Jesus prays that we might know him – Luke 9:18-24, Zech 12:10-13:1

Sunday, Ordinary Time, Yr C, Wk 12; Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Notre Dame)

Have you ever wondered what Jesus was praying about when he was praying alone?  It’s an important truth of our faith that Jesus truly was praying, not just play-acting or talking to himself.  The Son can truly pray to the Father, because while both are fully God, our God is one God in three persons.  The “spirit of petition” that the prophet Zechariah promised would be poured out on all people truly dwelled with Jesus, and flowed from him to us, enlivening us to pray just as he prayed. But what was he praying?  I’d always written off my curiosity about these moments as something to get past, maybe as a prompt for me to pray for greater humility (not everything is mine to know), but praying with and studying this passage from Luke’s gospel over the past week it occurred to me that while the text doesn’t quite come out and tell us, it lets us make more than a guess as to at least part of what Jesus might have been praying about: Jesus prayed that Peter might know who he is.

Upcoming conference presentation

If you liking reading things here, and you happen to be in or around San Antonio in November, you might also enjoy hearing me speak in a more academic conference.  Program book link (search on my last name; I don't know how to link to the results of a search).

Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
11/19/2016 1:00 PM

“A death like his:” Saul’s privation and restoration of sight as formation for the Christian super-prophet in Acts 9

(abstract below the cut)

God frees us for extravagant love – Luke 7:36-50, 2 Sam 12:7-13, Gal 2:16-21

Ordinary Time C, Wk 11; Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Notre Dame)

We grow up learning how to make deals.  We know that if we eat all of our Brussel sprouts, we might get ice cream, if we share we might get more toys, or (somewhat paradoxically) if we tidy our rooms, we might not get sent to them so soon.  Deals certainly have their place, but I hope they stay in their place.  A lot of us here are students and/or teachers, many of you here for summer school.  The fast pace of summer instruction can lead to the temptation to reduce education to a series of deals: the teacher agrees to impart certain information, the student agrees to regurgitate it, the teacher agrees to give a grade based on how accurately that regurgitation occurs.  Deals have their place, but I hope we’re all open to something more than that happening in our classrooms: something more relational, more transformative, more loving.  And I certainly hope we’re open to that in our walk with God.

God brings us to share the glory of love – John 16:12-15, Prov 8:22-31, Rom 5:1-15 (Trinity)

Trinity Sunday, Year C -- Notre Dame (Basilica of the Sacred Heart)

Before I entered seminary, I was a math teacher, which makes me wonder if that’s why they asked me to preach here on Trinity Sunday.  But, no amount of mathematical trickery can magically make ‘sense’ of the 3-in-1, because the Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved, but someone to adore.  We’re not here to ‘make sense’ of the Trinity, because sense is fundamentally the wrong thing to try to make out of Love.  Love is the thing to make out of Love: wonder, love, awe, praise and adoration.  When we confess God as Trinity, we are confessing the simple, delightful, death-dying truth that God is Love, and to do so grateful to theologians who have loved this God, drawn close to this God in prayer, and given us words to help us approach the awesome mystery.

Jesus dwells with us ever more openly – John 14:23-29, Rev 21:10-14, 22-23

Easter, Year C, Week 6; FWSB TV Mass for the homebound and incarcerated.

I used to be really jealous of the people who had known Jesus during his earthly ministry; the zeroth generation of disciples, if you like.  The fact that they got to walk and talk with Jesus, to converse, to eat, to hunger… to interact with him in the same way as we interact when presented with any other regular living human.  But, as time has gone on, I’ve become more and more appreciative of living in this time, the time of the first, second, third… whatever number generation we’re on of being disciples, the time of the church. 

Jesus renews our love – John 121:31-35, Rev 21:1-5a

5th Sunday of Easter, Yr C; St. Mary's Convent / ND (Farley).

“Don’t let them in, don’t let them see / Be the good girl you always have to be. // Conceal, don’t feel, put on a show / Make one wrong move and everyone will know.”  So sings Queen Elsa, hiding behind her locked bedroom door out of fear, early on in Disney’s Frozen.  Scared of opening the door, of ungloving a hand; scared of loving.  And she’s already virtuous enough that she’s not scared of getting hurt, but she’s scared of hurting others, so she maintains her voluntary imprisonment as long as she can.

Jesus gives us the gift of being givers – John 21:1-14, Rev 5:11-14

Easter, Week 3 (Year C); Notre Dame (Keenan / Howard)

When I was in my first semester of the MDiv degree here at Notre Dame, I was rather surprised to get an email from one of our professors asking, “Can I keep a copy of this paper?”  It was a class in which we had to write a bunch of short papers over the semester, and after turning in about half of them, she would contact me to ask if she could keep a copy.  At first I thought it was a little strange, mainly because I didn’t really see why she felt the need to ask, but also because these weren’t papers that had really contained a lot of original research on my part, I’m sure I hadn’t told her something she didn’t already know in them, they were really just processing and reflecting on the readings that she had already given us.  But, then I remembered she was a scholar and a teacher.  She had chosen to dedicate her life to theological scholarship because she loved to read good theological writing, and apparently, I was producing something at least approaching that.  And, as a teacher, she needed to teach me that I was doing that, and asking permission to keep a copy of something she had a right to anyway, something that I could only have produced with her help and at her command; that was how she went about that.  In her deigning to receive my work as a gift, she nourished my scholarly zeal.  In deigning to receive my work as a gift, she gave me a gift in addition to the teaching she had already given; she gave me the gift of being a giver.