Reflecting on Revelation 7, 9, 14b-17

It’s only during the seven weeks of the Easter season that we read from the book of Revelation, certainly the least understood book in the bible.  The book is not a secret code, to be cracked by those up on their conspiracy theories and watchings of the moon, to tell only the spiritual elite when the end of days will occur.

It is, however, a book written to comfort those who lived in Ephesus at the time Emperor Domitian introduced the cult of imperial Rome.  This was enforced participation in sacrifices and festivals that honored Domitian and his ancestors; yes, the very ones who had destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.  The Christians in Ephesus were horrified that they were expected to celebrate the murderers of their grandparents and parents.  Revelation is written to comfort those who would stand up, even to the point of death, to this imperative.

Vatican reporter John Allen has done much to educate us on the greatest era of brutal religious martyrdom, which is our own.  Every year, one hundred and fifty thousand people are martyred as a direct result of their faith, or the works of charity inspired by their faith.  Eighty percent of these martyrs are Christians. There were well over one million Christian martyrs in the twentieth century, and of course the Nazis murdered six million Jews on the pretext that “Christ killers” were not part of the Master Race.

We don’t hear of these martyrdoms much because we hope that we live in more enlightened times, where religion isn’t used as an excuse to take land and lives.  But the blood of the martyrs of El Salvador and Nigeria and Kenya and Turkey and Iraq and Korea says otherwise.  We must not forget them.

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

Reflecting on John 21: 1-19

Do you have a place in your life where you and Jesus rendezvous?  Is there a chair in your house, or a park in your neighborhood, or a conversation with a friend, where Jesus always shows up?  It’s interesting that Peter, after the horrors of his denial of Jesus, and the mysteries of that Easter empty tomb, didn’t know what to do next but to go fishing.  I think he just longed for Jesus so much that he set out to find him where he himself was found.  We know from the other gospels that it was while Peter was fishing that Jesus first called him.

Vocation, says St. Francis de Sales, is nothing more than just doing what you were doing when God found entry into your heart.  Were you, at some point in your life, supple and open to God’s voice?  Whatever you were doing then, keep doing that.  That’s vocation.

Peter, burdened with guilt yet filled with hope, set out that day in his boat.  I don’t think he was looking for fish.  He was looking for Jesus.  And oh, how he, exhausted from the night’s fruitless work, leapt into the water to meet him when the Beloved Disciple cried, “It’s the Lord!”  And he found Jesus right there, near the charcoal fire, a fire that perhaps reminded him of that other charcoal fire, the one in Caiaphas’ courtyard, where he  had denied him just days before.

No matter.  He had the grace to go fishing, and Jesus fished him right out of the water.  He was released from the nets of guilt and shame that strangled him, and set free to be the slave of Christ.

Where do you go to meet Jesus?

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

Reflecting on John 20: 19-31

I love the word mercy. I love its musical sound when spoken, and the heart’s warm release when it is received and lodged there.  I love the feeling of extending mercy, especially because I have had so much mercy extended to me.

This Lent has been an immersion in mercy.  Just like me, that barren fig tree got still another year to shape up and start bearing fruit.  The lost son was welcomed home so ecstatically that I’ll bet the resentful neighbors were scandalized.  The woman caught in adultery found only mercy when she waited for Jesus to acknowledge her.  I think we could all feel his heart break for her as he scribbled in the sand.  I wonder if he was so mortified by the behavior of her accusers that he was embarrassed to look at her.

Mercy just feels good, and I’ll bet that’s God way of getting us to give it more often.  I’ll bet it was even more exciting for Jesus to let Thomas feel his wounds than it was for Thomas to touch them and realize that this was truly his crucified Lord, the one who lives.  Oh, the mercy in that upper room that first Easter night!  Thomas was so transformed by the experience that tradition tells us he traveled all the way to India to tell of that mercy over and over again.

Do you long for a closer connection with Christ this Easter?  Here’s the surefire answer: extend mercy to everyone you meet.  I can hear the Risen One laughing and clapping and sending more and more mercy your way.  That’s Easter.  Thanks be to God, Alleluia!  Alleluia.

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

We may have received Easter a little early this year when the cardinal who chose the name “Francis” ascended to the Chair of Peter.  The Catholic imagination runs wild.

Here’s a good Easter question: Who is your favorite saint? The answer might open up a life-changing conversation about the power of deaths and risings.

One of the most revealing things I learned early on about my husband Ben is that Francis Xavier is his favorite saint.   Why?  Because he was, in many things, a dismal failure.  True, he was one of the founders of the Jesuits.  He traveled to and lived in Asia all of his religious life.  He even baptized the occasional convert there, but his religion, based in the faith of a crucified God, made most of the native peoples uncomfortable.  He took heart, though, in his upcoming voyage to China.  There, he would make converts.  But he died of a fever while waiting for a boat to take him to the mainland.

Oh, and the initial vow that those first Jesuits made, along with poverty, chastity and obedience?  They would convert the Muslims in the Middle East.  We see how that worked out.

In taking the name “Francis”, then, our new pope invoked the faithfulness-in-the-face-of-failure of Francis Xavier.  Ben loves him because he, too, has struggled against the tide in striving to really live the gospel.  He’s failed many times in his heroic attempts to enlist others in causes he feels are vital.  St. Francis Xavier is his model and friend.  They both “failed up”, which is a beautiful term to describe the grace and gifts that rise from “failure”.

So, in taking the beloved name of Francis the Holy Father has invoked the perseverance of Francis Xavier, as well as the humility and reform imaged by the little man of Assisi.  And don’t forget St. Frances Cabrini’s warm love of the children of the poor, or the gentle, humorous bishop of Geneva, St. Francis de Sales.  Pope Francis has brought each of these beloved saints into our consciousness once again.

We need a little Easter, right this very minute. May the stone of bitterness and betrayal be rolled away, and may Christ our Light illumine a new dawn.  St. Francis, pray for us.

Who do you know whose name is a derivative of Francis?

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

Reflecting on Luke 22:14-23:56

Peter denies Christ by Rembrandt. Canvas, 1660. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Come with me for a moment.  I want to show you something.  Stand here with me in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the high priest.  The temple guards have just arrested Jesus.  Did you hear all that commotion when they marched him up from the Mount of Olives?  Now they’ve got him in the house.  See that man over there, the one with the thick accent?  He was one of the followers of Jesus.  But he keeps denying it.  Let’s ask him for a third time: Surely you were with him, for you too are a Galilean, right?  No, he says, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Can you hear it?  The rooster crowing?  And now look!  There is Jesus, looking out the window, staring at his friend. What is that message that passes between them?  Jesus has pure love in his eyes.  But his friend’s eyes are starting to turn red, and he runs far away from the fire, far away from Jesus, weeping so loudly we can still hear him.

Listen.  The sound of his crying melts into the sounds of Jesus’ prayers―is that Psalm 88?― as he stands chained in the dungeon in the caves just beneath us.

Two thousand years later, millions of believers still come to this place.  Roosters still crow in the courtyard.  Pilgrims still climb down, down into the pit where Jesus was chained the night before he died.  And the sound of Peter’s weeping meets our own.

Why does the Church remember Peter as her first leader after his terrible betrayal?

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

Reflecting on John 8: 1-11

No way out.  That’s what she must be thinking.  The woman standing in the middle of the Temple area must be sure that there is no way out for her.  The Pharisees have her penned in, a human sacrifice to their need to catch Jesus violating the Law.

Jesus, who knows the meaning of the words mercy, not sacrifice, is her way out.  He seems utterly uninterested in the details.  He simply issues this challenge: okay, you who have never sinned may now step up and throw the first stone. They all walk away, of course, and when he looks up he seems surprised to see her still standing there.  He couldn’t be less interested in condemning her.

His soul calls out to her soul, and the way out is clear.  Mercy.

Another  way out, of course, occurred  twelve hundred years before, when God divided the Sea and the children of Abraham marched through it dry-shod, with the water like a wall on their right and on their left.  If they stayed on land they’d be killed by Pharaoh.  If they went into the water they would drown. So God created a new way, a third way, by opening a way in the sea for them to “pass over”.

Do you think that there is no way out for you, no forgiveness, no chance to move on from your bad behaviors, bad choices, and bad priorities that now have you trapped?  Here’s God’s special love letter to you today:  Remember not the former things.  Don’t ponder the things of the past.  Behold, I’m doing something new.  Watch.

And we will all watch and pray with you.

How have you given someone a way out?

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

Reflecting on Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

One of the things I enjoy about this forum is that I get to talk about books.  It’s also unfair, because I get to share what I’m reading while the reader doesn’t.  But this website  is open for readers from around the country to jump on and talk with each other about spiritual (or other) books they are reading.  Thanks so much for joining the online conversation!

Right now the book that captures me is Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle, S.J.  It’s his memoir of the ministry that the Jesuits set up in South Central L.A. for the ten thousand gang members within the boundaries of the parish where he serves.

At the center of each of the stories is one theme: forgiveness is the only thing that can heal us, ever.  Fr. Boyle has presided over hundreds of funerals of children he loved who were killed by children he loved.  (And then those children were killed by the “families” of the murdered, and the miserable vortex of violence just spiraled higher and wider.)

The Paschal (Easter) Mystery, which is the center of our faith, says this: Your dad beat you? You will never, never beat your own children.  Your brother was killed by a gang member?  You will not avenge his death, but will pray for his murderers.  Your son has shamed you and squandered his inheritance on dissolute living?  You will wait for him at the city gate and run to greet him when he, half-starved and humiliated, returns.

That iconic story of forgiveness is the one we all need to tattoo on our hearts.  Or maybe you have your own story, your own memory of being let off the hook that resonates even more deeply for you.  We’d love to hear it.  We’re listening.

Have you experienced a reconciliation this year?

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

Reflecting on Luke 13: 1-9

It’s the third Sunday of Lent, and forgiveness is afoot.  The next three weeks  give us those great stories of radical love that are the hallmark of the Lenten season in Cycle C−−−the gracious second chance given  to the Barren Fig Tree, the Prodigal Son, and the Woman Caught in Adultery.  The first two stories are parables from Luke’s gospel, and the third is an event recorded in John’s gospel that scholars suspect was originally told by Luke.  Its wonderful compassion for a woman trapped in a sinful culture is so much like St. Luke that it fits perfectly in Cycle C.

I really resonate with today’s unproductive fig tree.  There are many areas of my life that continue to exhaust everyone around me, while bearing no fruit whatsoever.  (Let’s not fuss with the details, okay?)  But year after year I resolve to eat less, be less sloppy, be on time, depend on the kindness of others less and on my own discipline more.  (Okay, those are the details.)

I can hear that unfruitful fig tree crying out, in the secret language of trees, “Stop!  Please!  I’ll work harder.  I’ll take less and give more.  Please give me a second chance.  I don’t want to die.”  And we breathe a huge sigh of relief with the tree when the Gardener−−−yes, the very One who tended the original Garden−−−promises to sacrifice his own efforts in order to save the life of the tree.  A second (millionth) chance is given.

But watch! The crocus pulls up. The trumpet sounds.  It’s the third Sunday of Lent, and because forgiveness has outmatched justice, Easter is afoot.

What radical love have you experienced this Lent?

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

Reflecting on Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18

We’ve had so many beautiful, clear nights this winter that I’ve taken to stopping just before going in the door at home and looking up at the skies.  The stars hang in the sky like diamonds, and it always shocks me a bit that this immense galaxy holds such beauty just above my little house.

Of course, my friends in Africa, and Israel, and Norway tonight will look on the very stars that light the doorway of my house.  As musical composer Chris Tomlin wrote so gracefully, “God of wonder, beyond our galaxy, you are holy, holy.”

I like to imagine the stars in that desert sky when God told Abram to count them, if he could.  Now, this is even more amazing when we consider that it was daylight when God issued this challenge!  (We surmise this because later, in verse 17, it says, “When the sun had set and it was dark”.  No wonder he couldn’t count them!)

Anyway, the current estimate is that there are three thousand million billion stars in our galaxy alone. That’s how many descendants Abram was to have. Well, if you count every Jew, Christian, and Muslim who has ever lived (and apparently no one ever has counted them, but I’ll keep googling), certainly they comprise the tiniest fraction of the number of stars. So, apparently the children of Abraham still have a long time to live on the earth.  If my visits to the Muslim and Jewish quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem are any indication, Abraham’s descendants continue to multiply at a great rate.

It’s the beauty of the image of this great promise that catches my heart when I gaze upwards at night.  Count the stars?  Of course we can’t.  But God, the Intelligent Designer, used the astounding stars to capture our imagination: all creation is in an eternal covenant with the merciful and awesome God of Wonder.

Do you like to star-gaze?

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

Reflecting on Luke 4: 1-13

I always get a little chill when I think about that single instant in which Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world.  It’s fascinating to consider what the evangelist thought Jesus saw.  Luke knew about ancient Egypt and Greece, but he had no idea that there were civilizations unknown to him (but not to Satan, apparently) far to the east that had been flourishing for over two millennia.

I don’t imagine that Jesus, who was present at the creation of the world, was  surprised when Satan showed him North China, or the Indus Valley, or Africa, or even the kingdoms of the Americas, the existence of which would not even be known by people in the Middle East for another 1400 years.  Those histories, which are still unfolding through the work of archaeologists and nature’s own ingenious way of revealing the past, were certainly in the mind of God before the beginning of time.  The spooky part is that they are in Satan’s mind too.

And what did Jesus see, in that instant, of the kingdoms to come?  The fall of the Roman Empire, the vast reach of Islam, the “New World” and its diverse indigenous peoples, the bloody revolutions, the abundant harvests, the great cities and the thousands of agrarian communities were revealed in an instant.  He saw the “little man” of Assisi.  He also saw Auschwitz.

Three years later, after Satan had returned to enter Judas and to sift Peter like wheat (Luke 22), Jesus saw it all again, this time from the hill of Calvary.  And all creation, from the beginning until the end, whispered with the Good Thief, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

How do you feel when you think about Jesus seeing you from the cross?

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