{"id":34932,"date":"2016-11-27T18:10:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T00:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=34932"},"modified":"2018-12-18T16:01:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T22:01:04","slug":"ars-praedicandi-the-first-sunday-of-advent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/27\/ars-praedicandi-the-first-sunday-of-advent\/","title":{"rendered":"Ars Praedicandi:<\/em> The First Sunday of Advent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following homily was preached by Rene McGraw, OSB, on November 27, 2016, St. John’s Abbey:<\/p>\n

The first reading begins with an invitation to all of us\u2014young and old, Father Don with his cane, Father Kieran and Kilian and Knute with their walkers, the youngest Hemesath boys, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists\u2014Come one and all.\u00a0 \u201cCome, let us climb the Lord\u2019s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.\u201d\u00a0 Come you poor, come you rich; come you Native Americans, come you whites and blacks, come; come you African-Americans, come one and all, come let us walk up the mountain side together\u2014and there at the top, there we shall all join together to sing our Hallelujahs.\u00a0 \u00a0That\u2019s our Advent.\u00a0 That\u2019s our journey toward the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n

And so as Christians began this arduous climb following in the path of Jesus, almost immediately the Christians begin pushing the Jews off the road and the Jewish people returned the favor.\u00a0 \u201cYes, I know that Isaiah says that we are climbing to the God of Jacob, but that\u2019s now our God, say the Christians and the Jews.\u00a0 We are the truth-keepers; we are the guide to the road that goes up to the mountain.\u00a0 We Christians, not you, are the keepers of the truth\u2014not just part of the truth, but the whole truth. \u00a0We are the Advent people.\u00a0 You had your chance.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s the Christians turn.\u201d\u00a0 Pogroms.\u00a0 Holocausts.\u00a0 All in the name of Jesus, even though Isaiah had said that on this mountain the swords would be beaten into plowshares.\u00a0 And we say, yes eventually, but not yet.\u00a0 A few more pogroms, a few more holocausts.\u00a0 And the Israelis begin pushing the Arabs and the Muslims further and further away from the water along the Jordan.\u00a0 And everyone kills.<\/p>\n

And on another path going up the mountain, the Muslims and the Hindus forget Gandhi and their own apostle of non-violence, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and push and shove each other and kill.\u00a0 And kill.\u00a0 And Gandhi and Ghaffar Khan climb on non-violently, Muslim and Hindu, Amish, and Mennonite and Quaker watch Catholics and Protestants kill each other in the name of truth.\u00a0 We must preserve the truth.\u00a0 We are the guardians of the truth, the whole truth, the complete truth, nothing but the truth.\u00a0 It is our sacred duty to keep all those who do not understand truth in the same way as we do, we must keep them off the sacred mountain.<\/p>\n

And all of these great religions, shout out, \u201cWe have the truth, the whole truth.\u00a0 We are the repository of truth. You can\u2019t climb the sacred mountain without a passport from us.\u00a0 You\u2019re a Shiite?\u00a0 Too bad; it\u2019s only we Sunnis that have the right answer, and so you Shiites can\u2019t climb the mountain, and if you try to climb this sacred mountain it is our duty to kill you.\u00a0 In the name of truth.\u00a0 You\u2019re a Lutheran\u2014well your truth is not the same as ours as Catholics.<\/p>\n

I love Gandhi\u2019s description of truth.\u00a0 Truth is a giant tree, a giant oak.\u00a0 And there it stands at the top of Isaiah\u2019s mountain that we are all climbing.\u00a0 Majestic. All the time it is fall and spring on that holy mountain.\u00a0 All the time there are leaves falling from the tree of truth, and all of us, Catholic Christians, Lutheran Christians, Mennonite Christians, we all scurry around picking up these leaves from the tree of truth.\u00a0 And there are the Muslims and the Jewish believers and the Hindus all picking up leaves.\u00a0 And as each of us pick up a leaf, we shout out, now I have the complete truth, and we kill some more because the others don\u2019t accept our leaf of truth.<\/p>\n

And that doesn\u2019t mean that all the leaves will be true.\u00a0 There will be some that blow on to the mountain from other trees, trees that might lead us astray.\u00a0\u00a0 A leaf that tells someone to kill Muslims or to kick them out of the country; a leaf that tells me that abortion is ok; a whole bunch of leaves that seems to blow down in the United States say, \u201cGreed is ok,\u201d so close your eyes to the poor, they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.\u00a0 Or some of us say, \u201cShooting blacks is alright,\u201d Or we find ourselves saying, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about the rest of the world, everything for America.\u201d\u00a0 These are leaves that have blown in from somewhere.\u00a0 But they are not the leaves from the great oak of truth.\u00a0 Those leaves need to be resisted.\u00a0 Sometimes with rage, sometimes quietly, and probably never with violence, but they need to be resisted.<\/p>\n

And so what does that tell us about Advent?\u00a0 Let us climb the holy mountain.\u00a0 Let us get to that place where the lion and the lamb lie down together.\u00a0 Let us come to a place where no one shall ever again be killed in the name of truth or to protect our businesses. \u00a0\u00a0Let us like Odysseus plant the oar from the ship that has taken us to war.\u00a0 Let us beg pardon of the Lord, who is the truth and the life and who never killed a single Pharisee or a Roman procurator in the name of truth.<\/p>\n

Advent is all about the thirst we experience as we climb to the top of the mountain.\u00a0 That long desire to make sense out of all the misery and joy of life.\u00a0 Keep walking.\u00a0 Bad heart, good heart, keep climbing.\u00a0 At the end of the journey there will Jesus be standing to welcome Hindu and Buddhist, Jew and Muslim, Christian and atheist, all who have felt that longing to find a true homeland, all who kept walking.\u00a0 Let us walk together, my brothers and sisters.\u00a0 Let us keep walking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love Gandhi\u2019s description of truth. Truth is a giant tree, a giant oak. And there it stands at the top of Isaiah\u2019s mountain that we are all climbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[3294,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-praedicandi","category-homiletics"],"yoast_head":"\nArs Praedicandi: The First Sunday of Advent - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/27\/ars-praedicandi-the-first-sunday-of-advent\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ars Praedicandi: The First Sunday of Advent - Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I love Gandhi\u2019s description of truth. 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