Both Human and Divine

by Fr. David M. Knight

November 30, 2024

Saint Andrew, Apostle

Rom 10:9-18/Mt 4:18-22 (Lectionary 684)

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/113024.cfm

Romans 10:9-18: The key to all Paul says here is human expression. Christianity is the religion of God-made-flesh in Jesus; and our response to him must be more than just “spiritual.” It must “take flesh” in human words and actions.

It is not enough to “confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord.” Jesus himself said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

But Paul continues “If you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.” Both are necessary. “Faith in the heart leads to justification, confession on the lips to salvation.” Those who believe without giving expression to it fall short of being Christians, just as those do who live exemplary lives according to what we call “Christian principles,” but just don’t believe in Christ or in the Church. The formula for full Christian living is “fully human, fully divine.” We need to live the divine life of God as completely as possible, while using and activating everything we can in our human nature.

Most “sins and errors” in Christian spirituality result from making life an “either or” between the divine and the human instead of a “both-and.” We affirm one by denying or downplaying the other. Thus we sometimes feel we have to choose between reason and faith; or between the “institutional” and “charismatic” Church. We make obedience to Church authority more “divine” by neglecting the human elements required for good government—consultation, subsidiarity, constructive criticism, accountability—or more human by insisting on all of the above while forgetting to discern the voice of the Spirit in all the members of the community, including authorities. We make liturgy more “divine” by making it humanly unintelligible (for example, retaining Latin after it had ceased to be understood, thus shrouding the action on the altar in “mystery”); or we make it more “human” by neglecting expressions of reverence (genuflecting, silence) that remind us we are in the presence of God. We try to become more “spiritual” by being less “physical,” or we indulge the body to the point of neglecting what nourishes the soul. We commit to ecology as if there were no Creator, or we worship God as if we were not “stewards of creation.” The answer to all this is both human and divine, not either-or.

Matthew 4:18-22: Jesus makes his mission dependent on human workers. But he works with, in and through them.

Initiative: Be whole: live as a human and as God.

Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry

www.ImmersedinChrist.org 

Jesus Gives Fulfillment in Life

by Fr. David M. Knight

Sunday, December 1, 2024

First Sunday of Advent

Jer 33:14-16/1 Thes 3:12—4:2/Lk 21:25-28, 34-36 (Lectionary 3)

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120124.cfm

These reflections we are presenting for Advent and Christmas this year are meant to foster, in a practical way, a process of spiritual growth. They are designed to help you grow to the “perfection of love” as a Christian. The reflections are based on the readings read at Mass each day. But there is a spin to them!

We will focus on whatever there is in the readings that speaks to the theme of appreciating and using Jesus as the Savior.  Note that our reflections point to Christ not just as the Savior of our “souls,” but of our life on this earth: family and social life, school life, work, and politics. Their aim is to facilitate the kind of interaction with Jesus Christ that will “save” every area and activity of our lives from “veering off” toward destructiveness, distortion, mediocrity, and meaninglessness. This is the promise of Advent and Christmas.

“Son of David”

Advent is a time of Evangelization: a time to hear again the "good news”—to excite and refocus our desires. To give us hope. To make us realize we want Jesus in our lives and how much we need him. A time to look at promises. The “promise” whose fulfillment Jeremiah 33: 14-16 announces is the one God made to David through the prophet Nathan:1

I will raise up your offspring… who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 

The Jews saw in this promised “Son of David” the Messiah who would bring to fulfillment all of God’s promises to Israel.

And so do we, but more so. For the Jews “the title Messiah-Christ meant kingship before it meant anything else; and everything suggests that to most Jews it meant nothing else.”2 But when we call Jesus “Son of David” we mean that he brings to fulfillment everything God has promised the human race through all the deep longings inseparable from human nature; everything he has promised his followers in Scripture; and everything he has promised any one of us through secret words spoken in our heart. This is what the Church, and in particular this reading, calls us to focus on during Advent.

Do I think I will find “fulfillment” in my own life through relationship with Jesus Christ? What am I doing to develop my relationship with him? That is the real measure of my faith in Jesus as “Savior.”

To accept Jesus as “Savior” doesn’t just mean we believe he can get us to heaven. It means we believe he can and will give us the fullness of life, both on earth and in heaven. He said, “I came that they might have life, and have it to the full.”3 

Jesus came to save our family and social life, business and political involvement from veering off to destructiveness or mediocrity. If we really believe in him as the Savior he described himself to be, we believe he can enable us to find joy and fulfillment in everything we do, even in suffering. To “settle for less” — even in this life — is to hold back from authentic faith in Jesus as Savior and “Son of David.”

The Responsorial Psalm cautions us, however, against thinking Jesus is going to do all this for us by just beaming down graces from heaven. We say in the Psalm, “To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.” We have to do something. The promise of the Psalm is: “He shows… He guides… He teaches….” Jesus can only give “life to the full” to those who look, who learn, who follow; to those who try, at least, to “keep his covenant and his decrees.” If we keep trying, he does not count our failures. Jesus is a friend, not a supervisor or judge. His only concern is to help all those who want his help and are realistic enough to know they need it. “He teaches the humble his way.”4

Be on guard!

Luke 21: 25-36 is realistic about the results of not following the way of Jesus. But we don’t need the Scripture to tell us “Nations will be in anguish… People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the earth.” All we have to do is read the history of World Wars I and II, and all the wars since, and turn on the television news. The existence of terrorism is a judgment on the image of Christianity, of America, that we project to the world. We have not yet begun to taste the consequences of that judgment — made inevitable by our failure to wake up.

Jesus says, “Be on guard lest your spirits become bloated with indulgence and drunkenness and worldly cares.” We ignore his warning if to be “on guard” for us means nothing more than to beef up our military might and Homeland Security! In our blindness, we sometimes act as if the only way we know to make peace is to make war!

The Way of Jesus

In 1Thessalonians 3:12 to 4:2 St. Paul tells us Jesus’ way:

May the Lord make you… abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

If we believe Jesus, the way to counter terrorism is to “abound in love” for terrorists — and for all the people out of whose populations terrorists are recruited. The way of Jesus is to ask, “Why do they hate us so much that they are willing to kill themselves just to kill a few of us?” We can rightly accuse them of mass murder, but we need also ask, “What are their grounds for such hatred?”

Paul teaches us Jesus’ way when he prays:

May the Lord strengthen your hearts…

(but we just strengthen our military defenses instead) …

…to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of Our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.

Is this the defense to which we turn in times of peril? To be “blameless in holiness”? If it is not — if the danger and destructiveness of our day has not driven us to deeper interaction with Jesus — then we are kidding ourselves if we say we believe in him as Savior.

And we are lying to ourselves and to God when we say, “To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.”

Harsh words. But the consequences of not lifting up our minds to God to learn and follow his way are harsher yet. The way of fools — both individuals and nations — is blind, self-centered greed and equally blind trust in power.

It is in the American tradition to trust in God. The nation has engraved on every dollar bill the words, “In God we trust.” These words should direct our decision every time we spend one.

Just a few years ago someone wrote.

North American Christians… are experiencing the highest level of the “good life” that any human beings ever have. The context in which we experience this consumer abundance, however, is one of a widening gap between the well-off and the poor of the world, as well as an increasing deterioration of the “resources” (the natural world) that fund our abundance. We cannot, in good conscience “love the world” – its snow-capped mountains and panda bears – while at the same time destroying it and allowing our less well-off sisters and brothers to sink into deeper poverty. Hence, I believe Christian discipleship for twenty-first century North American Christians means “cruciform living,” an alternative notion of the abundant life, which will involve a philosophy of “enoughness,” limitations on energy use, and sacrifice for the sake of others…. We need to repent of a major sin — our silent complicity in the impoverishment of others and the degradation of the planet. In Charles Birch’s pithy statement: “The rich must live more simply, so that the poor may simply live.” 5 

If this offers hope; if it turns us to look again at the Gospel, it is Good News.

Insight: Do I really believe that the way of Jesus is the way to the peace and fulfillment I look for in my home life? Social life? School or professional life? How do I need to interact with him in order to say honestly, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul”?

Initiative: Use this time of Advent to make some decisions: at least one to begin with.  Ask how you can” lift up your soul” to God in trust that Jesus is indeed the Savior. What actions could express this trust? What kind of prayer will nourish it?

12Samuel 7:112-13; 1Chronicles 17: 11-14.  

2John McKenzie, The Power and the Wisdom, pp. 73, 76.  

3John 10:10.  

4Psalm 25.

5Sallie McFague, Life Abundant, Fortress Press, 2001, p. 14.

Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry

www.ImmersedinChrist.org 

Envisioning the End of Time

by Fr. David M. Knight

Friday, November 29, 2024

Rv 20:1-4, 11—21:2/Lk 21:29-33 (507) (Lectionary 507) 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112924.cfm

The verses after Luke 21:29-33 (tomorrow’s reading) give the practical application:

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.

Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man. 

Today’s passage is saying we should not make the mistake of assuming that the “day of the Lord” is so remote we need not think about it. Jesus says, “When you see these things happening, know that the reign of God is near.” By “these things” he doesn’t mean just the signs that precede the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the world. They include anything that warns us that “Here we have no lasting city.” We live always in the simultaneous expectation of death and glory: “We are looking for the city that is to come.” That will be the “day of the Lord.” It is always imminent.

If we know “the heavens and the earth will pass away,” and this “present generation” will pass away, it makes sense to look for something that has permanence. Jesus says, “My words will not pass away.” His promises stand, no matter what changes take place in our world. So, we need to focus on them.

Revelation 20:1 to 21:2 gives us something to focus on. When the “end time” comes, God will dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. As a preliminary, God’s angel will master the “dragon.” The devil is free to tempt us only as long as God allows him. The martyrs and all who have been faithful to Christ will rise and “reign” with him. All the dead will be “judged according to each one’s conduct.” There will be nothing un-addressed, no loose ends. All the injustices that seemed to have impunity on earth will no longer be ignored. All things will be brought into balance and order. All lies, “spin” and cover-ups will be laid bare. Truth will prevail. Then there will be “a new heaven and a new earth.”

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

This vision of the “end time” is given to us. Very few have it. Even fewer think about it. That explains much. Our job, as stewards of the kingship of Christ, is to make it the inspiring, empowering goal of everything we do.

Initiative: Be the lookout. From the height of faith, see and say what is to come.

Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry

www.ImmersedinChrist.org