The Sermon on the Mount must contain the greatest spiritual teachings ever given. It's mostly about moral behavior, and much of it finds common usage even among people who have little or no connection with Christianity. We heard last week Christ's breathtaking teaching on love. This Sunday's offering contains some great, if challenging lines: 'Nobody can serve two masters.... Do not worry about your livelihood....what you are to eat or drink, or what you are to wear.... Seek first the kingship of God...'
Definitely challenging and a stretch! But Jesus is not inviting us to become enclosed Carthusian monks, whose every waking moment is focused on God alone. He is merely trying to shock us into a new level of awareness. An ancient philosopher said that if a stick is bent in the wrong direction you must purposely bend it back in the opposite direction in order to get it right.
Using the master/slave model, he invites us to be aware of that to which we have become enslaved. Everyone has something that's of ultimate importance, one thing that's more desirable than anything else, something we seek with our whole heart. We need only to look at our cityscapes to see what's most important to us as a society. Our tallest buildings are not churches anymore. St. Patrick Cathedral in New York City is dwarfed by the money-making buildings around it. Money, more than anything else, drives us!
How credible are Jesus' words today? Financial resources are essential for survival. Jesus is not asking us to be unconcerned about our material needs. He wants us to be concerned, first, about our relationship to God. He invites us to place our lives and legitimate needs, within a framework that's broader than money-making. You don't have to be a Bernie Madoff in order to forget about God. We all of us tend to put God in the margin and become pre-occupied with the nice things of life.
First and above all, our lives are God's gift. St. Paul reminds us that we are stewards of God's gifts; we are meant to manage them according to the will of God. The whole Sermon on the Mount is about the seamless garment of God's will being honored on earth as it is in heaven. We live our lives under the loving care of God's eye. Our life's purpose is to engage with the loving and caring kindness of God. Jesus invites us to place our everyday worries within the context of God's loving care for us.
Too often God is peripheral to our lives, not the main context. Too often we allow ourselves to become dominated by 'mammon.' I love the old-fashioned term, the 'mammon of iniquity!' We need to put God in clear focus, not a blurred image in the background. If we do, everything else will be in sync and our lives will be marked by peace and relieved of undue worry. 'Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (i.e. his seamless will), and all these things will be given you besides.'
PASTOR EMERITUS
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
GOD'S SECRET WEAPON
'Be holy... Offer no resistance to the one who is evil... Turn the other cheek... Love your enemies... Be perfect...' I wanted to go back to bed and sleep it all off when I looked at the scriptures for this Sunday! This must be one of the most challenging pieces on offer anywhere in the spiritual world today. It calls for the kind of heroic virtue the saints practiced. I'm no saint, but feel I'm having a good day when I find myself surviving, morally speaking; not killing anybody, not robbing anyone, not breaking my celibacy, not lashing out....
Jesus goes after the Old Testament teaching of the prophets with a vengeance, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' and says it's not enough; we have to do better. The Old Testament came up with this teaching in order to reduce the systemic violence that was in vogue at the time. In those days you could kill someone who took your eye or your tooth. If someone put you in hospital, you could put that person in the morgue. If he came after you with a knife, you went after him with a gun. The prophets wanted to even the playing field and put an end to this excessive response to violence, saying 'an eye for an eye,' and no more than that.
Now Jesus comes along saying a new day has dawned; 'an eye for an eye' won't fit the bill anymore. He wants more than justice. He wants to go beyond justice, to radicalize it. Today he makes a case for love - love in the sense of wanting what's good for the other person. He makes that to be the hallmark of Christianity. 'Love your enemies,' he says. We all know how much of a stretch it is to love someone who has let us down or hurt us badly. Our first instinct is to take them off our dinner list. Jesus says don't do that. Instead, have them over and put your best wine on the table!
Jesus proposes a brand of love that's familiar to saints, a love that doesn't want something in return. A love that's ready to give away the cream of the crop, and not count the cost. It's a generosity that wants to drive you home from the beauty parlor in the afternoon as well as drop you off there before lunch.
When St. John says in his First Letter that 'God is Love,' he means that God is precisely the kind of person Jesus is talking about. God doesn't have small, medium and large measures of love on tap, depending on the person. Divine love rains in equal measure on the good and on the bad, on the Mother Teresas of the world and on the Hitlers. The injustice and brutality of a Hitler or a Pol Pot doesn't reduce or block God's love. Nobody, however evil, can control God measureless flow of love to them.
Jesus pushes the envelope big time when he says, 'love your enemies....' Much of my comfort zone consists in ignoring my enemies and those who drive me nuts. The very thought of them is liable to keep me awake at night, tossing and turning in a lather of frustration and anger! Love them??? Where is Jesus coming from?
Seriously, though, I think the greatest test of love is to love someone who refuses to love me or want what is good for me in return. Have you been there, done that? If so, you may well have lured that person into a better spiritual and moral space! Come to think of it, that's the secret weapon Christ used on the cross, the one he continues to use to win us over. 'Father, forgive them...'
PASTOR EMERITUS
Jesus goes after the Old Testament teaching of the prophets with a vengeance, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' and says it's not enough; we have to do better. The Old Testament came up with this teaching in order to reduce the systemic violence that was in vogue at the time. In those days you could kill someone who took your eye or your tooth. If someone put you in hospital, you could put that person in the morgue. If he came after you with a knife, you went after him with a gun. The prophets wanted to even the playing field and put an end to this excessive response to violence, saying 'an eye for an eye,' and no more than that.
Now Jesus comes along saying a new day has dawned; 'an eye for an eye' won't fit the bill anymore. He wants more than justice. He wants to go beyond justice, to radicalize it. Today he makes a case for love - love in the sense of wanting what's good for the other person. He makes that to be the hallmark of Christianity. 'Love your enemies,' he says. We all know how much of a stretch it is to love someone who has let us down or hurt us badly. Our first instinct is to take them off our dinner list. Jesus says don't do that. Instead, have them over and put your best wine on the table!
Jesus proposes a brand of love that's familiar to saints, a love that doesn't want something in return. A love that's ready to give away the cream of the crop, and not count the cost. It's a generosity that wants to drive you home from the beauty parlor in the afternoon as well as drop you off there before lunch.
When St. John says in his First Letter that 'God is Love,' he means that God is precisely the kind of person Jesus is talking about. God doesn't have small, medium and large measures of love on tap, depending on the person. Divine love rains in equal measure on the good and on the bad, on the Mother Teresas of the world and on the Hitlers. The injustice and brutality of a Hitler or a Pol Pot doesn't reduce or block God's love. Nobody, however evil, can control God measureless flow of love to them.
Jesus pushes the envelope big time when he says, 'love your enemies....' Much of my comfort zone consists in ignoring my enemies and those who drive me nuts. The very thought of them is liable to keep me awake at night, tossing and turning in a lather of frustration and anger! Love them??? Where is Jesus coming from?
Seriously, though, I think the greatest test of love is to love someone who refuses to love me or want what is good for me in return. Have you been there, done that? If so, you may well have lured that person into a better spiritual and moral space! Come to think of it, that's the secret weapon Christ used on the cross, the one he continues to use to win us over. 'Father, forgive them...'
PASTOR EMERITUS
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
MURDER IN MIND?
I think Jesus has a word for our violent world today. The commandments, reiterated over and over again by the old Jewish prophets, said 'You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery....' They hadn't worked very well up to Jesus' time. Jesus recognized as much and decided to do say something that would reveal more fully what they were about. He said he came not to abolish the commandments but to 'fulfill' them. He came to expose the root causes of why people kill each other, why some folk commit adultery and others steal and bear false witness.... The prophets forbade the external actions. Jesus focuses on the deep inner sources of these actions.
He starts with murder, the ultimate expression of violence. Violence is born of anger in the human heart. Anger is usually the result of jealousy, resentment and fear. It stews and simmers, affecting the mind and stirring up dangerous feelings. Left untended, anger in the heart becomes verbal and violent language ensues: 'Raqa,' 'You idiot,' or worse. Bitter speech is often the first manifestation of a festering anger. Jesus traces it all the way back to disorder in the heart. 'If a person is without fault in speech that person is complete,' says St. James (3:2).
Look deep within and deal with your anger before bringing your gift to the altar, he says. Don't try to hide behind externals, even religious ones. Too often in my forty seven years of priesthood have I met very angry people in church, dabbling in religious devotions. I hate it when I see it. It looks so hypocritical! Jesus challenges such people to go and seek reconciliation with whoever has caused their anger. And then come back with their devotions and gifts to church.
Commentators on this gospel and other spiritual writers speak of the interior work we need to do in order to quench our anger. They talk about making a searching moral inventory (12-Step) and coming to the realization that we are loved by God at the center of our being, that there is no need for us to fear. Discovering that place, we discover the place where we are connected to everybody else - even to the person who annoys us. This can take us inside that person, where we discover that they are like us; they want to be happy and avoid pain. This spiritual journey doesn't happen overnight. It takes decisive effort and dogged perseverance. The end result can be an enormous sense of identification and empathy with the person who triggers our anger.
PASTOR EMERITUS
He starts with murder, the ultimate expression of violence. Violence is born of anger in the human heart. Anger is usually the result of jealousy, resentment and fear. It stews and simmers, affecting the mind and stirring up dangerous feelings. Left untended, anger in the heart becomes verbal and violent language ensues: 'Raqa,' 'You idiot,' or worse. Bitter speech is often the first manifestation of a festering anger. Jesus traces it all the way back to disorder in the heart. 'If a person is without fault in speech that person is complete,' says St. James (3:2).
Look deep within and deal with your anger before bringing your gift to the altar, he says. Don't try to hide behind externals, even religious ones. Too often in my forty seven years of priesthood have I met very angry people in church, dabbling in religious devotions. I hate it when I see it. It looks so hypocritical! Jesus challenges such people to go and seek reconciliation with whoever has caused their anger. And then come back with their devotions and gifts to church.
Commentators on this gospel and other spiritual writers speak of the interior work we need to do in order to quench our anger. They talk about making a searching moral inventory (12-Step) and coming to the realization that we are loved by God at the center of our being, that there is no need for us to fear. Discovering that place, we discover the place where we are connected to everybody else - even to the person who annoys us. This can take us inside that person, where we discover that they are like us; they want to be happy and avoid pain. This spiritual journey doesn't happen overnight. It takes decisive effort and dogged perseverance. The end result can be an enormous sense of identification and empathy with the person who triggers our anger.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
'What difference?' a man asked when he heard his priest say, 'The Mass is ended. Go forth and make a difference in the world!' Starting next Advent, we will hear a new version: 'Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord!' or, 'Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life!' In one way or another they all say the same thing: Go out and make a difference by bringing Christ to the world.
Three images are offered to us in this Sunday's Gospel: Salt, Light and a City. These things make a difference. Salt is one of food's many flavorings. Flavors spice up our meals and make them easier to eat. It's impossible to see light with the naked eye. What we see is that which is illuminated by light - a dark room, for example. Light makes life easier by enabling people to move with safety and see where they're going. In olden times, a city on a hill served as a guide to travelers on land and sea. It was the place of plenty - where beauty, goodness and the truth were available.
Jesus offers, as a kind of job description, these images of who we are and what we are called to be. Just as we don't serve salt as a starter or a side dish but offer it to make food more attractive, as Christians we are meant to spice up the world and make it a healthier place. 'Receive the light of Christ,' we were told at our baptism. Christians are not meant to put a damper on life but to highlight what is true and good and genuinely beautiful about it. We are meant to make a difference to how people see and live their lives. We are called to be the light of Christ to ourselves and to each other.
Just as salt that goes flat is no use on the table, so when Christians who lose their saltiness, their spicy particularity, their distinctiveness and their slightly annoying uniqueness, they can no longer 'Go and announce the Gospel' with credibility. They become one with the secular culture around them. James Burtchaell's enormous book, 'The Dying of the Light,' is a telling study of the disengagement of Christian colleges and universities from their Church. Currently, because of the actions of certain bishops, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is in dialog with the Catholic Health Care system with a view to keeping Catholic hospitals distinct from the secular values of the world.
Christianity will lose its raison d'etre and its mission the moment it becomes one with the world. As Catholics, we are called to be different; to look differently, act differently, see life differently, live and speak from a different perspective. We become no different from the secular world when we lose the light of Christ. If we never raise a question in the minds of worldly people about our beliefs and values, instead of showing the light of Christ we will be nothing but an empty echo of the secular culture around us.
Many think that our religion is about spiritual perfection, getting holy. And it is. But Christianity is much more than fussing about our spiritual interiority, happiness, fulfillment and holiness. If we are a serving community, engaged with the world - offering the spiritual and corporal works of mercy and showing the unique light of Christ - our holiness and happiness will take care of themselves, behind our backs when we're not looking.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Three images are offered to us in this Sunday's Gospel: Salt, Light and a City. These things make a difference. Salt is one of food's many flavorings. Flavors spice up our meals and make them easier to eat. It's impossible to see light with the naked eye. What we see is that which is illuminated by light - a dark room, for example. Light makes life easier by enabling people to move with safety and see where they're going. In olden times, a city on a hill served as a guide to travelers on land and sea. It was the place of plenty - where beauty, goodness and the truth were available.
Jesus offers, as a kind of job description, these images of who we are and what we are called to be. Just as we don't serve salt as a starter or a side dish but offer it to make food more attractive, as Christians we are meant to spice up the world and make it a healthier place. 'Receive the light of Christ,' we were told at our baptism. Christians are not meant to put a damper on life but to highlight what is true and good and genuinely beautiful about it. We are meant to make a difference to how people see and live their lives. We are called to be the light of Christ to ourselves and to each other.
Just as salt that goes flat is no use on the table, so when Christians who lose their saltiness, their spicy particularity, their distinctiveness and their slightly annoying uniqueness, they can no longer 'Go and announce the Gospel' with credibility. They become one with the secular culture around them. James Burtchaell's enormous book, 'The Dying of the Light,' is a telling study of the disengagement of Christian colleges and universities from their Church. Currently, because of the actions of certain bishops, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is in dialog with the Catholic Health Care system with a view to keeping Catholic hospitals distinct from the secular values of the world.
Christianity will lose its raison d'etre and its mission the moment it becomes one with the world. As Catholics, we are called to be different; to look differently, act differently, see life differently, live and speak from a different perspective. We become no different from the secular world when we lose the light of Christ. If we never raise a question in the minds of worldly people about our beliefs and values, instead of showing the light of Christ we will be nothing but an empty echo of the secular culture around us.
Many think that our religion is about spiritual perfection, getting holy. And it is. But Christianity is much more than fussing about our spiritual interiority, happiness, fulfillment and holiness. If we are a serving community, engaged with the world - offering the spiritual and corporal works of mercy and showing the unique light of Christ - our holiness and happiness will take care of themselves, behind our backs when we're not looking.
PASTOR EMERITUS
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