Friday 28 June 2019

ST. JOHN 8:33-36


                                                             

Lectio divina, that is, divine meaning, is to approach Sacred Scripture not as a text, like the words of some technical journal, work of history, or a novel, but as living words not to be read, studied, but to see them, hear them, take them in, allow them to penetrate, transform our mind, heart, soul.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit and requires our cooperation, hence before opening to any book, page, line of Sacred Scripture we should ask the Holy Spirit for His assistance, without which we can fall into various errors, such as literalism which reduces Sacred Scripture to some sort of human record and distorts the living word.


So-called creationists fall into this error and do enormous harm thereby for their literalist interpretation reduces the marvel of all that is, of all that we are, to a type of magic trick, whereas the reality of all that is and all that we are is because the Most Holy Trinity in a creative explosion of love and divine delicacy, ex nihilo, more than just ‘out of nothing’, but from the stupendous reality of there being no-thing created some-thing, and all that was not became!


It matters not a wit how long the process of creation did or did not take.


What matters is the truth that creation is, we are, no mere ‘one of’, rather all that has been created is being creatively sustained by the same love which created and creates – for each newborn human being is a new creation, for God Himself breathes Himself into the matter originally created as Adam and Eve and sustains this marvel of the human person so that each time the original matter becomes conjoined anew between a man and woman LIFE is breathed into the matter anew and a PERSON becomes in the Trinity’s own image and likeness.


Had those challenging Jesus not been scriptural literalists they would have understood, allowed with joy to penetrate their hearts His word assuring them they would come to know the truth, that is come to know Him and that this knowing would set them free.


Instead they rejected not only His words but Jesus Himself with their challenge: They answered Him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will become free’?” [v. 33]


Part of the willful arrogance here is not simply these are the people of the Exodus and Babylonian captivity, but they were currently living under Roman occupation!


Ever patient with such challenges Jesus seeks to help them understand, to help us all understand, our notion of what is meant by freedom is too narrow, in a sense too materialist. We assume it primarily is a matter of freedom from external oppression/slavery, when the reality is freedom was lost with original sin and each time we choose sin we choose real enslavement/imprisonment.


V.34=Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”


Often in modern translations of passages where Jesus uses the double amen, we find the words ‘verily’ or ‘truly’, some use ‘most assuredly’ - accurate translations, however Jewish custom at the time was only to use amen after a blessing-prayer. Jesus’ use is not only to underscore the importance of His teaching, but also to remind us He is Himself ultimate prayer to the Father and that being in constant intimate dialogue with the Father every teaching is itself a blessing.


V.35= “A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains.”


There are two ways in which a human being becomes a slave. One is external and imposed by another, the other way we become slaves is through what we do to ourselves, enslave ourselves to sins, some mortal, some venial and as varied as addiction to pleasure, poisoned thinking about ourselves or others. Tragically the variety of sin of which we humans are capable is as varied as we are. 


Regarding the first form of enslavement, to assume that sin of the massive form of slavery prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries, in particular with the kidnapping and selling of our brothers and sisters from Africa to various owners throughout the western hemisphere, ended when first Canada, then the rest of the British Empire, then the US outlawed slavery, is to be ignorant of ongoing human trafficking, where men, women and children become slaves to factory owners, wealthy families, prostitution rings, groups which use children as soldiers.


The Church reminds us in the Catechism: The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord."  [ cf. # 2414 ]


As Christians we have an explicit obligation under charity and justice, if we are aware, for example, of someone indentured in domestic service, to report this to the authorities. Charity and justice also demand we help as best we can those charitable organizations that work to end slavery and human trafficking.


When it comes to being enslaved ourselves in sin, freedom comes from asking for metanoia, true conversion of heart, for which we have access in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, prayer, fasting, and where the sin is some form of addiction groups like Alcoholic Anonymous, and similar groups for drug, sex, anger addicts, are excellent ways of working towards being freed some such slavery, especially if such effort is combined with the help of a priest-spiritual director.


When Jesus teaches us: a son always remains, He Himself is the living example of the freedom of being a child of God, dwelling forever in the house of our Father. Granted here on earth it is to dwell in the house of trust in Jesus’s promise: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in Me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to Myself, so that where I am you also may be.” [14: 1-3]


V: 36= “So if a son frees you, then you will truly be free.”


This is no mere amnesty such as that which Lincoln granted the slaves in the United States during the Civil War. Indeed, whatever a human authority grants such authority can rescind just as easily.

Again, when Jesus uses the word ‘son’ He speaks of Himself and we can hear in this, and many other passages, the intensity of His love, the very ‘sitio’ He has, to set us free. Freedom is a gift of the Holy Trinity through Jesus laying down His life for us to redeem us.


© 2018 Fr. Arthur Joseph






Tuesday 11 June 2019

ST. JOHN 8:31-32


                                                            

This amazingly detailed teaching of Jesus, recorded by St. John, is striking in vs. 31,32 with both Jesus’ words of affirmation and promise: the affirmation - Jesus then said to those Jews who believed in Him, “If you remain in My word, you will truly be My disciples……

When we hear the word ‘remain’ most often it is heard meaning ‘to stay with’, when in fact the first meaning of the word is: continue to exist.

As St. Paul taught the Greeks about Jesus, referencing their own poets, the actual truth is it is in Jesus: we live and move and have our being. [cf. Acts 17:28]

The parameters of this indwelling, this remaining, as Jesus has just taught us, are His words.

When we seek to live primarily by the words of anyone else, or some national constitution, some philosophy etc., is when we diminish the fullness of our existence, when we step out of remaining indwelling in the Light of Christ and begin to become lost in the darkness of the culture of death.

31.cont.: ……and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

One of the deepest wounds within humanity, sourced in the lies from satan since the first lie told by the evil one to Adam and Eve, is that truth has been diminished from what is essentially true about truth: it is not information about something – such as it is the earth which circles the sun, not as was believed for millennia that the sun circled the earth. Nor is it subjective, that is dependant on personal interpretation.

When Pilate asked: “What is truth?” [18:38] he, perhaps unwittingly, betrayed the common error of reducing truth to information, which in our day is expressed in relativism, the deliberate refusal to embrace that which is objective truth, indeed, more accurately to be faithful to He Who is Truth.

When Jesus tells us we will come to know the truth and thus be set free, He is telling us when we come to know Him through communion of love with Him, which is to live the Gospel, then indeed we shall be imbued with truth, live in truth and thus be the free persons we have been created to be.

Jesus is the glory of the Father ‘full of grace and truth’ [1:14] and it is through Jesus that truth comes into all of creation, into each human being, [1:17], if we accept Jesus into our lives, not just when baptized: in every moment of our lives.

“I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” [14:6], Jesus says of Himself.

Truth is a person: the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ.

Unless we embrace this, are guided by this, then we are easily seduced by the world’s notions about truth, are vulnerable to lies of all kinds.

Abiding in the words of Jesus, is to abide in Him, to live and move and have our being in Truth.

What the world does when making use of the word truth, declaring something to be true, is fundamentally an assessment of facts, information, persons.

The ‘truth’ about something: movement of the sun, a statement made to us by another about what is or is not, is never pure, always tainted by the interpretation made by the speaker, or the ‘recorder’ of facts or scientific conclusions.

The current debate about climate is a prime example of how ‘truth-facts’ are easily manipulated.

Christ who is Truth simply IS truth, speaks only what is true and amazingly invites us into this reality and once we are in communion with truth Himself, we become free.

This being free is to experience the grace of redemption, thus, to be free from the fears, the darkness, the lies of satan, from death.

Many will argue because of physical or emotional problems, painful life experiences, sins committed against us or by us, the burden of doubts, rejection by others, etc., etc., we cannot ever claim to be free.

This is reductionist thinking.

The freedom Christ promises us, in our lives in this moment, is not freedom from life’s struggles, it is the promise of all grace needed to live life, to have hope, to know we are beloved of the Holy Trinity, children of the Father, disciples of Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit.

Freedom is to be one with Christ, taking up our cross each day and following Him.

Freedom is that there is a redemptive dimension to our suffering, that Divine Mercy, for example in sacramental confession, is always available to us, and freedom is that in the Holy Trinity every moment is the moment of beginning again.

Freedom is not the illusions of ephemeral ‘happiness’, it is to have the Holy Spirit’s gift of joy, joy which no suffering, no lie, no disappointment can overcome.

Contingent on Christ’s assuring us truth will set us free is to embrace the connection between the Beatitudes and the Our Father.

The most pernicious, deep, dark, prison keeping us unfree, thus vulnerable to being easily hurt by the words/actions of others, prone to distrust that we are beloved of God, bound by the inner pain from the lie that prayer is anything but pointless, indeed so easily wounded by the trails and tribulations, disappointments of life, by the minor pricks or grievous harm done to us by others we become exhaustingly tangled in the dark web of hatred, is to slam shut by our own actions the prison door and ourselves to turn the key and imprison ourselves because we refuse to forgive.

 Jesus assures us that the poor in spirit are blessed [cf.Mt.5:3] and to experience our sinfulness and need of forgiveness is the poverty of being human and to experience the seemingly unfairness of being the forgiver of others is the poverty of relinquishing the very human need to be in control, the ugly stepchild of pride.

When we forgive, which is to show mercy [cf. Mt.5:7] we are blessed with Divine Mercy being lavished upon us, for the Beatitudes are not promises of something in the distance but in the immediate.

These Beatitudes, as with the promise of freedom flowing from dwelling in Truth, that is to dwell in Christ, are not simply linked to but become operative every time we pray the Our Father, as Jesus teaches us: ……forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. [cf. Lk. 11:4].

Older translations have it as: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.

All sin committed against me, by myself, by someone against me or me against another, is to trespass into and upon the sacred ground of personhood.

In either translation the operative ask of the Father for forgiveness is our declaration that we are forgiving of others. Frankly self must be included in that, otherwise we go through life hobbled by guilt, which is the egotistical way to avoid true contrition.

Mercy/forgiveness given becomes mercy received and breaks the shackles, breaks the lock, smashes open the prison which has kept us from the freedom for which we have been created and redeemed.

“If you remain in My word, you will truly be My disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”



© 2019 Fr. Arthur Joseph