Volume Two: Musings on Sunday Scriptures Year C
Sermons
I Wish I Had Preached
or
Better Still
"Teached"
Musings on the Sunday Scriptures
Year C
by
Catherine Berry Stidsen
Introduction
This is the second volume of these musings. I began the first in 1993, Year B of the liturgical cycle. It is my hope to spend the next year thinking and writing about Year A. That will coincide with winding done my second career, that of a secondary school teacher, and moving into my third, a bed and breakfast hostess (spiritual variety), and an assorted number of other interests which I hope to pursue.
If you read the first volume you know that these musings began with considerable pique over what I was hearing from Roman Catholic pulpits. I used to come home, write what I thought ought to have been said, and then trash it. One Pentecost Sunday, a special friend, Paul Bolland, left church in as much of a pique as I usually did and said to me, "What should that have been about?" When I explained my understanding of Pentecost, he urged me to write these musings and not trash them, and for two years that is what I have done. He and his dear friend and mine, Peter Rogers, have continued to read them and to enter into the kind of dialogue with me that keeps me thinking about not only how I write, but how I live.
My childhood friend, Leonard W. Broughan, O.Carm., continues to be of help to me with scriptural insights. My college friend, Elizabeth Hughes Rufo helps me with her love and laughter. The special friend of my adulthood, Archbishop Leobard D'Souza of Nagpur, India, constantly encourages me to "keep batting" which anyone who knows cricket will understand. And in all of this the memory of my husband, Bent Stidsen, his love for me and delight in me, inspires me as does nothing or no one else. To love and be loved by him was literally Divine.
This year has been special. Is there any that isn't? I inaugurated the Nagpur Learning Centre in December. I introduced cooperative learning in my classes in January and completed my certification in Reality Therapy in July. I am becoming increasingly active in the economic development of the region in which I live. I have learned to surf the Internet and I am astounded at the possibilities for learning that if offers. I have read everything that Scott Peck has written except for his very latest book. And I am now hooked on Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter, Sharyn McCrumb, and Sara Maitland. I have also helped to establish a small support group of women in the high school where I teach and it is one of the better things that I have done with my life. We listen, learn, love, laugh, and live together. Oh, how we laugh, and cry. This past September I turned "60 and Sensational" as a button from a Philadelphia friend says. It was not something I had looked forward to, but friends and family made it so special an event that I am now prepared to recommend it to anyone.
As of today my garage roof is leaking, and there are holes in three places in the eavestroughs. My car needs servicing. Someone has trashed my mailbox. The mice have eaten the wires in my telephone system and my printer for my computer has given up the ghost - almost. The world seems to have vetoed the production of chocolate brown, avocado, and golden rod towels, all of which I need for my bed and breakfast project. I am probably going to have $3,500 a year less in pension funds than I anticipated. I have gained fifteen pounds this past year. Other than that things are fine. Other people should have my problems.
Just one final word for those of you who have not read volume one. The dreadful language that is in the title of the this book is deliberate. If I gave homilies, I would want to enter into dialogue with those hearing them. That was what Yeshua did and that is what every good teacher does. The talking at people which is the model for contemporary preaching, with few exceptions, is unsound especially in North America where we have the best educated Catholic Christian laity in the history of humanity. Until laity and clergy in this communion learn with and from each other, mutually training and equipping each other, we are all losers. And until as a communion we get over our present institutional preoccupation with ourselves, and learn from and with all others, do we have a chance of making any real difference in our time and our place as Yeshua did in his?
Catherine Berry Stidsen
Oakwood, Cayuga, Ontario
November 26, 1995
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 13: 14, 43-52
Revelation 7: 9, 14-17
John 10: 27-30
I find myself wondering where the liturgists were when they made today Vocation Sunday. The rest of the world is commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of VE Day. I was moving toward my tenth birthday when this victory occurred. It was just a few months earlier that my father who would have been about thirty-nine then got called in for his potential drafting into the armed forces of the U.S. and was declared unfit for service because of his bad eyes and chest. I still remember how sad he seemed to me to look that day as if he were missing out on a chance to make history. I was just happy that he wasn't going to have to go to war and risk getting killed.
I have been watching the faces of the men who are about ten years younger than my father would have been had he still been alive. He would have been 89 this Christmas Day. The photographs of them and the television clips of them are special. They may be one of the best anti-ageism commercials we will ever have. I have been thinking of how Britain's Queen Mother must feel as she inaugurated the celebrations in Hyde Park this weekend. I remember as a child seeing photographs of her and her husband and the little princesses when they determined to stay in London during the blitz, refusing to leave England, unlike the Dutch royal family which came to Canada to wait out their country's liberation.
Maybe this is a suitable Sunday after all to be praying for vocations, vocations to fidelity, to loyalty, to believing in something or someone so much that one is willing to die for it, and therefore one has something or someone to live for. Those kinds of vocations are worthy of prayer.
I should make at least one comment on today's gospel. When I was growing up Catholic in Philadelphia I learned that statements like "The Father and I are one," were clear proofs of Yeshua's divinity. I didn't know then, of course, that he might never have said these words at all but that a convinced evangelist put them into his mouth. It was much later in my life that I learned that this unity was a unity "of will" in the interpretation of many Protestant scripture scholars. It was when I was writing my doctoral dissertation in 1990-93 that I learned that William Ernest Hocking about whom I wrote said that the divinity of Yeshua consisted of the spiritual union of his will with that of his God's. Hocking went on to say that this kind of union is possible for any of us and that was precisely the message of Yeshua, that this kind of unity was not only possible, but it was what God wanted of us and was conspiring to effect for us. He got as close to being excommunicated for this position as a Protestant can! But doesn't this hold out a marvellous possibility?
What if the vocation of every one of us is to be so spiritually united to God that we become the human face of God for each other? Could any of us want any more? Could we hope for any more? And at this moment of our human history, dare we pray for anything less?
Cayuga, Ontario, May 7, 1995
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 14: 21-27
Revelation 21: 1-5
John 13: 1, 31-35
"Just as I have loved you, you should love one another." How did Yeshua love? I thought of that yesterday during the homily of a wedding mass which I attended. The homily was twenty-five minutes long and all about the sacrifices that marriage requires. There was nothing about the gifts it offers to those who make this commitment to be each other's best friend for life. This homily was bad enough but there was a "catechesis" before Holy Communion that left me raging.
We were all told to sit down. Then it was explained that Eucharist is for Catholics only, not for Protestants, "not because we think that we are any better than the rest of you but because that is the way it is." (I will not attempt to duplicate the heavily Italian-accented English in which this information was delivered.) Then for another ten minutes we were treated to why this is the case especially as it relates to the Third Commandment. Anyone who is not in Church every Sunday is not entitled to communicate. "I could go through the list of all the rest of the commandments but I will only speak of this one. This law of the Church says that you may not receive Communion if you are not at mass every Sunday. But don't worry. You can go to confession this afternoon and go to Communion tomorrow." I am paraphrasing.
Law of the Church? Strange, I thought the Commandments were laws of God and that the third is to keep holy the Sabbath, sundown Friday to sundown Saturday as observed by our Jewish brothers and sisters. It is a reminder to make time for the intensification of the perpetual Presence of God in one's life and in the life of one's religious community. It is a bit like the difference between having one's best friend in mind and being in the physical presence of that dear person.
And then some amazing things happened! An Anglican approached the altar. I found myself rejoicing that she sees herself as Catholic albeit not of the Roman variety. I wanted to say "Gotcha, Father!" I had decided not to receive Communion as soon as he began his diatribe. Out of a congregation of almost 150 persons, about thirty approached the altar for communion. I suddenly realized that there was a boycott going on, and indeed there was. Here was the sensus fidelium at work in a special way. Would this geek of a priest have ears to hear and eyes to see what was happening?
The church was filled with many former students of mine, as the bride had been, and some with their husbands. An amazing number of them came to me afterwards and said something like, "Miss, I was so sorry for you during those talks of that priest. We are at mass every Sunday but I said to my husband, 'Don't you dare move! Stay put! We are not going up there.'" I found myself thinking that Yeshua would have been part of this boycott, his loving would have been with us and not with the religious legalists.
Later I learned that this priest -- a youngish man -- does this at every wedding and funeral in his parish. How my heart goes out to the bereaved! We were involved in a joyous celebration. What must it be like to be grieving and listen to this catechesis of the unwashed and the unwanted? We have people of all religious traditions and none at our sacraments these days. Isn't there some need for inclusivity at these moments, some reminder of what all the great religions and ideologies want at their core, integral human development? Aren't these moments to rejoice in what we have in common rather than repeat what separates us? But perhaps that is too much to ask of a priest whose training does not include any study of the religions of their world neighbours as this man's studies would not have. I know the seminary from which he comes and I feel even sadder about its inadequate training now that I have in the past.
Another thing happened this week that I want to reflect on. There was a message from India on my answering machine. It told me of the death by suicide of a marvellous woman who was the sacristan at the National Biblical, Liturgical, and Catechetical Centre in Bangalore. I have written of my experiences there in previous musings. She was a Hindu woman who felt called to a contemplative vocation. Since there is little if nothing in her own religious tradition that encourages women to this way of life unless they are widows, she came to NBCLC to work there. Apart from caring for the chapel at the Centre, which she did beautifully, leading in the singing, and the general helping out that anyone on staff there does, she had time to be the contemplative she so desired. But her family did not accept her decision. There was no question of converting to Catholicism here. I spent some time in this woman's company and her insights and experiences about all paths to God leading to One God were special. She planned to be faithful to her tradition. Her family felt she was dishonouring them.
Corporate suicide? Individual suicide? Is either of these circumstances loving others as Yeshua loved them? Surely, Yeshua' s loving involves life-giving, not death-dealing of any sort.
Cayuga, Ontario, May 14, 1995
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 15: 1-2, 22-29
Revelation 21: 10-14, 22-23
John 4: 23-29
About fifteen years ago I read everything pneumatological that I could get my hands on. That means that I tried to understand this idea of the Holy Spirit. I read especially the works of J. Massingberd Ford, a woman who is reportedly the international scholar on the topic. Her first name is Josephine. She has also been involved in the charismatic renewal movement at Notre Dame University in the United States. I don't know where she is or even if she is now but I tried to understand her thinking, I really did, and I must admit that I did not succeed. But something in our papers this week hit me like a ton of bricks. If this is not the Sustaining Being of God, I don't know what it is.
Kristen French is one of the two young women for whose rapes and heinous deaths Paul Bernardo is on trial. Kristen was a Catholic high school student who was kidnapped by Bernardo and his wife at knife point. The pair made videotapes of their crimes, an even more hideous outrage and the papers report that in one of them Kristen refused to cooperate with her captors in the sexual orgies they had planned for her. She said, "There are some things worth dying for."
In all of their grieving how much Kristen's parents and her teachers must be rejoicing over this statement. Kristen got it. If this is not the message of Yeshua and the Spirit alive among those who live his Way today, I don't know what is. I am praying for her eternal life. And I know that she continues to work for ours. That kind of loving and conviction simply cannot die with her body. And somehow, someway, what she leaves to us, and in particular to her peers, is Spirit.
Cayuga, Ontario, May 21, 1995
Ascension of the Lord
Acts 1: 1-11
Hebrews 9: 24-28, 10: 19-23
Luke 24: 46-53
I am finding it really difficult today to reflect on the Ascension of Yeshua to God with pictures of Canadian and other peacekeepers in Bosnia chained to weapons depots so that UN forces do no more bombing of them. I was planning to muse about the difference between the ending of Luke's gospel where the apostles are in the Jewish temple praising God, and the beginning of his Acts when he tells the same story but has two figures in white tell the apostles and disciples to get off their duffs and get going. But it seems so irrelevant to me at the moment.
I think the situation is bringing home to me the "hostage taking" situations with which I live daily. I think of the lack of civility on the part of so many of my students, especially the males, and the scorn they heap on others who will not take those same stances. I think of the smart one-liners which have become de rigeur for being cool, and I wish the students who are making an art of using them would know what they tell me about their fear of any kind of intimacy, spiritual, intellectual, and probably physical, although many of them talk about their sexual exploits in a way that leaves me wondering how they have any energy left to get to school on a Monday after one of these supposed orgiastic weekends.
The violence overwhelms me at times. Two boys get off a bus, one an Hispanic, one a white supremacist, and they jostle each other and within seconds they are fighting and the staff rush to separate them. I watch the male chauvinism and I fear I have the future Marc Lepines in front of me, who, if these uppity women keep doing what they are doing, will have to be eradicated to keep male supremacy where it belongs. How can this have happened? How can all the peace education be having this effect? Where is God, Creating, Re-Deeming, Sustaining, in all of this? I know that the Bosnias of the world start here and I feel so helpless to stop it because peace just isn't perceived as "fun" and violence is. And above all, the bulk of my students must have fun, or so they tell me.
I worry for the young people who are not like this. Now and again in my classes, some of the young women who are living out Christian values and who are committed to civility, speak out for what they believe in. So do some of the gentler young men. The jocks laugh them to scorn. One day they will have to make this world happen, these gentle, loving persons, and as hard as I find things at times, I think their lot will be even more difficult.
What can I do? I teach civility and I insist on it in my classes. Increasingly, my classes are becoming monastery-like places of reflection, an alternative to the violence of the culture. But it is taking its toll. And I am in one of the best schools in Ontario. God help us. God help me.
Cayuga, Ontario, May 28, 1995
Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2: 1-11
Romans 8: 8-17
John 14: 15-16, 23-26
Richard Berryman, a religion writer for the Hamilton Spectator, says that the Jewish feast of Shavout and the Christian Pentecost on which it is based are both reminders of "common-unity" or community. And somewhere or other in his books, M. Scott Peck, the Christian psychologist, writes that his experiences of community in and through his community building workshops keep him from despairing of humanity, no matter how bad things get for him. "Common-unity" -- what a beautiful way of putting it all! I am remembering today the most powerful experience of community I ever had until my marriage.
It was thirty years ago this summer and it was at Barat College of the Sacred Heart, in Chicago, Illinois, and it happened at a Retreat of the Christian Community. The retreats were sponsored by the Better World Movement founded by Fr. Ricardo Lombardi, S.J. For eight days to five months, people came together hoping to experience Christian community. We didn't seek community directly, much the same way that one cannot seek happiness directly and make it happen. We hoped that community, like happiness, would kind of fall through what it was that we were doing, and indeed it did. It changed my life forever.
I was in the habit of making an annual retreat for several years by the summer of 1965. I usually got a two to three week summer holiday and I spent eight days of it on retreat. I needed a time to stop doing and to be. In those days retreats were according to one's "state in life" so I usually made a retreat for single women. They were completely in silence and we were lectured at by a priest, usually from a religious order. I had made about five of these by the time I read of this new and different kind of retreat, open to men, women, laity, priests, religious, married and single persons. It was given by a team, it involved dialogue as well as silence, and it was based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I was in my Jesuit phase then. So I boarded a coach for Chicago, sat up overnight going and coming, and had a foretaste of heaven.
The retreat was in three phases. Three times each day we gathered to hear points made by at least two members of the five-member team. At the end of the points we sat in silence, good Quaker style, until and if someone was moved to add to the thinking with which we had been presented. Sometimes we were, sometimes we weren't. There was no conflict in these gatherings. There was a learning from and a learning with, simply, directly, refreshingly. We talked to each other at meals, something unheard of in the usual retreat method. We switched seats so that we would come to know as many people as possible. After each evening meal we enjoyed each other's company in a recreation hour. We laughed, sang, joked, played games. We were people savouring each other's company. We were encouraged to have particular friendships, again something usually forbidden in spiritual settings like this, until we came to understand that all friendships are particular. What else could real friendship be? We thought and talked and prayed about ourselves, our church, and our world. Three fifths of the way through the experience, we had a full day of silence and a time to make some decisions about what we were hearing would mean for our future. And that silence was total. We kept our bodies, our minds, and our spirits silent.
Something else happened on that retreat. There was a meeting to follow a few weeks after ours of persons interested in sponsoring these kinds of retreats in parish settings in the Chicago area. The response had not been great and when I learned that, having had some experience in public relations by then, I suggested that we organize a blitz of the area parishes in Chicago and the five surrounding dioceses. We did and we spent spare time printing new releases, and folding them into envelopes, stamping, etc., etc., etc., having enormous fun in the process. Not only did we have our hearts and heads involved, but our hands were, too.
Even as I write of this I am not doing justice to it. We accepted each other. We used each other intelligently. We resolved differences amicably. We laughed together, oh how much we laughed. We cried together. As sad as we were to go, we were on a spiritual high. We had learned that although this community was temporary, that was not unimportant. We left believing that we could duplicate it elsewhere. We left knowing that we had to duplicate this kind of community elsewhere if our church had a snowball's chance in hell of making itself relevant in this present moment. That was my Pentecost. I felt God in me, with me, and for me, in us, with us, and for us at that time in a way I never had before. It was not until my marriage four years later that I found that kind of relationship again, and that lasted for only eleven short years.
I have known that kind of joy a few times since, especially in personal relationships, one in particular, and now and again when a class I am working with really clicks. And like the Velveteen Rabbit, I know, that once you are real, and what else is being in community but being real, you can never be unreal again.
That retreat movement is no more. It exists in name but it is a shadow of its former self. Rome got nervous about sisters and priests being permitted to make retreats with each other, much less with lay persons. And imagine a bishop or two pouring their hearts out to lay persons and to priests and sisters in this kind of retreat setting. That wouldn't do. They might come across as persons instead of religious totems. Fr. Lombardi's successors caved in and returned to retreats to the separate, isolated compartments of our church life. The dynamic of mutually training and equipping each other, preparing ourselves for more effective dialogue with and service to our modern world, evaporated from the retreat scene. The dialogue and consociations with our world neighbours, the next anticipated step in the Better World Movement, never really got off the ground apart from an office at the United Nations which may or may not still function.
Even as I write this, I know that the Movement may have died, but not the movement, for it is of the Spirit. I am thinking of M. Scott Peck's Foundation for Community Encouragement, which workshop I will make sometime soon. As he writes of it, his and his participants' experience of community is real, albeit temporary. And common-unity is still happening, as Dr. Berryman writes, wherever in human history there is "truth, beauty, healing, and knowledge" because "...wherever they occur, within whatever culture they occur, all truth is of God." Come, Holy Spirit of Truth!
Cayuga, Ontario, June 4, 1995
Trinity Sunday
Proverbs 8: 22-31
Romans 5: 1-5
John 16: 12-15
I think I am still on some kind of nostalgia trip this week as I was last. I am remembering again the Movement for a Better World, this time the experience at its then headquarters outside of Rome in a village called Rocca di Papa. It was just across the lake from Castelgondolfo, the summer residence of the popes. It was here that I heard for the first time an explanation of the Trinity that made sense. I know that I have written of this elsewhere but it bears repeating. Again, the interpretation came from Fr. Ricardo Lombardi, S.J., friend and confidant of popes from Pius XII to Paul VI. I went to Rome in September of 1965 to take the training course to become a facilitator of the Better World Movement. It was being held in Rome so that we might learn from and with the specialists in things theological who were there for the last sessions of Vatican II. It was an exhilarating experience.
It was here that I heard Fr. Lombardi explain that all dogmas and doctrines are meant to be lived not just learned. And it was here that I heard for the first time, maybe it had been said at Barat about which I wrote last week, but I really heard in Rome that, "Our God is a Community of Persons, knowing and known, loving and loved, together generating a Life which, without each other, They would not have. Made in the image and likeness of God, we are to live communitarian lives, knowing and known, loving and loved, and in that way generate life which, without each other, we will not have." There is no unsolvable mystery here! This is ultimate simplicity, but not ease. Christianity is not a religion of costless comfort but of relationships.
It was two years later that I heard the same thing but in a slightly different way from Fr. Gerard Sloyan, the Christian scripture scholar at Temple University, with whom I studied. He suggested that the Trinity or Tri-Unity is three ways for God to be God. There is a Creating, a Re-deeming, and a Sustaining Face of God. Made in the image and likeness of God, we are called to be constantly creating, re-deeming, and sustaining, ourselves and all others in our time and place as Yeshua did in his. Again, there is no mystery, but tremendous invitation and purpose.
It was years later in my research for my dissertation that I encountered Dr. William Ernest Hocking's position that "the Spirit will lead you into all truth" was Jesus' conviction that Truth is wider and deeper than Jewish truth and his call to be open to all religious persons. At the same time I discovered that Hocking's friend and colleague Mahatma Gandhi defined his satyagraha movement as "the irresistible quest for Truth, which is the irresistible quest for God Who is All Truth." Where there is Truth and truth-seekers, there is God. I don't find much mystery there.
I want to add one thought to this trinitarian "thing" which is uniquely mine, perhaps. I wonder, at times, if this formula, if it is truly something to be lived, not just learned, is an invitation to be our individual best [the three subsistences of Trinity] and put that best at the disposition of all others [Oneness]. In our contemporary language is this perhaps an invitation to be and become our best possible selves, never harming anyone else or anything in that process, and putting that self at the intelligent and loving disposition of all others? Perhaps. And I don't think there's much mystery in that.
Cayuga, Ontario, June 11, 1995
Body and Blood of Christ
Genesis 14: 18-20
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26
Luke 9: 11-17
I never get to this feast without being six years old again. It is June of 1942 and my mother and aunts are searching about for a white dress for me to wear in my very first procession, apart from having been dragged along by the family when I was younger. Now I am in Grade One and I get to walk in the procession with my own class. My grandmother is weaving a garland of flowers for me for my hair. Her flowers are adorning all three of the altars where we will stop enroute in the procession around the hills of Manayunk. I was missing my two front teeth. And to this day I don't know where they got the dress because we were too poor to buy one. There is a picture of me in my photograph album looking so, so happy. Last year in these musings I wrote about planning my first trip to Europe around the Corpus Christi Procession in Cologne. But it is this Grade One adventure that always comes to mind today.
I am thinking of "all ate and were filled". I want to pray as many of my Jewish friends do, "From your lips to God's Ears." Not all eat and are filled at our present Eucharists. That will come as no surprise. We had the closing school mass this week on Tuesday and not all ate and were filled at it. I stood like a prison guard over my class to get a modicum of comportment that approached civility. It was a very sad experience that got even sadder. I need to tell you about it.
I have an alter ego in my school work. His name is Henry and he is a piñata rescued from a trash can outside the art room. Henry and I talk to each other -- "Dr. Stidsen talks to a doll" -- and Henry sometimes has messages for the class. "John, Henry thinks you would look much more handsome if you got that shirt buttoned, and tucked in." One student David, talks without stuttering when he gets a message form Henry. "Doctor, Henry thinks we really need our stretch break today." Anway, you get the idea.
Mid-way through this semester, Henry was knocked off his perch atop a filing cabinet "by accident" by a very angry student and was subsequently repaired by the Arts Council. We sent him get well cards, made by David, and had a party when he returned to class after his treatment. Henry has become for most of us the symbol of patience, goodness, concern, and in some ways, irrevocable love. Henry never gives up on us.
After the closing mass this past Tuesday, we returned to class to get our books and I stood in the hallway at the door taking stock of a colleague's class where a fight had broken out. He was late getting back to open his door. We had just come back from Eucharist, and I was to discover later that Henry had been knocked over, and jumped on by three of the boys in this class, all young men with whom I have had difficulties getting them to take responsibility for their lives. What hurt me more than anything else was that the balance of the class walked right past me while this was going on and said nothing. Subsequently, I got the information I need to get the culprits to the vice principals and have them deal with the vandalism. But the whole thing was almost more than I could bear. These three young men were killing me through Henry. It was so clear. Rather than accepting increasing responsibility for their behaviours, it was far easier to destroy the messenger of the good news that they need not think of themselves as victims for the rest of their lives.
The story has a happy ending, far happier than I could have imagined. When I got into my last period class, David said, "Doctor, wh-wh-where's, H-H-Henry?" I replied, "He's in critical condition, David, in my workroom. I've had a consultation with the art department and they want Henry buried. I can't bring myself to do that but I don't know what else to do." "D-d-d-doctor, we can't pull the plug on Henry. We just can't pull the plug on Henry." And then to my amazement and delight and profund joy, one of the girls who has given me so much grief in this class said, "Doctor Stidsen is hurting and Henry is hurting. We can't let this go on. We have to do something about it." She volunteered to go take a look at Henry. She and David went. Within minutes she was back, organizing the class into who would do what, planning the materials needs, and all of them agreeing to give up their next day of examination review to perform the surgery.
I wish that all of you who are reading this could have been in that classroom that day. There was not an uninvolved student. Everyone of them made some contribution. And the whole session began with David's saying, "Doctor, Henry doesn't have a pulse." At the finishing touch, when they decided that Henry's hat holding in his bashed skull, looked too much like a bishop's mitre, and decided to put a propellor on it, David said, "Doctor, Doctor, Henry's got a pulse." And then they decided to take Henry on a pilgrimage. They went to the vice principals' offices, to the art room, and finally to the classrooms of the would-be assassins. I was overwhelmed with joy. They got it! Nothing that I had done up until that time had brought this class together. And Henry and his near demise had. I knew that I was in the midst of something at least as miraculous as today's gospel.
To "eat" in Jewish and Christian scriptures is to know from first-hand experience, not vicariously. My students and myself "ate and were filled" that Wednesday afternoon. We knew what coming together to be of help to the innocent, the weak, the hurting could do not only for them but, perhaps more importantly, for us.
Cayuga, Ontario, June 18, 1995
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Zechariah 12: 10-11
Galatians 3: 26-29
Luke 9: 18-24
I found myself identifying with Yeshua one day at lunch recently, when a man for whom I have a great deal of respect said to me, "Your colleagues see you as an eccentric, but knowledgeable and as dependable as a rock." I hadn't even asked, "Who do people say that I am?" and got an answer to the question. My reputation with my students over the years has been "tough but fair" and I certainly can live with that. But I came home after that lunch and looked up the word "eccentric" to see if I really knew what it meant, still pondering how I could be both eccentric and dependable. I found the word "bizarre" among the definitions and immediately thought of my former student Mark who used to call me "the world's most bizarre teacher". Mark arrived at my door after his first year of university and said, "Miss, Miss, I have just got to talk to your students and tell them you are the best preparation for their future that is around this place." I welcomed him to do so and listened intently to him.
I don't think that what he had to say is germane to today's musing, but that he came and felt he had to say it was special. He has just completed his training as an animator and television expert. I look forward to what he will do to enhance the world of mass communication.
Yeshua's question is an interesting one. I have asked the same kind of question over the years in many different situations. I have asked it most often when something that I have done or am doing is being misinterpreted by others around me. I have asked it especially when I have been doing something I truly believe is good and others think that that is not the case. One of the scripture scholars commenting on today's gospel says that Yeshua had a sense of his own special mission and purpose and was hoping that others might see and understand that mission and purpose as well. Other scholars say that once again is it Luke putting the words into the mouths of Yeshua and Peter that he feels belong there. Who can ever know? I think it was Fr. Gerard Sloyan who once suggested that this is a reminder not that "all of life is suffering" as some Buddhists believe, but that "there is suffering in all of life" and that suffering comes in and through our unique mission, and sometimes, I would add, precisely because of it.
When I read this scripture I think of Eric Fromm's idea that each of us can live with any "how", providing we have a "why" for it. How elusive a "why" can sometimes be! Maybe, just maybe a very human Yeshua in this gospel is looking for an affirmation of his "why"?
Cayuga, Ontario, June 25, 1995
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 19:16, 19-21
Galatians 5:1, 13-18
Luke 9:51-61
G. B. Caird, writing of this gospel in the Pelican Gospel Commentaries says that the point of this story is "the most difficult choices in life are not between the good and the evil, but between the good and the best." I have been thinking about this as I wander around center-city Philadelphia during breaks from a conference that I am attending here. I've come to complete my certification process in reality therapy, control theory, and quality management. I must admit that I have been thinking more of those persons in this city who appear to have no place to lay their heads but grates and manhole covers, than of choosing between the good and the best. These homeless persons seem to me to be legion although I have been told that they have been rounded up and taken off to hostels during this Fourth of July holiday celebration, for which Philadelphia is becoming more and more famous.
A friend here, a former social worker, tells me that these people on the streets are the result of the closure of mental hospitals, and a change in benefits programs for the disabled of body, mind, and spirit. Another friend, a woman religious who is a social worker specializing in geriatrics, says that it is not quite that simple. Her hostel offers programs for health of body, mind, and spirit, for anyone who wants them, but especially for older women. "We can be there with them in the process, but we cannot do it for them," she has told me. "Some who come to us are not prepared to make the effort, are not prepared to make any effort. Many leave of their own accord finding that our very minimal requirements are more than they want." In the midst of all this I am learning that all behaviour is chosen and all behaviour is total, i.e., behaving involves doing, thinking, feeling, and our physiology. But more of all that at another time.
This is my first visit to Philadelphia, my native place, since the death of my father in November of 1993. I began these musings with that event. It is strange not to be in his apartment, the last place where he had to lay his head, a rented location after he had lost his home and financial security. But again, that's for another time. Today I went to St. John the Evangelist Church, a stone's throw from the hotel where the conference is. I saw a Franciscan style cross there above the monstrance. There is daily exposition of the Blessed Sacrament here. I saw on the bulletin board outside the church that Capuchin Fathers are now in charge of it. Not enough diocesan priests? Everyone of these Capuchins is gray. The congregation is aged. I did not tune in to the homily. I was remembering too much of what this church once was for me, a haven in the midst of the joys and the crises of my work life in this city. I was remembering above all else, Monsignor McKenna, who was my employer at the Holy Name Union, who would come to the Adelphia Hotel to rest after his lunch at our office at l0th and Chestnut, and then to St. John's for his daily hourly "being" with his God. "Kid, I just go there and lay it all out. I lay out what's going right and what isn't. Sometimes I get answers, and sometimes I don't. It helps, kid, to just lay it all out." I remember once thinking, "Monsignor has everywhere to lay his head. Any rectory in the world would take him in. Doesn't he have anybody human to lay out his heart to? Shouldn't he?" I was 18.
G. B. Caird, with whom I began this reflection comments that family life is what God has appointed for us in the normal course of events. It is good that we have homes of our own in which we can care for our spouses, our children and our parents, and show affection and welcome to them and to our friends and associates. But if we are true to the new concept of God that Yeshua gives us, viz., to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, even as God does, then we must be willing to sacrifice "security, duty, and affection" in that process. What a message!
Do the street people in Philadelphia understand this message in a way that I still don't? Did my father? Did Monsignor McKenna? It's a blistering, muggy, breath-taking day in Philadelphia, and it's not just my body that's feeling that way.
Philadelphia, Pa., July 2, 1995
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66: 10-14
Galatians 6: 14-18
Luke 10: 1-12, 17-20
Six hundred years before Yeshua, when the Buddha sent his disciples out to teach people how to end suffering, he insisted that they go on their own. It seems as if he were afraid that if they went in pairs they might depend too much on each other and be too little available to the people to whom they were to go. Yeshua's missionaries are sent in pairs and are told to "walk their talk". They go in pairs and to whole towns and villages. Some scholars say that this is to make clear that it is a corporate, not an individual response that Yeshua now wants. Maybe so.
This gospel has resulted in all kinds of bizarre things among fundamentalist Christians. Now and again one reads of the snake-handling variety who allow themselves to be bitten because they know that real faith will save them. If the person dies from snake bite, that's o.k. They just haven't believed strongly enough. I have written elsewhere of the symbolism involved with snakes so I won't repeat it. But this is where it helps so much to be a contextual reader of these scriptures, which Catholics are supposed to be, of course.
You will notice that there are some verses left out in today's gospel. In them Yeshua rails against the people of Capernaum! Why? This has been a place where we are told he was received. What has happened to change that? And verse 16 contains that famous, "He who hears you, hears me. He who rejects you, rejects me. And he who rejects me, rejects him who sent me." I call it famous because in my growing up Catholic in Philadelphia, the sisters who were my teachers used it as a proof text for the value we should give to papal teachings. And, of course, that carried down from the pope to bishops to pastors and to them who spoke in the name of God. To reject them was to reject God. Now that is an interesting variation on a theme, eh? Maybe, just maybe, the liturgists have left out those verses to invite us to understand all of this message differently?
But it is another blistering, muggy day and I am feeling brain dead. We need rain in this area and I cannot think of much else today. I am finding it hard to be a woman of faith in the midst of this drought.
Cayuga, Ontario, July 9, 1995
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deuteronomy 40: 10-13
Colossians 1: 15-20
Luke 10: 25-37
C.B. Caird, the Lucan scholar for whom I depend at times for a contextual understanding of those scriptures says that today's gospel is about "To whom can I be a neighbour?" His answer is so powerful that I want to share it with you. He says that the answer to that question is, "To anyone whose need constitutes a claim on my love." I find that almost more than I can deal with. Perhaps it is because I have been watching this week the women and children who have fled from supposedly safe cities in Bosnia. I listen to the accounts of some of the atrocities they have had to deal with. I see the smile of the mother nursing a baby a few hours old. I know that these people have a claim on my love. I am grateful that the UN peacekeepers are doing what they can.
What comes to me time and time again is that in this era the people of the world are my neighbours. All creatures of the world, great and small, are my neighbours. Mother Earth herself is my neighbour. They all have claims on my love. In the midst of this drought and unbelieveable heat -- the reports are that some three hundred persons in Chicago have died from it -- all of creation is my neighbour. It is exciting, it is humbling, it is exhausting to ponder this. And it is frightening to listen to a Toronto radio show telling parents what they can do with their bored children! Nothing that I have heard so far invites the parents to help their children take their world more seriously. Nothing that I have heard invites the children to understand that their parents do not exist to make their lives happen. They exist to make their lives happen. They exist to come to an understanding of neighbourliness if we are ever going to make world community a reality.
The brightest and best of educators know that we must educate for a global awareness. We are indeed becoming a global village and it is the media which are making that a reality. I have been following for years a project of the Ontario government about global education. I have been doing what I can personally through world religions courses, helping my students to understand the psychology, history, and literature of the world's peoples. I am deeply involved in helping to make the wisdom of the world available to the persons who will use the Nagpur Learning Centre which I have helped to construct in Central India, and am now helping to equip. But it never seems to be enough . Nothing ever seems to be enough.
I have a tremendous respect for Richard Berryman who writes in the Hamilton Spectator. He is an Anglican priest and pastor of a parish in Hamilton. This week he was interviewed by the paper about a career counselling project which he is beginning at the church. For a minimal fee, he and some associates will help people to find jobs again, and will help first-time entrants into the world of work. He and his people looked around and saw this need and are in the process of meeting it. Dr. Berryman is not putting down what goes on elsewhere by provincial and federal agencies but he mentions that too often we in the West have come to depend on these agencies to be involved in the neighbourliness that is the demand on all Christians. He suggests that we must move back to that situation where Christians did the job themselves and did not depend on others to meet the claims on our love. I think he's on to something.
Dr. Berryman says that he does not know of an Anglican parish in this area that is financially self-sustaining but he suggests that Christian communities dare not wait for that financial security before they reach out to others in love. I need to think about this. A year from now I will begin my retirement from secondary school teaching. I've been holding back on a few things that I think constitute legitimate claims on my love because of that. Dare I do that when I look at the faces of those Muslim women and children? Dare I do that after having surfed the Indian Internet and seen what we need to bring the wisdom of the ages to the people of Nagpur through this possibility? Dare I do that when I hear that three families around me have just lost their homes because of job losses?
There's much to think about this hot, hot day. "Who is my neighbour?" is probably more pertinent a question now than when the legalist asked it of Yeshua.
Cayuga, Ontario, July 16, 1995
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 18: 1-10
Colossians 1: 24-28
Luke 10: 38-42
When I was growing up Catholic in Philadelphia this was the gospel used to help us to understand that the contemplative vocation was "higher" than the active, and that the religious life was "higher" than the married, to say nothing of the single state. Who knew anything different then? Now I know that there are at least five versions of this gospel around. Some feminist scripture scholars go so far as to say that it is Luke's reproving of Martha who is turning out to be a far better disciple than many of the men who knew Yeshua. It's his version of saying, "Cool it, Martha. Let the men catch up with you." That's an interesting possibility. G. B. Caird suggests another possibility and frankly it sits better with my experience than anything else I have read on the topic.
Caird's interpretation reminds me of something that I read somewhere a long time ago and I can't remember where. That author said of one of his characters, "She lived her life for others and by the haunted look in their eyes you could tell exactly who those others were." It's what I call the "After All I've Done For You Syndrome". I think Caird is on to something. He puts it this way. He suggests that Martha is a stronger character and a far more mature disciple than her sister. She hasn't got a selfish bone in her body. Martha seems to have a lot of trouble with the kind of selfishness that seeks its own pleasure and it seems as though she fears that is what she is dealing with in terms of her sister. Caird says that this approach earns her a "gentle reproof" from Yeshua. He reminds Martha that "unselfishness, service, and even sacrifice can be spoiled by self-concern and self-pity, that good works which are not self-forgetful can become a misery to the doer and a tyranny to others."
Perhaps this is a good time to work to end tyranny wherever and whenever we find it, especially the tyranny in our own hearts that wants every bit of bread we cast upon the waters to come back to us unmoldy.
Cayuga, Ontario, July 23, 1995
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 18: 20-32
Colossians 2: 6-14
Luke 11: 1-13
One day my husband and I were walking down our laneway when we saw a tree that had grown in a circle to get the light it needed for itself. It must have been broken at some point but there was still life enough left in it. It formed a hard knot where the break had occurred and then grew to one side of a larger tree, into the light. When we saw it we stopped and my husband said, "Would that people had such persistence!" I always think of that tree when I hear today's gospel. A few years after Bent's death I took a photograph of that tree in the winter snow and made of it my Christmas card. I was aching for reasons to persist at that point in my life rather than throw in the towel and say, "What's the use?" I have a 20" x 30" enlargement of that photo in my kitchen. It is across from me each morning at breakfast and there have been mornings when I have prayed, "O God, give me the gift of persistence today. Help me to care."
I also think of another story connected with this gospel which I may have written of previously but it matters not. It bears repeating. My husband was the first sighted child born into his family. The first three children were born blind. The second was born and the third conceived by the time the parents realized the blindness of their first and second child. That they went on to have my husband, their fourth child, after discovering the blindness of the third boggles the mind. My husband was especially close to the sister who preceded him. He once said to me after I had met his family, "Inge [the third child] was so cute. She was tiny and sweet and she used to run after me everywhere. We had a special friendship." In those days the Danish government required that all blind children leave home at the age of three and go to a school for the blind for most of a given year. They continued this practice even during the war. Of all the children, Inge seemed to mind most leaving the family after the holidays and returning to school. One day Bent thought he had the answer.
He came home from Sunday School all excited because he had been told, at the age of seven, that if he asked Jesus for anything he would get it. He told Inge that and together they prayed the whole night before the day she was to return to school that she might get her sight back. They awakened the next morning to find Inge as blind as ever and Bent wondering why his Sunday School teacher had lied to him. I tried over the years to explain to Bent that a far better explanation would have been to try to help the children understand that Jesus believed that God knew what God was about. It was in that kind of trust that Jesus went to his own death. It was not until Bent's death that I began to question if God knew what God was about. And there are moments when I still wonder about that.
I want to mention just one thing that scholars say about this gospel. There are some manuscriptis that have, instead of "thy kingdom come", the expression, "Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us." Isn't that lovely? It helps with all the confusion about a kingdom already present and one still to come. I can imagine Yeshua asking God that the Holy Spirit come and clean up our hearts which Jews believed were the source of all our good and bad thoughts, words, and deeds. God's own spirit working at making our ways God's ways is a powerful prayer. There are historical reasons why "thy kingdom come" began to take precedence but they need not concern us here. It might just be a better way to think about our present reality to ask for cleansing and it gets rid of the male "king" in the process.
My persistence tree died last year. I went out to the woods one spring day to say hello to it and I found that it had died over the winter. I was sad. A friend and I cut it down, deciding that it had lived its life. We hope to make it into a crozier for a special friend because it looks a bit like a Chi Rho and it is sturdy oak. It is drying out now. If that doesn't happen, I shall make a sturdy cane of it for my older age. I think the death of the tree is also a powerful symbol. It is hard to keep going, very, very hard. It is difficult to keep hoping in the face of so much hopelessness and to keep smiling in the midst of so much sadness. It is hard to believe at times that God really cares, that God enables us to live in and with and through any kind of trial, with emphasis on the word live. I did not write endure, but live. But that is the call.
Cayuga, Ontario, July 30, 1995
Transfiguration of the Lord
Daniel 7: 9-10, 13-14
2 Peter 1: 16-19
Luke 9: 28-36
I am truly glad that I do not "really" have to preach today and can confine myself to these musings. I have been dealing with not one, not two, but three "bright lights" this week and it's almost too much. How does one write about the transfiguration of the Lord, a six-week drought that might just be about to relieve itself, and the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and make some sense of it all? The aged monsignor who is visiting our parish this weekend made an admirable attempt. I'm still pondering late afternoon on this Sunday.
I think I'll make some attempt and start with the first point and then move on to the other two. Some scholars say that the Lucan version of this story is a reminder that who Yeshua was finally "clicked" for these people closest to him. Just as his mission in some way or other "clicked" in some definitive way for Yeshua at the time of his baptism, so, too, here it clicks for Peter, James, and John. What "clicks" is that Yeshua is superseding even Moses and Elijah in terms of what God wants of the Jewish people. Yeshua is a new, final, definitive revelation and to be dealt with as such.
I have had these experiences of things clicking, certainly not of this magnitude as in today's gospel, but I will never forget the time that geometry clicked in for me. Suddenly it was there, all of it. I understood it, I had it, I could even teach it. I've since forgotten most of it but that was one amazing moment. I remember, too, when it clicked in for me that I had to go to Temple University to study world religions. It was something that I "had" to do and is the closest to a "call" that I think I have ever experienced. I wish that I could have this sense of the inordinate value of Yeshua that his closest friends had at the moment we read of today. I must admit I'm still working on that.
Then there's the drought, the bright light of relentless sun that has been with us for six weeks. The earth is parched and just beginning to recover after three days of rain, on and off, sometimes torrential. I prayed for rain. I have asked my friends to pray for rain. I asked my deceased husband for an anniversary gift of rain on August 3rd. We were married twenty-six years ago that day. I asked my friend the archbishop to offer a votive mass for rain, if such a thing is done anymore. At 9:40 p.m. on August 3rd, the rain began. I wept from sheer relief. It would have been the time each morning the archbishop celebrates Eucharist in India, just about the prayers of the faithful. Coincidence? I suspect not. Finally, today, late afternoon, the humidity is gone, the rains have ended, and there is a delicious sunshine filled with a wonderful breeze.
And then there is that other light, the horrendous light that marked the detonation of the bomb in Hiroshima, to be followed shortly by the bombing of Nagasaki. I have been watching the documentaries. A few weeks ago I sat glued to the television version of the Manhattan Project. This afternoon I watched "A Dangerous Life", with Max von Sydow, a priest who was in Hiroshima during the war and during the bombing. There is a wonderful scene in it where a young boy loses the notebook that his schoolmate who dies in their classroom during the blast wants given to his mother. A Japanese sargeant who finds him and takes him to a hospital says of the loss of the notebook of drawings, "Between friends it is not the deed that counts. It is the spirit of the deed that counts."
Is that somehow or the other what today is all about? Is that what Yeshua is trying to make clear to Peter who wants to build a permanent structure at the place of his enlightenment? Is he trying to make clear that it is the spirit that Peter brings to the enlightenment that makes the difference? Is there something also for me to "click into" about my concern over this drought? Is it that my spirit which is aching for the well-being of this part of this earth which is mine to care for is more important than what I can actually get done for it, or is at least as important as what I can physically get done for it? And about Hiroshima, is it a reminder, too, that above all else I must live with the spirit of "No more war, war never again, no more war," that Paul VI cried out to the United Nations thirty years ago this year on the twentieth anniversary of their founding?
With whom am I at war? How do I end it? With whom must I make peace? With whom and what must I "click" so that peace, personal, global, ecological becomes a reality?
Cayuga, Ontario, August 6, 1995
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 18: 6-9
Hebrews 11: 1-2, 18-19
Luke 12: 32-48
Today's gospel is a series of warnings. Those closest to Yeshua are told to keep their long robes tucked up into their girdles to be able to move fast when the need arises. (In the verses just before the ones we hear today are the famous lines about the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea being cared for by Divinity. The earliest manuscripts translated the "ravens of the air", and one Lucan commentator mentions that whatever else, ravens certainly do work for their living, work hard, and sometimes die from hunger! Yeshua seems not to have been much of an ornithologists.) In any event, I always think of the Franciscan Sisters who were my elelmentary school educators when I hear this gospel. In those days they would take their habit and tuck it up into the Franciscan girdle which they wore. They had huge black petticoats underneath but they were shorter than their serge habits. They tucked up the habits, and had special ways of tucking up their long sleeves, too, when there was scrubbing to be done, or climbing to fix a bulletin board, or hiking up a ladder to repair a light. I suppose part of what was going on then was that they had to be prepared for anything in schools that were completely maintained by the parishes in which they were located. It was fun to see how quickly the sisters could make these transformations.
I suppose I am also thinking of my elementary school educators today because if there was one thing they drilled into us, into me, it was that I was one "to whom much has been given", and therefore one from whom "much must be received". It started in Grade 3 when I got to stay after school and work with helping other children who were not reading as well as I was. By Grade 7, I was the equivalent of an associate teacher though I would not have known to call myself that at that time. I was taught to stay ready, be prepared, keep my eyes open, all of that in terms of being of service to others, particularly those who had fewer intellectual gifts than I did.
Did that hurt me? I think not. I am terribly other-directed and have a hard time thinking that I am worth much if I am not in some way or other contributing to make my world a better place for my having been in it. I am at my happiest when I can be of service. I am often amazed when anyone is of service to me. It sometimes confuses me when another does for me what I so automatically am prepared to do for them. But if I am going to have besetting sins, I think I'd like to number loyalty and service among them.
I have been thinking of all this because a colleague sent me a copy of an e-mail article that he had received about the need to stream our children in schools, and the disaster involved for the brightest and best of our young people today unless they are in select learning environments. Children with an I.Q. of 125 and better should be in their own schools, the article goes on to say, if we are going to be able in any way to match the gifted and talented children of other countries. I had (probably still do have) an I.Q. considerably above 125. Did it hurt me to be in an integrated rather than a segregated learning situation? Is there just a chance that segregation will give us a generation of arrogant young persons, unable, and perhaps even unwilling to work with their less gifted peers whom eventually they will have to manage. I think not. I think none of us will be badly done by so long as we all stay loyal and dutiful.
Today's gospel reminds us of the need to be loyal and to do our duty. It reminds us to say what we mean, mean what we say, and do what we say we will do. It invites us to be women and men of honour, always ready to be of service rather than thinking that we exist to be served.
I hope and pray for loyalty today: for husbands and wives to be loyal and faithful spouses; for priests to leave behind any and all cynicism and be with their people, prodding, encouraging, never tiring; for teachers to believe in their charges, enabling, ennobling, enlightening them; for children and young persons to be truthful with the adults in their lives and with each other; for persons in positions of authority everywhere to be loyal and dutiful servants. What else is peace?
Cayuga, Ontario, August 13, 1995
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 38: 1-2, 4-6, 8-10
Hebrews 12: 1-4
Luke 12: 49-53
Whoa! What do we have here? One ticked-off Yeshua? Is this the same person who prays in John's gospel that we all might be "one"? It's hard to believe so. But I relish this gospel, which some commentators says is Yeshua at his poetic best. He is using language from the inter-testamental times in which he is, about what the people Israel will have to suffer. And he will suffer the same unlike any concept of messiah which they have.
But why do I love this reading? It reminds me of what Yeshua must truly have been, not the mealy-mouthed pietistic type that so many would make him out to be. This is a mensch making clear that there is a cost to being his disciple and to being what God ask from anyone of us. It is no "gentle Jesus, meek and mild, hear oh hear thy feeble child" syndrome that we hear today. This is one feisty Jew full of impatience and of reluctance.
Why do I say that? Yeshua believed with all of his being that he had a tragic destiny. He wanted to get to it. He also believed that without the acceptance of what he was all about, the last hope of Jewish national security was gone. He is reluctant to see that possibility go. He seems caught between a rock and a hard place. His humanity is so palpable here one can almost reach out and touch it. Do we ever allow ours to be that evident and ourselves that vulnerable in the process?
Cayuga, Ontario, August 20, 1995
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66: 18-21
Hebrews 12: 5-7, 11-13
Luke 13: 22-30
One of the great gifts of this summer for me -- and there have been many -- has been discovering the works of Ellis Peters. Ellis Peters is really Edith Pargeter. Anyway, E.P. has two detectives. One is Brother Cadfael and the other is George Felse. Brother is operating in the twelfth century and George in ours. I want to learn more about just who Edith Pargeter is. I'll probably surf the Internet to find that out, another gift of this summer. She surely knows Catholic theology inside out. In one of her books there is something that reminds me tremendously of the point of today's gospel.
A young layman has been accused of being a heretic and denying God's grace. In one of his interrogations the young man says something like, "I don't deny God's grace. Grace is God's gift of the choice to do right or to do wrong. But I do believe we have to earn salvation. And I would rather have to earn it than sit around on my hams and have it given to me. What kind of man would I be if I took handouts of grace or salvation like a beggar?" When I read that reply, which is surely Edith Pargeter's own approach to the topic, I literally cheered, which gave my cats a bit of a start.
Surely, something like this is going on today. Yeshua is saying, "Don't be so sure you've got it straight about who is in and who is out. Keep doing your thing. That's the surest way to all that God has promised. Don't sit on your hams and expect the reign of God to come as a gift." I would say "Don't sit on your buns", but you get the idea.
I am sorry to say that in much of my growing-up Catholic in Philadelphia, I learned what is now called the "displacement theory" which is that we Christians displaced our Jewish brothers and sisters in God's eyes. This gospel we have heard today was presented as an example of that displacement. Clearly, this is not what Yeshua was about. He does not say that there will be none of the Jewish people at the Messianic Banquet [heaven, the good times, the whole thing together, making sense, whatever]. But he did work to make clear here that the oppressors of the Jews at his time, the Gentiles, were not necessarily excluded from sharing in all that God promised to those who lived their lives creating, re-deeming, sustaining themselves and all others. It just wasn't that easy, viz., Jews in, Gentiles out.
Yeshua's words today remind me, too, of the approach of Siddartha Guatama, the Buddha, to things metaphysical, speculative. He simply would not allow those kinds of discussions among any members of his closest friends and disciples. He told them that we had enough to do to work out what we were going to do right here, right now, without spending precious time playing around with who was "saved" and who wasn't. Yeshua and Guatama would have been great friends if the latter had not lived some six centuries before the former.
On another slightly personal note, I never understood this locking-in and locking-out in today's gospel until my first trip to India. I live in the country and think I have some idea of what dark without any street lights is but that's when I'm sitting on my deck looking up at the stars. Just try to negotiate, even with a flashlight in a completely darkened area, especially in a starless night, and in rural India, and you get the feel for the house owner's challenge. Sometimes when it is a truly dark night and I am trying to make it from my garage to my front steps I find it rough going if I have forgotten to leave the porch lights on. I think again, Yeshua is saying, "Take it easy. Go slowly. Watch your step." He's doing it all in first-century Jewish idioms and we need to translate it to our situations.
And all those "first and last" sayings! So often I have thought that men have preached them and women have lived them in this church of ours. How often I have felt that I have done something really good and there has been no one but myself, my God, and the person or persons involved who have known what has happened. Other times, often it has been something mediocre in my estimation, I am lauded and applauded for my performance. It really is mind-boggling. The moral? I'm not sure there is one except to work at being and becoming my best possible self, and inviting all others whom I encounter to be and become the same. I hope that's enough.
Cayuga, Ontario, August 27, 1995
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sirach 3: 17-20, 28-29
Hebrews 12: 18-19, 22-24
Luke: 14: 1, 7-14
The closest I have ever come to this "last shall be first" experience happened to me in India. I wear an air brace on my right ankle when I travel. I have osteoarthritis in it as a result of a dreadful accident many years ago. It is extremely difficult for me to stand in lines that barely move or to have to stand in one place for a long period of time. The air brace helps. Because of this, in a country like India where there is nothing like pre-boarding in my experience, or if it does exist it gets royally ignored, I usually wait until the end to board. It sometimes creates a challenge with carry-on luggage but it usually works. I have a seat assigned and I decide not to rush. On this occasion I did my usual thing. I was travelling with my friend and colleague there who prefers to be among the first up boarding and disembarking and he's the native but he understands and was going along with me.
We got to the top of the rickety steps leading on to the plane, and to our amazement and delight the first two seats were vacant. Since we were the last to board my friend asked, "Are these taken?" A smiling steward replied, "Only if you and memsahib want them, sir." We chuckled, sat down, and enjoyed a wonderful flight with the best leg room on board and we were the first off. Our hand luggage had been taken by the steward and returned immediately on landing. It was such fun because it was so unexpected.
G. B. Caird writes of today's gospel that Yeshua is trying to make the point that "recognition eludes those who demand it and accrues to those who think more highly of others than of themselves." He also thinks that "True dignity is always unconscious dignity, and true honour, whether conferred by man [sic] or God, is always unexpected." (Women, of course, can confer honour, too.) A part of me reads this and says "maybe" and another part says "maybe not". I have been watching the arrival this week of the some 27,000 delegates to the non-governmental organization portion of the women's meeting in Beijing. I think that many of these women are weary of having recognition pass them by. Why else the effort to attend this conference? I think many of them are completely conscious of their dignity, at long last for many of them, and intend to work hard to convince every woman they encounter, at home and abroad, of theirs. And I think further, that Yeshua would be applauding what is going on in Beijing and perhaps saying, "You have been last long enough. Come into the first places." I am awaiting television coverage of the opening of the official congress which is supposed to happen to "Ode to Joy". Someone made a good choice in that music for this special assembly.
Nowhere in my reading of him does Yeshua ask us to be doormats, any of us. He surely asks of us, always and all ways, to be women and men of principle, and to believe that living that way matters. I was one happy citizen this week when Sheila Finestone, head of the official Canadian delegation led the protest to the Chinese government of the rough handling of some of the women demonstrating against human rights violations, especially in Tibet, as perpetrated by the Chinese government.
I have discussed elsewhere the symbolism of the banquet in Judaism where all will be at peace and shalom will be a living reality. I need not repeat that here except to say that somehow if Yeshua were around today, I think he'd use the image of round tables and no head table to get his message across. I think he'd work hard at having us understand that no good deed goes unnoticed, nor does any evil one, and that persistence in things good, especially in the face of unremitting and unrelenting evil, is in many ways, perhaps in every way, its own reward.
Cayuga, Ontario, September 3, 1995
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 9: 13-18
Philemon 9-10, 12-17
Luke 14: 29-33
G. B. Caird reminds us that the semitic mind is only comfortable with extremes. He suggests that today's gospel is a good example of that. It's all either black or white. You're useful or you're useless. And if you're useless, you're rubbish and you're tossed out into the street. That's the message of the imagery of hating and being hated, loving and being loved that abounds in today's gospel. It's powerful stuff, semitic or not.
Try as I might I'm at a loss to relate anything about today's gospel to my present experience. I think Yeshua himself would probably say, "Then toss it and muse about what you need to." And that is what I am going to do. This past week I began what I am thinking of as the last year of the rest of my life, with apologies to whomever it was who coined, "the first day of the rest of your life." I am retiring at the end of this academic year, or as I prefer to call it, I am beginning my open-ended sabbatical. It is a bittersweet experience, this doing my best while knowing that I am soon going. I'm understanding "lame duck" in a way that I never have before. But something happened this week that I must record. A student came to me and said, "Doctor, how come you are here and not in Beijing?" I almost flipped. "Well, I'm not there because nobody asked me to go." The young woman smiled and said, "My mother said you were a feminist before anybody coined the word. You should be there." I smiled and then asked a few questions. As I had surmised, her mother was my student at Cathedral Girls' many years ago.
I must admit that I have never thought of myself as a feminist. That word is too loaded. I have thought of myself as a humanist, another word so loaded that one hardly knows how to begin to use it. I have been always and all ways concerned about equality. Perhaps its was because I went to an all girls' high school that I emerged from that experience thinking that I could do whatever it was that I set my body, mind, and spirit to do. I believed that then, and in many ways I still believe that now, male or female, black, white, red, yellow, or brown, we can do what we set our minds to do. But I was touched, so touched by this young woman's inquiry.
A whole bunch of years ago, thirty in fact, when I was studying in Rome, the director of the course said that the world needed a whole group of "pint-sized martyrs". I have thought about that often since then. He suggested that to make Vatican Council II a reality it would take all kinds of people known only to themselves and to their God and to the people whose lives they were affecting positively. They would need to be the reality of the Council for those whom they encountered. I have tried to do that. I have wondered at times, at so many times if anything that I was doing came anywhere close to walking the talk of Vatican II. This past week I got an answer to that question in my own mind.
I don't know if that young woman will ever know what she has done for me in this sixtieth year of my life. In so many ways she has let me know that what I have done, or tried to do, has touched at least her mother and herself, and that my great hope for the equality of humanity, and of my walking that talk, has not been completely, totally, and entirely in vain.
Cayuga, Ontario, September 10, 1995
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 32: 7-11, 13-14
1 Timothy 1: 12-17
Luke 15: 1-32
The Lucan scholar, E.J. Tinsley says that the elder brother in today's gospel stands for Israel, concerned for itself and self-righteous about its relationship to God. The younger brother stands for the Gentiles. "Your brother here" is a reference to the need for Israel to reach out to the Gentiles, to choose to end Israel's chosenness, so to speak. I hope it is that. I do believe that the insight that Yeshua had about Judaism was that its God was for all of humanity and that the Jewish people were not doing what God wanted of them by retreating into a closed relationship with that divinity.
But humanly speaking, another part of me is with the elder brother today. I had a major problem this week with a single mother of two children who are in our school's child care centre. She has finished Grade 12 but has come back to upgrade some of her courses. Almost every day she and a group of her friends come to their lockers outsider of my class and laugh and joke and make all kinds of noise while I am trying to teach. They should not be there at that time, there is no reason for them to be there, It went on almost all of last year and began again this year. I went out and asked them as usual to take others into account, and no luck. On the third encounter, I got angry, really angry, white hot angry, and I had to put my hands in my pockets to keep from hitting her. "Lady, I got kids to pick up at day care and I'll do it when I want to and I want you off my back." I cannot believe the things that went through my mind.
I wanted to tell her that she was the one who had chosen to get pregnant without marriage, not once but twice, she was the one who had chosen to keep the babies, both of which are inter-racial, not once but twice. She is the one who is being helped in every possible way, shape, and form through public monies with her own education and the upbringing of her children, and she is the one who is currently choosing to live without benefit of marriage with a man twenty years her senior. I said none of it but running through my mind was a discussion I had had many years ago with a former student at Cathedral Girls. I can see her yet saying, "Why stay chaste, Miss? I get pregnant and everybody is all over me. I can come to class when and if I want without uniform. I get all the counselling I need. I get my needs and my child's needs cared for. I'll get my university tuition. Why stay chaste?"
I remember saying to that young woman that it was my conviction that every child deserved the best possible start in life, two parents who love each other, who are happy together, and who believe that their happiness will be enhanced with a child. But I can still see her wide-eyed self and often wonder what has happened to her. Perhaps I'll find out at a reunion that's going to be held on October 21st.
I reported the noise-maker to the vice principal. He told me she is worried because of the provincial cutbacks to her funding which are due on October 1st. He is trying to find her a job to help her earn what she is currently losing. She is also upset because one of her friends at school who is pregnant has been thrown out of her house. It's not the pregnancy that she is upset about but that the parents are not there to pick up the pieces after the pregnancy. Her own mom "helps a lot". The upshot of it is that her locker and those of her noisy friends will be moved to an area immediately outside of the child care centre. This should take care of both our sets of needs, he thinks. I'm not sure.
Do you ever notice that there's no ending to today's gospel? We don't know if the younger son stays or leaves home again. We don't know if the older son throws in the towel. We know that there was a party, a good one, and there was a lot of pain for all three persons, the father, and the two sons. I wonder how much of a celebration it actually was.
What will become of this young woman and her children? Will she be a good mother? I have heard her screaming at the toddler at the bus stop more than once. Will she become employed and return to the citizenry of Ontario what investment it has made in her? Will she eventually come to understand personal responsibility or will she continue to exist expecting to be taken care of by that public? And what of her two friends, one already pregnant? Am I being self-righteous or genuinely concerned that we not continue to promote procreation by our funding of persons biologically equipped, but emotionally and financially unready for the responsibilities of parenting? I am left with far more questions than answers this week.
Cayuga, Ontario, September 17, 1995
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Amos 8: 4-7
1 Timothy 2: 1-7
Luke 16: 1-13
Before I did any formal study of scriptures I used to think that Yeshua was merely being sarcastic in these scriptures. Sometimes I think he still is. But the scholars tell us that the point he is trying to make is that where there is money there is a menace. And that menace is to make of it one's god.
I should perhaps mention that this story is one of the most widely debated among scholars. It might help to remember that the Lucan community was confronted with some rich Christians. That was not how the people of the Way started. But now the community was dealing with riches, women's issues, apostates, and the meantime, e.g., the time between Yeshua's leaving them and his presumed return. In today's gospel Luke seems to be trying to do something with the question of riches.
I hope you will be a little patient with me as I work to explain some of the background against which this story is told. I found it fascinating when I first learned of it and perhaps you will, too. The Law of Moses forbade the taking of interest on loans to other Jews for any reason. But the Pharisees had managed to get around this. They argued that this law was intended to care for those destitute persons who might be exploited by unscrupulous money lenders. They said it could not possibly have anything to do with lending money which partnership would eventually benefit both lender and borrower. That was simply good business, something like what we call profit sharing today. So they said that if a man already possessed some of whatever it was he wanted to borrow, he was not destitute and therefore the law against interest did not apply.
There was probably no one in Israel, even the poorest person who would not have had just a bit of wheat left in a bin, or a bit of oil left for a lamp. Since it was usually wheat and oil that were borrowed, the Pharisees argued that these persons were not destitute therefore the loans could be made and the interest was all right. Neat legal slight of hand, eh?
So what would happen would be something like this. A man borrowed 80 tonnes of wheat and was required to repay 100. Another borrowed 60 barrels of oil and was to return 75, i.e., they both were required to pay the principal and the interest. What this manager, or bailiff, or steward as he is called in other translations did was simply to call in the debtors and remit the interest! His action was legal because he was still the accredited agent. And more than that, his actions placed him among the "righteous" because he could claim what he was doing was what God really wanted anyway. And his action was smart because those debtors would never, ever forget what he had done for them. And in these parts of the world memories are long and markers are called in.
Now here comes the really interesting twisto! As we know, the master praises the "unjust" steward. And here's why. This master now gets an entirely undeserved reputation for following the law prohibiting usury. He comes across as one of the "righteous" and he is going to capitalize on this spiritual gesture. He is like many people who amass huge amounts of money without being too much concerned about the ethical process in the procuring of it. Then they fund hospital wings, university additions, all kinds of charitable and philanthropic operations and come off smelling like roses.
G. B. Caird says that this parable is "an attack on the niggling methods of scriptural interpretation by which the Pharisees managed to keep their religious principles from interfering with business, and [is] an appeal for a whole-hearted service of God." He goes on to say that the overall impact of this parable is to remind hearers that money is to be used for "the purpose of promoting friendship; to invest money in benefaction is to exchange it for the currency of heaven." So once again we are presented with the either/or of Yeshua, self-assertion or self-sacrifice. For Yeshua there seems to be no middle road.
Once again, too, we have the reminder that prosperity in and of itself is not a sign of a reward for godliness. John Calvin seems not to have gotten this message and we in North America are still working at understanding it. Caird concludes that "All money, however acquired, is tainted unless it is used in God's service." Am I using my money in God's service? Are our federal and provincial governments using their money in God's service?
Cayuga, Ontario, September 24, 1995
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Habakkuk 1: 2-3, 2: 2-4
2 Timothy 1: 6-8, 13-14
Luke 17: 5-10
The opening words of the first reading were mine this past week. After five weeks of class when I open my mouth to teach in my Grade 10 class, sixteen side conversations still begin. You will gather that there are 32 in the class. I set them to writing our school guidelines about respect for those in authority in the school and mutual respect for each other and five of them said, "We're not to blame," and stalked out of the room and went to the vice principal's office to accuse me of violating their rights. My position was "If your'e not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." We had a class meeting later in the period and I was advised simply to "teach those who want to learn." When I asked what I ought to do with the others I was told, "Put them in the back of the room and tell them they have a 50 no matter what they do." I could not believe my ears. "Other teachers do it." I replied quietly, "I am not other teachers."
This happened on Thursday and on Friday I refused to raise my voice above a natural pitch. And I refused to speak when anyone else in the class is speaking. I got through about half of what I wanted to work on. I also switched from a study of the sacraments to the study of morality. Maybe, must maybe they haven't heard before this what constitutes an authentic human life, much less a Christian one. And, of course, maybe they have. It is the violence that overwhelms me so much in these situations. "Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise."
Gloomy thoughts for this Thanksgiving Weekend? Perhaps. Just before today's gospel reading there is a passage about settling disputes. I'd like to reflect on it for a moment. The injured person is to guard against resentment, being spiteful, and bearing grudges. The injured person is to take the issue directly to the one who has presumably offended, not storm out the door to the vice principal! G. B. Caird writes, "...with forgiveness on the one hand, and repentance on the other, they must dispose of the matter once and for all." I want to forgive and I want to be forgiven but I find no repentance in my students about this incident or about much else that they do with their lives. Perhaps that's too severe. Two girls did come to me after class and say, "I'm sorry, Doctor, really sorry." Each came on their own. I asked each of them what they think it might have done if they had said that apology publically in the class. Both said they would not have had the courage to do it and that it would not have made any difference if they had. I suggested that they might have tried. They said, "No way."
I suppose that's why the beginning of today's gospel is so important. Faith can move mountains, we're told. If I were really a woman of faith perhaps I could take impossibilities like effecting some sense of repentance in my students in my stride. And perhaps that is what this weekend is all about, thanking God for the impossibilites in my life that together we have rendered possible. And perhaps it is a reminder to pray unceasingly that with God I can make good things happen again.
You have probably gathered by now that today's gospel is a gathering of sayings that Luke seems to put together randomly. It ends with the story of the need to abandon the whole idea of merit in terms of our approach to God. When we do our best we cannot , supposedly, earn God's approval, nor put God under any obligation to us. I find this a very, very, very hard saying. And if Yeshua really said it, I can understand why some walked away from him. It just makes no sense.
We get Yeshua presenting God to us in other stories in so intimate a relationship with us that we are like dealing with a daddy holding out his arms to a toddler trying to walk. I have seen human fathers and mothers doing this when their child takes its first step. They glow with the effort. They rejoice in the accomplishment. Does the Divine Parent do less? Does the Divine Parent say, "That's all right. You've only done what you should be doing." How could any loving, doting parent act that way in the face of effort or of accomplishment on the part of their child, and not be saddened by the lack thereof?
We need to remember that Luke was dealing with apostates, rich Christians, the role of women, and the question of what to do in the meantime between Yeshua's first and supposedly second coming. Maybe, just maybe, these words in Yeshua's mouth are Luke's saying to the members of his community, "Do the right thing whether you get the results you want or not. Do it whether you get the rewards you want or not. Do it because it is the right thing to do." I hope so. I want -- I need -- a God who smiles and who rejoices in our successes and mourns our losses. Anthropomorphic or not, I cannot imagine any other kind of God worth serving.
Cayuga, Ontario, October 8, 1995
Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Kings 5: 14-17
2 Timothy 2: 8-13
Luke 17: 11-19
This is one wierd gospel when you come to think of it. Yeshua tells the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests. They had to do this to be authentically clean of their disease. They do it. They do what he tells them to do, and then he appears to get ticked off because they do what he has asked of them! He did not tell them to come back to see him. He told them to go and show themselves to the priest. The one who broke ranks and didn't do what he was told to do was a Samaritan. We've met his kind before. They are well and truly hated by the rest of the Jews. They are the untouchables of their day as far as things religious in Judaism were concerned. This is the one who breaks ranks and comes back to Yeshua and says his thanks. One wonders why he was in the company of more traditional Jews in the first place. Did the leprosy make companions of them when their religion did not? Yeshua himself refers to the man as a "foreigner". This is big stuff, unusual stuff. Some scripture scholars think the story has been badly told because it seems so out of character in terms of Yeshua. Some say it is one more pitch of Luke's for extending the Way to gentiles. If Luke were as close a friend and confidant of Paul's as we think, then he would have perhaps put on Paul's mindset about the value of a mission to the Gentiles.
Is there just a chance that when the other nine had done what Yeshua told them to do, that is, presented themselves to the priests, that they came back and said a thank you to him, too? I like to think that they did.
I also wonder if what we have here is a very human Yeshua hoping for once that people would read his mind and heart and know what he needed and not always have to be told what he needed of them. That's risky business, expecting people to read your mind, but maybe, just maybe that was what was going on here. Maybe Yeshua needed some kind of affirmation that what he was doing with God made some kind of difference. I don't know. I do know that gratitude is essential if one is going to live humanely. Maybe Yeshua felt that way, too.
Cayuga, Ontario, October 15, 1995
Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 17: 8-13
2 Timothy 3: 14 - 4: 2
Luke 18: 1-8
I wonder if in today's story Yeshua is reminding himself, not just those whom he is teaching, of the need for persistence. If he were truly human, and our Catholic tradition tells us that he was both truly human and truly divine, then he must have thought about giving up sometime in his life. We have that terrible cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Is there any human being who hasn't at some point or another wondered if what they are doing is worth it, whether their life has any meaning or purpose to it, whether to go on or to end it all metaphorically or actually? I doubt it. At least I doubt that any human being who truly cares wonders at least now and then about going on.
There are a few more things that I wonder about in this gospel. There was no such thing as a Jewish court with only a sole judge. The Jews required three judges in their courts saying that God was the only One adequate to make solo judgments. Humans needed help from their own kind. This widow is interesting, too. Only men had full rights before the Jewish law. Women were not full citizens and did not have the right to go to law. This woman should have had a male pleading her case, but in the story she doesn't. She may even have been a childless widow or had a son younger than thirteen who would still have been considered a child and also not a full citizen. Furthermore, women, children, and slaves were not required to pray in ancient Israel, while the menfolk were expected to praise and bless God unceasingly, three times daily, at every turn of season, etc. Yeshua uses a woman, not required to pray, as a model of prayerful and faithful persistence. Odd.
So, here we are presented with this woman with little or no status because she seems not to have a man in her life, harassing a judge whose very credentials seem questionable, and getting what she wants, because she persists. She's the classic person who "won't take no for an answer". I envy her. I wish I had her apparent certainty about the correctness of that about which she is persisting. The older I get the less I feel I know about what is right and what is wrong. More often than not recently I have been praying that my will might be spiritually, intimately united to the Will of the Good One so that I have a clearer sense of the right kind of values.
It's interesting to have this woman presented for our reflection on World Mission Sunday. It's the day when our prayers and our pocketbooks are supposed to take into acount our world neighbours. I think that there are few of us left in our church who want every living human being baptized formally into our Roman community. There may still be some but I think we have become increasingly catholic, truly universal, in our outreach and that is special. It means that the days of so-called rice Catholic are behind us, that is, people who joined our tradition because of what we could give them far less than joining because of what they could give us. I have seen the remnants of such rice Catholics in India. Many are alcoholics, living in village compounds, expecting mission handouts to continue, and resisting efforts to become self-sustaining in body, mind, and spirit.
I have written previously that I believe, and I continue to believe, that our present catholic mission is to secure food, clothing, shelter, education, and sufficient leisure for reflection (prayer), for every person on earth. We also have the obligation to be caretakers of all creation. I have believed that above all else it is education which undergirds the dignity of human beings, helping them to understand who and what they are for, and who and what others are for, and that without authentic education we deprive human beings of their humanity. With Epictetus -- at least I think he was he -- I have held that "only the educated are free". Now I think I want to add to those convictions that only the persistent are truly free. It is not only today's gospel but some recent experiences and something that I just read other than this gospel, that have made me re-evaluate my thinking on all of this. The passage I read is as follows:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.*
I have been pondering that word "omnipotent". Is Yeshua, too, inviting us to experience that to persist is to tap into Omnipotence Itself? Is he suggesting that persistence is the special recourse of those who are on the margins, who have no special friends or funds to make their case, and whose persistence is the sure-fire way to get God "moving" at home or abroad? Maybe.
Cayuga, Ontario, Mission Sunday, 1995
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sirach 35: 15-17, 20-22
2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18
Luke 18: 9-14
Whatever else this Sunday is, it is not "ordinary time". It is the day before the referendum in Quebec in which a decision will be made by that province to stay in Canada or to leave it. This potential departure is not legal, it seems, but the likelihood of the departure is real. The last poll says that the undecided 14% of the Quebec population will make the difference tomorrow. The "oui" and "non" are neck-in-neck.
I was amazed and edified at the 125,000 Canadians who went to the Montreal rally Friday to support the "non" side. From all over the country, by car, bus, plane, and train, thousands flocked to Quebec to say, "Stay. We value you, we appreciate you, we want you in Canada. We promise to work to understand better what your needs are and to meet them." I think some of the well-wishers were even hoping that the Quebecois would work to better understand the rest of Canada, too, and to commit themselves to meeting the needs of other Canadians. It's interesting to ponder on a day like today that "all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
We are doing something right in Canada. To see the Prime Minister on Friday, hair blowing in the wind, pouring out his heart to his own Quebecois, speaking in the open, without a bullet-proof shield, and with no armed guards protecting him, was to see Canada at its best. If we are all humbled by that, perhaps tomorrow we may all have reason to exalt.
Cayuga, Ontario, October 29, 1995
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 11: 22-12: 2
2 Thessalonians 1: 11-2: 2
Luke 19: 1-10
Last week I was wondering if there would be a Canada by this weekend. This week I am wondering if there will be a world worth living in left for any of us by next weekend. We squeaked by in Canada. We have one country for now. The challenges remain but we have some breathing space. How we can "squeak by" the death of Yitzak Rabin, I don't know. When I heard of his assassination I began to weep. A Nobel Peace Prize winner, a man who was making history in terms of peace in the Middle East, gunned down by a exceptionally bright Israeli youth, if we are to believe the news, at the end of a peace rally. How does one come to grips with this?
As I listened to Canada's prime minister and to the president of the United States talk about Mr. Rabin, emotionally for which I was grateful, they spoke of their friendship with him, how much they liked him, how special it was to be in his presence. A woman who knew Golda Meir said the same of her. Israeli politicians do not lose touch with their roots nor their people. Golda used to go regularly to the kibbutz where her daughter lived and made meals and washed dishes along with the rest of the kibbutzim. In Israel, everyone calls everyone else by their first name, their Hebrew name. It is a reminder that they are all in the business of making the country work. No honorofic titles are there to allow people to think that some are more important than others or that some have more responsibility than others for making the country happen. I have written elsewhere of what it might be like in our church if we did the same.
On my first and last trip to Israel, so far, I made a kind of pilgrimage to its modern holy places. I went to the homes of Chaim Weismann, David ben Gurion, and Golda Meir. I stood in awe at the Museum of the Dead Sea Scrolls and at the menorah outside the Israeli parliament. I found myself thinking that Yeshua would be happy with the plans there of his modern brothers and sisters to provide human beings with the best that life has to offer while giving them their dignity in the process. What else was he for?
It must have been something like that that brought Zaccheus down out of his tree to meet Yeshua. It must have been the aura of sincerity, conviction, and dedication that touched Zaccheus and caused him to turn his life around. And yet, it was his own who killed Yeshua, as it is one of his own who killed Rabin. "When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?"
I am pondering the security risks of the gathering of world leaders who will come to Rabin's funeral on Monday. I am pondering the spiritual gain for all who will follow those simple, traditional ceremonies, albeit this is to be a state funeral. I am hoping and praying that the life of Yitzak Rabin, like his brother Yeshua before him, will touch the minds and hearts of all modern peoples, not just Israelis, and invite us to make restitution for any whom we have hurt, and to give "half" of what it is that we have to make our world a better, happier, and holier place to be. Yeshua once touched Zaccheus and others in that way. Is it too much to hope that Yitzak Rabin's untimely, unfortunate death might also do the same?
Cayuga, Ontario, November 5, 1995
Postscript
Mary Malone, the religious studies scholar at the University of Waterloo, once told me the story of her mother's funeral in Ireland. Mary's husband had died two weeks previously. Mary gathered her strength and went to Ireland. She described the burial. It was pouring rain. The grave was half filled with water. There was no pseudo-sod to protect the feet of the mourners around the grave. The priest, crucifer, and two acolytes, one of whom was a young woman, accompanied the coffin to the grave.
Mary remarked at the calm and control of the priest and the male acolytes. The young woman, who knew and loved Mary's mother. was weeping uncontrollably. She gave up on trying to keep her candle lighted. It rocked precariously in her hands as she wept over the pain of this good woman's leaving her. Mary said, "I prayed that she was the symbol of the future priesthood of the church."
Just a few minutes ago I finished watching the funeral of Yitzak Rabin. I had taped it earlier in the day. I wept through most of it. As much as I dislike television at times, its gift becomes so clear in such moments. I savoured the tributes paid to the fallen Israeli prime minister, but none of them touched me more than that of his granddaughter Noa. She is eighteen, finishing art and theatre studies at high school, heading to her tour of duty in the army. She talked of Yitzak's hugs, support, smile, and asked the angels of paradise to care for him. And she did all of this with tears streaming down her young cheeks. She wept unashamedly, uncontrollably. I found myself praying, "May this be the future of our world."
Cayuga, Ontario, November 6, 1995
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Except that it isn't. It is the vigil and I am in the Assumption University Chapel awaiting the time when Rita Ann Galliani and Scott Radford Nash will commit to each other to be best friends for life. What else is a marriage but that? The couple have asked me to offer the Prayers of the Faithful during the celebration and I am deeply touched.
Rita was my student at Cathedral Girls' High School the year my husband died. She has become my dear and special friend. I had taught her sister, Phyllis, nine years previously and today she will be her sister's matron of honour and her two children, John Carlo and Emily Rose will be ringbearer and flower girl. I saw Rita's mother and father at the hotel when I checked in and it was like a home coming. Mrs. Galliani used to have me stop by after school and feed me and she used to send me care packages to be sure that I ate well. Rita cared for my home and my cats during my first trip to India.
I see at least six of my former students and Rita's classmates seated here in the chapel. There is nothing "ordinary" about this time. I am feeling like a spiritual grandmother of sorts as I see one former student in particular who is pregnant with her third or four child. It is a special moment.
This is what I teach my students about sacraments, that they are special moments. I tell them it is a bit like having a dear and special friend with whom one corresponds and talks to on the phone, but in whose actual physical presence we are the happiest. In the midst of what appear to be ordinary lives, our life passages are highlighted by these sacramental moments. God is more intensely present to us, to all who love us, to all whom we love. I am feeling that Reality in so special a way this moment.
Scott and Rita have chosen the creation of man and woman, Paul's thoughts on love, and the Marriage Feast of Cana stories for their wedding readings. If they had chosen the readings that others will hear this weekend it would have been about the rabbinical discussion between Yeshua and the Sadducees about resurrection and marriage. It is so technical that I really don't want to get into it here. The most congenial way of explaining this to the modern mind is that Yeshua appears to be making the point that all of life consists of friendship with God. If we are God's friends here and now, that takes care of all living, here and hereafter. I find myself thinking that if Rita and Scott are each other's best friend now, and all the days of their lives, they will always and all ways also be God's friends. It seems so simple, but it isn't easy.
Ah, Rita has just come in. She is holding her father's hand as she makes her way to the back of the chapel with her entourage. She is her smiling, lovely, off-the-wall self. How like her to choose a chapel which has only a side door, not a back one! (I find myself wondering if this chapel once housed Basilian postulants and novices who also vowed their special kind of friendship with God in this place. This building belongs to the Basilian Fathers.) A smiling Scott has just appeared from the sacristy door along with his best man. The processional has begun. No, there is nothing at all ordinary about this ordinary time.
Assumption University Chapel
Windsor, Ontario
November 11, 1995
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Malachi 4: 1-2
2 Thessalonians 3: 7-12
Luke 21: 5-19
"Anyone unwilling to work should not eat." Wow. All these years I thought it was one of the Puritans at Plymouth Rock who said this. Today I am discovering it is St. Paul. I know that I usually muse about the Gospel reading but this is too good to pass up. I think the Puritans said, "He who does not work shall not eat." I don't think there was any "unwilling" about their position. But I have been to the Plymouth Plantation and I can imagine that if you didn't work you froze to death, so the willing or unwilling dimensions of things was fairly insignificant. But it's fascinating to ponder this.
In the early church if someone came to a community and expected to be supported by it without doing any work in it, they were considered spurious. Paul was talking about his fellow apostles and disciples, the professional religious caste of today. That's a huge mouthful. It's impressive to ponder it. I remember learning years ago that the Orthodox Church and the Greek Uniate Church required its parish clergy to be married and to have a trade. They were to work side by side with their village community, sowing, planting, and bringing in the harvest. They were to marry and raise children, and out of that lived experience of "working" with and for their community and their family, preside at worship, and reflect on the spiritual dimensions of their living. That is still the case today. If a priest chooses not to marry, he must live in community with at least two other priests and share the tasks of their monastic household. "He who does not work does not exist."
What does this say to all of us in Ontario, Canada, facing workfare programs? The Catholic Bishops of Ontario and an inter-faith coalition represented by Rabbi Dow Marmur of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto are saying that the poor must be cared for. They are saying that by and large these persons are not "unwilling" to work but simply cannot find work and they must not be penalized for that. I am remembering the number of offshore persons who were brought to the fruit belts of Ontario these past many years because local persons would not do those jobs. I am thinking of a mother despondent over the pregnancy of her Grade 11 daughter who said to me with tears in her eyes that the father of the child patted her daughter's abdomen in her presence and said, "Here's our future, and what's more important, here's our money." I am thinking of the teacher who came to me recently and said she had found one of her students crying. When she asked her why the girl, a Grade 10 student replied, "I didn't get pregnant this month which means my boyfriend and I can't move away from home into our own place. But I'll be pregnant this time next month." The teacher said, "Catherine, I don't know where to begin."
I tell myself time and time again that we must judge things by their use, not their abuse. My own family was on welfare for three years at the end of the great depression. I must have been about seven and my brother about two years old. My father and mother hated every minute of it and couldn't wait to get off the dole which my father did by becoming a Sun Life Insurance salesman and collecting nickel and dime policies weekly. I am weary of handouts. How do we create more and more "handups'?
Cayuga, Ontario, November 19, 1996
Christ the King
2 Samuel 5: 1-3
Colossians 1: 12-20
Luke 23: 35-43
It is interesting to be musing about Jesus as a king with the news made this past week by the Princess of Wales about her marriage to and separation from the Prince. I have not been able to bring myself to view it. The entire two-hour interview which is supposed to have sent most of the people of Great Britain to their screens to watch it will be aired this coming Monday and Tuesday. Maybe I will watch some of it. The reviews of that interview have been interesting. The princess is portrayed in some of them as utterly sincere, tremendously loving and giving. In others she is made out to be the ultimate con artist working to make sure that Charles never is free to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, much less become the King of England. Who can say or know what is in her heart but the princess herself. One wonders if even she does. Are any of our best motives really pure?
I have written in the first volume of these musings about how kings in the ancient world were expected to make their peoples' lives happen. They had power, wealth, clout, and they were supposed to use these abilities for the well being of their people. This happened long before democracies came into vogue. The feast today, I have been told, is supposed to remind us of this kind of gift of the power of Yeshua, the reminder that when compassion and justice reign, heaven will be at hand. This is what Yeshua offers us by way of power, control, effectiveness, that we enter into a war of persuasion on behalf of all humanity, inviting each other to change of minds and hearts.
I don't like today's gospel being used to support the idea of Yeshua as king. It is just pushing the word "kingdom" too far in the scheme of things. Yeshua, of course, is supposed to have said, "My kingdom is not of this world," and so the persons who chose this reading for today probably don't think it's pushing things too much to use it. I do remember how as young adults we sang, "To Jesus Christ our Sovereign King" on this Sunday at mass, bellowed might be more the correct word. In my early youth we sang, "Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus, Christus imperat." I leave the translation to you. Would Yeshua of Nazareth be happy with this kind of adulation? I doubt it. And today I think he might be just about as uninspired by kings and queens, princes and princesses as many of us are feeling. I think he would be happiest with "He went about doing good."
I think this is what the good thief picked up on, too. Tradition says his name was Dismas. Dismas knew what he was and he knew what Yeshua was. Dismas was guilty. Yeshua was not. He was a pawn in a game of expediency to keep the Jews out of difficulties with the Romans. Dismas knew that. The other thief seems to have lacked any sense of guilt. He was furious that a twist of fate meant he was caught. There was no remorse. Maybe, just maybe, Yeshua was saying in some way or other, "I appreciate your sincerity. I appreciate the admission of your guilt. I will never ever forget that, in this life or the next." Don't we too relish and value integrity?
Today I bring the second volume of my musings to an end. Last November, on the first Sunday of Advent, I recognized that I needed new ways of learning in my classroom and in my life. Those of you who have travelled with me through these pages know that I have spent the year completing my training in reality therapy, control theory, and quality management, and have put all of them to use in my classes. It has been a good and exciting adventure n many ways, and it means that, please God, I will end my secondary school career much happier than I was a few short years ago. I have put what I have learned to work in my own personal life as well and people tell me I am funnier than I have been in years and that I seem much more at peace. I think I am, too. I am not where I want to be in terms of the joy which I believe is the essence of peace. I increasingly think it may be that I will have that only fifteen minutes after I am dead. That doesn't mean that I won't keep on trying.
I think, like Dismas, I know now what I am and what I am not. I no longer blame others or exculpate myself by inculpating them. I do what I can -- which never seems to me to be enough -- and I work hard to leave the outcome of what I do in the hands of God. I remind myself again and again that life is what happens while we are making other plans. I have learned this year -- relearned is a better way to put it -- that when I am fearful it is about something from my past or a prospect in my future. At those moments I pretend I am in a ship in a safe, tight compartment, secured from the past, and from the future. I "seize the day" and savour what it alone can give me. I look, learn, listen, love, and laugh. I think I will need to do this all the days of my life.
Cayuga, Ontario, November 26, 1995
SERMONS I WISH I HAD PREACHED OR BETTER STILL "TEACHED": YEAR C. Copyright © 1995 Catherine Berry Stidsen, Ph.D., R.T.C. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations. For information or permission for longer citations address the author, 535 Irish Line, R. R. #3, Cayuga, Ontario, Canada, NOA lEO, Phone/Fax: 01-905-772-3790, E-mail: ad930@freenet.hamilton.on.ca.