| Does God answers prayers? |
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NO_TRANSLATION_AVAILABLE It's ironic that in the passage of the Acts of the Apostles there is the account of the martyrdom of Stephen and that in today's Gospel, on the other hand, we are reassured that everything that we ask in Jesus' name will be granted. Death by stoning is a very cruel way of dying because it depends on the good aim of the insane mass. Stoning does not only try to eradicate someone's life, but it tries to erase the memory and meaning of the person. There is an implicit communal repudiation in the act of dealing a death by each participant taking the instrument of performance: a stone. And there is also a share of the blame among the perpetrators, and it makes the entire community directly responsible for implementation. In stoning, those who kill you were your friends, your people. You die inside your own culture, as someone who chose for themselves a lifestyle rejected by the majority. Death by stoning reconstitutes group unity at the bloodshed. The group separates from you to affirm your otherness. To choose the path of Jesus they physically and spiritually remove you from your culture. Death by stoning is a cultural death, in the most complete sense of the term culture. How do you win when everyone is against you- When it's you against the world- When nobody, or almost nobody approves of what you do---When they consider you so great a criminal that they kill you with a form of execution reserved for criminals that are ritually unclean to touch and so they throw the homicidal weapon from a distance? Do you think Jesus' statement that everything that they request would be given to them passed through Stephen's mind? Do you think that he is thinking about his life and how beautiful it would be to save it while at the same time the blows don't stop and become stronger and stronger? It is ironic that in this gospel Jesus promises everything you ask in his name and that the reading of Acts Stephen died by stoning. However, Stephen asked something in this scene. He asked God not to take into account this corporative sin, this lynching, the repudiation of their own, and this restoration of the control of the pack, this suppression of the individual, this physical and spiritual assault. Stephen, ask not to be taken into account. The fact that the first Christian martyr was someone who was more or less a waiter at the weekly Eucharist of the emerging Christian church is a sign pointing toward the center, the heart of the Christian faith that more than a defined, coherent body of doctrine, or even a sacred book. It is above all else a lifestyle of service to others, an option that is sometimes against the wishes of our parents or friends, not in response to a group of teachings of a guru, or the dictates of a national religion, but in response to a living presence. If you came to the Maundy Thursday dinner and believed that Tony or I were the most important because we were the ones who were speaking, you were wrong. The heroes were Azra and her acolytes, who served silently, with a quiet diligence. They created the conditions of the feast of love, as the General Schwarzkopf, the business of forgiving is something from God for us to organize the meeting. Jesus acknowledges that the focus of their lives is eccentric, the center is outside of them, the center is in the Other par excellence- by extension my resources are not within me, or other people, or what I have or in the material world. The resources I appeal to when I am in limiting situations, (sickness, death, tragedy or joy) is in God. In a God completely and radically different from me, which definitively means that God is Holy. The life and death of Jesus guarantees an eccentric life, outside of the self, beyond the material, beyond the social group, and placed firmly in God. Often we see life as a semi-circle, the semi-circle of the achievements or failures of one's self, the semi-circle of the approval or rejection of those around us (the group or society), the semi-circle of knowledge, or of the property and/or resources that we have accumulated in our lives, the semi-circle of the health and strength of youth and the decline of the elderly. All those highs and lows that exist become zero at the time of death. Nothing remains of the achievements or failures of fame or infamy, or what they have. Nothing remains of health or disease. None of this can stop the inevitable and, given the finitude, transient existence, then began to think that maybe that was not all, it had more of this semi-circle of our human potential, the semi-circle of the ego, society or material things, the semi-circle of the body. There is another semi-circle that completes our life, one whose meaning is beyond the here and is strongly placed in the "all". That was the vision that Stephen saw in the sky, shortly before his death, he saw his life in the completing circle of God With the semi-circle from above, from God, our life is made circular, but it is not dependent on our achievements, or the approval of the group, or what we accumulate in life, but our relationship with God, it's not even dependent on if we live or die. A life centered on God gives us an incredible freedom: what we do to gain experience, skills, and knowledge is not going to determine who we are at the end. A life centered on God gives us an incredible freedom: in the end what people think of us or not, does not mean anything. A life centered on God gives us an incredible freedom: what we accrue or not, does not determine who we are. Jesus proposes a re-consideration of life, a new eccentric perspective, outside of the self, and the group, and of the material world to find its center in "the above" "the transcendent" in "the all" rather than "the here ". This is the "born again" that Jesus recommends to Nicodemus. Jesus gave his life for this opportunity. The entire ministry of Jesus is based on this premise, the possibility that in spite of our mistreated lives, in spite of the damage we have caused, in spite of how we are mired in sin, we can keep pointing upwards towards "the all" towards God, towards completion. Putting "the all" instead of "the here" at the center will change all of our priorities, all our goals, our whole purpose of living. It is not a question of fanaticism; it is not a question of drinking Jim Jones' kool-aid. It is to see life as it is from the perspective of God. It is not about talking about God more in daily conversation, or coming to Mass more often. It is not even about being more "religious." It is about living in the freedom that God has promised us in His Son Jesus Christ. Ignorance or knowledge, popularity or infamy, wealth or poverty, success or failure will still be there; but will have limited relevance to our existence, because we are part of a much bigger narrative, we have a monitor, that helps us to see that ultimately our meaning does not depend on our knowledge, fame, or possession, but God. Christianity is the discovery of the most complete reality, this sacred geometry of life, which puts our semi-circle of death-to-life in the context of a circle that had its beginnings and endings in God. In the days after October 6, 2006 the Amish gave the American Christians a lesson. Precisely one singular lesson of clarity and purpose, when in modest gestures and increasingly made known through words and deeds that they pardoned the murderer of the five girls and did what is necessary to help his widow and two children. An elderly Amish man held the father of the murderer for one hour, while crying inconsolably. That is what Jesus was talking about when he promised to give what is asked for in his name. He knew that his disciples would not ask for a Mercedes, or even a necessary salary increase; but he asked his disciples to do the impossible: to forgive a grave injustice, to love who all who hate or fear, and to accept that this is profoundly different. Would it not be that the prayer of Stephen that Jesus sustains the pained hearts of the disciples in his divine hands so that they can do his will- even though doing his will seems impossible? Stephen does not die screaming, "Long live Israel!" or "Jesus is the Messiah!" which makes me think that the prayer of Stephen comes from a place more complicated than simple partisanship or fanaticism. The prayer of Stephen comes from the vision of the heavenly abode, it comes from eternal life with God, it comes from the circle that begins and ends in God.
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