Defend the Orphan ~Isaiah 1:17

“Defend the Orphan” ~Isaiah 1:17

“Watch , for you know not when the master of the house 

will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or 

in the morning; lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.” 

~Mark 13:35, 36

This is how the Gospel says it in Mark. Today’s Gospel from Luke turns the phrase in a slightly different way. But the message is the same. Watch, be ready; Jesus is coming at an unexpected time.

When I was in the early years of my priesthood I served a church in which the Senior Warden sold insurance by day and played the saxophone by night. His wife often quoted the Gospel words; “You never know when Walter’s coming home, at midnight or cockcrow or in the morning.” She often said the words with an edge in her voice, a pause and then we all laughed. 

When I go to church on a Sunday morning on a beautiful day like this, I hope to hear the Good News of Jesus, and to be among folk who want to worship God. I find myself eager to be in the beauty of holiness, to ready myself for the coming of Jesus. 

But the world is much too much with us. Day in and day out we hear so much bad news. The daily grind can get to us. We oftentimes find ourselves worn down by it all. So when I come here, I want to find my heart lifted toward the holy.

This has always been the case. From the earliest of times, folks have gathered to sacrifice and feast before God in an effort to find whatever connection there is between us and the divine. 

Yet also from the earliest of times the Prophets have confronted and warned us about thinking that worship alone pleases God.  In today’s first lesson from the Prophet Isaiah, we read;

“When you stretch out your hands,

   I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

   I will not listen…

   cease to do evil,

17   learn to do good;

seek justice,

   rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

   plead for the widow.”

How timely these words!

The prophet’s message bears a special immediacy to us. As we round up folks for detention and deportation, the children are left to plead with us. How can they possibly understand the politics of it all? 

There is a little girl in tears who looks up at a camera begging for her father. “I need my daddy. He’s not a criminal. Please don’t take him away and leave me here alone.” I do not understand how it is that we make orphans by the the hundreds on a daily basis, rather than defending them, those of us especially who claim to be under the authority of Scripture.

Therefore I turn to the Bible. In it I find the word “Justice.” It is used 194 times. There must be a way to find our way to a just solution to what divides us. It stands to reason. 

The Prophet continues;

“Come now, let us argue it out,

though your sins are like scarlet,

   they shall be like snow;

though they are red like crimson,

   they shall become like wool.

If you are willing and obedient,

   you shall eat the good of the land”

There must be a way to turn our hearts. With God there is “Compassion”; a word that is used 80 times in Scripture and there is the word “Forgive” which occurs 133 times.

Tragically, the word “violence” is also used 76 times. When left to our own devices we end up in conflict which often directs us toward hatred and hatred is expressed in violence. 

The Prophet continues; 

“if you refuse and rebel,

   you shall be devoured by the sword;  The gun and the AK-47

   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Isn’t that the tragic truth of it! Dear ones, what we read in this ancient manuscript from Isaiah today sounds as fresh and as raw as this precise moment in our history. 

This is what brings me to gather with good folks like you Sunday by Sunday. Right smack dab in the midst of a world much too present with us we seek to gather and remember who we are and whose we.

The Epistle articulates an especially compelling vision of the Gospel today.  “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Interesting turn of phrase; “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The Christian Hope is the assurance of the Love of God made flesh and blood in Jesus. The word “Love” by the way, is used in the Bible 872 times. If our conviction is in Jesus, surely God’s Love is the thing unseen but no less real. And this is our Faith! “The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.

We have received the faith of Abraham who connects us to the Three Great Abrahamic Faiths; Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. For as Paul says in his soaring words today; “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place …not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed…in a foreign land, living in tents…but he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” “A wandering Aramean was my father!” By faith he and Sarah gave birth to descendants ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.’” Abraham like the rest of us at one time or another, undocumented aliens in a foreign land, put his faith in God. 

What bring me back again and again to our gathering together is this Faith; a living relationship with Jesus and with the people of Jesus because we are the people who embrace the Gospel proclamation we heard just moments ago; we are the ones who listen to Jesus; “Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

When Jesus comes each and every one of us wants to be engaged in those life giving words; Justice, Compassion, Forgiveness. This is the Way to Faith and the Way to Eternal Life; it is the Way of Love. Justice for the orphans, the widows, the poor; without regard to Nationality or Language, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Orientation or any variation of all the above. We are all one in Jesus.

And Jesus says; “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

In the Name of God; the Most Holy Undivided and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

Fr Paul

"Let me help you"

A Good Friday Meditation

A little girl bends over to help him with his cross.

It is the most natural thing in all the world to do.

She will follow him and help him all the way to the end.

That’s just the way she is. 

She will watch with him even when he dies. 

She will not leave him.

She will stay with him. 

On the third day, she and her friends will go to the garden to prepare him for burial.

But the stone will be rolled away.

The gardener will greet her.

She will ask; “Where have they taken him?”

It is then she will remember; “It’s you! You are the one I stooped over to help when first you fell.”

Only then will it dawn upon her that he lives! 

They won’t believe her but she knows the truth.

He lives!

You and I will not fully understand this for a very long time. But it’s all true and more besides;

In the meantime, there is this from Celtic Daily Prayer for this Good Friday

Go peaceful
in gentleness
through the violence of these days.
Give freely.
Show tenderness
in all your ways.

Through darkness,
in troubled times
let holiness be your aim.
Seek wisdom.
Let faithfulness
burn like a flame.

God speed you!
God lead you,
and keep you wrapped around His heart!
May you be known by love.

Be righteous.
Speak truthfully
in a world of greed and lies.
Show kindness.
See everyone
through heaven’s eyes.

God hold you,
enfold you,
and keep you wrapped around His heart.
May you be known by love.

~Celtic Daily Prayer, Paul Field

(The image from above is from the Episcopal Cultural Network)

The Word of God Was Rare in Those Days

The Word of God Was Rare in Those Days

That sure sounds like current events to me. 

Open a newspaper, turn on the news. All the jarring headlines and brutal imagery we see is so deeply disturbing, because none of these things has anything to do with the God we know and love. There are vicious and violent words and deeds, that are heard done from various fundamentalist corners of the religious world. They make us shudder to think of them.

And yet as we read the holy words of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed we stop to think about the one who brings us out of slavery into freedom, the one who faces down sin and death and rises victorious up from both, and the one whose quiet soul listens to Allah the All Merciful and writes for us the words of the Holy Koran. 

Oh for the storytellers! 

The ones who can tell us of the little boy Samuel and how he had yet to hear of who God was and is. How can anyone “teach” God? Just yesterday, I prayed, how can I tell my own children? Or other people I love. How can I share this sense within my heart that God often comes to us in the night season as we rest?  God can call us by name as he did for the little boy in the Temple where he served faithfully the old man Eli; “Samuel, Samuel”

Did I hear somebody call my name, the little fella said? So he scampered off to Eli. “Yes, you called me.” 

And the old man Eli said “No, go back to bed. I did not call you.”

And then, he lay there surrounded by the darkness and the fulsome silence wakeful because he was certain that there was a voice that called his name. And then, perhaps as he was dozing off, there it was again; “Samuel, Samuel”

The little fella said, “Yes, I did hear somebody call my name”. So he scampered off again to Eli, and now insisted “You did call me”. 

“No, go lie down, I did not call you”

Then the Scripture makes it all clear. Samuel did not yet know the Lord. He did not yet know that God speaks to us in the very depths of our souls, in the dead silence, in the deepest corner of the heart, where the truth resides. It is here that God speaks to us all. I’m not talking about voices that you might hear in a psychotic episode. I am talking about the kind of voice that is always within you as your friend and companion reminding you to go deeper and face the truth; the truth about yourself with compassion and abiding love for yourself and those you love the most. 

This is the Truth that shall make you free. It is the Truth that shall bring you to God.

And then you see, he heard it again, that “voice” that something that speaks the truth within, and off again he scampers to the old man Eli; “Here I am, for you called me”. 

The old man knows now that this is how God speaks to us; often in the night season, in a restless moment or two, in our youth, where there is hope. Eli knew that he and his sons had made a mess of things in the Temple and that God was not the least bit pleased. 

Maybe, God had a word for him. Be that as it may, Eli perceived, he “discerned” that what was really happening was that God wanted to have a word with the little fella. After all, as we all know from sacred history, “A little child shall lead them”, as in the case of Samuel, David, and Jesus. 

This time the old man said; “Go back to your bed and when you hear the Silence speak in your heart once more, you stay there still and say, Speak Lord for your servant is listening”.

What God has to say is not the least bit pleasant because it spells the end of Eli’s priesthood. He had betrayed the trust of God and had let his unruly kids run rampant throughout the holy place. It was time to clean up the place once more and make God’s holy place fit for the Glory of God.

I have always loved this story. When my grandmother first told us that story, I was fascinated by the idea that a child could be called by God to serve the church. So I asked her, “Ma, does that mean that God can call children to be ministers in his church?” This is back in the days when we spoke of the clergy as “ministers” and not as “priests”.

And her eyes twinkled with delight as she said, of course God can call children to serve the Church. I went off to see the priest at the time and made an appointment to see him in his office. I remember that my legs still hung over the side of the chair not quite reaching the floor, as he smiled at me with that kindly smile of the clergy of our church. 

“What can I do for you young man?”

“I want to know what it takes to become a parish priest.”

To his eternal credit he didn’t laugh, but told me. Graduate from Hight School, go to College, preferably a secular college where you faith can be tested, and then go to Seminary, there is one right here in Cambridge. You’ll need to pass a number of tests, you’ll need the sponsorship of a local congregation, and the approval of the Bishop and Standing Committee obviously…but that’s the essence of it.

And so that’s is what I did.

For as long as I’ve lived out my priesthood in the church, I have often wondered what it is that makes the Church endure. Though the rise and fall of empires, as nations come and nations go as fashions and fads shine and then fade away, there is the enduring quality of the human heart in contact with the enduring Presence of God.

And then I remember that we belong to a kingdom not of this world; in this world, to be sure but not of this world. God’s kingdom belongs to those whose heats belong to God. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is rounding up his disciples at the beginnings of his ministry. He said to Phillip; “Follow me”. He did. 

Then Phillip said to Nathaniel; “We have found him of whom Moses and the Prophets spoke, Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Nazareth!, can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

But when Jesus meets Nathaniel, he says; “Nathaniel, I saw you under the fig tree.”

Now, I have no idea what it was that Nathaniel was doing under the fig tree, but whatever it was, the fact that Jesus knew about it, brought Nathaniel to his spiritual knees and he was able to proclaim “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!”

Imagine, God knows us that intimately. It is in this manner that God seeks to build a whole new kingdom, a new Empire, built not with armies, weapons of mass destruction, or acts of violence but with compassion, love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

This is the kingdom to which we have been called.

In the collect for purity the very first prayer from the very first Prayer Book ever written in English, Thomas Cranmer made it clear what our relationship to God was to be like; 

"Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name through Jesus Christ our Lord."

That’s God’s kingdom, God’s Empire. We are God’s citizens. God is our King and our Emperor. And to meet our King we need look no further than within our own hearts. 

As the old adage goes; “God is closer to you than the very next breath that you will take.” 

If the Word of God seems rarely heard in these days, it is only because we rarely listen. We need look no further than within your own hearts.

It is true, the body is the Temple of God’s Holy Spirit, as the Apostle Paul puts it.

And the Psalmists says it in soaring and magnificent language; 

My body was not hidden from you, *

while I was being made in secret

and woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;

all of them were written in your book; *

they were fashioned day by day,

when as yet there was none of them.

How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *

how great is the sum of them!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Fr Paul

How God Wants Us to Feel

How God Wants Us to Feel

It is time for me to rethink my website and blog. You can follow the link for my website and see what is there now. But the question my consultant raised was this; "How do you want people to feel?" As good a question as that is, I found myself rephrasing it; "How does God want us to feel?" She, my consultant, asked me to come up with three words. I came up with four. After all, one of the strongest forms in all architecture is the pyramid. Therefore I find myself thinking about a foursquare Gospel. There are four Gospels. So these are the words I propose as Fr Paul's Foursquare Gospel.

God wants you to feel forgiven. And God wants you to forgive. Here is a picture of the kind of forgiveness God has in mind.

God wants you to feel loved. And God wants you to love. Here is a picture of the kind of love God has in mind.

God wants you to feel compassion. God wants you to have compassion. Since the word compassion in Greek has within it the notion of the womb, I think of such a picture as this for the kind of compassion God wants you to feel and wants you to share.

I love that picture. See the love she has for him? If you see that, you can see the compassion she has for us as well. And perhaps you can see the compassion God wants you to share with the world.

Finally, I see God seeking reconciliation among us. Jesus reconciled us to God. God and Jesus seek to reconcile us to one another. I think of "The Parable of the Prodigal Son", or probably more aptly titled, "The Parable of the Compassionate Father". How difficult a thing it is for the Father to make both sons see how generous the Father's love is. 

You can almost feel the love of the Father for his son. But still there is the older brother who resents the party the father gives for his son. The work of reconciliation goes on and on. 

These great words set the scene for what I see as the stage for sacred history. We're all under their authority. First the authority that God sets in our hearts for ourselves. We are to love ourselves as we'll as others. We are to love others as we do ourselves. Here is a lifetime's work for us.

Then there is my mission statement. I believe we are called to be a "House of Prayer for ALL People". ALL means all. Not just some. Throughout my lifetime, in just one short lifetime, the search for justice and peace has included civil rights, gender equality, and now we seek a way to include within the ever widening circles of compassion, the whole range of folks within the entire LGBTQ community. 

All of this is challenging work. But from childhood, I have remembered the words above the great west doors of the national cathedral in Washington, "A House of Prayer for ALL People". 

Here is a picture of that noble edifice. Here is a picture of what I have in mind; a place where all people without regard to race, ethnicity, class, gender or orientation can find a home with genuine warmth; a place where we can know and feel what it means to be forgiven, loved, where compassion is at the heart of things and where the work of reconciliation is central to its mission.

This is how I seek to rebuild my website. Stay tuned. We seek to relaunch by May Day. This should be fun. Thanks to you all for your encouragement throughout my ministry. It is a ministry we all share. I've been doing it for only 41 years. The work has been going on for thousands of years by all the host of heaven and earth. 

Grace and Peace be to you all.

Fr Paul

Climate Change and the Transfiguration

On the Mountaintop

I remember like it was yesterday the day we took a busload of kids to Mount Sinai. St. Catherine’s, one of the oldest Monasteries in Christendom stands at the foot of the mountain and encloses an example of what we have come to call “the burning bush”. When the wind plays through the leaves, they shimmer in the sunlight and appear to be ablaze with glory. The mountain reaches 7,497 feet toward heaven. The kids all arose at 2am to begin their climb. I begged off and allowed my son Michael to be my eyes for me. 

Upon his return Michael was a changed man. His countenance was transfigured, if you will, with a radiance that can only be explained by what it means to walk in the footsteps of the holy. He told me it was like he could feel Moses with him in his footsteps as he climbed the mountain. The silence he heard was deafening, only his breath and the breathing of strained lungs from his friends who also found their lives changed by this approach toward God.

Not long after they reached the summit, there was a magnificent sunrise...and the silence continued. The kids wrote in their journals of their contact with God there on the mountaintop.

When I was younger I climbed my beloved Mount Washington in New Hampshire...at least, I should say, more accurately and more honestly I climbed a lateral path with a group guided by the Appalachian Mountain Club and reached Bald Knob one October day. It was cold up on the mountain, but the sun was shining, and we were too young to notice any discomfort from either the weather or the exertion.

There we rested and looked out over the Presidential Range. How magnificent. It was as though you could hear the voice of God speaking in your heart. “Here is my creation. Take care of it. Take care of one another. Remember, this is holy”, the voice seemed say.

I can well imagine how it was the day that Peter, James and John went up on the mountain to pray with Jesus. Such is the awe with which one takes to the mountaintop that one can hardly help but pray. 

It would come as no surprise to me that one might see something like the images of Moses and Elijah. After all the Law and the Prophets were written into their hearts as the Law and the Prophets are written into our hearts. Woven into our lives from Sunday School on, the sense of right and wrong; and the desire for just dealings among each other, guides and governs the better angels of our nature.

It is in this spirit that we now come to the Last Sunday after the Epiphany of our Lord. On this day we see Jesus transfigured before our very eyes. We see him along with Moses and Elijah, and as they fade away he becomes more and more vividly the imprint of the nature of God. The Law and the Prophets may now be fulfilled by a higher law and a deeper justice. A compassionate love and the courage of reconciliation makes Peace with God and humankind possible. They now complete the old dispensation, under which we lived for so long at the foot of Sinai’s mandate.

Now we live under the mandate of the Love of God made flesh and blood in the person of Jesus. We are changed now from glory to glory. This means for all our days. As it is in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, so too for us in all our joys and sorrows, all our triumphs and failures, all our righteousness and all our sin, God redeems us in our life and death through the life of our Advocate with the Father.

We cannot stay on the mountain, one must hasten to add. As much as we’d like to build lean to’s for the capturing of the moment as Peter suggested to Jesus, he found out all too soon that you cannot capture or box the holy into any kind of container. It is well known that there are these impressive bushes that one can weave into lean to’s in this part of the world. But the holy simply passes as soon as it comes. We come down from the mountain changed, but for us, the radiance of those moments fades as it did from the countenance of Moses when he came away from the tent of meeting. 

We return to the whoop and wharf of the ordinary round and that which seemed so vivid and real now becomes somewhat more diffuse and fading away into memory.

Allow me to recommend that we all spend some time practicing the presence of God as a regular discipline. In prayer and in acts of mercy, may we waken our spirits with the presence of God within us. I do hope some of you will attend our Lenten Classes between the 8 & 10:30 services. I’ve called this particular series of classes “Tracing the Image of God”.

I believe we can do that; I mean “trace God’s image”. You may remember that we are created in the image of God. I don’t mean that we are created to “look like” God. Neither does any serious theologian. It means something much more.

Our Catechism says;

Q.	What does it mean to be created in the image of God?
A.	It means that we are free to make choices: to love, to  create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation  and with God.  Catechism, Book of Common Prayer page 845

You see, to be created in the image of God means to be most genuinely human. In fact we theologians consider it to be an axiom that the more genuinely human we become the more God-like we are. Conversely, the more genuinely God-like God becomes the more human God really is. 

The two meet, we believe, in Jesus. The horizontal line of human experience and the vertical line of Godly love and redemption meet at the nexus of the heart of God and in the human heart.

In these recent months we’ve seen quite a spate of storms. It appears to me that nature is trying to get our attention. My son David recently published a table of charts for Boston Harbor sea levels as they were in the 1890’s, the 1950’s and the present. Guess what...yes Virginia, the sea levels are rising dramatically. And more than that, the glaciers are receding, the Polar Ice Caps are melting and yes if you want to see Glacier National Park, you better be quick about it.

Between Hurricane Sandy and the Blizzard of 2013, it is clear not just from these storms but from the collected evidence of all meteorological data, that there is a climatic change coming upon us caused at least in part by human activity. We will not be able to hide our heads in the sand over the fact for long. For the sand is being swamped by the water. You could drown hiding your head in the sand!

I confess that it has been fun the past few days to track the Blizzard of 2013. David and Joshua Bresnahan and all my friends in New England have been busily posting photographs and videos to help track and document the magnificent power of the storm. One of the videos I posted showed a bunch of young people tossing each other about in the snow like sacks of potatoes. At the shore, they looked out over the sea wall at King’s Beach near my home, and the scene they saw was breathtaking. The roiling and rollicking tempest unleashing its power upon the shore is nothing short of a magnificent and awe inspiring sight.

So then if we are created in the image of God we are created to love, to create, to reason and to live in harmony with creation, then it follows that we might perhaps consider our role in tending to what God has given us. That’s real stewardship. 

The Transfiguration of our personal spirituality is not an event that occurs in isolation but within the context of our relationship with God, one another and all of God’s creation.

Paul warns us that their minds were hardened and that the veil was drawn over their faces. They refused to see Jesus for who he is. Remembering that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life, it begs the question. How can we deny the truth? Now we find ourselves climbing another mountain of God in our own historic moment. What we see as we reach the summit will change our lives. Clearly we stand in need of yet another Transfiguration of sorts.

Like my son Michael when he climbed Sinai yea these many years ago, we will find ourselves climbing with the holiness of God. That holiness is demanding that we care for God’s creation and one another. 

Thus I pray with the collect of the day that we may be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed from glory to glory as we encounter the living Christ in our own day.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Fr Paul

Living Up to Jesus' Moral Absolutes!

Living Up to Jesus' Moral Absolutes

How is it possible to live up to Jesus's standards, especially after reading today's Gospel?

It is fascinating to note that those who follow the founder of our faith often use passages such as this as yet another opportunity to judge others and not as an opportunity to proclaim forgiveness.

The Pharisees were just trying to catch Jesus up in his own words, as was their custom. And instead of asking about Jesus’ teaching on marriage they asked him about his teaching on divorce.

The ensuing dialogue sets the stage for Jesus’ proclamation of one of the Bible’s clearest ethical absolutes; “If you promise to love someone, then, by God, keep that promise. If you don’t, there’s no way around it, you commit adultery!”

Many have been hurt by this kind of ethical absolutism, but there it is in black and white. My mother was turned away from the church in 1956 some years before the canon on marriage was changed to allow for remarriage in the Episcopal Church.

Still, if we know the biblical record, we can press a little deeper. When we come to a parallel passage in Matthew (Chapter 19), we see there that the Pharisees are still pressing Jesus on the issue of divorce. Again he proclaims his ethical absolute, but leaves a little bit of wiggle room and creates an exception in the case of unchastity. So here then you can divorce a woman in case she commits adultery. No mention of equal treatment for men, mind you! Matthew was written about 20-30 years later than Mark, so some editor may have felt it expedient to ascribe some flexibility to Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce. We even hear Jesus tread into the very dangerous territory of gay marriage. in this chapter. It is no wonder he ended up crucified!

But consider this; Jesus’ ethic on marriage seems to be absolute, except in two rather outstanding cases.

The first and all time winner in the exception department is the story of the woman caught in the very act of adultery. (John 8:1-8) Here the elders of the Temple haul this poor woman right up to Jesus and cite the Law of Moses in the manner of Pharisees and Biblical literalists.

“The Law requires that such a woman is to be stoned to death.” Correct! That’s what the Law says. In fact, whether it is Mosaic Law in Judaism, Sharia Law in Islam, or The Biblical Law for fundamentalist Christians, all the literalists insist on a letter of the law approach when it comes to judging somebody else’s ethical behavior!

But Jesus was not so fast to judge, you may remember. Jesus knew a set up when he saw one. Here they were, bringing the woman before Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery. So if they brought her up to him, why hadn’t they brought the man? After all the Mosaic Law requires both to be stoned to death.

Then Jesus did an interesting thing. He wrote something in the sand. We have no way of knowing what it was he wrote. But given the situation, I wonder if he had written the name of the fellow who had done the deed with her. God knows he was Jesus, God knows the secrets of all human hearts and obviously knows what we’ve been up to behind closed doors, so I suspect he knew who it was.

So then he said; “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” He continued to write in the sand, and one by one, beginning with the elders of the congregation, they went away.

Do you think that those who set up the whole scene may have been involved in that act of adultery? Given the nature of hypocrisy, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if any number of the Temple elders and authorities had been involved in the very activity.

The other exception involves the Samaritan woman at the well. (John 4) Jesus asks her to bring him a drink of water and then there follows a marvelous discourse on the “Living Water” that Jesus can provide to the sinner. It is the kind of water that wells up from within to bring abundant forgiveness and abundant love.

Then he asks her to bring her husband to meet him. And she allows as how she has no husband. To which Jesus replies that indeed she speaks the truth because she has had five husbands and the one she has now is not her husband. Immediately, she gets it. This fellow is a prophet because he knows all her secrets and still he offers her God’s forgiveness and God’s love.

When the disciples come back they are astonished to see that he is talking to such a woman as this. 

It is astonishing to meet Jesus in the Gospels. His ethical standards are absolute. But so is his compassion, his forgiveness, and his love; they too are all moral and ethical absolutes.

How wonderful is Jesus. 

How wonderful is God.

This is the Gospel. God’s absolutes!

On Thursday of this week we blessed the animals at the Villa. Seniors and children brought their cats, and dogs, and stuffed animals for a blessing. In honor of Blessed Francis of Assisi, he who taught us so much about the love of God's creation and God's animals. It made me think of the story of St. Francis and Brother Leo. After all, we are asking the question; "how it can be possible to live up to Jesus standards?"

Saint Francis and Brother Leo

One day Saint Francis and brother Leo were walking down the road. Noticing Leo was depressed, Francis turned and asked, “Leo, do you know what it means to be pure of heart?”

“Of course. It means to have no sins, faults or weaknesses to reproach myself for.”

“Ah,” said Francis, “now I understand why you're sad. We will always have something to reproach ourselves for.”

“Right,” said Leo. “That's why I despair of ever arriving at purity of heart.”

“Leo, listen carefully to me. Don't be so preoccupied with the purity of your heart. Turn and look at Jesus. Admire Him. Rejoice that He is what He is—your Brother, your Friend, your Lord and Savior. That, little brother, is what it means to be pure of heart. And once you've turned to Jesus, don't turn back and look at yourself. Don't wonder where you stand with Him.”

“The sadness of not being perfect, the discovery that you really are sinful, is a feeling much too human, even borders on idolatry. Focus your vision outside yourself, on the beauty, graciousness and compassion of Jesus Christ. The pure of heart praise Him from sunrise to sundown.”

“Even when they feel broken, feeble, distracted, insecure and uncertain, they are able to release it into His peace. A heart like that is stripped and of self and filled with the fullness of God. It is enough that Jesus is Lord.”

After a long pause, Leo said, “Still, Francis, the Lord demands our effort and fidelity.”

"No doubt about that,” replied Francis. “But holiness is not a personal achievement. It's an emptiness you discover in yourself. Instead of resenting it, you accept it and it becomes the free space where the Lord can create anew. To cry out, ‘You alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord,' that is what it means to be pure of heart. And it doesn't come by your Herculean efforts and threadbare resolutions.”

“Then how?” asked Leo.

“Simply hoard nothing of yourself; sweep the house clean. Sweep out even the attic, even the nagging, painful consciousness of your past. Accept being shipwrecked. Renounce everything that is heavy, even the weight of your sins. See only the compassion, the infinite patience and the tender love of Christ. Jesus is Lord. That suffices. Your guilt and reproach disappear into the nothingness of non-attention. You are no longer aware of yourself, like the sparrow aloft and free in the azure sky. Even the desire for holiness is transformed into a pure and simple desire for Jesus.”

Leo listened gravely as he walked along beside Francis. Step by step he felt his heart grow lighter as a profound peace flooded his soul (Brennan Manning, pages 209-211).

And this my friends is how we live up to Jesus standards!

May your heart grow lighter and may God's profound peace fill your soul!

Fr. Paul