This Week's Blog......
Introducing
'Lectionary Musings'
Since January of 2007, I have been involved in some kind of sharing of thoughts and ideas from Holy Scripture. Each day, at each Catholic liturgy, there are usually two, sometimes three Scripture passages that follow the life of Christ throughout the year. Ordinarily, the first reading is from the Old Testament, though it might be from a Letter of Paul’s, the Book of Acts, or Revelation. The second reading is always from one of the four gospels. A link to these readings is posted below this Blog.
Originally our sharings were by E-mail, but at some point we began posting them on this web page, that is to say, as a regular feature of “What’s new at St. Benedict’s Farm?” Up to now, we published these sharings as “Fragments from the Daily Lectionary.” Beginning today, they will be called, “Lectionary Musings.” What is the difference? you might ask.
In this new format, we will tend to follow a single thought or strand. Before we made an attempt to relate the two readings, to see how each might profitably speak to a given theme. This is useful, but also very challenging. I believe the change of format will bring these reflections closer in spirit to the Lectio Divina I do each day. In other words, the ideas will come more from my Prayer Basket than my teacher’s notebook.
In my Lectio, I customarily select whatever word, phrase, verse or short passage that happens to strike my fancy. Then – in prayer – I meditate on that small portion of the readings, as I lift up to whatever ideas are generated to God. Essentially that is what we will be doing from here on out in this space each week. What comes out of these sharings will necessarily be somewhat by chance … “a pig in a poke,” as they say. But as always we don’t want to walk to God alone! Feel free to react, add to, challenge or build on whatever we say.
Blessings …and the Peace of Christ be with you. --- Brother Caedfile
Note: Our daily-reading reflections are made from the readings of each day's liturgy, as posted at Today's Readings. Doubleclick on the day's calendar date and the readings will appear. Since moving from an E-mail to a Web Posting of these commentaries, we do not hear from as many of you as of old. We are posting our E-mail address here. So if you have a reaction, whatever it might be, we invite you as always, send email to John of SBF . You can find some of Brother Caedfiles older Blogs on the Google blogsite at Brother Caedfile speaks. Blessings to all. John
March Update: Below our weekday Musings, we describe a plan for a very simple kind of Christian Outreach. We spoke about this in our Blog last week, and we will have more to say about it next month. We see this Outreach plan as a ministry that any Christian church -- or even and organization within a church -- might undertake, be you Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox or "whatever." It's a very simple concept: Hand out "a good word" along with some type of social ministry. Read the selection below this week's Musings for a fuller explanation. Your feedback on this idea, as always,is welcome and will be appreciated. By and by we will return in the space below to reporting on our book project, "Father in the Church," the writings and witness of George R. Gannon (1928-1996), founder of St. Benedict's Farm.
Monday, March 15: Jesus - ‘The new earth’
Isaiah 65:17-21; Psalm 30; John 4:43-54: It’s one of my very favorite verses, Isaiah 65: 17: Thus says the LORD: “Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered.” We find ‘new heavens and a new earth’ also in Revelation 21:1, and in both cases the words refer to the afterlife. After “all things have passed away,” will come ‘the new heavens and the new earth.’ Note well: the ‘new heavens’ are plural, but the ‘new earth’ is singular. I believe this helps us identify the ‘new earth’ with the resurrected body of Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God, perhaps that most essential idea in the Gospel, is co-extensive with Jesus Christ raised. On the other hand, ‘new heavens’ is plural, helping us to see it as signifying all the Elect who dwell in this ‘new earth,’ the body of the living resurrected Christ. In both places where the expression “new heavens and a new earth” occur, Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21, an image that sits alongside it is 'the new Jerusalem,' a favorite Biblical figure for the Kingdom realized. This is the new place the Most High God shall abide forever. The “old place” – where God dwelt with his People in the desert -- was the Ark of the Covenant. On Israel’s journey out of Egypt, through the desert, into the Promised Land, the Ark of the Covenant symbolized God dwelling with them. Jeremiah’s prophecy about the Ark points us to ‘the new heavens and the new earth,’ and in similar language. Compare the two: Jeremiah predicts: “They will in those days no longer say, ‘The Ark of the Covenant of the LORD!’ They will no longer think of it, or remember it, or miss it, or make another.” (Jeremiah 3:16b) Note the resemblance to Isaiah’s words: “Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered.” Why not remembered? Because -- safely lodged in the new Ark of the Covenant -- we will be in the midst of God’s joyful embrace, where “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the human heart what things God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9; Isaiah 64:3) Amen, and God bless.
Tuesday, March 16: "Do you want to be well?"
Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12; Psalm 46; John 5:1-16: It might seem like an obvious question to ask a man who has been lying crippled for 38 years! “Do you want to be well?” But clearly Jesus had something more in mind than just restoring this person’s twisted limbs. For after curing those long crippled limbs, Jesus confronts the man -- now able to move about for the first time in 38 years! -- in the temple area. Jesus warns: “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” In speaking to the cured man like this, Jesus was wishing him ‘Shalom,’ the Hebrew word for ‘peace.’ ‘Shalom’ means possessing – not just freedom from this or that problem – but wholeness, wellness in one’s total being. Shalom means possessing that fulfillment God wants for each of us, here and hereafter. What did Shalom mean for Jesus? Listen: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is may anguish until it is accomplished.” (Luke 12:49-50) Do we need to recall here that this ‘baptism’ included going to the Cross!? This is holy anguish, to be totally restless until one completes the work God gives us to do. Somewhere in his letters, Paul proclaims: “Woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel!” Is this not a fertile issue for our meditation? What task are you ‘anguished’ to complete? What Shalom is God calling me to embrace? “Do you, do I, really want to be well?”
Wednesday, March 17: God’s Amazing Work
Isaiah 49:8-15; Psalm 145; John 5:17-30: In our gospel today, Jesus tells us he “cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing …For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed.” The reading begins with a testimony that both the Father and the Son are “workers.’ Listen: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” How does God work? By sending forth his word, even as we read in Genesis: “God said, let there be light, and there was light.” The Hebrew word for “word” is Da-Bar; scholars tell us da-bar signifies an action, more than it does letters that stand for a sound. God’s word amazes, because it is effective, as the prophet testifies: “Like rain and snow that come down and produce seed and bread, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11) Consider further that most important word the Father spoke -- the Word Made Flesh -- and those two "words" we will soon celebrate, Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection! On that “first day of the week” when the women came to the tomb with spices and found it empty, Jesus appeared to his disciples. He “showed them his hands and his feet” – the unmistakable nail marks! Luke writes: While they were still incredulous of joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them. Amazing indeed!
Thursday, March 18: ‘Cloud of Witnesses’
Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 106; John 5:31-47: The bitter battle between Jesus and “the Jews,” as the Evangelist calls them, strikes me as profoundly sad: “He came into his own, but his own did not receive him.” (John 1:11) As this bitter battle plays out in today’s gospel, we see a magnificent array of things/ people who do “testify to Jesus.” Early in this reading, Jesus reminds the Jews they sent emissaries to John the Baptist, asking him if he, John, was the Messiah (John 1:19), and the Baptist “testified to the truth.” Jesus added: “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true. But there is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he gives on my behalf is true.” Who else could this ‘another’ be, but the Holy Spirit, as the Lord promised the Apostles in his Last Supper discourse: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me.” (John 15:26) Then referring to the Apostles themselves, he said, “And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.” (John 15:27; see also, Acts 1:5) Next, Jesus points out to the Jews, “The works that the Father gave me to accomplish ‘testify on my behalf.’” Again in this word battle, he cries, “Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf.” At both Jesus baptism, and again at the Transfiguration, the Father’s voice is heard from heaven, as recorded in all three Synoptic gospels. Lastly Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf.” In these Scriptures, Moses speaks of Jesus. So he chides the Jews further: “For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. (Deut 18:15) But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” In view of this ‘cloud of witnesses,’ dear brothers and sisters, let us hasten to heed the voice of the Father on the Mount of Transfiguration: “This is my Beloved Son; listen to him.” (Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35)
Friday, March 19: ‘Father of us all’
2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16; Psalm 89; Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22; Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a: : As the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, so, we read today, the Angel of the Lord appears to Joseph, as he is minded to “put away” Mary, after discovering her pregnancy: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her.” Like Mary, Joseph believed the word of the Lord, “and he took his wife into his home.” This act may have saved Mary from condemnation by the Law of Moses, for death was the penalty for adultery. In our reading from Romans, Paul makes this remarkable comparison: “It was not through the law that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants that he would inherit the world, but through the righteousness that comes from faith.” We see that faith in action in both Mary and Joseph. In this same reading, Paul likewise comes to this remarkable conclusion: Our Salvation “depends on faith, so that it may be a gift, and the promise may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s descendants, not only to those who follow the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us, as it is written, ‘I have made you father of many nations.’” Here Paul is quoting Genesis 17:5, where God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, “Father of Many Nations.” The prophet Isaiah echoes this truth as in three verses, we read this remarkable compendium of the Gospel: “Listen to me, you who pursue justice, who seek the Lord; look to the rock from which you were hewn, to the pit from which you were quarried; look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth; when he was but one I called him, I blessed him and made him many. Yes, the LORD shall comfort Zion and have pity on all her ruins; her deserts he shall make like Eden, her wasteland like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of song.” (Isaiah 51:1-3) Amen.
This Idea Can Be Easily
Adapted by Any Christian Church
As noted above in today’s Blog, the idea for this Christian Outreach comes from Sirach 18:14-16: “Like dew that abates a burning wind, so does a word improve a gift. Sometimes the word means more than the gift.” The idea is quite simple. Every social ministry the Church takes up should be accompanied by “a word gift.” The word-gift envisioned for this Black-Eyed Pea outreach is a simple written testimony, which I will illustrate by and by.
This program can be done by a church…any Christian church, or by any organization within a Church, say for example, the Women’s guild. It has two parts: the Social Action element and the Testimonial part or element. The social ministry can be any number of things …food, clothing, medicine assistance; transportation; physical assistance such as lawn work, housework, babysitting, what-have-you. The idea is to offer to one’s friends and neighbors some expression of human caring, to go along with the spiritual caring the Church is meant to do as its number 1 mission.
Jesus said he came into this world “to bear witness to the truth,” and further, “to preach the Good News.” But in the process “he went about doing good.” We feel very strongly that the Church should imitate this hand-in-hand ministry today. We ought not to let our physical assistance to individuals be “just physical,” but it should include the bread of God’s word as well. And that’s where the ‘Black-Eyed Pea’ name comes from.
Like the Church in Gonzales, we have a Food Pantry at St. Patrick Church in Waelder, Texas. But I said to myself one day: “We should not give an individual or family as little as one can of Black-Eyed Peas without giving them a Christian testimony …some kind of “good word” from Jesus Christ, as well. Of course we must use “Salt” in this endeavor. If the can of Black-Eyed Peas is given to someone active in the Church already, the love shown itself is word enough. We will have more on this project in succeeding months.
Pancho, the Talking Donkey, says: Come back soon, ya hear!
Pancho
In honor of the PBS Detective of yesteryear, Brother Cadfael (say 'CAD-file'), we have adopted his persona for our blogs. Brother Cadfael also reminds me of my very favorite monk of yesteryear -- the Venerable Bede (672-735). Fr. Bede loved to study, teach and write about the word of God. He was a celebrated historian; his book on the Church in England is still being read and studied. He was interested in the natural sciences. This humble monk never travelled very far from his Northumbrian, England Monasteries of Sts. Peter and Paul.
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