Monsignor Owen F. Campion

  • Jesus alone has the way to eternal life

    3rd Sunday of Lent
    Jn 4:5-42

    The Book of Exodus is the source of the first biblical reading this weekend.

    In Hebrew history, the Exodus virtually was unsurpassed as an event of great significance, unless perhaps this distinction goes to creation itself. In the Exodus, the Hebrew people, enslaved and dreadfully mistreated in Egypt, escaped. Eventually, they found their new homeland.

    None of this good fortune happened because of luck or human strategy. Rather, God’s power led the Hebrews to a successful escape from Egypt. Moses, their leader in this endeavor, was chosen by God for the task.

    As the flight was underway, Moses received from God and then gave to the people what long has been called the Ten Commandments.

    These familiar commandments formed the essential requisites for the relationship between God and the Hebrew people. By observing these commandments, the people fulfill their obligations under the Covenant. It was as if the commandments were a legal contract, solemnly binding both parties.

    St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians goes to the heart of the Christian message. Christianity preaches Christ. In this reading, Paul asserts that Jesus is the key to salvation. So, the apostle declares, he preaches, “Christ crucified.” It is a “stumbling block for the Jews, and an absurdity for the Gentiles.” (The Jews, suffering under Roman oppression, and enduring so much, were inclined to regard Jesus as an imposter and blasphemer. Others, “gentiles,” would have seen Jesus as a convicted felon, found guilty by the jurisprudence of Rome that proclaimed its wisdom and perfection.)

    For its Gospel reading, the Church this weekend furnishes us with St. John’s Gospel.

    This weekend’s reading is one of the most familiar sections of the New Testament. It recalls the time when Jesus, shortly before Passover, entered the temple precincts and found underway a brisk traffic in the things needed for ritual sacrifice. Furious, the Lord drove the merchants away.

    He then predicted that the temple would fall, in itself a virtual blasphemy for many who witnessed this event, and then made the astonishing announcement that he would rebuild the colossal structure in three days. It had taken many people many years to build the temple in the first place.

    The Gospel reading sets the stage for Good Friday when the accusers of Jesus would refer to the Lord’s prediction that the temple would fall, claiming that Jesus was a blasphemer and a troublemaker. The Lord’s prediction regarding the re-building of the temple in three days looked ahead to the Resurrection.

    The reading establishes Jesus as God’s voice, and God’s agent. He is very outdone at the misuse of the temple. The reading also looks forward to Calvary and to the Resurrection, the climactic moments in Redemption.

    This reading also reveals much about the bystanders. The Lord’s reaction to the money changers and peddlers reminds them of the Scriptures, yet they fail fully to grasp the Lord’s identity or message.

    Reflection

    Lent reminds us of our humanity. Despite all the differences in lifestyles and scientific knowledge, nothing removes us from the condition in which the contemporaries of Jesus lived. We, as were they, are humans, subject to human limitations.

    Being human has its bright side. We congratulate ourselves, for example, on the brilliant design of spaceships. The dark side is that we, as did the accusers of Jesus, fail to see reality in full perspective. When it comes to right or wrong, too often we choose the wrong side.

    Sin brings, and has brought, such injury to people. Stubbornly, we hold onto sin. Lenten discipline calls us more sharply to focus, better to see sin in its reality.

    God never deserts us, even in our folly. He forever gives us life. Jesus is our Savior and example. He alone has the way to eternal life.

    Posted on March 7, 2012, to:

  • In God we lack nothing

    2nd Sunday of Lent Mk 9:2-10

    The Book of Genesis is the source of this weekend’s first reading. Often, Genesis is associated with its Creation Narratives, since these particular sections of the book have prompted such warfare among those of varying opinions as to the interpretation.

    However, much else is included in Genesis. A major figure is Abraham. Historians and biblical scholars agree that Abraham actually lived. He was not a myth or the product of imagination. He lived very long ago.

    Historically, Jews have regarded Abraham as the first of their race. In a theological sense, Christians see Abraham as the first of their race, since Christians believe that their religion flows from the Revelation initially given by God to the Jews.

    This weekend’s reading is very familiar. Abraham leads his beloved son, Isaac, to the top of a high mountain, there to kill him as a sacrifice to God. As is well known, God intervenes and orders that Isaac be spared.

    The story has several lessons. One lesson, usually overlooked, is the repudiation of human sacrifice by none other than God. Human sacrifice, in and of itself forever abhorrent to Jews, was much a part of the ritual of pagans who lived around the Jews.

    Another feature of pagan worship was to conduct ceremonies, including sacrifices, atop high mountains.

    Therefore, beyond sparing Isaac, beyond rejecting human sacrifice, in this story God draws Abraham, and all people, away from the error of paganism. Instead, they learn from God, about the best and true order of creation. God is the best teacher, and God provides.

    Isaac is a figure who, for Christians in later centuries, in a sense symbolizes Jesus. As was Isaac, Jesus was the sacrifice, killed by the ignorance and baseness of humans. However, Jesus lived. Like Isaac, Jesus did not die forever.

    St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans furnishes the second reading. Always, inevitably, in his writings, Paul encouraged and reinforced his disciples in their faith. This section from Romans is no exception.

    Typically straightforward and clear, this reading simply says that if the power of God, and the light of God, are with us, nothing can prevail against us.

    The Gospel of Mark provides the last reading. As was the case with the reading from Genesis, this weekend’s first reading, this selection is very familiar. It is the story of the Transfiguration.

    In this story, Jesus takes Peter, James and John to the summit of a high mountain. There, in an overwhelming, stupendous, even terrifying appearance, Jesus is transfigured. He becomes visible to the Apostles as the Son of God.

    Light is everywhere. In the Old Testament, God is associated with light. Indeed, the presence of God constitutes the difference between darkness and light. God is the Lord of life, and of light.

    Mountaintops were the places on earth nearest to heaven. In a hopeful, awkward attempt to come as close as possible to God, humans went to the tops of mountains. Indeed, the temple in Jerusalem was at the summit of Mount Zion. Jesus was crucified on a hilltop. He ascended from a hilltop.

    In this reading, all earthly fogs and veils are cast down. Jesus appears in the reality of divinity. In this divinity is eternal life itself.

    The presence of Moses and Elijah indicate that Jesus is fully and absolutely in the historic train of God’s communication with, and salvation of, God’s people.

    Reflection

    The novelty of Lent has ended. This weekend, we are observing the second Sunday of the season.

    Now, the Church leads us in earnest into this period to prepare for Holy Week and Easter.

    Its message is simple. It is profound. God is everything. We are humans; we are limited. Always, amid our limitations, to relieve us in our limitations, God has provided.

    God provided for Abraham. God spared Isaac, but only after being assured of Abraham’s unflinching faith. Faith is indispensable in our search for, and path to, God.

    Faith is the opposite of selfishness and of foolishly over exaggerating our limited human abilities.

    God is in Jesus. Jesus is Lord. This is the great message of the Transfiguration given us this weekend in Mark’s Gospel. It was Paul’s word to the Christian Romans. If we have Jesus, we have God. In God, we lack nothing.

    Posted on February 29, 2012, to:

  • Concentrate on God during Lent

    1st Sunday in Lent
    Mk 1:12-15

    The Book of Genesis provides the first biblical reading for this first Sunday of Lent.

    The first rule to remember in reading Genesis is that it is a religious book, and it was designed to be a religious book. It is to teach us about God.

    This weekend’s story is familiar. It is about the great flood, and about Noah. Not read in this reading, but essential to understanding this passage and indeed the entire narrative, is the fact that sin and human wickedness drastically disordered creation. Sin brought death, from a force as powerful as a flood.

    God, however, did not leave the people, or creation itself, hopelessly doomed in the face of this flood. God instructed Noah, telling Noah how to survive by taking his own family into a specially constructed vessel, and also to take partners of all living creatures. These partners were to be male and female, so that they could reproduce.

    (An important message here is that in all these processes of reproduction, parenting figures are instruments of God’s might creative power.)

    Noah obeys. The world lives.

    The second reading is from the First Epistle of Peter. The Church always has highly venerated this Epistle, and its companion, as somehow expressing the teaching of Peter, the chief of the Apostles.

    The reading this weekend is rich in its message and in its symbolism. First, it proclaims Christ as Savior. He died to reconcile humankind with God. He died in the wake of human sin. Just as God saved creation and humanity through Noah, God saves humanity through Jesus.

    Then, the reading compares the flood to baptism. All aboard the ark, humans and animals, kept their lives. Through them, earthly life endured.

    The genuinely holy endure the waters of Baptism. Indeed, in Baptism, they attain everlasting life. The Church will refer to this symbolic link between Noah and Christ, between flood and Baptism, during its splendid Holy Saturday Easter Vigil liturgy.

    St. Mark’s Gospel is the source of the third reading. It is brief, but its message is stark and direct. John has been arrested. The last of the great prophets preceding Jesus has been silenced.

    All was not lost, however. Jesus went into the desert, presumably the Judean desert located between Jerusalem and the Jordan River, to pray for a long period of time. Then, Jesus emerged from this solitude and went to Galilee to call people to repentance and to belief in the Gospel. Redemption had come!

    Reflection

    The readings offer us a contrast, death or life. Baptism is essential to this story of contrast.

    Across the country, many people at this time are in the final stages of preparation for Baptism. At the Easter Vigil, they will be baptized, becoming members of the Church. In this union with the Church will be their union with Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah so eloquently described in First Peter.

    Also very much included are believers already baptized. At the Vigil, they will repeat original baptismal promises. They will renew the pledges spoken perhaps long ago.

    The Church calls us all to the waters of Baptism, there not to die, but rather to rise from them to true life.

    This weekend, the Church begins Lent in earnest. Lent prepares us for Holy Saturday.

    If we authentically restate our baptismal promises, we must forsake everything and humbly turn to God. We must concentrate on God, as Jesus turned to God and God alone in the desert.

    All sinners, we must repent. Among the contemporaries of Jesus, repentance had a very demanding meaning. This meaning summonses us. It is the absolute and total change of mind, heart and soul, so that we offer everything in our very being to God. Nothing less is sufficient.

    Posted on February 21, 2012, to:

  • God forgives, through Jesus

    7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Mk 2:1-12

    The Book of Isaiah is the source of this weekend’s first reading. These verses come from the second section of Isaiah. At the time of their composition, the long, dreary exile of Jewish survivors of the Babylonian conquest generations earlier of the two Jewish kingdoms had ended. These exiles, or their descendants, yearned for their homeland. The opportunity to return came when the Persian emperor, Cyrus, overwhelmed Babylonia. He allowed the exiles to go home.

    The religiously devout among the exiles saw God as the true deliverer. Cyrus merely was the instrument of God in this process. It is not all glorious and happy. God accuses the people of allowing despair to overtake them in Babylon, abandoning hope that God would protect them. Regardless, God was true to the Covenant.

    Return to the homeland was bittersweet. The land was desolate and unaccommodating.  The prophets still faced the task of sustaining and fortifying the people’s faith.

    St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians provides the second lesson for this weekend’s liturgy.

    Corinth was a chief city in the Roman Empire. With a large population, including people from throughout the Mediterranean world, it, of course, was a destination for pioneer Christian missionaries. Converts were made in Corinth. A Christian community formed.

    Evidently, however, these converts were the source of some anxiety for Paul, quarrelling among themselves, straying into sin and pagan practice, in a word being proud and stubborn. Paul called for uncompromised loyalty to the Gospel.

    For its last reading the Church presents a passage from St. Mark’s Gospel. Healing this paralyzed man was marvelous, and lowering him through the roof made it all the more dramatic. Instead of being impressed, the scribes present at the event took offense. The Lord’s statement of forgiving the paralytic’s sin infuriated them, since they held firm the belief that only God can forgive sins, as sins offend God. They refused to accept Jesus as Son of God, the identity Mark so carefully asserted.

    This reading, and the context of the times, link this man’s paralysis and sin. Pious Jews of that day looked upon physical maladies as the result of sin. Perhaps the victim of the maladies had sinned. Perhaps ancestors had sinned. Jesus confirmed this link by forgiving the man his sins.

    Incidentally, roofs at the time were quite flimsy by modern standards. They were wooden beams laid horizontally from wall to the directly opposing walls of a house. Then thatch was laid on these beams, loosely held together by mud. It kept out the hot rays of the sun, much more a problem in the Holy Land than rainwater.

    Reflection

    Since Christmas, through the readings at Mass, the Church’s emphasis has been on Jesus as Savior, and as Son of God. With divine authority, Jesus forgives sin. Ultimately, the presence of God among us, in Jesus, is the marvel, exceeding even the cure of the paralytic.

    The attitudes of the paralytic, and of the scribes, and their responses to Jesus, are important to note. The paralytic’s anxious hope for a cure is obvious. Still, the connection between his physical plight and sin very likely was on his mind. The Lord’s forgiveness came as much as a disabling of the effect of sin as a restoration of physical wholeness.  He accepted Jesus as Son of God.

    Scribes, able to read as well as write in an age of illiteracy, knew Judaism and Jewish history. They knew God’s intervention in rescuing the exiles from Babylon, for example. They knew that God had sent the prophets.

    Still, despite their knowledge, they did not or could not recognize Jesus. The lesson is that God will forgive us, through Jesus, but we must humble ourselves. Our pride well may paralyze us.

    Posted on February 15, 2012, to:

  • Jesus alone is source of life and peace

    6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Mk 1:40-45

    The first reading for this weekend comes from the Book of Leviticus. In sequence, Leviticus is the fourth book in modern translations of the Bible. As such, it is part of the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch includes the five books of the Bible attributed to Moses.

    These five books are the Torah.

    The Pentateuch forms the fundamental law, and philosophy, of Judaism, both in current understandings and in ancient practices as well.

    In this reading, God speaks to Moses and to Aaron, the brother of Moses. The topic is leprosy. Today it is not known whether these references to leprosy in the Scriptures referred to Hansen’s disease, or to some other illness. However, regardless of the exact scientific nature of what the ancients called leprosy, the problem was chronic and severe.

    An entire social system developed around the disease. Victims were outcasts. They suffered being shunned, but they also most often virtually had to forage for food and search for any shelter they could find.

    Ancient Jews would never blame God for the fact of such a serious malady. God was regarded as good, loving and merciful. The ancient Hebrews saw human sin as ultimately the cause of all earthly misery.

    St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, this weekend’s second reading, includes the great Apostle’s counsel that Christians should do everything with the intention of glorifying God.

    He admonished the Christians of Corinth never to offend either Jew or Gentile. Paul urges that the Christians follow his example, because Paul says that he imitates Christ.

    The reading therefore sets Christ as the example and insists that believers must follow the example of the Lord in their lives.

    For its last reading, the Church gives us a passage from the Gospel of Mark. In this reading, a leper approaches Jesus, pleading for a cure. Jesus cured the man, the Lord being “moved with pity,” according to Mark.

    This cure came when Jesus touched the man. (As an aside, but nevertheless instructive, symbolic touching is very important in the liturgy. Touch creates contact and enables transference. In Ordinations, the ordaining bishop lays his hands upon the candidates to be ordained bishop, priest or deacon. At weddings, the bride and bridegroom hold each other’s hands.)

    Jesus transmitted the healing power of God to the man through this touch. Then, Jesus spoke the miraculous words of healing.

    The Lord ordered the man to go to the priests. The man had been exiled from the community because of his illness. If the priests saw that he was free of disease, they would re-admit him to society.

    The reading closes by noting that great crowds pursued Jesus.

    Reflection

    Strong in the reading from Mark is the image of desperation on the part of the leper. It is no wonder. While modern scientist debate exactly what the Bible means by “leprosy,” this is clear. It was an awful disease, and people shunned to the extreme anyone suffering from this disease. It brought utter isolation and want.

    In the minds of the ancient Hebrew people, it somehow resulted from sin.

    Mark recalls that Jesus, moved by pity, cured the man. He accepted the man, so banished from society.

    An interesting sidebar in these Miracle Narratives from Mark’s Gospel is that people so yearn for Jesus. Several weeks ago, a paralytic so wanted to find Jesus that others let him through the very roof of the house where Jesus was. When Jesus withdrew into the desert to pray, the Apostles spontaneously followed, unwilling to be without the Lord. This reading says people came to Jesus from everywhere.

    These reports all reveal something very basic and true. Jesus alone is the source of life and peace, and, blessedly, Jesus lovingly imparts life and peace.

    Posted on February 8, 2012, to: