St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church

A Reflection for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman Acts 11:19-26 & 29-30 & Jn 4:5-42 May 15. 2022 Today’s Gospel from John tells us that we must be open to ...differences. People in the first-century weren’t prepared for what a truly radical and profoundly inclusive figure Jesus was, and unfortunately some are the same today where they fight change or refuse to accept others who are different from us. Jesus’ life and ministry often showed acceptance of others and we are called to follow Jesus’ example even though it caused others to question and even hate him. The fact that Jesus was even talking with the Samaritan woman stunned his own disciples, and the woman’s past and present made her the type of person one might not want to be associated with. Yet there was never a word of condemnation that passed Jesus’ lips. Instead, the woman felt heard, understood and cared for. Jesus treated her with dignity and respect in spite of her failures while others refused to understand. The encounter with Jesus transformed her life and afterwards she became the first female preacher in Christian history. This is a striking example of Jesus’ rejection of conventional religious and cultural thinking of the time. Jesus dared to talk to a woman in a world in which women were treated as second-class citizens, if even that, and on top of that she was also a despised Samaritan. How dare Jesus do this! But he did! This happened time and again with Jesus. He touched lepers and healed a woman who had a constant flow of menstrual blood, both of whom were considered impure so they were shunned by others and were not allowed to pray in the Temple area. He forgave a sinful woman and told her to go in peace; he healed the paralytic and a blind man, people thought to be worthless and useless to society. As Jesus was being crucified, he told the remorseful thief on the cross next to him, Today you will be with me in paradise. Jesus stressed the need to change and turn away from our self-centeredness! Jesus was attacked repeatedly for hanging out with the wrong crowd and he even recruited his disciples from the lower rungs of society, once again, how dare he! Remember, Jesus’s ministry was with the unwanted and the outcast, men and women living in the shadow of society, those more likely to be dismissed than noticed, more likely to be condemned than valued. One reason for Jesus’ connection with outcasts undoubtedly had to do with his compassion and empathy, his desire to relieve their pain and lift the soul-crushing shame that accompanies being considered a social pariah or an untouchable. In other words, this is the type of compassion we need today. But that is hardly the only reason. Jesus modeled inclusion and solidarity with the unclean and marginalized not only for their sake but also for the sake of the powerful and the privileged and for the good of the whole. Jesus clearly believed that outcasts had something to teach the privileged and the powerful, including the virtues of humility and sacrifice. (Just think of Lazarus and the Rich Man.) Jesus understood that the weak and dispossessed often experience God in a very different way as a dispenser of grace, a source of comfort, as the redeemer. They see the world, and God, through a different prism than do the powerful and the proud. The lowly in the world offer a corrective to the spiritual distorted images that develop among others. It’s easy for us to look back twenty centuries and see how religious authorities were too severe and unforgiving in how they treated the outcasts of their time. The wisest question we could ask ourselves isn’t why we are so much more humane and enlightened than they were; rather, it is to ask ourselves who the modern outcasts are and how we’re mistreating them. Who are the tax collectors of our era, the people we despise but whom Jesus would welcome, those around whom we are determined to build a dividing wall of hostility, to use the imagery of the Apostle Paul. (Eph 2:14) Jesus’ teachings are so challenging, so distinct from normal human reactions and behaviors, that we constantly have to renew our commitment to them. Every generation needs to think through how his example applies to the times in which they live. We need our sensibilities to align more with his. Otherwise, we drift into self-righteousness and legalism, even to the point that we corrupt the very institution, the church, which was created to help us worship him and to love others. The lesson from Jesus’ life and ministry is that understanding other people’s stories and struggles requires much more time and effort than simply condemning them, but it is vastly more rewarding, for both and us. The lesson of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, of Jesus’ life and mission, is that all of us were once outcasts, broken yet loved, but still worth reaching out to and redeeming. If God did that for us, why do we find it so hard to do it for each other? See more

A Reflection for the Fourth Paschal Sunday Sunday of the Paralytic Man Acts 9:32-42 & Jn 5:1-15 May 8, 2022... St. John must have observed many instances of Jesus healing people but he selected only a very few to include in his Gospel. Maybe he assumed that his readers had access to one or more of the earlier written Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke) so perhaps his selections were intended to teach important lessons about who Jesus is and what it means to believe in him. We know from the Synoptic Gospels that after Jesus' ministry in Samaria he spent considerable time ministering in Galilee and John now takes us back to Jerusalem and a remarkable healing at the Pool of Bethesda. John described the scene for readers as you would expect an eyewitness to do for those who hadn't been to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep [Gate] a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes." This was a center for healing and it was crowded with sick people, lying there blind, lame or disabled waiting because from time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had. Amazingly, instead of seeking out the Healer who came to Jerusalem to heal and save, they huddled around this pool and pinned their hopes on the remote chance that they might be the first into the waters. Jesus arrived and for some reason selected an invalid of thirty-eight years to heal. Instead of wondering why Jesus chose this particular person to heal, let’s look at the invalid's character and God’s Grace in order to teach us not to act like the blind man. We get some hints about the invalid's character from John's account and it is helpful to note his personal traits. Because the invalid was Old and Dependent he needed to rely on others for everything. If he couldn't take care of himself, well, he was probably dirty and smelly. One can understand that but one issue really was that he was a Complainer, he grumbled about how long he's been an invalid and no one helped him into the pool, once again understandable. But he was a Blamer for when confronted for carrying his pallet on the Sabbath he accused the person who cured him and told him to carry it. For Jesus to confront him later in the temple he must have been a Sinner. The appalling thing is he was Ungrateful and Disloyal because rather than being thankful for his healing and loyal to his healer, he "tattled" on Jesus. Finally, he may have even been Unrepentant as there is no indication that he accepted and acted on Jesus' rebuke about his sin. We know this because Later on, Jesus found the man in the temple and said to him, ‘Remember, now you have been cured. Give up your sins so that something worse may not overtake you.’ The man went away and informed the Jews that Jesus was the one who had cured him." It is amazing that Jesus spotted]the man in the temple and not the other way around, even though there was probably a crowd of people around Jesus. He was now able to now walk to Jesus and thank him, but he did not show any gratitude! One other thing we should learn from this Gospel is that it is possible that there are people all around us, like this man paralyzed for 38 years who needed help, needed companionship people for whom we can be like Christ and reach out to them and help them. And it is also possible that we have been the ones struggling with some burden for a long time, feeling there is no one to help me, and the solution might be outside of myself in seeking help from a neighbor or others, to allow them to follow in Jesus’ path to help us. The lessons for us in this Gospel vary many, we need to know when we are to be Christ to another and when we need someone else to be Christ for us. As St Paul said: Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)