Wrapping Ourselves in Truth

 Yesterday I mentioned the Scripture from 3 John: I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth.  Someone unfamiliar with Scripture might rightly ask, as did Pilate: "What is truth?"  Someone once told me, "There is no truth, only stories we tell ourselves."   I think a version of that statement is, "There is no truth, only our perception of the truth."  

Scripturally, not only does Truth exist, but it has come to us in the Person of Jesus Christ:  I am...the Truth.  And not only does objective truth exist, but we can apprehend it -- Sanctify them by the truth; Your Word is truth (Jn. 17:17).  He intended that we walk, not in darkness, but in the Light.  Every child has the right to know what his Father expects of him, and God never intended that we should have to guess what pleases Him.  From the beginning, He was willing to reveal His heart, His mind, His soul to those who would listen to Him.  He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve; with Abraham, He said, "Walk in my presence and be perfect/complete."  In other words, those who will listen and walk with Him will know truth.  

Now "truth" is an abstract idea; we cannot know truth itself unless we know God Himself.  But knowing what has been given to us of God, we can even now begin to walk in the truth little by little.  One of the best ways to do this is by taking small bites of the Psalms until they become part of us.  When I visited the National Cathedral in Washington D. C., I found tiny silver bracelets with verses from the Psalms engraved into them.  I bought the one that said, "God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-ready help in distress" (Ps. 46:1).  Had I known then what I know now, I would have bought about 30 or more different bracelets.  I wore that one until it fell apart, until it became part of me.  Even now I can feel that bracelet on my wrist when I need it.  I literally wrapped myself in that truth until I knew it to be true.

Recently, a friend told me that she feared getting old, a realistic fear for all of us, without a doubt.  But I suggested she wrap Ps. 34:4 around her until its truth grew greater than her fear:  I sought the Lord and He answered me; from all my fears He delivered me.  Actually, that one psalm contains a number of verses that would deliver us from fear if we could only wrap them around our hearts and minds:

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them (7).

Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing. The lions grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing (9-10).

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (18).

A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all (19).

We don't need to read or to know the whole bible to begin to walk in the truth.  One or two verses will serve to keep us warm and well-fed if we clothe ourselves in the truth and eat it as our daily bread.

The Other "Lord's Prayer"

 People often request prayer, or I am often moved to prayer for others.  But then I begin to wonder how best to pray for them.  Not so much because God needs me to say the right words, but because I feel helpless and don't know what to say in the face of their need.  And then my not knowing becomes the subject of my prayer:  "Show me how to pray!"

And one day the thought came to me to study John 17, Jesus' prayer for his disciples the night before He died. It seemed to me that His prayer could become the pattern for my own:

I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.

First, gratitude for "those you have given me," for the richness of the gift You have given me all my life:  for parents, brothers and sisters, children, friends, business associates, neighbors, advisors, mentors, teachers, spouse .... once I begin to make a list, I am overwhelmed with gratitude, with thanksgiving for all I have been given through these, the ones the Father has given to me.  So my prayer begins with thanksgiving for the person I am praying for.

...they are still in the world, and I am coming to you.  Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name---the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.....I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. ...My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

Jesus prays that those he loves will be protected by the power of the Name, just as he has been protecting them by that name all this time. How many times have we been protected by the prayers of our parents, our teachers, our priests, of those who love us and pray for us?  We cannot know the answer to that question now, but I suspect it will be revealed to us in the next life.  And so, after thanksgiving, I pray for protection for those I love -- for their physical safety and health, for their spiritual safety and inner balance, or connection with God. 

Scripture tells us, "The Name of our God is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe" (Prov. 18:10).  All of Psalm 20 probably constitutes the best prayer we can pray for those we love: 

May the Lord answer you when you are in distress; may the Name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion. May he remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings.  May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed. We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.  May the Lord grant all your requests...Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

So when Jesus invokes the Name (ha Shem, in Hebrew) of His Father and God over his disciples, he is giving them the protection of a strong tower because he knew that they would be hated, even as He was hated.

Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth...for them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

 St. John the Evangelist says, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth" (3 Jn. 4).  C. S. Lewis says that our joy in God's word, or instruction, is like that of someone who finally steps on solid ground after a disastrous shortcut slogging through muddy fields. And the beginning of John's Gospel testifies, "the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world."  And so, finally, I pray that those I love will walk in the truth, find solid ground, and rejoice in the light that gives life, strength, and joy to those that find it. 

 Thanksgiving, protection, physical and spiritual health, and truth -- all based on the prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper for his friends.  We cannot do better than that!

How Do I Build More Faith?

 "How do I build more faith?" someone asked this week.  It was a question I had asked myself many years ago:  "How do I GET this faith that everyone says is so important?"  

We recognize that faith is a GIFT of the Holy Spirit.  It must be given; we do not manufacture it, no matter how hard we try.  So then, somehow, we must get close to, or even into, the Holy Spirit, Who is the Father of Faith.  His job is to awaken in us the divine gifts of faith, hope, and love.  

"I will not leave you orphans," said Jesus at the Last Supper.  "I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me...if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (Jn. 14).

According to Bishop Robert Barron, faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God.  It is an openness to what God will reveal, do, and invite.  Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, we can and do believe that God is there with us, present to us, and if present to us, then acting in us, for us, and with us.

"Does God care if we get a parking place or not?" someone once asked me.  The implication here is that God has bigger things to think about than what we might need at the moment.  But how important is that parking place to us?  If we are driving around the doughnut shop six times praying for someone to pull out and leave space for us, well..... But if we have a doctor's appointment and a sick child in the car, I think it is fair to say God is with us and for us.  God does not have "bigger" things to think about than the safety and protection of His children.  The parable of the prodigal son shows us the Father on the roof of his house, anxiously looking down the road for the return of His son who "was lost and has now returned to us."

When we think about our own children, even our adult children, nothing is more important to us than what they are experiencing in their lives.  Wherever they are struggling or hurting enters our hearts; we have no "bigger" concerns than their welfare.  And Jesus, at the Last Supper, with so much tenderness toward his friends, promises that He will send the Holy Spirit to be with them when He cannot.  

If we are to acquire this trust in the presence of God in the smallest details of our lives, this radical openness to what God will do for us, in us, and with us, I think maybe the best place to begin is by reading the Gospel of John, especially chapters 13-16, the Last Supper discourse.  Jesus begins by washing the feet of the disciples.  What a small gesture with such great import!  Can we imagine Him washing our feet?  Bathing our souls?  Pouring ointment on our open wounds?  God With Us -- Emmanual.  He is here, with us.  He still does what He did then.  Are we open to what He will do, what He can do?

We ask for what we need, for what we want, but we believe that He can and will do what is best for us, as a good physician, as a good mother would for her children.  

Is the scripture of divine origin or of human origin?  This may be the first question we must answer.

If it is of divine origin, if it is indeed the living word of God, then we need to embrace it, read it with whatever "faith" we have.  As we read it, we begin to believe it.  As we believe it, the Truth begins to form and re-form our minds and hearts.  If we allow it to re-shape us, we begin to trust what it says -- that God sent His Son to be present to us through the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Then we become curious as to what this Spirit will do in our lives; we begin to believe that He might indeed really be with us and in us and for us.  And if present, then acting in us, for us, and with us.  And so, then, faith at last!

Reprogramming Our Minds Through Scripture

 "Why is this happening to me?"  

"It's always something!"  "I can't get a break."  

"I am always worried about...."

Our minds are always in motion, but often what they are producing is the "thorns and thistles" I wrote about yesterday, the ones God mentioned to Adam in Genesis 3.  We eat our daily food while wrestling with the negativity of the thorns and thistles of our minds. But God's plan is to redeem us from that curse of Adam and to renew our minds with love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, creativity, and so forth.

"You are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which He prepared for us in advance" (Ephesians 2).  In another place, Paul says, "You are God's field, God's building."  Now when I am working in my garden, I don't sow seeds of destruction and aggressive weeds, but rather those of beauty, order, and delight.  In fact, I am most busy weeding out the things that threaten my handiwork.  Nor does a builder allow crooked and misshapen beams and weak foundations to undermine his work.  

When the Holy Spirit comes, His first mission is to "convict the world of sin" --- that is, to point out the things that are ruining God's workmanship in us: the crooked beams, the weak foundations, the aggressive weeds overtaking the garden.    Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God as a mustard seed that becomes a large tree, welcoming the birds that dwell in its branches.   The seed of that kingdom is planted in each one of us, but it is daily threatened by the negativity of our minds, of the media, of the thorns and thistles of our lives.  Where does the work of "weeding" take place for us but in Scripture?

I sought the Lord and He answered me; from all my fears He delivered me! (Ps. 34).

I will take shelter under the shadow of His wings until the disaster has passed me by (Ps. 57:2)

Surely goodness and kindness will follow me, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Ps. 23).

Little by little, we begin to believe and to recite these truths to ourselves, weeding out the destructive thoughts that threaten to overwhelm and defeat our joy.  It is like cool water to a thirsty soul or dry land!

When we keep our kingdom trees watered and well-tended with Scripture, the branches lush and green, others are drawn to our comforting shade, just as we are drawn to theirs.  We nurture the kingdom of God through prayer, through Scripture, and through fellowship with others whose mind and hearts and wills are well-watered by the Spirit of God.  After promising the woman at the well a spring of  "living water" (John 4), Jesus also tells his disciples that out of their bellies will flow rivers of living water (John 7).  A spring waters our personal lives; a river or stream flows out of us to others.  In Sirach 24, Scripture is compared to the 4 sparkling rivers that originally watered the Garden of Eden, before rain came upon the earth: 

  All this is true of the book of the Most High's covenant...It overflows, like the Phison, with wisdom--like the Tigris in the days of new fruits.  It runs over like the Euphrates, with understanding, like the Jordan at harvest time.  It sparkles like the Nile with knowledge, like the Gihon at vintage time.  The first man never finished comprehending wisdom, nor will the last succeed in fathoming her.  For deeper than the sea are her thoughts; her counsels, than the great abyss.

Now I, like a rivulet from her stream, channeling the waters into a garden, said to myself, "I will water my plants, my flower bed I will drench"; and suddenly this rivulet of mine became a river, then this stream of mine, a sea.  Thus do I send my teachings forth shining like the dawn, to become known afar off. 

Yesterday I quoted Mark 4 about the farmer who planted seed in his garden and slept and woke and the seed flourished he knew not how.  When we begin to read Scripture for ourselves, the seed grows; our hearts and our minds are watered; we know not how.  But the seed, watered by the Holy Spirit, "accomplishes the purpose for which [God] has sent it"   (Is. 55), producing fruit in us.  We do not see it growing, but trust me, others will! And the negativity, fear, and anxiety that daily threaten our joy will be gradually weeded out of our lives.

Reprogramming Our Earth Through Scripture

 In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 4, we read of Jesus teaching about the Word of God:  "This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how.  Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come."

That parable is immediately followed by the famous one about the mustard seed....but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.  

Anyone familiar with the Old Testament might connect Jesus' parables about the Word of God growing and producing fruit with the passage from Isaiah 55:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.  Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. 

In other words, the Word that comes forth from God will reverse the curse that Adam/the man brought upon the earth/adamah:  Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the plants of the field through the sweat of your brow.....

There is a remedy for the "painful toil" we suffer all the days of our lives.  God has not left us alone in our suffering.  As early as Genesis 6, we find Lamech naming his son "Noah," which means "comfort," because "he will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed." The same Hebrew root that means "comfort" or "comforter" reappears after the  Babylonian Exile when the Jews begin to rebuild their city, their temple, their culture under the direction of a man called "Nehemiah"/comfort.

Finally, after Jesus' life, death, and resurrection ("Behold, I make all things new!"), He sends the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to renew the earth, beginning with our hearts and minds and souls.  That renewal extends from us to our very planet, as Pope Francis and other popes have again and again reminded us in their encyclicals, especially Laudato Si .  Just as Adam's estrangement from the Spirit of God damaged the earth, so our connection with the Spirit renews the earth.

Why read Scripture?  Because "every word that comes forth from the mouth of God" begins to re-create and renew not only our minds and hearts and hearts but also our very earth.  The same Word that created from chaos (Light! Be!) now re-creates a new heavens and a new earth through a renewed mankind, a new creation born from the Second Adam, Jesus Christ.  We do not realize what is happening to us as we re-program our hearts and minds through Scripture, (while we sleep and rise again day after day), but one day, when the ear is ripe, we harvest the fruit it has produced in us.  

More about this tomorrow, God willing.