Hope, Change, and the rules

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today resonate with themes of Hope, challenge for change, and testing the rules.

The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel foresees the Wonderful Stream that the restoration of life for the Babylonian exiles returning to Jerusalem will bring.

* [47:1–12] The life and refreshment produced wherever the Temple stream flows evoke the order and abundance of paradise (cf. Gn 1:20–22; 2:10–14; Ps 46:5) and represent the coming transformation Ezekiel envisions for the exiles and their land. Water signifies great blessings and evidence of the Lord’s presence (cf. Jl 2:14).

In the Gospel from John, Jesus gives a sign of cure on a Sabbath as He seeks confirmation that the change that will result from His action is acceptable.

* [5:17] Sabbath observance (10) was based on God’s resting on the seventh day (cf. Gn 2:2–3; Ex 20:11). Philo and some rabbis insisted that God’s providence remains active on the sabbath, keeping all things in existence, giving life in birth and taking it away in death. Other rabbis taught that God rested from creating, but not from judging (=ruling, governing). Jesus here claims the same authority to work as the Father, and, in the discourse that follows, the same divine prerogatives: power over life and death (Jn 5:21, 24–26) and judgment (Jn 5:22, 27).

Chas Kestermeier, S.J. probes our openness and asks How do we respond to Jesus offer?  

Do we really understand what is happening to us or what the true name of our Lord is?  How we can show proper thanks?

The question is always how this might apply to us.  We are that man, sinful but patient, looking to God for forgiveness and healing, for a fresh start to our trying to know, love, and serve Him, and we are (or should be) amazed that God looks at us a second time and even talks to us, heals us, or becomes human so that He can approach us and touch us more deeply.

Don Schwager asks "Do you really want to be healed?" as he quotes Augustine of Hippo, 430-543 A.D., on so great a Physician.

"Our wound is serious, but the Physician is all-powerful. Does it seem to you so small a mercy that, while you were living in evil and sinning, He did not take away your life, but brought you to belief and forgave your sins? What I suffer is serious, but I trust the Almighty. I would despair of my mortal wound if I had not found so great a Physician." (excerpt from Sermon 352,3)

Friar Jude Winkler sees in the Temple description of Ezekiel a river of grace that is a gift of the Holy Spirit  that creates a mystical energy and goodness that transforms the world. After a period like the 38 years in the Gospel do we  want to be healed? Because we are so used to our state are we ready to be something different or why not just keep the rules?

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, quotes John Philip Newell (b. 1953), a poet and scholar known for his work in the field of Celtic spirituality, who traces the roots and impact of the doctrine creatio ex nihilo. Newell offers an alternative, still orthodox, view of creation based on the writings of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon.

Irenaeus intuited that this would be a disaster, that to neutralize matter, to teach that creation does not come from holy substance, would lead to the abuse of creation. It was a convenient “truth” . . . [meaning] that the empire could do whatever it wished to matter. Matter was not holy. It had not come forth from the womb of God’s Being. Rather it was made from nothing. It was essentially devoid of sacred energy. So, every imperial mind could ravage the earth’s resources with impunity. It could disparage the rights of creatures and subordinate the physical well-being of its subjects. Religion had become the accomplice of the state’s subordination of the earth. It had sanctioned the separation of spirit and matter.

Fr. Aiden, explores the work of Thomas Aquinas on creatio ex nihilo and reveals a difference of opinion with St Bonaventure.

I’m certain, however, that the Seraphic Doctor did not have the Angelic Doctor in mind when he referred to philosophers with tiny intellects

Fr Richard Rohr offers a fitting final remark that the Christ story is the universe story. The birth of the divine-human child is a revelation, a lifting of the veil to show us that all life has been conceived by the Spirit in the womb of the universe, that we are all divine-human creatures, that everything that has being in the universe carries within itself the sacredness of Spirit.

References


(n.d.). Ezekiel, chapter 47 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/ezekiel/47

(n.d.). John, chapter 5 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/john5:51

(n.d.). Online Ministries - Creighton University. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html

(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/

(2017, December 30). 2018 Daily Meditations - Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from https://cac.org/2018-daily-meditations/

(2016, February 1). St Thomas Aquinas: Does Creatio ex Nihilo Exclude an Everlasting .... Retrieved March 13, 2018, from https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/st-thomas-aquinas-does-creatio-ex-nihilo-exclude-an-everlasting-universe/