October 21, 2012
Isaiah 53:10-11;
Psalm 33; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45
Liturgy starts off with chilling
words from the prophet Isaiah, “The Lord was pleased to crush him in
infirmity.” What kind of Lord delights in the suffering of others? Isaiah is
referring to the Suffering Servant whom God selects as the one who will take on
the suffering of others so they may receive a greater good. However, it doesn’t
answer the question because if God is all powerful and all good, how can God
delight in the suffering of any person? The reading is more tolerable if
it reads, “The Lord was saddened that his servant had to take on the burden of
others,” or “the Lord felt compassion upon him” or “the Lord had any other
feeling to express sorrow”, but that is not what it says. The reality of these
words is difficult to comprehend.
The reading from Hebrews gives a
fuller description of Scripture. The author believes Jesus is Isaiah’s
Suffering Servant. He is the great high priest who suffered to bring us closer
to God. This Jesus becomes one hundred percent human for our sake. He comes to
know our struggles and joys so he can adequately represent us as an advocate to
the Father in heaven. He is aware of our weaknesses because he was weak just like
us. He becomes one of us. The suffering he faced was not unlike ours, but
because of his fidelity to God – by picking up his cross – he brought us
redemption. He had free will as we do, but he chose fidelity as a way of
remaining close to God in heaven.
The brothers James and John approach
Jesus with a preposterous statement, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask
of you.” It may be honest, and it is surely impetuous and bold in its self-concern.
Jesus is magnanimous in his response, “What do you wish me to do for you?”
Jesus sets up a contrast between two modes of action: the two disciples seek
their honor and glory; Jesus seeks to meet the needs of others. When the
discourse ends, Jesus launches into a lesson about the rightful use of real authority
and power.
Jesus cautions his followers not to
be like the Gentiles who lord it over others and make their authority felt. A
person in authority has to be delicate with her actions and words. God does not
use force or impose his will upon others. We are to recognize this so that we may
imitate God and act likewise. However, many people in positions of power will
try to forcibly influence others or set conditions to control and manipulate.
Sometimes unhealthy co-dependencies and relationships are fostered. How many
times does a person who has power over you threaten you in some way – either
explicitly or in veiled terms? Or they deal with you in passive-aggressive
terms? You don’t want to get this person mad at you because you experience the
threat of loss. We instinctively know that someone with influence is acting
wrongly. We just don’t know how to stop it.
We need courage that allows us to
correctly name their behaviors and ask them to stop it. This is a correct use
of authority – your own God-given authority to know what is morally right and
wrong. Once we identify the behavior and show it back to the person, sometimes
they naturally recognize their incorrect, adverse actions. Instead of acting
back in anger, we then let them know how we feel because of their actions. A
sensitive person will feel remorse for causing you to feel that way.
We
do two things that are helpful for him or her: (1.) we simply disapprove of
their behavior, but we allow him or her to retain their dignity. We convey that
our relationship with this person is secure. We intend to continue to love them
and respect them. (2.) we give them an opportunity to learn how to express
their anger more immediately. This is healthy. Anger is a positive emotion. It
tells us that we must talk about how we are affected because something is out
of balance that needs to be set right. We give another person the chance to
help us get ourselves back in balance. We all win. So, even when we are in a position
of powerlessness, we can elevate ourselves by correctly exercising the power
within us. It becomes much easier with practice and we get to see potentially
explosive relationships maintained and strengthened. We come to know that we
are essentially brothers and sisters in the same family.
Jesus wants us to expand our understanding
of leadership so that it demands that we care for others. Servant leadership
means that we are to become vulnerable for others and hold their suffering.
Jesus demonstrated this by giving his life so the world may have greater life. To
be his disciple means to imitate him. I still don’t think God will delight in
our suffering, but he may delight in seeing the extraordinary ways we serve
others. Leadership is serious business. The way we act or speak may mean life
or death for another person.
Themes for this Week’s Masses
First
Reading: In Ephesians, Paul explains that everyone was once
dead in their sins, but by the grace of God, Christ brought us back to life
through his saving grace. This grace comes from God as a gift and is not from
our works. Through Christ, those who were far off or alienated from the
community of Israel, have become brought near. He made us one and broke down
the dividing wall of enmity thus establishing peace. You are no longer
strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of
the household of God. Paul explains that it was by grace that the Gospel of God
was revealed to him. Paul tells his own story and claims that God gave him a
mission to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ. Paul then
prays for the community asking God to strengthen the people and give them
knowledge to understand. He prays that, rooted and grounded in love, they may
come to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge. He asks them to
live in a manner worthy of their call and that they be filled with humility,
gentleness, patience, bearing with one another through love, and striving to
preserve the unity in the spirit. He tells them that the Spirit graced them
with gifts to use to build up the holy family. They are to strive for unity of
faith and live the truth in love. We are always to grow in Christ in every way
possible.
Gospel:
Jesus tells someone in the crowd to back off when he is asked to get involved
in a family dispute. He warns them about the effects of greed and tells the
parable of the rich man with a bountiful harvest. He saved all his grain and
safeguarded it. God, however, demanded his life be given up. All his conserving
efforts proved futile. Jesus asks people to always be ready to account for
their actions. They are to be like servants who stay up all night in vigil for
their master’s return. Peter asks again about whether they will be saved. Jesus
tells them they too must be ready for the master’s call at any moment. Their
moral lives are to be admirable and they are to give as much as they can to
building up the faith. To the one who has much, much will be expected. Jesus
then tells them that he has come to set the world on fire. One’s passion from
God will separate them from their spouses, family members, and loved ones. They
are to rejoice that their names are inscribed in the book of heaven. A person
has to be able to read the signs of the times and be able to conform their
actions to that reality. He illustrates a person’s wise discernment in judging
natural disasters, like the Galilean sacrifices of blood or the falling tower
at Siloam. He also demonstrates a man’s prudence of waiting for the flowering
on a seemingly barren fig tree.
Saints of the Week
October 23: John of Capistrano, priest, had a vision of Francis of
Assisi when he was imprisoned during an Italian civil war at which time he was
the governor of Perugia. He entered the Franciscan Friars Minor in 1415 after
ending his marriage. He preached missions throughout Europe including a mission
to Hungary to preach a crusade against the Turks. After the Christian victory
at the Battle of Belgrade in 1456, John died.
October 24: Anthony Claret, bishop (1807-1870)
adopted his father's weaving career as a young man, but continued to study
Latin and printing. After entering seminary, he began preaching retreats and
giving missions. He published and distributed religious literature and founded
the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He was appointed
archbishop of Cuba but was called back to Spain to be Queen Isabella II's
confessor. He resumed publishing until the revolution of 1868 sent him into
exile.
October 28: Simon and Jude, apostles (first century)
were two of the Twelve Disciples called by Jesus, but little is known about
them. We think they are Simon the Zealot and Judas, the son of James. Simon was
most likely a Zealot sympathizer who would have desired revolution against
Rome; Jude is also called Thaddeus, and is patron saint of hopeless causes.
Both apostles suffered martyrdom.
This Week in
Jesuit History
·
October 21, 1568: Fr. Robert Parsons
was elected Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He resigned his Fellowship in
1574.
·
October 22, 1870: In France, Garibaldi
and his men drove the Jesuits from the Colleges of Dole and Mont Roland.
·
October 23, 1767: The Jesuits who had
been kept prisoners in their college in Santiago, Chile, for almost two months
were led forth to exile. In all 360 Jesuits of the Chile Province were shipped
to Europe as exiles.
·
October 24, 1759: 133 members of the
Society, banished from Portugal and put ashore at Civita Vecchia, were most kindly received by Clement XIII and by
the religious communities, especially the Dominicans.
·
Oct 25, 1567. St Stanislaus Kostka
arrived in Rome and was admitted into the Society by St Francis Borgia.
·
Oct 26, 1546. The Province of Portugal
was established as the first province in the Society, with Simao Rodriguez as
its first provincial superior.
·
Oct 27, 1610. The initial entrance of
the Jesuits into Canada. The mission had been recommended to the Society by
Henry IV.
That phrase from Isaiah has always appalled me. I think of C.S.Lewis' wrestling to dispel the image of the "cosmic sadist" who would give Lewis' wife a seemingly miraculous remission from her cancer only to send it back in a worse form that ultimately killed her. I think of all the writings in the works of various saints and religious authors that sound like God is insatiable for the pain of His creatures and the ugly picture presented in the Book of Job of a God trying to impress Satan (!) by tormenting an innocent man to see if he will crack. I am always reminded of the Leigh Hunt poem "The Glove and the Lions" in which a medieval lady tosses her glove into a lion pit to see if her knight will leap in and retrieve it so that her friends will be suitably impressed. He does, but then throws it in her face and says, "No love, said he, but vanity sets love a task like that."
ReplyDeleteI even looked up the Hebrew word used in the passage to see if it had other interpretations but it is definitely a word used to express absolute delight (often in the context of romantic love), although like our own word "pleased" it also gets used in expressions of simple volition like "if you please" or "During vacation, she got up when she pleased."
The phrase in Psalm 116:15 about the death of His faithful ones being "precious" in God's sight is similar, though slightly less harsh.
I, too, wonder what kind of God enjoys innocent suffering. Aquinas reminds us that "Nothing can be postulated univocally of God and creatures" and just like the implications of the phrases that seem to attribute to God the kind of despotic vanity that demands to be continually flattered by smarmy sycophants or else He will smite them, I hope it is just an unfortunate choice of analogy that "limps" rather badly than most.
To appreciate sacrifice is normal--who doesn't smile at the O'Henry story of the poor man who sells his heirloom watch to buy combs for his wife's hair, while she sells her hair to a wigmaker to buy a chain for his watch? And we understand Jesus' praise of the widow who put her two mites into the collection. We're touched when our kids use their allowance to buy a present for us, and even get a tear in our eye when we read the story of the little boy who agreed to donate his blood to his sister when she needed a transfusion even though he thought it would require all his blood. But to demand this kind of thing, especially in appeasement for one's own wounded pride when one's commands are flouted by someone else, and to take actual pleasure in it---that I cannot understand. It is one sentence taken in relative isolation (like the "Shall there be evil in the city and I have not done it?" in Amos 3:6 which appears to make God the author of evil, which was the old definition of blasphemy in my gradeschool catechism, such phrases can do a great deal of harm to those of us who have issues with the Problem of Evil anyway. I continue to hope that the expression "the Lord was pleased to crush him" is just an idiomatic way of saying that God decided to let this happen, knowing the tremendous good that would come from it. Still raises the problem of the end justifying the means, and I sympathize with the Karamazov brother who had to admit that if the creation of an otherwise perfect world would require that one innocent child be tortured to death, he wouldn't have done it. But at least it isn't quite as sadistic as the phrase sounds to us in the present translations.
At least I take consolation in the fact that they were words that one human author wrote about the Suffering Servant. Just because he wrote that, does not mean God definitively had that emotion. There is a larger story to tell. We are never allowed to speak for God or how God feels. Only God (or only a person) can tell us how he (or she) feels.
DeleteIt does raise the essential question of religion: how can a good, caring, all-powerful God allow the suffering of the innocent?
How indeed? And although a human author wrote the words and it is certainly dangerous to try to speak for God, we are supposed to think that Scripture is inspired and the words of the Prophets are one of the ways in which God tries to speak to us though He is constrained by the intrinsic limitations of human language (not to mention English translations of Latin translations of Greek translations of Hebrew thousands of years after it was written). If they don't speak for God, what is the point of prophecy?
DeleteI certainly have no answer for the Problem of Evil. It is probably the single worst hurdle in my own religious life. But I always remember my pet rat, a particularly unattractive, shabby old rat that I rescued from a "Stuff Your Snake" sale at the pet shop because the adult retarded person who swept up the store begged me to buy him. The rat turned out to be a very responsive and sensitive pet, and we really bonded. Then he got an ulcer on his tail and he was too old for anesthesia (he had a heart condition) so the vet had to debride and cauterize it without any. Amazingly, he just hunkered down, eyes shut tight, and endured the scraping and burning without attempting to bite her or needing any restraint. At the end, though, he looked me straight in the face, leapt from the table onto my chest, and tooth-chattered (a sign of supreme ratty indignation) for almost ten full minutes without taking his eyes off mine. It may be anthropomorphizing, but he certainly seemed to be reproaching me as I have often reproached God---"Haven't I been a good pet? What was I doing wrong? I was just hanging out in my cage, minding my own business, and you snatched me up and turned me over to the torturers. They cut me, they burned me, it really, really hurt. And you stood there watching. You didn't lift one finger to help me. You didn't say one word in my defense. You're supposed to love me, to protect me. How could you let this happen? Why would you do such a thing to me? How can I ever trust you again????" It took him a while to forgive me, but eventually he did. After all, bad as I seemed, I was all he had, and all the good in his life, the food, the water, the soft bedding, the stroking, the affection came from me, as well as the inexplicable and to him, unjustifiable, pain. When I finally had to have him euthanized due to congestive heart failure, he accepted it patiently and even licked the vet's hand as she gave him the lethal injection. (She broke down completely.)Perhaps that's the best we can do with regard to God as well.
What a great story. The thing we know about God from Scriptures is that it is a collection of stories of God's care for us and his desire to be in closer union. We know of God's love and mercy because of what Jesus revealed to us.
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