Reflecting on Luke 1:1-4; 4: 14-21

Of all the fascinating subjects—the saints,  scripture, social justice— that are part of the lives of the 1 billion Catholics on the globe, the one I find the most compelling is the brilliant 1969 lectionary.

If you haven’t sat with some kind of publication that has the Sunday scriptures—week after week for a year or two at least– you are missing the best-kept secret of all the reforms since the Council.

There’s a method to why we read what we read when we read it, and it’s breathtaking.  The first reading is chosen, out of all the scriptures in the entire Old Testament, to match the Gospel reading.  And the Responsorial Psalm is chosen, out of all 150 psalms, to be the soft light that illumines the connection between those two.

They rhyme, kind of.  They harmonize.  Today’s section from Luke describes the process perfectly.   Jesus takes his turn as lector in the synagogue in Nazareth.  Isaiah 61 is the Torah portion (actually the “Half Torah”, since it’s from a prophet and not from the first five books) this particular day, describing the Spirit’s anointing on the one who does justice.  Jesus closes the scroll and says, “That’s me.  Isaiah is talking about me.”

That’s how the lectionary is shaped.  The first reading is the overture, the gospel the opera.

It all started on that ancient day when Ezra the scribe, circa 450BC, read the earliest written version of The Books of Moses.  Thousands of people stood, silently aware that the Divine Presence was among them as the Word was proclaimed.

We stand still, all these years later, when the gospel is proclaimed, in communion with all the Catholic men, women and children old enough to understand.

Have you ever been fascinated with the way the readings connected on a particular Sunday?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 2: 1-11

African Christian Art

Right off the bat, at the very beginning of his public ministry, Jesus sets out transforming us.  The first “sign” that John’s gospel gives us is that puny, weak bit of wine that runs out so quickly at the wedding at Cana.  Watch for the transformation:

Somehow, there are SIX STONE JARS sitting outside the tiny house!  This is funny, and it’s an inside joke for the Jewish-Christian readers of the first century.  Hmm.  Where else have we seen such huge jars?  Right at the entrance to the Temple, where men did ritual washings in order to make themselves pure so they could enter. Now those huge jars have been transplanted from the Temple all the way up to the little house where the marriage party is in full swing.

A similar joke might be if someone said, “We went to some Catholic friends’ home for dinner, and the stained glass windows from the Sistine Chapel were in their living room!”  It’s John’s way of saying, “Watch for the transformation that Jesus will perform.”

His mother gives directions to the stewards, and Jesus gives directions to the created world (which he created), and the water is transformed into the best wine of the party.

And of course there are countless transformations to come: the lonely Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at a well and becomes the premiere disciple in her village; the man born blind who is given sight so that we can see how blind we are; the dead Lazarus whose stone is rolled away.

But we don’t have to go far from the scriptures to see the best transformations, the ones that are endlessly happening in we who try and fail and try again to do whatever he tells us.

How do you try to do whatever he tells you in your life?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 23:35-43

We should have seen it coming from the beginning.  One year ago we rotated into Luke’s Gospel, and if we’d paid attention we would have noticed it then, right there in the second chapter.  But we were distracted by the glorious account of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, and those shepherds running up to Bethlehem to see the things that had come to pass.

Jesus, remember me

We should have seen it coming, this horrible, terrifying death on a hill.  The day he came into Jerusalem on a colt, with his followers singing hosannas, should have jolted our memories.  Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven! They were singing just what the angels sang on the night of his birth!  Something destined from before all things was now unfolding before our eyes.

The King of Kings lies nailed to a cross.  He struggles, he cries, he writhes in agony.  And now we remember the prophet Simeon as he held the baby Jesus in the Temple: And Mary, a sword will pierce your heart too. Ah. We knew this was coming all along.

But now, grace enters into the heart of one crucified next to him.  The torture of the cross opens up a place that has grown hard in his heart.  In his last moments he recognizes the image of the invisible God, Christ himself, who came into the world to deliver us from darkness.  Jesus! he moans.  Remember me when you come into your kingdom!

The crucified King promises paradise to him this very day. And we who, at this distance of two thousand years, know the end of the story, wait in joyful hope at the empty tomb.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

At what times of your life have you begged Jesus to remember you?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 21: 5-19

My friend Joanie was the first of my friends to have a baby, way back in the early 1970s.  I still remember how shocked I was that she was ignoring all the signs of the times―the recent famine in Biafra, the war in Vietnam, the oil embargo, the Palestinian terror attack at the Munich Olympics, the eruption of Mt. Etna.

In every age, bring life forward

How could she possibly think about having a family when Jesus’ prophecy about the last days was clearly being acted out on the world stage?  Wars, famines, terrorism, volcanos.  Surely things could never get worse.  Also, hadn’t she read the very same reading assignments I had at school?  The world would run out of clean water and air by the time we were in our forties.

But as the years went by, something even more shocking happened.  All of my friends started having families!  I was stunned at their hopefulness, their faith-driven optimism that God is the God of the living, and their vocation was to bring life forward.

And that’s what finally compelled me to learn how to read Scripture.  Of course.  Luke’s Gospel today is timeless, and Jesus was absolutely right.  In every age there will be all those dreadful things.  And in every age, Jesus is Lord of all who hope in him.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways do you experience a tension between faith and fear?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14

When I was a young Catholic growing up in the warm parish community of St. Vincent de Paul in Denver, our favorite recess activity was to take our Saints Books out on the playground and horrify each other with the stories of their martyrdoms.  I think of that today as we hear that terrifying account of the torture and execution of the seven pious brothers (and their mother) by Antiochus Epiphanes IV around 170 B.C.

I used to know a lot more about how the saints died than how they lived.  Their deaths were so dramatic that I forgot to notice the faith statements of their lives.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Canada’s first canonized saint, André Bessette.  What a disappointing story.  He wasn’t devoured by Roman lions or skinned alive by Syrian emperors.  For forty years he just held the door open for people coming into Notre Dame College in Quebec.   And after his totally unremarkable death over one million people filed by his casket, weeping for this simple Holy Cross brother who lived his ordinary life with extraordinary love.

I guess that’s who  all the saints are: door openers.  Something about their lives, and sometimes their deaths, opens a door for us so we can see Jesus more clearly.  And on the day of our own deaths Jesus himself will open the door for us, for as today’s Gospel tells us, “he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What saint, living or dead, opens the door for you to see Jesus?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 19:1-10

Oh, Zaccheus.  We really get you.  Short in stature and huge of heart, you couldn’t hear or see through the crowd.  The Jesus whom you longed to know was here!  Right here in Jericho!  So you climbed straight up that sycamore in order to see him whom your heart already loved.  Your story inspires us still, and so we have the courage to pray:

From The Life of Jesus in Nazareth, 1908

Find us, Jesus, as we rise and pray our Morning Offering, as we care for children and parents, as we strap on our sneakers and go to the gym, as we give everything we have to our jobs and our families, as we make our examen before falling asleep.  Find us, Jesus, as we hear the baby cry and leave our warm beds, as we stand firm against the strong wills of our unformed teenagers, as we look at the same photo album a thousand times with our parents who suffer from Alzheimer’s.

Find us, Jesus, as we navigate the path back to peace after an argument, insight after a humbling experience, faith after a time of doubt.  Find us, Jesus, as we process together to receive you in the Eucharist, then to see you at every table throughout the week.

Find us today, Jesus.  See us in that sycamore.  Call us by our name.  Invite yourself to our house for dinner tonight.  Please, Jesus.   AMEN.

We are gifted with a question at the ground of our being. And even in the worst of times, we climb trees to find out what the answer might be.  (John Kavanaugh, S.J.)

My dear friends Mary Frances and Bill Jaster inspired this column.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways do you seek Jesus?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on 2 Tm 4:6-8, 16-18

It’s frustrating not to know more about the world of Jesus and St. Paul.  But there is a clue in the second reading today, an actual insider’s joke from St. Paul (or one of his disciples) to the church headed by Timothy in Ephesus.

Nero's Olympics

“I have competed well, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  And from now on, the crown of righteousness awaits me.”  Hmm.  Why does he use the image of an athlete competing in a race, finishing it and wearing the crown?  Could it be that Paul, from his chains, is sending along a little joke about the crazy man on the throne, the dreaded Emperor Nero, the one who would be his executioner?  I think so.

By the time this letter was written the whole Roman Empire was laughing at Nero because, at the Olympics in the year 67, he actually bribed the judges to let him compete.  He entered himself in six races and, guess what, won every one of them (no competitors allowed). And when he fell off his chariot in the race against himself, he still won and got to wear the victor’s wreath and process around the stadium to thunderous applause-on-demand.

Thanks, St. Paul.  All these millennia later, we still get the message.  Unlike Nero, we’ll run the real race and we’ll finish it.  We’ll keep the faith.  And at the finish line, with our last breaths, we will reach for Him who has forgiven us.  And the heavens will rejoice that another set of sinners has been lifted onto the Winner’s Podium, to be crowned on high with eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Special thanks to my friend Thomas Smith for the background information given in this column.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

How do you feel you are doing in “running the race” of faithfulness to your baptismal vows?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Exodus 17: 8-13

Last Sunday I was giving a talk about biblical history.   I had a big, heavy burlap chart that needed two people to hold it.  About ten minutes into this lesson Fred, dropping his arms (and thus the chart) said, “Will Aaron be coming soon?”  And the class, very biblically literate, erupted in laughter, recalling this story today from Exodus about Moses’ arms being held up by Aaron in the heat of the battle.

Victory, Oh Lord Painting by John Everett Millias 1829-1896

I looked at the couple I had recruited for the chart-holding task.  Their arms were aching, but they had dutifully stretched that chart across the room until they just couldn’t hold it anymore.  They, and hundreds of others, have been holding up the good works of the Church all their lives.

Afterwards, the doors of the hall burst open and a group of beautiful young adults came rushing in, hastily setting up the cots for a number of homeless families who will be staying at the parish this week.  They are part of a whole army of parishioners who will hold up the arms of these struggling families, providing friendship, food and shelter for them as the adults go to their jobs or look for work this week.

My cousin Maureen has a long list of people for whom she prays, every single day.  The years come and go, but she is always there, like the widow in Luke’s story today, holding up in prayer those who are sick, or jobless, or divorcing, or grieving.

Will Aaron be coming soon?  As I look at the faithful work of the Church around the world I can confidently say that he is already here.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

How are you helping to hold up the arms of the weary?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 17:11-19

Do you have a certain time in your life that is so indelibly marked in your heart that you return to it almost daily?  For me that time is the fall of 2007, when a staph infection took me to the very limits of my strength.  Those horrible months are all stamped in my memory: the screaming pain, the overwhelming nausea, and the second-by-second waits for the medication to start working.  Those flashbacks return to me now, in this gorgeous fall of 2010, through the distinct sensory messengers of cooling days, leaves changing, and darkness descending earlier.  And this is what that suffering has seared in me:

One returned and thanked him

Utter delight, every single time I drive myself anywhere in the car.  Almost unbearable pleasure at the smell of apples falling from the trees. Laughing out loud as I walk by myself down the block in less than a minute, remembering the agony of trying to take even five steps at a time.  The ecstasy of walking into the grocery story.  The heavenly touch of those who love me.

But I think the most delicious experience of all is remembering, the endless remembering, of being brought back from the depths by the living Body of Christ―the hundreds of friends and family who took care of me through it all.   There can never be enough words of gratitude.  But it’s kind of a “cellular gratitude”.  It’s not anything conscious.  Pain dug a well that is now filled to overflowing with astonished gratitude.  Like the cured Samaritan leper, I will give thanks while I live.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Have you reached a place of “cellular gratitude”?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14

There’s an incendiary sentence in this week’s second reading from 2Timothy: “I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God bestowed when my hands were laid on you.”  Those of us in Colorado and California have had more than enough “flames” this season.  One hundred and sixty nine Boulder families were recently displaced when flames, whipped up by winds, darted from house to house, destroying homes and hundreds of acres of land.   It is the most costly fire in Colorado history.

Beautiful Zeenat. She’ll be President someday.

But it does give one pause.  How quickly, how ravenously a fire can consume anything in its wake.  A fire starts out quietly (in this case in a fire pit) and then builds volume as it spreads.  And it’s just that kind of fire that the author of the letter to Timothy is encouraging!

I’ve seen lots of those kinds of fires.  Twelve years ago my brother Marty pointed out a little girl in his inner-city Math class and said, “This kid will be President someday if somebody will just give her a little help.”  Last year, at age 18 and a first-year college student, she wowed the benefactors at the Seeds of Hope gala with her poised and thoughtful reflection on the many mentors who supported her as she navigated her way through elementary school and high school.  She’ll probably be President of her own non-profit someday.  She will undoubtedly spend her life stoking the same fires of compassion and justice that were darting around her during those difficult years.

Send forth the fires of your justice, God.  And let each one of us fan the flames of radical kindness and goodness into a fire that can never be extinguished.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Can you remember a kindness that one person extended that grew into a larger “firestorm” of good?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).