Category: Prayer

Today's readings

Today's Liturgy of the Word assures us that the establishment of the Church was not some kind of made-up aberration on the part of the followers of Jesus. In the first reading, Paul who is now doing battle for his life against the Pharisees and Sadducees, is told by the Lord that just as he has borne witness to Christ in Jerusalem, he must now do so in Rome. And he will do that by giving witness to his actions. This will lead to his death, but certainly his witness contributed to the establishment of the Church in that great city.

We are still hearing Jesus' prayer in the last hours of his life. Speaking to his Father, he prays not just for the disciples who have been part of his life, but also for all those who will believe in Jesus through their word. Sitting here at this Liturgy, we have to know that we are among those Jesus was praying for in those last moments. And the Father, who certainly would answer the prayers of his only Son, granted that the Church would be the steward of the great mysteries of Redemption.

These early clues of the Church that we hear about in today's readings were nurtured by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, which we will celebrate in just a few days. What we should hear in today's Scriptures is that God always intended us to be one with him, or Jesus would never have prayed for that. And God always intended that the Church would be the institution to bring His creation back to Himself.

Today's readings

Today's Liturgy of the Word represents a kind of wrap-up to the lives of St. Paul and Jesus, respectively. They both have completed the mission for which they had been sent, and both are now giving the mission back to God who would continue it as He alone saw fit. Paul's mission had been one of conversion, beginning with his own, and then reaching out to the Gentiles he met traveling far and wide. Now he did not know what would happen to him, only that the Holy Spirit kept telling him it was to be an end filled with hardship, from which Paul refused to shrink.

Jesus, one with the Father from the beginning, had come from the Father and was now going back to the Father. He brought God's love to bear on the aberrations of sin and death and had drawn disciples into the mission to continue the work. It could not continue unless he returned to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit upon them. Doing that has brought the Gospel into every nation and into the lives of millions. He too faced an end filled with hardship, from which he refused to shrink.

We disciples will come to our own ends as well. Will we too be able to give the mission back to the Father, confident that we've done it as best we could, and confident that it would be continued as God saw fit? Have our days sometimes been filled with hardship, and if so, have we also refused to shrink from it? We disciples are part of the mission that God has in the world. We take it for a time and will eventually have to hand it back over. May we all be able to do so with confidence that God's will has been done in us.

Today's readings

One of the great themes of Catholic theology is the "already, and not yet." Basically, that means that we disciples of Christ already have a share in the life of God and the promise of heaven, but we are not yet there. So we who believe in Jesus and live our faith every day have the hope of heaven before us, even if we are not home yet. And this hope isn't just some "iffy" kind of thing: it's not "I hope I'll go to heaven one day." No, it's the promise that because of the salvation we have in Christ, we who are faithful will one day live and reign with him. This gives us hope in the midst of the sorrows that we experience in this world.

Another great theme of Catholic theology is that our God is transcendent, but also immanent. Transcendent means that our God is higher than the heavens, more lofty than our thoughts and dreams, beyond anything we can imagine. Whatever we say about God, like "God is love" or "God is good" – those things only begin to scratch the surface of who God is, because God is transcendent beyond anything our limited words can describe. But our God is also immanent. God is not some far off entity that has brought the world into existence and set the events of our lives in motion and then drops back to observe things from afar. No, our God is one who walks among us and knows our sorrow and our pain and celebrates our joy. Saint Augustine said that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. Our God may indeed be mysterious and beyond us, but he is also the one we can reach out and touch.

As you can see, Catholic theology is generally speaking not exclusive. We are not either already sharing in the promise or not yet sharing in it, but we are "already and not yet." Our God is not either transcendent or immanent, but both transcendent and immanent. These two great theological themes come to a kind of crossroads here on this feast of the Ascension.

Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, our share in the life of God and the promise of heaven is sealed. We have hope of eternal life because our Lord has gone before us to prepare a place for us. If he had not gone, we could never have shared in this life. So, although Jesus has left the apostles yet again, they can rejoice because they know that the promise is coming to fulfillment. We do not possess it yet, because we are not home yet, but we share in it already, because Christ is our promise.

Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, he once again, with the Father, is transcendent, because we, along with the Apostles, can no longer see him. But he remains immanent by his promise to be with us always. Again, I will quote St. Augustine who said of Christ that "He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in haven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven." St. Augustine's notion of time is that everything is present to God all at once. This explains how our celebration of the Eucharist in a few minutes brings us to Calvary at the moment when Jesus gave his life for us. And it explains how Jesus can ascend into heaven and yet remain among us. Time is a limitation for us humans, but not for God who created time in the first place.

All of this theology can be heady stuff, but what it boils down to is this: because Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, we now have the hope of heaven and of sharing in the very life of God. Even though we do not possess heaven yet, we know that it belongs to all who have faith in Christ and live that faith every day. And even though we do not see Jesus walking among us, he is still absolutely present among us and promises to be with us forever. The preface to the Eucharistic prayer which I will sing in a few minutes makes this very clear; it says:

Christ, the mediator between God and humanity,
judge of the world and Lord of all,
has passed beyond our sight,
not to abandon us but to be our hope.
Christ is the beginning, the head of the Church;
where he has gone, we hope to follow.

Jesus, having explained the Scriptures to his Apostles yet again, tells them "You are witnesses of these things." And so they don't have the luxury of just standing there, staring up into the sky for hours, dejected and crushed because the One who had been their hope had disappeared. No, as the Gospel tells us today, they "returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God." They are witnesses, "clothed with power from on high," and they must be filled with the hope and joy of the resurrection and ascension of the Lord.

We disciples are witnesses of these things too. We must witness to a world filled with violence and oppression and sadness that our God promises life without end for all those who believe in him. And we have that hope already, even though not yet. We must witness to a world languishing in the vapidity of relativism and individualism and New Age Oprah and Dr. Phil philosophy that it is Jesus Christ, the Lord of All, who is one with us in heaven, and present among us on earth, who fulfills our hopes and longings and will never leave us. We must be witnesses to all these things, living with great joy, continually praising God because, as our opening prayer said so eloquently, Christ's "ascension is our glory and our hope."

Today’s readings

We are literally on the eve of Ascension day here. It is hard for the disciples to imagine what is going to happen, and even if they knew, I don’t think they would be looking forward to it. They wouldn’t want to be losing their friend so soon after his resurrection. But if he didn’t go, he couldn’t send the Holy Spirit, and then they’d never understand anything that happened.

What I love about this Gospel is the way Jesus was preparing them for what was to come. There is really good news here. He is telling them they will no longer have to ask Jesus to ask the Father for what they need. No, because they have known Jesus, and because he died and rose for them, and because he is returning to the Father to prepare the way for them, and most especially because he will be sending the Holy Spirit, because of all of that they now inherit the relationship Jesus himself had with the Father. And now they can ask the Father himself for what they need, in the name of Jesus.

This is true for us disciples too. Jesus died and rose and ascended and sent the Holy Spirit for us too. Because of that, we can now pray to the Father in the words our Savior gave us, asking for what we truly need in Jesus’ name. And the prayers we ask for in faith will be answered by the Father who loves us as he loves his only Son.

Today’s readings
[Mass for the school children.]

Jesus tells us today that sadness is always going to be a part of life. That’s not the good news, that’s just the way things are. I think we can all think about things that have made us sad. Maybe we have had a good friend who has moved away and we don’t get to see them very much. That makes us sad. Maybe we have lost a pet or a toy that we have liked a lot, and that makes us sad. Maybe we didn’t get picked for a team, or didn’t understand something in school, and those things have made us sad.

And some of us have had harder things that have been sad for us. Maybe your parents aren’t getting along or have split up. That’s very sad. Just last week, my father died. I miss him a lot, and I am very sad – maybe you too have had a grandparent or someone you’re very close to die and you don’t get to see them again. That’s very sad.

But sadness is a part of our life. But Jesus says today that sadness is not forever. He says that it’s just like a woman who is having a baby. She is sad because giving birth hurts so much. But after a while, the baby is born and the pain stops, and she gets to see the beautiful child she brought into the world and is happy again. Just like that, the things that make us sad won’t last forever. One day, we will get to see Jesus face-to-face and he will bring us happiness that lasts forever. Then there won’t be anything that can make us sad again.

That doesn’t mean that our sadness doesn’t hurt right now. It just means it won’t hurt forever. Because Jesus loves us, we can look forward to happiness forever, even if we have to put up with a little sadness now and then.

Today’s readings

This would not be the Gospel I would have picked today considering the grief that I’m still working my way through. But the truth is, who of us is not touched by grief? We all have to deal with it at some point in our lives. Indeed, we who are disciples can look forward to a lot of grief in this world, which is what Jesus means when he says:

Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices;
you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.

The Gospel begins by Jesus pointing out that for a while, the disciples won’t see him, but then a little while later they will see him again, and this would be the cause for their true joy. I think that whenever we grieve much, it is often because we have lost sight of God. Whatever the event that caused our grief, that grief causes us to lose sight of our God. And it hurts a lot because while we weep and mourn, it seems as if all the world is in the throws of joy. We have to grieve, but we must know that by seeing our Jesus again, we will once again experience true joy. The disciple who trusts in God knows this is true. However painful the grief may be, the joy that Jesus provides us will be the greatest joy ever.

Today’s readings

Today’s readings are a reminder that we disciples have to be discerning. It is important for us to discern what the truth is so that we can be led to the one who is Truth itself. The Gentiles, who worshiped idols, didn’t have the context of monotheism – that there is one God – to help them. Paul and Barnabbas did their best to catechize them, but there was much work to be done to overcome something that had been for the Greeks so culturally ingrained. The Gentiles didn’t have a context of God working through human beings, so they naturally mistook Paul and Barnabas for gods.

And in today’s Gospel, Jesus spells out how one can discern who is a true disciple. The true disciple, claiming that he or she loves God, will be one who keeps God’s commandments. If the disciple truly loves God, keeping God’s commandments would be second nature for him or her. But if one were to see someone claiming to love God and be his disciple but not obeying God’s commandments, one could conclude that person is not a true disciple.

Discernment is important for us, because we want authenticity in our worship and in our belief and understanding. Discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When we come to know the One who is Truth itself, then we will be filled with the Holy Spirit and come to know the truth.

Today’s readings

The One who sat on the throne said,
“Behold, I make all things new.”

That was, as we just heard, the end of today’s second reading. The book of Revelation is all about the persecution of the early Christians, and it looks forward to the day when all that persecution would 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 sports and activities. 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 two crosses here in our church. First, the love that is poured out on the cross behind me, in which 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. The second cross is over to the left of the sanctuary and portrays Jesus rising from the dead against the backdrop of the cross. 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. And that sounds like an easy 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.”

Today’s readings

Well, today’s Gospel reading is an exact repeat of the Gospel we had for the Feast of Sts. Philip and James, which was just two days ago. That’s the kind of coincidence that happens on the church calendar sometimes. So I’m not going to say much about the Gospel today. Instead, I want to pick up on the last line of the first reading. Just to refresh our memories, that line was: “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”

That’s an amazing line considering what happened to them earlier in the reading. The Jews showed them violent abuse and completely and vehemently contradicted their testimony to the Gospel. So they turned to the Gentiles who received the Message with great joy, but were later incited by some prominent Jews to expel them from their territory. When we look at that kind of situation, it has to strike us that joy is the last thing these men could possibly be filled with, right?

Yet that’s what happened. They were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. 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 can fully attest to that in these days myself. 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.

Today’s readings

The last two days, the Gospel has overlapped by one verse, John 14:6. It appeared at the beginning of yesterday’s Gospel reading, and at the beginning of today’s:

“I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”

To me, this has always been a rather clear and uncompromising statement. How can a person come to the Father? Only through Jesus Christ, who is not just a way, a truth and one possible life, but rather the way, the truth, and the life, without whom no one can come to the reward of knowing God the Father, the one who created us for himself. This statement is Gospel, so we are called to believe in it, but it is one of those Gospel statements that is, well, a little troubling.

Because sometimes we would rather not make waves. Hey, anything you do is okay as long as you’re a good person. And aren’t all religions going for the same thing anyway? Well, that’s not what we’re hearing this morning, is it? St. Paul was pretty clear on this in today’s first reading from Acts, too. Listen to the end of his declaration one more time:

“We ourselves are proclaiming this good news to you
that what God promised our fathers
he has brought to fulfillment for us, their children, by raising up Jesus,
as it is written in the second psalm,
You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.”

Speaking to the Jews at Antioch, Paul makes it clear that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophets, even if the Jews at Jerusalem had Jesus put to death. Jesus alone is the one of whom prophets and psalmists have spoken, and we are now called upon to accept that truth.

As troubling as this Gospel may be, we have to look at it and come to terms with it, because it is the core of the Gospel faith. If Jesus isn’t the one way to the Father and to eternal life, then we could pick a faith that’s a lot easier. We could stay home and pray to trees and try to be as nice as we can to everyone. But the Gospel demands a lot more than that. It demands that we recognize Jesus as the one truth, and his way – which, let’s face it, is the Way of the Cross – is the one way, and his life of service and love is the only life there is. And if that’s true, we all have to be proclaimers of the Gospel so that this troubled world might be converted.