Genesis 9.8-15
Psalm 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Resp. 10
1 Peter 3.18-22
Mark 1.12-15
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? We’re told that rainbows are merely illusions, light refracted into its constituent parts by water droplets, but people do not write songs or poems or myths about light refracted by water droplets. They write songs and poems and myths about rainbows.
This attempt to deconstruct the rainbow, to explain it away, is a danger in our modern scientific world. The danger is that we see through everything and soon there is nothing to look at anymore. “The rainbow is merely refracted light. Rainbows are only illusions.” No. It is not only or merely anything. It is a gigantic stripe of every color that goes from one side of the sky to the other. If a person sees through a rainbow, then they no longer see the rainbow. Someone who can look at a rainbow and not see a rainbow is blind.
This problem of seeing through is particularly a modern problem, but humans have always suffered from this blindness. St. Peter writes in the second reading today that baptism is not merely the removal of dirt from the body. Somebody might see a baptism and say, “That’s it? That’s all? Just a little water, a quick bath?” They have seen through the baptism, so they cannot see the baptism. They cannot see a person saved through water and the Holy Spirit.
Is love merely a chemical reaction in the brain? No. There may be such a reaction, but it is not the essence of love. If you want to know about love, ask someone who has loved, not a neuroscientist. Is the Mass merely a lot of unnecessary words and rituals? Is the Eucharist just bread and wine? If you want the truth, you cannot ask someone who has seen through it all. You need someone who has seen the truth, the ineffable, wonderful, amazing truth.
That is Jesus in our Gospel today. He went out into the wilderness to fast for 40 days, the first Lent, and he came back with a vision for the people of Galilee: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” Jesus could see what we blind people miss. He constantly prayed and fasted. He is God, of course, and knows the Father and the Holy Spirit perfectly, but he also made certain that his human nature was able to see what we look right through. In fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, Jesus brought his human nature into right relationship with God.
Perhaps it is clearer how the other two practices of Lent relate to our relationship with God. If we want to be close to God, obviously we should pray, talking to him and listening to him. And almsgiving means serving the people he created. If I love God, I will pray and help others. These two are clearly important, but perhaps it is less obvious that if I love God I will not eat meat or give up desserts.
But fasting is the tool by which we are able to see the reality of the symbols. Like when we look at a drop of water through a microscope and see all sorts of living creatures swimming around that were invisible before, or we look at the sky through a telescope and see planets and stars and galaxies where there seemed to be nothing, if we are going to see to the reality of things, we need a tool; not a telescope or microscope but something else. That something else is fasting, and it is so very essential to the Christian life. How does fasting allow us to start seeing new things? It is not that if we fast long enough we will eventually start hallucinating. There are people who do that in other religions, but that is not the goal of Christian fasting. The good effects of fasting last even after you begin eating normally again.
For us, fasting is based on a hunger that is present in every human soul. Atheist or Christian or whatever religion, the hunger is present because God put it there when he created us. We experience hunger pangs of this spiritual hunger. It is painful to have a desire that cannot be filled. So we try to answer the hunger with various things: food, entertainment, alcohol, whatever. This hunger is why we eat too much. This hunger is why people get drunk. This hunger is why people jump out of airplanes and ride rollercoasters. This hunger goes under many names, but above all it is called Boredom. O wonderful boredom, the realization that I am not satisfied with what this world has to offer!
If we sit on the couch with a bag of potato chips, watching TV, we might quiet this hunger for a little while, but not very long. If a starving person cannot get food, perhaps they will chew on gum or something else to pass the time, but, when they have food, they will throw away the gum and begin to eat. So also, when we get to heaven and live in the presence of God, we will throw away whatever we have used to quiet our longing for God here on earth. But what if the hungry person forgot that hunger was for food and kept chewing gum when there was food available? Or what if a person forgets that the longing of their soul is for God and tries to find their happiness in the trifles of this earth? We must fast so that we do not forget what we really want, so that we do not forget what the longing is really for.
As we fast this Lent and rediscover our longing for God, we must be careful not to find a substitute for what we have given up. Particularly if you have given up television or the internet, you may find that you have literally hours of extra time each day. Now is not the time to become an avid reader of novels. Use the time for the other Lenten practices: prayer and almsgiving. Help those in need. Read the Scriptures. Spend some time in Adoration. If our fast is the kind of fast that God loves, it will turn us outward to God and to our neighbor.
Then, we will be able to see. A person who has not spent time fasting cannot see the love of God, but we can. We will look at rainbows and see a promise given thousands of years ago. We will look at the Eucharist and see the Body and Blood and Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we imitate Jesus this lent and fast for 40 days, we will begin to feel something. When our hearts are burning because we refuse to settle for anything less than God, when our whole bodies are on fire with desire, then we will walk around with our eyes wide open, then we will be able to see.
Daily Homilies
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
March 29, 2012 - Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Today's Readings
Quantum physics teaches that certain events are uncertain until observed. This is most easily described with the case of Schrödinger’s cat, an experiment to bring the uncertainty of quantum physics into our everyday experience. He designed a box, inside of which there is a cat and a poison that may or may not be released, depending upon an atomic event. Quantum physics says that, until someone looks inside the box, the cat is in some sense both dead and alive, it is not definite until you see it. Schrödinger’s cat leads to all sorts of scientific and philosophical questions, among which is whether we could pray for the cat before opening the box, since we cannot pray for a dead cat.
Jesus tells us today: “before Abraham came to be, I AM.” At first, this sounds like bad grammar, but it is actually just very careful grammar. “Before Abraham came to be” refers to an actual period of time. Jesus is saying, about this period of time, not “I was” but “I AM.” He is not saying that he existed back then. He is saying that he is existing back then. As Jesus stands talking with the Jews, he is also back before Abraham existed, he is also right here, right now in this church. For God, the creation of the world and the end of the world are all at once. This phrase, “all at once”, is a very good phrase for understanding God’s perspective. He sees all at once. He lives all at once. He exists all at once.
So we can pray for the cat. When we pray, our prayers go outside of time to God, who can put them back into time whenever they are needed. Take the Titanic as an example. We cannot pray that the ship will not sink, since we know that it did, but we can pray for the people on the ship, since we do not know what happened to each of them, and our prayers will be effective. Consider the case of suicide. When a person commits suicide, there is a critical moment, after they have killed themselves, before they die, when they need to repent and be reconciled to God. St. John Vianney once told a woman who came to him in confession about her husband, who had committed suicide, “Between the bridge and the water, he prayed a Hail Mary. He is in Purgatory now. Pray for him.” Where there is uncertainty, there is the possibility of prayer. Our prayers right now can affect a critical moment at any time in the past, because they travel from us through God, who is outside of time. If there is something you want to pray for, find the uncertainty and do not be afraid to pray.
Quantum physics teaches that certain events are uncertain until observed. This is most easily described with the case of Schrödinger’s cat, an experiment to bring the uncertainty of quantum physics into our everyday experience. He designed a box, inside of which there is a cat and a poison that may or may not be released, depending upon an atomic event. Quantum physics says that, until someone looks inside the box, the cat is in some sense both dead and alive, it is not definite until you see it. Schrödinger’s cat leads to all sorts of scientific and philosophical questions, among which is whether we could pray for the cat before opening the box, since we cannot pray for a dead cat.
Jesus tells us today: “before Abraham came to be, I AM.” At first, this sounds like bad grammar, but it is actually just very careful grammar. “Before Abraham came to be” refers to an actual period of time. Jesus is saying, about this period of time, not “I was” but “I AM.” He is not saying that he existed back then. He is saying that he is existing back then. As Jesus stands talking with the Jews, he is also back before Abraham existed, he is also right here, right now in this church. For God, the creation of the world and the end of the world are all at once. This phrase, “all at once”, is a very good phrase for understanding God’s perspective. He sees all at once. He lives all at once. He exists all at once.
So we can pray for the cat. When we pray, our prayers go outside of time to God, who can put them back into time whenever they are needed. Take the Titanic as an example. We cannot pray that the ship will not sink, since we know that it did, but we can pray for the people on the ship, since we do not know what happened to each of them, and our prayers will be effective. Consider the case of suicide. When a person commits suicide, there is a critical moment, after they have killed themselves, before they die, when they need to repent and be reconciled to God. St. John Vianney once told a woman who came to him in confession about her husband, who had committed suicide, “Between the bridge and the water, he prayed a Hail Mary. He is in Purgatory now. Pray for him.” Where there is uncertainty, there is the possibility of prayer. Our prayers right now can affect a critical moment at any time in the past, because they travel from us through God, who is outside of time. If there is something you want to pray for, find the uncertainty and do not be afraid to pray.
February 26, 2012 - First Sunday of Lent
Today's Readings
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? We’ve been told that rainbows are merely illusions, light refracted into its constituent parts by water droplets, but people do not write songs or poems or myths about light refracted by water droplets. They write songs and poems and myths about rainbows.
This attempt to deconstruct the rainbow, to explain it away is a danger in our modern scientific world. The danger is that we see through everything and soon there is nothing to look at anymore. “The rainbow is only refracted light. The rainbow is merely an optical illusion.” No. It is not only or merely anything. It is a gigantic stripe of every color that goes from one side of the sky to the other. If a person sees through a rainbow, then they no longer see the rainbow. Someone who can look at a rainbow and not see a rainbow is blind.
This problem of seeing through is particularly a modern problem, but humans have always suffered from this blindness. St. Peter writes in the second reading today that baptism is not merely the removal of dirt from the body. Somebody might see a baptism and say, “That’s it? That’s all? Just a little water, a quick bath?” They have seen through the baptism, so they cannot see the baptism. They cannot see a person saved through water and the Holy Spirit.
Is love merely a chemical reaction in the brain? No. There may be such a reaction, but it is not the essence of love. If you want to know about love, ask someone who has loved, not a neuroscientist. Is the Mass merely a lot of unnecessary words and rituals? Is the Eucharist just bread and wine? If you want the truth, you cannot ask someone who has seen through it all. You need someone who has seen the truth, the ineffable, wonderful, amazing truth.
That is Jesus in our Gospel today. He went out into the wilderness to fast for 40 days, the first Lent, and he came back with a vision for the people of Galilee: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” Jesus could see what we blind people miss. He constantly prayed and fasted. He is God, of course, and knows the Father and the Holy Spirit perfectly, but he also made certain that his human nature was able to see what we look right through. In fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, Jesus brought his human nature into right relationship with God.
Perhaps it is clearer how the other two practices of Lent relate to our relationship with God. If we want to be close to God, obviously we should pray, talking to him and listening to him. And almsgiving means serving the people he created. If I love God, I will pray and help others. These two are clearly important, but perhaps it is less obvious that if I love God I will not eat meat or give up desserts.
But fasting is the tool by which we are able to see the reality of the symbols. Like when we look at a drop of water through a microscope and see all sorts of living creatures swimming around that were invisible before, or we look at the sky through a telescope and see planets and stars and galaxies where there seemed to be nothing, if we are going to see to the reality of things, we need a tool; not a telescope or microscope but something else. That something else is fasting, and it is so very essential to the Christian life.
How is it that fasting allow us to start seeing things? It is not that if we fast long enough we will eventually start hallucinating. There are people who do that in other religions, but that is not the goal of Christian fasting. We know this because the good effects of fasting last even after you begin eating normally again.
For us, fasting is based on a hunger that is present in every human soul. Atheist or Christian or whatever religion, the hunger is present because God put it there when he created us. We experience hunger pangs of this spiritual hunger. It is painful to have a desire that cannot be filled. So we try to answer the hunger with various things: food, entertainment, alcohol, whatever. This hunger is why we eat too much. This hunger is why people get drunk. This hunger is why people jump out of airplanes and ride rollercoasters. This hunger goes under many names, but above all it is called Boredom. O wonderful boredom, the realization that I am not satisfied with what this world has to offer!
If we sit on the couch with a bag of potato chips, watching TV, we might quiet this hunger for a little while, but not very long. If a starving person cannot get food, perhaps they will chew on gum or something else to pass the time, but, when they have food, they will throw away the gum and begin to eat. So we also, when we get to heaven and live in the presence of God, will throw away whatever we have used to quiet our longing for God here on earth. Here and now it is painful to throw these things away. We must force ourselves to fast so that we do not forget what we really want, so that we do not forget what the longing is really for.
As we fast this Lent and rediscover our longing for God, we must be careful not to find a substitute for what we have given up. Particularly if you have given up television or the internet, you may find that you have literally hours of extra time each day. Now is not the time to become an avid reader of novels. Use the time for the other Lenten practices: prayer and almsgiving. Help those in need. Read the Scriptures. Spend some time in Adoration. If our fast is the kind of fast that God loves, it will turn us outward to God and to our neighbor.
Then, we will be able to see. A person who has not spent time fasting cannot see the love of God, but we can. We will look at rainbows and see a promise given thousands of years ago. We will look at the Eucharist and see the Body and Blood and Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we imitate Jesus this lent and fast for 40 days, we will begin to feel something. When our hearts are burning because we refuse to settle for anything less than God, when our whole bodies are on fire with desire, then we will walk around with our eyes wide open, then we will be able to see.
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? We’ve been told that rainbows are merely illusions, light refracted into its constituent parts by water droplets, but people do not write songs or poems or myths about light refracted by water droplets. They write songs and poems and myths about rainbows.
This attempt to deconstruct the rainbow, to explain it away is a danger in our modern scientific world. The danger is that we see through everything and soon there is nothing to look at anymore. “The rainbow is only refracted light. The rainbow is merely an optical illusion.” No. It is not only or merely anything. It is a gigantic stripe of every color that goes from one side of the sky to the other. If a person sees through a rainbow, then they no longer see the rainbow. Someone who can look at a rainbow and not see a rainbow is blind.
This problem of seeing through is particularly a modern problem, but humans have always suffered from this blindness. St. Peter writes in the second reading today that baptism is not merely the removal of dirt from the body. Somebody might see a baptism and say, “That’s it? That’s all? Just a little water, a quick bath?” They have seen through the baptism, so they cannot see the baptism. They cannot see a person saved through water and the Holy Spirit.
Is love merely a chemical reaction in the brain? No. There may be such a reaction, but it is not the essence of love. If you want to know about love, ask someone who has loved, not a neuroscientist. Is the Mass merely a lot of unnecessary words and rituals? Is the Eucharist just bread and wine? If you want the truth, you cannot ask someone who has seen through it all. You need someone who has seen the truth, the ineffable, wonderful, amazing truth.
That is Jesus in our Gospel today. He went out into the wilderness to fast for 40 days, the first Lent, and he came back with a vision for the people of Galilee: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” Jesus could see what we blind people miss. He constantly prayed and fasted. He is God, of course, and knows the Father and the Holy Spirit perfectly, but he also made certain that his human nature was able to see what we look right through. In fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, Jesus brought his human nature into right relationship with God.
Perhaps it is clearer how the other two practices of Lent relate to our relationship with God. If we want to be close to God, obviously we should pray, talking to him and listening to him. And almsgiving means serving the people he created. If I love God, I will pray and help others. These two are clearly important, but perhaps it is less obvious that if I love God I will not eat meat or give up desserts.
But fasting is the tool by which we are able to see the reality of the symbols. Like when we look at a drop of water through a microscope and see all sorts of living creatures swimming around that were invisible before, or we look at the sky through a telescope and see planets and stars and galaxies where there seemed to be nothing, if we are going to see to the reality of things, we need a tool; not a telescope or microscope but something else. That something else is fasting, and it is so very essential to the Christian life.
How is it that fasting allow us to start seeing things? It is not that if we fast long enough we will eventually start hallucinating. There are people who do that in other religions, but that is not the goal of Christian fasting. We know this because the good effects of fasting last even after you begin eating normally again.
For us, fasting is based on a hunger that is present in every human soul. Atheist or Christian or whatever religion, the hunger is present because God put it there when he created us. We experience hunger pangs of this spiritual hunger. It is painful to have a desire that cannot be filled. So we try to answer the hunger with various things: food, entertainment, alcohol, whatever. This hunger is why we eat too much. This hunger is why people get drunk. This hunger is why people jump out of airplanes and ride rollercoasters. This hunger goes under many names, but above all it is called Boredom. O wonderful boredom, the realization that I am not satisfied with what this world has to offer!
If we sit on the couch with a bag of potato chips, watching TV, we might quiet this hunger for a little while, but not very long. If a starving person cannot get food, perhaps they will chew on gum or something else to pass the time, but, when they have food, they will throw away the gum and begin to eat. So we also, when we get to heaven and live in the presence of God, will throw away whatever we have used to quiet our longing for God here on earth. Here and now it is painful to throw these things away. We must force ourselves to fast so that we do not forget what we really want, so that we do not forget what the longing is really for.
As we fast this Lent and rediscover our longing for God, we must be careful not to find a substitute for what we have given up. Particularly if you have given up television or the internet, you may find that you have literally hours of extra time each day. Now is not the time to become an avid reader of novels. Use the time for the other Lenten practices: prayer and almsgiving. Help those in need. Read the Scriptures. Spend some time in Adoration. If our fast is the kind of fast that God loves, it will turn us outward to God and to our neighbor.
Then, we will be able to see. A person who has not spent time fasting cannot see the love of God, but we can. We will look at rainbows and see a promise given thousands of years ago. We will look at the Eucharist and see the Body and Blood and Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we imitate Jesus this lent and fast for 40 days, we will begin to feel something. When our hearts are burning because we refuse to settle for anything less than God, when our whole bodies are on fire with desire, then we will walk around with our eyes wide open, then we will be able to see.
July 10, 2011 - Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today's Readings
Is it not a little too convenient how Jesus has such perfect parables? He always seems to find the exact metaphor he needs in nature. When we use analogies, they only go so far; eventually our analogies break down, but not Jesus! The truth of his analogies goes all the way from the surface similarities to deep wisdom. The further we consider them, the more we see.
Of course, he kind of cheated. We have to take the world as a given and then try to make an analogy, whereas his analogies preceded the world. When Jesus says that the word of God is like a seed which is sown in a field, we should remember that he is the one who invented the idea of seeds. The analogy is not really his words but the seeds themselves.
When we consider creation, we probably think of the universe first, then the earth, then the plants and animals, last we see humanity living among the rest. As if God made the whole universe and everything in it and then, as an afterthought, created humans. That is the order things were made in, even according to Genesis, but the order things happen in time is not the same as the order of intention.
Intention is a very important concept. We all understand it; it is basic to getting through life. If you see someone go get out some bread and peanut butter and put the peanut butter on the bread and then put the other piece of bread on top and then eat it, you would say that their intention, the whole time, was to eat a peanut butter sandwich, even though that is the last thing they did. If you did not understand intention, you would think that they got the bread and peanut butter for no particular reason, spread the peanut butter on the bread for no particular reason, put the other piece of bread on top for no particular reason, and then noticed that they had a peanut butter sandwich and decided to eat it.
Everything we do can be traced to intention. When you woke up this morning, you would never have gotten out of bed unless you had some reason to do so. Yet when we think of God and the creation of the universe, we tend to be very simplistic and imagine that what exists exists for no particular reason. Every scientific discovery reveals to us the mind of God. All life depends on water, and we happen to live on a planet covered in water. This is not a coincidence.
If we think of creation with respect to intention, we think first of humans. We do not even need to think specifically what kind of bodies the humans will have, just that there are humans. Next we think about what kind of universe should be created for them to live in? Should it be big or small? Should they breathe air? Should they drink water? Do they need to eat? Should they live underwater? Should there be other animals?
God had to answer all these questions and a trillion more when he created us, and his answers were not chosen at random. Every single part of creation, from duck-billed platypodes to the law of gravity was designed for us. All the stars in the sky, so far away that we could never visit them between now and the end of the world, each one millions of times larger than our planet, exist, in part, so that we have a beautiful sky to look at each night.
The universe proclaims the glory of God and the earth reveals the work of his hands. Day after day takes up this story, and night after night make known this message. No speech, no word, no voice is heard, yet the message extends through all the earth, up to the very border of the universe. And what is this message? First of all the universe is saying, “God made us”, but each part is also telling us some idea that God wanted to get across. The Bible is God’s word expressed through human authors. All of creation is God’s word expressed directly. The languages of the Bible are Hebrew and Greek. The languages of creation are seeds growing into plants, water falling from the sky, lions roaring, birds singing, stars burning, and rocks holding steady under our feet.
So when God says, in our first reading, “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be”, he is telling us that when he invented rain, and the whole water cycle, he meant it as a symbol for us about how grace comes down from heaven, does its work here, and then goes back up to heaven.
So when Jesus says, in our Gospel, that the preached Word of God is like a farmer planting grain, he is telling us that when he invented seeds and decided that that is where food would come from and how they would grow into plants and how they need proper soil and growing conditions, he meant it all as a symbol for us about how we need to be good soil so that the Word of God can grow in us into a plant with strong roots and lots of fruit.
Creation looks different when we look at it and try to see the intention of God. All of creation stands open like a book. It is a symbol of God’s plan for us. It is a symbol in its entirety and in every tiny part. In this way, science is ultimately a religious act. When the first Russian cosmonaut went up into space, he announced, laughing, that he did not find God up there, which was unfortunate, since he could have. Every scientist who comes to their work with faith in God, can find God in whatever subject they are studying, whether protons or protists.
“All creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God”, because all creation exists for the sake of those children of God. Fourteen billion years of creation come down to this moment. All of creation is like a mother, St. Paul tells us, and the fourteen billion years are like the pregnancy. Now we have reached the moment of labor pains, and soon she will give birth, not to one person but to all those who will live forever in heaven.
The reason for the existence of the universe is to produce the children of God, and we human beings alone in all the universe can choose whether to cooperate in that task, since it we who are, potentially, going to be the children of God. The rest of creation praises and reveals God naturally, but the children are free to do as they please. We can either take our place in this symphony and be born at the end of time into eternal life, so that this life is only to us then what our time in our mother’s womb is to us now, or not.
We also have the option to become so obsessed with the pleasures of this life and the goals of this life that we forget the point of this life. The universe will go on toward God’s intention; the children of God will be born according to plan, but we will be left behind, turned in on ourselves, like a person making a sandwich who gets obsessed with spreading the peanut butter and never gets around to eating lunch. We have that option. We could choose that. Why would we?
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