29th Sunday - Catholic Imagination

Imagination is one of those distinctly human qualities. Children develop their imaginations when they play. We adults too need to be child-like and engage our imaginations.  The lack of imagination is what can hinder us in life and in our relationships and how we live life well.

Some of the religious leaders could not imagine God as Jesus revealed. This led them to react with hostility against Jesus. The gospel for today makes it very clear.   Jesus came and He revealed all who God is. We know that this revelation angered some; it threatened them and their ideas or their so-called power. So in their hostility some religious leaders, with their lack of imagination, try to trap Jesus. A lack of imagination that divides. A lack of imagination that sees only divisions. That only sees themselves.  Jesus with his imagination overcomes that trap and reveals their lack of imagination.

Jesus's imagination sees Unity Harmony between all

Israel had to learn in their exile about God as well. They were forced to imagine God and how God operates in a different way. The Babylonian exile was a traumatic event for Israel. People were taken off to captivity, their Temple was destroyed and they thought “God therefore was also destroyed”. Because in that time, God was only God in the confines of their land, and within that Temple.  It took the prophets, such as third Isaiah and Ezekiel, to show them how to imagine differently. The prophets announced God indeed was still present with them even as they were in Exile.  Then with that imagination, that inspiration, they began to rewrite, to edit their scriptures taken with them into exile. This became what we would call the foundations of the Old Testament. They began to imagine God differently, more fully. Even able to imagination how God used King Cyrus as an agent and helped them to return to their land.

We, as God's children, by nature can imagine wonderful things. It is part of who we are as created in the image of God.  Jesus came and called us to this. He called us to imagine a world in which all were treated with dignity; to imagine a world in which we forgave one another; imagine a world in which we all would share willingly.  He is not calling us to something that is outside of us; rather he speaks to the spirit of creativity that is already within us by virtue of being God's children. He calls us to be human.

What holds us back?

Just as those religious leaders in the gospel: fear, ego, ignorance, shame.

See it is not that we can't imagine differently it is that we will not imagine differently. Because that would mean that we would need to change. It would mean that we would need to think differently. It would mean that we would have to act differently. It means that maybe what we think is important, well, really is not after all.  It would mean we would have to imagine that people actually do not think the way we do.  

And because of this lack of will, we create divisions among us. We create the hate among us. We create the suffering, the violence, the hunger, the poverty and so much more. 

Yet we as Catholics when we used our imagination great things have happened. It has helped us to make positive changes in this world. Damien going off to the lepers in Hawaii. Teresa of Avila to re-form her community. Mother Cabrini with her work with immigrants here in the USA.

Catholics, our rituals are meant to bring for that imagination. We can imagine God's grace pouring into a child at baptism. We can imagine the Holy Spirit overwhelming teens with oil being placed on their heads. We can imagine the fullness of divinity pouring into the Bread and Wine.

Can we not imagine more?