Reflecting on Luke 9: 51-62

There is a theory in some circles that the name Nazir—set apart—was purposefully chosen by a clan of Jews, tracing their ancestry to King David himself, who settled in a region twenty miles south of the Sea of Galilee a few years before the birth of Jesus. They named their tiny city Nazareth because they believed that they were royalty, set apart, and that the Messiah would come from their family line.

And of course he did.  But perhaps Jesus was different from what they thought the Messiah would be. The earlier gospels (but not John) reveal an underlying misapprehension of the mission of Jesus on the part of some of his family members.

At the age of twelve he stayed behind in Jerusalem after the festival of Passover while his family left for home.  When his anxious parents returned and found him in the Temple he was astounded that they didn’t know that he must be about his Father’s business (Lk. 2: 41-52).

Around the age of 30 “he left Nazareth and made his home by the sea” (Matt: 4:13).   The gospel of Mark recounts his many miracles there, and that his relatives “set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (3:21).  Later in that chapter, when they arrive and ask to see him, Jesus looks at the crowd and says, “Here are my mother and brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (3: 34, 35).

And now, in today’s gospel, he tells the young man to forfeit his most important family duty and “let the dead bury the dead”.  Jesus relentlessly shocks us with his obsessive desire for each of us to get to heaven, even if it means not fulfilling what our families may see as our more important roles. His mother Mary, who stood at the foot of the cross, understands that perfectly.

What are you leaving behind in order to be fit for the kingdom?

Who do you say I am? We’d like to ask that question, wouldn’t we?  We long to hear “beloved friend”, “adored spouse”, “precious family member”, and “irreplaceable, much-admired co-worker”.  Nothing stings more than when people answer that sacred question by naming our faults.  Our sins are not who we are.  At least not to God.

Who do you say the people in your life are? I have friends who have held me up when I couldn’t stand, who have carried me when I couldn’t walk.  And here’s the great truth: once someone has loved you in your helplessness, he or she will always be everything to you.  It won’t matter that their kids don’t go to church, that they never got the family photo albums digitalized, that they brought take-out to the Christmas dinner.  The person who catches you during the free falls of your life is everything to you, and you are theirs forever.

The crazy thing is that the ones who see us in our vulnerability love us as much as we love them.  I think it’s because, in our emptiness, they have entered the broken heart of God.  And that’s a very sacred place, indeed.

Jesus, the God-with-flesh-on, longs to hear from his friends who they think he is.  But I think what he is really asking for is their hearts, their lives, their very selves.  Who do you say I am? It wasn’t until the resurrection, the ascension and the sending of the Spirit that they finally figured it out.

Who do I say he is? The One who catches me every day.  I am his.

Who do you say he is?

Last week my husband Ben invited me to join him in the Corpus Christi procession at Denver’s historic Annunciation Church.  As the curious neighbors came out to watch, Ben (with me reluctantly in tow) approached them and asked if they attended church anywhere, and, if not, if they’d ever considered joining Annunciation parish.

It was a wonderful, affirming experience to speak with the warm and kind-hearted people who welcomed us.  One man, however, shocked us.  He waved his hand in the direction of a dilapidated apartment building and said, “Look around you. The Catholic Church doesn’t care about the poor.”

We did look around, and observed three things. At least eighty houses in the neighborhood were renovated in the ‘90s by Annuciation Partners to help low-income families buy their own homes.  Archdiocesan Housing funds the nearby Humboldt Apartments.  And the Sr. Mary Lucy Downey Computer Lab provides free, after-school tutoring space.

That “sinful woman” in today’s gospel got it right.  If you want to show someone how grateful you are to have been forgiven, give water for cleansing, a kiss for greeting, and oil for anointing.  That is, provide a way for working families to buy their own houses, have affordable apartments for those who are poor, and have after-school care tutoring for their kids.

Paul’s words today will always ring true.  We are fit for heaven because our faith in Jesus shapes us for heaven.  But it’s the daily hospitality shown to those who are homeless, struggling, or need help with their math homework that reveals the depth of our gratitude that it is no longer us, but Christ who lives in us.

What acts of hospitality do you perform to express your gratitude to God?

Reflecting on I Kings 17: 17-24; Luke 7:11-17

I read a good book last month.  Three Weeks with my Brother is a thoughtful and mesmerizing memoir written by Nicholas Sparks. His life story is far more harrowing than I imagined the author of The Notebook had lived.

At ages 37 and 38, Nicholas and his brother Micah took a trip around the world. Their conversation often turned to memories of their childhood.

Growing up in poverty with a sister and two wildly dysfunctional parents, Nicholas and Micah remained faithful Catholics into their early adult years, but the many tragedies that they endured led them to two different conclusions about God’s ability (or willingness) to answer prayer.  Listening to today’s readings, we could ask the same questions.

Why did God allow the widow of Zarepheth’ s only son to die, and then be resuscitated by Elijah? There must have been many grieving families in Israel, but the only son of the widow of Nain Jesus raised up and gave back to his mother.

I think that God wants us to engage in the mystery.  The creator of wonders beyond our galaxy desires that we pray to be healed, that we pray for others to be healed.  Some will be given more years of life, and others will go to God earlier than we so earnestly desire.  Michelangelo’s Pieta images Jesus himself, the only son of his widowed mother, in his mother’s arms after his crucifixion.  God did not save him from the cross.

But the empty tomb stands as an eternal witness that God has complete power over death.  We live as servants to the God who desires that we draw ever more near.

How do you “engage” with God?

When was the last time you read Charles Dickens?  My brother begged me to get reacquainted with him, and I’ve spent the last several months in reverent silence, listening to his stunning and shattering stories on audio tapes.

Hard Times is my latest find.  It was published in 1854, and reflects the soulless existence of the factory workers outside of London as the Industrial Revolution steals the health of the adults and the lives of the children.  Still in the throes of the 17^th century Enlightenment, the owners of the factories and the intellectual elite of the town preach a strict adherence to FACT and REASON.  “The Good
Samaritan was a poor economist,” they say.  “Jesus should have calculated the mathematical probability of being crucified,” they nod wryly.

In other words, there is no mystery in life, nothing sacred to our existence, no ocean teeming with fish waiting for us to lower our nets on the other side.  Jesus would have flunked The Enlightenment.

Isaiah, writing 700 years before Christ, tells of entering the Temple and seeing the Lord on a throne, and angels placing hot coals on Isaiah’s lips that he may be worthy to speak of such things.  He would have flunked The Enlightenment too.

As Paul relates in today’s second reading from I Corinthians 15, (the earliest account ever written on the resurrection, preceding even Mark’s gospel), Jesus appeared to many hundreds of people after the resurrection.  Those eyewitnesses went out to the ends of the earth, filled with the Holy Spirit, preaching the Risen Lord.  They would all have flunked The Enlightenment.

Oh Lord, I want to be in that number.

In what ways do you see mystery at work in the world?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on I Corinthians 12:31-13:13

When I drift off to sleep at night I try to recall all the radical love that came in my direction that day.  It washes over me like a delicious warm ocean wave, and like the ocean it rocks me gently to sleep.

There’s something about love.  We might not be able to define it, but we sure know it when we get it.  And bringing it to mind makes it “really present” all over again.

And then this thought occurs to me:  Since God is love, might it be that the only thing God CANNOT do is withhold love?  Maybe God is restricted in only one thing: God can’t stop loving us, madly, unconditionally, eternally.

At a rosary for a friend’s dad the other night the deacon read from the Rites, “God takes all of our good works with us to heaven.”  Those tiny good works that we’ve forgotten minutes after we offered them?  It turns out God has remembered every single one of them and has them stored up for us to take into eternity.

That image brings to mind the proud parent who has kept all our pictures, and trophies, and—yikes!—even our report cards, and somehow sees a beautiful, brilliant athlete/scholar there, despite all evidence to the contrary.

It’s a delicious circle.  God is LOVE, and because love never fails, God’s love keeps circling around us in an eternal loop of patience and kindness, never brooding over our sins or rejoicing over our wrongdoing.

Huh.  So THAT’S why God takes our good works to heaven with us.  Loving others creates the perfect joy that is the DNA of eternity.  Or, as Victor Hugo wrote so beautifully in Les Miserables, “To love another person is the see the face of God.”

In what ways have you experienced, by giving or receiving, the kind of love in I Corinthians 12:31-13:13?

This column was inspired by the recent deaths of four beloved Christians, each of whom loved so magnificently that it’s wonderful to imagine heaven bursting at the seams as they entered it, so much love did they bring with them.  Wayne Hendrix, Angela DiMartini, Jimmy McNamee, and Wayne Easley have each gone home to God in the past two weeks.  Watch for miracles.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 1:1-4; 4: 14-21

Of all the fascinating subjects—the saints,  scripture, social justice— that are part of the lives of the 1 billion Catholics on the globe, the one I find the most compelling is the brilliant 1969 lectionary.

If you haven’t sat with some kind of publication that has the Sunday scriptures—week after week for a year or two at least– you are missing the best-kept secret of all the reforms since the Council.

There’s a method to why we read what we read when we read it, and it’s breathtaking.  The first reading is chosen, out of all the scriptures in the entire Old Testament, to match the Gospel reading.  And the Responsorial Psalm is chosen, out of all 150 psalms, to be the soft light that illumines the connection between those two.

They rhyme, kind of.  They harmonize.  Today’s section from Luke describes the process perfectly.   Jesus takes his turn as lector in the synagogue in Nazareth.  Isaiah 61 is the Torah portion (actually the “Half Torah”, since it’s from a prophet and not from the first five books) this particular day, describing the Spirit’s anointing on the one who does justice.  Jesus closes the scroll and says, “That’s me.  Isaiah is talking about me.”

That’s how the lectionary is shaped.  The first reading is the overture, the gospel the opera.

It all started on that ancient day when Ezra the scribe, circa 450BC, read the earliest written version of The Books of Moses.  Thousands of people stood, silently aware that the Divine Presence was among them as the Word was proclaimed.

We stand still, all these years later, when the gospel is proclaimed, in communion with all the Catholic men, women and children old enough to understand.

Have you ever been fascinated with the way the readings connected on a particular Sunday?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 2: 1-11

African Christian Art

Right off the bat, at the very beginning of his public ministry, Jesus sets out transforming us.  The first “sign” that John’s gospel gives us is that puny, weak bit of wine that runs out so quickly at the wedding at Cana.  Watch for the transformation:

Somehow, there are SIX STONE JARS sitting outside the tiny house!  This is funny, and it’s an inside joke for the Jewish-Christian readers of the first century.  Hmm.  Where else have we seen such huge jars?  Right at the entrance to the Temple, where men did ritual washings in order to make themselves pure so they could enter. Now those huge jars have been transplanted from the Temple all the way up to the little house where the marriage party is in full swing.

A similar joke might be if someone said, “We went to some Catholic friends’ home for dinner, and the stained glass windows from the Sistine Chapel were in their living room!”  It’s John’s way of saying, “Watch for the transformation that Jesus will perform.”

His mother gives directions to the stewards, and Jesus gives directions to the created world (which he created), and the water is transformed into the best wine of the party.

And of course there are countless transformations to come: the lonely Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at a well and becomes the premiere disciple in her village; the man born blind who is given sight so that we can see how blind we are; the dead Lazarus whose stone is rolled away.

But we don’t have to go far from the scriptures to see the best transformations, the ones that are endlessly happening in we who try and fail and try again to do whatever he tells us.

How do you try to do whatever he tells you in your life?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 23:35-43

We should have seen it coming from the beginning.  One year ago we rotated into Luke’s Gospel, and if we’d paid attention we would have noticed it then, right there in the second chapter.  But we were distracted by the glorious account of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, and those shepherds running up to Bethlehem to see the things that had come to pass.

Jesus, remember me

We should have seen it coming, this horrible, terrifying death on a hill.  The day he came into Jerusalem on a colt, with his followers singing hosannas, should have jolted our memories.  Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven! They were singing just what the angels sang on the night of his birth!  Something destined from before all things was now unfolding before our eyes.

The King of Kings lies nailed to a cross.  He struggles, he cries, he writhes in agony.  And now we remember the prophet Simeon as he held the baby Jesus in the Temple: And Mary, a sword will pierce your heart too. Ah. We knew this was coming all along.

But now, grace enters into the heart of one crucified next to him.  The torture of the cross opens up a place that has grown hard in his heart.  In his last moments he recognizes the image of the invisible God, Christ himself, who came into the world to deliver us from darkness.  Jesus! he moans.  Remember me when you come into your kingdom!

The crucified King promises paradise to him this very day. And we who, at this distance of two thousand years, know the end of the story, wait in joyful hope at the empty tomb.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

At what times of your life have you begged Jesus to remember you?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 21: 5-19

My friend Joanie was the first of my friends to have a baby, way back in the early 1970s.  I still remember how shocked I was that she was ignoring all the signs of the times―the recent famine in Biafra, the war in Vietnam, the oil embargo, the Palestinian terror attack at the Munich Olympics, the eruption of Mt. Etna.

In every age, bring life forward

How could she possibly think about having a family when Jesus’ prophecy about the last days was clearly being acted out on the world stage?  Wars, famines, terrorism, volcanos.  Surely things could never get worse.  Also, hadn’t she read the very same reading assignments I had at school?  The world would run out of clean water and air by the time we were in our forties.

But as the years went by, something even more shocking happened.  All of my friends started having families!  I was stunned at their hopefulness, their faith-driven optimism that God is the God of the living, and their vocation was to bring life forward.

And that’s what finally compelled me to learn how to read Scripture.  Of course.  Luke’s Gospel today is timeless, and Jesus was absolutely right.  In every age there will be all those dreadful things.  And in every age, Jesus is Lord of all who hope in him.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways do you experience a tension between faith and fear?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).