October 21, 2007

Lectio Divina

Posted in Homilies at 9:00 am

Twenty-ninth Sunday, Year C, October 21st, 2007

Today we are going to slowly read the Gospel together! (Isn’t that exciting?) Through the lens of the Second Reading. We will learn how to pray with Scripture, using an ancient method called lectio divina or sacred reading: a slow, meditative, contemplative reading of the Bible.

In the second letter of Paul to Timothy, the apostle writes, “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16 ). What does that mean, that Scripture is “inspired by God”? (I am going to pause for moments of silence because in order to hear God speaking to us through the Scriptures, we need to listen in silence. I think it would also be helpful if we kept a bit more silence after the first reading, the Gospel, and Communion. So don’t be disturbed if you notice slightly longer pauses for silence). What does that mean, that Scripture is “inspired by God”?

As the Compendium of the Catechism puts it, “God himself is the author of Sacred Scripture . . . The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors who wrote what he wanted to teach us” (#18). Do we really take this truth to heart? “God himself is the author of Sacred Scripture.” In a world of millions of books, God only wrote one, and this is it – a fairly important book! So let us listen again to parts of the Gospel and take time to meditate on its words. This is something you can do at home, with your own Bible or Missal, and I invite you to follow along with the Missal in your pews.

I won’t re-read the entire Gospel, because some of you might get bored. This reminds me of my visit with Justin McKenna last week to give him Holy Communion. There were both amusing and deeply inspiring moments, and I asked the McKenna’s if they wouldn’t mind if I shared them with you. First, Justin said something that other people might be thinking at Mass, but they would never ever dare say out loud. While I was reading the Gospel of the day, Justin interrupted, “Fr. Tim, you’re keeping me awake!” Later, he said something very touching, which I will save for the end.

Sorry for keeping you awake with my homily, but that’s my job. OK, do you see there in your Missal the first line of today’s Gospel?
“Jesus told the disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”
A straightforward sentence, right? In lectio divina, there are four stages of reading (There are 1 page handouts on lectio divina at each door):

1) a simple reading and re-reading the passage to make sure we understand it, perhaps comparing 2 different translations, reading the context of the passage within the Gospel, etc …
2) meditation
3) prayer
4) contemplation

In this second stage of meditation, we must personalize our reflection and ask, “do I lose heart or grow weary in prayer?” Perhaps Jesus is telling this parable to me today, so that I will persevere in prayer, like Moses holding up his hands to God during the battle, and like the widow who kept coming and coming to the unjust judge.

This is the power of God’s word: it is not a dead letter, it is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword . . . and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart” (Heb 4:12). God speaks to you and me personally through his Word, if we take time to meditate upon it.

Let us take another line from the Gospel. Jesus the Son of God testifies, “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, God will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk 18:7-8).

Again, let us meditate more deeply on these words of the Son of God, that are addressed personally to each one of us. Jesus assures us that God will answer the prayers of his chosen ones, because he is our Father, and we are his beloved children . But what kind of prayers does God answer quickly? A hastily muttered “Our Father”? God will hear the prayers of those “who cry out to him day and night.” What does that mean? Are we supposed to take the Bible literally in this case – to cry out to God day and night?

Yes, we are meant to take these words literally, because Jesus himself “offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears . . . and he was heard because of his reverence” (Heb 5:7). Once again, if the inspired Word of God is going to have any impact on our lives, we must personalize it. As you sit alone in a room, in some quiet place for 15 minutes while doing your lectio divina, you might ask yourself, “have I, or would I cry out day and night for anything? I would only do that for something really, really important – if I lost my job, or if I were sick or dying . . . or maybe for my deepest, deepest desire” . . . and then, after further silent reflection, you might ask yourself, “what is my deepest desire? . . . I don’t even know . . . “ Then how are you going to know what to pray for, if you don’t even know what you want?

Then why not ask the One who knows you better than you know yourself, who loves you more than you love yourself – why not ask God, “What should I pray for? What is my deepest desire?”
3) This is the third stage of lectio divina – prayer to God. Lest we slip into navel-gazing and become too self-absorbed in our meditation, we must lift up our hands and hearts to God in prayer.

Be brave as you explore the undiscovered territory of your own heart. There are some grown men, for example, who have spent their whole lives as over-achievers in their chosen profession, trying (unconsciously) to prove to their long-dead fathers that they could do it, that they were good enough, that they could be successful, because as children, that was one of their deepest and unfulfilled desires – to receive their father’s love, to win his approval. For others, one of their deepest desires might be more love and attention from their spouse, more appreciation from their children, and so on.

Some of our painful, unfulfilled desires, that we ignore day and night in our noisy, busy lives, might rise to the surface in the silent meditation of lectio divina, but have no fear – they arise only to lead us closer to God. Do not be afraid to cry out to God day and night. You are his chosen ones, his elect, his beloved children. He will not delay long in helping you!

A whole journey that begins with a simple Bible reading that might have put us to sleep becomes a doorway into our heart and a gateway to heaven. Then we experience:
4) The fourth stage of lectio divina: contemplation, resting in God’s loving presence, in the words of the psalmist: “as a child has rest in its mother’s arms, even so my soul” rests in you (Psalm 131, The Grail translation, 1963), or as the bride says in the Song of Songs, in her joyful sigh: “my beloved is mine, and I am his” (2:16a)

In this Marian month of October, let us turn again to our Blessed Mother Mary as an example of lectio divina, because she listened so attentively and pondered so deeply in her heart every single word of her Son. She received God’s Word into her ears, her heart, and her womb: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” This same Word of God, Jesus Christ, becomes flesh for us again in Holy Communion. We must first listen to this Word if we are going to receive the Word made Flesh worthily and meaningfully, and if Holy Communion is going to be more than mere ritual, routine, habit. Lectio Divina is one way to help us establish and nourish this personal relationship with Christ, which is the deepest desire of every human heart, whether people realize it or not.

Back to Justin McKenna. After I gave him Holy Communion, I re-assured him, saying, “Justin, now Jesus lives in you. He’s always with you and he will take care of you. Don’t worry about anything.” And do you know what he said? “I love him very much.” That was Justin McKenna’s prayer of thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion. In silent time after Holy Communion, perhaps we could make some of these words our own: “My souls rests in you.” “My beloved is mine and I am his.” “I love him very much.”

October 14, 2007

Gratitude

Posted in Homilies at 9:00 am

Homily for the Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

October 14, 2007

With their focus on being thankful, today’s readings would have been a good fit for last weekend. I would guess that most of us celebrated Thanksgiving on Sunday or Monday. Did we remember, amidst all the activity of family gatherings, the cooking, the meals, maybe the travelling, that the purpose of the celebration is giving thanks to God? Although throughout our parish family we have varying degrees of blessings and challenges, joys and sorrows, we should always be grateful for the hand of God in our lives.

God certainly gave Namaan and the ten lepers reasons to be grateful. Let’s try to understand the situation of lepers in Biblical times. These people suffered from some kind of skin disease which may have been the same as what we identify as leprosy, also known as Hanson’s disease, a horrifying condition in which limbs and digits lose their circulation, deteriorate, and decay. It could also refer to other visible diseases of the skin or deformities. Whatever the actual condition, it resulted in the affected person being declared “unclean.”

The matter of being considered unclean was as much a problem as, or maybe worse than, having the disease. It meant being shunned, being required to keep your distance from those who were clean. It was thought that the illness was a punishment for the person’s sinfulness. This caused the lepers to think of themselves unacceptable, to other people, as well as to God. Being unclean, they were outsiders. Outcasts. They were truly, as we would say today, marginalised, forced to live in isolated camps on the outskirts of the villages or cities where the clean people lived. There was no cure for their condition, so they really had no hope for healing.

Yet, they did have some faith, some hope, that Jesus could help them. When the lepers cry out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”, they are placing themselves under His authority. The term Master, “epistates” in the original Greek, was often used in a military context, or indicated someone with miraculous power. And in their plea, “have mercy on us”, “eleison”, we hear our own words in the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass.

It also required some trust on their part to do as Jesus instructed, and go show themselves to the Jewish priests. The priests were the only ones who had the authority to declare them cured, no longer unclean. For them to go to the priests meant going into areas where lepers were forbidden. Their trust was rewarded in that they were all cured. And yet, only one of them, and a Samaritan at that, was moved to return to Jesus and express his gratitude.

Namaan, in the first reading, was not in quite the same situation as the lepers of the Gospel. We are told that he was a leper, but we don’t have any indication as to how advanced his case was. We do know that he was a well respected commander of the army. He heard of the power of the prophet Elisha from a servant girl. He sought healing, somewhat reluctantly followed Elisha’s instructions, and was healed. He was grateful, but Elisha could not accept his thanks, knowing that it was the Lord that was responsible for the healing. Namaan finally understands, and indicates his gratitude, by swearing to only offer sacrifice to the Lord.

Each of us has moments, small or large, every day that demonstrate God’s work in our lives. Before we can be grateful for this, we need to recognize it. How many times do we just ascribe our blessings to good luck, or our own efforts alone, without giving credit to God, much less thanks? It’s easy to take things for granted. I have looked back on my own life, and see times when God clearly was guiding my path. Now, there are times when that guidance is obvious to me even as it is happening. Once we start to actively look at how God is participating in our lives, it becomes easier to perceive His work. And once we acknowledge His gifts and blessings, our gratitude should be the natural result.

Being thankful in our hearts is important. And we also are called to demonstrate our gratitude in our actions, and in living our lives in accordance with our faith, and in reaching out to those who may be considered the lepers of our time. We may not be saints, yet – but we can develop and deepen our prayer life. We may not end injustice, or poverty, or disease – but we should use our talents and resources to mitigate the effects of these problems. We can do this through working with marginalised people directly, contributing to organisations that provide them support, and in praying for God’s assistance and mercy. We have many people in this parish that are active in helping others in various ways. However it is expressed, our Christian charity, our sharing, is a manifestation of our gratitude to God.

The bottom line is that we are God’s children, and that gives us reason to rejoice and be thankful. Gratefully recognizing that God is our loving Father who blesses us, and heals us, can transform us, bringing us into a closer relationship with God. As that relationship deepens, we can make our lives, the way we live, an act of gratitude to the Lord. When we pray, let’s all be like the one leper who returned to Jesus with praise and thanks.

October 7, 2007

Lord, increase our faith!

Posted in Homilies at 9:00 am

Twenty-seventh Sunday, Year C, October 7th, 2007

I’ll begin by asking a question: “Do you believe in God?” . . . and “Do you trust in God?” . . . What is the difference between belief or faith and trust?

In today’s Gospel, the disciples say to Jesus, “Increase our faith!”
The New Testament word for faith, pistis, and its related verb can also be translated “trust.” (Jn 14:1 in NIV, Jn 2:24) “Increase our trust!” Certainly, one element of faith is personal trust in God. The Catechism states that “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed” (CCC #150).

The readings today cover both aspects of faith: personal adherence to God and trust in Him, and free assent to the truth, belief in the teachings of the Church. When the disciples say, “Increase our faith!” it is not clear for what exactly they are asking. They are probably not asking that Jesus will increase their knowledge of the content of the Jewish faith, of God’s revelation in the Old Testament. Then what? For the faith to perform miracles? But how could one perform miracles apart from trust in God? The disciples at least recognize that any increase in the faith required to perform miracles is inseparable from personal trust in Jesus.

In the second reading, Paul exhorts Timothy to “guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us” (2 Tim 1:14). The word translated “good treasure” is “paratheke” which refers to the deposit of faith, the content of our faith, contained in the Sacred Scripture and Tradition, which the apostles entrusted to the whole of the Church (CCC #84). Paul is urging Timothy to guard the deposit of faith, to hold on firmly to the correct knowledge and pure doctrine of the Gospel, and to conscientiously deliver it to others (my Bible dictionary)

Consider these two symbols:
1) The Catechism: this is the symbol of the deposit of faith, of the teaching of the Church, requiring “free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed”
2) Divine Mercy Image: “Jesus, I trust in you!” This is a symbol of faith as a personal adherence of man to God, and personal trust in Jesus Christ.

My question is: can you have one without the other? Can you have the content of the Catechism without trust in Divine Mercy? Can you have trust in Divine Mercy without the contents of the Catechism?

1) Can you have faith but lack trust? Can you believe in the content of the Catholic faith and still lack trust in God?
Obviously, yes. We all struggle with a lack of trust in God, and we should pray everyday, “Lord, increase our faith. Increase our trust!”
Would we not all agree that it is very important for human beings to trust in God, and that we cannot imagine how it is possible to be happy in this world, with all its pain and sorrows, all its unpredictable tragedies, all the temptations, and so on, without trust in God?

2) On the other hand, can you trust in God while not believing in the content of the Catholic faith? Think about it. As a Catholic, can you trust in God while not believing in the content of the Catholic faith?
If you say “yes,” does that mean that what we believe about God – who He is up there in heaven — does not influence our trust in God?

Take for example, what John Paul II has written about Islam: “some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 92).

So what do the Muslims believe about God – who He is up there in heaven? He is our Creator and our Judge, but he did not become a human being, nor did He suffer and die for love of us. He is outside the world; He is not that close to His creatures. Is this the kind of God that is easy to love and trust? (Our Judge but not our Redeemer?) So we can see that what Muslims and other non-Catholics believe about God would influence how much they can trust in God. And we should trust God all the more, since it is only Christians, and specifically Catholics, who can touch our God in the Eucharist, who have devotional images like this one of Divine Mercy, encouraging us to say to our God with full confidence, “Jesus, I trust in you.” The content of the Catechism does help us know and trust in God.

At Theology on Tap Russell two weeks ago, someone mentioned to me, “if you believe 80% of what the Church teaches, that’s pretty good.” Well, it is better than only believing 20% of what the Church teaches, but I don’t believe it is possible to have complete trust in God – that level of trust that we all desire so that we can enjoy more peace and happiness in this world – without believing 100% of the content of the Catholic faith. If the Church is wrong, or lying, about 20%, how can you trust the Church at all, or the New Testament that the Church wrote? Maybe Jesus did not exist at all! How far will you let your lack of faith in the Catechism take you away from trusting in God?

Consider the example of the saints. Did St. Faustina, who received the revelations of Divine Mercy, ever say, “Well, I trust in Jesus, but I don’t know if I really believe everything the Church says about honouring Mary. ” Or consider St. Gianna Molla, a wife, mother and doctor who died in 1955: did she ever say, “Well, I trust in Jesus, but I don’t know if I really believe in the Church’s teaching on contraception and natural family planning.” No. All the saints, meaning all the people who have ever found true happiness in this life and finally made it into heaven, all of them trusted in God and believed in 100% in the content of the Catholic faith.

Perhaps one reason (of many) that we lack trust in God is that we do not know or trust in the teachings of the Church. And how many Catholics actually read their Catechism at home? Pope Benedict has suggested that the Catechism could be covered during Mass, with “‘thematic’ homilies treating the great themes of the Christian faith” (Sacramentum Caritatis #46). It’s a great idea in theory, but priests would need a planning guide which would divide up the Catechism into the three-year cycle of readings. Another problem is that people would sleep. I may be wrong, but I’m afraid people would snooze through purely teaching homilies based on the Catechism. Please tell me I’m wrong!

Nonetheless, parishes must offer some opportunity for Catholics to better learn the deposit of faith, the content of our faith. So this year we are planning to offer Catholicism 201, a Catholic follow-up to Alpha, sometime after Easter, with the hope that we might increase our trust in God by better understanding the content of our faith.

As we begin the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in this month of October, the month of the Rosary, let us turn to the Blessed Virgin as a model of the “obedience of faith,” and ask her to obtain for us an increase of faith and trust in her Son. Our Archbishop wrote a letter to priests on October 4th proposing as a theme for the 2007-2008 pastoral year: “Together with Mary We Live the Eucharist.” I had already suggested our theme for this year could be “Live the Mass,” but I think that the bishop’s idea is even better, and perfectly appropriate for our parish, “Together with Mary We Live the Eucharist.” (He’s also recommended that we could end the Prayers of the Faithful with a prayer for the Eucharistic Congress, which I will start doing today).

I will end with this: providentially, I have also been reading the life of one of our local saints (not yet canonized) named Eleonore Potvin who founded a new religious order, the Servants of Jesus and Mary, whose Mother House is in Hull, right across the King Edward bridge. I will quote her first in French, a language most of you understand, then translate it. “Vivez la liturgie . . . c’est l’etat le plus sanctifiant, c’etait l’occupation continuelle de la Sainte Vierge” (Eleonore Potvin: femme de la foi et de lumiere. Madeleine Guertin, Montreal: Edition Paulines, 1993. P. 29). “To live the liturgy is the most sanctifying state; it was the continual occupation of the Blessed Virgin.”

With Mary, let us live the liturgy, live the Eucharist– to consciously offer ourselves to God, to receive Jesus with deep faith and gratitude. The Eucharist, the Catechism, the Blessed Mother and the Saints – may all help us to increase our faith and our trust in God.