ON THE LAST THINGS

THAT TIME OF YEAR

This afternoon our monastic community made our annual visit to the monks' plot ion St. Mary's Cemetery to honor oar deceased brothers. This is the time of year when the falling leaves and the liturgy conspire to turn our thoughts once again to the so-called "last things," the end-time and our own mortality.

Coincidentally, today, November 9, is the feast of the dedication of the Pope’s parish Church in Rome, the Basilica of Saint John Lateran.  Many of the readings and songs on this feast add to the theme of the end time: the Church as the communion of saints in heaven and on earth, for example, and the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from heaven.

As I was reflecting on these things this morning I thought of the words of the Creed we recite each Sunday, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” and the equivalent in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

BORING AS HELL

If I’m not careful I can start thinking of “life everlasting” in terms of the only life I really know: My life just keeps going on forever... and ever... for countless billions of years. Now, I don’t know how that makes you feel, but that prospect makes me want to yawn. After a few billion years it would get boring as hell.

The good news is that that Jesus Christ adds to this concept something absolutely crucial: We’re not just “immortal humans,” but we’re given the literally indescribable gift of living in Him and in the Father in a union of LOVE. It’s indescribable. St. Paul warns us not to bother wondering about what it will actually be like, because we’ll never even begin to come close to the truth:
"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Cor.2:9) 

SO WHAT?

But even this can leave us with simply the belief of "pie in the sky when we die" unless we make

still another escape from our limited human way of thinking. More good news: Jesus assures us "The Kingdom of God is among you." Our transformation has already begun! We are already being transformed into Christ. We are His presence wherever we are, whether in our workplace or at home or at the mall, we are Christ. And so is each person we encounter. Heaven is breaking in all round us today, here and now. 

BETTER QUESTIONS

In the gospel, the Sadducees, who do not believe in a resurrection of the dead, ask Jesus the inane question about whose wife will that widow of seven husbands be. They do that deliberately to try to make Jesus look silly. But in our unguarded moments we who believe in a resurrection of the dead can also ask equally inane questions: Will there be pepperoni pizza in Heaven? Will I see my dog Fido in Heaven? Will there be soccer in heaven? What age will my resurrected body be in heaven? Those are bad questions. Paul's advice to the Corinthians is worth repeating here: 

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Cor.2:9) 

Jesus offers us a much more positive set of question to ask:

- How am I reflecting God's boundless love to the people around me?

- How am I being Christ to my sisters and brothers today?

- How am I already living out the life of God's eternal love in my home, my place of work?

These are the things we need to be worried about. We need to be building up the Kingdom NOW, foreshadowing and even hastening the everlasting love of heaven.

Let God worry about the pizza and the pets in heaven!  
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SAINTLY IMPERFECTION

 THE PROBLEM WITH PERFECTION

During this past week we celebrated the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, and today (Saturday) I'm writing this on the Solemnity of All Saints. So I've been thinking about the terrible hoax that continues to be perpetrated on Christian believers by various writers over and over throughout the centuries. I'm referring to the idea that a "saint" is someone who is "perfect." Almost from the beginning certain biographers of saints felt compelled to show that their particular saint had no faults, no shortcomings and was free of all imperfections.

I'm sure that there must be folks around today who believe that the Church is watering down her definition of "saint" by canonizing people such as John XXIII and John Paul II whom we knew, and whose imperfections and weaknesses were well known. But in recent years the Church has once again restated the ancient idea that every one of us is called to be holy (in Latin and the Romance languages the word for "holy" is the same word as "saint." This "universal call to holiness" is not a call to be faultless, flawless and untainted by sin -- that is clearly not possible for anyone but God alone -- but it's there nevertheless. So we have to figure out how to be saints despite our imperfections.

TWELVE IMPERFECT PEOPLE

Did you ever look closely at the twelve people that Jesus chose as the ones who would spread his word to the world? The gospel passage for the feast of Simon and Jude listed them by name, and the roll call is pretty discouraging. Matthew was a tax-collector for the Romans, a trade despised by his fellow Jews. Simon the Zealot was a member of a group who hated the Romans and continually plotted their violent expulsion from Israel; I wonder what he and Matthew talked about over supper. Then there were James and John, nicknamed Boanerges or Sons of Thunder - (in other words, they were vociferous -- maybe even Loudmouths). There was Thomas who wouldn't take his brothers' word for anything but needed to see it wth his own eyes, and the blustery Peter who bragged that he would follow Jesus to death but then denied even knowing him. Judas Iscariot, whatever his motives, wound up handing Jesus over to the Sanhedrin.

TWELVE MORE IMPERFECT PEOPLE

I thought of this yesterday during a community meeting with my brothers in the monastery -- one abbot and twelve monks, an interesting number. As I scanned the group, each of us with our strengths and weaknesses, our talents and our troubles, I thought of the motley group of Jesus' helpers, each one handpicked personally by Him yet full of faults and foibles. "Yeah," I figured, "I guess we're a match for them."

I pray that like the twelve apostles our closeness to Jesus will allow us very ordinary men to do whatever extraordinary things the Lord calls us to do. Meanwhile we just keep trying and striving. That's what saints do, they keep trying and striving and helping one another along the way.

GET READY, GET SET...

From time to time I will run into one of our high school Students standing in the hallway. I say to him “what class are you supposed to be in right now?“ And he Will answer “I’m getting ready to go to English class.“ The response “I’m getting ready come across as awfully evasive. It leaves open the questions “what are you doing in the hallway?” And quote, why aren’t you in class?" The great French religious philosopher Blaise Pascal writes somewhere that many Christians waste their Present lives Waiting for heaven, which is their goal.

In some of the recent Mass readings, we have heard Jesus telling us to prepare for the master's return. But he doesn’t tell us to simply “await” that return.

The center of his message is that the kingdom of God is already among us. This kingdom exists, if you will, in this spaces between us.

I need to ask myself what characterizes the space between me and, say, this particular brother. Is it envy? Sympathy? Jealousy? Or self-giving love? That’s where the kingdom exists already!

Yesterday I had this awful thought: I imagined that I had died, and Jesus was asking me how I had spent my life. And I answered “I was getting ready!”

That is not the response we Christians are supposed to give in accounting for our lives.

Blaise Pascal 1623 - 1662

We are each called to make a liar out of Blaise Pascal by spending our lives on earth being Christ for everyone we meet. We are supposed to be helping to build the kingdom on earth. 

We have no time to waste by just “waiting for the Lord to return.”

PESTERING THE LORD

PRAYING WITHOUT BECOMING WEARY

The Sunday Gospel for Oct. 19 is the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge. Here’s a reflection that I wrote some years ago on this little story.

Sometimes I have the impression that the Lord is in no great hurry to answer my prayers. Judging from the number of parables about bridegrooms who are delayed in coming, and masters who go off on five-year journeys, it would seem that the earliest Christians, too, had a similar experience of waiting impatiently on the Lord. No doubt they lost heart at times, wondering if he was ever going to keep his promise to return on the clouds of heaven.

Luke, knowing the impatience and discouragement of his little community, has Jesus warn the disciples that the end may not come any time soon: "The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it" (Luke 17:22). The gospel writer follows this saying immediately with an especially powerful little story about perseverance in prayer. "He told them a parable on the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary" (Luke 18:1).

THE PARABLE OF THE WIDOW AND THE JUDGE

The story concerns a corrupt judge and a certain widow.

The judge is part of a judicial system which is rife with bribery and corruption, and which favors the rich and powerful over the weak and the poor. The widow, on the other hand, is in a particularly vulnerable situation, since a woman in those times derived her status completely from her husband. She has no welfare system or Social Security to fall back on, but has to fend for herself as best she can. This is the background, then, for the clash between the widow and the judge.

This particular widow, Jesus tells us, came to the judge demanding her rights. The verb "came" is in the "imperfect" tense, which is Greek's way of showing continued repetition: "she kept coming and coming." We get the picture of a woman constantly badgering the judge until she gets what she wants. The image grows more forceful as the story continues.

Despite the fact that he "fears neither God nor man," the judge finally decides "because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me" (Luke 18:5). This sentence is much more picturesque in the original Greek. It starts with the expression "yet because this widow keeps causing me trouble (kopos), I will give her justice." Kopos, "difficulty, toil," comes from a root which means "chop, hack." It's fun to imagine this powerful judge feeling that he's getting chopped and hacked by this strong-willed widow!

The second half of the sentence follows with another comical image: the judge decides to rule in her favor "lest she finally come and strike (hupōpiazō) me." This verb is used to describe fistfights. Paul applies it to his own spiritual self-discipline: "I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train (hupōpiazō) it" (I Corinthians 9:27). He toughens his body the way a prizefighter does, by striking it repeatedly to get it in shape. Hupōpiazō is actually a combination of hupo, "under," and ops "the eye," and means literally "to strike below the eye." This is what the judge is afraid the pesky widow may do to him -- sock him in the eye

This three-sentence parable paints an unforgettable picture of a completely powerless person managing to get her way with a mighty judge. Then Jesus draws the lesson for us: "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night" (Luke 18:6-7)" "Who call out to him" is a present participle in Greek: "calling out to him day and night." Once again we have the image of constant, ongoing, relentless asking.

My study of hupōpiazō has had an impact on my own approach to prayer. Recently, as I

started to bless myself at the end of a few minutes of praying, I felt a bony elbow jab into my ribs. "Hey! Why are you stopping so soon?" rasped an old woman's voice. "You're just getting started!" I sat there mute and mystified. "I'm telling you, go back and ask again!" She was so upset with me that I was afraid she was going to haul off and hit me. "Then after that," she went on, "go back and ask again. Keep asking!" I did go back and ask again. She's returned several more times since then to push me into being more tenacious and persistent in my praying.

Just this morning she stopped me, right in the middle of my prayer. "Listen! Do you really want what you're praying for? Because you sure don't sound like it! You're just rattling on, only half thinking about what you're saying. You ask that way and expect God to answer you? You've got to be kidding!" I just sat there stone-faced, knowing that the widow, as usual, was right. "You've got to throw your whole heart into it!" she continued, "Don't be shy -- that never gets results. Maybe try getting a little loud. You know -- make a scene, let him know you're serious."

St. Benedict's approach to prayer in his Rule for Monks reflects the widow's approach: he usually connects prayer with tears and compunction, and advises us to pray without ceasing. Little by little I have been learning to pray more passionately myself, borrowing a bit of the widow's fiery enthusiasm. I'm not sure how much this kind of praying changes God, but it is certainly changing me. Although the parable does not say that the judge and the widow ended up being good friends, I am sure that if I just keep trying to "pray without growing weary," I will end up in a closer and livelier relationship with God, the just Judge.

THINK ABOUT IT

Most of us have been taught to pray to God tentatively, and to add at the end of our petition some statement like, "However, Lord, if you don't want to grant my request, that's fine too. I will gladly accept whatever it is that you decide to do." How does this laid back, seemingly indifferent approach square with the widow's forceful approach, which was recommended by Jesus himself?

Are you comfortable pestering God passionately and repeatedly with a particular request? Do you ever pray that way? If so, what do you pray for? What do you do if your prayer is still not answered?

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GOD, ME, AND THE ROCKS

Here’s an image that I heard yesterday and which struck home with me. I  hope it may be of some help to you as well.

Take a large glass container, maybe a two-quart pitcher,  and fill it to the top with rocks about the size of the child’s fist. You could say that the container is now full.

Next take a couple of handfuls of pebbles and put them in the container, shaking it as you do so. Now you could say that the container is full, right?

Then take a couple of cups of sand and pour it into the container. Now you could say that the container is really full, right?

I guess you can see where this is going. Maybe you could try taking some water and dumping it into the “full” container as well.

Think of this as a parable of my relationship with the Lord. The point is that I have to start with the big rocks first. Sometimes I say “I just don’t have enough time to pray. My day is just so full!” I fill my life with gravel and sand, the less important details in daily life, and leave for last the most important ones, the big rocks, namely my relationship with God, and time for prayer. 

I get to the end of a long, tiring day, and am disappointed that I have little energy,  there’s little room left for God, for nurturing my intimate relationship with the Lord.

If I’m not careful, my life gets filled up first with the gravel and the sand of daily living. The image of the container in which the big rocks went in first offers me a powerful lesson about setting priorities. 

What do I need to do to make sure that the “big rocks” in my life are given priority so as not to be displaced by the less crucial details of daily living?

Certainly worth some serious thought.

THE MUSTARD BUSH

Today's gospel passage has got me thinking about Mark's parable of the mustard seed.

Jesus said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ Mark 4:30-32

The Old Testament contains some metaphors based on the towering cedar tree magnificently reigning over the rest of the forest. Jesus makes a point of avoiding that metaphor in favor of the mustard plant, which grows to a height of three to about ten feet. Using one of his favorite devices, Jesus catches his hearers off guard with this surprising comparison. Its pointed irony would not have been lost on them: the Kingdom is not about being the biggest and the mightiest. But there are other things that people knew about mustard plants that would have given the metaphor even more punch.
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THE KINGDOM AS A WEED

There are two more things we can take from this image: Pliny in his Natural History says that the mustard plant is “hearty and intrusive.”

First, the Kingdom is as hearty as a mustard plant: it’s hard to kill. Some years ago I wrote a post celebrating the hardiness of the faith in Haiti. The Kingdom there is proving amazingly hearty, showing itself in people’s sending their prayers of lament, praise and thanks heavenward from the midst of the rubble and the misery. Is the Kingdom that hearty in my life, I wonder, surviving every challenge and difficulty?

Second, the kingdom, like the mustard plant, intrudes where it’s not necessarily wanted. This first definition of a weed I came across seems to fit well enough. “Weed: a plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden.” Think of some of the hearty weeds that keep trying to take over your own garden. The Kingdom, it seems, is supposed to be troublesome like that, popping up in our life in areas where we’d rather not have it. It may show up just as I’m about to say something that would move my plans along but which would be rude or hurtful to someone. Or maybe it will intrude as I’m wondering if I really have any responsibility to help the poor people in Haiti. Some call it the voice of conscience, which is fine, too; we know that it's a sign of the presence of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is like a mustard plant -- hearty and intrusive. When I pray “Thy Kingdom come” I’d better be ready for something “undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome” to get in the way of my plans and which may prove very hard to get rid of once it takes root in my heart!

KINGDOM SPACES

There was once a rich man ...

Today's gospel parable about the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31) got me thinking about the Kingdom of God. I like to imagine the Kingdom of God as “existing in the spaces between us.” We are each responsible for what characterizes those spaces: mutual care? anger? jealousy? empathy?

In the case of the rich man, he was not even aware of the existence of the beggar at his front door. What characterized the space between him and Lazarus, at least from the rich man's perspective? Maybe indifference. In any case, it was not the “Kingdom” Jesus had come to establish on earth.

Interestingly, the parable ends with the image of a space between the two characters: an unbridgeable space separating the two of them. And it is too late for the rich man to bridge that space by filling it with compassion. He is, however, the one responsible for the chasm.

So there are at least a couple of lessons for us in this parable. First, we need always to be aware of the people that God has placed in our lives, especially those whom we may be tempted to pass by without noticing them. (It’s no coincidence that this poor man, Lazarus is the only character in any parable who is given a name), And second, we are responsible for how we treat those people. So we could say that the Kingdom means filling the species between us with love, right?

Yes, I suppose that's true. But we should not forget that the Kingdom is not always filled with "nice" experiences. The experience of the Kingdom also includes sharing in the sufferings of Christ, the King.

So when we are experiencing pain and suffering, we have to try to experience them as a share in the mystery of Christ's pain and suffering. These ended, as promised, in victory over death and suffering. Ultimately, the kingdom is about Easter.

My faith in Christ the Risen King assures me that if today is Good Friday for me, then Easter is coming!

I once heard this saying, attributed to a wise old rabbi: "God is not nice. God is not your uncle. God is an earthquake." 

I don't know about you, but I have certainly met this Earthquake God a few times. But this God is also the God of the Paschal mystery who raised Jesus from the dead. The God of love whose ways are unfathomable to us.

Our faith assures us that in the end, God always wins, and the Kingdom always comes. When we pray "Thy Kingdom come," we are committing ourselves to help to bring it about by filling all the spaces in our lives with Christlike love.