Scottish Patron brings Good News

Today, the feast of St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, is sheepishly compared to the celebration of the other Celtic patron, St Patrick. The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary have a theme of the spreading of the Good News. The calling of St Andrew, from the gospel of Matthew started his lifelong mission as a fisher of people in distant lands. The evangelization of people is ongoing and top of mind in the Western Church. The psalmist proclaims the Nature of God which attracts the attention of people through the sheer awe we experience in living. Our sense of the divine is stirred by the world around us, the immensity of the cosmos and the charity, devotion, trust and self giving of people. Paul proclaims to the Romans the two pronged experience of faith and confession. We come to peace with God, justification, as noted by Friar Jude Winkler through faith. We are saved as we work out our lives confessing to the truth in which we believe by our actions. For Paul, salvation occurs at the end time when Jesus returns for us. The passage from the Gospel of Matthew is an image of the great attractiveness of Jesus as the person with whom Christians grow in faith and trust. The process of this conversion, comments Friar Jude, is transformation of the person created by God with unique human characteristics into a person shaped and focused by the encounter with Jesus to work out our relationship as living examples of the attractiveness of the Good News through our uniqueness as His creatures. The life of Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, transformed from zealous Pharisee persecuting the Way to great voice of the Good News is the outstanding example of Christian tradition. Our own transformations are the only Bible that some people may read and our impact may not be like that of St Patrick but to the individuals we touch we may be their St Andrew.

Peace in our turmoil

The psalmist proclaims “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” in the text chosen for the Roman Catholic Lectionary today. The passage from the Book of Revelation today is the vision of the destruction of Rome, the centre of the evil empire which is persecuting Christians. The Gospel from Luke is the foretelling of the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred at the hands of the Romans before the Gospel was written. The destruction of the evil cities is a theme which goes at least as far back as Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis. (Genesis 19.24). Luke presents the destruction of Jerusalem as the consequence of the failure of the Holy City to embrace Jesus message of trust in God. The failure to trust in God has been attributed as the root of much of the trouble in our salvation history. The exile of the people of God to foreign lands seems to be contrary to the praise heaped on God by the psalmist. The unfolding of tragedy to peoples and individuals is multi causal. Failure to trust in God and direct our actions according to His Will can be the loss of moral compass which brings us to exile from loved people and places. The other phenomena cited by Luke are natural occurrences in our world. Fire, flood and the action of nature are not divine punishment. They do remind us that our personal exile from the world may come without notice. Trust in God is the faith that the praise of the psalmist holds true regardless of the circumstances in which natural disaster, disease or our own choices have brought us destruction. Rabbi Harold Kushner has written very insight fully about the position of God in the lives of people in turmoil and trouble. He asserts, echoing the psalmist, that God is the first to cry with us in our exile in mourning, remorse, loss and destruction. 

Punish good deeds

The text from the Book of Revelation in the Roman CatholicLectionary today presents the vision of the triumph of Jesus, the Lamb, over evil. Friar Jude Winkler expands the symbols of glass and water to show Jesus as the New Moses and those following the Way as being in the new Exodus to freedom from the slavery of sin through Jesus sacrifice on the cross. FatherRobert Barron, in the video series Catholicism, seeks to present the ‘edginess’ of Jesus. This includes Jesus person as God and the triumph for Christians over the secular empire of Rome represented by the mechanism of terror and torture, the crucifixion, becoming the sign of forgiveness, mercy and love and the victory of the Lamb. The Gospel of Luke tells the followers of Jesus that they will endure persecution. We continue to find that the Way of Jesus is in conflict and tension with so much of modern life. The powerful continue to oppress the children of God as the Pharaoh once dominated the Israelites. The philosophies of “get “attract many to reject the message of Christ to “give”. Living as a Christian will attract attention. We know that Francis of Assisi directed followers of Jesus to make their lives models which preached the love of God. We know that our lives may be the only Bible that some people may read. The decision presented by Jesus to people is extremely consequential. Luke asserts that the believer trust in the support of Jesus for those who decide to follow the Way.

Final days

The end of the liturgical year and the texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary point us toward consideration of the last day or days. The vision from the Book of Revelation imagines the Final Judgement. The psalmist praises God who comes to judge the people in righteousness and truth. Friar Jude Winkler brings our personal last day into consideration as he comments on the permission God grants that our choices during life will be our experience at death. The fruit of righteous relationship with God will be knowledge of true depth of the communion with the Divine. The decisions to be self centered will continue to limit us to the worlds of our own creation. The Gospel from Luke contains the prediction from Jesus of the destruction of the Temple. This destruction occurred before the Gospel was written. Luke is presenting the destruction by the Romans as a consequence of the failure of Jerusalem to accept Jesus. The natural signs presented in the Gospel and Revelation of the end times are visible to people as daily events in the world. The end is celebrated at the time of death for us all.

Witnesses and Widows

The texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary offer at least two areas of our lives as Disciples of Christ to consider in reflection. The passage from the Book of Revelation images the gathering of the incredible multiplication of the old Israel and the New Jerusalem a thousand times over as explained by Friar Jude Winkler. This gathering sings a radically new hymn to Jesus the Lamb which trumpets the triumph of Love over totalitarian oppression and the propaganda of the secular age. The nature of Love that conquers all is that it is radically non self centered. It abandons all for the Beloved. It trusts in the Love to sustain. The psalmist sees such people as having clean hands and pure hearts who ascend to the hill of the Lord. Christian teaching has offered the challenge of doing only what gives honour to God. Luke describes Jesus recognition of such love in the action of the widow who gives all she has to live on as her Temple offering. Living on Love is the confidence of the young couple who go forward into life together without the practical necessities the consideration of which too often replaces the radical giving of all to the other with the ‘sensible” utility of needing to take care of myself. Living Love is one reflection for the disciple. The other is to develop the awareness that we are differently gifted and the measure of our response to the life in the New Jerusalem is proportional to the inner spiritual gifts of which we are aware. The pursuit of self knowledge is powerful in people. The knowledge we seek is promised by Paul to the Corinthians as the fruit of our relationship with Jesus when “then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12)

Christ the King

The history of salvation is known among believers as a story of persecution of the people of God by secular rulers and empires. Commentators on the Book of Daniel, from which the first reading of the Roman Catholic Lectionary is taken today, have associated the persecution stories with four world kingdoms, Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek. The beast imagery of the Book of Daniel has been used extensively in the Book of Revelation, where it is applied to the Roman Empire as persecutor of the Church. Friar Jude Winkler notes that the image of the Son of Man coming on a cloud to overcome the evil forces represents the people of Israel who will have dominion over the their persecutors through their Covenant with God. The image of the Son of Man in the passage from the Book of Revelation is the Servant King who transforms us to be priests and witnesses to the majesty of the Love of God. Father Larry GillickSJ writes of the three tensions experienced by Pilate and known to us when we encounter Jesus. We are drawn to Jesus. Perhaps, like Pilate, we are perplexed by the lack of concern for the power of worldly forces we witness in Jesus. We know the tension of the world with its demands and expectations and the consequential slavery we accept to meet those demands. We, like Pilate, struggle with an ego which always sets us up to expect to deserve and receive better attention for our own kingdom of self image in the world. The Gospel of John presents the Christ the King as glorious on the cross which defines the Word made Flesh as Love. The message of dominion over the kingdoms of the world in Daniel and Revelation is the first and last statement of God in Glory. Love conquers all.

Master and disciple

The psalm today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary is entitled a “Prayer for National Deliverance and Security”. We need not look far to see that many people of the world suffer under the oppression of war and governments which rule in totalitarian ways. The vision from the author of the Book of Revelation describes the witness of two creatures which are olive trees and lamp stands. The audience to whom Revelations is addressed suffered persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire.  Friar Jude Winkler explains that these witnesses are disciples of Jesus who radiate the light of His message to the world. The lamp is provided the oil it needs from the olive tree, so that it is always giving light. The message of the vision becomes the revelation that the life of the Master Jesus is the life of the disciple. The world rises up against the witnesses and kills them. Friar Jude decodes the numerology of the text to translate the three and one half day period as half of 7 which is the fullness of time. This persecution of witnesses will not last forever. The communion of Jesus with the Father is the destiny also of the disciple of Jesus. The Sadducees, who question Jesus, in the text from the Gospel of Luke, do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They craft a clever scenario to attempt to ridicule Jesus. The revelation that Love is perfected in communion with Jesus and the Father reminds us of the Christian assertion, prayed during the Liturgy of the Resurrection of the Dead, that life is changed not ended by death. Luke cites Moses understanding from Exodus that God, experienced in the burning bush, is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is present tense and even though the patriarchs have died, they are in the present time with God.