Food for Thought---III

The Psalms certainly contain food for thought as we navigate through the threat of the corona virus. Here are some possible helps:

Come back, Yahweh, rescue [our] soul[s] (Ps 6:4).
Our strength,come quickly to [our] help (Ps 22:19).
Rise, Yahweh, save [us, our] God (Ps 13: 7).
Our soul awaits Yahweh; he is our help and shield       (Ps 33:20).
Now, break your silence, Yahweh....Do not let them     say, 'Now we have got him down' (Ps 35:22).
Assign your Love and Faithfulness to guard [us] 
  (Ps 81:7.
Verily,God is our shelter, our strength, ever ready         to help in time of trouble (Ps 46: 1).
I rely on you, do  not let me be shamed (Ps 25:2).
Relieve the distress of [our] heart[s], free [us] from     [our] suffering. See [our] misery and pain 
   (Ps 25:17).
Up,wake up, come to [our] defense, Lord, [our]          God, side with [us] (Ps 35: 23).
See, Yahweh is a stronghold when times are hard.       Those who acknowledge your name can rely on         you. You never desert those who seek you,               Yahweh (Ps 9-10: 9-10

Faith in Rough Times

In today's Gospel, Mark 5: 21-43, we encounter two persons who seek out Jesus, one a woman who has been "afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years, has suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors, and had spent all that she had" and the other a synagogue official whose 12-year-old daughter is seriously ill.   The woman hears about Jesus and is determined that if she only touches the hem of his garment she will be healed.  She "came up behind him in [a large]crowd and touched his cloak." Immediately she is healed and Jesus knew that power had left Him. "Who touched me," He asked. The woman realizes what has happened to her and approaches Jesus "in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth. He said to  her, 'Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.'"  At the same time, people from the synagogue official's house arrive and inform the official that his daughter has died and suggests that he stop bothering Jesus. "It is over," so to speak! Jesus says to the official: "Do not be afraid; just have faith." He proceeds to the official's house, enters the room where the little girl is and says to her:  "Little girl,..., arise!" She "arose immediately and walked around." And Jesus instructs her parents to give her something to eat!

Neither individual gives up!   Nor does Jesus!  In case of the woman, neither despair nor repeated failures stops her from getting close to Jesus and touching His cloak.  In regard to the synagogue official, he does not let the discouraging message from his people get between him and Jesus. Nor does he despair because he's been told that his daughter is dead. In the case of Jesus, the crowd taunts Him, as though saying to Him:  "Who touched you? For heaven's sake,  the crowd is pressing upon you!  Of course, someone brushed against your cloak!  Move on!" Jesus also ignores the people who proclaim that the little girl is dead. "Have faith," He say to the synagogue official!

Do you and I keep our eyes on Jesus? Or, do we let what others think and say dissuade us and lead us into despair? into giving up on Jesus?

"Take this Medicine!"

In today’s first reading, Tobit 11: 15-17 we have the continuation of the story of Tobit and Anna, whose son Tobiah just married Sarah, the daughter of Raguel.  Anna is eagerly awaiting her son’s return from the wedding , anxious to meet her new daughter-in-law, no doubt.  The angel Raphael is accompanying Tobiah on his return home. On the way the angel directs Tobiah to anoint his father’s eyes with fish gall and is certain he will see again.  “Tobiah went up to [his father] with the fish gall in his hand, and holding him firmly, blew into his eyes. ‘Courage, father,’ he said. Next he smeared the medicine on his eyes, and it made them smart. Then, beginning at the corners of Tobit’s eyes, Tobiah  used both hands to peel off the cataracts.” That took a lot of courage, trust and faith on Tobiah’s part as well as on the part of his father.

You and I might object and say to the angel “Do what? You’ve got to be kidding! I’m not doing that to my father.  He will think I am crazy! I’m not a physician. And what if that makes his eyes worst. He will then blame me.”  How often when God send His messengers to us to guide us in a certain way do we not object!  The suggestion itself “smarts” and, many times,  we do whatever we need do to avoid the pain to ourselves or to another. Perhaps someone needs to hear the truth that what he/she is doing is wrong, will lead to bad consequences for his/her family or for oneself, such as smoking marijuana or abusing alcohol or other drugs,  getting into pornography or keeping company with so and so and on and on. 

Doing what is right, many times, involves pain in the same way as bringing a child into the world involves pain. New life demands sacrifice. New beginnings are not easy!  Am I willing to undergo pain for a greater good? How strong is my faith and trust when I am directed to take a step that is difficult to take?

The Indescrible Pain of a Situational Depression

In today’s first reading, Job 3: 1-3, 11-17, 2023, Job curses the day that he was born. Sunk into a deep depression caused by the loss of everything—his children and his property—Job is so distraught that death seems to be the only solution to his indescribable pain.  “Why did I not perish at birth,” He asks the Lord. “Why is…life [given] to the bitter in spirit? They wait for death and it comes not; they search for it rather than for hidden treasures, rejoice in it exultingly and are glad when they reach the grave: those whose path is hidden from them, and whom God has hemmed in!”  Depression can be so painful that death seems like the only out.  In my deepest pain, I have said: “Lord, I understand why some people consider suicide.”  Job was at that point.

Both Job and the psalmist, in today’s responsorial psalm, Psalm 88, teach us how to bare our souls to the Lord  when we are in the pit of desolation: 

                                Let my prayer come before you;

                                Incline your ear to my call for help.

                                For my soul is surfeited with troubles

                                And my life draws near to the nether world.

                                I am numbered with those who go down into the pit;

                                I am a man [a woman, a young girl/boy] without strength.

                                My couch is among the dead,

                                Like the slain who lie in the grave,

                                …who are cut off from your care.

                                You have plunged me into the bottom of the pit,

                                Into the dark abyss....                             

When we are in such darkness, it is important not to minimize it. Others may do that in hopes of making us feel better. The fact is we are in pain.  That is what needs to be expressed in agonizing prayer (the way Jesus talked to His Father in Gethsemane). It also needs to be talked about with someone who is supportive and loving and doesn’t need to “fix” it.  Sometimes all the other can do is hold our hand. I read a book recently of a man suffering a serious situational depression. Besides seeing a professional counselor, what most helped him was the person who visited him daily and simply, with his permission, massaged his feet--that connection was the only connection he felt. The friend remained silent as he lovingly did the foot massage. He did not offer meaningless platitudes. He was supportive, as Mary was beneath the cross of Jesus, where she shared her Son’s powerlessness.

What do I do when  someone I love is suffering a darkness that I am powerless to remove?  Am I willing to be there without trying to “fix” it?  Or, do I stay away because I do not want to feel powerless with the person in a pit so deep that the solution  is out of reach at the moment?             

Continuous pain, Incurable woundedness

In today’s first reading, Jer 15: 10, 16-21, Jeremiah laments about having been born, sees himself as a person “of strife and contention.”  He complains that he neither borrows or lends yet “all curse me.”  He cries out in his pain, saying to the Lord: “Why is my pain continuous, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?”  How many people, I thought, are in that state of mind, tortured by emotional and psychological pain, traumatized by the violence of war, sitting in refugee camps, and so wounded by past traumas of sexual, physical, verbal and emotional abuse that their psyches remain, it seems, incurably wounded. 

The Lord responded to Jeremiah, asking him to repent of any wrongdoing and bring Him “the precious without the vile.”  Each and every person is the precious one in God’s sight. Before God, none of  us is despicable, wicked or loathsome.  In Christ Jesus we have been made clean, purified, healed and made whole.  Jesus Himself took our vile with Him when He entered Gethsemane. His agony was our agony,   as Jesus, the Son of God, lives in the Eternal Now.   Not only His agony in the Garden but also His crucifixion on the cross and his resurrection are our sufferings, our crucifixions and our resurrections, as, in Baptism, we died and rose with Christ. Before willingly going into His final hours,  Jesus prayed to His Father, and ours, that we would all be made one in Him as He and the Father are one. His prayer would not have fallen on deaf ears. You and I, if not now, later will know this oneness with the Lord and with one another. Vile will not separate us from the Lord.  On the cross,  Jesus set us  free us from that which defiles us, saying to the Father: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” when they commit evil or go astray. Jeremiah repented of any wrongdoing he might have done. 

May you and I repent of all that defiles our thinking or choosing or interacting with others and believe in the resurrection, accepting the grace of being set free.

Mary's Faith Journey: Her Questioning and Ours

Today we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  The Gospel tells the story of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus up to the temple on his 12th birthday. Jewish boys, at that time, become a bar miszvah, "literally a 'son of the commandment(s).'   He can then perform all the mitzvoth and is required to do so with full responsibility for his religious behavior. When the boy is first 'called up' to the Torah, symbolic of his attainment of majority, the father utters a blessing commemorating this transition to adulthood."  Following the ceremony, Jesus stays behind in the Temple. Mary and Joseph leave Jerusalem, thinking that Jesus is in the caravan with the other parent.  He is not!  Mary and Joseph spend three terrifying days looking for him, Mary no doubt recalling Simeon's prophesy that Jesus is destined to be the cause of the rise and fall of many in Israel and a sword [of sorrow] will pierce her heart.

We read about the terror any parent goes through when a child is abducted, kidnapped, lost.  Mary and Joseph are no exception.  They find Jesus after a three-day search and Mary says to Jesus: "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety" (Luke 2: 41-51).  And Jesus responds: "Why were  you looking for me?"  That response must have baffled Mary and Joseph, I would think. The Scriptures tell us that "they did not understand what he said to them."  He left the Temple and returned to Nazareth with His parents, and "was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart."

We next meet Mary in the Scriptures when she and "his brothers come looking for him"(Mt. 12:46). Rumors  were such that his relatives wondered whether Jesus had lost his mind--had he gone crazy, being so involved in his ministry that he did not take time to eat. And finally, the next appearance of Mary is beneath the cross, where Jesus says to her: Woman, behold your son; Son, behold your mother"--all of us are entrusted to her care and she becomes the Mother of the Church!

Mary's faith journey was anything but simple or easy. Every parent knows Mary's pain and the burden  and responsibilities of parenthood--they do not disappear when a child enters adulthood.

The question we may want to ponder is: what does Mary teach us about parenthood, about being there for a  child, or anyone,  in trouble, about dealing with life on God's terms?

From darkness to light: who will show us the way?

This past week was a week of terror for Bostonians, a week that thrust many into the darkness of tragedy.  Lives were lost. Individuals were maimed and others seriously injured in other ways. In West, TX, an explosion at a fertilizer plant claimed a significant number of lives, as well,and destroyed properties. In Chicago and in the Midwest floods inundated cities, cars were swallowed up in sinkholes. In China an earthquake rocked a city, claiming more than 160 lives and leaving thousands homeless.  This week's news begins with just as much violence and turmoil and dark, dark realities as last week's. Today's AOL news headings contain the following:    Myanmar Authorities Accused Of Organizing Ethnic Cleansing Campaign Against Muslim Groups.. 125,000 People Displaced In Wake Of Attacks.. In Deadliest Incident, At Least 70 Killed In Day-Long Massacre.. 'They Killed Us Very Easily'.  Another heading reads: Hundreds Feared Dead In Damascus. And in still another,  Michael T. Klare, author and professor of peace and world-security studies, Hampshire College warns us of two nightmare scenarios -- a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change -- [that] are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition, and conflict.

Who will lead us out of this darkness? Who will calm our fears? The answer to Christians is clear.  Jesus alone is our Savior!  Jesus alone will lead us out of darkness into light. Jesus alone will show us the way to new life when what we knew and loved is taken away from us. "Come to me, all you who...are overburdened, " Jesus says in Mt 11:28.  Rest, at peace, we will clearly recognize the path that will lead us to "new pastures." We also have Jesus' example when He, too, faced the hatred of those determined to destroy Him; when He, too, faced the ugliness of evil in this world.

Surrendering all to the Lord

In today’s Scriptures,  1 Samuel 1: 24-28 and Lk1:  46-56, we have the story of Hannah who brings Samuel to the Temple to give him over to the service of the Lord and Mary’s Magnificat in praise of “the greatness of the Lord,” who had made her the mother of the Messiah, who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, was conceived in her womb prior to her marriage to Joseph.  Both women’s wombs are made fertile. Both women consecrate the fruit of their wombs to the Lord and let go of their first-born sons: Hannah in the Temple, Mary on the cross when her Son surrenders to God’s will to pay the price for our redemption.  To what am I willing to die believing that new life is possible?  God’s plan for our salvation always involves a dying. Believing that God will bring life out of death always demands the faith of Mary, who said to the angel: “Nothing is impossible for God.” Do I believe that, when all around me is darkness and death, sacrifice and pain? Naturally speaking, darkness surrounded Mary when she said “yes” to the will of God, as she could have been stoned to death if she were found with child prior to her marriage to Joseph.   The miraculous encounter between herself and Elizabeth did not erase that possibility. It still existed until God intervened. That intervention was still a future event and demanded a surrender to the will of God, a dying to one’s fears and anxieties, a dying to anger and frustration and a rising to new life that faith gives to all who trust the Lord.

 Am a person of faith and trust? Or am I a person who wallows in fear and mistrust, anger and resentment in the face of this world’s injustices?