Newspaper Page Text
September 14,1978
The Georgia Bulletin
PAGE 5
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How Can I Nourish My Spiritual Life?
“PEOPLE ARE AFRAID to feed themselves the bread of
life,” Mary C. Maher writes. “Attitudes such as ‘Do not touch
the host’ take a long time to readjust. And so congregations
have been fed rather than asked to respond to Jesus’ invitation
to active participation: ‘Take and eat.’” (NC Photo by Frank
Methe)
A Call Of The Disciples
BY MARY C. MAHER
The word “nourishment” usually indicates
food or affection given us by others. That
definition is not arguable. We humans are not
camels who store up food within, to digest
later. We are nourished physically from
without.
Yet this word, when transferred to spiritual
contexts, is capable of a far wider rage of
meanings. Many of us have seen the popular
films, “Julia” and “Turning Point,” which both
show us friends who nurtured and nourished
each other by calling out the goodness in the
other.
But, interestingly enough, they also called
out the darkness in their friends, not by intent
but by the open struggle between them. The
jealousy and competitive sides of the characters
came forth and, in the end, these strengthened
the goodness of each other in a firmer sense of
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self-appropriation. They nourished each other
by calling out darkness as well as light.
The point of the films is that people are
nourished to their own fullness in the
recognition that contraries dwell in each of us.
Learning to deal with contraries and to balance
them gives strength and wholeness.
It is fair to say that many of us expect
religion to nourish only the light side in us —
bread to block out our brokenness is what we
ask for. Something outside ourselves to hide us
from what lies within. Sentimentality that
sweetens the need to struggle and leaves us
wondering why giants like Jacob had to wrestle
so much. We want rituals that relax us rather
than reach into and out of our lived
awarenesses. We look for community life that
blunts the need for rigorous individuation
which, paradoxically, also calls community to
fullness.
It is fair to say that our religious
expectations have often made us passive
BY SISTER IRENE HARTMAN
“Obedience and Peace,” the motto of Pope
John XXIII, ruled his life. At one point he
wrote in his diary: “I am becoming ever more
dogmatic about the efficacy of this: ‘Thy will
be done.”
John saw in this prayer a call to be willing to
let the times mature for the kingdom of God
without wanting to rush things.
He developed this basic insight with
reference to Chapter 12 of Book 3 of the
“Imitation of Christ” which he knew by heart:
“My child, I will teach you now the way of
peace and true liberty.
“1. Seek, child, to do the will of others
rather than your own.
“2. Always choose to have less than more.
“3. Look always for the last place and seek
to be beneath all others.
“4. Always wish and pray that the will of
God be fully carried out in you.”
In summing up the spirituality of Pope John,
we find the constant search to know and do
God’s will in his life and work combined with a
peace and confidence in God the Father that
was a special charismatic gift.
For a 78-year-old pontiff to convoke a
council demanded a deeply rooted trust in God.
It was a risk, one he accepted.
During the first session, the pope said
humorously, “I would like very much for our
Lord to appear to me and tell me when the
council will end. To get it started, I am in
command, but to finish it. . .” He had mixed
feelings about what results the council would
bring and said, “I expect a little fresh air from
it... we must shake off the imperial dust that
has accumulated on the throne of St. Peter
since Constantine.”
John saw the duty of the church not simply
as guarding the sacred treasury of truth but
dedicating itself with an earnest will and
without fear to the work which this era
demands of God’s people. “We are not here on
earth to guard a museum but to cultivate a
garden flourishing with life and promise to a
glorious future.”
He loved the past and respected existing
institutions, yet he shook them and set in
dependents, longing to be fed, to be less
responsible for our lives rather than more.
We see this most graphically and painfully
these days in the response of many to the
revision of the Communion rite. People are
often afraid to feed themselves the bread of
life. We may have bred that attitude in
Christian communities and called it
“sacramental purity.” Attitudes such as “Do
not touch the host” take a long time to
readjust. And so congregations have been fed
rather than asked to respond to Jesus’
invitation to active participation: “Take and
eat.”
In this revised rite we will find ourselves
symbolically feeding ourselves the bread of life
which invites fuller human life of us. It asks
that the strength that many of us often store
within ourselves, hidden even from ourselves,
come into the full light. It asks that the
strength that many of us often wish to put
aside as not there be brought forth, even draped
in its napkins of non-use, fear, alienation and
manipulation. This coming to light will be
painful and it will not eliminate the darkness of
deed of which we are capable but, in the
process of nourishing ourselves this way in the
Eucharist, we will discover fuller dimensions of
our own humanity.
All of this is not new, of course. It is
foundationally Hebraic. The Jewish concept of
shalom indicates well-being, balancing of the
many energies, dark and light, which lie within
us. Jesus, well understanding his own tradition,
stressed again and again in his public ministry
that the kingdom of God, which was
metaphorically and symoblically a banquet, was
a full meal for a full life. It was not surrogate
food for those who simply wished to survive.
To be in touch with this aspect of Jesus’
ministry is also to be active so that no one on
this earth need suffer from the loss of human
food and human basics. Jesus invited out the
potential of each human he met but he did not
do so by asking them to deny less agreeable
aspects of themselves. (It is a strong and
cleansing irony that often those who declare
the non-life which they see in us often most
lead us toward fuller life.) Jesus and the
Hebraic tradition have believed in human
potential since the first and even during those
times when those traditions did not affirm it
with any clarity.
In our time the human potential movement
is another active agent in this “nurturing unto
fullness.” This movement itself, consisting of
EST, gestalt therapies, encounter groups,
running for meditation and many others, need
not frighten us. Anything good which happens
is worthy of praise. Such expression of
nurturing fuller life may indeed have a good
deal to say to us about the nature of human
fullness and our need to create new ways to
both achieve and receive it.
We are learning that a lot of the nourishment
we long for lies inside us waiting to be nurtured
to fuller life. God offers us nourishment in
ways too numerous to list or identify. But it is
our prerogative to accept or decline this
nourishment that can only enrich. We just need
to be brave enough to feed upon it.
motion a renewal of the institutions from their
foundations. The windows, he knew, needed to
be opened.
He was anxious to do God’s will. From the
hundreds of pages in his spiritual notebooks, we
can draw some idea of the priority he put on
his methodical search for God’s will. It is in
amazing fidelity in detail to the ordinary means
of the spiritual life, prayer, spiritual celebration
of the liturgy, and the pursuit of the faith, hope
and charity, humility, poverty, abandonment to
God’s will, zeal for the pastoral ministry.
He wrote, “The Lord brought me forth from
poor parents and took care of everything. I
have let him do it all. My humble and already
long life has developed like a skein under the
sign of simplicity and purity. It costs one
nothing to acknowledge and repeat that I am,
and that I amount to, really nothing.”
This humble, faithful effort to find God’s
will in all the events of life offered the vision
and confidence for Pope John’s priestly and
papal ministry. No one was more a pastor of
souls than he. The whole world felt his
unbounded love and friendship for every man,
his unwavering hope for the grace of God at
work in the hearts of all men — East and West
— Christian or communist — saint and sinner.
He expressed his thoughts this way, “Here I
must make some distinctions. I should not be a
master of politics, strategy or human science;
there are plenty of men who are masters in
these areas. I am to be the master of mercy and
truth and will turn out to be helpful in the
social order.
“On me, on all priests, on all Catholics lies
the important duty of cooperating in the
conversion of the world. We are not responsible
for the results. What can support our inner
tranquility is to know that Jesus our Savior is
more solicitous than we are for the salvation of
souls; that he wills to save them with our
cooperation; but that it is grace that saves them
and his grace will never be lacking at the right
time.”
This humble priest who rose to the papacy
has touched us all. The fresh air he allowed to
enter still blows. Sometimes it is a gust,
sometimes a gentle breeze. He understood that
God’s “grace will never be lacking at the right
time.”
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
The call of the first disciples is recorded in
all four Gospels. Besides giving us interesting
insights into Jesus’ relations with “his own”
and the demands of discipleship, these accounts
furnish excellent examples of how the
evangelists adapted transitional material to their
own individual purposes. The Gospels are not
lives of Christ in the modern sense of the term.
Rather, they are interpretations of the
Christ-event in the light of post-Resurrection
faith. Their authors were concerned, of course,
with history, but they were more concerned
with conveying the meaning of that history.
And each of them had his own view of things,
his own approach, his own theology.
Mark’s account is the earliest and simplest. It
tells us that Jesus, walking along the shore of
the Sea of Galilee, saw Simon and his brother
Andrew fishing. He stopped and called out:
“Come after me; I will make you fishers of
men.” They immediately abandoned their nets
and became his followers. Farther down the
shore he spotted another pair of brothers,
James and John, who were getting their nets
ready. He called them; they left their father
Zebedee and went off with him.
Putting this event at the beginning of the
public ministry, Mark has recorded no previous
activity of Jesus which might have prepared the
disciples for such an abrupt call and
mysteriously immediate response. Is he perhaps
trying to suggest the power of Jesus’
personality? At any rate, he conveys the idea
that following Jesus demands renunciation. The
first two left their nets, their livelihood; the
second pair left their father - all of them
severing material ties and even intimate family
bonds. Not that they never Fished or saw their
folks again, but that is irrelevant for Mark’s
main point (Mk. 1,16-20).
Matthew follows Mark almost to the letter,
both in the placing and the description of the
call (Mt. 4, 18-22). Luke, however, uses the
material in his own way (5,1-11). He tells first
of Jesus’ preaching at Nazareth and Capernaum
(4, 14-32), the cure of a demoniac (33-37), of
Simon’s mother-in-law and many others, with
his renown spreading throughout the area
(38-44).
Only then does he recount the call of the
disciples, and he concentrates almost
exclusively on Simon Peter. The setting is the
same as in Mark and Matthew, by the Sea of
Galilee, which he calls the Lake of Gennesaret.
Again the fishermen are there, now washing
their nets. But Luke introduces some
interesting variants. Jesus gets into Simon’s
boat, asks him to pull out a little from the
shore, and from “the bark of Peter’ addresses
the people on the beach.
At the end of his talk he tells Simon to move
into deep water and let down the nets. Simon
objects that they’ve been at it all night and
there’s not a fish anywhere around, but agrees
to give it a try. The catch is so huge that the
nets almost break and they have to signal for
help, finally filling two boats.
Then comes one of the most touching scenes
in the Gospel. Peter, an experienced fisherman,
is flabbergasted. He realizes vaguely that he is in
the presence of something, someone, beyond
the ordinary. He falls at Jesus’ knees, saying,
“Leave me, Lord. I am a sinful man.” Jesus
must have loved him deeply at that moment
and, far from leaving him, gave him assurance
and a commission. “Do not be afraid. From
now on you will be catching men.”
Luke records, almost in passing, the
amazement of James and John and their
response; “With that they brought their boats
to land, left everything, and became his
followers.” Luke’s Gospel has been called the
Gospel of total renunciation; typically he tells
us that they left “everything.”
The fourth Gospel has a notably different,
probably parallel, tradition of the call of the
first disciples (Jn 1,35-51). The disciples appear
on the scene as followers of John the Baptist,
who points Jesus out to them. And the setting
is not the Lake of Galilee but the Jordan valley
in Judea, where John is baptizing.
The first two to meet Jesus are Andrew and
an unnamed companion, probably John, son of
Zebedee. Andrew brings Simon to Jesus, who
changes his name to Cephas (Peter). Next are
Philip and Nathanael. The incident covers two
days and is arranged in such a way as to bring
out many points of Johannine theology. There
is a rapid crescendo of recogniton on the part
of the disciples, beginning with “rabbi,” then
“the messiah,” then “the one Moses spoke of in
the law — the prophets too,” and finally “son
of God, king of Israel.” Thus John telescopes
into two days a long process of slow
recognition which was complete only after the
Resurrection.
One detail is eloquent. When Jesus noticed
the first two following him, he asked, “What
are you looking for?” They answered, “Rabbi,
where do you stay?” “Come and see,” he said.
Father Raymond Brown offers this rich insight:
“Notice that in the beginning of the process
of discipleship it is Jesus who takes the
initiative by turning and speaking . . . Jesus’
first words in the fourth Gospel are a question
that he addresses • to everyone who would-
follow him, “What are you looking for?” . . .
This question touches on the basic need of man
that causes him to turn to God, and the answer
of the disciples must be interpreted on the same
theological level. Man wishes to stay . . . with
God; he is constantly seeking to escape
temporality, change and death, seeking to find
something that is lasting. Jesus answers with the
all-embracing challenge to faith: “Come and
see.” (The Gospel according to John, Anchor
Bible, Vol. 29, pp. 78-79).
Faith, temperance and fortitude -- all
are difficult, yet necessary virtues for
Christians. Without faith in God, there
seems no logical reason for the difficulties
each of us encounter in our lifetimes.
Without faith, we have no real nded for
temperance in anything that gives us
pleasure. Without fortitude, our lives are
doomed to unfulfillment.
People who are rich in these virtues
mark each generation. During our time
we remember one such man vividly —
Pope John XXIII. His faith in God was so
great that he dared to call a council —~a
council that was sure to stir up
controversy. What a tremendous strength
such an undertaking demanded. But Pope
John was well prepared for his mission
which would affect not only Catholics
but the whole world. His preparation, in
essence, was simple. He had complete
trust and faith in the Lord. “I let him do
it all,” he wrote. His great faith helped
him to forego the search of worldly
pleasure. And from his faith stemmed the
strength to open windows of the church
— all this in the evening of his life.
Long ago the greatest of all men,
Jesus, began his public ministry. One of
his first acts was to invite 12 men to join
him. They were ordinary men. When they
looked at Jesus and talked to him, they
sensed that he was an extraordinary man.
When Jesus said, “Come and see,” they
accepted his invitation, though they did
not really know who he was. Their
acceptance was the first spark of faith. As
time went on, their faith grew and with it
came the strength they would need when
Jesus was no longer with them. But Jesus’
way was hard. He did not offer them
physical comfort or riches in this world.
In fact, they had to give up all they had
to follow him. Only one faltered.
Ultimately, we, too, must decide whether
or not we will “come and see.”
Each person has the potential for good
and evil. We must learn to recognize both
through our interaction with other
people. How we deal with these options
determines whether or not we wish to
“come and see.” If we accept Jesus’
invitation, our journey, like the disciples’
and John’s will be a difficult one. But the
promise it offers is joy, peace and eternal
life so sublime that we cannot begin to
imagine it.
Today many seek fulfillment in
worldly pleasures. But these pleasures last
such a little while and when they are
done, only emptiness remains. That
emptiness is being recognized by more
and more people. With this recognition
comes a desire for truth that will bring
lasting contentment. Goodness, too, is
still with us. We experience it when we
hear those who openly praise the Lord
and when we see Christians coming
together. As the brokenness begins the
healing process, we indeed know that
God’s presence is still very much with us.
A Special Gift
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