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Daily Scripture

+ 7th Week of Easter

Much ado about nothing or, is there something to it?

Readings: Acts 19:1-8 Psalm 68:2-7 John 16:29-33

Paul traveled through the interior of the country and down to Ephesus where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They answered him, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” [Acts 19:1-3]

Depending on one’s sacramental theology and pastoral practice, this text has been variously interpreted. For example, those who work with the RCIA (catecheumenate) hold that the sacrament of Confirmation should be administered with Baptism as it was in the early Church. It is one of the sacraments of initiation—Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist. The Eastern Rite of the Roman Catholic Church has retained the tradition of administering all three at Baptism. Yes, the infant receives a small piece of the Eucharist bread. And so in the Eastern Rite, there is no formal celebration of First Holy Communion at the age of reason or Confirmation by the bishop at whatever age the local diocese has determined the age of maturity appropriate for Confirmation. All three sacraments are administered shortly after birth.

Others feel that the celebration of First Communion and Confirmation at a later age ensures the participation of youngsters in parish religious education programs – at least until Confirmation. In this case, many Catholics view Confirmation as the completion of or graduation from religious studies.

In recent years I have become convinced that the RCIA folks and the Eastern Rite Catholics have it right. All three sacraments of initiation should be administered together. First Holy Communion and Confirmation have become more social than spiritual. I do not mean to suggest that there is no connection or that there should be no celebration after sacramental ceremonies but for many, the accent is on the wrong syllable.

The path from Baptism to Christian maturity is life-long and the benchmarks for progress are not easily measured by grouping children by age or grade level for a period of preparation that is largely academic.

This is not to suggest that religious education is optional. Faith development is unique to each person within the context first of family and then of parish. Religious education / formation is intended to provide insight into faith development at an age-appropriate level.

Catholicism has become ‘child-centered’ the result of which, we have an adult population whose religious and spiritual development stopped at Confirmation.

The celebration of Eucharist is the primary setting for faith formation. Religious education is a necessary component but detached from Eucharist, it remain just another subject to master.

Of course this all assumes that the parish celebration of the Eucharist is truly inclusive and meaningful rather than just an empty ritual. The parish at worship should be a rendition of a community of faith that strives to live its faith ‘in the town square’ as I mentioned in Sunday’s homily.

Notwithstanding my commitment to religious dialogue, I do believe that effective dialogue is based on the assumption that although both parties are knowledgeable about the topic. Though they may have different perspectives, they are not based on ignorance of the subject.

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'C'

Saturday July 3, 2010

Holy Mother Church

I can still hear the associate pastor in the parish of my boyhood years, referring to the Church as “Holy Mother Church”. I recall asking myself, “How can the Church be a woman, much less a mother, and still be the ‘Body of Christ?’”—In hindsight, a simplistic question, to be sure. However, in those rather simple times, we were not encouraged to question or express our doubts. If the priest said the Church was a mother, so be it! Otherwise, I have no recollection of this title having had a significant impact on my elementary understanding of the Church or my embryonic experience of Church life.

Many years later, however, Pope John XXIII wrote an encyclical entitled, Mater et Magistra — Mother and Teacher. The title of papal letters is taken from the first two or three opening words of the document. This encyclical pre-dated the Second Vatican Council but was one of Pope John’s monumental works. In it, he summarized the Church’s social teaching from Leo XIII to the late 1950s but rooted it more emphatically in the teachings of Jesus Christ. In essence, Pope John was making very practical the teaching of Jesus Christ that the love of God cannot be separated from the love of neighbor. Moreover, he stressed the reality that the Church must be the first not only to proclaim the message but also to live the message in the same manner in which a mother is the first to practice what she teaches her children. A woman’s love — is proactive. So too must the Church be proactive in works of justice, mercy and charity.

A mother’s love is uniquely sacrificial. Who but a mother can accurately describe the pain that accompanied the birth of a child. It has been noted often that a man could never bear the pain of childbirth. We men need not be dismayed by that observation. It does not mean that a man’s love is superficial or that we cannot bear willingly the pain of sacrificial love. Jesus as man surely demonstrated the totality of a human sacrificial love, male and female. However, a woman bears not only intense physical pain as in childbirth but also a unique anguish of soul as she identifies with the life-struggles of her children.

This may be demonstrated even further in an image popular in medieval art and poetry — the pelican with her brood of chicks. This symbol is represented in one of the stained windows in the sanctuary of St. Joseph Church in Mendham and in the nave of our own Assumption Church. In the process of feeding her young, the pelican presses her feed sack full of fish against her neck in such a way that she seems to pierce her breast with her bill. The redness of the tip of her beak extols the notion that the pelican actually draws blood from her breast so that her young might live. Hence it became not only a powerful image of the maternal instinctive but also of thesacrificial love of God manifested in Jesus’ life-giving death on the cross.

This symbol was adopted by the founders of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth at Convent Station to demonstrate the sacrificial love to which they are called as a religious community. The large number of sisters who have given their life through martyrdom is of historic record.

In his short-lived reign of thirty days as Pope, John Paul I reintroduced the image of mother when he affirmed the multiple facets of God’s personality. He said: “God is our father, even more, God is our mother… if children are ill.. or if they are sick with badness and are on the wrong track… they have an additional claim to be loved by their mother…”

In any event, I think the Scriptures this weekend suggest that we revisit the title and it’s application to the Church as woman and its mission to the world in an age of excessive individualism and increasing narcissism.

The first reading from Isaiah refers to Jerusalem as woman and mother. In later times, the Church will be called the new Jerusalem. “Rejoice with Jerusalem in joy, that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast… and you shall be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees.” Isaiah, however, is inferring more than this. In the name of God, Isaiah goes on to state: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” In other words, he is applying feminine qualities to God with great ease.

Saint Paul’s understanding of the preaching of the Gospel was not restricted to male preachers or teachers but applied to the entire Christian assembly, especially to those who gather as ‘church’ for the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries. He was promoting nothing more or less than what Jesus himself promoted as an itinerant preacher: “Love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength and your neighbor as yourself.” If you do that, you will indeed be preaching the Gospel, using words when necessary. This is true sacrificial love.

As members of the Church, we are being sent forth with the courage of a warrior but with the strength of a mother. We are called as men and women not to dictate or dominate but to enlighten and edify. This calls for nothing less than sacrificial love and the assurance that God will uphold us even in the face of criticism and rejection. In essence, this is a call to true Christian discipleship.

Soon after I began my service as diocesan secretary for parish ministry, among many of my responsibilities was the formation of priests, deacons and lay ministers in the art of collaborative ministry. I became very aware that this could not be a ‘lone ranger’ effort. In order to teach the skills that promoted collaboration, I had to partner with other ministers, male and female in the formation program and I found just the right person to develop and implement the program as my primary partner. Sr. Marie and I were a great team and complemented each other during our formation sessions. She brought to these sessions a unique wisdom that I could not impart on my own.

Women played an essential role in the infant church but as it evolved, males became more dominant and eventually led to what I would call a discriminating tone to ministry in which women was relegated to an inferior role as a structured hierarchy developed.

At a recent retreat I met a sister who spoke eloquently of the sacrament of Reconciliation. I took the occasion to remind her and and the other retreatants of how often sisters, deacons and lay men and women have been instruments of reconciliation at the bedside of the dying and on other occasions through healing touch and the healing of memories, assuring them of God’s merciful love and forgiveness when a priest was not available.

On this Fourth of July, we need to be reminded hat collaboration rather than competition will yield more effective results in the healing of our country than demonstrations that divide. The lack of civility and the incessant bickering and war of words exchanged in congress and from the White House must give way to an un patronizing patriotism that leads to solidarity on which we can build bridges and partnerships with one another in our search for lasting solutions to national global challenges that threaten to destroy us.

Freedom is a terrible gift to waste.

John Paul I was correct – “God is our Father and even more our Mother…’ For God and country, let us move forward with the wisdom that only God can reveal to the Churches and to our nation at every level.

Men and women, young and old, let us become partners with God in the ongoing work of the Dominion of God.