Breaking the Word: Between Adventure & Nightmare

Sunday, December 06, 2020

Between Adventure & Nightmare

2nd Sunday of Advent (B)

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11; Psalm 84(85):9-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

My dear friends, imagine for a moment that you are a little child on a family outing, and you get separated from your parents. How will you feel if you were to suddenly hear them calling your name, telling you it’s time to go home? How will you react? I’m not sure if you’ll agree with me, but I think your reaction will depend very much on your own awareness of being lost. For it may be that, even before hearing your parents calling, you had already realised they were missing, and had been frantically searching for them. If so, then their voices will bring you great relief. But it’s also possible that you did not realise you were lost, that you still thought you were on some exciting adventure, instead of being trapped in a fearful nightmare. If that’s the case, you may choose to ignore your parents, perhaps even decide to run farther away.

I mention this because, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed, in each of our Mass readings, there is a voice crying in the wilderness. In the first reading this voice takes the form of the prophet Isaiah, consoling a people living in the wilderness of exile. In the second reading, the voice is found in the writings of an unknown author, using the name of the apostle Peter, offering guidance to those confused by false teaching. And in the gospel, John the Baptist cries out, not just in a physical wilderness of locusts and honey, and a political desert of foreign occupation, but also the spiritual barrenness of sin.

No matter the exact form it takes throughout history, the voice crying in the wilderness indicates the various ways in which God, our loving and merciful Father, continually calls his wayward children to return. Encouraging them to welcome and to follow Christ, the Way that leads them home. To that glorious place where justice and peace have embraced. But each child reacts according to its own awareness of being lost. Some will eagerly heed the call, while others just keep insisting on going their own way.

And what about us? In what form might this voice be taking in our lives today? In what wilderness is it resounding? Very likely, each of us will have our own personal answers to these questions. Even so, it’s difficult not to think of the pandemic that continues to devastate our world. To see COVID-19 as a desert in which many remain lost. But isn’t it true that, if we were to listen carefully, we might yet hear a quiet voice calling to us in this viral wilderness? Reminding us that we were lost long before the infections began. Highlighting to us the often ignored fault-lines that fracture our apparently ultra-modern world. Painful divisions between rich and poor, elite and common, local and migrant… As well as between humanity and nature, between creature and Creator… Encouraging us to dare to imagine new heavens and new earth… Showing us how urgently we need to change the way we live…

If so, then perhaps it’s also true that how we respond will depend on our own awareness of being lost, our own willingness to see that our modern adventure has turned into a fearful nightmare for so many. Sisters and brothers, this Advent, what must we do to heed the call of our heavenly Father, and to wake from troubled sleep 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

Sunday, December 06, 2020

Between Adventure & Nightmare

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