Daily word, 28 Aug 18

Memorial of St. Augustine (28 Aug 2018)

2Th 2. 1-3a, 14-17; Ps 96; Mt 23. 23-26

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

Bookend Virtues

Early in the retreat Bill encouraged that no one outdoes God’s generosity. I hope each of us has has been drawing on God’s generosity to us. St. Augustine reminds me in the final hours of retreat that it helps to summon another virtue: patience. We want to stay on retreat and not miss what God desires we enjoy. It is all too easy to visit what awaits us at home. Visiting what awaits me on re-turn from retreat does not affect what awaits me; only on my return can I do anything. Patience helps me recognize things as they are; and frees me to let God continue to shape me for life after retreat.

Augustine received the gift of patience in part by inheriting it. At he first did not know patience was part of his DNA, so to say. Remembering his mother yesterday reminds us of her patience. She longed for her son to become a Christian. Augustine recalled her desire that she expressed to him near the end of her life: “One thing only there was for which I desired to linger in this life: to see you a Catholic Christian before I died.”¹ 

Persevering patience in his DNA helps us appreciate that Augustine could say with no tinge of regret: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you.”² No regret; his words communicate refreshing fulfilment.

God was not totally off Augustine’s radar. He longed for beauty and goodness; finding it frustrated him. Not so different from us. Augustine again: “I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and humans, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever.”³ “Embracing Jesus Christ” echoes a modern conversion-phrase: “accepting Jesus as one’s saviour.” Or, Pope Francis’ favoured verb regarding Jesus and others: encounter. Frustrated—even refusing—to embrace, accept or encounter Jesus does not frustrate Jesus’ patience with us. The more we savour Jesus’ patience with us, the more we live by Jesus’ care and less by our compulsions.

Jesus patiently called you to retreat and you accepted. Jesus patiently is with you on retreat and you are responding. Jesus called you to share and possess his life now—to use St. Paul’s phrase—and you are responding. None of us has been deceived; we have been encouraged. Continue to savour what you have received. To savour patiently enjoys more deeply what our triune God waits patiently to offer us on retreat.

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1. Confessions, Book IX.10.26.
2. Confessions, Book X.27.38.
3. Confessions, Book VII.18.24.

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Wiki-image Conversion of Augustine PD-US

Daily word, 24 Aug 18

Feast of St. Bartholomew (24 Aug 2018)

Rv 21. 9b-14; Ps 145; Jn 1. 45-51

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

Introducing

I can easily miss God’s fidelity to me. Jesus embodied God’s fidelity for us. The Book of Revelation is about God’s fidelity—even contrary to appearances. Risen Jesus began the Book of Revelation: on Patmos John received visions for both the eye and ear. John heard risen Jesus speak to him about churches he had known before being exiled; risen Jesus encouraged John to write letters to the churches. All that happened to John was for the people in those churches, to console them.

We celebrate the Feast of St. Bartholomew with a fulfillment-passage from the Book of Revelation. It showed me God’s fidelity again. God’s messenger spoke to John, saying, “Come…I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” The angel took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem.” That happens for us on retreat. We desire a share in God’s life for us: we retreat for God to offer it anew or again; God begins meeting our desires. It may take more time to unfold than we’d like. Yet God is faithful; nothing is lost on retreat.

Continue to meet God. Pray for the grace of meeting. Know that God will find you because God creates us and knows us with a glance. Jesus knew Nathaniel Bartholomew on seeing him under the fig tree. Being known by Jesus opened a new way of knowing for Nathaniel; we may call it God-recognition. It was clear and deep: someone from a place scripture had never extolled Nathaniel recognized as Rabbi…Son of God…King of Israel. Retreat-recognition is simultaneously God-recognition and graced self-recognition. It is also power, power to help us introduce others to the God we meet.

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Wiki-image Nathaniel under the fig tree PD-US

Daily word, 18 Aug 18

Nineteenth Saturday of the Year (18 Aug 2018) 

Ez 18. 1-10, 13b, 30-32; Ps 51; Mt 19. 13-15

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

Savouring

In  dramas on stage, in film, in novels: a message as it unfolds speaks more powerfully than the set, costumes, time. As they unfold scriptures communicate God’s essential message. Circumstances historical, cultural and social are helpful; so great is their distance from us they cannot help us as we would like; surely not as much as the unfolding of God’s message in specific writings.

Our gospel selection began to unfold on Tuesday. Jesus welcoming children to his disciples’ chagrin follows two recent moments: Jesus more than encouraged disciples to be childlike—unless you change—conduct yourselves with childlike openness and wonder—you will never enter the realm of God;¹ then immediately after Jesus spoke of forgive-ness and marriage—Thursday and Friday’s gospel selections—people brought…children…to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray.

Bernie noted on Tuesday that chapters 18 & 19 in the First Gospel the voice of Jesus addressed Matthew’s church community and each one since. The leading image—childlike openness—shapes how we are to be, to keep disposing ourselves. As we grow up we grow out of childlike openness; we may even feel outgrowing it is our destiny. Jesus says our destiny rests in recovering our openness and wonder so we may receive creation as gift.

To cultivate childlike openness requires help. I do offer my willingness and my desire, but alone I cannot cultivate it; I need to be blessed. Blessing shares in the life of our triune God. Parents in the gospel seemed to act on their instinct to help their children: they brought Jesus their children for him to bless. Worship deepened their instinct.

Every Yom Kippur parents bless their children² by “placing both their hands on [each] child’s head.” Many parents did this every Sabbath.³ The oral tradition preserved recalled that people asked blessings of righteous ones—often elders: a righteous person would “pray for [children] to merit Torah and good deeds. …and to teach that they were pleasant and their deeds hand-some and white to heaven.”⁴ Parents recognized Jesus lived the covenant of God with God’s people and practiced good deeds; sure reasons to ask him to pray their children would be like him.

We might savour today how we found ourselves in Messiah Jesus’ presence these days. That may be sufficient. Some may be moved to consider how to cultivate at home what being in risen Jesus’ presence on retreat has opened or unfolded for us. Nothing may be said at all; one may bring oneself to Jesus and simply be with the embodiment of God, be with the one who is ever ready to bless us and bless our lives and “to teach that [we are] pleasant” to Jesus and feel more alive with his Spirit.

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1. Matthew 18.3.
2. Erev Yom Kippur blessing. The Day was instituted at Leviticus 16.29-30. 
3. Shloma Majeski, Chapter Seven: The Blessings and Prayers Of a Rebbe. The Sabbath Prayer from “Fiddler on the Roof” is a window on parents praying for their daughters.
4. Tractate Soferim 18.5. A period during the 1^st and into 2^nd Centuries.

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Wiki-image Let the children come to me PD-US

Sunday word, 12 Aug 18

Nineteenth Sunday of the Year B (12 Aug 2018)

1Kgs 19. 4-8; Ps 34; Eph 4. 30-5. 2; Jn 6. 41-51

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J. on 8-day directed retreat

Experiencing God

We can recall turning points in our lives. Some turning points offer hope for the future—graduation, a new job, reconnecting with a friend; others cut deeply—personal failure, pink-slips, illness, death of dear ones and acquaintances. Turning points affect us strongly; at times we want to flee them. Our turning points help us appreciate Prophet Elijah. He had miraculously manifested God’s power, but it earned him royal wrath. Afraid he fled for his life.¹ During his turning point God’s bread nourished Elijah. God strengthened Elijah to continue his ministry and life.

With nourishing and strengthening the bible describes God’s care for those who trust God. Jesus fulfilled God’s desire to nourish us in an unmatched way: the living bread come down from heaven. Our living bread is available to us in Jesus’ eucharist.

Jesus’ eucharist is his self-gift to us as he said: my body…my blood for you.² As food and drink nourish our bodies Jesus’ self-gift to us in his eucharist nourishes our baptisms. Baptism united us with risen Jesus and sealed us with his Spirit for our salvation—our life in him. His eucharist helps us put on Jesus each day. Jesus’ eucharist revives our Christian love³; his eucharist helps us think, choose and act in harmony with him. Sharing Jesus’ eucharist helps us grow in his friendship.⁴ 

As our friendships with others shape how we choose, think and act, sharing Jesus’ eucharist affects our daily living. Regularly sharing Jesus’ eucharist fashions us as Jesus’ presence for others. Regularly sharing Jesus’ eucharist helps grow more free from bitterness, fury, anger, shouting…reviling and malice: things that wound individuals and communities. Sharing Jesus’ eucharist clothes us with his compassion.

Regularly sharing Jesus’ eucharist offers new ways to see ourselves and others. Our vision is not limited by the familiar or the customary. Some of Jesus’ listeners that day were limited by the familiar: Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus’ words could find no home in them.

Faith fashions a home for Jesus’ words and Jesus’ encouragement. Faith frees us to see the world as God’s gift; to see others as companions sharing life’s journey; and to see Jesus as our nourishment, our brother, our Messiah, our Creator and Redeemer.

Regularly sharing Jesus’ eucharist is a turning point for us. His eucharist draws us closer to him; it also frees and empowers us to live as his presence wherever we may be.

The oft-sung words of our responsorial psalm teach us to find out by experience: taste and see [God’s] goodness. Like the psalm retreat is our song of experience: experiencing God guiding, nourishing and strengthening us; our experience of God turning toward us and our turning toward God.

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1. 1 Kings 19.3. Verse before today’s reading; the reading may be used at a votive mass of the Holy Eucharist (Lectionary for Ritual Masses, [976. 6]).
2. Luke 22.19-20.
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] 1394.
4. CCC 1395.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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Wiki-images Multiplication of Loaves and Fish PD-US; by Reinhardhauke Stained-glass window CC BY-SA 3.0 

Brief Video Introduces Ignatian Spiritual Exercises

A concise resume of Ignatian Spirituality with links is here. Those in North America may explore U.S. retreat centres; and Loyola House Retreats and Ignatian Training in Guelph, Ontario.

Daily word, 03 Aug 18

Seventeenth Friday of the Year (03 Aug 2018) Jer 26. 1-9; Ps 69; Mk 13. 54-58

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

Learning God Anew

I continue learning the Psalms, especially how New Testament writers used them: they helped make sense of their experience of Jesus as human and as risen messiah. Psalm 69 helped greatly. New Testament writers extensively cited Psalm 69 and alluded to it.¹ The responsorial is part of Psalm 69. It shows us a pattern in Jesus’ life; one Jesus transformed for us. First, the Psalmist’s experience of that pattern.

The Psalmist enumerated several dangerous circumstances and prayed God, Answer and rescue me from them. The greatest danger may go unnoticed by us because our cultures differ from ancient Mediterranean culture. Both insult and outcast are among the greatest dangers anyone in that culture could face. Both are faces of shame. The bible’s culture was hypersensitive to honour and shame: it was more important to be seen as honourable in the cultural world of the bible. If I was not honourable, but I lived in a way so you did not see my dishonour I could survive—and maybe more than survive. If you knew my dishonourable self—even one action: that I could not survive.

I’ve learned that well about Jesus’ culture to tell you, but I cannot feel what it was like or is like. Many of us share that inability to get inside the skin of those who walked with Jesus. The result? We diagnose the Psalmist as suffering some emotional imbalance, or worse, warped self-esteem; we miss the heart of God the Psalmist knew and appealed to: In your great kindness answer me with your constant help, O God. An abundant kindness and unmatched fidelity to help.

The insult heaped on the Psalmist flowed from the Psalmist’s love for God’s house in Jerusalem, the temple. Insults were directed at God by some who belittled the temple and its liturgy; but the Psalmist defended the temple and was slandered too. How could the Psalmist be so constant a defender of God and the temple? The Psalmist told us: zeal for your house consumes me. The cost was terrible: he was disowned! That is the meaning behind what we translate as stranger…outcast. To be disowned in any culture lacerates one’s deepest self; in biblical culture it was a death-sentence.

The pattern of righteous suffering fit Jesus and his passion; it also bore a distinct, lasting difference. In life Jesus’ zeal did not beget vengeance: he was compassionate even from his cross. Although others unjustly stole his life God more than returned it to him in his resurrection and ongoing risen life. Christian zeal for God is one with com-passion for others. It is possible for us by staying in relationship with risen Jesus. Relationship with risen Jesus is faith. Retreats rekindle our faith.

If we want our zeal to be more Christian take Thomas Merton’s advice: “Go into [retreat]…not to escape other[s] but in order to find them in God.”² Along the way we find ourselves with God: God favouring us with God’s great kindness and constant help.

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1. Only Psalm 22 exceeds it in the number of citations and allusions. Both psalm originally were laments in sorely troubled circum-stances. Ben Witherington III, Psalms Old and New, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), p. 151.
2. New Seeds for Contemplation (NY: New Directions, 1962), p. 53.

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Wiki-image by chiron3636 Turbulence CC BY 2.0