Sunday word, 30 Jul 17

Seventeenth Sunday of the Year A (30 Jul 2017)

1Kgs 3. 5, 7-12; Ps 119; Rm 8. 28-30; Mt 13. 44-52

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

God’s Signature

I’d like to begin with St. Paul and what he wrote as the opening of the second reading: God works with all things toward the good, namely, ultimately sharing Gods’s life. Paul continued to have in view the big picture: as he put it at the beginning of his letter, the gospel…is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.¹ The big picture helps us appreciate that God does not micromanage anyone’s life; rather, humans are shaped to share the identity of God’s son Jesus. As life was unfair to Jesus, who was killed on trumped up charges yet vindicated by God, we share his future; and we already do albeit partially. Appreciating this allows us to be more receptive to the surprises the gospel of Christ Jesus holds for us. 

Jesus summarized his parables to this point with the three we heard: buried treasure; the most exquisite pearl; and a dragnet. The treasure and the pearl function more as main characters than those who unearth the one and buy the other in the riskiest of ways: the treasure and the pearl both exert vigorous, magnetic energy and influence on the finders as if they were more than mere objects. To use St. Paul’s language: God collaborates through the treasure and the pearl toward the good of the humans who obtain them. Might we know better how God collaborates? 

Selling everything to purchase the pearl was a risk: the one who sold everything forfeited all security. To obtain the buried treasure was more risky. In a world in which people buried things to protect them, buying another’s field would beg an explanation: perhaps my father died and failed to tell me of the treasure he buried for the livelihood of me and our family. Let’s continue to personalize this so that one of you is the finder; your good fortune could spell disaster for me and my family. Or, if you or I tried to purchase the field to own the treasure and our motive for purchasing the field came to light, that could spell disaster for any of us: loss of reputation was an immeasurable disaster in a society in which the way a person appeared to be was the way others thought one really was.

But Jesus noted suspicion of either kind—disaster for the original owner or for the treasure finder—did not enter at all. Instead, joy—not happiness over unexpected good fortune, nor greed that fuels our warped notion of “finders keepers…”—joy overtook the discoverer of the buried treasure. Gospel joy is a divine gift, a share in divine blessedness God both enjoys and bestows: Jesus voiced it as sheer gift, [Created one], enter the joy of your [Creator].²

Joy, a signature of our Creator, indicates Jesus’ parable points beyond us and human luck or disadvantage. The field holding unknown treasure and the most exquisite pearl each emerge as flowing from Jesus as divine gifts Jesus came to announce. They hold power beyond themselves; they are more influential characters than the humans who risk by finding, selling, buying. Things do not possess such power. Jesus is the field holding unknown treasure; Jesus is the most exquisite pearl! Jesus exceeds the risks to ourselves; Jesus imparts his joy to us as well as his power of God he gives us to point to salvation in him.

Jesus risked all for God’s dream for all creation. We are shaped to share his identity, his life with God. God validates the risks we take for Jesus and for his gospel. Gospel risks leave us more complete, more alive; gospel risks we take do the same for others we encounter. We may not realize it, yet we are part of everything that God works with for the good, the goal of all creation.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Rest in the life of the Trinity.
• Ask St. Paul to present you to Jesus.
• Chat with Jesus: praise him for dying and rising for us; thank Jesus for sharing his life and identity as his many brothers and sisters.
• Ask Jesus to increase our courage to stay close to him and to let us be shaped more in his image.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. Speaking his words reassures us that we are intimately related to him and like him rely more on God shaping us more like our brother Messiah Jesus.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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1. Romans 1.16.
2. A paraphrase of Matthew 25.21, 23.

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Wiki-images Hidden Treasure PD-US; Flowers PDP

Daily word, 28 Jul 17

(28 Jul 2017) Sixteenth Friday of the Year

Ex 20. 1-17; Ps 19; Mk 13. 18-23

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J. closing an 8-day Directed Retreat

Staggering Goodness

Join me and try to make ours the voice of our psalm refrain: Lord, you have the words of everlasting life! It was Peter’s response to Jesus when he asked Peter and the Twelve, You do not want to leave me like the others, do you? To make Peter’s words a response to a psalm—blending New Testament and Old—splendidly shows how worship cares little about logic and very much that what is old abides ever new and what is new flows from what went before. In other words, you and I fuss over time—early, late; new, old; while worship enjoys being timeless and welcomes us into it.

For us to punctuate the psalm with Lord, you have the words of everlasting life! acknowledges our triune God; it is worship more than our reasonable judgment. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life! rejoic[es] the heart and enlighten[s] the eye. It helps us treasure the psalm’s words as God’s before ours. We treasure them as more valuable than purest gold, as more sweetly delectable than syrup or honey from the comb. Our human valuing and delights only begin to reveal God’s staggering goodness.

We can empathize with Peter and the Psalmist when we recall we have experienced people dear to us reveal themselves to us. Their self-revelations not only give us themselves; their self-revelations inform us about our hearts, our delights; they even transform for the better the ways we value the world. Such a deep, heartfelt relationship with God’s self-revelation deepens our relationship to God and God’s revelation in scripture, creation and people. We treasure God and God’s ongoing revelations to us and grow more unable to live without God embracing our hearts, enlightening our inmost eye, and guiding our daily living.

Cultivating this relationship is what our triune God wants because God desires to befriend each person. Jesus: I call you friends because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.¹ So the Hebrew bible, esp. the Prophets: they repeatedly expressed God’s desire to know each person as as spouses know one another.² When we enjoy such deep bonds we are alert to anything that may harm them or us. We grow more sensitive to how we may drift from trusting our self-revealing God.

We are quicker to notice what comes between us and God. That acceptance is mature, not childish; we take it as a matter of fact. We take Jesus at his word that the Evil One indeed seeks to harm us and our relationship with our ever life-giving, self-revealing God. Jesus vividly named the enemy’s violence: hooks us and snatches away. (The word’s original language provides us with our harpoon.)

As we go forth resolve with one another to face down any challenge, God forbid! any misfortune, any attempt by the Evil One, any worldly anxiety and the lure of riches to choke what God has given us on retreat. Jesus told us that in the gospel. I echo Jesus because Jesus reminded me to encourage you on your way to live as his better friends.

I can hear someone object, The world into which we go will not receive us as Loyola House has. Yes, things are amiss in our world; they would not have strayed so far or even at all if friendship with our triune God had not been stretched and torn. You and I cannot prevent others from stretching and tearing—even God will not hinder another’s freedom. Each of us can cultivate our friendship with our triune God so it becomes our still sweeter treasure. By cultivating it each of us bears fruit and tastes even now God’s staggering goodness—everlasting life.

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1. John 15.15.
2. The Hebrew word we translate as to know includes acquiring information to interpersonal intimacy, including sexual relations.

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Wiki-image by George Shuklin Honeycomb CC BY-SA 1.0

Daily word, 04 Jul 17

(04 Jul 2017) Gn 19. 15-29; Ps 26; Mt 8. 23-27

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Opening Spiritual Directors Workshop, Guelph, ON

God Merges With Us

We’ll breathe an Ignatian atmosphere these dozen days shaped for you as a contemplative experience. Ignatian contemplation involves the real: my real; your real; it merges one’s real with the most Real, our triune God. That merging Ignatius welcomes rests in his two-word phrase: for me.¹ Most of its 12 appearances in the Spanish Autograph of the Spiritual Exercises invite us to let God merge with us: the Most Real with my real experi-ences—all of them. In the merging we have a deeper felt-knowledge of God’s graciousness: we marvel that God works and labors for me in all things created on the face of the earth;² the earth…has not opened to swallow me up, creating new Hells for me to suffer in…forever!³ The name of God’s merging with us is mercy.

Enter Abraham: a fine intercessor for us—all and each. I almost missed Abraham in the drama swirling about Lot and his family and the fiery destruction of cities and soil. From the place where he had stood in the Lord’s presence…[Abraham] looked down toward [what was left of] Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole region of the Plain. Was he silent? did he sigh a whisper? did he gasp? I do not know: what Abraham felt in his bones was mercy for him: God, your mercy [to me and Lot will ever be] before my eyes and accompany me.

Accepting mercy often challenges. After all, mercy is God merging with us. As the Spiritual Directors Workshop unfolds take advantage of its contemplative moments. Invite Abraham to your side and gaze with him; not on topography but on our lives as God reveals them to us. God may reveal a moment or a season; God desires to merge God’s life with your life. With Abraham at your side take heart that what God reveals to you is for you.

Two take-aways for us: 1) God is more active than are we during our workshop. Let our triune God work for you, for us. Receive God’s mercy: live it, breathe it, wake up in it. 2) Hold yourselves gently before our God. Jesus’ epithet for his disciples welcomed them to do the same. We hear the word epithet and may quickly think slurs: she hurled epithets. Epithet’s first meaning is a byname, a nickname that captures a quality of a person. In the gospel you of little faith is Jesus’ term of endear-ment for those he called. He called them as they were for full life. He calls us for the same. The ministry of giving exercises and helping people live from them over time is how we give ourselves so others may count on mercy, blossom in faith and enjoy lives that radiate each.

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1. Spiritual Exercises (Spanish Autograph, trans. Elder Mullan, S.J.): [60] bis; [63]; [104]; [116]; [147]; [181]; [203]; [232]; [234] bis; [236].
2. [236].
3. [60].

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Image of St. Ignatius, dawn in Guelph, ON, by PDP

Happy Independence Day

Wiki-image of Fireworks in D.C. PD-US