Sunday and Monday meditations

161doc.

Scripture: Lectionary 161: Feast of Christ the King (A Cycle). Ezekierl 34:11-12. 15-17. Psalm 23: 1-2, 2-3, 5-6. I Corinthians 15:20-26, 28. Matthew 25: 31-46:

Because the Scriptures are written in Hebrew and Greek (N.T.) we need to understand that the cultural influence of the Israelites and the Greeks is behind many of the paradoxes and mixed metaphors that we hear and read. This goes contrary to our present day thinking and speaking in our own vernacular and our own western images and metaphors. Poetry is a good way of learning how to listen to the words of the Bible and how to not only read the Bible but let it read us. This will help us to get through the lessons for the day without being frustrated. Our normal way of hurrying through our readings has to be slowed down and a type of subconscious reflective reading of the texts (a quiet lectio divina) has to be undertaken to overcome our ordinary patterns of thinking in an orderly, crisp, and logical way. We tend to put what we do not understand into boxes and prejudge the texts that seem unreasonable to us.

The Feast of Christ the King presents us with different images of who Christ is as King and Shepherd and most of us are not familiar with those types of leadership and care. The Bible is not that easy to read with its Semitisms and Hellenistic phrases often translated in so many different ways in English. There are some different titles applied to Christ in the traditions that grew from the original oral speaking that gave way to fixing the tradition in texts that now have to be unwrapped by us and by our commentators and exegetes. Then our own hermeneutic or understanding the text in the way it can be lived out is often obscured by our rationalistic approach or even our practical approach of saying “let’s just do it.”

We are thus encouraged to take some time to prepare for the daily readings and to reflect upon them beforehand. Hopefully, the preacher or homilist will take even more time to open them up for us without pushing an agenda. Our own pondering over, reflecting upon the images, and our own hermeneutic of faith and hope will enlighten for us the meaning of the texts and their application to our everyday lives. We need to do this with our listening hearts as well as with our intellects and will power. Then we will be able to comprehend what the texts are calling us to do whether it be celebrating them, putting them into practice, or just being informed with their century long wisdom.

All this is preface to our understanding the texts that are presented on this Feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. We learn from the very placement that the texts are leading us to consider some serious things about the final judgment and who is in charge of what happens on that summing up of all that God has intended for us in the long unraveling history of salvation. It makes sense to focus on the last judgment and on the different type of ruling that Christ the King of kings exercises. The images of Shepherd and King do not exactly match one another and both are far removed from our North American way of ruling. The Shepherd theme is bucolic in its imagery and the sheep are so much in need of a shepherd that it makes it difficult for us to identify with them. The King gloriously reigning does not make it easy for us to see how this fits our relationship with Jesus the Savior, Redeemer, compassionate companion, and brother of us all.

One thing that comes into the feast is also the last judgment where Christ will encompass all and all will be summed up in his return to God. He then surrenders all that to the Father and the Holy Spirit! Before that happens, however, we are brought into the picture with the essentials of how we are to be seen and judged by Jesus at the time of our death and at the last judgment. Fortunately, there is no mixing of metaphors in what we are required to do as disciples of the Lord. The commandments that are positively seen and developed in the corporal works of mercy are presented to us by Jesus and we are asked to sum up how we were open, compassionate, kind and generous to all those who have come into our lives or into our stages of life whether we considered them friends or enemies. This is how we know whether we will be on the “left” or on the “right” at the judgment seat of the Christ who is both King and Shepherd. We do not have to be named a “goat” or a “sheep” for we are now going to stand face to face with a person called Jesus.

All biblical titles and even Christological titles have their limits. Some may prefer to see Jesus with a low Christology and emphasize his humanity; others will be led to see Jesus as the divine Son of God for all eternity. This tension within our knowing who Jesus is began with the New Testament and continued in the councils, theological thinkers, and saints throughout the ages. We may be confused by so many ways of looking at Jesus. So many interpretations, translations, and agendas are part of our way of thinking in today’s culture. As the Founder of the Marianists stated, one needs to ponder over slowly with faith of the heart both the Scriptures and the Creed(s). Slowing down is thus necessary in our stress-filled world of activities. In all of this Jesus is the Person to whom we relate with through the key to relationships, namely, love. Without this there will only be more confusion about judgment and the cost of discipleship.

Matthew does give us a masterpiece in this last sermon that he has for the fifth part of his Torah-like Gospel. Torah means instruction, revelation, and life before it means “law(s)”. Jesus now brings the message of who he is in picturesque images that are supplemented by the twenty-third psalm—the favorite of most Americans. Jesus is both human and divine in his love for us. That is why he is the one who can penetrate what type of love we have for him by showing us what type of love for we have for one another. All his titles in the Biblical panorama reflect upon who he is. All are bound up ultimately with the love of God and how we are to live out that love as creatures made like Jesus who was born of a human mother (Mary of Nazareth) in the image and likeness of God. As Rabbi Klenecki so clearly put it: “We all are given the gift of image. What we do with our given image is how we become likened to God.”

Since the corporal works of mercy are what are central to the sermon Jesus gives us. We would do well to carry out a few of them this week as we approach the end time scenes of the Sunday and weekdays before Advent begins. Here are the seven corporal works of mercy; Matthew only left out the last of the seven in the sermon he received from the oral tradition of Jesus’ words:

1) to feed the hungry 2)to give drink to the thirsty 3) to clothe the naked 4)to visit the imprisoned 5) to shelter the homeless 6) to visit the sick and finally 70 to bury the dead.

All of the corporal works of mercy are acts of love and kindness that come from the human heart. These tell us whether we are a disciple of Jesus who has understood his words no matter where we live or what our language is. Amen.

Doc. 503. Monday of the 34^th week in Ordinary Time, Year I Lectionary: 503

Scripture: Daniel 1:1-6, 8-20. Response: Daniel 3:52,53, 54, 55, 56. Luke 21:1-4:

Our last Monday of the liturgical year gives us a beautiful example of total love and generosity on the part of one of the poor widows whom the Scriptures call the ‘Anawim or the Poor of God (Yahweh). As we look forward to a new beginning this coming weekend we can learn much from this short passage that only Luke retains in his Gospel. Jesus, having finished the journey up; to Jerusalem, now takes some time to look at the Temple from his place of rest nearby. It is he who glancing up to the structure of the Temple sees a woman who evidently is a widow both by her dress and by what he sees her putting into the treasury of the Temple. We are told they are almost worthless—two copper not silver coins, but they are all that she had. As one of the Poor of Yahweh, this woman knew that her heart trusted completely in God. He generosity enables us to see that as the reality of who she is and why Jesus glanced up and saw her. He too was amazed and touched by her love for God seen in her love for the Temple of the Lord.

The ‘Anawim or Poor of Yahweh somehow knew that God would not overlook their total self-giving to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This woman felt the compassion of God through her mitzvah or kindness in action for God and God’s Temple. She most likely knew this as her spirituality if we may use the word founded upon the praying of the Psalms of the Poor. She was in need of God just as the blind man was and was seen by Jesus and just as Zachaeus was as he and Jesus caught one another’s glance through the meeting of their eyes. We learned about how to pray from the blind man and how to be generous from Zachaeus.

Luke in this scene brings to us more ways of carrying out our discipleship. With open and generous hearts we become friends of the Lord and he glances upon us. The cost is total self-giving. The woman who gave her last savings is a great model for us. Jesus praises her in what she has done. Jesus himself by recognizing her helps us to see him too as a self-effacing and compassionate one who looks upon the little ones with great care. May we receive a similar glance of the Lord today as we attempt in some small way to imitate the poor widow. Amen.