SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Mt. 5:17-37

Dear Friends, In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is inviting us to totally change our value system. He is calling us to a conversion that embraces his gospel vision. He is insisting that we go deeper into life to experience the presence of God in our relationships and responsibilities. He is laying fourth the great gift of the Jewish law and teachings free from the burden of human compromise and distortion. It is a pathway into God’s wisdom and truth. It is a true guide in the darkness of our broken world.

Matthew is emphatic that Jesus is not breaking away from the Old Testament. Jesus brings us to greater depth and clarity in the Torah, the teachings of the Old Testament. He is clearly showing the true meaning of the teachings that had not matured sufficiently. He is inviting us to go deeper to find the true meaning in all the wisdom and beauty God’s message in the Old Testament. Jesus is emphasizing the importance of the heart as the source of interpretation that moves beyond a rigid and legalistic observance.

In today’s selection from Matthew, there are four of six statements that begin, “you have heard it was said…but I say…”. They all deal with Jesus bringing us to a much more challenging understanding of the Old Testament teaching. They all deal with human relations. The four statements of today’s Gospel are murder, adultery, divorce and oaths. Next week, we will have the other two: revenge and love of enemies.

When I was a young priest, I was a firebrand for racial justice. I was abundantly blessed with the youthful gift of enthusiasm and cursed with an abundance of youthful self-righteousness. One day, one of my older and wiser Carmelite brothers told me I would be more effective if I worked at calling forth and not putting down people. Since the log in my eye was of the XXXL size it took me quite a while to grasp the wisdom of my brother’s advice. Slowly, it began to take focus. To call forth and not put down simply means to give due recognition to the human dignity of the other.

Jesus had a clear handle on the process. All six of his statements are a beautiful expressions of celebrating the people’s human dignity.

Here’s a thought on just one of Jesus teachings in today’s Gospel selection. In talking about, “You shall not kill” Jesus says, “whoever says,’ you fool’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna’”. (Mt 5:22)

Just think how important names and labels are in any movement of a group seeking freedom and dignity. We went from Colored to Negroes to Blacks to African Americans. We went from fruits to fags to queers to gays to one with a different sexual orientation to LGBTQ and, apparently, we ae not finished yet. Each of these changes was difficult, and often painful, because it slowly surfaced a deeply engrained prejudice. Each change was a step closer to the gospel challenge to recognize the basic human dignity of the “other”.

Today we can use the term illegal alien or one seeking the American Dream. Only one of these labels identifies the human dignity of God’s child.

The Gospel has a perfect example of this recognition of human dignity in the story of the Prodigal Son. In our common sense view of reality, the father would have been totally justified in angrily calling the son, “You fool”! (Mt 5:22)

The Gospel story tells us the father gave no such expression. His response was much more elegant and joyful. He commanded the servants to get ready for the party to celebrate because “This son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found”. (Lk 15:23)

Jesus understood the Torah as the true path to a meaningful relationships with God and with our brothers and sistersGod wants his followers to see the Torah’s beauty and power. Jesus was not rejecting God’s revelation. He was reforming the distorted practice that had evolved. All of his gospel message is rooted in this gift to the Chosen People. The Sermon on the Mount is a call to wholeness and holiness.

Jesus is inviting us to ponder the depth of the power of the names we use for others. They need to express and celebrate the human dignity of the other. They need to lead us to call forth and not put down if we “are to be perfect just as our heavenly Father is perfect”. (Mt 5:48)

Mt. 5:13-16

Dear Friends, Here is an amazing statistic about the religious scene in the US. Roman Catholics are the largest religious group. The second largest religious assortment are those who have left the Roman Catholic Church. Equally surprising is this. In many Latin America countries, traditionally Roman Catholic, Evangelicals are the largest religious denomination.

Somewhere along the line, a great number of us, in all of these religious groups, failed to get the memo from Jesus that we need to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

When one delves into the reasons so many people have left the Catholic Church, the reasons are many and the blame is on all sides. However, the response has to move away from finger pointing. We need to get back to the Gospel message. We need to evangelize ourselves and others.

Jesus’ command to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world has received a feeble response from most of us who call ourselves Christians. Jesus command is crystal clear. We are all called to stand with the gospel in contrast to the materialistic and consumer driven society that stands so flagrantly in contrast to the message of Jesus. Our true calling as the salt of the earth and the light of the world is to be a contrast People of God, a contrast that lights the darkness of our broken world. We are called to be salt that nourishes a spiritually starving world by lives lived in justice and working toward reconciliation. We are to be witnesses of our God of love and mercy.

Paul VI taught us that evangelization is the process of “bringing the Good News into every strata of humankind and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new.” (Evangelii Nuntiandi #19) He went on to say we need to be witnesses more than teachers. For him, a witness was one whose life spoke so loudly and clearly of the gospel that you could not hear what he or she was saying. St. Francis of Assisi made the same point when he said, “Preach the gospel always. Speak only when necessary.”

In these three verses in today’s Gospel, Jesus is calling us to embrace the totality of the Sermon on the Mount. He is telling us to live the message and to proclaim the message. He is asking us to let our life be the gospel message for all to hear and see. We are summoned to invite all to a welcoming embrace into the loving arms of our gracious God.

This evangelizing that proclaims the gospel is all about love. We have a good example of how to manifest this love in today’s first reading from Isaiah. “Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them, and do not turn your back on your own.” (Is 58:7) This life of service, no matter how humble, is truly letting our light shine. It genuinely lets us be the salt of the earth. This opens the way to love that transforms us and our world. This is our calling in today’s Gospel. This is how we are witnesses who do not need words to proclaim the message.

We, as a Church and we as individual followers of Christ, need to encounter the power and the beauty of the call to let our light shine. We need make a difference by embracing life in the footsteps of Jesus.

Reconciliation and service, forgiveness and generosity lead to the healing powers that crush division and wipe out the insipidness of mediocrity. This is the true call to unity. We need to bring the focus back to Jesus as He presents himself and his message in the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon is loaded with strategies for us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Matthew 5:1-12

Dear Friends, On this Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we have the first gospel selectin of the next five Sundays. This is our invitation into the Sermon on the Mount. These are three chapters (5-7) in Matthew. They are a summary of the Gospel message. Today’s passage on the Beatitudes is a summary of the Sermon on the Mount.

The Beatitudes are not laws. They are a summons into the mystery of Jesus. He is the one who is truly blessed. The Beatitudes are a revelation of the depth and breadth of the mystery of love in our broken world that is Jesus Christ.

The Beatitudes are not some pious thought that has nothing to do with the ordinary life of a true follower of Christ. On the other hand, they are not some law that a sincere Christian must follow. They are an invitation to witness to the coming of the Kingdom that Jesus has proclaimed. They are an invitation into a deeper commitment to the gospel message. They are an expression of hope in midst of present suffering and loss on the way to the ultimate victory. They express an assurance of the final victory of the kingdom, a return to the Original Innocence.

The beatitudes are a call to a life of faith, a life of hope and a life of love in the footsteps of Jesus on the Road to Jerusalem. It is in the Crucifixion and Death that the final victory of our present agony and mortality will be overcome. This final and complete victory of the Beatitudes in the Risen Christ is the first stage of the final kingdom of God!

The Beatitudes are a description of Jesus. They are an invitation to cross the threshold into the mystery of God. They are a call to ponder the Word that is Jesus. This draws us to embrace God’s will. The next step for us is to translate this new wisdom into action. This is exactly what should do. We are called to connect our inner experience of God’s call and our life, the lived experience of the gospel.

Thomas Merton gives us a definition of prayer that highlights this linking between our prayer and life. He says, Prayer is yearning to be in the presence of God, a personal understanding of God’s Word, knowledge of God’s will and the capacity to hear and obey it.”

I would like to use one short example of this wisdom of the gospel world of the Beatitudes where the first are last and we need to lose our life to save it.

Jesus says, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted”. (Mt 5:4) This, like all the Beatitudes, shatters our common sense perception of reality. Mourning and being comforted just do not fit together in our ordinary quest for happiness.

A deeper look at the mourning that Jesus is proclaiming begins to shed light on the reality. For Jesus, death is truly part of life. Death is part of a passage to a new life that is eternal. This destiny to eternal life has always been part of God’s plan for each of us.

Why do we mourn? The reason we mourn is because we love. Without love there is no need to mourn. Jesus is teaching us that in the end, love will win out. All our losses are in transition when we walk with Jesus. He invites us into a way and a life and a truth that guarantees the victory of love. He reveals that victory in the Resurrection. He gives us the presence of a new reality where every tear will be wiped away. That reality begins now when we love. In the end, that love will share the fullness of the victory that is the Risen Christ. We are much richer when we mourn because we love. When we are indifferent and have no need to mourn we operate in a selfishness that leads to death not life. Indeed, we can say in the fullness of truth and joy, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Mt 5: 4)

In similar fashion, all of the Beatitudes are an invitation into the upside down world of the gospel. They each reveal to us a deeper truth of the great reversal that is the coming of God’s kingdom where love will have the last word.

Mt 4:12-23

Dear Friends, Today we have our first selection from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus introduces two themes that will be the foundation of his message throughout the year: the kingdom and the call.

It is helpful for us to remember the mentality of the people at the beginning of Jesus’s public life. For the Jews, at that time, Satan was in charge. His power for evil was seen in all of life: sickness, violence, injustice, poverty, division. Likewise, the oppressive Roman Empire was seen as an expression of this evil. Even the turbulence of nature was experienced as the display of Satan’s domination. The hope for the Messiah, and his gift of deliverance, was defined in relation to this overwhelming control of the demons’ devastating power.

Jesus enters the scene in the context of apparent helplessness in face of evil. The first words of his public ministry are: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Mt 4:17) In this declaration Jesus is telling us that the end of evil’s unchallenged reign of darkness and destruction is coming to an end. In his teaching, his miracles, and most of all, in his life and death, a new day is arriving. The battle of good and evil, the constant conflict of love and hatred, sickness and health are now in a final stage. Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom is the beginning of the end. Justice and peace, like the mustard seed, will ultimately prevail in this transformation. Jesus will strike the final blow to death in his resurrection.

We are called to repent. We need to open our hearts to this changing reality in the humble acceptance of our sinfulness and God’s gracious call to new life.

In the story of the call of the first disciples, Jesus it telling us that we have a role in the coming of the kingdom. Our participation is critical to our salvation. The life of the faithful disciple of Christ is basically an open-hearted acceptance of God’s call to love that is the kingdom.

As we see the first disciples leaving their boats and apparently everything else, we have a model of our personal call to walk with Jesus. Like Peter and the others, the initial call is extremely important. Yet, the Gospel story will show us that the “call of Jesus” is a repeating event always expanding the test of our generosity. It is seemingly never finished. New horizons keep us unsettled in our search for security and stability. In Peter, we will have a mirror to see the depth of our commitment that continuously comes up short. His story is a marvelous example of the need for humility ever seeking release from personal deception, blindness and ignorance.

Jesus reveals the unyielding insistence of God. At the same time, we encounter an equally effective demonstration of God’s patience and mercy. In spite of our human ambivalence, the divine call gently persists. Our faithful walking with the Gospel of Matthew will help us to be faithful to the call of the kingdom this year.

John 1:29-34

Dear Friends, St. Matthew is our guide as we walk with Jesus in the beginning of Ordinary Time of our liturgical year. I always look forward to a new journey that is the same but always deeper, always more inviting as we grow more in our personal maturity and in faith.

Today, however, we start out with St. John, and not only St. John, but seemingly the same story we had last week about Jesus’ encounter with the Baptist. This has got to tell us that we need to dig deeper for the message from John’s version of the baptism to grasp how it connects to St. Matthew’s journey.

A note about St. John’s Gospel will be helpful. John was written many years after all the other Gospels. It has a deeper and more mature understanding of the identity of Jesus. That is one of the reasons that it is so different than the other Gospels.

John realized that Jesus was the fullest and most perfect revelation of who God is. In the person of Jesus, we have that glorious discovery.

To see Jesus is to see God. Today’s “I am” statement as the Lamb of God is the first of many. They all are revelations directly about God in the person of Jesus. This is one of many titles John gives to Jesus such as the Light of the World, the Living Water, the Bread of Life, the Life and the Resurrection and, of course, the Way, the Life and The Truth.

There is a second point in John that is helpful as we begin our endeavor with Matthew. It is the title, “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. This title leads to a Messianic expectation in a different way. It was not the national liberator or the person of political and economic power. It was the beginning of a transformation of the idea of salvation and the nature of the Messiah that was much more meaningful and richer and universal than the common anticipation of the people in Jesus’s time. The seeds of the Suffering Servant Messiah were being sown right at the beginning.

We still struggle with the idea of a crucified Messiah rather than a “make me feel good Jesus” in our day also. We still are much more prone to see God as the answer to our problems than the God who will deliver us from our selfishness and call us to service and surrender on the road to Jerusalem with Jesus.

The message of today’s Gospel is clear and to the point. Jesus is the fullness of God’s revelation. He will lead us on the journey to salvation. We need to be faithful to his call because He has the answer to the deepest yearnings of the human heart.

As we begin the journey with St. Matthew we need to know the answer to our search is in an openness to God’s call in the person of His Son. Jesus is the Lamb of God leading us to the freedom of the Gospel message of Good News. This is why the Church invites us to begin with this passage at the beginning of John’s Gospel, a picture of Christ that is strong and forceful right from the very beginning.

Just as the disciples walked the dusty roads of Galilee, we, too, have the opportunity to walk once again with the Son of God made flesh who calls us out of darkness into the light.

The refrain of the Responsorial Psalm captures this Lamb of God image for us. Jesus is the servant, the Suffering Servant for a sinful, broken world. He has come to deliver us from the consequences of sin that is our heritage from Original Sin. We are called also to be servants in that cause of salvation. The Psalm has the answer for us: Here I am Lord; I come to do your will.

Matthew 3:13-17

Dear Friends, St. Matthew begins the public life of Jesus with the Baptism of the Son of God. In spite of the Baptist’s reluctance to baptize, Jesus tells John to go along with this public ritual. God has a plan and the baptism fits into that divine scheme. God wants Jesus to share the human experience including the ritual of repentance that John was celebrating. By his desire to be baptized, Jesus was showing a desire to plunge into the human reality. This was a reality in the ongoing conflict of good and evil, sin and grace. Ultimately, the depth of this sharing will lead to his death on the Cross.

In the meanwhile, in Mathew’s Gospel we are called to walk with Jesus once again in our life and in our liturgical year. Though we know the story of Jesus, we will never know it well enough. Likewise, we need to bring the story into our experience, an experience that is always entering into new and demanding stages our our journey. St. Matthew presents Jesus as our guide.

In today’s gospel passage we hear the Father sharing with us his love for his beloved Son. We need to let him touch our heart and to enlighten our mind s we may be enlightened to share in this love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Slowly, this continuing encounter will draw us into the freedom of the truth and the new energy of love that only Jesus can give.

We are encouraged to remember our own baptism on this feast of Jesus’ Baptism. Our baptism is a sacred commitment we tend so often to forget. This remembrance should encourage us to recommit ourselves to walk with Jesus in his role as servant. The call of justice should inflame our hearts to be present to all the needs of our neighbor. It should shed a light on the demands of our life-giving relationships and responsibilities. It is a call to be a healer, a reconciler and a proclaimer of the Good News in imitation of Jesus.

Our baptism is an initiation to service as a gospel decree. Like Jesus, we are called to hear the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. Like Jesus we are called to reach out to those in need in our midst. Like Jesus, we are to be a healing presence in the midst of a very conflictual world. Like Jesus, we are to extend a welcoming hand and a welcoming heart to all. This is our baptism call. This is our sacred bond to Jesus that must continue to deepen by a life of gospel responsibility that is energized by dying to self.

Each week in the Matthew version of the Jesus story we will be called into the gradual realization that we are loved beyond our wildest dreams. This love, if freely embraced, will set us free to journey to our own Jerusalem where we can die so we can live and give life to all.

Introduction

This is the second of eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.
Merton’s teaching on the dynamic of the True Self/False Self is a truly marvelous gift for our spiritual journey. However, it demands some basic understanding of our true goal in life. First and foremost, we must realize that our rightful destiny is union with God. To clarify this goal, which most often we distort by our talk of heaven, we need to appreciate several basic points.

We are imbedded with a fierce pull to selfishness and sin by our heritage of Original Sin.

We are in need of a purification and transformation to break loose of our sinful condition.

The call of the gospel message of Jesus is a constant movement away from the fallacies of the False Self to the saving freedom of the True Self.

The true destiny of our spiritual life is embracing this struggle of breaking loose from the bondage of the False Self. This means I was born with a mask if not a series of masks. The movement to the truth involves the shattering of the masks and accepting my true identity.

We only achieve the final and total victory of the True Self in either contemplation or death. Most of the positive victories in our life are at best partial and incomplete in their movement away from the power of the False Self.

In many ways, Merton anticipated the incarnational approach to spirituality called for by Vatican II. He emphasized human experience as the source and location of our experience of God. He saw God’s will in the concrete demands of daily life. God is seeking us in every circumstance of our life. On God’s part, it is always a call to love. It may be the alarm clock in the morning, the thrill of a little league game, a moment of crisis in the emergency room, the joy of a Thanksgiving dinner or the pain and joy of an empty nest. God is present with a call to life and love in every moment and circumstance. All of life is grace and a summoning into the True Self.

According to Merton, when we speak of the “I” we are most often referring to the superficial, empirical and external values of the False Self. All of the many characteristics of the False Self are deceitful because they are contingent. This means that they will pass away at death. This is a long, hard lesson for us to accept. A wonderful example to this truth is Jesus’ story of the man who had to build his new barns so he could pursue the illusionary freedom of his new security while, in fact, he had only hours to live. (Lk 16:15-21)

This transient “I” which holds center place in our consciousness is, at best, a mask disguising the abyss between the False Self and the True Self. Merton says this deeply rooted deception that permeates our life is going to pass away as smoke flowing out of a chimney.

The true task in our life is in a growing awareness of what is real. It demands breaking loose of the conventional wisdom that is a singular stumbling block to the freeing power of the gospel. We live in a darkness that we think is light. It is an extensive and challenging road that leads to Jesus, the Light of the World.

Almost everything in our consumer-driven society speaks of values contrary to the message of Jesus. We need to shatter the constraints of the mindset that sees security in our possessions, a constant desire to look younger, a pull to an endless search for the right medicine and stock portfolio that will all but assure us of immortality. The battle of the True Self and False Self will lead to a recognition of the desperate need for a self-knowledge and a stunning transformation of consciousness leading us to see our reality through the eyes of the gospel.

These changes will open Pandora’s Box for us. Our deeply held prejudices will surface into the light of day much to our dismay. Slowly, we will learn that all the idols were not limited only in the Old Testament. The idols of our self-deception that make us the center of reality are many and ever-present in our life. They even show up in the “respectable” practice of religion. We slowly learn that our faith journey is often a matter of convenience rather than conviction.

Breaking loose from the conventional wisdom of a comfortable religion, we are shocked to learn that being a “good Christian” is truly a Road to Jerusalem. Like the early disciples, we will need to travel in a faith that must face misunderstanding, confusion and doubt. The true Jesus is evolving out of the caricature of him that we have treasured for so long. Our long-cherished hopes and ambitions are disintegrating right before our eyes. The precious desires of respectability and recognition, security and acceptance, slowly will fade from our perspective. We begin to recognize our God in the weakness, rejection and total devastation of the Crucified Christ. The passage from the False Self to the True Self is a truly shattering experience.

This passage is a moment of deep transition in our life. Pleasure, success, health, money and. even life itself, all take on a sense of lesser values. Eventually, we will have to transcend pain, suffering and death. This all leads to the embrace of God’s loving call to life that is without end.

This victory is possible because, in spite of the pervasive consequences of Original Sin, God’s grace is more powerful, more universal and more overwhelming. God wants nothing more than that we accept God’s love and mercy as the full blossoming of the True Self.

Conclusion

In the beginning, it was stated how important it is to clearly understand that our final, non-negotiable goal is union with God, a calling that is eternal. Our life must be a constant quest to live the values of truth justice, mercy and love. This is God’s will for us. Our spiritual growth will unveil God’s presence in our daily lives. We will eventually see the utter importance of our daily responsibilities and relationships. They hold the gold of God’s will in the concrete. They will be a constant call away from selfishness; away from the dominance of the False Self. These commitments to our daily call to love and service will be a growing invitation away from the fluff of life to the substance of the gospel. God’s love and mercy become the means to our acceptance of the True Self. All of this search for life and truth is enhanced by a commitment to deep personal prayer.

Mt 2:1-12

Dear Friends, The Infancy Narratives in Matthew in chapters one and two are called a miniature Gospel. They affirm three basic points of the Good News of salvation:

God intends salvation for all.
Jesus is the long-awaited Messianic Savior.
The mission is to the whole world with all the variations of languages cultures and races.

Jesus speaks to all people. This includes a message of wisdom directed to all the variables of age, stage of life, culture and individual gifts. All are welcome at the table of life and salvation for the Bread of Life. All are enlightened by the Light of the World.

The Epiphany is commonly known as the feast of the Three Kings. The scriptural text says nothing about the number three. It also makes no mention that they are kings nor anything about their racial makeup. These are various cultural expressions developed over the centuries. The Gospel message of the feast is about the universality of God’s saving grace and love. All peoples are invited to the heavenly banquet.

Cultural and folkloric expressions have always enriched the proclamation of the Gospel. Often, these additions have been enlightening to the basic message of salvation. On the other hand, the message also has been deeply distorted with the overlay of pietistic exaggerations and even contradictions rooted in national and cultural prejudices.

One of the major hopes of Vatican II was to get us back to the central Gospel message, to put Jesus at the center. One of the most important developments of that holy gathering occurred a decade later when Pope Paul VI gave us one of the all-time great papal documents on the topic of Evangelization. Paul VI pointed out that the message of the Gospel is never free of cultural expressions but that we have to work to always go beyond any particular cultural, national or racial expression that limits the Gospel.

Whether it is the St. Patrick’s Day Parade or the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Cristo Negro of Esquipulas, or the celebration of Our Lady of Lourdes they all have a pull to limit the Gospel to some partial view of one group or nation. Today’s feast of the Epiphany opens us up to universality. We are invited to include everyone. This is no small challenge.

At the center of today’s feast is not the three kings, but the elusive truth that all human beings share a common dignity and destiny. Every human being is called to union with God. There is a gospel inclusiveness that is a never ending challenge to the followers of Christ. Our great obstacle is the endless ways that we divide and degrade, often in the name of Jesus.

Jesus relentlessly proclaimed the dignity of women and children. Jesus constantly attacked sin, disease and ethnicity as barriers to the common unity of all. The Church and all other religions and ideologies have struggled mightily down through history even to this mornings news with this call to universal acceptance.

Today’s Gospel account of the Magi is much more than a lovely tale about strange visitors coming in an unexpected way to a poor family. The Magi are a symbol of the universality of salvation. This is a message of Good News that informs us that this child is the long-awaited Son of David, the promised ruler and savior of Israel. He will open the gift of salvation to all peoples. No one needs a visa or a green card or residential papers at the crib! All are welcome!

Today’s Gospel tells us we need not travel far to seek Jesus. Exotic places do not have to be part of our search. The Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus, is always taking place in the midst of our life. Jesus is all around us. We need only look with faith to embrace Him in our brothers and sisters especially the poor and needy among us.

Some five decades ago, Vatican II stated the truth of this feast in this insightful and beautiful declaration:

"The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially those who are poor and afflicted in any way, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts."

Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965

Mt2:13-5, 19-23

Dear Friends. The fundamental message of our Christmas Season is that “the Word was made flesh” (Jn 1:14). The emphasis is not the baby story of Jesus. It is about the humanity unveiling the divinity, about grace and love entering a sinful world. The paradoxes of the Gospel penetrate the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew. The divine becoming human exposes the incessant pull of birth and death, innocence and suffering. This is the light and the way to our journey in our search for God.

The stuff of every family, regardless of the vast cultural differences of the relations of spouses and that of parents to children, is found in the Holy Family. It was through the institution of the family that God chose to relate to humanity. Jesus learned to live and to love in his relations to Mary and Joseph. In spite of the shock and trial of being refugees and immigrants and the horror of unimaginable violence in the Holy Innocents, love opened a way for them.

Matthew had an additional message beyond the family relationship of the three. He intended to offer us a prologue of the Gospel. Jesus was to summarize in the dramatic story of his infancy the saving history of Israel. In this way Jesus was modeling and addressing the Messianic expectations of Israel.

There are three stories in Matthew’s Infancy narrative: the escape to Egypt, the massacre of the Holy Innocents and the return from Egypt to Nazareth. They all mirror a particular experience of the Chosen People and Moses.

Our faith calls us to accept Jesus as truly human. In this genuine humanity he grew as we all do. He was part of a family, a truly holy family. It was in the context of these family relations that Jesus learned who God intended him to be. In his role as Savior, Jesus learned how to respond to life and its many mysteries of good and evil in the warmth and acceptance of his loving parents, Mary and Joseph.

The message for us today is clear. No matter what the cultural variations and limits, the family is the school of love. All our fundamental relations and responsibilities are filtered through the basic foundation of a family experience that gives us our personal identity. Our task is to build on the good points and eliminate the elements of selfishness and entitlement to let love flow openly in spite of all the inherent conflicts. Privilege and power in family life have to give way to acceptance, service and humility if we expect to continue to create a joyful and meaningful life for all.

Joseph and Mary found themselves drenched in confusion and bewilderment. They were uprooted, impoverished, exiled, threatened and isolated all in a matter of weeks. All this was the result of a child promised to be a Savior. Only the deepest commitment of faith and trust allowed them to continue the struggle. They were not following script. They were living an apparent tragedy of monumental depth. We need to ponder the beauty of their simplicity and generosity in the midst of a situation that would challenge any our lives.

Today’s feast invites us into this mystery of darkness and pain. We are invited to bring our story of family struggles to find light and direction. The message was eventually clear to Mary and Joseph as it will be to us as we walk in faith. God is with us no matter how desperate the circumstances. “The Word was made flesh” and we are gifted with the best all gifts, Emmanuel! God is with us!

As we celebrate this Christmas day the truth is that we have no place on earth and no individual that is free from the consequences of our first parents sin described in Genesis. It is so rampantly clear we need salvation. Wherever we look, be it far or near, we need peace. We need reconciliation. We need justice. We need mercy and compassion.

God knows this and he has sent his Son to engage us in the conversation that will bring this healing and this freedom. This is what we celebrate this Christmas day.

In the most consequential event in history, The Word has become Flesh. When we lose sight of the Child becoming one of us, we also miss another consequential point. We are called become one with the overwhelming Mystery that is Love, the God of Abraham. We are getting lost in the darkness on this great day of Light! Our celebration quickly fades into a passing illusion.

Putting Christ back into Christmas is surely the desire of most Christians. The intensity of the “Black Fridays” and “Cyber Mondays” seems to never let up. It is truly difficult to break through the message to “shop till you drop.” On a personal level, a great number of people try to balance the gross commercialism and the spiritual significance of the feast. An honest and intelligent reading of the Scriptures opens up the chasm between our celebrations and the great mystery of the feast. The truly radical message in Luke and Matthew of the birth of Christ go wildly beyond the catchy slogan, “Put Christ back into Christmas”. We are caught in a conundrum of the incredible cultural pressure of the commercial conquest of Christmas and the simple overwhelming act of love that is the Word made flesh.

We miss the point of Christmas if we do not open our eyes to the evil at our doorstep and in our heart. Christmas invites us to share in breaking the stranglehold of darkness by embracing the Light that is the Word become flesh. The often-hidden message is we are called not only to celebrate the Light. We need to become the Light to bring hope to our broken world by the way we live.

In our Christmas liturgies we use the Gospels of Luke, Matthew and John. We have created a sentimental and flowery description of the birth in Bethlehem that distorts Luke’s story. The commonly accepted version hides the uprooting, poverty and deep bewilderment of Mary and Joseph. How could God allow his Son to enter the world in such destitution?

Our “Silent Night” is the sentimental interpretation of the event that leaves little room for the true message of Luke, and practically no room for Matthew’s description of the story. Both evangelists are inviting us into the deepest and truest dimension of our reality, a graciousness that is always calling us out of the darkness into the light. The evangelists’ harsh and challenging description of the birth offers a suitable backdrop for God’s ultimate conversation with a broken humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.

An important point to remember is that both Matthew and Luke describe the birth of Jesus as an overture for the entire gospel message. The child in the manger is the beginning of a journey that leads to the Messiah on the Cross. God speaks to us in both events that are of the one reality: God’s saving love for us. A few cultures capture this profound truth by using the wood of the creche for the wood of the cross for their Good Friday celebration. Matthew’s story emphasizes the connection of Jesus’ birth to the Jewish longing for the Messiah as the Son of David. This Messiah in Matthew is Emmanuel, God with us. The reaction to the birth, seen in Herod’s effort to manipulate the Wise Men, prefigures all the intrigue and violence that will happen in the journey to Golgotha.

While Luke has a strong element of song and joy, the somber note in Matthew continues in the exile into Egypt and the killing of the Innocents. Mary’s infant avoids the slaughter by divine intervention only to face the Father’s will in the Garden.

Matthew’s version of the conflict of good and evil features the Holy Family and Herod. It looks back at Moses and the Pharaoh and looks forward to the saving death that concludes in the resurrection. The world Matthew is portraying in Jesus’ birth is a portrait of our world today with our unwelcome migrants and sexual slavery, gangs and abuse in families, grossly unjust distribution of wealth and vast investment in arms, the ever-present curse of racism all crystallized in Putin’s war and the horror of the people of Gaza. On top of it all, we hardly have a newscast that does not start out with the ravages of climate change.

From the moment of her call to be the Mother, Mary faced the irony of utter joy and wonder in her heart against the continual disorientation, confusion and total displacing of her plans and events in her daily life.

Both Matthew and Luke are addressing the question that pervades all the Gospels: What kind of Messiah will Jesus be?

Our cultural and commercial celebration of Christmas is filled with an answer that Jesus challenged at all times in his life, ministry and teachings and especially in his death and resurrection. He will not be a Messiah isolated from the poor and marginalized. He will not be draped in wealth and power. He will be a Messiah of sacrifice and service wrapped in swaddling clothes. The salvation Jesus offers as a suffering Messiah is not one of the easy fix. It is a salvation that calls for our purification and self-giving leading to a personal transformation and even the washing of the feet of our neighbor in need!

Luke’s message of hope and joy is more wonderous in the context of this full gospel message.

Just a few months before his death, Archbishop Romero captured the spiritual depth of Christmas. He said, “Today, we recall God’s reign is now in this world, and that Christ has inaugurated the fullness of time. Christ’s birth attests that God is now marching with us in history – that we are not alone, and that our aspiration for peace, for justice, for a reign of divine law, for something holy is far from earth’s realities. Nevertheless, we can hope for all these things, not because we human beings are able to construct that realm of holiness which God’s holy words proclaim but because the builder of a reign of justice, of love and peace is already in the midst of us.”

These words, on the Christmas message of hope, draw me into my Christmas story which I experienced a few years ago. I was at a police station filling a report on my stolen phone. Waiting for my report, a young mother and her six-month-old son sat next to me. I shared how crazy it was to lose your phone. She responded, “If you want to know about crazy, you need to have a violent and abusive husband.” In our conversation I learned she was an immigrant from a Muslim country only here two and a half years. Even though they both still live in the same building, the situation between her and her husband is so bad, they must exchange the child at the police station. This happens four days of the week when she goes to school. She is pursuing a Doctor’s degree in clinical psychology.

What struck me about this scene was how hopeful she was despite being an abused woman, a Muslim immigrant and the mother of a young child in a failed marriage.

It was obvious to me that the message of hope and the grace of the Infant of Bethlehem is for all people and at all times even if they do not have the label Christian. The Word made flesh has exposed a reality pregnant with life and love for all people at all times no matter how challenging the circumstances.

Mt 1:18-24

Dear Friends, No matter how much we try, it is a truly an uphill battle to truly grasp, “Jesus is the reason for the Season!”

Over our lifetimes we have been the recipients of billion upon billions of advertising dollars to immerse us in a neatly packaged idea of a commercial Christmas. It is a subtle and attractive enticement. In the end, however, it has little, if anything to do with the Christ of the Gospels.

In the opening prayer of today’s liturgy, the Church, like a voice in the wilderness, is calling us back to Jesus in the stark beauty and wonder of the gospel message. It directs us to be aware of the Angel’s message of the Incarnation. Then, in almost shocking contrast to our vision for the Season, has us pray that we may “by his Passion and cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection.”

It is a message that cuts through all the fluff and deception. It tells us if we really are going to enter the mystery of the Babe in the crib, we need to accept the totality of the message. This is actually only possible by accepting the Crucified and Risen Christ. In this broader view, we are able to grasp the genuine truth of the Bethlehem experience. It is the beginning of the final battle of good and evil that is opening the darkness of our life and world to a new Light of the World that is Christ.

In this approach to the Christmas mystery, Dec. 26th or any other day of the year is not a letdown of the emotional high when we clean up the mess left by the commercial event. The true experience of Christmas engulfs us in a message of hope every day.

So, today, in this final Sunday before Christmas, we are invited to ponder two clearly comforting and revealing phrases in our Scriptural lessons.

In today’s Gospel story the two phrases are, “be not afraid” and “Emmanuel” which means God is with us. These phrases mark the change in focus of the Advent message. The Incarnation of the coming Christmas Season is moving to center stage. Each of today’s readings is on this theme. Emanuel is born in time to be forever with his people as the new presence of a loving and saving God.

While the phrase “be not afraid” is used over three hundred times in Scripture, the Infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew convey this expression four times. It is always related to the supportive presence of God in a challenging situation such as Joseph’s dilemma with Mary’s pregnancy.

Just like the almost destructive ambiguity that Mary and Joseph faced, our lives are never free of the consequences of evil. Sickness, ignorance, prejudice, violence, and hatred come at us in all manner of ways. This is the reality of living with the seemingly endless battle of good and evil in the events of our day. No sooner has Covid been reduced as a threat, than we have Putin’s war in the Ukraine or the apparently endless violence in the Middle East. These incredible horrors confront us with human carnage, destruction of the environment, threat of nuclear disaster and the waste of all these resources to the neglect of the poor and hungry. This gross manifestation of evil affects everyone.

“Emmanuel” reveals God’s faithfulness and involvement in all human reality. God is always present calling us into the mystery of new life and new love amidst the evil. On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we begin to recall the great event of God becoming human in the person of Jesus. This is the ultimate revelation of God’s saving involvement in our broken world. Our challenge is to be open and accepting of the call on God’s terms.

While “be not afraid” and “Emmanuel” are profoundly comforting statements, Mary and Joseph needed all the support they could get. If you do the minimal analysis of their situation, the challenge to their relationship was enormous. Anytime the betrothed says she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit, where does the dialogue go from there? Add the fact that the child is to be the Savior of his people, the only saving grace would have to be divine intervention. That’s what happened!

Mary and Joseph had to dig deep into the comforting and reassuring message of the angel to make any kind of sense of the reality of their poverty and uprooting that was to be part of the crisis that surrounded them. It truly challenged them to look with faith on the baby who needed a diaper change and see hope for the world.

On this fourth Sunday of Advent as we recall the wonder of God’s becoming flesh, we are invited to embrace the great gift of Emmanuel. God is with us in love, mercy and saving grace in the person of Jesus, the son of Mary. Our challenge is to respond to this call of love on God’s terms.

For Mary, it was just the beginning of a long journey of confusion and bewilderment. Only her faith and trust could comfort her in the midst of a perplexing series of events that ultimately brought her to the foot of the Cross.

When you think about it, it is similar to our journey! It is no wonder that the great prayer of Advent is so relevant to our life. Come, Lord Jesus!

Merton’s Gift Leading To Deep Personal Prayer

Recently, I had the opportunity to read, reflect on and pray with some of the many wonderful books of Thomas Merton. He was definitely a person of prominence as a wisdom and prophetic figure in 20th century America.

Most of his writings deal with a more advanced spirituality. I am always on the search to gather information to help people in the beginning of the journey of deep personal prayer. Two items popped out to me as truly fitting the message for my blogs on the first stages of prayer.

These two items are Merton’s definition prayer, and his teaching on the False Self and the True Self. In both of these subjects, Merton points to their importance in achieving the final goal of prayer, contemplation. I would like to offer a series of reflections on these important insights of Merton. The two Merton items are remarkably helpful in the early stages of the quest for deep personal prayer.

In a brief analysis of the two items, I hope to describe how they connect to some of the most significant factors that support growth in deep personal prayer.

Merton’s Definition of Prayer

From the beginning of my writings on deep personal prayer, which began almost ten years ago, I have used Merton’s definition of prayer. Prayer is yearning for the awareness of the presence of God, a personal understanding of God’s word, knowledge of God’s will and the capacity to hear and obey.

There are some immediate consequences that flow from this approach to prayer.

It centers on God and not ourselves.
It is about our personal transformation flowing from God’s word and will.
It centers on a hunger in our heart for God rather than on our personal needs.
These three initial insights offer a great beginning of a spirituality that will support a continual growth in prayer leading to a life rooted in gospel vales.

False Self and True Self

Merton gives extensive treatment to this fundamental teaching about the spiritual journey. Most of it is related to the need to pursue the final stage of prayer, contemplation. In fact, his conception is that the True Self is only totally achieved in contemplation or at the moment of death.

I believe his teachings on the topic also offer great guidance and highlight the meaningful implications for those in the beginning stages of the prayer journey.

In treating the False Self, Merton begins by pointing out that we are dominated by false values that ultimately, not only deceive us, but lead us nowhere. Merton has a long list of adjectives that at various times he uses in place of his main describing word, false. They are: superficial, empirical, outward, contingent, private, shadow, illusory, fictitious, smoke, petty and external. These all contribute to his principal message: to describe the consequences of Original Sin in the daily human experience.

The True Self offers a goal of freedom and transformation, and in our search for God, a return to our original innocence. It happens as we live the gospel values. Its final expression is when we reach our goal, union with God.

Along the way, there are several helpful activities that facilitate this movement from an all-engrossing selfishness to walking with Jesus. These contributing elements are self-knowledge, transformation of consciousness, detachment, elimination of addiction, humility and a growing focus on Jesus and his message.

These are all indicators and facilitators of the transition from the False Self to the True Self. Deep personal prayer is central to this activity which is the basic stuff of the spiritual life.

I hope to flesh out these positive contributions to our Christian life in search of the gospel in a series of blog reflections. In particular, I would like to connect several of the gospel stories, characters and parables to our personal passage from the dominance of our False Self to the life-giving pursuit of our True Self. In the process we are basically seeking to share Paul’s reality: “Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives within me.” (Gal 2:20)

Mt 11:2-11

Dear Friends,

In today’s Scripture, Isaiah draws a poetic picture of the Jews walking away into freedom after fifty years of anguish and exile in Babylonia. He uses his beautiful and poetic language to mirror the great event of the Old Testament, the Exodus from slavery to the Promised Land.

Today’s Gospel is about John the Baptist’s question, “Are you the one who is to come?” This plunges us into the mystery we celebrate this Advent season. Each of us in the depths of our heart has a basic yearning for Jesus. We long for him to bring salvation for us and for our world.

The message of Advent has many rich and beautiful dimensions. Most center on the coming of the Lord. Today we are called to experience this coming in the saving acts of Jesus as seen in the past and experienced in our life today. Faith will draw us into the wonderous truth that Jesus is truly the one for us and our world.

We have to see our life’s struggles in this context of these biblical journeys to freedom and healing. Jesus says, “Go tell John what you hear and see.” (Mt 11:4) The real message of Advent makes us able to see that not only are the blind given sight but the lame who now are able to leap like stags are even ready to go Dancing with the Stars. This is because the Advent message tells us that our reality is pregnant with a graciousness. The Advent implications for today reveal Jesus as still bringing restoration on the way to our original innocence. We are, indeed, being set free in our lives today. We do need to let the cry of Advent burst forth from our hearts: Come, Lord Jesus! Even more, we need to let this hunger in our hearts for a new day direct us to live the Gospel message. We have to walk in the footsteps of Jesus today. Our lived commitment brings the transformation of reality we yearn for right now. A life lived in love is the answer to our Advent prayer: Come Lord Jesus! The fullness of salvation we long for in the future will take place now when we walk in love in the footsteps of Jesus.

Jesus’ message to John in today’s Gospel is clear. There is a new day breaking through in his conquest of evil and the demonic power in his healing miracles. Just as the return of the Exiles from Babylonia mirrored the freedom of the great act of deliverance in the journey of people out of Egypt, God continues to manifest the great saving action of Jesus in our day. We need to see with eyes of the heart. The salvation we long for is taking place right now when we are sharing the compassion and love that Jesus continues in our day. This calls us to tear down the barriers. This calls us to work for reconciliation always and everywhere. This calls us to hear the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth.

The gift of hope leads us out of fear and despair to a life of action and commitment to the wonder of the Gospel message.

The battle of good and evil still dominates our world. The pull to freedom, the search for happiness and security still only find a lasting solution in Jesus. Jesus alone still possesses both the message and the power to draw us into eternal life. We still are the blind, the lame and the sinners that need healing and mercy. The answer to our cry for deliverance from the overwhelming power of evil in our day awaits us. That is what we pray for in our Advent prayer, Come Lord Jesus!

While we wait, we have to address our life situation now. St. Teresa of Avila gives us the direction in her classic Book Marker Prayer:

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing make you afraid.
All things are passing.
God alone never changes.
Patience gains all things.
If you have God you will want for nothing.
God alone suffices.

Matt 3:1-12

Dear Friends. Advent is an invitation to ponder the Christian perspective on time. Time, for the Christian, is not the relentless and isolated moving of the the hands on the clock. It is not the mindless and purposeless waiting for Godot. The Christ event has made time pregnant with the endless possibility of new life. Time is the messenger of God calling us into a gracious future where a new day will prevail.

In Advent, we see the mystery of time intimately connected to the past, present and future in the Christ event. The past recalls in the Incarnation of the Word. The present is the encounter with God’s grace leading us to walk with Jesus. The future is the final completion of Christ’s victory in his Second Coming, the final fulfillment of both our personal destiny and human history.

To understand this mystery of time, we look back to the events of our saving past. Today, it is Isaiah who presents the beautiful passage of hope that foreshadows the coming of Christ. These seemingly impossible relationships will only be possible by the divine intervention of the Messianic presence in Christ both at Bethlehem and at the conclusion of our historic venture

“Justice shall be the band around his waist,

And faithfulness a belt upon his hips.

Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,

And the leopard shall lie down with the kid;

The calf and the young lion shall browse together,

With a little child to guide them.

The cow and the bear shall be neighbors,

Together their young shall rest;

The lion shall eat hay like the ox.

The baby shall play by the cobra’s den,

And the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.

There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain;

For the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord,

As water covers the sea” (Is 11:5-9).

Advent, more than anything else, is a time of joyful and purpose-filled waiting for God who has assured us of his coming. Because we already know the one we are waiting for, the best way to anticipate his coming is to become like him. We need to let our life express the joy and hope that is the central message of the Advent season. We need to be the instruments of peace and justice, of service and healing that anticipate the new day we long for.

The Gospel today draws us to John the Baptist. It is a call to prepare for Christ as the total mystery of the Word made flesh, not a nostalgic return to the beauty of Bethlehem. We need to recall the entire Jesus event. This includes his challenging message and the saving events of the death and resurrection. In longing for Jesus, we understand John’ message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:20). This demands that we change our lives as we prepare for the coming of the Lord.

These changes will happen as part of personal and communal conversion. Along with our personal and communal transformation, we recognize that we are responding to the imitative of God’s call. This Advent season reminds us of the overwhelming mercy that is revealed in the coming of Jesus into our life and into our history.

The waiting of Advent is not like the drudgery of getting stuck in traffic nor is it the seemingly endless line in the market. Nor is it the anxiety-driven time waiting for the results of a test or other life-changing news from a doctor. Advent waiting is a joyful anticipation of new life. This new life demands a creative openness that leads to repentance and conversion. It means we welcome the God who continually comes and knocks at the door of the human heart. Advent leads us to develop a spirituality of watchfulness that opens to the appreciation of the giftedness of today and hope for tomorrow. We prepare for all of this Advent waiting with the special prayer of the season, Come, Lord Jesus!

Introduction

I am going to offer the following eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.

Merton portrays the True Self as an ever-present invitation into a glorious future that is never achieved with the exception of an effective purification of contemplation or the experience of death. Nevertheless, it is a driving force in the definitive human endeavor to seek God.

This powerful attraction of the True Self calls us into the depths of our being where God dwells. The foundation of the Christian life is this. To truly embrace the True Self in God, one has to leave oneself and give it to others in love. This is almost always a partial and incomplete effort for most of us. The True Self’s clash with the False Self is always an experience calling us into a new future. The grace for us is in the seemingly endless struggle to choose the True Self and to forsake the False Self’s plea for indulgence, self-enhancement and glorification of our bondage to self-centeredness. This is the battle of the spiritual life. This is the breaking loose of the affliction of our self-absorption to be free walk with Jesus.

Merton’s approach to spirituality is very human and down-to-earth. For Merton, the true relevance of the True Self/False Self dynamic flows from an authentic spirituality that affects every level of life. It responds to life as experienced by ordinary people. In contrast, most distorted spiritualities usually end up in fanaticism or elitism far removed from the common experience of most individuals.

Matthew 24:37-44

Dear Friends, Advent invites us into a new year in which we journey with the Gospel of Matthew. This is a graced time when we are summoned once more to an encounter with Christ as our Savior and Lord. The Advent Season first guides us to prepare for the Second Coming and, in the final days, to plunge into the mystery of Word becoming flesh.

Advent has us look backward, so we can look forward. Both views call us to live in the present. Advent is not a penitential season but a celebration. We are called to rejoice in the gift of Christ. We recall He is coming today just as He came in the poverty of the first crib. A special element of Advent is the challenge of making the Second Coming produce consequences for our daily living. Jesus emphasized the suddenness and surprise of the final hours. There will be a swift judgement that sifts good from evil with a decisiveness that is final and absolute. However, he did not call us to do anything different beyond the utter importance of our ordinary responsibilities and relationships. Both in the incarnation and the Second coming we have a powerful invitation to embrace the gift of today, the now of the present moment, as a concrete opportunity to walk with Christ.

Isaiah is the featured Old Testament author of the Advent Season. The beauty of his poetry is filled with hope for deliverance and longing for the final expression of God’s saving power.

Matthew’s message in this time of Advent, is based on the fundamental confidence flowing from the Christian message. Christ will return in glory and with him will come the fullness of redemption. A new day is coming. Matthew is emphatic: we need to be ready.

This longing for the return of the Lord mirrors the passionate longing expressed in Isaiah. Yet it is incredibly enriched and supported by our gift of the Gospel reality. Paul tells us, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” (Romans 13:14) So, we join together in our Advent liturgies and in our lives to proclaim the Advent yearning: Come Lord Jesus!

In the meanwhile, Isaiah, Paul and Matthew have a clear and simple message for us. Live today in faithfulness to the Lord. Enter into our reality. We do not know the future but we are gifted with the present. We are called to live the Gospel with acts of mercy and forgiveness, with concern for justice and the constant struggle “to beat the swords into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks.” Isaiah 2:4)

Swords and plowshares are not our ordinary arsenal in our daily battles with one another. We often have looks and words and attitudes that are up to the job of antagonizing our neighbor. Our anger and resentments join with our prejudices to create walls of isolation and hostility. We have a way of making our time, interests and convenience the measure of our actions, all to the detriment of fraternal charity. More often than not this is done with a facade of righteousness. Advent is a time to put away the weapons of hostility and division and isolation. It is a time to pray with a truly humble heart, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Advent challenges us to look at the lost opportunities, the time wasted and misdirected. We all have more than enough to account for. Advent calls us to gather ourselves together and live today, with the gift of the present moment. Tomorrow is in God’s hands. We indeed need to cry out, Come Lord Jesus! A life seeking to walk with Jesus right now makes our Advent Prayer all the more real and focused.

God is very capable of keeping the schedule. He will do his job of finishing the program at the appropriate time. It is quite normal for us to use that familiar question of our youth, Are we there yet? God will let us know. In the meanwhile, our task is to be faithful to the Gospel message and express the hunger in our heart for a new day with the beautiful Advent prayer, Come Lord Jesus!

The Thirty Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Lk 23: 35-43

Dear Friends, On this feast of Christ the King, we celebrate a “kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace” (Preface of Christ the King). We are asked to gaze again on the Crucified Christ. We are driven to ponder Mary’s words: How can this be?

The Angel said to Mary, “You shall name him Jesus. He will be great and called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father….And Mary said, “How can this be?” (Lk 1:31-34)

We have journeyed the year with St. Luke’s Gospel, a Gospel where the theme of reversal is a dominant message. We have been invited into the mystery where the last shall be first, and the first last. We have heard the strange teaching where we have to lose our life to save it. Even stranger, we were told to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…to the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other as well.” (Lk 6:27-29)

As we contemplate the mangled body of our King, so many events of the Gospel journey seem like a long-faded past. The miracle worker and the healer is hidden in the agony of the Cross. Peter’s boat overflowing with the great catch, the multiplication of the loves and fishers, Bartimeaus jumping for joy with his new sight, the penitent woman rejoicing in her tears and so many other events unveiling the gracious possibilities in life. We have to ask, how is such a radical turn to darkness possible? The contradiction of the Cross goes so beyond any possible human understanding. Yet we ponder and see a crucified Savior and Messiah, a King in total poverty and apparent defeat. A leader has been abandoned by almost all. With good reason we need to ask, How can this be?

One part of the Passion of Jesus is the startling expression of his service and compassion for others in spite of his personal suffering and rejection at all levels. In the garden, he heels the ear of one of the mob. After the trial, he reaches out to Peter in sympathy and tenderness. On the road to Calvary, Jesus expresses his kindheartedness for the suffering women. On the cross, he forgives the Good Thief. With a heart unlocked by this compassionate love, Dismas is able to see a Savior and a King. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” (Lk 23:43)

This is the King at the deepest time of personal loss and denunciation. His Kingship is clearly an emptiness of self and openness to God in the brothers and sisters.

The mockery of the rulers, the soldiers and even the unrepentant thief holds the seed of the answer. “Save yourself.” Indeed, hidden in all the darkness of evil’s apparent victory is the reality of salvation for all.

In this crucified King and Savior, we encounter the deepest wisdom of God. Jesus’ greatest power is revealed in the manifestation of his weakness. The truly poor misguided leaders speak the truth in their sanctimonious petition to “the Christ” and “the Chosen One”. Their plea “save yourself” was, in fact, addressing the ultimate and most consequential event in human history, the universal saving death of Jesus Christ. This was the gift of eternal life being offered to all of humankind.

Luke’s pattern of reversal, the up side down world of Jesus’ Gospel, has its ultimate expression in today’s Gospel: death giving way to life! It is not only the good thief, but all of us, who celebrate the victory of a loving God answering our question, How can this be? The unconditional love of God revealed in Jesus Crucified and Jesus Risen tells us how this can be! Alleluia!

Evangelization and Contemplation: Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus
Over the past several years, I have called upon Teresa of Avila and Pope Francis to help explore the riches of our Catholic spirituality. I would like to go to the well of their insights and wisdom once more for help understanding the call to universal holiness. I will use the Pope’s call to evangelization and Teresa’s summons to deeper prayer in the Carmelite tradition.

These seemingly very different persons offer much clarity for our directive to proclaim the Good News of a loving God to a world floundering in a search for meaning and direction. In both The Joy of the Gospel and The Interior Castle, we find a vast font of wisdom to guide us on our pilgrimage to God in the confusion and brokenness of our lives and of our world. Both the Jesuit Pope and the saintly Carmelite never tire of telling us to keep our eyes and our heart fixed on Jesus. Both agree that one of the major consequences of this continual encounter with Jesus will be a new and inviting awareness of the poor and those on the margin in our midst.

Challenge of Evangelization and Need for Contemplation
For Francis, the emphasis in this quest for universal holiness calls us to share Jesus’ call to evangelize. For Teresa, deeper prayer opening to contemplation, is the most important experience. These two ostensibly different concepts and experiences are mutually supportive in a search for God.

Francis tells us at the beginning of The Joy of the Gospel that bringing Jesus into our life frees us from narrowness and self-absorption. We move steadily to the development of ourselves in accord with God’s plan for us. We want to share the love we have discovered with others. This personal and spiritual growth moves us to share the Good News, to evangelize all we meet in life.

Francis refers to a statement by the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops: “Life grows by giving it away, and it weakens in isolation and comfort. Indeed, those who enjoy life most are those who leave security on the shore and become excited by the mission of communicating life to others.” Francis is simply adding his voice on the theme of evangelization to a message expressed many decades earlier by Paul VI and repeated by John Paul II and Benedict XVl. We are all called to proclaim the gospel and, in doing so, to transform the world and ourselves by giving new life in Jesus Christ. We are all summoned to be evangelizers, missionary disciples.

This is new to us. This is not a common vision we share as followers of Christ in today’s Church. For many, the idea of evangelization is limited and often distorted. True evangelization means far more than to stand on the corner holding a sign: “Jesus saves!” Likewise, most respect others’ religion and simply are not comfortable talking about the richness of our faith. Religion is a private affair in the usual social interchange we share. This is especially so on personal issues but also to a degree in the social, economic and political realm.

Vatican II set the stage for this renewed challenge of evangelization. The Council members set out a clear call to universal holiness. This too is a mandate that has not been part of the generally accepted understanding of what it means to be a good Christian. Francis and Teresa offer a deeper and more extensive view of what it involves for us to walk with Jesus in the God-given task to evangelize and to seek God’s gift of contemplation. We are summoned to be holy and we are directed to share the Good News of God’s love in Christ both in our life and in our actions. Evangelization, understood in the fullness of its meaning, is a radical breakthrough in our awareness and acceptance of our Christian calling. Francis asks us to proclaim the depth of God’s love in Christ as we enter more deeply into the Mystery. He quotes John of the Cross, the great Doctor of Mysticism, in describing this process: “The thicket of God’s wisdom and knowledge is so deep and so broad that the soul, however much it has come to know of it, can always penetrate deeper within it” (Spiritual Canticle, 36, 10).

Contemplation, a new and different experience of God, where God takes a fresh and active role, normally is the result of a faithful and generous journey with Jesus. Teresa of Avila points out us a clear and direct path to this special development.

In the centuries following the Reformation certain elements of the tradition were either neglected or misrepresented. Evangelization and contemplation were two significant victims of neglect and misrepresentation. The distortion and neglect of both evangelization and contemplation led to minimizing holiness for most members of the Church. Contemplation was specifically twisted to be understood as the privilege of a chosen few rather than the normal consequence of a faithful Christian life. Evangelization was both diminished and considered primarily an exclusive task of the clerical faction of the Church.

Like its invitation into so many other buried treasures, Vatican II has directed us to recover the hidden riches of these profound resources, a central one being holiness for all the disciples of Christ. This deeper encounter with the message of Christ and the call to a more profound experience of prayer are a passageway to our most authentic experience of God.

Lk 21:5-19

Dear Parishioners,
As the Church Year draws to a rapid conclusion, the Gospel message is once again a story of the end. Last week it was a personal ending. This week it is the end of the world.

Luke’s description in today’s Gospel is the destruction of the Temple. It is the first of three destructions in this chapter of Luke. The next two are of Jerusalem (Lk 21:20-24) and the world (Lk 21:25-28).

This passage addresses the early Christians and us. Our first ancestors in the faith expected a quick and almost effortless passage to glory on their acceptance of Christ as Savior. No such luck. Rejection, conflict and persecution shortly followed their conversion. Slowly they had to delve more deeply into the Gospel message to find meaning in their new puzzling, and at times, frightening world.

It is the same for us. We come to Jesus seeking comfort, and soon, much of our new world is caught in the challenge of walking with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem.

Jesus’ message today is that the struggle will continue to the end. Our journey of discipleship is only possible in his footsteps on the road to Jerusalem where death gives way to life. Good and evil will be our daily fare until the end. Whether it be the call to martyrdom or dealing with the in-laws, whether it is the loss of a child or the aging process, whether it is a loved one lost in a destructive addiction or the crisis of a Church floundering in search of the Gospel, the weeds and the wheat will be the stuff of our experience till the end.

Jesus’ message is very clear about what we should do when the end is at hand. We do not need to store up food and supplies in our bunker on the mountain or in the basement. What we need to do is continue to serve and love our brothers and sisters in the context of our life’s responsibilities.

When our little world, locked into prejudice, is threatened when immigrants are no longer convenient, we need to seek justice that recognizes their humanity and inherent dignity and rights. When our world of stereotype and distortion is crushed by the emersion of gays as equal in our humanity we need to flee from our fear and ignorance to a new heart filled with compassion and acceptance. There are many of our worlds that will continue to crumble as we embrace the light of the Gospel. In the process we need to be faithful to the struggle on the journey to Jerusalem.

The word Jesus has for us today is that the grace is in the struggle. Yet, the comfort Jesus assures us is gradually perceived in a growing awareness of a loving presence. Slowly we grasp that we have been lifted up on eagles’ wings. The dangers that have haunted us somehow fade into oblivion. Jesus calls us to persevere, to be patient, to be faithful as we experience the destruction our little worlds of comfort and prejudice on the way towards the end of the world. When we will be hated because of His Name we are called to stay faithful. We need not be afraid. He guarantees “not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will be saved”. (Lk 21:19)

In Christ,

Fr. Tracy O’Sullivan, O. Carm.

THE JUSTICE PERSPECTIVE

THE NEED FOR AN INTEGRATED SPIRITUALITY

The traditional spiritualities such as the Carmelite, Jesuit, Franciscan, Benedictine and others have been challenged to adjust to some of the fundamental changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council. The insights of this historic event unleashed the power of the social message of the gospel. The final document of Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World had this to say on that topic: “A new humanism is emerging in the world in which man and woman are primarily defined by their responsibility toward their brothers and sisters and toward history.”

Vatican II made it clear that there is no part of human life and history that is not affected by faith and the gospel. Grace touches all of life whether it is personal, in the home, the workplace, the political arena, the theatres, the stadiums or any and all social reality. All of God’s created handiwork is influenced by the saving presence of God’s grace. An isolated “natural order” is a fiction far removed from the divine dominion that encompasses all creation.

Basically, this call for a new humanism is a summons to adjust our religion, to refocus how and where we experience God, to direct our attention and to be open to this world. Many of us were raised to understand our central faith project as saving our souls. Our attention was focused on “the spiritual”, “the other worldly.” Events in this world simply formed the context for this fundamental personal endeavor. Carmelite spirituality, like all other traditional spiritualities, had been distorted over time to exaggerate the personal and private to the neglect of the wider picture of the social and historical, including the actual experience of our daily lives.

Pope Francis, in his beautiful and transforming Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, speaks of our need to change our ways so we can bring justice to the poor. His message is completely in tune with the gospel, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the long and magnificent tradition of the social teachings of the Church. Francis lays out a concrete program that is founded on a mature development of Vatican II’s message. The problem many people have with his call for involvement is rooted in a narrow and damaging understanding of spirituality.

Slowly, we have come to realize that Jesus did not preach a message of just saving one’s soul. He proclaimed the coming of the kingdom. His message includes saving one’s soul but also concern for this world, its history and the struggle for a just society. The gospel is about the kingdom of God (Lk 4:43); it is about loving God who reigns in our world. To the extent that He reigns within us, the life of society will be a setting for universal fraternity, justice, peace and dignity. Both Christi preaching and life, then, are meant to have an impact on society. We are seeking God’s kingdom: “Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6:33) Jesus’ mission is to inaugurate the kingdom of his Father; he commands his disciples to proclaim the good news that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Mt 10:7) Pope Francis highlights this call to social involvement over and over in The Joy of the Gospel. Here is one example: “We cannot ignore the fact that in cities human trafficking, the narcotics trade, the abuse and exploitation of minors, the abandonment of the elderly and infirm, and the various forms of corruption and criminal activity take place … The unified and complete sense of human life that the gospel proposes is the best remedy for the ills of our cities … But to live out human life to the fullest and to meet every challenge as a leaven of gospel witness in every culture and in every city will make us better Christians and bear fruit in our cities.” 1

This is the Justice Perspective. It involves both a personal and a social transformation. It calls us to experience a spirituality that includes the just transformation of our society. This is the prophetic dimension of the gospel which has played a minimal role in the lives of many if not most Christians for centuries.

The Synod on Justice in 1971 captured this fundamental call to expand our horizons in this historic statement: “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as constitutive dimension of preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”

In his response to the environmental crisis, Laudato Si, Pope Francis makes a strong point about concern for the poor. He states that we must always include a social approach in our response to the gravity of the ecological issues that confront us. We must constantly include action on behalf of the poor. Justice has a vital role in uniting our response to both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

Praying Alone Together

SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Mt. 5:17-37

FIFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mt. 5:13-16

THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Matthew 5:1-12

THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mt 4:12-23

SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

John 1:29-34

THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD

Matthew 3:13-17

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-2

Introduction

EPIPHANY

HOLY FAMILY

Mt2:13-5, 19-23

CHIRISTMAS REFLECTION

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Mt 1:18-24

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-1

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Mt 11:2-11

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Matt 3:1-12

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF

Introduction

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Matthew 24:37-44

CHRIST THE KING

Lk 23: 35-43

CALL TO HOLINESS-4

THIRTY THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Lk 21:5-19

CALL TO HOLINESS-3

THE JUSTICE PERSPECTIVE

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