PATHWAY TO PERSONAL RENEWAL

The Carmelite tradition states clearly that we are called to union with God. This is the goal of our full human development. This is the pilgrimage returning to the innocence of Paradise. We achieve this by a process of purification and transformation that begins with our effort to live an authentic and prayerful life. It concludes by the action of God in the state of contemplation. Our Christian life leads us through prayer to the experience of God that purifies and transforms us.

St. Teresa of Avila had a high regard for vocal prayer. For her, the key point was that we need to pay attention to whom we are praying along with the message of the words of the prayer. The common practice of mental prayer in her day was called meditation. It involved using the mind and the imagination to stir the heart. It led her to one of her more famous sayings, “For mental prayer in my opinion, is nothing else than intimate sharing between friends. It means taking the time to be alone with Him whom we know loves us.” (L 8.5)

Teresa always saw prayer’s purpose as drawing us into a deeper loving relationship with Christ. Deep personal prayer whether vocal or mental was the pathway to this all-important relationship.

Effects of Prayer

Regular prayer will always bring us to the challenge of changing our lives. The journey to the center and its encounter with our loving God in prayer is not cost-free. Prayer discloses what God wants in a way that confronts our blind spots. The nature of deep personal prayer is to draw us out of comfortable deceptions. Examples of these deceptions are our inability to listen to others, our assumption of privilege and prestige, the power and depth of our prejudices, and many more. The issue of time and the other excuses hindering our prayer are rooted in a fear of moving away from our comfort zone. All these factors contribute to and maintain a basic selfishness.

When we pray regularly with deep personal commitment, things happen within us. Prominent among these changes is a new consciousness. We begin to trust with a renewed sense of spiritual security. Faith leads us to be open to God leading the way as a guide through the darkness. Our relationships are enriched with an innovative sense of compassion. Likewise, we become more accepting and gentler with ourselves and with others. Failures become less traumatic and even seem as an opening to let God take over. Our faults are accepted. We find that we do not need to be in endless pursuit of looking good.

As our prayer becomes more authentic, there is a movement to our true center where God is. This moves us beyond the superficial self, the self-engrossed and shaped by the advertising world and the narrow self-interest of family, community, church and nation. Here we have become engulfed in the never-ending new products guaranteed to fill the void in a misdirected heart and the many “isms” that expand the blindness of our prejudices. This is the self propped

With this new focus on God in prayer, there are even more deep-seated changes within us. We begin to see the need for greater honesty and authenticity in all our relationships to persons, things, ideas and especially to the gift of God’s creation. We find it easier to cast out the log in our eye and to be more accepting of others in all their faults. “Either/or” thinking begins to fade away. The “both/and” view of life blossoms as a real possibility for us. We are amazed how a rigid “either/or” situation develops into several realistic possibilities. Finally, we gradually begin to experience life as rooted in an overwhelming sense of God’s gracious and merciful presence. Prayer, indeed, opens the road for our return to Paradise.

Prayer opens the passage to the true self hidden deep within. While this journey inward in prayer offers innumerable blessings, unfortunately, it is always limited and deficient. We gradually come to see how distant we are from our real destiny: union with God. This is the paradox of an authentic spiritual life. The more progress we make, the more we become aware of our helplessness, our sinfulness and our total dependence on God. This leads us to contemplation. Here God takes over. Our role is to let go so this divine activity can finalize our personal purification and transformation.

II

Grace in the Struggle

The part of the Pilgrimage to God that is probably most difficult for all of us is this. God wants everything. Therefore, we have to let go of everything. At first, we grudgingly respond to the gentle but ever so persistent divine call. But God is rightly described as The Hound of Heaven. We reluctantly begin to let go a little bit more. This is why Teresa has explained the process in seven dwelling places. In each stage of growth, God raises the price. We need to repeatedly accept new demands for self-surrender. For our part, it seems like an endless struggle. For God’s part, it is a gentle, consistent and determined invitation into freedom and love. Helping us progress from our narrow view of constant struggle to the continuing invitation to love and freedom is the true goal of Teresa’s teachings. We are made for God and we will be restless until we are one with God. “Everything I have advised you about in this book is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our will to his and the detachment from creatures …Unless we give our wills entirely to the Lord so that in everything pertaining to us, he might do what conforms to his will, we will never be allowed to drink from this fount. Drinking from it is perfect contemplation.” (W.32.9)

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DO NOT PREVENT THEM

Twenty-Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mark 9: 38-43, 45, 47-48.

Dear Friends, What seems like a simple lesson in Mark’s gospel passage for today, offers us a lot more. The teaching is about the presence of good outside the community and brokenness inside the community. Once again, Jesus’s words call us much deeper into the mystery of the kingdom of God. Today’s message has truly huge ramifications for our lives as individuals and as a community seeking to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

There are three points about John’s statement and Jesus’ reaction that help us grasp the multilayered meaning of the lesson of Jesus. First and foremost, John, the disciple, misses the urgent reality of the kingdom that was taking place. The person was being liberated from the demonic powers. This event is manifesting the victory in the basic conflict of good and evil, sin and grace, the weeds and the wheat. Throughout the Gospels, the Scribes and Pharisees missed the same point in the miracles of Jesus. The power of God was on display right before their eyes. They were blinded in their hunger to protect their vested interests. The wonder of Jesus’ saving acts was distorted into an impediment to their self-serving agenda. Secondly, John’s focus is more directed towards maintaining personal privilege and power exemplified in his statement “one of us”. Thirdly, John is drawn inward to safeguard the group’s interests to the neglect of celebrating and exercising the healing mission of the kingdom. The Church has suffered from this arrogance and institutional self-interest throughout its history.

Jesus is pointing out something profound about the gospel. Jesus’ teachings set off a constant battle within people who are seeking to exclude rather than include. It is the power and presence of the kingdom that makes a difference. It is not the label of the performer as one in our group or outside our group that is foremost.

This issue became a critical teaching of Vatican II. God’s grace is universal and available to all. Often the initiator of the good acts may belong to another expression of the Christian faith. Frequently, it may be be a member of another religion altogether or even an agnostic or atheist. God’s saving grace is relentless in its presence and pursuit of every human being irrespective of religious trademarks. Down through the centuries the failure to understand this truth of the universality of grace has been the source of many failures of the Church to live and proclaim the gospel. Too often the Church has been dedicated to its institutional interests rather than the movement of God in the kingdom.

In the second part of today’s gospel, Jesus is using some incredibly strong language to highlight the need to build up the community. The hunger for prestige and power and an elitism and sense of privilege by the leaders is a scandal to “the little ones,” those still in the early stages of development in their faith. In the prophetic hyperbole, Jesus is demanding for us to keep our eye on the ball. The mission of the faith community we call Church is to proclaim the kingdom. The Church needs to be a humble witness to service and love, not an arrogant gathering of privileged and powerful. Too often, the Church fails to live up to the calling to treat all within the community with equality and a sense of dignity, not to mention the essential task of being a welcoming community. There were no parishes in Jesus day but the negativity of parochialism has been with us from the beginning. This turning in on itself has produce many evils that need the healing surgeries that Jesus suggests in his exaggerated language. There is no clearer example of this than the many dimensions of the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Church for the last several decades.

The Church is not the kingdom. It needs to be a witness to the values of the kingdom which are an infinitely greater reality. In the kingdom of God there is no “us and them”. The Church is not a program where the privileged and powerful are in control and use doctrine and discipline to exclude and isolate. The community of faith needs to include all. This requires an ever-expanding horizon of acceptance of the “other.” This is a call to embrace all the marginated and excluded in our day. We are never finished building up and enfolding a rellentlessly greater “us” and an ever-diminishing “them.” Our vocation is to cultivate a gracious respect for both the elements of difference and the richness of the gifts of others. We have a calling to reveal the infinite mercy and acceptance God.

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WHOEVER RECEIVES ONE CHILD SUCH AS THIS IN MY NAME, RECEIVES ME

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mark 9:30-37 

Dear Friends, Our Catholic Faith is often described as a service from the cradle to the grave. Actually, we are very emphatic that it starts before the cradle at the moment of conception. I think we all have difficulty with this universal demand of our faith.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is using his second prediction of his passion and death to teach us that there are no “nobodies” in God’s eyes.

In Mark’s Gospel, there is a basic pattern to the three announcements by Jesus of his Passion, Death and Resurrection. First of all, Jesus makes the shocking prediction. Then the disciples are caught in a situation that shows their total failure to understand this lesson of Jesus. This is followed by a teaching by Jesus that is a profound contribution to his gospel message.

Today’s predicament for the Disciples is an argument about who is the most important among them. This leads to today’s instruction by Jesus.

Today’s message is missed if we do not understand that a child in the time of the New Testament was a “nobody”, a person of no social value or recognition. Jesus’ teaching was that whoever welcomes a child welcomes Jesus.

A child was truly a “nobody “for everybody except the family. The child had no rights, recognition or voice in anything. Jesus turns that view upside down in his Gospel message today. He not only puts his arms around the child in a tender embrace of recognition but says, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the one who sent me.” (Mk 9:37)

This teaching of Jesus has shrewd social implications. Such a meaningful and respectful relation with a child would mean putting down your self-importance and identity as an adult. This emptying of self was an invitation into leadership that forsakes dominance and control. It was a call to a humble leadership of service and openness.

On an even deeper level, this teaching of Jesus challenges both the disciples’ notion of the Messiah and of God. Jesus is telling us in his teaching, and even more so in his life, that God is one who comes among us not as one who rules by control and punishment but one whose reign is one of service. We are all a child in the eyes of God. It is God’s goodness not our accomplishments that is the source of our strength, dignity and beauty as human beings.

In this statement and loving embrace of the child, Jesus is showing us that there are no “nobodies” in God’s eyes. We need to see that all humanity in all its incredible different expressions offers an image of God. Therefore, if we wish to be a leader, we need to celebrate this divine manifestation by a presence that makes us a servant of all.

Jesus is showing us the way by his faithful surrender on the way to Jerusalem. He asks us, his followers and disciples, to recognize and respond to God’s presence in all our brothers and sisters whether they are in diapers or in prison, whether in a coma or addiction, whether a Nobel Prize winner or a mother-in-law. All are worthy of our life of service and love.

We all have our own list of “nobodies”. Jesus is asking us to open our eyes to see the wonderful presence of God hidden in our midst by changing our labels of negativity to labels of a precious child of God.

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JESUS TEACHING ON PRAYER

Jesus taught the people to start from where they were in their life situation. Jesus then invited them into the mystery of the kingdom. There was special emphasis on the parables as the method of his teaching. In the parables, he taught that prayer should be urgent, insistent, forgiving and always steeped in humility that recognizes one’s sinfulness.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offered a great deal of his message on prayer. First, there must be a conversion that shows itself in concrete action: reconciliation before offering gifts at the altar, love of enemy, prayer in secret with simple language and even silence, purity of heart and choosing God’s kingdom above all.

The Our Father

This all leads to the greatest lesson in prayer, the Our Father. (Mt 6:9-13) Jesus starts out by telling us not to pray as the pagans pray. Their prayer is described as an effort to wear down God with volume, repetition and perseverance searching for just the right phrase to gain the desired response from a somewhat indifferent deity.

Jesus‘ invitation to pray is totally opposite. God, he says, already knows what we need. God’s generosity is a given. According to Jesus, what is needed is a human heart disposed to the big-heartedness of the Father.

The structure of the Lord’s Prayer is clear. The first part draws us into the domain of the Lord who is “Our Father” both holy and loving. There is a divine plan. The petitions of the first part of the prayer place all the attention on God: the loving Father, the holy name, God’s kingdom and God’s will. We are pulled away from our small world of self-interest. In the second part, we come back to our needs and our dependence on God.

The initial address of “Our Father” is an expression in the original language (likely Aramaic) of parental tenderness and endearment. Today it would be “Daddy” or “Pop” or some similar utterance of an adult child. Likewise, by using “Our”, Jesus is revealing that we, as a community of disciples have been welcomed into a new family, a Godly family. All members are invited into a divine relationship of intimacy and confidence.

The next three petitions, in truth, are one: the coming of the kingdom is the central message of Jesus. The holiness of God’s name and God’s will are biblical statements that are part of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom.

The kingdom is God’s response to the consequences of sin flowing from the tragedy in the Garden. The first eleven chapters of Genesis describe this destructive evolution of evil that permeates our world. From the call of Abraham to Jesus’ declaration of the kingdom we have the counter-evolution of love in God’s plan. The Hebrew Scriptures are replete with expressions of the bondage to sin and death and, most of all, alienation from God. They also have a message of faithfulness and hope. In Jesus, there is a new saving presence which continues in his new family of faith, the Church. The kingdom is, indeed, the seed that will become the great tree to shelter all the birds. (Mt13:31-32) We participate in the coming of the kingdom when we walk with Jesus in a life of love and service to his reign.

When we pray for God’s kingdom, we are praying for deliverance from the consequences of sin. The magnitude of this seemingly simple petition is easy to miss. This prayer includes our pleas for practically anything that is good from the healing our child’s headache to elimination of sexual slavery, from success in the driver’s test to the conversion of the gangs, from peace with the in-laws to peace between Russia and Ukraine.

In the Good Friday liturgy, the Our Father is echoed as we pray that “God may cleanse the world of all errors, banish disease, drive out hunger, unlock prisons, loosen fetters, granting to travelers safety, to pilgrims return, health to the sick, and salvation to the dying”. God’s kingdom will overcome all hatred and every prejudice, any expressions of inhumanity, every dimension of poverty, and divisions of all kinds. The list goes on and on. All evil, and most especially death, is vanquished by the coming of God’s kingdom. The hidden Alleluia of Christ’s victory is always the wheat overcoming the weeds in our midst. (Mt 13:24-30)

When we pray “Thy kingdom come”, we are praying for all that we need (and, perhaps, even some of what we want). All our varied petitions in the prayer of the faithful, in our rosary, in our novena intentions, and in each hidden desire in our heart are most likely included in God’s kingdom. Yet, it is still good to pray for our individual concerns because it helps us become mindful of our dependent relationship with God.

The second set of petitions in the Lord’s Prayer reflects a pilgrim people like the Israelites wandering the dessert for whom manna is the bread for their human material needs. But the bread is also a symbol of the Eucharist. It is in this context that we are reminded that God forgives always. However, we can block that flow of mercy if we do not forgive. In the final petitions we pray that the forces of evil not prevail in our personal, communal and historical reality.

The Lord’s Prayer, then, is the prayer of the family of God on the journey to the unity and freedom of the kingdom. This is the New Creation, the eventual return to the original innocence inviting us to enter into a consciousness of our total reliance on God. It helps us experience the sense of divine intimacy. It fills us with hope.

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“WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?

The Twenty Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time 

Mk 8:27-35 

Dear Friends, This encounter between Jesus and Peter identifies the centerpiece of Mark’s Gospel. The rich description of Jesus’ activities up to this point in Mark’s Gospel leads to the critical question of Jesus, “Who do you say I am?” (Mk 8:28) For the disciples, and for us, there is no more important question we must address in our life. Who is Jesus for us?

Up to this point in Mark’s text everything was about the identity of Jesus. His miracles, his teachings, his call of the disciples, his conflicts, religious and secular, and above all, his person. They all combined to raise the issue of Jesus’ identity that Peter stated so boldly, “You are the Christ.” (Mk 8:29)

Jesus implied they were correct. Then he told them not tell anyone. As if this was not confusing enough, he then told them of his upcoming suffering, rejection and death. This led Peter to rebuke him only to receive a response that, no doubt, shattered Peter’s world. “Get behind me Satan, you are thinking not as God does but as human beings do.” (MK 8:33)

When Jesus then told the disciples they need to suffer and take up their cross, their bewilderment was complete. The entire second half of Mark’s Gospel is an elaboration of Jesus’ faithfulness to this message and the disciples’ failure to figure it out.

In this shocking conflict, Mark is inviting us to go beyond the surface in our commitment to Jesus, to dig deep in our search for the true meaning of the gospel in our life.

The central issue for the disciples was the difference in understanding of the role of the Messiah. Jesus understood the mystery that there is true life only in giving it away not by clinging to it. For the disciples the goal of life was to be found in getting not giving. Only slowly did they learn that love teaches us the paradox of the gospel. To truly own something, we need to be willing to give it away. To truly own our life, we need to be free to lose our life.

As Peter proclaimed, Jesus was indeed the Christ. However, Jesus understood that he was to bring about the Father’s plan by suffering and self-giving and service. All his teachings had be understood in this context, the context of the crucified Christ.

Jesus’ rebuke of Peter was based on the real issue for the disciples, and for searching faithful down to our day.

We, like Peter, face the perennial temptation to try to make Christ in our image. We are looking for a more comfortable version. Peter and the disciples had a plan for Christ. He was to be the provider of prosperity and privilege, security and contentment. Jesus agreed to this basic human fulfillment but at a much different level. Jesus insisted this fulfillment is only truly possible by self-giving not self-indulgence. We must learn to center on God rather than to center all on ourselves. Jesus’ gift of our prosperity and privilege, our security and contentment will be beyond our wildest dreams. This is what Jesus means by “whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mk 8:34) The road to Jerusalem is the way into this fundamental Christian truth: life conquers death only by centering on the Father’s will not our will.

When Jesus tells us to take up our cross, it involves much more than this particular difficult person or that painful loss or a frightening sickness. Taking up our cross means being open to God in all manner of ways that we experience in the totality of life. Taking up the cross involves a determined resolution and deep desire and vigorous acceptance, not merely passive resignation. The cross Jesus is talking about comes in all different fashions in the harsh reality of human experience.

The disciples eventually got the message when Jesus invited them to Galilee after the Resurrection. He was going to give them a second chance. He gives us many times more than a second chance. He does this by raising a second question to ponder, “How do we die with Jesus?” We need to accept Jesus on his terms when we answer that fundamental question of life, “Who do you say I am?” (Mk 8:27) This leads to the second question, “How do I die with Jesus?” Our personal faith journey will eventually enlighten us to understand that dying is the only way to true life in the Jesus venture in our life.

In describing the Apostles, The Acts of the Apostles portrays a whole new cast of characters. They truly are distant from Mark’s rendering of the special twelve followers of Christ. Now, they not only know Jesus, they know how to die with Jeus to truly discover the life that their heart so yearned for. Their life of service and self-giving shows how they took advantage of the second chance. We need to do the same.

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AN OBSTACLE IN DEEP PERSONAL PRAYER

The Real Difficulty in Prayer: God’s Attitude

A little bit of our heart is never enough. God is never satisfied unless we offer ourselves completely. God always wants more, the whole thing. Love is not about a little bit. All the problems in prayer are rooted in this divine posture. On our part, we are often willing, and even enthused, to bring God into some of our life. God has no interest in an eight-hour day. The divine program is twenty-four seven. It takes us on a long and winding journey to grasp this sense of totality that is God’s agenda.

We cling to the controls with an unimagined ferocity. We simply want to be in charge of how much time and what part of our life we will give to God. Both the “when” and the “how” of this venture definitely must happen on our terms.

This contrast between God’s approach and our approach is the root of our difficulties in prayer.

All this effort to open ourselves to God has one purpose. It is completely and absolutely about love. While love, no doubt, is a wonderful thing, it is very costly. Love constantly calls for a serious change in our personal schedule and a whole lot more. When dealing with God, we become artists in the great human venture of compromise. We end up in a program with God that includes our negotiables but we withhold our non-negotiables. We eventually learn that God is very patient with us. But in the end, God will have the last word. This is the ultimate reality for every human being. We are made to be one with God. This is our destiny. This is clearly the answer to the great human question, “Where are we going?” Most often, we have to learn that the hard way. Nevertheless, God’s desire for our whole heart is not going to change. God’s love is just too strong, too focused and too intense to let us get away. God made us to be loved and to be one with the mystery that is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God will have it no other way, no matter how hard we try to distract and re-direct the program according to our self-interest.

All human effort to answer that basic inquiry of human existence will all fall short of God’s clear purpose. No matter how good they may appear, each and every human endeavor that does not include our destiny to be one with God will fall short. In one way or another, all these activities are based on the denial of death, a moment when we become completely out of control. For God, death is simply a change that opens to the everlasting love that God has determined for us.

The Gospels are filled with sayings that attack our very human tendency to compromise with this program of eternal love that God has established for us.

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mk 8:34)

“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 8:35)

“Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39)

These sayings are just a brief sample of the multitude of similar statements that permeate the four Gospels. They ask a total generosity on our part. The jealous love of God is calling us into the divine mystery. This venture is the gradual, but unending, work of a lifetime. It is clear that God’s love is not a part time endeavor. When we begin a commitment to pray in a more serious manner, we should be aware that we are beginning a wonderful journey. In the end, with all its difficulties and complexities, it is all about love. God’s love of total generosity and supreme intensity transforming our love from its pettiness, brokenness and severely compromised generosity. It is long road of step-by-step effort that gradually leads to the freedom of being one with God. The first great obstacle is to not begin to pray with this new intensity. The second is to not understand that the true grace we hunger for is only possible when we continue the struggle to say yes to God. The Carmelite tradition is emphatic that all this is possible only with personal purification and transformation. This, in turn, can only happen through deep personal prayer that is an expression of the love in our heart.

II

Teresa of Avila tells us prayer is a conversation with someone we know loves us. Personal experience will show us what our difficulty in prayer is. It is overcoming our self-love to let our love of God rise to the top of our agenda. To do this we face the challenge of change, often deep personal change. Teresa says that prayer and comfortable living are not compatible. Prayer demands sacrifice that claims our time. It then confronts our lifestyle. Difficulties in prayer emerge from these very demanding personal challenges.

When we are praying, distractions are the most immediate obstacle. The direct answer to distractions is to regain our focus. This is done by returning to the text or to our prayer word, the mantra. This is all part of the battle of prayer. The ego sees prayer as a life or death issue. Life for the ego means to be in control. The Spirit is calling us to let go, to accept our poverty and surrender to God.

The root of distractions is this conflict of the ego and the Spirit. The distractions will not go away completely until God takes over within us in the development of deep contemplative prayer. Meanwhile, we need to understand there is gold to be found in the struggle of our relentless flights of fancy.

On the conscious level, our struggle is between our ego’s unending quest for control and gradual submission to God. At a deeper level, God often uses distractions to surface issues and concerns that help us on the road to self-knowledge and humility. Frequently our prayer session seems like a total waste of time. However, battling distractions has a double effect. It is a beautiful invitation to embrace humility. Likewise, it often makes us aware of our inordinate attachments which are commonly the root of our distractions.

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Ephphatha

Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mark 7:31-37 Dear Friends, In the world that Mak addresses in his Gospel, the people had a much more intense outlook about the devil than is the case in our day. For them, the basic conflict of good and evil was a struggle between God and the power of darkness residing in the demons. Sickness, political domination and the endless challenges of nature and climate were all seen as manifestations of demonic control over human freedom. The long anticipated Messiah was seen as one who would finally complete this seemingly never-ending struggle. He would bring back the original innocence and freedom of the Garden of Eden.

All of Jesus’ actions were a movement toward human freedom from this deeply entrenched control of the demons. Today’s healing of the deaf mute would have been seen as an exorcism that set the victim free of the demonic bondage, a clear step towards total victory over all evil and darkness.

The man’s condition had left him in severe isolation. It is extremely difficult for us to imagine the destructive consequence of being unable to hear and unable to speak.

Jesus’ healing intervention is clearly part of the mission to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. (Mk 1:14-15) Jesus performs this miracle in a Gentile territory. This was another way he used to expand the horizons of his mission well beyond the limited vision of his followers. He was sowing the seeds of the shocking reality that salvation was for all people not just the Jewish nation. The church has the task to continue the work of Jesus. This community of faith will always strive to continue to break the restrictions of culture and convention.

Like the deaf mute in today’s gospel, we too, are in need of God’s healing grace to hear and speak the saving word in the many divergent situations in our life. So often, in our lives, we are so self-absorbed that it limits our ability to listen and to be present to others in true dialogue. We fail to see that there are two sides to every situation if not six or seven possible solutions. We often suffer from a spiritual deafness. It is the source of much conflict in our personal, family, and communal lives and in the larger realities of all sorts. To be able to hear and to speak the word of God from a pure heart will always expand our horizons and make us instruments of God’s peace and God’s justice.

In the sacrament of Baptism, we ritualize this great gift of openness and communication with the rite of Ephphatha. This is where the minister makes the sign of the cross on the mouth and the ears and says, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God.”

We should see ourselves in the deaf mute. We are often locked into a world muted by a message of consumerism and privilege and exclusion. We need Jesus to free us from the domination of a culture that muffles the cry of the poor while it proclaims a message of self-indulgence with a seemingly interminable array of new products that will guarantee our contentment and expand our self-centeredness. We live in a world where our voice to proclaim the gospel is rendered mute by the noise of a culture that seeks always more comfort, more pampering and more security. Just like the mute and deaf character in our reading today, Jesus frees us to hear the liberating word of God and draws us out of isolation and into a saving community enriched by honest dialogue.

In our day, Jesus sets us free to enhance our relationships with truly human communication. This always involves a deeper ability to hear the other and an honesty to speak the truth no matter how painful. Jesus also sets us free for a life of service and witness to the good news of the gospel. This is only possible if we recognize the depth of our muteness and deafness when it comes to matters of the spirit. The first step for all of us is to accept that we need the healing power of Jesus to set us free.

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AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DEEP PERSONAL PRAYER

Christian Meditation

A second method of prayer is Christian Meditation. It is truly different in its approach from lectio divina and other forms of meditation where the mind is a vital component of the prayer. Christian Meditation is a contemplative approach to prayer that centers on silence. It hopes to eliminate, or at least quiet down, all thinking and the imagination during the period of prayer. The silence invites God to be active in our prayer. The spirit of poverty is the goal. We simply seek to create an emptiness that is the best invitation to the Spirit, where God prays within us. “In the same way the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.” (Rom 8:26)

The individual is asked to silently repeat the holy word, maranatha, which means “the Lord will come.” The choice of the word is arbitrary, and it is important not to think of its meaning. The simple and slow repetition of the mantra has a clear goal: the creation of silence that suppresses the mind and imagination. This happens by drawing the focus to the holy word or mantra. The repetition connects to one’s breathing. The slow repetition of the word is the individual’s prayer.

The mind and imagination are the source of the distractions. There is a fear on the part of the ego that the silence will lead to the loss of the ego’s control. The gentle repetition of the mantra frees us to let go. We want to open space for God. Simplicity and emptiness need to be the goal. The repeating of the word symbolizes and encourages the faithful surrender to God. Our hope is that we grow in purity of heart with openness to God’s grace.

The prayer is experiential and practical. People need to start the journey and let the experience be the teacher. The purpose of the simple repetition of the mantra, maranatha, is to clear the mind, to get beyond thinking. We want to move from the head to the heart. We need to pay attention to how we say the mantra. Our effort should be calm but firm in our prayerful repetition. This clears the mind enough to make space for the Spirit. The highly recommended schedule for this prayer is twenty to thirty minutes in both the morning and evening. We must never forget that the final measure of effective prayer is a life more in tune with the values of the gospel, walking with Jesus.

How to Meditate

The most important thing to learn about meditation is to meditate. It is extraordinarily simple. This is the problem. Few believe that something so simple is so effective and transforming.

To meditate, sit still and upright while seeking the awareness of God’s presence. As you relax, close your eyes. Slowly begin saying the mantra in four syllables. Do not think or imagine anything. As distractions come, return to the mantra softly but decisively. Even good thoughts are to be excluded. The target is twenty to thirty minutes in the morning and evening.

There are three simple goals to guide the two meditation periods each day:

1. Say the mantra for the complete time of the meditation. This is a skill. It will take time to create a habit.

2. Say the mantra throughout the meditation without interruption. The task here is to continually return as soon as possible from the persistent distractions that are the ego’s hunger for control.

3. In saying the mantra, let it draw you into the depths of your being, beyond thought, imagination, and all images. Rest in the presence of God dwelling in the depth of your heart.

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THEIR HEARTS ARE FAR FROM ME

Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Dear Friends.

Often in the Gospels, we find that Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees and Scribes leads to a deeper dimension of his message. In today’s passage from Mark, Jesus addresses the distortion of the purity laws. Over time, these good practices had lost their way. They eventually became a source of division and elitism, hypocrisy and isolation. This is very often the case in all religious practice. It had become almost a full time job to respond to the endless details of the purity laws. For working poor, the actual implementation of the multiple and intricate laws had become an impossible burden. As an example, the shepherds were considered totally out of the realm of respectability because of their failure to ritualize the overwhelming demands of these laws.

In the beginning, the purity laws were a guide to true integrity. They were a means to express the true holiness of the Chosen People in the midst of their pagan neighbors. However, their distortion over time had evolved into an expression of power and control as well as a source of income for the élite.

Jesus cut right to core of the issue in the quote for Isaiah.

This people honors me with their lips,

But their hearts are far from me;

In vain do they worship me

teaching as doctrines human precepts.

In the midst of this controversy with the Jewish leaders, Jessus presents a fundamental truth to guide all people at all times. True holiness flows from a heart in love with God. All the laws of Moses are a guide to encounter this God of love. All the laws are truly a pathway to personal integrity and authenticity. The law, properly understood, was not a source of potential punishment, but an invitation into holiness, a holiness reflecting the life and love of God.

In this life-giving relationship with God, the fundamental issue is the heart. This core presence within the person nurtures all true and genuine morality. Any use of the law that is not rooted in the true faithfulness of the heart soon becomes a caricature. It reduces commitment to lip service and empty compliance. When there is a disconnect with the heart, hypocrisy is never far behind.

Jesus’ constant message is about faithfulness that is the product of a pure heart. For the heart to attain this sense of holiness and purity, it needs the word of God. The power of God’s word, especially the connection with Jesus, will guide and inspire in all circumstances.

Another issue is self-knowledge. This involves a growing awareness of the potential for evil within each person. This self-knowledge is a critical component of the gospel experience. Listing twelve common expressions of evil, Jesus then says: “All these evils come from within and they defile.” (Mk 7:23)

Jesus is constantly inviting the crowds and the disciples and us to move beyond the letter of the law to the deeper domain of the spirit, the home arena of the heart. This is a call to see in Jesus the one who truly is the absolute revelation of the God of love and mercy. He is the fullness of truth and freedom. In our effort to walk with Jesus, which is the true Christian life, we will find the rightful law which is the fount of all true morality. This is the gift of Jesus’ new law, love of God and love of our neighbor.

Till the end, the Church will have to deal with the awesome pull of hypocrisy and the temptation to weaponize the laws for the control and privilege of the few. Till the end, all of us as individuals, will struggle with a fragmented heart that distorts Jesus’ teachings for our personal advantage. Till the end, we will need to pray to Jesus for mercy and the elusive treasure that is purity of heart. This will help us hear and respond to the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth in our daily life.

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“MASTER, TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?

Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time

John 6:60-69

Dear Friends, In these last five weeks we have been pondering Jesus as the Bread of Life. The heart of the lesson is that Jesus is the revelation of God, a saving God who calls us to eternal life through his beloved Son. “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (Jn 6:63) The faith that Jesus demands is not about making everything crystal clear but about a steadfast allegiance in spite an enduring ambiguity of life’s ups and downs.

Today’s final words of Jesus center on this need for faith, a faith open to the Spirit’s call. Underlying and permeating this entire examination of the Bread of Life, and throughout the Gospel of John, is the stunning reality of the Incarnation, “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” (Jn 1:14). Jesus will return to the Father in the self-sacrificing event of his death and resurrection. To accept the wonder of this invitation into love, we need faith to let the Spirit fill our hearts. We have before us the answer to the deepest longing in our hearts. We have before us the Bread to satisfy our deepest hunger. We have before us the call to total freedom and everlasting life. We need to join Peter’s marvelous declaration, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (Jn 6:69)

Jesus’ words opened the eyes and hearts of the disciples. In proclaiming himself as the Bread of Life sent down from heaven Jesus touched their deepest longings. They still remained confused and humble. They still longed for the clarity and the security of a better understanding. Yet they had come to the conviction and commitment to accept Jesus as “the Holy One of God.” (Jn 6:69) Their faith had set them free to begin the pilgrimage to God by embracing Jesus as the Bread of Life.

There is a profound message for us in this faith-inspired but bewildering situation facing disciples. It is clear they did not totally comprehend the profound message of Jesus as the Bread of Life. While their understanding remained partial and incomplete, while their commitment would bend to the limits on the journey to Jerusalem, while the coming disaster of “the fatal weekend” held a future of unimaginable darkness for them, they stayed faithful and open to growth acne in the midst of their human weakness and uncertainty. They have shown us that faith is not about having a flawless answer. It is about steadfastness in spite of life’s relentless expressions of our mortality. The disciples, in their very flawed humanity, have shown us the way.

This same challenge of accepting Jesus is ever-present in our life. It is the most basic choice that faces us as human beings. We must answer Jesus’ question which is similar to his statement in Mark, “Who do you say I am?” (Mk 8:27) We need to accept God on God’s terms no matter how shocking Jesus’ statement: “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.” (Jn 6:54) We need to let go of the deceitful world our common sense builds to blind us in our self-serving sense of security and comfort. We need to embrace faith in the great and incomprehensible mystery of Jesus as the Bread of Life. He has taken flesh in our world so we may be transformed in the Spirit. Our faith and commitment to walk in his footsteps will carry us through death to eternal life.

For five weeks we have seen the two sides of Jesus as the Bread of Life. He is both the unveiling of the wisdom and power of God and the gift of love in the Eucharist. John will further expose the depths of that great gift of his body and blood at the Last Supper. In the washing of the feet, we encounter the true nature of the Eucharist. It is Jesus as God’s gift for the life of the world. We are nourished by the flesh and blood to continue that revelation of self-giving that Jesus has modeled for us in the washing of the feet. It is all about love leading to life. We enhance that life in the service of others. It is all about love leading to our life eternal.

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4. THE PRAYERFUL READING OF THE BIBLE

An Opportunity for Deep Personal Prayer

The Prayerful Reading of the Bible: Lectio Divina

Vatican II brought the word of God in the Bible to the center of all Christian spirituality. This revival has led to a growing practice of prayer that has had a long tradition in the church. This is called lectio divina. Literally, this means divine reading. Another description would be the prayerful reading of the Bible.

This prayerful reading seeks to listen to what God has to say to us. It will lead us to know and embrace God’s will. It is all about the transforming encounter with God’s special means of revelation, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

When approaching the Mystery unveiled in the Scriptures, we need the attitude of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10).

There are four steps to this prayerful reading of the Bible:

1. A slow meditative reading of a selected text of the Scriptures.
2. A reflection on the text that connects it with our life experience.
3. A response in prayer to this reflective activity.
4. Finally, a quiet resting in the Mystery of this encounter.

Four Steps

It is essential to prepare for this serious time of prayer. We need to create an atmosphere of silence, with minimal outside distractions. Next, we select the text. We then invoke the Holy Spirit.

In the initial step, we have to seek out the meaning: What does the text say? Silence is important for listening and avoiding the trap of making the text say what we want. We need to bring the heart into the process as well as the mind. A particular phrase or sentence may burst out as a light, sometimes gently, sometimes with great force. Hold on to it.

In the second step, we want to ask: What does the text say to us? We enter into a dialogue with the text. Here we want to make the connection to our life. The reflection leads to building a bridge between God’s word and our life situation at this moment. In this process, the distractions will never be far away. To cast out these disruptions in the mind, always return to the text. The all-important matter here is that we must return to the text and away from the mind’s ever-present wanderings. This discipline maintains a recollected and focused approach to the job of reflection in the second step.

In the third step, we try to discover what the text leads us to say to God. We are moved to prayer. We speak to God of how we know that we want to change. We acknowledge the struggle. We cannot do it by ourselves. Honesty is the true gold of this form of prayer. We seek help perhaps in healing a flawed relationship or getting rid of a bad habit. We ask assistance and guidance. We make resolutions to be more generous in walking with Jesus. Patience is truly important. This is always a slow journey from the head to the heart to life. This is about self-knowledge, a topic decisive to any authentic effort at prayer.

The fourth step, quiet listening and resting in the Lord, generates a contemplative mood. This is the goal of the prayerful reading of the Bible: opening ourselves up to the transforming love of God. Silence is the language of God. We slowly grow in the wonder that God loves us. While we do not always have this deep encounter of loving silence, it remains the goal. It is the gift that transforms us into the image of Christ.

Spiritual Transformation

When we approach the prayerful reading of the Bible in lectio divina, we should see ourselves as the one to whom the Bible is directed. It was formulated to address us here and now. However, we are always a member of a community. The Bible is not a personal prayer book but God’s gift to the community.

Our search for the meaning of the Scriptures needs to include the church’s guidance in biblical studies. Praying the Scriptures should lead us to seek an understanding of the biblical meaning. Prayer and study need to steer us away from making the Bible fit our demands and desires.

We need to keep the concrete reality of our life, our family, our community, and the larger circumstances of the political, economic, and social reality front and center. The first three steps are an encounter with Christ-for-us. He is our Savior calling us to new life. In the final, and most important step, we meet Christ-in-us. This presence grows in the gradual transformation of our being that results from our faithful and generous reading of the Bible. We are truly walking with Jesus.

The faithful practice of lectio divina helps us move out of our false self and to seek the gift of our true self. We slowly grow out of illusions of self-importance. We recognize the destructive power of self-absorption. This often-painful growth surprisingly is a growth in humility. This draws us toward the goal of the human journey, being one with God.

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JESUS THE BREAD OF LIFE

Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

John 6:51-58

Dear Friends, Today we continue our journey with John’s theme of the Bread of Life. Up to this point, the message has been Jesus the Bread of Life as a gift of wisdom. He is the full revelation of God including the loving plan of redemption and the call of the Father to eternal life. Now there is a subtle switch to incorporate Jesus as the Bread of Life that nourishes us in the Eucharist.

It is very helpful to keep in mind the rich biblical themes as we ponder the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage. The whole of chapter six of John looks back to the manna in the desert. It also recalls the Passover meal along with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Finally, it is all gathered together in the Passion and Death of Jesus. In these topics we encounter Jesus as Word and Sacrament.

The first thing we must remember is that Jesus is not speaking in the language of modern science, that of chemistry, biology or medicine. He was speaking the language of the heart as it related to the abundant scriptural tradition of the Jewish people. He was talking about his human person as the presence of God’s message. Both the New Passover of his death and resurrection and the New Manna of the Eucharist are a message that divided the crowd. He was presenting himself as the gift of God far beyond the generosity of God’s manna in the desert. He is now the bread that offers ever-lasting life. He is the new Pascal Lamb that will lead to deliverance from slavery in all its seemingly endless expressions of evil. He will set us free from all that keeps us from loving God with our whole heart and anything that hinders true human development.

What Jesus is saying in the gift of his flesh and blood is that we are called not only to new life but eternal life. Like the story of the vine and branches, Jesus is using the plea to be one with him in his body and blood. This will make his life and our life one in a mission of love. This life-giving participation in the Eucharist, the New Passover and the New Manna, helps all who partake of the body and blood to share Jesus’ sacrificial and saving love for the world. Through sharing communion with Jesus, we participate in his love for all people. We are called into the fundamental message of all the Gospel: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn13:34)

Those in the crowd who rejected the message understood clearly. They were not ready to leave their old tradition. Jesus was proclaiming a new day. Jesus was transparent. God is now speaking through him. We have to unite with Jesus to truly hear the word of God and to embrace it in our life by sharing in the love for all. All barriers are to be broken down. All forms of exclusion are to abolished. This is possible by the gift of the Eucharist where Jesus gives us the Bread of Life to walk in the way of love. This new life takes flesh in our service and sharing with all our brothers and sisters, with our care for all God’s creation.

John’s message in chapter six is that Jesus feeds us in two ways. The first is the revelation of God’s truth and wisdom. The second is in the Eucharist of his flesh and blood calling us into communion in a life of love. Both gifts are Jesus as the Bread of Life. In the Word made flesh that is the Incarnation of Jesus, God goes beyond the freedom of the Exodus and the nourishment of the manna. God far surpasses his providential generosity. God wildly exceeds the grasp of our human understanding. This is why we spend these five weeks pondering God’s love in Jesus as the Bread of Life. In the end only faith will open our heart to this divine gift. In Jesus, God transcends mere information. God is inviting us into the Mystery of Love that is the true nourishment for the hunger in our heart and the call to transform the world.

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THE BIBLE AND PRAYER

An Opportunity for Deep Personal Prayer

I

The People’s Experience of God

The Bible is a love story of God and his people. It is simple and clear. Yet, it is also complicated because this love absorbs human frailty and sin covering centuries.

The creation accounts in Genesis are written in their own symbolic and narrative style. They contain complex insights about the human experience and our historical reality. They portray the human venture based on three fundamental and deeply connected relationships with God, our neighbor and creation. The Genesis account relates a basic brokenness in these three relationships. This is sin. Adam and Eve, our first parents, set the pattern. We follow it as we place ourselves rather than God at the center of all reality. We refuse to acknowledge the constraints of being creatures.

While the Bible is the story of salvation, the consequences of sin are at the center of the story in Genesis’ first eleven chapters. They lay out the need for salvation. Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel and, of course, Adam and Eve and the apple are examples of humankind’s pulling away from God. God’s instruction “to have dominion over all the earth” (Gen 1:28) is mangled in our selfish patterns of behavior. God also told us to “till it and keep it.” (Gen 2:15) Our failure on both accounts has severely disrupted the balance between God, humanity and creation. This rupture is expressed in our time in wars, violence, abuse, neglect of the most vulnerable and the continuing violation of nature.

Pope Francis describes this sin that places ourselves at the center in today’s historical experience as “practical relativism.” He defines this practical relativism as follows: “When human beings place themselves at the center, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative.”

This relativism, a powerful and pervasive expression of sin in our day, leads to the exploitation and neglect of others at all levels. People are reduced to objects. Abuse of others, economically, racially and sexually, is a natural consequence of this mentality. We see all of this expressed in the invisible forces of the market, in human trafficking, in organized crime, in malignant consumerism, in the drug trade, unrelenting racism and in the rampant misuse of the land and the sea and air, flora and fauna. All these destructive forces flow from a false vision and denial of human dignity.

The story of salvation begins in chapter twelve of Genesis with the call and promise made to Abraham. What follows is nearly two thousand years of the evolution of that promise leading to Jesus in the epic struggle of sin and grace.

In its broadest sweep, the story flows in a time-frame across two thousand years from Abraham to Moses to David, moving to the prophets and climaxing in Jesus. Throughout, there is a continual expression of God’s faithfulness and human ambivalence. The story moves from the promise to Abraham, destined to become the father of a great nation, to Moses liberating the people on the way to the Promised Land. The era of David and the kings introduces the idea of hope for God’s final intervention in the person of the Messiah. The enlightenment of the prophets’ message expands and deepens this hope. Along the way, we are gifted with the collective wisdom of the people in other books, especially in the psalms. Each draws us deeper into the mystery of this ever-active, always loving and saving God.

Throughout this journey of Abraham’s family evolving into the Jewish people, the hope of the promise advances in spite of consistent and profound infidelities to the Law of the Covenant. Likewise, there is a slow but steady growth in the communal understanding of who God is and what God wants. Many centuries after Abraham, the people came to the deepest truth of all: there is only one God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

The entire thrust of the movement of this salvation history leads to Jesus, the Word of God. In Jesus, we have the fullness of God’s revelation. We have the invitation to enter into the Mystery of Love reflected in the beautiful harmony between the Jewish Scriptures and the great event of Christ crucified and Christ risen. The fullness of God’s grace and truth is revealed in Jesus in the abandonment and utter poverty of the Cross. Here we encounter the ultimate truth of God, a God of saving love and mercy.

II

The Bible as a Source of Prayer

The Bible’s story of salvation was put together by the people reflecting, sharing, and praying about their experience of God. Most of the writings in the Bible are the conclusion of the community’s deep discernment. Their on-going encounter with God took place over a long period of time. There was a steady process of maturing in their knowledge and acceptance of God. The gentle guidance of the Holy Spirit directed the journey leading to Jesus, the final and absolute Word of God in the flesh.

A centerpiece of this journey for God’s people was the Exodus: the liberation from slavery in Egypt. This included the passage through the desert and the entry into the Promised Land. The singular power of this experience guided the people down through the centuries of an often-torturous history. Again, and again, the children of Abraham reflected on the faithfulness of God who set them free. They found strength and fortitude in encountering the revelation of this God of the Exodus in their constantly troubled plight

The same is true of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This ultimate expression of God’s saving love has become the gateway to the new day, the New Exodus, in Christian history. We see in it the continual opening to hope, no matter how dark and stinging the ravages of life may be.

The central point of the story of salvation in the Bible is this. The message, in all its breadth and depth, comes from the people’s experience of the saving power of God who is active in their lives and their history. The Bible teaches us that the same God of the Chosen People is in our life. The word in the Bible gives us the light that enables us to encounter, understand, and embrace the reality of God’s continuing presence in our life. We are invited to participate in the call and promise today. This is the pilgrimage through history to the kingdom of God. The gift of God’s word in the revelation of the Bible is always a call to new life and new horizons.

III

Study and Prayer

Our approach to the Bible requires two distinct methods. One is to study the Bible to absorb the story and to grow in familiarity with the word of God. This should be done with a reverent spirit. However, it is an exercise of the intellect. We must develop a familiarity with the overall story. This should include a broad sense of the general themes, major events and the basic timeline from Abraham to Jesus. Pope Francis calls for this bible study in the The Joy of the Gospel. He says, “The study of the sacred Scriptures must be a door opened to every believer. It is essential that the revealed word radically enrich our catechesis and all efforts to pass on the faith…Let us receive the sublime treasure of the revealed word.” (#175)

The second method is the prayerful reading of the Scriptures. This task goes beyond the mind to the depth of the spirit within us, a truly different tactic. The prayerful reading of the Bible seeks primarily to listen to what God has to say to us in the midst of our lives. This demands an openness and emptiness that echoes Samuel as we approach the Holy Word: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)

We need to always be aware that the text is more than fact. It is a symbol, a window, and a reflection that lets us see the past as a mirror of today’s experience. This prayerful reading of the word of God needs to lead us into our present historical reality in a way that it discloses the mystery of God’s saving presence here and now.

Our search has three goals:

We want to acquire a personal understanding of God’s word.

We want to let God’s will for our life situation to become clear and practical.

We want to live the call to walk with Jesus.

These goals prepare us to face the challenge of the brokenness and confusion of our daily experience. In this prayerful reading of the Bible, we need to receive the message as if it is addressed to us personally at this specific time in history because it is.

In this time of prayerful reading of the scriptures, it is important to set aside any sense of study or preparation to share our understanding with others. We prayerfully read the Bible for one purpose. We want to grow in faith and simply be in the presence of the living God.

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JESUS AS THE BREAD OF LIFE IN THE EUCHARIST

Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

John 6:41-51

Dear Friends, In today’s liturgy we continue the discourse on the Bread of Life in chapter six of John’s Gospel. Jesus’ message emphasizes his identity as the Bread of Life. It is only through him, as the Bread of Life, that we will get to know the Father. Likewise, it is only through him as the Bread of Life that we will be fed by the Father on the journey to eternal life. Next week full attention will be on this second element of this discourse, Jesus as the Bread of Life in the Eucharist. Today we continue the emphasis on the person of Jesus as the Bread of Life as our invitation into the Divine Mystery.

The crowd’s rejection of Jesus in today’s Gospel has to do with the Incarnation. The people’s limited image of God did not allow them to see that God could use one like us to reveal God’s truth. With many echoes of the Exodus story, the conflict shows Jesus testing the limits of their cramped imagination. In their limited worldview, Jesus, as the Bread come down from heaven, just does not connect as a possibility. They do not want to move much beyond the surface of their world and culture. They truly appreciated God’s generosity in the manna of their ancestors. Yet, they failed to see how much greater was God’s gift of the Bread of Life in Jesus right before their eyes. In the time of the Exodus and here in the gospel time of Jesus, we have the response of the people to God’s gift of bread. The people murmured and complained. Is it that different in our day? We are being challenged to put away our grumbles and our doubts, our confusion and our anxieties and let Jesus guide us through the ever-present darkness and bitterness of life. We must let Jesus be the Bread of Life for us.

The great event of Christianity is that through the humanity of Christ we are called into his divinity. This truth becomes available not by turning away from the traditional truths of the religious tradition of the Chosen People. Jesus points out our calling is to enter more deeply into the tradition by accepting Jesus as the Bread that came down from heaven. Jesus completes and replaces that initial revelation to the family of Abraham. Jesus is God’s continuing offer of life more abundant than we could imagine. The manna in the desert is only the slimmest glimmer of God’s ultimate gift in Jesus as the Bread of Life.

Jesus is telling the people, and us, that the only way we can understand him is through a faith that draws us to a much deeper level. That deeper level is available to us when we open ourselves to the most intense hungers in our hearts. These are hungers only God can satisfy. St. Augustine spoke eloquently of this God-hunger: “You have made us for yourself O Lord and our heart is restless until we rest in you.”

Jesus is challenging the crowd, and us, to go beyond ourselves, beyond our petty world controlled by rigid traditions and limited and routine religious practices. Jesus is inviting us to encounter him and his message as the Bread of Life as the most genuine truth within our lives. We need to allow the Spirit of God open us to the Bread of Life. Again and again, Jesus is offering the wisdom of the Bread of Life. Again and again, this chapter six in John has the offer of eternal life. In today’s Gospel we are called to accept Jesus as the gift of God. This is the gift leading to the ultimate yearning in our heart, happiness forever. Now, in our present moment, this gift of God that is Jesus, helps us to find direction and meaning in our life. Jesus shows us that the authentic truth of our lives will be found in service, reconciliation and love for all in the footsteps of Jesus.

There is an obvious call to share the gift of the heavenly and earthly bread we have received. We need to open our hearts and our pocketbooks to the hungry near and far. We need to see in the homeless and the migrants an opportunity to give flesh in our day to the Bread of Life that is our gift from Jesus.

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AN OBSTACLE TO DEEP PERSONAL PRAYER

Prayer of Petition: Complex and Easily Distorted 

I

There are two fundamental points about the prayer of petition. We start with an awareness of our dependence on God. Second, whatever our petition may be, it must lead to God’s plan for our salvation, the Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospels. As we slip away from these central points, there is a change of focus from God to ourselves. We move gradually into deeper levels of superstition and magic. This is a denial of God and a gross distortion of our faith. It is amazing how flawed Christian prayer fades into the same structure of petition as practiced in witchcraft.

Moving away from a journey of faith and trust, we move toward the magical. We create our own image of God as our personal Divine Manipulator. This is how we become the center, and God is there in heaven at our beck and call. Now, it is not God’s Kingdom but our kingdom that is front and center. Most often our desires are for security and the elimination of anxiety. Usually, our prayer falls into a pattern of seeking some form of prosperity usually defined not by God’s Kingdom but by the norms of our consumer society with its assurance of wealth and comfort. Likewise, much prayer is brought on by a crisis whether personal or communal.

II

The Church’s prayer for a blessing of a car gives an important insight into this complex issue of the integrity of prayer of petition. The prayer of blessing makes three points: safety of those in the vehicle, the responsibility of the driver for the safety of others, and that Christ always be a companion of those in the vehicle.

This call for personal responsibility and accountability is critical to all prayer. God expects us to use the talents and gifts we have received. This task of human effort is spelled out beautifully in what we call the transcendental precepts. We express this human effort in the following guidelines for all authentic human activity:

1. Be attentive.
2. Be intelligent.
3. Be reasonable.
4. Be responsible.
5. Be loving.

In this way, whether in driving a car or any other genuine human activity, we are using our humanity as God wants. Only after this engagement should we enter the arena of the prayer of petition. By following the precepts, we develop a proper image of God. This is the loving providential God who operates within the limits of our sinful and broken human condition. God’s saving plan was made manifest in the death and resurrection of Jesus. God invites us to share in that great act of love by our service and surrender.

This is our final and complete entry into God’s loving plan. Along the way, everything we pray for needs to be measured in how it helps us achieve this final good that is God’s will for us.

Jesus has much to say about prayer in the Gospels. In Luke, Jesus makes it very clear how to decide about our concerns and God’s concerns. “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Notice the ravens: they do no sow or reap; they have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them. How much more important are you than birds!…Indeed, seek his kingdom, and these other things will be given you besides… for where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Lk 12:22–24, 31, 34).

In all of its complexity, the prayer of petition comes down to this. God is God. We are creatures. This is the basis of our relationship with God. As creatures we are ultimately defined by our mortality resulting from our sinfulness. Our basic petition is for freedom from this bondage. That is God’s plan for us: a freedom and love in this life that opens in the passage through death to life eternal.

God’s Plan and Our Plan

Most often, when people pray, their petition fits into their plan. They want God to respond when their strategy for happiness needs some help. But God also has a plan, and God wants us to respond to the divine plan. Here is the conflict, the two plans: God’s and ours. This is a significant problem with prayer. However, in the end, this difference can be a great source of life in our prayer.

I had my first experience of the conflict of the two plans in high school. The loss of a championship football game seemed like the end of the world to me. In fact, it was the beginning of a new and ever-so-more-wonderful world. After the loss of the game, I entered what seemed like an unending funk totally new to my teenage experience. What it was, in reality, was God making space so I could hear his call to enter the seminary, one of the best decisions in my life. It took me many years to understand that the pain and anguish of the loss were a true blessing. Life is always coming from death when we walk with Jesus.

For most people, a good part of their journey as Christians and searching people involves this transition from our plan for happiness to God’s plan for our happiness. We are clear with what we want and what we think we need. Deep personal payer opens up the wonder of the Gospels to let us see life in a new way. This is the transition from our kingdom to God’s Kingdom. In this way, we turn the prayer of petition into a true opportunity rather an obstacle to deep personal prayer.

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