3rd Day of Christmas

December 27 is always the feast of St. John. The 1st reading is the very beginning of his First Letter.  Eternal God enters flesh:
Something which has existed since the beginning
which we have heard,
which we have seen with our own eyes,
which we have watched
and touched with our own hands,
the Word of life.

(Sorry, for some reason I have not been able to put text under the picture for several days. This picture is from yesterday.  We have just enough snow to make our world beautiful.)

Good News, Great Joy

Every Thing

Everything that is, is holy now.

-John L'Heureaux

Deep Incarnation

More than 150 geese taking off, I presume, for points south.  Click on picture for a better look.
Today is the feast of St. John Damascene.  He lived in the Eastern Church at a time (657-749) when the veneration of icons was being attacked as idolatrous.  In defense of icons St. John declared that what was at stake was the capacity of material things to serve as the vehicle of divine grace, the very basis of the Incarnation.  By becoming matter in Jesus, God enters into all matter.

White Rider

In the old black and white cowboy movies that I loved when I was a kid, the good guy wore a white hat and we cheered as he came riding to the rescue with his team on horseback behind him.  I find this appearance of Jesus in Revelation 19:11-21 thrilling.  After all the book's outlandish descriptions of beasts and evil, it is so satisfying to see the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, all in white with his enormous army all in white riding to our rescue.

The Lamb

The second image of Jesus in the Book of Revelation (5:1-14) is that of a Lamb.  This is the first time that title appears in the book, but it will appear 30 times more as the visions continue.  He bears the wounds of his passion, but has triumphed and therefore stands erect.  The sacrifice of this Lamb never has to be repeated.

Alive Forever

I recently finished studying the Book of Revelation with a small group.  This morning I meditated on the first appearance of Jesus (1:12-20.)  The description ravishes  our senses,  a majestic, other-worldly figure.  He says, "I am the living one.  I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death."  He has conquered death and unlocks his wondrous new life for us.

Truth

Truth seems to be in short supply these days.  In last Sunday's Gospel Jesus offers himself to Pilate and to us as Truth Incarnate.  Pilate can't bring himself to take a stand.  Truth is crucial for the ordinary functioning of life.  We can let Jesus the Truth show us the way.

Love Who love us, thank You

"Always be thankful.

 With gratitude in your hearts

 sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs to God;

 and whatever you say or do,

 Let it be in the name of the Lord Jesus

 in thanksgiving to God the Father through him."

                                  --St. Paul, Colossians 3:16-17

Relentless

This morning's gifts: a picture and a prayer:  God of mercy, you pursue us with relentless love.

Horizon of Hope

This Sunday's first reading and Gospel are apocalyptic passages.  Maybe the closest our culture comes to apocalyptic literary form is science fiction movies.  No matter how terrible the outlandish creatures and the fierce battles, we are confident that the movie will have a happy ending.  Apocalyptic writing in the Bible assures us that no matter how hopeless our situation seems we will not be destroyed.  In Jesus God has already won the battle with evil. 

Afterlife

Yeh, that's the moon up there playing in a very gentle sunrise.
We Christians are so comforted reading about life after death in the New Testament that we take for granted that it's like that in the Old Testament.  In the Hebrew Bible the only certain reference to life after death is Daniel 12:2-3: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence.  And the knowledgeable will be radiant like the bright expanse of sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever."

Joy, Joy, Joy

One of two "Armistice Day" cacti that set buds within a day or two of being brought inside.
A parishioner pointed out to me that Psalm 16 scheduled for next Sunday is very upbeat, contrasting with the apocalyptic first reading and Gospel.  The last verse is:
"You will show me the path to life,
  fullness of joys in your presence,
  the delights at your right hand forever."
Robert Alter in his book on the Psalms says that the literal sense of the Hebrew of  the second line is "a satiety of joys in your presence."  Sated with joy!  A surfeit of joy!  More joy than we can enjoy!

A Penny

When I was little I liked to watch my aunt's country store.  A little girl came in and looked for a long time at the penny candy display.  In her fist she had three pennies.  I asked if I could help her.  "What would you buy," she said, "if you had the money?"
Jesus sat watching people put money in the temple treasury.  A poor widow came and put in two copper coins worth a penny.  Jesus said, "She put in more than all the others." (Mark 12:41-44)

The Evening of the Year

"Dusk has fallen once again, and we are in the evening of the year.

 In the thinning of the forests, in the lengthening of shadows, 

 our life is seen as fleeting, our end as drawing near.

 Trees no longer set a limit to our vision,

 while through bare and nervous branches

 our gaze is lifted to the clouds.

 The sky seems incredibly higher and we appear as we truly are,

 less than our imaginings, more the creature.

 In this season of falling leaves, of coldness and of want,

 we think of death.

 In this season of harvest, of gathering into barns

 or into bundles to be burned,

 we think of life to come."

                                                  --Laurence Brett

Jesus the Jew

It might help to remind ourselves frequently that Jesus was a real Jew.  Perhaps no place better than this Sunday's Gospel shows us his Jewishness.   When asked what the greatest commandment is, he immediately begins his reply the way he began his morning prayer, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one"(Mark 12:29.)  This is still how Jews begin their morning and evening prayer.

All Saints

We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.

Hebrews 12:1

These clouds witness to Beauty, whom we sometimes call God.  The saints are a great cloud of witnesses to the Holy One.  We see God in the clouds and in the saints.

Rare Glory

What a glorious greeting from our God.  

In every direction this morning 

there were clouds colored by the coming sun.

Both One

Full sun this morning found a bit of autumn glory.
By telling us that loving God and loving our neighbor is the greatest commandment (Mark 12:28-34), Jesus makes the point that we cannot love God if we do not love other people.  The author of the First Letter of John is even more to the point: Anyone who says, "I love God" and hates his brother, is a liar, since whoever does not love the brother whom he can see cannot love God whom he has not seen.  Indeed this is the commandment that we have received from him, that whoever loves God must also love his brother." (4:20-21)

The Least Loved

Someone told me once that I loved God only as much as the person I love the least.  I really hope that is not so, but it's enough to scare me into asking myself who I love the least, or even who do I not love at all. 

Absolutely Gratuitous

Wednesday night's full moon-Hunter's Moon, Blackberry Moon? Harvest Moon?

Thanks to a friend I found out today that Thomas Keating died.  He was a Trappist monk who has been very influential in the centering prayer movement.  In this quote he helps us understand:
"The gift of God is absolutely gratuitous.  It's not something you earn.  It's something that's there.  It's something you just have to accept.  This is the gift that has been given.  There's no place to go to get it.  There is no place you can go to avoid it.  It just is.  It's part of our very existence.  And so the purpose of all the great religions is to bring us into this relationship with reality that is so intimate that no words can describe it."

Why stay?

Again this morning the sun's rays managed to find a little fall color.
Gordon Zahn wrote to Dorothy Day, considering leaving the Church because the bishops as a group would not condemn the Vietnam War.  Day answered that she didn't remain Catholic because of the bishops.  "It is the saints," she wrote, "who keep appearing throughout history who keep things going."  We cherish a Church that has inspired such outstanding examples of holiness.

An Encouraging Surprise

This morning's bright sun managed to highlight a little autumn color.
As I finished my two hours volunteering this cold, beautiful afternoon to help get out the vote, the people working the next shift who relieved me turned out to be a boy and girl, high school juniors, not yet old enough to vote, who want to make things better. 

Harsh and Dreadful

"Love is a hash and dreadful thing to ask of us, 

  but it is the only answer."

       -Dorothy Day

Clericalism

Frost on the ground this morning did not deter this lone fisherman.
Pope Francis points to clericalism as the root cause of sex abuse.  Bishops, priests, and deacons expect special treatment because of their office.  They use their position to take advantage of others.  We see signs of it already in this weekend's Gospel when James and John ask Jesus to treat them special (Mark 10:35-45.)  It has continued to corrupt church leaders down through the centuries.  Lay members of the Church cooperate by something as simple as letting father go first in line for food at a party and by something as huge as parents scolding their children for telling them that "Father" mistreated them.   

Teresa of Avila

"You need not go to  heaven to see God,
  nor need you speak loud as if God were far away,
  nor need you cry for wings like a dove to fly to him;
  only be in silence
  and you will come upon God within yourself."

St. Teresa of Avila, a mystic who lived in 16th century Spain, is one of the great teachers of prayer in the history of the church.
 

Grace

Through the years I have become more and more aware of how much I need God's love to love God.  God within us enabling us to love God.  As I began to address God as "Love," my prayer more than a year ago became, "You are Love with Whom I love You."  Those are the last words that I pray to the Trinity as I begin Centering Prayer in the morning.  They became the theme of the hymn, You Are Love.

Vatican 2 Anniversary

The feast of Pope John XXIII is set on this date because it is the date on which he convened the Second Vatican Council, one of the most important events in the history of the Church.  This Council officially started the Church on the road into the modern world.   Perhaps its biggest gift was to help us to see that the Church is not just the Pope and the bishops, but all of its members.

Sophia

The Book of Wisdom is the most recent book in the Old Testament, probably written in the century just before Christ in Alexandria, Egypt.  It was written originally in  Greek, not Hebrew, and as such is one of the books that Catholics have and Protestants don't.
Wisdom is personified in this book and in a few others almost to the point of sounding like God.  In the New Jerusalem translation that I often use, Wisdom is capitalized as are other names for God.  In 7:7-11 Solomon praises Wisdom extravagantly, "I loved her more than health or beauty, preferred her to the light, since her radiance never sleeps."  Further on (25-26) he says, "She is the breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty....She is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God's active power, and image of his goodness." 
The Greek word for Wisdom is "Sophia." Though the Jewish author of the book did not see her as divine, some modern writers are using "Sophia" as a name for God the way John in the beginning of his Gospel uses "Word" to refer to what we call the Second Person of the Trinity.

Wind of Change

Here's the third and final stanza of the hymn, You Are Love.  This stanza sings to Pneuma, the Greek word used in the New Testament for "Spirit."  Pneuma includes the meanings Breath, Air, and Wind.

You are Love with Whom we love You, our Three-in-One Divine
Breath of many different voices enriching humankind
Freshest Air for Whom we're gasping, just what's needed to revive
Our halfhearted efforts to bring this time alive
Wind of change Who bring a gentle hope to fashion all our days
You are Love like wildfire spreading till all the world's ablaze.

Love Made Flesh

A very confused forsythia with autumn leaves and spring blooms.

Here's the second stanza of the hymn, You Are Love:

You are Love enabling us to love, our Three-in-One Divine
You are Love made flesh at Nazareth in Mary maiden fine
You have come to live among us and to share our joy and grief
A heart ever open to leper, beggar, thief
You are Love Who lifted us to Love by hanging on a tree
Risen Love throughout the universe Whose passing set us free.

Source of All

Here's the first stanza of the hymn You are Love:

You are Love who draw us into You, our Three-in-One divine
You are Love who power the universe evolving over time
You are Beauty ever ancient, You are Beauty ever new
A bush burning brightly, sheer silence soft and true
Source of all the splendor round us, each bird and stream and hill
You are present, past, and future, old Love, yet coming still.

(The tune is from Gustave Holst's The Planets, Jupiter Bringer of Joy.  It is the same tune used in Oregon Catholic Press' Easter hymn, Three Days.)

By any other name...

Words get stale, laden with the dust of casual usage.   Might "God" and "Lord" have suffered that fate.  Moses asked God in the burning bush, "What's your name?" God answered "I AM."  The Jews used that name for many years, but about 400 years before Jesus they stopped saying it out loud, lest they lose the sense of awe that should surround it.  Some Catholic theologians have suggested that we start using another name for God.  I have written a hymn in which I do not use "God" or "Lord" to address the Holy One.  I use "Love." 
You are Love Who power the universe, evolving over time.

Perspective

Last night I went to an extensive and accurate presentation of the abuse crisis. From those present a passionate mix of heartbreak, anger, and gratitude. When I got home around 10 PM I went out on the front deck and looked at the crystal clear sky sparkling with stars.  Even the Milky Way was visible.  I felt small and all the concerns I had just heard seemed small in the presence of eternity.
Since I have no pictures of stars I hope a mid-summer morning view from my side deck also captures a similar awe.

Unpredictable Spirit

Talking about the Spirit, Jesus says, "The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going."(John 3:8)  In Greek the word "pneuma" means wind and spirit (also breath and air.)  In Hebrew the word "ruah" has the same fourfold meaning.  It is humbling to accept that PNEUMA is available, not only to Catholics, not only to Christians, but to whomever God sends it.

Uncontainable Spirit

Like the sun God shines on everyone.  That doesn't always make us happy.  In this Sunday's Gospel passage John tells Jesus, "We saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us" (Mark 9:38-40.)  He would like to contain the power of Jesus.

In the first reading ( Numbers 11:25-29) the elders that were with Moses receive the spirit from God. Two men who were not with Moses and the elders also received the spirit and began prophesying.  A man hurried to Moses and told him to stop them.  He would like to contain the spirit of God.  Moses replied that he wished God would send his spirit on all the people. 

Episcopal Prejudice

Most of my life I've been concerned about racial prejudice.  Now I, of all people, am upset by the prejudice against bishops.  It's important to say "some" bishops put concern for the institution above care for children.  Even if it's a large number, it's important not to paint them all with the same brush.  When they speak as a group, it's fair enough to criticize what "the bishops said"; but, when we suspect every bishop of immoral and illegal acts, that's just plain, old fashioned prejudice. 

Servant Leadership

When the disciples are arguing over who is the greatest, Jesus says that a true leader must serve all (Mark 9:30-37.)  He holds up a little child and says, "Even a child."  It's not a style that appeals to many leaders.  Any of us in leadership positions must feel challenged.

Misery Wants Company

He's picked a miserable day, but I don't think this fisherman is miserable.  In our lives sometimes, though, we might feel this isolated and want company. 
By choosing to call himself  "Son of Man" Jesus reveals that he is not just a figure of glory, but a human being just like us.  "Look at me!" he says, "I've gone through all that you go through.  I'm living in you and will share with you the strength that got me through rejection and suffering and death.  Follow me, hang on to me, and we'll get  through this together.  (Translation by me)

Suffering Savior

By becoming human Jesus has fully embraced all humanity.  Suffering and dying is part of human existence.  Jesus redeems our suffering by suffering himself.  He redeems our dying by dying himself.  He has lifted all humanity with him into the joy of risen life.

Deep Incarnation

This expression "deep Incarnation" that I have found in a few places seems to mean that somehow the Son's taking on human flesh means that the Son takes on all flesh and even all material stuff and redeems it.  Maybe that's why so much around me shines and shimmers.

Accompanied

This is  the town of Capernaum where Jesus made his home during his public life.
I have been reading and praying about how Jesus redeemed us by becoming one of us and living his human life with its ups and downs as we do.  He even went so far as to die as we do.  He did not die to coax God to love us once again.
God redeemed the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt without paying Pharaoh anything.  God redeemed them by accompanying them through the desert into the Promised Land.

Son of Man

Is it possible that Jesus so often chose to use the title "Son of Man" to refer to himself because of its ambiguity?  It could have a common place meaning such as "the man that I am" and at the same time refer to his glorification.  In Mark 8:27-35 Jesus seems to use the title to tone down Peter's identifying him as "the Messiah," a title that would arouse the suspicion of the Roman rulers.  "He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days."

Hunker Down

30 years ago one of my sisters and two nephews and I went white water rafting.  We had been warned about an area downstream where there were a lot of rocks on the right.  We were told to paddle hard to the left.  We failed.  We decided  to stop paddling, hunker down, and hold on tight to some part of the interior of the raft.  We were bounced around as if we were in a pinball machine, but we made it through and continued on downstream.
The memory comes back to me now as the best way to deal with the current issues in our Church.  Stop trying now to change the course, hunker down, and hang on to what's interior, Love whom we sometimes call God.

Perspective

If you can keep your head when all about you

are losing theirs and blaming it on you....

Perhaps Rudyard Kipling's verse is the best advice in this crisis in the Church. Here are some things that might give us some perspective on the sex crisis:

Get to know a victim and listen to her/his story.  

Note that the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report says that since 2002 when most dioceses adopted very strict guidelines there has been a drastic reduction of abuse reported.

Notice that the same Jury reports heterosexual as well as homosexual misconduct.

Imagine how far, far more priests and bishops remain good pastors.

If you think this is the worst, read the history of the church.

We will serve YHWH

This is the sight that greeted me on my Monday morning walk.  August 20?  It just ain't right!

This Sunday we will be treated  to the only passage from the Book of Joshua that made it into the lectionary.  It's in the last chapter (24:1-2; 15-17; 18b.)  The tribes of Israel have settled in the "Promised Land" and things are at peace.  Joshua, Moses' successor, has grown old.  He calls the tribes together and asks them what gods they will follow.  "As for me and my household," he says, "We will serve YHWH (God's proper name that God gave to Moses.)  The tribes respond that it was YHWH who brought them out of slavery in Egypt.  "Therefore we also will serve YHWH, for he is our God."  Both this reading and the Gospel challenge us to make a counter-cultural choice to let God draw us into our Father's household.

Without Any Care

I don't know what these are, but I want them in my yard.  My neighbor has been dead for many years, but every year at this time, without any care, this bush grows and blooms bountifully.

In the middle of the last century Karl Rahner said that the Christian of the future would be either a mystic or nothing.  I think of someone who doesn't have to look to an institution to have a direct relationship with God, someone who sees God in every person and in every bit of creation and loves God there.  Did Rahner foresee times like these when we may feel without any care?

"Eternal Life" begins now.

This weekend, as we finish reading from John's chapter 6, Peter says to Jesus, "You have the words of eternal life." (6:68)  In John's Gospel when Jesus uses the phrase "eternal life," he's not talking about after we die.  Jesus shares with us his very own life here and now and forever.  When Jesus is talking with Nicodemus in chapter 3, he says, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." (3:16)  Starting right now all we need do is surrender and Jesus lives and grow in us.

To Whom Shall We Go!

Oddly enough this is a sunrise reflecting in a north sky.

It is easy to feel disgust with the current reports of clergy sexual abuse.  Some are tempted to quit the Church.  They mistake the leaders of the Church for the whole Church.   The Church is really all the faithful.  Anytime things are too dark to see clearly, it is our love of God and of Jesus and of the whole people of God that enables us to hang in there.  Sunrise even in the north sky!
At one point some disciples stop following Jesus because they cannot accept his teaching.  Jesus turns to the apostles and asks the very painful question, "Will you also go away?" It is good old Peter who asks, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life. " (John 6:59-69) 
Really, to whom shall we go!

Father-centered Mass

Saturday's sunset.
As a boy, I thought the Mass was aimed at Jesus.  As we began using missals with the English translation of what the priest was saying and much later when the priest prayed in English, it became clear that Mass was aimed at the Father.  We unite ourselves to Jesus and offer ourselves wholeheartedly to the Father.