Category Archives: Musings

Apostle Signs Nike Endorsement Deal

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Around Easter each year friends and family send me all kinds of Easter-themed images, memes, articles, and what-not. I am always amazed at the creativity and imagination of some folks, for example:

The (fake) Press Release from Nike:

JUDEA — Saint John the Apostle has reportedly signed a lucrative six figure deal with Nike following his win against Saint Peter in a footrace to the tomb of Jesus.

Saint Peter has continually maintained that it was not a race, and that they were just excited to learn if Jesus had indeed risen. However, that hasn’t put a stopper on Saint John’s growing fame as a sprinter. Nike decided to strike while the iron is hot.

“We’re proud to have signed John to an official endorsement deal,” said Nike CEO Tiberius Calceus. “We’re also excited to announce a collaboration with the apostle on the brand-new Nike Air John 1, the shoe for beloved winners. Run like John with a pair of Air John 1’s today.”

Image and text courtesy of Babylon Bee

Resurrection Faith

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Today’s gospel from St. Matthew  is familiar to all readers: Jesus has been crucified, died, and laid within a tomb guarded by soldiers and watched by Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary.” The Sabbath has passed and dawn approaches on the first day of a new week.

The gospel accounts of the empty tomb are fairly similar. Women (names and number of women differ) come to the tomb early on Sunday morning. The stone is rolled away and the tomb is empty. Some of the gospels have an angelic messenger who speaks to the women.

There is great diversity in the accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ. It is difficult to harmonize any of them. Perhaps there is a message in that: Our contemporary experiences of the risen Christ will differ. There are those who visibly see a white light and others don’t. There are those who experience Christ in a radical transformation, A “born-again” event in their lives. There are those for whom Christ has been such a reality throughout their lives that they can’t think of a moment when Christ wasn’t present to them or when there was a great turning point in their lives. How the risen Christ comes to people differ – then and now. Our stories about the risen Christ’s presence in our lives differ – and in that lack of uniformity there is witness to the breadth of humanity.  

The woman left the empty tomb “fearful yet overjoyed” only to encounter the Risen Christ telling them: “Do not be afraid.” A good message for us. Resurrection faith does not arise on the basis of evidence, of which the chief priests and soldiers had plenty, but on the basis of the experienced presence of the risen Christ, by testimony of those to whom he appeared, and by his own continuing presence among his disciples – on the Easter morning and in all the days since.

We need to be a people unafraid to proclaim a radical resurrection faith in the present, not just a historical event. We need to tell it with joy!

He is risen! Alleluia!

Image credit: Christ’s Appearance to Mary after the Resurrection | Alexander Ivanov | Russian Museum | PD-US

In the darkness

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There have been many a Good Friday in the course of my life. I have heard the Passion narrative. I led the Passion narrative during Good Friday liturgies. Over the many years of Bible study I have covered the Passion narrative more than a few times. And now thru the gift of my friends Jerry and Maureen, I experienced Good Friday in a way not to ever be forgotten.

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Triduum: a love story

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A reflection for the Readings on Spy Wednesday: Holy Week is a story told in three acts.

Act 1: Love Portrayed.  All Lent we have seen Love Portrayed:  Jesus transfigured on the mountain top. The glory of God revealed and yet what would seem to be the final scene of the play is but the beginning. We’ve more to hear, more to see. Especially in the daily gospels we have acts of love. A man born blind who now sees. Lessons on unlimited forgiveness. Teachings on the great commandments of loving God and neighbor. And so many more scenes of love portrayed.  The disciples believe because they have seen and heard the power of God in the world.

Love is portrayed by the people of the city of God, Jerusalem, who welcome Jesus with palm branches waved and laid upon the road as one who greets the arriving king. Cries of “Hosanna…. hosanna in the highest”  The cry reserved for the Messiah.  Their love is portrayed in the hopes they pray the Nazarene can fulfill.  All believe – in the enthusiasm of the moment it is easy to believe.

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Will you sing?

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The refrain from today’s psalm is “I will sing of your salvation.” Will you? If you are the average Catholic your answer might be “yes” but I wonder what you answer would be if the question was “Will you sing of your salvation outside of Mass or your shower?”  Granted we all sound great in the shower, but we are more reluctant to sing at all apart from the choir of the faithful or our personal Niagara Falls.

Are you willing to sing of your salvation, to give witness, in the public forum when all eyes are upon you? How about in the local WalMart or Wegmans? Your average Catholic only needs to stand next to a born-again, evangelical Christian to understand how private we are about our life in faith.  Of course, you’re thinking, “All that public praying and witnessing, that’s their thing. Our faith is more discrete, more private, more, well…… more sophisticated than asking someone in the local WalMart if they had been saved. Ours is a faith steeped in tradition, liturgy, sacraments. This is how we serve the Lord.” 

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At what cost?

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“Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” (John 12:3)

As Jesus draws nearer to His Passion, today’s gospel (John 12:1-11) presents a moment of striking intimacy and devotion. Six days before Passover, Jesus is at the home of Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead—a miracle that already pointed to His power over life and death, and foreshadowed His own resurrection. Amidst the gathering, Mary, a sister of Lazarus, performs a beautiful and extravagant act of love: she anoints Jesus’ feet with costly oil and dries them with her hair.

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Inside and Out

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Tomorrow is Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion in which we will hear the well-known gospel of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (from outside), The Passion narrative recounts many events inside the city as do the daily gospel readings. But at the end of the Passion, Jesus is again outside the city, crucified and entombed. There were those who cried Hosanna on Sunday and crucify him on Friday. There are those who swore they would stand by him no matter what and then ran away. With respect to the Messiah, Jerusalem and its inhabitants are a divided city. Continue reading →

Enslaved

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If you are attentive to the gospel readings so far this week it is clear that there is controversy in the air. The gospels are from John 8 and follow immediately upon the scene of the “woman caught in adultery.” It is important to note that John 7 is filled with back-and-forth arguments between Jesus and the religious leaders about Jesus’ identity. In John 7 Jesus uses terms like “the one sent” and behind closed doors the religious leaders wonder if Jesus is portraying himself as the Messiah or the great-Prophet-to-come as promised by Moses.  Ranging behind all this is the question of what is Jesus’ relationship to the Father? Is it something so completely different, so unique, that God is his Father in a way that God is Father to no other human being? This controversy ranges through the whole of the chapter; the issue refuses to stay down or go away. 

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Raise your eyes

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The first reading today is from the Book of Numbers 21:4-9:

With their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!” In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.” Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.

The Book of Numbers is the title of the book in English, but the Hebrew title is, more commonly, bemiḏbar, “in the wilderness [of]”). “In the wilderness” describes the contents of the book much better than “numbers,” which is derived from the censuses described in later chapters. Our passage occurs after God has assigned them to wander in the desert for a generation because of their rebellion against the leadership of God. They seem to have to fight their way through the wilderness. 

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