To Find Fruit

Why the Twinkle

2012-02-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

To see the arms of the Milky Way, our spiral galaxy, where would a camera have to be? Outside of the galaxy or inside it? This The Atlantic/Tech post has the answer. It also reveals why stars twinkle with extended bars of light.

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Wiki-image of spiral galaxy NGC 7319 is in the public domain.

Lost and Found

2012-02-15T07:56:00.000-05:00

Pope Pius IX gave the first Bishop of Buffalo (New York) an intricate tapestry. It was a gift on the occasion of the dedication of the diocesan cathedral. The tapestry is a calendar, and the days contain relics of the saints of each day. The first six minutes of the video of January 2012 Currents contains images of the tapestry and commentary. A another report contains more views, which show the size of the “calendar relic.”

Hoping. . .

2012-02-14T17:42:00.000-05:00

...people gave and received dark chocolate this Valentine’s Day.

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Wiki-image by John Loo of an dark chocolate is used according to CC BY 2.0.

Keep Open the Communication

2012-02-14T17:33:00.002-05:00

“It’s not like there’s total conflict, and I want to get that out.”

Archbishop Timothy Dolan said that in a conversation in Rome with Mr. John L. Allen Jr. The archbishop responded with those words and others regarding the HHS insurance mandates much in the U.S. press.

In the interview, the archbishop also felt that the recently appointed papal nuncio to the United States is “someone who does not look upon the internal workings of the Holy See with rose-colored glasses, but is well aware of difficulties there.”

Dutch Masters

2012-02-13T07:30:00.000-05:00

Cigars? Not this time. Though many think of them with that title-phrase. Even the Wikipedia entry,

“Dutch Golden Age painting,” redirects tobacco-aficionados to the cigar. The title includes one of the Dutch painters of that 17^th Century period. The painter was highlighted by Jesuit Timothy O’Brien as he recalled sitting in front of one of that artist’s paintings.

What began as a class to appreciate art ran its course and allowed him to see with new eyes. His thoughtful, brief essay in America today focuses on more than eyesight.

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Wiki-image by Jane023 of an alley in Haarlem is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Sunday word, 12 Feb 2012

2012-02-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

Out of Isolation

6^th Sunday of the Year B (12 Feb 2012)

Lv 13. 1-2, 44-46; Ps 32; 1Co 10. 31-11.1; Mk 1. 40-45

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Jesus continued on his healing move, as we heard in the gospel. Our distance from Jesus, both in time and culture, distracts us from his mission. The distance of time causes us to think about things in categories familiar to us. The distance of culture causes us to miss things important in one culture that may not carry the same importance in ours.

The lectionary compels us to consider those distances because it paired Jesus’ healing of a leper with a passage from Leviticus about leprosy. Our distance from the times of Jesus and of the earlier history of his people as well as the ancient Jewish culture causes us to miss what it meant by leprosy. We think disease but biblical leprosy seemed more an imperfection than a disease.

The cause of the disease we think of when hear the word leprosy was discovered in 1868 by Gerhard Hansen. We hear leprosy, and you and I think of Hansen’s Disease, but that’s not biblical leprosy. The description of biblical leprosy as a white blotch which spread, is more like psoriasis.¹Imperfect did not describe God, and, imperfections prevented people from approaching God. Worse, a person with biblical leprosy was required to dwell apart and live outside the camp.

To be shunned was a death sentence to Mediterranean people. By culture they were gregarious and oriented to groups far more than we are. If our need for social interaction were a liquid, which would fill some quart jars, then Mediterranean peoples’ need would overflow them many times over. Even today in Mediterranean lands, people flock to central squares or to harbors in the cool of the evening to walk and socialize. For me it’s amazing and energizing to watch.

Dealing with the imperfection of biblical leprosy by shunning, however, was not energizing. The cultural habit it had become long before Jesus suggests that Jewish people had forgot God’s desire to welcome people with imperfections and differences. The resident alien comes to mind: not only were they not to mistreat² the alien living among them; from the lips of Moses, they were to love the alien, for that is what they had been in the land of Egypt.³

While we may never know what biblical leprosy was, we do know two things. First, people had not learned a life-giving way to deal with biblical leprosy. Second, for Jesus to touch those so shunned was an act of defiance difficult for us to appreciate. Jesus’ refusal to shun was the beginning of healing the leper in the gospel. The disciples of Jesus surely must have been amazed when Jesus stretched out his hand and touched [the leper]. Cleansed people moved into the city, while Jesus remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere. Jesus chose a place fruitful for ministering God’s healing and uniting desire.

Touch was Jesus’ powerful way to challenge his culture’s sentence upon people. It also made clear that as the Holy One of God,⁴ Jesus announced what had been lost because of time and culture: God desires that people stand as one and help each other welcome God, not prevent each other from doing so.

Not to stand together is to isolate. Isolation has negative effects on well-being.⁵ One of the premier images of the church—of its self-understanding—is the body of Christ.⁶ Union with Jesus is union with others. How do we unite with Jesus and his mission? Are we quick to give ourselves to Jesus and to ask Jesus to help us negotiate our limitations and imperfections?

The gospel remembered that people kept coming to Jesus from everywhere. Why? Because Jesus embodied for them the joy of salvation. Do we make those words of the Psalmist ours and entrust ourselves to Jesus? Will we, like St. Paul, imitate Jesus to help others to be saved?

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

Compose yourself in the Trinity’s healing love.
Ask the leper of the gospel to present you to Jesus with all the courage and homage with which that leper approached Jesus.
Tell Jesus in your words what you do to isolate yourself from Jesus and from others.
Beg Jesus to touch your wound with his wounds to make you whole.
Close your prayer by saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus gave us his prayer to remind us that God desires us to seek God’s healing so that we can help others to become whole.

Link to the homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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Leviticus 13.24-27, verses not included by the Lectionary for the First Reading.
Leviticus 19.33.
Deuteronomy 10.19.
Mark 1.24.
A summary of one study.
This is St. Paul’s image in 1Corinthians 12; Colossians 2.19.

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Wiki-images of Jesus healing a leper and of Jesus Pantocrator are in the public domain.

“Accomodation”

2012-02-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

A “‘common sense accommodation’...is aimed at ending the confrontation between the Obama administration and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.” Thus begins Kevin Clarke’s Opinion at CNN.com.

Capitol Cookers: Slow and Fast

2012-02-10T07:30:00.000-05:00

At a time when Congress is stunningly unpopular, with approval ratings in various recent polls around 12 percent, Father Conroy and Dr. Black serve as pastors to what must be one of the most reviled congregations in the country.

Read about both chaplains and the description by one of them of the Senate and House as well-known cooking appliances.

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Wiki-image by Douglas Whitaker of U.S. Capitol chandelier is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Healing Power of the Page

2012-02-08T07:30:00.000-05:00

After a storm evocative of “The Wizard of Oz,” Mr. Lessmore is reunited with books, which fly and walk in this animated short nominated for an Oscar. Mr. Lessmore spends his days considering his story, which intersected with books and people. “Getting into his story” is restorative for him.

The film has inspired an iPad app, which according to John Pavlus, is “like a well-written bedtime story and an immersive animated movie at once—without being ‘too much’ of either.”

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Healing Wounds

2012-02-07T07:30:00.000-05:00

Marie Collins was abused by a hospital chaplain when she was 13. This week she will tell her story to bishops around the world. Not only did the abuse damage her faith in the Catholic Church. It affected her life as a mom.

I couldn’t do the things with my son that I’d like to do. I had agoraphobia, I couldn’t take him out to play. I couldn’t take him on picnics. I really felt he was losing out in his life as a child. He didn’t have a mother who could do all the things that a mother should do.

She told her story to a columnist of the CatholicHerald.

No Fuel, No Bread & Urgent Plea

2012-02-06T11:33:00.000-05:00

The dearth of fuel and of butane gas in Egypt means bakeries are unable to bake bread. The lack of subsidized bread in Cairo and beyond could lead to riots, according to the “head of the bakeries division at the Federation of Egypt Chambers of Commerce.” Reported in this afternoon’s Egypt Independent.

Earlier, in Syria, an activist in the severely besieged city of Homs begged for help. Dead bodies in the video are not visible in this version by the Telegraph.

Getting to the Bottom

2012-02-06T10:38:00.001-05:00

An “affair of state” is how an Italian television host has described a situation in the Vatican. Was a higher-up in the office that oversees the daily operation of the Vatican combatting cronyism or is something else afoot? Mr. John L. Allen Jr. sorted through leaked letters.

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Wiki-image by Andreas Tillea of staircase is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Sunday word, 05 Feb 2012

2012-02-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

Ongoing Restoration
5^th Sunday of the Year B (05 Feb 2012)
Jb 7. 1-4, 6-7; Ps 147; 1Co 9. 16-19, 22-23; Mk 1. 29-39
Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Scripture, spirituality and service paint large, living frescoes in which we can see ourselves, find ourselves as well as deeper meaning for our lives. Today’s readings offer a living fresco. Scripture is God’s story among us in Jesus by Holy Spirit. Spirituality allows us to find ourselves in Jesus’ story. Service is our response to and with Jesus. I will begin with Jesus then return to him to end this homily.

When Jesus began his ministry in Mark’s gospel, Jesus healed. “We’ve heard that before, and we know that!” some will say. Correct you are! However, to attempt to heal—especially for professional physicians of Jesus’ day—was risky business, and not for what we may think. Ancient Mediterranean, professional physicians were reluctant to heal people because if they failed, they could be put to death. (Put to death makes today’s malpractice suits seem tame.) Rather than attempt to heal, ancient physicians preferred to talk about illnesses, after the fashion of philosopher-healers.¹

People turned to folk-healers, who were willing to treat with means at their disposal. Learning that helped me appreciate more why people sought Jesus. The healing people sought exceeded their cures because illness had social consequences, namely, separation from or even shunning by the community.

Jesus, who addressed those in need of healing, did not stop at curing; Jesus restored sick-marginalized people to their places, status and roles in society. That restoration exceeded curing illness and helped make people and society whole.

The effects of being sick-marginalized—I don’t know one word to describe it—were well expressed by Job, and we can identify with him. Illness of every sort leaves us listless so that the most routine task becomes drudgery. Time drags, and we feel it masters us rather than we it: a slave who longs for the shade and a hireling who waits for his wages illustrated what it feels like when time drags. We can quickly paint scenes from our restlessness when, like Job, happiness seems far away.

We long to negotiate our restlessness in all our limitations. Our lives, too, need healing. As witnesses to Jesus today we do not only see and seek his cures. To seek only cures misses Jesus’ mission. We witnesses to Jesus today dispose ourselves to trust the words and ways of Jesus, especially when evidence mocks Jesus and his ways and tempts us to do the same. For the nearness of restlessness and the distance of happiness conspire and tempt us to live without hope.

The temptation is strong when things do not unfold as we’d like. St. Paul reminded us that witnesses to Jesus today don’t always give their testimony willingly. It isn’t always convenient. Yet,

Christian stewardship overcomes inertia and obstacles and moves forward. In our ways as parents, children, students, employees and employers, we know that from experience.

So it is with giving witness to Jesus. Witness, testimony, evangelizing begin with personal relationships with Jesus. Personal relationships with Jesus function like fuel and fire: they move us beyond ourselves, and they provide spark to our words and especially to our deeds.

Peter’s mother-in-law embodied such fuel and fire. She rose from bed, which echoed Jesus’ rising from death in this First Gospel; her waiting on Jesus and his disciples isn’t about subservience. She reclaimed her role in home and society, which is what Jesus healing her accomplished.

What sort of healing do we need? Are we aware that we need healing? Is our trust in Jesus strong and determined? Do we turn to Jesus quickly in our weakness?

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

Compose yourself in the Trinity. Bask in our Triune God.
Ask Peter’s mother-in-law to present you to Jesus to speak with him. Before you speak notice how you feel at that moment.
Then tell Jesus how you want to trust him, and tell him what prevents you: am I lazy? Do I feel lost? Am I tempted?—and the like.
Welcome Jesus into your weakness and ask Jesus to touch your weakness and heal you to put it into perspective; to learn how you can use it in his service; and to know how your weakness draws you closer to him and to others.
Close saying slowing the Lords’ Prayer. Jesus gave it to us so we may recognize more clearly how God’s life and love is more than sufficient each day.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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John J. Pilch, “Social Healing.” http://www.liturgy.slu.edu/5OrdB020809/theword_cultural.html

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Wiki-imagex of Jesus healing Peter's mohter-in-law and of sparks on water are in the public domain.

200 of 220 Respond

2012-02-04T07:41:00.000-05:00

Sex-trafficking in the U.S. is estimated to be a “$16 billion business.” Women of religious communities are on the front lines of the battle to expose and end it.

In the Indianapolis area hotels responded to an initiative of 11 orders of Catholic sisters. “Seven requested training for their employees; another 99 requested materials to help employees recognize and respond to possible human trafficking.” The U.S. Catholic post links to the sources of those stats.

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Wiki-image of U.S. Hwy. 127 is in the public domain.

Holy Confusion

2012-02-03T07:30:00.000-05:00

Certain moments are life-changing; others illuminate life in ways for which one longs without knowing it. Jesuit Paul Lickteig recalled a moment in his life which illuminated and changed him. It was a lyric, which he described as the “profanity of using the sacred to describe the familiar.”

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Wiki-image by MASA of analog record is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

CCH on HHS; and CSW

2012-02-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

America published the statement of the President of the Catholic Health Association on the Health and Human Services ruling.

In the matter of Catholic Schools Week, Jesuit Fr. Ed Reese spoke about the contribution of the Brophy Preparatory School addition, Loyola Academy. It “provides a Catholic, Jesuit education to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade boys who demonstrate academic promise but have had limited educational opportunities.”

Dying Regrets

2012-02-01T07:30:00.000-05:00

The BBC Global News closed Tuesday’s afternoon broadcast with Bronnie Ware’s list of five regrets of dying people. Ms. Ware had been a palliative care nurse and had cared for many dying people.

She posted the list at her site last year. It has grown into a book. The regrets of others allowed Ms. Ware to change her life. She offered her book to help others do the same sooner than later.

Live each day with honest intention, the list encourages. It is wise to cultivate health: “Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.”

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Wiki-image by Fannie Schertzer of Ball’s Pyramid is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Spiritual Freedom

2012-01-31T07:30:00.000-05:00

God desires all to enjoy a relationship with God. Scripture expressed this desire as the will of God and the relationship as being saved (See 1Timothy 2.3-4). God respects each human’s freedom to accept or reject this saving relationship. People work out this relationship over lifetimes in their vocations.

Sean Gallagher highlighted freedom in a reminder that this is what each person is called to do in life:

In the end, people in all vocations are called to holiness. And the way that this ultimately happens—in every vocation—is through becoming detached from our own will and embracing wholeheartedly God’s will for us.

Read his post in The Criterion Online Edition. [The link to a blog post of Fr. Robert Barron, mentioned though not given, is likely this one.]

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Wiki-image of St. Mary Catholic Church, Indianapolis, has been released into the public domain.

Why Do It?

2012-01-30T07:30:00.001-05:00

Jesuit Joe Simmons, found himself busy, so busy that for praying he had no time. At least, he recalled, “I didn’t see how adding prayer to my already busy life could possibly improve it.” His

desire led him to persevere in prayer as well as the rest of living a busy life.

I still ask myself, What does it take to pray well? Or even more simply, that most brutally honest of questions: Given all the pressing business in life, why pray?

He both posed those questions and begins answering them at The Jesuit Post. He offers concrete suggestions.

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Wiki-image by Peter Taylor of clock, fountain and square is used according to CC BY-SA 2.0.

Highest Resolution

2012-01-27T07:30:00.000-05:00

The Atlantic has posted an image of earth in the highest resolution to date.

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Wiki-image by Jupiter75 of a telescope icon is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Par and Prayer

2012-01-26T07:30:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Franciscan Fr. Hilarion Kistner for appreciating his brother’s enjoyment of golf. It led the Franciscan to consider prayer in fresh way.

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Wiki-image by Ludraman of tees is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Christian Unity Week Closes

2012-01-25T17:12:00.000-05:00

Pope Benedict:

While experiencing these days the painful situation of our divisions, we Christians can and must look to the future with hope, because Christ’s victory means to overcome everything that keeps us from sharing the fullness of life with Him and with others.

The pope spoke during Evening Prayer at the close of the Week of Christian Unity.

St. Paul sensed a personal share in that “fullness of life.”

Dominican Father Jerome Murphy O’Connor is one of the world’s most renowned scholars on St. Paul...spoke to Susy Hodges about why St. Paul is such an important figure when it comes to the issue of Christian unity and also examines the apostle's character, his achievements and his legacy.

Link to their conversation.

Communications

2012-01-25T07:30:00.000-05:00

On the eve of the close of Week of Christian Unity, modern popes release the annual World Communications Day Message. January 24 celebrates St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers. The pope again lauds social media.

Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning, as well as making space for silence and occasions for prayer, meditation or sharing of the word of God.

The text of the message and an audio commentary are available.

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Wiki-image of mike is used according to CC0 1.0.

Beyond Ideologies

2012-01-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

Thomas B. Edsall, professor of journalism at Columbia University, asked several conservative sources what they would do for the unemployed and those otherwise harmed by

the economy. He was disappointed:

All the answers evaded the question posed, and in my view, amounted to ideological pap.

I decided it might be better to ask liberals what they liked about conservatism.

The answers were “illuminating,” and he shared many in his op-ed piece in last week’s NYT. This week Mr. Edsall offered “What the Left Gets Right.”

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Wiki-image of searchlight is released into the public domain.

Convergence

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

Three convergences:

1. The Sunday evening Mass at the National Shrine had not yet begun and many seats had been taken. Many citizens—including non-Catholics—oppose abortion. They have gathered in Washington, D.C., for the annual March for Life today.

2. With the recent HHS rule requiring abortifacients, sterilization and contraception in all health plans, the opposition is likely to intensify. Archbishop Timothy Dolan summarized it in a 2-minute video.

3. A woman, who favored abortion when she was younger and now opposes it, connected abortion with slavery in recent remarks revisiting the slipperiness of rejecting natal life. Then, the case of Amelia Rivera emerged lest talk become theoretical.

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Wiki-image by Atoma of rose petals is used according to CC BY 2.5.

Sunday word, 22 Jan 2012

2012-01-22T07:30:00.000-05:00

Claiming God’s Life

3^rd Sunday of the Year B (22 Jan 2012)

Jon 3. 1-5,10; Ps 25; 1Co 7. 29-31; Mk 1. 14-20

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Kingdom is God’s life, God’s measure of reality. As an artist shapes a masterpiece, the Creator gives everything value and purpose. As it is written,

God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being, and the creatures of the world are wholesome.¹

To the most wholesome, us, God gave a unique share in God’s life. How do we claim our share in God’s life? We repent. To repent is to align self with God’s measure of reality. In practice to repent is to exchange our limited human measure for God’s more expansive desire for us to be in the world. With effort prophets embodied that more expansive attitude, Jesus most clearly.

Jonah is a case study of repentance. Details about the Jonah account can distract our attention: fish swallowing a human; the large size of the city of Nineveh; its population. The details are not the point; God’s desire to send Jonah as agent of God’s hope for people to be in relationship with God is the point.

Jonah lived within the covenant God had made with Abraham. Covenant-living fostered relationship with God. The covenant established norms for living according to God’s measure so that people in relationship with God could draw others to God. Jonah, whom God called to do that, did not want to be God’s agent, which is why Jonah was aboard a ship. Wanting to measure his way—to deprive the Ninevites of God’s care—Jonah spurned God’s first invitation to preach to Nineveh:

Jonah made ready to flee to Tarshish away from the Lord. He went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went aboard to journey with them to Tarshish, away from the Lord.²

Natural forces denied Jonah his wish and brought him to the great city. Although effective, Jonah was angry and admitted to himself and God that was why he left home.³ Remarkable reaction, isn’t it, that Jonah, who was part of the covenant, was angry that large numbers of people outside the covenant responded positively to God through him!

Jonah reluctantly brought good news of a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, [and] loathe to punish,⁴ and many responded positively and welcomed his word. It leads me to ponder: Am I more like Jonah or more like the people of Nineveh? Am I a reluctant Catholic, or do I welcome my faith as a gift and the guarantee of my relationship with God, who offers me transforming life?

In a similar way details in the gospel might distract us, especially the immediate response of those Jesus called to follow him in his company. The point isn’t time, it’s relationship: not only does Jesus desire our friendship, Jesus shares his attitude with us: we have the mind of our Messiah, St. Paul encouraged with his gospel.⁵

Gospel meant good news: of a monarch; of a deity; of a prophet. Mark’s narrative of Jesus shaped another meaning for the word: a chronicle or report. That second meaning has become primary for us. Yet the original meaning, good news, is more dynamic and inviting. Consider it.

When someone tells you, “I have news for you”; or when someone is specific, “Good news!”: our first instinct is to listen. If someone says, “I received some bad news,” we may call forth courage to listen even if we’d rather not. Listening to another binds us. It may be temporary as on a plane, in a store, at the salon or at a class. It may be longer lasting as with schoolmates, neighbors, friends and family.

Listening is not only about others. When we listen to others freely and without filters, we learn about ourselves. Those Jesus called had been seeking for meaning in their lives, hoping for the messiah. Their seeking and hoping shaped their positive reaction to God. Their seeking and hoping freed them to respond to Jesus wholeheartedly, with undivided loyalty, which their immediate and total response to Jesus’ invitation showed. Their seeking and hoping paved their way to weigh things with Jesus’ measure, seeing with God’s vision and calling forth the best in everyone.

The point of today’s scriptures is wholehearted response to God’s compassion, even in the face of things which discount it. We find meaning not in things passing away. We find meaning in our relationships, especially relationship with God. We access God’s compassion the more we respond to it with open hearts and minds, allowing it to shape us as its witnesses.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

Pause in the presence of the Trinity.
Ask St. Paul to present you to Jesus.
Speak with Jesus about your determination and energy to respond to Jesus inviting you. Tell Jesus what stands in your way of responding to him.
Ask for grace to overcome what keeps you from responding wholeheartedly to Jesus.
Close your time saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. Its reminder that God’s kingdom dawns on earth as...in heaven encourages us and frees our hearts to respond as we are and to follow Jesus in deed as well as word.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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Wisdom 1.13-14a.
Jonah 1.3.
Jonah 4.1-2.
Ibid.
1Corinthians 2.16.

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Wiki-image of Jonah is in the public domain. Wiki-image of Jesus calling fisherman is used according to the free art license.

Birthday Lowdown

2012-01-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

Friday was the birthday of Mr. John L. Allen Jr., veteran Vatican-watcher. Happy Birthday, John! In his weekly post, All Things Catholic, he said, “It’s my birthday today, so I guess that means I can cry if I want to. Although I’m not exactly

weeping, I do find myself grousing a bit about the way recent Vatican stories have played in most news coverage.”

He turned fuss into focus to lay bare what was news in the “pope’s top foreign policy speech of the year” as well as the striking feature about the recently named cardinals, which is the difference “between outward-looking figures focused on geopolitics and dialogue, and more inward-looking figures concerned with Catholic identity and doctrinal fidelity.” Read more.

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Wiki-image of Attention is dedicated to the public domain.

Sacred Intuitive

2012-01-19T07:30:00.000-05:00

Aphilosopher of science has weighed in concerning science and religion and considers science to be “unnatural.”

In a new book, “Why Religion is Natural and Science Is Not,” [Robert N.] McCauley argues that, if you consider how the human mind actually works, science faces challenges even where it seems ascendant. Religion is too intuitive, too natural a style of thinking, to be gotten rid of.

In contrast, modern scientific thinking is radically unnatural.

See the Boston Globe article to explore more.

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Wiki-image by Julianva of Quantum Reality is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Year of Sustainable Energy

2012-01-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

The United Nations has designated this year the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.”

Dr. Peter Pavlovic, Study Secretary of Church & Society Commission and Secretary of ECEN - the European
Christian Environmental Network, …explained that ECEN is closely linked to the ecumenical Conference of European Churches and is its main working instrument for addressing the need for environmental engagement and responding to climate change.

Links to listen to his interview are at the Vatican Radio site containing the above quote in a brief report.

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Wiki-image by Saperaud of roof-top wind turbine is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Fresh Power

2012-01-17T07:30:00.000-05:00

Words become overly familiar, their affect diminished. Timeless words are at greater risk. Their faithful representation allows hearing and reading them to be freshly powerful.

WorshipHouse Media posted “Free Fall,” a poetic rendition of Genesis 3. Sound and vision work together to give timeless words fresh power. The video “serves to creatively set up the topic of sin and brokenness, or our desperate need for redemption.”

Prayers for Passengers

2012-01-16T16:16:00.000-05:00

Prayers for the still-missing passengers of the Costa Concordia, their rescuers and their families and friends. Reuters offered this update.

Nonviolence

2012-01-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., can be an historical act: today the United States recalls him and his nonviolent efforts to make it more just. Remembering Dr. King can also be a personal action. The King Center describes it as cultivating a “nonviolent frame of mind.” This frame of mind is part of the King philosophy, kept alive by the Center and worth re-exploring.

Established in 1968 by Mrs. Coretta Scott King, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (“The King Center”) has been a global destination, resource center and community institution for over a quarter century. Nearly a million people each year make pilgrimage to the National Historic Site to learn, be inspired and pay their respects to Dr. King’s legacy.

Both a traditional memorial and programmatic nonprofit, the King Center was envisioned by its founder to be “no dead monument, but a living memorial filled with all the vitality that was his, a center of human endeavor, committed to the causes for which he lived and died.” [Source: About King Center]

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Wiki-image of March on Washington was donated to the U.S. Library of Congress and has no known restrictions.

Sunday word, 15 Jan 2012

2012-01-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

Personally Recreated
2^nd Sunday of the Year B (15 Jan 2012)

1Sm 3. 3b-10, 19; Ps 40; 1Co 6. 13c-15a ,17-20; Jn 1. 35-42

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

To live faithfully can be described as growing more familiar with Jesus and his way of being in the world. Familiar means getting to know Jesus by establishing an intimacy with him in personal praying, public worship and willingly serving others.

At times—moments or even periods—anyone may move through life without graced intimacy with Jesus. Sometimes we are not familiar with Jesus by choice, at other times by human stumbling or by simple inattention. Jesus invites us beyond whatever causes us to be unfamiliar with Jesus. The more alert to Jesus moving with us, the more we discover who Jesus creates us to be: his disciples, ministers of his paschal mystery. Today’s scriptures invite us to grow more familiar with Jesus, who addresses us and invites us to join his mission.

The lectionary invites us to remember Samuel as a way to consider growing familiar with God. While a boy, the prophet Samuel was not familiar with the Lord, because the Lord had not revealed anything to him as yet. That was a statement of fact for God desires to communicate to all people of all ages. Yet the world offers static: certain values of the world hinder or prevent us from receiving the self-disclosure God desires us to receive from God.

Samuel and his mentor, Eli, lived during a time when a revelation of the Lord was uncommon and vision infrequent.¹ That was the state of affairs when God invited Samuel. Even Eli was not immediately able to guide Samuel. The focus isn’t human slow-wittedness but God’s graciously, patient desire to welcome us into God’s heart and orbit.

Eli’s guidance remains good advice for us: Speak, Lord, your servant is listening. It is rare to hear a voice like we hear each other. Rather, we feel prompted or moved or drawn. At times describing the feeling we may liken it to a voice. That suggests to us and to others that our interior feeling has a personal quality, a longing for meaning.

The Baptizer’s proclamation of Jesus ceased to prepare his way and announced a person, whom John pointed as the Lamb of God. The Baptizer’s disciples—seekers longing for the Messiah—heard John and followed Jesus. Their movement toward Jesus and away from John dramatized how John later described his mission: [Jesus] must increase; I must decrease.² But the increase was not only Jesus’ gain of disciples. The disciples gained, too: they grew familiar with Jesus. An afternoon and evening spent with Jesus became lifelong companionship, changing their lives!

The effort to identify Jesus by John and his disciples—Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi, Messiah—gave no advantage over Jesus to John and his disciples. Jesus was and is more than each of those titles. In the bible, to give a name exercised power over another. Today’s gospel selection ended with Jesus naming Simon. The disciples entered the orbit of Jesus’ power. That Andrew brought his brother to Jesus is no throwaway line: each of us needs help to recognize Jesus and abide in his power.

Jesus’ power remains disarming. Jesus’ power upends worldly power because it liberates not dominates. Jesus’ power is inviting—Come and see—promising authentic life not passing pleasure. Our liturgy praises Jesus’ power with the word mystery. Scripture and liturgy do not point to a puzzle or a problem; they praise the secret core of our triune God, revealed and shared with us each moment in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection—his paschal mystery.

Jesus’ self-gift in his sacrifice and supper is our privileged way to grow familiar with Jesus and allow Jesus to recreate our authentic selves.³ Graced knowledge and familiarity with Jesus lead to more accurate self-knowledge: by his Spirit Jesus shares his power with us, both for us and through us for others.

How we discern and live our Christian discipleship with one another depends on growing familiar with Jesus by cultivating an intimacy with him in personal praying, public worship and willingly serving others. Abiding in Jesus includes being alert to the ways Jesus invites us to live, serve, even suffer so to rise with him.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

Compose yourself in the presence of the Trinity.
Ask Samuel or Andrew or the Baptist or your patron saint to present you to Jesus.
Thank Jesus for your life and for the vocation-mission Jesus has given you. Or, if you are discerning a vocation, thank Jesus for your life and ask Jesus to enlighten you.
Ask Jesus for the grace to seal your friendship with him by personal praying, public worship and willingly serving others.
Close by saying the Lord’s Prayer: it guides us all to grow more familiar with Jesus and his way and put our faithful friendship with Jesus into action.

Link to this Sunday’s Spiritual Exercise

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1 Samuel 3.1. The designers of the Lectionary chose to silence the first verse of this chapter in the Sunday proclamation about Samuel’s first revelation from God.
John 3.30.
Today’s Prayer Over the Offerings professes this: Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that we may participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.

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Detail of Wiki-image of call of Samuel is in the public domain in the U. S. Wiki-image of the Baptizer pointing is in the public domain.

Blind Spot

2012-01-14T07:30:00.000-05:00

Addressing Vatican diplomats is a New-Year custom of popes. This year Pope Benedict mentioned violence against Christians, observing that violence registers in different ways: being “deprived of fundamental rights and sidelined from public life,” and in other places having to “endure violent attacks against their churches and their homes.”

In his weekly post, All Things Catholic, Mr. John L. Allen Jr. considered five myths about anti-Christian persecution. Data show a “wide variety of circumstances in which Christians are in harm’s way”—sometimes even by other Christians, as happened last fall. Mr. Allen sheds light on an issue not well understood.

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Wiki-image by David Lally of barbed wire is used according to CC BY-SA 2.0.

Brevity Speaks

2012-01-13T07:30:00.000-05:00

The Gospel of Mark is the shortest of the four. When it is read in a semicontinuous manner on Sundays in the Roman Catholic Church—2012 is its turn—it cannot cover all the Sundays. It gets help from the Gospel of John. The Third Sunday of

the [Liturgical] Year (22 January) presents the first encounter with Jesus in John’s gospel: disciples desire to meet him. On five summer Sundays its sixth chapter is read.

The rest of the Sundays outside of Lent and Easter enjoy the Gospel of Mark. Though short it is a gospel of great artistry. Franciscan John R. Barker offers a tour of the gospel to help people be alert to the gospel and to how it invites them.

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Wiki-image of a portrait of Mark is in the public domain.

Perennial Pursuit

2012-01-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

The phrase, “new evangelization,” does not imply something about the gospel that has not yet been proclaimed. It is about using means that address today’s circumstances.

In a Salt & Light post Sebastian Gomes recalled that proclaiming the gospel has always challenged and continues to challenge the “whole Church to find new and effective ways of articulating the gospel message, particularly in those societies once firmly Christian in structure and practice (e.g. Canada, Europe).”

Neighborhood “Womblike Space”

2012-01-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

Movie-watching involves the whole person. In a look at last year’s “best religious movies,” critic John Anderson noted in America Magazine:

Under ideal moviegoing conditions, the viewer surrounded by others still inhabits his or her own womblike space and occupies as receptive a state regarding matters spiritual as he or she is likely to do in the course of an otherwise secular day.

Some movies considered “were endowed with a sense of aspiration that was inspirational.”

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Wiki-image by Fernando de Sousa of Cinema4 is used according to CC BY-SA 2.0.

Encouragement Left

2012-01-10T07:48:00.000-05:00

Speaking to Vatican diplomats Pope Benedict noted two encouraging developments. They had their support from the political left, which Mr. John L. Allen Jr. reported as a "fascinating point."

Sunday word, 08 Jan 2012

2012-01-08T07:30:00.000-05:00

In Motion

Epiphany B (08 Jan 2012)

Is 60. 1-6; Ps 72; Eph 3. 2-3a,5-6; Mt 2. 1-12

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

I served two parishes with the custom of moving statues remembering the Wise Men closer to the manger throughout Christmastime, closer and closer as Epiphany drew near. I jested then that sometimes more care was taken to move the statues closer to Jesus than to move ourselves closer to Jesus in our daily lives. I learned I was not the first to think that.

A Danish philosopher considered it long before. He contrasted the scribes and the Wise Men. The scribes had access to God’s self-communication with Israel, while the Wise Men had the light of a star and its rumor of an infant monarch. Yet, the scribes stayed put; the Wise Men moved. Before the Wise Men traveled, their hearts were in motion. Their spirits were restless for truth deeper and more real than all their wisdom, and they followed their restless urgings.

The scribes, though, “did not accompany the Wise Men to seek” that Truth born in so humble, easy-to-overlook way. That always puzzled me. The philosopher noted that this puzzle diagnoses our spiritual health.

...we may be able to explain every article of our faith, yet remain spiritually motionless. The power that moved heaven and earth leaves us completely unmoved. What a contrast! The three kings had only a rumor to go by. But it spurred them to set out on a long, hard journey. The scribes, meanwhile, were much better informed, much better versed. They had sat and studied the scriptures for years, like so many dons. But it didn’t make any difference. Who had the more truth? Those who followed a rumor, or those who remained sitting, satisfied with all their knowledge?¹

Do we treat our faith as a rumor or whimsy? Do we treat our faith as an abstract thing or a theory? Faith is much more. Faith is relationship: our relationship with Jesus, God in the flesh with us dead and risen, and through him with others: alive now and to come. Jesus’ Spirit guarantees our relationship. If we are fickle, Jesus will always be faithful: desiring us; longing to love us and give us himself.

Faith links us with our God made flesh. Sometimes our link is freeing so we can be apostolic in our actions and example. At other times our faith-link places us in Jesus’ heart when we need protection, compassion and felt knowledge of Jesus loving us. Whether our faith-relationship frees and moves us to be apostolic agents of Jesus’ gospel; or whether our faith-relationship reassures us of Jesus’ love, protection and care; or whatever way our faith-relationship unites us to Jesus as his evangelizers today, most important for our spiritual health and vitality is to keep spiritually agile and to resist being “spiritually motionless.”

Beginning 2012 is a good time to resolve to grow more spiritually agile and more alert to the motions within us, motions not in harmony with Jesus’ gospel and motions in harmony with Jesus’ gospel. Our interior motions produce actions, and our actions become habits.

Being alert to interior movements—to spiritual motions and to the ways they draw and pull us closer to Jesus or away from him—keeps our faith-relationship alive and our inmost selves in motion. We grow more awed each moment at each person and all creation. The rumors of creation—stars and seasons; things singular and commonplace; exotic and familiar—not only become pointers to the light and life of our Savior. You and I become brighter lights, who embody our Savior’s dispositions and desires.

Shining brightly as his disciple-friends is the fruit of lives of prayer always in motion. Praying not only reaches toward God. Pope Benedict reminded us in preaching on this feast that “[p]raying without ceasing means: never losing contact with God, letting ourselves be constantly touched by him in the depths of our hearts and, in this way, being penetrated by his light”² to be light for others.

To have felt-knowledge of being enlightened by Jesus to reflect his light by your lives: give Jesus 15 minutes each day this week.

Pause and bask in the love with which the Trinity creates you.
Ask the Wise Men to present you to Jesus so you may ask Jesus to free you from what holds you back from moving closer to Jesus in word and deed.
Thank Jesus for the ways Jesus chooses you to embody him in the world and for the countless ways Jesus protected you last year.
Resolve to grow more agile in spirit this year. Look forward to your relationship with Jesus to grow in 2012 and
Say the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus gave us his prayer as our compass to find him in and with others.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations.
His 2012 Epiphany homily.

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Wiki-image by Reinhardhauke of adoration of Magi is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0. Wiki-image of Lagoon nebula is in the public domain.

Keeping Whole

2012-01-07T07:30:00.000-05:00

Keeping body and soul together is an expression meaning, to survive. A enduring question is, “How do body and soul relate?” The hope is that they a friends. So the English poet,

Richard Crashaw, described them in a poem describing the end of life. Sport—“physical play”—as author, B.G. Kelly, maintains can make and keep them friends.

Physical play and exercise can help us stay connected to God and the world. This can lead to a physical and spiritual ripening rather than a rotting.

Read his “Exercise, Sports and Spirituality.”

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Wiki-image of athletic pictogram is in the public domain.

Resolve To Use Practices At Hand

2012-01-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

The first Friday of the year meshes with one of Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s list of three suggestions to shape one’s life throughout 2012.

He addressed Catholics because he is one of their pastors. Yet anyone can benefit by identifying three practices which enrich an interior life and making them habits day to day. Interpersonal effects will follow.
UPDATE: Archbishop Dolan was named a cardinal today.

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Wiki-image of date-page is used according to the LGPL.

Twarmth

2012-01-04T07:27:00.000-05:00

After a mild fall and winter in many places cold and sleet and snow are due. What to do to stay warm? Folks in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, tweeted tips and their Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus made them known according to familiar strains.

Prelature

2012-01-03T07:30:00.000-05:00

An informative piece explaining the Ordinariate of St. Peter and its U.S.-hub in Houston, Texas.

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Wiki-image by Thorvaldsson of O.L. of Walsingham statue is used according to CC BY 3.0.

2012-01-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

Sifting through events of a year and selecting the most important or influential gets more complicated. Some event-

coverage doesn’t have “much echo.” Mr. John L. Allen Jr. listed his top 10 under-covered Vatican stories in an end-of-the-year All Things Catholic post. They form “the kind of stuff that armchair vaticanisti everywhere need to know.”

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Wiki-image of aerial view of the Vatican is in the public domain.

2012-01-02T07:11:00.000-05:00

News of the world is wonderful and needed. At times, though, the news becomes the exclusive way people see others. German filmmakers, Salome and Lukas Augustin, offer an “unhurried and remarkable” view of the lives of Afghan people with scenes not covered by news media.

Afghanistan – touch down in flight from Augustin Pictures on Vimeo.

Catching Up In Time

2012-01-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

Samoa made a giant leap toward the celebration of the New Year when it changed its time zone. The world has caught up, and colorful pictures of celebrating the beginning of 2012 were released by the The Atlantic.

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Wiki-image by BernardM of Samoa’s former place on the international dateline is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Sunday word, 01 Jan 2012

2012-01-01T07:30:00.000-05:00

Octave of Christmas, Mary Mother of God (01 Jan 2012)

Nu 6:22-27; Ps 67; Gal 4. 4-7; Lk 2. 16-21

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

What No Angel Can Do

The festival of the Incarnation—from Christmas Day through the Baptism of the Lord—is never enough time: never enough time to soak in the astonishing wonder of the divine become human, heaven on earth, God assuming our human nature. Mary’s motherhood of God began our redemption in Messiah Jesus born of her.

It happened when the fullness of time had come, as St. Paul put it. Indeed, when heaven joined earth time became more than full, it flooded with God. Earth inexorably—a person at a time—joined heaven: Mary’s affirmative response to Gabriel’s message from God; the action-response of the shepherds to the angelic Gloria; and the acceptance of Jesus as prophet and messiah of God by individuals down to us here and now. Those action-responses to the divine desire to restore and reunite humans with God means that time is full of the divine life of the Trinity, who decided in their eternity that the Second Person should also become a human being in order to save the human race.¹

In one sense time passes: 2011 seeps into 2012. In another sense time is full, and our reckoning it into hours, days, months and years is artificial. We were baptized to live in the more real sense of time as flooded with God. Mary mothered God into human history. Thus, we live between Jesus’ first arrival as human and his glorious return as risen Lord. Today we humans, not angels, are his ambassadors. Our vocation to announce God joining us in our broken, incomplete and at times erratic living begins to satisfy humanity’s deepest hungers for peaceful restoration, wholeness and steady living. As Jesus’ ambassadors we extend the message of the angels and do it in ways no angel can: we proclaim our Messiah Jesus with our flesh and blood; we proclaim him by how we choose, speak and act.

Because flesh and blood clothes our spirits, the angel-spirits pray for us and cheer us on to do our part to make this fullness of time more humane as God in Jesus by their Spirit make it divine. How might we do that? Not so long ago, my mother’s pastor offered seven-ups in his homily to begin a new year. They were:

Wake up;
Dress up (with a smile);
Shut up (from gossip and unhelpful remarks);
Look up (for there is much beyond ourselves);
Stand up (to engage the world);
Reach up (as a babe reaches for mother; and to that which God invites me to become); &
Lift up (ourselves and all things to be transformed by God’s creative and redeeming love).

Those ways make good Christian ambassadors. They help us appreciate better God’s invitation of light, glory, life and mission. We’ve all moved in those directions in our lives. We have also moved away from them.

We slip from attention to inattention; from bright faces to dull, smile-less expressions; from holding our tongues—or at least guarding our words—to cutting others and our world unnecessarily; from gazing beyond to moping within; from a posture of relationship with others to groveling, being enslaved by our limitations and sinfulness; from trying to inhabit the mysteries beyond our reach to fearing that everything and everyone might harm me; and from placing ourselves into God’s heart and hands to acting as if each of us were the center of the universe.

Those seven-ups

Wake up;
Dress up (with a smile);
Shut up (from gossip and unhelpful remarks);
Look up (for there is much beyond ourselves);
Stand up (to engage the world);
Reach up (as a babe reaches for mother; and to that which God invites me to become); &
Lift up (ourselves and all things to be transformed by God’s creative and redeeming love).

help us grow more humane. By becoming more humane we welcome our Messiah Jesus to shape us by his Spirit as his ambassadors for each other and our world. To be Jesus’ spirited ambassadors challenges us to look forward to 2012 and to choose: what will I do to renew my relationship with Jesus and to bring it more alive one day at a time?

A year ends, another begins. Will you, will I begin my life anew in and through Jesus’ Spirit?

Desire to live anew.
Each day give Jesus 15 minutes of your attention.
Ask Mary to present you to her son.
Allow yourself silence, stillness of spirit and wonder to do that. Silence, stillness of spirit and wonder begin to make us his ambassadors. They allow us to give ourselves more to Jesus, to his gospel, to others, to work, to family and other relationships, to relaxation.

Silence, stillness of spirit and wonder welcome God’s creative and redeeming love. God’s creative and redeeming love help us stand tall, look beyond ourselves and speak and act with Christian wisdom and love. As we act with Christian wisdom and love, we and others grow less to mark time and more to live each moment as flooded with God’s life given through Jesus by their Spirit. That is our way to glory in the beginnings of [God’s] grace, so one day we may rejoice in its completion in us and our world.²

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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As St. Ignatius of Loyola expressed it in his Spiritual Exercises, 102.
Prayer Over the Offerings, Mass of the Solemnity of Mary, Holy Mother of God, Roman Missal.

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Wiki-images by Фёдор_Гусляров of a retouched mosaic of the Nativity and by Johnbod of a stained glass window of the annunciation to shepherds are used according to CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

Dodecadal Facts

2012-01-01T00:30:00.000-05:00

Twelve years into the millennium earns a quiz about that number.

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Wiki-image of Happy New Year is used according to the FAL 1.3.

Looking Forward

2011-12-31T07:30:00.000-05:00

The headlines of the past year suggest few accomplishments toward peace and for the progress of humans. Yet accom-plishments toward human progress were made. The Catholic Near East Welfare Association names a few it made in 2011 with the help of its friends. People chose to make those and other accomplishments happen. See the day-after-Christmas-CSM post, “The (surprisingly upbeat) state of the world,” for a larger perspective.

Personal responsibility to act in ways consonant with peace one day at a time is a fine resolution for anyone. For Christians it is the Christmas vocation. The anthem, “Before the Marvel of This Night,” reminds that people the bear the message today that heavenly messengers first proclaimed.

Real Rather Than Quaint

2011-12-29T07:30:00.000-05:00

Twelve days have been given to celebrate and enter the mystery of the Incarnation. One carol was for shepherds rather than about shepherds. Entering the Incarnation means imagining it “for me.” Kevin Clarke helps people do that.

How Much?

2011-12-28T07:30:00.000-05:00

ne concludes that distance from constituents and greed are related.

This NYT report on a failure by most members of Congress to answer an informal survey is not cheerful. It is in sync with standing observations and concerns about the disconnect between Congress and people.

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Wiki-image by Vincent.Mar of bar graph meeting is used according to CC BY-SA 2.0.

Perhaps the Best Gift

2011-12-27T07:53:00.001-05:00

Cultivating wonder: suggestion for New-Year resolve.

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Wiki-map by Iain Thompson of snow-covered road is used according to CC BY-SA 2.0.

More Extensive Anti-Christian Violence

2011-12-26T13:42:00.000-05:00

Roundly condemned, senseless bombings on Christmas in Nigeria this year were more extensive than last year.

Boko haram claimed responsibility for the bombings of churches in five locations.

Today’s CSM report by Correspondent Tom A. Peter acquaints readers with an Islamist extreme group, described as the “Nigerian Taliban.” His report includes a video.

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Wiki-map by DragonFire1024 of Nigeria is used according to CC BY-SA 3.0.

Pandora, Christmas and Arab Christians

2011-12-25T08:22:00.000-05:00

A sober and sobering view from that part of the world to which Christmas draws Christian imaginations. Conditions, however, continue to cause anxiety, fear and Christian emigration.

One lesson of this CSM post: to stop cultivating peace seems to guarantee its loss.

New Light

2011-12-25T08:09:00.003-05:00

Merry Christmas!

Incarnation

2011-12-24T09:23:00.000-05:00

The Word enfleshed.

Davidic Key

2011-12-20T16:40:00.000-05:00

A reflection on today’s evening antiphon.

2011-12-20T07:30:00.000-05:00

In the United Kingdom non-Christians are supporting Christmas. As Alexander Goldberg noted:

The ‘War on Christmas’ myth needs to be debunked. I share similar concerns to my closest Christian neighbours that the festival risks becoming on one hand a secular consumerist feast or on the other a time when the majority of the population wrongly believes it has to play down celebrations so as not to offend others.

Read his remarks about the HappyChristmas4All campaign.

Lineage

2011-12-19T14:30:00.000-05:00

The lineage of important people was common in ancient Near East societies. This evening’s antiphon recalls Jesse as the primogenitor of the Second David, Jesus.

One of the earliest images of this line in stained glass is in Chartres Cathedral.

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Wiki-image of the Jesse Tree window is in the public domain.

Outstretched Arm

2011-12-18T14:30:00.000-05:00

This evening’s antiphon recalls God’s mighty power to save. The 18 December antiphon begins with the title of Lord. Its Hebrew word, adonai, replaced the divine name, which was

not pronounced. Paragraph 3 at the site Hebrew for Christians explains. It also lists the several uses of adonai.

Two years ago, Paul Zalonski, posted a summary of all the O Antiphons with a graphic: read vertically and left then right to see their order for the week.

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Wiki-image of O Adonai chant is in the public domain.

Sunday word, 18 Dec 2011

2011-12-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

Advent Sunday 4 (18 Dec 2011)

2Sm 7:1-5; 8b-12; 14a, 16; Ps 89 Luke1; Rm 16. 25-27; Lk 1. 26-38

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Reconciled By the Incarnation

Today’s liturgy and its scripture selections shape our immediate preparation to celebrate our Savior’s birth. The opening prayer reminded us that our celebration of God’s birth among us also asks God that “[Jesus’] Passion and Cross…[may bring us] to the glory of his Resurrection”¹ and our participation in it. One way this divine-human participation functions is reconciliation. A brief word on the Incarnation as reconciling us to God.

St. Ignatius of Loyola imagined the Incarnation as flowing from the heart of the Trinity from their eternity. He invited us to consider the Divine Persons gazing upon the surface of the earth

seeing humans being born and dying, loving and hating, happy and sad, flourishing and struggling, “so many people aimless, despairing, hateful and killing; so many undernourish-ed, sick and dying, so many struggling with life and blind to any meaning. With God I can hear people laughing and crying, some shouting and screaming, some praying, others cursing.”² That is an accurate assessment of things today.

Staying close to reality allows us to be real about God. God is not an idea. God is our Creator and Redeemer. God’s intimate desire to remain involved with creation and fulfill it Ignatius expressed this way: the Divine Persons “decide in their eternity that the Second Person should also become a human being to save the human race.”³

The Incarnation is about us! God in Jesus by their Spirit desired to restore our original dignity to us. That restoration shapes our vocation in life. Each of us begins with oneself. Whom do I love? What is alive in me? What do I nourish? What gives me meaning? As one considers these gracious gifts, their opposites surface in our minds and hearts: Who irritates me, or worse? What is not life-giving for me? What do I neglect or refuse to cultivate within me? How do I squander my gifts and my purpose in life?

When we are honest about ourselves this way, then we open ourselves to the mystery of God working in us, with us and for us. We notice more clearly how each of us is an image of our Creator and Redeemer, and we tend to see others that way. We also—and this is often a steeper challenge—we notice our need to be saved. We increasingly dispose ourselves to know in a felt way that Jesus is our Savior.

The more honest we are about ourselves, the more compassionate we become. Things that seemed too much for us we see in truer perspective. Our worries and fears do not evaporate, although our confidence to contend with them increases. We grow more alert that by Holy Spirit our Savior is with us wherever we may be. As we cultivate this awareness through daily moments of quiet, prayer and celebrating the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, our personal confidence flows into our daily living. We desire others to enjoy it.

The Incarnation is the most exquisite relationship. Over 1500 years ago Pope St. Leo wrote that “divine nature and the nature of a servant were…united in one person.”⁴ The service of the Incarnation is twofold: first, to restore us, reconcile us to our true and original dignity as images of God; and second, to deepen our relationship with God and restore our relationship with each other.

The Incarnation has many practical effects. One is the desire for others to enjoy it, to make it known to all. Evangelizing—passing on our Incarnation faith by our choices and behaviors and styles of living—deepens our relationship with God and makes us ambassadors of reconciliation⁵ day to day.

In your 15 minutes with Jesus this week

Pause in the love of the Trinity.
Ask Mary to present you to her Son.
In your words thank Jesus, our Divine Savior, for becoming human for you.
Ask him to increase your confidence in his presence with you and deepen your felt knowledge of his presence.
Close by saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus gave us his prayer so that we may grow more confident that his union with us and us with him through his Incarnation will bring us to the glory of his Resurrection.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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Roman Missal, Fourth Sunday of Advent.
This paraphrase of St. Ignatius belongs to James L. Fleming, S.J., Draw Me Into Your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises: A Literal Translation & A Contemporary Reading. St. Louis: IJS, 1996, p. 91.
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans. & comm. George E. Ganss, S.J., St. Louis: IJS, 1992, p. 56 [at #102].
Letter 31, which is excerpted in the Liturgy of the Hours on 17 December.
The language is St. Paul’s. See 2Corinthians 5.16-21.

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Wiki-image by 3268zauber of an Advent wreath is used according to the CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Wiki-image of an Annunciation window is in the public domain.

O Antiphons Commence Today

2011-12-17T07:35:00.000-05:00

In the Roman Catholic liturgy the days17-23 December have their own formulae. During each Evening Prayer one of seven antiphons is sung before and after the Marian canticle, The Magnificat. They are drawn from images from Old Testament writings. We know them in a familiar Advent song.

[Source: YouTube]
The first words of the antiphons are titles given to Jesus as Messiah. Because they begin with the letter O in the Latin, they are called the O Antiphons. Today’s is Wisdom, O Sapientia.

For all of them, a brief history and their Latin acronym, see the Dominican Friars blogpost of yesterday, on which the above video was embedded.

Thermal Theme

2011-12-17T07:30:00.000-05:00

For those who live far from active volcanoes, their activity goes unnoticed. Much of humanity learns to cope with them and their eruptive forces. In a collection of vivid photographs taken in 2011, The Atlantic allows viewers to appreciate better one way the earth continues to function.

It concludes with links for those who wish to learn more.

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Wiki-image by Wolfgangbeyer of Stromboli eruption is used according to the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

David, Goliath and Robots

2011-12-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Patrick Lin, Ph.D. is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Yesterday The Atlantic published a readable post of some length. Mr. Lin’s “briefing about the ethics of drones…[is] a thorough and unnerving survey of what it might mean for the intelligence service to deploy different kinds of robots.”

The “usual reason” robots are deployed, Mr. Lin summarized, is to do jobs, which are dull, dirty and dangerous. Those three Ds are disquieting. To them Mr. Lin added an unnerving one: “a new, fourth ‘D’ that’s worth considering, [is] the ability to act with dispassion.” Some examples:

If doctors won’t violate their oath to do no harm and refuse to torture others or inject them with dangerous materials, would robots be used for that?
If robots can fire with near-total accuracy, then states using them would “violate a rule by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which bans weapons that cause more than 25% field mortality and 5% hospital mortality.”
How do we clean up after [microbots and disposable robots]? If we don’t, and they’re tiny—for instance, nanosensors—then they could then be ingested or inhaled by animals or people.

How did humans get to this? That question was not entertained in this briefing.

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Wiki-diagram by Leonidl of a Skeet drone is used according to the CC BY 2.0 license.

Defusing Pressure

2011-12-15T12:42:00.000-05:00

Need help in getting ready to celebrate Christmas? Fearful of too much pressure? Consider laughter. Read Jesuit Fr. James Martin’s post, “When Thanksgiving Is Filled with Turkeys.”

Climate for Life

2011-12-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

Global warming is accelerating at an unexpected rate. It is a “life issue,” as the title of Elizabeth Groppe’s essay in today’s America Magazine indicates. The situation is not simple because the

global climate is a very complex reality in which a small
change in average temperature has ripple effects on ocean currents, precipitation patterns and other climate systems. An apparently small temperature increase is already destabilizing the energy balance of the climate and spawning changes adverse to human beings and other species.

Ms. Groppe summarizes effects on agriculture, sea level, oceans, weather and extinctions. She explains that climate change is a life issue because “failure to protect the earth [endangers] generations unborn.”

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Wiki-diagram of an array of systems effected by global warming is in the public domain.

Sunday word, 11 Dec 2011

2011-12-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

More in Unison

Advent Sunday 3 (11 Dec 2011)

Is 61:1-2a, 10-11; Resp Luke1; 1Th 5. 16-24; Jn 1. 6-8, 19-28
Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

In my childhood the beginning of Advent seemed to mark a long time. Before I knew it Advent’s midpoint arrived. While Advent’s month of Sundays no longer seems as long, it unfolds no less quickly. We have again reached its Third Sunday. Its liturgy focuses on the coming Solemnity of our Lord’s Nativity.

The Nativity of our Lord is the beginning of redemption: Jesus embodied God, who would release humans from the bondage of sin.¹ That alone moved people to rejoice. Yet the mystery of God

releasing people from sin by becoming human with us and for us fills each human life with something greater than our glad rejoicing: God’s delight over us. That has been so from the beginning of the Christian experience. In the language of our tradition we name that new life, salvation, which is nothing less than living divine life. The first Christians did not think of salvation as reserved for a distant future; they experienced salvation; they were being saved² by risen Jesus, as St. Paul often said, in their daily living. Being saved registered as a power to live with freedom in every circumstance.

Living Christian freedom, the liberty for which Messiah Jesus freed us,³ is what the Prayer Over the Offerings points when it calls, May the sacrifice of our worship, Lord, we pray, be offered to you unceasingly. It does not mean that we are in church 24 hours a day. It means we live the communion we offer and receive gathered as one; each of us living what we offer and receive here in our many places of living, working, learning and playing. When each of us complete[s] by how we live what was begun in [this] sacred mystery, we incarnate and advance God’s saving work in Jesus by their Spirit.

The church has extolled God’s incarnation, the union in Jesus of human and divine,⁴ as a marriage of humanity with God.⁵ As they enter into married life, human spouses “think in unison,” as Pope Benedict has observed.⁶ The way human spouses honor and celebrate marriage is by living their unison more readily. In the marriage of the Incarnation we Christians are to think in unison with our Savior. We begin that when we confess Jesus with our lips⁷ as our God and brother and act on our words. We act so as not to pay lip-service to what God does for us in Jesus by their Spirit. Jesus reminded us that our deeds confirm or negate our words.⁸ Today we say it is not enough to talk Christian things; witnesses to Jesus walk the Christian way. The Christian way is not a refined human way of living. The Christian way, living Christian freedom in every circumstance, flows from Jesus’ Spirit: it is of God.

John the Baptizer was one sent from God. The good news of our salvation in Messiah Jesus is alive today because of Jesus’ Spirit at work in prophets and disciples, past and present. You and I make straight the way of the Lord when we do not get in the way of the Spirit but let our lives manifest the power of Jesus’ Spirit, given us in word and sacrament.

“How do we do that?” one may ask. Another may say, “I don’t recognize the Spirit at work in me.” The Spirit is not present in the same way you and I are present to each other. However, traces of the Spirit—we might say, the fingerprints of the Spirit—are in good deeds; in expressions of gratitude for life, for people, for our faith; in the fruits of personal prayer; and in communal worship,

especially around the tables of God’s word and God’s son. When we are faithful to those practices and to others of our Catholic heritage, we begin to recognize the Spirit at work in us and in the world, and others recognize the Spirit, too.

The result: we are reshaped by the mystery of the Incarnation. We move closer to God who united with us. It is breathtaking to pause and ponder it. “By His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every person. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart.”⁹ Allowing our Messiah Jesus to work in us is being saved. To think in unison with our Savior is to live God’s delight over us.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

Pause in the Trinity’s saving love for you.
Ask John the Baptizer to present you to Jesus.
Praise Jesus for embodying God’s goodness and mercy for you.
Ask Jesus for the grace to live more in unison with his words and example.
Close, saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus’ prayer schools us to pray and live in greater harmony with others and our Savior, who is with us and who is to come.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

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See Matthew 1.21, which specified the name of Jesus, which means the Lord saves.
1Corinthians 1.18 is one example from Paul. Peter too, was emphatic, 1Peter 3.21. In Revelation 12.10 the seer, John, heard no less an authority than the voice in heaven announce, “Now have salvation and power come.”
Galatians 2.4 and Galatians 5.1.
John 1.14; Philippians 2.6-8; Colossians 2.9; 1Timothy 3.16; Hebrews 2.14-17.
Psalm-Prayer at Evening Prayer, Monday, Week2. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI summarized this tradition in his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, 13.
His 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, 54.
Hebrews 13.15.
Luke 6.46-49 recalled a vivid parable.
Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution: Church in the Modern World, 22.

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Wiki-images of light from a star-forming region and an artist's depiction of Holy Spirit in the Annunciation are in the public domain.