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Reflection on Addiction and Violence from March Schenectady for Jesus 2022

[Reflection delivered by me at the corner of Albany and Hulett Streets in Schenectady on Saturday, July 30th during March Schenectady for Jesus 2022.]

Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.

At this stop we pause to address the plague of addiction and violence.

These two things, these two sins, are bound together. God asks us to be in control of our lives and our actions, to hand ourselves over completely to Him and to follow His gospel path. 

However, when we surrender ourselves to addiction, we surrender our self-control. We allow drugs and alcohol, addiction to food, sexual behaviors and pornography, and gambling to rule and run our lives. Time for family — none. Time for work — none. Savings — none. Church — forget it. The less and less control we have the less time we have for God’s way, and in His place we revel in destruction.

When we surrender ourselves to addiction, you know what comes behind it — yes violence. Place oneself under Satan’s guidance, and under the influence of that addiction, and one will engage in behaviors they wouldn’t if they were sober and right minded. 

Violent behaviors and addiction go hand-in-hand because anyone in your way is in the way. That includes God. I need to get my fix and my high — get out of my way or I’ll get you out of my way. Nothing can stop me. Lack of money — rob it. Someone trying to help me, attack them. That girl won’t give in — rape her. God trying to turn me back, to turn me around — deny Him and hate Him. Reject His Church.

Addiction fuels that pent up rage in us. Gasoline on the fire. In the end the addicted and the violent will stand there alone, shattered bodies and spirits in the wake. Satan laughing. His promises were meaningless.

Think that addiction isn’t being expressed outwardly in some form of violence? These are the other, more subtle forms of violence addiction fuels, things like: Blackmail, Physical threats, Gaslighting, Attacking another’s self-worth, Intimidation, Stalking, Name-calling, Withholding resources and necessities, Excluding a person from meaningful events or activities, Blaming the victim.

Is this in you? It is time to turn now. Immediately, right now. Go to one of the pastors here. Seek help. Call 988. Get help.

God asks for our surrender, the surrender of the whole self. No holding back and no backsliding. Now is the time to throw Satan and his booze, drugs, food, pornography, gambling, and any other addiction away and hand over our lives 100%.

God take me and heal me, mold me as You see fit. Amen.

Homilies,

Reflection for the 4th Sunday of Advent

Don’t look in there… What are they hiding in there away?

St. Paul is writing to the Church at Rome. He tells them:

…the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages but now manifested through the prophetic writings and, according to the command of the eternal God, made known to all nations

Children wonder, especially at this time of the year, what might be hidden in the closet or basement; perhaps under mom and dad’s bed. We are like children, children of faith. Paul is speaking to us. He’s letting us know that nothing is hidden. God has revealed everything to us. What was once a mystery is now plain. Everything became plain in the life of Jesus.

God isn’t into mystery, or spooky miracles, or suddenly appearing saints. What He is about is clearly understood – He is about relationships founded in deep love, generosity, caring, and the deep desire that we, His people, live in community with Him and each other.

Rather than searching the closets or the basement, let’s search our hearts for the plain meaning in the Gospels. Jesus’ coming has given us all we need to know.

Armed with His gospel of love and community we join in His holy mission – making His Father’s message available to all people.

The miracle is this – there are no secrets – Jesus has opened heaven’s store of dignity and love for all people. He really loves us. Knowing that, we can say with Paul:

to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ be glory forever and ever.

PNCC

Fr. Calvo on the Solemnity of the Presentation

From Fr. Randolpf Calvo of Holy Name Parish in Deerfield, CT: Is There Something More to the Feast of the Presentation?

This liturgical observance is based on Luke 2:22-23. Luke is a Gentile author and his record of the Jewish rites associated with the birth of Jesus are somewhat muddled. These are not customs Luke is personally familiar with as he writes his Gospel. This is clear in the conflation of the presentation of Jesus account, which should have occurred one month after His birth (Numbers 18:16), with that of Mary’s purification on the 40th day after giving birth to a male child (Leviticus 12:2-4), which is the basis of Luke 2:24, and which is also the basis of much of the confusion associated with this account. Even so, they are reported more for theological purpose than historical, and in this they become more profound in what they convey. We are not seeing what happened, but we glimpse why it happened.

For example, when the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will be the mother of Jesus, —the Son of the Most High,— (Luke 1:32) she is at first confused by the pronouncement, but then in faith responds, —‘Let it be with me according to your word.’— (Luke 1:38) Mary then gives beautiful expression to her feelings in what the church has come to refer to as the Magnificat. This passage is found in your Bibles at Luke 1:46-55. If you go to your Bibles, you may find there a footnote directing you to 1 Samuel 2:1-10. It is very possible that Mary gave expression to her wonderment and glorified God because of all the events we associate with the Annunciation, but that she expressed them in words so similar to those of Hannah in similar circumstance is more likely for theological purpose than for historical record.

Luke has reached back into the Holy Scriptures of his day to help give expression to the mystery of God’s dramatic role in the birth of Jesus. Hannah was barren and her son Samuel was born only through the intervention of God. In response to Samuel’s miraculous birth, Hannah offers her prayer of joyous praise. When Luke imitates unabashedly these words in the Magnificat, his intention is to connect the two events in the mind of the reader. Anyone familiar with the Holy Scriptures would have realized immediately the connection between the two and that the actual words were not meant to be historically accurate. They were meant to be theologically profound.

Luke continues this theme from the Annunciation to that of Jesus’ presentation at the Temple, which has its parallel when Hannah presents her son Samuel at the Lord’s sanctuary at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:21-28). Hannah fulfills her promise to God. The young child Samuel is presented at the sanctuary with the mother’s words: —‘I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.’— (1 Samuel 1:28) This prepares Luke’s readers to think of Jesus in the same way, as one whose life is given over completely to God.

Still with Jesus’ presentation in mind, at Luke 2:23 the Evangelist refers to the Mosaic Law of the firstborn male child. According to Exodus 13:2,15 and Numbers 18:15-16, such a child would be redeemed by a payment of five sanctuary shekels. Luke makes no mention of this payment. Instead, he tells the story of the presentation at the Temple, a custom about which absolutely nothing is mentioned in the Old Testament. Since Luke makes reference to the tradition of the redemption of the firstborn male at Luke 2:23, he would also have known about the monetary equivalent. When Luke instead speaks of the presentation, it is because Jesus is already at birth —the Son of the Most High.— Jesus need not be redeemed by the sanctuary shekels because He already belongs to God, He already is God.

Luke’s account of Jesus’ presentation speaks amply of Jesus’ coming life of dedicated service to God and as God’s Son. The historical record of this event is confounded in Luke’s account, but its truth remains unambiguous. The story is not imaginary. It is most likely based on an actual remembrance that Jesus’ family performed the standard Jewish rituals following the birth of a child, but neither is its purpose to merely record history. There is something more. Its truth is in its purpose and meaning. This is why it is gospel-proclamation, and this is its real literal truth.

Christian Witness, PNCC

Christmas and the Sanctity of Our World

A reflection from Fr. Randy Calvo of Holy Name of Jesus Parish in South Deerfield, MA:

I have been attending sporadically a Jewish Midrash and myth Bible study group at Schoen Books here in South Deerfield on Wednesday evenings. The group has extended an invitation to me and has been wonderfully patient with my ignorance of the Hebrew terminology and teachers. I have found it extremely interesting to hear readings of the same texts that I have read since I was a child in a wholly different light, and maybe most amazingly of all is that I have found the readings enlightening to my Christian faith in an unexpected way. Sometimes as Christians we may approach the Old Testament with an air of condescension based upon the belief that we know a fuller meaning of the text than its original recipients because we recognize that it all points to the coming of Jesus as the Messiah.

I thank my teachers of the historical-critical method of Old Testament study, Fr. Michael Barone and Rev. Bruce Dahlburg, for helping me to read these books in their own right. These Midrash classes have helped me to deepen that insight. The closest parallel I can offer is that Midrash treats the biblical word in similar fashion to Christian patristics. Midrash uses the inspired text as a springboard to further spiritual insight and theological exploration. It is some of these musings that have led me to a deeper appreciation of the Incarnation, of God’s entrance into human history at Christmas.

Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher of the 12th century, expounded on the idea of —good— as repeated numerous times in Genesis 1. He concluded that creation is good in and of itself. The goodness of what God has made is not dependent upon how it serves humans. Their goodness is intrinsic as made by God. He further stated that the repetition of the word implied that the whole of creation is good in a way that is greater than any isolated part of that creation could ever be alone.

Six hundred years later Shneur Zalman, again expounding on Genesis 1, speaks of God’s creation of the dry land of the earth on the third day. Zalman believed that the earth manifested the presence and power of God more than the rest of creation because it held the power to make things grow, and he found this in the verse: —Let the earth put forth vegetation …— (Genesis 1:11) The rest of creation is created by God, but the earth creates like God. Zalman imagined that God’s radiance from on high shown down through all of existence, but that when it reached the bottom, the earth, it reflected back toward God through the earth’s power to create. The presence and power of God, therefore, are most clearly expressed not only in the goodness of creation, but especially in the goodness of the miracle of the process of life.

Genesis is the creation story of the Jewish people. We have adopted it as our own, but it was born in the Jewish faith. I find it bothersome that Holy Scripture tells us of the inherent goodness of creation and also of the goodness of the process of life, and then some of the teachers of the church would insist that we profess instead that creation is inherently evil and that this evil is passed from generation to generation through the process of life. Zalman was fleeing from the armies of Napoleon and a certain death sentence when he wrote these words. He was not naïve. That the world is not perfect does not equate with the world is evil. That the world has been created by God, and has been called —good— by God, does mean that creation and life have been sanctified. The church does a disservice to this revelation when we insist on having people believe in original sin and all that accompanies it.

When God physically enters creation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, He testifies to the holiness of ordinary life. Christmas is a time to remember that the presence of God not only showers down upon us, but is reflected back towards God in the goodness of this creation. Perfection belongs to heaven, but Christmas reminds us that there are sparks of the divine, that there is hidden holiness, all around us. Being able to see that again is part of the joy and wonder of the season of Jesus’ birth and one of God’s greatest Christmas gifts to us all.

…and I would add that our baptismal regeneration and membership in the Church requires just this sort of witness. It is the building up of man and woman in light of Jesus’ salvific action. That action began at His incarnation and will end when our plea of Maranatha is answered. Christ’s entry into human life forever changes our relationship to life — to the eternal.

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