To Weather the Storm

12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B); June 23, 2024

Job 38:1,8-11.  Ps 107.  2 Cor 5:14-17.  Mk 4:35-41

Deacon Jim McFadden

         There is a problem-solving stratagem that is often used by corporate America, educational institutions, etc. to ameliorate corporate problems, first by  describing them, analyzing  how they got embedded in the culture,  and what actionable solutions can be done to resolve the issue.  If we divided our parish  gathering into groups—don’t worry, this is only a hypothetical enterprise—and listed the problems that we are facing as a society in the political, economic, and social domains, the list would be extensive, contentious, and problematic.  Then drilling down at a personal level, each participant would describe the issues that one is dealing with at their job and their family, etc.   And, finally, each would describe the personal turbulence they are processing.  Taken all together, as we move about in our lives, we are dealing with a lot of storms.  You get the point. 

            That is why this wonderful gospel story of the calming of the storm at sea resonates so much with us because it deals with the elemental spiritual dynamics of fear and trust.  Making their way across the lake, the disciples stand symbolically for all of us journeying through life.  When they confront the mighty and inevitable waves, they are immediately filled with terror as the turbulent waters threatened to swallow them whole.  Fear is their first response: they feel overpowered and they are afraid.  Similarly, when the trials and anxieties of our contemporary life confront us, our primordial, go-to reaction is fear.

            What is Jesus’ response?  He’s “asleep on a cushion.”  Are you kidding me?  The waves are crashing over our boat, we are in danger of drowning, and you are sleeping!  I think Mark makes that reference because Jesus asleep stands for the divine power that is “asleep” within all of us.  Jesus, the Son of Man, forever united with our humanity, symbolizes that divine energy which remains unaffected by the fear-storms generated by the grasping ego.

            That explains Jesus’ straight-forward response:  “Why are you terrified?  Do you not yet have faith?” (Mk 4:40).  We only have to look at Jesus’ behavior during the storm to see how one of faith should behave.  First of all, Jesus sleeps during the storm because he knows who he is and he is secure in his Father’s love.  As God’s beloved Son, Jesus is grounded in love, not fear.  It is from that conviction he can confront whatever storm arises.   The awakened Jesus shows his disciples the power of a steady mind open to God. So, “He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Quiet! Be still!” (v. 39). This episode reveals that the Son of God became man to mediate God’s power into the storms of our life. 

            Not only does Jesus model how to behave in specific crises, he also gave us very clear guidelines, especially in the Sermon of the Mount.  When we internalize and live those teachings, which are descriptions of Kingdom living, we become conformed to the Risen Christ and can be examples of how to relate to one another authentically.  By operating out of God’s love, we participate in his self-giving generosity and so relate to others in a truly genuine way.  Nothing, nothing is greater than the love God has for all of us.

            This beautiful narrative suggests that if we but awaken to the presence of Christ within us, then we can withstand even the most frightening storms.  Again at the close of the story,  when he asked his bewildered disciples “Why are you terrified?” Do you not have faith?”, he is wondering why they have not experienced the change of heart necessary for living in the Kingdom of God.  Our Lord Jesus is asking us the same question today. 

            May the Blessed Virgin Mary, who in her life never stopped trusting in God, reawaken in us the basic need of entrusting ourselves to him each day.  Amen.

Reflection Questions:

1. What is your first response when you confront the turbulent storms in your life?
2. How do you tap into the divine power that is “asleep” within you?
3. When you reflect upon the Beatitudes, do they mirror your life?  In other words, do you live by faith?

Do We Walk by Faith?

11^th Sunday of O.T. (B); June 16^th, 2024

Ez 17:22-24.  Ps 92.  2 Cor 5:6-10.  Mk 4:26-34

Deacon Jim McFadden

         The recent storm that hit Houston left thousands of residents without power underscored that we live in a world where more and more of our devices require charging and concomitantly we have become so dependent upon technology just to function in our modern society.  Such dependency has spawned new and unique mental, psychological, and spiritual challenges.  One has to be super-organized just to keep track of one’s passwords: the average American reportedly has over 100 of them.  So, it seems that we navigate through life via our digital devices and technology, which shapes our consciousness.

            Such dependency raises a basic question: does technology, an extension of reason, form our consciousness; has it become our primary orientation towards life?  In our second reading from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, offers an alternative view when he tells us that “…we walk by faith not by sight” (5:7), which is a pithy statement of the Christian life.  As Christians we perceive the world through our bodily senses and we interpret that sensory data through our rational interpretative lenses just like non-believers do.  But our primary orientation is not given to us by the body or reason:  it is given by faith, which has nothing to do with gullibility, superstition, or naivete.  We’re not going to put our Chromebooks, iPads, smartphones, etc.  in the closet.  What faith does is to integrate our sensory perceptions and rational inferences into our I-Thou and communal relationship with God and each other.    Through faith we can appreciate what the Jesuit poet Gerald Manly Hopkins once wrote that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

            Perception and reason: that’s walking by sight—nothing wrong with that; indeed, that where we start.  But we walk primarily not by sight, but by faith. That means we are attentive to God and the movement of God within our ordinary experience.  The contemporary spiritual writer Paula D’Arcy put it this way, “God comes to us disguised as our life.”  And that can’t be a matter of direct vision or rational insight.  Rather, God is appreciated in faith which goes beyond reason without contradicting it.

            But, sometimes it is very difficult to see how God is at work.  As we emerged from our 15 month pandemic exile, we carried the burden of one million of our fellow Americans who had succumbed to the virus, along with millions more world-wide.  Understandably, we may ask,  where was God in all of this?  What is God up to?  Sometimes, its exceedingly hard to see, but we trust because we walk by faith and not just by sight.  What God is doing might happen very slowly and in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.  But God is always acting!  He’s never missing-in-action!  From the smallest beginnings can come the accomplishment of God’s purposes.  We hear this in our first reading from Ezekiel who sings of Israel’s great universal destiny which was prophesized during Exile in which they lost everything!   THEY LOST EVERYTHING (!) and yet they still believed that God was present. 

            Five hundred years after Ezekiel, Jesus is making much the same point.  We hear in the Gospel, “This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed in the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how” (Mk 4:26-27).

            God is working, but we cannot see it with our ordinary eyes; we cannot understand it with our ordinary categories; no app is going to give us that access.  God is at work, but we know not how.  That’s okay because we walk by faith not by sight.

            This is why the kingdom of God, as conveyed in the second parable, is like a mustard seed: the smallest of all the seeds of the earth, but once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants, so that “birds of the sky can dwell in its shade” (v. 32c).  It’s not easy for us to enter into this logic of the unforeseeable nature of God and to accept his presence in our life.  But, during a time of uncertainty, loss, and cultural/political divisiveness, God exhorts us to an attitude of faith which exceeds our plans, agendas, calculations, and predictions.  God is always at work and since his ways our not our ways, he will always surprise us. The parable of the mustard seed invites us to open our hearts to surprises, to God’s plans, both at the personal level and that of the community.  In all of our relationships—familial, parish, political, economic, and social—it is important that we pay attention to the little and big occasions in which we can live the Great Commandment.  That means we disengage from the divisive rhetoric that objectifies our brothers and sisters or those policies that inhibit social justice.  Since we walk by faith and not sight, we engage in the dynamics of love, of welcoming and showing mercy towards others without qualification. 

            People of God,  the authenticity of the Church’s mission, which is exactly the same as the Risen and Glorified Christ, does not come through success, programs, or outcomes, but by going forth in and through Christ Jesus: to walk with him courageously and to trust that our Father’s will always bears fruit.  We go forth professing that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar or his successors, and that it is the power of the Holy Spirit who alone can transform peoples’ hearts.  It is the awareness of accepting that we are a small mustard seed, which in the hands of our loving heavenly Father and his grace, great deeds can be done through us to bring about the kingdom of God.

            Here’s the point, brothers and sisters: never give up on God!  Never let yourself be governed by what ordinary perception tells you.  Don’t put your trust in princes.  Rather, look with the eye of faith and see what God is up to.  As the mustard seed grows into the largest of plants, walk by faith and not by sight.  Amen.

Reflection Questions:

1. Is technology forming your consciousness or do you walk by faith?
2. How do you discern that God is actively at work within your life?
3. Does the parable of the mustard seed resonate with you?  How so?

“Who told you that you were naked?”

Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B); June 9, 2024

Gn 3:9-15.  Ps 130.  2 Cor 4:13-5:1.   Mk 3:20-35

Deacon Jim McFadden

            There was once a young boy sitting on the bench during a Little League baseball game just itching to play. Feeling a bit forlorn,  he spoke to his manager and wondered, “Coach, why  is it when Tommy makes an error, I feel better?”  Why indeed?!

This anecdote shows that we don’t have to live too long before we realize that we are participants in a constant struggle between good and evil.  Extrapolating from that game we see it in the world writ large:  people at war with one another—often of same Christian faith, which we see in Ukraine v. Russia; unjust economic systems that should promote the common good  but now  work to the advantage of the privileged few and exploit the vulnerable; groups committed to various ideologies demean those who disagree with them.  In our families we may confront infidelity, abuse, and alienation.  Personally, we may find ourselves wrestling with addiction, resentment, frustration, cynicism, and despair.  How did we get here?  Well, our first reading offers an explanation: we are the offspring of the woman in the garden and we are in constant struggle with the offspring of the serpent. 

            When Adam and Eve listened  to the serpent—their first mistake!—and chose to believe him over God, they basically wanted to place themselves over God; rather than worship God, they wanted to be God.  They thought they could attain happiness without God, which is a metaphysical impossibility since God is the source of Life. Their rebellion led to the world that we now live in.  G.K. Chesterton once wrote that the only theological truth that can be empirically confirmed is Original Sin.  We just have to look around to see its consequences.

The world we now live in, marked by grasping, acquiring, and having seems like it’s real because it is the only world we know, but it is not real to God.

 That is why God began a rescue operation to get us back to the Garden.  When he began this process by looking for Adam and Eve after their transgression, they hid because they were now afraid because they were naked.   Nakedness in itself is not the problem because that term (‘arom’ in the original Greek) meant that they were uncovered; that is, there were no barriers between themselves and God and each other.  However, after they had sinned the term used to describe their sin indicates that they are exposed  (‘erom’).   This term only appears 10 times in the entire Bible and connotes some kind of spiritual deprivation. 

After their sin the woman and man are not only naked (spiritually exposed), they are unwilling to take responsibility for their fault as they blame each other, blame the serpent, and subtly imply that if God hadn’t put the snake in the Garden, none of this would have happened.  Now, they are stuck in their sin, which explains the world we live in which contains   its inevitable consequence: Death. 

Our sin is now embedded in our human experience and the Responsorial Psalm (130) acknowledges the helplessness of sinful human beings in the presence of the one true God:  “Out of the depths I call to you, Lord; Lord hear my cry!  May your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.  If you, Lord, mark our sins, Lord, who can stand?  But with you is forgiveness and so you are revered” (Ps 130:2-4).

Fortunately, God does listen to our plea for forgiveness and his power can overcome our sin and death.  In the exorcisms performed by Jesus and his disciples in today’s gospel reading from Mark, shows that God’s power is supreme and can cast out the demons themselves.  But, before Jesus can vanquish Satan’s domination—“to enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property” (Mk 3:27a), the attacker, namely Jesus, has to incapacitate the householder by tying up the strong man. Then he can plunder the house” (v. 27b). 

That is why the Word of God, the 2^nd Person of the Trinity, became a human being.  Left to ourselves in our nakedness (‘erom’, spiritually exposed) we cannot overcome  our Adversary.  But, God can because he is all-powerful and can overcome anything, including sin and death, which He did through the  death and Resurrection of His only begotten Son, Jesus. 

Though the Prince of Darkness has been vanquished through the salvific work of Jesus, we are still in a struggle with the forces of evil.  Nonetheless, we are SO empowered.  By virtue of our Baptism, we have been initiated into Jesus very mystical Body, the Church, in which we are nurtured by the Eucharist and Confirmed in the Holy Spirit.  We live out our baptismal call through our vocation either Holy Orders, matrimony, or the single life.  And, as we move towards our destiny we have the sacraments of healing—Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick—which salves our wounds. 

Let us call upon our Blessed Mother Mary who said “Yes” to God’s power by permitting the Word of God to become human and thereby casting out Satan and his evil spirits who seek the ruin of souls.  Amen.

Reflection Questions:

1.  How do you experience the struggle between good and evil? 
2.  How have you experienced ‘erom’, spiritual deprivation ?
3. Do you feel empowered to realize your destiny through Christ our Lord? Does that bring you confidence and joy?