There is often a beautiful 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 John’s Gospel, with Jesus explained to us that he is the bread of life, the living bread that came down from heaven to bring us eternal life. We Catholics see a direct connection between those readings in 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 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. James gives us a lot of wonderful, practical advice on how to live out a Christian life.
One of the phrases that sticks out to me in today’s reading from James is this: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.” A short concise sentence that contains a profound truth. Our faith is often a dichotomy, of many aspects that might 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 into our temporal existence here on earth. Our faith calls us to prayer, reflection, and contemplation, but it also calls us to actions and good works. 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.” If you read through this passage several times in the tradition of Lectio Divina, it is amazing how different words stick out to us, how God’s word speaks 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 found a copy of a prayer written by St Anselm of Canterbury tucked into that page of the Bible. That Prayer expresses some of what we may feel when reflecting upon this reading from James. Anselm was an 11th century Benedictine monk from Italy who became the Archbishop of Canterbury in England. Anselm is a famous theologian and philosopher from the Medieval period of Church history. He was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Clement XI in 1720. He is most famous for his philosophical proofs of God’s existence. This prayer comes from Anselm’s influential book entitled the Proslogion, the Latin word for discourse. When I find little gems like this, I don’t think it is chance or coincidence, but rather the working of the Holy Spirit. This is Anselm’s prayer:
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.
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