It is Love Who hangs on the Cross

"Having loved his own who were in this world, he loved them to the end (John 13:1."  Throughout his Gospel John has stressed the divinity of Jesus.  In John's view it is God who hangs on the Cross.  The death of Jesus is not aimed at convincing God to love us.  It is aimed at convincing us that God has always loved us.  The Crucifixion shows us to what lengths God will go to prove such constant love.  Through the arms of Jesus opened wide on the Cross, God embraces all humanity from beginning to end with a love that never stops.
(The Crucifixion by Georges Rouault)

Authentic Eucharist

Any authentic celebration of the Eucharist makes us want to wash each others' feet.  Whose feet does Jesus want you to wash?

Ecstasy

The last verse of Mark's Gospel (16:8) has commonly been translated to say that the three women who saw the angel at the tomb on Easter morning ran away bewildered and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.  The New Collegeville Bible Commentary proposes a completely different translation based strictly on the original Greek: "Going out, they fled  the tomb for trembling and ecstasy possessed them, and  they said nothing to anyone because they were filled with awe."
"Ecstasy" and "awe" capture beautifully what these women must have experienced and gives Mark's Gospel a more fitting conclusion.

Alone

A lone ice-fisherman back a month ago when the lake was still frozen.
If we forget what we know from the other three Gospels and just focus on what Mark tells us in his account of the passion of Jesus (15:21-41,) we are impressed by how absolutely alone Jesus is on the cross.  His disciples have run away, one young man so anxious to get away that he leaves his clothes in his pursuer's hands.  At the cross Mark describes only the leaders and  their crowd who make cruel fun of Jesus.  No good thief, no mention of his mother or any other disciple.  Even a group of women followers are described as "watching from a distance."  Finally Jesus feels cut off even from God and shouts, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!"
Jesus embraces all the loneliness and abandonment that we have felt in our lives and redeems it.

Emptying

Jesus empties himself by becoming one of us and by dying on the cross.  God "lifted him high and gave him the name above all names....Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:6-11.)  St. Paul asks us to imitate the humility of Jesus so that we might learn to put the interests of others ahead of our own. 

Happy First Day of Spring!

I just went downstairs to take a picture of this, but my camera battery was dead.  I found this picture from many years ago.  This much snow has blown up against the door today, even though the snow beyond is not as deep.  I will trudge through it soon to go to the mailbox.
The prayers that I used this morning had this to say from Ecclesiastes 7:14: On a good day enjoy good things, and on an evil day consider this: Both the good day and the bad day God has made, so that no one may find the least fault with him."
And continuing down the same page:  "The people complained against God and against Moses."
"God, open our hearts to receive the season of spring with hope and reverence."
"May God awaken us to new life, encourage us in times of change, and renew us in love"

Law Written On Our Hearts

 Several years ago the snow almost covered the Adirondack chairs in our front yard.
"I will plant my law within them and write it on their hearts," promises the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah (31:31-34.)  When faced with a moral decision we check with the living voice of God within us.

The Hour

At the wedding of Cana Jesus told his mother, "My hour has not yet come."  In this Sunday's Gospel (John 12:20-33) Jesus says, "Now the hour has come." In the preceding verses we are told that some Greeks asked to see Jesus.  These Greeks represent the world beyond Judaism. Jesus has come to save the whole world.  So it's time now for his "hour," his passion, death, and resurrection.  He asks, "What shall I say, 'Father, save me from this hour?' But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour.  Father, glorify your name." 
These words make me wonder what is the hour in my life, the "very reason that I have come."  Why am I here?

Life-changing

In 1974 I read James Burtchaelle's Philemon's Problem: a Theology of Grace, a book that changed my life.  Let me quote this entire eloquent paragraph:  Unlike ourselves the Father loves us, not for what he finds in us, but for what lies within himself.  It is not because we are good that God loves us, nor only the good among us whom he loves.  It is because he is so unutterably good that God loves us all, good and evil alike.  Put most clearly: the Father of Jesus loves sinners.  He loves  the loveless, the unloving, the unlovable.  He does not detect what is congenial, appealing, sound, or attractive, and respond to it with his favor.  Indeed, he does not respond at all.  He initiates.  His is motiveless love, radiating forth eternally. And because the Father of Jesus is creative, his love originates good rather than rewarding it.  St. Augustine had this in mind when he prayed to God, "By loving me, you made me lovable."

God's Masterpiece

Returning home from this morning's very cold and lovely walk.
St. Paul can't wait to explain his whole idea, so he blurts out, "It is through grace that you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:4-10.)   "Grace" means "gift."  We can never earn it.  God always makes the first move.  Paul concludes, "We are God's work of art."

"The Jews"

This wall is all that is left of the Temple in Jerusalem (the golden dome is a mosque) 
In John's Gospel when Jesus drives the merchants out of the Temple area (2:13-25) the author says, "The Jews said to him 'What sign can you show us for doing this?'"  John does not mean  that all the Jews present challenged Jesus.  He uses "the Jews" to designate the Jewish leaders who oppose Jesus, and whose opposition will grow and grow as the story continues.  If we don't know that John's use of "the Jews" almost always refers to the Jewish leadership, we will blame a lot of bad things that happen on the whole Jewish people, not just on their leaders.

The Decalogue

This mountain is in the country of Jordan, looking west to the Holy Land.   Perhaps the mountain from which God showed Moses the Promised Land which Moses never lived to enter. 
Reflecting on what we call the ten commandments ("ten words" in the Hebrew) in this Sunday's first reading (Exodus 20:1-17) got me thinking of how very much we owe the Jewish people.  Most of all the Bible.  We forget that even the New Testament, the Christian writings, were written by Jewish people.

Cosmic Force

"Love is the most universal, the most tremendous,

  and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces....

  the physical structure of the universe is love."

(Teilhard de Chardin  quotation for March 

on the beautiful wall calendar published by the Ministry of the Arts)