Today, in Mercy, one line from our readings hit me like a lightening bolt:
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.
Yes, it’s the truth! God will keep coming back again and again to encourage us to hear his true message for our lives.
Our Gospel gives us a hint about how resistant we sometimes are to this deep listening:
This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah.
What is the sign of Jonah anyway?
To put it simply, it is the witness of the Resurrection – that overarching event that changed everything for believers. For just as Jonah was able to return from certain death in the whale’s belly, so Christ conquered death and rose to new life, promising us the same power.
This is the central, life-changing belief for Christians. It should make a difference in how we live.
By our Lenten repentance, we can be like Jonah, grasping the second chance God always gives us to respond to our life circumstances with faith, hope, and love.
I would bet there is something in your life right now that is calling you to such a response. Someplace in your life, you may be caught in a bit of a “whale’s belly 🐳” about some issue, am I right?
God makes us ask ourselves questions most often when He intends to resolve them. He gives us needs that He alone can satisfy, and awakens capacities that He means to fulfill. Any perplexity is liable to be a spiritual gestation, leading to a new birth and a mystical regeneration.”― Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas
Today’s readings remind us that we already have the glorious sign of the Resurrection to inspire us to leap from that dark “belly” into God’s hope for us!
Music:a fun song “In the Belly ofWhale” – The Newsboys
Today, in Mercy, we encounter themes of creation, life, temptation, sin, death, and repentance. I’d say that’s a pretty loaded Sunday!
We start out with the simple, but heavily misinterpreted, story of Adam and Eve. This creation myth shared by Judea-Christian and Islamic religions serves as a foundation of these great faith traditions.
The story is often the first we learn as we are introduced to our family’s faith practice. We imagine Adam and Eve as historically real personalities and the snake as a flesh and blood devil. Some of us never get beyond that elementary understanding of the story.
A few decades ago, I taught New Testament Studies to a class of men aspiring to become deacons. During the session on today’s reading from Romans, a discussion arose about whether an entire human race could descend from just a “first man and woman”. When I pointed out that the creation story uses mythical elements to represent a broader reality, one man reacted adamantly. He could not imagine that there were not a specific “Adam” and “Eve”, but that instead these names represented humankind in their evolving relationship with God. The thought was so shattering to him that he dropped the class.
That made me sad. But it also caused me to focus on the creation story myself to examine ways in which I might be missing or blocking its deep spiritual significance. Is it really just about temptation, sin, punishment, and death? Or is there a much deeper message for our faith?
One of my go-to theologians has helped me significantly. Walter Brueggemann says this about our consideration of the Creation Story:
Like the people in this narrative, our concern is not finally the danger of sex, the origin of evil, the appearance of death, or the power of the fall. It is, rather, the summons of this calling God for us to be his creatures, to live in his world on his terms.
We struggle throughout our lives to understand God and God’s ways – to live on God’s terms. We will never accomplish it.We will always meet the “snakes” of questions like:
Why is there evil in the world?
Why does God let innocent people suffer?
Why is “this” (Whatever trial) happening to me?
Why did he or she have to die so young?
Why don’t the bad people die instead?
Why? Why? Why?
We want KNOWLEDGE – just what the “serpent” facetiously offered from the forbidden tree!
But this beautiful creation story teaches us that what God desires from us is not knowledge but rather TRUST – trust to live in the unfolding, but never fully-unfolded, mystery of God’s faithfulness to us.
So much in us wants to pluck the magic apple that will make us the “gods” of our existence, controlling life as we would like it to be.
God says instead that we should trust, and delight in sitting under the mysterious, nurturing tree of God’s irreversible, covenantal love – the same love Jesus trusts in today’s challenging Gospel.
Music: Nothing I Hold on To – Will Reagan ( Listen to it like a mantra and let your breathing synch to it. Breathe in Love. Breathe out Trust. No apples necessary.)
Today, in Mercy, Isaiah cuts his listeners no slack — and we too are his listeners.
In this powerful passage, the prophet shatters the pretenses of those who make a show of religion. Speaking with God’s voice, Isaiah lambastes those who fast and pray but practice no works of justice and mercy.
“Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers. Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw.”
These “fake fasters” are left wondering why God doesn’t answer their prayers. The prophet tells them that God isn’t fooled by their pretenses:
Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Isaiah says that God’s not into sackcloth and ashes. God’s into good works of mercy and justice. These are the actions that change our hearts, opening us to deeper relationship with God.
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.
Listen, dear friends. It can’t be clearer than that.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
In a world full of prosperity gospels, false piety and pretend religion – used to justify all kinds of injustice – we may get mixed up sometimes about what pleases God.
Let’s really open our hearts to Isaiah’s message and try to rid our own lives of any pretense about these things.
Let’s confront such hypocrisy when we see it used to subtly oppress rather than to lift up others.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed.
Perhaps we might spend sometime today thinking about that “wound” we need healed. Might there be some harbored prejudice, indifference, fear, or ignorance that distances us from others who are different, vulnerable, or in need?
Isaiah cautions that until that wound is healed, we will never hear God’s true answer to our prayers.
Music: Respond – Collin Campbell (Lyrics below)
Oh how long will you cry out
And never truly seek my face
You come to me with heavy hearts
But you ignore what makes mine break
I see your thoughts, I hear your words
And I have watched you as you’ve prayed
I’ve told you my desires
But you don’t follow all the way
Children, I’m crying out
Break the chains
Let the oppressed go free
Empty yourselves to those in need
Be my hands Be my feet
What you do unto them You do unto Me
Every day you lift your voice
And await my swift response
But I see only what’s inside
And it’s (what i see on the inside) an offering I don’t want
Children, I’m crying out
Break the chains
Let the oppressed go free
Empty yourselves to those in need
Be my hands Be my feet
What you do unto them You do unto Me
Then your Salvation will come like the dawn
And my glory will be your shield
When you call on My name I will not turn away
I am Your God And I am here
And your light it will shine from the dark
You will be like a free flowing stream
And when you call on My name I will not turn away
I am your God And I am here
Today, in Mercy, our readings confirm that a life patterned on Christ contradicts worldly definitions.
Deuteronomy gives us stark, either-or, advice:
I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.
It’s definitive, but we could probably do that, right? Choose life, love God, heed God’s voice, hold fast to God? Sounds OK, doesn’t it?
It’s when Jesus comes along that it sounds difficult.
Jesus tells us, “Here’s how you choose life –
“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
Jesus tells us, “Here’s the God you must love, one who
“suffers greatly, is rejected, and is killed.”
Jesus tells us, “Here’s what my voice says to you –
“What profit is there for you to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit yourself?”
Jesus tells us, “Here’s how you hold fast to me –
‘Take up your cross daily and follow me.”
Some have huge crosses to carry in their lives – perhaps famine, enslavement, untended illness, homelessness, persecution, poverty. Those who carry such crosses are singularly loved by God who dwells with them.
But if we don’t have big, obvious crosses in our lives – if we are among those the world deems fortunate – how do we follow the crucified Jesus to find our way to eternal life?
How do we really CHOOSE LIFE?
We need to get close to the ones God singularly loves. We need to walk beside them and lift some of their heavy crosses. We need to help their voices be heard, their needs be met, their rights be honored.
Not all of us can do this by direct service. But we can do it by our advocacy, our material contributions, and our articulated support for justice.
We need to make these choices for life all the time. But Lent is a great time to examine the vigor and commitment of our choices, a time to take a closer walk with our suffering Christ and ask him to inspire our courage.
Music:Just a Closer Walk with Thee – Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson
Today, in Mercy, we are creeping up to Lent’s doorstep.
Are you beginning to consider your Lenten rituals? Our readings today might help orient us.
They leave this question hanging in the air: Who do I really want to be in my life?
James says that if we are someone who loves the world, we will find ourselves at enmity with God. James defines “the world” as a place in discord, conflicted by covetousness, envy, frustration, and death-dealing.
James is directly addressing damaging squabbles within the Church itself. Infighting has caused fractures within his believing community. Failures in mutual charity and sincere prayer have generated “wars” among the members.
Why would anybody choose to contribute to such a negative environment?
James pins it on one thing: jealousy. We are jealous to be, have, control, and possess more than others. We are tempted by power, riches and esteem. We want our opinions to be honored, our needs to be met above and before others.
The reality exists today as well, as we know too well.
We see it in the Church from factions who want to bend the Gospel to their own agenda.
We see it within and between nations who raise the advantage of some over the welfare of others.
We see it in families, businesses, and social circles where individuals volley for position, influence, or control over others.
These conflicts pour out in criticism, judgements, biases, shunning, and all kinds of failures in compassion, respect, and honesty. They blind us to our common creaturehood in God, and to its demand for an equity of love, mercy, and justice.
Otherwise,
How could we ever kill or enslave one another, either by aggression or neglect?
How could we separate parents from their children and put babies in cages?
How could we participate in a global economic tyranny that leaves some without land, homes, health care, or hope?
How could we use other human beings – or their vital resources – only for our own pleasure, power or enrichment?
Most of us do not outrightly choose these sinful behaviors. But we must ask ourselves to what degree we are complicit in them by our failures in just judgement, advocacy, political responsibility, globally sustainable choices, — just plain care and reverence for all human beings, all Creation.
The approach of Lent is a great time to revisit the question James hangs in the air for us:
Who do I really want to be in my life?
Do I need to make changes to do that?
How can I prepare for a Lent that helps me make those Grace-filled changes?
We are grown-ups now, and our Lenten repentances demand more than those we learned in grade school. Fasting from candy won’t cut it anymore.
How about we fast from cable news that feeds our biases?
Or actually do something for our parish besides critique the Sunday sermon?
Maybe give up some of our polluting behaviors requiring plastic and other non-recyclables?
How about including a outsider in something where they are otherwise ignored?
Or providing for someone’s need who would hesitate to ask for your attention?
I think James would approve of choices like that because he says:
God bestows a greater grace; therefore, it says: God resists the proud,
but gives grace to the humble. So submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Music: When It’s All Been Said and Done – Robin Mark
Today, in Mercy, the deep undercurrent of our readings is about the power and difficulties of faith.
James talks about how our faith can be choked by the weeds of “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition”. These chokers make us “boast and be false to the truth”. They fill us with a “pretend wisdom” that is not from the Holy Spirit.
Praying with this passage, I asked myself why we allow these ugly constraints to grasp our souls when the alternative James describes is so beautiful:
… the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.
The Gospel helped me with an answer.
Unconditional faith is scary. It requires us to give control over to God. It asks us to let go of fear and to trust God’s Spirit within us. It needs us to empty our hearts of pretense and self-protection in order to make room for God’s transforming Mercy and Love.
This kind of faith will change us. It will make us “foolish” and insecure in worldly terms. It will cause us to live from a Wisdom the world misunderstands and mocks.
It’s hard to live that kind of faith. The dad in today’s Gospel admits it. He wants to have a faith that invites Christ’s power into his life. But he’s afraid. What if God wants something different for him and his son? What happens if he gives control over to God?
This yearning father confesses his ambivalence in a plea for Christ’s assistance:
We all find ourselves within that plea sometimes in our lives. It’s a faith of “if”, “maybe”, and “but” – all of which are hardly faith at all. Unconditional faith is “Yes”, no matter what. It is the place where Faith and Love merge.
Our faithful “Yes”, as the e.e.cummings poem might describe it:
love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds
Music:When we live this “Yes Faith”, God’s love, God’s heart lives in us. This song by Michael Hedges, based on another poem by e.e.cummings, can be a prayer for us. We may be unused to calling God “my dear”, “my darling”. But a loving name for God can be helpful to our prayer. Substitute what works for you. Don’t be hesitant about being in love with God❤️
I Carry Your Heart – Michael Hedges (Lyrics below)
I carry your heart with me
I carry it in my heart
I am never without it
Anywhere i go you go, my dear
And whatever is done by only me
Is your doing, my darling.
I fear no fate
For you are my fate, my sweet
I want no world
For beautiful you are my world, my true
And it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
And whatever a sun will always sing is you
Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
Here is the root of the root
And the bud of the bud
And the sky of the sky
Of a tree called life;
Which grows higher than the soul can hope
Or mind can hide
And this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart
I carry it in my heart
Today, in Mercy, our readings are around the theme of our spiritual senses.
James tells us to listen, look, see, and act on the Word planted within our hearts. Once again, he gives us great images to help our understanding.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like.
If anyone thinks he is religious
and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, his religion is vain.
In our Gospel, once again our dear, earthy Jesus heals someone in a deeply human way. Jesus takes the blind man aside, holding his hand to lead him. As he did in a passage recently, Jesus spits on his fingers and massages the blind man’s eyes.
The man tries to work with Jesus, exclaiming that he sees “people like trees walking”.
I’ve always loved that line because it makes me feel like I’m right there, listening to the man’s amazement!
As we pray this morning, we might wonder what Jesus said back to that overwhelmed man as they sat together. What might he say to us as he lifts one of our many blindnesses from our hearts?
Music:I See Men As Trees Walking – Johnny Cash (lyrics below)
Today, in Mercy, James continues with his spiritual encouragements.
For one thing, he makes it clear that God doesn’t tempt us. Some of us make the mistake of thinking that, saying things like, “God is testing me.”
James, outlining a perfect way to examine one’s conscience, says this:
No one experiencing temptation should say, “I am being tempted by God”; for God is not subject to temptation to evil, and God himself tempts no one. Rather, each person is tempted when lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death.
I don’t really like to talk about sins; I’d probably much rather commit them!!!! So if we have some little labyrinths of temptation and sinful habits ensnaring us, we should listen to James. He encourages us to examine and check our own concupiscentdesires as they are the seeds of our spiritual undoing.
In my experience, these desires are usually disguised, pretending to be beneficial for us at first sight. But underneath, they are rooted in selfishness and excess, deviating us from our center in God. Just think how some of the famous ones have masqueraded into our lives: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Greed, Wrath (Vengeful Anger).
In the second part of this passage, James takes the tone up a notch. He reminds us that, once centered on God, we realize that only good things come from God.
All good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.
I particularly love that last phrase, rendered in our hymn today like this:
It’s beautiful to see how James, as a real spiritual leader, is so aware of his flock’s human struggles. No doubt, he shares them. What a blessing that his wise and loving guidance has come down through the ages to us!
Today, in Mercy, our readings leave me wondering about what makes God tick.
In our first reading, God exacts justice for Solomon’s unfaithfulness, but He does it sort of like a prosecutor in a plea bargain.
I will deprive you of the kingdom … but not during your lifetime It is your son whom I will deprive … but I won’t take away the whole kingdom.
What’s going on with God in this reading? Well, it’s more like “What’s going on with the writer as he tries, retrospectively, to interpret God’s role in Israel’s history?”
The passage is much more than a report on exchanges between God and Solomon.
It is a testament to Israel’s unwavering faith that God is intimately involved in their lives. In every circumstance, the believing community returns to the fact that experience leads to God and not away from Him.
So “Solomon … had TURNED his heart to strange gods” BUT God had not turned from Solomon. Nor would God EVER turn because God has CHOSEN Israel.
In our Gospel, the Syrophoenician woman tries to get the favor of Jesus to turn toward her. And actually, Jesus sounds pretty mean and stingy about it.
Again the writer Mark is portraying, retrospectively, a significant time in Christ’s ministry. Jesus has really gone into hiding in a remote place. Apparently, he wants space to figure some things out. The story indicates that one of those things might be whether or not his ministry should embrace the Gentiles.
The persistence of this woman’s faith is a turning point for Jesus Who evolved, as we all do, in his understanding of his sacred role and meaning in the world.
These passages encourage us to constantly turn toward God Who lives our life with us. Such conversation helps us to grow spiritually. As we become bigger in heart and soul, so does our concept of God and what God’s hope is for us.
Music: Perfect Wisdom of Our God – The Gettys (See poem after music video)
All this “turning” brought to mind some favorites lines from T.S. Eliot:
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I happened across a website where Eliot himself reads “Burnt Norton”, the poem from which these lines are taken. Eliot fans might enjoy this. Eliot’s poems take time and work as well as simple reading. But the effort is so worth it!
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
Wtih slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plentitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Dessication of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
the black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
V
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always —
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
Today, in Mercy, we read about the massive celebration to dedicate Solomon’s Temple. It would have been a ceremony akin to the parades we view in movies like Ben Hur.
This video gives us a good understanding of the magnificence of the building.
Praying with the passage today, core questions repeat themselves to me:
Can God be in a building?
Is there a legitimate spiritual purpose to the cathedrals, large or small, that we build?
For me, the answer is a fluid one. Certainly, beautiful churches inspire our faith and serve as a central symbol for the unity of believers.
But throughout history, these buildings have also symbolized individual and national power, pride and greed.
A recent initiative of Pope Francis converted a 19th century palace behind the Vatican into a homeless shelter. The Pope directed this rather than the site’s upgrade to a luxurious hotel.
The building is described as having “carved wooden ceilings, frescoed walls and tiled floors — evidence of its aristocratic origins.” Sharing a meal with its first residents, Pope Francis said, “Beauty heals”.
Such healing is the real purpose of all such buildings – that their beauty heal hearts, communities, and nations. Where the purpose is lost, excess eviscerates the healing beauty.
At points in the Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the Temple – instructing his disciples that God’s Presence now dwells in the world through him. Today’s Gospel shows us how this Presence manifests itself – through the power of compassion and justice for the poor:
Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.
Where God is present there is always healing. May it be so in our churches and in our hearts.
A few decades ago, I taught New Testament Studies to a class of men aspiring to become deacons. During the session on today’s reading from Romans, a discussion arose about whether an entire human race could descend from just a “first man and woman”. When I pointed out that the creation story uses mythical elements to represent a broader reality, one man reacted adamantly. He could not imagine that there were not a specific “Adam” and “Eve”, but that instead these names represented humankind in their evolving relationship with God. The thought was so shattering to him that he dropped the class.
Lavish Mercy 