Sunday Readings

^{The Fifth Sunday of Easter April 18, 2025} ^{Readings: Acts of the Apostles 14.21-27; Book of Revelation 21.1-5; Gospel of John 13.31-33, 34-35} ^{[Paul and Barnabas] gave their disciples reassurances, and encouraged them to persevere in the faith with this instruction: “We must undergo many trials if we are to enter into the Kingdom of God”}^{(First Reading).} ^{In an interview, the author, Norman Mailer, spoke of his interest in religion. He said he was “searching for a plausible God.” Religion and the concept of God, he explained, are on the frontline in our attempt to understand the modern world.} ^{What struck me was that Mailer was seeking a plausible God. The dictionary describes the word “plausible” as “seemingly true.” The root of the word is the Latin word meaning to applaud. Basically Mailer wanted a God whom he could applaud.} ^{Mailer’s attitude reflects the modern mentality of designer-made deities. “Let me construct a God who fits into my own needs and calculations.” It is part of the celebrity mania of our times. I applaud what pleases me. And those who wish to be applauded work at making people seek the image that they convey. Applause is the center of the operation. I want applause. I want what I want. I will fashion the wants of people so that upon seeing me, they will applaud. Norman Mailer traveled among the celebrities, creating his plausible God.} ^{May Norman Mailer and all the souls departed, like us sojourners, find and live the truth; what he is before God is known to God alone and we must not judge lest we be judged. We judge his ideas about God.} ^{What we must point out is the example of the saints in their pursuit of the mystery of God in the Catholic and Orthodox contemplative tradition. One goes into the desert, spiritually or really, to be stripped of all allusions, of all self-seeking, embracing the Cross of Christ in the mystery of unknowing. It is in the posture of obedient listening that we receive God as God reveals Himself in the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection through the Word and the Sacrament of the Church. We die to self so that we can receive the Triune God. The divine truth about the mystery of God, revealed in Christ Jesus, has nothing to do with “a plausible God.”} ^{Once we have entered into the Mystery of Christ we do not expect applause but the Cross. Hence the quote from the First Reading:} ^{We must undergo many trials if we are to enter the Kingdom of God.} ^{In the moment of trial we surrender to God with the faith that God is in union with us in that trial. A negative feeling or an adverse condition cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is the REAL GOD AND THE REALITY OF THE KINGDOM we must seek with humility and nakedness, not the plausible God created in the celebrity mold.} ^{Jesus saw His glory in the very painful act of betrayal:} ^{Once Judas had left, Jesus said: Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him (The Gospel Reading).} ^{Christ in the Spirit reveals God who was not a plausible God but a Father whose love called for obedience in the midst of a tortuous death as a criminal, although the One Who Suffered was Son of God.} ^{Nor does God seek applause. God lives in His own Glory. Glory is the magnificence of God’s own nature in itself. God’s glory is His Trinity: The divine relationships within the oneness of the Godhead. Jesus’ surrender as Man, in His relationship as eternal Son, to the Father is the glory of God made manifest in the one single human life at the time of Pilate.} ^{The glory of Christ ultimately and absolutely renews the world:} ^{I, John, saw new heavens and a new earth. The former heavens and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no longer. I also saw a new Jerusalem, the Holy City, coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride prepared to meet her husband. The One Who sat on the throne said to me, “See, I made all things new!”}^{(The Second Reading)} ^{We must hold the Truth about God proclaimed and taught within the Church (“the new Jerusalem”) against all the relativism of our age. Out of that Truth we still can hold in love people like Norman Mailer, who are trying to construct their plausible God. The Real God is present to Norman Mailer and loves him and will use even his “plausible God” to become more palpable to ever-present grace.} ^{Let us be faithful to the Catholic, Apostolic Truth and compassionate to all the seekers after God. The Gospel truth is founded on love:} ^{I give you a new commandment: Love one another (the Gospel Reading).} ^{Let our celebration of the Holy Eucharist be our surrender to the mystery of the Triune Relationship of Love which is God, palpable in Christ and quite plausible when faith illumines reason.} Fifth Sunday of Lent April 6, 2025 Readings: Isaiah 43.16-21; Philippians 3.8-14; John 8.1-11 Contemplative life cannot exist unless our memory is infused with the supernatural virtue of hope. Hope resides, for the most part, in our memory which is our knowledge bank. In the middle of the experience held in the memory, hope enables us to be open to that which is beyond all experience. Hope offers an expectancy which is beyond the limits of our experience. Christian hope is a night to our memory, but hope is also a light that glows from faith and leads to love. St. John of the Cross writes that faith and hope are two wings for love which bears us into God. In the First Reading from Isaiah the Lord God clearly teaches that hope empowers memory to go beyond itself: Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? The Reading is telling God’s people that the exodus was a marvelous miracle of liberation. Now the prophet is saying that there is something beyond even the exodus of God’s people. The newness that is to come is the formation of a new people redeemed by God, beyond the national confines of Israel, a fuller and universal sign of the redemption of the whole human family: The people whom I formed for myself, that they might announce my praise. What is beyond Israel's common experience of the liberation? All humanity must be the recipients of this newer, more profound liberation. Christ Jesus conquers death, humanity’s great enemy. The Resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection in Him are the realities of faith and the power of our hope. We all have witnessed the wrenching pain of death and the vast violence inflicted upon individuals and groups. We have not witnessed their resurrection in Christ. We have not witnessed with our eyes this resurrection and therefore, our memories do not contain that invisible reality. Faith brings the Mystery to our understanding; hope anchors us in the certainty of resurrection for us as it has been the culminating reality of Jesus. Faith brings an understanding beyond the power of reason; hope brings an experience of that which is beyond memory experience; divine love infused in the soul makes it all a reality and a living knowledge. It is a flame that burns within the contemplative heart. Love cannot burn if there is not the oxygen of hope. The Second Reading brings us further into the qualities of the virtue of hope as the substance of our contemplative life. Contemplative hope is based on the experience of Christ: Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. The Gospel Reading brings us away from theological concepts to look at individuals who are caught up in the turmoil of religious conscience and capital punishment. A woman who has been caught in the act of adultery lies condemned at the feet of Jesus. Where is her hope? Is her heart a barren waste devoid of the sense of God? And what goes on in the hearts of the religious people who wish to stone her as a means of catching and thus of diminishing His popularity? They live in the shrunken confines of religious formulas. She lives in the shackles of her sin. Jesus liberates her and offers liberation to the religious persons gathered around her. Jesus gives her the hope of a new life. Her new life is founded on the grace of Jesus along with her resolution to cooperate with grace. She needs the power to sin no more. Jesus DOES NOT SAY: This is not a sin; it’s only you self-expression. Jesus brings liberation through grace and also through a moral code that reflects the nature He created as the Word with the Father. Do what is natural which is obedience to the will of God even to the point of dying to self. What was lacking in the religious people who were antagonistic to Jesus was their lack of the sense of hope. They had a sense of moral obligation. That is part of it. Jesus is not taking away the commandments that flow from our very nature as creatures of God. Jesus is giving hope to us as fallen creatures, prone to selfishness. Jesus offers the hope of forgiveness, the hope of a new life in His Spirit. True religion requires hope; we must always go beyond what we experience in our religious life. The treasures of God’s possibilities are never exhausted. Even in sin, weakness and death, God brings the power of Christ’s resurrection. The power of change is founded on Christ’s grace and on the power of hope. I hope in the resurrection of Christ to bring me all that I need to conquer my sin and my addiction to my own selfishness. The Lenten liturgy has patiently brought us along to this Sunday of hope and forgiveness. We are like the woman caught in adultery. We are all caught in the adultery of our infidelity to God and His law written into our natures. More deeply, by our sins we are unfaithful in our fleeing from the presence of the Holy Spirit within our soul. The contemplative practice is to remain peaceful and forgiven at the feet of Jesus. It also requires more. The fruit of deep consciousness of that union with Christ must bring us into loving relationship with others. We must bear the burdens of one another; wash one another’s feet. It is in the Eucharist that we are principally caught up into this Mystery, our oneness with Christ. William Fredrickson, OblS,OSB; D.Min.

^{The Fifth Sunday of Easter

April 18, 2025}

^{Readings: Acts of the Apostles 14.21-27; Book of Revelation 21.1-5; Gospel of John 13.31-33, 34-35}

^{[Paul and Barnabas] gave their disciples reassurances, and encouraged them to persevere in the faith with this instruction: “We must undergo many trials if we are to enter into the Kingdom of God”}^{(First Reading).}

^{In an interview, the author, Norman Mailer, spoke of his interest in religion. He said he was “searching for a plausible God.” Religion and the concept of God, he explained, are on the frontline in our attempt to understand the modern world.}

^{What struck me was that Mailer was seeking a plausible God. The dictionary describes the word “plausible” as “seemingly true.” The root of the word is the Latin word meaning to applaud. Basically Mailer wanted a God whom he could applaud.}

^{Mailer’s attitude reflects the modern mentality of designer-made deities. “Let me construct a God who fits into my own needs and calculations.” It is part of the celebrity mania of our times. I applaud what pleases me. And those who wish to be applauded work at making people seek the image that they convey. Applause is the center of the operation. I want applause. I want what I want. I will fashion the wants of people so that upon seeing me, they will applaud. Norman Mailer traveled among the celebrities, creating his plausible God.}

^{May Norman Mailer and all the souls departed, like us sojourners, find and live the truth; what he is before God is known to God alone and we must not judge lest we be judged. We judge his ideas about God.}

^{What we must point out is the example of the saints in their pursuit of the mystery of God in the Catholic and Orthodox contemplative tradition. One goes into the desert, spiritually or really, to be stripped of all allusions, of all self-seeking, embracing the Cross of Christ in the mystery of unknowing. It is in the posture of obedient listening that we receive God as God reveals Himself in the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection through the Word and the Sacrament of the Church. We die to self so that we can receive the Triune God. The divine truth about the mystery of God, revealed in Christ Jesus, has nothing to do with “a plausible God.”}

^{Once we have entered into the Mystery of Christ we do not expect applause but the Cross. Hence the quote from the First Reading:}

^{We must undergo many trials if we are to enter the Kingdom of God.}
^{In the moment of trial we surrender to God with the faith that God is in union with us in that trial. A negative feeling or an adverse condition cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is the REAL GOD AND THE REALITY OF THE KINGDOM we must seek with humility and nakedness, not the plausible God created in the celebrity mold.}

^{Jesus saw His glory in the very painful act of betrayal:}

^{Once Judas had left, Jesus said: Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him (The Gospel Reading).}

^{Christ in the Spirit reveals God who was not a plausible God but a Father whose love called for obedience in the midst of a tortuous death as a criminal, although the One Who Suffered was Son of God.}

^{Nor does God seek applause. God lives in His own Glory. Glory is the magnificence of God’s own nature in itself. God’s glory is His Trinity: The divine relationships within the oneness of the Godhead. Jesus’ surrender as Man, in His relationship as eternal Son, to the Father is the glory of God made manifest in the one single human life at the time of Pilate.}

^{The glory of Christ ultimately and absolutely renews the world:}

^{I, John, saw new heavens and a new earth. The former heavens and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no longer. I also saw a new Jerusalem, the Holy City, coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride prepared to meet her husband. The One Who sat on the throne said to me, “See, I made all things new!”}^{(The Second Reading)}

^{We must hold the Truth about God proclaimed and taught within the Church (“the new Jerusalem”) against all the relativism of our age. Out of that Truth we still can hold in love people like Norman Mailer, who are trying to construct their plausible God. The Real God is present to Norman Mailer and loves him and will use even his “plausible God” to become more palpable to ever-present grace.}

^{Let us be faithful to the Catholic, Apostolic Truth and compassionate to all the seekers after God. The Gospel truth is founded on love:}

^{I give you a new commandment: Love one another (the Gospel Reading).}

^{Let our celebration of the Holy Eucharist be our surrender to the mystery of the Triune Relationship of Love which is God, palpable in Christ and quite plausible when faith illumines reason.}

Fifth Sunday of Lent

April 6, 2025

Readings: Isaiah 43.16-21; Philippians 3.8-14; John 8.1-11

Contemplative life cannot exist unless our memory is infused with the supernatural virtue of hope. Hope resides, for the most part, in our memory which is our knowledge bank. In the middle of the experience held in the memory, hope enables us to be open to that which is beyond all experience. Hope offers an expectancy which is beyond the limits of our experience. Christian hope is a night to our memory, but hope is also a light that glows from faith and leads to love. St. John of the Cross writes that faith and hope are two wings for love which bears us into God.

In the First Reading from Isaiah the Lord God clearly teaches that hope empowers memory to go beyond itself: Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

The Reading is telling God’s people that the exodus was a marvelous miracle of liberation. Now the prophet is saying that there is something beyond even the exodus of God’s people. The newness that is to come is the formation of a new people redeemed by God, beyond the national confines of Israel, a fuller and universal sign of the redemption of the whole human family: The people whom I formed for myself, that they might announce my praise.

What is beyond Israel's common experience of the liberation? All humanity must be the recipients of this newer, more profound liberation. Christ Jesus conquers death, humanity’s great enemy. The Resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection in Him are the realities of faith and the power of our hope.

We all have witnessed the wrenching pain of death and the vast violence inflicted upon individuals and groups. We have not witnessed their resurrection in Christ. We have not witnessed with our eyes this resurrection and therefore, our memories do not contain that invisible reality. Faith brings the Mystery to our understanding; hope anchors us in the certainty of resurrection for us as it has been the culminating reality of Jesus. Faith brings an understanding beyond the power of reason; hope brings an experience of that which is beyond memory experience; divine love infused in the soul makes it all a reality and a living knowledge. It is a flame that burns within the contemplative heart. Love cannot burn if there is not the oxygen of hope.

The Second Reading brings us further into the qualities of the virtue of hope as the substance of our contemplative life. Contemplative hope is based on the experience of Christ:

Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which through faith in
Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

The Gospel Reading brings us away from theological concepts to look at individuals who are caught up in the turmoil of religious conscience and capital punishment. A woman who has been caught in the act of adultery lies condemned at the feet of Jesus. Where is her hope? Is her heart a barren waste devoid of the sense of God? And what goes on in the hearts of the religious people who wish to stone her as a means of catching and thus of diminishing His popularity? They live in the shrunken confines of religious formulas. She lives in the shackles of her sin.

Jesus liberates her and offers liberation to the religious persons gathered around her. Jesus gives her the hope of a new life. Her new life is founded on the grace of Jesus along with her resolution to cooperate with grace. She needs the power to sin no more. Jesus DOES NOT SAY: This is not a sin; it’s only you self-expression. Jesus brings liberation through grace and also through a moral code that reflects the nature He created as the Word with the Father. Do what is natural which is obedience to the will of God even to the point of dying to self.

What was lacking in the religious people who were antagonistic to Jesus was their lack of the sense of hope. They had a sense of moral obligation. That is part of it. Jesus is not taking away the commandments that flow from our very nature as creatures of God. Jesus is giving hope to us as fallen creatures, prone to selfishness. Jesus offers the hope of forgiveness, the hope of a new life in His Spirit. True religion requires hope; we must always go beyond what we experience in our religious life. The treasures of God’s possibilities are never exhausted. Even in sin, weakness and death, God brings the power of Christ’s resurrection.

The power of change is founded on Christ’s grace and on the power of hope. I hope in the resurrection of Christ to bring me all that I need to conquer my sin and my addiction to my own selfishness.

The Lenten liturgy has patiently brought us along to this Sunday of hope and forgiveness. We are like the woman caught in adultery. We are all caught in the adultery of our infidelity to God and His law written into our natures. More deeply, by our sins we are unfaithful in our fleeing from the presence of the Holy Spirit within our soul.

The contemplative practice is to remain peaceful and forgiven at the feet of Jesus.
It also requires more. The fruit of deep consciousness of that union with Christ must bring us into loving relationship with others. We must bear the burdens of one another; wash one another’s feet. It is in the Eucharist that we are principally caught up into this Mystery, our oneness with Christ.

William Fredrickson, OblS,OSB; D.Min.