Daily word, 03 Aug 18

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

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

Learning God Anew

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

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

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

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

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

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

__________

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

__________

Wiki-image by chiron3636 Turbulence CC BY 2.0