Reflecting on I Peter 3:18-22

Here’s a question:  When exactly did the gates of heaven open? Was it at the moment of the crucifixion (see Mt. 27: 52-53)? And where exactly did the spirit of Jesus go when his body lay in the “abode of death?”

The second reading today (I Peter 3: 18-22) suggests a tantalizing answer: In (the Spirit) he also went to preach to the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah…

This enigmatic sentence became a scriptural basis for the section in the Apostles’ Creed that states “He descended into hell”.

We used to say that every Sunday, but what does it mean?  I love this portion of an ancient poem by an unknown Christian, speaking about this mystery:

The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.  He has gone to search for our first parents, gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve.  He took them by the hand and raised them up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light”.

How does time and space work with God?  Had “all who had ever slept since the world began” waited out those thousands of years in “real time”?  Or is there perhaps a “wrinkle in time”, a mere blink that separates this life (and death) from eternity?

Be at peace.  The God of heaven and earth (and under the earth) has gone in search of us.

Is it hard to imagine that hell might be empty?

With thanks to my dear friend Susan Maly, who lent me A Wrinkle in Time and set me on a whole new path of understanding all the things we’ll never understand.

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 Mark 2:1-2

My friends Mary and Jim had been high school sweethearts, and they had kept their romance going through college while on opposite sides of the country.  But for a short time during the spring of their sophomore year they were a mere ninety miles away from each other.  And one night James Taylor showed up unexpectedly to give an impromptu concert to hundreds of astonished students in a little field on the Denver University campus.

That’s when the agony started, because Jim was right there and Mary was at college in Fort Collins. Jim had a front-row stump (there were no chairs in the field) watching James Taylor sing all the songs that he and Mary loved, and he spent the whole time longing for Mary to be there to share the experience with him.  That’s the thing about love.

I think about that as I relish the love that those four friends had for the paralytic in today’s Gospel.  Whatever it took, even carrying him across town and dropping him down through the roof, they were going to get their sick friend into the presence of Jesus.  The Healer was there, and they couldn’t be happy until their friend was touched by him. That’s the thing about love.

At some point in our lives, someone brought us to Jesus.  Perhaps it was our parents, who brought us to the doors of the church for baptism.  Perhaps it was a friend, who said “Come and see.”   Thanks be to God for their kindness, for now we too can say, “Oh, Jesus.  How sweet it is to be loved by you.”

Who are the friends in your life who would carry you across town to meet Jesus?

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 Mark 1: 40-45

The leper, kneeling before Jesus, wonders if he wants to heal him.  If you wish, you can make me clean, he says.  But maybe you don’t wish it.  Maybe you’re a God with wonderful healing powers to relieve us of our suffering, our blindness, our lameness, our demon possession, but maybe you just don’t want to.  So you have to be coaxed and flattered and manipulated by those of us who are sick.

I admit I’ve approached God similarly.  Now listen, God, this is a little child we’re talking about here.  She’s suffering. You love little children, remember? You have the power to heal her.  If you want to you can heal her, God.  I know you can do it.  Let my words convince you to be merciful.

We think we have to sweet-talk God into being compassionate because, in spite of our prayers, our coaxing, our crying out to God, eventually we and the ones we love still die. God, if you want to you can save us from death! And if death comes anyway we conclude that God just doesn’t want to.

But I find great comfort in the translation in the 1966 Jerusalem Bible.  When the leper says to Jesus, if you want to you can make me clean, Jesus says of course I want to!

Of course I want to. That’s all we need to know.  Jesus our Healer wants to heal us.  Why we still suffer and die is a mystery that remains.  But death’s victory is short-lived, for the God who loves us knows where to find us after we have breathed our last.  And oh, what healing will begin then.

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 Mark 1:29-39

Everyone is looking for you, Jesus.

We don’t realize it most of the time.  When we feel good, and our work is meaningful, and our family is well, we forget how deeply we long to find Jesus as the suffering believers encountered him in today’s Gospel.

But even just a few hours of illness can bring us to our knees, and when we experience the healing touch of Jesus through the doctors God sends us we feel a special connection with Simon’s mother-in-law, who rejoiced at her renewed strength and immediately rose from her bed and served Jesus.

The Book of Job gives us such a close look at suffering, and Job’s description of the “troubled nights” allotted to him ring true for anyone who has agonized over a child, the loss of a love, or the miseries of illness.  But Jesus our Healer stands with us.  And Job lived centuries too early to know him.

Everyone is looking for you, Jesus.

We are sick, Jesus.  Touch us.  We are still looking for work, Jesus.  Help us.  We are anxious, or doubtful, or seduced by the lies of this world that has forgotten to seek you.  Save us, Jesus.  Draw near to us so we can draw near to you.

Everyone is looking for you, Jesus. But the prophet Jeremiah has already spoken for you:  if you seek Me, you will find Me, if you seek Me with all of your heart, I will let Myself be found by you (29:13,14).

Look for Jesus this week.  He has promised to be found.

Have you placed yourself among friends who can help you find Jesus?

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 7:32-35

St. Paul’s remarks today about the differences between those who are married and unmarried calls to mind the beautiful death last November of Sr.  Antonia Anthony, OSF.  She was killed by a young driver who ran a red light four blocks from her home.

In her last moments Sr. Antonia prayed Come, Lord Jesus. And he did.

Sister Patty Podhaisky gave this account: Within minutes Sr. Antonia relaxed, and her breathing slowed down until she peacefully breathed her last, surrounded by her Franciscan sisters and her family.  We felt deep communion in the Heart of God with all of you, her/our sisters, families, friends, companions, as we journeyed with her into the heart of Great Love.  It seemed as though Antonia was running home, and the breeze of her passing brushed each of us with tender grace.

I think St. Paul would especially take note of the “deep communion” that the Sisters,  and her  family, all felt with the Body of Christ throughout the world who had known and loved and been loved by Sr. Antonia, whose passion for justice had propelled her to the poorest places on the globe.

Sister Macrina Scott, Sr. Antonia’s great friend who was in the car with her and sustained serious injuries, appeared in court two months later to appeal for mercy for the young man. She and other members of her community gave him a picture of Sr. Antonia, and a prayer card from her funeral.  Instead of prison he will perform five hundred hours of community service.  Sr. Antonia’s spirit remains.

We, all of us, are one Body.  And we do not live or die alone.  Married and unmarried, ordained and vowed Religious, we journey together, praying Come, Lord Jesus. And there he is, in the midst of us.

Have you experienced the friendships of those in vowed religious communities?

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 Jonah 3:1-5,10

Much of the humor in the Bible is lost on us today because it so culturally-conditioned.  But the passive, hypocritical Jonah in today’s first reading makes a great comic foil in any time.

Have you read the Old Testament book of Jonah lately? Try it.  You’ll laugh at the guy who tells God he ABSOLUTELY will go east, then books passage on the fastest boat going west.  Of course, he ends up being thrown overboard by the prayerful, (non-Jewish) sailors who recognize that God wants Jonah out of the boat and into the belly of the “big fish”.

After three days Jonah is spit up onto the shore and finally heads towards Nineveh.  There the inhabitants (including the cattle!) of the capital city of the most violent empire in the ancient world “believe God” immediately, and fast and pray.  When God has compassion on them and forgives them Jonah is FURIOUS, and at the end of the book we find him pouting under a tree that is quickly shriveling, taking away his shade and his last place to hide from the God who so maddeningly forgives the people Jonah hates.

But Jonah isn’t alone in his jealousy.  I admit I’m jealous too, because it appears that the Ninevites were able to truly change with just a short encounter with God’s word.   Real change— a change we can believe in—eludes us most of the time, and yet we long for it.  Change our hearts this time, oh God.  Put us anywhere, even in sackcloth and ashes in Nineveh—anywhere but with Jonah, spending eternity with an unconverted heart and a blazing, unrelenting sun.

What change do you long to make 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 John 1:35-42

St. Andrew, the First-Called

It was about four in the afternoon.  Isn’t that interesting? The author of John’s Gospel thought it was important to notice the time of day that the two disciples left their community with John the Baptist and followed Jesus, to “see where he stayed”.

And speaking of times of day, it must have been night time when little Samuel heard God calling him.  He rose from his sleep three times to respond to the specific voice that he heard calling his name.  And what was Eli’s instruction to him?  Go back to sleep. Go back to the place where you felt God’s presence and wait for God to find you there.

Do you have a “time of day” that you recall as a time of rendezvous with Jesus?  Do you have a memory of a time or place where you felt the touch of Jesus?  Faith builds on the memories of the times when we have been touched by God’s great mercy.  Take a moment to remember one or two times when you experienced the comforting presence of God.  You know that feeling of strength and peace that comes upon you?  That’s grace, and there is grace sufficient to carry you every time you savor that memory.

In this new year, marked by a specific time (2012), perhaps we could each choose a time of day where we will stop for just a moment to listen for Jesus, or to recall God’s nearness.  I choose four in the afternoon.  How about you?

What is your time or place of “rendezvous with Jesus”?

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 Matthew 2:1-12

Andrea Mantegna c. 1497

And so we come back to the beautiful story of those wise men from the East.  And our questions arise as surely as the Star.

How is it that they observed the Star at its rising?  Why did they, Gentiles who knew nothing of the promised Messiah, leave everything to seek a newborn King of Judea? And, the harder question: if the Star hovered over the house where the Holy Family stayed in Bethlehem, with none of the Jews in the City of David noticing it, how did the Gentiles see it clearly from afar and find the Messiah through its Light?

St. Matthew (the only one of the four Gospel writers who knows this Epiphany story) is telling his Jewish/Christian community something beautiful: those who seek Jesus will surely find Him, whether born into the right bloodlines or not.

And there’s something else here too: are we ready to follow the Stars that arise in our lives, to be utterly open to the Surprising Love of the One who meets us in our comings and goings, our dreaming and our rising, our instinctive drawing near to him who drew so near to us?  In this new year let’s resolve again to keep our eyes wide open for the Christ who comes to us in a thousand different ways, bidden and unbidden,  searching for us as earnestly as we are searching for him.

Many thanks to young Kathleen Sullivan, who encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone and seek broader and wider for the true meaning of the  Epiphany.  Just like the Wise Men.

In what ways do you sense that God is seeking 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 2:16-21

One Christmas Eve, while on pilgrimage to Israel, my husband and I took a memorable walk to Bethlehem from Shepherd’s Field.  This is the field that remembers the sacred place where the shepherds—that group who were considered so unclean that their testimony was not honored in court—saw the angel, who entrusted to them the greatest news in the history of the world.  Then the heavens opened and they saw “a multitude of the heavenly host” praising God.

Ben and I decided to follow their footsteps from Shepherd’s Field that Christmas Eve afternoon.  We “went in haste” those three miles, which gradually got steeper as they led to the Church of the Nativity.  Breathless and with hearts bursting, we entered the church which, at Midnight Mass in ten hours, would be packed with pilgrims from around the world.  But at this moment we were alone.  We climbed down the dark stairs that led to the ancient cave where the shepherds found “Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger.”  Then those shepherds, those “outlaws”, testified to them what they had been told about Jesus.

What peace we felt there in that cave on that Christmas Eve.  As we walked out into the December chill we promised to increase our own testimony of Jesus, and to work harder for peace on earth, and goodwill towards all.

Are there places in your heart that can’t embrace a God who has love for all people?

This column is dedicated to our dearest friend in Jerusalem, Rev. Goran Larsson, who is friend to Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Holy City.  He has walked from Shepherd’s Field to Bethlehem many times, but his life and his extraordinary spirit  brings believers to the place where they can find Jesus.

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 2:1-14

We were arguing when it happened.  We were keeping the night watch in the fields.  The new hire, the one who just got out of one of Herod’s prison dungeons, started leading the sheep away from the water.  But we wanted to spend the night there, drinking wine and telling stories about our good times up north in Jerusalem.

And all of a sudden it wasn’t night, and it wasn’t day.  It was just LIGHT, everywhere LIGHT.  And this Angel was standing right in the circle where we’d been arguing.  We were terrified.  Somehow we heard this Angel speak. And our fear just fell away as we heard about this Baby, this Savior, who had just been born just three miles away in Bethlehem.

And then!  The sky was filled, from every corner, with these HUGE, BEAUTIFUL messengers of LIGHT.  And oh, the music.  Try to imagine the sweetest sound you’ve ever heard, coming from LIGHT in every corner of the sky.

Glory to God in the highest!  And Peace! Peace! Peace!

We don’t remember running.  We couldn’t stop until we found Him.  He was there, this heavenly Child, lying in a manger in the back of a barn.  We shouted out what had happened in the skies, and what we had learned about Him.  And we knelt in front of this Child and His mother.  And nothing will ever be the same.

As we left we saw the Beautiful Mother gazing at the Child, and we wondered what she was seeing.  She was quiet as we walked away.

What mysteries of your own life do you “ponder in your heart”?

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).