This coming Sunday is the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. 45 It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. Continue reading
Given Weil’s description of affliction, it is appropriate to return to the Book of Job, generally dated between 550-445 BCE. It is broadly understood to be a retelling of the story of the nation of Israel’s history before, during and after the Exile. It therefore possesses a psychological and sociological dimension, as well as the personal. At the core of the story, Job, our scriptural icon of the afflicted one, asks why? In the face of the loss of everything – children, wealth, honor and health (Job 1,2) – Job is initially resilient: “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb and naked shall I go back again. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). As the suffering mounts and moves towards despair, Job’s wife counsels him, “Curse God and die” (2:9). Job does not curse God; he curses himself. His previously stoic response collapses in the face of the depth of the experience. This is no mere suffering, this moves beyond that to what Weil calls affliction. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. 43 Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop murmuring among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day.
Jesus now addresses the crowd for a second time and tells them to stop their grumbling. Then he repeats the saying of v.37, but in a slightly stronger form. In v.37 the word “come” (hēxei) is the future, active voice and means that the person (subject) will be in the process of “coming.” But in v.44 the subject is God who will helkysē (draw, haul by force – EDNT v.1:435) the person to him. In the midst of everyone considering the great Eucharistic questions posed by John 6, it is easy to pass over one of the great doctrines of the Gospel and the Christian faith: divine initiative. Continue reading
Outside of Scripture, the Christian tradition speaks of affliction broadly, but perhaps none speaks so clearly in the contemporary era as Simone Weil, the 20th century French philosopher and mystic, who gives the following insightful description of affliction:
“In the realm of suffering, affliction is something apart, specific and irreducible…it takes possession of the soul and marks it… Affliction is an uprooting of life, a more or less attenuated equivalent of death…. Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time. … What is terrible is that if, in this darkness where there is nothing to love, the soul ceases to love, God’s absence becomes final. … If the soul stops loving it falls, even in this life, into something almost equivalent to hell. That is why those who plunge men into affliction before they are prepared to receive it kill their souls. … Help given to souls is effective only if it goes far enough really to prepare them for affliction. That is no small thing.” (Waiting for God; New York : Harper & Row, 1951 | pp. 117, 120-121).
This coming Sunday is the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. 41 The Jews murmured about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” 42 and they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
As with the encounter with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well, the dialogue reveals more about Jesus and his mission, but the revelation does not necessarily lead to understanding. Continue reading
Together the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures use “affliction” (θλιβω; דנצ) or related root words, approximately 150 times. In the Hebrew Scriptures דנצ most often describes an external dilemma of being constricted or hemmed in (Dt 28:52), treated with hostility (Is 11:13) or oppressed (Is 19:10). Many of the uses are contained in Leviticus where the term is applied to those who are somehow rendered impure or unclean – they are thus placed outside the camp, removed from all that they knew and loved. While the use of דנצ is often external, there are personal and internal implications. The expelled are abandoned. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The text from the previous Sunday (18th Sunday) centers around Jesus challenging the people’s motivation for coming to Jesus. He tells them they only came to see more signs, eat their fill, but not really “work” for the bread that is eternal. The people not only do not understand Jesus’ point, but become bogged down in “what do I have to do to get it” as though they could accomplish this on their own talents and perseverance. Jesus’ response is that all one needs to do is believe – and the conversation returns to “show us another sign” and they up the ante – “and make it better than the one Moses did in the dessert.” Continue reading
It is always a tough thing to take an unpopular stand especially when among people you know will not support. Do we shy away from the moment – I mean, why waste time and effort? But what about as a listener? What about when one message is something you agree with or hope for, but the other message is one which warns things aren’t as they seem, you might be in the wrong, and if so the judgment awaits. Does one message more easily grab your attention? So you dismiss the message that challenges you? Continue reading
In listening to the story and pleading of Elias Syriani’s children, it was hard not to be overwhelmed with compassion for them and their cause. A part of me was in the present, attentive to their stories. A part of me was already experiencing fear for what awaited them knowing that their cry for mercy would fall on deaf ears. There was little hope for a stay of execution. Were the children prepared for the new suffering that awaited them? Would the recent joy of reconciliation and memories of reunion with their father be enough to sustain them through the sorrow that would come? Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, lectionary cycle B. For five Sundays here in the middle of Year B, our gospel is taken from John 6. So, perhaps it is best to see where this reading fits in. John 6 follows the same basic pattern noted in chapter 5: miracle / dialogue / discourse. This pattern is more intricate in John 6 because the chapter narrates Jesus’ self-revelation to two groups: the crowd and his disciples. As such John 6 contains two miracles: one performed before the crowd and the disciples (6:1–15) and one performed in front of the disciples alone (6:16–21). This dual focus is reflected in the discourse material as well. John 6 can be outlined as follows: Continue reading
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