Author: DVO

Sr. Chris Koellhoffer writes that to confirm something is to verify it as being true or accurate. It means putting any doubts about a particular matter to rest. Today’s feast of the Visitation shows three ways God confirmed Mary’s calling to her. First, the Visitation tells us how Mary and Elizabeth—both made pregnant miraculously—offered an emotional confirmation to each other. You can imagine these two women talking excitedly about all that has happened to them: one who conceived despite her old age and the other who conceived without human intervention. They share their joys, concerns, and hopes for their children. Second, the Visitation describes a physical confirmation when the baby John leaped into his mother’s womb. Luke called this a leap of joy, indicating that it went far beyond a baby’s normal kicking. That leap confirmed for Mary how special her baby was. Third, the Visitation gave Mary a prophetic confirmation. Elizabeth called Mary “the mother of my Lord,” confirming that Mary’s child was more than just an ordinary baby. Luke also tells us that Elizabeth said these words because she was “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This confirmation shows you the Lord wants to confirm that he is working wonders in you, even if it doesn’t feel like it. He wants to let you know that he is pleased with you and is happy to keep working with you, doing whatever it takes to build up your faith.  

Professor Jessica Coblentz explains that, like many biblical adages, “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first, is often excised from its context and rehearsed by Christians as a comforting promise. However, when we encounter the familiar phrase within the context of this exchange between Peter and Jesus, its message is quite unsettling. With words of exhaustion and perhaps frustration, Peter reminds Jesus of all he has surrendered for discipleship. Jesus affirms his followers’ sacrifice and promises better things now and a glorious life to come. Yet, accompanying this good news is a significant caveat. Not only must Peter continue to live with the discomforts of social and economic insecurity, but he must also endure ‘persecutions’ he cannot yet fathom. In Jesus’ clear-eyed account of discipleship, the difficulties and comforts of Christian life are bound up together. Our hope for the life to come does not protect us from challenges but spurs us to love our enemies. It does not shield us from God’s difficult calling but encourages us to live humbly and resist what hinders the reign of God today.” This is the call and reality that all of Christ’s disciples face. The Lord simply asks us to give him our all as he gave his all for us. 

Today we celebrate the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. Scripture presents some very clear aspects of Mary and some that have confused readers. On this first day after celebrating Pentecost, we are retaken to the upper room where the disciples have gathered along with “some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” Here we see Mary in her fidelity to her son’s mission, but some may ask, “Jesus had brothers?” No, the term brothers refer to extended family members and others close to Mary. We have also seen confusion about the relationship between Mary and Jesus. Some will quote the scripture verse where a child says to him, “Your mother is here, trying to see you,” and he answers, “Who is my mother?” Then, pointing to the people sitting around him, he says, “Those who hear the word of God and keep it are mother and brother and sister to me.” Is Jesus distancing himself from his mother here? No. He’s pointing out the fundamental link between them. Among all the people in the gospels, Mary is the preeminent example of the one who hears the word of God and keeps it. For this reason, more than because of biological motherhood, Jesus claims her as his mother. Giving birth to Christ is something more than biological. The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father. “Mother” is one word that cannot be defined in a single phrase. That one word embodies all the love a human being could offer. These beautiful thoughts on motherhood are appropriate today as the Church celebrates Mary, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of purity and chastity, the Mother who understands human suffering, and the preeminent Mother of the Poor. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is the mother of humanity.  

In 1994 Fr. Ron Rolheiser commented on the nature of Pentecost being blocked within the church because of those who will not move on to the Vatican II reforms or those who now want to return to the pre-Vatican II life. I am posting an adaptation of his comments as we still appear to be fighting to return to a pre-Vatican II church, which is theologically understood as the pre-ascended body of Christ. Fr. Rolheiser wrote: “For us to receive the Holy Spirit, we must, like the original disciples of Jesus, let the church we once knew give us its blessing and ascend to heaven so that we can receive the spirit for the ecclesial life that we are living. And this is not happening. Vatican II recognized the need to name a death and claim a resurrection, a new life. So this is our situation: We live in a post-Vatican II church, but the body of the pre-Vatican II church remains with us ungrieved, unreverenced, unascended, and unable to give us its blessing. And the atmosphere within the church precisely manifests this debilitating situation. What is evident from all of this is that we lack a fresh spirit and the Holy Spirit on both sides. Too little charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, fidelity, mildness, faith, and chastity is left. We need a new pentecost. And that pentecost will happen only when all of us, liberals and conservatives alike, with deep reverence and love, let the old ascend and give us its blessing. But this will happen only when we understand the church of the past for what it was and is, the resurrected body of Christ, waiting to ascend, calling us to the Mount of the Ascension to impart its blessing.”

Melanie Rigney asks the question, “Does it sometimes seem that God loves someone else more than he loves you? Maybe it’s a friend whose life is golden: great health, a circle of wonderful family and friends, a workplace, or a volunteer ministry that suits them perfectly. Meanwhile, you seem to face a new challenge, large or small, every day. Where’s the justice in that? Jesus tells Peter in response to his question in today’s gospel reading of his relationship with John, “What concern is it of yours? You follow me,” his friendship with others isn’t our business, beyond the gift we may have of introducing Christ to those who don’t know him. All we need to focus on is listening to his call and following where he leads. There’s an enthusiasm that comes from the wetness of fertility that can make the soul swell with feelings of creativity, warmth, and immortality. God is in that. But there is also a bareness that comes from a deeper place, a heat that threatens to dry out the very marrow of the soul, a dryness that shrinks all swelling, especially pride, and leaves us vulnerable and mortal by bringing the soul to kindling temperature. God is in that dryness no less than in the wetness of fertility because, in that painful longing, we feel the eros of God and the motivation of Christ.

St. Catherine of Siena asks, “How do we show love to God who is in need of nothing?” We demonstrate that we love him through our neighbors. Jesus says three times to Peter, “Do you love me?” When Peter answered that Jesus knew very well that he loved him, Jesus then said, “If you love me, feed my little sheep.” It is as if Jesus was saying, “Here is how I will know whether you love me: if, since you cannot be of any service to me, you come to the aid of your neighbors, nurturing them and giving them your best efforts in true holy teaching.” To be affirmed is a human need. We are made to get and give love. Today’s interaction between Jesus and Peter connects to many people who long for that second chance. One of the lessons on love is hidden in the exchange between Jesus and Peter. Jesus assures us that God’s love is always both unmerited and unconditional. Nothing we do can make God love us, just as nothing can stop God from loving us. God loves just as God does everything else – perfectly.

Today we read the classic text of the ecumenical movement, which seeks full unity among all Christians. The Catholic Church officially joined this movement in 1964. Fr. Rolheiser writes that one of the most ancient problems in philosophy is the question of ‘the one and the many,’ whether reality is ultimately a unity or a plurality, and how these interrelate. We might ask the same question regarding the plurality of religious faiths, churches, and forms of worship in our world. Is there some inherent oneness there, or is it all plurality without anything binding us together in some kind of community that transcends our differences? All of us who have a sincere belief share a common faith because we ultimately share a common God. Moreover, since we share a common God, we also share a common problem; namely, we struggle equally in trying to conceptualize this non-conceptualizable God. The first dogma about God in all valid religions is that God is holy and ineffable, meaning that God can never be circumscribed and grasped in a concept. Avery Dulles taught that the way forward for Christian ecumenism and interreligious dialogue is not the way of conversion – trying to get others to convert to our particular church. The way forward (in his words) is the way of “progressive gradualism,” namely, of each of us being ever more faithful to God within our tradition so that as each of us grows closer to God (and, for Christians, to Christ), we will grow closer to each other and all people of sincere faith. The unity we seek lies not in one church or faith community, eventually converting all others to join it, but in every one of sincere faith becoming progressively more faithful to God so that the unity we desire can take place sometime in the future, contingent on our own deeper fidelity inside our own faith tradition. None of us is living out the full truth of our faith traditions. Therefore, The path forward lies in a deeper personal conversion within our own faith traditions that will lead to a more empathic relationship with other faith traditions.

Today, we continue in John’s Gospel with Jesus’ Prayer to the Father. He speaks powerfully to the nature of truth. He has sought to concentrate the faithful in the truth and nature of God. Fr. Rolheiser writes that we have lost any sense of what truth is. Our facile denial of whatever truths we judge as inconvenient are labeled as “fake news,” “alternate facts,” or phantom conspiracies. Social media, for all the good it has brought, has also created a platform for anyone to make up their own truth and then work at eroding the truths that bind us together and anchor our sanity. We now live in a world where two plus two often no longer equals four. That plays on our very sanity and has created a certain social insanity. The truths which anchor our everyday life are becoming unmoored. What frightens and unsettles me more than the threat of the Covid virus, the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, the dangers of climate change, and even the bitter hatred that now separates us from each other is our separation from truth. One of the central lessons in the gospels is this: lying is the most dangerous of all sins. And this doesn’t just play out regarding our relationship with God and the Holy Spirit. When we lie, we’re not only playing fast and loose with God, we’re also playing fast and loose with our own sanity. Our sanity is contingent on what classical theology terms the “Oneness” of God. What this means in lay terms is that God is consistent. There are no contradictions inside of God; because of that, reality can also be trusted to be consistent. Our sanity depends on that trust. For instance, should we ever arrive at a day where two plus two no longer equals four, then the very underpinnings of our sanity will be gone; we’ll literally be unmoored. Our personal sanity and our social sanity depend upon the truth, upon us acknowledging the truth, upon us telling the truth, and upon two plus two forever equaling four.

Home. In both of our readings today, we have the image of home placed before us. In John’s Gospel reading, Christ is praying before his disciples as he knows the hour has arrived when he will be arrested and begin his passion journey leading to his return to the Father in heaven. In our verse from the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul is in Ephesus and knows that his journey on earth is also coming to a close, yet he hopes “I may finish my course.” These are stories of mission that highlight the transitory nature of our earthly home. Like St. Paul, we are fulfilling a mission of one sort or another, either for the transitory things of the world or in the struggle to reach our eternal home. I was recently reading an article penned by Kathryn Butler, a critical care surgeon and homeschool mom who was speaking about our image of home. “Home is a word we brandish casually, its colors weathered, its edges frayed from careless use. Christ offers us, at long last, the promise of an eternal home, eternal peace, and eternal belonging for which we all thirst.” St. Paul said, “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent, we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.” This earthly sojourn is temporary. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ has promised all believers that one day, just as the father embraced the prodigal son who returned home, our Heavenly Father will rush to us with His arms wide open and welcome us to our eternal home where all things will be new.

Gail Goleas wonder’s if you feel the same way as she does about products advertised with a lifetime guarantee. She asks, “Does that guarantee refer to the product’s lifetime or the company selling it? Is it guaranteed as long as I live? As nice as it would be for my purchases to be unconditionally guaranteed, I won’t count on it. When it comes to our life, there are even fewer assurances. Jesus reminds us of that in today’s gospel. He does not promise us freedom from pain. He doesn’t gloss over the fact that we will all face hardships. It is clear that suffering will be ours to endure. That is not comforting, and I would rather not dwell on it. But I must. When troubles do come, as we know they will (and pray they won’t), Jesus urges us to be courageous.” How do we get so confused today that we fail to understand what he has conquered? So many of us strive to find joy and happiness in conquering the world so we might gain its riches and thereby find our joy and happiness. C.S. Lewis notes in “Surprised by Joy” that true joy is the ache for something beyond this world, like those little moments in life when the light falls in just a certain way on a summer evening that it stirs within you a deep longing that’s hard to define. Earthly pursuits cannot fill the void. The quest for true joy and happiness is connecting to something, not of this world, and that would be the movement of the Holy Spirit in your life. The spirit will use this restlessness to awaken a spiritual hunger within you, this ache for something beyond this world. It will push you deeper and deeper into your relationship with God. Pursue Him. Allow that longing for Him to become the hottest fire in your heart; that is where true joy and happiness are found.