A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 8, n. 11)
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C – February 7, 2010 *
“By the Grace of God”
BIBLE READINGS
Is 6:1-2a, 3-8 // I Cor 15:1-11 // Lk 5:1-11
(N.B. Series 8 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year C from the perspective of the Second Reading. For reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year C based on the Gospel reading, please scroll up to the “ARCHIVES” above and open Series 2. For reflections based on the Old Testament reading, open Series 5.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
Each of the readings of this Sunday’s liturgy depicts a profound religious experience and the conversion-transformation it brings about in the person. The three personages - Isaiah, Simon Peter and Paul – have experienced the mysterium tremendum et fascinans – a terrifying and fascinating mystery, wholly other, yet compassionate and generous. All have encountered deeply the awe-some grandeur of God and his loving mercy. And all have received a call to divine service and mission.
Graziano Marcheschi remarks: “In each of today’s readings we find manifestations of the holy to be terrifying and yet attractive. This results from the human person’s awareness of smallness and unworthiness in the presence of God’s overwhelming majesty. Yet none of today’s readings dwells on the vision of awe-inspiring holiness, but on the call that lies at the heart of that vision.”
On Saint Paul’s call to the service of Jesus, Marcheschi comments: “Paul had his own fearful and fascinating encounter with the divine when the Risen Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus. It was there he experienced the call to conversion that he later passed on to the Corinthians … The Corinthians have lost the initial fervor with which they have responded to the Gospel. Paul seeks to abate this erosion of commitment and to fortify the faith of his readers. He begins with the essentials, affirming Christ’s saving death (for our sins) and his resurrection. This is the indispensable ground of faith. Lose that and you’ve lost everything, because if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is in vain. Next he stresses the post-resurrection appearances that irrefutably confirm the resurrection (…) Paul stops suddenly to focus on the graced nature of his apostolic calling. He is mindful of his back-door entry into Christ’s church: entered abnormally, as the least of the apostles. His unworthiness, though more concrete and serious than Isaiah’s, was just as surely blotted out by the grace and initiative of God … Effective labor was made possible only by God’s bountiful and unmerited mercy.”
By the grace of God, Paul became what God intended him to be – totally conformed to Christ. Through divine encounter, Paul became a zealous, faithful apostle and preacher of the Good News to the nations. Animated by the power of God, Paul preached and the people believed. God’s favor at work in Saint Paul made the latter’s apostolic ministry to the Gentiles fruitful. People from many nations and cultures were brought to the love of God, enabling them to participate in the passion, death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. Paul’s intense religious experience and his unconditional response to the grace of God made him a true and efficacious apostle.
The following testimony of Barbara Kouba, an assistive technologist at California State University San Bernardino, is awe-some and intensely haunting as she narrates her unique encounter with the divine and the mission that resulted from her painful struggles (cf. “I Love You For Hating Me” in AMERICA, August 17-24, 2009, p. 26-28). At age 17, Barbara became ill with a rare blood disease, a distant cousin of hemophilia, which spawned bursting blood vessels and left her with painful and energy-zapping bruises from her forehead to her big toe.
At first I managed to accept my own illness. But when I witnessed the senseless suffering and death of the hospital ward’s young patients, I sank. All patients under age 20 were put on the same ward, and terminal cases were the norm. In colorless rooms, I saw listless infants with immense needles sticking out of their tiny limbs and necks. Some babies’ heads were the size of a light bulb; others were the size of a basketball. Hollow-eyed children had incurable cancers, birth defects or life-threatening injuries inflicted by abusers. Life-support machines pumped oxygen and fluids through a maze of tubes, yet many of the youngsters became shrunken wraiths. Normal child noises were replaced with mechanical ones. These gray-skinned little people were too ill and too drugged to talk, laugh or cry.
There were no Hail Marys, Our Father or Acts of Contrition for this. My rock-hard faith in God shattered into sand. What kind of God would allow innocents to suffer so much? Where was the just and loving God I personally knew and believed in all my life? A sense of betrayal, anger and rage consumed me like an out-of-control wildfire. My final prayer of 1971 summed it up: “I will not love you, God. You’re a monstrous sadist.” (…)
My hematologist consulted a psychiatrist. After one brief outpatient session, I was deemed depressed enough to spend the next few months in a psych ward. I went through a revolving door of psychiatric hospitalizations over the next several years, but each trip found me more deeply depressed. (…) One desperate evening, I asked a hospital staff member to lock me inside the Quiet Room – a tiny padded cell in the psychiatric unit. The room’s thick padding provided me with a cocoon-like safety zone. Huddled in a corner, my knees close to my chest, I was alone except for a vigilant orderly, who made his rounds every 15 minutes. Lights behind the small observation window illuminated his concerned face.
I was a ball of twisted pathology when an unexpected visitor flung open my spirit’s bolted door, refusing to be ignored or rejected another moment. “I love you. I am proud of you.” The simple message was not delivered by the hospital orderly; nor was there a voice, a psychic sign or a Cecil B. DeMille production. But the communication encompassed my total being. It was God. The modus operandi was easily recognizable. After a long pause, my nonverbal response was as subtle as a sledge hammer: “I hate you.” Without pause, God replied, “I love you for hating me.” I was incredulous. “It is understandable.” “What’s understandable?” “That you blame me for all the suffering you witnessed.” “Only a monster would let innocent children suffer. I can’t believe in a cruel, sadistic monster.” “That is why I love you.” My battered brain ached. My Irish temper seethed. I needed clarification. “You agree that you’re a monster?” “I love you and am proud you would never believe in anyone you think could be cruel or sadistic. I want your suffering to end.” “Why me? Why not the others?” “Why not you?” “But so many die? “Life is a series of dyings and risings. People accept this in nature, but sometimes fear death on a personal level.” How quickly God got me to the core of things. “I don’t fear death. I want death.” “It is not your time. I decide when it is time for souls to move on.” “Life has no purpose.” “It is when there is no purpose that you must find a new one.”
My mind turned into a mental video camera stuck on play. No pause or stop button. Sick baby scenes replayed with endless looping. It felt as if an icy hand gripped my heart. My breathing became labored. I cried helpless tears. I heaved with years of bottled-up anguish. “Like it or not, the past is an essential part of your life. But you must find life’s goodness again.” “How God?” “By looking within.” “No, I’m hollow inside. I did nothing to help those kids.” It was the first time I had revealed my failures and limitations to myself. “Once you find your goodness, you can use it to help others.” “How? How will I ever find it?” “I will help, but only if you open the door and accept me. You have free will, so it is your choice.” God’s reaction was gentle but firm. “But I’m still angry.” “Anger can be a positive emotion when it’s transformed to do good.” “If you’re God, why not give me an instant miracle?” I reasoned. “Miracles abound. But you must stop self-destructing. Trust me. Then every day for the rest of your life you will find a gift from me to you.” Ever so timidly I opened my heart, mind and soul. Unconditional love, comfort and peace surrounded me from the inside out and the outside in. Before I fell into a restorative sleep, God repeated the original message. “I love you. I am proud of you.”
I refused to share this transformative experience with the atheist psychiatrist, yet even he noticed a definitive change. Within a week, I was discharged from the hospital; within months, I stopped all prescription drugs and turned completely to God, the Master Healer (…) I enlisted and served four years as a U.S. Army chaplain’s assistant, where I developed professional faith-based counseling and therapy techniques to serve fellow soldiers better. Then I earned a master’s degree in instructional technology and embarked on a new career as an assistive technology instructor and practitioner (…) Today 36 years worth of cumulative gifts are evidence of God’s love that resonates through me. The most extraordinary of God’s gifts emerge from ordinary relationships. Topping my list is my husband, David, a gentle and caring man who in 19 years of marriage had loved and accepted me in a way no one else has. What about my anger? It’s still there. But rather than self-destructing, I channel my emotions constructively into organizations like Special Olympics, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Catholic Charities.
A byproduct of healing is maturity. God is no longer my scapegoat for life’s problems; instead, I find answers revealed through prayer, acceptance and interactions with others. Accepting death, especially a child’s death, is still a challenge, but I better understand the process of dying and rising as exemplified by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
Do we experience the awe-some holiness and fascinating presence of God? What is our response to the divine presence? Like Isaiah, do we respond positively to the divine proposal: “Whom shall I send?” and declare: “Here I am! Send me!”
Are we ready to imitate Simon Peter’s response to Jesus who gave him an intense experience of the divine through the miraculous catch? Are we ready to leave everything behind and follow Jesus Christ?
Like Saint Paul, do we allow the grace of God to heal us and transform us? Are we willing to participate fully in the paschal mystery of Christ’s death and rising? Are we ready to give a limpid witness to our faith?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: Loving Father,
we have experienced your infinite holiness and all-encompassing love
in your faithful Servant-Son Jesus Christ.
He died for us and, raised from the dead, he was glorified.
The grace of our Risen Lord enfolds us.
It gives us strength to serve your saving plan.
By your saving mercy fully revealed in Jesus’ life-giving ministry
and by your loving compassion manifested in Christ’s paschal mystery,
we become what you intend us to be:
persons totally “christified”
and fully committed to your service and praise,
now and forever.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.” (I Cor 15:10a)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: Spend quality time delving into the personal meaning of the Gospel in your life. Sustained by the grace of God, endeavor to share the Good News of Christ’s death and resurrection with people whose faith has been shattered and enfeebled by adverse circumstances and difficult trials.
ACTION PLAN: That we may become more receptive to divine grace and keenly perceive our personal mission in life; make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year C, vol. 6, # 11).
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US