His vision is so different from ours

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

One final reflection on the beautiful passage I quoted to you last week from the Odes of Solomon.

His love for me brought low his greatness.

He made himself like me so that I might receive him.

He made himself like me so that I might be clothed in him.

I had no fear when I saw him,

for he is mercy to me.

He took my nature so that I might understand him,

my face so that I should not turn away from him.

He made himself like me. How can he make himself like me when I am so much not like him? This puzzles me because I try to make sense of it with my limited intelligence and with my limited ability to see things as He sees them.

I see in a dualistic way: I am different from Him.

He is good; I am not good.

He is sinless; I am sinful.

He is perfect; I am defective.

If I might dare make an assumption, Jesus sees in a unified way. And the unifying principle is His love, His compassion, His mercy, His forbearance, and His eternal will that I one day be united to Him and share totally in His glory. That is what He prayed for before He was betrayed and arrested and put to death:

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24)

And so when the Christ chooses to become like me, all of this is part of that choice, and all of His unfathomable goodness and love is part of that decision.

And again: He does not see the way I see. He does not think the way I think. He does not judge the way I judge. And out of His love he risks becoming human even though it will turn out that human beings will seek to destroy His human nature.

But none of that matters. Still, He chooses to become like you and like me. And we will receive Him, we will be clothed with him, and we will have no fear in light of His limitless mercy.

And so finally, we can heed the encouragement given to us in the first reading from today’s Mass, from the Letter to the Hebrews, to persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. (Heb 12:2)

Pray today for an increase of faith and for the ability to see beyond dualistic appearances.

God bless you!

He is accessible

Monday, January 30, 2017

I continue to reflect on the beautiful passage I quoted to you last week from the Odes of Solomon.

His love for me brought low his greatness.

He made himself like me so that I might receive him.

He made himself like me so that I might be clothed in him.

I had no fear when I saw him,

for he is mercy to me.

He took my nature so that I might understand him,

my face so that I should not turn away from him.

He made himself like me. This eternal, omnipotent and ineffable God who is greater than anything our minds can conceive or imagine, this magnificent Creator God who fashioned us from the dust of the earth and breathed the breath of life into us (and we can be reminded of that every time we breathe), this overwhelming source of Love and Compassion was not satisfied with simply creating us. He yearned from all eternity to united us to Himself in a way that we could finally manage to understand.

And we can only understand what we can see, touch, taste, feel and examine. And so, to become understandable to us, He surrendered his greatness for a time and became one of us. This profound act of self-emptying (kenosis) was sung in the earliest Christian communities and it has come down to us in the Letter to the Philippians:

Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in the likeness of men.

Notice the close relationship between this passage in Philippians 2:5-7 and the passage from the Odes of Solomon.

God made himself like me so that I could receive him.

No one is obligated or required to plumb the depths of theological inquiry or to master any formulas more complex than this simple statement. Like I said above, what we can see and touch, we can understand. And so Jesus is available to you and me; Jesus God is accessible to you and to me. And we are reminded by the sacred authors of the New Testament that during His time on earth He was as accessible as anyone you may know, as the ones you love, and as anyone you might be moved to serve. Consider, if you will, the opening lines of the first letter of John:

That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon and touched with our hands,
concerning the word of life--
the life that was made manifest,
and we saw it, and testify to it,
and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father
and was made manifest to us.

Remember that the next time you go to communion. In Eucharistic form you see Him, and you touch Him and you taste Him and you take Him to yourself, because that Eucharist is flesh and blood, and so knowing that He was only to spend a limited amount of linear time on earth, Jesus arranged a way that we could continue to have direct access to him in the most personal and intimate way.

Consider that, especially when you feel like you are far from him.

Blessed day to you!

He is mercy to me

Friday, January 27, 2017

“I had no fear when I saw him,

for he is mercy to me.”

This comes from a second century Jewish-Christian text known as The Odes of Solomon.

Think of that moment sometime in the future when you and I will actually be standing before Jesus Christ and seeing Him for the first time. I think my immediate reaction would be to repeat the words of Saint Peter when the Lord had told him to cast his nets into the sea and he hauled in so many fish that the nets were breaking: Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. (Luke 5:8) Standing before Jesus, I would be so aware of my unworthiness, of all the thoughts, words, and deeds that would fill me with shame and regret that I would truly be afraid; afraid that I would burn up and be extinguished when standing before the ultimate bearer of goodness and virtue and holiness, afraid that He might cast me far from His sight. I would want to hide behind all the good things I had done, all the times when I did, with His grace, speak, think and act in a way that followed His example and His teaching; I would want to hid behind those things and hope they would cover the darker parts of my being and the darker parts of my own history.

But no. The text I quoted above does away with all of that. He is mercy to me. We must reflect on that mercy every time we come to Him in prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. We need to pray those words so many times that they become a part of the fabric of our souls, so much so that when we ultimately meet Him we will see and understand that He Who is mercy stands there to meet and answer our own plaintive cry for mercy.

I admire the faith of the one who wrote those lines, one who could look upon Jesus and see the fullness of mercy; not accusation, not condemnation, not blame, not reproach, but rather overpowering mercy so great that our minds can hardly conceive it. The faith of one who understood that the eternal Christ became human so that He could meet us where we are, so that in Him could be united both divinity and humanity.

I close this reflection by quoting an expanded version of the text. And by the way, if you would like to discover some of ancient texts of our faith in a way that would enlarge and enlighten your understanding, I refer you to a book that I have mentioned in the past, and that I am re-reading these days: The Roots of Christian Mysticism by Olivier Clément.  Anyway, here is the expanded text:

His love for me brought low his greatness.

He made himself like me so that I might receive him.

He made himself like me so that I might be clothed in him.

I had no fear when I saw him,

for he is mercy to me.

He took my nature so that I might understand him,

my face so that I should not turn away from him.

The Odes of Solomon 7, quoted in Clément, p. 37.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend.

God's Economy

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Sts. Timothy and Titus,

from today’s Gospel:

The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you, and still more will be given to you. (Matthew 4:24)

God is greater than any idea we can have of him, and so when we speak of the qualities of God we must realize that our words and our notions are woefully inadequate and can only faintly point to a reality which is greater than any reality and far beyond even the notion of reality.

Nonetheless, being people who think with words and ideas, that is all we have to use when we want to reflect on God. (It is far better to just sit in silence and awe and behold the incomprehensible, but many people are unable to do this in their own journey of spiritual development.)

Why do I write in such a way today? Because I am going to make a statement about God and I must do it with humility, knowing that God far surpasses anything that I might try to say. And with all that being said, this is my statement: Our God is a God of superabundance. God’s storehouse of goodness, and riches, and blessings, and grace far surpasses anything we can imagine or conceive of. And today, in this one sentence from the Holy Gospel, Jesus makes a statement which tries to translate for us the sense of abundance and superabundance that He experiences since He is God. And this one sentence is His translation: The measure with which you measure will be measure out to you, and still more will be given to you.

That, my friends, is God’s economy and it blows our own notions of economy right out of the water. I don’t know about you, but I do know that when I think of economy in a purely human sense, I think about scarcity, about greed and about injustice. God’s economy has nothing at all to do with that. One thing about the statement that Jesus makes is that it is meant to challenge us to participate in God’s economy.

If you give, you will receive far more than you give.

When you forgive, you will be forgiven far more than you forgave.

When you are compassionate, God’s compassion towards you will overflow upon you.

When you are self-sacrificing, well, God has already shown us the fullest meaning of self-sacrifice, and it was done for us.

When you give your life in service of God, you come to know God’s service of you in an unending wealth of experiences, insights, blessings, graces and satisfaction.

And what about the statement that follows the sentence I have quoted? from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

This statement can sound unjust to us, and I know I have struggled with it for many years. But I have come to see it this way:

When you act out of scarcity, when you are stingy or miserly, when you do not practice compassion, when you are severe in your judgments and condemnations, when you live for yourself alone, well then, you cut yourself off from God’s economy and cannot receive due to your own fault.

I don’t know if this satisfies you, but it is the only understanding the Holy Spirit has allowed me to reach at this time in my own journey. If it makes sense to you, then take care what you hear. (this is the beginning of Mark 4:24).

God bless you abundantly!

The conversion of a fanatic

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul

Paul was what we would call today a religious fanatic, a fervent Pharisee who went about imprisoning and murdering those who believed in Jesus. The story of his past and of his conversion is recounted in two places in the Acts of the Apostles: Acts 9:1-22 and Acts 22:3-16.

It is important to realize that in his fanaticism, he fervently believed he was doing the right thing, and that is true of all fanatics of whatever stripe, and it is true today; in fact, there are even fanatical Christians. Consider, for example, those who have murdered abortionists, or who beat their children severely, or who subject homosexual teenagers to cruel and ineffective “conversion therapies.” (Consider also that the current American Vice-President believes this to be the right thing to do.)

One more example: this is true even of you and me: we have an innate ability to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing, especially when all we have to rely on is our own “light.”

There are three things that I would like to point out concerning St. Paul’s story:

1) God had other plans for Paul than what Paul was planning to do on his way to Damascus and in order to get through to him, He flooded him with light. Sometimes God has plans for us that take us in another direction than we had planned to go, and sometimes He has to knock us off our “high horse” to get through to us as well.

2) Don’t ever think that you have been so sinful or so lost in error that God would have no use for you. Consider Paul and how God used him even though he considered himself “the worst of sinners.”

3) God sometimes even uses our greatest weaknesses for his own purposes. Again, consider Paul: once a fanatic, always a fanatic, and if you read Paul’s letters carefully, you can perhaps detect signs of Paul’s innate fanaticism, but now tempered by God’s grace. Nonetheless, Paul was a driven man, just as much as he was when he was persecuting the Lord’s people. God took that fierce drive of his and channeled it so that Paul became the greatest, and fiercest, preacher of his age.

God bless you!

Don't exclude anyone

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

From today’s Gospel (Mark 3:31-35)

“’Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’”

There is a dualist tendency in religion to exclude. If you are over 60, think of all the terrible things we Catholic children were told about Protestants. I can actually remember praying for my Lutheran grandmother when I was about 12 years old from a prayer book. The prayer asked God to send her a terrible tragedy so that she would come to her senses and return to the True Faith! And we continue to exclude even in our own times. Certain groups, people who don’t believe like we do, people who don’t behave like we do, people who don’t believe in Jesus, people who don’t believe in God, Islamic peoples, etc., etc., etc., ad naus. And there are many texts in Scriptures that exhibit a dualist tendency as well. Consider the Jews and the Samaritans, for example, or even some statements in the letters of Paul that declare who is or isn’t fit for the Kingdom of God.

But there is also an evolution in the Scriptures, as well as an evolution in Jesus Christ Himself. Recall how at first he refused to heal the daughter of the Canaanite woman, but then, because of her persistence and her faith, changed His mind and redefined His mission which He had previously said was only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

And here, near the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel, we see Jesus extending the boundaries of His family to include the people who were listening to him. His only qualification: those who do the will of God. And we must be careful here not to assume that we know who it is who is doing God’s will. God often works through people who do not belong to our group, our faith, our orientation, our lifestyle, our practices, our notion of God. My goodness, God even works through atheists! I’m thinking of a composer who wrote many of the most beloved hymns of Christianity who declared himself to be an athieist, and yet he wrote more beautifully about the Christian faith than many believers could even attempt. Was he or wasn’t he doing will of God? Would Jesus include him as part of His family? Be careful how you answer. The best answer of all is not to answer, but simply to hold the mystery in your heart, just as it is so important for us to do with every single individual we encounter. Just as Jesus said never to judge, I would suggest that we must never make assumptions about anyone. As I said yesterday, we never know what burdens another individual is carrying, or what pain is part of that individual’s history.

As you read the Gospel’s keep this drive to inclusion in mind and you will see it occurring in stories and passages that you may never have seen in that light before.

God bless you!

Life in the womb

Monday, January 23, 2017

Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Interestingly enough, the Entrance Antiphon for today’s Mass is “For the sake of your name, O Lord, give me life,” and I imagined this antiphon being prayed by an unborn child in its mother’s womb.

I have always relied on three scriptural texts that I interpret as signs that life begins with conception. Here they are:

Psalm 71:6 

On you I have leaned from my birth;

from my mother’s womb, you have been my help.

Psalm 139:13

For it was you who formed my inmost being,

knit me together from my mother’s womb.

And the third, and most important, text comes from the Gospel of Luke, the story of the Visitation, when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, goes to visit Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, and Elizabeth greets her, crying out: The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby leapt in my womb for joy. (Luke 1:44).

One last observation: no matter what, we must always heed the strong admonition pronounced by Jesus: do not judge. (Matthew 7:1) It is an “occupational hazard” for those who are passionate about this cause to jump to judgment, but that is something we must never do.  Here is a compassionate statement made by Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville:

“This is the 44^th year that I have prayed to be a protector, humble and yet bold—walking with a mother so in need as to consider not giving birth.”

Again a reminder that we never know the state of a person’s soul, nor do we know, understand or appreciate the burdens that another person may be carrying. In all things, we must be compassionate.

God bless you!