Daily word, 29 Jun17

Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul (29 Jun 2017)

Ac 12. 1-11; Ps 34; 2Tm 4. 6-8, 17-18; Mt 16. 13-19

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J. closing 8-day retreat, Guelph, ON

Forward

Jesus echoed the stairway-image Jacob had dreamt: a stairway rested on the ground with its top reaching to the heavens; and God’s angels were going up and down it.¹ On waking Jacob identified the place where he had slept as visited by God.

Jesus used the stairway-image to name himself to a skeptical disciple: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”² 

Jesus and his contemporaries breathed and dreamed the scriptures. With scripture Jesus named himself. To that skeptical disciple Jesus deftly identified himself as the Holy Place where people encounter God and the one descended from God who would again enter God’s presence. Jesus is no stairway-to-nowhere; Jesus leads all who welcome him into God’s presence. To enter God’s presence is personal but never private: as we enter we invite others.

We learn that from Jesus: joining our humanity he invites us to join him, to go on mission with him. Jesus supplies what we need to go: from courage and strength to keener vision. Even our imperfections can serve Jesus’ mission—he called us with them! Ending retreat and returning home to our daily living are opportunity to join Jesus’ mission afresh. Exemplary missionaries intercede for us: Sts. Peter and Paul.

Jesus called Peter to be one of his Twelve Apostles. Peter learned Jesus and his mission by walking with Jesus. His learning matured when Peter encountered risen Jesus. Risen Jesus met Paul while Paul sought to exterminate the mission of Jesus one Christian at at time. On Jesus’ part their meeting was gracious; for Paul it was life-changing. Forgive him he knows not what he does: the words were not spoken but their truth was communicated when risen Jesus’ first visited Paul.³ Reconciliation became Paul’s mission.⁴

In what ways has risen Jesus visited you? renewed you? invited you to rejoin his mission? In what ways were we aware we were in God’s presence? How has risen Jesus graced us to be our true selves? Even if someone is only now aware of risen Jesus that is grace. Nothing is lost on retreat, especially time I thought was empty or that God was silent, Jesus absent or Holy Spirit dispirited.

As you savour the graces of your retreats you may notice they point you forward. What summary grace has God in Jesus by Holy Spirit offered me? To name a summary grace by no means trashes individual graces. A summary grace helps me live from the organic unity my annual retreat is for me. Early in his apostolic ministry Peter described his abiding grace as being set free: Now I know for certain the Lord sent his angel and rescued me. Paul recognized that during his apostolic life the Lord stood by me and gave me strength. What may each of us name?

God desires we own what God has graciously given each of us. A summary grace not only names the organic unity of one’s retreat; it paves one’s way forward on mission with Jesus into God’s presence with others.

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1. Genesis 28.12.
2. John 1.51.
3. Paul never forgot it yet from it grace freed him. 1Corinthians 15.8-10.
4. 2Corinthians 5.18-19.

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Wiki-images Ss. Peter and Paul icon PD-US; Flowers PDP

Sunday word, 25 Jun 17

Twelfth Sunday of the Year A (25 Jun 2017)

Jer 20. 10-13; Ps 69; Rm 5. 12-15; Mt 10. 26-33

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Connection

Everything is connected. Interactions abound though often unseen. Nature’s four fundamental forces give their names to their interactions: gravitation; strong interaction; weak interaction; electromagnetism.¹

Connection is not only a modern, scientific quest. Connection and interconnection among people poets have long intuited. John Donne—also a 16 & 17^th-Century Member of Parliament and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral—intuited human interconnection. Using the image of a book he wrote, humanity

is of one author, and is one volume; when [anyone] dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.²

He was convinced people don’t thrive in isolation: No one is an island. In 2008 his conviction was expressed with unpoetic precision: “a thousand fibers connect us to those who are present and those present throughout the generations.”³ Connection is the flip side of isolation. Can we note connecting fibres?

Physicists have laboratories to seek and find nature’s connections; a poet’s laboratory is the page awaiting her writing. On the page she distills feelings, insights and observations into words and arranges them with tender precision. We people of faith have a laboratory, too: we’re engaged in it—our laboratory is liturgy.⁴ Liturgy allows individuals to connect with one another and meet God on God’s terms; the word of God treasures God’s terms. At liturgy our initial reactions to its proclamation may range from confusion, distaste, distrust, resistance in various combinations. When we finally surrender to God on God’s terms we let God meet us, divine life connect with our human lives: we let ourselves be converted.

Conversion is risky because its more about God than us. We don’t find God; God finds us. The women who went to anoint the body Jesus represent us: they found the tomb empty.⁵ Two grieving friends that same day represent us: Jesus met them on their way.⁶ The risk is more keenly felt because it is not about what I have or lose or what I do or earn; it is God’s graciousness offered me. St. Paul exemplified that well: as he again set out to destroy Christians, risen Jesus met him on his way and set him apart for Jesus’ mission.⁷

Today’s reading from St. Paul concisely expresses our doctrine of original sin. We tend to focus on one side of this doctrine, the transgression. God, though, focuses on the gift.

Original Sin names the consequence of the first human choice to disrupt the harmony of God’s creation. That choice distorted everything about human existence. We inherit the distortion because everything is connected, “a thousand fibers connect us to those who are present and those present throughout the generations.” Original Sin describes our human condition: we are in desperate need of being returned to right relation with God, with others, with ourselves.

The name of the doctrine contains only half of the doctrine and focuses us on the transgression. The flip side of the doctrine’s name is the gift.⁸ The gift is a person, Jesus: he restores us to right relationship with God, with others and with ourselves. Jesus is both the gift and the one who restores us to our original holiness, to our true selves as images of God.

Do we risk being met by risen Jesus? Or do we resist being met by Jesus? Have we allowed Jesus to meet us then resist his terms: love others as you love yourself? take my yoke upon you—that is, allow me to accompany you; join you to my mission?

Physicists’ discoveries are preceded by numerous failed experiments. Poets’ gems are preceded by numerous shredded drafts and “writer’s block.” Risking conversion is a life-long process with its ups and downs, consolations and desolations. It connects us to Jesus. If we take the risk Jesus translates our lives into his better language, the powerful effects of his grace. Grace is more real than the distorting effects of original sin. The grace, Jesus’ living, dying and rising, has already begun to translate us from distortion, disharmony and isolation into clarity, concord and connection. Connecting with Jesus connects us with others in life-giving ways.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Cast your burdens onto the Trinity.
• Ask St. Paul to present you to Jesus.
• Praise Jesus for dying and rising for you. Thank Jesus for the living gift Jesus offers you and creates within you.
• Ask Jesus to allow you to continue to grow more connected to him; more connected with others as his disciple.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. It restores our relationships with Jesus, with others and with ourselves the more we pray it.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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1. A wikipedia article covers the history of this physical theory.
2. Meditation XVII from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html His more famous words from this meditation are “No man is an island.”
3. Cited in “Quite Moments,” Catholic Digest, June 2008, p. 126. It provided no bibliographical information about its author, Violet George; an internet search was not fruitful.
4. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (112) affirms this.
5. Matthew 28.5-6 || Mark 16.6 || Luke 24.3.
6. Luke 24.13-16.
7. Acts 9.3-6.
8. Catechism of the Catholic Church expressed it this way: “The doctrine of original sin is, so to speak, the reverse side’ of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all...that all need salvation, and that salvation is offered to all through Jesus Christ.” #389. St. Paul emphasized the graciousness of salvation by calling it charis, a Greek word translated by the Latin, gratis, grace. Both mean free and unearned.

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Wiki-images Jesus prepares his disciples for persecution CC BY-SA 3.0; Flowering tree PDP

Sunday word, 18 Jun 17

Solemnity of the Body & Blood of Christ A (22 Jun 2014)

Dt 8. 2-3,14b-16a; Ps 147; 1Co 10. 16-17; Sequence Lauda Sion; Jn 6. 51-58

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Participation for Mission

Today’s celebration is named the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus. Yet we celebrate more than flesh and blood. We celebrate his person not parts of him; when we are with another we sense that more is present than physical parts. Each of us is a mystery that way.

The mystery of Jesus is richer: he continues to give himself for us; in word and sacrament he is more present to us by his spirit; he invites us to share his life in action; he is the sacrament uniting us and holding us together as his body.

Risen Jesus’ continual giving and nourishing; being present to us in an abiding way; inviting us to share his life in action; his uniting each of us to himself and all of us as his body. Giving, being present, inviting us to join his reconciling project, uniting and holding us together mean we celebrate an event as well. The event is sharing life.

Sharing life with others has always challenged. St. Paul was aware of that. Inviting people into the body of risen Jesus was more than personal salvation. His favoured image, one body exceeds personal salvation. One body equals risen Jesus and all his friends in every age.

Many Corinthian Christians—as do many Christians since—were more comfortable with personal salvation than with being one body, risen Jesus’ on mission. Yes, St. Paul’s time and culture and ours differ dramatically. Yet the way people choose to associate with others today is remarkably similar. Corinth was a large city. It was home to a mix of people largely because it was a port-city. It also was a gateway to the interior of its country. Sounds like cities and town of old in many provinces, doesn’t it? In both Corinth and our cities and towns—then and now—people freely associated with others; often similar interests united them.

Then and now: clubs, ancient and modern; guilds of workers practicing different crafts and using the same materials; people with similar tastes in art, music; athletes and soldiers; even the poor and sick. Then and now people with similar interests and people with different roles in society crisscrossed each other’s lives. Similar interests and needs caused people of different classes to rub shoulders.

Similar interests help us feel safe if we fear the unknown; if we distrust anything new; or if we only desire to be comfortable. We know that never to explore ensures a dull life; never to trust ensures no reward of deep satisfaction and growth; and to choose only comfort is a springboard to emotional and spiritual flabbiness. To associate only out of similar interests guarantees listless lives.

Good news exists despite all that. The good news St. Paul brought to Corinth then, the good news St. Paul offers us now is this: The person-event who is risen Jesus giving, being present, inviting us to join him reconciling, nourishing us, uniting and holding us together frees us to trust, to desire to grow more and to enjoy apostolic energy.

Precisely to these Pope Francis has urged the world church. They are not new to the church of his Argentina:

I have often said to the priests and laity of Buenos Aires: I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. …If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life.¹

Jesus gives us himself for mission. We go out as his friends to extend to others the friendship we enjoy: “the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, [mediated anew by] a community of faith.”

By the eucharist we participate in risen Jesus; we grow intimately one with him and one another. As we partake in Jesus we participate in the lives of all people—not only as Jesus did but as risen Jesus does in sending us on his mission each day.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Ask our triune God to see yourself, others and the world as God sees.
• Ask St. Paul to present you to Jesus.
• Chat with Jesus: praise him for dying and rising for you; share with Jesus your hunger for him, your desire to live from his mind and heart.
• Ask Jesus for grace to participate in his person and his saving work with deep joy.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. The sacrament of Jesus’ body and blood transforms our request for our daily bread into power to become the one we receive: Jesus our Creator, our Redeemer, our Friend.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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1. His The Joy of the Gospel, 49. His first apostolic exhortation is a mission statement of his ministry as Bishop of Rome.

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Wiki-image Jirka at Czech Wikipedia of Corpus Christi procession CC BY-SA 3.0; by HVL Corpus Christi carpet CC BY-SA 3.0

Trinity Sunday word 11Jun 17

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity A (11 June 2017)

Ex 34. 4b-6, 8-9; Dn 3; 2Co 13. 11-13; Jn 3. 16-18

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Living Yearning

During enjoyable moments who asks what do they mean? The joy we experienced satisfies us. We feel no need to look beyond our joy: it absorbs us within it. This absorbing is proper human. Usually we consider only a certain few get so absorbed to be united in qualities such as joy or with another person, with God. We name them mystics.

Most significant for them—and everyone’s mystic moments—is this: they sense no distinction between them and, say, their joy; between them and another. Words cannot express their experience; yet mystics try to express it for us. Julian of Norwich was one.

Julian enjoyed revelations—Showings, she named them—of the Trinity and our participation among the triune God.

It is a lofty understanding inwardly to see and to know that God, who is our maker, dwells in our soul, and it is a still loftier and greater understanding inwardly to see and to know that our soul, which is created, dwells in God’s substance. From this substance we are what we are, by God.

She experienced mutual indwelling:

I saw no difference between God and our [human self], but saw it as if it were all God. And yet my understanding accepted the fact that…God is God and our [human self] is a creature in God. For the Almighty Truth of the Trinity is our Father, for he made us and preserves us in himself; the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our mother, in whom we are enclosed; the lofty goodness of the Trinity is our Lord, and in him we are enclosed and he in us.

We are enclosed in the Father, we are enclosed in the Son, and we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit. The Father is enclosed in us—All-power, All-wisdom, and All-goodness: one God, one Lord.¹ 

This indwelling participation in our triune God is not easy to take. The unlimited “is enclosed in us!” We easily fear losing ourselves, our personal power. Let mystics enjoy this and keep it to themselves: it’s too much for the rest of us! Yet we Christians are who we are because we profess unlimited divinity was enclosed in a woman’s womb and was born for us. In Jesus God united human life with divine life. Matching our profession to our deeds and choices is how we Christians witness to one another and our world.

All this is living mystery. Julian’s efforts to express her showings means none of this is abstract meaning. Our Christian mystery registers as power—we participate in All-power; it registers as wisdom—we participate in All-wisdom; it register as human kindness—we participate in All-goodness. St. Paul enumerated other fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.² These Spirit-fruits are gifts: ours because we participate in the passion, dying and rising of Jesus each moment.³

Does a down-to-earth outcome of this participation in the triune Creator exist? Pope Francis is adamant that this is it: “Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity.”⁴ Because “everything is interconnected…genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others.”⁵

Perhaps this a grace for us sophisticated, technological folk to yearn: that we may be overcome with joy that we are included within God—a joy that does not overwhelm us but moves us to let our thoughts, choices and actions be done in and with God. The world will be transformed more as we live what we yearn.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Rest in our triune God.
• Ask Mary and the communion of saints to present you to Jesus.
• Chat with him: praise him for dying, rising and giving us his Spirit; ask Jesus to help you experience we live in him as his witnesses to our world.
• Ask Jesus for grace to be overcome with his joy because we are included within God.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus gave us his  prayer to help our relationship with our Creator grow and to welcome others into it.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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1. Revelations of Divine Love in Sixteen Shewings, 54. The revealer to Julian was “Jesus Christ, our endless bliss” (1).
2. Galatians 5.22-23.
3. Galatians 2.19; Romans 6.6, 8-11.
4. Laudato Si, 240.
5. Laudato Si, 70.

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Wiki-image by Ervinsomogyi Gothic rings CC BY-SA 3.0; Angels at Mamre PD-US

Pentecost word, 04Jun17

Pentecost (04 Jun 2017)

Ac 2. 1-11; Ps 104; 1Co 12. 3b-7,12-13; Jn 20. 19-23

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Filling Gift

A popular story has circulated to illustrate important things, less important and least important things in one’s life. Its moral urges: focus on most important things contributes to a meaningful life. The story’s essentials are a professor, students, a jar, rocks, pebbles and sand. Here’s my adaptation.

A professor enters a classroom and sets a large jar on a table before them. Silently the professor places two-inch rocks in the jar until no more can fit. “Is the jar full, class?” The students agree it is full.

The professor proceeds to add pebbles and shakes the jar so the pebbles fill the spaces between the rocks. “Is the jar full, class?” Some students agree it is full. The professor proceeds to add sand; it fills the spaces between the pebbles.

“Consider, class, that this jar is your life. The rocks are what is more important in it—all you’ll value at the end of your life: family; friends; health; fulfilling your hopes and dreams. The pebbles other things that offer you meaning: learning; your job; house; hobbies; colleagues and acquaintances. The sand represents everything else, the ‘small stuff.’ If you focus all your energy on material things and other small stuff, you will not make room for what is most important, meaningful and life-giving.¹

Today’s mystery urges us to reverse the story’s obvious logic of what we perceive as large equals most important. By whatever approach we use to enter Pentecost this remains: Holy Spirit is God’s gift; it fills our inmost being and animates our lives. Take the more familiar approach we heard from the Acts of the Apostles. After 50 days Risen Jesus’ presence and power registered as a noise like a strong driving wind, tongues as of fire, and once-timid disciples boldly announcing Jesus in speech that all understood and deeds strongly felt.

Another expression of the gift of the Spirit is more mysterious and personal: On the evening [Jesus rose from the dead]…that first day of the week…Jesus breathed on them and said to them,“Receive the Holy Spirit.” Its accompanying power is power to forgive. Not only is it sacramental power; it includes the power every Christian prays for in the Lord’s Prayer: to forgive as we are forgiven.

This Spirit-power is not earned, is nothing I reach. Rather, the Spirit who is God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us…while we were still weak.²

Filled by and with the Spirit is often subtle and always intrinsic, innate to us. Our baptism makes Jesus’ Spirit inseparable from us and gives us power to discern. The Letter to the Hebrews imagined the mysterious Spirit-power—finer than the sand in the professor’s valuable story and not taking up space—with its vivid image: Holy Spirit uttered by every word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting through so as to divide soul from spirit, joints from marrow. It is even able to discern the thoughts and deliberations of the heart.³

What might Pentecost offer us today? It invites us to surrender more to risen Jesus’ personal gift. The disciples did not labor to figure out what happened to them when Jesus’ Spirit filled them. They recognized Jesus had baptized them with his presence and power as he had promised⁴; and they let themselves by intoxicated by it with astonishing effect. Not toxic, Holy Spirit is life. Even more valuable: Jesus’ Spirit is the antidote to the pressures the world exerts; to the violence humans afflict on one another and creation; and to all that subverts life’s meaning and vitality. So none of us miss the obvious: receiving and living risen Jesus’ personal gift of his Spirit empowers us to share it so through us risen Jesus may continue to renew the face of our earth.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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1. One adaptation includes water. Others are animated.
2. Romans 5.5-6a.
3. Hebrews 4.12.
4. Acts 1.5.

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Wiki-image The Descent of the Holy Spirit PD-US Christian Logo CorNexus com CC0 1.0