Hope Eternal

In today’s Gospel, Lk 20: 27-40, Jesus tells us that those who have passed through the door of death “can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

 

That is the hope to which all believers cling. It was the hope to which the 130,000 Vietnamese martyrs clung (we celebrate their victory today) when they were tortured and killed for their faith.  No matter how difficult or horrifying life becomes for those who believe in God, adhere to the values of the Gospel and stand up for what they believe, we know that our “crucifixions,” our dying with Christ is followed by a rising with Him.  Throughout this sojourn on earth, the Lord, as stated in today’s responsorial psalm, “trains [our] hands for battle, [our] fingers for war” (Psalm 144).  It is God at work in our lives who will give us the same victory He gave to David, his servant, and to Jesus, son of David and Son of God, who assumed human nature and was obedient to God even unto death for our sakes. 

What sacrifices am I willing to make for my faith, for the wellbeing of my family, my religious community, the good of the country, the civic and church community in which I live?

Year of Faith

Today, the 50th Anniversary of Vatican  Council II, begins a Year of Faith announced by Pope Benedict XVI.  Our faith in Jesus Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, is being challenged in today's world, it seems to me.  The question is: am I being swept away by this world's denial of the existence of God and more specifically by the world's rejection of Christ, the Son of God, sent into the world, not to condemn it but to save it?  When I was baptized into Christ, I was put on a path of  communion with Christ. I began a journey of being transformed--body, mind and spirit--into the Body of Christ and into the mind and heart of God.  Each day is an opportunity for me to put on Christ, to become Christ, that is, to be salt for the earth and light for the world, illuminating the path to union with the Trinity.  Each day, through grace and my cooperation with grace, I am being transformed into the image of Christ--a transformation that will take place until my birth into eternal life when my union with God will be complete.

Job: Strengthened through Suffering

Today’s first reading, Job 1:6-22, at first was very disturbing to me!  I said to myself: “How can God give Satan permission to attack Job, a righteous person, destroy his possessions and take the life of his children. What cruelty!  God? God as I know God?  No way!”   I vehemently oppose this image of God. I reject it!

Jesus does not present God to us as a cruel God. On the contrary, Jesus shows us that God is compassionate, heals the brokenhearted, binds up wounds, makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak, and gives vision back to the blind, spiritually and physically blind.  The lame walk and the dead are restored to live, physically and spiritually.  Satan is cast out, confronted, thrown into the swine.

So what does Job teach us? Not that God is cruel but that God shields us from that form of destruction that is eternally fatal: the lost of our souls, spiritual death.  Job remains strong in his faith and in his trust of God, because God did not abandon him at all.  Job’s love for his Creator God never wavered because of God’s power at work in the depth of his being.  Job comes through the sufferings of his life stronger than ever. Why? Because God never left his side.

We learn this same lesson from Jesus, who also did not escape the sufferings of this world either.  Like Job and Jesus, each of us will rise from the “ashes of death,” whatever form death takes. Who we really are and what really matters—our eternal salvation, our faith and trust in the Lord, our love for God, others and ourselves—is strengthened and purified as gold tried in fire, as we pass through this “valley of tears.”  None of us, who believe in Jesus, who cling to God, is diminished by the difficulties of this life. No our true selves emerge, as it did for Job!

Revealing the Compassion of God

In today's Gospel, Luke 7: 1-10, we are given the story of the Roman centurion whose slave is seriously ill. He sends elders to ask Jesus to heal him, reminding Jesus that this dying man is deserving of divine intervention. He also tells Jesus that he is "not worthy that Jesus enter under his roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed." The centurion shares his own experience with Jesus as a man with authority: I say "Come," "Do this," "Go," and my servants listen. In effect, he is saying: Jesus, you have authority. Whatever you say will be done. As Master of the Universe, You do not need to be physically present to heal my servant. "Only say the word..."

What faith! And the centurion is not even a Jew! Jesus is amazed and he tells the crowd: "...not even in Israel have I found such faith!"

Who am I in this story: the slave who is seriously ill, the centurion asking for Jesus' intervention, the elders who bring the centurion's message to Jesus, those in whom Jesus finds no faith or a dwindling, smoldering, flickering faith with little or no life left in it?

Is it really the Lord? Is God really at work?

Today’s readings, for me, are about utter dependence upon and trust of God and God’s eternal faithfulness to humankind.  The first reading deals with political disasters—the Assyrians invade the Northern Kingdom, destroy the city and drive the people into exile.  In the Gospel, the disciples’ boat is on the verge of capsizing in a turbulent sea.  Out of nowhere, between 3:00-6:00 a.m., Jesus, though not recognized, is seen walking on the sea, coming toward the boat.  They cry out: “It is a ghost.” Jesus responds: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”  Peter says: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Peter starts out, doubts, almost drowns and cries out: “Lord, save me!” 

What lessons for you and me!  The world is in no better shape than when the Assyrians invaded the Northern Kingdom.  We have nations rising up against nations to this very day, destroying cities, driving people out of their homelands. Personal disasters also touch every person’s life, multiple times, it seems. This is life “in this vale of tears.”

Like Peter, we have the option of crying out to the Lord: “Lord, save us.”  And He will.  We also know in faith, that, as in the Old Testament, God is a warrior who fights for us, who comes to our aid, and is close to the brokenhearted who seek Him above all and in all and through all.  Evil will not triumph, even though it may look that way. With the author of psalm 89, we pray:  “O Lord, you have been our refuge through all generations. Before the mountains were begotten and the earth and the world were brought forth, from everlasting to everlasting you are God!”

Patience in the face of suffering

In today’s first reading, Acts 16: 22-34,we read about Paul and Silas’ arrest, being beaten with rods and put in chained shackles.  They are treated cruelly, shamefully, disdainfully. It is night. No bed. No comforts.  They turn to their faith and spend the night singing, thanking and praising God. Suddenly an earthquake shatters the prison, breaks open their chains and they could be free men. However, they do not escape. The jailor is terrified of his fate when he discovered the prison doors wide open, the chains broken. In his desperation he  is about to commit suicide when Paul yells out: Don’t harm yourself!  God uses Paul and Silas’ heroic faith and love to save the jailor and his family, who turn to Christ, are baptized and minister to Paul and Silas, taking them to his home; treating their beaten, bruised bodies and giving them a meal.

As I reflect on my reactions to things in my life that are irritating, humiliating and distasteful on a much smaller scale than what Paul and Silas went through, I am humbled as I reflect upon their faith response.  I rant and rave at much smaller injustices, far from turning to the Lord in prayerful praise, as Paul and Silas had done.  When life throws me “a curve ball” or all hell breaks loose on my efforts, what if my response flowed out of my faith instead of my anger, my demand for just treatment or my insistence on being treated righteously.  What miracles the Lord could perform!

Mother Frances Streitel: the origins of her faith

Mother Frances Streitel, Foundress of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother: Before we look more deeply into Mother Frances following her call to religious life, I would like to reflect more deeply upon the elements in her family life that, I believe,  prepared her to be open to the Lord’s will for her.  Her mother was a very conscientious Christian who lived her faith, not only by participation in the Eucharistic liturgy and the other sacraments, but she also passed her faith on to her children by teaching them to pray and to cherish the Scriptures that were read and preached at each liturgy. Is it possible, also  that the Bible was more than a shelved book in the Streitel family?   I wonder that based on the fact that Amalia as a little child attempted to understand what the Scriptures meant when it said that Jesus would draw all things to Himself when He was lifted high upon the cross.  She must have learned the art of reflection upon the things of the Spirit from her parents. Amalia’s mother also taught her children to be concerned that the poor had food to put on their tables—Amalia would go with her mother when she brought food to the poor.  Love of nature--its beauty, its solitude--was also a value instilled in the Streitel children. What familial elements have led you to the Lord and/or deepened your faith?

Good tree, good fruit

Saturday, September 10, 2011:  Today’s liturgy speaks about a good tree bearing good fruit and a bad tree bearing bad fruit.  In every fruit-bearing tree is a seed: apple, pear, plum, chestnut, apricot, banana, breadfruit, mango, oranges, etc. The fruit does nothing but await the nutrients the tree feeds it: water, sun’s rays, and its own sap or the nutrients from within the tree. Within you and me, a seed was planted by God’s creation of us. We are all created in the image of God. That image grows at its own pace, as does the apple, orange, mango, etc.  Besides the gift of being created in God’s image is the gift of faith given many of us at our baptism.  This seed also grows, if we give it the nourishment  it needs. And it grows, also, at its own pace. My faith today is very different than my faith as a adolescent, for instance.  The question is:  Am I providing the nourishment my faith needs every day to grow into a “strong oak”: prayer, solitude, the sacraments, reflection on the Scriptures, and relating to others in the events of each day in a way that my actions and attitudes are life-giving and flow from the power of the Spirit at the core of my being?

the gift of meditation, the gift of faith

The Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, according to their Rule or Constitution, set aside a minimum of 30 minutes each day for meditation upon the Scriptures or another source of spiritual nourishment. This morning I meditated on the first reading of today’s liturgy (Col.2:6-15). What an awesome reading in which we are reminded that we share in the fullness of the diety in human form in Christ Jesus.  We share in the fullness; we do not, obviously, possess the fullness. But even to share in the fullness of the diety is awesome.  How is it that we are given this gift? St. Paul  tells us that, on the cross, Jesus took our transgressions upon Himself, obliterated them,  removed them, nailed them to the cross.  All that causes death was nailed to the Cross with Christ and all that causes new life in God was raised to life with Jesus. In baptism, we, too, die and rise with Christ. The self that was alienated from God and the things of God by sin and selfishness, greed and lust for power, prestige and worldly pleasures—the allurements of the world, worldly philosophies and ideologies—was buried with Christ at our baptisms.  We rose with Christ through the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. The self that rose with Christ is a new self. We put on Jesus Christ in baptism.  We are now rooted in Christ Jesus.  Our hearts have been circumcised , that is, we underwent a spiritual circumcision, not a physical one.  Our hearts, not a physical part of our bodies, were changed by baptism into Christ.  By dying and rising with Christ in our baptisms and through the faith that was given to us in baptism,  we are now spiritually dead to sin, selfishness, worldly philosophies and ideologies, jealousies, lusts for power, prestige and popularity, fear of death (saving the self, not losing it in love, in truth, in purity). We rose with Christ transformed into new persons, reconciled to God and to one another. What a grace!

God's mercy and the strength of the human spirit

September 1, 2011: The sad news about Hurricane Irene abounds here in the Eastern States. The good news is that the flood waters are receding.  Thousands of businesses have sustained considerable losses and are wondering how they will survive. Just as God witnessed the dire straits of the Israelites in Egypt and called upon someone to take up the task of leading them out of a destitute situation, so, too, God is sending persons to help. God cares as much today for persons devastated by nature’s fury as He cared for the Israelites oppressed by Pharaoh’s cruelty. God weeps, I believe, with those who weep and is stirring up the hearts of neighbors across the country to reach out in compassion to provide in whatever ways possible.

As we deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, today’s Scriptures are consoling. They tell the story of Peter being asked to cast his net into the deep. He objects, saying “Lord, we worked hard all night long and caught nothing,”  but if you say so, we will try again. People’s nets are not only empty, they are ripped apart by Hurricane Irene--that for which families worked hard all their life has been snatched from them .  What they “caught” over time is gone, swept away in the flood waters. “Try again! Start over, find another way”—“cast into the deep” are probably not happy thoughts right now! 

 In times of disasters like this one, the only thing most people have to cling to is their faith in a caring, merciful  God.  That was true of my parents, who, as farmers, often struggled to make ends. That was certainly true when bills piled up as cancer ravaged my mother’s life and stole it from her at age 50, leaving four elementary-grade children without a mom.  Hours before she died, my mother writes to me: “When I get out of here (Sacred Heart Hospital in Tomahawk, WI), I am going to get a job so we can make ends meet.” In the face of death itself, she did not give up hope. Many people whose livelihood has been destroyed by Hurricane Irene are saying:  “We will survive. We will find a way. It may be tough for a while but we will come out of this.”  What strength rises within the depth of one’s being, where the human spirit meets the Spirit and the power of God.  What inspiration people with faith and trust are to a world marred by tragedies.

A call to live by faith

As I reflect on the news around us--local and world situations--my mind is challenged as a Christian. How do we renew a world that seems so far away from its Creator, a world that seems to have put other things first and set God on  a back burner, so to speak.  How do we recognize the Divine Presence in all that is and will be? My mind is preoccupied with the realization that a Holy, Powerful energy continues to bring order out of the chaos we have created in all aspects of human existence. We have a God who rights the wrongs we have committed against all of humanity and all of creation; a God who pardons all our ills, as Jesus pardoned His executioners and us from the Cross, when He said: "Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing."  My heart rejoices this Easter Season that the One who came into the world 2000+ years ago, and continues coming, did not and does not come to condemn the world but to save it. What a God we have in Jesus, in the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit! God be praised and served! And God, have mercy on us, for we know not what we are doing when we continue to spread violence and perpetuate wars at home or abroad, in foreign lands or in our city streets, with strangers or friends and family members and with the universe itself.  God, have mercy!