Our reading from the letter of James:
Dearest brothers and sisters: All good
giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of
lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.
He willed to give us birth by the word of
truth that we may be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
Humbly welcome the word that has been
planted in you and is able to save your souls.
Be doers of the word and not hearers only,
deluding yourselves.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before
God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and
to keep oneself unstained by the world.
The word of the Lord - thanks be to God.
Sometimes there is a wonderful symmetry in the readings we have in our Sunday
liturgies. For five Sundays in a row, ending last Sunday, we heard the Bread of Life
discourse from the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel, in which Jesus explained to
us that he is the bread of life, the living bread that came down from heaven
that will bring eternal life to his followers. We Catholics see a direct connection between
those readings from John’s Gospel and our belief in the true presence of Christ
in the Eucharist, in our call to live out the spirit of the Eucharist in our
lives. This Sunday, we hear the first of five readings from the Letter of James in our
second readings at our Sunday masses. What is wonderful about James, is that it is an easy book to read, especially
compared to some of the letters of St Paul and some of the books of the Old
Testament. And James gives us a lot of wonderful, practical advice on how to live out a
Christian life.
Probably, one of the phrases that sticks out to us in today’s reading from James is
this: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.” What a short little sentence that is, but
with so much meaning. Our faith is often a dichotomy, of aspects that may at first seem
contradictory, but in reality, they compliment each other. Our faith calls us to discover the divine and the transcendent in our lived
reality, but it also calls us to infuse our faith in the temporal and the
imminent of our present. Our faith calls us to prayer, reflection, and contemplation, but it calls us to
actions and good works as well. In our faith, we respect mystery and that which is beyond our human understanding,
but we also look for greater comprehension and knowledge of those spiritual things
that are within our human grasp. We are called to respect the traditions of the ancient Church, the Church of
the Apostles, the Matriarchs and Patriarchs and those blessed men and women
throughout history who helped develop our faith, theology, and spiritual
traditions. But we are also called to
dialogue with the modern world, with the signs of the times, with our present
reality. We see the world in its reality, but we also see the world through the lens of
our faith, which means looking at it in a very different way.
Being doers of the word means that our actions and our good works flow out of
our faith and flow out of the Word of God that is with us. And that is the phrase that the letter of James uses: “Humbly welcome (God’s)
word that has been planted in you.” Last Wednesday, our deanery had a retreat over at the farm of Zeke and Karen
Hodges. We concentrated on this very
reading from James that we have in today’s mass. Reading through the passage several times as
a group and reflecting up in from out individual perspectives, it was amazing
how different words could stick out. It was amazing how God’s word can speak to
our reality. We need to take the time
to study God’s word, to hear how it speaks to our own reality, to have it enter
our hearts where we can ponder it and reflect upon it. One phrase that was left out of today’s passage – James tells us to “be quick
to listen but slow to speak and slow to rouse your temper.” So often our listening to God’s word in its totality is interrupted by our own
words and our own desires and our own whims, but our own anger and frustration
and despair. Yet, can we humble ourselves to listen to God speak to us in his rawness and
honesty?
As I was reading the passage from the Letter of James in my copy of the
Jerusalem Bible I have, a Catholic translation I often consult when I am
writing homilies, I saw a copy of a pray written by St Anselm of Canterbury
that expresses some of what we may feel when reflecting up this reading from
James. Anselm was an 11th century Benedictine monk, theologian, and
philosopher who served as the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is most famous for his philosophical proofs of God’s existence. When I find little treasures like this, I don’t think it is chance or
coincidence, but rather the working of the Holy Spirit:
O
my God teach my heart where and how to seek you,
where
and how to find you…
You
are my God and you are my All and I have never seen you.
You
have made me and remade me,
You
have bestowed on me all the good things I possess,
Still
I do not know you…
I
have not yet done that for which I was made….
Teach
me to seek you…
I
cannot seek you unless you teach me
or
find you unless you show yourself to me.
Let
me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking.
Let
me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you.
AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment