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Notre Dame School
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As adults with many life experiences, we gather to grow in our relationship with God. The Holy Spirit leads us through Scripture, through the Catechism, and the gifts of each other to a deeper faith. We have prayer, humor, information and lively discussions on basic topics of the Catholic faith.
Monthly Discussion - first Sunday of each Month
School Library - Kemper Hall
9:30 - 10:45 am
Note:
Occasionally the date of the meeting is changed, so check the bulletin or
if you have any questions contact
cafe@ndparishkerrville.org
Click Here for the Upcoming
CAFE Schedule
February 7, 2010
Study Material
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CAFE
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Purpose:
Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, through
study of Scripture, Catechism, other resources, and sharing our
faith experiences, we help one
another grow the faith.
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Following is information to help you discern whether joining CAFE
is the volunteer service for you.
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ACTIVITIES/FUNCTIONS
·
Meeting for discussion once a month.
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MEETING FREQUENCY/TIME/PLACE
9:30 - 10:45 am in the school library in Kemper Hall
1hr, 15 minutes. A discussion sheet for the next month is always
handed out so if one wishes, one can review and prepare for the next
meeting.
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TASKS/SKILLS
· Willingness
to listen and if you wish, share experiences, opinions and ideas and
enjoy lively discussion.
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CURRENT NEEDS
· Always
open to new ideas, suggestions and new ways to build faith.·
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FUTURE GOALS
Continue
to be open to the Holy Spirit and what God wants to teach us through
one another
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Feb 7: There are
no “Mr. Moms” in Jesus time
Mom and Dad have certain roles in the household which
are strictly organized and very different. Only by living out these
roles does the family have honor. Honor in the family is measured by the
power and respect for the
authority of the father and by maintaining gender roles.
To be an honorable male, one must have manliness,
courage, authority over family, willingness to defend his reputation and
refusal to submit to humiliation. Does Jesus demonstrate the role of the
typical male of his culture, Matt 9:8, 11, 17, 19, 22, 24?
Female honor requires sexual exclusiveness,
discretion, shyness, restraint, timidity, and modesty. She strives to
avoid human contacts, especially males to whom she is not related. This
might expose her to dishonor. However, she cannot be expected to succeed
in her role unsupported by male authority and control. Yet it is the
responsible man’s duty to protect , defend and look after the purity of
his women, since their dishonor directly relates to his. In Matt 9:20-22
a woman steps out of her gender role.
Women are embedded within the honor of some male but
have the responsibility to have proper sentiments of positive shame, a
sensitivity to the opinion of others. She must teach this to her
children. To have shame in this sense is a
positive value, a concern for her honor which she inherits from
her mother.
John 4:5-10 reports a counter-cultural contact between
Jesus and an unrelated
woman. Why might each risk this shameful behavior?
Within the home, male and female have very distinct
roles and space in which to perform their duties.
Female spaces are those places central to family life; the
kitchen, the public well and drawing water, spinning, sewing , public
oven and bread baking, sweeping out the house. These roles turn females
inward. Mary, sister of
Martha exhibits behavior which is shameful, Lk 10:38-42. Why? However
Martha exhibits similar behavior, Jn 11:20-27. What is going on here?
Turning
outward from the home, the male role dominates, The places of contact
such as the family courtyard, the village square, and the city gate are
male when males are present.
Women enter either when no males are present or when their males are
present.
The wife normally becomes financial administrator when
the husband must go to the fields, other villages, or on pilgrimage. Men
who are traveling merchants, shepherds, or
wandering preachers necessarily leave their honor in doubt since
their wives are left alone for rather long periods. If Joseph has died,
Mary should be under the protection of
her only son. Does Jesus as a wandering preacher cause people to
doubt his honor?
Since the female is always embedded in the male, a
deceived husband or father becomes the object of ridicule and dishonor
and entitles him to avenge any outrage committed against him. Women not
under the tutelage of a man such as childless widows, Lk 7:12 or
divorced women without family ties are viewed as stripped of
female honor and more like males than females and therefore sexually
predatory, aggressive and
dangerous. Only remarriage would restore their true gender roles. So
women are entitled to a new marriage if this can be arranged. Jesus’
statements about divorce are for the protection of women, Mk 10:2-10.
Lk
15:4-10 features 2 parables
following the challenge of Jesus by the Pharisees and scribes, Lk 15:2.
Jesus returns their challenge with an insult. A shepherd and a
woman are portrayed as doing
the job that the Pharisees are supposed to do. Does Jesus belittle women
here?
Gender rules apply to work. Jesus refers to both, Mt
6:25-28. Even animals symbolize male and female roles. Goats are of the
female domain, sheep in the male domain. Mt 25:31-33 does not flatter
the female domain. Another put down for women? Peter receives the proper
male role, John 21:15-17.
Any
dignity a woman has, comes with child birth. Being childless is a
woman’s greatest shame. But women do not simply give birth to a child
but to a boy or a girl. The gender of the child is most important. Males
are considered better because they are males. They represent the honor
of the group, Windows on the World of Jesus, Window 28.
Children are the concern of mothers with boys staying
with females until about puberty. Fathers have little to do with child
rearing. When the boy is thrown into the adult male world at puberty,
his biggest concern is to behave “like a man,” a behavior the child has
had little opportunity to observe. Mothers and sons form the closest
bond of affection. Mt 20:20-24 is honorable behavior for a mother,
Window 32.
In summary, women are
socialized to serve,
put others first and to submit to authority.
Men are not. Might
Jesus has a difficult task in forming the
apostles? Mt19:27-30, 20:16, 20-28; Mk 10:43-45;
Jn 13:14, 21.
How might Jesus’ ministry be
different if
21st C American gender roles existed in the 1st
C?
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Jan 3, 2010 A BLESSED AND HONORABLE
NEW YEAR!
Do
Jews of the 1st C
wear their hearts inside out and keep their minds locked,
while Americans do the opposite, Window 9, Windows on the World
of Jesus? Does this seem like a fair assessment to you?
Jews of the 1st C are more openly
emotional than Americans. They do not generally attempt to justify
and/or explain their emotions. They value spontaneity in feeling and
action. Since they live
in public, they express their emotions in a public way.
Americans tend to be more reserved partially because
they value of control and restraint and
because emotional display is considered childish. Not all
Americans are reserved and not Judeans are publically emotional but
this seems to be the
most dominant pattern
within the two cultures.
The show of emotion is normal for the honorable
man in 1st C. Males read and write
psalms, for example, that include the whole range of emotion,
Ps 3:5, 6:7, 13:3, 42:4, 44:16, 47:2. Scriptures such as Mt
2:16, 20:24, 21:15, Mk
10:14 show anger,
indignation, displeasure.
Jesus is emotionally moved by people in distress,
Mt 9:36, Mk 6:34,
8:2, Lk 7:13, Jn
11:30-38. Are you comfortable with these kinds of emotions in
public?
Displaying emotion includes a
lowing of psychosocial boundaries
in public that Americans are used to. Also, touching
behaviors such as males walking arm-in-arm or hand-in-hand
illustrate the greater degree to which ancient Judean friends
feel they can enter each other’s personal space. This behavior
announces that this is my friend and any difficulty you cause him
will require that you answer to me as well,
Window 8.
The Last Supper scene involves great intimacy, Jn
13:5, 23-25 Men embrace and kiss in public, Mt 26:48 and express
their emotional attachments openly,
Acts 20:37, Rom16:16.
When Jesus
heals, he touches,
Mk 1:40-41, Lk
4:38-40. This symbolizes a sharing of health-giving space
and a sharing of the healer’s power and solidarity. He
touches women, Mk 1:29-31, 5:23, 41 and allows them to touch him, Mk
5:30. Speaking to or
touching a woman to whom one is not related is shameful in 1st
C culture. Does Jesus
overcome the barriers of
his culture with regards to women?
Why might he be willing to do this?
Jesus does it and is not publically shamed.
Why? Because his
honor rating is high due
to his words, Mk 1:25-28, his healing power and his response to
challenges, Mk 2:8, 17,27.
Do Jesus’ responses to challenges sound harsh to you?
The most famous words about love come from
Jesus, Mk 12:28-34, who
weaves together Deut 6:5
and Lev 19:18. For
introspective, individualistic Americans, these words are about
psychological states. They are about feeling, emotion and affection.
How do you understand Mk 12:30-31?
But we
find that the word “love” and “hate” have
very different meanings in 1st C world.
Affection, emotion and feeling may or may not be involved. The
expression of love is all about attachment to one’s group or
attachment to a person in the group. It is the family group, the village
group or a faction group,
such as the apostles, that one joins at some point in life that matters
above all.
To love God above all means to become attached
exclusively to Yahweh-God to the exclusion of any other god. It includes
attaching oneself to a group that clusters itself distinctly
around this God. Does one have to be attached to a group to love God in
our culture? Many say that they are “spiritual” but not religious. To a
1st C person,
this would make no sense.
To love one’s neighbor as oneself means to become
exclusively attached to the people in one’s own neighborhood or village
as if they were family. The
full context of Lev 19:18 makes it clear
that “neighbor” means “fellow ethnic,” fellow Jew.
In Lk 10:25-37, the story of the Good Samaritan
follows Jesus’ great commandment. Since Luke is writing to a Christian
gentile audience, he wants them to know that God
excludes no one. Everyone is now a neighbor to everyone in the
reign of God.
What
does “hate” mean in 1st C culture, Lk14:26? Jesus is not
commanding his followers to have negative emotions toward their intimate
kinfolk but rather to detach themselves from their family
for the sake of Jesus and the gospel. Is Jesus a good example of
this?
The depth of detachment required of a follower of
Jesus is expressed in
Peter’s dialogues with Jesus,
Mt 19:27-30. Because
one’s very life depends upon loyalty and attachment to the family, to
leave home and kin is to leave everything meaningful in life, to risk
death itself ( Lk 15:17). How will Jesus honor the loyalty of his
disciples?
Dr. John Pilch, in his commentary on this reading states, “This kind of
group attachment may be desired in our culture but seems to be difficult
to attain. Individualism is the biggest obstacle to community. We tend
to be very pragmatic with regard to group attachment. One may join a
group and remain a member only as long as the group meets one’s personal
needs. When it fails to do so, the individual drops out and joins
another group on similar terms.” Do you agree with this analysis by Dr.
Pilch? Does this create a problem for discipleship?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dec 6
1st
C Israel, a
land of limited good(s)
Americans consider their land a place of limitless good, goods and
resources. Is it? Our area
experiences drought. Folks
with investments in failed
companies may
never get back their funds. How about the 1970's when there were
long lines at the gas pump?
How do we cope with times of
shortage and loss? Do we believe that goods and times of prosperity will
eventually return? Will
resources to feed, heal, enjoy and prosper always be available?
The people of Jesus’ day believe in a world
of limited goods. Why? They live in a rural, preindustrial world. 95% of
the people are poor peasants. Great landowners and other elite shape the
agenda of their lives. The
peasants are subject to the demands of the elite as well the whims of
nature. Landowners are oppressive and nature is not always kind.
The peasants
believe that their existence is ruled by others and limited by
the natural and social resources of the village and the
city. This leads to the perception that all good(s) are
limited. They conclude that land, wealth, honor, health,
friendship, love, respect, status, power, influence, security and safety
are limited and will always
be in short supply.
There is no way
within a person’s power to increase the available quantities. For
example, the land can be
divided and redivided but never increased. So any apparent improvement
in one family’s position is seen as a threat to the entire community
since it must be that others are being deprived and denied of something
that is theirs. There is no win-win in this culture.
For someone to win, someone must lose.
What is the family goal in this culture ? Life is
about harmony by preserving
status with honor, not by acquiring goods or achieving anything.
In fact, it is honorable to avoid achieving or
accumulating since it is
seen as a threat to the community. Since all goods are limited, one who
seeks to accumulate wealth is necessarily dishonorable and greedy. How
do we view people of wealth?
How does one demonstrate to others that they are not,
in a sense, stealing the good(s) of others? By living a transparent
life. Children roam freely in and out of
homes and workplaces. Note the availability of children, Mt 18:2,
Mk 9:36. Also, one acts
defensively and humbly like Jesus does, Lk 12:14 since the community
wants to reject an achiever, Mt 17:9, Mk10:19. Why is Jesus rejected
here? Are we threatened by achievers?
Because one does not want to appear ambitious, one
never admits to initiating bonds or alliances, Things “just happen.” Day
laborers must be asked to work, Mt 20:7. No one seeks out Jesus for
discipleship. They must be asked. Honorable persons never compliment
others. Jesus’ repudiates a compliment, as any honorable man would, Mk
10:17-18. Does Jesus care about his honor rating here?
When a limited good becomes very scarce, for example, if family honor is
questioned, if crops fail, a family member becomes ill, a bride needs a
dowry, taxes are too high, the family is in need of “salvation.” It is a
common Greek word of the 1st
C and not specifically a God-oriented word.
How do we define “salvation?”
One way to
find “salvation” is by finding a patron. A patron-client
relationship is implied when a person approaches Jesus for “pity,” Mt
9:27, 15:22. All positive relationships with God are rooted in the idea of
patron-client relationships. Persons who know how to put prospective clients
into contact with patrons are called brokers. Jesus acts as a broker,
putting people in contact with their heavenly Patron. Can we view
Jesus and the Father as a heavenly
patron/broker?
Another way to salvation is a
friend with resources. Jesus calls Levi, a toll collector, to follow
him, Lk 5:27-32. Levi is wealthy and responds with a great dinner for Jesus.
What bothers Jesus’ critics is that he eats with sinners and tax collectors
and they are not of his status. They have no good(s) with which to respond
in kind. Does Jesus worry about
his honor in this situation?
Does Levi?
There
are “rich” folks in the Gospels. They are considered to be
dishonorable because they do not care about public opinion and
accumulate great wealth. Some ordinary income can be expected from wages,
customary rent, reciprocal lending or selling goods. But for the “rich, it
is expected that their profit and gain must be based on fraud or extortion.
However Jesus’ opinion about wealth is really unclear. Let us look at Lk
12:16-21, the rich fool; Lk 16:19-31, the rich man and Lazarus; Lk 18:18-23,
the rich official. Is wealth helpful or hurtful for Christians in our time?
A
phase that has been used to justify a lack of care for the poor is Mk 14:7.
“Poor” has many meanings
in a limited good(s) society: Lk
4:18, Lk 6:20-21, Mt 5:3, Mt 11:4-5, 25:34 ff.. Poor often refers to those
with health limitations, the inability to maintain an honorable status and
what we might call being the wrong place at the wrong time. How should we
apply Jesus’ words in our
culture?
Nov 15
When is it important to say “thank you?”
Well, it depends.
Remember the movie “Love Story”
and most famous line from that movie: Love is never having to say you’re
sorry?” Well, in 1st Century
Israel, love is never having to say “thank you.”
Do you find “thank you” a useful phrase, a bonding
phrase, an irritating phrase?
Do folks say it not often enough? Too often?
It is irritating to some and necessary for others in Jesus’ time.
Consider the story of the 10 lepers, Lk 17:12-19. Jesus’ question about
the other nine may not be what we might expect.
We will look at Window 5 of Windows
on the World of Jesus.
Jews of Jesus’ time do not thank
a person who is the same status as they are(an in-group member)
when they are grateful for some favor done for them. To express
gratitude to a social equal ends the relationship. Saying “thank you”
means, “I do
not intend to interact with you anymore! I will not be needing
you anymore in the future. Our relationship is finished since I cannot
and will not repay you.” In a culture where “belongingness” is
paramount, saying this to a social equal
would be shameful.
From whom do we expect gratitude? Can gratitude ever
end a relationship?
Therefore the people in the Gospels do not thank Jesus
after he heals them. Rather, they praise God from whom good health
comes, implying that they might have to interact with Jesus again should
illness strike later, Mk 2:12, Mt 9:8, 15:31, Lk 5:26, 7:16,
13:13,18:43, 19:37. What is our
response to these healing stories?
To thank Jesus would mean that the relationship is
over, Lk 17:16. This is OK for the Samaritan since when he thanks Jesus,
he believes that his leprosy is healed for good, as one might expect
from a Messianic healer. And he does not expect any further relationship
with Jesus to occur because
the Samaritan is a member of an out-group. Any out-group member in
Jesus’ day is considered less than human and not worthy of respect.
Not
so the 9, who might need Jesus’ services again. Jesus would like them to
return but to give thanks to God. The
9 consider themselves part of Jesus’ in-group. In-group
obligations involve a continuous repayment of one’s debts of gratitude.
It is not that the ancient Judeans are an ungrateful people or that they
presume the world owes them a living. In-group obligations continue and
are a matter of loyalty to the in-group members forever! Does Jesus ever
thank his disciples for their loyalty to him? Do they thank him? What
kind of bond do we have with Jesus as we strive to be disciples?
For a Jew in the 1st C to thank a
high-ranking social superior such as the king, a Roman prefect or God is
right since one gives thanks for a favor received although it is
undeserved and can never be repaid. One cannot deserve anything from
such high-ranking patrons nor can one
ever expect to become
a member of their in-group. They are simply too remote. But public
thanks and praise is expected. Such acknowledgment gives honor and glory
of the high-ranking social superior. How do you express gratitude to
God?
What are in-groups of 1st
C about? The in-group begins with family and its extensions-friendship,
workmates and neighbors are treated like family. The in-group is always to
be supported, respected and given loyalty. Group solidarity means that if
any member of the group needs help or is threatened, he/she can expect that
the other members will automatically come to his/her aid.
Any deviation from this rule would be shameful.
Why do folks in our culture form groups? Is there always
group solidarity, loyalty?
Do Americans change groups often? Is individualism or group loyalty
more important?
Window 19 tells us what it means to be a good neighbor, a
member of an in-group resulting from location, a neighbor who helps a
neighbor. One may even impose on a neighbor in time of need as one would on
one’s kin, Lk 11:5-8. 1st C Jews knew that all Israel were
neighbors.
However, folks of the out-group like the Samaritan, are
treated as a different species. They simply do not count. Imagine the
murmurings about the “good” Samaritan parable, Lk 10:29-37. Imagine the
contrast offered by Jesus who extends neighborhood boundaries, Mt 5:43-48..
Jesus again heals a member of an out-group, Mk 7:25-30. We
see that the Syrophoenician woman gives as good as she gets in this exchange
with Jesus. Does Jesus reassess his mission after this exchange?
Out- group folks don’t count as we will see in Window 34.
Are there some out-groups in our culture?
How are they treated? Why are they treated as they are?
October 25: Is Jesus a rebellious Son or an honorable One?
Remember that the organizing principle of 1st
Century life is belongingness. Success in life means maintaining ties to
other persons within sets of significant groups. The main group is one’s
extended family, the kinship group. Belonging and acceptance depend on a
person’s abiding by the traditional rules
by which families are organized and maintained. These traditional
rules are rooted in the
codes of honor and shame.
Honor
refers to a person’s or group’s claim to worth, along with the
acknowledgment of that worth in public.
Honor is based on authority, gender and respect. In the 1st
C world of Jesus, honor is the basic value of life.
What is the American basic value? (Check the Sept. 14
discussion.) How
important do you think honor is in our culture?
Who are honorable people for you? Why are they honorable?
The Gospel writers want their readers to know that
they worship a person, Jesus of Nazareth,
who belongs to an honorable family and is worthy of all honor and
respect.
How does one gain honor? Most important of all, honor
is inherited , Matt 1;2-16, read about Jesus’ ancestors. Honor is
ascribed if one has a worthy patron, Mk 1:9-11.
Honor is acquired by public acclamation, Mk 1:27-28. Honor
is acquired when one is challenged and wins and thereby shames
others. When others are shamed, Jesus’
honor increases, Mk 2:23-28- 3:1-5. But what
happens when they are shamed, Mk 3:6?
Honor is acquired when Jesus overwhelms evil, Mk 3:11 and
nature, Mk 4:35-41. Jesus shames the Pharisees and scribes with
parables, Lk 15:1-10. Do
these examples change your image of Jesus in any way?
Is Jesus a rebellious son who shames his family? Can
that be? When Jesus is possibly insane, Mk 3:20, and when he announces
that his true family are those who do the will of God, he surely places
his honor and that of his family in question, Mk 3:31-35. Jesus eats
with “tax collectors and sinners,” Mk 2:16 and he is accused of being a
“glutton and a drunkard,” Matt 11:19. These actions bring into question
the behavior of an obedient son who should
bring honor to his family, not shame.
We will discuss Window 1 from Windows on the World
of Jesus regarding a
rebellious son. Each Window is a short scene in which a 21st
C American goes to 1st C Judea and interacts in various ways
with its people. We will see how these interactions play out according
to 1st C values. These scenes then shed light on the actions
and events in the life of Jesus.
We learn
from this Window that if Jesus is of a higher status,
this sort of behavior is allowed and even praised for higher
status people are superior to the obligations of ordinary persons. The
reader of the Gospel is clued into the probability of just such a
status by the voice from the
sky at Jesus’ baptism, Mk 1:11 and at the Transfiguration, Mk 9:7.
Jesus’ “patron”(a person of
higher status who gives
honor and possessions to another in return for loyalty) gives Jesus
authority to speak for God in the world.
Shame is
what is to be avoided in Jesus’ world. Jesus could bring shame upon his
family for going into pagan territory and for not observing the purity laws,
Mk 5:1-20. But not only does he deal with evil spirits but lots of unclean
swine go to their doom. This event would have been the source of much
merriment to the Judeans of
Jesus’ time.
Jesus
receives ascribed honor
for the devotion and respect
he shows for his family, Lk 2:51. He also collects honor for his
family from his time in the
temple, Lk 2:46-47. At the
wedding at Cana, Jesus
shows the respect and honor he has for his dear mother, Jn 2:1-11.
Everyone at the wedding wants to acquire honor. How does Jesus
acquire honor at Cana?
However, the deepest form of shame, humiliation and disgrace awaits him, not
because he is crucified but because
his own people hand him over, Mk 15:10.
But the deepest honor awaits him also. We get a clue about this honor
from the centurion, Mk 15:39. The ultimate ascribed honor befalls Jesus from
his all powerful, praise worthy patron bringing maximum, eternal honor, Mk
16:6. Do we usually think of the
Resurrection as an honor giving event for Jesus?
Sept 13: What is the culture of the 1st
Century
at the time of Jesus and the New Testament ?
Why should we study it?
Because then
we can understand the words and
actions of Jesus in a deeper and richer way. Our goal will be
to clothe ourselves with Christ, Gal
3:27; be in Christ, Romans 16:3,7, 9, 10 and learn how better to
follow Christ, Mk 2:14.
Can we understand the
Incarnation apart from 1st
C culture? Our traditional belief tells us that Jesus of
Nazareth, God’s Messiah,
is a concrete historical person and
the union of the divine
and the human. This historical
union, called the Incarnation, takes place in time and space,
within a particular culture. If we are
interested in not only what the
Bible says but what Jesus’ words and actions
mean in that culture,
we can understand more completely
the humanity of the God-man Jesus. What questions do you have
about
the culture in which he lived?
We can discover a
whole new world of meaning in the Gospels by understanding the
culture of Jesus’
time.
We are encouraged in our discovery
by the Dogmatic Constitution on
Divine Revelation, Die Verbum,
promulgated in 1965 by Vatican II.
Chapter III, 12:
“For the correct understanding of
what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be
paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling,
speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred
writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period
in their everyday dealings with one another.
Spelling out what will
be helpful in finding
“the correct understanding.” is the
document
The Interpretation of the Bible in
the Church” which
was presented on April 23, 1993 by
the Pontifical Biblical Commission to Pope John Paul II.
Many approaches including sociology,
psychology, and cultural anthropology (the study of culture) are
mentioned:
Chap I, Section D: “In general,
cultural anthropology seeks to define the characteristics of
different kinds of human beings in their social context-as, for
example the “Mediterranean person”–with all that this involves
by the way of studying the rural or urban context and with
attention paid to the values recognized by the society in
question (honor and dishonor, secrecy, keeping faith, tradition,
kinds of education and schooling) to the manner in which social
control is exercised, to the ideas which people have of family
house, kin, to the situation of women, to institutionalized
dualities (patron-client, owner-tenant, benefactor-beneficiary,
free person-slave), taking into account also the prevailing
conception of the sacred and the profane, taboos, rites of
passage from one state to another, magic, the source of wealth,
of power, of information. Clearly this kind of study can be
useful for the interpretation of biblical texts.”
Our guides in this
series are “The New Testament
World. Insights from Cultural Anthropology”
by
Bruce Malina and “Windows
on the World of Jesus.” by Bruce
Malina. He is a Professor
of Theology, at Creighton
University, Omaha, Nebraska. Our other
resources are three books: “The
Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday, Cycle A, B, and C”
by
John J. Pilch, Professor of Theology
at
Georgetown University
in Washington,
D.C.
Let us look at some of
the cultural norms of the 1st
C that are on the back of this sheet .
The Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World, from Vatican II
(22)
tells us “He has truly been made one
of us, like us in all things except sin.”
Heb 4:15 echoes this theme.
How might Jesus be like us? Why
might Jesus be different?
Over the next 9 sessions we
will look at various passages in the Gospels and then
consider new insights that cultural anthropology can offer us.
For more information on 1st Century Mideast Culture,
click here
June 7
Trinity: the Living God of Love
What ever happened to Trinity?
People’s eyes
glaze over. Heads nod at the word. In truth Trinitarian
language acclaims the living God as the source, summit and
reason for our salvation. It is the Christian code for the
God of love made known through Jesus and the Spirit, 1 Jn
4:8, 16. Somehow a disconnect between the Christian life and
Trinity happened. Can we be
Christian without speaking of Trinity?
How did the
disconnect happen between
Trinity and Christian life?
Paul
wrote 2 Cor 13:13 about 56 AD.
We continue to proclaim it today. But somewhere we lost the
experience of the grace of the love of
God and the Lord Jesus Christ
and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit: God totally transcendent,
present historically in Jesus and present in the Spirit
within our community.
The disconnect
began to happen as the church needed to deal with a
controversy over the divinity of Jesus. At the Council of
Nicaea, 325 AD,
distinctions had to be formally
spelled out concerning the nature of God and the nature of
Jesus, i.e.
one divine nature in which the
three divine persons share equally . The theology of later
centuries further divided what God was doing for us (pro
nobis) from the God (in se) in Godself who exists apart from
the world.
We ended up with lots of
abstract, specialized terms and obscure language.
Today a revival in
vital meaning of
Trinity is happening. It
involves three distinct but related tasks:
1)
Re-root
Trinity in the experience of our salvation: as Creator and
Liberator in the O.T., as
Messiah Jesus in the N. T.
and as Spirit who is present now
in the world.
How do you understand the word
“salvation”?
2)
Remember
the
mystery of God is always ever
greater than our thought. The key notions of “person,”
“one,” and “ three” can not be taken literally.
a) “Person” does not mean a
person as we use the term today. Originally it meant
something like “the firm ground from out of which a thing
stands forth and exists.” Today we think of “person” as an
individual with a distinct center of consciousness and
freedom. Karl Rahner suggested that theology retire the word
“person” and use “manner of subsistence.” The one God
“subsists” in three distinct ways. Would it be possible to
retire the word “person?”
b) “one” and “three” do not
refer to numbers in the usual sense. As soon as they connote
quantity we get the idea that God is divided into three
parts. A wonderful insight comes from the 4th
C Eastern Fathers:
perichoresis
( per-ee-kor-ee’sis) That each of the “persons” moves,
interacts,
interweaves with the others in a
dance of divine love. While distinct, the three are in a
communion of love, a divine round dance if you will.
Fr. Richard Rohr, ofm,(1943-
)internationally known speaker
and author,
suggests that we can get into
the flow of
Trinitarian life using the
metaphor of perichoresis. God is not the dancer but the
dance itself.
The dance is the flow of love
between Father, Son and Spirit, a eternal circle of loving.
We are invited to participate.
True happiness is participation in the flow of love.
We can move from the level of
dogma and disconnection by entering into the flow with our
choice to love God and one another.
The flow of
Trinity is inclusive. In the
dance, all
are included in compassionate love which pours out praise of
God and care for the world in need.
3)
Speak
of Trinity in a contemporary way:
a) focus primarily on the triune
God in action in
us and
the world, as the One who is
“God for us. ” Any claims about God’s inner life can only
come from our experience. In a classic work, “God For Us,”
Catherine LaCugna (1952-1997), Professor of Systematic
Theology at University of Notre Dame,
believed that
analysis of the inner life of
Trinity apart from the saving
aspect is a distraction.
Understanding
Trinity in this way
is truly
practical!
Does this belief give immediate
solutions to the world’s problems and our personal problems?
Not usually, rather it gives us a
source of vision , an image to
shape our actions, a way to measure our faith and love in
community with others.
What problems could be shaped by
this vision/image?
b)
find words
to express a “livingness”
in God who is beyond, with and
within the world
and its history. A sense of the
Holy One from whom , by whom, and in whom all things exist,
thrive, struggle toward freedom and are gathered in.
Sr. Johnson, in
“Quest For the Living God”
writes of at least 21 ways of
thinking about Trinity by different theologians using
different perspectives: Scripture, relationship, love,
wisdom, action, etc. We have studied some of these and
will talk of
others that she mentions.
As the living God
who is “God for us”
in your life, what words work
for you?
the living God who is beyond:
the living God who is with:
the living God who is within:
How would you describe Trinity to a
non-believer?
Praise Trinity
from whom all blessings flow.
This is the end of
the series in which we have searched in contemporary
situations for the “living God.” Has your horizon been
stretched? Expanded? Distorted?
Has the “living God” come more
alive for you?
Has Gracious Mystery become more
gracious? More mysterious? Other thoughts?
May 3. The Creative Spirit of God, the Vivifier,
dwells in our world
of wonder.
On the other hand, we must lament that
humans can
make it our world that is wasted.
Who is the creative Spirit of God? The Creed
identifies the Spirit as “the Lord and Giver of life,” in Latin
Dominus et vivificantem, the one who vivifies. In
Trinitarian language, if the Father is likened to the sun,
Christ is a sunbeam and the Spirit is the warmth and light which
falls on the earth. The Spirit is never less than God. We have
ecological theology to glimpse the Spirit’s work of wonders that
is our world. What are some wonders of the world for you?
Amazing: the universe is 13.5 billion years
old. Our sun and planets are 5 billion years old. There are over
1 hundred billion galaxies with billions
of stars in each.
In Abraham Heschel’s beautiful metaphor: human
beings are the cantors of the universe able to sing praise and
thanks in the name of the whole cosmic community of which we are
a part. Can I be a
“cantor” of the cosmic community?
The universe is dynamic. New space comes into
being as the universe expands. Stars are born and go extinct.
Species thrive, change and go extinct. We earthlings are
included in the exciting undertakings of nature. We are distinct
but not separate from the rest of the cosmos. St. Francis of
Assisi (1187-1224) knew that. He sang hymns to his family:
Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Mother Earth and Sister Water.
Everything is interconnected in very complex
ways. From stardust to one celled organisms to we humans. We
share a common genetic ancestry, all gifted by the Spirit
according to The
Language of God by Francis Collins.
Unfortunately, we are exploiting, polluting,
exhausting our earth ecological devastation. The destruction
disproportionately effects the poor and so we can add social
injustice to the problems.
How can we consider our “stewardship?” Gen
1:28. Fresh ideas
about divine presence and activity are needed. We begin with the
belief that the presence and activity of God pervade the world.
God’s own Spirit
breathes life and brings forth this wonderful universe.
The natural world takes on a sacramental character.
The indwelling Sprit moves over the void, breathes into
the chaos, quickens, warms, sets free, blesses and continuously
creates the world, empowering its evolutionary advance. Gen 1:1.
A word for this presence is panentheism-all in God. Not
pantheism-all is God which erases the difference between the
created and uncreated. Panentheism allows that everything abides
in God, Eph 4:6.
But this natural world can be beautiful but
also filled with suffering and death. The cross of Jesus is
linked with divine compassion deep within the sinful world. His
resurrection reveals that the Spirit of God is open the promise
of new life through and beyond death.. Do we see that the
Creator Spirit dwells in compassionate solidarity with
every living being that suffers? Matt 10:26, Gen 21:
Rom 8:22.
The universe is an adventure that is still
happening. How
does God act in this emergent universe? Perhaps natural forces
and individual creatures receive from God
power to act with their own independence. Australian
theologian Denis Edwards states that although Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274) never
knew Darwin’s theory of evolution but he would have had no
difficulty understanding it as the way that God creates.
Although
Einstein said “God does not play dice.” Maybe God does.
Science has revealed the existence of areas where what happens
next seems to be truly unpredictable. There is something in
nature that will always be uncertain.
Fr. Michael Heller, of the Pontifical Academy of Krakow,
(1936- ) a physicist, mathematician and philosopher,
holds that in some cases there is no way to foretell
events.
This means that there has not been a
predetermined blueprint and that there is
genuine randomness in the universe.
Jesuit astrophysicist William Stoeger of the Vatican
Observatory Research Group says that if we were to rewind the
clock of the world back to the first moment and let it start
ticking again things might not turn out the same way!
Can
we relate this to the indwelling Spirit of God?
Ecological theology suggests that boundless love is at
work in ongoing evolution. This creativity brings order to the
cosmos, Gen 1, but also allows for novelty. Unpredictable
upheavals might be destructive but they can also lead to richer
forms of order. Dinosaurs, anyone? Can chaos be good?
Maybe this tells us something about grace. The
Spirit offers us the very life of God but we are not forced to
accept it. We can choose to act out of love as the
generous spirit of God energizes us. Are our choices
pre-determined or really choices?
The cross
provides another analogy. Jesus chose not to cling
but “emptied himself,” Phil 2:5-11, giving himself freely in
love, empowering all to imitate him. Divine “kenosis” opened up
space for random choice in others.
Can we be empowered by choosing to imitate Jesus?
Theologian John Haught suggests that we should
no longer think of God as having a plan for our world but rather
a vision. This vision is about
bringing into being the community of love. It also
invites the world to participate in its own creation. How would
you define vision?
Do you like the idea of a
“vision” rather than “plan” for your life?
for the earth?
Does this theology give us a sense of
responsibility for caring for the Earth? Pope John Paul II,
1990: “respect for
life and for the dignity of the human person extent also the to
rest of creation.” Who is my neighbor now includes the whale and
the rain forest. We must love it all as our very self.
We can be sure that God’s vision is
life not death, wonder not waste. We need to use all the
techniques of active nonviolent resistance to halt the
destruction of the earth.
March 29: A generous God of religious pluralism
In our era of global
travel and immigration, many religious traditions exist
side by side as never before.
We are asked to be faithful to our beliefs while making
space for the different beliefs of others. We have 3 choices:
defend our identity by declaring all others in error, flatten
our differences into a common essence or- seeking to avoid both
hostility and relativism- engage others in dialogue. Can we
dialogue, learn and share and then circle back to our
own faith with a desire to account for what we have
discovered? Do you have contact with those of other faiths? Is
it a challenge? A hostile situation? A
dialogue?
As Catholics, we may have 3 questions about
other religions: 1) Can persons who are not baptized / believe
in Jesus be saved? 2) If yes, are they saved through the
practice of their religion or despite it? 3) If through their
religions, then do these religions have a positive place in
God’s one plan of salvation for the whole human race?
Response 1: Vatican II teaches and the
Catechism of the Catholic Church says yes.
Lumen Gentium 16, CCC 847,
Gaudium et
Spes 22 and CCC
1260 tell us that God’s mercy reaches beyond Christian word and
sacrament.
Response 2: Noting the profound religious
sense of people of the Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Jewish
faiths, the council declared in Nostra Aetate 2, CCC 843
and 2104 that there
is the presence of grace in the beliefs and rituals of other
religions although all religions are meant to reach their true
fulfillment in the
church of Jesus Christ.
Pope John Paul II
in Redemptoris Missio 28, writes of the presence
of God in religions. His letter affirms the Spirit’s presence
and activity in all peoples, cultures and religions.
Response 3: Ground breaking reflections have
come from the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences. These
bishops of 14 countries and 10 associate member nations see the
Church as a small group living amid a teeming mass of
the poor yet rich in cultures and religions that give
people dignity. The bishops of India say that hundreds of
millions of our fellow human beings find salvation channeled to
them through their religious traditions. Therefore we cannot
deny a saving role
for these religions in God’s plan. The bishops of Korea call for
the recognition of the part played by the great traditional
religions of their country in the saving plan of God.
However
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith issued
Dominus Iesus in 2000. It asserts that “objectively
speaking, they (other religions) are in a gravely deficient
situation.” This document warns of
relativism. The issue is the uniqueness of the salvation
won by Christ while acknowledging that other religions play a
positive role in God’s plan for humanity. There is
no consensus concerning
what God intends by the existence of multiple religions.
Is relativism an issue for you?
So question 3 becomes: Holding faithfully to
Jesus Christ, how does one deal with God’s handiwork in other
religions? Can we
find the living God in this pluralism?
Can we witness to Christ? The bishops propose
that the best way to
proclaim Christ is to promote the kingdom of God of
compassion and justice for the poor, to find ways of using the
church’s Western patterns in Eastern forms and to encourage
interreligious dialogue.
Can we look to the Holy
Spirit for inspiration? Like the wind blowing where it will, do you
think that the Spirit creates experiences of the one God’s saving
presence through the world’s religions for all to share?
Yes? How?
Think dialogue:
Pope John Paul II: “By dialogue we let God be present in our
midst; as we open ourselves in dialogue to one another, we open
ourselves to God.”
A dialogue of life exists wherever people of
different faiths live and work side by side in friendship.
Have you experienced this type of dialogue?
A
dialogue of action is encouraged by the Asian Catholic bishops where
different faiths cooperate on shared projects. There are many
examples this kind of
dialogue.
The dialogue of theological exchange is one we can
experience. In SA,
theologians of various faiths have gathered
to share ideas. There are books available such as
Revelation, Catholic & Muslim Perspectives, prepared by the
Midwest Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims..
Finally
the dialogue of religious experience: In 1986, John Paul II hosted a
gathering at Assisi for 120 representatives of the world’s major
religions. Another example: Sr. Johnson describes a Catholic mass
that she attended in India with
musical instruments, chants and incense that one would find
in a Hindu temple service.
Have you or would you like to be
part of dialogues like these?
Jacques Dupuis, a Jesuit, (1923-2004) wrote in
Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism , that
since there is one God, presumably there is one plan by which God
intends to bring all people into saving union. This plan reaches its
fulfillment in Jesus Christ and yet God is not constrained or
exhausted in Jesus.
Jesus, the Word, crucified and risen,
washes the feet of the world by emptying himself
as a lowly slave, Phil 2:5-11; by proclaiming the reign of
God with blessings for all; by being the sacrament that brings God’s
saving will to all.
More questions: does religious pluralism exist as
just a fact of the world or is it a good intended by God? In other
words, is plurality of religions only permitted or positively willed
by God?
Is religious pluralism a
divine gift of the super abundant generosity of God who is Love? Do
you think that our faith
can be enlarged by the different ways of others?
Can we circle back, be renewed and grow in our own faith
through other religions?
March 1, 2009 Latino Spirituality
Although Hispanics/Latinos has many gifts to
offer, US culture has tended to ignore, disparage or misunderstand
Latino culture. Latinos are generally at the low end of the economic
scale, so for the majority, to live means to engage in the struggle,
la lucha. Does that appear to be the situation
in our area?
The history of Latino peoples is violent and
consists of 2 conquests: the Spanish conquest of the 1500s and
the US expansion of
its borders to
include all the Latinos in the southwest. Here, Latinos became the
minority in a Protestant Anglo-Christian culture.
Racially, Latinos are a mixture of the local,
native population, the Spanish and African descendants of the slave
trade. Out of this came people whose characteristics include a gift
for celebration, strong connection to family and a passionate zest
for life in community. Latinos favor visual, musical and dramatic
symbols to indicate the presence of the sacred. What are some
examples of such symbols?
The study of Latino history and
style of Christianity has been the life’s work of
Fr. Virgilio Elizondo, (1935- ) Born and raised in San
Antonio, he was ordained in 1965. He was
rector of San Fernando Cathedral for 12 years. He founded the
Mexican-American Cultural Institute of San Antonio in 1972. He is
Professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology at Notre Dame University
and pastor of St. Rose of Lima parish in San Antonio.
He is considered
the father of US Latino religious thought.
He writes that much of Latino religious tradition
is the result of the conquest of 1500s. For the Anglo, the
Enlightenment of the 17th -18th Centuries in
Europe culturally separated the secular and the sacred, the material
and the spiritual. This
separation did not occur for Latinos because theirs is a 1500s
understanding of the spiritual life. The cultural and
religious heritage of Latinos is medieval
and
pre-Enlightenment where the presence of the Spirit
everywhere is taken for granted. Because of this, created
things, images, stories and popular rituals can mediate between the
visible and invisible worlds and convey grace. Might this be a gift
of our “living God?”
With home altars, special altars for the Day of
the Dead, the rosary
hanging from the car mirror,
images of Our lady of Guadalupe everywhere, the posadas at
Christmas, Good Friday
procession, and public fiestas,
the community is expressing itself in everyday spiritual
practices, It is build around relationships, compassion and hope,
and on a personal trust and love of God, not primarily
doctrines. It is lay-led rather than organized by the clergy. The
clergy are welcome to participate according to Fr.
Elizondo.
Another way of approaching Latino spirituality has
been offered by Brazilian priest, Fr. Orlando Espin (1952- )
Professor of Systematic and Practical theology at the University of
San Diego. He refers to a classic church teaching,
sensus fidelium, CCC 91-92 the sense of the faithful.
In this teaching, the body of the faithful as a whole, baptized,
anointed and moved by the Spirit has a grasp of belief that is
reliable. The people can sense that something is true or not true
according to the gospel. Along with the magisterium, liturgy and
official teaching and theologians, the people are carriers of
tradition. How do you experience sensus fidelium?
Another Latino tradition is a
deep devotion to La Virgen. She is seen as a symbol of divine
love and divine compassion. La Virgen is not an aspect of God but the
Holy Spirit of God leading Latinos to a profound experience of sacred
love and compassion that gives heart, wisdom and fortitude.
“God
who accompanies”
is a name that resonates with Latinos. God joins the group since the
group, not the individual, is the fundamental unit of society. Latinos
understand themselves communally, finding the fullness of their identity
by walking together. They envision that God is walking with them,
gifting them with life and strength. In what way does God “accompany”
you?
Fr. Elizondo’s work in Christology continues the idea
of God’s accompaniment. Jesus was marginalized. He came from poor, rural
people. He was bilingual.
His birth and parentage were uncertain. He encountered failure and
rejection but God was with him all the way. From this Fr. Elizondo
suggests 3 principles: the Galilee principle: that what human beings
reject, God chooses as his own. The Jerusalem principle: God entrusts
the rejected with a mission to confront the powers of this world in
order to transform society. The Resurrection principle: out of suffering
and death, God brings life, overcoming evil by the power of love. Do
these principles harmonize with your spirituality?
These principles may be a scandal to some but good
news to the poor and marginalized who recognize that God walks with the
poor. La lucha means to be accompanied by God with hope and joy
celebrated with family and
friends. The “Accompanying God of Fiesta” enriches the
understanding of God for Latinos.
This hope is expressed in flor y canto, flower
and song, a metaphor for the
blessing of divine presence uniting truth and beauty. This sense of
beauty is a glimpse of God and the spiritual heart of the Latino
community. Does flor y canto sound familiar?
The relationship to the sacred comes to full
expression in the fiesta, an essential part of the life of Latino
communities, a time of merriment and music. The fiesta is not just a
party. It is a community experience that celebrates life. The fiesta is
rooted in the sense that life is a gift and that the source of this gift
is the Creator. The fiesta is a thanksgiving celebration.
Have the gifts of Latino spirituality brought spiritual growth to Notre
Dame?
February 8,
2009 God breaks the chains of racism
Faith in the God of Jesus
Christ has sustained African Americans through the years of slavery,
segregation, Jim Crow laws, lynchings
and the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s. The election
has revealed and also overcome racism in some ways.
Is
racism still a persistent
problem
in our country?
In Kerrville?
Slavery was introduced
into the US in 1619. That slaves suffered every kind of imaginable
abuse is well documented.
However, over time, slaves were exposed
to the Christianity of the white communities.
Eph 6:5 and Col 3:22-24 were supposed to
encourage
docility rather than rebellion in
slaves.
In fact, the enslaved
Africans heard something else. They heard that God made and loves
“all his children,” that Jesus died and rose fore all people. They
heard Gal 3:28.
Albert Raboteau writes in
Slave Religion: the ‘Invisible
Institution’ in the Antebellum South, “
that slaves affirmed and slave holders rejected
the belief that slavery and Christianity
were incompatible. A slaveholding Christian
was
a contradiction in terms. Why do you
think that
it took Christians so many centuries
to hear Gal 3:28?
Slaves had a powerful
incentive to struggle for physical and spiritual freedom.
Their idea of God’s power was the power
with
which
Moses confronted Pharaoh, Ex 5:1. They
identified themselves with the children of Israel enslaved in Egypt.
Traditional Christianity
taught that the death and resurrection of Jesus should lead to a
passive acceptance of suffering and to a heavenly reward.
Slaves and black Americans since have
found another interpretation. Having suffered himself, Jesus knows
what they are suffering better than anyone. They discern that in the
pain of Jesus, God has entered into solidarity with them. This gives
them a dignity that slavery denied. His resurrection gives them hope
in God in a way that is not just about the hereafter but that calls
for meaningful struggle against abuse now. The African American
theologian James Cone: “To believe in heaven is to refuse to accept
hell on earth.”
Comments on his statement?
A
unique religious creation helped the oppressed cope. James Cone,
The Spirituals and the Blues: An
Interpretation, writes that black
spirituals combined African rhythms, chants and patterns of lament
with biblical themes from Christianity. They supported communal
worship. They enabled slaves to experience God and sustain their
spirit through wretched conditions. Since the vast majority could
not read, spirituals were their channel to God. Does music hold
special meaning in the way you worship?
One of the secrets of the
spirituals’ power lies in the way they explicitly name the
suffering, “Nobody
knows de trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.”
“Where you there when they crucified my
Lord?” They sang of reunion
with one another after they had been
forcible sold away from their families, “When we all meet in heaven,
there is no parting there.” A Msgr. Mike B. favorite,“Swing low
sweet chariot,” inspired by 2 Kgs 2:11, has a double meaning. It is
about escape to the north as well as escape from earthly woes. So
does “Steal Away to Jesus.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
drew on this tradition in the struggle for black freedom. His
speeches were filled with hopeful images of roads made straight,
flickering lamps restored, righteousness flowing like a river, being
bound for glory, getting to the promised land. Because God was on
the side of the righteous, activists sang, “We shall overcome.” What
were called spirituals have now been integrated into Gospel music
and are part of the music scene for all Americans. Amazon.com
had 45,138 CDs of Gospel music for sale
as of 12/08.
As part
of this movement, theologians from the black community have developed
black liberation theology.
James Cone,
ordained minister and a professor of
Systematic Theology
at Union Theological Seminary in NYC since
1970
writes that the God of the Israelites and Jesus
Christ in his compassionate life, death and resurrection is always on
the side of the marginalized.
Black theology is convinced
that God is never “color blind,” not blind to those who suffer due to
their race. He suggests another image of God:
God is black. The
culturally accepted image of God is that of the white God. If the image
of God in solidarity with black people’s struggle for freedom is black,
then black people can link their lives with
this God. “We do not believe that there is any hope for any race of
people who do not believe they look like God,” Bishop Henry T. McNeil
Turner.
Do our churches and
our society implicitly
think of God as an all-powerful white man?
Black Catholic theologian
Diana Hayes, Professor of Systematic
Theology at Georgetown U. writes that blacks can celebrate “God ‘s image
in our blackness,
being confident of our self-understanding as
sons and daughter of God while affirming that all human beings are
beloved.”
Valuable insights for our Church can be
found a book edited by her and Fr. Peter Phan,
Many Faces, One Church: Cultural Diversity
and the American Catholic Experience. It
explores the experiences of
African-American, Latino, Asian and
Carribean Catholics in the US church.
We might conclude
from our study last month that
discrimination due to gender, class and race plagues the lives of black
women. Theologian Delores Williams offers the story of Hagar, Gen 16 and
21. The story of Hagar is not so much an exodus from slavery but
survival.
She was a female slave of African descent.
She has two dramatic encounters with God when her life and the life of
her child is at stake.
Globally, about 25% of the
world’s Catholics are black. In the US there are about 2.3 million black
Catholics. Black Catholic slaves came to the US in 1680s. Black Catholic
slaves numbered about 100,000 in 1860. Unfortunately the church followed
a course of political caution and did not have the numbers, wealth or
internal strength to speak up against slavery. Because they received
little encouragement from the church or their masters, it is a wonder
that some blacks clung to their Catholic faith,
Randall M. Miller,
Catholics in the Old South.
The continued presence of racism, subtle or overt, is
not in harmony with Christianity. Acting justly in race matters
expresses a love of neighbor that flows from the belief in the living
God. God leads Christians in breaking chains in solidarity with those
who are not yet truly free.
Notre Dame hosted the 3rd
and
will be hosting the 4th
annual Gospel Concert
on Feb 13 called “Many Voices-One Soul.”
Gospel music will be presented by members of
Barnett Chapel Methodist Church and Mt Olive
Baptist Church in Kerrville and others from San Antonio. The event is
being held at Notre Dame again because the black community felt very
welcome here last year.
What impact can events like
this have for our church community? For Kerrville?
Jan 4, 2009. A BLESSED NEW YEAR
New ways of naming God have also come from the
awareness of women as human
persons honored by God with many gifts. Women have been demeaned in
culture, symbols and
rituals of both society and church. Prejudices of gender, race and class
have placed poor women in the lowest social classes especially in Latin
America, Asia and Africa. But the living God who created women in the
divine image and likeness, Gen 1:27,
desires that women flourish.
Jesus’ openness to women is well documented:
John 4:7–9, 11:5; Mk 5:33-34, 7:24-26; Lk 7:37-38,48-50,
13:12-13. Paul follows his Master, Gal 3:28.
Paul commends many women for their leadership roles in the
church, Rm 16:3-15. What
insight may have occurred
when the rite of initiation- baptism replaced circumcision?
But
women became marginalized as the church developed. Traditional culture
overwhelmed Paul’s words, 1 Tim 2:11-15. Tertullian, St. Augustine and
St. Thomas Aquinas supported the 2nd class status of women in the
church.
The civil rights movement
of the 1960s-1970s raised awareness of the status of women.
Especially women of color became aware of
oppression due to ethnicity and class as well as gender. They
studied scripture. Women discovered that they are beloved of God. Do our
symbols and words reflect
this? Inclusive language, anyone?
Why
are symbols important?
Because according to Sr. Johnson, “ symbols function.” Symbols are not
neutral. Symbols bring about actions. (Think about the swish and the
energizer bunny.) Their effects express and mold a community. The symbol
of God as male is not neutral. It leads to particular ways of thinking
and acting. What symbols express and mold our Catholic Christian
community?
The symbol of God as male results in 3 negative
effects:
1) It gets taken literally.
Exclusive male language may cause us to forget the
incomprehensibility of God and reduces the living God to one
symbol. (See the rules for seeking God, Sept 7, CAFE.) God is
much greater than any one or any dozen symbols.
2)
It justifies patriarchy in church and society when men have assumed the
duty to command and control and exercise authority on earth as it is in
heaven. “If God is male,
then male is God.”
3) Exclusive male symbols imply that women are
somehow less like God and not really in the image and likeness of God.
Do you think that male symbols function this way?
What are some symbols that affirm the dignity of
women? Two clusters of
female symbols/images of the divine in scripture and tradition
reflect women’s gifts. The first is God as mother: Is
49:15, Hos 11:3-4, Ps
131:1-2, Deut 32:11,18 , Lk
13:34, 15:8-10. Do these examples connect you with the God you seek?
In later centuries, St Anselm, Archbishop of
Canterbury (1033-1109) in Prayer 10 to St. Paul uses the metaphor
of Jesus our mother. The same
theme in the high middle ages comes from the mystic Julian of
Norwich(1342-ca. 1416) in
Showings. For her, Jesus as mother functions in 2 ways: mothers
bring forth new life as Jesus’ death brings
new life. Mothers often communicate love through food, a loving
meal thoughtfully prepared.
Jesus provides the Eucharistic meal.
Does Jesus as mother make sense to you?
John Paul I (1912-1978) in his Angelus
message on Sept 10, 1978, startled the world when he said “God is our
father; even more God is our mother.”
The second female image is that of holy Wisdom. In
the book of Proverbs,
Wisdom, (Sophia in Greek) represents God active, redeeming
the world. Prv 8 opens with Wisdom calling by the road, in the
marketplace and at the city gates. She promises life to whoever listens
and follows her way, 8:35.
Who else can make this promise but the living God? Sophia is present at
creation, playing in delight with the newborn world 8:22-31. She walks
the paths of justice and kings who rule righteously do so by her light.
8:15. She prepares a feast and invites all,
9:1-6.
In the book of Wisdom, she brings the world into
birth and is the mother and fashioner of all things, 7:11-12,22-27. She
uses her power to redeem 10:15-17. Evil can not prevail against her,
7:30.
The NT draws on this wisdom tradition. Paul
identifies the crucified Christ with the power and wisdom of God, 1 Cor
1:24. Matt 11:19 tells us
that Jesus sees himself as the embodiment of wisdom. Is Jesus
Sophia/wisdom for you?
John 1:1-14 presents Jesus as
Wisdom using the metaphor of the Word, (Logos in Greek.)
The Word/Wisdom becomes a human being and lives among us. Jesus
is to be identified with Sophia. His ministry is pervaded with Sophia,
seeking and finding, nourishing, light in the darkness and
life over death, Lk 15, John 6:11, 8:12, 10:10.
This important connection of Jesus and Wisdom can be seen
at Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom,
a magnificent church in Istanbul which was dedicated to Christ
and is now a museum.
Maternal Love and Holy Wisdom are dedicated to the
flourishing of all life. While Maternal Love gives life and nurtures it,
Holy Wisdom expands beyond this to include
governing, playing, teaching, justice-making and life giving
throughout the world.
Every symbol of God
produces one more fragment of the truth. It is not about adding
women to a male centered structure, nor is it about adding female
qualities to God. It’s about giving equal significance to the many names
for the living God: mystery, father, mother,
wisdom, liberator, crucified, etc. We seek the power and strength
of the living God in men and women in all circumstances.
Does
this expand any horizons for you?
December 7 Study Material
Our context for seeking God is the massive suffering
of the poor in the world
and their struggle for relief.
Oppressive social structures in Latin America, Africa and Asia have
resulted
in millions living on less than is necessary to sustain
life.
Traditional Christian doctrine presents God as the
Supreme Being who rules with
authority and commands the rich to be charitable. The poor are to bear
their suffering with patience in accord with Christ’s sacrifice on the
cross and earn an eternal reward.
A caveat here: We will be discussing the foundations
of liberation theology.
There are issues between the theologians of liberation theology and the
Vatican which we will discuss later.
Starting in the 1950's as part of a pastoral movement
in Brazil to revitalize faith, the poor gathered in small groups. Here
they read scripture, prayerfully reflected on its meaning in relation to
their situation. These
comunidades eclesiales de base, communities formed at the base of
the church, became sites where poor people made the amazing discovery
that they are beloved of God. They saw that
the immense suffering of poverty is against the divine intent for
how beloved people should live. They began to believe that their lives
could be different. They received insight into an ancient truth: that in
situations of misery God is not neutral. God wants all life to
flourish. Wretched poverty violates what God wants for his people. So
the living God makes a dramatic decision: to side with oppressed people
to forge a new way of life.
Where did this insight come from? Read Ex 3:7-8. The
verb “know” v.7 is the same one used in Gen 4:1 for sexual
relations. God intimately
sees, hears and feels their affliction and comes to set them free. What
does the burning bush, Ex 3:2, symbolize for you?
In many more passages of the O.T., God admonishes the covenant
community to care for the oppressed.
Is 1:16-17, 58:6-8; Amos 5:12-15,7:4-7
are a few examples.
This insight into God’s passion for the poor is
linked to what it means for God to be Creator. For if God creates the
world freely, out of love, then divine glory and honor are at stake in
the world’s flourishing. Our experience of creating anything out of
love: a child, a work of art, is that we want our handiwork to thrive.
Apparently so does God. God’s plan for the world is frustrated by
injustice and oppression, Ps 146:6-7, Je 9:22-23.
Jesus clearly and often speaks and acts on this
theme, Lk 4:18-19. In Matt 25:31-46, Jesus tells us that in our practice
of justice we will experience the mystery of God. Could this be the
only way we can truly be disciples of
Jesus?
Mary prophetically speaks that God comes to reverse
the condition of the lowly and the hungry,
Lk 1:51-53. Suffering is a kind of death that the living God
abhors. The Magnificat calls oppressors to conversion and
encourages all to bring life out of death. Many years later, Jesus’
resurrection proves that life, not death, is God’s plan.
The resurrection of Jesus to new life in the Spirit signals God’s
liberation for all. The resurrection is a victory not only of divine
power over death but divine love over injustice. The resurrection
pledges that there is a blessed future for all
who have been cast off as if their lives were meaningless. The
early Christian community honored Jesus’ resurrection commitment, Acts
2:42-47.
There is a famous proverb from Bishop Irenaeus, 150 AD,
“ Gloria Dei,vivens homo,”
“the glory of God is the human being fully alive.” God’s glory
happens in the flourishing of all people, every one and all together.
Is this proverb meaningful to you?
Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador (1917 -1980)
added: La gloria de Dios es
el pobre que vive, “The glory of God is the poor person fully alive”.
The glory of the liberating God is found in practice in food, housing, work,
land, medical care, education and human rights for the poor person. Will
works of charity meet these needs?
There are social systems that violently oppose God as
liberator. Among those martyred are Archbishop Romero, assassinated in 1980,
6 Jesuits in 1989 and Sr. Dorothy Stang in 2005 to name a few. But
“God’s preferential option for the poor” has entered the Catholic
vocabulary. Does this mean that God
excludes others? No, God is forever inclusive. But the reason for
this partiality is divine love, not because the poor are more or less
saintly but because of their situation.
Liberation
theology has not been condemned by Rome as some believe. But the
Vatican has issued
documents that question
it. These documents affirm that
the church is called by God to liberate but
warn against a Marxist
analysis of class struggle and against reducing faith to a political
goal. Google
“Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation,” and
“Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation.”
We all know the numbers. A United Nations report
states that in the year 2000, the richest 10% of the world’s population
owned 85% of its household wealth and 50% owned barely 1%. The United
Nations 2002 Human Development Report states that climate change represents
the latest and greatest challenge for the poor and will worsen their
situation.
Now
some good news. There are 162 Catholic agencies belonging to Caritas
International dedicated to relief, development and social service in 200
countries. There has been success by microloan organizations and
cooperatives. Paul Polak, in his
book Out of Poverty: What
Works When Traditional Approaches Fail,
says that there are 1 billion dollar-a-day people in the world. He
suggests many creative ways to aid the poor.
What are ways that Notre Dame can respond to the God of
liberation?
October 5 Study Material
Living in a secular world:
What makes belief
difficult?
How can we arrive at a notion of God that is understandable in these
secular times?
In
what ways is the secular world
difficult for the believer?
1) scientifically-discoveries about the natural
world seems to explain everything, gives humans
a measure of control over nature, makes life comfortable
2) politically-democracy gives persons greater
freedom and authority in running their lives, higher levels of
education leads to questioning and independent judgment, the
mass media influence is global
3) intellectually- some thinkers in philosophy,
literature and psychology have found the idea of God merely a
perfection of human strengths, a god in our own image, a “opiate of
the people,” some reject the existence of God in the face of
innocent suffering, some proclaim “God is dead”
Which greatly challenges your faith?
So how can we find God in
the secular world? Let us study
Karl Rahner, a Jesuit, considered by many to be the foremost
Catholic theologian of the 20th C. (1904-1984.)
All the “isms:” atheism, agnosticism, positivism, secularism
and religious pluralism make life difficult. He writes that
Christianity is in the season of
“winter” when trees are bare and the cold wind blows. We need
to return to the inmost core that can
warm the heart in winter. Does this “winter” metaphor apply
to you?
Rahner’s answer is God: Gracious Mystery, the
“ever greater, ever near.”
We must glimpse God in a new way. The usual way of arriving
at an idea of God is to start with the natural world and conclude
something about its
Maker. Rahner does this
but goes deeper into human nature.
He focuses on human curiosity in dealing
with life and our search for the meaning of life. We ask:
What kind of life exists in our world and in the universe?
Is there hope?
What shall I do with my life? Who loves me? It is about a drive
toward truth which is ultimately boundless. “We are a question in
search of the fullness of truth.” We always are looking for “more.”
Is this true in your experience?
We are
oriented toward something more that opens
a space and beckons us onward. Rahner calls this the
“orientation to the horizon,”
and it is part of everyone’s life It is not just one
experience but a building and reaching out beyond ourselves toward
something transcendent, a horizon we never can reach. (Like a plane
in flight that never reaches a destination.) Does this sound like
Job:3:11-12,16; 6:11-13; 10:1-7?
Rahner reasons that if God exists, it is no accident that we
find ourselves so open, reaching out. The Creator would have made us
this way in order to be the fulfillment of our questioning. To name
God in this way of speaking,
Rahner suggests “Holy Mystery.”
Opening up to God is not mastering the mystery but “ being
grasped by the mystery which is present and yet every
distant.”Aquinas, De Potentia, q.7,a.5)
Sorry
but God’s incomprehensibility exists even in heaven! Without this
God would not be God. For some this limits our happiness. For some
this means freedom to endlessly explore the possibilities of the
horizon in every direction.
Do you feel limited or freed by this horizon concept?
It may be a relief and a liberation to know and place
our spirits into a relationship which can glimpse the mystery of God not
as absence but as so many possibilities.
Does this make you disoriented? Challenged? What? How does Job
see it? Job 42:1-6.
Our prayer for this session are the words of
Rahner to the incomprehensible God:
“Whenever I think of Your
Infinity. I am racked with anxiety, wondering how You are disposed to
me. You must adapt Your word to my smallness, so that it can enter into
this tiny dwelling of my finiteness-the only dwelling in which I can
live-without destroying it. If you should speak such an “abbreviated”
word, which would not say everything but only something simple which I
could grasp, then I could breathe freely again. You must make your own
some human word, for that is the only kind I can comprehend. Don’t tell
me everything that you are; don’t tell my of Your Infinity-just say that
You love me, just tell me of Your Goodness to me.”
According to Rahner, God’s response is: Lk 2:7. God
does not remains forever remote but draws
near in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Jn 16:13.We must now
talk of radical nearness(closer than my skin), immediacy(present to me
more than I am present to myself), intimacy, (loving me in my core),
aka: “Gracious
Mystery.”
Jesus proclaimed the reign of God. He healed, sought
the lost, offered hospitality to all and expressed what God is: prodigal
love, Lk 15:11-32. In his violent death, he became the mystery of God in
solidarity with all victims, Mk 15:33-39.
Most see the purpose of the life of Jesus in Gen 3:15
and so the motive for Jesus’ life
was redemption. But Rahner revives an ancient tradition. The
Franciscans, led by Duns Scotus, say that the Word became flesh so that
God who is love could enter into deep personal union with the world, the
beloved. This would have happened if humans had not sinned!
“God eternally desires to communicate the divine self to the
“other” who is not divine and so creates a world to allow this to
happen.”
How does Jesus remain with us in redemptive love?
God’s gracious love is another way of speaking of grace: God’s own
Spirit given freely to all human beings, dwelling in us, orienting us to
the immediacy and intimacy of God who yearns for union with us. Refusal
to accept this love is sin.
But sin or no, God’s self-communication of love through the Holy
Spirit never ceases, 1 Cor 1:4-7.
Rahner believes that God’s gracious presence is for
the whole human race and that the Spirit of God is constantly offered to
all. Jesus showed us how God is
present and most observable
to the world when he
said: “ I was hungry... ,”Matt 25:35-40.
Does “Gracious Mystery” open
horizons for you?
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September 2008 - June 2009
Schedule
Seeking the Living God in the
Events and Circumstances of Our Times
St. Augustine prayed: “Late have I
loved you, O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new.”
We do not search
for a new God but we seek the presence of God in
the situations of our world.
Using Scripture, the writings of the
Church Fathers,
Fr. Karl Rahner,
many other theologians and Vatican II documents,
we hope to glimpse God in new and fresh ways.
Sept 7: seeking ultimate meaning, Je
29:12-13.
What are the ground rules of our search? Where do we
seek?
OCT 5: in the secular world and the growth of atheism, we
seek “Gracious Mystery,” John 1:14
Nov 2: in unspeakable suffering such
as the Holocaust,
Darfur,
where is God? Mt 27:46
Dec 7: in abject
poverty, we seek God’s glory in the human being
fully alive,
Lk 4:18-19
Jan 4, 2009: in maternal Love, God gives,
life, nurtures and protects it,
Is 49:15, Mt 23:37
Feb 1, 2009: in the God who breaks the chains of racism, who
liberates and strengthens, Ex 5:1
March 1,
2009: in the Hispanic experience of la lucha, we find
God in relationship, Ps 33
March 29,
2009: in religious pluralism, is
God’s plan of salvation for all?
1 Jn 3:20
May 3,
2009: in the Creator Spirit
dwelling in a
world of wonder,
not exploitation, Eph 4:6
June 7,
2009: in
Trinity, God’s self communication of love is
beyond us, with us and in us, 1 Jn 4:16
The phrase “living God” is found
at least 26 times
in the Bible.
Each refers in some way to God’s actions as
dynamic, full of surprises, generous, compassionate,
full of energy and spirit, approaching us and
approachable by us,
beyond and yet everywhere in the world.
There is
more to learn about our relationship with God
than we can possibly imagine.
St. Augustine beckons us.
He wrote, “If you have understood, it is not
God.”
The outline for our sessions comes
from: “Quest for the Living God,
Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God”
by Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J. (Congregation of
St. Joseph), Distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham University. She
has written numerous books and
articles, served on various Vatican commissions
and received many awards. Sr. Johnson believes that we have entered “a
golden age of theology” in which we are discovering new ways to relate to
the depths of divine compassion of the “living God.” Her bio on the internet:
http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/theology/faculty/elizabeth_a_johnson_/
We will meet
in the school library, Kemper Hall from 9:30 to 10:45 am. Sessions are
generally on the first Sunday of the month. Summaries and discussion
questions for
the upcoming session can be found on the Notre
Dame website and in the narthex book rack under CAFÉ.
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