Who Touched Me

 

In January 2018, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column entitled “Now Is the Time to Talk About the Power of Touch.” Brooks wrote: “Emotional touch alters the heart and soul in ways that are mostly unconscious. It can take a lifetime of analysis to get even a glimpse of understanding.” 

There could hardly be a better introduction to today’s Gospel. So many times when we hear this Gospel, we focus on the woman’s healing and the little girl’s resuscitation, but as Mark tells the story, those are only the backdrop to what’s going on. In this account, Mark mentions touching seven times. (Mark 5:21-43)

Mark builds today’s Gospel around two subjects: a father’s request for the healing of the daughter of a synagogue official, and the healing of the woman with a chronic hemorrhage. In between the father’s request and the girl’s rising, Mark describes both “meaningless” and “healing” touch. Meaningless touch occurs when a group becomes a crowd and tries to move en masse. The crowd’s attention is focused on its goal and who bumps into whom is of no account. That’s how the disciples saw this walk with Jesus; they were on the way to the synagogue official’s house and their intention was to remain near and see what would happen. Jostling was inconsequential as long as they could maintain a good viewing position.

But the crux of the story focused on the woman they didn’t even notice, the one who had suffered for 12 years — symbolically forever. Mark subtly leads us through her journey of faith. First, she had heard about Jesus. What she heard sparked her hope and kindled her faith. Like someone who approaches God based on God’s merciful reputation rather than personal knowledge, she snuck up behind Jesus, believing that simply touching his cloak would save her. She was right. Just coming in contact with him healed her infirmity. But for Jesus that was not enough. Jesus was not teaching theology or representing a distant benevolent miracle-working deity; Jesus was bringing people into God’s kingdom, the real presence of his loving Father for whom all things were possible.

Jesus perceived that someone in the crowd had touched him for who he was to enter into personal relationship. By calling her “daughter,” Jesus assured her that she could go in peace, her affliction was healed by her faith. The bold woman Jesus called “daughter,” reminds us that if we will risk reaching out in hope, the results can be beyond our imagining just another curious onlooker in the bustling crowd. She sought him out and her faith was so strong that she
believed that simply touching Jesus’ garment she would be cured.

(adapted from the “Power of Touch," Mary M. McGlone, CSJ NCR, June 15-28, 2018)

What are you afraid of?

 

What are you afraid of? Lord you have to be kidding might have been our response. These men are skilled fishermen caught in the storm of their lives; their boat is about to capsize and despite all their experience, they are unable to take control and fear for their lives. And Jesus, who has done marvelous, mystical things on behalf of others,... is sleeping.

In our Gospel, (Mark 4:35-41), it’s hard to imagine that Jesus’ response and questions to the apostles were not rhetorical: Quiet! Be still!” Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?

We know that parables were used by Jesus to get us to think, expand our frame of reference and perhaps shake us up a bit. This story while not necessarily a parable, fits the bill. It does shake us up a bit. How would we have behaved as characters in this story? How would we have responded to Jesus’ question? What would it be like to trust our ability to have faith in the midst of overwhelming, and in the apostles’ case, incapacitating fear?

Have you ever gotten to a point in your life where you were powerless to control and take charge of a serious life-impacting situation? I can recall a number of times when I was confronted with having to make decisions that I knew would alter my and my family’s lives forever. These were not easy and options were very limited. In all cases, fear of the unknown resulted in feelings of helplessness, bordering on paralysis…there was no place to hide…no one to whom I could turn.

Fear or suffering gets us to a place in which our nerves are raw and exposed and that place between us and the bottom is very thin. This thin place seems to minimize the semi-permeable membrane that serves as a barrier between us and God. If we are open and receptive, in time we will hear or feel his prompting and finally be able to overcome our immobility and we begin to move. Sometimes it takes minutes, days, weeks…or even years.

Jesus’ lesson for his apostles in the midst of the storm is to trust in God. The storm will pass and we will “somehow” manage to make it through, different from the way in which we “entered,” transformed, with insight and a greater inner experience of God in us than we ever had before.

Albert Nolan writes that “God is closer to me than I am to myself. God is one with me and with you…If God is closer to me than I am to myself and we are in some profound sense one, then I have nothing to fear. I will be cared for at all times and in all circumstances. Nothing can really harm me and whatever happens will be for the best. I am loved beyond measure because I am one with the whole mystery of life.” ( Jesus Today, A Spirituality of Radical Freedom. p 143)

To What Shall We Compare the Kingdom of God?

 

In one of the early scenes in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Billy Bigelow sings There’s a hell of a lotta stars in the sky and the sky’s so big the sea looks small; two little people you and I, we don’t count at all. Hammerstein knew as he wrote the lyrics that Billy was wrong; we do count. We do make a difference in the world.

Mark makes the point in his metaphorical reference to the tiny mustard seed. Despite its size and unremarkable beginning, the plant grows without effort or will. The sower in the parable doesn't even water or weed the field! The sower just sows and goes about his business while the earth gives of itself enabling the plant to grow organically and send out its branches. The kingdom of God like the mustard seed, grows organically. And inevitably, as day follows night, God's hidden, mysterious work plays out in the world… and in us. Mark 4:26-34

God is in all things and the seed of His incarnation in the universe is love. God is Love. Despite man’s efforts, the future of the earth, therefore, lies not in science and technology, but in the spiritual power of faith and the power of love. We are born out of love, we exist in love, and we are destined for eternal love. We are transformed as we continually “reinvent” ourselves through love. The love of God, as with the tiniest of seeds, grows beyond anything we can possibly imagine. It grows, roots, invades and becomes all encompassing. 

Our presence in the world matters as we pick up where Jesus left-off centuries ago.  The Christ of the physical universe, the Christ of all humanity, the Christ of all religions is not a static figure, like a goal post with an endpoint in mind. We, like the incarnation of God in us, are constantly evolving, expanding our reach beyond anything imaginable and invading the Kingdom like the invasive mustard seed. (Adapted from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Evolving the Universe, June 8, 2018.)

Do this in memory of me

 

How often have we said the Creed and breezed through the line “I believe in the Communion of Saints” without giving it much thought? Sure it’s a phrase that we have heard and repeated throughout our lives without really thinking about it as more than just a line in a prayer.

The early Christians referred to all members of the community as “saints,” not necessarily because they achieved moral excellence, but because they were made “holy” by belonging to a “group” whose lives were connected in serving God. In this sense community and communion are synonymous with church which goes beyond a mere place of worship.

The Communion of Saints like the vine and the branches, connects all people in present time with those who came before, and those have yet to come...it’s an eternal continuum. God is love. God is eternal. Love is eternal. When we love one another. We share the presence of God in us with one another. The ancient Sanskrit word, Namaste is traditionally used at the end of a yoga practice. However, its meaning goes beyond that of a salutation. In a spiritual sense we acknowledge the presence of God in all creation: The Divine in me bows to the Divine in you. Namaste!

Yet, when we think of Communion it’s only natural for us to think of the Eucharist as the sharing of the Lord’s Supper with one another. When we recite the line in the Creed, "I believe in the Communion of Saints" we remember that we are sharing God’s love and when we receive and give the Eucharist we share His love... in memory of Him. (Mark 14:12-16,21-26).

In this dynamic act of sharing, the presence of the Trinity becomes clear to us: Love is in us and shared through us for Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus name, Amen.

It is more than just the line in a prayer, isn’t it?

My Prayer to the Holy Trinity

 

Dear God, I don’t want to pass the buck but your being within me hasn’t been discussed too often or too clearly. I hate to sound critical but this doctrine on the Indwelling has been passed over rather superficially in my early religious training. I never heard this from the nuns in grade school or the brothers in high school.

Yet Lord, all the while, deep down I wanted your love and the reassurance of your love as I always tried to earn it. So you can see why your Indwelling presence strikes me as strange and foreign.  Now I’m being told that while they are beautiful and comforting, it’s not necessary to say the prayers I was taught and had memorized whenever I want to speak with you. No, rather I should converse naturally, in a familiar and relaxed way as if you’re “one of the family” because you Eternal Three, have made your home within me. (Matthew 28:16-30)

Of course I hesitate. My religious training emphasized that you were the one who would punish me if I even talked in Church... and as a youngster I remember confessing it. It was a sin. I was trained to be meticulously respectful when I came into your presence, as if your presence was only in my Church. (I remember feeling guilty for a long time when Sister Janice caught Ralph and me playing the theme from “Dragnet” on the organ in the choir loft, one Saturday afternoon after “confession.” Who knew she was preparing the sacristy for Sunday Mass! I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to face her wrath on Monday or roast in hell forever?) Now, I’m being told that your presence is within me! And I’m supposed to be comfortable with you. I feel as though I should hold my breath.

Dear God, now I’m learning not to think of grace as the absence of sin but as a gift of your presence, Father, Son and Spirit within me.  And that you are closer to me than I am to myself and that you want to be for no other reason except that you love me. That is so beautiful that I really want to hold on to this feeling forever.

I’m trying to understand that the more aware, conscious, alert, and attentive I am to your triune presence within me, the more I will find you in all things. Dear God, I really do want this.

Frankly, I must admit that in the past I hadn’t given much thought to your presence, your intimacy, you activity within me. What a love you must have for me! A genuine, boundless, omnipotent, all-present, eternal, home love within me! I certainly need a mature faith for this. I no longer can go just gliding along the surface of my old religious practices anymore, can I?

Thank you Lord.

In the Name of the Father, from whom we came and to whom we are going, and to the Son, in whom we find our true self, and to the Holy Spirit, the divine aliveness in our innermost life. Amen                                                                                            (John 3:16-18)

(adapted from  Ronald T. Haney SJ, God Within You, Mysticism for the 21^st Century, pp. 150-151)

He will take from Me and declare it to you

Pentecost preserves the memory of Jesus through the Holy Spirit as our community’s faith is both restored and renewed in breadth and depth through our love for one another. God and Love cannot be contained and must be shared. God is love.

David Steindl-Rast writes in Deeper than Words that The Holy Spirit is the awe-inspiring power of life and love. We differ only by the degree to which we open ourselves to this power. If we patiently cultivate courage and openness, we will become more and more aware of the Spirit which allows us to know God within.

In our Creed when we proclaim our belief in the Holy Spirit, we acknowledge the Trinitarian God as the ‘Father,’ the ultimate mystery from whom we come and to whom we are on our way; the ‘Son,’ in whom we find our true Self; the ‘Spirit,’ the divine aliveness within our innermost life, Here we touch upon the very core of faith.

We are charged with remembering all that Jesus lived while he was with us. ( John 15:26-27 Acts 1)The Spirit is the ultimate power of the Gospel through which the Word becomes flesh in us, and are no longer just words. We become those words and they define who and what we are. We remember not as if it were yesterday but because it is today; we live the memory now and again and again.

“When we remember, we leave the present for the past. To say it better, we bring the past into the present and give it life alongside the tangible realities we are compelled to consider. Not physical presence but love leads us to live with this remembered person even in his/her absence. When love is strong, the memory of this may be even more dear and more real than the reality of those who are present. Our memory of another confers the present upon him, gives him further life in our life, and keeps a moment of the past from drifting away or fading into death.

We are fed and nourished by communion of life in which our lives intersect in memory and merge into a common experience. No lover forgets. No beloved is forgotten. The memory of love is life; the memory of another becomes ourselves. So when the communion of believers remembers Jesus, Christ is present and is brought into the present with his grace by the power of the Spirit…The gift of the Spirit is fidelity to the memory of life’s mystery and confidence in the mystery of its future.” (Anthony Padovano, Dawn without Darkness)


When you're awake, the things you think
Come from the dream you dream
Thought has wings, and lots of things
Are seldom what they seem

Sometimes you think you've lived before
All that you live to day
Things you do come back to you
As though they knew the way

That they all may be One

 

John proclaims the Divine presence of God in Jesus in his very first Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God… And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And now, as he announces the end of his physical presence as the incarnation of the Father on earth, Jesus passes the baton to us. How beautiful it is to hear Jesus pray for his apostles, not alone in a garden or in the desert but in their very midst. It really is nothing short of astonishing to imagine this gospel as a beautiful model for us. In this Gospel of John (John17: 11-19) there is no request for Jesus to “teach us how to pray,” but rather a beautiful prayer for the protection of those Jesus loved as he was preparing to physically leave this world. This is the Lord’s Prayer according to John.

Holy Father, I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. 

Here John relies on mystical words that speak to us in a place in which personal images of reality and life itself reside. John invites us to picture what being in a relationship with God really means. Note, I did not say “understand,” but rather, I used the word “picture” in an effort to prompt our imaginations and all our senses to feel the words as a palpable experience, and know what being in a relationship with God actually feels like, tastes like, and smells like. It’s at the essence of what we know when we say “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God shared our humanity fully through Jesus as we through Jesus, share fully in God’s divinity. Anything less than this relationship would be considered to be a just a mere “acquaintance” of God.