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Gospel Reflection 20071118

Whatever your gifts, there are ways that you can use them to make a difference in the world.
Whatever your gifts—leadership skills, compassion, organization, writing, research—you can contribute them to an organization or project. You may become a "front person" for issues that mean a lot to you. You may write articles and letters that will change people's hearts. Not only will getting involved help you to protect creation, but you will also learn more about yourself and the talents you have.

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Treat All People With Respect and Dignity Because God in Them Deserves It
November 18, 2007


Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time


Gospel
Lk 21:5-19

While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
Jesus said, "All that you see here--
the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down."

Then they asked him,
"Teacher, when will this happen?
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?"
He answered,
"See that you not be deceived,
for many will come in my name, saying,
'I am he,’ and 'The time has come.’
Do not follow them!
When you hear of wars and insurrections,
do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
but it will not immediately be the end."
Then he said to them,
"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues
from place to place;
and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.

"Before all this happens, however,
they will seize and persecute you,
they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons,
and they will have you led before kings and governors
because of my name.
It will lead to your giving testimony.
Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends,
and they will put some of you to death.
You will be hated by all because of my name,
but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
By your perseverance you will secure your lives."




In the end, everything has a purpose. Sometimes we don’t see it, but might still sense it deep down. Most things achieve their purpose because they are programmed to do so. The only creatures in this world who have a say in the purpose for which they were made are human beings. We can change the direction of our lives because we alone have free choice. And while God’s purpose for us is ultimately total bliss, we are free to thwart that purpose. We can even change the meaning of bliss; we can call God’s idea of good, bad and God’s idea of wrong, right. In the end, of course, truth will out and we will reap what we have sown to our own glory or our own confusion.

It is only at the end of a story that we can fully understand its entire meaning. But the end of any real-life story is not a foregone conclusion. How the players interact with each other and the decisions they take gradually shape that conclusion. This was true of the story of Jesus. Had He made a different choice, for example, in Gethsemane; had the Jews believed in Him, His story would have ended differently. For Jesus, the conclusion was what it was because He did not live His life concerned about Himself, but out of unwavering obedience to the eternal Father. Had that obedience concluded in acceptance by the Jews, so Jesus would have accepted them; but because it concluded in murderous rejection, Jesus equally accepted that. Jesus persevered in utter fidelity to the Father, irrespective of the outcome. The center of His life, His thoughts, His mind, His Heart, indeed of His whole being, was the Father. Hear what He says: “the Father and I are one”, “my food is to do the will of my Father”, “Father, not my will, but thine be done.” Jesus lived from His totally open relationship to the Father. That was the meaning of His life and of His death, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.”

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus teaches us that just as He lived and died in that way for the Father, so we should live and die for Him. Those who were with Him on that occasion were curious about the destruction of the Temple, when it would happen and what would be the sign that it would happen. But Jesus drew their attention away from their sensationalist questioning. He acknowledged that indeed there would be some cosmic signs, not so much before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, as before the end of the world. But the core of His response is not about “signs out there” or spectacular and unexpected phenomena. He tells them that the outcome of their lives and of the history of the world depends on their relationship to Himself. What can this mean?

Notice that Jesus uses the phrase “in my name” three times: “many will come in my name”; “they will have you led before kings and governors in my name”, “you will be hated by all because of my name.” “My name” simply means “me”; the name identifies the person. It is as if He is saying: “don’t be so concerned about wars or cataclysms, earthquakes and famines; rather be primarily concerned about your relationship to me.” For it is our relationship to Him which gives meaning and purpose to our existence as individuals and as a race. And just as obedience to the Father brought Jesus rejection by the sin present in all, so our genuine obedience to Jesus will bring us all, sooner or later, some form of persecution from “kings and governors”, let us say “political authorities”, or from “brothers, relatives and friends”, let us say “family and community.” Here the words of Jesus about His coming to cause division come true. A deep, personal commitment to Christ must take pride of place in the heart and life of a Christian. It must take precedence over everyone and everything else and, for that very reason, it can, and probably will, bring us much grief. For, of themselves, human beings and human institutions do not like to be given second place. It’s almost as if they would have us consider Jesus an outsider and say: “it’s okay to associate with Him from time to time (e.g. Sunday), but whenever we don’t like what He asks or demands, then you have to close ranks with the club of humanity.”

At the same time, Jesus makes it clear, however, that He is powerfully present to anyone who perseveres in fidelity to Him, to His way of feeling, perceiving, thinking, evaluating and acting. Do not fear, He says, those who can kill only the body and after that can do no more. Fear Him, rather, who, after the death of the body, can cast both body and soul into hell. Jesus thus asks of us fearless witness to Himself. Persecution, He says, will be your opportunity to give testimony to my name, that is to His person and to all He stands for. Lest we feel that this is too much for us, He adds: “do not prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” If the Christian lives for Christ, then Christ Himself will be able to use the Christian to communicate the power and strength of the Gospel to those who would persecute him. Jesus does not ask us to be heroes and then abandon us to the lions: He makes us heroic in Himself, He gives us the fortitude and the wisdom to be as He would be in the presence of our foes.

Who are our foes and what is our persecution? The traditional answers to this question still hold true today, at least in some parts of the world. The foes can be totalitarian regimes or hostile wings of other religions; the persecutions can be torture and martyrdom or the limiting of rights and freedoms. But there are other foes and other persecutions closer to home which demand of us to give testimony to Christ. There are those who reject the words and symbols of the Christian faith, the teachings of the Church about human life and moral integrity; there are those who limit the freedom of the Church in the name of a secular understanding of freedom; there are those who besmirch and distort the life and history of the Church to weaken the faith and discourage the hearts of believers. There are those who adhere to a modern idolatry which simply treats the Gospel with indifferent disdain. Tragically, many of these foes and many of their persecuting tactics are not all to be found outside the Church, but often inside Her. Some of those entrusted with the task of teaching, for example, replace the Gospel with their own opinions which are born more from an ideology than from the Gospel. When people start reinventing the mission and the teaching of the Church to serve mere human ideals, Christ is again being rejected and His name and mystery are being manipulated to suit a cause without any eternal purpose.

Put simply, the Gospel today asks of us to prefer absolutely no love to the love of Christ, and to love absolutely everyone else for that love’s sake. This condition is possible; indeed, it is necessary if we are to achieve the purpose of our existence. Let us beg for it with humble and contrite hearts and live it with that perseverance which will secure our lives.



Josh is the resident humanist in the neighborhood. He does not go to church anymore. He goes about telling his friends that since God lives in everyone’s soul, it is not necessary for anyone to go to church to find God. His Pastor learns of this and decides to pay Josh a visit. The Pastor shows up in Josh’s house one cold winter evening and finds Josh warning himself by the fireside. Josh invites the Pastor to join him at the fireside, which he does. The Pastor does not talk about church attendance, although Josh suspects that is why he came. They talk about the weather. Meanwhile, the Pastor uses the fire-tongs to remove a burning piece of wood from the fire and places it all by itself beside the fireplace. Both men watch as the flames flicker and go out and in a short time white ash covers the once blazing piece of wood. Josh gets the message. He turns to the Pastor and says, “I will be in church next Sunday.” Like that piece of wood we need fellowship with our brothers and sisters in the faith in order to maintain the fire of our own faith. We need the Church.
Josh is an example of people who go to one extreme. There are people also who go the other extreme, people who see the presence of God only in churches and church services. We read about people like that in today’s gospel. We are not told exactly who they but some of them were probably disciples of Jesus. They were fascinated with the splendor of the Jerusalem Temple built by Herod the Great in over 46 years and lavishly adorned with gold and silver offerings of the people. For these people the Temple is God’s dwelling place on earth and the adornment of the Temple means that the people’s faith in God is strong. Can you imagine the shock on their faces when Jesus tells them that this Temple standing in all its glory and majesty is destined to be utterly destroyed leaving not one stone upon another? As a prophetic statement the destruction of the Temple was accomplished in AD 70 by the Roman army under the command of Titus.
Jesus’ saying on the Temple is significant not only for the people of his time but for Christians of all times. We must remember that the people of Jerusalem who were building up and decorating the House of God were the same people who were at the same time planning to destroy the son of God. If they saw God in the adornments of stone and gold, why couldn’t they recognize Him in flesh and blood? When a temple becomes so superimposing that people are no longer able to see God except in it, the time for its destruction has come. How does one explain the fact that the flourishing of Christendom in the Middle Ages was associating with a culture in which human life and human rights were cheap? Think of the religious wars, the torturing and killing of freethinkers, the burning of suspected witches and the inhuman traffic in slaves. Could it be that the more people exalted the temple as the house of God the less they esteemed the human person made in the image of God?
And yet, that should not be the case. Our faith demands that we recognize the presence of God in the human person as well as in the temple. St Paul reminds the Corinthians that they are as sacred as the temple; that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” (1Cor 3:16). “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” 1Cor 6:19). The Christian who, like the disciples in today’s gospel, sees God in the grandeur of the temple but not in other people is only telling half of the story. The Christian who, like Josh in our story, sees God in the human person but not in the temple also tells only half of the story. Today’s gospel, therefore, challenges us to endeavor to see and serve God both in the temple when we gather for worship and in one another after the worship. Remember, we treat the other person with respect and dignity not because they deserve it by their own conduct but because God in them deserves it. This way, our lives both in church and out of church, become one continuous act of service to the same God who dwells in the human soul as well as in the temple.

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St. Elizabeth of Hungary
(1207-1231)


In her short life Elizabeth manifested such great love for the poor and suffering that she has become the patroness of Catholic charities and of the Secular Franciscan Order. The daughter of the King of Hungary, Elizabeth chose a life of penance and asceticism when a life of leisure and luxury could easily have been hers. This choice endeared her in the hearts of the common people throughout Europe.
At the age of 14 Elizabeth was married to Louis of Thuringia (a German principality), whom she deeply loved; she bore three children. Under the spiritual direction of a Franciscan friar, she led a life of prayer, sacrifice and service to the poor and sick. Seeking to become one with the poor, she wore simple clothing. Daily she would take bread to hundreds of the poorest in the land, who came to her gate.

After six years of marriage, her husband died in the Crusades, and she was grief-stricken. Her husband's family looked upon her as squandering the royal purse, and mistreated her, finally throwing her out of the palace. The return of her husband's allies from the Crusades resulted in her being reinstated, since her son was legal heir to the throne.

In 1228 Elizabeth joined the Secular Franciscan Order, spending the remaining few years of her life caring for the poor in a hospital which she founded in honor of St. Francis. Elizabeth's health declined, and she died before her 24th birthday in 1231. Her great popularity resulted in her canonization four years later.

Comment:

Elizabeth understood well the lesson Jesus taught when he washed his disciples' feet at the Last Supper: The Christian must be one who serves the humblest needs of others, even if one serves from an exalted position. Of royal blood, Elizabeth could have lorded it over her subjects. Yet she served them with such a loving heart that her brief life won for her a special place in the hearts of many. Elizabeth is also an example to us in her following the guidance of a spiritual director. Growth in the spiritual life is a difficult process. We can play games very easily if we don't have someone to challenge us or to share experiences so as to help us avoid pitfalls.

Quote:
"Today, there is an inescapable duty to make ourselves the neighbor of every individual, without exception, and to take positive steps to help a neighbor whom we encounter, whether that neighbor be an elderly person, abandoned by everyone, a foreign worker who suffers the injustice of being despised, a refugee, an illegitimate child wrongly suffering for a sin of which the child is innocent, or a starving human being who awakens our conscience by calling to mind the words of Christ: 'As long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for me' (Matthew 25:40)" (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 27, Austin Flannery translation).

posted by Mike Young @ 7:07 AM