Pins of Light:Scattered hints to provoke thought and talk about God...
This bible blog was launched for Advent 2007, and began as a daily reflection on scriptural readings until Easter of 2008. Since every reflection posed a question to God, this initial portion of Pins of Light is called Questions for God.
From March 2008 to December 2009, Pins of Light has featured a weekly reflection on the Sunday readings.
Since 2008, Advent and Lenten recollections have also been conducted on line.
In September 2010, this web site with its new look launches as the Sunday bible blogs resume. I hope you enjoy reading them and stumble into some hints about God's whereabouts.
Nothing reminds me more of Your divinity than the mystery of the Trinity that we celebrate today: You as the One True God, but revealed by the Lord Jesus as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Given such a truth, I can't help but feel what the mystics have always known about You: Your transcendence and Your ineffability. As early as the 12th century, the Second Lateran Council has taught that any image or knowledge of God that we have is more unlike You than like You.
Meditating on this today, I sense a sudden and strange surge of reverence. Unfortunately, reverence can be a rare, unfamiliar feeling in this present age, when we run around all over the place believing we have the capacity to know everything and the permission to use everything for our ends.
I think You were trying to tell me something a few weeks ago when I watched the Japanese film called "Departures" ("Okurubito"), which had just won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year. The story revolves around Daigo, a young cellist who loses his job and thanks to circumstances as well as his own growing financial needs, ends up in the unlikely job of "encoffinments"--the ancient Japanese art of preparing corpses for cremation before the bereaved. Although initially squeamish about the prospect of bathing and grooming the dead, Daigo begins to appreciate the meaning of his work as he realizes how the ceremony enables him to care not only for the dead, but for the grieving as well.
More than anything else, what struck me about the film was its sense of reverence--as shown by Daigo in particular, but as found in the Japanese culture in general. Reverence is to know that something is greater than the self: The person is more than the corpse, but it is far from just an empty shell. The world is not just a place we live in; it is pulsing with mystery and if we watch closely, always inspires wonder. Other people don't just happen to be around and aren't just to be defined in terms of their relationship to us and our lives; each person is a profound mystery with an inner universe as vast as our external universe. And certainly You are far greater than any concept or metaphor that our limited reason can concoct, and all our concepts and metaphors put together only limp and fall short of the profound mystery of Who You are.
Dearest Lord, today teach me reverence for all the things that I did not create: for the tree, for the sky, for the all the persons who people my world. Most of all, teach me reverence for You, the Most Holy Triune God: You Who lie far beyond our concepts and metaphors, but mysteriously fall always within our reach. Amen.
How about posting a Quick Prayer here to share with others?
Note: You may want to watch this beautiful excerpt from "Departures," where on Christmas eve, Daigo takes out his childhood cello and plays "Ave Maria" for his boss and colleague. The clip shows how he gradually grows into his new job.
Today's Solemnity of Your Body and Blood reminds us how much more seriously you take something we take so much for granted: what it means to "take flesh," to "wear skin." Sometimes, especially when our bodies fail us, we can't help wishing them away. That was not the case with you, Lord. When you rose from the dead, you could have discarded your body, but didn't. Instead you chose to keep it, complete with all its wounds, so much so that today, in your glory, you continue to wear our skin.
I think one message we can get from today's feast is your nearness. Because you have a body like ours, you know what it means to have the sun on your face, to feel sweat on your skin. Like us, you know the pleasures we know: to feast on good food and good wine, to accept the touch of a mother, to receive encouragement through a good friend's tap on the shoulder. You also know the pains we know: the limits to one's strength, the waning of energy, tears blurring our vision, and the sting of freshly inflicted wounds.
So whether in pleasure or pain, in health or sickness, you are near because you've "been there, done that." And still not content with that, you didn't depart without leaving behind your body and blood in the Eucharist. Our faith insists that appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, every plain-looking wafer and every cup of that sweet wine raised in consecration at Mass are literally transformed into your very body and blood. What can be more intimate than to be fed your body and blood?
When I think about it, Christianity isn't a very spiritual religion. As the Jesuit activist/poet, Daniel Berrigan, wrote somewhere about being Christian: "It all comes down to this: Whose flesh are you touching and why? Whose flesh are you recoiling from and why? Whose flesh are you burning and why?" There's no going around flesh if we're serious about following you.
Dearest Jesus, thank you for insisting on wearing our skin for all of eternity. Forgive us for taking for granted your physical presence in us and among us. Grant us the eyes to recognize you not only in the Eucharistic host and wine, but also in our own bodies, especially the broken bodies of our brothers and sisters. Amen.
Feel like sharing a Quick Prayer on this feast of the Corpus Christi? It might lead another reader to pray.
"Do you not care that we are perishing?" Those words from your disciples as you lay sleeping in a storm-tossed boat that dark night make me think of the brewing turmoil in Iran.
That night, Lord, you stirred from your sleep. You rose and faced both wind and sea, and in a voice that summoned obedience, you commanded both to be quiet, to be still. And there was calm.
Lord, as I pray this moment, there has been a sea in turmoil in Iran. You know the story: The recent presidential election, the declaration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,the declaration of the incumbent president's victory, and the last six days of protests. Protests have been unfurling in the streets, and the movement has been called a sea of green, the color of opposition candidate, Hossein Mousavi. Their sea is far from calm.
On the evening of June 19, after their Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, declared the election a definitive victory of the incumbent president, shouts of "Allah-o Akbar" rose from the rooftops of Tehran. The desperation is heartbreaking, but the people's brave protests, now on its seventh day, despite the violent crackdown, continue.
Lord, hear their cry. Stir from your sleep. Rise and face their storm. Lord, walk on their sea of green! Walk with the people in green. Protect them, give them courage as they fight for justice. Out of your great love, bring peace, bring justice to the people of Iran. Amen.
How about a Quick Prayer? Let us pray for the people of Iran and join our voices to theirs as they shout to God for mercy and help. Note: This heartbreaking video clip is a poem about the shouts from the rooftop of Iran.
We have not one but two healing stories in today's Gospel passage, but the first--involving the woman afflicted with a twelve-year hemorrhage--strikes me. She fights her way through that crowd around you, and perhaps having no other way of connecting with you, reaches out to touch...your clothes.
Two strange things happen here that make me learn something new about you. First, the woman's belief verges on the superstitious! She tells herself, "If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured." It reminds me of the local Catholic practice of touching statues (For all we know, the woman with the hemorrhage is the origin of this custom). Immediately she knows it; she feels that the bleeding has stopped.
But what do you do? You reward her superstition. Later, you even call it faith! It seems to me that no faith is too crude or too childish for you. So those of us who pride ourselves in our subtle, sophisticated spiritualities can get a message or two here.
Strange thing #2: You don't will this particular healing. You don't even really know until after it occurs. It just happens! In fact, in what I think is one of the funniest scenes in the Gospel, your disciples stare at you with disbelief and maybe some exasperation when you turn to them in that crowd and ask them that impossible question: "Who has touched my clothes?"
The woman has stolen her cure from you, but when she finally steps forward to admit her theft, not only do you let her keep her stolen grace, but you also even praise her for what to me resembles superstition more than faith.
Lord Jesus, you're a strange God! But am I glad you are! Thank you for rewarding the woman's superstition and theft. I love it that you judge neither our primitive faiths nor our desperate needs. Remind me not to keep away from you just because I myself belittle my own lack of faith or reject my needs. Gaze upon us with the your usual kindness and mercy as we continue to stumble after you through this valley of tears, often clutching blindly ahead of us in the hope of touching even just the hem of your clothes. AMEN.
