Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Easter

  • The Third Sunday of Easter [A]

    The Third Sunday of Easter [A]

    Today’s readings

    It is always interesting to me, in this story of the appearance of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, how the one thing that got through to them was the breaking of the bread.  He spent a long time walking with them, interpreting the Scriptures and recollecting all the things that had happened on the way.  But they never knew it was Jesus until he broke bread with them.

    Because of this, the early Christian community quickly took on a Eucharistic identity.  They gathered often and took part in the breaking of the bread, and it is in this act of worship that they found the icon of who they were.  “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus had commanded them, and through appearances like this one on the road to Emmaus, they quickly began to see how important this actually was.  And because the early Christian Community found its own identity in the breaking of the bread, it is not terribly surprising, I think, that we find ourselves to be a Eucharistic people.

    Listen to the part of the Gospel where he reveals himself to them once again: “And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.”  There are four specific verbs here: took, blessed, broke, gave.  First Jesus takes bread, receives our offerings, uses what we have to bring to the table.  Then he blesses that bread: as wanting as our gifts may be, Jesus blesses them anyway and gives them a character that they could never have on their own, or as a result of our own poor efforts.  Then he breaks it: just as his own body was broken for us on the cross, so he breaks the bread of our offerings so that it can be a sacrifice given for many.  Finally he gives it: our bread, our offerings, are now completely transformed, filled up with whatever they may lack, blessed and made available to many, and now given for our own sanctification and salvation.  The gifts we have given, which ultimately came from God, are now given to us once again, only this time with more blessing than they ever had.

    This weekend we have been celebrating First Holy Communion with our second graders.  I always love celebrating that with them, and I always tell them that this is not their last Holy Communion, but just the first of many, and every single one of those Holy Communions will be special for them.  Maybe you can remember your own First Holy Communion, the people that were with you, the special clothes you wore, how you felt getting to receive the Lord for the very first time.  Sometimes maybe we get a little lax: we don’t receive Communion with as much zeal as we did that first time.  So maybe it’s a good thing for us to do today as we receive Communion: remember our first time, and the joy of it, and experience that joy once again.

    This story of the journey to Emmaus is an important one for us to hear with fresh ears.  Because this story reminds us what Holy Communion is all about.  Just as those disciples came to recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so it will be for us.  Filled with the grace of today’s Holy Communion, maybe we can recognize our Lord with fresh eyes and truly see him in our brothers and sisters.  Maybe you will see our Lord in the faces of the needy when you come to serve them.  Maybe you will see him in the faces of your children as you teach them and correct them and love them into the kingdom of God.  Maybe you will see him in the face of a coworker or friend who is going through a difficult time.  As we love those people the Lord puts in our paths, maybe we can see our Lord among us in a new way.

    God has given us wonderful gifts.  We have been blessed in so many ways.  And so we need to offer him our best: our faithful attendance at Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, our reverent care for the people in our lives and those who are in need, our joyful preaching of the Gospel by living lives of integrity and honesty.  Jesus takes all these gifts from us, grateful for the love with which we offer them.  He blesses these gifts and perfects them when they are flawed.  He breaks those gifts so that they can be given for many, and the gives them to us to receive new life and even more blessing.

    We are a Eucharistic people.  So we gather over and over to find our identity once again.  We offer our gifts: bread and wine, our experiences, our sorrows and joys, our loving and our living, our successes and failures, who we are and who we were meant to be.  Jesus takes all this, blesses it, breaks it and offers it back redeemed and sanctified and made whole and holy.  Every time we gather for the Eucharist, we not only recognize our Lord in the breaking of the bread, but also we recognize our true selves, the ones we were created to be.

    With those first disciples, we find our hearts burning within us as we hear these wonderful stories of Sacred Scripture, and we come here again and again so that we may receive our Lord and recognize him in the breaking of the bread.

     

  • Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    One of the great things about being Catholic, I think, is the celebration of Easter.  We do it up right, and keep doing it for fifty days!  In fact, just yesterday we completed our celebration of Easter Day, which lasts for eight full days.  It certainly makes sense to us that the joy of our salvation should be celebrated with great festivity, and we shouldn’t be so eager to toss the lilies out of the church (even if I am allergic to them)!

    Today we begin the second phase of our Easter celebration.  Having completed the Octave of Easter, we now begin the preparation for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the first Apostles, and later to each Christian.  We have in our Gospel today the emergence of the interesting figure of Nicodemus.  He was a Jew, and one of the Pharisees.  But he found Jesus and his message compelling, so a few times in John’s Gospel we get to hear from him.  Even though the rest of the Pharisees flat out rejected Jesus, Nicodemus knew that Jesus couldn’t be ignored.  There was something to this Jesus, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.  We don’t know if Nicodemus ever fully, publicly accepted Jesus, but he took many steps on the way.

    Today Nicodemus and Jesus speak about being born again, born of the Spirit.  This for us is a process of accepting the Gospel in faith, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and then living as a people reborn.  Although we can point to our Confirmation day, and even the day of our Baptism as days when we received the Holy Spirit, the process of accepting the Gospel in faith and living as a people reborn in the Spirit is one that takes the rest of our lives.  What we celebrate with joy today is that we are on that journey.  Because of the Resurrection of Our Lord and his gift of the Holy Spirit, we can now live according to the Spirit’s direction in our lives, confident that that Holy Spirit will give us the gifts and courage to do what we are called to do.  The Apostles did that in today’s first reading, and now we must do the same.

     

  • The Second Sunday of Easter

    The Second Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    I really feel like we are inappropriately harsh on poor Saint Thomas.  Sure, he had the benefit of seeing and knowing Jesus during his life, but still, neither he nor any of the other disciples had a guidebook of what was to happen after Jesus’ death, so how can we blame him for not believing this incredible story?  Today is the feast day for those of us who sometimes question things, and the apostle, Saint Thomas, is our patron saint.  I think, rather than disparage Saint Thomas, we might do better to just come to the Lord in our humility and say “My Lord and my God!”

    Because I’m sure we can all think of at least one time when we were reluctant to believe something, or had our faith tested, only to have Jesus stand before us and say, “Peace be with you.”  I remember the time that it became apparent to me that the Lord was calling me to go to seminary after so many years being out of school.  I had a long list of reasons why that wouldn’t work, why it couldn’t be done at this stage of my life, why anyone would be a better choice than me.  And I never got a direct answer to any of that.  Never.  In some ways, all I got was Jesus standing in the midst of my questioning and saying to me “Peace be with you.”  And six months later I was in seminary.

    You’ve had that same kind of experience at some point in your life, I’d bet.  Maybe it was in college when you started really questioning your faith and felt like everything anyone had ever told you was a lie.  Or maybe it was the time you were called to do something at Church, or even take a turn in your career, and couldn’t possibly believe that you were qualified to do that.  Maybe it was the time it suddenly dawned on you that you were a parent, and had no idea how you could ever raise a child.  It could even have been the time when you completely changed your career – as I did – and weren’t totally sure that was God’s will for you.

    Like Thomas, we want evidence, hard facts, a good hard look at the big picture, before we’re ready to jump in.  We want to “see the mark of the nails in his hands and put our fingers into the nailmarks and put our hands into his side.”  That’s the kind of people we are, but that’s not faith.  Some people say that seeing is believing, but faith tells us that believing is seeing.  “Blessed are they,” Jesus says, “who have not seen but still believe.”  We sometimes first have to make an act of faith, a leap of faith if you will, before we can really see what God is doing in our lives.  And that’s the hard part, that’s the part that we, like Thomas, are reluctant to do.

    Jesus makes three invitations to us today.  The first is to believe.  Believe with all your heart and mind and soul.  Believe first, and leave the seeing to later.  Trust that God is with you, walking with you, guiding you, willing the best for you.  Be ready to make that leap of faith, because that’s what it takes for us to see God’s will.  What God has in store for us is so much better than our puny plans for our lives.  Be blessed by not seeing but still believing.

    The second invitation is to touch.  “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says to Thomas, “and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  He makes that same invitation to us every time we walk up to receive Holy Communion.  What a gift it is to be able to share in Christ’s wounds, to be bound up in his Passion, to live the resurrection and to be nourished by his very body and blood.  Just like Thomas, we’re invited to touch so that we too might believe.  That’s why coming to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day is so important.

    The third invitation is to live a new day. The Gospel tells us that Jesus first came to the Apostles on the evening of the “first day of the week.”  That detail isn’t there so that we know what day it is or can mark our calendars.  In the Gospel, the “first day of the week” refers to the new day that Jesus is bringing about – a new day of faith, a new day of trust in God’s divine mercy, a new day of being caught up in God’s life.  We are invited to that new day every time we gather for worship.

    We have doubts, periodically and sometimes persistently.  But God does not abandon us in our doubt.  Just like Thomas, he comes to us in the midst of our uncertainty and says to us: “Do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  “Peace be with you.”

     

  • Easter Monday

    Easter Monday

    Today’s readings

    Well, it wasn’t all that long ago that we saw the disciples scatter in fear, was it?  Here they had seen their friend arrested, tortured, and killed, so one could not blame them for running scared.  I’m sure I would have done no different if I had been them.

    But in today’s first reading, we see them different.  They have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, they have seen him alive.  More than that, they have been filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit, that great gift he had promised them all along.  And so now they get it.  Now they realize what he had been saying to them, and now they have courage and fortitude to proclaim the Gospel.

    “God raised this Jesus, of this we are all witnesses,” Peter says on their behalf.  They have entered into mystagogia … that time following a great event when those involved look back on what they have experienced, and come to new understandings based on those experiences.  Their mystagogia of the Easter event has given them fresh hope and courage, and has empowered them to proclaim the message.

    We didn’t have any baptisms here this Easter Vigil, but many were baptized into the Church and Christ Jesus throughout the world.  They are experiencing mystagogia in these days.  They are looking back on their reception into full communion with us, and reflecting on what they have learned and how they have grown in their faith.  We cradle Catholics also experience mystagogia in these days.  Our baptisms are not as fresh in our minds as are the baptisms of our new brothers and sisters, but we recall with gratitude and profound joy the saving sacrifice that has given us hope of new life.  So we too, like the apostles, are empowered to proclaim the message.

    God has raised this Jesus from the dead, and we are witnesses of these things, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Praise God!  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

     

  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord: Mass During the Day

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord: Mass During the Day

    Today’s readings

    Can you remember a time when you had a breakthrough moment, a kind of “aha!” experience?  Maybe it was getting the answer to a math problem, or mastering the technique of a pitch in baseball, or coming up with just the right combination of ingredients cooking a sauce, or getting a particularly delicate plant to grow in your garden, or learning to sing or play a difficult but beautiful piece of music, or getting your second wind in a long distance run.  Whatever it was, you probably remember the time when it just worked and it forever changed the way you did that particular thing.  Those breakthrough moments are the stuff that help us to learn and grow.

    The line of the Gospel that I really love, though, is “Do not be afraid!”  Easy for that heavenly messenger to say!  We and the disciples are left standing at that empty tomb totally blown away by all that has happened.  But we believe in a God who is very surprising.  All through the Bible, we can read stories of people trying to come to terms with God, and just when they thought they had him all figured out, he bursts in to their complacency and says, “No, that’s not it, you just don’t get me at all, do you?”

    That happens to us too, doesn’t it?  God surprises us all the time. Most often, people note the bad surprises: the death of a loved one, an illness, loss of a job.  But those things are not of God.  God didn’t make those surprises; he allows them in this imperfect world, but they are not his will for us.  What is his will for us is what really surprises us: the grace to deal with a difficult situation with a strength we never knew we had, the help of a friend or loved one at just the right time, words spoken by a stranger or an acquaintance that help us to find the ability to journey on from where we are.  And in our surprise, God says, “Do not be afraid!”

    To really get how surprising this day must have been for Jesus’ disciples, we have to back up and see the story up to this point.  Jesus had been doing wonderful, amazing things: healing the sick, raising the dead, speaking words of challenge and hope.  The Jewish leaders of the time became more and more uncomfortable with his message, seeing it as blasphemy and a rejection of everything good and holy.  More and more, their anger raged up, and many times they attempted to arrest him.  Finally, the movement against him rises to a fever pitch.  Judas, who thought he would get rich off this wonder-worker Jesus grows disillusioned to the point that he is willing to hand Jesus over to them.

    Jesus’ hour had come: he was put through a farce of a trial, brutally beaten and contemptuously treated.  Finally he is nailed to a cross and suffers hours of agony and abandonment by most of his disciples before he gives us his spirit at last.  All seemed darker than dark.  Jesus is placed in a tomb that was not his own by people who had just been acquaintances.  His friends have fled in fear.  His mother and some women wept at the end of it all.  Things couldn’t have been worse or more hopeless.

    But then came the morning.  Some of the women go to anoint his body for its burial, and just when they are wondering who is going to help them roll the stone away so they can get in to the tomb, they come upon the tomb, open and empty.  They had to be utterly amazed – they probably didn’t even know what had actually happened.  But as they stood there, mouths hanging open, thoughts reeling in their minds, the messenger appears: “Do not be amazed!”  Jesus said he would rise, and rise he did, hammering home the point that hopelessness is no obstacle to God’s power, that fear is no match for grace, that death and darkness are nothing compared to God’s great love.  Do not be afraid!

    Even that is not where the wonder of it all stopped.  The disciples have now had their breakthrough moment and so, in their joy, they eventually recollect themselves and go out and tell people what had happened.  Christ, crucified, overcame death to rise to new life.   In the light of the resurrection, they came to understand what Jesus had always preached and also received the grace of the Spirit so that they could preach it to others. Their preaching shaped the Church, guiding it through the centuries to our own day.  Today we gather not just to remember an amazing event that happened two thousand years ago, but rather to experience the joy of that resurrection with those women at the tomb, with the disciples who heard about it from them, with all the people from every time and place, on earth and in heaven, all of us who have had the Gospel preached to us.  We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus as one.  Do not be afraid!

    And the marvel continues: the death and resurrection of Christ has had an effect on this cold and dark and sinful world.  Through that wonderful saving action, the finality of our death has been obliterated, the vicious cycle of our sins has been erased.  We have been freed from it all through the power of grace, freely given if we will freely accept it, lavished out on all of us wandering ones who return to God with sorrow for our sins and hope for forgiveness.  We have truly been saved and made free.  Do not be afraid!

    We have also been given the great gift of eternal life.  In his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ has broken the chains of death and risen triumphant from the grave.  Because of that, our own graves will never be our final resting place, pain and sorrow and death will be temporary, and we who believe and follow our risen Lord have hope of life that lasts forever.  Just as Christ’s own time on the cross and in the grave was brief, so our own pain, death, and burial will be as nothing compared to the ages of new life we have yet to receive.  We have hope in these days because Christ who is our hope has overcome the obstacles to our living.  Do not be afraid!

    Back on the evening of Holy Thursday, when the Church gathered to commemorate the giving of the Eucharist, the entrance antiphon told us what was to come:

    We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    for he is our salvation, our life and our resurrection;
    through him we are saved and made free.

    And this morning, we gather to celebrate that that is truly what has happened.  On this feast of our salvation, we celebrate our great breakthrough moment.  Through the cross and resurrection we are saved and made free to live the salvation, life and resurrection that God always intended for us to have.  We should glory in the cross!   Do not be afraid!

     

  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord: The Easter Vigil

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord: The Easter Vigil

    Tonight’s readings

    We English-speakers have just one word for time, but other languages have more; those languages recognize the different kinds of time.  Most notably for us because it is reflected in the New Testament, the Greek language has two kinds of time: chronos and kairos.  Chronos is the kind of time you can measure.  It’s a day or a week or even the timeline of a project at work.  Kairos on the other hand can be thought of as quality time: a summer afternoon spent with your family, a visit to a sick loved one, or a chance encounter with an old friend.  This kind of time is mostly unmeasurable, and in some sense kairos is always “now.”

    It’s important to keep these kinds of time in mind because the world sometimes sees time in a rather cynical way.   But that’s not how our God sees time.  Did you hear what we prayed at the very beginning of tonight’s vigil?  Listen again: “Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, all time belongs to him, and all ages, to him be glory and power through every age forever.  Amen.”  And these are important, even brave words for us to offer on this most holy night.  Tonight’s vigil proclaims that all time is holy, sanctified by our God who has walked with us through our yesterdays, remains with us today, and forges on with us toward our tomorrows.  There is not a single moment of our life, not a single moment of our history that is not holy because every moment has been, is now, and always will be imbued with the presence of our God who is holiness itself.  That’s what we gather to celebrate on this holy night.

    But as we have walked through Lent, and especially through this Holy Week, there may even be a temptation, I think, to come to think that the world, and especially human history, was a creative experiment that went horribly wrong, that God sent his Son to clean up the mess only to have him killed for it, and then in a last move of desperation raised him up out of the grave.  But we know that’s not right.  Salvation was not some kind of dumb luck or happy accident.  The salvation of the world had been part of God’s creative plan all along.  Humanity, given the grace of free will had, and has, certainly gone astray.  But God did not create us simply to follow our own devices and end up in hell.  He created us for himself, and so sent his Son Jesus to walk our walk, to die our death, and to rise up over it all in the everlasting promise of eternal life.  That’s what we celebrate on this most holy of all nights.

    There is a cynical view of our world that would have us believe that everything is futile and that the only possible way to endure this world is to cultivate a kind of cynical apathy that divorces us from our God, our loved ones, our communities and our world.  We are conditioned to believe that time, and life itself, is meaningless, that there is nothing worth living for, and certainly nothing worth dying for.  But tonight’s vigil debunks all of that.  Tonight we are assured by our God that our present is no less redeemable than was our past, nor is it any less filled with promise than is our future.

    Tonight we have heard stories of our salvation.  Each of our readings has been a stop in the history of God’s love for us.  God’s plan for salvation, and his sanctification of time, began back at the beginning of it all.  Each of the days was hallowed with precious creation, and all of it was created and pronounced good.  Then Abraham’s faithfulness and righteousness earned us a future as bright as a zillion twinkling stars.  Later, as Moses and the Israelites stood trapped by the waters of the red sea, God’s providence made a way for them and cut off their pursuers, making the future safe for those God calls his own.  The prophet Isaiah calls us to seek the Lord while he may be found, not spending our lives on things that fail to satisfy, but investing in our relationship with God that gives us everything.  The prophet Ezekiel foretells the recreation all humanity will experience as they come to know Christ and are filled with the Spirit.  St. Paul rejoices in the baptism that has washed away the stains of sin as we have died and risen with Christ, and has brought us into a new life that leads ultimately to God’s kingdom.  And finally, our Gospel tonight tells us not to be afraid, to go forth into the Galilee of our future and expect to see the Lord.

    We Christians have been spared the necessity of a cynical view of the world and its people.  Our gift has been and always is the promise that Jesus Christ is with us forever, even until the end of the world.  And so, just as God sanctified all of time through his interventions of salvation, so too he has sanctified our lives through the interventions of Sacrament.  We are a sacramental people, purified and reborn in baptism, fed and strengthened in the Eucharist, and in Confirmation, set on fire to burn brightly and light up our world.  Tonight we recall these three Sacraments of Initiation and recommit ourselves to the promises of our baptism.  Also, for the first time since Thursday, we have the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist together, drawing strength from the food our God provides.

    These days of Lent have been a sanctifying journey for all of us, as we have walked the Stations of the Cross together, attended our parish mission, celebrated the sacraments, spent time before the Eucharist, gathered as a community for a fish fry or pizza fest or a soup and bread supper, and so much more.  Christ has definitely sanctified this Lenten time for all of us, and has now brought us to the fullness of this hour, when he rises over sin and death to bring us all to the promise of life eternal.

    And it is this very night that cleanses our world from all the stains of sin and death and lights up the darkness.  The Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation that I sang when we entered Church tonight, tells us: “Of this night, Scripture says, ‘The night will be clear as day: it will become my light, my joy.’ The power of this holy night dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy; it casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.”  What a gift this night is, not just to us gathered here in this church, not just to all the Catholics gathered together throughout the world on this holy night, but to all people in every time and place.  Our world needs the light and our time needs the presence of Christ, and our history needs salvation.  Blessed be God who never leaves his people without the great hope of his abiding presence!

    And so, having come through this hour to be sanctified in this vigil, we will shortly be sent forth to help sanctify our own time and place.  Brightened by this beautiful vigil, we now become a flame to light up our darkened world.  That is our ministry in the world.  That is our call as believers.  That is our vocation as disciples.  “May the Morning Star, which never sets, find this flame still burning: Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, [the Son of God] who lives and reigns forever and ever.  Amen.”

     

     

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Today’s readings

    We believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the Lord, the giver of life,
    who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
    With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
    He has spoken through the prophets.

    You know those words very well; we proclaim them every Sunday, and will proclaim them in a few minutes.  This is the part of the Creed that speaks of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, whose feast we celebrate today.  Today is the birthday of the Church, the moment when the Spirit descended upon those first Apostles and was passed on through them to every Christian ever since.  The Holy Spirit emboldened those first disciples and continues to pour gifts on all of us so that the Church can continue the creative and redemptive works of the Father and the Son until Christ comes in glory.  That is what we gather to celebrate today.

    At the Ascension of Christ into heaven, which we celebrated last Sunday, the apostles had been told to wait in the city until they were clothed with power from on high.  This is exactly what we celebrate today.  Christ returned to the Father in heaven, and they sent the Holy Spirit to be with the Church until the end of time.  That Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary so that God can continue to work in the world and be in the world while Christ was no longer physically present.

    The Holy Spirit works in us and in the world in so many ways.  But the way that he works in us that jumps out at me today is through language.  The Spirit is speaking powerfully in the world, and our Liturgy reminds us of that.  It is the Holy Spirit that speaks to the world in the voice of God.  Consider what we have heard and will yet hear today:

    In the alternate opening prayer, the Church prays:  “Loosen our tongues to sing your praise in words beyond the power of speech, for without your Spirit man could never raise his voice in words of peace or announce the truth that Jesus is Lord.”

    In our first reading, the Spirit spoke through the apostles.  Even though all of them were Galileans, and spoke some dialect of Aramaic, still people who had gathered in Jerusalem from all over the then-known world, people of every race and language group at that time, all of them came to hear the Gospel proclaimed in their very own language, as though it had been spoken just for them, which of course, it was.  This incredible miracle is often seen as the undoing of the Tower of Babel story, in which men who thought they could build a tower high enough to get to heaven all by themselves were penalized by the invention of all kinds of human languages which prevented people from speaking to each other.  Pentecost, then, was the healing of this ill.

    In our Gospel, words are still used by the Holy Spirit.  Jesus tells the apostles even before the Passion, that he would send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate or Paraclete who would teach them everything, and remind them of all Jesus told him while he was alive.

    In the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer, which I will sing in a few minutes, the Church prays: “Today we celebrate the great beginning of your Church when the Holy Spirit made known to all peoples the one true God, and created from the many languages of man one voice to profess one faith.”

    The Holy Spirit speaks to us to give us what we need, and speaks through us in order to bring the world to God.  The Spirit is the voice of the Church proclaiming the one, true faith, and the voice of each disciple courageously living that faith day in and day out.  Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Gospel that when we are challenged for our faith, we need not fear that we do not have the words to speak in those moments, because the Holy Spirit will speak through us more eloquently than we could on our own.

    The Holy Spirit is also the voice of our prayer.  Saint Paul reminds us of what we certainly know: we do not know how to pray as we ought.  But he also reminds us that we need not worry when words fail us and we cannot pray, because the Holy Spirit groans within us and speaks the language of God who hears us and hears the Spirit in us.

    I am not a master of languages.  I tried but failed to learn French, Spanish and Greek at various times in my life.  Some days I even have trouble with English!  And so not having the words to speak is very real to me in my Spiritual life.  But I certainly learned what Saint Paul taught in my second year in seminary, when both my mother and father were diagnosed with cancer within about a month of each other.  When that happened, I had no idea what to even say to God any more.  The only prayer that I had in me was “help.”  And that, along with the Spirit’s groaning, was enough.  Fellow seminarians prayed for me and with me and over me, and I was eventually able to pray again.  That was the Holy Spirit.

    The Holy Spirit speaks to us all the time, I think, and we would do well to tune in and listen closely.  The Spirit speaks when we are about to embark on a venture or come to a decision and gives us pause because we have not prayed the issue well enough. The Spirit speaks to us when we are agitated or worried or upset or frustrated or dejected, and gives us peace to know we are not alone, that God is there with us in the storm.  The Spirit speaks to us when we are discerning and helps us to know the way we should go.

    Then too, the Holy Spirit speaks in us and through us all the time. The Spirit speaks through us when we know something is wrong and gives us the courage to say so.  The Spirit speaks through us whenever we offer someone kind words, even if we’re not sure that our words are helpful – the Spirit even speaks through us if we have no words, and are just there to be present to those in need.  The Spirit speaks through us when we perceive the injustice in our world and reach out to those in need, to those who are marginalized, and to those the world has forgotten.  The Spirit sings in us when we join with the Church in prayer and praise to God, especially when we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, the greatest prayer of the Church.  The Spirit is the one who puts the prayers we offer in our hearts in the first place, and who gives us the words to offer them to God, even groaning for us when our own words are not adequate.

    When we are one, united in the Spirit, we speak to a world that is not inclined to understand the language of faith, in a way that moves them and brings them back to God who created the many peoples of the world to be one with him forever.  That is the great project of our lives, the great project of the Church, the mission that owns us and defines us as disciples.  As Cardinal George is fond of saying, the Church does not have a mission; the Mission has a Church.  And it is that Church that speaks words of the Spirit to proclaim the truth, that Jesus is Lord, and that he is the way, the truth and the life.

    In the Creed, we proclaim that the Holy Spirit has spoken through the prophets.  But that prophetic word is far from over.  The Spirit-spoken prophecy goes on, in the words and actions of people of faith, every day in every place, so that all people can have the opportunity to know the truth that God is alive and fully intends to love his people into heaven.

  • Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    One of the greatest obstacles to the Christian life is comparing ourselves to others. Because, and I’ll just say it, discipleship isn’t meant to be fair. At least not as we see fairness. The essence of discipleship is doing what we were put here to do, we ourselves. We discern that vocation by reflecting on our own gifts and talents, given to us by God, by prayerfully meditating on God’s will for us, and then engaging in conversation with the Church to see how best to use those talents and gifts. That’s the process of discernment, which is always aided by the working of the Holy Spirit.

    What causes us to get off track, though, is looking at other people and what they are doing, or the gifts they have, or the opportunities they have received. We might be envious of their gifts or the opportunities they have to use them. We may see what they are doing and think we can do it better. We might be frustrated that they don’t do what we would do if we were in their place. And all of that is nonsense. It’s pride, and it’s destructive. It will ruin the Christian life and leave us bitter people.

    That’s the correction Jesus made to Peter. Poor Peter was getting it all wrong once again. He thought Jesus was revealing secrets to John that he wanted to know also. But whatever it was that Jesus said to John as they reclined at table that night was none of Peter’s business, nor was it ours. Peter had a specific job to do, and so do we. If we are serious about our discipleship, then we would do well to take our eyes off what others are doing or saying or experiencing, and instead focus on the wonderful gifts and opportunities we have right in front of us. As for what other people are up to, as Jesus said, “what concern is that of yours?”

    As always, the Psalmist has it right. We don’t look at others, we have only one place to look: “The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.”

  • Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Jesus’ words to Peter in this Gospel reading are a mixture of comfort, challenge, and warning. Peter had just messed up in the worst way possible by denying his friend not once but three times. But then comes the question not once but three times: “Peter, do you love me?” This is comfort because with each asking, Jesus is healing Peter from the inside out.

    Then words of challenge: “Feed my sheep.” When we are forgiven or graced in any way, we, like Peter, are then challenged to do something about it. Feed my sheep, follow me, give me your life, come to know my grace in a deeper way.

    And then words of warning: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” When we give ourselves over to God, that necessarily means that we might have to go in a direction we might not otherwise choose.

    But then Jesus brings Peter back to comfort and healing once again by saying “Follow me.” No matter what we disciples have done in our past, no matter how many times we have messed up or in what ways, there is always forgiveness if we give ourselves over to our Savior and our friend.

  • Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes we get an idea and it seems well, a little uncomfortable.  We may well have had a call or even a gentle moving from the Lord, and are afraid to act on it.  Today’s Scriptures speak to those of us who are sometimes hesitant to do what the Lord is calling on us to do.

    I think St. Paul must have been exhausted by this point in his life.  As we hear of him in our reading from Acts today, he is saved from one angry mob, only to learn he is to go to another.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  He has borne witness to Christ in Jerusalem, but now he has to go and do it all over again in Rome.  And underneath it all, he knows there is a good chance he is going to die.

    In the Gospel today, Jesus prays for all of his disciples, and also for all those who “will believe in me through their word.”  And that, of course, includes all of us.  He prays that we would be unified and would be protected from anything or anyone who might seek to divide us from each other, or even from God.  He says that we are a gift to him, and that he wishes us to be where he will be for all eternity.

    What we see in our Liturgy today is that God keeps safe the ones he loves.  If he calls us to do something, he will sustain us through it.  Maybe we’ll have to witness to Jesus all over again or we’ll have to defend our faith against people in our community or workplace – or wherever – who just don’t understand.  We might well feel hesitant at these times, but we can and must go forward, acting on God’s call.  When we do that, we can make our own prayer in the words of the Psalm today: “Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.”