There is a real problem with any attempt to reflect on the word “obedience.” That problem can be summed up by the observation that all of the books on “obedience” over at Barnes & Noble seem to be in the Dog section. We generally look at obedience as putting aside our own identity, turning off the thought process, turning our will over to someone else entirely. Great for dogs. Not for humans. As Catholics, we also have a little history here, and we suspect that this idea of “obedience” can be a code word for turning off your brain and just accepting what you’re told. I know that when I…
-
-
Today’s readings introduce two words that we all have difficulty with but that are part of what we need to confront as Lent draws to a close and all our preparation for Easter begins to reach a climax. The two words are suffering, and obedience. St. Paul’s second reading links the two in that mysterious phrase that we still puzzle over: “through suffering, he learned obedience.” And in this Gospel, from the Gospel of John just before Jesus faces his passion and death, which we face with him next weekend when Holy Week begins, we see Jesus himself struggling with this idea that suffering and obedience are a necessary part…
-
A lot of people are uncomfortable reading the book of psalms. Not all of the psalms, but a lot of them. For example, everyone likes the 23rd psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd.” It is comforting to think of God that way, as a shepherd, and a good number of the psalms are psalms of comfort, or of quiet confidence, or of happiness, even occasionally some good advice. But many of the psalms are desperate. The largest group of them, in fact, are lamentations. They are songs about things that have been lost, about an empire that seems to have gone to pieces, of enemies that are on every side…
-
If you are a deacon, then today’s first reading is clearly the one that you have to address: It’s the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, part 2 of Luke’s gospel, and in it the 12 apostles decide that their many duties are leading them to neglect the service of some of the widows and the other needy in the early church. So they asked the community to choose 7 others who would take over some of the apostles’ duties in these works of charity and administration. By long tradition, these 7 – Stephen, Philip and the others – we regard as the first deacons. So there is your…
-
Today’s gospel shouldn’t really be separated from the gospel reading we heard last week; it’s Part Two of a story that is all one. Last week, Jesus stood up in the temple in his hometown, to read the scriptures at the liturgy, and he read from the prophet Isaiah, who told people that he’d been sent to proclaim freedom and good news to captives, and it picks up today, when Jesus tells his listeners that Isaiah’s prophecy is being fulfilled right in front of them. They clearly don’t understand that he is talking about himself, because it says that his audience is pleased at his eloquence, the same way that…
-
We have to admit it up front that there are problems with the image of sheep and shepherd. Despite the fact that the 23rd Psalm, ‘The Lord is My Shepherd,” is everyone’s favorite, of course it makes us sheep, and if we think about it a little too long, even city kids know what that means. On a sheep behavior Web site I found called Sheep 101, one of the first things it says is this: “When one sheep moves, the rest will follow, even if it is not a good idea.” It illustrates this with an incident just last year in Turkey when 400 sheep plunged over a steep…
-
Maybe it’s because I had a big birthday this past week, but I have been thinking a lot about the future. And I have to say that in a lot of ways, I found that except as a source of worry and anxiety I don’t think much about the future at all. Even if you haven’t been ragged on all week about age, as I have, maybe you feel the same way. We have a tendency to see the future in two ways. One is to hate the future, to regard the way the world is going as pretty much hostile and out of control, at best drifting, and probably…
-
I suspect that if you haven’t already, you will end up seeing at some point this coming week, whether you want to or not, at least some of that Christmas favorite on television, It’s a Wonderful Life. You don’t need me to tell you the plot, about how the small-town banker who is about to lose his business sees a vision of how the world would have turned out if he had never lived. Of course, what he finds in this vision of an entirely different future is that without him, not only did his wife end up not marrying him, but his entire family was different, his friends less…
-
Angels are big business, these days. Barnes & Noble has a whole angel section. More importantly, it’s a big week coming up for angels generally, the message of the angels to the shepherds that will make us smile, as it should, when we hear it on Tuesday night, and of course today’s angel appearing to Mary. Yet despite all these books and gorgeous paintings and Christmas cards, we live pretty angel-free lives, and this last Sunday of Advent is a time to think about why. Angels are in fact a perfect sign of what this week asks us to remember. Because there is a thread that runs through today, and…
-
Some of you have probably had the experience I had this week of having something at work come up that completely disrupted and reorganized everything I had planned. I had to make a trip out of town with some other people from work, they set the time and the agenda, it came up on no notice, and I had to drop everything and go. It messed me up but good, and a lot of plans went by the boards. Doctors’ appointments, pleasant lunches, meetings, other trips, things at home, I spent as much time on the phone changing it all as I would have at the actual events themselves. I…