21st Sunday of Ordinary Time Cycle B August 25, 2024
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time Cycle B
August 25, 2024
Campfires. Campfires are part of what summer is all about. As a child, I remember campfires at Y camp where we sang songs and watched skits with corny endings, “Hare today, Goon Tomorrow”. We also listened to stories of fables from American History or Indian lore. Campfires are places to reflect and think about life. As the embers fade, we would lie on our backs and look at the star-lit sky and think about what is out there. Reflections upon God and our place in the universe.
Last week I had a campfire with my sibs and some friends. We told stories about our childhood days and high school years and exchanged news about neighbors and old friends.
The words around the campfire are words like what Joshua says in today's first reading. As Joshua wanders with the exiles, he encourages them to remember all the good things God has done for them in the past and is doing for them today.
“Far be it from us to forsake the Lord”. The Lord has not forsaken us, we may just have to remember how the Lord has been with us. Come move a log close to the fire and reflect with me on our life of faith.
Look into the flames of the campfire and let your mind wander. Think about your life of faith, who has been a guide for you? Who first helped you learn what it means to be a follower of Christ? What times or moments helped you to know there is a living God?
I find myself staring into the fire and remembering my mother who got up early in the morning to get laundry done and get dinner started. As I came downstairs I would find her in her chair praying her rosary. Her break from work was time spent in prayer. Mom took all of us to church each week. We always seemed to arrive to an empty parking lot and church. We needed to be early to have those few moments for quiet prayer in the church.
I recall summer days spent wandering in the woods looking at the plants and the animals. As we rode our bikes in the cemetery, we got in trouble for this, I would find myself thinking about all the men and women of faith buried here.
I remember the plaque given to me on my confirmation, which still sits on my dresser, “What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”
What about you? Whose face do you pull out of the fire?
“Far be it from us to forsake the Lord”
Look again into the fire, look up at the star-lit sky, see the bright shining moon. Think about how God is active in your life today.
I find myself experiencing God this week as I prayed with a family who has said goodbye to its father and the wife and who told me over and over, “I know he is at peace”.
I reflect upon the red sky I looked at the other night as the sun set on the horizon.
I see the faces of the children as they savor the flavors of summer at the Delaware County Fair.
When my cat jumps on my lap I feel his love for me and breath and prayer of thanksgiving to our God.
Now think back over your week, where was God in your days this week?
“Far be it from us to forsake the Lord”
We wake from our reverie in the flames of our campfire, but we go forth to recall all our God is doing for us. This time of peace and reflection nurtures our soul. We have experienced what the psalmist has told us is true, we have “Tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord.”
Once a year the church asks us to remember how important the Eucharist is to our faith life. Each year we pause and celebrate this feast, The Body and Blood of Christ. We are given the words of Moses on this feast. Moses said to the people: "Remember” and “Do not forget." He is speaking of the lessons learned in the desert, but he could be speaking about today’s feast. It is too easy to forget the gift of the Eucharist, how in our celebration at the Mass each week we become the body and blood of Christ. It is so easy to forget the importance of being a member of the body of Christ. Mass attendance and honoring the Sabbath is a good habit to nurture. Too often I hear from people who say to me, “I get nothing out of Mass.” This is the consumeristic attitude of our culture. The attitude that says something is worthwhile only if it is of benefit to me. I do not attend Mass simply for myself, but I attend Mass as a member of the body of Christ. It is so easy to forget that the body of Christ contains me and many other members. If I choose to exempt myself from the body of Christ, the body suffers. Those who say “I get nothing out of it” are unwilling to put anything into it. How often have I asked a person to tell the name of the person who they have sat next to for many years and they tell me I don’t know his/her name. How hard is it to introduce yourself to another? He/she is a member of the body of Christ. Each time we come to Mass, we have many opportunities to engage with the body of Christ. Before Mass begins, we have an opportunity to greet members of the body of Christ. As we pray the Mass, there are many opportunities for what the church calls “full and active participation”. When we sing the songs we pray twice, and the music makes our worship more joyful. As we respond to the prayers, we participate in the Mass. Each time we gather for Mass we gather as a part of the body of Christ. The priest or deacon may lead us in prayer, but we members of the body of Christ we are part of the prayer. Our participation is needed. In the liturgy of the Word we gather around the word of God as found in the scriptures, the psalms, and the words of Jesus in the gospels. In the liturgy of the Eucharist, we hear the words of Jesus at the Last Supper. The prayers of the priest and the congregation allow the bread and wine to become the body and blood of Christ. As the congregation comes forward, as the body of Christ, we receive the body of Christ. The time we spend in church is time well spent as we go forth to bring the body of Christ to others during our week. At the end of each Mass, we are instructed to take what we have received and bring it to others. Our weekly participation in the Body and Blood of Christ helps to remember who we are and helps us to nurture well the body of Christ we meet in our daily lives.
The passage we are given from John’s Gospel says, "God so loved the world…" I would rewrite it as, "God so loved me ….” I often find myself wondering how God could love me so much. How can God love me so much and each other person so much. There are so many people God has loved into being. So many people loved by our God. There are times I do not feel so loveable. Yet our faith reminds us that God loves each one of us. There are many people I do not know or am not sure I like but I am reminded that, like me, they are created in the image and likeness of a loving God. The feast we celebrate today is a feast of love. The love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. An ancient image given to us by the Eastern fathers speaks of the Trinity as a dance among the three persons. The dance is a circular dance with each one of us invited to join in the dance. This is a dance of love that includes each one of us. The hand of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit reaches out to us in love, inviting us to join in the dance. This is how Barbara Reid describes the dance: The dance is an open circle that invites all onto the dance floor, drawing them right into the midst of the energetic flow of divine delight. If some hesitate, preferring to sit on the sidelines, the Three-in-One circle back again, extending the invitation over and over to each and to all, changing the pace and the rhythm, so that even the most clumsy of us can learn the steps in the dance of divine love. Paul suggests some practice steps for the dance: rejoice, mend your ways, encourage one another, seek agreement, live in peace, greet one another with a holy kiss. In these ways, we help one another onto the dance floor, where we become one with the very source of grace, love, and communion. (1) The divine dance reminds me of the song of the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland: Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance? Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance? (1) Barbara E. Reid, O.P., "A Dance of Love". America Magazine, June 6, 2011.
When C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia , he wrote The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe first. In the old order this was the first book in the series. Today The Magician's Nephew is placed first, since it tells of the creation of Narnia by Aslan. In The Magician's Nephew we met Digory, who meets Aslan for the first time. Digory’s mom is ill and Aslan tells him about a fruit that may heal her. It is found in a walled garden. Jadis the White Witch also wants the fruit. She climbs over the wall to get it. The fruit gives her eternal life, but hers is a life of despair and hurt. She acquired the fruit by climbing over the wall; as in today’s Gospel, she is a thief. She did not enter through the sheep gate. The Tree of Youth (also, the Tree of Life) was the first, largest, and most spectacular Silver Apple Tree in existence. It grew at the very centre of the Garden of Youth, and bore shining, silver apples that had wonderful, powerful magical properties, and gave off an ethereal, breathtaking, almost irresistible smell. The tree was enclosed within the Garden, and roosting in its branches was a single Phoenix (and the only one ever seen in Narnia). Though the apples were silvery and incredibly beautiful, their juice was darker than one would expect. The first person to eat the Apples of Youth was Jadis who, dismissing the written warning that the fruits should only be plucked to help others, and not to be eaten for oneself, climbed into the Garden over the wall, and plucked a fruit for herself. After she had greedily eaten the fruit, Jadis claimed that she felt such changes within her that she knew that she would never grow old or die. When Digory spotted her throwing away the core of the apple she had eaten, and saw how the dark juice stained her mouth horribly, he guessed - rightly - how she had entered the Garden, and thought he understood what the last line: For those who steal or those who climb my wall, shall find their heart's desire and find despair meant, for, despite the fact that Jadis looked "stronger and prouder than ever, and even, in a way, triumphant", her face was "deadly white, as white as salt". Presumably ignorant of what she had doomed herself to, Jadis tried twice to tempt Digory into disobeying Aslan: first, by encouraging him to eat the fruit himself, telling him that it would make him alive and young forever. Second, telling him to give the fruit to his ill, dying mother instead, assuring him that it would cure her of her illness. Digory, very fortunately for him and his mother, was able to resist both temptations, and even angrily rebuffed Jadis, who retorted by calling him a fool to throw away his one and only chance of endless youth. When Jadis began to feel the dark and cold inside her, she fled from the Western Wild, to the far north, to presumably begin creating her army. However, as Aslan said, it was actually Jadis, not Digory, who was a fool, given that the fruit would never work happily for any who pluck it at their own will, and that "length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery, and already she begins to know it" - Jadis' immortality meant that the misery that constantly plagued her because of her dark, evil heart would never end. Digory, by resisting the two devastating temptations, actually saved himself and his mother from terrible fates that would have definitely befell them if he had succumbed to either one of the temptations. When Digory returned to Aslan with the Apple of Youth, Aslan told him to throw it on the bank of the Great River of Narnia, where it grew into the Tree of Protection that protected the Kingdom of Narnia from all enemies for 898 years. In just a matter of days the tree along with the rest of the garden presumably disappeared into Aslan's Country. (1) There is a warning posted on the wall of the garden: Come in by the gold gates or not at all, Take of my fruit for others or forbear, For those who steal or those who climb my wall Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair. (2) The witch did not enter by the gates. She used the fruit for herself and will spend her days in despair. Those of us who enter through the sheep gate via the waters of baptism use the fruits of the Holy Spirit to help others. They are not for our use. Many will testify that what we do for others comes back to us in abundance. On this “Good Shepherd Sunday", we enter through the sheep gate and we share what we have found with others. Each time a person is baptized in this space, we gather as a community to help that person in his/her journey as a member of the body of Christ. We come not as thieves; we enter through the sheepgate and, in doing so, we find immortal life and joy and not immortal life and despair as did Jadis the witch. (1) https://narnia.fandom.com/wiki/Tree_of_Youth (2) The Magician's Nephew (1955), page 185
