'I waited, waited for the Lord and he stooped down to me.' Sunday Reflections, 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

 

From The Gospel of John, directed by Philip Saville

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel John 1:35-42 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Apostle St Andrew

Zurbarán [Web Gallery of Art]

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother (John 1:40; Gospel)

The Memorial of St Anthony the Abbot (c.251-356) is observed by the Church on 17 January, this coming Wednesday. His story is very much connected with the First Reading and Gospel of today's Mass the main theme of which is vocation, one's specific call from God.

Each year the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for St Anthony the Abbot in the Breviary makes me smile as it seems that the young Anthony discovered God's call by being late for Mass. Here is how St Athanasius tell us this story in his Life of Anthony, which he wrote around 360.

He went into the church. It happened that the gospel was then being read, and he heard what the Lord had said to the rich man 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'

The young man Anthony, whose parents had died about six months previously, took these words to heart and went to live in the desert. He became, without planning it, the 'Father of Monasticism' in the Church. And perhaps if he had not been late for Mass that day the Gospel - Matthew 19:16-26 - might not have struck him as it did. He was to be 'later' than most in another sense in that he was 105 when he died, a remarkable age to live to now but even more remarkable in the fourth century. It was through being late for Mass that Anthony discovered what God had in mind for him.

The reading from St Athanasius ends with a detail that always touches me: And so the people of the village, and the good men with whom he associated saw what kind of man he was, and they called him 'The friend of God'. Some loved him as a son, and others as though he were a brother.

St Anthony the Abbot

Zurbarán [Web Gallery of Art]

In 2007 I officiated at the wedding of a young couple in the Philippines (photo below) whose punctuality eventually led them to the altar. While at university they belonged to a Catholic association that planned an outing for a particular day. They were the only ones to turn up at the designated time and while waiting for the others to arrive their conversation led them to see that they were more than just members of the same association.

Officiating at the wedding of friends in 2007

[M & J now have five children, God bless them]

A vocation is very personal and often comes through another. The young Samuel heard God's voice calling him three times, thinking it was the voice of Eli, who eventually realised that it really was God's voice that Samuel had heard. The reading concludes with these words: Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.”

The description of St Anthony the Abbot by those who knew him as The friend of God goes to the heart of what a Christian vocation is. It is to come to know oneself as a friend of God, as one whom God loves personally and who is called to know God intimately. That is how it was with the two disciples in the Gospel, Andrew and John the Evangelist, who never uses his own name in his gospel. They felt a desire to come to know Jesus, who read their hearts and invited them to where he was staying. 

That was the turning point in their lives. And Andrew was so excited that he ran to tell his brother Simon. When he met Jesus he found himself with a new name: You shall be called Cephas (which means Peter). This means 'Rock' and was his specific vocation, to be the Rock upon which Jesus would build his Church. And before he got his new name Jesus looked at him. Some translations add the word 'intently' or 'hard' to 'looked'. Clearly Jesus was looking with great love into the soul of Peter. About four years ago I heard a married woman share with a group of married couples that the first time she met the man who was to become her husband, at a party, he looked at her and for the first time in her life she realised her own self-worth. In that look God was leading her and the man to discover their vocation in life.

The verses of the Responsorial Psalm are taken from Psalm 39 [40]. The opening verse is expresses both our desire for God and God's desire for us: I waited, waited for the Lord and he stooped down to me. He heard my cry. He put a new song into my mouth, praise of our God.

He stooped down to me reminds me of the line in Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem God's Grandeur: Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

And the Second Reading, which is not linked by theme to the First Reading and Gospel, tells us more about our very dignity as Christians and, indeed, the source of our vocation. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

By baptism each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit and it is the Holy Spirit Who leads us to discover our specific vocation in life by leading us into an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus and allow him to look at us as He looked at Simon before giving him his new name / vocation.

Central to the spirituality of St Columban, patron saint of the Missionary Society of St Columban to which I belong are the words of St Paul in the Second Reading: You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. St Columban wrote: Christi simus non nostri - Let us be of Christ, not of ourselves. And we are also living in a world where so many do not glorify God in their bodies and where humans are treated as commodities, millions being killed before they are even born, with pressure now to kill off those who are old and 'useless'.

A while ago I came across a Chinese proverb that says: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Our song is praise of our God. Our very vocation as Christians is to sing praise of our God by the way we live. That is why genuinely saintly people attract us so much. 

The Prologue of the Catechism of the Catholic Church sums it all up: "FATHER, . . . this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3). "God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:3-4). "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12) - than the name of JESUS.

God's Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ

Performed by Lance Pearson

Traditional Latin Mass

Second Sunday after the Epiphany

The complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 01-14-2024 if necessary).

Epistle: Romans 12:6-16. Gospel: John 2:1-11.  

The Marriage at Cana

Marten de Vos [Web Gallery of Art]

'Do whatever he tells you' (John 1:5; Gospel).

St John of the Cross and Roy Campbell, two poets

St John of the Cross

Attributed to Francisco de Zurbarán [Wikipedia]

Feast Day 14 December (24 November in the Old Calendar)

Crisis Magazine today (13 December) carries an interesting article about South African poet Roy Campbell (1901-1957) written by Joseph Pearce, under the intriguing title A Convert Among Communists and Carmelites. I have used translations by Roy Campbell of poems by St John of the Cross (1542-1591) on this blog but never knew until I read Pearce's article of the intimate connection between the poet and the archives of the saint given to him by the Carmelite friars in Toledo, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) for safekeeping.

Two of Campbell's translations of the saint's poems are in the English-language Breviary approved for use by the hierarchies of Australia, England & Wales and Ireland in 1973. Below is one of them in the Spanish of St John of the Cross and the English of Roy Campbell. The English subtitles in the video are different from the latter.

Del Verbo Divino

San Juan de la Cruz

Translated by Roy Campbell

Del Verbo divino
la Virgen preñada
viene de camino :
¡ si les dais posada !

Concerning the Divine Word

St John of the Cross

With the divinest Word, the Virgin

Made pregnant, down the road

Comes walking, if you'll grant her

A room in your abode 

A View of Toledo

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

El Greco's landscape of Toledo depicts the Priory in which John was held captive, just below the old Muslim Alcazar and perched on the banks of the Tajo on high cliffs. (From Wikipedia).

From the Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross

(Office of Readings, Feast of St John of the Cross, 14 December)

There are depths to be fathomed in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many recesses containing treasures, and no matter how men try to fathom them the end is never reached. Rather, in each recess, men keep on finding here and there new veins of new riches.

St John wrote much of the Spiritual Canticle while he was imprisoned by other Carmelite friars.

From The Ascent of Mount Carmel by St John of the Cross

(Office of Readings, Advent Week 2, Monday)

When [God] gave us, as he did, his Son, who is his one Word, he spoke everything to us, once and for all in that one Word. There is nothing further for him to say.

I've highlighted these two texts because so often we can get caught in what are claimed to be revelations from God but that are not in harmony with the teaching of the Church. Such 'revelations' can lead us away from God.

The Annunciation (1433-34)

Blessed Fra Angelico [Web Gallery of Art]

The Incarnation

by St John of the Cross

Translated by Roy Campbell

Then He summoned an archangel, 

Saint Gabriel: and when he came, 

Sent him forth to find a maiden, 

     Mary was her name.

Only through her consenting love 

Could the mystery be preferred 

That the Trinity in human 

     Flesh might clothe the Word.

Though the three Persons worked the wonder 

It only happened to the One. 

So was the Word made incarnation 

     In Mary's womb, a son.

So He who only had a Father 

Now had a Mother undefiled, 

Though not as ordinary maids 

     Had she conceived the Child.

By Mary, and with her own flesh 

He was clothed in His own frame: 

Both Son of God and Son of Man 

     Together had one name.  

The Annunciation (1442-43)

Blessed Fra Angelico [Web Gallery of Art]

'He put a new song into my mouth, praise of our God.' Sunday Reflections, 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B; Feast of the Santo Niño in the Philippines

 

From The Gospel of John, directed by Philip Saville

Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel John 1:35-42 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Apostle St Andrew

Zurbarán [Web Gallery of Art]

The Memorial of St Anthony the Abbot (c.251-356) is observed by the Church on 17 January. However, as it falls on Sunday this year that celebration will be omitted. But his story is very much connected with the First Reading and Gospel of today's Mass the main theme of which is vocation, one's specific call from God.

Each year the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for St Anthony the Abbot in the Breviary causes me to smile as it seems that the young Anthony discovered God's call by being late for Mass. Here is how St Athanasius tell us this story in his Life of Anthony, which he wrote around 360.

He went into the church. It happened that the gospel was then being read, and he heard what the Lord had said to the rich man 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'

The young man Anthony, whose parents had died about six months previously, took these words to heart and went to live in the desert. He became, without planning it, the 'Father of Monasticism' in the Church. And perhaps if he had not been late for Mass that day the Gospel - Matthew 19:16-26 - might not have struck him as it did. He was to be 'later' than most in another sense in that he was 105 when he died, a remarkable age to live to now but even more remarkable in the fourth century. It was through being late for Mass that Anthony discovered what God had in mind for him.

The reading from St Athanasius ends with a detail that always touches me: And so the people of the village, and the good men with whom he associated saw what kind of man he was, and they called him 'The friend of God'. Some loved him as a son, and others as though he were a brother.

St Anthony the Abbot

Zurbarán [Web Gallery of Art]

Some years ago I officiated at the wedding of a young couple in the Philippines whose punctuality eventually led them to the altar. While at university they belonged to a Catholic association that planned an outing for a particular day. They were the only ones to turn up at the designated time and while waiting for the others to arrive their conversation led them to see that they were more than just members of the same association.

A vocation is very personal and often comes through another. The young Samuel heard God's voice calling him three times, thinking it was the voice of Eli, who eventually realised that it really was God's voice that Samuel had heard. The reading concludes with these words: Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.”

The description of St Anthony the Abbot by those who knew hims as The friend of God goes to the heart of what a Christian vocation is. It is to come to know oneself as a friend of God, as one whom God loves personally and who is called to know God intimately. That is how it was with the two disciples in the Gospel, Andrew and John the Evangelist, who never uses his own name in his gospel. The felt a desire to come to know Jesus, who read their hearts and invited them to where he was staying. 

That was the turning point in their lives. And Andrew was so excited that he ran to tell his brother Simon. When he met Jesus he found himself with a new name: You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter). This means 'Rock' and was his specific vocation, to be the Rock upon which Jesus would build his Church. And before he got his new name Jesus looked at him. Some translations add the word 'intently' or 'hard' to 'looked. Clearly Jesus was looking with great love into the soul of Peter. A couples of months ago I heard a married woman share with a group of married couples that the first time she met the man who was to become her husband, at a party, he looked at her and for the first time in her life she realised her own self-worth. In that look God was leading her and the man - to discover their vocation in life.

The verses of the Responsorial Psalm are taken from Psalm 39 [40]. The opening verse is expresses both our desire for God and God's desire for us: I waited, waited for the Lord and he stooped down to me. He heard my cry. He put a new song into my mouth, praise of our God.

He stooped down to me reminds me of the line in Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem God's Grandeur: Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

And the Second Reading, which is not linked by theme to the First Reading and Gospel, tells us more about our very dignity as Christians and, indeed, the source of our vocation. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

By baptism each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit and it is the Holy Spirit Who leads us to discover our specific vocation in life by leading us into an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus and allow him to look at us as He looked at Simon before giving him his new name / vocation.

Central to the spirituality of St Columban, patron saint of the Missionary Society of St Columban to which I belong are the words of St Paul in the Second Reading: You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. St Columban wrote: Christi simus non nostri - Let us be of Christ, not of ourselves. And we are also living in a world where so many do not glorify God in their bodies and where humans are treated as commodities, millions being killed before they are even born, with pressure now to kill off those who are old and 'useless'.

The other day I came across a Chinese proverb that says: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Our song is praise of our God. Our very vocation as Christians is to sing praise of our God by the way we live. That is why genuinely saintly people attract us so much. 

The Prologue of the Catechism of the Catholic Church sums it all up: "FATHER, . . . this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3). "God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:3-4). "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12) - than the name of JESUS.

Santo Niño (Philippines)

Santo Niño de Cebú

[Wikipedia]

You will find a reflection for the Feast of the Santo Niño in the Philippines here. The Gospel read this year may be different.

Extraordinary Form of the Mass

Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) 

Second Sunday after the Epiphany

The complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 1-17-2021 if necessary).

Epistle: Romans 12:6-16. Gospel: John 2:1-11.  

Authentic Beauty

Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.

Pope Benedict XVI meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel, 21 November 2009.

God's Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ

Performed by Lance Pearson

'There is nothing further for God to say.' Sunday Reflections, 2nd Sunday of Advent, Year C

Linaioli Tabernacle, St John the Baptist, Fra Angelico 
[Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Luke 3:1-6 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition)   

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

“Prepare the way of the Lord,

    make his paths straight.

    Every valley shall be filled,

    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall be made straight,

    and the rough ways made smooth;

    and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”’

The last part of today's gospel from Handel's Messiah

Charles Kuralt was an American journalist who worked for many years for the CBS TV network in the USA. He was especially noted for his 'On the Road' features on the CBS Evening News. These started in 1967, the year I was ordained, and I became familiar with them when I went to study in the USA the following year.

I vividly remember one particular story - they were never from the highways but from the byways of the United States - about a man somewhat on the older side who lived in a small town somewhere in the heartland of the country. I forget the particular state. The nearest town was only a few kilometres away but there was no road connecting the two. People had to take a very long way around to get from one to the other.

The residents of both houses tried for years to persuade their politicians to build a road between the towns, without success. So this particular elderly citizen decided he'd start to build a road himself, using planks. When Charles Kuralt caught up with him he hadn't got very far - but he had started.

Legion of Mary Altar [Wikipedia]

This man was engaged in what the Handbook of the Legion ofMary calls Symbolic Action. The Handbook was written almost entirely by Frank Duff, the founder of the Legion.

The Handbook says, It is a fundamental Legion principle that into every work should be thrown the best that we can give. simple or difficult, it must be done in the spirit of Mary . . . 

But sometimes we are faced with works which are really impossible, that is to say, beyond human effort . . .

'Every impossibility is divisible into thirty-nine steps, of which each step is possible' - declares a legionary slogan . . .

Observe: the stress is set on action. No matter what may be the degree of the difficulty, a step must be taken. Of course, the step should be as effective as it can be. But if an effective step is not in view, then we must take a less effective one. And if the latter be not available, then some active gesture (that is, not merely a prayer) must be made which, though of no apparent practical value, at least tends towards or has some relation to the objective. This final challenging gesture is what the Legion has been calling 'Symbolic Action.' Recourse to it will explode the impossibility which is of our own imagining. And, on the other hand, it enters in the spirit of faith into dramatic conflict with the genuine impossibility.

The sequel may be the collapse of the walls of that Jericho.

I saw Charles Kuralt's broadcast some time between 1968 and 1971. In the autumn of 1982 I was working in a hospital in Minneapolis as a chaplain on a three-month Clinical Pastoral Education programme. Charles Kuralt came to town while I was there to give a lunchtime lecture in an auditorium near the hospital and I went along to hear him. When he invited questions from the very large audience someone asked him, What happened to that road the old man began to build? So I wasn't the only one who had remembered the story.

Mr Kuralt told us that the man had since died - but that the road between the two towns had finally been built by the authorities.

The chances are that the man featured in Charles Kuralt's story, since he was from the heartland of the USA, was familiar with today's gospel. St John the Baptist is quoting the Prophet Isaiah and asking each of us to Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. He assures us that Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;  and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Jesus asks for our cooperation. When he was faced with the hungry crowds he asked the Apostles what food they had and then told them to feed the people. Their cooperation with their feeble resources enabled him to show God's bounty in a way they could not have imagined. At Cana Jesus told the servants to fill the water containers - and changed the water into the equivalent of about 600 bottles of the very best wine. (I once read a commentary that advised the reader to take that in a symbolic sense. I really don't see why we should diminish God's bounty! What Jesus did is indeed a symbol of God's bounty precisely because it was an ct of that bounty in a specific situation.)

Linaioli Tabernacle (shutters open), Fra Angelico [Web Gallery of Art]

We have no idea what God can do with a seemingly insignificant or purely personal action. When the young St Anthony of the Abbot went of to live as a hermit in the desert, rather like St John the Baptist, he had no idea that it would lead to the foundation of monasteries of contemplatives around the world. 

Logo of L'Arche International [Wikipedia]

When in 1964 Jean Vanier, a former officer in the Royal Canadian Navy and a professor of philosophy, bought an old cottage in France, rebuilt it and invited Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux, two men with learning disabilities who were living in institutions, to live with him he had no idea that this would lead to L'Arche communities around the world. These are communities where persons with learning disabilities live with others like a family and are able to develop their abilities, sometimes to the extent of leaving and living on their own. Raphael or Philippe, I forget which one, was able to make such a decision after .

Jesus, through the words of Isaiah repeated by St John the Baptist is calling us to actively prepare for his coming, in so many unexpected ways in our daily lives, through joys and sorrows, through the Mass and the sacraments, and in glory at the end of time. We are also preparing to celebrate the birthday of Jesus. However, that First Coming in the flesh has already taken place. 

St John of the Cross, Zurbarán [Wikipedia]

St John of the Cross wrote in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, When he (God) gave us, as he did, his Son, who is his one Word, he spoke everything to us, once and for all in that one Word. There is nothing further for him to say. This is part of the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for Monday in Week 2 of Advent.

There is nothing further for him to say.

St John of the Cross goes on to write in the same passage, Consequently, anyone who today would want to ask God questions or desire some vision or revelation, would not only be acting foolishly but would commit an offence against God by not fixing his eyes entirely on Christ, without wanting something new or something besides him.

God might give him this answer, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.' I have already told you all things in my Word. Fix your eyes on him alone, because in him I have spoken and revealed all. Moreover, in him you will find more than you ask or desire.

The writings of St John of the Cross and of other great theologians do not reveal to us anything new but rather bring us into a deeper understanding of the Word. Likewise, the messages that the Church recognises as having been received in such places as Lourdes, for example, do not reveal to us anything new but rather emphasise some aspect of the Word, usually a call to penance and to prayer, in other words, Prepare the way of the Lord.

God asks us to look to the future in active, sometimes symbolically active, hope like the old man in Charles Kuralt's story. Be ready to meet Jesus in whatever guise he comes and whenever he comes, each day, at the hour of our death, at the end of time.