Urban Hermit at 3156 Doyle Street, Toledo, OH 43608-2006 US - Year C, 2nd-7th, 11th

Psalm 96:1-3, 7-10—Sing a new song!

1 Corinthians 12:4-11—To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.

John 2:1-11—Jesus revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

Dear People of God,

We stand at the beginning of ordinary time.  Even though it’s called “ordinary,” we know it’s anything but ordinary.  This ordinary time is “ordered” time, measured out, meted in a sure and steady way, immersing us Sunday by Sunday in the great mystery of Jesus Christ, pulling us inexorably into those “numbered” among his disciples.

Jesus is seen, for the first time in John’s Gospel, as a wonder-worker.  His glory begins to be manifest to the people around him.  “They have no wine,” his mother tells him, and Jesus gives them the best wine—a foreshadowing of his outpouring of life and blood.

Whenever the wedding metaphor is used in our scriptures, it reverberates with echoes of the marriage of God and Israel, the old covenant of Abraham that bound the Hebrews to Yahweh.  John reveals the new covenant here, to be sealed with the blood of Jesus and celebrated with the wine of the altar from that day to this.

The people drink.  The wine is good, the best.  And through this sign Jesus’ glory begins to be known, and his disciples begin to believe.

Jesus continues, throughout his ministry, to pour himself out to those in need, extravagantly, the best he has to give, and, in the end, everything.  With the gifts of the spirit we have been given, we are called to follow.

God bless!

3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C):  Body of Christ

Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10—Ezra read out of the book of the law from daybreak till midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand.

Psalm 19:8-10, 15—The word of God is Spirit and life.

1 Corinthians 12:12-30—You are Christ’s body.  If one part suffers, all parts suffer with it.

Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21—The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.  God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed.

Dear People of God,

When was the last time you saw someone sleeping in church during the Sunday homily? 

Thirty-five years ago, in these very same pews, you would have seen a lot of sleepers.  It was commonplace then to fall asleep during the sermon.  Some even snored, quite loudly, waking themselves up with a “harrumph!” of a cough in an attempt to cover their faux pas.    But we all knew what had happened.

These days the people who used to snore the sermon away are no longer among us.  Many of those who came only to fulfill their “Sunday obligation” no longer show up.  The people who come now, of course, still understand that it’s a church rule that they attend weekly Mass, but they come because they want to, and they come to celebrate actively the liturgy of word and Eucharist. 

Today’s first reading from the book of Nehemiah vividly portrays the grateful emotional response of the people of Israel when they gathered to hear the Word of God after their exile.  Now freed from the oppression that deprived them not only of liberty but also of the freedom to practice their religion, the people listen eagerly, joyfully to the proclamation of the word.

We’ve changed a lot in the way we listen to the word in the last 35 years.  Sermons have become homilies, breaking open the scriptures and applying them to our daily lives. 

We’ve changed a lot in the way we celebrate Eucharist as well, moving from passive attendance at the ritual to active participation in the celebration. 

Before Vatican II, we were conscious of the presence of Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist and in the priest/presider as “persona Christi.” 

We have become much more conscious of the presence of Jesus in the word and in the gathered assembly.  In our second reading Paul tells us that we are all baptized into the body of Christ, each of us needed for the health of the whole. 

That’s a lesson that is not always apparent in our assemblies.  Too often we see leaders staking out turf, forming cliques, barring newcomers from sharing their gifts with the community.  Some are afraid; others have a compulsion to control.  It seems that the sickness of our society cannot be kept from infecting our parishes.

But we are called to be the body of Christ, and to recognize Christ in others.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon us; we have been anointed by our baptism to bring good news to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, empowerment to the oppressed. 

That’s the message Jesus proclaims when he unrolls the scroll of the prophet Isaiah at his home synagogue in Nazareth:  “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” 

God bless!__________________________________________________________

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C):  Rescue Us!

Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19—I am with you.

Psalm 71:1-6, 15, 17—In your justice rescue me, and deliver me.

1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13—Love never fails.

Luke 4:21-30—No prophet is accepted in his own native place.

Dear People of God,

Jeremiah’s words ring out across the millennia, reaching us today—as the word of God always does—in new ways.  As Catholic women in the opening decade of the new millennium we hear a message spoken directly to us:  God formed us before we were born, dedicated us as prophets to the nations, and today we are told to stand strong in God’s strength.  “Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them,” Jeremiah says.  You are a pillar of iron against kings and princes, against priests and people.  “They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you.”

What a world Catholic women face!  In 2001 we saw the end of the Presidency of a morally scurrilous woman-chaser.  We heard of sexual indiscretion by the spiritual advisor to that President.  We heard accolades to the new President for his “pro-life” stance.  Yet in all of this, we did not hear the voice of the women involved.  We did not hear a voice against the harassment of women in the workplace.  We did not hear a voice denouncing the immorality of infidelity, either in the case of Mr. Clinton or Mr. Jackson.  We did not hear a voice calling for responsibility on the part of the males who impregnated the females who seek abortions.  And since then the abortion rate has increased in direct proportion to the decrease of assistance to unwed mothers.

And then we heard of new Cardinals appointed by our Pope.  When his successor is selected by the College of Cardinals, all but ten of them will have been appointed by John Paul II, guaranteeing a continuation of the patriarchal view of women as non-persons. 

Women might well begin to wonder if God is really here, but we turn to the story in Luke’s Gospel set before us, and we know that Jesus has been here before.  Following up on last week’s pericope in which he read from the prophet Isaiah, Luke tells us that his listeners, “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” began to beset him.  When Jesus reminds them that the prophets Elijah and Elisha were able to work their wonders and healings among strangers, they understand only too well what he means and chase him out of town, intending to kill him. 

Women know, like Jesus, this reaction of the Church’s leaders to words of challenge.  Women have spoken truth only to find themselves shunned, silenced, sent away.  In spite of the significant advances in Catholic scripture scholarship since Divine Afflante Spiritu, the leadership of the Church continues to reiterate policies based on faulty readings and flawed biology.  American Catholic women are the driving force and spirituality in our parishes, yet our Church not only refuses to consider ordaining us, it orders us not to discuss the subject.  And again, the old prohibition against commissioning women as lectors has been ordered to be revived.

When we look at Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians to love, we see the core of our Christianity, articulated by Jesus in the two great commandments to love God and love our neighbor.  This love is patient, kind, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.  This is the love women in the Catholic Church are called to again and again, in the face of ongoing discrimination and exclusion.  It is not always easy.

So the great celebration has ended.  The Jubilee door has closed.  We are walking through the new millennium, and women remain outsiders in our own church.  The psalmist puts words in our mouths:  In your justice, Lord, rescue us!

God bless!

____________________________________________________________

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C):  Here I Am!  Send Me!

Isaiah 6:1-8—Here I am; send me!

Psalm 138:1-4—When I called, you answered me.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11—Jesus appeared to me!

Luke 5:1-11—Leave everything and follow Jesus.

Dear People of God,

It’s been observed that pride is a man’s sin, while the concomitant woman’s sin is lack of self-esteem.  The response of the men in today’s three readings underscores that difference.

First, Isaiah’s reaction to seeing God is “Woe is me, I am doomed!”  He is so deeply convinced of his own superiority as a human that he cannot accept God as present to him without thinking he will be destroyed.  Isaiah is unable to rise above the dominant male’s conviction that all life is a battle.  So he perceives God as a destroyer!  Only after the seraph purges his sin is he able to respond freely and positively to God’s call to service.

Paul’s reaction is similar.  He belabors his lack of fitness to be called an apostle.  “Last of all,” he writes, Jesus appeared to him “as to one born abnormally.”  What kind of mindset allows this worldview?  It’s as if Paul sees himself as “least of all the apostles” because of some kind of supernatural pecking order; then, since he cannot be first among those to whom Jesus appears, he takes a perverse pride in being last and continually points out his worthlessness.  He berates himself for having had to receive grace in order to do God’s will. 

Paul at least admits that God is the source of grace.  Nevertheless, when he confesses, “I am what I am,” he seems unable to go beyond his sense of disgrace in finding out that he is human. 

Finally, Peter is, as usual, blunt about his self-understanding:  “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” he cries when he recognizes the supernatural presence in Jesus.  When Jesus encourages the fishermen, “Do not be afraid,” what is it that they have been fearing?  Men who have made their livelihood from fishing, they have been instructed by an amateur.  Something far greater than their old life has come to them, and they fear the changes that will be required to change their self-understanding and their understanding of the world to accommodate it.  To their credit, Peter, James, and John drop what they’re doing and follow Jesus.  We know that they will continue to struggle to understand this new way that Jesus teaches.

It seems as if all these men, faced with the gracious mystery of God’s presence, are suddenly thrown into the posture of self-abnegation that women are forced to live with all the time; they are unable to find redemption in the moment.  Their overweening pride does not allow them the automatic female response:  Thank you!  Yes!  It takes these men a while to get around to the servant response:  “Here I am!  Send me.”

Women, on the other hand, encounter the presence of God in the midst of an experience of rejection by the powerful.  The glory of God shining in their direction spurs them to gratitude and acquiescence.  Mary’s “Yes!” at the annunciation is typical of the way women have responded to God.   

As women become, especially in the United States of America in the 21^st century, more independent and empowered, it’s likely that we will adopt the mindset of the patriarchy that has oppressed us throughout recorded history.  As we go about this week, let’s take note of the way we respond to God’s inbreaking presence in our lives; let’s make sure we say “thank you!” as we race to follow Jesus.

God bless!_____________________________________________________________

6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C):  Blessed!

Jeremiah 17:5-8—The one who trusts in God, not humans, is like a tree planted by water, showing no distress and bearing fruit in the year of distress.

Psalm 1:1-4, 6—Blessed are they who hope in God.

1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20—Christ has been raised from the dead.

Luke 6:17, 20-26—Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.  Their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

Dear People of God,

God has been speaking to human beings since the beginning of time, and still the message falls on deaf ears.  Jeremiah, in today’s first reading, comments on the fruits of trusting in God rather than in human beings, observing that people who place their trust in God last the drought as if they had a basic source—like a root in the water—that allowed them to show no distress.

That’s truly the way life happens.  The old adage that admonishes us not to place all our eggs in one basket is similar.  When we place our trust in humans, and they fail, we are distressed, disappointed, dejected.  When we place our trust in God, we can never be disappointed.

And so in the Gospel Luke relates Jesus’ sermon on the plain, an upside-down world in the eyes of many human beings.  In this world the poor, the hungry, and the weeping are blessed, while the rich, the satisfied, and the merrymakers are cursed.  What kind of world is this? 

We know it well.  It’s the world we live in.  It’s not the top of the mountain; it’s the deep, dark valley.  It’s the world that rewards the greedy and the manipulative with wealth and power.  It’s the world where a few claim the right to eat meat as they stroll by those who have no bread.  It’s the world where compassion is ridiculed.  And it’s the world where those who try to do good are hated, excluded and insulted.

Yet Jesus’ advice to the poor, hungry, mourning, hated, excluded, and insulted ones is to rejoice.  It really isn’t a surprise why women tend to relate more than men to the Christian message.  In the patriarchal culture and the patriarchal society and the patriarchal church we live in, we are the ones who are not allowed to own property.  We are the ones who go hungry to feed our children.  We are the ones who mourn the death of our loved ones from disease and malnutrition and war; we are the ones who grieve the loss of freedom and self-determination.  Even more, we are told that we are the ones who to blame for whatever goes wrong!

In too many places our tradition has interpreted the Scriptures as defining women by a role as sexual objects.  Our institutional Catholic Church continues to exclude women from ordination, from authoritative decision-making positions, even from commissioning as lectors.  Too many priests continue to encourage the antagonists who denigrate women, lifting them into positions of authority in their parishes rather than chastising them.

The typical American parish today, in our post-Vatican world, is full of volunteers.  Women fill the pews… and continue to scrub them with Murphy’s Oil Soap.  Women fill the collection basket...  and then serve as tellers to count the proceeds.  Women type the letters, cook the dinners, raise the money, visit the sick, comfort the grieving, raise the children, teach religion classes, run the Sunday School… and must go to the Pastor for approval of every action they take.  The few men who volunteer are welcomed onto the Finance Councils and Maintenance Team, where they decide how to spend the parish’s income; a few actually end up helping with the menial tasks of cooking and cleaning, and they are awarded accolades for doing it.

In this context it’s truly a wonder that any ministry continues to take place.  Women have long and varied experiences of being unrewarded servants in the church.  As a result, it can only be that women understand, deeply and personally, this Gospel message about the blessedness of those who are excluded, insulted and denounced.  The entire Christian message aims at the anawim, the poor, the rejected.  Women, the largest ongoing group of anawim, grow up understanding intuitively their position in the world; when Jesus shows, through the sermon he preaches on the plain today, that he understands this position, it’s no wonder women respond!  Prophets have always been treated badly, Jesus says, and your servant discipleship can only be seen as threatening to the selfish and the greedy.

Let us leap for joy that the institutional church continues to exclude us!  To be included in a system that insults women for being women, to be included in a system that builds treasures on the backs of the poor, to be included in a system that feasts on chicken dinners while failing to feed the hungriest among us a cup of rice… that would be a cursed place to belong to. 

God bless!_____________________________________________________________

7^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C):  A Sacrifice of Justice

1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9—God will reward justice and faithfulness.

Psalm 103:1-4, 8, 10, 12-13—Bless God, merciful and gracious, who pardons all our sins.

1 Corinthians 15:45-49—Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.

Luke 6:27-38—Love your enemies. 

Dear People of God, 

Today’s message is a message of radical faith, radical hope, and radical love. 

Christianity seems easy when we concentrate on the superficial rituals.  We say our Morning Offering, we fulfill our weekly Mass obligation, we bake a casserole for the parish anniversary dinner.  We’re good Christians.

The message of radical faith comes in our first reading.  God will reward us for our justice and faithfulness.  David has this faith in God.  When King Saul is at David’s mercy and David’s comrade Abishai urges him to kill King Saul, David is able to walk away from the opportunity.  He gives up his right to justice out of respect for the fact that Saul is the anointed king.  David is able to do this because of his faith in God’s way.

The message of radical hope comes in our second reading.  Paul holds out to us the hope that we shall be like God:  we shall bear the image of God in us, just as the first humans were created in God’s natural image and Jesus came to this world in God’s heavenly image.  Born in that same image of God, we are to hope for its fulfillment in our very selves. 

Made in the image of God, we are called to act like God.  The message of radical love in today’s Gospel from Luke is impossible to miss.  Jesus’ words are hard:  love your enemies.  As God showers love on those who do good and those who do evil, so we must do the same.  We must pattern our lives after the love of God, especially when we are in the right, when we are persecuted, when we are excluded, when we are reviled.

How am I to love those who do me ill?  That is difficult.  When someone harms me—physically or financially or reputationally, or however—my automatic reaction is to strike back.  I want to get even. 

I’m trying to recall the last time I loved someone who wasn’t in line to receive my love.  I sent Christmas cards to my friends.  I contributed to the Sunday collection in my parish.  I smiled and chatted with the people I encountered last week as I went about my daily routines. 

When I found myself sitting at a meeting next to a woman whose vicious gossip had caused people to misjudge me, did I try to carry on a normal conversation with her out of love?  When asked to volunteer my services for a man who had terminated my employment contract on the basis of rumors he’d heard, did I embrace the opportunity to serve out of love?  Unless I move to another state, unless I change careers, unless I forsake—or lose to death—all my friends and family, I will daily encounter someone who has harmed me at some point in our shared history.  How will I act toward them? 

I am clearly called to love them.  I am called to mercy and forgiveness.  I am called to do good to those who treat me badly.  I am called to give without expecting anything back, and even more to give when I know nothing will be coming back except more hatred.  That is the image of God I am called to reflect to the world because I am a Christian.

It is a sacrifice of justice, indeed. 

God bless!

_____________

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C):  Out of their own resources