Friday 18 November 2016

Beneath rigidity there is something else, there is often wickedness

At this morning’s mass in St. Martha’s House, the Pope said rigid people lead a “double life”, they seem good but they often aren’t; they are strangers to God’s freedom, “slaves of the law”. “How they suffer”!

VATICAN CITY

DOMENICO AGASSO JR
VATICAN CITY
Beneath the rigid exterior of a person who is not free because he or she is a slave to the law, is a double life, something hidden, some sort of disease. Often wickedness. By contrast, the Lord gives freedom, in addition to meekness and kindness, Pope Francis said in this morning’s homily in St. Martha’s House.
In today’s Gospel story, Christ heals a woman on a Saturday, stirring feelings of contempt and protest in the synagogue chief who claimed the “Law of the Lord” was violated: “It is not easy,” the Pope remarked, “to walk in the Law of the Lord,” it is “a grace we need to ask for”.

 The Son of God calls the synagogue chief a hypocrite, a word “he uses so often to refer to those who are rigid and unyielding in their insistence on applying the law down to the last letter”. These people are not free, “they are slaves of the Law”. But “the Law was not made to enslave us but to set us free, to make us children” of the Lord. “Beneath  rigidity there is something else, always! This is why Jesus says: hypocrites!”

Francis said: “beneath rigidity there is something hidden about a person’s life. Rigidity is not a gift of God. Meekness is; kindness is; benevolence is; forgiveness is. But rigidity is not! Beneath rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life; but there is also some sort of disease lingering there. How the rigid suffer: when they are sincere and they acknowledge this they suffer! Because they are unable to feel the freedom that God’s children feel; they do not know what it is like to walk in the Law of the Lord and they are not blessed. And they suffer so much!” They seem “good because they follow the Law; but beneath that there is something not so nice about them: either they are bad or they are hypocrites or they are ill. They suffer!”

The Bishop of Rome recalled the parable of the Prodigal Son: the elder son’s attitude of indignation shows what lies behind some forms of goodness; “The arrogance of believing oneself to be right”. “Beneath one’s good actions lies arrogance. He knew he had a father and in his darkest hour he went to his father; he had only ever seen his father as a master not as a father. H ewas rigid; he walked in the Law in a rigid way. The other one set the Law aside and went off without the law, against the Law but there came a point when he remembered his father and came back. And he was forgiven. It is not easy walking in the Law of the lord without drifting towards rigidity.”

The Pope concluded by invoking God and inviting faithful to pray “for our brothers and sisters who believe that walking in the Law of the Lord  means becoming rigid. May the Lord show them that He is the Father and He likes mercy, tenderness, kindness, meekness and humility. May he teach us all to walk in the Law of the Lord, adopting all of these attitudes”. 

Saturday 22 October 2016

Reflection on Farming and Marriage

Bishop Etienne of the (U.S.) Catholic Rural Life Conference makes some poignant remarks about farming, marriage & moving "from the finite to the infinite". I especially like his insight into farmers (and families) not imposing their own will, but "bowing to nature's genius". Enjoy! 
Fr. Matt

Thursday 20 October 2016

Saint-Paulin

In 393, wealthy patrician Pontius Meropius Anicius decides to forsake his worldly possessions and devote the remainder of his Life to God.  Builder of hospitals and churches, the generous Pontius, eventually known as Bishop Paulinus of Nola, turns to poetry as a means of reaching inner peace.  His many writings on ornate prose have withstood the test of time and are still considered to be among the finest examples of early Christian literature.  Later canonized, Saint Paulinus, originally from Aquitaine, full-fledged Roman citizen and poet emeritus, was also an avid gardener.  Nobel, devout, cultured and a friend of the earth, he is a true inspiration, worthy of the cheese that bears his name.

Five Ways Jesus Dealt With Difficult People - reposted from the Cenale FAll 2016


How to accept the inconvenient, the incongruent and the bothersome

By Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, F.S.P.
How should we deal with difficult people?
Some people in our lives may be difficult simply because they challenge us. Or they may be difficult because they are different. Or they may be difficult because we live with them (and close proximity amplifies foibles). Or they may be difficult because we are difficult and something about us just rubs them the wrong way.
Or they may just be difficult.
Regardless, by growing in holiness we can learn to accept the inconvenient, the incongruent and the bothersome (people and events) in our life not just as necessary nuisances but as gifts.
Seeing difficult people in such a positive light seems like a tall order. But we can start by learning to deal with other people in a Christ-like way.
Scripture teaches us some ways that Jesus dealt with difficult people:

  1. Jesus Asks Questions: In Chapter 12 of Luke, Jesus is asked to settle a family dispute and basically responds: “Who do you think I am, Judge Judy?” (a loose translation). It is interesting to note that Jesus asks a lot of questions in Scripture. Jesus’ questions were sometimes rhetorical, or challenging, and at other times he was also seeking feedback. By using questions, Jesus emphasizes his openness to the other person.  It is funny, but we humans tend not to ask a lot of questions. We assume, we pontificate, we lecture, we observe, we interrupt and we judge. But we rarely make it a point to ask other people questions. In using questions frequently, I think Jesus is modeling the behaviour of a good communicator, one who cares about the other person enough to engage with them and challenge them. Even, and perhaps especially, when they are being difficult.
  2. Jesus Is Never Cornered: In Chapter 6 of Luke, Jesus is taking a Sabbath stroll with his disciples and the Pharisees pop up out of nowhere and accuse them of breaking the Sabbath by picking grain. Jesus is unflustered. He is never scared of the people who try to slip him up or think the worst of him, because what other people think is not his focus.  Sometimes people corner us with their assumptions and judgments and we can begin to wonder if the way they see us is more objective than how we see ourselves. It is hard when we feel like others misunderstand us or do not take the time to get to know us before judging. But, like Jesus, we do not have to feel defined by the projections of other people. Our identity resides and is found in God, not in what other people try to push on us.
  3. Jesus Knows When to Ignore: Remember that time when Jesus ticks off all of his former neighbours and friends in his hometown of Nazareth? They are so worked up that they decide to throw him off a cliff. Jesus, seeing that there is no reasoning with these people, walks through the crowd, ignores their rage, and “went on his way” (Luke 4).  Sometimes difficult people throw tantrums, speak harshly or treat us in an abusive way (this happens online all the time). This is the cue to disengage and walk away. Jesus knew how to keep his blood pressure in checkand his eyes on the prize. Of course, if we have to deal assertively with someone who does this in person, a face-to-face discussion might help. Later.
  4. Jesus Is Not Defensive: In Chapter 10 of Mark, James and John say to Jesus: “We want you to do for us whatever we ask.” Wow. Talk about overstepping boundaries! But Jesus is not co-dependent, so neediness and boundary crossing is not threatening to him. He knows when to say no and when to say yes and does not beat himself up when he doesn’t make other people happy.  Sometimes people can demand more from us than what we can give them. They may try to sway us with guilt trips. Before we know it we find ourselves bending over backward trying to satisfy a needy or aggressive person (who is rarely satisfied!). But Jesus does not try to people please. Jesus does not need to protect himself from other people; God’s will is enough security. This is where his non-defensiveness comes from.
  5. Jesus Is Flexible: In Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman demands that Jesus heal his daughter and Jesus says no. But then he is moved by the woman’s response of faith and heals her daughter. Jesus approaches others with an open mind. Even when he had preconceived notions, he allowed the Spirit to move him and go against his instincts.  When a difficult person approaches us, we may think, Oh great, here we go again, or I know how this will go, but Jesus kept an open mind when he was approached by others. You never know. The Spirit may move you, or the person who is normally difficult, to act in a different, unexpected way. Being closed to others closes us to the Holy Spirit who is working in us and in the other person.
Taken from Aleteia.org, February 2. 2016.

Thursday 13 October 2016

Article from The Tablet

You don't often get to cheer for the rational approach, but Clifford Longley makes the case for "[g]enuine political debate" conducted by competent representatives, as opposed to populist urgings. I wonder if we (i.e., Canada) as a nation didn't accept this uncritically when our political parties moved to a 'one member, one vote" model. It would be good to have representatives & leaders who lead, not just echo the loudest ravings of our society. Pray for all who make (and enforce) laws in our name! - Fr. Matt

Irrational Impulses are part and parcel of populist politics

We should be worried about the survival of parliamentary democracy, our best and possibly only protection against tyranny and arbitrary government. We should be worried that it is being subverted by populism and demagoguery, which flies on wings of emotion and the mass mobilisation of gut reactions, rather than on careful and intelligent argument tested in debate. History teaches that plebiscites are easily manipulated by anti-democratic forces, even though they usually do so in the name of democracy.

Take three examples: the EU referendum, the battle for control of the Labour Party, and the takeover of the US Republican Party by the populist demagogue Donald Trump. 
Click title and register to read entire article.


Tuesday 11 October 2016

New York Times article on Digital Adulthood - The Virtues of Reality

"New York times columnist Ross Douthat wonders about certain infantilizing effects of our digital age, and the religious response necessary to address those challenges."
Fr. Matt


SINCE the 1990s, we’ve seen two broad social changes that few observers would have expected to happen together.
First, youth culture has become less violent, less promiscuous and more responsible. American childhood is safer than ever before. Teenagers drink and smoke less than previous generations. The millennial generation has fewer sexual partners than its parents, and the teen birthrate has traced a two-decade decline. Violent crime — a young person’s temptation — fell for 25 years before the recent post-Ferguson homicide spike. Young people are half as likely to have been in a fight than a generation ago. Teen suicides, binge drinking, hard drug use — all are down.
But over the same period, adulthood has become less responsible, less obviously adult. For the first time in over a century, more 20-somethingslive with their parents than in any other arrangement. The marriage rate is way down, and despite a high out-of-wedlock birthrate American fertility just hit an all-time low. More and more prime-age workers are dropping out of the work force — men especially, and younger men more so than older men, though female work force participation has dipped as well.
You can tell different stories that synthesize these trends: strictly economic ones about the impact of the Great Recession, critical ones about the infantilizing effects of helicopter parenting, upbeat ones about how young people are forging new life paths.
But I want to advance a technology-driven hypothesis: This mix of youthful safety and adult immaturity may be a feature of life in a society increasingly shaped by the internet’s virtual realities.
It is easy to see how online culture would make adolescent life less dangerous. Pornography to take the edge off teenage sexual appetite. Video games instead of fisticuffs or contact sports as an outlet for hormonal aggression. (Once it was feared that porn and violent media would encourage real-world aggression; instead they seem to be replacing it.) Sexting and selfie-enabled masturbation as a safer alternative to hooking up. Online hangouts instead of keggers in the field. More texting and driving, but less driving — one of the most dangerous teen activities — overall.
The question is whether this substitution is habit-forming and soul-shaping, and whether it extends beyond dangerous teen behavior to include things essential to long-term human flourishing — marriage, work, family, all that old-fashioned “meatspace” stuff.
That’s certainly the impression left whenever journalists try to figure out why young people aren’t marrying, or dating, or in some cases even seeking sex. (From The Washington Post, earlier this month: “Noah Paterson, 18, likes to sit in front of several screens simultaneously … to shut it all down for a date or even a one-night stand seems like a waste.”) The same impression is left by research on younger men dropping out of the work force: Their leisure time is being filled to a large extent by gaming, and happiness studies suggest that they are pretty content with the trade-off.
The men in that research lack college degrees, which is particularly telling. It wasn’t so long ago that people worried about a digital divide, in which online access would be a luxury good that left the bottom half behind. But if anything, the virtual world looks more like an opiate for the masses. The poor spent more time online than the rich, and it’s the elite — the Silicon Valley elite, in some striking cases — that’s more likely to limit the uses of devices in their homes and schools, to draw distinctions between screen time and real time.
The keenest critics of how the internet shapes culture, writers like Sherry Turkle, are often hopeful that with time and experience we will learn better management strategies, which keep the virtual in its place before too many real goods are lost.
Such strategies may work for individuals and families. But the trends in the marketplace — ever-more-customized pornography, virtual realities that feel more and more immersive, devices and apps customized for addictive behavior — seem likely to overwhelm most attempts to enjoy the virtual only within limits.
My mother, Patricia Snow (yes, even columnists have mothers), in an essayfor First Things earlier this year, suggested that any effective resistance to virtual reality’s encroachments would need to be moral and religious, not just pragmatic and managerial. I never could induce her to read Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” but her argument made me think of the science-fiction novel’s “Butlerian jihad” — the religious rebellion against artificial intelligence that birthed Herbert’s imagined far-future society, which has advanced spacefaring technology but not a HAL or C-3PO in sight.
“Jihad” is a more fraught term these days than when Herbert’s novel first came out. But we have a pacifist community within our own society that’s organized around religious resistance to advanced technology — the Old Order Amish.

The future probably doesn’t belong to the Pennsylvania Dutch. But the Amish impulse is one to watch, as we reckon with virtual reality’s strange gift — a cup that tastes of progress, but might have poison waiting in the dregs.
Op-Ed Columnist

The Virtues of Reality

By ROSS DOUTHAT
Online realms make us safer, but sometimes stunted.


Monday 19 September 2016

Pope insists bodily resurrection is real, not a mere metaphor


VATICAN CITY - Christians are called to believe in the logic of the resurrection of the body and not succumb to heresies that reduce it to a mere spiritual experience, Pope Francis said.
When looking toward the future, the uncertainty about what happens after death often can lead to not understanding Christianity’s “logic of the future,” which proclaims that believers will rise again in body and soul like Jesus did, the pope said Sept. 16 during a morning Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
“A spiritualistic piety, a nuanced piety is much easier; but to enter into the logic of the flesh of Christ, this is difficult. And this is the logic of the day after tomorrow. We will resurrect like the risen Christ, with our own flesh,” he said.
In his homily, the pope reflected on St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in which the apostle admonishes some of the early Christian community for saying “there is no resurrection of the dead.”
“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty, too, is our preaching; empty, too, your faith,” St. Paul wrote.
The pope said that, for some, it is difficult to understand and accept the “logic of the future” regarding what happens after death. The belief that, like Jesus, Christians will experience the resurrection of the body “is not easy.”
“Yesterday’s logic is easy, today’s logic is easy. Tomorrow’s logic is easy: We will all die. But the logic of the day after tomorrow, that is difficult,” he said.
Some Christians “are afraid of the flesh” and may fall prey to “a certain type of gnosticism” that reduces the resurrection to a purely spiritual experience; a belief that was “the first heresy” denounced by the apostle John, the pope explained.
Believing and having faith that Christ did not rise from the dead “as a ghost” but rather in flesh and blood is “the logic of the day after tomorrow that we find hard to understand,” he said.
While it is a sign of maturity to see the logic of the resurrection, Christians must also pray for the grace to understand it, Pope Francis added.
“You also need the great grace of the Holy Spirit to understand this logic of the day after tomorrow; after the transformation, when he will come and will carry us transformed above the clouds to be with him always. Let us ask the Lord for the grace of this faith.”

Friday 29 July 2016

Wholeness and Love

Can we see our brokenness as a gift from God? Enjoy Fr. Richard Rohr’s reflection on wholeness vs. perfection and see if God isn’t calling us to grow through the broken parts of our lives.

Reposted from https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/

Wholeness and Love
Friday, July 29, 2016
Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection. Divine perfection is the ability to recognize, forgive, and include imperfection--just as God does with all of us. Only in this way can we find the beautiful and hidden wholeness of God underneath the passing human show. I like the way David Benner explains this in CAC's journal Oneing. Benner writes:

Spare me perfection. Give me instead the wholeness that comes from embracing the full reality of who I am, just as I am. Paradoxically, it is this whole self that is most perfect. As it turns out, wholeness, not perfection, is the route to the actualization of our deepest humanity.

Inconsistencies, imperfections, and failures to live up to ideals are all part of what it means to be human. What seems to distinguish those who are most deeply and wholly human is not their perfection, but their courage in accepting their imperfections. Accepting themselves as they are, they then become able to accept others as they are.

The richness of being human lies precisely in our lack of perfection. This is the source of so much of our longing, and out of that longing emerges so much creativity, beauty, and goodness. With appropriate openness and humility, it is the cracks that let in the light. Once those cracks and flaws are embraced and accepted as part of the self, then, and only then, can the light flow out though them, into the lives of others and into the world. This is Henri Nouwen's "wounded healer"--one who mediates healing, not in spite of personal wounds, but precisely because of them. [1] It is our humanity, not our pseudo-perfection, that allows us to both receive and pass on what Christians call grace--the goodness that flows into our lives from beyond.

The harmonic of the universe is wholeness, not perfection; more specifically, it is wholeness that involves differentiation. . . . Living wholeness is participating in the dynamism of love that gathers everything together into greater unity and consciousness. It is to live with an openness of mind and heart, to encounter others, not as strangers, but as parts of one's self. When we enter into the heart of love in this way, we enter the field of relatedness and come to know our truest and deepest belonging and calling.

Wholeness and love are inseparable. Love leads to larger wholes and there is no true wholeness that is not built on love. In the words of Ilia Delio, "Our challenge today is to trust the power of love at the heart of life, to let ourselves be seized by love, to create and invent ways for love to evolve into a global wholeness of unity, compassion, justice, and peacemaking." [2] [3]

Gateway to Silence
When I am weak I am strong.

References:
[1] Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (Doubleday: 1972).
[2] Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love (Orbis Books: 2013), xxv.
[3] David G. Benner, "Perfection and the Harmonics of Wholeness," "Perfection," Oneing, Vol. 4, No. 1 (CAC: 2016), 61-63. This article was adapted from David G. Benner, Human Being and Becoming (Brazos Press: 2016).

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And . . . Daily Meditations (Franciscan Media: 2013), 374.


Thursday 28 July 2016

...teach youth about Martyrs

Sadly, the continuing acts of terror around the world are being acutely felt at World Youth Day (I remember going to Evening Prayer at the Taize Church in Cologne at WYD 2005, the day the founder of the Taize Community, Br. Roger was killed: even though we were wedged in, on the ground (no pews in a pre-Reformation church!), it felt like the whole place would take off and soar into the air! We forget that we are indeed living in an age of martyrs, and how they can heal us: consider the witness of the niece of an Indian Bishop who was raped - "there are some sufferings that Jesus would not have known"!

https://cruxnow.com/analysis/2016/07/27/memo-wyd-forget-program-teach-youth-martyrs/

Friday 15 July 2016

St. Kateri Tekakwitha - Thursday, July 14, 2016 Lived(1656-1680) | Feast Day: Thursday, July 14, 2016

While the Church in Canada marks St. Kateri's feast on April 17th (i.e., her death in 1680), our neighbours to the south track a different calendar (much as they celebrate the martyrdom of St. Anthony Daniel & Companions, not St. Jean de Brebeuf as we do), nonetheless their reflection on St. Kateri's ability to find every grace in her different states of life (both single, avowed) is a great inspiration for layperson, priest or religious alike. St. Kateri, Lily of the Mohawks, pray for us!
The following is re-posted from Franciscanmedia - Saint of the Day
http://productions.franciscanmedia.org/sections/sod/

The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. Nine years after the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and John de Brébeuf (October 19) were tomahawked by Iroquois warriors, a baby girl was born near the place of their martyrdom, Auriesville, New York.
Her mother was a Christian Algonquin, taken captive by the Iroquois and given as wife to the chief of the Mohawk clan, the boldest and fiercest of the Five Nations. When she was four, Kateri lost her parents and little brother in a smallpox epidemic that left her disfigured and half blind. She was adopted by an uncle, who succeeded her father as chief. He hated the coming of the Blackrobes (Jesuit missionaries), but could do nothing to them because a peace treaty with the French required their presence in villages with Christian captives. She was moved by the words of three Blackrobes who lodged with her uncle, but fear of him kept her from seeking instruction. She refused to marry a Mohawk brave and at 19 finally got the courage to take the step of converting. She was baptized with the name Kateri (Catherine) on Easter Sunday.
Now she would be treated as a slave. Because she would not work on Sunday, she received no food that day. Her life in grace grew rapidly. She told a missionary that she often meditated on the great dignity of being baptized. She was powerfully moved by God’s love for human beings and saw the dignity of each of her people.
She was always in danger, for her conversion and holy life created great opposition. On the advice of a priest, she stole away one night and began a 200-mile walking journey to a Christian Indian village at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal.
For three years she grew in holiness under the direction of a priest and an older Iroquois woman, giving herself totally to God in long hours of prayer, in charity and in strenuous penance. At 23 she took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for an Indian woman, whose future depended on being married. She found a place in the woods where she could pray an hour a day—and was accused of meeting a man there!
Her dedication to virginity was instinctive: She did not know about religious life for women until she visited Montreal. Inspired by this, she and two friends wanted to start a community, but the local priest dissuaded her. She humbly accepted an “ordinary” life. She practiced extremely severe fasting as penance for the conversion of her nation. She died the afternoon before Holy Thursday. Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980 and canonized in 2012..
Comment:
We like to think that our proposed holiness is thwarted by our situation. If only we could have more solitude, less opposition, better health. Kateri repeats the example of the saints: Holiness thrives on the cross, anywhere. Yet she did have what Christians—all people—need: the support of a community. She had a good mother, helpful priests, Christian friends. These were present in what we call primitive conditions, and blossomed in the age-old Christian triad of prayer, fasting and alms: union with God in Jesus and the Spirit, self-discipline and often suffering, and charity for her brothers and sisters.

Quote:
Kateri said: “I am not my own; I have given myself to Jesus. He must be my only love. The state of helpless poverty that may befall me if I do not marry does not frighten me. All I need is a little food and a few pieces of clothing. With the work of my hands I shall always earn what is necessary and what is left over I’ll give to my relatives and to the poor. If I should become sick and unable to work, then I shall be like the Lord on the cross. He will have mercy on me and help me, I am sure.”

Wednesday 6 July 2016

Sunday Scripture Reflections re posted from Catholic Theological Union


Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 10, 2016

First Reading: DT 30:10-14
Responsorial Psalm: PS 69:14,17, 30-31, 33-34, 36-37
Second Reading: COL 1:15-20
Gospel: LK 10: 25-37

I used to think today's gospel was a no-brainer: Everyone knew that what we were called to do was to tend to those who are discarded by the side of the road. Maybe not everyone understood the overwhelming generosity of the Samaritan, but everyone knew intuitively that the man had to be tended to in his need.
           
However, having listened to presidential candidates trip over each other in promising ever-crueler treatment of immigrants; having witnessed the tone in Europe change toward refugees, and our own politicians sowing hatred toward those who are escaping the violence of their homelands; having seen our politicians unable to provide funding for those who are infected with the Zika virus; or even provide funding for our own social services here in Illinois, simply because politics is more important than people in need, I have had to re-think what I thought was a given. Now, it seems like the priest and the Levite have gained the ascendency in American society, and that I can no longer take for granted those things which I had previously assumed everyone agreed with.

The words of Pope Francis, addressed to Europe, in accepting the Charlemagne Prize, ring true of America as well: "What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom? ..... What has happened to you, Europe, the mother of peoples and nations, the mother of great men and women who upheld and even sacrificed their lives for the dignity of their brothers and sisters?" In the Pope's mind, another Europe is emerging; and it seems that another America is emerging as well.

The Scripture readings for today speak of a different way of looking at the world, and of finding our place in the world. In the first reading, Moses speaks to the people of the law of God which "is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts." He tells his people "you have only to carry it out." It ought to be that simple! What God requires of us is already written on our hearts. We have only to carry it out.

That might appear to be simple, and should give us the answer to the man by the side of the road. But there is a first step that Moses says needs to be taken. And that is to "return to the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your soul." In order to be able to recognize the law of God that is written on our hearts, we must first convert. It's not something that happens automatically; it only happens with conversion. We must first learn to read our hearts, on which is written God's merciful law.
           
And that conversion means recognizing the unity of creation that comes through Jesus, as Paul tells us in the second reading, in whom all the fullness of creation dwells.
           
The first step, then, is seeing creation in a new light. It is not simply "creation as it seems", but creation as it has been redeemed through the resurrection of Jesus. That's what prepares us to read the law of God written on our hearts, and prepares us to "love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." Seeing the fullness of creation which resides in Jesus allows us to act in a different way toward the world, because we have seen the world in a different way.
           
That is the basis for Jesus turning the scholar's question around. The scholar asks, "Who is my neighbor?" but Jesus answers, "Who are you neighbor to?" When we do not see the unity of creation, we impose our own divisions on it. We make the distinction between who is my neighbor, and who is not; who do I help, and who do I not; who is worthy of what I have, and who is not. I become the arbiter of that, and look at the world from a position of power, and by looking at the world from the outside.
           
When, on the other hand, I have to answer the question, "Who am I a neighbor to?", then I ask the question from inside the world. I do not stand apart from it, or act as the judge over the world and over its peoples.
             
In speaking of this parable in a General Audience of April 27, 2016, Pope Francis notes the reversal of the question, and urges us: "Do not stand by classifying others by sight who is my neighbor and who is not. You can become neighbor to any needy person you meet, and you will know that you have compassion in your heart, that is, whether you have the capacity to suffer with the other." This means, the Pope says, "compromising oneself, taking all the necessary steps so as to approach the other to the point of identifying with him: 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' This is the Lord's commandment."
           
This ability to see my neighbor as myself is at the heart of our compassion as followers of Jesus. It allows us to see our oneness with all of creation, which has been brought together in Jesus' name, to the glory of God.


Adjunct Professor

Director, Hesburgh Sabbatical ProgramCatholic Theological Union

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Saint of the Day (Monday, July 4, 2016)-St. Elizabeth of Portugal

Elizabeth is usually depicted in royal garb with a dove or an olive branch. At her birth in 1271, her father, Pedro III, future king of Aragon, was reconciled with his father, James, the reigning monarch. This proved to be a portent of things to come. Under the healthful influences surrounding her early years, she quickly learned self-discipline and acquired a taste for spirituality. Thus fortunately prepared, she was able to meet the challenge when, at the age of 12, she was given in marriage to Denis, king of Portugal. She was able to establish for herself a pattern of life conducive to growth in God’s love, not merely through her exercises of piety, including daily Mass, but also through her exercise of charity, by which she was able to befriend and help pilgrims, strangers, the sick, the poor—in a word, all those whose need came to her notice. At the same time she remained devoted to her husband, whose infidelity to her was a scandal to the kingdom.
He, too, was the object of many of her peace endeavors. She long sought peace for him with God, and was finally rewarded when he gave up his life of sin. She repeatedly sought and effected peace between the king and their rebellious son, Alfonso, who thought that he was passed over to favor the king’s illegitimate children. She acted as peacemaker in the struggle between Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his cousin James, who claimed the crown. And finally from Coimbra, where she had retired as a Franciscan tertiary to the monastery of the Poor Clares after the death of her husband, she set out and was able to bring about a lasting peace between her son Alfonso, now king of Portugal, and his son-in-law, the king of Castile.

Comment:
The work of promoting peace is anything but a calm and quiet endeavor. It takes a clear mind, a steady spirit and a brave soul to intervene between people whose emotions are so aroused that they are ready to destroy one another. This is all the more true of a woman in the early 14th century. But Elizabeth had a deep and sincere love and sympathy for humankind, almost a total lack of concern for herself and an abiding confidence in God. These were the tools of her success.


Re-posted from Franciscan Media.org Saint of the Day

Saturday 25 June 2016

Falling into Mercy - Richard Rohr

Two Halves of Life: Week 2

Falling into Mercy
Thursday, June 23, 2016
The transition to the second half of life moves you from either/or thinking to both/and thinking, the ability to live with paradox. You no longer think in terms of win/lose, but win/win instead. It is a completely different mind. In order for this alternative consciousness to become your primary way of thinking, you have to experience something that forces either/or thinking to fall apart. Perhaps you hate homosexuality and then you meet a real, wonderful homosexual. Or your son comes home and tells you he is getting a divorce. Or you meet a Muslim who is more loving than most of your Christian friends.
Your first reaction is a struggle: “What do I do now? I don’t like this. I can’t deal with this. I want to go back to my familiar and habitual world.” You know your lesbian daughter is good and you love her and don’t want to reject her. So you ask your minister, “What will I do?” Inside such “liminal space” is where real change happens, where your self-serving little dualisms have to fall apart. It might be called growing up.
Jesus kept telling his Jewish listeners about good, holy non-Jews, like the Samaritan man and the Syro-Phoenician woman. But even his disciples struggled to accept that the outsider could be accepted. If you’re stuck in the first half of life, with your explanation about why you’re the best, you will hold on strongly because it’s all you have, and change always feels like dying. Often the only thing that can break down your natural egocentricity is discovering that the qualities you hate in others are actually within you. You’re not so moral after all. You’ve imagined doing “bad” things; and if you could get away with it, you know you’d do it. The only reason you don’t is because you’re afraid. Fear is not enlightenment. Fear is not the new transformed state of the risen Christ that we’ve been promised. Fear keeps you inside of a false order and will not allow any reordering.
Unless you somehow “weep” over your own phoniness, hypocrisy, and woundedness, you probably will not let go of the first half of life. The gift of tears helps you embrace the mystery of paradox, of that which can’t be fixed, which can’t be made right, which can’t be controlled, and which doesn’t make sense. But if you don’t allow this needed disappointment to well up within you (good guilt), if you surround yourself with your orthodoxies and your certitudes and your belief that you’re the best, frankly, you will stay in the first half of life forever and never fall into the Great Mercy. Many religious people never allow themselves to “fall,” while many sinners fall and rise again.
Gateway to Silence:Take up your cross and follow me.
Reference:Adapted from Richard Rohr, Adult Christianity and How to Get There (CAC: 2004)