1st Reading: 2 Samuel 5:1-3
2nd Reading: Colossians 1:12-20
Gospel: Luke 23:35-43
Homily: Ted Keating SM (from his outline and paraphrased from notes taken)
PAX mass planning is the best kind of faith sharing.
I had a homiletics teacher who encouraged teaching the tensions vs the comfortable interpretations.
In 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in his encyclical letter “Quas Primas,” in response to growing nationalism and secularism around the world. (https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/upload/Christ-the-King-2013.pdf)
World War I was just an introduction to Word War II, nothing was resolved; the world was rearming itself.
For Pius XI, Christ was the King of goodness and love. What does “King” mean to us? In today’s first reading, we hear David was preferred to Saul: David won more battles. David the warrior as the Messiah? Confusing. In today’s gospel, Jesus is nailed to a cross by people who think they know better than him: Jesus as the tortured and murdered Messiah for His people. Another confusing image of King.
For a better sense of Christ, we turn to Teilhard de Chardin for whom Jesus was the model and image of the creation and of God Creator: the alpha and omega of the universe.
Our second reading is a wonderful hymn to Christ.
(I’m sure we’re all) Struck by the incredible violence of this liturgical year ending — the war in Ukraine, drought and starvation in West Africa due to climate change, the Covid Virus, refugees.
Daily and Sunday readings emphasize the fragility of the creation, stars, temple, and earth itself. They are preparing us to enter more fully a new year of Grace.
We are the first generation of human history to see that the world will end. Yet we are comforted by the illusion of strength and stability in nature.
Until the very end of Jesus’ life, the apostles/disciples asked whether they would be made the new leaders. They didn’t understand.
Christ is both model and image: of how he came to us and how he was treated. We have no answer in Christianity to tell us what suffering is all about. Believing Jesus was sent to die and suffer to relieve us of our sins only reinforces treating others badly. In pastoral counseling, you have to enter into the suffering of others.
During a dialogue homily with the Greenbelt community, I mentioned Karl Rahner’s phrase “all is grace.” A woman said, “I refuse to accept that. You can’t tell me there is grace in Ukraine. It’s just words – even if true – they don’t work.”
Such suffering when we let ourselves soak it up (with the difficulties of seeing it every night) puts us right into the mindset of impossibly accepting so much suffering in the world. It feels blasphemous when we face terrible suffering in ourselves, those we love, and like this woman who has taken in with the fullness of compassion and empathy the terrible suffering of the innocent in the Ukraine War, and finally in all of history like the Holocaust.
Like nothing else, needless innocent suffering tends to turn us on God in rage. Either God is not all-powerful and doesn’t care, or not all-powerful and cannot be depended upon—the cry of the atheist.
At first blush, we cannot see how this suffering makes anyone who is victimized more whole.
We are often told this kind of rage with God is healthy and needed for future healing. But we can’t be blazé about it or we dishonor the suffering and grief of victims. We have to face it. How can you do this? Permit this? It’s the first stage of grief. No easy faith options.
But the rituals, the Word of God, and the religious culture of our Christianity is called to go deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Some say that until this happens to us, we have not fully matured into grace.
In one way or another, bit by bit we contemplate on the life of Jesus and His own rejection, betrayal, torture, and humiliating death.
On the night Marlin Luther King Jr was assassinated, Robert F Kennedy had to give a speech. He quoted from Aeschylus:
“And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
So, with this we enter our Advent season searching for the light, and our new Liturgical year of finding the truth about life and love.
Martin Luther King Jr on suffering:
“Suffering can be a most creative and powerful social force…The nonviolent say that suffering becomes a powerful social force when you willingly accept that violence on yourself, so that self-suffering stands at the center of the nonviolent movement, and the individuals involved are able to suffer in a creative manner, feeling that unearned suffering is redemptive and that suffering may serve to transform the social situation.”
Finally, a poem by John Updike: Fever
I have brought back a good
Message from the land of 102 degrees;
God exists.
I had seriously doubted it before;
But the bedposts spoke of it with utmost Confidence,
The threads in my blanket took it for granted,
The tree outside my window dismissed all complaints,
And I have not slept so justly for years.
It is hard, now, to convey
How emblematically appearances sat
Upon the membranes of my consciousness;
But it is truth long known,
That some secrets are hidden from health.
What do you think about starting anew, building the light again?
Community Sharing: (reprinted with permission)
Molly: Jim (Molly’s husband) and I have renamed 2022 “The year of unfortunate events.” We’ve come to some peace about it…(and have realized) God is found in the more liminal spaces…That’s where God is for me.
Catherine: I work with children…One was a 6-year-old whose family had fled El Salvador. After talking a bit about Jesus’ death and resurrection, I asked, “Do you think Jesus still suffers?” He replied, “Only when people suffer.” We don’t need to look at the cross but the live suffering of Jesus. Nellie: I liked how today’s Gospel with the Good Thief countermanded all three of the Devil’s temptations to Jesus in the desert at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Lk. 4:1-13), undoing everything the Devil tried to do. In this scene from the crucifixion, three times people mock Jesus, saying, “If you are the Messiah, save yourself.” This resembles the temptation in the desert where three times the devil tells Jesus, “If you are the Son of God,” then demands that Jesus: 1) command the stones to turn into bread; 2) bow down to worship the devil in order to receive all the kingdoms of the world, which the devil claimed to rule over; and 3) throw himself down and the angels would prevent him from falling. On the cross, Jesus resists the temptation to try to save himself, comparable to turning the stones into bread or expecting angels to save him. Similarly, the good thief refuses to ask to escape death. Instead, the thief does homage to Jesus, recognizing him as the real king. And the thief refuses to give in to despair as a sinner—he believes that Jesus can and will forgive him and make him worthy of paradise. This is mind-blowing: both Jesus and the good thief see past the appearances and refuse to believe the devil’s false claim to have dominion over the whole world. We, too, sometimes face the temptation to think that evil seems to be triumphing over good, or that some people are irredeemable. One of the mottoes I try to adhere to is never, never, never, never to give up on somebody but to stubbornly keep praying for that person. (For more reflections comparing the Luke 23 reading to the temptation in the desert, see https://web.stanfordcatholic.org/pray/weekly-reflections/2022/11/15/solemnity-of-christ-the-king-november-20-2022 , https://www.cbcgb.org/sites/default/files/sermons/lexington/em/additional/2012/13%20luke%2023-26.23-56%20devotional.pdf, and https://www.e-churchbulletins.com/bulletins/985599.pdf)
Mike: Thank you for focusing on our experience of suffering. I want my faith experience and church (to live in) the midst of that suffering. What do we do with (the suffering)? Solidarity. (It’s) counter-cultural…what do we do with that? We (celebrate) Eucharist as the broken body of Christ.
Leslie: Usually when people suffer they are more vulnerable, they feel powerless, but they are also more open to God…People who inflict pain are worse off…they are further away from God.
Mary Linda: I think about the people in Ukraine daily and wonder how to express being with their suffering (as Ted has suggested). I feel powerless; there doesn’t seem to be anything overtly helpful to do. Watching TV, the people’s spirit continues in the face of all that is going on. I wish there was a way to join with that spirit.
Al: My problem is how to respond to those inflicting pain on people…I feel I have to respond…how far does one go?
Sylvia: Sometimes you can get involved (by) discerning what we can do: sometimes it is impossible (but) sometimes it isn’t. It might be sending a donation to Oxfam or getting in touch with our representatives, like we did with the Petition about COP27.
Bob: A segment on the PBS Newshour on Friday profiled about 6,000 to 7,000 workers who died building the infrastructure for the World Cup, while many others only received a fraction of what they were promised and are now deep in debt in their home countries. Hence, what will we experience when we watch the World Cup? Will the death of 6,000-7,000 foreign workers who built the infrastructurefor the Games prick our conscience? Is this what the world is going to celebrate? https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/reporters/20221028-the-plight-of-migrant-workers-in-qatar (link courtesy of Dale Chambers)