Monthly Archives: January 2010

Reflecting on 1 Corinthians 12:31; 13:1-13

Do you have a memory, or a million memories, that you snuggle up with at night when you say your last prayers of the day?  And when you make your Morning Offering, what do you resolve to try to do with the day God has given?  I’ll bet the answer is right there in Paul’s most famous passage, which we hear in today’s second reading.  It’s love.  Wonderful, painful, life-changing love.

Paul wrote his famous letter to the church in ancient Corinth

Want to feel God’s closeness immediately?  Love somebody.  Want to connect with Jesus as he hung on the cross?  Forgive somebody.  Want to share in the witness of the martyrs?  Bear all things, hope all things, endure all things.  That ache in our hearts as we pray for Haiti is the result of love, and it takes us straight to the heart of God.

Can you recall a time when you were caught, red-handed, in a lie or some other embarrassing transgression?  Now try to remember that great relief and love washing over you when you were forgiven.  That’s love!  The one you wronged didn’t brood over injury or rejoice in your humiliation, but rejoiced in this truth: love is the gateway to God.

Let somebody off the hook today.  You’ll feel the presence of Jesus every time you remember how good it felt.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Do you have a special memory of being let off the hook?

Reflecting on I Corinthians 12:12-30

Two years ago I had a very difficult illness.  After five hospitalizations my veins were terrible and it became more and more difficult to place the I.V. for hydration and medication.  But I was going to recover from all of this with just one last surgery!  I was prepped and ready, but neither the surgical nurse nor the anesthesiologist could find a vein for the I.V. At this moment the curtains in the little room opened and a woman (a nurse at that hospital) who had been in my Scripture class years before anxiously stepped in.

“I saw your name on the board and I heard they can’t get the I.V. in.  Give me that.”  She took the needle, lifted my arm

We are one Body in Christ

and got that I.V. going in one try.  Ah, the Body of Christ.

And then there was the card from the friend that had the exact Scripture passage that I had been reading before I opened the card.  And the strong friend who happened to come by the hospital at the time they were deciding not to discharge me that day because there wasn’t anyone strong enough to carry me into my house.  And the lemon drops my brother brought to the hospital, which turned out to be the only thing that could help the nausea.  And my sister sending money for flowers and my brother deciding I’d rather have Chinese food, and the fortune that arrived with the lunch:  You will live a long a healthy life.

We are one Body, one Body in Christ.  And we do not stand alone.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways do you need the other members of the Body, and how is the Body incomplete without you?

Reflecting on John 2:1-11

There was a wedding feast at Cana

When my husband Ben and I were married in 1988 Sr. Macrina Scott, the founder of Denver’s outstanding Catholic Biblical School, was kind enough to carry home for us a small clay jar which she bought in a gift shop in Cana, Galilee during a pilgrimage there.  Years later, Ben and I visited Cana ourselves, and our guide, Dr. Randy Smith from The History Channel, told us the following facts about engagements and weddings during the time of Jesus.  To this day I can’t repeat this story without being overcome with emotion:

In Jesus’ day, when a young man was ready for marriage, his parents brought him to the village square, where he proudly made an imprint in the mud with his sandal.  The next day, the young girl whom the families had decided should be the next to marry came to that same square and shyly placed her footprint inside his.  And with that sacred gesture they became engaged.   There was much to get ready!  The bridegroom would have to leave soon to build an addition onto the home he shared with his parents so that he and his bride could live there and raise their children. That night, at the ceremonial meal with both families, the bridegroom took bread and, giving God thanks and praise, broke the bread, gave it to his betrothed and said, “Take this and eat it.  This is the bread of my covenant with you.  Do not let your heart be troubled.  In my father’s house are many rooms.  I am going now to prepare a place for us.  I will come back for you, so that where I am you also may be.  If it were not so I would have told you.”

Ah.  So that was marital language that Jesus spoke to his disciples on the night before he died!  No wonder the first “sign” in John’s Gospel is Jesus at a wedding.  It turns out he was the Bridegroom all along.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Why do you think the first recorded miracle of Jesus’ was at a wedding?

Artist, Giotto, 1304

Reflecting on Luke 13:15-16, 21-22

The Jordan River

Ah, water.  At the dawn of creation the Spirit hovered over it.  The Great Flood became a waterway for Noah’s arc, carrying life in all its forms to safety.  The Red Sea opened and provided a third way—neither death by Pharaoh’s sword nor by drowning its waters—for the Hebrews to pass over.  When Jesus submitted to baptism in the Jordan the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit hovered once again, this time over the beloved Son.  At his death, when he was pierced, water and blood poured from his side, setting into motion our own passover into eternal life.

It’s not hard to imagine that every day of the week, for two thousand years, somebody has been baptized in the Jordan River.  How many millions have walked into that cold river these past two millennia, hearts pounding with joy as they went under the water, professing faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?  Today (if it is outside of the Easter season) when a person is baptized the priest or deacon will bless the water.  Unless, of course, somebody has brought water from the Jordan River for the baptism.  That water has already been blessed, forever.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What memories do you have from the baptisms you have witnessed?

Reflecting on Matthew 2:1-12

Respite on the Flight into Egypt -- Luc Olivier Merson, 1879

In the Boston Museum of Art there hangs a nineteenth century painting that is so stunning that one can only stand in front of it and pray.  Respite on the Flight into Egypt portrays an exhausted Joseph, sleeping on the ground next to a small campfire that only gives enough light for us to see his body stretched out on the sand.  But the light carries the eye upward, upward, and now we know that, yes, we are in Egypt, for there is a massive sphinx, staring out into the dark desert.  And―of course!―we see the source of that beautiful glow that has caught us and stopped us in our tracks.  There, in the massive arms of the granite guardian of the great Egyptian temple, sleeps Mary and her Child.  All are supremely at peace.  Joseph guards the scene as Mary cradles her baby, and the wondrous ancient lion/man cradles her.

Where do Mary and her Child sleep during their flight away from Herod?    Where else?  They sleep one hundred and fifty feet high, in the arms of the most powerful symbol of the most powerful nation on earth.

Herod should have taken a cue from the heavens.  When the Prince of Peace entered human history as a child, celestial beings, and wise foreigners, and the greatest wonders of the ancient world all did him homage.  If you look closely you’ll see that they still do.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways can you discern all creation giving glory to God?