Sunday, June 21, 2009

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear All,

This Sunday’s gospel comes at the end of a day when Jesus had been teaching at the edge of the lake, the ‘boundary’ between land and see where he had called his first disciples. It is a very human image of Jesus who, after giving himself to the crowd teaching them, tells his disciples to cross to the other side of the lake. We need to picture this in our minds, going from the Jewish side of the See of Galilee to the other side predominantly Gentile territory. But before we cross that ‘boundary’ let us reflect on the work of Jesus ‘this’ side of the lake, his home country. It was very hard work talking to large crowd without amplifiers, microphones and speakers, comforting the oppressed, healing the sick, while dealing with the growing hostility. It all must have taken a heavy toll on Jesus. So now get into today’s Gospel scene with Jesus sound asleep in the front of the boat, dead to the world. Can you remember times when you just felt dead asleep and completely disconnected form your surrounding? I did… and too many times to tell you.

The disciples took Jesus in the boat, “just as he was”. Other boats are also mentioned almost in passing, to show Jesus’ gathering of followers, but no more attention is given to them in Mark’s narrative. This is the first of six crossings that Mark describes, which are much more than geographical excursions. One way we can explain the scene in today’s Gospel is that Jesus, in his absolute humanity, is just dead tired, exhausted. While he is resting, the fishing boat is caught in a sudden storm so violent that the experienced fishermen on board, the apostles, are panicking. And what is the Savior of the world doing? Nothing! Jesus is sound asleep in the front of the world, dead to his surroundings. The effect on his followers is very interesting. Here they are, fighting for their lives, and Jesus seems completely out of it.

Can you remember times in your live when you were in the midst of the fiercest storms and God seemed completely absent? … like Jesus to the apostles? When they wake him up, they sound frustrated and complain “Do you not care that we are perishing?” Now, honestly, what did they expect? Their teacher is not a sailor, they are. But once he is awake he stops the winds, stills the storm and calms the waves, to the surprise of his disciples. But there was more to come. Now it is Jesus’ turn to complain. Why did you wake me up? What is your problem? Why are you terrified? Do you really think anything could happen to you while I am with you? The apostles were amazed when Jesus quieted the storms. They asked, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” For the first time they began to wonder if maybe God himself was among them in some way. For Jesus in that moment looked and sounded very much like the way God does in the First Reading from the Book of Job: “and here shall your.. waters be stilled!”.

This story reminds me of times, we all go through in our lives, when the going (“the seas”) gets really rough, the waves seem too much and we feel in danger of drowning. Often at these times God seems asleep, deaf to our cries. But like in today’s story, He is never out of touch. He probably wants to ask us, “Why are you terrified?’” Knowing the history as we know it, he may even be asking, “After all I’ve done, do you think I could ever abandon you?” I keep reminding myself that even in times when I felt alone and overwhelmed, I am actually not alone. He is with us and the storm will pass.

The complete text of the readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/06/twelfth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Corpus Christi - Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Dear All,

The inauguration of the Holy Eucharist is celebrated first and foremost on Holy Thursday in its natural place the night before Jesus died on the Cross. But because that celebration takes place very much in the context of the sadness of the events of Christ’s passion and death, the Church gives us this second feast in the course of the year to help us to get to explore more fully the Eucharist, the commemoration of the Last Supper. Two Sundays ago we celebrated Pentecost and last Sunday we celebrated the feast of the Blessed Trinity and now we commemorate the Blessed Eucharist. There is a certain logic in this sequence of celebrations. Pentecost is the Birthday of the Church and on the Feast of the Blessed Trinity we look at the very nature of God himself. Today in the Feast of Corpus Christi we examine how God continues to make himself present to his Church, how he sustains and nourishes us. And he achieves all this principally through the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. On the night before he died Jesus gave his disciples a Last Supper. It was a meal with a difference. It was a meal during which, and through which, he showed them the very depths of his love. He gave them special instructions both by word and example; the example being the washing of feet. And then, as we know, he took the bread, blessed and broke it and said: this is my body which is given up for you. Do this in memory of me. And then he hid the same with the wine. By these actions Jesus brought into focus, and in a mysterious way actually made present, the events which were to happen on the following three days.

And through our following out of Jesus’ command, and doing this in memory of him, in an extraordinary way those same events are made present in our hearts every time we join a community at the altar of Eucharist celebration. The Last Supper wasn’t an event that was sprung on the apostles out of the blue. They were all there when Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish and managed to feed five thousand people. The incident was clearly meant to be a foreshadowing of the Last Supper since all the essential elements were present: He took the bread, said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to the people. What could be more Eucharistic than that? And all had their fill! In the celebration of the Eucharist we encounter the Lord Most High and He gives us real nourishment for our souls. So much nourishment that it would take a lifetime to begin to appreciate.

Let us praise and thank God for this great gift which enables us to be united with Christ’s work of redemption in a real and most intimate way. I encourage everybody to celebrate your next Eucharist in His memory and come to communion with Him as we share His Body and Blood.

The complete text of the readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/06/solmenity-of-corpus-christi-most-holy.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Trinity Sunday

Dear All,

The Trinity is both the most frequently invoked prayer and at the same time one of the more complex concepts to grasp. Every time we say “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” we pray to the triune God. Yet understanding ‘this thing’ of one God and three persons is one that does not meet the standards of every day life. The doctrine of the Trinity developed first out of the communal prayer of the early Church. After several Trinitarian controversies it was formulated at the Councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381) and is now professed in the recitation of the creed. The Feast, now celebrated every year in the week after Pentecost is from the high middle ages (twelfth century).

The trinity concept is really hard for us to internalize. How that makes any difference in our lives, whether it is one God in three persons and all the philosophical explanations in the world are not really much of a turn-on, are they? Who would argue that it is really hard to get excited about the idea of a triune God? It is tricky to make it something viable and alive that you want to go out and do wonderful things for other people about it, isn’t it? And yet behind the significance of the feast for the sake of us, we take the concept to “humanize” God through it and get to understand some… that is , there is one God, we don’t really understand his nature (if we did he wouldn’t be God), but we try to explain what he does and how he interacts both with himself and with us… that is where this notion of trinity grows up in the New Testament, especially the end of Matthew, which we read today: “baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. The Trinity is just a way of our very limited intelligence approaching and understanding of a little bit about the

nature of God, that’s all it is. The makeup of the nature of God is creation, redemption and sanctification. It is applying three types of work giving them persons to the nature of God. It remains a mystery, but if we come to see the world in which we live as sacred created by God the Father, redeemed by God the Son and sanctified by God the Holy Spirit, we may be at a first step of getting past the barbarism of human greed. By opening ourselves outward toward the world in which we live and cooperating with one another, just like the three persons of the Trinity interact throughout history, we can renounce the nature of selfishness and greed through compassion, giving meaning to our concept of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel passage of this Sunday, which we also read at every baptism ceremony, is known as the “Great Commission”. The risen Jesus sends out the eleven disciples to all nations and charges them with the task of forming more people as his followers. Interesting to note that the passage contains past, present and future: Jesus notes that power has been given to him from his Father (past); He commissions them to make disciples of all nations and baptized them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (present) and assures them he will be with them (us) until the end of times (future).

The complete text of the readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/06/trinity-sunday.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer