the new unexpected abundance is given by human agency that is propelled by the generosity of God

 Wednesday after Lent 4

Psalm 101; Genesis 50:15-26; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Mark 8:11-26

God who breaks the cycles of fearful scarcity, break those cycles in our lives.  Give us enough gracefulness to receive your abundance and to accept it as the new norm of our daily existence.  In his name.  Amen

The disciples of Jesus, like almost all of us, were habituated into scarcity.  They assumed there was not enough.  They feared running out.  As a result, they had no interpretive categories by which to compute the overflow of abundance of bread that Jesus made possible.  His wondrous act of feeding the hungry crowd attests to his capacity for abundance.  But they missed the point, even when they could count the surplus baskets of bread as twelve and seven.  They had abundance in their hands, but they missed the point.

In the same way the brothers of Joseph lived in fearful parsimony.  They assumed that Joseph would act in kind toward them and retaliate against them for their hateful action earlier in their lives.  They did not anticipate that his largess of spirit would break the vicious cycle of parsimonious interaction .  Or more properly,  they did not reckon on the providential goodness of God who stood behind the generosity of Joseph.

These two narratives explicate the habit of fearful scarcity that is so powerful among us.  That fearful scarcity dictates so much of our neighborly life and so much of our grudging policy toward needy neighbors.  But these two stories also bear witness to the breaking of the cycles of parsimony that we assume will continue to perpetuity.  In both cases, the new unexpected abundance is given by human agency that is propelled by the generosity of God.  It is more than possible that we ourselves might be such agents of abundance propelled by the same God of generosity.

I thought it was worth giving the post following on the one for yesterday because it completes the thought.  

It is instructive how even in places in the world, now, which waste enormous amounts of food, the same mental habits behind the hoarding against fantasies of scarcity hold.   

Yesterday's post got posted with a bit deleted.  The sermon against overly academic theology was given by the current Papal Preacher Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa.  This account of it is worth reading.  

Western theology risks becoming an abstract and rationalized conversation among academics rather than a tool for nourishing the faith of God's people, the papal preacher said.

"Theology, above all in the West, has increasingly moved away from the power of the Spirit to rely on human wisdom," Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, told members of the Roman Curia during a Lenten meditation March 1.

Pope Francis did not attend the meditation, though Cantalmessa told those present that the pope was following his talk remotely. Several other cardinals were in attendance.

Modern rationalism has "demanded that Christianity present its message dialectically," subjecting it to modes of research and discussion that are philosophically acceptable, he said. But "the danger inherent in this approach to theology is that God becomes objectified, he becomes an object which we talk about, not a subject with whom or in whose presence we talk."

A purely rationalistic form of theology makes it become "more and more a dialogue with the academic elite of the moment and less and less nourishment for the faith of God's people," the cardinal said.

"You only get out of this situation by prayer, by talking to God before you even talk about God," he said. Quoting St. Evagrius Ponticus, a fourth-century Christian monk, Cantalamessa said, "If you are a theologian, you will truly pray, and if you truly pray you will be a theologian." He then cited the example of St. Augustine, who he said produced his "most lasting" theology through speaking with God in his Confessions.

Faith, he noted, "does not oppose reason, but supposes reason, just as grace supposes nature."

I think that this tendency is far more true of Catholic theology than it is of much of the mainstream Protestant theology I've been reading.   When Elizabeth A. Johnson wrote a book giving chapters about theology that takes real life and real People into account, the eminent academic theologian, the then Karl Ratzinger, more or less mounted an inquisition against her which saw her having to face, single-handedly, a room full of American bishops, most of them appointed by John Paul II and ready to attack any woman who they figured JPII and his attack shepherd, Ratzinger wanted to dispose of.  She argued her case better than they attacked her but, no doubt, the experience enraged her and anyone who cares about intellectual fairness and honesty and, in the face of those two pastorally disastrous Popes, in favor of theology that addresses Peoples' real lives and souls.   

For his several missteps, such as the very serious one, his recent call for Ukraine to make concessions to the Putin dictatorship,  Francis has been about the complete opposite of his two immediate predecessors.   I pray that the next Pope continues that and is more decisive in dealing with the bishops, cardinals and media priests who serve the billionaires and millionaires.   It should be remarked on that JPII and Benedict XVI had no problems with the billionaires and millionaires even as they did the most terrible things and promoted fascism and inequality.   JPII made Rupert Murdoch a Papal Knight at the urging of some particularly corrupt American hierarchs.   I doubt he'd have cared if he realized what he did.   I have no use for the cannonization of JPII.