Wisdom 7:7-11; Hebrews 4: 12-13; Mark 10:17-30
October 15, 2006
Every believer’s life displays the sign of pilgrimage. Pilgrims have no permanent home. Wealth cannot be hoarded, but must be used for the common good, for pilgrims are only passing through.
We easily forget or deny our sign of pilgrimage, however. The Hebrew Wisdom tradition is sharp in noting how money usually acts like a trap.
Those who consider themselves Jesus’ disciples know that in their very persons a form of life is at stake when they begin to follow him as pilgrims towards the Kingdom and that this form of life defines their being as his disciples.
The evangelist Mark sets the framework for the discipleship of wealth. His entire Gospel is a rich catechetical itinerary that pulls together the practices of many actual disciples. These practices are for us a challenge and a criticism, because the socio-economic system in which we live doesn’t let us adopt a critical attitude towards money.
We move along unconcernedly and often unaware that we are enveloped in a form of life that is sustained by sophisticated mechanisms of injustice, much like the rich young man in today’s gospel.
The rich young man considers himself an honest seeker of authentic life. Yet when he approaches Jesus, he feels himself judged, and though at the end of his conversation with Jesus he may understand why he feels this way, he cannot fully face the truth. For the truth is that his wealth confesses its source, in the dispossessing of others. That’s the meaning of what Jesus urges him to do, “Go, sell what you own, and give it to the poor.” Give it back to the poor, Jesus could have added.
Upon that suggestion of Jesus’ the best of Catholic social teaching finds its support. In a nutshell: No wealth is innocent.
Always and in various ways wealth presupposes a process of possession that entails at the same time the dispossession of others. Jesus’ disciples bear personal responsibility in the way they perceive the benefits of wealth and in their way of using them, but above all they must confront their complicity in the dynamic of a system which the Church’s social teaching calls a “structure of sin,” since these accumulated goods have been despoiled from others.
The community where the Gospel of Mark was written knows by experience that there cannot be coherence between the seeking of a full life and the grasping of wealth for oneself.
We know the outcome of today’s gospel. We know it by the choice of many men and women of faith who have decided to break with that grasping form of life and who have assumed instead the “preferential option for the poor.”
At a personal level, grasping, hoarding the benefits of wealth constitutes idolatry (Mammon) and closes off all possibility of joining God’s project for humanity.
At a social level, accumulated wealth takes form within a sinful economic order. The rich person tends to live piously consecrated to the religion of the market, where the rich person’s wealth comes from. Day by day the market is the route for the despoiling of the majority of the populations of poor counties.
Oddly enough, migrant workers arrive among us seeking work in order to earn money, but the great majority of them can neither accumulate nor possess wealth. When you see the amazing volume of the remittances that the migrants send back to their countries of origin, you can’t do anything but admire them. Their earnings are no longer money that produces money, as in financial markets, but money from labor that generates resources and sustains life in a multitude of small country towns, where it’s really the only income that keeps families and communities alive. In Mexico’s case, migrant workers’ remittances constitute the second-highest source of state revenue after income from oil.
Mark proposes today a sign that authenticates the disciples. To follow Jesus demands a choice, in the form of putting oneself in the right relation to money. This right relation consists of getting rid of money’s idolatrous character and of freely redirecting it towards a genuine project of solidarity with the world of those who are poor.
martes, 18 de marzo de 2008
Following the Spirit’s Footprints
Acts 2:1-11; I Cor 12:3b-7,12-13; John 15:26-27; 16:12-15 (Pentecost)
June 4, 2006
We have met believers who through their own lives tell the story of the Spirit’s tirelessly creative activity.
Cultures are arriving by diverse paths at border areas, and, embedded within those cultures, we human persons live intimately the experience of being on the march in unfamiliar territory. There is bewilderment, there is a search for solid ground, there is a diversity of plans and initiatives.
Just in those places where human life used to be organized in some simple, predictable way, the Spirit is busy creating unexpected outlets, perhaps heterodox ones, yet outlets not only born from life but bearing life along.
Believers in the New Testament ventured forth to follow the Spirit’s footsteps in stirrings that bore them along to transformation. That’s why the Acts of the Apostles characterizes the Spirit’s activity as a “strong driving wind” letting loose a new world that doesn’t at all look like the supposed “real” one. (People outside the community of the disciples are “amazed” at them, as if they think the disciples are inebriated!)
The ecclesiology of Acts seems to describe the social and public aspect of the Spirit’s activity in gathering and forming the community that must become the new world’s sacrament.
People with eyes and ears open are capable of discerning where the Spirit is blowing. But to do that they have to allow the Spirit to bear them away; they have to learn to intuit the Spirit’s activity and to become witnesses of her presence.
There was concern in the communities rallying around the Beloved Disciple about how to adapt to new situations while remaining loyal to origins. We recognize in the stories told in John’s gospel a creative tension: the tension involved in welcoming the creativity of the Spirit as she sallies forth towards new horizons— to do so without renouncing connection to the historical Jesus. That’s how the earliest community describes receiving the Spirit from Jesus himself. The community believed it had received her, not as their own invention, but as the consequence of its fidelity to the historical person.
Surrounded by so many situations that hem them in, migrant communities have to become capable of following the Spirit’s footprints. Not every novelty is the Spirit’s work. Not every form of reacting to challenge is inspired by her. What’s certain is that amid this people forced to explore new forms of living, the Spirit makes a privileged and recognizable intervention. Yet often the intervention occurs where the people themselves least expect it. A handful of migrants are slowly discovering that their very way of living is a work fostered by the Spirit so that the Kingdom may become possible. Their discovery begins as they reflect on the decisions that brought them to the US in the first place… Each migrant takes years to decide whether he (or she) should leave his country. He has to decide whether it’s worth the pain to break with family and begin again at zero. It’s an agonizing process that takes many stages of discernment. Yet in a sense there is no decision to be made, there are no options to choose among. What’s involved is taking that last chance to escape the bonds of misery. The decision once made, the person must follow the Spirit’s path, if he or she really wants to move forward.
In our stories, personal a well as ecclesial, there must be real and effective footprints of salvation for us to follow. If we can’t recognize them, we might conclude that the Spirit isn’t at work, or that she is incapable of working. Yet such a conclusion contradicts the experience of the first Christian communities and the subsequent history of the Church. It’s rather that we ourselves have lost the capacity to discover the Spirit. In that case, we will have to get to work following the Spirit’s footprints in those places where the Spirit dwells and in those activities where the Spirit is the protagonist.
Beyond Mere Pairing
Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16
October 8, 2006
All human beings, male and/or female, are called to a paired relationship in communion with each other, one that suppresses neither their identity as a couple nor their individual differences.
The moralizing concern of church tradition has seen in matrimonial commitment the entire richness of the Biblical story of the origins of this relationship. Yet marriage is not possible for all people. Still, no human being, whatever his or her life choices might actually be, can avoid this aspiration towards the unity of male-female duality. (Our readings today do not address the question whether two people of the same sex can aspire towards a similar unity.)
One interpretation of this human structure has been marked by the patriarchal effort to suppress the deeper challenge of the male-female relationship in two contrasting ways: either (the “higher” way) by constructing legally exclusive frameworks attributed to the divinity or (the “lower” one) by trivializing the duality, formalizing it as a merely conventional or arbitrary arrangement.
Yet it seems that what inspired the Biblical story of the male-female couple’s origins is the amazed awareness that neither the masculine nor the feminine possesses an absolute dimension. The idea dawns on us that their duality converges from a common divine source and that therefore this duality tends to find its fulfillment in communion.
Jesus, that wise interpreter of the “Old” or First Testament, understood that this story of the human couple had much more to do with the original form of the human being designed by the Creator than it did with legal distinctions fashioned by men. That’s why, when confronted with the question of legal divorce, he clarifies the relationship of the human couple in terms of the original project of humankind’s fulfillment. The male is realized— becomes real, becomes himself— in relation to the female, and the female becomes herself in relation to the male. Yes, but this fact does not necessarily imply that marriage is the only experience in which this fullness can be lived. Marriage includes it, of course, as a concrete option for man and woman.
In our personal histories, all of us human beings, whether male or female, are invited to embark on the venture of taking on and integrating certain dualities— but also of casting off others either not fully assumed or else experienced as contradictions. We travel a path which, as it goes along, requires us both to drink from our origins and at the same time to be made new in the spirit of Jesus, the New Man. It is in this dyamically unfolding way that within each person, male or female, the fully-realized figure of the human being is sketched. To realize ourselves in duality of relationship is to realize our own individual being.
Does the day ever come when this process of integration is finished? The process is ongoing, directed towards integration. The male and female pair journey as pilgrims towards this goal. The vocation of human communion is fully realized only in the couple’s sacramental commitment. But the sacrament itself is always being more and more fully realized, as the pair walk with Jesus throughout their lifetimes— and beyond.
At the same time the limits, as well as the experiences of human fullness, will have multiple and diverse manifestations. Among those manifestations would be marriage, of course— but also maternity or paternity without a partner; celibacy; and the experience of other sexual orientations. But all are directed towards the search for communion.
It is the creative and creating relationship with the other person and particularly with the person whose sexual identity is different from my own— it is this which causes me to grow and develop. It is in the complexity and richness of this relationship where the interior dualities assume their proper dimensions and express themselves in the most human form. Without this relationship my own individual being is not fully realized.
The important thing is not to deny this relationship to or disfigure it into a yoking of unequals… to do so would be to lose origin and direction. “God made them male and female…and the two shall become one flesh,” says Jesus.
October 8, 2006
All human beings, male and/or female, are called to a paired relationship in communion with each other, one that suppresses neither their identity as a couple nor their individual differences.
The moralizing concern of church tradition has seen in matrimonial commitment the entire richness of the Biblical story of the origins of this relationship. Yet marriage is not possible for all people. Still, no human being, whatever his or her life choices might actually be, can avoid this aspiration towards the unity of male-female duality. (Our readings today do not address the question whether two people of the same sex can aspire towards a similar unity.)
One interpretation of this human structure has been marked by the patriarchal effort to suppress the deeper challenge of the male-female relationship in two contrasting ways: either (the “higher” way) by constructing legally exclusive frameworks attributed to the divinity or (the “lower” one) by trivializing the duality, formalizing it as a merely conventional or arbitrary arrangement.
Yet it seems that what inspired the Biblical story of the male-female couple’s origins is the amazed awareness that neither the masculine nor the feminine possesses an absolute dimension. The idea dawns on us that their duality converges from a common divine source and that therefore this duality tends to find its fulfillment in communion.
Jesus, that wise interpreter of the “Old” or First Testament, understood that this story of the human couple had much more to do with the original form of the human being designed by the Creator than it did with legal distinctions fashioned by men. That’s why, when confronted with the question of legal divorce, he clarifies the relationship of the human couple in terms of the original project of humankind’s fulfillment. The male is realized— becomes real, becomes himself— in relation to the female, and the female becomes herself in relation to the male. Yes, but this fact does not necessarily imply that marriage is the only experience in which this fullness can be lived. Marriage includes it, of course, as a concrete option for man and woman.
In our personal histories, all of us human beings, whether male or female, are invited to embark on the venture of taking on and integrating certain dualities— but also of casting off others either not fully assumed or else experienced as contradictions. We travel a path which, as it goes along, requires us both to drink from our origins and at the same time to be made new in the spirit of Jesus, the New Man. It is in this dyamically unfolding way that within each person, male or female, the fully-realized figure of the human being is sketched. To realize ourselves in duality of relationship is to realize our own individual being.
Does the day ever come when this process of integration is finished? The process is ongoing, directed towards integration. The male and female pair journey as pilgrims towards this goal. The vocation of human communion is fully realized only in the couple’s sacramental commitment. But the sacrament itself is always being more and more fully realized, as the pair walk with Jesus throughout their lifetimes— and beyond.
At the same time the limits, as well as the experiences of human fullness, will have multiple and diverse manifestations. Among those manifestations would be marriage, of course— but also maternity or paternity without a partner; celibacy; and the experience of other sexual orientations. But all are directed towards the search for communion.
It is the creative and creating relationship with the other person and particularly with the person whose sexual identity is different from my own— it is this which causes me to grow and develop. It is in the complexity and richness of this relationship where the interior dualities assume their proper dimensions and express themselves in the most human form. Without this relationship my own individual being is not fully realized.
The important thing is not to deny this relationship to or disfigure it into a yoking of unequals… to do so would be to lose origin and direction. “God made them male and female…and the two shall become one flesh,” says Jesus.
In Search of a Pedagogy “From Below”
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34
July 23, 2006
“And he began to teach them many things.” In this brief statement Mark the evangelist presents Jesus as educator of the people.
It’s certain that Jesus traveled the routes of his community’s wisdom. He knew well the vital methods which simple people follow to learn and to educate others.
His pedagogy didn’t depend on pre-set programs. That’s why he adhered to the occasions and rhythms of the people he was talking with. Jesus did not impose the “right” moment on them. The right moment arose as people came forward to dialogue with him.
Migrant life-rhythms determine the entire existence of real people and communities. In defining pastoral work with such people, there are those who say, on the basis of realities that obtain in other situations, “What’s necessary in migrant ministry is forming leaders from the migrant community.” True enough, leadership formation never stops being a challenge, but only as the outcome of a pedagogical path inspired by the Gospel. We pastoral ministers cannot be the ones who determine either the occasions or the conditions of that path.
Jesus is supremely creative, but his creativity honors the dynamic of people’s lives.
The migrant mothers and fathers I know yearn for a good education for their children. They make every effort to achieve that end, but they are realistic, knowing that they cannot count on their children ever having the time necessary. Those same adults will themselves have wanted a “better education…so as not to have to work so much.” They see their children deprived of opportunity in the same way they were.
It seems to me that Mark the evangelist, by describing Jesus’ way of teaching, sketches the features of an educating community. It is an itinerant pedagogical model with a long-range view yet one which arises out of encounter with people’s concrete life situations. Jesus approaches people openly, on their level, independently of structures or expectations external to them. People for him are far more important than the socio-cultural prejudices that levy their own forms of taxation. An attitude like Jesus’ encourages people to identify alternatives according to their own understandings.
Theologian Fr. Jon Sobrino, SJ, uses the phrase “mercy principle” to describe that constant attitude in Jesus’ life: A profound sensitivity for “listening” to the other person, instead of merely assuming ahead of time how he or she thinks or feels. It is an attitude, a habit of looking at life “from below,” from the situation of the one who has been excluded and then of meeting the person right there, where he or she is.
Jesus teaches this way because he knows there is already a rich dynamism in action within each person and community. He enters into this dynamism fully, yet transforms it through his own complicity with the action of the Spirit.
The Brasilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, author of The Pedadogy of the Oppressed, was right when he said, “Christ must be for me the great example of the pedagogue. What fascinates me about the Gospel is the indivisibility between its content and the method with which Jesus communicated it…”
The migrant community, like many other sectors of the church, still awaits a pedagogical initiative for enriching its faith life that responds to the community’s real expectations and that enables the community to discover the road to its own.
Community (Koinonia) is Salvation
Acts 4:32-25; I John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31
April 23, 2006
Three migrant children were crossing the border through the desert while their parents were already waiting for them sleeplessly in a small US town on the other side. When migration officials came across the group, their coyote abandoned them to their fate. But then one of the other people embarking on that same desert venture succeeded in hiding the children with him, undoubtedly because he sensed what their parents were feeling. He took care of the children and helped them arrive at their destination.
The reunion of that small family community, after days and hours of hopelessness and uncertainty, was an encounter of communion and life. When there are at least the traces of community…and the individual embraces others, then not all is lost.
Likewise the Christian project can only be lived as a communal venture. The entire Christian experience flourished thanks to a life-in-common or koinonia (from the Greek word “koinos,” meaning “in common,” “shared”) that became the lifestyle of the early Christians. The Acts of the Apostles testifies to the importance of koinonia, or community-communion. And even more than that: The resurrection experience itself took form as multiple small actions were interwoven into communal networks.
Of course, times have changed. Modern subjectivity has taught us that no one can escape the distinctly personal rhythms and life-paths of our era without losing direction. Yet the spirit of the group contributes a specific and determining character to the person even under these modern conditions.
Whoever makes it all the way “north” for the first time does so by depending heavily on friends and family connections. By contrast, North Americans value their personal independence so highly that at times they seem to become mere individualists. They are astonished when they see migrant workers living together peaceably even in substandard encampments. They do not realize that the migrants survive such conditions by drawing strength from the communal values of solidarity and spontaneous koinonia.
I myself have witnessed these values at work among migrant workers. And it seems to me that these same values jump out at us in the story the Gospel tells about Doubting Thomas…about a personal search, a series of uneasinesses and questions, all wrapped up in sincere yearning to possess clear signs upon which to anchor belief. In Thomas’ case, this yearning is eased and transformed not through an isolated revelation, but in communion with Jesus and the other disciples. Every disciple then and now reorients herself, recovers her personal path in the warmth of that brotherly/sisterly koinonia. It is not that the questions come to an end, nor the search, nor that the uncertainty of faith is ever resolved. Yet each person experiences unconditional welcome when the community mirrors the original features of the Master— of the Servant who embraces and forgives, who refuses to hide his wounds and who repeats the invitation to mission. This is where the sense of faith is revived.
Communal consciousness lies at the cultural roots of our migrant population. This consciousness, like an enchantment, captivates and protects the migrants when they come in contact with the “American way of life” where the ideal seems to be total self-sufficiency. This ideal asserts itself in all situations, whether in the workplace, or whether in making money, even in interpersonal relationships.
Even so, I have met people who incarnate a synthesis of the communal and individual. They retain a rich communal sense while at the same time displaying the most valuable personal potentialities. But this synthesis proves possible only in communities that permit people to heal not only their own wounds but also each other’s.
April 23, 2006
Three migrant children were crossing the border through the desert while their parents were already waiting for them sleeplessly in a small US town on the other side. When migration officials came across the group, their coyote abandoned them to their fate. But then one of the other people embarking on that same desert venture succeeded in hiding the children with him, undoubtedly because he sensed what their parents were feeling. He took care of the children and helped them arrive at their destination.
The reunion of that small family community, after days and hours of hopelessness and uncertainty, was an encounter of communion and life. When there are at least the traces of community…and the individual embraces others, then not all is lost.
Likewise the Christian project can only be lived as a communal venture. The entire Christian experience flourished thanks to a life-in-common or koinonia (from the Greek word “koinos,” meaning “in common,” “shared”) that became the lifestyle of the early Christians. The Acts of the Apostles testifies to the importance of koinonia, or community-communion. And even more than that: The resurrection experience itself took form as multiple small actions were interwoven into communal networks.
Of course, times have changed. Modern subjectivity has taught us that no one can escape the distinctly personal rhythms and life-paths of our era without losing direction. Yet the spirit of the group contributes a specific and determining character to the person even under these modern conditions.
Whoever makes it all the way “north” for the first time does so by depending heavily on friends and family connections. By contrast, North Americans value their personal independence so highly that at times they seem to become mere individualists. They are astonished when they see migrant workers living together peaceably even in substandard encampments. They do not realize that the migrants survive such conditions by drawing strength from the communal values of solidarity and spontaneous koinonia.
I myself have witnessed these values at work among migrant workers. And it seems to me that these same values jump out at us in the story the Gospel tells about Doubting Thomas…about a personal search, a series of uneasinesses and questions, all wrapped up in sincere yearning to possess clear signs upon which to anchor belief. In Thomas’ case, this yearning is eased and transformed not through an isolated revelation, but in communion with Jesus and the other disciples. Every disciple then and now reorients herself, recovers her personal path in the warmth of that brotherly/sisterly koinonia. It is not that the questions come to an end, nor the search, nor that the uncertainty of faith is ever resolved. Yet each person experiences unconditional welcome when the community mirrors the original features of the Master— of the Servant who embraces and forgives, who refuses to hide his wounds and who repeats the invitation to mission. This is where the sense of faith is revived.
Communal consciousness lies at the cultural roots of our migrant population. This consciousness, like an enchantment, captivates and protects the migrants when they come in contact with the “American way of life” where the ideal seems to be total self-sufficiency. This ideal asserts itself in all situations, whether in the workplace, or whether in making money, even in interpersonal relationships.
Even so, I have met people who incarnate a synthesis of the communal and individual. They retain a rich communal sense while at the same time displaying the most valuable personal potentialities. But this synthesis proves possible only in communities that permit people to heal not only their own wounds but also each other’s.
An Image of the Trinity
Deut 4:32-34, 39-40; Rom 8:14-17; Matt 28:16-20 (Trinity Sunday)
June 11, 2006
The greatest apostles are those who create networks of communion wherever they go. The power to create such networks doesn’t have much to do with ”professional” preparation. The power to do so has more to do with letting yourself by borne along by the Spirit.
The Fathers of the Church taught that the Tri-unity of the living God maintained within God’s oneness a relation of perichoresis. Perichoresis, from a Greek word meaning “dancing around,” refers to the co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As a result of their perichoresis, each person of the Trinity freely affirms the others in their identity and difference. And to the extent that each affirms the identity and difference of the others, each affirms itself in its own richness. Or to put the point in negative form: There is no negation of the other persons in any of the three persons’ self –affirmation. Each person’s self-affirmation is actually a loving of the others as the fullness of its own being. It is this mutual relation of love among the Trinitarian persons which creates unity in plurality. (And clearly the word “person” as used in Trinitarian theology is not at all what we ordinarily mean by the word: the individual separated from others by body, psychology, history, etc.)
Jesus and his disciples believed that this way of living and relating could be replicated among human beings. That’s why believers considered themselves sent to create networks of disciples. So when they talk about teaching, they’re not referring to the verbal transmission of doctrine, but to learning to enter into that form of relations lived by the God of the Trinity. “Go and make disciples of all nations…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
The writer of the Book of Deuteronomy believed that the Israelites passed through historical experiences that allowed them to “discover” the presence of God in those very experiences. The God of the Bible is a God who reveals himself in the journey of his people, in the interpersonal relations of his followers, and in the actions and steps of growth taken and realized at every stage in the life of individuals and communities.
Today’s migratorial comings and goings force people caught in such currents to sharpen their capacities for creating new relationships. In the midst of this social phenomenon it’s not difficult to find men and women who continue to weave fraternal networks. These are people who follow the steps of the God of Jesus in their own lives, in the doings of their communities, and in the trials of the poor.
To be on the move, in migration’s social dynamic, isn’t an optional experience. Rather, circumstances themselves move people along. At any given moment, the migrant’s life is displaced in a movement critical for his (or her) identity in diversity. To himself he is at the same time one and various. Something remains of his own self, but at the same time he feels the necessity of welcoming and integrating something which is not his own. In this way the migrant person becomes the image of the God of the Trinity, the God who is One in three persons.
June 11, 2006
The greatest apostles are those who create networks of communion wherever they go. The power to create such networks doesn’t have much to do with ”professional” preparation. The power to do so has more to do with letting yourself by borne along by the Spirit.
The Fathers of the Church taught that the Tri-unity of the living God maintained within God’s oneness a relation of perichoresis. Perichoresis, from a Greek word meaning “dancing around,” refers to the co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As a result of their perichoresis, each person of the Trinity freely affirms the others in their identity and difference. And to the extent that each affirms the identity and difference of the others, each affirms itself in its own richness. Or to put the point in negative form: There is no negation of the other persons in any of the three persons’ self –affirmation. Each person’s self-affirmation is actually a loving of the others as the fullness of its own being. It is this mutual relation of love among the Trinitarian persons which creates unity in plurality. (And clearly the word “person” as used in Trinitarian theology is not at all what we ordinarily mean by the word: the individual separated from others by body, psychology, history, etc.)
Jesus and his disciples believed that this way of living and relating could be replicated among human beings. That’s why believers considered themselves sent to create networks of disciples. So when they talk about teaching, they’re not referring to the verbal transmission of doctrine, but to learning to enter into that form of relations lived by the God of the Trinity. “Go and make disciples of all nations…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
The writer of the Book of Deuteronomy believed that the Israelites passed through historical experiences that allowed them to “discover” the presence of God in those very experiences. The God of the Bible is a God who reveals himself in the journey of his people, in the interpersonal relations of his followers, and in the actions and steps of growth taken and realized at every stage in the life of individuals and communities.
Today’s migratorial comings and goings force people caught in such currents to sharpen their capacities for creating new relationships. In the midst of this social phenomenon it’s not difficult to find men and women who continue to weave fraternal networks. These are people who follow the steps of the God of Jesus in their own lives, in the doings of their communities, and in the trials of the poor.
To be on the move, in migration’s social dynamic, isn’t an optional experience. Rather, circumstances themselves move people along. At any given moment, the migrant’s life is displaced in a movement critical for his (or her) identity in diversity. To himself he is at the same time one and various. Something remains of his own self, but at the same time he feels the necessity of welcoming and integrating something which is not his own. In this way the migrant person becomes the image of the God of the Trinity, the God who is One in three persons.
In the Squall’s Midst
June 25, 2006
Job 38:1, 8-11; 2 Corinthians 5:14-17; Mark 4:35-41
It’s possible that the story of Jesus’ calming of the sea reflects the experience of the early Christian communities, who lived their faith in the middle of persecution, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Yet the story also reflects the turbulent conditions in which many of our present-day Christian communities live.
Our Gospel passage is found within a larger section where Mark describes the character of discipleship. The question Mark asks is, Who is Jesus’ true disciple?
A force in testing the disciple’s formation is the spirit of evil. It seems that turbulence of all kinds is an effect of this spirit’s presence. Beyond that, the spirit of evil consists of elements that cross the disciple’s path and that are not completely under his control. But note the paradox: When I, the would-be disciple, try to eliminate this spirit completely, when I put all my efforts into establishing and maintaining “security,” I find that fear and anxiety seize me. And then if I bring this spirit into my faith community, I find that the fear and anxiety intensify within the group and paralyze it.
Jesus is all alone, sleeping, in the midst of the storm. He is free of the group contagion.
Yet true disciples, both as individuals and as members of communities, learn to live in turbulence. The members of the migrant community have learned to live and celebrate in the midst of fear. They know how poorly it pays to try to prevent unpleasant, even disastrous things from happening. They have learned to calculate the risks they have to take in order to assure the survival of their families.
The person who knows that his or her stay in a place is considered illegal develops the wisdom of the old saying: “If you can’t change it, learn to live with it.”
The migrant community is like the “faithful remnant” the prophets speak of. It lives in the midst of a “squall.” Moments come when it sees that everything is lost, that there’s no way out. But it’s precisely here that the community finds and retains attitudes of patience and confidence.
I think that the Book of Job’s profound understanding of the suffering of the just— where it is argued that that suffering is not the consequence of own sin— I think this discussion connects very well with the drama of migrant families. The God whom the suffering Job hopes to encounter has other standards of justice and right than those that are measured by material security or its absence. Migrant believers preserve this same paradigm of faith. They discover an image of God that passes the usual limits. They welcome a God who does not punish the innocent, and they hope that this God will keep accompanying them in every storm at sea, perhaps sleeping in that same boat apparently on the point of shipwreck.
Paul assures us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” The person of faith bears in him or herself the presence of Lord. This is the same presence discovered by Job and recognized in the squall’s midst by the disciples. His comforting presence arrives with astonishing lucidity when the spirit of evil and its heavy waves harass us.
Job 38:1, 8-11; 2 Corinthians 5:14-17; Mark 4:35-41
It’s possible that the story of Jesus’ calming of the sea reflects the experience of the early Christian communities, who lived their faith in the middle of persecution, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Yet the story also reflects the turbulent conditions in which many of our present-day Christian communities live.
Our Gospel passage is found within a larger section where Mark describes the character of discipleship. The question Mark asks is, Who is Jesus’ true disciple?
A force in testing the disciple’s formation is the spirit of evil. It seems that turbulence of all kinds is an effect of this spirit’s presence. Beyond that, the spirit of evil consists of elements that cross the disciple’s path and that are not completely under his control. But note the paradox: When I, the would-be disciple, try to eliminate this spirit completely, when I put all my efforts into establishing and maintaining “security,” I find that fear and anxiety seize me. And then if I bring this spirit into my faith community, I find that the fear and anxiety intensify within the group and paralyze it.
Jesus is all alone, sleeping, in the midst of the storm. He is free of the group contagion.
Yet true disciples, both as individuals and as members of communities, learn to live in turbulence. The members of the migrant community have learned to live and celebrate in the midst of fear. They know how poorly it pays to try to prevent unpleasant, even disastrous things from happening. They have learned to calculate the risks they have to take in order to assure the survival of their families.
The person who knows that his or her stay in a place is considered illegal develops the wisdom of the old saying: “If you can’t change it, learn to live with it.”
The migrant community is like the “faithful remnant” the prophets speak of. It lives in the midst of a “squall.” Moments come when it sees that everything is lost, that there’s no way out. But it’s precisely here that the community finds and retains attitudes of patience and confidence.
I think that the Book of Job’s profound understanding of the suffering of the just— where it is argued that that suffering is not the consequence of own sin— I think this discussion connects very well with the drama of migrant families. The God whom the suffering Job hopes to encounter has other standards of justice and right than those that are measured by material security or its absence. Migrant believers preserve this same paradigm of faith. They discover an image of God that passes the usual limits. They welcome a God who does not punish the innocent, and they hope that this God will keep accompanying them in every storm at sea, perhaps sleeping in that same boat apparently on the point of shipwreck.
Paul assures us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” The person of faith bears in him or herself the presence of Lord. This is the same presence discovered by Job and recognized in the squall’s midst by the disciples. His comforting presence arrives with astonishing lucidity when the spirit of evil and its heavy waves harass us.
A Boy’s Initiative
II Kings 4:42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; John :1-15
July 30, 2006
In the Gospel’s story of the multiplication of the loaves, the “Eucharistic” event occurs thanks to one boy’s generous offer. With innocent sincerity he presents his loaves and fishes, and with those same humble elements Jesus brings the entire group of people assembled there to experience the extraordinariness of communion/community.
The story’s Eucharistic background is one thing. There is also a critical analysis to be made about the mistaken way in which the people in the Gospel account interpret Jesus’ leadership. They act as if they want to say: “We seek a leader who solves every problem and who doesn’t burden us with personal responsibility.”
We can follow both lines of interpretation, the Eucharistic and the ideological reading of Jesus’ style of leadership, when we look at the children of the migrat population.
For various reasons, sociological and cultural, the children of migrants tend to conserve their own language and culture of origin. I say this despite all the problems that in our time surround the use of the word “conserve.” In any case, an element that seems to me significant in the context of our Catholic faith is that these migrant children (born in the US) eventually succeed in inheriting their ancestors’ faith values and religious practices. These inherited elements are rooted far beyond the confines of the institutional Church— and yet at the same time are genuinely “catholic.”
Perhaps someone who likes to see things more pragmatically could assert: “These children are speaking English, they are growing up in the culture of this country, and if their faith is Catholic, they will have to assimilate to the US’s own Church dynamic and norms.”
But it’s against this vision of cultural dominance I’d like to read today’s Gospel. For notice that Jesus himself does not overwhelm the boy’s initiative. He accepts it, he transforms it. He takes the boy’s loaves and the fishes and uses those same elements to realize, to make concrete the sign of multiplication.
How has the Church itself dealt with the initiatives of its youngest members? In fact the Church has a challenge it has postponed— that of attending to children and youth in general. But this postponement, this delay, can be seen even more concretely in the case of the population of Latino children and youth. And most concretely of all among the migrant boys and girls I’m familiar with.
Yet it is these same children who possess in their very lives valuable “signs” inherited from Latin American faith traditions. Those signs are the loaves and fishes offered to us. These children’s lives hold the potentiality for the formation of a multicultural church. But if local churches neglect or overlook this potentiality, and proceed with their usual faith formation programs, migrant children are going to believe that what their mothers and families have been teaching them about faith— that these inherited treasures have no value. If that happens, then the church, as a truly catholic (universal) church, will be diminished.
Our challenge is to value what these children are. And to welcome what they offer us. They are young people living within themselves two cultural realities. They already possess, at their own level, a multicultural “synthesis.” Their loaves and fishes— their religous, their bi-cultural experience—could contribute significant energy to the way of being church in this country. Provided, of course, that their contributions are welcomed and nurtured, But it will take creativity and boldness on our part for this multicultural miracle, this multiplication of loaves and fishes, to happen among us.
July 30, 2006
In the Gospel’s story of the multiplication of the loaves, the “Eucharistic” event occurs thanks to one boy’s generous offer. With innocent sincerity he presents his loaves and fishes, and with those same humble elements Jesus brings the entire group of people assembled there to experience the extraordinariness of communion/community.
The story’s Eucharistic background is one thing. There is also a critical analysis to be made about the mistaken way in which the people in the Gospel account interpret Jesus’ leadership. They act as if they want to say: “We seek a leader who solves every problem and who doesn’t burden us with personal responsibility.”
We can follow both lines of interpretation, the Eucharistic and the ideological reading of Jesus’ style of leadership, when we look at the children of the migrat population.
For various reasons, sociological and cultural, the children of migrants tend to conserve their own language and culture of origin. I say this despite all the problems that in our time surround the use of the word “conserve.” In any case, an element that seems to me significant in the context of our Catholic faith is that these migrant children (born in the US) eventually succeed in inheriting their ancestors’ faith values and religious practices. These inherited elements are rooted far beyond the confines of the institutional Church— and yet at the same time are genuinely “catholic.”
Perhaps someone who likes to see things more pragmatically could assert: “These children are speaking English, they are growing up in the culture of this country, and if their faith is Catholic, they will have to assimilate to the US’s own Church dynamic and norms.”
But it’s against this vision of cultural dominance I’d like to read today’s Gospel. For notice that Jesus himself does not overwhelm the boy’s initiative. He accepts it, he transforms it. He takes the boy’s loaves and the fishes and uses those same elements to realize, to make concrete the sign of multiplication.
How has the Church itself dealt with the initiatives of its youngest members? In fact the Church has a challenge it has postponed— that of attending to children and youth in general. But this postponement, this delay, can be seen even more concretely in the case of the population of Latino children and youth. And most concretely of all among the migrant boys and girls I’m familiar with.
Yet it is these same children who possess in their very lives valuable “signs” inherited from Latin American faith traditions. Those signs are the loaves and fishes offered to us. These children’s lives hold the potentiality for the formation of a multicultural church. But if local churches neglect or overlook this potentiality, and proceed with their usual faith formation programs, migrant children are going to believe that what their mothers and families have been teaching them about faith— that these inherited treasures have no value. If that happens, then the church, as a truly catholic (universal) church, will be diminished.
Our challenge is to value what these children are. And to welcome what they offer us. They are young people living within themselves two cultural realities. They already possess, at their own level, a multicultural “synthesis.” Their loaves and fishes— their religous, their bi-cultural experience—could contribute significant energy to the way of being church in this country. Provided, of course, that their contributions are welcomed and nurtured, But it will take creativity and boldness on our part for this multicultural miracle, this multiplication of loaves and fishes, to happen among us.
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