GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD...WHEN I AM LIFTED UP

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT "B"

God so loved the World….    When I am lifted up (Jn 3,16….)

Suffering = love = glory = God

When Jesus speaks in John’s gospel he often makes it easy to misunderstand him. Nicodemus, for example, gets mocked by Jesus for having difficulty figuring out, for example, how a grown man can be born again. Today, Jesus does it again, saying one thing but meaning more than folks would catch at first hearing. When Jesus says he will be lifted up, the expectation is that he is describing some sort of glorification. “I - once I am lifted up from the earth – will draw all to myself.” After all, the passage begins with his declaration that “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” It sounds encouraging. Jesus will be lifted up from the earth to something better, and we will be drawn to him there. Good news, but the wrong message. John “lets the beans out of the bag” by telling us that Jesus is actually talking about the way he will die, lifted up from the earth on a cross. Do I really want to be drawn to him there? The paradox is that both understandings of what Jesus says are correct. For John the crucifixion is the glorification of Christ, and his glorification is inseparable from the Cross. How can that be? How can death by torture be glory? Holy Week is the time to think about the puzzle of John’s equating death and glory. Theoretically, Jesus could have saved us by doing something other than dying; sharing intellectual or spiritual enlightenment would have been easier for us to handle. Let’s start by thinking about glory. We may not be sure what it is, but (aside from John’s equating it with the Cross), we think that, on the whole, it’s more pleasant than being tortured. It’s hard to describe glory since we have not experienced it fully. However, we have all had moments that have seemed close enough to the real thing to give us a hint of what glory is. Over the centuries, we have used light, halos, trumpets, anthems, dances and ecstasies to describe it. To put it prosaically, glory is the experience of being embraced by God’s overwhelming love. That love has no limit. Time, sin and death cannot overcome it. It’s a love by which God gives life in all its richness. When I intuit it or, like a contemplative, experience it directly, I am transformed, transported with a joy so great that it can feel like pain. But can I trust it? How can I be sure of it? After all, I will die. Even before that happens, I feel the love of God less often and less intensely than I feel its seeming absence. Believing in it doesn’t make my life any easier. It certainly doesn’t make me a nicer person. So, is the love of God that the Church proclaims real? This is where John’s insight that the Cross is the glorification of Christ gives comforting assurance. Even in his death that seemed as far as possible from the love of God or anyone else, Jesus was in glory because he was embraced by God’s love and showing the nature of God’s love. God’s is a crucified love. It is so completely self-giving as to be self-immolation, the death of God. In John’s account of the Last Supper, Jesus says there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. On the Cross that is what God does. The Eternal God dies of love. The ultimate example of the presence of God’s love, the ultimate glory is, indeed, the Cross. So Jesus can say that in being lifted up on the Cross he will draw all to himself in glory. And what of us? At Easter we will renew our baptismal union with the death of Christ. Jesus says that unless a grain of wheat fall to the earth and die, it remains merely a grain. It will certainly die. In various ways I have suffered and will suffer. Can I believe that even in these experiences, I am embraced by the love of God, that I am in glory? That is one of the things Lenten practices should be teaching me in a low key way. In deprivation, privation, suffering and death I am embraced by God. In those experiences, I am, in fact, most closely embraced by God, because they are the times I can be most like God whose love is a suffering love.

HOW AM I JUDAS?

HOW AM I JUDAS?

            History has not been kind to Judas: his name has become a byword for deception and betrayal. We may wonder how Judas could possibly have betrayed the Lord. After all, he had been with him constantly for three years; had known him well, heard his teaching, seen his miracles and perceived his power. Surely this should have been enough to inspire him with a love of Jesus, and some idea of who he was. It is easy to say to ourselves that we would never have done such a thing in his position.

            We could work with the thesis that Judas was a political revolutionary who betrayed Jesus from a high rather than a base motive. He wanted to spur Christ into a confrontation that would force him to usher in a new political kingdom. He wanted to use Jesus to gain political advantage. He went wrong because he was living out of his own power and sinful nature, with no reliance on God.

            How are we Judas? How do we use Jesus for our own ends rather than asking what are his?

            Let Judas speak: “In my childhood I had been brought up to recognise what was a fair price and a just profit. When the Master had put me in charge of our common purse, some of the other disciples were not happy about this. They even went so far as to murmur among themselves that I might be light-fingered! This was probably because I knew too much about their own shortcomings, especially their dreams of greatness by using the Master. But I saw through their tricks, and it annoyed them.”

            Be that as it may, Judas must have been bound by his own limited ideas of who Jesus was and how he expected the Messiah to act. He was not open enough to receive the full revelation of who Jesus was, unlike Peter who came to know that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God”(Mathew 16,16). It is often suggested that Judas was disappointed in Jesus because he failed to live up to his expectations of a Messiah who would liberate Israel from Roman domination. Judas saw Jesus in merely earthly terms; he did not understand that Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world, that he came to free men not just from human oppression but from the power of sin and death, and that by way of suffering and death. The world that he had projected turned out to an empty skull – “Golgotha” – and he felt devastatingly isolated; no one even to point an accusing finger, which would have indicated some human connection.  He realised that what he had done left him rotten and that no one would touch him with a bar of soap; so he believed he would pass the sentence of death upon himself. “Poor old Judas. Goodbye Judas”, as the line goes from “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

            We too can have wrong ideas about Jesus, and cling to our own thoughts about him rather than ask the Spirit to reveal him to us. Devout people and especially religious leaders may make the mistake of expecting God to fit into their plans. Familiarity with the divine would tempt them to tame and domesticate the Holy Spirit and produce the illusion that they have God in their possession. We can be devout and perform religious rituals, but these could process from our egos. “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6,6). The truth is that we all have something of the traitor in us and show it when we hand over our fellow humans to suffering, somehow, somewhere, though mostly unbeknownst to ourselves. When we willingly confess that we sometimes hand those we love over to suffering, even against our best intentions, we shall more readily forgive those who cause us pain.

            Religious leaders, priests, ministers, rabbis and imams can be admired and revered but also hated and despised. We expect that our religious leaders will bring us closer to God through their prayers, teachings and guidance. We listen critically to their words to see how they tally with their behaviour. We may expect them to be superhuman and are disappointed and betrayed when they prove to be just as human as we. Unqualified admiration turns to unrestrained anger.

            According to the thesis enunciated at the beginning of this piece, Judas may have been disappointed or angered by what he thought was the human weakness of his Leader. He killed himself before he could get the complete picture that we are privileged to have, that of the great Paschal Mystery.

            And there is yet another lesson, and that is we must try to love our religious leaders, forgive them their faults, and see them as brothers sisters, which will help them, in their brokenness, lead us closer to the heart of God.

Oberammergau Passion Play 2000, Act VII: “Like Cain, Judas despairs of God’s mercy and passes judgement on himself…See Judas fall into the darkness below. Why does no brother hold him tight? Gracious Lord, grant mercy to the ostracised, those without comfort and rest, those in despair and those guilty of betrayal; the victims and the perpetrators, those who live in terror and in sin, grant them your forgiveness and peace.”

In a Musical Drama of great spiritual power, Judas was portrayed as a young, impulsive idealist haunted by his inability to accept his failure and betrayal and discover the seeds of renewal in self-acceptance, and the absence of compassionate human live to enfold and remind him of his true worth despite his great failure, left him with his distorted vision of himself that crippled his ability to live. The agonising fear and resistance Jesus faced in his struggle in the garden before being enabled through his God to find within himself the strength to accept his death with compassion for his executioners, including Judas, depicted the fullness of Jesus’ humanity, and the nature of the divinity which shone within it.

HOLY THURSDAY: FOOTWASH CORPORATION

FOOTWASH  CORPORATION

            “So he rose from table, took off his outer garments, and wrapped a towel round his waist. Then he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist” (Gospel of John 13, 4 - 5).

STATING THE OLD VALUES

            In the Jewish and Greco-Roman world the washing of guests’ feet was normally the work of slaves, and female slaves, at that.  Jewish male slaves were exempt from doing it, though it might be required of a male Gentile slave. Jewish wives were also expected to do this for their husbands as a wifely act of personal service, just like preparing a husband’s meals or making his bed. King David’s virtuous wife, Abigail, in her extraordinary humility, offered to wash the feet of his slaves (cf. 1 Sam. 25,41). Foot-washing was also done by Jewish children for their parents, sometimes even by devoted pupils for their teachers, though this was strictly extra-curricular. No marks for this!

UNSEATING THE OLD VALUES

            It is interesting to recognise how much of our own social and moral ethos we bring to supposedly dispassionate studies of God. For example, there is an Innuit tribe who posit a totally incompetent God: not mean or sulky, but an absolute bungler! Their God is sound asleep most of the time, and the function of religious ritual is a crucial “Rock-a-bye Baby” to prolong the divine slumber. The priestly task is to sing soothing lullabies and to urge the Innuits not to fight with each other. Tribal tumult and disputation would wake the god who would, being kindly but doddering, want to sort things out, and chaos would ensue. This is one of the primal myths that lays total responsibility on its believers: no “deus ex machina” escapes for them (cf. Sarah Maitland, A Big Enough God, pp. 118 - 119). The God of Christian experience neither slumbers nor sulks, but is personally involved in building relationships from the ground up. Apart from projecting an actively engaged God, Jesus, by washing his own disciples’ feet, reverses the world’s cherished values by doing the task of the lowly  -  Gentile slaves, women, children, students. This action was quite unlike his usual acts of power and authority, like creating wine, miraculously feeding the crowd, and raising the dead to life. By coming down from his pedestal of God’s agent and Messiah, Jesus seemed to be subverting his own values. This has prompted different people to read subtle nuances of meaning tucked away in the foot-washing episode. We can consider only the more solid nuggets.

SALVATION IN THE FOOT-WASHING

            The Gospel of St. John goes to great lengths to show Jesus as the heavenly Revealer, demonstrating his divine Sonship by his teaching and miraculous signs, in the midst of which he had also come into conflict with the Jewish leaders. Along the way he had made references to his coming “hour”, when he would be glorified; but this “hour” was not yet. Now, as Jesus was about to wash his disciples’ feet, he announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”, and speaks openly of his piercing anguish. It becomes clear that Jesus’ “hour” of glory is also the moment of suffering. At the same moment Jesus’ time to leave and go to the Father is charged with supreme love; love “to the end”. Then, just as the Good Shepherd “lays aside” his life, he “lays aside” his garments; and after the washing he puts them on again, just as he will take up his life once more at the Resurrection.

THE TOWEL OF SERVITUDE

            Girding oneself with a towel or apron was usually preparatory to menial service. The Roman emperor Caligula often insulted highborn senators by compelling them to drape linen round their waists and play the flunky for him at table. According to a Jewish commentator, the patriarch Abraham dismissed Hagar “with a bill of divorce and took a cloth and girded it about her loins, that people might know her to be a slave.”  Jesus foretold Peter’s being girded by another, which symbolised his death by martyrdom. Jesus’ self-girding with a towel could well be a double symbol:  his willingness to perform a menial service and his humiliation in a death inflicted on slaves, traitors and bandits. Jesus’ self-girding was the auto-marking for service unto death. The “glory-hour” of the “cleansing”  love-power of Jesus’ death-resurrection had arrived !

PETER’S FOOT-TO-HEAD PROBLEM

            “Lord, not only my feet but also my head.”  Peter {known to be a bit of a bungler by his friends and a bit of a bruiser by his enemies} wanted to have his head washed also, only to have his priorities overturned, too.

 The feet would quite suitably do for the head, as they would, when he would be crucified upside-down in Rome, “when he saw the landscape as it really is: with the stars like flowers, and the clouds like hills, and all men hanging on the mercy of God” (G. K.Chesterton). The Simon of nature would turn into the Peter of faith. Gospel values serve to turn worldly values on their head, or rather, right side up. In the meantime, Jesus invites Peter to have “part” with him through the foot-washing: “If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.” “Part” is another way of saying “lot” or “inheritance”, material inheritance like that demanded by the Prodigal Son, but more often a spiritual one. Does not Baptism incorporate us to Christ? What John’s Gospel is saying is that whoever would share a spiritual inheritance with the Son of God must accept his “foot-washing”, i.e. his service and sacrificial death. Once anyone has received the benefit of his love and death, further washings are pointless. And washing one another’s feet is an effective sign of the willingness to participate in Jesus’ service and death.

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES

NOT AN INDIVIDUAL ETHIC  

In the 2^nd. Century, the version of Christianity called Gnosticism focused on the salvation of the individual soul from the body. The soul needed saving since it had fallen into the body by mistake or mischief. According to the Gnostics, only spirit is good; matter is bad. So the spirit, as a “spark” of divinity, had to be awakened to realize its true being, and set free from the shackles of the body in order to return to the pure light, which is Christ. The Gnostics had no time for the Incarnation, since the divine goodness could not be associated with evil matter. So they had little good to say about ordinary human life or about social institutions. Their point of salvation was the “return” of the human soul to its “source.” Even today, certain forms of Christian spirituality concern themselves only with the salvation of the individual, with no care for the wider world at all. Happily, this individualistic mentality is being phased out with better understanding of the interdependence of person and society.

NOT A SOCIAL ETHIC

                A certain type of liberation theology today locates salvation in society, not in the individual. Sinful and alienating social structures keep human beings from realizing their full potential. For instance, patriarchalism, racism, neo-colonialism, and globalisation – these are the systemic patterns of oppression and marginalisation that engender and perpetuate the moral diseases of envy, competition and violence. Salvation will be accomplished when the social order reflects “the rule of God” preached by Jesus and exemplified by his style of life.

                While this idea of social salvation is admirable, it fails to present a clear picture of how God saves, except through the efforts of humans who work for such a social agenda. Nor is it clear how Jesus is Saviour, except as his proclamation of the good news in Nazareth (Luke 4, 16-32) and his Beatitudes (Luke 6, 20-24) sketch the agenda, while his embrace of the outcast suggested how it might be fulfilled. Thus Jesus is seen primarily (and popularly) as the reformer of the social order, and the good news amounts to the vision of a society freed from distinctions and discrimination.

OVERSIMPLYFYING SALVATION               

Escaping our bodies or changing our social structures will not address the real issue of salvation. The real issue of salvation is the disease of the human heart and the distortion of human freedom that we call sin; salvation consists in the restoration of the person to participation of the divine life in Jesus, thereby bringing about the healing of societal structures. Salvation derives, not merely from a philosophical analysis of the human condition or an ideological critique of society, but essentially from the intervention of God in the personal and social life of man and the latter’s experiential surrender to this divine intervention in Jesus Christ.  

RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

The complex stories of the Bible reveal that salvation was rooted in the history of a long relationship between human beings and the God who created, called, chastised and finally graced them fully in the person of Jesus Christ. Salvation also involves the healing of this relationship that only God can accomplish. God alone saves. The implication of this is that both God and humans are persons, that is, they have the freedom to direct their knowing and love towards others. Only persons can hear and accept, freely give themselves to and accept others, for love means to possess and to be possessed.

The fact that God alone can save implies that human freedom is so enslaved by sin that it cannot direct itself properly. Sin is not a matter of the spirit being polluted by the body, nor is it a matter of people being enslaved by an unjust social order. Sin is a disease of freedom itself that is so profound, so complex, so entrenched, that only God – who has created us as free creatures – has the power, knowledge and love to redirect that freedom rightly. Salvation is not only about getting right knowledge of the self, nor merely about creating the right political order: it is about being in right relationship with God. And only God can make that relationship right.

Good for us, Jesus is God !

JESUS – SAVIOUR GOD

                If God above all is Saviour, and salvation comes from him, then the designation of Jesus in the New Testament as Saviour is of tremendous significance. It means that God saves us through Jesus’ agency. Jesus is God’s prophet, apostle (“sent”), Word, and, most frequently and intimately, God’s Son. Jesus is not only the sort of human that God desired and was pleased with, but also that he is the very human face of God. This is a confession that orthodoxy has defended against all diminutions, for if God has not entered into the fabric of human freedom in order to heal it, then it indeed remains unhealed. Good for us, God has got involved with us in Jesus !

                Precisely through the way in which he was human, Jesus was Saviour. His human freedom expressed the right relationship with God and thus all other relationships as well in an ever-widening pattern of healing and reconciliation reaching even to the structures of human society.

JESUS SAVES  - 2

SELF-EMPTYING

            If Jesus had earned any title to divinity, we should consider an outpouring so total that nothing was left of the merely human. In setting the human to naught, all that remained was the burning flame of the divine. It was the moment when the divinity “absorbed” all that was left of the humanity in pure obedience to preserve it and unite it forever to his Person in the transcendent order. That was the moment when Jesus had the non-dual experience, when he could say, “I and the Father are one,” and “Whoever sees me sees the Father.”  His humanity had become so completely taken up into the divinity, that the Father was no longer an object, related as subject to object, but as subject in subject.

Here Jesus’ humanity came to full flowering; the quality of being human was completely perfected, i.e. that specific quality consisting of the capacity of total self-surrender to the Supreme Being. So it is with us when in union with Jesus we surrender ourselves to the Father. Our individual humanity with all its accumulated excellence is not exposed to futility, but rather consummated in God. This is what the Resurrection of Christ points to.  “Whoever follows Christ the perfect man becomes himself more a man.” “The fact that it is the same God who is at once saviour and creator, Lord of human history and of the history of salvation, does not mean that the autonomy of the creature, of man in particular, is suppressed; on the contrary, in the divine order of things, all this redounds to the restoration and consolidation of this autonomy” (Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, art. 41).

            God may seem to be most absent when we are in pain, but with the denial of every access to pleasure or self-centredness, in the dying which life ultimately imposes on us, there often stirs in the deepest reaches of the soul another kind of life. It will come to flower in those who die gracefully by accepting their mortality and even welcoming it as a stage of growth. When this has been achieved, one has already risen from the dead, even as Jesus did at the moment of his death on the cross. We often notice in the lives of the saints a strange paradox: the deeper their appreciation of the things of God, the greater the darkness they have to endure. As they enter into realms of that union so far beyond the imagination of ordinary believers, the saints can find themselves at times in regions of anguish, which also pass our comprehension. Physically Our Lord’s sufferings were not the most extreme in the history of human torture. But if one takes account of his unique inner spirit, “his unique hypostatic (two natures in one Person) suffering embraces every temporal and eternal suffering possible to a created human being” (Hans Urs von Balthasar). At the same time we might bear in mind another aspect of the paradox of mysticism: even the very bitterness can have its sweetness, and even the very darkness can dazzle.

ASSUMING SINFUL CONDITION

            Now we can begin to understand the sinlessness of Jesus, who was, according to the verse from the Letter to the Hebrews, “in all things like us, sin alone excepted.” This is what distinguishes him from all other human beings, for sin is not part of human nature but a violation of human nature. All sins are “crimes against humanity.” Human nature is, so to speak, the raw material from which a human life has to be built. Human nature is not in itself sinful or sinless, for sin can arise only when the person, the leading edge of the self, chooses to adopt one desire or possibility of action over another. Sin does, indeed, mark our humanity without marring it. On the positive side, sinlessness not does abolish humanity but brings it to the level God intended for it in the new Adam.

            Good for us that the eternal Son of God assumed our nature and, with it, our sinful condition with its arrogance and self-seeking. And when died the Son, so did our pride and arrogance, for everyone knows how the process of dying signals the exhaustion of arrogance quite perceptibly, and, by that token, the advent of the kingdom of heaven. The process of dying is the physical sign of the advent of divine purifying love. That kingdom is now, in every death that we die to sin.

NO GOOD FRIDAY FOR US ?

No Good Friday for us?

Not one clean sheet to write on.

My scavenged rags – odorous and mildewed.

I write for myself and the dregs:

the putrefying humanity; for I am of their number,

 though they take not to me.

We are the outcastes, the scum who do not belong,

not even to each other.

We have no title, stand under no claim,

for we have no standing: the offscouring of humanity,

the offal of cheapest flesh.

Despised by all, for we have lost all:

goods, friends, repute and culture.

The poor look at us and laugh,

the rich look and see nothing.

even the dogs disdain a bark.

We are brought low; our sins have found us out,

and we are cursed, marked out for living death.

Only total death is our relief, and it is long in coming,

till we bear the torture of our disgrace.

We crave for torturers,

those heartless, unthinking, holy and righteous ones,

steeped in sanctity, who know the good

and tell us we are evil.

We long for them to make us face us our sin,

tear us apart, spit on us, cover us with their holy offal,

for by that token we are saved from nothingness,

awarded recognition and targeted as things.

Saints die, and their death is deemed an event of honour,

looked ahead to, as they stood in the corridor of time,

anticipating the eternity of glory.

We worship them not,

for no sanction was granted us to do so.

But where is our death?

Oh, but death is too great an honour.

Death denied, we are in hell already:

bereft of sunlight, darkness our drink,

the husks of pigs a meal too sumptuous;

for we are lower than pigs and rats,

sicklied through by blackest plague.

Is there no Good Friday for us? Oh, but

Good Friday is for sinner-turned-saints,

which we are not, and cannot be,

for we are lower than sinners,

and nothing may descend further than our nothingness.

The mistake of creation, the uncouth freaks

that were not intended, with no place amid

the myriad galaxies, unloved of every heart,

the ugly laughing stock of beauteous angels.

No Good Friday for us?

Be there no man or beast or dead wood sliver

or grain of sand to breathe with us our darkness,

to share our despicable state, or taste

the shame of our condition and, sharing, spread

their disgrace like a mantle over ours,

and ours be gathered unto theirs?

Be there no one to stoop so low

and be one of us,

to give us a Good Friday without

a right of our presuming?

Be there no one? No one at all?

Oh, my nothingness, my utter, utter emptiness!

Only by a deeper emptiness can mine redeeméd be .

Be there such nothingness, Oh, another emptiness,

the Totally Other Emptiness... to fill mine?  

Did I hear a voice say: “I am He”?

                                                          

                                                                 - Mervyn Carapiet

THE SUN HAS SET

The sun has set.

Our Son has walked into the night,

And that night was dark, indeed,

Made the more opaque

By one man’s treachery

That manoeuvred our sinfulness unto his death.

Our Son has walked into the night,

Laid himself down,

And now is still in death.

Sleep on, Saviour sweet!

Brave Warrior of our freedom’s battle;

Hero of our redemption’s drama.

Sleep on, dear Son and Brother.

Yesterday and today you laboured;

A splendid work, indeed,

But the weight thereof

Has laid you low

In a stone sepulchre.

Yet take your rest,

Tonight and another.

Yahweh once rested

At the close of the original creation;

Why not you

On the threshold of the new?

So sleep, sweet Prince,

And take your rest.

Tomorrow and a day will bring the dawn.

And with the dawn new life.

Then you will be King!

For our Son will rise again!

 - Fr. Mervyn Carapiet

PALM SUNDAY: Homily I and II

PALM SUNDAY : Homily I & II

Homily  I

Since we will not be able to go to Israel, our parish church must become for us the Holy Land. Within these walls we shall find Jerusalem, the Upper Room, Gethsamane, Calvary and the Tomb. Our focus this week will be the Christ, in the words of the poet Tennyson, “The Lord from Heaven, born of a village girl, carpenter’s son, Wonderful, Prince of Peace, the Mighty God.”

Today the vestibule of our church must become the town of Bethany situated just outside Jerusalem. There will be a hero’s welcome for the “anti-establishment” figure. The centre isle of our church must become for us the long dusty road surrounded by cheers. You can watch the man on the donkey pass by, wordless and swordless.

HOMILY   II

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were relatively quiet days for Jesus. He spent them largely in reflection and prayer in the great Temple of Jerusalem. For us, this church must become the great Temple. On Holy Thursday, this sanctuary become the Upper Room. The altar becomes the long narrow table where sat. On the night of Holy Thursday, the church becomes the Garden of Gethsemane. Here Jesus undergoes the dark night of the soul. Before him is a cruel death. Our thoughts might be those of the poet Joseph M. Plunkett:

            “I see his blood upon the rose

            And in the stars the glory of his eyes.

            His body gleams amid eternal snows

            His tears fall from the skies.”

Good Friday will see us crowding into the church which will be changed in the Way of the Cross. On Holy Saturday, we will come mourning to church but full of hope. As the poet Francis Thompson wrote:

            “Look up, O most sorrowful of daughters,

            For his feet are coming to thee on the waters.”

Finally coming out of church on Easter Sunday we will shout with Gerard Manley Hopkins:   

                        “Let him easter in us

                        Be a dayspring to the dimness in us

                        Be a crimson crested East.”

PRAYER

Jesus, Lord of the Journey, we thank you

that you set your face firmly towards Jerusalem,

with a single eye and pure intention,

knowing what lay ahead but never turning aside.

Jesus, Lord of the Palms, we thank you

that you enjoyed the Hallelujahs of ordinary people,

living full in that moment of delight

and accepting their praise.

Jesus, Lord of the Cross, we thank you

that you went into the heart of our evil and pain,

along a way that was both terrible and wonderful,

as your kingship became your brokenness

and your dying became love’s triumph.

PALM SUNDAY: Journeying with Jesus

PALM SUNDAY: Journeying with Jesus

Introduction:     This week we are offered an invitation not just to journey with Jesus to Calvary, but also to journey deep within ourselves towards our own Calvaries - the Calvary of sickness and pain, of frayed nerves, of broken relationships, seemingly uncontrollable people and situations.  The journey to Calvary is not so much our journeying with him, as his journeying with us. It is God who feels our pain and the misery brought on by our sins. His wounded flesh mirrors that of all too many of his people. Let us allow God into our lives so that he will take our brokenness and make of it something beautiful.

Homily 

Since we will not be able to go to Israel, our parish church must become for us the Holy Land. Within these walls we shall find Jerusalem, the Upper Room, Gethsemane, Calvary and the Tomb. Our focus this week will be the Christ, in the words of the poet Tennyson, “The Lord from Heaven, born of a village girl, carpenter’s son, Wonderful, Prince of Peace, the Mighty God.”

Today the vestibule of our church must become the town of Bethany situated just outside Jerusalem. There will be a hero’s welcome for the “anti-establishment” figure. The centre isle of our church must become for us the long dusty road surrounded by cheers. You can watch the man on the donkey pass by, wordless and swordless.

His ancestor, King David had to flee his royal city, Jerusalem, after being reduced to rags by his own son, Absalom who led the rebellion against him. David had not even a horse to ride on; he had to borrow a donkey  -  symbol of humiliation and shame. Now his descendant, Jesus of Nazareth rides back on a donkey triumphantly into his city amidst cries of “Hosanna” and the waving of palms.

That poor stupid looking animal, the donkey, carried the Lord of creation on its back. Call the mule a fool; but just listen to what this stupid animal has to say, in the words of G.K. Chesterton:

“Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet;

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet.”

Today we enter one of the holiest and most significant weeks of the Christian year. The Liturgy invites us into a profound reflection on a central mystery of Christian faith  -  the Cross of Jesus Christ. No death in human history compares with this one singular death. The great painters and artists of history  -  men like Caravaggio, Mantegna, Masaccio and Piero della Francesca  -  have made it their endeavour to capture the dramatic and tragic events surrounding Jesus’ passion and death. More recently, the actor and director Mel Gibson sought to dramatise in the film “The Passion of Christ” the entire mysterious event. We salute and thank God for all those who have worked to help us grasp the enormity and profundity and glory of Jesus’ death on the cross.

When we listen to the Passion narrative at Mass or read it in the quiet of our own home or meditate upon it at the Stations of the Cross, we become more aware that one thing alone compelled Jesus to die on the Cross  -  and that was love, divine love. The Cross of Jesus is a testament to the power of love  -  a love so amazing, so self-sacrificing and so total that it is the most eloquent, most beautiful and most perfect expression of God’s love that there could ever be.

Listen to what Jordan of Saxony has to say: “The law that is perfect because it takes away all imperfections is charity, and you find it written with a strange beauty when you gaze at Jesus your Saviour stretched out like a sheet of parchment on the cross, inscribed with wounds, illustrated in his own loving blood. Where else is there a comparable book of love to read”?

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were relatively quiet days for Jesus. He spent them largely in reflection and prayer in the great Temple of Jerusalem. For us, this church must become the great Temple. On Holy Thursday, this sanctuary become the Upper Room. The altar becomes the long narrow table where sat. On the night of Holy Thursday, the church becomes the Garden of Gethsemane. Here Jesus undergoes the dark night of the soul. Before him is a cruel death. Our thoughts might be those of the poet Joseph M. Plunkett:

            “I see his blood upon the rose

            And in the stars the glory of his eyes.

            His body gleams amid eternal snows

            His tears fall from the skies.”

Good Friday will see us crowding into the church, which will be transformed into the Way of the Cross. On Holy Saturday, we will come mourning to church but full of hope. As the poet Francis Thompson wrote:

            “Look up, O most sorrowful of daughters,

            For his feet are coming to thee on the waters.”

Finally coming out of church on Easter Sunday we will shout with Gerard Manley Hopkins:       

                        “Let him Easter in us

                        Be a dayspring to the dimness in us

                        Be a crimson crested East.”

PRAYER

Jesus, Lord of the Journey, we thank you

that you set your face firmly towards Jerusalem,

with a single eye and pure intention,

knowing what lay ahead but never turning aside.

Jesus, Lord of the Palms, we thank you

that you enjoyed the Hallelujahs of ordinary people,

living full in that moment of delight

and accepting their praise.

Jesus, Lord of the Cross, we thank you

that you went into the heart of our evil and pain,

along a way that was both terrible and wonderful,

as your kingship became your brokenness

and your dying became love’s triumph.

PALM SUNDAY: What lies ahead

PALM SUNDAY: WHAT LIES AHEAD

As they near Jerusalem, Jesus gives his disciples clear instructions: Go, find, untie, bring to me…

All this so the last part of the journey to Jerusalem can begin to come to its tragic and triumphant end.

In our own Lenten journey, perhaps we are starting to get the sense that we are near our destination.

But do we really know what lies ahead? Generally, we’d say “no”; the future is a mystery yet to unfold. In this case we do know. We know the end of this story. We know that this victory is already won in Jesus’ salvific act of dying and rising. Jesus has triumphed over death.

Each Holy Week, as I hear the stories of the obedient confusion from the disciples (why do you need an ass and a colt?!), the inevitable betrayal by a friend and the horrific death of “Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” I am consoled because I know that victory is the “end” of our human story. Resurrection will come on the third day.

Yet we live each day in the reality that this victory has not yet been fully realized. We live with agony, disappointment, despair and even death. We are called to not only believe in this victory with our mind, but to live and act out of our belief.

PRAYER:
God, who exceeds all expectations, be our hope as we enter more deeply into the Easter mysteries. Sustain our resolve, and grow our desire to live life in expectation of your victory that continues to come.

PALM SUNDAY

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is approaching. The day the Messiah triumphantly rode into Jerusalem on a colt, the day the masses waved palm branches to usher him in, the day the city rejoiced at his coming. “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” they cried. The last time such infectious rejoicing was recorded was when the angels heralded Jesus’s birth. “Glory to God in the highest!” It was the beginning of something new. And indeed, this was something very new.

One of the first things Jesus did when he arrived in Jerusalem was to overturn the tables in the temple, to refocus the people on the true meaning of worship: an earnest communion with God that transcends circumstances. Jesus could count with his fingers the number of days until his crucifixion, the ultimate expression of love and worship, and he saw a deep need for the people to re-center themselves on God.

A monumental shift was imminent; an unprecedented transformation was about to completely redefine how God would relate to God’s people. God, Jesus, our high priest-king in the order of Melchizedek would lay himself down on the altar instead of our sacrifices. This single act upended the entire Jewish religious system: no more sacrifices, no more high priests, no more mediation between humans and God. Jesus knew exactly what his death and resurrection would entail, and he recognized that if the people weren’t truly communing with God, they wouldn’t have a clue of what had just happened.

Life is unpredictable, and it’s easy for me to forget that in my everyday routine. Not if, but when the next big change broadsides me, will I suddenly realize I’ve drifted from the Center, or will my worship anchor me to the sovereign God?

- Monca Miller,

Goshen College

The waving of palm branches and the cries of "Hosanna to the King!" usher in the holiest week of the year. The full drama begins with the crowd's fickle acclaim of Jesus as King for a day. It is a foreshadowing of the blasphemous mockery the soldiers will hurl at our thorn-crowned Savior a few days later. And yet, for a few hours we can raise our voices joyfully with the multitude, linking the honor given by the crowd, especially by the children, with His ultimate victory beyond the grave. We wonder and rejoice as the veil is raised to permit a glimpse of Jesus, the Messiah and liberator. But then, as the Palm Sunday Mass proceeds, the horrors of the Passion are proclaimed, and we are left wondering what we would have done, when we hear: "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?"

How could have events accelerated at such a dizzying pace between Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday? The forces of darkness were never more vicious in their attempt to destroy the Mission of Jesus on this earth. That the religious leaders of the day were made instruments of evil is a tragic lesson to all religions, even to the present day. That these leaders scandalized their own people, making them agents of falsehood, is another warning to those of unwary and careless piety. How easily the righteous can be persuaded by the lies of their leaders that a certain action is not at all evil, but actually good and admirable. We wonder how many of those whom Jesus healed in His journeys were among the crowds crying out against Him just a few days later!

The Passion narrative is the most powerful story ever written about the sacrifice of the innocent to evil, and the blind consent of crowds to the will of those in power. In this year's narrative according to St. Luke, the Roman Procurator three times declared the innocence of Jesus, and so did Herod Antipas, the Jewish tetrarch of Galilee. Yet, fear of political expediency prevailed. Only the "good" thief, who defended the truth of Jesus' innocence and honestly admits his own guilt, is rewarded with heaven that day.

In this Year of Mercy, how ironic it is that no mercy of any kind was shown to Jesus by either the Roman authorities, the Jewish religious leaders, or the crowds. The outstanding example of courage and kindness, however, came from Veronica who wiped the face of Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. We wonder how many people may have been converted by the powerful image on the cloth which she must have proudly treasured that day. And did Simon gradually help Jesus willingly with the Cross?

The whole purpose of God the Father and His divine Son in allowing the brutality and agony of the ordeal was to show the greatest mercy to all of us, sons and daughters of Adam. He continues to show endless mercy to us in our fickle and weak responses throughout the ages even to the present time.

This Holy Week is another opportunity for us to become fervent messengers of God's love and mercy in a world that still has time. By embracing the Cross of Jesus in patience and gratitude, may we find hope and newness of life.

ST. JOSEPH, EDUCATOR AND FATHER

St. Joseph is the model of the educator, daddy & of the father

Vatican city, March 19, 2014: Here is a translation of Pope Francis’ address this morning at the general audience, which in light of today’s solemnity, he dedicated to St. Joseph.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning!

Today, March 19, we celebrate the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary and Patron of the universal Church. Therefore, we dedicate this catechesis to him, who merits all our gratitude and our devotion for his having been able to take care of the Holy Virgin and her Son Jesus. Joseph’s characteristic is to be a guardian: it is his great mission, to be a guardian.

Today I would like to take up the topic of guardianship according to a particular perspective: the educational perspective. We look at Joseph as the model of educators, who takes care of and supports Jesus in the course of his growth “in wisdom, age and grace,” as the Gospel says. He was not Jesus’ father: Jesus’ Father was God, but he behaved as a father to Jesus, he behaved as a father to Jesus to make him grow. And how did he make him grow? In wisdom, age and grace.

We begin with age, which is the most natural dimension, physical and psychological growth. Joseph, together with Mary, took care of Jesus especially from this point of view, namely, he “brought him up,” taking care that he did not lack the necessary for a healthy development. Let us not forget that the diligent looking-after of the life of the Child entailed also the flight into Egypt, the harsh experience of living as refugees – Joseph was a refugee, with Mary and Jesus – to escape from Herod’s threat.

Then, once they had returned to their homeland and were established at Nazareth, there is the whole long period of Jesus’ life in his family. In those years, Joseph also taught Jesus his work, and Jesus learned to be a carpenter with his father Joseph. So Joseph brought up Jesus.

We pass to the second dimension of education, that of “wisdom.” Joseph was for Jesus an example and teacher of this wisdom, which is nourished by the Word of God. We can think of how Joseph educated little Jesus to listen to the Sacred Scriptures, above all accompanying him on Saturdays to the synagogue of Nazareth. And Joseph accompanied him so that Jesus could hear the Word of God in the synagogue.

And, finally, the dimension of “grace.” Referring to Jesus, Saint Luke says: “And the grace of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). Here, certainly, the part reserved for Saint Joseph is more limited compared to the ambits of age and of wisdom. However, it would be a grave error to think that a father and a mother can do nothing to educate their children to grow in the grace of God. To grow in age, to grow in wisdom, to grow in grace: this is the work that Joseph did with Jesus, to make him grow in these three dimensions, to help him to grow.

Dear brothers and sisters, Saint Joseph’s mission is certainly unique and unrepeatable, because Jesus is absolutely unique. And yet, in his taking care of Jesus, educating him to grow in age, wisdom and grace he is a model for every educator, in particular for every father. Saint Joseph is the model of the educator and of the daddy, of the father. Therefore, I entrust to his protection all parents, priests – who are Fathers – and those who have an educational task in the Church and in society. In a special way, I would like to greet today, Day of the Father, all parents, all daddies: I greet you from my heart! Let’s see: are there some daddies in the Square? Daddies, raise your hand! But how many daddies! Best wishes, best wishes on your Day!

I ask for you the grace to be always very close to your children, letting them grow but being close to them, close to them! They are in need of you, of your presence, of your closeness, of your love. Be for them like Saint Joseph: guardians of their growth in age, wisdom and grace. Guardians of their path; educators, and walk with them. And with this closeness you will be true educators.

Thank you for all you do for your children, thank you. Many good wishes to you and happy Daddy’s Feast to all the daddies who are here, to all daddies.

May Saint Joseph bless you and accompany you. And some of us have lost our daddy, he has gone, the Lord has called him. So many who are in the Square do not have their daddy. We can pray for all the daddies of the world, for the living daddies and also for the deceased and for our own, and we can do so together, each one remembering his daddy, if he is alive and if he is dead. And we pray to the great Daddy of us all, the Father. An “Our Father” for our daddies: Our Father …

And very best wishes to the daddies!

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT "B"

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

High above Jerusalem, on Mt. Tabor, Jesus was transformed and transfigured – his human body infused with grace and divinity, was a dazzling sight. The Son of God in his splendid divinity, more brilliant than a million suns, and shining white as snow. The Old Testament figures of Moses and Elijah appeared, absorbed in conversation with Jesus. It is easy to sympathize with the combination of fear and sheer delight felt by the disciples, Peter, James and John. Peter, confused but wanting somehow to hang on to this moment of glory, blurted out the suggestion that they could put up shelters for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. It was not to be. They could not prolong this moment but had to come down from the mountain and carry on their work in the world. The disciples had to realize that even though they saw the “Beloved Son” pointed out by the Father in his glory that was natural to him, that beautiful Son could not get away with glory but must descend Tabor to ascend Calvary. That’s the kind of God we have come to know: a God whose glory is spelt out in bleeding wounds, darkness and death. A God pretty much like us, worse than us. In the Bible God makes himself known. His presence is realized in the here and now of human life. Jesus stayed with that human life, was wholly involved in it. In him that human life was transformed and transfigured by the presence of divinity. And on Mt. Tabor Peter saw it and knew it. His words came tumbling out: the best he could find in his wonder and awe at what he saw and heard. “Master, it is good to be here.” We too can expect the Lord to allow us to glimpse and taste the heavenly life to which we are called. This can come in a variety of ways: a blessed time of prayer, an inspired insight into Scripture, or a sharper awareness of the victory Jesus won for us, or simply the loving closeness of God. Such moments of anointing and blessing are God’s gifts to strengthen us so we too can take up our cross and follow Jesus Christ. We are all awkward customers, plagued by our own follies and by the very many difficulties of being human in a world that runs to so much inhumanity. We are not east to work with or to work through. Yet we can say and with all others who bear witness to the work of God in the midst of us, “It is good to be here.” Good to be where God is known as he was to Peter in the person of Jesus Christ. But to use the word “here” is never enough, for no single place can ever contain God. To be part of God’s whole creation sharing each in his or her own way in the building of God’s kingdom here on earth. We are together, close or far apart, working for one and the same thing, however difficult it may prove to be: to build God’s tabernacle on earth as Peter wanted. There is one body and one spirit, even as we are called in one hope. All this we share, and we can say with thanksgiving and wonder:”Lord, it is good to be here.”

2) Exodus of Transfiguration.

Today, the exodus, the path of liberation that we are called to fulfill, is the one of contemplation. Through contemplation, prayer becomes gaze, and our heart, which is the “center” of our soul, opens up to the light of Christ’s love.

In this way, we can understand the journey that the liturgy of this Sunday indicates to us: that of a pilgrim who carries out the exodus that leads him to the Promised Land: eternal Life with Christ.

It is a journey full of nostalgia, precariousness, and weakness, but also full of the hope of those who have the heart wounded by the beloved. It is full of light because “the ‘brightness’ that characterizes the extraordinary event of the Transfiguration, symbolizes its purpose: to illuminate the minds and hearts of the disciples so that they can clearly understand who their Master is. It is a flash of light that suddenly opens itself on the mystery of Jesus, and illuminates his whole person and his whole life “(Pope Francis).

It is true that to follow the Lord is to be crucified with Him. It is true that at every step the wounds of pain pierce our heart. Evil is true, sin is true, death is true. But the Transfiguration of everything is also true, and the beauty that surpasses and gives meaning to everything is true: “In the passion of Christ … the experience of beauty receives a new depth, a new realism. The One who is “Beauty in himself “ let himself be struck on his face, covered with spits, crowned with thorns … But in that disfigured face appears the authentic extreme Beauty of the Love that loves” to the end ” showing itself stronger than any lie and violence.

An example of how to grasp this transfigured beauty comes to us from the consecrated virgins. In a special way, these women testify to three specific aspects of the Christian.

The first is to give themselves in complete abandonment to Christ because they lovingly trust his Love, “who does not hesitate to undress from external beauty to announce the Truth of Beauty” (Joseph Ratzinger). With their consecrated virginity, these women announce precisely the crucified beauty, the transfigured beauty, his beauty which is our true beauty.

The second is that of witnessing, in their life lived as a virgin, the need to descend from the Mount to return to the evangelizing mission of the Lord, a mission that passes through the Cross and proclaims the Resurrection that is nothing else but the Transfiguration made eternal in the Humanity of the Lord.

The third is to show that listening is the main dimension of the disciple of Christ. Today’s Gospel tells: “This is my beloved Son: listen to him!” (Mk 9: 7).

In a world that has the habit of speaking so many words (it would be better saying: to chat), these women are constantly listening to the Word and, following the example of the Virgin Mary, become “virgins of listening and mothers of the Word”.

The Father asks each of us to be a listener of the Word, whose words are words of life because, through the Cross, they purify from every dead work and unite to God and to the brothers.

This Word needs a place (our heart). It needs to go deep in it and to die there like a seed, to put root, to grow, to sprout and to resist the storms and bad weather like a house built on the Rock.

For it to be heard, this Word needs attention, but also silence. Inner and outer silence are necessary for this word to be heard. This is a particularly difficult point for us in our time. In fact, ours is an age in which meditation is not encouraged; on the contrary, sometimes, one gets the impression that there is a fear of detaching himself, even for a moment, from the river of words and images that mark and fill the days.

The secluded life of the consecrated virgins shows how important it is to educate ourselves to the value of silence because with it we accept the Word of God in our personal and ecclesial life, valuing meditation and inner calm. Without silence one does not hear, one does not listen, one does not receive the Word and what it says. This observation of St. Augustine is always valid: Verba crescente, verba deficiunt – “When the Word of God grows, the words of man become less” (cf. Sermo 288: PL 38.1307; Sermo 120.2: PL38 , 677)