(13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B)
The Scriptures we hear today lead us to reflect on the mysteries of sickness and health, of illness and wellness. Everyone knows the experience of sickness, both in themselves and in the suffering of others. We know the tragedy of the terrible diseases that afflict those we love, and we are always aware of the fact that most of us will one day suffer through the last illness that will end in our death.
We automatically know that there is something wrong with this. It isn’t right that people suffer, that disease unjustly ends lives prematurely, and that people die. Sickness and death, in a way, are the simplest signs that there is something wrong with the world. We all know it in our hearts. People shouldn’t have to get sick, and shouldn’t have to die. The first reading today confirms this knowledge for us; the author of wisdom puts it simply: “God did not make death,’ but made all things “wholesome” and “man to be imperishable.”
So if God made everything wholesome and human beings to be imperishable, why do we get sick and die? Since God did not make death and does not will any creature to suffer, we know that sickness and death are part of the fallen state of the world. They are part of the fallenness of the world that derives mysteriously from, as Wisdom says, the “envy of the devil” and the disobedience and sin of our first parents. But here we have to be a little careful. Even though we know that sickness and death are part of the fallenness of the world that resulted from the original sin of our first parents, this does not mean there is a simple correspondence between sickness and personal sin for us as individuals. In other words, people do not suffer the punishment of illness in this life because of their individual sins. Instead, we all live together in an atmosphere of physical corruption and death because of the general sin of the world, and we suffer corporately on account of it.
This isn’t how God wills the world to be. God desires that his creatures be healthy and joyful. This is a large part of why we worship God for sending his Son into the world, because where God is there is only life and wellness. In Jesus the presence of divine wellness arrives among us. We see this in the two sandwiched parts of the gospel we hear today: The woman who had suffered for so long just had to touch Jesus’ clothes and she was healed. The little girl only had to receive Jesus’ word, and she rose again from death. Where Jesus is, there is only life and there is no room for sickness or death. This is why, for the Fathers of the Church, one of the favorite titles for Jesus was the “divine physician.”
This is why Holy Mass is such a sublime gift for us. In every Mass we hear Jesus speak the word that delivers us from death, just as it did for the little girl in the gospel today. In the Holy Communion we receive we are like the afflicted woman who reached out in faith to touch the Lord. She touched his clothes and Jesus’ healing power went into her body. We receive his Body and Blood and his healing power enters into our bodies and souls. One of the quiet prayers of the priest before Holy Communion expresses it so well: “Lord Jesus Christ, with faith in your love and mercy I eat your body and drink your blood. Let it not bring me condemnation, but health in mind and body.” The new, more accurate translation (which we should have soon) puts it even more strongly, calling Holy Communion the “healing remedy.”
As the afflicted woman pushed her way through the crowd just to touch the Lord, let us strive in prayer to seek his healing presence. And as Jesus entered the house of the little girl to bring her healing, so he enters the inner room of our hearts through Holy Communion. Let us welcome his healing arrival.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
The Body and Blood of Christ
(Corpus Christi, B)
Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, more commonly known as Corpus Christi. This day is traditionally observed on the second Thursday after Easter, sixty days after Holy Thursday, in order to make the connection with the institution of the Eucharist at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. But, as seems to be the sometimes unfortunate trend, our great moveable feasts migrate to the nearest Sunday. In any case, however, today is a day set aside to reflect on, appreciate, explore, and worship the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Here at Holy Mass we stand and kneel before, and even receive into our bodies, the true and real Body of Christ. This is Christ’s great gift to us, and it’s worth our attention and prayer.
When we talk about the Body of Christ, we mean first of all the historical, human body of Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Word of God made flesh. His human body and human soul were perfectly joined to the divine life of second Person of the Blessed Trinity, breathed forth from the Father from all eternity. We know from our most basic confession as Christians that the destiny of his human body was to be broken as a sacrifice on the Cross. But we also know that the breaking of his body and the extinguishing of his human life were not the end of the story. The same Body of Christ returned from the dead in the revelation of the Resurrection. The Scriptures are pretty insistent on this point: the historical, human body of Jesus of Nazareth is continuous with the Risen Body of the Resurrected Christ.
The Eucharist fits into this through its institution at the Last Supper. As we hear in the gospel today, on the eve of his Passion and death, Jesus identified his own body, soon to be broken in sacrifice, and his own blood, soon to be poured out on the Cross, with the bread and wine of that meal. In this, Jesus establishes both an eternal commemoration of his own self-sacrifice, and passes his own Presence as Risen Lord into our offering of that same commemoration. This is the mystery of the Eucharist for us: The Real Presence of the Resurrected Jesus, which we know is continuous with the physical body of the Incarnate Son of God, has passed into the consecrated bread and wine of Holy Mass.
In the Eucharist we see and touch Jesus risen from the dead just as the disciples did when the Resurrection was first revealed. And this shouldn’t seem so weird to us, because the wonder of the resurrected Jesus—which we have contemplated through this past Easter season—is the same as the wonder of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. For example, we know from the Scriptures that the risen Jesus had a body that could be touched, and yet he also appeared in locked rooms and does not seem to have been confined by space and time. And so it is with the Most Blessed Sacrament: it is the Real Presence of Christ, but it is a Presence not limited in location. The risen Jesus, though it was really the same Jesus the disciples had known in his earthly life, was sometimes not immediately recognizable. Remember how Mary Magdalene didn’t know who he was until he called her by name? She thought he was the gardener! So it is with the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus is truly risen into the bread and wine we offer, and his Real Presence abides in them for our worship, but this isn’t something we can see with our physical eyes. We see the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist with our spiritual eyes. As with Mary, these eyes are opened when the Lord calls us by name through prayer. So let us always be praying in the Presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament, that the Lord may open our eyes to see him among us.
Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, more commonly known as Corpus Christi. This day is traditionally observed on the second Thursday after Easter, sixty days after Holy Thursday, in order to make the connection with the institution of the Eucharist at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. But, as seems to be the sometimes unfortunate trend, our great moveable feasts migrate to the nearest Sunday. In any case, however, today is a day set aside to reflect on, appreciate, explore, and worship the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Here at Holy Mass we stand and kneel before, and even receive into our bodies, the true and real Body of Christ. This is Christ’s great gift to us, and it’s worth our attention and prayer.
When we talk about the Body of Christ, we mean first of all the historical, human body of Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Word of God made flesh. His human body and human soul were perfectly joined to the divine life of second Person of the Blessed Trinity, breathed forth from the Father from all eternity. We know from our most basic confession as Christians that the destiny of his human body was to be broken as a sacrifice on the Cross. But we also know that the breaking of his body and the extinguishing of his human life were not the end of the story. The same Body of Christ returned from the dead in the revelation of the Resurrection. The Scriptures are pretty insistent on this point: the historical, human body of Jesus of Nazareth is continuous with the Risen Body of the Resurrected Christ.
The Eucharist fits into this through its institution at the Last Supper. As we hear in the gospel today, on the eve of his Passion and death, Jesus identified his own body, soon to be broken in sacrifice, and his own blood, soon to be poured out on the Cross, with the bread and wine of that meal. In this, Jesus establishes both an eternal commemoration of his own self-sacrifice, and passes his own Presence as Risen Lord into our offering of that same commemoration. This is the mystery of the Eucharist for us: The Real Presence of the Resurrected Jesus, which we know is continuous with the physical body of the Incarnate Son of God, has passed into the consecrated bread and wine of Holy Mass.
In the Eucharist we see and touch Jesus risen from the dead just as the disciples did when the Resurrection was first revealed. And this shouldn’t seem so weird to us, because the wonder of the resurrected Jesus—which we have contemplated through this past Easter season—is the same as the wonder of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. For example, we know from the Scriptures that the risen Jesus had a body that could be touched, and yet he also appeared in locked rooms and does not seem to have been confined by space and time. And so it is with the Most Blessed Sacrament: it is the Real Presence of Christ, but it is a Presence not limited in location. The risen Jesus, though it was really the same Jesus the disciples had known in his earthly life, was sometimes not immediately recognizable. Remember how Mary Magdalene didn’t know who he was until he called her by name? She thought he was the gardener! So it is with the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus is truly risen into the bread and wine we offer, and his Real Presence abides in them for our worship, but this isn’t something we can see with our physical eyes. We see the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist with our spiritual eyes. As with Mary, these eyes are opened when the Lord calls us by name through prayer. So let us always be praying in the Presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament, that the Lord may open our eyes to see him among us.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
The Blessed Trinity
(Trinity Sunday, B)
When it comes to our reflection upon and appreciation of the Blessed Trinity, so many times we give up so fast! We say, ‘Who can understand it?’ People like to say, ‘Well, it’s a mystery.’ That much is true. The Blessed Trinity is a mystery. In fact it is the Mystery. But though we can never comprehend this Mystery completely, this doesn’t mean we can never have some appreciation and understanding of what it means.
Even in theological school people give up on having a practical understanding of the Blessed Trinity. Every seminary student is taught the old ‘5,4,3,2,1,’ mnemonic for remembering trinitarian doctrine: In the Trinity there are five notions, four relations, three persons, two processions, one nature, and then, as is always added in comedic desperation, zero understanding.
It’s funny, but to me it’s a little sad. Let’s not give up on having some understanding of the Trinity! We can, brothers and sisters, come to an appreciation of Who the Blessed Trinity is and what He means for us. Not a grasp, a comprehension, mind you, but an appreciation. We can do this for at least for a couple of reasons. First, we are created in the image and likeness of God, so if God is a Trinity, so we can look for the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity in ourselves. That’s the approach I took last year with the homily for today. But also, we must always remember that Sacred Scripture is the revealed Word of God. So if God is a Trinity, we can expect the Sacred Scriptures to reveal the Blessed Trinity. And so they do, but we have to look carefully.
In the first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, Moses recalls to the people their great privilege of having God reveal Himself to them: “Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of a fire, as you did, and live?” How was God revealed to the people? God was in the voice and the fire. You recall the powerful scene from the book of Exodus that the Scriptures point to here, when God spoke to Moses in the burning bush. This is one of the most complete revelations of the Blessed Trinity in all of the Scriptures. For we believe that God is a superabundant love, and from all eternity God overflows into a perfect expression of Himself that we call the Word or the Son. The Word is ‘begotten, not made” as we pray in the Creed. This is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word that is spoken from the burning bush, the Word through whom God creates the universe—“God said…and so it happened”—and the Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ.
The fire out of which the Word was spoken, the breath of God that carries the Word, this is Who we call the Holy Spirit. So there you have the Blessed Trinity. A dynamic overflowing of Love in which from all eternity there is Lover, Beloved, and the Love that binds them. But even in this, we haven’t reached the fullness of the good news and wonder for us.
Because God is a set of dynamic relationships—indeed, this is what we confess by our belief in the Blessed Trinity—this means that there is a way into God. Just as the love of husband and wife overflows creatively to include the new life of children, so in the human birth of Christ, the dynamic love of the Blessed Trinity expands to include us. This is what St. Paul is talking about in the second reading when he talks about “the Spirit of adoption.” By our baptism into Christ, by our faith, and by our communion with his humanity here at Mass, our lives are folded into the blessed life of the Trinity. We become daughters and sons in the Son.
With that in mind, think back to the burning bush for a moment. Recall what was amazing about the burning bush, that it was not consumed by the fire. And so it is with our adoption by the Holy Spirit into the Love of the Father and the Son. The life of the Blessed Trinity comes to dwell in us in such a way that it does not consume or displace our humanity. The gift and good news we have in Christ is that the dynamic Mystery of Love we call God has come to include us in its own life, in such a way that the Love of God delights to live in us as our love for each other.
When it comes to our reflection upon and appreciation of the Blessed Trinity, so many times we give up so fast! We say, ‘Who can understand it?’ People like to say, ‘Well, it’s a mystery.’ That much is true. The Blessed Trinity is a mystery. In fact it is the Mystery. But though we can never comprehend this Mystery completely, this doesn’t mean we can never have some appreciation and understanding of what it means.
Even in theological school people give up on having a practical understanding of the Blessed Trinity. Every seminary student is taught the old ‘5,4,3,2,1,’ mnemonic for remembering trinitarian doctrine: In the Trinity there are five notions, four relations, three persons, two processions, one nature, and then, as is always added in comedic desperation, zero understanding.
It’s funny, but to me it’s a little sad. Let’s not give up on having some understanding of the Trinity! We can, brothers and sisters, come to an appreciation of Who the Blessed Trinity is and what He means for us. Not a grasp, a comprehension, mind you, but an appreciation. We can do this for at least for a couple of reasons. First, we are created in the image and likeness of God, so if God is a Trinity, so we can look for the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity in ourselves. That’s the approach I took last year with the homily for today. But also, we must always remember that Sacred Scripture is the revealed Word of God. So if God is a Trinity, we can expect the Sacred Scriptures to reveal the Blessed Trinity. And so they do, but we have to look carefully.
In the first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, Moses recalls to the people their great privilege of having God reveal Himself to them: “Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of a fire, as you did, and live?” How was God revealed to the people? God was in the voice and the fire. You recall the powerful scene from the book of Exodus that the Scriptures point to here, when God spoke to Moses in the burning bush. This is one of the most complete revelations of the Blessed Trinity in all of the Scriptures. For we believe that God is a superabundant love, and from all eternity God overflows into a perfect expression of Himself that we call the Word or the Son. The Word is ‘begotten, not made” as we pray in the Creed. This is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word that is spoken from the burning bush, the Word through whom God creates the universe—“God said…and so it happened”—and the Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ.
The fire out of which the Word was spoken, the breath of God that carries the Word, this is Who we call the Holy Spirit. So there you have the Blessed Trinity. A dynamic overflowing of Love in which from all eternity there is Lover, Beloved, and the Love that binds them. But even in this, we haven’t reached the fullness of the good news and wonder for us.
Because God is a set of dynamic relationships—indeed, this is what we confess by our belief in the Blessed Trinity—this means that there is a way into God. Just as the love of husband and wife overflows creatively to include the new life of children, so in the human birth of Christ, the dynamic love of the Blessed Trinity expands to include us. This is what St. Paul is talking about in the second reading when he talks about “the Spirit of adoption.” By our baptism into Christ, by our faith, and by our communion with his humanity here at Mass, our lives are folded into the blessed life of the Trinity. We become daughters and sons in the Son.
With that in mind, think back to the burning bush for a moment. Recall what was amazing about the burning bush, that it was not consumed by the fire. And so it is with our adoption by the Holy Spirit into the Love of the Father and the Son. The life of the Blessed Trinity comes to dwell in us in such a way that it does not consume or displace our humanity. The gift and good news we have in Christ is that the dynamic Mystery of Love we call God has come to include us in its own life, in such a way that the Love of God delights to live in us as our love for each other.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Outpouring
(Pentecost, Day, B)
Brothers and sisters, today is the big payoff. Today is the feast of God’s overwhelming generosity. By everything Jesus Christ has done for us in his Incarnation, his teaching, his Passion, his Resurrection from the dead and his Ascension into heaven, today we receive the definitive and surpassing gift of God, the Holy Spirit.
Back at Christmas we celebrated how the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Word of God was thus born as one of us. The Word became flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus took this divine humanity and accepted for himself the worst evil we inflict upon each other, even to disregard, torture, and death. But because death could not hold onto his divine nature, he emerged anew in the Resurrection, thus creating a path for our humanity from death to life. He took that same humanity and ascended to the Father, and so all of us who are in communion with him are already citizens of heaven.
Today we rejoice in what this means for us. We are Christians, those who are united to God through the humanity of Christ and each of us is called to be “another Christ,” an alter Christus, as the tradition says. Just as the Holy Spirit stretched the dynamic love of the Blessed Trinity into the world by conceiving the Word of God as man, so the Holy Spirit delights to conceive the Presence of God in each of us who is baptized into Christ.
This is the ongoing self-emptying of God. The Incarnation of God continues in us who are other Christs for the world. And the most sublime and beautiful good news is that God in his humility wants to live in each of us in a way that doesn’t displace our humanity. God wills to live in each of us as our love, as our care for the world, as our Christian service to our neighbor. That’s what St. Paul is getting at in the second reading, when he is talking about how the Spirit produces different gifts in different people. Each person is a unique creation of God, and so the Spirit of God made flesh within them will be a unique and unrepeatable grace for the world.
And with these gifts raised up the Spirit within us, we are sent. In the gospel we hear today Jesus empowers us with divine forgiveness. This is the power of the Holy Spirit for the reconciliation—a reconciliation that our world, so plagued by selfishness and greed and violence, needs so desperately. Let us take the gifts that the Spirit has conceived within us, and be about our mission of forgiveness and reconciliation. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, today is the big payoff. Today is the feast of God’s overwhelming generosity. By everything Jesus Christ has done for us in his Incarnation, his teaching, his Passion, his Resurrection from the dead and his Ascension into heaven, today we receive the definitive and surpassing gift of God, the Holy Spirit.
Back at Christmas we celebrated how the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Word of God was thus born as one of us. The Word became flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus took this divine humanity and accepted for himself the worst evil we inflict upon each other, even to disregard, torture, and death. But because death could not hold onto his divine nature, he emerged anew in the Resurrection, thus creating a path for our humanity from death to life. He took that same humanity and ascended to the Father, and so all of us who are in communion with him are already citizens of heaven.
Today we rejoice in what this means for us. We are Christians, those who are united to God through the humanity of Christ and each of us is called to be “another Christ,” an alter Christus, as the tradition says. Just as the Holy Spirit stretched the dynamic love of the Blessed Trinity into the world by conceiving the Word of God as man, so the Holy Spirit delights to conceive the Presence of God in each of us who is baptized into Christ.
This is the ongoing self-emptying of God. The Incarnation of God continues in us who are other Christs for the world. And the most sublime and beautiful good news is that God in his humility wants to live in each of us in a way that doesn’t displace our humanity. God wills to live in each of us as our love, as our care for the world, as our Christian service to our neighbor. That’s what St. Paul is getting at in the second reading, when he is talking about how the Spirit produces different gifts in different people. Each person is a unique creation of God, and so the Spirit of God made flesh within them will be a unique and unrepeatable grace for the world.
And with these gifts raised up the Spirit within us, we are sent. In the gospel we hear today Jesus empowers us with divine forgiveness. This is the power of the Holy Spirit for the reconciliation—a reconciliation that our world, so plagued by selfishness and greed and violence, needs so desperately. Let us take the gifts that the Spirit has conceived within us, and be about our mission of forgiveness and reconciliation. Amen.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The Desire of our Hearts
(Pentecost, Vigil)
For me the spirituality of the Pentecost Vigil, which we celebrate tonight, connects all the way back to the other side of the liturgical year at Advent and Christmas. Just like the season of Advent, the Pentecost Vigil is about the desire of the human heart, our deepest longings, and what we really want and look forward to.
That’s basically what we are as human beings, a desire. We seek. We want. We do everything we do because of the belief, right or wrong, that it will make us happy. But what is it that we really want? At a basic level, the goods of security, comfort, and pleasure. Go a little deeper, become a little more mature, and we realize that we want beauty and goodness. In the end what we want is love, to delight in loving and being loved. Ultimately what we want Love Itself, and this Love is the goodness out of which all of the goodnesses of the creation overflow, the Mystery and Source of all that we call God.
It is God that the heart wants. St. Augustine calls the human being a capax Dei, a “capacity for God.” (De Trinitate, XIV:11) The human person is a desire, a home, and a capacity for God. St. Paul expressed this so viscerally in the second reading tonight: our longing for adoption into God, the redemption of our bodies for which we long and for which all creation is “groaning.”
The trouble is, we are often misguided in our effort to satisfy our desire for God. We reach out for the wrong thing, thinking it will make us happy, but it doesn’t. And this goes for all of our little, distracting personal sins all the way up the great tragedies of violence that scar families, communities and nations. The classic Biblical example of this problem comes to us in the first reading today. The prehistoric people tried to build a tower that would go up to heaven. They wanted to reach up and grab the heaven that they desired. And so it is with us whenever we try to get what our heart wants by grasping. And we see the result of it all: mass confusion. This confusion continues in our own society, when crimes and errors that are clearly against human dignity and goodness have become all but normal and acceptable.
All of our grasping and grabbing for happiness, pleasure, and security is ultimately doomed because we are looking the wrong way. The great gift of Pentecost, the good news of this beautiful celebration, is that the God that we desire is right here. Jesus says in the Gospel tonight, “"Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me." By his Incarnation among us, Jesus has placed the divine life of God within our humanity, and we join our humanity to his by our faith and our Communion with him here at Mass. Thus the real desire of our hearts is right here, flowing from within. It is the living water of our baptism into Christ.
Therefore, let us turn our attention inwards in prayer, that we might notice this great gift of God. Prayer will teach us how to unseal the Spirit God has placed within us, that He might flow forth from us for the recreation and renewal of the world.
For me the spirituality of the Pentecost Vigil, which we celebrate tonight, connects all the way back to the other side of the liturgical year at Advent and Christmas. Just like the season of Advent, the Pentecost Vigil is about the desire of the human heart, our deepest longings, and what we really want and look forward to.
That’s basically what we are as human beings, a desire. We seek. We want. We do everything we do because of the belief, right or wrong, that it will make us happy. But what is it that we really want? At a basic level, the goods of security, comfort, and pleasure. Go a little deeper, become a little more mature, and we realize that we want beauty and goodness. In the end what we want is love, to delight in loving and being loved. Ultimately what we want Love Itself, and this Love is the goodness out of which all of the goodnesses of the creation overflow, the Mystery and Source of all that we call God.
It is God that the heart wants. St. Augustine calls the human being a capax Dei, a “capacity for God.” (De Trinitate, XIV:11) The human person is a desire, a home, and a capacity for God. St. Paul expressed this so viscerally in the second reading tonight: our longing for adoption into God, the redemption of our bodies for which we long and for which all creation is “groaning.”
The trouble is, we are often misguided in our effort to satisfy our desire for God. We reach out for the wrong thing, thinking it will make us happy, but it doesn’t. And this goes for all of our little, distracting personal sins all the way up the great tragedies of violence that scar families, communities and nations. The classic Biblical example of this problem comes to us in the first reading today. The prehistoric people tried to build a tower that would go up to heaven. They wanted to reach up and grab the heaven that they desired. And so it is with us whenever we try to get what our heart wants by grasping. And we see the result of it all: mass confusion. This confusion continues in our own society, when crimes and errors that are clearly against human dignity and goodness have become all but normal and acceptable.
All of our grasping and grabbing for happiness, pleasure, and security is ultimately doomed because we are looking the wrong way. The great gift of Pentecost, the good news of this beautiful celebration, is that the God that we desire is right here. Jesus says in the Gospel tonight, “"Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me." By his Incarnation among us, Jesus has placed the divine life of God within our humanity, and we join our humanity to his by our faith and our Communion with him here at Mass. Thus the real desire of our hearts is right here, flowing from within. It is the living water of our baptism into Christ.
Therefore, let us turn our attention inwards in prayer, that we might notice this great gift of God. Prayer will teach us how to unseal the Spirit God has placed within us, that He might flow forth from us for the recreation and renewal of the world.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Mission Handed Over
(7th Sunday of Easter, B)
In these days, brothers and sisters, we find ourselves in the midst of the Church’s first and original novena, the nine days of prayer that extend from the Ascension of the Lord to the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. (Our word novena is derived, of course, from the Latin numeral novem, nine.)
In this time of the great novena we look forward to the feast of Pentecost next week, which is one of the real crowns of the whole liturgical year we celebrate here at Sunday Mass. So as we approach the coming of the Holy Spirit and the fulfillment of all our hope, where are we left as another cycle of the Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter seasons comes to a close?
Well, we are not left at all. We are not abandoned, but instead we are sent. In the Gospel we hear today, after praying for us, his disciples, and assuring us of his desire to have us share in his joy, Jesus sends us into the world. Jesus prays to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” As Jesus ascends to the Father, we inherit his mission. As Jesus was sent, so are we, and our mission is continuous with and identical to his.
But what exactly was the mission of Jesus? If we back up a little bit in St. John to the gospel we heard back on the fourth Sunday of Lent, it becomes very clear. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” The mission of Jesus is thus twofold: to be the expression of God’s love and to save the world. In our own lives—and in our deepest identity as the Body of Christ we become in the Eucharist—this mission is handed over to us. This is the first sense of what we Christians mean by tradition, from the Latin tradere, to hand on or hand over. As Jesus was handed over for our salvation, so his mission is now put into our hands that we might continue to make it real in the world.
This mission is our great joy, but it also our most intense challenge. It is our joy because, through our communion with God through the humanity of Christ, God delights to live in us and to express his own divine love and care as the love we offer to our brothers and sisters. The love of God takes shape in the world as our love. That’s the joyful payoff of the mystery of the Incarnation. This is what it means to say that we are sent into the world, just as Jesus was, to be the expression of God’s love. “God so loved the world,” that he sends you and me into it to be the bearers of divine love and delight.
But our mission is also a challenge that can be very difficult and very painful. The Body of Christ saves the world by offering itself to be broken on the Cross, that its life-giving blood might be poured out for the forgiveness of sins and the ratification of the new and everlasting covenant. When we say “Amen” to the minister of Holy Communion after being addressed with our real name, “the Body of Christ,” each of us affirms that we will have to embrace the Cross in the particular way it takes shape in our life. Each of us will have some way we need to break ourselves in order that God’s love and salvation might flourish more in our lives and be expressed more fully to the world around us. It might be pride, or selfishness, or spiritual listlessness, or any number of things that hold us back from being the fully loved and completely loving people God calls us to be for the world.
Let us accept our mission. Let us be sent anew into the world as the Body of Christ, expressing God’s love and offering itself for the world’s salvation. This is the new life of the Holy Spirit, Whose renewed Presence we seek and long for in these days.
In these days, brothers and sisters, we find ourselves in the midst of the Church’s first and original novena, the nine days of prayer that extend from the Ascension of the Lord to the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. (Our word novena is derived, of course, from the Latin numeral novem, nine.)
In this time of the great novena we look forward to the feast of Pentecost next week, which is one of the real crowns of the whole liturgical year we celebrate here at Sunday Mass. So as we approach the coming of the Holy Spirit and the fulfillment of all our hope, where are we left as another cycle of the Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter seasons comes to a close?
Well, we are not left at all. We are not abandoned, but instead we are sent. In the Gospel we hear today, after praying for us, his disciples, and assuring us of his desire to have us share in his joy, Jesus sends us into the world. Jesus prays to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” As Jesus ascends to the Father, we inherit his mission. As Jesus was sent, so are we, and our mission is continuous with and identical to his.
But what exactly was the mission of Jesus? If we back up a little bit in St. John to the gospel we heard back on the fourth Sunday of Lent, it becomes very clear. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” The mission of Jesus is thus twofold: to be the expression of God’s love and to save the world. In our own lives—and in our deepest identity as the Body of Christ we become in the Eucharist—this mission is handed over to us. This is the first sense of what we Christians mean by tradition, from the Latin tradere, to hand on or hand over. As Jesus was handed over for our salvation, so his mission is now put into our hands that we might continue to make it real in the world.
This mission is our great joy, but it also our most intense challenge. It is our joy because, through our communion with God through the humanity of Christ, God delights to live in us and to express his own divine love and care as the love we offer to our brothers and sisters. The love of God takes shape in the world as our love. That’s the joyful payoff of the mystery of the Incarnation. This is what it means to say that we are sent into the world, just as Jesus was, to be the expression of God’s love. “God so loved the world,” that he sends you and me into it to be the bearers of divine love and delight.
But our mission is also a challenge that can be very difficult and very painful. The Body of Christ saves the world by offering itself to be broken on the Cross, that its life-giving blood might be poured out for the forgiveness of sins and the ratification of the new and everlasting covenant. When we say “Amen” to the minister of Holy Communion after being addressed with our real name, “the Body of Christ,” each of us affirms that we will have to embrace the Cross in the particular way it takes shape in our life. Each of us will have some way we need to break ourselves in order that God’s love and salvation might flourish more in our lives and be expressed more fully to the world around us. It might be pride, or selfishness, or spiritual listlessness, or any number of things that hold us back from being the fully loved and completely loving people God calls us to be for the world.
Let us accept our mission. Let us be sent anew into the world as the Body of Christ, expressing God’s love and offering itself for the world’s salvation. This is the new life of the Holy Spirit, Whose renewed Presence we seek and long for in these days.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Love of God
(6th Sunday of Easter, B)
We arrive today, brothers and sisters, at the thirty-sixth day of the Easter season, so we know that we are close to that fortieth day after the Resurrection when Jesus will ascend to the Father. So as we prepare to mark the departure of the Risen Jesus from our midst, that we might welcome his abiding presence among us in the Holy Spirit, Jesus gives us his farewell commandment: “Love one another, as I love you.”
In order to know how it is we are to love one another, we must first understand how it is that God has loved us; only then can we love each other with that same love. In his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, our holy father Benedict wrote to us extensively on the love of God. Benedict reminds us that God loves us in a “completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit” on our part. (10) This is why the love God has for us is a love that is always ready to forgive; because God—in the Love that he is—desires and delights only in the happiness and flourishing of his creatures. In the service of that desire and delight God wishes to remove from us all the guilt and selfishness that hold us back from loving with our entire being.
Jesus is for us the incarnation of this love. In the self-emptying of his humble birth we see the God who is ready to give up everything it ought to mean to be God. And especially in his self-sacrifice on the Cross and his giving of himself into our hands in this Eucharist, we see the incarnate love of God, passionately expressing God’s desire to share his love with us. (13)
To love God is to love the love that God is; to love God is to be in love with God’s goodness to his creation. And so when we love God, we begin to share God’s loving attitude toward his creatures. This is why the love of God and the love of neighbor always go together. In loving God we love him in his love for each one, and so we come also to share in God’s love for our neighbor.
Jesus commands us to do precisely this: to love each other with the same love with which God loves the world. Indeed, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is exactly this: that the love of God should live in us as our love for our brothers and sisters. By our communion with God through the humanity of Christ, the Holy Spirit of love comes to expression through our love of each other. This is what the first letter of John is talking about in the second reading, when John writes that everyone who loves is “begotten of God.” The love we express for each other is the renewing and re-creating force of God’s Spirit present in our lives. It has the power to bring us and the whole world to a new and spiritual rebirth.
This is certainly the most beautiful that there is, but it won’t be easy. All who resolve themselves to fulfilling Jesus’ commandment of love will also have their share of the Lord’s Cross. Supporting the Church’s institutional works of charity requires of many the sacrifice of time, talent, and treasure. On a more personal level, many of those we are called to love will be people we can’t stand on the emotional or natural level. Many times our attachments to our own feelings and prejudices will have to be mortified in order to see every person as the lovable creation they are in the loving gaze of God. But to see each brother or sister as God sees them is to love them with a perfect love. When we let ourselves fall in love with God, we will begin to love each other with the Love that is the Holy Spirit, and he will be poured out from our hearts to renew the face of the earth.
We arrive today, brothers and sisters, at the thirty-sixth day of the Easter season, so we know that we are close to that fortieth day after the Resurrection when Jesus will ascend to the Father. So as we prepare to mark the departure of the Risen Jesus from our midst, that we might welcome his abiding presence among us in the Holy Spirit, Jesus gives us his farewell commandment: “Love one another, as I love you.”
In order to know how it is we are to love one another, we must first understand how it is that God has loved us; only then can we love each other with that same love. In his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, our holy father Benedict wrote to us extensively on the love of God. Benedict reminds us that God loves us in a “completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit” on our part. (10) This is why the love God has for us is a love that is always ready to forgive; because God—in the Love that he is—desires and delights only in the happiness and flourishing of his creatures. In the service of that desire and delight God wishes to remove from us all the guilt and selfishness that hold us back from loving with our entire being.
Jesus is for us the incarnation of this love. In the self-emptying of his humble birth we see the God who is ready to give up everything it ought to mean to be God. And especially in his self-sacrifice on the Cross and his giving of himself into our hands in this Eucharist, we see the incarnate love of God, passionately expressing God’s desire to share his love with us. (13)
To love God is to love the love that God is; to love God is to be in love with God’s goodness to his creation. And so when we love God, we begin to share God’s loving attitude toward his creatures. This is why the love of God and the love of neighbor always go together. In loving God we love him in his love for each one, and so we come also to share in God’s love for our neighbor.
Jesus commands us to do precisely this: to love each other with the same love with which God loves the world. Indeed, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is exactly this: that the love of God should live in us as our love for our brothers and sisters. By our communion with God through the humanity of Christ, the Holy Spirit of love comes to expression through our love of each other. This is what the first letter of John is talking about in the second reading, when John writes that everyone who loves is “begotten of God.” The love we express for each other is the renewing and re-creating force of God’s Spirit present in our lives. It has the power to bring us and the whole world to a new and spiritual rebirth.
This is certainly the most beautiful that there is, but it won’t be easy. All who resolve themselves to fulfilling Jesus’ commandment of love will also have their share of the Lord’s Cross. Supporting the Church’s institutional works of charity requires of many the sacrifice of time, talent, and treasure. On a more personal level, many of those we are called to love will be people we can’t stand on the emotional or natural level. Many times our attachments to our own feelings and prejudices will have to be mortified in order to see every person as the lovable creation they are in the loving gaze of God. But to see each brother or sister as God sees them is to love them with a perfect love. When we let ourselves fall in love with God, we will begin to love each other with the Love that is the Holy Spirit, and he will be poured out from our hearts to renew the face of the earth.
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