Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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 20th 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

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

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

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

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

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

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