More Than a Metaphor

Years ago my family lived in a small town in Massachusetts.

Our neighbors across the lane were an elderly couple.

My teenage brother used to hang out with them, and help them with chores.

The husband, Will, was an artist and poet of some local renown.

And he gave my brother a few paintings.

And an old trunk with some papers and other items he’d laid aside over the years.

Decades later, just a few weeks ago, my brother came across that trunk in his basement.

He found a poem in the papers—written by Will almost a hundred years ago.

It was a poem about St Joseph.

So, since I’m here at St Joseph’s, he sent me a copy.

It was a good poem; well written; thoughtful; showing St Joseph as the hero he was.

It was also heretical.

It spoke of St Joseph finally fathering his own children after Jesus was born.

I told my brother that Will must have been a more modern protestant.

From the earliest times, Church doctrine has held that Mary was ever-virgin.

She bore no children other than in the miraculous virgin-birth of Jesus.

Even the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, held with that doctrine.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Huldrych Zwingli.

But more modern evangelicals and fundamentalists go with their own interpretation.

As do some modern members of those old main-line protestant churches.

When they read the Scripture and see reference to Jesus’ brothers and sisters.

And many see it as a plain statement that Mary bore other children.

They’re unaware of, or dismiss, the interpretation from the days of the early Church.

From Church fathers, scholars, theologians and saints.

Including the saint we honor today, Thomas Aquinas,

Who addressed the question in his Summa Theologica.

Most early Church leaders agreed in their conclusions, but not in their explanations.

Some believed that the brothers and sisters were actually cousins.

The Jewish language and culture often used the same words for those relationships.

And even for broader relationships.

Others believed that Joseph was a widower with children before he married Mary.

So Jesus referred to those family members as brothers and sisters.

The early non-Scriptural work, the Gospel of James, says that this was in fact the case.

It also states one of the reasons why the issue is important.

It says that Mary’s parents offered her, as a child, to serve God in the Temple.

And that she had taken a vow to remain a perpetual virgin.

We can draw two key points from today’s passage from the Gospel according to Mark.

One point is that we need a deep background to fully understand Scripture.

Seemingly plain words, like brother and sister, can have complicated, broader meanings.

The other point, the truly major point, is the Good News message of this Gospel passage.

Jesus himself further extends the broad definition of his brothers and sisters—
He extends it to include us.

 Tuesday, 3rd Week of Ordinary Time

Mk 3:31-35           Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Advance Team

There’s a lot happening this week.

We’ve already begun the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Monday is Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Wednesday we have the March for Life.

We’re in the middle of Poverty Awareness Month.

Busy times.

And every few years we squeeze an added presidential inauguration into this week.

These programs and events take a lot of preparation.

Ecumenical teams at the World Council of Churches prepare their programs.

Prayers, liturgies, readings, and other events for Christian Unity.

Thousands of organizers tackle the massive preparation effort for the March for Life.

Preparing Masses, rallies, and other events.

Preparing plans to handle all the challenging logistics.

All the work of accommodating hundreds of thousands of marchers.

A lot of effort goes into the preparation for any important event.

In modern political campaigns, that’s the job of the advance man, or woman or team.

Getting everything prepared for the candidate who will come after them.

Someone has to make sure everything’s ready.

The reservations, transportation, media, security, venues—even the crowds.

This advance work to prepare for someone’s coming isn’t really a new idea.

And it’s not limited to politics.

It’s for generals, CEO’s, celebrities, popes and all sorts of important people.

They all have someone to lead the preparation for their coming.

Even to serve as the warm-up act to get the crowd ready for the headliner to take the stage.

Advance teams work to prepare for even more mundane events.

Before an organization installs a new computer system they send someone out to the offices.

To make sure the physical site is ready for the new equipment.

And to make sure the users are trained and prepared for the new system.

Before a builder begins construction, others go out to survey and evaluate and prepare the site.

Advance men have played an important role since the time leaders first began making appearances.

It’s an ancient practice.

As it turned out, all the prophets were advance men—preparing the way for Jesus’ coming.

But John the Baptist was the prophet closest to Jesus.

Closest in time and space—they were contemporaries, they actually met.

Closest in kinship—the Gospels tell us their mothers were cousins.

Closest in spirit—John sensed Jesus’ presence when both were still in the womb.

When they met 30 years later, John knew at a glance that Jesus was the Lamb of God.

John the Baptist is the perfect model of the advance man.

Jesus himself said that there was no man born of woman who was greater than John.

John started with a single-minded dedication to his mission.

Preparing the way for the coming of the Messiah.

When people thought he himself might be the Messiah,

He was quick to correct them and stress his humbler role as merely the one helping to prepare.

And, when the time came, he was quick to point people toward the true Messiah.

He didn’t seek fame and glory for himself.

His greatest satisfaction was serving God and serving well.

Preparing the people, so that they might better recognize and accept Jesus.

John was fully committed to serving the Messiah before he even knew who the Messiah was.

And when the Messiah’s identity was revealed to him, he dedicated himself to Jesus.

It was his great joy to be surpassed by the one he had worked so hard to promote.

We can strive to follow the example given by John.

We already have a lot in common with him.

Our primary mission is the same as his.

To know, love and serve God in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in Heaven.

His more specific mission was to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus.

And we share that more specific mission too.

Jesus is coming again.

We need to prepare ourselves and others for that coming.

He won’t come unrecognized, as he came to Israel.

We’ll next see him when he comes in glory at the end of time.

Or, more likely, when we face him for judgment at our own death.

But either way, the next time we see him there will be no doubt that he is God.

We need to be always prepared for his coming.

We need to prepare ourselves.

And we need to be God’s advance men, helping prepare others.

The preparations John made benefited the people of his day.

But also everyone who came after them—including us.

His words and actions continue to strengthen and guide us today.

We benefit directly from the impact of his words and acts as they’re proclaimed in the Gospels.

We also benefit from the goodness that those acts and words have brought into the world.

Through the impact they had on those who were present there with John.

Witnessing those actions and hearing those words.

And by the response of those new disciples; the goodness their actions and words have brought.

And all that resulting accumulated goodness, growing and flowing down through generations.

Today, we’re the ones God is counting on to continue and increase that flow of goodness.

To spend our efforts preparing for something far greater than an election or a new building.

It’s up to us to make the Gospel known.

To testify, as John testified, through our words and acts and example.

God’s now counting on us to prepare the way for his coming.

Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jn 1:29-34           Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Ancient Wisdom

We sometimes have a tendency to think of people from the distant past

As less sophisticated, or more gullible, or less intelligent than we are today.

Maybe we suffer from some scientific and technological snobbery.

We have made enormous advances in those areas.

But it’s clear from history and from reading what they wrote,

That the people who lived thousands of years ago were just as intelligent,

Just as capable of reasoning, and just as discerning as we are today.

That’s certainly the case for the people who lived just 2,000 years ago.

A few hundred years after Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.

Those people of 2,000 years ago weren’t easily fooled or deceived.

They were just as perceptive and just as skeptical about outlandish claims as we are.

They questioned authority the same way we do.

So when Jesus showed up in Palestine, he was scrutinized by intelligent, savvy people.

They were impressed with his speech and his knowledge and his wisdom.

But they were still skeptical of his authority.

Why should they listen when his teaching contradicted the prevailing ideas of the day?

Things like:

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'

But I say to you, love your enemies…

Or, It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.

And why should they keep listening even as his statements grew more and more radical.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

I am the way the truth and the life.

Unless you eat my body and drink my blood you shall not have life.

There’s no doubt that he spoke as one having authority.

And there’s no doubt that many people did question that authority.

But he convinced them; he demonstrated his authority.

He drove out demons.

He cured diseases.

He raised the dead.

The people were amazed.

Thousands of those intelligent, discerning, questioning people came to believe in him.
And when his death shook their faith, he bolstered it---increased it---by rising again.

It’s okay for us too, to question his authority.

It’s more than okay.

It’s good for us from time to time to contemplate the question of Jesus’ authority;

To test his teachings and his claims against our life experiences.

Should we really believe that Jesus was who he said he was?

Our life experience tells us, Yes; or at least Why not?

Our gift of faith tells us, Yes.

The voice of the Spirit dwelling within us tells us, Yes.

The testimony of billions of other Christians, past and present, tells us, Yes.

And—not least of all—the testimony of those intelligent, savvy eye witnesses tells us, Yes.

Tuesday, 1st Week of Ordinary Time
Mk 1:21-28           Read this Scripture @usccb.org