Good morning Papa!
Good morning son!
Papa, thanks again for Bishop Barron, he nailed it again today I thought.
You’re welcome son, yes, I’d say Jesus nailed it to the cross, scapegoating that is ;D
Exactly and thereby cancelling out the whole scapegoat mechanism on the cosmic level… granted, most of us never received the memo about this and still go right on scapegoating everyone and everything. But that old tired and violent way was nailed to the cross and a new way of resurrection and life rose from the ashes in a very real sense… it simply is taking its time sinking into the entirecosmos but it will take over. It is inevitable. Those who resist will feel it as fire, those who embrace the new way of love and forgiveness will feel it as warming rays of the life giving sun/son of God.
Exactly, you’re tendency to blame and scapegoat went all the way back to the beginning as you remember and is highly linked to pride. Both must be completely uprooted if true healing is to happen, but the cosmic groundwork has been completed. You are all invited to join in that triumph of the way of forgiveness, love and overcoming evil with good. But it wouldn’t work if I forced it on you would it… that would be using the same old method of violence to overcome your violence. This is an invitation to humanity to marry our divinity and it is not a shotgun wedding.
Indeed Papa, and I fully embrace it and pray that everyone will. Of course, I cannot do it except in, with and through you though you. Jesus I trust in you.
__________
Bishop Barron’s Gospel Homily for today:
JOHN 11:45–56
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the chief priests and Pharisees unite in a plot to kill Jesus because he raised Lazarus from the dead.
The Crucifixion of Jesus is a classic instance of Catholic philosopher René Girard’s scapegoating theory. He held that a society, large or small, that finds itself in conflict comes together through a common act of blaming an individual or group purportedly responsible for the conflict.
It is utterly consistent with the Girardian theory that Caiaphas, the leading religious figure of the time, said to his colleagues, “It is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.”
In any other religious context, this sort of rationalization would be validated. But in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, this stunning truth is revealed: God is not on the side of the scapegoaters, but rather on the side of the scapegoated victim.
The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim.
__________
__________
Bishop Barron’s Gospel Homily for today:
JOHN 11:45–56
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the chief priests and Pharisees unite in a plot to kill Jesus because he raised Lazarus from the dead.
The Crucifixion of Jesus is a classic instance of Catholic philosopher René Girard’s scapegoating theory. He held that a society, large or small, that finds itself in conflict comes together through a common act of blaming an individual or group purportedly responsible for the conflict.
It is utterly consistent with the Girardian theory that Caiaphas, the leading religious figure of the time, said to his colleagues, “It is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.”
In any other religious context, this sort of rationalization would be validated. But in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, this stunning truth is revealed: God is not on the side of the scapegoaters, but rather on the side of the scapegoated victim.
The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim.
__________
Common recurring scapegoating themes from the left and right today in the US. Dare we look into our own
hearts and see the murderous thoughts that lurk right there?
Nope.
Easier just
to blame other groups, individuals or institutions.
What we fail to realize is that the battle lines between good and evil run straight through the middle of each human heart.
In the words of St. Macarius the Great “…[T]he heart itself is but a small vessel, yet there also are dragons and there are lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. And there are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices. But there also is God, also the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and Apostles, the treasures of grace — there are all things.” (The Fifty Spiritual Homilies, Homily 43.7)
