GOSPEL CHARACTERS-6 (SAINT JOHN)

The Merchants in the Temple And Deep Personal Prayer

These various reflection on Gospel characters hopes to show the importance of deep personal prayer. In some examples, the absence of this prayer is also insightful. 

Jn 2:13-22

No doubt, the merchants in the Temple were shocked by Jesus’ astonishing attack on the commercial situation that had evolved out of the Law’s mandate to offer sacrifice. It is hard to believe that they were not baffled and blind to the corruption and distortion of faith that Jesus was confronting and exposing.

Most likely, the vast majority of the merchants started their job with a great deal of good will. Not only did they have an opportunity for a good job to support their family, they were able to express their faith and support the community of believers in professing their religious responsibilities and obligations. It surely started out for most as a win/win situation.

How did it come to the point that led to Jesus’ radical challenge: “Stop making my father’s house a marketplace.” (Jn 2:16) These activities had slowly but inevitably moved away from service to God to service for profit. The pull of the deception of easy money ate away at the spiritual foundation of their ministry in support of the most sacred place of worship in the Jewish faith.

This misrepresentation and self-deception is a common experience for those involved in religion either as professional workers or as committed volunteers. The Golden Calf never is far from the surface in the world of religion. Money has an awesome pull that misleads and betrays in the service of God and religious institutions even though committed to an exalted goal.

II

I was a pastor in a poor parish in South Central Los Angeles for twenty years. I recall two encounters with the insidious pull of the Golden Calf. I am sure there were many more.

The first was with a Development Board made up of several generous and wealthy benefactors. Their activities raised tens of thousands of dollars on a regular basis. This money supported new buildings, projects, programs and personnel. It was a great temptation to lose the focus on the basic mission of evangelization and ride the wave of material success and progress.

The second issue was a situation in a much smaller economic reality at our annual festival. It involved less than three thousand dollars. There were several groups that had sales of their ethnic food specialties at the event. At the beginning all shared the good will of working to help the parish better achieve its mission to serve the gospel. Gradually, however, a truly negative competition developed between the groups to see who would raise the most money. In the end, it ended up a long, long way from the gospel mission.

Just imagine if this was the case in a poor parish, just how much more these negative factors come into play in a “successful” parish or institution or religious TV program. There is no doubt the negative thrust of the Golden Calf is fully operative under the guise of many good causes and projects. Jesus would need more than a cord to cast out the merchants of deception if he returned to our churches today.

III

The question is, how did the merchants in the Gospel story, along with their compatriots of today, slip from the good-willed Temple workers and servants of the people to be servants of the Golden Calf and the profit motive.

The answer for the Temple workers and all of us today is the deceptive power and demands of the ego. The ego’s agenda is to make us the center of all activities. When it comes to religion and spirituality, the ego has singular powers to deceive us. It produces false motives, drawing us away from service and sacrifice. The ego has despicable capabilities to center on the selfish motives rather than God’s priorities. It has determined the way of the world since Adam and Eve ate the apple.

For centuries the Church has carried the burden of a clericalism and sexism that has been accepted as the norm. In recent times that has begun to change. It was this kind of institutional blindness that gave us the sexual abuse scandal and crisis.

It is the very nature of deep personal prayer to enlighten the forces of evil in each of us and in our culture and institutions. Self-knowledge is one of the great blessings of deep personal prayer. It slowly opens a path to freedom from the forces of darkness that support all the deceiving appeals of the Golden Calf and all other idols.

When we pray regularly there is a steady confrontation with the influences of the ego. Sometimes the conflicts are gentle and sometimes they are fierce. Faithfulness to deep personal prayer will guarantee a gradual diminishment of all factors pulling us away from God.

This is what the merchants needed to respond to Jesus’ challenge. They needed to search for the light of God’s will and to find strength in work and commitment in doing God’s will.

Any movement away from the clutches of the Golden Calf is a demanding venture. Deep personal prayer exposes the lies of the ego. It calls us to new values rooted in the gospel. It calls us to new action in the footsteps of Jesus.

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THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Lk 24: 35-48

Dear Friends, The real power and message of today’s story is not in the Alleluia. It is the account of how difficult it was for the disciples to embrace the reality of the Alleluia, the risen Lord, the Suffering Messiah’s who conquest of death.

The disciples are gathered in fear and anguish. The Emmaus travelers are enthusiastically sharing their experience. During their wild tale, Jesus appears. Luke describes the immediate reaction. It is not one of joy and wonder. The people in the room are startled and terrified. They think they are seeing a ghost. Jesus calms them down by showing them the remnants of his wounds on his hands and feet. Then he eats the fish. Luke’s invites us into the profound struggle for the disciples and the others to accept the resurrection.

The risen Jesus is in their presence. The disciples were engulfed in a total transformation of reality. It was truly difficult for them to grasp. It is equally challenging for us even after these many centuries. All the resurrection stories try to convey the necessity of a profound faith to fathom the new reality. Even with Jesus physically present, the disciples’ reaction was terror and shock.

The point for us is to avoid a superficial response to the mystery. We need to avoid an Alleluia that comes from the mouth and not the depths of the heart. Luke is telling us it is a long passage of faith from the simple information to the ultimate experiencing of reality as gracious and life-giving.

The resurrection is intimately connected to the cross. They are one event. In the two aspects of this experience, we have the full revelation of God’s love. The suffering Messiah unveils a God who does not control or coerce. Love that frees and invites is the lesson. In confrontation with the world’s evil, Jesus chose to suffer rather than to dominate and conquer. We are invited into a great mystery foretold by the prophets. It was misunderstood by the disciples and their successors down to our day.

The God who raised Jesus to the Easter victory is with us today. He conquers evil for us also. Easter shows us that God will transform danger, sorrow and suffering into new life and new freedom when we walk with Jesus.

In today’s Gospel passage, three points are highlighted by Luke. First, the Messiah was not what they or we expected: a rejected and humiliated Savior. Secondly, conversion and forgiveness are to be preached in his name. Thirdly, the message needs to be proclaimed to all the world.

Pope Francis’s statement of his vison for the Church was laid out for us in his exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel. The unifying theme of this wondrous statement is preaching the Gospel to all the world.

Francis states: “I dream of a “missionary option,” that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything. So that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” (The Joy of the gospel #27)

We need to enter into the Alleluia event of Easter. When we truly embrace it, we have no choice but to proclaim it with all our being. We will then follow the example of the disciples who finally made the passage to the real Alleluia and its overwhelming significance. Death has been conquered and the new creation has begun.

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THE SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 20:19-31

When you think about it, the disciples had a really devastating seventy-two hours from the washing of the feet on Thursday to the visit of the Risen Christ on Sunday evening. Of course, Peter leads the way in the trauma department.

Wash my feet! Never! Then my hands and face also! I will be willing to die rather than deny you! I do not know the man! Peter “went out and wept bitterly.” (Lk.22:62) “The doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.” (Jn 20:19) It was a short trip from total arrogance to total devastation.

They were engulfed in shattered dreams and wrapped up in fear and pain. Slowly they realized the events of the weekend not only exposed them as losers for wasting three years of their life chasing an illusion but now they were in danger of doing time in prison and maybe even losing their lives.

Crisis management did not give them much time to let the depth of their loss sink in. Likewise, they were unable to see with any clarity the extent of their personal cowardice in their flight and rejection after three years of intimacy at the feet of Jesus. Self knowledge does take a long time!

Then in the midst of the pain, the fear, the loss and utter confusion they see Him and hear, “Peace be with you.” Jn 20:19.

They had a lot of experience with the upside down world of Jesus. However, nothing prepared them for this. In an instant defeat and failure are now victory and triumph. Darkness is now light. Abandonment leads to embrace. Sin and denial are washed away in love and healing. Indeed, “Peace be with you.”

No wonder the Church invites us to ponder and pray about this awesome mystery of the Resurrection for the next seven weeks. There is a lot to take in.

It took time, but the disciples, along with the early Christian community, realized the Resurrection changed everything. This great act of love faced death as the supreme expression of evil. This triumph was the beginning of the New Creation. Indeed, everything has is being made anew. The conquest of evil allowed the disciples and us to interpret everything Jesus did and taught through the filter of this overthrow of death. This celebration of the season of Easter is our invitation to put our life up against the great event of the Pascal Mystery, Christ Crucified and Christ Risen. We are called, especially today, to ponder the magnitude and majesty of God’s mercy present in the Risen Christ’s word: “Peace be with you.”

If we are willing to dig deep enough, we gradually will see the story of our lives in the vulnerability of the disciples. We will see the dominance and control of our fear and anxieties giving way to hope. We will see and embrace our God’s forgiveness: “Whose sins you shall forgive are forgiven them”. (Jn 20:23)

Indeed, Christ is Risen! Alleluia! When we enter into this deepest reality of our lives nothing will ever be the same again.

Like the disciples, we are loved in our brokenness. We are accepted in our weakness and sinfulness. Slowly we will get a glimmer of the love Jesus has for us. We will begin to see the wonder of God’s mercy. It is without limit or condition. It is a treasure we can hardly grasp. Whether we grasp it or not, the goal of our spiritual journey in life is to let the power and beauty of this loving mercy transform us into a new creation just as it did for the disciples. This is the day we so fittingly celebrate the mercy of God.

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EASTER SUNDAY

Mark 16:1-7 

Dear Friends, Among all the Resurrection stories, today’s passage from Mark is especially challenging and different. All the stories carry the fundamental message of victory over death, the restoration from the consequences of the first sin of Adam and Eve. It is clear that God had spoken and the ultimate word is not death but life, not hatred but love, not injustice and violence, but wholeness, integrity, peace and reconciliation.

In today’s passage we are given a powerful insight about discipleship: God never gives up on us!

In the three passages in Mark (8:31, 9:31, & 10:34) where Jesus foretells His journey to Jerusalem and His death, He also foretells His resurrection. “And three days after His death He will rise.” (Mk 9:31)

Each time in Mark the failure of the disciples to grasp this reality is highlighted by an event that shows their total misunderstanding of Jesus’ message.

At the Tomb, the messenger of God, dressed in white, tells the women to have the disciples go to Galilee where they will encounter the Risen Christ. This means they will be given another opportunity to enter deeply and openly into the teachings of Jesus which they totally failed to understand in the first the first time around.

Jesus has not given up on the disciples. Their failure to grasp his message, their desertion at the time of the Passion and Death, does not call forth the wrath of a vengeful God. On the contrary, we are presented with a faithful and forgiving and ever so patient God. Indeed, the reality is that God did not give up on the disciples, and especially Peter. Nor will God ever give up on us.

This invitation to return to Galilee is to enter into the Gospel message with new eyes of faith. It is a call for us to truly understand the words of Jesus to take up our cross and follow Him to Jerusalem. It is an invitation to face up to death in all its manifestations, great and small, and realize that God has spoken with the ultimate authority in our human reality. The last word is not death but life, not defeat and hopelessness but victory that unveils a graciousness and a sense of hope in all our darkest moments. God has not given up on us!

We need o return to Galilee and encounter God’s word in Jesus with new eyes opened by the reality of the Resurrection. It is, indeed, a long journey to learn that there is victory in defeat and that it is better to serve than to be served and that the first shall be last and the last first and to save our life we need to lose it! Alleluia!

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TRIDUUM

When I was young, Easter meant very little to us. The really big thing was Lent. The great time was at noon on Holy Saturday when we could eat candy and indulge in whatever else we gave up for Lent. This, this like too many religious practices over history, was an incredible distortion of the Church’s message.

Today, we have another caricature of Easter. The big day is Good Friday. For many, if not most, Easter is an afterthought in much of our popular religious practice. The point we need to understand is that we are an Easter People!!

The Church’s teaching is very clear. The Death and Resurrection are one event! We take thirteen and a half weeks to celebrate, in the most solemn and beautiful way, the central reality of our faith, the Pascal Mystery. The goal of Lent is a time of penitential preparation to enter as profoundly as possible into the mystery of the Crucified and Risen Christ. This one event includes the Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ. This is the event of the Triduum, the three most holy days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil/Easter. This is followed by seven weeks of the Easter Season to further ponder this great Mystery. This same event is celebrated and experienced in every Mass.

These thirteen and half weeks are a meaningful portion of the entire Church year. The goal is much more than to recall this story. It goes far beyond a history lesson. We do not repeat history. We celebrate the Mystery and in the celebration we are present to the Mystery, the one and singular and historical event. The power of the Spirit in the Church makes us present to the saving event, the Pascal Mystery.

Here is the bottom line of all this material. The Church understands the Triduum, and the liturgy in general, in this way. It is not a reenactment. It is not simply a telling of the story no matter how solemn.

The celebration is the power and presence of God’s saving grace coming into our lives here and now. This one saving event is not broken into parts. It is the Mystery of the saving action of God in Jesus Christ. We are entering into the deepest reality of our life. We are experiencing. here and now in our worship, the presence of the saving love. It is calling us to eternal life right in this present moment. When we receive communion the minister does not say this is a remembrance of the Body of Christ. The words state the reality. This is the Body of Christ!

In the three holy days of the Triduum, we have the pinnacle of all the most sacred events in our liturgy. This is the most hallowed time to celebrate, and in the celebration not only recall, but be present to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is what liturgy does. It brings us into the presence of the Pascal Mystery that we celebrate. We do not repeat it. We enter into the one most singular event. This is why we are Easter People! We long to encounter not only the crucified Christ but the glorious Alleluia of the Easter victory of good over evil, of life over death! It is our invitation to life eternal.

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SUNDAY PALM

Mark 14:1 to 15:47

Dear Friends, Over the centuries, we have had many different interpretations of a most basic truth of our faith: Jesus died to save us. We say in the Nicene Creed every Sunday, “for our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He suffered death and was buried and rose again on the third day.”

St. Anselm taught us that the Father was not looking for some bloody sacrifice to appease his justice. Christ was sent into the world to live perfectly as a human being. In this way, being free and perfect in His humanity, He saved us.

There were many options Jesus could have used to accomplish our salvation. There were no limits to his power. In the view of St. Anselm, Jesus chose to respond to evil in love that was expressed in his renunciation of power. This powerlessness was seen in his refusal to drawn into evil. His response was the ultimate expression of freedom. It was completely devoid of self-interest. It was the expression of humanity in its most perfect state.

What is pleasing to the Father is not the suffering and death of Jesus. It was that Jesus chose his freedom to express his full and complete sharing in the human reality to save us. The consequence of this choice was his death on the Cross.

It was love for the Father that led Jesus to the way of humiliation and total rejection of power to save us by love, mercy and self-sacrifice.

The four Passion narratives amazingly have almost no description of great physical pain. None of the Evangelists even mention Jesus was nailed to the cross. Only afterward, in John’s story about Thomas is this implied.

Likewise, none of the four Gospels tell us of the crucifixion in a complete sentence. In Matthew and Mark, the second part of the sentence is about the division of his garments. In Luke and John, it is about the two thieves.

The Gospels are a bit clearer about the psychological suffering. Jesus sees the apparent failure of his life’s work with the disciples. He had to face Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denials and the flight of the rest in fear and anxiety. Only a few woman disciples were at Golgotha to the end. He faced the total rejection of the Jewish leaders, the people’s choice of Barabbas over him and the further disgrace of being placed between the two thieves. Throughout the Passion there was constant ridicule and scorn: from the trial before the Jewish leaders, Pilate’s soldiers, the crowd, the leaders and finally the two thieves mock him mercilessly.

Likewise, there was the silence of the adoring crowd that just a few days before hailed him with the Hosannas on his entry into Jerusalem. Nor were there any defenders among the thousands he healed and fed.

In the entire panorama of suffering, physical and psychological, Jesus was faithful to his purpose, the salvation of all by his commitment to being human in the sinful reality that is our world. In every step along the way, Jesus chose not to use his power. He chose to show the power of love that surpasses each expression of evil and sin. Jesus chose, in this way, to share in the suffering and death of all people. Jesus chose in this way to reveal the power of the Father’s love as the final expression of reality, the victory of life and love over death and sin.

The Father’s love was proclaimed in Jesus’ faithfulness even to the Cross. In this event we learn that his death gives way to the Resurrection. Jesus’ powerlessness led to his sharing all manner of human suffering. Jesus invites us to share his way of love in confronting all the forces that continue to dehumanize and degrade our brothers and sisters. In our commitment to the Crucified Christ, the final word is the victory of love over hatred, justice over injustice and reconciliation over division, isolation and prejudice. God has spoken. The seeds of peace and true community have been sown in Christ Crucified and Chris Risen. The seeds will continue to blossom as we learn to die for one another in love and service.

Jesus’ rejection of power shows us that He was not above us but among us. All through the Gospel of Mark he told the people to keep the secret of the wonders he worked. Now, finally, in the total disgrace of the Cross, his true presence is proclaimed. ‘When the centurion who stood facing him saw he breathed his last he said, ‘Truly this man was the son of God.’” (Mk 15:39) We are asked to accept Jesus on the Cross as the full and decisive revelation of God.

Now we are invited to see Jesus in the totality of his truth, crucified in his complete sharing of our broken world and broken lives. This is our invitation into the Mystery of Love. Our passage is the faithfulness of heart surrendering to love just as Jesus did. This will be our death to our selfishness. In this death, we, like Jesus, will find true life. That true life begins now when we walk with Jesus in love!

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FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

John 12: 20-33

Dear Friends, This passage from John is extraordinary in many ways. First, by itself, it contains a great amount of Jesus’ message. Secondly, for a liturgical selection, it is much more far-reaching than usual.

It will help us if we read it from the context of our Lenten journey. We are trying to purify ourselves and to free ourselves to enter into the great mystery of our faith, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In the previous chapters of John, Jesus had denied several times that his “hour” had come. Now he says the “hour” is at hand. The “hour” is his glorification in death. John’s Gospel is emphatic that the sufferings of Jesus on the cross are the means to our salvation. This connection to our salvation is captured in the term, “hour”. The sufferings of the passion and cross are central to Jesus’ “hour” as was the resurrection.

Jesus explains what is about to happen in three steps. The first is the necessity of his death. Secondly, there is the presentation of Jesus’ interior struggle. Finally, the consequences of his death and the need for our proper response to this final act of glory are set out for us.

Jesus lays it out in a simple and direct form. His death will give life. The seed seemingly dies when it is placed in the ground. However, it proceeds to produce life in the new wheat. So too with Jesus, his death, an apparent total defeat, is a source of life for every human being in the ultimate victory in the resurrection.

In a sharp break for the usual pattern for Jesus in John, there is a display of fear and confusion. This is a very human and tender moment. The text then returns to the norm of Jesus’ single-mindedness. “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? Father save me from this hour. But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father glorify you name.” (Jn 12:27-28)

Jesus’ “hour” places the burden of decision on the faithful in their time of trial. Many other decisions will follow in the course of one’s life as the trials will never be wanting. Those who accept the suffering Messiah will be free from the domination of the ruler of this world, Satan, and his legacy of sin and death. Jesus’ “hour”, which is the glory of God, provides the gift of eternal life. Jesus, “lifted up” on the cross, will offer the gift of life and love to all.

When John uses the term “lifted up”, there is a more profound message for us. The exaltation of the crucified Christ will attract all humanity to the freedom and love of this action of saving grace. This is the highest point of revelation of God’s love for humanity and for each of us personally. Our Lenten journey, more than anything, is an invitation into that love. To accept this call to renewal, we need to abandon the relentless pull of our selfishness. The more we we place our eyes on the crucified Christ, the easier will our conversion be.

Today’s gospel, leading into the sufferings of Jesus, invites us into a new awareness. We need to see in the suffering Christ a pathway to new life. This should lead us to see in our many human struggles an opportunity. Jesus has opened the door to freedom from all the darkness in our life. A new hope and new life is always available to us in the footsteps of Jesus.

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THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

REPENT AND BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL 
(JOHN 3: 14-21)

The daily readings from John in weeks four and five of Lent

How are you doing in our Lenten intention to give up something? Have you failed a couple of times? The Church has made plans for that failure!

This is how it works. The time of Lent is a time of conversion. What you may give up is only secondary to the change of mind and heart that we are called to on Ash Wednesday: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

The daily Gospel readings of the first three weeks of Lent are all about Jesus’ calling us into a new world of love, reconciliation and service. Giving up ice cream, Miller Light or Disneyland is not the burning issues. In fact, if we fail, it can be a big help!

The failure can help us learn that we need help. We cannot do this sacrifice, and all the more, embrace the Gospel message of conversion by ourselves. We need help and we need it big time.

The Church gives us an answer. Keep your eyes on Jesus. To help us do this in these final weeks of Lent, we are presented with a new theme in the daily Gospel readings in the fourth and fifth weeks of Lent.

The readings are taken from the Gospel of John. They are actually selection from chapter four to chapter twelve that are not used in any other readings for the rest of the year.

We are called into the mystery of Jesus. We are invited to encounter Jesus as our savior. We are presented, as always, with the Gospel message of love. For in the end, it is only when we realize and embrace the reality of Jesus’ love that we can move forward on the Christian journey and have the change of mind and heart that is true conversion.

So the message of the fourth and fifth weeks of Lent is to embrace our weakness and turn to Jesus. In this way we prepare to celebrate the great wonder of our faith in Holy Week, the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

We are all invited to journey on the road to Jerusalem. We are given the daily passages from John to help us on the way. Our task is simple: “Keep our eyes on Jesus!”

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THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

Jn 2:13-25

No doubt, the merchants in the Temple were shocked by Jesus’ astonishing attack on the commercial situation that had evolved out of the Law’s mandate to offer sacrifice. It is hard to believe that they were not baffled and blind to the corruption and distortion of faith that Jesus was confronting and exposing.

Most likely, the vast majority of the merchants started their job with a great deal of good will. Not only did they have an opportunity for a good job to support their family, they were able to express their faith and support the community of believers in professing their religious responsibilities and obligations. It surely started out for most as a win/win situation.

How did it come to the point that led to Jesus’ radical challenge: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” (Jn 2:16) These activities had slowly but inevitably moved away from service to God to service for profit. The pull of the deception of easy money ate away at the spiritual foundation of their ministry in support of the most sacred place of worship in the Jewish faith, the Temple in Jerusalem.

This misrepresentation and self-deception is a common experience for those involved in religion either as professional workers or as committed volunteers. The Golden Calf never is far from the surface in the world of religion or in any place dealing with the human heart. Money has an awesome pull that misleads and betrays in the service of God and religious institutions even though committed to an exalted goal.

The question is, how did the merchants in the Gospel story, along with us today, slip from the good-willed Temple workers and servants of the people to be servants of the Golden Calf and the profit motive.

The answer for the Temple workers and all of us is the deceptive power and demands of the ego. The ego’s agenda is to make us the center of all activities. When it comes to religion and spirituality, the ego has singular powers to deceive us. It produces false motives, drawing us away from service and sacrifice. The ego has despicable capabilities to center on the selfish motives rather than God’s priorities. It has determined the way of the world since Adam and Eve ate the apple. Of course, the ego’s power of deception is not limited to the religious sphere. All other facets of life are drawn to the deception and corruption of the Golden Calf.

Any movement away from the clutches of the Golden Calf is a demanding venture. Our Lenten tasks of prayer, fasting and almsgiving can be a great help in freeing us to walk with Jesus in new freedom and growing clarity.

There are many second and third level messages in John’s Gospel. Today one of these deeper messages is that Jesus is proclaiming a new order of worship. The cleansing of the Temple signifies a new order of worship that will center around the body of Christ. He is the new temple. Our Lenten journey is preparing us to celebrate the Pascal Mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. John’s message is beckoning us to move on from the external piety and rituals of the old temple to a more insightful and truly spiritual worship centered in Jesus Christ. The cleansing of the Temple is really about the cleansing of our hearts so we may worship with a growing integrity that highlights the person of Jesus Christ.

Our celebration of Lent aims to facilitate this cleansing of our hearts and our worship. Our religious practice will always be in need of a purification and deliverance from the corrupting power of our basic selfishness. Today’s gospel is a call for authenticity and a Lenten conversion in our life as we journey with Jesus to Jerusalem these forty holy days.

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THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

Mk 9:2-10

Dear Friends, Our task for Lent is clear. This is a time to free our hearts and to enter more deeply into to the great mystery of our faith, the boundless act of God’s love in or crucified Savior.

The somber message of Lent and the glory of the Transfiguration offer us a challenge similar to the challenge of the total message of Jesus. We are trying to grasp how death opens up to life.

When Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29), Peter answered, “The Messiah.” (Mk 8:29) No doubt, Peter thought he had arrived safely at the conclusion of his search. Then Jesus lays the Jerusalem journey with the Cross and death on poor Peter. He felt confused and bewildered. Suffering and God, Messiah and failure were opposites he was ready to unite.

We share Peter’s confusion when we try to equate our belief in an all- loving and an all-powerful God and the horrors we hear and see daily in the news and the experience in our lives. If we are honest and open to the uttlerly harsh depth of violence and hatred, the insanity of war and ambiguity of nature’s horrors, we have to ask, How can this be?

This is the ultimate question about the broken and sinful condition of humankind. It seems history is an endless display of human evil and savagery. This happens with full-blown consistency on a personal level and, in the case of climate change, it involves the whole world. How can this be? The hunger and thirst of millions is right in front of us while we continually look for new places to store our grain? The picture of the children of Gaza stretching out their little pans for a spoonful of food leads us to the question, How can this be? In a few months it will be similar story in new place coming to us on the nightly news.

God has only one answer to this repeating and universal horror. His beloved Son has entered into the consequences of sin from our first parents that unleased this persistent evil. The result was not an explanation we can put into our textbooks. It was the reality of the Crucified Christ so that we can ask in a new way and with new wonder, How can this be? How can our God suffer and die for all of us, both good and bad?

The Cross was the way God has responded to the curse of theall-pervading evil of human experience. In the Crucified Christ, God has given the answer to the ruthless destruction and waste of war, the ravages of climate change, the persistence of racism and sexism, the constant presence of the majority of humankind living in poverty and our enduring ability to discover new ways to degrade our brothers and sisters.

It is through that Crucified Christ that we must confront these expressions of evil whether that be personal like the death of a child or communal like the repeating gun violence in our nation. Christ assumed them all in his death and passage to the new reality of the Resurrection. This is God’s final word. This is the victory of love over hatred. This is the conquests of death by life eternal that begins now when we walk in love in the footsteps of Jesus. This is not information that we try to understand but a mystery we live by in the surrender of faith. Lent tells us our footsteps of faith must direct us first to Jeruslam and the Cross and then to new life in love in the Resurrection.

In the Transfiguration, Jesus reaffirms his divinity just as He does on the road to Jerusalem where He will be rejected, suffer and die. So, when the Father says, “This is my Beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” (Mt 9:7) we are being called into the Pascal Mystery. This is the key to the placement of the Transfiguration story on this second Sunday of our Lenten journey.

Lent is a time to prepare to celebrate with new joy and hope, stronger faith and growing love, the great mystery of our faith and our life, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

“Listen to Him!” (Mk 9:7) ‘is the task our Lenten journey. It will draw us in freedom into the mystery that is Christ Crucified and Christ Risen.

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FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

Mark 1:12-15

Dear Friends. As we begin our Lenten journey, today’s Gospel sets the story line of Jesus’ life in the most simple and stark terms. It is a contest of good and evil. We need to let the light of the Gospel story open up the depth of our own experience. We, too, find an endless struggle with the “wild beasts” and are in constant need of the angels to minister to us.

There is a very strong word in the beginning of today’s Gospel. The word is “drove”. “The Spirit drove him into the desert.” (Mk 1:12) The word Mark uses to describe what happens to Jesus in the desert indicates that he is tested rather than tempted. This is the same word used to describe the challenge to Abraham with his son, the experience of Moses and the exiles in the desert, and the entire adventure of Job.

It is clear the Spirit is preparing Jesus to face the evil which awaits him in his ministry and, ultimately, in its most naked and shocking form in the passion and death.

Along with the test of evil in the phrase “among the wild beasts” (Mk 1:13), we have the consoling message, “and the angels ministered to him.” (Mk 1:13) This tells us that God is never far away even when we so often find ourselves “among the wild beasts” as is the case in the lives of all of us.

One of the great deceptions of the devil is to lead us to think that we have overcome evil, thinking we have won the battle. This diabolic deception holds the seeds of many distortions and deceits in our journey.

Let me share a story about the environment as an example. In the 1880’s in Chicago there was a serious problem with sewage. From the city’s beginning, they simply let the sewage flow into Lake Michigan, the source of the city’s drinking water. As the city experienced a population explosion, the quantity of sewage expanded rapidly. At the same time, there was an enormous demand for more drinking water. Thousands were dying of typhoid fever because of the sewage in the Lake. Only after years of struggle did the city leaders finally face the need to pay for a new sewage system. In the meanwhile, tens of thousands had died.

The same choices between the quality of life and economic sacrifice is repeated constantaly in our day. We constantly face an option between health and money, life and death. The denial is most often maintained until we have the bodies to give us proof. This is evil that stays hidden until the end. Yet, it is evil whether we accept it or not. We saw an example of this in our recent encounter with Covid. The simple but life-giving actions of receiving vaccines, wearing a mask and keeping social distancing during the pandemic saved lives.

This is what Jesus’ Gospel is about. We are given a choice between good and evil. We have a role to play in the coming of the Kingdom, which is God’s plan for the world and reality. “This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand.” (Mk 1:15)

Jesus invites us to enter the struggle between good and evil. Jesus calls us to change and to accept his call to embrace the Good News. Jesus wants us to know the angels will be on hand to help us as we journey in his footsteps.

In today’s gospel, a passage at the very beginning of Mark, we have two basic facts about the Christian message. The time is at hand and the kingdom has arrived. This means we have the responsibility to change our life. We need to repent. Likewise, we need to believe the Good News of God’s love revealed in Jesus. We are challenged to change our way of living. We need to put God at the center. It is a clear issue of God’s reign and our response in new openness of heart leading to our Lenten task of service and sacrifice.

On this First Sunday of Lent, the brief Gospel passage lays out a challenge for us to walk with Jesus in the unending battle of good and evil. We need to use the time of Lent in sacrifice, service and prayer to open the eyes of our heart to see the depth and power of evil in our personal life and in our world. Like Jesus, the wild beasts are never far from us. The greatest danger is to fail to recognize them. Lent is a time to open up our eyes and our heart to Jesus’ command, “Repent and believe the Gospel.” (Mk 1:15)

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SIXTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mark 1:40-45

It is important to understand the context of lepers in the time of Jesus. They were designated lepers by any major skin disease. Only some had the key contagious disease we call leprosy today. Secondly, they had to live in isolation with no contact with the community. This included total isolation from family, worship and work. Therefore, they were beggars and abandoned at all levels as the awaited a painful and slow death.

The first five words of today’s gospel text are very explosive. “A leper came to Jesus…” (Mk 1:40) For a leper to approach a person other than another leper was a life threatening adventure for the diseased individual. People considered the ailment both deadly and easily contagious. Therefore, they justified whatever was necessary to protect themselves and their loved ones.

In today’s episode and other events to follow in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus was taking on the task of humanizing the distortion of the purity laws. In fact, there was a deeper realty taking place. There was an on-going transfer of the place of holiness from the Temple to the person of Jesus.

In his desperation, the poor leper realized Jesus was the source of something special. Not only does he approach Jesus in a breach of the purity laws, he dares to beg for a cure. “If you wish, you can make me clean.” (Mk 1:40) Jesus responds by touching him, an even more shattering defiance of the purity laws.

This encounter between Jesus and the leper goes much deeper than a compassionate healing miracle. Jesus is revealing a new source of purity in his person. Jesus is launching an unprecedented attack on the prevailing demonic power. He also is attacking the rigid control of the Jewish leaders and their manipulation of the purity laws.

Then it gets interesting. The leper has this incredible experience of a totally new life in front of him. Jesus seems not to share his joy and warns him sternly with the command, “See that you tell no one anything but go show yourself to the priest.” (Mk 1:44)

The leper was not up for the program of silence and containment. “He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.” (Mk 1:45)

This same request of Jesus for silence about his healing power is related in many ways in Mark’s stories. It deals with the basic nature of Jesus’ mission. He did not come to do wonders even if he healed the leper, fed the 5000, let the blind see and so many other marvelous expressions of healing and freedom.

Jesus saw the larger issue. He realized that not all the lepers were being cleansed nor all the blind were receiving sight nor all the hungry were being fed. He understood that His mission was to address a much more fundamental and totally pervasive reality. He was confronting evil. He saw that the conclusion of His mission would lead Him to Jerusalem and to the Cross and the death that would be the ultimate victory.

The entire Gospel of Mark plays out this central struggle of what kind of Messiah Jesus was to be. The leper today and the disciples in the unveiling of the rest of the Gospel are seeking a wonder worker and a person of prestige, power and privilege. They want a popular Messiah who, no doubt, would make their life share in the prestige, power and privilege of Jesus.

Jesus had a totally different vision of his mission. His message was one of service and sacrifice. He modeled the true victory in the apparent ultimate defeat. It was only at the foot of the cross that the full revelation was unveiled when the centurion said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” (Mk 15:39)

Mark invites us continually to struggle with the deeper image of Jesus that is so foreign to our seeking Jesus to fix our problems and give us special blessings. Mark tells us we will all participate in the ultimate healing beyond our wildest dreams and far beyond the leper’s wondrous cure. However, to do so, we have to take up our cross, we have to lose our life and we have to follow Jesus to Jerusalem on the passage to the fullness of life in the Father’s Kingdom.

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GOSPEL CHARACTERS-5 (SAINT MATTHEW)

The Canaanite Woman’s Prayer 

These various reflection on Gospel characters hopes to show the importance of deep personal prayer.

In some examples, the absence of this prayer is also insightful.

I

The Story’s Background in Matthew’s Gospel

All the Evangelists told the story of Jesus out of the context of their own community. Matthew’s community was a group of Jewish Christians struggling for their own identity as both Jews and followers of Christ.

They saw themselves as the true Jews. They accepted Jesus as the promised Messiah fulfilling the hope of centuries of Jewish longings for salvation foretold to Abraham and Moses. Matthew’s faithful Jewish community understood God’s saving action in the Law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus. They recognized one consistent message of deliverance from evil.

However, they faced a two-fold dilemma. First, the majority of the Jews rejected Jesus and, in fact, rejected them in their commitment to Christ. They had been dismissed and persecuted as unfaithful to the common acceptance of the Jewish faith. Secondly, great numbers of Gentiles were accepting Jesus as the t rue Savior of all humankind.

Matthew wrote his Gospel for the community in the midst of a massive identity crisis. Were they true representatives of the Jewish heritage? Was Jesus the true Messiah and leader? Were they called to leave their Jewish heritage and join the growing numbers of Gentile followers of Christ now called Christians?

Matthew offers an answer to this dilemma in his Gospel. He portrays Jesus, first and foremost, as the fulfillment of the Law and longings of the Jewish people. Matthew is unequivocal. The hope rooted in the stories and tradition of the Patriarchs, Moses, David and the prophets was fulfilled in Jesus

At the same time, Matthew offers an opening to the universality of God’s saving power in Jesus. Matthew’s development of the Gospel has a gradual opening to the Gentile world. At the very beginning, there are four Gentile women in the genealogy. Then there is the presence of the Magi in the infancy narrative. This is followed by the miracle healings in the stories of the centurion’s servant and the Canaanite’s daughter. At the foot of the Cross, we again have a centurion speaking the truth of Jesus’ identity. Finally, at the conclusion, as Jesus prepares to ascend to the Father, we have the final mandate to preach the Gospel to all the world.

Matthew presents a very sensitive and insightful image of Jesus that addresses this opening to the boundless gift of salvation for all. Matthew’s guidance to his Jewish brothers and sisters was not the centuries old choice of “us or them”. It was a clear and joyful declaration of the reality that all humanity are truly children of God.

This was an answer to the people who were grappling to interpret a God-given, centuries old identity as the Chosen People. The story of the Canaanite woman captures that struggle of the people in the story of Jesus’ own struggle with the awesome woman of faith and courage.

II

A Woman of Faith and Courage from the Gentiles
A Brief summary of the Text (Mt 15:21-28)

There are three characters in the scene:

1. Jesus had just finished a conflict with the Jewish leaders stressing that the Law was about the heart not legalities. He was moving toward a Gentile area to seek some rest and quiet.
2. The disciples were anxious to get rid of the woman and her annoying determination to get help from Jesus.
3. Then there was the Canaanite woman. Her insistence was rooted in her pain and driven by compassion for her daughter. She saw in Jesus the true answer to her immediate prayers. At a deeper level, she perceived a true savior.

In the woman’s first cry for help Jesus completely ignores her anguish. The disciples plead with Jesus to dismiss her. The benign interpretation of this plea is the removal by healing the daughter. The more realistic view would be in tune with the common prejudice of the day. She was a Gentile. She was a woman. She deserved no attention.

Jesus’ first response is to the disciples. He told them his mission was the Chosen People not the Gentiles.

Next, there is one of the most touching scenes in all of the Gospels. The woman acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah, kneels before Jesus in total vulnerability and says, “Lord, help me.” (Mt 15:25)

Jesus is still resistant. He says, “It is not right to take the bread of children and throw it to the dogs.” (Mt 15:26)

There has been an enormous amount of ink spent over the centuries trying to give a gentle and satisfying interpretation to Jesus’ use of the accepted Jewish word for Gentiles: dogs. Whatever the true explanation, the woman wins the day with her brilliant response, “Please Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” (Mt 15:27)

In a critical point in all of Christian history, Jesus accepts the plea of the Gentile woman and reveals God’s love for all humankind in his words. “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that time.” (Mt 15:28)

Much more than most Gospel passages, the story of this special Gentile woman has received seemingly countless interpretations. One of the most insightful and sensitive is Matthew’s kindhearted understanding of his community’s problems with the Gentile issue. Matthew has Jesus mirror the struggle of his community in addressing the tortuous issue of accepting the Gentiles. In Matthew’s construction of the story, Jesus is shown in his own uncertainty. Yet he changes and accepts the faith of the woman. He shatters the Gentile barrier. His example encourages and supports his Jewish followers to both castoff their own resistance and to embrace the deeper world of God’s love for all.

III

A Woman of Prayer

Upon deeper reflection, the wonderful person of faith that is the Canaanite woman in Matthew’s Gospel, offers us some excellent traits needed to be a person of deep personal prayer.

• First and foremost, she moved beyond herself. Her emphasis was service.

• The complaint of the disciples, whether benign or ignorant, could easily have led her to see herself as a victim. She stayed the course, stressing not her personal hurt, but the urgent need of her daughter.

• She was in a Jewish world. She was a foreigner. She was a woman. Nevertheless, she maintained her dignity.

• With all these truly burdensome obstacles, she always kept her eyes on Jesus.

Her determination drove her beyond the labels of the situation. She did not get lost in her being a woman or Gentile or a victim. She did not let the label of Jew or Gentile, saved or lost, Chosen People or pagans, impede her determination to express her concerns before God. Stripped of all labels, she stood free in the ultimate reality as a creature before God. She accepted her helplessness and expressed her trust and faith as a child of the all -loving God.

If we reflect on her simplicity and helplessness, we have a marvelous model as we seek a life of deep personal prayer.

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FIFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mark 1:29-39

Dear Friends, The seemingly breathless activity of Jesus takes place in in the framework of an ordinary day. The series of teachings, exorcisms and miracles were, in fact, a declaration of the coming of the long-awaited kingdom of God. The people at that time saw the exorcisms and healings as an open attack on the reigning power of the demons.

Here are a few major points that will be helpful in understanding these initial actions of Jesus:

• The teachings, exorcisms and healings clearly signaled the coming of the kingdom.
• This new reality demands that people must recognize the need for personal change. Personal attitudes and false values are often an obstacle to the coming of the kingdom.
• Jesus holds the key to overcoming the reign of evil in the longstanding dominance of the demonic powers.
• Early on, it is clear that the disciples’ understanding of Jeus is quite deficient. The question of what kind of Messiah Jesus was to be is a critical question in all of the Gospels, especially Mark.

There is one aspect of today’s Gospel that bothered me for a long time. The verse says, “Then the fever left her and she waited on them.” (Mk 1:31)

I did not feel very good about the mother-in-law getting right out of the sick bed to wait on them. It seemed a bit much to me. I thought they should wait on her.

As is so often the case, deeper study of the Scriptures opens up new and powerful insights. In this case, the service of the mother-in-law is related to a central theme of Jesus’ teaching in Mark. The word used to describe the action of Peter’s mother-in-law is used at critical points later on to describe a true disciple. The mother-in-law, as a new disciple, must respond to the call of the kingdom in service.

Jesus uses the same word to describe a true disciple when John and James ask to sit at his right and left. He says, “for the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as ransom for many.” (Mk 10:45)

The next time the word used to describe the mother-in-law’s action is at the time of the passion. In portraying the faithful women who did not flee but stayed near the Cross, Mark has this to say about them: “These women had followed Him when he was in Galilee and ministered to Him.” (Mk 15:41)

In these three instances, among several examples, of the description of service, we have a clear picture of what Jesus wants from His disciples: a life of service for the brothers and sisters.

From the beginning to the final stages of Mark’s Gospel, the disciples struggle to understand Jesus’ teachings. In the Garden, they flee. Their failure is crystallized in Peter’s three denials.

Mark’s Gospel gives us a powerful picture of the broken humanity of the twelve disciples. Their vision was rooted in their longing for privilege and power, not service. They struggle mightily and painfully before they grasp the contradiction between their misguided understanding of the Messiah and the clear and demanding reality of the suffering Christ.

Mark uses them to give us an image of ourselves. It is no small task to accept Jesus’ teaching about the cross. “He summoned the crowd and his disciples and said to them, ‘whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.’ ”(Mk 8:34-35)

Peter’s mother-in-law got it. Let us hope, like Peter and the disciples, we too, will eventually get the message.

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THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mark 1: 21-28

Dear Friends, This opening exorcism of Mark’s Gospel, the first of Jesus’ signs and miracles, goes far beyond an act of kindness to a deeply afflicted individual. Mark uses today’s passage to set the scene for the dramatic story of his Gospel. It is a story of the ultimate conflict of good and evil. It will conclude with the drama of the final victory of righteousness in the apparent defeat of Jesus in his death on the Cross. Of course, in the Resurrection, we have the final and absolute victory over evil and the source of eternal hope.

For the Jews at the time of Jesus, the demons were much more pervasive expression of evil than depicted in the possession of an individual. Demons represented all that was evil, all that restrained the freedom of the people. This bondage was especially manifested in sickness, the disasters of nature and the brutal power of the repressive Roman regime.

Jesus’ casting out of the devil from the man possessed was a powerful sign of the coming of the new age. It was an expression of God’s rule coming in the person of Jesus. Equally important in today’s Gospel story is the teaching of Jesus. The goodness and truth of God were so much part of Jesus’ teachings that the demons cried out in fear and horror.

The entire first half of Mark’s Gospel will build upon this diabolic encounter. It will develop the growing question of the identity of Jesus (Mk 1:21-8:21) Just as for the first followers of Jesus, we today are all being invited to respond to the awesome question, “Who do you say that I am?” (MK 8:21)

When Jesus said, “This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand.” (Mk 1:15) the battle between good and evil was on. He came to cast out all that restrains the freedom of all of us. He came to release us from oppressing diabolic presence in our midst. The “devils” of our day come in all different sizes and forms in our personal lives: the seductive illusions of consumerism, the grandiosity of our egoism so often out of control, the lure of power and money, the expression of sex that neither enhances life nor love, the horror of addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling and so many other false gods of our day. Then there is the area of mental health that can be so fragile and so destructive when it fails to be an expression of healthy freedom.

Likewise, the “demons” of our social and economic lives destroy our freedom: unemployment, economic injustice in the distribution of society’s goods and opportunities, the violence bred by the abuse of drugs. Just think of the billions of dollars wasted on the tragedy and insanity of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. This money could go the alleviate poverty and fund our efforts to create a clean environment. These evils, and so many more, are symbolized in the conflict of Jesus and the demon.

The key component of this conflict of good and evil is the freedom that Jesus brings to the possessed man. He opens for us that opportunity of freedom also when He proclaims, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.” (Mk 1:15) So often, the burdens and conflicts of our lives seem so out of control, so beyond our ability to manage them. It seems our freedom is lost and we are possessed by the circumstances of our broken relationships whether personal and social and economic. Today’s Gospel tells us all is not lost. Hope opens the way to new positive horizons. We need to turn to Jesus in faith, trust and surrender. He will, again, set us free of the demons that oppress us. True gospel freedom demands that we listen to and accept the One who offers “a new teaching with authority.” (Mk 1:27) We need to ‘Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” (Mk 1:15).

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