TRUST FALL

In the past week or so I’ve been practicing letting go of any worries and

preoccupations and placing them in the Lord's hands. A couple of days ago I came across a second helpful image: a sheep lying down confidently in a green pasture under the shepherd’s watchful eye. It’s from Psalm 23, the “Good Shepherd” psalm. I’m lying down in it and trusting in the shepherd to keep me safe. 

The picture had come to me early one morning years ago as I was reflecting on Matthew’s account of the miracle of the loaves and fishes (Mt 15:32-38). I was struck by verse 35: “Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground…” 

I knew that “sit down” was a translation of one of my favorite Greek words, anapiptō. What had first interested me about the word was that it means literally “to fall backwards, to lean back.” For instance, when Jesus reveals at the last supper that someone is about to betray him, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” leaned back [anapiptō] against his chest and asked him, “Master, who is it” (Jn 13:25)?

Usually, however, the verb is not used in this literal way but in the sense of “to lean back to dine.” For solemn meals, Jews in New Testament times followed the Roman custom of lying on mats or low couches around the outside edge of a low U-shaped table. The diners would lean on their left elbow and use their right hand for eating. This was the scene, for instance, when Our Lord accepted a Pharisee’s invitation to dinner: “Jesus entered and reclined at table [anapiptō] to eat” (Lk 11:37). Since this was a banquet, Jesus and the others would literally have “reclined” as they ate. Early on, however, the word expanded from its narrow meaning of “to recline at a banquet” to become the general word for “to sit down to eat.”

This is the word I had come upon at the beginning of the story of the loaves and fishes early one morning: “He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass.” Ever since discovering the background of this word I’ve loved the image of thousands of hungry people in that deserted spot not simply sitting down to eat, but obediently “leaning over backwards” in trust at Jesus’ invitation.

I used to wonder what I would have done if I’d been in that crowd when Jesus invited

them to sit down to eat. Being a doer by nature, and someone who wants to solve his own problems, I had trouble imagining myself leaning back passively and letting him supply me with food. I would have preferred instead to find some way of getting it for myself. 

But I think that over the years I’ve found it easier to picture myself “reclining” on the grass. And, remembering the literal meaning of the word, I can close my eyes and let myself “fall backwards,” knowing that He will catch me, and that He will give me whatever strength I might need to get through whatever problems or worries I may be facing.

The Lord is my shepherd,

and nothing shall I lack.

He makes me lie down

in green pastures...

 

ARE YOU WORRIED?

 The gospel  passage at today's mass (Saturday) is a treatise about worrying (Mt 6:24-34), Since the summer heat is wearing me down, I’m taking a shortcut and presenting a chapter from my book “Walking in Valleys of Darkness.” 

It's no wonder that ours is sometimes called "The Age of Anxiety." Everyone, it seems, is worried about something -- or probably about a lot of things. The pressures of daily living in a complex society – balancing job and family, providing for a secure economic future, concern for the safety and education of our children leave us feeling anxious. We stopped worrying over a nuclear showdown in the "cold war" with the Soviet Union only to be faced with the new worry of global terrorism in our cities, and warnings about drug-resistant diseases that could wipe us out.   

Since the NT word for “worry,” merimnao, comes up a dozen times, we can get some idea of the kinds of things that the people in the early Christian churches worried about. The first Christians probably a lot of the same things you and I do! In the story of Martha and Mary, Jesus points out to the harried hostess Martha, “you worry (merimnao) and fret over many things, but only one is necessary. (Lk 10:41)”

Before looking further at how the word is used, though, it would be helpful to know that the Greek New Testament verb merimnao, and the noun form merimna come from the verb merizo, “to divide,” to draw in different directions. By extension merizo means “to distract.” in the sense of “to divide someone’s attention, to cause them to go off in a different direction.” 

To be worried is, then, to be distracted from something. Martha in the passage quoted above was distracted from the opportunity to listen to God Incarnate in her own living room and soak in his words. 

Worries can distract us from many important things. In the parable of the Sower, the seed gets sown among thorns gets choked off. The thorns, Our Lord explained, are the worries (merimna) of this world that distract us from the Word sown in our hearts. In another place Jesus warns, “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be overcome with surfeiting and drunkenness and the worries (merimna) of this life, and that day catch you unawares. (Lk 21:34)”  

It's true that worries can distract us from paying attention to God’s word, and can leave us unprepared for the coming of the Lord on the last day, but the bible is clear that not all anxiety is bad.

There is a kind of anxiety that is a natural part of loving and caring about someone This is the kind of anxiety that can push us closer to God. Paul tells the Philippians that he hopes to send them Timothy, the only one who is concerned about (merimnao) them the way Paul himself is (Phil. 2:20). In his list of his sufferings as an apostle Paul includes, along with shipwrecks, floods, hunger and thirst, his “anxiety” (merimna) for all the churches. (II Cor. 11:28)" 

What makes worry harmful is its power to distract us from our true goal in life. However, at least in Paul’s eyes, to be deeply concerned and even anxious for a brother or sister is not a distraction from our true mission, but is in fact something we ought to feel toward one another as Christians! He tells the Corinthians that the parts of Christ’s body should have concern (merimnao) for one another (I Cor. 12:25).

What kind of help does the bible offer to keep anxiety from distracting us from our truly important concerns? There are two texts that offer some insight. The First Letter of Peter tells the community to be humble, because God resists the proud. “And all of you, clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for: 'God opposes the proud but bestows favor on the humble.' So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your worries (merimna) upon him because he cares for you. (I Pet. 5:5-7)” 

The writer connects worrying with pride. He seems to be telling us to be more humble, and stop trying to be so much in control of everything and cast our care on the Lord instead. Let God worry about it! Not such bad advice for worriers. 

In the Letter to the Philippians Paul offers a second bit of advice about how to handle worries: “The Lord is coming soon. Have no anxiety at all [= do not worry (merimnao)], but in all things, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:6-7)” Notice that peace comes only after you make your requests known to God. Once we include the Lord in the situation everything changes: our worries become gifts! They give us a reason to get close to God in prayer, and opportunity to admit our neediness and our dependence on God. They can lead us to the peace that surpasses all understanding – and that overcomes all anxiety.

Read Mt. 6:25-34, the section of the Sermon on the Mount that contains a treatise on worrying. Some form of the word merimnao comes up half a dozen times in those ten verses, including “Let tomorrow worry (merimnao) about itself” so that you don’t get distracted from the opportunities of today.

Read Lk 12:11 in which Jesus advises “When they bring you to trial before the synagogue do not worry (merimnao) about how you will answer or what you are to say. It will be given you at that time.” “Don’t be distracted from your present apostolic task,” he seems to be saying, “by worrying about your trial.” Have you ever been so distracted by anxiety that you lost your focus on important tasks at hand? Is there anything right now that is causing you a great amount of concern? Make up a prayer to the Lord and ask him to take that worry over for you so that you may have peace can be about the important business of being Christ to others.

A TIME FOR HOPE

The first reading at mass on Monday, Nov. 6 contains a beautiful exclamation of wonder  on the part of St. Paul: 

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God=

How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!

For who has known the mind of the Lord

or who has been his counselor?

Or who has given him anything

that he may be repaid?

For from him and through him and for him are all things.

To God be glory forever. Amen (Romans 11:33-36).

Paul has just spent the last three chapters (9-11) agonizing over the question: "What about the Jewish people? Has God abandoned His Chosen People?" In trying to answer the question he goes through some complex rabbinic reasoning (the lectionary skips almost all of these verses) and comes to the conclusion that God has not abandoned his People, but will save them in the end grafting the onto the Vine which is Christ and the New People of God, that is, the Church.

In this post I'm not interested in following his reasoning or looking at his conclusion, but rather at the verses cited above, in which he finally throws up his hands in frustration at not being able to find a clear answer to the question. He has found that God's ways were far too mysterious for him to understand.

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Recently, two different friends of mine, as they were each talking about their difficult, painful and discouraging situations, said the same thing" "I don't understand!" Well, this passage from St. Paul can assure them that they are in good company: Paul could not understand God's ways either. I(n fact, he would write in his second letter to the Corinthians, "We walk by faith and not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:7).

God has given each of us and intellect so that we might know and understand our world, and so Aristotle writes "All humans desire to know." So I can't really blame my friends for complaining "I don't know!" when they are in a painful situation that "makes no sense" in terms of God's loving plan for them.

The virtue of Hope is a gift from the Lord that enables you and me to hold fast to our belief in a good and loving God despite our experiences of suffering and evil in our own lives and in the lives of people in war zones. 

Certainly in our present times we can each pray for an increase in the virtue of Hope, so that we can look at the evils we see in the daily headlines or in our own hearts, and still continue to take up our cross every day and follow Christ. 

Saint Martin's Fire

Yesterday, November 11, was the feast of Saint Martin of Tours. A classical biography of St. Martin, written by Septimius Severus, is available on line. Today, however, I'd like to share with you a little story about Martin excerpted from my book Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey Through Lent.

Abbey of Ligugé

I’m speeding across the fertile farmland of France’s Poitou region on the train from Paris to Bordeaux. We’re about five minutes south of Poitiers when I look out the window to my left. The narrow, tree-lined canal that lies lazily alongside the tracks was built by the Romans when this was the province of Gallia. I look out the other side of the train just in time to glimpse a collection of stone buildings huddling around a church tower. This is the Benedictine Abbey of Ligugé, said to be the oldest monastery in the Western Christian world. Its story takes me on a trip back in time. . . .

About the year a.d. 361, a strange young man in his late twenties took up residence in the ruins of an ancient Gallo-Roman villa on the site of the present monastery. He was born in Pannonia (present-day Hungary) but was raised in Italy. At the age of fifteen, he had been forced by law to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was an officer in the Roman army. Three years later, he was baptized a Christian and soon became a disciple of Hilary, the saintly bishop of nearby Poitiers. Well-known for his holiness of life even before his baptism, over time the young man would become more and more famous for the countless miraculous cures he performed. As so often happens to holy men in the fourth century, he would eventually be drafted by the people to become bishop of their town.

Martin shares his cloak

As Bishop of Tours, he became an energetic foe of the pagan cults that still flourished in the Roman Empire at the time. His fame as a miracle worker spread across Gaul, and by the time of his death he was already being honored as “Saint Martin of Tours.” Many paintings and statues recall the famous story of his cutting his soldier’s cloak down the middle in order to give half of it to a beggar. The next night, the story goes, Jesus appeared to Martin clothed in the cloak he’d the saint had given to the poor man.

In the earliest biography of Saint Martin, Sulpicius Severus gives a long and impressive list of the monk-bishop’s wonderful deeds to prove that Martin was a perfect saint whom God protected from all harm. After the Life of St. Martin was published, however, Sulpicius felt he had to write a letter to a certain Eusebius to defend Martin from slander: there was a story going around alleging that the supposedly invulnerable Martin had once been burned in a fire. Here is the story that Sulpicius retells.

Martin is making the rounds of the parishes in his diocese and decides to sleep in a little room attached to the church he is visiting. He is uncomfortable with the luxury of the straw mattress that has been made up for him and so pushes the straw aside and sleeps on the wooden floor. During the night, a defective stove used for heating the room sets fire to the straw and Martin is awakened around midnight by a cloud of thick, choking smoke. He gropes his way quickly to the door and begins pulling frantically on the bolt to unlock it. The bolt won’t budge! Within a few moments, flames fill the room and engulf the bishop, singeing the hem of his robe. Weak with fear, he struggles again with the stubborn bolt. Still no luck! I’ll let Sulpicius finish the story in his own flowery style:

At length recovering his habitual conviction that safety lay not in flight but in the Lord, and seizing the shield of faith and prayer, committing himself entirely to the Lord, he lay down in the midst of the flames. Then indeed, the fire having been removed by divine intervention, he continued to pray amid a circle of flames that did him no harm.

By Martin’s own admission, he had taken longer than he should have to turn to the power of prayer. He’d been startled out of a sound sleep to find himself in terrible danger. The saint later spoke of this incident as a snare that the devil had laid for him, a snare that, for a moment, had worked.

Sulpicius is truly indignant when people imply that this scene shows some imperfection in Martin. “This event which is ascribed to the infirmity of Martin,” he argues, “is, in reality, full of dignity and glory, since indeed, being tried by a most dangerous calamity, he came forth a conqueror.”

The story certainly does end in dignity and glory, but maybe Christians would be better served by meditating on what the good bishop did for the first half-minute after he smelled smoke. I keep hoping to find a painting of this scene: Saint Martin, eyes wide with fright, desperately tugging with both hands at the rusty bolt as flames lick at his robe. That is a saint I could identify with.

I’ve experienced that minute of panic often enough, when I’ve forgotten that God is there with me. In the flames of difficult situations, when everything seems to be coming apart, I take too long to hand things over to the Lord. I, like Saint Martin, the great Bishop of Tours, have wasted time tugging at the rusty bolt and only later remembered to stop trying to control things and turn confidently to the power of prayer.

Maybe I could settle for a picture of the saint lying in prayer on the burning floor, untouched by the flames all around him. In any case, Martin of Tours is the one I pray to for the grace to keep my cool when I’m starting to panic. He knows what that feeling is like.

The blur of gray buildings is well behind us now, and the train continues rattling southwest toward the sea. No one else is looking out the window.

NEED A LITTLE ADVENT

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I don't know how you feel these days about the state of our world, our country and our families, but when I think about these and so many other topics I feel a deep need for Advent.

The name "advent" comes from the Latin word "adventus" which means "coming, arrival." Starting four Sundays before Christmas, it's a period of preparation for the coming of Christ. I've been pondering the theological meanings of the season, hoping to make advent this year as meaningful as possible in the face of all the worries that confront us. Here are some of my ideas so far.

The Crucible

The crucible: One of God's best tools

Advent reminds us of the thousands of years during which the just were waiting for the coming of a Savior. This expectant longing was especially evident in the Jews, whose prophets kept telling them that one day the messiah would come to deliver them. (No wonder the prophet Isaiah is given center stage in the liturgical readings during this season.) The prophets' message of hope was a very hard sell during periods of exile or foreign oppression, but it was precisely in the crucible of suffering and darkness that Judaism was formed into the People of God that the Lord had in mind. So here's a good reminder for me: No matter how grim or depressing things seem, the Lord's plan is working itself out in history, in the wide sweep of world events and in my own life. The period of advent-waiting is a good reminder that humanity's weakness and sinfulness cannot overcome God's loving plan for us -- and that in fact the Lord makes use of our weakness and sinfulness to achieve his final victory.

The Tension 

At the heart of advent is a contradiction: Christ has already been born years ago, yet we are anxiously awaiting his birth. A classical image the church uses to express this contradiction is that we are living in an in-between time, in the tension between the "already" of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem and the "not yet" of his final coming when he will return to set things right once and for all. Tension is a central element of the natural world: Think of the tension produced by the blood in your arteries pushing outward against the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. If that tension is not there, and your have a peaceful BP reading of 0 over 0, you obviously are not alive. To use a rather playful image, I remember the advertisements in the back of comic books touting the body-building exercises of Charles Atlas, based on the secret of "dynamic tension:" The secret was that growth comes when you make the right use of tension. Advent is like that, I think -- a time for experiencing the tension between the fact of Christ's birth in Bethlehem and the not-yet of today's sin-sick world. The secret is to use this tension to strengthen our faith and hope.

Our Lady of Sorrows - Titian

Mary: The Advent Attitude

This is why the church has always made Mary a central figure during advent, seeing her as the first person to keep advent. Despite any confusion or wondering, despite not knowing clearly what was happening to her, Mary held steadfastly to her confident belief that God would take care of her, that "the Lord's words to her would be fulfilled." We sometimes honor her as "our Lady of Sorrows" who in the midst of all her trials never lost hope in God's promise. She'll be a good companion for me over the next four weeks.




Let's pray for one another and for our world that so badly needs Advent's message of Hope.

Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

WHAT THE LADY SAW

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WHAT THE LADY SAW

Early in July I wrote a post about a woman who came to advise us on designing a new cloister garden. I described how she seemed to see in her imagination the new garden long before it was even planted. Well, here’s a picture Brother Aziel took of our new cloister garden today -- what the Garden Lady saw last July is starting to take shape. Even I can picture what it will look like in the summer when  beds of flowers make it glow with bright colors.

WHAT THE LORD SAW

We’ve been praying for decades, asking the Lord to give us the gift of new members so that our monastery can continue to be a witness to the Gospel here in the middle of downtown Newark. Every eight years or so, we would get a new monk. Then, about two years ago, the Lord finally started to answer our prayers.

Thursday of this week the monks voted to admit Michael Woodruff into a period of temporary vows beginning of November 11, and to allow Mark Dilone to begin novitiate (date to be announced); we also have another young man staying with us for the month, who seems very interested in pursuing his inquiry into joining the monastery here. There are also two visiting monks who are both intending to join us eventually. If you’ve been watching the abbey’s Facebook page, you know that we have two newly professed 25-year old monks as well.

The Lord made us wait all those years, but the present situation is what He saw all along, the way the Garden Lady saw the new cloister garden months ahead of time.

Then, just today I heard that a dear and deeply prayerful friend of mine who has been praying for years to be able to have a baby is now pregnant. Finally! But this is what the Lord saw all along, just like the Garden Lady looking at the mess in our garden last July.

After last week’s post, I know better than to ask why the Lord does things the way he does, but at least this week the events have been good ones!  

OPTIMISM AND HOPE

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A week ago, I heard someone make a distinction between “optimism” and “hope,” and I've been pondering that difference, off and on, ever since. I’ve noticed that we often use the words “hope” and “optimism” interchangeably in everyday speech, for example, “As he began running the diagnostic tests, the engineer was hopeful that he would be able to pinpoint the problem.” The word “optimistic” would fit just as well in this case.  

Just now I Googled “optimism versus  hope” and found lots of different approaches. A counselling psychologist, a rabbi, and an educational leadership instructor each had their own definitions and made their own distinctions between the two ideas. The following reflection includes, along with my own ideas, a couple of phrases and ideas gathered during my ten-minute web search.

I think it was the psychologist who wrote “Optimism can be defined as being confident of the future or success of something, it claims everything will be all right despite reality.” I’ve heard optimism described as the typical American virtue, the “can-do” attitude that built a railroad across a continent, dug a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and put a man on the moon. The problem is, as everyone knows, that reality does not always cooperate with our dreams, nor does it always yield to our best efforts -- that's just the way life is sometimes. And optimism cannot stand up to that kind of abject failure of our dreams and wishes. As another writer puts it, “When real trouble comes, the house [of optimism] inevitably comes crashing down.”

“Hope, on the other hand, is a far deeper and more rigorous disposition. It is built on surer foundations and looks to greater realities than just the material world. Hope knows the goodness and value of life in the face of limits, and even in suffering. Unlike mere optimism, hope is able to weather the storm when trouble comes.” I find this a very useful description -- by saying that hope is founded on ultimate realities outside the material world, this author is connecting hope with religious belief.

Last night I had a profound experience of the difference between optimism and hope during a service of the stations of the cross.

.As Jesus fell the third time under the weight of his cross, overwhelmed by its weight, by his human fear of death, and by the weight of the world's sins, I realized that no one would say that Jesus was “optimistic” in this situation. As he hung in agony on the cross, the word “optimism” didn’t fit. But Christians say that Jesus never lost hope: he believed that his heavenly Father would not abandon him. For us, the cross is a sign of hope. The classical Christian symbol of the virtue of hope is the anchor: hope casts an anchor into the future, and fastens itself to God. We trust that God is greater than our problems, that Love conquers hatred, that suffering becomes the means of our salvation, and that death itself is ultimately  transformed into eternal life. This is not optimism, it is hope -- it is based on realities that lie beyond the limits of physical suffering and temporary defeats.

As we enter into the mysteries of Christ’s redemptive suffering, death and resurrection, we may not feel very optimistic about many of the things that are happening in our world, in our country, or in our personal lives. But the Cross and the empty tomb will revive our hope, our belief, anchored in God’s promise, that in the end, goodness and life will be victorious over sin and death.

p.s. Check the list of labels to the left for previous posts about "Palm Sunday."

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JESUS AND DO-OVERS

The three backpacking instructors in that I’m in charge of this month are sophomores who are teaching “Camping Skills” to sixteen freshmen at a time. I give the instructors pointers ahead of time, then they run the entire session while I sit in the back and keep an eye 0n things. All three are good at their work, and are willing to try different teaching techniques such as various questioning strategies or ways of engaging the learners.

Today I watched one of them going around checking the kids’ knot-tying skills. Coming to

one Freshman who had tied his power hitch around the leg of a nearby desk, he scrutinized the knot. Then he commented, “You’ve put three turns inside first loop instead of two, so the knot doesn't work. Untie it and do it over.” Then he moved on down the aisle, checking other students. He came to a big kid who has been a bit confrontational and disruptive in our class at times. The instructor looked at this kid’s “Siberian hitch,” and commented, “That’s it! Good job.” Then,as he moved on down the aisle he simply gave the student two quick pats on the shoulder and kept moving. I was truly impressed by the sophomore’s savvy -- the shoulder-pat was perfect: a guy-thing that gave off a lot of good non-verbal vibes. “Yes!” I thought to myself, “that freshman is yours for the rest of the course!”    

the course!”  

At 5:00 mass this evening Fr. Augustine preached on the encounter of St. Peter with the Risen Lord on the shore of the lake, beside a charcoal fire. Jesus asked him three times, “Simon, do you love me.” The threefold question was, of course, a reminder to Simon of the three times he had denied even knowing Jesus -- that, too had happened around a charcoal fire.

Then Fr. Augustine said, “John’s is the gospel of do-overs,” and gave as an example the encounter with the woman taken in adultery, who Jesus forgave and let her start over again. I immediately thought of my Camping instructor in this morning’s class.

First, when the one student had messed up his power hitch, the instructor simply pointed out that it wouldn’t do, and that he had to re-do it. No hard feelings, no condemnations, just “Re-do it.” This is the way our Lord works with each of us when we mess up in our knot-tying. He lets us have a re-do every time -- we always have the right to start over again.

Then there was the pat on the shoulder given to the problem student. I think that this, too, is something that Jesus does for me; he finds subtle ways of reassuring me and encouraging me, of motivating me to be a better follower of his.

And finally, Jesus must expect me to use that same approach on people around me: everyone always has aright to a do-over, a right to be forgiven. Sometimes that’s a difficult thing to do. A lot harder than learning to tie a power hitch.

LIMITATIONS AND EXPECTATIONS

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Little Melanie was inconsolable over the death of her pet dog, Muffie. For days nothing seemed to work to alleviate the grief of the five-year old. Finally her mother sat the weeping child down and tried explaining to her,

- “Listen, Melanie, Muffie is now in heaven with God.”

With the cold literalism of childhood, Melanie stared at her mom through tearful eyes and asked,

- “What does God want with a dead dog?”

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?

All of us are  bound by the limitations of our own expectations. We’re fascinated by fantastic stories of people overcoming impossible situations (such as the patient with the severed spinal cord who eventually walked again), and have a difficult time believing in the magic of  expressions such as Tug McGraw’s shout to his 1973 Mets teammates: “You gotta believe!” (They made it all the way to the World Series, with the lowest winning percentage of any pennant-winning team in history.)

EASTER EXPECTATIONS

The readings during the Easter season are, it seems to me, all about people coming up against the limitations imposed by their own expectations. Last week I reflected on Mary Magdalene's slowness to recognize the risen Jesus standing in front of her in the garden on Easter morning. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus likewise failed to recognize him during the couple of hours he spent walking and talking with them.

When Luke says of those two disciples on the road that “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him,” I don’t think this means that God somehow intervened to blind them temporarily; rather I think it’s simply another way of saying that they were not expecting a suffering Messiah much less a Messiah risen from the dead. They were “blinded” by the limitations of their own expectations. Or lack of expectations.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the passage in Acts (5:35-42) where the respected rabbi Gamaliel advises his fellow members of the Sanhedrin not to interfere with the preaching of the apostles because if the apostles’ message is from God then the Sanhedrin would wind up fighting with God. So they should just take a wait-and-see attitude: These fanatics will probably just fade away on their own. But did his stance, seemingly sensible on the face of it, ever strike you as terribly cynical? He’s acting as if they don’t know if this movement is from God. Really, Gamaliel? You’ve heard about and perhaps seen with your own eyes the miracles that Jesus and now his disciples have performed right in the temple area! You’ve watched their words bring sinners to repentance and hopeless people to joyful trust in the Lord. And still you say “We don’t know if this movement is truly from God!” That seems to me a cynical remark from someone whose narrow expectations about the Messiah and the coming of the Kingdom of God have completely limited his ability to see God acting right in front of him.

The gospels tell of lots of "impossible" incidents. How about when Andrew warns Jesus that they have only five barley loaves and two fish - “And what are these among so many?” For a few chapters in John Jesus has been challenging his apostles to see beyond the limitations of their expectations, but once again they’re not able to pull it off; all they can see is five barley loaves and two fish. Jesus sees with different eyes indeed: "Tell the people to recline!"

And once again the infinite power of God shines through, completely dissolving the boundaries of the expected, of the possible. The Gospels are dotted with miraculous multiplications of loaves, with paralysed people walking again, with dead people casting off their winding sheets and rejoining their families.

Lucky for us that God is not bound by the winding sheets of our human expectations! The Easter message, the Paschal Mystery, says that out of defeat comes victory, out of suffering comes joy, and out of death comes life. 

"YOU ARE WITNESSES OF THESE THINGS"

The last words of this Sunday's Gospel passage are the risen Lord's words to his apostles who have just seen and heard him speaking: "You are witnesses to these things."

That's our job as His disciples, to witness to the fact that our expectations must not have worldly limitations.

For example, just yesterday I had to deal with a bright sophomore in my class who is living with deep psychological issues and whose family environment conspires to make things worse. He has recently stopped doing his homework and I caught him cheating on a test in my class. Now one obvious approach would have been to make him live with the consequences of his bad decisions by throwing a big fat F at him and maybe yelling a couple of insults. But something told me to sit with him after class instead and talk. The "something" that told me to take that approach must have been at least partly my refusal to be limited by my expectations of what a troubled kid from a dysfunctional home can accomplish. It turned out to be an enlightening conversation. It seems that he hadn't studied for my test because of some chaos going on at home, but had somehow managed to finish a report for Biology and study for another test, and finally got to bed at 3:00 a.m. The upshot was that he's going to take the test again on Monday. He's easily capable of getting an A. We'll see... 

Meanwhile I'm trying to be a witness to the Paschal Principle that our expectations can and must go way beyond the limitations of our prejudgments about what is possible.

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"We are witnesses to these things"

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