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Daily Scripture

+ 20th Week in Ordinary Time

I’ll do it myself.

Readings: Ezekiel 34:1-11 Psalm 23:1-6 Matthew 20:1-16

Therefore, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: because my shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves and did not pasture my sheep, I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding my sheep. I will save my sheep, that they may no longer be food for their mouths. [Ezekiel 34:10]

There is much talk about a vocation shortage—fewer young men entering the seminary and fewer still persevering to ordination. Not withstanding some notable exceptions this has resulted in the lowering of standards for ordination. Moreover, priests and candidates for the priesthood are being ‘imported’ from other countries whose needs are as urgent as ours.

The prevailing accent seems to be on the need to have a sufficient number of priests to ‘say Mass’ and provide for the sacramental needs of the faithful. But surely in the light of the Second Vatican Council, priests need to be more than presiders at Mass and providers of the sacraments, as important as are these roles.

The earliest experience of the Church can be instructive in this regard. The notion of presbyter provided the early church with presiders for worship and leaders for base communities. Celibacy was not an issue and there was no clerical caste. The gifts of the faithful were recognized in such a manner that men and women, married and single fulfilled the spiritual needs of the community including the sacramental needs.

Notwithstanding the inadequacy of the notion of shepherding people (sheeple?) the need remains for qualified men and women to minister to the needs of the community.

Ezekiel warned the priests and assured the people of Israel that God would find away to pasture his people.

Ezekiel’s words need to be taken to heart again and in fact we already see that God is indeed providing a way through the action of the Holy Spirit in the lives of men and women, married and single, who are tending to the needs of the faithful.

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time '08'

Sunday June 15, 2008

Love as you are loved.

“Go in peace to love and serve the Lord… ” But don’t go yet!

Life is a series of movements, some more dynamic than others. The birth of a child is a very dramatic moment but it is the culmination of a movement that began with an act of intimacy—a intervention through the experience of human love.

Most of life’s movements are subtle. The movement of the universe reflected in the passing of time from sunrise to sunset and from one season to another is a safe metaphor for the growth of human relationships, indeed, the movement of human love.

God is movement—dynamic, life giving, all embracing and infinite.

The sacred scriptures provide a lens through which we continue to attempt to get a handle on our understanding of the imminence and the immediacy of God’s movement in our lives.

Beginning with the story of creation, the Old Testament is filled with examples of God’s movement in the universe and in humanity as we evolve toward our destiny. It’s worth reading over again as if for the first time not as a scientific study but as the score of a musical rendition or simply as an epic poem filled with rich metaphorical imagery. God’s mysterious wisdom does not belie scientific truth. It encompasses it.

The Book of Exodus is the solemn recollections of inspired storytellers about God’s dramatic intervention into the life of the Israelites that ended their captivity in Egypt. For our Jewish elders and ancestors in faith, it’s a watershed document encapsulating their ancestral call and their ultimate destiny.

They considered themselves chosen not because they were better or more worthy than other nations but because of they were a broken people who were not abandoned by God. The Book of Exodus was the Jewish version of Amazing Grace – God reaching out to save them.

They viewed the crossing of the Red Sea as the saving movement of God within them, a kind of baptism, the proto-type of Christian baptism. They viewed God’s sustenance in the desert as the fulfillment in part of the promise to Abraham that God would make of them a holy nation not for their own sake but for the sake of all the nations. They would be viewed as a people in whom others might seek and find refuge and not treated as aliens in a foreign land.

In his letter to the Romans, the Pauline version of John 3:16, Saint Paul dramatizes God’s movement of love reminding the early Christians at Rome and us that this same God of Moses “proved his love for us that while we were still sinners [broken], God sent Jesus to save us and to reconcile us to God.” This statement is Paul’s attempt to explain Jesus’ mission, i.e., to proclaim the universal and undying movement of love that is God.

It was God’s initiative, not ours; it was God’s love, not our merits which ‘earned’ mercy and unleashed generative love in such a fashion that even human love could become a conduit of divine love.

However, it is the Gospel of Matthew that epitomizes in Jesus as shepherd, the generative nature of God’s movement toward humanity through this holy one we call ‘the Christ.’

Jesus’ life as described by all the Gospel writers is a movement from the heart of God to the heart of humanity, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, a movement from death to life – to eternal life. Jesus engaged his disciples in a dynamic relationship that transformed them.

It was a slow and gradual transformation, one that even the disciples – disparate group, to be sure—were not fully aware of until Pentecost; a movement which ultimately empowered them to go forth and shepherd others as they had been shepherded by Jesus Christ.

“As you go, proclaim the good news,
‘The ‘kindom’ of heaven has come near.
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, cast out demons,
You received without payment,
now give without payment.”

It’s a pretty powerful statement about how we are to be part of this movement as individuals and surely as a Church – not because we are better than others but because ‘we were lost but now are saved.’

The greatest indicator or manifestation of God’s movement is the gift of compassion. It’s a good word. Rooted in the Latin word, passio, i.e., passage or walk and cum, i.e., with. Compassion is the ability to accompany my neighbor with passion and enthusiasm, from the Greek words en (in) and Theos (God).

In the words of the contemporary hymn, “We are companions on a journey”—companions not only in the breaking of bread with one another at this table but also in the breaking of the bread of our lives together at the table of humanity.

In the words of Robert Sloan Coffin’s in his book, “Credo: “Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are love, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.”

And this one:

“We don’t have to be ‘successful,’ only valuable. We don’t have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.”

And finally:

“I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.”

And that’s how it is with the movement of God. Not only do we get to know God, ultimately we become like God.

Now, “go in peace to love and server the Lord in one another!” but wait until after the ‘Entrée’ of this important meal.