Coming
attractions at our week-end Masses: For
the next three week-ends, we will hear three “parables of the Kingdom” from
Matthew 13; then on 6 August, the Feast of the Transfiguration; then the
following week, the story of Jesus walking on the water. All of this material is highly significant
not only within the New Testament and early Christianity, but through the
centuries, and in the life of the Church.
My task will be to take each lesson as it comes, and seek to help make
it meaningful for our parishioners. We
will try to understand the LORD’s teaching together. It is not easily understandable, because
Christ is leading us into the mystery of God; or rather, into a life well lived
in tension toward the unknown God whom he calls “my Father.” As I have often done, we must move towards a
true understanding dialectically: that
is, warding off misunderstandings, and using misinterpretations to help us
arrive at a deeper or better grasp of what Christ is telling us here and
now. One learns to discern the truth by
seeing and breaking from error. This
process is never-ending, because our minds are limited, our understanding
always fallible. The search for the
truth of God is always greater than, and encompasses, any results one discovers
along the way. If one is not seeking,
wondering, exploring, then one is stagnating.
There is nothing stagnant about the
“Kingdom of God.” This symbolic phrase,
used by Jesus to speak about the reality and ways of God in our lives, is
dynamic, creative, freeing, challenging, demanding, consoling, guiding. It is, among other things, a way to speak
about God’s providential care for his creatures, for us. God’s way of doing things is not identical
with our ways. Whereas human beings
gravitate to the powerful, the famous, the wealthy, God’s way is to seek out
the lost, the lowly, the humble, those rejected by fellow human beings. Whereas we human beings seek status, wealth,
or power, the Kingdom of God—God’s way of acting—is life-giving, affirming,
able to “tear down the mighty and lift up the lowly.” (Are you lowly enough to be reached by
God?).
God’s way brings judgment only to
bring peace, to heal, never to condemn and lock up in a hell of human
imagination.
Peace.
