a lawless blog

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July 23, 2017

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading I: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19
Responsorial Psalm: 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16
Reading II: Romans 8:26-27
Gospel: Matthew 13:24-43

Reading 2 Rom 8:26-27

Brothers and sisters:
The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
And the one who searches hearts
knows what is the intention of the Spirit,
because he intercedes for the holy ones
according to God's will.

Gospel Mt 13:24-43

Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying:
"The kingdom of heaven may be likened
to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.
The slaves of the householder came to him and said,
'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?'
He answered, 'An enemy has done this.'
His slaves said to him,
'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters,
"First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072317.cfm

New things and old in our spiritual life

It is refreshing for some of us to look for new ways to express what we mean by 'god', and what is the purpose of being christian, but others become anxious and feel a threat to the familiar ideas that have served them well over a lifetime. One way of looking at the parable of the weeds in the wheatfield would see it as allowing the old to continue lest in trying to clean up we damage healthy plants.

The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.'

Jeshua says it is better to tolerate weeds in spite of how untidy they look and how much they might seem to lessen the value of the crop by stealing moisture and nourishment from the wheat, because in pulling them out you might damage the wheat.

Clearly this would apply only to weeds that grow with the wheat. It would not apply in the case of something that smothers the whole crop; we still have to use our common sense in reading this lesson. It's another warning to be careful when we start cleaning up the community because we can damage healthy individuals. It is not our job to get rid of those we think don't fit in; judgements of that kind may do more harm than good. In fact we can't judge because we don't see inside the person.

* * * * *

In all our discussions about what's wrong in the community and about renewal, the heart of the matter is the spiritual life. The spiritual, of course, is elusive, like jelly - a bit slippery, hard to get a grip on, nebulous - hard to define. Today I would like to meander through some ideas about the spiritual.

The life of the spirit is something we all experience. Let's call it 'awareness' - self-awareness, awareness of value and meaning, awareness of origins and purpose, awareness of The Spirit whom we call 'god'.

Atheists have awareness too and can be deeply spiritual people. Everyone has a spiritual life, though not everyone pays attention to it. It does need cultivating. Ideas can be planted like seeds and we can see them grow and bear fruit, or they can be killed off, wilt and die for lack of care, or be choked by weeds.

As our personality is formed by relationships, so is spiritual life about relationships. The old paradigm that being spiritual meant being a person who prayed regularly, went to church often and perhaps had some favourite devotions, hardly works today. These are only the shell, means to the end.

Being spiritual is being aware, and this takes work. One thing that needs re-thinking by catholics is the idea that performing some ritual or reciting some formula will produce holiness.

The notion of 'god' is meaningless for some people and yet they are keenly aware of their relationships with people, animals and nature. Others believe that God has initiated a dialogue with humankind and they have a keen appreciation of God's word. They regularly put work into their response. For them God's relationship to us colours the meaning and value of everything.

* * * * *

Developing awareness takes time and quite a lot of reflection. In practice you could say that a spiritual person is a thoughtful person.

One's spiritual awareness is a very private and personal thing, obviously. Some say it's like the story we tell ourselves about who we are and where we're going and 'what it all means to me.'

My spiritual awareness rests on my belief that God has opened a relationship with us. We don't get very far if we begin from a scientific premise that god does not and cannot intervene in this world where every effect is shown to have a physical cause, (or it may be a quantum mutation which itself is normal). As I see it, the greatest intervention conceivable is in the simple planting of an idea.

I assume this is done very subtly, in fact spiritually.

* * * * *

Jesus of Nazareth was not a social or political reformer, nor did he set out to reform the religious institution of his time. His program is entirely at the personal level. It seems to me that he addressed each person with the invitation to invigorate their spiritual life, and the challenge to 'sort yourself out', 'get your house in order', learn to think straight and be true, honest and just. For each one who does that it means that God's realm has by that much more become an actuality.

This, of course, is the stuff of the spirit, of being thoughtful about meaning and value, aware of the dignity and rights of every person, and mindful of the Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being.

Jeshua taught how to be a spiritual person. He spoke about living with integrity in oneself, towards each other, and in one's relationship with the Father. He talked about his own relationship, often in terms of doing what the Father wanted of him. That must have been hard at times because he pushed himself to be patient with his volunteers, to keep moving on when the crowds made exhausting demands on him, to engage in some very hostile encounters which turned fatal in the end.

One human feature that shows through the gospel narrative is of a person who spent himself till there was nothing left to give. Then he let them arrest him and take him to judgement, torture and execution because that was the only way he could put a seal on all he had taught, by giving his life as the ultimate witness to the truth he stood for. He had lived out his life of love in a spirit of total and unstinted giving, aware of the value of each person he spoke to, especially of those who were considered of no value to anyone, for to the Father each one had the absolute value of a loved child. And that's the truth.

This is the Word from the Father Jeshua came to teach.

Paul was a great teacher, explaining in his own words what was being taught in those stories about Jeshua. He was a leader too and laid down rules for the communities he had founded. But especially he was a spiritual and moral guide encouraging his people to think about faith, and to trust, and to live with virtue and generosity. Finally he was a mystic who shared his experience of relationship with God in the Spirit.

Reading Paul you come to see that there is no way to understand Jeshua unless you go below the surface of his words and the events of his life. And of course when you do go below the surface of a word to its meaning and let your spirit wonder about what it implies you soon find yourself beyond the realm of words. It's not possible to explain these things, no matter how many words you use. We have to discover them, each one for oneself.

Like any journey of discovery, it can be long and tiring over the years. Paul knew all about that, but realised it is all God's work and not just dependent on our efforts.

In the readings from his letter to the communities in Rome which are currently our Second Reading he shares an awareness of the Spirit which rather takes your breath away:

8:22-25 - It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail. And it is plain, too, that we who have a foretaste of the Spirit are in a state of painful tension, while we wait for that redemption of our bodies which will mean that at last we have realised [that in him we are fully children of God with all the rights of true children].* We were saved by this hope, but in our moments of impatience let us remember that hope always means waiting for something that we haven't yet got. But if we hope for something we cannot see, then we must settle down to wait for it in patience.

8:26-27 - The Spirit of God not only maintains this hope within us, but helps us in our present limitations. For example, we do not know how to pray worthily as sons of God, but his Spirit within us is actually praying for us in those agonising longings which never find words. And God who knows the heart's secrets understands, of course, the Spirit's intention as he prays for those who love God. [J. B. Phillips trans.]

That's a bit like my life in relationship with the Spirit.

* [that in him we are fully children of God with all the rights of true children] is my expanded reading of 'our full sonship in him.' Paul sees that humankind feels alienated like children who feel rejected and expelled from the family home.

He uses the word 'redemption' and this has come to mean that Jesus paid a price, and that price was his suffering and death. We have to get it into our heads that this thinking is only human thinking. It is not God's thinking. God never saw us as alienated, or want Jesus to suffer for his satisfaction. That screwed up idea is only in our head.

Restoring in humankind that sense of belonging required someone to do something with shock value in it to make it perfectly clear that there is no animosity in the family. This is the truth Jesus stood for.