Monday, January 25, 2016

Christ Has No Body Now But Yours


A few days ago I had a dream about ISIS. Though I do not recall any details about the dream presently, the eerie feeling that I had while sleeping, immediately after and even into the next morning is quite clear. My dream experience brought the reality that many have suffered and are suffering presently into the forefront of my being. For a moment, though subconscious and through a dream, I had what might be for some a very real feeling of sorrow or terror--of enslavement. The experience was personal and up close.

In today’s gospel, Jesus unrolls a scroll and reads from the prophet Isaiah that the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” He then proceeds to tell us that “today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

In our own time, there are many in our world who are enslaved or oppressed in variety of ways.  I would like to believe that slavery is over, for as an international community we have acknowledged that slavery is a crime against humanity. And yet, human trafficking, racism, terror, indifference, displacement and greed are harsh realities for those most vulnerable in our world.

Several years ago I lived in Nepal. Recently, I received an email from a former student who comes from a poor village. He spoke to me of his current reality: “now due to the
political instability we are facing [a] huge problem of shortage and starvation of food, fuel, gas, kerosene etc...the government leaders are also involved in that black market and earning huge money. they are selling basic needs thing(s) in triple price. the high class people they can [afford]  but poor people they are having [a] really difficult time.”

Dorothy Day once said, “No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do”. December 8, 2015 began the Jubilee Year of Mercy instituted by Pope Francis. Our readings today draw upon a variety of themes. Jubilee, though not explicitly stated, seems to be present in both the first reading and in the gospel. In the biblical sense, jubilee was the “year of the Lord” where all debts were cancelled and slaves were freed.

A question that comes to mind today for me is: do we have the courage to set each other free? There is a long list of evils that exist in our world, and as individuals we might feel helpless. Teresa of  Ávila asserts that: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

The second reading reminds us that we belong to each other. Sometimes in prayer I visit the most vulnerable. I remind myself that if they are suffering through such horrors, then their horrors are somehow mystically apart of my story and are Christ’s mutilated body.

My prayer today is that Christians everywhere have the courage to love those in their midst and to act both within systems and in their daily lives for a more just world. While there is much work yet to do before we are all set free, still the first reading delivers words of comfort while we live in the already, but not yet realized experience of Jesus. “Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”


Tuesday, January 19, 2016

It is not my problem...


The following blog entry was Fr. Robert Murphy's homily for Sunday, January 17. The readings for Sunday are available here.


It is not my problem. It is not my problem. This is basically Jesus’ initial reaction today in the Gospel. We hear that he is at a wedding with his mother and his disciples and at a certain point during the reception they run out of wine and for those of us who have planned weddings and know how much things cost it is no surprise that ran out because things add up and there is only so much money to go around and for those of us who have attended weddings it is no surprise for we know how much people like to, let’s call it “celebrate.” Now Mary knows her Son, and she knows that he can do something to help in this situation. And so she asks her son to help and he is like well how does this concern affect me, my hour has not come. Basically, It is not my problem, I not ready.

Now before we give Jesus a hard for being like this, let us check ourselves because often enough we can be like this, we can have this mentality. We can look at our country and see questions about immigration and think well I am a citizen not my problem, and we can look out and we can see abuses against life and think I not pregnant or I am not terminally ill not my problem, we can look around our city and see homelessness and think I got a place to stay, not my problem, and we can see racism and think well I am not a person of color so not my problem. And in addition, we can tell ourselves I am just a college student, I am not ready, once a get my degree and graduate then I will be ready, then it will be my time. And so we can let ourselves off the hook.

Now fortunately, for everyone at the reception, Mary will not let Jesus off that easy, so “encourages” him to do something by she simply volunteering him. And this gets Jesus to act and through the use of his gifts, his abilities, he is able to help the married couple resolve their problem even though he is not married, even though it was not his problem and even though he did not think he was ready.

And fortunately, for everyone in our country, Martin Luther King, would not let certain inequalities stand. And so he decided to do something about it, and this encouraged other people to act. And they began to use their gifts and his abilities in the civil rights movement even though many people were not ready or prepared and even if it might not have been an issue for them.

And so like Isaiah the prophet in the first reading, they could not be silent. And we my brothers and sisters cannot be silent. There are certain issues facing our city and our country that our faith, our Catholic faith not only encourages, but calls us even demands that we speak out that we act that we act until the day of vindication, until the day that certain people are no longer considered forsaken but delightful. Take a minute and think about all the different people that are hated right now who are demonized and imagine what it would look like if they were accepted and appreciated. And since we know that we are not there the question for us is not if we should act, if we should respond, it is how, not if but how.

And for this we turn to our second reading, for St. Paul explains that there are different types of spiritual gifts but the same spirit, and different forms of service but the same Lord, and different workings but the same God. And then he goes on to list out different gifts and how the spirit gives these different gifts to different people. And so my brothers and sisters, we have each been blessed with our own unique set of gifts and abilities. And so each of us has to identify our gifts and abilities and decide how best to put them to use. And this can be hard and so sometimes we need someone to be like Mary and encourage us.

And while at SLU we are here to be this person for each other. We are here to not only help each other recognize our gifts and develop new ones but in the mean time we are to here find opportunities for us to use them and encourage other to do the same and in this way work on the problems facing our city and our country.



Now my brothers and sisters, Jesus did not work alone to solve the problem, he worked with other. He did his part and they did theirs. So look around this space, look around this space at all the different people, and as you do think about all of the different gifts, all the different gifts that God has given us and with this in mind let us realize that there is no problem, that there is no problem that we cannot solve if we work together.