My Journey of Life and Faith

Merry Christmas

2009-12-22T08:32:00.009-05:00

Welcome to this world!

Our Christmas present arrived in Rome, Italy on December 21^st at 5:20 PM when Astrid gave birth to Samuele. Father Simone was at her side and Grandma’ Nora is in Rome for this season. We welcome Samuele to this world, weighting 7.4 lbs and measuring 20"!

Alex and Christian are joining Rainer in Miami for Christmas. María José had gone to Santa Fe to spend the holidays with her birth family in Argentina.

Last year the whole family was together. This year, the first time in 37 years for Nora and Rainer to spend Christmas on separate continents, but for a very joyous reason: Samuele, our first grandson!!!

Nuestro regalo de Navidad llegó a Roma el 21 de diciembre a las 17:20, cuando nuestra hija Astrid dio a luz a su primogénito: Samuele. El padre, Simone está al lado de Astrid y la abuela primeriza, Nora ayudando en Roma. Damos la bienvenida a este mundo a Samuele con sus 3.360 kg y 51 cm.

Alex y Christian pasarán la navidad con Rainer en Miami. María José festejará el fin de año con su padre y hermanos en Santa Fe.

El año pasado logramos una Navidad con toda la familia reunida. Esta vez, la primera en 37 años que Nora y Rainer lo festejarán en continentes separados. Gracias a Dios por muy auspicioso motivo: nuestro primer nieto, Samuele!!!

Unser Weih-nachtsgeschenk ist am 21. Dezember um 17:20 in Rom angekommen, als unsere Tochter Astrid ihr erstes Kind auf die Welt brachte,Samuele. Vater Simone war bei Ihr und Neu-grossmutter Nora ist zu Besuch in Rom. Wir will-kommen Samuele mit seinen 3.360 kg und 51 cm in diese Welt.

Alex und Chris-tian sind fuer Weihnacht mit Rainer in Miami. María José ist bei Vater und Ge-schwistern in Santa Fe, Argentinien.

Letztes Jahr wa-ren wir alle zusammen. Die-ses Mal, das Erste in 37 Jahren, feiern Nora und Rainer Weihnachten auf verschiedenen Kontinente, fuer einen wunder-schönen Grund: Samuele, unser erstes Enkelkind!!

Il nostro regalo di Natale è arrivato a Roma il 21 dicembre 17:20, dove Astrid ha dato alla luce Samuele. Il papa’ Simone era accanto a lei ed anche la nonna Nora è a Roma per questo periodo. Diamo a Samuele il benvenuto tra noi, forte dei suoi 3,360 kg e la sua ‘‘autorevole’’ lunghezza: 51 cm!

Alex e Christian si uniscono a Rainer a Miami per il Natale, mentre María José trascorre le feste a Santa Fe in Argentina con la sua famiglia di origine.

Mentre l'anno scorso tutta la famiglia era riunita a Miami, quest'anno per la prima volta in 37 anni Nora e Rainer trascorrono il Natale lontani, ma per un motivo gioioso: la nascita del nostro primo nipote Samuele!!!

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer & Nora

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Feliz Navidad y un Feliz Año Nuevo!

Frohe Weihnachten & einen guten Rutsch!

Buon Natale e un Felice Anno Nuovo!

聖誕快樂&新年快樂

Joyeux noël & une bonne et heureuse année!

Wesołych Świąt i Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku!

Fijne kerstdagen & een gelukkig nieuwjaar!

Рождеством и счастливого нового года

Feliz Natal e um Feliz Ano Novo!

Fourth Sunday of Advent

2009-12-20T11:30:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

On this Fourth and last Sunday of Advent the prophet Micah in the First Reading, has been encouraging the people of Israel about their future. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, is believed to have been active between 740 and 700 BCE. The temple will be raised high on a mountain and all nations will see Israel as a holy nation. Israel is a small area and other clans and nations were much stronger at the time. Micah announces that from the little town of Bethlehem, the place of David, the great king who reined Judah and Israel from 1010–970 BCE, will come a special person to be the awaited-for great leader. This person will be of the line of David and as did David, this “one” will bring back all of Israel into the kingdom of Israel. From the smallest shall come forth the revelation of God’s greatness. This “one” shall bring unity peace within and among all nations. Micah’s prophesy that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem into the family descendant from King David, is one of the four dozens predictions about the Savior of Israel in the Old Testament. Several scholars have found biblical proof that Jesus, whose incarnate birthday we celebrate on Christmas in just five days, fulfilled al forty eight predictions. Interesting piece of trivia, isn’t it?

The Gospel account this week according to Luke is an intimate encounter between two pregnant women of faith. They both are moved to share their secrets. Mary had dream visit from an angel and trusts what she heard in her soul. Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting at the entrance of the house of the priest Zechariah and trusts what she hears and feels within her body (“the infant –John the Baptist– leaped in her womb”). Elizabeth greets Mary with a tender benediction “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled”. Mary is pictured as having received a tremendous gift and promise. The first thing she is moved to do is to check it out with her older cousin whom she learned was pregnant too, after a long barren life. Elizabeth

reads the signs of the times, the “something more” than an ordinary human event -the stirring of the little John in her womb- and proclaims the blessedness that God has bestowed on Mary and the One she carries. So much preparation for the great Gift of God’s impregnating the womb of this world. The mystery of the Incarnation means that God has come to us according to what makes sense to our minds. Through our senses God has come to visit and stay. It does remain more than we can handle and yet God continues to give the Gift into our little hands, our little stables, our little mangers to hold and begin distributing. He came that we might have life and be freed to give it, and Him away in the life-long, life-giving visits we make in the lives of others.

On a very personal note, this week’s liturgical stories, their backgrounds and our very current family reality bring a number of elements together that just keep my head spinning. Our daughter, Astrid, who was born on a 24^th of June (the birthday of John the Baptist) is in the final hours of a little boy leaping in her womb. She lives in Italy and right now is in a hospital in Ostia (Eastern municipality of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea Coast) waiting for her first born to come to this world. They will name him Samuele. The Prophet Samuel was the one who in 1010 BCE anointed the shepherd David to King of Israel. Please join us in prayer for Astrid and Samuele in this defining moment and for Simone, the father to-be. May this beautiful Italian family be blessed abundantly by our endless loving God.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/12/fourth-sunday-of-advent.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-30th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Third Sunday of Advent

2009-12-13T10:35:00.002-05:00

Dear All,

The Third Sunday of Advent is called Sunday of Joy (Gaudete in Latin). This is a reminder during the preparation season of Advent that there is ample reason for joy, even in the midst of spiritual repentance that John the Baptist calls us to. The Sunday takes its name from the Second Reading, where we continue from last week, to read from the letter that Paul writes out of prison to the Philippians (and to us) about the nearness of the Lord. Appropriate at this time, be it because of two week’s before Christmas or either of the other two encounters with Christ we spoke about last week: at the end of times or in each other in our daily lives. A very practical recommendation on how to deal will all the ‘stuff’ and stress that fills our days in this paragraph from Paul: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God”. There is reason for joy, isn’t there? For those of us blessed with faith, we can believe that statement wholeheartedly… and when the ruts are about to take over, be reminded of it, and lift up our fears to God, “by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving” and relax (=”have no anxiety”). As an additional aide memoire we light the rose candle on the Advent wreath on this Sunday.

The First Reading is from the Prophet Zephaniah, one of the twelve Minor Prophets from the Old Testament, most likely compiled to its present form in the Hebrew Bible around 200 BCE, but referring to a cotemporary of Jeremiah around 640-609

BCE and the Babylonian Captivity. The short book is a catastrophe prophecy affecting Judah and all the nations condemned for corruption springing from pride. Salvation to a humble remnant is promised and today’s passage describes at length the joy Zion, Israel and Jerusalem will have when the Lord has removed the judgment against them and turned away their enemies.

In Luke’s Gospel we encounter a humble, but very pragmatic John the Baptist. He acknowledges and points to the “one mightier than I” coming after him to baptize with the Holy Spirit. Has some very practical advice for his enquiring followers, share excess cloak and food; to tax collectors to stop collecting more than is prescribed and to soldiers not to practice extortion and refrain from false accusations. As we get ourselves ready for the coming of Christ, let us reflect on these practical suggestions and consider which ones need fine-tuning in our own ‘portfolio’.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/12/third-sunday-of-advent.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-30th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Second Sunday of Advent

2009-12-06T09:14:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

On this Second Advent, we light another candle, this one for peace on the Advent Wreath. (I wrote about the wreath tradition last year).

The First Reading this week is from the Prophet Baruch a contemporary of Jeremiah, actually his secretary. Baruch’s prophecies, though from the Old Testament are not found in the Hebrew Bible. It was written in Babylon, during the Jewish captivity in the sixth century before Christ Era (BCE) and sent back to Jerusalem to be read at religious gatherings. In this week’s passage the prophet consoles the exiles with a reminder of messianic hope. We can clearly hear the prophet also speaking to those of us today who sometimes understand the mourning and misery much better than the salvation that is possible. His words challenge us to a radical hope and to the possibility of return from our own exiles of discouragement or spiritual alienation. Baruch is one who sees with God’s eyes the hope that is nearing fulfillment. During these hectic times full of anxieties, knowing to be “remembered by God” is a profound image that probably needs time to do its healing work.

The Second Reading is from the ‘letter of joy’ that Paul wrote, ironically from a prison (scholars are not sure if Rome or Ephesus) to the Philippians’ community for whom he holds special love and gratitude. I read it as if written to us today, as a call to greater holiness, to do even more of what we have been doing. The Advent season embodies the inherent tension of the kingdom, which is at hand, but is yet to come in fullness. The final prayer from Paul reminds us, during this often distracting season, about what is truly of value: Love… to increase… in knowledge… of perception to discern what is of value… for the glory and praise of God.

The Gospel according to Luke makes a particular point to situate his narrative about the Good News (i.e. Gospel) in the context of human history. He introduces the ministry of John the Baptist "in the fifteen year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar..."; then he goes on to mention other secular rulers: Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip and Lsyanias; as well as religious authorities of the time: Annas and Caiphas. Yet for those who like to split hairs about historical precision,

Luke has some ambiguity in his ‘time-counting’ about the "fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar." The problem is that the Roman emperor Tiberius shared power with Augustus for two years and we do not know when Luke is beginning his count of the years of Tiberius' reign. Luke is probably smiling to himself about those historians that get hang up by this (what are two years in two thousand years of history?). In any case this is one of the several places in the Bible where we can anchor our believes that Jesus did exist in history, despite several books written in the 20^th century to the contrary. To counter these, a Chicago Tribune court reporter, Lee Strobel, wrote several fascinating books about contemporary legalistic proof that Jesus actually walked this earth. Back to Luke…, after such a solemn introduction we expect something momentous about to happen. You would think that this was the announcement of the birth of Jesus. But it isn't (on this 2^nd Sunday of Advent)... yet the event that is announced is earthshaking: The Word of the Lord came to John the Baptist who started to proclaim a baptism of repentance and calling people to prepare the way of the Lord. At that specific time and place, God intervened in human history, by inspiring John the Baptist to proclaim his presence. How did he convince John to do this? Was there a bolt of lightning, a vision in sky, a miraculous event? Or did John simply respond to the voice within him telling him to go into action? Given that scripture is void of any sort of marvel, I think it is telling us here, as in many other places that God often works his wonders in whispers (remember Elijah at the cave?).

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/12/second-sunday-of-advent.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

First Sunday of Advent

2009-11-29T13:48:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

This week we begin a new Liturgical Year. This year it is cycle C as it is designated in the Roman Lectionary. We retell the story about the mysteries of our salvation in history, by following the third Synoptic Gospel, according to Luke. Like in every year we will also read certain passages of the fourth Gospel, according to John, but our featured writer will be the Greek physician and companion of Paul who lived when Jesus walked the earth and writes with the Gentiles as main audience. Of all the authors of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, Jude) he is the only one who is not from Jewish upbringing. He is also the author of the Acts of the Apostles.

Every new Liturgical Year begins with the season of Advent, a time of anticipation, time of preparation, getting ready. The word has a Latin root, Adventus (= arrival) meaning a time of waiting for the arrival. On the traditional advent wreath we light the first candle which we call of hope during the First Advent Sunday. We remember and commemorate the arrival of Christ over two thousand years ago, as well as preparing ourselves for Christ’s second coming at the end of times. It also invites us to conceive Christ in the Spirit in our own lives here and now, swell pregnant with the holy seed of God’s grace and stir the womb of our complacency. A time for turning and returning, for straightening the crooked paths in our relationships with our fellow men and women (in German the word “Mitmenschen” denotes humans with whom we share our spaces, the world) and our relationship with God. If I focus on this third invitation, this season of advent may convert from a passive period (of remembrance of God’s first incarnation and waiting for the second coming) into an opportunity to become active in the waiting, by welcoming and befriending the vulnerable, the stranger as well as the desert places in myself.

The Prophet Jeremiah, imprisoned by King Zedekiah, utters words of hope to the people of Israel at times of great despair (587 BC the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian invaders) foretelling the coming of a Savior, the Messiah, as a descendant of the house of David. Christian tradition sees Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy. “The Lord our justice” is our hope and salvation.

The apostle Paul, who expected to experience Christ’s second coming during his lifetime, in his letter to the recently converted Thessalonians offers advice about how believers ought to be living their lives in anticipation of such second coming. While Jesus did not come then, nor may be coming during our lifetime, Paul’s advice remains very important, as there is no better time to conduct ourselves in ways pleasing to God.

Luke’s Gospel this week paints a scene with vivid colors of what the last times may bring with a terrible storm raging through the first paragraph. The apocalyptic message turns to a momentary brightening of the sky in the second paragraph, yet clouds close in again in the final paragraph. Luke is not just trying to terrify, but offering hope reminding us we don’t have to be among the ones who panic, but stand erect and raise our heads knowing that redemption is at hand. Christ is not just the babe in the manger, but a cosmic Lord whose glory fills us with awe.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/11/first-sunday-of-advent.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-30th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

The Solemnity of Christ the King

2009-11-22T06:21:00.000-05:00

Dear All,

We have arrived at the end of the Liturgical year. The Feast of Christ the King is quite recent in our two millennia old church. It was established in 1925 in an attempt to counter the rise of modern secularism. The word secularism comes for the Latin “Seculum” meaning earthly creation or world. After the First World War there was a growing sense of the power of humanity to rule itself. God did not seem to be in charge. The world in the midst of an identity crisis was experiencing its own authority crisis. The Church promoted this celebration to present the person of Jesus as “king of the universe”. Hitler, in Germany would see himself as dominator of the world only a few years later and we all know how that ended with the tragedy of the Second World War. In today’s secularism we pray to allow Jesus to be our Servant King in the midst of tension with the many little personal tyrants within us urging for their places of power; like ego, fear, revenge, pleasure, as well as many other struggles for supremacy and control. Allowing His lordship into our lives is what the spiritual life is all about.

The First Reading for this Feast is a vision of Daniel written in apocalyptic style (explained in last week’s reflection). Four beasts have been destroyed, that is Babylon (the place of the Jewish captivity around 900 BCE), and the power of God is prepared to be handed over to “a son of man” or a mysterious person who receives true authority and supremacy from the “Ancient One”. Kingship of the known Jewish world had been taken away by kings of foreign origin, but now, the vision is reporting that the Ancient One was returning true heavenly power and glory to a special one, a “son of man” or an anointed for revelation and service of God and God’s people. This will be an everlasting kingdom giving the people of God, including us today, trust and hope.

The Second Reading is from the last Book of the Bible, Revelation also known as the Apocalypse, part of the apocalyptic literature mentioned above. In the introduction of the Book, the visionary John offers grace and peace from God who is, who was and who is to come. Then he exclaims that this grace and peace also comes from Jesus Christ, who is the Faithful Witness, the First Born of the Dead and the Ruler of all the Kings of the earth. What is the meaning and application for us? First of all, Jesus is the Faithful Witness who stood before the Jewish Sanhedrin and proclaimed that He was the Messiah. He stood before the Roman King Pilate, and proclaimed the Truth that He, Jesus, was the King. Revelations was written to encourage the Christians of the ancient Roman Empire to stand

up in front of persecution and give witness to Jesus Christ even if they were putting their lives in danger. It also encourages us to stand for the truth, even when the truth may not be popular or is ridiculed by the some. But more subtle than that, it encourages us to stand up for the truth when our personal advancement may be jeopardized, such as, standing up against unethical business practices within the company we work for, or standing up against the character assassination of someone we work with whose job would then be available for us. I am tempted to ask, “why should I suffer when everybody else is advancing by these ‘normal’ business practices?” Yet the answer is straightforward: There is nothing normal for a person created in the image and likeness of God to reject ones spiritual essence for the sake of “momentary” and monetary gain. The early witnesses were told in Revelation “By patient endurance you will survive.” It is infinitely better for us to suffer the injustice of the world than for us to reject our call to stand as witnesses of the God of Truth. We do have in Jesus, the faithful witness, a model that guides us and gives us strength.

In this week’s Gospel according to John, Jesus tells the Roman King of the Palestine world at the time, “My kingdom does not belong to this world”. When Pontius Pilate insists in getting confirmation, “So are you a king?”; Jesus replies, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." The early community of John had a strong trust in the truth of who Jesus is. The kingdom of God is already here as Jesus lives within and among us now. But we know also that his presence is obscured by the continued presence of evil in the world. Individuals and institutions are quite far from being aligned with the will of God, resulting in an incomplete kingdom. Though we are inclined to think of the kingdom as still to come: a zone beyond the grave, Christ wants to be our king here and now.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/11/solemnity-of-christ-king.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-30th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-11-15T06:39:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

As we come to the last couple of Sundays of the Liturgical year, we start our annual tour through Apocalyptic Biblical literature. Apocalypse comes from the Greek and denotes a Revelation from God. In recent times it often is being referred to end of times (eschatological) predictions. The apocalyptic writings are full of poetry and metaphors. Interpreting the passages literally would be mistake as much as dismissing them as nothing but poetry. The metaphors tell us the truth that Heaven and Earth as we know it may indeed pass away, but not before a final resolution of good triumphing over evil. Biblical apocalypse was written in times of persecution, to encourage the harassed by telling them that their sufferings were not going unnoticed by God, and that they would prevail in the end. Courage, not fear, was being promoted.

The First Reading from the last chapter of the Book of Daniel is from the Sixth century BCE during the Babylonian captivity, where Daniel, an Israelite became advisor to King Nebuchadnezzar. While not in this week’s passage, there is one expression from the Prophet Daniel that has made it to our times, ‘seeing the writing on the wall’. In the mid 90’s I sang with the Florida Philharmonic Chorus, Leonard Bernstein’s ChiChester Psalms under the direction of the British Maestro James Judd. It was an incredible experience in five venues in South Florida in front of audiences into the thousands. Though in Hebrew the text referring to Daniel seeing the writing on the wall for the evil to be judged combined with unique orchestral music did not seize to give me goose bumps in each of the seven performances. Well, I went off on a tangent here, didn’t I? Back to the main

thought …. the apocalyptic style is encrypted poetry and scholars continue to try to decode the underlying meanings. Daniel reassures the Israelites during their difficult times that God’s kingdom will prevail in the end and makes one of the early references to the Resurrection and Eternal Peace.

The passage from the Gospel according to Mark tells us about the second coming of Christ in a very pictorial way. While early Christians and among them many of the apostles expected it to happen during their life time, we really don’t know when it will happen. The last verse of this week’s passage from Mark, quotes Jesus’ unequivocal statement "But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Some have referred the prediction of “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” as a way of foretelling the individual experience we all may have at the end of our own lives rather than focusing on the eternal validity of Jesus’ teachings (“my words will not pass away”).

In essence as we are coming to the end of the liturgical calendar year we remind ourselves about the reality of an end of times, either individually or collectively, in which good does prevail over evil. This is a message of hope, despite all the horrors and atrocities of our times, which are not that different from the horrors of the Babylonian captivity and the persecutions of the early Christians, as well as all the history since then through our days.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/11/thirty-third-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-30th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-11-08T21:01:00.003-05:00

Dear All,

The First Reading is from the passage of the First Book of Kings which inspired best selling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho to write a fiction novel, The Fifth Mountain. A devastating drought was affecting the region short of 3 millennia ago when we encounter a very poor widow on the verge of dying of starvation. The prophet Elijah who had predicted the drought to King Ahab of Israel, asks the widow at the entrance of the city for water and some bread to eat. She was gathering a few sticks to prepare some bread, probably the last in her life, from the final bit of flour and oil in her possession. Elijah asks her to first bake something for him. Widows in the patriarchal structure of society were one of the most vulnerable groups. Poor and with child brought her to the lowest level of the social order, barely above slaves, with no one to ensure her rights and provide for her welfare. The prophet makes a daunting promise in exchange for the first peace of bread on behalf of God: “'The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry” until the end of the famine. On the brink of starvation she places her trust in the words of the prophet and they are fulfilled. A little side note that magnifies the widows faith even more. We read that this happens in Zarephath, a place in Palestine that at the time of the story was in the god’s Baal territory. Baal was the god of storms and fertility. Even there the famine had stricken. It is difficult to imagine how devastated this poor woman must have been. Yet she put her trust in the prophet’s announcement that God will provide even during the famine. And we get treated to one of the miracle stories in the bible about multiplication of food, when we read at the end of the passage that she, her son and Elijah were able to eat for a whole year until the rain came down to the earth, as “the jar of flour did not go empty nor the jug of oil run dry”.

The gospel according to Mark talks about another poor widow who at the entrance of the temple gave all she had, two small coins worth a few cents. In this passage the story does not focus on the happy ending, but on the teaching to the disciples (and to us) by Jesus upon observing the giving of the crowd into the treasure in the courtyard of the temple. Jesus states that while in economic terms there were many rich people putting in large sums, they were giving from their surplus wealth. Yet the poor widow gave from her livelihood.

The Lord is setting the bar very high for standards of not thinking about self, but focusing on others. The point of the Gospel is certainly not that we should all seek to become poor widows, but it clearly challenges us to give more than of what is left over. Be it care for others, interest in others as well as monetary support to the needy, wherever we encounter them in our lives.

My personal journey on this topic was not easy, yet infinitely rewarding, once I dared to let go. I grew up in an environment where giving, for example to the church, was just a few coins. When we came to the US over twenty years ago, we were challenged with stewardship campaigns and learned about the concept of tithing. Transitioning from an economy where church is funded by government tax money to the US where churches are funded solely by parishioners’ contributions, created great conscience stress at the time. When we finally got around to giving more than a tip to the weekly collection, from moneys that we almost didn’t have at the time, we were blessed a hundred fold with better and more rewarding ways of earnings. This may not be easy, particularly in societies that value personal advancement and satisfaction above all else. Despite it all, we can share our talents with others and we can give our time and energy to schools, hospitals, soup kitchens, church communities and ministries or wherever we are called to. When you come to think about it, sometimes it is even easier to give money than to give ourselves in some of these ways.

Fortunately there are many people in our world we can look up to as role models in generosity, like the widows of this week’s passages are. Many parents willingly sacrifice their own interests so that their children have what they need. There are people who work long hours in healthcare facilities to ensure that the needs of patients are being met. Public servants like police and firefighters place themselves at risk in order to ensure our safety. We encounter the ultimate example of unselfish giving in this week’s Second Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews in Jesus who gave his life so that we may have eternal live.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/11/thirty-second-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-32nd-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

All Saints

2009-11-01T01:45:00.001-04:00

Dear All,

This week we celebrate the Solemnity of all Saints, which comes right after Halloween (“Hallow e’en”, evening of All Saints). The Gospel according to Matthew is from the beginning of the Sermon of the Mount (Chapters 5 through 7) in the section referred to as “The Beatitudes”. The opening of the sermon was probably designed to shock the audience as a deliberate inversion of standard values. Jesus talks about a group of people normally thought as unfortunate or unblessable and pronounces them well-off and fortunate (blessed) because of the presence and availability of abundant life in God's kingdom to everyone, regardless of status, circumstances, or condition. Jesus enumerates eight characteristics of people and the benefits each of them renders. As we honor all the Saints that preceded us we may recognize the beatitudes as a foretelling how they were going to be: satisfied when hungering and thirsting for righteousness, comforted when mourning, inheriting timid ones (the meek), mercy showing peacemakers, rejoicing and glad when persecuted. At the same time some of Jesus’ statements about the poor, the mourning, the meek to be declared fortunate, i.e. blessed sound rather daring. I don’t believe that Jesus is praising the powerlessness. I read it as a statement that those free from the illusion of worldly power can find the lasting gifts of happiness. The original Greek source speaks about ‘praos’ that was translated into ‘meek’. Praos means more tan humble and timid, along the lines of becoming tamed (as for a wild animal being domesticated). It could be interpreted as a recommendation to develop the inner strength to manage one's automatic reactions and aversions, suggesting a capacity for going against all natural resentfulness and passion and anger.

Some ancient writers saw a parallel as well as a contrast between Moses receiving the Law on Mount Sinai, and Jesus pronouncing the Beatitudes on the Mount of Olives. One of them, Chromatius, during the early fifth century wrote, “When the law was first given on the mountain, the people were forbidden to draw close. But now, as the Lord was teaching on the mountain, no one is forbidden. Rather, all are invited that they may hear, because there is severity in the law and grace in the gospel.”

This week’s First Reading from the Book of Revelation is written in apocalyptic style. Apocalypse literally means the

disclosure or revealing of something hidden. It has a Greek-myth root which is quite interesting. Things have been hidden about the sufferings of the early followers of Jesus. Rome, The Beast, has been attacking the Church and persecuting the faithful. This form of literature was popular before the compilation of this book. The prophets of Israel had visions of how things would be especially concerning the exiles. Their theme is centered around hope and trust. The sufferings of the present are leading into a brighter future. Communities under harsh conditions need the encouragements both from within and outside the group. This is where this week’s reading gets its importance and power. There are many symbols within the Book of Revelation (the last book of the Bible) that are not only appropriate for that time, but can also be interpreted for this present age. This week’s passage has a wonderful picture of twelve times twelve thousand people who have endured the persecution and are singing God's praises after it all. All peoples (from every nation, race, people, and tongue) are envisioned as gathered together in profound worship and thanksgiving.

The Second Reading is from the same author as the Book of Revelation, the Gospel Author and beloved apostle John. While declaring that we are God’s children now it acknowledges that it has not yet been revealed what it is we shall be. Purity is achieved through hope of becoming like Him.

On this Feast of All Saints we recognize the dying and the silent waiting for new life to unfold beyond our sight. In faith we honor all of the saints, ancestors who have preceded us, heroes and heroines of life lived in love and trust. We pray for those who have died and who await the fullness of glory with and in God. We remember all those who have died. We lift up their names in gratitude, entrusting them to the love and mercy of God. And we think about our own destinies and futures, soberly reminded that aging is a progression – not a loss.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-and-faith.blogspot.com/ 2009/10/solemnity-of-all-saints_31.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-30th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-10-25T12:14:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

Blindness in Christ's time was common. Hygiene was very primitive. Eye doctors had not yet arrived with their magic drops and wonderful lasers. However, what is interesting about this story is that the patient is given a proper name. Mark in his Gospel was not in the habit of being so specific. So, when we read “Bartimaeus, … the son of Timaeus” we know something important is going to happen. Exiled into destitution by his blindness, probably fallen out of family favor (I somewhere read that Timaeus means “respected one”) because of the belief at the time (which we today consider mistaken) that physical disability was also indicative of moral stigma. When Jesus was walking by, Bartimaeus gave Him a raucous yell using not only his everyday name but also the messianic title of Son of David. His eyes were dead but God had gifted him with a first class set of lungs. First the crowd admonished him and asked him to shut up, not unlike crowds (we?) do with unimportant, marginalized people. Even in the crowd Jesus becomes aware of the ragged person who is eager for personal contact with him… to this day, I believe, no matter how frayed I may be or feel… Jesus is not too busy for this personal contact, even within a sizable crowd at the beginning of the last leg of his journey up to Jerusalem about 20 miles southwest over steep and dangerous ascent. Jericho was an impressive oasis city in the first century with palaces, pools and public buildings in the Roman style. King Herod the Great had embellished the ancient city that had become a favorite wintering place for the Jerusalem elite. Close to trade routes it was a convenient gathering point for pilgrims preparing to go up to Jerusalem and therefore a good place for beggars to sit by the wayside hoping for some pious pilgrims tossing a few coins. Jesus instruction to the crowd to “Call him here” combined with the persistence of Bartimaeus seems to transform them from rebuking to encouraging the blind beggar to rise up and answer Jesus’ call. Full of hope and quite faith inspired Bartimaeus throws away his cloak, his last piece of possession (serving as coat, sleeping bag and collection rug for occasional coins tossed his way) and listens to exactly the same question we heard Jesus ask to James and John in last weeks gospel:

“What do you want me to do for you?”. We know how the “insiders” responded, blinded by self-aggrandizement asking for the best place in the kingdom. The “outsider” asks for nothing but that he may see. We witness the last miraculous cure before Jesus passion and crucifixion in Jerusalem, restoring physical sight to a man that showed to have the seeing eyes of faith. Bartimaeus is now free to go wherever he wants, not anymore confined to the one place at the side of the road and he chooses to follow Jesus on the way.

The First Reading from the prophet Jeremiah is a profession of joy as the blind, the lame, the needy have been saved by the Lord and are on their way back home from the exile. The sixth-century B.C.E. verses from Jeremiah announce that vulnerable, dependent people are being brought back, gathered and led by a Shepherd Savior. The prophet assures the people that a gentle and loving God is like a father caring for his firstborn, carrying the poor and weak safely home. The “remnant” refers to the survivors of the fallen northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in 721 BC, who through the exile are finally being brought together with people of all different backgrounds and abilities into an “immense throng”. The restoration of Israel is about the close relationship of God with his people, mentioning Ephraim, one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

All three Readings this week are success stories, but not in ways we might at first have thought. It was Bartimaeus’ faith that saved him. This is the true miracle. The restoration of his physical sight can be seen as simply the external manifestation of his faith. This tells me that the reign of God exists underneath, behind or deep within the circumstances of life, even if we cannot see it at first sight (no pun intended).

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/10/thirtieth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-30th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-10-18T21:02:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

If we ever were looking for a place where some followers of Jesus appear rather immature, in a real arrogant attitude, this week’s passage from Mark is one of them, when it talks about James and John with a selfish request: “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left”. The Zebedee brothers are cozying up to Jesus for some good seats at the victory party. Their lack of really understanding what Jesus has been telling them comes through when they respond yes without a blink in their eyes to Jesus’ question about drinking the cup he will drink. He had been telling them about his upcoming suffering and death, but it does not fit into their worldview about Kingdom and once again we can connect with them not “getting it”. The other ten disciples become angry, even offended. We do not know if they were upset with James and John or with Jesus for the response he gave: “it is not mine to give (the good seats) but it is for those for whom it has been prepared”. Recognizing their indignation Jesus brought them back together for a ‘come to Jesus’ conversation and we read one of the most important statements in Mark about Jesus ‘mission statement’: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve”, followed by unquestionable clarity about his Passion, death and Resurrection: “and to give his life as a ransom for many." Still to this day it sounds rather counterintuitive that to be leader one has to be servant. Jesus clarifies for us that in the gentile world the ruler is served, but in the Kingdom of God, that is in the Christian way “whoever wishes to be great …. will be your servant, .. to be first… will be the slave of all”. That Jesus walked his talk when his humble services went beyond washing his disciples’ feet at the last supper, to dying on the cross ‘as a ransom for many’.

The First Reading is from one of the Servant Songs from the late Isaiah, recorded about 600 BCE. It represents how a faithful Jew is to look upon the sufferings of his own life. A faithful Jew will suffer and his torment will atone for his sin and those of his Jewish community. He sees his life, not as a curse, but a way of God to bless. We can interpret it as a prophesy that came true in the passion and death of Jesus. While I have difficulties reconciling in my own mind a loving God that is pleased when I am crushed in infirmity, when I fast forward to the stronger, more mature person I have become after some of those crushing experiences, I am reminded of an example in the mineral world. The steel only becomes so hard and strong after the iron has been melted to liquid state (crushed?). At the personal level it brings out a stronger more mature person. In the case of Christ it is as ransom for the sins of all mankind.

The Letter to the Hebrews, which we have been reading for the last three weeks, presents a passage that encourages us to take our confession of sins to the one priest “who has similarly been tested in every way” and can relate to our struggles, Jesus, the Son of God.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/10/twenty-ninth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-28th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-10-11T15:23:00.001-04:00

Dear All,

The First Reading from the Book of Wisdom is part of the prayers of King Solomon, son of David, the final king of the United Monarchy before the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah split. Salomon was the builder of the first temple in Jerusalem. He ruled during forty years about 10th Century BCE. We read a beautiful poem exulting wisdom above everything, deeming riches nothing in comparison to her with very vivid contrasts of gold to sand and silver to mud (mire). Solomon prayed for wisdom, yet all good things came to him in company of her (wisdom is addressed as a female in the whole book) and countless riches.

The Letter to the Hebrews passage this week has a very graphic description of the sharpness of the word of God. While we can’t tell what the distance is between soul and spirit, we do understand the narrowness between joints and marrow. Awesome to know that God is able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. Sometimes a bit frightening to learn that everything is naked and exposed to the eyes or God. We all have had thoughts at some point or other which we really wouldn’t want anyone to know. The reassuring thing about this, our God who sees it all, is that he is also a loving and forgiving God. As long as we ask for it… but that is topic of some future reflection.

The Gospel passage from Mark sort of tears me in two directions. Initially I am thrilled to find a successful business man asking the right question: “What does it take to inherit eternal life”. Often one encounters successful people that are only interested in knowing how to become even more successful in the here and now. Be it wondering when the first million will be earned or when the next promotion will be awarded or how to win the next tournament or big contract. Finding someone asking the right question is encouraging. The good teacher inquires about basics. Again the young man is up to speed with

the don’ts of the commandments (not kill, not commit adultery, not steal, not defraud, not bear false witness) and honors father and mother. One can sense that even Jesus is delighted when Mark tells us that looking at the successful man, he loved him. At this point Jesus invites him to get to the next level in his spiritual life, by getting rid of all he possesses to become a disciple. The young man is dismayed (“his face fell”) and he went away. He got stuck on his spiritual journey, not being able to go beyond the basics, to the point that he is lost in history. We don’t know his name or anything else about him. It is here where I personally continue to struggle with the idea of giving everything up. I don’t believe Jesus is asking us to become material masochists. Yet letting go of material things that clutter our lives and freely giving to needy ones has proven a spiritual uplift. I have also experienced what Jesus teaches to his disciples toward the end of today’s Reading: “no one has given… who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age”. I have to admit that only recently I have been able to stay with the reading to get to that very sentence. I used to ‘go away sad’ from this reading at the point of the camel and the needle’s eye. While I am more comfortable with it, I know that I have a long way to go in my own spiritual journey.

In summary asking for wisdom and giving freely have rewarded in history, are announced in two passages this week and at some level many of us have experience it in our own lives. May it encourage us to do more!

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/10/twenty-eighth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-28th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-10-04T21:44:00.001-04:00

Dear All,

This week we are invited to think and pray about the institution of marriage. The First Reading from the Book of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, is from the second narrative about creation. In the first creation account from Gn 1:1-2:4, God creates man, male and female, in the image of God on the sixth day. In contrast in the second creation story, from which this week’s passage comes, the creation from man and woman occurs sequentially. After creating man from earth, God acknowledges that man needs a suitable partner, and the living creatures of the earth and sky are formed. After none turn out to be a suitable partner, God forms woman from man. In this highly allegoric chronicle the concept of suitable partnership is mentioned twice. The emphasis on companionship and mutuality makes it clear that man and woman are made for each other. Any subordination read into the sequentiality of the creation is a mistake.

Often when priests preach about marriage, one may be reminded of the story about a middle aged woman who after one of such sermons said: “I wish I knew as little about marriage as he does”. Chuckles aside, we all know a lot about marriage, from experience and from observation. Each one of us exists because a man and a woman loved each other and brought us into the world. If we are among the lucky ones, they stuck together and took care of us. This may be a good proof point that marriage is very important. Yet, let’s face it, a great many people are not so sure anymore about the sanctity or even validity of marriage. Men and women keep falling in love and start living together, but, in increasing numbers, they feel no need to get married. Fifty years ago, that may have made the news, but not today. At some level it is understandable. Weddings are not only expensive, but risky. They not always turn out the way we hoped. Marriage has become quite unpopular in many quarters because it involves making promises. “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do us part” sounds pretty daunting, doesn’t it? For many that is too risky. So they just live together and leave themselves a way out if things don’t go the way they hoped. On the surface is seems more prudent than making promises they might not be able to keep.

To such people the teachings in this week’s Gospel sound too idealistic. Many consider it rigid and unrealistic to insist that two people make binding promises to stay together through good and bad times, after the glow has faded. Lovers should be free, instead of being tied down, is their mantra. But freedom comes with a price, which the children (some of us later in life?) are paying. We have become a nation of single-parent families, with damaging impact to many of their children (higher school drop out rates, etc.) Such families are part of a national tragedy.

This week’s teachings from Genesis and Mark have unequivocal messages. They are not easy. They call for courage and sacrifice. The sacrament of matrimony is one of the seven visible symbols that point to and embody a spiritual reality. In the case of marriage it points to the spiritual reality of Jesus’ love for the church. The promise of each spouse to care for the other one implies a giving up of self. It is not anymore ‘me’ the most important entity in the universe, but the spouse. With this in mind, and considering Jesus sacrifice on the cross, it puts things into perspective when it comes to love for the spouse. The generous help of God’s grace to meet the challenges of a faithful life together can go a long way. And the benefits of a blessed life together in companionship are gigantic. From experience I can say, paraphrasing the passage from the Book of Genesis, that “it is not good for man to be alone”…, it is great to be with a suitable partner, the spouse!

The last passage of this week’s Gospel from Mark shows us one more, of the several scenes in the New Testament where the apostles are ‘not getting it’. In the best of the intent they shove away children, thinking that they have nothing to do with the ‘adult talk’ they are just having with the great teacher. Jesus ‘became indignant’ and a bit frustrated that his disciples had not realized that children and matrimony are two sides of the same coin. We could call it the coin of Gods creation at work. The moments between the beginning (the Alpha) and the ending (the Omega) of the world, is the procreation of the human race: Marriage and raising children! We know very little about the ‘book ends’ (beginning and end) but we are very present to the creation at work here and now. The final guidance for spiritual positioning of accepting the Kingdom of God like a child as entry-ticket is also unmistakable.

The complete text of today’s Readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/10/twenty-seventh-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-09-27T16:45:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

Our First Reading this week from the fourth book of Hebrew Bible (aka Christian Old Testament), the Pentateuch (aka Torah), is an account of the journey from Sinai to Moab (before crossing the Jordan River to the Promised Land). It is called Book of Numbers because Moses counts more than 600 Thousand Israelites fit to bear arms (military service). One of the themes of this week’s readings is about partisan religion. Eldad and Medad were not in the tent when the Spirit of God came upon the seventy elders. Eldad and Medad weren’t there, but they still received the Spirit and began to prophesize. “Stop them,” Joshua told Moses, “Why?” asked Moses. “Would that God’s Spirit come upon all the people.”

In this week’s Gospel according to Mark it is the only time the Apostle John speaks on his own. He calls Jesus’ attention to someone who is casting out demons in his name and how the disciples had tried to stop him. John more or less wants Jesus to stop this man because the disciples couldn’t manage it by themselves. But John forgets that Jesus’ first concern is for as many people as possible to hear the words of salvation and to experience the liberation this brings. John was really surprised when Jesus welcomes this anonymous exorcist and tells the disciples not to stop him. Anyone who is not against us is for us.

Last Sunday I was in Zurich, Switzerland, looking for a catholic church to attend Mass. The reception of the hotel told me that a few blocks away the Christian Catholic Church had service at 9:30 on Sunday morning. The service had a few nuances that were different from what I was used to, but I thought it must be geographic dissimilarities. During the Liturgy of the word, however, I realized that the Readings (about which I had written my reflections the evening before) were not the ones of the Roman cycle. I learned that the Christian Catholic Church separated from Rome in 1870 after Vatican I, because of some dogmatic differences. I was reminded that all religions have a tendency

to claim exclusive control of the avenues of salvation. But God is surely free to work outside of our familiar religious structures. This doesn't mean that such structures are unnecessary or unimportant. It does mean that we should work in genuine humility to make our own religious structures as open as possible to the saving power of God. It is profoundly reassuring that right after that experience in Zurich I get to read Numbers and Mark telling us that anyone who is not against God is for God.

The second theme of today is about ending up in hell for taking unfair advantage of others. The Letter of James is quite explicit in modern day advantage taking, like withholding wages, storing excessively for the last days, etc. In Mark’s Gospel it is quite interesting to note that on the one hand the Lord seems very open and tolerant and yet right after stating “Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ” …. “will surely not lose his reward”, Jesus seems very severe and harsh. Christ takes this very seriously: He does not want his disciples to be obstacles to anyone’s faith. The task of a disciple is to bring people into the Kingdom and not cause them to be lost. It is a scandal to take advantage of vulnerable people who can so easily be exploited when they should be protected and assisted. This is where real sinfulness lies and the punishment is swift and severe. Gehenna was the place where Jerusalem's trash was deposited. It was usually smoldering and was infested by all sorts of pests and parasites. It was certainly not where one would hope to end up.

Let us stay away from partisan religion and let us help those who are in need, are two clear messages of today’s Readings, whose complete text can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/09/twenty-sixth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/1234567/Print-Version-26th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-09-20T06:40:00.003-04:00

Dear All,

One theme that weaves through all three Readings this week is envy, one of the most hateful sins. The Old Testament Reading from the Book of Wisdom tells how people bring down a “just man” because he makes them feel inadequate (“is obnoxious to us”) by comparison. In the Second Reading from the Letter of James, envy (“Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist”) is identified as the source of conflicts and wars. And in Mark’s Gospel we see the disciples maneuvering for tops spot (“discussing among themselves”, “who was the greatest”). Envy is a desire for superiority that leads to satisfaction at the others downfall. Envy creates feeling of sadness at the others superiority.

We all have experiences of envy, sometimes in ridiculous ways that torment us. The cure is repentance, often by recognizing our dependence, like Jesus teaches his disciples in this week’s Gospel, becoming like a little child, depending from God and from others. Dante in The Divine Comedy tells about a woman, Sapia, so filled with envy that she rejoiced at the downfall of her hometown, bringing bad fortune to those she envied. Sapia ends up in purgatory and the cure she undergoes involves her eyes being sealed and having her arm on the person ahead of her to find the way. Understanding deep in our souls our dependence on each other is one way to cure this ugly sin.

Jesus’ teaching in this week’s gospel makes it crystal clear, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” We do remember Him doing so at the last supper when as the

undisputed leader of the group he washes each one of his disciple feet, even Peter who initially doesn’t get it. Am I getting it? Am I growing into a state inoculated against the hateful sin of envy?, by actively seeking to serve others and passively becoming like a child in recognizing my utter dependence on God and on others.

The final encouragement the Jesus give his disciples, and us, is that by receiving a child in Jesus’ name we are receiving him and the One who sent him. Last Sunday I met with a friend in Shanghai who I hadn’t seen in over eight years. He and his wife are on assignment in China with their three teenage children. They are fostering a baby that was found in a garbage ground at only weeks of age. It needed surgery because of some external head tumor. The baby is now 9 months old, after successful surgery is growing healthy and is being offered for adoption. While reflecting on the last sentence of this week’s gospel I was encouraged by this real personal encounter with someone doing what Jesus taught us. Admiration, a total opposite to envy, is what I felt.

The complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/09/twenty-fifth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go tohttp://www.scribd.com/doc/19964792/Print-Version-25th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-09-06T11:00:00.004-04:00

Dear All,

In this week’s Gospel according to Mark, Jesus is wandering on the fringes of Palestine, in the land to the north. In this story he is avoiding the hostility of his adversaries and instructing his followers who are travelling with him, free from the crowds during his teachings in Galilee. The miracle is relatively simple and straightforward. He took the deaf man with a speech impediment aside from the multitude and in a personal encounter with the Messiah privately said “Be opened” and his ears opened, his tongue was released and he went on to speak plainly. The miracle story is not only the recording of an actual incident in Jesus’ life, but also aimed at those members of the community (maybe even us today) having difficulties in hearing Jesus. So much noise in our lives, and not only in the sense of sound. There is noise in the sense of disturbance, like static on the phone line. In addition to all the audio noises, like TV, radio, the kids, the neighbors, cars, etc. there is also noise in turmoil in our lives created by our continual worrying about tomorrow and maybe the hanging on to the battle stories of the past. As Jesus called the man away from the crowd, so he is calling us away from the noises of our life to his quiet. A little quiet in our homes, a few minutes before the morning gets going, or after the kids are in bed… just a little time to get away from the noise. Jesus touched the man’s ear and he said “Be opened”. Like in the baptismal ritual the celebrant touches the mouth and ear of the newly baptized repeating the blessing from the Gospel, “Be opened”. When we hear the still, small voice Elijah heard in the cave, whispering that God loves us. Or we may hear Mary’s voice at the wedding feast of Cana reas-

suring the wine stewards and us, “Do whatever he tells you”.

Mark’s repeated theme is that Jesus did indeed do signs and wonders, but refused demands for spectacular signs, because he was not merely a wonder worker, but a prophet, a prophet who opens the hearts of all, as the First Reading from Isaiah suggests. Jesus makes real Isaiah’s prophecy from 800 years before, saying “to those (us?) whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God”, “he comes to save you” when “the ears of the deaf” will “be cleared” and “the tongue of the mute will sing”. Jesus makes this prophecy a reality for those that walked the earth with him and for us two thousand years later.

The Second Reading from the Letter of James is a first century invitation to avoid discrimination. To stay away from becoming judges of others and making distinction among rich and poor. God has indeed chosen “those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith”. Mother Teresa of Calcutta a very prominent example of the twentieth century, being present to the poorest in their weakest hour.

The complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/08/twenty-third-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/19472154/Print-Version-23rd-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary time

2009-08-30T08:42:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

Reflecting on this week’s Gospel according to Mark, I am reminded of the story about a thief who late one night hounded a priest: “Your money or your life!” When he saw the priest’s collar he told him to put his wallet away. The relieved priest lit a cigarette and offered one to his would-be mugger. “Not thanks, Father. I have given up cigarettes for Lent”, he proudly responded.

At the times of Jesus it must have been common for people missing on the sins from within, while being utmost pristine in following ritual and purity laws… missing the forest because of the trees. Looks like the problem had been observed some 800 hundred years before, in Jesus’ quoting Isaiah’s reference to lip service from people, worshiping in vain. Jesus tells the scribes and Pharisees that they are hypocrites when they are more concerned about the ritual law than the reason for the law. The problem has not gotten much visible improvement to this day. Some famous quotes from the last 50 years, like “The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.", “Psychology advises us to resist our feelings of guilt. Sociology instructs us to lay all blame on society and think of ourselves as victims”, remind us of the danger of thinking God takes our sins lightly because we take them lightly. Jesus recaps for us that “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly” “come from within and they defile”, dishonor and violate.

Examination of conscience is not a bizarre design by old nuns for children, but an ancient practice that comes from the pagan world, passed on to the Jews and borrowed by Christianity. It also exists in other traditions and believes. I am personally impressed by a powerful examination of conscience worked up by the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi: a list of seven deadly sins. They are: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, commerce without

morality, science without humility, worship without sacrifice, knowledge without character, and politics without principle.

In the First Reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses give his people clear instructions to follow the Lord’s commandments once they enter the promised land. To the point that he announces that it will raise the standing of the people in the world they were living, because of such high standards. The Israelites are happy because the Law allows them to follow their God. The ancient Hebrews always felt that the Law was a blessing, a personal guide from the Almighty.

As we begin to read the Letter of James, after seven weeks of Second Readings from the Letter to the Ephesians, he too reminds us that God is the source of every good gift. We will read from James for the next five Sundays and learn from one of the five “catholic” epistles. Catholic not as Roman Catholic, but as universal in scope, intended to impact not just one particular local community, as with the Pauline letters (Ephesians, Romans, Corinthians, etc.), but addressed to Christians living outside of Palestine (“to the twelve tribes in dispersion” says the first verse of James’ letter). The Father’s gifts go as far as enabling our re-creation, for the salvation that is offered to those who are born again of the truth of God’s word. The intimacy of God’s word is emphasized in the stunning image of the word planted deep within us that will grow and transform us… with clear recommendation about doing as opposed to only hearing the word.

The complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/08/twenty-second-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/19335597/Print-Version-22nd-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-08-23T10:27:00.012-04:00

Dear All,

We are coming to the end of the five weeks reading from John’s Gospel with the last three Sundays on the discourse about the bread of life, the Eucharist. The followers at the time of Jesus were utterly confused. “This saying is hard, who can accept it?” is also something that to this day is quite widespread. Many, who had followed Jesus since the feeding of the five thousand on five loaves of bread and two fish, now give up on him and leave. It comes down to pure faith to stay with him, like Peter sums it up for all his followers at the time, and us today, “You have the word of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God”. Today we have the benefit of hindsight of what the Apostles learned at the last Supper, when Jesus took bread and wine and gave it to them to eat and drink as his body and blood. Before that, for many his discourse about his body and blood sounded more like an invitation to anthropophagy, which scared many of them. It remains a mystery, but we know it represent spiritual nourishment and involves the highest level of intimacy with Christ.

The First Reading from the book of Joshua presents another challenge about faith to the Israelites. They had finally gotten to the Promised Land, after forty years of desert wandering. Moses had died a few steps before arrival and Joshua had take over from him the leadership of the people. He challenges them to decide between the one and true God or other deities, like the gods of the Amorites, inhabitants of the land they had just entered. In todays time the gods of ‘Amorites’ are many, like money, excess in accumulating stuff, consumerism, etc.

Where am I on this? With Joshua, who professes for himself and his household to be with the God, who freed his ancestors from slavery? The First Reading concludes with a profession of faith of the people of Israel, “Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God”.

The Second Reading from the Letter to the Ephesians is one of three places in the New Testament where household codes are documented. Codes were quite common in Greco-Roman Literature of the first century. This passage has been basis for many chauvinistic views about the relationship of husband and wife. Yet one can only fall into that pitfall by ignoring two key phrases. The first is right at the beginning, “Be subordinate to one another”, with emphasis on one another. This means reciprocal and not unidirectional. The second is when Paul compares the subordination of wives to husbands with the subordination of the church to Christ, with specific attention to Christ. For example at the Last Supper when Peter had to subordinate to Christ accepting the washing of his feet by the Lord. Christ is a very unique leader, in the sense that he serves the ones he leads. If we read this passage with those two ideas in mind, we come much closer to what remains a great mystery, like it is described in the concluding sentence.

The complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/08/twenty-first-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/19015836/Print-Version-21st-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-08-16T06:52:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

This week’s readings invite to two banquets. The first comes from the Wisdom tradition of ancient Israel in the First Reading from Proverbs. The proverbs are attributed to Solomon (son of David, reigned 971-931 BCE) author of ‘three thousand proverbs’. It is rooted in a classic form of Egyptian wisdom literature. Wisdom, personified as a woman, spreads out a sumptuous banquet inviting “whoever is simple…. who lacks understanding”. To me this means, ‘don’t overcomplicate it’, ‘the less you know the more you are welcomed’ to this meal of dressed meat and mixed wine, which are insight and understanding. ‘Lady Wisdom’ seeks those who are not wise so she can offer the riches of wisdom that she possesses.

The second banquet is an invitation from Jesus to the bread which is clearly Eucharistic. Chapter 6 of the Gospel according to John, from which we read during these five weeks, is about sustenance. It is about eating. It is about nourishment. The Eucharist is not about eating like we normally eat. Normally, when we eat, we assimilate the food. Our body breaks down the food, takes the nutrients it needs, and feeds our cell system. In a sense, the food becomes part of us. Eating is about what we do with the food. We assimilate the food. But that is not what happens when we receive the Eucharist. When we receive the Eucharist, we don’t assimilate the food, the Food sort of assimilates us. Jesus transforms us. Instead of the food taking on our life, we take on the life of the Lord. We read in this week’s

Gospel: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” To us this means to follow Jesus with the reward of eternity (=”life forever” in a spiritual sense).

The wisdom theme is also found in the Second Reading, where the Ephesians and we are warned against foolish living. The admonition is startling: “because the days are evil”. Some of the evils we are warned about in this letter are still with us like drunkenness and corruption, dishonesty (=”debauchery”). Other forms of evil, like arrogance that presumes that our point of view is the only legitimate one, may it be in matters of religion or culture or political partisanship; corporate greed; glorification of violence; etc. would get Paul going to say “the days are evil”.

Despite the invitation to all to be enriched at the Woman’s Wisdom’s table and to be transformed by the body and blood of Christ, we often procrastinate and choose to stay comfortable in the lives we have fashioned for ourselves and shy away from reform or renewal. Yet we are all kindly invited to … the banquet that leads to life forever.

The complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/08/twentieth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

For a Print version (pdf file) got to http://www.scribd.com/doc/18650660/Print-Version-20th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-08-09T08:00:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

The prophet Elijah suffers severe depression about 2,900 years ago. And some of us thought that Freud ‘invented’ depression by studying and describing it in the early 20^th century? The bestselling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho wrote a novel about a passage from the First Book of Kings, our First Reading this week, The Fifth Mountain. There are inevitable moments of misfortune which interrupt our lives, when it looks like the world has conspired against us. The Story of Elijah can be a lesson of hope for us today. In despair Elijah asked God to take his life. Despite his loss of faith, God sent an angel to comfort him and provide food and drink. To his credit, Elijah, responded positively, not however, before he had given up. For the times, in our day and age that I may feel despair, this First Reading is reassuring that even after giving up, God is there for me and it is up to me at any time to get up and get going and move forward. Opening up the lines of communication, even if it is by angry faith, are the first step on the journey out of self-pity. Elijah first gets food and rest and then moves on to Mount Horeb, which is the northern name for Mount Sinai, the place of sacred revelation to his ancestors, the mountain where God revealed himself to Moses and gave him de wisdom of the Torah (the Law) with witch to nourish Israel. So often we need the touch of another ‘angel’ in our wilderness moments, those times of grief, of real and perceived misunderstanding or those tragic days of disillusionment with ourselves and our world. The phone call, the visit, the e-mail, the invitation to a cup of coffee are simple ‘touches’ and can help us rise and continue in our life’s journey. This last realization invites me to reflect not only on the times when I am in the slump, but the times that I may play the role of such an ‘angel’ to someone else.

The Second Reading from the Letter the Ephesians reminds us that Christian life has ethical implications. Taken from the section of the letter

that deals with the Christian and non-Christian behaviors, Paul instructs his followers in Ephesus and all of us not to disappoint the Holy Spirit, with whom one was sealed at baptism, by refraining from acting on the list of vices (“bitterness, fury, anger, shouting and reviling” “along with all malice”). The opposite conduct, living the virtues of kindness, compassion and forgiveness testifies to a life lived in the Spirit of Christ, called for in our Baptism. Ultimately, Christian ethical conduct cannot be separated from one’s relationship with God, as we are to “be imitators of God”.

The religious leaders in this week’s Gospel according to John are foolishly certain that they know all about Jesus because they know his parents. They have closed the ears of their hearts and are not ready for a surprising God who can be present in the prosaic and ordinary. It takes faith to see what is going on here, and faith comes only by the grace of God, as Jesus said, “… it is written by the prophets: They shall all be taught by God”. The price is pretty lofty, when we hear Jesus’ promise: “whoever believes has eternal life”

In closing a story I once read about a question asked at the last meeting before a person was received into the church: “What was the hardest thing to accept? Was it the Eucharist?” The answer was inspiring to me: “By no means, that was easy. If religion never asked to believe something beyond comprehension, I’d figure it was just something people made up. But this is the kind of challenge that I would expect from God”. Now, if you haven’t already, go and read the ten verses of John’s Gospel passage for this week. As always you can find the complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/08/nineteenth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-08-01T15:50:00.002-04:00

Dear All,

During this second week of a five week pause from the Gospel according to Mark we read from a series of passages from the Bread of Life discourse from John. Holding the delicate balance between our responsibility to care for others (and ourselves) and our humble acknowledgement of our dependence on God is an ever present challenge. To admit dependence on anyone, even God, is particularly difficult for those of us who have the strength and ability to be self-sufficient, bringing about the risk to forget that our ultimate sustenance comes from God. Prior to this week’s passage in John’s Gospel are two miracle stories: the multiplication of bread and fish, which we read last week and Jesus’ walking on water. They are preludes to the teachings about our fundamental beliefs about Jesus, the Eucharist and eternal life.

The First Reading this week, from the Book of Exodus, which is the second of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible – Old Testament – called Torah (meaning instruction or learning in Hebrew) or Pentateuch (penta = five in Greek). Exodus tells the story of the Israelites in Egypt, their departure (thus exodus), their journey to Sinai, the covenant with the Lord at the holy mountain and the building of a tent as place for the Ark of the Covenant. This week’s section recounts a fascinating event about ‘bread from heaven’. After being freed by God from the Egyptian captivity, the Israelites complain that they have no food. For those of us curious about the mechanics of certain miracles, trying to peek behind the scene, I found some interesting biological hypothesis about this manna (which in Hebrew means “what is it?”). It probably was not bread at all, nor did it come down from somewhere, but rather may have come off something. Most probably it was a substance secreted by the tamarisk tree that hardened as the morning dew evaporated and then deteriorated during the heat of the day. Yet the importance does not lie in figuring out how it came about, but its meaning. It came from God and it was only enough for the day reminding us to trust that God will always provide what we need. In this week’s Gospel passage, Jesus clarifies to us (and

to his disciples at the time) that it was not Moses that provided the bread, but rather Jesus’ Father giving it.

The Gospel story is about the crowds searching (“… themselves got into boats and came …. looking) for Jesus” and basically posing three questions: 1) when did you get there?, 2 )what can we do to accomplish the works of God?, 3) what sign can you do, that we may believe in you? Jesus answers like a good teacher directing the crowds to new insights: 1) the Son of Man, sent by the Father, will provide imperishable food, 2) nothing needs to be done, except to believe that the food comes through God’s initiative, in order to receive it, 3) Jesus is the new Moses, through whom the Father provides the true bread of heaven.

In the Second Reading, Paul insists that acceptance of Jesus as the real source of live and the very nourishment of our spirits effects a total transformation in us. Having been fed with the bread of heaven we are mysteriously transformed, renewing the spirits of our minds.

All three readings remind us that those sustained by God have not earned such a blessing through their own merit. On the contrary, like the Israelites got manna, the ‘bread from heaven’ even after they murmured against God, so we are promised by Jesus the true bread of eternal life. We can see that God’s generosity is not dependant on our virtue, rather it comes from God’s goodness.

The complete text of the readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/08/eighteenth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

P.S. Please join us in prayer for complete and speedy healing of one of our fellows on the journey, Alina, who had surgery this week.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-07-26T06:06:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

The incident from our First Reading from the Book of Kings is a clear and very early foreshadowing of the Eucharist. Eucharist comes from the Greek and means ‘give thanks’. The man bearing the bread comes from the town Baal-shalishah, named after a pagan god but he gives his first fruits to the true God by handing them to Elisha, “the man of God”. The normal procedure at the time would have been for the first fruits to be offered in the shrine and then afterwards consumed by the priests. But here Elisha breaks with this longstanding custom and gives the bread to the people to eat. And miraculously the small amount of bread is shared out among a hundred men who all had their fill and more.

We have heard the story about the miracle of feeding thousands from five loaves of bread and two pieces of fish many times. Actually stories about multiplication of food exist six times in the New Testament. Mathew and Mark are so fascinated that each one has two stories. This week we read from John, who like Luke tells just one scene of what some scholars say must have been the feeding of over fifteen thousand people. John lays himself open to the charge of being somewhat of a chauvinist. He obviously did not think women were important enough to mention, when he speaks about five thousand men. But even then women were not about to let husbands wander by themselves over the countryside. So, one can be certain there were women and children in attendance. That is how some scholars speak of fifteen thousand. One child in particular plays a key role in the unfolding of the story. This one boy finds Andrew and probably shouts to him, "Hey, mister, come here." He rips out of his pockets five thoroughly squashed slices of bread and two suspicious looking fish. This was to be the boy's own lunch. Let us note here that the kid was giving not out of his surplus but all he had. Andrew

not wanting to hurt the boy's feelings takes the unattractive morsels over to Christ. To the boy's mortification, the mob may have laughed up a storm at him. But not so the Christ! He accepts the boy's gifts with proper ceremony and gratitude. Gives thanks (Eucharist) and invites His guests to draw up a seat on the grass. Only that kid may have remained on his feet. The boy’s eyes, large as dinner plates, wondering what this strange Man with the massive hands was going to do with his lunch. The Master tells His people to share the boy's gifts among the humungous crowd. They look in disbelief at the soggy pieces of bread and convincingly dead fish. They ask, "Master, are you kidding us?"

Like watching a magician I have often been mesmerized by the miracle and carried away in trying to figure out, how He does it? … and I could write a whole essay about several potential engineering, social and psychological solutions to the quiz… but this time around I suddenly realized that if we look at the story from anyone in the crowd of followers, we realize that Jesus takes care of every one. “Follow Jesus and he will take care of you” is the message I take with me into this coming week. No clue how He does it, but no one is left hungry. The gospel writers make the point of the twelve baskets of remaining food, after everybody had their fill, to reassure us that nobody is left unfed. This time I will personally give up on trying to figure out the mechanics of the miracle of multiplication of loaves and fish, but stay intensely focused on the great benefits of followership: Jesus does take care of those who follow him!

The complete text of the readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/07/seventeenth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-06-21T01:52:00.000-04:00

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

Corpus Christi - Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

2009-06-14T05:04:00.000-04:00

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

Trinity Sunday

2009-06-07T16:14:00.001-04:00

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

Pentecost Sunday

2009-05-31T08:23:00.002-04:00

Dear All,

Pentecost Sunday is the “birthday” of the Christian Church. Pentecost is a Greek name meaning fiftieth day… after Passover. On the Jewish Feast of Weeks, “devout Jews from every nation under heaven ⁽¹⁾” gathered in Jerusalem at the end the season of harvest which began with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Diaspora or dispersion of the Jewish people resulting from the exile once considered a severe sentence, can now be seen as a great boon to the missionary venture of the early church. With one sermon, people from every corner of the world have now heard the good news of the gospel. In another situation, some of these people could have been enemies. Now, they are sisters and brothers in faith, members of the same body of Christ. The distinctions “Jew or Greek, slave or free person”, woman or man, rich or poor, educated or illiterate are no longer divisions; they are simply identifications of unique perspectives of life. The Spirit of God seizes all who have opened themselves to the miracle of transformation. And on that day in that room there was indeed a miracle of communication. While the Galilean disciples spoke in their mother tongue all this visitors from around the world heard them speak in their own tongue. These previously terrified people were now all somehow filled with the dynamic power of God, that refreshes and recreates.

The First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles is read every year to mark the beginning of the Church founded by Christ. While He was alive, the disciples did not understand Him, to the point that Peter denied him three times in Garden, narrated in Palm Sunday’s Gospel. When Jesus comingled with them after the Resurrection they continued to be taught, but did not get it either. After Jesus’ Ascension, celebrated last Sunday, they were utterly scared and

completely lost. But, like Jesus told them (in today’s Gospel) “when the Advocate comes” “the Spirit of truth will testify” to Him and so will the disciples. Clearly the Spirit of God was present, first emboldening the once frightened disciples and then opening the ears of the crowd to the marvels of the gospel message. Through the miraculous act they suddenly understood all He had been teaching for years (they got it) and felt secure and assertive to communicate the Good News of Salvation. The Church –Community- that Jesus had commissioned Simon (calling him Peter, the rock upon…) to build was in the making and two thousand years later is still celebrating the same mysteries and teaching all of us the History of Salvation.

This same Spirit was given to us when we were baptized and confirmed. If we received the same Spirit, as did the disciples on that first Pentecost, why can't we do the same marvelous deeds? But we can! Paul assures us, as he did the Corinthians in our Second Reading, that "to each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit." And to what benefit is the Spirit given? For the benefit of the community at large, not merely the individual possessing the special gift. Just as it did at the time of Pentecost, the Spirit of God transforms minds and hearts that are open to its healing power. Not everyone in the community will be able to perform the same service, but we have different gifts. We are one body in Christ, however, and together we will be able to accomplish much.

The complete text of the readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/05/pentecost-sunday.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

(1) Acts of the Apostles enumerates the following locations, people were from [see the map]:

Parthians: people from a region of north-eastern Iran

Medes: ancient Iranian people and Iranian sister nation of the Persians, who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran.

Elamites: people from Elam, an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran

Mesopotamia: northern Irak

Judea: mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel, an area now divided between Israel and the West Bank

Capadoccia: extensive inland district of Asia Minor (modern Turkey)

Pontus: historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day northeastern Turkey

Asia: a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey

Phrygia: a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the Southern Balkans

Pamphylia: region in the south of Asia Minor, extending from the Mediterranean to Mount Taurus (modern day Antalya province, Turkey)

Egypt: north east Africa

Libya: north Africa, west of Egypt

Cyrene: ancient Greek colony in present-day Libya

Rome: central west on Italian Peninsula

Cretans: form Crete, the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, was the center of the Minoan civilization (ca. 2600–1400 BC), the oldest Greek civilization

Third Sunday of Easter

2009-04-26T08:30:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

Today’s readings are all about amazement, repentance, terror and joy. The First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles is part of the famous Kerygmata Petrou (Greek for Preachings of Peter). After curing a crippled beggar outside the temple (before what we read today - Acts 3:1-12), Peter testifies to the power of God at work in their midst. His point is that neither he nor John cured the cripple, but God himself. He goes on to point out how they also were ignorant of the true identity of Jesus. They failed to recognize him, as they did not expect a Messiah who was going to suffer and die. Peter calls them to conversion now as precondition for their sins to be wiped away.

Luke’s Gospel follows the Emmaus story, after the two disciples had returned to Jerusalem recounting their encounter with the risen Jesus. He appears among them offering peace. Initially they were terrified thinking they were seeing a ghost. To prove that He was real he ate baked fish in front of them. Proceeding then to connect the teachings before his death with the reality of the risen Christ bringing forgiveness of sins. At funeral liturgies we hear: In him, who rose from the dead, our hope of resurrection dawned; the sadness of death gives way to the bright promise of immortality.

On Easter Sunday, Jesus did not return to his former life, he broke the bonds of death forever and won for all of us a pledge of eternal life. This is the good news (that is why we call these books Gospel) that we celebrate during the Easter season – news that is indeed amazing and fills us with joy.

The Second Reading from the first letter of John talks in a very realistic way about our honest desire not to sin, yet as humans, we sometimes fall short. The message is not to worry, for we have an Advocate who intercedes on our behalf. The early Church used today’s passage in initiation rituals, starting with confession of sinfulness prior to welcoming converts into the Christian community.

A complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/04/third-sunday-of-easter.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

P.S. Prayer of Thanksgiving for my brother-in-law Andreas’ successful surgery!!! Please include him in your prayers for complete and speedy healing.

Second Sunday of Easter

2009-04-19T16:27:00.001-04:00

Dear All,

We have now transitioned from Lent to Easter Season, a period of eight weeks through Pentecost. In this Season the First Reading is always from the Acts of the Apostles, the second book attributed to Luke about the history of the early Church describing how the salvation promised to Israel in the Old Testament, accomplished by Jesus has now been extended to the Gentiles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As the Second Reading during this Easter Season we read many passages of the First Letter of John, composed as a short treatise toward the end of the first century by John the Evangelist.

The Gospel according to John talks about the first hours of the bunch of ragged followers hiding frightened in a locked up room, after their leader had been executed on the cross and the body had vanished… the very morning of that first Sunday they had found the empty tomb. Everything seemed to have gone wrong, including Peter’s denial and the others running away, now hiding and wondering when the Jews were going to come and get them. In the midst of this angst Jesus appears to all of them and after raising from the dead the first thing he says is Shalom, meaning peace (much more than calm and stillness), communion with God, one’s neighbor and the earth. This reminds me that when we wish peace to each other we do not mean absence of trauma or conflict, but fullness and fulfillment of life. If you were astounded, like I was, that after coming back from death the first thing coming out Jesus mouth is Peace, isn’t it amazing that right after that he gives the power to forgive sins as sort of the first instruction to the leaders of his community. In my humanity I could imagine many other things I would have told my friends after such a unique experience. I am in awe recognizing how clear Jesus knows of our human toiling making the first directive to his apostles (ambassadors) to forgive sins. In the sentence between the Shalom and

forgiveness he officially makes them ambassadors (“as the Father has sent me, so I send you”).

If the first passage of the Gospel created incredible amazement, the next passage made me feel right at home when Didymus (meaning twin in Greek) insists on proof from his fellows when they tell him of their first encounter with the risen Jesus. We are all doubting Thomases, aren’t we? We want to experience through our senses (see, touch, feel) before we believe anything. In order to let us build our faith, in the second post-Resurrection appearance, and once the same Thomas (meaning twin in Aramaic) satisfied his sense (by touching the hands and side of Christ), Jesus blesses all of us who not having seen, we do believe. Having as one of our key witnesses to the resurrected Christ someone so much like us, gives me a sense of comfort.

The last passage of today’s Gospel reading is the end of John (before the Epilogue attributed to an editor), telling us that the few signs that were written, of the many Jesus performed in the presence of his disciples, were documented so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer foretold in the thousands of years of Jewish tradition.

A complete text of the readings at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/04/second-sunday-of-easter.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

P.S. Please include my brother-in-law Andreas in your prayers for a successful surgery on Monday (April 20^th) and complete and speedy healing thereafter.

Easter Sunday

2009-04-12T07:54:00.003-04:00

Dear All,

The First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles sounds like a Press Release from Peter about Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection. Beginning with His Baptism (we read about this on the second Sunday of this calendar year) and the anointment by the Holy Spirit, followed by his ministry doing good and healing all. The whole passion is summarized in just one sentence: “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” I once heard a homilist saying that God must have first confirmed with the devil that the death and burial of the son meant victory of evil over good. Once reassured, God proved the devil wrong by instructing Jesus on the third day to “Be raised”, making real the good news of eternal life. And to prove the point that the resurrected Christ was real, Peter reports about Him eating and drinking with the witnesses chosen by God in advance. Ghosts don’t eat and drink.

The Gospel of John is one of the four accounts we have about the Resurrection. While in most of the gospel stories we can relate up to four complementary views about the same story, with the Resurrection we can find several contradictory narratives. It seems to be saying, they really don’t know the exact nature of the chronology of events leading to the discovery that Jesus is no longer in the tomb. Interesting to note is that the first one to observe the empty tomb is Mary Magdalene, a woman. We are going to come back to why it may not have been Peter and John, but Mary who gets first to the empty tomb and (in the Gospel of Mark, which we are not reading today) is the first one to see Jesus resurrected.

Towards the end of the 20^th century a random blind sample study on three thousand people in the US discovered that 94% of the interviewed people spend their entire lives looking forward to something or not accepting where they are, here and now, but expecting something significant to happen tomorrow, the next month, the next year, when everything will come together… looking forward to something and not living the today. We may interpret this as the missing of an internalized construct to appreciate the resurrection other than cerebrally. We want to believe it, we say we’re going to believe it, we in our minds decide that that’s the way for us to go. But emotionally acceptance that we live out on a daily basis means nothing to most of us, at least to 94% of the sample. Because if you believe that you’re going to rise from the dead, you can live like it, right here and now.

Peter and John hit the ground running when they hear about the empty tomb, just like today’s American society. Kind of the reaction that most of us have in our daily lives, we wake up in the morning and we often hit the ground running, without stopping to think about why, or where, or what it all means. In general we can’t stand silence, we have difficulties coping with quietude… while we claim we want tranquility, we often get anxious because we’re not “doing something”…. sometimes to the point of pain out of fear about what is going to happen in the future.. pain that comes from not putting the whole thing into a larger context in which the Resurrection of Christ is not just intellectually accepted as true but activated by the way we live… through the capacity to grow in love, which most of us know intuitively that it has an effect in our lives. When we are in love, we get emotional and this is exactly why Mary is the first one to see Christ… because Peter and John, like most men, were living in their heads… while Mary in her capacity to love has the emotional ability to connect with Christ, by whom we identify our own resurrection. We may or may not genuinely accept the reality of the Resurrection… but whether we realize it or not, we hope that it is going to happen to us.

If you want to celebrate this Easter different than perhaps others, open your hearts and not just your heads to the message of a redeeming Christ who demonstrates his love for us by giving us the hope of immortality. Our mortgages, our jobs, our problems with all sorts of family members (children, parents, in-laws, remote relatives, etc.) whom we dislike or don’t get along with or don’t speak to and the neighbors and acquaintances that we despise, all that is related to the inability to see the loving Christ open himself to us in an act of immortality. Opening one’s heart is difficult because we think that if we do that, we’re going to get hurt… but unless we take the responsibility for the possibility of being hurt, this life retains little meaning… and we get to those places we’re so afraid of, which we can symbolized by the empty tomb… the only thing that makes that suffering and pain and anxiety worthwhile is that the empty tomb means that Christ is risen. The empty tomb of our lives has to be filled with something risen to make our lives make sense!

On the broader subject of faith, today’s Miami Herald reports on the front page about a University of Miami researcher suggesting that “people of all faiths, by a sizeable margin do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and are generally happier than their non believing peers”. The complete story can be read at http://www.miamiherald.com/486/story/995989.html

Talking about hope of resurrection… there was an older lady whose husband had died a few months ago and she had not been out to visit the cemetery. This couple had a very difficult marriage… they had made it but it was sort of the kind of relationship where they fought every day… getting along by fighting… as a way of communicating. Of course when one of them dies, the other one always feels guilty… so they’re especially devoted to going to the cemetery. While she was standing in front of the tomb one could see over her shoulder that the tombstone had something written on top of it: “Rest in peace …” and as you got closer you could see that at the bottom it read: “… until we meet again”.

May the smile (or loud laughter) enlighten your heart and open it for the love of the resurrected Christ! Happy Easter!

The complete text of the readings can be found at http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/04/easter-sunday.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

2009-04-05T21:46:00.003-04:00

Dear All,

My child recollections of Palm Sunday are about incredible swing in mood. I have memories of great joy during the entrance procession. The Gospel of Mark telling us the secretive story about the two disciples fetching the not yet broken in colt and then Jesus’ triumphant entrance in Jerusalem with the people crying out “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come!” is followed by a glorious entrance into the church with people waiving branches. Incidentally, “Hosanna” is the Greek rendition of the Hebrew phrase Hoshi’a-na which means “Lord, grant salvation” that comes from Psalm 118 recited during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. The people were celebrating the Lord’s entrance spreading cloaks and leafy branches on the road. From these leafy branches comes our tradition of palm leaves, that are blessed with holy water during the entrance into the church, we take into our homes.

While I was ready for a big celebratory mass, I remember when I was a child to be wondering why the First Reading had a sad undertone. The passage is from one of the Servant Songs from the Prophet Isaiah. In our Christian tradition Jesus is understood as the fulfillment of the prophecies of the suffering servant, who speaks seemingly resigned to the suffering he experiences. The servant is a disciple speaking the word of the Lord to those who are weary and receiving guidance from the Lord each morning. He is faithful despite those who mistreat and do harm to him. He does not despair, even in the midst of his suffering, for he acknowledges the Lord as his help and protector during times of trial.

My mood swung into total sadness during the Gospel account of the Lord’s passion. Long before the Gospels were ever put into writing, they were told as stories and that is how they took shape. The earliest and most frequently told story was about Jesus’ death, about that last hours of his life on the surface of this earth. There are nine scenes in Mark’s Narrative:

· Jesus’ anointing with perfumed oil at the House of Simon the leper, in Bethany.

· The last supper foretelling his betrayal and instituting the Eucharist at a place shown to two of his disciples by a man carrying a jar of water.

· Arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane (after three of his closest disciples, Peter, James and John fell asleep several times when Jesus went off to pray, accepting God’s will after asking for the cup to be taken away from him).

· Jesus on trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin

· Denials of Peter (“Before the cock crows twice you will deny me three times”).

· Trial before Pilate and Mocking of Pilate’s soldiers.

· The way of the Cross to the place of Golgotha, which translated means Place of the Skull.

· The Death of Jesus (Mark records Jesus’ last words crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

· The Burial of Jesus.

Today I reflect about my child memories, when Jesus’ death, like the death of any loved one, meant the end of everything, and realize that therein rests the great mystery of the Good News… but that is the Easter story, for which we’ll wait until next Sunday.

We wish you a Blessed Holy Week and pray for you to find some quite moments during the Paschal Triduum.

The complete text of the readings can be found at: http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/04/palm-sunday-of-lords-passion.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Fifth Sunday of Lent

2009-03-29T10:00:00.004-04:00

Dear All,

The First Reading of this Fifth Sunday of Lent comes from two chapters of the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah called “the little book of consolation”. Jeremiah, son of a priest lived around the time of siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon at the beginning of the sixth century B.C.E. Fear and despair seem to grip the people and empty them of hope and they wonder if their promise-making God had deserted them. But Jeremiah assures them that the days are coming when God will pour new life into them, when God will make a new covenant with them. There have been many previous covenants; with Noah, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses at Sinai and Joshua at Shechem (the ones highlighted we have read during this season of Lent). All were God’s initiative at times of crisis and transitions for God’s people and are described in terms of intimate relationships. Now, says Jeremiah, God will make one that will be even more intimate: not cut onto tablets of stone, but onto their people’s hearts, giving them a new capacity to respond faithfully to God “from the inside out”. This will require conversion of heart to God, who alone can truly forgive and forget their (and our) sinfulness.

At the time when Jesus walked the surface of the earth the Greeks were seasoned wanderers. They had the money. They were like yesterday's jet set with an insatiable desire to see fresh places and taste new ideas. Being smart tourists they knew the time to be in Jerusalem was Passover. Then they would get all the action and color they wanted. John is the only Gospel containing the story of the Greek travelers. Not surprising, as John's work was written to present Christ to the Greeks and Gentiles. His Jesus was designed for export. The Greeks of the Gospel story may have seen some of the miracles worked by the Christ in Jerusalem. They may have witnessed Him driving the traders out of the Temple. They must have heard of His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. No wonder they wanted to get to know Jesus, probably suspecting such an outspoken person would not live long. They chose the apostle Philip as their messenger (must have liked his Greek name ;-). Their famous line "Sir, we would like to see Jesus!" has been echoed by billions since the Greeks spoke it. But Philip broke into a sweat at their request. Did the Master want to chat with these foreigners? They had no appointment. Timidly Philip threw the ball into Andrew's court, one of the more senior followers of Jesus. He set up the rendezvous immediately. He had learned long before, what we now know, that the Teacher has time for everybody. You need no appointment. He has no voice mail, no cell phone, no e-mail. He takes all calls immediately. He is on the job 7/24/365. He's just a prayer away.

With the “hour has come” Jesus foretells for the last time his death and resurrection, with the powerful parable of the grain of wheat having to die in order for the plant to grow and produce much fruit. We can call this paradoxical wisdom of emptying in order to become full, of dying so that we may be raised to new life. I am reminded of a story of a very successful person going to a Zen Master seeking the meaning of life. The visitor began telling all about his ideas, his achievements and his interests. While the visitor was talking and talking the Zen Master put a cup in front of him and began serving tea. Even after the cup was filled, he continued pouring tea. The visitor jumped away from the overflowing cup saying to the Zen Mater: “The cup is overflowing! Don’t you see that not more will go in?” To which the Master responded: “Like this cup, you are overflowing with your own views and accomplishments. I have no way of showing you Zen, unless you first empty your cup”.

After receiving feedback from my dear readers that the scripture website sometimes was confusing (particularly on dates when several readings are available to choose from), I have created a dedicated blog posting only the scripture text I am referring to in any given commentary. For this one, the complete text of the readings at: http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/03/fifth-sunday-of-lent.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Fourth Sunday of Lent - Laetare Sunday

2009-03-22T01:56:00.002-04:00

Dear All,

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is Laetare Sunday. From the Latin it means joy at one stage of our Lenten journey. Rose colored vestments and flowers on the altar are signs of the Church's joy.

This week’s readings are about faith and behavior, good and bad in the history of God’s people. The First Reading from the Old Testament – 2^nd Book of Chronicles reports about bad behaviors -infidelities, practicing abominations, polluting– of leaders –princes, priests- and people, ignoring –mocking, despising- the messengers that God had sent over time. This bad behavior and reluctance to repent leads to destruction of the Temple, palaces and the walls of Jerusalem and those that escaped the sword end up in the seventy year Babylonian captivity. The subject of bad behavior is characterized in John’s Gospel as staying in the darkness doing wicked things, earning condemnation.

In the Second Reading, the apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians helps us understand one of the central questions about faith, which is the gift of God. Salvation does not come from good works. It is by grace through faith, which is a gift from God. Every time I come across this passage, I need to take a deep breath and slow down a moment, read it a few times and just let it float in my head for a while. Often I end up with an immense sense of gratitude about this precious gift of eternal life. It is so godly and so counter-intuitive of all the other goodies in life which have to be earned. We can all relax and enjoy the moment of this notion of the great gift.

John’s Gospel tells about Jesus’ teaching to his timid, well-read disciple Nicodemus, and to us, about the great mystery of the Resurrection as a precursor to eternal life. The famous passage of John 3:16, so often quoted and referenced by many, is about God’s love for the world and offering up his only Son for salvation of all. We started reflecting about the consequences of bad behavior and end with the teaching of John that good behavior may be clearly seen by God, as it brings it to the light that came into the world.

To me today, this means that the consequences of un-repented bad behavior are condemnation. Yet God’s mercy is unlimited, always available to redeem us, like he did bring back the Israelites form Babylon, with the only requirement of our repentance. The relationship between God’s offering of his only son and salvation is one of the great mysteries, which I include into the categories of things I still don’t fully understand. However I am free to hope that one day I may. In the meantime I can relax, as the greatest of all, salvation to eternal life, is a free gift. Gratitude and Joy –Laetare- is the response I choose.

A complete text of the readings at: http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/03/fourth-sunday-of-lent.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

P.S. Please include Astrid’s boyfriend, Simo in your prayers, for the healing of whatever is causing some nasty back pains.

Third Sunday of Lent

2009-03-15T23:55:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

It looks like this year’s Lenten reflections are all being written above 35,000 feet. Last week’s was written on my way to Brazil, the one before on my way to London and this one is being typed into to laptop on my way to Germany. With all this traveling around it has been a challenge to find that quiet time for prayer and reflection. Fasting is going well as reflected by several pounds less. As for almsgiving, the third of the Lenten priorities, I am glad we have a few more weeks before Easter to give me a chance to catch up. How is your Lenten coming along?

The Old Testament Readings continue on the path of God’s covenants. We recall Genesis’ Noah’s story of the First Sunday with God’s promise to all living creatures. Last week it was a promise to Abraham and his descendants larger in number than the stars on the night sky. This week we read from the Book of Exodus about God’s ten commandments given to Moses on Mount Horeb, better known as Mount Sinai. Every year we get a chance to remind ourselves of these instructions given to the Israelites just a few months into their journey to the Promised Land. Some scholars estimate that only three months had elapsed since they had escaped captivity from Egypt and they were already getting into all sorts of troubles among themselves wondering if captivity with sure food would not be better than this wondering around in the desert. The commandments are God’s promise that if they follow them they will have better relationships among themselves. They certainly needed them for their 40 year journey through the desert. I ask myself how well am I following them and how am I doing in relationship with my fellows on this life’s journey. In this day an age, some are straightforward and almost self evident for some of us, like “Thou shall not kill”. Although there are Catholics in high ranking positions today (number 2 and 3 in the US Presidential succession as one example) that with a “pro choice” versus “pro life” position seem to have a bit of a fuzzy view about this one. I am going to stay away from commenting an all ten here. But I do suggest that you spend sometime reflecting on one or two of them that are in your way of better relationships. That is what God wants from us, to live in good relations with our neighbors.

John’s Gospel was written about 70 years after the Resurrection at the time when the three Synoptic Gospels were well known in the Christian community. While Matthew, Mark and Luke wrestle with the What, When and Who, John is more on the question of Why. The Story of kicking out the traders and money dealers from the Great Temple, one of the world wonders at its time -under construction for half a century, is told by all three Synoptics much later in their narrative, while John has it quite early. When John tells his story the Temple of Jerusalem had already been destroyed by the Romans, not leaving a single stone in its place. Jesus shows a strong emotion, though he took his time to let it build up. “He made a whip out of cords” must have taken some time. The market place was not unrelated to the temple… the money changers were there to change liras, roman coins to shekels, Hebrew money (as roman coins would have been an offense for the offerings)… the dove, sheep and oxen traders found their place to provide ‘material’ for the sacrifices. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has the original of El Greco’s great rendition of this scene. Yet the Jews were loosing sight of what the worship was all about with the distractions about all the trading going on. Jesus confrontation with the religious leadership of his time (the Jews) who felt threatened by this Jesus and challenged him for signs, is a repeating theme in John’s Gospel. Paul tells us in his first Letter to the Corinthians that Jews were looking for signs, very much like Greeks believed in reason as a source of the almighty. Jesus foretells his resurrection by using the words of rebuilding the temple in three days. I like John’s editorial comment for all of us who may not get it either, “but he was speaking about the temple of his body”. John’s gospel has seven sign’s from the miracle of converting water into wine at the Canaan wedding all the way to the resurrection of Lazarus, providing ample signs. Yet the Scribes and Pharisees did not get it. Much worse they felt threatened… but that is a story we’ll read in a few weeks, on Palm Sunday.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/031509a.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Second Sunday of Lent

2009-03-08T05:52:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

On our Lenten journey to Easter, the highest feast of the liturgical year, we come across another covenant of God in the First Reading of the Book of Genesis. Not unlike last week’s covenant relationship with all the creatures of the world, this week we read of the covenant made with Abraham. Having promised Abraham descendants and land, God asks him to sacrifice the very son through whom the promise was to be carried out. Abraham is put to the test to choose between the promise of God to be fulfilled in Isaac and the very God who made the promise in the first place. Abraham shows the depth of his faith in God with a terrifying response, getting ready to kill his only son. Accepting God’s grace, even when not understanding, was the key to avoid focusing on the promise itself. Complicated indeed, I have to admit, but part of the mystery of suffering in this world.

In the Second Reading from his Letter to the Romans, Paul says simply, yet with profound and unshakable faith, that if God is with us, no one and nothing can be against us. This deep conviction Paul wishes to convey to his Roman communities… and to us. God being with us does not mean avoidance from suffering, very much like to get to Easter, Jesus had to suffer through Good Friday. No one and nothing against us, means that nothing can prevent the Good News of Salvation and Eternal Life. Not even Jesus crucifixion and burial prevented God from raising Him on Easter Sunday. This is a great mystery of the suffering. I often think that we are good company to Peter, John and James when coming down from Mount Tabor when “questioning what rising from the dead meant”. We need the faith of Abraham and of Paul that sustains us during our travel through the weeks of Lent.

I realize, I got ahead of myself coming down from the high mountain before we even got up there. Six days before the story we read from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had told his closest followers that he must go to Jerusalem, where he would suffer and be put to death. He tried to tell them that it was a path to glory both for him and for them. For them, like it would be for us if we wouldn’t know about the Easter Resurrection, it didn’t make any sense. They were worried and anxious. Jesus had to give them something to hold onto. He took three of them to the lonely summit of a mountain where they had a mystical experience that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. The Greek Bible talks bout the metamorphosis. As Jesus transfigured and for a brief interval his divinity shone through, two biblical ancestors, Moses and Elijah, who also had experienced suffering, revelation and transformation on mountain tops (Sinai and Carmel) engage in dialogue with him. They represent the Mosaic Law and the Prophets from the Old Testament. And while the three are terrified and Peter makes the off the wall suggestion of building tents, we hear for the second and last time in the New Testament, God’s voice, pointing us, like at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, to his beloved son. This time with a precise instruction to Peter, John, James and all of us, who often hear but not understand: “Listen to him”.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/030809.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

First Sunday of Lent

2009-03-01T21:12:00.000-05:00

Dear All,

The First Reading from the Book of Genesis, the first Book in the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah, tells the story of the flood and Noah’s ark. Every time we look at a rainbow we are reminded of God’s promise, the close bond remembered over three thousand years ago, not only to mankind but also to every living creature. The rainbow, this most beautiful and transient of all things, is a wonderful sign of God’s love. All the colors are there and all the grades in between. And there are even colors we can’t see. This shows the breadth of God’s love. His love covers the whole range of existence and even things we are totally unaware of. In some ancient cultures the rainbow is a sign of a weapon as in a bow and arrow, representing God’s bow and the lightning his arrow. The rainbow for them is a sign of anger, but for us it is a sign of God’s love. We do enough things to provoke God’s anger, but in this great covenant God says that he will be merciful to us. Although we have sinned he will hold back his anger. Instead he will love us all the more.

During this season of Lent we think about fasting and doing penance. The Gospel tells us about Jesus spending time in the desert being tested and experiencing all kinds of temptations. He emerged victorious in Galilee proclaiming the good news: "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel." These were the first spoken words of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel. The account of the temptation reads almost like a telegram. There are just two verses compared to the lengthier and fuller eleven verses of Matthew and thirteen of Luke. Mark doesn’t bother about the content of the various temptations. He bluntly states the fact of the forty days when Jesus was tempted by Satan. The wild beasts are traditional symbols of evil and like Satan they prowl around looking for any signs of weakness. And by enduring the tests successfully Jesus demonstrates that he is the true heir of Moses and Elijah who also endured periods of fasting. The forty days is a symbolic allusion to the forty years the Chosen People spent in the wilderness after the Egyptian captivity, being tested by God. We remember all this during the forty days of Lent.

All testing involves privation and suffering. If all testing involves suffering then in spiritual terms we can also say that all suffering is a testing. The test hopefully will increase our faith and trust in God. We can also undergo spiritual suffering when we experience times of doubt and darkness, which are also tests. God seems so far away. We find it hard to place ourselves in his presence, wondering sometimes if all this isn’t a complete waste of time. Most of us dread being put to the test, but it is something we all have to endure. It is an essential element of our pilgrimage. But you notice that even for Jesus it was for a fixed time, the forty days. There is always an end. During Lent we are invited to undergo some small hardship as a spiritual exercise, as a strengthening and a preparation for that real time of testing we may encounter during our journey. We place ourselves in God’s hands relying trustfully upon him. Remembering those hidden Angels, who are not far away, during these trials we unite ourselves with Christ and ask him to endure the Temptation with us. When we emerge from the desert we enter more fully into the presence of God and it will have all the beauty and more of the rainbow.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/030109.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Ash Wednesday

2009-02-25T19:25:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. The liturgical year has for special seasons, Christmas, Lent and Easter. The weeks “in between” are called ordinary time. Lent starts with an invitation from the Book of Joel, one of the twelve minor Prophets from the Old Testament, to open our hearts and return to the Lord with fasting. He pronounces our God to be merciful, slow to anger and rich in kindness.

Jesus gives us some practical means to get our priorities straight and return to God. We learn how to perform righteous deeds, how to pray and how to fast. Interesting that all three paragraphs in the Gospel start with the phrase “when you…” leaving it assumed that those three activities are the ones that will get us back on track. In all three situations he directs us to do it privately, assuring us that God will know about it, even if nobody else on earth notices it. I get the sense from this scripture from Matthew that the less observable to the physical world, higher the degree of acceptance of our loving Father. We have all experienced it at one point in our lives. When intensely focused on any of these three, we get to remember moments of intense inner peace in the aftermath of it. Lent are five weeks during which we are invited to specially focus on fasting, praying and almsgiving. Not that we won’t do any of them the rest of the year, but it is a good occasion to focus on them. Fasting makes me reflect at the opportunity to shed some pounds or kilos, which are excess baggage any way. And five weeks are a manageable time. Talking about manageable, we learned something very encouraging during our six year in Germany, a sort of crutch to make the weeks of Lent even more acceptable. A German Jesuit priest told us that taking a break from fasting on Sundays is perfectly fitting. He reminded us that it is the Lord’s Day and our joy should not be hindered by fasting afflictions. Neat, isn’t it? We are all invited to reflect on plans for fasting, thinking about what it is we are going to give up during these weeks. Same with praying, are we considering any special dedication to prayer during this Lent? And for righteous things and almsgiving the opportunities are facing us almost every step of the way. Are we going to act differently in this season than we usually do, when the next opportunity crosses our path?

From the second reading from St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, which we have been following for the last several weeks, we read that now is an acceptable time when God will help us. The letters to the Corinthians come across as very modern. The society at Corinth had many common traits with our present western society. Very successful merchants, great architects, not withholding much on promiscuity and very developed social lives. Paul is writing to people like us. Therefore we can take to heart when he speaks as an ambassador for Christ, "Be reconciled to God...Now is the day of salvation."

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/022509.shtml

Wishing everyone a blessed Lent,

Rainer

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-02-22T23:49:00.000-05:00

Dear All,

The Prophet Isaiah makes a amazing pronouncement in this Sunday’s First Reading when saying:” Thus says the LORD: … It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.” What an introduction to one of the themes of this last Sunday before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Forgiveness of sins together with healing and friendship are significant topics of this week.

From the second chapter of the Gospel of Mark we read this great story of the paralytic and his friends. After the extensive healings of the first chapter: the man with the unclean spirit, Peter’s mother in law, the many people who followed Jesus looking for some sort of cure, and even the healing of a leper. This week’s story is a lot deeper than a miracle story. It is a story of healing forgiveness, the power of the Lord, and the power of friends. Jesus is teaching in a house, crowded with people. Four friends want to bring their paralyzed buddy to the Lord, but they can’t get near the door. So, they climb up onto the roof, haul the poor guy up, then pull apart the roof making a hole right over where Jesus was. Jesus’ response to the incident is to commend the friends for their faith and then to forgive the paralytic. When some scribes complain that only God can forgive, Jesus notes that according to Isaiah a sign of the Messiah would be that sins would be forgiven and that, among other healings, the lame would walk. The lame is forgiven, healed and he leaves carrying his mat.

In the ancient world paralysis was seen as resulting from sin. We now know that this is not true, at least not directly. In the case of this healing, the man is paralyzed by sin, the same way sin can paralyze us today. Sin can exercise such force over us that we feel incapable of movement. A person’s self worth can be so torn down, feeling incapable of approaching healing. “How can I go to confession?” someone asks. “I’ve destroyed a life, destroyed a marriage, destroyed my family?” Many times a person will say, “I want forgiveness, but I just can’t get up the courage to seek it. I can’t control temptations. I probably will sin again.” When we feel that way we are paralyzed by sin. We need healing. Physical healing, perhaps. Spiritual healing, certainly. Jesus gives the paralytic both physical and spiritual healing. How come? Because He is God’s Love come down to earth. He loves the man too much to allow him to continue suffering both spiritually and physically.

And now we come to the real heroes of the story, the paralytic’s four friends. These four would do whatever it took to bring their friend to the Lord. Certainly they were pushed aside when they tried to enter the door. They probably were yelled at, insulted and mocked for climbing onto the roof and destroying it. But their determination to do what was the best for their friend, their determination to bring him to the Lord, was all that mattered. This is at the center of Christian friendship. It is a huge blessing to have friends willing to do whatever it takes to bring someone to the Lord. It takes a courageous friend to say to someone, caught up in the effects of sin, whether he/she caused the sin or is suffering from the sin of others: “Look, your killing yourself with … drugs, with alcohol, with the way you treat other people. You don’t like who you’ve become. But you don’t have to stay suffering like this. Come to Jesus. Start new again and be happy.” This gospel story tells us about the responsibility and the opportunity we have for one another. There are times that we are paralyzed by selfishness, fear, pride, greed or whatever. We might not realize the extent of our need. We might be unable or unwilling to do anything on our own behalf. We depend upon others to carry us to the Lord. And there are times that we come upon others that need our strength and our faith to help them to see the Light of Christ in the midst of their darkness. When Jesus saw the faith of the four friends, he healed the paralytic.

We pray today that we might not just have friends like that, but that we might become friends like that to others. A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/022209.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-02-15T22:49:00.000-05:00

Dear All,

This Sunday’s Gospel from Mark is about healing. We know that Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels, yet it contains the most miracles. Christ was being followed by a huge crowd. As He approached a town, a desperate man broke through the mob and painfully got to his knees before Jesus. The crowd ran away in horror. The fellow was our unnamed leper. Leprosy was a common disease in Palestine. In its late stages, the illness is a bad scene with foul smelling sores around nose, lips, toes, etc. The Jews looked upon leprosy not so much as a physical disease but a spiritual uncleanness, as we heard in the First Reading from the Book of Leviticus. The leper carried both physical wounds and the conviction that God hated him. Jewish law was harsh to lepers. They had to live outside towns. If they came upon a clean person, they had to ring a bell and shout, "Leper, leper." The historian Josephus wrote they "were, in effect, dead men." Imagine the courage of this fellow! The law stated if a leper exposed others to his disease, he was to be stoned to death. Lucky for him that the people around Jesus were so anxious to get away from the scene. Otherwise they might have well stoned him to death. Would Jesus have put Himself between them and the stones? We can confidently answer, yes. Now, we may ask, how did the leper sense that the Christ would not flee in revulsion with everyone else? What quality did he discern in Him that told him Jesus would hold His ground?

This story tells us that Jesus is most approachable. We discover He has time for those whom others consider human garbage. One hears people say, "My sin is so horrible not even God could forgive it." This Gospel tells us that such a statement is incorrect in the realm of God. The mystics tell us God will forgive us not because of who we are but because of who He is. “If you wish, you can make me clean." The leper's gut plea is uttered in just eight words. When we are in pain we have time only for the essentials. Today's account tells us that Jesus touched the leper’s running sores. Can we imagine what that stroking must have felt like to the leper? Probably it was the first time in years that someone who was clean placed a hand upon him. This miracle is called by scholars an action miracle. It happened instantaneously, “I do will it. Be made clean." This is unlike other miracles in Mark at which Jesus takes the man aside, looks to the heavens, sighs, puts spittle on the man's ear, etc. But here the Nazarene felt there was no time for rituals. This fellow's misery had to be terminated immediately.

One more observation we may take to heart. The cured man taught us how to pray. His prayer needed only eight words: “If you want to, you can cure me." Jesus shows fondness for short prayers. We hear Jesus in Matthew 6:7 giving us practical directions, "In your prayers do not use a lot of meaningless words...", brief prayers bring quick answers.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/021509.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-02-09T06:01:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

I am sitting in flight from Miami to London at 37,000 feet above the Atlantic, thinking about this Sunday’s readings, which talk about three things: the mystery of suffering, about prayer and spreading the Good News.

In today’s First Reading we are invited to reflect on the meaning of suffering. In the passage from the book of Job we see how Job despaired at the suffering he was forced to endure. He had lost everything; his land, possessions and even his family. We can certainly identify with his complaint. He sees no sense in his suffering and therefore no meaning in his life and he complains at what he must endure. Job despairs uttering: “I shall not see happiness again”—but we know that later in the story he rediscovers hope and his losses are restored to him. His perseverance pays off—God rewards him for not giving up. Nevertheless, we can identify with his suffering and we have all known depression or despair at one time or another in our lives.

In Mark’s Gospel reading there is a much more positive note and we read about the compassion of Jesus. Simon’s house looked like an emergency room that evening, when people brought all the sick and disturbed in the town, in order to be cured. He cures Simon’s mother-in-law and then goes on to cure all who asked for healing whether they were suffering from illnesses of body or spirit. We know that Jesus did not refuse to heal one single person who presented themselves to him and asked for healing.

But his compassion drains him and at dawn he goes away to a lonely place to be at peace and to pray to the Father. Several times we read in the Gospel stories about Jesus’ going to a quiet place to pray. Do we take time out of our busy lifes to pray, to reflect? I just read about a European CEO who is proud to confess that he only sleeps about five hours a night. He is so busy almost around the clock. Yet, a magazine wrote an article criticizing some of his decisions, wondering aloud if because of all this busy times he had forgotten how to think. There are so many things to do and to distract us that we run the risk of forgetting how to think. Jesus gives us a good example, after a hectic day of healing many sick in body and in mind; he goes into the desert to a serene place to pray. Each one of us also benefits from spending time in a lonely place of our own. Prayer will build up our courage to face the trials ahead and the best way to do this is to draw strength from the Father in prayer. Finding our own place of stillness, our own place of silence, where we can commune with the Lord and our souls can be at rest and have time to contemplate what lies ahead for us and grow in understanding of the victory that Christ has already won (=the Good News).

Paul offers to his followers in Corinth in today’s Second Reading the gospel free of charge. Spreading the Good News about Salvation keeps him going. I find energy and motivation out of this, and offer my own reflection in the hope that my dear readers can experience healings of your sufferings and find joy in this Good News.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/020809.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-02-01T17:11:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

The readings today speak to me about authority and anxiety. In the First Reading from the Book Deuteronomy we find one of the many stories of the Old Testament announcing to the people that God will raise a prophet from their midst in the future, that will speak what God tells him. Moses instructs his followers throughout the ages to listen to this prophet. Now, in hindsight, we know that all these announcements point to Jesus Christ.

Mark’s Gospel today, describing the opening of the teaching ministry, says that Jesus taught as one having authority. Authority comes from the Latin term autocritas, which in its origin refers to rightful ownership of the article in question, according to the French linguist Beneviste. To reinforce the notion of authority we hear the first recorded miracle, of Jesus freeing a possessed man from an unclean spirit. It is interesting to note that the Gospel does not tell us what it is Jesus taught. According to one tradition, this would not be Mark’s fault, but Peter’s fault. It is said that the origin to the earliest of the three Synoptic gospels is Peter dictating his memories to possibly his son. We know Peter was married, because his mother in law is cured from a fever in the very next story in Mark’s Gospel. But he does tell us that he taught different than the scribes. To me this means that he did not repeat what others said, but told the things as he saw them, even if it upset some of the established power (Scribes, Pharisees, Temple leaders of his time). After casting out the unclean spirit you can hear the murmurs in amazement among the audience: a new teaching authority! And we can see by the sequence of the story that Jesus interrupts whatever he is teaching to attend the sick person. Throughout his ministry we never find him refusing a sick person a cure.

Paul is well aware of the unavoidable struggles and anxieties of his Corinthian community. He wishes them to be free of them as much as possible so as to stay focused on the following of Christ. St. Paul would readily join the prayer we say at the conclusion of the Our Father: "Protect us from all anxiety." Today’s passage of his letter may at first reading seem to be a negative attitude to marriage. To be honest, until I read the commentary by Verna Holyhead, I saw it as such. An Australian Benedictine nun, interprets the letter to be saying that “all lifestyles have their preoccupations and competing loyalties, whether a person is married or single” and the male and female roles are no different in this regard. Paul invites us to free ourselves from these anxieties and that is a message we all need, for the most part in today’s challenging economic times.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/020109.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

P.S. Read the commentary from one of our friends from our six years living in Germany, pointing to regional differences in Christmas season traditions

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-01-25T11:59:00.004-05:00

Dear All,

Mark's gospel is often referred to as the Kingdom gospel, because it flows from the initial Kingdom proclamation, found in today's reading of Jesus going to Galilee to begin his messianic ministry. We may have become so accustomed to hearing this that we may overlook how odd it was. Jerusalem was the religious and political center of Israel and anyone announcing a new future for Israel would have been expected to declare his intentions there. As Jesus' ministry develops, however, it becomes clear that Jerusalem was the one place in Israel that was least likely to accept his message. The powerful people in the capital city had far too much to protect. They could tolerate only a "controlled" reform.

Mark wastes no time in pointing out the implications of the public mission of Jesus in Galilee: "This is the time of fulfillment." All the hopes and dreams of Israel are about to be realized. The thousand plus years of waiting are over. This is so because "The kingdom of God is at hand." The hopes of Israel had been centered in the promised messianic kingdom through which God would deliver his people from bondage and bring everlasting peace. At long last the promise is being fulfilled; the Messiah has arrived. But the kingdom that Jesus had in mind was both far less and far more that anyone in Israel had imagined. It would not mean the end of the hated Roman occupation, yet it would reveal a Redeemer (Messiah) who is the Son of God. To develop his mission, Jesus would choose, not clever politicians, but simple honest fishermen, announcing to Simon and his brother Andrew, that he would make them fishers of men. He knew that for his purposes a good and generous heart was more important than a proud and ambitious head.

This gospel invites to some fascinating reflection. To be honest, we are painfully aware that, though 2000 years have passed, we have not yet seen the fulfillment of God's literal promises. Some have stopped searching for the meaning and given up their faith in God. The rest of us may consider the solution to this dilemma to be the recognition that the fulfillment envisioned by Jesus is constantly being offered to each of us. It is a "rolling" fulfillment that each person must discover in his or her own lifetime. Jesus has come, but he is also still coming, and each one of us must ask whether he is being welcomed. Fulfillment is offered; it is never imposed. To live in the expectation of fulfillment is to live in the bittersweet world of promise. What we hope for is still awaited, and that may be painful. But we also live in joyful expectation of what will be, and that is comforting beyond words. We may be struggling in a dark valley, but the horizon is illuminated by God's trustworthy promise.

Interesting to note that Jesus called his first disciples from their workplaces, reminding us that there is a purpose in life beyond work. This larger purpose is found in our response to God's call to walk with him. This means taking time for prayer and gradually getting to know the Lord as the very center of our lives. Coming to understand that it is in Him that the value of our work and the precious gift of other people will be found… again and again…unto eternity.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/012509.shtml

In the news, the Church meets Web 2.0: The Vatican launched this week its channel at : http://www.youtube.com/vatican

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-01-18T09:25:00.004-05:00

Dear All,

The Readings of this Second Sunday in Ordinary Time are about the calling. The First Reading from the Old Testament is about Samuel’s. He was born of Hannah, a barren woman who is blessed by Eli after her vow that if she has a son she will dedicate it to God. The young boy is living with the half-blind priest serving his temple apprenticeship at the scene of today’s Reading. It is a beautifully choreographed three part dialogue. God calls, Samuel hears the voice thinking it comes from Eli and Eli after several repetitions of sending the kid back to sleep, finally realizes Who was calling. This was at a time of crisis in the political life of Israel around 1,100 BCE. The priestly family serving the temple of Shiloh had become spiritually exhausted, politics and society were corrupted. When I think about this short scene of Samuel’s calling I reflect back on the times in my life where I was called and now in hindsight realize that I thought it was an ‘Eli’ speaking not grasping that it was God calling me in a certain direction. I also wonder about the few occasions I played the role of Eli in the life of someone by helping to discern the content of a message. You may want to think about your roles as ‘Eli’ as well as ‘Samuel’ when hearing a calling.

The Gospel of John tells us about Jesus first recruits. Jesus does not yet have a following, he is just an ordinary Middle Eastern man. There is no miraculous healing, no dramatic instruction that mesmerizes the crowds. He is simply (‘ordinarily’) passing by the people who are standing around. His biblical ‘advertising agent’, John the Baptist, who foretold us about His coming since the Second Sunday of Advent (see the December 7, 2008 article) through last Sunday’s Baptism of the Lord feast, points him out to two of his followers. After they spend the day with Jesus they realized how extraordinary he was. Andrew, one of them, went and recruited his brother Simon. Jesus on the spot renames Simon to Peter (Cephas in Aramaic), indicating that He knew that He would commission Peter to become the rock upon which to build the Church.

Paul had been thrown out of Corinth, though not convicted, because of preaching against the licentiousness and depravity at the thriving gulf city, a center of commerce with Greek, Roman and Egyptian religious diversity. The Acro-Corinth on top of the mountain had the temple of Aphrodite earning the reputation of something of an ancient “Sin City”. Paul writes to his followers in today’s Second Reading to remind them of the sanctity of the body that is not for immorality. Another call that applies properly to our times, where the Aphrodite temples have been replaced by pornography polluting the internet.

All three incidents were quite ordinary on first appearance. Through the eyes of faith we recognize how extraordinary these three callings were. Be it Samuel accepting the message, or the Corinthian Christians that recognized their bodily dignity and focused on morality in their lives, or the disciples who hadn’t even noticed Jesus; they were called to deeper insights through the agency of another (i.e. Eli, Paul and John the Baptist).

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011809.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Baptism of Our Lord

2009-01-11T11:03:00.008-05:00

Dear All,

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord represents both the end of the Christmas Season as well as the First Sunday in Ordinary time. While in our time barely two weeks have elapsed since Christmas, the timeline of our Gospel stories has fast forwarded by over 30 years, presenting us Jesus as adult at the beginning of his public life. We hear the same story told from three different time perspectives.

First in the post-exilic Isaiah, from which we have been reading throughout Advent and Christmas, the prophet provides comfort to a broken people, after the Israelite’s return from Babylonian Captivity in one of the so called Songs of the Suffering Servant … Isaiah prophesied a Messiah who would not be a military commander but one who would suffer and die for the people.

Then Mark in the Gospel describes the Baptism by John of Jesus in the Jordan. When John the Baptist says that he is not worthy to loosen the thongs of the sandals of the one coming after him, it is to be understood in context of the customs of desert Palestine two thousand years ago. The slave, the lowest member of the household, loosened the thongs of the sandals of the visitors before they entered all smelly from walking in the desert. John means that he is even less worthy than the lowest member when it comes to the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

Lastly in our Second Reading from Acts of the Apostles, Peter tells about Jesus’ public ministry and how He went about healing all those oppressed by the devil beginning after the baptism that John preached. It is one more of the many places in the New Testament where Gentiles become part of the chosen people, when Peter states to those gathered in the house of Cornelius, who is not a Jew, that every nation is acceptable to God.

From today’s message three things can be seen:

1. The Lord humbling himself before John the Baptist is the traditional emphasis of uniting the feast to Christmas. The Son of God humbled Himself to such a degree that He was born in a manger. He humbled Himself accepting the baptism of John even though He was sinless. Christ refused to consider Himself better than anyone.

2. The Lord empowered by the Spirit to begin the mission of the Father signals in Mark the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. This aspect of the baptism is emphasized by the Eastern Church, of both rites, orthodox and catholic.

3. Isn’t it all about Change? … a very current term/concept these days in the US, particularly. We are no different than the people of Jesus' time. Those who stood before John the Baptist were sick of a world full of cruelty, persecution, and war. They wanted a change and they wanted to do something about this immediately. And we know what they did: They repented their own sins. They recognized that the world is not going to change unless they change. Jesus saw this and joined them. The Man of Peace accepted the baptism of John because He also wanted the world changed. Then Jesus began His public life saying that the Kingdom of God, the New Order, is upon us.

A complete text of the readings at: http://scriptures-my-journey-oflife-andfaith.blogspot.com/2009/01/baptism-of-lord.html

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Feast of the Epiphany

2009-01-04T10:25:00.007-05:00

Dear All,

The Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated within the twelve days of Christmas but separately in the Western Church, while the Eastern Rite celebrates both events together, the birth of Jesus and the homage by the foreign kings. Epiphany in Greek means the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something. While many homilists translate Epiphany with “manifestation”, I do believe that the vernacular gist of “comprehension of the essence of something” applies very well to Matthew’s Gospel story of today. It is an ‘Aha’ moment in history, Three Wise Men from afar realized that something very special had just happened. And that is why they joined the shepherds at the manger and presented high value gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the holy family. Interesting to note that the first spoken words in the Gospel of Matthew are from the Magi, when they ask King Herod “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?” As we know, Matthew writes for the Jews, and for him to utter the first spoken words by foreign dignitaries sets an additional accent to the importance of what is about to be told. The newborn king of the Jews is recognized from afar and will rule over far more than the Jewish nation. Would the author have guessed way back then that two thousand years later there would be 2.1 billion people around the globe recognizing themselves as Christians? In the Hispanic world the Three Kings bring the presents to the children, as opposed to Santa Claus. We were in Mallorca a couple of years ago and stood by the Three King Parade in the city of Palma, a huge popular event with thousands of families on the streets along the route of the parade. While the scriptures do not tell us more than the Gospel passage we read today, a very rich legend developed during the early Church days about the Three Wise Men. One legend tells about all three dying on the same day somewhere in Persia and a long journey about their remains over the centuries. Today we can find their relics in the Cathedral of Cologne in, which were given to the sitting archbishop in 1165 by Emperor Barbarossa, who had taken them from Milan as spoils of war after he conquered the city. The archbishop had a shrine built for them. While we lived in Germany we visited the beautiful golden shrine and the museum under the cathedral.

The First Reading from Isaiah, of the same period we have been reading during Advent, after the Babylonian Captivity, talks about light that has come. The distinction between darkness covering the earth and the glory of the Lord shining upon Israel and the predictions of wealth of nations be brought to them, encourages the people back then to rebuild the temple and the city from the ruins. Rebuilding our temples and our lives in hope of eternal riches is an encouragement to us, particularly in moments when we are overwhelmed by darkness in our hearts.

Paul tells the Ephesians in his letter of our Second Reading that the Gentiles are coheirs and members of the same body. We can read the passage as written personally to us in this time. The newborn king of the Jews, that Herod despised, is king for all of our hearts, independently of our ethnic heritage.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/010409.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer

Seasons Greetings

2008-12-21T20:56:00.007-05:00

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Feliz Navidad y un Feliz Año Nuevo!

Frohe Weihnachten & einen guten Rutsch!

Buon Natale e un Felice Anno Nuovo!

Joyeux noël & une bonne et heureuse année!

Wesołych Świąt i Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku!

Fijne kerstdagen & een gelukkig nieuwjaar!

Feliz Natal e um Feliz Ano Novo!

Рождеством и счастливогонового года

We finally ma-naged to get all together for this Christmas sea-son. (from left to right):Christian and María José arrived on Sa-turday morning from Las Vegas; Astrid and Simo had a long and cumbersome journey from Rome Italy, but made it to Miami on Saturday af-ternoon just in time for the final blessing at our renewal of mar-riage vows ce-remony during the 4^th of Advent mass; Alex came home after his third college se-mester; and Grandma Emy came from Ar-gentina. Seasons Greetings and best wishes for the 2009 year from sunny Florida !!!

Finalmente logra-mos reunirnos todos para las Fiestas Navide-ñas. (de izq. a der.):Christian y María José lle-garon el sábado desde Las Vegas; Astrid y Simone llegaron después de un largo y complicado viaje desde Roma, Italia, justo a tiempo para la bendición final de nuestra renova-ción de votos matrimoniales durante la misa del 4to domingo de adviento. Alex vino a casa después de com-pletar el tercer semestre de es-tudios universitarios y la abuela Emy vino de visita desde Ar-gentina. Durante el soleado domin-go elevamos las copas con los mejores augurios para las Fiestas y el Año Nuevo!!!

Es ist uns wieder mal gelungen die ganze Familie zu Weihnachten zu-sammen zu bringen.(v.l.n.r.): Christian und Ma-ría José kamen von Las Vegas am Samstag morgen an; As-trid und Simone sind nach einer sehr langen und komplizierten Reise von Rom–Italian noch rechtzeitig zum Segen der 4ten Adventmesse an der wir unsere Ehegelübde zum 35. erneuert ha-ben, angekom-men. Alex kam zu den Semes-terferien von der Uni nach Hause und Oma Emy ist zu Besuch aus Argentinien bei uns. Wir erheben ein Glas Sekt vom sonnigen Miami mit Frohe Weihanchten und Guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr Wün-sche!!!!

Siamo finalmente riusciti a stare tutti insieme per queste feste. (da sinistra a destra): Christian e María José sono arrivati de Las Vegas sabato mattina; Astrid e Simone, dopo un lungo e difficile viaggio da Roma, sono arrivati domenica pomeriggio appena in tempo per la benedizione ed il rinnovo dei voti per i 35 anni di matrimonio che abbiamo deciso di festeggiare in coincidenza con la 4ta domenica di avvento; Alex e’ tornato a casa al termine del terzo semestre accademico, e nonna Emy é venuta dall’ Argentina. Tanti auguri e buone feste dalla Florida assolata!!!

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer & Nora

Third Sunday of Advent

2008-12-14T11:19:00.001-05:00

Dear All,

This Third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday which means joy. The joy of the Church today is in the coming of Jesus – once and every day – to bring us peace and joy and gladness and love. Someone said, "Life is too serious to take seriously." This seems like a strange saying, but it sums up the message of today’s Gaudete - the Rejoice Sunday. The Apostle Paul says to not take seriously the disappointments of life - instead, to "rejoice always." We Christians have the choice to rejoice even when things go bad because we can see the true point of human existence. Let us look at a birthday party when the person blows on the candle, it goes out - but then the flame suddenly pops up again. Our lives are like that. Death appears to end one's life, but we will immediately re-appear before God. You cannot extinguish a human soul. We are destined to live forever. In comparison to eternity, this life is like the blink of an eye. The Apostle Paul suffered horrible things during his life: hunger, disease, poverty, sleepless nights, betrayal, shipwreck, scourging, imprisonment - even snakebite. You name it, St. Paul suffered it. Yet he said, "Rejoice always." He knew that life no matter how full of pain and disappointments should not be taken too seriously, when seen from the dimension of eternity.

The First Reading from Isaiah, who escorts us through all of Advent into Christmas, encourages the Israelites after the Babylon captivity, and us today, with glad tidings to heal the brokenhearted. God has clothed the prophet in a robe of salvation producing joy to his soul.

We have in today’s Gospel according to John (the Evangelist) an interesting interrogation. The Priests and Levites came out from Jerusalem to find out who this John (the Baptist) was, and whether he was the Messiah. The detailed account of the interrogation indicates that John the Evangelist probably was present. Why else would John the Baptist say: ‘There stands among you, unknown to you, the one who is coming after me’? This notion gets reinforced a few verses beyond today’s reading, when John the Baptist points out Jesus to him and Andrew. The Priests and Levites ask John three questions: ‘Are you the Christ?’ ‘… Elijah?’ ‘… the prophet?’ John answered these three questions quite honestly by saying no to them all. The first and the last were really the same question since the Christ and the Prophet were words used interchangeably for the Messiah. Then they ask a fourth: ‘If you are not the Christ, or Elijah or the Prophet then why are you baptizing?’ John does not directly answer but makes a declaration that the Messiah is already here and he says with visible irony, ‘he is standing among you.’ Jesus stands among us, just as he stood unrecognized among those Priests and Levites. He is there as a hidden presence. Not threatening, not judging, not spying on us or interfering; but just there cool, calm, patient, content to let things take their course. Be aware of His hidden presence, it will help us to find a common meaning and purpose in our life. John the Baptist tells the Religious of his time: "I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord”. "I baptize with water; but there is one… coming after me,… that will baptize with the Holy Spirit”. John guides us in Advent to look to Christ alone to take away our sins and to open heaven for us when he comes again in glory. Advent is a special time for open-hearted prayer of hope for the gift of recognizing God's coming among us. If today you should hear his voice, harden not your heart. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Let us take into our hearts the words of Paul in his first letter to the Thessalonians, today’s second reading, and let it be our prayer for each other, ‘May the God of peace make you perfect and holy; and may you all be kept safe and blameless, spirit, soul and body’.

A complete text of the readings at: http://www.usccb.org/nab/121408.shtml

With God’s Love and Blessings,

Rainer