Reflecting on Matthew 21:33-43

We Catholics have faced a lot of hostility through the years. “No Catholics Need Apply” is not just a sign on a store in a 19^th century tenement district, but an unspoken condescension on the part of a great number of people in our post-modern age.

Tell the clerk at the bank that you write a weekly scripture column for Catholic churches, for example, and get ready. God didn’t make the world in six twenty-four hour days.  It’s ridiculous that Catholics think they are the only ones going to heaven. Everyone knows that Catholics worship idols. And don’t forget that Catholics want to destroy the planet by clogging it up with unwanted children.

Sometimes you just want to stare at people and say, “Learn something. Read a book.”  Just for the record:

1. It was the Catholic scripture scholars who led the way in teaching the UNLITERAL way to read the Genesis account of the beginnings of the world.
2. Catholic teaching holds that God’s mercy exceeds our understanding.
3. Catholics worship Christ, and revere the saints whose witness brings us closer to him.
4. The many beautiful documents the Church has written on the environment are blunt and unwavering: it’s the voracious greed of the developed nations (read “us”) that is bringing the planet to the verge of destruction.

This overwhelming misinformation and disdain for the Church (not to mention the inestimable sins of the priestly sexual abuses) has worked to make us embarrassed, apologetic, and silent about where we go on Sundays. But the stone which the culture rejects is still the cornerstone of grace and hope for the world.

Are you embarrassed to reveal that you are Catholic?

Reflecting on Philippians 2: 1-11

My husband has a great friend of his youth who has served as a priest for 23 years.  They lost track of each other for many years, and one day last spring Ben woke up and said, “I wonder what ever happened to Fr. Ben Reese.”

It was a God thing.  A quick google search revealed that this sweet, holy man, who never wanted anything but to be a priest, had been diagnosed with ALS. The particular form of his disease attacked his voice box first, so over the past year he has lost what he most treasured: his ability to say the words of consecration over the bread and wine, and of absolution in the sacrament of reconciliation.

Imagine giving your whole life over so that you could proclaim the gospel and preach it, and then be unable to utter a word.  Imagine being unable to even say “Body of Christ” while distributing the Eucharist. Imagine having to rely on others so much in order to serve as a priest that my husband recently assisted him by praying the prayers for the dying for a man just moments before his death, while Father Ben blessed him.

Imagine being Jesus, who, though he was God, took on our human estate so thoroughly that he was able to be tortured, scourged, and nailed to a tree.  And because of that great humility every knee in heaven and on earth (and under the earth) bends at his Name.

We know that we will all face death. We cling to Jesus, who became one with us so that we would know that, in our most tortured state, we are never alone.

In what ways has the crucified Christ been a comfort to you?

Reflecting on Matthew 20: 1-16a

It’s insane, of course, to buy a Powerball ticket, but I am willing to pay two dollars a few times a year for the opportunity to dream about the world I would create if I were fabulously rich. In that alternative universe, my winnings would buy cures for all diseases, housing and food and clean water for all living things, and treasured friends and life-long loves for all who long for them. That’s a lot to ask of six numbers on a piece of paper.

But the kingdom of God, where “every tear will be undone”, will be all of this. Today’s gospel spills the beans about the question that’s on the exam for entrance into the kingdom: did you show up?

Those lucky laborers didn’t have to work all day in the blazing sun, or even half the day. They worked the last part of the day, and then collected their paycheck. Don’t be put off by the grumblings of the other workers who labored since dawn. Certainly there were other areas in their lives where they too had only done the very minimum, but they will be joyfully welcomed into the kingdom as well.

You didn’t draw near to Christ all those years when you had the chance? Draw near now. You didn’t notice the mentally ill standing on the street corner with a sign? Notice them now. You didn’t visit the sick, care for the prisoner, give food and drink to those who needed it? Do it now.

You can’t win the Powerball if you don’t buy a ticket. You can’t enter the kingdom of heaven if you don’t show up. That clanging sound you hear is the gates of heaven opening wide so that all we latecomers can rush in.

Have you ever been surprised by the astonishing generosity of God?

Reflecting on Numbers 21: 4b-9

Last week I had the opportunity to be on a jury.  When it came time to choose our foreperson we each admitted that if we found her guilty we didn’t want to be the one to look her in the eye and say it out loud.

In the end, it didn’t matter.  They polled each of us, and we each said “guilty”.  When it was my turn, I forced myself to look in her lovely young face and say, “Guilty”.  I reasoned that if I wasn’t certain enough to look her in the eye and say it then I should change my vote.

Sometimes we have to look at the very thing that makes us uneasy and name it. I felt my weakling self grow stronger as I met her gaze and spoke the truth that I believed, even while knowing that it would make her life more difficult.  But that truth may save her life someday, or the life of a passenger in her car, or in a car sharing the road with her.

Averting our gaze from our own truth―our addictions, our gossiping, our laziness, our self-aggrandizement―only hastens the day when someone else will have to tell us the truth about ourselves.  Hopefully, that won’t be in a courtroom.

Stare down the serpent as it is raised up in the desert and it will heal you.  That’s the beginning of true spiritual healing.  Recognize and name the things that are making you sick, or sad, or sinful.  Have the courage to truly gaze at them, and then watch God heal.

Or you could avoid self-knowledge today, and force a scaredy-cat jury to pronounce you guilty tomorrow.

What truths about yourself do you refuse to see?

Reflecting on Responsorial Psalm 95:1-2,6-7,8-9

What’s  the state of your heart today?  Crusty?  Sad?  Soft?  Hard? Stop for a minute and take note of it, because the responsorial psalm is pretty clear:  if God speaks to you today, don’t harden your heart.  God’s voice is best heard by those who keep their hearts supple and touchable.

The deadly Ebola virus is terrifying, but there is another highly infectious illness―particularly virulent in the U.S.―that is spreading just as quickly.  Here’s a short test to make sure you haven’t been infected with the dreaded Hardening of the Heart. 

1. Your perpetually out-of-luck friend needs your nurture and attention.  You give him a call.  Again.
2. The mail comes, and you read at least one of the letters from charities.  You set it aside and consider adding it to your list of donations.
3. The hymns are sung, the gospel is read, the homily is delivered, and the General Intercessions are prayed.  You are moved, and changed, and you make a note to remember the people for whom we are praying this week.
4. Sometimes you’re secretly relieved that your kids want to play on their electronic devices more than they want to talk to you, but you don’t give in to that. You limit their consumption of technology time and invite them into some actual family time.
5. You never stop believing that people can change, and you risk the affection of ones close to you by encouraging them to face their weaknesses and be victorious over them.
6. You never stop believing in the life-changing power of Jesus Christ.

Congratulations!  You are virus-free.  Now keep working on inoculating the rest of us.

How are you helping limit Hardening of the Heart in the world?

Reflecting on Matthew 16: 21-27

What profit would there be if you gained the whole world, yet forfeited your life?  That’s not a question we in the west take very seriously.  We can’t imagine what the Christians in Mosul have to face every day, but maybe we should make ourselves imagine it.

Christians have been the target of 80 percent of all religious discrimination in 139 countries around the world.  Attacks on Christians jumped 309 percent in seven years, and more than 100 million have been persecuted.  Since the time of Jesus, the world has seen 70 million Christian martyrs, and fully 50 percent of those have lived in the 20^th century.

It’s hard to get an accurate count of the martyrs of this century, and certainly the events in Mosul will take those numbers to, in the words evocative of our country’s own terror 13 years ago, “more than we can bear”.  A conservative number is between seven and eight thousand yearly.  John Allen, author of The Global War on Christians, writes “Two thirds of the 2.3 billion Christians in the world today live…in dangerous neighborhoods.  They are often poor.  They often belong to ethnic, linguistic and cultural minorities.  And they are often at risk.   That point is more important than being precise about the death toll.”

In 1999, Columbine shooting survivor Val Schnurr had already been shot when her madman assailant asked if she believed in Jesus.  She said “yes,” and by some miracle was not killed.  Answering “yes” to that question in over 50 countries today can get you killed, with, in a world increasingly “tolerant,” no questions asked.

We must bear witness.  The prophet Jeremiah compels us.

Reflecting on Matthew 16:13-20

When Jesus told Peter that it was his faith that would be the rock upon which he would build his Church, he was looking at a lot of rock.  He had taken the disciples up north to Caesarea Philippi, where a huge rock formation served as the Roman shrine for the vicious god Pan (later transformed by J.M.Barrie as the benign Peter Pan).

The Master Teacher used these surroundings to tell Peter― Petra, or Rock―that it was rock-hard faith that would be the foundation and sign of the Christian in the world.  The faith of the Christian should be as powerful as the collision of the continents that formed the earth as we know it today.

You wanna see some rocks?  Visit some of the awesome national parks that are part of the Colorado Plateau.  Thirty million years ago, the largest rock formation on earth (130,000 square-miles) was one piece.  But the forces of water and time gradually carved out the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon, the great stone Arches of southern Utah, and the awesome Grand Canyon. 

And of course these rocks hold secrets, mind-boggling secrets about vast underground bodies of water, the migration routes of the First Peoples of our continent 13,000 years ago, and even of the beginnings of life which the Master Designer breathed into the world so very long ago.

All this makes me wonder about what archaeologists thousands of years from now will say about us.  See here?  These path makers of peace, these missionaries of friendship and hope, these people who chose love over hate and thus saved the world?  They call themselves Christians.  And the gates of hell have not prevailed against them.

How is time turning you into a greater Christian?

Reflecting on Matt. 15: 21-28

I hope that you have a lot of memories of your parents pulling a “Syro-Phoenician Woman” for you.  I do.  One time my dad actually went to the convent and spoke with the principal about me.   I came home from the first day of school in fourth grade very upset because all of my friends were in the other section of fourth grade.  He came home that night and said, “It’s okay, Kathy.  I went down and explained everything to Sister.  Tomorrow you’ll be in the other classroom.”  That feeling of being extraordinarily loved has never left me.

Imagine that tormented daughter, probably convulsing and having seizures, finally being at rest.  Imagine the peace, and the relief, and the immense gratitude she must have felt when the neighbors came running in and said, “You should have seen your mom!  She stood right up to the Rabbi.  He told her he only came for the Jews, and she told him that even the dogs get the leftovers!  And he laughed and laughed, and hugged her, and told her that her faith had blessed him so much that he could feel healing going out from him!”  That’s how I imagine that conversation went.

I’m positive that daughter never forgot the feeling of being so very precious to her mother that she sought out Jesus as he was passing through her town and begged for her life.  I’ll bet that wonderful knowledge of how deeply she was loved healed her as much as did the power of Jesus.

Go to God in prayer this week and beg for someone.  The Gospel assures us that Jesus longs for such faith.

Who needs the healing touch of Christ in your life?

Reflecting on Matthew 14: 22-33

 I think Peter must have loved Jesus with all his heart and soul and mind and strength.  It was that love that compelled him and his brother Andrew to leave their nets behind when Jesus called them to begin his Assembly of Twelve years earlier.

And it was surely that love that pushed Peter out of the wind-tossed boat in the fourth watch of the night.  The Romans divided the night into three-hour “watches”, four per night.  It was now somewhere between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., and they were exhausted, terrified, and struggling mightily.

Even though the seasoned fishermen had set out in early evening, they still hadn’t crossed the Lake, which is five miles wide, because of the great gales. It was then that Emanuel―God with us―set out to be with them in the storm.  It was he who had commanded them to get in the boat and return to the other side of the Lake.  It was he who stayed behind in a deserted place to pray while they went off to meet the wind and the rain.  And it was he who was now coming to comfort them.

This was no still, quiet voice they heard, speaking to their hearts during a quiet retreat.  This was the screaming roar of an epic storm at sea.  It was in the storm that Jesus drew near to them.  And it was in the storm that Peter said, Lord, if that’s really you, just call me and I’ll come.

The next time you are terrified―perhaps of losing someone you love, or of a scary diagnosis―think of Jesus coming toward you in the midnight storm, calling your name.  Take heart.  It is really he.

In what storms of your life has Emanuel been “with you”?

Reflecting on Matthew 14: 13-21

My friends Arline and Bay recently moved into a beautiful assisted living apartment, and Arline can’t believe how wonderful it is to not be in charge of feeding people anymore.

Most nights of the year, for nearly sixty years, she prepared a beautiful dinner for up to ten people.  Of course, as the kids grew up and moved out of the house the numbers dropped, but as they married and brought the kids over for dinner the table grew again.  Bay helped when he was home, but that’s a lot of potatoes to peel, and Arline is weak with relief (and I’ll guess just a twinge of melancholy) that she doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Every single meal we enjoy represents labor and attention, gift and sacrifice.   From the field to the farm to the beehive to the pasture to the dairy, all creation offers its gift, and then we humans prepare it and put it on the table.

Food is probably the best metaphor for the kingdom, and Jesus uses it often.  But it’s his suggestion to the Twelve—Give them some food yourselves— that’s the kernel of the story.  Whatever your gift is―attentive listening, loving parenting, sacrificial grand parenting, care for the elderly or for those on the margins in any way―God simply asks that you give it, and then watch it multiply.

This gift of yours is your “sign”, your signature on the world.  As Gerhard Lohfink has beautifully written, signs make room for the kingdom of God, and allow it to grow.  In your own unique way you too are feeding the five thousand, and bringing forth the reign of God.

How are you offering your own gifts for God to multiply?