Christ prays for unity, not uniformity. Where there are great pressures for uniformity, we should be suspicious. Christians do not have to look, dress, think, and act alike. The church is not an
assembly line producing only Fords. - Joe Aldrich
(Individuality, unity, and uniformity: how do you experience the tension between these?)
|
1 Cor 3:18-23; Ps 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6 Lk 5:1-11 While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God,
he
was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds
from the boat.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
"Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch."
Simon said in reply,
"Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets."
When
they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat
to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats
so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this,
he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
"Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."
For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus
said to Simon, "Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men."
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.
Reflection on the Scriptures
The entire crowd saw and heard this exchange between Simon and Jesus. I think it is much like the conversation we also have with Jesus. First, Simon knows who Jesus is. He calls him Master and he says he will
obey his command. That sounds like a lot of us. But underneath the surface, Simon does not believe that what Jesus tells him to do will produce a good outcome. Like Simon, we often go through the motion of doing what Jesus tells us with little confidence or zeal. Jesus teaches an important lesson here. The crowd also would have been astonished when Simon’s nets were filled to the point of tearing. All the fishermen were extremely impressed, that is certain, but they must have also felt some
fear. Simon Peter so much so that he fell to the ground at the feet of Jesus in repentance for his lack of belief. Yet, Jesus took away that fear with just his word and all the fishermen there that day immediately followed Jesus’ next directive to follow him and be catchers of men. That was a powerful experience and directive!
What is in this for me? For you? I think Jesus is saying let us not let our
fear of failure or our lack of confidence in our own goodness stop us from sharing the good news of Christ with others. We need not be perfect or wise. In fact, no one dares boast of such vanity and foolishness. Today I pray that we hear the words of Jesus say, “Do not be afraid.” And “from now on” we can all do so much more.
by Barbara
Dilly
Psychic Energy and Contemplation by James
Arraj From St. John of the Cross and Dr. C. J. Jung, Part III, Chapter 9. Inner Growth Books, 1986. A Psychological Dark Night The foundation for discerning these two different states (conscious and unconscious infused contemplation) depends on a careful reading of St. John's three signs. The
dark night was used by St. John in both a wide and narrow sense. In the wide sense it meant that recollected people fell into aridities, and this is how the proponents of acquired contemplation understood it. But the three signs are meant to define the dark night of sense in a strict way as the actual beginning of contemplation. The first two signs are not enough: the third must be present, for only the third differentiates between infused contemplation and various psychological
counterparts: "When one is incapable of making discursive meditation upon the things of God and disinclined to consider subjects extraneous to God, the cause could be melancholia or some other kind of humor in the heart or brain capable of producing a certain stupefaction and suspension of the sense faculties. This anomaly would be the explanation for want of thought or of desire and inclination
for thought." (24) Melancholy, the black bile of the ancients which they thought gave birth to depression, was part of this psychological vocabulary that St. John had to work with. Even though this vocabulary was rudimentary from a modern point of view, it might have contained a greater degree of insight than we can recapture today. Baruzi, for example, suggests that John might have come in
contact with one of the noted physicians of the time, Gómez Pereira, while he was working in the hospital in Medina del Campo. One of the works of this learned doctor was entitled, Concerning the Fevers Arising from Melancholy and the Signs of Them.(25) Victor White makes the astute observation that melancholy could be associated with the introverted intuition type.(26)
|
|
