• Genesis 12:1-4. Abraham is promised to be a great nation and a model of blessings for all nations if he obediently goes forth “to a land that I will show you.”
• 2 Timothy 1:8-10. Not by our own merits but by the grace in Christ Jesus has God saved us. Therefore, we ought to bear our share of the hardships which the gospel entails.
• Matthew 17:1-9. Jesus, wondrously transfigured, is joined by Moses and Elijah; a voice out of the clouds says: “This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.”

Thoughts for your consideration:

The Good News of Jesus Christ is to spread the love that God has for all humanity. Jesus demonstrated God’s love in word and deed to all who suffered every malady and hardship. In accepting God’s love we are also invited to share that same love to all of God’s people. By word and deed we must also offer the radical love that Jesus had in feeding the hungry, healing the sick, preaching peace, and forgiving all who sin against us. This is the “hardship for the gospel” that St. Paul describes in the second reading for this weekend. The hardship can seem unbearable and indeed it is but for “the strength that comes from God.” In the second reading St. Paul shares his own witness of the risen Christ as a glorious reminder that through Christ comes the promise that death is defeated and immortality is achieved. This is the promise that gives fuel for the early Christians to live a countercultural lifestyle and to face the persecution that so many of them faced.

The first reading and the gospel passage both offer an epiphany moment to Abraham and the disciples of Jesus that gives them great hope in a divine promise that will bring fulfillment to a hardship that they must bear. For Abraham he is being asked to uproot himself in his old age to a foreign land with the unlikely promise that he will be a great nation. In the gospel passage Jesus just predicts his passion and death and then goes on to tell his disciples that they too must carry their own cross. The disciples may have had second thoughts with regards to the messianic mission of Christ so he takes the three leaders of the early church and offers them a secret epiphany moment through the transfiguration.

Our Christian duty is to continue this tradition of demonstrating God’s great love to all people by word and deed. We face different challenges than either Abraham or the Apostles but the gospel message is as countercultural today as it was back then and our prophetic message will still create amazing hardships for many of us. Preaching social policies that address life, hunger and healthcare to a highly individualistic and competitive market society will not bring us social popularity. We may not be persecuted outright but many of us can feel marginalized or even ridiculed when we preach a policy of peace and nonviolence. Just like Abraham and the Apostle we need these epiphany moments that God gives us to give us strength and fortitude to continue the mission of Jesus as we dare to share God’s great love with one another.

Many of us can attest to having either visions or inspirational moments where we become aware of God’s presence in our lives and experience a sense of recollection. They may not be cosmic events such what the Apostles witnessed but they are moments, sometimes fleeting, where we feel a sense of peace and purpose. These moments will come to us periodically through moments of prayer and reflection. Some have shared with me personal visions that they have had, for my part I can attest to inspirations that usually accompany a spiritual reading or a fervent prayer. The point is not to get hung up on these moments, like Peter tried to do in the gospel passage, but to allow ourselves to be transfigured during those moments so that our own faith in God is nourished as we face the hardships that we are called to. In this way we will collaborate with God in fulfilling a divine purpose and not our own self-interest. For that reason it is often suggested that we have a spiritual director who can help us with counsel and resources to have a balanced spiritual life and to help us discern these inspirations or visions such as they are. The founder of the Passionist community, St. Paul of the Cross, offered spiritual direction to many lay men and women as well as clergy and religious. In one letter written in 1735 he gave this important counsel regarding the difference between holy and unholy inspirations.                

“The things of God, his gifts, bring a great knowledge of his Infinite Majesty and a great knowledge of one’s own nothingness… The things of God cause a great detachment from everything, a great love of the cross and of suffering, a great acceptance of everything that is not sin, and exact obedience. They cause a great peace and heavenly understanding. They bring on a great inclination to holy prayer…

The work of the devil, on the contrary, at the beginning may bring some peace and devotion, but it does not last. They principally generate a secret presumption and opinion that one is important, and bring on, if not immediately, at least after a time, perturbation of spirit, arousal of the passions, stubbornness of mind and one’s opinions.”

God gives us moments of transfigurations where he offers us a sense of the divine mystery and a purpose for the countercultural hardship that we will face in preaching the Good News. St. Paul of the Cross suggests that we should be humbled by such an experience and open towards offering a compassionate love to a suffering world. But if our inspirations drive us to opinionated stubbornness and a false sense of preeminence then we need to keep those self-inflating desires in check. We cannot hope to demonstrate God’s great love to the world if we do not allow ourselves to be open to His own transforming influence in our own lives.

• Isaiah 2: 1-5. Isaiah prophesizes about the future glory of Jerusalem. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.”
• Romans 13: 11-14. Paul reminds the Romans that they must be awake and ready for the immanent salvation. The people should conduct themselves properly and “throw off the works of darkness.”
• Matthew 24: 37-44. Jesus tells the disciples that the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah and the Flood. We must be prepared for we do not know the hour when the Son of Man will come.

Thoughts for Your Consideration: By Fr. Phil Paxton, CP

Every year around this time, I reflect on the distinction between preparing for the holiday of Christmas and preparing for the holy day. Preparations for the holiday have already begun. Christmas decorations are adorning the stores, and shoppers are listening to Christmas music. People are buying gifts and looking for the best deal, whether it’s in a store or online. Trips and visits are planned, and menus for Christmas dinner are getting set. This Sunday marks the beginning of the season of Advent, and the time of preparation for the holy day of Christmas, when we celebrate the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ, into the world, and wait for Him to come again. Both kinds of preparation can be positive. I still enjoy giving and receiving gifts. I enjoy hearing about how friends and family are decorating their homes or getting ready to bake dozens (hundreds!) of Christmas cookies.

When we look at what’s going on in the world, or in our lives, the preparation to celebrate Jesus’ birth and to await His coming again becomes more and more important. Advent is a time of waiting, but not passive waiting. We are to get ready. As Jesus says in our Gospel reading from Matthew, “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”

How are we to get ready? In our second reading from Romans, St. Paul exhorts his fellow Christians: “You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” To get ready for the day when Jesus comes, we are called to get out of certain things (“the works of darkness”), and get into others (“the armor of light”).

Our Scripture readings point to some of the “works of darkness” that are all around us, and keep us from the “peace” and “good will among all” that this time of year calls to mind. In our first reading from Isaiah, we hear the prophet look forward to a time when “One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” Violence is a work of darkness that has proven difficult for us to throw off. So often we seem to turn to violence almost as a first, rather than as a last resort. In the reading from Romans, St. Paul writes, “let us conduct ourselves…not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy.” Another work of darkness that seems prevalent is self-indulgence. We are tempted to want more and more and more, despite the consequences to others or even to the whole earth.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus points to another work of darkness. He says, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.” For me, Jesus warns against complacency. In some ways, this can be the most seductive work of darkness of all. We can be tempted to let our comfort determine our attitude toward others and to the world. As Christians, we can never be satisfied with what is. When it comes to the environment or poverty or violence, we really can’t wait to “conduct ourselves properly as in the day” (Romans 13:13), or beat our “swords into plowshares,” and our “spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4)! We are called to act at this time in our lives!

We cannot throw off the works of darkness on our own. As St. Paul says, we are to put on “the armor of light.” We are to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Only in the grace and love of Jesus Christ can we let go of violence and self-indulgence and complacency. In sharing Jesus’ love we can work for peace and justice in our world. To paraphrase the words of Isaiah, we are being called: “O Church, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

 May God continue to bless us all, and may we prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming.

• Acts 2:1-11. The Awesome descent of the Spirit, so that all are caught up in wonder and hear the marvels of God spoken in their own tongue.
• 1 Corinthian 12:3-7, 12-13. There are different gifts but the same Spirit. In the one Spirit all of us were baptized into one body [and] have been given to drink of the one Spirit.
• John 20:19-23. Jesus breathed upon the disciples, gathered together in a locked room; he conferred the Holy Spirit and the power of forgiving sin.

 Thoughts for your Consideration:

This week is Pentecost Sunday. The lectionary readings focus on the awesome power of the Holy Spirit as it descends upon the disciples and as it is expressed by members of the early Christian community. In the Acts of the Apostles the event is described in the midst of powerful and richly symbolic natural events. The manifestation of the Holy Spirit produces great confusion among the Jewish bystanders who happen to witness this event; some are curiously impressed while many scoff at what they perceive as an apparent drunken stupor.  Peter is left defending himself and his colleagues from this accusation by suggesting that it is too early in the day to be drunk and then he places this confusing event within the context of the prophetic tradition by citing the words of the prophet Joel. The conclusion of this citation ends with a salvific message for all of God’s people, “and it shall be that everyone shall be saved who calls on the name of the Lord.”

In his letter to the Corinthians St. Paul describes the great gifts of the Spirit that is shared to the various members of the early church. St. Paul makes a very clear point in highlighting the supreme unity of the One Spirit in the midst of this great diversity of gifts and talents that emanate from it. St. Paul cannot seem to emphasize this point enough. It is suggested in scripture commentaries that the Corinthian church had begun to establish ethnic and social discrimination in its early community. In this passage St. Paul needs to emphasize the unity that exists between the Jews and Greeks as well as the free people and the slaves. In the Gospel reading Jesus prepares his disciples for this event by establishing a culture of peace on them. He keeps emphasizing that they be at peace before they receive the Spirit.

While the first reading describes the event of Pentecost the next two readings remind us that the great and awesome gifts of the Spirit can only serve the mission of promoting unity and it can only be received and utilized through a culture of peace.      

Many of us who are Catholics have gone through the Sacrament of Confirmation. For many of us the wondrous natural events that we read about in Acts did not accompany our own reception of this Sacrament. We may end up spiritualizing this sacramental event or dismissing it altogether. I have come to admire a medieval Catholic theological formula that helps explain our own growth into the gifts of the Holy Spirit and our own orientation towards the supreme good that is God.

Medieval theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas believed that we have an aspect of God within each and every one of us, this divine spark was called synderesis. It was thought (and continues to be studied in contemporary moral theology) that an essence towards the orientation towards God was built within our own DNA structure. This element is what allowed us to believe that some actions and judgments were self-evident in all of humanity. Through synderesis all humanity had deep within themselves an orientation on what was called the first principles of the natural order. The general concepts that most codified laws including the Ten Commandments had, such as regulating against murder and thievery and promoting values of charity and mutual respect, emanate from some kind of self-evident principles that come to us directly from the divine source. Our own American Declaration of Independence suggest three self-evident principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if these principles are self-evident then they are known to us through the divine knowledge of the good that we have through synderesis.

But synderesis is only one habit within our conscience that judges for us the actions we must take. Our actions towards the good are often clouded by our own self-interest and passions. Thus we require the Holy Spirit to make its impression felt on us so that we can awaken the divine spark within each of us and recognize that divine essence in all others. To do the supreme good (rather than our own good) we must allow the Holy Spirit to affect us. As a sacrament Confirmation offers us the grace to receive the power that will awaken the divine spark in us. The power of the Holy Spirit will then give strength to our own existing orientation to do the supreme good. It will also awaken in us the particular gifts that we are given to fulfill the supreme good. While Confirmation grants us the moment to allow ourselves to be open to this reception we must always pray that the Holy Spirit continue to nurture us with this grace since our other social and personal distractions will continue to cloud our judgments.

Keep in mind however that this can only happen within the context of a couple necessary dispositions. First, we must be aligned under a spirit and culture of peace. Second we must only use these gifts to build up the Kingdom of God in unity and without imposing any barriers of discrimination to the love that we are all entitled to. We all already exist within the supreme unity and orientation to God. We all share a supreme equality with each other through the divine dignity that exists in our very nature. In the spirit of peace and unity let us be receptive to the power of the Holy Spirit in awakening this orientation to do the supreme good and to live in harmony with each other.

I was personally saddened when the Economic Stimulus debate and subsequent vote ended up bolstering the ongoing partisanship that has defined Washington all these years. Amidst this reality I continue to work and pray for a collaborative ecumenical social agenda that can move this country and the world forward in the midst of this ongoing economic, social and environmental crisis.

For us in the Catholic Community the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good is a movement that aims to build this model. Below I will again past their wonderful video where they share their consistent position on all  Catholic social issues.

Their collaboration with Christian Churches Together (CCT) in addressing the issues of poverty also demonstrate this move by the Christian community from addressing only liberal or conservative issues to just being Christian.

Poverty is a very central Christian issue. The concern for the poor is found throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Even when St. Paul and St. James argued about the direction of the early church with regards to the Gentiles they both conceded on importance of “remembering the poor,” (Gal. 2:10)

Poverty was also an issue of preeminent importance to St. Paul of the Cross. He reminded the members of his community to always look to the poor, “For the name of Jesus is written on their foreheads.”

Today the Passionist community continue to serve this mandate and to promote both our services to the poor and to advocate on their behalf. In doing this we not only fulfill the vision of our founder but a basic tenet of the Catholic faith.

A consistent theme of Catholic social teaching is the option or love of preference for the poor. Today, this preference has to be expressed in worldwide dimensions, embracing the immense numbers of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without medical care, and those without hope. – Sollicitudo Rei Socialis by Pope John Paul II, 1987

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_fa1yRh-WM

FT.com / UK – Israel’s self-defeating Gaza offensive.

I found this article insightful insofar as it describes in detail the spiral of violence that the current Israeli offensive is setting off. In the article the author describes the perspective that was shared to him by an educated Palestinian man who voted for Hamas:

“Because every day, the Israelis find a different way to say ‘fuck you’,” he told me. “By voting for Hamas, I’m saying ‘fuck you back’,” I laughed at the time. But – stripped of all diplomatic and strategic rationales – that seems like a good summery of the tragic and self-defeating logic that lies behind the fighting in Gaza.

The scenario that this conflict is developing into was described as the Spiral of Violence by Archbishop Helder Camara. The Spiral of Violence became the title of a book written by Archbishop Camara of Brazil in 1971. In this book, Archbishop Camara describes the attraction of violence in this way:

Now the egoism of some privileged groups drives countless human beings into this sub-human conditions, where they suffer restrictions, humiliations, injustices; without prospect, without hope, their condition is that of slaves.

This established violence, this violence No. 1, attracts violence No 2, revolt, either of the oppressed themselves or of youth, firmly resolved to battle for a more just and human world.

Scripture is a testament to an alternative logic. In the letter to the Romans Paul discusses this alternative wisdom to the early Christian community of Rome who is struggling with the established violence of the Roman Empire:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12: 17-21

In direct observance of this Gospel call to “live peaceably with all,” the Passionist JPIC Office of North America is working with Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) to urge the U.S. Congress to support a ceasefire. Please help us overcome this evil with good by adding your voice to the CMEP action alert.

Peace,

John

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despiar, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

Over 60 years ago a catastrophic event shook our global society to the core. The Great Depression and World War II brought unimaginable suffering. Our world experienced economic and military violence. We experienced the horrors of genocide, torture, and the vast ugliness that is absolute war. This event came to a close with a taste of the devastation from the Atomic Bomb.

60 years ago the global human community came together to make sense of this tragic event and gleam from this intense suffering the wisdom that could move us forward so that we would not make these same mistakes again. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was that wisdom that came to us.

The task remains for us to make this Universal Declaration come alive in us and in our world. Genocide and torture are still a reality for us. Economic disparity and the slavery of human trafficking are very much alive today. The threat of nuclear weapons and now the reality of climate change threaten to destroy both our society and our environment.

December 10th is the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration. Let us take this time to remember the social injustices that we now exist today and reflect on each of the 30 articles so that we to may understand and appreciate the wisdom that are Grandparents experienced.

Peace,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTlrSYbCbHE