The Clueless Disciples in Mark 10

Sunday morning.    Use your imagination to make up for the limitations of the camera!

The Clueless Disciples in the 10^th Chapter of Mark

Once when preaching before a group of religious women, I asked which of the four gospels was their favorite.   Practically to a person, they chose the gospel of John.   My own preference is the more primitive gospel of Mark.   I find it certainly more direct, and perhaps more urgent and honest.  Today and on recent Sundays we have been reading a section of Mark’ gospel that underlines what difficulties Jesus has with his chosen friends.   Later in this gospel story, in the time of crisis we know that his disciples sleep when he asks them to pray but worse yet they absolutely abandon him and let him get arrested alone.  Even their leader in the person of Peter denies in public that he even knows Jesus.

But Mark gives plenty of evidence early on that this abandonment will happen.   In this section of the gospel that we read today we sense a disconnect with Jesus, a lack of courage and even loyalty.   This section is probably months before the time of crisis.   In deed Jesus astounds the disciples with his manifestations of power over physical sickness and what the gospel sees as diabolical possession.  But, on the other hand, Jesus seems powerless in his struggle to get even his friends to understand him.

In these chapters eight, nine and ten, bracketed by his healing of the blind, Jesus three times tells virtually the same story revealing that he is not some worldly hero. He tells his disciples directly that he will be humiliated and executed.  Indeed he tells them that his Father in heaven will raise him from the dead.  But the disciples three times are blind to his plan and witless.  They embarrass him with their ignorant, hard-headed responses.   With Jesus first revelation of his death, Peter recklessly tells Jesus how they will prevent it.  The second time they do not know what to say and wind up bickering among themselves about who is the greatest among them.  

And today we read about the third time.    Here James and John (who much later turn out to be leaders) sidle up to Jesus and quietly propose that they be the ones chosen to get the best seats at Jesus’ right and left in the coming Kingdom.   Oh, they know about the best seats and they are willing to say that they will drink from the same cup as the one from which Jesus drinks.   But later the argument among all the disciples is about the arrogance of these two who seem to think that they have special rights of friendship with Jesus.

The disciples in these responses to Jesus’ honest and even shocking revelations show themselves as shameless.   No wonder, then, that later in the time of crisis they all refuse to drink the cup that Jesus drinks.   Later the places at the crucified Jesus’ right and left are taken by two thieves.  Even Peter who vowed allegiance completely loses his professed nerve.  Mark notes that a few of Jesus’s female disciples stand by from a distance and are present at the crucifixion.  But the men are absent.

It is not difficult to imagine these young men, and they are even some of them what we would call teenagers, totally perplexed.  They are like so many young people today filled with desire to be courageous, and loyal and honest but struggling to understand the price of practicing these things in a world filled with tragedy and sin.

To their credit, these young men do what I have seen other groups of young men do, when they are angry or perplexed or greatly disappointed.   They stick together…maybe, yes, out of fear for themselves, or out of sorrow, or out of an inability to discover any other path.   Yes, maybe out of desperation.  But the disciples stuck together and waited in hope that the promises made to them might be fulfilled. 

I have seen this sticking together among the young, a gathering in response to tragic deaths of their young friends.  Once at the funeral of a popular young man killed on the streets of North Philadelphia the teenage boys and girls were keening with grief and clinging to one another to keep from collapsing.    I also saw a different kind of gathering no less emotional more recently among football team members of Ryan Gillyard, the St. Joseph’s Prep player who died suddenly on the field last April.  The team dedicated this season to him and they will play their hearts out in his memory.

We in the Church in recent years have had reason to be embarrassed and perplexed, reason simply to abandon one another in our shame.  To our credit, though, we have come together in so many ways and pledged ourselves to greater vigilance and care for our children.   Hundreds of thousands of teachers and youth club leaders decided not to turn away from their callings but have strengthened themselves and one another in their ability to care for the young.  

Just as the disciples stuck together in their time of confusion and looked even blindly at first for the promises of Jesus’ kingdom, so, too, let’s stick together despite some inability to see what God is doing among us.   Mark’s gospel is clear.   The power of the risen Jesus is more than enough to restore those who are disciples to those youthful virtues of courage, loyalty and integrity.  We, too, have every reason to expect the risen Jesus to bless us with the graces that we desire.

Church of my Childhood

Yesterday the church of my childhood, Immaculate Conception in Jenkintown, PA., began its sesquicentennial jubilee celebration.   As I had been in the Church recently for a funeral, the pastor, Msgr. David Diamond, found out about my connection and invited me to the opening Mass of the jubilee year.   At that altar (in the old configuration) I learned the Latin responses of the altar server and I remember early Christmas day Mass kneeling with other kids at that altar rail.   Yesterday, of course, the servers were both boys and girls and all was in English.  

The windows along the nave are all of this pattern.  Lighting in this church as in many is much improved and even the stain glass windows looked more brilliant than they were seventy years ago.

I thought someone in the crowded congregation might come up to me and remember my parents or our name.   Nobody did but some recent acquaintances of mine from the Prep.   I, of course, remembered my parents and siblings always there on Sunday.    After Mass we bought the breakfast cinnamon buns at the bakery across the street (now something else).   And I remembered names of our classmates: Hentz and Fox and Bailey and so forth.

Morning, October 14, 2015. Jesuit Center, Wernersville, PA.

The colors in these photos are a digital adaptation of the true colors but I like their view of what I saw this morning! 

October 14, 2015

From me, the new guy at the Jesuit Center:

Dear Friends,

This autumn of 2015 is the second time in my life that I have been the “new kid on the block” here at what is now the Jesuit Center.  My first years as a Jesuit were spent here at what was then our Jesuit Novitiate.  I remember especially the winters when we novices had plenty of snow to shovel.    This year I look forward to the winter since I am happily free at my age of that duty!  

God has been constant in so many ways but just as I have changed over fifty years, so, too, this treasured Jesuit site in Wernersville is marked most clearly by a change from Novitiate to a Center for Spiritual Growth for men and women of all ages and callings, a facility for retreats and spiritual programming of varying types, no one size fits all.

The elements of the Jesuit retreat experience known as the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius are essential to every Jesuit enterprise.   In Jesuit schools throughout the world we seek for our students the grace of self-knowledge, especially the knowledge of God’s personal love, and the grace of self-reflection as one called to respond to this love.   In that way at least my last thirty years of service in schools, a time long enough to have been amazed to watch pre-K toddlers mature even to Ignatian educators, prepares me for service at the Jesuit Center.  

The Jesuit Center continues to enrich the growth and mature commitments of thousands each year.   The health and vigor of our staff and resources allow us to plan for Ignatian retreat ministries far into the future.   Even now, for example, we already have retreats and programming in the planning stages through the next three years.  As our skills and resources flourish over these years, so, too, they will offer seamless service to the future of Christ and His people

I ask you to pray for our resident Jesuits, for our lay men and women colleagues, and for all those whom God will invite to join us in an experience of divine grace in the coming months.  

Cuadrado-Williams Wedding Oct 10 Tenth Presbyterian Church Phila

I had the pleasure of meeting this couple when they attended Saint Joseph's University back in the last decade.   This wedding service followed the song " 'Tis a gift to be simple."    His dad was Adam's (Cuadrado) best man and her mom was Meghan's (Williams) matron of honor.   (Pictured also are Adam's mom and Meghan's brother.)

But the simplicity only amplified both the happiness of the couple with their infectious laughter and the directives of the official minister.   He made the Christian nature of the union clear calling on Adam to be like Christ in his sacrifice of himself and Meghan to be as glorious and dedicated as Christ's Church.

I was blessed to be present and to witness some of the fruits of their time together at SJU.

Sunrise over Reading shielded in the clouds.

JESUIT CENTER PLAYS HOST TO CYO CROSS COUNTRY MEET

 At the sound of the gun 3rd and 4th graders begin their heat.

Fortunately the sun made an appearance and graced the second annual CYO Cross Country tournament held Sunday afternoon on our rolling hills, a suitable setting for obvious reasons.   

Five separate groups of runners based on their ages ran separate races.   Even K kids ran in a shortened version of the course while the 7th and 8th graders ran in the longer 2 mile course.  Watching the thin line of weightless boys and girls run up the hill from Our Lady's Grotto down among the trees led me to think of the many athletic uses to which the property could be dedicated!

The Jesuit Center cloister looking out on a rainy Saturday (not to mention Tues through Friday!)   But this Sunday morning is brighter and a sunny week ahead is in the forecast.

Today I am preaching about marriage.   There is a coincidence between the regular Sunday readings on marriage and the opening in Rome today of the Bishops' Synod on Families.

Sunday, October 4,   Mark 10  2-16  Marriage and Divorce

Perhaps the Spirit or even the Bishops planned that today’s particular readings would be part of the liturgy on the very day of the opening of the Synod of Bishops that is discussing family life.    That day is today in Rome.    In Rome they read as we do from Genesis.  Genesis reveals that the possibility of mutual relationships between male and female completes God’s creation of the human person.   Not only that but where possible the male-female relationship includes the responsibility of procreation.   In Rome, too, they read as we do from the gospel of Mark about Jesus’ understanding of the permanent nature of marriage.

Pope Francis while in Philadelphia, greatly inspired by testimony from family members about their human relationships, talked to all of us family members, and all of us belong to families of one kind or another.  He talked about love for one another, about struggles in prayer and in service. He called the family a “domestic church” and encouraged family members to engage in those countless small acts of kindness that are the signs of love that imitate the generosity of God.

The meeting starting today in Rome will be addressing chiefly all of the pastoral issues related to the fundamental Catholic doctrine expressed clearly by Pope Francis about the permanence of marriage.   This doctrine is an ideal that flies in the face of so much that happens in human life but Jesus acknowledges that any historic gestures supporting the notion of impermanence are related to “hardness of heart”.   He also elevates the permanence of marriage as a sign of the permanence of God’s covenant with God’s chosen people.   I have among so many of my friends men and women who have committed themselves to such permanence despite so many obstacles.  I consider them to be living a miracle, particularly those who have flourished in their relationship by their constant care of the next generations, whether those in next generations are of their own families or others.

But the Pope and the Synod in its realism knows that people make mistakes and sinful mistakes, too.   The Pope talks of young people poorly prepared for a permanent life-long relationship.  He talks of the lack of free choice in so many ways and he understands that the appearance of marriage between a man and a woman does not always mean a true marriage.  In such cases he wants to make the process of recognizing the nullity of such marriages a more merciful process.   Surely the Synod will affirm a process that requires less stress and time.  

The hardness of heart about which Jesus speaks in the gospel of Mark ensnares us sinful human beings in a great variety of ways, not simply in our desire for divorce.   Here Jesus is speaking of the hardness of heart not open to growing through the difficulties so frequent in the marital relationship, a growing that can yield to great graces and understanding.   But there are other kinds of hardness of heart such as one in my own family history.   In my Irish grandmother’s family, her sister Margaret was the black sheep.   Margaret ran off from the family with a married man, a neighbor from her own small Irish town.  Margaret shamed the family and was disowned; her name was never spoken to the next generation of the family; no attempt ever made to restore contact with her.  This was, I gather, in that culture a fairly standard version of hardness of heart.

In contrast I remember the softness in the heart of a Black Catholic family in North Philadelphia, whose husband and father died suddenly not long after abandoning his family and going to live with his mistress.   The family loved this man and saw that he was buried with love from the Catholic Church where the family regularly worshiped.

I have learned from this family to repeat often those famous words of Pope Francis:  who am I to judge?    And the corollary statement: whatever the need for judgements that such necessary judgements be made with mercy.   But we must acknowledge that we also have a further responsibility, that is, the responsibility to define characteristics for relationships, characteristics that are consistent with the revealed word of God and with the time-proven traditions of the Catholic Church in its judgement about sacramental marriages and about non-sacramental marriages.  Moreover, whatever we think of civil unions of same sex couples I judge also that these characteristics are just as essential for them as well.   

I understand  these three characteristics as consistent with Catholic teaching. There must be

1)   the mutual love and support of both parties in the relationship,

2)   the commitment to permanence, and

3)   the support of the next generation, procreative when this is possible.   

Without these characteristics two individuals simply live together and tolerate to their peril a lack of direction and stability in their lives.

But to all those committed to these characteristics we pastoral people owe our prayers and support even when the juridical state of their relationship is in serious question or even non-existent within the Church. 

Yes, whatever our state in life it is difficult for all of us to maintain these characteristics.  But still when we and others fail we owe ourselves and others that mercy that belongs most completely to God.