Setting out into Advent once again,/ we ask that we might worship well this year,/ with full hearts,/ minds and voices./ We pray for those who live in places where there is no regular Sunday Eucharist,/ or where people are in trouble for attending Mass./ We pray to the Lord. At the start of December,/ we pray for those who celebrate birthdays,/ anniversaries,/ and other days of remembrance./ Comfort and strengthen the friendless./ We pray to the Lord. Mindful that these are the days of deepest darkness in our hemisphere,/ we pray for those who live in interior darkness:/ who lie to protect power,/ who make and own dark money,/ who hate and hurt other people./ We pray to the Lord.
We pray for those who suffer the most in our throw-away culture:/ the unborn baby,/ unwanted infants and children,/ the elderly poor,/ prisoners,/ migrants,/ refugees,/ addicts,/ the planet itself./ Our world needs to be trained in the things of the heart./ We pray to the Lord. We pray for family members and friends who are struggling with the darkness of depression and tiring anxiety./ For any who are unemployed,/ or living in a time of personal misfortune and frustration./ We pray to the Lord. We pray for the President of the United States/ and for leaders around the world;/ may they be peace-makers,/ decent and good,/ truth-telling people,/ who care for the ones who are most vulnerable./ We pray to the Lord.
This is Mihaly Munkacsy's (1844-1900) painting, Christ Before Pilate. And here is St. Mark's Gospel account of the event. We might keep the two in mind in our reflecting.
At the festival season the Governor used to release one prisoner at the people's request. As it happened, the man known as Barabbas was then in custody with the rebels who had committed murder in the rising. When the crowd appeared asking for the usual favour, Pilate replied, "Do you wish me to release for you the king of the Jews?" For he knew it was out of spite that they had brought Jesus before him. But the chief priests incited the crowd to ask him to release Barabbas rather than Jesus. Pilate spoke to them again: "Then what shall I do with the man you call king of the Jews?" They shouted back, "Crucify him!" So Pilate, in his desire to satisfy the mob, released Barabbas to them; and he had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified. Mark 15: 6-1
The "festival season" Mark refers to the annual celebration of Passover - the Jewish people remembering with grateful hearts God's lifting them out of their oppression through death, to a new life. And Jesus is beginning his own Passover, lifting humankind out of sin and the darkness which oppresses us.
At the start of this sacred action, Jesus' life is already being exchanged for a murderous rebel, Barabbas. Perhaps Barabbas is an image of humankind, which in countless ways throughout history, rebels against life.
Far from Rome, at the end of the Mediterranean, Pilate is governor - Caesar's man, sent to manage the Jews. All executions require Rome's seal of approval - that's why Pilate is integral to this story. The artist depicts Pilate as tense and vexed; he knows what the religious officials are up to. They want Jesus dead because he is more popular than they. The original sin is power. Their power is being threatened by the non-power of Jesus.
Notice that no where in the Gospel does Mark blame the Jews for the death of Jesus - just some religious officials. We understand.
And these leaders incite the crowd. Munkacsy has captured this moment. We see men with heads together; whispering their conspiracy theories. The religious spokesman delivers his case with great dramatic effect. The crowd is making a lot of noise. The poor, dim fellow in the blue coat on the left is trying to figure it out - Should I join in? History isn't done with this kind of low-end behaviour: white supremacist processions and political rallies. And right in the middle of it all is a mother with an infant. She is gentle and protective.
But look at how the artist has depicted Jesus, who is dressed in a brilliant white robe. He stands nobly and victorious against the shadowy crowd. One art commentator says that Mankacsy was disappointed in his changing world - full of doubts and fears. It's not unlike our own world and cultural scene: so much invoking of religion, religious freedom and religious rights - but also so much self-righteous, fearful-anger and hatred, especially hatred of theothers.
May hearts, crystallized in cold-hate, melt as well. P.S. The snow covered White Pine pictured above seeded itself here about 12 years ago. It is lovely in every season.
The realm of Christ the King is a realm of justice,/ mercy,/ love and peace./ May the Church understand its mission to extend this healing and reconciling realm/ thereby lifting up all of humankind and creation itself./ We pray to the Lord. We pray for the President of the United States and for the newly elected who will now assume roles in government./ May they be good and honorable people/ whose efforts lift the weak ones to their feet./ We pray to the Lord.
While one in six children in our nation struggles with hunger,/ a TV commercial this week invites us to a four day weekend of unlimited eating./May God forgive our national sin of greed,/ indifference and willful ignorance/ and give us new hearts./ We pray to the Lord. At Mass/ we call Abraham, Our father in faith./ Traditional Jewish teaching says that Abraham set up his tent with four open sides/ so he could see strangers approach and run to meet them./ In this time of California tent cities/ for those who have lost their homes to fire/ and asylum seekers at the southern border,/ may we learn the words of Jesus,/ "Welcome the stranger."/ We pray to the Lord. As the holiday season begins this weekend,/ we pray for our families and dear ones./ May they know the blessings of sobriety,/ good health,/ strength,/ safety,/ and the resolution of problems which cause anxiety and fatigue./ We pray to the Lord. Finally,/ as this Liturgical year comes to a close,/ we ask for God to touch the hearts of those who are in mourning,/ or who are embittered/ or who have forgotten how to be deeply human./ We pray to the Lord.
I got the last roses wrapped up just before the snow this past week and put the wheelbarrow away in the shed. The gardener has this sense of going around and around through the cycles of planting, pruning, feeding, trimming back, wrapping up. And just as we're ending the garden year, there are signs of beginning again, with the seed catalogs arriving in the mail two weeks ago. We're finishing up and looking ahead.
And the liturgy reflects this as well. We are wrapping things up this Thirty-Third Sunday. Next week is the Feast of Christ the King and then we begin again with First Advent.
The beautiful and hopeful Psalm (16) at Mass today seems to be aware of this. One priest has titled it, "True Happiness: A Psalm of Confidence." This title suggests that religion isn't a thing simply to believe in, argue about, debate or prove for myself or others, but religion is supposed to be an experience - an experience to our happiness and confidence, as we move around and around our life-way.
Indeed, God is to be experienced. But often the way we approach religion precludes or obstructs any experience of God, or tricks us into thinking we experience God when really all we've experienced is our own talking and busy do-ing.
So, as we wrap up another liturgical year and have beginning again in our sights - we might ponder these things. Years ago there was a series of volumes reflecting on the themes of the liturgical year titled, The Year of Grace. And grace isn't some kind of commodity, a thing to be gotten and stored up. Grace is an experience of God's energizing presence, love, mercy and forgiveness - God's creative impulses shared with us. The Eastern Church speaks of grace as divine energies.
Have I had any personal experience of that this year? We come to Mass, week after faithful week, bringing with us all the "stuff" that makes up human living. Where has God been in all of that?
A woman I knew when I was a deacon back in 1979 sent a holiday card this week. She wasn't complaining or whining at all, but sharing an awareness of her increasing weakness, how her now grown sons are struggling with health and marital concerns. We could all write an end-of-the-year card reflecting on these kinds of human themes. How would I reflect God's presence and movement in a card like that?
Where was God in the losses suffered this years?
Where is God in the on-going struggles with health and aging?
Where has God inspired some new insight or opened up some new possibility for me?
Has God sought to teach me something new this year - about myself; about old or stuck thinking.
Has God been in my change of course or helped me to navigate the life-course I find myself on?
Has God provided for me when I feared I'd run dry?
In this awful time (and any time might be called awful, but this is the time we live in) how is God enabling me to stay standing?
Where is God and what is God doing and saying in the intersecting of my relationships?
This Thirty-Third Sunday we have our last look at the green for awhile. How is God greening me?
And these thoughts or reflections might help us to prepare a bit for Thursday's national feast day. We want to do more than plan a menu and spread a perfect table.
This psalm 134 sings of God who is Lord and Sovereign. Really? We're adept at using religious words, but do we know the implications for the words we use? If the language, however beautiful, carries no contemporary and personal implication, then God is mocked. And God won't have that.
Verses 1-4: Notice at once that the psalm opens with Alleluia - Praise the Lord. But this is also the last word of the psalm. Like bookends. That this new day, that this hour, that this project would begin and end with the praises of God. That's not a sentiment but a conscious choice resulting in new action.
The invitation is to praise the Lord's name. Ours is not an anonymous God. The word name suggests familiarity and intimacy with a God superior to all the other gods. The psalmist also refers to us as servants: God has chosen us as his own. We belong to God who is good,loving and gracious. We're loved. And being loved should be transformative of how we think and act.
Verses 5-7:"The Lord is great and high above all gods." This is the proclamation of Jethro after the opening of the Red Sea. But why is the Lord high and great? Because he has freed his people from oppression. If I get is - really get this - everything will be new for me.
"High above all gods." God is Sovereign. Israel's perennial temptation was to worship other gods. Their story is filled with infidelity. Ours too. We are no better than the ancient Israelites. For all our liturgical do-ing we are as susceptible to loving other gods: our gun-love; our shopping; our grazing (endless eating); our money-love; our worship of youth, sexiness, fitness and comfort; the nations' infatuation with all things military; the weaponization of our planet, all the ways we tolerate the destruction of our planet-home.
Verse 6 speaks of God's rule being vast, unlimited and invasive of the ancient three-tiered world of sky, earth and sea-depths. But we might ask ourselves if God has sovereignty of that universe which is my mind: my thinking, my policies, my takes, angles,biases and issues. Some Christians have mental associations and loyalties that are ungodly, confounding, even depressing.
In Verse 7 the psalmist references thunderstorms (as in other places) because storms were the ancient business of the god, Baal. The psalmist wants us to know that our God is even superior to Baal. God summons and acts. The other gods are powerless because they are manufactured by humans - gods of metal, plastic, synthetics, human concoctions with power connections.
Verses 8-14: It was the wind that opened the Red Sea and the lightning accompanied God's visitation at the top of Mount Sinai where Moses received the Law. Now the psalmist takes a few lines to summarize the divine action of the Exodus story. God is sovereign, not Pharaoh. God is sovereign over the lesser kings, Sihon and Og. God is sovereign even over all the kingdoms of Canaan.
Some religious people like this kind of buster-God who in the end will get the enemy, who is anyone not like me. They miss the essence of the religious story. The Exodus is a dramatic telling of how God with compassion takes up the cause of oppressed peoples, symbolized by the Israelites who have been pressed into slavery.
Some Christians don't understand this. They prefer a nationalized, politicized God, a get-me-what-I-need God. God is paid lip service and kept very small - no bigger than our supreme court fights. Who is oppressed today? Syrians? Hondurans? The baby in the womb? Those with disabilities? Christians and Jews in some lands? Anyone in someone else's gun sights? The crushed poor? I don't pick and tease-out those that fit the bill or suit my agenda. "I'm not into that justice stuff," the silly person said. Spiritual laziness.
Verses 15-18: Now the psalmist draws a great contrast. All our little gods are powerless. They can do nothing. They are not creators, but created. They have no spirit-wind (vitality) in them. And those who trust these powerless gods, essentially amount to nothing. "You are what you eat" we say. But we might also say, "You are what you look at," "You are who you listen to," "You are who you hang with," "You are what you read." "You are what (or who) you secretly swear allegiance to."
"Other gods." Where has all our science and technology left us? We are everyday on the brink of blowing up our planet home, the plants and animals becoming extinct at alarming rates, the forests are disappearing, the garbage mountans grow higher, the air in so many places poisoned and deadly, in much of the world the water is not potable.
Verse 21:"May God be blessed." That doesn't mean we toss incense and compliments at God, but to see ourselves as servants of the God who is Master of vast worlds - inner and outer. Jesus says, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day./ May we discover gratitude as the door to the spiritual life./ We ask the blessings of safe-travel,/ sobriety and peace/ in the gathering of families./ We pray to the Lord.
Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address 155 years ago this Monday./ It has been said that today we are fighting a cold civil war in our nation./ May we grow into Lincoln's new birth of freedom,/ but freedom from hatred,/ arrogance,/ militarism/ and idolatry./ We pray to the Lord. We pray for 18-year-old Claudia Garcia Sordo/ who is walking from San Miguel, El Salvador to the United States./ After refusing to sell drugs for a gang/ they killed her step-father,/ 2-year-old brother and 16-year-old sister./ May she find among us/ a people of great heart./ We pray to the Lord. The Greek word hypocrite means actor./ May our church leadership be expunged of all hypocrisy,/ fashioning itself as pro-life,/ while putting self-preservation and prestige ahead of the protection of young people./ We pray to the Lord. We pray again for the members of our families,/ our friends and colleagues./ For the healing of those who are sick,/ where relationships are fractured,/ where people have gone off into shadow./ We pray to the Lord. Again we pray for those who are suffering great losses in California's fires./ For fire fighters and helpers./ And may we quickly learn why,/ in what should be California's rainy season,/ the state is repeatedly in flames./ We pray to the Lord. November is the month of remembering the dead./ We pray for those who have died this past year./ For those who die suddenly,/ in wars,/ disasters or famines./ For those who die without family,/ friend or mourner./ We pray to the Lord.
Michael and Diane Porter put up this (2012) photo of a flock of winter-time American Goldfinches on their website Birdwatching Dot Com. Their company out of Fairfield, Iowa sells everything one would need to start birdwatching.
We accuse someone of being a "Bird brain" when we think them to be dim, slow or unintelligent. I don't agree. I'd say birds are in the know and have a great deal to teach us. We might do well to keep a keen eye on them and learn some of their lessons.
Entering the time of overwhelming darkness, the sparseness,
Every early morning, rain or shine, I walk the long, circular, dirt driveway here eleven times. That's just over three miles. One portion of the path runs parallel to a grassy area about twelve feet deep. Beyond that is a wooded area of about thirty feet deep, then a wide and active stream of about forty feet across. Monday morning was dank and wet from the night rain. On lap number five, head down, shoulders hunched...
"Hey!" ... "Hey!" ... "Hey, you with the hooded-head!" "Hornbeam here, pumpin out gold, while you're in a fuss over mud on your shoes!"
In the Autumn change of seasons/ the trees drop a great number of leaves./ May we drop resentment and the divisive anger which is tearing our nation apart./ May God rain down justice upon the earth through our best efforts./ We pray to the Lord. November 11 was originally called Armistice Day,/ marking the end of the First World War in Europe in 1918./ May we be enthusiastic for peace;/ learning,/ protecting and expanding peace in our own day./ We pray to the Lord.
November 11 is also called Veteran's Day./ We pray for soldiers and sailors/ not only in our own country/ but those of every nation./ Grant consolation and strength to veterans who have been damaged physically and emotionally./ We pray to the Lord.
For the President of the United States and those who were elected to government this week./ May they be restorers of decency and hope./ We pray to the Lord. Tuesday is the Feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini,/ the 19th century/ New York based,/ Saint of the immigrants./ May we learn the heart-depths of Jesus' command,/ to welcome the stranger./ We pray to the Lord. We mark the 80th Anniversary of Kristallnacht,/ the days of German rampage which destroyed hundreds of Jewish synagogues,/ businesses and homes./ May Christians realize how incongruous it is for a follower of Jesus to hate Jews./ We pray to the Lord. We pray for ourselves,/ those who are around us at Mass today,/ our families and friends/ and all who ask for healing and the restoration of hope and joy./ We pray to the Lord.
*The little video above is of the stream here that runs through the woods down to the Delaware River. This was a windy morning when it seemed to rain leaves. Notice the horizontal of the stream and the vertical of the trees and leaf-fall.
The Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown each Friday evening. Last week a small synagogue (about an hour away from here) dedicated their Friday prayer to the Tree of Life Community in Pittsburgh where recently eleven congregants were murdered, and many others injured, during Saturday morning prayers. They called the prayer "A Service of Healing and Solidarity."
The Friday evening worship began with the traditional lighting of Sabbath Candles and a prayer that we might be inwardly illumined. So many troubling voices of division, hatred, suspicion and bitterness these days - the prayer here, prayed heartily by two hundred people, suggests not everyone is on board with all of that.
Let us Bring Light
When evil darkens our world, let us be the bearers of light.
When fists are clenched in self-righteous rage, let our hands be open for the sake of peace.
When injustice slams doors on the ill, the poor, the old and the stranger, let us pry the doors open.
Where shelter is lacking, let us be builders.
Where food and clothing are needed, let us be providers.
Where knowledge is denied, let us be champions of learning.
When dissent is stifled, let our voices speak truth to power.
When the earth and its creatures are threatened, let us be their guardians.
When bias, greed and bigotry erode our country's values, let us proclaim liberty throughout the land.
In the places where no one acts like a human being,
In her poem, Sometimes, Mary Oliver gives us brief instructions for living a life. She suggests we pay attention, be astonished and tell about it.
Recently, driving on Rt 17, with the river to my right and the yellowing, autumn hills on my lfe, a Great Blue Heron flew low over my car. Human beings are the only thing on earth that can hold this kind of wonder. ~ ~ ~
In one moment, just that, I was driving south-east and you were flying north-west, your S shaped neck, your six-foot wing span, your four-foot legs pulled back like landing gear. From my feeling-place I called out and up, "Are you the Great Blue who wades along my cow pond, who when I arrive you arise, vertically, in a great rhythm of wing-flap, feathers cutting the air, all power, all grace?
Are you the Great Blue who fishes from the river rock where my stream meets the Delaware, and when I arrive you arise, leaving wet-webbed foot prints behind, the sun bright on your blue-gray, or is it gray-blue? And glider-like, you slide through the green tunnel upstream, looking to restore your solitude. Father Stephen P. Morris
At the start of November,/ we pray for those who celebrate birthdays,/ anniversaries and other days of remembrance./ We pray for gifts of good health,/ safety and well-being./ We pray to the Lord.
One month after the signing of a Vatican-China accord,/ the shrines of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows and Our Lady of Bliss were destroyed in China./ We ask consolation for those who are saddened by such a loss/ and conversion of heart for those who are destroyers./ We pray to the Lord.
While Jews comprise two percent of the nation's population,/ anti-semitic crimes are most numerous and virulent./ We ask God's forgiveness for the many expressions of hate against other people,/ mindful of those who are sad,/ fearful and in mourning in Pittsburgh today./ We pray to the Lord.
Election day is Tuesday./ Grant the nation the gift of maturity as we exercise a great freedom./ Bless us with servant-leaders who are free of anger,/ hatred and fear,/ who have in mind and heart what is helpful and best for all,/ not some./ We pray to the Lord.
These are troubling times./ We pray for one another at Mass today,/ for our families and friends,/ and for ourselves./ Grant that we would not lose heart,/ not succumb to cynicism and bitterness,/ but remain strong in faith,/ hope and love./ We pray to the Lord.
For the sick,/ the children who suffer,/ the war torn,/ the broken-hearted,/ the fearful./ Might we find our way to a world renewed by justice;/ a world that is clean and healthy./ We pray to the Lord.
