Sunday Gospel Reflection, September 2, 2018: Be doers of the word and not hearers only...

 Be doers of the word, and not hearers only… 

What use are all these rules and commandments? 

   Communal life has always involved rules.  In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses enjoins the people to hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, and the people must listen not only with their heads but with their hearts, so they can give evidence of their wisdom and intelligence to the nations.  In essence, Moses is asking the people of Israel to reconsider how they live and why.  Psalm 15 enumerates the conduct necessary for one who would like to live in the presence of the Lord, that is, one who is fully open to living according to the God’s Word:  they must do justice, the psalmist tells them.  In both cases, a consideration of society’s rules challenges the people to step beyond what their heads can understand to absorb what their hearts intuit.  Taking in God’s Word means opening to the transformation that God’s word works in us, and living accordingly.

   In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus will challenge the Jewish authorities to reconsider the basis for the many, many rules they have established to govern daily life.  When they ask Jesus, Why do your disciples eat a meal with unclean hands? Jesus responds with a clear understanding of God’s commandment and human tradition’s reinterpretation of that commandment:  This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  In slavish attention to rules without any attention to the meaning behind those rules, the people have lost their connection to God; they are too caught up in tangibles that don’t lead them beyond the surface.  The Word of God, Jesus is saying, must touch the core of our very being, must change us – but it can only do so if we are open to it, if we hear it with our hearts.  And if that Word does change us, the fruits can be infinite, as we will naturally follow James’ advice and be doers of the Word and not hearers only. 

   Rules are indeed necessary to our daily life, but if we only understand them at their literal level, hearing with our heads and not our hearts, we are missing out on that perfect gift that ours, the transformation that God wills for us, and that will ultimately effect salvation for all.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordle.net

Sunday Scripture Reflection, May 27, 2018: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

 In the name of the Father, and of the Son,and of the Holy Spirit… 

 What does your relationship with God look like? 

   We understand God to have been, from the beginning of time, relational.  As Psalm 33 reminds us, even in Creation, God was also Word and Spirit:  By the word of the Lord the heavens were made; by the breath of his mouth all their host.  Moreover, we too are called to relationship with God in the psalm, hoping for his kindness, waiting for the Lord, trusting that God is present to us in our every moment.  Moses reminds the people of this relationship in Deuteronomy:  Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?  Yet, while God does not need our promise in relationship, God would like our participation, and so Moses tells the people that they must keep God’s statutes and commandments as a way of fixing in their hearts that the Lord is God.  This is how God gives identity to his people:  they are called by God who has ongoing care for them and who will keep his promises.

   Jesus will insist on this relationship in new ways at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, after the Resurrection:  I am with you always, until the end of the age, he tells his disciples.  And, because he will dwell in them in the form of the Spirit, they are to go out, aware of that presence within, and draw others in to comprehension and awareness of all God is doing in this world:  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  This is participation in the relationship Jesus comes to embody, to give body to.

   We are called through baptism and death and resurrection to union with God.  Having, as Paul tells the Romans, received a Spirit of adoption, we are children of God, and can now call God Abba, Father!  If we are one with the Spirit God gave to us, we are children, blessed into a relationship of intimacy, of union with God in all God’s persons, not falling back into fear, but relying on God’s love, fixed in our hearts, God, who is present to us – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in every moment, as he promised.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source: www.wordle.net

Sunday Gospel Reflection, August 30, 2015: In vain do they worship...

In vain do they worship...  

Is religion just about following a bunch of rules?  

The Book of Deuteronomy, from which this Sunday's first reading is taken, is primarily concerned with Jewish rituals and the proper rules for celebrating them. When Moses teaches the people to observe a set of statutes and decrees, that list is meant to define them communally, as a people, an identity derived first and foremost from their relationship with God.  Psalm 15 names some of these rules:  the people of Israel are called to walk blamelessly, to embrace the truth rather than slander, to harm or reproach no one… The list is extensive, detailed; more importantly, it is other-centered, promoting a justice that looks always to the needs of our fellow human beings.

By Jesus' time, the law has atrophied into a set of rules that are no longer just or life-giving.  Participating in law of God was meant to bind people to the love of God and the love of other, Jesus tells the hypocritical Pharisees and scribes in Mark's Gospel, whereas their proliferation of human laws tends to generate only ritualistic motions:  in vain do they worship, Jesus says.  Faith is not something we can just do ritualistically; we have to allow it to grow, to transform us; it is ongoing, an evolving process.  And it requires our active participation, starting from a place of other-centered humility.  As the Letter of James notes:  Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you.  Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.  Care for orphans and widows. 

If religion is just about following a bunch of rules, if it is a practice that does not transform our relationship with others, then it is useless and empty.  But if we allow ourselves to be recreated by the Word, we can be channels through which God's love can come into the world, binding us to others and to God in the true etymological sense of the word religare… not by laws or rules, but through love, the greatest law of all.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle