Mary under the Cross

MARY UNDER THE CROSS

On the surface, it seems she isn’t doing anything at all: She doesn’t speak, doesn’t try to stop the crucifixion, and she doesn’t even protest its unfairness or plead Jesus’ innocence. She is mute, seemingly passive, overtly doing nothing.

In essence, what Mary was doing under the cross was this: She couldn’t stop the crucifixion (there are times when darkness has its hour) but she could stop some of the hatred, bitterness, jealousy, heartlessness, and anger that caused it and surrounded it.

Mary helped stop bitterness by refusing to give it back in kind, by transforming rather than transmitting it, by swallowing hard and (literally) eating bitterness rather than giving it back, as everyone else was doing.

Had Mary, in moral outrage, begun to scream hysterically, shout angrily at those crucifying Jesus, or physically tried to attack someone as he was driving the nails into Jesus’ hands, she would have been caught up in the same kind of energy as everyone else, replicating the very anger and bitterness that caused the crucifixion to begin with. What Mary was doing under the cross, her silence and seeming unwillingness to protest notwithstanding, was radiating all that is antithetical to the crucifixion: gentleness, understanding, forgiveness, peace, light.

There are times too when things have gone so far that shouts and protests are no longer helpful, darkness is going to have its hour come what may and all we can do is to stand under the cross and help eat its bitterness by refusing to participate in its energy.

In those situations, like Mary, we have to say: “I can’t stop this crucifixion, but I can stop some of the hatred, bitterness, jealousy, brute-heartlessness, and darkness that surround it. I can’t stop this, but I will not conduct its hatred.”

Sometimes the blind, wounded forces of jealousy, bitterness, violence, and sin cannot be stopped. Like Mary under the cross, we are asked to “stand” under them, not in passivity and weakness, but in strength, knowing that we can’t stop the crucifixion but we can help stop some of the hatred, anger, and bitterness that surrounds it.

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Palm Sunday (A)

Short Reflection for Palm Sunday (A): The Passion according to Matthew

Readings: Isaiah 50: 4-7; Philippians 2: 6-11; Matthew 26: 14 - 27: 66

Selected Passage:  “Then one of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?’ They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over”. (Matthew 26: 14-16)

Meditation:  The drama of the Passion raises several questions for our reflection. One is the betrayal of Jesus by his friend, Judas Iscariot, and the other apostles left him, too. We, too, have betrayed the Lord and often for less than 30 pieces of silver!  The real miracle of the Passion is the grace and strength Jesus received from the Father to embrace the CROSS and drink the cup with courage and forbearance to the end.

Today, as ever, God’s grace is never lacking and like Jesus, we too can embrace our cross and drink the cup with courage.  Cf. www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

5th Sunday of Lent (A) - Raising of Lazarus

Short Reflection for the 5^th Sunday of Lent (A): The Raising of Lazarus

Readings: Ezekiel 37: 12-14; Romans 8: 8-11; John 11: 1-45

Text:  And when Jesus had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11: 43)

Meditation:  The drama of raising Lazarus from the dead confronts us anew of the same question asked of Marta and Mary… "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

We need to hear the call of Jesus, the Lord, anew and come out from the tomb of fear, unbelief, powerlessness and isolation. Let us all come out from the tomb of impotence that is ourselves. Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

The Language of Extremism

The Language of Extremism

The fundamentalist discourse divides the world into two factions: that of evil and that of “true” believers

Hassan Mohamed Wageih Hassan | 21 March 2017

The current situation in the Middle East requires us to be vigilant and to join our efforts, especially in Egypt, in order to stop this chaos and handle this urgent crisis. It is an unprecedented crisis, which could be called “viral” or “contagious,” given the ease with which it is transmitted from one place to another. […]

Here I want to present some features of the extremist mindset, which we should urgently deal with through educational, social and media interventions. […]

An Authoritarian Speech
When they speak, extremists put themselves in a dominant position, using a negative, threatening, uninformed and approximate language, built on aggressive and arrogant arguments, and on fallacious reasoning. 

Extremists think of themselves as the only representatives of God on earth and claim to guide the people who follow them from darkness to light. Those who do not accept their demands are excommunicated. […]

Recruitment Strategies
Extremists resort to discursive strategies that aim to recruit militants, especially among people who struggle. […] They combine financial incentives to forms of brainwashing. Knowing who finances them remains a central issue. […]

A Manichean Language
The extremists’ speech divides the world into two factions: that of evil and that of “true” believers. […]

Slogans and Symbols
The extremists’ language is packed with glittering slogans and emotionally charged symbols such as “Freeing the Islamic lands from the colonizers,” “Fighting injustice and the corrupt and tyrannical political systems.” […]

In front of these phenomena, we must focus on prevention rather than crisis management when it is already too late.

*Extracts from the speech delivered at the symposium of the Joint Committee for Dialogue of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and al-Azhar. Hassan Mohamed Wageih Hassan is Professor of Linguistics at Al-Azhar University.

(Source: Oasis, March 2017)

4th Sunday of Lent (A)

Short Reflection for the 4^th Sunday of Lent (A): The Blind Man

Readings: I Samuel 16: 1. 6-7. 10-13; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9: 1-41

Gospel Passage:  Then Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind." (John 9: 39)

Meditation:  Jesus Christ becomes the lens for seeing and not seeing… Through him we do see/not see the poor, the needy, and the injustice and the wrong against neighbors. 

Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote about today’s Gospel: “The Gospel confronts each one of us with the question: “Do you believe in the Son of man?” “Lord, I believe!” (Jn 9:35; 38), the man born blind joyfully exclaims, giving voice to all believers. The miracle of this healing is a sign that Christ wants not only to give us sight, but also open our interior vision, so that our faith may become ever deeper and we may recognize him as our only Savior. He illuminates all that is dark in life and leads men and women to live as “children of the light.”

Lent is a season for seeing… Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

3rd Sunday of Lent (A) The Samaritan Woman

Short Reflection for the 3^rd Sunday of Lent (A): The Samaritan Woman

Readings: Exodus 17: 3-7; Romans 5: 1-2. 5-8; John 4: 5-42

Gospel Passage:  Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4: 13-14)

Meditation:  We have drunk of the well of Jesus… We shall never be thirsty again and that water in us will become a spring welling up to eternal life. Moreover, In Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman, he reminds us that “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship, too, in Spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:24)

Often, in our worship, we are tied to a place or sanctuary, yet the true God’s sanctuary is in the heart and in living by the Truth that is Jesus Christ.  Yes, God resides in our hearts and in our deeds!  Visit:  www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

Sweating Blood at the Garden

SWEATING BLOOD IN THE GARDEN

When we look at the accounts of Jesus’ passion and death we see that what the gospel writers highlight is not Jesus’ physical suffering but his emotional anguish. Indeed, in the gospels, his physical sufferings are almost underplayed.

What’s emphasized instead is that Jesus was alone, abandoned, betrayed, morally lonely, hung out to dry, unanimity-minus- one.

What Jesus suffers is the emotional agony that sometimes comes on us as the price of love. The blood he was sweating was the blood of emotional crucifixion, the price of being faithful in love.

To be faithful requires that sometimes we have to enter a great loneliness: the loneliness of moral integrity, the loneliness of fidelity, the loneliness of duty, the loneliness of renouncing an overpowering desire, the loneliness of losing life so that we might find it in a higher way.

Jesus didn’t find it easy and neither do we. What love and fidelity ask will sometimes drive us to our knees in anguish and, like Jesus in Gethsemane, we will find ourselves begging God for a means to still have our own way in this, to have our cake and eat it too, to find some way around fidelity, vow, promise, and duty.

This is a lover’s anguish because the part in us that’s agonizing and resisting is that part of the heart that stewards intimacy, romance, and embrace. The lover in us is having to let go of some very precious things; it’s having to die to something for the sake of something else, and that’s emotionally crucifying.

The account of Jesus sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane is, among other things, a powerful mystical image that tells us it’s not enough simply to be sincere and follow the heart’s desires. Sometimes love and fidelity demand that, like Jesus, in anguish and tears, we say to God: “Much as I desperately want this, I can’t have it! Not my will, but yours, be done!”

To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/sweating-blood-in-the-garden-2-of-6/#.WLgjCRiZNE4

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