Tuesday word, 22 Dec 2009

Parish Reconciliation Liturgy (22 Dec 2009) Is 49. 15-16; Ps ; Mk 5. 23-34

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Three Strands

Abraham Lincoln was once asked how he was going to treat the rebellious southerners when they had finally been defeated and had returned to the Union of the United States. Prepared to hear the President express the beginning of his plan for vengeance, Lincoln answered his questioner, “I will treat them as if they had never been away.”¹

Lincoln’s reply is an insight into God’s heart.² We easily forget that God desires to treat us as if we had never parted ways with God’s heart and covenant. God’s forgiveness surpasses ours because God’s forgiveness literally recreates us as images of God in and for the world.

My mentor in Ignatian spirituality reflected long and deeply on “the experience of being forgiven.” Because he reflected on himself, I heard what I had experienced: “The experience of forgiveness reveals and integrates all our energies for living and loving in all situations as sons and daughters of a loving” God, whom Jesus called his Father. My mentor admitted:

There is often great anxiety at the prospect of facing one’s self. However the ultimate sadness is to live life in darkness—without the enlightenment of knowing the mystery of ourselves mirrored in God’s great hopes & dreams for each one of us. Any humiliation and worry and fear is worth that ultimate discovery!³

Key is “God’s great hopes and dreams for each one of us.” Jesus is God’s unmatched hope and dream.

By becoming enfleshed for us Jesus, the forgiveness of God, is our window to discover our true selves when much conspires to prevent us from enjoying true sight. Just as it disconcerts us to become aware over again within the memories of mind and heart of who we are; just as it disconcerts us to notice we are not like everyone else, so it is with God. To realize we are not God may be expressed experientially this way: we realize we need to be helped.⁴

God chose to help us personally, in the person of Jesus, our awaited Messiah. Our self-help culture doesn’t help us recognize God helping us personally in our Messiah Jesus. Self-help persistently tells us we can help ourselves, that we can save ourselves. We can be scrupulous about self-care, but we never succeed. We can proofread our own words, but another will catch the one or two misspellings or typographical errors. When we come before God, God reveals to us our need to be helped. God does so lovingly, proofreading the text of our lives to make us more eloquently readable and instructive by what we do, both to ourselves and to others. In faith language, God reveals to us our sinfulness. “There is no other way to come to it.”⁵

One thing we come to is this: grace, sinfulness, forgiveness are three strands of a single cord. The way Jesus, Son of God born of Mary, was with people continues now. Jesus affirms our goodness, gracing us to see us as he beholds us. Jesus helps us honestly take stock of ourselves and to desire to be recreated. Jesus helps us notice the ways Jesus refashions us: easing sadness; diminishing anxiety; leaving behind humiliation, worry and fear; restoring confidence in Jesus as our guiding light; and shining his light for us into the lives of others.

The mutual relationship of grace, sinfulness and forgiveness may be a new way to consider the mystery of sin and the mercy of God, who never treats us as if we have been away. The mutual relationship of grace, sinfulness and forgiveness allows us to behold more clearly the mystery of our human condition: we are images of God in our bodies. The Incarnation joins us to God in Jesus by their Spirit to make better known and accessible God’s great hopes and dreams for us and for our world.

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1. From a retreat conference. If the words are not an exact quotation, they reflect fact. Even at the failed Hampton Roads conference to end the War Between the States, Lincoln wanted to restore the Union not to take vengeance.
2. Lincoln’s political pragmatism did not squelch his spiritual connection to God. “...I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” Francis B. Carpenter, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House (Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p. 282. Also, Ward Hill Lamon Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 91.
3. George A. Aschenbrenner, S.J. “Forgiveness,” Forgiveness, Jesuit Center For Spiritual Growth, n.d.; first appeared in Sisters Today (December 1973), p. 1.
4. Ibid., pp. 2-3.
5. Ibid., p. 2.

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Sunday word, 20 Dec 2009

Advent Sunday4 (20 Dec 2009)

Mi 5. 1-4a; Ps 80; Hb 10. 5-10; Lk 1. 39-45

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Hidden Blessing

Can anyone identify with this? “Many things distract me from entering Advent and preparing for Christmas.” I can. To admit distraction from entering Advent and preparing for Christmas suggests self-awareness. Advent invites us to grow more aware of self and God in Jesus by their Spirit at work in us. We may ask ourselves: Do we expect to live by our merits or what we expect through them or by what God in Jesus by their Spirit offers us? One way that registers can be described as the distraction Madison Avenue exerts on our souls’ desire, which the Trinity seeks to meet in Advent. The Madison Avenue focus blurs Advent’s focus and invitation.

We are not the first to contend with this struggle of focus. The passage from Prophet Micah we heard described attributes of God’s Anointed so people might identify the messiah and ally with him. Yet Jesus did not seem to fulfill the prophecy: he was gentle not firm. He was not strong as people expected nor did divine majesty openly radiate from him; and as far as greatness, Jesus’ origins were obscure—even scandalous.

Those who recognized Jesus as Messiah had very different dispositions from those who could not: those who recognized Jesus as Messiah were vulnerable; they acknowledged their limitations and weakness; they weren’t numbered among great ones If they sat with us here, we probably would long to get away.

Many Micah addressed struggled long and hard against all those things they were—weak, limited, without clout, anonymous—and gained docile spirits. Advent invites us to the disposition of docile spirits. Our culture, indeed human nature, isn’t fond of docility of spirit. A docile spirit is not resigned nor wimpy nor whiny. Far from it! Docile means willing to learn. People with docile spirits are focused and attentive to God at work in them. In prophetic language: Behold, I come to do your will. The church early applied those words to Jesus: When Christ came into the world, he said: …behold, I come to do your will. Advent reminds us how Christ came into the world: he was born of the obscure woman, neither wealthy nor powerful, who surrendered herself to an inviting, gracious God.

Imagine Mary’s distractions! How could it be that she would embody God into the world? How would it affect her future and Joseph, her betrothed? Her family, friends, all of Nazareth? Mary surrendered her expectations and her disposition to God who invited her. Her surrender changed history.

You and I overheard yet again two effects of that change in one of history’s most intimate and personal exchanges. Elizabeth’s prophetic in-sight was not hers. With no knowledge of what we know of Mary, Elizabeth proclaimed her kinswoman blessed among feminine humanity and identified Mary almost casually: the mother of my Lord. Giving God our human nature gave Mary her mission. From the confines of home Mary set out in haste; from perplexed girl to a focused servant of an aged woman, whose womb was fully alive; from dreamy fiancée to a joyful young woman of promised blessing.

Elizabeth praised Mary because Mary aligned herself with God’s desire more than for the content of Mary’s belief. Practiced faith exceeds its content. If people held only the content of Micah’s prophecy—that the Messiah would be firm, mighty, radiating divinity—you and I wouldn’t try to surrender to God’s desire for each of us. To consider our expectations in the light of Elizabeth, Mary and Jesus is to begin to free our dispositions, to respond to Advent’s invitation for our futures and to surrender to prophetic language we often use all too casually.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week, surrender yourself to the Trinity’s love for you. Ask Mary to present you to her son. Converse with Jesus: express to him your awe that in him God shared our human nature; ask Jesus to free you more to welcome his divinity both hidden in our humanity and at work through you to make his desires come alive today. Close by saying slowly the prayer Jesus taught us. To pray, “thy kingdom come,” means to pave the way for it in ways gentle, strong, focused, prophetic and to grow more aware we are blessed even in hidden ways.

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