7th Sunday - The greater reality of God

In the movie from the 80’s “Ferris Bueller’s Day off”, a great scene for me was at the Art Institute of Chicago where Cameron contemplated that great work, “Sunday in the Park with George”. This is a masterpiece in pointillism; a huge painting that from a distance looks intact, whole and tells a story, but viewed up close is a series of colored points. It’s an amazing piece of artwork.

In the 17th century Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuvenhoek placed a drop of water into a new device called a microscope and he saw tiny little creatures swimming in water that beforehand had never been seen. This led to a new understanding of germs and how life existed.

Our lives can be transformed, depending on our range of visión.

Sacramental theology, our belief in sacraments is amazing. 

The brief but concise definition of a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality. We use things and words to signify that something else is also occurring, and that reality is not perceived, but nonetheless has an effect on our lives.

Baptism uses water and the words “I baptize you in the name of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” to make real the effect that the core of our very being is as children of God.

Now what this also means is that reality as we perceive it is not the whole of reality. This is beyond our “Churchy” things. This includes all of reality. There is always more to it. As Catholics, this means how we perceive and operate in the world is different. We are encouraged to see differently, so that this reality of being God’s children comes forth.

This has pervaded our scripture, our art, our architecture, our music, our rituals: all of it to move us deeper into the reality of God.

Of course we also believe that our sacraments were instituted by Christ.  Christ who revealed to us the greater reality of God.  Christ who by his actions of healing, forgiveness, compassion and more, revealed the Reality of God breaking forth into our world.  Christ is The Sacrament, The visible sign of the invisible reality of God.

Read again, remember again the teaching from our Gospel.  What is he saying: Go deeper into these laws. There is something greater here beyond the words on the paper.  Get to the intent, to God's reality.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Trinity and unity. Three and One; a divine community of Love, of mutual ongoing love. God created us in this image; God created us for unity and community, for love. Unity, community, love fulfills us as persons, and helps to make this world better.  The “laws” are based on love, even our own modern Church laws are based on love.  

We have to see the whole context, and cannot just isolate one point of the law and focus on that, otherwise we lose the art, the context.  

The eye for and eye concept was written to stop escalation of violence. It was a matter of justice; if you stole one of my goats, justice was I get one goat in return, not your whole flock, nor do I come and slaughter your whole tribe. It was to create safety.

Jesus now takes this intent to a deeper meaning too. Can we forgive? Can we let go? Can we see people not in dualistic terms, as neighbor and enemy, but as equals? To do so builds unity, to do so expresses the reality of God and the reality of who we are as humans persons.

Humility means that we acknowledge who we are, what we know and what we don’t know. Humility opens us to God, to transformation, to conversion, to holiness.

We will all be confronted by events and situations in this world that will cause us to feel. How will we react? Or better, how will we act?

In these events, we react when we only believe what we perceive...this person did wrong and is a bad person. It’s only black and white...etc And what usually happens in the reaction is that we escalate, we open our lives and the world to more violence; either emotional violence, spiritual violence and/or physical violence. We gossip, we lie, we send hasty nasty texts. We become trolls on the internet. Let’s be honest, there are way too many of them already.

We act when we pause and consider the situation. We act when we look deeper into the deeper reality. We act when we make a moral decision. A decision that states the other is a neighbor, even with a differing view. A decision that reveals we can be forgiving, and not controlled by our fears and anger.

We can think someone ignores us; when the truth is that person worries about their ailing parents and how to care for them.

We can think God is punishing us; when the truth is that we have been making bad decisions all along and the consequences are coming home.

We can think we are isolated; but the reality is that we are surrounded by people who want to love us, but not just on our own terms.

The Christian path opens our eyes to a greater reality. Our Catholic sacraments, our rituals, our scripture, our very way of being Catholic gives us the means to be open to Christ, who moves us into that greater reality.

A reality of joy, of community, of unity, of love.