Two Mists

Christmas Day (25 Dec 2020) Is 52. 7-10; Ps 98; Hb 1: 1-6; Jn 1. 1-18

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

Two Mists

A venerable Jesuit observed that “gospel words, are in their effect upon us, like window panes that have become misted over.”¹ Words in John’s Gospel expressing the Incarnation  can leave a heavy mist. Permit me to spray 3 spritzes of homiletic Windex to remove the mist: 

• why we are here;
• we are a new creation; and
• the daily gift we offer.

Poll each of us, and we would hear various responses to why we are here. One thing that Christmas conjures fuels its celebrations: emotion. Aromas, sights, sounds, rituals, the very thought of Christmas stir us. I used to discount emotions in years gone by because I mistrusted them. Many helped me trust and accept emotions. Through emotions God communicates to us that we are alive, that God creates us each moment. 

Like Christmas worship of God is emotion-rich. Christmas memories stir people to reach beyond themselves—in memory and in acton. St. Augustine was eloquent about memory, emotion and reaching beyond with love. About revering martyrs at their shrines and graves, he preached, “the memories that cling to those…altars [and places] where these holy bodies rest will stir our emotions and encourage us to greater love both for the martyrs whom we can imitate and for God whose grace enables us to do so.”²

By graciously empowering us to reach beyond ourselves God makes us a new creation. That phrase opened mass in mid-Advent: God…through your Only-Begotten Son [you] have made us a new creation.³ How? By being born in time and our human nature. “This wonderful blending”⁴ of divine and human John’s gospel assured us empowers [us] to become children of God. “Jesus Christ was born for this!”⁵ we sing. On the birthday of Christ Jesus in time and our human nature we recall God’s daily gift to us: God’s gift of becoming children of God.

God’s transforming gift is for every day. God gives it to us to share with others. No share in God’s healing life is given to keep. What can we offer? With his finger on the pulse of human living Pope Francis suggests kindness is the best daily gift we offer. In his recent encyclical Francis urges us to recover kindness. “Those who [cultivate kindness] become stars shining in the midst of darkness.” Christian kindness outshines good manners. It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit for us. Practicing kindness “involves ‘speaking words of comfort, strength, consolation and encouragement’ and not ‘words that demean, sadden, anger or show scorn.’” Indeed, acting kindly “opens new paths where hostility and conflict would burn all bridges.”⁶

This year has been painfully dark:: dark for all. Others feel it more intensely: survivors of Covid19; exhausted health-care workers the world over; the heroic people who allow us to carry on living day to day; those who survive loved ones, friends and colleagues who have died. They prove that the darkness of pain and exhaustion are unable to overwhelm kindness.

By offering kindness as our daily practice we help kindness become a culture. Francis reminds us a culture is a network of a people’s “desires, their interests and ultimately the way they live their lives.”⁷ In addition to easing others’ burdens giving kindness daily “transforms lifestyles, relationships and the ways ideas are discussed and compared.”⁸ The eyes of those who receive kindness may mist with tears; that mist does not obscure vision; it helps individuals see themselves more clearly: possessing dignity; enjoying respect; and living as a new creation. Resolving to offer kindness more readily imitates God’s kindness to us; it is the timely gift our world sorely needs; and each of us is empowered to offer it everyday. Merry Christmas! 

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1. Karl Rahner, “Christmas, the Festival of Eternal Youth,” Theological Investigations, vol. VII, (NY: Herder and Herder), p. 121.
2. From his Treatise Against Faustus used in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours.
3. Third Week, Tuesday, Collect, Roman Missal.
4. Leo the Great, Letter 31.2, also in the Office of Readings.
5. 2^nd verse of “Good Christians All Rejoice,” Lyrics, John Mason Neale (1818-1866).
6. Fratelli Tutti, ##222-224.
7. Fratelli Tutti, ##216.
8. Fratelli Tutti, ##222.

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Wiki-images by Asurnipal Simple Christmas crib in a hollow tree in Frastanz, Vorarlberg, Austria & Detail of same CC BY-SA 4.0.

Daily word, 10 Mar 20

2^nd Tuesday of Lent (10 Jan 2020)

Is 1. 10, 16-20; Ps 50; Mt 23. 1-12

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., 5-day directed retreat

4Ps

Lent is our opportunity to recommit to live the faith of Jesus more consistently. None of us wants to give lip-service Jesus, to our Christian life. Lip-serve, Jesus clearly said, will not win us entry into the kingdom of heaven.¹ Our lenten practices can help us accept Jesus’ invitation to allow our lives to speak eloquently. Jesus was not the first to recommend that we do good and make God’s justice our aim. Prophet Isaiah was one of many who recommended both. Isaiah advised how do both for his time and circumstances: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea; defend the widow. Orphans and widows included all the vulnerable ones in his society.

Justice is always social. Justice involves institutions and systems. An act of charity is personal: what one does for another; or help a person offers to aid this or that emergency. All Christians journey together in Lent; it is social in the way of God’s justice. By gracing our time God opens the way for us to cooperate with God’s justice.

Because it involves systems and institutions making justice our aim seems beyond you and me. Lent reminds us that we are cooperators with God’s justice; Lent allows us to practice the fine points of Christian living so they become daily practice. Practice is key. Practice develops and develops us. An example from our world.

While we are keenly aware now of our need to redress the wrong we have done to our planet, in 1987 Pope St. John Paul II reminded that

A true concept of [human, social] development cannot ignore the use of the elements of nature, the renewability of resources and the consequences of haphazard industrialization: three considera-tions which alert our consciences to the moral dimension of development.²

In 1991 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew convened an ecological gathering in Crete entitled “Living in the Creation of the Lord.”³ Later, John Paul addressed “the worrying…ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which is closely connected to it.”⁴ A development in Catholic social teaching followed when John Paul added to its principles a seventh: care for creation. Pope Francis has amplified this with Laudato Si!⁵ and by his other catecheses and homilies.

Our time and circumstances differ from those of Isaiah and Jesus. Yet God’s longing for justice among people by people for every created being abides. I rehearse this brief history of the development of Catholic social teaching to encourage our developing practice of God’s justice. Focus on the fine points, our individual choices we make daily. Each choice affects positively or negatively: the planet; peace; poverty; and parity, that is, economic justice that redresses the wronged. This graced season helps our choices incarnate God’s mercy. Our choices for God’s justice make it a joyful time.

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1. Matthew 7.21.
2. “The Social Concern of the Church,” 34.
3. John Chryssavgis, The Green Patriarch: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the Protection of the Environment.
4. Centesimus Annus, 37.
5. Laudato Si! helps us see interconnection by its phrase“integral ecology.”

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Wiki-images by: Auckland Museum Chemist’s scale CC BY 4.0; The Blue Marble PD-US

Daily word, 22 Feb 20

Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Apostle (22 Feb 2020) 

1Pt 5. 1-4; Ps 23; Mt 16. 13-19

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., Weekend Retreats

Three Suggestions For Us

Professors come and go from endowed chairs at universities: a chair of applied ethics; Asian history; nuclear medicine, for example: each has its focus. The occupants of the chairs serve the lives of learners. Today’s feast lets us celebrate the pastor of the world church. We celebrate the Bishop of Rome’s authority in service of the church in all its variety. Guiding, teaching, worshiping, forming: all serve its unity. More Christians recognize the service of unity catholics have celebrated very early in the church’s history.

We also celebrate ourselves and our baptismal gifts. St. Paul reminded Christians that our transformation in Christ empowers us to identify with the feelings and conditions of others: rejoice with those who are rejoicing; weep with those who are weeping.¹ Our death and rebirth in Christ causes our rejoicing. Human weeping of tears shed as well as tears others do not know they shed; and one’s groaning for relief and redemption as well the groaning of the entire creation,² throw us onto our baptism into Christ and his eucharist that sustains our baptisms. Baptism, eucharist and the entire Christian life is a shared life. That means the witness to the sufferings of Christ does not alone share in the glory to be revealed. The witness assures all of us are heirs to our blessed hope and the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.³ Baptism endows us with gifts to interpret ways Christ is already present and ways to live in hope as we expect Christ’s glory to be revealed.

Baptism also gifts us with power to discern spirits; and to note the variety of ways scripture discloses our triune God at work for us, in us and all creation. Retreats especially nourish our baptismal gift of discernment.

Finally, we celebrate the church’s unique service to the world: all that exists harmonizes …with the [desire] of the Creator [who]…endowed…all things…with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order.⁴ Our baptisms empower us to respect others and everything; and to do the more challenging task of returning good for evil done to others and to our planet.⁵ It is God’s way.

This unique service, another baptismal gift, is not always welcomed by others. We may say we die to Satan’s pattern of evil for evil and are born to Christ’s pattern of good for evil. Christ’s pattern is no less a gift than expecting Christ’s glory to be revealed and the discernment offered us as we live our expectation. As you come to know more clearly and deeply who Christ is for you, let Christ renew your baptismal gifts and enlighten you to feel and know more clearly the way Christ invites you to live your role in Christ’s church today.

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1. Romans 12.15.
2. Romans 8.22.
3. Conclusion of words recited by priests after the assembly prays the Lord’s Prayer. Roman Missal, #124.
4. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, 36.  
5. Scripture is replete with this. Jesus encouraged it esp. in Matthew 5.44 || Luke 6.35.

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Wiki-image: Dnalor 01 Chair of Peter. CC BY-SA 3.0

Daily word, 30 Jan 20

3^rd Thursday of the Year (30 Jan 2020) 

2Sm 7. 18-19, 24-29; Ps 132; Mk 4. 21-25

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

Uncontrollable

Hearers and watchers of narrative and drama are more aware than the actors in them. Our more accurate knowledge is called irony; Mark’s gospel drips with irony from its opening words: the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.¹ We know who God knows: Christ Jesus is God’s son. We know who the spirits and the cosmic forces know: Jesus, the Holy One of God. We know who Jesus’ opponents reject, and we know Jesus’ identity before the disciples grasp it.

From the start the gospel’s irony revolves around Jesus: he is the key to interpreting his announcement: the time is fulfilled and God’s reign is at hand²; Jesus embodies his announcement. Though address-ed to all the earth it is not earth-bound: it is God’s costly action for the world; hostile spirits and cosmic forces oppose him. The first spirit in the drama was vocal: What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!³ In his presence others shrieked, You are the Son of God.⁴

Our more accurate knowledge can be hard to take. It isn’t easy to sympathize with the disciples as they falter in coming to know Jesus; our hesitations to know Jesus allow us to do it. When we curb our desire to shake sense into them, we take heart: although they were slow to recognize and know Jesus, the disciples perse-vered! as did Jesus, which is easy to forget. Through his relationship with his disciples Jesus teaches us. How? Jesus urges, Take no excessive pride in self and achievements. A smug attitude closes us to Jesus and to the mystery he is, the mystery his Spirit manifests in the particulars of our lives, locations and times. Though they did not understand Jesus, one cannot say the disciples were smug: they followed Jesus though quite unaware. My teacher enlightened me and others that Jesus

seems to be saying, “if [we] think [we] understand the mystery of the kingdom and even control it, watch out; it remains alive and [awesome] beyond [our] comprehension. If [we] think disciple-ship consists in power because of the presence of God, beware; [we] are called to follow the one who suffered and died. [Our] discipleship is defined by his messiahship, that is, in terms of [obedient listening] and service.”⁵ 

Opposition to Jesus was violent; threats to kill him emerged early. The violent opposition forced Jesus to speak in parables. While parables confounded⁶ opponents we can do what they would not: apply them to ourselves. Do we receive the word as gift and help it take root in us? Do we welcome the light Jesus is and offers? When we welcome Jesus, do we share him? 

Signals that we are face to face with mystery punctuate the parables we apply to ourselves: Listen! Whoever has ears to hear…listen! Anyone who has ears to hear ought to listen! Take care how you listen⁷ Earlier Mediterranean prophets used such phrases to alert listeners to God’s ways that we can never domes-ticate. Jesus drew on Isaiah: see  but not perceive…listen but not understand.

We can only wait on the divine mystery—ever a human challenge. Whom do we await? Our benevolent God as Jesus revealed. Mystic Julian of Norwich in the 14^th C experienced the benevolent God as “courteous Lord.” The descriptor is rich: affable; gentle; considerate; thoughtful; chivalrous—loyal, honourable, strong. God lavishes for our benefit “princely friendship” in every circumstance to support and restore us.⁸

Have we gracious courage to welcome such divine qualities? Are we free to move beyond any shock that God is courteous? is humble? benevolently befriends? is human? Look to Jesus, and take care how you look? That is, ask for the grace you need and wait on it.

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1. Mark 1.1.
2. Mark 1.15.
3. Mark 1.24.
4. Mark 3.11.
5. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament (Kindle Locations 2621-2624).
6. Mark 4.11, part of Mark 4.1-20, yesterday’s gospel selection.
7. Mark 4.3, 8, 23, 24.
8. Her Showings, chapter 39. “Princely friendship” appears in the translation in Enfolded in Love: Daily Readings with Julian of Norwich. 

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Wiki-images: Jesus teaches by the sea PD-US; Julian of Norwich by Antiquary CC BY-SA 4.0