While written from the perspective of the United Kingdom, Father McMillan briefly mentions the U.S. contribution that helped start Faith in the Workplace [FIWP] in London. Father McMillan also offers a concise description of the monthly, 1.5 hr-long meetings plus a testimonial from one person in business for whom FIWP is part of that person's life.Advent Sunday1 (29 Nov 2009)
Jer 33. 14-16; Ps 25; 1Th 3. 12-4.2; Lk 21. 25-28, 34-36
Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.
Advent Assurance For Daily Living
We begin another Advent. We begin “a season of joyful and spiritual expectation.”1 That description of Advent by the church—“a season of joyful and spiritual expectation”—is important for us to recall because over its history the church observed Advent as a miniature Lent, which Advent is not. Because some of us can remember that and most of us are affected by how Advent was observed, the church’s definition of Advent as “a season of joyful and spiritual expectation” helps us appreciate better what we’ve begun. This year I want to reflect with you on Advent’s shape and to what today’s scriptures point.
Advent, which means arrival, celebrates that Jesus, who was born and shared our human nature, died and rose and sits at God’s right hand2 in glory. His human birth was his first advent. Jesus is also present among us by his spirit and will return in glory to give his faithful followers a share in his glory.3 You and I await is his future, second advent.
As always the church engages us where we are: living lives of faith, hope and love. Advent opens the same way, where we are, living with faithful vigilance Jesus’ second advent. Advent renews our sights on Jesus’ future advent to revitalize our faith today and to encourage us to live it. As we near our celebration of the birth of Jesus, Advent recalls the past, Jesus’ birth, which began to transform human history and life. Do today’s scripture readings help our ongoing transformation? I believe they do.
Today’s readings flow with friendship language: promise; covenant; friendship; hearts. They also echo behavior flowing from friendship: kindness and constancy; [God’s] justice, our conduct; humble action; and vigilance. The word promise threads through the bible, usually about God’s promise to people. Jesus fulfilled God’s promise for Jesus was and is access to God’s life, and Jesus gives us a share in it. While we think friendship a human bond, God desires our friendship and established a covenant so God’s friendship would win and free our hearts. Keeping the covenant embraced various human behaviors.
Behavior flowing from friendship makes it a living, pulsing, human truth not some ideal. Friends and friendly people show kindness. They also are faithful, loyal, committed and devoted in deed and word. God’s devotion is God’s justice, which was, is and will be God’s desire that we live in right relationship with God, with others and with all created things.
The norm for human conduct is humble action: to cultivate an awareness of my Creator and Redeemer so that I will not act as though I am the center of my universe. To act as if one were the center of the universe is not only not humility, it’s idolatry. Idolatry minimizes God or takes God’s place. To minimize God or to take God’s place is the root sin of all sins.
Each of us knows how we minimize God or do not respect God’s goodness. We need to be vigilant with ourselves. Yet, living our Catholic faith is not just a matter of personal scrutiny. Living our faith acts with the assurance that our Messiah Jesus accompanies us; living our faith joyfully anticipates his glorious return. Welcoming his friendship and extending it to others are how we live sure that our Messiah accompanies us and will return to complete his promises to us. Although clothed in human forms, Jesus’ friendship offers us divine gifts. Jesus graces our human kindness to give others his peace. As agents of his peace we transform the world one person and one moment at a time.
In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week, ask to see with the Trinity’s vision, to see others and the world as if for the first time. Ask the disciples to present you to Jesus. Speak with Jesus in your words requesting new freedom from fear and anxiety to live his good news as Jesus created you to live it. Ask Jesus for the grace to be a disciple, who is faithful, loyal, committed and devoted in deed and word. Close, saying slowing the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus gave us the words, thy kingdom come, to heighten our joyful expectation, and the next words, thy will be done, to help us act in sync with his gospel-kingdom day by day.
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34th Saturday of the Year (28Nov 2009)
Dn 7. 15-27; Resp. Dn 3; Lk 21. 34-36
Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.
Alert Not Charmed
Because many of us celebrate mass between Sundays we have noticed the prophet Daniel’s message this last week of the liturgical year had one theme with different expressions. The theme was power, human and godly, earthly and heavenly. Rather than working in concert with godly power, human power had grown arrogant. Arrogant in kings, who led others into captivity—the context of the Book of Daniel; arrogant in the kingdoms themselves depicted by beasts, which caricatured power wielded by humans.
A caricature exaggerates striking characteristics to make a point. In Daniel’s vision he beheld beasts devouring and crushing...and trampling humans and the rest of creation, rather than preserving, strengthening and building creation in the manner of true stewards. The beastly features opposed humans, whom God created in the divine image, and humane stewardship.
Stewardship involves of creation,1 especially its crown, humans. Power that abuses does not harmonize with God’s kingdom. In proclaiming the kingdom, Jesus emphasized the harmony of human and divine, and God’s initiative to help people to become realigned with God in deed and word: our vocation daily until Jesus’ return.
Luke’s Jesus offered no timetable of events before the return of the son of Man, a sobriquet in circulation before Daniel’s time. Instead, he encouraged an alert vigilance not an idle one; a calm and even approach to the world; and to pray for strength to persevere in that approach.
The distractions of daily life need not be only its anxieties. Earlier in his teaching, Jesus remarked that even the pleasures of daily life can choke the word [of God] so that it does not come to maturity in human behavior or language.2
A parallel with safety is apt. Safety pros teach that the more familiar our surroundings, the less alert we are to potential hazards. Similarly, in our desires we don't notice insidious dangers. Insidious dangers may have harmful effects equal to those coming from a visible, external source, even a beastly one, to exploit Daniel’s vision. Yet Jesus encouraged a vigilance to free us not make us paranoid; a vigilance that would offer us strength; a vigilance that would make us confident so that we can stand firm with head held high3 whenever the son of Man may come.
For us who live in secure comfort, Jesus may encourage us to employ alert vigilance lest life charm us to forget God has given all things to us so we may exercise holy stewardship not become puffed up by any power we have. To be alert that way to exercise holy stewardship is not to be a caricature-Christian but to truly and effectively minister to each other.
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Wiki-image of Jesus' teaching about the end of the temple is used according to the Free Art License.
“Priestly people” is a royal title: God set us apart in Jesus to glorify God. It’s a prophetic title, too: we are free to imagine new life dawning in the darkness and hum-drum of daily existence until new life shines as the son of Man...on the clouds of heaven presents us before the Creator’s throne.
How would a ruler make sense of that? Jesus’ mission to testify to the truth stirred in Pilate no idle question, “What is truth?” though Pilate may have asked it from the position of his power rather than genuine desire.
A second implication is that we cross the bridge, who is Jesus; in other words, our action, our cooperation with Jesus makes us and keeps us as God’s family. Jesus expressed that this way: whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.
So we leave our time, 60 minutes of it on Sunday, to enter with one another kingdom-time, which the Psalmist described: A thousand years in [God’s] eyes are merely a yesterday [to us]./1/ Our notion of time contradicts that of the bible, so we let the bible pass; or we refuse to take it seriously; or we feel it’s not for us because it’s outdated—time again!—just not in tune with us.
Then the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken….then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory...then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.
We’ll never know the how Jesus took his seat forever at the right hand of God. Yet we have experienced it: healing; forgiveness of sin; living faithfully; showing compassion, receiving compassion; feeling grace embrace us, guide us and inspire us to choose, act and speak faithfully. Those and other revelations of God’s heart are ours! Sitting at the right hand imagines them and stirs us to imagine them. Not a cold fact a ticket-stub at Severance Hall gives, sitting at the right hand of God invites us to desire the delights of God here, now, moment by moment. God will take care of the future: [God] will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds.
I’d like us to begin with memory. Memory is more than discreet facts or ideas. Memory of a human is a portrait of that person, giving us access to who that person was and who that person came to be in our experience. The Book of Sirach is clear about that: the virtues of godly people are remembered, not forgotten. Virtues don’t exist separate from people; people embody them or not. To say that we remember Mary Jo’s virtues is to say we remember her. Surely, more than we remember her. By her life as an educator and a counselor, Mary Jo touched many lives, helping young people shape their futures. Memory lives in people. Memory shapes people.
Jesus preparation of a place for us is a metaphor for nothing less than Jesus creating us anew! Creating is what Jesus does at each moment. Creating is not a past event; it is who Jesus fashions each of us to be every moment. That may be a new way to think about God creating through Jesus by their Spirit, but that has been true from all ages. You and I tend to think in terms of time and history more than in terms of Jesus at work for us now.
Something I learned about Amalia from her family was easy for me to appreciate. When my father was 20, a stroke crippled his father, and my father became responsible for the home and lives of his father, mother, sister and his. Becoming head of the household in a practical way, shaped my father into both a responsible man and someone who appreciated everything as gift—even that for which he labored.
After Anne completed Gesu School, Amalia was free to work beyond her home. She was the “media lady” at and for the school. Another kind of service became even more dear to her. Timing can be grace, and Gesu Parish embarked on RENEW, which is as its name suggests, a renewal, both personal and parish-wide. “RENEW happened at the right time,” as Caroline put it, “for our mother to serve with other women.” As someone who has personally experienced RENEW, I can say that service is first giving glory to God and growing in a graced personal relationship with Jesus. It is personal, and because it is not private, it is a relationship in Jesus shared with one’s small group of seekers. Knowing Jesus impels the group to serve others in his name.
she came to the treasury and put in two small coins worth a few cents. She did not put in one and keep one for herself. Her confident faith that God would safeguard her and guide her journey through life freed her. Moreover, Jesus saw how she and the crowd put in their offerings. As it happens so often, we with more have more to distract us from giving freely and faithfully.
visible with the naked eye brightens the longer hours of night in November.
