The Book of Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 7:32-35

The Holy Gospel according to Mark 1:21-28

The fascination with fortunetellers and psychic readers is not new.  That interest escalates in times of uncertainty.  People do not want the experience of being in the dark, hearing sounds, and wondering what is going on out there.  Won’t someone please turn on the lights?  Someone, please tell us what is happening.  As understandable as anxiety is, the role of the prophet in Scripture is misunderstood if we think he is a seer who tells people with specificity what tomorrow holds.

The prophet in Hebrew Scriptures is one who speaks what God wants the people to hear.  The prophetic onus is tremendous.  No wonder some of the major prophets protested their unworthiness when they felt summoned to the task.  No wonder some of them fled in terror hoping their calling would change.  Fidelity to the vocation will not necessarily result in the prophet’s being heard or the message heeded.  Hear Jeremiah’s anguished cries as he sinks into the mud of the cistern where he has been cast because of his unpopular message.  Think of Jonah last week as he fumed in the whale’s belly.  Of course he was disappointed because the Ninavites heard Jonah’s prophecy and repented.  Jonah had hoped to see their destruction by God’s wrath.

Prophecy is something faith communities need in order to be reminded lest the way be lost.  Or, once lost, to help them find the way back.  Taken as a whole, what is the prophetic message?  Through the Prophet, God says: Let me be your God.  You be my people.  Foreigners will know and marvel at our relationship unlike that between any other nation and their gods when they see you following my ways.

Ah, as Shakespeare says, there just might lay the rub.  Every prophetic message is a call to conversion, to a change of life.  No one ever said that conversion would be easy.  It always involves dying and rising, dying to one way of life and rising to another.  Or, conversion necessitates going deeper into the faith life being lived and responding more completely.

There are two ways to hear this Sunday’s first reading.  It is assumed by those in Moses’ audience that hearing God directly would be too intense, just as would be the experience of looking on the face of God.  They knew that no one cane see the face of God and live – no one, that is, but Moses.  The Israelites did not argue that point.  At the same time there is the desire to know the mind of God.  The Lord said to Moses; I will raise up for (the Israelites) a prophet like you from among their kin and will put my words into his mouth; he shall tell them all that I command him.  There will be others like Moses who will speak to the people on God’s behalf.  That is another way of saying that God’s presence among the people will be evidenced by the veracity of the message.  So many times, succinctly put, that message will be: Remain faithful.  Come back to me with all your heart.  At other times there will be prophetic warnings regarding the implications of infidelity.  If the people abandon God’s ways, their strength will be sapped.  Destruction and bondage could follow if they do not give up the ways of pagans.  But even should they be enslaved, the Prophet will remind the people that God is faithful and one day God will bring them back and restore their city.  There will always be forgiveness and ready reconciliation.

Some hear in the promise to raise up for them a prophet the Messianic Promise.  Christians believe that promise is fulfilled in Jesus.  Mark says it quite clearly at the outset of his Gospel: Here begins the gospel (Good News) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus is the one who shall tell the people all that God commands him since his will is always to do the bidding of the One who sent him.

So it is that at the beginning of his ministry in Mark, Jesus observes Sabbath and enters the synagogue.  He teaches and gives for the first time in the Gospel prophetic utterance.  Two words dominate the moment.  Authority.  Astonished.  The first describes the manner with which Jesus taught.  There was the professorial about him, a depth of understanding conveyed, but in such a way that those who heard could also understand.  The second word, astonished, describes the people’s reaction.  Astonished.  Amazed.  Both words are used interchangeably in the Gospels and convey the picture of people standing with mouths agape in reaction to what they hear or see.  Neither word implies belief.  Throughout the Gospel two quite distinct groups will follow after Jesus.  Disciples are those who have made their decision about Jesus.  Crowds are those who may well be astonished but are unable to commit.

All the more important that we pay attention to the reaction of the unclean spirit Jesus casts out of the possessed man in the synagogue.  The spirit cries out: What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are – the Holy One of God!  The evil spirit recognizes the authority and from where it comes.  That is beyond what the crowd has perceived.  And Jesus commands the spirit to be silent.  It will not be Evil’s witness that will convince the people who Jesus is, but the words he speaks and the works he does.  Quiet!  Come out of him!

So, today’s Gospel concludes with people marveling about what they have seen, the astonishing authority with which Jesus has acted and his new teaching.  But to what does it all point?  What does this mean?  The people of the synagogue, the witnesses, will tell others the story and help spread Jesus reputation.  It will take the rest of the story, the rest of the journey with Jesus, for the mystery to be revealed and for faith to begin.  Because even those who early on call themselves disciples will have to let go of what they thought they understood, let go of their assumptions about the promised Messiah, and watch him die.  Ah, but then there will be the Third Day.

And so, we hear the proclamation.  What will be its impact on our lives?  We must ponder, noshing, if you will, taking the Word into our hearts.  We live in the light of that Third Day.  About that we don’t have to wonder.  That is why the completion of the Liturgy of the Word for us is always a transition.  We move from the Table of the Word to the Table of the Eucharist, there to enter into Mystery and be transformed, as is the bread and wine, by the invoking of the Spirit.  It is not for us to be astonished or amazed.  Having shared the meal and been deepened in faith and transformed into Christ’s Body, it will be for us to go out and continue the prophecy through ministry.  Some may be astonished at the love being poured out.  Others, though, will see and recognize the source of the power of the works.  And seeing, they will come to believe with us.  And the prophecy goes on.

Sincerely,

Didymus      

]]> http://didymus.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/the-fourth-sunday-in-ordinary-time-january-29-2012/feed/ 0 didymus http://didymus.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/you-must-remember-this/ http://didymus.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/you-must-remember-this/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:54:54 +0000 didymus http://didymus.wordpress.com/?p=1045 ]]> Dear Jesus,

Why are there so many who have to be jealous about you, controlling about who speaks and acts in your name?  When I was a child and first getting to know you, those few actors who could speak in your behalf were clearly and narrowly defined and delineated, at least in my mind.  The pope spoke.  The bishop spoke.  The priest spoke.  The rest of us Catholic Christians listened and towed the line in response.  Even in our worship, all was done for and before us.  We accepted the dictum that we were not very well educated in theology and ecclesiology in those days.  So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised in light of today’s sensibilities that we couldn’t have been trusted with weightier responsibilities then.

Were you uncomfortable with the attitudes we had then even about Eucharist?  Maybe I wasn’t paying attention then.  Certainly I wasn’t reading the right books.  I don’t ever remember being told that Eucharist was more a verb than a noun, something to be done more than something to be adored, and something to be shared and imitated.

Granted, it was safer in those days of clearer definition, when moral decision-making was easier.  We knew what sins were mortal and the primacy of importance to avoid sexual sins, all of which were mortal.  We accepted that there was no such thing as a venial sexual sin.  Not much was said about justice and peace issues.  Oh, the church spoke, but in terms of importance, those teachings didn’t have nearly the impact that the warnings about sexual morality had on our consciences.

With such clear definition we knew our responsibility regarding Mass attendance, too.  We knew we had to hear Mass on all Sundays and holy days of obligation.  We did that by being present on those occasions, at least from the time the priest removed the chalice veil until he closed the tabernacle door after Communion.  We weren’t even expected to share in the meal except visually.  For most people, having to fast even from water from midnight before made it difficult to receive Communion at any Mass that started after 8AM.  Some would try to last until a later Mass.  There were frequent faintings at Mass in those days.

No wonder the noun Eucharist was more clearly understood by us than the verb Eucharist.  You can adore nouns.  Verbs require action.

I keep using we when I guess honesty should force me to use I.  I am writing this to you acknowledging my own shortcomings and limitations in terms of response.  Do you remember how popular the shorter, quieter Masses used to be?  The quieter aspects allowed people to get through their rosaries and other private devotions while Mass was going on.  By today’s standards that would be missing Mass.  When I had something important pending, I could get to Mass at 6AM and be on my way by 6:40 – 6:30 if just a few people went to Communion.  That can’t happen today, at least in most parishes.

I’m confessing past attitudes to you, even as I am hoping you will help me adapt and change in light of what some would call newer insights that to me sound like an attempt to return us to those ways.  I’m not sure I can endure those unless you help me.  Don’t you see that I have embraced the newer ways that to me are far more demanding?

Did you send that person to mock me and leave me shaken and unsettled because he asked me: “Do you think the church is a supernatural welfare state holding entitlements to grace for the submissive?  Or do you think the church exists not to serve itself, but to serve the Liturgy of the World?”  I thought it was nervy of him to speak that way to me since he isn’t even one of us, if you catch my meaning.  Then he quoted Karl Rahner’s description of that terrible and sublime liturgy, breathing death and sacrifice that God celebrates…throughout the free history of men and women…throughout the whole length and breadth of this colossal history of birth and death.  Now how am I supposed to react to that?

Do you know how disturbing that line of thinking is?  It’s far more demanding than some might think they can face every time they go to Mass.  If we enter into that kind of celebration every Sunday, soon what will be left of us?  Maybe that is why some liked it better when they used to hear the bell and know that the bread and wine had been changed and you were there.  Now we have to wonder if that is enough.  What if only the bread is changed and I am not?  Or could I use we here again?  We understand today that this action is, after all, something you challenge us to do as the people of God, the body of Christ, the church.

Is this the kind of violence to self we should expect when we enter into worship that demands such total transformation?  That shouldn’t surprise us.  After all, you spoke in terms of cutting off a hand, or a foot, in terms of plucking out an eye if any of these hindered our journey toward the Kingdom.  Maybe that would be easier than to meet the demands of Eucharist properly celebrated.  Because when we finish that, we still have to allow ourselves to be broken and poured out in service.

May I be honest with you?  As demanding as this present understanding of Eucharistic Liturgy is, I love it and want to continue to experience its transforming power.  I think it is more than pride that makes me resent the attempt to turn the clock back and return us to the practices of those olden days of my childhood.

Still, what can I do?  I have to listen to and obey those that speak for you.  So when the changes begin this Advent, I will submit.  Secretly, I may continue to hold the attitudes and values I have gleaned from my present understanding of Eucharist even if I won’t be able to express them.  And I’ll pray for the day when the Spirit moves us forward again.

Could you get back to me about all of this?  Could you let me know what you expect of me?

Sincerely,

Didymus

The Book of the Prophet Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark’s Gospel 1:14-20

This is the only Sunday in the three-year cycle of readings that we hear from the Prophet Jonah.  That shouldn’t be surprising since the book is short, only four brief chapters.  In some ways the book is a comic opera given the hapless and reluctant prophet that is Jonah.  Reluctant is the operative word.  God called Jonah to be a prophet to the people of Nineveh, a people of long standing animosity with Israel.  Jonah wanted noting to do with them and so fled by ship hoping to reach Tarshish and so escape God’s call.  You know what happened next.  God sent a storm that threatened to envelop the boat and sink it.  The mates on board saw the storm saw the storm as a punishment from God, but directed at whom?

Jonah confessed that he was fleeing from God’s will and concluded that the storm was probably directed at him.  He offered himself to be thrown into the sea so that the ship would be spared.  Overboard he went only to be swallowed by a giant fish in whose belly Jonah would reside for three days.  Jonah repented from there.  God heard him and commanded the fish to spew forth Jonah.  Sputtering on the shore, Jonah heard God’s message again: Set out for the great city of Nineveh and announce to it the message that I will give you.  The message?  In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed – the epitome of a sermon of fire and brimstone.  Jonah expected his proclamation to be ignored by the people of Nineveh.  He looked forward to finishing the three-day trek through the city so that he could climb the hill on the other side and from there, watch the destruction of the detested people.

Imagine his consternation when, after a single day’s journey into the city, all the people hear the prophecy and repent, declaring a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.  Even the king repented, and so God changed his mind.  Nineveh was spared, much to Jonah’s disappointment.  He so wanted to see the fire and brimstone fall from the heavens.  Instead he witnessed God’s mercy and finally experienced that mercy in his own heart.

So, what is the point of all this?  When we hear the word of the Lord, we ought to respond wholeheartedly.  But you have to wonder what was in the hearts of the people of Nineveh that they repented so quickly and thoroughly.  What spoke to them and touched the longings in their hearts.  Why didn’t they hear in Jonah the epitome of the judgmental Haranguer?  In spite of Jonah’s sternness, God’s grace went out through Jonah’s message and found reception in the people’s hearts.  They heard a message of hope, theirs if they would only change their ways.

After John the Baptist had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.  Jesus’ message, like Jonah’s is a call to repentance but without the threat of immanent destruction.  The word gospel means good news.  Jesus invites all who hear him to get ready for the time of fulfillment, what the prophets had foretold, the coming of the reign of God.  If they change their lives and return to God’s ways they will experience God in their lives – God living not only among them but also in them.

Now we see the start of something new.  Jesus does not want to be the sole bearer of the good news.  He invites others to take up his ministry.  He calls the fishermen, Simon and Andrew.  It would seem at their first hearing of the message they respond wholeheartedly.  Come after me, and I will make you fishers of humankind.  They will still be throwing out nets, but not to ensnare fish.  Immediately Simon and Andrew abandon their former way of life and follow Jesus.  There is no implication that the brothers were living evil lives.  They were honest and hard workers.  It means that Jesus called them to something different and they held nothing back in responding.

The same holds true for the next pair of fishermen-brothers, James and John, who hear and immediately leave their father, Zebedee, and the crew of workers and follow Jesus.  One can’t help but wonder how thrilled Zebedee was with this turn of events.  But for the brothers, Jesus was the answer to everything that they longed for and desired.  For them there was nothing else to do but answer his call.

They abandoned everything and followed Jesus.  They left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed Jesus.  The call goes forth and the response is total.  The example is a call for us to do the same.

You might ask what these men understood when Jesus invited them to follow him and become fishers of people.  They probably did not understand very much and certainly not what they would come to understand to be the Gospel.  In the beginning they had a lot to learn.  Jesus must have had a magnetic personality.  Everywhere he spoke, crowds immediately gathered.  It is likely that those first called thought Jesus was the Messiah with their understanding of Messiah as the one who would restore Israel to power and drive out foreign rule, free them from the Romans.  They might have imagined that when all this would come to pass they would find themselves to be important personages in that coming realm.  Perhaps.  That really doesn’t matter.  Jesus spoke.  They followed.  They never looked back.  As they made their trek with Jesus they would come to a whole new understanding of Messiah and experience God who does not want to be served but to serve.  They would be formed following the example that Jesus was before them.  They would come to understand that Jesus is the message that invites all people to experience a new unity with God and each other, a new peace.

For us, it is the same.  Whatever fascinates us about Jesus in the beginning doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that we recognize the call and dare to imagine that the message is meant for us.  What matters is our willingness to change our lives and conform them to Christ.  What matters is that we follow him and learn his ways.

That is what making this journey through the Liturgical Year can accomplish.  We hear the readings as the Word of God.  We hear the Gospel as the living word.  We listen and let that Good news that is Jesus take root in our hearts.  We change and learn to do what Jesus does.  If Jesus is the norm, then imitating him must be our response.  Over time and with each gospel’s proclamation we will come to know more and more what that imitation means, what in us has to change.  It is not fear that draws us.  It is love.  And like those first responders, we too are invited to join in the announcing of the Good News, Jesus the Lord.

I don’t know how long it is that we walk in Jesus’ footsteps before we realize that his call is never for ourselves alone.  I don’t know when it is that we realize that the love that drew us must go out from us and draw others.  But I do believe that once we hear and let the Word penetrate our hearts, the rest follows.

That is why our lives soon begin to revolve around Sunday Eucharist.  We gather with others who have heard and begun to respond.  We gather as one body to be renewed in Jesus’ dying and rising.  We gather to give thanks to God through the renewal of Jesus’ dying and rising.  We gather to take and eat the Body of Christ so that we can be sent forth and in the week ahead, find the strength and the courage to be fishers of people, catching them up in God’s love that comes to us through Jesus and invite them to follow, too.

Sincerely,

Didymus

Recently I was struck by Isaiah’s beautiful prophecy (Isaiah 62: 1-5) in which the Lord speaks like a young lover on bended knee before his wounded beloved.  Does he kiss away the tears as the Beloved hiccups the names others have called her?  Forsaken?  Desolate?  I can hear him hushing and gently patting in a tender embrace as he speaks of restored virginal innocence in a new period of betrothal before the wedding and the beginning of something new.

We need to hear those words and the images that emerge now as we stand in the wreckage and mire of these times.  We are wounded and the hurled mud clings to the hems of our garments.  It isn’t that long ago that we were in glory days.  Remember the hope and confidence we felt in those days of renewal and how boldly the Good News was proclaimed then?  Walls came tumbling down as East and West were reunited and divisions among people seemed to be healing as a new awareness of our oneness came into focus.  In the process there had been terrible days of fire hoses and snarling dogs.  Nightsticks and Billy clubs pummeled some.  Some were numbered among the disappeared never to be seen again.  Out of the ashes rose a phoenix of fraternal possibilities as we began to recognize and accept the dignity of each person, regardless of race or creed or gender or orientation.

In the church, the invitation to the exercise of Baptismal Priesthood helped many to respond to the call to ministry.  It was as if, in a moment, the People of God took to heart Paul’s reminder of the many and diverse gifts given to God’s people that, if put into practice, could result in the building up of something new, the Body of Christ.  Women and men, young and not so young, the able and the disabled, all were represented among those who presented themselves and said, “With the help of the Spirit we can do this.  We can respond to the call.”

As I write this today, I feel discouraged.  I see the wreckage of these last few years.  It is as if the lights have gone out and the enthusiasm has waned, and possibilities have succumbed to the cants of prophets of doom.

People have exited the pews and turned their backs to walk away.  Discouraged by scandal, they do not hear a proclamation of the promise of the Good News.  They know that some in positions of authority reject the teachings of Vatican Council II and with concerted effort seek to return the church to pre-Counciliar days.  The Language of Liturgy is becoming stilted and archaic in an attempt to transliterate the Latin texts instead of translating texts into the people’s vernacular.  Instead of experiencing a call to full, active, and conscious participation in the Liturgy, divisions emerge and mass is said for rather than celebrated with the Assembly.

Some worship spaces have been remodeled to accommodate the Tridentine Liturgy with altars against the wall, tabernacles resting at the center of the altar, and mass said with the priest’s back to the people.  Even the communion railing to separate the ordinary people from the sanctuary where the ordained may enter, are being restored.

Reservation chapels for the Eucharist are falling out of use as tabernacles return to the main worship area.  Or, ignoring the canon directing that there be one place of reservation in the parish, some churches have both the tabernacle in the worship space and a reservation chapel for perpetual adoration lest Jesus be lonely in the tabernacle there. The people are not to gather to celebrate Eucharist and experience the sacramental transforming presence of Christ in the Word, in the Assembly, and in Bread and Wine; they are told to come not so much as a people but as individuals to worship the Presence in the tabernacle.  Often the people do not receive from the Bread and Wine consecrated at the Eucharist they are part of but from the reserved Eucharistic Bread from the tabernacle.  So much for full, active and conscious participation.  Access to the Cup is being curtailed in many places, too.

I struggle with the tug of material things and find myself envying those who have much.  I say that even as I recognize that, in relationship to so many of my brothers and sisters in impoverished lands, I have plenty.  And I realize that the lure of materialism can enmesh even the vigilant.  Schooled in the Church’s social Gospel, I believed in the responsibility we have for each other, especially for the poor, the disabled, the aged, and the disenfranchised.  The poor are poor because they didn’t work as hard as the wealthy, or so some would say.  The wealthiest shouldn’t be taxed to help the government meet the needs of the poor.  I realize that we live in a land where the separation of church and state is established.  But for a time I had rejoiced in thinking that the Church’s social Gospel was having an impact on the conscience of the people at large.  Alas.

Being older is not valued today.  Only the young, the beautiful, the strong and the wealthy matter in this land of increasing disparity between those who have and those who don’t.  Granted, some among the Evangelical Fundamentalists see wealth as a sign of God’s favor and of the predestination in heaven of the wealthy.  That is not part of our Catholic tradition.  If the Forsaken and the Desolate are to experience the Lord’s embrace and be lifted out of squalor it will be through those who minister motivated by that vision of restoration.

We need another Cana.  Are the stone water jars empty?  Have we run out of rich wine?  Or is the Lord telling us that Cana has already happened.  The gifts have been given.  The water jars are filled to overflowing with the finest wine.  Dip some out and drink.  We have to take the Lord’s word for it, take it seriously.

This is the new thing that the Lord has wrought, this time of transforming the water of our lives into the rich wine of fulfillment, dependent upon our sharing with others the gifts the Spirit empowers in us.  The Lord is calling us to something new and does not wish us to sit and wait for the Lord to do something about the trouble we are in and so make renewal happen.  The Lord expects us to be instruments of peace, change, and renewal.  Our hearts have to change. Our responsibility is to live, vulnerable as we are and offer our giftedness, limited though that might be, and trust that the Lord who changed the water into wine at Cana can transform this raw material of ours into a renewed church with powers unleashed to transform the world.

That’s pretty heady, isn’t it?  We might be inclined to pray about this for a while longer and then get back to the matter at a later date.  But think of Cana and the change it promises.  If we take the Marriage Feast at Cana to heart then we have to face the fact that the Lord’s hour has come and he has given us a role to play in it.

Sincerely,

Didymus

The First Book of Samuel 3:3b-10, 19

Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20

John’s Gospel 1:35-42

With the celebration of the Second Sunday we enter Ordinary Time.  The Christmas Season concluded last Sunday with the celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord.  There is a risk we take if we make this journey through the Liturgical Year and listen to the proclamation of the full cycle of readings.  The possibility is that we might not be at all the same at the conclusion as we were at the start.  Perhaps that is stating the obvious.  The fact of the matter is, conversion is the risk we run each time we gather to celebrate Eucharist.

It always amazes me how casually and nonchalantly people come together for Liturgy.  What is the action works this time?  What if the Spirit rushes through the assembly this time and accomplishes the same transformation of them that happens with the bread and the wine?  Of course it happens, even if those assembled are unaware.  The faithful are ready to venerate the Body and Blood of Christ present in the Eucharist.  Are they ready to be the Body of Christ?  Then shouldn’t they have the same reverence for the Christ present in the Assembly?  If it works, the Liturgy, that is, then Christ is present in those who have gathered, who have eaten and drunk, and who are then sent.  Maybe the realization takes time.  But how long?  If it works, about the same length of time it takes to transform the Bread and the Wine.

The human experience is on of awareness gradually unfolding and growing in clarity.  The potential plant is contained in the seed.  Watch that seed sprout and the plant grow and the blossom burst forth and you know that your understanding and appreciation has grown as well through each stage of the plant’s development.  That’s what happens when we journey in faith and yield to the Spirit’s influence.  Our understanding grows with each step we take, with each celebration of Eucharist, and we come to an increased awareness of what it means to be the Body of Christ, that is, if we respond.  We have to allow it to happen.

Hear the first reading from the First Book of Samuel and marvel.  It is an account of growing awareness on the part of the boy Samuel and of his teacher, the priest and leader Eli.  Samuel is sleeping in the temple where the ark of God was.  The ark is a concentrated presence of God, if you will.  God’s presence is universal, but is especially so where the ark is.  Samuel, young, perhaps 13 years old, was given to God’s service from infancy by his mother, Hannah.  He is awakened by the sound of his name on the night air.  Samuel.  Samuel.  Was it a whisper?  Was it a shout?  That doesn’t matter.  The response matters.  Here I am.  Twice the boy will wake Eli thinking it was the teacher calling.  The third time Samuel awakens him, Eli understands who it is who calls, that it is the Lord.  One wonders if Eli suffered pangs of jealousy that one so young had an encounter that Eli had always longed for.  Regardless, Eli told Samuel that the next time he heard the voice he was to say: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.  For Samuel it will be an invitation from the Lord to prophecy and the beginning of a relationship with the Lord that will bring him to anoint the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David.  Alas, Eli will hear the first prophecy from Samuel, the promise of the coming destruction of Eli and his family for their lack of fidelity to the Lord.  The word of God is a two-edged sword.

When Samuel obeyed Eli following the third calling of his name, how much did he understand?  Certainly not nearly as much as he did at the twilight of his life and after the years of service and openness to the Lord.  At the beginning of each person’s faith walk, s/he is called by name by God as the seed of faith is planted in the human heart.  It is the role of the more experienced, the seasoned veterans in the faith, to help the neophyte understand who it is that is calling and to exemplify what it means to respond.

The Rite of Christian Initiation (RCIA) process is meant to provide the atmosphere and means for those awakening to faith the call to Baptism.  Along the way, through the experience of faith in the witness and action of the catechists and the parish assembly they come to understand what believers do and how they worship.  It is a process that entails journeying with Jesus through the full cycle of readings in a Liturgical year.  Sometimes it takes even longer.  They come to understand who it is that is calling, what it means to follow, and so find the courage and the faith to say: Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.  Their faith is dawning as they stand at the Font’s edge and take their first steps into the waters.  As they emerge on the other side, reborn in Christ, they will come to understand that they have only just begun and that they will continue to grow, to be transformed, until, in the fullness of time, Christ comes to full stature in them.

Faith in Christ is a growing process.  No one knows and understands at once.  Even Paul, after his blazing encounter on the road to Damascus, had to be led by the hand back into the city where he would be instructed and so learn how much he would have to suffer for the Name.

The two in the gospel this Sunday are seekers.  They thought that John the Baptist was the one they sought.  But John, like Eli, like the RCIA catechist, points them in another direction as Jesus walks by: Behold the Lamb of God.  Notice the question Jesus asks the two of them as he becomes aware that they a following him.  What are you looking for?  Notice that they have no answer to the question because they know so little; but they know that something is here.  They hope that they will know better after some time and exposure to him.  So, they address Jesus as Rabbi and ask him where he lives.  Jesus’ response is: come and see.  Do you remember that later bitter confrontation between Jesus and Peter when they are coming down the mountain after the Transfiguration, what Jesus says to him when Peter tries to dissuade Jesus from going to Jerusalem to suffer, to die, and on the third day rise again?  Remember what Jesus said then?  Get behind me, you tempter, and learn from me!  The words are harsh, but what he commanded Peter to do was to walk in Jesus’ footsteps, watch over his shoulder and observe what he does so that he can do the same and come to understand.  That is the same thing, in gentler words, that Jesus says to the two seekers.  And they stayed with him that day.  That is the only way to come to know Jesus, by being with him and then doing what he does.

The next thing we hear is that Andrew, one of the two, goes to his brother Simon and tells him: We have found the Messiah – which translated means Christ.  Meeting Christ, believing in Christ, means bringing others to Christ.  Bring others to Christ and let Christ do the rest.  See how Simon is changed.  Jesus gives him a new name that in turn gives him a new significance.  You are Simon, the son of John; you will be called Cephas – which translated is Peter.  And Peter is translated Rock.

So, the faith journey of this year begins.  Maybe the Lord asks you at the outset: What are you looking for?  There may be many things you think you seek.  Ultimately, though, it is Christ you seek and your ongoing transformation in Christ.  So he says to you, Come and see.  Listen as you stand at the Table of the Word.  Observe as you fully, actively and consciously participate at the Table of the Eucharist.  Be transformed as you take and eat.  And if it works, you will be transformed and newly convinced that you are sent to be the continuation of Christ’s presence in the world until all have eaten and drunk and come to know.

Sincerely,

Didymus 

What is a prophet?

That may sound like a silly question.  You may read this and think that I ought to know the answer to that most basic of questions.  Maybe I do, but my question is sincere and a result of struggling with what others claim are prophetic utterances.  I can’t reconcile them with what I think I have heard you say.

I don’t know when I first concluded that a prophet is someone inspired by your Spirit to say things that God wants the people to hear and make a practical response, even a change of life – what we might call conversion.  Doesn’t the prophet help us to recognize the message in our present and lived experience?  If the prophet is genuine and Spirit inspired, shouldn’t the prophet’s message, challenging as it might be, rise out of your Good News and be compatible with it?  I wonder if the prophet doesn’t live the message as much as proclaim it.

Ought prophetic utterances be divisive, segregating your people, making some feel unloved and beyond the pale of your mercy?  There are not a few of those proclaiming to speak in your name, uttering what they say are Bible-based messages, damning segments of society, declaring these ones made in the image and likeness of God, or so we believe about every human being, declaring them to be hated by God and destined for eternal punishment in hell.  The message seems to be that your dying and rising won’t benefit them.  Apparently, God no longer wills the salvation of all people, and God’s love is no longer universal.

You were there when I sat with the man in tears who told me he was leaving our parish community because the message he was hearing from some Catholic voices was that the Church didn’t love him or his kind, thought he was depraved because of who and what he is.  Tell me that that message cannot come from a Spirit-driven prophet.

How can a message be prophetic, that is having God as its source, and incite people to violence and war.  I do not believe that anyone can kill another person in your name.  Dare I be so bold as to think that there isn’t now, nor has there ever been, such a thing as a holy war.  Not to be flippant, but wouldn’t that be an oxymoron?  At least that is what I have always believed.

If the message of all the prophets were condensed into one, if your Word were announced nakedly, so to speak, wouldn’t it be a universal call to all people to know God’s love for them and, recognizing that love, to live lives of service, to do everything with love as the driving force?  I believe that.

I envy the security some seem to have in their positions.  To me they seem smug, try as I might not to be judgmental.  They see things so clearly in non-graduated shades of black and white.  They seem to say there is only one way that leads to heaven and to God.  But isn’t that what got you into trouble in the synagogue at Nazareth when you told those among whom you had grown up that some outside the household were doing a better job of responding to God’s will and ways than they were?

I would probably be more secure if I thought prophecy would always come in the ways that I expect it and in turns of phrase that I find comfortable.  Still, I accept that our God is a god of surprises and that God’s word unsettles the complacent in every age.  I also believe that prophets ultimately proclaim God’s love, God’s desire to be our god, and God’s desire for us to let God be god in our lives.  You were being prophetic when you welcomed sinners and others deemed untouchable by the Pharisees, the keepers of the Law.  You welcomed sinners and broke bread with them and these attitudes and actions became the cause used to justify your execution.

I admire some protesters and demonstrators.  Yesterday I saw a picture of someone carrying a banner that read: As long as there is one soul in prison, I am not free.  That was a prophetic utterance that got me thinking about the fact that at the heart of our faith is the conviction that once we were slaves, but God acted to lead us to freedom.  If I believe that, and in my solidarity in you with my sisters and brothers in the world, if, as I think I did, if I heard you say that you fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy about setting captives free, how can I be at peace in a nation that has more of its citizens in prisons and jails than any other Western world nation?  Certainly there are those dangerous ones from whom the rest of society needs to be protected.  But how many of those imprisoned ones made the criminal decisions they did in squalid circumstances and desperate situations.  You have inspired prophetic voices to call for a rebuilding of impoverished neighborhoods and for better education of the children struggling for survival in them.  They awaken in some the sense of responsibility we have for one another.

What strain on the idea of the human family comes from the fact that the vast majority of wealth is in the hands of 1.5% of our population while the numbers of impoverished continues to grow as does the chasm that separates the “haves” from the “have-nots.”  Some prophetic voices call us to share the wealth.  Are they rooting their prophesy in the Gospel and your challenge to your disciples to feed the hungry and clothe the naked?  Aren’t those sheep on the right in Matthew’s judgment scene, the prophetic ones who recognized you in every dire situation and responded with acts of love?

I read of a man’s execution in another state.  Reporters wrote that he cried out to God for mercy and protested his innocence.  He pled for God’s intervention and deliverance.  And his mother wept on the other side of the glass window in the execution chamber.  Isn’t there a prophetic message about that situation that needs to be heard?

Some decry the emerging role of women in the Church and of the laity in worship.  They are calling for a ridding of practices that grew out of the reforms of Vatican Council II.  More and more is being heard of nostalgia for the good old days when the Church was more obviously hierarchical and the laity was more obviously subservient to the ordained.  Never mind about the proclamation of the Priesthood of the Baptized and the call for the full, active, and conscious participation of the faithful in Liturgy.  I can’t find the Spirit in these utterances and calls for reform.  Is the faith experience of mourners really enriched by the return of black vestments worn by the priest-presider?  What is the prophetic message all this proclaims?  Don’t these messages and similar ones stifle your voice?  You are probably not surprised that many of the faithful are fleeing and finding solace and the strengthening of their faith in other denominations, Christian and otherwise?  I wonder if you do not weep at what you see.

I know I feel vulnerable when such prophecies wash over me.  They are so contrary to everything I believed and that motivated my ministry and the empowering decisions I made.  I want to put my hands over my ears and crouch and cringe because I cannot silence them.  I cannot reconcile the message to your announcing of the Good News.  It is one thing to bask in nostalgia for former times; it is another to try to regress to those times.  The Church is a living organism that continues to evolve.  I believe you want us to attain our full stature and to embrace the freedom that is ours as the children of God, loved by God with the same love God has for you.  That has to govern how we celebrate when we gather with you for Eucharist.

I wonder what will be the prophetic call you will announce next.  It is the nature of prophesies to unsettle and challenge us to grow in the implications of our Baptisms.  There needs to be the graced power of discernment to help us separate the true from the false prophets.

Just when I think I’ve got it down, will the prophet always shake me up to realize how much further I have to go?  If I dare to listen and find the courage to continue on The Way, you will be with me, won’t you?  And with these people with whom I journey to our table?

One last thought occurs to me.  What should I do if you ask me to take a prophetic stance?  After all, that role could flow from Baptism.  Will I be able to let you point the way?

Sincerely,

Didymus

The Book of the Prophet Isaiah 60:1-6

Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6

The Gospel according to Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany.  The word means manifestation, showing forth, or demonstration.  An epiphany makes something once hidden evident.  On this feast we celebrate the clear and certain proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah and Lord, the Son of God.  It is all in the signs contained in the readings.  Ah, but we have to be able to read signs in order to get the message.  And we have to persevere in hope believing that one day, the day of the Lord for which we long will come to pass.

In the first reading, Isaiah, as often is the case, proclaims a message of hope to a people nearing despair.  Darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples.  Israel seems to be in a hopeless situation.  Jerusalem and the Temple are in ruins.  The people are in the Diaspora, living in slavery, enveloped in the thick clouds of the Babylonian captivity.  Yet Isaiah proclaims that it will not always be like this.  The people must remember the promise.  They are walking in darkness now.  One day the sun will shine on them with a radiance that will be so alluring that even the Gentiles from far away places will stream to them even as they return to Jerusalem from enslavement.  The poetry is lush.  The names of the far-away places are exotic.  If we put contemporary names on those places from which people will stream to Israel we will understand that Isaiah is talking about the people of Iran and Iraq, Spain, Egypt, and Ethiopia.  They are the ones coming to bask in the favor of Israel’s God.  The come because the glory of the Lord shines upon the people of Israel.

The Epiphany we celebrate today results from our recognizing the glory shining forth from Jesus whose birth and naming we have celebrated.  The signs abound.  Do we drink in what they are saying?

Sometimes there is a tendency in people to rejoice in good news and then to restrict it and translate it into something that applies only to them.  There are not a few of those, were they to hear the contemporary names of the ones coming bearing the gifts of gold, frankincense, and the riches of the sea, who would be angered by that message because we are at war with some of them.

Ironic, isn’t it, that these times in which we are living could be described aptly in Isaiah’s imagery.  Many feel like a people walking in darkness.  Those thick clouds of economic difficulties, of unemployment and poverty, of desperation felt by many homeless people added to the tensions and heartbreaks of war, and those thick clouds seem to threaten to threaten to envelop us.  When will that glory of the Lord begin to shine on us?  Is it really meant to shine as well on those who have caused so much misery?  Will it shine on those who have betrayed us, even on those we refer to as our exes?  How all embracing is this love of God that comes to us through Jesus, God’s beloved Son?

It was hard for some of the first Jewish Christians to hear that even Gentiles would share in the inheritance through their coming to believe in Jesus.  Remember that the Jews believed they were God’s uniquely chosen beloved people.  The Messiah, sent by God, and by them believed to be Jesus, would set Israel free, drive away foreign rule, i.e., the Romans, and establish a period of unending prosperity and peace.  Surely the Gentiles, some of whom were their oppressors, would not be sharers in the peace and prosperity.

That is exactly what Paul declares in today’s second reading from his Letter to the Ephesians.  The result of the mystery made known to me by revelation now has been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.  The Ephesians had to hear the message and so do we.  Difficult as it might be to swallow, and here you can think of those you number among your enemies, those you think to be least lovable, all those are embraced by the Light.  They are called to be members of the same body, to be copartners in the promise, and are coheirs.  They will inherit the Kingdom the same as the Ephesians.  They had to accept that our Gentile ancestors, and therefore we among them, would be among that number.  We have to accept that those we would exclude are among that number, too.  Do you believe and accept that?  It might not be easy.  It might take a gift of the Spirit and an outpouring of grace in order to believe and accept that Jesus is Lord of all and that God’s love that comes through Jesus is universal.

In these times that must be the message the Gospel and the Church proclaims.  That will stand in stark contrast to what seem to be the attitudes and judgments common today.  Lines of demarcation are continually being drawn and judgments made that exclude and divide the human family.  Just because a Black man is President of the United States does not mean that racism isn’t alive and well in our land.  Sexism is thriving.  The unemployment statistics show that a much higher percentage of Blacks than Whites are out of work, and more women than men.

Evangelical fundamentalists can be quick to enumerate those to be condemned to the everlasting fires.  Some proclaim the Catholic Church to be the whore of Babylon.  There are fundamentalist Catholics who proclaim that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.  Hell awaits homosexuals and so does it for those politicians and others who support freedom of choice legislation, regardless of their reasons for doing so.  We could go on with more examples of attitudes perceived to limit and curtain the embrace of God’s love made manifest in the revelation of Jesus as Lord.  Some have yet to hear Jesus say: Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will refresh you.  The operative word is all.

We mustn’t miss the point of the reading of today’s Good news from Matthew’s Infancy Narrative.  We are back in Bethlehem in the days following Jesus’ birth.  Magi we number to be three because of the list of the gifts they bring, come from the East, that is, from Gentile lands, seeking the newborn king of the Jews.  They had seen the sign, a star, and interpreted its meaning from their reading of sacred texts.  They came to those who should have been most filled with joy at this sign of fulfillment of God’s promise.  In stead their inquiry fills Herod with resentment.  He is quite happy to be king and not at all inclined to step aside for a successor.  The chief priests and the scribes know the prophecy regarding where the Messiah, i.e., the Christ was to be born.  They can tell Herod that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem.  Now Herod knows where to send the Magi with the instruction to return to him with the information so that he, too, can go and pay his respects.  His real purpose is to learn where to focus the slaughter that will eliminate the newborn threat to his throne.  The point is that those to whom it was first given reject the fulfillment of the promise.  That wasn’t something that happened once and for all.  The challenge remains for us today to determine who will reign in our hearts.

We can give a sinister interpretation to the declining number of Catholics attending Sunday mass.  All those leaving are devious.  It is said that former Catholics make up the second largest denomination in the United States – second only to Catholics as the largest denomination.  The same statistic may apply in other countries as well.  Certainly there is no simple solution to the complex problem these statistics indicate.  The bishops may meet and deliberate in order to find a new direction and so stem the flow.  Parishes might meet and deliberate as well.  Both groups need to ask the same question.  Are they living the message?  Is the hierarch imaging the Servant Shepherd?  Is the promised light shining forth from where the parish gathers inviting all who walk in darkness to come and rejoice in what is revealed in their midst?  Is the Catholic Church imitating Christ by effectively proclaiming that all are welcome here?

When we gather to celebrate Eucharist, we gather to enter into the Mystery of God’s acting in the here and now.  We gather as one body the Body of Christ, to renew his dying and rising and so to be transformed, to be forgiven, to be healed, and to be sent.  But as we gather we are also to invite all to gather with us around the table.  All – in imitation of Jesus’ practice of table fellowship.  If that message is our, the charity we live going forth from the celebration will become that light that draws others.  Do people feel welcomed as they come among us or is their dominant feeling that of being judged?  Do we uphold the dignity of all people?  Are we motivated to work for justice and peace?  When people think of your parish do they see Jesus embracing and lifting up all those who labor and are heavily burdened?

We celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord today.  That is, we celebrate the manifestation of Jesus as Lord, the one who brings God’s love to us, that love that is meant for all people.  Clouds may threaten, but if we live the message, the light will be seen and the sign understood.

Sincerely,

Didymus

I noticed something today that surprised me.  During my prayer time this morning I was reflecting on the question you asked your disciples about what others say about you.  After you had listened to their digest of others’ opinions, I heard you ask: Who do I say that I say that you are?  I’ve grown used to what others have said.  I struggle with my own opinion as my faith is challenged and continues to grow.

I know that the Gospel is your living word, new in every age.  So, I wonder how much my comfort with earlier opinions is dictated by hearing the word as an historical document.  In other words, if I hear the question asked of your disciples then, I can hear some of their historical expectations in their responses as they glean from the gossip the judgments their neighbors are making about you in what they hoped was a dawning messianic age.  Something in the air told them that this was the time and this was the place for long-cherished promises to be fulfilled.  The people needed a hero, but one that fit within the comforts of their constraints.  It’s easier to speak of the familiar.

Then you ask the important question for the individual: Who do you say that I am?  It was bold of Peter to make his declaration about your being the Messiah, the Christ of God.  He must have been surprised by the sternness of your response to him as you rebuked him and told him not to pass this information on to anyone else till much more had happened.  Weren’t you warning Peter and the others not to be too glib with their decisions?  Their conclusions must be refined by what was coming.  They still thought of the Messiah as a mighty warrior, someone who would wreak vengeance on all those that had oppressed the people down through the ages.  In that revolution, wouldn’t it be natural to assume they would have places of favor when you began your reign?

I can only imagine the shock that must have gone through them when you spoke for the first time of what I have grown used to hearing.  The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.  Whether they heard the last phrase about your being raised on the third day, they certainly heard about the impending suffering, rejection, and execution.  How could these ideas be reconciled with their understanding of Messiah?  That’s the point, isn’t it?  Their presuppositions had to yield to things unimaginable.  I come to think that so must the suppositions of believers in every age.

The church lives this cycle of your dying and rising each year and renews your dying and rising in each Eucharist.  Those first disciples had yet to be confronted with your dying and could not have imagined what your rising from the dead might mean.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m not back there with them, clinging to what I want your lordship to mean in my life without having to deal with the dying.  Sovereignty is much more comforting than subservience.

You know that I love you and want to walk with you every day.  But what do I understand the Christ to be?  Who do I say that you are by the way that I live?  I think that is the question that must be asked and answered in every age and by every individual.  The collective answer of the Church is not enough.

What I have to deal with is what you challenged then and what you challenge now.  Pick up your cross every day if you are going to follow me!  How many lifetimes does it take to learn what that is all about and then to embrace it?  You see, sometimes I think I want the old understanding of Messiah to be fulfilled in you.  I want the mighty warrior.  I want the power and prestige of an empire.  And if I am honest, sometimes I think a position of power and influence wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  When I see terrible injustices that happen in our world and the sufferings of the little ones, I’d like to see you come as the mighty deliverer and see that reign of justice and peace.  And then, too, I have to admit that some of the temporal rewards of powerful reigns wouldn’t be too hard to take.

You say: Take up your cross each day if I am to follow you.  I have to pick up my cross every day if I want to follow you.  I see clearly that is not just a suggestion; it is an absolute condition of discipleship.  Where is the glory and where the hoped for rewards in that?  Are you telling me that I could be in danger of misunderstanding what you are all about?  I like to think of you in glory now, with the gold crown on your head and the scepter in your hand.  If I do cling to those kinds of images and because of them worship you from afar, I have it wrong, don’t I?  You did not come as one who wanted to be served, to have people cower in your presence.  You are the servant Christ who, in another version of the story, came to wash feet and make foot-washers of your followers.

I won’t get it right until I see you pouring yourself out through your intimate involvement in human lives, in my life.  Until I can embrace that concept and accept the consequences that all to which I can aspire is being a servant to the rest of my sisters and brothers, I won’t be able to utter the answer you are looking for when you ask: Who do you say that I am?

You invite your church, your Body, to gather at your table and with you to exercise our baptismal priesthood as we co-celebrate with the ordained priesthood the Eucharist you want us to share and to imitate.  I wonder if the stranger who wandered into the celebration for the first time would experience that.  Would that ideal of a servant church be obvious?  Is that the spirit that exudes from me?

Power has nothing to do with it.  Is that what you are saying?  If I am about exhibiting power and its trappings instead of being about empowering the powerless, I haven’t understood the core message of your messiahship, have I?

Could you get back to me on this matter?  No hurry.  Just when you have time.

Sincerely,

Didymus

The Book of Numbers 6:22-27

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians 4:4-7

The Gospel according to Luke: 2:16-21

The feast we celebrate on this Sunday that also happens to be the first day of the New Year, 2012, has had several titles.  Some might remember when January 1^st was the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord, so called because Jewish Law prescribed that male babies undergo the operation eight days after their birth.  It was also the day they were named.  Then January 1^st could be celebrated as the Word Day of Peace, or as we call it now, the Feast of Mary, the Mother of the Lord.  All three titles are appropriate.  The Liturgy of the Word puts all three ideas before us for our contemplation.  Hearing the Word should bring us comfort in these troubled times and strengthen our hope.

The first reading from the Book of Numbers is an ancient prayer of blessing.  Most Jews would know the blessing by heart having heard it invoked so often in the synagogue services.  Fathers would bless their families with these words and perhaps conclude each day with the blessing.  Jesus, as he grew in age and grace and wisdom, heard the blessing that three times invoked the Holy One with reverence and awe and asked that the Lord wrap those blessed in God’s presence with love, sustain them in the splendid countenance of God’s gaze, and fill them with serenity and peace.  To so bless is to fulfill God’s will when the Lord commanded Moses to instruct Aaron and his sons how they were to bless the Israelites.  The point is that God wants the Israelites to be conscious of the presence and the love that should see them through good times and difficult times, sustaining them in the worst of times with the knowledge that nothing will separate them from God’s enveloping love.  Jesus grew in the consciousness that he lived always in the Father’s presence and sent by God, his desire always was to do his Father’s will.  With his last breath in this world Jesus would commend his spirit into the Father’s hands.  That is the fulfillment of the blessing.

It was the consciousness of the blessing’s meaning that gave Mary the strength to say “yes” to Gabriel’s announcement.  And God took on human form in her womb.

Think about committing the blessing to memory and then you will be able to use it in various situations with those you love.  What a wonderful way to pray over your children as you put them to bed at day’s end.  What a wonderful way to pray over you son or daughter as your child leaves home for university or military service.  What a wonderful way to pray over someone as you keep the final vigil and usher your loved one into glory.

Now let Paul’s words that summarize our core beliefs wash over you.  What a magnificent reading that reminds us of the transformation of creation that has happened because of Jesus Christ born of Mary.  Jesus came into the world in the fullness of time as a result of God’s sending and was born into the human condition, subject to the Law and destined to redeem those under the Law.  That is the meaning of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.  In turn Jesus breathed his Spirit on us in our Baptisms and transformed us through our adoption as sons and daughters of God.  Sin caused the breach.  The Incarnation reconciled and united God and humans.  Notice the word Paul said we should use in “crying out to God.”  Abba.  The text translates Abba as Father.  More literally, it should be translated, “Daddy.”  Less formal than Father, Daddy inspires the confidence that a little one has in reaching out to father, unable as yet to use the word, Father.  And, implied is the fact that God responds in kind.  In Christ we are no longer slaves.  We are sons and daughters and therefore heirs to the Kingdom.

When we were baptized we entered the waters described both as tomb and womb.  When the waters were poured over us or we were immersed in the waters we died there to all that was of sin and opposed to God.  We came out of the waters, born to a new life, clothed in Christ.  The white robe we were clothed in then symbolized that rebirth.  Abba!  God is our Father, our Daddy, our Papa.    Embraced by our Papa forever, what is there to fear?

And so we come to the gospel.  The shepherds have made haste to see the sign spoken of by the angels that would confirm the good news of great joy, the birth of the one who is Christ the Lord.  The sign?  “An infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”  The shepherds take in the sign, translate it, and rejoice at what has begun.  Mary stores all that is happening in her heart where she will be able to process and reflect on the marvels God is accomplishing because she said, “Yes.”

Mary is the ark of the New Covenant.  She carried in her womb the Living Word made flesh.  The Son born of her and lying in the manger will bring about the new and eternal Covenant with God.  She is the Mother of the Church, the Body of Christ.  On this day we gather with the shepherds and honor Mary, singing her praises, rejoicing because she is our mother as well.

The Blood of the Lamb will save Mary in the same way that every member of the human race that achieves salvation is saved.  The church proclaims that Mary, who bore in her womb the word Incarnate, was preserved from sin from the first moment of her existence.  Death and sin have an inextricable link.  Mary will not have to die because she never knew sin.  We call that mystery, the Immaculate Conception.  When her life runs its course, Mary will repose in dormition and she will transition into glory.  She will experience the full consequences of her son’s redemptive act and of her having said yes to God’s will in her life.  We rejoice and celebrate because there is hope in the mystery for all of us who have died with Christ in baptism and been raised to live in union with Christ.  Our bodies may die for a time.  We believe that at the end of time, our bodies will be raised and body and spirit, we, too, like Mary, shall live with Christ in glory.

Mary is the model of discipleship.  We who believe in Christ are called to live the will of the Lord in our lives, to learn from Mary’s example, to learn through our desire to imitate Christ, and so always say yes the way Mary did and the way Jesus did.  “My desire is to do the will of (the Father) who sent me.”

There is a lot for us to ponder on this first day of the New Year.  We won’t exhaust the implications before we transition from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  But conscious that Mary’s son lives in and unites us, we ought to be prepared to let go and enter into Mystery.  As co-celebrants of the Eucharist we will experience the sacramental presence of Christ in the Bread and Wine just as we experience that presence uniting us as the Body of Christ.  Humbled by the magnitude of God’s love and the wonder of the invitation, we will take and eat; we will take and drink.  And we will be sent.  Strengthened by the meal we have shared, we will continue to find ways to minister, to serve the little ones, to bring peace to the anxious, and comfort to the dying.  With Mary we will say yes to God’s will working in our lives.

Abba embraces us in love now and lives among us.  Imagine what it will be like when the full glory is revealed provided we have loved even as we are loved.

Amen.  May it be so.

Sincerely,

Didymus

“You have a saying, don’t you, about not judging a book by its cover?” Zacchaeus asked.

We sat together on the shore of the lake watching the red and waning light from the late-afternoon sun dance on the expanse of water before us.  I had come to the lake weighed down with a problem that I had not been able to solve through the course of the day.  My thought had been that dusk would provide the silent arena in which an answer would come to me.  Strange.  At this point I don’t remember what my problem had been.  I remember only the irritation I felt as I became aware of the odd little man’s voice intruding on my reverie.  At first I thought he was chattering to himself and paid no attention to what he was saying.  It was just noise that was prompting me to get up and move to a quieter place.  Then I thought that if I could just ignore him he would grow weary from the lack of response and move on to pester someone more receptive than I.

He continued talking and it became increasingly obvious that he was talking to me.  My conscience wouldn’t let me continue ignoring him.  So, with a deep sigh, I turned toward him with a begrudging smile.  My fate was sealed as I acknowledged him.

Physically, there was nothing imposing about him, nothing pleasing about his visage.  Scarcely five foot tall, the voice went with the stature – thin and raspy – another source of irritation to me.  I remember thinking that a crow’s caw would be an improvement.

I am embarrassed to say that initially I found it difficult to hide my contempt for him.  Yet as I began to pay attention to his tale, he fascinated me and I found myself warming to him and his sincerity as his tale ensnared me.  It was clear.  He had a story to tell to anyone who would listen, a story he never tired of telling.

“Can you imagine,” he said, “what it’s like to be held in contempt by all your neighbors?  It’s been that way most of my life.  From my early years people laughed at me when it became obvious that I would always be a runt.  But having them laugh at my height paled in comparison to the pain I felt from their contempt of me because of my occupation.

“You probably would think that because I am wealthy, I shouldn’t have cared what other people thought.  But, you see, I always cared about others and had innate sympathy for them and their troubles.  They made assumptions about me because I am a tax collector, employed by the foreigners that occupy our land.  They gossiped and accused me of being greedy and dishonest, a collaborator with Roman rule.  My family suffered from those assumptions and they ached for me.

“How could I tell those people that I was scrupulously honest in my accounting and did not take part in the accepted practice of defrauding, as others in my profession did?  I never knew how to plead with those who should have been my friends, akin in faith as we are, and urge them to recognize that I was not like others.  Of course they did not know how I shared my wealth with the poor, because I did that anonymously.  I believed the Scriptures and would willingly follow their prescriptions for those who are fraudulent in their dealings.  I would pay back fourfold willingly if I defrauded anyone.

“As a young man, I got caught up in the messianic movement that swept through my people as we longed for the one who would come and drive away foreign rule and establish the Kingdom.  I went to Temple daily and prayed that the Messiah would come.

“When I first began to hear about Jesus and what people were saying about him, what he taught and the amazing deeds at his hands, I wondered.  Could he be the one?

“Then that day, I heard that Jesus would be coming to our area, passing through our neighborhood.  I knew I had to see him with my own eyes.

“I thought I had left my home in plenty of time.  But many others had gathered before my arrival lining both sides of the road.  I ran back and forth trying to find a break in the crowd.  Then, ignoring what people might think of my antics, I climbed a sycamore and perched on a branch over their heads.

“I felt the most exquisite pain burn through me.  In a shock of emotion I realized that our eyes had locked across the span for so long that the crowd had turned from him and, stupefied, were gazing up the tree at me, my arms clinging to the trunk and my feet dangling below the branch on which I sat.  A few began to laugh.  One or two barbed comments came flying at me.  But he called me by name and said, ‘Zacchaeus, pure and innocent one, come down and let me have dinner with you tonight.’

“Then I knew.”  He swallowed heavily as he brought his hands to both sides of his face.  He paused as if to catch his breath.

His voice had softened and his face, glazed by the sun’s red rays, had turned toward the lake.  Small waves lapped at the sand not that far in front of us.  And a gull or two bobbed along, looking for their final morsel for the day.  The fading light glinted in the tears that rimmed his eyes.  I was fascinated and wanted to hear more.  I certainly didn’t want to say anything that would interrupt his chain of thought.  Whatever my problem had been, it had vanished from my consciousness.

“Yes,” he said, “then I knew.  Amid the growing murmurs as I scaled down awkwardly from my roost, he reached out and took me by the hand and accepted me as if we were tried and true friends.  He wasn’t ashamed to be seen with me.  It was as if we were the only two on the road as he talked with me.

“With my neighbors’ accusations and slurs stuck in my craw, I began to babble protesting my innocence and promising that if I had wronged anyone I would atone fourfold.

“Do you know what he said to me next?  He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, this is what you have long been praying for.  I tell you, God has heard you and today God’s Kingdom resides in your heart and in the hearts of your family.’

“As we broke bread together at my table and I offered him the finest wine from my cellar, I knew what peace meant.  My longing was satisfied.  I looked at my wife and my children reclining around the table with us.  What a blessing!  I thought, even if no one outside this gathering accepted my family and me, God did.  And I could live in peace, knowing that I would never be the same.”

He turned back to me and put his hand on my arm.  “We’re almost there.  Be patient with me.”

I assured him I was fine and fascinated by the story he was telling.

“He broke a piece of bread and reached it over to me.  ‘I want you to go out from this table and tell others what you found here tonight.’  I took the bread and ate it.”

I followed his gaze into the night sky and saw the slivered arc of the new moon rising.  A multitude of stars speckled the canopy over us.  And a cooling breeze embraced us.