Author: DVO

The very darkness of the world seems to capture many people when Christ’s story gets to his passion. This most horrific suffering, death by crucifixion, represents the worst part of our humanness. Yet in the moments leading up to his suffering, Jesus is not sitting in fear worrying about himself. He is thinking of his disciples and his desire that they have peace. Fr. Kenneth Grabner writes that this promise of Jesus’ is our hope when we feel overwhelmed by life’s problems. Life offers us many joys, but it has its problematic side too. We might have to do something that seems beyond our strength. Perhaps we’re burdened by the unrealistic expectations of others. Whatever our difficulties, Jesus is with us to help us through them. Our trust in his presence enables us to mitigate our fear and strengthen our hope. I don’t think we can experience this strength fully without spending time with God in silent prayer. In attentive silence, we become aware of God’s guiding presence within us. When we experience his presence and surrender ourselves to it, a sense of hope flows into us that begins to transform our lives. That is God’s loving will for us.

St. Augustine wrote that God is not too grand to come, he is not too fussy or shy, and he is not too proud. On the contrary, he is pleased to come if you do not displease him. Listen to the promise he makes. Listen to him indeed promising with pleasure, not threatening in displeasure, “We shall come to him,” he says, “I and the Father.” To the one he had earlier called his friend, the one who obeys his precepts, the keeper of his commandment, the lover of God, the lover of his neighbor, he says, “We shall come to him and make our abode with him.” Henri Nouwen says that just as a whole world of beauty can be discovered in one flower, so the great grace of God can be tasted in one small moment. Just as no great travels are necessary to see the beauty of creation, no great ecstasies are needed to discover the love of God. But you have to be still and wait so that you can realize that God is not in the earthquake, the storm, or the lightning but in the gentle breeze with which he touches your back.

Since the fall of humankind, we have struggled with the falling apart of civilization. In our present time, we have faced a global pandemic, wars, and continued chaos in our communities with senseless acts of violence and disorder. In the early 1920s, William Butler Yeats wrote a poem entitled, The Second Coming. Its message is strong, adult, and ultimately quite depressing. Yeats sees a certain dissolution of civilization as he has known it; things are falling apart. What is at the root of this falling apart? He answers in a single line: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Where can we find hope that in this life, we can believe in something greater than the darkness we see in the world? Fr. Rolheiser writes that it is to believe in a different credo: “I believe in the Resurrection.” I believe in the resurrection of Christ, precisely, to the degree that we believe that the center holds or does not hold, namely, to the degree that we can, in any circumstance of life, say and mean: “Lord, all things are possible for you.” And, in the end, this is not a theoretical thing, a matter of orthodoxy or raw intellectual commitment: Do I believe in God or not? Do I believe in the empty tomb? Can I say the creed and mean it? Notwithstanding that these are important, faith in the resurrection of Jesus is something more down-to-earth and ordinary. It is a practical thing, an everyday trust, a feeling, a sense, however inchoate but real, that, in the end, there is a deep anchor that is holding everything together and that we, for our part, can get on with the business of living and can live in trust, knowing that our inadequacies, failings, and even our deaths, are not the final answer. Faith is a practical thing. It is to trust that God is in charge, nothing more and nothing less. To believe in the resurrection, the essence of faith is to look at everything, including death, and believe that the center will hold.

We all conveniently dismiss verses such as those taken from the Acts of the Apostles today. Picture St. Paul speaking to us through the millennium, calling us as Jesus’ apostles, to recognize that the Word made flesh is “the same yesterday and today and forever.” God’s word endures for all time, as does our obligation to heed his teaching to be the light and love to a world lost in the darkness of separation from God. Bishop Barron reflects on the enduring nature of God by saying, “If you had asked an aristocrat in second-century Italy how long the Roman Empire would last, he probably would have said, ‘forever.’ If you had told an English gentleman in 1900 that Britain would be a second-rate power by the end of the 20th century, he wouldn’t have believed you. Jesus unveils the true nature of this passing world so that we might not cling to it as our ultimate good. Just when we are tempted to find our security in nature, governments, cultural institutions, or the health of our own bodies, these words today from St. Paul should shake us out of our complacency and force us to wake up. Jesus, who entered into this passing world of ours but bore in his person the eternal power of God, wants us not to panic when the world and everything in it are shaken. For if we are grounded in Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, we are bonded to the eternal destiny that awaits all who are in Him.

Dr. Michael Downey, the author of many books on the spiritual nature of life, asked this question: “How do we speak of God inside a culture that’s pathologically distracted, distrusts religious language and church institutions, and yet carries its own moral energy and virtue?” Downey suggests we see Christ as the kenosis of God, the divine self-abandonment; God emptying himself in the incarnation of his Son. Fr. Ron Rolheiser explains that to self-empty in the way Jesus is described above means being present without demanding that your presence be recognized and its importance acknowledged; it means giving without demanding that your generosity be reciprocated; it means being invitational rather than threatening, healthily solicitous rather than nagging or coercive; it means being vulnerable and helpless, unable to protect yourself against the pain of being taken for granted or rejected.” This is not an easy thing at all, but that is why we have lifted our praise to Jesus for two thousand years because he showed us how to do this in his life on earth. And that’s our invitation to begin learning how to empty ourselves of “us” and to fill ourselves with more of “Him.”

Fr. Ron Rolheiser says how we conceive God, colors for good or bad, and everything within our religious practice. And above all else, Jesus revealed this about God: God is good. That truth must ground everything else: our churches, theologies, spiritualities, liturgies, and understanding of everyone else. Today’s Responsorial Psalm declares, “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.” T. E. Bird notes that the psalm begins by stating that God’s mercy and truth cannot fail; his promise to the House of David can never become void. Who can compare with God, all-powerful in heaven and on earth, kind, just, and faithful to his people and their king? Then the psalmist recalls the promise made to David whereby an everlasting covenant was established and the throne secured. Even if Israel should prove faithless and have to be punished, the promise to David’s House will never be annulled. So, we can joyfully proclaim, “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.”

Fr. John Meoska writes about searching for family members through what he called “the marvel of the internet” and located an elderly second cousin I had never met. The cousin and his wife lived in Colorado, so he made plans to meet them. During his visit, the cousin asked, “Are you doing the same thing I am?” “Yes,” Fr. Meoska replied, for he knew exactly what he was asking. We were both looking for family resemblances in each other’s faces, gestures, and manners of speech. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus tells Philip in the Gospel today. Jesus claims more than a cursory or superficial resemblance to our Father. Jesus is “one in being” with the Father, and so is the perfect reflection of the Father, the one Word spoken by the Father. Jesus’ discourse reveals that certain family traits, ways of thinking, acting, and speaking, help identify us as God’s people and his brothers and sisters. We recognize and follow Jesus as “the way, truth, and life.” By faith, we do the works that Jesus did, and even greater works than his because he is gone to the Father. Paul reminds us that, though we are born out of time as he was, as children of our Heavenly Father, we are commissioned to proclaim the Good News of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection through our words and, most importantly, how we live our lives.

Some of us were brought into the Christian community as newborn children through baptism. That childhood faith planted a seed that grows into the mature Christian through the accompaniment and teaching of other mature Christians who came before us. While we do not precisely know who first began to describe the disciples as “Christians,” the fact that they were given a name shows that everyone recognized them as an identifiable group. St Athanasius said: “Although the holy apostles were our teachers and have given us the Gospel of the Savior, it is not from them that we have taken our name. We are Christians through Christ, and it is for him that we are called in this way.” What differentiates Christians from every other tribal definition humans carry is our daily choice to place the will of God and the grace of Jesus before our own selfish and self-centered desires. We can often fall into complacency around the word Christian and neglect its deeper intention to bring about genuine change. To be Christian is more than membership in a church. Our obligation in carrying that title is to connect all aspects of our life to the very essence and purpose of what Jesus taught. Faith is not a thing to be grasped but a life to be lived.

We are in the part of readings from the Acts of the Apostles where we witness a leadership transition from Peter to Paul. This leadership transition mirrors the transition from a Jewish church to a Jewish-Gentile church. Transitions in our lives can be challenging for us, as they were for the two apostles. Our ability to move effectively through these transitions is often a result of our inability to remain open to God’s direction in our lives. One of the transitions we face in our faith lives is moving from our childhood years of being a “babe” in our understanding of what God has given us to become a mature person of faith. That maturity is generally related to our spiritual growth. Fr. Ron Rolheiser says our growth is often hindered by three main things: narcissism, pragmatism, and unbridled restlessness. Fr. Rolheiser defines narcissism as excessive self-preoccupation; pragmatism as excessive focus on work, achievement, and the practical concerns for life; and restlessness as referring to an excessive greed for experience, an over-eating, not in terms of food but in terms of trying to drink in too much of life. One of the main aspects that hinder our growth is not seeking out the desires of our hearts, which can only be filled through God. We must listen to His voice, not the world’s, just as Peter did.     

The parable of the Good Shepherd in today’s Gospel from John brings into view the power of the voices we listen to in our lives as it presents the reality that Christianity is not a set of ideas; it’s not a philosophy or an ideology; it’s a relationship with someone who has a voice. If we go back to the very beginning of our story to the Garden of Eden, the entirety of the temptation story is one of voices. Eve first heard her doubts and anxieties and then listened to the serpent’s voice, which kept amplifying those feelings. Adam listened to the voice of his own discontent when Eve had risked the forbidden and then listened to her voice, inviting him to join her. What happened in the Garden of Eden still happens today. We listen to the voice of our doubts, fears, and discontent, and the Evil One amplifies that voice and adds his voice of lies and deception. We know that the Evil One tempted Jesus in the desert. He sought to leverage the weakness of Jesus – food for a hungry body, a test to make God prove Himself, and finally, a shortcut to get what He was here to accomplish on earth. But Jesus did not listen to the voice inside Him crying out for the easy path. He did not hear or heed the voice of desire. Instead, Jesus was listening to another voice, the voice of the Father. Sin speaks the voice of the moment, the voice of desire, the voice of want. The Spirit speaks the voice of truth, faith, and righteousness. Jesus tells us whom we should listen to by listening to the voice of the Spirit, who speaks to us through Sacred Scripture. That is what makes us strong. What enables us to resist temptation is not that we are better than others but a matter of whose voice we choose to listen to. Let us listen to the voice of Jesus, who will lead us to a renewed and transformational life with God.