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02 Feb 2014 - Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Cycle A

Penitential Act Invitation Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries. Invocations You make us ready for your coming. Lord, have mercy. You free us from sin and death. Christ, have mercy. You show us your salvation. Lord, have mercy. Prayer of the Faithful The universal prayer Here in God’s temple, we seek the Lord in prayer: That the Lord may make the church righteous and devout, we pray, Lord, hear our prayer. That the world may see the salvation of God, we pray, Lord, hear our prayer. That the Lord may free those who live in fear, we pray, Lord, hear our prayer. That our lives may give glory to the Lord, we pray, Lord, hear our prayer.

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Cycle A

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Exploring the word

24 Nov 2019 - Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, Cycle C

Many of us, admittedly, live in the past or the future a good bit of the time. Past-dwellers can be divided into groups: the nostalgists who think the past is much too good to leave behind and those who rubberneck their personal histories with all the gruesome fascination of a car wreck. In the same way, future-dwellers come in two kinds: those who eagerly await the future as the ultimate antidote to all that ails us and those who agonize about what’s ahead to the point of requiring ulcer medicine. In the twin obsessions with long ago and later, the members of all four clubs stand to lose the pearl of great price. The only moment that counts—that is, the hour of purpose and possibility—is the present. Our addiction to the past is certainly understandable. So far we’ve lived a great deal of our lives there, and some of it was pretty good. Certainly the songs were memorable, and nobody makes movies like that anymore. Try buying tomatoes like the ones we used to get, or buying anything near the quality of what used to be. Liturgy was grander, the streets were cleaner, the environment was healthier, and eating meat wasn’t going to drive you crazy. For better or for worse But then there was the bad stuff. Let us count the ways just in the relatively recent past: the Holocaust, wars galore, assassinations, and terror attacks, for starters. More personally, every one of us has known dark hours that took years to move beyond, and some of us are still trying to salvage ourselves from the wreckage of our own histories. For many people, the past is a shrine composed of glory days and nightmares, both of which keep us in thrall to what was and cannot be again. Future junkies go the other way. The enthusiasts are often young people and all too soon they’ll get over it. Technology will prove to be, not the god it pretends to be, but only the Golden Calf, a false savior of health, time, and labor. Harmony and understanding won’t rush in with the dawn of Aquarius or the next government. When we finally meet E.T., he won’t be any more together than we are. Future worriers, of course, will discover some of their fears realized, and others merely phantoms. Either way it won’t matter, because addictive worriers will already be embarked on the next great season of fretting. How can we escape our obsessive orbit of past or future? By embracing the present and refusing to live anywhere else. This is not the path of least resistance by any means: The present has all kinds of grisly elements that might send the faint of heart screaming into the time tunnel and frantically pushing all available buttons. But a brave new world cannot be had by those who seek to escape the here and now. Those fueled by bitterness, disappointment, or nostalgia idolize the past and will feed the present and future to it as a sacrificial offering. Those motivated by fear, anxiety, or misplaced hopes allow tomorrow to rule over today like a ruthless dictator. The only way to overthrow these powers and principalities is to surrender totally to divine grace, which operates in the “holy now” of God’s everlasting presence. Now is the hour when Christ is King. The Kingdom we await is always “at hand.” Kingdom now How do we know this? Luke is the evangelist of the holy now. Mary announces the imperative of the present hour in her canticle: “Behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.” Simeon echoes it in his: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace.” The angels in Bethlehem take up the refrain: “For today in the city of David, a savior has been born for you.” And Jesus preaches the same in the synagogue at Nazareth, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” The imperative to commit to today is spelled out in the conditions for discipleship: If anyone wishes to follow Jesus, he or she must take up the cross daily. Zacchaeus is told that salvation arrives at his house today. Likewise the repentant thief on the cross is assured that he will attain Paradise today. No one is asked to take a number, to come back tomorrow, or to bide his or her time. The moment of action is always now. The eternal God doesn’t use a date planner. If something is worth doing, we might say, it’s worth doing at once. When asked by the Pharisees when the promised Kingdom would arrive, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.” In plain speech, Jesus introduced the reign of God breaking into time and taking a chair in our midst. Maybe heaven can wait, but the Kingdom is in the room. Applying the word Christ our King The folks at Hebron knew just what to do when David arrived. They claimed him as their king. But many Christians seem uncertain that Christ is King, or that citizenship in his Kingdom is our primary allegiance. It could be a matter of terminology: Kingship is off-putting in a democratic age. Paul preferred the phrase: Jesus is Lord. Authority has become such a soiled garment in our times that the idea of ultimate authority seems to have no positive corollary. But sovereignty is the message: the power without peer. For Christians, Jesus is sovereign, and the reign of God trumps every other reality. Essayist Charles Lamb once wrote, “If Shakespeare should come into this room, we would all rise; but if Jesus Christ should come in, we would all kneel.” The sentiment is right, but the use of the conditional, at least with reference to Jesus, is misleading. Jesus Christ is among us and his Kingdom is within us. If Jesus is our King, the time to make our allegiance is now. If we believe the reign of God is among us, it’s time to live according to its values. Related scripture links Today in Luke: 1:48, 2:11, 2:29, 4:2, 9:23, 17:20-21, 19:10 Locating the Kingdom: Matt. 4:17, 12:28; Mark 1:15; Luke 4:43, 8:1, 9:11, 10:9-11, 11:20, 17:20-21; John 3:3-6 Jesus is Lord: 1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 1:19-23; Phil. 2:9-11; Col. 1:15-20

Authors Alice Camille

today the present

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12 Jan 2020 - Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Cycle A

Mortality being what it is, we are limited by definition. Most of the time we forget this as we bluster off into the thick of our lives, managing Herculean feats like raising children, committing our fidelity for life, accepting the suffering and death of those we love, and living with the ongoing surrender of youthful strength and beauty in exchange for the encroaching pain and disability of old age. These are huge undertakings, impossible to reconcile in abstraction but endured on a daily basis without fanfare by the folks sitting around us in the pews. At the same time, all of these undertakings teach us challenging lessons about how truly fragile and ephemeral we are. Flesh is grass, scripture says; it rises up in a season, common and cheap, and then fades and dies without much notice. In another passage, it is noted that a human life is “70 years, or 80 for those who are strong.” That may seem like a lot of time in the beginning, but after three decades or so we start to appreciate how short the normal life span is. Not to mention the fact that our birth comes with no warranty, and we don’t get our money back if our particular life span is considerably shorter. Acceptance of our finite condition allows us at least one precious gift: the absolute significance of the present moment. The power of this hour Those in 12-step recovery programs know well the fatal hubris involved in swearing off liquor, drugs, overeating, compulsive sex, gambling, or any other substance or behavior “forever.” Forever is a long time, and it’s not given to us mortals to dicker over. What we’ve got in our hands is the present hour, and therein lies all the authority over our lives that we will ever need. All we have to do, really, is commit to a certain responsibility or course of action today, right now, in this hour. Let tomorrow take care of itself—if we should have a tomorrow. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. If we try to do otherwise—and we often do—then we find ourselves in the unlikely task of biting off eternity and trying to swallow it. We choke on the attempt. Instances of paralysis and indecision in our lives might be accounted for by the knowledge that we are seeking to do too much: making “forever” choices with finite hearts. If we are overwhelmed by life at times, we might step back from trying to live “our lives” and live only the next hour. Or the next five minutes. Or take the next breath. Those are significantly more manageable tasks, not to mention more sensible ones. John the Baptist betrays that he is caught up in the Big Picture at the expense of the moment when Jesus comes to him for Baptism. John has been proclaiming a mighty, controversial, and dangerous message in a high profile sort of way and gathering gale force for a coming storm. To prepare the way of the Lord, John has also been performing Baptisms all day, all week, perhaps for a season or more. It should be second nature to him to perform one more. It should be his finest hour to receive the Lord for whom he has been preparing the nation. Instead John freezes, objects, finds himself at a loss to do the first thing his Lord asks him to do. Being wrapped up in the Big Picture, John cannot find himself in the simple and singular demand of this hour. John’s problem and ours It’s not that John doesn’t know how to do what Jesus asks. It’s that he’s confounded by the why of the request, not to mention the who and the what of it. John wants to understand it before he does it, and according to every path of reasoning, the thing doesn’t make sense. Baptism is for repentance—does Jesus need to repent? Baptism absolves us of past sin—does Jesus have any? Baptism prepares the way of the Lord—does Jesus mean to prepare the way for himself? John has believed all the while that he is cooperating with the great divine plan, and has styled himself a mere voice in the wilderness who has abandoned ego and will in order to give God room to act. But in this hour, he is forced to recognize that his ego and will are quick to reassert themselves when the logic of the thing confounds him, as it does here. He will submit to God’s plan entirely so long as he gets it. But if God introduces some inexplicable variables, John is fully prepared to balk. I don’t think this reaction is rare—it is among the most common spiritual obstacles we face. Being finite folk, we have a very limited perspective on what’s going on, cosmically speaking. Logic is one of the big guns we pull out to blast away at life’s dilemmas. Who hasn’t drawn columns of pro and con on a piece of paper in an attempt to reason through a discernment? How many would-be saints have abandoned the path of faith altogether because they couldn’t get their minds around some practical, factual concern? It doesn’t take a biggie like “virgin birth” to get our minds spinning in stunning denial. For John, the sinless one shouldn’t be baptized; he should be baptizing! It was as simple as that. Applying the word Then he gave in What it took John to breech the impasse was an act of surrender. He gave in “for now,” or as the advertising wizards might say, he just did it. If John had foreseen where this whole divine pageant was going—Baptism, conflict, rejection, arrest, trial, condemnation, crucifixion—no doubt he would have really balked and been unable to continue in his share of the task. What would finite human reason make of the road Jesus was on? What good was knowing the Big Picture if it took away our ability to function in the present hour? “Give in for now” is a great motto for discipleship. Inch by inch, we make our way toward paradise. Related scripture links Flesh is grass: Isa. 40:6-8 Seventy years or eighty: Ps. 90:10 Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof: Matt. 6:34 (KJV)

Authors Alice Camille

the present forever limited perspective

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26 Jan 2025 - Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

God is the Lord of Today, the God of Present Tense. "I AM" is the name God uses in the ancient stories of Israel. The Eternal One exists in an everlasting state of Now, which is why God expects things of us today more than any other day. As for most of us, trapped in the limited perspective of linear moments, we often get stuck in the past. We're overcome by waves of nostalgia for a world that was: for youth, strength, ability, beauty, and opportunity come and gone. We're caught up by grievance and indignation for what others have done or failed to do. We're mired in loss and can't seem to break free from remorse. Paradoxically and even perversely we also live in the future, counting on what is not yet real. We spend money we don't yet have. We live for dreams that haven't materialized and may not ever. We imagine ourselves to be better than we are and presume (with little evidence) that we're heading in a righteous direction. But because we don't live in the present, we miss the opportunities that arrive in every moment to bring the future we want to birth. So the people of Jerusalem weep at the Water Gate, listening to Ezra proclaim the law of God. They don't hear its benevolence, only the dreaded shortfall of their past actions. They hear also what they must do in the future to attain the standards God has set for humanity. What they don't hear is the very thing Ezra exhorts them to consider: God's good word is reason to celebrate now. Forget what was (God is willing to do so!) and what will be (it's not guaranteed!) and rejoice in the Holy Now—because that's where God is to be found. Today and now are the only points in time when God can be encountered, so they are the only moments where grace operates and change can take place. Jesus demonstrates the same allegiance to the present hour when he reads the scroll of Isaiah, ancient prophet of Israel long dead, and declares: "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." Does Jesus simply mean that these words of prophecy have been in cold storage for six centuries and are finally being realized in 30 A.D.? Is he proposing that the school of Isaiah that produced the Servant Songs foreknew the coming of Jesus, incarnate Word of God? We can't know the mind of Isaiah or his admirers. What is clear is that Jesus views prophecy as an organic word that lives now or not at all. If ever a year is proclaimed acceptable to the Lord, let it be this one. Related scripture links Public proclamation of the law: Deut. 31:9-13; 2 Kings 22:8:25; 2 Chron. 34:1-33 The hour of decision: Deut. 30:19-20; Josh. 24:15-27 Now is the acceptable time: 2 Cor. 6:2 Nothing is impossible with God: Luke 1:37 Catechism links Implications of the Nazareth proclamation: CCC 436; 543-550; 714-716; 1168; 1286; 2443-2449 Adapted from a previously published Exploring the word.

Authors Alice Camille

Prophecy the present hour

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