Faith in Jesus' authority

Today’s Gospel, Mt. 8: 5-17, reiterates the story of the centurion’s request of Jesus: “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”  Jesus immediately responds: “I will come and cure him.”  Imagine telling Jesus that someone you love dearly is sick and/or in serious trouble.  Jesus, without hesitation, says to you: “I will come and cure him/her. I will go and help.”  You and I do not need to imagine that. Our God is that way!  We may not see the results instantaneously but our faith tells us that God responded.  The point, I think, is the asking and that we bring our concerns to Jesus, knowing who Jesus is!

In the story just told, the centurion says to Jesus: No, you do not need to come to my house.  “I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed…” And then he says: “You know, Lord, I, too, am a person under authority and I also have authority. I say to a servant ‘Come’ and he comes. ‘Do this’ and he does it.”  It’s like he is saying to Jesus: “Lord, you are author of heaven and earth. You have dominion over everything: health and sickness, light and darkness, evil and good. Just command the evil to leave my servant and it will be gone.”  What faith!  What about yours and mine?

Power in the name of Jesus and of faith in Christ

In the first reading of the vigil of Saints Peter and Paul, whose feast we celebrate today, we have the story of the crippled man who was brought to the gate of the temple each day to beg for alms (Acts. 3: 1-10).  When he saw Peter and John, he asked them for them alms as well. Peter looks intently at him and says: “ I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”

For a long time, my mind focused on the phrase: “…in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”  Finally, I picked up my pen and started writing.  What I heard Jesus saying to me in the depth of my heart was:

               “Rise up, Dorothy Ann, from self-putdowns, from  thinking ill of yourself.

               Rise up to the woman you are in my sight: a woman filled with grace.
               Rise up and walk in the light of that grace.
               Rise up in the power of the Spirit I have given you:

                              a Spirit of power,

                              a Spirit of hope,
                              a Spirit of optimism
                              a Spirit of faith.

               I brought you into this world in love.

               Live in my Love.
               Rise up in my Love.”

As I reflected further on this Scripture reading,I realized that Peter took the crippled man by the right hand and raised him up.  I, too, after being raised up to new life in Christ Jesus, need to share that faith with others, lifting them up by the right hand, raising them up as I was raised up.  The faith of Peter awakened the faith of the crippled man. We need each other to be awakened in our faith, to  live in Love, to rise above that which weighs us down, to take our rightful place in the ministry of discipleship and spread the News of the life, death and resurrection of Christ and to make a difference in the world of our day, as Peter and Paul did in their day.

Finding our way back to God

In today’s first reading,  2 Kings 24: 8-17, we hear about the collapse of Jerusalem, the people  surrendering to the King of Babylon and being deported, the treasures of the temple being confiscated. The breakdown of this ancient society is rooted in their rulers having become slaves to evil ways, the covenant having been abandoned, the idolatrous ways of the surrounding nations having been adopted. Infidelity after infidelity eroded the morality of the people. The consequences could not have been more frightful.

The Chosen People, through the psalmist, bring their situation to God’s attention: 

               O God, the nations have come into your inheritance,

               They have defiled your holy temple,

               They have laid Jerusalem in ruins.

….We have become the reproach of our neighbours,                         

               the scorn and derision of those around us.

O, Lord, how long? Will you be angry forever?

Will your jealousy burn like fire?....

This isn’t about God being angry but about the Chosen people being unfaithful and suffering the consequences of poor choices! We aren’t any different from our ancestors, as we, too, have gone astray, chasing that which is not of God, taking on the God-less attitudes and ways of “nations” around us, bent on destroying anything of divine origin.  When our consequences are dire, do we, too, cry out: “O Lord, how long? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire?” Or do we change our ways, repent and return to a life of holiness, justice, and truth? 

Overcoming the odds

In today’s first reading, 2 Kings 22: 8-13; 23: 1-3, the high priest Hilkiah found the book of the law in the temple of the Lord. When  king Josiah heard the book of the law read aloud, He tore his garments as he realized that his ancestors violated God’s covenant. He gathered all of the people in the Temple and had the entire book of the law read to them.  The king renewed their commitment to the law of God and to being faithful to the covenant God had made with the people of Israel. 

Josiah is eighteen years of age. The example given him by both his grandfather, Manasseh, and his father Amon is horrible. Both were violent men. Both, as rulers of the Jewish people, led the people into idol worship and occult practices.  Their reign was corrupt to its very core.  Manasseh even murdered his own son. Amon follows in his father’s footsteps and eventually is himself murdered. Josiah breaks this pattern of corruption  and violence, of immorality and dishonesty.  He reverses the pattern of disobedience and disrespect for the law of God.

You and I also face decisions every day of choosing to follow a path of virtue or one that leads to corruption, or as Jesus states in today’s Gospel, following true prophets or false prophets.  We can engage in behaviors that corrupt or sustain a life of  virtue.  Like Josiah, we have the power to break bad habits and to reverse long-standing patterns around us. That power comes from the Word of God, the sacraments, the Eucharist, holy reading, the example of those who are faithful to God and the voice of the Good Spirit quietly guiding us in the depth of our hearts. Will we follow this Good Spirit, as Josiah did,  or will be  get swept away by the corruption, the violence, the immorality, the dishonesty, the “idol worship” and “occult practices” in our world, as did Manasseh and Amon? The answer is ours to make!

Faith Alive

In today’s first reading, 2 Kings 19: 9b-11, 14-21, 31-35a, 36, we hear the story of how Hezikiah, King of Jud, handled the news of impending disaster.  Sennacharib, King od Assyria,  was planning to attack Judah, the Southern Kingdom of Israel, to do to them what had been done to the Northern Kingdom: disperse them, exile them from their inherited land and destroy the Temple, their place of worship.  Hezikiah went to the Lord and prayed:

“O Lord, God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim! You alone are God over all    

the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth. Incline your

ear, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Hear the words of Sennecherib

 which he sent to taunt the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid

waste the nations and their lands, and cast their gods into the fire; they destroyed

 them because they were not gods, but the work of human hands, wood and stone.

Therefore, O Lord our God, save us from the power of this man, that all the kingdoms

of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God.”

Hezikah’s prayer was answered and 185,000 men of Sennacherib’s army died that night. Sennacherib retreated.

Your response might be: “What magic!” It was not magic. Hezikiah was a God-fearing person, a man who lived by faith.  He expected to see God in the events of his day.  If we live by faith, we will  also see God at work in our lives and in the world of today. If we do not keep our covenant with God, if we do not rely upon God, if we do not look for God, we, obviously will not find Him nor will we see Him at work in our lives. Disaster will be disaster period and not something out of which God brings a good.  Chaos will be chaos and chaos alone, not something out of which order will emerge in God’s time with our cooperation and reliance upon God.

Learning from John the Baptist

Yesterday we celebrated the feast of St. John the Baptist, the precursor of the Lord, the one who, in the desert, announced the coming of the Messiah.  You and I are also called to direct people to the Lord, to make Christ known to others.  Our greatness, like John’s, is Christ Jesus.  In Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17: 28): a discovery that unfolds, for all of us, throughout our lifetime until that final moment when we surrender everything to the Lord and are born into eternal life. 

The journey is a difficult one. Like John the Baptist, we begin with all of the attention placed on ourselves—what will this child become (Lk. 1:66)—to the realization that life is not about ourselves, that we are not the center of the universe as we were as infants.   As we mature, we learn also that the world itself is not an Absolute, that it disappoints more than it satisfied, that fullness of life occurs in giving it away, not hoarding it, not clutching it; in serving others more than oneself, in dying to self for the sake of others and to a Higher Good than in living selfishly, from “Behold me” to “behold the Lamb of God, (Jn 1:29) who takes away the sins of the world.”

God's will last forever

God’s Covenant cannot be destroyed:  In  2 Sam 7: 16  God promises that David’s “house,” “kingdom” and “throne” will be established forever.  That means that the Messiah will come from the lineage of David and that Christ will establish a kingdom from which He will reign for all eternity.

In today’s first reading a greedy person, Athaliah, plots to destroy the royal dynasty of the line of David. As with Moses, an infant of the royal line is hidden, escapes the massacre, and is later crowned king, while the usurper is put to death. The homilist explained the murderous episodes—there is more than one—in light of the truth that God’s plan for our salvation would not be thwarted,  that God’s will would not be denied.

As we look at the world today, there are also schemes to erase God’s plan, to thwart the will of God, to erase God’s consciousness from the peoples; in fact, to deny the very existence of God.  The Old Testament proves that no such attempt will succeed.  There is always someone or a small remnant of people who keep this promise alive for us, who teach us “not [to] store up for [ourselves] treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal” (Mt 6: 19-23), as we read in today’s Gospel.  Who holds the treasure in their hearts and shares their faith and hope in God with you?  With whom do you share the treasure of your faith?  And for whom are you a shining example of hope in God’s promises?