The Temple

 Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days....(John 2:19)

And the apostle adds a comment:  By this He meant the temple of his body....

For the Jews, the temple was the center of life -- spiritual, yes, but also political, moral, social, educational.   When Jesus proclaimed, "The kingdom of God is among you," the Jews would have heard four things:  (1)  The 12 tribes would be gathered and re-united; (2) all nations would come to the temple of the Lord and "beat their swords into plowshares" ;  (3) the Temple would be cleansed, and (4) God would at last defeat His enemies.

By this He meant the temple of his body.....  In Jesus Christ, the Temple is restored and remade.  But there is more....St. Paul tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6).  The Complete Jewish Bible puts it this way: Don't you know that your body is a temple for the Ruach HaKodesh who lives inside you, whom you received from God?

The Ruach HaKodesh in Hebrew is the expression of God's breath (Ruach- spirit, breath, wind), the Spirit of holiness, of restoration, of renewal.  In the beginning, the Ruach -- the Spirit, the breath, the wind of God hovered over the chaos and spoke: LIGHT: BE!  And order, light, harmony began to re-fashion the abyss.  

With the Resurrection of Jesus, that Ruach  -- the breath of God -- returned to the earth, hovering over the chaos -- and began to restore harmony, order, and light.  The Temple of the Living God was established in the Person of His Son, and now all nations would stream to Him, beating their weapons into plowshares.  And we too, who are His temples because we have in us His Ruach HaKodesh -- His Spirit, His Breath -- are the sources of His Re-fashioning of the earth.  

Genesis tells us that we are made in His Image and Likeness because He breathed His Breath/Spirit/ Ruach into us.  And St. Paul in Galatians 5 tells us what that image and likeness consists of: The fruits of the Spirit are these: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long-suffering, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  These are the marks of the Spirit/ Breath of God/ Ruach dwelling in His temple.

Our world today is characterized by chaos.  But the Spirit of Jesus is in us to re-make that world, to cleanse it and restore it to the Temple of the Lord.  The Lord once allowed me to see myself (and others, also, of course) as a temple.  The outer courtyard was the courtyard of the Gentiles, who were welcome to enter there to pray to the God/Yahweh of the Jews.  The inner courtyard was for the Jews, the believers in the true God -- the place of acceptable sacrifice and true teaching.  The Holy of Holies was the dwelling place of God.

As we create space for all who enter our lives -- the courtyard of the Gentiles -- we draw them into the Presence of God through the Spirit who dwells in us and through the fruits of His Presence: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long-suffering, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  When we worship together with those who have the Spirit of God dwelling in them, we enter the courtyard of the Jews -- the believers in the One God.  And in the Body of Christ, we enter into the Presence of God -- the Holy of Holies..

From there, the nations will be united and beat their weapons into plowshares, God's enemies will be defeated,  and the earth will once again become a Temple where people will gather in peace and God will dwell among His people.

God's Agenda

 I guess most of us get up each day with some sort of agenda.  Lately, I have been starting a list early in the morning, since I can't seem to remember my priorities as the day unfolds and I grow increasingly tired.  

But slowly I seem to be learning that God also has an agenda for me each day, and the only way I can discern His agenda is to listen as well as to speak in my morning prayer time. And more and more, I am learning to listen peacefully to God's agenda early in the morning.  

One of my favorite prayers is the following;  Holy Spirit, think your thoughts in me until your thoughts become my thoughts.  I am trying to "lean into" the Holy Spirit to direct my daily activities.    Scripture tells us that Jesus rose early in the morning and went off by himself to pray.  In the Gospel of John, He says, "I do nothing on my own, but what I see the Father doing, I also do."  To see what God is doing, it seems that we must really cease for a period from our own agendas and "doing."

Even at the age of 12, Jesus knew He had to be about His Father's work. 

I think God never intended for us to stumble the best we can through life, and then to turn to Him only when our resources are depleted.  God tells Abraham in Genesis 17, "Walk before me and be perfect."  That phrase ("be perfect") puzzled me for years until I read that "perfect" can also mean "complete."  

Aha!  We are not finished products in our own right!  God breathed His Spirit/breath into Adam and Adam became a living being.  It is God's breath/Spirit in us that completes us; without that, we are continually gasping for breath in our lives, so to speak.  And God knows we feel it on a daily basis!

I find that when I quietly listen for God's agenda in my daily life, things seem so much easier and smoother.  Even menu-planning, my weekly and daily nemesis, seems to unfold without my usual hassle. It's not just about preaching the Gospel or serving the poor; God has a plan for the simplest activities of our daily lives.  Proverbs 4 says it best:

the path of the righteous is like the morning sun,
shining ever brighter til the full light of day.
But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; 
they do not know what makes them stumble.

[It's pretty clear from the Gospels that the words "righteous" and "wicked" do not refer to saints and sinners but rather to those who walk with Jesus and those who choose to walk away from HIm!]  So even we sinners can Walk before me and be perfect! if we are willing to listen.

A Conversation About the Creed

 We believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, 
of all that is visible and invisible....

Last night, during a meeting of RCIA, a class for those entering into the Catholic church, we had a video on the opening phrase of the Nicene Creed, formulated in 325 AD.  Catholics pray the Nicene Creed at Mass.  During the following discussion, one of the participants said, "We all believe the same thing; why keep shoving it down our throats again and again?"

I came home after the meeting and reflected long into the night:  is it really important to talk about the Nicene Creed, and if so, why is it important?

Immediately, two conversations came to mind.  The first was from a long-time friend, who said to me one day: "  I don't believe Jesus was divine; I think He just came from generations of a good family, and He was put to death because what He said made people mad."  This friend was raised in a Catholic family and attended Catholic grade school and high school.  So much for all of us believing the same thing!

The second conversation occurred in Jerusalem, in the Garden of Olives, looking across the valley at the Golden Gate and the Temple Mount.  The slope on that side of the valley is crowded with graves of both Jews and Christians who believe that when the Messiah comes (or returns), He will enter Jerusalem through the Golden Gate, and the dead will come out of their tombs to greet Him.  I mentioned that I would like to see the day when all those graves open and the dead arise.  The person to whom I was speaking, a lifelong Catholic, casually remarked, "Oh, I don't believe anything is going to happen to our bodies."  I was shocked into silence, as I thought of all the years this person has been attending Mass and saying the Nicene Creed at every Mass she attended:  I believe in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.

If it is indeed true that "we all believe the same thing" (and I am no longer sure that it is), then it is true only in our Western culture.  I recently returned from a trip to Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.  In that part of the world, in every city, the main attractions are the royal palaces, the Buddhist temples, and the Hindu temples --- all of which are filled with representatives of what they call "demons" and "gods."  In Buddhism, there is no mention of God, and Buddha himself is not considered a god, but only "enlightened," having risen to an extraordinary level of purification from the pollution of the world.

The "demons" in the Royal Palace of Bangkok are "mostly good, but maybe a little bad," according to the guide with a smile.  "Sort of the like the Greek gods?" I asked.  "Yes," she said, "they are protective spirits that guard the palace, and you don't want to anger them."  In one of the Vietnamese Hindu  temples, we climbed many, many steps (getting closer to heaven) to observe first of a kind of ziggurat (to get even closer to heaven) and then multiple mini-temples, or small shrines, each of which was dedicated to and housed a different diety.  According to one of our guides, Hinduism has 333 million dieties, so only the important ones have their own shrines.  In each shrine, Buddhist or Hindu, the visitor is required to remove both hat and shoes before entering.

When visiting a Catholic church in Vietnam, we were also required to remove our shoes and hats --- and then it struck me, "O no!  This is just one shrine among many.  To them, this is another temple, and one must show respect to whichever god inhabits the temple."  I finally realized the challenge of St. Francis Xavier and the other missionaries to tried to Christianize the Far East!

And I finally understood why the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church must have a creed, beginning with "I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth....."  To say those words in the countries I have visited could be very dangerous indeed!

Is Abraham a Template?

 Today I have more of a question than an answer.  In reflecting on the journey of Abraham, I asked myself if we could take Abraham's experience as a template of God's relationship with mankind.  In other words, does God reveal Himself in each person's life at some point, with an invitation to come out of our present situation to "a land which I will show you"?

I have read that faith is always based on an experience of love.  That is, we trust God and follow Him because we have first experienced in some way His absolute love and providence for us.  When we read the story of Abraham, we see not only the call of God to come out of paganism, but the providence of God in delivering Sarah from the harem of Egypt.  Later, we see the power of God on Abraham's behalf as Abraham sets out to deliver his kinsman Lot from the kings of surrounding cities.

In the New Testament Gospel of John, we see the first disciples encounter Jesus as He "sees" them for who they really are -- in their first encounter with them, He sees into their souls.  When He first meets Peter, He says, "You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas (Rock)."  When Jesus first meets Nathanael, He says, "Here is a true Israelite in whom there is nothing false."  "How do you know me?" asks Nathanael.  When Jesus replies that He saw Nathanael before Philip called him, Nathanael immediately recognizes who Jesus is:  "You are the Son of God; You are the king of Israel!"

Thomas Merton says that faith is the knowledge of God that is inseparable from an experience of love (The New Man, p. 71).  Abraham knew Who God Is because of God's love and providence for him.  Peter, Nathanael, Matthew, Mary Magdalene, and the other disciples encountered the personal love of God for them in the Person of Jesus.

So my question is this:  Does each person encounter in some way the revelation of God's love in his or her life?  Karl Rahner, the greatest theologian of the 20th century, asserts that we have encountered God in our lives, whether we recognize it or not.  "O yes," Rahner says, "you have encountered Him."  At this point, I need to re-read Karl Rahner for the 21st Century to recall the background and context for his statement, but I am intrigued with the question:  Is Abraham a template?  Does God reveal Himself to each person in some way?  

The Best Christmas Ever

 It's January 1, almost 4 a.m., and I'm sitting in the dark beside the Christmas tree with its deep red ornaments and scarlet ribbon.  Across the room is my creche set, highlighted with soft green lights and scented with handmade candles sent by my daughter.  It looks and smells like Christmas in this room.  Outside the window, the outdoor lights are still visible, the last ones in my neighborhood.  I had planned to leave them lit until January 6, when I take down the crib set, but I may cave in to social pressure before then.  

I had been traveling for a few weeks after Thanksgiving this year, so I missed most of the Christmas hype in stores and in the media this year.  No "Jingle Bells," no advertisements, no last-minute sales.....  Instead, I was traveling through Thailand and Vietnam, seeing all the Buddhist and Indian shrines, watching people come to worship the Buddha or their ancestors, or the 333 million gods of Hinduism.  And I could not help recalling the magnificent prologue to John's Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God....and the Word was God....In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it....The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world....He was in the world and though the world was made by Him, the world did not recognize Him.  Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, he gave the right to become children of God.....No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known.

I returned home two weeks before Christmas, and since the family had all agreed this year to not exchange presents, all I had to do was to put up the Christmas tree and the crib. I had put up the outdoor lights before I left, but did not activate them until my return.  Our holiday get-together was scheduled for the week after Christmas, so the burden of cooking and house cleaning was postponed until then.  I had ordered a meditation book called Welcoming the Christ Child with Padre Pio before I left, so the two weeks before Christmas was a time of relaxation and reflection for me.

By the time Christmas morning arrived, I was welcoming and rejoicing in the Gift of the Light of the World. I knew the Light had come; I was ready to celebrate it!  That night, the opening statement of the news anchor was, "Goodbye Christmas. Hello, Mardi Gras!"  Wait, What?  I thought we were going to celebrate the birth of Christ here.....the Light of the World!  Kawaanza lasts for a week ---- What about Christmas?  It's Over!  No celebration ---- it's over.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has never understood it.  The light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness instead.

I realized then how out-of-step it is to live the liturgical year.  Our church will be ablaze with Christmas trees, poinsettias, and lights until Jan. 6 --- the celebration of the Light revealed to the nations (Feast of Epiphany --- the three kings).  And I too will keep my lights and candles lit until then, putting them away reluctantly until next year.  

Sometimes I wonder how God feels about sending His Son into the world, and watching the lights go off the next day:  Christmas is over. Next!

A Voice in the Wilderness

 On this third Sunday of Advent, we read about John the Baptist who identified himself as "a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the path of the Lord."

And I wonder if all of us, despite our shortcomings and insufficiencies, could at least be "a voice," making clear to others what we have seen and heard of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Speaking not so much what we "believe" about Jesus, but rather telling of what we have experienced of Him.  I keep going back to Thomas Aquinas saying that man is a "knower," not a thinker.  That is, we know what we have seen, tasted, smelled, and touched more than what we have heard about from others.  

In his first letter, John the Evangelist says, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you may have fellowship with us.

It seems to me that people believe in Jesus at some point in their lives because of what they have experienced of Him.  Up to a point, we are Christians because of our culture, our inheritance, or our education.  But if we have not "seen with our eyes, touched with our hands," faith eventually becomes an abstraction non-competitive with the things we "know" for ourselves.

And that is where prayer becomes irreplaceable.  If our early faith has not drawn us to prayer, we have no relationship with God -- and thus we have not experienced His Presence and action in our lives.  And without seeing for ourselves what we have heard from others, we fail to believe and thus to trust. Our faith grows cold for lack of evidence.

C.S.Lewis as an atheist had often heard about belief from his friend Tolkein, but it was not until "the most reluctant convert in all of England" got down on his knees and began to pray that Lewis began to enter into a life-long relationship with God.  And as a result of that relationship, "surprised by joy," Lewis himself became a voice crying out in the wilderness, testifying to what he himself had seen and heard of the Divine.

It was the joy that Lewis experienced, the joy for which he had yearned his entire life, that convinced him of the reality of Christ.  It was what he himself had seen and heard, had touched with his own hands, that he proclaimed to the world.  So with all of us!

Knowing God

Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent (Jn. 17:3)

  I have written before about "eternal life," not as a series of unending days, but rather as a kind of vibrancy of life despite all else that human life may offer ---grief, sadness, boredom, poverty, etc.  The "pearl of great price" for which someone may give all that he has is a peace, joy, enthusiasm that over-rides daily vicissitudes.  And this eternal life is the gift of God given to us in Jesus!  It is nothing else but participation in divine life.

So the question today is how do we come to "know" God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ?  St. Thomas Aquinas says that man is a "knower," not a "thinker."  That is, while a great many people like to "think" God, there are a few --- let's hope a great many --- who actually "know" Him.  Over a period of a lifetime, they come to know Him in all the ways the Bible describes Him -- as their Shepherd, as a Shield, and as "the lifter of my head."  They come to know Him as a "rock," and a "hiding place," as Defender and Provider ("Give us this day our daily bread").  Above all, they come to know Him as Jesus revealed Him, as Father -- and Jesus as the Doorway to the Father ("No one comes to the Father but by Me!")

So how do we move from "thinking" God to "knowing" Him?  In this week's (Nov. 12) Sunday homily, Bishop Barron says that God is like a helicopter pilot looking for a place to land in our lives.  He is just waiting for us to clear a space for Him to land, to enter into our lives.  We tend to think that man has been looking for God, whereas God has been looking for us from the beginning.  We do not have to earn anything -- we just have to clear away enough of life's clutter to make an opening for Him to land.  

Usually, it is hardship or difficulty that creates the first space for God to enter --- when we have exhausted our own resources and run out of our own strength.  The moment we finally look up and say, "Help me!" is often the place of entry for God in our lives.  And when we begin to experience His nearness, His help, we begin to know Him.

In the desert of Arabia, the Egyptian slave girl Hagar encountered God.  Twice.  The first time, she had run away from the encampment of Abraham and Sarah because she was being mistreated.  But the angel of the Lord found her in the desert, and God promised her a great increase of descendants, just as He had promised Abraham.  At that time, Hagar gave God a name: You are the God who sees me!  She said, "I have now seen the One who sees me!"  She no longer "thought" about God; she had actually entered into a relationship with "the One who sees me."  She could live with confidence that she was seen and known by the living God.

Hagar's second recorded encounter with God comes in chapter 21 of Genesis, when Abraham sends her away because of conflict between the two women.  This time, "God heard the boy crying," and Hagar herself was sobbing. The angel said, "Do not be afraid, Hagar. God has heard the boy crying."  At that time, God (The One who sees me) provided water in the desert for her and her son.  Though Scripture does not record it, she may now have known God as "The One Who hears me!" (cf. Psalm 34).

If we are more confident that God is looking for a way to enter our lives, we may not have to wait for a disaster to open the door to Him.  Barron recommends 5 minutes a day to simply say, "I believe You want to come into my life!  I open the door now. Please let me know You as the One who sees me, the One who hears me!"