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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.

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'C'

Saturday July 10, 2010

There Are No Free Lunches!

The astute professor of philosophy decided to challenge his young inexperienced students with a summer assignment that would demand more reflection than study. Aware that their life experiences were too few to have achieved a great deal of wisdom, he nevertheless tested their acumen with a term paper entitled, “The Basic Rule For Successful Living—An Exigesis.”

Of course the students were anxious to please the professor and enthusiastic to win an A+ for their efforts. He did tell them to make it succinct but didn’t instruct them on the number of words or pages.

On or before the due date, the completed assignments started arriving on the professor’s desk. Few of them were less than one hundred pages. Instead of rejecting their efforts outright and because he was a compassionate professor unlike his confreres, he decided to give them a break and send them back to their computers with the direction, “say it fewer words.”

The deadline was extended twice and finally on the last day, one student arrived with his term paper of one page with one sentence that read, “There are no free lunches!”

To the scholar of the law who asked Jesus the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “How do you read the law?” and he might have added, “Say it in one sentence.” The lawyer did indeed respond in one sentence, ‘You shall lov the Lord, our God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” A+ __ ! Go to the head of the class!

How much more simply can it be stated? On these two commandments, the entire law and prophets are based.

But as with many of us lawyers searching for a legal loophole, the man had to complicate the matter by asking Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Do I have to love everyone even if some people don’t deserve it?

I came upon this bit of wisdom which couldn’t be stated any more clearly or cleverly than if I wrote it myself so I will quote liberally from the source. [Celebration: Preaching Resources, Pat Sanchez, NCR Publications,Kansas City, MO]

“As long ago as the fifth century B.C.E., the poet Pindar wrote: “Of the good things given between man and man, [sic] I say that a neighbor, true and loving in heart, is a joy beyond all things else.’ Among the Chinese, the following two proverbs about neighbors are popular: ‘Anyone can buy a good house, but good neighbors are priceless’ and ‘If at home you receive no visitors, then abroad you will have no host.’”

“Closer to our own times, G.K. Chesterton wrote, ‘your next door neighbor … is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a wall; he is drains that are worse than yours or roses that are better than yours.’ Martin Luther King Jr. called good the neighbor ‘who looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men [sic] human and, therefore, brothers.’ (Now we’re getting close.) Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested that ‘neighborliness is not a quality that we must discover in other people before we accept them as neighbors ; it is, rather, their claim on ourselves. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not. We must behave like neighbor to him.’”

“Then there are those who would quote the English proverb, ‘Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.’” which is very similar to the sentiments expressed by my own father, “If you want to remain close to your family, don’t live next store to them.”

In the end it was the one who treated the wounded man with compassion that was identified as the neighbor and this man was a Samaritan! In our own times it might well have been a Palestinian reaching out to the Jew.

So in essence, Jesus defines “neighbor” as anyone in need, regardless of race, color or creed and his disciples as those who respond with compassion.

This is an interesting word which is a derivation of the Latin word “passio” to suffer and “cum” which means, “with.” And so to have compassion is to have sympathy for and empathy with another. I think however that compassion has an even more basic meaning and application. Compassion can also mean to walk with. Truly we do not know our neighbor until we have walked a mile in his shoes!

So there you have it. It has taken more than a sentence to explicate the message but it shouldn’t take a lifetime to put it into practice.

A young man approached me after early Mass this morning and asked if I could have said all of the above more succinctly – in one sentence, one page. I responded: “I did indeed say in one sentence on one page – ‘There are no free lunches!’”

Amen.