Second Sunday of Advent Question

  

Second Sunday of Advent

Our need to change

Reading I          Isaiah 11:1–10 (the rule of Emmanuel)

Reading II         Romans 15:4–9 (prayer of encouragement)

Gospel                 Matthew 3:1–12 (John the Baptist)

Key Passage    This is the one [John the Baptist] of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Matthew 3:3)

Adult:                  What do you need to change so that others can learn from watching you that Christ walks among us?

Child:  What could you do so that others will see in you what it means to follow Jesus?

First Sunday of Advent Cycle A

December 1, 2013

For today's scripture readings, click here.

The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton.

In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.

You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you've never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.

But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time C

November 17, 2013

For today's scripture readings click here.

There was a mother mouse who was scurrying across the kitchen floor with her brood of six little mice in tow.

All of a sudden she came eyeball‑to‑ eyeball with a very large and very mean‑looking cat.

The mother mouse was terrified!

But she pulled herself up to full height, squared her shoulders, and roared at the top of her lungs, "Bow‑wow!"

The cat nearly jumped out of his skin, and in the blink of an eye was scrambling up a tree two blocks away.

Meanwhile, the mother mouse gathered her little ones around her and explained, ANow, my dears, you see what I've always told you about the importance of learning a second language!@

Sooner or later we all come face to face with our own version of that monster cat ‑ face to face with an event or circumstance that tells us that our world and life as we have known it has come to an end.

The ugly possibilities are endless; an irreversible illness, death of a spouse or child, rejection by our loved ones, abandonment by our friends, total loss of our fortune, utter failure in our life's work, the final triumph of all our enemies.

That's just the short list, but the possibilities are endless and we've all had a taste of them.

We all know what the gospel means when it talks about the sun being darkened and the stars falling out of the sky.

We know!

So it's important for us to learn how we are to survive when, inevitably, those moments do come.

The gospel gives us the key: "When all these things happen," it says, "you will see the Son of Man coming with great power and glory."

The promise of today=s scripture is that, when our personal world falls apart, and the bottom drops out of our lives, we'll be able to see past the ugliness and see through the pain to the ultimate reality of things ‑

which is: despite all appearances,

God is still in charge, still cares, still has the power to make all things right,

and still intends to do just that ‑ in good time!

Now what is it that enables us to see all that so clearly when disaster has struck so hard?

Faith! Only faith!

Not some eleventh‑hour grasping at straws, but a deeply ingrained habit of the heart that we've built a piece at a time over many years.

So what have our hearts been saying all these years?

I hope something like this, "Lord, I know from living that you love me even more than I love myself.

So, Lord, I entrust myself to you, and no matter what comes, I won't be afraid."

If that is what our hearts have been saying ‑

if that is the habit of our hearts ‑

we have nothing to fear from the future because we're ready for it on the inside.

God never promised to insulate us from pain or sadness.

But he does guarantee that, whatever comes, we will not be destroyed so long as we stay connected to him.

Whatever comes, he will see us through and we will, in the end, prevail, so long as we stay connected to him.

So now is the time to speak our word of faith deeply from the heart.

Now is the time to entrust our whole selves to him and never, ever look back.

And when at last the lights grow dim and our world fades away, we shall see him coming in power and glory!

We shall see him face to face!

Question of the Week

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Overcoming difficulties

Reading I       Malachi 3:19–20a (messenger of the covenant)

               Reading II      2 Thessalonians 3:7–12 (qualifications of various ministers)

                Gospel            Luke 21:5–19 (the cataclysm to come)

          Key Passage Jesus said, “You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of   your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” (Luke 21:17–19)

              Adult  When bad things happen, how do you deal with them?

           Child   Have you ever worried about something that might happen? What can help you worry less?

Thirty-second Sunday Ordinary Time C

November 10, 2013

For today's scripture readings click here.

Yes and ANo@.

Each word can be an appropriate, fitting response.

But AYes@ and ANo@ are more than just single-word responses.

Yes and ANo@ are attitudes.

For some people, ANo@ is a deeply-held philosophy, the overall guiding principle of life.

No, don't bother me.

No, we can't do that.

No, it will never work.

A position that begins with ANo@ doesn't have to be explained. ANo@ ends the conversation.

No doesn=t require change,

No doesn't threaten what already is,

No doesn't demand the inconvenience of an open mind or a generous heart.

No protects the safety of expediency and preserves the comfort of our fears.

And ANo@ fits nicely on a bumper sticker.

Yes, on the other hand, is not so easy.

The difficulty about AYes@ is that, when you say AYes@, you have to explain the what, the when, the why, the how.

AYes@ flies in the face of what is easy and convenient.

Yes dares to face our fears head-on.

Yes dares to dream what is not but could be.

Yes is about commitment and acceptance of responsibility:

Yes, I love you.

Yes, I'll marry you.

Yes, we will have children.

Yes, I'll take on that job.

Yes, we can make things better.

The attitude of AYes@ is nothing less than a gift of faith, a gift of the spirit of our generous God.^[i]

Our God is a God of '@Yes@, a God of life, hope, joy, resurrection

not a God of “no,”  a God of death, vengeance, destruction.

The hypothetical situation that the Sadducees pose to Jesus reflects a very limited and negative understanding of God and God's love for humanity.

Such a narrow perspective attests to our tendency to see God as the end rather than the beginning of life,

as the vengeful Judge of cowering humanity rather than the beginning of life,

as the vengeful Judge of cowering humanity rather than the loving Reconciler who constantly calls us back to him.

To be Asons and daughters of the resurrection@ is to approach God and the things of God not out of fear and dread,

but as the source of hope in the promise of eternal life.

---

Is it time to separate church and state marriages?

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SURVEY MARRIAGE AND FAMILY PRAYER AND SACRAMENTS

TO TAKE THE SURVEY CLICK HERE.

Instead of getting all tied in knots about same-sex marriage, the church should separate itself from the state when it comes to officiating civil marriages.

By Bryan Cones, a writer living in Chicago.

 

Sounding Boards are one person's take on a many-sided subject and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of U.S. Catholic, its editors, or the Claretians.

Please take the survey that follows this essay. 

The June 2013 Supreme Court rulings that struck down portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and overturned California’s Proposition 8 marked a major turning point in the debate over whether same-sex couples should have access to the civil institution of marriage. That debate, which began slowly with a Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruling; similar rulings in Iowa, California, and Vermont; and successive state legislatures legal recognition of same-sex marriage or parallel civil union, is fast heading toward a conclusion. The Internal Revenue Service’s August decision to grant married filing status to married same-sex couples even if they live in a state that does not recognize their union is further indication that, at least on the national level, the question of whether same-sex couples can marry has largely been determined in their favor.

These developments, however, continue to expose wide divides in society about the definition and meaning of marriage, no less in the Catholic Church. The Catholic bishops of this country have been nearly univocal in denouncing any attempt to redefine civil marriage. Individual bishops have devoted large amounts of financial and other diocesan resources in political activity to oppose changes to the civil law.

Rank-and-file Catholics meanwhile seem to be leaning the other way on the issue. Poll after poll shows Catholics in general favoring legal recognition of same-sex couples—either in marriage or civil unions—by large margins. A March 2011 poll saw 43 percent of Catholic respondents support full civil marriage rights, with another 31 percent in favor of civil unions; a poll two years later found 54 percent support for full civil marriage rights with 38 percent opposed, a complete reversal of the findings as recently as 2008.

Given the shift in marriage’s civil legal definition to include same-sex couples, it is time that Catholic conversations about the issue recognize that we are talking about two different realities when we use the word “marriage”—a legal contract on the civil side, and a sacramental covenant between two baptized people on the other—and adjust our practice accordingly. Doing so would allow Catholics to have a fruitful intramural conversation about our theological understanding of the sacrament of marriage without at the same time being entangled in the question of whether families and couples that don’t fit that vision should have access to the legal benefits and duties that go with its civil parallel. It would also acknowledge what should be obvious to everyone: Even if civil and religious marriage were once a single entity, the ties uniting those two dimensions have now almost completely unraveled.

One doesn’t have to look far into Christian history to find differences between a general societal view of marriage and what became the Christian vision. Jesus’ condemnation of divorce (Mark 10:2-12; Matthew 19:3-9) questioned the practices of some rabbis in his own Jewish community who permitted marriages to be easily dissolved. Paul’s insistence that women had rights within marriage, to sex for example (1 Corinthians 7:1-10), were revolutionary in a Greco-Roman culture in which married women were treated as property and divorce was common for the sake of cementing family alliances. His repetition of Jesus’ teaching against divorce (with some exception) made clear that marriage was practiced differently in the household of God than in civil society.

Despite the New Testament witnesses, ancient Christian practice around marriage does not become clear until about the fourth century, as the settlement joining the church to the Roman Empire was becoming firm. Once bishops and priests became civil authorities, the civil and religious dimensions of marriage also became inextricably joined—a situation that endured until the modern period.

Many liberal democracies in Europe and Latin America have long required first a civil marriage to then be followed by a separate religious ceremony, or convalidation, if the couple so desires. But the effects of the “marriage” between church and state in this country are still evident every time a priest signs a civil marriage license, perhaps the only time a religious leader still acts as a civil servant in the United States—a practice that is against the law in countries such as Mexico.

Indeed, the fear of bishops and many Catholics who oppose same-sex marriage is that priests, since they act as civil authorities in performing marriage ceremonies, will be “forced” to solemnize the marriage of same-sex couples, thus contravening the church’s teaching. The easiest way to solve that problem is simply for priests to stop signing any couple’s civil marriage license, a duty that can surely be left to the county clerk, and only officiate sacramental weddings. Forcing couples to essentially be “married” twice—once civilly, once sacramentally—may have the unfortunate side effect of some couples skipping the religious marriage altogether, but even that may open up a further opportunity for Catholics to tease out the difference between a civil marriage and a sacramental one.

Beyond the relationship between church and state on the matter of marriage, however, there’s simply no denying that marriage in any form isn’t the institution it used to be. The work of sociologists and historians, notably Stephanie Coontz, has documented the shift from previous models of marriage focused on economic productivity and procreation to our contemporary “companionate model,” with its focus on the relationship and well-being of the partners. That shift has no doubt fuelled society’s acceptance of civil partnerships between persons of the same gender.

While many defenders of “traditional” marriage may insist that marriage is and has always been by definition between a man and a woman, that now holds true only when talking about the sacrament. When it comes to civil marriage, both state legislatures and the courts have already changed the legal definition, just as they did in the matter of no-fault divorce laws, thus undermining the “lifelong” portion of the marital definition. History makes clear that, at least when it comes to civil marriage, the definition is a moving target.

Catholic teaching in the past 100 years has itself undergone a similar shift. While Pius XI’s 1930 Casti Connubii continued to characterize marriage primarily as a contract with little specifically theological significance, Vatican II’s 1965 Gaudium et Spes and Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Humanae Vitae shifted to the biblical language of marriage as a “covenant” between the spouses. Pope John Paul II’s “theology of the body” elevated church language about the good of marriage, and sex within it, to a further dignity that would likely make Pius XI blush.

The so-called “unitive principle” of marriage that appears in contemporary Catholic teaching—what Gaudium et Spes calls the couple’s “mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions”—reflects the broader societal shift toward the companionate model of marriage.  Where Catholic teaching goes beyond this model is in its emphasis on procreation as a critical dimension of marriage. While a strictly civil marriage need not include both dimensions—any more than it must include a lifelong commitment—they cannot be absent from the sacramental union of two baptized persons (at least when both partners are still physically capable of having children).

Separating religious marriage from its civil counterpart will of course not overcome every social, political, and theological challenge related to same-sex relationships. Lesbian and gay Catholics will likely continue to make known their views on marriage and to ask bishops and Catholics in general to reconsider the church’s teaching on the matter, as is their right under the Code of Canon Law as baptized people (canon 212).

We may, however, hope for some new beginnings. Catholics who wish to can celebrate with gay and lesbian neighbors, friends, and family members the new and important steps our society has taken toward granting civil rights to same-sex couples with less need to explain how one can be “a good Catholic” and still support the civil rights of same-gender couples. Those concerned with the religious definition of marriage will be free to pursue its theological dimensions, and all sides will hopefully benefit from a more charitable debate on the matter.

Priests, freed from their civil obligations, will have no concern over being required to violate their beliefs. And bishops, relieved of the need to bankroll ever more expensive political initiatives, can devote time and resources to strengthening the sacramental dimensions of Catholic marriage and family life.

Perhaps together we will come up with a creative new beginning to Catholic reflection on human sexuality and marriage, one that still critiques and challenges the world around us, as the gospel always does, while also offering the encouragement and hope that is the hallmark of the good news. 

- See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/civilmarriages#Survey?utm_source=November+5%2C+2013&utm_campaign=ebulletin+November+5%2C+2013&utm_medium=email

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time C

November 3, 2013

Scripture readings for today can be found here.

Many of us struggle to imagine that God would just forgive sin, apart from some meaningful repentance.

After all, if God just forgave us, what would become of God's justice?

(Truth be told, I don't think this Gospel passage is about sin and forgiveness -- at least Luke doesn't use those terms -- but I think it nevertheless seems like a related and fair question.)

What if, however, God doesn't care as much about justice as we do?

That is, what if justice wasn't the primary category God uses all along?

Maybe justice is our way of tracking each other, our way of defining each other, of keeping count, of keeping score, of following who's in and who's out, who's up and who's down.

If this is so, if God's love regularly trumps God's justice -- and I believe Jesus dies precisely to show us that it is -- then we're operating with flawed categories.

God, Jesus, the whole biblical story, as it turns out, isn't primarily about justice ( give time for them to come up with one word which would describe for them what the whole biblical story really is about.

It’s all ablut relationship!

God's deep, abiding, tenacious desire to be in relationship with each and all of us.

Which, when you think about it, was pretty much what the Reformation was all about -- declaring that God is a lot more like a loving parent than a tyrannical monarch,

a lot more interested in relationship with us than righteous over us.

Luther's great insight into Romans, in fact, is that Paul's phrase "the righteousness of God" (Rom. 1:17) isn't the righteousness God expects from us and by which God judges us,

but rather is the righteousness God gives us freely and unconditionally in Christ,

so that we -- whether tax collector or teacher, cleric or homemaker -- can hear and believe that salvation has come to us through Christ.

So perhaps that's our task this week,: to proclaim that against all odds and expectations God “can” just forgive sin, and that God “can”  pronounce salvation apart from repentance.

Why? Because it's “God” who is doing it.

And because this God is determined, even desperate, to be in relationship with all of us so that, in turn, we might be in relationship with each other.

This may not be easy for many of us to hear.

We like our formulas because, truth be told, they give us a way to manage the illusion that maybe we're still in control,

at least a little bit;

that maybe God isn't quite so wildly free as the Bible portrays;

 that maybe there are rules we can know and follow and hold others accountable to.

All that disappears when God just forgives sin and pronounces blessing.

But maybe that's exactly why Jesus again shocks the crowds and disciples alike by seeking out this rich tax collector, honoring him, affirming him, naming him a child of God and declaring that, indeed, salvation has come this very day to his household.

Maybe it's to remind us that we never were in control in the first place.

Which, while hard to take, proves in the long run to be a good thing as God's mercy so greatly exceeds either our need or our expectations.

Question of the Week

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

The dead will rise

For full readings click here.

Reading 1       2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14 (martyrdom of a mother and her sons)

Reading II      2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 (the gospel versus empty fables)

Gospel                        Luke 20:27-38 (the resurrection of the dead)

Key Passage Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." (Luke 20:37-38)

Adult How does your belief in the resurrection of the dead affect the way you live?

Child   Has someone in your family or among your friends died? Do you think

            about that person in heaven? What do you hope to talk about with this person