Breaking the Word

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Thursday in the 5th Week of Lent
Promise and Prostration

Readings: Genesis 17:3-9; Psalm 105:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; John 8:51-59

At the center of our readings today, we find two experiences, or perhaps two aspects of a single experience. Their central position in the readings serves to highlight for us their crucial importance in our lives of faith. The first experience is probably the more obvious one. It has to do with a promise generously given and faithfully fulfilled. I will maintain my covenant with you and your descendants, says God to Abraham, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you… And through the vagaries of history, God continues to remember his covenant, to faithfully abide by it, until its final fulfillment in Jesus, the Word made flesh. In him the God of Abraham binds himself to his people by a bond that can never be broken. Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad…

But this promise, which God makes and fulfills, cannot be adequately appreciated and accepted without another experience. This is an experience with which both God’s promise and its fulfillment are intimately intertwined. Consider how the first reading begins. Consider its description of the circumstances surrounding the making of God’s promise. When Abram prostrated himself, God spoke to him… The promise is made and received when the creature humbly acknowledges his Creator. Isn’t this what the physical posture of prostration signifies: a willingness to subject one’s entire self to the other? Isn’t it true that it is only when we receive the grace to adopt such a spiritual posture before God that we can actually begin to receive God’s promise, to experience God’s fidelity in our lives? Otherwise, like the people in the gospel, we will focus on the incidentals at the expense of the essential. Eagerly expecting a conquering hero who will snatch back the land physically occupied by their enemies, Jesus’ opponents fail to recognize the compassionate One who comes to reclaim their hearts for God.

Promise and prostration are also related in an even more striking way. Not only does a prostration accompany the promise when it is made, but more so does it constitute the way in which that promise is fulfilled. Isn’t this the deeper implication of Jesus’ scandalizing words to the people in the gospel? Before Abraham came to be, I AM. In Jesus, the unthinkable happens. God the almighty Creator deigns to prostrate himself before his creatures, humbly submitting even to death on a cross. In Christ, the promise made to humanity is fulfilled through a divine prostration. And isn’t it through witnessing this prodigal display of God’s love for us, that we in turn receive the grace to prostrate ourselves as well? Isn’t this the crux of the great celebration of Easter for which we are preparing?

A little more than a week from now, on Good Friday, our communal commemoration of the Lord’s Passion will begin with the presider prostrating himself in the sanctuary. It is an ancient tradition, one filled with deep meaning. It speaks to us of the intimate connection between promise and prostration, of the marvelous unity between the human and the divine.

What is our experience of promise and prostration today?

1 comment:

AnonymousThu Mar 13, 07:12:00 pm GMT+8
Dictionary defines prostration as an act: to cast (oneself) face down on the ground in humility, submission, or adoration.
It requires the person to make the very act to humble himself in the presence of inexplicable awe. It defines the person not as being weak but instead one of character.
In the photo; the open door, with the light streaming over the black and white checkered floor, illuminating the person in the act of submissive prayer, illustrates better than a thousand words.
The promise is intangible but the spiritual context is palpable. We can feel what we cannot express, we just know. How else can we have a living experience of the transcendent??
This is my personal question!!
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Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. This is also the reason for the series of liturgical texts found in both the Roman Missal and The Liturgy of the Hours (Vol. III - IV), for Sundays and weekdays in this season. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, 43-44

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