If you would like to catch up on some recent posts, here is a place where you can easily access some posts you might have missed. I hope it helps… enjoy.
Continue readingA quick look back
Featured
2
Waiting with Quiet Conviction
There are seasons in life when faith feels less like certainty and more like waiting. We pray for healing, but the illness remains. We pray for reconciliation, but the relationship is still broken. We pray for guidance, but the way forward remains unclear. We pray for a child or grandchild who has wandered from the faith, but nothing seems to change. In those moments, we may know what God has promised. We may believe that he is faithful. But we have not yet seen the fulfillment. That is where both Jeremiah and Martha stand in today’s readings.
Jeremiah is exhausted by his vocation. He has spoken God’s word faithfully, but instead of success he has experienced conflict, isolation, and rejection. He cries out: “Woe to me, mother, that you gave me birth!” This is not the voice of someone who has lost all faith. It is the voice of someone who has tried to remain faithful and is tired of the cost. Yet in the middle of his lament, Jeremiah says: “When I found your words, I devoured them; your words were my joy and the happiness of my heart.”
Jeremiah still remembers what first sustained him. God’s word had become part of him. He had not merely heard it. He had consumed it. It had nourished his heart and given meaning to his life. But now he is struggling because the word he embraced has not yet produced the outcome he hoped for. He has God’s promise, but he is still waiting for deliverance.
Martha is in a similar place. Her brother Lazarus has died. Jesus is late on the scene. She says to him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There is both faith and pain in that sentence. Martha believes Jesus could have helped. She trusts his power. But she is also grieving what did not happen. Her prayer was not answered in the way she expected. And yet she does not walk away. She remains in conversation with Jesus. “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Martha does not understand what Jesus is about to do. She has no clear picture of how this story will end. She is still standing in grief. But she holds on.
Then Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life.” He does not explain what He is about to do, rather the first action is the gift of Himself to Martha. That may be the deepest lesson in these readings.
While we are waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled, God often gives us his presence before he gives us an answer. We want to know when things will change. God says, “I am with you.” We want to know how the story will end. God says, “Trust me.” We want a solution. God gives us his Word.
This does not mean that our questions are wrong or that faithful people never become discouraged. Jeremiah complains openly. Martha tells Jesus exactly how she feels. Faith is not pretending that everything is fine. Faith is bringing our disappointment to God and refusing to stop speaking with him. It is possible to grieve and still believe. It is possible to be confused and still trust. It is possible to feel tired and still hold on to God’s word.
God responds to Jeremiah with a promise: “They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you, to deliver and rescue you.” God does not promise that Jeremiah’s struggle will disappear immediately.He promises that the struggle will not have the final word.
Jesus makes the same promise to Martha, only in an even greater way: “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” Death itself will not have the final word. This is the faith Christians are called to live.
We hold on to God’s word while waiting for God’s promise. We do not always know when healing will come. We do not always know how reconciliation will happen. We do not know when grief will become lighter or when a prayer will be answered. But we know the One who has spoken.
And in the end, Christian hope rests not in our ability to predict what God will do, but in the character of the God who has promised to remain with us. Most of the Christian life is lived somewhere between Jeremiah’s words: “Your words were my joy” and Martha’s confession: I have come to believe.”
We remember what God has said. We continue to believe. And we wait with the quiet conviction that the Lord who has begun the story has not abandoned it.
Image credit: The Raising of Lazarus, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1310), Kimberly Museum of Art, Public Domain
More than inspirational
This coming Sunday is the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. The miraculous feeding of a very large number of people in the wilderness is one miracle that is told in each of the four canonical gospels. Despite the consistency of the narrative there are, in every age, those who reject the miraculous offering that Jesus only inspired the people to share. Or they dismiss the narrative as apocryphal – or at best an altered memory of a large feast that imagined the coming banquet of the Kingdom. Keener (403) points out that nothing would be more memorable than a feeding miracle, especially in the context of the culture of their day. Keener offers four points:
- First, the disciples were right to be concerned about the people’s hunger but intended to solve the problem in a purely natural way (e.g. 1 Kings 17:16 and 2 Kings 4:43). Our expectations of what God can do often are too small; providing food in the wilderness was technically impossible, but God had used Moses, Elijah and Elisha for feeding miracles.
- Second, like God of the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus takes what his servants bring to him and multiplies it. (Ex 4:1-3; 2 Kings 4:1-7)
- Third, God does miracles only when his people need them – and the need is very evident in this wilderness area.
- Fourth, sharing is not the narrative thrust of Matthew’s writing. The ending points to thing outside and beyond the people present: (a) we are not to be intimidated by the magnitude of the problem because God is with us, and (b) the surprising leftovers point to the continuation of this miracle (greater than manna which had no leftovers) into the Apostolic Age.
Adding to Keener’s insight, there is also the clear Eucharistic intention in the use of four verbs ‘take’, ‘bless’, ‘break’ and ‘give’ which occur with minor variations not only in all six accounts of the two miraculous feedings and in that of the Emmaus meal, but also in all four accounts of the Last Supper.
That being said, at the event itself, the Eucharistic foretaste would be unknown and so Keener’s understanding of the event in Old Testament terms is appropriate.
Image credit: James J. Tissot, ‘Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes’ (1886-94), Brooklyn Museum, NYC | PD-US
Imagery
This coming Sunday is the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. Eugene Boring (323-4) notes that this miracles account appears six times in the NT gospels and incorporates a wide variety of imagery from Scripture, as well as the Jewish and Christian traditions. Looking to all the various accounts, Boring lists the prominent imagery:
- the wilderness setting for the people of God en route from captivity to the promised land
- recalcitrant Israelites / disciples, who doubt that food can be provided in the wilderness (Ex. 16:2-3);
- God leads the people who are like sheep without a shepherd as the narrative calls to mind Ps 23 and its green grass;
- the giving of manna (Ex 16, Nb 11);
- Elisha’s miraculous provision of food (2 Kings 4:42-44) in which there are provisions left over;
- Jesus, accused of being a glutton (Mt 11:19) provided table fellowship for all;
- Jesus’ Eucharistic last meal with his disciples in which he takes on the role of the head of the new family, providing food and pronouncing the blessing; and
- the messianic banquet as part of the gathering of all creation seen in the bread and sea creatures.
The imagery points across the full breadth of salvation history, pointing to Jesus’ fulfillment as the “great prophet like Moses” and the Exodus experience, keying upon the miraculous feeding by Elisha in 2 Kings, pointing forward to the Last Supper and institution of the Eucharist, as well as indicating the breaking in of the Kingdom of Heaven in the typology of the great banquet with so much food that everyone had their fill and there are still foods leftover.
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. (Isaiah 25:6)
Image credit: James J. Tissot, ‘Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes’ (1886-94), Brooklyn Museum, NYC | PD-US
Divine and Human Mercy
From a Sermon by Saint Caesarius of Arles, bishop
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. My brothers and sisters, sweet is the thought of mercy, but even more so is mercy itself. It is what all men hope for, but unfortunately, not what all men deserve. For while all men wish to receive it, only a few are willing to give it.
How can a man ask for himself what he refuses to give to another? If he expects to receive any mercy in heaven, he should give mercy on earth. Do we all desire to receive mercy? Let us make mercy our patroness now, and she will free us in the world to come. Yes, there is mercy in heaven, but the road to it is paved by our merciful acts on earth. As Scripture says: Lord, your mercy is in heaven.
There is, therefore, an earthly as well as heavenly mercy, that is to say, a human and a divine mercy. Human mercy has compassion on the miseries of the poor. Divine mercy grants forgiveness of sins. Whatever human mercy bestows here on earth, divine mercy will return to us in our homeland. In this life God feels cold and hunger in all who are stricken with poverty; for, remember, he once said: What you have done to the least of my brothers you have done to me. Yes, God who sees fit to give his mercy in heaven wishes it to be a reality here on earth.
What kind of people are we? When God gives, we wish to receive, but when he begs, we refuse to give. Remember, it was Christ who said: I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. When the poor are starving, Christ too hungers. Do not neglect to improve the unhappy conditions of the poor, if you wish to ensure that your own sins be forgiven you. Christ hungers now, my brethren; it is he who deigns to hunger and thirst in the persons of the poor. And what he will return in heaven tomorrow is what he receives here on earth today.
What do you wish for, what do you pray for, my dear brothers and sisters, when you come to church? Is it mercy? How can it be anything else? Show mercy, then, while you are on earth, and mercy will be shown to you in heaven. A poor person asks you for something; you ask God for something. He begs for a morsel of food; you beg for eternal life. Give to the beggar so that you may merit to receive from Christ. For he it is who says: Give and it will be given to you. It baffles me that you have the impudence to ask for what you do not want to give. Give when you come to church. Give to the poor. Give them whatever your resources will allow.
Sermon 25,1: CCL 103, 111-112
From parables to miracles
This coming Sunday is the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. From the several weeks of parables we have heard over the previous several Sundays, the Gospel of Matthew returns to the narrative in which Jesus’ miracles increasingly become the source of controversies. R.T. France outlines this section as follows noting the varying response to Jesus’ teaching and miracles (13:54–16:20)
- Nazareth rejects Jesus (13:54–58) – questioning the source of his wisdom and deeds of power – and taking offense at him. “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.”
- Herod Antipas thinks Jesus is John the Baptist revived (14:1–12)
- Jesus feeds a large crowd (14:13–21) – our gospel reading this Sunday
- Jesus walks on the water (14:22–33)
- The popularity of Jesus as a healer (14:34–36)
- Dispute with Pharisees and scribes over defilement (15:1–20)
- A Gentile woman’s faith (15:21–28)
- Healing ministry among the Gentiles (15:29–31)
- Second feeding of a crowd (15:32–39)
- Jesus’ repudiation of Pharisees and Sadducees (16:1–12)
- Jesus is the Messiah (16:13–20)
Stories of the rejection of Jesus will be interrupted by three miracle stories, the first of which is the miraculous feeding of the 5,000. The narrative is introduced by Jesus’ suspicion concerning Herod’s interest in him causing him to depart to a deserted place, but the crowds follow. After curing some of the sick, Jesus provides enough food for five thousand men, plus women and children (vv. 15–21). There is a pattern to Matthew’s narrative in which miracle and confrontation ebb and flow – and in the midst are accounts of faith and disbelief. The narrative plays out the parables that preceded it: the net is indeed cast wide and all kinds of fish, wheat, weeds, and more are caught in the net of the Kingdom.
The parables that are especially notable in Matthew 13 (a day of parables) are focused and revolve around the phrase, “the kingdom of heaven is like…”, making clear it is in contrast to the kingdom of this world. That contrast between the two kingdoms continues and this time using the setting of the banquet. In the passage immediately preceding our gospel, King Herod presides over a banquet whose excess results in the death of John the Baptist. Herein Jesus presides over a banquet, not in a palace but in the wilderness, not among the powerful but rather the weak and poor, and results in life.
Image credit: James J. Tissot, ‘Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes’ (1886-94), Brooklyn Museum, NYC | PD-US
The Kingdom of Heaven among the Weeds
The kingdom of heaven is like…. There are lots of parables that begin with those words. Maybe we can do a thought experiment – a kind of fill-in-the-blank thing. Keep your answers silent within your own thoughts. And since no one is listening, you can be completely honest with your answer. For you…. the kingdom of heaven is like……. What? (No hurry, I’ll wait….) Continue reading
Understanding Parables
This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The opening description in 13:3 and the concluding transitional comment at 13:53 indicate that Matthew considers everything in between to be parables, including v. 52. Thus, although commentators have liked to find exactly seven parables in the chapter, Matthew apparently considered the concluding picture of the scribe to be a parable as well, a parabolic concluding picture on the use of parables.
The picture comes as an elaboration of the disciples’ affirmative response to Jesus’ question. They claim to understand. These words added to Mark are to make clear that, for Matthew, understanding is not an optional element of discipleship.
Matthew understood that parables were constructed from a “treasure” of conventional metaphors, in which, for example, “king” or “father” customarily point to God, “harvest” or “accounting” to eschatological judgment, and such.’“ Both Jesus and Christian scribal teachers did this. The uniqueness of Jesus does not consist in the invention of radically new images, but in the surprising use to which they put the repertoire of familiar images. Vocabulary and style, as well as theology, indicate that
Matthew affirms both the old and the new (see 9:17). Like a skilled scribe, he brings out of his storehouse the treasures of his Jewish past (Scripture, stock of traditional imagery, perspectives, and concerns), as well as older Christian tradition (Mark). But he does not merely repeat the past. Alongside the old but introduces the new, presenting the old in a new light. Reclaiming it for the new situation in which he finds himself, seeing all things in the light of the Christ event and the coming of the kingdom. Even the unexpected order of “new and old” may be important: it is the new that provides the key to the appropriateness of the old, not vice versa.
Image credit: The Pearl of Great Price, by Domenico Fetti, 17th century |Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank | Public Domain
Sacred Things, Sacred Hearts
There is one verse in today’s first reading that almost takes us by surprise. The prophet Jeremiah says: “They will in those days no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the LORD!’ They will no longer think of it, or remember it, or miss it, or make another.” (Jer 3:16) If you were an Israelite hearing those words for the first time, they would have been shocking.
The Ark of the Covenant was the holiest object in Israel. It held the tablets of the Law given to Moses. It was the sign of God’s covenant and the symbol of his presence among his people. It accompanied Israel through the wilderness, stood in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, and reminded the people that God dwelt in their midst. So why would Jeremiah say that one day people would no longer even speak about it? Certainly not because the Ark was unimportant. It was profoundly important.
But it was never the destination. It was always a sign pointing to something greater.
Jeremiah goes on to say: “At that time they shall call Jerusalem the LORD’s throne.” Notice the movement. God’s presence is no longer focused on a single sacred object. It begins to embrace an entire people. That promise prepares us for the Gospel where Jesus tells the parable of the sower and explains that the seed is the word of God. The question is no longer, “Where is the Ark?” but, “Where will the Word take root?”
Some hearts are like the path. The Word never enters. Some are rocky. The Word begins to grow but has no roots. Some are crowded with thorns. The cares of life choke it. But some hearts are good soil. There the Word takes root where it grows and bears fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.
The Ark represented God’s presence. Jesus wants God’s presence to dwell in the human heart. The New Covenant is not centered on an object but on lives transformed by the living Word. That is why Jeremiah can say there will be no need to make another Ark. The sign points to a greater reality which when it arrives, the sign has fulfilled its purpose.
Most of us have things that help us draw close to God: a favorite Bible with worn pages, a rosary that has accompanied us through years of prayer, a crucifix hanging in our home, a church where we have celebrated baptisms, weddings, funerals, and countless Masses. These are precious gifts. They shape our memory and nourish our faith. The Church treasures sacred objects because they point us toward the sacred mysteries they represent.
But Jeremiah gently reminds us that even the holiest objects are never the goal. Their purpose is to lead us into a living relationship with God. Jesus tells us where that relationship finally takes root: not in wood overlaid with gold, not in stone buildings, not even in beautiful religious objects but in the human heart.
The true question is not whether we possess holy things. The true question is whether God’s Word has found good soil within us. Has it made us more patient? More forgiving? More generous? More faithful? More like Christ? Because in the end, the most sacred place on earth is not simply a beautiful church or a treasured religious object. The most sacred place on earth is a heart where Christ is welcomed, cherished, and allowed to bear fruit.
Today, as we receive the Lord in the Eucharist, let us ask for the grace to become that good soil, to allow his Word to sink deeply into our lives, so that God’s presence may not only dwell among us, but truly dwell within us.
Image credit: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection | Alexander Ivanon | Russian Museum | PD-US
The Net Cast Widely
This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.” The net pictured here is a large dragnet, usually about six feet deep and up to several hundred feet wide, positioned in the lake by boats and requiring several men to operate (hence the plurals of v. 48). The picture is realistic, portraying an ordinary event with no surprising twists: The net brings in “every kind” of both good and bad fish, which are then sorted, the good being kept and the bad thrown out.
Whatever the original meaning of the parable, Matthew’s own ecclesiastical application already appears in the telling of the parable itself. The bad fish are called “bad” (rotten, sapra). Clearly the fish are fresh-caught so “rotten” seems inappropriate. The same word was used four times previously in Matthew’s description of bad “fruit” (works) presented by Christians. There it is easier to assess.
It is likely that “bad” refers to fish that lack the fins and scales noted in Leviticus 11:9-12. If the fish caught were eels or the Galilee catfish (eel-like in appearance), they would be forbidden fish. Of course, the fish could be too small or simply considered poor in taste. Hence the need for the sorting.
This parable then, like that of the “Wheat and Weeds.,” is one of judgment. It echoes not only the separation and destruction of the wicked, but also the motif of a mixture of good and bad until the time of final separation. The dragnet is inevitably indiscriminate in what it catches. As long as the fish remain in the lake, and indeed in the net, they remain undifferentiated. It is only when they come up for final scrutiny that some will be preserved and others destroyed
The Parable of the Net Explained
This interpretation is very like that of the parable of the weeds, vv. 36-43. Like the preceding interpretation, it concentrates entirely on the fate of the wicked, whose destiny is to be cast into the furnace of fire, with weeping and gnashing of teeth—all typical Matthean language for eschatological judgment, but not appropriate to fish, which are buried or thrown back into the water, not burned. The interpretation, allegorical as it is, does not represent the net to be the church, the fishers to be evangelists, etc. Matthew seems intentionally to forego the obvious opportunity to relate the parable to the story of the call of the fishers in 4:18-22. The parable is not a picture of evangelism, “fishing for people,” but a parable of final sorting and separation. [Boring, 1994, 314]
Image credit: The Pearl of Great Price, by Domenico Fetti, 17th century | Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank | Public Domain
Forgotten Love
There is something deeply moving in the way God speaks at the beginning of today’s first reading: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the desert.” God remembers the beginning. He remembers when Israel trusted him, when the relationship was fresh, when the people followed him into the wilderness with little more than his promise to sustain them.
The image is almost like that of a bridegroom remembering the first love of his bride. And then comes one of the saddest questions in all of Scripture: “What fault did your ancestors find in me that they withdrew from me?” God is not really asking; He knows what happened. This is a lament, the sorrowful question of someone whose love has been taken for granted.
God had brought his people out of slavery. He had led them through the desert. He had given them a fertile land. Yet once they entered that land and began to prosper.. And they began to forget. They had the priestly rituals, the sacrifices, the Law and even the great symbols of God’s presence: the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant. But somewhere along the way, they stopped looking for God – or worse yet just assumed He would be there… there when needed. In the between times….meh.
In the Gospel, the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks to the crowds in parables. Jesus responds by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “They look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.” The problem is not that God has stopped speaking. The problem is that hearts are paying attention. The people have stopped listening.
Today was not the first time you’ve heard these readings. Were you paying attention to more than the words or were you waiting for the homily to tell you what it all means? At that point you’re listening to the homilist. A heart that is open hears the voice of God within the story, the reading and within the homily. An inattentive heart grows dull and hears only words.
Jeremiah describes how that dullness begins. It begins when people abandon “the source of living waters” and dig for themselves “broken cisterns that hold no water.” A cistern was meant to collect and preserve water. But a cracked cistern slowly loses everything placed within it. That is Jeremiah’s picture of all the things we expect to satisfy us apart from God.
Success can become a broken cistern. Possessions can become a broken cistern. Approval, comfort, entertainment, control, even constant busyness can become broken cisterns. They may hold our attention for a time, but they cannot satisfy the deepest thirst of the human heart. And the tragedy is that the more we depend upon those substitutes, the less able we become to recognize the living water when it is offered to us.
This can happen even in the spiritual life. We may still come to Mass, still say familiar prayers, receive the Sacraments and more. Yet familiarity can slowly replace attentiveness. We may know when to stand, sit, and kneel, but stop expecting God to speak. We may hear the readings, but no longer ask, “Lord, what are you saying to me today?” We may receive the Eucharist, but forget the wonder that the Lord himself has drawn near. The greatest danger is not always that we abandon the faith dramatically.Sometimes it is that we remain outwardly close while inwardly losing our sense of wonder.
But today’s readings also contain hope.
God begins by saying: “I remember.” Israel forgets, but God remembers. The people wander, but God remembers the covenant. Their love grows cold, but God remembers their first love and calls them back. That is how God deals with us as well.
He does not remember our failures in order to hold them against us. He remembers the person we were created to become. He remembers every sincere beginning, every act of trust, every moment when we allowed him to lead us. And he continues to invite us back. Not merely back to religious routine. Back to relationship, to attentiveness, to the living water.
Today, perhaps our prayer can be very simple:
- “Lord, restore in me a listening heart.”
- Help me not merely to hear your Word, but to receive it.
- Help me not merely to look, but to see.
- Help me not merely to practice the faith, but to love you again with freshness, gratitude, and wonder.
For the tragedy of forgotten love is not that God stops loving us. It is that we forget how deeply we have always been loved.
Image credit: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection | Alexander Ivanon | Russian Museum | PD-US
friarmusings 