Thoughts for your Consideration: by John Gonzalez
In this Sunday’s readings we are invited to be renewed and recommitted to our faith community. The first reading offers us an historical glimpse of the evolution of our faith. The people with Joshua are now aware of the new situation they find themselves in. They have reached a new stage in their development where they are no longer wandering migrants but are now stable and responsible for a land that has been given to them. It was God who chose them and brought them here, but at this point they need to declare their own commitment to God and the faith of their fathers. This becomes the basis of their covenant, a social contract where two parties freely commit responsibility and faithfulness to each other. Joshua tells them that this covenant, should they freely choose to make it, will be difficult and challenging to keep. The historical development of this community will be a testament to this difficulty and we will witness the ups and downs of this covenant relationship.

We understand Jesus to be the new covenant that God is now forming not just to a certain community but to the whole of humanity. Throughout his ministry Jesus invites many to participate and to be disciples of his teachings. Furthermore Jesus is offering the people a deeper relationship with God the Father and the amazing miracles and healings demonstrate the power of this relationship. But now, as in Joshua, Jesus explains the challenging nature of this commitment. Like any good contract negotiation it is important for both parties to be completely aware of the details of this commitment that they are engaging in. Throughout the last couple of weeks we have heard from the 6th chapter of John’s Gospel where Jesus is explaining this commitment to the “Bread of Life,” it is a glorious commitment to share in eternal life, but it also demands faith and belief in what is unknown and almost unacceptable.

In a sense what we are witnessing, through Jesus, is the relationship of faith evolving. The commitment that Jesus is offering his disciples is recommitment to the faith of their fathers. And yet the faith that Jesus if offering here sounds somewhat strange to them. Last week we heard his audience ask, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” But faith is evolving here and changing. Of course change is difficult. We are fortunate to have the vantage point of where we are in history. We can now understand that faith in God is now beyond any tribal borders and is indeed universal. This was clarified through the work of St. Paul and the early Christian community.

But we can only imagine the bewilderment of the people who heard this invitation. We should marvel at the stance of Peter and the remaining disciples. To recommit to a relationship when that relationship is definitely changing is to take a leap of faith into the unknown. Our faith continues to evolve in our present day. Our current situation is in the midst of great change and we must again renew our own faith tradition in light of what is happening to our society. What is God calling us to do? We must accept that this tradition will be consistent with that faith that Moses and Joshua had in God and with the faith that Jesus offered the disciples. But because our own situation has changed this faith will look different for us. One “sign of the times” that many of us are exploring is the question of our relationship towards creation. We are becoming well aware of the deep interconnection between what we do and how our environment reacts. Is it possible that our faith is growing towards a relationship not just with the global human community (which is still in need of development) but also with the larger ecological world? How shall we respond to this?

Paul’s use of the image of husband and wife is an excellent analogy for me to understand my own response to this evolving faith. The first covenant of our marriage was wonderful and in many ways simple, but the marriage developed and changed. Many aspects of our own relationship had to change when my daughter was born. That change was even greater after my son was born. I had wanted to go back to the covenant and expectations that we had originally made. It was my wife however who kept me in check with the fact that things have drastically changed and that if we were to continue in relationship we would have to accept a new dynamic in how we were to relate. This took me awhile but I began to see more clearly the truth of this matter. Our relationship had changed and if we were to choose to stay together then we had to renew our commitment based on the new dynamics that were part of our life. I remember taking a leap of faith and letting go with so much of my own expectation and desire. I also remember how years later I was able to again fully appreciate this renewal. Paul tells us that our relationship with God is quite similar. We do not live in a static unchanging environment. As God gets ready to change the dynamics of our relationship we will again be called to renew this relationship.

Readings:
Exodus 24:3-8
Hebrews 9:11-15
Mark 14:12-16,22-26

Thoughts for your consideration:
Corpus Christi raises up before our eyes the beauty and value of the Eucharist. It brings to mind the gift of the Body and the Blood of the Lord. The Eucharist stand at the heart of our Catholic faith.

There are different ways of approaching the Eucharist, some of which are devotional. But the bible readings chosen for us by the church today stresses the Eucharist as a sacrifice, which brings to mind the mass. Recent popes have worried that we don’t pay sufficient attention to the sacrificial nature of Eucharist. On the other hand, some complain that attending to the Eucharist in any of these ways can be detrimental to concerns of justice, peace and the integrity of creation (JPIC), constraining our efforts “to the sanctuary”, and restraining them from social concerns beyond the church walls.

Today’s readings suggest otherwise. The reason is the focus on blood that the bible presents. In Exodus it is the blood of animals, in Hebrews and Mark it is the blood of Christ. What’s notable about this emphasis on blood is the effect it produces: covenants, alliances, agreements, solidarity among those sharing in the blood.

When Moses sprinkles the blood of animals on the alter and on the people, he is uniting a sacrificial offering (sanctuary) and people, making their laborious way across the desert on their journey to the Promised Land. He calls it “the blood of the covenant”. Covenant is an alliance, a device for achieving justice, a away of leveling out relationships between otherwise uneven partners: God and humans. In other words, this religious act effects the balance of justice in peoples’ lives.

More cogently, the author of the letter to the Hebrews speaks of blood again, this time, the blood of Christ shed on the cross, far superior to the blood of animals described in Exodus. Ans so, as we might expect, the effect are superior. The blood of Christ does more than enable us to cross the desert. It helps us to reach the gate of heaven, traversing the distance between earth and heaven. And once again we note that this is a covenant, a new covenant. It negotiates the extreme differences between our lowly selves and the eminence of God. It is a justice device, effecting solidarity between such unlikely partners as God and humans.

We have the privilege of anticipating this blood-facilitated covenantal arrangement with God by our Eucharistic sacrifice, where what Mark describes in the gospel takes place among us here and now. Jesus first took bread, then took wine, transposing them into His Body and Blood, as He proceeded to name it: “This is my blood of the covenant…” Once again “covenant” emerges to the fore – a justice device to bring about a species of equality between totally unequal partners: God and us.

The celebration of Corpus Christi reminds us that what takes place in the sanctuary of our churches brings about an unlikely straightening out of relationships, that can carry over into our JPIC concerns, which desperately seek to hit upon legal and moral arrangements repairing the inequities in our daily lives. We strive to articulate new covenants with earth and sea, with one another, by looking to the Passion of Christ, and His shedding of blood, to restore the original creation of God in our midst, where all of us have suitable access to the land, enabling us, in turn, to enjoy just and equitable relationships with one another, because, thanks to His blood, we enjoy a covenantal bonding with God. A sense of Corpus Christi leads to a sense of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation.

Questions for Reflection in your Faith Sharing Group:

• How is the Eucharist important for your spiritual life?

• How is the Eucharist important for your work for justice in the world?

]]> http://www.passionistjpic.org/2009/06/corpus-christi-sunday/feed/ 1 http://www.passionistjpic.org/2009/03/lectionary-reflection-fifth-sunday-of-lent/ http://www.passionistjpic.org/2009/03/lectionary-reflection-fifth-sunday-of-lent/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:38:43 +0000 Christian MacAuley http://lectionaryreflections.wordpress.com/?p=110 Readings:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hebrews 5:7-9
John 12:20-33

Thoughts for your consideration: by Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, CP

JPIC concerns are universal ones, expressing themselves differently in particular settings.   Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation continually attract our attention.

They emerge in today’s biblical readings.  Jeremiah, the prophet, for instance, celebrates a new moment in the history of the Jewish people, by noting a major development in  their covenantal relationship to God.  Throughout their history they have had to renegotiate, usually unsuccessfully, a series of covenantal arrangements with God.  Humanity has never been able to execute these arrangements very well.  As a result, God was forever formulating another version of His relationship with us.  Today represents a new wrinkle in this age-old institution.  The covenant, from here on in, is no longer an external device or instrument, but it’s to be an internal phenomenon-something fashioned within the very flesh and blood of the human community.

In this highly creative gesture, God incarnates a token of justice between Himself and His people, enfleshing a hint of equality between Himself and the Jews.  Covenants are always efforts at equality between parties, like contracts.  But past efforts at this equality have been hard to come by. But this time, as Jeremiah graphically points out, it becomes an embodied achievement, as God refashions the very hearts of this people so that a semblance of equality is within them.  At long last, something approximating justice prevails in this new covenant.  The people’s self-esteem is uplifted.  A certain equality prevails between them.

JPIC further engages the day’s scriptures in the spelling out of peace (P).  We note this in the letter to the Hebrews.  We usually think of peace as a combination of well-being and harmony with others, providing a sense of serenity.  The author of this letter, in describing what Christ achieves through His sufferings, observes that they help Him achieve perfection, while securing salvation for us who believe in Him.  Salvation is appropriately described as a state of safety and security, or, in other words, an instance of the peace that is so meaningful to us all.  The letter to the Hebrews traces this elusive quality of life to the death of Christ for us on the cross, from where it works itself out into various segments of life.  The violence so visibly evident in the viciousness of crucifixion to the wood of the cross recalls the blood-letting practices of physicians long ago, which were credited with healing and saving results: salvation.  Faith helps us share in the saving procedure provided by Christ Jesus on the cross, offering the remedy of peace we desire for our corporate body.  By sharing this faith with others, we make this remedy available on a large scale, and so stem the spreading contagion of war and violence.

The integrity of creation is a not-to-be-overlooked element in the formula, JPIC.  This integrity is evident in the restorative cycle of nature around us.  Jesus reminds us, in the day’s gospel, to heed the role of nature’s rhythm in regulating our lives.  He points to the grain of wheat falling into the depths of the earth, and dying, then re-emerging.  He suggests this familiar process to the Greek visitors, inquiring of Philip about Jesus.  In doing so, He makes a point about the cyclical rhythm of nature, which death does not conclude.  Rather, death is part of a process enabling new growth to occur again.  Nature’s capacity to “come back to life” is its God-given charter that Jesus finds useful in offering a human counterpart of the cycle of life and death, to be so powerfully illustrated in His own death and resurrection.  The grain of wheat conveys Jesus’ message to the inquiring visitors, knowing they will appreciate it.  It conveys the message of our co-existence with nature as well as our life of faith in God.  How often Jesus would have been hampered in imparting His message to us without the opportunity to appeal to the skies, the earth, the depths of the sea, as explanations of His mission on behalf of His heavenly Father.

JPIC is a window opening into our lives, and into our faith in God.  As justice, it points out a semblance of equality with God gained through His covenantal arrangements with us (J); as peace, it traces our well-being and serenity to the blood-letting of the cross (P); as integrity of creation, it provides an incessant circle of death and life that describes our way to God (IC).  Justice, peace and integrity of creation can combine with prayer, fasting and almsgiving as Lenten practices helping us to celebrate the Easter event.

Questions for Reflection in your Faith Sharing Group:

• How often do you hear about our Church’s social teachings?
• What thoughts or feelings surface as you consider the acronym JPIC? How does a spirituality of JPIC help deepen your own relationship (contract) with God and Christ?
• How does a spirituality of JPIC help you reflect on the financial crisis and unfolding scandals that we hear about almost daily?

• Gen 9:8-15
• 1 Pet 3:18-22
• Mark 1:12-15

Thoughts for your consideration:

Covenants are a social contract. In many ways the scripture is an ongoing saga of the social contract between God and his Creation. For some Christians this notion of a covenant is understood to be very passive. God is the only active participant and only through His grace can we possibly be expected to actualize our part of the bargain. In this sense the idea of a contract is very misleading because by its very definition a contract freely involves two active participants.

We Catholics do not dismiss grace, in many ways grace is like our divine lawyer who can help us navigate the difficult details of this contract. But our tradition has also emphasized the importance of free will. God very much expects us to perform. The infamous Babylonian captivity of ancient Israel is a reminder of what happens when we break from our part of the agreement.

The theme of the covenant is prominent throughout the readings for this Sunday. Genesis starts us off very directly by reminding us of the covenant God made with humanity to never flood the world again. The first letter of Peter takes us back to this incident and connects our baptism into the Body of Christ with the covenant that saved Noah and his descendents. Christ is the new covenant for us so that through the powerful grace of His life, death and resurrection we can freely engage in the responsible administration of this contract. Baptism into Christ can grace us “as an appeal to God for a good conscience.” Baptism into Christ is a powerful tool that can aid us in following the covenant.

So then what is our part of the bargain? What is our responsibility under this new covenant? In the gospel Jesus tells us to “repent, and believe in the good news.” Being human Jesus takes on the temptations we face. Jesus goes through this episode but emerges as a reformed person that follows not his own passion and desires but that of God his father. The word repent mean to reform from our past life to a new life that is consistent with the good news. The good news is that the Kingdom of God is arriving and Jesus lives as a citizen of this Kingdom. We are called to follow his actions in becoming citizens of the Kingdom of God. Jesus demonstrated this reformed lifestyle by:

• healing the sick
• feeding the poor
• forgiving sinners
• socializing with the outcast
• comforting the heartbroken

And throughout all this Jesus teaches us about the great love and mercy that God invites us to share with the rest of creation. This is the Kingdom of God. This is the social contract that we Christians have been called to fulfill.

Questions for your reflection:

• How does the gift of free will strike you? How do you take personal responsibility in being a Christian?
• What temptations keep you from living out your baptism? Do you use the tools of grace (such as prayer and scripture) to aid you with these temptations.
• How does our society address the issues of temptation? Does it seek what is comfortable and materialistic or is it willing to serve God and the common good of all creation? How can we be agents of reform to the social sins of our world?