Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. held at SJU Fieldhouse

Local State Representative Louise Bishop always organizes a music and prayer rally with the SJU Fieldhouse as her site.

Left to right starting at top: SJU student athletes prepare to leave for day of service; four boys learn about Dr. King; a praise dancer marks the occasion;

some of the 250 student athletes prepare for day of service; a musical tribute from center stage; a blue sky day today;

the choir raises the roof with Alleluias.

These are two less conventional images presented as images of the face of Jesus Christ. Popular Science magazine offers the image on the left as consistent with the typical remains of Jewish men of first century Palestine. Above is a more conventional African-American image.

Ordinary Time Second Sunday John 1: 29

“John the Baptist saw Jesus walking toward him.”

This action by Jesus, “walking toward,” ushers in a new age. This scene is the first in the gospel of John to place us human beings in the presence of our brother who is the Word of God. A few verses earlier in the text the gospel does refer to Jesus Christ as the one through whom truth comes into the world. But the gospel reports this “walking toward” as the very first of many public actions of the man Jesus: “the Baptist saw Jesus walking toward him.” In this way Jesus appears on the scene, his first appearance noted as we might note the first appearance of the lead character in a movie....

If someone whom you do not know is walking toward you, how do you feel, how do you react? On a street in the city I react in different ways depending on how I answer questions concerning the one who is approaching me: Does this person want directions? Is this person going to give me an advertising flyer? Will the person be begging? Will he or she demand something more from me? Can I read the face? Is it smiling? Or is it threatening? Ought I to be afraid? There are many times in fact when we carefully change our paths or even cross the street simply to avoid having to face up to a greeting or a snubbing of the person approaching us.

The gospel suggests that we place ourselves next to the Baptist and watch Jesus walking toward us. How do we react? Test yourself. Will you be able to greet Jesus as you would an old and trusted friend? Will you greet him with a feeling of embarrassment and not want to meet him eye to eye?... If you are reluctant and step aside and let Jesus walk by, you are in the majority.

Most of us do the same. Some of us even cross the street. But those of us here at this Eucharist on this non-descript cold winter morning, we come here looking for something, someone. We want the grace of him walking toward us in the same way as he has walked toward other sinners and other saints. No other reasons exist for us to get out of our warm beds, turn off our televisions and cell phones and come here to this sacred space. We are willing to have Jesus greet us. He brings forgiveness to sinners; consolation to the sorrowful and courage to those who persevere in patience, courage to those with heroic ideals and heroic ambitions. He brings the good news to the poor and freedom to captives, sight to the blind and liberation from oppression.

But whether we let Jesus walk right by us today or not, he will be back again walking toward us tomorrow. He lives in all of the people that approach us. He lives in what they give us and what they ask of us. His life shared with us deepens our joys and eases our sorrows.

In our prayer this morning, let us prepare ourselves to meet the Lord Jesus in this Eucharist and in one another.

“John the Baptist saw Jesus walking toward him.” John 1: 29

I love the colors in this nativity scene (Piero della Francesca, c. 1470); they reminded me of a day along the Wissahickon.

This nativity depicts Joseph with his legs crossed! You can see the sole of his foot. The image is among many available on the site of the National Gallery, London.

This is Holy Family Sunday!

Feast of the Holy Family Dec 30 University Chapel
The great story teller, Tolstoy, opens one of his novels with this sentence: “All happy families resemble one another but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Because we celebrate today the feast of the Holy Family, this sentence can help us understand our readings. How wise it is for us to place this feast of family between Christmas and New Year’s .... In this season families are on our minds and hearts…..

I believe that Jesus’ family was a happy one and, taking a cue from Tolstoy, his family resembles other happy families.
We judge happy families, and Jesus’ family as well, not by the absence of sorrow, dysfunction or suffering but by the capacity of the members of the family to become stronger and more supportive of one another through the joys and sorrows that they experience.

I know quite well a happy family that has suffered much: multiple divorces; a mother's death, Janet's, brought on by alcoholism; Michael's death, a young father, in a traffic accident before the birth of his one child; the collapse of a young woman, Lisa, into a persistent vegetative state by reason of a heart attack, the loss of a baby girl just days after her birth. Some of these crises were instantaneous, others endured over a long period; some are not yet resolved. This family now numbers 33 and not one member wants to miss the annual Christmas party. I know about this family because I belong to it. The laughter and sharing of life at one of these annual parties helps carry me through the rest of the year. This is a happy family.

But it is clear that the happiness of my family is closely related to the suffering that we have shared…. when Tolstoy spoke of the resemblance in all happy families, he must have meant at least this: happy families have the ability to survive as families no matter what the threat.

Today, our reading details a threat to Jesus’ family and tells the story about his family as political refugees… The vicious King Herod, a ruler over Bethlehem where Jesus’ birth takes place, emerges as a bitter enemy of this child because he hears by rumor that the child will become a king. He fears that this child threatens his grip on power. He plans to kill Jesus. In a dream an angel warns Joseph about this danger and he flees with Mary and the baby outside of Herod’s territory into the land of Egypt…

What must it have been like for this family to be refugees and to share a fate like so many of today’s families? Did Joseph wait on some dusty byway in Egypt in order to be hired as a day-laborer? Was he given a status as a political refugee or did he simply hide out under cover? The next time you see a foreign-looking cabbie or gardener or bus boy, think that Joseph must have been something like him, sticking out like a stranger in a strange land not knowing the language but determined to protect and provide for his wife and child.

This kind of fear and anxiety can so stress a young couple that they might not hold together but I believe that Joseph and Mary's fear and refugee status actually strengthen them for what is to come. The family survives this time of uncertainty and eventually returns quietly to settle in Nazareth. This is Jesus’ home and as a human being he needs to have a home. In the bosom of this family Jesus learns the centrality of the community meal and the importance of service to others. In the bosom of this family he gains the capacity to understand the power of suffering to overcome evil. The ability of his family to thrive after the stress of exile provides one small proof that the family of Jesus is one of Tolstoy’s happy families.

This feast celebrates not only the happiness of biological families but also any of the human support structures we build out of our faith, our hope and our love: the family of the church to which we all belong, the elements of the family created by so many of you in your service to young people, the family of friends when we are far away from our biological families by geography or by other circumstances, the new families that welcome us when we are in exile in any way. God comes in the flesh and needs a home and finds it even in exile, even in the dirt-poor town of Nazareth, and even in the community he starts with a few fishermen. If we know any family at all, it makes us happy to know that Jesus lived in such wonderful ones.

Christmas 2007 (Manresa Hall Mass at Midday)
I join my personal greeting to greetings from all those who have known and loved you through the years. Celebrating what we have seen and heard I say again: Merry Christmas. The Christ Child comes again into this world of ours to bring us a joy symbolized in the songs and the sweet treats of the season.
Two one liners simply to free our spirits: When did the baby Jesus first get on a airplane? On the flight into Egypt. What nationality is Santa Claus? North Polish.
This year Tim Brown sent me some Christmas writings composed by Joseph Ratzinger years ago when Ratzinger was the Archbishop of Munich. They are beautifully re-presented in this book “The Blessing of Christmas” illustrated with two dozen color plates of classical Christian art.
Ratzinger calls the first of his sermons: An Advent Dialogue with the Sick. I enjoyed the whole text. Yet let me simply give a brief outline and read something from its introduction and each of its three parts.
[During the Christmas season], Ratzinger writes, “the burden of sickness prevents us from truly sharing in the joy others feel….but perhaps Advent [and Christmas] can help us discover the unobtrusive grace that can lie in the very fact of being sick.” (p.15). He goes on to speak of visitation, of waiting and of joy.
His writings suggest that the sick place themselves in the position of Elizabeth whose confinement and immobility have allowed her to be the subject of a visit. This visitation could have been from negative powers. But, on the contrary, the mother of her savior comes to see her in her confinement; her visitation is a joyful one.
Ratzinger writes: “perhaps we should try an experiment. Let us understand the individual events of the day as little signs that God sends us…To keep an inner diary of good things would be a beautiful and a healing task…--[a diary of visits of all kinds, for example. This diary would be]--… one way that God can come to us and be close to us.”
About waiting in this season, Ratzinger writes: “In his life here on earth, man is one who waits. As a child he wants to be an adult; as an adult he wants to forge ahead and be successful; and finally he yearns for rest. At last there comes a time when he realizes that he has hoped for too little.”
A Christian waits for that Jesus who will bring all of us together into his kingdom. But if the present moment remains completely empty, to wait becomes, Ratzinger says, “completely intolerable.” “But when time itself is meaningful and each moment contains something valuable of its own, the joyful anticipation of something greater, something still to come, makes even more precious that which we already experience. And it gives us a kind of invisible force that bears us across the individual moments.”
Jesus Christ penetrates our time of waiting and hears our prayer, our lamentations, our questions, our praise.
Finally about joy, Ratzinger quotes the psalms that speak of nature expressing the joy of the Christmas season: of the trees breaking into songs of praise and of the rivers that flow with milk and honey. So we sing and eat sweet treats.
“It may be difficult for us,” he says, “to accept this joyful music… when we are afflicted both by bodily illness and psychological problems…but this child is a sign of hope precisely for those who are oppressed…his consoling power can touch the hearts even of unbelievers.”
May the Christ child today fill us with quiet visitations so that we wait with a joyful hope.

At the Jesuit house at the University of Central America; the garden where the Jesuits were killed in 1989; the roses were planted in their memory and in the memory of their cook and her daughter who were brutally killed with them.
In downtown San Salvador the tomb of Bishop Oscar Romero on a Sunday in November.

Here a delegation of rural people visit the altar where Bishop Romero was murdered.

En este altar Monsegnor Oscar A. Romero ofrendo su vida a Dios por su pueblo.

EL SALVADOR MEMORIAL NOVEMBER 2007
It was very early in the dark hours of November 16, 1989 after nine years of the brutal war in El Salvador that the six Jesuits and their cook and her daughter were pulled from their beds and shot point blank at the Jesuit residence at the University of Central America in San Salvador. The army officers responsible later told the story of that night in all its grim details. The Jesuits were their target, Jesuits who had pleaded all along with both sides to seek some agreeable cease-fire but the elites and the army viewed even neutrality in the war as yielding to a communist-influenced treason.

El Salvador is a country no bigger than New Jersey with about the same population. Since the war ended in 1992 with a UN brokered peace agreement, the situation for the poor has not changed much. Still the bottom 40% of the population barely sustain themselves while the top 20% live very comfortable lives. Because of the lack of jobs at home, over a quarter of working age El Salvadorans, some 2.2 million men and women live and work outside the country, nearly a million in California alone.

During the war 75,000 men, women and children died in the brutality. About 80% at the hands of the army and the right-wing death squads. Imagine 5 or 6,000 citizens of New Jersey killed every year for twelve years at the hands of government forces, some tortured and you get the idea of the extent of the chaos. The Jesuits were only a tiny part of the bloodshed that embraced so many families.

Briefly let me say this: I spent many years working and preaching in the African American community. The leading image of salvation in that community is the image of the Exodus, the biblical journey of the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the promised land. This image still sustains AA Christians as they make their pilgrimage of faith into freedom.

But for the people of El Salvador the memory of blood running in the streets is still fresh. For them the leading image of salvation is the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the cross, his torture and his death that leads to life. An AA leader is often compared with Moses who leads the people into freedom. The diocesan priests, the Jesuits, Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero gunned down even at the altar, and all those innocents who suffered death in the war in El Salvador rather are pictured as suffering with Christ on the cross.

It is with the sufferings of the people of El Salvador and with the sufferings of others like them that we, too, can come to know this Jesus who suffered for us, the Jesus whom his Father raised up to new life.

Jon Sobrino, the Jesuit theologian who today carries on the work of the martyred Jesuits at the UCA, has this to say about the Jesus that led his brothers to death: “Jesus’ cross is an expression of God’s love…and God chose this way of showing himself, because he could not find any clearer way of telling us human beings that he really wills our salvation.” Let this encourage us to embrace our own salvation in our relationships with those who are suffering. And let us labor to build an image of this life of salvation by alleviating in all that we do the sorrow and the frustration that faces so many of our brothers and sisters.

On Saturday evening, November 3, Peter and Rosalee were altar servers for Mass at the historic Old Saint Thomas Church in Chester Springs, Chester County. The parish, St Thomas the Apostle, is the first in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Usually the parish celebrates Mass in their new modern church building but on this evening we celebrated in the 1852 church building. Since Jesuits first said Mass in the area in the 1720's, they invited a Jesuit, me, to celebrate in the historic church.

Luke 19: 1-10 Zacchaeus
Life challenges all of us in some way: perhaps physically or emotionally or intellectually. Our gospel story is about Zacchaeus who is vertically-challenged. He climbs a tree and in this way attracts the attention of Jesus. You have heard it said that the last shall be first and the first last. The Zacchaeus story suggests this phrase: The short shall be tall and the tall shall be short. Or, perhaps as this story develops, a more fitting characterization is this: though the poor are blessed by God and promised a place in God’s kingdom, the rich can also have a place in God’s kingdom.

Luke’s gospel is generally hard on the rich. There is the rich young man who wants to inherit eternal life but walks away when Jesus invites him to sell what he has and give to the poor and come follow me. There is Dives who ignores the poor Lazarus and winds up in Hell. There is the expression: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Zacchaeus distinguishes himself from the rich, however, by his generosity. Even though he is one of the hated class in his community, a tax collector for the Romans, Zacchaeus concerns himself more about what we now call social capital, healthy resources of all kinds that people share in community, than about preserving his own capital.

Jesus recognizes his initiative and calls up to him: “Zacchaeus come down quickly, for today I must stay in your home.” Jesus is direct and forward with him; words that anyone of us long to hear. I like how it happens in an instant.

Not only is Jesus quick to recognize Zacchaeus’s initiative, he also engages in a life-saving situation for the man. Often people in Luke’s gospel are saved by their faith or by their gratitude toward Jesus. Zacchaeus relationship to Jesus seems much more ordinary. Jesus is his guest but Zacchaeus makes no particular expression of faith in Jesus, no special thanks, no special honor. He simply announces his own ethical behavior: “Half my possessions I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I shall repay it four times over.” Jesus applauds him for his generous spirit and announces that salvation has come to this house.

There is the curious story of a real estate speculator I once knew. I was part of a community group that challenged him over his practices, practices that became illegal when people saw their ruinous results. Zacchaeus makes me think of him now because he also came around and realized the damage he had done. His money now sits in a $100,000,000 foundation benefiting the very communities that he defrauded. I suppose that God gave him a place in the kingdom.

Jesus confirms salvation even for a lost tax collector. So, too, Jesus is always reaching out to the lost. And when the lost are found, Jesus asks us to rejoice with his Father God who wishes to lead all souls to heaven.

So even if our initiatives with God are not answered the way we would like, even if our talents or possessions weigh heavy on us, let us take the time today to join in the party at the house of Zacchaeus for salvation has come to it.

Tim Russert visits Gesu School and receives the Jesuit Magis Spirit Award. Pictured here greeting the school president, Christine Beck

See local news article about Tim's appearance to students:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/education/20071023_The_secret_of_Russerts_success_.html

Presentation of Magis Spirit Award

Every day I pass the desk of Father Berret, a Jesuit, an English professor at Saint Joseph’s University. On the desktop now are the books he is reading with his freshman class this fall. Among them is “Big Russ and Me,” an example of biography. The students are learning about history, family, celebrity, generosity and the integrity of life.

Father Berret told me what surprised him most about the book: the book is clearly the story of the Timothy Russert that we honor today with the Magis Spirit award. But, unlike most autobiographies, the whole first chapter is not about the author at all. Rather it is about his father; the book begins in the same way as Jesuit prayers always begin with the placing of oneself in context, with the exercise of giving thanks for all that has been. In paying homage to his father in that first chapter and throughout the book, Tim acknowledges that his own life began long before his birth, and that the millennial work of family and church and community creates a rich fabric. This is a great lesson for college students to learn in an age preoccupied with crises that pressure us always to respond to the now.

The stories of the author’s generous interchanges with nuns in his grade school, of his admiration for the Jesuit priests in his high school, and of his high school job as a receptionist in the Jesuit community house, rang true. Reading these stories, I almost forgot where the book was leading and I expected a chapter after high school or college about entry into the novitiate, the full formation program for a Jesuit.

If he had become a Jesuit, though, he would have missed out on so many of the wonderful formative experiences of his life: his son, for example. But I mention a simple, surprising one. As a young novice, I was frequently assigned to what we called the swill house, taking care of the garbage. But Tim’s whole summer job to help pay his way through college was as a garbage collector, the one who heaved the cans of refuse into the truck. Tim wrote about this job in homage to his father who worked in sanitation his whole life. In reading it I thought that maybe we are not doing the right thing at Saint Joseph’s finding intern jobs for our kids in the fancy offices of finance managers and lawyers. But perhaps Tim’s point is different: Big Russ taught him that there was something wonderful to be learned everywhere; and he himself found something wonderful in this work, another confirmation of a Jesuit phrase: “finding God in all things.”

Tim Russert’s life experience grounds him in this world and in the struggles that we all go through for faith, for justice, for integrity and for the love that is shown in deeds. We look to him as a man who has won victories on all these fronts. Now with our contemporary media, people everywhere in the world can come to know this man and these victories. A true contemporary blessing.

In addition to his highlighting the father-son relationship, let me name his generosity to a new generation of Catholic school kids and his genuine openheartedness towards us here at Gesu from the most seasoned supporter to the kids in the kindergarten. For all these traits and for more we Jesuits and our colleagues honor Tim Russert with the Magis Spirit Award.