Being on Jesus’ Side

26th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Num 11, 25-29 / Jas 5, 1-6 / Mk9, 38-43, 45, 47-48

The question today’s gospel asks is basically:  What does it mean to side with Christ?  How do you know you are on Jesus’ side of things?  And a further question the gospel poses is:  How do you pass on to the young this being on Jesus’ side?

These are crucially important questions for us to ask ourselves and to answer honestly?  What does it mean for us to find ourselves on Jesus’ side of things in today’s world?  St. Paul would ask us:  Have you taken on the attitude of Christ – taken on his way of seeing, valuing and acting on things?  And then:  What do we tell our children?  What attitude toward life do we model for the young?

The gospels call the attempt to be on Jesus’ side – to take on his attitude toward life – they call that being a disciple.  The word itself, disciple, means “learner”.  A disciple of Jesus is someone learning to follow Jesus’ way of life.  And the gospels are full of instructions from Jesus on how to be his disciple.  Most instructions have something to do with love.  Over and over Jesus tells his disciples they must learn to love as he loves.  “This is how people will know you are my disciples,” he says.

But there is throughout all the gospels a recurring touchstone of discipleship – a repeated signature piece that lets everyone know:  this is a disciple of Jesus.  That signature piece is loving your enemy.  Jesus uses all sorts of images to describe the love he wants for his disciples:  turn the other cheek; let your love be like the rainfall, falling on good and evil both.  And, of course, the most vivid image he left us is his own passion and death with words of forgiving love for his executioners.

Love your enemy!  Doing that will put us on Jesus’ side.  Loving – not hating – those who seem to be Jesus’ enemies on earth.  Suppose they really do hate and reject Jesus; nevertheless he loves them.  And to be on his side we must love them too.

Love your enemy!  This is also the cornerstone for Christian thought on war and peace.  How are we to handle violence as disciples of Jesus?  St. Augustine teaches us that for the Christian love of enemies admits of no exceptions.  And St. Thomas Aquinas in taking up the question of war and violence asks: “Whether It is Always Sinful to Wage War?” In our tradition the clear presumption is always and insistently against the use of violent force.  The disciple’s attitude is always and insistently poised against the use of violent force.  The disciple of Jesus has an unsparing distrust of violence.

As citizen-disciples, as American Catholics do we find ourselves on Jesus’ side of things?  We might ask ourselves: have we allowed violence and war to become our presumed, our preferred answer to dealing with troubling and threatening situations?  Have we come to rely on violence – rely on violence in our words and in our actions?

Our Catholic tradition poses this explicit question to anyone, to any nation considering the use of violence:  Do the rights and values at issue in the conflict at all justify the deliberate decision to take human life?  You will notice how the question itself moves us beyond thinking of war as a means to some strategic or political goal.  Rather, it confronts us with war’s simple, brutal reality.  War is the decision to kill people.  Killing human life is always a matter of utmost gravity.  It may not be simply dismissed as “collateral damage” – even with regret.  And such killing undertaken to maintain a comfortable lifestyle is indefensible in our tradition.

Pope John Paul II spoke the attitude of Christ when he said:  I proclaim with the conviction of my faith in Christ and with the awareness of my mission [as pope] that violence is evil, that violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems, that violence is unworthy of man…

Are we on the side of Christ?  What do we communicate to the young?  Do we tell them that war and violence are things we don’t want but things we think we can’t refuse?  Crucial questions for us all that we need to reflect on and pray about.  And we need to pray for one another that we may take on the attitude of Christ and learn to be his good disciples.  And let us recall our opening prayer:  O God, you manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow this grace abundantly upon us… Amen.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Being Political and the Public Servant of All

25th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Wis 2, 12, 17-20 / Jas 3, 16-4, 3/ Mk 9, 30-37

As I read today’s gospel I could see Jesus walking along and being followed by the disciples.  He’s told them clearly and definitively that to be disciples they have to learn to deny themselves, to un-center themselves from their own living.  He hears behind him a hefty discussion going on.  They must be talking about the challenge of learning how to live life without being self-pre-occupied.  Once they get to their destination in Capernaum, he asks them:  “So what were you talking about?”  They’re quiet – untypically quiet.  Jesus learns they hadn’t been talking about moving beyond self-pre-occupation at all.  In fact, just the opposite was the case.  They’d been talking precisely about themselves and who was the greatest among them.  Imagine Jesus’ frustration and disappointment.

Jesus then gets graphic and concrete.  He tells them to be his disciples they have to become servants of all.  And he acts out what he has just said.  He brings a child into their midst, embraces that child and tells them to do the same.  Jesus not only accepts the child but identifies himself with the child.  In accepting the child they will be accepting him.  To fully grasp what Jesus is doing here, we have to realize that in Jesus’ day children were regarded as having no social or legal importance.  They were non-persons in Jewish society to whom nothing was really owed.  Children could make no claims for themselves.  And Jesus embraces and accepts these non-persons, identifies with them and tells his disciples they must do the same if they want to consider themselves his followers.

What Jesus is saying and doing here has many applications.  But I want to read and understand the gospel scene in the light of our political season.  We are about the process of electing the next president of our country.  I hear us having hefty discussions – talking and arguing about who will be the greatest to lead us?  And I hear Jesus wanting to insert into our political conversation a question, a consideration we need to think about.  “The greatest among us”, we say, “that one should be president.”  We have many measures for greatness – but do we have the measure Jesus gives to his disciples?  That’s becoming “the servant of all”.  That’s embracing and identifying with the non-persons of our society, those with little social, economic or legal power to make claims for themselves.  Is that the kind of greatness we want from our leaders?  Is that the kind of greatness we want for ourselves?  In our politics do we want to be servants of all?  If Jesus were to hear us talking politics among ourselves and asked us what kind of leadership we want, would we come to an embarrassed silence?

Becoming the servant of all requires having care and consideration for the good of all, including the powerless.  In our Catholic tradition we name that “good of all” the common good.  Every disciple of Jesus, every Catholic is called upon by Jesus himself to be the servant of all in society by making political, economic and social decisions that serve to promote the common good – our common good.  This is how we concretely embrace the children – the non-persons – in our midst.

A politics based on the pursuit of the common good militates directly against any politics based merely on self-interest – where what is mine – what promotes my interests – is the real bottom line.  The common good is understood to be the sum total of those conditions of social living whereby all people are enabled more fully to achieve their God-given purpose.  And our God-given purpose in life is to flourish as human beings – living and loving together in community – and grateful for our interdependence on each other.  We are grateful to live as images of a God who is a loving community of Father, Son and Spirit.  We are born sacred and social – brother and sister to one another.

In this political season and beyond we do have much to talk about among ourselves.  We are Republicans; we are Democrats; we are Independents.  But as disciples of Jesus we ask not:  am I better off now than I was four years ago?  That question may not be the main or motivating question we bring to our political decisions.  Rather, we ask:  how shall we become the servants of all?  How shall we promote and work for the common good of all, especially the vulnerable and voiceless?

To conclude, I say we need to pray for one another.  And I’d like to offer a prayer I found in my reading and preparation for this homily.  Listen, please, to the words.

Creator God, Source of our vitality and freedom,

You call us beyond our limits.
So downwards we tunnel, upwards we construct,
And sidewards we reach out, determined to connect.
Bless the constructs of our minds, may they manifest your wisdom.
Nourish the feelings in our hearts, may they express your compassion.
Bless the works of our hands, may they reveal your justice.
For if we build without you, we toil in vain.
In truth, we are the clay and you are the potter.
Amen.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Does This Shock You?

21st SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Josh 24, 1-2, 15-18 / Eph 5, 2a,25-32 / John 6, 60-69

School is starting up, so we know the summer holiday is coming to an end.  And with today’s gospel we have come to the end of a month-long reflection on the sixth chapter of John’s gospel.  Now Jesus wants a response from us – a decision.  It’s much like what we heard in the first reading when Joshua puts it to the people: “Decide today whom you will serve!”  Like them – we have a decision to make.

In the gospel Jesus’ call for decision meets with strong resistance – from people who think themselves his disciples.  They say: “What you say to us, Jesus, is hard to accept.  But Jesus doesn’t relent.  He pushes the question: “Does what I have said shock you?”  But why should they be shocked?  Why should we be shocked?  What shocking thing is Jesus saying?

Many take Jesus’ words about himself as the Bread of Life in a very physical sense.  So the shock comes in Jesus telling us to actually eat his body.  “Take and eat!”  Yet in the gospel of John Jesus warns us about such an overly fleshy reading of his words.  He says: “It is the spirit that gives life, while flesh of itself is of no avail.  The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.”

Jesus is telling us: what we are to take and eat is his own Spirit and life.  When we take into ourselves Jesus’ Spirit and life – feed on Jesus’ way and values – his vision and style of life – then Jesus really is becoming our Bread of Life – the Bread for our Living.

We cannot talk about Eucharist without talking about change and transformation.  We talk about bread and wine being changed into Jesus’ real presence among us.  That is deeply true.  But we dare not put limits to God’s work.  God’s work of transformation has not only to do with bread and wine.  It has everything to do with us.  As we make Jesus our real Bread of Life by taking on his Spirit and life, then we are changed.  We are transformed.

We will experience our own transformation.  We will find ourselves living more self-forgetfully and loving more generously.  We will be shocked to recognize Jesus in who we are becoming.  We will be shocked to recognize in ourselves the Living Lord, the Risen Lord.

Jesus’ words change things.  “This is my body” changes bread and wine – changes us into “Body of Christ”.  And the words change the neighbor – fellow parishioner, fellow citizen – into “Body of Christ”.  But also the neighbor from afar – the refugee, the immigrant, the illegal – “Body of Christ”.  And the unacknowledged neighbor – the un-allowed, unwelcome neighbor:  the people kept on the margins of our society and our church – “Body of Christ”.  And finally the always unrecognized, unmentioned neighbor:  the enemy – whomever we fear or been told we should fear – “Body of Christ”.

Does what Jesus says shock us?  I think our shock shows we have understood what he is saying to us.

We have a phrase: “being a practicing Catholic”.  Jesus is telling us:  being a good, practicing Catholic requires we approach ourselves and the neighbor – the neighbor of every kind and degree – with the same reverence with which we come to the altar to receive Jesus’ Body and Blood.

Let our communion here in church this morning ready us for our communion in the streets tomorrow.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ
 

Becoming What We Eat

20^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Pr 9, 1-6 / Eph 5, 15-20 / John6, 51-58

For four Sundays straight we have been reflecting on the sixth chapter of John’s gospel.  Today’s reading really amounts to the centerpiece of the chapter.  Here Jesus says: I am the living bread… whoever eats this bread will live forever… will have eternal life.  What Jesus is saying here anticipates what he will say and do at the Last Supper.  And it also anticipates what we will say and do at this Eucharist today.  Take and eat – my body.  Take and drink – my blood.  He could not be more clear or graphic.  Eat!  Drink!  Basic things.  What is Jesus saying to us?  What does he want for us?

Eating and drinking involve tasting and taking in.  They require chewing, swallowing, digesting.  Jesus is saying to us:  you take me in by taking into yourself my way of life, my lifestyle, my values.  And when you have chewed on my ways and digested my values, then eventually you will assimilate my vision of life – my understanding of what it means to be a human being.  And that’s when I become truly your bread of life – the bread for your living.  Elsewhere in John’s gospel Jesus says the very same thing but puts it this way:  I become your way, your truth and your life.

So what happens here at our Sunday Eucharist?  What are we doing here?  What happens is that we are fed the bread for our living in the word of God proclaimed and preached and in the sacramental signs of bread and wine.  Through these we have communion with the “Lord of our lives”.  And we make our commitment to let him become our way, our truth and our life in the journey ahead of us.

But – and this is a crucially important “but” – it’s what happens after our Sunday Eucharist that is the main event in our lives.  The main event is our daily lives – our real lives!  It’s on that journey that we really digest the bread of life.  It’s on that daily journey that Jesus really becomes our way, our truth and our life.

 

An example.  We say to one another here in church at the Eucharist: “the peace of Christ”.  What we say must become what we do for one another and for our world.  Our world is so easily fascinated by conflict, so easily convinced of the value of violent actions and words.  Our world, and yes, at times our church – seem so ready to reply with power’s answer – not love’s.  Power seeks its own advantage.  Love gives itself away.  To this world and this church we must bring and nurture Jesus’ peace, Jesus’ Shalom.  Our holiness must happen in the streets.  There is where Jesus will detox our unpeaceful imaginations and set us free from our self-absorbed dream of a loveless lifestyle.

We will know ourselves detoxed – know ourselves saved – know ourselves feeding on the bread of life – when we begin to sense from within us an honest joy in our making decisions that are love-giving – for others – decisions that are life-giving – for others.  Then, like Jesus, we will be living for the life of the world.  And therein will be our joy.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Getting on with the Summer Picnic

18^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Ex 16, 2-4, 12-15 / Eph 4, 17,20-24 / John 6, 24-35

Last Sunday we began a picnic – a picnic in Galilee with Jesus as our host.  On this picnic we will be hearing the good news from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.  In fact we will be hearing from that same chapter through to the last Sunday in August.  That’s five consecutive Sundays with the same chapter!  The sixth chapter begins with the story of the multiplication of loaves – which we heard last Sunday.  And then John moves us into a profound and prolonged reflection on the Eucharist and on Jesus as the Bread of Life – the Bread of our lives.  We are beginning that reflection today.

The whole thrust of this chapter – and really the thrust of the whole gospel of John – is to help us become aware of God’s presence – God’s closeness – in our lives.  Jesus will use signs to help us become aware.  For any Jew – for Jesus – as well as for John, the author of the gospel – a sign is any word or gesture – any concrete thing that helps us become aware of God’s transforming presence in my life.  For Jesus – we always become of aware of God as the God who is changing us – the God who is renewing, reshaping, recreating us.

When Jesus says in today’s gospel:  I am the bread of life. – he is using sign-language to bring us to awareness of God’s presence to us.  He is making himself the sign – the concrete reality that points to God’s presence.  What does the sign say?  What is Jesus saying to us?

I am the bread of life.  The image he is using is food, and we eat food.  Eating is tasting and taking in; it’s digesting and assimilating.  When we eat something, then what had been outside of us, other than us becomes part of us.  We become what we eat, the saying goes.  Just so, Jesus is telling us this:  you take me in – you consume me – and you will know God’s transforming presence in your life.  You take me in – you feed on me – by tasting and taking into yourself my way – my values – my teaching – my style of life.  Live, as I live!  Love, as I love!  When my values – my vision of life actually become your own, then I become truly the bread of life for you – then I become living bread for you.

At this Eucharist Jesus continues to say to us:  when you have tasted, digested and assimilated me as your bread of life – your living bread, then you will experience God.  But how does that really happen – experiencing God?  You will experience God as changing your love – changing your affections.  We will find ourselves becoming less self-concerned and more self-forgetful – less self-promoting and more large-hearted, more open-handed.  And we will experience growing within us a magnanimity – a grand and generous spirit – that will make us friend and soul-mate to Jesus.  Gratefully, we will recognize Jesus in who we are becoming.  We will recognize the living Lord in ourselves.

And then – then we will be empowered – empowered to let go of being the center of our own lives.  We will be free with the freedom God wants and works for us.

On July 31^st, we celebrated the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.  I’d like to conclude these thoughts on Jesus as our bread of life by sharing with you some reflections from Karl Rahner, a famous German Jesuit theologian.  Once he was asked why any sensible modern man like himself would think to remain or become a Jesuit?  His reply was quite simply that he found among his Jesuit brothers the living spirit of Jesus.  But listen to how he describes how that living spirit is concretely lived.  Listen to his words.

“I think of Jesuit brothers whom I myself have known.  I think of one who in a village in India that is unknown to Indian intellectuals helps poor people to dig their wells.  I think of one who for long hours in the confessional listens to the pain and torment of unimportant people who are far more complex than they appear on the surface.  I think of one who is beaten by police along with his students without the satisfaction of even being a revolutionary.  I think of my Jesuit brother who in his prison ministry must proclaim over and over again the message of the Gospel with never a token of gratitude, who is more appreciated for the handout of cigarettes than for the words of the Good News he brings.  I think of the one who with difficulty and without any clear evidence of success plods away at the task of awakening in just a few people a small spark of faith, of hope and of charity.”

I think Rahner is describing for us the concrete shape our freedom will take on when we let Jesus empower us with his love and his life – when we let Jesus become our living Lord, our Bread of Life.  Then with Jesus we will say to our world:  Take and eat, my life for you.  Take and drink in, my love for you.

 Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

On Picnics & Signs

17^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

2Kgs 4, 42-44 / Eph 4, 1-6 / John6, 1-15 

How about going on a picnic?  With today’s gospel reading from John, the Church is inviting us to begin a kind of summer picnic.  The picnic will be in Galilee and our host will be Jesus.  Till the fourth Sunday of August [August 26] – for five consecutive Sundays – we will be hearing the good news from one, single chapter of John’s gospel – the sixth chapter.  The chapter begins with the multiplication of loaves – what we have just heard.  John then uses the story to introduce a profound and extended reflection on the Eucharist and on Jesus as the Bread of Life.

We’re going to be hearing lots of food imagery on the picnic.  Food, in fact, is the most common of all biblical images.  God’s goodness is described as a feast, God’s displeasure as a famine and our penitence as a fasting.  Israel is described in the Bible not as some picturesque spot but as a land flowing with milk and honey.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem which translated means “house of bread” [beit-le-hem].  And Jesus calls on us as disciples to be salt – giving flavor to the food of life.  So the Scriptures and the food network share much.

Since we’re going to be on this picnic for some time, I think it would be good for us to adjust some of our expectations.  For example, it would be wrong to expect Chippendale chairs and fine china on a picnic.  On picnics we sit on the ground and make due with paper plates.  In just the same way it would be good for us to get to know the thought and language John will use in chapter six.  Then we will be able to hear with better understanding and will come to have the right expectations.  We won’t be expecting Chippendale chairs when Jesus is inviting us to sit on the grass.

A critically important idea throughout John’s gospel, and especially in the sixth chapter, is the word sign.  John tells us the crowds are following Jesus because of the signs he is performing.  The multiplication of loaves is described by John as a sign.  So we need to understand what a sign is if we’re going to understand what Jesus is doing in the multiplication of loaves.

What’s a sign?  For the Jews, as for John, a sign is any sensible reality – something concrete – which makes present to me a transforming experience of God’s presence.  Through the sign God’s real presence becomes accessible, available to me – in the change, in the transformation I experience myself undergoing.  I come to experience/know God as the God-who-is-changing/transforming-me.  And I come to experience/know myself as where God is actively at work.

Through concrete things like bread and wine, like spoken words and body gestures – God becomes present to me as actually reshaping me, renewing me, recreating me.  And that is what miracle means in the Bible.  Miracle literally means “to bring to wonder and awe.”  A miracle happens when we experience wonder and awe at God’s powerful, transforming presence in life – in my life and in the lives of others.

It’s very important to emphasize that miracle is not magic.  I say very important in order to understand the gospel of John but also very important in order to understand what we do here at Eucharist every Sunday.  Magic affects the surface of things.  Miracle transforms what is innermost.  Magic entertains – is cheap entertainment – and costs us nothing.  We watch and are amused.  Miracle engages us – is costly engagement – and costs us dearly.  We take part and are changed.  Unless it costs, it isn’t a miracle.  In sign and miracle I encounter the intimate yet insistently challenging presence of the Living God.

So on the picnic in Galilee over the next weeks look for the signs and ask yourself some questions.  For example, in today’s reading the multiplication of loaves is worked by Jesus as a sign – but how?  How is it a sign?  We are not dealing with magic but with a miracle.  So how is God encountered in the sign – in the miracle of the multiplication of loaves?  Where is God’s challenging presence in my life?  What interior transformation is being brought about within me?  Remember the beginning of our transformation is becoming aware of our need for it.

Many questions – but the answers can come only from us and from our lives – not from any homily or catechism.  The answers come from our own deep-down living.

During these next weeks let Jesus earn his reputation as a “miracle-worker”.  Let this become our expectation:  how is Jesus bringing us to wonder and awe in our own lives?

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Wonderfully Made!

BIRTH OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST

Isaiah 49: 1-6 / Acts 13: 22-26 / Luke 1: 57-66, 80
 

We celebrate the birth of John the Baptist.  In our liturgical calendar there are only three births celebrated:  the birth of Jesus at Christmas, the birth of Mary in September and today’s feast, the birth of John the Baptist.  So it’s a special day when we recall the beauty of birth – the beauty and wonder of new life.  Added to this celebration is the fact that, as a growing parish, over the past year we have celebrated over sixty baptisms.

So we are being given new life – in our babies and in our baptisms.  And I think we can let today’s celebration help us – help us to learn to see ourselves perhaps differently but certainly more deeply – learn to see ourselves with the same bright, expectant eyes we use to see our newly born and newly baptized.

Let us learn to hear the words from Isaiah, our first reading, speaking to us and speaking about us directly:  The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.  …You are my servant, the Lord said to me, through you I show my glory.  …and [so] I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord.

These words are true and speak truly to us and about us.  God has chosen to reveal the wonder of his love and goodness in and through each one of us.  Each of us reflects in a unique, unrepeatable way God’s own radiant presence and love.

Today we celebrate John the Baptist.  But there was another John whose words capture the deeper meaning of our feast.  They are the words of Cardinal John Newman, an Englishman of the nineteenth century, who realized how wonderfully we are made and how wonderfully we are guided by God in life.  Listen to his words.  Again, they are words spoken directly to us and about us:

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  He has not created me for naught.  I shall do good – I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments.

I think what Newman says is deeply true.  In the working out of God’s plan we are simply irreplaceable in one another’s lives.  We are, each of us, links in a chain, bringing people together – bringing people closer to one another.  What a thing of beauty it is to have this as our vocation in life:  bringing people closer to each other.  I think we deprive ourselves when we don’t take the time to reflect on how we actually do live out in our daily lives the beauty of our vocation.  Reflect on our marriages and families.  Reflect on our friendships.  Reflect on all the ways we reach out to others and bring them closer.  Reflect on how irreplaceable we are for others in their coming to know God’s goodness.

In today’s gospel from Luke Elizabeth insists that the child to be circumcised be called John.  In Hebrew that name is Johanan, and it means God is gracious.  In his own life John remained true to his name.  He showed God’s gracious love by bringing people together to be baptized and then bringing them to Jesus.  John was the messenger; Jesus the message.  John was the voice; Jesus the word.

John tells us who we are.  We are, all of us, like John.  Each of us – being fashioned fresh from God’s love – bring people together.  We love and we link people together.  And in our own wonderful, beautiful, irreplaceable way we bring people to Christ.

During the upcoming week, as we begin to enjoy the season of summer, let us also take the time to enjoy how God has been gracious to others through us.  Let us appreciate and give thanks for how wonderfully we have been made.

And let us continue to hear true words spoken to us: And the Lord said to me: ‘you are my servant; through you I show my glory.’  [Isaiah 49: 3]

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ