Truth Trial and Deliverance

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to ponder the truths that set us free and the trials which often accompany our journey to truth and goodness.

Truth and Trial

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes the trial of the Twelve before the Sanhedrin.

* [5:17–42] A second action against the community is taken by the Sanhedrin in the arrest and trial of the Twelve; cf. Acts 4:1–3. The motive is the jealousy of the religious authorities over the popularity of the apostles (Acts 5:17) who are now charged with the defiance of the Sanhedrin’s previous order to them to abandon their prophetic role (Acts 5:28; cf. Acts 4:18). In this crisis the apostles are favored by a miraculous release from prison (Acts 5:18–24). (For similar incidents involving Peter and Paul, see Acts 12:6–11; 16:25–29.) The real significance of such an event, however, would be manifest only to people of faith, not to unbelievers; since the Sanhedrin already judged the Twelve to be inauthentic prophets, it could disregard reports of their miracles. When the Twelve immediately resumed public teaching, the Sanhedrin determined to invoke upon them the penalty of death (Acts 5:33) prescribed in Dt 13:6–10. Gamaliel’s advice against this course finally prevailed, but it did not save the Twelve from the punishment of scourging (Acts 5:40) in a last endeavor to shake their conviction of their prophetic mission.

* [5:30] Hanging him on a tree: that is, crucifying him (cf. also Gal 3:13).

* [5:31] At his right hand: see note on Acts 2:33. (Acts of the Apostles, CHAPTER 5, n.d.)

Psalm 34 offers praise for Deliverance from Trouble.

* [Psalm 34] A thanksgiving in acrostic form, each line beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this Psalm one letter is missing and two are in reverse order. The psalmist, fresh from the experience of being rescued (Ps 34:5, 7), can teach the “poor,” those who are defenseless, to trust in God alone (Ps 34:4, 12). God will make them powerful (Ps 34:5–11) and give them protection (Ps 34:12–22).

* [34:1] Abimelech: a scribal error for Achish. In 1 Sm 21:13–16, David feigned madness before Achish, not Abimelech. (Psalms, PSALM 34, n.d.)

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the One Who comes from Heaven.

* [3:31–36] It is uncertain whether these are words by the Baptist, Jesus, or the evangelist. They are reflections on the two preceding scenes.

* [3:34] His gift: of God or to Jesus, perhaps both. This verse echoes Jn 5:8. (John, CHAPTER 3, n.d.)

Tom Purcell asks “Why so many religious celebrations around the date of the equinox?”  Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus after the crucifixion.  The indigenous people celebrate this date because it marks a time of longer days moving into new growth of forage for horses, better hunting, and the planting seasons.  Jews celebrate Passover as freedom from the Egyptian overlords, and the beginning of the journey to the promised land.  Ramadan celebrates the gift from God to the prophet Mohammed of the holy book of Quran. 

These celebrations of victories, of renewal, of hope can arrive, though, in challenging times.  The realities of wars, pestilences, political unrest, repressions of people viewed as the “other,” economic pressures, increases in “us versus them” confrontations, false dichotomies of fairness – all these and more can intrude on our attempts to rejoice in the springs that can dispel our winters of discontent.  It is easy to focus on existing grievances (real or perceived) and trivialities, and neglect to bask in the sun of salvation and new beginnings.  We tend to ignore the now of the glorious thing that we have been given – salvation – and keep turning our minds and actions back to dwell on past hurts and on the less important temporary realities of daily life.  We don’t take the time to be one with the reality around us.  In our focus on our beliefs, we can forget that our sisters and brothers have received different revelations of the importance of this annual new beginning.  We would do well to learn more about their beliefs so we can more fully appreciate our own spiritual connections to our Creator. (Purcell, 2023)

Don Schwager quotes “Always bless the Lord!” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.

"When are you to 'bless the Lord?' When he showers blessings on you? When earthly goods are plentiful? When you have a plethora of grain, oil, wine, gold, silver... - while your mortal body remains healthy, uninjured and free from disease; while everything that is born on your estate is growing well, and nothing is snatched away by untimely death; while every kind of happiness floods your home and you have all you want in profusion? Is it only then that you are to bless the Lord? No, but 'at all times.' So you are to bless him equally when from time to time, or because the Lord God wishes to discipline you, these good things let you down or are taken from you, when there are fewer births or the already-born slip away. These things happen, and their consequence is poverty, need, hardship, disappointment and temptation. But you sang, 'I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be in my mouth always,' so when the Lord gives you these good things, bless him, and when he takes them away, bless him. He it is who gives, and he it is who takes away, but he does not take himself away from anyone who blesses him. (excerpt from EXPOSITIONS OF THE PSALMS 34.3) (Schwager, n.d.)

The Word Among Us Meditation on Acts 5:27-33 comments that we, too, have received the Holy Spirit, and we have seen the Spirit at work in our lives and in the people around us. And just as he called the apostles, the Spirit calls us to share the good news. We might be fearful of rejection or of offending someone. We might be afraid of saying the wrong thing. But if we step out in faith, we’ll begin to see God working in power. And that will cause our faith to grow, just as it did for the apostles.

Keep asking the Holy Spirit to help you and keep taking those steps, no matter how small, to reach out with the love of God. As you do, you’ll become more confident. Not only that, but like the apostles, you’ll get to see firsthand the power of the Spirit touching people through your words.

“Holy Spirit, give me the courage to spread the good news.” (Meditation on Acts 5:27-33, n.d.)

Peter Edmonds SJ, a tutor in Biblical Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, invites us to spend some time exploring the  background and character of the Acts of the Apostles as we attempt to grasp the significance of Easter and deepen the peace, hope and joy which the season offers.

Besides teaching about the identity of God, Luke has much to say about the power of the grace of God and the initiatives God takes in forming witnesses for the mission. The experiences of Peter and Paul demonstrate this most dramatically. When Jesus was on trial, Peter denied three times that he ever knew him, but Jesus did not abandon him. After the resurrection, the Lord appeared to him (Luke 24:34). He resumed his leadership of the Twelve in arranging for the election of Matthias (1:15) and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, spoke out with great effect to the crowds on Pentecost day (2:14-36). Nonetheless he needed a special heavenly vision and voice to persuade him to eat what appeared to be unclean, which led to his acceptance of the Gentile Cornelius. So important are the truths contained in this story that it is told twice (10:9-17; 11:4-10). (Edmonds, 2012)

Friar Jude Winkler comments on the response of the Sanhedrin to the accusation of the Apostles that they have Jesus' blood on their hands. The Gospel of John contrasts those things that drag us down, concupiscence, with the spiritual relationship with Jesus. Friar Jude reminds us that full life is initiated as soon as we embrace the Son and that God cannot force us to Love.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that through studying Francis of Assisi, he learned that weeping is a mode of being that relinquishes any need to be in control. After her father’s death, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captures the embodied experience of “the weeping mode,” in which no attempts to “fix” or “move on” will do.

Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. Why are my sides so sore and achy? It’s from crying, I’m told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue is unbearably bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart—my actual, physical heart, nothing figurative here—is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odds with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable. For weeks, my stomach is in turmoil, tense and tight with foreboding, the ever-present certainty that somebody else will die, that more will be lost. [2] (Rohr, 2023)

When we pause to contemplate our experience of enlightenment by the Spirit, we are grateful for the Love of God.

References

Acts of the Apostles, CHAPTER 5. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/acts/5?27 

Edmonds, P. (2012, May 9). Easter Reading: The Acts of the Apostles. Thinking Faith. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20120509_1.htm 

John, CHAPTER 3. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/3?31 

Meditation on Acts 5:27-33. (n.d.). The Word Among Us: Homepage. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://wau.org/meditations/2023/04/20/660630/ 

Psalms, PSALM 34. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/34?2 

Purcell, T. (2023, April 20). Creighton U. Daily Reflection. Online Ministries. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/042023.html 

Rohr, R. (2023, April 20). The Weeping Mode — Center for Action and Contemplation. Daily Meditations Archive: 2023. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-weeping-mode-2023-04-20/ 

Schwager, D. (n.d.). He Who Believes in the Son Has Eternal Life. Daily Scripture Net. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://www.dailyscripture.net/daily-meditation/?ds_year=2023&date=apr20 

Preparing with alms fasting and prayer

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary for Ash Wednesday invite us to a journey of alms giving, fasting and prayer to deepen our experience of the Presence of God in our lives.

Alms and fasting

The Prophet Joel urges a return to the Lord for Jerusalem as it anticipates tragedy.

* [2:18] Jealous: the Hebrew word describes the passionate empathetic bond the Lord has with Israel. The people’s wholehearted participation in Joel’s call for fasting and prayer sparks the Lord’s longing to protect and love his people Israel. This desire moves him to withhold punishment and to send the blessing of v. 14 instead.1 

In the Letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes the experience of reconciliation in his ministry.

* [5:21] This is a statement of God’s purpose, expressed paradoxically in terms of sharing and exchange of attributes. As Christ became our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30), we become God’s righteousness (cf. 2 Cor 5:14–15).2 

The Gospel from Matthew from the Sermon on the Mount is a teaching about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.

* [6:1–18] The sermon continues with a warning against doing good in order to be seen and gives three examples, almsgiving (Mt 6:2–4), prayer (Mt 6:5–15), and fasting (Mt 6:16–18). In each, the conduct of the hypocrites (Mt 6:2) is contrasted with that demanded of the disciples. The sayings about reward found here and elsewhere (Mt 5:12, 46; 10:41–42) show that this is a genuine element of Christian moral exhortation. Possibly to underline the difference between the Christian idea of reward and that of the hypocrites, the evangelist uses two different Greek verbs to express the rewarding of the disciples and that of the hypocrites; in the latter case it is the verb apechō, a commercial term for giving a receipt for what has been paid in full (Mt 6:2, 5, 16).3 

Tom Shanahan, S.J. asks what is most important for us? Clearly it is not to fake out others to make them think that we’re something special. But the truth is that we ARE something special, made so by our Baptism.

The point is where does that “specialness” end up?  If it ends in God’s beauty and love for us and in Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice for us: it’s grace.  But if it ends in a falsely-humble sign of how good we are it’s the opposite of grace: it’s a blast of the Adam-side of us and totally unrelated to the beauty of Lent.
Lent is a “joyous” season even though many of us have been schooled to think of it as a somber or gloomy period.  We think of having to give up things and not entering into the deep joy of hearing and living out the call of Christ.  Lent is, liturgically, a preparation for the celebration of Baptism. Members of our community receive Baptism and through it entrance into the very person of Christ.  At the end of Lent (Holy Saturday) catechumens begin their lives as “Christed” members of our faith community. By Baptism they join us in the search for the profound meaning of life-in-Christ and growing in faith, hope and charity.4 

Don Schwager quotes “Lent - the epitome of our whole life,” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 AD.

"Christians must always live in this way, without any wish to come down from their cross - otherwise they will sink beneath the world's mire. But if we have to do so all our lives, we must make an even greater effort during the days of Lent. It is not a simple matter of living through forty days. Lent is the epitome of our whole life." (excerpt from Sermon 205, 1)5 

The Word Among Us Meditation on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 shares that Jesus is inviting us to “return to the Lord, your God” this Lent (Joel 2:13). Every journey begins with the smallest, most ordinary of steps. So get into the daily habit of turning to him through these three ordinary spiritual practices. Then watch to see whether something extraordinary comes of them.

 These next forty days offer us a wonderful opportunity to enter into the blessings of a routine. If we can commit to praying every day this Lent, we’ll be well on our way to forming a permanent habit of spending time with God and letting his word change our hearts. If we can commit the next six weeks to fasting—from some food or activity or attitude that has too tight a grip on us—we stand the chance of becoming less attached to this world and more attached to Christ. If we can commit to giving some of our time and money to helping the poor on a regular basis, generosity and compassion will begin to flow from us more naturally 6

Michael Barnes SJ lectures in the Theology of Religions. He asks: What do we expect fasting – and prayer and almsgiving and all the other Lenten practices of faith – to do for us? What part do they play in the living out of those ancient patterns of holiness which are inscribed in our sacred texts and traditions? And what can Muslims and Christians learn from each other? (Ramadan 2019 will begin in the evening of Sunday, May 5 and ends in the evening of Tuesday, June 4)

Lent is like Ramadan in the sense that the community of faith is formed by several weeks of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  But Ramadan is essentially a daily round, a ritual which marks time and measures the rhythms of life. At the end of each day the process is repeated, until the entire spiritual and physical universe is gathered around a single point of time and creation is restored to a new harmony.  The map of time which Christians seek to draw is more complex. Lent intensifies the relationship which the command to follow opens up. Indeed it is itself a pilgrimage in which through personal companionship with Jesus we are drawn more deeply into the intimacy of God’s act of self-communication.7 

Friar Jude Winkler comments on the apocalyptic situation described by Joel that declares that NOW is the time to dedicate ourselves to conversion. The destruction of the Temple in 70 CE required that the rabbis recommend replacement of sacrifice with prayer, fasting and giving alms to heal the death brought by sin. Friar Jude imagines the ashes in our heart that do not draw attention to ourselves.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, declares the Eucharist is an encounter of the heart, knowing Presence through our own offered presence. In the Eucharist, we move beyond mere words or rational thought and go to that place where we don’t talk about the Mystery anymore; we begin to chew on it. Jesus did not say, “Think about this” or “Stare at this” or even “Worship this.” Instead he said, “Eat this!”

We must move our knowing to the bodily, cellular, participative, and thus unitive level. We must keep eating and drinking the Mystery, until one day it dawns on us, in an undefended moment, “My God, I really am what I eat! I also am the Body of Christ.” Then we can trust and allow what has been true since the first moment of our existence. We have dignity and power flowing through us in our bare and naked existence—and everybody else does too, even though most do not know it. A body awareness of this sort is enough to steer and empower our entire faith life, while merely assenting to or saying the words will never give us the jolt we need to absorb the divine desire for us.
This is why I must hold to the orthodox belief that there is Real Presence in the bread and wine. For me, if we sacrifice Reality in the elements, we end up sacrificing the same Reality in ourselves.8 

The pilgrimage of Lent moves us away from creature comfort concerns to experience the community of the Body of Christ.

References

1	(n.d.). Joel chapter 2 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Retrieved March 6, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/Joel/2:12
2	(n.d.). 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. Retrieved March 5, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/2Corinthians/5:20
3	(n.d.). Matthew, chapter 6. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/matthew/6:1
4	(n.d.). Creighton U Daily Reflections .... Retrieved March 6, 2019, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
5	(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/
6	(n.d.). Ash Wednesday - Mass Readings and Catholic Daily Meditations for .... Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://wau.org/meditations/2019/03/06
7	(2008, February 6). Keeping the Lenten Fast – thoughts from a dialogue ... - Thinking Faith. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20080206_1.htm
8	(n.d.). Daily Meditations Archive: March 2019 - Center for Action and .... Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/2019/03/