Psalms 1, Trust and Confidence in Salvation
On Thursday, our class dug deep into the Psalms of Trust and Confidence. We started with perhaps the most familiar, and in many eyes the most beautiful — Psalm 23.
A psalm of David.
The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.
In green pastures he makes me lie down; to still waters he leads me; he restores my soul.
He guides me along right paths for the sake of his name.
We’ve talked repeatedly throughout this study about how beautiful the psalms are. The poetry of this week’s Psalms (23, 11, 27, 63 & 16) at times left us breathless. Their use of images and language to draw us closer to God, to assure our hearts that he is with us always, brought me great peace and a sense of the order the Lord seeks to create for us in this world.
Psalm 23 and its references to a shepherd naturally lead us to images of Christ settling our souls.
We see Christ and the Church at work throughout Psalm 23. When we read “You set a table before me,” we taste the Eucharist at Sunday mass. When the Lord anoints the Psalmist’s head with oil, we see Confirmation, or the Initiation ceremony at Easter Vigil. The safe waters where our strength is restored are the waters of Baptism. When we pray this Psalm intimately, we are in deepest communion with God. We will dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.
The sense of the constant, eternal and lasting signs of God’s presence with us are so strong in these Psalms. They may have been written 2500-3000 years ago, but they have always been present to humans throughout the ages.
Look at how Mark uses Psalm 23 in his version of the Multiplication of the Loaves. Patrick Henry Reardon, in his book Christ in the Psalms, points out that when Christ and the disciples find the multitudes before them, they are in a desert, a deserted place. But when he tells the Apostles to instruct the thousands (“like sheep without a shepherd“) to sit down in small groups, they lie down in the “green grass” of Psalm 23.
Just as we found Christ in Psalm 1 with Sister Salvador, and as we found Him in the opening Psalm-like hymn of John’s Gospel, we find Him here again in Psalm 23. He was and is always with us, always our savior. In Psalm 27, he is the Lord “of light and my salvation.” (As Pat pointed out, the Septuagint trades the word Salvation for Savior.)
But while the Lord and his love are timeless, the Psalms remind us our lives on this earth are not. This finite nature of our human existence is one of the greatest challenges in forming and holding our covenant with God. The Psalms of Trust and Confidence pose this question: Do we pursue God because we fear death and seek an everlasting life? Is that the basis of our worship? The Psalms of Trust and Confidence ask us to consider deeply before answering.
The New American version of Psalm 16 tells us that God will show us the path to life and “the delights at your right hand forever.” Is this worship for the purpose of resurrection? The Septuagint, the original Greek version of the Bible, uses different words. It reads “the delights at your right hand to the end.” (Thank you again Pat for leading us to this.)
Nancy remarked how she felt that seeking God’s love was not a kind of “waiting game,” but that God through these Psalms begs our hearts to love him here and now, every day, as deeply as we can.
Sheol, a place of total absence from God, is depicted throughout the Old Testament in different forms. In Jonah 2, the belly of the whale removes Jonah from his God.
The worshippers of other gods depicted in these verses are accursed. “They multiply their sorrows who court other gods.” (Psalm 16:4) Thursday night, when I read this in class, the image of humans choosing to not worship the one and only God made me realize they were choosing to distance themselves from God’s love. Instead of death/sheol forcing separation from God on these worshippers, they actively chose to spend their lives absent from God. They choose to live their lives in a state of death. Talk about a zombie apocalypse!
We need to reject that kind of worship, and Psalm 27 shows us the way. The Psalmist writes: “Come,” says my heart, “seek God’s face.” (Psalm 27:8) For the Jews, that voice would have been a scary proposition. Only Moses saw God face-to-face. The Psalmist appears to be willing to risk his own death to see God.
I also see great meaning in the fact that the Psalmist says it is his heart that calls to him, not his head. I think when we intellectualize our love for God too much, we move away from the true source of a lasting covenant.
God is Love, and Love exists not in the head, but in the heart. We cannot understand it. I don’t know why as a father I love my children so much. I couldn’t explain it “rationally” to you. I just know that I do love them, and it is perhaps the most powerful emotion I feel. If I tried to explain it to you by reason (“I love my children because I share DNA with them.” OR “I love my children because I’ve raised them since birth.”) it falls far short of the essence of my love for them. I cannot explain that essence.
For me, that same “love” is the essence of God’s love for us and us for Him. I know what it feels like. It is there for me in some tangible intangible way that exists in the tension between our world and something else far beyond my comprehension. But I have the trust and confidence that it is real. God’s love exists. And He will not abandon me. This for me is the power of the Psalms. “For your love is better than life; my lips shall ever praise you!” (Psalm 63:4)
We’ve also started a new tradition with this class. Every Thursday night, we are going to ask someone to read one of the Psalms from their Bible. Nancy pointed out the richness of the different translations we all have, and how they lead us to revelations that the New American and other traditional modern Catholic Bibles don’t share. As you read this week’s text (Pages 43-54), please consider reading for us from your Bible. Send me an e-mail in advance, and let me know which Psalm has meant something to you. We’ll listen to God’s words that evening through you.
St. Pat’s Book Club, Reading between the lines, The Women of Passover
At class on Monday, we were a small but active group. Because there were so few of us, we could spend a little more time on each participant’s thoughts and questions. One area we focused on was the primacy of women in enabling the redemption of Israel. We spoke again of how Zipporah saved Moses’ life as he prepared to enter Egypt to save the Jewish nation. We talked about how Puah and Shiphrah stood up to Pharaoh and refused to participate in his infanticide.
There are so many strong, key Women of Passover, most of them acting in the role of mother. But I mentioned how one of my favorite Jewish authors, Aviva Zornberg, teaches a great lesson about the unwritten Jewish heroines and how they contributed to Israel’s redemption by being loving wives. Zornberg was interviewed a few years ago by Krista Tippett, for Tippett’s program “On Being.” You can find the interview podcast and other materials by clicking on this link.
Krista Tippett interviews biblical scholar Aviva Zornberg (R).
I’ve excerpted from the interview transcript the section where Zornberg talks about how the Israelite women responded to Pharaoh’s punishing directive to remove straw from the slave’s ingredients for bricks. He was trying to break the men, and by doing so, break the Jewish nation. As Zornberg teaches, the Jewish women responded in their uniquely powerful, feminine way. This is from a primary Midrashic collection, Tanhuma Pekudei, edited in the fifth century.
Reader: “You find that when Israel were in harsh labor in Egypt, Pharaoh decreed against them that they should not sleep at home nor have relations with their wives. Said Rabbi Shimeon bar Chalafta, ‘What did the daughters of Israel do?’ They would go down to draw water from the river, and God would prepare for them little fish in their buckets. And they would sell some of them, and cook some of them, and buy wine with the proceeds, and go to the field and feed their husbands. And when they had eaten and drunk, the women would take the mirrors and look into them with their husbands, and she would say, ‘I am more comely than you,’ and he would say, ‘I am more comely than you.’ And as a result, they would accustom themselves to desire, and they were fruitful and multiplied, and God took note of them immediately. Some of our sages said they bore two children at a time, others said they bore 12 at a time, and still others said 600,000. … And all these numbers from the mirrors. … In the merit of those mirrors which they showed their husbands to accustom them to desire, from the midst of the harsh labor, they raised up all the hosts.”
Dr. Zornberg: She says to him, ‘I’m more beautiful than you,’ and he answers her, ‘No, I’m more beautiful than you.’ So there is some kind of dare going on here. There’s some kind of game. As I understand it, it’s a game in which she is challenging him to see his own beauty. If there’s anything left in him at all of any kind of assertiveness, then how could he not somewhere swing back at her when she has said that to him? And the result is — and the Midrash is very unequivocal — the result is that they accustom themselves to desire, an extraordinary expression, as if desire is something that simply has disappeared from their repertoire.
Dr. Zornberg: And I think there’s a sense here that what she’s got going here makes it possible for each couple to feel that they are capable of giving birth to all the many various possibilities.
Ms. Tippett: And the possibility of freedom.
Dr. Zornberg: Of freedom, of infiniteness, of unpredictability, which such multiple births suggests, and that it’s all done with mirrors, the Midrash says, mischievously, it seems to me. And I have a whole theory about these mirrors. It seems to me that, when one looks in a mirror, one is basically always seeing a somewhat changed version of oneself, a distorted version of oneself. So it means that the mirror represents fantasy. But from the point of view of the Midrash and from the point of view of God, who supports the women’s activities, it takes an act of this kind, a performative act of whimsy and imagination, not looking at things quite straight, in order to open things up.
St. Pat’s Book Club, Giving Birth to the Covenant
When last we left the Semitic people, the descendants of Rebekah and Isaac, Rachel, Leah and Jacob, were struggling to extend the lineage of Abraham and Sarah. Barrenness tested faith. Humans battled their free will in the face of God’s will.
In this short chapter of Women in the Old Testament, we meet more significant players in God’s plan; women who give birth to the signature moment in Jewish history, the Exodus and salvation of the new nation. Once again, God’s ultimate design requires women(including some from outside the 12 tribes) to take action reaffirming faith in the covenant.
Pharaoh commands the midwives to take the lives of all the Jewish newborns.
The midwives are moved to act faithfully by their fear of God. I think that the midwives of Exodus are some of the most courageous people in all of the Bible. Here are Shiphrah and Puah (possibly Egyptian, as Sr. Nowell instructs us on page 48), familiar enough to their ruler that they are instructed by Pharaoh himself to kill Jewish babies, but equal to their task of resistance.
As midwives they had very little power yet still they see the chaos of Pharaoh’s directive, how it conflicts with God’s desire for order, and stand up against it. Sr. Nowell’s statement here about the one meaning of their actions should stay with us throughout this study: “The only way to break oppression is to refuse to be oppressed.” What a lesson Shiphrah, Puah and many other Women in the Old Testament have to teach us all.
Moses’ mother Jochebed and sister Miriam are the next women who refuse to be oppressed by Pharaoh’s genocidal decree. While their actions are easier to understand given their blood connections to Moses, they are no less brave and bold in their defiance. I believe it is very significant here that the author of Exodus uses language that directly connects Jochebed with God.
First, Jochebed refers to Moses as “goodly” at Exo 2:2, much in the way we heard how God saw what was good in the Genesis creation story. Second, the Bible uses the word for the vessel Moses is placed in (tebah) only in the Genesis story of Noah’s ark. For me, there is no mistaking the inspiration of the Exodus writer. Women are undeniably made in God’s image.
Another crucial “mother” of the Exodus is none other than Pharaoh’s daughter. Perhaps it is her motherly instincts that cause her to defy her own father’s orders. One of the things I love about this passage is the way that the author describes her motivation upon hearing the baby Moses crying in the reeds:
“She was moved with pity for him.” Exo 2:6
Throughout Exodus, God too is moved by pity when hearing the cry of the Jewish people. First we hear His compassion prior to and at the burning bush. God “heard their cry of complaint.” We hear it again and again, not only in Exodus, but also in the Psalms, like 106 and in St. Stephen’s discourse in Acts of the Apostles. Pharaoh’s daughter acted like God and she too should be remembered for her mercy.
Miriam and Zipporah also are crucial to God’s plan. Zipporah, conceivably a non-Jew as she lived in Midian (which was traditionally directly connected with Arab tribes), saves Moses’ life, and as such permits him to fulfill his role in leading the Jewish people out of Israel. Circumcision was a sign of male devotion to God’s covenant, and it is Zipporah who in the face of God’s wrath takes charge to ensure that God’s plan can proceed. Pretty powerful stuff (even without all the references to blood).
Miriam would not even had the chance to be a prophetess if not for her sister-in-law Zipporah. But once given the opportunity to be a leader, she engages. In Hebrew, Miriam’s name means “bitterness,” reflecting the despair she likely felt living during the time of great oppression of her people. But despite her bitterness, Miriam makes some savvy choices to help save her people.
Miriam leads the women of Israel in song after Pharaoh’s army is swallowed up at the Reed Sea.
At a Jewish website, I came across the following description of Miriam’s journey as the sister of Moses:
For it was Miriam, with her deep well of feminine feeling, who truly experienced the bitterness of galut (exile and persecution). And it was Miriam, with her woman’s capacity for endurance, perseverance, and hope, who stood a lonely watch over the tender, fledging life in a basket at the edge of a mammoth river; whose vigilance over what would become of him and his mission to bring redemption to her people never faltered.
The author eloquently captures the unique nature of women to feel despair when life, something they feel directly when carrying a child in their womb, is not fulfilled. Is this the same mercy and compassion God feels when he hears the cry of his beloved nation in affliction?
- What do Jochebed’s actions tell YOU about her place in God’s heart?
- Having met non-semitic members of the Bible, what do you make of the actions of women like Pharaoh’s daughter and Zipporah, and their inclusion in the story of the birth of the Jewish nation?
- Does it bother you that both Aaron and Miriam confront God about Moses’ mission, but only Miriam is punished?
- Name the 2-3 most prominent character attributes of the Women of Israel’s Passover and how you feel about them.
- Name the instances where the stories of the Women of Israel’s Beginnings are repeated in Women of Israel’s Passover.
Psalms 1, The Descriptive Voice of Praise
In this, our second class about the Psalms of Descriptive Praise, we listened deeper and longer for the voice of God, and equally important, the voice of those who praise Him.
In Psalm 29, we experienced the crashing thunder of God’s voice, humbling worshippers as his might washed in from the Mediterranean Sea, crashed through the cedar forests of Lebanon and brought rain to Mt. Hermon (Sirion) in northern Israel.
Patrick Henry Reardon, in his book Christ in the Psalms, writes how “… the Hebrew noun found most frequently [seven times in fact] in this psalm is qol, meaning “voice.” Pronounced with the full glottal shock of the letter “q,” the word mimics the sound of thunder, which is in fact, what the noun refers to in this psalm.” (As Mary stated in her lesson, Psalm 29 is called “The Psalm of the Seven Thunders.”)
The Jewish nation, who likely adapted this song from the Canaanites, is grateful not only for God’s power, but for the blessings of water coursing down the slopes of Mt. Hermon into the Jordan River, and eventually bringing life to Judah. Their gratitude is reflected in verse 2:
Give to the LORD the glory due his name. Bow down before the LORD’s holy splendor!
I thought perhaps we could listen to these voices of worship.
The life-giving waters of the Jordan are crucial to farms in this otherwise arid land.
God’s voice is gentler in Psalm 65. Water showers through its verses, making the land verdant for farming and raising livestock.
As Mary has told us several times now, the psalmist uses imagery the average Hebrew could understand. No greater metaphor did the young Jewish nation have for God’s blessings (and their dependence on them) than the annual rains.
With showers you keep the ground soft, blessing its young sprouts.
You adorn the year with your bounty; your paths drip with fruitful rain.
The meadows of the wilderness also drip; the hills are robed with joy.
Craghan ends this chapter drawing us to the New Testament, specifically to the opening of John’s Gospel. I have always loved this section. This poetry of creation, including the images of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all present at the beginning of the world when order was created out of chaos. I never realized this is a hymn.
Craghan writes about how “At prayer we are compelled to recognize God’s movement as ever going outward.” While Craghan focuses on how “the Word” moves between different elements of our world during different phases of God’s engagement with it (pre-creation, creation and when Christ became incarnate), I was drawn to how “the Word,” through scripture, engages us in a continuous dialogue that allows us to always hear God’s voice. What a blessing these psalms are, like the waters of the Jordan.
Pathways 2012-13, Vol 3 — “The Way”
When Pathways started back in 2009, this week’s reading was one of the first that I wrote about. The miracle of a blind man gaining sight as the result of Jesus’ healing hands is an easy one for us to focus on and gloss over as a feel good tale of Christ’s compassion. Jesus is Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, capable of performing great miracles. Nice and tidy.
On second glance though, the story of Bartimaeus is so much more complex and demands a personal reaction deeper than just acknowledging Jesus as savior. Like the previous readings this month from Mark, this story is less about Jesus and more about how we as humans SEE him, and RESPOND to him. Last week, the sons of Zebedee wanted to tell Christ what THEY needed FROM him. Jesus had to chastise and remind them that his fate and the destiny of anyone who would follow him would not be an easy one.
Two weeks ago we had to face our personal attachments that separate us from God when Mark told us the story of the young rich man, who wanted to “inherit eternal life.” When Jesus told him to give up his worldly possessions, the young man turned away in shame. Even Christ’s disciples struggled with his demand that they pursue the treasures of heaven, and not those of this earth.
Jesus heals Bartimaeus.
In Mark’s Gospel, our encounter with Bartimaeus is Jesus’ final miracle before he enters Jerusalem. Jesus is taking the last steps of his path to the cross. and the city is abuzz with excitement because word of Christ’s teachings and many miracles have penetrated its walls. As we will see in Mark, Chapter 11, the Jewish people will honor Jesus as the prophet of the coming messianic kingdom.
When we first meet Bartimaeus, Mark describes him as begging. Those onlookers and members of the crowd following Jesus rebuke Bartimaeus and tell him to remain silent. But he has heard of the great wonders of Christ and persists, specifically calling Jesus “son of David,” which Jewish people would have considered equal with the title Messiah.
Bartimaeus, as Jesus tells him, is a man of faith. Indeed, it is Bartimaeus’ faith that heals him.
When Bartimaeus regains his sight, he does not simply go off with his friends and family, to take advantage of this miraculous blessing. No. Mark tells us that when Bartimaeus received his sight, he followed Jesus “on the way.”
Given the gift of sight, this man’s only reaction is to follow Jesus on his way to the cross. This decision is even more poignant for me because Jesus, after healing the man, tells Bartimaeus “go your way.” When Bartimaeus responds by going Jesus’ way, he is stating emphatically, “my way is YOUR way now.”
There are many references to the phrase “the way” in the New Testament and other early Christian writings. In John 14:6, as part of the Last Supper discourses, Jesus declares himself “the way and the truth and the life.” Luke, in Acts of the Apostles (9:2) tells us that Jewish people who followed the growth of the early Christian church, called it “the Way.”
If we think of our lives as a journey, where God gives us the free will to decide which way we want to go, then the story of Bartimaeus can become very personal. That left hand turn you’re going to take into an immoral decision? Is that your way, or God’s way? That temporary detour of self-centeredness you’re thinking about? Whose way is that?
There is no doubt for me anymore, because I regained my sight 6-7 years ago. The way to salvation, truth, wisdom, life lived fully, is only through Christ.
RCIA, The Sacrament of Penance
Pat led us Sunday in a very thoughtful and prayerful review of the Sacrament of Penance. I loved how Pat started out reminding us that when we atone for sins against ourselves, God and the community this Sacrament can be a new beginning for the world. As Jesus said to the apostles in the locked room when he was resurrected, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
I often wonder what the response was of the Apostles. Did they forgive Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin for persecuting Christ? Did they forgive themselves for abandoning Jesus? I think they did, because they went on to create a new beginning, the initiation of the Christian faith. The fact that they weren’t immediately eradicated tells me that the power of forgiveness opened up the possibility for a new way of fulfilling God’s law. (Yes, most of the Apostles were martyred. There was resistance to Christ’s way, but we also read in Acts of the Apostles how thousands flocked to living in union with Jesus.)
On this earth, when we retain the pain of our mistakes, and force those who have trespassed against us to live their mistakes over and over again, sins are retained and growth isn’t possible. Think about all of the times we hold grudges against others, like the story of Diana on the first page of this week’s lesson. She lost years of friendship with her girlfriend and lived years of unhappiness because she retained her own sins and Jennifer’s.
As we discussed Sunday, the story of the Prodigal Son can show us how reconciling with our Father, our community and ourselves can turn our lives around.
That is not what Christ wanted for us in this life. He didn’t want us to live in misery because we were unable to forgive ourselves and others. And so we have the Sacrament of Penance, a chance to shed our burdens and mistakes, and those of others against us. What a beautiful gift.
Now, some people bemoan the Sacrament, asking, as we discussed in class Sunday, why we need to discuss our sins in front of a priest. When a priest is ordained, he is empowered to act as a mediator between us and God, to act as Jesus did in a way to reconcile us back to God and our community. I also maintain that until you speak your thoughts to another person, and have to listen to your sins outside of the walls of your own head, it is easy to overlook those sins and keep performing them.
But does that mean the Sacrament is foolproof? Will we sin again? And does our human nature towards sin negate the whole meaning of the Sacrament? No. As Pat instructed us, part of the Sacrament is saying: “I resolve to amend my life and promise to do my best.” In a guide for confession at Catholic.org, we find this: “The basic requirement for a good confession is to have the intention of returning to God like the ‘prodigal son’ and to acknowledge our sins with true sorrow before the priest.”
If you take part in this Sacrament with true intention to listen to your sins, own up to them, and move away from sin, then the Sacrament has power to bring you back into union with yourself, your community and God.
One of the best ways for us to personalize the need and benefits of this sacrament are for us to examine our own lives and remember those times when we were cleansed by forgiveness. So we leave you with the following question:
Do you remember a time in your life of sin and forgiveness?
St. Pat’s Book Club, “She is more righteous than I am.”
Chagall’s Tamar Belle-Fille de Juda (Tamar Daughter-in-Law of Judah), 1960
This is the voice of Judah, Jacob’s son, when he realizes his daughter-in-law Tamar has done more to maintain God’s covenant than he has. As we read Tamar’s story, we hear echoes from the lives of Sarah, Rebekah and other women of Israel’s beginnings.
Judah has withheld his third son Shelah from Tamar because he fears Shelah will follow the fate of his two brothers — to an early demise. Judah is willing to rebel against God’s plan for his tribe, as well as the custom of the time to provide for the twice-widowed Tamar. But Tamar will not be denied her devotion to continue the patriarchal line of the tribe of Judah.
You may disagree with her method of complying with God’s designs, but she achieves her goal and even the Gospel writer Matthew himself will etch Tamar’s name into the history of Christianity.
Tamar is just one of many determined women we find on pages 21-46 of Women in the Old Testament. Some will deceive (Rebekah), steal (Rachel) and cause strife with jealousy of their sibling (Leah). (Of course, the patriarchs aren’t much better. What is with the sister-wife deception thing?)
How human they all are. In fact, not only do they thrive in their time, they are blessed by God too. Isn’t it reassuring for the rest of us? Despite their/our human weaknesses, these women and us are still capable of being blessed by God and playing a positive role in helping the Lord achieve His goal.
Finally, I relish the fact that it is a man who states unequivocally Tamar’s superior righteousness. That must have taken great humility for Judah to make this statement. To place a woman above him in God’s eyes no doubt was not easy in that society. Perhaps Judah might be called the world’s first feminist.
- What are the parallels we find between Rebekah and her mother-in-law Sarah?
- What do these similarities tell us about Rebekah’s place in God’s plan?
- Why do YOU think Rachel stole her father’s idols?
- Is Tamar worthy of being one of Jesus’ great-grandmothers?
Psalms 1, The Descriptive Praise of Autumn
To think, people drive from all over the region to take in the wonder right outside my front door.
To be in a state of wonder is a marvelous thing. Autumn’s splendor always reduces me to awe. Like I said Thursday night, it seems this time of year every corner you turn in Orange County unveils another spectacular landscape.
The hills of Harriman State Park, facing our valley, have been fabulous this week. I live in Smith’s Clove, and all I need to do is open my front door to see God’s splendor.
We have a sugar maple in our front yard that I have come to treasure. It must be 30-40 feet tall at this point. During the summer, as the afternoon progresses, it throws shade on the front lawn, providing sanctuary for our Golden Doodle Sophie who likes to lounge there on the lawn.
In the fall, it turns a shimmering yellow that at certain times of day almost makes it look like a stained glass window. It reminds me of the tree of life Sister Salvador had us meditate over when we studied Psalm 1 last week.
Now, thinking about Pat’s lesson, I can’t help but hover over Psalm 33:8: “let all who dwell in the world show reverence.”
Thursday night, as Pat captured with such genuine devotion the meaning of these Psalms, I heard the echo of Sister Roberta’s voice, her reminding us how the Wisdom Psalms point us to the order God has created in our world. If we live faithful to our covenant with God, life is like the sugar maple in front of my home, spreading shade in the heat of summer, a shimmering gold light in fall.
This is the order Pat spoke about when we studied the synonymous parallelism of the Psalms of Praise. As the psalmist declares the depth of beauty we find in the world, he also is describing the incomparable and inconceivable glory that is God, the creator of order.
“You are clothed with majesty and glory, robed in light as with a cloak.” Psalm 104:1
A three-panel stained glass depiction of the “Tree of Life,” in of all places, St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Traverse City, Mich.
Like Pat, I too am a hiker. It is one of the reasons I live here in the Hudson Valley. We have so many places right at our doorstep where we can take in the majesty of God and the glory he creates. There are hundreds of miles of trails in Harriman State Park and Black Rock Preserve. The highest point in Orange County is our very own Schunnemunk Mountain. And you haven’t experienced awe until you’ve stood in front of Mineral Springs Falls in late April as the snow melt thunders over the rocks.
These meditative places are like Psalms, helping us grow closer to God. In Psalms for All Seasons, John Craghan writes: “… one finds God both in the beauty of nature and in the beauty of the revealed word. The worship in the universe and in the Temple should complement each other and lead to mutual appreciation.”
I often wonder, if we could hear God’s voice, what would it sound like. I think it sounds something like Autumn.
[Interesting postscript. Saturday morning, an e-mail from a stranger led me to this video. Like the Psalms, this song reminds us that if we are listening for God’s voice, we are open to growing closer to him. Perhaps Autumn’s visual splendor IS one of God’s ways of drawing us to his voice…..]
St. Pat’s Book Club, A last look at Hagar and Sarah
Sarah offers Hagar to Abraham.
Monday’s discussion was truly a delight. We delved deeply into some troubling questions about what we believe about Sarah and Hagar, and how these two magnificent women reflect on our Catholic faith.As Mike Hansen said several times, “contradictions and conflicts abound” in the stories of these two matriarchs. We can try all we can to box Sarah and Hagar into some kind of biblical stereotype, but odds are we are going to fail. Sarah may be the wife of Abraham and devoted to God, but she also was willing to cast out into the desert a woman whom she was responsible for, and her husband’s son. Not exactly charitable.
Hagar meanwhile lorded her fertility over Sarah when she was pregnant. Is this a character defect that should concern us?
The one area of consensus I did hear was how God creates order in the world, and that when man or woman go against that order, conflict is created. If Sarah and Abraham had been obedient to God’s promise and patient for it to bear fruit, Hagar and Ishmael may not have experienced their pain and suffering.
Perhaps that in the end is the ultimate message of the lives of Sarah and Hagar. Here we have two very decent human beings, blessed in so many ways by God. Yet, despite their good fortune they struggled to trust completely in God and ended up bringing disorder to the world. Even as a man, I find it very easy to see myself in Sarah and Hagar. How about you?
RCIA, The Eucharist
The Tabernacle inside St. Patrick’s, holding the host for the Eucharist, is off to the right of the sanctuary.
For those of you who have never seen Rosemarie teach “The Eucharist,” I am saddened for you. Her devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is so powerful, so unshakable, it can make you overcome any lack of faith you might have that at communion we take in the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.
This Sunday’s class was a remarkable reminder of how we need to work at faith like Rosemarie’s because the concepts of the Eucharist and “transubstantiation” require it. Rosemarie compared the Last Supper to the feeding of the multitudes with a few loaves and fishes. From these two events we can draw parallels to how at mass every Sunday we see a similar miracle performed for our modern hearts, minds and bodies.
Leading up to the Last Supper, Jesus’ many miracles proved that he had powers superior to and independent of nature. He is that powerful and we see his power in the fact that he transformed the future of humankind with his crucifixion. Two thousand years later, billions still follow him. Talk about transformation!
But this doesn’t mean that our human minds necessarily are capable of readily understanding and accepting the concepts of the eucharist. This is why we declare the memorial acclamation called the “The Mystery of Faith” after the host has been consecrated and before we serve communion. I always felt these words were meant to remind us of the basis for the transformation of the eucharist (Christ’s death, resurrection and promise to return). If I believe that Christ was the only son of God and died for my sins, then anything is truly possible.
As much as I would like to understand the science behind the transubstantiation, I don’t think I ever will. That’s a good thing to me, because I don’t want to reduce Christ to science. Where is the faith if I can explain neatly everything he did and promised? Where is the awe and wonder, the challenge to probe my heart and soul to have a relationship with Christ, and sacrifice something of me for him, if I look at his life as a history book? (I’ve never been motivated to have a relationship with George Washington, or Henry Ford, and I’ve read plenty about them in history books.) Knowing Jesus sacrificed himself for me and that he created a way (the eucharist) to abide in me after his death is explanation enough.
Indeed, Rosemarie called the Eucharist “a gift of faith.” In our world, where we all want everything to seem cut and dried by logic, to appear black and white, to be spelled out completely for us to follow, I love Rosemarie’s simple explanation. If I am going to push myself to be a better person, to live a life worthy of Christ’s sacrifice, I’d rather my inspiration not come solely from an instruction manual. I need more than that to transform me.
The Jewish nation of Christ’s time had a manual, called the Pentateuch. But still they struggled (as we ALL do even today) to obey it. When Jesus was asked about the Jewish laws, he said that he didn’t come to abolish the law (the Ten Commandments and the Mitzvot the Jews agreed to follow). Christ said he came to fulfill it, to add something to it more powerful than words and dictates. For me, what Christ added (with his death and resurrection) was a requirement of faith, and that faith was to be bolstered, amongst other things, by the Eucharist, a true gift abiding inside us as the nourishment we need to overcome our human limitations.
Richard D'Ambrosio
Pathways 