Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    A lack of unity will kill us all. Jesus knew this, and so did St. Paul. In fact, St. Paul used a lack of unity among the Jews to save his own life. He knew that the Pharisees, of which he was one, believed in the resurrection of the dead, and angels and spirit. He knew that the Sadducees did not (which is why they are sad, you see…). When Paul appealed to the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection of the dead, he got them on their side, and the skirmish that ensued caused the commander to whisk Paul to safety. He was not to die this day; the Lord had other plans for him.

    As Jesus gets ready for his own death in the gospel reading today, he prays for the unity of the first disciples. He knew that they would be challenged greatly by the world, because they were no longer of the world. They belonged to God now, and that would be the source of their unity. That unity would keep them together and ensure that a reasoned, unified message would be proclaimed throughout the world and throughout the ages. That was the only way the gospel could be proclaimed to every creature on earth.

    In our day, unity is just as critical as it ever was. We still believe in ONE holy, catholic and apostolic church. We believe that Jesus came to found just ONE church, and that the fragmentations that exist among us are the result of sinfulness and broken humanity. We need to be people who witness to the joy of our faith so that we can bind up all that disunity and become once again one people, healed of all divisions. We are called to be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one, so that we can witness to all the world the saving power of our one, almighty God.

  • The Ascension of the Lord

    The Ascension of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    For some reason, whenever I’m in the car with my mother, taking her wherever it is we need to go, we seem to get all the red lights. After we stop for a dozen of them or so, it becomes kind of a joke, and she just laughs and says, “well, it’s because I’m in the car with you!” What makes it so funny is that neither of us is really that good at waiting. But hey, are any of us good at waiting? We are a people who want to get on with it, we don’t like to stand around doing nothing. We want to come to a decision, to make things happen, to get it over with already.

    So today’s feast is a little bit of a challenge for us, I think. The Ascension in some ways is the feast of waiting. The disciples in our first reading from Acts want to know if this is it, is Jesus finally going to restore the kingdom to Israel. And this betrays the fact that they’ve gotten it wrong once again. “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority,” Jesus tells them. They want to know the big picture, to see what’s coming next, and Jesus isn’t going to do that for them. They are just going to have to wait.

    Waiting is hard for the Apostles to do. They have fervor having been with Jesus, but they were always getting it wrong. They are looking for the coming of the Messiah. They want Jesus to be the one to restore the kingdom to Israel. They want everything wrapped up, all of their hopes and dreams fulfilled, and they’d like all that to happen now, please. And who can blame them? Don’t we too have these same expectations of Jesus from time to time? Don’t we too want the wars in the world to come to an end and peace to break out all over the globe? Don’t we want to stop experiencing illness, and death and sin? Don’t we want the kingdom to come now, not later, in our lifetime, so we can see it? Who can blame the Apostles for not wanting to wait? We ourselves cannot wait for the fullness of the kingdom to be accomplished.

    But they, and we, are told to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Because by themselves, Jesus told them, they can do nothing. It is only with the grace of God, poured out by the Holy Spirit, that anything worthwhile can ever be accomplished. Without the Spirit, those first disciples were always misinterpreting Jesus’ words and actions. Without the Spirit, they scattered at the first sign of trouble. This too, is something we experience. Whenever we attempt to do anything, worthwhile as it may be, without God’s help, we are destined to fail. We might want to better ourselves in some way, by giving up a vice or learning something new, but without God’s grace, it falls flat soon after we resolve to do it. We may want, as our Gospel says, to drive out demons, to speak new languages, to heal the sick. But how do we do that on our own? The answer is, we don’t. We too have to wait for the Holy Spirit.

    Waiting is a spiritual discipline that we must all learn. The reasons to develop the habit of waiting are good ones. In waiting, we have that time out that keeps us from doing something wrong. In waiting, we gather better information and think things through before we launch into something the wrong way. In waiting, we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit who leads us in the everlasting way. And that gift of the Spirit is absolutely worth the wait!

    So today we stand here with the disciples. There are so many questions to ask. What’s going to happen when? How do we be a Church? What do we need to do to spread the Gospel to every creature on earth? But this isn’t the time to get all the answers. We will have to wait. Because now, our Lord ascends from our sight. In his glorified, resurrected body, he rises to heaven, returning to the Father from whom he came. Will we do the same, returning in our resurrected bodies to the Father? Yes. When will that happen? That’s not for us to know right now. Again, we will have to wait.

    And so, with those first disciples, we stand here, peering up into the heavens, waiting for our Jesus to answer all our questions, to bind up all our woundedness, and to bring us all to glory. But we can’t go there just yet. And so, what are we doing standing here looking up into the sky. Jesus will return. We don’t know when; we will just have to wait. But while we are waiting there is much to do.

    “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” This is important work that has been entrusted to us. Because the consequences are dire: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.” And this task is given to us disciples. We have to proclaim the gospel in everything that we do. In the words we speak, in our actions and habits, in the love we bring to others – this is how people will hear the gospel. If they don’t hear it in your actions and love, they may never hear it in a homily or sermon. “Preach the gospel at all times,” St. Francis once said, “and when necessary, use words.”

    So that’s what we are to do while we are waiting. We have to make sure everyone knows that God loves them enough to send his only Son to be our salvation. Jesus came to earth, taking on our human body, becoming one like us in all things but sin, walked among us and died the same death we all do, paying the price for our sins and obliterating the obstacles of sin and death that kept us from God. People need to know that and if they’re ever going to hear it, they need to hear it in you – in your families, in your workplaces, in your schools, your communities, wherever God puts you. And it is that gift of the Holy Spirit, that gift for which we wait on this Ascension day, that will give you the power to do that convincingly.

    These last months have been a difficult time of waiting for me. I had asked the bishop and the personnel board of our diocese for permission to stay at St. Raphael’s another year. Because there is much that still needs to be done. But, this week, I was reminded that I’m not supposed to do it all. I learned that in the week after Father’s Day, I will be transferred to St. Petronille in Glen Ellyn, and that a new priest, a newly ordained priest, would be coming here to St. Raphael. So now the waiting is over, and the moving and the leaving and the saying goodbye has to start. Quite frankly, if there is anything I dislike more than waiting, it’s moving and leaving and saying goodbye. But that’s where life takes us from time to time.

    You absolutely have to know that my heart is breaking as I leave here. You have been my family, and you have been the family that has formed me in my first years of priesthood and has made me always want to be a better priest every day. You have loved me into my vocation, and have been shining examples of faith and discipleship for me. You have prayed with me, and worshipped with me, and served with me. You were the ones who helped me through the illness and death of my father in my very first year as a priest. You will always have a special place in my heart, and I will always be grateful for the gift of having been your priest.

    I hope that you give those same gifts to the new priest. He will need your love and support. He will need you to challenge and teach him. He will need your prayers. Fr. Ted and I will need your prayers too as we go through this transition. I’ll still be here for a few weeks, so this isn’t goodbye just yet. Instead it is a thank-you. And God bless you for being the people you have been for me.

  • Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    We gather here today on the eve of the Ascension. The tension is palpable; the disciples have so many more questions to ask, and they have no idea how short a time they have left to ask them. They are certainly not prepared to have the one they lost briefly to death ascend from their sight. They have been reunited with their friend and have gathered around him with a purpose; not wanting to ever be parted from him again.

    And Jesus has been preparing them in the Gospel readings this week for what must come. If God’s purpose is to be advanced on this earth, then Jesus has to return to the Father. They will mourn once again for the loss of their friend. But if he does not leave them, he would not be able to send the Holy Spirit, the new Advocate to come and lead them to all truth. If the Spirit does not descend, the Church would not be born. If the Church were not born, the Gospel would be but an obscure footnote in the history of the world.

    And so Jesus, their friend, prepares them for his parting. When he is gone from them, they will be able to ask the Father for whatever they need in Jesus’ name, and it will be given them. Their friendship with them will bear fruit in blessing.

    The same is true of us. We disciples, we friends of Jesus, can count on his blessing, the rich gift of the Holy Spirit, the great witness of the Church. Our lives are enriched by our faith and our discipleship. What we do here on earth, what we suffer in our lives, what we celebrate — all this will bear fruit for the glory of God.

  • Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Petty jealousy is a pernicious thing. Paul experienced it, directed against him by those Jews who were jealous of Paul’s effective preaching and suspicious of the Christian Way. In their fear and jealousy, they appeal to Gallio, a Roman official, complaining that Paul stirred up the people to worship God contrary to the law. By this they did not mean that Paul and the others were worshipping in a way they didn’t like – although that was certainly true. What they were trying to do was get Paul and the others arrested for worshipping God at all, in violation of Roman law.

    The Romans were a pagan people, with their own gods, and it was required that all citizens worshipped these gods and not the God of Israel or certainly Jesus Christ. Sometimes this was not enforced so rigorously, as was the case with Gallio. So those troublemakers among the Jews were guilty of it too. But these troublemakers were trying to get Gallio to enforce it against Paul and his followers, and not against themselves of course. Gallio sees through their very thinly veiled patriotism and throws them all out, turning a blind eye as they beat a synagogue official who was a supporter of Paul.

    What a horrible mess, isn’t it? Neither those troublemakers nor Gallio were at all virtuous. The troublemakers weren’t so much concerned about the laws of the land as they were quibbling about following Jesus. And Gallio wasn’t so concerned about defending the Christians as much as he wanted them all to go away and leave him alone. Through it all, Paul was able to see the fulfillment of God’s promise in the vision he had: “Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack and harm you.” And that’s exactly what Paul did.

    It is up to us to witness to our faith courageously too. We might face opposition, and even petty jealousy. But the message is too important to bury for fear of what might happen. We must trust that the Lord will preserve us too, in the same way he guarded Paul in his efforts to proclaim the Gospel.

  • 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.

  • 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. 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.

  • Sixth Sunday of Easter

    Sixth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    I think we get the point here, don’t we? The second reading and the Gospel tell us what John wants us to know about the Gospel: God is love. That’s a wonderful theme that runs all through John’s Gospel and the Letters of John. And today, deep into the Easter season, we have a beautiful presentation of what that love should look like, what it should accomplish, and where it should lead us.

    And it’s an important road map for us, I think. We get all kinds of notions about what love is and what it’s not. But mostly these are pretty erroneous. Even our own language has a paltry expression of love, because for us love can mean so many different things. I can say, “cookies are my favorite food – I love cookies!” and that’s not the kind of love Jesus wants us to know about today. When we say “love” in our language, we could mean an attraction, like puppy love, or we could mean that we like something a lot, or we might even be referring to sex. And none of that is adequate to convey the kind of love that is the hallmark of Jesus’ disciples.

    To really see what Jesus meant by love in today’s Gospel, we have to see what he was doing. Today’s Gospel has him readying the disciples for the mission. He has them gathered together and reassures them that whatever their personal gifts or failings, they have been chosen for the mission. And it was just that – he chose them, they didn’t choose him. And they had been chosen to do something very important for the kingdom of God. They have been chosen to create a legacy – to bear fruit that will remain. He could have given them all sorts of detailed instructions on how to go about doing this, but that’s not what he did. He gave them just one instruction: “This is my commandment: love one another.” It is that love that will bring lasting joy to his disciples.

    But he does get more detailed in his description of what it means to love one another. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he says to them. And that’s an important point, I think: “as I have loved you.” In the same way I have loved you. And we can see how far Jesus took that – all the way to the cross. He loved us enough to take our sins upon himself and nail them to the cross, dying to pay the price for those sins, and being raised from the dead to smash the power of those sins to control our eternity. So the love that Jesus is talking about here is sacrificial. And he says it rather plainly in one of my favorite pieces of Holy Scripture: “No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

    And the disciples clearly were called to that kind of sacrificial love. The Twelve all experienced martyrdom, except for John. They literally died so that people would come to know about Jesus, the Gospel, and God’s love. Their love did indeed bear fruit that would remain – it remained to found a Church, to spread the Gospel to many lands, to bring the message to us even in our own day.

    And the disciples were men and women who experienced joy. Which isn’t the same thing as saying they were always happy. They experienced a lot of opposition along the way to founding the Church. They were persecuted, thrown out of the synagogues, beaten for stirring up trouble, put to death for their faith in Christ. But they were still people of joy. Because in their love, the sacrificial love that they received from Christ who chose them and gave them the love to start with, they had found a source of joy that could not be controlled by external circumstances.

    So that’s what Jesus meant by love in today’s Gospel. It was a sacrificial love that was contagious, joyfully bringing the Good News to the world, bearing fruit that would remain for eternity. True love gives without counting the cost. True love brings others to heaven.

    And the thing is, the instruction to love wasn’t meant just for those first disciples. We know that it was meant for us too. Interestingly enough, this Gospel was also the Gospel for Mass this past Friday, and I celebrated with the third, fourth, and fifth graders from our school. I asked the fourth graders to make posters of what this kind of sacrificial love might mean for them. I thought I might show you what they came up with…

    So I think the fourth graders got it. On their level, they knew they could do little things with great love that would bear fruit that would remain and bring joy to themselves and others. It’s a lesson we could all use to hear now and then.

    We may never be asked to literally lay down our lives for those we love, although that kind of thing does happen all the time. People who give a kidney or bone marrow for another literally lay down their lives in love, maybe even for someone they don’t know very well. People who take a risk to pull someone out of the path of an oncoming vehicle on the street – those are the kinds of ways that people might live this Gospel message quite literally. But for most of us, the call to sacrificial love might be more along the lines of what our fourth graders had in mind.

    So we’re going to look for opportunities this week to love sacrificially. Doing a chore that’s not our job and not making a big thing of it. Finding an opportunity to encourage a spouse or child with a kind word that we haven’t offered in a long time. Picking the neighbor’s trash can up out of the street when it’s been a windy day. It doesn’t matter how big or small the thing is we do, what matters is the love we put into it. Mother Theresa once said, “I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will NOT ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’, rather he will ask, ‘How much LOVE did you put into what you did?’”

    When we are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to love, there is no way we can miss the joy that Jesus wants us to have today. “Love one another as I have loved you” might be a big challenge, but it might just be the greatest joy of our lives.

  • Fifth Sunday of Easter

    Fifth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “Lord, you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly gives you praise. All life, all holiness comes from you through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, by the working of the Holy Spirit.” You’re going to hear those words again in a few minutes, because they are the beginning of the Third Eucharistic prayer, which I’ll be using today. I think they speak well of what we hear in today’s Gospel.

    I remember back in my second year of seminary, I took my first moral theology class. One of the first tests we took had that line from the third Eucharistic Prayer on it: “Father, you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly gives you praise.” This line came along with the question: “Rocks are part of creation. So how does a rock give God praise?” Only a Jesuit moral theologian would ask a question like that! The answer, we had been taught, is “by being a rock.” Certainly a rock could not sing a song of praise or pray a psalm, but just by being what it was intended to be—a rock—it gave God praise.

    That’s what today’s Gospel is all about. Not about being a rock, that would be silly, but by rightly giving God praise by being what we were created to be: the most fully human people we can be. Now that might seem like a no-brainer. Hey, we can all be human, right? But that, I think, is based on a flawed notion of what it means to be human. How many times have we all said something like, “sure, I am a sinner; I’m only human, right?” But being a sinner is not the same as being fully human. The most fully human person that ever walked the face of the earth was Jesus Christ. Jesus, we believe, was like us in all things, except sin. This is how we know that sin is not part of what it means to be fully human. And sin obviously is not something that gives God praise. Indeed, that last line of the Gospel seems to leave no room for sin, and sets a rather high standard of what it means to give God praise: that we must bear much fruit – not just some fruit, but much fruit – and become disciples of Jesus.

    To become more fully human is a life-long task, and we know that it will never be fully realized this side of heaven. But while we are on earth, that’s our primary responsibility: to give God praise by becoming more fully what we were created to be in the first place. Today’s Gospel gives us a picture of how we’re supposed to do that. It mentions two specific things we are to do.

    The first thing we are to do is, quite frankly, painful. And that is to get pruned. I’ve pruned more than a few bushes at my parents’ house in my day. When I was growing up, I made the mistake of doing it well, and so I got that job every spring! I didn’t really mind doing it though, but I often thought about the fact that this process could not be all that painless for the shrub. It involved cutting away branches that looked for all the world like they were healthy and life-giving, and even cutting some branches radically away.

    Well, we have to give in to that kind of painful process in our own lives too, I think. We have to be willing to get some of us pruned away if we are to grow as healthy and fully human people. This process is painfully difficult, but we recognize that the things we prune away can be really destructive: relationships that entangle us in ways that are not healthy, pleasures that lead to sin, habits that are not virtuous. However enjoyable these relationships or activities may seem to be, and however painful it may be to end them, end them we must in the name of pruning our lives to be healthier, to be more fully the people we were created to be.

    The second thing we must do is to remain in Christ. That’s what he says in the Gospel:

    Remain in me, as I remain in you.
    Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
    unless it remains on the vine,
    so neither can you unless you remain in me.

    And I’d have to say that they key here is the word “remain” because Jesus uses it four times in that short quote! “Remain in me,” Jesus says, as the branch remains in the vine. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you can bear much fruit. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you will not wither and dry up only to be tossed out and burned as rubbish. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that whatever you truly need and want will be done, and so that you can bear much fruit and be my disciples.

    I think we can all get on board with remaining in Jesus, because this reading makes it sound completely wonderful. And it is wonderful. If we want to be truly happy, if we want ultimate fulfillment in life, if we really want to be the wonderful creation God made us to be, we must remain in Jesus, because, as he says, “without me you can do nothing.” And that’s true. How many times have we tried to better ourselves and lost sight of the goal before we even started? Don’t even ask me about my new year’s resolutions! How many times have we tried to stamp out a pattern of sin in our lives, only to fall victim to it time and time again? How many times have we tried to repair relationships only to have egos, hurts or resentments get in the way? When we forget to start our work and continue our work with God’s help, we are destined to fail. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. Well does he advise us to remain in him.

    But what does “remain in me” look like? Unfortunately, we don’t get a clear-cut blueprint for that in today’s Gospel. And the truth is, remaining in Christ is going to be different for every person. Just like my pruning of mom’s shrubs wasn’t a once-and-for-all activity, we are going to have to do some pruning every now and then so that we can remain in Christ. And so we’ll have to continue to be on the lookout for parts of our lives that are not ultimately life-giving and prune them away. But we’ll also have to look out for opportunities that will fertilize our growth. We have to check our growth daily, we have to examine where we are remaining every day. That might start with Sunday Mass attendance, and perhaps move on to daily Mass, praying devotions like the Rosary, reading Scripture every day, and taking time at the end of the day to see whether we’ve been part of the vine, or are in danger of breaking away from it. We have to be willing to renew ourselves in Christ every single day of our lives.

    On this Mother’s Day, I am particularly struck by the spiritual example of my mother and my grandmothers. These women have been faithful witnesses to the Gospel for me and have always encouraged me to live the most fully human life I possibly could. They encouraged me to become all that God had created me to be, and if not for their witness and their urging, I know I would not be standing here today. One of the many gifts God gives us in this life to encourage us in the very hard work of pruning and remaining is the gift of those who have been mother to us. These might have been our natural mothers and grandmothers, our godmothers, our aunts or sisters or some other nurturing female presence in our lives. For all of them today, let us give thanks, and praise our God for the ways they have helped us to be what God created us to be.

    All creation, as Eucharistic Prayer III tells us, rightly gives God praise. But we aren’t rocks. It’s not so easy for us to be most fully the wonderful human creation we were made to be. But that, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our calling and our joy. May we all support one another in our times of pruning and through our journey of remaining.

  • 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. 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.

  • Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “Don’t shoot the messenger!” That’s our colloquial way of saying that the words we speak to someone come from someone else; they are not our ideas. Most of us have probably said that to someone at some time.

    But that doesn’t work for we who are followers of Christ. Yes, we are messengers. The Greek word for messenger is “angeloi” from which we get our English word, “angel.” Angels are messengers sent by God to communicate something specific to humankind. We’ve seen the archangel Gabriel herald the coming of Christ to a young woman named Mary. A whole host of angels heralded the birth of the Savior to shepherds working in the fields. The letter to the Hebrews tells us not to neglect hospitality, for we may be entertaining angels. And Jesus tells us today, “whoever receives the one I send
    receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”

    We are all sent, brothers and sisters in Christ, to be messengers. We have received the Gospel and have been schooled in it through our participation in the Mass and our education in faith. We are not angels, because angels are a different species of creation than humankind, but we are in a sense angeloi, we are messengers who are sent by God to bring the Good News, the Gospel, to all those who need to hear it. And that would be every person God puts in our lives or in our path. We have to preach it every day, maybe not by standing on a soapbox, but definitely by our living of the message ourselves.

    Just as St. Paul courageously preached the truth in the synagogue in today’s first reading, we have to be ready to courageously share our faith in whatever way God calls us, wherever God puts us, to whoever God gives us. The Psalmist has it right today, as always, when he says, “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord!” Whether we have trained voices or not, we must always sing the praises of God who gives us everything we have and everything we could ever hope for. Singing those praises with our lives makes our message every bit as beautiful as the choirs of angels sang on that great first Christmas.

    May our guardian angels show us the way to be angeloi for the glory of God!