Sunday word, 13 Apr 14

Mario Lanza and J.S. Bach

(While We Hail our King With Palm Branches)

Passion Sunday A (13 April 2014)

Mt 21. 1-11; Is 50. 4-7; Ps 22; Phil 2. 6-11; Mt 26. 14-27. 66

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

I wager Mario Lanza and J.S. Bach rarely appear in the same sentence. The composer Bach lived and died centuries before the tenor Lanza. Separated by time they had passion in common.

Mario was full-throated “When They Beg[a]n the Beguine.” He gave his love “Only a Rose”; he lent the “Desert Song” vocal passion that made it sound more an adventure than a dry, dusty, dangerous affair its lyrics suggested.

Bach’s passion was writing music. He gave scripture musical shape so we could feel its call and respond to it. Some of his cantatas thrill with the grandeur of God; others show me my shadow made bright in God’s grandeur.

We will hail Jesus as our King. We will recall his passion that followed after hosannas faded. By his music Bach helps us feel Jesus’ passion.¹ Someone² I met described it this way: The episodes of Jesus’ passion Matthew painted in words; Bach “record[ed] in music the impact of each episode on his mind.” I add, and heart: minds alone do not interpret God’s word or respond to it.

For Bach Jesus’ Passion³ was most real, most human. When Jesus will tell his disciples, Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, Bach’s music cues most frantic, frightened voices to deny, one following another, Surely not I Lord?⁴

Lent prepared us to face our heart’s frenzy and fear; to see ourselves as we are at this season of our lives. If anyone has slogged through Lent, close it and make room in your heart for our most holy, potent days ahead. If anyone began Lent late, you are not disgraced. Ask Jesus to help you admit what causes you to tremble and take energy from it and Jesus. If anyone has yet to begin Lent, do not be ashamed. Walk with Jesus or just stand with him in one moment of his Passion. Allow Isaiah, St. Paul and Matthew, whose words we will hear in a moment, to present you to Jesus.

Lent isn’t dry—we are. Lent has no dust—we do. Lent isn’t dangerous—we court danger. Lent has been our key to notice passion: our suffering; the suffering of others; and now the passion of our Love, Jesus our King.

Hosanna to the Son of David!

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

____________

1. Bach has helped us feel Jesus’ suffering as this familiar minute of passion attests.
2. Paul Sevier Minear (†2007), Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology Emeritus, The Divinity School, Yale University, paid close attention to the way Bach (and other artists) interpreted Scripture. His “Matthew, Evangelist and Johann, Composer” appeared in Theology Today (30) 1973, pp. 243-55. He contributed to a symposium at Yale some years ago that focused on Bach’s Matthew’s Passion.
3. This site sketches the history of setting the Passion to music.
4. The voices sound at 1:16 in this 2-minute video portion of “St. Matthew’s Passion.” Text and translation.

________________________________________________________________

Wiki-images of Jesus’ procession in Jerusalem PD-Art 

Sunday word, 06 Apr 2014

Felt-Knowing, Surging Wonder, Being Loved

Lenten Sunda5 A (06 April 2014)

Ez 37. 12-14; Ps 130; Rm 8. 8-11; Jn 11. 1-45

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

If you want to have or give a short description of Scripture’s purpose, here’s one in nine words:

Scripture discloses God, present to the world, by humans.

The ways they disclose God are prophetic: not narrowly “to predict” but “to reveal,” to make known. Prophet means spokesperson.

They communicated in language and actions. Their language and actions dripped with vision, symbol, poetry, parable and myth. Jesus’ remark to his disciples captures those: I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightening.¹ We don’t think their way, why Scripture puzzles us to say the least. More important than our puzzling is this: by the visions the prophets beheld and heard they stood in heaven with their feet rooted on earth.

So it was for Ezekiel. God granted him a vision at the lowest point in Israel’s history. God showed him God would transform God’s defeated, deported people and give them new life. My people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Those words summarized the vision.

What was the vision? It inspired a song we know.

     Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones,

     Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones,

     Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones,

     Now hear the word of the Lord!

     Foot bone connected to the ankle bone

    Ankle bone connected to the leg bone

    Leg bone connected to the knee bone

    Knee bone connected to the thigh bone

    Thigh bone connected to the hip bone

    Hip bone connected to the back bone

    Back bone connected to the shoulder bone

    Shoulder bone connected to the neck bone

    Neck bone connected to the head bone

  Now hear the word of the Lord!

   Dese bones, dese bones are gonna walk around.

  Dese bones, dese bones are gonna walk around.

  Dese bones, dese bones are gonna walk around.

  Now hear the word of the Lord!

No anatomy lesson for Ezekiel. He saw God’s promise. God’s promises are not ones of logic but of vision. Ezekiel believed God would bring them back and by God’s spirit give them life and purpose.

Temptations not to believe have always lurked among us. We heard in her grief Martha almost succumbed to them. The dead man’s sister, said to Jesus when he ordered Lazarus’ tomb opened, “Lord…there will be a stench; he has been dead four days.” Jesus said…“Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” She saw!

Lazarus may have been the last “living dead” before Jesus. A vision of a valley of “living dead” with bones, sinews, flesh, skin, breath² and lively purpose kept Martha and countless others awake not to slumber in disbelief. They were in awe of God’s life giving promises. Their awe and longing moved them to believe.

That word again: believe. To believe outstrips logic and mannered knowledge. Believing in Messiah Jesus is steeped in sacraments; it drips with vision, symbol, poetry, parable and his pattern of living. ‘I believe’ means I respond to God, to God who reveals and gives God’s self to me.³ Response language is relationship language. It speaks being touched, moved, grasped, renewed; it is the heart’s felt-knowing, surging wonder, being loved. Because it is relational it is personal. It is never private. No prophetic visions are given to a person as private property. They give access to God, who always invites others to respond to God’s life and love.

The church of Jesus—you and I—will soon recall his passion and death with deep devotion. Will we be awake with wonder and emotion at what Jesus did for each of us and all people? Will we stay connected with his dying for our very lives? That is our outlandish good news. “Outlandish” for it defies our logic. “Good” because it is the vision our triune God has had for us before time began.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Rest in our triune God.
• Ask Lazarus to present you to Jesus. He gave Lazarus a new lease on life and new purpose to live it.
• Chat with Jesus: praise him for dying and rising for you; allow yourself to feel touched, moved, grasped, renewed or loved by his passion for you.
• Ask Jesus for grace to respond more freely to him in others.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. His words, lead us not into temptation on our lips, are not limited to wrong actions. They beg to live awake by Jesus’ vision and to share it by our lives.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

____________

1. Luke 10.18.
2. Ezekiel 37.7-10.
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 26.

________________________________________________________________

Wiki-images of Ezekiel’s Vision PD-Release and the raising of Lazarus PD-US 

Everyone Is Fed

The Easter homily attributed to St. John Chrysostom emphatically welcomes all to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus: “Whoever may be spent by fasting, enjoy now your reward. …[yet] If any of you have arrived even at the eleventh hour, do not be dismayed for being late them not fear on account of tardiness.” [Video of full homily] Such hope for latecomers!

For any starting Lent late, Jesuit Nicholas King recently noted that the “strength of fasting [helps avoid the] danger of drifting into putting that at the centre of our lives which is not God, and some kind of postponement (or even cancellation) of satisfaction can be a powerful statement of who and what our God really is.”

________________________________

Wiki-mage by Thomas Bresson of crescent moon CC BY 2.0

Sunday word, 30 Mar 14

Sharing Jesus’ Vision

Lenten Sunday 4 A (30 Mar 2014)

1Sm 16. 1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Ps 23; Eph 5. 8-14; Jn 9. 1-41

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

The first mechanically printed, English bible had ample notes. People used their “study bible.”¹ One of its notes appeared at a verse in today’s gospel selection:

“Religion is assaulted most by the pretence of religion: but the more it is pressed down, the more it rises up.”²

Pretense. We hear it echo its cousin, pretend: to behave in ways to make something appear to be the case when it is not. We all are familiar with that. Religion and living that flows from it are vulnerable to pretense and pretenders. Jesus faced that often in his life and ministry. Today we witnessed it with Pharisees after Jesus healed a man born blind. First a word about healing, then about the Pharisees.

We all know Jesus lived before our understanding of medicine. That means we have to let go our understanding given to us by science and technology. When we do we can begin to understand what Jesus and his peers understood healing to do. Briefly, healing in the ancient Mediterranean world restored meaning to people whose lives were lacerated by a variety of conditions. For Jesus and all Jews meaning itself flowed from God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebbekah, Jacob and Rachel, Creator of all.

God created humans male and female.³ By worship humans served God recalling the words of their Scriptures and with ritual praise and sacrifice. Illness, and even some ordinary bodily functions, made people unfit to worship. To be unable to worship put people out of balance at best. At worst it emptied their lives of meaning. When he healed Jesus restored meaning to people and their lives. We can miss that when we focus on the elimination of their symptoms or conditions.

To be blind was understood not to be whole as God had created humans. The disciples’ question about sin begins to fit. More important was the lack of meaning the blind man felt not being able to worship and being able only to beg. Even his neighbors didn’t know him. When they saw him after Jesus healed him they said:“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?” Some said,“It is,“but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”

How we are known shapes our meaning.

The once-blind-now-seeing man held his own with the Pharisees. The seeing man allows us to notice the Pharisees were blind to Jesus, light from light⁴ who is light of the human race.⁵

In a sense we are all blind because no one see as God sees. In another sense our triune God shares the vision of God with all who desire it. We can choose to stay in darkness; yet God created us for light and to be light. Paul’s phrase children of the light is no quaint expression. To share the vision of the Trinity, who creates and redeems us, makes us people of the light. To enjoy their light frees us to live the purposes they create for us and live them with gusto for the life of the world.⁶

Living our Christian vocations for the life of the world shares Jesus’ mission. We don’t pretend. When we make Jesus’ mission ours we don’t assault nor do we look inward. We look beyond ourselves; we encourage others; and by respectful, unassuming Christian outreach we allow others to discover or to reclaim meaning for their lives.

Each of us grows freer to spread the light of Jesus the more we grow to echo in our words the one with clear sight received from Jesus: One thing I do know is that I all I have is Jesus’ gift: my sight; my abilities; my talents; my possessions; my personal purpose, my vocation.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Rest in the life of our triune God.
• Ask the man born blind to present you to Jesus.
• Praise him for enlightening you and sharing with you his vision and attitude. Consider how you live your baptism in respectful, unassuming Christian ways. Chat with Jesus about them.
• Ask Jesus for the grace to make his mission—for the life of the world—yours lived with his church.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. The more we live his words which we pray, the more we put our fingerprints on Jesus’ mission and he gives us his vision and attitude.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

____________

1. It became known as the Geneva Bible.
2. Note on John 9.16.
3. Genesis 1.27.
4. From the Nicene Creed.
5. John 1.4.
6. John 6.51.

________________________________________________________________

Wiki-images of the blind man washing in Siloam pool and healed blind man telling his story PD-Art

Cross and Resurrection: Or, Benefits of No Meat

The Lenten practice of abstaining from meat is ancient. The churches of the West and the East focus differently on the goal to which abstaining from meat points. Jesuit Samuel Overloop considered that and contemporary aspects of abstaining from meat. He explores the physical as well as the spiritual benefits of the practice. The latter includes “reconciliation with creation.”

________________________________

Wiki-mage by Odejea of fruits on a heraldic sheild CC BY-SA 3.0

Sunday word, 23 Mar 14

Visiting Wells

Lenten Sunday3 A (23 Mar 2014)

Ex 17. 3-7; Ps 95; Rm 5. 1-2, 5-8; Jn 4. 5-42

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

A woman came to draw water from her neighborhood well.

We came to draw nearer to Jesus and to one another as a parish community.

Hers was a simple task, and it wasn’t. Simple because drawing water is straightforward: hard work but not complex; not simple because like every person in every age, the woman was a fusion of emotions, experiences, failures, successes and longings.

In our life-tasks we are no different.

Jesus sat down about noon. He was tired by his journey. We pause here awaiting any number of things: midday; midyear; warm weather; sharing faith; welcoming a word; acknowledging our weariness and how our hearts thirst. The woman came, puzzled to see a man resting where women worked. She didn’t need another puzzle to complicate her life. “By heaven above, and Jacob’s well too,” she thought, “he’s no one I know, and he isn’t one of us!”

Jesus sits down among us everyday, every moment. If we ask him, Jesus joins us; we often leave disappointed. More often we stumble on him. As the woman at the well did, we often don’t recognize him. And if we do—isn’t this true?—we dread how he might complicate our already complicated lives.

Jesus spoke to the woman. Shocked, she conversed with him—interrogating him first (how do you do what I wouldn’t do? who do you think you are?). Jesus joined her at every turn. He poured questions of his own into her thirsty heart: God’s freeing questions.

Jesus communicates with us: as the Word; in his Sacraments; by his cross; in images and colors; in music and song. Jesus longs for us. Do we converse with him? Not put him on trial: we’re too good at that. Do we ask him for his heart? Do we speak to him as to absent friends; departed parents; a loved one we recall fondly; that person we dream of meeting?

When the woman left Jesus, she left her water jar and was not disappointed, no longer puzzled. She left on a mission! Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! No shame but full of joy and unburdened peace. Her joy flowed from visiting her well to perform a routine task. She rejoiced over Jacob’s well in a way she never dreamed.

Do such wells exist for us? They do. Now we can meet Jesus anywhere. First we had to come or be brought here to the well of baptism. Its living water poured God’s love into us through Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Jesus’ Spirit creates us new everyday! Do we let Jesus’ abiding Spirit turn our thirsts for meaning and fulfillment into our mission as well as his?

From the well of baptism flows the other privileged ways we meet Jesus, the sacraments. In them Jesus joins our humanity. Our regular celebration of the sacraments nourishes, strengthens, heals and focuses us as witnesses on mission to make Jesus known. To celebrate sacraments is more than to receive them. To our Elect, who will be fully joined to the Catholic Church, I offer this encouragement: to celebrate sacraments is more than to receive them. I celebrate when I give myself to what I receive. Catholic vocabulary has long put it, I cooperate with the grace I receive.¹ Only to receive a sacrament makes no use of God’s life given me. To cooperate with God’s life given us in the sacraments affects us. When we collaborate with God’s life we affect others we know and meet.² To affect others with his life Jesus infuses in us is to worship…in spirit and in truth.

The woman of Samaria is a Christian’s personal icon. She engaged Jesus vigorously and honestly. She withheld nothing from him. She expressed to him her deep desires. She did not keep for herself what Jesus had given, awakened and liberated in her. She shared Jesus’ gifts to her with others: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! How could this man not be the Messiah?” If you desire a patron saint to help you live Christian discipleship, visit her and well of the sacraments often.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Rest in the life of our triune God.
• Ask the woman of Samaria to present you to Jesus.
• Praise him for giving you in various ways his Spirit, his life. Consider how you live your baptism, and how you can live it with more gusto. Chat with Jesus about that.
• Ask Jesus for the grace to live his life in deeper friendship and with greater conviction.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. The more we live his words which we pray, the more Jesus slakes our thirst for him.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

____________

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], 2002 details humans’ “free response.”
2. “Grace includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with [the Spirit’s] work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ.” CCC 2003.

________________________________________________________________

Wiki-images of woman of Samaria at the well PD-US and by Stanley Howe of site of St. Mary’s Well CC BY-SA 2.0

Drama for Lent

Very early the Church chose the Gospel of John as the gospel for Lent and Easter. Jesuit Peter Edmonds considers it one of the “religious classics.” He tours the gospel so its selections in the coming weeks will offer more of their treasures to hearers today.

________________________________

Wiki-mage by Marc Auer of Eagle of John the Evangelist CC BY-SA 2.0

Sunday word, 16 Mar 14

Friends Learn Each Other

Lenten Sunday 2 A (16 Mar 2014)

Gn 12. 1-4a; Ps 33; 2Tm 1. 8b-10; Mt 17. 1-9

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Early in my priesthood I made my annual retreat. After arriving I told my director I had come more than to pray. I desired the Trinity reveal to me what I needed for my life. The Trinity enlightened me: prayer is far more than words and time for them. Prayer is relationship with our triune God.

The pivotal moment on that retreat happened the day I spent visiting and revisiting the Transfiguration. Its operative grace was light: Like the sun…[Jesus] shone. Jesus wrapped me in his light. As sunlight represents life, Jesus invited me to receive his life and to welcome it, accept and share it.

I am not exceptional. God in Jesus by their Spirit extend the same invitation to you and every one. A single word captures their invitation and the variety of ways they reveal it: friendship—friendship with Jesus. I have called you friends¹ was no throwaway line of Jesus. Friendliness grounds the church’s mission from welcoming, reconciling, worshiping, charity, justice and proclamation. The church’s mission is the mission of each Christian. Our mission is to invite others to the same friendship revealed and offered to us.

God’s gracious friendship exceeds words. God’s gracious friendship includes this: God desires each of us and graces us with what any of us needs each moment. The Transfiguration of Jesus was such a moment for the disciples. 

Before Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves, Jesus had just show[n] his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders…ruling priests…scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.² Peter, we recall, objected severely to Jesus. Can we appreciate Peter’s feelings? We can at least begin when we recall their ancient Mediterranean culture desired honor and feared shame. Honor was the prized value of their culture.

Honor involved more than esteem and privilege. Honor involved public image and moral responsibilities. Someone could be born to honor as the child of a person of high reputation or pedigree. Or, one could be adopted to it. Adoption not only won the prized value. It oiled the political machinery: if a ruler adopted his chosen successor as his child, people recognized the successor as legitimate.

The opposite of honor was shame, and people feared it. Tarnishing image and failing to live up to responsibilities owed family, friends and clan was shameful. People feared to bring disgrace on family and clan. They also feared the humiliation those actions—even accusations—carried.

Romans knew their culture. The most shameful death they could execute was crucifixion; it was a shame-spectacle: pains inflicted; power taken self-respect lost—progressively and all in public!³ For slaves and revolutionaries to be killed was to be crucified. Peter staked his life on Jesus; he could not bear the shame of his messiah being killed. He naturally objected to what Jesus said.

Words of Jesus were not enough. So Jesus took Peter and the other two hot-tempered disciples⁴—his inner circle—up the mountain. We have no video of what happened. That does not mean we are left with no meaning. Mountain and God are closely associated in Israel’s tradition. Moses went up a mountain to communicate with God and receive God’s teachings. Prophets and mountains were no strangers.⁵ Mountain, Moses and Elijah were only three features of the gospel. Others were: heaven opened; light; a cloud; a vision; a voice; a command. The command, Listen to Jesus, included what he had just told them: he would die suffering. Do these features offer meaning?

The vision was for Peter, James and John. It validated them as prophets of Jesus’ good news. It offered them a new way to grasp honor and rely on God as its source not humans. That took time and more help from God at work in them. Jesus’ words to them, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead,” are as much grace as command. They would struggle to accept Jesus’ words and his fate until they experienced Jesus risen. Then they grasped God honored him and them in an undying way. 

Jesus has been raised from the dead for us. That is why we are here. Lent is time for each of us to refresh our friendship with Jesus. Its practices help us count on God in Jesus by their Spirit for all we are, all we have and all we do from our friendship. Prayer grows our friendship with Jesus.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Rest in the life of our triune God.
• Ask Peter, James and John to present you to Jesus.
• Chat with him: thank him for having called you his friend. Consider the ways you resist his friendship. Talk to Jesus about them.
• Ask Jesus for grace to open more to him and his risen life he desires you to enjoy.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. His words on our lips remind us that Christian friendship is not conveniently seeing the same way. Christian friendship begins by learning Jesus to have his attitude; then living from it.

Link to this homily’s Spiritual Exercise

____________

1. John 15.15.
2. Matthew 16.21.
3. Cicero did not mince words about the public trials.
4. Mark 10.35-45 || Matthew 20.20-23; Luke 9.49-56.
5. For Elijah: 1Kings 19.7-14.

________________________________________________________________

Wiki-images of Jesus transfigured PD-US and by S Yao of Divine Light CC BY-SA 3.0