Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 14, 2016: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord...

If you confess withyour mouth that Jesus is Lord…

How deep is your faith in the Lord?

Though Moses knew he would never enter in the Promised Land, in the Book of Deuteronomy, he takes pains to prepare the people of Israel for their first harvest there, instructing them elaborately on the offering of thanksgiving they will make to the Lord:  You shall declare before the Lord, your God… I have now brought you the firstfruits of the products of the soil which you, O Lord, have given me.  And having set them before the Lord, your God, you shall bow down in his presence.  Gratitude is our first connection to God; through thanksgiving, we recognize that we need God; we acknowledge that God has a place in our lives, that God is necessary to our existence.  Say to the Lord, My refuge and fortress, my God in whom I trust, Psalm 91 proclaims.  The psalmist encourages the people to realize that God is with them, and that they are protected wherever they are.  Again, trust and deep faith are necessary, and it is gratitude that leads us to trust.

Faith is at the center of Paul's letter to the Romans as well:  if you believe, you will be saved, he says.  He has preached the Gospel to the Romans; they simply have to put their faith in the Word of God.  Jesus' death has been effective in their lives, and they need to make that known.  But to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead is to step into a space of difficulty, to step into the Cross.  Yet, without witness, is your faith really something you live?  Paul thus calls the Romans -- and us -- to living faith in the promise that is ours:  you will be saved.

Jesus' faith, of course, is a given:  he has trust in the love of his Father even when tempted by the devil in the desert, as Luke describes it.  Driven to this life-threatening place of dangerous, wild things by the Holy Spirit, Jesus spends forty days reversing the sin of Adam, in order to give humankind the opportunity to embrace faith once again, and to let go of the thirst for power man once sought.   Human power functions by taking; Jesus understands that he needs to stand with the power of love itself, which works by giving.  Confident, having trust in God alone, he rejects Satan's temptations and embraces love instead.

Lent is a time to discover anew how deeply in love with God we are, how profoundly we trust, how completely we have faith in the Lord's presence.  After all, it is not human power that saves us, but God's power, the power that is love, at work in our lives, always.  Hence:  have faith!

This post is based on Fr. Pat's 2013 homily on these readings.

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 24, 2016: And all the people listened attentively...

  And all the people listened attentively…  

How are we formed by the Word of God?  

   In Nehemiah's time, Ezra the priest has the people stop what they are doing to listen to him read plainly from the book of the law of God.  It is the first time the Torah is heard in its entirety, and all the people are weeping to hear their identity described to them in such detail, for before the restoration, during a period of exile and enslavement, it was easy to lose any sense of one's identity in God.  Ezra's reading of the Torah helps the people to see how their ancestors have failed by being unfaithful to covenant, but it also demonstrates the grace of God's mercy, for God repeatedly reached out to them, calling them back to relationship.  And so they also perhaps weep for joy at knowing once again what it means to be a people of Israel, defined by a new law, identifying with a community of believers, experiencing a connection with one another they have not known previously.  Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life, Psalm 19 reminds us:  God's law reminds us that our relationship with God is an opportunity to access all that is necessary; it offers insight into our lives and world that is profound and complete.

   In Luke's Gospel, Jesus also shares the Word of God with the people when he stands up in the synagogue to read from the Book of Isaiah.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus and the passage he chooses to read is fulfilled in their midst:  the blind are getting to see, and the poor are being lifted up.  Because of Jesus' coming, it is a jubilee year, a year of favor from our Lord.  Through his proclamation of the Word, as lector, Jesus is offering the people a new identity and a new unity.  As Paul reminds the Corinthians, we were all baptized into one Body, in union in Christ; we come to Eucharist as part of that Body, as part of a whole, sharing in one common identity at our core. 

   Our readings this Sunday thus prompt us to ask:  Do we feel connection with one another when we hear the proclamation of the Word at Mass?  Does that Word form and inform our identity?  And do we indeed believe we are Christ's body, so constructed by God to be necessary to the salvation of all?

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

Image source:  Wordle