The World Was Younger Than Today

In the years before Covid19, we had the good fortune to celebrate Father’s Day with my son and his family.  The day was always made more special because it coincided with 2 June birthdays. Now, post Covid, we were able to celebrate in person again, although the children are no longer children; all,except on is in his/her 20’s. And their issues are far more complex now.  Although it was only four years ago, it seemed so long ago and far way and the world was much younger than today. 

As the proverbial “fly on the wall,” I  enjoyed listening to their repartee and marveled as to how well this all turned out. I realized that I became a better parent when I became a grandfather. As a grandparent I am more a spectator than an active participant and have the luxury of being able to sit back and observe how these scenes of life  all play out. Sure, I know some of the challenges my son and daughter-in-law face in rearing children are the same as the ones we and our parents faced, but the world and our culture are more complex today and the pressures on parents to manage these challenges are greater than the ones we faced. Our parents never faced Covid19 and the challenges that this dreaded virus has heaped on young families. The book has yet to be written but somehow it seems that it is all working out and that whatever changes that had to be made were made with insight and intuition and by the seat of our pants. 

As a “spectator” I am in awe as to how our son and daughter-in-law work through the endless issues that pop up on a daily, if not hourly basis, and I ask myself, “when did they learn to do all that; where did they pick up all the skills to handle this? I don’t think I would have done it as well.” I have learned so much about parenting in watching them and while it makes me feel good to think that there may be some imprinting going on, they are far ahead of where I was then.  

Life, wrote Kierkegaard, can only be understood backwards.  But it  can only be lived going forward.  

We see ourselves in our children almost as if we were watching an old home movie or looking in a mirror. Wouldn't it be great if we could see our lives and ways of relating to others play out in the life of Jesus? Every day we strive to be Jesus’ surrogates in all that we do. We don’t always succeed although being aware of when we slip is part of the journey.

Our task (Matthew 10: 37-42) is to consciously attend to the Christ in everyone. Christ in the stranger. Christ in the enemy. Christ in the friend. Christ in the spouse. Christ in our siblings. Christ in the politician who makes our blood boil. Christ in the disenfranchised. Christ in the “others.”

 

You Are What You Eat

 

Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…John 6:51-58  

Whoa!!! Imagine hearing these words for the first time without any previous knowledge of the Eucharist.  We know that some of those gathered in the crowd were startled by what Jesus was saying, to the point that they stopped following him. Jesus doesn’t tone down his rhetoric or even hint that he might be speaking metaphorically. No, he said what he did in the way he did so that his words would not be easily forgotten. He wanted to challenge his followers to process his words so that they would resonate in a place beyond the intellect. I wonder if after years of listening to so many Gospel readings and sermons on the Eucharist, have we become jaded to the true essence of their meaning?  

Imagine you are attending church for the first time as this passage is read!

Imagine hearing Jesus say these words. How would you react???  

Once again John relies on mystical words to speak to each of us in that place in which the personal images of reality and life itself reside. John invites us to close our eyes and picture what being in a relationship with God really means. Note, I use the word “picture,” not “understand,” in an effort to prompt our imagination and senses to feel the words as a palpable, sensory experience, and know what being in a relationship with God actually feels like, tastes like, and smells like. This is at the essence of our being and what we mean when we say “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God fully shared our humanity through Jesus as we through Jesus, fully share in God’s divinity. Anything less than that relationship with God would be reduced to mere acquaintance.  

St. Augustine used the phrase “visible words” to help explain the connection between the sacraments and our daily lives. Baptism and Communion are visible, physical manifestations of our faith. In other words, the sacraments are the embodiment of the gospel in the material form of water, bread, and wine. They serve as the physical presence of what we have heard and believe because we are physical creatures. And so the gospel is proclaimed so that we may hear it, and this very same gospel comes alive to us in the Eucharist as we taste, touch and feel it with our hands, our mouths and our bodies.