November 1, 2009
Feast of All Saints
Alumnae Memorial Mass
Reflection on Revelations 7:2-4, 9-14
I John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12a
by Patricia Crowley, OSB.
|
|
I. Introduction1. How do we look at people who are different from ourselves? With curiosity? With fear? By being defensive or sarcastic or mocking? How about people who talk to themselves or imagine things that others don’t see? Or what about people who step out of their very wealthy milieu and go to live in an awful slum? Or how about people who don’t seem to have the same cleanliness standards as we do? Or how about people who like doing things that we don’t like?
2. Today’s readings suggested these questions to me and they suggest a further question – How does God see those people who are different?
a. In the Native American cultures those who are suffering form mental illness are considered very close to God.
b. In our own scriptures, a holy one is “someone who is ‘other’ – an individual who is different from those around him or her (based on a commentary in Celebration by Rev. Roger Vermalen Karban).
3. Part of our life’s mission is to imitate God’s holiness on earth. As this is described in the book of Leviticus, we are called to be holy as God is holy. This feast and these readings focus on holiness.
4. So, what does this word “holiness” mean?
It is pictured in so many different ways….. Perhaps in images of folded hands, of people on their knees, of people robed in white or black or saffron, people looking up to heaven?
a. Scriptural people don’t really look like that……i. Thomas (who doubted….) or
ii. Peter (who failed in his determined goal to be faithful….) or
iii. Mark ( who was young and impressionable….) or
iv. Mary of Magdala (whose story gets all mixed up in our minds but who undoubtedly was a very attractive woman with a flair for the dramatic….)
v. …….rough fishermen, women not recognized to be of value in their society, tax collectors, lepers, people who were sick and specially challenged (as we say today), people who were willing to stick their necks out…….II. Who are the holy people?
b. We call them “saints”.
When I was little, as a family, we would pack ourselves into our station wagon and drive long hours from one CFM house and meeting to another. The “kids” were (all but one of us at a time) in the back seat which was flattened out so we could fit more of us in the car. As we would begin to get “restless or if we began to fight over the very limited space we had, my mother would begin to read to us from the lives of the Saints….
c. Those stories became part & parcel of my (and maybe yours?) life.
d. Think about some of them for a moment:2) Women of the past like –
i. Catherine of Siena who lived alone a lot of the time and who told popes what they should be dong……
ii. Teresa of Avila, a cloistered nun, who broke away and started something brand new…..
iii. Therese of Lisieux, a sickly woman in her 20’s, who was theologically astute, wanted to be a priest, a missionary and who spoke of our church as needing to have a priesthood for men and women in all states of life….
3) Men of the past like –
i. Jean Marie Vianney, the cure d’Ars, who was sent to an obscure village because his superiors saw little potential in him, who later became the patron of parish priests because he knew how to listen….. or
ii. Francis of Assisi, the wealthy young Italian man who threw away his wealth for poverty and wanted to build a new kind of church…..4) Women of today like –
i. Catherine de Hueck Doherty, a wealthy Russian baroness who immigrated here, married an alcoholic Irish journalist and then set up Friendship Houses in the ghettos of our large cities……..or
ii. Dorothy Day, a single parent, a convert to Catholicism, a defiant proponent of the gospel, who began the Catholic Worker movement……
iii. Sister Dorothy Steng, a nun in her 70’s working in Brazil, shot to death for her outspoken opinions about people’s right to land……5) Men of today –
i. Franz Jagerstatter, who stood firm in the face of Nazi oppression and was killed, leaving a young family….. or
ii. Charles de Foucauld, who went to the desert to find God….
iii. Teilhard de Chardin, who pursued a career in paleontology and now is acclaimed as one of the keenest of spiritual writers….e. Obviously, these are people who for one reason or another would have seemed “different” to the people around them. Very probably, people did not always recognize them as “holy”.
f. The first reading, from Revelations, describes them as “sealed on their foreheads as the servant of God”, as “the ones who have survived the time of great distress”. They are the ones who “washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”
g. Who are the saints we honor today?
As we have seen, even those, who are canonized or those who are being considered for canonization, come from a wide variety of people. Certainly this feast of All Saints is about more people than those who have been officially canonized.
III. So, what is the way to holiness?
1. Our goal in life is “to become holy.” That sounds good…. What does it mean in practical terms?
2. Today’s gospel selection from Matthew summarizes Jesus’ answer to that question in the presentation of what we now call the beatitudes (a word that basically means “blessings”).
a. No scholar believes this scene occurred as it is recorded… It is constructed in that paradoxical way we so often find in the gospels and laid out in a paralleled structure which would make these eight blessings easy to remember.
b. They are definitely a lesson in how “to become holy”.
3. According to Diane Bergant’s reflection on this passage.
The beatitudes found in the gospel account remind us that the disposition needed for access to God is not obedience to laws, regardless of how genuine those laws might be.
Rather, it is brought to birth in our relationships with others.
4. To get a few clues to this question of holiness, let’s look at a few of these so-called blessings in terms of the relationships that are ours in life:
c. Each of us has relationships with many different people. Some are about power. We each have power within ourselves but our societal and church structures are set up with a hierarchical senseof power. As we relate to one another and to ourselves, the abuse of power or the giving away of power in an inappropriate way can happen. Jesus calls us to be meek and humble and merciful to ourselves and to those we feel have power over us. Blessed are the meek!
d. Each of us, has someone whom we have loved and that person has died. We experiences loss in our lives. In the grieving process, we often learn about ourselves, we experience ourselves and others in new ways. In this way we grow in God. Blessed are those who mourn!
e. Each of us has caretaking or care-giving relationships. These can evoke many sentiments within us and among us. Blessed are the merciful!
f. Each of us has conflicts in our relationships. Most of us experience the effects of conflict in our world. Blessed are the peace makers!
IV. Conclusion
Relationship is at the heart of our human lives and of our call to be holy as God is holy.
The beatitudes describe aspects of our human life where we can indeed by “rooted in God”. We remember, however, that being so rooted, being so “blessed”, may bring out our uniqueness in new ways.
The beatitudes give us some clues as to the attitudes and ways we might want to nurture as we move through life toward holiness and the attitudes and ways we might want to reverence deeply in other
people, especially in people whom we consider to be different from ourselves.