Ministry is Mystery Made Visible: 17th Week of the Liturgical Year, July 24-30, 2011

Ministry is Mystery Made Visible

Seventeenth Week of the Liturgical Year, July 24-30, 2011

Exodus, chapters 32-40; Leviticus chapters 23-25; Matthew, chapters 13-14.

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A key word in ministry, as in Christianity itself, is visibility. Jesus is the “Word made flesh.” The sacraments are visible signs. And ministry is surrender to letting Christ express himself in and through our physical, human actions. This is the mystery made visible in Christian ministry.

Sunday: Wisdom is “operative desire” for the Ultimate Good: union with God in heaven. Ministry, by working to “bring Christ to full stature” in everyone, makes this desire visible.

St. James: “The absence of the human is the revelation of the divine.” The renunciation of human desire for prestige and power makes visible divine desire for the true good wisdom perceives. In his Church, Jesus divorced position from prestige to make equality evident.

Monday: Our need for something visible to focus on in religion can lead to the idolatry of focusing on laws (Phariseeism), “sacred figures” (clericalism), or ecclesiastical splendor (triumphalism). Ministry makes God visible by letting God express himself in visible acts of love.

Tuesday: Ministers who judge others by their visible behavior are judged for making God’s judgment invisible. Because God is “steadfast love,” God’s “final judgment” about anyone awaits the person’s “final judgment” about God in the enlightened moment of death.

Wednesday: Our contemplation of God’s “steadfast love” leads to awareness, which, made visible in our bodies, makes God’s steadfast love visible to others. This is ministry.

Thursday: The ark of the Covenant, Eucharist, the Church, are visible signs of God’s “presence in the present.” They are all “eschatological” previews and promises of future fulfillment that is the focus of wisdom. So are the visible acts of ministry.

Friday: Liturgical celebration is a “symbol in action.” The human actions of liturgy make visible the divine action that was, is and will be. The essence of both liturgy and ministry is self-expression: God’s self-expression in ours. What we fail to make visible through expression, we fail to realize and remember. Our visible interactions with God make visible our relationship with God and remind us of it. Interactions with others that make visible our true relationship with them and with God are ministry.

Saturday: Praise is perception expressing itself. It is response to what is seen. To authentically praise God for the “wisdom of his laws,” we have to see God’s love made visible in them. When laws are interpreted with love and implemented with flexibility, we don’t perceive them as imposed. The law of Christ is love. The limitation of love is the deformation of law.

Immersed in Christ is a practical means to achieve the three goals of the United States Bishops’ letter, “Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us”:

1. Invite and Enable Ongoing Conversion to Jesus in Holiness of Life: through 1. awareness of our identity “in Christ” and 2. commitment to discipleship. (“Our Father, hallowed be thy Name!)

2. Promote and Support Active Membership in the Christian Community: through 3. dedication to mission (“Thy Kingdom come!”) and 4. surrender to ministry (“Thy will be done”).

3. Call and Prepare Adults to Act as Disciples in Mission to the World: by 5. abandoning ourselves, as stewards of the kingship of Christ, to the work of establishing the “unity and peace of his kingdom” throughout all of creation until he comes in victory (“Give us... and forgive us...”).