Peter's Mother-in-law

"As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them." (Mark 1:29-31)

As Jesus finishes a teaching session in the synagogue, Mark notes that he’s invited to Peter’s house where Peter’s mother-in-law presumably lives with him and his wife.  Though Peter’s wife isn’t mentioned specifically here, later, in 1 Corinthians (9:5), Paul very clearly refers to her as possibly accompanying Peter on his mission.  Perhaps the mother-in-law had the flu: “she was in bed with a fever”, always risky for an older person.  In his quiet, gentle way Jesus comes to her and takes her hand.  As the fever subsides, she gets up out of the bed, and heads for the kitchen, as any good Jewish mother would do, to get them all something to eat!  Could it be that Mark inserts this little detail in his Gospel to hold up the mother-in-law as an example to us of someone looking beyond her own ills and infirmities to taking care of the needs of others?

A New Creation In Christ

"Use creatures as they should be used: the earth, the sea, the sky, the air, the springs and the rivers. Give praise and glory to their Creator for all that you find beautiful and wonderful in them. See with your bodily eyes the light that shines on earth, but embrace with your whole soul and all your affections 'the true light which enlightens everyone who comes into this world'…If we are indeed the temple of God and if the Spirit of God lives in us, then what every believer has within is greater than what the believer admires in the skies. 

Our words and exhortations are not intended to make you disdain God's works or think there is anything contrary to your faith in creation, for the good God has himself made all things good. What we ask is that you use reasonably and with moderation all the marvelous creatures which adorn this world…"  

(From a sermon of St. Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461)

"For Me To Live Is Christ"

From a homily of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople (407):

"The one thing [Paul] feared, indeed dreaded, was to offend God; nothing else could sway him. Therefore, the only thing he really wanted was always to please God.

The most important thing of all to him, however, was that he knew himself to be loved by Christ. Enjoying this love, he considered himself happier than anyone else…

To be separated from that love was, in his eyes, the greatest and most extraordinary of torments; the pain of that loss would alone have been hell, and endless, unbearable torture…

So too, in being loved by Christ he thought of himself  as possessing life, the world, the angels, present and future, the kingdom, the promise and countless blessings. Apart from that love nothing saddened or delighted him; for nothing earthly did he regard as bitter or sweet…"

Week of Prayer for Unity & Intereligious Dialogue

During the week beginning on the feast of the Confession of St. Peter, January 18, and continuing through January 25, the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the Church celebrates a Week of Prayer for Unity and Interreligious Dialogue. Though originally designed and commonly understood to pray for Christian unity, in more recent years it has widened in scope to include interfaith involvement. 

This ecumenical week began in the little New York community of Peekskill, specifically on a remote hillside 5 miles away, called Graymoor, home to a small Episcopal religious community of friars and sisters, who were quite controversial and unpopular in the Episcopal Church. At a time when religious community members were often suspected as “advance agents” for a Roman Catholic takeover of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Graymoor Franciscans, “eccentrics”, as they were called, did very little to allay such suspicions.

Fr. Paul Wattson and Mother Lurana White, co-founders of the Graymoor Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement, quite openly advocated for a reunion of Anglicans with Rome and recognition of the papacy. Most Protestants and even some Catholics were astounded by the idea. Because of their committed stance, the Graymoors were under enormous pressure from church leaders and editors to abandon their efforts. Fr. Paul was shunned in most Episcopal pulpits, and Mother Lurana had to literally send her sisters out begging just to keep the Society of the Atonement alive.

Nevertheless, Fr. Paul and Mother Lurana pursued their perceived God-given mission: to seek a coming together of divided Christian churches. The idea of a period of prayer for Christian unity came up in a conversation between Fr. Wattson and an Anglican clergyman in England, The Rev. Spencer Jones. In the autumn of 1907, Fr. Jones suggested an annual day of prayer for Christian unity. Fr. Wattson concurred, but simultaneously conceived the idea of a Church Unity Week or “Octave”, to be observed for eight days between January 18 and 25, the dates of the two feasts mentioned earlier. The first attempt at the observance, held in the small, gloomy Graymoor chapel in 1908, met with lukewarm response, at best. 

Fr. Paul and Mother Lurana, because of their pro-Roman leanings, finally asked to be admitted into the Roman Catholic Church, and in October, 1909, Pius X received the whole Society of the Atonement as a body. Eventually, the Octave became very popular, but almost exclusively in the Roman Catholic Church. Other Christian bodies held observances of their own, more compatible with their theology and spirituality.

A number of historical movements towards Christian unity, from the 18th century on, preceded the Graymoors’ efforts.  In the 19th century, the desire for Christians to pray together was occasioned by the divisions which weakened the power of Christian witness. In 1846 the Evangelical Alliance was established in London and developed both international and inter-church connections. The Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christians was founded in 1857 with Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox participation. The Popes had consistently urged Roman Catholics to pray for Christian unity, but only from the particular stance of return to the Roman Catholic fold. The Lambeth Conferences, particularly in 1878, during this period also promoted prayer for Christian unity.

In 1913 the Faith and Order Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church issued a number of publications for Christian unity, and the preparatory Conference on Faith and Order at Geneva in 1920 appealed for a special week of prayer for Christian unity. Faith and Order continued to issue "Suggestions for an Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity" until 1941 when it changed the dates for its week to that of the January Octave. In this way, Christians, who for reasons of conscience, could not join with others in prayer services could still share in united prayer at a specific time. 

In 1935 Abbé Paul Couturier, a French priest, addressed this problem by promoting prayer for Christian unity on the inclusive basis that "our Lord would grant to his Church on earth that peace and unity which were in his mind and purpose, when, on the eve of His Passion, He prayed that all might be one." A huge ecumenical step was taken in 1964 with the issuing of the Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican Council II. The Decree was clear for Roman Catholics: "In certain special circumstances, such as in prayer services for unity and during ecumenical gatherings, it is allowable, indeed desirable, that Catholics should join in prayer with their separated brethren.” Today the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and Interreligious Dialogue belongs to all people of faith who wish, as Jesus did, "that all may be one". The formation of official ecumenical dialogues among Christians and between non-Christian bodies reinforces the value of such a yearly observance.

A dear deceased Trappist monk friend of mine, Fr. Brendan, OCSO, once sent me this quote: “The schisms, persecutions, and polemics of our yesterdays [today] begin to assume a certain unreality...As the Christian world once split on the dipthong, so have Christians killed each other for a definition. That they should quarrel and divide within the great area of mystery created by the Incarnation, which they share and live by, becomes increasingly unacceptable. The most elementary lesson of a faith held in common is to love, and so to understand one another...”

Jesus the Christ, Savior

Luke 2:15-21 tells us of angelic words spoken to common sheep-tenders: "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you: he is Christ the Lord." The child referred to is Jesus of Nazareth who historically bore the name Yeshua/Joshua bar Joseph. The name derives from yasha = to be open, wide free: to save. Jesus signifies "He [God] saves." A Jewish name stood for the person and indicated something about her/his history, purpose, and mission in life. The name Yeshua was a fairly common one. There had been many "saviors" in the history of God's people, but this Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, was to be the Savior, the Anointed One of the Lord.

Many of us may have been asked, at one time or another, "Are you saved?" That usually implies our ability to cite a specific time or date of a religious experience or conversion, or it implies that some common ground is provided in conversation between the questioner & us, as in "Are you part of the club, the 'in' group?" A positive reply allows the questioner to associate with you; a negative reply causes the questioner's defenses to go up and draw away. 

When I hear that question, "Are you saved?", I think back to some comments made by my son's school principal in a 1981 PTA newsletter: "The greatest problem facing our world today is that of man's relationship to his fellow man…The human ability to accept others is the brightest light in the darkness of this world…I am convinced that the answers to this problem lie within each of us. The light is there for us to use as individuals, as a community of persons, as a community of nations. Yet we continue to withhold ourselves from others -- we cut them off -- we don't believe in them -- we don't accept them as being one of us because of a difference in age, sex, color, viewpoint or speech. Darkness is nothing -- as soon as we turn the light on it disappears…At this time of year, just think what benefit we can provide for those who inhabit our small corner of the world and even for ourselves if we turn on the light of affection, concern, sympathy, understanding and love for our fellowman…It is not so difficult to give of ourselves -- to open the gates of our attitudes -- so that we can share ourselves with those who may have differing viewpoints…It is our potential to give freely and lavishly of [our gifts]."

What a wonderfully simple, direct, practical message, yet one which virtually expresses the essential wisdom and meaning of such phrases as "Are you saved?", "He saved us", "Jesus saves". The fact is that Jesus wouldn't withhold himself from humankind. "The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us."  He accepted us. He accepts us always, even despite what we've been in the past and often are in the present. St. Paul reminds us: "…when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy…" Regardless of how we are, Jesus accepts us.

How might you and I spread the light of our "affection, concern, sympathy, understanding and love to our fellowman", mentioned above? You and I have so many simple saving gifts which we can give to one another all year long: a smile; offering to wash the dishes or to cook a meal for someone; forgiving an old grudge or hurt; propagating good news, rather than just the negative or gossip; saying "Please" and "Thank you"; trying to be understanding of someone's feelings or viewpoint before we grumble at or condemn them.

Somewhere along the line, I'm sure I ran across the name of the person who wrote the following Resolutions but I can't for the life of me remember or track it down. It'll suffice simply to share them in hopes that each of us might be moved by one or other of them as we live through this New Year of 2015.

No one will ever get out of this world alive.

Resolve, therefore, in the year to come to maintain a sense of values.

Take care of yourself. Good health is everyone's source of wealth.

Without it, happiness is almost impossible.

Resolve to be cheerful and helpful. People will repay you in kind.

Avoid angry, abrasive persons. They are generally vengeful.

Avoid zealots. They are generally humorless.

Resolve to listen more and to talk less. No one ever learns anything by talking.

Be chary of giving advice. Wise men don't need it; and fools won't heed it.

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged,

sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong.

Sometime in life you will have been all of these.

Do not equate money with success. There are many successful money-makers

who are miserable failures as human beings.

What counts most about success is how a man achieves it.

Resolve to love next year someone you didn't love this year.

Love is the most enriching ingredient of life.

Christmas Eve

In the Ukraine, it is said, there's a legend about a woman who was too poor to decorate her Christmas tree, but shared the warmth of her home with a spider. The spider returned the gift: one night she spun her web on the tree and when morning came the tree sparkled with the sunlit web. For the people of the Ukraine the web symbolizes our connectedness, our fragility and the road we each travel toward death.

With Christmas Eve our Advent season of waiting ends and we celebrate the feast of the Lord's birth. Our weeks of Advent waiting and expectation are fulfilled in the hope which Christmas brings, hope embodied in Jesus the Son of Mary who is the Lord. There's a Hebrew word for hope, kaveh, which is also associated with a spider's web. In the web, in its connectedness, there is hope.

One of my former professors of nearly 50 years ago, Fr. Gerard Sloyan, has written: "Luke has composed a tale so profoundly religious, indeed so theological, that pedantic exegesis of its details could destroy its fragile beauty. This is a narrative of God's design…a tale of divine paradox."

Luke's is a marvelous story of how God interconnects with us, of how God's Son came to be with us in a stable, in ordinary human history, through Mary's pregnancy, bearing, and nurturing of a human child like us. Christmas is a season of birthing, of labor pains, yet a season also of people interconnecting in hope. Luke uses very descriptive words in speaking of Mary, as she and Joseph left Nazareth for Bethlehem: "great with child", "swollen inwardly". Mary set out for Judea, obedient to nature's laws, obedient to her country's laws, and especially obedient to the will of God. She was called to a birthing which may have prompted rumors of scandal among those who knew her, yet one which brought a whole series of amazing new relationships, relationships of affirmation and hope.
The census itself could be seen as an exercise in interconnectedness: "all went to be enrolled, each to his own city." Mary's life was certainly enmeshed with Joseph's, her betrothed. She was, literally, connected with her son, Jesus, who was born for us, his pilgrim followers, on the way.

The Advent and Christmas seasons lend themselves to our thinking back over all of our relationships and interconnections. Think of all the people, yourself included, who are "pregnant" with responsibilities and chores to be done so that Christmas can come about: the house-cleaning, the traveling, the parenting, the baking, and the financial worries which haunt and drive us, especially at this time. Sometimes it seems that the whole world around us, in St. Paul's words, "groans in travail…" It is our very connectedness to those who mean most to us which can, especially at this time of busyness, become most vital. They, just like the spider's web, can be our hope and support in the midst of our frazzledness and fragility. 

With all the mixed feeling and emotions engendered by the Christmas season, as Christians our eyes and hearts this day turn towards the altar and the crèche in a pregnant silence, waiting…not just for the Word to become flesh again, but for flesh to become Word now, in Christ's Mass. We each want nothing less than to be born anew in God, to be in touch with the Holy. 

Contemporary poet, William Wendell, has wonderfully expressed the meaning of this sacred Christmas Eve in terms of family connectedness:

After a month of Silent Nights

and Jingle Bells

and White Christmases

When you're up to your mistletoe

with Rudophs

and Scrooges

and Frosty the Snowman

When you've realized that 

your six-year-old doesn't ask

how Santa can be in each store anymore

And you're tired of tinsel

and plastic Baby Jesuses

and wondering what to buy

It all comes to 

pajamaed feet on stair steps

and stage whispers of excitement

at some ungodly hour

that is somehow perfectly godly

because it's Christmas morning

And the trauma turns to tears

when you open the crumply wrapped box

mummified with scotch tape

and behold your very own

handmade

pot holder

And it occurs to you

that despite all the shopping

the millions do for Christmas

No one has ever been able to buy it

For it is eternally given

each to the other

and from Him

to us.    

4th Week of Advent

He’d just finished a long teaching session in the synagogue.  She’d been sitting quietly toward the back of the room, taking in all he’d said.  She waited until most of the others had left, then, approaching him, smiling, she took his face in her hands and said, “Yeshua, blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you!” His warm hand reached up and grasped her hand cradling his cheek as he smiled and observed, “Ah, but rather blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

At that moment his mind began to wander back to when he was a young boy, to that day when he’d talked with his mother, Miriam, as she worked in the kitchen.  The kind of quiet spontaneous conversation a boy enjoys with his mom.  He’d asked all sorts of questions: the kind that young boys often ask when important issues and things that don’t make sense come to their minds, in no particular order.  

His mother had paused as he somewhat delicately asked how he’d come to be: how he’d been born, and why Joseph was his “stepfather”.  With a far-away look in her eyes, Miriam spoke softly of the day, many years ago, when she had been a young woman, not much older than he was now.  She and Joseph had just been betrothed, which for a Jewish couple such as they, meant that she was married to him, for all practical purposes.  

True, she hadn’t gone to his house to stay as yet, but that was the next step. This particular day she’d been on her way to the well to draw water, when suddenly she felt what could only be described as a Presence: something like a dream and yet as though it was really happening.  She heard words, though not verbal, spoken to her that sounded as though they were intended for someone else.  There must’ve been a mistake! “Hail, O favored one. The Lord is with you.”  She knew that she was a good Jewish girl: Anna and Jehoiakim had raised her such.  But this was language for someone “special”, someone very close to the Holy One: not for someone as ordinary as she!

Trying very hard not to seem afraid, she nevertheless could feel herself trembling.  But the Presence continued, gently but persistently, with the astounding announcement that she would soon become pregnant, immediately, in fact, and that it would be a boy, a son, and that his name would be Jeshua.

“How nice,” she remembered thinking momentarily.  “Jeshua: ‘he saves’”.  A name familiar to her among her relatives.  But then, in an instant, the impact of this registered with her.  “This can’t be right,” she thought, “my betrothal hasn’t yet been consummated!”  All these images of a great son, and thrones, and never-ending kingdoms suddenly terrified her.  “How can this be, since I have no husband,” she whispered.  “I’ll be stoned if they find me pregnant before Joseph and I are together.”

As she related the story to Jeshua, she’d paused briefly, sitting very quietly, then continued.  The unseen Visitor had spoken about the Spirit and about the Most High’s power overshadowing her.  Even as she heard this in her heart she could feel in her body that it had already been done.  Something was different.  Something was new.

“The child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”  The Visitor went on to tell her of her cousin Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and all that she had verified when she’d visited Elizabeth some time thereafter.  Then came words which continued to ring in her ears all through the days of her pregnancy and beyond: “For with God nothing will be impossible.”

She’d then told Jeshua how, in that strange and sudden moment as she continued on her way to the well that day, she began to make some sense of it despite her confusion.  From somewhere deep inside she’d summoned up the courage to articulate what she was now feeling: “I am the Lord’s handmaid; let it be to me according to your word.”  She’d heard and kept the word.  

Jeshua’s mind came back from his reverie, back to the present, back to the synagogue, back to the smiling face of the older woman in front of him.  From the expression on her face, as she looked him straight in the eyes, he knew that she understood what he’d just said: “Blessed, rather are the ones who hear God’s word and keep it.”

+ + + + + + +

We draw this season of Advent, of waiting and expectation, to a close just as we began it.  As a community of hurt, we take a hard and honest look at all the suffering, discontent, frustration, pain, disappointment, and uncertainty which characterize our lives and the lives of those around us.  We acknowledge the persistent reality of all this, knowing that it will continue as long as we await Christ’s coming.

But we also wait as a community of hope and of faith.  We hope and believe because God’s word, through “the revelation of the mystery” and “through the prophetic writings”, assures us that “God... is able to strenthen you” and, as with David, assures us: “I have been with you wherever you went...”  During these four weeks of Advent the Holy One has spoken to our hearts: of comfort and rejoicing, of the power of the Spirit of God.  The Good News, the Gospel, is intrusive speech which changes us and others from within if we but allow it do so.

The Good News which has come to us proclaims that what we thought impossible, God has made possible.  We no longer have to remain a community of hurt.  We can be in the world in a new way.  

Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann, says that “...the life of faith is bracketed between the invitation to impossibility which begins things and the summons to praise which closes things...”   “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.”

If you and I are to truly glorify God by what we say and do, then we have to be ready to embrace deep displacement in our lives.  We have to be able to face and live with impossibility. We have to have the “obedience of faith”, to which Paul refers, even as Mary did, in order to trust that God will make possible, even in us, what you and I thought and think at times to be impossible.

That necessitates being open enough to reorganize and reorient our lives together around that powerful word of God which nullifies all our old assumptions and presuppositions and securities.  It calls for not only hearing the Word, but keeping it, day after day, even in the face of contradiction.  

Advent’s question is: “How can this be...?”

And the answer is Christmas: God as Word become flesh; Good News that in Jesus (He who saves) all our impossibilities are now possible.

All that is left is for us to generously respond:  “Let it be done...according to your word!”