What Makes Us Different - St. Mary of Magdala, an Inclusive Catholic Community

Helen Weber-McReynolds, RCWP, Pastor
Maria Thornton McClain, RCWP, Retired Pastor

Transmitting God’s Love to One Another

6/18/2023

Transmitting God’s Love to One Another
11th Sunday Ordinary Time and Father’s Day, June 18, 2023

Helen Weber-McReynolds, RWCP
Gen 21: 7-21; Ps. 100; 2 Cor 1: 3-4; Mt 9: 35-38

Imagine being an enslaved young woman with a little son, and being cast out into the desert alone with only enough food and water for a day, and for a totally unjust reason.
Imagine being an early Christian evangelist, unable to return to visit dear friends and fellow Christians, due to the threat of religious persecution.
Imagine being the apostles Jesus sent out to cure and heal the sick and raise the dead, and expected to count on the hospitality of strangers for your living, as happened in the chapter following the passage from Matthew we read today.
Hagar, Ishmael, Paul, and the apostles no doubt felt lost, harassed, troubled, and abandoned, as did the people the apostles were sent to help.
Now imagine being a transgender teenager in Indiana, unsure if you will be able the receive the medical treatment you need to live the life you know is right for you.
Imagine being an LGBTQIA person in one of the many states in the US that have passed laws restricting your rights strictly on the basis of your sexuality.
Imagine experiencing a miscarriage and hemorrhage and being told by your doctor that it was against the laws of your state to give you the medicine needed to help you.
Imagine being a Southern Baptist woman pastor, and being told you could no longer minister to your congregation.
Imagine being a woman called to priesthood in the Catholic church.
Lost, harassed, troubled.
Our readings today tell us how God saved and protected Hagar and Ishmael, Paul, the apostles sent out by Jesus, and the people they cured and raised up. God saved them because of God’s love. But these people also went on to accomplish very important work in helping to establish justice and pass on God’s love on earth. Hagar helped Ishmael produce a great nation, by introducing him to his Egyptian wife. Paul spread the word of God’s extravagant love for all throughout the eastern Mediterranean region, helping many people understand their inherent worth in God’s eyes. And the apostles cured the sick, raised the dead, and told of the Good News of Jesus’ love.
As Sr. Mary McGlone pointed out in the National Catholic Reporter this week, when we bring God’s love to others, we experience it most intensely ourselves. We begin to understand what it is like to love as God loves. We only really understand God’s love when we give it to others. And that is really the sum of what God asks of us—to love God and to love one another. To love God BY loving one another.
Fatherhood is certainly a vocation of loving God by loving others. Fathers are called every day to model God’s love to their children. Both the fathers and their children learn the depth of God’s love for us by experiencing the way fathers care, provide, teach, and protect.
To be an apostle is to be one sent out by another. We are all apostles, then. Jesus sends us all as laborers into the field. There are so many who are terrified, harassed, and abandoned. Sometimes we feel that way ourselves. The only solution is to parent, shepherd, heal, and teach one another. God loves us infinitely. Let us transmit that love to one another, day by day, any way we can.

"Profound Mutuality"

6/4/2023

“Profound Mutuality”
Trinity Sunday, June 4, 2023

Helen Weber-McReynolds, RWCP
Ex 34: 4-6, 8-9; Ps. 104; 2 Cor 13: 11-13; John: 3: 16-17; Mt 27: 50-56

   The other day I saw a little humorous post on the internet that observed that God was the original user of They/Them pronouns. Which is kind of a cool way to say that this person’s opinion was that God understands people for whom gender is not binary, that there are more than just he and she to human existence. But it’s also a fresh take on the concept of the Trinity. It’s a new way of thinking about our God, who shares everything, even existence. God’s essence is to be in relationship—relationship to the other members of Godself, and to us, and all creatures. Communion with Godself and with us is the way of being for God.
           The concept of God is beyond the capacity of any human to completely understand. But there are many comparisons in the Bible, among other literature, to help us understand what God is like. In the Psalms, for example, God is described as a protector who keeps her children safe as they travel; also as a shepherd who guides his sheep; even as water that relieves thirst, or forms a powerful, cooling waterfall. To Elijah, waiting in the cave for the voice of God, it was not in the fire, or the storm, or the earthquake, but it was in a tiny, whispering wind. In Jesus’ parables, God is compared to a forgiving parent, a woman adding yeast to bread dough, an investor seeking good returns, and a farmer planting seeds. Always images of relating, of care, of love for us, of helping, of support.
           The idea of the Trinity can be very confusing—how can 3 persons be in one person?—but it can also be very revealing. Three persons existing as one Person. God the Creator, the Human Incarnation of God, and the Spirit of God that resides in each of us and all the world. Over the centuries, there have been some very destructive interpretations of the Trinity, such as the monarchal image, in which God is a king, from which the other members of the Trinity proceed. Or the patriarchal interpretation, in which God is a father, and the other members are all male too. But we can move beyond these negative interpretations to the essence of the Trinity idea—that God is loving and seeks at all times to relate to us and all beings in love. In the Trinity, God exists as three equal persons related in profound mutuality. This is a very feminist concept, when you think about it. All three components of Godself are equal—none existed before the others, none proceeds one from another.
As Elizabeth Johnson expresses it, in her book Quest for the Living God, “The living God is an overflowing communion of self-giving love.” Which tells us that if we wish to answer Jesus’ call to love as God loves, we also must relate to others as equals, in self-giving love, which builds communion with other people and with God as well. It also gives us guidance in our task of helping to recreate and reform the church. Of the church, Johnson says, “Only a community of equal persons related in profound mutuality, pouring out praise of God and care for the world in need, only such a church corresponds to the triune God it purports to serve.”
During this Pride month, maybe we can make a point of being sensitive to the personal pronouns people prefer to use, and to learning more about the beautiful spectrum which is human gender. Maybe we can also take time to reflect on God’s unselfishness, even to the point of very existence, and the example that provides for us.