Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
The readings this week speak of lifelong fidelity to shared relationships rooted in God. Today’s readings also give us an opportunity to examine and speak about relationships—relationships of all kinds. There is an ideal to strive for in our relationships. We turn to Mark to find it. Christ holds up the importance of faithfulness in relationships. He says, simply, that we are called to be faithful and in our closest relationships we are to be totally faithful. Christ gives us an ideal. It is about the "completeness" of human relationships.
We must uphold the ideal, because it is God’s vision, God’s dream; and it is also the dream with which all married couples begin. It is an ideal in which they may find inspiration and strength at the exciting moments of married life, but also in the everyday grayness, and even in the trials and darkness from which no married life is free. We must make room for God’s dream and married people’s deepest desire, but also for human failure.
We must also be realistic and acknowledge the fact that the ideal cannot always be realized. There are marriages that, however enthusiastically and generously begun, turn sour. When a marriage breaks down, it is safe to say that in most instances it is preceded and followed by a great amount of suffering, pain, and anguish. In those instances, we as a Christian community must make sure not to add to the pain by ostracizing the people whose marriage has broken down. Rather we must show ourselves to be ministers of healing, channels of peace to hurting people. That’s why we have a church and pastoral people to help sort out the messes that we sometimes get ourselves into.
Dear friends, you and I know that life is messy. The joy is that God is right there in the mess of things. Of course we would like it if everything in this world, especially our relationships were orderly, predictable, everything in its place. But that’s not the way things are. The mess-age is in the mess. Saint John Chrysostom said…to support one another in the things of Spirit is the true sign of goodwill . . . of loving kinship and sincere affection.
Make your mess your message
Father William
Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In the Gospel today, we are privy to a conversation between Jesus and the disciples who are upset that Jesus allows a person outside his inner circle to drive out demons in his name. Religious traditions have a funny habit of condemning all other traditions. What is that about? What causes that? What is it that leads us to fear of the other? THERE IS A TEMPTATION in every religion and even within religions to elitism and exclusivity. When we observe the world in which we live we see and hear the dangerous words of exclusion. Perhaps we need to really listen a new to Jesus who taught extraordinary tolerance and acceptance of everyone of good will. We embrace our faith, but not to the rejection of Jews, Muslims, other Christians, or even nonbelievers. We’re all in this together.
Today, Jesus enunciates a principle for his disciples that we should take note of: "Anyone who is not against us is for us." God can and does use anyone to do his work. Neither I, nor you or any religion or the Church has a monopoly on God's work or on God's truth or on God's love or on God's power to heal and reconcile. The work of the Kingdom is not confined only to the baptized, although it is certainly our special work.
In the Sunday readings this month the church has been sampling the Letter of James on the importance not only of acting on one’s faith but also of acting rightly. The gospels have followed this same pattern: Believe in Jesus but make sure that your discipleship doesn’t involve ambition (last week) and envy and causing scandal (this week). May the God of all, who alone is perfect and all-knowing, gift us with a sense of genuine inclusiveness? May we be more open to seeing the good in people and situations rather than any apparent limitations? May we be willing to confront our own short-comings honestly and work collaboratively with others to build the kingdom of God here on earth, one that will mirror God's own limitless perspective
God loves difference in unity,
Father William
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
It’s amazing to think that the disciples were arguing about which of them was the greatest just after Jesus had told them—for the second time—of his Passion to come. The very thing Christ was talking about, the way of lowliness and submission, was the exact opposite of their game of spiritual one-upmanship. To be “first” is to be last—to eliminate, really, the possibility of being first at all. How does this lesson apply to our life?
The Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said that what Jesus wants is followers, not admirers. He’s right. To admire Jesus without trying to change our lives does nothing for Jesus or for us. Yet how exactly does one follow Jesus? Classically we have said that we do this by trying to imitate him. But what is that?
Perhaps one of the better answers to that question is given by Saint John of the Cross, the great Spanish mystic. In his view, we imitate Jesus when we try to imitate his motivation, when we try to do things for the same reason he did. For him, that is how one “puts on Christ.” We enter real discipleship when, like Jesus, we have as our motivation the desire to draw all things into one—into one unity of heart, one family of love. John of the Cross then offers some advice regarding how this can be done. We should begin, he says, by reading scripture and meditating on the life of Jesus. Then we should pray to Christ and ask him to instill in us his desire, longing, and motivation. In essence, we should pray to Jesus and ask him to make us feel the way he felt while he was on earth.
“Will you let me be your servant? Let me be as Christ to you.” Pope Francis, who serves the poor in his every word and deed, calls us to share in this journey. How can I surrender my need for recognition? How can we serve the needs of others? Albert Schweitzer wrote: there is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.
For the greater Glory of God
Father William