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PAGE 5-March 15,1973
Jesus-Word of God
BY FATHER AL MCBRIDE, O.PRAEM.
In one of the Peanuts cartoons, Lucy is shown leaning on the
edge of the grand piano while Schroeder, head down, is intent
on playing Beethoven. Lucy asks him, several times with
repeated intensity, “Do you think I am the most beautiful girl
in all the world?” Eventually, the annoyed Schroeder looks up
at her and says, “Yes.” Lucy mopes away disconsolate, saying,
“Even when he says it, he doesn’t say it.”
The story illustrates two points about communication. First,
words today are often so empty of meaning that they fail to
communicate anything. Secondly, body talk is a strikingly
effective communicator. The face of Schroeder was saying,
“Lucy, go away, you’re bothering me,” even as his lip syntax
and grammar was telling her about unparalleled beauty.
Practically every social commentator today tells us of the
breakdown in communications--an expression made especially
powerful in Paul Newman’s portrayal of “Cool Hand Luke.”
Plainly, what it means is that we are experiencing a crisis of love
for each other. Love is the perennial human problem, but today
it seems to be more so than ever. What makes the quandary
more confusing is that we keep on using love talk on our lips,
while our body talk literally screams the opposite.
The savage violence of recent films points to the real code
many of us send to each other. “Straw Dogs,” “Dirty Harry,”
and “Clockwork Orange,” offer unrelieved, violent body talk.
The literary scenario, the lip talk is barely memorable as we are
treated to the sight of people raping, butchering, and ripping
one another up. The sight of communication in terms of mutual
savagery makes painfully clear what more sedate commentators
have been trying to say. Since loving isn’t working, why not try
unrestrained hating?
The Bible calls Jesus the Word of God. That’s a way of saying
that Jesus is the one person who has not failed to communicate.
Furthermore, he is as successful in lip talk as he is in body talk.
He proves that love works, whether through that glory of
man-human eloquence-or through the altruistic maneuvering of
the human body.
His words are not mere conventions of speech; they create,
heal, convert and inspire. When his Father spoke, something
beautiful happened in the world. Let there be light. Let there be
valleys and streams. Let there be man.
Jesus speaks to a cripple and the man stands and walks. Jesus
speaks to a corpse and the cadaver rises to new life. Jesus speaks
to Magdalen torn with personal guilt and shame, humiliated by
the justified and ostracized by the pure. After she hears Jesus,
she stands proud and reborn, suddenly aware of herself as a
person of dignity, as one forgiven and invited to a life of
integrity.
Like the words of his Father, the words of Jesus create
wonder in the life around him. His words bristle with power.
The Samaritan woman changes. No longer is she a woman whom
men always betrayed; she knows a man who communicates
shining trust and irresistible vision.
No man has ever spoken as this man has. That’s what they
were saying after a sermon of Jesus. Speech was not cheap on
his lips; it was gold. But, just as important, his body talk
matched his words. Artists have struggled to limn the utter
honesty of the face of Christ. Jesus not only spoke truth, he was
the truth. Radical candor, so much beloved of our mod
generation, was ordinary good form to Jesus.
In our own day, lip talk sputters to a halt as violent body
talk tries to get messages through. Some marriage counselors
even advocate programmed conflict and hostility. Hostility
therapy, unembarrassedly, schedules pillow thumping and other
forms of improvised tantrums.
Curiously, there is a similar progression in Christ’s life, but
with a special reverse. In the hour of his Passion, his eloquence
is quenched. He stands silent before Pilate. Now he lets body
talk take over.
There is violence. But the violence is not performed by Jesus.
He offers his body to the hating violence of others, that as they
pummel him, he may, through the speech of death, instruct the
world about the supremacy of love. The word of the Cross is
that love must absorb the violent hatred of men and thus
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IN ONE OF THE PEANUTS CARTOONS, Lucy is
shown leaning on the edge of the grand piano while
Schroeder, head down, is intent on playing Beethoven.
Lucy asks him, several times with repeated intensity,
“Do you think I am the most beautiful girl in the
world?” Lucy and Shroeder as they appeared a month
ago in a CBS cartoon, “Play it Again, Charlie Brown.”
(NC Photo)
destroy it, so that the transfiguration of the hater may be
brought about.
Because of Jesus’ speech, in creative eloquence and saving
behavior, we know what our word should be. He makes it
possible for us to talk in healing, creative and inspiring ways,
and to love unto death if necessary. Let that Word become flesh
in you.
The Word
Was God
BY FATHER CARL J. PFEIFER, S.J.
“Credibility gap” is a rather recent phrase describing a very
ancient phenomenon. The credibility gap is simply the gap that
is often experienced between what people say and what they
really think, between their words and their actual intentions.
Perhaps we experience this gap more acutely because we are so
flooded with dubious words on TV and radio, in magazines and
newspapers. So much of what we hear tends not to be believed,
whether it be the words of advertisers, politicians, or officials.
The message of Eliza’s song in “My Fair Lady” expresses a
common desire of people today as in every age: “Words, words,
words . . .don’t tell me, show me!” Somehow actions not only
speak louder than words but are usually much more convincing.
The devaluation of the word in our experience because of the
credibility gap felt in contemporary society can make it doubly
difficult to appreciate Jesus as the “Word of God.” On the other
hand the very phrase “credibility gap” may be a key to our
understanding of what is implied when Jesus is spoken of as
God’s “Word.”
Long before the twentieth century there has existed an
experienced credibility gap between man and God. Man’s
experience has always occasioned doubts, questions and unbelief
as well as faith in God. History records voice after voice
lamenting with Job that God’s words are not believable.
From God’s side, as one looks back through history, one
discovers an escalating effort on his part to bridge that gap, to
convince mankind that he really means what he says - that he
cares for and about man with might and compassion - that his
word does reflect his intentions, namely to free man from all
that limits the fullness of life.
His first word to man is creation itself. “God spoke .. .and it
came to be.” Men of all ages and regions have looked at
themselves and all that God has made and concurred with God
that “It is good, very good indeed.” From the beauties of
creation they were led to recognize and believe the Creator. But
there were ambiguities. Not all seemed good. Nature, including
man, could be cruel, harsh, deceptive.
m (All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1973 by N.C. News Service)
[Know Your Faith I
God’s Word Became Flesh
BY FATHER QUENTIN QUESNELL, S.J.
God’s truth is forever. His mind does not waver or change.
We may understand a little here, a little there, about this or
that. God understands everything about everything. He always
has and he always will.
God knows all there is, and it all exists because he knows it.
The little truth we arrive at with so much labor is possible
because ultimately the world makes sense. But ultimately the
world makes sense because it is made according to the measure
of God’s truth, and God’s truth abides.
This truth, that is the measure of everything else, is God.
Things are what they are because God is what he is. Nothing
exists except as God knows it and has fashioned it according to
the measure of his own perfect knowledge and wisdom.
His knowledge and truth and wisdom are his very life. He
shares that life with us in different ways.
He puts into each of us a deep desire to know and
understand. Our hunger for truth is a hunger for the full life
that is his own. We feel pleasure when we catch on, see the light,
understand something which was at first a puzzle. That pleasure
is a tiny spark of God’ full life and light.
A ray of God’s full light shines within our minds. It makes us
able to understand somewhat as he does. It leads us on to ask
“A RAY OF GOD’S FULL LIGHT shines within
our minds . . .We may disregard that light within us,
but it never goes out completely. It continues to shine
and attract us along the way of life toward God. In the
long run, light is always stronger than
darkness.” Sunlight breaks through the dark sky
behind the steeples of a church in Milwaukee. (NC
Photo by George R. Cassidy)
questions about everything, wondering, searching, hoping,
dreaming. If we follow where this light within us moves and
leads, we are on the road to life. The end of that road is perfect
life with God.
We may disregard that light within us, but it never goes out
completely. It continues to shine and attract us along the way
of life toward God. In the long run, light is always stronger than
darkness.
Another way God shares his life with us is by teaching us. He
sends holy men, his prophets, to speak his name. “Many times
and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the
prophets . . .” (Hebrews 1,1). But the word, spoken only by
messengers, is easy to neglect.
One day God sent another messenger, the greatest of the
prophets, John the Baptist. John came to tell about a new way
God would share his life with us. From now on, John
said,besides giving us minds to think with and messengers to
listen to, God would do more. God’s own Light, Wisdom, Truth,
would come personally into our world. John was trying to
prepare people, so that when the light did arrive, all might
recognize it for what it was.
Well, God’s truth and light did come personally into the
world. (God’s truth, remember, is God.) He came, but the world
still did not receive him. He came to his own people, and they
did not really want him.
Still, some did receive him. Some did recognize him and
believe. Those who did received a wonderful gift. He made them
able to become sons of God! By so simple a thing - believing
recognition of God’s light and truth before their eyes - the"
were born to God’s life! Not born by natural means of a human
father and mother, but born this time of God!
So God’s word became flesh. No longer need it be passed
along by messengers. It walked among us. The truth of God,
measure and norm of all that exists, became a man and lived
with us.
The Gospel will show that man tired, hungry, weeping,
scandalizing his enemies, loving his friends. In the grace and
truth of those human realities, those who believe will see the
glory of the only Son of God.
This is what John tried to tell people, and what the whole
Gospel will be about. The life we see in the Gospel is the
measure of all our lives.
The way Jesus went is the way God calls us all to go. It takes
the eyes of faith to see the value of this single human life. That
faith must overcome even the shock of the cross.
But those who can see God’s message to us there, God’s word
in the flesh, will be blessed with one blessing after another.
They will be able to do what no man before them ever could.
They will see God.
So God sent men, Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, and
scores of others, voicing ever more convincingly the word about
Himself -- that he was a God of peace, freedom, life and love -
that he really cared for and about each person, that he was
mighty and merciful. Many listened, and believed; but many
found it incredible and the words didn’t seem to fit their
experience. In spite of God’s efforts through creation and the
prophets to communicate himself with man, there still existed a
credibility gap.
Finally he sent his “Word” in person, “In times past, God
spoke in fragmentary and varied ways to our fathers through
the prophets; in this, the final age, he has spoken to us through
his Son” (Heb. 1:1) “The Word became flesh, and made his
dwelling among us.” (Jn 1:14). Jesus is the Father’s most
exhaustive effort to communicate with man, to bridge the
credibility gap between himself and man. This was the ultimate
effort to “show us” what his “Word” really meant. Here among
men was the “Word of life” so close that St. John could speak
of “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what
we have looked upon and our hands have touched” the word of
life. (lJn. 1:1).
A prayer I’ve recently heard catches John’s insight:
Father, you have sent your son for just one purpose, to
fulfill the promise you made to man from the beginning,
to bring us a love so powerful and so beautiful, so real and
so much like us, that we could become one with
him and live like him.
And you fulfilled this promise, you sent your son, and
He loved us totally. He gave his life for us,
And He gave himself for us, so as to be always present
within us, around us, and before us.
That prayer suggests to me the notion behind calling Jesus,
the Word of God. In him we hear not words about God, but we
hear and see God himself in human form, giving evidence of
God’s promised love. There is no gap between word and reality;
the reality of God is his Word.
The Church teaches, following the Scriptures, that Jesus is so
perfect an expression of who God is and what he is like that he
captures the fullness of God’s reality, sharing the very nature of
the Father. A Word like that is unique. No human word can
capture fully the reality of the person speaking it. Jesus is the
Father’s final bridging of the credibility gap. “If you see me,
you have seen the Father.”
Observing Jesus stilling the waves and wind, forgiving the
sinner, healing the tormented, curing the blind and lame, is the
way to find believable what God says of himself: “I have loved
you with an everlasting love” (Jer 31:3).
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Private Prayer and Public Worship
BY FATHER JOSEPH M. CHAMPLIN
Our seminary day in the early 1950’s began at the awful hour
of 5:30 a.m. when a horrendous bell blasted its “time to get up”
sound throughout the corridor and brought most (not all) of the
students out of dreamland into the cold, dark realities of life.
We quickly dressed, washed and ran to the chapel for a few
minutes of morning prayers (in Latin) and a half hour of private
meditation.
This writer spent most of the latter period on his knees-not
out of any desire to impress others or because of purely
ascetical motives, but simply from the practical necessity of
trying to stay awake.
We were taught and expected to meditate. Our spiritual
director helped us every other day or so with points for
reflection the night before and occasional thoughts during those
sleepy morning moments. It was assumed, of course, that this
training prepared us well for life later as a priest and we then
would faithfully spend time daily in some type of personal,
private mental prayer.
To say that there have been a few changes in approach and
attitude in this area over the two decades might well be the
greatest understatement of the century. Many priests in those
years abandoned the breviary, some began to look upon their
work as their prayer, others gave up the regular practice of
formalized meditation. I think it is clear to some observers of
the scene that we are now experiencing among priests, young
and old, a return in modified fashion to the divine office and a
great concern about interior prayer.
In its Dec. 11, 1972 issue, the New York Times carried an
article, “Thousands Finding Meditation Eases Stress of Living. ”
An estimated total of 175,000 Americans, according to the
Times, have in the last few years taken up the practice of
“transcendental meditation.” The person leading others in this
method is not a Jesuit skilled in the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises,
nor a Benedictine monk versed in the divine reading (“lectio
divina”) of his founder, nor a parish priest trained in the
seminary, but an Indian physicist-turned- Hindu monk named
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
A 32-year-old Connecticut executive follows the suggested
program, awakes at 6:30 a.m. props himself upon his bed and
spends 20 minutes letting his mind dwell on a meaningless
sound known as a “mantra.” He repeats the process in the
evening before dinner either in his office or home. What has this
done for the man during the past year?
“I’m happier, I think more clearly and work more efficiently,
I find myself more involved in helping other people, I’ve learned
to deal with stress, and at the end of the day I have more energy
left over for my family life.”
The Times noted: “Maharishi and his followers are emphatic
that transcendental meditation is not a religion. They say it
requires no ideology, that it is compatible with all of the great
religions and, if anything, tends to make meditators more
serious about whatever faith they come to it with.”
I find the link between my seminary past and today’s
transcendental meditation obvious, if strange, with clear
similarities of approach and differences in content.
Is there any connection between these developments and
public worship? Of course. The liturgy is public prayer, and all
prayer must come from the heart, be infused with an inner spirit
or it becomes a mere “noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.”
From these considerations flow two pragmatic liturgical
consequences.
First, private, inward oriented moments of personal prayer
and meditation form the best possible and even an essential
preparation of outward, community worship.
Second, those periods of silence called for in the revised
Order of Mass provide an opportunity for brief intervals of such
prayerful reflection. Pauses of sufficient length, for example,
after the readings, the homily, Communion obviously will not
enable practioners of transcendental meditation to dwell very
long on their “mantra,” but it should give worshippers the
occasion to let God’s Word and Eucharist sink into the depths
of their being.