"Patience, Lord,...We're Coming!"

O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. (Lutheran Book of Worship, Proper 8)

Between that magnificent prayer from the Lutheran Book of Worship and Matthew’s Gospel passage today (10:40-42), there’s a whole lot of “welcoming” going on! “Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another…”, we pray. Jesus reminds us that to welcome him is to welcome the Father who sent him, and to welcome one another, even the least of us, with as simple a thing as a cup of water, is to welcome Jesus himself: the Prophet, the Righteous One. The promise is that our lives will be directed by God’s grace, and that our world will be reshaped by justice and mercy.

Jesus spoke a lot about love. We talk a lot about love in the Church, the Body of Christ. But when it comes to actually being a loving person, that’s not always so easy, especially for us who preach about it. Imagine a not untypical situation: a sermon, three points and a poem, has just been eloquently delivered on the topic of  Christian love, its obligation to love even the unlovable, and how to apply that in practice. At the end of the service, exiting parishioners say all sorts of nice things to the preacher:

- “I enjoyed your sermon.”

- “Your sermon was so uplifting.”

- “I wish my spouse had heard that sermon”, and you’re thinking “I wasn’t preaching to your spouse!”

Then, just as the preacher is heading home for lunch, the Sunday paper, and a nap, a stranger approaches him. Now, he knows from previous experience that he’s going to hear the 973rd “creative” version of a sad story. 

So, what does he do? What would you do? Plan A might be to do a 180º turn when you see the person coming and leave by the back door. If you do, unless you’re heartless or cynical, phrases of your beautiful, “meaningful” sermon on love will come back to haunt and convict you of hypocrisy!

Plan B would be the option to practice “charity by referral”, but you’re already quite aware that the soup kitchen, the Salvation Army, and all the social agencies are closed on Sunday! Besides, you’ll probably feel guilty later for whatever you might have done, but didn’t do.

In Plan C you suck it up and listen sympathetically to the person’s plight, then, perhaps, you hand over the only currency you have in your wallet, which is, of course, a $20 bill, then you smile, with a bit of a wince, and send the person off with a hurried blessing!

You stand there wondering if you did the right thing, or if you simply contributed to the economy of a professional panhandler, who makes similar rounds to all the churches in town. Are you helping or hindering that person?? Is that what "Christian love" really is??

We all feel this sort of tension between the rhetoric and reality of Jesus’ words. There’s perhaps no more agonizing problem for us as followers of Jesus than the gap between what we hear, sing, and pray here in church, and then the decisions we make in our homes, our neighborhoods, our community, etc. The reality of justice, mercy, and love often means choosing between difficult alternatives, and never being quite sure if we’ve made the best decision or not.

St. Paul grappled with these same issues back in the first century, based on his experience as a missionary and a community-builder, as we see in the passage today from Romans (6:12-23),  Romans is Paul’s earliest epistle, dating from c. 55-58 CE. It’s also the longest and most systematic of his epistles. Usually his letters are solutions given to problems within the various Christian communities. This letter, however, is Paul’s introduction to the Roman Christian community. He’d never been there to visit. So, Romans is really a letter wherein Paul works out in his own mind problems that he’s experienced in other places recently at firsthand. You could describe Romans as a theological essay in which Paul tries to spell out what the Gospel really is.

Paul outlines for the Roman Christians his take on what God is doing for humankind, despite the insensitivity of both the Gentile Greeks and the Jewish people. At the beginning of Romans, Paul declares: “...I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the [Gentile] Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’” Paul understands Jesus’ appearance in human history as a revelation of God’s righteousness. Humankind’s need, he says, is evident in both the selfishly corrupt society of the pagan world, as well as in the Jewish people’s clinging to an insufficient, lifeless Law, all the while remaining blind to recognizing the presence of the Messiah, God’s Anointed One. In Paul’s mind, steeped as he was in the Hebrew Scriptures’ Psalms and prophets, righteousness or justice and salvation are intimately connected. Psalm 71 says: “My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all day long…” (v. 15) Isaiah proclaims: “...There is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior…” (45:21)

The righteousness/justice which characterizes God differs from the way we understand it. For Paul God’s justice is always a saving reality. It’s the trait by which God delivers or restores God’s people, frees them from slavery to sin and draws them back to Godself. It is, as Paul says, “the power of God for salvation.” Well, why not just call it salvation? Because in the Hebrew Scriptures, for God to be just or righteous evoked the idea of rectitude (from the Latin, meaning a ruler/guide/tutor/governor, which leads in a straight forward/right/appropriate/ virtuous direction), the idea of measuring up to a norm. If God is “just”, the only norm God can be measured against is Godself as God has revealed Godself. For the people of the Hebrew Scriptures, this could only be the God of the Exodus who chose a people bound to Godself in Covenant. God is “righteous/just” in that God is faithful to God’s promises and sworn word, and in fulfilling them. Amazingly, throughout history, even after humankind’s continuous failure to keep Covenant, God never ceases to intervene to save us, and it’s precisely this that we understand as God’s righteousness/justice/salvation. For the very reason that, in our human nature, we’re continually susceptible to selfishness, to self-centered sin, and consequently death, God’s saving action, God’s righteousness, freely delivers us from this most fundamental of our alienations. In being saved, we’re set “right”, “straightened out”, so to speak.  

God’s acting in human life through Christ, Paul says, is directed at human selfishness and self-centeredness, what we traditionally call sin. Rather than liberating us, humankind’s moral sense alone (law, conscience, the moral imperative) convicts us. Paul’s message is that God’s gracious gift in Christ is true liberation, and that it’s readily available to any and all of us. The self-sacrificing love of Jesus’ words and actions is God’s love, and it’s our assurance of being able to share it.

When we respond to God’s love in Christ, and open our minds to his teaching, we have what Paul calls faith: the setting of our mind and heart on Jesus and on his way of living. Faith is the essential preliminary to new life, to a new start. That’s the Good news. The Bad news is the fact of sin, of failure, of slipping back into self-centeredness, as well as the reality of suffering and death, which we’ll all experience. For Paul, God frees us, in the love of Christ crucified and risen, from both of these, and in that freeing we come to share in a new humanity. We’re reconciled with God, emancipated from sin and death, empowered to live in love, and made to share in eternal life. Nevertheless, Jesus doesn’t shield us from the fact that there is a cost in human terms.

If you and I are troubled by the contrast between rhetoric and reality, between Christian ideals and practice, if you and I are often puzzled about what the truly loving thing to do is, then we should thank God for our troubled conscience! The most devastating disease which can afflict us is “no conscience”, the inability or the unwillingness to recognize where we fall short, or worse, the decision not to care at all, to feel no agony of decision.

Jesus’ message isn’t one of self-satisfaction and non-caring, nor of easy answers. His way is a way of loving, but one that costs. “Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace on the earth; I’ve come not to bring peace, but division.” We might ask ourselves, in light of today’s reflections on Matthew and Romans:

- Am I able on any given day of my life to separate rhetoric from reality?

- Am I committed enough that I’m willing to learn to live with the ambiguities which arise out of my putting Christ first in my life?

- When, in my relationship with both God and others, I fail to love, when I get rhetoric and reality mixed up, am I still able to humbly confess my inadequacy, to pray for God’s mercy, and to expect that God in Christ will forgive me, help me amend what I am, and direct me to what I can be?

It’s hard to be the Church. It’s hard to consistently carry on the mission and ministry to which Christ calls us. It’s hard to allow ourselves to be ever more deeply drawn into the Body of Christ, dying his death, but also living his life. When I was serving as the chaplain of Sacred Heart College in Wichita, KS, one of my dearest colleagues, Shirley Mallott, the Director of Students, constantly inspired me. She was extraordinarily patient, she was kind and loving and welcoming, she gave constantly of herself to the whole college community, while always remaining in the background. I’ll never forget the little ceramic turtle which Shirley kept on her desk. On the turtle’s shell was written: “Patience, Lord, I’m coming.” 

“Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ…but be patient with us, Lord, we’re coming.”      

  

      

Prophesying In The Spirit Of John the Baptizer

"Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.


On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him...The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel." (Lk 1:57-66; 80)


We notice a sense of rejoicing in this Gospel passage over the fact that God extends and shares God's mercy. Zechariah can exclaim: "God has looked favorably on [God's] people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us...as he spoke through the mouth of holy prophets..." (1:68), or as the old Douay version reads, "God has visited and wrought redemption on his people..." We are daughters and sons of the Holy One, prophets. The Word has returned with a showing of signs!


The name John means "God has granted a favor/prayer". He initiates the time of the Promised One. All the signs are there: joy, rapidly-spreading news, astonishment, a time of fruitfulness, the prophetic word is again heard, and God's presence responds to every human need.


In earlier centuries, Israel had experienced the mighty acts and powerful influence of their great prophets. Later, it seemed, God became silent and the prophets were mute. Israel was a "non-prophet" organization (!), so to speak, even though there was hope that the word of God would make itself heard in the time of the Messiah's coming. Luke sees that John, precisely, is fulfilling all the preceding prophetic vocations: Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, and Isaiah. He is the prophet of the final age, inaugurating a new line of prophets: the members of the Church of Pentecost.


John helps us understand that a prophet isn't primarily one who foretells the future. Rather, a prophet is one who stands in God's stead and witnesses to the life-giving presence of God's Word, through preaching, or witness, or obedience to that Word which is uttered by the Spirit of God: the powerful, creative Word.


For the New Covenant prophets, vision lies in examining the present event, wherever and whatever, and lucidly grasping the relationship of love which God intends to have with humankind in those circumstances. All of us share in the gift of prophesying, according to the place and role each has in the Body of Christ, according to how each develops her or his talent. We're each called to interpret the events, "the signs", as Jesus called them, of our times, through the eyes of faith. Authentic faith is dynamic. It always helps the Church to act as a light to the nations, as Zechariah implies. Many holy women and men through the centuries and down to the present have prophesied in the spirit of John the Baptizer. Unfortunately, their "batting average" may seem to be a bit low at times. Nevertheless, through our living faith we still go on, move forward, bearing in mind the words of one of the great modern prophets, Blessed John XXIII, who said: "Ever ready to love people, I stand by the law of the Gospel." 

"Living Bread & Bread Life-Bringing"

“The immeasurable blessings of divine favor, which have been showered upon the people of God, confer on them an inestimable dignity. What great nation is there, or ever was, that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us! For the only-begotten Son of God, willing that we should share in his divinity, assumed our nature. He was made man, that he might make man divine. And what is more, he gave back to us for our salvation, all that he had assumed belonging to us. For he offered to God the Father, for our reconciliation, his own body as a victim on the altar of the cross. He shed his blood, at one and the same time, a ransom and a purification, that being redeemed from wretched slavery we might be washed clean of all sins.


But that the remembrance of so great a favor might remain with us, he left to be taken by the faithful, under the appearance of bread and wine, his body for food and his blood for drink. O precious and wonderful banquet, health-giving and full of all delight! For what can be more precious than this banquet, in which not the flesh of calves and goats, as in the old law, but Christ true God, is set before us to eat? What is more wonderful than this Sacrament? For in it the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ, and therefore Christ, perfect God and man, is contained under the appearance of a little bread and wine.


He is therefore eaten by the faithful, but in no way is he mangled. Indeed when the Sacrament is divided, he remains whole under each particle. The accidents, however, remain here without any subject. And this, in order that faith may be exercised when what is visible is invisibly received, hidden under another appearance; furthermore, that the senses, which judge of the accidents according to appearances, may be preserved from error. No sacrament is more health-giving than this one, in which sins are cleansed, virtues increased, and the mind enriched with abundance of all spiritual gifts. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all, may profit all.


Finally, no one can adequately express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual sweetness is tasted in its source, and the memory is recalled of that most excellent love that Christ showed in his passion. Therefore, to impress the immensity of this love more deeply on the hearts of the faithful, at the Last Supper, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, and about to leave this world and go to the Father, he instituted this sacrament as a lasting memorial of his passion. It fulfilled the foreshadowing of ancient rites, and was the greatest of the miracles he worked, which he left as a unique comfort to his disciples saddened by his absence.”

(Sermon of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 57th of his Lesser Works, used in

the 2nd Nocturn at Matins for the feast of Corpus Christi)

+ + + + + +

For the devotion of the faithful, it is good solemnly to recall the institution of such a saving and wonderful sacrament, so that we may venerate the ineffable divine presence in a visible sacrament, and praise God's power which works so many miracles in the same sacrament, and give God due thanks for such a medicinal and tasty benefit. Even though on Holy Thursday, when this sacrament was instituted, there is special mention of it in the solemn celebration of the Mass, the whole remaining part of the day's office is about the passion of Christ, which the Church is busy venerating at that time.


Therefore, to let the faithful people solemnly recall the institution of such a great sacrament with a whole Office of celebration, Pope Urban IV, out of devotion to this sacrament, decreed that the memory of this institution be celebrated by all the faithful on the first Thursday after the Octave of Pentecost. For, even though we used this sacrament for our salvation throughout the year, we can specially call to mind its institution at that time when the Holy Spirit taught the hearts of the disciples fully to understand the mysteries of this sacrament. For at that time this sacrament came into use among the faithful. For we read in the Acts of the Apostles that "they devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and communing in the breaking of bread and in prayer" right after the sending of the Holy Spirit.

(Taken from the Breviary of the Order of Preachers, Dublin, 1967)

Trying To Understand the Holy Trinity

Today we celebrate both Father’s Day and Trinity Sunday.  Many preachers, including me, feel quite uncomfortable trying to preach on the Trinity.  It’s like rushing in to where angels fear to tread. The Holy Trinity is such a mystery; who can understand it even a little bit? In forty-seven years as a priest I don’t believe that I’ve ever given a truly satisfactory sermon about the Holy Trinity, which is probably a good thing for one’s humility!

There’s a story about an Asian gentleman to whom a well-meaning missionary was speaking about God the Father who created us, about God the Son who died and was raised up for us, and about the Holy Spirit of Love who appeared as a dove over the head of Jesus when He was baptized.  After the Asian gentleman had listened politely to the explanation, he said:  “Honorable Father -- ah, very good.  Honorable Son -- also very good.  But Honorable Bird -- I do not understand at all.”  So, I suppose I could also say: “Honorable Holy Trinity -- that I do not understand at all.”

If we look closely at today’s readings from Scripture, we might notice that they help us understand better the most important truth about the Holy Trinity: namely, that to know God as Three and, at the same time to know God as One, has to do with responding to God’s invitation to be in relationship with Godself: and not simply about having information about God.

Let me tell you two stories:

First, there was a man who lived in a city in the Eastern United States.  When he was young he decided to devote his life to God with the religious Brothers of the Sacred Heart in New Jersey.  After awhile, he decided that God wasn’t calling him to this vocation, and so he left the order of the Brothers.  He later married a woman and they had two children, a boy and a girl. A few years later his wife contracted  tuberculosis and died. The man’s circumstances forced him to put his two children in the care of the nuns at a local Catholic orphanage.  

After a few years he married a second time and this wife bore him a son.  By this time the man had set up shop as an orthopedic therapist, and began treating peoples’ ailments.  Though no one seems to know exactly what happened, the man disappeared one day, leaving behind his young wife and his son, now two years old.  For 11 years the wife and her son didn’t know where the man had gone.  Eventually he was found, arrested and jailed for failing to provide  support for his wife and child all those years.  He paid for a short time, but then disappeared once again.

The second story is about this man’s only son from the second marriage.  This boy grew up fatherless, without ever knowing or remembering his father.  He had only a few pictures of his father from long ago: some photos of his father in his white therapist clothes and shoes; several pictures of the boy sitting in the car with his father on the day when the boy had his first hair cut; another picture, a happy one, at a lake, showing the father, the mother, and the boy, holding up a string of fish; and finally a picture, also, of his father when he reappeared after 11 years: in prison clothes.   

The boy grew up to be a man, and as the saying goes: “Like father, like son.”  The man also married and had two children,  just like his father: a boy and a girl.  He loved them both, and when they would ask him, “Who do you love the most?”, he would say: “I love you both the most because I love each of you differently, just as you are.”  

The man’s relationship with his own son was particularly unique, in that he could be for that boy the father whom he never knew.  He made sure to say to the boy “I love you” and to hug his son.  The man enjoyed it when his son asked to do things with him and for him,  things which the man had not be able to do with his own father.  Just to be called “Daddy” was so magical!

This man in the second story, when he had his own daughter and son, experienced a love which eventually turned his loneliness and separation into wholeness.  His experience taught him about creativeness, expressiveness, and oneness.  And so you might say that this man was taught in a rudimentary way what the Holy Trinity is.

+   +   +

Now, the first story which I told was about my own father, Robert.  The second story was about me and my own children, particularly my son, Andrew.

For many years it bothered me how very little I knew about my roots, my ancestors, and especially about my father.  Since my father left us before I was aware, I never really had the opportunity to call anyone “Daddy”. Luckily, I did, however, have two other very significant male “father” figures as I grew up:  my grandfather, Harry, for whom I was named; and my stepfather, Tom, who became my friend as well as my parent, until he died much too early at the age of 44.

My son, Andrew, had a great career as a professional ballet dancer and choreographer for 22 years, performing with some of the finest companies all over the world, and once even on Broadway.  So many times I stood and watched in awe as he danced on stage. In him I’ve been blessed to see fatherhood from the other side.  In my son I’ve been able to see what comes forth from the depths of a person and is expressed when that person creates with dedication and love.

I’ve also had some intuitions about the gift of love which binds people into one through relationships.  In 1988, fifty years after my father disappeared, I found my oldest stepsister, now 85, and she was able to tell me much that I didn’t know about my father. The most exciting thing I learned from her was that my father really did love me, and that he carried with him a childhood photograph of me for all those years that we were separated, and that he knew that I’d been ordained a priest. More exciting still, my sister told me that my father had married twice more, and that I had a total of 4 stepbrothers and three stepsisters: one who is now deceased, the others ranging in age from 85 to 43! Unfortunately, I also learned that my father had died in 1973 at age 69.

Through the years, I discovered that, though I didn’t know my father, I loved him and was very grateful that he had given me life, allowed me to exist. Without that I wouldn’t have had the chance to express all the potential goodness which he himself possessed.

I love my son, for in generating him and enabling him to go far beyond my own capacities and potential, I am, so to speak, “glorified”, and affirmed.

These very characteristics which have marked my personal story, and which, I’m sure, mark most of your stories, flow from the very life of God the Holy Trinity which today’s Scriptures proclaim: divine creativeness, divine expressiveness, and divine love which makes one.

The passage from Genesis (1:1-2:4a) for this feast affirms that the life-giving Word of the Father, by which the world and all creation came to be, is no other or different Word than that which was embodied and expressed in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth, and is now made continually present in the Mystical Body of the Church by the Holy Spirit.

St. Paul, in his second Letter to the Corinthians (13:11-13), concludes with a blessing proclaiming God’s creativeness, expressiveness, and unifying love.  “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Blessing is, perhaps, the most unique way of proclaiming the Good News.  It reminds us that we have life and faith only because God is committed to us and is with us always: in Jesus and in the continuing self-gift of the Holy Spirit.  The late Catholic Bishop of Tanzania, Christopher Mwoleka, once said:  “The mystery of the Trinity is not a doctrine dealing with a division of power in the Godhead, but a statement about the way in which God shares [God]self with the creation and calls us who believe not so much to explain as to imitate that sharing by sharing our own lives with the creation.” That’s really the core of the “Great Commission” in Matthew’s Gospel (28:16-20).  It’s much more than a command to establish a few missions in foreign countries.  True discipleship means obedient sharing of the teaching of Jesus wherever we are.  Making disciples has nothing to do with proselytizing or increasing parish statistics.  It has everything to do with taking the message of Jesus so seriously that, in and through the name of the Triune God, we creatively, expressively, and lovingly share ourselves with all the people and things around us in creation: no exceptions.

“Honorable Trinity -- that I do not understand at all.”

But fatherhood, sonship, and love which makes us one: these have gradually begun to make some sense to me as I’ve grown older.  

This understanding was reinforced by a dream I had shortly after my first visit with my younger stepbrother and two stepsisters in 1989, sharing old photos and reminiscing, and after we had together visited my father’s grave. Not a word was spoken in the dream I later had, but in it my father and I came together, embraced each other, communicated with each other, then slowly walked off together.  I felt utter joy and peace.

So it is in the community of the Holy Trinity.

And so it can be in the community of our lives.   

 

"Speak, Lord, Your Servant Hears"

One of my all-time favorite stories in Scripture (1 Samuel 3:1-21) is that of Samuel the prophet's first encounter with God as a young boy. He'd been God's precious gift to Hannah, after she'd gone childless so long, and had endured the taunts of the co-wife of her husband, Elkanah, despite the latter's obvious and professed love for Hannah. As it turned out, Hannah seems to have really gotten the hang of the begatting process: she later had three more sons and two daughters!


True to Hannah's earlier promise to God and to the priest of Shiloh, Eli, she dedicates Samuel entirely to God's service as a nazarite, forever, in fact. The story takes up in 1 Samuel 3 as the boy goes about his temple duties.


Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
By God's providence, Samuel comes on the scene at a time of major transition in Israel's history. During the period of the Judges, God raised up charismatic figures to guide the Chosen People. Desiring more, in terms of leadership, especially a visible symbol of power, the Israelites would eventually opt for a king, against Samuel's intuition and against God's wishes. 


At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out,
That last line has a poignancy to it: the enlightening wisdom from on high hadn't been extinguished, but neither was it shining too brightly. When the Word of God is "rare", whether in the lives of individuals or nations, darkness, spiritual blindness quickly sets in.   


and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.
The Ark of the Covenant stood as a symbol of God's very presence in the sacred space in the midst of the people. Samuel, laying truly in the "cloud of unknowing", then receives the call. 


Then the Lord called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’* and he said, ‘Here I am!’ 
Notice the speed and dedication with which Samuel responds: no hesitation, even though he thought it was Eli. What a model for our hearing the call of God in the midst of life's daily demands: what Zorba the Greek calls "the whole catastrophe"! 


and [Samuel] ran to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ But he said, ‘I did not call; lie down again.’ So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, ‘Samuel!’ Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ But he said, ‘I did not call, my son; lie down again.’ 
How easy it is for us so often to brush off, to ignore the messenger as an incovenience while in our spiritually soporific state, to miss the cues that will lead us deeper into God's presence and the understanding of God's will.


Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.
Samuel is only one example of so many unknowing, uncomprehending figures in Scripture (Rahab the prostitute, Zacchaeus the tax collector, Saul of Tarsus) whom God selects to deliver a message that will shake people out of their spiritual lethargy and negligence. 


The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, ‘Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” ’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.


Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’
Even though he'd been cued into the response by Eli, the whole context of the story gives us the impression that, indeed, Samuel was really listening and hearing what God had to say.


Then the Lord said to Samuel, ‘See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.
Once, God had asked Abraham: "Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" God is always "mighty in all your acts, wonderful in all your works". But here is something extra special about to happen, and God uses that wonderful image of tingling ears! This new thing will amount to a deep spiritual experience.


On that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house for ever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God,* and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering for ever.’
Eli had to know that this was coming for some time. The writer of 1 Samuel has only disdain for Eli's two priest sons, Hophni and Phinehas: "...the sons of Eli were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord or for the duties of the priests to the people..." (1 Samuel 2:12-13) They apparently took for themselves all the prime cuts of meat from sacrifices, and committed adultery with the women who served at the sanctuary entrance. Eli was quite aware of their behavior, and, though he rebukes them: "...No, my sons; it is not a good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad...", he does nothing to stop it. The sons continued: "...they would not listen to the voice of their father...", quite in contrast to the young boy, Samuel, who was listening intently to God's word.  


Samuel lay there until morning;
Samuel's real training to become a prophet of God, one who speaks the Word in God's stead, sometimes comforting, sometimes very disconcerting, had begun. What thoughts and questions must've been running through that young boy's head! Imagine the fear and dread he must've had at the prospect of relaying God's message to Eli, that Eli's house was doomed to oblivion. 


then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. 
Again, Samuel's routine duty of opening the door to God's house takes on, in the story's context, and deeper meaning. In a time and place where the word of God was rare, and true spiritual vision not widespread, Samuel now becomes an instrument for throwing wide open the doors of access, both of the temple and of the human heart, to the living God. 


Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, ‘Samuel, my son.’ He said, ‘Here I am.’ Eli said, ‘What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.’ 
Eli is a tragic figure. He's obviously no dumbbell, and the very fact he insists on Samuel telling him everything, even the dire judgment he already expected, says something of his relationship with God.


So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, ‘It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.’
Samuel prophesies to Eli that Eli and his family will be punished for this: with all men being usually placed in positions subservient to priests from other lineages, and dying before reaching old age. The curse alludes to a previous promise from God that Eli's lineage would continue eternally. While this continuation isn't revoked, a curse is placed on all of Eli's male descendants forever. The Philistines will later capture the Ark of the Covenant, and, in the process, Hophni and Phinehas will be killed. Eli himself, when he learns of the Ark's capture, will fall from his seat, breaking his neck and dying.


As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.
When our lives are consistently fed with God's word, there can only be growth. Not only is it characterized by wisdom, but also by integrity, truthfulness, a sense of surety. "The sum of your word is truth..." (Psalm 119:106) So it was for Samuel. The boy who had not yet known the Lord, was now the seer, the one for whom God had pulled back the curtain (re = back + velum = curtain, revelare = reveal) on God's Presence. God's revelation of Godself to us through the Word, primarily Jesus, and in many other forms, is what sharpens our spiritual sight.  

A 20th Century Seeker of Wisdom

“For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.Though she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the man who lives with wisdom. For she is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail...She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well.” (Wisdom 7:24-8:1)


Evelyn Underhill, an English Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist, became one of the most widely read writers on religion and spiritual practice, parti-cularly Christian mysticism, in the first half of the 20th century. She was born into a comfortable upper-middle class London family in 1875, the only, and possibly unwanted, child of a barrister and his wife. The Underhills, members of the Church of England, had Evelyn baptized as an infant, but they were Christian only in the most superficial sense.


Evelyn was schooled in the home until she was 13, when she entered a boarding school. While there she was confirmed in the Church of England at age 16. Her college education was a scant one year at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College, London. She cared little for theology at that time, but was self-taught in philosophy, delving into the writings of Saint Augustine and Plotinus.


Evelyn learned a great deal about Christianity through her annual trips to Italy and France with her mother. There she fell in love with the art and spirit of the medieval world: a decidedly Catholic world. Her travels had a profound and lasting impact on her beliefs in general, but specifically upon her understanding of symbols and sacraments, and her love for things “spiritual”. Her exposure to medieval Christianity coincided with a growing cultural renaissance in the study of mysticism and spirituality: an age when works on the psychology of religion were complemented by the discovery and recovery of many classics of Christian spirituality.


In her mid-twenties Evelyn became involved with a religious group, called “The Golden Dawn”, which dabbled in magic and mysticism. She belonged to this group for about two years, long enough to savor the taste of religious ritual and corporate prayer. A significant religious experience in her early life occurred at the French Franciscan Convent of St. Mary of the Angels in Southampton, where Evelyn and her best friend had gone on retreat. She was so taken with the spiritual atmosphere of the Convent that she cut her retreat short, fearing, as she put it, “a hasty conversion to Catholicism”.


At the time, Evelyn was engaged to be married to a childhood friend, Hubert Stewart Moore, a barrister, who, like her parents, was at best indifferent to religion. He wasn’t pleased by Evelyn’s attraction to Roman Catholicism, so she planned to delay joining the Catholic Church until after her wedding. By that time, however, Pope Pius X had issued a papal decree condemning modern biblical and theological studies, the very things which Evelyn appreciated and advocated. So her religious experiences were reduced to attending Catholic Mass with her best friend, but being denied Holy Communion.


Like so many of her generation, Underhill turned from organized religion to interior personal religious experience. Her classic book, Mysticism, describes this inward turn in some detail. No other book of its type at that time met with such success. It’s an optimistic work, which outlines the spiritual life as a human ascent to God through a path known as ‘the Mystic Way”.


By 1920 the First World War and the death of her best friend had deflated Evelyn’s positive view of humanity. Her keen mind and her ability for languages were easily recognizable by this time. She wrote books on mysticism, novels, and books of poetry. She also served in military intelligence during the War as a translator. Still, her spiritual life was in need of direction, and for this she turned to Baron Friedrich von Hügel, a Roman Catholic layman. Von Hügel served as Evelyn’s spiritual guide and mentor from 1921 to 1925, the last years of his life. From him she learned that God’s grace is the starting point in one’s spiritual life. He helped her develop a much-deepened appreciation of the Sacraments, and to understand the necessity of the Church in one’s spiritual life, and this marked a turning point in her life. She re-entered the Church of England in 1921. She quickly became involved in various Church commissions, and was the first woman to deliver a theology lecture at Oxford. She also received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Aberdeen College. She began leading retreats for clergy and lay people all over England, and was soon acclaimed as a retreat conductor and spiritual guide.


“The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’“ (John 4:19-24)


Evelyn Underhill’s understanding of the mystery of faith is perhaps best expressed in her later book, Worship (1936): "Worship, in all its grades and kinds, is the response of the creature to the eternal: nor need we limit this definition to the human sphere. There is a sense in which we may think of the whole life of the universe, seen and unseen, conscious and unconscious, as an act of worship, glorifying its Origin, Sustainer, and End. Only in some such context, indeed, can we begin to understand the emergence and growth of the spirit of worship in men and women or the influence which it exerts upon their concrete activities...It is possible to regard worship as one of the greatest of humanity's mistakes: a form taken by the fantasy-life, the desperate effort of bewildered creatures to come to terms with the surrounding mystery. Or it may be accepted as the most profound of man's responses to reality; and more than this, the organ of his divine knowledge and the earnest of eternal life..." (From Celebrating the Saints, Canterbury Press, p. 198)


Her theology, though far more orthodox than it had been when she wrote Mysticism, was still unique. While she saw Jesus as central to the Christian faith, the emphasis of her own teachings was on the Holy Spirit, whom she identified as the spirit of self-sacrificial love. For her, to be a Christian was to be filled with God’s Spirit to such an extent that one gave one’s entire life to serve God. This led her to become a convinced pacifist toward the end of her life: a very unpopular position to hold in England during World War II! Further, Evelyn saw the Holy Spirit as the central actor in one’s prayer life. This teaching allowed her to emphasize the similarities among various Christian traditions in their common goal of offering to God a sacrifice of thanks and praise.


Evelyn Underhill died on June 15, 1941, after suffering for many years with physical pain and ill health. At the time of her death she was given the fitting title of “Spiritual Director to her Generation”.

St. Basil the Great Hierarch (c. 329-379)

"The bread which you use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit."