Ministry is a Two-edged Sword
Inventory
You love God, but how much? For you, is God the
“best,” the “first,” or the All? Ask the same question about your trust. Do you
trust in God somewhat, seriously, or absolutely? What in your lifestyle “puts
your money where your mouth is”?
We don’t believe our own words unless we see
them expressed in our actions.
Input
The Entrance
Antiphon invites us to both trust and love. We call God “our Protector.”
And we say we appreciate him more than anything on earth: “If we can be with
you even one day, it is better than a thousand without you.”
In the Opening
Prayer we beg to “love you in all things and above all things.” This makes
God All. We look for God in all things, and what we find to love in all things
is God: God present and acting in them, God in them translating his goodness
into created form. But he is above and beyond them all. And the “joy he has
prepared for us” when we see and possess him as he is we recognize as “beyond
all our imagining.”
In the Prayer
Over the Gifts we translate this recognition into action: “By offering what
you have given us” — that includes all we are and own, because what do we have
that God has not given? — “may we receive the gift of yourself.” May we give
all to enter into possession of the All.
In the Prayer
After Communion we get very practical: “By becoming more like him on earth”
— that is a practical goal to inspire a concrete plan for a way of life — “may
we come to share in his glory in heaven.” The vision, the mystical vision, of
God in all his grandeur is what goads us and guides us. And the “source and
summit” of it all is Eucharist. “God of mercy, by this sacrament you make us
one with Christ.” In the Mass we have a beginning that already embraces the
end.
“If it comes up mud…”:
Jeremiah
38: 4-10 calls
to mind Damon Runyon’s short story, “If It Comes Up Mud.” It is about betting
on a pitiful racehorse who couldn’t beat an arthritic cow around the track
unless, on the day of the race, “it comes up mud.” On a muddy track the horse
comes to life and soars.
Jeremiah reached the height of his witness to
God when he was cast into the depths of a well. “There was no water in the
well,” the reading tells us, “only mud. And into the mud Jeremiah sank.” But
out of the mud his spirit soared. In the depths of his despair he reached the
greatest height of faith, of hope and of love.
Like Abraham, “Hoping against hope, he believed….” (Romans 4:18). It is
only when we act out of belief in the impossible that we know we truly believe
that “for God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26; and see Mark 14:36).
When Jeremiah’s life “hit bottom” in the mud of the well, he was able pray with
full awareness of what he was saying, “Lord,
come to my aid” (Psalm 40, Responsorial).
Unity and
Division:
In Luke
12: 49-53 Jesus tells us the mixed feelings he had about his ministry,
precisely because it was a summons to unmixed love.
On the one hand, he was exalted by the greatness
of it: “I have come to bring fire to the earth!” He gloried in calling human
beings to the grandeur of capacity to love as God loves — with total,
unrestrained, unlimited self-bestowal. What Paul will declare later as his
prayer, Jesus embraces here as his desire:
I pray that you may have
the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length
and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:18-19).
Jesus couldn’t wait to set us all on fire. One
of the first things Luke reports was John the Baptizer’s promise about him: “I
baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming…. He will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16).
Jesus knew, however, that before we could be
baptized into his fire, he had to be baptized into our failure. He had to be
immersed in the sin of the world, taking us, with all of our sins, into his own
body on the cross: “For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so
that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus looked forward to this with both desire and dread: “I have a baptism with
which to be baptized, and how great is my distress till it is over!”
Jesus also knew that the Baptism he was giving
us would call us to death as well as to life. It would be the same Baptism as
his: to become immersed in his Life we would first have to be immersed in his
death. Baptism is a sharing in Christ’s own dying and rising:
Do you not know that all
of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Therefore we have been
buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from
the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life
(Romans 5:3-4).
This gave Jesus mixed feelings about his
ministry. The good news was that he was calling us to unlimited love and giving
us life “to the full.” The bad news was that he had to die in order to do this,
and we would have to die with him.
In Luke’s Gospel the earliest proclamations of
Christ’s coming and birth promised peace:
The dawn from on high
will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the
shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on
earth peace among those whom he favors!” (Luke 1:68-79; 2:14).
When Jesus sent his disciples out on mission, he
sent them as bearers of peace: “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to
this house!’” (Lu 10:5).
But now, in today’s Gospel Jesus says, “Do you
think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather
division!” And the source of the division is precisely the undividedness of
heart to which he calls us. Those who accept Christ must accept him with
undivided loyalty. Even family bonds do not take priority over our total gift
and surrender to him. This will split up families:
From now on five in one
household will be divided, three against two and two against three… father
against son… mother against daughter… daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.
Many people who claim to love God themselves
will not accept us if our love for God is total. The sad news is that an
undivided heart can be a source of division that alienates us from others.
“For the sake of the joy…” Hebrews 12:1-4 picks up the note,
urging us to “lay aside” everything that keeps us from responding without reserves
to Jesus’ call and to “persevere in running the race that lies ahead.”
The way to do this is to “keep our eyes fixed on
Jesus.” For those ministering and for those ministered to, our central focus
and source of inspiration must be Jesus. “For the sake of the joy that lay
before him, he endured the cross.” We shouldn’t even try to “endure the
opposition of sinners” unless we do it in union with Jesus — letting him do it
himself: with us, in us and through us.
We should remember we are not alone in our
efforts to minister, to serve others as Jesus within us wants to serve them. We
are “surrounded by a cloud of witnesses” who pray for us. Who count on us and
urge us on. And the victory is assured. We can lift up our eyes in faith and
see that Jesus “has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Hence we “do not grow despondent or abandon the struggle.”
In him we find our strength. When we pray, “Lord, come to my aid!” it is with
assurance that he can and will.
The key to it all is focus. We look to one God,
one alone. He is the absolute All of existence. The absolute, one and only
Good. The One we love with all our hearts, in whom we place all our trust.
For you alone are the
Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are Most High, Jesus Christ, with
the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
Insight
What else is there to love and live for but God?
What can I do that is better than helping people to know and love him?
Initiative:
Give God’s life:
Identify one fear in your life and counter it
with trust.
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