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“To love means to renew our dedication every day, with loving deeds of service”

In 01 Daily Meditations on 2015/02/13 at 12:00 AM
“These days”, you were saying, “have been the happiest in my life.” And I answered you without hesitation: that is because you have lived with a little more self-giving than usual. (Furrow, 7)

Remember the parable of the talents. The servant who received one talent could have put it to good use, as his fellow servants did. He could have set to work with his own abilities. He could have made sure that his talent bore fruit. Instead, what is on his mind? He is worried about losing his talent. Fair enough. But, then? He goes and buries it! [1] The talent he received bears no fruit.

Let us not forget this man’s sickly fear of putting to honest use his capacity for work, his mind, his will, his whole being. ‘I’ll bury it,’ the poor fellow seems to be saying, ‘but my freedom is safe!’ Not so. He has turned his freedom towards something very definite, towards the most miserable and arid barrenness. He has taken sides, because he had no alternative. He had to choose, but he has chosen badly.

It is utterly false to oppose freedom and self‑surrender, because self‑surrender is a consequence of freedom. Look, when a mother sacrifices herself for love of her children, she has made a choice, and the more she loves the greater will be her freedom. If her love is great, her freedom will bear much fruit. Her children’s good derives from her blessed freedom, which presupposes self‑surrender, and from her blessed self-surrender, which is precisely freedom.

But, you might say, when we have attained our heart’s desire, our search will be over. Does freedom vanish then? I assure you that it will then be more active than ever, because love is not content with a routine fulfilment of duty. Love is incompatible with boredom or apathy. To love means to renew our dedication every day, with loving deeds of service.

I insist, and I would like to engrave this deep in your hearts, that freedom and self‑surrender are not contradictory. They sustain one another. Freedom can only be given up for love; I cannot conceive any other reason for surrendering it. And I am not just playing with words or phrases. When people give themselves freely, at every moment of their self‑surrender, freedom renews their love; to be renewed in that way is to be always young, generous, capable of high ideals and great sacrifices. (Friends of God, 30-31)

[1] cf Matt 25:18

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The New Testament from a Jewish Perspective

In 06 Scripture & Theology on 2015/02/06 at 12:00 AM

NOSTRA AETATE (Nostra Aetate is the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council.)  50 years later:

Jewish scholarship on the New Testament has greatly increased in number since NOSTRA AETATE. While there was some Jewish scholarship on the New Testament over the centuries before NOSTRA AETATE, Jews in general have not desired to read or understand the New Testament. This has mostly been due to the harsh statements made by Jesus about Jews and their religious leader in the Gospel, and the accusation by the Church that “Jews killed our Lord.” Centuries of violent and often deadly persecution, pogroms, expulsions, lies and suffering followed. Jews stayed away from this dangerous text, and even those Jewish scholars who wrote about the New Testament, were not widely read by other Jews.

However, three events in the 1940’s prompted a change in Jewish interest in studying the New Testament and in Christian interest in Jewish scholarship on the New Testament. These events are the Holocaust, the birth of the State of Israel, and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The first two were traumatic events that changed relations between Christians and Jews, mostly among clergy, religious, and scholars. Christians began to question what elements in the long development of Christian theology contributed to the Holocaust, while the birth of the State of Israel prompted Christians to ask about God’s character of faithfulness in His covenant to the Jewish people, when the status of the Jewish people changed from wandering to returning home.

Nostra Aetate followed in the 1960’s, opening a new chapter in Christian thinking about Jews, Judaism, and

our relationship to the Jewish community. The church admitted it had been wrong about God revoking the covenant between God and Israel. The covenant was indeed a living covenant, never having been revoked. It also rescinded the deicide charge–“the Jews killed our Lord”–against the Jewish people. Other Christian denominations followed suit and began to reach out to Jews and to the Jewish community. Jews responded, and Christian-Jewish dialogue followed in full force. Jesus’ identity as a Jew, faithful to Judaism, was affirmed by the Church, and Christian scholars became interested in studying the Jewish Jesus to understand the specifically Jewish context and Jewish faith in which Jesus taught. The church needed help from Jewish scholars to accomplish this.

Jewish scholars also became interested in pursuing the New Testament for a number of different reasons, e.g., it was written by Jews and could be studied from a Jewish perspective, it contained elements of Second Temple Judaism not available in other Jewish sources. As Amy Jill-Levine stated in an interview about her book, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, “The more I study the New Testament the better Jew I become.” Likewise, Brad Young, a Christian scholar who studied under David Flusser, a Jewish scholar of the New Testament, said, “If we do not know Jesus as a Jew, we do not know Jesus.”

Because we are often taught by rabbis, and study Jewish sources to understand scripture more fully, we want to offer this study as a way of exposing the breadth of Jewish scholarship on the New Testament that are available, to understand the history and development of this particular scholarship, and to gain new insights into Jesus’ teachings for our faith, life, and discipleship.

At the invitation of the Winnipeg Bat Kol Tri-Diocesan Committee Sister Lucy Thorson gave a conference to a crowd of approximately seventy people on the topic Modern Milestones in Catholic Jewish Relations. Using a power point to illustrate her lecture, Sister Lucy identified the step by step developments within the Church regarding our relationship with Judaism and our Jewish brothers and sisters. Her presentation itemized the various documents, declarations and activities of the Church through the terms of Popes John XXIII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. We were led to understand how significant each moment in this history was and how profoundly the Church’s stance has changed during the almost 50 years since Nostra Aetate was written in 1965. Nostra Aetate is the Declaration on the Church’s Relationship to Non- Christian Religions, one of the most influential and celebrated documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Rabbi Alan Green offered insights and perspectives from his experience in dialogue. He noted the accomplishments to date and invited us to consider what the next steps might be here in Winnipeg, challenging the group to consider what steps would be necessary to move forward together and to include Muslims in our dialogue. Rabbi Green brought the evening to a close with a prayerful Shabbat chant.

From the Newsletter of the Sisters of Sion: Dynamic Movement of the Holy Spirit

 

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Importance of Family

In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2015/02/06 at 12:00 AM

One of the great blessings of my life was to grow up in close proximity to all of my grandparents. In fact, from the time I was 6 or 7 until she died when I was 20, my maternal grandmother lived with my family.

My grandmother had debilitating arthritis that left her completely bedridden for the last 18 years of her life, and because my grandfather was unable to provide the care she needed in his final years, she came to stay with us.
As my grandmother required 24-hour care, my siblings and I were all expected to help out, and we did our best to normalize life for our disabled grandmother. Consequently, a large part of my childhood was spent sitting with her, talking with her, and caring for her.
But although my grandmother required a great deal of time and energy, I don’t think any of us minded at all because we all knew that what Grandma had to give back to us was so much more valuable than the energy and time we expended in caring for her.
Outside of the normal things that grandmothers provide their grandchildren in terms of love, care, and wisdom, my grandmother taught my siblings and me the value and dignity that can be found in human suffering.
Perhaps that sounds a bit odd to some of you that suffering has value and can confer dignity on someone. Isn’t suffering an evil that we should eliminate or at least lessen if we can?
The short answer to that question is: Yes! Suffering is an evil, and yes, we should try to eliminate or lessen the sufferings of others if it lies within our power.
But sometimes we can’t do anything about suffering. Sometimes suffering simply has to be endured. And if that’s the case, then we must seek to profit from our suffering, drawing from it the great virtues that are to be had when we embrace it.
For while suffering can be the most difficult of companions in life, suffering is not without its gifts for those willing to bear with it. Suffering is also one of life’s best teachers to those whose eyes and ears are open to its lessons.
Our readings today confront us with God’s power in the face of suffering. The prophet Isaiah speaks in beautiful terms today about the saving power of God, a power that opens the eyes of the blind, clears the ears of the deaf, and allows the mute tongue to sing.
And in the 7th chapter of Mark we witness our Lord healing the deaf man with the speech impediment in the district of the Decapolis.
In this Gospel story as Jesus touches the deaf man’s ears and tongue, he says the Greek word Ephphatha, which means: “be opened.” This is a gesture that is often repeated at baptisms to symbolize the spiritual healing we all need to facilitate our reception of the Faith and to prepare us to share our Faith with others.
In a larger context, I think the Ephphatha prayer to “be opened” is a call for us to be open to how our Lord desires to heal us, trusting that our Lord will always do what is best for us.
Indeed, one of the things we learn from today’s readings is that God desires to aid us in our weaknesses.
While those with physical disabilities tend to stand out amongst those in need of healing, the truth of the matter is that all of us, no matter how healthy we may think we are, are in need of some type of healing.
For all of us are born with the supreme form of ailment: original sin. And every time we sin, or someone sins against us, we sustain emotional and, more seriously, spiritual injuries.
Just as physical and emotional ailments can prevent us from living life fully, and in the worse cases can lead to death, spiritual ailments can also keep us from living life as God intends us to live it, and in the worse cases cause spiritual death, which is the loss of eternal life.
As we consider the woundedness and its accompanying suffering that is part of the human condition, we must remember that our blessed Lord understands it all, for He, too, suffered greatly in His passion and death. The crucifix is our constant reminder of His suffering.
The difference, of course, between our Lord’s suffering and our own is that Jesus suffered not because of any sin on His own part, but only because of the sins of others. We cannot say the same for our own suffering.
As Christians called to follow our Lord and imitate Him in every way, we are sometimes called by our Lord to share in His Passion. Sometimes our Lord invites us to walk with Him up the steep path of Calvary, helping to shoulder the cross, and He does so for many reasons.
Sometimes our Lord allows us to share in His Passion so that we can grow in virtue – like humility or courage; sometimes He invites us to share in His passion to make reparation for sin; sometimes He desires our suffering to be offered as a prayer to benefit other souls; and sometimes Jesus invites us into His passion just to become closer to Him.
What we have to realize, though, is that everything that we suffer in life, big or small, is an opportunity to unite ourselves to our Lord and to become more like Him.
All suffering is an opportunity for us to identify with our crucified savior and thereby participate in His great work of redemption.
If our eyes and ears are open to the possibilities of faith, we will learn to see all suffering in this light: viz., as an opportunity to grow in holiness and prepare ourselves for Heaven!
But even though suffering can have positive benefits for us when we endure it with faith, it’s also good for us to pray for our suffering to be alleviated. That’s a good and holy prayer! But as I mentioned earlier, we must be open to how our Lord desires to heal us.
When our Lord heals us of our suffering, He does so to strengthen our faith. And if He doesn’t take away our suffering, it’s either because He’s testing our faith or because the suffering itself is meant to heal something else within us or to benefit another soul.
But whatever the answer to our prayer, we are called to be faithful and persevere.
Moreover, we must learn gratitude in the face of suffering. Because whether or not our Lordalleviates our suffering as we wish, it’s all a gift to help us grow in holiness. And so we must
always try to accept our sufferings with love, not bitterness, and with faith, not fear.

If we can do this, trusting that our Lord will give us the necessary grace to bear whateverburdens He allows to come our way, it is then that we will truly grow in holiness and begin to
bear His likeness.

Brothers and sisters, none of us enjoys suffering. But suffering is a part of our humancondition. It’s something that we must all learn to bear.
And so if you find yourself suffering in some way, do not despair and do not be bitter. Whileour gracious Lord may not have explicitly willed for this suffering to come into your life, He
is allowing it for the benefit of your soul – and possibly the benefit of others souls.

So as true followers of Christ, let us have hope in the face of our sufferings: hope that if webear our sufferings well and unite them to our Lord’s suffering on the cross, we will become
a little more like Him and become a little better prepared for Heaven.

Through our Lady’s gracious intercession, may we all be patient, persevering, and always faithful to God in our times of trial.
09 September 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

Homilies from June 17, 2012 onward have audio .
To enable the audio, please go directly to Fr. Reid’s homily homilies and select the matching date.

Link to Homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

 

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