TIMING AND THE FUNDAMENTAL CHOICE
December 5, 2021
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal
T he gospel reading for this second Sunday of Advent opens with Luke’s effort to pinpoint the time and location of John the Baptist’s appearance in Judea. In an age without calendars, Luke uses a list of the names of those in various forms of authority to give his readers a rough idea of when things happened. We often do the same thing when we can’t recall an exact date, but do remember the time when so-and-so was president, what’s-his-name was governor, which songs were popular then, and so on. Modern scholars can determine from Luke’s listing that the year of John’s appearance was around 30 a.d., and the locale was a section of the Jordan River near the Dead Sea.
Why was all that information, particularly the timing, important?
Jewish expectation of the Messiah’s arrival had reached a fevered pitch of excitement around the time Luke points to. The Book of Daniel prophesied that roughly four hundred ninety years would pass from the beginning of the Babylonian exile until an anointed one would come to “put an end to sin and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet and to anoint a most holy place” (Dan 9:24). Many in 30 a.d. believed that the fulfilment of God’s plan had arrived.
When the Baptist appeared preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, he repeatedly had to deny that he was the awaited Messiah (Luke 3:15ff; John 1:19-28). However, he said, this baptism of repentance was needed to prepare people’s minds and hearts for the advent of the kingdom of heaven that was now at hand in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. 3:2).
There is a way that Luke’s emphasis on timing can apply to each of us. Advent is a time when the Church proclaims athe message of repentance to prepare for the Lord’s coming – in the first two weeks of Advent, specifically, preparations for His Second Coming and in the last two weeks for His first coming at Christmas.
It’s important that we take this call to repentance seriously, since delaying repentance until the end of life is like playing Russian Roulette with our salvation.
I want to be clear about the kind of repentance the Baptist is thinking of. People who came to him for baptism wanted to turn away from sinful patterns of life. But they would not have come to John if they weren’t also thinking of something more positive; namely, a desire to be ready for the Messiah, a desire to turn toward the Kingdom of Heaven.
This was no getting rid of superficial imperfections like using bad language or watching too much television. Besides, given the biblical view of sin versus righteousness, there are no allowances for “gray areas” where I can’t decide whether what I’m doing is right or wrong, so I do it anyway. Scripture doesn’t admit of “gray areas.” In biblical terms, I’m either wise or a fool, righteous or wicked, a sheep or a goat. So, when it comes to wanting entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven, it’s either For or Against, In or Out, Yes or No. Repentance of this sort is radical; it strikes to the root of my identity. Here, the subject of repentance is that one choice at the core of my being, that one “fundamental option” that, when made, sets the overall direction for the rest of my life.
Who of us has not allowed ourselves to drift along, taking things as they come, letting circumstances determine what we do with our lives, even determine what their ultimate purpose is? We may have settled on something we’re passionate about, like saving the environment or building a career that helps people; we may even have sensed a vocation to using the environment or our career to advance the Catholic faith. But these choices are temporal.
The Kingdom (Jesus himself) calls for a specific,
conscious response to a question even more fundamental:
Do we want Him or not?
All of us will face a moment in the history of our lives when the Lord will face us with that question. It may come at one recognizable moment, or it may crystallize over a period of years. But seizing the moment is critical, lest it slip by. In my own case – and purely by God’s grace – the time to answer that question occurred just when I had reached the point of deciding to leave the faith, and I can still remember the year, the month, and the day I finally realized what the question was and said Yes. When I did, all my other concerns fell into place.
The baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins that John preached was an invitation to make that one fundamental choice: Yes or No, In or Out, Toward God or Away from Him. Not to decide one way or the other is to say No. If you want to say Yes, you need to say so consciously, deliberately, and with conviction, and then renew your choice every day.
If you have not yet said that fundamental Yes, or if you don’t even know whether you have, the time is right this Advent to turn to the Lord and ask for the grace to say it. The time of fulfilment in God’s plan for your life has arrived. In your heart make straight the way of the Lord, so he can level the mountains and fill the valleys of your life
THE GREAT GIFT TO THE CHURCH AND TO THE WORLD
November 28, 2021
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal
Today we begin a new church year. We celebrate the First Sunday of the Season of Advent which features the Gospel of Luke (year C in the cycle of readings).
Luke’s gospel message (Lk 21:25-28, 34-36) brings very different reactions. Frightening, bold, and beautiful glimpses of God are what Jesus offers on this First Sunday of Advent.
As troubling as the text may be for us, in it are treasures that help us to focus on the true meaning and purpose of Advent. In it, Jesus challenges us, as he did the early hearers of the Word, to pay attention and be ready.
Advent means “coming” or “arrival,” and this text from Luke reminds us that Advent involves preparing for three comings: 1) God coming to earth in the infant Jesus whom we await at Christmas; 2) Christ returning to earth at a time we do not know; and 3) Jesus coming into our hearts anew each Advent.
Jesus wants us to be ready. And we prepare by keeping alert, constantly preparing ourselves/our hearts, and continuing to hope in our loving God who comes to us in Jesus Christ
So, what is it that we must do to prepare? We tend to lead very busy lives, and sometimes we lose our focus. I believe we need to lay down some things, some distractions, to make more room for God. It may be different for each of us.
• For some, it may be the “what-ifs” of a recent experience – what if I had done more, been there more, said more, loved more….
• Some of us may be angry or disappointed with someone or with God, and that blocks our hearts and doesn’t allow room for the Christ child…
God wants only what is best for us with this Season of Advent. So, think about what is the one thing that you need to focus on – this very moment – as you begin to prepare your heart for the Christ Child at the very beginning of the liturgical year.
Ponder it in silence. When you come up to the altar for Holy Communion, bring it with you, and lay your burdens down at the feet of the Lord. The manger has lots of open space to add characters and animals as the weeks progress. It also reminds us to make room for Jesus, to rid ourselves of some of those things that are burdening our hearts and minds, so there is more room for Jesus.
Jesus comes into our hearts anew with each Christmas we experience. Laying down those burdens allows us to stand with a free heart, with open arms for Jesus to enter; to rise with hope for all that God can and will do in our lives.
Advent is the season of hope, because the promise is that no matter what happens, one truth will last: “I will be with you all days.” Jesus with us, guiding us, that no matter how dark it gets, we know that his light will shine through. It is his light that we follow.
Hope is more than optimism.
Our optimism can be rooted in a whole variety
of human circumstances.
Hope can only be rooted in God;
it is the human response to God’s word of promise.
Very often hope comes into its own
when optimism dies.
In the gospel reading this weekend, Jesus describes a scene that leaves very little room for optimism. He speaks of nations in agony, of men dying of fear, of threatening powers that menace the world, and of disturbing signs in nature. Such a scenario would not encourage optimism. Yet, in spite of this grim scene Jesus calls on his followers to be hopeful, to stand erect with heads held high.
The reason for such hope amid this trauma is the coming of the Son of Man with power and great glory. Jesus promises that when all seems to be falling apart, he will come with his liberating power. This promise is the source of our hope.
Jesus is saying that even when there are no grounds for optimism, there is always reason for hope because God is stronger than the forces that threaten to engulf us. This is the heart of the gospel message. “Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it” (Jn 1:5). St. Paul expressed this conviction very well when he said, “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (Rm 5:20). It is this conviction that keeps us hopeful even in the face of great darkness and distress.
Dear brothers and sisters, the virtue of hope is a great gift to the Church and to the world. People can inspire others to tackle what they might otherwise shy away from. Advent is a season when we are invited to renew and deepen our hope.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus suggests to us how we can keep hope alive. The wakefulness or attentiveness to God that we call ‘prayer’ helps us to remain hopeful. In prayer we become attuned to God’s presence; we grow in our awareness of God’s coming into even the most unpromising of situations. And my prayer is that this becomes a time to walk with God and for God to walk with us.
THERE IS ANOTHER VOICE
November 21, 2021
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal
On this feast of Christ the King, the Gospel of St. John takes us into this civil trial, the final week of our Lord’s life before His crucifixion. In the 18th chapter we have a series of trials that our Lord was put through: three of them with the Jewish leaders and three of them with the Gentile leaders. Pilate entered again into the Praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to Him: “Are You the King of the Jews?”
It’s a simple question and Pilate wants a simple answer, a simple truth. Yes or no. You either are or you aren’t. Which is it? That’s the kind of question we always hear lawyers in the court room ask: Yes or no? Even if you’ve never questioned a witness or tried a lawsuit, I am sure there have been times in your life when you too wanted a clear answer and a simple truth. Pilate wants to possess the truth.
I think we all do things to try to possess the truth. There is, however, a dark and dangerous side to claiming possession of the truth. When we claim to be the sole custodians of truth, we put ourselves in the position of having to defend, guard, and protect that truth. We promote and impose our truth on others. Conversations are reduced to monologues of rhetoric, and relationships give way to either isolation or domination. And violence arises in the words we speak and the actions we take. Sometimes it is a violence that injures or kills another human being, but it always wounds the human soul – theirs and ours.
We all have heard that monologue rhetoric from our friends or in the media: someone’s research on the internet about whether or not the vaccine works against covid. This sort of claiming possession of truth looks like broken hearts in marriages, families, and friendships. it looks like each presidential candidates claiming to know more and better than the other.
Why does Jesus not give Pilate a straight answer? Maybe that’s his way of telling us that truth is never as simple as we want it to be, never as absolute as we often assert it to be, and never as exclusive as we sometimes claim it is. He knows that truth is more than a fact, an answer, or an experience, and that it cannot be possessed. Rather, it is a life to be lived.
The truth to which Jesus testifies is the God who is beyond the circumstances of this world and yet always present in the circumstances of this world. Jesus came into the world to tell us about that truth, to show us what it looks like in a human life, and to teach us how to be a part of and belong to that truth. To seek and claim sole and exclusive possession of the truth is the way of Pilate and the way of the world, but it is not the way of Christ.
Jesus never asks us to possess the truth about him or anything else. Instead, he asks us to belong to the truth, to let ourselves be possessed by his truth, and listen to his voice.
So, here is my question: Do we belong to the truth, or do we live and act as if the truth belongs to us? How we answer that question will determine whose voice we listen to, the choices we make, the priorities we establish, the words we speak, and the actions we take. “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,” Jesus said.
In reality we listen to our own voice and the voices of those who think and act like us. We listen to the voice of our political party, our country’s leaders, our religion. We listen to the voice of our own fear and insecurity. I have heard and listened to them. I know they are real. And they do speak a truth, but it is only a piece of the truth. They remind me that the world is not always safe, and life is not always easy.
There is another voice, a voice that speaks from a kingdom not of this world. In the midst of uncertainty, fear, and terrorist attacks, there is a voice that says, “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Is. 41:10). “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt. 28:20). In the darkness of death, there is a voice that says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (Jn. 11:25).
In a sea of human diversity – people who think, act, and believe differently than us – there is a voice that says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. 12:31). In a world with battle lines drawn and enemies named, there is a voice that says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt. 5:44). In the midst of humanitarian need, there is a voice that says, “I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt. 25:35).
In the pain of a broken heart, hurt feelings, and betrayals, there is a voice that says, “If anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you” (Col. 3:13). That’s the voice I want to listen to. That’s the truth to which I want you also to belong to.
THE CHALLENGE
November 14, 2021
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal
We are at the end of this Church Year once again. Next Sunday is the feast of Christ the King, and then weenter into Advent.
Today the readings direct our attention to the end of time. In the readings, we are promised that if we are faithful, we shall not be destroyed. We are promised that the Archangel Michael will be there helping us. We are told that the one great sacrifice for sins has been made and we must cling to the Lord. God will gather His elect, and we must be ready.
It is awesome to think that one day we shall all be gathered to the Lord with all who have gone before us and those who may come after us. The fear comes because there is always the possibility that I will not be counted among those who are chosen. The first reading today from the Book of Daniel (Dn 12:1-3) tells us: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever; others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.” This is the kind of statement that makes us have a bit of fear.
In 1999, in the month of July, Pope John Paul II shocked the Christian world when he made the following statements in his Wednesday audience:
“Heaven, or the happiness in which we will find ourselves, is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a personal relation [with God]. This final condition can be anticipated in a certain sense now on earth… Moreover, the pictures of Hell given to us in Sacred Scripture must be correctly interpreted. They express the total frustration and emptiness of a life without God. More than a place, Hell is the state of the one who freely and finally removes himself from God, the source of life and joy.”
Why did the Pope deem it necessary to offer this kind of clarification at this time? I think that the Pope was responding to two popular but erroneous ways of looking at biblical texts that have to do with the End Times, namely rationalism and literalism.
A rationalistic approach will read this passage as the mistaken belief of early Christians that the End Times were just around the corner. This would lead to the conclusion that this is an outdated text that has no value to us, and that heaven is nothing but a figment of their primitive imaginations as a physical place in the clouds, and that from there Christ would come back.
A literalistic reading, on the other hand, would treat our passage as a factual prediction of future events that will mark the End Times. If the Bible says heaven is somewhere in the clouds, then heaven is somewhere in the clouds. Maybe the clouds in question are so high above that our astronauts who have been to the moon have not seen it and cannot see it even with their powerful telescopes. As regards Jesus saying to his hearers: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (Mark 13:30), literalists quickly abandon literalism and argue that the evangelist who wrote these things certainly misunderstood what Jesus said, since Jesus could not be wrong.
Rejecting both rationalism and literalism, the Pope pointed out to us a third way, namely, to recognize these texts as graphic depictions of a gospel message that is always relevant to people of every age and culture. Read in this way, we can pick out these important messages that the text has for us and for people of every generation:
• Firstly, this world is passing away. Life in this world is like an overvalued high-tech stock that is bound to crash sooner or later. So why should anyone have all their assets in this one stock? It is, therefore, an invitation for us to invest wisely, to invest in things out of this world, to invest in the stock of the kingdom of God.
• Secondly, God, the Righteous One will come someday, that is the Last Day, to right all the wrongs of this world. Because the world as we know it is a world where often enough innocent people suffer and evil people prosper. Good people may indeed sleep better at night, but bad people seem to enjoy the waking hours more. If that is all there is to life, then why would anybody want to be good and upright rather than bad and smart?
The Good News of the End Times assures us that in the final analysis, evil will catch up with the evildoer, and justice will again be just. This will be in the kingdom of God for which this life is only a preparation. As we say the Lord’s Prayer today, let us mean it when we say, “Thy kingdom come.”
Dear brothers and sisters, the challenge is not to know when the end is coming but to live today as if the end will be right now. There is no sense in pretending with God. God knows our hearts and our minds, even more than we do. We must simply get on with living now as if this is our last moment – with no fear and no upset, completely trusting in the love of the Lord.
PRUDENCE VS. THE "PRINCIPLE OF WASTE"
November 7, 2021
Deacon Dennis Walters
Parish office managers who track donations have observed that, in general, wealthy parishioners seem to donate less to the Church than poorer parishioners do. While there are numerous exceptions to this, the general pattern seems to be that the wealthier one is, the less one tends to contribute.
From a purely human point of view, managing one’s money responsibly calls for a great deal of prudence. Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues. According to the book of Proverbs, “the prudent man looks where he is going” (Prv. 14:15). So when it comes to finances, it’s only prudent to ask yourself where you’re going with your money.
Prudence indicates that you pay what is necessary before you consider what is optional. So, especially if you believe that money is tight, you pay your basic bills first – food, housing, utilities – before deciding where the rest of your income goes. That often puts the Church in the “optional” category.
It may come as something of a shock to learn that our standard of prudence is upside down from God’s. Today’s readings provide two good examples of this.
In our first reading (1 Kings 17:10-16), the prophet Elijah comes in the midst of a three-year famine to a Gentile town, where he meets a widow gathering firewood. Her food supply has run out; she has only enough for one last meal for herself and her son. When Elijah asks her for food, he promises that her supply of flour and oil will not run out, provided that she first serve him and then herself and her son.
Prudence would dictate that she feed her family first and give Elijah anything left over. But for whatever reason – be it Middle Eastern standards of hospitality or an instinctive faith – she trusts his promise and feeds the prophet before she and her son eat. And her trust is miraculously rewarded.
In our second example (Mark 12:41-44), Jesus points to a widow who puts two coins called leptons – worth less than two cents in our coinage – into the Temple treasury. He commends her generosity over that of all those contributing much larger sums because they give out of their abundance, whereas she gives out of her poverty.
Jesus is not suggesting that donating out of one’s abundance is unworthy or trifling. Rich people can be incredibly generous; some contribute thirty percent and more of their personal income to the Church. Yet their level of income permits that generosity; they have almost no need to pinch pennies. But the widow’s gift matters more to Jesus because she cannot afford it. Setting prudence aside, she puts God before herself, trusting Him to provide for her.
Both stories, of course, are about a kind of “imprudent” faith. Wealthy or not, all of us are poor before God – all we have belongs to Him; we’re only using it. So it’s only appropriate that we should give some of it back.
The question is, how to be both generous and prudent?
The answer may lie in a story that all four gospels tell of a wealthy woman – in John’s gospel, it’s Mary, Martha’s sister – who at a banquet anoints Jesus by pouring a vial of expensive nard over his head (John 12:1-8). The disciples (specifically, Judas) complain, “Why this waste? That perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor.” The question not only attacks the woman’s imprudence, but it also suggests that Jesus is not worth the extravagance.
In response, Jesus explains that the woman is performing a work of mercy toward Him, preparing his body for its burial; He then adds, “Wherever in all the world the Gospel is preached, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (Matt 26:13). Her deed illustrates what one preacher calls “the principle of waste.”
As he explains it, the “principle of waste” is part of the Gospel message. Giving from our resources – our time, our talent, our treasure – is a way of giving ourselves. It’s what Scripture means by commanding us to love God with our “whole heart, our whole mind, our whole soul, and all our strength” (Mark 12:30).
The phrase “our strength” refers to our personal and material resources. We are called to “waste” ourselves on God. The sort of “prudence” where we take care of ourselves first is not part of that.
The episode of Elijah with the widow of Zarephath illustrates the principle of waste: in God’s dispensation, real prudence says we give to God first and the rest will follow. Is there a risk to that? Of course. Faith always involves some level of risk; otherwise, it’s not faith. But God is not stingy; He gives back. As the story illustrates, He in turn provides for our needs.
So how much of ourselves is it prudent to give to God? 10%? 25%? (Note that 50% is half-hearted!) The widow Jesus observes suggests an answer: 100%. God wants our heart – all of it. Of course, He will take whatever we give Him. But He wants it as a gift. If we give Him all we are, even it it’s not much, we give more than someone does who is rich in resources but out of prudence gives only a percentage.
In the spiritual life, prudence indicates that we should imitate Jesus. He became poor for our sake and wasted Himself on us. As I said earlier, all of us are poor before God; we’re only using what belongs to Him. If we then, out of our poverty, give Him all we have – if we “waste” ourselves on Him – we can trust that He will not withhold anything we need to live on.