Monthly Archives: February 2016

Thoughts on the Sunday readings: God in the thorns

27 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in homily, homily; mercy, Uncategorized

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moses-and-burning-bushJewish midrash is a way of interpreting Hebrew Scripture that seeks to fill in the gaps and therefore bring forth truths of faith. A midrash on the scene of God appearing to Moses in the burning bush that we heard in the first reading (Ex. 3:1-8a,13-15) holds that the bush had thorns.  God witnessed the suffering of the Hebrew people in Egypt, their daily struggle and pain, and therefore God chose to reveal Himself to Moses in the midst of a thorn bush to show that He is a God who is present in the midst of the suffering of his people.

The classic translation of the name that God provides Moses is “I am who I am.” Some scholars suggest that this translation relies too heavily on Greek thinking which tended more toward the philosophical and abstract.  A translation that would lean more toward the Hebraic way of thinking which is more concrete and dynamic in its understanding of being is “I am the one who I am there.”  In this understanding, the revelation of the name of God is immediately connected with his covenant to the people of Israel.  God is not removed, God is revealed as a God who is in the midst of his people.  God’s very being is a “being-for-His-people.”

In the first letter of John we are given the singularly important teaching that “God is love”. This is first and foremost but the way by which we know God as love is the way of mercy.  Mercy is God’s love poured out, given that we might have life.  When we were lost, when we had sinned and wandered far from God, God sought us out.  God sought out Abram and made a covenant with him and his descendants.  God hears the cry of his people in Egypt and he seeks them out.  God enters into their suffering.  God is “I am the one who I am there.”

The fullest revelation of who God is; is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Christ fully reveals both the love and the mercy of God and Christ is that full revelation of the name of God.  In Christ, God fully enters into the thorns of our suffering.  God is revealed in the very midst of our pain, our loss and our weakness.  I am the one who I am there.

But we on our part need to make a choice. This is part of the gospel message for today (Lk. 13:1-9).  Through the incarnation God has entered into his creation and its injustices and tragedies.  I am who I am there.  Christ acknowledges the unjust killing of the Galileans by Pilate as well as the tragic death of those people killed when the tower collapsed.  We each have only so many days allotted us, what choice are we going to make?  CSacred-heart-of-jesus-ibarraranhrist comes to reveal the truth of who God is and to call us into relationship with Him because here and only here is where we will find true life.  What choice will we make?  We each have only so many days allotted us.

The midrash teaches that God revealed himself to Moses in the midst of a thorn bush. Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus, who is God with us and for us, is being scourged he is crowned with a crown of thorns?  In a couple of weeks we will hold the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart Mission here at St. Dominic Church.  The image at the center of the mission is the Sacred Heart of our Lord – a heart both divine and human and a heart surrounded by a crown of thorns beating in love and mercy for us.

The Transfiguration of our Lord: Extraordinary and Ordinary

20 Saturday Feb 2016

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The Transfiguration of our Lord by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

We can say that Lent is an extraordinary time lived in an ordinary season. We fast, we pray, we do works of charity – all while we also go about the ordinary rhythm of our lives.  We still go to work, we still go to school, we visit with one another, we pay bills…  The ordinary rhythm of life continues on even while we make the extraordinary journey of Lent.

We have echoes of this “extraordinary in the ordinary” in our readings for this second Sunday of Lent. In the gospel (Lk. 9:28b-36) our Lord takes Peter, James and John up on the mountain to pray.  The three disciples experience the transfiguration of our Lord as he is in prayer to the Father.  They catch a glimpse of the truth of who Christ is and they are awestruck … but the world continues on.  The other nine disciples were probably about the duties of an ordinary day, for the people in the closest village it was just another day like any other.  The world did not stop even as this amazing event occurs.  Peter, understandably, wants to remain in this extraordinary experience but the gospel goes on to say that he “did not know what he was saying.” Our God does not disdain the ordinary.  For God the extraordinary and the ordinary are not opposed.

Just as Jesus took the three disciples up the mountain to pray, we are told that God “took Abram outside” to see and count the number of the stars (Gen. 15:5-12,17-18).  Our God values our company.  He does not like to walk alone.  Even with the surreal and mystical image of animals being sacrificed and Abram in a trance, God binds himself to an ordinary group of people, Abram’s descendants, in order to walk with them through the running of time and history and thereby bring them (and through them all of humanity) into the fullness of his Kingdom.  Christ himself values our ordinary company.  The gospels are consistent in this message.  Christ does not see himself as some tragic, solitary hero.  Christ binds himself to his ordinary, little group of followers even as he is fully aware of their weaknesses and their limits.

“Yes,” says the author of Philippians, “our citizenship is in heaven” and to this we direct our lives but we now live our lives here in this world so “stand firm in the Lord” (Phil. 3:17-4:1). Our actions here in our ordinary world and lives should reflect the extraordinary glory of our citizenship in heaven which is the hope we journey toward.

For God the extraordinary and the ordinary are not opposed. The same ought to be true for us.  We can be awakened, our eyes can be opened to see the extraordinary in the ordinary if we allow ourselves to be “taken up” by Christ.  Just as Christ took the three disciples up the mountain to pray, just as God took Abram outside to gaze at the heavens, we need to allow Christ to take us and pull us away from our own selfishness and draw us into his own life.  If we allow this to happen then we can participate in a greater reality, our eyes will be opened and we will begin to see as Christ sees.  We also can be transfigured.

It has been said that the transfiguration “means breaking boundaries. It means contemplating how good the Lord is, how wide his horizons are, and how deep the demands of his Gospel are.”  May each one of us be a little more transfigured during this extraordinary time lived in an ordinary season.