Reflecting on Matthew 5: 1-12a

I like to do things that make me feel good. One thing that works every time is to stop to analyze what it is about people that makes them lovable, or approachable, or even inspiring.  I think about that today when Paul says “whoever boasts should boast in the Lord.” The people I know who inspire me are, always, people who point the praise and glory elsewhere.

How blest, then, are those who are so poor in spirit that they look beyond their own accomplishments and seek a greater good. How blest are those who are so clean of heart that they can get past their own insecurities and brokenness and mercifully reach out to others. The person who seeks God is the person who attracts me, because I too am made to draw nearer and nearer to God.

As a teacher of Scripture I am deeply touched by the way adult students will put everything aside for as long as they can to just study the Word.  As a student of Scripture I sit weekly at the feet of my own teachers, never disappointed, yet never satiated.  Our shared life in Christ is the treasure which draws me.

The person who seeks the Lord, in spite of our highly secular society that laughs at such a pursuit, is the person I want with me on a desert island. That is the truly blessed person, the deep person, the intelligent person. How blest are all of us who seek God. The scriptures promise that, as we draw near to God, God draws near to us.

In what ways has seeking the Lord been a blessing for you?

Kathy McGovern ©2017

Reflecting on Matthew 4: 12-23

It’s a call narrative. That’s the name given to the account of how two sets of brothers, all fishermen, literally dropped everything and followed a man they hadn’t even met yet. I’ll bet Zebedee (the father of James and John) was thrilled when his sons just left the nets they were mending on the boat and abandoned him and the family business. James and John were called “the sons of thunder,” which may give us an idea of the kind of temper Zebedee possessed. I’m glad I wasn’t around at the time.

Another theory suggests that any Jewish father would have been honored to have his sons called by the famous rabbi Jesus. Rabbinic texts from the first century offer many examples of the prestige bestowed on a man whom a rabbi called to be his disciple. It was considered a huge honor to walk away from everything you knew in order to study with a teacher of the Law. Since all the apostles answered this radical call, is it possible that Jesus was already known by the Galilean community before he called the Twelve?

We all have a call narrative, a story we love to tell about how we knew what we wanted to do with our lives, or where we wanted to live, or the first time we met a dear friend or our spouse. Those are the sacred stories we tell at wedding receptions, at reunions, and at funerals. But there has never been an encounter like the day Jesus called four guys in two boats. His voice soared from the shore to the sea. “Come after me,” he said. If you listen, you can hear it still.

What is the favorite call story of your life?

Kathy McGovern ©2017

Reflecting on John 1: 29-34

And there you have it. Just one week removed from the Christmas season and the gospels are already moving us in the direction of Lent. Hence this powerful baptism story, which will launch us into the ministry of Jesus, which will take us straight to the cross.

John the Baptist “did not know” his kinsman Jesus until he had a personal encounter with him at Bethany, on the other side of the Jordan. It was then, when he saw the Holy Spirit hovering over Jesus, that the fullness of the meaning of his own life became clear. He was born to witness to the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

How profound that the word is singular. It is the sin of the world that’s killing us. Individual sins, deadly and less so, do not weigh the world down in the way that our corporate selfishness does.

My 10-year-old nephew Jacob and I had the BEST conversation on the phone before Christmas. He had just seen the BEST movie with grandma, and was going to the BEST baseball camp over vacation, and they had the BEST Christmas tree in their house.

At that point I interjected, “Oh, and don’t forget to get the present from us that your mom has for you under the tree. “Aunt Kathy, “he said, “I already got my Christmas present. My grandpa isn’t sick anymore.”

That’s precisely the place where Jesus wants us all to be, that sacred place where our personal encounters of love save us from the deadly sin of only looking out for ourselves. That is the “sin of the world” the Lamb of God came to redeem.

What do you think is the greatest “sin of the world”?

Kathy McGovern ©2017 www.thestoryandyou.com

Reflecting on Mark 13: 33-37

Advent begins next week, and with it comes a new gospel. This is the last we will hear from Matthew―except, always, on Epiphany, since he is the only evangelist who knows the story of the Magi―until we return to him in December of 2016.

Before we turn the page to Mark’s gospel, then, it’s good to remember what Jesus tells us, over and over again, in Matthew’s brilliant gospel. It’s really just one word: mercy.

Go and learn the meaning of this: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. This is what he tells the learned Pharisees, shocked that Jesus has called a tax collector (Matthew)to be one of the Twelve, and is even now having dinner at his house (9:13)!

This is a bit like a professor telling a veterinarian student, “Go and learn the meaning of the word cat”. It’s deeply insulting to the scripture-quoting Pharisees, because Jesus is quoting the famous passage from Hosea 6:6.They have known that text from their youth, yet here is Jesus telling them to go learn it again.

Pope Francis has said about his papacy, “I think this is a time of mercy.”  And about the gospels: “The Lord’s most powerful message is mercy.”  In fact, his first major book as Pope has just been published, with this beautiful title: The Church of Mercy.

But if it’s all about mercy, what, then, are we to make of the God who rescues and heals the lost and scattered, but destroys the “sleek and strong”? We hope that we will be the sheep who inherit the kingdom of heaven, but where is the mercy for those goats that God will cast into eternal fire?

Maybe Matthew’s final message to us this year is this: Christ the King will be the judge. And he will judge us on how merciful we were.

In what ways have you shown mercy this year?

Reflecting on Proverbs 31:10-13,19-20,30-31

It’s fun to consider the utter Jewishness of that reading from Proverbs today. We chuckle at the ancient Jewish male’s celebration of the perfect Jewish wife, but really, isn’t that the spouse we all want? She’s kind, industrious, an astonishing multi-tasker, brilliant in business and in keeping all the home projects on schedule, great with the kids, generous to those who are poor, and, best of all, everyone in town knows her smart her husband was to have married her.  Mazel tov!

I love to imagine Jesus, the Bridegroom, extolling us, his Bride, in a similar fashion:

The value of my Bride is far beyond pearls. I have entrusted my Sacred Heart to her.

She brings the planet good, and not evil, all her days.

Through her kindness and lack of ego, enemies begin to speak to one another

And those who were estranged join hands in friendship.

She reaches out her hands to those who are poor,

And extends her arms to those who are needy.

She yields to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

She is the first to say, “Forgive me”.

She believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Even in persecution, Her love never fails.

Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting,

But those who hear the Word of God and do it

Will live in joy with Me forever.

How do you think the Church is doing as the Bride of Christ?

The oldest basilica in Christendom is celebrated today, because the Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran happens to fall on a Sunday, and so, like last Sunday’s Feast of All Souls, trumps the Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Constantine, Christianity’s first emperor, received the property from the wealthy Laterani family, which explains part of the name. (Later, the church was dedicated both to St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist.) This was, and is today, the official basilica of the Bishop of Rome.

Imagine what this building, restored and rebuilt many times, has seen. Like the Church itself, it has been declared dead many times. But it still stands today.

And here is the best part. On his first Holy Thursday as pope, the Holy Father elected not to remember the institution of the Eucharist, and Jesus’ command to wash each other’s feet, at that ancient basilica. He knew that there would be plenty of cardinals who would happily preside there, washing the feet of other dignitaries.

Instead, Pope Francis celebrated that most holy night, the night that remembers the institution of the priesthood, at a penal institution for minors on the outskirts of Rome. If you missed the heart-filling photograph of him bending to kiss the feet of the inmates whose feet he had just washed, google it, or ask someone to google it for you.

It’s the best possible image of what the pope’s church is. For where there is love, there is God. And there the Church must always be.

Which worship space most serves as the place where you encounter Jesus?

Several years ago I suffered a long illness. Every day that has passed since stands as a marker of gratitude so deep that it has changed the way I see, and hear, and breathe. I will never be the same, thank God.

While in the depths of the darkness, I had a recurring, disturbing sense of slowly descending down a long escalator. It seemed that all humankind was on this escalator with me, going down into the depths, with no escape hatch, no way out.  I wondered how the world kept turning, and people kept living with joy and courage, when the gaping mouth of the escalator was so near.

I will never forget this. I will never be happy again, because I have seen the escalator.

As the months passed, the infection left, my nervous system healed, and the rock-hard faith of all who love me pulled me out of the tunnel and back into God’s glorious light. The escalator began to fade, and today I can barely remember the journey I was sure I could never forget.

Today we remember the souls of all whom we have loved in this life, and will love forever. They are in the safekeeping of the God who, even though we walk in the dark valley, lifts us from the depths and carries us safely home.

For this is the will of God, that none of us should lose the confidence of eternity with Christ. Illness and death have their day, it’s true.  But the power of God will transform death, and no torment shall touch us again. The escalator exists. But, through God’s grace and mercy, it is always going up.

Do you have a memory of being confident of God’s mercy?

Reflecting on Exodus 22: 20-26

Last weekend I ran into Monsignor Ken Leone, a beloved priest in the Denver Archdiocese and one of the city’s experts in the art of giving away most of what passes through his pockets in a day.

I hadn’t seen him since the day, three years earlier, when he invested a mutual friend with the task of tricking us into accepting a twenty dollar bill from him.

“Someone I know dropped this outside your drugstore today. He was too lazy to pick it up so he asked that I just give it to you.”

“Ha! Please give Monsignor Leone our warmest thanks.” We both laughed.

I put the bill in the pocket of my jeans, and forgot all about it until later in the day, when I was delivering prescriptions to an elderly, poor Russian widow living in a small apartment.

“Do you know Monsignor Leone?” she asked, out of the blue.

“That’s so funny you ask that. I just sent a message to him today.”

“Yes. He is very good to me.”  Not surprising.

Our transaction complete, she asked if I had change for the five dollar bill she was using to pay her bill. I had foreseen this, and had put two dollars in my pocket.  But, sure enough, out came the twenty dollar bill.

“Kathy,” I could hear Monsignor’s voice in my ear, “are you REALLY going to switch pockets and give this poor widow two dollars, when the twenty came to you as a gift to begin with?”

The ancient book of Exodus got it right.  The widows, orphans, and aliens in the land are owed what has come to us as gift.

How are you helping to transfer your gifts to those who have less?

Reflecting on Isaiah 45:1,4-6

I can think of several warlords operating in the world today who would be forever changed if they allowed themselves to be inspired by the great King Cyrus of Persia, the only non-Jew in scripture whom the Jews themselves called “anointed” (Messiah), and the star of today’s first reading (Isaiah 45:1,4-6).

He’s an extraordinary figure in world history, beloved to the Iranians as their wise ancestor, and to the Jews as the magnanimous victor who, after conquering Babylon, allowed the exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem, taking with them the money which Nebuchadnezzar had stolen when he destroyed their city fifty years before.

“Go home,” King Cyrus said. “Take all that was stolen from you. Rebuild your Temple and your lives. Only, pray for the Royal Family and me.”

Even today, as far as we’ve come as human beings, it’s still astonishing to think that a conquering king looked at all the different ethnic groups who had been brought in chains to Babylon and didn’t think about how he could humiliate them further. Instead, he recognized that the most good they could do him and the world would be to return home.

Yes, the Jews would pay tax to the Persian Empire. But they would be in a position to do so because they would be in their homeland, worshiping their own God and restoring themselves in Israel as the Chosen People.

The sociopaths presenting themselves as ISIS would never get this, of course. Nor would any of the radical groups menacing the world today. But there once was a great king who understood that might did not mean right, and that religious liberty was a God-given right for all.

Do you have a world figure who inspires you?

Reflecting on Philippians 4:12-14,19-20

When our niece Chelsea was eight she made all kinds of beautiful things in Sunday School, but my favorite was a refrigerator magnet on which she had painted, in her darling child’s hand, today’s  famous words from St. Paul:  I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me  (Philippians 4: 12-14, 19-20).

Twelve years have come and gone since we lovingly attached that magnet to our refrigerator, and it blessed us over and over as we faced two cancers, several hospitalizations, the loss of jobs that we loved, and the challenges that our families have overcome.

Chelsea has grown into a brilliant biology student, and will no doubt be a fine veterinarian one day. But the faith that filled her child’s heart as she painted those words has never left her, nor has it left us. We know that we can do all things in Christ who strengthens us.

My friend Joe had a frightening bicycle accident last July as he was riding his bike to see the fireworks.  He was hit by a drunk driver, flew over the hood of the car, and broke his hip and wrist.  Were you terrified? I asked.  Was the pain horrible?  No, he said. I kept reminding myself that I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.

My friend Joni has suffered more than any person I’ve known.  Her rheumatoid arthritis has destroyed most of the joints in her body.  She fell last summer and lay on the cold kitchen floor for several hours waiting for her son, praying over and over I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.

She can. And so can you.

What scripture text do you hold close in times of suffering?