HOMILY WEEK 16 01 – Year I
Trusting Contemplative Faith:
Optional Memorial of St. Sharbel Maklūf
(Ex 14:5-18; Ex 15; Mt 12:38-42)
**************************************
“The Lord will fight for you; you have only to keep still.”
Those striking words from Moses open up a vista of transformative, contemplative faith and prayer.
Pharoah in this first reading today symbolizes the dark side of our humanity – our perverse and persistent tendency to repeat over and over again the sin of our first parents – stubborn self-will and playing God, deciding for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. That is so characteristic of our society today, with the “all about me” ideologies, and things like physician assisted suicide, etc. After all the plagues they experienced, one would think that Pharoah and the Egyptians would have learned to respect the power and authority of God, but no – they got stubborn, could only think of the loss of the Hebrews who had provided them with slave labor, and blindly set out to pursue them and return them to servitude.
Those same Hebrews also symbolized our all-too-human tendency to doubt, to lack faith, to fall back into the servitude of our old ways: “Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians.” Freedom can be a fearful thing – to take responsibility for ourselves, our mistakes and our need to go through the pain of personal and communal growth. There are many among us who are dreadfully afraid of the pain of dealing with their past hurts, or are struggling mightily to do so. Some who are coming to me for spiritual direction are precisely in that situation.
In his faith and wisdom, Moses stands strong, sinks deep roots of faith, trusts in the presence and power of God in this crisis, and speaks these memorable words to the fearful people: “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today… The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
Doesn’t that go just the opposite of our survival instincts – to dig in, try harder, do more, get busy? It takes faith to trust that God is present in the silence and stillness of our waiting. In the words of the W.A. program, “The less I do, the more God can do.” There is a strong invitation here to move into contemplative prayer – pondering the word of God, meditating on it, praying with it, and then setting all thoughts and feelings aside, and resting in God’s presence, a process that is called Lectio Divina.
It is this movement of the Spirit deep within us, when we are still, silent, in solitude, receptive and open, that what spiritual writer Thomas Keating calls “divine therapy” happens.
In the gospel, Jesus adds the elements of repentance and the paschal mystery to the mix. As Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the whale, and as Jesus was for three days and nights in the heart of the earth, this serves as an invitation to follow Jesus into our own Exodus Journey and Paschal Mystery experience. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia – putting on our highest mind, changing our way of thinking, acting and even feeling – basically, going on a healing journey.
Albert is someone who did this. When I was a young priest in Beauval, he came into my office one day and told me his story: he was a drunk for decades, then he sobered up, and joined AA. However, he was not really working the program and went on a dry drunk for 4 years, chairing meetings and organizing Roundups. Then he relapsed and was hospitalized. Coming to his senses and realizing that he was not being genuine, he did a sincere Step 5, and began to experience sobriety that was joyous and free.
Moved by his story and transformation, it struck me that was also the story of Moses: slavery in Egypt for centuries, liberation through the Red Sea; the 10 commandments, a dry-drunk of 40 years in the desert where they had to learn to trust God one day at a time (manna in the morning, quail in the evening), crossing the Jordan, and finally entering into the promised land.
Then I realized that was above all the story of Jesus: passion, death, resurrection, appearances to his friends, ascension into heaven, and finally, sending the Spirit at Pentecost – six distinct stages like Albert and Moses.
When Jesus speaks of the sign of Noah, and taking up our cross and following him, that is an invitation for us to go on a healing journey: to look at our own passion, how we have been hurt. Our deaths become the losses we have suffered. The resurrection becomes for us how we have survived by acting out of our pain, hurting others in turn, and now in need of forgiveness. The appearances of Jesus become for us a time of grieving our losses, and the ascension, the act of forgiving anyone who has hurt us in any way, and receiving forgiveness from God and anyone we have hurt. Then, forgiven and healed, delivered from our painful emotions and negative attitudes, we move into the promised land, living within the kingdom of God woith serenity and even joy.
Jesus adds a final subtle touch: as the Queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, so too we have to come from the ends of our earth, to listen to the words of the one who is much greater than Solomon, Jesus himself, the Son of God, Word made flesh, crucified Messiah, risen Lord and Savior. We do that best in contemplative prayer and Lectio Divina.
Today, the Church honours someone who lived the message of these readings today – who went into the wilderness, who was a contemplative, St. Sharble Makhluf. Joseph Makhluf was born in the mountains of Lebanon in 1828. At the age of 20 he joined a monastery in the Maronite rite, where he took the name of a 2nd century martyr, Sharbel. He lived there as a monk, but longed to live as a hermit in the desert. His superiors granted his wish in 1875 and he spent the next 23 years in a life of fasting, prayer and manual labor. He was famed for his holiness, wisdom and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. He died in 1898 and was canonized in 1977, and serves as an inspiring model for us.
The Eucharist we celebrate is rooted in the Exodus Journey and Paschal Mystery experience. The blood and flesh of a lamb that helped liberate the Hebrew people from physical slavery in Egypt, is now for us the body and blood of Jesus that liberates us from our sin and heals us of our sinfulness, that which makes us sin.
May our celebration deepen our faith in Jesus, and empower us to encounter him and his forgiving and healing power in especially contemplative prayer. May we heed the words of Moses: “The Lord will fight for you; you have only to be still.”
