Year II Twenty-second Monday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Cor 2:1-5; Ps 119:97-102; Luke 4:16-30

Human wisdom differs from divine wisdom. Theo-logic defies human logic. This is most evident in God’s relation to power. While all-powerful (“omnipotent” is the relevant word), God exercises supreme power by becoming powerless. To make this more concrete, consider the Incarnation of God’s Son.

God did not become incarnate as Caesar in Rome, as the Emperor of Persia, or even as part of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. God became incarnate as a marginal person among a conquered, oppressed, and marginal people. Even as a Jew, Jesus was not born into the high priestly family, or even into the priestly caste. Jesus was a member of the tribe of Judah, not the priestly tribe of Levi. As the passion narratives make clear, he was from a small village in backwards Galilee. Perhaps the local equivalent would be Panguitch.

Nothing demonstrates the power of powerless better than the cross. One cannot articulate the fathomless mystery of the cross using words. This is Paul’s message in our first reading. As in the famous passage from his Second Letter to the Corinthians,¹ Paul here insists that he bears apostolic witness to Christ through his weakness. It is not in spite of but precisely through his inadequacy that he goes about the work God gave him. This is how God’s power is manifest.

The same dynamic is at work in today’s Gospel. Of all the passages from the TaNaK the inspired author of Luke could’ve chosen, he placed the passages from Isaiah we just heard on the lips of Jesus.² Any decently catechized Jew of the late-Second Temple period (the era in which Jesus lived) or the immediate post-Temple period (the time this Gospel was written) would’ve recognized this as a Messianic prophecy.

Jésus dans la synagogue déroule le livre, James Tissot, 1886-1894

This prophecy tells of the works the Messiah, the Christ, would do. It tells how the Messiah ushers in God’s reign, that is, how he will bring God’s saving power to bear on the world. The congregation understood what Jesus said. This is what led them to react with murderous anger. It is the not unbelieving pagans who grow enraged, but observant Jews.

In our day, Christians who seek to carry out the Messianic mission, who are not in the thrall of ideology, often experience similar anger from fellow Christians when they reach out to and advocate for the weak, the poor, and the imprisoned. When they stand-up for the inherent dignity of those on the margins: people whose countries are devastated by war, immigrants and refugees, the unborn, the elderly, the severely ill, the disabled, those on death row, racial minorities, as well as homosexual and transgender people.

As Pope Francis consistently insists, reaching out to the margins is what it means to evangelize. It is our failure to grasp this that leads to our puzzlement as to why too often what passes for evangelization fails. Let’s face it, it’s easier to engage in “apologetics” than it is to serve those in need.

Hear again: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor…to proclaim liberty to captives”…help the blind see…to free the oppressed.³ Like Saint Paul, our mission is the Messiah’s mission. It’s what participating in this Eucharist empowers us for and commits us to.

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1 2 Corinthians 12:9-11.^↩
2 Isaiah 61:1-2; 58:6.^↩
3 Luke 4:18.^↩

Christianity's central paradox

Readings: Jer 20:7-9; Ps 63:2-6.8-9; Rom 12:1-2; Matt 16:21-27

This week, again, I am going to adhere to the five-minute rule. In terms of a blog post, this means no more than 500 words. Parenthetical citations don’t count.

It seems fitting that I write this reflection on this Sunday's readings on the Memorial of the Beheading of John the Baptist. Our Gospel for this Sunday is one of those about which endless words have been written and spoken (including these words of mine). I daresay a lot of those words don't amount to much more than ways to evade the cross.

By teaching the necessity of losing your life to save it, Jesus sets forth the fundamental paradox of Christianity. When properly grasped, Christianity is a religion of paradox: one in three, human and divine, virgin and mother, bread and body, success through failure, etc. The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel saw the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as an outright contradiction, thus making it the cornerstone of his dialectical philosophy.

In this passage, Jesus isn’t teaching about life's woes, those things that happen to virtually everyone at some time or another- the suffering that is an inevitable part of life. Rather, he is talking about the suffering that occurs as a result of following him, of living as if God's kingdom is already fully established, what results from loving God by loving your neighbor as you love yourself. According to Terry Eagleton, citing Fr. Herbert McCabe, OP, the "central doctrine of Christianity... is... that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you. Here, then, is your pie in the sky and opium of the people" (see "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching").

Souffrances de Jérémie (The Suffering of Jeremiah), by Marc Chagall, 1956

This is the prophet Jeremiah's experience. It’s important not to lose the plain sense of the passage that constitutes our first reading. Jeremiah complains that he does God's will, suffers the consequences of so doing, swears he will never listen to God again, and then feels compelled to do God's will despite knowing the outcome. This, too, is what the John the Baptist, the seal of the prophets, experienced even to the point of being martyred.

In urging the Christians of ancient Rome and, by extension, Christians in all times and places, to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice to God through Christ, Paul is urging them/us to live Jesus’s teaching. Doing this requires a transformation of one’s mind. This renewal is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Blessed Christoph LeBreton, OCSO, one of the Cistercian martyrs of Algeria, wrote this as his journal entry for 20 April 1994:

We are actually afraid of what the Gospel says to us, afraid of the anguish it can lead us to, and that’s why we reduce it to a banal “religious language” that does not touch reality at all. But the Gospel is an infinitely difficult book, for the person who reads it with open eyes, who has achieved the second naïveté and become “like a child” (Born From the Gaze of God: The Tibhirine Journal of a Martyr Monk, 76)

What Père Christoph describes, I believe, is the renewal of mind about which Paul wrote.

"She is selling faith on the Go Tell crusade"

Friday, time for a traditio. What to choose? There is so much great music from which to choose. Sadly, I haven't been listening to as much music as I usually do. I always feel it when there is not enough music in my life.

Earlier in the summer, I did go through something of a REM revival. This consisted mostly of listening to their earlier stuff. Two REM songs have always stuck with me: "Don't Go Back to Rockville," off their Reckoning album, and "Driver 8." The latter song is off the band's Fables of the Reconstruction LP.

The Southern Crescent locomotive

Since I posted "Don't Go Back to Rockville" as a traditio back in 2014 (see "Going Where Nobody Says Hello"- the video I linked to has been removed), "Driver 8" becomes our late summer traditio by default.

"Driver 8" is about an actual train: the Southern Crescent. This was a Southern Railroad train until 1979. The route is still run today by Amtrak and is still called "Crescent." It's a haunting song, which is even now when I hear it, it resonates deeply within me. It evokes for me something of a Southern gothic atmosphere.

Maybe I'm thinking about trains because I need a vacation. In any case, today is just about the music. Enjoy.

Jesus is Messiah and Lord

Readings: Isa 22:19-23; Ps 138:1-3.6.8; Rom 11:33-36; Matt 16:13-20

John Wester, my former bishop and now the archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has insisted that for the duration of the pandemic, his clergy keep their homilies to five minutes or less. His reason for this is to decrease the possibility for the novel coronavirus to spread. This accomplishes the purpose in two ways. First, less speaking reduces the risk. Second, less time gathered together also decreases the risk.

A good meter for counting time is word count. The pace of about 100 words per minute is pretty accurate. Even when preaching, I speak at a slightly faster clip. But my goal in this reflection is to keep it under 500 words. As another of my former bishops, the late George Niederauer, once quipped: "I've never had anyone complain that my homily was too short." Anyone who preaches can verify this by their own experience.

By my reckoning, the main takeaway from today's readings is that Jesus is Lord. A secondary point is that coming to the realization that Jesus is Lord is what it means to have faith. Third, faith is a gift from God, which is what I take these words the inspired author placed in Jesus's mouth to mean: "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father" (Matt 16:17).

It should not be missed that what is revealed to Peter is that this flesh and blood person (i.e., Jesus) is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. It is not intuitively obvious to the casual observer that Jesus is Messiah and Lord. Not only is Jesus one in being (i.e., "consubstantial") with the Father ("God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God"), he is also one in being with us. The Lord is consubstantial with us through the Blessed Virgin, in whose womb he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit.

To experience Jesus as Lord is to experience God's lovingkindness, his hesed. To experience divine hesed is to be changed, to be marked, like Jacob was marked as a result of his wrestling match with the angel (see Gen 32:22-32).

God's hesed shines forth when Jesus hangs on the cross. The all-powerful God exercises divine power by becoming powerless. This is why flesh and blood cannot reveal to you that Jesus is Lord and Messiah. His blood-shedding is the revelation.

What does this mean for how you live your life? This is a good question for each of us to ponder this week in light of God's revelation in and through Christ Jesus. It is also something for the Church, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, to constantly reflect upon "in her heart" (Luke 2:19).

Queenship of Mary

One week after the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Roman Catholics celebrate the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary. From a Catholic perspective, there are four major Church teachings about the Blessed Virgin: Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, Assumption, Queenship. As the Virgin's Assumption is the fourth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, Mary's Coronation as Queen of Heaven is the fifth and final Glorious mystery. The fruit of that mystery is trust in the Blessed Mother's intercession.

It's nice that this year that both Mary's Assumption and her Queenship fall on Saturdays. Traditionally, Saturdays are a day of the week devoted to Mary. And so, when not superseded by a mandatory memorial, feast, or solemnity, the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary can be prayed on Saturdays.

When one considers the multitude of factors that contribute to the decline of faith and religious practice, it's reasonable to see the decline in devotion to Mary as one factor. Practices like praying the Rosary daily and making frequent recourse to Mary by praying the Memorare are two of the most widespread Marian devotions.

Far from being a meek and unobtrusive figure, Mary should be seen as brave and bold, perhaps a bit brash. I am puzzled that whenever her Magnificat is the Gospel reading, the preaching rarely focuses on its prophetic message:

He has shown the strength of his arm.
He has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and the rich he has sent away empty

Mary is on the side of the lowly, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast. As a Jewish woman, one who turned up unexpectedly pregnant, in a conquered society, she understands, experientially, what this means.

Pope Francis's devotion to the Blessed Virgin reflects all this. Before and after each of his Apostolic trips, the Holy Father goes to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major. There before Our Lady, Salus Populi Romani (i.e., Protectress of the Roman People), he asks her intercession for the success of his journey. After his trip, he returns to thank her, usually bringing her flowers. All Roman Catholics, along with all Christians in communion with Rome, constitute the Roman people.

So, beginning today, make recourse to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trust her with your concerns and petitions. The easiest way to do this by praying the Rosary- start with the Glorious mysteries. Learn the Angelus and the Memorare.

"There'll be days/When I'll stray"

The connections my mind makes when I pay attention kind of astound me. I mean "astound" both in the sense of thinking "That's weird" and in the sense of being amazed at gaining some insight.

Last Sunday, as I drove home from church listening to the radio, Depeche Mode's "Strangelove" came across the airwaves. It was struck by the song's opening verse:

There'll be times
When my crimes
Will seem almost unforgivable
I give in to sin
Because you have to make this life livable

"I give in to sin because you have to make this life livable." I sort of meditated on this the rest of the day. When it comes to sin, it almost goes without saying that there are sins and then there are sins. This at the heart of the mortal/venial distinction. I like the distinction Dietrich Bonhöffer made: "It is not the sins of weakness, but the sins of strength that matter." I take "matter" in this context to mean those sins about which one should be concerned, contrite, and strive, with God's help, not to commit again, very grave failure to love one's neighbor.

In my extended lectio on this short sentence from "Strangelove," I was thinking about sins of weakness. It is perhaps through certain sins of weakness one might seek some solace and comfort, even as one recognizes that the comfort and solace will be short-lived.

Depiction of the Holy of Holies in the Second Temple

On Monday I read this excerpt from Pope Francis's Sunday Angelus:

Each one of us has our own story and it is not always a clean story…Many times it is a difficult story, with a lot of pain, many misfortunes and many sins. What do I do with my story? Do I hide it? No! We must bring it before the Lord

And, again, on Monday in a book of essays that look at the Jewish Bible through the lens psychoanalysis, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, in an essay on Abraham, "The Vale of Soul-Making," I read something about the rabbinic commentators' insistence that Abraham, during his years of inquiry and movement toward the one, true, God while living in Ur of Chaldees, participated in pagan worship, that is, the worship of idols.

Commenting on God's disposition towards Abraham's early idolatry, Gottlieb Zornberg summarizes it nicely:

So God reassures Abraham: "Yours is the dew of youth: your youthful sins acted like dew- they roused you to search for God. They spoke to you through promise and frustration, they suggested love and beauty. Having done this work they vanished (165)

This caused me to realize that those youthful sins may not have yet done their work in rousing me to search for God.

Later in the same essay, Gottlieb Zornberg discusses what it might mean for Abraham to be a blessing to God, something God asks of him (Gen 12:2). She makes the observation, which I think wholly accurate- something I addressed in great detail in my doctoral dissertation- "God, it seems, needs human blessing" (167). But what does it mean to bless God?

"...to realize the godly in the world is to bless God" (italics mine- 167). What is it to realize the godly in the world? "The blessing of God," Gottlieb Zornberg continues "is that God should rejoice in his work (ibid). She then turns to a passage of the Talmud she calls "haunting," in which God asks the high priest Ishmael, one of the last high priests of the Second Temple period, to bless him. Ishmael replies: "May it be Your will that Your compassion prevail over Your other attributes" (167). She then concludes" "To be a source of blessing to God comes to mean to help God achieve His compassionate self" (167).

To say that Jews are older siblings to us Christians is more than just a throw-away line uttered at a time of violent antisemitism.

As you might guess, this week's traditio is Depeche Mode's "Strangelove."

Year A Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isa 56:1.6-7; Ps 67:2-3.5-6.8; Rom 11:13-15.29-32; Matt 15:21-28

Today’s readings have a singular theme: welcoming the stranger. It is no exaggeration to state that nothing is more biblical than welcoming the stranger. This injunction appears from the opening pages of the Sacred Scriptures to the last pages.

It was Jesus himself who said: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”¹ The inspired author of the Letter the Hebrews urged early Christians “not to neglect hospitality” because by extending hospitality to all “some have unknowingly entertained angels.”² In his Regula, or Rule, Saint Benedict instructs the brothers: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ…”³

God often reminded his Chosen People, Israel, to welcome the stranger among them and to treat foreigners in their midst justly: “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you well know how it feels to be an alien, since you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.”⁴

In our uniquely Christian scriptures, we are reminded that before putting on Christ we “were ‘no people’ but now you are God’s people; you “had not received mercy” but now you have received mercy.”⁵ In other words, as Gentiles on whom God has taken mercy through Christ, the Canaanite woman is us. Who are we, then, not to extend the mercy we have received to others?

God has only ever extended one covenant to humanity: “You will be my people and I will be your God.”⁶ Through Jesus Christ, this covenant is open to all. What it means to be God’s people is to keep God’s commandments.

What does God command? “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”⁷ This prompts the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’s most famous answer to this question, found in Saint Luke’s Gospel, is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In its essence, the Law is but the means to the end of loving God with your whole being by loving your neighbor as you love yourself.

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother,” we read elsewhere in the New Testament, “he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”⁸

Christ and the Woman of Canaan, by Peter Lastman, 1617

The Samaritan’s neighbor was the robbed and beaten Jew who likely despised him and of whom the Samaritan was likely not a priori very fond. Your neighbor is the one who needs your help. As Christians, we are to “make” ourselves a neighbor to those in need.

We cannot succumb to what Pope Francis has identified as a culture of indifference. Indifference to the plight of those who flee war, persecution, corruption, lack of education, etc. Nor can we participate in what the Holy Father has dubbed a throw-away culture, one in which even human beings are expendable.

In our American context, we must distinguish patriotism from nationalism. Because U.S. citizenship is not rooted in blood and soil, ours is a nation of immigrants, the proverbial melting pot. This diversity contributes to our country’s greatness. Nationalism, which often manifests as racism and xenophobia, is, therefore, antithetical to U.S. patriotism.

Our commitment to follow Christ trumps all other loyalties. Christianity is either universal or it is nothing. In free societies, Christians are to pursue the common good of everyone. It has been observed that a nation’s greatness is best measured by how it treats its weakest members. If we take the scriptures seriously, let alone claim to be a Christian nation, our greatness is also measured by how, not whether, we welcome those who seek entry.

This is beautifully expressed in words from Emma Lazarus’s poem, The New Colossus. This poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903. The poet places these words on the lips of “A mighty woman with a torch”-

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”⁹

Monsignor Luigi Giussani, in a passionate speech delivered in Saint Peter’s Square, perhaps taking his cue from today’s Gospel, insisted: “The true protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ.” Christ begs for your heart through the person in need, through the immigrant and the refugee, many of whom are our sisters and brothers in Christ.

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1 Matthew 25:35.^↩
2 Hebrews 13:2.^↩
3 Rule of Saint Benedict, 53:1.^↩
4 Exodus 23:9.^↩
5 1 Peter 2:10.^↩
6 Jeremiah 30:22..^↩
7 Matthew 27:37.39; Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18.^↩
8 1 John 4:20-21.^↩
9 The New Colossus.^↩