Breaking the Word: Devotion Amid Distractions

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Devotion Amid Distractions

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Readings: Deuteronomy 18: 15-20; Psalm 94 (95): 1-2, 6-9; 1 Corinthians 7: 32-35; Mark 1: 21-28

My dear friends, do you like to watch dragon dances? We’ll probably see more of them soon, when we usher in the Year of the Dragon. A dragon dance, as you know, requires focus. Each dancer has to carefully follow the movements of the one in front, without being distracted. Can you imagine what will happen if just one dancer suddenly decides to stop to check his phone? This challenge to stay focused and avoid distraction is also what we find in our scriptures today.

Why does St Paul advise the single Christians of Corinth not to marry? He assumes that Jesus will be returning very soon. So why marry, and have to deal with worldly affairs? Better to just give one’s undivided attention to the Lord. To be totally devoted to Christ without distraction. This is Paul’s concern. Of course, two thousand years later, not only are we still waiting for the Lord’s return, we’ve also come to see that marriage is not a distraction. We celebrate it as a sacrament. A privileged channel of grace, through which we can love and be loved by the Lord, in and through others. Still, Paul’s concern remains valid, even if his advice may not. For whether we are single or married, clergy or lay, don’t we all have to face the challenge of staying devoted to the Lord, without being distracted by worries over worldly affairs? Such as the craving for wealth or success, fame or popularity?

In the first reading, God has a reason for promising to raise up for the people a prophet like Moses. It’s because the people can’t bear to deal directly with God. They complain that the sound of God’s voice, and the sight of God’s glory are too much for them. Causing them to fear for their lives. Distracting them from paying attention to God. Again the concern is to help the people avoid distraction, so as to truly listen to the Lord. As Christians, we believe this promise is fulfilled in Jesus. But even Jesus has to deal with distractions.

In the gospel, why does he command the unclean spirit to be quiet? Why doesn’t he want people to know that he is the Holy One of God? Isn’t it because they’re expecting a military leader to help them drive out the Romans? But Jesus brings salvation of a different kind. Something that will become clear only after his Dying and Rising. Just as the people in the first reading are put off because God is too much, those in the gospel risk being scandalised because Jesus seems too little.

Which goes to show that we can be distracted not just by the worries of the world, but also by our own mistaken notions about God. In either case, the challenge remains the same: to stay focused, and to avoid distraction. How? Perhaps by heeding the call of the psalmist, and keeping a close watch over our hearts. Learning, through constant practice, to follow only those desires that lead us to the praise and glory of God. Just as we are practising here and now, at this Mass.

Sisters and brothers, if the life of faith is truly like a dragon dance, requiring us to remain focused on the Lord, then what more can we do to help one another avoid being distracted?

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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, January 28, 2024

Devotion Amid Distractions

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