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Daily Scripture

+ 33rd Week in Ordinary Time

Keep hope alive!

Readings: Revelation 5:1-10 Psalm 149:1-6, 9 Luke 19:41-44

_As Jesus drew near Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “if this day you only knew what makes for peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes.” [Luke 19:41]

In Christian liturgy and literature, he Church has often been referred to as “the new Jerusalem” and heaven as “the new and eternal Jerusalem.” I think it’s a good simile. If you have ever been to the old section of Jerusalem, you surely would have noted the appropriateness of this comparison. Ancient Jerusalem is still very much in evidence if not literally, surely in its ambiance. A walk from the site of the ancient praetorium to Calvary – now well within the city limits – will surely give you a sense of what it may have been like when Jesus made that last fateful journey.

Today Jerusalem is truly an international city and bears within its womb and walls, the extremes of every race and religion. Jews still narrate the story of the great exodus and Christians break the bread of Eucharist while Islamic temples broadcast their ancient chants from minarets that echo through the streets in the wee hours of the morning.

This is the city over which Jesus wept not because it did not make him king but because it did not recognize its day of visitation, that is to say, its moment of opportunity. In reading a passage such as this, we need to put away preconceived notions about our understanding of Jesus’ messianic role in the light of its Christological evolution in Christian teaching today. Jesus was not about establishing new religious structures but about announcing the universality of God’s love – for Jews and gentiles, male and female, of every race and nation.

Would it be accurate to state that Jesus is weeping not just over Jerusalem but over our war torn world? And yet one cannot fail to see signs of hope on the horizon. Bernard Lonergan, Carol Rahner and Carl Jung support this very Christian notion that it is in our moments of deepest despair that a new wisdom emerges leading to a common vision of a new world in which love and respect overcome evil and injustice. Is it possible that in the midst of the turmoil in which our world seems enmeshed people of good can bring that vision to reality not through confrontation but through collaboration?

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 'C'

Saturday September 8, 2007

To Know Jesus is to Live Jesus

Today’s Gospel brought back memories of my days in the seminary in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains in Mahwah. They were very different times, to be sure. As with those preparing for a commitment to monastic life, young men destined even for the ‘secular’ priesthood were expected to live apart from the world in a quasi-monastic setting.

The seminary was often referred to as a spiritual ‘boot camp.’ Some cynics called it ‘Alcatraz!’ No food allowed in the room; no carpets on the floor, no secular pictures or even family photos on the wall. Contact with family and friends was limited to what we now call ‘snail mail.’ Phone calls were permitted for emergencies only and never without explicit permission. There were no weekly visits from parents, sisters and brothers or ‘outsiders’ of any kind and our only trip beyond the seminary gates was a walk to the cemetery on All Souls Day and a ride to the voting polls on election day. Newspapers or secular magazines were the property of professors who sometimes left them in a disposal container at the end of the hall where we would snatch them up for a clandestine peek.

The daily schedule was clearly defined; nothing left to chance or choice. We were being trained to “love God with all our minds and hearts and souls and our neighbor as ourselves” though our neighbors were limited to our fellow students and instructors, the latter making it very difficult at times to love them.

This may all sound quirky to you and I can assure you it does to me as well in hindsight. But believe it or not, they were to a great extent, carefree days. There was security in that axiom, “You keep the rule, and the rule will keep you!” But is this wisdom or naivete? Perhaps they were happy because we were happily ignorant of the world around us. This type of detachment from reality was not healthy.

There is no doubt that the seminary lifestyle was intended to prepare us to live in the world as true disciples of Christ — the same Christ that we meet in the Gospel. Perhaps seminary discipline was based on a literal interpretation of today’s text from Luke which is even stronger than Matthew’s narration of the same teaching: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

The difficulty is not that you and I reject the literal meaning of this text; we certainly do! The problem is that we are tempted to cast it aside as having no application whatever to our lives and our life-style. Was it Mahatmas Ghandi who said, “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it’s just that it has never been tried.” As the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel, it is an overstatement to be sure but not without merit or application. The line between exclusive love for Jesus and religious fanaticism is very thin. We live in an age of religious fanaticism. We find it among Christians and even among some Catholics who revel biblical and theological fundamentalism, in rules and regulations and in the minutiae of rubrics and rituals while neglecting the rule of love. To love Jesus exclusively is to love others inclusively!

Just as one person cannot be “trained” to know and love another in preparation for marriage, so too the seminary could not “train” candidates to know and love Jesus in preparation for a life-long commitment to him and to his teachings. Couples fall in love; faith in Jesus is caught and love for him not learned from books but experienced through association. A young German seminarian approached the great theologian and mystic, Karl Rahner, asking for a list of books to help strengthen his fiath. Father Rahner suprised him with the answer, “No books. Instead, go out and help the poor in Munich.” (Quoted in Everyday Simplicity, a practical guide to aspiritual growth, Sorin Books, Notre Dame, 2000)

The disciples of Jesus journeyed with him. In fact, Luke’s portrayal of Jesus life is a journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem, in the course of which his disciples came to know him as ‘the way, the truth, and the life;” for them, the only way, the only truth, and the only life.

As in a healthy marriage, when the relationship is solid, we do whatever we need to do protect it, to nurture it, and to live it faithfully. We become preoccupied with the other and the other energizes us overtly and subliminally. So it is in our relationship with Jesus. We do whatever we need to do to remain faithful. Jesus becomes the center of our lives. In the words of the psalm hymn: “O Lord, you are the center of my life; I will always praise you, I will always serve you, I will always keep you in my sight.”

Indeed faith is caught not taught; love is experienced by hanging out with people who know Jesus and who love as Jesus loved.

A young boy was in the habit of coming home from school late. There was no good reason for his tardiness and no amount of discussion seemed to help. Finally in desperation the boy’s father sat down with him and said, “The next time you come home late from school you are going to be served bread and water for your supper — and nothing else. Is that clear, son?”

The boy looked straight into the father’s eyes and nodded. He understood perfectly. However, the next day he arrived home later than ever.

That night when they sat down together at table, the boy’s heart sank to his feet. His father’s plate was filled with food; likewise his mother’s plate. But the boy’s own plate contained only a single slice of bread. Next to his plate was a lonely glass of water.

The boy’s eyes stared first at the bread, then at the glass of water. This was the punishment his parents had warned him about. To make it worse, he was absolutely starving.

The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate and put it in front of the boy.

The boy understood what his father was doing. His father was taking upon himself the punishment that he, the boy, had brought upon himself by his own behavior. Years later, that same boy recalled the incident and said, “All my life I’ve known what God is like by seeing what my father did that night.”

This is in effect what Paul did for Onesimus, the slave of Philemon in ‘adopting’ him as his son and it is what God had done for us in Christ.

All our lives we may have been wondering what God is like and then we met Jesus.

The next step is for us to be for others what Jesus has been for us.