Red Sky In the Morning

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affliction, bless, cheerfulness, diligence, endure, evil, generosity, good, hate, honor, love, persevere, prayer, rejoice, rejoice in hope, Romans, see, sincere, spirit, spiritual growth, St. Paul, Thanksgiving, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, weep, zeal

Sometimes opportunity is so fleeting that we easily miss it if we aren’t paying attention. Take, for example, the coming of light to the sky. That’s something that happens every morning so it’s often taken for granted. Today, because of the shift to Daylight Saving Time, I was happy to see that it was in process as I started the trek downstairs for my coffee. Had I not been paying attention when I sat to write on my return I would have missed a breathtaking red sky whose glory dissipated within two minutes. I was almost too busy reading Paul’s staccato-like advice to the Romans in chapter 12 to look out the window. Both “feasts for the eyes” were worthy of a pause.

I could have just glided over that reading (ROM 12:5-26) because of what seemed self-explanatory as well as familiar. I mean, why would I need to think about how to exercise our differing gifts as I read: “let us exercise them: if ministry, in ministering; if one is a teacher, in teaching; if one exhorts, in exhortation…” since it follows automatically in that way. I got stopped, however, by the last three elements on the list: “if one contributes, in generosity; if one is over others, with diligence; if one does works of mercy, with cheerfulness.” Generosity, diligence and cheerfulness are certainly qualities to be pondered.

Had I not been slowed down by those three important words, I could have missed the brilliance of what came next. I find it impossible not to share the totality of this message because every bit of Paul’s exhortation is so vital to our spiritual growth. If we took each one of the following clauses for a day’s reflection we would be much richer when Thanksgiving rolls around. And then it would be a good practice to start again for the season of Advent! But I’m getting ahead of myself. I plan just to bask in the sunshine of this morning and read the text – the entire remainder – aloud, to hear Paul’s words again as if for the first time.

Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor. Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, exercise  hospitality. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same regard for one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly.

Blessings on us all!

 

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Giving Or Getting?

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Acts of the Apostles, afflicted, Corinthians, demand, esteem, Jesus, Matthew, Paul, perplexed, persecuted, power, serve, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, zeal, Zebedee

Today’s lectionary readings seem to point out two basic attitudes to life. I often smile when I read the text from 2 Corinthians (4:7-15) where Paul reminds me of the play when the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” sings (as the Titanic is sinking), “I ain’t down yet!” Paul says, “We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed…” He is so full of zeal for the mission of Jesus that nothing can stop him. I am always amazed when I read of his travels in The Acts of the Apostles, knowing that a trip in his day has absolutely no comparison to mine. What took Paul months on the sea or overland might cost me a few hours on a plane. Paul’s attitude was that of a consummate optimist; he was willing to suffer anything for what he knew of Christ and wanted to share.

The gospel (MT 20:20-28) shows us something different with which we are quite familiar in our “dog-eat-dog” culture. Enter: the mother of the sons of Zebedee, an over-zealous parent who has obviously not learned the disasters that can afflict spoiled children. She approaches Jesus with the wish – no, the demand – that her sons be at his right and left, the positions of power, when it comes to sitting in the kingdom that she presumes he will establish. Not only were she and her sons totally mistaken about the mission of Jesus but they then had to deal with the other ten apostles who were indignant about the way they put themselves forward. Getting all you can of power or esteem or money is a prevalent attitude in our time and culture but is definitely not the way those who seek a spiritual life view right living.

Jesus is clear in his assessment of this situation and in his response both to the Zebedee family and the other apostles, saying, “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.” Paul got the message and maybe the Zebedees eventually did too, since it appears they remained in the company of Jesus whose closing remark in this text is a good lesson for all of us: “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve…”

 

 

 

 

 

The Early Days

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communion of saints, conversion, diversity, fellowship, friends, gifts, spreading the gospel, St. Paul, St. Timothy, St. Titus, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, zeal

I don’t ever recall the Church celebrating a feast in honor of St. Paul’s companions Timothy and Titus even though they have been known to me as recipients of Paul’s letters. Today I hear them accorded the title of “Saint” which clearly they deserve because of their zeal in spreading the gospel for which they eventually lost their lives. A few things stand out for me after reading commentary and thinking about Paul’s letters to each of them.

1. Commentaries put their death date around the year 95 so although they were early followers of Christ, they were not among the first apostles. Evidence points up the diversity in the early Christian community because Titus was a Greek Gentile whereas Timothy had a Greek father and Jewish mother. An interesting note (for me, at least) was the influence of Timothy’s grandmother, Lois, mentioned in one of Paul’s letters. She was a very early Christian who, I’m guessing, may have had some influence on her grandson’s conversion.
2. Both of these men were close friends of Paul and lent him support personally and as an intermediary in the communities to which Paul sent them. Clearly, Paul’s ministry was bolstered by their support in more ways than one.
3. Not simply missionaries, both of these men became administrators of the communities in which they served. Timothy, known to be very young for his role, was compared in the Franciscan commentary to a modern “harried bishop” and Titus was charged by Paul with “organizing, correcting abuses and appointing presbyter-bishops” on the island of Crete. They certainly knew the meaning of “multi-tasking.”

What all of this points up for me is not only that different gifts are essential for the work to be done, but also that “faith is caught, not taught” by people who exhibit the depth of their own faith to others, and that friends are very important; we cannot persevere without them, even if the relationships are carried on from a distance. (Note the warmth in Paul’s letters for both of these men.)

After all this pondering, I find myself conjuring images of these two admirable men as they go about their ministry. I see them arriving by boat, smiling with enthusiasm toward their greeters and exuding love with their every step, writing messages back to Paul of all the happenings of the day or the month and eagerly receiving his response…How grateful I am for their fellowship in the communion of saints to which we all belong!

Our Zeal Quotient

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Advent, Christmas, faith traditions, holy work, Isaiah, Jesus Christ, light, Nativity, Peace, Prince of Peace, universal love, zeal

The prophet Isaiah has had a lot to say during the season of Advent and today, when Christians celebrate the feast of the Nativity of Jesus the Christ, there are four different possibilities from the Roman Catholic lectionary for reflection on those prophecies. Whether from the vigil Mass, the Mass during the night, at dawn or during the day today, this prolific book of the Hebrew Scriptures is a call to attention, recognition and renewal in God’s love. My favorite is always IS 9:1-6, which speaks of the light seen by the people who have been walking in darkness. I should remember to read it more often for the sheer poetry of it. This morning two things stand out.

1. For a child is born to us…They name him Wonder Counselor…Prince of Peace…I have received news of four new babies recently with names I had never or rarely heard before. I have saved the texts with pictures of these wise-looking beings shining out from my phone. I look at and share them often to the delight of everyone. They are unspoiled as yet by this world’s dangers and woes and it is my prayer that they will be instruments of peace and love as they grow.
2. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this! Zeal is such an active word and although I am reminded by this last line of the quoted text that it is God’s work to bring the peace of Isaiah’s vision, it seems so contagious as to be irrepressible – flowing out to “infect” all those who catch its meaning. Here are some dictionary synonyms for the word zeal: passion, ardor, love, fervor, fire, avidity, devotion, enthusiasm, eagerness, keenness, appetite, relish, gusto, vigor, energy, intensity… How is it possible that those who experience God’s zeal for this world’s ongoing creation would be able to remain indifferent to the ongoing achievement of God’s task?

So on we go. Basking in whatever the celebrations of our faith traditions bring to us during this holiday season, may we be renewed in optimism and hope for our world and confident that we are equal to the task of peace and universal love if we are willing to join with all others in this holy and essential work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Way of Generosity

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apostles, cheerful giving, Corinthians, generosity, humility, Matthew, Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, travel, zeal

Paul is writing to the Christians in Corinth this morning about his ministry and God’s grace in its unfolding. In some ways he sounds like a fundraiser preparing the people for the beginning of an upcoming campaign. Urging the community to generosity upon his arrival was necessary since it was only in that way that he was able to continue his work and the work of the other missionaries of the gospel. I rarely think of this aspect of their ministry since the zeal of the message is clearly what fueled them and sometimes it is understood that they traveled around living off the kindness of strangers. But, differently from the first apostles, Paul and his companions traveled far and wide on land and sea, not just on foot, so their needs for shelter and travel were probably significant.

In this morning’s snippet from 2 COR 9:6-11, Paul is focusing on the motivation for generosity as well as the reward. This reminds me of the year I was an “outside consultant” for a parish stewardship program, a strange task for a woman whose relationship to money was grounded in the vow of poverty. Since all it meant was that I attended meetings of the committee and helped to frame the process, I thought I could do the job. The carrot held out to me was the promise that I would be able to preach on All Saints Sunday, the day when parishioners offered their pledges as a “generous promise.” The entire process was an education in the benefits of generosity, which seemed to me at the outset an exercise in semantics to get people to give, but later became a reality that truly motivated “cheerful giving.” Paul saw this early on when he said, “Whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly and whoever sows bountifully will reap bountifully…You are being enriched in every way for all generosity.”

Jesus adds a caveat to this discussion – a sort of postscript to generous giving – when he says in the gospel, “When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others.” (MT 6:1-6) So part of generosity is humility and sincerity because if all we are looking for is praise for our giving, the enrichment that Paul and Jesus are speaking of will be lacking.

None of this is “new news” for people who have been listening to stewardship sermons for years, but it is a great reminder for a way to live our lives – not just in donating money but for generous giving of ourselves in the everyday. As we grow in our ability to let go and offer ourselves humbly and sincerely to whatever possibility is set before us, we will surely come to know the joy and peace that God provides.

Zeal for God’s House

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crucifixion, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., God's house, Holy Week, Isaiah, Jesus, prophecy, prophets, psalm 69, zeal

In today’s first reading (Isaiah 50) the prophet speaks of all the suffering he has been willing to undergo in his vocation of prophecy. From “buffets and spitting” to violent death he is called to endure whatever comes from those who refuse the messages he [or she] is compelled to offer in the service of truth, the word of God. We know this from the prophets of our own time, mindful of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as we just remembered the 50th anniversary of the Selma March. Jesus spoke the word of God in his very being and today Psalm 69 speaks of his motivation as he continues the journey toward crucifixion. It says: I have become an outcast to my brothers, a stranger to my mother’s sons, because zeal for your house consumes me.

The word zeal (from the Greek zelos) speaks loudly to me. It has many meanings. Among them are: passion, ardor, love, fervor, fire, avidity, devotion, enthusiasm, eagerness, keenness, gusto, vigor and intensity. Today I will carry it with me in all of its iterations, pondering the level of my zeal for “God’s house” and joining myself to the mind of Jesus as I move deeper into the experience of this Holy Week.

To the Ends of the Earth

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cardinals, communication, continents, Galilee, geography, global, Jerusalem, Jesus, Luke, Nazareth, Pope Francis, spread of Christianity, St. John Neumann, Syria, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, zeal

As some people my age, I have come “kicking and screaming” into the world of technology. Those who know me, however, are aware of my enthusiasm for the GeoMaster APP which has enabled me to learn the names and locations of places everywhere around the world. I now feel connected to people and events as never before because I know where they live and see where it’s all happening. In an organic way it has expanded the reach of my prayer as well.

This morning I found an incredible synchronicity as I began to prepare this reflection. It began (rather whimsically actually) with a line from Luke’s gospel that says Jesus left Nazareth and went to live at Capernaum by the sea. I had a fleeting image of him sitting in a beach chair watching the waves…but was brought back to my task as I continued to read chapter 4 which gave me a totally different picture. He went all around Galilee, it said, teaching and preaching the Kingdom and curing every disease and illness of the people. His fame spread to all of Syria and great crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and beyond the Jordan followed him. On a map these countries of the Middle East are among the smallest,  but we need to remember that Jesus traveled on foot and only occasionally by boat – small boats.

Next I read about the canonized saint of the Catholic Church whose feast is today. St. John Neumann, born in 1811 was an immigrant to the United States of America when he was 25 years old, coming from what today is known as the Czech Republic. He was a priest of the Redemptorist Order and, his biography states, did “missionary work” first in New York, then in Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, where he was popular with the German community. Named Bishop of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania he became a champion of education, drawing many religious communities of nuns and priests to teach in the schools and creating a system of diocesan schools that remains strong today. He died in 1860 and proclaimed a saint in 1977.

When I went to http://www.americancatholic.org to read about John Neumann, there was a headline on the website about Pope Francis having named a new group of cardinals. There are 15 eligible electors (those who will name the next pope) and 5 honorifics (cardinals who are too old to participate in a conclave but were named because of their long and outstanding service to the Church). The 15 come from 14 nations on every continent including Cape Verde, Tonga and Myanmar. There are 3 from Asia, 3 from Latin America, 2 from Africa and 2 from Oceania. This is an astounding shift and I am proud to say that I can locate all of those places on a world map!

What does all this mean for me today? It just points up the growth and spread of Christianity from a small band of followers of Jesus in a tiny territory over 2,000 years ago to over a billion believers scattered all over planet earth. The miracle of this all boils down to zeal and communication – gifts, talents and willingness exercised by good people not unlike you and me whose faith has continued the story and helped new chapters to be written. Today these include renewed relationships among Christians across the denominational spectrum as well as new connections with those of other religious and philosophical traditions around the world. I am grateful for that today and can only conjecture…where will it go from here?

What’s Your Answer?

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courage, faults, fear, fidelity, followers of Christ, ignorance, Jesus, mission, Paul, Peter, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, zeal

Today my Church celebrates the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul whom we consider to be very important to the spread of Christianity in the world and examples of what it means to be followers of Christ. The comforting thing for me is that both of these men had rather significant faults and yet God chose them for significant roles and ministries. Peter was the one who hid in the crowd and denied that he even knew Jesus during the events of his arrest and trial. Paul, a Roman citizen, was a major figure in the persecution of Christians in the early days of Christianity. Considering those behaviors, I  am led to reflect on the effects of fear and ignorance. Peter clearly loved and followed Jesus throughout the three years of public ministry. Who of us, had we been a follower of the person some considered to be the Messiah, the one to restore the earthly kingdom of David (not yet recognized as divine), would have been willing to acknowledge him in a situation that would mean certain death for us? That was Peter’s fear. And Paul, an upstanding Roman citizen, was acting in the manner of the occupying nation in Israel when he was persecuting those who had become disciples of Jesus. He understood this as his duty and was ignorant of the true identity of Jesus until his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.

Considering Peter in today’s gospel (MT 16:13-19), we remember another side of him. He was the only one who had something to say when Jesus asked the gathered disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” His response of “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” was the proclamation of a man who was willing to spontaneously jump out of a boat into the water to get to Jesus (more than once!) for love of him, the one who proclaimed that love in a threefold answer to the question, “Peter, do you love me?” This same Peter did, in fact, die for his faith in Christ – crucified upside down – after years of leadership in the communities of faith. Paul, converted in a blaze of light on that fateful journey to Damascus, never looked back and became “the Apostle to the Gentiles” credited with more writing and more preaching than anyone else in the spread of Christianity in the known world.

I think of the dictum that “there’s a little bad in the best of us and a little good in the worst of us” as I ponder these two giants. Paul doesn’t always get high marks from women and Peter was rather impulsive but we need to consider the culture of the times and the personalities of these saints when judging them. What stands out is their zeal and the love that impelled them forward and once they woke up to their mission nothing ever stood in the way of their fidelity and courage. They certainly lived out – in word and action – their answer to the question Jesus put to Peter in the beginning. So today I ask myself, as Jesus the Christ asks me: Lois, who do YOU say that I am?