theROCK

Soldiers or Lovers

In today’s gospel, Jesus’ disciples return from their experience of sharing the Good News. What should our approach to the outside world be?  Are we meant to go out as Christian soldiers or Catholic lovers?

These last three weeks we have heard in our gospels of the call we all have to be prophets in our non-Christian world. Just as in the time of Jesus, we leave church to face an indifferent or even hostile world. How are we to engage it, as soldiers or lovers? It has been suggested that we must arm ourselves with truth and steady ourselves to the assaults we will endure when we profess our faith in the world. Those supporting this approach use St Paul’s words to the Ephesians, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, that you may resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground.” We even call our school students the St. Dominic Knights.

But we are still haunted by, “What would Jesus do?” The power of Christ is love, not the sword. Although our Church history is laden with examples of harming unbelievers, if you accept our first reading, it is the Lord who holds the scales of justice. Our fight against evil is one in which it is Jesus who wars for us. When we go out, we must be secure in our own relationship with God, but the world will not be saved by the sword. The world will be saved by love. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 
(John 13:35)

Come Away and Rest

As I prepared to write this reflection, I found myself pacing in my office. I was deep into the, “Lord, reveal to me what you need your disciples to hear so that it be your words not mine.” In the gospel from Mark I was struck by verse Mark 6: 31, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” How often do we do that? 

At this point in the Gospel of Mark, the apostles learn of John the Baptist’s death. Jesus desperately tries to remove them from the crowds so that they may come away by themselves and rest awhile. Jesus is encouraging self-care. Jesus is encouraging time to mourn. Jesus is loving His disciples, striving to provide them with what they need, yet the crowds press on.  What does this mean for our own lives? 

Our culture has allowed us to believe that busy is better. That the busier you are the better you are. It is a badge of honor to share how impossible your schedule is. Why? Is busier better? Is it somehow a show of popularity? Is it arrogance to some degree? I have come to learn through many Saintly examples that the busier we are, the less charitable we are able to be, that if we don’t set boundaries with our time, we are unable to respond to the demands of love around us. How does the adage go? You can’t give what you don’t have. Jesus clearly knows that and strives to provide that for His disciples.  We often see Jesus retreat in order to pray, to rest, to fill His cup. If He can do it, so should we. In today’s Gospel, He is teaching this important practice, to go away to a deserted place to rest.  As disciples, we must refresh, restore, and renew our energies in order to be the hands of Jesus in the world.

My fellow disciples, take time to go away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest awhile. Summer provides an opportunity to do that if we let it. This could mean turning off the radio in the car, sitting on the deck/patio so you are not distracted by the TV, putting down or putting away our phones, spending time just “being,” or visiting church to sit before the tabernacle or in Adoration. Simply unwind and unplug. If this isn’t part of your routine, might I suggest starting slow with 1 or 2 minutes and building up from there? To the unpracticed, one minute can seem like an eternity! Create a habit of withdrawing to fill your cup so that you can be a peace-filled disciple, one who is ready to respond to the demands of love placed before you on a daily basis. Go, rest a while.

The Authentic Jesus

Today’s Gospel is about the people who know Jesus the most, the people he grew up around, rejecting Him. He didn’t fit the image they had of Him from His youth, so they couldn’t accept Him as He really is—the Son of God, here to preach and teach them about God. They were offended by what he had to say.

I find this such an interesting Gospel for the weekend of the 4th of July. Is the above not true of our current political climate? Everyone is offended by Jesus, or at least the authentic Jesus found in the Scriptures. We all have these little false Jesus’ we’ve created in our minds that fit our political ideologies. And we get really offended and astonished when presented with Gospel passages or Church teachings where Jesus contradicts the idea we have of Him in our mind. Both sides of the political spectrum agree with some of Jesus’ 
teachings and reject others.

Which is actually very fitting because Jesus says himself, in the Gospels, that he did not come to fit into the existing paradigm, but to upend it, to be above it all, to flip it on its head and restore His own order—God’s order.

So today, on this 4th of July weekend, as we celebrate our amazing country with an eye to the upcoming presidential elections, let us all take a moment to reflect on which Jesus we are worshipping – the Republican Jesus, the Democratic Jesus, or the authentic Jesus of the Scriptures. And let us once again commit to daily reading of the Gospels so we might come to know more closely who Jesus authentically is from the source itself. Only then can we truly make this country as great as we desire it to be.

Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of the United States of America, pray for us.