Author: jcgosj

“MUST YOU SPOIL THE PARTY?” (Mt 3:1-12):  09 December 2007 (Second Sunday of Advent)

Reading:  www.nccbuscc.org/nab/120907.shtml

If  a poll were conducted today about saints and biblical characters, my guess is that John the Baptist would get one of the lowest approval ratings.

Let’s face it:  Whenever he shows up in the gospel, as he does today, he’s usually bad news, reminding us of sins that we have committed but would rather forget.  That camel-hair ensemble won’t exactly land him on a “Best Dressed” list either, not to mention his strange eating habits.  In other words, the Baptist just isn’t the kind of person you’d invite to your party because he’s bound to be a party pooper.

So this Second Sunday of Advent, I’d like to turn to him and ask him a couple of questions:  “Must you spoil the party?  Must you talk about fire and brimstone instead of heaven and angels?  Why not be charming instead of resorting to all those scare tactics?”

Actually, he hasn’t always been like this.  The first time we meet him, he’s–of all things!–dancing!  Hearing the sound of Mary’s voice and recognizing the presence of the One, he leaps in his mother’s womb and for all we know, does a mean boogie as the Mother of the Lord sings her Magnificat.   When he is born, his name is all his father Zechariah needs to speak and sing again.  So what happened?  When did he turn into such a party pooper?

Maybe it happened in the desert, that lonely, scary place where God sometimes chooses to meet us–a place as much out there as in ourselves.  There, deep in his own desert, John the Baptist must have once again heard the music that once made him dance, a music so enchanting that he longed so much to share it with the rest of the world.  But soon he must have realized, much to his dismay, that the world couldn’t hear the music because its sins have rendered it–all of us–deaf.  Instead of dancing to God’s song, we’ve ended up listening to noise that we’ve been mistaking for music.  We think we’re having a ball, but we’re only limping to noise.

So you see, if John the Baptist is such a party pooper, I think it’s only because he knows we’re missing out on the real party.  After all, his job is to “prepare the way of the Lord and make straight his paths.”  He took his job so seriously, in fact, that he ended up having his head served on a plate at a dance that he till the end refused to join.

So if we want to be ready for the Lord, we’d better check if we’ve been attending the right party or dancing to the wrong music.  Otherwise, why not invite John the Baptist into our life this Advent to listen to what he has to say?  Maybe we will hear a little of the music he heard and–who knows?–one day dance and party with the Baptist.

(image:  details from Caravaggio’s “St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness”)

“HOW LONG DO WE WAIT?” (Mt 9:27-37):  07 December 2007 (Memorial of St. Ambrose, Friday)

Reading: www.nccbuscc.org/nab/120707.shtml

In the gospel story today, Jesus heals two blind men and they happily recover their sight.  But what strikes me most about the reading is that the healing doesn’t happen immediately; it is performed only after Jesus enters a house and the two blind men finally catch up with him.  Before that, we’re told that they follow him around for God knows how long, crying out to him, “Have pity on us!”

How long did they have to do that? I wonder.  How long did they have to wait?

All I can say is:  Been there, done that–haven’t we?  There have been times in our lives when we needed God’s help, and we prayed and begged, hounding him all day and all night with our pleas.  We had to wait.

Recently, I watched a film I didn’t want to watch. It’s called “A Mighty Heart” featuring Angelina Jolie.  I was reluctant to watch it because I knew watching the film would break my heart.  It’s the story of American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, and eventually beheaded on video in 2002.  It’s a movie about waiting.  The film focuses on his pregnant wife, Mariane, as she waited and hoped against hope while the authorities tried to track the kidnapers and rescue Daniel.  But one who knows the story watches the film like a Greek tragedy, his heart just waiting to sink because of the inevitable end hanging over his head.

The strange thing about watching the film is that I found myself waiting and hoping with Mariane Pearl even if I already knew even before watching the movie that she–and I–would merely wait and hope in vain.  Daniel would never be found.  He would eventually end up dead and beheaded anyway.  But I waited and hoped still, like some desperate person who had no choice but to wait and hope.  Like Mariane Pearl.

Yes, been there, done that.  How many times have I felt similarly hopeless and desperate?  All those times I have felt that I had no choice but to wait and hope.

And so today I ask the Lord:  “How long do we wait and hope, Lord?”  Given the law of entropy, the world seems headed for inevitable ruin. Yet we wait and hope and pray because we must.  Perhaps one day you will turn around after we follow you crying for your pity. Perhaps one day you will heal our wound and ease our pain for good–and bring all our waiting to an end.

Or will we, like Mariane, simply end up waiting in vain?  But we never really just wait in vain, do we?  Doesn’t the waiting–even if in vain–bring some hidden grace?  Mariane’s waiting must have somehow gathered for her the strength she needed to face Daniel’s death, as well as the courage to raise their child alone after his death.  This Advent, let us pray that we learn to wait and hope, even if our pleas and prayers will not be answered in the exact way we expect or desire.  Sometimes the answer to the prayer is given in our very waiting.

(image:  http://media.canada.com)

“WHAT THEN SHALL WE CALL YOU?”  (Mt 7:21, 24-27):  06 December 2007 (Thursday)

Reading:  www.nccbuscc.org/nab/120607.shtml

Some years ago, American singer Joan Osborne had a controverial hit song called “One of Us”–a song most recently used as the theme for the TV series “Joan of Arcadia.”  The first lines go:  “If God had a name, what would it be, and would you call it to his face?”

The gospel today warns us against simply calling Jesus “Lord” to his face.  Calling him Lord just isn’t going to be enough to get us to heaven.  So my question is:  If calling him “Lord” isn’t enough, what name does he prefer?  What then shall we call him?

I remember when I was a first-year novice twenty years ago, our novice master repeatedly told us that prayer shouldn’t just be about talking to God, but should involve listening to him.  So I tried doing just that:  I sat in the chapel to pray, listening for God’s voice.  I waited and waited.  Each day I went to a different chapel, prayed in a different position, closed my eyes and knitted my brows in deep concentration, but all I heard was the sound of my breathing and my own distracted wandering thoughts.  I couldn’t sense God’s presence.  I even tried using a mantra–repeating Christ’s name like some magical incantation–but all to no avail.

Not until after several weeks of hard work at it did I finally–by God’s grace– receive some satisfactory prayer experience.  Those first few weeks, however, taught me a valuable lesson not only about prayer, but also about the Lord:  He is truly transcendent.  We can never capture him and conveniently contain him in a box.  As the mystics say, God is “like the wind that blows where it pleases.”  Although he is present everywhere, our sense of his presence, our experience of him, is a gift he gives only when he wills it and only to those he wishes, whether deserving or not.  The most we can do is to wait humbly and patiently.

Today’s reading warns us against being content with simply calling him Lord.  Uttering his name will not automatically summon his presence and will not guarantee our salvation.  But our Lord also shares a secret with us:  If we really want to be close to him, more important than what we say and what we pray is what we do:  to “do the will of the Father”–i.e., to love and serve our neighbor.  In a word, to follow Jesus.

The music video of Joan Osborne’s “One of Us” features a carnival where every sort of odd-looking people stand behind a standee of Michaelangelo’s Creator and stick their faces into the hole where God’s face has been cut out.  I think it tells us that because God has truly become one of us, if we want to find him, we need to seek him in our neighbor.  His name is really not just “Lord.”  His name is also “brother.”

(image:  www.hotmixradio.fr)

Note:  I’ve uploaded the song if you wish to listen to it.  The lyrics are as follows:

ONE OF US (Joan Osborne)
(lyricsondemand.com)

If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his face
If you were faced with him in all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question

And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like heaven and in jesus and the saints and all the prophets

And yeah yeah god is great yeah yeah god is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
He’s trying to make his way home
Back up to heaven all alone
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the pope maybe in rome

And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the Pope maybe in Rome

“WHY NOT ALWAYS?”  (Mt 15:29-37): 05 December 2007 (Wednesday)

Reading: www.nccbuscc.org/nab/120507.shtml

That’s a lot of miracles Jesus performed in today’s gospel reading:  healing of the sick and feeding of the hungry–all in a day’s work!  I don’t know about you, but when I read something like that and I watch CNN or BBC or scan the morning papers and learn about all the suffering and hungry people in our world today, I can’t help but turn to the Lord and ask: “These miracles that you can do–why not perform them habitually?  Why only occasionally?  Why not always?”

God knows–and he literally does!–how much our world desperately needs miracles!  Despite modern technology, we still have millions of people suffering and dying of incurable illnesses.  And despite the abundance of food in certain places in the world, millions of children still die each day from hunger.

When I read about these miracles of healing and multiplication of loaves and fish, I can’t help but wonder why the Lord doesn’t perform more of them today.  Why indeed do his miracles have to be the exception rather than the rule?

There must be a good reason why God insists that we follow the laws of nature, and why he allows the pain and death that seem to be inevitable consequences of these laws.  The philosophers and theologians can come up with their intellectual discourses, but when I see the the devastated bodies  of the sick and the emaciated faces of starving children, I just don’t get it!  I know God is all-good and all-powerful, so what gives?

When I was a kid, I was told that when Job, that innocent man of the Old Testament, was stricken with unimaginable suffering, he piously intoned, “The Lord has given, and he has taken away!”  But later I found out that he said that only in the beginning.  For the rest of the book (in fact, most of it!), Job complained and demanded an explanation from God for his inexplicable suffering.  Unfortunately, God didn’t give him any explanation–and to this day, as far as I know, God hasn’t to anyone.

But what the Lord does is give us some kind of prescription–one that I suppose he thinks we can follow even without understanding.  We find this prescription in the feeding of the crowd.  The disciples ask him, “Where do we get the food to feed this crowd?”  And the Lord responds with a question, “What do you have?”  And the Lord takes what the disciples have–seven loaves, we’re told, and a few fish–and uses them to miraculously feed everybody.

In response to our questions and complaints about the sufferings and hunger of the world, the Lord invites us to share whatever we have, and to believe that he will use what we have–no matter how little, no matter how limited–to perform his much longed-for miracles.

So I guess the question we can ask ourselves today is:  Can we share the little that we have to heal and feed the world?  And if we can, his question to us will probably be the same question we had for him:  Why not do it habitually?  Why not always?

(image:  www.public.iastate.edu)

“DID YOU KNOW?” (Lk 10:22): 04 December 2007 (Tuesday)

Reading: www.nccbuscc.org/nab/120407.shtml

The way our Lord spoke in the Gospel today certainly sounded like he knew what he was talking about.  He sounded so certain about who he was and what his relationship to the Father was–i.e., the Messiah, the Son of the Most High, and the only, almost exclusive, Way to the Father.  Those of us who prefer a superhuman Christ should be consoled by that.

However, most biblical scholars today would say that these words were probably added by his disciples only after the Resurrection, when they were more certain about the meaning of Christ’s person and life.  So the question I’d like to ask the Lord is:  “Did you know? Did you know for sure that you were the Messiah, the Divine Son of God?”

In one of the most moving and most meaningful Theology classes I had years ago, our professor, Fr. C. G. Arevalo, extended an invitation to us to speculate,  to imagine what Christ might have thought and felt as a human person. After all, the Church staunchly  teaches that Christ is both totally divine and totally human.  That’s also what the Bible says:  that he was like us in all things except sin.

If Christ, therefore, was totally human, it would not have been possible for him to know for sure who he was every moment of his life.  Ambiguity is part and parcel of being human, so if our Lord was truly totally human, then he couldn’t have been 100% sure about who he was and who God was for him!

As a result of that class, I wrote a song called “Something More,” which was about Christ asking if he was indeed “the One” people were looking for.  In other words, maybe the Lord didn’t know for sure.  At best he had a hunch, but he did not completely understand.  St. Paul had a term for Christ’s condition in his letter to the Philippians:  kenosis, meaning “self-emptying.”  In Christ, God emptied himself, his divinity, to become human.  I suppose the ‘self-emptying’ included divine omniscience.   When God emptied himself in Christ, the divine was hidden not only from people, but even from Christ himself!  That’s how human he must have been!

Some people might suspect that this Christ with all our human limitations might be a reduction of his divinity.  But that’s true only if you think you become less divine if you are more human, and that’s exactly what Christianity is not about.  Christianity teaches us through the Incarnation that there is no opposition between being divine and being human.

I don’t know about you, but this less-than-superhuman Christ, this less-than-certain Christ who probably struggled and lost sleep about who he was, who knew but also like us, did not know for sure if he was following God’s Will–such a Christ is more real and more appealing to me.  Such a Christ understands me more–my own questions, my own struggles, even my own doubts.  One of the most consoling things about the Christian faith is that it offers not a God who is distant and who, because of his perfection, does not and can never understand our imperfections.  Instead it offers us a somewhat subversive face of a God who is intimately linked to us and who remains perfect and divine but because of the human imperfection he willingly embraced, can and does understand our imperfections as well.

I don’t know about you, but such a God, such a Christ, inspires more love and more gratitude in me.  How wonderful that we have such a God!

(image: www.oel-bild.de/Bilder)