Contemplating

The cover of this month's Give Us This Day is a picture of a white robed figure in a swirl of colors.  The artist, Daniel Bonnel, titles it, Jesus Walking On The Water, Contemplating.  Jesus has spent the night in prayer on the hill.  He is still lost in contemplation as he moves over the water..  The commentator points out that one of Webster's definitions of contemplation is, "a state of mystical awareness of God's being," a beautiful and inviting notion of contemplating.
I'm still waiting for a lab report that would tell us what kind of melanoma is attacking my lung.  That will determine what medicine we will use to shrink it,  Please keep praying,

All will be well?

I have often quoted Julian of Norwich's famous line, "All will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well."  It's a thought that can give us hope with so much suffering and pain and confusion in our world.  But in a welcome article by Mahri Leonard-Fleckman in the August issue of America magazine the author says that Julian took a long time before she could understand how God could say such a thing in so miserable a world.
Julian wrote finally, "Know it well, love was his meaning.  Who reveals it to you?  Love.  What did he reveal to you?  Love.  Why does he reveal it to you?  For love.  Remain in this, and you will know more of the same.  But you will never know different, without end.  So I was taught that love is our Lord's meaning."
It is hard for our limited mind to grasp this Mystery.  Love is everything, everywhere, in us and around us like the air we breathe.  As I begin centering prayer I am keenly aware that my love for God is woefully inadequate.  So I pray, "You are Love with Whom I love You."  It's only with God in me, loving God through Godself that I can dare approach the Divine Mystery.  It can never be completely clear.  So we surrender.   Then Love can use us to permeate out suffering world.

Divine Abundanza

The shore of the Sea of Galilee.

An excellent pizzeria near my home has a very large pizza they call "Abundanza."   The miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21,) is full of rich symbolism. One that stands out for me today is the abundance of divine hospitality.  Hospitality strikes me as a good way to think about grace.  You don't earn it, you just happen to show up and you are welcome.  The disciples in the story suggest letting the people take care of themselves, but Jesus feeds them hospitably.  And not just scrimping.  With abundance!  Twelve wicker baskets full left over.
With abundance God's love washes over us.

Let It Be

After the angel Gabriel made his announcement to Mary, the young girl responded, "Let it happen to me as you have said."  I like to think that as a young mother teaching her son to pray, she taught him to say to God, "Let it be as you will."  As a man Jesus taught us to say "Thy will be done."  In the garden the night before he died   Jesus himself prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me.  Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine." (Luke:22:42)
While I am lying in bed in the morning, reluctant to get up, I pray a version of the Angelus.  I have a statue of Mary on the wall beside my bed.  As I pray Mary's response to the angel, I stop and ask her  to teach me, as she taught her son, to mean it when I pray to God, ."Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me.  Nevertheless, let your will, not mine, be done."
It occurs to me as I pray that the French "si vous plait," (if it pleases you,)  comes closer to what I mean than our English "please."

St. Mary Magdalene

My favorite depiction of Mary Magdalene is in Franco Zeffirielli's  1977 TV series Jesus of Nazareth.  Perfectly played by Anne Bancroft, she is about the age of the mother of Jesus, maybe a little older.  Not a former prostitute, she is a follower of Jesus, as devoted as the other apostles, perhaps more devoted because we find her at the Crucifixion of Jesus. The gospels describe her as the first person to meet the Risen Christ who sends her to tell the other apostles.
In the film she goes to the room where they are hiding out of fear of the authorities.  She tells them that she has seen Jesus and that he sent her to tell the that he is risen.  They don't believe her and mutter about women's fantasies.  Sort of scolding them in a very old aunt kind of way, she says"Well, I've told you!"  And she walks out.
(The series may be available for screening.  A fortieth anniversary edition is available from Amazon.)
In an age when most people would look askance at anyone talking about rising from the dead, St. Mary Magdalene is a model for us of loving faith and courage.
I am not expecting to celebrate Mass in church or outside in the near future.

One Precious Pearl

In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus helps us to understand what he means by The Reign of God.  In Hebrew poetry a second line often repeats the meaning of the first line in different words.  Jesus teaches us to pray "Thy Kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  God's will being done by each of us and all of us results in the coming of God's Reign.
That Reign of God is one precious pearl that we would give everything for.  With God we can bring it about.
The biopsy last Tuesday showed that the type of cancer in my right lung and pleura is a melanoma, common on people's skin, but rare inside a person.  We want the lab to answer some questions that will assure us the cancer is melanoma.  If so the treatment to reduce the tumor could be a daily pill or an injection every two or four weeks, both of which target the melanoma directly.

Kingdom of "Heaven"?

I'm still here.  I haven't had the energy to do a blog.  I am having trouble with my breathing.  Had a pet-scan and biopsy last week and am waiting for the results.  Please pray for me.
Last weekend, this weekend, and next we've been reading parables about "the Kingdom of Heaven" from Matthew's Gospel.  I think it''s worth repeating that Matthew,as a reverent Jew, uses "Heaven" as a substitute for the name "God."  Every year the Gospel reading was from Matthew's until the 1970's when we got a three year cycle of readings.  When I was young I thought Jesus was talking about  the place where we go when we die.
Another help is that the Greek word that is translated "kingdom" is better translated "reign."  So we get the reign of God is like seed growing enormously, like yeast hidden in dough, like a treasure hidden in a field.  Reign of God helps me to think of letting God's love rule over my heart and quietly and abundantly change me.  Not just individuals,  the Reign of God that Jesus announces is taking over the whole world.  It doesn't always seem that way, but each of us letting God rule our hearts spreads the Reign of God.

Flowing

On a hot summer night with no wind, cool air flows down the mountain behind my house and into my back windows.  I can feel it flowing up the hallway into my room in the front of the house.  It is so gentle and so refreshing that I've begun to think of Love, whom we sometimes call God, flowing over me and around me and within me and out of me to others.  Love Who loves us flows over our entire sick earth, over our suffering country and over all of our people threatened by the virus.  Love Who loves us flows over and around and through everyone of us, flowing out to everyone we meet.  The love we receive from others is Love flowing out of them into us.  The flowing is so effortless that all we have to do is keep the windows open.

Madly in Love

Like a teenager, God has been madly in love with us since the very beginning.  Love never considers the consequences.  Tender.  Wasteful. This lavish love touches me especially in two passages in the prophet Hosea.  Through the prophet God compares us to a spouse: "I will betroth you to myself forever, betroth you with integrity and justice, with faithful love and tenderness. I will betroth you to myself with loyalty, and you will come to know your God." (2:21-22)  Chapter 11 begins:  "When Israel was a child I loved him."  God is a parent leaning down and taking a child's arms to teach them to walk, "leading them with human ties, with leading-strings of love.  I was like someone who lifts an infant close against his cheek; stooping down to him I gave him his food." (3-4)
This is the first instance in the Old Testament of the theme of God's love as cause of his choosing Iraael.  Jesus will show us over and over that God's love is not earned.  It is simply that God is Love that flows over all that God has made, transforming us into lovers.

100, 60,30?

What is called the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9) is really about the seed and the soil.  The main message of Jesus is that God's rule, God's reign has come.  Very likely most of us have received this message of Jesus, so this parable pushes us to ask ourselves how generous is our response to God's power in our lives.  100 fold would be an extraordinary, but not impossible, harvest.  There may be a few of us who respond wholeheartedly to the power of God's love.  Most of us, however, will find ourselves a little or a lot less than that.  We must not underestimate ourselves or God's grace.  Honestly, how much of our heart are we giving over to the power of God's love?  60? 30?  God's love can improve the soil of our hearts.  All we have to do is let God do it.
I am starting to have problems with my breathing again, like I had two years ago.  Please pray for me.  It doesn't look like I will be celebrating Mass this summer in church or outside.

Hope

Hope is only hope when things seem hopeless.  Our nation is the oldest enduring republic in the history of the world, with a set of political institutions and traditions that have stood the test of time.  We have lost a lot of the world's respect recently.  Through the prophet Ezekiel God offers us hope (36:24-28): "I will give you my own spirit to lead you in my ways faithful to what I command.  Then you will live in the land the land I gave your ancestors.  You will be my people and I will be your God."
We have talked so much about the separation of church and state that we may not remember that, while our country was not founded on a particular denomination, it was founded on a kind of natural religion that almost all the great faiths of the world have in common: belief in God, an after-life, divine reward and punishment, responsibility to others.  Roger Williams, the strong proponent of the separation of church and state insisted that natural religion was a necessary condition for any free republic to maintain order and to be effective.  Our Declaration of Independence says that "all men are created."  We needn't be bashful about it.

United States

We seem determined to be the un-united States, even turning a pandemic into a matter of partisan politics.  To wear of not to wear a mask!!  George Washington warned our infant nation that disagreement and argument between political parties was the biggest danger to unity that we faced.  We have got ourselves to the point where we need to rededicate ourselves to working for unity.  As we surrender to our God who is Love, we beg that every last one of us may be filled with Love so strong that we will once again be the United States.

Peace to the Nations

The Old Testament passage chosen for most Sundays throws light on  the Gospel.  Matthew 11:25-30 asks us to imitate a gentle Jesus. The first reading from the Prophet Zechariah 9:9-10 stresses peace. A king riding on a donkey comes for peace.  Perhaps worth mentioning is that there is only one animal in the picture.  In Hebrew poetry a second line often repeats a first line in different words.  It was common for rulers to ride around their kingdom on donkeys.  This peace-bringing king does not ride a warhorse.  In fact he banishes them along with bows and chariots used in war. 
Peace is a dream of the human race.  I'm reading a book in which one character is a boy who graduates from high school just at the time when the United States is considering entering the Second World War.  He considers himself a pacifist.  Dorothy Day is one of his heroes.  His family and friends think he is an unrealistic dreamer.  His is a very hard stance to maintain in the face of Hitler's evil.  And so it goes.
We need a gentle leader who can bring us to take seriously the possibility of "No More War."

An Easy Yoke

"Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  

Yes , my yoke is easy and my burden light."

Matthew 11:29-30

The Pharisees referred to the Law as a yoke, literally a wooden frame placed over the necks of two oxen to draw a plow.  The quality of ease and lightness that Jesus offers does not consist of a lower level of ethical demand.  Obeying the Law is made easy by our relationship with Jesus and the sense of being grasped by the love of one who is gentle and humble of heart.  Jesus' interpretation of the Law also gives priority to engagement of the heart and promotion of relationships over purely ritual and external prescriptions. 

As we grow in our intimacy with Jesus he is able to share his goodness with us.

St. Paul and St. Peter

Today is the feast day of the two pillars of the Church.  Since Paul is my patron, let me concentrate on him.  One passage I like a lot and one of his most powerful, a terrific example of classic rhetoric, is in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. He has been criticized by some other Christian preachers for being too weak. Beginning in chapter 11, verse 21 he boasts of all that he has done, suffering, weakness, ecstatic visions,  "a thorn against his flesh." 
Of the last he says that he pleaded with Christ to take it away, but Christ told him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." (12:9)  Paul answers his critics, "That is why I am glad of weaknesses, insults, constraints, persecutions and distress for Christ's sake.  For it is when I am weak that I am strong."
As we realize and accept our weaknesses God's grace can work better in us.
The picture is my favorite corner in the house.  I just got up from there to write here what I was thinking about St. Paul.

Centering Prayer

When you pray, go into your inner room and close your door to pray to your Father who is in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will pay you back.

Matthew 6:6

It looks like Covid-19 is with us for yet a while.  I mentioned centering prayer when we started isolating ourselves, but most of what I have done in this blog has been about meditating on the Bible (lectio divina.)  We begin that by using our head.  Centering prayer is a prayer of the heart.  Here are four recommended steps.

1. Choose a sacred word as a symbol of your consent to God's presence and action within you.

2. Sitting comfortably with eyes closed, settle yourself briefly, and silently start saying your chosen word as the symbol of your consent to God's presence and action within you.

3. When you become aware that you are thinking of something, return ever so gently to your sacred word.

4. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a few minutes.

When I began centering prayer forty years ago I could do it for only 5 minutes, but within a month I could do it for 20 minutes.  I didn't want to go any longer than that, so I began setting an alarm.  Two books that were helpful were Thomas Keating's Open Mind, Open Heart and Basil Pennington's Centering Prayer.

Churches Opening

The Catholic Churches in Mountain Maryland (Allegany and Garrett Counties) are opening for Mass this weekend.  The pastors and staff had to do a lot of preparations.  Those taking part in Mass are asked to please follow whatever directions they are given to safeguard themselves and the others gathering for Mass.
We pray that everything goes well and that all will be safe.
We pray also for those who have died of Covid 19 and for their families.  We pray for those who are sick.  We pray for health care workers.  We pray for those who are having a hard, and even abusive,  time quarantining at home.
Because of my age and my health I will not be celebrating Mass for a good while yet. 

My Brother's Keeper

"Am I my brother's keeper?" a man quoted this Scripture passage to me recently to prove from the Bible that he didn't owe anybody anything.  Every once in a while when I would preach on social justice, someone would quote this to me. I awoke this morning with the quote going through my head, so I used Genesis 4:1-16 for meditation today.
Cain has just killed his brother Abel.  God comes looking for Abel and asks Cain where he is.  Cain's flippant reply is "Am I my brother's keeper?"  God doesn't honor the smart aleck remark with the  answer which is clearly "Yes." He kicks Cain out of Paradise.
This passage isn't aimed just at those rich people who think they deserve what they worked for.  So what is God saying to us.  In this time of the virus one message is that I must protect my brothers and sisters  by something as simple as wearing a mask and keeping my distance.  Being more generous by sharing what I have more than I might usually do.  Favoring programs that care for the poor and sick and exiled.

Who ya gonna love?

I haven't had internet service since Sunday morning.  My phone also was unreliable.  Turns out some towers were down in our area, but I don't know why that would affect both internet and phone.
Well, Monday I meditated on Matthew 10:37-42 which is this coming Sunday's Gospel. Of the warnings and advice that Matthew collects here, the verse I found most poignant was, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.  And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." When I was little I couldn't imagine loving God better than my mother and father.  As I grew older I was able to make some sense of the warning, but I also grew convinced that if someone didn't love their parents and relatives, they couldn't possibly love God.  Someone once told me that I love God only as much as the person I love the least.  I hope that's not true, but if we don't love people, we won't call attention to the Good News as Jesus wants us to.
This coming weekend the Catholic churches in Mountain Maryland are opening for Mass.  We are seeing an upswing in Covid 19 cases in some places where churches have opened.  Use you head.  Be cautious.  I will not be celebrating Mass for the foreseeable future.

Happy Fathers' Day

Parents, never drive your children to resentment 

but bring them up with correction and advice inspired by the Lord. 

Ephesians 6:4

Our image of God in heavily influenced by the way our fathers and mothers treated us.  When they have loved us and cherished us, we are comfortable with God who loves us and cherishes us.  We feel sure of God, we know that we can trust God with our life.  

If one or the other or both punished us severely we grow up afraid of God as someone who cannot be trusted.  We also may are very judgmental of others.  Some may even turn away from God entirely. 

A book I just finished reading named Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God, can help us to  understand how we come to our image of God and to find ways to heal it.

Summer Solstice

I got up this morning at six so I could get a picture of the rising sun on the summer solstice.  The fog was so thick I couldn't see beyond the shore line.  Then I read that the earliest sunrise is often a few days earlier than the solstice.  Maybe the sunrise that I posted Wednesday.  So here's a somewhat different picture of that.

Psalm 19 is one of my favorites.  I used it for meditation today.  C.S. Lewis thought it was the most beautiful of all the psalms.  The name used for God is El, an ancient Near-Eastern name for the high god.  The Hebrew word for sun has the same root as the name of the Babylonian sun god.  It may be that the psalmist has taken poetic elements about the Babylonian god to show that the Hebrew God is the creator of the sun.  In other words, "Our God made your god!"  Here are verses 4-6:

There at the rim of  the world

God has pitched a tent

for the sun to rest and  rise renewed

like a bridegroom rising from bed,

an athlete eager to run the race.

It springs from the edge of the earth,

runs its course across the sky

to win the race at heaven's end.

Nothing on earth escapes its heat.

Heart for Love

Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  When I was little I was fascinated by a picture on my grandmother's living room wall of just two hearts, that of Jesus and Mary.  They were shaped like real hearts, not like the one in the picture above.  One had a crown of thorns around it and the smaller, I think had a sword through it.  My family told me that was to show me how much Jesus and Mary loved me.
The second reading for today's Mass is 1 John 4: 7-16, a passage I refer to frequently.  The author says that if we are loving people that's a clear sign that we are children of God because "God is love."  God's very nature is love.  If we love one another it shows that God lives in us. "Those who remain in love remain in God, and God remains in them."  These verses have become a touchstone for the centrality of Christian love for all persons.
So it isn't that God tells us that we have to love all those who are different from us.  It's simply that love flows from God through us to everyone, no matter what their color or race or nationality.

New Adam

The blossoms on the rhododendron have come and already gone
In Romans 5:12-15 St. Paul begins an analogy between Jesus and Adam.  Jesus brings new life to the world the way Adam brought death.  Since we no longer regard Adam as an historical figure,  scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson uses him as a symbol, "Everyone has sinned the way Adam did, so that the effect of Adam's sin continues, and continues to be symbolized by the death experienced by all humans."  The Risen Christ, like a new Adam, stands at the beginning of the new creation and brings obedience, new life and grace. He has redeemed believers not from one single sin but from the power of sin and death.

Speaking Out

5:30 AM, June 17, 2020

Now there's some good news: beautiful, beautiful way to be awakened.

The prophet Jeremiah (20:10-13) had lots of bad news that God expected him to announce to the people.  Even though it was true, he was hated and persecuted for it.  Jesus tells us  three times not to be afraid to tell people what God expects of them (Matthew 10:26-33.)   Most of us are reluctant to speak out.  When I read about Hitler's time or see movies about it, I wonder how the priests and bishops who did speak out decided that "now is the time."  

More Than Many Sparrows

A book I got a lot of comfort from in my later years in the seminary was called More Than Many Sparrows.  The quote comes from this coming Sunday's Gospel reading, Matthew 10:26-35.  The author of the book, if I remember correctly, took the verse out of the context of this Gospel and used it simply to stress how precious we are in God's sight.  Not even a sparrow dies without God knowing it and we are worth more than many sparrows.  Luke and Mark each use it in different contexts also.  Elizabeth Johnson, in a passage I just read this morning, uses it to point out God's intimate care of all creation.  I will never hear it without simply being comforted that God is constantly looking out for me.
The little fellow in the picture is a song sparrow who has an absolutely beautiful song.  In the picture he is eating the supper I fed him after he sang for it.

Life-changing

On our retreat last week one of the questions for reflection was: "When have you had an experience of coming to know Jesus in a different way?  What effect did it have on you?"  For me it was discovering unearned love in a book I read in the early 1970's by James Burtchell named Philemon's Problem.  I am sure that I had heard of God's gracious love in Catholic school and in seminary and had probably even preached on it during the ten years that I had by then been a priest.  But it had never sunk in until I read this book.  One paragraph got to my heart (forgive all the male references:)
"Unlike ourselves, the Father loves men, not for what he finds in them, but for what lies within himself.  It is not because men are good that he loves them, nor only good men that he loves.  It is because he is so unutterably good  that he loves all men, good and evil. He loves sinners, He loves the loveless, the unloving, the (for unaided us) unlovable.  He does not  detect what is congenial, appealing, attractive, and respond to it with his favor.  Indeed, he does not respond at all.  The Father is a source.  He does not react; he initiates love.  His is motiveless love, radiating forth eternally.  And because it is creative, it originates good rather than rewarding it  Augustine had this divine priority in mind in his aphorism, 'In loving me, you made me lovable.'"
That passage changed my spiritual life from effortful to effortless.  From then on I felt like I was floating through life.  Forty-five years later I am still unpacking all that it means to have a God who loves us not matter what.

Eating and Drinking

My flesh is true food

and my blood is true drink.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood

remains in me and I in them.

John 6:55-56

Going further than St. Paul's writing about a "meal," John is very vivid in the language he uses.  Most of us have not eaten Christ's flesh and drunk his blood for three months.  That eating and drinking is much missed, but we still "remain" in Jesus in Jesus "remains" in us.  

Eucharistic Meal

Because the loaf of bread is one, 

we, though many, are one body, 

for we all partake of the one loaf.

 1 Cor 10:17

What I miss most during this time of the virus is gathering around the altar table with the community of believers.  St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the purpose of the Eucharist is to build up the community of the Church.

Because of my age and my health, I have made the decision to wait a lot longer before I gather with the community either in church or in the yard.  

The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

Love Who love us, please heal our world.
May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, come down upon us and remain with us forever.
Monday through Friday this week I am making my annual retreat with seven other priests, my support group.  I probably won't have time to work on this blog.
We are still not having Mass in the yard on Saturday.

Relationships

I have a good copy of the above icon that I use to start my centering prayer in the morning.  Starting on the right, I address, "Holy Spirit, Jesus, Father, Love, in You I live and move and have my being.  Each day You show me that You are gracious Love."  A few short prayers and then, "You are Love with Whom I love You."
Trinity is a name that points to God as an eternal communion of self-giving love.  God is relationships.  Love relates to me as Energy that is always powering evolution and as Beauty that astonishes me everyday.  Love became a human being like me and carries my humanity and all humanity into the Divine.  Love within me relates me to every other person and creates unity in the Church and among all human beings.
For the last several years this way of looking at the Trinity has helped me grow in my relationship with God.  In past years other images and metaphors helped me.  In the years to come I don't doubt that other ways of looking at God may help me grow.  It is important to our spiritual growth that we leave ourselves open to the way that at this time in our lives makes the most sense to us. 

A Shamrock?

God is not a shamrock.  Nor is God two men and a bird.  God is not a father in any literal sense, nor a son, nor a spirit in any literal sense.  God is neither male nor female.  God is not even "god" in any literal sense.  Our word "god" comes from the ancient Sanskrit word meaning "day."
St. Thomas Aquinas said the only way we can talk about God is by analogy.  St. Augustine said, "When you have understood, then what you have understood is not God."  Words about God can only point rather than enclose.
We are sometimes afraid to talk about the Holy Trinity lest we end up in heresy.  Once we realize, however, that no ideas are adequate, that frees us up  to find images and metaphors and analogies that help us to get some glimmer of understanding that is essential for growing in our relationship with God.
This year's first reading for Trinity Sunday from Exodus 34:4-9 is a powerful reminder that the feast is about one God.  The earliest Christians began to talk about their experience of this one and only God in a three-fold way as beyond them, with them, and within them, that is, as utterly transcendent, as present historically in the person of Jesus, and as present in the Spirit within their community.  These were all encounters with only one God. 

A Holy Kiss

My favorite place in Greece was Delphi.  Many people came here to consult the Oracle.  What made it my favorite was the altitude.  I chose a hotel clinging to the mountain with a great view of the Gulf of Corinth.  The picture includes the city of Corinth and an enormous orchard of olive trees.  I have never had such delicious olives; they were almost sweet.
In the time of St. Paul it was a large and bustling city, apparently famous for its immorality.  At the very end of Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthians (13:11-13,) we get only a hint of the difficulties Paul ran into with the converts there, fighting among themselves.  It is kind of reassuring that the kind of split that we find in the Church today was already happening in the late 50's of the first century.  Paul begs the Corinthians to let the kiss of peace be an expression of the loving concern for one another.
This is the only passage in this year's Trinity Sunday readings that refers to "three."  This early on the Christians did not have a developed doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but Paul expresses an awareness of relating to God in three ways.  Through Jesus the community has come to know the love of God that they may live in fellowship with the Holy Spirit, the source of their unity in Christ.  Just a glimpse!

Second Chance God

Since the three year set of readings for Mass was published in 1970, I have never paid this Trinity Sunday's reading any attention.  Even as recently as this past Sunday I din't intend to give it a second thought.  Then today I decided to use it for meditation. What a striking revelation!
From Exodus 34 we select only verses 4-9 for the Sunday reading, but it helps to know that when Moses came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the Law which God had given him and found the Hebrews worshiping the golden calf, Moses was so angry that he threw the tablets on the ground and broke them.  So Moses gets two fresh tablets which God writes on and heads back up the mountain.  This fact alone signals a new relationship with God.
Elizabeth Nagel in her brief commentary points out that God's willingness to give the Hebrews a second chance indicates that the future of the divine-human relationship "would always depend not on human fidelity but on God's intense desire to live with humankind."
I understand that, out of respect for Jewish sensitivities, we no longer use the Divine Name, but it is sorely missed in this passage which captures all the awe the name inspires.  God passes before Moses and cries out, "Yahweh! Yahweh! a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and faithfulness."  Translating the Name as "I AM," as God does in chapter 3, we have God calling out a description of God's very Self.
Nothing here about "Three Persons," but a powerful statement about the One God. 
(Nagel's commentary is in the Workbook for Lectors.)

Mini-Gospel

God so loved the world 

that he gave his only Son,

so that everyone who believes in him might not perish

but might have eternal life.

For God sent his Son into the world,

not to condemn the world,

but that the world might be saved through him.

(John 3:16-17)

"The world" usually has a negative meaning in John's Gospel; I've seen it translated as "the system."  Not so much in these verses.  God loves the world so much that God wants to be part of it.  The Son is the way God does this.  Incarnation (enfleshment) saves us.  Divine and human are united.  The other world and this world are knitted together.  The Son enables us to surrender in love to the Divine in us and around us.

The picture is last Tuesday's sunrise sky from my bed when I awoke.

Mother of the Church

This statue was on the site of the church of my childhood.
Today is the feast  of "The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church."  February 11, 2018, Pope Francis announced that this new feast could be celebrated the Monday after Pentecost.  This morning was the first I saw the prayers and readings.
The Gospel is a good one John 19:22-34, Mary at the Cross as Jesus says to the disciple whom Jesus loved, "Behold, your mother."  In John's Gospel Mary is a symbol of the New Eve, "the mother of all the living" (Genesis 3:20.)  The crucified Christ gives her to us the disciples whom Jesus loves as our Mother, the Mother of the Church.
Just like our country, the Church is seriously split.  We might ask Mary today to pray that we all will be united in her family, the Church.

Burning

When I was little, if someone gave me a nickel or a dime, I couldn't wait to spend it.  Mother used to say "You act like that money was burning a hole in your pocket."  This picture from Tuesday has been burning a hole in my computer, so eager was I to share it with you.  I saved it for Pentecost.
St. Francis of Assisi said,  "Preach the Gospel at all times.  If necessary, use words." The Holy Spirit  makes us so eager to let other's know the Good News that God loves us beyond deserving and beyond imagining that you would think the Spirit's fire was going to burn a hole in our hearts.

Cling to me wits

The very large tree that looks almost bare is a red oak.
Many years ago I read all of Jon Hassler's novels.  In one there was a character who wrote poetry.  Red Oaks was one of them.  Wise.  I have put it on this blog before.

Among the four seasons' perpetual jokes

Is the winter appearance of overdressed oaks.

Refusing to fall with the sleet and snow 

Oak leaves cling, lifelike, through fifty-below

Until they are nudged by the force of the sap

Rising to fashion the oak a spring wrap.

I hope when it's autumn and winter for me

I can look as alive as the overdressed tree

And during the lengthening nights I can cling

To my wits and my heart--the tokens of spring--

Only releasing them into the sod

The moment I'm dressed in the glory of God.

Holy Air

It feels so good to get out in the fresh air and sunshine after weeks of staying indoors.  I do walk every morning, even days in  May when the air was cold and I had to wear my winter coat.  This is the first view I see as I start my walk.  Three mornings ago I was tickled to see the leaves on the trees had begun to open up. Today,with more warm air, they are almost fully open.
In recent years as I tried to find immaterial ways to think of God, one that seemed perfect to me was simply air itself.  I've suggested it to people who find their traditional images of God no longer satisfying.  We don't have any image that fits the living God exactly, but God is like the air all around us, Air that loves us.
As I have written here "Air" is one of the four meanings of "pneuma," the Greek word used in the Bible for the Holy Spirit.  Holy Air warms our hearts with love and opens us to bring delight to all who know us.

Holy Breath

We wear masks to keep our breath from carrying the virus to others. 
When I was a young priest we breathed on a baby that we were baptizing and said "Receive the Holy Spirit. 
The evening of his resurrection Christ appears to his disciples in the upper room (2019-23.) He breathes on them and says "Receive the Holy Breath."  The word used in Greek by the author of the Gospel means also, "spirit," "air," and "wind." 
The Hebrew word "ruah" has the same four meanings.  At the beginning of the Book of Genesis the "ruah" of God blew over the chaotic waters.  In Genesis 2:7 "Yahweh God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being." 
The Resurrection of Christ is the beginning of a New Creation that spans from the beginning to the end of the cosmos.  With the Breath of Christ within them the disciples continued that New Creation.  We take off our masks of indifference and let the Holy Breath spread out to our world carrying love and joy and justice.

Catching

Quarantining ourselves has been much harder on some of us than on others but most of us are cautious enough that we are willing to continue social distancing and keeping to our homes.  We are motivated not just by fear that we might catch this virus but that others might catch it from us.  

The Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost in wind and fire intending just the opposite.  The Holy Wind makes us burn so fiercely with the love of God that we can't help but spread it to others.  Ghandi said, "A lukewarm thing loses its heat when it touches something else; a burning thing sets fire to everything it touches."  The Spirit sets us on fire with love like wildfire spreading till all the world's ablaze.

Loving the World and the Church

I was ordained a priest 58 years ago today.  As the number of years gets higher and higher I am more and more astonished, first of all that I have lived this long, and most of all that I have found a way to be true to my own liberal values and to remain faithful to a Church that has often frowned on them.
I fell in love with the world when I was a child, at the same time that I was falling in love with the Church.  For most of my young life "Church" was the faith of my parents and extended family and the congregation of St. Mary's Church in Lonaconing and some pastors and sisters.  I don't recall even thinking about bishops and the institutional church.  The Church was the Catholics that I knew and loved.
In my teen years in the seminary my love for the world grew as I exposed myself to modern culture, poetry, art, music, movies, theater.  I found friends there who also cherished this wonder-full world.  All of this helped me grow in my relationship with God.  I found God in the beauty of the world.
Then into my life came Gene Walsh and Ray Brown with new ways of looking at liturgy and scripture.  I was excited by change.  I began to see that the institutional church was going to have to embrace change faster if it was going to keep up with the still wonder-full rapidly changing world.  My longing was answered 58 years ago when I was ordained into a Church of John the 23rd and the Second Vatican Council.  Though the road to change was still rocky for some years, Pope Francis holds out the promise that the Second Vatican council is irreversible.
With God's help I still try to share with others new ways of thinking about God and a Cosmic Christ and a less clerical and more open Church, one that realizes that change has to be a constant part of our Catholic life.
Love Who love us, thank You.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             .

RIP

May the choirs of angels come to greet you.  

May they speed you to Paradise.  

May the Lord enfold you in his mercy.

May you find eternal life.

We pray today for all those who have died in war and for the 345,470 people around our mother earth who have died of Covid-19 and for their families.  We pray for all those who are sick with this evil and for the health care workers who are risking their lives caring for them.  We pray also for those who are keeping to their homes, especially those who are lonely or abused.  

Sophia

I could smell these lilacs yesterday as I approached them.  When I was a kid I liked to cut them from a bush in our yard and bring them into the house to enjoy the scent.
Written about 200 years before Christ, another Old Testament book that only Catholics use is Sirach (Ecclesiasticus).  In chapter 24 Wisdom praises herself with characteristics which in the New Testament will  be applied to the person of the Word or to the Spirit.  The New Jerusalem Bible says, "The passage seems to have been one of the principal sources of inspiration for the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, in which several of Wisdom's activities and attributes are ascribed to the Logos (Word)."
Wisdom says, "The Creator of all things instructed me, 'Pitch your tent in Jacob, make Israel your inheritance.' From eternity, in the beginning, he created me, and for eternity I shall remain." 
Written around the same time, Baruch, another Old Testament book that only Catholics use says of Wisdom, "So she appeared on earth and lived with humankind."(3:37)
Using feminine terms to talk about God may help some people to grow in their relationship with God, especially those whose own father was distant or even abusive. 
Outdoor Mass may begin towards the end of June, maybe even later.

Wisdom

There are several Old Testament books that Catholics use that Jews and Protestants do not use.  One  of them is Wisdom.  In feminine terms the author in chapter 7  praises Wisdom as holy, unique, almighty, a breath of the power of God, a reflection of eternal light, an image of divine goodness.  "She is more beautiful than the sun and excels every constellation of the stars....Against Wisdom evil cannot prevail. She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things sweetly and well."
The author even writes about how the people have been saved by Wisdom..  She saved those in the Ark; she delivered the people from slavery in Egypt (10:4,13).  These texts are actually referring to the one God of Israel but in female rather than male language.   God is beyond gender.  In the diaspora Jews were scattered all over the Mediterranean world.  Other religions had female goddesses like Isis and Athena.  It's possible that, to fit in, rabbis began to emphasize the female figure of Wisdom.  Elizabeth Johnson writes, "Within strong monotheistic belief, she is neither a replacement for nor an addition to Yahweh but an alternative way of speaking about the one unfathomable God of Israel who creates and redeems the world."
Almost all of the above is from Johnson's Creation and the Cross.  Check my entry on May 16 "What's In A Name?"

Lady Wisdom

In the book of Proverbs, a book which Jews and Protestants and Catholics accept, there is a beautiful poem (8:22-31) in which Wisdom refers to herself as present at creation, "Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning..from everlasting I was firmly set...Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I came to birth....I was beside him, like a master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence."  In chapter 9 she continues, "Happy are those who keep my ways...Whoever finds me finds life."
The Greek word for "wisdom" is "sophia."  I don't remember ever studying this in the seminary, but I intend to take some time meditating on Lady Wisdom here and in the books of Sirach and Wisdom. 

Gathered In

Today is the traditional feast of the Ascension.  In almost all dioceses its celebration has been moved to Sunday so that more people might be able to celebrate it.  It doesn't make much difference this year because in most places churches are still not open.
When the Father raises his Son from the dead and carries him into the other world, all humanity is gathered in with him. The Ascension of God-made-man is human nature's entry into that other world.  Whether in church or not, our prayer today is simply one of  surrender.

Fear

On Monday morning I met by zoom with the staff of the Catholic churches in our area and in the afternoon with seven priests who make up our support group.  Much of the talk was about when it was safe to open our churches.  The fear of catching Covid-19 is real and well founded.  The list of requirements for preparing churches to reopen is very long.  Old people, especially those with health problems, are especially vulnerable.  So much of this made me think that we should not be in any hurry to open.  It's made me more fearful about my own vulnerability.  Our churches decided to open no sooner than the middle of June.
I will not celebrate Mass outside at least until the churches open for Mass.  I may not start even then.

Ascending?

In the readings assigned for the feast of the Ascension this year only the first one from the very beginning of Luke's Acts of the Apostles describes the event in the familiar way.  "Now as he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was taken up into heaven." 
The first reading from the Letter to the Ephesians 1:17-24 says that  God raised Christ and seated him in heaven at God's right hand. Both Ephesians and John's Gospel help us to think about the resurrection and ascension of Jesus as the same event.  God raises Jesus from the dead into heaven.
The very end of Matthew's Gospel is assigned for this year's celebration of Ascension.  There is no mention of ascending.  Jesus promises the disciples, "I will be with you always, until the end of time. The heaven into which Jesus rises is woven into and through our world.  He loved these men and women too much to leave them forever.  He loves us too much to leave us forever. Love enables the Risen Christ to be both in the other world and in this world, transforming everyone and everything. 

What's in a name?

"What's in a name?  That which we call a rose

  By any other name would smell as sweet."

So says Juliet to Romeo, Act 2, Scene 2.
That which we call God by any other name would be as loving and merciful and powerful.  I thought of this today while I was meditating on the remainder of Isaiah 55:1-11.  God tells Israel that they will attract to Yahweh nations whom they don't know.  Isaiah seems to be saying that all nations will embrace Israel's religion, but he tells us to "seek Yahweh."  We must always be on a quest for the living God.
Israel had many names for God.  We might name God "Love" or "Beauty."  Other religions have their names for God.  But it is the same God.  If we have trouble with this idea, we hear God warn us, "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts."  We are back again with Mystery.  God can never be captured completely by our concepts and our words.