Manna from heaven

The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
The Israelites said to them,
"Would that we had died at the LORD's hand in the land of Egypt,
as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!
But you had to lead us into this desert
to make the whole community die of famine!"

Exodus 16:2 - 4

Murmuring (literally in the biblical sense meaning ‘grumbling) is nothing new – from the Hebrews in the desert to the crowd at Jesus’ trial, to the letters to the editor in local paper. Grumbling is about expressing dissatisfaction, a grievance or complaint. Some have made it into a refined art: we do it about taxes, rates, levies, fees, government at all levels, public services and institutions, laws, regulations, rules and policies. Grumbling often occurs when there is a perceived lack of fairness, equity, justice, opportunity or choice. The majority of us like to have a whinge, and most of us get over it and move on. A matter that might really irk may well summon in us the energy to write a letter of complaint or to make that phone call. Grumbling, even in our biblical stories, often produces results, results that may surprise.

The Lord’s response to the murmuring Hebrews is to send quail and manna from heaven to feed them. As the saying goes, ‘The Lord provides’. The groaning of the crowd at Jesus’ trial results in Pilate handing him over to the soldiers to whip him and then crucify him.

In both these instances we see at play the unfolding of our story of salvation – God’s plan for us. In feeding the Hebrews the Lord affirms his relationship with them by providing the essentials for life and with the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey – if they remain faithful. The ultimate promise made by God is that we will be saved, from sin, from ourselves, from hopelessness, and it can only be achieved by Jesus’ death, and then fully revealed in his resurrection. Even grumbling has a purpose, for it picks up on that sense of yearning, of seeking what is right.

John (6:24 – 35) takes the Exodus text beyond the feeding of the Hebrews and re-presents Jesus as being the bread sent from heaven: I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst (v. 35). God’s generosity moves from the provision of food, to the total giving of himself, fulfilling the covenant he has with us. This bread we understand as the Eucharist.

For those who grumble about the state of things, how everything has worsened, the Lord unequivocally invites us to break bread at his table, to respond to his gracious generosity by giving him worship and praise. And, all are welcome.

Peter Douglas

Searching for God in the city of angels

Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu

July 27, 2018

Getting a good night’s sleep is impossible when everything is in a constant state of turmoil. There is a wistfulness in the air for how things felt just last week or the week before, when things appeared troubled but in hindsight now seem tame. There is much suffering, and every day it seems to grow.

I imagine all this being said between Jesus and his friends as they walked through Galilee, tired and dusty, encountering people on the brink of hopelessness. I have also heard that same voice in the early church community as they faced persecution. It is there again as Dietrich Bonhoeffer denounces the rise of Nazism in Germany and as Martin Luther King Jr. fights against racism in Birmingham, Ala.—both theologians writing from jail cells. The brokenness of the moment is heartbreakingly poignant in the sermons of Archbishop Óscar Romero and the voices of his murdered Jesuit friends in El Salvador.

I recognize that voice in me today. Maybe you do, too.

St. Teresa of Ávila repeatedly bemoans the difficulty of writing about a profound experience. She is clear that grace is needed to give us understanding and words to express what we have seen. I share her frustration and hope that grace may be present to us all, as we try to enter into each other’s worlds. So please accompany me on what seemed like any ordinary day.

It is late in the morning, and I encounter a couple of my coworkers from the university. They tell me they are on their way to pray. I ask if I may join them, and they beam their sincere welcome. I am grateful for their trust. We enter a small chapel in our building, where several others are waiting. I know all of them. We’ve become friends over the years but more so recently, as the urgency of life becomes ever more acute. The members of the group carry nothing with them except walkie-talkies that sometimes crackle and interrupt. Their carts stand neatly tucked in corners around the building, and their blue work uniforms visibly mark the separations of class and privilege we accept without question. “We are only custodians,” they tell me, painfully aware of their marginality. Their resilience and courage humble me.

They begin their informal prayer service, which they have squeezed into their morning break. The guidance of the service rotates among the men and women in complete trust. I note they don’t pay much attention to the chapel space, other than appreciating its quiet privacy. The altar and ambo are not used, and the community stands in a circle joining hands. The day’s leader voices intercessory prayers for all, having first asked what should be prayed for. The prayers, often accompanied by tears, are for their sick, for their coworkers facing financial difficulties, for those who are far, for children, their own and the world’s.

They pray for each other by name, and they intercede for the particular needs of the students and the leadership of “this great university.” No one asks who is Catholic or evangelical or Pentecostal, although I know all three groups are represented. All are immigrants, and although almost all are Spanish speakers, one woman translates softly for her fellow worker from Sainte-Lucie. The day he leads prayers, his words are translated for the rest. They share hearts. We hear Scripture quoted from memory mixed with the stories of battling cancer, fighting the deportation of loved ones, hope for their children, traveling to the border to help. We take up a collection for those too sick to work. I am most grateful for what they teach me. It is a glimpse into something so sacred that I can only call it the kingdom of God.

I have also spent time recently discovering faith communities in inner-city Los Angeles with my photographer son. Far from the affluent neighborhoods, their locations and church buildings are evidence of decades of white flight. The contrast is powerful, as communities made up almost exclusively of people of color struggle to provide even the most basic ministries that are so abundant in the affluent suburbs. Like my coworkers, they make our city function; and like them, they remain invisible to the rest of us.

I went to search for the kingdom of God with them because, as Jesus makes clear in the Beatitudes, the poor, sorrowful and meek have nothing standing in the way as they turn their gaze to God. Unencumbered by power and privilege, they are “blessed” by their vision of the reign. Just as I saw with my coworkers, the expressions of faith of the poor and vulnerable are occurring against a background of chaos and fear.

You and I live in the particularity of the United States of 2018, where millions of people wake up every morning to another day in which their future is uncertain and their forcible removal from their homes and families is a real possibility. People who have braved everything for the sake of feeding their loved ones are treated like criminals and routinely denied their humanity, jailed, deported and rejected as “illegals.”

Beyond this but connected to it, rising militarism, racist nationalism and staggering expenditures on weapons are all occurring at the same time that spending on education, health care, housing and food aid is being severely cut. We count out grimly the number of mass shootings, offering prayers as a panacea, while teachers like me watch “safety videos,” and the brisk business of selling guns continues. We close our borders to refugees, dismantle programs to aid those fleeing persecution, jailing them and separating them from their children and we cut new deep wounds into our mother earth to force out fossil fuels and choke ourselves to death. There is much suffering.

The Task at Hand 

Theology is a creative task that weaves together millennia-old traditions with the urgencies of the present moment. When done properly, theological reflection allows us to see deeper into reality and discover a religious tradition’s power to face and transform that reality in faithful coherence with how we understand God’s vision for us. In our little chapel at my university, and in the locales of the inner city, I realized that our moment is at once entirely new but also entirely familiar to generations of Christians. In these communities, I saw the living faith of the poor. And this, the place where God is indispensable to life, is where any search for the kingdom of God must begin.

Our present reality, both nationally and globally, is dangerous. I do not mean just the obvious dangers of deportation or war. Those are clear. I mean the kind of danger that deceives and hides, hoping we will not notice. What is hidden inside our moment is that unless we act for the kingdom of God, the truthfulness and efficacy of the Gospel is at stake.

The custodial workers who meet every morning know this. They ask Christ to be in their midst and offer themselves and their vulnerability. For all of us who call ourselves Christians, this moment is about the biggest questions of all, about our faithfulness and discernment as beings made “in the image of God,” about our obedience to God’s vision and about our kinship as God’s creatures. What the early church, Bonhoeffer, King, Romero, the prayer group and the multitudes of Christians they represent know and we must now remember is that if we look the other way and acquiesce to evil, we obliterate God’s attempt to reach us through Jesus Christ and destroy the very possibility of that which the Son came to announce: the reign of God.

Conditions for the Search 

As I think back on the upheaval faced by Jesus’ Jewish community long before his time, the disconcerting violence encountered by him and his contemporaries and the marked collective convulsions of the past century, I am alarmed; but I also recognize that there is something more being revealed in the unfolding of that story. History also reveals that moments of confusion and suffering birthed prophets through whom the Spirit spoke. These prophets nurtured communities that rekindled an active faith in what was possible, and their work produced lasting changes in consciousness that we can reawaken today. In each of these instances, as the world was fracturing, the brokenness was revealing something new.

Those of us who live in the developed world have entered a new phase in our history. This may actually be good news for our relationship to the good news. The state of confrontation and conflict we are living in is not only our present—it is the story of our past. No matter how much we romanticize it with beautiful songs like “Silent Night,” the truth (as the witnesses of the Gospel tell the story) is that political upheaval, violent ethnic and religious conflict, militarization and poverty were the conditions of the world into which Jesus was born. The New Testament, reflecting on the life of Jesus and his friends, from their first meeting through the beginnings of the movement we call the church, paints an unmistakable picture of life lived on the edge.

There is nothing romantic or good about a chaotic existence, and I wish it on no one, but it may be a necessary condition for understanding just what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. Today, the realization that there is nothing safe or comforting about the stories recounted in the Gospels may help us find our own place inside the big story they tell. And that story is about God’s work in the world.

Mary's Vision of the Kingdom of God 

An interesting feature of the prayer group that I also witnessed throughout the inner-city parishes I visited is the central role of women’s tireless work on behalf of the kingdom. Joining over 36,000 Catholics gathered for the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress in March, I observed and later confirmed an astounding (but unsurprising) statistic: 70 percent of those gathered to study and train for their work in the church were women. At the same time, a careful look at the aesthetic evidence of sacred spaces in the inner-city parishes made evident just how much the poor and vulnerable turn to a woman, La Virgen María. Why is that? Why do they seek her companionship and leave testimonies of their prayers and their love?

The author of the Gospel of Luke, drawing on a voice like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, makes Mary an early herald of the purpose and nearness of God’s kingdom. In what we commonly call “The Canticle of Mary” or “The Magnificat,” Luke presents a number of clues for recognizing God’s active presence in the world (1:46-55). At first, the canticle appears not to relate much to the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, and indeed many biblical scholars believe it is an early Jewish-Christian hymn. But I suggest we should read it within the context of the story.

This clear-eyed vision of the world as it should be, and in her forceful telling will be, is articulated by a radically powerless person. Mary is young, pregnant and, curiously, traveling alone and in haste through the hill country of Judah. As Luke passes along the tradition that Mary is unwed, we note that she travels to her kinswoman Elizabeth, perhaps seeking her protection. This early announcement of God’s kingdom, placed in the mouth of the woman who would give birth to Jesus and raise him, needs to be read from a space of precariousness and vulnerability. The gift of praying with the poor is that they are already there; their closeness to Mary’s situation can orient us on how to read the canticle with new eyes.

Who is this God Mary knows and wants us to know? The canticle tells us we know God not by speculation about a transcendent Other but intimately through God’s action in the world. Mary both tells and enacts the truth that God gives voice to the “nobodies.” As she speaks, Mary shows God’s action in her, which emboldens her past the limitations set up to contain her. In this, the image of the Magnificat is paradoxical. Mary is aware of her status, what the author calls her “lowliness,” and yet it is precisely this humble identification with the least that allows her to speak defiantly with them and for them. Her embrace of powerlessness as tapping into the very source of God’s power connects her religiously and culturally to an entire community of people.

God of the Lowly 

Throughout Scripture, God is never praised as an abstract concept or distant other but as the one who loves and through love makes a different and wonderfully new kind of world possible. The community I pray with truly believes this. In their world, “God raises the needy from the dust, [and] lifts the poor from the ash heap” (Ps 113:7). Luke’s description of God’s action through Mary is that God shows mercy “to those who fear [God]” (Lk 1:50). In earlier times, the word fear conjured up a “fire and brimstone” God. But a more accurate way to read this is that God shows mercy to those who are consciously aware of God and act accordingly. Sailors “fear” the sea because if they do not, if they are not fully present to its ways, they will be unable to live in its demanding reality. We cannot even begin to know God’s mercy unless we are first aware of our dependence on God; otherwise we mistakenly assign to ourselves the power that is God’s alone, and we will most assuredly capsize. The kingdom of God depends on such an intentional awareness of God’s vision for creation, and this awareness must engender particular actions from us.

God’s vision for creation, Mary tells us, cannot abide arrogance; it opposes and deposes rulers who exploit the lowly and will judge and send away the rich who avoid hearing the cries of the hungry. The canticle ends by underlining God’s “promise” to God’s beloved: Mary’s suffering people of Israel. There is nothing ambiguous here about what the vision of the kingdom of God is; it entails living into this constant and searing requirement that the lowly be lifted up, not tomorrow but today. As God keeps God’s promises, so must we.

Choosing the Kingdom 

This uncompromising requirement of God’s vision for the building of God’s reign has divided Christians throughout history. There are those who retire from the turmoil and speak of the kingdom of God as a future place, somewhere in “heaven,” where the wrongs will finally be righted. Getting there is just a matter of piety, patience and, well, dying. And then there are those who try to assuage their consciences by doing the minimum for others as “charity” while building spiritual spas: luxuriant parish complexes that reinforce their separateness from the vulnerable. The result is places of comfort and security that drown out the pain of the world with elevator music.

But there are also those who, like Mary, see God acting in the world for the lowly and vulnerable and boldly take up their cause, which is God’s cause. One could say that these are three different approaches to living as a Christian in a troubled world, all equally valid. One could, but one should not unless one is ready to walk away from the Gospel.

In one of the traditions collected by Luke, Jesus is asked bluntly by scholars “when the kingdom of God would come.” Jesus responds directly in a few words. First, the kingdom “cannot be observed,” and no one will announce it by pointing it out. It is not a “place,” like heaven or a perfectly constructed temple or religious system. The reign of God is an “event.” The kingdom is not to be looked at; it is to be experienced. As Jesus continues, he challenges the scholars, telling them something often repeated throughout the Gospels: They just do not see that “the kingdom of God is among you” (17:20-21).

Any approach to the suffering of the world that does not directly engage us personally with that suffering is, in essence, a denial of the kingdom’s presence among us; it is a denial of Christ’s revelation. The offerings of flowers, candles and prayers I encountered in the inner city were addressed to Mary as the champion of the lowly, the mother who hears their cries and who carries and buries a son who died for love of them. In our little chapel and in churches all over the world, the poor make themselves present to God, ask for God’s companionship and volunteer to do the hard work.

Just as Archbishop Romero was a prophet, so too is every single person who dares to dream of God’s reign with him. Just as the Holy Spirit spoke through Martin Luther King Jr., so too it speaks through all the anonymous women and men who preceded him and walked with him. To be a prophet is a sign of our baptism, and it is time we start acting like it. Jesus Christ’s example and exhortation to us to build God’s reign of radical and dangerous love is alive in you, it is alive in me, it lives in the church, and it calls us to heroism. Where does God’s kingdom need me today, lowly as I am, to speak up and act like young Mary did centuries ago in the sun-kissed hills of Judah? This is our question.

This article also appeared in print, under the headline "Portraits of the Kingdon," in the August 6, 2018 issue of America.

Amazing faith

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house." So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.

Mark 6:4 - 6

Amazed at their lack of faith. Would he be amazed at our lack of faith? Let’s face it, we put our trust in the things we think might have scientific or even economic certainty. Our secular community easily mocks those who are people of faith, as if placing your trust in God amounts to silly superstition. Christians comprise 31.5% of the world’s population. There are 2.1 billion of us, and of those 1.17 billion are Catholics, while the other 930 million are divided among almost 36,000 denominations. You are not alone. There are up to 1.6 billion Muslims, 1 billion Hindus and possibly half a billion Buddhists and of course there are folk religions, Judaism and others. 1.1 billion have no religion, are secularists – and even then most of these are in the Western world and China.

We wonder why our world lacks miracles, and Jesus himself tells us it is because of our lack of faith.

But would Jesus really find more than a few to lay his hands on to heal them? Would he be struck by our fascination with possessions and our addictive consumerism, do these things prevent us from seeing the miracles great and small taking place before our very eyes? Or would he find...

Connie Gladman, born and raised in rural Victoria, joined the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart aged 23. According to her family she had longed for religious life and to teach the poor. Trained as a teacher before entering the convent, Connie (by now Sister Mary Rosina) was sent to the OLSH mission in PNG. Connie was sitting at the back of a classroom supervising a teacher at the Magien school when she was violently murdered on 30 November 1964.

It was believed that the murder had been 'payback' killing because a young man from there had died in the Vunapope Hospital in Rabaul run by the same order of nuns. Connie was a dedicated school teacher, and later, a schools inspector. She was particularly interested in teacher education and consequently was an early founder of OLSH Kabaleo Teachers College in Kokopo which still exists today. The murderer, Rapui, spent most of his life in the Laloki Mental Hospital near Port Moresby.

Her cause was presented to Rome in 2012, seeking to recognise Connie as a martyr.

There are miracles in every aspect of Connie's life. She never attended a Catholic school, but she found her vocation which her father put to the test. The impact she had on the children she taught, the teachers she trained and supervised resulted in further vocations. She was loved and admired by her family and her (religious) sisters. Yet this ordinary Australian woman lived an extraordinary life. Her faith led her to the end of the earth where she met the poorest of the poor and dedicated herself to educate their children - in state and Catholic schools, and now her life is an exemplar to each of us. In time miracles wrought by her intercession will be sought to support her cause, and I have no doubt many will come.

As part of our Christian faith we believe that hope is ours, that there is something for those who wait, for those who are patient, for those who live out being good news, for those who give their lives for others. With faith we know the miraculous becomes possible and that we can experience and participate in the marvellous and awesome moments of the divine in the beautiful world God has given us.

Don’t be afraid to be a person of faith, even if that means living on the edge. Remember Connie Gladman, she was on that edge and that was where she lived and died in the service of her Lord.

Peter Douglas

For further information on Connie (Sister Rosina) Gladman see:

https://www.standard.net.au/story/2746335/memories-of-a-sisters-missionary-calling/

https://www.acountrypriest.com/death-of-a-missionary/

I wanted to become a Catholic. But first I had to give up the Eucharist—and porn.

by Jacob Turnrose

This article appeared in America on June 25, 2018

At the start of the fall semester of my senior year of college, I was receiving the Eucharist every day. The problem was, I was not Catholic. I had begun attending daily Mass four months before, drawn less by the Catholic faith than by the soothing regularity of the liturgy. Whenever the host was administered, I went up with the rest of the parish and received it without a second thought. I did not think there was a difference between Protestant communion and the Catholic Eucharist other than that one was administered more frequently than the other.

But by September, I could no longer plead ignorance. I had begun to participate in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and was learning about church doctrine and the theology of the sacraments, including how the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life.” I also learned that people were not supposed to take the Eucharist unless they had received first Communion. How could I live with this contradiction: breaking the rules of the very church I wanted to join?

Around that time, I posed the question in my journal: “Maybe I should stop taking the Eucharist until I’m confirmed, but could I bear that?” I had developed a burning desire for the body and blood of Christ. And when I went to Mass, that was the only thing that mattered: fulfilling this personal desire to commune with God through the Blessed Sacrament.

But by fulfilling this desire, I was isolating myself from others. By continuing to receive Communion I was taking myself out of the adult initiation process and creating division between myself and the other catechumens and candidates, who were patiently waiting for their first Communion. I was also distancing myself from the greater Catholic community by ignoring the stages that the church in her wisdom has laid out for catechumens and candidates prior to full reception into the church. But the thought of waiting for the Eucharist seemed too much to bear. My faith was growing, yes, but it was also becoming increasingly individualistic.  

There was another problem. In addition to my daily Eucharist habit, I was watching pornography nearly every other day.

People often worry that pornography encourages men to view women as expendable and interchangeable sex partners, that it prioritizes sexual “intimacy” over emotional intimacy. I am sure that is true for some users. But I had been viewing pornography since middle school, and it was not leading me to have casual sex with all kinds of women. Instead, it led me to completely isolate myself, both sexually and emotionally.

In college, I developed a fear of sex. It seemed so risky. The potential for awkwardness, rejection and pain hung over me whenever I thought about sexual intimacy with another person. Watching pornography was much better, I felt, because it was safe. There was no potential for hurt because I was alone with a screen. This fear seeped into my friendships, too. It was much easier for me to fence myself off from others and not let anyone get too close because the potential for pain was more than I could bear.

Deep down, however, I wanted more. I wanted to experience intimacy with others. I started by giving up Communion. In the week following my September journal entry, I decided to abstain from the Blessed Sacrament until my first Communion. Abstaining meant abandoning a certain “cave mentality” of living my faith on my own. It invited me to share my budding faith with others who were walking with me on the journey.

But my decision to refrain from Communion also forced me to reconsider how I thought about sex. The parallels were all too real. If abstaining from my strong urge to have the body and blood would allow me greater communion in the end, could the same be true of giving up porn?  

I started taking seriously the prospect of marriage and how watching pornography might inhibit my ability to be intimate with my future spouse. I acknowledged its disconnecting properties—that it ultimately separates me from others. I asked, how could I share in the beautiful gift of sex with my future spouse if I kept teaching myself, through every porn clip, that sex was a solitary activity? How could I possibly survive the intimacy and vulnerability of marriage when I was fencing myself off from those exact things by using pornography?

These were the kinds of questions that changed things for me.

I saw that I had to expel pornography from my life in order to free myself from its narcissism. Ultimately, I had to free myself to pursue something greater. And it was the end goal itself—experiencing intimacy in marriage—that made pornography less and less appealing to me. Through the grace of God, I stopped a decade-long habit of giving in to the safe, self-gratifying act of watching porn.

Sex was never meant to be a solitary activity, but for 10 years that was all sex was for me. In a similar way, the way of the Christian was never meant to be solitary. The process of Christian initiation illuminated these truths and taught me that immediate passions must give way in order for us to experience true communion.  

Four weeks before Easter Sunday, the members of my R.C.I.A. cohort were asked to examine our lives in preparation for receiving the sacraments. After a moment of reflection, we went around in a circle and shared our reflections. I was shocked to hear another candidate speak about the struggle she had with a self-gratifying sexual practice. When this person finished, I jumped in to talk about my own similar experience. She thanked me for sharing, and for a moment, I felt the solidarity that is our true end. We were two Christians, yearning for more.

This article also appears in print, under the headline "True Communion," in the July 9, 2018 issue.