Snow Gently Falling

Saturday morning the snow was big fluffy flakes (clicking on the picture enlarges it.)  I hadn't gone for my morning walk for a few days because of the bitter weather.  But this gently falling snow coaxed me out.  On a winter morning like this there is no sound.  No vehicles out yet.  No birds, and of course no insect sounds as there are in the summer.   Deep stillness.  I felt almost as light as the snow.  As much as I love the tropics, I would not want to live where there is no snow.
Today's another story.  Freezing rain when I awoke, then just rain.  Temperature as I now write has gone up to 42.  Some sun on a hill here and there.  Some blue sky peeking through clouds.  It looks like much of the ice has melted, but there is still some on my driveway.  Makes me dream about walking on a Caribbean beach.

Christ's Body

This is a copy of Marc Chagall's stained glass window which takes up an entire wall of the chapel at the United Nations Building in New York.  It seems to hint at the unity of all nations.  Maybe it can help us meditate on Christ's Body.
The second reading for this Sunday's Mass is St. Paul's powerful passage about our being Christ's Body (1 Corinthians 12:12-30.)  It begins, "As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ."  After explaining the analogy in detail, he says that it is more than an analogy, "You are Christ's Body, and individually parts of it."
The passage helps me think of three things.  The Risen Christ living in each of us makes us all one in His Body.  Like the members of a body, we each have a separate function in the Body of Christ, according to our God-given abilities and interests.  Christ relies on us to do what he wants to do in today's world.
St. Teresa of Avila tells us:
"Christ has no body now but yours
  No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
  Yours are the eyes with which he looks
  With compassion on this world.
  Christ has no body now on earth but yours."

Non-violence

Another picture from Sunday, a prelude to two bitterly cold days.  (Clicking on picture enlarges it.)
My calendar Monday and Tuesday carried this quote of Martin Luther King that expresses his belief in non-violent opposition to evil: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
In keeping with the focus that I want to keep in mind this year, let me add, "Ugliness cannot drive out ugliness;  only beauty can do that."
As people around our country watched on TV non-violent protesters being beaten by police and set upon by police dogs and knocked down by the force of water from fire hoses, many viewers found their prejudices challenged and their minds changed about segregation.  Such was the power of non-violence.
(The calendar is from the sisters at Ministy of the Arts.)

Black Freedom

A winter sunrise over Baltimore. (Clicking on the picture enlarges it.)
I topped off Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Day with the movie Lincoln.  The combination brought home profoundly and with tears how far African Americans had come from the 13th amendment to the March on Washington to the beginning of the second term of a black president.
When I was a child in the market staring at the only black woman in town, a servant to two old maiden ladies, my father told me explicitly that "she is just the same as you."  In a nearby town which had more blacks, they could sit in only one small section of the local movie house.  In the whole county I don't think there was one restaurant that didn't "reserve the right to serve whom they pleased."
In 1950 when my aunt bought property on the lake where I now live, her deed specified that she could not re-sell the property "to negroes."  During the 50's in a Baltimore seminary there were many students and even some priests who disliked blacks, even though we had one in our class.  It was there, however, that I was encouraged to build on my father's insistence that blacks were my equal.  When I was ordained in 1962 a young black man from Baltimore was ordained in the same ceremony, but for a diocese in Alabama, because the previous archbishop of Baltimore would not accept black men to study for the priesthood.
When I preached about racial integration in my first parish in central Maryland some parishioners got up and walked out.  I joined the NAACP and worked to integrate housing.  I went with several car loads of members to the March on Washington.  Curiously, I went in my own car with the only other white man.  Prejudices still remaining?
Even in 1969 a self-appointed minister from Texas preached in a park in east Baltimore that we should hang all blacks from the nearest lamp post.  I had been asked to go with several other priests to mix in with the mostly Catholic crowd to try to keep them from rioting.  People spit at us and said, "I'm a Catholic, Father, but I hate n...."
I am grateful to God for how far I've come and how far our country has come in realizing the "Dream" that Martin Luther King proclaimed so eloquently from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  We still have far to go.

Jesus Liked a Party

At the Wedding Feast of Cana Jesus changed water into more than 120 gallons of wine. In John's Gospel most stories have two or three layers of meaning, one of which we have explored in previous entries. 
I also think it is worthwhile to take the story at face value.  This embarasses some Christians.  It's difficult for them to think that, after the guests had finished off all the wine provided for the wedding, Jesus would make 120 to 180 gallons more so they could continue their celebrating.
On this level of meaning it's clear that Jesus liked a party.  He is with us in our celebrating.  He wants us to have a good time in life.  We are so used to turning to him when we are in trouble and asking for help.  We don't always advert to his presence in our good times as well.
Many people would have met Jesus for the first time at Cana as they saw him having fun at the wedding.  Later in life, no doubt, some of the same people came to him with their problems and difficulties.  He is certainly with us in the bad times of our lives, but this miracle at Cana reminds us to look for Jesus in the good times as well.

Hosea

The prophet Hosea is a big help in seeing married love as a great symbol of God's intimate union with us.  God tells Hosea to marry a woman who will be as unfaithful to him as Israel is to God. Despite the many times that she betrays her husband, Hosea takes her back.  The people make fun of him for being such a fool.  But God says to him, "Go and love her yet again."  That's how foolish God is in loving us.
In the 2nd chapter God speaks to our heart, "I will espouse you to myself forever, espouse you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love; I will espouse you to myself with faithfulness, and you will come to know me."  God is speaking to the whole people, not just to us as individuals.
In chapter 11, after expressing his anger toward us, God relents, "How could I part with you, my people?  How could I give you up?  My heart within me is overwhelmed.  I will not give in to my anger, for I am God not a human being.  I am the Holy One in your midst and have no wish to destroy."
Near the end of the book in a rapturous burst of poetry God says, "I shall love them with all my heart.  I shall fall like dew on my people.  They will bloom like the lily and put out roots like the cedar of Lebanon.  They will spread new branches.  They will be as beautiful as the olive tree, as fragrant as the cedars of Lebanon.  They will come back to live in my shade.  They will grow wheat again and make the vine flourish."
God's intimate marriage union with us will be fruitful.

St. Paul the Hermit

A friend emailed me to tell me that today is the feast of St. Paul the Hermit.  I didn't remember hearing about him, so I looked him up. 
He lived from about 229 to 342.  Born in Egypt and orphaned at 15, he went into hiding to escape the persecution of Christians under Emperor Decius.  When he was 22 he fled to the desert when he found out that his brother-in-law, who wanted Paul's estate, was going to report him for being a Christian.
The life of a hermit suited him, so he stayed in the desert.  St. Jerome wrote a life of Paul.  Jerome visited him in the desert, thought him a very holy man, and buried Paul when he died.  He had lived to be 113 years old, more than 90 of which were spent as a hermit.
I wonder what he would think of a half-hermit.  Well, another patron.