Author: 1mhmcoffee

Is 63:16-19, 64:2-7; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

In this gospel, Jesus tells us to watch, pay attention, stay awake, ‘don’t miss anything.’ Many describe the longing for the Lord as a desire for “we know not what,” and so we wait for “we know not what.” And while we are forced to pause, our prophet models the honesty warranted, we tell the Lord of our fears that what we wait for will never come to pass, or that we will not recognize it when it does arrive.

Jesus begins this exhortation with a parable about servants waiting for the Master’s return. We, I too, am the house; my faculties, i.e. my will, imagination, perception, reason, memory and intuition are each a servant with specific roles to carry out in the preparations for the Master. Our will operates as the doorkeeper, so I desire, wait and prepare for “I know not what.”

Christ says, “Watch the snow fall, and the quail round the corner of the city apartment building, and the moon shine from a blue sky at 10A; watch the passerby give money to the homeless, and nursing home staff comfort a crying daughter whose father doesn’t recognize her. I’m there. Watch.”

A coworker who came to the US in her twenties from Jamaica told me about the first time she saw snow; she’d seen pictures and heard descriptions but nothing had prepared her for the beauty. She stared out the window as the snow fell for hours. Perhaps watching for the Lord is similar; the Kingdom builds one soul, one snowflake at a time until the faithful blanket the Earth, resembling a field of fresh, pure snow.

In the Interpreters Bible, a commentary I often use, the word ‘theophany’ crops up repeatedly and means ‘the manifestation or appearance of g(G)od to a human.” CS Lewis tells us that the incarnation is the “grand miracle.” Christ exhorting us to witness this miracle of the incarnation, a present day reality due to the Eucharist, on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute basis.

I too ingest the body and blood. Because He therefore dwells within me, theophany also occurs within my dreams and contemplative experiences, through my feelings and attitudes, in my memories and motivations. I need to observe my interior life with hope and the expectation of theophany. I better pay more attention!

 

Reflection Question:

What specific roles do your six faculties play for you as you begin to wait for the birth of Jesus? For example, what do you imagine, think about, notice, want, and remember. What insights have you had over the past year that make this Advent season new?

Writing Exercise:
Retell a ‘theophanic’ dream or contemplative experience that you had. Try to tell it in a way that would leave a reader unsure as to whether or not the experience was a conscious or unconscious experience.

Art Exercise:
Represent using your favorite medium a time when you waited for an event or person’s arrival. Try to capture your many emotions through color and textures.

 

© 2014 Marilyn MacArthur, all rights reserved

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042014.cfm

John 20:1-10, (11-18)

The passion narrative is framed by two garden scenes; when Christ is arrested in the garden of Gestheme, He asks the soldiers, “Who are you looking for?” When Christ appears to Mary in the garden after the resurrection He asks her, “Who are you looking for?” While a garden symbolizes new life and harmony, it is planted on purpose and has order and structure. Likewise Christ’s question to us, “Who are you looking for?” frames our beginnings and endings, the moments of transition in our lives.

“Lazarus came out with his grave-clothes on, for he was to use them again; but Christ, rising to an immortal life, came out free from those incumbrances…When we arise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, we must leave our grave-clothes behind us…” (Matthew Henry). Grave clothes are very similar to everyday dress-up clothes these days, so we must be very mindful, metaphorically, as to what we are actually covering ourselves with. St. Paul makes many lovely references to clothing ourselves in the Light of Christ.

Mary is frightened that the stone over Christ’s tomb was rolled away. We try to bury Christ and put big boulders in His way all the time; He then needs to roll them away, so He can make His presence known. Like Mary, we crave His presence, but panic because He manifests Himself in unexpected ways.

Christ’s appearance after the resurrection is exclusively for his friends, those chosen as his own. On the contrary, His ministry and death are both public. While His post-resurrection Presence is private, it is for the many. Indeed, they rely on each other’s experiences and strengths to understand their personal experiences more completely. Peter is back in the fold and trusted by the other disciples, despite his fall and fear. His courage offers us hope of redemption from our own weaknesses.

Like Peter and John, we may believe in His presence in the world and our lives because we have no other explanation for what we have observed. We may recognize the voice of Christ when he identifies us, as Mary did. The other disciples must wait in hope and joyful expectation because of their trust in Mary, Peter and John’s interpretation of their experiences; we are these disciples at times. In whichever case, Christ told them that He would rise on the third day, but when it occurred, they didn’t comprehend. It is easy to label the disciples as “thick, unbelieving, lacking faith, or otherwise clueless.” It is often difficult, however, to make sense in the moment of what in hindsight seems obvious, or logical. Likewise we often forget what we are told explicitly.

Peter and John come to the tomb, make some observations and declare belief, and leave again. We are told the story of Mary’s interaction with the Risen Lord, with the word ‘meanwhile’ introducing the narrative. This may mean that she was conversing with the angels and Christ with Peter and John present but unaware, or perhaps she stayed behind when they left. Either way, in John’s account she was the first He spoke to and the first who recognized Him. She was able to have this interaction with Him because she remained present (while Peter and John had left.)

The exchange between Mary and the Risen Jesus is characteristic of many a conversation with the Lord. Like Mary, we weep for a loss that is not in fact a loss, but a transformation. She has lost Christ’s body, she is correct, but she has gained His spirit. As in this case, angels and/or other people often ask us the question that Jesus will ask us; i.e. they give us a head’s up. In this case the question is, as it is so often, “Why are you weeping?”

The moment of recognition occurred when He called her by name. Christ identified Mary, which enabled her to recognize His presence. Her response was to identify the relationship they had, and all He was to her. In other words, Christ calls us by name because He knows our souls intimately. We respond to the voice and call of our Lord (the sheep know the Shepherd’s voice), by noting His importance and role in our lives. Jesus has a function in our lives, a purpose; He is our Savior, Teacher, Master, Friend, Brother. Our function to Him, is however, only to be known and loved by Him.

It is fitting that this is the first interaction with the Risen Lord, for indeed, did He not have life and suffer the Passion so we could arise from our own living deaths when He calls us to be one with Himself, Father and the Holy Spirit? And is not this Union with and for us His glory?

 

Journal Questions:

What I am typically clothed in? In what inappropriate circumstances am I wearing my grave-clothes?

 

Writing Exercise:

Recount and reflect on a time when you needed to rely on other people’s perception of an event or situation to get a fuller understanding of your own experience.

 

Creative Arts:

Fabric art- Create “grave clothes.”

Paper art- Play with the images of boulders; What are they blocking? What is set free as they are rolled away.

Home art- Imagine Christ asking you, “Why are you weeping?” How do you respond? Sometimes weeping and bemoaning are our default positions. Strategize ways to establish a different “default.”

 

© 2014 Marilyn MacArthur, all rights reserved

 

Good Friday

John 18:1-19

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041814.cfm

We think of “God’s Moment of Glory” as Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning, however, there are mini-moments of Glory throughout the Passion narrative itself. If we search history as well as modern culture, we think of glory in terms of a any sort of conflict in which one side is victorious; giving glory typically involves recognizing and celebrating someone’s power in said victory. We also think of glory as moments in which we are vindicated and our power or strength of character is acknowledged.

Christ’s Passion is a political event. Pilate capitulates to the Jews despite declaring three times Jesus’ innocence, because he wants to be perceived of as in step with Caesar. The people say they have no king but Caesar; this is their last argument as to why Christ should be killed. The trial of Jesus is structured into seven scenes, “These symbolize respectively the spiritual realm that Jesus represents and the world that rejects his revelation. Pilate is caught between these two worlds, feeling the pull of both, but in the end he opts for the world of Caesar rather than of God” (Collegeville Biblical Commentary). This is the story of a power “struggle” between the world and God. It is a story of Glory, because Christ recognized and acknowledged as King, Son of God, and Ruler of Eternity.

Christ initiates the conflict with the soldiers by asking them who they are looking for; the soldiers fall to the ground when he identifies himself as I AM. Because they recognize Him as Son of God, it is a moment of glory. There is yet another moment of glory when Christ tries to keep his disciples safe, for it reveals the power of His love. Christ carries his own cross, and “gives up His spirit.” John portrays a Christ who is in control; He is not a victim. The inscription reads, “King of the Jews,” in three languages. A passerby from any culture had access to the truth of His identity. These are moments of glory because despite circumstances and the horror of the situation, Christ is recognized as the Lord.

The most fundamental element of human existence is the desire to be with God. For those he has chosen as His, it is the only reason to be alive; if we are not alive in The Spirit of God, we are dead in spirit and soul. Despite cognitive understanding, we tend to perceive an inherent distance between ourselves and God because we dwell here below and have been cast from the Garden. Christ lived a human life without distance in his soul and spirit between himself and God, while enduring the distance of time and space. Because he endured such a separation, we don’t have to. By taking on human life and coming into the world, Christ eradicated the distance between ourselves and God.

While we perceive this distance, God, most probably, does not. Jesus’ desire is to reveal to all people the father’s love for them, to make the unity of the Trinity transparent, and to invite us to be a part of that unity. He dwells within, regardless of our awareness of the fact; if I am not aware of union with God am I still in union with Him? If my awareness does not alter the fact of the unity, what does it matter if I am aware or not? The sun still shines whether or not we are aware of it, but if we remain indoors it is irrelevant to us personally. Perhaps, likewise, if we are not aware of the Lord’s presence within, His being so becomes passé.

The more we “have of” the Lord, the more we want, so that regardless of continual fulfillment, we are never fulfilled. We reach for Him, but we can’t “obtain” Him. However, we extend ourselves far beyond ourselves and we obtain something else. The only way to attain this secondary thing is to remain focused on the first. The first can be most closely named as “I AM,” but this secondary, lesser “i am” is ourselves as we exist within the primary I AM. Only when we reach for I AM, can we be most authentically ourselves, for seeking and being one with I AM, is our most authentic self.

Our longing for the Lord is His glory, for it is our recognition that He has full power in our lives. Scripture is perhaps not God’s revelation of himself to people, but the mutual desire for, by, and between the Lord and His chosen. If we are destined for God, if He’s written a story for us about our life with Him and we are invited to fulfill that story, we are the fulfillment of scripture (scripture we have yet to read) ourselves. Our lives can become mini-books of Glory when we surrender to the paradoxes and diachomenies of desiring and reaching towards that which already exists and dwells within.

 

Journal Questions:

Do I agree with the idea that the desire for God is fundamental to my existence? How does this play out in my life?

 

Writing Exercise:

Jumping off from the metaphor of remaining indoors while the sun is shining, compose similar figurative language expressions to describe your own response to God’s presence in your life. Turn it/them into a narrative or poem.

 

Creative Arts:

Fabric art- Represent the “little i am,” within the “Big I AM.”

Paper art- Create the cover for the God’s scripture text that involves you as fulfillment.

Home art- Ask each household member to identify one way in which they will give glory to God, i.e. they will acknowledge Christ as Lord.

 

© 2014 Marilyn MacArthur, all rights reserved

 

 

The Prayers

The idea of giving glory to God seems a bit grandiose or presumptuous in that we cannot “give” Him glory. Is it boastful to think any action of ours could somehow add to the glory of God? When we give the Lord the gift of “giving glory,” we are changed. When we give Him glory, our hearts expand; this may or may not touch or inspire others to greater love for God but we are nevertheless transformed.

“This prayer also picks up the previous tenants of the unity of the father and son, with the disciples as the basis on which they continue to be in the world” (New Jerome Biblical Commentary). The text goes on to say the climax of the prayer “comes with the commissioning of the disciples take Jesus’ place in the world.” However Jesus’ place in the world is a state of unity between Himself and the Father. He consecrates them to the Unity of Love between Father, Son, and Spirit, not to specific deeds.

While scholars debate as to whether or not the Last Supper was a Seder, it clearly occurred around the time of Passover. At an earlier Passover, Jesus multiples the loaves and fishes, delivers the “Bread of Life” discourse, and makes the first of His ‘I am’ statements. The New Interpreters Bible characterizes both events as Eucharistic in nature; “the Eucharist is here depicted as a relationship of abiding, mutual intimacy, where believers are drawn into the love of the father and son.” Every ‘I am’ statement within the Gospels is a statement about the relationship of unity with between Son and Father.

While Jesus includes a petition around protection, He primarily prays for the disciples to be drawn into His union. Because Jesus and the Father are One, he need not vocalize or formulate His prayer to the Father. He prays verbally and aloud for the benefit of the disciples. In doing so He pulls them into His union with the Father. Chapter 17 is often called the “high priestly prayer”. The highest function of a priest and of a priestly people remains to be drawing others into the Unity of the Trinity.

We cannot consider the glory and the unity of the Trinity without feeling an intense desire for Him. ‘Desire’, ‘unity’, and ‘glory’ are part and parcel of each other, and create a circular cause-and-effect. Because of our humanity, we are limited in our perception of our own union with Him; perhaps, however, the Lord does not perceive any sort of distance or gulf. How do we live in such a way as to openly surrender to the desire for unity, thereby giving glory to God in a way that draws others into that Oneness? How do we accept and suffer through such longing while living in the real world?

Father, Son and Holy Spirit are glorified by us when we allow ourselves to feel hunger and thirst for the Lord knowing we cannot fully fulfill it in this lifetime. The acknowledgement of and surrender to the painful experience of our unfulfillable desire for Him is His glory. Teresa of Avila labels this a “sweet suffering” with only joy and peace attending it; it was for this suffering that Christ endured the cross.

 

Journal Questions:

• How do you give glory to God?
• How do you perceive or characterize your union with the Lord?
• What strategies do you employ to tolerate the unquenchable thirst, the insatiable hunger for the Trinity?

 

Writing Exercise:

Write a list of personal ‘I am’ statements. Analyze how they are or are not statements of unity with the Lord. End with a commitment to make any changes you feel necessary.

 

Creative Arts:

Fabric art- Use three versions of a color, object, stitch, etc. Each will represent one member of the Trinity.

Paper art- What might you say is the Creator’s “crowning glory?” Use or represent such in a piece.

Home arts- Create a list or a symbol of an ‘I am’ statement for your home, a room or particular area.

 

© 2014 Marilyn MacArthur, all rights reserved

The World’s Hatred and Role of the Paraclete

We wonder, am I paranoid and/or narcissistic to believe that someone feels intensely enough to hate me and consider me an enemy? These are strong words. We have all been disliked at some point because of our personality; personality conflicts seem inevitable. However, moments in which someone hates us because we love The Lord shock, grieve and frustrate us. Matthew Henry points out the age-old history of hatred towards the faithful:

“The world’s enmity against the followers of Christ: it hateth them… Why did Cain hate Abel, but because his works were righteous? Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing; Joseph’s brethren hated him because his father loved him; Saul hated David because the Lord was with him; Ahab hated Micaiah because of his prophecies; such are the causeless causes of the world’s hatred” (Matthew Henry).

Understanding that we are hated requires the shedding of innocence. Love of the Lord opens our eyes to true ugliness as well as the awe-inspiring beauty within others.

Jesus speaks of the punishment of the enemies of the Lord’s. He promises a reward for those who abide in Him. We want to rise above such childish expectations as external rewards from our Father. However both reward and punishment beg a responsibility that we may simply want to avoid. If the Lord rewards us by answering our prayers, we need to pray responsibly.

In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name (John 16:23). In this verse, two different Greek words are used for our one word, ‘ask.’ To paraphrase more accurately, Jesus says, “You will not question me, but you will make requests to our Father” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible). To ask the Father something in the name of Jesus means no less than that it is Him who dwells within us who is making the request. In this way, petitionary prayer requires two levels of prayer. On the one hand, we are praying that we be one with Christ in will and vision, on the other, we are asking for what we or others need. Our feelings and intuitions will tell us when we are or are not in sync with the indwelling Christ.

We often think of the Paraclete as equivalent to wisdom, intuition, inspiration, the giver of blessings and graces. However, the Paraclete’s functions are also “forensic” (The New Jerome Biblical Commentary.) “The mission of the Spirit… shows that while he acts as an advocate or defense lawyer for the disciples, is also a prosecutor who indicts the unbelieving world” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible). Christ rejected the excessive legalize of the Pharisees and, following His death, sends His agent into this world to judge it applying a new code of law.

Because the Paraclete is sent to vindicate the Son following His crucifixion, we think of the Paraclete as presiding over a criminal court. But He is also a defense attorney in property cases, advocating God’s rightful ownership of our souls. The Lord God v. the world. The cross embodies the world’s temper-tantrum when God wins the case. Because of the crucifixion, Christ was able to send the Paraclete to defend those who also belong to God. Jesus paid the court fees, so we could be defended pro bono. As far as property assessment, the value of our souls are but chump change, however, the Paraclete defends and covets us His pennies as if we were gold bars. For him such distinctions hold no merit.

Jesus contextualizes the disciple’s pain in terms of their subsequent joy while acknowledging His own distress. He stresses the temporary nature of pain. In John 15:11, Christ says, “All this I tell you so that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.” This leads us to an understanding that joy is a desire and not simply a feeling or state of being. Joy is not static or motionless; it is an incomplete desire that reaches its arms and heart out to Christ.

Jesus dwells within, destined to be with God, while being One with Him. He is One and will be completed within us, whether or not we are aware of His spiritual union within our souls. By being alive and of faith, we are hitching a ride as it were as the indwelling Christ finds its way to the God He is one with. To know the gift and grace of being chosen to be a part of this union is the only fulfillment of joy.

 

Journal Questions:

• Do you know of anyone who hates you? How do you handle such feelings when they are directed at you?
• What are your attitudes towards external, internal and spiritual rewards and punishments?
• Identify the general rewards and punishments that God has meted out to you. How did your responsibilities change because of them?

 

Writing Exercise:

Recount an experience in which you experienced joy because the desire for unity with the Trinity was fulfilled?

 

Creative Arts:

Fabric arts- Develop a piece that somehow symbolizes fulfilled joy. Try to capture the spiritual nature of the fulfillment.

Paper arts- Create a symbol that you can put in your place of prayer to remind you that petitions require “pre-prayer” to thrust us into the indwelling Christ.

Home arts- Write a list as to what gets rewarded and what bears punishment in your household. Try to capture the humor involved in our sometimes childish responses to both reward and punishment.

 

© 2014 Marilyn MacArthur, all rights reserved