by SFXparish | Feb 28, 2019 | BLOG
Jesus told his disciples a parable, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? (Lk: 6:42)
We begin our reflection on this Sunday’s gospel reading with a rhetorical question. In it Jesus is being obvious that one who cannot see certainly cannot guide another who needs guiding. In order to comprehend the full sense of this scriptural passage, we must always recall that the parables of Jesus have a deeper spiritual meaning.
On a few occasions Jesus called the Pharisees “blind guides” chastising them for neglecting major virtues and institutions while being preoccupied with lesser religious traditions. Jesus chides them for placing too heavy an emphasis on external piety while giving insufficient attention to interior devotion (Mt 15:14 & Mt 23:24, 26).
For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is within (Lk 17:21). This does not mean that Jesus spoke against liturgy; quite the opposite! He wanted to elevate the temple (Mt 23:17), revere the altar (Mt 23:18), and honor the sacrifice on the altar (Mt 5:24) by inspiring a proper disposition toward all three. Yet, he rightly regarded as serious the temptation toward pride in the outward practice of religion and the self-satisfaction of personal piety (Mt 23:5-7). Instead, the true practice of religion – imitation of Christ in both charity and worship – is its own reward; it should never result in special privilege for any Christian.
Jesus teaches that the eye is either the window to purity or to sinfulness (Mt 6:22-23) and there are many reasons a person may suffer spiritual blindness. There is also what some call the “mind’s eye” or the imagination where one can fall under the practice of idolatry by raising up something or some person to a greater place than it or that person rightly deserves. Pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice & sloth, the Seven Deadly Sins, are no less deadly today for infecting the eye or intellect of the human soul.
In order to assist us in our reflection for this 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time , we place on our bulletin cover a work by 17th century Flemish Baroque artist Sebastian Vrancx, entitled The Parable of the Blind. Vrancx was the primary innovator of military battle painting in the Netherlands. His particular ability of filling landscapes with small but very active figures (as with his predecessor, Pieter Bruegel) allowed for his achievement. Vrancx was also contemporary with Peter Paul Rubens and also a Counter Reformation artist. Vrancx once painted a Crossing of the Red Sea in which the pharaoh’s men were Protestants and Turks drowned in their hot pursuit of the Church.
The men depicted in our bulletin image, however, cannot even cross a stream. This somewhat, comic parable has a deeper spiritual meaning in that it shows a major point about human history especially in our own culture: that those without the guidance of God will rely instead upon each other’s worldliness on a journey that leads them ever downward on a diagonal path toward Hell.
Of the figures in our painting: some hold on; some reach out; some leap forward! Yet all our “blind” and will fall down without the guidance of Word and Sacrament.
–Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services
by SFXparish | Feb 22, 2019 | BLOG
Abishai whispered to David: “God has delivered your enemy into your grasp this day… But David said to Abishai, “Do not harm him, for who can lay hands on the LORD’s anointed and remain unpunished?” (1 Sam: 26:8-9)
In this Sunday’s gospel reading Jesus attaches a greater demand of love onto the commandment to love. He tells his disciples “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Lk 6:27). From there he counsels that when struck by another we should “turn the other cheek” and when another takes what is ours we should not demand it back.
Respectively, each of these instructions goes counter to our human impulse to defend ourselves and our property. However it must be pointed out that these teachings of Jesus are not about pacifism or communism; Jesus is not concerned here with negating the natural human rights to self-protection and property. What Jesus is always concerned with is living life in imitation of His Father in heaven. This is why the conclusion of today’s lesson is that we, as His disciples, behave as “children of the Most High” who is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Lk 6:35). Jesus is asking us to forgo the human for the divine, because it is for the divine that we have been created (1 Jn 3:2).
To understand this we must recall that we were once enemies of God. Since Adam, man has abused the gifts of God; and if we have not cursed him, we have certainly forgotten him. We would still be enemies of God if not for the redemptive act of Jesus Christ, who ransomed himself for our salvation through the forgiveness of our sins (Lk 1:77). God offered us his love even when we set ourselves against him (Ps 2:2). Without overcomplicating today’s gospel reading, let us say that God is asking that we his children become like Him and offer our love to those who set themselves against us.
Reaching back into the Old Testament for an early example of clemency (and even love) toward an imposing enemy, we have placed on our bulletin cover for this 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time a painting by the Victorian era artist, Richard Dadd, entitled David Spareth Saul’s Life (1854). Dadd, a British Romantic painter, moved back and forth between genre and fantasy. The latter was sadly also Dadd’s reality, as much of his painting was produced in a London psychiatric hospital. Some of Dadd’s works may be compared to Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) for these scenes were filled with many strange figures in minutia, except perhaps in less awkward poses than in Bosch.
In our bulletin image we see King Saul sleeping on the foreground in his battle camp while David and his companion Abishai stand over Saul. Neither spear, nor shield, nor guard, nor even mountainside can protect Saul from being delivered into David’s hand as was the will of God. Yet we also see David putting out his right hand to prevent the lance thrust that would have pinned Saul’s corpse to the ground. David spares his enemy because his first duty is to God – to not destroy God’s anointed one. David would rather risk his enemy’s wrathful pursuit than pursue a course forbidden by God. He would rather suffer the pain of his enemy than the pain of becoming like his enemy.
–Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services
by SFXparish | Feb 14, 2019 | BLOG
Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream (Jer 17:7-8).
There is no faith without grace. In chronological order, the process of human redemption goes this way: grace, faith and good works. One may certainly perform good works from one’s own human will, yet such natural works gain no merit before God unless they flow from the confluence of supernatural charity. One can also have natural faith: he or she can for example have faith in their neighbor, trust in their sports team, in their hairdresser, in their firemen, and in their military; but no one can come to trust in God unless he drinks first “from the stream by the wayside and therefore lifts up his head” (Ps 110:7). In fact, no one can even say “Jesus Christ is Lord” unless he sips from the abundant waters of grace (1 Jn 4:2-3 & 1 Cor 12:3).
In our first reading today, the prophet Jeremiah is making reference to the first psalm of David which contrasts the way of the wicked man with that of the good man, or rather with that of the graceful man. The graceful man is “blessed” as “he is like a tree planted by streams of water” (Ps 1:3). The leaves of this tree “never wither” while it is always prosperous and fruitful. The transpiration of its roots draws water from the fountain of life. The blessedness of this tree commences and remains through it having faith and hope in the Lord God.
In the second psalm (in the Book of Psalms) we are instructed as to what this tree symbolizes. It is Jesus, the “anointed one” (Ps 2:2), the Christ. It is he who comes into the world to stand in the streams of the Jordan, not so he can drain the physical “energy” of that river as some demi-god or superhero, but so that he may plant himself upon the earth as the renewed Tree of Life which drinks eternally from the Holy Spirit. It is from this tree that we (as branches) are fed and prosper unto everlasting salvation (Jn 15:4-6).
Just as the psalmist creates a symbol of grace with tree and stream, so do we on our bulletin cover for this 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The image we have chosen for this purpose is by the French Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin, entitled By the Stream, Autumn (1885). Gaugin still paints here in the Impressionist style, but one can see in this earlier period in Paris how he already begins to experiment with the flattening of bright, bordered, and compartmentalized color. We still have light and the reflection of light as in Impressionism, but now it is a soaked up light so that even the reflection in the stream has become the color of the trees and field, synthesized as it were in the post-impressionist method.
Yet, we do not want to take our comparison of tree-and-stream with Christ-and-grace too far urging some Zen-like moment, and so be absorbed into a meditation upon nature itself. Our goal as Christians is not nature, but super-nature; always the movement of grace. This comes to us as a free gift of God to all who repent and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ (Mk 1:15).
–Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services
by SFXparish | Feb 8, 2019 | BLOG
“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” (Lk 5:4-5)
The boats of Jewish fisherman on the Lake of Gennesaret were unlikely to be large vessels and so their nets for catching fish were much smaller than the nets of our modern fishing crafts. So when Jesus challenges Peter and his crew to go out “into deep water”, he was not sending Peter out to drag up fish from the bottom of the sea but to trust Him in a precarious situation, especially since fishing in deep water is not particularly safe or sound practice when one is already tired.
Jesus being the Word and Wisdom of God was playing out for Peter a parable in real life so that he would understand that his abundant catch of fish, through the power of Jesus, serves as an analogy of catching men through that same power. This power of God which we call grace is present to all disciples of Christ who seek to benefit from it. Grace is no “force” or “energy”, but the power of the Holy Spirit freely gifted to those who believe in Jesus Christ and his saving mission. All baptized Catholics are called to this mission to add to the great catch of souls that will fill the school of heaven.
The fish are very slippery these days and our nets unsure. As to the fish, they are much more difficult to catch than, say, were the pagans-of-old, many who before converting to the faith held strongly to belief in the natural law, trusting in: the exclusivity of marriage, the modesty of the body, the biology of two genders, the respect of elders, the esteem of tradition, and deference to moral authority. As to our nets, they need to be sturdier and more sound to receive and catch our contemporary zigzagging fish. Such fish cannot be caught by simply floating a “welcome” sign. They must be sought in faith, seized by truth, and secured in love.
In order to put this vision to task we are using two images from American maritime painter Winslow Homer in this bulletin for this 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The first, Mending the Nets (1881), which is on page four, serves for us as an allegory that we need to set aside quiet time to reflect and even contemplate God’s will as we repair our Church and weave our approach to catching souls. The second, which adorns our bulletin cover, is entitled The Herring Net. This is what we do after we have rested and worshipped and been counseled by the Lord. It is indicated by robust action, the willingness to go out into the deep, and the fortitude to endure the dangerous waters amongst the raging waves that rock the boat of the world each and every day. This needed approach requires sharp spiritual senses, the resolution to drag the net over and over again, the steadiness of faith to not fall into sin or doubt, and the strong arms of Church teaching to carry home God’s capture. Let us pray and get to work.
–Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services
by SFXparish | Jan 31, 2019 | BLOG
The word of the LORD came to me, saying… stand up and tell them all that I command you. Be not crushed on their account… They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD (Jer 1:4,17,19)
It is said of Judaism that it considers its second greatest prophet to be Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet of God in the 7th century B.C. He was called for the specific purpose of calling the Jews to conversion and away from idolatrous worship. In particular, Jeremiah warned the Jews about the Babylonian conquest and of their impending captivity which began near 597 B.C. Jeremiah is sometimes called the “weeping prophet” as he is considered the author of the Book of Lamentations, a collection of sorrowful poems concerning Jerusalem’s destruction.
The life of prophecy was not one of ease for Jeremiah. As he spoke out against the nation’s drift into paganism, including against the Jewish leadership which fostered it, Jeremiah was often berated by the official royal prophets and his predictions were seen as dolefully exaggerated. He became a victim of plots, he was scourged and mistreated, and even thrown into a cistern of deep mud and left to die. But as the Lord told Jeremiah, as quoted above in this Sunday’s first reading, “They will fight against you, but not prevail over you”.
Jesus made similar promises of protection to his disciples. When Jesus was granting authority to His apostle Peter, He stated that even the gates of the netherworld (death) would not prevail against the Church (Mt 16:18). However, it does seem of late that the world is prevailing over the Church in various ways and that Church leadership and discipleship are like those in Jeremiah’s time: often found consulting the world even as the world seeks to malign the Church. Some parishes are closed; some are razed to the ground; not by an invading force but by an internal process that chugs along without the apparent knowhow to reverse the losses. No doubt the culture has inflicted many of these losses on the Church, yet many losses have been self-inflicted.
For this Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time so as to reflect on the lament of Jeremiah (and ourselves), we have placed on our bulletin cover a work by French Realist Horace Vernet, entitled Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem (1844). Vernet was an artist for the French crown and renowned for being historically faithful in his painted battle scenes. Vernet also had a fascination with oriental painting, that is, with painting works depicting the East, or more specifically, the Middle East.
Thus we see Jeremiah amongst the rubble of Zion after the Babylonians did their work. Jeremiah writes his lamentations as “the Word of the Lord came to him” indicated by his upward gaze. Jeremiah is not sitting but kneeling as he is in the presence of God. Fresh smoke arises in the background, yet the blue sky offers hope as promised by the prophet Isaiah (Is 43: 14-19).
Hence, we too must hope for a great restoration. But we must do so as did the returning Jewish exiles, directing our entire lives toward God in prayer, word, and confession (Neh 8:6; 9:2).
–Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services
