Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “You will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices;
    you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”

    Jesus continues to prepare his disciples for his not being among them in the flesh. He knows that his ascension to the Father was part of the plan, and he wants the disciples to be prepared so that their grief does not overwhelm the mission. He knows that they will indeed grieve, after all, he was fully human in that way too. He grieved over the death of Lazarus and grieved over the needs of the people he ministered to. He knew that sadness was to be expected and please note carefully that he did NOT tell them not to grieve: “You WILL weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you WILL grieve…” So he does not, as our modern society would, tell them to get over it and get back to work. He knows that grief is healthy and necessary.

    But he also gives them hope. Because we Christians do not grieve as if we have no hope. He knows that salvation is the plan, and that death is no longer the end of the story. Their grief would indeed become joy. And joy isn’t the same thing as saying they would always be happy. But just because people grieve doesn’t mean they are not experiencing joy. Because joy is a condition that is not regulated by external circumstances. Joy comes from knowing that God is in control and that salvation is ours.

    Joy ultimately comes from the Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus knew for certain he would be sending once he returned to the Father. The Spirit’s presence in our lives gives us a joy that the world and all its grief cannot ever take away. We too look forward to these events as we prepare for our annual celebrations of the Ascension and Pentecost. We may indeed be subject to grief in this life, in many forms. But we have been given the gift of the Spirit, we know that God is in control and that salvation is ours.

    We may indeed weep and mourn while the world rejoices; we may grieve, but our grief will certainly become joy.

  • Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    There are a lot of miracles going on in today’s first reading.  First, there’s the earthquake that brings down the prison walls, although Paul and Silas did not take advantage of the situation.  Then there’s the conversion of the jailer, who was an employee of the Romans, and would have probably been expected to worship their pagan gods.  You might also note the rather miraculous faith of Paul and Silas, who despite being very badly mistreated on account of Jesus, did not abandon their faith but actually grew stronger in it.  And you might also consider it a miracle that, when they are jailed and singing hymns at midnight, the other prisoners didn’t gang up and beat them into silence!

    When you look at it as a vignette, it’s all so amazing, although Paul and Silas probably just viewed it as part and parcel of the life they had been called to live.  They had faith in Jesus and they probably didn’t expect anything less than the miracles they were seeing!

    People of great faith experience such great miracles.  This is not to say that all their troubles go away; Paul and Silas were still imprisoned, and continued to be hounded by the people and the government because of their faith.  But the miracles come through the abiding presence of Christ, giving us strength when we need it most, a kind word from a stranger that comes at the right moment, a phone call from a friend that makes our day, an answer to prayer that is not what we expected but exactly what we needed.  The Psalmist today has that same great faith: “Your right hand saves me, O Lord,” he sings.  Let us pray that our hearts and eyes and minds would be open to see the miracles happening around us, that we might sing that same great song!

  • Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today, Jesus has for us good news and bad news.  The good news is that he is eventually going to send the Holy Spirit upon the world.  The Holy Spirit will be a new Advocate for us, and will testify to everything that Jesus said and did.  The Spirit’s testimony will be further evidence of God’s abiding love for us, a love that did not come to an end at the cross or the tomb, but instead triumphed over everything to make known his salvation to the ends of the earth.  The testimony of the Holy Spirit, combined with the testimony of the Apostles, would be the birth pangs of the emerging Church, given by Christ to make the Gospel known in every land and every age.

    But the bad news is, that glory won’t come without a price.  Those Apostles would be expelled from the synagogues and misguided worshippers would think they were doing God’s will by killing them.  Jesus knew this would be the lot of his baby disciples and he cares for them enough to warn them of what is to come.  It is an important aspect of their discernment to know what is to come.  Also, by warning them, he is preparing them for what is to come so that when it does happen, they may not be flustered or frightened, but might instead hold deeply to their faith, knowing that God’s providence had foreseen these calamities and they might know that in God’s providence, these calamities would not be the end of the story.

    We are beneficiaries of the good news and bad news of today’s Gospel.  We have heard the testimony of the Spirit and the Apostles, have been nourished by the Church they founded, have been encouraged by all that they suffered to bring the Good News to us.  It is important that we too know that there is good news and bad news in the future of our discipleship.  The Spirit continues to testify and the Apostles continue to teach us – that’s the good news.  The bad news is, sometimes our faith will be tested, and sometimes our faith with cost us something.  But in the end, it’s all Good News: even our suffering will not be the end of the story.  God’s love triumphs over everything.

  • The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    When we pray the Creed, we always say that we believe in the Holy Spirit.  When we prepare for Confirmation, we study the gifts of the Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit and we get ready to receive the Holy Spirit in a Sacramental way.  But I often wonder if we are aware of the Holy Spirit on a day-to-day basis, in the everydayness of our lives, when the rubber meets the road.

    The early Christian community certainly were aware of the Holy Spirit.  They saw some very powerful things happen as a result of the Holy Spirit.  They had the whole Pentecost experience and spoke in tongues.  But even more important than that, they grew bold in the Holy Spirit.  This was a group of men who were scared to death of what was happening.  They saw the Savior hanged on a cross, and they panicked at the idea of that happening to them too.  They scattered, forgetting for the moment all they had experienced with Jesus, trying to return to their former way of life.

    And then Pentecost happened.  The Holy Spirit descended upon them, and they were able to speak to people in their own native languages.  They were able to cure the sick and do mighty deeds in the name of Christ, in much the same way as their Lord had done.  Not only that, they grew bold.  Instead of cowering in fear, today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows them fearlessly proclaiming Christ, founding Churches, writing to fellow Christians about matters of doctrine, and sharing the decisions of the Holy Spirit.

    They were so in touch with the Holy Spirit, that they were able to tell others what the Holy Spirit wanted to happen.  They weren’t making these things up; they did it through prayer and a fervent relying on the Holy Spirit to help them build the Church.  Because they prayed to the Holy Spirit and consulted the Holy Spirit so constantly, they received grace from the Spirit and were able to act in prudent ways to found a Church that has come down through the ages to our own day.

    This is the Holy Spirit that Jesus promises those disciples in today’s Gospel reading.  At that time, they couldn’t have known how important the Spirit, the Advocate, would be to them.  But they know it soon enough.

    What is important for us to know is that Christ promises us this same Holy Spirit.  He calls us all to receive the Holy Spirit and to rely on the Holy Spirit in all that we do.  Think about how different our lives would be if we asked for the gifts of the Holy Spirit on a daily basis.  Think about how different our world would be if we prayed to the Holy Spirit to guide our business decisions, to help us vote wisely, to give us grace to deal with difficult decisions.

    God wants us to have that kind of grace, that kind of guidance, that essential inspiration – which means to be imbued with the Spirit.  So that is why, in these days after the Lord’s resurrection, Jesus promises that, on returning to heaven, he would send the Advocate, the One who would continue to intercede for us and be present to us and guide us into the future.

    Next week we celebrate the Ascension.  In two weeks we celebrate Pentecost.  On the eve of these two great events, Christ makes a promise to us.  He will not leave us alone.  He will come back to us.  And in the mean time, he will send us the Holy Spirit to be our Advocate and Guide.  We should pray every day for a greater outpouring of the Spirit.  I do it every morning and rely on the Spirit’s presence in my day.  I use the prayer I learned when I was preparing for Confirmation.  Maybe you know it too.  If you do, pray it with me:

    Come, Holy Spirit.
    Fill the hearts of your faithful,
    and kindle in them the fire of your love.
    Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created,
    and you shall renew the face of the earth.

    Amen!  Come, Holy Spirit!

  • Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Saint Paul was obviously a pretty tough guy.  I don’t know about you, but if I barely weathered the storm of people throwing rocks at me and leaving me for dead, I might think twice about how I handled my ministry.  That’s nothing to be proud of, but I think that’s part of fallen human nature.  How blessed we are to have the saints, like Saint Paul, to give example of how to weather the storm and live the faith and preach the word.  Indeed, if it weren’t for the grace-filled tenacity of those saintly apostles, we would very likely not have the joy of our faith today.

    But contrast the storminess of Paul’s stoning with the wonderful words of encouragement and consolation we have in today’s Gospel reading: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”  We can think of all sorts of situations in which these words would be welcome.  We may have experienced health problems in ourselves or in those close to us, job difficulties, family problems, and so many more.  How wonderfully consoling it is to know that in the midst of the many storms we daily face, our Savior is there: offering us peace.

    But the peace Jesus offers us in this reading is a bit different from what we might expect.  It’s not the mere absence of conflict, nor is it any kind of placating peace the world might offer us.  It’s also not a magic wand that makes all our troubles go away.  This peace is a genuine one, a peace that comes from the inside out, a peace that calms our troubled minds and hearts even if it does not remove the storm.  There is a contemporary Christian song that says, “Sometimes he calms the storm, and other times he calms his child.”  How true that is!

    God knows that we walk through storms every day.  He experienced that first-hand in the person of Jesus as he walked our walk in his earthly life.  He knows our joys and our pains, and reaches out to us in every one of them with his abiding presence and his loving embrace.  He was there for St. Paul when he was being stoned, and he is there for us too.  His presence abides in us through the Church, through the holy people God has put in our lives, through his presence in our moments of prayer and reflection, and in so many ways we could never count them all, and we’re probably not even aware of them all.  This peace from the inside out is one that our God longs for us to know, whether we are traversing calm waters or braving a vicious storm.

    We pray, then, for the grace to find peace in our daily lives, the peace that comes from Jesus himself.

  • The Fifth Sunday of Easter

    The Fifth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    One of the most exciting lines in today’s Liturgy of the Word comes in the second reading: “The One who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”  The book of Revelation is all about the persecution of the early Christians, and it looks forward to the day when God would put all that persecution to an end.  People were dying for the faith, being forced to give it up or be cast out of the synagogues.  That left them open to the persecution of the Romans who demanded that they take up the worship of their pagan gods or face death.  They were a people looking for newness, healing, and re-creation.  Fittingly then, John reports what is heard in his vision: “Behold, I make all things new.”

    There is a clamor for newness, I think, in every age and society.  We are a people who could use some re-creation even today.  Look at the way our own faith is received.  The voices of death have such a foothold that they have many faithful Catholics believing that babies can be aborted in favor of personal choice.  Sunday family worship takes a further back seat to soccer games, baseball, and other activities, as if worshipping God were just one possible choice for the many ways people could spend the Lord’s day.  Rudeness and hurtful language are used in every forum, and we call it entitlement.  Prayer is not welcome in almost any public location, for fear that someone might be offended by our religiosity.  Concern for the poor and needy, and a longing for peace and justice are bracketed in favor of capital gain.  We Christians today are persecuted just as surely as the early Christians, even if we don’t pay for it with our lives.  We Christians today are in need of hearing those great words: “Behold, I make all things new.”

    The good news is that as an Easter people, we can already see the newness that is God’s re-creation of our world.  We know the story of our salvation: This world was steeped in sin and we are a people who, though created and blessed by our God, time after time and age after age turned away from our God.  Every generation turned away in ways more brazen than the last.  We are the heirs of that fickle behavior and we can all attest that our sins have led us down those same paths time after time in our own lives.  But God, who would be justified in letting us live in the hell we seemed to prefer, could not live without us.  So he sent his only Son into our world.  He was born as one of us and walked among us, living the same life as ours in all things but sin.  He reached out to us and preached the new life of the Gospel.  And in the end, he died our death, the death we so richly deserved for our sins.  And not letting that death have the last word in our existence, he rose to a new life that lasts forever.  He did all that motivated by the only thing that could ever explain away our fickle sinfulness, and that motivation is love.

    I give you a new commandment: love one another.
    As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
    This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
    if you have love for one another.

    The love that Jesus is talking about here is not some kind of emotional infatuation that fades as quickly as it grows.  It is not a love that says “I will love you if…”  You have heard it before, I know: “I will love you if you remain faithful to me.”  “I will love you if you are successful in school.”  “I will love you if you meet all my own selfish expectations.”  “I will love you if you ignore my imperfections.”  “I will love you if you become more perfect.”  Because the kind of love that says “I will love you if…” is not love at all.  If God loved us if… we would be dead in our sins and there would be no reason to gather in this holy place day after day.  If God loved us if… we would have nothing to look forward to in the life to come.

    No, God does not love us if… God loves us period.  As we know, God is love.  God is love itself, love in all its perfection.  Love cannot be experienced in a vacuum, so God created us to love him and for him to love us.  We are the creation of God’s love and God cannot not love us!  The kind of love Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel can only be summed up by the cross and resurrection.  Jesus takes our sinfulness and brokenness upon himself, and stretches out his arms to die the death we had deserved for our unfaithfulness.  It wasn’t nails that held him to that cross, it was love, and we are totally undeserving of it.  Then, the Resurrection means that, because of love, death and sin have lost their sting.  They no longer have the last word in our existence, because our God who is love itself has recreated the world in love.

    And with this great act of sacrifice that restores us to grace, Jesus also gives those who would be his disciples a commandment: Love one another.  Which sounds like an easy enough thing to do.  But the second line of that commandment gives us pause and reminds us that our love can’t just be a nice feeling.  He says to us: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  And we know how he has loved us, don’t we?  Whenever we forget, all we have to do is look at the nearest crucifix.  Our love must be sacrificial.  Our love must be unconditional.  Our love cannot be “I will love you if…” but instead, “I love you period.”  Our love must be a love that re-creates the world in the image of God’s own love.

    We live in a world that is broken and dark and evil at times.  But our God has not abandoned us.  Taking our death upon himself, he has risen triumphant over it.  In spite of our unfaithfulness, he has re-created us all in his love.  So now we disciples must continue his work of re-creation and love the world into a new existence.

    “Behold, I make all things new.”

  • Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Now think about this just for a minute – pretend you are Paul or Barnabas or one of the other apostles.  Think about all the things they went through in that first reading. Paul hasn’t even been a Christian for very long, and already he is being hounded and persecuted.  Maybe that makes sense because I’m sure some people viewed his conversion as a kind of treason.  Whatever the case, as they speak out boldly in the name of Jesus, they receive nothing but violent abuse from the Jews.  So they turn then to the Gentiles who were delighted to hear the Word preached to them.  But the Jews didn’t even leave that alone; they stirred up some of the prominent Gentiles to persecute Paul and Barnabas and eventually they expelled them from their territory.  What a horrible reception they received over and over again.

    But, listen to the last line of that first reading again: “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”

    Really?  Think about it.  Would that be your reaction?  Or would you say, “enough is enough” and let God stir up someone else to preach the Word?  Obviously, that’s not what Paul and Barnabas, or any of the other disciples did, or we wouldn’t be here today.  No, they were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God!

    That’s the way joy works. It’s not something conditioned by the external events of a person’s life.  Joy is not a feeling. Joy, instead, is a direct result of the disciple’s decision to give their life to Christ and to follow his way – wherever that may take him or her.  Joy does not mean that the disciple won’t experience sadness or even hard times.  I have experienced that in my own life, and I’m sure you have too.  But joy does mean that the disciple will never give in to the sadness or the hard times because all those things have been made new in Christ.

    Christ is the source of our true joy.  We disciples must choose to live lives of joy and remain unaffected by the world and the events of our lives.  We choose joy because we know the One who is our Salvation, and because it is he who fills us with joy and the Holy Spirit.

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    I think most of the time, we really need to be reassured that we are in the hands of God.  Things here on earth can be pretty uncertain on a daily basis.  The state of the economy, wars being fought all over the globe, terrorism and natural disasters, the disrespect for human life, antagonism toward Christ-like values, all of this makes us feel pretty uncertain, at best.  Add to that the stuff that affects us directly: illness, death of a loved one, unemployment, family difficulties, our own sins – all of this may find us asking the question from time to time, “Where is God in all this?”

    That’s why it’s so good to hear Jesus say today:

    My sheep hear my voice;
    I know them, and they follow me.
    I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
    No one can take them out of my hand.

    This does not, of course, mean that life is going to be easier for us, or that we won’t still be challenged in this world. But it does give us confidence that we are on the right track, and that our ways are being guarded.  With this confidence, we are expected then to be disciples.  We are expected to go forth and do what God asks of us, ministering to those in need, reaching out to the broken, preaching the Good News just by the way that we live our life.

    We can live and preach the Gospel with confidence, we can be called Christians as our brothers and sisters in the first reading were for the first time, knowing that God has our back.  Whatever we may suffer in this life for the sake of Christ will more than be rewarded in the life to come.  And the good works we do here on earth, as small as they may seem to us in the face of such adversity, are never for nothing: God takes our efforts and makes them huge advances in the battle for souls.

    Jesus says that the Father is greater than all, and that all of us, safe in the Father’s hands, can never be taken from him.  Praise God for his providence and mercy and protection today.

  • Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    When God made the human person, he put into him and her a hunger and a thirst that could only be filled up with God.  God made us for himself, because he is Love itself and Love must always have an object of that love.  As Saint Augustine said well, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  The Psalmist also says that today in his words:

    As the hind longs for the running waters,
    so my soul longs for you, O God.
    Athirst is my soul for God, the living God.
    When shall I go and behold the face of God?

    Given that all people are created with this spiritual hunger, it should not have come as a huge shock to the circumcised believers that many Gentiles were turning to follow Christ.  Christ showed us the most perfect way to the Father, the only One who can fill up all the longings of the human heart.  Every conversion story is a return of the soul to our God; a filling up of the heart with what it really lacks.

    We try to fill up our lives with all kinds of things.  We turn on the television to drown out the silence.  We seek refuge in food and drink and career and even darker things.  But all of this is nothing more than a misguided attempt to fill up our lives with things that do not matter.  We can only fill ourselves up with what we truly long for: God himself.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Do you believe in coincidences?  I can’t say that I do, at least not in the spiritual sense.  Sometimes, I think, being in the right place at the right time is divinely ordained.  Far more often than we realize, I think it’s the work of the Holy Spirit.  Certainly that has to be the case in today’s first reading.  How else would we explain an angel directing Philip to be on a road at the very same time as the Ethiopian eunuch passed by, reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah that referred to Jesus?  Seizing the moment, Philip explains the Jesus event to him in a way that was powerful enough and moving enough that, on seeing some water as they continued on the journey, the eunuch begged to be baptized.  Then, as the Spirit whisks Philip off to Azotus, the eunuch continues on his way, rejoicing in his new life.

    The same is true for those who were fortunate enough to hear Jesus proclaim the Bread of Life discourse that we’ve been reading in our Gospel readings these past days.  Having been fed by a few loaves and fishes when they were physically hungry, they now come to find Jesus who longs to fill them up not just physically but also, and more importantly, spiritually.  Their hunger put them in the right place at the right time.

    Maybe what’s important for us to get today is that we are always in the right place at the right time, spiritually speaking.  Wherever we find ourselves is the place that we are directed by the Holy Spirit to find God.  Wherever we find ourselves is the place that we are directed by the Holy Spirit to proclaim God.  And so we may be called upon to find God in the midst of peace, or chaos, or any situation.  We never know how God may feed us in those situations.  And we may indeed be called upon to proclaim God in those same peaceful, or chaotic, situations.  Because we never know when there will be someone like an Ethiopian eunuch there, aching to be filled with Christ’s presence and called to a new life.

    It is no coincidence that we are where we are, when we are.  The Spirit always calls on us to find our God and proclaim him as Lord of every moment and every situation.