November 16, 33rd Sunday in OT, Cycle A

Next Sunday is the Last of the Church Year. So, this weekend's readings bring us very near to the "end of time," so our readings speak of the “end” of things as we know them. St. Paul discusses death and the world’s end with the Thessalonians, and in the Gospel, Christ gives a parable about “making an accounting” for all that has been given us. Obviously, these readings are preparations for the “end,” and ask us to always keep “the Higher Purpose” to Which our lives are dedicated, and for Which we will have to answer in the forefront of our minds. But it’s the first reading, from Proverbs, that tells us HOW to prepare. This reading is the “Eshet Chayil”–the celebration of the “Valiant Woman,” as the Text is known in Judaism, as it is read every Sabbath. How does she (the valiant woman, the "mother of Israel") teach us how to “prepare ourselves for the End?” She merely does what needs to be done, each day. For it’s in the daily tasks of life that we “work out our salvation,” as St. Paul put it. We bring light to the darkness, lift the fallen, help the hungry, care for the fragile. It’s in our daily living that our lives conform themselves to the Christ. Let’s get busy, then. As we’d say in Kansas, where I was raised: “Time’s a wasting!’”

November 23, 2008, Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

Today’s readings focus on the future–with the prophet Ezekiel, in the first reading, poetically describing the final and ultimate “pasturing” by God of His weary, worn sheep, having grown frustrated with the poor pasturing they’ve had to endure for centuries, nay millenia. Then, St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church is a meditation on the cosmic "end time" work of the Christ in “collecting” all that is and has ever been into His hands, and then, at the end, presenting it ALL to the Father, redeemed and whole. The Gospel assures the reader of eternal rewards at the final judgement, the “Last Accounting–though it’s a “mixed bag.” Why? Well, anyone with a mind who reads this Gospel passage, reads it with some discomfort. Look closely: those who, apparently, thought they had “salvation” sewn up by “knowing” the Lord, don’t. And those who never had a clue, never knew Who the Lord was, “get it!” As I say, it’s disconcerting. It’s probably best to read it as the story of all of us–none of us perfect–all of us having fed some people, and ignored some people, cared for some people, not bothered about others. Such is life. Perhaps the point is to encourage us to “keep at it” when the going seems especially rough. Right now, our economy is so unstable that “taking care of ourselves,” alone, is a Herculean task, so perhaps we can read the lessons, today, as a “cosmic plea” from Christ’s own lips to try a little harder to care for the frail. If the world is tough for us–with all the resources we have at our disposal–how much worse for those with less! So...let’s let that old “Catholic Guilt” (which is really simply a Higher Consciousness) grab us, yet again, and may our lives become benedictions of Goodness in our world. God bless.

November 9, 2008, Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

This is an odd feast–celebrating the first church we ever built as a Christian religion. Before this, anything we used as a church was, in reality, a hiding place, for our religion was illegal. The emperor Constantine with the Edict of Milan made us a “legal religion,” and thus we were able to “build” in the open a place of worship for ourselves. We got this property in Rome from the Laterini family, and dedicated the church to the memory of St. John. So the readings are about the holiness of space–with the Prophet Ezekiel, in the first reading, speaking of the Jerusalem Temple as being the epitome of sacredness in the world–not a place “walled off from human traffic,” but rather a place from which “Life Energy” symbolized by “water in a desert,” flows forth to water all the earth. St. Paul reminds us that while there are sacred places, the Church is more than brick and mortar–it subsists in the hearts and souls of the believers, ourselves, as we make up a “spiritual Temple” of wonderful holiness. And the Gospel is all about Jesus’ “cleansing” of the Temple wherein He simply “symbolically” restored the “court of the Gentiles” as a place free of clutter and commerce, so that the Gentiles might, also, worship God in their assigned place. This latter act of Christ reveals His openness to the vague and the different of the earth–calling them to the “center of the world” (which the Temple was mystically thought to be) and recognizing them as worthy of God’s service--no matter how "far off" others thought them. So, what do we learn? We learn that “holiness” is always “life giving,” not sanctimonious, and that it resides throughout the earth, for God is everywhere, but especially in us, His people, and that with all our goofiness, we are, indeed, invited to experience the Grace and Goodness of God. Such is our celebration of our first building–celebrating “ourselves and our mission” as much as that ancient construction.