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Sign & sacrament

25 Aug 2013 - Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

A teacher asked his class for examples of words that describe the current crop of college students. He expected to hear “highly educated” or “sophisticated” but was surprised at the honesty of a young woman who responded “entitlement. We think everything is owed to us.” An overstatement, yet such an attitude can often be attached to a particular social class, race, gender, ethnicity, or nationality. I may grow up believing I am owed good things in life because I am white, or black, because I am a woman, or an American, or a Catholic. But scripture makes it clear that simply being a member of a chosen race or having rank upon rank of noble ancestors makes no impression on God. Only one thing does: goodness. For more “Sign & sacrament” material, search the Prepare the Word database by today’s scripture reading, a particular theme, or a special occasion.

identity Belonging virtues

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Sign & sacrament

11 Aug 2013 - Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

With so much emphasis on work and consumption in American culture, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that “you are what you earn.” This attitude creates a lot of anxiety, leaving us constantly worried about our financial worth and feeling devalued if our “earning power” drops or if we are not part of the wage economy. Jesus offers a different vision when he assures us that God is pleased to give us the kingdom. There is nothing to earn here, nothing to be gained, nothing to be lost. Our self-worth is a freely given gift of our Creator. Bank on it! For more “Sign & sacrament” material, search the Prepare the Word database by today’s scripture reading, a particular theme, or a special occasion.

identity Acceptance work

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Exploring the word

04 Aug 2013 - Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

What do people see when they look at you? The color of your hair and eyes and skin. Your gender and perhaps your generation. Whether you seem pleasant and at peace—or formidable and perhaps dangerous to approach. They might be able to guess your weight and height; your age. They can even take stabs at how much you’re worth based on the way you dress, what you drive, or the street you live on. People may formulate a whole story about who you are based on purely exterior evidence. But the truth is, they don’t know you at all. Even if you’re the sort of person who wears your heart on your sleeve—or your net worth on your wrist—there’s another you: It’s the inner you which is always thinking and feeling your way through the day. Hoping and praying. Or fearing and dreading. Or judging and condemning. Or enjoying and appreciating every minute, every person. This internal you is the person you really are, and his or her life is the one you’re really living. Because it doesn’t matter where you live or what you drive or wear or say. You actually aren’t what you eat either. You are, for the most part, what you think and believe and feel about everything that’s going on around you. That’s where the center of your personhood lies; that’s your experience of the world through the years. Maybe it’s a wonderful life or a dreadful one. Maybe you’re mostly angry or mostly grateful. Maybe you’re always learning and growing and making adjustments to your thinking. Or maybe your experience is a closed door of opinions, ideas, and expectations about who people are and what’s possible. Even though we live in the freest society on the planet, a lot of us aren’t very free at all. Internally we may be all in knots much of the time, feeling that our circumstances have preordained our level of happiness, the amount of the good life we get to have. How much input do we really have on whether or not we can “rest, eat, drink, and be merry,” like the man in the parable, or have to work and be miserable all the time? So long as we think of what’s on earth rather than what’s above, as the Letter to the Colossians says, we’re locked into exterior realities so that the person you are right now is a prisoner of circumstances—and at the same time the jailer of the person we might become. Do we want to be free? Do we want to experience the joy and hope and liberation of the Christian adventure into fullness of life? Then Christ must be permitted to be all in all. Rooted in Christ, that hidden fullness of life shapes what we think and feel and believe about everything, and the world takes on a radiance we never imagined. Scripture links Wealth as negative influence: Eccles. 5:10-19; Amos 2:6; 3:10; 5:11-12; Mic. 2:1-3; Sir. 13:3-7; 19-23; 31:3-7 Wealth in a positive light: Prov. 3:16; 10:4; 11:16; Sir. 31:8-11 Jesus on wealth: Mark 10:17-31; 12:41-44; Matt. 19:16-20; Luke 16:13, 19-31; 18:18-30; 21:1-4 Later church teachings: 1 Tim. 6:7-10; James 1:9-11; 2:1-9; 5:1-6 Catechism links Material goods and their moral significance: CCC 2401-2449

Authors Alice Camille

identity

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23 Jun 2013 - Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

A question hangs over the world for 20 centuries, dividing Jews and Christians in an incontrovertible way. Who is Jesus? Is he the messiah promised in sacred texts of the past or not? If he is, how are we to understand him? What does his messiahship involve? What difference does it make if we accept it or not? A writer adding to Zechariah’s scroll after the exile mentions one who is pierced and mourned—and Christians flash at once to the Crucifixion, as we do at a dozen prophecies and more from the sayings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and even Moses. Of course we do. And of course the faithful Jewish community doesn’t, reading this particular text in the plural and seeing suffering Jerusalem as its subject. Robert Schoen, author of What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew about Judaism, laments a frequent question from Christian audiences: “Why don’t you believe that Jesus is the messiah?” The query is aimed more like an accusation, to which Bob simply replies: “We just don’t.” If you read a Jewish translation of the Bible, these texts don’t point as sharply to Jesus as they do in Christian interpretations of them. We shouldn’t be surprised that the identity of Jesus is up for grabs among God-fearing people. So it was in his generation as well and among his own friends. Even after everything Jesus did and taught, all the miracles and healings and signs, his disciples fled at his arrest and argued about him after his Resurrection. Among those who accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior there were still sharp distinctions as to what the consequences of that faith might be. Saint Paul insisted that faith in Christ Jesus (literally, confidence in Christ Jesus) obliterated the three traditional distinctions among persons. In the ancient world Greeks acknowledged three blessings: to be human and not a beast; to be a man and not a woman; to be Greek and not a barbarian. Paul attacked precisely this distinction when he claims that life “in Christ” confers a unity beyond any mortal division. It was a thrilling and destabilizing notion then, and it still is. Where we take it in the modern world is another matter. Many would be alarmed at this sort of extreme unity, however liberal we think we are. In Christ are there Protestants and Catholics? Vatican II cheerleaders and Tridentine loyalists? Are there distinctly regarded men and women, with male and female baptismal opportunities? Even if we get the identity of Jesus right, do we know where the consequences may take us? Scripture links I do not call you slaves but friends: John 15:13-15 Matthew’s discourses: Matt. 5-7, 10, 13, 18, 23-25 And the Word was God: John 1:1 Jesus as I AM: John 4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19, 18:5, 6, 8 Who do you say that I am?: Mark 8:27-30; Matt. 16:13-20 Catechism links Unity of Christ and the church: CCC 775; 796; 820 Jesus the Messiah: CCC 436, 727 The way of the cross: CCC 618, 2015

Authors Alice Camille

Messiah identity

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Sign & sacrament

23 Jun 2013 - Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Identity is the crucial issue of our time. We cannot inherit it; we have to make it. In that sense we do indeed construct our reality. But as the African maxim says, “I am because we are.” No personal sense of identity is formed on one’s own. And what is identity if not another way of saying one’s purpose? The connection with vocation is clear. Many refuse to make final commitments—in any major life decision—precisely because they cannot convince themselves that one identity is enough or even possible. In a time of heightened individualism, it takes much more courage than ever to accept an identity or commit to a vocation. For identity and vocation, only a definitive embrace from the depths of conviction and trust will do. –Excerpted from Pastoral Trends by Bryan Froehle For more “Sign & sacrament” material, search the Prepare the Word database by today’s scripture reading, a particular theme, or a special occasion.

identity Commitment

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Exploring the word

13 May 2012 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

TODAY IS MOTHER’S Day. In a rather direct sense, your mothers are among the most significant people you will ever encounter in your lives. You can add fathers to that ultimate group of associations, too. Depending on your culture, chances are you may carry the names your parents picked for you or gave you legally your whole life long. You may have other names and identities that are just as important to you. Women traditionally took their husband’s last name; some modern couples combine names to uniquely claim their unity. In addition there are other ways you name who you are: American, Catholic, parent, priest, teacher, student, soldier, public servant. You may rank other identities of greater or lesser significance, including your ethnicity or political affiliation or things like musician or artist, sports enthusiast, birder, gardener, movie lover, comic book collector, pet owner. Reflect for a moment on the Top Ten identities out of which you live and move and have your being. What do they say about who you are and what’s of value to you? In the time of the early church, names like Jew and Gentile held great authority over people’s lives. Like many names, they defined exclusive groups that did not mingle well together. They weren’t allowed to share a table, so social relationships across types were in practice quite discouraged. Because Christian table fellowship was central to the life of the church, what to do about Gentiles who expressed interest in the gospel was a serious problem. Gentile outreach before the arrival of Saint Paul was understandably limited; it just created too many problems. Then Saint Peter had that vexing dream about animals both kosher and unkosher, all together as if the distinctions didn’t matter. Right after that, he is summoned into the presence of a Roman soldier, whose entire household is quickly seized by an obvious manifestation of the Holy Spirit. What can Peter do but baptize the lot of them? It’s messy, this gospel, right from the start—and it’s clear this lack of tidy distinctions and exclusions is just what Jesus intended. There is no attempt to rank church members by degrees of worthiness: Pharisees first, or Jews before Gentiles. Paul later insists that distinctions cannot be made between masters and servants, nor men and women. When Jesus is approached about “who’s the greatest,” he chooses a random child rather than James over Peter. And rather than putting together a detailed flow chart of supplicants, neophytes, and junior and senior believers, Jesus looks across the table and calls his loyal followers merely “friends.” It’s a name you might want to hold high on your list of identities that most shape who you are and can become. Related scripture links Kingdom paradox: Matt. 5:3-11; 11:4-5; 18:4; 19:30; Mark 9:35; Luke 6:20-26; 9:48; 1 Cor. 15:42-44; 2 Cor. 12:9-10 Eye of the needle: Matt. 19:24; Mark 10:25 Travel light: Matt. 10:9-10; Luke 9:3; 10: 4 Catechism links Joy: CCC 301; 736, 1723; 1829; 1832 Remaining in love: CCC 459; 609; 614; 1823-1829; 1972; 2074; 2615; 2745

Authors Alice Camille

names identity

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Exploring the word

04 Dec 2011 - Second Sunday of Advent, Cycle B

How do you know who you are, and whom you’re called to be? It could be as simple as paying attention to your generation and its circumstances. Sometime in the 6th century B.C.E., in the midst of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon, a person whose name we’ll probably never know took up the scroll of Isaiah, now dead for more than a century. And he (some scholars say maybe even she) decided to add new words of comfort and joy to the revered prophet’s legacy for a nation plunged into decades-long despair in foreign captivity: The way home was guaranteed, made smooth by the loving hand of a God whose mission in every generation is to save. It was a wonderful message, hard to believe in that season of defeat. It’s just as unlikely sounding in the year 2011, when we hear every day about markets collapsing, jobs lost, families impoverished, and economic forecasts ever-more grim. Is there a way out, a way back from the brink of global desolation? Can the present dismal landscape ever become navigable enough to bring us to a happier future? Might economic valleys and mountains of debt one day meet in the middle to level the rough road of human history? Will individual kindness and political truth ever have a happy reunion, or justice and international peace kiss in a world restored to its original nature? Another way of saying that: Is our Advent hope realistic or a pious sham? Do we believe what we say, and are we waiting on the Incarnation of our salvation this season—or only some wrapped gifts under a tree? Like Deutero-Isaiah (bless his or her faithful heart!), John the Baptist woke up one day to the reality of his generation and his destiny. He put on his game face, dressed for prophetic success in camel’s hair, and ate the breakfast of champions—although the locust-and-wild-honey diet may be the reason we have so few reliable prophets today. He reread Isaiah to get his strategy straight. Thus fortified he went out there kicking hypocritical butt and taking names. We don’t know what fate awaited Deutero-Isaiah for showing such courage, but we do know it cost John the Baptist his head. It also gained him the title of forerunner to Jesus Christ himself—not bad for a short career of baptisms and gutsy pronouncements. You and I are in the same boat as these two folks, somewhere on the ocean of salvation history. We’re called to say something, do something, be someone, for the sake of our times and our neighbors. The world still needs saving, God knows. The new heavens and new earth are still waiting to be born. Related scripture links The desert: Deut. 8:14-18; 1 Kings 19:1-8; Jer. 2:2, 4:26; Hos. 2:16; Isa. 13:20, 30:6, 35:1-2; Mark 1:12; Matt. 4:1-11, 15:33-37; Luke 4:1-13; Heb. 3:8-11; Rev. 12:6, 14 The glory of the Lord: Exod. 13:21-22; 19:16-19; 33:7-11; 1 Kings 8:10-13; Ps. 19:1; Isa. 6:3; Mark 9:2-8; Matt. 17:1-8; Luke 9:28-36; Rev. 15:8 Gifts and fruits of the Spirit: Isa. 11:2-3; Gal. 5:22-23 Catechism links Season of Advent: CCC 524; 1095 John as voice of consolation: CCC 719 Spiritual gifts: CCC 768; 798-801; 1266; 1830-1831 Spiritual fruits: CCC 736; 1832

Authors Alice Camille

identity Destiny

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27 Jun 2010 - Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

PEOPLE START ASKING us the question pretty early: What do you want to be when you grow up? We want so many things in the beginning, as much as wonder permits. We want to be superheroes, artists, rock stars, presidents, NASCAR racers, truck drivers, millionaires. Or as my preschool niece used to explain: "First a baker, then a mommy, then a ballerina, and maybe a schoolteacher. I don't know what else later." When it comes to our early dreams for life, our eyes are the limit. Whatever we see, we imagine ourselves becoming—at least for a while. By high school we absorb the deflating truth that we have to take definite steps to become something. And what we become may well preclude other things or everything else. Maybe that's when we define ourselves down to the traditional goals: a good paying job, someone to love, home, family. We get behind the plow and try to keep the lines reasonably straight. We know nothing about Elisha before the day Elijah snapped him up for great things. All we know is what we hear about that particular day: a young man plowing in the fields, keeping the lines straight, his thoughts on his chores and his duty to his family. And then, suddenly, his world gets dis-mantled. A flying cloak is hurled across his shoulders, and the prophet who flung it hurries down the road. A startled Elisha has to run to catch up with him. He knows the authority one must assume with this cloak. He knows the sword of decision hangs right above his head. He knows the classic domestic life he'd assumed for himself is no longer a given. He has to make a radical choice, and make it now. Elisha belongs to the lucky ones because he understands so much about his predicament. Most of us are more like those hapless folks who run up to Jesus along the journey and make half-baked pledges of allegiance to him. "I'll follow you wherever you go," we say—but give no thought to how radical a journey that might be. Or we make conditional statements: "I'll follow later—but first . . . but only if . . . but on one condition . . . ." Jesus exposes these false declarations of discipleship for what they are and rejects them all. Authentic followers don't look back. They turn forward. We can only head into kingdom territory if we first abandon our allegiance to other, smaller goals. Because Elisha is perceptive, responsive, and decisive, he becomes the greatest of the prophets, greater even than the one whose mantle he accepts. We never learn what those other people become who once were offered a great opportunity—and preferred things just as they are. Related scripture links Giving testimony: Acts 2:1-11; 1 John 1:1-4 Called to Christ: Rom. 1:5-7, 8:28-30, 11:29; 1 Cor. 1:1-2, 26-31 Famous calls in scripture: Gen. 15:1-6; Exod. 3:4-10; 1 Sam. 3:1-18; Ruth 1:16-18; Isa. 6:1-8; Jer.1:4-10; Acts 9:1-6; Gal. 1:11-16 "Unequal yokes": 1 Cor. 10-13, 5:6-8, 6:15-20, 7:12-16; 2 Cor. 6:14-18 Catechism links Facing Jerusalem: CCC 557 Human freedom: CCC 1730-1742; 1749

Authors Alice Camille

identity professions Destiny Leadership Journey discipleship

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