Whatever you say to one of them she insists, “I know. I know.”
In Greek that would be, “Gnosco, gnosco.” Those Romans were called Gnostics.
Irenaeus spent a few years visiting with groups of Gnostics, reporting on what they were saying, leaving us more than a hundred pages of notes that gathered in a book is called, “Irenaeus Against the Heresies.”
His great service to the Christian cause is that he was a direct link to John and Jesus through Polycarp. As such he established the value of Christian teachings that have been handed down from the Apostles, assigning special value to traditions handed down from Peter and Paul in Rome.
Today is the feast of Irenaeus, a saint worth knowing. Around the year 100 he was born in Smyrna on the shore of the Aegean Sea where as a boy he was devoted to an old priest called Polycarp, who as a boy had been devoted to the Apostle John. He
loved every story about John and Jesus that he heard from that “Grand Old Man, Polycarp.”
Now, the port of Smyrna had a trading relationship with the French city of Lyons, and Irenaeus’s life as a merchant had him moving to Lyons where he found the Christians in confusion. A Christian named Montanus, along with a woman named Priscilla had spent a year with them, telling them versions of the Bible that differed from anything they had heard. Montanus and Priscilla swore they were receiving new Bible stories directly from the Holy Spirit. The Christians of Lyon who believed Montanus broke away, coming to be known as the Montanists.
Irenaeus assured the old Christians that the stories and the teachings they lived by were completely in accord with the tales of Jesus and St. John he had heard from Polycarp. However, he respected the sincerity of the Montanists, and by openness with them he brought them to live at peace with the Christians. His solid foundation in Christianity along with his understanding ways meant so much to all factions that they came together demanding that he become their bishop. He reluctantly accepted, but he was not left in peace.
The Pope heard about Irenaeus’s ability to deal with Christians with odd ideas, and he sent for him to come to Rome to deal with a strange group who were different from the Montanists, and who were splitting Roman Christians into factions.
This strange group were something like astrologers. I understand Astrology to be a belief that the stars and planets by their relative positions communicate good and bad news to people. This Roman group went further than that. They were saying that angels of more and less power controlled the stars and planets, and they were communicating new versions of the Bible to their followers. They produced several new gospels that conflicted with what had been handed down through the Church.
Those people were known as the Knowing Ones. The Greek word for “I know” is gnosco. They remind me of three-year-old girls who get the idea they can’t be told anything new. Whatever you say to one of them she insists, “I know. I know.”
In Greek that would be, “Gnosco, gnosco.” Those Romans were called Gnostics.
Irenaeus spent a few years visiting with groups of Gnostics, reporting on what they were saying, leaving us more than a hundred pages of notes that gathered in a book is called, “Irenaeus Against the Heresies.”
His great service to the Christian cause is that he was a direct link to John and Jesus through Polycarp. As such he established the value of Christian teachings that have been handed down from the Apostles, assigning special value to traditions handed down from Peter and Paul in Rome.
One bad appple can ruin a barrel, but ten good men can save a town.
Monday, 6/27/11
In the First Reading God visited Abraham at the pine grove of Mamre, and he told Abraham that he had heard such terrible things about the towns of Sodom and Gomorra that he was going down to see, and if the reports proved true he would completely destroy the two towns.
In the First Reading God visited Abraham at the pine grove of Mamre, and he told Abraham that he had heard such terrible things about the towns of Sodom and Gomorra that he was going down to see, and if the reports proved true he would completely destroy the two towns.
Abraham had a nephew who along with his family had settled in Sodom, so he set out to persuade God to spare the sinful town. Saying that God certainly would not want to hurt good people, Abraham asked God to spare the town if he found fifty just men there. God agreed, for the sake of the fifty he would spare Sodom.
Seeing he had succeeded, Abraham began to (pardon the expression) jew God down. Would he spare the town if only forty, thirty, twenty were found? God, after agreeing to spare the town if there were ten just men quickly departed before Abraham could twist his arm any further.
We are always hearing how a few bad people can corrupt the whole assembly, how one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel. This Bible story tells us the opposite is true: the presence of ten good souls has the power to save a corrupt mass.
Abraham gave us a fine lesson on being hospitable.
Saturday, 6/25/11
The story of Abraham in the first reading is a lesson on being hospitable. It invites us to re-read the passage to find how many gracious things Abraham did for his guests. Here is my count.
First, he was not too self-absorbed to notice men who needed a welcome. Second he ran to greet them. Third, he said they would be doing him a favor by stopping. Fourth, he had them rest in the shade. Fifth, he brought water to soothe their feet.
Sixth, he had Sarah prepare an abundance of bread, and seventh he had a servant roast a whole steer. Eighth he had curds and milk prepared. Ninth, he waited on the guests himself. (Father Corry always did that with our guests.)
Tenth, while his wife laughed at the notion of them bearing a son in their nineties, he would not dispute with guests. Our reading cuts off before telling us the eleventh nice thing Abraham did for his guests: he accompanied them on their way, as though it pained him to see the last of them.
It's great celebrating St. John the Baptist with all his fans
Friday, 6/24/11
If you are a Red Socks fan at a game in Boston, or a Cardinals fan at a game in St. Louis you get a great feeling from being one of forty thousand all shouting for the cause you are shouting for.
I spent the Feast of John the Baptist in Quebec City one year, and I got a terrific day-long thrill out of being one of thousands of Catholic fans of John the Baptist.
We had spent the night in the grand Hotel de Frontenac, and we were playing Scrabble in the lobby as hundred of old and young, dressed in their best, filed through showing themselves off on their National Holiday. We caught a three P.M. funeral Mass, then, enjoyed its being a week-long lobster fest. The restaurant’s tables were 18 inches wide, and the aisles narrower. The waiters wove their way through, working as a team. A fellow turned over my saucer, a girl following him turned it's cup on to it. A coffee pourer came next, followed by cream. They were very knacky.
In the evening we joined thousands on the grass on the Plains of Abraham, all of us cheered by the four story high bonfire, and by the young men who snatched out burning planks they held aloft running through the crowds.
It’s a great thing to let a saint like John the Baptist emerge from his dark church for a day with the kind of people who came to him in the Jordan.
Living by what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount is a way for building our lives on solod rock.
Our Lord’s parable about the house built on rock brings me back to May of 1954 when I helped build a house that stayed in place through a typhoon.
It was a two-room house with a kitchen. The rooms were nine by nine, the kitchen nine by five. It called for eight end posts under each of which we sunk a big round stone from the stream bed. Peter Choi and his wife and baby were to have one room and Paul Kim and his young wife the other. They would operate their radio and photography shops out of both rooms.
I was there with Peter and Paul for digging the three-foot-deep holes for the rocks and poles, but just Paul and I were up there for thatching the roof. Peter had taken his wife Theresa to her parents’ house to have their baby. That’s when the typhoon hit. The deluge roaring down from the high mountains took out all the houses in the village of Theresa’s parents, and she had the baby high on a hillside. Half our water-soaked church hill slid down, taking with it the police barracks beneath us. But our little house on the eight buried stones held firm.
In Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount the equivalent of the eight stones we sunk into those holes were the main points Jesus made in the sermon: like not only avoiding murder and adultery, but avoiding anger and lust. Like not fasting or praying or giving alms to impress people, but doing them secretly only to please God, deepening our bond with him.
Abraham used the only method he knew to make his pact with God.
Wednesday, 6/22/11
In the first reading Abraham complied with God’s wish to enter into a covenant with him. All of us today: medical workers, police, and teachers are buried so deep in paper work that we have no time for innovative thinking. It should be refreshing for us to read how Abraham, who could not even sign his name, went about setting up the ritual for a covenant with God.
Abraham lived in a time when there were no governments, no police forces. Their population consisted of wandering bands of men and women who owed complete obedience to their leaders. When rival bands arrived at the same watering place or the same grassy meadows, the bands could either fight for the water or grass, or they could make a pact. The way they made their pacts seems animalistic to us.
The bands would hold their distance at the far ends of an open field. Then diggers from both sides would dig the ends of a trench out towards each other. After the trenches met, the workmen would cut goats, rams, and birds in two, leaving the halves opposite each other above the ditch on the sides.
At last, when all those preparations were made, the two tribal leaders each from is own side would hop into the trench, and walk toward each other, all the time calling out, “If we are unfaithful to this pact let me be cut in two like this goat, this ram, these birds.” Afterwards, all fear of each other gone, the two leaders would confer on an equitable division of the water and grass.
In the Bible story Abraham sat at his end of the ditch, waiting for action from the far end. He fell into the same kind of sleep that God put on Adam before removing his rib. After dark, Abraham awoke to see a torch advancing from the far end, touching the animal halves.
What is noteworthy about the story is the way God lowered himself to Abraham’s illiterate level. It tells us that God meets everyone on his level. This goes for infants, schizophrenics and us weak-
minded old folks.
We enter through the narrow gate when we protect ourselves against failure.
Tuesday, 6/21/11
We are all familiar with Our Lord’s advice that we should enter through the narrow gate. We have heard how in ancient walled towns all the coming and going seemed to be through the town’s massive town gateway. The wide road runs right through it, and the town’s leaders had benches in the gateway where they sat, conferring on the town’s business.
Known only to long time residents was a narrow guarded gate at an almost inaccessible spot hidden behind brush on the far side of town.
Wise residents were aware of how when bandits or disease was all about, the town leaders might pull the main gates firmly closed until the danger passed, even though it might take days.
People caught out on such bad days could find their lives in grave danger. To avoid such an eventuality wise men would for long build up the habit of seeking to enter through the narrow gate, and getting to be known by the gatekeeper.
Of course, Jesus was speaking metaphorically. Building up the habit of going around to the narrow gate could mean getting your work done in advance, or having extra sleep and exercise to be in shape for unexpected hard times, or being kind to everyone to avoid ever being without a friend in tough times.
Jesus tells us to avoid being judged by holding back from judging others.
Monday, 6/20/11
In today’s Gospel Jesus gave us two motives for not making unkind judgments of others, and we might add two more to those.
The first motive Jesus gives us for avoiding judging others is that it is a way of protecting ourselves from their retaliating to get even.
Secondly, he says that our own greater fault might render us incapable of seeing the matter clearly. The beam in my own eye may be preventing me from seeing the matter clearly.
The two other motives we could add are these. First, if we have the gift of understanding that insight will let us see that the person couldn’t do any better under the circumstances.
Lastly, we might have enough empathy to want to shy away from hurting the other. That seemed to have been the case with Joe Gargery in Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations.” He said something like, “We wouldn’t want to hurt a poor honest fellow creature, would we Pip old fellow?”
God wants us to learn about him from the Scriptures.
Sunday, 6/19/11
Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. We explain it by saying the Trinity is the mystery of One God in three divine Persons. However, catechism answers like that can give us wrong pictures of our truths.
The word trinity, when we hear it, locks our minds into the number three, which goes against our most fundamental belief that God is One.
The word person is also misleading. “Per-sona” literally meant to make a sound through something. Persons were what they called the various masks worn by a single actor who played several roles in a Greek drama. When we use that word to describe the Almighty we get the picture of God switching masks to play the three different roles of the Father, Son, and Spirit. That does not match up with what Scripture teaches us about God. So, what does Scripture say?
Even in looking at what Scripture says, we might lack the insights to properly understand them. Our two sources for understanding the pertinent Scripture passages are the writings of St. Thomas and the writings of three Greek Fathers of the Church: St. Gregory, St. Basil, and the other St. Gregory.
But, let’s first take a look at the Old Testament. It’s opening words, “In the beginning,” gives us the strong idea of the one God who was there forever and ever before he initiated creation.
The New Testament introduced us to the Son. The Letter to the Hebrews described him as “the very imprint” of God’s being. The Letter to the Colossians called him, “The image of the invisible God.”
St. Thomas Aquinas interpreted those Bible passages by saying that before there was any creation the One God, containing all reality within himself, was alone with his thoughts. Now, the only object his thinking could focus on was himself. So, he saw himself completely, and his thinking never wavered from that picture of himself. It was his “brain child.”
Turning to the Greek Fathers who were of greatest help to us in understanding God, we find that two of them, Gregory and Basil were brothers, and the third one, Gregory of Nazianzus, was a close friend of theirs. As boys the three had studied together in Alexandria and Athens. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa had a most capable older sister named Makrina. Sensing that her brothers and the other Gregory were on to something, she opened her home to them, turning it into the Holy Spirit’s think tank.
Those Greek Fathers saw the mutual love of Father and Son as substantive in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Going on to the First Letter of John’s succinct definition that says, “God it Love,” they pictured the Persons as engaging in an endless exchange of love. They described the interior behavior of the Trinity as one of perachoresus, a word describing three persons holding hands turning in a dance.
Perhaps I am wrong for trying to go beyond the catechism answer, but I think that God in giving us these Scriptural clues was offering us an invitation to know him better, and he is pleased when we accept the invitation.
Jesus spoke against useless worrying that goes around and around in circles.
Saturday, 6/18/11
Jesus asked, “Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”
Yes, of course, life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing, but so what?
What point was Jesus making? Let me tell you how I understand him.
Jesus was saying something like this, “Since the Father was a good enough provider to give you life itself, can’t you trust him to do the lesser thing of giving you your next meal? Likewise, since he was good enough to give you your marvelous body, can’t you trust him to find you something to clothe that body?
Certainly we must make preparations to come by our necessary food and clothing. Jesus wasn’t criticizing us for making wise plans to provide for our needs. No, he spoke of wise stewards and wise women who did well for those in their care. We must plan wisely, but then we should leave all care in God’s hands. What Jesus was against was useless worrying that goes around in circles, accomplishing nothing.
When we indulge in useless worrying we are like children sitting with heads in hands, asking, “What will we have to eat and wear tomorrow?” Such silly kids are insulting their parents who had always provided well for them. And when we let our worrying go around and around in circles we are insulting God who has provided for us all these years.
We can expand our capacity for etrrnal happiness.
In the Gospel Jesus told us to store up treasures for ourselves in heaven. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time picturing what such treasures in heaven would look like. But, back in 1947 I had encounters with two men who took Jesus at his word on this.
My first encounter was with Billy Mayer the summer before he entered the Trappist Monastery. We had our last tennis game together, then we sat and talked. I asked Billy what he would get to eat in the monastery. He told me they had wonderful bread and cheese, and I asked what would happen when he got tired of them.
He looked at me like I was an ill informed Christian, and he said, “Why, that’s when the merit begins.”
The second encounter came two months later in my first year at the major seminary. I noticed how an old priests called Doctor Mee kept coming to the school library for Theology books. Now, he was too old to teach or to go out and preach, so I wondered what good all the study would do him. Our Scripture professor saw the puzzled look on my face, so he asked me what was bothering me.
When I told him I didn’t see why Doc Mee was still studying, he said, “I wondered about that too, so I asked Doc about it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘While all of us will be happy as we can be in heaven, some folks by prayer and study will have expanded their capacity, so they will have much more happiness.’”
It is hard to say one Our Father without distraction
Thursday, 6/16/11
I like the story about St. Bernard and the Lord’s Prayer.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, back in the eleven hundreds, was riding up into the Alps to give a retreat. In passing a farmer he heard a grunt, and he stopped to look down at the him. The man followed the grunt by saying, “I envy you, with nothing to do but pray while I have to kill myself working in this rocky soil.”
“Well,” the saint said, “Praying can be even harder work that digging around those stones.”
“I doubt that very much,” the man said, “With that beautiful horse and the gorgeous saddle, what do you know of hardship?”
Up till then Bernard hadn’t given any attention to his mount. He said, ”It is a beautiful horse, isn’t it? I’ll tell you what, if you can say the Lord’s Prayer from beginning to end without taking your mind off it, I’ll give you this horse.”
We must take every opportunity for deepening our love with the Father.
In this Gospel Jesus told us to avoid making a show of it when we are giving alms, fasting, or praying. We might think that the big point he is making is that we should not be hypocrites, but there is something more important than that here.
What does Jesus say will happen if we avoid making a show of our good behavior? He says, “Your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”
Looked at another way, Jesus was telling us that having people think well of us is less important than pleasing the Father. In other words, what is of most value to us in this life is to have an ever deepening personal relationship with the Father.
Christ seems to be alone in telling us to love strangers
The last line of the Gospel is off-putting. How are we expected to be perfect? Maybe we don’t even want to be perfect, to be goodie-goodies. Our Lord’s advice becomes more palatable if we note that what Matthew wrote, and what Jesus said, was a little different. The advice was not to be perfect, but to be complete, well rounded, not one-sided.
In my limited experience, Our Lord is alone in telling us to love our enemies. In Korea I became an admirer of the Confucian way of life. I particularly enjoyed standing on the church hill, and looking down on the thirteen hundred kids in the public school yard. Mornings, the principal would stand on a platform, pleading with the children to follow the moral teachings of Confucius.
That moral code was quite specific. It outlined the duties that fall to us in our relationships. There are five sets of duties: those between parents and children, siblings, husbands and wives, teachers and students, subjects and kings.
Where Confucianism falls short of Christianity is in that it puts no bounds on the way you treat unattached persons. People wisely avoid doing business with anyone who might blithe fully cheat them.
The Sermon on the Mount showed how Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets.
Each day for the next two weeks our first reading will be taken from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians; and although it contains some marvelous phrases, on the whole, it only represent’s Paul’s defense of his work. As such, it is not as helpful to us as his First Letter to the Corinthians.
Our Gospels for these two weeks are taken from Chapters Six and Seven of Matthew’s Gospel. They give us a good sampling of the Sermon on the Mount, and it might be helpful for us to review what Matthew was getting at in this most famous of all sermons.
The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in the year 70. Afterwards the conservative Jews settled in the town of Jamnia on the Mediterranean. After licking their wounds, they turned to puzzling out how a religion that had always had the temple as its core could survive without its temple.
They settled on making observance of the Law the essence of Jewish belief. For five hundred years leading up to that time their scribes had been adding precepts to the Law of Moses. Those precepts, known as the Mishna, covered a hundred times more scrolls than the rules recording in the Torah; and their scribes came to value them as highly as the Torah itself. They made up the story that the whole bulk of the Mishna actually came from Moses, and had been handed down orally.
At Jamnia, after they decided on making observance of the Law central to their lives they began looking around at the thousands of devout Jews who had also become devout Christians. They saw that the Jewish Christians had taken to mingling freely with unclean Gentile Christians. The people at Jamnia saw this as contrary to their understanding of Judaism. It had them telling the Jewish Christians they would need to choose to be either Christians or Jews, because they could not be both. The accusation they consistently leveled at the Christians was that their Jesus had come only to destroy the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew began his Sermon on the Mount by quoting Jesus as saying, “I came not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.” From that Matthew, in today’s reading, went on to show us how Jesus was more than faithful to Moses. What Jesus did was to fulfill the Law of Moses, the way secondary education completes the work begun on the primary level.
Before it became our Christian feast, Pentecost marked both the end of the spring harvest and the ratifucation of the Old Covenant.
That day’s great gathering of Jews from all over the Mediterranean area lets us know that before the Spirit came down on the Apostles the day of Pentecost had some non-Christian history. Knowledge of that pre-Christian history adds depth to our appreciation of this great feast.
From a thousand years before the brothers of Joseph sold him down into Egypt, the peoples of the Middle East were celebrating their own version of Pentecost. They always planted grain in November, then, they began their harvesting on the day of the first full moon in spring. That night they would use the first grain for flat cakes mixing no yeast with the dough. After that night, to get their harvest in before the late spring rains, they would work from sun up to sun down for fifty days, getting in the harvest. The word Pentecost meant fiftieth day. On Pentecost they would celebrate the end of the tiring harvesting. They’d party. They’d have weddings.
For the Israelites Pentecost took on a new meaning. The Book of Exodus tells us that they ate their first Passover meal the night of the feast of the unleavened bread. Then they journeyed the length of the Sinai Peninsula over the next seven weeks. On the day of Pentecost they made their covenant with God on the plain in front of Mt. Sinai. It was as though they were completing a spiritual harvest.
When the Spirit-filled Apostles emerged from the upper room they found the streets thronged with visitors. They were celebrating both the anniversary of the Israelite’s covenant with God, and the end of the fifty-day-long back-bending work in the fields.
Our spiritual harvest season began with the Lord offering us the unleavened Bread of the Eucharist. It ends with the Spirit bringing everything together in the minds of the Apostles. They came out from hiding in the upper room, and Peter explained all the Spirit had enabled him to see.
St. Barnabas was really named Joseph. Barnabas was a nickname meaning "Son of encouragement." The Apostles called him that because he was so kind.
Today we honor Paul’s companion, St. Barnabas. He was introduced to us in Chapter Four of the Acts of the Apostles. Born in Cyprus, he was of the priestly tribe of Levi, and he owned property in Jerusalem. He was so complete in his faith in Jesus that he sold his property, turning the proceeds over to the Apostles.
Named Joseph by his parents, this man’s kindness to the needy was so obvious that the Apostles began calling him Barnabas, which literally means “Son of Encouragement.”
When the Apostles received the exceptional news that up in Antioch many Gentiles were coming over to Jesus, they decided that Barnabas was the man to welcome them into the Faith.
Later on the church at Antioch was to send Barnabas and Paul off to spread the Gospel in Asia Minor. They took Barnabas’s nephew Mark with them, but Mark got homesick, and let them. Afterwards when Mark wanted to join them on their next missionary journey Paul and Barnabas split up over the dispute, with Paul having nothing more to do with the young man, but kind Barnabas wanting to give him another chance.
The early Church recognized Peter's special role.
Today’s Gospel tells us that Peter was to have a special role among the Apostles. It is interesting that Peter’s commissioning in John’s final chapter is book-ended by an incident in Chapter One of John’s Gospel. Back then Simon’s brother Andrew brought him to meet Jesus. When Jesus saw him he said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Kephas.” That was the Aramaic word for the kind of rock used for foundations. There is no other instance of its being used as a man’s proper name. The Latin for Kephas was Petrus.
Most people feel that the reason Jesus three times asked Peter if he loved him was that Peter had three times denied him. While going along with that, scholars also point out that great offices were ceremoniously conferred by a threefold formula of bestowal. (There does not seem to be any symbolic difference between Jesus saying feed the lambs and feed the sheep.)
We usually consider these places in John’s Gospel in conjunction with the passage in Matthew where Jesus said, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” They point to Peter’s obvious leading role, as do incidents in the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul’s letters. Church History then confirms the acceptance of the authority of Peter’s successors as bishops of Rome.
I like St. Cyprian’s witness to the pope’s authority. In 255 as bishop of Carthage he was engaged in many debates with Pope Stephen over the pope’s right to choose bishops for North Africa, yet Cyprian wrote a stirring defense of the need for individual dioceses to be in union with Rome if they wanted to belong to the Catholic Church.
When Jesus was praying for the Apostles at the Last Supper he looked over their heads to include us in his prayer.
Let me draw your attention to one idea from each of today’s readings. In the first reading we see Paul using a clever trick, and that makes us feel that there are times when it pays to be tricky.
When Paul arrived back in Jerusalem after a long absence, some conservative Jews, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the bystanders to lay hold of this man who was saying it was right for Jews to mingle with unclean Gentiles. The minor riot that arose had the temple guards bringing him before a full assembly of the Sanhedrin.
Paul displayed his cleverness there. He saw that his accusers were divided between Pharisees and Sadducees, and he knew that they liked arguing over life after death. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead, while the Sadducees opposed the idea. To get attention diverted from himself, Paul loudly announced that he was being detained because as a life-long Pharisee he believed in the resurrection of the dead. This put the Pharisees on his side, bringing the trial to an end.
Let me tell one of my old Korean stories about being tricky. The mayor of our town held that a former pastor has deeded a church lot over to the city. That priest had been shot by Commies, and there was no paper work on the transfer. I wanted to give them the lot, but the bishop told me, “Hang on to that lot with your life.”
About then I got 600 bags of American flour for distribution to the five townships in our parish. With the nuns’ help I put up a big sign that told our hungry townsfolk that the flour would go to the other four townships, but not to ours, because of a legal dispute between the church and the town hall. That had the people shouting down the mayor, and it had him coming up to me, saying, “That lot belongs to the church. I never believed that story about it having been deeded to the city.”
The point in the Gospel that pleases me is the final prayer Jesus offered for his followers. He prayed for those surrounding him, then, he said, “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” When he said that he was looking over the heads of the Apostles, and he was seeing us afar off, and he was including us in his prayer.
Paul put a high value on good, hard work.
St. Paul had made three journeys through the land that is now the peninsula of Turkey. In today’s reading he was saying his last goodbye, and feeling deeply about it.
He was able to boast, “I never wanted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You know that these very hands have served my needs and my companions.”
The Gospels didn’t have much good to say about the Pharisees, but Paul’s training as a Pharisee made him quite honorable in one way: as a Pharisee he paid his own way by working at tent making. The Pharisees all had their own trades where they earned their keep, demanding no pay for being Pharisees.
His own example equipped Paul to make others see the value of good hard work. In today’s reading he recommended hard work as our way of having the wherewithal to help the poor. In his Letter to the Philippians he recommended that they live by the motto, “Those who did not work should not be allowed to eat.”
People are getting more out of the Mass these days.
In the Gospel Jesus prayed for his disciples. They were remaining in the world as he was leaving it. They would be in the world, but not of the world.
I first saw this passage behind glass in a frame in 1941. We had a new priest in our parish, Father Jimmy Curtin, and he had Christ’s prayer for priests on the wall in his room. He was a good priest, serving the Church for forty years, turning the school system of the Archdiocese of St. Louis into a fine organization.
Thinking about Father Curtin in 1941 has me looking at our American priesthood over these seventy years. One difference from then that I remember is that except when he was playing golf or mowing the lawn Father Curtin always wore the Roman collar. In fact the expression we had for someone leaving the priesthood was, “He took off the collar.”
The turnout for Sunday Mass was much better in 1941 than what it is today, and the usual thing is for us to say that everything was better then. That is not altogether true.
Saying Mass this morning I had a feeling of things going well. The Mass didn’t belong to just the priest. The people read the Entrance Antiphon. That was an improvement over Father Curtin giving off the Introit with little understanding of the Latin. Today a man came up to do the first reading from the three-year cycle that introduces us to the whole Bible. A lady held the cup at communion time. Father Curtin never gave a homily on a weekday, but there were people nodding at things I said, even chiming in.
Christian Batism takes its full effect even though the person baptizing and the one being baptized are not thinking of what they are doing. They only have to say the proper words when applying the water.
The first reading describes a Christian baptism, contrasting it with the baptism administered by John the Baptist. It says that John “baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Jesus.”
John’s baptism was a sincere gesture of repentance but its value for the individual consisted only in it ability to make him or her sorry for sins and anxious to meet with the Savior. Its worth was emotional. It was not a Sacrament.
The Sacrament of Baptism, what Luke calls Baptism in the Spirit, has the force of enrolling one in the Christian family. Without needing any conscious reaction from the one being baptized (he or she might even be asleep) the Sacrament of Baptism takes its effect.
Neither does its effect depend on the mental state of the one conferring the Sacrament. He need not even be a believer. The Sacrament takes its effect if the water is poured as the one pouring says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
The Feast of the Ascension celebrates the seating of our human nature next to the Father in heaven.
The Feast of the Ascension isn’t what it used to be. For one thing, the bishops have moved it from Thursday to Sunday. For another, it has become difficult for us to picture what happened when Christ was taken up.
In ancient times people imagined God’s heaven to be just above our mountaintops. Jacob saw angels making it there on a long ladder. Christians could image Jesus being taken up through the clouds to where ten miles up angels were waiting to carry him the rest of the way.
On a Sunday television show thirty years ago I watched Jacksonville’s First Baptist Church’s Homer Lindsey telling us that there was a planet out in space to which the body of the risen Lord was taken to rest. That doesn’t seem right to me.
In our Creed we Christians profess belief in the resurrection of our bodies as well as the body of Christ. But, we don’t believe that they will have new addresses on other planets out in space.
Paul, in First Corinthians, Fifteen, tells us we will have heavenly bodies. Let me quote five verses from that chapter.
40. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the brightness of the heavenly is one kind and that of the earthly another. 41 The brightness of the sun is one kind, the brightness of the moon another, and the brightness of the stars another. For star differs from star in brightness.
42. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. 43. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown week; it is raised powerful. 44. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.
Christ’s ascension is of importance to us because in tells us that our human nature is worthy of sitting at God’s right hand.
With the Ascension the Bible story comes full circle. It began with God creating us in his image and likeness. It ends with our human nature enthroned above.
We sing an Easter song as the season closes.
Today’s reading don’t take a hold on me. With the Easter season disappearing, I feel like stirring up some of its feelings.
Perhaps you have heard my story from 1967. The folk singer Ray Repp had a buddy named Mark who was killed in Viet Nam. At Mark’s funeral Ray stood in the sanctuary of the St. Louis Cathedral singing this song he and Mark had composed together.
CHORUS:
I am the resurrection and the life;
He who believes in me will never die.
I am the resurrection and the life;
He who believes in me will live a new life.
I have come to bring the truth;
I have come to bring you life;
If you believe then you shall live.
CHORUS:
I am the resurrection and the life;
He who believes in me will never die.
I am the resurrection and the life;
He who believes in me will live a new life.
I have come to bring the truth;
I have come to bring you life;
If you believe then you shall live.
CHORUS:
In my word all men will come to know
It is love which makes the Spirit grow
If you believe then you shall live.
CHORUS:
It is love which makes the Spirit grow
If you believe then you shall live.
CHORUS:
Keep in mind the things that I have said
Remember me in the breaking of the bread
If you believe then you shall live.
Remember me in the breaking of the bread
If you believe then you shall live.
CHORUS
Jesus has many more good people than bad in our city.
While Paul was in Corinth Jesus appeared to him by night, saying, “I have many people in this city.”
That must have been reassuring for Paul, because Corinth was a place with a bad reputation. Built on a narrow isthmus, both the east and west sides of town were sea ports. On the Aegean side goods from the Orient were unloaded to be carried across Corinth to be shipped across the Adriatic to Venice. That carting through the streets offered opportunities for pilfering. Thievery was not Corinth’s only unholy profession. Many hundreds of young women were employed in temples where sailors appeased Diana and Neptune by intimacies with the ladies. All around the Mediterranean prostitutes were referred to as Corinthian girls.
So, if even in Corinth the Lord had many people of whom he was proud, he must have many more here in Jacksonville. The news media employs itself showing us what evil takes place in a city like this. The limitless good and generous deeds carried out all around us go mostly unnoticed.
My own experience has been most heartening. I ride the busses, and I take long walks through our neighborhoods, and I encounter an endless stream of friendliness and kindness. Jesus could well say, “I have many people in this city.”
When Jesus said he would see us again in a little while did he mean he would see us when he comes to us in union with the Holy Spirit?
People have long puzzled over just what Jesus meant by a “little while.” John quoted Jesus as saying, “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later you will see me.” And, “Because I am going to the Father.”
When will he see them again? Was it on Easter? Perhaps, but on Easter he had not as yet gone to the Father. Was it at the hour of death for each of us? We would see him then, but it would be individually, and he seemed t be speaking to the disciples as a group.
Father Raymond Brown in his two volume commentary on John’s Gospel says scholars and saints have not been able to agree on just what Jesus meant by again seeing his disciples in a little while. He gives his own view, but everyone might not agree.
Father Brown thinks Jesus meant he would see them again when he came on Pentecost as the Holy Spirit. For Father Brown Christ and the Holy Spirit are one and the same God. When the Spirit comes, Christ comes.
Christians of a Pentecostal bent are so used to speaking of the Holy Spirit as a distinct individual that they do not care for Brown’s explanation.
