A MERRY AND BLESSED CHRISTMAS

      In these dark days of pandemic and concern, we remember the Star that shone over the birthplace of Christ.  

     Let us renew the hope, peace and love that is in our hearts because of His coming.                                                                                                                         

     A Merry and Blessed Christmas to you all. 

   

Thank you for reading my blog,

Anthony Massimini

   

THE SYMPHONY THAT IS CHRIST

    A young musician who was studying conducting was paying almost all his attention to the notes of the composition he was preparing to conduct.  His teacher told him he was missing the most important point.  The notes, he said, do not exist by themselves or for themselves.  They exist in patterns, in melodies.  It is the patterns, the melodies, that turn the individual notes into music.  If he did not see and conduct the patterns, he would conduct individual, disconnected sounds and miss the music that is greater than the individual notes and greater than himself.

    Unhappily, that is what happens to many of us Christians when we read Bible passages that were not meant to be taken literally.  Like the young conductor, we can easily read the words and miss the music, which is the symphony of God-with-us.  Without our consciousness  of the presence of God in the entire Bible, we are liable to give the texts our own meaning, with all our human limitations, including our errors and prejudices.

   To us Christians, God-With-Us has a name.  It is Christ, or the Christ Reality, Who is  God-With-Us within and throughout the entire universe from its very birth, 13.8 billion years ago.  With respect to our Jewish cousins who gave us what we call, The Old Testament," we Christians see the grand symphony of God-With-Us, Christ, beginning with the very first sentence of Genesis, which tells us that a mighty wind, the Spirit of God, swept over the initial dark abyss, bringing Divinity into the birth of the entire universe.  

   In the New Testament, St. John describes the same reality as God "speaking" Christ, i.e., Divinity's presence, into the newly created universe.  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (1:Jn 1)   

   The "notes" of the Old Testament give us  beautiful and wonder-filled music.  The story of Adam and Even in the garden of Eden is a mythic wonder, i.e., a story that is not historically  true but that beautifully expresses the "music" of our creation by God, and our human frailty.  When we learned the scientific and historic truth of evolution, we were able to see ourselves from our very beginning as imperfect, yet deeply blessed and loved children of God.

   The symphony grows and develops in the wonder stories of the Great Flood and Noah's Ark.  Even the deliberately funny story of Jonah in the Whale carries the melody of love and resurrection.  And what poem or song can match the music of the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd...?

   And when the ancients sent discords into the symphony of God, they had Prophets to call them back from their cacophony.

   For us Christians the symphonic music of the Bible builds until the blessed day when Christ, God-With-Us appears physically in the world in the person of Jesus.  Jesus is our Divine Way, Truth and Life.  (Jn. 14:6)  

   In Christ Jesus there is no place for hateful views of those who are different from us, racially, culturally, politically, etc., etc.  And there is no room for depressed and depressing predictions of the imminent end of the world, or for "infallible" predictions of election results, or for adamant refusal to accept true election results.

    In Christ Jesus there is room only for love for everyone without any exception.  And there is room only for loving confidence that Christ Jesus will get us through whatever crucifixions life may send us.

   At this crucial moment in our beloved country's history we must keep in our mind and heart our love of Christ Jesus, God-With-Us.  In him we find the beautiful music that is the symphony that is Christ, God-With-Us, who is the true melody of our lives and of our beloved America.  

Comments:  Massimini7@gmail.com

 

A TIME FOR PROPHETS

    This election is so important that we cannot in good faith turn away from the stark reality of this moment of our history.  As the People of Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, we must speak truth about the condition of our country, and speak it loudly.  We are all prophets of Christ: we all have the grace, opportunity and responsibility to speak the truth as loudly and clearly as we can.

   The Truth of Christ is that we must vote to save our country, our very democracy, our rule of law, and our political and moral dignity.  That is what the contemporary prophets of Christ are called and empowered to do.

   First, let's get the important question of abortion out of the way.  In a very short time, Amy Coney Barrett will be sworn in to the Supreme Court.  She will give the Court the sixth conservative justice as opposed to three liberal justices.  So the Court can easily vote to end Roe v. Wade.   

   In the Spirit of Christ we must decide if we want to have a country and  a government that are based in the Constitution and the Rule of Law, and not on the whims of a President and his slavish followers who are operating out of the back woods of the American psyche.

   We have to decide if we want to continue to have corporations that pay very little taxes and have CEO's who receive obscene compensation while they keep the employees' salaries and benefits under tight control, and while they disregard the air pollution and physical damage they inflict on the environment.

   We have to decide how to enlighten and help those of us who are polluting our public life with political prejudices born of tribal mindsets, poor schooling and ineffective and even misleading religious leaders.   

   This election is testing us to show what level of humanity we want to live on.  It is all too clear that some of us are acting out of the primitive, or reptilian, part of our brain.  These are the ones who form and act in political hate groups.  Members of these groups live out of our basic instincts where we are controlled by pre-formed fears and prejudices that give birth to actions of hatred and violence.   These brothers and sisters of ours are victims of our social and political collapse.

   Lastly, we have to vote for leaders who will work for living conditions that are fair, just, safe and peaceful for all of us, with special concern for the poor, sick, vulnerable and outcast.  We have to vote for leaders who will give us better schools with better education plans that prepare our children not only to find good jobs but also to be good citizens.  We have to vote with care for our fellow Americans who do not have the opportunities that America owes them.  

   Christ is calling to us to be the prophets that his grace has formed us to be.  Now is the time to vote to help bring the Kingdom of God on earth, the Kingdom of Love for everyone without exception, ever closer to reality here in our beloved country.

   

MAKE GOOD TROUBLE, NECESSARY TROUBLE

    When Jesus sent his apostles out into the world to preach the good news of salvation, he knew they were going to get into trouble.  "I am sending you out as lambs among wolves."   (John. 18:25)   In fact, all of Jesus' apostles were killed--murdered--by the citizens of the world of evil, hatred and violence.  Like Jesus, his apostles paid the price for making good trouble.

   When John Lewis walked across the Edmund Pettis bridge, he also knew that he was going out as a lamb among wolves.  Being a citizen of the world of justice, peace and love, he went out to make good trouble.  And like the apostles before him, he shed his blood, terribly wounded by the citizens of the world of evil, hatred and violence.

   We live in a number of worlds:  a) the physical world of space and time, e.g., of nature, towns, cities  and countries;  b) the emotional world of feelings; c) the mental world of thought and understanding; d) the moral world of right and wrong; and e) the spiritual world of universal and personal consciousness which is the world of all-inclusive Creative, Healing and World-transforming  Love.

   We live in all these worlds at once.  And we have a choice.  We are called and enabled to build one world of beautiful, all-embracing justice, peace and love, a world that is the one radiant Body of Christ on earth.  This world in the one that loves Jesus.

   For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.  Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them; if prophecy, in proportion to the faith; if ministry, in ministering; if one is a teacher, in teaching; if one exhorts, in exhortation; if one contributes, in generosity; if one is over others, with diligence; if one does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.  (Rom. 12:4-8)

   Or we can build a world of greed, hatred and evil, a world that is morally and spiritually lost, with broken individuals and,families, poor education, morally compromised political parties and government, etc.  This is the world that hates Jesus and his followers. (John 16:18-20)

   We are free to live in the world of our choice.  Jesus has called and empowered us build up the world of justice, peace and love for all people and for all of nature, with a special option for the poor, sick and outcast.  This is the world that is the Kingdom of God on earth that Jesus prayed to be built and developed.  "Thy Kingdom come...on earth."

   In building the Kingdom of God of earth we have to learn how to "get in the way" of the world that hates Jesus.  Thankfully, Jesus has taught and enabled us how to "get in the way" and "make good trouble."  He has made us everyday mystics and everyday prophets.  As everyday mystics we can see what people without faith cannot see.  (How many of those who attacked John Lewis and his fellow marchers called themselves Christians and attended Christian churches?)  

   As everyday prophets we can and must make good and necessary trouble by peacefully and lovingly working to open people's eyes and minds to the world of love, as Jesus did.  All we need is the commitment to act, with the gifts and opportunities that God provides to us.  

   St. Francis of Assisi very beautifully showed us how to make "good trouble:"

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love.

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

   

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive

It is is pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen

   Thank you, St. Paul.  Thank you, St. Francis.  Thank you John Lewis.  Thank you, all who are making good trouble as you help build up the Kingdom of God on earth.  All that we do, we do for the honor and glory of Jesus Christ.  To him be all honor and glory now and forever.  Amen

   

PLEA FOR EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL AMERICANS

"Do you hear it?" I cry out.
Nothing.  So again I shout,
"Can't you hear the deadened nothingness?
Can't you hear the moaning sad distress?"
It shouts at us like angelic blasts of doom
In woeful gloom.
America is dying.

Black White, Yellow, Brown and Red,
Born with the right to get ahead.
Politicians with demonic verve,
Forgetting those whom they should gladly serve.
Depriving us of our God-given right
To live in light.
America is crying.

The rich ask, "What's this all about?
Look at the wealth we proudly tout.
We are makers, not those who take,
We leave the lazy in our wake."
And those left behind strive in vain to get ahead,
For daily bread.
America is sighing. 

Lady Liberty, old friend,
When will all this darkness end?
With saddened hope to you we cry and plead,
Help us as our hearts so sorely bleed.
With your harbor's light shine out new clarity,
New Charity.
America is dying.

A SPECIAL TIME TO BUILD

   No matter where you are reading this post, in any of the 100 countries from which I have received readers (Thank You!), it is almost certain that you are living with the corona virus on your mind.  Even when we are not thinking of the virus,its presence is influencing us and guiding us in the way we are acting and living.

   In a crazy, odd way, we have been forced into contemplation.  We can describe contemplation as our mystical awareness of God's existence, presence and guidance.  By "mystical" we mean our ability to see what non-believers cannot see.  Because of our faith we can "see" i.e., be aware of, God's presence, i.e., Divinity, in the universe, the world and within ourselves and everyone else. 

   Another word for Divinity is Loving, Life Giving and Guiding Existence.  If Loving, Life Giving and Guiding Existence were not present within us, we would not exist and we would not be capable of living in the love for ourselves and others that makes us the images and likenesses of God that we are.  

   In its own way, our consciousness of the corona virus makes us aware of and alert to the need to protect ourselves against this deadly pandemic.  It is a vital, life-protecting and guiding consciousness.  Even when we are not actually thinking of the virus, consciousness of it is there in the background guiding us and protecting us in everything we do.

   In the same way, even when we are not aware of Divine Love within us, it is always there, guiding and protecting us in  our everyday lives.  For example, think of the love we have for our parents, siblings, children, friends, others, and even plants and animals.  While we are paying attention to those we love, we are actually being guided by the Divine, Life-Giving Love that lives within us.

   Some of us might ask, "If Divine Love is with us always,  then why are we suffering with this virus, and with all the others diseases and kinds of distress that afflict us?"  In a recent post, I pointed out that God does not cause our troubles, nature does.  The Bible tells us, "There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. (Eccles. 3:1, and also, read the story of Job.)  We will be without troubles, sickness and death with God in eternity.

   We are here in limited space/time to work to build up the Kingdom of God here on earth, which is the Kingdom of Love.  "Thy Kingdom come, on earth."   The happiness we receive in eternity will depend on the love and joy we create here on earth.  At this time of a world-wide virus, we have a special call to build the Kingdom of Love for ourselves and for all others as well as we can, within the presence and power of the Divine Love that shines within us and is guiding us.     




     

   

GOOD FRIDAY LEADS TO EASTER

   This Good Friday, our country, divided as it is by racial, social, economic and political hostility, is experiencing an ironic unity:  the unity of staying apart together.  In our  united separation we have been given the opportunity to realize how much we lose by being apart from one another.  In our own way, we are suffering as Jesus suffered on the Cross--for everyone.

   Our society naturally sorts us out economically, politically, religiously, etc.  But it should not separate us so much that we stop caring for one another, as we are inclined to do.  We are all Americans.  We are "We the People."  We fought a Revolution and a Civil War to be "One nation under God."  We need one another to succeed in our lives.  
   
   This Good Friday, as we wait for Easter while we stay home, physically away from our relatives and neighbors, we should take time to prayerfully think about changing our ways for the better.  

   We should re-examine our vocations, i.e., our talents and opportunities to help make ourselves, our families and communities, and our country more beautifully human in every way possible.  To begin with, we should make sure our family life is strong and healthy.  We should also take special care to help and protect the sick, poor, vulnerable and outcast.  

    Our political leaders must turn away from their narrow views and find new and better ways to help every American thrive.  Our corporations must reach out to their employees and provide true living wages and benefits.  Our schools must figure out new ways to educate our children--especially those from disadvantaged homes.  We must all take care of our planet.  If we don't do all this,we will have suffered in vain.  What a waste!

  Good Friday is the way to Easter.  If we don't make Good Friday a time for recollection and renewed commitment to do our part to make God's Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, then we will turn the present suffering into an experience of hell.  The Way of the Cross is the way to  a better, fairer and more loving Earth and to an Easter of eternal life with God.

   Let us be on our way.  

   A blessed Easter to all my readers in all the 100 countries that log on, and to everyone on earth.  






   

GOD IS WITH US

   French philosopher Albert Camus wrote a novel about a plague that was ravaging a city in North Africa.  A doctor, rather than flee the city to be with his family, stays and does his best to treat the victims.  He has little success.  As he keeps on trying, a priest is preaching throughout the city that the plague is the result of the people's sins.

   One day, the priest comes to the hospital.  The doctor sees him and calls him over to a bed where a little boy is dying from the plague.  He looks at the doctor and says, "Tell me that this boy is dying because of his sins."

    The priest then stops blaming the people and begins to help the victims of the plague.  

    Some of us Christians are saying that God is punishing us with the Corona virus because of  our sins.  No.  That is not true.  God is Love. Jesus came to us  and died to show God's infinite love for us.  Jesus sent us his Spirit who gives us the power to shows God's infinite love for everyone.

    God did not send us this plague.  It has come upon us because we don't live in eternity.  We don't live in heaven.  We live in a created, space/time world this is finite and limited, and that therefore at times is violent with earthquakes, floods, storms, floods, sickness and death.  Nature sent us this plague.

    So instead of asking why God is punishing us, we should be asking how we can show God's infinite love for us by doing all we can to help those who are afflicted, even as we protect ourselves as well as possible.

    We must insist that our governments:  local, state and federal, fulfill their God-given responsibility to do everything possible to provide the means for professionals to treat those who become ill and to find a cure for this pandemic.

    I'll end with a reference to another book.  Some years ago my wife and I went to our local bookstore to hear an author speak about a book he had just written.  As I remember, his name was Frank.  His young son had been killed in an auto accident.  He was so devastated that he lost his memory of what his son looked like and felt like. 

    His wife, a photographer, had just received a contract to photograph Trappist monks in their monastery.  Despite his objections, she convinced him to go with her.   One day he went up to the balcony of the chapel and listened to the monks chanting prayers.  He could think only of his emptiness.  How could these monks be praying to a God who allowed his son to be killed?  They were foolishly praying to no one, to nothing.  As he put it, they were pitching when no one was there catching.

    Then he felt a tap on his shoulder.  He looked up and saw a monk.  To his great surprise it was an old school friend.  The monk quietly said, "Your wife told me what happened. I'm very sorry."  

    Frank looked up at his old friend and asked, "How could God have permitted this?  Why is God punishing me like this?  How could He be so absent?"

     His friend answered, "God is not absent."

     "So where is he?"

     "Frank, He's right here, crying with you."

     Soon after that, Frank remembered what his son looked and felt like.  He could now grieve for his son, not in God's absence, or to or a God who was punishing him, but with God right there, crying with him.

      God is not punishing us with this plague.  God is here, crying with us.











       

AMERICA IN DANGER

   Benjamin Franklin famously said that we have a Republic, if we can keep it.  Our founders knew that our Constitution and our country could not work unless the American people had a strong and clear religious faith, strong family life, and a strong commitment to public service.

   Sadly, at this point in our history we have fallen from these ideals.  Our country is now engaged in a social, moral, cultural and political civil war.  We have fallen dangerously below ordinary political differences into a swampland of irrational, vicious separations that are eroding our Constitution and the Rule of Law.  In fact, our present fall is not just in what we are doing, which is our moral life, but it goes all the way to who we are, which shows us our very souls, our very meaning of who we are as humans and as Christians, i.e., it goes to our spirituality.

   The present crisis calls for the deepest possible reawakening of our true meaning as humans and as People of God.  In the process, we need to clarify and deepen our understanding and expression of our faith.  What we do follows from who we are.  Therefore, our moral conduct follows from our spirituality, which shows us that we are images and expressions of Jesus, the Eternal Christ, the presence of Divinity on earth, who is living and acting in today's world in and through us.

   Our faith is vital to our politics because it shows us the wholeness and integrity of who we are.  It also shows how to see and understand the very meaning of our government and country.  In the heart and mind of Christ we do not simply accept all the particulars of any political party.  We choose political leaders and programs that can most realistically work for our whole society, a society that is marked by love for all without exception, with emphasis on the poor, sick, vulnerable and outcast.

   Today, our faith is telling us that we have to make vital, life and death choices.  One very important example arises from the fact that we are divided between the challenge of abortion and the challenge of a broken Constitution rising from a continuing attack on the Rule of Law.  Looking at the whole picture, it seems clear that we have to face the challenge of our broken Constitution and the Rule of Law.  If they fall, America falls.  No empire is guaranteed to last forever.  We don't know what amount of chaos will follow if America falls but in the chaos abortion will be  pushed into the background as we struggle to rebuild our broken country.

   Both challenges are spiritual because, as I said above, both show us who we are as Americans and as Christians.  These are no ordinary times. I suggest that the danger to our country is so immediate and so great that we are being called to put our particular concerns aside, no matter how vital they are, and to focus on the life and death concern to make our beloved country whole again.  

    God bless America. 

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

   (From Mark 22:28-34:  "Which is the first of all the commandments?  Jesus replied, "You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

     The second commandment can sound like an impossible one to obey and live by.  How can we love terrorists and those who would destroy us?  How can we love those who disagree with us in today's rancid political atmosphere?  How can we love anyone who would harm us or our society in any way?

     I suggest that the answer to these questions lies in the meaning of "love."  We usually think of love as the beautiful, sentimental affection for someone one.  We want to be with those we love.

      Love can be love of friendship, or sexual love, or love for the sake of the other.  This last kind of love is agape.  Another word for agape is charity, i.e., love that goes beyond affection to the point of our freely sacrificing something of ourselves for the other.  This, for example, is the love of husband and wife, of parents for their children, and even of soldiers in battle who risk and sometimes love their lives for one another.  It is the love of Jesus on the Cross.

      Christianity is not naive.  We don't have to like someone in order to love them.  We can hardly be expected to like those who would harm or even destroy us.  Agape is not naivety, it is spiritual maturity.  It extends to all those who would harm or destroy us and moves us to work to get through to such people so that they can live at peace with themselves and with us.  We must of course protect ourselves against those who would harm us.  That may even call for defensive military action after all peaceful means have been exhausted.  

      It is normal and healthy to get angry at the injuries and injustices being inflicted upon us by the leaders of our society, be they political, educational, corporate, etc.  Such harm to all of us definitely calls for political action.  Likewise it calls for well informed action when our school do not educate our children properly.  And it calls for social action when our culture is attacked and made more crude and even violent. 

      In all cases, it calls for action that is informed and inspired by the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of creative, healing and world-transforming love.  It is not enough to say what is wrong.  In Christ we must learn and proclaim what is right and then use all the peaceful and just means available to us as citizens and voters to change what is wrong into what is right in the service of the common good.