Reflecting on Luke 4:21-30

I know a fascinating secret about today’s section from Luke. This insight comes from the work of Bargil Pixner, osb., an archaeologist who excavated some of the more famous portions of ancient Israel.

The city of Nazareth (never mentioned in the Old Testament) was very probably founded only a hundred years before the birth of Jesus, and was purposely named Nazareth from the Hebrew word nazir, which means set apart. This means that the grandchildren of those who settled that little town―who had probably emigrated from Babylon, that place of exile― saw themselves as set apart. Why? Because they were descended from King David, and they expected that the Messiah would come from their ranks.

Doesn’t that make much of the odd behavior of the people from Jesus’ home town make sense? Throughout all four of the gospels there is a backdrop of hostility and disappointment when Jesus returns to Nazareth. He is the famous miracle worker, the charismatic leader who has drawn twelve devoted apostles to his work, he is royalty, for heaven’s sake, and yet what has he done?

Has he mobilized an army, like David would have, to expel the loathsome Romans? Has he marched on Jerusalem and staged a coup to take over the palace? Most important, has he assigned his own family members as generals in his army and presidents of his parliament?

What good is finally having the Messiah (anointed one) come from your home town if his idea of anointed is that he bring good news to the poor and restore sight to the blind? What kind of glorious revolution is that?

No wonder they tried to throw him off a cliff.

Have you ever relinquished your expectations of family members and honored who they really are?

Reflecting on I Corinthians 12: 12-30

Every once in a while I take inventory of my body. Let’s see. I’ve been coloring my hair since I was twenty-five. I’ve needed glasses since college. Let’s just stop there. The rest is where it starts to get ugly.

How about you? What assessments would you make about the history of your body? Does that old football injury still kick up when it rains? Has your appendix scar just sort of blended in with all your other battle scars? St. Paul’s letter today inspires me to review my physical body, and to marvel at how brilliant the whole messed up thing is.

But of course he’s using the body as a metaphor for the Body of believers, that perfect organism whose blood supply is Love. So let’s take a quick inventory of how the Body is functioning in our time.

Where there is loneliness, are we there? Where there are refugees, are we mobilizing? Where there is ignorance and intolerance, are we courageous and outspoken? Where there are people bound to their homes through illness and disability, are we organized to bring them comfort, meals, rides to doctor appointments?

Where there are young families with newborns, are we supporting them with meals, and our time, so they can catch up on sleep? For that matter, where there are small children at Mass, are we providing child care so their exhausted parents can pray and be renewed?

Are we honoring the elders who built our parishes and schools and who now need our help? I can proudly say that, in many ways, we are. But, just like that nagging arthritic knee, the broken places still cry out for healing.

In what ways are you helping to build up the Body?

Kathy McGovern ©2016

This week’s column was inspired by four wonderful friends. Christine Maschka oversees the stunning Share the Care program at Most Precious Blood Parish in Denver. This column is a very brief summary of the dozens of needs she responds to and serves each week. Madonna Gaudio is finishing her degree at Regis University, after which she will immerse herself in addressing those needs in a larger arena. Justin and Lauren Zuiker regularly attempt Mass attendance while juggling two toddlers. It is observing their struggle that inspires the question about child care in our parishes.

Reflecting on John 2: 1-11

Some scholars say that the secret to the story of the wedding feast of Cana lies in those mysterious six stone water jars. What on earth are six huge jars, holding twenty to thirty gallons of water, doing outside a tiny house in tiny Cana of Galilee? The only appropriate courtyard for such massive jars would have been―of course! ―the Temple in Jerusalem.

The first century Jewish reader would smile in profound recognition. Brilliant! John has transported the very stone jars that once stood outside the Temple, the Temple which, by the time this late gospel was written, had been brutally destroyed by the Roman army, and transported them to tiny Cana where Jesus, his mother, and their friends are all celebrating a joyous wedding.

They have no wine, said Mary to Jesus. Might that be symbolic language for “all the things we held dear as faithful Jews have been destroyed”?

After a brief skirmish with his mother, which of course he doesn’t win, Jesus directs the servers to fill those (symbolic) jars with water. If we take this story literally (which I suspect would disappoint John the Evangelist deeply) we have to wonder how long it would take―and how many trips to the well it would involve―  to pour one hundred and twenty gallons of water into those jars.

The very shape of this wondrous story suggests that this deeply symbolic account of a neighborhood wedding is meant to tell us one thing: Jesus is the new Temple, Jesus is the new wine, Jesus is everything we had longed for and thought we had lost.

It’s that simple. Thank you, Blessed Mother! Now go and do whatever he tells you.

What things that you once held dear have you put aside in order to follow Jesus?

Reflecting on Luke 23: 35-43

Jesus, remember us when you come into your kingdom. Remember us, Jesus, in the Philippines.  You thirsted on the cross that terrible day.  We thirst.  We have no clean water, and no one can reach us in our isolated village.  We suffer with you, Jesus.

They looted your belongings and cast lots for your garment that terrible day. Here, every source of water and food and shelter has been looted.  We are not criminals.  We are trying to save our children.  We are naked, and wet, and cold, and hot.  We suffer with you, Jesus.

Remember those, Jesus, here at home, who await court trials. Their family members are terrified for them.  Console all prisoners around the world who are wrongly imprisoned through the false testimony of others.  You suffered that betrayal too.   And as you forgave the Good Thief from the cross, let all prisoners who have sinned against you deeply know the deep consolation of your saving mercy.

Your friends fled from you that terrible day.  What a comfort it would have been to have them there at the cross, praying with you.   Instead, your tormentors mocked you.  Our elderly understand that, Jesus.  They are alone in their nursing homes, forgotten by friends, abandoned by their children.  Their memories fail them, and they are the source of snickering behind their backs.  They suffer with you, Jesus.

Remember the young people around the world, Jesus, who cannot find work.  Many cannot find meaning.  Many cannot find you.  O Jesus, remember them most of all.

In what areas of your life do you ask Jesus to “remember” you?

Reflecting on Luke 21: 5-19

If you go to New York City sometime, try to get to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.  The inhabitants of Little Italy, Chinatown, the Jewish communities, and thousands of others lived in the tenements high above the bustling saloons, clothing and jewelry stores on Orchard Street― a block that historians say was the most densely populated street in the world in the 1870s.

Listen to the babies crying.  Hear the music of the world’s languages as neighbors barter for the freshest tomatoes, or the best price for winter coats.  Get ready to sweat as you help Gerta Schneider cook schnitzel in her tiny kitchen in July.  Watch Mama Rogarshevsky light the Sabbath candles, and bow your head as Papa prays the Sabbath blessing.

They left large farms to live literally on top of one another in a crowded city.  Many escaped earthquakes, famines and plagues, or ominous pogroms that bode of the holocaust to come.  They came for a better life, and later generations found it.

Today, neighborhood carnicerias thrive next to Middle East grocery stores and Somali markets. These groups fled their homes also, where unstable nations rise against nations, and kingdoms against kingdoms.

We, too, live in a time of powerful earthquakes, famines and plagues. Hurricane Sandy came close to destroying in a day the very tenement neighborhood that housed millions of immigrants for three hundred years.

We Coloradans have our own flood narratives, too.  And Nebraskans have tornados.  And don’t even mention fires to Californians.  Is the world finally coming to an end?

Do not be terrified, says Jesus.  If we all work to heal our planet the God of all nations will secure our lives.

In what ways do you live by faith, not fear?

Reflecting on Luke 20: 27-38

What awaits us after death?  Will heaven be so radically different from earth that even the greatest joys of our existence here will fade to nothing once we are in the presence of the Beatific Vision?  That image of heaven makes me uneasy.

We cling to this life because it’s all we know.  Of course we hold close to the loves and friendships that make our lives so rich and full.  Why on earth would we willingly leave them for an eternity of the unknown?  The ancient author of the book of Ecclesiastes reflects on this in my favorite passage in all of scripture:  God has made everything beautiful in its time, and yet has set eternity in our hearts (3:11).

Yes.  We embrace and love this life, and yet we carry a deep intuition that this is not the end, that we are made for eternity, where every tear shall be undone, and death will be no more (Revelation 21:4).

I somehow sense that heaven will be more and more of all the things we built on earth.  As C.S. Lewis suggests in The Great Divorce, if we demand to cling to our resentments and pettiness and selfishness, heaven can’t give us more than what we consistently chose throughout our lives. We will flee from heaven because it’s too solid, too real, and too wonderful for us.

But, as the great John Kavanaugh, S.J. wrote:  Those who cast themselves into the arms of the living God, no matter what their shame or sorrow, will find what their hearts desired.

I choose to cast myself into those arms, and to trust in the God of the living.

What do you think heaven will be like?

Reflecting on Luke 19: 1-10

I think that we are all doing the best we can.  It’s tough out there.  We have to be great parents, attentive and available grandparents, debt-free, environmentally conscious, active parishioners, and avidly working on our fat-to-muscle ratio.

Outsiders might look at our rowdy kids and say, “Why doesn’t someone teach those parents how to discipline their kids?”  Others might say, in the car after the party, “I can’t believe they used paper plates when they could have just brought out their regular dishes and washed them later.  I thought they were supposed to be such environmentalists.”  Or, the worst, “She says she’s watching her cholesterol, but did you see that piece of cake she ate?”

Looking at us from the outside, it appears that we are hypocritical and lazy.  But the Incarnate Jesus, the one who dwells with us, isn’t looking from the outside.  He dwells within us, and breathes every breath with us.  He is with us during the endless sleepless nights we endure with our kids.  He is with us when we recycle the annoying cardboard boxes.  He is with us when we spend those lonely late-night hours working to get out of debt, or to face and recover from our addictions.

That’s what Zaccheus experienced when Jesus, who had talked so often about the dignity and worth of the poor, called this rich man down from the sycamore tree and invited himself over for dinner.  The Incarnate One knew he was doing the best he could, and Zaccheus, overjoyed at being held in the embrace of Love, did even better than his best for the rest of his life.

Whose belief in you has inspired you to be the best you can be?

Reflecting on Luke 18: 9-14

There is something very sacred about this story that Jesus tells today about the Pharisee and the tax collector.  But we must hold it close, and let its grace touch us.  To be able to consider that we might be the Pharisees, the ones who think (secretly, of course) that they are more deserving of God’s mercy than anyone else, is a grace just in itself.  We don’t think in terms of “sin” and “sinner” anymore, so to actually let that concept into our hearts can be healing already.

The surest and quickest passage to God’ mercy is to be profoundly aware of our need of it.  Try to remember a time when you were humbled by sin.  Maybe you were caught in a lie, or stopped while gossiping about someone.  Maybe one of the deadly sins has you in its vise, and the fruit of a lifetime of wrath, for example, finds you banging on the hood of somebody’s stalled car in front of you at rush hour.  Or maybe, like me, you routinely use about a thousand percent of your share of the world’s resources, and a traveling companion asks if that was really you taking that twenty-minute shower.

It is such a precious gift to be humbled, to admit our sin, to bow before God and say, “Lord, I thank you that I’ve finally been found out.  I thank you that the world now knows what you’ve known all along.  Oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

It doesn’t feel good, but it changes us.  It nudges us a bit closer to heaven, where sinners are welcomed home every day.

How has the awareness of sin in your life changed you?

Reflecting on Luke 18: 1-18

Rembrandt, St. Jacob Praying, 1661

Somewhere, at this moment, someone in the world is praying for you.  I know.  I just saw it with my own eyes.

Recently my husband Ben and I found ourselves on the highest hill in Paris, cozily ensconced in the Sacre Coeur monastery for two days.  There we had the great joy of stepping out of our rooms and into the basilica, the breathtaking church built by the French in atonement for their part in the Franco-Prussian War.

Imagine the roar and rush of Paris.  Then imagine stepping into the basilica, where the Benedictine nuns and priests sing the psalms (in French, of course) by candlelight, at various time of the night and day, world without end.  Heaven.

Five days later we entered another piece of heaven when he got off the train in Lisieux, the home of St. Thérése.  Roses!  Millions of roses greet the pilgrims who have come to pray with the Carmelite community at the hermitage where St. Thérèse lived, and where she wrote Story of a Soul, the best-selling religious book of the twentieth century.

Here we prayed with the Carmelite sisters and postulants at all hours of the day and night.  And oh, the music of those French psalms wafting through the grille where St. Thérése and her cloistered community once prayed.  Heaven.

This is what I love about being Catholic: the sure and certain hope that we are never alone.  At this moment, a friend, a stranger, or a member of some religious community somewhere is praying for us.  Thank God that they never stop praying, for our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Can we pray for you?  Go to the website and let us know.

Reflecting on Luke 17: 11-19

James Tissot, Healing of the Lepers at Capernaum, 1886-94

Will you do a spiritual exercise for me?  Be quiet for a moment, and try to recall the last time you were sick.  Maybe you had a bad cold. Think of that pounding headache, or the burning eyes, or the painful blowing of your red, red nose.  Remember the misery of having to go to work, or make dinner, or answer e-mails when your body was screaming for sleep.

And now, remember the morning when your cold was over.  You slept through the night.  Your head was clear.  You felt blessedly strong and full of energy.

Try to remember that delicious moment of delivery from illness.  The migraine gone.  The blood test negative.  The lump dissolved.  Live in that moment of gratitude now.

Imagine that poor Samaritan man who had contracted leprosy.  What huge floods of relief must have coursed through him to hold out his hand and see that he was cured!  Cured!  He could return to his family.  He could make a living for them once again.  He could hold his new baby, or maybe his grandchild.  Death and loneliness had circled ‘round him, but as he was traveling to show himself to the priest he realized that he was healed, and sorrow and sadness fled away.

If we could just live in that moment of gratitude every day we would break open every inch of distance we may feel from God.  Can you remember how it felt to be healed of an illness?  God lives right there, in the place where immense gratitude is stored.  Offer that memory back to God.  That’s where the heart of praise finds its endless source.

What memory do you have of being healed?