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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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When climbers set out to conquer a great mountain, say, Everest or Kilimanjaro, they begin with backpacks overflowing. Food for every possibility, extra clothes, comforts from home, maybe even a favorite book. But the higher they climb, the heavier every ounce feels. Oxygen thins. Steps slow. At the base, you own your things; halfway up, they own you. So at every camp, they leave something behind: a pan, a sweater, a photo. The mountain strips them down to the essentials. Because the only way to reach the summit is to travel light.
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Jesus uses daily life images to put across an important teaching about the nature of our calling as believers. The image of a banquet is something that we are all familiar with. We have been engaged in arranging and inviting people to attend ceremonies of various kinds. And by sending out the invitations early, we hope that people will rework their schedules and honor the invitation with their attendance. It is embarrassing if people don’t show up and food has already been prepared.
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You know what's fascinating about airport reunions? We've all seen those videos, People waiting to receive their loved ones after a gap of years. What is fascinating is Not the actual reunion, but what happens in the minutes before. Watch the people waiting at arrivals sometime. They're nervous, excited, checking their phones, craning their necks. They know the person is coming. The flight has landed. They've got confirmation. But that last bit, that walking through the doors part, that's the bit that feels endless. Today, on this remembrance day, we're standing in that arrivals hall. And the readings we've heard, from the book of Wisdom and from John's Gospel, They're giving us something to stand on while we wait.
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Today in our gospel, a Pharisee invited Jesus to his home for a Sabbath dinner, and the Lord accepted the invitation. As we are aware, Jesus had a difficult relationship with the Pharisees. In today’s gospel, however, a Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner at his house, and the Lord accepted the invitation. As expected, there were other Pharisees at the dinner, and the gospel says “they were watching him” – every word Jesus said or every action he performed. The “watching” being described here can be translated as a “sinister spying” on someone. In other words, the Lord was under scrutiny.
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Let me be honest with you: while preparing this homily I had to look up for more details about Simon and Jude the apostles. Not because I'm a terrible Catholic, okay, maybe partly that, but because these two apostles are essentially footnotes in the Gospel story. Simon gets just one description: "the Zealot." Jude gets confused with Judas Iscariot so often that he has basically spent two thousand years saying, "No, not that Judas. The other one." Yet here we are, celebrating their feast day. Not of the famous ones. Not just Peter and John. But Simon the political radical and Jude the perpetually mistaken.
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Every day we hear about or encounter the tensions that exist among family members, neighbors, co-workers, and even within our own hearts—one of these is the tension between trying to discipline the desires of the flesh and the presumption that we can do whatever we want because God is merciful. When Paul wrote today’s reading to the Romans, it was to guide two groups of people who were at odds with one another in following Jesus. At that time, there was a growing confusion in the Roman Church… a phenomenon that continues to occur in each generation, often revisiting the same topics.
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