God as mystery
“What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.
His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said.
But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.
The strange story of Joseph, the youngest and most beloved son of Jacob–Israel, is so very fitting for these post-flood days here in Texas. Who can help loving this story of the seventeen-year-old boy who doesn’t know the rules?
Or maybe he does and just ignores them?
It’s likely that Joseph’s brothers made their hatred of him apparent. Jacob preferred Joseph to all the others because “he was the son of his old age.” And yet, Joseph told his brothers about the dreams predicting Joseph’s lordship over them all. Finally, when Jacob had created a special coat for the boy, Joseph hastened to find his brothers to show them.
The boy evokes this as he appears in his ‘coat with long sleeves.’ “Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; we shall say that a wild beast has devoured him and we shall see what becomes of his dreams. But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life….Shed no blood…”
It’s got everything, this tale: love, jealousy, hatred, maybe pride on the part of Joseph. But primarily, Joseph’s story foreshadows Christ: humilation, rejection, forgiveness, and salvation.
I wrote the above over two years ago, but the liturgical readings of this week have been Joseph’s strange, eternally puzzling story. It’s eerily fitting for these heartbreaking days of devastating losses in our beloved Texas Hill Country.
Desperate need for silence
I avoid the news, but it’s impossible to escape the word battles raging in social media. Whether it’s weatherpeople justifying themselves by blaming the inaction of others, or criticism of the camps’ inadherence to 100-year flood plans, we know this is only the beginning of the blame and shame game: The pathetic name we give to politics.
I’ve been a Catholic Christian now for close to thirty years. And I’m convinced it’s an all-or-nothing deal. I mean by this, we cannot join in this ongoing pejoration of our brothers and sisters and call ourselves Christians.
Not that we should not, we cannot.
Are there responsible people who didn’t do what they should have done?
Most likely, yes, but can’t that be said about you and me?
You might be thinking, “Yes, but my (fill in the blank) didn’t cause the death of over 250 innocent people.” But think for just a second or ten, quietly, silently, empyting yourself to hear the God As Mystery.
Saint Benedict’s memorial was on Friday. Saint Benedict is important to me because his school has taught me far more than did over twenty-four years of education. The Rule of Benedict contains just seventy-three chapters. As a Benedictine Oblate I read and reflect on the rule daily. It’s Chapter Six I write of today: On the Spirit of Silence, our desperate need for silence.
Let us do what the Prophet says:
“I said, ‘I will guard my ways,
that I may not sin with my tongue.
I have set a guard to my mouth.’
I was mute and was humbled,
and kept silence even from good things” (Ps. 38[39]:2-3).
Here the Prophet shows
that if the spirit of silence ought to lead us at times
to refrain even from good speech,
so much the more ought the punishment for sin
make us avoid evil words.Therefore, since the spirit of silence is so important,
permission to speak should rarely be granted
even to perfect disciples,
even though it be for good, holy edifying conversation;
for it is written,
“In much speaking you will not escape sin” (Prov. 10:19),
and in another place,
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21).
Long ago, I Iearned from a good friend, the real reason for my moral outrage.
“I just had to talk with you!”
She listened patiently to my rant. There was no other word for the torrent of my words.
When certain I was done, Almita was quiet for a long minute. Then she spoke.
“Lin, I have found that when such strong emotions are evoked by the actions of another, it is often something in ourselves that we are reacting to. Something we dislike intensely because we are embarrassed or perhaps ashamed of the feeling when it appears unbidden.”
Joseph’s stirring reply to his justifiably shamed brothers, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them,” emanated from one source: Love.
“When their message came to him, Joseph (Jesus) wept.”
“War begins in here and finishes out there. The news we see in the papers or on television… Today so many people die, and that seed of war, which breeds envy, jealousy, and greed in my heart, is the same – grown up, become a tree – as the bomb which falls on a hospital, on a school, and kills children…God makes peace with us but it is not easy to care for peace. It is a daily task, because within each of us is that seed of original sin, that is, the spirit of Cain which – for envy, jealousy, greed, and the desire to dominate – leads to war.”
War Begins in the Heart
Pope Francis
