REFLECTION 

BUILDING GOOD BRIDGES

Michael Wolfe

This past Sunday, Pope Francis wrapped up his visit to the United States.  The whirlwind tour was full of many firsts: not only was it the first time that he had ever visited the country, but during his days in Washington DC, he addressed Congress during a joint session, the first pope ever to do so.  Recognizing the significance of Pope Francis’ visit to the Unites States as a whole, and especially the historical event of his address to Congress, I’d like to share with you some of what I consider the salient points of that address in relation to our readings from Mass this past Sunday[1] (which was the last day Pope Francis’ celebrated Mass in the U.S.).  I do so in large part because Francis himself made it very clear that he was not only addressing the legislators present, but the entire people of the United States.  And of course, his content is applicable to all people of faith.

GRADUATION: CELEBRATING THE DIGNITY OF THE CHILDREN OF THE PRESCHOOL PROGRAM IN SABANA YEGUA (DOMINICAN REPUBLIC) 

During the Summer, 45 children graduated from the preschool programs in La Sagrada Familia Parish. We celebrated a formal graduation ceremony (even though the children are very young) to recognize the participation of these kids in the program and their educational advances during the last year, and also to bid them farewell, since in September they will move on to primary school. Our children’s preschool program is conducted at three sites throughout the parish (in the towns of Sabana Yegua, El Ganadero and Los Negros) and it provides initial education for 180 children, from two to five years of age. The little ones go daily to the centers, where they receive education, a nutritional balanced diet (breakfast and lunch) and medical monitoring. Importantly, the preschool program also requires the active participation of their parents. This involvement of the parents includes not just getting the children to and from the school, but also attending meetings and talks about subjects like health and nutrition.

The children in this program of preschool childcare come from families of scarce means who live in marginal towns and settlements within the parish. The poverty and need in which these families find themselves seems at times to strip away their dignity. To conduct a well-organized, formal graduation was a way to restore a bit this dignity, at times lost due to their adversities. The parents came to the graduation dressed elegantly and participated with pride in the different activities, while the children were showing off proudly all of their advances. We hope that these children grow with confidence and the dignity necessary to be good men and women in our society.

REFLECTION

WHO DO YOU SAY JESUS IS?
(From the Gospel of the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time)
José Nieto

Can you imagine Jesus asking this question to you in front of everybody else at church on a Sunday mass? What would you say? Most probably we would give an answer like Peter’s - "Jesus you are the Christ! Jesus, you are the messiah, the King!"

And there is no reason why Peter or anyone of us would not answer in this way, unless Peter’s concept of messiah would be the wrong one. Could we also be wrong about what kind of messiah Jesus is?

Indeed, Peter is mistaken about Jesus’ messianic identity. It is true, of course, that Jesus is the messiah, the Christ. But when Jesus explained the suffering and the road to the cross he would have to undergo, Peter’s idea of a triumphant messiah becomes an obstacle for Peter’s understanding. For him, the idea of suffering and dying does not belong to the idealized messiah that he confessed just few verses before.

Like Peter, we can also be caught up with the wrong idea of Christ. Sometimes we can even accommodate Jesus’ role to our convenience, thinking according to our logic but not as God would. A clear example is when we think of Jesus as a judge and not as a merciful Lord. It may happen that our logic would demand to think of Jesus as a punishing judge for those who do not follow the law. This would be the way of human logic. But in God’s mind, human judgment falls short compared to his infinite mercy and love. Sometimes our way of thinking demands a logical consequence for a cause. But in God’s eyes, we are always seen as his most precious creation, those who were made in his own image. When thinking about Jesus, and who he is, we should always be aware that his love will always overcome any of our human expectations.

So, before we get the wrong idea of Christ, we should ask ourselves - Am I thinking like God does or as humans do, when answering the question, who do you say that Jesus is?

GRADUATION OF STUDENTS IN SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM

Jansel Corcino, of Sabana Yeguar, is proud of having graduated from the Computer Science Degree at the University UTESUR of Azua (Dominican Republic). Another student from Sabana Yegua, Hugo Alquejay, also graduated, in his case from as an Agricultural Engineer. We rejoice in the fact that he completed his studies with Honors.  Both Jansel and Hugo are examples of the more than 70 young people who have received scholarships from La Sagrada Familia parish. The success of this program gives us great satisfaction, since we know that to invest in education is the best we can do to offer a future filled with hope to the young people in our region.

WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE CARE OF CREATION

Pope Francis has instituted September 1st as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. We thus join the Orthodox Church in prayer for the future of nature and everything that inhabits it. In line with his last encyclical Laudato Si', on “Caring for Our Common Home,” the Pope invites us to join in conscious and active protection of the Mother Earth. With the encyclical he adheres to concerns from environmental groups, researchers and various groups for our environment.

This is then opportunity to review our thinking and our actions regarding the care for Creation. Are we aware of the practices and policies harmful to the environment? Can we commit to transforming this situation? Can we change prsonal habits in order to reduce consumption of water or energy, use public transport or car pool, not waste food, recycle ... Some of our habits can be changed to be more consistent with a more sustainable environment.

REFLECTION

THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE (II)

Martí Colom




“Is this not Jesus?”

 

Following the meditation published a few days ago, we continue reflecting on the Bread of Life Discourse, which extends itself for most of chapter six of John’s Gospel and we have heard at Sunday Mass during the past few weeks.

In verse 6:24 we are told that one of the resistances that Jesus found in those to whom he proclaimed the Good News was based on nothing less than in his closeness to them. He identified himself as bread from heaven and they responded murmuring, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother?”

They ask themselves, filled with wonder, how can he bring us something new if he belongs here, if we have always known him, if he is one of us?

Beyond these questions (which begin with the mention of Jesus’ name, as if his well-known identity was the strongest argument to discredit his message), there is a deeply rooted tendency not just of those who listened to him 2,000 years ago, but even of many today: the tendency to think that when God manifests Himself in our lives this will necessarily happen by way of extraordinary signs and spectacular events completely foreign to our daily experience. We refuse to accept that God may come to us tip-toeing, through ordinary people, through those we have closest. Yet, this is exactly what happens.

Perhaps many of us are more in debt than what we would like to admit to superstitious and magical ways of thinking, out of which we automatically associate God’s presence to the super-natural and everything that is grandiose, foreign and incomprehensible. It seems to us that our daily experience simply cannot be the scenario or the means for God’s action.

Jesus, of course, comes to challenge this mentality and to claim back the richness and sanctity of everything ordinary, and to suggest that his own closeness to those he lived with (in short, his humanity) it was not, neither then nor now, an obstacle for him to be living bread for all.

If we try to be his followers we must understand that each and every one of us is also called to be bread of life for others: from our simplicity, from our rootedness to our own cultures, from our personalities more or less integrated, even from our many limitations, from our fears and hopes.

A careful reading of this passage, finally, will help us to discover God’s footprint in places where we perhaps were not looking: in the father and the grandfather that give me advice, in the children who question my ideas, in the wife whom I love, in the sick person that I visit, in the friend to whom I open my own heart, in the neighbor that helps me, in the coworker I see every day, in the brother with whom I pray together and in the poor person who I perhaps tend to ignore instead of finding, in him as well, my bread of eternal life.

 

 

 

REFLECTION


THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE (I)

Martí Colom

 

 

Food that endures forever

In the Sunday Masses of these last few weeks we have heard portions of the “bread of life discourse,” in which Jesus insists over and over again that he is food for all. It is a long section of John’s Gospel, one that begins after the scene in which Jesus feeds a crowd with five loaves of bread and two fish (Jn 6:1-15) and then covers the rest of chapter six until its ending (6:71).

I would like to reflect a bit upon two moments of this chapter.  The first is Jn 6:27, when on the day after the multiplication of the loaves Jesus talks to the same crowd he has fed and tells them: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life”.

Beyond the more spiritual (and certainly appropriate) interpretation, according to which with these words Jesus wants to underline the importance of living with our eyes fixed on horizons that go beyond the present world, it seems to me that the text also allows for a more practical or “earthly” interpretation.

Jesus sees the crowd: they have gone after for him because they had been given to eat. He immediately understands that a relationship of dependency has been created between the crowd and himself. They are, let us remember, the same men and women from whom he moved away because “they were going to come and carry him off to make him king” (6:15). Jesus knows that no dependency is good, that the Father wants us to be free, autonomous. That is why he encourages them to work for the bread that endures forever. “The food that perishes” is the nourishment that others have to give you, for you do not know how to generate it. Someone offers it to you, you eat it and right away you need to extend your hand again asking for more. The food that endures forever is the nourishment that one knows how to produce, which therefore allows someone to be autonomous. The food that never ends is analogous to the interior spring of living water that Jesus promised to the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:14), which will free her from having to go to the well day after day. Jesus is inviting those around him to discover their own dignity, to experience God’s presence in themselves, and thus to understand that they have no need of any king, chief or charismatic leader with answers to every question, since they have in themselves the potential to move on, in their own right. To make this discovery is to find the bread that endures forever.

This passage can thus shed light over the way in which we live our faith and carry out our ministry. It can help us to understand that every time that we, as priests, religious or committed lay people create dependencies from those whom we serve towards us, then we are using criteria that are very different from those of the Gospel. Our mission is the same mission that moved Jesus: to help those we serve so that they can discover their own capacities to grow and evolve (as difficult as this may be). To proclaim the Gospel is, above anything else, to help individuals become aware of their own worth as loved sons and daughters of the Father. That is why our message is a liberating one: because it implies the realization of God’s presence in oneself –the living bread that endures and the spring of water that never ends.

Obviously, it will then be desirable that from a situation of healthy autonomy we may be willing to link our lives to the lives of others, forming community with them. It would indeed be very sad if we were to use our newly obtained autonomy to lead selfish and individualistic lives, with an air of “since I am capable to provide for my own needs, then I am interested in no one else.” But this is a risk that we must run, because what is undeniable is that only free persons, working for the bread that endures forever, will be able to create a Christian community worthy of this name. Individuals who are dependent on the bread that perishes may form tribes, clans, gangs, sects or caricatures of family, but never authentic communities living the Gospel of Jesus.

In a later reflection we will meditate on the other moment of the bread of life discourse that we wanted to comment.