Category: preaching

drawing deeply from the well

Image of el monasterio de la Encarnación in Ávila, España by Julie Vieira (August 17, 2023)
~ julie vieira ~ Leave a comment

Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, virgin and doctor of the church
Romans 8:14-17, 26-27
Psalm 33:2-3, 10-11, 18-19
John 4:5-15

Dear Sisters, Brothers, and Siblings — Happy Feast Day.

In August, I had the great delight and honor to visit la ciudad de Ávila in España. Each day I was there, I visited my favorite place, el monasterio de la Encarnación. I’d walk from the old town of Ávila down the fortified hill, and a few blocks through a neighborhood toward the monastery. Once I reached the street, Calle de la Encarnación, I could see a couple blocks away the magnificent statue of Teresa – you know the one, where she stands tall, walking staff in hand.

I would enter el patio de la Encarnación, an outdoor terrace just within the monastery walls. From where I sat on stone bench, I could see the very door through which Teresa entered the Carmelite Order in 1535. Each day, I sat there and wrote, eager to encounter Teresa and the God who so enraptured her heart. I waited and listened. I listened and waited. And then I waited some more. I figured, what better place than for divine inspiration?! I waited and listened. Nothing.

Finally, I gave up. I figured that if Teresa was going to be silent, so would I. I put away my notebook and pencil and walked out. But I couldn’t leave. So I started to wander around outside, down the street past the main entrance of the monastery. I followed the outer walls of Encarnacion, curious about the space that Encarnación occupied. It was not a short walk. The property was much more extensive than I ever imagined. I was getting tired, and the heat of the day was relieved only by the coolness radiating from the stones of the massive walls.

After what seemed like an impossible number of left-hand turns, I started to recognize things again, and up ahead I could see Calle de la Encarnación again. As I neared the crossroads, ready to take my final left to get back to the main entrance, I saw a sign. That’s right, a sign. A STOP sign to be exact. Below it were the words, “Convento de San José (Las Madres) Primero Fundación de Santa Teresa de Jesús”. Next to the words was an arrow. The arrow, slight though it was, pointed in the opposite direction of Encarnación.

It is then that I remembered. Teresa left. She left Encarnación. She left and she set out. She left what had been her home and her local community of many years. Familiar walls, familiar faces, familiar routine, familiar spaces to encounter God. She left. The statue that we love so much and that is replete with emotion and intensity and meaning. With walking staff in hand, Teresa is setting out to re-found the Carmelite order. Her back is to Encarnación, and her face is set like flint, heading towards San José, the first convent of the Carmelite reform.

The woman from today’s gospel is no different. She encountered Jesus not in a monastery but in a familiar place — Jacob’s well. The well dated back nearly 2 millennia to the time of Jacob in the land of Samaria, in the town of Sychar, “near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph” (John 4:5). It was familiar not only to the woman but to her ancestors who day after day, year after year, came to draw water.

Jesus presented the woman with a crossroads. He asked her to let go of the familiar and to draw water not from this spring that had served her and her people for years, but to draw living water, that is, water flowing from God’s endless spring of Wisdom. It is the Wisdom we hear about in our first reading, “I loved Her more than health and beauty; I preferred Her to the light of day, for Her countenance shone unceasingly.” (Wisdom 7:10)

The woman couldn’t believe what she was hearing from Jesus. “Who do you think you are?” she says to Jesus. (John 4:12). Perhaps she even wondered to herself, “Who do I think I am to receive this water?” Still, she waited and listened, longing for more.

And then she gets it.

She leaves her water jar behind and sets out. Her faith is being refounded – what it looks like, she’s not sure – but she sets out to live that refounding and share it with others.

Are we not at this same place? Are we not at a crossroads and being invited to leave the familiar and to set out for the new?

Even when the signs are clear, we don’t always know what to do or how to take a next step. When I stood at the crossroads – Encarnación to my left and the refoundation of San Jose on my right – I’m proud to say that I took the road most traveled. I turned left to Encarnación.

You see I love everything that Encarnación stands for. I love the peace and calm I feel. I love the cast-iron handle that I can grasp and pull open just as Teresa did some years ago. But I still had to go. I’d like to say that I set my face like flint and headed for San Jose, but instead I went into town, and sat in la plaza, surrounded by the night life of Ávila. I resigned myself to peanuts and beer.

It is then that Teresa came and sat down beside me. Her presence is as unmistakable to me as our communion of IHM saints “dwelling now in light yet ever near”.

“Go,” she said. From Encarnación to San Jose. Go. From the walls to the city, to the fields to the rock-strewn paths and the sun-scorched plains. Go.”

For Teresa to go, for the woman at the well to go, and for us to go, we must draw richly from the well of living water. We must leave behind the familiar, leave behind even the water jug that has served us so well. What does this look like?

I’m reminded of a few stories I heard over the past few days:

  • the couple in their 60s who overnight find themselves to be parents and grandparents as they adopt a young woman and her child as their own
  • the school board who chooses to welcome with open arms a student who is transgendered
  • the religious sister who places her body literally in the crossfire of warring nations in order to ensure peace and safety for all
  • the middle-aged mechanic who in the midst of anxiety and depression, chooses not to give up on themselves

This is what it looks like to have living water flowing through you – to be open to and to live into God’s invitation to life, even when it seems unfamiliar, absurd, unpopular, or terrifying.

What crossroads are we at today – as individuals, as families and religious congregations, as nations and an earth community? Where are the wells inside of us and around us from which we are called to draw living water?

Wait and listen.

Then go …

… from Encarnación to San Jose. Go. From the walls to the city, to the fields to the rock-strewn paths and the sun-scorched plains. Go.

image credit: julie vieira

and Joseph wept

~ julie vieira ~ Leave a comment

Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 385

Genesis 41:55-57; 42:5-7a, 17-24a
Psalm 33:2-3, 10-11, 18-19
Matthew 10:1-7

I’ve always loved the story of Joseph. I wasn’t in it so much for the technicolored robe as I was for how he was able to survive after being nearly killed by his siblings and then sold into slavery. I was amazed that he was able to make a life for himself and eventually become a person of power and influence. It was poetic genius of the writers of Genesis to note that years later, the brothers would find themselves at the mercy of the very one whom they had rejected.

Even listening again to the story now, I feel great satisfaction in Joseph tossing his brothers into the guardhouse and making them think about what they had done. But what has always perplexed me is that upon hearing the brothers discuss what they had done, Joseph turned and wept.

He wept.

I want Joseph to shout and curse them, to throw tables and chairs. But Joseph just turned from them and wept.

This is neither the first nor the last time that Joseph weeps. In fact, throughout the accounting of his life, he has frequent bouts of weeping.[1] At one point, he weeps so loudly that even the Egyptians in the other room can hear him![2] Some have interpreted this weeping as a psychological characteristic of Joseph. He was a tender soul. Passionate and sensitive. That very well may be. But scholars say that’s not the reason for it’s inclusion in Scripture.

Jewish scholar Ariel Seri-Levi notes that there are three main categories for why people weep:

  1. Mourning for the dead
  2. Distress directed towards a leader – it might be, for example, a crying out for justice towards the government or towards the divine
  3. An encounter or reunion between relatives or close friends

Weeping in each of these circumstances communicates something. It shows how a person is in relationship with someone or something.

When Joseph first encounters his brothers begging for food, he doesn’t break down and cry. He is composed and careful about how he will treat them. It isn’t until he hears them discuss what had happened those years ago when they “saw the anguish of his heart when he [had] pleaded” with them.

It is in this moment that Joseph weeps. Going back to Seri-Levi’s categories of weeping – Joseph was not weeping to mourn the dead. Nor was Joseph weeping in distress directed towards a leader. Joseph was weeping because this encounter was not exactly a “reunion” but opened his heart to the possibility that maybe his brothers did actually have a conscience and felt sorrow for what they had done. Seri-Levi says this is one moment for Joseph in a long process of being reunited with his family, and this is why Joseph cries so frequently. For example, when the brothers come back to Egypt and bring Benjamin this time, Joseph once again weeps upon seeing him, but because he is still unwilling to reveal his identity, he does so in secret.

There is much for us to learn in this Genesis reading about the importance of weeping and about the process of healing in our own relationships. But curiously, the church doesn’t pair this reading with a similar gospel reading. It could easily have been Jesus weeping when Lazarus died. No. Instead we get Jesus sending out the 12 apostles.

We get it – Joseph and his brothers are the 12 tribes of Israel in Genesis, and we have the same symbolic 12 in Matthew. That part makes sense.

But perhaps there is something more to reflect on. The story of Joseph and his brothers is a story of love, anguish, violence, wounds, regrets and healing. The same could be said for the 12 apostles. Both sets of 12 were people who were yes leaders, even saints, but who also lived day by day with their own humanity, broken and willful, and in a hostile world.

These are the ones whom God called.

Today, it is you and I who are called. Our messy humanity doesn’t exempt us but rather qualifies us to be sent out to tend to the brokenness in the world. Like Joseph, we may weep frequently. That’s okay. It’s part of healing and moves us ever closer to reunion with others and communion with God. As we go forth in this day, let us remember our own times of weeping – whether in grief, or in protest against injustice, or out of longing for reunion – and talk with God about how this weeping in turn brings the kindom of heaven ever more near.

[1] Ariel Seri-Levi, “Torah Portion of the Week: The Tales Behind the Tears” in Haaretz (December 29, 2016)
[2] Gen 45:2

no word of hope

The Stonewall Inn
~ julie vieira ~ Leave a comment

Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
Lectionary: 353

Tobit 1:3; 2:1a-8
Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6
Mark 12:1-12

Today’s readings are difficult ones. There’s no easy way to find a word of hope without doing a disservice to the reality of life which while certainly beautiful, is also fragile and broken.

Not all stories have a happy ending, not every cloud a silver lining.

We cannot gloss over the the realities of poverty, racism or the willful destruction of Earth. We cannot give a passing glance to oppression of LGBTQ+ people. In fact this month of June, we remember particularly the Stonewall Riots of June, 28, 1969, when the queer community broke out in spontaneous protests to a police raid targeting their community at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village of New York City.

We humans are no stranger to the harshness of life. Sometimes we are its victims, and sometimes we are its aggressors.

In our readings today we hear from both classic antiquity and the time of Jesus about the  struggle we have to live justly and in right relationship with one another.

In our first reading, Tobit shares with us about his desire to share a meal with “a poor person from among our kin exiled here in Nineveh” only to receive word from his son Tobiah that one from among the poor had been murdered and left lying in the marketplace.

And in the gospel, Jesus shares a parable with the chief priests, scribes, and elders about how a vineyard owner’s servants, and even his own son, were abused and killed out of a sense of disrespect, entitlement and greed. The parable of course is a way for Jesus to point out the hardness of heart that some people had toward Jesus’ message of the radical inclusivity of God’s love.

Far from happy endings, these stories hold only tragedy and heartbreak. There is no dramatic turn of events that saves the day.

“But hope is on the way!” we might cry out in protest. “Jesus does save the day!”

Yes.

But not on that day in Nineveh. Not on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Riots, and not on March 13, 2020, when a Black woman, Breonna Taylor, was murdered by police in her Louisville apartment.

That these stories do not end on a hopeful note does not mean that there is no hope. Rather they are an invitation for us to stay present in the moment, in the here and now, tending in a very personal way to one another in the hour of our greatest sorrow and hopelessness. This we must do, even while at the same time we long for and work on behalf of a new creation, “a new heaven and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:13).

Tobit models for us what this might look like. Let’s go back to what happened in Nineveh that day. Upon hearing of the murder of his kin, Tobit says:

I sprang to my feet, leaving the dinner untouched;
and I carried the dead man from the street
and put him in one of the rooms,
so that I might bury him after sunset.
Returning to my own quarters, I washed myself
and ate my food in sorrow….

And I wept.
Then at sunset I went out, dug a grave, and buried him.

Looking at Tobit’s response symbolically, we might ask ourselves:

  • what experiences urge us to “spring to our feet”?
  • what rooms in our home can we open up for others?
  • when are we called to accompany others – or give permission to ourselves – to lament and to weep?
  • what actions are we compelled to take that emerge out of our heartbreak and our deep faith and commitment to God?

Perhaps in the absence of finding a word of hope within these stories, we might instead follow Jesus and become a cornerstone, a foundation of the new heaven and new earth that all of creation longs for.

Image Credit: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

the unknown God

~ julie vieira ~ Leave a comment

Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Lectionary: 293

Acts 17:15, 22—18:1
Psalm 148:1-2, 11-12, 13, 14
John 16:12-15

The past few weeks I’ve been working on a presentation at Visitation on my fave theologian, and the subject of my master’s degree, Karl Rahner. I will spare you the long list of reasons why I love Rahner. However I would be remiss if I missed an opportunity to mention Rahner’s insight into understanding God as Holy Mystery. God is the one who is “incomprehensible and impenetrable”. God is the nameless one, the infinite horizon.

Of course my ears perked up with today’s reading from Acts where Paul speaks about the Athenians’ shrine to “the unknown God”. Now I don’t want to be anachronistic in any way, but I do think there’s an interesting connection between the Athenians’ experience of the sacred as unknown and the emerging Christological sense of the sacred as mystery.

The Athenians liked gods – the major Olympian gods like Zeus and Athena and the minor gods like Pan and the Muses. They even paid homage to the titans. Athens was so inclusive and welcoming that their city boasted shrines to all kinds of deities beyond their own religious circle. They were “inherently hospitable to new gods, ideas, and interpretations” (source). The Athenians were also careful. They erected a shrine to “the unknown God” just to make sure they’d covered all their bases. For they did not wish to offend any deity, even one they did not know.

Paul rightly observes “that in every respect [they] are very religious” (Acts 17:22). What’s interesting to me is that he doesn’t make an issue of any of the shrines. He doesn’t try to bring his Christian message into dialogue with Artemis or Dionysius. Instead, he focuses on this one particular shrine to the unknown God. There’s something about the “unknownness” of this particular deity that Paul finds a connection with. He takes the opportunity to make the connection between this unknowable God, and the God whom he knows intimately. This God, he says, is in fact very much known – not “fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination” but a living God in whom “we live and have our being”, a God who makes Godself known through Jesus the Christ.

Some have read this passage as Paul pointing out their folly and reprimanding the Athenians for the foolishness of worshiping a deity that they did not know. But I don’t think so. Paul knew the ways of the Greek world – he spoke Greek and was well versed in Greek philosophy. There was something about the unknown God that resonated with him and compelled him to begin there, rather than with the very knowable (and rather fallible) deities of the Greek world.

Although Paul did not have the benefit 20th century philosophical concepts or theological language of Rahner, it’s clear that he also has had a fundamental experience of God as mystery – and God as revealed, knowable. He speaks of this throughout his preaching. He is passionate about sharing this with the Greeks, to help them make the connection between the unknown and the known.

In our life today, we have many things that remain unknown to us, not just God. There’s our health, our relationship⁠s⁠ – I don’t even know what I’m having for lunch today! I’d like to be able to flip a switch – from unknown to known, from hidden to revealed, but that’s not how mystery works. It’s something we have to not only live into, but embrace. It’s in the dance of mystery that we find our creativity, our passion, and our zeal.

Perhaps we can take a page out of Paul’s playbook. To respect the places of unknown and mystery that we find ourselves in and to also begin to move around it, start to find shapes and patterns, colors and textures in the midst of the unknown. In doing so, we begin to name what has been unnamable, reveal what has been hidden.

It doesn’t mean that it’s easy nor that it wont have discomfort, suffering or pain. In today’s gospel, Jesus promises that we are not alone in this and that we do not have to bear everything alone. The Spirit is truly with us.

As we “live and have our being” today, let us be on the look out experiences of the unknown and known – and not be afraid to dance with this mystery.

Image Credit: Kamil Feczko on Unsplash