May 13, 2012
We Give Authority Carefully
Thoughts on the First Readings – Joe Frankenfield
6th Sunday of Easter
Acts10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48

There is a prized item that most authorities would like in their box of tools: the perception, if not of divinity itself, at least of a divine ambassadorship. When I am speaking, God is speaking is a powerful warrant. Parents, princes and popes would all like such clout.

Claims to speak for the Divinity can’t be effectively asserted, however, they can only be granted. Parent, pope or king can give every imaginable reason why he should be viewed as infallibly expressing God’s will but only those who judge his claim reasonable and beneficial will grant him authority.

Social or physical strength may give a person who claims authority great power to enforce his will but it gives him no authority. One who forces others to do his will without communicating to them a truth which they recognize is a tyrant, not an authority.

But, some say, God gives authority. God always has power but God has no authority that is not recognized by creatures. It is astounding to realize that our Creator respects that. Even God’s authority exists within a relationship of freedom.

The point of this observation is not to change the attitudes of those who claim authority. The point is to examine our attitude towards authority.

Our choices of those who possess power over us are limited. Every school child learns that on the playground. Our choices about authority in our lives, however, are another matter entirely.

No one who believes in Jesus’ God questions God’s authority. That authority is first of all and ultimately rooted in the perception that God loves us. The authority of anyone who would speak for God depends on whether she or he reflects God’s love for us.

I judge your authority to be true because I judge you to be loving is the key equation we must make. If we find ourselves troubled at those who claim authority, it’s most likely because we simply do not experience that simple truth with them. If that’s so, we do well to be wary.

May 6, 2012
The Courage To Love
Thoughts on the First Readings -Joe Frankenfield
5th Sunday of Easter
Acts of the Apostles 9:26-31

“I’m afraid; I’m simply afraid.” That’s how the young man summed up his feelings towards his girlfriend. “I like her. She’s a good person and lots of fun and we get along great. I just don’t know where she’s – where the whole thing is taking me and it scares me.”

I never found out how their relationship turned out. That’s campus ministry: a library of stories whose endings you never learn. Still, this one had a common but always important theme: fear.

If the core of Jesus’ revelation about God is the absolute love God has for every person, the biggest obstacle to experiencing as well as sharing that love is fear.

Why would the Creator of everything love me? What do I have to offer in return for love? What will love demand of me? Like the young man fearful of the demands his friend’s love might make on him, we all seem to have a fear of love – not just God’s love but of anyone’s love.

A long-married parishioner discussing how he and his wife had overcome their self-centeredness once told me, “We loved each other’s fears away. I don’t know exactly how. I think sometimes we just couldn’t do anything else.”

Thinking about his words many times, I realized that he was explaining something central not only to human relationships but at the core of God’s relationship with us as we’ve come to know it in Jesus. In Jesus, God loved or fears away.

When God loves away our fears, we’re freed to love away the fears of those around us. That’s when things begin to change. That’s when we begin to experience the world Jesus promised.

I often remember that elderly husband’s wisdom when I read of Jesus urging his disciples to forgive one another and enemies just as God forgives them.

April 29, 2012
We Give As God Gives
Thoughts on the First Readings – Joe Frankenfield
4th Sunday of Easter
Acts of the Apostles 4:8-12

“I don’t need your advice. I don’t need your criticism. I need your support and your help. If you can’t give me those, please leave.” The father of a disabled son spoke those words in a radio interview he gave about his friends’ reactions to his situation. His words struck me because they echoed those I’d heard a few weeks earlier from the political leader of a small, struggling nation.

Giving advice and criticism is easier than rolling up our sleeves and pitching in. Giving advice and criticism keeps us superior to the one in trouble. Wrestling directly with another’s problem means making the problem our own and experiencing our own weakness in its presence.

Too often our world asks us Christians for help only to receive advice and criticism instead. Standing outside of its pain we offer, “Let us explain to you why you are suffering. Let us tell you how you should have avoided your difficulty. We have the answers if you would simply listen to us.”

Too often, as well, our answers are based in ignorance. Too often they serve to justify our assumptions rather than lighten others’ burdens. Too often those in need tolerate our presumptuousness to obtain whatever benefit they can. They damp the flames of their resentment for a later time.

To give in the Spirit of Jesus is to give without strings. To help in the Spirit of Jesus is to enter into another’s problem so deeply that we live it from the perspective of the one seeking our aid.

If we understand Jesus as a human being who was God’s presence rather than God acting as though he were human, we know that he didn’t intervene as an outsider. From within the community he worked with and encouraged people to accomplish what, with God, they were capable of.

Jesus was never made himself better than we are. He was one of us in the struggle for the life God promises. That’s what the world asks of us.

April 22, 2012
Faith Lives Within History
Thoughts on the First Readings -Joe Frankenfield
3rd Sunday of Easter
Acts of the Apostles 3:13-15, 17-19

Recently a friend told me of a kindness that the members of his family had performed for an acquaintance. “We did it because it was the kind of thing that our parents did and, so the story goes, their parents before them. I guess. It’s just who we are.”

Folks care about what their ancestors have done, not simply out of historical curiosity but because their ancestors form the foundations of their lives. Each builds on the efforts of those who preceded them. To value one’s ancestors is to value one’s self and one’s future.

When Matthew and Luke told the story of Jesus, they began by placing him within his ancestral past. Name after name, century after century they recounted those who made Jesus possible until, nourished by the dreams, faith and work of countless progenitors, he revealed God’s promise of human triumph.

Just as we do, Jesus stood on the shoulders of those who went before him. His promise was the fulfillment of the future they had longed for.

One of the pluses of belonging to a faith tradition is that it constantly reminds us that others have given us faith and that we hold it in trust for those who will follow. The work of faith is inseparable from the work of human history. It’s not about our private lives. Faith’s focus is the common advancement of humanity from its present widespread suffering and injustice to its inheritance of peace and dignity.

It would be nice if our family of faith consisted of perfect people orderly processing into a glowing future. Alas, the old saw, family: you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them, applies as much to the Church as to any other group.

It helps to remember that, without a doubt, we are someone else’s frustration just as certainly as they are ours. Anyone who thinks the journey to God’s Kingdom is smooth and harmonious has been breathing too much incense.

God creates the universe to evolve. The Spirit lives in the dream that drives the process. As much as we complain about Church society, as we do as well about our political and social societies, it’s where we’re challenged, sometimes gently sometimes harshly to become the people we can be.

April 15, 2012
Wherever We Are, We All Teach
Thoughts on the First Readings -Joe Frankenfield
2nd Sunday of Easter
Acts of the Apostles 4:32-35

One result of the current debacle facing Catholic teaching authority is the serious lessening of its power to present the core Catholic vision in a way others find believable.

At the heart of our understanding of God, ourselves, salvation and human destiny is the communal nature of life. In Catholic understanding, there is no survival, let alone fulfillment of the individual outside of the community. There isn’t any hope for the community that does not include the dignity and fulfillment of the individual. The economic, social and legal behavior of our society makes it obvious that, regardless of the fine speeches we make about our union, we’ve not embraced this perspective.

If the law doesn’t stop me from getting or doing it, I have a right to it is a common attitude. To one who’s absorbed the Spirit of Jesus this understanding is unworkable and destructive.

Is it any business of religion? Yes. The foundational importance of community to life is a tenet of our faith. If we are committed to our faith, we are committed to the health of the community – the entire community. It’s not a doctrine to believe; it’s a love to share.

We must work for a healthy community and we must speak about a healthy community. We must make the community’s welfare the touchstone of our behavior. We promote the common good in every way we can – by explaining, by convincing, by encouraging, most of all, by modeling our commitment to it.

But some would say it’s not my job as a layperson to influence public opinion or policy. That’s the work of the bishops and cardinals. They testify before congressional hearings. They give speeches. They hold the press conferences.

In America today, the most trusted and powerful voice for our faith, the most valued source for Jesus’ values is the honest, down-to-earth neighbor next door. It’s the reliable person in the next office. It’s the car-pooling dad and the school volunteer mom. It’s the friendly clerk at the store.

You are the voice of the Church today. Don’t be silent.