Breaking the Word: Good News Or Bad?

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Good News Or Bad?

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

Picture: By hossein azarbad on Unsplash

My dear friends, what makes a piece of news sound good or bad? Doesn’t it depend not just on the news itself, but also on those who receive it? For example, we may recall that last year the then government of New Zealand passed a law that would have effectively banned the sale of cigarettes to future generations of Kiwis. Does this sound like good news or bad? Many in New Zealand and around the world thought it was great news. Many. But not all. Just weeks ago, a new government announced its intention to scrap the smoking ban to fund tax cuts. Clearly, to those somehow invested in the status quo, the ban had sounded like really bad news.

It’s helpful to keep this in mind on this 2nd Sunday of Advent, when our scriptures speak to us of good news. To a people living in exile, the first reading offers a tender word of consolation. To those who consider themselves punished by God for their own sinfulness, a joyful message is proclaimed, from the mouth of the Lord. God is coming to save them. To dry their tears. To heal their wounds. To finally bring them home. Good news, right? And yet, isn’t it likely that there are those who’ve settled comfortably in the foreign land? Built new lives for themselves and their families? And forgotten the place from which their ancestors came? To such people, won’t the prospect of relocation sound like really bad news?

In the gospel, St Mark begins his account of the life of Jesus by calling it Good News (the literal meaning of the word, gospel). The powerful story of the Son of Man’s first coming. The One who ushers in God’s kingdom of justice and peace. But there are those who consider this really bad news. Those for whom it brings desolation, instead of consolation. Isn’t this why John the Baptist eventually gets beheaded? And Jesus is crowned with thorns, and enthroned on a cross?

Still, the good news cannot be cancelled. Not only is the Lord raised from the dead, and taken up to heaven, we believe he will come again. Isn’t this what the second reading warns us to never forget? The belief that, just as Jesus ushered in God’s kingdom at his first coming, he will unveil this same kingdom in the fullness of its glory at his second. An event that will happen suddenly, like a thief. When everything will come to an end. To be replaced by new heavens and new earth, the place where righteousness will (finally) be at home.

Does this sound like good news or bad? Well, that will depend on where we choose to rest our hearts, and invest our lives. Whether on things that will eventually pass away, or on those that will endure to eternity. On our willingness to live as exiles in a foreign land, where righteousness is not yet at home. Isn’t this why, in each of our readings, we find a call to repentance? And why, in the coming week, we will gather for penitential services? To allow the Spirit to renovate our hearts and lives in the direction of greater justice and peace.

Sisters and brothers, unlike a ban on smoking, the Lord’s second coming cannot be scrapped. What must we do to prepare to welcome him as our true gospel this Advent?

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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, December 10, 2023

Good News Or Bad?

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