Persevere in Prayer

The Bible Points to Jesus as THE Revelation of God

The word of God takes us back to a defining moment in the life of ancient Israel: the Exodus of the Hebrews from their oppressors. In the wilderness, the Hebrews encountered dangers everywhere. Here they are fighting. Moses, atop a hill, displays the staff of God, a symbol of God’s presence, and extends his hands, almost magically. Every time Moses lifts his hands up in prayer, the tide turns in favor of the Hebrews.

The message is simple: persevere in prayer, because God does hear us.

Paul here emphasizes the significance of the Bible and its importance in our lives. The Bible is the very breath of God which empowers us to be faithful disciples of Jesus.

In the Gospel according to Luke, the widow doesn’t give up in her demand for justice, and the judge eventually yields. The parable challenges us to persevere in doing what we can to right wrongs.

The Bible is a guide in life. Through the inspired word of God, it is a two-way conversation. We should be ever attentive and responsive to the word of God.

Yes, God authored the Bible in the sense that the Bible includes what God wants us to know about God, his relationship to the universe, and his purpose for us.

But the authors of the Bible were real authors, using the languages, images, literary genres, and worldviews they knew to communicate religious truths, not scientific theories. They knew nothing about evolution, the solar system, galaxies, or the International Space Station – which this past Friday conducted its first all-female spacewalk.

Moreover, the Bible is not one book, but a library of books written over 1,500 years by at least forty different authors—in prose and poetry, fiction and history, historical narratives and short stories, etc. The Bible often speaks symbolically, as in the parables of Jesus.

Just as we interpret literary genres differently, we have to interpret biblical literary genres differently, to discover more easily the fundamental religious truth that it is trying to communicate. The creation stories, for example, communicate religious truths. The biblical authors communicated through the cultural images and legends and traditions they knew.

I invite us to read the Bible prayerfully. Not to find specific answers to questions the biblical authors never thought about, but to become the kind of person for our day that Jesus was for his day.

The scriptures point to Jesus as the unique or definitive revelation of God to us. In other words, everything that God wanted to do for us or say to us, God did in Jesus. The Spirit in the global Catholic community guides us along the journey to our heavenly dwelling place, in light of new challenges in new generations and evolving cultures.

I invite us particularly to nourish our spiritual life through the Sunday readings in the Liturgy of the Word. We gather every Sunday in churches across the globe to listen to God in the Liturgy and to presence sacramentally and mystically Jesus Christ gloriously alive in the Eucharist, to become one with Him in Communion, and then to go forth to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ, until he comes again.

Merry Christmas

Rembrandt's Adoration of the Shepherds

Every year we relive the wonderful Christmas story. The Gospel according to John summed up this magnificent story in a single line: The Word became flesh.

That takes us back in our imaginations to the beginnings of the human family, in Genesis: when man and woman walked with God, had friendship with God and one another. But somehow man and woman lost that friendship, they fell from grace: they hid from God.

But in the midst of ancient Israel’s fidelities and infidelities to the covenant, God never reneged on his promises. And so the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

The Word of God for the Christmas liturgies is like a prism through which is refracted the multiple facets of this great mystery of the Incarnation.

Isaiah proclaims glad tidings: the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Paul writes that the grace of God appeared in Jesus Christ who made us “heirs” to the promise of eternal life. In the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke, the Virgin Mary gave birth to her son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.And the Gospel of John sums up the meaning of Christmas: the Word became flesh. That is God’s greatest gift to us.

Some gifts really transform the lives the people: gifts of teaching, of listening and supporting, of sharing time and experiences, of compassion and forgiveness and affirmation. This begins in our own families and workplaces and communities: enduring gifts that we can always give to one another.

The Word became flesh. That single line changed our destiny. Christmas means not simply God in Bethlehem centuries ago, but God within us. We carry within ourselves Emmanuel, God with us. How? By virtue of the life-giving waters of baptism.We gather to proclaim the awesome Word of God, to celebrate the presence of the living Christ.

That great truth of our faith, God within us, challenges us always to look for the good in ourselves, in other people and in all situations in life.

And who is the ultimate good-finder? God so loved us that he became one of us. Yes, Jesus had a unique relationship. He was God-man. A healer, a teacher, a peacemaker. Think of all the people in the Gospels that Jesus met: the blind, the leper, the lame, the sinner, the forgotten. And Jesus found goodness in all of them where many didn’t.

The promised Messiah has come, He is in our midst mystically in the word proclaimed and the sacrament celebrated, and He will come again in power and glory at the end-time. In the meantime, pray this Christmas season that the Lord will help those who doubt to find faith; those who despair to find hope; those who are weak to find courage; those who are sick to find health; those who are sad to find joy; and those who have died to find eternal life in God.

God's Priority is Love

Dali's Sacrament of the Last Supper

How many are tired of mid-term politicking? Here’s how politicians in Colonial America sought feedback from their constituencies. They sent their assistants to local taverns, to “go sip some ale and listen to conversations.” Assistants were dispatched to different places. “You go sip here” and “I'll go sip there.”

“Go sip” morphed into the word “gossip.” Maybe that’s what polls are.  We'll know Wednesday!

Sometimes we ask ourselves: what’s the one thing I want to be known for?  Such questions may reveal what’s really important to us.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus was asked to prioritize the commandments. Without hesitating, he reveals what is most important to God by quoting the She’ma, a daily prayer still recited today by Jews:

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
Then Jesus adds a quote from the holiness code in Leviticus:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The scribe notes his response to Jesus: You are right…to love God and to love your neighbor is worth “more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

Jesus Christ, our high priest, through his death and resurrection opened up to all humankind eternal life with God. Yes, in the mystery of death is eternal life. God called you and me for a specific purpose in this earthly life and an unimaginable future in heaven. Christ anticipates this future.

I would like to suggest how we might begin to experience this by becoming more aware of the presence of God as we go about our daily routine. One way to make the best of the present is to practice the presence of God. The great masters of Christian spirituality say this practice is an art.

Yes, we can experience the presence of the divine all around us in nature and in people. But we encounter the living Christ in a privileged way in the liturgy. The Risen Christ is present  as we gather together in his name. He dwells in each of us through our life of discipleship with him. We connect with one another as sons and daughters of God our Father in a way that expresses the unity of the mystical body of Christ, our global faith community.

The living Christ invites us, through the presider, to sing and pray in worship of the Father. We also encounter the living Christ in the word: listening with open ears and open hearts because Christ has a word for each of us, a word that hits home.

Then Christ reveals his presence to us in the reality of his body and blood. This is an intensely personal and communal moment as we are deeply united with Christ and with all who share this sacred meal in this community and in our world-wide faith community. Communion links us through the sacramental body of Christ to his mystical body.

May God grace us abundantly so that we can practice the art of the presence
of God as we go about our daily routine of working and traveling and shopping and exercising and eating with family and friends.  And then we will make the best of the present moment.