Church, yes, Church

Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year A)

Acts 8:5-8, 14-17

I Peter 3:15-18

John 14:15-21

Depending where you live in the Catholic world you will either celebrate the Ascension of the Lord on this coming Thursday or as is our case here in the Archdiocese of Port of Spain on next Sunday. The Easter candle is burning lower and the Easter Season is getting away from us. We’ll be back to green as our Sunday color even before we know it!

This Sunday is an Acts of the Apostles meditation meant to cast light on our acts as Church today. It is a reflection caught up, if you will, in the great mysteries of this Easter Season: of the Lord’s Resurrection, of His Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father, of His Sending the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, on Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. Let it be a challenge or incentive to you and me to live as immediately, as intensely as Philip, Peter and John what it means to be loved by Christ, loved by God the Father and thereby empowered to announce Jesus first to family, to friends and associates, but ultimately to all the world. When we lit the candle at the Easter Vigil we sang three times “Christ, our Light! Thanks be to God!” Those words have implications for the way we live our faith day in and day out.

The Opening Prayer for Mass today went:

“Ever-living God, help us to celebrate our joy in the resurrection of the Lord and to express in our lives the love we celebrate.”

The passage from Acts today attributes the conversions to the faith in a Samaritan town to the signs and wonders worked by Philip. The people responded to his acts of power in Jesus’ Name. Hearing of their accepting Baptism the apostles in Jerusalem sent Peter and John down to confirm them by laying hands on them and thereby pouring forth upon them the Holy Spirit.

This kind of thing should always be happening in the Church. It doesn’t happen often enough today and I am sure it doesn’t simply because we have lost heart. We don’t really get it. Today’s 2^nd Reading from St. Peter just kind of washes over us or if we were seriously to think that it was being addressed to us we’d probably deny it and make as if that could not be, even physically turning around and looking for that other person behind us to whom the words must have really been addressed:

“Reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts, and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have.”

When was the last time someone asked you the reason for your hope? Is it really our world that is all that indifferent? Are we that culturally out of sink that people treat us as antiquated or eccentric, not bothering even to disagree with us because we present no challenge to them anyway?

The readings of these Easter days from the Gospel of John repeat again and again the words which open today’s Gospel:

“If you love me you will keep my commandments.”

The way folks pick and choose about obeying the Commandments, about living their faith fully and seriously might be interpreted as an indication that our love has grown cold, that we really don’t love the Lord as we ought.

Today, with the Lord’s Ascension and Pentecost imminent, the words of John quoting Jesus continue:

“I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, that Spirit of truth whom the world can never receive since it neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he is with you, he is in you.”

At the book store this week a kind of nice, but funny older man, standing on the edge of my conversation with one of the managers kept interrupting with pieces of his own view of what being a good Trini Catholic is all about. I know you are familiar with it. It’s a light-hearted sort of thing: you make fun of absolutes and everybody tries to be good together, because we shouldn’t be divided… It’s mediocrity; it’s my stubborn willfulness not wanting to bend to anybody’s rule. This is not the alternative to being sour; embracing truth and witnessing to it in our world is not something we do with either a fat lip or a pout. Nobody wants to be or wants you to be pugnacious, but isn’t there such a thing as a false peace or an essential and unacceptable compromise of the faith? Is the reason for my hope really no different than anybody else’s? I can only invite you to think about this.

This Sunday’s readings point us elsewhere and offer food for the reflection which should fill our Sunday rest. Take the time to go back to the 2^nd Reading in the course of your Sunday, if you will! See if it doesn’t invite you to embrace conflict, contrast, persecution, suffering for doing right, for the sake of the truth, just as your Lord and Savior did!

We learned at home as children that we couldn’t always be everyone’s friend, that sometimes we had to stand up for principle. If we didn’t we were lost and could never have true friends, we were told. I fear that as adults we have forgotten that lesson; we’ve also missed out thereby on enjoying the only community of life and love which ultimately counts:

“If you love me you will keep my commandments.”

Remember that Opening Prayer for Mass today:

“Ever-living God, help us to celebrate our joy in the resurrection of the Lord and to express in our lives the love we celebrate.”

Attentive to God and Neighbor

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Holy Cross Parish
21-22 July 2007, Hutchinson, KS

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

All those of you who are fans of the monthly prayer book MAGNIFICAT may have noticed that the cover picture for July, a painting from Johann Friedrich Overbeck, entitled "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary", not only captures the scene of our Gospel today, of Jesus admonishing Martha and taking Mary’s part, but through the window in the painting we can see last week’s Gospel of the parable of the Good Samaritan! That’s a wonderful sort of art as far as I am concerned. We should never underestimate the value of good Christian art not only to help lift our minds and hearts to God in prayer because of its beauty, but to inspire and teach us as well.
Just as we see it in Overbeck’s painting, so it is in fact: the teachings of these two Sundays are different but complementary. Being a neighbor to those in need like the Good Samaritan was for the man left for dead by robbers on the road to Jericho is a crucial part of our Christian calling. No less important is genuine and generous hospitality, true hospitality as illustrated in the First Reading and Gospel for today, that is, attentiveness to the guest.
What was Martha’s mistake that won her a little reproof from Jesus? Abraham too in the First Reading from the Book of Genesis is rushing around. It’d be hard to fault Martha on that account, but Abraham, different than she, really is attentive to the three passersby: he welcomes them, he feeds them, and most importantly, he has time to talk with them. Martha has an idea of how this visit from Jesus and His companions should come off and is always looking over her shoulder at her sister wishing for her help in the kitchen. But it is not Martha; it is Mary who understands that a guest in their house is there to be with and to be cherished, first and foremost. Preparing and serving the lunch and deciding which dishes or napkins come out with that lunch may have a certain importance, but Mary has chosen the better part, much to the pleasure and approval of her Sacred Guest.
Abraham did not go to all the fuss he did because he guessed the true identity of the three men. No, he offered the hospitality common to his day and because he kept the men company as they ate and rested in the shade Abraham was also rewarded with an encounter with God and good news of the heir, the baby boy by his wife Sarah, that the couple had all but given up hoping for.
Visiting with my cousins up in Sioux Falls this summer the topic of “progressive dinners” came up and there was a laugh and a comment about not only how rarely people entertain today, but how the quality of potluck suppers has fallen as people resort to delis for their contribution, as no one seems to have time for cooking any more. The progressive dinner thing was definitely out as that would mean upsetting not one but five households for an evening. Abraham’s and Martha’s concerns might in a sense belong to another culture and other times, but attentiveness to the other, to the guest, never goes out of style and carries with it the same reward, as it did for Abraham (receiving confirmation of a covenant promise to him, which he had all but despaired of seeing fulfilled) and as it did for Mary in her home in Bethany seated at Jesus’ feet and taking in His every word.
A retired priest friend of mine up north told me about the small town or rural weekly newspapers he enjoys so very much yet today, not only because of the obituaries, but also for the news items about someone’s son and his family who were home to the farm for a visit and the like. I didn’t realize that such papers still existed, papers that value what’s important to Mom and Dad, so to speak. I don’t think Father knows all these people, but he sees the small town papers as placing the accent on what’s really important. They come from that more personable world of once upon a time, which had its etiquette and its propriety, it was often quite formal, but because of this deliberate, and though by our standards slow-paced lifestyle, a world marked by social interaction. It was a valuable world of relationships, more valuable I’d say than what we glean from a whole Sunday afternoon of TV or video games or phoning and chatting on the internet.
Did Abraham expect a visit from God personally by his tent under the terebinth of Mamre? Was Martha any less aware of the importance of Jesus than her sister Mary? Maybe neither question is to the point and doesn’t or can’t lead us where we want to or ought to go. Sunday afternoon visits to and from relatives were not exactly what you’d call transcendental experiences and nothing would be gained by bringing them back, but much is lost in the distracted isolation which is so common to our society. Distracted isolation steals time from immediate and extended family; distracted isolation leaves little room in our lives for God and His surprise visits.
God entered the lives of Abraham and Sarah, of Martha, Mary and Lazarus through attentive social exchange. I have no doubt that the reason Perpetual Adoration is so popular today is because it’s one of the few face to face encounters left in our lives; it’s a quiet break from all the pushing, shoving, elbowing and digital connectedness which keeps us at arm’s length from everyone, including ourselves.
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
Jesus is speaking to lots of us here today. What are we to do? Take the reprimand and react! Don’t waste another moment! Choose the better part as Mary of Bethany did!
People may not be able to manage the time needed for you to slaughter and barbeque a fattened steer, bake bread and set out curds and milk, as Abraham did for strangers, but then as Mary knew and Martha learned, that really wasn’t the point. The win or gain comes in treasuring the other and opening up to him or her.
Quality living begins at home as we take time for our spouse, for our children, for our parents, and for the extended family and neighborhood. How much time is wasted on Google Searches and the like, which could be better “wasted” in listening to someone or just being together and thereby affirming the other’s worth, even without words.
It’s not a question of choosing a different, alternative or otherwise radical lifestyle, it has nothing to do particularly with ecology or of moving to an acreage and raising goats and chickens, but represents a choice in favor of real society and is indeed a premise for possible encounters with God in our lives, which may be no less striking or dramatic for us than they were for Abraham and Sarah or for the family in Bethany.
Let thoughtful interpersonal relations open another door to prayer and adoration of the One God living and true for each and every one of us! The two great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor require not only sacrifices of us but attentiveness to the other, human or divine, which carries with itself its own reward.