Tag: jesus

giving away everything in our lunch box

yellow tin lunch box illustrated as a school bus
~ julie vieira ~ Leave a comment

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time | IHM Jubilee Eucharistic Celebration | July 27, 2024
Lectionary: 110

2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145:10-11,15-16,17-18
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:1-15

Sisters, Brothers and Siblings, Hermanas y Hermanos: ¡Feliz Jubileo! Happy Jubilee!

Twenty-five years ago when I entered the IHM congregation as a novice, we stood in this chapel – at this altar – in the presence of the IHM president and community and expressed our desire to commit ourselves to God within the IHM mission. The then-president Virginia Pfau presented each of us a copy of the IHM Constitutions which are our rule of life. It sets out how we will live the liberating mission of God with one another on behalf of the church and world.

As Ginny handed us the Constitutions, she said a word or two. And then she said, “Take and enflesh the Constitutions”.

Enflesh the constitutions?? We were all taken aback. Those were strong words. Not just “read this” or “be inspired by this”, but enflesh the Constitutions. Make real with your very bodies the Constitutions. Make them alive and concrete in your life.

After receiving the Constitutions, we moved into the Eucharistic Rite and were invited, like every Eucharist, to take and become the Body and Blood of Jesus the Christ.

Eat. Drink. Enflesh. Do this in memory of me. Comer. Beber. Encarnar. Hacer esto en memoria de mi.

Today’s readings proclaim this central message of our vocation as Christians. In the gospel, John tells the story of Jesus’ of the multiplication of loaves and fish. It is an awesome event.

But John tells us this story not so much to dazzle us with Jesus’ miraculous feats, but to symbolize what Eucharist means: Jesus the Christ not only sustains us with God’s own life but satisfies us abundantly and overflowingly.

We know the story well. A throng of people follow Jesus, wanting to see more strange and marvel-filled wonders. Jesus, on the other hand, just wanted a quiet, mountain-side retreat with his disciples. But now he’s got a crowd of thousands, and those thousands are hungry. The rest, as they say, is history. One blessing and a few loaves and fish later, and everyone has more than enough to eat with leftovers to boot.

While the miracle is, well, miraculous, there is perhaps an even more important thing that happens in this story. Let’s go back to the beginning for a moment when Jesus realizes that the people are hungry and asks if there is any food. John writes: “Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, [responds] to Jesus, [saying] ‘There is a [child] here who has five barley loaves and two fish …’” (John 6:9)

Imagine the scene. Thousands upon thousands of people tired, hungry, and perhaps even getting a little disruptive — as any hangry person would know! Among them was a child with his lunch box: five loaves and two fish. John tells us that the loaves were made of barley, hinting that the child was from a poor family for barley bread is the ordinary food of the poor. We know no other details; however, we can imagine that this food likely was the last of what this boy’s family had, with no idea where the next meal might come from.

Still, the child brings his five barley loaves and two fish to one of the apostles. Perhaps he tugs on Andrew’s robe and shyly unwraps the food. People nearby laugh and say how cute the child is for thinking foolishly that the lunch box has enough food to make a dent in the crisis at hand. But all the child knows is that food is needed, and that they have something to share.

It would have been understandable for the child to hide the lunch box and have just enough to feed his family. But instead, the child chooses to give it all away and to risk going hungry. All that child knew to do was to answer the call to, in the prophet Elisha’s words, “give to the people to eat”.

I do not believe that this quiet act of faith was lost on Jesus. For Jesus, too, would give everything he had, his own body and blood for the sake of a world hungering for a deeper life of meaning and connection with God.

As I ponder what it means to be jubilarians – women religious in the IHM Community for 25, 60, 70, 75, and 80 years – I can’t help but think of these women who came to the congregation with whatever gifts, desires, energy, and hopes that they had – a loaf of barley bread here, a fish there. None of us have enough in our lunch box to heal the wounds of the world – to ease suffering, to end racism, to protect the queer community, to heal the earth, to liberate the captive. Yet the call is no different to us as it was to that child some 2000 years ago.

Give to the people to eat. Dar a la gente para comer.

We Jubilarians and indeed all of us gathered here in person and online – of whatever age, gender identity, culture, language, relationship status or spiritual persuasion – every one of us is called to give what we have, to empty our lunch boxes, and to trust that in doing so, something good and beautiful for the world will unfold. Indeed, God honors each of our few loaves and fish, and then goes further and provides for us abundantly, even when the odds are stacked against us.

Our God is a God of Providence, a God who guides us and cares for us in “concrete and immediate ways” in “the least things to the great events of the world and its history”. (Catechism of the Catholic Church §303)

As our foremothers the Oblate Sisters of Providence say, “Providentia providebit”. Providence provides. Years ago, I asked Sister Mary Alice Chineworth, OSP, an Oblate Sister of Providence, what exactly this means. She said,

Providence Spirituality is dependence upon God as Provider of all our needs, including our spiritual welfare.… Whatever we have, we know that it is gift of the spirit, and we must use it wisely and share it generously…. [It] enables us, with total trust in God’s Providence, to bring joy, healing and the liberating redemptive life of the suffering Jesus to the victims of poverty, racism and injustice despite contradictions, prejudice and pain.

Each of us is called to give not only our gifts – a loaf of bread here, a fish there – but our very life for the world – just like the child and their lunch box … just like Jesus and his total gift of self.

Therefore, “I urge you,” as Paul says to the Ephesians, “live in a manner worth of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love.” (Ephesians 4:1-2)

Remember this: “take and become the body and blood of Jesus the Christ.”

Eat. Drink. Enflesh. Do this in memory of me. Comer. Beber. Encarnar. Hacer esto en memoria de mi..  

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photo : Dan Iggers on Flickr

leave it all behind

~ julie vieira ~ Leave a comment

Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 487
Romans 13:8-10
Psalm 112:1b-2, 4-5, 9
Luke 14:25-33

Today we meet Jesus, ever the itinerant preacher, on the road again. He’s not traveling alone. His band of close friends and disciples has now become a great crowd of people – people who have been healed by Jesus, fed by Jesus, embraced by Jesus.

I imagine that people were feeling pretty good, perhaps even on fire in their hearts for all that they were experiencing and hearing from Jesus. They were all for trekking out into the desert, across the sea — wherever Jesus was headed.

And then he turns around and faces the crowd and says,

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

…
                        …
                                               …

The silence is palpable. This road trip just got real.

How could Jesus say those things? Hate my those who have taken care of me? Hate my partner, my best friend, my siblings, and children? Hate myself?

I think there may be times in our life where we have wanted to banish everything from our life and focus on God alone. Let it all go, cut ourselves off, and live with single-hearted devotion to God. Many of us have even gone so far as to hate self – especially if we have been taught that we are not good enough, less than, or worthless. We have no problem denying ourselves and carrying our own cross because that’s what we’ve done our whole lives!

But we know Jesus better than this. Jesus is love, not hatred. What does he mean then when he says that to follow him is to hate everyone else?

“Hate” is a strong word and scholars say that it was likely used intentionally by Jesus. His use of the word reflects a Jewish style of argument used to demonstrate the force or passion underlying Jesus message, and that is, the importance of loving God above all else. That doesn’t mean to hate or vilify anyone; rather “hate” in this context is understood more in the sense of “love less”. Now that idea of loving less sounds like a negative.

“I love you, ehh, but I love you less than I love Billie.”

I’d be kinda hurt by that!

But I think when Jesus invites us to love God more, it’s not about a hierarchy of love, it’s not a binary of better or worse. Love is not quantifiable. It’s more like what Margaret Brennan taught me when I entered the community – all of your affections get rearranged. I think that’s true here to. When Jesus calls us to follow him, we need to rearrange our “affections” – our relationships, our priorities, what we give our energy to.

And so yes, let go of everything. Be willing to trek out into the desert, to cross the tumultuous seas, to make adjustments in relationships and rearrange priorities. But love? Don’t give that up.

As Paul writes to the Roman community, “Owe nothing to anyone, except love.”

“Owe nothing to anyone, except love.”

Have no attachments, nothing that binds you – except love.

photo : Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash

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