Roc Homily (e) – 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017

Here’s my first attempt at dealing with the meaning of “atonement.”

The Oxford-English Dictionary defines “atone” as “making reparation for a wrong or injury.”  However, the medieval Latin word, adunamentum, means “unity” from an obsolete verb meaning “to unite.”  So, what sounded as a hip dealing with this concept in the 1970’s as “at-one-ment” is actually true to its roots.

I am indebted to the magisterial study by Dom Sebastian Moore, OSB, “The Crucified Jesus is No Stranger.”  He proposed that Jesus elicited then and elicits now our deeper, darker resistances we typically avoid. Thus, our complicity in his crucifixion.

 What do you seen in this Ink Blot?

Here, I simply make the point that Jesus is like the proverbial Rorschach test, the Ink Blot exam, intended to draw forth our perceptions and intentions.  Jesus evoked then and evokes now our profound resistance so that we can see, bring it to the Light, and experience some modicum of healing in this life. 

“Hurt people hurt people.”

This is how Jesus makes communion with us, within us, and among us. He brings us to “at-one-ment” by summoning our woundedness into his Light.

Give a listen. –roc,sj