29th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Ex 17:8-13

Ps 121

2 Tm 3:14-4:2

Lk 18:1-8

In the summer of 1969 The Doors released an album titled “The Soft Parade."  Critics do not list it among their best albums.  But Paul, one of my 'extended' roommates, brought a copy to Penn State in September of that year.  We came close to wearing it out.  Thus, for better or for worse, it is part of the soundtrack of my life, one that I still visit from time to time via the digital copy on the computer. (It is available on You Tube, I checked before Mass).  The title track, which is the last track rather than the first, begins with Jim Morrison saying in a deep, amplified, echoing, and sarcastic voice, “When I was back there in seminary school there was a person there who put forth the proposition that you can petition the Lord with prayer.”  He repeats, “petition the Lord with prayer” three times with more and more sarcasm dripping from each word.  He then screams in a hoarse voice, "YOU CANNOT . . PETITION THE LORD . . . WITH PRAYER.”  The sound fades into a beautiful melody.  By then the drugs had completely wrecked his brain and destroyed his soul.  Less than two years after the album release he would be dead of a heroin overdose.  Age twenty-six.  He was wrong.  He was very wrong.

You can petition the Lord with prayer. 

You should petition the Lord with prayer. 

You must petition the Lord with prayer. 

One rarely used English word comes to mind when considering the first reading and the gospel, both of which illustrate how to petition the Lord with prayer:  Importune.  To importune means to ask with urgency or persistence, to annoy, to beset with solicitations, to be troublesomely persistent.  Only the first of the definitions describes prayer: to ask with urgency and persistence.  One can never annoy or trouble God with prayer.  The entire psalter, from Psalm 1 to Psalm 150 is a long, continuous, and frequently importuning prayer.  The psalter is a model for how we are to pray.

The first reading is fascinating.  As long as Moses’ arms were raised in prayer the Israelites were winning the battle.  When they dropped with fatigue the situation changed.  But Moses had help.  Aaron and Hur supported his arms that were raised in prayer as long as was necessary.  So it is for us.  We cannot go it alone in prayer any more than Moses could.  That is why we are surrounded by a community of believers.  That is why we must ask for help with our prayer.  That is why we pray for others.  When others prays for us they are doing the same as Aaron and Hur, supporting our arms when we are too fatigued, too angry, too anxiety-ridden, or too overwrought to pray.  We do the same for others when we pray for and with them. 

The Gospel presents a different image.  The widow would not give up.  No matter what the unjust judge did she returned importuning until he gave her a fair judgment.  The judge’s motivations for giving that judgment, however, were less than pure.  He had no interest in or thirst for justice.  He gave the judgment because he feared that she might strike him.  His actions recall T.S. Eliot’s observation, “The final temptation is the greatest treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”  God can never be unjust.  Jesus asks the rhetorical question: “Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night?”  In the context of this Gospel passage we know the answer without it being written.    

The responsorial psalm, Psalm 121, is among the most beautiful and poignant in the entire psalter.  Over seventeen years ago, Jesuit Father Paul Harmon was speaking to New England Province scholastics, young Jesuits still in studies.  This psalm was the topic of one of his talks.  Fr. Harmon's explanation, one I’ve not seen elsewhere, put this psalm into a new and deeper context.  He noted that when the psalmist looked up to the mountains he did not find comfort.  Rather,  he saw that he was surrounded by the fires of sacrifice to the baals, the pagan gods.  And he asked  “Whence shall help come to me?”  He had been abandoned by his people who followed not the God of the covenant but the au courant gods, the gods it was socially expedient to worship, the gods of money, power, influence, and fame.  The gods of political power.  And then the psalmist remembered,

“My help is from the LORD,

who made heaven and earth.” 

When the psalmist looked up into the mountains he did not have comforting visions of angels, pretty sunsets and cottony clouds.  He saw treachery. He saw betrayal by his own people, a people who had abandoned the God of their fathers, the God of the covenant.  He had to look interiorly, he had to pray, to realize that help did not come from the baals or from power.  He would not find his help in money, social status. or any of the other false gods of today.  His help would come only from the Lord, the Lord who created both heaven and earth.  It is an exquisite psalm. 

“I lift up my eyes toward the mountains;
whence shall help come to me?
My help is from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.”

Stay with that thought for the rest of the day.

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Another busy week has ended.  A minor cold did not help matters at all.  On Wednesday I have an appointment with an optometrist to get checked for new glasses.  Apparently one cannot simply copy progressive lenses.  The good news is that while I am stuck with these reading glasses (I cannot describe how much I hate having to look over the top of them and how much I loathe being looked at over the top of a pair of glasses) when the new ones are ready I will have a back up pair.  Two for one sale.  I think I found the Slovenian equivalent of ForEyes. 

It was a week of mostly rainy damp weather, the perfect time to have a cold and not necessarily feel like going out anyway.  On Wednesday I went for coffee with a friend.  It was an interesting experience.  When we took a table at the outdoor cafe the waiter set an ashtray in front of us.  And ASHTRAY?!?  Haven't seen one of those in an eating establishment in years.  Even outdoors.  More surprising, however, was watching a number of young women at several different table, I assume students at the university, rolling their own cigarettes.  And they were tobacco cigarettes as evidenced by the smell.  Overall there seems to be more smoking here than in the U.S. despite large print black and white warnings on the front of cigarette packs as opposed to on the side as is true in the U.S.  While I still occasionally miss the physical action of smoking (I quite 38 years ago) I've no desire to actually light up or even take a drag.  I suspect the nausea would be overwhelming.  

The photos below are the result of some nocturnal wandering. 

The Butcher's Bridge at night.  I did not know that the walkway near the bridge was glass when I was here in January and February.  It was covered with wood.  Apparently what seemed like a good idea at the time resulted in very dangerous conditions in the winter when the glass became icy and slippery.  Alas, it isn't too easy to walk on when wet either.  And wet is a common condition in LJ.

An outdoor cafe along the river.  It was a fairly comfortable night.  However, even now, when the temperatures are dropping into the forties at night, Slovenians are sitting outdoors, bundled up, drinking beer or coffee. 

This street is limited to pedestrians.  The only way to differentiate the cafes is by the tables and chairs.  They are distinct for reach place

The cafe nearest our house.  I took a photo the day before Valentine's when there were several inches of snow on the tables and chairs. 

Ye Olde Tchotchke Shoppe.  I cannot describe how I much I loathe seeing the faux Olde Englyshe spellings in tourist traps.  My niece and I got close to hysterical laughter in Newburyport, Mass. many years ago when it seemed as if every store had that kid of sign.  We still call them:  Ye Oldee Shoppee.

 +Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

28th Sunday Ordinary Time

3 Kgs 5:14-17

Ps 98 1-4

2 Tm 2:8-13

Lk 17:11-19

The first reading and the Gospel both turn on the disease leprosy as it was understood in the Ancient Near East.  It is critical to remember that when it is mentioned in any biblical readings leprosy does not mean the chronic disfiguring infectious disease known today as Hansen’s disease.  While Hansen’s may have been in the population during Jesus’ time, it did not exist during more ancient times, such as that in which the first reading is set some six centuries before Jesus' birth. In addition, the descriptions of leprosy in the Old Testament, are inconsistent with Hansen’s disease as described in Harrison’s Textbook of Internal Medicine, the standard textbook of medicine in the U.S. Walls, clothing, and other inanimate objects could also be considered leprous if they had a certain appearance.

Leprosy comes from the Greek root LEPI that means scales of a fish. Thus,  psoriasis, with its characteristic scaling lesion, would have been called leprosy, along with many other diseases that are not related and are not infectious. Infectious is the key word. The fear of leprosy was the fear of contagion, the fear of transmission of disease. That contagion, several millennia before antibiotics and so on, was a threat to the ongoing life of the community. Much of the fear was related to a different understanding of illness then compared with our understanding today.

We understand living and disease as part of an unbroken line. That line is interrupted only by death.  One may be ill but one is still living until the moment of death.   In the Ancient Near East disease was understood as a “mild form of death”  or “a living death.” The break, the radical interruption, was not between life and death but between health and illness.  Lepers were thought to be losing life’s vital force from their bodies.  Lepers were seen as the living dead, as already inhabiting sheol.  

Adding to the stigma was that, like other illnesses in the Ancient Near East, leprosy was understood as punishment for sin.  It was visible evidence that the afflicted was a sinner.  The lepers who approached Jesus were suffering from social exclusion. They asked Jesus for compassion and healing.  In his compassion for their suffering, for their isolation from society, and their alienation from themselves, Jesus healed them of the visible cause of their suffering.  He removed the "leprosy" that visibly marked them as sinners.  Jesus returned them to society and gave them back to themselves.

Jesus did the same for us.  He continues to do the same for us.  Jesus took upon himself the burden of our sin.  By his obedience to the will of the Father, he freed us from sin and death.  In the sacrament of confession he offers us the opportunity to be made clean again and again, as often as we may need to be cleansed of the internal marks of leprosy.  And thus He returns us to the right relationship with God and with ourselves. The readings and the Gospel also highlight the interdependence of gift and thanksgiving.

The story of Naaman in the first reading began with verse fourteen, in which he descended into the water of the Jordan seven times and emerged healed of his lesions.  We didn't hear the important verses that come immediately before this. In those verses, Naaman was told by the Elisha's messenger, not the Prophet Elisha himself, to bathe in the water of the Jordan seven times.  Then we read, "But Naaman was angered and walked away.  He said, 'I thought he would surely come out to me and would stand and invoke the Lord his God by name and would wave his hand toward the spot and cure the affected part.'"  Naaman continued to rage until a servant asked, "if the prophet told you to do something difficult, would you not do it?" The servant then pointed out that the prophet had suggested something easy.  Logic triumphed over fury. Naaman's gratitude was total, immediate, and sincere.

The gospel adds a twist.  Only one of the ten lepers Jesus healed returned to express his gratitude.  Only one gave thanks when he realized that he had been healed.  The response of the other nine lepers is an important point. It highlights the unfortunate disconnection between faith, gift, and thanksgiving that characterizes most people at least some of the time.  The ten lepers obviously had faith in Jesus.  Otherwise, they would not have set out to present themselves to the priests.  But only one, a Samaritan, a foreigner, returned to give thanks. 

Faith cannot exist, it cannot grow, without thanksgiving.  Faith needs to be nurtured with prayer, the Eucharist, and meditation upon scripture.  Prayer is not just for petition in times of trouble.  Prayer is thanksgiving. It is conversation between us and God that expresses our gratitude for what God has done, for what He is doing, and for what He will do for us, even if we don't understand it at the moment.  The psalm explains it all.  First, the psalmist instructs us in the way of faith when he sings:

"All the ends of the earth have seen

the salvation by our God."

And then he tells us how to express our gratitude:

"Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands,

Break into song; sing praise."

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Went to Maribor last Sunday for a concert that included several pieces sung by Father Damjan Ristič. Damjan possesses a rich baritone voice that he used beautifully.  The other performers on the program were a French horn quartet.  They played beautifully.  I never realized a French horn could play such low notes.  

This morning I wandered down to the market place and the Franciscan Church around 7:30 AM.  It was fascinating to watch the market coming to life.  I can't imagine setting up and taking down my wares every single day.  

A French horn on a chair before the concert

There was a reception afterwards.  Students were setting out the glasses and food well before the concert began.

Reflections in the river.  

Ljubljana Castle dominates the view from many areas of the city.  

A detail of stucco, a lamp, and red flowers.

A tour boat on the river.  This was from Friday midday rather than early Saturday AM.

Chairs locked up for overnight.  The outdoor cafes were very active as staff set out tables and chairs.

A coffee shop overlooking the river.

Salty snacks including pizza.

A merchant working in the colonnade carrying good to his area.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Hab 1:2-3, 2:2-4

Ps 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9

2 Tim 1:6-8, 13-14

Lk  17:5-10

“How long O Lord? 

I cry for help

but you do not listen!”

Book of Habakkuk begins with a startling statement. 

“I cry for help . . .

but you do not listen.” 

Habakkuk is unique among the prophets because he openly questions the wisdom of God.  The major theme of Habakkuk is trying to move from perplexity, confusion and doubt toward faith and absolute trust in God.  It is only at the end of the third and final chapter of this short book, that Habakkuk expresses his ultimate faith in God, even if he, like us, does not yet fully understand. In the last verses, sometimes called the Psalm of Habakkuk, we hear him reflecting on the  loss of everything as he writes: 

“For though the fig tree blossom not

nor fruit be on the vines,

though the yield of the olive fail

and the terraces produce no nourishment, . . .

Yet will I rejoice in the Lord

and exult in my saving God.

God, my Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet swift as those of hinds

and enables me to go upon the heights.” 

In this magnificent ending to a book that opened with a hostile challenge we learn of the faith that redeems and sustains. 

The Gospel begins with the famous statement relating faith to the mustard seed.  When I was in high school many of the girls wore a necklace with a small clear globe and a tiny yellow mustard seed suspended in the middle.  One had to look very closely to make out the seed as it was only one or two millimeters—about 1/25th of an inch—in size.  That tiny seed grows into a bush that, while technically not a tree, is large enough for the birds to perch in as though it were a tree.  It is a metaphor for faith.

Faith is freely given. Faith sustains us through the ups and down of life.  It augments the joys and diminishes the sorrows. Faith brings us eternal life. But we must care for it and nurture it.  Many of Jesus’ parables turn on the question of faith, how it is nurtured and increased.  How we live our faith in the present is a question we must face  regularly.  Just as it takes a long time for the mustard seed to grow into a large bush, so it is with faith.  As we live it, cultivate it, and attend to it through prayer, reflection, meditation on scripture, and participation in the Eucharist, faith matures.  It becomes stronger.  More resilient.  More able to sustain us in good times and in bad. Faith permits us and sometimes compels us, to ask the question which began the first reading from Habakkuk: 

“How long O Lord?”

Faith allows us to pray with one single screamed word:  “WHY?”  And faith allows us  to endure the startling silence that may be the only reply to that angry why?.  Sometimes it is the example of others whose faith is stronger than ours that helps us cultivate our own. 

Six years ago, on Friday September 17, 2010 I was wandering through the Jesuit cemetery in Weston, MA. My fingers moved slowly over the rosary.  Nothing made sense.  I had just viewed the body of Jesuit Father Ignatius Ikunza, a very close friend, who died of a rapidly lethal form of cancer, three days after his 39th birthday. The grave, partially covered with a weathered piece of plywood, was ready.  His body would come down the hill from the funeral Mass around noon. 

After Mass the East African Provincial addressed the congregation.  When he was done Ikunza’s mother rose and positioned herself between the altar and her son’s coffin.  She took the microphone from Father Provincial and began to speak.  She spoke about the meaning of her son’s life and the meaning of his death as a seamless whole.  She spoke eloquently about her faith in the resurrection, the certainty of eternal life, and the joy that eased some of her grief,  the joy that he was now with God.  When she finished the congregation packing the large chapel rose and applauded.  We rose because of the example of faith she had just given us.  Because she had taken us through the entire Book of Habakkuk from anger and sorrow to faith, in nine minutes.

As we waited at the grave, another Jesuit nudged me and said, “I hope all of those high powered theologians were listening to Ikunza’s mom.  She is proof that we don’t need them.”  Had he been there Ikunza would have laughed as hard as I did.  Like her son’s, her faith was not something she put on only in times of crisis. It was not something she tapped only during the bad times. She did not look to God only when she needed Him.   She had nurtured the mustard seed of faith that was planted in her over the years.  She shared it with her son, nurtured it, and it grew in him.  With her mighty faith she shielded us mourners from some of the harshness of despair and hopelessness.  Ikunza’s mom should not be unique. It is possible for all of us that, through faith, no matter what happens, the angry question:

“How long O Lord?” 

can be replaced with:

“God my Lord is my strength,

He enables me to go upon the heights.”

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I've been in Ljubljana a week.  Jet lag is beginning to abate though sleep is still a bit of a problem.  Alas, sleep is frequently a problem without the necessity of crossing time zones.  

From Monday to Wednesday of this week I was in Trieste, Italy, about ninety minutes by car from here, with eighteen students who are going to live at our residential college, Magis, in Maribor (their classes begin on Monday).  It was a chance for the students, some of whom lived there last year and some of whom didn't, to come to know each other, do some of the necessary paperwork, and relax.  They all seemed to enjoy themselves.  I had a chance to get to know some of them, particularly the medical students, over the course of the days.  On our last day there Peter and I abandoned the kids at lunch and were guests of the Jesuit community for a very pleasant lunch.  

Trieste is an interesting city.  I didn't get to spend as much time doing photography as I wished because of the jet lag and because Trieste is built on the side of either a mountain or a cliff.  I can't figure out which.  It featured some of the most narrow, steepest, and serpentine roads that I've seen in a long time.  San Francisco is relatively flat in comparison.  I couldn't imagine living there daily and parking in very small spaces.  Can't quite figure how some of the drivers were going to get their cars out of the parking place in the morning.  After lunch on the last day Peter planned to go to the Adriatic Coast for an hour or so.  That is when the camera got a workout.

Miramare (Look at the Sea) Castle was built by the Emperor Franz Ferdinand in the 19th century.  It sits on thirty-two acres looking directly out at the Adriatic.  I had only an hour with the camera.  The trip out of Trieste to the highway was a nightmare.  Whatever GPS Peter used apparently took us the short way rather than the sane one.  The road was very steep, very narrow with cars and houses, and featured two hairpin turns.  We couldn't make one of them in the van without continuing up, turning around, and then following the road.  Alas, I had to get out of the car to help guide Peter as he backed up into a small space hollowed out of the hill.  It suggested that others had to do the same thing.  As he was backing up I realized he couldn't see me so I scrambled up a dirt mound but fell while doing so.  I only noticed when we were well into the trip that my glasses had apparently fallen out of the pocket.  First time in fifty years of wearing glasses that I lost or broke them.  At the moment I am making do with prescription sunglasses and a pair of reading glasses.  But, given the astigmatism that complicates old man eyes, things could be better than just readers.   My optometrist in D.C. agreed to send me the prescription so I can get a pair made here.  Perhaps by next week.  

The students at the van when everyone met up at a highway gas station.

There was a soccer game with some Italian guys.  Took many photos of this.  A lot different than landscapes or still life work.

The Miramare Castle.  Great lines and relative simplicity combined with majesty.

Looking from one of the patios.  A beer, a lounge chair and an umbrella would have been nice.

Looking toward the port of Trieste

Looking over the ocean from one of the paths leading to the castle.  This is an intentionally underexposed shot that gives the illusion of moonlight on the water when, in fact, the sun was blazing.

+Fr. Jack, SJ, MD