Blog # 286 A Psalm shared

Blog # 286  A Psalm shared

Yesterday morning as  I was about to begin the daily experience of praying the breviary,  some thoughts came to me that I wanted to share with you in a blog.  I clearly remembered more than one Spiritual Director  back in the days of my seminary training reminding us the prayers and readings that made up our daily use of the breviary were  not the private prayer of an individual Christian believer but rather were part of the Church's official publc worship. I had assumed the responsibility and privilege of praying in the name of  the entire Church at the time I was ordained for this as a subdeacon back in 1953.

Clear evidence  and an invitation to be aware of this responsibility and privilege  can be found in the prayer that is daily given to introduce  the breviary: " Lord, open my lips. - And my mouth shall declare your praise."  Even when a large community of monks or a group of priests would be praying the breviary together the official opening words do not change  from my lips and my mouth to  our
mouths and our lips.

The entire Church throughout the world, individuals made one  in the Sacrament of Baptism in a relationshp with one another that is closer than the natural relationships that make a Frenchman close to a Frenchman, a Chinese to a Chinese,  male and female to one another, husbands to wives, parents to children , children to parents and to peers in a natural human family,  rich and poor, old and  young, saints and sinners, sick and well, suffering and celebrating, some to continue living on earth fifty, sixty, or more years, some to 'die' tomorrow,  all sharing God's everlasting infinite  love made one by the Holy Spirit in the Body of Jesus the Church.

All of this is true for the monks who are identified in their dedication to praying the breviary as public worship in community.  They are supported in their dedication by the faith and the beautiful sounds of their singing companions.
Diocesan, or 'secular' priests as we are sometimes labeled,
do not have the daily audible support of a monastic
community, but we do have the authenticity, opportunity, and obligation  of praying the breviary daily in union with and as a blessing  for the  entire Church throughout the world.

I am not sure every priest sees it this way, but that is the way I learned it back sixty years ago, and it continues to be a blessing for which I am thankful every day. 

The thought that got me going on this blog and I wanted to share with you came when I was praying Psalm 1.  It was a special blessing for me and a genuine source of encouragement.  I thought this belongs to the people as well as to me. Don't keep it to yourself.  Give it to anyone who might read  your blog and it might be the sort of blessing for them as it was for you.

 Pray it rather than just reading it, a bit more slowly and thoughtfully than you might do if you were just reading it and see what happens. When I prayed it the other day  I was praying it for you. Neither one of us knew it was precisely for you. But God knew.  May it be a blessing for you!

Psalm One  - true happiness.

Happy the person who follows not  the counsel of the wicked   Nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent,   But delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night.    He is like a tree planted near running water,    That yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade. [Whatever he does prospers.]   Not so the wicked, not so;  They are like chaff which the wind drives way.  Therefore in judgment the wicked shall not stand, nor shall sinners, in the assembly of the just.  For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes. 

BLOG # 93 Advent 4, 2010

Blog # 93 Advent 4, 2010 If we imagine that a motion picture had been made of the universe from a beginning 5 billion years ago to today, and the film is shown in fast motion, speeded up so that the 5 billion-year-long run is crowded into two hours, the period from the time when the first aquatic vertebrates evolved to the present day would be just 9 1/2 minutes. The period roughly 500,000 years from the time of the earliest known chipped stone tools to the present would be a little more than a 1/2 second. If this 1/2 second of film were itself slowed down to run two hours, the period from the first domestication of animals and plants to the present would occupy the last 2 minutes, and the period between the time of Jesus and the present would take the last 29 seconds! From the time only God knows exactly how long ago, when God made the promise given in verse fifteen of Chapter three of the Book of Genesis to the first human creatures who were also the first to sin, all creation was waiting for the promise to be fulfilled, at first not even knowing for what they were waiting or perhaps that they were waiting at all. But in God's plan and promise ALL OF CREATION was indeed waiting for that plan and promise to be fulfilled. As the story progressed human creatures began to wonder, to be curious and to discover a need and desire within themselves of knowing the purpose and meaning of all that was going on within and around them. Profound issues such as suffering and death, joy, further sin, virtues , goodness, and love all invited them to ask questions. Gods were imagined worshipped loved praised and feared. A major breakthrough came when Abraham became the father of an IDENTIFIABLE PEOPLE who trusted and believed him as he had trusted and believed the God who revealed to him in a vision there was but ONE CREATOR OF ALL THAT EXISTS, all the time, space, beauty, power, ALL that is, was, or ever will be.

Then at the precise instant when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary the WHOLE PICTURE changed. Jesus was born and matured as a member of this people of faith, the children of Abraham. After about thirty years of experiencing a normal human life and identified by his neighbors and friends as the son of a Jewish carpenter Jesus began to say and do things that the religious leaders around him held for God alone to say and do.

Jesus did not deny the accuracy of their observations about him. Rather he took the occasions of their complaining as an opportunity to proclaim himself to be the Promised One of Genesis, justifying his supernatural words and deeds by identifying them as his credentials to help them have faith in him as Emmanuel, not just another prophet but as God Himself come among us as one of us in the mystery of His humanity yet as ever and always in the mystery of His divinity the Eternal Word.

In his genuine identity and capacity as one of us Jesus had no awareness of the content of the first paragraph of this blog. In His divine Identity as the Eternal Word of God ,divinely united with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He was well aware of it. Looking back, the event of Christmas is rooted in the event of the Annunciation nine months ago on March 25. Looking ahead the event of Christmas will reach full maturity in the event of Good Friday April 22, 2011.

As the baby Jesus of Christmas grows in His human experiences He will learn to say "Before Abraham came to be, I AM". (jn 8: 58). And: "Philip, to see Me is to see the Father," (Jn 14: 8,9). And: "I and the Father are one." (Jn 10:30). And: "Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you." (Mt 11: 28).And : "This is how all will know you are my disciples: your love for one another." (Jn 13: 35). And : "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." ( Jn 15: 13). And, to Pilate: " You would have no power over me whatever unless it were given you from above." (Jn 19:11). And : " As the Father has sent me, so I send you." (Jn 20:21.

With these and similar texts in mind I hope to kneel before the manger again this Christmas in awe not at the authenticity of the figures in the crib but in the wonder of creation and my own life, waiting for further time color space and shapes into which God may call me in my 83rd year of life to discover and embrace the dramatic life and love of Emanuel, God-Among -us, which all and in a special way those Baptized into the life death and resurrection of Jesus as branches on a vine are invited to share and proclaim.

BLOG # 92 Advent 3, 2010

Blog # 92 Advent 3, 2010 What would you think if you asked someone what he or she wanted Santa Claus to bring them for Christmas and the person answered "wisdom goodness and generosity"? You might feel frustrated if you had in mind to give the person some socks or a pair of gloves.

Situations like that do exist, I know, because that was my situation last Sunday morning. Then Sunday evening someone asked me if I would like to receive the gift of better hearing. I said yes, but if it were one or the other I would rather receive the gift of wisdom goodness and generosity than the gift of better hearing.

What is the background for my conviction that the gift of wisdom goodness and generosity is a better gift than the gift of better hearing? As you might expect, the conviction is rooted somewhere in the Bible.

First I looked up references to deafness in the Bible. As early as the book of Exodus (chapter four) we find Moses making excuses why God should get someone else to lead His people out of the slavery of Egypt. Moses claims he is handicapped in that he is "slow of speech and tongue". God sees no weight in Moses' excuse ( v. 10). "Who gives one man speech and makes another deaf and dumb? Or who gives sight and makes another blind? Is is not I, the Lord?" God takes full responsibility for who can see color and who can hear sound.

Sight and hearing are God's design. For those who hear and see, it is God's gift to them. This is true of all sight and of all hearing. They are gifts that are well designed. They are precious.

So precious are they, when God wanted to express the value and beauty of what God would do in sending a redeemer to bring His people back from sin, He inspired His prophets to use the image of healing the blind and the deaf to symbolize what would happen when those who believe would see and accept the will of the Lord and hear and understand His plan for creation and for eternity. (cf. Is. 29: 18 - 20; 35: 4,5).

Each day in our morning newspaper and each evening in our world news we see ample evidence of the fact there are many problems and much unhappiness and difficulties in our current world and in the lives of individuals near and far. God knows it all, better than we. "Who gives one man speech and makes another deaf and dumb?...Is it not I, the Lord?"

But physical deafness and physical blindness in the Bible are symbols of spiritual effects of sin. God has an answer for the problem of physical evil. We have to answer for sin. But even in the face and fact of sin God is present. In the very beginning when the first sin was made God promised to come to take it away. (Gen. 3: 15).

The promise was given again and again. It was clarified in various images of conquering physical evil as a sign of what would happen when sin was forgiven and freedom from it won. We have been using these promises in our Advent readings . ( Is 2: 1 - 5; 11: 1 - 10; 7, 10 - 14). Then at a certain moment of history all God's promises were fulfilled and given a personal name. Jesus was born. In Him all God's promises are fulfilled. He is the perfect YES to the Father's will, the perfect divine-human achievement of the Father's plan.

Jesus heals the blind and the deaf not so much so that people could hear sound and see color but that they would be touched by God and know God's power and love. The sounds and colors we see and hear are passing. The power and love of God are eternal. It takes wisdom to know this, goodness to accept it, and generoity to give it to others. That is why if I had the choice, I would rather receive the gift of wisdom goodness and generosity than the gift of better hearing.

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus this year may it be an occasion for us all to appreciate more clearly and deeply the identity of Jesus as the fulfillment of all God's promises, to each of us individually and to all of us throughout the world, promises of peace, justice,mercy, goodness, eternal happiness, and love. Only in Jesus are these promises perfectly fulfilled. United to Him they are fulfilled in us. That is the Father's plan. What tremendous wisdom, goodness, and generosity! It is the gift of Christmas! Come. Lord Jesus !

BLOG # 91 Advent 2, 2010

Blog # 91 Advent 2, 2010 If one day this week while digging in the back yard I found a million dollars wrapped in a package, you could use some of it, right? Well, actually I found more than a million dollars, and I want to share it with you as we continue to prepare for Christmas. In the case of the million dollars I would have had to be digging, be able to recognize a dollar, and be able to count to a million in order to know what I had done and what had happened in my life. So with what I actually discovered. I needed to be looking searching working, open focused available and other possible descriptive words for the incident to happen. I would also have had to be able to recognize a value that was beyond sight sound touch taste and smell to recognize the value I had found. This is just as I would have had to recognize what money can buy to recognize what I had found if I had found a million dollars, in itself just paper but for someone who knows, a much more valuable reality than paper in the reality it represents and in what it has the power to accomplish. What I found was an egg. A gold egg? No, just an egg. I found it in a nest I had set up in a pen where I keep six chickens hatched out six months ago . I was happy to find it and took it into the house. The next morning I was preparing to have it for breakfast and I began to think about the whole incident while waiting for the egg to boil. What do you think I found when I cracked it open? Right, an egg, just like so many other eggs I had had for breakfast these many years of my life. But this egg, here in the season of preparing for the celebration of the birth of Jesus was beginning to be special. Size shape color texture and taste were very much the same as any egg. Egg white egg yolk right in the center. The same. The difference began to show IN MY RESPONSE to the egg. I began to ask what it really was, beyond what I saw, the why of it, and how it came to be. The egg was not in the nest yesterday and the mother hen was herself merely an egg six months ago. A perfect shape, the color of the yolk just right, the wonderful taste of a fresh egg. What all went into it was the question on my mind. Time, merely six months, corn earth water sunshine and grass all must have had something to do with my egg. But none of these nor all of them together could explain sufficiently the fact the egg was so much like all other eggs in size and shape color and taste. None of the chickens in that pen had ever laid eggs before this one. They could not have been the teacher. Who taught the mother hen how to make an egg? Yes, the corn and grass water and sunshine had something to do with it, but not all of it nor in themselves. To think there was not some reality beyond these would have been like receiving a package in the mail from someone who lives in Chicago and thinking it came merely from the local post office. So I let my mind be touched by God and began to imagine and praise the Designer, Gift-giver, Someone-Who-Loves-Me, Creator, Wisdom, Goodness, Presence, my God. I had discovered something far more valuable than a million dollars in that egg. Scripture texts began to come to mind. "Look to the birds of the air..." and to chickens. "The Father cares for them...how much more you!" May you discover many 'eggs' in your life! May all that you call your own remind you of the Lord and call you to praise thanks and joy. May Jesus, God-Among-Us, the Father's Greatest Gift, be your teacher and your friend. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HIM, in us ! Christmas, 1989.