Who is this Jesus?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues to reveal that He is the Son of God, the “I Am,” who, before Abraham was, He existed.  Imagine being one of the Pharisees listening to Jesus.  “Who is this man who claims to be God,”  I might be asking myself.  As I gaze upon the host at every Mass, I ask myself, “Who is this God who stoops to earth below and changes bread and wine into His body and blood? Who is this God who, every day in the Eucharist, becomes my Food, my Transformation, my Cleansing into the purity of God? Who is this God who became sin for me on the Cross to crucify sin in me so that I become a new person in Christ Jesus.

“I AM the I AM,”  Jesus says to me. I am your life in God. I AM the I AM who created you, watched you take shape in your mother’s womb as I was molding you into the person you are at your very core. I formed you and I transform you every day.  I AM the I AM who knows you through and through, who loves you unconditionally and completely, when you are awake and asleep, when you come to me and when you walk away from me, when you are aware of me and grateful and when you are deaf, blind, and ungrateful. I AM the I AM who pastures you, gives you rest, heals you,  makes you whole and fruitful. I AM the I Am who conquers sin in you and plants the seeds of holiness and goodness within you and around you and empowers that goodness to create new life that springs up into eternal life. I am your God and there is no other!

Standing firm in my faith

In today’s first reading, Daniel 3: 14-20, 91-92, 95, we read of the heroic testimony of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refuse to worship  King Nebuchadnezzar’s  false god, a golden statue.  Death or life is put before these three men and they choose life. “We have no need to defend ourselves before you,” they tell the king.   “If our God, whom we serve, will save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up.”

What faith! What courage! Nothing will deter these brothers from remaining faithful to their God-- the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of their ancestors.

Do I stand up to the “Nebuchadnezzar’s” in my life? Do I have the courage to do what is right and just no matter what the consequences? If those consequences are costly, do I still hold firm to what I believe? Maybe I will lose some friends. Maybe I will be left standing with no one taking my side. Maybe I will be denied a promotion, be slandered, put down, ridiculed. Maybe even my family will reject me for my faith in the one true God and in Jesus Christ, my Savior.

Lord, I pray for the faith and courage of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego.  May I stand firm in the faith that my parents handed down to me, even when those around me scoff at my beliefs or challenge me to abandon my faith.

Look upon Him Whom You have Pierced

In today’s first reading, Numbers 21: 4-9, the Chosen People complain bitterly against God and Moses for bringing them out  into the desert.  “Why,” they ask, “have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food.”  Sound familiar? Every day, no doubt, there is something /someone about whom to grumble  and to bitterly proclaim our disgust.  Winter hangs on. Spring holds back!  Another tornado hits. A mudslide buries homes in a nearby State. Another shooting occurs. War breaks out. Another individual goes astray.  Another crime is exposed to the light.  The list goes on and on and on. Or we may be complaining of less weightier things that are part of daily life: the computer bulks when I am in a hurry to get to something done. The printer breaks down in the middle of an important print job. The battery goes dead on the car when I am rushing to get home, the brakes give out. The kids are screaming for attention when I’m busy. The TV blocks a Packer game, etc. etc., etc.

God was not oblivious of the people’s grumbling, discontent, rebelliousness.  He understood their anger but He also held them accountable.   “In punishment the Lord sent among the people seraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died.”   When the people cried out for mercy and acknowledged their sin, the Lord instructed Moses to [m]ake a seraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever look[ed] on it after being bitten….[lived]. The punishment for our sinfulness was the death of Jesus. He became sin for us.  All who look upon the cross of Christ and ask for mercy are saved  both here on earth and in eternity from everlasting death, from being separated from the Lord forever.  Truly the “Lord looked down from his holy height, from heaven he beheld the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoners [all of us enslaved to sinful patterns of behavior and to destructive attitudes that precede our acts of rebellion against God and others].” He offers His only Begotten Son, allowing Him to become sin  for us in order “to release those doomed to die” (today’s responsorial psalm, Psalm 102), to bring us to a new way of living and thinking, a way that transforms misery into happiness, frustration into joy, rebellion into cooperation, death into life.
Oh, the goodness of our God. What an awesome God! What a merciful God! What a compassionate God!

Looking into the Mirror of another Person's Life

Today’s first reading, Wisdom 2: 1a, 12-22, speaks of the difficulty we sometimes have when we encounter someone who mirrors what we are not, that is, the holiness of God. Why were some of the people in Jesus’ day so hostile toward Him? Is it possible that they saw in Him what was lacking in their own way of life and in their personal way of relating to others.   In our lives, a Christian who takes seriously what the Scriptures ask of him/her may cause us some discomfort or even lead us to complain: “She thinks she’s so holy” or “He thinks he goody-two-shoes; I can’t stand him.” What we may see in that mirror is what is lacking in our own attitudes, commitments and  behaviors.  Sometimes we want to do away with those who, in a real sense, put us to shame.  With the author in today’s chapter from the book of Wisdom, we might believe that “[b]ecause his  life is not like that of others, and different are his  ways  [that]  he judges us debased; [that ]  he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.”  The truth is that we judge ourselves “debased.”  It is not the person doing good who is judging us. We are the judges of our faithfulness, our ways of being Godlike, of living authentic, Eucharistic lives, whereby we allow ourselves to be broken for others, to be poured out as blessed wine to quench anothers’ thirst for righteousness, justice, and goodness.

May we have the humility, O Lord, to look upon others as You do and when they are doing good give praise to you. May we also have the humility to look at our own lives and ask the question: how can I live the Gospel more authentically?  When the goodness of another repulses me, when I feel uncomfortable around someone who is  pouring our his/her life for the sake of another’s well-being, may I have the wisdom to look deeply into my own heart to discover the source of my discomfort.   I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Power of Intercessory Prayer

In today’s first reading, Ex 32:7-14, we learn of how fed up God is with His people and is ready to eliminate them from the face of the earth.   Did God forget the covenant He made with His people following the flood when He said that He would never destroy the people again? Or is God simply voicing the depth of His disappointment in the Chosen People?  Imagine, they have made a golden calf and are worshipping it, stating that this is the god who saved them from the Egyptians.  Can they be that stupid, I ask?  A golden calf? A God? Are they crazy?

Before I go too far, let me stop and think!  When I depend totally upon myself or another human being or something another person or I have created to save me from my despair, am I not doing the same thing?  When I forget who has the power to transform that which is contributing to my frustration and anger, that which is rendering me hopeless and forlorn, am I not also forgetting the God who brings me out of the “Egypts”  of my life?

How often do I not look to things not of God to “make my day”! 

The author of Exodus 32: 7-14 reminds me that, through the intercessory prayer, in this case, of Moses, God relented of “the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.”   Moses cries out to the Lord, “Let your blazing wrath die down!”  And it does!  All of us are brought back into God’s graces by the intercessory prayer of others and vice versa. Let us never forget the importance of asking for prayers and being an intercessor for people around the globe.  Let us, too, remember that Jesus is continually interceding for us and, when we do not know how to pray, the Spirit prays within us in accord with God’s holy will for us (Rom 8:26).

No wonder miracles of grace continue to surface throughout the world of today. Open my eyes to them, Lord!

The Graciousness and Kindness of our God

In today’s first reading, Is 49: 8-15, the prophet says to us:

Along the ways,…[you] shall find pasture,
On every bare height shall…your pastures be…
For…[God] who pities[you] leads [you]
and guides [you] beside springs of water.
[God] will cut a road through all [your] mountains,
And make [your] highways level.
See, some shall come from  afar,
Others from the north and the west….
Sing out, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth,
Break forth into song, you mountains.
For the Lord comforts his people
And shows mercy to his afflicted.

 As I meditated upon this passage, the thought came to me that the “bare height” where our pasture shall be is heaven itself, that God, who pities us, leads us to this Promised Land, cutting through the mountains of our lives, leveling the highways.  “See, some [come into eternal life] from the mud slides in the State of Washington, others from the watery grave  where the Malaysian plane’s  tragedy occurred, others from the devastating 8.2 earthquake off the coast of Chile.  So, too, does God remember those who die by the violent hand of another, those who  suffer because of a terminal illness, an ugly divorce, a domestic dispute. God knows and cares about all who suffer the brutal ravages of a war, all who are the target of ethnic cleansing, who are bullied because they are different from those who abuse them.      “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you,”  God tells us, no matter how much it seems otherwise. 

 “I do believe, Lord, help my unbelief” (Mk 9:24).

Water that Transforms , Heals and Makes Us One with God

In today’s first reading, Ez 47: 1-9, 12, the prophet is invited by an angel to “the back entrance of the temple of the Lord.”  He sees “water flowing out from beneath the threshold toward the east….  The angel, Ezekiel tells us “had him wade through the water.” At first the water was ankle deep, then up to his knees and finally up to his waist until he was unable to cross it. A river ran through it and anything near the bank of the river flourished and bore fruit. Salt waters, into which the river flowed, were made fresh.

In the Gospel, the ill, the blind, the lame and crippled sought healing in the Bethesda pool.  Whenever the waters in that pool swirled, the first person into the pool was healed.  A man crippled for 38 years never made it to the pool first. Jesus noticed his plight and asked him if he wanted to be made whole. He responded: “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on the way, someone else gets down there before me. Jesus said to him.  ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk.’”

Jesus also notices our infirmities, that which cripples us mentally, spiritually, socially.  He says to us, as He said to the crippled man:  “Do you want to be well?”  In our case, we need to avail ourselves of the sacraments of reconciliation and of the Eucharist.  We need to “pick up our mat,” that is pick up the Bible and read about God’s promises to those who seek Him (the psalms might be a good place to begin or the Gospel readings). We need to stop the noise around us, become quiet before the Lord for 2, 3, 5 minutes a day, if not longer: “Listen to the stillness; God is at work,” that is, the Living Water within us is swirling to make us whole.   Are we willing to  accept “the angel’s” invitation to wade through those waters that made us new, that  transform us into Christ, that lead us to oneness with God and others, as Jesus and the Father are one with each other and with each of us?