Breaking the Word

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Thursday in the 17th Week of Ordinary Time (I)
From the Dragnet to the Dwelling Place

Readings: Exodus 40:16-21, 34-38; Psalm 84:3, 4, 5-6a and 8a, 11; Matthew 13:47-53

As we continue our meditation on the coming of God’s kingdom, our readings today offer us two further metaphors for our consideration. The first is found in the gospel. Here, the kingdom is likened to a dragnet that gathers in a haul of all kinds. The second is to be found in the first reading and the psalm. Here we are invited to consider: How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, God of hosts.

It is perhaps useful to acknowledge and to reflect more deeply upon the inherent tension between these two metaphors. If the dragnet highlights the apparently indiscriminate inclusiveness of the kingdom, at least in the initial stages of its advent, the dwelling place underscores its inherent selectivity. The dragnet hauls in everything. But not everyone is fit to enter into the dwelling place of God. And we will only finally discover who is fit and who is not at the end of time, when the great separation is carried out. At this point in the history of salvation, it may seem like it doesn’t take very much to be included among the contents of the dragnet. We may, for example, already be baptized and may even go faithfully to Mass every Sunday. But where will we be on the Last Day? And where are we now? Are we content merely to remain in the dragnet? Or are we truly seeking entrance into God’s dwelling place? And, if so, what can we do?

Perhaps the first is to ponder upon the awesome mystery that our readings remind us of today. In the first reading, God actually comes and pitches God’s tent among the people. God makes God’s dwelling place among them. For us who are Christian, this takes place especially through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Word who became flesh and made his dwelling among us (see John 1:14). This is a cause of great joy and consolation for us. For now, in Christ, we all have access to God’s dwelling place. Now, because the Word pitched his tent among us, we believe in faith that it is possible to encounter God in every time and place and circumstance. Because Christ passed from death into the new life, even our own experiences of suffering and death can become doorways into the dwelling place of God. But having access doesn’t necessarily mean that we will be fit to enter. For that something more is needed. We find a hint of what this might be in the experience of the Israelites in the first reading.

At every stage of their journey, we are told, whenever the cloud rose… they would resume their march. If the cloud did not rise, they waited… At every stage of their journey through the wilderness, the Israelites let God determine for them whether they marched or waited. At every stage of their journey, they made the Tent of Meeting, God’s dwelling place, the central focus of their attention. Are we not invited somehow to do the same? Are we not called to seek and find the presence of Christ in every situation and circumstance of our lives? Is this not the way in which we can move from the dragnet into the dwelling place of God?

How might we be helped to do so today?

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Breaking News: Easter

The fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost are celebrated in joyful exultation as one feast day, or better as one "great Sunday." These above all others are the days for the singing of the Alleluia. The Sundays of this season rank as the paschal Sundays and, after Easter Sunday itself, are called the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Sundays of Easter. The period of fifty sacred days ends on Pentecost Sunday. The first eight days of the Easter season make up the octave of Easter and are celebrated as solemnities of the Lord. On the fortieth day after Easter the Ascension is celebrated, except in places where, not being a holyday of obligation, it has been transferred to the Seventh Sunday of Easter (see no. 7).[R4] The weekdays after the Ascension until the Saturday before Pentecost inclusive are a preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, 22-26

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19

Thursday, August 02, 2007

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