Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter A, 14 May 2023

Sixth Sunday of Easter | USCCB

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

This quote from today’s Gospel passage is taken from the section covering the Last Supper which spans four chapters of John’s gospel.

We are all familiar with lengthy farewells. They usually start in the kitchen after a good meal, and leftovers are wrapped up to send with our guests. Then we stand in the hallway as they are gathering their belongings, followed by hugs and kisses at the door. Then we follow our guests to their cars where we promise to get together soon followed by more hugs and kisses. Then we stand by their cars as they get in, wishing them safe travel. As they pull away, we stand and wave and throw more kisses as they toot their horns and finally drive away. We may still stand there as they go down the road and say what a good time we had with them.

In a similar manner, in Chapter 13 after washing of feet of the apostles Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.” Jesus will go on to repeat “love one another” four more times through the next two chapters. Jesus talks about keeping his commandments six times in the same two chapters saying finally: “This I command you: love one another.”

 If there could be anything more central to the gospels, and to Jesus’ teachings it has to be, “love one another.” If there is anything more important in all of Scripture it has to be “love one another.” In fact “love one another” appears sixteen times in the New Testament.

The commandment to love sounds easy until we stop to realize what it means. In the New Testament whenever the word “love” appears, it is the word agape. For Christians, agape from Ancient Greek ἀγάπη (agápē)) is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God". This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or eros with the sense of a sexual nature. We most commonly use the word “charity” when we refer to the love that is “agape.” So another way we could say “love one another,” is to say, “Be charitable to one another.”

Jesus concludes today’ passage saying, “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” This is a round-about way of revealing the intimate relationship the Father has with the Son and is made known in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the community of all who love one another.

How are we faithful to Christ’s commandment to love one another on a personal level? How do we show this in our closest relationships? Are we selfish or do we put the needs of others ahead of our own?

How are we faithful to Christ’s commandment to love one another as a community of believers? Are we judgmental and do we exclude others based on arbitrary criteria? Do others seek to be members of our faith community because they see a living example of Christ’s love? Do we seek to bring meaningful change to a world suffering from injustice on so many levels?

In the Eucharist we celebrate today let us ask God for the grace to break down the barriers that keep us from fully loving one another and to take that love out into the world as we leave here today.

 

 

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, 19 February 2023

 Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time | USCCB

“Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s a pretty tall order. How do we do that? Practice makes perfect. As the old joke goes: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.”

I was in band when I was in high school. I played the baritone, a smaller, oval version of a tuba. I was not particularly fond of that instrument. There were two other baritone players in the band with me, and they were far better musicians than I was. In fact, I relied on them to learn the music and I would play by ear. One day the band director handed us each a portfolio with three different pieces of music to learn. I just put the portfolio aside; I never even attempted to look at the music to see if I could learn it. When I was asked to play it, well it wasn’t pretty. I could have tried to learn even only one piece, but I wasn’t willing to practice.

Today’s readings are some of the most challenging any Christian will ever hear. Why? Because they ask us to do something that is so against our human nature. They ask us to put the needs of others ahead of our own, they ask us to forgive. It’s as if God has given us each a portfolio of music to learn. Notes on a page, how can I make any sense of that? Will I even give it a try? What if I don’t get it perfect?

The truth is we won’t get it perfect. “[We] are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (Mark 8:33) In Paul’s letter we hear:

“Let no one deceive himself.
If any one among you considers himself wise in this age,
let him become a fool, so as to become wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.”

So what is the wisdom when Jesus says:

“I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

God obviously looks on the world in a way we can hardly imagine. God sees the world with love. God sees the world in its entirety. How can God not love any part of his creation? It is we who have made distinctions that have caused the animosity and divisions we suffer today.

 Dietrich Bonhoffer, German theologian and outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler wrote: “Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging  others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.” Simply put by judging others we make it impossible for us to see them as God does, and God has an infinitely better vantage point than we do.

So how do we become perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect? We practice. We practice prayer; we practice with acts of charity; we practice by withholding judgement of others. We love our neighbors as ourselves. And we keep practicing all of this until we get the music right.

This week we begin the holy season of Lent. Let this be an opportunity for us to begin practicing the commandment to love others as we love ourselves, making their needs our needs, and giving up the urge to judge others, and doing all of this with a prayerful spirit. In this Eucharist we celebrate let us ask our heavenly Father to enable us to see God’s image in all mankind and to serve God in them. And let our prayer this week be: “Perfect us in love, Lord.”

Fourth Sunday of Advent A, 18 December 2022

 

      Gabriel appears to Joseph in a dream

Fourth Sunday of Advent | USCCB

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent A

One year ago at this time Louise and I were eagerly awaiting the birth of our first grandchild. The due date was December 27^th, and we had our calendar clear so that at soon as our daughter called we would head up to Milwaukee. On the 23^rd she called to let us know she was in labor and said she would call back to let us know when they were headed to the hospital. When she called back it was to tell us not to come up yet.

When Marie and her husband, Joe, arrived at the hospital they were tested for covid and found out they were both positive. After Wren was born they tested her and she was positive also. We said we would come up to help when they got home from the hospital, but she told us to wait until they had completed their quarantine. It was ten days after the birth of our grand-daughter before we were finally able to go to visit. Life is full of unexpected interruptions, and like GPS apps we are constantly recalculating.

What kind of plans did Joseph have for his life with Mary? Imagine when he finds out Mary is with child. He is trying to figure out the best way to handle this unexpected turn of events. He decides to discreetly break the betrothal, this would clear the way for the true father to take Mary into his home. Then, in a dream he learns that it is by the Holy Spirit that Mary conceived, and he is to take the child into his home.

Life for Joseph doesn’t settle down to a carpenter shop in a little out of the way town where he can live quietly and unnoticed. He is forced to take his family and flee to escape the murderous King Herod.

Sometimes I think we imagine that the Holy Family lived a charmed life. What could go wrong for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph? But they lived in troubled times, just as we do, and they had to adjust to the unexpected twists and turns of life, just as we do. But they had the hope of Immanuel, God with us.

God IS with us. Being mindful that God is with us is to trust that no matter how desperate the circumstances may appear in the present, God will bring everything to a final, loving conclusion. And the things that we fret over because we can’t control them will, in God’s time, take care of themselves.

We are in the final week of Advent. There is still time to make this a period of hopeful preparation. There is no need to worry about things beyond our control. There is no need to worry about having missed black Friday or cyber Monday nor any of the other meaningless hypes that overwhelm us in this mad rush to artificial happiness. Don’t worry if your house is not ready for guests; rather, make your heart ready to receive Immanuel.

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time C

James Tisssot, Pharisee and the Publican, 1871

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time | USCCB

The last few weeks both our Sunday and weekday readings have highlighted widows, orphans and lepers and tax collectors. All of these people were held in less esteem in society because it was thought that they somehow deserved their lot in life for the sins they or their parents committed. Those who were privileged in life owed it to God’s favor and their own virtue. Once again Jesus turns that false logic on its head. The sinful tax collector went home justified in the eyes of God, while the “virtuous” Pharisee did not.

If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that we are drawn to the rich, the powerful, the successful, and the “beautiful” people. We envy their apparent success in life. We want to get close to them hoping some of it will rub off. We attribute their success to the idea that they must be doing something right in life.

On the other hand we shun the “losers” in life, the poor, the deadbeats, the homeless, the ones who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. But these were the very people that Jesus went out of his way to be near. He wasn’t worried that their apparent “misfortune” would rub off on him. He was there to pick them up, dust them off, and send them out to a better life, a life that he was a part of.

How often do we judge by appearances and not by love, trying to be someone we’re not and looking down on someone we don’t want to be like?

How often do we admit that by the grace given to us in Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Communion, that we have a share in the life and mission of Christ in this world, here and now? We are called to lift up the lowly, to shelter the homeless and seek justice for those whom it has been denied to hear the cry of the poor.

Saint Theresa of Avila, whose feast was on October 15, had a beautiful way of saying how we are part of the body of Christ:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

A Reflection for The Feast of Saint Luke, evangelist, By James Martin, S.J.

 “The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.” -Lk 10:9

 "This week we celebrated the Feast of St. Luke, the author of both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Luke’s Gospel includes some of the most memorable narratives in the entire New Testament: The Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Lost Sheep. Luke’s also focuses on marginalized people and highlights the role of women. So this week it might be good to read the Gospel of Luke all the way through and see what it might have to say to you. In fact, one of the most surprising things for Catholics, and other Christians, is the experience of reading through the Gospel straight through. 

 Many of us get our Gospel narratives piecemeal, from the readings at Sunday Mass, or, for some of us, at Daily Mass. And so our knowledge of the full story of Jesus, as contained in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, remains incomplete. When you read a Gospel all the way through, start to finish, you can get a better sense not only of Jesus’s life, but also of who Jesus was for the writer of this particular Gospel, and the community he’s writing for. So this month, why not try to read Luke’s Gospel, or at least as much as you can, and see where it leads you in prayer. After all, the Gospel of Luke is often called The Gospel of Prayer, because of all the many times it portrays Jesus at prayer. Take that as your text, and inspiration, for this week."

            In this Eucharist we are celebrating let us ask God to give us the humility to hear the cry of the poor.

Twentyfirst Sunday in Ordinary Time C, 21 August 2022

 

“Strive to enter the narrow gate.” This is Jesus’ response to the question if only a few are being saved. Strive to enter the narrow gate.

When I was a younger man I used to get out and run. I even entered a few 10 k races. I didn’t just decide to run a race one day and sign up for it, I had to start training. My father worked for the Toledo Blade. After he died I decided to run in the next Blade 10 k in his memory. I was living by Ottawa Park and I would get out every morning and run before I went to work. At first it was agony. I would be out of breath, my feet and legs hurt, I would get pains in my side, but I was determined to run in that 10 k so I kept running. After a while I learned to pace myself. I had better control of my breathing, my feet and legs became conditioned, and I no longer would get pains in my side—but it was still a workout.

It was finally the day of the 10 K. I had no illusions that I was going to win, but I knew I was going to finish because I knew I could do it. After the race started and everyone began to find their pace, I found a companion who was running at my pace and we kept up with each other until we crossed the finish line.

Why did I just tell you about my running a race? The Greek word used in the gospel for “strive” is agonizomai and it means “to train for the race.” In last week’s passage from Hebrews when the author exhorts us to persevere in running the race with our eyes fixed on Jesus, he uses the Greek word agona for race. It is where the word agony comes from. Strive to enter the narrow gate.

Why would Jesus say that? In the opening lines of the passage we see that Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem. He already knows what to expect there-betrayal, humiliation, suffering, and death. It is his narrow gate. He is responding to the Pharisees who think their entry into heaven is guaranteed by the privilege of being descendants of Abraham. He sees that they are not serious followers. If they were-they would already be heading to the narrow gate. They would have turned their lives around, and they would be following the commandments to love God with their whole being, and to love their neighbor as they love themselves.

The Pharisees were content to listen to Jesus, to eat and drink with him, but not to commit their lives to him. They followed rules and they wanted to know what the rules were so they could follow them. They did not want to give up the privilege and comfort to which they were accustomed. They did not want to “train for the race.” In a sense, Jesus is telling them to get moving before the gate is barred.

How about us? Are we content to say: “I’m baptized. I’m a Catholic. I follow the rules.” Or are we up to the call to follow Jesus, to strive for the narrow gate to “train for the race? “  What effort are we willing to make to enter the narrow gate? The cost of entry is love—love of God and love of neighbor. We must be willing to change ourselves in order to live out the Gospel. We should not assume a sense of privilege that results in a place in the kingdom.

What steps should we take to begin our training? Jesus meets us where we are. He knows our strengths and weaknesses. He is our trainer, he shows us the way. Our daily encounters with family, friends, co-workers, and even the stranger on the street give us the opportunities to begin our training. As we become stronger we become more able to endure more challenging situations.

As we celebrate this Eucharist today let us be mindful that it is part of our training with Jesus, and he is about to offer us the Banquet of Champions so that we may go and strive to enter the narrow gate.

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 10 January 2021

 

Antique 19th Century Russian Icon, The Baptism of Jesus on Wood Panel

  Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 10 January 2021

 Today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord signals the close of the Christmas season and the return to Ordinary time. In a little over a month Ash Wednesday will begin the season of Lent on the 17^th of February. It is appropriate that this feast is celebrated on the cusp of the transition from Christmas to Ordinary time because the baptism of Jesus marks the beginning of his public ministry, the time when Jesus announces that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

During Advent we heard in Mark’ gospel the verses leading up to today’s passage: “John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People of the whole Judean countryside…were being baptized by [John] in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.” John declares his unworthiness to untie the sandals of the one mightier than he. “I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”

“It happened in those days… Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John. On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens torn open and the Spirit like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens; “you are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.”

We see John baptizing with water for repentance. Jesus who needs no repentance is baptized by John. Jesus is affirmed by the Spirit. Jesus then begins his public ministry. Both passages from Isaiah and Acts connect the baptism of Jesus with his public ministry. The words of Isaiah are echoed in the gospel: “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with who I am pleased, upon whom I have put my Spirit; He shall bring forth justice to the nations…open the eyes of the blind, bring out prisoners from confinement and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”  In Acts we hear “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Why did John baptize? “He sought to prepare hearts for the coming of God’s kingdom.” Why did Jesus submit to John’s Baptism? His willingness to be baptized represents his total allegiance to the kingdom. In the water, Jesus himself becomes the very sign of the dawning of the kingdom.” What do the Spirit and the voice signify? Seeing the Spirit and hearing the voice is for Jesus an affirmation, the acknowledgement of God’s love. All of this leads to the ministry Jesus is about to begin. “This moment in Jesus’ life reassures him that everything he does from this point forward in making God’s kingdom a reality, he does not do alone. This is what makes John’s prophetic words about Jesus baptizing with the spirit so true; the mission of Jesus is not simply to convert hearts but to establish a relationship in which his followers believe themselves to be beloved by God.”(Willbricht)

What does this mean for us? While we acknowledge that in Baptism our sins are forgiven, more importantly and more stunningly we become sisters and brothers of Christ sharing in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and also sharing in the ministry of Christ. Baptism is an affirmation of our child-parent relationship with the Father and an affirmation of our sister-brother relationship with Christ.

Baptism is also our commission. Baptism is the beginning of our journey with Christ to make the Kingdom of God real. When Jesus says “The kingdom of God is at hand,” he does not mean it is waiting in the wings to come on stage, he means it is here and now, and we as Jesus’ sisters and brothers need to be about our Father’s business.

Today we must consider the implications of baptism and faith in Christ. The readings and the larger Gospel message affirm that receiving the Spirit at baptism is only the beginning, and important work must follow. All are welcomed and invited to be baptized, and that baptism requires believers to promote justice and truth. The Spirit is directly connected to both of those ideals, and receiving the Spirit is a call to action. On this feast of the baptism of [the Lord], let us be inspired to actively participate in the quest for justice and truth.” (Waters)

Homily for 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time A, October 11, 2020

 

 Homily for 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time A, October 11, 2020

Who doesn’t like to go to a wedding reception? Who has ever had to turn down or be excused from a wedding invitation?

My mother’s younger brother had a son and two daughters. The older daughter’s wedding was set for just about the time we were expecting the birth of our first child. We were disappointed but we were just not able to travel, so we could not attend. A year and a half later we were expecting our second child. My uncle’s younger daughter announced her wedding date. Again it was so very close to our due date that we could not attend her wedding either. A couple of years later we were expecting the birth of our youngest child. My uncle’s son announced his wedding date, and, you guessed it, we could not travel to attend that wedding because it was so near to our due date. To this day I don’t know if my uncle thought we were snubbing him.

In the Gospel passage today we see the king announcing a banquet for his son and he is snubbed by those he invited. If we look at the story behind the story we see the king represents God the Father and the son represents Jesus. The servants are the prophets and the invited guests represent the Israelites and the Jewish leaders. The banquet represents the kingdom of heaven.

The first invitation is to the Israelites, God’s chosen people, who ignore the invitation, that is, they ignore the prophets God has sent them. The second invitation is announced by John the Baptist and Jesus who are mistreated and killed by the Israelites and the religious leaders. The troops are the Roman occupiers who destroy the city of Jerusalem in 70 a. d. The final invitation is announced by the apostles and evangelists. "The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests.” This invitation goes to everyone, all are called by God.

The “invitation” is God’s ever present call to us. It is the divine initiative to which we can either respond or ignore. Once we respond it calls for our participation. This brings us to the last character, the man not dressed in a wedding garment.

A casual reading of this verse has us asking the question: if he was called in from the street how would he already have a wedding garment? It seems like pretty harsh treatment for someone just because he didn’t have the proper clothing. A better understanding is that the garment “represents a converted life full of good deeds. Sinners are invited but are expected to repent. Believers are thus warned against complacency.” (New Jerome Biblical Commentary)

This passage began, “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.” So that we don’t take these words too literally, Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “The kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit; whoever serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by others. Let us then pursue what leads to peace and to building up one another.” Romans 14:17-19

What does that mean to us who call ourselves followers of Christ? In the Vatican II document, Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the Council Fathers wrote:

Christians cannot yearn for anything more ardently than to serve the men of the modern world ever more generously and effectively. Therefore, holding faithfully to the gospel and benefiting from its resources, and united with every man who loves and practices justice, Christians have shouldered a gigantic task demanding fulfillment in this world. Concerning this task they must give a reckoning to him who will judge every [person] on the last day. 

Are we living up to the invitation to the Kingdom of Heaven? Are we following Jesus’ command to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as our self? Are we using the Beatitudes as a guide for our behavior? Or, are we trying to enter the banquet without a “wedding garment?”

As we celebrate this Eucharist may we realize that “God will fully supply whatever [we] need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father, glory for ever and ever. Amen

 

Homily for 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time A, 12 July 2020

  Jean-Francois Millet, The Sower - 1850

 “For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God…We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves…we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”(Romans 8:19, 22-23)

I have two quotes. “The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. The first Bible is the Bible of nature.” (Rohr) “In his…thesis on The Theology of History in Saint Bonaventure, Joseph Ratzinger (before he became Pope Benedict XVI) observed a striking parallel between the revelation of God in Scripture and that which is found in creation. Ratzinger [suggests] two errors: modern man’s deafness to God’s word and blindness to God’s will written in creation.” (Matuzak)

How do we see “God’s will written in creation?” I think we have ample opportunities if we take time to look in the natural world around us, and we consider the profound wisdom found in Pope Francis’s encyclical letter On Care for Our Common Home. It begins:

“Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs”.¹ This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters. ¹Canticle of the Creatures, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, New York-London-Manila, 1999, 113-114.

We certainly cannot be deaf to the warnings of scientists than the earth is undergoing a period of accelerated global climate change. I was musing back in February as Covid-19 was beginning to sweep through the world that the Earth itself has a fever and is trying to fight the infection. The point is nothing happens on this Earth that does not have an effect on anything else.

I’d like to share with you a reflection I read this week:

“In these challenging, difficult times, we are discovering a wisdom that we needed all along, and that wisdom is that we are all connected. We are not separate. We used to think that we caught diseases as individuals: "I'm sick; you're not." But now we realize, no, we catch diseases as individuals, who are part of families, and families who are part of cities, and cities that are part of states and nations. We realize now that our whole species can become infected, and that our whole globe can be changed because of our interconnectedness. . . 

“Maybe this is also an opportunity for us to become enlightened about some other viruses that have been spreading and causing even greater damage, without being acknowledged: social and spiritual viruses that spread among us from individual to individual, from generation to generation, and are not named. We don’t organize against them, and so they continue to spread and cause all kinds of sickness [and death]. Social and spiritual viruses like racism, white supremacy, human supremacy, Christian supremacy, any kind of hostility that is spread, based on prejudice and fear.

“What would happen if we said, as passionate as we are about being tested for coronavirus, we all wanted to test ourselves for these social and spiritual viruses that could be lurking inside of us? And then, when I come into your presence, I, in some way, inflict this virus on you. I make you suffer. What an awesome opportunity for us to say and begin to pray that we would be healed and cleansed, not just of a physical virus, but of these other invisible viruses that are such a huge and devastating part of human history. . . .

“In this pandemic, many of us are nostalgic for the old normal. We want to get back to our favorite coffee shop, our favorite restaurant, our church service. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with so many of those desires for the old normal. But I’d like to make a proposal. If we are wise in this time, we will not go back unthinkingly to the old normal. There were problems with that old normal many of us weren’t aware of.

“The old normal, when you look at it from today’s perspective, was not so great, not something to be nostalgic about, without also being deeply critical of it. As we experience discomfort in this time, let’s begin to dream of a new normal, a new normal that addresses the weaknesses and problems that were going unaddressed in the old normal. If we’re wise, we won’t go back; we’ll go forward.” (McLaren)

In today’s Gospel Jesus challenges us:                                                                            “But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” MT 13:17

Lord, let your wisdom lead us today, that we may walk in the newness of life.

Stephen M. Matuszak, S.T.D., Mining the Tradition for the Recovery of Wisdom, St. Bonaventure on Creation, Virtue and Divine Love, file:///C:/Users/Michael/Downloads/St._Bonaventure_on_Creation_Virtue_and_D.pdf

Brian McLaren, Our Spiritual Health, https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/2020/07/

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, “The First Bible,” https://cac.org/the-first-bible-2016-02-28/

Today’s Readings: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/071220.cfm

                                                   

Homily for Pentecost Sunday, the Vigil Mass, 8 June 2019

 

              Fresco at the Karlskirche in Vienna (by Johann Michael Rottmayr)     

Homily for Pentecost Sunday, 

the Vigil Mass, 8 June 2019

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,

and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created,

and you shall renew the face of the earth.

The first two lines are the verses that were sung with the Alleluia before the Gospel. The third and fourth lines are from Psalm 104, verse 30. This is a prayer that is usually recited before reading Holy Scripture.

Pentecost is the Church’s great feast of the Holy Spirit. The name comes from the Greek and means fiftieth, and signifies the number of days after Passover when the Jews celebrated Succoth, the festival of first fruits, similar to our Thanksgiving. Today’s Gospel reading takes place around this time of Succoth. Our passage ends with the curious line, “There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

What does this mean? In the Old Testament, the word for “spirit” is the Hebrew word ruah. The word is sometimes translated as “wind” or “breath” as in Genesis 1:2: “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” and Genesis 2:7: “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” In both cases, God’s ruah, God’s spirit, is a creative, dynamic force. And in both cases, God’s ruah is interacting with the world and ultimately, with people. (Ekeh). In the time of Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell with the person, even while the mind and heart and actions continue to be one’s own.  The result of this kind of giving of the Spirit is not a superhuman strength. The result is the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, and more.

So this is what the Gospel means. Before Christ, the Holy Spirit animates all creation. But in the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was given to Christ’s people, to dwell with them always, in loving peaceful union with Christ, available to anyone who will come to Christ to drink. (Stump)

So how and where do we find the Holy Spirit in our life? The Spirit is not something to be pinned down. The very nature of the Spirit is to be on the move, but in an unexpected moment, if we are attentive we will be aware of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the love of God—unbridled, unbound, totally free, entirely present—creating, revealing, enlivening, breathing—among us, through us, and within us. This is what the Scriptures tell us. This is what our hearts know. (Ekeh)

How can we be attentive to the spirit? Theologian Dietriech Bonhoffer wrote, “We are so afraid of silence that we chase ourselves from one event to the next in order not to have to spend a moment alone with ourselves, in order not to have to look at ourselves in the mirror.” Our day to day lives are filled with all kinds of distractions. Sometimes we deliberately keep ourselves so preoccupied that we never give the Spirit a moment’s notice.

Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk, based a technique called Centering Prayer on the words of Jesus, “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret”(Mt 7:6). Jesus by his own example would go off by himself to pray. Keating writes,” The grace of Pentecost affirms that the risen Jesus is among us as the glorified Christ. Christ lives in each of us as the Enlightened One, present everywhere and at all times. He is the living Master who continuously sends the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and to bear witness to his resurrection by empowering us to experience and manifest the fruits of the Spirit and the Beatitudes both in prayer and action.”

 With centering prayer a person sets aside a time and place every day for quieting the body and mind so the “voice of the Spirit” can be heard. No technique or practice can bring the Holy Spirit on demand, and the presence of the Spirit may not even be sensed during the period of centering prayer. It may, in fact, be sensed at another moment when circumstances come together. The point is, if we never open ourselves to the Spirit, we will be depriving ourselves of all the Spirit’s wonderful fruits:  charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity.

In this celebration of the Eucharist today let us ask Christ to fill us with “rivers of living water” so that we may experience the Holy Spirit working in our life.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,

and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created,

and you shall renew the face of the earth.