I Am Convinced

          This week’s Gospel reading is the parable of The Prodigal Son.  The parable, a metaphor for our relationship with God, concerns the younger of two sons asking his father for his inheritance early.  The father gives the young man the money, and the son then goes and squanders it in “dissolute living,” really bad and immoral choices.  After the younger brother blows all the money, and eventually comes to his senses, he makes a plan to return home and seek his father’s forgiveness with a grand apology.  The son even plans to beg to live like one of the father’s slaves. 

Now, when the younger son is returning home, but still a long way out, his father sees him from a distance and runs to the son.  Before the younger son can even get his whole apology out, the father stops him, hugs him, and tells the servants to dress the son in new clothes and jewelry, and to start a feast for him. 

          This passage has been analyzed as much as any other passage in the Bible (probably more), and there is not too much I could come up with that would be new.  So, let me tell you which two parts mean the most to me.

          First, we notice that the father sees the son while the son is still a significant distance from home.  That means that the father must have been looking for him to return the whole time, or else the father would not have seen the son while he was still so far away.  The father must have been looking for the son to return the whole time to have seen him the moment he popped over the horizon.     

          What does that mean for us?  It means that we can never do something so wrong that God is not hoping for us to return to Him.  Never, never, never.  God is always looking for us to come back to Him after we have wandered away.  Period, end of story.  In Romans 8:38, St. Paul tells us what he thinks about this.  He says, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  That’s very comforting to me.  Sometimes I feel like there are a lot of things that come between me and God.  But I know in my heart that St. Paul is right; nothing can come between me and God.  Nothing, nothing, nothing. 

          Second, in the parable we see that the son plans out his whole speech, but when he returns home, he can’t get even half of it out before his father cuts him off and tells him how much he loves him.  

What does that mean for us?  That means that we don’t have to pray with eloquent language to connect to God.  God knows what we want before we even say it.  That bodes well for me, too, because I am not at all great at praying.  After many years of trying, I still don’t have a specific method or approach, let alone an established script.  Quite frankly, most of the time I find it difficult to even quiet my mind, let alone come out with a great prayer.  But that’s OK.  A sincere desire to connect to God is the thing.  Great phrasing seems optional at best, unless it helps us frame our thoughts.  Everyone prays differently.  I think we can keep our prayers as simple as possible and still connect with God.        

         

-         The Older Brother   

The Tree of Life

Luke’s Gospel (13:1-9) includes the parable of the barren fig tree. The tree that bears no fruit is reminiscent of the person who bears no spiritual fruit. Every single person on this small planet we call earth has a mission.  That mission is to be a conduit of grace into the world. God has planted the seeds of our life to blossom. 

In Jesus’ parable, the one caring for the tree begs the owner for more chance to cultivate the tree, hoping to bring it back to life. But if the tree bears no fruit, the tree will be cut down. This is the note of urgency; we can run out of time. We can become so resistant to God’s plan that our Tree of Life becomes barren.

How are we cultivating our life with God?  Is time running out? Do we look back on our lives and see we have no fruit on our tree? Do we make time for mass or, do we make excuses not to attend mass? I don’t have time for prayer is another excuse. A wise monk once told me wake up an hour earlier and sit in the silence of your heart in prayer with God.

The door to our hearts must be open to the will of God. Once we open that door, then we can nurture our tree with a labor of love. That labor of love is prayer, mass, confession and mercy. So if our fig tree is bare, let us begin to cultivate our tree before time runs out.

Bernard of Clairvaux

This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.

This weeks gospel reading Luke 9:28-36 covers the transfiguration. This may be  one of the greatest miracles in Jesus life. I say this because this  miracle was actually performed on Jesus himself.   Jesus took Peter, James and John  up a mountain for some prayer. At some point, the disciples fell asleep but, Jesus stayed in prayer. When the disciples woke up they witnessed the miracle.  The woke up and saw Moses and Elijah speaking to Jesus.  Jesus’s face had changed, his garments became bright white and were glowing.  It was at that moment the disciples saw Jesus in his glory.  After the transfiguration a cloud approached and the disciples became afraid. Out of that cloud they heard a voice. 

 The voice said 'This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.'

Just like the disciples who fall asleep instead staying awake, we can fall asleep spiritually. We can grow tired of the ups and downs of life and fall asleep instead of turning to Jesus with our prayers. There is no doubt that in our lives we will have those moments when we are just tired. The moments when we wonder who and what we believe in.  Before this miracle, Jesus appeared to be a regular person to the disciples, like you and I.  Yes, he spoke of about being the son of God but, were the disciples sure????   It is hard to imagine  but, even the  disciples had moments when they even wondered who they believed in.  They were hand picked by Jesus himself and yet their faith wavered.  I do believe that after what Peter and the boys witnessed on this mountain  things were different.  They knew for a fact that Jesus was who he said he was.  The Son of God.

I ask you to reflect for a few moments and think about a time in your life when you weren’t sure that Jesus was your savior like he says he is.  I want you to think about how you may not have been  praying as often as you usually did.  Think about a time when you when you took that spiritual slumber.  I firmly believe that is when you get to witness the miraculous power of Jesus.  That is when Jesus is standing with you in all his glory.  When you grow tired, Jesus stays awake. Throughout our lives the clouds of despair may approach  and you may be afraid. Know that Jesus will be there. The Chosen One.  Listen to him. 

Anonymous

The Wisdom of the World

It seems that everywhere we turn these days, we are offered words of wisdom - freely given to any that would but only listen. Whether it's on the internet, T.V, Movies, even billboards, the wisdom of the world is ours for the taking. To be honest, most of it is pleasing to hear and seems right by the values of our times. A few nuggets of wisdom that have crossed my desktop recently: "It's more important to be kind, than it is to be right." "It's Okay for you to believe what you want; it's not okay for you to insist that everyone else believe what you believe." "You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down." Who can argue with such simple and obviously sound logic?

This is the situation in this Sunday's Gospel; the 40 days are over and we might assume that the Lord's fast is completed too. "When they (the 40 days) were over, He was hungry." Jesus is tempted by the evil one: "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread." Now, scripture identifies this as a temptation; but I have to ask myself what's so bad about this? Assuming that this is something that you can do, it is a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem. Isn't it? Mind you: there's no commandment that says "thou shalt not turn stone into bread." So what could possibly be the problem, here?

I'll offer my thoughts on this for your consideration: I think it's an attack on the Lord's very identity. It's an attack that comes in the form of a reasonable solution to a real problem.

Jesus IS the Son of God - this is the Truth, of course, but He is also the Stone that the builders rejected and the Bread of Life. This reasonable solution to His problem is meant to be a trap; there may be nothing wrong with turning stone to bread, but if Jesus does turn this stone into bread in order to satisfy His hunger and affirm His identity, then it follows that He can break THIS bread and feed THIS bread to His Church.  He doesn't really have to be broken Himself, now, does He? And we know that He prayed fervently in the Garden of Gethsemane for that cup to pass Him by. So this, I offer for your consideration, was perhaps a real temptation for our Lord.

Jesus's response is Wise beyond our ability to fully grasp. He doesn't take the bait, but turns to scripture instead. "It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”  (but by all that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.) And by the way - Jesus is also The Word Incarnate, so it can be said that He responds to an attack on His identity as Son of God, Cornerstone and Bread of Life, by asserting His identity as Word Incarnate.

This causes me to consider the wisdom of the world a little more carefully; Can it be that there is more to it than meets the eye? Can the wisdom of the world be a trap for us, too?

Since we can't read hearts, we tend to rely on appearances in order to make everyday decisions. If we accept that it is more important to be kind than it is to be right, then we can easily fall victim to the wolf in sheep's clothing. The wolf, who appears to be kind, but is not. By that standard, Judas who betrayed Jesus in the garden with a kindly kiss might have succeeded in that charade.

I wonder if "...it's not okay for you to insist that everyone else believe what you believe" basically translates to ".....just keep your beliefs to yourself?" If so, What does that say about our apostolic mission to spread the good news to the ends of the Earth? Of course we should never insist that everyone believe what we believe, there is truth in that; But that was never our mission anyway. We are simply charged with the task of witnessing to the truth, always and everywhere - and we should never be silent on matters of importance. This is how holocausts happen.

Consider this picture* of a rainbow shining through a window and visible on the floor:

Is this a prison cell? I don't know: it's not a particularly splendid floor. Yet there is a rainbow, right there for the person looking down to see. Perhaps we forget that the rainbow is a gift from God. I think that God meets us wherever we are, and sends His gifts because we are beautiful in His eyes and well loved. Wherever we are, God (is) With Us.

A closing thought: sometimes what is pleasing to hear and right by the values of our times seems perfectly reasonable, but can lead us down the wrong path. In these difficult times, let us pray for the grace to be able to discern what is right and good.

~Peace,
                 + Theophilus

* (Wikimedia Commons contributors. File:Rainbow on the ground.jpg [Internet]. Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository; 2015 Aug 18, 12:45 UTC [cited 2019 Feb 6]. Available from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Rainbow_on_the_ground.jpg&oldid=168947579. )