By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — The everyday “ordinariness” of God’s miraculous presence among His people can be “a stumbling block” today, just as it was in Jesus’ own time on Earth when fellow villagers doubted the special status of a carpenter’s son, a theology professor told the second annual Southwest Biblical Conference here.
“God became flesh, and has a belly button,” said Dr. James Pauley, professor of theology and catechetics at Franciscan University of Steubenville, during the program lasting nearly four and a half hours on November 18 at St. Thomas the Apostle Church.
The day began with an 8:30 a.m. Mass offered by the bishop of Gallup, N.M., James S. Wall, who had been the pastor at St. Thomas the Apostle before being named to the New Mexico post in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.
Along with St. Thomas’ Institute of Catholic Theology program, Franciscan University of Steubenville cosponsored the Phoenix conference, and its president, Fr. Sean Sheridan, TOR, JD, JCD, attended and greeted the approximately 170 participants.
The conference theme was, “The Incarnation of Christ: God’s radical presence in our lives.”
Pauley said one of his favorite paintings depicts Infant Jesus on Mary’s lap, reaching out to her because He needs to be fed, while her hands are folded in adoration of Him. This shows the “tension” between the human and divine, as well as His needing her, and she needing Him, in different ways, the professor said.
God entered into the ordinary existence of humanity in order to bring redemption, Pauley said, recalling that the shepherds in the field beheld God in a baby.
Jesus “said things and He did things that didn’t appear to align” with what He claimed to be, Pauley said, recalling that when Jesus returned to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, people asked, “Where did this man get all this?…Is He not the carpenter, the son of Mary….And they took offense at Him.”
“It was His ordinariness, His familiarity that presented a barrier to them,” which was also the primary reason that the religious authorities rejected Him, Pauley said, adding that people’s lack of faith limited His powers among them.
Pauley provided these illustrations after noting that some Catholics drop away from the Church if they don’t feel inspired by “the ordinariness” of its customary religious rituals.
Also speaking at the Southwest Biblical Conference were Kevin Saunders, who has a master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and founded Arizona Bible Class, a program that studies the Bible intensively, and Mary Mirrione, national director of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd who also works with the Missionaries of Charity both in the U.S. and abroad.
“God Himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” Pauley said, “and He has destined us to share in that exchange.”
Citing the biblical passage that “eye has not seen, ear has not heard . . . what God has prepared for those who love Him,” Pauley said that “the sacraments plunge us” into that love.
The sacraments, he said, are the place for the “maximum divine encounter.” However, he said, many Catholics place their expectations for spiritual transformation at Mass by looking for a stirring homily, inspiring music, or the environment or atmosphere there, or the other people attending.
Pauley asked, “Is it possible to experience transforming grace” without these elements?
Jesus established the sacraments as “the primary vehicle” for the spiritual encounter, “and we must also give ourselves entirely” to Him, Pauley said, explaining that if people don’t learn to speak this “language of the Incarnation,” then they depend on searching for what seem to be rewarding elements in the way Mass is celebrated.
“Then our Catholic faith becomes something very fragile,” he said. “. . . (T)he greatest possible encounter with God unfolds through the ordinariness” of the customary rituals.
He recalled that 20th-century Catholic author and theologian Frank Sheed said every village in Jesus’ land had a carpenter, but Jesus was the carpenter who “had made the customer whose order He was executing. . . .
“How can one person have two opposite essences simultaneously?. . . This was a problem for many of the people of His time,” Pauley said.
The “ordinariness” of the sacraments today bestowing grace “becomes a stumbling block” for many people, he said — they ask, for instance, why they need to go to a priest to confess their sins, or how can bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus?
Again illustrating the power of the ordinary, Pauley said that in his first year of marriage, he frequently brought flowers home to his wife, then she told him that she’d rather have something from the Chipotle Grill.
Another conference speaker, Mirrione, said many ancient cultures saw time “as an endless repeating cycle,” but ancient Israel saw time moving forward, beginning with Creation, “marked by stages which are only tending toward redemption. . . .
“Divine intervention in human events is constant and loving,” she said, with the messages of the ancient prophets becoming “the guiding light for Israel.” In the Bible, she said, humans are collaborators with God, and Mary is “the most perfect response” God has received.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress