THE GREAT COMMANDMENT OF JESUS: A Reflection on the gospel for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2014

 Years ago, when I was the Director of Liturgy and Music at St. Hubert in Chanhassen, Minnesota, I had the privilege of working alongside Fr Barry Schneider, OFM. Barry, grew up in Jordan, Minnesota, went to Minor Seminary, was ordained in the Order of Friars Minor, and taught for many years on the South Side of Chicago at Hales Franciscan High School. He was a noted playwright and director of drama, he marched with Dr Martin Luther King Jr through the streets of Cicero, IL, was big in the anti-Vietnam war movement, and claimed he saw his F.B.I. file ... it was a rather thick file with plenty of surveillance photographs. While in Chicago, he told me he went toe to toe with Cardinal Cody. Barry later was director of Religious Education in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and followed that being a pastor at a predominately African American parish in Nashville, Tennessee.

Barry was very heavily into the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church. He was not afraid to challenge authority, religious or civil, including bishops, politicians, and even the Provincial General of his own religious order, if he thought that any action being taken by them was against the gospel  of Jesus. Working with Barry all those years probably accounts for some of the religious and political values for which I stand today, and was a preparation ground for ministering later at St. Stephen's Catholic Church in South Minneapolis.

The way Barry would evaluate a pastoral situation was to ask 2 questions. The first being, "Just what does this have to do with heaven?" The second question was phrased more like, "How does the great commandment of Jesus, loving God and neighbor, apply to this situation?" These two measuring sticks by which Barry evaluated pastoral situations and conundrums have remained with me 25 years later.

I remember on one occasion when Barry, reflecting on the close to 1800 Canonical laws that govern the Roman Catholic Church, saying, "The law of Jesus is so simple, 'love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and, love your neighbor as yourself.' Why has the Church complicated this simple law so terribly?"

The quote that was the centerpiece of last week's gospel, "Give to Caesar's what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's", flows directly from the great commandment of Jesus. If we truly worship the presence of God in all living things, especially in the people whom we encounter, then civil society will be sustainable and orderly. Is not truly loving and serving God in one another one of the highest forms of worshiping God? In no way is this to minimize our call to worship God on Sunday at Mass. However, if we limit our worship of God to just sacramental ritual and prayer while we ignore and neglect the presence of God in our neighbor, then our rituals are merely paying lip service to God, empty gestures that lack authenticity.

In the 11th chapter of St Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians, St Paul raises this precise point. Within the Corinthian community there is division, people refusing to recognize the presence of Christ within one another.

" I do not praise the fact that your meetings are doing more harm than good. First of all, I hear that when you meet as a church there are divisions among you, and to a degree I believe it; there have to be factions among you in order that (also) those who are approved among you may become known. When you meet in one place, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s supper, for in eating, each one goes ahead with his own supper, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk.Do you not have houses in which you can eat and drink? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and make those who have nothing feel ashamed? What can I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this matter I do not praise you." (1 Cor 11: 17-22)

St. Paul continues that in disrespecting the presence of Christ in one another, they are guilty of murdering the Body of Christ just as surely as those who crucified Jesus on Calvary. When they eat the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, they are eating and drinking their own damnation.

"Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." (1 Cor 11: 27-29)

St. Paul reminds us that whenever we gather together as the Body of Christ to celebrate the Mass, the face of God whom we worship is on the face of our neighbor. The two parts of the Great Commandment are inseparable. One cannot just do one and ignore the other. We enflesh the love, praise and thanks we give to the God whom we worship at Mass, by our serving and loving the God in one another. It is at Mass that we are fed by the Word of Jesus and the Body and Blood of Jesus so that we can then be sent forth into the world to be Christ to one another.

What does the Great Commandment of Jesus have to do with Heaven, as Fr Barry Schneider once asked? It has everything to do with Heaven.

 

THE SYNOD ON THE FAMILY - THE CHURCH SEEN THROUGH THE FILM PLEASANTVILLE

Over the little time that Ruthie and I had off, HBO was playing the movie Pleasantville. I enjoyed this film greatly when I first viewed it years ago. Upon viewing it multiple times, at least 3 times over the past week, I found the film having a tremendous impact on me. I have been at a loss over the obsession I have felt over this film.

The premise of the film is essentially how a teenage brother and sister from the 1990’s change a society that has been locked in the black and white world of the 1950’s. In fighting over a remote control that has special powers, they are pulled into an old black and white family sitcom from the 1950’s named Pleasantville, where the sun always shines, the temperature in always a pleasant 74 degrees, everyone is happy, the basketball team is undefeated, there is no illness or death, and the only purpose for the town’s fire department is to rescue treed pussycats.

In this world, where husbands and wives sleep in separate beds, and their roles are distinctly and clearly defined as breadwinner and homemaker, these two teenagers introduce sexuality, art, literature, knowledge and personal growth. All of a sudden, color begins to enter the black and white world of Pleasantville, first in a flower and then in the complexions of individuals as they begin to explore their own selves, intellectually, sexually, their roles in society, and the development of their own particular gifts. 

Dissatisfaction enters this “perfect” world on the part of those who no longer want to be trapped in black and white stereotypes, and those who do not want to see their black and white world change. The “coloreds” who desire change begin to clash with the “black and whites” who resist change producing thunderstorms that disrupt the perfect weather of this place. The conclusion of the film sees Pleasantville, once the black and white society turned in upon itself, transformed into a society of brilliant color, expanding beyond its world of Main Street and Elm Street, into a world of the unknown and uncertainty, with the teenage sister choosing to remain in Pleasantville in order to grow into a different person than she was in the modern world, and the teenage brother returning to the world of the 1990’s more self-assured and at ease with less structure and less certainty.

I have been wondering why this film had such an impact on me this time around, when I noticed that as I was watching this film multiple times during vacation, I was following with as much great interest the Synod on the Family in Rome. It came as no surprise to see that the two, though on different parallel tracks, were exploring themes fairly similar.

From the Council of Trent to Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church had been living a Pleasantville existence, removed and isolated from the larger world. While within this self-imposed cloister, societal forces, both good and evil, were moving and shaking up the real world. At times, these forces battered against the walls of the cloister, calling for response, but the response was for the most part feeble and everybody remained within the safe, secure black and white confines of the cloister. Then, Pope John XXIII opened the doors of the cloister and let the real world into the Church. 

As in the film, the abrupt changes to liturgy, ecclesiology, the roles of clergy, religious and laity disrupted the Church. The Black and Whites railed against the changes and during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, tried to shut down and persecute the “coloreds” of the Church that Vatican II introduced and restore the “black and whites” of the Triumphant Church of Trent. 

The Synod on the Family, over the past 2 weeks, has begun to bring color back to the repressive black and white pallor of the Church. All the “forbidden topics” of John Paul II and Benedict XVI were brought out once more into the open for discussion and dialogue. Of course, the neo-cons of the Church brought their fear mongering of exclusivity to the fore only to find themselves countered equally by more inclusive clerics with a greater vision of welcome to the “coloreds” of our lived reality. While the Synod was only part one of a two part process and nothing definitive can be stated about it at this time, it makes me hopeful that the repressiveness, the persecution, and the fear that has dominated the Roman Catholic Church for the past 30 years may finally have come to an end. I believe it was Fr Jim Martin, SJ, who dubbed the Synod as a continuation of Vatican II. Let’s hope and pray that he is right and change and color will continue to grow in the Roman Catholic Church.