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December 29, 2009
The Epiphany of the Lord [January 3, 2009]
Let me tell you a story about God. Actually, it is someone else’s story about God, but it is worth the retelling.
Some years ago a reporter for the New York Times was sent to Guatemala to do a story on the civil war in that saddened country. He stood in the middle of the cathedral market place, observing people in a long line waiting for food. The line nearly extended around the block. Finally at the end stood a slender young woman holding a basket. It seemed to take forever for her to reach the officials who were distributing the food. When she finally arrived, there was only a single banana left on the table. She looked off to the side where a little boy and girl were waiting by the fence. She then took the banana, walked over to them, peeled it, broke it in half and gave a peace to each of the children. They walked out of the square. At the end of the reporter’s description of this event, he wrote: “You know, I think I saw the face of God just then.”
Today we celebrate to solemnity of the Epiphany, my friends, the story of the three royal wise men who traveled across the Eastern desert to find and pay homage to a child king who was reported to have been born in Bethlehem of Judea. More about that later.
Many people throughout history have reported seeing the face of God or at least to having heard God speak to them. I have not been so fortunate, however, I can report that on many occasions I believe that I have experienced God up close. Was it an epiphany of sorts? I do believe so. An epiphany is simply an experience when the sacred, the awesome, the breathtaking overwhelms you and you can only say: “I saw the face of God just then.”
Let me tell you of several such experiences that have left me without a human answer to life’s epiphanies.
I think I saw the face of God early one morning when Father Jim Schultz and I took the last step on the summit of the Matterhorn in Switzerland and looked straight in the sun coming up over the border of Italy. An epiphany!
Sadly, I think I have seen the face of God in tragedy. On the day, for instance, when I was called to a funeral home to take a crying mother by the arm to see her daughter who had only hours before committed suicide. I saw the mysterious face of God just then.
I have watched little kids in a school playground screaming with the pure joy for fifteen minutes of freedom.
I have seen the face of God, mysteriously, when I first learned that Father Jim Schultz, my friend and climber, had fallen off the east face of Little Bear Mountain in Colorado. He was dead; the mountains he so loved claimed him.
And finally, I think I have seen the face of God in those earthy moments when a young man and woman say, “I do.” Or when a team of young, tight-muscled high school football players celebrate a win in the last 5 seconds of a game.
All these events, my friends, are epiphanies, visions of the sacred, whether in joy or tragedy. Each time a human being is so struck by the unexplainable, that he or she can only gasp for breath and ask “why, how come?” we are face to face with God.
I believe that is what the author of St. Matthew’s gospel was trying to convey when he told that ancient story of the three royal personages from the East who came seeking someone who would tell them where the supposed King of the Jews was to be born. “Why, in Bethlehem came the answer, that small, insignificant, backwater village where nothing important in all of history has ever occurred.” Now that’s the face of God and the work of God.
And so, as the story goes, these royal princes came to visit the God king and pay their homage: Gold, frankincense and myrrh.
What astonished these men, of course, was the fact that the light of a star was constantly directing them to the place where a child lay, yes, astonishingly, a child, a king?
Somewhere in that story there must be a message for us, we who so often imagine that we live in a dull world where nothing spectacular, nothing dazzling, nothing brilliant ever happens Could it be that we have closed up our eyes to the light of the spectacular, the overwhelming, the events that draw from us a simple response…“holy smoke, how about that?”
I truly believe that there are holy events, unexplainable human experiences happening at nearly every moment of the day, just waiting for a person of imagination and insight to say, “you know, I think I saw the face of God just then.”
By the way, we do not even need to brave the miles of hot desert sands to experience the sacred. It’s all around us, free for the imagining.
The Scriptures: Isaiah 60: 1-6; Ephesians 3: 2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2: 1-12
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 11:30 AM.
December 23, 2009
Feast of the Holy Family [December 27, 2009]
I am not ordinarily not very alert or perceptive at 7:00 in the morning, but there was an occasion several weeks ago when I was having my morning shot of coffee and the comics that it suddenly it occurred to me that about 90% of the comics are about children and families. So, I asked myself, why should that be? Do most people simply enjoy reading something that doesn’t take much intelligence or concentration? Could be. But then, I silently waxed philosophical and thought to myself, “why not; hey, it’s our own story; we all do those silly things described in the comics. Down below the surface (if the writer is good at it) one can always find some very basic traits of human nature. Why, for instance, is the Classic Peanuts comic still running after all these years? Could it be that the kids are portrayed as “little” adults with all of the adult idiosyncrasies? When we laugh at them, we are actually laughing at ourselves. Charles M. Schultz, the author, was no dummy. He spent a large part of his life making fun of us and for us.
The anthropologists, therefore, are not the only smart people who claim to know something about human nature in all its beauty, its complicatedness, its love, its meanness, it’s pride and its shame. It’s all about the family, the descendants of Adam and Eve. We are nature’s masterpiece.
Given all that let me say that our Church’s liturgical year also pays attention to the importance of family. Once each year, it celebrates the feast of the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary and Jesus. From all the hints of family life in the gospels, the Church chooses St. Luke’s anecdote today regarding the twelve-year-old “runaway Jesus” and his three-day visit to His Father’s house, the temple in Jerusalem. Without doubt this incident actually happened the way Luke describes it. Why else would he even write about it?
The human quality of that event, however, loses some its human character insofar as Jesus is portrayed as the new Lawgiver who, amazingly at the early age of twelve, understands the Torah in all its complexity. It is already a hint at age 12 of Jesus’ divine nature. All well and good.
There are, however, are some other lovely human elements that tell us that this event had the quality of a family squabble. Jesus’ mother, Mary gets a bit snippety and asks her son how he could possibly do such a dim-witted thing. “What possessed you?” she said? Didn’t it occur to you that your father and I might have been worried about your safety?” Isn’t this exactly what any mother father would have said to a senseless son? “You are coming home with us, we still love you ok?”
I use this anecdote to point out that there are many incidents in the gospels that portray family life exactly as it is. Think, for instance, of the incident when Jesus began encountering some serious threats from enemy factions. What happens? His mother, brothers and sisters come out and plead with him to come home. They did not want him to get hurt by the belligerent crowds.
On another occasion, his family came out simply to speak to him and check on his health. What is Jesus’ reply? “I already have a family that you do not know about.” Not a very respectful reply to a sincere question from his own mother.
I simply wanted to highlight those two incidents to point out that there are some very beautiful human incidents in the gospels that are at the very foundation of Jesus divinity.
Could not one say, therefore, that in the world’s human community there are factors that have the quality of true holiness?
All this leads me to say that in every human family there is a certain quality of grace something that reminds us that this is God’s way of telling us that being family is the way of redemption. Despite all the crazy things we do: our quarrelsomeness, our anger, our pettiness, but also our love our howls of laughter, our fierce defense of our brother or sister in times of stress, all this is a sacramental analogy for holiness. Yes, despite its defects we will still weep with our family and for them when all goes badly. In short, we do not choose our family; they are God’s gift to us as we are to one another.
Given all that, I say once again that even if we do not have a traditional family at this moment in our lives, we will go out and seek one. True, it may not look very much like the one in which we grew up but we are naturally so hungry for companionship that we will create one if it comes to that.
So, let us thank our God whose family is the Trinity that we have been graced with people who may not be perfect but they are all we have and that will be enough until we join God’s family in heaven’s kingdom.
The scriptures: 1 Samuel 1: 20-22; 1 John 3: 1-2, 22-24; Luke 2: 41-52
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 01:53 PM.
December 17, 2009
Fourth Sunday of Advent [December 20, 2009]
My friends, it is my hunch that if you were to ask any priest or minister who preaches for a living how they feel about preaching during the Sundays of Advent, they will tell you that it’s a battle, it’s always been a battle, at least in these modern times when the commercialization of Christmas has caught the eye of Christians and non-Christians alike.
Let me tell you, however, that this beautiful season of Advent which has its own meaning and identity often gets lost in stories of Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman.
Now, I would not want to be labeled a Christmas grouch; it just a fact of the intersection of two seasons. Because of its material attractiveness, the anticipation of Christmas shopping simply drowns out the beauty of the O Antiphons, the rich color of violet, the longing sounds of the Advent: Maranatha, “Come Lord Jesus Come. The decoration of the malls began long before Thanksgiving whereas the beautiful season of Advent creeps up quietly upon us at first vespers of the First Sunday. From that moment forward until vespers of the Nativity we stay quiet, letting this time have its place.
But that is okay, my friends’ we’re not going to do battle with those who are simply trying to celebrate the birth of Christ in their own particular manner. It’s just that the Christian faith that lies in the heart of Advent does not seem as interesting as the effort to find a good bargain on a flat screen television. No more of this griping. I’ve gotten it out of my system.
So, what can one find in this Fourth Sunday of Advent, only a few days before Christmas, that will help us redeem the heart of the Advent season?
Well, first of all, for folks who try to find spiritual meaning in the scriptures of this season there is plenty to reflect on simply because all of Advent is a shortened symbol of the waiting we humans have been doing, ever since the great prophets of Israel began to speak of The One who is to come, the Redeemer of all humankind, the great Christ event. Michah, the prophet, for instance, speaks of Bethlehem, David’s birthplace, from whence shall come a shepherd who will bring that peace for which we have waited so long, peace for a fractured world and healing for wounded sinners.
The gospel also speaks so clearly of waiting, the brief waiting that Mary and Elizabeth did as they prepared for the eventual coming of Jesus and John the Baptist. It is the a symbol of the kind waiting that we all do as we search for signs that the Lord’s coming is closer than we first thought possible.
The whole meaning of this season, therefore, is a lesson in waiting, not for death, but rather for the coming of the Christ into our lives, our families, our neighborhoods. In some sense this is a waiting that has no end, at least none that we know of at this moment. We do realize, however, that all human existence is a kind of in-between-time, life from the mysterious beginning of human existence until each of us comes to the point of the eternal vision of God’s presence.
So, the question comes: What shall we do in-the-between-times, while waiting. Consider this: Life itself is not simply a period of hesitancy, waiting for something to happen over which we have no control. The waiting of the Christian is one that is filled with opportunities to make Christ present, not at the end of time, but rather here and now in this moment of history, the history of our lives.
Given all that, my friends, let us not do battle with those who have never heard of Advent’s waiting. Let us rather live in such a way that people may be a bit astonished that we are not rushing around until Christmas eve. Rather, let this be a quiet, contemplative time, a moment during the year when we give God, God’s time to become present to us in the Son who comes from Bethlehem, not yet, but sometime. In the meantime we say, “Come Lord Jesus, come.” All creation waits for the moment of final fulfillment that, for now, is only a dream, but will be reality….sometime.
The scriptures: Michah: 5: 1-4; Hebrews 10: 5-10; Luke 1: 39-45
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 10:39 AM.
December 07, 2009
Third Sunday of Advent [December 13, 2009]
I always look forward to the Third Week of Advent each year, mainly because we are introduced to the last of the great prophets, John the Baptist, “J.B.” as I like to call him. I like him for the contrarian character that he is. He beats people up, figuratively. One will not escape John’s wrath, whether one resides in First Century Palestine or in our own Twenty First Century. We may not like John’s “attitude” or the way he chooses to dress but we will have to admit that he answers questions bluntly and straightforwardly. “What should we do?” one person asks. “Here’s what you should do, listen up,” he says. So it goes. People asked questions and got answers. People never went away from John’s preaching puzzled.
Here I must interject a “J.B” character from modern film, someone I have often mentioned before, Dewey Euliss, played by that great actor, Robert Duval. The film is titled The Apostle. Dewey Euliss is a “laid back” North Texas pastor of a large church. He has no problems; he’s the senior pastor with tenure. All goes well for Sonny: He preaches fiery rhetoric but never asks hard questions. There are no significant questions to be asked; everyone is quite content with life.
Until….one day the whole world changes for Sonny Euliss. In a furious confrontation with the church’s youth minister who just happens to be having an “affair” with Sonny’s wife, Sonny clubs him over the head with a baseball bat.
So, with the dark cloud of God’s anger hovering over him, Sonny hits the road across Bayou country, attempting to rediscover his lost career. All the while he hopes to find a church that will be attracted to his style of preaching. After much back road walking and sweating he finds a small ramshackle building that had, indeed, once been a church. “Ah, here it is,” Sonny says; “I’ll git me some folks, white or black, and we’ll fix ‘er up.
Interestingly, however, the only folks who show up to fix the church are sincere, religious “black folks” from the Bayou. So, now, Sonny needs to adapt his fiery style to such folks if he is going to have a congregation. After only a short time, those good folks begin to come and, much to Sonny’s satisfaction, they love his preaching. He feels redeemed for his misdeed.
One day, however, precisely in the middle of one of Sonny’s inspiring sermons, the long arm of the law appears in the vestibule of the church. He’s been found out and off to jail he goes, leaving his congregants without pastor or preacher. End of story, as far as we know.
As I have already mentioned above, I think of Sonny Euliss as a modern-day John the Baptist. John, as we learn in the gospel had no fear in answering questions about the shape of life. Being moved (scared) by his preaching, they would say, “What should do?” John would say, “Well, if you have enough clothes, give some away. If you have enough food, share it with your neighbor. See, it’s just that simple!”
Given all that, it appears to me that we have one of those situations where, if you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question: Don’t cheat, don’t practice extortion, don’t accuse others of falsehoods, be satisfied with your wages. Immediately, we might say, “Well, those answers surely fit our times so well. Just read the daily newspaper.”
Scripture scholars maintain that the questions put to John the Baptist probably were also coming from the early Christians. They were waiting (An Advent word!) for the Messiah and they wanted to know what they should do if and when he came. Perhaps some of those early Christians were slackening in their original Christian spirit, who knows.
All that, of course, invites us to ask questions about the age in which we live. Like the early Christians, we are also living the in-between-times, the times between the first coming of Christ and His final coming. Scripture scholars call this “delayed eschatology.”
There is no doubt, however, that we Christians of this age are asked to think globally and act locally. Every act of justice is always local.
Therefore, we may ask how we feel about the Christian spirit in our neighborhood, church community or, even more broadly, what we think about the political situation of our country. What can we do to confront issues of social justice and peace? Is there anything at all that we are truly and deeply concerned about in terms of Christian life here and now.
Questions about life, of course, are always facing us and they are always challenging, but they have to be asked. Questions about human life going on around us are always changing according to time, history and culture. Christian life happens amidst such a milieu; it does not exist in a vacuum. Christian questions always arise out of secular situations.
John the Baptist answered questions about situations arising out of First Century Judaism. Our questions will be somewhat the same but also different. As long as Jesus delays his final coming, it is our task to continue asking questions while we wait for answers about today and tomorrow, until that moment in human history when there will no more questions: It’s called Heaven’s Reign.
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 11:33 AM.
December 02, 2009
Second Sunday of Advent [December 6, 2009]
If you were to ask any Catholic person with even a smattering of catechism background in Roman liturgy what comes to mind when they hear the word Advent, without doubt, they will say, waiting and preparing. It is true: For all the years of our Catholic upbringing we have dwelt on those two words as the core of this beautiful season. Unfortunately, for many years, at least as children, we were told that we were waiting and preparing for the coming of Jesus or the birth of the baby Jesus. Partly true, of course, but not true enough. There is so much more depth and meaning in those two words that we were not ready for in our early days. Are we ready for them today, that’s the question? Here are some thoughts, not all original, but worth some reflection nonetheless.
I am sure it will be no breaking news to anyone that we humans spend a large portion of our life on earth simply waiting, waiting for something over which we have little or no control. It is probably one of the most frustrating feelings anyone can have because by nature we are action-oriented; we want to do things, mentally or physically. However, we do wait nine months to be born. We expect that sometime in our 80’s we will die. Then, in between those two parameters we continue to wait: To grow up, to finish school, to get a good job, to do a good job, to retire…and then what? More waiting. Some of the things we wait for in life do happen for us, others do not. Nonetheless, we have no other option than to wait.
In Raymond Brown’s splendid work on John’s gospel, he makes the point that even Jesus waited because he was convinced that the kingdom of God was close at hand. “You will know that the kingdom of God is coming close when the blind see, the lame walk and the poor have the good news preached to them.” So, with that, Jesus, in some sense, was struggling to hurry the onset of the kingdom of God. He wanted to do his part to make this event happen even in his own time.
In his preaching, however, he continually made the point that waiting, by itself, is not enough. What is needed is vigilance, being on watch for God’s coming, not necessarily at the “end times,” but in the here and now.
In some sense, I believe Jesus is saying “If the kingdom has not yet come, then we need to go about the business of making it come in our own day and time. The kingdom does not come spontaneously: Each age is responsible for the questions and challenges of their own time. In that sense, then, the kingdom is always coming but is not present yet. It’s part of the old philosophical question of the already and the not yet. The kingdom is partly here, but not completely here.
Waiting around aimlessly, therefore, is not an option for the Christian. The kingdom comes every day. Indeed, Jesus says, it is already within you, already part of the ongoing action of this world. So, vigilance is the important point here, always being alert for whatever changes are going on. Time is important; events are always taking place in time that, in themselves, have some meaning or the meaning that we put into them. In some mysterious manner, the kingdom comes at our pace to the degree that we are concerned about events that are happening in our age and time.
Vigilance, vigilance is the central word. “Gird your loins” (put on your trousers) Jesus, says. “Light your lamps,” there’s work to be done.
But then there is that other important Advent word, prepare, prepare ye? You will notice that it is an active verb, do the hard work of preparing.
Preparation events are happening around us every day. I’m sure there must be a large staff at the White House that prepares for the coming of important personages. Physicians prepare scrupulously for a surgery; lawyers spend long hours preparing their notes for a trial. Students spend years preparing for that final Ph. D. exam. Had we known how to prepare for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, we might have prevented the deaths of over 3000 people. The person who is not vigilant, who does not know how to prepare even for the ordinary, every day, events that take place in our daily lives, has some problems.
The question, however, is this: What sort of preparedness is called for in the season of Advent? Obviously, it is not the sort of short-term preparation that happens at the White House. Statesmen and women come and go each day.
I believe that the preparation called for in Advent must come from the inside: It is the sort of attitude of mind or spirit demonstrated in the scriptures in this Sunday’s liturgy in the character of the prophet Baruch, John the Baptist and Jesus. All their efforts were directed toward the events of their times. They saw issues that needed to be addressed and they addressed them. They also died for them.
As for ourselves, living in this age of history, as we do, Advent preparation must be for the eternal coming of the living word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ. This world in which we live is waiting for just such a word of good news: The cessation of war, attention to the poor, the diminishment of terror on our streets, et cetera.
Finally, it must be said that this Advent preparation and waiting, would be all for naught if it were simply limited to Advent. What then happens to the rest of the year? Advent, in some sense, then, needs to be a model and a paradigm for the entire year, indeed for all of life. The Christ continues to come with the invitation to follow Him where the blind still do not see; the handicapped do not yet have access, where those without justice are still waiting. Human needs never seem to end, which means that our waiting and preparedness must never slacken until the Lord comes finally with the word that the kingdom is now.
The scriptures: Baruch 5: 1-9; Philippians 1: 4-6, 8-11; Luke 3: 1-6
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 09:34 AM.
