Category: Parish News & Events

The invitation to Abram to uproot his life—a life he knew, a life he had built, a life that had security guaranteed, a life surrounded by his things, his people, his culture—is the beginning of a journey of  thousands of years of all people to the new Jerusalem unveiled for us in the book of Revelation. 

Abram had to make a decision. Do I abandon my fatherland for this land that the Lord is promising to me? Do I abandon my family and my people in favor of a people, a nation, that the Lord is revealing, when I know that logically this doesn’t make sense given Sarai’s infertility? Do I set aside my inheritance, for the inheritance that the Lord is laying out for me? If this were all to work out as the Lord says, I will gain much, but the cost will be great, the risk, the uncertainty. Do I have the trust in this God that will see me through to the end? Abram, we read eventually, left for this land.

In Hebrews we read, “It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going… And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. …Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God” (Heb 11:8-10).

Today’s Scripture passage prompts us to a decision, “for our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:20). We need to decide whether to abandon our plans, our security, the stuff we collect and the people we gather around ourselves, and ultimately our earthly “blessings,” for an eternal inheritance promised us though unseen. To exchange our ultimate loyalty to our earthly citizenship to confess our forever credo in the providential love of God who has called us to take on the attitudes, values, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the Kingdom that is even now growing to maturity in a hidden way on this earth. When the Son of Man returns on the clouds to gather his own into the Kingdom of his Father, to present them as his brothers and sisters, members of his Body, we want to be among that number.

Abram is our father in faith, yet he stumbled and doubted and failed along the way until he completely trusted this God who had chosen him to be the father of a great nation. You and I are a part of this great nation. We struggle and stumble, doubt and fall along the way. Nevertheless, with courage, we keep our eyes fixed on what “eye has not seen, ear has not heard” (1 Cor 2:9).

In the words of Philip Krill, in his book Deified Vision: Toward an Angogical Catholicism, our faith journey “is an anticipated participation in the yet-to-be-fully manifest glory of the Coming Kingdom. ‘Behold, I make all things new!’ exclaims the Savior (Rev 21:5). We eagerly anticipate ‘new heavens and a new earth’ (Is 65:17-25; Rev 21). We expect to see an entirely recreated, transfigured creation: a world so transformed and renewed that every particle of matter…will participate providentially in what God has in store for those who love him (Rom 8:28; 1 Cor 2:9). …. [S]o magnificent and all-inclusive and redemptive is the final consummation of his glory.”

Contact the author

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”

 Sometimes, this verse is misunderstood to mean that we cannot judge actions as right or wrong, and so to mean we must tolerate serious wrongdoing because “it’s none of my business.” And if we judge others we will be severely judged. But elsewhere, Jesus tells us to “judge with right judgment” (John 7:24). So, we CAN judge, but we shouldn’t?

 Sometimes, this is (more correctly) understood to mean that we can judge actions but not people. We should not condone sin, but we cannot condemn a sinner. This is certainly true, but where is love in this interpretation? Refusal to judge must be filled with genuine love for the other, and a desire for their good. A “parable” from Erasmus Leiva-Merikakis in his wonderful reflection on the Gospel of Matthew entitled Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word (Ignatius Press) invites us to a subtler reflection on how we might apply these words to our lives:

 A beggar comes to my door asking for water to quench his thirst. I will not turn him away, because I fear some neighbor might observe my disdain. At the same time I do not consider the beggar worthy of touching with his lips more than the smallest tin cup in the house, which I quickly fill and brusquely hand him, so carelessly that half the cup spills. The cup is so small and mean, in fact, that I tell him to keep it. In reality, I don’t want to waste my time in such company.

 Much time—a whole lifetime—passes, and I find myself in the presence of Christ the King and Judge. I anxiously await my reward: I have always revered God, kept the commandments, observed the Lenten fasts, and celebrated the Church’s feasts with due solemnity. The King hands me back my tin cup, which I had long forgotten and certainly did not expect to see again in this eschatological setting. Seeing the look of dismay on my face, and with an infinite kindness in his voice that almost has the pleading tone of a beggar in it, Christ says to me: ‘I’m sorry, friend. Even I, the King, have no other cup to give you.’

Taking on ourselves the role of judge closes us up against all that the Lord wants to give us! It is not simply a fear of judgment that should align us with these words of Christ, but the awful truth that the capacity of our own hearts for love and forgiveness and God is constricted when we ignore them! To become “perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect,” we must share his loving and forgiving view of all of creation, particularly those we find difficult.

How can we see others through the lens of genuine love today?

Contact the author