Link to today’s Mass Readings: Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB

As I mentioned in one of the reflections from last week, here we find an excellent example of Paul (and the Christian community) “doing theology”. That is, bringing the reality of the Christ-event into dialogue with the current experience of believers, and allowing that to inform and transform that experience in Christ.

Here we find Paul drawing attention to the difference between the Christian experience of grief, and the pagan experience of grief (as understood at the time). Paul’s opening sentence “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters”^[1] really has the impact of saying: Let me clear a few things up for you, because how we (the Christian community) understand this circumstance is quite different from those around us. For those of you (too) familiar with Friday evenings at Year 8 Debating this is similar to the 2^nd Speaker for the Affirmative saying: The Opposition has told you X, but they are idiots and they are wrong.^[2]

The great difference here for St Paul, and so for us, is that our grief is experienced in the bedrock of ‘hope’. It does not mean that our experience of loss does not bring pain and grief, or that our experience of loss is not unsettling and bewildering (at times), but that this grief and loss is not accompanied by the thought that this is all there is; that this is the end.

I remember Phillip Adams commenting that he found the thought of his daughters or wife dying unbearable to him, because as an atheist their death meant the annihilation of their being. They wouldn’t be going somewhere else where one day he would be with them, there would be no sense of “until we meet again” – they would simply cease to exist.^[3] It is in contrast to this unspeakable grief that St Paul writes of the Christian experience; the Christian experiences grief in the context of the hope of the resurrection.

Let us commend to God all those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, particularly those who have no-one to remember them:

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through your mercy rest in peace and rise in glory.

^[1] Other translations put this a little more forcefully: “But we do not want you to be uninformed” (New Oxford Annotated Bible”, or, “Now we do not want you to be in ignorance, brothers and sisters” (Richard, E.J. (1995). Sacra Pagina: First and Second Thessalonians. (D.J. Harrington, Ed.). The Liturgical Press.

^[2] And “yes”, I have adjudicated debates where the Opposition were referred to as idiots.

^[3] This comment was made at a debate at Sydney University in the early 2000s. I cannot remember whether Phillip Adams was in discussion with Cardinal George Pell around the topic of whether atheists could be moral people, or whether Mr Adams was chairing the discussion.

Link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/0827-memorial-monica.cfm

St Monica lived between 332-387c.e., and was the mother St Augustine. While this might sound as if the family home was a garden of saints, such was not the case. Monica’s husband (Patricius) was a pagan with a temper and ‘wandering eye’ (shall we say), and Augustine’s saintliness was only to develop in his more mature years.

As a young man Augustine dabbled with the heresy of Manichaeism, had a mistress, and fathered a child out of wedlock. In his book The Confessions he recounts a prayer he prayed in his younger days: "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." (Confessions 8.7.17). Poor Monica must have been ready to rip her hair out!

However, a mother’s persistent prayer, petition, and example won through, and Augustine was baptized a Catholic by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in 387 c.e., and was ordained a priest in 391. Four years later he became Bishop of Hippo. Augustine was to become one of the most prolific thinkers and writers of early Christianity, whose influence is still strongly felt today.  All of this due to the grace of God, and the prayers of a mother.

Today’s Gospel alerts us to the compassion Jesus felt for another mother, one who had lost her only son. Jesus comes to the town of Nain, and happened upon the funeral procession of young man, the only son of his widowed mother. The Gospel tells us ‘When the Lord saw her he felt sorry for her. “Do not cry” he said. Then he went up and put his hand on the bier and the bearers stood still, and he said, “Young man, I tell you to get up.” And the dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him to his mother.’

Of course, we who know the gospel story in full can imagine in this narrative another widow (Mary) grieving the loss of her only son as he (Jesus) is carried to the grave.

Today, let us be thankful for all people who have been supportive of us as we journey through life. Those people who hold us in their prayers each, and particularly our own mothers – wherever it is in God’s embrace they may presently be.

Imagine downloaded from https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.monasteryicons.com/images/popup/st-monica-icon-439.jpg on 26 August, 2021.

Link to today’s Mass Readings: Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB

 ^[2] (https://youtu.be/vXMPNXXnCls)

Link to today’s Mass Readings: Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB

Today in our First Reading we start making our way through St Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. 1^st Thessalonians is the earliest text we have in the New Testament, written around 49-51c.e. In Paul’s later writings, e.g., Romans, Corinthians, we find a much more developed theology, but here we find Paul being more pastoral or personal in style and language. It is written at a time only 15-16 yrs after the death and resurrection of Jesus, when there still would have been members of Christian communities alive who actually accompanied Jesus on his journeys, who mourned his death as the death of someone they had sat at table with, and who celebrated his resurrection as the return of one with whom they had walked the roads of Israel.

While, as I mentioned, the majority of the letter is pastoral or personal in nature, we do find in its final chapters some ‘theologizing’. In 1Thess 4:13-18 we find Paul speaking to the community at Thessalonica about those ‘who have fallen asleep’; this was a Greek euphemism for those who had died. The early Church, as we do, waited in hope for the Second Coming of Jesus, but where we are more resigned to it possible being ‘some way off yet’, for the early Church it was unclear. He – Jesus – said he would return, but was it meant to be next week, next month, next year…the community was unclear. At the time of this letter’s writing, people (including those who had known the early Jesus) had started to die, and so the community was left with the question: What happens to these people, will they too be gathered up by the Lord? In Paul’s response we have an example of the early Church ‘doing’ theology, that is, applying the experience of the Christ-Event to their present-day life. I love reading or listening to this passage from 1^st Thessalonians as it is such a powerful example of the dynamic of reality of the Christ-Event in dialogue with the questions of our lives. (NB: Keep your ‘eyes open’ and your ‘ears peeled’ on Monday of next week, as 1 Thess 4:13-18 is the First Reading that day!)

In today’s First Reading we find this lovely greeting to the people of Thessalonica: ‘We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labour of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen.’ Imagine if this was the spirit with which we all greeted each other as we gathered for the celebration of the Eucharist^[1], or as a family as we sat down to enjoy a meal together, or if this is how schools started their day. Do our faces actually radiate some joy as we greet the brothers and sisters we have, by virtue of baptism, in the Lord.

^[1] Whenever it is that we can start gathering again.

The Alleluia Verse from today’s readings:

Alleluia, alleluia.
Receive the word of God, not as the word of men,
but, as it truly is, the word of God.
Alleluia, alleluia.

This is such a great call to attend to the Word for what it is – the Word of God – and therefore be subject to it, rather than it subject to us.

I remember some years ago, about twenty probably, chatting with some Religious Education teaching colleagues who were horrified at my comment that: “No, I don’t think it’s appropriate to use something from Anthony De Mello’s book The Prayer of the Frog as an alternative to scripture for the First Reading at Mass”. The response of “You can’t seriously suggest that poetry or some other piece of meaningful literature can’t be used in this place” was met with “No!” Doesn’t this conversation illustrate for us the need to understand and appreciate the Word for what it is: the Word of God! Our Alleluia verse asks us to do this.

In a couple of schools where I was the Religious Education Coordinator/Director of Religious Education, I tried (mostly with a great lack of success and against some strong opposition) to encourage staff to use the ‘readings of the day’ or prayers from the ‘Mass of the day’ for the times that we prayed together. Among the arguments I used to support this approach, apart from that it would allow us to join in harmony with the rest of the praying Church, was that it is vitally important for a Christian to be formed by the Word of God rather than employing the Word of God to make a point. When we always pick readings to suit a ‘theme’, or select a prayer or reading that ‘says something nice’, then we limit the Word’s capacity to form us, and as a consequence will never grow in the Christian life.

There is great merit in placing ourselves in the presence of the Word across the liturgical year, rather than placing the Word at our disposal across the less ordered nature of our years. To do the former is to let God be God in our lives, while the latter tells God who we’d like God to be.

11^th August – The Memorial of St Clare

Link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/0811-memorial-saintclare.cfm

Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of St Clare (16 July 1194 – 11 August 1253). Clare was born in Assisi and was the eldest daughter of the Count of Sasso-Rossa. As you can imagine she was born into a family of prestige, comfort and wealth, that would have been typical of the aristocracy at that time.

As a teenager Clare heard Francis of Assisi preaching, and in 1212 at the age of 18 travelled with her aunt to meet Francis, and there under Francis’ guidance promised her life to God as an enclosed religious. Initially living as a Benedictine, Clare sought to follow a path of spirituality closer to that of Francis’, and so she founded a group of women known as the Order of Poor Ladies. After her death, and in her honour, in 1263 Pope Urban IV changed the Order’s name to the Order of St Clare.

St Clare leaves us this beautiful prayer:

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity!
Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!
Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance!
And transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead Itself
through contemplation!
So that you too may feel what His friends feel
as they taste the hidden sweetness
which God Himself has reserved
from the beginning
for those who love Him.

We find in this prayer some wonderful parallels with today’s First Reading for the memorial:

‘Brothers and sisters: I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…’

‘Brothers and sisters, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.’

Imagine downloaded from https://liturgy.co.nz/saint-clare-of-assisi on 07 August, 2021.

A link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080921.cfm

Today’s First Reading comes for the Book of Deuteronomy, one of the Old Testament books (Hebrew Scriptures) attributed to Moses. In some ways it is easiest to understand Deuteronomy as the last will and testament of Moses as he and the People of Israel stand on the brink of entering the Promised Land; a land Moses would not live to enter.

Deuteronomy is without much of the escape and journey narrative of the Book of Exodus, and can be read almost in the light Moses thinking to himself: “What are things I must say (again) to the People of Israel”. If read in this light, then the words of today’s First Reading take on even greater impact.

Moses starts this discourse with a reminder to the Israelites of who God is, rather than who God can be reduced to:

• “Think! The heavens, even the highest heavens, belong to the LORD, your God, as well as the earth and everything on it”, and
• “For the LORD, your God, is the God of gods, the LORD of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome.”

The Holy One who brought them up out of Egypt, the Holy One who chose them from among all the nations of the world, is not just some ‘friendly chap’ who happens to be on their side, but is indeed the God of the Universe – worthy to be feared, loved, and served with all their hearts and souls!

I worry…it may have moved a little past worry…when I hear discussion/questions that move too quickly, far too quickly, to the applications of faith, before attending to the foundational nature of the revelation of God (brought to fulfilment in Jesus). This rush frequently causes us to miss this call of Moses, picked up and renewed in the Gospels, to first attend to God – not some nice fellow down the road who came up with a great idea about how we might live together, but God!! – with our whole heart and soul, in a spirit of awe and deep reverence.

If we properly attend to the Holy One, then the application will come naturally; in fact, more than simply naturally, but powerfully. We are not called to do acts on God’s behalf, but to live in the world with, in, and through God. However, we can only truly be about the actions that God asks of us (‘to befriend the alien’) when we first attend to the God who is “mighty and awesome”.

To do less than this risks the agenda of my/our actions being ‘mine’ or ‘ours’, and not the not the will of the One to whom we pray: “Your will be done on earth as it is heaven”.