Pastor’s Reflection

Transformers

A whole cadre of summer movies and comic books have dogged us lately with images of wild machines fighting to take over the world. “Transformers” scan twirl into any shape or size robot at the blink of an eye.  One can’t nail them down and they are hard to fight off.  Prophets are people like that. They let God’s word grasp and transform them.   As a prophetic people – we are invited to that same relationship. We are to be transformers, but different than the movies.  It starts with our words.    St. Francis of Assisi had such a devotion to “words” that he would collect them if he found them at the side of the road and put them in some place of devotion. “Every miracle from the beginning of the world came about through words,” said his follower Roger Bacon. The Franciscans I came to admire have always been fascinated with what one can do with a word.

Elijah is on the run. At great risk, the prophet literally puts his whole body on the line to heal the son of the woman hiding him in her own home.  Three times, he embraces the boy’s dead body. This very startling image seems to be of the life-giving power of God flowing in a very physical way through the body of the prophet to the body of the child.   At the same time, Elijah begs God: “Oh Lord my God, let the life-breath return to the body of this child.” In this story, prophecy works through an intense, and very dramatic, very physical action accompanied by the words of intercessory prayer.  And they transform, they turn everything upside down and inside out.

The great Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggeman saw the prophet Elijah as, “a source of life in a world where death is taken to be (the) final” word.” Jesus stands with that noble group.  His mercy for the grieving widow of Naim comes through his great heart, according to St Luke.   We celebrated the Sacred Heart this past Friday, the feast of God’s Compassion.  When Jesus called upon the young man, “Arise!” —and the life breath returned, a new world was born.  Everyone present recognized the power of a prophet‘s words and the visitation of God among his people.

Our words count. St. Paul in Galatians tells how the intervention of Gods word changed him from a screaming zealot to a disciple of the one he was determined to wipe out.   What we say cannot be retrieved back after the words leave our lips.  Prophetic words first imagine a different kind of world, an alternative to the present one. Than in the “words” of intercessory prayer (like we do in every Mass at the final moment of the Liturgy of the Word)  takes a step in creating it.   I pray for the coming summer months of American politics.  I hope more of the words and diatribes, the harsh rhetoric of the past months do not drown us.   Wisdom never needs to be screamed. May our words give heart to our politics.  It’s a word that transforms the world.

Many thanks for the generosity of the past months. We at St. Mary’s are a transforming word, in the center of Phoenix. As the summer heat finds us, may we keep our compassion and our vision well hydrated.

A gentle week.
Fr. Michael Weldon, OFM