July 25, 2010
Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
I just returned Thursday from a wonderful opportunity to travel by train and bicycle with Bishop Tyson through some of the great towns and sights of Germany. We stayed in the town of Bitburg the home of famous Bit Beer, which was close to the small farming village of Pickliessem where my great grandfather, Peter Zender and his parents were baptized and I got to see the Church there. We also visited the great historical Cathedrals of Cologne and Aachen. The most beautiful place that we saw was Bamberg, the home town of one our parishioners, Martina Battle. A gentle river winds through town, where cobble streets, beautiful medieval architecture essentially untouched by the bombs of World War II, lush gardens and massive churches grace the natural scenery. The greatest of the churches of course is the Cathedral which dates back to nearly 1000 years ago, the year 1012. Of all the artwork in the Cathedral, the most intriguing is that of the Bamberg Horseman carved of stone in one of the pillars of the Cathedral. The big question is, who is he? Is he Constantine the Great or One or the three Wise Men? All we know, is that he comes in peace, because he unarmed, he comes with great dignity, because he is dressed in noble clothing and his head is held high, as he gazes toward the main altar. Here is the reflection that the guide to Cathedral says of him:
Rider.
Who are you?
Why have you stopped?
What are you looking for?
We do not know.
But you are endowed with dignity,
A kingly rider, a kingly man.
We are all called to be kings:
Acknowledge your dignity.
In the simple version of the Lord’s Prayer that we receive from Luke’s Gospel, one message that Jesus teaches his disciples is the message of the rider in Bamberg’s Cathedral: Acknowledge your dignity. Our true dignity is nothing that is self made; it is a dignity that comes only from God. The simple “Our Father” is a radical expression of the dignity that comes from the initiate relationship with our Creator God that only Jesus can offer. When Jesus taught this prayer, it would have been unthinkable to call God “Father”. Who could presume to think of his or herself as a son or daughter of God? Yet, as the disciples later come to know fully only after the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord, Jesus is the only Son of God and by our baptism into his death and resurrection, we become his adopted sons and daughters, and so we dare to call God “Father”. The dignity that Adam and Eve know before the fall is not only restored or renewed; our dignity through Christ Jesus is entirely new and rose to a level never before known.
When Jesus teaches that we must pray for God’s kingdom to come and to forgive as God has forgiven us he is essentially saying that once we know our dignity in Christ Jesus, we also need to recognize the dignity of all people. Faith must be put into action or it is dead. The gift of our true that we discover from our deep relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, call us to dignified relationships with each other. Let me conclude with another reflection from Bamberg’s Cathedral:
Every individual has dignity: the child and the old, the weak and the strong, the victim and the offender, the dying and the vivacious – and I do too.
July 11, 2010
Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
What can I say to you on a hot Sunday evening (warm morning) in July, the day (just hours) before I leave for vacation? I promise that I will be mercifully short today!
Often times when we listen to the Gospel, we identify ourselves with certain characters, and think to ourselves that we sure don’t want to be like others. Most of us don’t want to be like the priest or the Levite who were on their way to offer sacrifice in the Temple. We might even find ourselves judging them as being legalistic, because according to the letter of the law, they would have been contaminated for offering temple sacrifice if they touched a foreigner like a Samaritan. At first glance their sin might seem to be cold-hearted legalism. Pope Benedict in his commentary on this Gospel says that we should not be quick to think of them as being cold-hearted. It was a dangerous place, maybe they were afraid, maybe they were unfamiliar with the area and were not sure where to go for help for someone who looked like he was beyond help anyway. Another commentator says maybe they presumed that the man was already dead, so what would there be go gain by touching a dead foreigner and then not be able to fulfill their duty at the temple?
The Samaritan doesn’t presume the negative, rather he puts his trust in the positive. This is the big difference between him and the priest and Levite. He doesn’t presume that all is lost. He refuses to focus on the danger, rather he seems to believe that thieves wouldn’t attack a man who is helping someone who is injured. He doesn’t presume that the man is dead or beyond hope, even though things look dire. So he gives what he has: oil and wine a ride to help on his mule and two coins.
St. Ambrose and St. Augustine teach that the Good Samaritan really represents Jesus. St. Augustine teaches us that when robbers had left us for dead Jesus poured wine and oil over us, the sacraments of our salvation. St. Ambrose says that the two coins given to the innkeeper are the word of God, the Old and New Testaments. Jesus, like the Good Samaritan, is a foreigner, this world is not his home land, yet he mercifully comes to us. The mule a beast of burden, represents his own body, he carries the burden of our wounds, our sin on the cross. The more we explore the symbolism the more we realize that we are the ones who are in the ditch, and the Lord is the Good Samaritan who saves us.
The way we imitate Jesus the Good Samaritan is to presume that no matter how dire the situation, even when it looks like all hope is gone, that we must not presume there is nothing that can be done, when our minds and fears may tell us that it is best to just keep moving and to mind our own business, don’t make the judgment at a distance, from the other side of the street, rather take the risk to cross the street to see for ourselves if indeed there is something that can be done . How else can be pay back the Good Samaritan for saving us, then to do for others what he has done for us?
St.Anthony Parish, 314 S 4th St. Renton, WA 98057; 425-255-3132