OURSELVES AND CROWDS

On Palm Sunday the church celebrates the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem. The short Gospel that accompanies the blessing of the palms at the beginning of Mass shows Jesus riding on a borrowed donkey and surrounded by a whole multitude of ecstatic Jews singing Hosannas and praising God for the 'king who comes in the name of the Lord.'

Paradoxically, we will hear in the long passion Gospel a few minutes later about a very different crowd, crying out 'Crucify him, crucify him.' Has a once friendly and welcoming crowd suddenly turned into an angry mob that smells blood?

We are drawn to crowds. The recent St. Paddy's Day parade, the appearance of a new pope in Rome, the City's reception of a victorious Giants World Series team. We are all potential groupies, made for connection and community.

Teens get sucked into gangs, lose their individuality and agree to do terrible things. We have gotten glimpses on television of fanatical Islamic mobs, and those of us who are old enough remember old movietone pictures of Nazi rallies.

Many people succumb to off-the-peg identities and try to discover themselves in society's role models. Celebrities - whether sporting, political, business or entertainment - attract vast adulation. Millions want to belong to their 'communities' through Twitter and Facebook. According to This Week magazine, teen heart-throb, nineteen year old Justin Bieber, has 35 million such followers!

Is it by associating with them, wearing their clothes, supporting their team, bearing their brand, that people hope to find themselves? To be non-conformist in this kind of world is to be on the shelf and left behind. Surely we Christians are non-conformist when it comes to self-identity.

The 'Hosanna' crowd that cheered for Jesus as he entered Jerusalem was drawn by his power. The 'Crucify Him' crowd of only five days later taunted him for his seeming powerlessness.

The powerful attract us. We hope by being with them we will catch their vigor and stave off the fear that we are nothing. The powerless can also attract us, like wolves attracted to a wounded animal. When celebrities fall, the media smell blood.

As we begin Holy Week we ask: How do we respond to power and to its loss? Do we home in on the strong, even the bullies, shedding our convictions in hopes of a share in their strength? Do we distance ourselves from the weak and despised?

Or do we follow him who 'emptied himself, taking the form of a slave...becoming obedient even to death on a cross?' Come Easter Sunday he will gather around him a multitude in which we can find ourselves, not having to buy into what society tells us is our identity, but caught up in the way of him who is our truth and way of life.

PASTOR EMERITUS

WILL THERE BE CHANGE?

At first flush this looks like a good choice. I have a feeling similar to the feeling I had when Pope John XXIII was elected in 1958. The new pope's body language looks warm and he has a natural smile. I was touched by his asking the crowd to bless him.

Taking the name of Francis is symbolic. When you think of St. Francis you think of Christ asking him to "Go, rebuild my church." There is no end to the possibilities in that for today. Link that to his simple lifestyle and experience of mixing daily with ordinary people on the public transport in Buenos Aires. It's hard to believe he is unaware of the troubles of the poor.

I pick up a genuine humility about him; someone with his feet well planted on the ground. And, like it or not, being a Jesuit is is nobody's fool! There appears to be a deep calmness to him, like somebody who is at ease in his own skin. He didn't strike me as a man who would be easily pushed around by Roman Curia officials. They will do well to tread softly around him!

Of course, it very much remains to be seen how he will act, what he will do, and what kind of people he will listen to. Though born in the Argentine and having never lived outside his native country, I believe there's German blood in his veins. Hopefully it will enable him to be decisive and unafraid to bring closer together the two basic factions in the church.

So let's all keep him in our prayers....

PASTOR EMERITUS

OLD LAW OR NEW?

The incident of the woman caught in adultery is one of the better known stories in the New Testament. The law of Moses prescribed she be stoned to death. The scribes and Pharisees brought her to Jesus in order to test him on the law. Would he condemn her to death, or would he plead for her release?

As in many other situations where they put Jesus to the test, he turned this one into a teaching opportunity. They had challenged him on paying taxes, breaking the sabbath, consorting with sinners, ignoring the tradition of the elders, and many other things. In each case Jesus turned what was meant to be a situation of ensnarement and entrapment into one of teaching and revelation.

'The Law of Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?' Ever been on the horns of a dilemma? Were Jesus to urge the woman be released he would violate the Mosaic Law and be seen as irreligious, and certainly no prophet. He would be written off by the crowds as a fake.

If, on the other hand, he approved the stoning he would have broken a Roman law which forbade Jews to condemn anybody to death. That was a Roman prerogative. And Rome was not inclined to tangle with the law of Moses.

The wily Jesus did neither. Instead, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. The Gospel doesn't say what it was he wrote in the sand. But all kinds of interpretations have been put forward. Many people say he wrote the sins of adultery committed by the scribes and Pharisees who were present and waiting to stone this woman. So they retreated silently in shame.

I prefer the one from the late Jean Danielou SJ which says he wrote on the hard ground the New Law of compassion and forgiveness. The reading from Isaiah this Sunday refers to the liberation of God's people from Egypt. Three months later God would present Moses with his law written on stone slabs. Was Jesus now offering the scribes and Pharisees liberation from the shakles of the Mosaic Law?

Were their eyes opened to the more excellent way of love which Paul eulogises in his famous "Love is patient...." hymn. Paul tells the Phillipians in the second reading that he, who in the past had been a Pharisee and rabid Mosaic lawman, had already left behind him the old law and was straining after a new. Paul's eyes had been opened as he lay on the ground, and so began his newfound freedom in Christ.

I would like to quote a few words from the late Fr. Jerry Kennedy of Oakland about the influence of the old law of fear in our church today. "Silence, secrecy and fear have stripped our bishop of credibility and wrapped them in the vestment of irrelevance. Rome has much work to do but has turned down the wrong blind alley to nowhere. But the Holy Spirit will figure something out...."

PASTOR EMERITUS

TWO SONS AND A FATHER

This Sunday we'll hear again Jesus' best loved parable, the Prodigal Son. Here we have the story-telling Christ at his magnetic best. It has all kinds of messages and has been interpreted in hundreds of ways.

Scripture scholars see in this parable evidence of Jesus' sense of dark humor. His audience is twofold: pharisees and scribes on the one hand, and tax collectors and sinners on the other. Guess which group gets its come-uppance!

The principal character in the story is the father who represents God. In a certain way, the younger son reminds me of the tax collectors and sinners, while the older boy suggests the self-righteously religious scribes and pharisees.

The scholars, pointing to Luke's Greek, describe the younger one as asking for money so he can put it in his pocket and spend as he likes. Demanding it before it falls due, he is saying he wants to live foot-loose and fancy-free, as if his father didn't exist. Everything he had up to now - existence, life, health, success, love - came from his father and family. From now on, he wants these things but on his own terms, and in a self-made world.

Gifts dry up when we break with our friends and patrons. The scholars tell us the kid set off to a collossal empty place - translated in English as 'a far country.' It was a world of contract and calculation; a world of tit for tat and slaving for money. He lived high on the hog until funds ran dry, and then he began to taste the raw inhumanity of his self-willed life. Its toxicity soon made him monumentally lonely and unhappy, until one day he woke up to some brutal honesty about himself.

'I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son..."'

This younger son had the wrong idea about the purpose of his life, his gifts and everything he had to offer. Somewhere along the line he picked up the notion that they were his to do whatsoever he desired with them. God's gifts to us of life, brains and brawn, are there for a God-given purpose. Our task is to discover that purpose. Failure to do so will enable happiness to pass us by.

The father in the story is not an 'I-told-you-so' father. Much less is he a penalizing judge. He is a huge party giver, someone who wants us all at the banquet table.

The elder son is no fun at all. He has poor communication and relationship with his father, and has to ask a servant to explain the party back at the ranch. In a rage, he refuses to enter, but lectures his father. 'Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders....' Like the pharisees and scribes, he is into grim submission to the law and orders. And he is into puritanical criticism and censorship of his once wayward brother.

God doesn't want automatons. God wants friends, people in grateful and happy communication with him and with one another. That's why a banquet table is at the center of our faith. The ancient pharisees and scribes were too stiff and law-fearing to have an easy and familiar relationship with their God. Recovering and repentant sinners who had tasted the truth about themselves were possibly a better catch.

PASTOR EMERITUS

TWO POPES

The decision of Benedict XVI to abdicate brought me back to the decision of John XXIII in 1959 to call the Second Vatican Council. Both decisions were bold, liberal and totally unexpected. John's turned out to have been life-giving for the church. Will Benedict's decision be life-giving?

Powerful elements within the Roman Curia tried but failed to undermine the hopes Pope John had in calling the Council. Will the old guard in the Vatican try to foil attempts to elect the person whose ministry should bring new life to an ageing and out of touch church? Or will they prevail and put a sign up that says, 'Business as Usual?' Things cannot go on as they are.

Whether we like it or not, our church is polarized. For thirty years, progressives and traditionalists have been drifting more and more apart. Mutual demonization has become the order of the day within the church. Many feel we need a leader who will work with both sides and unify the church again.

A new and recent voice has been heard: 'Vatican II has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, misconstrued and misapplied.' Yes, there have been some minor misapplications of the Council's decrees. The minority voices during the Council, the old denizens of the Vatican, had the same complaint: 'This Council is not in line with previous Councils.' Luckily, they were unheeded and outvoted 9/1 on average for all sixteen documents. Why are we heeding the current chorus, coming especially from people who did not live through Vatican II?

Many feel we need a vigorous pope who will defeat the artful dodgers who undermined Benedict's attempts to run the church. Benedict is surely the patron saint of people everywhere who are oppressed by philistine bureacracies. He was a Mozart afficianado, and maybe the tragedy of his papacy will one day be the stuff of a Mozart-like opera.

Good Pope John held fast to his vision. And so did Paul VI who came after him, who had the Council's vision and oversaw its implementation and interpretation for the fifteen years of his papacy.

What is the vision today? The church needs to step away from the security of its power and preoccupation with preserving its institutions, and go out to meet the generation it has lost. It must stop waiting for the young to come in, but instead go out to meet them.

The West has become missionary territory, just as what we once alled the 'third world' was missionary land in the last century. The new pope will need to have more than a Roman outlook, more than a European one. He will need to see the world as if it were a village. And he will need to have around him a Vatican Curia with a similar vision. Hopefully he will be for the 21st century what Pope John XXIII was for the 20th.

PASTOR EMERITUS