1st Reading: Amos 6:1a,4-7
2nd Reading: Romans 8:18-28
Gospel: Luke 16:19-31
Homily: Ted Keating, SM (his notes)
Why this season of the Year? (Here’s a poem by William Blake)
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear.
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar.
The Beggar’s Dog and Widow’s Cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.
The Gnat that sings his Summer song
Poison gets from Slander’s tongue.
The poison of the Snake and Newt
Is the sweat of Envy’s Foot.
Thro’ the World we safely go.
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.
The theme of listening to the earth…may be a little weak—we need to take on a new consciousness that keeps us in loving dialogue with… creation. We have to come to love it or we will never have the energy and motivation to take on the momentous task of dealing with the impact of Climate change. This is Pope Francis’ point in Laudato Sí.
Will (we) begin to forge that new consciousness as a relationship that includes us within that creation(?)
(An) Example of the eerie emergence of a new human consciousness in the axial age—with explosions in breadth and depth of human consciousness, with self-reflection between 500 to 250 BC in nations and cultures with no contact with one another. Evolutionists call in the awakening of humanity. The Prophets and Wisdom literature in the Jewish Testament, Greek Philosphy, Zen, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., etc.
Vatican II and the explosion of consciousness on the rapid emergence and Church-wide relation to social justice as essential to its mission and ministry. Still struggling with this in many circles.
We also must rise to a new consciousness that sees us as well in the creation, the earth that we are part of, as brother and sister.
Why are we as Christians and Catholics so stuck on a view of nature and creation as (being) there for our use and even our plundering? It is our brother and sister. We are made of the same flesh
- Fear of nature because of paganism and pantheism in our Christian origins.
- Over emphasis on the future coming of Jesus — “There is Pie in the sky when you die by and by” — the accusation of Marxism seeing our inattention to the poor and their desperation except for charity without concern for justice and empowerment of the poor.
- Uncomfortableness with matter coming from our Greek origins—recall the shock of Chardin for us and his love of matter in the Divine Milieu.
- Antisemitism and the loss of the Jewish Testament where creation is the very symbol and connection with God
- Without awe and love for the earth and the universe, we will never pull this off
Liturgy and Eucharist are crucial. Bringing in the Season of Creation has helped with the silence of the Eucharist on creation. See Elizabeth Johnson’s Eucharist for a World in Peril — I did a workshop on this book a few years ago.
Neil de Grasse Tyson’s, a very popular physicist, new book — Starry Messengers—on the same theme.
Ghandi: “It is impossible to wake someone up who does not know he is asleep. It is even harder to wake someone up who is pretending to be asleep.”
Let’s take a look at this through the lens of these readings—Amos Axial Age. (In our) 1st reading God says your sacrifices stink up the heavens. Get out and take care of poor being plundered by leaders and those out to stiff the poor.
The “Big House” mentality of the nameless rich person still wanting to boss Lazarus around and expects Abraham to have the same attitude. These are the poor and powerless who are not the first ones suffering from the Climate issues.
(I’ll) Close with a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Communion Meditation: Beginners, by Denise Levertov
But we have only begun
To love the earth.
We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
..so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
..we have only begun to imagine justice and mercy,
Only begun to envision how it might be
To live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
Surely our river
Cannot already be hastening
Into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot drag, in the silt,
All that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet..
There is too much broken
That must be mended.
Too much hurt we have done to each other
That cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
The power that is in us if we would join
Our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
Complete its gesture,
So much is in bud.
More poems Ted shared:
The Grandeur of God, Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world
Broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Romans 8:18-28
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.
The Garden of Love—William Blake
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.
London, by William Blake
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.