How True!

HOLY WEEK Thursday, April 5, 2012 Holy Thursday

"  .  .  .  (in) the Last Supper in the Gospel of John  .  .  .  we come upon the story of Jesus on his knees washing the Apostles' feet  .  .  .  Peter symbolizes all of us as he protests, "You will never wash my feet!" (John 13:8). But Jesus answers, "If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me." That is strong! We all find it hard to receive undeserved love from another. For some reason it is very humiliating to the ego. We all want to think we have earned any love that we get by our worthiness or attractiveness. So Jesus has to insist on being the servant lover. Thank God, Peter surrenders, but it probably takes him the rest of his life to understand." --Father Richard Rohr

More Father Rohr Excerpts

HOLY WEEK Friday, April 6, 2012 Good Friday

"The supreme irony of the whole crucifixion scene is this: He who was everything had everything taken away from Him. He who was perfect was totally misjudged as "sin" itself (Romans 8:3-4). The crucified Jesus forever tells power and authority, and all of us, how utterly wrong we can be about who is in the right and who is sinful (John 16:8)  .  .  .    .  .  .  Jesus forever tells us that God is found wherever the pain is, which leaves God on both sides of every war, in sympathy with both the pain of the perpetrator and the pain of the victim, with the excluded, the tortured, the abandoned, and the oppressed since the beginning of time. I wonder if we even like that. There are no games of moral superiority left. Yet this is exactly the kind of Lover and the universal Love that humanity needs.   .  . .  Jesus redeemed the world "by the blood of the cross.” It was not some kind of heavenly transaction, or "paying a price" to God, as much as a cosmic communion with all that humanity has ever loved and ever suffered. If he was paying any price it was for the hard and resistant skin around our souls."

Some More Humility for the Soul

Another edgy entry by Father Richard Rohr  .  .  . 

"Jesus enters the temple and drives out the dealers who are trying to buy and sell worthiness and access (Luke 19:45-46), which is the great temptation of all religion. He symbolically dismantles the system. The temple of religion (read “church” or “mosque” too) is henceforth to become personal, relational, embodied in people, and not a physical building. He came to say that God is available everywhere, and for some reason we like to keep God 'elsewhere,' where we can control God by our theologies and services.

His public demonstration against the sacred space is surely the historical action that finally gets Him killed. The trouble with declaring one space sacred is that we then imagine other spaces are not! Here He takes on the detours of false religion: any attempt to "buy" God, purity and debt codes, and the primacy of "sacrifices" over mercy and compassion. Jesus has come to liberate God for humanity and humanity for God."

This reminds me of the evening a few falls ago when I had the good fortune to hear famed author ("Night") and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel.  Among his many eloquent gems of wisdom came his emphasis that any religion, any culture, any race can have extremists and we need guard against thinking ourselves immune.  He explained that a fanatic is one who holds God prisoner and claims to have the key.  

The deeper I dive into my own Catholocism in this intensely religious season of Lent, I find the refreshing beauty of my religion's most central message -- the commandment from Jesus, himself -- love thy neighbor. 

Direct link to Richard Rohr's post:  http://us.mg204.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.partner=sbc&.gx=1&.rand=fk4dcj2irkt4v