May

Years ago on television, at the end of the George Burns and Gracie Allen show, Gracie would talk on and on and finally George would stop her dryly with the words, “Say good night, Gracie.” She would reply, “Good night Gracie.” Laughter.*

George was her “straight man.”

In Sunday’s Gospel, Philip and Thomas (of doubting fame) serve as straight men—not for a comedian but for Christ, who is explaining the very deepest meaning of Christianity.

“There are many rooms in my Father’s house,” Jesus says. “I will come back and take you there. You know the way to where I am going.”

Thomas asks rather naturally, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” He might as well have said, “Do your magic.”

So Jesus makes a play on “the way.” Thomas thinks these words mean a roadway or a pathway. But Jesus means something else. He says, Thomas, you already know The Way quite well. It is me. I am the Way and the Truth and the Light. I am the Pathway to the Father. If you know me then you know the Father.

The early followers of Jesus actually called their Jesus movement, “the Way,” instead of “Christianity.” All puns aside, what does “the Way” mean?

It is the way to real life. Jesus is saying that the Father has been shown forth completely, in himself, the Christ. Jesus called him “abba,” but he is the God all ages have sought for, the One who is all good and all loving and all powerful. God. Do you want to know God? Look at Jesus. Follow his way.

Philip does want to know “the Father,” but he completely misses Jesus’ play on the words, “the Way.” He replies, “Master, just show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” We can’t understand your explanations, just give us the goods.

People throughout the ages had said the same thing. We want to know the gods. We want the favor of those exalted ones who have no suffering, no crop failures, no droughts, starvation, no aids, no genocide, no Covid. no death. We want what they have, a luxury, power, honor, and glory. Show us that Father, Philip says.

Maybe you and I say exactly the same thing! We are so attracted to the itches of our heart: to have exactly what we want, to avoid troubles, to live “the good life.” As television says, “it doesn't get any better than this.” Oh doesn't it?

Jesus' response: “show you the Father? What Are You Saying, Philip? I AM showing you the Father. God is so present in my life (and death and resurrection) that to know me is to know the Father.”

Let the meaning in. Jesus seems to say that God is totally within him. They are one. You can see infinite love revealed!

Can you or I look at the Cross and the Resurrection and see God’s infinite love embedded there? Can we see a love that is stronger than death, stronger than honor, power, riches, stronger than a “trouble-free life”?

It is The Way to freedom.

 

Copyright © 2023, John B. Foley, S.J. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

A friend of mine likes to explain his religious background this way: “I have powerful conservative roots. I was raised in a very strong conservative, Roman Catholic, immigrant, German farming family, with all the inhibitions, protectiveness, exclusivity, and reticence that this entailed. It would be hard to find a more strongly conservative religious background than mine. And I'm grateful for that. It's one of the greatest gift you can be given. Now I'm free for the rest of my life!”

There is something both healthily conservative and healthily liberal in that assessment. The instinct within the liberal wants to push edges, to widen the circle, to move away from narrowness, to be more inclusive, to not always see the other as threat, and to protect the ineffability of God and God's universal salvific will. Whereas the conservative intuits the necessity of being rooted in truth, in grounding yourself in the essentials, in having proper boundaries, and in not being naive to the fact that everything that's precious and true will invariably be under attack.

Both protect the soul. The soul, as we know, has two functions which are often in tension with each other. On the one hand, the soul is the source of all energy inside of us, the fire that fuels everything we do. We know the precise moment when the soul leaves a body. All energy ceases. On the other hand, the soul is also the source of unity and integration. It glues one together. Decomposition begins the very second the soul leaves the body. Without the soul, every element goes its own way.

The liberal instinct is mostly about the fire, the conservative instinct is mostly about the glue. The story of the man who was raised in such a strong conservative background and who now feels rooted enough to be more liberal illustrates that both are necessary. There is a time to be liberal and there is a time to be conservative and it is important that we know which time is right both as regards to our own growth and as regards to the growth of others.

Malcolm X once said something to this effect: I have a strong allegiance to both Christ and Muhammad because we need them both. Right now, so many of the men to whom I am trying to minister need the discipline of Allah. Their lives are in such disrepair that they need clear, hard rules of discipline that are spelled out for them without ambiguity. Later on, once they have their lives more in order, they can turn more to the liberal love of Jesus. First we need the discipline of Allah, later the freedom of Jesus.

He understood that there are stages to the spiritual life and that what is needed in one stage will sometimes be very different than what is needed in another. What are the basic stages of the spiritual life?

The gospels, the mystics and the great spiritual writers, with some variation in how they express this, concur that there are three clear stages to the spiritual journey or, in another way of putting it, three levels of discipleship:

The first level, which might aptly be termed, Essential Discipleship, is the struggle to get our lives together, to achieve basic human maturity (which itself might be defined as the capacity for essential unselfishness, the capacity to put others before ourselves). The second level can be called Generative Discipleship and is the struggle to give our lives away in love, service, and prayer. The third level can be called Radical Discipleship and consists in the struggle to give our deaths away, that is, to leave this earth in such a way that our deaths themselves become our final gift and blessing to our families, churches, and society.

1. The first stage, Essential Discipleship, is, yes, about essentials, about getting our lives together by properly channeling our energies through discipline (the origin of the word, discipleship). By definition, that task is mainly conservative: learning proper teaching so as to have a healthy vision, submitting to rules of behavior that ground us and move us beyond our instinctual selfishness, and being a learner within family and church community. Metaphorically speaking, at this stage we are learning the “discipline of Allah.”
2. But, once this stage is achieved with a certain proficiency, the challenge becomes different. Now the task is to give our lives away—and to give them away ever more deeply and to an ever-widening circle. That's a more liberal task and it becomes even-more liberal as we move towards that truly great unknown, death, where all that we have grounded ourselves in must be left behind as we are opened to the widest circle of all, cosmic embrace, infinity, and the ineffable mystery of God.

In our discipleship, our spiritual journey, there is an important time to be conservative, just as there is an important time to be liberal. We are not meant to pick one of these over the other.

Used with permission of the author, Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser. Currently, Father Rolheiser is serving as President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas. He can be contacted through his website, www.ronrolheiser.com.

The risen Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Jesus is the way, the path to eternal life with the Father: “no one comes to the Father but through me.” To try another way is to ensure failure.

Jesus is the truth, the word of God. To seek the truth elsewhere is to “stumble and fall,” to deal in falsehood and lie.

Jesus is the life, the God who has “filled all ages with the words of a new song.”To live outside of Christ is to die.

Those who follow Jesus faithfully are a chosen race, “a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation.” They are chosen to “proclaim the glorious works” of God. They are priestly mediators “offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.”

They are consecrated to “the One who called you from darkness.” Built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ, they are a powerful community, descending from that early church where “the word of God continued to spread and the number of disciples ... enormously increased.”

When Jesus, who had suffered the death of the cross for mankind, had risen, He appeared as the one constituted as Lord, Christ and eternal Priest, and He poured out on His disciples the Spirit promised by the Father. From this source the Church, equipped with the gifts of its Founder and faithfully guarding His precepts of charity, humility and self-sacrifice, receives the mission to proclaim and to spread among all peoples the Kingdom of Christ and of God.

Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 1965:5.

First Reading: Acts 6:1-7

1.  As the early church grew, problems arose and were addressed. For instance, the Hellenists neglected widows. Do you see areas of negligence today for which the Church might help to find solutions? School shootings and gun violence? Ecojustice? Homelessness? Immigration? Racial inequality?
2. “The Hellenists complained. … So the Twelve called together the community of disciples. … ” What is a “Synod”? Will Synodality involve the “community” in making needed changes?

Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:4-9

1. St Peter says that we are “a chosen race a royal priesthood and holy nation, a people of his own.” Do you “announce the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light”? Regularly? Sometimes? With words? With works?
2. How do you “announce the praises of him who called you out of darkness” to the hungry on your streets? When there is eco-injustice in parts of your city? When there is racism in your office?

Gospel: John 14:1-12 

1. The disciples didn’t know where Jesus was going and certainly did not want him to leave. Can you relate to this desire to be with the people you love? How is human love either a reflection of divine love or else actually a participation in it?
2. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” What did Jesus tell his disciples (and us) in this reading to ensure that our hearts are not troubled, according to Pope Francis?

Jesus is risen and lives precisely to be always by our side. We can thus say to him, “Jesus, I believe that you rose again and are beside me. I believe that you listen to me. I bring to you what upsets me, my troubles. …

… “My Father’s house has many rooms … I am going there to prepare a place for you.” … he reserved a place in Heaven for us. He took our humanity upon himself to carry it beyond death, to a new place, to Heaven, so that we might also be where he is.

… God is in love with us; we are his children. … We are in transit here. We are made for Heaven, for eternal life, to live forever. …

But how can we reach heaven? … He says to us today: “I am the Way” … to have a living relationship with him, to imitate him in love, to follow in his footsteps … of service to others.

Pope Francis
Angelus, 5th Sunday of Easter
May 10, 2020

The selection from the Acts of the Apostles points out that divisions, biases, and conflict are part of human nature and have existed in the church from the earliest days. The conflicts between Aramaic-speaking and Greek-speaking Jews existed for many years before the church. The Hellenists were Greek-speaking members of the community. Widows and orphans were the poorest in society. Women and children depended upon husbands and fathers; if they died, they had no source of livelihood or place to stay. The Hellenists made it known that they thought the widows of the Hebrew-speaking part of the church were getting more support, and the Greek-speaking widows were being neglected. Caring for the poor and those in need has been part of the church's life from the beginning.

In response to the conflict in the community and to improve the assistance, the Apostles decided to appoint some Hellenists to oversee this assistance. They broadened the ministry of the church to meet the needs that existed. These seven men came to ministry out of everyday life. Diakonia is a Greek word that means service. It can be used as a general term for service as a waiter serves at the table, or it can be used for those who dedicate themselves to a life of service. The church continues this ministry with both transitional and permanent deacons. Transitional deacons spend a time as a deacon on their way to ordination as priests. Permanent deacons are ordained later in life, often married, and committed to serving the needs of the church in a parish or other ministry.

The passage from the First Letter of Peter continues unfolding the meaning and significance of Baptism. Although the leadership of the Jewish community rejected Jesus, he was affirmed by God, who raised Him up. Jesus, living as a human and offering a challenging message, is a stumbling stone. The way to God is through Jesus, and those who reject him follow a path that diverges from God.

The last two lines of the reading present a beautiful image of who we are called to be.

Chosen Race /a people of his own: The chosen aspect reflects God’s choice to be in relationship with you and to include you in a special people, the people of God. In times past, this has been misused to promote prejudice and racial superiority. The chosen race is not from our perspective but God's, and all who respond and come to know God are part of God’s chosen people.

Royal Priesthood: Royal has to do with the king, who was the anointed of God. God set them apart for a special task of focusing the people on the task that they were to do.

Priests were the ones who brought the people’s prayers and offerings before God.

The title, royal priesthood, is given to the baptized who have been anointed and chosen by God to bring the prayers and needs of all the human family to God in prayer. We are called to be intercessors.

Holy nation: To be holy is to be set aside from the ordinary, to be other. To be God’s people is live differently than the rest of society. The way of Jesus and his message is different from the way of society in both his day and our day. The beatitudes catch this difference: To be dependent upon God, desiring justice, to be merciful, to be single-hearted, to be peacemakers, to endure suffering for doing right, and to forgive those who wrong us. This is a different way to live.

The Gospel brings out the disciples' fear as Jesus approaches death. The fear also existed in the early church when Jesus did not return in the decades after his resurrection. What were they going to do? Jesus assures them that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. They are connected to him and the Father by faith, by the Holy Spirit who dwells within them, and by the works that they do. Jesus did what the Father asked of him, and they could see it in his life. Just as they do the work that Jesus did, they will realize they are connected to Jesus and the Father. He is the Way by how he lived, and we follow that way in the way we live. Jesus is the Truth not as static answers but in the living, dynamic relationship He has with the Father. As we share in that relationship, we are in the Truth. It is not how much one knows but how one lives the truth. Jesus is the Life. He is the source of life, the spring of living water that nurtures and renews. As we follow the way and live the truth, we fully enter life. Not even death could take life from Jesus, and when we are connected to Him, we will have life to the full.

Key themes:

• Service and the ministry of deacons
• Priesthood of the baptized
• Holiness
• Chosen People
• Unity with Christ and the Father

Reflection questions:

• Who is powerless and needy in our society? 
• Have you seen or participated in any outreach programs for those in need?
• What does it mean for you to live a holy life? 
• How can you intercede (priestly) with those in need?
• How have you experienced God’s presence in the deeds you have done and the actions that you have taken?

Prayer suggestions:

For the church: that we may recognize that we are a chosen and holy people, living stones, whom God is creating into the Body of Christ, to announce the deeds of the Lord, 

For fuller discipleship: that God will guide us in living sacrificial lives and continuing the ministry of Christ in laying down our lives for our families, our communities, and our society

For all who serve the poor, widows, orphans, and the forgotten of society: that God will renew their hearts and strengthen their spirits as they continue to reach out to those in need

For all burdened by worry and anxiety: that they may find in Christ hope, freedom, and peace

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: Do not ... be troubled, I am going, I am the way, know my Father, how can we know the way?, do the works

To the point: Jesus’ words in this gospel from the Last Supper discourse are reassuring ones: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Yet Thomas and Philip, who hear Jesus also tell them that he is leaving, are not reassured and question him anxiously. The leap from the Jesus at the Last Supper to the Jesus after the resurrection is one giant step, one the disciples have not yet taken. But we have taken this leap. We are an Easter people. We have received the Holy Spirit who empowers us to know Jesus, through him to know the Father, and to do the works of Jesus. Believing this mitigates all troubles, all anxiety.

Connecting the Gospel …… to the Second Reading: Peter can confidently invite people to “Come to [Christ]” and name them “a people of [Christ’s] own” because he is writing from an Easter faith; he has encountered the risen Lord. He has made the leap that the troubled and anxious disciples in the gospel have not yet made.
… to experience: Being troubled and anxious is a fact of our stress-filled lives. “Do not be troubled” the surgeon says to someone before major surgery; “Do not be troubled” a parent says to a child wakened by a nightmare; “Do not be troubled” …The only way we can truly not be troubled.

The appointment of deacons, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, was a response to the needs of fellow Christians and the desires of the Twelve to be more available for prayer and the proclamation of the word.

While the task at hand concerned material requirements of the community—the fair distribution of food among the widows—what is more interesting about the account is the Apostles’ flexibility in responding to the needs of their time.

As the ages rolled by, the function and meaning of the diaconate took various shapes, sometimes of minor importance, but always linked to service, whether liturgical or communal. In the contemporary Western church, the hallmark of deacons is that they assist, not preside, even though, in response to need, deacons do preside at baptisms, marriages, and burials. Thus, the diaconate gets more closely linked to the priesthood. But I hope not too close.

I have often wondered whether there is a hidden hindrance in the preaching and the hearing of the word in today’s Church. I mean more than the quality and length of sermons. It is inevitable that some of us preachers are just not as good as others—certainly not as good as some preachers who have grown up more in the tradition of the word than of sacrament.

There is a deeper issue here that involves our lives and labors. As an old African-American woman told a group of us one day, “I’d rather hear one sermon lived than ten preached.”

If there are problems with our preaching, it is not only that we are too busy doing other things—although administrative duties can consume a pastor in any parish. A far bigger problem is this: even the best of homilies can be sloughed off because it is tied to the very nature of the presiding office, the task, the business of priestcraft.

A significant charism of deacons in the contemporary church is related to the fact that most of them are married, have other places of work, have had an active career, and have no reason to give service to the church other than their faith. The work of priests, even their preaching, can be subconsciously passed off as “what they have to do.” But when a deacon visits the sick, when a mail carrier or a business person gets into the pulpit, something else is going on. And people know this. It is not just “their job.”

There is something particularly moving and engaging about an ordinary person who wants to read and preach the word of God—and it’s not “business as usual.” It can’t be sloughed off as something that is “expected” to be done.

The witness of married folk, living “ordinary” lives, is most powerful precisely because they do not need to do it, nor are they expected to do so. One of the charisms of the Promise-Keepers and Opus Dei is the fact that people, who seem ordinary, desire to do uncommon things for God and community. Similarly, the primary source of vocations to the priesthood or conversions to the Catholic faith is the example of family members, friends, and co-workers. It is a matter of persons, not institutional strategy.

Two of my closest friends, till the day they died, had prayed for the ordination of women in the Catholic church. Though they are gone, I still hold their hope that if it is the will of God and the work of the Spirit, the church will have the humility to change.

Yet both of these women eventually confided to me that they experienced in their labors (one as a nun-physician, the other as a wife and professional photographer) strange powers of communicating faith that no priest or preacher seemed to have. Since they didn’t have to preach and pray, people could not ignore them the way they could ignore an official minister. Since they were not expected to be servants of the poor, advocates for justice, or ministers of the word, they could not easily be explained away.

This is the very thing I experienced in those moments when married women scouted the far reaches of mystical prayer or a father of a large family revealed, before me and other men, how his life would have no final meaning or joy without Christ. We have all known deacons who, because of their kind service, led others to say, “See how those Catholics love one another—and others as well.” It was precisely because they were not priests that they were so effective.

We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation. The ritual prayer that commissions deacons should be for us all, “Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you are; believe what you read, preach what you believe, put into practice what you preach.”

Whatever our office in the church, we are all called to be deacons, just as we are called to the priesthood of faithful believers. The diversity of roles is life-giving. A mother lives what I could never preach. A celibate reveals a color in the spectrum of faith that spouses cannot. A single lay person consoles in ways that other Christians never could.

Isn't it appropriate, then, that Jesus is reported to have said, “In my father’s house there are many mansions”?

Copyright © 1997 by John F. Kavanaugh. All rights reserved. Used by permission from Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545-0308

Farewell Addresses

Scholars identify chapters 14-17 of John’s Gospel as the evangelist’s creative presentation of teachings of Jesus in the form of a “farewell address.”

In general, these passages begin with an indication that the speaker is about to die or depart. Then follows an exhortation to his successors. The elements in this part of the address vary: there are prophecies, words of caution about the future, God’s intentions for the future.

Successors are also exhorted to pass these words on to others. Sometimes there is also notice of the speaker’s death and burial.

When John 14 concludes with “Get up, let us go,” we are surprised to see that John 15 continues the farewell address. Clearly the evangelist has strung together otherwise separate traditions.

Jesus The Way

Jesus’ words and deeds in this Gospel speak love at every turn. He demonstrates absolute, total, and universal love in his varied responses to those who approach him.

Jesus’ life, teaching, and behavior do indeed present people with “an authentic vision of human existence,” that is, a model of the way human life ought to be lived.

If one lives like this, one will definitely encounter God, who is Love.

These are heartening words not only to Jesus’ disciples but especially to believers within John’s community who are beginning to suffer for believing in Jesus. “The Judeans had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue” (Jn 9:22; see also Jn 12:42; Jn 16:2).

Such excommunication deprived these people of a community and a place that were dear to them. Moreover it raised doubts about whether they really could meet God anywhere else.

The synagogue, after all, represented God’s chosen community. Jesus assures his disciples and through them all subsequent generations of believers: “If you know me, you will know my Father also.” If one has met Jesus, one has met the Father.

Philip still doesn’t get it. He asks Jesus to “show us the Father” (Jn 14:8). This must have been particularly disappointing to the historical, earthly Jesus.

Jesus himself called Philip to be a follower, and he in turn brought Nathanael to Jesus (Jn 1:43-48). When faced with a hungry multitude, Jesus turned to Philip and asked him how they could be fed (Jn 6:5-9). When curious Greeks wanted to meet and talk with Jesus, they approached Philip to intercede on their behalf (Jn 12:20-22).

Only against this background can one appreciate Jesus’ disappointment: “You still do not know me!?”

Philip’s failure provides Jesus with the opportunity to point to the future successes of his followers: “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these. ... ” (Jn 14:12).

The works of Jesus are the works of God: to give life, and to restore meaning to life or enrich life’s meaning. Already at creation God called us to take dominion over evolution (“to till the garden and keep it,” Gen 1:26-28).

This is our challenge to engage in life-giving activities rather than death-dealing ones. This is also our challenge to put meaning into life rather than suck it out. This is what Jesus in his “last will and testament” urges his followers to do out of love for others.

Jesus has presented himself as the authentic vision of existence. Believers can only echo Peter: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).

 

Copyright © 1995 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, MN. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

Commentary by Ambrose
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Let us march forward intrepidly to meet our Redeemer, Jesus, pursuing our onward course without swerving until we come to the assembly of the saints and are welcomed by the company of the just.

It is to join our Christian forebears that we are journeying, to those who taught us our faith—that faith which comes to our aid and safeguards our heritage for us even when we have no good works to show.

In the place we are making, the Lord will be everyone’s light; the true light which enlightens every human person will shine upon all.

In the house where we are going the Lord Jesus has prepared many dwelling-places for his servants, so that where he is we also may be, for this was his desire.

Hear his own words about them: “In my Father’s house are many dwelling-places,” and about his desire: “I will come again, he says, and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.”

  “But he was speaking only to his disciples” you say, “and so it was to them alone that the many dwelling-places were promised.” Do you really suppose it was only for the eleven disciples they were prepared?
And what of the saying about people coming from all the corners of the earth to sit at table in the kingdom of heaven? Do we doubt that the divine will will be accomplished?

But for Christ, to will is to do! Accordingly he has shown us both the way and the place: “You know where I am going,” he said, “and you know the way.”

The place is where the Father is; the way is Christ, according to his own declaration: “I am the way, and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Let us set out on this way, let us hold fast to truth, let us follow life. It is the way that leads us, the truth that strengthens us, the life that is restored to us through him.

To make sure that we really understand his will, Christ prays later on: “Father, it is my desire that those whom you have given me may be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory.”

How graciously he asks for what he had already promised! The promise came first and then the request, not the other way around.

Conscious of his authority and knowing the gift was at his own disposal, he made the promise; then, as if to show his filial submission, he asked his Father to grant it. He promised first to make us aware of his power; he asked afterwards to show us his loving deference to his Father.

Yes, Lord Jesus, we do follow you, but we can only come at your bidding. No one can make the ascent without you, for you are our way, our truth, our life, our strength, our confidence, our reward. Be the way that receives us, the truth that strengthens us, the life that invigorates us.

Death as a Blessing 12, 52-55: CSEL 32, 747-750

Ambrose (339-397) was born in Trier, the son of a praetorian prefect of Gaul. On the death of Auxentius, the Arian bishop of Milan, Ambrose, while still a catechumen, was elected to the see by acclamation. We know from Saint Augustine that as bishop he was accessible to everyone. Although Ambrose was influenced by the Greek Fathers, especially Origen, his preaching had the practical bent characteristic of Western theological writers.

Copyright © 1992, New City Press.
All Rights Reserved.

In Acts, when Luke sketches scenes from the story of the early days of the Church in Jerusalem, he is not simply recording events. He is providing paradigms that portray something about the Church's nature.

And the scenario we meet today in the First Reading is not entirely a pretty picture.

  “At that time, as the number of disciples continued to grow, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution [diakonia]” (Acts 6:1). The “Hellenists” are best understood as Greek-speaking Jews (probably people who grew up in the Diaspora and later emigrated to Judea). “Hebrews,” then, would be Aramaic-speaking Jews. We have evidence, even as far back as the Maccabees, that there had long been tension between the Jews who had taken on the language and even some of the ways of the Hellenistic world, on the one hand, and the more traditional Jews who preferred to speak Aramaic, on the other.

The passage from Acts 6 (First Reading) lets us know that the infant Christian community of Jerusalem included Jews from both subgroups, and that becoming Christian did not automatically erase the “liberal/conservative” baggage that they brought with them. Luke informs us that the community had set up a daily distribution (of food?) to take care of the needy among them, especially widows. But the Greek-speaking widows were somehow being neglected.

Where did that neglect come from? A combination of scarcity and prejudice? Were the (“Hebrew”) Twelve favoring their own kind? Were they too busy to oversee the distribution properly? Whatever the cause of the neglect, the Twelve chose to apply a familiar practical solution: they increased the staff. Too busy with the diakonia of the word to tie up their time with serving at table (or, in another valid translation, “keeping accounts”), they call the entire community together and mandate it to select seven good men to carry out this other diakonia. That the seven chosen all have Greek names suggests a kind of affirmative action on the part of the community: they chose Greek-speaking members, thereby assuring that the neglect of Hellenist widows would be remedied. This freeing up of the apostles led to continuing rapid growth of the Church, even attracting some of the Temple priests to the fold.

This vignette shows the Spirit-filled community facing a very human set of problems and acting practically and faithfully. The Second Reading, from what appears to be a baptismal homily embedded in 1 Peter, describes the Church in a very different way. This passage is a densely layered poem made of imagery mined from the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.

Urging the recently baptized, whom he calls “born again,” the writer/homilist invites them to “come to [the Lord], a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God.” The author here draws upon an application to Jesus of Psalm 118:22 attributed both to Jesus himself (Luke 20:18) and to Peter (Acts 4:11). The original meaning of the psalm was to call Israel a stone rejected by the mighty empires around it but nonetheless destined to become the foundation stone in God's own victorious work.

Such is now true of Jesus: the rejected stone now becomes the foundation stone of the “spiritual house,” the Church. The baptized person is encouraged to participate in the victory of his resurrection. Preparing to describe the community as temple, he calls Jesus a “living” stone to highlight the reality that the Church is no inanimate object but a living unity, in which the new Christian is a living stone.

Shifting the image slightly, but remaining in the Temple ambiance, the author reminds the baptized that they, collectively, are to grow into “a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Like Paul in Rm 12:1-2, Peter makes it clear that by “spiritual sacrifices” he means the basic relationships of community life: “since you have purified yourselves by obedience to the truth for sincere mutual love, love one another intensely from a [pure] heart.” (1 Pt 1:22) The author ends the poem by applying to the Church phrases used in Ex 19:5-6 to describe the covenant community of Israel at Sinai: “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own.”

Luke the historian describes the Church facing a knotty administrative challenge. Peter describes the same Church in a poem that plays Hebrew refrains in a new key. Both picture the Church, ever human, always guided by a power greater than itself.

 

Copyright © 2001, Dennis Hamm, S.J. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

Reading I: Acts 6:1-7

For the New Testament scholar, several problems are raised by this story from Acts 6.

The main one is that although we are told that the Seven were appointed to “serve tables” in order to allow the apostles to give their undivided attention to the ministry of the word, nevertheless the only members of the Seven whom we hear about after their appointment turn out to be themselves notable ministers of the word, namely, Stephen and Philip.

Probably this confusion is due to the author of Luke-Acts, who sees in the appointment of the Seven the institution of a subordinate ministry (deacons?—he uses the verb diakonein, meaning “serve” but does not actually call them deacons).

In actual fact, however, the Seven must have been more than that. They must have been, in a real sense, leaders of the growing Greek-speaking part of the community.

In that case, the real concern of the apostles in recognizing the Seven would have been to prevent a split between the Greek-speaking and the Aramaic-speaking Christians (Hellenists and Hebrews).

Perhaps even the act of ordination—laying on of hands with prayer—reflects the practice at the time Luke wrote rather than that of the earliest church (see also Acts 13:3 and Acts 14:23, which are probably equally anachronistic).

Nevertheless, ordination by the laying on of hands with prayer must have been introduced in a Palestinian-Jewish environment, for it reflects the synagogue practice of ordaining elders—a fact that has even led some modern scholars to suppose that the Seven were appointed presbyters (elders) rather than deacons.

But this is improbable. The truth more likely is that we have here two levels of interpretation:

1. the original historical situation, that is, the tensions mentioned above and the recognition of the leaders of the Greek-speaking group by the Twelve, thus averting a breach between the two parties;
2. the origins of a subordinate ministry. 

Responsorial Psalm: 33:1-2, 4-5, 18-19

As a psalm of thanksgiving for the mighty acts of God in salvation history, this selection is appropriate for the Easter season, particularly since the last stanza refers to deliverance from death.

Originally, of course, this was a reference to deliverance from some natural calamity, probably famine, which is mentioned in the last line.

In the context of this Easter liturgy, this can be given a full Christian sense. In his resurrection Christ has indeed delivered the souls (lives) of his people from death.

Reading II: 1 Peter 2:4-9

We recall that 1 Peter is full of baptismal references. Originally, perhaps, this passage was an instruction for baptismal candidates.

It tells them the nature of the community into which they are being admitted. It is a temple (the place of God’s presence) made up of living stones (that is, men and women). It is, like the people of the old covenant (Ex 19:6), a holy or royal priesthood, a distinct race and nation.

Special stress is laid upon the priestly aspect of the community, for only this aspect is spelled out in terms of implied functions.

The community expresses its priestly character by offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ and declares the wonderful deeds of him who calls it out of darkness into light.

Between this exposition of the nature of the Church there is inserted a string of Old Testament quotations, connected by the theme of the stone (Is 28:16; Ps 118:22; Is 8:14-15) and applied to the person and work of Christ. These quotations were evidently suggested by the reference to the composition of the church out of living stones.

This reminds the author that Christians, as living stones, are joined together by Christ, who is the cornerstone. Remove the prosaic quotations and we have what may have been an early (baptismal?) hymn about the church.

This is the locus classicus in the New Testament on the theme of the church’s priesthood. It was, of course, the passage that inspired the Reformers to reassert the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Though it was understandable, it was a pity that they had to assert it polemically against the late medieval doctrines of ministerial priesthood, obscuring thereby the priestly understanding of the ministry.

A book by an American Lutheran scholar, John H. Elliott, has sought to cut the ground from under this polemic by insisting that (1) there is a basic difference between the priesthood of the church as predicated in Ex 19:6 and the cultic priesthood of Leviticus, and (2) the sacrifice offered by the Christian community, which is not cultic but ethical—the living of a Christian life in the world.

It is a helpful insight that the priesthood of the church is based on Exodus rather than Leviticus. This protects the teaching of the letter to the Hebrews that Christ has once for all replaced the sacrifices of the Levitical priesthood by his redemptive act, and that any priesthood we predicate of the church or its ministry can never abrogate the “once-for-all-ness” of his sacrifice and the uniqueness of his priesthood.

Nor can it be denied that the author of 1 Peter sees the Exodus-type sacrifice of the church as being actualized and made visible to the world in the quality of its ethical life.

Nevertheless, I wonder whether we can exclude cultic ideas altogether from this passage. The “spiritual sacrifices” offered by the church do not exclude the “declaring” (or recital) of the wonderful deeds of God in salvation history.

Here is the primary focus of the church’s priesthood, and this is what the church does in the liturgy. Of course, this issues or should issue in a lifestyle in the world. But its cultic basis must be preserved or the whole conception of sacrifice will evaporate.

The great Eucharistic Prayer (traditionally called the “canon” in the West and the “anaphora” in the East) is the occasion par excellence when we “show forth,” “declare” or recite before God in thanksgiving God’s mighty acts of salvation.

This is the primary work of the church. For this we are baptized, and for this we renew our baptismal vows at Easter.

Gospel: John 14:1-12

What CH Dodd wrote some years ago about the First Epistle of John is equally applicable to the discourses in the Fourth Gospel:

The argument is not closely articulated. There is little direct progression. The writer ‘thinks around’ a succession of related topics. The movement of thought has not inaptly been described as ‘spiral,’ for the development of a theme often brings us back almost to the starting point—almost, but not quite, for there is a slight shift which provides the transition to a fresh theme.”
This special pattern makes an analysis of a passage like today’s Gospel very difficult. A number of themes arise in succession:

1. Jesus’ impending departure, that is, his death and exaltation.
2. (Linked by the key word “way”:) Jesus as the revelation and the way to the Father.
3. Following this, a dialogue with Philip unfolding this christological affirmation: Jesus as the revelation of the Father, a reference to the words and works of Jesus as the words and works of the Father, words and works that make him the revelation of the Father.
4. A challenge to believe Jesus, preferably because of encounter with his whole person or, if not that, at least because of his works.
5. The promise that believers will do even greater works because of Jesus’ departure — which brings us back almost to where we started.

Obviously there is much in this passage that could be developed for a homily. The liturgical season, with Ascension Day approaching, suggests that we read it because of what it says about Jesus’ departure to the Father.

No doubt when the farewell discourse was first chosen in the traditional Lectionary for the lessons of the old “great forty days,” our ancestors equated this departure with the ascension as a separate event and thought of the discourses almost as though they were delivered by the risen Christ during the great forty days.

Our understanding of the Easter event today, as well as of the farewell discourses, is more sophisticated. For us, the “going” of Jesus to the Father is the whole complex event, celebrated throughout the great fifty days — his resurrection, exaltation, appearances, and the gift of the Spirit.

And the farewell discourses themselves, while doubtless enshrining the traditional sayings of Jesus, are meditations of the Johannine community upon the meaning of this total complex of events.

For us, the important message of today’s pericope is that the risen, exalted Christ continues his words and works in his church.

Are these “greater works” — the word and the sacraments — greater because they will actually mediate the divine salvation, whereas the words and works of the earthly Jesus only pointed forward to, and prepared for, the central saving acts?

His departure from earth was preparatory for his continual coming to his church.

Copyright © 1984 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

• For the Church: that we may live as God’s chosen people and follow Christ who is our Way, our Truth, and our Life
• For fuller discipleship: that God will guide us in living sacrificial lives and continuing the ministry of Christ in our families, our communities, and our society
• For the healing of divisions within the Christian Community and between Christian Communities: that the Spirit will help us hear each other’s pain and open a pathway for reconciliation and cooperation
• For those struggling to come to know Christ: that the Spirit will lead them to recognize the works of God in their lives and the world around them as signs of God's love and presence
• For all who serve the poor, widows, orphans and the forgotten of society: that God will renew their hearts and strengthen their spirits to continue to reach out to those in need
• For all Deacons: that they may faithfully follow Christ as they unselfishly serve those who are in need in body, mind, or spirit
• For all who are being ordained this spring: that God will fill them with the Spirit and help them to bring Christ’s presence to all whose lives they touch
• For students who are taking final examinations: that they may recall all that they have learned this semester and that God will help them clearly express their learning and make beneficial use of it in their lives
• For an end to gun violence: that God will break the cycle of gun usage to resolve disputes and disappointments, and open a greater respect for human life
• For all burdened by worry and anxiety: that they may find hope, freedom, and peace in Christ
• For all who are struggling with addictions: that Christ may be their way to freedom and wholeness
• For all who work the earth: that they may use their skills wisely to feed the human family and that God will give them favorable weather and an abundant harvest
• For all who are unemployed: that God will give them courage, help them to persevere as they wait, and help them find support from others
• For all who are ill: that God will give them strength, restore them to health, and sustain them through therapy
• For Peace: that God touch the hearts of all leaders engaged in warfare and give them a new conviction of the value and peace and the shortcomings of violence

We live in an age when nostalgia sells. We have radio stations devoted to “oldies,” that is, the music of some former era. Television has endless recall of shows from Jack Benny to Leave it to Beaver to I Love Lucy to ... you name it.

Such a human thing it is to remember the spirit of the past and to understand better what we have done and have been. Can all of it media hype, designed to “sell product”? We are tempted to say, yes, hype, hype and nothing but hype. Yet much of what our nostalgia dredges up was actually good in its day, and remains so.

Throughout Easter the Church is recalling the adventures of the Church in the weeks after Jesus died and then rose again. We sit around the campfire of our memories, telling stories about how it was then. Philip. Remember Philip who told Jesus, “just show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Of course he was seeing Jesus and therefore was looking at the Father, but he did not know it.

And do you remember what Jesus said just before his passion and death? That he would send the Spirit of Truth into our hearts. And that we would not be left orphans. It was hard to understand then and it is still pretty difficult.

Let us go over it one more time. Jesus seemed to say, first, that God the Abba was so much within Jesus that every time you see him it is the same thing as seeing God. Second, Jesus said, I am going to be so much within you — yes, you normal people — that whenever people see you it will be the same thing as seeing me! And of course, the Father is in me, so they see the Father too!

  “I almost have it,” Philip gulped.

So Jesus said it again. You will not see me anymore. But that doesn’t make me absent from you. I and Abba will be within you so that your very spirit will hold the Spirit of me and of the Father. All you need to do is to say “yes.”

Then Philip saw it. In the upper room he touched the truth. Very soon he was running from place to place doing miracles and preaching about the Messiah!

With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing. For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice, came out of many possessed people, and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured. There was great joy in that city (First Reading)

We ourselves touch the truth and receive it also. Maybe it is not so dramatic as Philip's experience, but we have it every Sunday and any other day we choose to participate in Mass. We touch and receive Jesus on the tongue.

Simple? No.

Well, maybe it is simple. This Sunday let us remember again not hype but these deepest, dearest mysteries of our lives.

Copyright © 2023, John B. Foley, S.J. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

At the heart of our faith lies the deep truth that we are unconditionally loved by God. We believe that God looks down on our lives and says: You are my beloved child, in you I take delight! We do not doubt that truth of that, we just find it impossible to believe.

Some years ago, at a workshop, a woman came up to me during the break and articulated it in these words: “God loves me unconditionally. I know that’s true, but I how can I make myself believe it? I simply can’t!” She could have been speaking for half of the human race. We know we are loved by God, we can say the words, but how do we make ourselves believe that?

Why? Why is that so difficult to believe?

For many reasons, though mostly because (unless we are extraordinarily blessed) we rarely, if ever, experience unconditional love. Mostly we experience love with conditions, even from those closest to us: Our parents love us better when we do not mess up. Our teachers love us better when we behave and perform well. Our churches love us better when we do not sin. Friends love us better when are successful and not needy. The world loves us better when we are attractive. Our spouses love us better when we do not disappoint them. Mostly, in this world, we have to measure up in some way to be loved.

Moreover many of us too have been wounded by supposed expressions of love that were not love at all but were instead expressions of self-serving manipulation, exploitation, or even positive abuse. Beyond even this, all of us have been cursed and shamed in our enthusiasm by the countless times someone, either through words or through a hateful or judgmental glace, in effect said to us: Who do you think you are? We wither under that and become the walking wounded, unable to believe that we are loved and loveable. So, even when we know that God loves us, how can we make ourselves believe it?

At one level, we do believe it. Deep down, below our wounded parts, the child of God that still inhabits the recesses of our soul knows that it is made in God’s image and likeness and is special, beautiful, and loveable. That is why we so easily become angry and enraged whenever someone violates our dignity or puts us down.

But how do we make ourselves believe that we are unconditionally loved in a way that would make us less insecure in our attitude and our actions? How do we live in a surer confidence that we are unconditionally loved so as to let that radiate in the way we treat others and ourselves?

There are no easy answers. For a wounded soul, like for a wounded body, there are no magic wands for quick easy healings. Biblically, however, there is an image that, while confusing on the surface, addresses this: When God gives Joshua instructions on how to move into the Promised Land he tells him that, once there, he must “kill” everything there, all the men, women, children, and even the animals.

Taken literally, this text is horrible and speaks about everything that God is not. Yet this is not a literal text but an archetypal one. It is an image, a metaphor. I suspect that someone in an Alcoholics Anonymous program will more easily get its message: Killing all the inhabitants of Canaan means precisely giving away all the bottles in your liquor cabinet—the scotch, the bourbon, the wine, the cognac, the gin, the beer, the vodka, and everything else that’s there. You can’t take the Promised Land and still keep a few “Canaanites” on the side or you will soon lose the Promised Land.

That image also tells us what we must do to enter our true self-image, the deep truth that we are unconditionally loved by God. In great mythical literature we see that, usually, before the great wedding where the young prince and the young princess are to be married so as to live happily ever after, there first has to be an execution: the wicked older brothers and the wicked step-sisters have to be killed off. Why? Because they would eventually come and spoil the wedding.

Who are those wicked older brothers and wicked step-sisters? They are not different people from the young prince or princess getting married. They are their older incarnations. They are also inside of us. They are the inner voices from our past that can, at any given moment, ruin our wedding or our self-image by dragging in our past humiliations and saying: “Who do you think you are? Do you really think that you can marry a prince or princess? Do you really think that you’re loveable? We know you, we know your past, so don’t delude yourself!”

To actually believe that we are unconditionally loved, we first have to kill a few “Canaanites.”

 
Used with permission of the author, Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser. Currently, Father Rolheiser is serving as President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas. He can be contacted through his website, www.ronrolheiser.com.

In today’s Gospel Jesus promises us that “I will not leave you orphaned; I will come back to you and you will have life.” Our faith, nurtured in this great paschal season, tells us that God-made-flesh is God-with-us, never abandoning us and always filling us with life.

It should be a great comfort to all of us, who share in the pain and suffering of ordinary life, to know that the Spirit of Jesus is with us always. It should be especially comforting to know that Jesus will not leave orphaned all those whom the world casts aside: the poor and homeless, the racial and ethnic minorities, the sick and dying, the prisoner and the refugee.

  “Christ died for sins once for all, a just man for the sake of the unjust.” He rescued us from our attachment to injustice, and then he sent his Spirit to remain with us and within us. Our prayer is one of gratitude for such a gift and hope that “we feel its saving power in our daily life.”

Jesus loves us so much that, even after his death, resurrection, and ascension, he remains with us. He is, after all, Emanuel, ‘God with us,’ but now through his living, sanctifying Spirit.

We now encounter him in new ways: in other human beings; in any place where people gather in his name; in the inspired words of Holy Scripture; in his Church, particularly her liturgical celebrations; in the person of his minister; and especially in the sacraments.

U.S. Bishops, The Eucharist and the Hungers
of the Human Family, 1975.

First Reading: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17

1. Why did the crowds “pay attention” to what Philip was saying? What gets your attention in spiritual matters?
2. The Samaritans saw many signs and were filled with “great joy.” What are the signs of the presence of God in your life? Do such signs fill you with joy? Can you think of these signs as “everyday miracles”? Is it a “miraculous” sign when you see people on the news taking truckloads of food to the starving children of South Sudan?

Second Reading: 1 Peter 3:15-18

1. Does your life indicate that the Spirit inspires you? How do you “sanctify Christ as Lord” in all of life’s arena: home, government, church, world, and all creation?
2. St. Peter was the writer of this Second Reading. How does he recommend answering someone who asks about your hopefulness? In the gospels, do we find Peter always true to his advice? Did he do a lot better after he received the Spirit? Will the same Spirit help you?

Gospel: John 14:15 to 21

1. “Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” If studying or reading or discussion are your only approaches to God, what else is needed, according to this reading? How does love impact knowledge and understanding in any friendship?
2. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth. … ” According to Pope Francis—quoting St. John Paul II— is the Holy Spirit able to untie the most “knotted” human affairs? Is there some small way you can allow the Holy Spirit to use your creativity to help untie the knots of hunger, gun violence and climate change?

To believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in everyone means realizing that he seeks to penetrate every human situation and all social bonds: ‘The Holy Spirit can be said to possess an infinite creativity, proper to the divine mind, which knows how to loosen the knots of human affairs, even the most complex and inscrutable.’ (from St. John Paul II)

Evangelium Gaudium, 178

The selection from the Acts of the Apostles introduces us to the ministry of Philip, one of those chosen in last week’s reading, to assist in the distribution of food to the widows. Philip now goes to an estranged group, the Samaritans. The Samaritans were in centuries past, members of the Israelite community. After the conquest of the northern part of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 before Christ, most were deported to other areas of the Assyrian empire. The Assyrians then brought in other conquered people who inter-married with the few Israelites who remained. Their descendants became known as the Samaritans. They believed in one God but did not see the Jerusalem temple as important to their religious life. The Jewish people, from the tribe of Judah of the Israelites, did not see them as true members of the Israelite community because the Samaritans had inter-married with non-Israelites. Neither trusted the other.

Philip arrives, preaches about the Jewish messiah, and brings healings to the City of Samaria. They accept him and his message. Philip baptizes them. The reconnection of the Samaritans to the faith of what God was doing, was a sign of the coming of the reign of God. It was something that no one had done in over seven hundred years. It was the work of God and a continuation of the work of Jesus by the Church.

The arrival of Peter and John shows that this work was united with the bigger Church which was still centered in Jerusalem. Peter and John, who first went to the tomb to confirm what had been told the Apostles by the women, are now those who go to Samaria to confirm that this is the work of God. They pray with the Samaritans and the Holy Spirit comes upon them just as the Spirit came on the church in Jerusalem. This is truly the work of God.

This passage highlights that God works in all the church in the same way, the importance of working together, and of Christian Unity. It is also used as the background for the practice of the bishop confirming children who were baptized as infants. That they belong not just to a parish or congregation but to the whole church. 

The First Letter of Peter offers a reality check for those who began to focus on their being “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own.” It does not mean life will be easy, that you will be wealthy, or that everything will go your way. Look at Jesus, God’s beloved Son. What happened to him? Christ suffered and you will suffer; Christ was rejected, and you will be rejected; Christ died, and you will die. If you do not want the reality of being a child of God, then being a Christian is not what you thought it would be. Early Christians began suffering and were confused. If Jesus is the Messiah, didn’t he do all the suffering?

The Gospel passage continues the discourse of Jesus with Philip about his request to see the Father. Jesus also assures them that he will not leave them orphaned. When Jesus dies, he will send the Spirit, the Spirit who dwelt in him at the Baptism by John, will be the Spirit that will dwell in them and us. Thus, the same Spirit that was working in Jesus will be working in them and us. When Jesus goes, the Spirit will come, and Jesus will be with us. It will be just like when Jesus was physically present.

It introduces the mystery of the indwelling of God. Jesus dwells in God and the Spirit dwells in Jesus. When we allow the Spirit to dwell in us, we dwell in Jesus and thus in the Father. John uses a Semitic literary device to convey the thought. At the beginning of the passage Jesus states, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." It is not a threat, but an expression of what love means. Toward the end of the passage, he flips the words, "Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me.”

When the “World” (society) does not see Jesus, we will see Jesus because the same works will be done by those who keep the commandments of Jesus. Jesus commanded that we love one another, pray for those who persecute us, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the sick. Then you will see Christ in the actions of the Body of Christ.

Themes

• Persecution of Christians
• Work of the Holy Spirit
• Commandments of Jesus
• Witnessing the Good News

Reflection Questions: 

1. What are some signs of the Spirit at work in the world or the church? 
2. How does the Catholic Church in various parts of the world, express the unity that exists?
3. When you face a challenge or suffering, do you think God has abandoned you?
4. How can we look to Christ to find an example of how to face suffering?
5. What other actions fulfill the commands of Christ?

Prayer Suggestions:

• For the Church: that we may grow in our awareness that Christ is in us, and we are in Christ because the Holy Spirit dwells in us
• For the renewal of God's Spirit in our hearts: that God will stir up into a flame the gift of the Spirit so that we may build up the Body of Christ and bring forth God's reign in the world
• For courage to live one’s mission: that God will empower each of us to follow the call that God has placed in our hearts and to use our gifts for God’s glory and the service of one another
• For the unity of all Christians: that the Spirit of God will heal the misunderstandings and wounds in the Body of Christ

Novena:

A novena is nine days of prayer following the example of the Apostles who prayed for the Spirit during the days between the Ascension and Pentecost. It is an ancient tradition in the church for everyone to pray for a renewal of the Spirit from next Friday until Pentecost Sunday, 10 days later. You can pray however you like. Here is one sample of music and prayer suggestions to guide you through the days. (It was composed for the pandemic but still is valuable today.)

https://www.danschuttemusic.com/wordpressstore/pentecost-novena/

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: keep my commandments, Spirit of truth, world … neither sees nor knows, you will see me, you will live, one who loves me, loved by my Father
To the point: In John’s gospel, “world” refers to everything opposed to God and being obedient to Jesus’ commandments. The world sees neither Jesus nor the “Spirit of truth”; faithful disciples do. The world does not love; faithful dis- ciples do. The world does not have life; faithful disciples do. Faithful disciples see, love, and live because of the Father’s gift of the Spirit dwelling within them. This divine indwelling is God’s very love. We are to be God’s love made visible, that the world may see Jesus, come to the truth, and choose to live in faithful love.
Connecting the Gospel …… to the Second Reading: Peter is writing to a community who has welcomed “Christ as Lord in [their] hearts” and has remained faithful by their “good conduct in Christ.” These disciples have heeded what Jesus asks in the Gospel: to keep his commandments. Through their faithfulness, the world that conducts itself with evil is “put to shame.”
… to experience: The world and its trappings are attractive. The “Spirit of truth” poured into our hearts by the Father leads us to discern where true satisfaction lies: in Jesus himself and being faithful to love as he has loved us.

Copyright 2014 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota.
All rights reserved.
Used by permission from Liturgical Press, St. Johns Abbey, P.O. Box 7500 Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500 

Baptism in the Spirit

“There was great joy in that city.” (Acts 8:8)
Some Catholic parents experience the sadness of seeing their children, once they reach or pass adolescence, leave the church of their childhood. I have never found parents indifferent to this. Rather, their feelings and faith span a range from anger, through guilt and worry, to an abiding trust in God and their children as well.

Although watching one’s children drift into a churchless way of life can be a jolt, it seems to be even more unsettling to some mothers and fathers to see their child leave Catholicism for something “better.” A son or daughter undergoes a conversion experience, is “baptized in the Spirit,” or finds deep Christian fellowship somewhere else.

I have yet to discover a satisfying account of how this happens. One thing is sure: there are no guaranteed causes of faith or its loss. Some children with casually Catholic upbringings become devoted churchgoers as adults. Others with a strict and extensive exposure to the traditions and practices of the church reject it all.

Our example, the environment of the home, the culture at large, the range of education, the quality of friendships—all influence the formation of a committed Catholic adult, but all of them together cannot ensure it.

What if a teenager discovers a new life of faith, prayer, and commitment in a Christian community other than ours? A number of times I have been approached by young adults who have had such an experience. To each person I put the following questions: Does it lead you into deeper union with Christ? Does it foster a life of greater virtue and service? Does it increase your faith, hope, and charity?

If the answers are yes, I then talk about the unique grace and goodness, as well as the deficiencies, of Catholicism; and if our young ones are tempted to reject this faith of ours, given through our church and sacraments, I bless their journey and entrust it to God.

Is that heresy? Should a strong and stern warning be given? If this were done, would it have any effect? Would a life of tepid or cafeteria-style Catholicism be better? To be sure, lukewarmness is not a universal trait of Catholics; but we do have to admit that there are lacks in our church.

Maybe we neglect some of the emotive power, the courage, the unique feeling of faith that is appropriate for a people truly saved by Christ and baptized in his Spirit. Our faith, one would think, is meant to be engaging and transforming.

Certainly, to judge by the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, Philip’s proclamation of the Messiah manifested such power that the whole town of Samaria felt joy that they described as being at a “fever pitch.”

After accepting the Word of God, Peter and John met with them to pray that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Do we pray with and for our own young in such a manner?

Beyond baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Apostles also imposed hands on the new believers so that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

In our own preparation for the sacrament of confirmation, many parishes seem to be increasingly aware of the opportunity to invite our young into a mature commitment and courageous conviction.

Apparently, it was such conviction that led to the heroic examples of suffering for the name of Christ to which the First Letter of Peter alludes.

In any event, in the Fourth Gospel Jesus does promise a Paraclete, a Spirit of truth that the world does not see or accept. Are we ourselves so comfortable with our world and its language that our children judge our faith to be neither profound nor special?

The Spirit that Christ promised would be revealed by a life of love. Is that the Spirit our young hunger for?

For our part, we might learn more deeply that our faith engages feeling as well as reason and practicality, that it involves not only practices and creed, but a personal relationship to Christ.

We might ask if we really care enough about our faith that we desire to bestow it as our dearest gift to our young. Perhaps it is then that we will have experienced greater fellowship and solidarity as well as a sense of Catholic uniqueness.

The Spirit of Christ is the bearer of a mighty truth that challenges the world and transforms our hearts. We are called to lives of holy resistance and revolution. We really do offer something different and most strategic to the world.

If we believe that, how could we not want to talk of faith and proclaim Jesus as our Messiah?

As for those young people who might leave us, the last chapter is not yet written for their lives. Just as our church itself has a long and winding history, so do the great majority of its communicants.

Through it all, what is most important is that the believer, as well as the believing community, pass on to its young the great truth that Jesus Christ has saved us. Such is the ground of our faith and hope as well as of all the Spirit’s gifts.

That is why it is only into God’s hands that we entrust our lives — and the lives of those we love. 

Speaking Truth
Repetition and Style

Today’s Gospel concludes Jesus’ response to Philip’s request: “Show us the Father” (Jn 14:8). The beginning and end of this passage repeat the same idea but in reverse: “if you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15) and “those who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me” (Jn 14:21).

Such a literary construction is called an “inclusion” characterized by “reverse parallelism” The text “included” within these verses is intended to be viewed as a unit.

The unit (Jn 14:16 to 20) contains three basic ideas, also repeated in parallelism.

1. The Spirit is coming to the community as advocate, helper, counselor (Jn 14:16); Jesus is returning (Jn 14:18). This pattern repeats itself throughout the farewell address.
   
   Jesus alternates the expressions “I go to send the Spirit” with “I myself shall return.”
   
   One and the same basic fact, that God does not abandon the community but remains ever with it, is captured in each statement.
2. The forces of evil neither see nor know the Spirit (Jn 14:17a); the disciples see the risen Jesus, source of their life (Jn 14:19a).
   
   Seeing and failing to see are major themes in John’s Gospel. Here the forces of evil (the world) stand in contrast to the force of Risen Life (the disciples).
3. The disciples know the Spirit because he abides with and in them (Jn 14:17b); the forces of evil do not see the risen Jesus, but the disciples recognize his abiding presence in the mutual love that they express freely and openly (Jn 14:19b).
   
   A number of insights from Mediterranean culture help modern believers to gain a better understanding of John’s repetitive style.

Repetition And Meaning

First, secrecy, lying, and deception are key strategies in this culture for protecting one’s honor It is always difficult to know the truth; the suspicion is always that others are lying.

Though this makes life very difficult, the culture offers strategies for affirming that truth is being told. One is to call God to witness to what one says. The prohibition against using God’s name in vain is a prohibition against calling God to witness a lie.

The fact that such a commandment exists suggests that it was a common practice to name God as witness to a lie.

Modern Western culture’s access to polygraph tests, sodium pentathol, and similar means makes it difficult to appreciate the frustration the ancients felt in trying to discover the truth. Jesus’ guarantee of the Spirit of truth as Paraclete was good news indeed.

Second, modern believers may feel uncomfortable about the contrasts John regularly draws between “us” (believers) and “them” (the world, the forces of evil). If John and his community sound slightly paranoid, that judgment may be more than partly correct.

Middle Eastern culture is agonistic, that is, it is conflict-prone. Its basic social institution is the large and very extended family. Everyone outside the family is suspected of being an enemy, plotting evil against the family, seeking to damage it. Truth was owed only to family and kin extending no further than the village. No one outside the village had a right to know anything.

This cultural orientation is challenged by Jesus’ teaching to love one another and imitate the love that exists between Jesus and the Father Jesus’ love-command extends beyond the family and the village.

John’s reference to “the world” or the forces of evil no doubt stems from this basic cultural hostility toward non-kin, but it also is based on the realization that some people refused to believe in Jesus and his message and sometimes did take hostile action (e.g., ejecting folks from the synagogue).

Since they live in a different culture, what role do Americans expect the Paraclete to play in their lives?

Copyright © 1995 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, MN. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

Commentary by John Chrysostom
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor. (John 14:16)

  “If you love me,” said Christ, “keep my commandments.” I have commanded you to love one another and to treat one another as I have treated you. To love me is to obey these commands, to submit to me your beloved.

  “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor.” This promise shows once again Christ’s consideration. Because his disciples did not yet know who he was, it was likely that they would greatly miss his companionship, his teaching, his actual physical presence, and be completely disconsolate when he had gone.

Therefore he said: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor,” meaning another like himself.

They received the Spirit after Christ had purified them by his sacrifice. The Spirit did not come down on them while Christ was still with them, because this sacrifice had not yet been offered.

But when sin had been blotted out and the disciples, sent out to face danger, were preparing themselves for the battle, they needed the Holy Spirit’s coming to encourage them.

If you ask why the Spirit did not come immediately after the resurrection, this was in order to increase their gratitude for receiving him by increasing their desire.

They were troubled by nothing as long as Christ was with them, but when his departure had left them desolate and very much afraid, they would be most eager to receive the Spirit.

“He will remain with you.” Christ said, meaning his presence with you will not be ended by death.

But since there was a danger that hearing of a Counselor might lead them to expect another incarnation and to think they would be able to see the Holy Spirit, he corrected this idea by saying: “The world cannot receive him because it does not see him.”

For he will not be with you in the same way as I am, but will dwell in your very souls, “He will be in you.”

Christ called him the Spirit of truth because the Spirit would help them to understand the types of the old law. By “He will be with you” he meant, “He will be with you as I am with you,” but he also hinted at the difference between them, namely, that the spirit would not suffer as he had done, nor would he ever depart.

“The world cannot receive him because it does not see him.” Does this imply that the Spirit is visible? By no means; Christ is speaking here of knowledge, for he adds: “or know him.”
Sight being the sense by which we perceive things most distinctly, he habitually used this sense to signify knowledge. By “the world” he means here the wicked, thus giving his disciples the consolation of receiving a special gift.

He said that the Spirit was another like himself, that he would not leave them, that he would come to them just as he himself had come, and that he would remain in them.

Yet even this did not drive away their sadness, for they still wanted Christ himself and his companionship. So to satisfy them he said:

“I will not leave you orphans; I will come back to you.” Do not be afraid, for when I promised to send you another counselor I did not mean that I was going to abandon you for ever, nor by saying that he would remain with you did I mean that I would not see you again. Of course I also will come to you; I will not leave you orphans.

John Chrysostom (c.347-407) was born at Antioch and studied under Diodore of Tarsus, the leader of the Antiochene school of theology. After a period of great austerity as a hermit, he returned to Antioch where he was ordained deacon in 381 and priest in 386. From 386 to 397 it was his duty to preach in the principal church of the city, and his best homilies, which earned him the title “Chrysostomos” or “the golden-mouthed,” were preached at this time. In 397 Chrysostom became patriarch of Constantinople, where his efforts to reform the court, clergy, and people led to his exile in 404 and finally to his death from the hardships imposed on him. Chrysostom stressed the divinity of Christ against the Arians and his full humanity against the Apollinarians, but he had no speculative bent. He was above all a pastor of souls, and was one of the most attractive personalities of the early Church.

Copyright © 1992, New City Press.
All Rights Reserved.

Baptism in the Spirit
“Have you been baptized in the Spirit?” Beginning some thirty years ago, exponents of the prayer movement known first as the Pentecostal movement (later, as the charismatic renewal) posed this question to their uninitiated friends. Most of us probably answered with something like, “I thought I received the Holy Spirit when I was baptized.” “No,” the questioner continued. “I'm talking about receiving a further in-filling of the Spirit that comes when you let a group pray with you for that gift. It can change your life.”

What often followed was testimony about the adult conversion experience that such group prayer often occasioned for people who participated in the charismatic prayer groups that began to spread among the mainline Christian churches in the late 60s and early 70s. Members of such groups began to speak of their friends and their priests as either “Spirit-filled” or not, and a new insider/outsider language began to be heard among the churches.

The source of the confusion came from the vocabulary of the Assemblies of God, where the contemporary charismatic movement took its origin. They distinguish between water baptism and spirit baptism. And they use this Sunday's first reading to substantiate this distinction. On the face of it, the passage does seem to support their claim. For the text says plainly that the Samaritans “had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” and that it took the special and later prayer of Peter and John for them to receive the Holy Spirit

But in another passage, Luke tells of these events happening in the opposite order. When Peter preaches to the household of Cornelius (Acts 10), Luke says that “the holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word.” The Jewish Christians who accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit should have been poured out on the Gentiles also. Peter observes, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have.”

Does Luke intend in these narratives to teach a distinction between spirit baptism and water baptism? Luke seems to provide the norm for understanding the link between baptism and the gift of the Spirit in Peter's speech on Pentecost. On that occasion Peter says, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)

The Gospel language about “baptizing in the Spirit” derives from the preaching of John the Baptist. Clearly, the Baptist makes a distinction between his prophetic (and pre-Christian) water baptism and the baptism in the Spirit that will come with Jesus (see Luke 3:16). And the rest of Luke-Acts makes it clear that the language normally refers to the Christian conversion-initiation experience of people receiving the Holy Spirit on the occasion of their baptism. The apparent exceptions can be accounted for by Luke's purposes. In the case of Peter and John laying hands on the Samaritans, the point is that the Samaritan mission (the first mission beyond Judaism) receives apostolic approval. And in the case of Peter with the Cornelius household, the point is that the movement of the Christian mission to the Gentiles has been divinely initiated.

In the biblical sense of getting baptized in the Spirit, then, every baptized Christian is baptized in the Spirit. What the charismatic renewal has highlighted is the genuine truth that sometimes adults do need to pray in community to let that gift of the Holy Spirit become more manifest in their lives. Understood within that framework, the readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (and for Ascension as well) give us rich texts to illustrate what life in the Spirit means. It means being ready to re­spond to those who ask the reason “for your hope.” (1 Pet 3:15) It means discovering that our obedience to Jesus' teaching enables us to know the Holy Spirit as our Advocate. (John 14:15-21) It means letting ourselves be called from apocalyptic sky-gazing and allowing the power of the Spirit to spur us on to mission in the world around us.

Copyright © 2001, Dennis Hamm, S.J. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

Reading I: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17

The Acts of the Apostles is planned to trace the expansion of the Church’s mission from Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The campaign undertaken by Philip, one of the seven, after the martyrdom of Stephen marks, for Luke, a decisive stage in the execution of this plan (Samaria).

Equally important for Luke is the concern that each successive stage should receive the imprimatur of the original Jerusalem community and its apostles. Hence the curious anomaly that in this story baptism does not convey the gift of the Spirit, as is normally the case in Acts, but has to await the arrival of Peter and John to lay hands on the Samaritan converts.

In later times, especially in Anglican thought during the past century and in revisions of the Book of Common Prayer produced in the 1920’s, this passage was taken as the Magna Carta for the episcopal confirmation of children baptized in infancy.

This exegesis has thus passed into the theology of the average Anglican parish priest without question. Let it be said with all emphasis that such an interpretation has no foundation in this passage, in the rest of the New Testament, or in the early Fathers.

The author of Luke-Acts knows nothing of “confirmation” as a separate rite, distinct from baptism, performed by the apostles or their successors (however justifiable such a development may have been in later times, granted the practice of infant baptism).

Rather, he is concerned with one of his major theological themes—the maintenance of the ties between the expanding mission of the Church and the Mother Church at Jerusalem as the center of salvation history.

Responsorial Psalm: 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20

Precisely the same selection of verses from Psalm 66 is used on the fourteenth Sunday of the year in series C. The only variation here is the optional substitution of the Easter Alleluia for the refrain.

However, this is an excellent example of the way in which the liturgical use of Scripture is itself an exegetical act.

The psalm originally celebrated some historical deliverance of the nation. It picks up the traditional language of the Exodus: “He turned the sea into dry land; men passed through the river on foot” (stanza 6).

Now, in this season, the mighty acts thus described as an exodus become the resurrection of Christ and our participation in it through baptism.

Reading II: 1 Peter 3:15-18

The baptismal material in the first part of 1 Peter, which runs through 1 Peter 4:12, includes warnings of possible persecution (after 1 Peter 4:12 the tone changes and the persecution becomes actual). The references to persecution in the present passage are contingent in character: “Always be prepared ... when you are abused ... if that should be God’s will.” 

The newly baptized, thrilled at their admission to all the privileges of the people of God as detailed in last Sunday’s Second Reading, are here reminded that it will not be smooth sailing all the time. They must know what they are in for.

Indeed, how could it be otherwise, since the Christian life is a following in the footsteps of Christ? That is why the passage ends with a quotation from an early Christian hymn about the death and resurrection of Christ (the hymn continues beyond the present reading through 1 Peter 3:15 to 22).

The words “the righteous for the unrighteous” are thought to have been added to the hymn so as to adapt it to its present position (see 1 Peter 3:14, ibid.16), in which the passion of Christ is treated as an example for the persecuted Christians to imitate.

In this way we see how a hymn receives new applications by being taken up successively into new contexts, namely (1) into a baptism homily; (2) into a letter warning Christians for whom persecution is an impending reality; (3) as used in today’s liturgy, where the whole passage receives yet another interpretation.

Gospel: John 14:15-21

We see here the same kind of spiral thought that characterizes the farewell discourse throughout and of which we spoke in our comments on last Sunday’s gospel. The points made are:

1. Love of Christ means obedience to his commandments.
2. The promise of the Paraclete (RSV: “Counselor”) sent by the Father in response to the prayer of the Son.
3. The Spirit, whom the world cannot receive, will dwell in the community.
4. The coming of the Spirit is equivalent to the return of the Son and almost completely fulfills the primitive expectation of the parousia.
5. The world will no longer see the Christ, but the community will (a) see him, (b) live because he lives, (c) know the mutual indwelling of Christ with the Father and of Christ with the community. 
6. This indwelling is a relationship of mutual love that includes obedience to Christ’s commandments.

It will again be noted how point 6 brings us full circle to where we were at point 1. Yet, the spiral leads to an enrichment of understanding.

The Christian life is not an external observance of Christ’s commandments but an intense relationship of the community to the three Persons of the Trinity, each with a specific role to play in this relationship.

The Spirit conveys the presence of the Son, who reveals the Father.

But this intense personal relationship is not dissolved into mere emotion; it is concretely and soberly manifested in a life of obedience to Christ’s commandments.

The departure of Jesus does not mean that he is now absent. It means his ever-renewed presence through the coming of the Spirit to the community. That is the Easter message of this Gospel reading.

• For the Church: that we may grow in our awareness that Christ is in us and see the hand of God in the people, the events of our lives, and in the created world around us
• For the renew of God’s Spirit in our hearts: that God will stir up into a flame the gift of the Spirit so that we may build up the Body of Christ and bring forth God’s reign in the world
• For a new spirit in our personal interactions: that we may speak with reverence and gentleness to one another, recognizing that we have become sisters and brothers in Christ
• For the gift of Hope: that we may remain confident in God’s love toward us despite hardship, confusion, conflicts, and ill-spoken words against us
• For the unity of all Christians: that the Spirit of God will heal the misunderstandings and wounds in the Body of Christ and lead us to a greater unity of mind and action as we confront evil and work to ease human suffering
• For all missionaries: that their words and deeds may draw others to Christ and that they may be ever refreshed by God’s love
• For all government leaders: that they may use their offices and abilities to address the issues that burden citizens and work to promote a just and safe society
• For those who experience injustice: that God will raise up and heal all who have been disrespected or treated unjustly and bring forth the truth that will set them free
• For all who are graduating this spring: that God will open pathways for them to use their gifts, build meaningful lives, and fulfill their greatest dreams
• For all who are ill: that God’s healing Spirit will ease their suffering, give them strength, and restore them to wholeness
• For greater respect for God’s creation: that we may recognize our interdependence with the created world and work to preserve the balance in nature that God has established
• For all seafarers who are waiting on boats in the Strait of Hormuz: that God will support and strengthen them, help them in times of boredom, and open a path for them to return home
• For all who have been orphaned: that God will protect them from harm, help them to find people whom they can trust and touch the hearts of many to reach out to them
• For all mothers and those who have shown us a mother’s love: that God will watch over them, bless them with every good gift, and fill their hearts with peace
• For all who have died, particularly our mothers: that God will welcome them into the peace and joy of God’s presence forever

Stay a While
At schools such as Saint Louis University the students and their life-networks always fly away at the end of each school year. Or at least drive away. The school always misses them. And now, in this wake of the Pandemic, especially so.

In my own college days, if I stayed on after the last day, there were empty halls and rooms and broad, completely undisturbed yards of grass. Yes, we were all glad to have the year done. But at the same time, why were the buildings deserted, and where is the buzzing life of intermingling students? Is zoom is the wave of the future?

All this must be a pointer to the hollowness that the disciples surely felt after the crucifixion. It was true especially of the women who had loved Jesus so much.

The passion had been the worst part for all of them.

What sort of lives could Jesus’ followers find after the very center of their lives had been taken away?

Well, you say, there was the resurrection. Correct. But we have seen how confusing this was to the disciples. Doubting Thomas said, “I will not believe this unless I put my hands on him. And Jesus’ new presence did not last so very long, did it? Suddenly there was this week’s “Ascension,” and didn’t it empty their lives all over again?

We might say that Jesus had graduated from life into Life. Having tunneled through the tight passageway of death—as you and I certainly will do one day—he had given everything he was and everything he possessed to the Father. Out of sheer love.

Instead of there being nothing left for humankind, there was now humanity transformed: a divine human person who had opened himself all the way and who was now marked with the totality of love. He was on his way back to the dynamic, swirling, Trinitarian circle of love from which his humanity had issued in the first place.

After the Resurrection he had lingered only in order to tell us about it, to comfort us, to ease the loss!

  “Stay in Jerusalem until my Spirit comes to fill your heart,” Jesus said to his followers (Ascension, First Reading). They were going to be filled “with all humility and gentleness, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit.” (Second Reading)

Can you or I follow Jesus in his resurrection and ascension, his immense act of humble love poured into us and ever since known to be the Holy Spirit? Jesus would continue to be alive within the world after all, but in a different form: the Holy Spirit’s presence within our own human bodies. Loss and absence have been turned into real presence.

In the Eucharistic Prayer and in Communion we take his body and blood into our own body and blood. His Spirit helps us accept his life, death, and resurrection. These settle into us and into others around us.

This real presence now abides forever in our midst, urging us, gently nudging us to say yes.

Copyright © 2023, John B. Foley, SJ All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

The Mystery of Presence and Absence in Love
Someone needs to write a book with one of these titles: The Metaphysics of a Goodbye, The Anatomy of a Farewell, The Pain of Moving On, or, better still, A Spirituality of the Ascension. Why such a book?

Because we experience many painful goodbyes in life. There are so many times when someone we love has to go away, or we have to go away. There are many times when, for whatever reason, someone has to move on and irrevocably change a relationship. Almost always this is painful, sometimes so painful that it leaves us feeling restless and empty, as if all the color, energy, and joy have gone out of our lives.

But, as we know, usually this isn't the end of the story. Most of the time, after the restless, dark heartache of a painful goodbye has worn off, we experience the opposite, a deep joy in sensing now our loved one's presence in different way.

Parents, for example, experience this when their children grow up and leave home to start lives of their own. At first, when a child leaves home to go to college, to get married, or to take a job elsewhere, we are often left with a restless heartache that leaves us feeling empty. But, after a while, especially when our child, in the full bloom of adulthood, comes back to visit us our heartache can just as quickly disappear because our loved one, now no longer a child, can offer us a richer love and presence than he or she could when they were little. The pain of losing someone turns into the joy of finding something deeper in the one whom we thought we had lost.

When Jesus was preparing his disciples for his ascension, he told them: "It is better for you that I go away! You won't understand this now. You will grieve and have heavy hearts, but, later, this will turn to joy and you will understand why I have to do this because, unless I go away, I can't send you my spirit."

These are the unspoken words that children say to their parents when they leave home to begin lives on their own; these are the unspoken words we say to our friends when we have to move on from a certain circle of friendship to get married; these are the unspoken words spouses sometimes say to each other when they have to grow in ways that, at the end of the day, will make their marriage stronger, but which, on a given day, leave their partner with a heartache; and these are the unspoken words we say to each other every time we have to say a goodbye, even if it's just to go off to work for the day: “It is better for you that I go away, even if there is sorrow now!”

The paradoxical interplay of presence and absence in love is a great mystery. We need to be present to each other physically, but we also need to be gone from each other at times. We bring a blessing both when we visit someone and when leave after the visit is over. Presence is partly predicated on absence and there is something of our spirit that we can only give by going away. Why is this so?

Because absence is sometimes the only thing that can purify presence. When we are physically present, there are always certain tensions, irritations, disappointments, flaws in our bodies, and faults in our character that partially block full love and blessing. That's why we rarely appreciate our loved ones fully, until they are taken away from us.

Absence can help wash clean. What the pain of absence does is stretch our hearts so that the essence, the beauty, the love, and the gift of the one who is absent can flow to us without being colored by the tensions, disappointments, and the flaws of everyday life. As well, the other's absence can work to stretch our hearts so that we can receive him or her in a way that more fully accepts and respects who he or she really is. That's why our children have to go away (and we have to feel that bitter heartache) before we can accept that they are no longer children, but adults like ourselves, with lives of their own.

The mystery of saying goodbye is really the mystery of the Ascension, the most under-understood mystery both inside and outside of religion. The Ascension is about going away so that our loved ones can fully receive our spirit. It's about the mystery of saying goodbye, when goodbye isn't really goodbye at all, but only love's way of taking on a different modality so that it can be present in a way that's deeper, purer, more permanent, less-clinging, and less-limited by the tensions, disappointments, inadequacies, wounds, and betrayals that, this side of eternity, forever make our intimacy a work in progress.

The Mission in the World
Having ascended into heaven, Jesus can now say that “I am in the world no more, but these are in the world.” He is not physically present in the world the way he was in the first third of the first century. It is now up to us to deal with the world.

During the period dominated by Trent and Vatican I, the Catholic Church was defensive in its approach to the world, which was regarded as an occasion of sin. Vatican II heralded a new approach based on dialogue rather than confrontation.

The world is viewed not as the enemy but rather as the object of service. This positive approach is much closer to our biblical roots: “I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”

“Time is the unfolding of truth that already is.” The world and its history are where we encounter the eternal God, “reaching from end to end of the universe.” We are not called to abandon the world but to remain in it and to take responsibility for its well ordering. The paschal mystery is a challenge to us to lift the world to the heavens.

Holding faithfully to the gospel and exercising her mission in the world, the Church consolidates peace among men, to God’s glory. For it is her task to uncover, cherish, and ennoble all that is true, good, and beautiful in the human community

Vatican II, Constitution on the Church
in the Modern World, 1965: 76.

First Reading

7th Sunday: Acts 1:12-14
Ascension: Acts 1:1-11

1. (Ascension:) Jesus told his apostles that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. They would be his witnesses unto the ends of the earth. On whom did the disciples depend for understanding what that meant for them? Did they understand right away or did it take some time? Do we depend on the same source for spiritual understanding?

2. (7th Sunday:) While they waited for the Holy Spirit they prayed together.* Did you receive the Holy Spirit at Confirmation? Once for all time? Or is the Spirit dynamic and new always? Do you pray alone and together with others that the Holy Spirit will illuminate the minds of scientists and people searching for solutions to problems like war, gun violence, hunger, racial justice and climate change?

Second Reading

7th Sunday: 1 Peter 4:13-16
Ascension: Ephesians 1:17-23

1. (Ascension:) If the “eyes of your hearts be enlightened,” what might they see? People suffering? The good that people are doing to relieve suffering? Would some of the goodness we see be related to “the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way”? What might be some “everyday kinds of fullness”? What kind of fullness would you like to have in your life?

2. (7th Sunday:) If you had your choice would you avoid all suffering? The Holy Spirit is sometimes called the Comforter. How does the Spirit comfort you if you suffer? Would you let such comfort come in? Is there some way you can add consolation to someone’s life?

Gospel

7th Sunday: John 17:1-11a
Ascension: Matthew 28:16-20

1. (Ascension:) “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (v. 20). How does Pope Francis say we realize Jesus’ presence today? Are we ever alone?

Through His Spirit, who leads the Church to walk through history as the companion of every person. … With the promise to remain with us until the end of time, … Jesus is present in the world but with … the style of the Risen One, that is a presence that is revealed in the Word, in the Sacraments and in the constant and interior action of the Holy Spirit. The Feast of the Ascension tells us that although Jesus ascended to Heaven, … he is still and always among us: this is the source of our strength, our perseverance, and our joy, from the very presence of Jesus among us with the strength of the Holy Spirit.

Ascension Angelus 2020

2. (7th Sunday:) The Father entrusted the good news of salvation to Jesus and he in turn entrusted it to his disciples. “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations.” What are the implications for you?

In celebrating the Ascension of the Lord, our texts move from the pattern in the Easter season flow to ones for the solemnity with readings from the Acts of the Apostles, the Letter to the Ephesians, and the Gospel of Matthew. 

The passage from Acts and the Gospel selection both describe the Ascension of Jesus, although in two different locations. Acts continues from the end of Luke’s Gospel with a description of what lies before the Apostles. (Matthew presents the Apostles in Galilee and Luke’s Gospel presents it as Bethany, just outside Jerusalem.)

Forty days is a richly symbolic number. With Noah, the rain came for 40 days and nights; Moses spent 40 days on the mountain with God; Elijah walked 40 days to the mountain of God; and Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert. Numbers in the Semitic tradition are more than just numbers. They have meaning and value beyond themselves. Forty is the fullness of time. It refers to God's time. Whatever time is needed for God to bring about God's plan, it is 40. So in the fulfillment of God's plan, Jesus was no longer seen by the early Christian community.

They are to wait for the "promise of the Father," the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then they are to be witnesses to the Gospel message in Jerusalem, Samaria (which we heard about last week), and to the ends of the earth. This is the outline of the Book of Acts with preaching in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and with St. Paul to Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome.

Acts offers several key points. Theophilus means, Lover of God. Thus, it is addressed to all believers, and there are lessons for all Christians to learn from Acts about responding to God's invitation and works. The Father promises the Spirit to all who believe. The gift of the Spirit will be like a baptism, an immersion, into the way of life and mission of Christ. The Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism by John and led him into his ministry. So too, with us, we are called to be guided by the Spirit in living our lives and continuing the work of Jesus. 

Thirdly, the Apostles were challenged by the angels to not focus on looking back but to look forward to being Christ's witnesses in their words and deeds.

The Gospel account is a shorter version with Christ commissioning them to teach and baptize (often called the Great Commission). Matthew regularly uses “Son of Man” for Jesus. In Daniel, “One like the Son of Man” was given “dominion, glory, and kingship” (Dan 7: 13-14). Jesus affirms that in his resurrected state, all authority has been given to him, and by that authority, he commissions and sends them forth to spread the Gospel to all nations. The Jewish community had not openly recruited people of other races or nations. Jesus is challenging the disciples to a much broader view and openness to God's plan for humanity. 

Baptism is presented here as a key manifestation of one’s acceptance of the Gospel and becoming a disciple of Jesus. The formula presented here is the one that was adopted by the church in the early centuries. It has been used by most Christian churches throughout the ages. The use of the Trinitarian formula has been understood as an obedience to Christ's instruction. (The alternative form of baptizing in the name of Jesus, which appears in the Acts of the Apostles, has been used by some Pentecostal and non-denominational churches in recent centuries.)

In Matthew, Jesus gathers them at a mountain, just as he gathered them to listen to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 -7) and for the Transfiguration (Matthew 17). Gathering at a mountain is an invitation. Something important is happening and so pay attention. It recalls Moses and Elijah both encountering God on the mountain.

Three phrases are worth considering in depth. Even when they saw Jesus, "they doubted." This theme is a continuation of the "little faith" that they had shown earlier. Doubt reflects the response of many believers throughout the ages. None of us are alone in doubting, even the Apostles doubted, but that does not stop Jesus from entrusting the mission to us. It is not by our power but by God's power that we find the strength to live the Gospel. Secondly, Jesus commissions them to teach and baptize "all the nations." Our awareness is often limited by our culture and experience. Christians are called to have a universal perspective. Catholic means universal. Thirdly, Jesus declares that "I am with you always." Many people feel alone and isolated. Anxiety can drain energy as people try to figure out how they are going to handle situations. Amid every chaotic moment when we are not in control, Jesus assures us that "I am with you" and "Do not be afraid."

The Letter to the Ephesians is from St Paul and shows his literary style. There are just three sentences that make up the whole passage. It begins with thanksgiving for what God has done in and through Jesus, including the gift of the Spirit. Paul highlights the meaning of what has been proclaimed in the gospels. It is also a prayer for believers that we may have the Spirit of Wisdom and be enlightened to recognize what God has done for us and how Christ is now exercising authority. God raised Jesus from the dead, seated him at God’s right hand, and put all things under his feet. Jesus is Lord of all creation. As believers, we have accepted his lordship. Although the rest of creation does not recognize him, it is under his authority and will gradually come to know this, as "all things are under his feet." 

Themes:

• Ascension
• Lordship of Jesus  
• Commission of the Baptized
• Discipleship

Reflection Questions:

1. How do you understand the Church and its mission?
2. In what ways are you aware of what God has done for you? How has God’s power touched your life?
3. What are some doubts that challenge you in believing the Gospel?
4. When faced with fear or anxiety, what can help you remember that you are not alone and that Jesus is with you, and that the Spirit is within you?

Prayer suggestions:

• For the Church: that, empowered by the Spirit, we may faithfully give witness to the Gospel and continue Christ’s mission of bringing hope and healing to those in need
• For the grace of discipleship: that through the words of Jesus and the example of the early disciples, we may discover how to help others to come to know the risen Lord and to live as disciples
• For deeper awareness: that the Spirit will lead us into a deeper relationship with Jesus so that our choices and desires may flow from the new life of the resurrected Lord
• For all who spread the Good News: that God will inspire evangelists, missionaries, preachers, composers, and writers to dynamically announce God’s abiding presence and untiring love for all
• For the grace of conversion: that we may strive to bring the brokenness, injustice, addictions, and selfishness of our society under the saving and redeeming reign of Christ

Novena:

The novena (nine days of prayer) leading to Pentecost continues this week. Even if you have not prayed these last couple of days, you can join in the prayer that the whole church makes for a renewal of the Spirit in the church and every human heart. You can pray however you like. Here is one sample, composed by Dan Schutte, of music and prayer suggestions to guide you through the days. It was composed in 2020 and thus has references to the pandemic.

https://www.danschuttemusic.com/wordpressstore/pentecost-novena/

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: went to Galilee, Jesus had ordered them, Go, all nations, until the end of the age

To the point: On the morning of his resurrection, nearing the end of his earthly life, Jesus orders the disciples back to Galilee where he had inaugurated his saving mission. The disciples are to begin where Jesus did, doing what Jesus did, but without geographical or temporal limits: their mission is to “all nations” and continues “until the end of the age.” In effect, then, Jesus com- missions not only those first disciples but all those through the ages who come to know and believe in him. Jesus chooses to complete his work of salvation through us. We must choose to take up his Great Commission.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: Jesus makes clear in his words to his disciples before the ascension that, far from abandoning them, he will send the Holy Spirit to empower them to be witnesses to his saving work.
… to experience: We mistakenly think that the ascension pertains only to Jesus. The liturgy communicates the ascension’s significance for us: “he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before” (Preface I of the Ascension of the Lord).

Copyright 2014 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota.
All rights reserved.
Used by permission from Liturgical Press, St. Johns Abbey, P.O. Box 7500 Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500

Once during Holy Week Jesus made the covers of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report—a phenomenon that might lead us to think that he had really changed the world for good, except for the fact that the Unabomber appeared on all three covers the following week.

Anyway, the three magazines vary greatly in their knowledge about Jesus. The real superstars of the articles are speculative theoreticians, whose own imaginings and desires we find in abundance.

Robert Funk, who started the Jesus Seminar and has taught at the academic shrines of Texas, Harvard, and Emory, wants to “set Jesus free,” he says, from scripture and creed.

But what, one might ask, is left of Jesus Christ without scripture, without creed? Well, he’s more like a “Jewish Socrates or Lenny Bruce,” we are told: “Jesus was perhaps the first stand-up comic”—not political, not programmatic, offering no program for the world. It turns out that the most reliable description of Jesus is that he is “an ironic secular sage.”

Some theoreticians say that Jesus is a projection of Christian need and faith. Isn’t it strange, then, how like a professor their Jesus is, this “ironic secular sage”? ’Tis a pity he himself was not tenured, that he was not interviewed by one of the more reputable reporters of his time, that he had not published in a peer-reviewed journal.

I do not mean to belittle or caricature the contemporary academic readings of Jesus Christ. Surely there is a rich diversity of opinion and quality in the theologians quoted by our newsweeklies. There is also devoted and painstaking research going on in our universities.

But the media coverage merits a clear and critical look. The cover stories of our magazines represent a religious crisis of our times: not just the refusal to face up to the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but a deep resistance to the transcendent God whom Jesus reveals.

How close is the so-called contemporary account of Jesus to a rejection of any faith in a God beyond? What criteria are used? All miracles must be deemed impossible; any mention of transcendence is suspect; all messianic claims, all reference to an afterlife are unacceptable; any thought that we need salvation by his death on a cross must be repressed.

The contemporary “secular sage” insists that it is all so ordinary, this faith, this story, this gospel, this Jesus. Yet it is precisely the extraordinary, the supernatural, that makes him what he is—not only his moral teachings (which some great sage might dream up), but also his resurrected body (which no other religion has come up with), and the seeming disgrace of his cross.

No human inventiveness would dare to concoct what was an embarrassment to the Roman Empire, a stumbling block to the Greek world, and a repudiation of Gnosticism. As the luminous Kierkegaard suggested, if faith is an offense to rationality, how might reason deal with faith other than by rejecting it?

It is not new, this struggle of faith in Jesus Christ. Since the beginning it was known that if we banish Christ’s divinity, he and all of us are utterly alone. He was just another heap of chemicals who died. It is humanity alone on that cross. And it is a stranded humanity that is left with post-Resurrection delusions.

But if we believe that Jesus is indeed the eternal Word of God made flesh, then our very God was crucified as well; and the destiny of our dying bodies is somehow found in the presence of the almighty God. 

If we do not believe that the cross bore the sorrows of God as much as it does our own, we ought not to have approached that wood to kneel. If we do not believe that by his Resurrection we are destined to be free, we ought not to have sung our alleluias on his day of victory. If it was not a heavenly, unearthly Jerusalem to which Jesus ascended, we ought not gather to look and pray to a God beyond who beckons us.

For it is sheer folly, the things we have done this Paschal season, if Christ does not reveal our sublime fortune. It was all a charade if our saving God was not on that cross, if it was not miraculously one of us who ascended on high. But if we worshiped in faith this season, we have again professed that, rather than being dupes of folly, we are the agents of the only true revolution that has graced human history.

In the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, neither Christ nor we are “confined” to dogma or scripture. Rather, our God is revealed and we are therein liberated.

It is God-with-us, Emmanuel, who died our death. It is the God who called history forth and loved it enough to marry it, to preserve and save it, to redeem its terrible, fragile beauty. Thus it was with full heart that we could pray: “We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee, because by thy holy cross thou hast redeemed the world.” And it is with faith in the miraculous, the transcendent, that we, like Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, look to heaven for the giver of eternal life, the glory of the earth and the love and truth from which we all came.

Copyright © 1997 by John F. Kavanaugh. All rights reserved. Used by permission from Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545-0308

The Meaning and Types of Prayer

Jesus ends his farewell address with two prayers (Jn 17:1-19, 20-26). The first is concerned with Jesus’ immediate disciples after his death; the second looks to believers yet to come.

From a purely cultural perspective, prayer is a socially meaningful act of communication directed to persons perceived to be in control of the life situation of the one praying and performed for the purpose of getting results.

The message of the prayer reveals how the persons praying perceive themselves and God. This is captured in a traditional saying: lex orandi, lex credendi, that is, how and what we pray reveal what we believe about the one to whom we pray.

Prayer can address seven practical purposes. It can be: (1) instrumental (“I/we want”); (2) regulatory (“do as I/we tell you”); (3) interactional (“me/we and you”); (4) self-focused (“here I am/we are”); (5) heuristic (“tell me/us why”); (6) imaginative (“let’s pretend”); and (7) informative (“I have something to tell you”).

John 17:1-5. The first five verses of Jesus’ prayer focus on the core Mediterranean cultural value, honor. The key word is “glory” or “glorify.” Recalling that honor is a claim to worth and a public acknowledgement of that claim, we note that Jesus is praying in the presence of the disciples (and not in secret, as he once instructed them; see Mt 6:5-6).

This portion of Jesus’ prayer is instrumental, that is, it is a prayer to obtain a good (honor) and a service (public proclamation) from God to satisfy Jesus’ and his disciples’ social need: to be recognized as honorable people.

John 17:6-8. This portion of Jesus’ prayer is self-focused, that is, he identifies himself and his disciples to God, with special emphasis on the disciples.

John 17:9-11. Jesus now switches the focus of his prayer back to the instrumental mode. He asks the Father “to protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (Jn 17:11). This is a petition for unity in community. The reason for petitioning this protection for his disciples is that Jesus is taking leave of them.

What he expresses here in prayer, Jesus later accomplishes in deed when, dying on the cross, he entrusts his mother to the care and protection of a good friend.

Modern Western believers may consider this approach to Jesus’ prayer as esoteric. But careful reflection on Western styles of public prayer reveals that very often these are composed with greater concern to impress or edify the human listeners than to stir God to action. The reason for this is that Westerners are convinced that they are masters of their own destiny and are expected to look out for themselves. No one else will.

Our Middle Eastern ancestors in the faith believed that they had no control over their lives. Only God did, and public prayer stirred God to act because it put God’s honor on the line. That was Jesus’ intent in this prayer. How do American believers pray?

Copyright © 1995 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, MN. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

The Gospel describes the Lord’s life upon earth and his return to heaven. But the sublime prophet David, as though unencumbered by the weight of his body, rose above himself to mingle with the heavenly powers and record for us their words as they accompanied the Master when he came down from heaven. Ordering the angels on earth entrusted with the care of human life to raise the gates, they cried: “Lift up your gates, you princes; be lifted up you everlasting doors. Let the King of glory enter.”

But because wherever he is he who contains all things in himself makes himself like those who receive him, not only becoming a man among human beings, but also when among angels conforming his nature to theirs, the gatekeepers asked: “Who is this King of glory?”

He is the strong one, they were told, mighty in battle, the one who is to grapple with and overthrow the captor of the human race who has the power of death. When this last enemy has been destroyed, he will restore us to freedom and peace.

Now the mystery of Christ’s death is fulfilled, victory is won, and the cross, the sign of triumph, is raised on high. He who gives us the noble gifts of life and a kingdom has ascended into heaven, “leading captivity captive.” Therefore the same command is repeated.

Once more the gates of heaven must open for him. Our guardian angels, who have now become his escorts, order them to be flung wide so that he may enter and regain his former glory.

But he is not recognized in the soiled garments of our life, in clothes reddened by the winepress of human sin.

Again the escorting angels are asked: “Who is this King of glory?”

The answer is no longer “The strong one, mighty in battle” but, “The lord of hosts,” he who has gained power over the whole universe, who has recapitulated all things in himself, who is above all things, who has restored all creation to its former state: “He is the King of glory.”

You see how much David has added to our joy in this feast and contributed to the gladness of the Church. Therefore as far as we can let us imitate the prophet by our love for God, by gentleness and by patience with those who hate us.

Let the prophet’s teaching help us to live in a way pleasing to God in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Sermon on the Ascension: Jaeger 9, 1, 323-327

Copyright © 1992, New City Press.
All Rights Reserved.

Between Ascension and Pentecost

This Sunday rounds out the seven Sundays of Easter, the season of the Church's explicit celebration of the resurrection and its meaning for Christian life. At the same time, this seventh Sunday, coming between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday, focuses exquisitely on the transition between the departure of Jesus' physical presence to his followers and the birth of the Church with the end-time outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Granted that we later generations of Christians live in an era long after Pentecost, there is something about this transitional moment, which Luke symbolizes as a ten-day segue, that can help us understand our own moment in salvation history.

Today’s First Reading gives us Luke's snapshot of the apostles and other disciples gathered in prayer in that interval of time. While they were still gaping at the sky after the ascension, angels sent them back into the rest of history with a jibe: “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

Instinctively, they gather with the rest of the little band of disciples in the upper room, where some of them had shared the Last Supper with their master. Luke will note that they number about 120. This numeric note is more than mere census; the multiple of twelve underscores Luke's conviction that this Jerusalem community of “Jews for Jesus” begins to fulfill the ancient expectation that “the Age to Come” would entail the restoration of Israel.

The list of eleven disciples is conspicuous for the absence of Judas. The first agenda item for this post-ascension community will be the restoration of the core group to the number twelve, showing the apostolic concern for restoring the number to the very meaning of Jesus’ original choice of a symbolic Twelve. The mention of “Mary the mother of Jesus” recalls the only other times Luke refers to Jesus' mother by name, the accounts of the conception (Lk 1:27) and the birth (Lk 2:5) of Jesus. The mention of her by name here in Acts underscores the fact that a new birth in the power of the Spirit is about to occur, the birth of the Church on Pentecost. Like Jesus praying after the baptism at the Jordan River, just before a fresh manifestation of the Holy Spirit in his life, the 120 in the upper room “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” (Lk 1:14)

Though we live long after Pentecost, Luke's scenario reminds us of some perennial realities about being Church. Though life in the community of faith requires plenty of nitty-gritty administrative tasks (like electing a replacement for Judas), at the end of the day, the Church takes its life from an act of God. Like the birth of Jesus itself, the Church is conceived and brought to birth by the Holy Spirit. As in its inception, the continued life of the Church demands ongoing communal prayer and openness to the Spirit, never forgetting that we always pray with Mary.

In this Sunday’s Gospel, John addresses many of these same post- Easter realities couched in much different language in the prayer of Jesus concluding his Last Supper farewell discourses. As in Acts 1, the focus of John 17 is on the transition between the earthly ministry of Jesus and the life of the post-Easter Church.

To modern ears not attuned to the biblical roots of the New Testament writing, talk of “glory” can carry vague and sentimental associations. But for people of John's and Jesus’ time and place, glory meant the visible manifestation of God's presence and power. We first meet this meaning of “glory” in John's prologue:

And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father's only Son,
full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:14)

The incarnation of the eternal and creative Word in Jesus is the manifestation of the presence of God in the humanity of Jesus. Here in the prayer of John 17, Jesus refers to his public life as an expression of the glory of the Son's own pre-creation presence to the Father. Toward the end of the part quoted as today's Gospel, he says that he has been glorified in his disciples. 

This way of thinking led to our insight that the purpose of the Church is to be the primary sacrament of the incarnation. This sense of “glory” helps us understand Jesus' prayer at the end of John 17, where he says, “I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.” (Jn 17:22-23)

 

Copyright © 2001, Dennis Hamm, S.J., All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

First, let us remind ourselves that Ascension Day should not be thought of as a historical commemoration. The New Testament treats the ascension as an integral part of the Easter event.

In fact, the earlier Easter narratives depict the appearances as manifestations of the already risen and ascended One. Hence Paul could include his Damascus experience among the appearances in 1 Cor 15.

The later appearance narratives (Luke and John) show a tendency to separate the Resurrection and the Ascension, but still they are not regarded as two successive events. They are separated in order to contemplate the meaning of two aspects of a single, indivisible event.

When this separation occurs, the Ascension seems to be variously located: in Lk 24, on Easter Sunday evening or, at the latest, the next day; in Jn 20, sometime between the appearance to Mary Magdalene (who is told not to touch the risen One because he has not yet ascended) and the appearance to Thomas (who is invited to touch him); in Acts 1, after the forty days (which, however, are symbolic of the time of revelation; there may be no intention to suggest that the Ascension actually “occurred” on the fortieth day).

For several centuries the church did not, either in its writings or in its liturgy, treat the Ascension as though it actually “occurred” on the fortieth day.

With the revised church calendar, we still keep it on the fortieth day as a matter of convenience (and that this is not an absolute rule is indicated by the rubrical permission [in the Roman Liturgy] to transfer the observance to the following Sunday). This allows us to isolate for contemplation one particular aspect of the total Easter event.

Reading I: Acts 1:1-11

It is curious that in his two-volume work Luke tells the story of the Ascension twice (Lk 24; Acts 1). Each narration brings out a different aspect of the truth. The version in Acts looks forward to the future, to the inauguration of the church’s mission and the final return of the ascending One.

Luke’s perspective on salvation history represents an adjustment. Salvation history, already in the Old Testament, is constantly readjusted in the light of earlier events. 

The earliest Church looked for only a brief interval between the Ascension and the parousia, an interval that would be marked by the apostles’ mission to Israel and by persecution and martyrdom.

Now salvation history is greatly extended. Paul already had modified it to include the mission to the Gentiles.

Now, for Luke, the church is here to stay, with a mission to the whole civilized world. But the hope of the parousia is still maintained, and the church’s mission is viewed as a preparation for the end.

Responsorial Psalm: 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9

This is one of the enthronement psalms, which, according to some scholars, were sung at a (hypothetical) annual feast at which the king was enthroned to symbolize Yhwh’s kingship over his people.

As the king took his seat upon his earthly throne, the whole people would have chanted this psalm in celebration of the kingship of Yhwh.

The Church in its liturgy has associated this psalm with, and transferred it to, the ascension of Christ. Ascension Day is the feast of Christ’s enthronement.

Henceforth God exercises his sovereignty over the universe through his exalted Son.

Reading II: Ephesians 1:17-23

Ephesians, whether written by Paul himself or, as now seems more likely, by a close disciple steeped in the thought of his master, begins, like most of Paul’s letters, with an opening thanksgiving and prayer. This prayer reproduces the pattern and phraseology of a liturgical hymn.

The first part of our passage prays for the church’s growth in wisdom and knowledge, and looks to the risen and ascended Christ for the power to foster this growth. The hymn then goes on to elaborate on the exaltation and kingship of Christ.

The New Testament views Christ’s kingship as exercised in two concentric circles. The inner circle embraces the church, where his kingship is known and acknowledged; the outer circle embraces the world, where he is de facto king but his kingship is as yet unrecognized.

The church’s function is to extend that inner circle to cover more and more of the outer one.

Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20

As we noted in our introduction to this feast, the earlier Easter narratives saw the appearances as manifestations from heaven of the already risen and ascended Christ. This is still the situation in Matthew’s story of the final appearance in today’s Gospel.

It is the ascended One who says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” It is the ascended One who commissions his apostles and sends them out into the world in the great missionary charge (see Eph 4:8-13, where the apostolate appears as the gift of the ascended Christ).

The final appearance takes place on a mountain. This, for Matthew, has theological significance.

The great sermon had been preached on a mountain. The Transfiguration took place on a mountain, as in the other Synoptists. And now the great appearance also takes place on a mountain.

This is, in fact, the only appearance that Matthew records, apart from the personal and private one to the women (Mt 28:9-10). All the meaning of the Resurrection appearances is, for Matthew, compressed into this single story.

Such a device was probably suggested to him by the angel’s charge to the women in Mk 16:7 to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, where they would see the risen Lord.

The primary significance of the appearances is that they are revelations of the risen One. Because they are revelations, they can be doubted as well as believed. But those who do believe respond in adoration (Mt 28:17).

In his opening words about his authority, the risen One echoes the language about the Son of Man in Dan 7:14 in the wording of the Greek Old Testament, a fact that suggests that this story must have crystallized in the Greek-speaking church.

The declaration of authority is followed by a missionary charge in three parts:

1. The disciples are commanded to “make disciples” of all nations. This is typically Matthean phraseology (cf. Mt 13:52; Mt 27:57). The longer ending in Mark, which has “proclaim the good news” (Mt 16:15), probably represents the earlier tradition, which Matthew has reworded to suit his own interests.

The association of the appearances with the command to mission goes back to the earliest tradition, as the word “apostle” itself shows, as do the terms in which Paul speaks of his own call on the road to Damascus (Gal 1:16).

2. As in Mk 16:16, the call to mission includes the charge to baptize. All our evidence agrees that baptism was practiced by the church right from the outset, and this despite the fact that baptism had not been a feature of the Lord’s public ministry.

This remains true even if there was an earlier period when Jesus worked side by side with John the Baptist and during which he too baptized (Jn 3:22).

There can be no doubt that it was the impact of the post-resurrection appearances that led to the revival of baptism by the earliest Christians. Baptism became the way in which those who had not had a firsthand encounter with the Christ event were brought into its sphere.

The command to baptize given by the risen One in Mark and Matthew (see also the allusions to the forgiveness of sin in the appearance stories of Luke and John) is a verbalization of this experience.

In the earliest community and for some time, baptism was administered in the name of Jesus. It is only in this passage of Matthew and in the Didache, a Christian writing probably dating back to the end of the first century, that we hear of the threefold formula.

One may say, however, that the use of Jesus’ name alone as a baptismal formula implies the threefold name, for baptism in the name of Jesus implies the confession of him as the Messiah (“Jesus is Lord” was probably the earliest baptismal confession), and in Jewish context Messiah means the agent of God’s final salvation, while the bestowal of the Spirit is a consequence of messianic salvation.

Hence, we may say that from the earliest date the Jewish Christians would have understood baptism in an implicitly trinitarian sense. The development of the threefold formula would have become necessary in Gentile communities, where the implications of the primitive confession of Jesus as Lord were no longer understood and had to be spelled out.

This does not mean that we should now go back to the single formula of earliest times. That would have quite a different meaning now—the repudiation of what was implicit in the earliest use of the single formula.

3. The command to baptize is followed by a charge to teach. It is not clear whether this teaching means post-baptismal instruction. “Baptizing” is a present participle in the Greek, as in the English translation, and this could suggest teaching accompanying baptism, that is, catechetical instruction.

After the charge to teach comes a final promise of the permanent presence of the ascended Christ from now until the parousia.

This is a far cry from the perspective of the earliest community, which thought of the interval between the Ascension and the Second Coming as a period of Christ’s temporary absence (Acts 3:21).

The wording of this promise thus verbalizes the experience of Christ’s presence, an experience made possible for the church through the gift of the Spirit and in the cultus during the intervening period.

 

Copyright © 1984 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

• For the Church: that knowing Christ has prayed for us, God will help us to deepen our identity as children of God and be strengthened to continue the mission of Christ each day
• For our Bishop N. and for all Bishops: that they may continue the apostolic work of witnessing to the Resurrection and building up the Body of Christ
• For a renewal of prayer in our lives: that God will draw us into a deeper relationship through our listening to scripture and attention to God’s action in our lives
• For all who suffer because of their faith, particularly Christians in the Middle East: that they may draw strength from Christ’s promise to be always with us
• For all who are awaiting a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit into their lives, particularly candidates for Confirmation or Holy Orders: that God will pour out abundantly the Spirit upon them and empower them to be instruments of Christ’s love and mercy
• For a new outpouring of the Spirit upon the Christian community: that God will heal the wounds in the Body of Christ, free us from fear, and unite us in mission and worship
• For all nations and peoples: that the Good News which frees hearts and brings conversion may be preached to all and bring forth a new flowering of peace and justice in our world
• For all who are waiting, whether for an end to isolation, the birth of a child, or the return of a loved one: that they may experience God with them in this time and draw strength from the prayers and concern of others
• For all who are seeking employment: that God will open new opportunities for them to use their gifts and help them to recognize new ways to serve the human family
• For all the newly ordained: that God will help them to be faithful witnesses to the Gospel and fulfill their responsibilities generously and lovingly
• For all engaged and newly married couples: that their love and care for each other may reflect God’s love and care for each of us
• For all the innocent in areas of warfare: that God will protect them from harm, provide for their needs, and guide them to places of safety
• For peace and a de-escalation of tension between world powers: that God will guide the work of international leaders as they seek peaceful resolution to conflicts and disagreements around the world
• For all who are near death: that God will comfort them, confirm their faith, and give them peace

• For the Church: that, empowered by the Spirit, we may faithfully give witness to the Gospel and continue Christ’s mission of bringing hope and healing to those in need
• For the grace of discipleship: that through the words of Jesus and the example of the early disciples we may discover who we are as disciples of Jesus and help others to come to know the risen Lord
• For all who spread the Good News: for evangelists, missionaries, preachers, composers, and writers: that God will inspire them to dynamically announce God’s abiding presence and untiring love for all
• For Pope Leo: that as he begins the second year of his papal ministry, God will help him proclaim the Gospel without fear and give bold witness to the teachings of Jesus
• For the grace of conversion: that we may strive to bring the brokenness, injustice, addictions, and selfishness of our society under the saving and redeeming reign of Christ
• For a healing of racism: that all nations and peoples may recognize the value and dignity that God has given each person and that they may work together to bring forth the reign of God in the world
• For all experiencing persecution: that they will draw strength from the victory of Christ and hold fast to the hopes planted in their hearts
• For all who are fearful or anxious: that they may recognize God’s message, “Fear not”, is for them and allow God to calm their spirits and give them hope
• For all who feel alone and isolated: that God will console them, let them experience God’s presence in their homes, and help others to connected with them to maintain the community spirit
• For all who are struggling financially, particularly single parents: that God will give them hope, guide them to the resources that they need, and help them to use their resources wisely
• For all who are graduating this spring: that they may use their talents to address some of the great challenges that exist
• For peace: that God will turn the hearts of world leaders from violence toward co-operation, bring an end to armed conflicts, and guide all decision makers in facing the challenges that confront all the human race
• For all who are grieving: that Christ will dry their tears and give them peace as they experience the death of a loved one or loss of a relationship  

The Great Sharing

Pentecost is a feast equal to Christmas and Easter in importance. It is the official sending of the Holy Spirit into men and women.

We have been hearing Jesus talk about this moment in the Gospels for weeks now. We have been hearing that he will not leave us alone, but will send the Spirit, the Paraclete, to us.

Now it has happened.

• The Father is so much within Jesus that if you know Jesus you know the Father.

• Just as the Father is within Jesus, Jesus will be within us.

• This will happen through the sending of the Holy Spirit, who is the “insides” of Jesus and of the Father. The Spirit is the love they have for each other, the closeness, the great sharing.
The first sign is that the apostles begin speaking in tongues. People from all different lands and languages gather and each understands the disciples’ words without any translation (First Reading). No small thing.

The reading then tells who the people in the crowd were:

• Parthians, Medes and Elamites,
• inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, of Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia
• Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene;
• travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism;
• Cretans and Arabs.

Language students of today wish they could talk in so many languages, don’t they? But the real point is deeper than that. God’s Holy Spirit means to bring us together, to allay differences, to let us hear other persons in the way they express themselves, not just to think about our own self. Each one has a “language” that expresses who they are (not a literal language, but an idiomatic way of speaking and acting that comes from the inside of who that person is). If you are able to hear, you can “listen through” characteristics and receive loving knowledge of that person, even if they have no intention of letting us in.

But that is so difficult, you say. Some people you run into are just plain annoying. “So-and-so just talks on and on and I think I will go crazy if there is a minute more.” How in the world can we “hear” another human being?

With the aid of the Holy Spirit.

It is not magic. The work of the Spirit is to listen for the “insides” of the other person, as we saw above. If you take Jesus seriously in the Gospel, you will hear with the aid of the Spirit, the Paraclete, which is Love given to the deepest part of you. Not Love instead of your own freedom, but Love as a help, a push (not a shove) toward caring for everything in God, of course, and what is best in other people, even troublesome ones.

It takes time to learn all this, of course, to clear the various blockages inside us that keep the Spirit at bay. Remember, we are being invited into the greatest closeness possible, the great sharing that is God himself. Yes it does take time. And we make a lot of mistakes. But God is willing to make us “temples of the Holy Spirit,” and to stay with us, strengthening us, guiding us, helping us to make Love a root in us.

Copyright © 2023, John B. Foley, S.J. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

Deeper Language

A year ago, outside of Guatemala City, Lorenzo Rosebaugh, a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate, was shot to death as he was driving with a number of his fellow missionaries to a community meeting. The real motive behind his killing may never be known. On the surface, it appeared to be nothing more than a violent robbery, but given the circumstances of Lorenzo's life and his life-long fight for justice for the poor, everyone—myself no exception—wants to believe that his shooting was more than a question of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Too much suggests that this was more than an accident. If nothing else, his death by gunshot is somehow symbolic: Lorenzo wasn't meant to die of old age in a comfortable bed.

I first met Lorenzo at our mother-house at Aix-en-Provence in France ten years ago. He had just returned from a long missionary stint in Latin America where, among other things, he had lived on the streets of Recife with its poor, without roof or fixed address, for several years. A serious illness drove him back to the USA and his Oblate community sent him on a sabbatical to France. He arrived there unable to speak any French whatsoever. Yet, when I met him there, less than a month after his arrival, he was sitting on the steps of the church which is attached to our community residence with a dozen street-people gathered round him. They were sharing food and cigarettes and some kind of conversation. It looked like a picnic in the park.

There is nothing exceptional about this except that Lorenzo couldn't speak a word of French and the people gathered round him couldn't speak English, Portuguese, or Spanish (his languages). Yet they clearly seemed to be communicating with each other, and deeply, in a way that would trigger envy to an outsider, and Lorenzo was their focal point.

How? How can we speak to each other beyond communicating in the ordinary languages that we know?

When the Evangelist, Luke, describes the first Pentecost, he tells us that, after receiving the Holy Spirit, the first followers of Jesus came out into public and began speaking and, everyone, absolutely everyone, no matter their ethnicity or language, heard the disciples’ words as if they were in their own language. The old barriers of native language no longer blocked hearing or understanding. The language given by the spirit transcended ethnicity and native tongue.

It is too easy for us to simply write this off as a miracle, an exceptional foundational intervention by God which helped found the church. That may also be true, but there is another point to this: Language functions at different levels.

At its most obvious level, language depends upon the spoken word and that word is always in a particular language, e.g., French, English, Spanish, Chinese. At this level words have a relative power, but they can also deceive and lie. Words don't always accurately mirror the heart. Moreover, they invariably fail us just when we most need them, especially in depth situations where tragedy, death, and betrayal render us mute.

Alright, but we have other languages: beyond the spoken word there is body language. Our bodies speak louder and more honestly than do our words. Through our body, through its gestures and the nuances of its countenance, we speak more deeply and more truly than we do with our words.

And we have still yet a deeper language: More deeply than through the body, we speak through the spirit, through the language of the Holy Spirit, a language that transcends the spoken word and the language of our bodies. What is the language of the spirit?

The Holy Spirit is not just a person inside the Trinity, hopelessly abstract and beyond our conception. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is also very concrete, conceivable, and tangible inside of charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, fidelity, gentleness, and chastity. These speak through us more loudly and clearly, either in their presence or their absence, than do all our words and gestures.

In the end we are not fooled by each other. We hear beyond spoken words, bodily gestures, and beyond what we explicitly intend to say to each other. The heart reads the heart and the spirit recognizes itself wherever it sees itself as manifest. Thus many of us talk passionately about our love for the poor, but the poor do not hear us, understand us, or gather round us, even when our diction is perfect in their native tongue.

While working in Latin America, Lorenzo Rosebaugh spoke only broken Spanish and broken Portuguese. Yet the poor there heard him and perfectly understood what he was saying. He spoke no French at all and still he was able to sit on the steps of a church in France and gather round him the street-people there who spoke only French—and they understood him clearly, as in their mother-tongue.

Such is the language of Pentecost.

Dreams and Visions

In today’s Gospel Jesus promises us that “I will not leave you orphaned; I will come back to you and you will have life.” Our faith, nurtured in this great paschal season, tells us that God-made-flesh is God-with-us, never abandoning us and always filling us with life.

It should be a great comfort to all of us, who share in the pain and suffering of ordinary life, to know that the Spirit of Jesus is with us always. It should be especially comforting to know that Jesus will not leave orphaned all those whom the world casts aside: the poor and homeless, the racial and ethnic minorities, the sick and dying, the prisoner and the refugee.

  “Thus says the Lord: I will pour out my spirit upon all mankind. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall see visions.”
The coming of the Spirit should fill us with dreams and visions of a better world. Let us dream, in the Spirit, of a classless society in which all people are regarded and treated as equals.

Let us dream, in the Spirit, of a nonviolent world in which there is no war, no terrorist attacks on innocent people, no murder, and no death penalty.

Let us dream, in the Spirit, of a world of economic justice in which all people have their basic needs met, and no one lives in poverty, hunger, or homelessness. Let us dream, in the Spirit, of a world of love, forgiveness, and service.

"Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” May the Spirit of God guide us to end the suffering we have brought on ourselves and “unite the faces and nations on earth to proclaim your glory.”

The People of God believe that they are led by the Spirit of the Lord, who fills the earth.

Motivated by this faith, it labors to decipher authentic signs of God’s presence and purpose in the happenings, needs, and desires in which this People has a part along with other men of our age.

For faith throws a new light on everything, manifests God’s design for man’s total vocation, and thus directs the mind to solutions which are fully human.

Vatican II, Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 1965:11

 

First Reading: Acts 2:1-11 (Day)

1. Every nation was confused and amazed because everyone understood in his or her language what the apostles were saying. If you were completely open to the Holy Spirit, would you have a deeper understanding of all that you hear? Was the miracle in the speaking or the hearing? How does the Holy Spirit use the miracle of hearing with you?

2. “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled they were all in one place together. ... ” Was fear present? What took the place of “fear” after the Holy Spirit rested on each one of them? According to Pope Francis, what are the implications of this for the Church today?

When they were locked in there, in the Upper Room, they were not strategizing, no, they were not drafting any pastoral plan. …

The Spirit himself opens doors and pushes us to press beyond what has already been said and done, beyond the precincts of a timid and wary faith. In the world, unless there is tight organization and a clear strategy, things fall apart. In the Church, however, the Spirit guarantees unity to those who proclaim the message. The Apostles set off: unprepared, yet putting their lives on the line. One thing kept them going: the desire to give what they received. The opening part of the First Letter of Saint John is beautiful: “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you” (cf Jn 1:3).

Pope Francis Pentecost Homily
May 31, 2020

Second Reading

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13
or Romans 8:8-17

1. “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. ... ” Were Vivaldi and Michelangelo, for instance, given gifts solely for their own pleasure? For whose benefit were they given? What are your gifts and for what benefit were they given to you and those around you? What gifts are you given to help with racism, gun violence, ending war or climate crisis? Are you a finder of solutions? A peace maker? A giver of food or money? One who prays?

2. Could the gifts of the Spirit help eradicate many of our problems: gifts of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, reverence, courage, right judgment and awe and wonder in the presence of God?

Gospel

John 20:19-23
  or John 14:15-16, 23b-26

1. Jesus “breathed” on them. How does this relate to Genesis 2:7, “God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”? What is the significance for you? How important is the Holy Spirit to you?

2. “ … When the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews … ” How were the disciples different after the Spirit’s arrival? In your own life do you tend to see the Holy Spirit as dynamic and constant or as only occasional? Rate your belief in the Holy Spirit being your constant companion on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. Are you different when you are confident that the Spirit is with you? Explain.

Pentecost marks the culmination of the Paschal season. It began with Lent as we prepared to join Jesus in dying and being raised to new life. It continued in the Easter season as we Integrated more deeply the gift of God’s new life into our life. As we celebrate Pentecost, our focus turns to mission that flows from this new life. Our readings are from the Acts of the Apostles, the First Letter to the Corinthians, and the Gospel of John. This is also one of four times a year that there is a sequence. 

Pentecost comes from the Greek word for fiftieth. It is the 50th day after Easter. In Judaism, it was 50 days after Passover and marked in the completion of the spring grain harvest. In religious circles it marked the 50 days that Israelites journeyed out of slavery in Egypt to the encounter with God at Mt, Sinai, and the giving of the commandments. Just as the law was central to the life of Jewish people, the Spirit is central to the life of the Christian community.

As we end the Easter season, our passage from Acts comes from the beginning of the book rather than at the conclusion. On the previous Sundays, we have been reading about how the Apostles lived and acted in the months and years after the resurrection. The question arises, how did they, uneducated fishermen and peasants, enter a new way of living.

The answer is the Holy Spirit coming upon them and empowering them to witnesses and people who continued the ministry of Christ. Both the section from Acts and the Gospel describe the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. 

Acts describes the coming of the Spirit as a mighty wind. Ruah is the Hebrew word for wind, breathe, or spirit. It is rooted in movement from power. The Ruah moved over the water at the beginning of creation while everything was formless chaos and brought the created world forward as God spoke the Word. Here the disciples have encountered the Word of God in Jesus, and the Spirit brings forth a new people by dwelling in them.

Wind, fire, and water are understood as liquids in the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus, they are spoken of as being poured out. “… when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel says the Lord God.” (Ez 39:29) Tongues of fire recalls that God appeared as fire in the burning bush to Moses. It also has power. The Spirit enters them and empowers them to bring God’s presence to the world.

"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. … we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”

(Acts 2: 4, 11) There is no definition what took place as the Apostles spoke. Were they able to speak in new languages or was it a miracle that everyone heard in their own language? It is unclear. It may be reference to God reuniting the human family after it became divided at the tower of Babel

(Genesis 11: 1 – 9). The work of the Spirit went on to reconnect the Samaritans and the Jewish Christians and bring about a relationship between the Jewish Christians and Gentiles. These were two large divisions in the human family that were bridged by the work of the Spirit.

The gift of the Spirit in the Gospel is also presented as enabling a mission of which human hearts were incapable – forgiveness. Jesus breathes (notice breathe!) and says receive the Spirit. Forgive! In both presentations, the disciples are sent to continue the mission of Jesus.

The passage from St Paul has two key points. The Spirit enables us in diverse ways. We cannot profess faith except by the power of the Spirit; we cannot lay down our lives in loving service except by the Spirit; and we become part of the community, the Body of Christ, by the Spirit. The Spirit gives each of us gifts, some for within the church community and others for the human community. (Being a good administrator (Rom 12:8) It seems that in early communities, some thought that particular gifts made them more important than other people. Paul challenges them that just like the human body needs all its parts, so the church needs all the gifts to fulfill the mission of Christ.

The sequence is a poetic meditation on a key mystery in the Christian experience. Originally connected to the Alleluia verse before the Gospel. They now stand as a reflection between the earlier readings and the Alleluia and Gospel. In centuries past there were several sequences in use. Now, there are two principal sequences that are used on Easter and Pentecost. These are reflective and contemplative to help us gain insight in the great work of God. There are also two optional ones for the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ and for Our Lady of Sorrows.

Themes:

• Holy Spirit
• Gifts of the Spirit
• Gift of Forgiveness
• Mission of the Church

Reflection Questions: 

1. How have you experienced the Holy Spirit coming into your life? Has anyone breathed words that changed your life? Were you empowered to do something?
2. Where do you experience a need for the Spirit in your life? The Spirit helps us to speak. Where do you need help with your speech – in speaking truth, in refraining from criticism, in speaking up when someone is being hurt?
3. What gifts, abilities, or talents do you recognize in yourself as gifts from God?
4. What gifts do you need to fulfill your calling or obligations?

Prayer Suggestions:

• For the Church: that we may faithfully confess Jesus as Lord and be guided by the Holy Spirit to continue the mission of Christ in our time
• For fuller utilization of the Gifts of the Spirit: that God will help us recognize and put into practice all the gifts which we have been give so that the Body of Christ may be strong in serving the reign of God
• For a Spirit of forgiveness: that God will break the bonds of resentment and vengeance that freeze our hearts and free us to forgive as we have been forgiven by God
• For a Spirit of unity: that God will destroy all the divisions that separate the human family and restore our ability to work together against disease, famine, and injustice

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: locked, fear, Peace, I send you, Receive the Holy Spirit, forgive

To the point: One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is peace. This peace is not a passive state of tranquility, but an empowering force that allays our fears, urges us forth to take up Jesus’ mission, and instills in us forgiving hearts. This peace transforms how we see ourselves, how we pursue discipleship, and how we relate to the world and one another. Certainly, this peace is life encompassing and enduring. How much more so is Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit!

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the Second Reading: The Second Reading alludes to the same empowering force as does the gospel: the Spirit bestows “spiritual gifts,” calls us to “different forms of service,” and manifests “different workings” such as forgiveness. All this for the benefit of the Body of Christ.

… to experience: We often think Jesus’ mission is given only to professional parish staff and other church ministers. All of us are called, however, to take up the mission of Jesus because of the Holy Spirit given to us at our baptism.
 

Copyright 2014 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota.
All rights reserved.
Used by permission from Liturgical Press, St. Johns Abbey, P.O. Box 7500 Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500

The Church of Many Voices

“What the Spirit brings is very different.”(1 Corinthians 12:4)
There are many gifts in the church, many ministries, many works, many members. That’s a problem. Who’s best? Who’s important? Who has the right way? Who corners the truth?

Some of us would love to have the special charism of solitary prayer. But not having it, we might think ourselves inferior. More distressing, we might envy contemplatives or even resort to the tactic of thinking that prayer isn’t so special after all. (Those people who run from the world, hide in their rooms, frequent chapels: wouldn’t it be better if they were like us, finding God in the rough and tumble, helping the poor, being busy?)

Then again, others of us wish we had the charism of community: family, relationships, friends, parties, gatherings. Social stars shine. They seem to engage others effortlessly. How do those people manage to be so outgoing and open? The same hints of our inferiority, however, set us on the way to envy and then resentment. (They’re nothing but enthusiasts, extroverts with slick surface and little depth. They usually are the ones who don’t care about peace and justice, as long as they are having a good time.)

Many of us, in our better moments, admire Christian social activists—people who hunger, thirst, and labor for justice. In our worse moments, however, we wish they wouldn’t bother us or remind us that the gospels challenge our way of life. (These people ought to get their own act together instead of trying to change the world. After all, we can’t hope for heaven on earth. All they do is send us on guilt trips.)

Surely those who have devoted their lives to the corporal works of mercy win the respect of us all. Has there ever been a time when we did not secretly desire to be like them? But this desire, too, sometimes sours; and the example of “do-gooders” feels more like a rebuke than an inspiration. (Bleeding hearts. Why do they care only about the poor—and not the rest of us? At least they could take better care of their own kin. Even that Mother Teresa, she only did band-aid work, anyway. Why didn’t she challenge the unjust political and economic structures?)

These examples, of course, are just caricatures; but they do suggest attitudes that stir hostility and division in the church. One might wonder, for example, whether some of the sharp quarrels between liberal and conservative, right and left, traditionalist and reformist are more a function of particularism and resentment than they are expressions of profound faith.

Are there not gifts of conservatives that liberals miss? Isn’t there a ministry the liberal gives us that the conservative does not? Do not traditionalists as well as innovators have a charism? Don’t contemplatives, social activists, Catholic Workers, and urban families all embody our faith in ways both necessary and complementary?

St. Paul, I propose, would say yes. The variety of talents and works, whether of Jew or Greek, slave or free, serves the common good. The diversity of the members makes them a body. But to be one body, they must have one Spirit and speak with one voice. “Jesus is Lord,” is their fundamental message, announced by those who drink of the same Spirit.

This is the Spirit that on Pentecost filled the disciples. It was so strong a confirmation of faith in Jesus that believers could speak in a way that was not only united but was universally understood. This is the Spirit that Jesus, in John’s Gospel, breathes in a moment of peace, igniting discipleship.

It is the Spirit, as the great hymn “Veni Sancte Spiritus” recalls, which inhabits the heart of the poor as well as the solitary. It quickens joy, eases sorrow. It permeates deep intelligence as well as high feeling. It transforms labor as well as the human heart.

In the Letter to the Galatians (Gal 5:19-23) we read that, as opposed to sexual indulgence, idolatry, wrangling, jealousy, ill-temper, disagreements, factions, envy, and orgy, “what this Spirit brings is different: love, joy, peace, trustfulness, kindness, goodness, gentleness, patience, and self-control.”

What a wonder it would be, what a breeze of life, what a fire of zeal, if differences in the church were marked by these gifts of Pentecost. Rather than all our particular ideologies, our special interests, our private fixations, we would communicate to the world (and to the young) in a language that we all understand. It is the language of the Holy Spirit, the language of love, revealed in patience and kindness, generosity and trust, and a faith both forgiving and enduring.

What a gift to speak the language of such love. What a renewal of the earth as well as our church. Rather than being shamed by the grace of another, we would be graced. Rather than shrink at comparisons, we arise in praise to God.

Is such a gift worth praying for? The alleluia verse of Pentecost leaves no doubt: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful; and kindle in them the fire of your love.”

Copyright © 1997 by John F. Kavanaugh. All rights reserved. Used by permission from Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545-0308

Air in Motion
The change from “Holy Ghost” to “Holy Spirit” in the English translations of sacred texts was literally correct and long overdue. (Other languages always translated the original Hebrew and Greek words with “spirit.”)

Middle Eastern culture sheds significant light on the evolution of the meaning of these Hebrew and Latin words.

Wind And Power

The Hebrew word ruah, the Greek pneuma, and the Latin spiritus all basically mean “air in motion,” “breath ” or “wind.” The root meaning is power.

Apart from human and animal power, wind was the main observable energy source in the ancient world. Sometimes it was experienced as a cool, refreshing breeze (Gn 3:8), other times as a strong wind (Ex 10:13, 19), and sometimes it had hurricane or tornado force (1 Kgs 19:11).

Poetic texts in ancient literature frequently preserve archaic expressions. Thus, Ps 18:15 (also 2 Sam 22:16) describes the wind as God’s breath.

Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. (see also Ex 15:8; 2 Sam 22:16; Hos 13:15; Is 30:28; Job 4:9).
Thus, the primitive understanding of wind in the Bible is as the breath of a very powerful being.

Wind As Liquid

Also interesting is the ancient understanding of wind (and water and fire) as possessing what we now consider to be the properties of liquids. This explains why the ancients believed that the wind or spirit could be “poured out”:

And I will never again hide my face from them, when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel says the Lord God. (Ez 39:29; see also Is 32:15; Joel 3:1ff.).

Wind, God's Breath

Since human beings tend to perceive and understand God from a human perspective, our ancestors in the faith spoke anthropomorphically of God’s arm (Is 40:15), hand (Dt 2:15), face (Gn 33:10), mouth (Ps 33:6), and breath (Jb 32:9; 33:4), which they understood to be God’s vital power or spirit.

The Old Testament never presents the spirit of God as a person but rather as the power by which God acts in human life. This power is no more distinct or separate from God than a hand or mouth.

Even so, God’s power or breath acts outside of God and can be “sent” (Is 48:16), “placed” (Is 63:11), or “poured.”

The Holy Wind, Breath, Spirit

This background helps a modern believer to appreciate what the apostles and Jesus understood to be taking place in today’s gospel.

Jesus announces that he is sending the apostles just as the Father sent him. Then he “breathes” on the Eleven (Jn 20:22), imitating the moment of creation when God “blew” up the nostrils of Adam and brought him to life (Gn 2:7).

The risen Jesus re-creates these human beings as children of God.

“Receive a holy spirit” continues Jesus as he empowers the apostles to forgive and hold sins. The Greek word for “sin” here (hamartia) portrays it as an “evil power or force.” (Twenty-five of the thirty-one occurrences of this word in John are in the singular!)
Thus Jesus gives the apostles a holy power to fight against an evil power, a mighty force to do combat with an evil force.

John’s viewpoint challenges modern believers to look beyond “lists of sins” and “new sins” and to view sin as an evil force. The good news is that Christ gives the spirit (or force) to all Christians to do battle against this evil force.

 
Copyright © 1995 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, MN. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

Commentary by Augustine

As the Father sent me, so I send you: Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20:21)

The happy day has dawned for us on which Holy Church makes her first radiant appearance to the eyes of faith and sets the hearts of believers on fire. It is the day on which we celebrate the sending of the Holy Spirit by our Lord Jesus Christ, after he had risen from the dead and ascended into glory.

In the Gospel it is written: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water shall flow from his heart.” (Jn 7:37-38)

The Evangelist explains these words by adding: “Jesus said this about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive. For the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” (Jn 7:39)

Now, the glorification of Jesus took place when he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, but all was not yet accomplished. The Holy Spirit still had to be given; the one who made the promise had to send him.

This is precisely what occurred at Pentecost.

After being in the company of his disciples for the forty days following his resurrection, the Lord ascended into heaven, and on the fiftieth day—the day we are now celebrating—he sent the Holy Spirit. The account is given in Scripture:

Suddenly, a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and there appeared to them tongues like fire which separated and came to rest on each one of them.

And they began to speak in other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them power of utterance. (Acts 2:2)
That wind cleansed the disciples’ hearts, blowing away fleshly thoughts like so much chaff. The fire burnt up their unregenerate desires as if they were straw.

The tongues in which they spoke as the Holy Spirit filled them were a foreshadowing of the Church’s preaching of the Gospel in the tongues of all nations.

After the flood, in pride and defiance of the Lord, an impious generation erected a high tower and so brought about the division of the human race into many language groups, each with its own peculiar speech which was unintelligible to the rest of the world.

At Pentecost, by contrast, the humble piety of believers brought all these diverse languages into the unity of the Church. What discord had scattered, love was to gather together.

Like the limbs of a single body, the separated members of the human race would be restored to unity by being joined to Christ, their common head, and welded into the oneness of a holy body by the fire of love.

Anyone therefore who rejects the gift of peace and withdraws from the fellowship of this unity cuts himself off from the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So then, my fellow members of Christ’s body, you are the fruits of unity and the children of peace. Keep this day with joy, celebrate it in freedom of spirit, for in you is fulfilled what was foreshadowed in those days when the Holy Spirit came.

At that time whoever received the Holy Spirit spoke in many languages, individual though he was. Now in the same way unity itself speaks through all nations in every tongue.

If you yourselves are established in that unity you have the Holy Spirit among you, and nothing can separate you from the Church of Christ which speaks in the language of every nation of the world.

(Sermon 271:PL 38, 1245-1246)

 

Augustine (354-430) was born at Thagaste in Africa and received a Christian education, although he was not baptized until 387. In 391 he was ordained priest and in 395 he became coadjutor bishop to Valerius of Hippo, whom he succeeded in 396. Augustine’s theology was formulated in the course of his struggle with three heresies: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. His writings are voluminous and his influence on subsequent theology immense. He molded the thought of the Middle Ages down to the thirteenth century. Yet he was above all a pastor and a great spiritual writer.

Runaways Blessed And Missioned

Resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, plus mission: Luke spreads these events across fifty days in Luke-Acts, but the Fourth Gospel concentrates them into the scenario of a single day.

This is one of the places that frustrates the historical literalists who insist on finding answers to the question—exactly what happened, precisely when and where? The texts of Luke-Acts and John do not yield answers to that kind of questioning. What these texts do assert is that soon after the death and resurrection of Jesus, God, beginning in Jerusalem, presented Jesus live to a stunned and frightened group of Jesus’ disciples and proceeded to enable them by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus’ mission. 

The fact that our New Testament canon includes more than one way of telling about this demonstrates that the Church lives easily with the fact that there is almost always more than one way to speak of the Trinity’s action in Jesus. Our business is to attend carefully to what each diverse account contributes to our understanding of the essential mystery of God's action in the world.

John sets the scene in a startling way:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’

Clearly, whatever Jesus may have said about his imminent death and resurrection, the disciples were entirely unprepared for the shock of his execution. Their first concern after learning of their Master's death by Roman crucifixion, apparently, was for their own safety. If the Romans considered Jesus dangerous enough to kill, surely they, the followers, might be next. John’s phrase “for fear of the Jews” has, or ought to have, a strange sound for our ears. 

After all, they themselves were Jews, as was Jesus himself. The fact is, the Fourth Gospel frequently calls Jesus’ adversaries (especially the religious officials of his day) “the Jews.” One can only make sense of this nomenclature by postulating that, at the time of the writing of the Fourth Gospel, the Christian community was largely Gentile and “the Jews” was for them a way of naming their own opponents. Then it becomes a way to name Jesus’ opponents during his own earthly ministry.

Were John with us today, and given the sad history of Christian anti-Semitism, one suspects that he would delete the phrase “the Jews” as failing to communicate what he had intended.

Jesus’ first statement to these frightened (and no doubt guilt-ridden) runaways is, “Peace be with you.” Before they have a chance to express regret and ask for forgiveness, Jesus blesses them with shalom.

Then, to confirm his identity, Jesus shows them the wounds of his hands and side. He follows this with another blessing of shalom, this time linked with the mandate to carry on his mission: “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This Fourth Gospel has said much about Jesus as “sent” by the Father—to be light for the world, to heal, to be bread from heaven, to be good shepherds, to die in order to gather into one the scattered children of God, to be the New Temple, to be the culmination of divine presence in human history. Thus, to be sent by the Father as Jesus was sent is a thought that requires the use of a phrase from the vocabulary of today's youth: totally awesome.

If that way of describing the disciples' mission is breathtaking, it is also breath-giving. For Jesus implements the commission with a powerful and resonant gesture: he breathes upon them. An action that demands an explanation—breathing upon an entire group is surely an attention-getting gesture—this is another of Jesus’ prophetic symbolic actions, like his washing of feet at the Last Supper. The key to the gesture’s meaning is the only other scene in the Bible that even comes close, the creation of Adam (Gen 2:7), where God is pictured as breathing life into a clay model. Thus the post-Easter gift of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples comes in the form of a new creation entailing a mission that implements the very mission of the original Sent One.

Now it becomes clear why John, in his account of the healing of the man born blind, highlights the name of the pool of healing water (Siloam, meaning “The Sent One.” Cf John 9:1–11). All of us are born blind, until we wash in the waters of the Sent One, baptized into the life of faith. Like the healed blind man, our destiny is simply to witness with our lives how we have been healed of fear and blindness and empowered to continue Jesus' mission.

Copyright © 2001, Dennis Hamm, SJ All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

Pentecost originated as a final celebration of the ingathering of the grain harvest, which had begun at Passover. Later Judaism transformed it into a feast of salvation history celebrating the giving of the Law at Sinai and the establishment of Israel as God’s people.

All these associations were carried over into the Christian feast that marked the conclusion of the great fifty days. The grain harvest and the Law are replaced by the gift of the Spirit, and the constitution of the old Israelis replaced by the constitution of the new. The feast of the Law becomes the feast of the Spirit.

Reading I: Acts 2:1-11

There is no unanimity in the New Testament about a single outpouring of the Spirit. The gospel of the day, as we shall see, places the gift of the Spirit on Easter Sunday evening, while Acts 2 puts it on Pentecost.

Originally, perhaps, the gift of the Spirit was associated with each of the resurrection appearances, and perhaps the Pentecost story corresponds to the otherwise unknown appearance to the five hundred (1 Cor 15:6).

Historically, this appearance marks the foundation of the Church as a wider community than the original Twelve and the beginning of the kerygma. Perhaps, as a later part of this story suggests (the crowd’s suspicion that the apostles were full of new wine), the beginning of the kerygma was marked by an outburst of glossolalia such as Paul describes as taking place at Corinth (1 Cor 12-14).

This earlier concept of glossolalia has been overlaid with a new symbolism (whether due to Luke or to his tradition, we cannot say) in which Pentecost reverses the effect of Babel.

 
Responsorial Psalm: 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34

This is a hymn of praise to God for his works in creation. The dominant theology of the Spirit in the wisdom literature (“the Spirit of God fills the world”) stresses the work of the Spirit in the created order.

By contrast, the New Testament concentrates almost exclusively on the eschatological work of the Spirit. The pneumatology of the New Testament is conditioned by its Christology.

When the psalmist speaks of the “renewal” of creation through the Spirit, he is probably thinking of no more than the renewal of nature at springtime.

But in Christian use it can be reinterpreted to mean the eschatological renewal of creation, a renewal of which the Church is the first fruits.

 
Reading II: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7,12-13

Paul’s Corinthians were very keen on glossolalia, but its effect on the community was questionable. It led to divisiveness—those who spoke in tongues treated those who did not have this particular gift as second-class citizens.

In reply, Paul insists on several things here. First, to have the Spirit means to confess that Jesus is Lord.

Here Paul’s use of the name Jesus is especially nuanced. “Jesus” means the earthly Jesus, Christ crucified.

The Corinthians regarded the death of Christ as a mere episode of the past and put all their money on the purely spiritual, ethereal Christ. Paul recalls them to the centrality of the cross, pricking the bubble of their enthusiasm.

Second, the gifts of the Spirit take different forms, not just the one form of speaking in tongues. Each gift, however unspectacular, has to be used for the common good.

Third, the gift of the Spirit must not lead to individualism but to the building up of the corporate body of the community. The Church is one body through a common baptism and a common “drinking of one Spirit.”

The latter is probably a reference to the baptismal Eucharist rather than to a rite analogous to the later rite of confirmation (see “supernatural drink” in 1 Cor 10:4). Here is a further suggestion that 1 Corinthians was written for the paschal feast.

OR
Reading II: Romans 8:8-17

Chapter 8 forms the climax of the first, doctrinal part of Romans. In chapters 1-4 the Apostle had first prepared the way for, and then enunciated, his message of justification by grace alone through faith. Now, having dealt in chapters 5-7 with certain objections to that message, Paul is ready to move from justification to the new life in the Spirit that justification opens up for the believers.

1 Corithinans 8-11 can be found on the fifth Sunday of Lent in series A.

These verses speak of the Spirit’s indwelling the believers as a result of their baptism, making them participants in advance in the resurrection life and renewing their inner being daily in preparation for that resurrection life.

Romans 8:12-17 insist that baptism is only a beginning. Life in the Spirit is a life of freedom, but it is always a freedom struggling with constant temptation. For life in the Spirit means being under the lordship of Christ.

The baptized are not under obligation to the “flesh” (our old, unredeemed nature, not some higher nature); therefore they must mortify the deeds of the body (remember, this will include pride as well as sensuality). They must be “driven” by the Spirit.

At this point notice how Paul appropriates and sanctions the language of the charismatic enthusiasts, which he had probably picked up at Corinth. But, significantly, he gives it an ethical twist.

Not spiritual excitement and religious emotion but obedient Christian living is the supreme test of the Spirit’s presence and activity.

It is that, rather than overpowering emotion, that will entitle Christians to cry out in worship, “Abba, Father.” And still that acclamation is characterized by a “not yet.” Only at the final consummation will the believers really receive the “adoption” anticipated in baptism.

For, as an Anglican theologian of the last generation, Oliver Chase Quick, used to teach, sacraments are both symbolic and instrumental. Baptism is symbolic of our final salvation, and it is instrumental in inaugurating the life in the Spirit that is to be consummated in that final salvation.

As we noted above, the freedom of the Spirit is a struggling freedom. This means that baptism inaugurates a life characterized by an element of suffering.

Suffering is symbolized in baptism when the converts symbolically die with Christ; it is effectualized internally in mortification, and externally in persecution.

Then, at the final consummation, the suffering will lead to glory, when the believers will inherit the kingdom of God with Christ (Rom 8:17).

 
Gospel: John 20:19-23

We have already seen that John places the giving of the Spirit on Easter day, and we have discussed the historical and theological grounds for this.

Here, as in Acts, the Spirit empowers the Church for its mission (“even so I send you”). The mission is defined here, however, not as kerygma but as the forgiving and retaining of sins.

The traditional Catholic and High Anglican interpretation of this has seen it as a reference to the sacrament of penance, but this is probably an anachronism as far as the evangelist is concerned.

In the New Testament, forgiveness of sins is baptismal language (see Lk 24:47), and what we have here is the Johannine version of the tradition, which includes in the appearance stories the command to baptize.

Our text speaks of the giving or withholding of baptism consequent upon faith or unbelief at hearing the gospel message. Only derivatively and insofar as the sacrament of absolution is a renewal of the baptismal status can this text be stretched to cover the traditional interpretation.

If our new interpretation be sustained, it is significant that both the second reading and the gospel speak of baptism, for in patristic times Pentecost was the day when those who for some reason had missed their baptism at Easter were baptized.

Baptism was not continually administered at any time of the year because its corporate significance was paramount.

OR
Gospel: John 14:15-16, 23b-26

We see here the same kind of spiral thought that characterizes the farewell discourse throughout and of which we spoke in our comments on last Sunday’s gospel. The points made are:

1. Love of Christ means obedience to his commandments.

2. The promise of the Paraclete (RSV: “Counselor”) sent by the Father in response to the prayer of the Son.

3. The Spirit, whom the world cannot receive, will dwell in the community.

4. The coming of the Spirit is equivalent to the return of the Son and almost completely fulfills the primitive expectation of the parousia.

5. The world will no longer see the Christ, but the community will (a) see him, (b) live because he lives, (c) know the mutual indwelling of Christ with the Father and of Christ with the community.

6. This indwelling is a relationship of mutual love that includes obedience to Christ’s commandments.
It will again be noted how point 6 brings us full circle to where we were at point 1. Yet, the spiral leads to an enrichment of understanding.

The Christian life is not an external observance of Christ’s commandments but an intense relationship of the community to the three Persons of the Trinity, each with a specific role to play in this relationship.

The Spirit conveys the presence of the Son, who reveals the Father.

But this intense personal relationship is not dissolved into mere emotion; it is concretely and soberly manifested in a life of obedience to Christ’s commandments.

The departure of Jesus does not mean that he is now absent. It means his ever-renewed presence through the coming of the Spirit to the community. That is the Easter message of this Gospel reading.

Commentary on John 14:23-29

In the Easter season we tend to read the farewell discourses, with their promise of the coming of the Paraclete (RSV: “Counselor”), as discourses given by the risen and not yet ascended Lord during the forty days in preparation for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

For the evangelist, they are discourses of the earthly Jesus, placed in the context of the Last Supper. They look through and beyond the death of Jesus to his glorification, which releases the gift of the Spirit. Thus, in the early Church the whole of the fifty days included the celebration of the gift of the Spirit, not just the day of Pentecost.

We are here listening to a promise fulfilled at Easter. In the Fourth Gospel the risen Christ conveys the gift of the Spirit to his disciples on Easter Sunday evening (see the Gospel of Pentecost Sunday). The Spirit is, as in Paul’s letters, the gift of the risen Christ.

In the gift of the Spirit, the risen Christ and the Father come and make their home with the disciples.

The function of the Spirit is to “teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” It is not the work of the Spirit to convey ever new revelations, but to unfold in ever new understanding, interpretation, and application the once-for-all revelation of Jesus Christ (“all that I have said to you”).

“His work is more than a reminiscence of the ipsissima verba of the Son of God; it is a living representation of all that he had spoken to his disciples, a creative exploitation of the gospel” (EC Hoskyns).

This ongoing work of the Spirit gives the disciples peace and takes away their fear, because the Spirit is always there as their helper who stands by them in persecution and martyrdom.

• For the Church: that we may faithfully confess Jesus as Lord and be guided by the Holy Spirit to continue the mission of Christ in our time
• For fuller utilization of the Gifts of the Spirit: that God will help us recognize and put into practice all the gifts which we have been give so that the Body of Christ may be strong in serving the reign of God
• For a new Pentecost: that God will pour out the Spirit in a new and abundant way on the Church, on humanity, and all of creation
• For a Spirit of unity: that God will destroy all the divisions that separate the human family and restore our ability to work together against disease, famine, and injustice
• For a Spirit of love: that we may fulfill Christ’s command to love one another by placing our time, energy, and gifts at the service of others and helping them to carry their daily burdens
• For a Spirit of truth: that we may open our minds and hearts to all the ways that truth is manifest particularly in the scriptures, tradition, the wisdom of those who have gone before us, and in the humanities and the sciences
• For a Spirit of hope: that all who are overwhelmed by life may find new reasons to live this day and be gifted with a vision of all that could be tomorrow
• For a Spirit of justice in the world: that the needy, the exploited, the abused, and the victims of war may know freedom, relief from oppression, and be recognized as daughters and sons of God
• For the Spirit of healing: that God will touch all who are ill, strengthen their minds, bodies, and spirits, and restore them to wholeness
• For a Spirit of forgiveness: that God will break the bonds of resentment and vengeance that freeze our hearts and free us to forgive as we have been forgiven by God
• For a Spirit of reverence: that all hearts may recognize God as creator and work to protect and preserve God’s gift of creation, our common home
• For the Spirit of life: that God will be merciful and give eternal life to all who have died or who are approaching death
• For a Spirit of wisdom for all government and business leaders: that they will develop policies that both protect society from harm and promote the well-being of everyone
• For a Spirit of Peace: that God will dissolve the hatred in human hearts, free the earth from nuclear weapons, and establish a season of peace throughout the world
• [USA] For the gift of eternal life: that God will welcome all who have died, particularly those who have served our nation, into everlasting life

The “Story” of the Trinity

In order to know about the Trinity, we can think back to the great story that we have been celebrating for many weeks. Let us tell it one more time.

God the Father invited people on earth to a lasting and loving relationship with him and with each other. “I want to be your God and I want you to be my people. My love for you is tender and precious. Won’t you love me in return?”

People understood and entered into the agreement. Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Elisha, Elijah, just to begin the list. But we humans keep choosing things closer to hand: money and honors—barns full of them—which can also bear a refusal of God’s love.

How would God react to such refusal?

My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me. For your sake I scourged your captors and their first-born sons, but you brought your scourges down on me! My people, answer me! [from Good Friday, The Reproaches]

So, eventually God tried a new and quite brilliant way. To paraphrase, “I will show them what true love looks like. Since I am all love and nothing but love, I will go out to them completely, as love does. I will become one of them. I will live humanity to its depths, and they will see Love in its full truth.”

So God was born as a human called Jesus, who told the people to love God above all things and their neighbors as themselves. He was the very heart of God-made-flesh. One with the Father but different as well.

And so the world knew about two persons in one God.

Many human beings had been hurt and betrayed, forced to live with their own mixed-up motives, and selfishness and greed. Having to live with the faults of others. Love can get lost in such a world.

So God the Son plunged into this ocean of cruelty and loss, diving all the way down to death. This was a display of the most profound insides of God: give everything, receive everything.

So far, the disciples knew two parts of God, Jesus and his Abba; and they were not very sure about these. So before he left, Christ said the following to them (again paraphrasing):

If you know me, you know the Father. He is in me fully, and after I go back I will make a home in you by sending the Holy Spirit. It will comfort you, and will be the very love that I and the Father have for each other and for you. That way I will be with you until the end of time!

He was talking about the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. which snuggles close to our souls if we let it. If we let it. The Holy Spirit is like a blanket in cold winter. It is the love between Father and Son. So real that it is the third person of the Trinity.

So there are three parts to God. Ok, not parts but ... well, go figure.

But how could God interact with us in these three very different ways? By being “plural” (in a sense), that is, by being what believers have called three “persons.”

Alright, how can three persons in God be one? By not letting the number three be a divider but a plus sign. All three, in a great dynamic of love; come so close that they are One God.

Let us simply let God the Trinity touch us!

The Richness of the Mystery of God

G.K. Chesterton once said that one of the reasons he believed in Christianity was because of its belief in the trinity. If Christianity had been made up by human persons, it would not have at its very center a concept that is impossible to grasp or explain: the idea that God exists as one but within in three persons.

How do we understand the trinity? We don't! God, by definition, is ineffable, beyond conceptualization, beyond imagination, beyond language. The Christian belief that God is a trinity helps underscore how rich the mystery of God is and how our experience of God is always richer than our concepts and language about God.

This is already evident in the history of religion. From the very beginning, humans have always had an experience of God and have worshipped God. However, from the very beginning too, humans have also had the sense that God is too rich and too-beyond any one set of categories to be captured in any human conception.

Hence most ancient peoples were polytheistic. They believed in many gods and goddesses. They experienced divine energy and the need to celebrate divine energy in many different areas of their lives and they had gods and goddesses to accommodate that. Thus they had gods and goddesses for every longing and every circumstance—from war, through growing crops, through sex, through understanding why your father wouldn't bless you—there was a god or goddess to whom you could turn.

Sometimes they believed in one supreme god who ultimately ruled over lesser gods and goddesses, but they sensed that divine energy was too rich a reality to be contained in a single being. They believed too that sometimes the gods were at war with each other. As well, their gods and goddesses often times messed around within human lives, making special deals with humans, having affairs with them, and sometimes even having children with them.

Many of the most powerful myths ever told arose out of the experience of God's overwhelming richness and the ancient peoples’ incapacity to conceptualize God and God's activity in any singular way. Whatever else might be said about polytheism and ancient myths about the gods and goddesses, still ancient religious practices and the incredible canon of mythology that these produced speak of how rich, untamed, and beyond simplistic imagination and language is the human experience of God. So the ancients believed that their experience pointed to the existence of many deities.

And then a massive shift took place: Judaism, soon followed by Christianity and Islam, introduced the strong, clear, doctrinaire idea that there is only one God. Now all divine power and energy was seen as coming from a single source, monotheism, YHWH, the Father of Jesus, Allah. There were no other gods or goddesses.

But from the time of Jesus' resurrection onwards, Christians began to struggle with simple monotheism. They believed that there is still only one God, but their experience of God demanded that they believe that this God was somehow “three.” Stated simply, when Jesus rose from the dead Christians immediately began to attribute divinity to him, yet without identifying him as God the Father. Jesus was understood to be God, but somehow different from God the Father. Moreover, inside their experience, they sensed still a third divine energy which they couldn't fully identify with either Jesus or God the Father.

The Holy Spirit.

This experience left them in a curious and sometimes perplexed state: they were monotheists, God alone was God. Yet, Jesus too was God, and so was the Holy Spirit. Their experience of grace and God’s action in the world was at odds with their simplistic conception of monotheism. God was one and yet God was somehow three.

How to fit this together? It took Christianity three hundred years to finally arrive at a formula that somehow honored the richness of the Christian experience of God. The Council of Nicaea in 325 gave us the creedal formula we profess today: there is one God in three persons (except they wrote that formula in Greek and the words there state literally that God is one substance in three subsistent relations).

This formula isn't meant to give us perfect clarity. No formula can ever capture the reality of God because God is too rich to ever be captured even half adequately, in imagination, thought, and word. The God that atheism rejects is precisely a conceptualized God, a God captured in a picture. In the end, atheism is less faithful to human experience than was polytheism which more rightly sensed deity, gods and goddesses, hidden under every rock.

To what does this call us?

To humility. All of us, believers and atheists, need to be more humble in our language about God. The idea of God needs to stretch, not shrink, the human imagination. Our actual experience of God, just as for ancient polytheism, is forever eating away at all simplistic conceptions of God.

Thank God, for the complexity of the doctrine of the Trinity!

The God of Revelation
One of the foundational truths of our faith is the “one God in three Persons: Father all-powerful, Christ Lord and Savior, Spirit of love.” We can reason our way into knowledge of the existence of God, but we would never know of God as Trinity if it were not revealed to us.

There is much else about God that has been revealed: about God as giver of life, land, and food; about God as liberator and protector; about the God of peace and the God of covenant love; about the suffering God, the God of the poor; about the God made flesh, the God with us.

None of this comes from reason, although it does not contradict reason. Most of what we know about God we know because God has revealed it to us.

On this Trinity Sunday, it would be good to reflect on the God of our faith and worship. Do we honor the God of revelation, or do we honor a god of our own making? Do we honor the vengeful god of a merciless world, or do we honor “the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity”?

In his goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man has access to the Father in the Holy Spirit and comes to share in the divine nature. Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of his love speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that he may invite and take them into fellowship with himself.

Vatican II, Constitution on Divine Revelation, 1965:2

First Reading
Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9

1. God has shown himself to us through the ages, through Jesus. Besides his name, what did God reveal about himself to Moses on Mount Sinai? What was Moses’ response to this revelation? How do you respond when God speaks to you?

2. This reading says that God forgives us when we are stiff-necked (haughty and stubborn). Do you forgive others when they have that malady? What could happen to family squabbles, disputes at work, wars between countries, racial bias, if forgiveness is introduced into the discussion/argument? How do we ask forgiveness of the planet for the global warming we have created?

Second Reading
2 Corinthians 13:11-13

1. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” God’s nature is love, and he has invited us to come along in his company. What are the implications for our communities?

2. We can all agree with and/or encourage each other in order to live in peace. How important is this to you? Do you encourage others? Is Paul talking about agreeing on everything or on basic truths?

Gospel
John 3:16-18

1.What action of the Father tells you he “ … so loved the world”? What did the Son do? What is your response to God’s immense love for the world and for you personally?

2. According to Pope Francis, the Trinity is Love and at the service of the world which he wishes to save and re-create. What is our job? Could it be to welcome the One who loves us? Should we let ourselves be “moved” by good ideas and inspirations to help re-create what is broken in creation?

God the Father loves the world so much that, in order to save it, He gives what is most precious to him: his only-begotten Son, who gives his life for humanity, rises again, returns to the Father and together with him sends the Holy Spirit.

Dear brothers and sisters, today’s Feast Day invites us to let ourselves once again be fascinated by the beauty of God; beauty, goodness and inexhaustible truth. But also beauty, goodness, and humble and close truth, which became flesh in order to enter our life, our history, my history, the history of each one of us, so that every man and woman may encounter it and have eternal life. And this is faith: to welcome God-Love; to welcome this God-Love who gives himself in Christ, who moves us in the Holy Spirit; to let ourselves be encountered by him and to trust in him. This is Christian life. To love, to encounter God, to seek God; and he seeks us first; he encounters us first.

Pope Francis Angelus for Trinity Sunday 2020

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: God so loved, gave his only Son, have eternal life, Whoever believes

To the point: God’s desire is that we share in divine Life eternally. To this end, God is very near—near to Moses on Mount Sinai (first reading) and near to us in the divine Son who came to dwell among us. Even more: for those who believe, our triune God dwells within us by grace and communion, drawing us into the inner Life of the Trinity. The unceasing Life of the Trinity is this: to love us into eternal Life. It is God’s gracious gift, and ours to choose.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the Second Reading: The Second Reading describes the life of those who choose to believe in the triune God’s gift of divine Presence: “rejoice,” “mend your ways,” “encourage one another,” “agree with one another,” “live in peace,” “greet one another with a holy kiss.”
… to experience: Contemporary society values individualism, personal rights, and self-gratification. This solemnity invites us to live not for ourselves but in communion with one another as does the Holy Trinity.

 

Copyright 2014 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota.
All rights reserved.
Used by permission from Liturgical Press, St. Johns Abbey, P.O. Box 7500 Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500 
 

In the Name of the Father

“Grace, love, and fellowship.” (2 Corinthians 13:11)
June is traditionally the month to honor the Holy Trinity. It is also, in the United States, the month when fathers are honored. That’s an opportune, if delicate, congruence.

I have friends, some men but especially women, who have found it difficult to pray to God as father. The reasons range from the psychological burden of a tyrannical parent to the theological reservation that fatherhood excludes the feminine-maternal in God and suggests the possibility that God is some one-sided initiator, a non-needer who started it all and then exited, indifferent to the drama.

To be sure, there is maternity in God. John Paul I, in his short papacy reminded us that God is not only a father to us, but a mother as well. No doubt he was inspired by passages from the prophets and psalms or feminine references to the Spirit and Wisdom.

But what can be learned, no matter what our culture or history, from the fact that Jesus called God “Father” and that Christians have for centuries praised God in hymn and creed as Father, Son, and Spirit in Trinity?

Despite what the word “God” has meant to various times and cultures—remote creator, unfeeling authority, arbitrary ruler, or a clan of super-beings—in Christianity God is a community of persons.

Mutuality is the source of life. Relationship grounds being. There is otherness from the start.

The doctrine of the Trinity affirms God as loving and knowing, giving and receiving. We profess that God could not be God without the “other” (the Son) and the eternal bond of their relationship (the Spirit).

While some may think that the doctrine of the Trinity is negotiable, it is actually central to our faith. If we lose it, we lose all we are. Moses’ personal God, “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, rich in kindness and fidelity,” emerges in St. Paul as the interpersonal Trinity that models true human relationship. Thus Paul prays: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Spirit be with you all.”

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only son to save the world.” Our God, in love for us, offers the dearest—the Son—to be one with us, as one in Trinity. Jesus reveals something not only about God, but about fatherhood. It is an intimate, self-giving relationship.

I wonder if the “Father” of the Trinity is more strategic for humanity than it is for the Trinity? Our problem may not lie so much in what we assign to God as in what many people associate with failed fatherhood.

In our own time we hear of uncaring and abusing fathers, “dead-beat, absent dads,” and “fatherless kids.” The lost father is lost relationship, broken promise, torn covenant, lost Trinity. The disappearance of fatherhood is the disappearance of intimacy.

But Jesus’ Father, nurturing and abiding, comforting and faithful, is radically different, and it would be most unfortunate if we were to ignore his revelation. We desperately need this father, strangely so like a mother.

When parenthood is true, its grace is as deep as it is divine. We are held in being with the other—spouse, father, and mother. How like the Trinity our covenants can be.

Copyright © 1997 by John F. Kavanaugh. All rights reserved. Used by permission from Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545-0308

The World

Bumper stickers and personalized license plates inscribed “John 3:16” are a common sight on highways across the United States. One can only wonder if the contemporary Christian who proudly broadcasts this heart-warming message (“For God so loved the world ... ”) realizes that it reflects only one phase in the life, loves, and hates of the first-century Johannine community.

John’s Gospel expresses both a positive and negative attitude toward the “world.” The positive attitude is clear in today’s passage and elsewhere in the Gospel (Jn 1:29; Jn 4:42; Jn 6:33, 51; Jn 10:36; Jn 12:47; Jn 17:21). Jesus is actually glad to “come into the world” (Jn 6:32; Jn 11:27). He is the “light of this world” (Jn 8:12; Jn 9:5; Jn 12:46) who willingly became human and pitched his tent among us (Jn 1:14).

The negative attitude is actually more common. The world refused to receive Jesus (Jn 1:9-10) and is basically at odds with him (Jn 16:20; Jn 17:14, 16; Jn 18:36) and his Spirit (Jn 14:17; Jn 16:8-11). In fact, the world positively hates Jesus and his followers (Jn 7:7; Jn 15:18-19; Jn 16:20).

In response, Jesus determines to judge the world (Jn 9:39; Jn 12:31) because the sons of darkness live in it (Jn 12:35-36). He prosecutes the world as its judge (Jn 8:21-29). Later, the Paraclete will carry on the formal trial and convict the world of false righteousness, false judgment, and submission to the devil (Jn 16:8-11).

How are we to understand the mixture of these positive and negative attitudes and the coexistence of strong love and deep-rooted hatred in John’s community long after Jesus departed this world? From a historical perspective, scholars acknowledge that John’s community went through stages of development.

In its earliest stage (mid 50s), this community saw the world as a good place but in need of reform. It needed and deserved evangelization. For the most part, Mediterranean Judean believers in Jesus attracted other Mediterranean Judeans to believe in Jesus.

At a slightly later stage (late 80s), some Judean audiences began to turn a deaf ear to the preaching and soon took measures to eject fellow believers in Jesus from the synagogues. This shocking experience stimulated the development of the negative attitude toward the “world.”

In John’s Gospel, chapters 5 to 12 indicate that the resistant and unbelieving “world” involves “some hostile and disbelieving Judeans.” But chapters 14 to 17 reflect the period after the break between early Christians and the synagogue. At the same time, some of the Gentiles who joined the community began to disbelieve its claims. They were also included in this negative perception of “the world.”

The Ways of an Antisocial Group

A cultural perspective sheds even additional light on our Johannine ancestors in the faith. The shock of “excommunication” transformed John’s community into an “antisocial group.” This technical term describes a group that sets itself up in a society as a conscious alternative to the larger society.

Social scientists observe that this posture is always transitional (even if the transition takes a couple of hundred years). This group’s use of the word “the world” (seventy-nine times in John compared to nine times in Matthew and three times each in Luke and Mark) is a clear indicator of the “us” versus “them” mentality.

Such peculiar use of language characterizes all antisocial groups. This strategy sharply separates the group from larger society but binds the group members into tight-knit relationships among themselves and with their founder. John uses a wide variety of synonyms to encourage and express this bonding: believing in Jesus; following him; abiding in him; loving him; keeping his word; etc.

As the Johannine scholar Raymond Brown noted, such activity can persuade believers to retreat from “the world” into their warm cocoon of life or inspire them to go forth and evangelize “the world.” He criticizes the former as a “fortress mentality” but warns that the latter is a “naive” view. All believers must come to grips with disagreement and rejection and devise constructive rather than self-defeating responses to both.

 

Copyright © 1995 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, MN. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

Commentary by Gregory Nazianzen
God sent his Son to save the world through him. (John 3:17)

To speak of the Godhead is, I know, like crossing the ocean on a raft, or like flying to the stars with wings of narrow span. Even heavenly beings are unable to speak of God’s decrees or of his government of the world.

But enlighten my mind and loosen my tongue, Spirit of God, and I will sound aloud the trumpet of truth, so that all who are united to God may rejoice with their whole heart.

There is one eternal God, uncaused and uncircumscribed by any being existing before him or yet to be. He is infinite, and all time is in his hands. He is the mighty Father of one mighty and noble Son. In no way does the birth of this Son resemble human birth, for God is spirit.

The Word of God is another divine Person, but not another Godhead. He is the living seal of the Father, the only son of the only God. He is equal to the Father, so that although the Father always remains wholly the Father, the Son is the creator and ruler of the world and is the Father’s power and wisdom.

Let us praise the Son first of all, venerating the blood that expiated our sins. He lost nothing of his divinity when he saved me, when like a good physician he stooped to my festering wounds.

He was a mortal man, but he was also God. He was of the race of David, but Adam’s creator. He who has no body clothed himself with flesh. He had a mother, but she was a virgin.

He who is without bounds bound himself with the cords of our humanity.

He was victim and high priest—yet he was God. He offered up his blood and cleansed the whole world. He was lifted up on the cross, but it was sin that was nailed to it. He became as one among the dead, but he rose from the dead, raising to life also many who had died before him. 

On the one hand, there was the poverty of his humanity; on the other, the riches of his divinity. Do not let what is human in the Son permit you wrongfully to detract from what is divine. For the sake of the divine, hold in the greatest honor the humanity which the immortal Son took upon himself for love of you.

My soul, why do you hold back? Sing praise to the Holy Spirit as well, lest your words tear asunder what is not separated by nature. Let us tremble before the great Spirit who also is God, through whom we have come to know God, who transforms us into God.

He is the omnipotent bestower of diverse gifts and the giver of life both in heaven and on earth. He is the divine strength, proceeding from the Father and subject to no power. He is not the Son, for there is only one Son, but he shares equally in the glory of the Godhead.

In the one God are three pulsations that move the world. Through them I became a new and different person when I came out of the font, where my death was buried, into the light—a man restored to life from the dead. If God cleansed me so completely, then I must worship him with my whole being.

Poem 1-3: PG 37, 397-411

Gregory Nazianzen (329-389) was one of the three great Cappadocian Fathers. Desiring a retired, contemplative life, he became a monk, but in about 362 his father, the bishop of Nazianzus, ordained him priest against his will, and ten years later he was raised to the episcopate by his friend Saint Basil.

In 379 Gregory was called to Constantinople, where his preaching helped to restore the Nicene faith and led to its final acceptance by the Council of Constantinople in 381. To the “Five Theological Orations” preached at Constantinople Gregory owes his title, “The Theologian.”

 

Copyright © 1992, New City Press.
All Rights Reserved.

Living Trinity

For many, approaching Trinity Sunday as the Sunday after Pentecost is both logical and daunting.

It is the logical “next step” after the celebration of Pentecost: having moved through Lent and Easter, a movement climaxing with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it makes sense that we should step back and acknowledge the unity of Father, Son and Spirit that lies behind the sacred history that the Liturgical Year has just unfolded.

But such a perspective is also daunting: like the incarnation, the Trinity is precisely one of those parts of our faith that escapes reason's grasp. How to pray and preach about so full a mystery in a single celebration? As always, the selections from Scripture give us points of entry that can freshen mind and imagination as we revisit this part of the heart of our faith.

The Gospel reading is possibly the most familiar chapter-and-verse citation in the world. In North America at least, we meet “John 3:16” on billboards, bumper stickers, and even on placards appearing at major sports events broadcast on national television. It is easy to understand why. “For 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”—as a one-liner, this is a powerful summation of the Gospel. Yet, dominant as it is, the single verse requires its full context to be fully understood. John 3:16 is very much part of the fabric of the Fourth Gospel. Let us restore that verse to its setting and see how such a setting helps us hear those words more clearly.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son … ”

This is not a word spoken on the way to the cross. The import of these simple words describing the action of God—“loved” and “gave”—surely derive from the post-Easter perspective that dominates the language of the Fourth Gospel. The Father “gave” the Son not only in the incarnation but also in the giving over to death by crucifixion.

Commentators have observed that the language of a father giving an only son resonates with the Jewish memory of Abraham's readiness to give his only son in sacrifice. It also catches the divine self-emptying celebrated in the hymn that Paul quotes in the second chapter of his letter to the Philippians:

though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself ... Phil 2:6-7.
As in John's prologue, this hymn addresses the whole movement of divine self-revelation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

“ ... so that everyone who believes in him ... might have eternal life.” Eternal life [zoen ionion] means more than our spontaneous contemporary understanding of these words suggests. In John's vocabulary, “eternal life” is not simply unending life after death. It means literally “the eon life”—or the life of the “age to come” already begun. It is precisely the new “born-again” or “born-from-above” life that Jesus had just been discussing with Nicodemus earlier in this third chapter of John. To have eternal life is to enter or see the kingdom of God by being born of “water and Spirit” (Jn 3:4-5).

The rest of the Gospel of John leads us to see that to believe in the Son is to accept Jesus as sent by the Father to show who God is and demonstrate what life with God is all about—laying down our lives for one another as Jesus lay down his life for us. And the gift of the Spirit of God is what enables us to live that “eternal life” here and now. Eternal life is the baptized person's participation in the life of the Trinity, both before and after our biological death.

The First Reading, from Exodus 34—with its precious description of the Lord God as “slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity”—is another helpful starting point for reflection on Trinity. John the Evangelist alludes to those very words in his prologue: “while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17). “Grace and truth” echoes “kindness and fidelity”; both phrases reflect the same Hebrew expression describing God's covenant love in Exodus 34:6. John speaks here of one gift replacing another. First God gave the gift of the law through Moses, but the fullness of covenant love was finally given through the incarnation of the eternal Son as Jesus of Nazareth.

Finally, Paul's blessing of the Corinthians reminds us that the normal peace and harmony of Christian community is a matter of collaboration with the Trinity: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be with you all!”

 

Copyright © 2001, Dennis Hamm, SJ All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

The doctrine of the Trinity, as distinct from triadic formulas and the triadic structure of the biblical experience of God, is implicit rather than explicit in Scripture.

What is true of the New Testament, namely, that the Spirit brings believers to faith in Jesus as the one in whom God has acted, is also true, mutatis mutandis, of the Old Testament. We see this in the theophany that is the subject of today’s first reading.

Reading I: Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9

The first paragraph speaks of the theophany itself (Yhwh’s proclamation of his name), while the second paragraph relates Moses’ response to this theophany.

Later Judaism would have boggled somewhat at the suggestion that Yhwh himself “descended” and “passed before [Moses]” in making this proclamation. Such crudely anthropomorphic ideas seemed inconsistent with Yhwh’s transcendence.

Accordingly, various intermediaries were proposed as the agencies of divine revelation—angels, the memra (word) or the Logos, the wisdom or the Spirit of Yhwh. These intermediaries paved the way for the Christian understanding of the Incarnation and the Trinity.

In revelation—whether the revelation of Sinai or the revelation in the Christ event—the transcendent Deity goes forth in self-communication out of the depths of the Deity’s own being. The Deity also creates the response to this self-revelation.

This is the triadic pattern of events that we find in the story of the theophany on Mount Sinai: (1) Yhwh in Yhwh’s own essential being; (2) Yhwh going out of himself in self-communication; (3) Yhwh creating within the heart of Moses the response to this self-communication.

This triadic pattern corresponds to the New Testament formulation of God as Father, Son, and Spirit. It is important for the Christian understanding of the Old Testament that Yhwh is not to be equated with the First Person of the Trinity in Christian doctrine but with all three Persons. Or, in the words of the so-called Athanasian Creed (note that Yhwh = Lord!):

The Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet there are not three Lords but one Lord.
 
Responsorial Psalm: Daniel 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56

This canticle, taken from the deuterocanonical portions of the Book of Daniel (and familiar to Episcopalians as the Benedictus es) is part of the Song of the Three Young Men, put into the mouths of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (= Ananias, Azarias, and Misael) as they moved unscathed through Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace.

The second half of the song is the Benedicite, omnia opera, also familiar as a canticle. It survives only in Greek, and it is impossible to say for certain whether it is of Hebrew or Aramaic origin. In any case, both parts of the song are impregnated with the liturgical language of the Old Testament psalms.

The first stanza picks up the theme of the “name of God” from the first reading. As we sing this song today, we must remember that for us that name is the threefold name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This could be brought out by adding as a final couplet:

Blessed art thou, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
to be praised and highly exalted for ever.
 
Reading II: 2 Corinthians 13:11 to 13

The Pauline letters were written to be read out loud at the Christian assembly. Here, as at the end of 1 Corinthians, this intention becomes perfectly clear—the conclusion of the letter leads into the celebration of the Eucharist.

Hence the exhortation to be at peace with one another and to express this by exchanging the “holy kiss” (which, in earlier times, as in some recent revisions of the liturgy, preceded the offertory instead of following the canon).

The triadic benediction would therefore fall naturally into place as the introduction to the eucharistic prayer (like the salutation before the Sursum corda in later times).

There are several places in Paul’s letters where a triadic understanding of Christian experience is presupposed (for example, 1 Cor 12:4 to 6), but only here does Paul deliberately use a triadic formula.

Elsewhere (Anglican Theological Review, April 1961) I suggested that this triadic formula has its roots in the so-called apocalyptic trinity. Jewish apocalyptic writings sometimes speak of God, the Son of Man, and the angels, and this formula is carried into Christian usage as the Father, the Son (of man), and the angels (see Mk 13:32).

Note, however, that the Pauline formula is not a bald dogmatic statement but keeps close to the Christian experience: the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit. It speaks of the experience of grace, love, and fellowship.

The order—Son, Father, Spirit—is striking and again reflects the order of Christian experience.

It is in Jesus Christ and his gracious life and death that we encounter the love of God, and this encounter leads to our incorporation into the redeemed community, in which we participate in the common life of the Spirit.

 
Gospel: John 3:16 to 18

This lesson was traditionally associated with the Pentecost season, having been used (including verses 19-25) in the old Lectionaries on Monday in Whitsun Week.

It is a welcome reform to have this important pericope read on a Sunday at least once every three years, for 3:16 is a succinct summary of the whole Gospel in characteristic Johannine idiom.

Some may feel that its use on Trinity Sunday implies a “binitarian” rather than a Trinitarian conception, for it mentions only the Father and the Son. A similar objection could have been raised against its traditional use on Whit Monday.

But it is impossible to dissociate the gift of eternal life, which is the outcome of the sending of the Son, from the Spirit, who is the Giver of life.

As a concluding comment on this passage, we cite some words from an essay on the liturgical sermon written by Canon M.R. Newbolt in the influential volume of Anglican essays called The Parish Communion (1937):

On a spring evening, as I passed through the Abbey gate at Chester, a street evangelist was declaiming his gospel in stentorian tones. “God so loved the world that he gave us His Son, His only Son. That is what I have to say to you people of Chester. I do not know what you are going to do about it. God gave His Son! Eternal life!”—words hammered by the speaker into his audience with rhythmic, persistent repetition.

“Why,” I thought, “can we not get this kind of simple gospel appeal inside the Cathedral? Must this message be given in the street, with an implied challenge to the official Church, outside the House of God, under its very walls?”

Two days afterwards, while we were singing the solemn eucharist in the choir on Whit Monday, the nave of the Cathedral was packed with tourists, casual sight-seers, taking in the Cathedral as part of their day’s outing. It happened that I remembered the street preacher; his words were still running in my head, but I had forgotten the opening of the Gospel for the day.

It came with a shock of surprise when the Deacon from the chancel steps intoned “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.” These very words, surrounded by what may have been unusual pageantry of lights and coloured vestments, may well have rung in the ears of some excursionist from the Potteries on that very Bank Holiday, as the street missioner’s had done in mine.

Copyright © 1984 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321