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Today we begin the Holy Week. In our readings today we are taken through the events of the eight days. It begins with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The glory at the end of the eight days is alluded in Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians in which we are encouraged by St. Paul to put on the mind of Jesus Christ – one who was willing to let go of his equality with God, in order to humble himself to share in our humanity. And humbling himself, Jesus went the way of death – and worst of all – death on a cross. Yet in doing the Will of the Father, Jesus is glorified and given a name above all names.
On 5th November 2017, Amai Mugabe (the wife of President Mugabe) held her Churches interface rally at Rufaro stadium, not 200m away from St. Peter’s church, where I was parish priest. I had been approached by the local counsellor to cancel our second Sunday mass at the church in order to allow people to go to the stadium and join in. No prizes for guessing how I responded to such a request However, I personally was up for some entertainment – so after I had finished my second mass, I went back to our Jesuit community – and tuned into ZBC tv where they were live-streaming the address being given by Mai Mugabe. As she ranted and raved and insulted the various politicians that formed part of the Lacoste faction lead by ED, people applauded her, laughed and egged her on with their ululations. What struck me most about that day was how so very compellingly attractive this woman was in the way utilized her power with such self-assurance. She literally exuded power and had the crowds eating out of her hand. Much as I loathed her, I could not help but admire her, and be drawn in by the way the crowd in turn energized her and how she fed of this energy. Not two weeks later, the very same people who had cheered Mai Mugabe on at Rufaro stadium were out on the streets celebrating the downfall of the Mugabes and social media was awash with memes that can only be described as dripping with schadenfreude as people now celebrated their “gamba” (hero) and liberator, ED Mnangagwa. There is a Shona proverb that states: Ushe imhute unoparara zuva rabuda (Chieftanship is like the morning mist that disappears when the sun rises).
Anyone can shout Alleluia when a miracle has already happened. And anyone can jump in praise of God when they begin to see light at the end of the tunnel. But it takes faith for one to shout before a miracle has happened. And it also takes great faith to continue trusting in God in the midst of problems without a solution. How many of us are seeing a silver lining in the dark cloud that the Coronavirus has cast in our lives? And how many are seeing the victory of life over death?
I don’t know about you, but when I go shopping, I get stressed – because I am usually trying to balance two things – I want to purchase good quality merchandise, but I want to find it within the limits of my budget. So I want to get as much quality as I can, and pay as little money as possible for it. In short I am looking for bargains. Every one loves a bargain and sometimes we can become so obsessed with finding bargains that we forget why we came to the shops in the first place. We just see the sign “SALE” and we lose all common sense – because we are infected with the virus of wanting to save money, with the thought of having scored something valuable without paying full price for it. And so there is something in commerce that brings out the selfish side of us.
God has the power to bring good out of evil plans formed against us. He can transform curses against us into blessings. The world may judge us unfavourably, but it is God’s opinion about us that will always reign supreme. As our Creator, “God does not look at the things people look at. People look at outward appearance, but God looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
If you say that you have been saved; what have been saved from? If you say that you are converted; what have you been converted from? Moreover, if you say that you are born again; into what state of life are you born into? And what was your previous life like? Does being a Christian make any difference to your current life?
Richard Rohr, a Fransican priest and widely acclaimed spiritual writer, brought out a book a few years ago, entitled “Falling Upwards.” His main thesis in this book is that life is divided into two halves. The first half of life is all about building one’s tower. As you might imagine, building your tower is all about piling up achievements, establishing a name for yourself, making a success of your life and acquiring all the attendant status symbols that this entails. But then once you have built your tower, the second part of life curiously requires that a person learn how to jump off their tower – this is the path of descent, the path of unknowing, the path of quiet surrender. The story of the transfiguration comes at a critical point in Mark’s gospel – at roughly the half-way point.
When you turn to God in prayer, what is your attitude? Do you ask, seek, and knock, trusting that God will answer your prayer? Do you expect God to give you what you truly need, and not necessarily everything that you want? How often do you pray? How do you pray? Do you have anyone with whom you can discuss your prayer life?
If there is anything positive that Covid-19 has brought into our world, it is the fact that God is the Source of life and he is our Savior. This contagion has rendered us powerless to an extent that our dependence on God has become the most central thing in our lives. Our false sense of autonomy has been shattered. While we can argue that God does not want us to suffer, it is also justifiable to argue that suffering can make us come to God, who is our source of salvation.
Today we begin our journey towards Easter. Lent is a Season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with Holy Saturday. The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing his ministry.
The goal of lent is to repent and be restored to God’s glory. As we fast, pray, give alms and do various works of mercy, we empty our hearts of all selfishness and wickedness which keep us away from God. We are weak, and we can never overcome evil by ourselves. However, God, in whose presence we journey, supplies us with the graces to excel.
The word talks about leprosy and the people with it should live outside the city. When a people with leprosy meets a person with it should call out, "Unclean, Unclean." Today a person with COVID 19 does not shout but those without do it for them and the person is isolated.
The Babylonian exile officially ended in the year 538 BC, with the Persian King Cyrus allowing the Israelites who had been deported into exile 50 years prior to return to the promised land. However, a prominent New Testament scholar by the name of NT Wright has recently suggested that, although the exile had officially ended 500 years ago, many Jews at the time of Jesus would have still regarded themselves as being in exile. This was because despite Yahweh having led them back to the promised land, their God had not really vindicated them against their enemies and the past 5 centuries of their history had been a succession of new captivities under oppressive foreign forces, most notably the Greeks and the Romans. The Jewish theodicy of the time led them to believe that God’s delay in vindicating them was because of their continued sinfulness. This was why the Pharisees put such a premium on ritual purity.
The whole book of Job is trying to deal with the question of why the innocent and the good must suffer. The excerpt that we are given in our first reading today catches Job at his most cynical and depressed. In the pit of depression, Job compares his life to the thread that runs through the weavers shuttle, and he can see the end of the thread approaching – and when the thread runs out, so does his hope, and life is over. Perhaps, in these days of Covid-19 we are tempted to subscribe to the same vision of life as Job – as something fleeting, that spins off a weaver’s shuttle so quickly that one minute it is there and the next minute it is gone.
In the cut-throat world of job interviews and that is highly competitive, with the pressure on candidates to curate impressive CVs, there is an equal pressure to “sell yourself” at the job interview, and it goes way beyond the job interview, once you have secured the job, you need to perform and show your superiors that you merited the job and that you merit promotion. We are constantly under pressure to sell ourselves. And so in this uber-competitive world, we are told that we need to “fake it till we make it” – we need to pretend we know what we’re talking about even when we don’t – and so we will go into class, into a management meeting exuding confidence – bandy about the latest research and stats that we were able to hastily look up on google just before the meeting and mostly we manage to pull it off. Our authority is not based on our experience (probably because we have none), rather it is based on someone else’s, hastily digested and all too rapidly regurgitated, before we have had a chance to really assimilate it and integrate it with our own experience. Our authority is built on the sand and not on the rock.
Much as we might have come to hate viruses as humans in the past few months, they are actually a really fascinating part of God’s creation. They are extremely simple organisms, lacking all the normal attributes of a cell structure that form the building blocks of other living organisms. There is actually much debate as to whether they can really be qualified as living organisms. All they really consist of is simple strands of RNA or DNA that contain all the necessary information for them to hack into the cells of their hosts, hijack their protein manufacturing mechanisms and use them to replicate more viruses. It is an amazingly small entity that punches way above its weight. Friday 29 January 2021 Reflection.pdf — PDF (62.1 KB)
A recent study of parishes in the US undertaken by the Dynamic Parish program found that on average at a given parish, a mere 6.4% of parishioners contributed 80% of the volunteer hours, and a mere 6.8% of parishioners donate 80% of financial contributions to the parish. They further found that there was an 84% overlap between these two groups, meaning that a total of 7% of parishioners support the bulk of the work of a parish. Now you may not realize it, but the parable of the sower that we heard yesterday was just a more covert way of expressing these same facts, maybe not in so stark terms, but the seed that falls in the good soil has to bear 30, 60 and 80 fold in order to make up for the failure to bear any fruit of the seed that fell on the path, the thorns and the rocky ground. Thursday 28 January 2021 Reflection.pdf — PDF (72.2 KB)
Looking at this parable of the sower from a marketing perspective, we might say that the sower failed dismally in identifying his target audience, and thereby wasted a lot of his resources through his indiscriminate sowing on the path and rocky ground, where there was little to no chance of success. But such a view fails to take into account Jewish farming methods in the first century, which were very different from our own, reveals a slightly different message.
There is a Shona proverb that states Chawawana idyai nehama, mutorwa ane hanganwa, which roughly translates to “share what you have come by with relatives for the stranger is forgetful,” meaning that it is wiser to help out relatives who will remember to repay the favor, rather than a stranger who might never return the favor. Too often our loyalties to family and friends are for the wrong reasons. We are loyal to them because they are “ours,” and we have the confidence that they will look after us because we share a bloodline. This attitude encourages nepotism in our Zimbabwean society and we end up creating an economy that runs on tribalism instead of on merit. Jobs and contracts are awarded not to the most competent people, but to those who we see are “our own.” This is the notion that Jesus is attacking in today’s gospel – the notion that we owe more loyalty to our family, simply because they are our family.
In yesterday’s reflection, we saw how important it is to allow Jesus to call us out of our self-preoccupation so that he can become the center of our lives. Paul’s conversion gives us a wonderful example of the decentering that takes place when we truly allow Christ into our lives. Paul embarks on a journey to Damascus, intent on his own agenda of exterminating the followers of the Way. On the road he has an experience that literally knocks him off his feet.
We have in the Gospel the very first words spoken by Jesus “This is a time of fulfilment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Good News” ( Mark 1: 15). The first command: “…repent and believe in the Good News,” illustrates that when we put our lives in God, we have the covering of His grace. God’s grace, in essence, enables us to pull through difficult situations, like Covid-19, with courage and hope.
Have you ever had the experience of being approached by a born-again Christian and been asked the question “Have you received Jesus into your life as your personal savior?” It has happened to me a few times and I have been tempted to ask them where in the Bible does it tell you that Christianity is all about receiving Jesus into your life and making him your personal savior. Because I can save you the time of looking – nowhere in the Bible does it tell us that we must receive Jesus into our lives, on the other hand, there are many places where we are told to enter into Jesus’ life to let Jesus receive us into his life and to make his life our own. In our hyper-individualized society we have got it backwards and this inversion of the proper order of things is typified by a spirit where I still remain the center of my own life and I am receiving Jesus into my own life.
Have you ever felt misunderstood by your family? Or felt that you were a disappointment to your parents because of your life choices or choice of career path? Perhaps in this experience, you look enviously to the life that Jesus had with his family and wish that you had a perfect family life as he did. Well that’s where you would be wrong. We are normally given such idyllic pictures of the holy family as if everything always went smoothly for them. Today’s gospel gives us an entirely different perspective on the holy family. We are told that Jesus’ relatives came and tried to take him away because they thought he had gone crazy.
In yesterday’s reflection we saw how Jesus’ strategy in his mission of spreading the Kingdom of God was to fail fast. Very early on in his ministry, Jesus realized that, because of the opposition he encountered from the Pharisees and the Sadducees, his public ministry was in all likelihood not going to last long. Scripture scholars tell us now that his public ministry was very short, probably little longer than a year in total. So he knew that if his mission were to have any chance of success, he would have to form a core team of trusted friends, companions and co-workers whom he could imprint with his Spirit. We often think that the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was what completely transformed the apostles and made them into courageous and outspoken missionaries. This is certainly true, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t just work like magic, creating grace out of nothing. As St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, grace builds on nature – so the Holy Spirit needs some raw material to work with.
In the world of business start-ups, the watch words are “fail fast.” If there is something wrong with your current business plan, you want to know about it as soon as possible, fail quickly, and move on to the next iteration of your business plan. This is preferable to a long slow drawn out death, where you are pouring energy and resources into a business that was bound to fail anyway. In our gospel today, we see Jesus adopting the same strategy.
“What’s up for the weekend?” While admittedly this question is probably not likely to elicit much enthusiasm during a lockdown, it is probably one we are used to hearing our friends ask us. It forms part of a constellation of questions and cultural attitudes towards the weekend that collectively put pressure on us to live interesting and hip lives so that we can curate our social media profiles with pics of us and our friends living the high life. It is in this vein that Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic letter, The Day of the Lord, cautions us against the dangers of conflating “the weekend” with the Sabbath.
In his celebrated work, The Road Less Travelled, the American psychologist M. Scott Peck talks about how during adolescence and into young adulthood, each one of us comes up with a certain worldview, a map that enables us to understand and interpret the reality that we see around us. Up to a certain age we are prepared to redraw our maps and change our worldviews in response to new data and new experiences. However, there comes a point, 27 years old for the average person, where we fix our maps and refuse to redraw our maps in response to new experiences.
Today’s gospel presents us with one of the few incidents where Jesus heals a person on the strength not of their own faith, but rather on the strength of the faith of his friends. Indeed these friends are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths in order to secure the healing of their paralyzed friend. The Greek that is translated by “they tore up the roof” literally means they “unroofed the roof.” The roof was meant to be a barrier to keeping out the elements and protecting the occupants inside from the day’s heat. But it had now become a barrier to their friend getting Jesus’ healing and so they “unroofed the roof.”
Have you ever been in a situation where you have seen two people, a newlywed couple, for example, who are just so clearly in love that you are shot through with a twinge of jealousy and wish that you could be them, wish that you could have that love. You can see that they are just so secure in each other’s love and mutual affirmation that they seem to be walking on air, they have no shortage of self-confidence and the world is their oyster.
There was an artist who, having finished an exquisite painting of Christ, invited his friend to see it. The friend admired the painting and congratulated the artist on its beauty, but remarked on one fatal flaw he observed in the painting: “you have painted Jesus knocking on the door but you have forgotten to paint a latch on the door,” to which the artist replied: “if the latch has been on the outside, Jesus would have opened the door and gone in. But the door is locked from the inside. Until the housekeeper opens it, Jesus cannot enter in.
In this gospel passage we see Jesus portrayed as a powerful preacher with authority to drive out evil spirits. In first century Palestine people believed that evil spirits were everywhere – it was possible to pick them up even by breathing – they circulated the air and penetrated everything known to man.
Much is often made of the fact that Jesus called humble uneducated fishermen to be his disciples. What we don’t often dwell on was the fact that fishermen were one of the few independent and entrepreneurial classes of workers who had to be smart, courageous and skillful in order to navigate the stormy and dangerous waters of the Sea of Galilee.