Breaking the Word: Between Engine & Wheels

Saturday, August 01, 2020

Between Engine & Wheels

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Readings: Isaiah 55:1-3; Psalm 144(145):8-9,15-18; Romans 8:35,37-39; Matthew 14:13-21

My dear friends, do you know what an axle is? It’s that crucially important part of a car that connects the engine to the wheels. The axle transmits the energy generated by the engine to the wheels in order to make them turn. Without the axle, even if the engine may run, the car will not move.

I mention this, because what we find in today’s Mass readings looks very much to me like the parts of a car. First, the second reading tells us about the amazing engine that is God’s love. So irresistible is its power that no created thing can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is this same amazing power that Jesus invites his disciples to share with the crowds gathered around them in the gospel. Now the Lord could probably have quite easily fed the people on his own, right? Yet he chose to say to his disciples, give them something to eat yourselves. Why did he do this, if not to show them that, if he himself is the engine, then they are meant to be the wheels?

And the call Jesus issued to the first disciples in the gospel remains our call today. We too are meant to be channels of God’s love, reaching out to feed others with the spiritual food that God provides for us so freely and abundantly in Christ. The same food that we are gathered here at this Mass to enjoy. And to do this not just in word, but also in deed. Not just in church, but wherever our steps may take us in the world. To be the wheels that keep turning to bring God’s love especially to those who may be most in need of it right now.

But that’s not all. In addition to an engine and wheels, the readings also describe for us something that looks like an axle. Except that this axle is not so much an object as it is a practice, or a discipline. We find it most clearly in the first reading, where God appeals to all who are thirsty to come to the water! To come to the Divine Engine that alone is the Source of everything that is good and true and beautiful. To come to the One who is Goodness and Truth and Beauty itself. To come… and drink… and eat… and live…

Except that this is not our usual kind of eating and drinking. It is not the compulsive consumption that our modern society engages in so routinely everyday. The kind that can be done half asleep. Indeed the kind that is precisely what keeps so many of us asleep. For what is perhaps most striking about the first reading is how often the word listen is repeated. Listen, listen to me… Pay attention… listen, and your soul will live… To eat and to drink is really to listen closely to God. To receive God’s Word and to ponder its practical implications for our lives. To allow God’s love to take root in us, that we might bear good fruit in abundance. And isn’t this also what our world needs most today, disturbed and disrupted as it is by deprivation and division and disease?

Sisters and brothers, if we are indeed called to be wheels, then what must we do to also become better axles 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

Saturday, August 01, 2020

Between Engine & Wheels

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