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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?

Easter Sunday 2008

Sunday March 23, 2008

Too good to be true?

As children of Abraham, “our father in faith,”
we hold in common with believers
of every race and nation,
that God is the origin of life:
eternal blessing,
original blessing,
the one whose unconditional love knows no limit
and has no equal.

As childen of God
we believe that we were loved into being,
creatures of the earth but
“in the image and likeness of God.”
male and female, Jew and gentile,
black and white, yellow and brown,
Greek and Irish, Italian, French, Russian,
Indian, Latino, Korean and African
and therefore that God is our “progenitor”
and because God breathed life into the earth,
the earth is our “mother” and
in the words of St. Francis,
the sun and moon and stars and all the planets
are our sisters and brothers
and we are sisters and brothers to one another too,
each of us unique,
clay in the hands of the potter,
neither clones of God nor clones of the earth,
but deftly designed and carefully crafted,
no two of us alike on the surface
but all of us alike at the core where God dwells;
each of us destined for union with God
in mind and heart, soul and spirit.

Our first parents did not believe it.
“Too good to be true!” they said.
So they sought after another truth,
their own truth; fiction became their fact.
Their sin not that they wanted to be like God
but that they failed to accept their likeness with God.
They chose darkness over light, blindness over sight,
and banished themselves into the exile
of disillusionment and despair.

But that wasn’t good enough for God
who said, “That’s not what I intended
and it’s not what I want.
I loved you into my likeness to know me
to show forth my my goodness,
and to be happy with me forever.”
How could you have missed the point?
Uncreated love creating human love
hoping for love in return in human form;
infinite goodness wanting only the best for humanity
love without measure;
divine wisdom entrusting herself to human habitation
without recompense,
except for the joy that comes in giving.
Divinity and humanity—a perfect combination.

And through the centuries,
God never gave up on this progeny
but spoke to them relentlessly and eloquently,
offering a covenant through Moses on tablets of stone
But the people griped and grumbled,
preferring another exile to a new exodus.

Then God spoke through prophets and priests:
“I will establish a new covenant;
I will write my law on their hearts.
They will know instinctively
that they are mine and that I am theirs.”

Now go back home and rebuild your temple and your homes.
Enjoy the fruit of the land and the work of your hands,
but never forget that the earth is your mother
and I am your Father but we are one,
and remember that all your efforts
are also the work of my hands.

But the people could not feel the gentle beat of God’s heart
and turned again to the beat of their own hearts,
carving for themselves, different idols,
constructing other towers of Babel,
erecting new pillars of pride.

Then God said, “Enough already!”
and sent Jesus to model for the people
what undying love meant by dying for love.
Oh, it’s not that God willed the death of Jesus__
God is not a sadist and Jesus was not a masochist__
God asked only his faithfulness—to life.
so that we could see how compatible and incomparable
are faithfulness to life and freedom to live.
- Some people think ‘life’ is a magazine!-
How could Jesus be other than faithful
in the presence of infinite truth and ultimate justice;
unconditional love and perfect beauty?

The world could not bear such honesty;
“Too good to be true!” they said.

And so they did him in
thinking him at best a schemer,
or at worst a blasphemer,
lifting him up on a cross,
obedient to life unto death.
But God lifted him up in glory never to die again,
“Death has no more power over him.”
Some people think that to obey means to surrender to power,
but for Jesus it meant to succumb to love.
And so the end was just the beginning.

The earth proclaims the greatness of God
and all creation exalts in God’s glory.
Jesus remains the perfect exemplar and the everlasting covenant
who unites heaven and earth
and all humanity to the eternal Word.

May we succumb to the grace of the Easter feast
and be for all humanity,
a sign that Jesus is truly risen from the dead.