Breaking the Word: The Power to Be Ugly

Sunday, July 12, 2020

The Power to Be Ugly

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Psalm 64(65):10-14; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23

Picture: cc marco

My dear friends, do you know what it’s like to be an ugly duckling? To feel as though there’s something wrong with you, simply because you don’t look like those around you, or because you have different attitudes and values, different hopes and priorities than they do? It’s not easy. Even if you may have been told that someday, in the distant future, you will grow up into a beautiful swan, it’s still not easy to accept your apparent ugliness now, in the present. Indeed, the temptation can be very great for someone in this position to do whatever it takes simply to fit in. Even to submit to plastic surgery of some kind. To deny, disguise, or deform oneself.

I wonder if this kind of experience is something like what we find in the second reading today… From the beginning till now, St Paul writes, the entire creation… has been groaning in one great act of giving birth; and not only creation, but all of us who possess the first-fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free. To groan together with the rest of creation, because we have not yet reached our true destiny. Have not yet become the beautiful swan that God intends us to become. Have not yet attained the full measure of justice and peace and joy that characterises the Kingdom of God.

To embrace the role of an ugly duckling. Feeling painfully out of place in a world that values superficial pleasures and passing comforts, often at the expense of human dignity and solidarity, of mercy and compassion. To groan for the coming of God’s Kingdom in all its fullness, and to do so not just with one’s voice, but also in one’s actions. Through the choices we make everyday, as individuals and families, as a society and as a church. Choices about what we watch or read, or buy or eat. Choices about whom we choose to interact with, or allow our hearts to be moved by… Yes, and also the choice of which candidate to support in an election…

It is not easy to groan in this way. The temptation is great to be silent and simply to blend in. And yet, the willingness to be different, perhaps even detested – the ability to groan – is also what distinguishes the two groups of people to whom Jesus speaks in the gospel today. On one side, there are the crowds, who flock enthusiastically to the Lord, but ultimately neither understand nor heed his urgent call to conversion. On the other side, are the disciples who, for all their shortcomings, persevere in following Jesus. And from him they receive the power that is described so beautifully in the first reading. The power of the rain and the snow, which come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth…

The power to groan and to grow towards the glory of God. This is what sets apart the true disciples of Christ. They are the ones who receive the seed of God’s Word in rich soil, and yield a harvest through their suffering, their willingness to embrace the difficult role of a baby swan in a world of ducks.

What shall we do to welcome and to wield this gentle yet insistent power in our world today?

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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

Sunday, July 12, 2020

The Power to Be Ugly

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