Justice (Reinhold Neibuhr)

Love is the motive,
but justice is the instrument. 

 --Reinhold Neibuhr 

Image source: http://www.upcwo.org/sermons/drdanssermon71518.html
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Christianity (Richard Rohr)

   Christianity is a lifestyle – a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established ‘religion’ (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s ‘personal Lord and Savior’… The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great. 

--Richard Rohr, Yes, and…: Daily Meditations 

Image source: https://news.ucsb.edu/2022/020695/how-earth-changing
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, September 1, 2024: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me...

 

This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me…

How often do we trim Scripture to suit our own needs? 

    In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses’ instructions to the people are very clear: In your observance of the commandments, you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it. Moses assures them that if they observe the commandments carefully, they will give evidence of their wisdom and intelligence to the nations. But human beings tend toward casuistry, using problematic reasoning to arrive at the conclusions we want. The people of Israel will wander for forty years in the desert because they do not follow the “ten words” (as the commandments were known), instead rewriting God’s law when it is convenient for them and bending the commandments so that they fit their own desires and make sense within their own parameters. Moses would much rather see them remain faithful to the Lord’s words, walking blamelessly and doing justice, as Psalm 15 suggests. The psalm offers a useful self-examination of one’s relationship to God’s laws and to God’s people. 

    By Jesus’ time, the commandments have been augmented by the Jewish leadership to a list of 613 laws that all Jewish people must observe. In Mark’s Gospel, we again see evidence of casuistry: the Jewish authorities are too caught up in the rules they have constructed to recall God’s original intent, which was to establish guidelines for relationship. The leaders want to maintain Jewish identity and culture while they are under the control of the Romans, but they are carried away by their own casuistry. And so, they ask Jesus questions like, Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands? The scribes and Pharisees are missing the point entirely; Jesus calls them hypocrites, all the while hoping that they will one day find their way back to the God of relationship again. 

    If only the scribes and the Pharisees themselves were paying attention to the lessons of Psalm 15, they might learn to do justice and thus live in the presence of the Lord. The psalmist knows that human beings must adhere to the truth in their heart, slander not, harm not their fellow man, or lend money at usury. These lessons of relationship are no less important in the Letter of James, which reminds us to conduct our own self-examination of our relationship to God’s laws and to God’s people: Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. Real religion, James concludes, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world. True, authentic faith that is faithful to Scripture involves a heart open and humble before God, with dedication to serve those most in need. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Heaven in our fingertips (St. Catherine of Siena / Fr. Patrick Michaels)

The path through heaven
lies through heaven,
and all the way to heaven is heaven.

--St. Catherine of Siena 

   In O’Brien Hall, over the holy water font, there is a wood cut (by R. F. McGovern) of Dorothy Day bringing bowls of soup to men in a soup kitchen. Dorothy Day was an incredible woman who dedicated her life to the service of others; she felt that any service done to anyone was a grace. She was the Mother Teresa of the United States. The title of the wood cut is illustrates her core belief: All the way to heaven is heaven. 

    Every kindness, every generous act, every compassion, every mercy, every forgiveness that you or I act upon, reveals heaven. Heaven is what we hope for, but heaven is revealed all along the way. Heaven is revealed in everything we do at the commission of the one who is the ruler of heaven and earth. 

   How can we be disciples going out to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand if the kingdom doesn’t rule our hearts? Yes, as Paul says, we are still working out salvation, one good deed after another. 

   But Dorothy Day had the right of it. All the way to heaven is heaven. Bring heaven to bear upon our broken earth, and see it bloom. Bring kindness to bear on people’s lives and see them lighten up. Bring mercy and forgiveness to bear in people’s lives, and see them shine. See how the world is transformed by heaven. Each of us has the capacity to do this. For we have been baptized into the Body of Christ Jesus, into his death and rising. We have heaven in our fingertips. All we have to do is reach out and touch our world. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels, Homily,
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley,
July 23, 2023

Image source: All the Way to Heaven is Heaven, which depicts Dorothy Day serving in a soup kitchen. This image is hanging in O'Brien Hall, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley. http://mountcarmelmv.blogspot.com/2023/10/compassion-as-covenant-fr-greg-boyle.html
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Lord, have mercy (Fr. Anthony Coniaris)

    The word mercy in English is the translation of the Greek word eleos. This word has the same ultimate root as the old Greek word for oil, or, more precisely, olive oil, which was poured onto wounds and gently massaged in, thus soothing, comforting, and making the injured part whole again. The Hebrew word, which is also translated as eleos and mercy, is hesed, which means steadfast love. 

  

    The Greek words for Lord, have mercy are Kyrie, eleison, meaning, Lord, soothe me, comfort me, take away my pain, show me your steadfast love. Thus, mercy does not refer so much to justice or acquittal, but to the infinite loving-kindness of God, and His compassion for His suffering children. 

--Fr. Anthony Coniaris 

 

Image source: Throne of Grace (also known as The Mercy Seat), alabaster sculpture, The Black Abbey in Kilkenny, Ireland,  https://dominicans.ie/100-objects/kilkennys-throne-of-grace/
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I wash my hands for you (Jacques Verduin)

Be subordinate to one another
out of reverence for Christ.
(Ephesians 5:21)

     What if, after this virus is gone, we learned it had changed our DNA in such a way that it forever altered our ability to consider each other? Consider each other no longer just as strangers, but in a new way, as in closer to our hearts? 

I wash my hands for you.   
Every time I wash my hands,
I think of you, the other, as myself
And I smile.
My freedom is in your hands and yours is in mine.
Every bit of care I bring to this gesture,
I dedicate to the mystery of you, the other, who invites me to connect with you.
I reach out to hold you and rejoice in how the water blesses both of us in this practice.
I can no longer disregard you.
I can no longer wash my hands of you, and your fate.
I wash my hands for your fate;
My freedom is in your hands, exactly where it belongs. 

     We don’t control circumstance. That’s one thing we’re learning right now, for sure. But we do get to take our stance in the midst of circumstance, in the midst of everything that begs us to be considered, and reconsidered, in these rapidly changing times. May that be a calm, grounded and loving stance and may it help people find their stance, including those folks you have never even touched or met. 

     My willingness to consider your fate announces my ability to mature as a human being. It frees me. Perhaps redemption is not a process that happens after everything is painstakingly measured and the final tally is made up. Maybe it’s a quality of consideration that we enter into every moment, by choice and by choice alone. Every moment that offends me has in it the grace of redemption. All it requires is my willingness to find it. 

     We are all human beings, you and I. We are all human beings, searching to be safe and to come home to each other, and be forgiven now, already, for every trespass made and every pending failure yet to come. 

--Jacques Verduin

Image source: https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/03/20/heres-why-washing-your-hands-with-soap-for-20-seconds-protects-you-from-covid-19/
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Radical servanthood (Henri Nouwen)

    Radical servanthood does not make sense unless we introduce a new level of understanding and see it as the way to encounter God. To be humble and persecuted cannot be desired unless we can find God in humility and persecution. When we begin to see God, the source of all our comfort and consolation, in the center of servanthood, compassion becomes much more than doing good for unfortunate people. 

   Radical servanthood, as the encounter with the compassionate God, takes us beyond the distinctions between wealth and poverty, success and failure, fortune and bad luck. Radical servanthood is not an enterprise in which we try to surround ourselves with as much misery as possible, but a joyful way of life in which our eyes are opened to the vision of the true God who chose to be revealed in servanthood. The poor are called blessed not because poverty is good, but because theirs is the kingdom of heaven; the mourners are called blessed not because mourning is good, but because they shall be comforted. 

    Here we are touching the profound spiritual truth that service is an expression of the search for God and not just of the desire to bring about individual or social change. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Mary Cassatt, The Child’s Bath (1893), https://one-hand-clapping.blogspot.com/2012/04/art-in-lent-washing-of-feet.html
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