celebrationpublications.org€¦ · Web viewThe second pair of images, the light and shining city on the hilltop is even more powerful when understood in a biblical context. Light

Preaching Resources – February 2017 © CelebrationPublications.org

February 5, 2017 – The 5th Sunday in Ordinary TimeIsaiah 58:7-10, Psalm 112:4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Matthew 5:13-16Salty CommunitiesBy: Mary McGlone

Did you ever try to un-salt what you were cooking? It’s nigh well impossible. Once salt has permeated the food it’s there; the only solution is to try to dilute it.

That’s an interesting fact to remember as we hear today’s Gospel. When Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world,” the “you” he addressed were the disciples who had just heard him say, “Blessed are you when they insult and persecute you because of me.” Remembering who is in the audience throws a particular light upon the message we’re hearing. To be certain that we understand Jesus’ point we should recall that in the first six beatitudes — the Gospel we heard last week — Jesus spoke in the third person (Blessed are the poor in spirit), he didn’t get personal (blessed are you) until he talked about suffering for his sake. Jesus was saying that his message is so provocative that those who propagate it will be persecuted, but they will have made a difference. They’ve salted the situation, and there’s no undoing the influence they’ve had.

Tertullian, an early Christian author wrote in the late second century about the futility of persecuting Christians: “No cruelty of yours, though each were to exceed the last in its exquisite refinement, profits you in the least; but forms rather an attraction to our sect. We spring up in greater numbers as often as we are mown down by you: the blood of the Christians is a source of new life” (Apologeticus, Chapter 50). Eventually Constantine understood that message and stopped the persecutions. His tolerance allowed Christianity to become main-beliefs. stream and since then, his policy has threatened to dilute the saltiness of the faith.

The last thing Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount was a mainstream faith. In a passage from an anonymous Christian to a pagan named Diognetus, it was said: “Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs ... they do not follow an eccentric manner of life.” But they were still unique. Christians seemed to know what they were about and they not only didn’t worry about what others thought about it, but they were willing to lose everything for the sake of their faith. The early Christians of whom the authors spoke were people who may have seemed ordinary, but underneath it all, they were different. They were salt and light in a world they considered insipid and murky.

How? How did being salt and light go together with Jesus’ teaching about not trumpeting your good deeds — even to the extent that your right hand should not know what the left hand is doing? (See Matthew 6:1-4). Since much of what Jesus says makes more sense to people who live in a communally oriented culture, we may better understand it through that lens. An individualist culture values independence, personal achievement and success; it thrives on competition. A communally oriented culture values family or community over individual rights; it prizes unity and cohesion, cooperation and the group’s reputation. Both types can be destructive when taken to an extreme: individualists become treacherously egoistic and collectivists can squash the uniqueness of the human person. Each must learn to appreciate the values of the other. As members of an individualist culture we tend to hear Jesus’ talk about being the salt and light as calls to each of us as individuals. Jesus’ original audience more likely


interpreted this as a call to be a light-bearing, salty community. There are some pretty significant implications to taking these words to heart in a communal way.

There’s no doubt that Jesus addressed the Sermon on the Mount to a group, a community of disciples. He was calling on them to join together in the work of welcoming and building up God’s reign in their midst. They had to do it together — a grain of salt doesn’t make a lot of difference, and one light, even if it’s well placed, won’t make the city on the hill visible in the dark. Not only could they not do it singly, but living in loving community was a key element of their witness to the world.

No matter our cultural background, we need to be aware that Jesus invites us into a communal movement. He doesn’t offer a methodology for individual salvation any more than we can light the world by ourselves. Today’s reading from Isaiah describes Jesus’ communities of salt and light. They enlighten the world because in them the hungry are fed, the homeless are taken in and everybody watches out for one another. They won’t dilute their message, and they don’t worry about what it costs because they don’t believe they can afford to live in the darkness of another kind of world.

IS 58:7-10

This selection from Isaiah 58 presents God’s answer when the people complained: “We’re doing such good and holy things! Why don’t you notice and do what we want?” The people detail their sacrifices, the ascetic practices they used to get God’s attention. Putting on sackcloth and ashes was like putting on a shroud and having the dust of the earth cover them, thereby simulating death. Bowing their heads was a sign of mourning and some penances even included self-flagellation (cf. Isaiah 58:1-5). They did all this to prove how pious and sincere they were. But God’s response was crystal clear: “The fast you are keeping today will not give you a hearing on high” (58:4). The people sought God “day after day,” but God answered their grumbling by pointing out that their fast days were no different from any other day; fasting or feasting, they sought to fulfill their own will while they drove their workers into the ground. God’s question to them could be paraphrased: “How do you have the nerve to complain as if you were a nation that does justice?” God then went on to tell them that when they made life better for others they would find their own life improved as well.

Isaiah’s people were not alone in their injudicious attempts to bribe God with sacrifice. Isn’t it ironic that religion has so often valued asceticism, self-denial and austerity? Those are virtues more in line with John the Baptist than Jesus. What child thinks he’s going to garner his parents’ favor by denying himself? The little boy who wants something from his mom will clean his room and take out the trash. The suspicious mother may be on guard for what’s coming next, but she knows that he’s trying to make her happy — even if for self-serving reasons. In the case of the people who were fasting, God’s answer was simple: “You’re putting on quite a show, but I’m not entertained.” Then, because they hadn’t seemed to get the message in the first 50 or 100 times it had been delivered, the prophet repeats the traditional teaching about what really pleases God.

As always, there are some ideas that are richer in the original languages than in translation. A more literal translation makes it clearer that God is asking people to offer the needy room and board in their own homes. This is not a case of taking food to a shelter or even covering the bill for a night’s stay at Motel 6, but bringing the hungry and homeless to the dinner table with the


family. And speaking of the family, the literal translation for “do not turn your back on your own” is more like “don’t hide from your family.”

When you do these things, says the Lord, you will be healed, and your light will shine, not because of what you’ve earned, but what you’ve learned. Being with God’s beloved ones, people who hope mightily and see God’s hand in every kindness done to them, is the greatest possible tutorial in spirituality. Most simply, this reading tells us that the poor and needy are the people who can lead us to God and reveal where God is at work in our world.

1 COR 2:1-5

Paul’s conversion was the sort of turning point that changed everything for him. It wasn’t simply a move from persecutor to proselytizer; all of his references were transformed. Although we don’t know much about his background, it’s obvious that he was an intelligent and well-educated man, a graduate of the best schools of his day, so to speak. Therefore, when he goes to the Corinthians saying “I did not come with sublimity of words or wisdom,” it’s a concrete sign of what he said in Philippians 3:7 — his social advantages were no better than trash in the light of knowing Christ.

The cross was such a counter-intuitive sign that anyone who came to believe in Christ would never see anything else the same way in the future. The cross was God’s revelation of power in very apparent weakness, of eternal victory in the guise of death. It’s very hard for those of us who were surrounded by Christian symbols during our entire lives to understand how scandalous the cross was — and still is. To the extent that we have gotten over its shock value we’ve probably lost its meaning. Anyone who believes in the cross becomes very suspicious of anything that looks like popular success — in Paul’s day and in ours.

Paul said he proclaimed a “mystery.” We might better understand that if we realize that his emphasis was not so much on preaching or proclaiming the mystery as it was on leading his people into an experience of the Spirit like the one he had undergone. As he said, he avoided enticements and impressive speech so that their faith “might rest not on human wisdom, but on the power of God.”

This reading challenges us on multiple levels. At first glance it calls us to examine whether or not we believe as does Paul that it is the cross, Christ’s act of total self-giving, that convinces us and calls us to imitation of him, or if we are more like “cultural Christians,” people along for the ride as long as it doesn’t get too uncomfortable.

That question quickly leads to a deeper one: What is our experience of God? When Paul talks about the “mystery” of God, he’s referring to a faith experience that goes beyond the pragmatic, the understandable and the safe. When we are open to this mystery we become as vulnerable as Paul was and susceptible to a deep-seated rethinking of all we thought we knew. That brings us to a radical juncture where we need to choose whether to have faith in God or in our own ideas and concepts. It is only when we hold our own convictions lightly that we can be open to God’s ongoing revelation.

Paradoxically, it requires immense faith to question our beliefs. But that is what Paul suggests in this reading. Paul the preacher wanted to lead his people to an experience of God. He refused to propose a well-crafted argument or proof of anything. Instead he offered a mind-blowing encounter with the power of the cross, a power that would draw the Corinthians into greater loving even as it questioned what seemed to make good sense. His words invite us to the same.


MT 5:13-16

As we continue through the Sermon on the Mount, we must remember that although many see Jesus here as the new Moses, he is not acting as a law-giver, but rather a dispenser of wisdom. The Beatitudes were conundrums, counterintuitive sayings that make sense only when we reflect on them from practice. In addition, although the entire sermon is generally thought to be a collection of teachings rather than a homily delivered all at one time, Matthew framed it as a discourse and therefore wanted his readers to take it as such. With that in mind we need to remember that Jesus addressed the statements about salt and light to you, meaning those disciples to whom he had previously just stated “blessed are those who are persecuted.”

Jesus was a great one for playing with words, and he did so in the saying about salt. Salt, in addition to its attributes as a flavor enhancer and food preservative, was a common metaphor for wisdom. So, the word Jesus used for the idea of salt losing its flavor was one which could connote foolishness. That concept makes for a great addition to what Paul had to say about human wisdom and the power of God. Following up on the last phrase of the beatitudes, Jesus indicates that persecuted disciples who are blessed and possess the kingdom of heaven are the salty wise ones. But if they lose that saltiness, their wisdom truly becomes folly, not only for them, but in the sight of the world that laughs because they gave up on what they had begun.

The second pair of images, the light and shining city on the hilltop is even more powerful when understood in a biblical context. Light was a common symbol for God’s word: “Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105); and even for God: “The Lord is my light and my salvation” (Psalm 27:1). The city on the hilltop was Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God (Micah 4:1-3). With these images Jesus teaches that the persecuted and blessed disciples are an extension of God’s very presence in the world, a presence that can never be hidden or snuffed out.


Homily - February 5, 2017 – The 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Illumine the World, Bring It FlavorBy: Ted Wolgamot

“Let there be light.” The first words God ever spoke.To this day, every major religion speaks a language of light. Jewish people use the menorah to

celebrate the Hanukah miracle of faith triumphing over evil. The Quakers have a famous expression: “I’ll hold you in the light,” instead of our common promise: “I’ll pray for you.”

Light illuminates. It warms. It destroys darkness. It lifts spirits.The prophet Isaiah makes crystal clear that we are to become a people of light. As he

challenges us so powerfully with his inspirational words found in today’s first reading, our actions of “clothing the naked” are to be so far-reaching, our deeds of “bestowing bread on the hungry” are to be so radical, our cries of anguish over the need for “sheltering the oppressed and the homeless” so loud, that they will break forth through the darkness of greed and the idolization of fame and power that engulf us like a shroud of gloom and despair.

Many people speak these days of our culture of depression and anxiety. In the midst of possessing so much, in the midst of untold comfort the likes of which most of the world could never imagine, somehow we are sad and afraid. So much so, we have come to embrace darkness — the darkness of bullying, of pornography, of drugs, of violence, of cynicism, of cruelty, of the horror of human trafficking, of abortion.

Jesus challenges us to embrace the ultimate antidote to all of this darkness. He calls us to create lives of generosity, gratitude and selflessness. He shines a beacon of hope in the midst of this negativity that surrounds us, and tells us instead:

“Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”

In our second reading today, the apostle Paul reminds us in very graphic terms that “You were once darkness, but now you are the light in the Lord. Live as children of the light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.”

Jesus goes on to challenge us even further. We are also to be salt — the “salt of the earth.” It’s difficult for us today to understand how critically essential salt was to the ancient world. The great early civilizations first developed near deserts close not only to water, but to salt resources. The ability that salt provided to preserve food was a requirement for people of that time.

But beyond this, salt gave flavor to food. And that’s what Jesus emphasizes. We are to become people who bring a whole new taste to the world we live in. We are to bring “the flavor of God” to all that we do and say. Light and salt are strongly connected. From Jesus’ point of view, the more we create a “God flavor” to life, we become light. We dispel the darkness we find around us.

That new taste, that new “God flavor” becomes contagious. It spreads. It multiplies.When you were baptized, a candle was lit, and the priest prayed over you: “This light is

entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly ... may you walk always as a child of the light.” God has passed the light of the heavens on to you and to me. Let each of us hold our lives “in

the light” and illumine the world we live in by flavoring it with the taste of God.


Planning - February 5, 2017 – The 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Light in the DarknessFr. Lawrence E. Mick

We live in dark times. War and terrorism, global climate change, political polarization, social upheaval, racial tensions, wage stagnation, wealth inequality and many other issues confront us every day. And for many in the Northern Hemisphere, February seems one of the bleakest months of the year, as we wait for signs of spring and new life.

On February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also called Candlemas Day, we celebrated the presence of the Light of the World in our midst. Today’s readings also focus on light, calling us to become lights in the darkness by letting Christ’s light shine through us.

The first reading assures us that light will rise in the darkness if we reach out to those in need as well as stop oppression and negative speech. Those are difficult challenges, but they are ones we are called to embrace and strive to meet day after day. The psalm refrain insists that the just person is a light in the darkness. The second reading does not mention light but reminds us that whatever good we can do flows from the power of the Spirit within us. In the Gospel, Jesus calls us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. That Gospel passage has inspired the naming of various groups such as Salt and Light TV and Communities of Salt and Light that are devoted to reaching out to the world with the message of Christ.

These readings call us again to consider how well our worship is leading people to take the Gospel to the streets, as Pope Francis has called us to do. Does your parish shine as a light in your neighborhood? Are people drawn to your community of faith by what they see you doing in the area?

Perhaps even more basic, does your worship enlighten those who participate? Does it help them understand and embrace the mission that Christ has entrusted to us? Does it fire up parishioners to go forth and spread the good news of God’s mercy? Does it make a difference in their daily lives?One would hope that we can all answer “yes” to those questions, but undoubtedly there is more that we can do, more that we can be. As we move through this liturgical year, and maybe especially as we prepare for Lent, we need to keep these challenges in mind so that the preaching and the prayers, the music and the hospitality, and everything we do becomes oriented to linking worship and mission, worship and daily life. What is the next step you can take to move your liturgies in that direction?


February 12, 2017 – 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time Sirach 15:15-20, Psalm 119:1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34, 1 Corinthians 2:6-10, Matthew 5:17-37Grasped by LoveBy: Mary McGlone

Years ago, we nicknamed one of my nieces “the attorney general.” She was about four years old and as legalistic as a tiny person could possibly be. When told that she could ride her tricycle only in the driveway, she wanted to know if the front wheel could touch the dividing line with the street when she turned around. And what about her shadow, if that went into the street was she disobeying? If so, riding at different times of day would imply different rules — and a cloudy day would throw confusion over the whole system! It would have done her mother no good to cite Sirach saying “If you choose, you can obey and it will save you.” The child sought razor-sharp precision, intent on getting away with all she could, only to test the limits. She and her parents had no shared values in the laws of bike riding. For her the rule was nothing but an authoritarian limitation on her freedom. For her parents, it was a matter of preserving her life so that she could survive one day to use her cleverness for better causes.

Our attitude toward the law depends on the reasons we see for it and on our feelings for those who have formulated it. One level of obedience, like my niece’s, is conformity to avoid punishment. That’s purely egoistic; the only reason for following the rule is to keep herself out of trouble. When the potential punishment or risk of being caught diminishes there’s no motivation for observing the law. The lawgiver thus has to be certain that disobedience appears more costly than compliance.

Today’s readings talk about a much different appreciation of divine law. The selection from the Book of Sirach, a collection of Jewish wisdom, claims that obedience to God’s law leads to genuine quality of life. The law turns out to be more of a revelation than a demand. As today’s responsorial psalm asserts, God’s law offers the pathway to a life full of blessing. When we appreciate that following the law of God leads to tranquility, it makes philosophical sense.

When we get to Paul’s message the philosophers are invited to bow out. Paul talks about a wisdom that applies to neither the winners of the world nor even the utopian theorists. For Paul, divine wisdom refers to neither legal nor philosophical concepts but comes from knowing the mystery of Christ. Paul understands wisdom as the consciousness that comes from allowing the Spirit of God to enlighten us. It’s the result of a relationship of love, and therefore it’s impossible to understand outside of the context of being caught up in God’s love.

While Paul’s approach sounds pretty philosophical, Jesus applies the law of wisdom to the everyday relationships of people in community — and what he says applies as startlingly now as did on the day he first uttered these things. Jesus reminds us that the anger which leads someone to demean a brother comes from the same root as Cain’s murder of Abel. And just in case people missed that subtle reference, he doubled down on it by talking about making peace before you presume to offer anything to God, reminding people that the first murder took place in the context of making an offering to God (Genesis 4:2-10). Jesus capped this teaching off with the warning that if we can’t figure out how to make peace among ourselves we’ll start taking one another to court and end up imprisoned by our own systems of retribution.

When he talks about relationships between the sexes, Jesus avoids judging the picky details and demands due reverence for every person made in God’s image. He points out that cultivating lust destroys the heart of the lascivious looker as surely as it devalues the woman who is considered like a carnival attraction. On the question of divorce Jesus tells the audience that if


you put someone in an impossible situation, you are responsible for what happens as a result. That’s a theory that we might apply today not just to family affairs but to situations like those of former soldiers with PTSD or inner city children stuck in failing schools. Speaking today Jesus might well talk about how much responsibility we have for these very serious problems. Matthew’s sermon on the mount presents Jesus as a new Moses, not as the lawgiver but a guide who shows the way to a life full of blessing. In Deuteronomy 30, Moses told the people that through the covenant, God was offering them life or death, blessing or curse. When Jesus interpreted the Mosaic Law, he refused to get lost in juridical minutiae but went to the heart of the matter. Fulfillment of the law is simply a question of love.

SIR 15:15-20

Today’s reading from Sirach is part of an exploration of questions of God’s omnipotence and omniscience in the face of human free will. The verses which precede today’s reading insist that people cannot blame God for their own failures: God created humanity with free will, and they are responsible. In these lines the sage echoes Moses’ speech in Deuteronomy 30:11-20 insisting that human beings have the ability to choose good or evil, that which leads to life or that which causes destruction.

This reading and the psalm which follows it present God’s law not as a legal system but as a way of wisdom. This approach is far closer to Native American traditions than to the U.S. judicial system.

The second part of the reading offers great comfort to any who seek God’s will. In the midst of extolling God’s wisdom and power it assures the reader that God comprehends the human heart. “Fear of the Lord” includes the assurance that God watches over beloved humanity and will never ask for anything harmful. The last line can simply be read as a defense of God’s law. But far more than that, it assures anyone who suffers injustice that no matter what the aggressor’s legalistic claims might be, nothing that does harm to another is the will of God. Regardless of what authorization people in power might claim, they have no license either to injure others or to demand that others do what is not right.

1 COR 2:6-10

Although in other places Paul’s compliments to the Corinthians may be ironic, here he’s sincere in calling them mature enough to appreciate divine wisdom. They would not be members of this community if they did not have some comprehension of God’s countercultural ways. Paul describes the wisdom at the heart of Christianity as something incomprehensible to the “rulers of this age,” and yet something that the community already grasps as a “mystery.” This implies that they accept it and that as they live into it, they comprehend its truth ever more deeply. The point of this part of the letter is that God’s wisdom is grasped by grace rather than through any intellectual accomplishment. To emphasize that Paul paraphrases and reinterprets Isaiah 64:3 with this statement: “No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you working such deeds for those who wait.”

Paul is picking up on Isaiah’s idea that the eye and ear and heart are receptors of knowledge. We tend to believe in most of what we see, we judge what we hear on the basis of our trust in the source, and while we may not consciously admit it, most of us come to final conclusions under the strong influence of the heart. With his poetic rendering of “eye has not seen ... ” Paul is


saying that there is no human sense or resource capable of discerning God’s plan. Only the Spirit of God can reveal God’s heart to limited human beings.

Last week’s reading gave us a glimpse of Paul’s interpretation of conversion as a total reordering of his life and understanding while this selection gives us a sense of the affect involved. Paul’s teaching about the mystery of God’s plan for humanity is not so much about grasping for understanding as it is about being grasped by love. The experience of God’s great love has reordered Paul’s whole being and overridden every other kind of knowledge.

Paul assures us that from the beginning of creation, God’s plan has been to entice us into participation in this mystery. Everything prepared for it until it came to fulfillment in Christ. We can know this only through the influence of the Spirit who communicates from the very depths of God. Paul’s talk about this mystery is nothing short of an invitation to share his mysticism. As he told the Corinthians, he also tells us that in Christ we invited to live this mystery.

MT 5: 17-37

“Do not think I came to abolish the law but rather to fulfill it.”Paul often talked about the end of the time of the law but Jesus presented a different

perspective. We need to understand Jesus’ sense of the fulfillment of the law within the context of metanoia – the turnaround implied by faith in Christ. The disciple who has undergone a radical change of perspective will understand the law and morality in a new and different way. God’s law was never supposed to function like a set of rules demanding conformity; rather, God told the people that the law was near to them, it dwelt in their hearts and would give them life (Deuteronomy 30:12-18). Nevertheless, they did not always take it in. Jesus now offers to show the disciples how to live the law in such a way that it directs their motivation and their perception, their heart and their mind. It is only when the law is a living interior force that people can truly fulfill it. The person who conforms to a law that doesn’t spring from the heart is like a dancer who makes all the right moves without interiorizing the rhythm. It’s a performance, not a dance. A well-oiled robot could accomplish the same. The moves may be right but they’re not graceful.

Each of Jesus’ examples springs from the tradition and gives it new life. When he refers to anger against a brother his people will hear references to Cain and Abel, and to Joseph’s jealous brothers. They will understand immediately what kind of anger leads to murder, and they will recognize it when they are implicated in the same deadly process. The demand for reconciliation here is stringent — it isn’t just to forgive, but to reach out to someone who has something against you — even if you might not think it’s your fault! The call to avoid anger thus evolves into a call to cultivate both humility and love for the other over oneself.

On the topic of relations between the sexes, Jesus stood up for vulnerable women. First of all, he said that regarding a woman as an object of pleasure denigrates her personhood. At a time when adultery was considered a crime against the woman’s husband, Jesus described both the lascivious gaze and the adulterous act as an offense against the woman herself, pointing out her primary significance in the whole matter. The same holds with the question of divorce. Because only the man could decide on divorce, it often left the woman without any honorable means of support. If a man puts a woman in that position, says Jesus, he will incur the guilt for whatever happens as a result. No man is free simply to wash his hands of a situation that doesn’t please him.

Finally, in what may seem to us a much lesser matter, Jesus tells people to stop swearing oaths as if that made their statements more trustworthy. In some cases, legalists of the day had


determined certain formulae which rendered oaths null, thereby making them and the word of the person pronouncing them a sham. Such an oath would have no object other than to deceive. But even in general, Jesus left no room for double talk among his disciples — too much would depend on their transparency and commitment.

Each of these pronouncements on the tradition clearly calls for deep commitment and interiority in the fulfillment of the law. They also halt the tendency to triangulation involved in thinking of hurting others as a transgression against heaven more than as mistreatment and disrespect of a brother or sister. When people think of the law primarily as what must be obeyed to stay in good graces with God they miss the entire point of God’s love. The commandments are the basis for creating the happiness and community for which God created humanity. Transgressing the law is an offense against God precisely because of the harm it does to the human community. Thinking otherwise makes it sound as if God has a delicate ego that must be treated with great care lest God unleash the full force of divine wrath in punishment. That’s an idea that disparages both God and humanity.

Jesus’ teachings about human relations described the interactions that characterize the kingdom of heaven. As in the earlier part of this discourse, these are wisdom sayings, not juridical pronouncements. They present a design for living with specific examples that can be applied to other situations as well. What underlies the whole is a profoundly reverential approach to relationships, to our dealings with those with whom we share community or family and those with whom we deal in day to day situations. The real subject of Jesus’ teaching here is about the heart we put into every human interaction.



Wisdom and the Law By: Gloria Couvion

In today’s first reading, Sirach speaks to the challenge of following the law: all we must do is choose to follow. Wouldn’t it be great if it were that simple? I am reminded of someone whose solution to any problem is to say, “all you have to do is” with no regard for the big picture. There is never an offer of a solution for the problem. Most of us know life is not that simple. There are difficulties that arise due to the very nature of our humanity. When I hear the comment “all you have to do is ... ” I respond with a blank stare, not out of disrespect, but because there is nothing I could say that would make a difference. Instead, I have already moved to a problem-solving mode. Often I wonder if that is how Jesus felt on occasion.

Jesus knew that there is more to following the law in one’s life. In the Gospel of Matthew, he recognizes that understanding the law needs to be developed more fully. His followers are restless and questioning. He wants them to have the wisdom to appreciate the law on a deeper level. Where does the desire to kill come from? Where does it start? It starts with lust, anger, name calling, bullying, acting without love or mercy. Right relationship is derailed when there is no clear understanding of these things. Like a pebble dropped in a pond the concentric circles radiate from the center. Everything around the center (the law) is affected by the wave of each circle as it radiates outward. The law is not simple but instead is layered with life, humanity and the culture of the times. Choices are not made in a vacuum but instead are made in relationship.

Jesus came to fulfill the law — a law that must be perpetually deepened with growing wisdom of the time. The work of fulfilling the law is in unceasing evolution. How different that looks today in a culture that is driven by media and technology. The task of applying new wisdom gained over time in a culture that is becoming more and more diverse with new temptations, disguised as normal, requires resourcefulness. Nothing is static and must always be open to new interpretation and relevance. The basic are the tried and true but the response evolves and regenerates itself with time and wisdom.

Did Jesus really mean “pluck out your eye” or did he mean divert your eyes when you know your gaze is not respectful? Did he really mean “cut off your hand” or did he mean think about what that hand is capable of? Jesus asks that we not let the laws become stumbling blocks but instead be a foundation for growth. Don’t go to the altar without taking responsibility for your actions. Bring to fruition the steps that bring forth wholeness to brokenness. The struggle with keeping the law should be taken seriously because it is the foundation of right relationship. Using that struggle helps to integrate morality and ethics into our daily lives and to build up the kingdom of God. Keeping the law is the work of mercy and love that heals. As the psalmist cries out: “Open my eyes, that I may consider the wonders of your law.” The law which manifests the basic values in an ever-changing world invites us to enter into the mystery. Consider the chaos without the continual fulfillment of the laws.



Life or DeathFr. Lawrence E. Mick

Today’s first reading issues a challenge to each of us: “Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” We have been given the power to choose, and with that power comes responsibility.

Religion is intended to be a guide to life, to choosing the good so that we can lead fulfilling and joyful lives. Too often, though, religion is seen as stifling life by its rules and demands on our time and money. Much of the challenge of evangelization in our time involves helping people to see that faith offers them positives rather than negatives, that the church is a place that fosters a full and rich life of love and joy.

This is not an easy message to get across, both because of our history as a church focused on laws and rules and because of contemporary condemnations of multiple groups and issues by many who claim the name of Christian today.

Some people think that the solution is simply to ignore any church law or rule that is inconvenient and make no demands on those who come to us. Today’s readings, however, also confront us with the importance of laws and obedience to God’s will, so we can’t just ignore all rules and commandments. The key is found in the Gospel, where Jesus challenges us to look more deeply into the commandments to see the values that they are trying to preserve. This requires a certain level of maturity, as Paul suggests in the second reading: “We speak a wisdom to those who are mature, not a wisdom of this age.”

When we are children, rules need to be rather black and white; at a young age, we are not yet mature enough to evaluate the purpose of the rule or when it might not apply. If we mature in our faith, however, we gain the ability to discern more carefully, to make sure that the purpose of the rule is fulfilled and that the rule is not impeding its own goals.This kind of discernment is necessary for moral issues, as Pope Francis has indicated more than once. “We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them,” he wrote in his apostolic exhortation on the family (Joy of Love #37). The same principle applies to liturgical laws and rules, too. The mature pastor or planner takes time to understand the reason for a law or rule and then strives to fulfill its purpose, even if at times that means adapting the law to a present situation. This is very different from simply ignoring any rules we don’t like, as it is very different from unthinking obedience to every rubric. Let us pray for the maturity and wisdom to embrace the law as Jesus did, going beyond the letter of the law to live its values and seek its goals.


February 19, 2017 – 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time Leviticus 19:1-2,17-18, Psalm 103:1-2,3-4,8,10,12-13, 1 Corinthians 3:16-23, Matthew 5:38-48Be Holy Like God By: Mary McGlone

One day God told Moses to assemble the entire community of Israel for an important message. So Moses did as he was told and God said: “Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.” What on earth did that mean? It seems redundant to call God holy; what else could God be? The people sought holiness by obeying God’s laws, but how could that make them holy like God? Did God obey the laws? God had no spouse or parent, nobody to whom to offer sacrifice, and all plants and animals belong to God so neither stealing nor jealousy can apply. How does one live so as to be holy like God?

Jesus issued essentially this same command at the end of today’s Gospel, except that Jesus used the word “perfect” instead of “holy.” It sounds like an impossible demand. How can we be like God? The minute we ask that question, we hear an echo of the first chapter of Genesis: “God created humankind in the divine image.” We must have some potential! Perhaps our major problem has been with our definition of holiness or godly perfection.

If we work backwards in today’s Gospel we hear about God’s unprejudiced treatment of the just and the unjust, those well-known for their goodness and those known for anything but love of God or others. The measure of God’s holiness or perfection seems to be the way God sends sun and rain to everybody. That must be what Jesus meant when he said: “Love your enemies that you may be children of your heavenly father.” And lest that be left simply as pious theory, he gave three practical, surprising and laughter-inducing examples of just what that looks like in practice.

Before we go to the examples, we need to explore the translation that says “offer no resistance to one who is evil.” When did Jesus let evil pass untrammeled? A better translation of that statement is “Do not react with hostility to one who is evil.” That’s an entirely different thing from not resisting evil. So the practical question is how to resist without hostility.

Jesus suggests that when somebody slaps you, you should turn the other cheek. The play in this bit of wisdom comes with the carefully chosen word “slap.” Jesus didn’t say “When your spouse beats you,” or “When the gang bullies you again,” instead, he said, “When somebody slaps you.” A slap is meant to demean rather than to draw blood. A slap doesn’t invite a fist fight; it’s a put-down, a power play in the social hierarchy. Note too that the slap Matthew portrays was backhanded (right hand to right cheek). Jesus was describing something intended to put the victim in his or her place rather than to incapacitate her or him. Turning the other cheek changed the game by having the victim say, “Hit me with integrity and then we’ll see.” Surely a few of the audience gasped as they pictured a browbeaten servant finally standing up like that to an arrogant overlord.

So too with walking the extra mile. A Roman soldier could force a local resident to carry his pack, but for only one mile. The offer to go a second mile robbed the uniformed bully of the initiative and put him in danger of being reported for going beyond the limits. By now Jesus’ audience was beginning to chuckle at the image of a Roman soldier pleading to get his pack back from a clever, audacious, pacifist rebel.

In the third example the power imbalance was economic. A poor person had borrowed money and all he had as collateral was his tunic, the outer garment that also served as his blanket at night. If the lender wanted to refuse to return the tunic until the loan was paid, he could get a


group of collaborators to make the judgment on his behalf. The poor debtor then had no recourse except to make a prophetic point of the absolutely unadorned fact that such a law left some naked while others ended up possessing a grimy inner garment — laundry they didn’t need and hardly wanted to touch.

What does God’s holiness look like? It looks like a never-ending outreach to rebellious humanity, an ongoing invitation to communion, the incarnation of love, no matter the cost. It looks like a person who approaches an oppressor with an attitude that says “You, no we can be better than that!” It looks like Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa and the little kid who forgives his brother who when tackled get his leg broken. Moses said “Be holy!” Jesus said “Be perfect,” and with his stories he taught that it is not only possible, but a lot more fun than other options.

LV 19:1-2, 17-18

“Thus says the Lord: ‘Be holy for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.’ ” On one level, there’s a socio/psychological theory underneath the idea that we tend to become like whatever god we worship. As human beings we naturally imitate what we admire. We see what others acclaim as desirable and suddenly we can’t wait to have it for ourselves. It’s as if there’s a yawning emptiness in us, a hunger ever seeking satisfaction that impels us to look outside ourselves for more. Thus we wear our team’s colors and buy the car that bespeaks our values, be they for the flashy or the ostentatiously ecologically responsible. This is the tendency that makes us prone to idolatry. We shouldn’t think of idolatry just as some ancient pagan ritual of bowing down before a totem, but recognize that every choice we make says something about our ultimate values, in other words, about what we worship. The Latin American bishops have spoken out vehemently against the contemporary “idols of power, wealth and fleeting pleasure” which have become “the decisive criterion in social organization” (Aparecida #387). We can recognize what we truly worship not so much by where we might go to church but rather by noting on what we spend our energy and our money. We know what has become holy to us by what makes us cheer, by what we strive to be and do.

Pope Francis commented on the “universal call to holiness” saying, “We are all called to become saints! So often, we are tempted to think that holiness is granted only to those who ... devote [their lives] to prayer. But it is not so! Some people think that holiness is closing your eyes and putting on a pious face ... No! That is not holiness! Holiness is something greater, more profound that God gifts us.” He went on to say, “When the Lord calls us to be saints, he does not call us to something hard or sad ... Not at all! It is an invitation to share His joy, to live and offer every moment of our lives with joy, at the same time making it a gift of love for the people around us” (Vatican Radio, 11/19/2014).

That is Pope Francis’ commentary on the Leviticus injunction to imitate God’s holiness. In very simple language he summarizes what Jewish and Christian biblical scholars have said about this passage. They will speak of God’s holiness as God’s love, God’s unrelenting coming to humanity with the invitation to participate in Trinitarian love. Whether we use Moses, Francis or the scholars, the end result is the same: “Be holy, for I the Lord, your God, am holy,” is an invitation to joy.


1 COR 3:16-23

There’s an interesting interplay between our reading from Leviticus and this selection from First Corinthians. Moses called the entire community together to demand that they be holy as God is holy. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul addresses the entire community as the temple of God. We should make no mistake here: Paul is speaking in the second person plural. The “you” called the temple and dwelling place of God’s spirit is the community, not individuals. While this way of speaking normally passes right by us as one more pious religious phrase, it had a good dose of shock value in Paul’s day. Paul wrote this letter around the year 56 when the Temple in Jerusalem still stood as the center of Jewish worship. The Temple was considered the focal point of God’s presence on earth (Psalm 48): the holy place in the holy city in God’s holy land. For a Jew like Paul to refer to the Christian community as the temple of God was something of a combination of blasphemy and a call to the people to fulfill the deepest meaning of their vocation. Paul was telling the Corinthians (and us) that if the world is to encounter God it will not happen in special buildings or on holy mountains, but in an encounter with God’s own people.

Whatever Paul might think of how the church has developed in the 20 centuries since he wrote, he would surely call us to a reemphasis on the presence of the Spirit God in the community. Paul would hardly be against our coming together for liturgy in a beautiful church — so long as it passes the test of authenticity he expounds later (1 Corinthians 11:17-33). But Paul would surely question our ingrained independence combined with our tendency to consider certain places, individuals and even things as “holy” while we miss the real presence of God in community.

The penchant for considering particular places as holy has developed in Christianity, and particularly in Catholicism. The early Christians worshipped in homes that otherwise housed the daily activities of the family. As Christianity became legalized in the fourth century, it was possible to build great church buildings that far outshone the house church or even small buildings set apart for communal worship. The Eucharistic bread was first reserved for distribution to the sick and eventually as a focus of private prayer, so that the building was more than a meeting place. In the 13th century Francis of Assisi promoted and popularized Eucharistic adoration and the practice spread through the ensuing centuries. Abuses eventually crept into liturgical practice and the Eucharistic presence was considered to have quasi-magical powers; awe-filled exaltation of the consecrated host replaced participation and communion — a misplaced emphasis addressed by the Council of Trent, Pius X and Vatican II.

If we take Paul seriously about the community being God’s temple, we will be challenged to a broader, deeper and more demanding understanding of Christ’s presence in our world. This can increase our devotion even as it calls us to recognize the Spirit among us and to be the presence we celebrate in our Eucharist.

MT 5:17-37

Today’s Gospel brings us the sayings of Jesus that are probably most vulnerable to misinterpretation and disastrous results. How many times have abused people been told to turn the other cheek? How many times have ideas from this selection been used to stop protests against injustice? How has the fatalism of the “resistance is futile” attitude become a mortal danger not just to humanity, but to the earth itself?

To grapple with this section of the Sermon on the Mount we need to understand what Jesus taught about the relationships that characterize the kingdom of heaven. Preceding today’s


reading, Jesus talked about in-house affairs, relationship with a brother, a husband or colleagues. Now he describes how the blessed participants in the kingdom of heaven can deal with their adversaries.

As before, Jesus introduced his teaching with “You have heard ... ” and then quoted an ancient guideline designed to break cycles of increasing violence. “An eye for an eye” assured that whether the person offended was a king or peasant, no more could be exacted from the offender than the loss he had caused. That was strict justice. But, as Gandhi pointed out, while that might have stopped violence from snowballing, it also created a lot of blindness. Jesus wanted his followers to see things differently.

Jesus wanted his followers to circumvent the spirals of hostility in the world, thus he taught them how to respond in a way that decreases antagonism and increases humanity. The “lex talionis,” an eye for an eye, recognized objective equality in terms of damage. The alternative Jesus proposed personalized the interaction. In his examples the injured party who refuses to be treated as an inferior human being becomes the greater in terms of humanity, simultaneously inviting the other into a more human milieu. That sounds a bit like “The last shall be first,” and it also presages how Jesus would respond to his own arrest, saying that those who live by the sword will die by it.

Jesus showed the powerlessness of brutality by proving that life prevails: he rose from the dead and the cross became a symbol of life. But as Paul admits, his message seems foolish to the world.

Nevertheless, from the time of Moses on, God has called a people to be holy, which ultimately means to be caught up in and by love. Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel is that we were made for more than pettiness and futility, and that no power on earth can demean us to the point of erasing our humanity. Jesus’ teachings about human relations described the interactions that characterize the kingdom of heaven. As in the earlier part of this discourse, these are wisdom sayings, not juridical pronouncements. They present a design for living with specific examples that can be applied to other situations as well. What underlies the whole is a profoundly reverential approach to relationships, to our dealings with those with whom we share community or family and those with whom we deal in day to day situations. The real subject of Jesus’ teaching here is about the heart we put into every human interaction.



God Calls Us to HolinessBy: Karen Seaborn

On June 17, 2015, nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina were shot to death while participating in a Bible study in the basement of their church. The shooter, a 21 year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist, had wandered into the room that evening. Can you picture it? Nine black church-goers in the midst of prayer and study, look up to see a young white man in jeans and a sweatshirt. Did they politely ask him to leave? Did they threaten to call the police if he did not leave? No. They invited him to join them. For a time, he did just that, he participated in their Bible study. And just as they were ending their session, heads bowed in prayer, he pulled a gun out of his fanny pack and one by one he shot them. Can you imagine the anguish the families of those nine people experienced? I cannot. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to lose a loved one so suddenly and so violently. And that is what makes the next part of this story so stunning. Only three days later, when invited to share a statement at the shooter’s bond hearing, several of the family members turned to the shooter and said “I forgive you”.

In today’s first reading, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites to be holy as the Lord their God is holy, to bear no hatred in their hearts, to take no revenge, to cherish no grudge and to love their neighbor as themselves. And who is their neighbor? Jesus responds to this question in chapter 10 of Luke’s Gospel with the parable of the good Samaritan: your neighbor is the one who is not like you. In today’s Gospel as Jesus brings his Sermon on the Mount to a close, he seems to save the most challenging part for last: Love not only those who are like you or even those who are not like you. Go one step further. Love your enemy. In this way, you will be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Few of us will be called to love in such horrific circumstances as those who lost loved ones in Charleston that night. But all of us have people around us who are difficult to love. It might be that co-worker who loudly snaps her gum in the next cubicle, or perhaps the committee chair who never listens to our ideas. It might be the protesters blocking traffic, or a family member with whom we haven’t spoken in many months. The wisdom of the world might call us to be righteous in our particular situation, but as Paul tells us in the second reading, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God. God calls us to holiness.

The man who shot those nine people was certainly not a friend. He was indeed their enemy. Yet, even in the midst of unimaginable pain, their family members knew that this man was still their neighbor. From somewhere deep inside themselves they knew that they were called to love that neighbor, to love their enemy. Did their forgiveness mean they no longer hurt? No. I am quite sure the family members of those victims continued to ache deeply. Yet their decision to love and forgive not only stopped a potential cycle of violence and vengeance, it made it possible for good to follow. Only twenty-three days after the shooting, the Confederate flag — long believed to be a racist symbol — was removed from South Carolina’s statehouse.These family members reflect the spirit of today’s readings. They show us how to be holy and perfect as the Lord our God is holy and perfect. It cannot have been easy for them. But they show us that with God’s grace, it can indeed be done.



The Challenge of LovingFr. Lawrence E. Mick

This Sunday and next Sunday offer a dual focus that could easily set the tone for Lent this year. Today’s readings call us to grow in our ability to love. The first reading will sound to some like a passage from the Gospels as it commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, but it comes from Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures. The psalm reminds us that God’s love is revealed in God’s kindness and mercy toward us. The second reading does not use the word love, but it speaks of the divine indwelling that communicates God’s love to us and enables us to love others. The Gospel poses the biggest challenge as Jesus commands us to embrace those who would do us harm: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father.”

There are perhaps few among us who manage to love so widely and so generously as to love even our enemies, but Jesus’ words stand as a constant challenge to continue to grow in our ability to love as God loves. This is the central commandment of Jesus, to love God and to love our neighbor. Furthermore, the teaching of Jesus makes it clear that our neighbor must include everyone, even those who hurt us and sin against us.

If Lent is supposed to draw us deeper into God’s life, then it must draw us into deeper loving. When the first reading calls us to be holy as God is holy, it goes on to command love of neighbor. That’s what holiness entails.

There is much potential for misunderstanding in a similar line in the Gospel. Jesus tells us to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That could be misunderstood to command the impossible, since none of us humans are perfect. If we remember that God is love, then being perfect like God is to love as God loves. Luke translates the same command as to “be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

In the preaching and prayers this weekend, we might focus on the different circles of loving to which we are called: family and friends, neighbors and fellow worshippers, people of other races and ethnic groups, citizens of other nations, and even those we call our enemies. Planners could compose a whole set of petitions for the intercessions, guiding the assembly to pray for the ability to love in ever widening circles.

There have been various stories in the news in recent years about people forgiving those who hurt them or their families. Search the web and recount one of those in the bulletin this week to help people see that this can happen in real life.


February 26, 2017 – 8th Sunday in Ordinary TimeIsaiah 49:14-15, Psalm 62:2-3,6-7,8-9, 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, Matthew 6:24-34Blueprint for the Reign of GodBy: Mary McGlone

When I lived among impoverished people in Peru I was initially shocked when my neighborhood friends would go all out for a celebration of someone’s birthday or baptism. They would serve food I thought they couldn’t spare to guests who came to pray with them as they waked a deceased family member in the front room. Didn’t they understand the need to conserve, to save for tomorrow?

Slowly I learned about a different set of values. A good party proclaims that the person we celebrated — whether alive or dead — is of incalculable value while money is only money, and more often than not it was in a spiral of devaluation. Additionally, people who live hand to mouth know too well that tomorrow is never guaranteed. You might save a few cents, but who’s to assure that you’ll be here tomorrow to enjoy it? Just ask the people of Haiti who survived the earthquake of 2010 and got hit with hurricane Matthew in 2016! A country that can “boast” of an entire Wikipedia entry just for its natural disasters will understand Jesus’ assertion that guests can’t fast while the bridegroom is with them but they’ll probably shake their heads at the saying, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

Somehow poverty can teach people that when you face an unknown and uncontrollable future you should make everything possible of the moment at hand. They don’t go out naked with the hopes that God will cause clothes to grow on them, but they also understand the futility of worry — it adds nothing to the quality or expanse of life and health.

There’s another bit of wisdom hidden in the tendency to party in spite of poverty. That is that celebrations create community. Folks participate in one another’s lives and become more and more bound to one another. The Spanish phrase “My house is your house” becomes ever more true as the whole neighborhood watches out for the kids playing on the street and everyone knows when the old man on the corner will go without dinner if somebody doesn’t do something about it this afternoon.

Another thing that I learned slowly among my Peruvian friends was a recognition of God’s bounty. When that elderly gentleman down the block received a dinner plate he would say “God provides.” Now in my book, the provider was Señora Mendoza who had cooked and delivered the dinner, but somehow the venerable Señor Quispe knew that God was behind it all, and Señora Mendoza would agree. Another one of those generous women once commented, “If we have an acre of corn, we mustn’t harvest it all. If we did, where would the poor find food?” If that’s not God’s providence at work, what is?

Impoverished people who live as neighbors creating community seem to have found the blueprint for building up the reign of God. They ask, “What kind of world are we creating?” If Señor Quispe had made his home a fortress with locked gates, on the day he was too weak to provide for himself, nobody might have known, and if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to get in to help.

Jesus told his followers not to worry about life, food, drink or clothes, but rather to seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness because everything else would come in its stead. It seems that the more we have, the more we tend to count on our own ability to procure and keep what we need. Are we putting more faith in IRAs, insurance policies and good locks than we do in God? The answer to that question might be found in how much we are willing to risk to help a


neighbor, be that the person across the street or the refugees pleading for a place of safety now that their homes have been destroyed by warring factions over whom they have no influence. When my friend talked of leaving some corn in her little field she was teaching that if we watch out only for ourselves, poor mothers will not be able to feed their children. And like a mother, she saw every hungry child as somehow her own. Jesus not only told his disciples to trust in God, but he also promised that those who left the security of home and family for his sake would receive a hundred times more in return. That promise comes true as we create the sort of community that can celebrate just because life is good and can share the little we have because we know it is all a gift.

IS 49: 14-15

This very short passage plays with two images for God, one that comes from dejected Zion and the other from the very mouth of God. Interestingly, Zion’s complaint about God comes immediately after a number of verses in which God promises that their salvation was on the way. Apparently, God’s promised “time of favor” seemed too far off because today’s verse begins with the people’s complaint that God has forgotten them.

Israel’s grievance against God compares the people to an abandoned wife. They say “God has deserted me.” They’re crying out in despair. They were grieving that they hadn’t even gotten the respect of the rights that would come with a divorce. They feel abandoned and forgotten as if God simply walked out on them. Like a wife whose husband has disappeared, they feel public shame, almost questioning whether the relationship ever existed.

That’s the cue for God to counter their accusation with an entirely different image. A runaway husband? No, not this God! “Can a woman forget the child of her womb?” If the choice of a spouse is a commitment, how very much more the divine decision to give birth to this people? God’s relationship to them can only be compared to motherhood, an intimacy that is unrepeatable and irreversible. But God goes even further: a mother doesn’t decide which child shall be hers: God chose this people in particular. God’s promise is irrevocable: I will never forget you.

1 COR 4:1-5

One way to approach this selection from the first letter to the Corinthians is to see it as an exploration of identity. Paul invites the community to see themselves, himself included, as “servants” and “stewards” of the mysteries of God. As he goes on he elaborates on each of those terms.

The word translated here as “servants” is rather unusual and literally means “under rowers” referring to the crew of a boat. This presents an image of a community in motion toward a goal that is set for them. Paul might be seen as the one who calls the rowing rhythm, being sure that the rowers work together. The point he makes with this colorful word is clearly that they have a task and a goal that has involved them in something bigger than themselves and their own ambitions.

The second word Paul uses, stewards, is much more familiar to his audience and to the Christian Scriptures. “Steward” generally referred to a slave who exercised significant responsibility. In those days, a person was not necessarily a slave for life and certainly not under the conditions known in 19th century America. A slave could earn enough to buy freedom. A


steward/slave had great control over household affairs. A steward was expected to be both faithful and of one accord with the master.

Paul’s description of the community includes two complimentary dimensions. First, the members of the community are Christ’s crew, workers without whom the goal cannot be reached. This implies hard toil and obedience. The idea of stewardship complements the role of rowers implying that they exercised both authority and responsibility for the master’s business.

Paul specifies that the concern of the master is none other than the mysteries of God, an idea he’s been working with throughout this first part of the letter. This mystery is the experience of being enlivened and oriented by the Spirit of God. It is a mystery that cannot be fully grasped even though it is experienced as true. One comprehends the mystery of God only by living it. Another word for it could be the experience of grace, God’s love active in a person and in the community. More accurately, the community cannot grasp the mystery of God, but rather they are grasped by it and thus impelled to serve it as surely as a thirsty person is impelled to seek water.

Paul goes on to say that neither his judgments nor anyone else’s matter in pursuing this life of stewardship. As Christ’s crew, the community can only do their best, trusting that God is guiding them. They want to strive toward a goal so attractive that they are willing to bet their lives on it even while they admit that they barely understand it. God has not promised success and certainly does not demand it. All God asks is faithfulness. Paul uses these images to help the community see themselves against an eschatological horizon. Until the day when Christ brings everything to fulfillment, they can make no definitive judgments, they are simply stewards, rowers trying to advance the mystery that gives them life and hope.

MT 6:24-34

In today’s segment from the Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches about the demands of discipleship. Later on, he will tell the disciples to go out without provisions (Matthew 10:9-10) and that giving up home and hearth for him will bring them a hundred-fold (Matthew 19:29). Here, during their early experiences with him it’s as if Jesus were giving them their freshman orientation, making it as clear as he can that discipleship is an all or nothing venture. Jesus actually uses the vocabulary of slavery to describe their relationship to God — although in this case, the individuals would choose freely which master they would serve.

As he developed this teaching, Jesus continued to use vivid language to describe discipleship. When he said that servants can be “devoted” to only one master, the Greek word Matthew quoted means to cling to something in such a way that the one holding on becomes like that which is held. That’s an idea we see repeated in the Parable of the Talents (Mt. 25:14-30) where the servants who acted like the master were rewarded while the one who feared him was rejected. The strength of this concept translates well into English with the word “devoted.” “Devoted” derives from words which mean to make a vow. A synonym for “devoted” is “consecrated.” The relationship Jesus expects between disciples and God is uncompromising. There’s no wiggle room.

The opposite of devotion to God is service of mammon. Mammon is not the devil or even money in particular, but rather possessions in a comprehensive sense. Jesus was pointing out how easy it is to become a slave of what we think we own — we need only note how a cell phone can take priority over everything from the family dinner table to the driver’s seat. Given the automatic and unfailing obedience we give to a ring tone, one would think that failing to


answer involved a public display of immorality. It’s small comfort to realize that the tendency to allow our things to dominate us is anything but new in human history.

After speaking about the exclusivity of commitment involved in discipleship, Jesus goes on to explain what discipleship offers. We might look at this as part of the longest-lasting and most audacious advertising campaign ever broadcast. For nearly 2,000 years, humanity has heard Jesus say, “You’ve got nothing to worry about! Clothing? If the birds don’t worry, why should you? Food? In case you didn’t notice, the earth and its oceans were custom designed to produce and reproduce it for every creature that will ever live!” We might ask why it is so easy to believe something like “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” while we’re so reluctant to let Jesus’ assurances guide us. Perhaps it’s the psychology of a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; like Isaiah’s dejected people, we’ll trust the limited warranty on our car brakes more than God’s promise of life.

We need to understand the injunction not to worry as an extension of Jesus’ teaching about discipleship. He actually claimed that it’s pagan to waste our time on concerns about food and drink. According to Jesus, life is all about seeking God’s kingdom and if we really do that, everything else will fall into place.

The truth is that in Jesus’ time as in our own, we have a limited attention span. Even the acts of seeing and hearing are discernments about what deserves our attention and what is only peripheral. Jesus is not suggesting that we don’t need to dress for work or pack a lunch, but rather that the way we do so will make all the difference. It’s like the distinction between the two 13th century laborers working next to each other in Chartres; when asked what they were doing one said he was laying bricks and the other that he was building a cathedral.

Pope Francis would have us understand that serving God and seeking the kingdom of heaven implies “a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable ... development” of our world (Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home #13). Jesus oriented the freshmen disciples, the course Francis is teaching might be called “Discipleship 2017.”

The call of today’s Gospel is becoming devoted disciples who trust the God who loves us like a mother and promises that we’ve got everything we need as long as we are willing to share it.



Worry or Tender TrustBy: Donna Schaper

These late February texts combine to describe the God given gift of trust. The Gospel asks the great question of “why worry?” The wildflowers don’t worry. The birds don’t worry. Why should you? If God cares for them, why would God not equally care for you? The Isaiah text speaks of God’s tenderness as like that of a mother towards an infant. A mother gazing into the eyes of a newborn embodies trust — just as the child in that eye-lock is learning how to trust. The Corinthians passage advocates that stewards be “trustworthy,” and implies that establishing trust is about taking care of what has been entrusted to us.

Many people today argue that they are spiritual but not religious. I often argue that you can’t have one without the other. The spiritual aspects of one’s self needs tending by the religious as well as the religious side needs tending by the spiritual. How do we guard the tender trust within us without trustworthy stewarding of religious or other institutions? Imagine if schools or teachers, priests or pastors, lawyers or politicians were not worthy of trust. Then the spirit within us withers. When religious or other kinds of institutions lose their way and people don’t find meaning or value in their work, we become dispirited felt as a great unraveling of the connection between the inner and the outer life of trust.

Lucy Bregman, in an interview captured in the article, “Spirituality: Unpacking a Glow Word,” (Bearings, Autumn 2016), says “the term [spirituality] glows so strongly that it is hard to say anything really bad about spirituality.” This alone “ought to make us wonder.” She also says there are at least 92 definitions of spirituality, mostly arguing that it is a good warm feeling or a thing. My favorite definitions of spirituality are a sense of meaning and a sense of connectedness. The prelude to both meaning and connection is trust. Each child needs her or his mother’s eyes to be dependable so that he or she can grow up as a trustworthy person. We develop an inner glow so that we can create outer connections that are meaningful. We become builders of trust so that others may trust — especially so that those who mistrust or have never found trust in their mother’s eyes have a way to find the tenderness God wants to give them.

Many of us are reeling from extraordinary volatility — in the church, in the environment, in technology. Families struggle with how to tend their young in these times of great change. I find that acknowledging how rapidly things are changing helps me practice trust. I don’t mistrust what is happening so much as see it, notice it, say it, remark upon it.

The kind of terrorism and public violence we see today has been hard to comprehend. Many have tragedy fatigue. We can’t even remember the latest horrific event given how frequently these tragedies occur. The sad outcome is this: we forget the awesome tenderness of God towards us. We worry. Then we start to worry about worrying.

Instead we could become more spiritual, more religious, more full of meaning and of connection. We could become meaning makers, stewards of great gifts. We could gaze with the eyes of an infant who learns to trust by looking into the tender eyes of God.We could pray today’s psalm: “Trust in him [our tender God] at all times, O my people! Pour out your hearts before him [our tender God]” (Psalm 62:9).



Only in GodFr. Lawrence E. Mick

Today’s readings offer us another entry point into the spirit of Lent. It is perhaps best focused in the psalm refrain: “Rest in God alone, my soul.” While Lent is a time to work on areas of our life that need to change, the power to make such changes can only come from God’s grace. Lent might be seen first as a time to rest in God’s presence, to take time for prayer and meditation. The more closely we are connected to God, the more our lives will change in accord with God’s will.

The first reading assures us that God will never forget us, but it is all too easy for us to forget God. Lent is a time to invite people to become more aware of God’s constant presence in our lives. In today’s Gospel, Jesus insists that we cannot serve two masters, so God must come first in our lives. But notice that he reminds us that God cares for us even more than for the wildflowers and the sparrows. This awareness of how deeply God cares for us should be the basis of our whole spiritual life, the reason we live by the God’s commandments and seek to share God’s love with those around us, especially those in need. Lent is a time to savor this immensely deep love for us, to let it truly sink into our minds and hearts that we are cherished by our creator and invited to share God’s very life.

There has been increased attention in recent years to the practice of Christian contemplation. Consider offering parishioners the opportunity during Lent to explore this style of prayer which has the potential to draw us more deeply into God’s presence. Other opportunities for encouraging contemplative prayer might include providing a “Lenten lending library” where books on the topic could be available. At the very least, offer an explanation and resources in the bulletin or the parish website about this method of prayer.

Ash Wednesday: Lent begins this Wednesday. This Sunday is a good time to gather palms from previous years to create the ashes to be used at Wednesday’s services. Invite the parish to participate in a simple ceremony where the palms are burned.On Ash Wednesday, provide several opportunities throughout the day for people to receive ashes. Be sure that each service is done well, whether it is within a Mass or within a Liturgy of the Word service. See the rubrics at the end of Ash Wednesday in the Roman Missal or chapter 52 in the Book of Blessings for details about blessing and distributing ashes outside of Mass.

Documents

celebrationpublications.org€¦ · Web viewThe second pair of images, the light and shining city on the hilltop is even more powerful when understood in a biblical context. Light