Sunday word, 10 Nov 19

32^nd Sunday of the Year C (10 Nov 2019)

2Mc 7. 1-2, 9-14; Ps 17; 2Th 2. 16-3. 5; Lk 20. 27-38

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.
Alive to God

Like people of every age we read history through our culture and our norms. A result is that we tame the scriptures and much of the ancient, Middle-Eastern culture of Jesus. A cultural historian put it well: “The Middle-Eastern culture of Jesus was a rough-and-tumble world. Modern-day ‘negative campaigning’ and sharp political debates are tame in contrast.”¹ Jesus’ debate with the Sadducees was more “rough-and-tumble” than hearing it may suggest.

All Jews did not believe alike. Sadducees believed only the first five books of scripture, not in the prophetic or other writings. Because resurrection from the dead was not stated in the five books of Moses they didn’t believe it. It developed a century before Jesus.We heard a Maccabean martyr testify to God’s fidelity: You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever. It is for his laws that we are dying. Note the insult on the martyr’s lips.

Insults were common; they asserted one’s standing against others. Better to show a command of language rather than shriek in pain. Even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man’s courage, because he regarded his sufferings as nothing. Insults were also common among the learned. In debates with Pharisees and scribes Jesus called them hypocrites.² Hypocrite meant actor as Jesus and his contemporaries used it. The religious professionals only acted a role; they were not attuned with God’s heart.

Sadducees conflicted with Pharisees on many fronts; one was the resurrection from the dead. When Sadducees bated Jesus over it he insulted grown men by rehearsing the facts of life: procreation is necessary for mortal humans, but life with God means absolutely new, indestructible life. Nor did Sadducees believe in angels, so Jesus aimed at their disbelief: not only are those raised from the dead like angels; they are the children of God, “a favorite Old Testament name for angels…since they share in the resurrection, a life-giving act of God.”³

Jesus also insulted the Sadducees’ priestly ability to interpret. He quoted scripture they believed.  Moses called God the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Our logic is not theirs; their logic was this: one would shame the living God by joining dead ones to God. The living God no part with death. With that logic Jesus  rebutted that Moses, in whom the Sadducees believed, would have shamed God if he joined dead ones to God. Meaningful for us is that in a way unknown to humans yet very real Abraham , Isaac and  Jacob are alive to God.

In our time and culture Jesus is not encouraging us to insult. Jesus encourages us to let our images of God be alive in ways we experience is real yet beyond us at the same time. How might that register in us? The responsorial psalm suggests confidence in God present with me and for me. I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God…and upon waking I shall be content in your presence. This is not magical or immature; it is to live the faith of Jesus, the Source of our faith.

Give Jesus 15 minutes each day this week.

• Rest in the presence our triune God.
• Ask Mary and your patron saint to present you to Jesus.
• Thank  Jesus for dying and rising for us; thank him for the everlasting encouragement he offers us by Holy Spirit to make him present by how we live.
• Ask for grace to live more attuned to the Spirit to help us walk with the endurance of Christ.
• Close saying slowly the prayer Jesus taught us. Christian endurance allows us to make alive his words, on earth as it is in heaven.

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1. John J. Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday, Cycle C (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), pp. 161-163. A shorter form may be viewed at The Sunday Website.
2. The word is especially concentrated in Matthew 6-7; 23. Also Luke 6.42; 12.56; 13.15; Mark 7.6.  
3. Pilch.

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Wiki-images: Sadducees and Pharisees Test Jesus. PD-US; Glass altarpiece PD-US

Daily word, 08 Nov 19

Friday, 31^st Week of the Year (08 Nov 2019)

Rm 15. 14-21; Ps 98; Lk 16. 1-8

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., Full Spiritual Exercises

Urgently Rising

Jesus felt an urgency to complete his mission:  I have a baptism to be baptized with, and I am wholly absorbed by it until it is completed!¹ St. Paul felt his mission was urgent. He expressed it earlier in Romans: our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.² His urgent sense made him “a pioneer preacher pushing on to new”³ regions with one mission: I have always made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named.

Paul truly aimed to make Christ known; yet the initiative was Christ’s. Christ encountered Paul when Paul least expected; indeed, Paul did not expect Christ. Christ’s graciousness Paul would always remember; graciousness from which he would always live:  I no longer live, but Christ lives in me…[Christ] the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.⁴ At once Paul knew also that Christ did not limit his love. Paul proclaimed, Christ is in you…his Spirit dwells in you⁵; and your life is hidden with Christ in God.⁶

The same eternal, triune Mystery, Christ, God, Spirit, has encountered each of us. We did not make the encounter happen nor expect the way Eternal Mystery encountered us. The Eternal urgently desired you come here and let yourself be encountered. The Eternal’s life given us presses us on to a new frontier: to engage the life we have received and will continue to receive. Christ lives in us, with us, for us.⁷ Hold onto that, keep hearing St. Paul’s emphatic urging. The enemy of our human nature tempts us all to discount it, to disbelieve it, to discard it. Banish the enemy quickly, and hear the truth you have encountered and inhabit the truth. Divine truth does not deceive.

St. Ignatius guided us to welcome truth and counter the enemy of our human nature; he helped us inhabit the truth, to let it shape us and to know it with our hearts and minds. In her pioneering way Dorothy Sayers used radio and drama to help people encounter Jesus and hear Jesus afresh. In one of her dramas her character Persona voiced Christ. Hearing her Christ-voice address us may help us reawaken to Christ alive in us and always for us and feel Christian urgency anew.

Come then, and take again your own sweet will

  that once was buried in the spicy grave

With Me, and now is risen with Me, more sweet

  than myrrh and cassia; come, receive again

All your desires, but better than your dreams,

All your lost loves, but lovelier than you knew,

All your fond hopes, but higher than your hearts

  could dare to frame them; all your City of God

  built by your faith, but nobler than you planned.

Instead of your justice, you shall have charity;

Instead of your happiness, you shall have joy; 

Instead of your peace the emulous exchange of   

  love, and I will give you the morning star.

Rise up, My mother Mary and come away, Rise up, My daughter Eve and My sweet son Adam, Rise up, My city, rise up, My church, My bride!

For the time of your singing has come, and My  

   bright angels

Unwinter hosannas in the perpetual spring; 

So enter my Father’s house…

Where the endless Now is one with the moment’s measure,

The truth with the image, the City with the  King.⁸

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1. I am constrained is in various English translations. Jesus’ constraint was not physical but that pressing urge to complete what was begun.
2. Romans 13.11. 
3. A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, Accordance electronic ed. (Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 2001), paragraph 4967.
4. Galatians 2.20.
5. Romans 8.10…11.
6. Col 3.3.
7. Romans 8.31.
8. Dorothy Sayers, her 1946 play, The Just Vengeance, London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd, 1959), p. 350-51.

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Wiki-images by Dietmar Rabich Window in Fira, Santorini, Greece CC BY-SA 4.0

Sunday word, 03 Nov 19

31^st Sunday of the Year C (03 Nov 2019)

Wis 11. 22-12. 2; Ps 145; 2Th  1. 11-2. 2; Lk 19. 1-10

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., Spiritual Exercises

Contradiction

Your retreats close today. Some have retreated from October 2^nd to today. Others end their retreats of 8 days or fewer. Our triune God has met all of us as we needed: that may be clear to you. God’s graciousness may dawn more clearly after you are home: at least that has happened for me now and again. Before you go I want you to consider with me the world you have experienced and can take with you.

Retreat affords us the opportunity to disengage from our usual milieux and their routines and engage our triune God more directly. Our retreats free us to access God more readily—even on our return home. Early rabbis commented on Psalm 145; their encouraging comment  can assist our access: “‘Everyone who repeats the [praise] of David three times a day may be sure [one] is a child of the world to come.’”¹

If we consider the entire psalm’s actions by humans and by the Eternal One we can begin to appreciate that ancient assurance:

It refers to exalting, worshipping, praising, lauding, murmuring, talking, proclaiming, pouring forth, resounding, confessing, and speaking….[Actions we can do anywhere, anytime.] It refers to [the Eternal’s] greatness, mighty acts, majesty, glory, splendor, wondrous acts, might, awesome acts, reign and rule. …goodness, faithfulness, grace, compassion, long-temperedness, commit-ment and trustworthiness. It describes [the Eternal’s] upholding, lifting up, giving, opening the hand, filling, being near, listening, delivering, watching.²

Little wonder James “Mays suggests Psalm 145 is the overture to the final movement of the psalter, a sort of prelude to the final “‘Ode to Joy.’”³

The Book of Wisdom echoed the psalm: God, you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made. We can do likewise. Consider Zacchaeus. Jesus not only confirmed Zacchaeus as a descendant of Abraham—an expression one was not only of God but was compassionate like God. His compassion stirred Zacchaeus to break with isolating himself: he was seeking to see who Jesus was. Zacchaeus did not want an eyeful of Jesus; he wanted truly to know Jesus, to converse with him. Jesus met his desire and beckoned him. Personally interacting with Jesus swelled Zacchaeus’ compassion to give generously to others.

Compassion contradicts isolation. Compassion stirred Jesus’ guts.⁴ Compassion is the guts of Christian community. Christian compassion flows from the eucharist. In it Francis recently reminded, “we enter into communion with Jesus, and from this communion with Jesus we reach a communion with our brothers and sisters.”⁵ Communion embraces compassion.

One way to deepen this communion, to refresh it, to remain in its orbit is savouring. Savouring “repeats the [praise] of David”; it also lets us re-experience its fruit given us. Savour how each of us is like Zacchaeus. His break with isolation began before he climbed a sycamore; yours began before you came on retreat. Zacchaeus climbed down the sycamore with his life forever changed. Your return home can mean the same: keep desiring to know Jesus; chat with him daily; and you will proclaim compassion with your newfound self.

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1. Quoted by Ben Witherington III, Psalms Old and New, Accordance electronic ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 303.
2. Witherington III, 303-304.
3. Witherington III, 303.
4. The Greek verb, to have compassion, is to experience one’s guts (heart, lungs, liver and the like) stirred; one’s inmost self is moved.
5. His 2019-21 August General Audience focused on Christian community.

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Picture of Burning Bush, IJC, Guelph, ON, by Paul Panaretos; Wiki-image Zacchaeus in a sycamore PD-US