Do you ever pray when you read the newspaper? Or watch the evening news? In today's Gospel (Luke 13: 1-9) we get the 1st Century equivalent of this. News spread by word of mouth back then and "some people told Jesus about" two tragic events. In Galilee, where Jesus was raised, the Roman governor Pilate killed some Jews as they were offering a religious sacrifice. Their blood "mingled with the blood of their sacrifices." And in Jerusalem, eighteen people were killed "when the tower at Siloam fell on them." Reflecting on this, the people sharing these news stories with Jesus wondered what sins these victims must have committed to have warranted such punishment from God. Jesus tells them that they've got it all wrong. God doesn't punish in this way.
I grew up with an image of God that was very negative and I can pinpoint where that image was planted in my consciousness. I was about five and my extended family had gotten together to visit my grandparents. As the adults were conversing around the large (at least to a boy) dining room table, I was chasing my cousin Ronny. My father told me, "Cut it out," and being the good boy I was, I obeyed him. But when the adults got busy again with their conversation, I poked Ronny and he poked me and we started fooling around again. As I chased him I slipped on the rug, fell, and hit my head on the table and started crying. My father said to me: "See! God punished you!" In that moment God became a policeman just waiting to catch little boys when they were misbehaving, and the jury and judge who would pass sentence on them, and the executioner--all rolled into one.
This is not the God Jesus reveals to us. Not the God Jesus teaches us about. We are not punished for our sins but by our sins.
God's creation has built-in laws. They give order to creation. They're not imposed from outside nor are they arbitrary. God's laws are part of the nature of things. For example, physical creatures follow the law of gravity. Humans are free to rebel against that law. Now, we're not talking about flying in an airplane which still follows the laws of physics. We're talking about someone who decides the law of gravity is too restrictive and launches him or herself off a high place in order to fly. They wouldn't break the law which is still there. They would break themselves. That wasn't God punishing them, but God maintaining the order of the universe and allowing them to suffer the consequences of their foolish choice.
But humans are more than physical beings. We are made in the image and likeness of God. We are spiritual. And just as there are physical laws that govern us because we are physical, so there are spiritual laws that govern us as well. They are part of nature and are for our good and the good order of the universe. If we choose to rebel against those spiritual laws, we end up hurting our relationship with God. We end up hurting others and ourselves. That's not God punishing us, but allowing us to experience the natural consequences of our foolish choices.
Sin hurts. This is why Jesus, in the Gospel, warns the people to repent lest they perish. And worse than hurting oneself physically is hurting oneself spiritually, being alienated from God and God's other children, possibly forever.
In the first reading from Exodus chapter 3, God comes to Moses as fire in a burning bush. God reveals the Divine Name. God is "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." God is the God of merciful faithfulness.
In a recent interview book, "The Name of God is Mercy," Pope Francis says that going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not like going to a dry cleaner to get some stains removed. Sin goes deeper. Sin wounds and the Sacrament is designed to heal the deep wounds, the consequences of sin.
In the Sacrament we encounter the merciful and sacred Heart of Jesus. Images of the Sacred Heart portray a heart on fire with love. The Letter to the Hebrews 12: 29 says that "our God is a consuming fire." The fire of God's love brings healing to the sinner and destroys or consumes sin. It is a purifying fire.
We encounter the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist and in all the Sacraments. Not only does the fiery love of this Heart purify us. It transforms us so that we in our turn can bring mercy into the world. One practical way that we can do this is to pray when we read the newspaper or watch the news. Rather than getting negative and angry, we can pray and ask God to be merciful to the people and situations that we see. Mercy is not only to be received; it's to be shared. In sharing it we will show ourselves to be faithful and merciful children of the Father and members of the Body of Christ.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Sunday, February 21, 2016
The Transfiguration
On the First Sunday of Lent we see Jesus in the desert battling temptations. On the Second Sunday of Lent we see him on the mountain basking in the glory of God. The two Sundays are a paradigm of our life which is a series of ups and downs.
In 2006 I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with forty-six others. We went to Mt. Tabor, traditionally viewed as the place of Jesus' Transfiguration. Our tour bus was large and unable to go up the narrow winding road to the top of the mount. We disembarked and took several of the vans or mini-buses that carried pilgrims to the top. It was easy to understand how the three apostles who were with Jesus fell asleep after the long climb. But our journey was easy and so we were wide awake for the beautiful view to the south and for the Mass we celebrated there in one of several churches.
Jesus often went to a hill or high place to pray. There seems to be a human instinct that leads us to encounter God in the heights. The Lakota Sioux went to mountains and high buttes for their vision quests. It was on Mt. Horeb (traditionally identified with Mt. Sinai) that Moses encountered God in the burning bush and received the covenant commandments. The prophet Elijah went to this same mountain where he encountered God not in fire or a mighty wind or an earthquake, but in "a tiny whispering sound" (1 Kings 19: 11-12).
Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets, turn up at Jesus' Transfiguration. They speak with Jesus about "his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem" (Luke 9: 31). Jesus had just been telling his apostles about this "exodus"--that the "Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised" (Luke 9: 22). He followed this teaching with one about discipleship: "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9: 23). The way to glory is not easy.
St. Peter wanted to construct tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. He would like them, and we can assume, himself and the two brothers James and John, to remain on the mountaintop. He would like to hold on to the glory and avoid the struggles that are part of the plains and valleys of life. But Jesus could not remain there. He had work to do--the work of our redemption.
Life is a series of ups and downs, mountaintop experiences and valleys. We would like to remain on the mountain, but we cannot. We must live in the broken world and share others' burdens and sorrows. We must deal with our own. Every so often we may have a mountaintop experience, or as St. Ignatius Loyola called it, consolation. But it will pass. When it comes, St. Ignatius says in his Rules for Discernment of Spirits, we should savor the peace and the joy in order to strengthen ourselves for the inevitable valleys of life. Then, when the valleys or, as he puts it, desolations, come, we will be strong. We will remember that the desolation too will pass.
Jesus' Transfiguration was a taste of glory before the battle. The consolations God sends us serve a similar role. They remind us of the joy of heaven that will never end.
Back to the pilgrimage: after celebrating Mass and touring the various churches and taking one last look at the plain to which we would be returning, we got on the minibuses for the trip down the mount. I suspect the drivers got a perverse pleasure out of scaring pilgrims as they raced around tight corners at breakneck speeds during the descent. All one could do is trust them and their driving skills.
That's a final lesson of the Transfiguration: trust. As Jesus surrendered himself into the loving hands of the Father, trusting that his suffering and death would lead to his glory, so do we followers of Jesus strive to trustingly surrender. As St. Paul wrote: "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body..." (Philippians 3: 20-21). If we let him, Jesus will lead us on an exodus from this world to the mountaintop of heaven where we will share in his glory.
In 2006 I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with forty-six others. We went to Mt. Tabor, traditionally viewed as the place of Jesus' Transfiguration. Our tour bus was large and unable to go up the narrow winding road to the top of the mount. We disembarked and took several of the vans or mini-buses that carried pilgrims to the top. It was easy to understand how the three apostles who were with Jesus fell asleep after the long climb. But our journey was easy and so we were wide awake for the beautiful view to the south and for the Mass we celebrated there in one of several churches.
Jesus often went to a hill or high place to pray. There seems to be a human instinct that leads us to encounter God in the heights. The Lakota Sioux went to mountains and high buttes for their vision quests. It was on Mt. Horeb (traditionally identified with Mt. Sinai) that Moses encountered God in the burning bush and received the covenant commandments. The prophet Elijah went to this same mountain where he encountered God not in fire or a mighty wind or an earthquake, but in "a tiny whispering sound" (1 Kings 19: 11-12).
Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets, turn up at Jesus' Transfiguration. They speak with Jesus about "his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem" (Luke 9: 31). Jesus had just been telling his apostles about this "exodus"--that the "Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised" (Luke 9: 22). He followed this teaching with one about discipleship: "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9: 23). The way to glory is not easy.
St. Peter wanted to construct tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. He would like them, and we can assume, himself and the two brothers James and John, to remain on the mountaintop. He would like to hold on to the glory and avoid the struggles that are part of the plains and valleys of life. But Jesus could not remain there. He had work to do--the work of our redemption.
Life is a series of ups and downs, mountaintop experiences and valleys. We would like to remain on the mountain, but we cannot. We must live in the broken world and share others' burdens and sorrows. We must deal with our own. Every so often we may have a mountaintop experience, or as St. Ignatius Loyola called it, consolation. But it will pass. When it comes, St. Ignatius says in his Rules for Discernment of Spirits, we should savor the peace and the joy in order to strengthen ourselves for the inevitable valleys of life. Then, when the valleys or, as he puts it, desolations, come, we will be strong. We will remember that the desolation too will pass.
Jesus' Transfiguration was a taste of glory before the battle. The consolations God sends us serve a similar role. They remind us of the joy of heaven that will never end.
Back to the pilgrimage: after celebrating Mass and touring the various churches and taking one last look at the plain to which we would be returning, we got on the minibuses for the trip down the mount. I suspect the drivers got a perverse pleasure out of scaring pilgrims as they raced around tight corners at breakneck speeds during the descent. All one could do is trust them and their driving skills.
That's a final lesson of the Transfiguration: trust. As Jesus surrendered himself into the loving hands of the Father, trusting that his suffering and death would lead to his glory, so do we followers of Jesus strive to trustingly surrender. As St. Paul wrote: "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body..." (Philippians 3: 20-21). If we let him, Jesus will lead us on an exodus from this world to the mountaintop of heaven where we will share in his glory.
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