“La politique, l’Etat, n’étaient pas une religion mais une réalité profane avec une mission spécifique… et les deux doivent être ouverts l’un pour l’égard de l’autre. Dans ce sens, je dirais aujourd’hui, pour les Français, et pas seulement pour les Français, pour nous chrétiens dans ce monde sécularisé d’aujourd’hui, il est important de vivre avec joie la liberté de notre foi, de vivre la beauté de la foi et de rendre visible dans le monde d’aujourd’hui qu’il est beau d’être croyant, qu’il est beau de connaître Dieu, Dieu avec un visage humain en Jésus-Christ… montrer donc la possibilité d’être un croyant aujourd’hui et même qu’il est nécessaire pour la société d’aujourd’hui qu’il y ait des hommes qui connaissent Dieu et peuvent donc vivre selon les grandes valeurs qu’il nous a données et contribuer à la présence des valeurs qui sont fondamentales pour la construction et pour la survie de nos Etats et de nos sociétés.” (excerpt from the response of Pope Benedict XVI to a journalist’s question about secular France and the Church today)
These words captured from the airplane interview with Pope Benedict XVI on his pilgrimage to France for the 150th Anniversary of Our Lady’s appearances to Bernadette at Lourdes, words about secularity (laicité) and the specific contribution which believers have to make to politics, statesmanship and toward building up society today, no doubt caught “outsiders” off-guard, just like the Holy Father’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, did. They didn’t expect from him words first and foremost about charity. “Outsiders” still haven’t learned: they just don’t expect the Pope to say things like: “il est important de vivre avec joie la liberté de notre foi, de vivre la beauté de la foi et de rendre visible dans le monde d’aujourd’hui qu’il est beau d’être croyant, qu’il est beau de connaître Dieu, Dieu avec un visage humain en Jésus-Christ…”
These words and the Holy Father’s general approach to the Christian life offer me an insight into how we can speak of the Triumph of the Holy Cross, which we have the joy of celebrating as a Sunday Feast this year, thanks to the 2008 calendar and where the 14th of September falls this year.
Regardless of the historical reasons which occasioned this feast: I was taught as a child that this feast commemorated the recovery of the Holy Cross by St. Helena, the mother the the Emperor Constantine; others note this day as a celebration for the dedication of the structure built over Calvary in Jerusalem on the day following the dedication of the Church of the Resurrection built by Constantine; my Daily Roman Missal dates it from a victory of a later Emperor, Heraclius, over the Persians and the recovery from them of the major relic of the True Cross, which they had carried off as booty from Jerusalem.
Leaving the history aside, it is good that we have another date in the calendar (Holy Thursday, for instance, has Corpus Christi) besides Good Friday to glory in the new Tree of Life which through the new Adam brought victory where the tree in the center of the garden brought defeat through the old Adam’s presumption.
“Nos autem gloriari oportet in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi, in quo est salus, vita et resurrectio nostra, per quem salvati et liberati sumus.”
It is beautiful to be a believer, it is beautiful to know God, God with a human face in Jesus Christ… if I may so render the Holy Father’s words from the plane last Friday. Bernadette was struck by how pretty and polite this young woman, clothed with the sun, was who appeared to her and prayed with her over the course of those days 150 years ago. It would seem that we have much to learn or learn again about what it means to have been buried with Christ in Baptism so as to live with Christ. It is beautiful to be a believer just so, as it is and not in any contrived sense. In this sense, Jesus’ death on the Cross and celebrating His Sacrifice is probably our best corrective to insure authenticity.
Without wishing to develop a whole homily or full-blown meditation on this point, I think it sufficient to invite my readers to join me in a day’s meditation on the glory of God shining forth on the face of Christ. The beauty of the Crucified One and the Glory of His Cross (taken as a part for the whole) is mine, is ours. Not physical health, not cosmetics and fashion, but my knowledge of God in Christ is for me and for the world salvation, life and resurrection. “Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
The Reason for Your Hope
Patron Feast
of the Companions of the Transfigured Christ
Sunday, 3 August 2008
THE TRANSFIGURATION
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
2 Peter 1:16-19
Matthew 17:1-9
“The Companions of the Transfigured Christ”:
ever since I learned the name of your community, I’ve been struggling with that name because of a long-standing presumption or prejudice on my part concerning this great mystery which unfolded on Mount Tabor. I’d like to share with you today my spiritual dilemma and how you have in a sense helped me to work through it and grow in my appreciation of the Mystery of Jesus’ Transfiguration and its importance for our life of faith. I hope these thoughts may be of help to all of you too.
Very simply, it boils down to this: For some reason and for as much of my life as I can remember, whenever I read the Gospel account of the Transfiguration or meditate on that mystery, even in conjunction with the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, Peter dominates the scene:
“Lord, how good that we are here! With your permission I will erect three booths here, one of you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Luke adds in parenthesis: “(He did not really know what he was saying.)”
What then is unique or special about being a companion of the TRANSFIGURED Christ, as opposed to being a companion of the Risen Christ, the Crucified Christ, the Adolescent Christ or the Infant King? If we focus on Peter’s offer to set up tents and stay on the mountain, it would almost seem as though the Transfiguration would have to be classed as an experience without application in the Christian life, as the one mystery in the life of our Lord and Savior which is not open to a discipleship experience. That, however, cannot be!
But it is not only Peter’s confused reaction to what he saw on Mt. Tabor which causes me to pose the question. We need only look a little further and ask why Jesus said what He did to them as recorded in the closing words of today’s Gospel:
“As they were coming down the mountainside Jesus commanded them, ‘Do not tell anyone of the vision until the Son of Man rises from the dead’.”
What kind of an experience did the first companions of the Transfigured Christ, Peter, James and John, have? We know that Jesus wanted to prepare the inner circle of His Apostles to endure the scandal of the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection, but why did He command their silence? Moving on to our day and to us who live in the glory of Easter, what possible role can this mountaintop experience play in our lives or in the life of any Christian?
The Infancy of Jesus, His Adolescence, His Adulthood, His Passion and Death, His Resurrection and Ascension are all events that have something of the journey about them. We can identify with them to a greater or lesser degree and apply them to our life’s experience. They work as models to be imitated: the Child Jesus within the Holy Family is an easy one. The Adolescent Christ in the midst of the elders in the Temple may not be quite as easy, but really offers all sorts of hope to young people and to the parents and teachers who must deal with youth. All the rest of Jesus’ life-and-teaching is rich in impulses for the lives of Christians great and humble.
The Transfiguration is different. What sort of ground rules does this event provide me for living the Christian life? Where do I begin and where can I go with the Transfigured Christ – He accompanying me and I being His companion? What do I carry with me from this mountaintop experience?
The Second Reading for the Feast is the key to what discipleship with the Transfigured Christ is all about. St. Peter, reflecting on his mountaintop experience, puts it very clearly:
“We ourselves heard this said from heaven while we were in his company on the holy mountain. Besides, we possess the prophetic message as something altogether reliable. Keep your attention closely fixed on it, as you would on a lamp shining in a dark place until the first streaks of dawn appear and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
What did these three chosen men hear said from heaven? “This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.”
What are they and we to do? “Keep your attention closely fixed on it, as you would on a lamp shining in a dark place until the first streaks of dawn appear and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
“This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.” The Transfiguration and the words of God the Father spoken from heaven as set out by St. Peter in his second letter tell us that the focus of our lives is and must be Jesus, true God and true Man, Son of God and Son of Mary.
Since the glorious day of Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father the question or real issue to be faced by any generation of Christians is not and never has been whether we live in the best of all times or the worst of all times. We are not and cannot be concerned with which way the wind is blowing or how the stock market is doing. No matter how dark the night, Christians have always and must always focus on the lamp of truth whose unwavering flame burns within the community of the Catholic Church. We wait in joyful hope for the Dawn from on high which is about to break upon us.
This is the insight; this is the wisdom to be found at the core, I believe, of the intuition which inspired your choice of a name, “The Companions of the Transfigured Christ”. It is not a question of pretending to be latter day Peters, James or Johns – the chosen ones among the elect. Moreover, Jesus admonishes you as He did those chosen ones that your message is not to be that of shouting out, “We’ve been to the mountaintop!” No, it would seem to me that your mission must be your focus as Peter would have it. Through your retreat and prayer apostolate, as well as through your work in the world, you can do no more and nothing better than take your cue from the lamp of truth burning within Christ’s Church, while living in joyful hope for the Lord’s return in glory. In the midst of darkness and confusion you are fixed on the lamp light until the Dawn breaks through.
In you people must discern a witness countering the prevailing distraction and consumerism of Blackberries, clothes and vehicles. While keeping what you saw on the mountaintop secret, you must be ready to respond to all who are drawn by your witness and explain to them when they ask the reason for your hope.
The Fathers of the Church in their commentary and in their preaching on the Mystery of the Transfiguration mention not only the insight gained by the three apostles from this manifestation. They point out that the Transfiguration was also a revelation to Moses and Elijah. On Mt. Tabor Moses and Elijah learned that the longed-for Messiah, the Savior had come. The Transfiguration was as prophecy and promise for Moses and Elijah what the descent among the dead was as reality and accomplishment for Adam and Eve on that first Holy Saturday. Not only did Moses and Elijah come to assure Peter, James and John that Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, but Jesus had summoned them too to hear those words from His Father in heaven: “This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.” The Transfiguration was for the benefit of the living but also for the dead who had in this life fixed their gaze on the lamp of truth foreshadowing the Dawn from on high.
Today is your day for the renewal of vows and promises; you recall the covenant relationship which binds you to each other and to the Father’s beloved Son. When Peter awoke to see the face of Jesus “dazzling as the sun, his clothes as radiant as light”… and when he recognized that Moses and Elijah were attending to Jesus, Peter was carried away by emotion. His emotion was premature. The Father spoke from heaven and all three men fell forward on the ground overcome with fear. Jesus put everything back into perspective and admonished them to silence until the Resurrection. “This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.”
In a sense, the Transfiguration is to the life of Jesus what the Creed is to the Christian Life: it’s all right there. Confessing yourselves before the Church and the World as Companions of the Transfigured Christ you are making, by the grace of God, a complete statement, a statement full of hope and expectation. Never doubt that you can do no better, nor offer the world around you any more.
The other day waiting in the Atlanta Airport, I watched a young man as he with more than evident pleasure unpacked some new electronic gadget he had purchased, showing it to his girlfriend. The man had dignity, the man had poise, and he unpacked the thing and showed it to her with absolute coolness and at the same time with unbounded pride radiating from his face and from every bone of his body. I don’t know what the gadget was or even if he had the slightest guarantee that it would work when he got it home and plugged it in, but it would be hard from his body language to imagine a happier man. I don’t know what he said to the young woman as I was out of ear shot, but it didn’t seem as though his lips were moving much at all.
Rooted, grounded in the Mystery of the Transfiguration you are and have much more than that young man had with girlfriend and gadget. The silence Jesus imposed on Peter, James and John on their way down from Mt. Tabor certainly didn’t keep them from radiating wonder, awe, boundless joy, fervor or whatever else positive and life-filling you’d like to name. They had seen and heard it all in a moment and were still in the company of the Father’s beloved Son, born of Mary. Why in the world would you want to say to anyone “I’ve been to the mountaintop” when everyone else is dying either to ask you the reason for the hope you radiate or simply to join you and your experience?
What you are as “Companions of the Transfigured Christ” may someday soon find its definitive configuration within the constellation of the Church. There you will have a privileged position for gazing upon the lamp of truth and waiting for the Dawn from on high to break upon us. Be of good courage! As the Lord has called you to His mountaintop so He will lead you as He led Peter, James and John. Go in His company, knowing that He is all you need for joy.
of the Companions of the Transfigured Christ
Sunday, 3 August 2008
THE TRANSFIGURATION
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
2 Peter 1:16-19
Matthew 17:1-9
“The Companions of the Transfigured Christ”:
ever since I learned the name of your community, I’ve been struggling with that name because of a long-standing presumption or prejudice on my part concerning this great mystery which unfolded on Mount Tabor. I’d like to share with you today my spiritual dilemma and how you have in a sense helped me to work through it and grow in my appreciation of the Mystery of Jesus’ Transfiguration and its importance for our life of faith. I hope these thoughts may be of help to all of you too.
Very simply, it boils down to this: For some reason and for as much of my life as I can remember, whenever I read the Gospel account of the Transfiguration or meditate on that mystery, even in conjunction with the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, Peter dominates the scene:
“Lord, how good that we are here! With your permission I will erect three booths here, one of you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Luke adds in parenthesis: “(He did not really know what he was saying.)”
What then is unique or special about being a companion of the TRANSFIGURED Christ, as opposed to being a companion of the Risen Christ, the Crucified Christ, the Adolescent Christ or the Infant King? If we focus on Peter’s offer to set up tents and stay on the mountain, it would almost seem as though the Transfiguration would have to be classed as an experience without application in the Christian life, as the one mystery in the life of our Lord and Savior which is not open to a discipleship experience. That, however, cannot be!
But it is not only Peter’s confused reaction to what he saw on Mt. Tabor which causes me to pose the question. We need only look a little further and ask why Jesus said what He did to them as recorded in the closing words of today’s Gospel:
“As they were coming down the mountainside Jesus commanded them, ‘Do not tell anyone of the vision until the Son of Man rises from the dead’.”
What kind of an experience did the first companions of the Transfigured Christ, Peter, James and John, have? We know that Jesus wanted to prepare the inner circle of His Apostles to endure the scandal of the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection, but why did He command their silence? Moving on to our day and to us who live in the glory of Easter, what possible role can this mountaintop experience play in our lives or in the life of any Christian?
The Infancy of Jesus, His Adolescence, His Adulthood, His Passion and Death, His Resurrection and Ascension are all events that have something of the journey about them. We can identify with them to a greater or lesser degree and apply them to our life’s experience. They work as models to be imitated: the Child Jesus within the Holy Family is an easy one. The Adolescent Christ in the midst of the elders in the Temple may not be quite as easy, but really offers all sorts of hope to young people and to the parents and teachers who must deal with youth. All the rest of Jesus’ life-and-teaching is rich in impulses for the lives of Christians great and humble.
The Transfiguration is different. What sort of ground rules does this event provide me for living the Christian life? Where do I begin and where can I go with the Transfigured Christ – He accompanying me and I being His companion? What do I carry with me from this mountaintop experience?
The Second Reading for the Feast is the key to what discipleship with the Transfigured Christ is all about. St. Peter, reflecting on his mountaintop experience, puts it very clearly:
“We ourselves heard this said from heaven while we were in his company on the holy mountain. Besides, we possess the prophetic message as something altogether reliable. Keep your attention closely fixed on it, as you would on a lamp shining in a dark place until the first streaks of dawn appear and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
What did these three chosen men hear said from heaven? “This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.”
What are they and we to do? “Keep your attention closely fixed on it, as you would on a lamp shining in a dark place until the first streaks of dawn appear and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
“This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.” The Transfiguration and the words of God the Father spoken from heaven as set out by St. Peter in his second letter tell us that the focus of our lives is and must be Jesus, true God and true Man, Son of God and Son of Mary.
Since the glorious day of Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father the question or real issue to be faced by any generation of Christians is not and never has been whether we live in the best of all times or the worst of all times. We are not and cannot be concerned with which way the wind is blowing or how the stock market is doing. No matter how dark the night, Christians have always and must always focus on the lamp of truth whose unwavering flame burns within the community of the Catholic Church. We wait in joyful hope for the Dawn from on high which is about to break upon us.
This is the insight; this is the wisdom to be found at the core, I believe, of the intuition which inspired your choice of a name, “The Companions of the Transfigured Christ”. It is not a question of pretending to be latter day Peters, James or Johns – the chosen ones among the elect. Moreover, Jesus admonishes you as He did those chosen ones that your message is not to be that of shouting out, “We’ve been to the mountaintop!” No, it would seem to me that your mission must be your focus as Peter would have it. Through your retreat and prayer apostolate, as well as through your work in the world, you can do no more and nothing better than take your cue from the lamp of truth burning within Christ’s Church, while living in joyful hope for the Lord’s return in glory. In the midst of darkness and confusion you are fixed on the lamp light until the Dawn breaks through.
In you people must discern a witness countering the prevailing distraction and consumerism of Blackberries, clothes and vehicles. While keeping what you saw on the mountaintop secret, you must be ready to respond to all who are drawn by your witness and explain to them when they ask the reason for your hope.
The Fathers of the Church in their commentary and in their preaching on the Mystery of the Transfiguration mention not only the insight gained by the three apostles from this manifestation. They point out that the Transfiguration was also a revelation to Moses and Elijah. On Mt. Tabor Moses and Elijah learned that the longed-for Messiah, the Savior had come. The Transfiguration was as prophecy and promise for Moses and Elijah what the descent among the dead was as reality and accomplishment for Adam and Eve on that first Holy Saturday. Not only did Moses and Elijah come to assure Peter, James and John that Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, but Jesus had summoned them too to hear those words from His Father in heaven: “This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.” The Transfiguration was for the benefit of the living but also for the dead who had in this life fixed their gaze on the lamp of truth foreshadowing the Dawn from on high.
Today is your day for the renewal of vows and promises; you recall the covenant relationship which binds you to each other and to the Father’s beloved Son. When Peter awoke to see the face of Jesus “dazzling as the sun, his clothes as radiant as light”… and when he recognized that Moses and Elijah were attending to Jesus, Peter was carried away by emotion. His emotion was premature. The Father spoke from heaven and all three men fell forward on the ground overcome with fear. Jesus put everything back into perspective and admonished them to silence until the Resurrection. “This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests. Listen to him.”
In a sense, the Transfiguration is to the life of Jesus what the Creed is to the Christian Life: it’s all right there. Confessing yourselves before the Church and the World as Companions of the Transfigured Christ you are making, by the grace of God, a complete statement, a statement full of hope and expectation. Never doubt that you can do no better, nor offer the world around you any more.
The other day waiting in the Atlanta Airport, I watched a young man as he with more than evident pleasure unpacked some new electronic gadget he had purchased, showing it to his girlfriend. The man had dignity, the man had poise, and he unpacked the thing and showed it to her with absolute coolness and at the same time with unbounded pride radiating from his face and from every bone of his body. I don’t know what the gadget was or even if he had the slightest guarantee that it would work when he got it home and plugged it in, but it would be hard from his body language to imagine a happier man. I don’t know what he said to the young woman as I was out of ear shot, but it didn’t seem as though his lips were moving much at all.
Rooted, grounded in the Mystery of the Transfiguration you are and have much more than that young man had with girlfriend and gadget. The silence Jesus imposed on Peter, James and John on their way down from Mt. Tabor certainly didn’t keep them from radiating wonder, awe, boundless joy, fervor or whatever else positive and life-filling you’d like to name. They had seen and heard it all in a moment and were still in the company of the Father’s beloved Son, born of Mary. Why in the world would you want to say to anyone “I’ve been to the mountaintop” when everyone else is dying either to ask you the reason for the hope you radiate or simply to join you and your experience?
What you are as “Companions of the Transfigured Christ” may someday soon find its definitive configuration within the constellation of the Church. There you will have a privileged position for gazing upon the lamp of truth and waiting for the Dawn from on high to break upon us. Be of good courage! As the Lord has called you to His mountaintop so He will lead you as He led Peter, James and John. Go in His company, knowing that He is all you need for joy.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
God's Word Achieves Its End
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
12-13 July 2008
Holy Cross Parish, Hutchinson, Kansas
Isaiah 55:10-11
Romans 8:18-23
Matthew 13:1-23
In a book of early commentaries on the Sunday Gospels including Sermons from the Fathers of the Church, I was looking up this Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew, the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. I learned that in ancient times this Gospel was read on a Sunday during Lent and the Church Fathers used it to preach on temperance or moderation in the use of material goods: a great Lenten theme really. For some reason I hadn’t expected that. It kind of surprised me as I’d never focused in on one particular virtue worth striving for as tied to this parable. For the same reason, I was also caught off guard by the observation from one of the early Church Fathers who makes the point that only a fourth of the seed sown bore fruit, namely that which fell on good soil. The other three fourths were wasted.
12-13 July 2008
Holy Cross Parish, Hutchinson, Kansas
Isaiah 55:10-11
Romans 8:18-23
Matthew 13:1-23
In a book of early commentaries on the Sunday Gospels including Sermons from the Fathers of the Church, I was looking up this Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew, the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. I learned that in ancient times this Gospel was read on a Sunday during Lent and the Church Fathers used it to preach on temperance or moderation in the use of material goods: a great Lenten theme really. For some reason I hadn’t expected that. It kind of surprised me as I’d never focused in on one particular virtue worth striving for as tied to this parable. For the same reason, I was also caught off guard by the observation from one of the early Church Fathers who makes the point that only a fourth of the seed sown bore fruit, namely that which fell on good soil. The other three fourths were wasted.
As a Midwesterner, I’m convinced that the farmer must have had more good ground than he had paths or rock piles or slews or weedy patches to deal with on his farm. Then again not everywhere in the world is like Kansas. Palestine is certainly different. It’s very rocky and no doubt the amount of good soil was less than it would be around here. Just the same we’ll stay with the figure of the three fourths lost and the one fourth saved. It may not correspond to what makes for good farming but it probably better describes the sorts of human beings the Sower is seeking to touch with his word both back then and now.
We read in the Gospel:
“But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold”.
Presuming that I’m good ground, what’s my yield: a hundred, sixty or thirtyfold? It depends on how receptive I am to God’s Word, to the teaching and preaching of the Church. If I’m as hard as a footpath, nothing will sink in and have a chance. Even if I’m shallow ground, rocky soil, there’s not much chance that God’s Word will survive the first real trials in my life. The more thorns and weeds, the distractions of this world, the more material goods I have - all those things which tend to pile up at home and that double locks, security systems and insurance policies are supposed to keep others from walking off with, not to mention worldly anxiety, those useless worries about things we cannot change or which may never happen, the more thorns and weeds that choke the word the less chance it will bear any fruit at all.
There’s a lot to think about in today’s Gospel; it bears a message for each and every one of us.
Isaiah too in the first reading assures us that God’s Word is not what fails; God’s Word always succeeds, he says: “… my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it”. The fact that some people seem to be lost to the faith is not God’s problem or His choice, no, we are the problem because more often than not we opt for things rather than God and His love. Whether or not it may come as a surprise that the early Church Fathers preached on temperance with this Gospel, one cannot deny that three fourths of the problem, three fourths of the reason that people fail to come (as they ought) to know, love and serve God in this life, so as to be happy with Him in the next, often (three fourths of the time even) it does indeed have to do (whether we consider ourselves rich or poor) with having too many things which seem to command most if not all of our attention.
Both my summer reading and my summer conversations this year have been marked by older people’s concern for the younger generation and their lack of knowledge of the faith. For example, here in Hutchinson in Holy Cross parish, despite the census, the telephone directory, local news items about sports and other achievements and the public school honor rolls which tell us there are a certain number of children out there in the parish who haven’t moved away, who were baptized Catholic and made their First Holy Communion and should still be coming to Public School Religion, the actual numbers, the class sizes are getting smaller. From the looks of it, only a few of those who were baptized in those years (ten to eighteen years ago) are coming to learn about their faith and even fewer are receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation. Lots of younger children are torn in their conscience at least for a while after their First Holy Communion because no responsible adult sees to it that they are able to assist at Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. A child may ask Mom and Dad once why they aren’t going to Mass of a Sunday and then no more. Failure of parents to come regularly themselves to the Sacrament of Penance and neglect of their children’s need to be encouraged to return time and again to confession are sadly all too common. That tilling and enriching of the soil, which makes it good ground and receptive to the Seed of the Sower, which is the Word of God, isn’t always and everywhere getting done at home it would seem. Often nobody at home seems to bother as they should with lovingly folding a baby’s hands for a prayer before supper or with helping that child make the Sign of the Cross or with kneeling down by the bed to hear a night time prayer of an older brother or sister. With loud music and TV filling households and closing out thought and quiet time, more and more of the seed ground is being turned into hardened footpaths or into those rocky strips ever wider along the fence line. Buy ‘em this and buy ‘em that, never denying yourself a pleasure or a convenience either and suddenly we have thorns and weeds aplenty to choke off all the rest at home which might have shown some promise. Just as when Jesus told the parable or as when the great Fathers of the Church were preaching so it would seem to be in our day as well: only a fourth of the seed comes to fruition... only a fourth.
“… my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it”.
In today’s Gospel Jesus quotes at length from the prophet Isaiah to explain why most folks don’t get the message, don’t receive the Word of God into their hearts, why trying to reach them is for all practical purposes a waste of time; parables are sufficient Jesus said, because they have closed their eyes to seeing and their ears to hearing.
What to do? Each of us should begin at home. We ourselves must take up the challenge and face up to our bad habits and habitual sins. Why won’t they go away? Why do the same wrongs crop up in my life over and over again? Maybe I don’t want them to go away or maybe it’s my dullness, my hardness of heart: eyes shut, ears stopped up such that God’s Word can’t reach my heart. In such a life there’s none of that eager expectation St. Paul describes in today’s second reading addressed to the Romans. Three fourths live without hope it would seem. They give no thought to the real promise that “the world itself will be freed from its slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God”.
The disciples were obviously different. They drew close to Jesus and asked really to be enlightened and Jesus blessed them. Where do we stand and how do we live and approach Jesus?
“(Blest) are your eyes because they see and blest are your ears because they hear. I assure you, many a prophet and many a saint longed to see what you see but did not see it, to hear what you hear but did not hear it”.
What to do? Could a garage sale be the answer? In a material sense just to empty out the closets, attic and basement, I think not. Maybe letting go of all those things without unloading them on others by a deliberate act of our will, by taking a spiritual trip to the “Goodwill store” so to speak might help. Yes and No: the bottom line is that we need to let go of what distracts and dulls our senses. We need to take time, ultimately time for God and what He has to say to us.
But working hard is good; bettering ourselves and giving those whom we love good things and material security is right. What am I trying to say? Can’t we rightly enjoy the fruits of our labor? Most certainly we can and should! That is not the point. The goods of the earth are to be enjoyed, but everything in perspective and everything in its right place! Thus the early Church Fathers and their sermons on temperance, on moderation in the use of material things!
I’ve said something about parents’ duty to cultivate in their children an openness to receive the Word of God, an attentiveness to God Who has something to say to each and every one of us and can make all the difference in our lives. This is something we can and must do for ourselves as well. One of the weekday Masses this week had a great quote from the prophet Hosea about repentance and conversion. The image he used was to invite God’s people to plow up a new field and be ready for God to do the rest. May I suggest that you return rest and reflection to your Sundays and use the Lord’s Day to help you see what’s needed to break up your hardened heart, maybe, or to clear those rocks which leave you with no depth, or to uproot those thorns and weeds which compete for your attention and leave little time or space for encountering the God Who loves you and wishes you well for all eternity.
And if you are a prayerful, thoughtful, even profound person: increase your yield from thirty, to sixty, to a hundred fold! In this last year I received copies of a new instruction to be made available to bishops on how to go about preparing the cases for people in their dioceses from the recent or more distant past who are being proposed for sainthood. What is sainthood? How do you measure it? In two words, an adjective and a noun: a saintly life, a holy life is a life of “heroic virtue”. What does that mean? Find out for yourself! Try doing what the disciples did after Jesus recounted the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. Draw near to Jesus and ask Him to explain Himself. He will.
“… my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it”.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Share the Faith
The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul
Sunday, 29 June 2008
Holy Cross Church, Hutchinson, Kansas
Acts of the Apostles 12:1-11
2 Timothy 4:6-8; 17-18
Matthew 16:13-19
The Entrance Antiphon from the missal for today’s feast of Saints Peter and Paul picks up one of the threads which go through the whole Liturgy of the Word for today:
“These men, conquering all human frailty, shed their blood and helped the Church to grow. By sharing the cup of the Lord’s suffering, they became the friends of God.”
These two sentences sum up very well one of the more important things we can say about Peter and Paul. These words present to you and me one of the most convincing challenges to any excuses we might put forward as to why we cannot do likewise. We are invited to follow in the footsteps of Christ as did His great Saints Peter and Paul. The fact that Peter who had shown great cowardice when Jesus was arrested and had denied him three times moved on by the grace of God to become Christ’s vicar, the chief Apostle, and the fact that Paul who had rabidly persecuted the Church in defense of Jewish traditions moved on by the personal choice of the Risen Christ to become the Apostle to the Gentiles leave us no room for shunning the grace provided by Jesus to each and every one of us to turn away from sin and become His witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Our calling may not be to martyrdom like Peter, crucified upside down, or like Paul who was beheaded by the sword. We may never even be imprisoned for our faith and certainly not rescued from chains by an angel as Peter was in our first reading today, but we are called, just like them, to confess Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. We are called to live so that we can make the words of St. Paul to Timothy our own, that we might in good conscience be able to say that we too “have fought the good fight …finished the race …kept the faith”.
To say that each of us must strive to follow the example of the great Princes of the Apostles might seem a bit of an exaggeration. In point of fact, although their personal experiences cannot be repeated, that is what we are called to do right where we find ourselves in our world. I think the key phrase is the one Paul shares in his second letter to young Timothy, whom he was grooming for big things back then:
“From now on a merited crown awaits me; on that day the Lord, just judge that he is, will award it to me – and not only to me but to all who have looked for his appearing with eager longing.”
After stumbling and stumbling grievously Peter and Paul turned to the Lord for forgiveness, gave their hearts entirely to Jesus in love, and set about making Him known. They gathered to themselves in life and in death countless numbers of people who just like them “looked for his appearing with eager longing.” You and I are called to do the same right where we find ourselves in the world. Whether we are called to do it “high profile” like let’s say Mother Angelica and all who work on EWTN or in a very hidden way like a cloistered monk or nun, or like a good father or mother for the family, in any and every case we are called to share the gift of faith, the seed planted and watered in our hearts by Baptism, which ultimately comes from God, but which we received thanks to the people who took up Paul’s challenge and confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, thanks to those who crossed our path in life and showed us the way to heaven. We must do the same. We cannot shirk what is more than a duty. This mission is our honor, our dignity; it is our only real joy.
A father who teaches his son to ride a bike or kick a football long and straight has joy for a day and maybe even for a season. A mother, who helps her daughter to grow straight and tall, has reason to be proud. Parents who succeed in communicating to their children their own eager longing for the coming of the Day of God can burst with pride and happiness, knowing that they have worked with the Lord, fulfilling His Will, and have given a gift which will spring up as a fountain unto everlasting life.
If you have ever read about St. John Marie Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, you may know of the hours and hours he spent hearing confessions, of all the time he spent in prayer, about how he hardly ever slept. What you may not know about John Vianney is how from his first day in his tiny parish in Ars, France he never let go of his parishioners, tirelessly teaching, admonishing, begging, praying for them, sacrificing and doing penance for them, doing all in his power to bring them back to Sunday Mass every Sunday and preparing them through the Sacrament of Penance for more frequent Communion. He held on tight to them, though they squirmed, struggled, protested and accused him unjustly, until the tables turned and they wouldn’t let him go any more. This was not nagging on his part, this was love. Love is the mark of the Apostle, self-less, sacrificial like Jesus, unconditioned love. This sacrificial love, which led Peter to the cross and brought Paul down by the sword, is what Christ wants from each and every person. Though we may at times be misunderstood for living the Cross of Christ, for following the example of Saints Peter and Paul, we are called nonetheless by Christ to share His love as it comes to us with the world around us.
Last evening marked the opening of a Jubilee Year for the universal Church in honor of the birth of St. Paul, the Apostle. One of the goals of this year is to bring us all to a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the Apostle to the Gentiles. We are encouraged to pick up and read from his letters. They are not always easy to read but with a good Catholic commentary well worth the effort. Pick up your Bible and turn to Paul again and again this year.
Both Peter and Paul are disarming because they are so real and so full of love for Christ. They share Christ’s love for all His people, Jesus’ eagerness that we might share in His victory over sin and death. Better priests and better bishops, better apostles of the stamp of John Marie Vianney would go a long way to accomplishing the changes in our own lives and the changes for the better in this world of ours which would make it a better place and make more of us fit for heaven. In a very real sense however it’s not only up to the successors of the Apostles in the strict sense of the term. Really, the ball is in our court. We cannot remain passive or indifferent to love. We must respond to love; we must cooperate with or accept the graces given. By the grace of a good confession, through study of our faith and prayer, and in many other ways, we need to open our hearts to Christ.
To be able to be surprised by love you may need to open your hearts wider to that same love as well. Faith is a two-way street. One of the hymns this parish sings from time to time has the refrain: “All are welcome in this place”. All are welcome, yes, but moreover all are called to respond to the love which comes to us from God. Peter and Paul knew this and we have the joy of celebrating their victory in Christ. That victory can be ours as well. Church life is a dialogue as we know from the liturgy, we must respond to the grace given: “Peace be with you!”
Sunday, 29 June 2008
Holy Cross Church, Hutchinson, Kansas
Acts of the Apostles 12:1-11
2 Timothy 4:6-8; 17-18
Matthew 16:13-19
The Entrance Antiphon from the missal for today’s feast of Saints Peter and Paul picks up one of the threads which go through the whole Liturgy of the Word for today:
“These men, conquering all human frailty, shed their blood and helped the Church to grow. By sharing the cup of the Lord’s suffering, they became the friends of God.”
These two sentences sum up very well one of the more important things we can say about Peter and Paul. These words present to you and me one of the most convincing challenges to any excuses we might put forward as to why we cannot do likewise. We are invited to follow in the footsteps of Christ as did His great Saints Peter and Paul. The fact that Peter who had shown great cowardice when Jesus was arrested and had denied him three times moved on by the grace of God to become Christ’s vicar, the chief Apostle, and the fact that Paul who had rabidly persecuted the Church in defense of Jewish traditions moved on by the personal choice of the Risen Christ to become the Apostle to the Gentiles leave us no room for shunning the grace provided by Jesus to each and every one of us to turn away from sin and become His witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Our calling may not be to martyrdom like Peter, crucified upside down, or like Paul who was beheaded by the sword. We may never even be imprisoned for our faith and certainly not rescued from chains by an angel as Peter was in our first reading today, but we are called, just like them, to confess Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. We are called to live so that we can make the words of St. Paul to Timothy our own, that we might in good conscience be able to say that we too “have fought the good fight …finished the race …kept the faith”.
To say that each of us must strive to follow the example of the great Princes of the Apostles might seem a bit of an exaggeration. In point of fact, although their personal experiences cannot be repeated, that is what we are called to do right where we find ourselves in our world. I think the key phrase is the one Paul shares in his second letter to young Timothy, whom he was grooming for big things back then:
“From now on a merited crown awaits me; on that day the Lord, just judge that he is, will award it to me – and not only to me but to all who have looked for his appearing with eager longing.”
After stumbling and stumbling grievously Peter and Paul turned to the Lord for forgiveness, gave their hearts entirely to Jesus in love, and set about making Him known. They gathered to themselves in life and in death countless numbers of people who just like them “looked for his appearing with eager longing.” You and I are called to do the same right where we find ourselves in the world. Whether we are called to do it “high profile” like let’s say Mother Angelica and all who work on EWTN or in a very hidden way like a cloistered monk or nun, or like a good father or mother for the family, in any and every case we are called to share the gift of faith, the seed planted and watered in our hearts by Baptism, which ultimately comes from God, but which we received thanks to the people who took up Paul’s challenge and confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, thanks to those who crossed our path in life and showed us the way to heaven. We must do the same. We cannot shirk what is more than a duty. This mission is our honor, our dignity; it is our only real joy.
A father who teaches his son to ride a bike or kick a football long and straight has joy for a day and maybe even for a season. A mother, who helps her daughter to grow straight and tall, has reason to be proud. Parents who succeed in communicating to their children their own eager longing for the coming of the Day of God can burst with pride and happiness, knowing that they have worked with the Lord, fulfilling His Will, and have given a gift which will spring up as a fountain unto everlasting life.
If you have ever read about St. John Marie Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, you may know of the hours and hours he spent hearing confessions, of all the time he spent in prayer, about how he hardly ever slept. What you may not know about John Vianney is how from his first day in his tiny parish in Ars, France he never let go of his parishioners, tirelessly teaching, admonishing, begging, praying for them, sacrificing and doing penance for them, doing all in his power to bring them back to Sunday Mass every Sunday and preparing them through the Sacrament of Penance for more frequent Communion. He held on tight to them, though they squirmed, struggled, protested and accused him unjustly, until the tables turned and they wouldn’t let him go any more. This was not nagging on his part, this was love. Love is the mark of the Apostle, self-less, sacrificial like Jesus, unconditioned love. This sacrificial love, which led Peter to the cross and brought Paul down by the sword, is what Christ wants from each and every person. Though we may at times be misunderstood for living the Cross of Christ, for following the example of Saints Peter and Paul, we are called nonetheless by Christ to share His love as it comes to us with the world around us.
Last evening marked the opening of a Jubilee Year for the universal Church in honor of the birth of St. Paul, the Apostle. One of the goals of this year is to bring us all to a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the Apostle to the Gentiles. We are encouraged to pick up and read from his letters. They are not always easy to read but with a good Catholic commentary well worth the effort. Pick up your Bible and turn to Paul again and again this year.
Both Peter and Paul are disarming because they are so real and so full of love for Christ. They share Christ’s love for all His people, Jesus’ eagerness that we might share in His victory over sin and death. Better priests and better bishops, better apostles of the stamp of John Marie Vianney would go a long way to accomplishing the changes in our own lives and the changes for the better in this world of ours which would make it a better place and make more of us fit for heaven. In a very real sense however it’s not only up to the successors of the Apostles in the strict sense of the term. Really, the ball is in our court. We cannot remain passive or indifferent to love. We must respond to love; we must cooperate with or accept the graces given. By the grace of a good confession, through study of our faith and prayer, and in many other ways, we need to open our hearts to Christ.
To be able to be surprised by love you may need to open your hearts wider to that same love as well. Faith is a two-way street. One of the hymns this parish sings from time to time has the refrain: “All are welcome in this place”. All are welcome, yes, but moreover all are called to respond to the love which comes to us from God. Peter and Paul knew this and we have the joy of celebrating their victory in Christ. That victory can be ours as well. Church life is a dialogue as we know from the liturgy, we must respond to the grace given: “Peace be with you!”
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Up Close and Personal
TRINITY SUNDAY
Entrance Antiphon
“Benedictus sit Deus Pater, unigenitusque Dei Filius, Sanctus quoque Spiritus, quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.”
“Father,
You sent your Word to bring us truth
and your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to know the mystery of your life.
Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.
We ask you this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, true and living, for ever and ever.”
As a young priest, I can remember sweating the homily preparation for Trinity Sunday. I can also remember listening to more than one young priest and deacon stumbling through a homily on this day, which obviously either had him frightened or embarrassed. For the longest time I always thought that this discomfort on the part of young preachers had something to do with the fact that on this Sunday above all others we owed our listeners an accessible homily on this great mystery of our faith. We owed them a homily which had a genuine theological content. It was like all those notes and classes in the seminary which had only been maybe half or half-heartedly studied had come home to haunt us once a year.
While I have no doubt that this day and our people deserve genuine theological content, I am beginning to wonder if that was the reason for our embarrassment. Although getting across the truth of the Oneness in Three to the person in the pew is a real challenge, I have become more convinced now in my later years that once the first task is accomplished it is the second which causes the preacher to fear and to tremble. Once the notion has been imparted, it would seem that the preacher is obliged to make the Trinity come alive and set his listeners on the great journey hand in hand with the living and true God.
Recently, in a social setting and in conversation with a group of people (in other words, I’m not giving away any secrets) the topic of vocation came up and one of the ladies expressed what she understood by the words “God calls me” or even apart from vocation she explained to all in the group how she understands divine intervention. In a very real sense, it was an account of how she understands the teaching on the immanence of a God Who is transcendent. I could see that this good Catholic woman seems to have no appreciation for God as a Person having a personal interest in me, first, middle and last name. My point today is that I am sure she is not alone in having worked things out this way. Two ideas or notions seemed to dominate hers and many others (perhaps even some priests’) notion of God’s involvement in our world: a) He has an eye for detail; b) vocation is my choice to go with His flow, so to speak. Asking a question or two, allowing another person in the group that evening to lay out a vision similar to mine about a personal God being interested in a personal me from all eternity found no resonance with her at all. God was definitely other for her. The great dogma of the Trinity was certainly confessed in the words of the Creed by this woman, but “person” for her was person period. That cannot be: if person is person at all, it is relational; it is Person to person, it is first God to me and then me to God (and obviously Person to Person within the Godhead itself from all eternity), as it must be.
It’s not the academics of Trinity Sunday which should make the preacher sweat, but the challenge for once in the year beyond Christmas and Easter to do more than offer a moral message. St. Patrick’s shamrock as a visual aid for explaining Three in One is the catechetical first-step to sharing with folk the witness of prayer and closeness to God, where it was God Who sustained St. Patrick as a boy-captive forced to watch sheep on the hillsides of Ireland. The challenge of Trinity Sunday is to pull back the veil and let people see the face of God.
This year’s readings for the Solemnity bring this home in a most articulate way. In the First Reading from Exodus, God passes before Moses on Mount Sinai and Moses bows down to the ground at once and worships God. He says: “If I have indeed won your favor, Lord, let my Lord come with us, I beg.”
In Second Corinthians, St. Paul blesses his readers with a Trinitarian blessing, addressing them singly and as a communion of saints, wishing twice that God would be with them and of course with us. God is an identifiable God, first the God of love and peace, and then he continues naming the three Persons individually: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
And above all: John’s Gospel Chapter 3 verse 16, Jesus speaking to Nicodemus struggling to understand and saying: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.”
We are not plugging into or going along with a cosmic flow, we take the hand which is extended, we respond to a named Person Who calls us by our very own name.
I remember one of those funny words which professors were always using and using it, if I remember correctly, as if it were something negative and maybe even dangerous: “reify” or “reifying”. Websters doesn’t seem to have gotten that impression. The dictionary defines reify simply as: “to treat (an abstraction) as substantially existing, or as a concrete material object.” Maybe that is the problem and the challenge of Trinity Sunday. Perhaps for too many of us good Catholics God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has been an abstraction, which we reduce to something concrete?
Maybe none of this is fair and there are really more profound theologians out there in the pew than there are in the pulpit? In any case, I encountered someone for whom the words “flow” or “source of energy” concretize a notion of person which is not person at all. For just one person, it would be worth the effort to sweat a bit of a Trinity Sunday and try to move beyond abstraction to encounter God as Person reaching out to me as person in more ways than I can count in a well crafted homily.
“Father,
You sent your Word to bring us truth
and your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to know the mystery of your life.
Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.
We ask you this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, true and living, for ever and ever.”
Yes, Jesus loves me; God loves me, that person with a first, middle and last name. He loved me before I was even named. He called me into being, He calls me to know, love and serve Him in this life, so as to be happy with Him forever in Heaven. Person to person!
Entrance Antiphon
“Benedictus sit Deus Pater, unigenitusque Dei Filius, Sanctus quoque Spiritus, quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.”
“Father,
You sent your Word to bring us truth
and your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to know the mystery of your life.
Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.
We ask you this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, true and living, for ever and ever.”
As a young priest, I can remember sweating the homily preparation for Trinity Sunday. I can also remember listening to more than one young priest and deacon stumbling through a homily on this day, which obviously either had him frightened or embarrassed. For the longest time I always thought that this discomfort on the part of young preachers had something to do with the fact that on this Sunday above all others we owed our listeners an accessible homily on this great mystery of our faith. We owed them a homily which had a genuine theological content. It was like all those notes and classes in the seminary which had only been maybe half or half-heartedly studied had come home to haunt us once a year.
While I have no doubt that this day and our people deserve genuine theological content, I am beginning to wonder if that was the reason for our embarrassment. Although getting across the truth of the Oneness in Three to the person in the pew is a real challenge, I have become more convinced now in my later years that once the first task is accomplished it is the second which causes the preacher to fear and to tremble. Once the notion has been imparted, it would seem that the preacher is obliged to make the Trinity come alive and set his listeners on the great journey hand in hand with the living and true God.
Recently, in a social setting and in conversation with a group of people (in other words, I’m not giving away any secrets) the topic of vocation came up and one of the ladies expressed what she understood by the words “God calls me” or even apart from vocation she explained to all in the group how she understands divine intervention. In a very real sense, it was an account of how she understands the teaching on the immanence of a God Who is transcendent. I could see that this good Catholic woman seems to have no appreciation for God as a Person having a personal interest in me, first, middle and last name. My point today is that I am sure she is not alone in having worked things out this way. Two ideas or notions seemed to dominate hers and many others (perhaps even some priests’) notion of God’s involvement in our world: a) He has an eye for detail; b) vocation is my choice to go with His flow, so to speak. Asking a question or two, allowing another person in the group that evening to lay out a vision similar to mine about a personal God being interested in a personal me from all eternity found no resonance with her at all. God was definitely other for her. The great dogma of the Trinity was certainly confessed in the words of the Creed by this woman, but “person” for her was person period. That cannot be: if person is person at all, it is relational; it is Person to person, it is first God to me and then me to God (and obviously Person to Person within the Godhead itself from all eternity), as it must be.
It’s not the academics of Trinity Sunday which should make the preacher sweat, but the challenge for once in the year beyond Christmas and Easter to do more than offer a moral message. St. Patrick’s shamrock as a visual aid for explaining Three in One is the catechetical first-step to sharing with folk the witness of prayer and closeness to God, where it was God Who sustained St. Patrick as a boy-captive forced to watch sheep on the hillsides of Ireland. The challenge of Trinity Sunday is to pull back the veil and let people see the face of God.
This year’s readings for the Solemnity bring this home in a most articulate way. In the First Reading from Exodus, God passes before Moses on Mount Sinai and Moses bows down to the ground at once and worships God. He says: “If I have indeed won your favor, Lord, let my Lord come with us, I beg.”
In Second Corinthians, St. Paul blesses his readers with a Trinitarian blessing, addressing them singly and as a communion of saints, wishing twice that God would be with them and of course with us. God is an identifiable God, first the God of love and peace, and then he continues naming the three Persons individually: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
And above all: John’s Gospel Chapter 3 verse 16, Jesus speaking to Nicodemus struggling to understand and saying: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.”
We are not plugging into or going along with a cosmic flow, we take the hand which is extended, we respond to a named Person Who calls us by our very own name.
I remember one of those funny words which professors were always using and using it, if I remember correctly, as if it were something negative and maybe even dangerous: “reify” or “reifying”. Websters doesn’t seem to have gotten that impression. The dictionary defines reify simply as: “to treat (an abstraction) as substantially existing, or as a concrete material object.” Maybe that is the problem and the challenge of Trinity Sunday. Perhaps for too many of us good Catholics God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has been an abstraction, which we reduce to something concrete?
Maybe none of this is fair and there are really more profound theologians out there in the pew than there are in the pulpit? In any case, I encountered someone for whom the words “flow” or “source of energy” concretize a notion of person which is not person at all. For just one person, it would be worth the effort to sweat a bit of a Trinity Sunday and try to move beyond abstraction to encounter God as Person reaching out to me as person in more ways than I can count in a well crafted homily.
“Father,
You sent your Word to bring us truth
and your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to know the mystery of your life.
Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.
We ask you this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, true and living, for ever and ever.”
Yes, Jesus loves me; God loves me, that person with a first, middle and last name. He loved me before I was even named. He called me into being, He calls me to know, love and serve Him in this life, so as to be happy with Him forever in Heaven. Person to person!
Friday, May 16, 2008
Speak, Lord, Your Servant is Listening
Holy Mass for the Closing of the Academic Year
at the Regional Seminary of
St. John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs
15 May 2008, 6:30 p.m.
Solemnity of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs
Reading I: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2.9-14
Reading II: 2 Cor. 4:7-15
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
The poor in spirit, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted in the cause of right… and all of this because of me, Jesus says, rejoice and be glad for heaven!
Among my all-time favorites from the Second Readings in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of Hours are two in the course of the year from Pope Paul VI, of blessed memory: one, assigned to the Feast of the Holy Family, comes from his talk in Nazareth about all the lessons to be learned from the school of the house of Jesus, Mary and Joseph at Nazareth; the other is from his 1964 homily at the canonization of the martyrs of Uganda.
Part of what thrills me about this excerpt from the Pope’s canonization homily is precisely the fact, that I (the Nuncio), a non-European, am hearing a great European sing the praises of another part of the world other than Europe. I am sure that Europeans are not and cannot be touched by the Pope’s message for the Feast of the Uganda Martyrs in the same way as I or most of us can. Let me quote the text ever so briefly:
“Who could have predicted to the famous African confessors and martyrs such as Cyprian, Felicity, Perpetua and – the greatest of all – Augustine, that we would one day add names so dear to us as Charles Lwanga and Matthias Mulumba Kalemba and their twenty companions?”
They were young men for the most part, whom the Church gladly identifies with the seven sons and their mother from the Book of Maccabees, and who in Christian art are often portrayed as the Black counterparts of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three young men singing unharmed in the fiery furnace of Babylon. The reading from Pope Paul VI continues:
“The infamous crime by which these young men were put to death was so unspeakable and so expressive of the times. It shows us clearly that a new people needs a moral foundation, needs new spiritual customs firmly planted, to be handed down to posterity. Symbolically, this crime also reveals that a simple and rough way of life – enriched by many fine human qualities yet enslaved by its own weakness and corruption – must give way to a more civilized life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.”
Hold that thought and let me switch gears for just a moment!
It is a commonly held opinion that today’s students, especially theology students, and major seminarians par excellence, are much more serious about learning than we were years ago. I’ve also read that your typical vocation to the priesthood today is more serious than we were once upon a time. I am glad for you, but also a bit puzzled and will try and explain myself by reflecting for a moment on your great patrons, the Uganda Martyrs.
The heroism of the young men in the Book of Maccabees, brutally tortured and killed for their refusal to eat pork from a pagan sacrifice in violation of God’s Covenant and Law given to Moses and the Chosen People always causes me to shudder, but I have no real problem understanding or accepting their zeal. They give evidence of the typical psychology or should we say appreciation of noble values as understood and embraced by boys, youths and young men of any day and time. Faith in the God of their ancestors was certainly the cornerstone of their sacrifice, but they were martyred essentially because of their adherence to the Commandments and dietary laws of Judaism which were concrete and judged worth holding. This they had learned at their mother’s knee. It is true the Book of Maccabees here and elsewhere offers us among the most articulate Jewish expressions of faith in a future resurrection, but central to these young men’s oblation was their adherence to the law of the God of their fathers.
The Uganda Martyrs, as the Pope points out so clearly, are of a piece with the great North African Martyrs and Saints of the early centuries, whose sacrifice is not described first and foremost by a strict adherence on their part to the observance of the Law but rather by their faith in Christ, to whom they had bound themselves firmly, bound themselves in love and fidelity, bound themselves to Jesus, to the Risen One, to the Victor over sin and death. They, the Uganda Martyrs like centuries of Christian martyrs before them, had embraced what the seven brothers and their mother could only salute from afar.
Recently in Curacao I had a conversation with a man I’d judge to be in his forties, who expressed optimism concerning the attractiveness of priesthood today as a vocational choice for young men here in our region. Even though he seemed to me to be a regular “man in the pew” my guess is that he had also heard as I had about this new generation of conscientious students and hardworking or more-dedicated-than-my-generation seminarians. I’m afraid I may have burst his optimism bubble, by insisting on the old faith imparted to me in primary school by Sister and by Father from the pulpit back when I was just a little boy in the 1950’s.
You see, I am a staunch believer in a timeless understanding of vocation, amply sustained by the descriptions of how men received their calling from God in both the Old and New Testaments. You’ll never convince me that the three basic prerequisites in a boy or young man for a priestly vocation have changed. What are they? They are very simply: 1. sound mind; 2. sound body; 3. somewhat better than average intelligence. Everything else that goes into a vocation is supernatural and mediated by the Church through the voice of authority. God called me to priesthood from my mother’s womb; He gave me the grace to respond; the Church confirmed the rightness of my childish, at first, later youthful and idealistic, longing. The Church trained me and ordained me and has never ceased in love to knock off all my rough edges and purify me, first and foremost for the service of the Altar.
The vocation or call to martyrdom in the act itself is as horrifying as Christ’s Passion. In the Light of Easter Sunday the sense of it all comes clear in God’s plan to raise us up, to save us and our world. Whether hung, drawn and quartered, flayed alive, stripped and locked away in a cold old starvation bunker in a concentration camp in Central Europe, impaled or burned facing the furious rejection of a blood relative who may be a temporal ruler but does not share our hope in Christ, we are talking in the martyr, male or female, child, youth or adult, we are talking in that person about the ultimate unto life’s blood witness of radical respect for the human person. We are talking about a new dignity and worth attributed to the human person through baptism into Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, Who in Himself has raised us to even greater nobility than that we had at the moment of the creation of our first parent. The New Testament or Christian martyr’s witness flows from a true love of God and neighbor. Death is swallowed up in death as we make up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (to quote one of the most approved authors).
I hope and pray you all had a great academic year. Some people claim that studies are the ultimate bloodless martyrdom. Pope Paul VI would tell you that the Uganda Martyrs did not choose the path of confrontation but, when pressed to the wall and demanded to choose, chose Jesus. As little more than neophytes, barely graduated from the catechumenate, they were called by Christ. He made their hearts (boyish hearts, youngish or youthful hearts) his own. They knew the Commandments but more essentially they knew their Redeemer; they knew He would raise them up to life and never abandon them; they knew that whole, entire, glorified in the flesh they would with their own eyes see God.
“Symbolically, this crime also reveals that a simple and rough way of life – enriched by many fine human qualities yet enslaved by its own weakness and corruption – must give way to a more civilized life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.”
As I say, I hope you all had a great academic year, that your studies have helped to equip you for “…a more civilized life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.” I am convinced that the Hellenizers who tortured and killed the seven sons and their mother in Maccabees were indeed as enslaved to their own weakness and corruption as Uganda’s degenerate king. The young men of the Old Testament outstripped their torturers in their hope and adherence to principle. St. Charles Lwanga and his companions had the further advantage through their catechism lessons and youthful life of faith of having come to know, love and serve Christ.
The self-oblation of the young men from Uganda must be one of the best possible examples of the glories of the true faith without admixture or ambiguity. I would never wish martyrdom on myself or on any of you, but I am willing to predict that if your faith-life is as straightforward and centered in the person of Jesus Christ as that of any one of those twenty-two boys, youths or young men, we’ll soon be resorting to phrases like “a new Pentecost” to describe the renaissance of Catholic life spreading across the Caribbean like wildfire.
What is ultimately attractive and inspiring? What causes the Gospel to be spread? The life of virtue and adherence to the Person of Christ most certainly! These are gifts of grace, things we learn, things we are trained in. We can identify such traits in ourselves and in others; we can come to live them better and better each day. Our Gospel summary for this Feast again: The poor in spirit, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted in the cause of right… and all of this because of me, Jesus says, rejoice and be glad for heaven!
I don’t know how much the bishops share with you about their anxious prayers and efforts for the sake of the life of the Regional Seminary of St. John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs. We can only speculate concerning what the present and ongoing crisis of the seminary is all about. Part of the problem and perhaps the reason crowds of young men are not knocking down the doors and begging to serve may be that young people have been deprived of the encounter with the Lord Jesus which Charles Lwanga and his companions were blessed to have had at the dawn of the evangelization of Sub-Saharan Africa. No, that is not possible! I don’t believe it! Rather, I would say that maybe there haven’t been enough Eli’s out there to tell the little boys named Samuel, sleeping in the Lord’s House at Shiloh, to simply lift up their heads and say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening!”
The marvelous human traits of the Uganda Martyrs are present also in the youth of this region. God’s call of shepherds in sufficient number to tend the flock is guaranteed. We need more parents like Samuel’s mother who gave her son back to God no sooner than he was weaned and we need more Eli’s to say, “Boy, God is calling. Respond as you should!”
The nuncio prays for you and hopes at the close of this academic year that you’ll have a wonderful vacation or next stage in your life. Life only gets better when you allow the Lord, Who loves you more than yourself, to plot your course.
at the Regional Seminary of
St. John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs
15 May 2008, 6:30 p.m.
Solemnity of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs
Reading I: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2.9-14
Reading II: 2 Cor. 4:7-15
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
The poor in spirit, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted in the cause of right… and all of this because of me, Jesus says, rejoice and be glad for heaven!
Among my all-time favorites from the Second Readings in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of Hours are two in the course of the year from Pope Paul VI, of blessed memory: one, assigned to the Feast of the Holy Family, comes from his talk in Nazareth about all the lessons to be learned from the school of the house of Jesus, Mary and Joseph at Nazareth; the other is from his 1964 homily at the canonization of the martyrs of Uganda.
Part of what thrills me about this excerpt from the Pope’s canonization homily is precisely the fact, that I (the Nuncio), a non-European, am hearing a great European sing the praises of another part of the world other than Europe. I am sure that Europeans are not and cannot be touched by the Pope’s message for the Feast of the Uganda Martyrs in the same way as I or most of us can. Let me quote the text ever so briefly:
“Who could have predicted to the famous African confessors and martyrs such as Cyprian, Felicity, Perpetua and – the greatest of all – Augustine, that we would one day add names so dear to us as Charles Lwanga and Matthias Mulumba Kalemba and their twenty companions?”
They were young men for the most part, whom the Church gladly identifies with the seven sons and their mother from the Book of Maccabees, and who in Christian art are often portrayed as the Black counterparts of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three young men singing unharmed in the fiery furnace of Babylon. The reading from Pope Paul VI continues:
“The infamous crime by which these young men were put to death was so unspeakable and so expressive of the times. It shows us clearly that a new people needs a moral foundation, needs new spiritual customs firmly planted, to be handed down to posterity. Symbolically, this crime also reveals that a simple and rough way of life – enriched by many fine human qualities yet enslaved by its own weakness and corruption – must give way to a more civilized life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.”
Hold that thought and let me switch gears for just a moment!
It is a commonly held opinion that today’s students, especially theology students, and major seminarians par excellence, are much more serious about learning than we were years ago. I’ve also read that your typical vocation to the priesthood today is more serious than we were once upon a time. I am glad for you, but also a bit puzzled and will try and explain myself by reflecting for a moment on your great patrons, the Uganda Martyrs.
The heroism of the young men in the Book of Maccabees, brutally tortured and killed for their refusal to eat pork from a pagan sacrifice in violation of God’s Covenant and Law given to Moses and the Chosen People always causes me to shudder, but I have no real problem understanding or accepting their zeal. They give evidence of the typical psychology or should we say appreciation of noble values as understood and embraced by boys, youths and young men of any day and time. Faith in the God of their ancestors was certainly the cornerstone of their sacrifice, but they were martyred essentially because of their adherence to the Commandments and dietary laws of Judaism which were concrete and judged worth holding. This they had learned at their mother’s knee. It is true the Book of Maccabees here and elsewhere offers us among the most articulate Jewish expressions of faith in a future resurrection, but central to these young men’s oblation was their adherence to the law of the God of their fathers.
The Uganda Martyrs, as the Pope points out so clearly, are of a piece with the great North African Martyrs and Saints of the early centuries, whose sacrifice is not described first and foremost by a strict adherence on their part to the observance of the Law but rather by their faith in Christ, to whom they had bound themselves firmly, bound themselves in love and fidelity, bound themselves to Jesus, to the Risen One, to the Victor over sin and death. They, the Uganda Martyrs like centuries of Christian martyrs before them, had embraced what the seven brothers and their mother could only salute from afar.
Recently in Curacao I had a conversation with a man I’d judge to be in his forties, who expressed optimism concerning the attractiveness of priesthood today as a vocational choice for young men here in our region. Even though he seemed to me to be a regular “man in the pew” my guess is that he had also heard as I had about this new generation of conscientious students and hardworking or more-dedicated-than-my-generation seminarians. I’m afraid I may have burst his optimism bubble, by insisting on the old faith imparted to me in primary school by Sister and by Father from the pulpit back when I was just a little boy in the 1950’s.
You see, I am a staunch believer in a timeless understanding of vocation, amply sustained by the descriptions of how men received their calling from God in both the Old and New Testaments. You’ll never convince me that the three basic prerequisites in a boy or young man for a priestly vocation have changed. What are they? They are very simply: 1. sound mind; 2. sound body; 3. somewhat better than average intelligence. Everything else that goes into a vocation is supernatural and mediated by the Church through the voice of authority. God called me to priesthood from my mother’s womb; He gave me the grace to respond; the Church confirmed the rightness of my childish, at first, later youthful and idealistic, longing. The Church trained me and ordained me and has never ceased in love to knock off all my rough edges and purify me, first and foremost for the service of the Altar.
The vocation or call to martyrdom in the act itself is as horrifying as Christ’s Passion. In the Light of Easter Sunday the sense of it all comes clear in God’s plan to raise us up, to save us and our world. Whether hung, drawn and quartered, flayed alive, stripped and locked away in a cold old starvation bunker in a concentration camp in Central Europe, impaled or burned facing the furious rejection of a blood relative who may be a temporal ruler but does not share our hope in Christ, we are talking in the martyr, male or female, child, youth or adult, we are talking in that person about the ultimate unto life’s blood witness of radical respect for the human person. We are talking about a new dignity and worth attributed to the human person through baptism into Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, Who in Himself has raised us to even greater nobility than that we had at the moment of the creation of our first parent. The New Testament or Christian martyr’s witness flows from a true love of God and neighbor. Death is swallowed up in death as we make up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (to quote one of the most approved authors).
I hope and pray you all had a great academic year. Some people claim that studies are the ultimate bloodless martyrdom. Pope Paul VI would tell you that the Uganda Martyrs did not choose the path of confrontation but, when pressed to the wall and demanded to choose, chose Jesus. As little more than neophytes, barely graduated from the catechumenate, they were called by Christ. He made their hearts (boyish hearts, youngish or youthful hearts) his own. They knew the Commandments but more essentially they knew their Redeemer; they knew He would raise them up to life and never abandon them; they knew that whole, entire, glorified in the flesh they would with their own eyes see God.
“Symbolically, this crime also reveals that a simple and rough way of life – enriched by many fine human qualities yet enslaved by its own weakness and corruption – must give way to a more civilized life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.”
As I say, I hope you all had a great academic year, that your studies have helped to equip you for “…a more civilized life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.” I am convinced that the Hellenizers who tortured and killed the seven sons and their mother in Maccabees were indeed as enslaved to their own weakness and corruption as Uganda’s degenerate king. The young men of the Old Testament outstripped their torturers in their hope and adherence to principle. St. Charles Lwanga and his companions had the further advantage through their catechism lessons and youthful life of faith of having come to know, love and serve Christ.
The self-oblation of the young men from Uganda must be one of the best possible examples of the glories of the true faith without admixture or ambiguity. I would never wish martyrdom on myself or on any of you, but I am willing to predict that if your faith-life is as straightforward and centered in the person of Jesus Christ as that of any one of those twenty-two boys, youths or young men, we’ll soon be resorting to phrases like “a new Pentecost” to describe the renaissance of Catholic life spreading across the Caribbean like wildfire.
What is ultimately attractive and inspiring? What causes the Gospel to be spread? The life of virtue and adherence to the Person of Christ most certainly! These are gifts of grace, things we learn, things we are trained in. We can identify such traits in ourselves and in others; we can come to live them better and better each day. Our Gospel summary for this Feast again: The poor in spirit, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted in the cause of right… and all of this because of me, Jesus says, rejoice and be glad for heaven!
I don’t know how much the bishops share with you about their anxious prayers and efforts for the sake of the life of the Regional Seminary of St. John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs. We can only speculate concerning what the present and ongoing crisis of the seminary is all about. Part of the problem and perhaps the reason crowds of young men are not knocking down the doors and begging to serve may be that young people have been deprived of the encounter with the Lord Jesus which Charles Lwanga and his companions were blessed to have had at the dawn of the evangelization of Sub-Saharan Africa. No, that is not possible! I don’t believe it! Rather, I would say that maybe there haven’t been enough Eli’s out there to tell the little boys named Samuel, sleeping in the Lord’s House at Shiloh, to simply lift up their heads and say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening!”
The marvelous human traits of the Uganda Martyrs are present also in the youth of this region. God’s call of shepherds in sufficient number to tend the flock is guaranteed. We need more parents like Samuel’s mother who gave her son back to God no sooner than he was weaned and we need more Eli’s to say, “Boy, God is calling. Respond as you should!”
The nuncio prays for you and hopes at the close of this academic year that you’ll have a wonderful vacation or next stage in your life. Life only gets better when you allow the Lord, Who loves you more than yourself, to plot your course.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Life in Hope
Pentecost Sunday
11 May 2008
“Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire! But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:11-13, RSV-CE)
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI… I heard a very fine Pentecost homily at the annual jubilee Mass of the local province of the Holy Ghost Fathers. The homilist also alluded to the above quoted text from the Second Letter of Peter, touching me in a very particular way, because this is the Scripture quote which stands behind and explains my Episcopal motto. Father’s allusion was drawn from a reflection he offered to the festive assembly on the nature of hope from the Holy Father’s Encyclical Letter Spe salvi.
WAITING FOR AND HASTENING THE COMING OF THE DAY OF GOD … Going beyond striving to live a holy and godly life and thereby contributing to shortening the time of God’s forbearance, lest “any should perish” and “all should reach repentance”, was certainly something that caught my attention when I picked my motto from this passage. I looked at it first and foremost from the point of view of cooperating with God’s grace. Father’s Pentecost homily this year hit me at an opportune moment and helped me to tighten and thereby light another bulb on that Christmas tree of my understanding of these words from Holy Scripture. He helped me better illuminate for my own understanding the aspect of hope involved in St. Peter’s call for zeal.
If you think about it, trying to hasten the day when “the elements will melt with fire” as an effort tied to genuine hope is a notion which needs some head work. Hoping for the establishment of God’s rule is not an instinctive yearning, like longing to be free from unjust constraints and respected by one’s peers. Eagerly awaiting new heavens and a new earth from God is an intelligent choice subsequent to our encounter with the Truth, with the Light and Life of the world. Godless men and women of good will and even non-Christians sadly content themselves with much less. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about the difference which Jesus Christ makes. We need only reflect for a moment about the back and forth we find in the Gospels between Jesus and His adversaries, and even between Jesus and His disciples or would-be disciples. Not everyone expected as revealed in the Person of Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ Who was to come into our world! The history of Creeds and Councils helps us understand something of the struggle to preserve the fullness of that faith over the centuries.
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI… Is it really more than a longing for the establishment of righteousness? Most certainly! The violent wind which was heard to blow in the Upper Room on that first Pentecost, those tongues of fire which settled upon the disciples gathered there with Mary, the Mother of God, in prayer, were certainly for them and for all who witnessed that event the foretaste and promise of the world to come. On that day, everything melted away in fire and hope’s object in faith may not have been seen but was certainly witnessed from afar. This was not only the birthday of the Church, but in a very real sense the Church’s Transfiguration, meant to strengthen the baptized for the scandal of the share in the Cross which would be ours, to make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
Freedom’s nature and dignity certainly does not allow us to victoriously establish God’s reign by imposing it on the lives of others. As transformed through our share in the prayer and suffering of Christ and His Church, we stand eagerly on the threshold of Judgment and Eternal Life. It is enough. Holiness and godliness will draw others to the Day as nothing else can. The light on the lamp stand, the city on the mountain top cannot be hidden.
Sometimes we hesitate, terrified or at least stymied by the darkness which seems to have devoured us and to have claimed the victory. The Lord Jesus’ temptations in the desert are not always withstood so valiantly by us, His followers, as we falter in hope, while awaiting that Dawn from on High.
Pentecost: caught up into the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity through the grace of that whirlwind Who is the Holy Spirit, we live in hope of God’s Day. It is more than enough.
11 May 2008
“Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire! But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:11-13, RSV-CE)
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI… I heard a very fine Pentecost homily at the annual jubilee Mass of the local province of the Holy Ghost Fathers. The homilist also alluded to the above quoted text from the Second Letter of Peter, touching me in a very particular way, because this is the Scripture quote which stands behind and explains my Episcopal motto. Father’s allusion was drawn from a reflection he offered to the festive assembly on the nature of hope from the Holy Father’s Encyclical Letter Spe salvi.
WAITING FOR AND HASTENING THE COMING OF THE DAY OF GOD … Going beyond striving to live a holy and godly life and thereby contributing to shortening the time of God’s forbearance, lest “any should perish” and “all should reach repentance”, was certainly something that caught my attention when I picked my motto from this passage. I looked at it first and foremost from the point of view of cooperating with God’s grace. Father’s Pentecost homily this year hit me at an opportune moment and helped me to tighten and thereby light another bulb on that Christmas tree of my understanding of these words from Holy Scripture. He helped me better illuminate for my own understanding the aspect of hope involved in St. Peter’s call for zeal.
If you think about it, trying to hasten the day when “the elements will melt with fire” as an effort tied to genuine hope is a notion which needs some head work. Hoping for the establishment of God’s rule is not an instinctive yearning, like longing to be free from unjust constraints and respected by one’s peers. Eagerly awaiting new heavens and a new earth from God is an intelligent choice subsequent to our encounter with the Truth, with the Light and Life of the world. Godless men and women of good will and even non-Christians sadly content themselves with much less. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about the difference which Jesus Christ makes. We need only reflect for a moment about the back and forth we find in the Gospels between Jesus and His adversaries, and even between Jesus and His disciples or would-be disciples. Not everyone expected as revealed in the Person of Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ Who was to come into our world! The history of Creeds and Councils helps us understand something of the struggle to preserve the fullness of that faith over the centuries.
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI… Is it really more than a longing for the establishment of righteousness? Most certainly! The violent wind which was heard to blow in the Upper Room on that first Pentecost, those tongues of fire which settled upon the disciples gathered there with Mary, the Mother of God, in prayer, were certainly for them and for all who witnessed that event the foretaste and promise of the world to come. On that day, everything melted away in fire and hope’s object in faith may not have been seen but was certainly witnessed from afar. This was not only the birthday of the Church, but in a very real sense the Church’s Transfiguration, meant to strengthen the baptized for the scandal of the share in the Cross which would be ours, to make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
Freedom’s nature and dignity certainly does not allow us to victoriously establish God’s reign by imposing it on the lives of others. As transformed through our share in the prayer and suffering of Christ and His Church, we stand eagerly on the threshold of Judgment and Eternal Life. It is enough. Holiness and godliness will draw others to the Day as nothing else can. The light on the lamp stand, the city on the mountain top cannot be hidden.
Sometimes we hesitate, terrified or at least stymied by the darkness which seems to have devoured us and to have claimed the victory. The Lord Jesus’ temptations in the desert are not always withstood so valiantly by us, His followers, as we falter in hope, while awaiting that Dawn from on High.
Pentecost: caught up into the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity through the grace of that whirlwind Who is the Holy Spirit, we live in hope of God’s Day. It is more than enough.
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