Denial Destruction and Hope

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today contain images of rejection and lamentation.

Difficult times

The Prophet Jeremiah cries out as those who will not heed his warnings seek to take his life.

* [20:7] You seduced me: Jeremiah accuses the Lord of having deceived him; cf. 15:18.

In the Gospel from John, Jesus finds the religious leaders have turned a blind eye to the works that testify to Jesus Divinity and He retreats to where the common people are becoming aware of His Identity.

* [10:30] This is justification for Jn 10:29; it asserts unity of power and reveals that the words and deeds of Jesus are the words and deeds of God.

Eileen Burke-Sullivan looks at the political landscape, global climate change, the financial instability of our time, the chronic oppression of the weak, violence with sex and guns and asks to whom or what can we turn to find hope and have confidence that Goodness will prevail?

During these last days in Lent, we who are Christians must turn to the Cross for hope.  It is there that we see the image of our God who will suffer for and with us. An image of a God who does not shore up the hegemony of violence but brings mercy for all by placing his own life on the line.  If your image of God gives you no hope in this world it is important to pray to know the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jesus. Don’t let cultural stereotypes of bolts of lightning striking you down. Don’t let images of a God who condemns stand in your way of coming to the Cross and seeing the truth of “Love Alone” stretched between heaven and earth.

Don Schwager quotes Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D. on the sacrifice of Christ.

"Even though the man Christ Jesus, in the form of God together with the Father with whom He is one God, accepts our sacrifice, nonetheless He has chosen in the form of a servant to be the sacrifice rather than to accept it. Therefore, He is the priest Himself Who presents the offering, and He Himself is what is offered." (excerpt from City of God, 10,20)

Friar Jude Winkler comments on the Confessions of Jeremiah which are autobiographical sections of the Book dealing with his suffering. In John 10 the Jewish leaders fight and object to Jesus using prerogatives of God. Friar Jude notes that Jesus uses Scripture cleverness as He reminds the opposition that He is doing the Father’s work as witness to His Divinity.

The Lamentations of Jeremiah and Jesus are compared by John J Parsons of the Hebrew for Christians website.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, notes that mystics—like Thomas Merton, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, John Duns Scotus, and many others—are ones who recognizes God’s image and likeness in this human being, in this creature, in this moment, and from that encounter with the sacred come to see God everywhere and always. He offers reflections from Mary Beth Ingham who writes about John Duns Scotus concept of Haecceitas that points to the ineffable within each being.

According to Scotus, the created order is not best understood as a transparent medium through which divine light [from the outside] shines (as Aquinas taught), but is itself endowed with an inner light that shines forth from within. [This is like the] difference between a window (Aquinas) and a lamp (Scotus). Both give light, but the source of light for Scotus has already been given to the being by the creator. Each being . . . possesses an immanent dignity; it is already gifted by the loving Creator with a sanctity beyond our ability to understand. . .

Our lamentations that cry out for hope and confront the destruction that the powerful seek to use to control parallel Jesus experience and are balanced by the inherent image of God that is a light of hope for us.

References


(n.d.). Jeremiah's Interior Crisis. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/jeremiah/jeremiah20.htm

(n.d.). John 10:10. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/john10.htm
(n.d.). Creighton University's Online Ministries. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html

(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/

(n.d.). The prophet Jeremiah and Jesus - Hebrew for Christians. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Holidays/Summer_Holidays/Tishah_B_Av/Jeremiah/jeremiah.html

(2017, December 30). 2018 Daily Meditations - Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from https://cac.org/2018-daily-meditations/