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Daily Scripture

+ Feast of the Birth of Mary

We have the best and the worst among our ancestors>

We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. [Romans 8:28]

You will recognize the gospel passage as the one we usually avoid, assuming it has nothing to offer contemporary Christians. However, it does have a purpose beyond tracing the lineage of Jesus to David. It is not a scientific genealogy so don’t attempt to ‘prove’ it scientifically.

It’s a mixed bag at best. There are saints and sinners among the list but they are all ancestors of Jesus through Mary. It’s odd that on this feast of the birth of Mary that we read the genealogy of Joseph because it is through Joseph not Mary that Jesus is connected to David.

I suppose we are all connected at least spiritually. The late great Seton Hall professor and convert to Christianity, Msgr. Osteriecher, used to remind us frequently that we are all spiritual Semites, i.e., we are Judeo-Christians and therefore trace our lineage through David to Abraham.

And that’s why we claim Mary as our spiritual mother. Indeed, she is.

Beyond that, it’s good for us to be reminded that few if any of us are of pure breed. We often refer to our family as a “Heinz 57” family because like the food brand, we have at least 57 different nationalities among our ancestors, not all of them saints, to be sure. But whenever we got together for a ‘family’ event, we were one. I hosted the last family reunion at St. Joseph several years ago for over 200 relatives comprising four generations.

It’s never too late to give thanks for our heritage.

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'B'

Sunday August 2, 2009

Look beyond the bread you eat.

“Babette’s Feast” is a wonderful 1987 Oscar winning film based on a short story by Isak Dinesen. It is filled with rich symbolism, wit and in the words of a Newsweek review, “robust humanity” that depicts the transformation of a ‘community’ of strangers into a feast of friends through a French gourmet meal. The setting is on the desolate coast of Denmark where Martina and Philippa, devout daughters of their very stern father and clergyman who preached salvation through rigid self-denial. Despite opportunities for romance, marriage, and a career in music, they carried on the mission of their father to a stoic and Spartan life-style long after his death until the arrival of Babette a colorful refugee of the French civil war whom they had hired as a servant. The beauty of the story is in the wisdom of the charming Babette who in the preparation for the feast brings out of the disparate group of strangers a new vision of what living the Christian life could be like when experienced as a feast.

How often have we read in the Scriptures a reference to the kingdom of God as a feast or banquet?

What would life be without food? What would life be without bread?

This is a question I used to ask young candidates for First Communion during family night. On this occasion, first communion candidates and their families would gather in the church for their final preparation for the feast – their First Holy Communion. All the candidates were asked to bring a loaf of their favorite bread. Many of the moms or dads baked their own bread. The session opened with an invitation to each candidate to stand in turn before the gathering to tell us his or her name and then name their favorite bread as they held it aloft. “My name is Kenny and my favorite bread is….” The variety of breads included everything from plain white to zucchini and potato bread and a hundred other names I had never heard before. The church had the fragrance of a large bakery.

I explained that although we come from different families and like the bread, we are all very different, when we gather in the name of Jesus, we become one family. After a bit of dialogue with the children, we retired to the gymnasium where they made Eucharistic banners attaching their names to each banner that would be hung on their family pew at the celebration of first Communion. And then they shared their bread from a common table.

The ceremony was rich in symbol and broadened their understanding of the Eucharist. It was an effort to raise their consciousness and that of their parents to look beyond the sign and the symbols to see that Jesus feeds us not just with bread but also with his very life. In effect, in the words of St. Paul, they needed not just to learn about Jesus but they had to learn Jesus by living Jesus – at an age appropriate level.

Yes, to learn Jesus is to live Jesus. That’s what we come to celebrate at this table.

In today’s gospel, Jesus challenges those who followed him to Capernaum to look beyond the bread that he had give them on the side of the hill. In essence he was saying, “Yes God provided manna to your ancestors in the desert, but the bread that God is providing is more than food for your body. It is wisdom for your soul.” In chapter fourteen of John’s Gospel, Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life. Those who live in me will not die but live.” In other words, those who partake of this food will be transformed and live a new kind of life but here again, he was not just speaking of bread but of the totality of his life and lifestyle.

When John describes Jesus as the new manna and the bread of life, he means Jesus as the “divine sophia” or wisdom of life. To the extent that we live in Jesus, we are able to respond to life’s challenges with insight, courage, grace, and dignity. Indeed, rather than cave into or melt down before them, we will grow through these challenges. Moreover, in Christ we are able to look beyond the bread and see one another as our sisters and brothers. We are challenged to look beyond the brokenness of life to new horizons that brings justice to our world and healing and peace to troubled hearts.

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul suggests to us that we cannot go it alone nor as “believers” can we trust the wisdom of the world — the desire for profit, material success. We must raise to consciousness the Spirit we received at baptism which in fact gave us the radical capacity and potential to live our humanity to the fullest with our eyes set on the higher goal of eternal life -salvation.

John tells us that eternal life-salvation is a gift that was given to us at baptism that continues throughout our lives to generate the wisdom and grace to think with God, to respond with Christ and to do the right thing. We need to come to this ‘Gospel table’ together and drink in the wisdom of God’s word and to this Eucharist table to become the bread that we eat—not just to survive but also to flourish.

As our ancestors of old grumbled in the desert, we sometimes whine and grumble and pine for the good old days while ignoring the bad old days.

But we can’t go back to the old days. We need to remain steadfast in the present and move confidently into the future. Indeed, “[we] do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”