The Irrepressible Jesus — Sixteenth Week of “Ordinary Time,” July 22 to 28, 2012

God is irrepressible. And the risen Jesus is popping up all over the place. Paul says that after the resurrection Jesus “appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive” (1Corinthians 15:6). Preaching a mission in North Carolina, I just saw him appear in more than five hundred members of the parish of St. William/Immaculate Heart, and all of them are still alive — or have come back to life because of the pastor and congregation that have ministered to them for the past sixteen years. They are the “sign of Jonah” — the life, the joy and the love of the risen Jesus is visible in them.





We read about multiple scandals in the Vatican. We see bishops and chancery officials standing trial for criminal failure to restrain child abusers. And some complain of “restorationist” priests trying to revive the “legalism, clericalism and triumphalism” rejected overwhelmingly by the bishops in the first session of Vatican II. But that is not where the Church is. Or what the Church is. I saw the Church in Murphy, North Carolina. The Church is the People of God. And Jesus lives in them.




The pastor introduced visitors at the beginning of Mass. I have seen this before, but when he did it I realized he was putting everyone’s focus on the congregation instead of on the priest and ministers in the sanctuary. He didn’t have to call for “full, active, conscious participation” in the Mass. He made everyone conscious that their activity was the Mass, and he was just presiding over it.




(I compared this to a recent book on the Mass, highly praised on the back cover by “big name” people, that had twenty-eight pictures. Twenty-four of them were of the author as celebrant. Not a single picture showed the congregation. The words reinforced the pictures).



The pastor did not recite the Eucharistic Prayer like someone reading words out of a book. Nor did he come across like Moses, going up the mountain alone to commune with God while the people watched in awe (Exodus 19:10 to 20:19). When he read the words, it was obvious that he was talking to God — and doing it with a keen sense of being in the midst of his people, saying the words with them, in union with them, as their spokesman. He was happy saying them. And so were the people.


At Communion time he smiled at each one. A parishioner told me, “That had never happened to me before. The first time I came to Mass here, I knew I was home.”


And I knew Jesus is alive and well in North Carolina — and in thousands of parishes all over the country, where on “ground level” Jesus is rising irrepressibly from the dead.


In most of the country, if you leave your back yard alone for awhile, it will be taken over by grass, weeds, bushes, and — if you leave it long enough — even trees. God is simply irrepressible, even in giving vegetative life. God is not afraid of life. Jesus told of a field where an enemy sowed weeds among the wheat. But the owner told his workers not to focus on weeding out what was bad: “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:24-30)

 Church ministry is not about attacking the sinners and excluding those not in “good standing.” It is about encouraging the life God is already giving to everyone who has been raised from the dead in Baptism (Ephesians 2:6; Colossians 2:12, 3:1). When we encounter one who, like Lazarus, has come out of the tomb still “bound hand and foot” with rules and regulations, Jesus says to us, “Unbind him, and let him go free” (John 11:44).


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Awaiting the “Peace of the Holy Spirit” — Fifteenth Week of “Ordinary Time,” July 15 to 21, 2012

It is well and good — but a little abstract — to say that as the “risen Jesus,” we should be living the life of Father, Son and Spirit” — a life of relationship with other persons, human and divine.

We have no problem saying it. But how do we make it real? If "relationship" is the reality of our life, what should it look like?

A “rising star” young author, Tanner Colby, has brought that question down to earth in a way we may love or hate. His brilliant, poignant, equally heart-rending and side-splitting book, Some of My Best Friends Are Black (Viking, 2912), looks at racial integration as it is on paper and as it really is in schools, neighborhoods, the workplace, and in churches. To examine our relationships on ground level, his book is a challenging place to start. And it is mostly stories. He says it is “not a book about politics or policy... Most of the book is just stories about people.”

Like the Gospels. And like our lives. When we meet Jesus after death, he is only going to be interested in the stories that tell how we dealt with people — and his Father, of course. And, as we saw last week, it won’t be about what we did for people, or did for God, but about the relationship we sought or neglected to seek with both.

“Peace” was the key word on Jesus’ lips after his resurrection. And it should be a key word to describe our relationship with each other as his risen body. But the “peace of the Holy Spirit” is more than the absence of conflict. In fact, the very absence of visible conflict in “façade integration” can be precisely the “invisibility cloak” that keeps us from seeing that no peace is there. Love on the lips can hide hate in the heart — as Jesus preached so forcefully to the Pharisees.

But the Spirit prevails — given time. Tanner Colby found racial integration mostly a failure in terms of its essential reality: relationships. He searched in schools, neighborhoods, workplaces and churches. But finally, in a little church in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, his native state, he said, “I found what I went looking for.”

“I saw black people at white churches, and I saw white people at black churches, but what I never saw anywhere but here was a black and white Church.” He calls it “The Miracle of Grand Coteau” — a miracle it took thirteen pastors and forty years of prayer and suffering to bring about. And the key players were laity. As one parishioner put it, “You have to go through Good Friday to get to Easter, and we went through an awful lot of Good Fridays.”

Fr. Charlie Thibodeaux, the priest who began it all, saw the kingdom come. “It was agonizing. But to see it now, the tension gone, the people more at ease, I thank God they’re finally united as brothers and sisters. Humanly speaking, it seemed like it was impossible. But with God there is always hope. It just takes time.”

When we say, “Peace be with you” at Mass, we are looking forward, awaiting “the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.” When he comes, our relationship with each other will be that of Father, Son and Spirit.

This is the triumph of Jesus: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Any comments? Share them with us through the COMMENTS link.

“In the unity of the Holy Spirit” — Fourteenth Week of “Ordinary Time,” July 8 to 14, 2012

When we see ourselves as the “risen Jesus,” we think of Jesus alive in our bodies, living and sharing his own divine life with us.



But the divine life Jesus lives is the life of the Holy Trinity. So we, with him, are living the life of Father, Son and Spirit. A “triune” life: three in one.


The Three Persons differ from each other only by their relationships. The mystery of being Three-in-One is the mystery of the way they live in relationship with each other. So all of us who live the life of Christ, sharing in his divine life as God, are living a life that can only be understood as a life of relationship.


Is that what they taught us in grade school? Is that what we are conscious of now?


In trying to live “a Christian life,” do we focus, first of all, on forming and fostering relationships? Finding security in personal relationship with the Father? Seeking fulfillment in life through deeper-and-deeper relationship with Jesus? Experiencing relationship through interaction with the Spirit?


Do we see our first duty toward others as the duty to seek relationship with them? To relate to others as Jesus relates to us? To see every person in the light of the relationship each one has with God? And, consequently, as bonded with us as brothers and sisters, co-sharing with us in the life of Jesus as branches share in the life of the vine?

Do we understand that, prior to being “just” or “fair” to others, prior to “helping them out,” our first duty is to accept the relationship with each one that our faith tells us we have? And tells us we should seek to form and foster — in the way and measure that circumstances allow?

One current example: the priests in the country have just formed the “Association of United States Catholic Priests.” Why is this?
 
This is not a “protest” organization. The goal is to “offer mutual support and a collegial voice; to engage in contemplation and dialogue”; and only as the fruit of this, to add “prophetic action on issues affecting Church and society.” In other words, it is first of all a movement toward forming and fostering relationship among priests.
As the life of God is relationship between Father, Son and Spirit.
As the life of the Church is koinonia — relationship, “fellowship,” “communion.”


This should make Catholics think. What does it mean that their priests are putting such a value on relationship? What does it say about marriage, friendship, relationship between co-workers and neighbors? Between Americans, immigrants and citizens of foreign countries? About the human race? About what Jesus came to do?


The Association says (www.uscatholicpriests.org), “We are a reconciling body, who are trying to provide a realistic means for dialogue among brothers and then among the people of God.” Are they discovering, and inviting us to discover, something new in the Church?

Any comments? Share them with us through the COMMENTS link.

“All will be well” — Thirteenth Week of “Ordinary Time,” July 1 to 7, 2012

Sunday’s reading begins, “God did not make death.” But the truth is, we blame him for it. We blame him for sin too. Julian of Norwich wrote that, before God taught her, “In my foolishness I often wondered why, through the great foreseeing wisdom of God, sin was not prevented. For it seemed to me that then all would have been well.”

God could have kept sin from happening. Why didn’t he? Jesus answered her with three shocking words: “Sin is necessary.”

He didn’t mean sin itself. He was talking about what Julian was complaining of: all the suffering and sorrow sin causes on earth; the terrible things people do that their victims blame God for, including sometimes things they do to themselves.

Julian saw that “all which is not good” actually contributes to our good. “The shameful contempt and complete denial of himself that Jesus endured for us... all the pains and passions, spiritual and bodily, of all his creatures... this pain is something for a time. It purges us and makes us know ourselves and ask for mercy.”

There are recovering alcoholics who bless the day they “hit bottom” so hard it woke them up and made them turn to AA and to a “higher power.”

In this context Jesus spoke to Julian the words she is famous for: “All will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.” God can be happy in spite of the sin and suffering in the world, because he sees an ending that is not just happy but perfect. “All will be well. All will be well. And every manner of thing will be well.”

That is the bottom line; just as resurrection was the bottom line of Jesus’ passion and death. And resurrection should be the first and bottom line of every Christian life on earth.

We should rise out of bed every morning as we rose out of the waters of Baptism: to let Jesus rise from the dead in our bodies, As soon as we wake, we should embrace consciously the mystery of our Baptism: “Jesus, I give you my body. Live this day with me, live this day in me, live this day through me.”

This should be the first line, the bottom line, and the repeated line we speak all during the day. “Lord, do this with me, do this in me, do this through me.” By Baptism we “became Christ.” This is the mystery of our life. We live to think with his thoughts, speak with his words, and act as his body on earth.

If we do this, “All will be well. All will be well. And every manner of thing will be well.”

Any comments? Share them with us through the COMMENTS link.

“Nos morituri....” — Twelth Week of “Ordinary Time,” June 24 to 30, 2012

I missed this blog last week. I was at St. Leo’s University in Florida attending the first assembly of the Association of United States Catholic Priests: the only forum for the communal voice of those in the unique position of having “working ministerial contact” both with the hierarchy and the laity, the governing and the governed. Unlike the bishops, the priests see with their own eyes the effect — good and bad — that Vatican and diocesan decisions have on the people. But, unlike most of the laity, they also see how those decisions are made and where they come from.

For example, there was overwhelming distress over the new “Roman English” translation of the Mass. Typical comments: “We cannot pray it. The people can’t pray it.” To add to their distress, they know the process that produced and imposed this translation. Those interested can google the open letter of Benedictine Father Anthony Ruff in America magazine, Feb. 11, 2011. Father Ruff wrote:

I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity. ... It has been an honor to serve until recently as chairman of the music committee... that prepared all the chants for the new missal. But my involvement in that process... has gradually opened my eyes to the deep problems in the structures of authority of our church... When I think of how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done with priests or laity, how the Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is, how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops in violation of their legitimate episcopal authority, how much deception and mischief have marked this process—and then when I think of Our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity…I weep.

The priests began their assembly “weeping” over all that afflicts them in their ministry today. Then they put that behind and asked, as a speaker remarked, “constructively, not wallowing in negativity,” what we as a Church can do. The intent of the Association — as quoted in the June 15 Tampa Tribune article, “New priests' group hopes to preserve vision of Vatican II” — is “not to be a controversial voice, but a collaborative one." These are not “rebel priests.” They are concerned priests.

Hence the title of this blog. “Nos morituri salutamus — We who are about to die salute you” — were the words of Roman gladiators condemned to fight each other to the death. I see them as the words of a generation of priests about to die, who are passing on their testimony to the Church.

Most of the 260 priests there were older. Together they offered between six and eight thousand years of combined experience of priestly ministry. In them I saw Christ in the final— and purgatorial — stage of being “brought to full stature.” They have “borne the heat of the day,” and their faces show it. In a few years none of them will be left. But they want to leave their legacy — the legacy of those who lived through the exultation and disappointments of Vatican II and its aftermath, who have seen vocations to priesthood pass “from flourishing to languishing,” who have seen the Church as it was, see it as it is, and hope in what it will be. “Nos morituri declaramus — We who are about to die declare to you" that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And while he lives in them, they will keep laboring to “build up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-14).

May their ranks swell.

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Who We Are — Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, June 10 to 16, 2012 (Tenth Week of “Ordinary Time”)

This feast tells us who we are. We are people who have become the body of Christ through the blood of Christ.

We did not become Christ’s body by “entering a second time into our mother’s womb and being born again.” Nicodemus had that right (see John 3:1 ff.). We are not ‘reborn” as the body of the baby Jesus.

Nor do we find our identity in following the words and example of Jesus “teaching... proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing people” in his ministry. We are not a “body politic,” as defined in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: "a voluntary association of individuals... by which the whole people covenants with each citizen and each citizen with the whole people." Our covenant to live, not by human laws but by the word of God, does not make us the “body of Christ.” Nor does “joining the Church” by voluntary acceptance of her teachings, authority and structure.

We have to be “born from above.” By “water and Spirit.” We must go into the waters of Baptism as into the grave, die with Christ and rise with him. The Jesus whose body we are is “the one who came by water and blood; not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.” The only “body of Christ” we can be is his risen body.

To be this we first have to die. This is the significance of the blood sacrifices that sealed the covenants between God and Abraham, God and his people (Genesis 15; Exodus 24). By killing animals as symbols of themselves, the people expressed that they were not just pledging to God the behavior specified in the Covenant, but giving their whole selves to him: their being, their lives — as God was giving himself to them: life for life. The Covenant was a mutual pledge, not just of behavior for behavior, but of being for being, life for life. To keep the Covenant it was not enough to keep the rules. The Covenant meant mutual giving of self; living in total union with God.

This union would be brought to fullness only when the “grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” was revealed: the “favor” of actually sharing in the divine life of God by being incorporated into the body of Jesus on the cross, dying with him, and letting him rise from the grave of Baptism in us, to continue his life and ministry on earth in us as his risen body.

The Feast of “Corpus Christi” is the feast of “the Body and Blood of Christ.” We celebrate, not only his body in Eucharist. We celebrate ourselves as his body — his real body, risen from his blood.

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We Are Relationship — Trinity Sunday, June 3 to 9, 2012 (Ninth Week of “Ordinary Time”)

To live as the “risen Christ,” we must live as Father, Son and Spirit interacting with each other. Does that sound complicated?

It should. God is “mystery” — not truth that is unknowable but Truth so “infinitely,” “boundlessly” knowable that it “invites endless exploration.” The key to knowing God (and ourselves as created in the image of God plus sharing his own divine life by grace) is to explore how in God “Being Itself” is the reality of Three Persons who, though One in nature, differ from each other by the way they interact. That is, by relationship. What makes the Father “Father” is his interaction with the Son and Spirit. The Son is “Son” (or “Word”) because of his unique relationship with the Father and Spirit. The Spirit is “Spirit” because of his special interaction with the Father and Son. (Notice we are using “relationship” and “interaction” interchangeably). That is about as clear as light so blinding you can’t look at it, but it does give us something to work with. In a nutshell, the key to personal “be-ing” is relating, interacting. We are persons, and create ourselves as the persons we are becoming, by the way we “relate” — that is, interact — with others. To “be” is to relate, interact.

Did they teach us that in religion class?

Actually, they did. The Great Commandment is the rule for interacting with God: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart....” And all the other Commandments are ways of expressing love in our interactions with people. Check this out: go through them, seeing each one in this light. It is enlightening.

The Responsorial invites us to know God by focusing on his interaction with us: “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.” So does the first reading: "Ask now... Did anything so great ever happen before?... Did a people ever hear the voice of God... as you did, and live?” And the second: “You received a Spirit of adoption... The Spirit himself bears witness....”

The Gospel tells us how, as the risen body of Jesus, we need to interact with others: “Go, therefore, and make disciples....” This means to bring others into participating in the divine interaction that is the life of God: “...baptizing them in the name of the Father,

and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

To live as a human is to interact with others. To live as Christ is to interact with the Father as the Son does, and with both Father and Son by the unitive, “joining” power of the Holy Spirit. To interact with others by “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” is to let the Son in us express to them the ‘love of the Father,” drawing every person we deal with into “communion in the Holy Spirit.”

To live is to be caught up in the life of the Three Persons going on inside of us — in their relationships, their interaction — and to interact in the same ways with other people.

This might sound a little mystical, but that is what our graced, divine-human life is: a mystery that invites “endless exploration.”

Any comments? Share them with us through the COMMENTS link.

Risen to Renew — Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2012 (Eighth Week of “Ordinary Time”)

At Mass, always read the Responsorial verse first: it gives a key to the readings. It tells us what the bishops saw in the first reading that made them choose it as a “match” for the Gospel.

For Pentecost Sunday it is: Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth. The theme of the Mass readings is renewal — the confidence of hope based on faith that God is transforming society, correcting cultural assumptions, reforming social structures. Establishing the reign of God on earth.

But he is doing it through us — Christ’s risen body, empowered by the Holy Spirit poured out into every Christian heart. If we are “renewing the face of the earth,” it is because we are in touch with the Spirit in us. If we are not changing anything, we need to establish contact with the Holy Spirit. How do we do that?

The first step, as always, is just to believe. Believe Jesus was speaking to every baptized person when he said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you... Receive the Holy Spirit.” We need to believe in, accept, and dedicate ourselves to our mission.

Our mission is determined by where we are. “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues.” And people “gathered together from every nation under heaven... all heard them speaking in their own language.” That is the key to the “lay apostolate.” The laity are everywhere; in every event of family and social life; in every business and occupation. And whatever they are a part of, they can “speak the language” of those who are there. But only if they are “filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Paul’s letter says all of us have the Spirit, but in different, particular ways: “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; different forms of service... But to each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” We just have to identify our gifts, the way the Spirit can act through us. Act where we are through what we are, both by nature and by grace.

How can we know how God wants to use us?

The first step is obvious: We ask. Every morning, say the prayer:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,

and enkindle in us the fire of your divine love.

Send forth your Spirit, Lord, and our hearts will be regenerated.

And you will renew the face of the earth!

Lord, by the light of the Holy Spirit you instruct the hearts of your faithful. Grant us by the same Holy Spirit always to do what is right and just, and always to rejoice in his consolations, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Jesus promised: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” Throughout the day, pay attention to your feelings. The Spirit usually speaks by increasing or diminishing our peace.

Any comments? Share them with us through the COMMENTS link.

Who Is On The Other End Of The Yoke? — Easter Week Seven, May 20 to 26, 2012

To live the risen life is not to “imitate Christ.” It is to be Christ and act as Jesus himself in everything we do.

This can be daunting. But it isn’t if we let Jesus act with us, in us and through us, keeping ourselves conscious of his presence by saying the WIT prayer all day long: “Lord, do this with me, do this in me, do this through me.” What makes his “burden light” is that Jesus carries it with us. His “yoke is easy” because it joins us to him. To shift the image, to let Jesus act with us, in us and through us all day is to be “joined to Jesus at the hip.”

But we have to know him. We need to know this person who is our yokemate, our partner, who co-carries our burdens and “co-operates” with us, in us and through us in all we say and do. We don’t appreciate having Jesus as a “friend by our side” if we don’t know him as a friend. And the key to this is knowing how he thinks.

How can we know that? Jesus is God. The Father himself said, speaking through Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” And Jesus said, “No one knows the Father but the Son.” To know God as he is, you have to be God.

But Jesus added: “...and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Jesus has revealed the Father to us by sharing his own divine life with us, including his own divine act of knowing the Father (we call this the “gift of faith,” the gift of divine enlightenmemt).

And when Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father,” Jesus answered, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’”? The Father is revealed in the words and actions of Jesus. The divine is made visible in the human.

Jesus went on to say, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”

That is the key. Jesus has made known to us the thoughts of God; his own thoughts and the thoughts of his Father. We can find them written in his words. All we have to do is read them.

And when we do, the Holy Spirit will help us understand them. Jesus promised it. “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” The Trinity of God himself, Father, Son and Spirit, will work together to let us know and understand the thoughts of God if we read his words.

Then we will know the true personality of the “friend by our side.” We will know Jesus, not as his servants, but as his friends. If we choose to read his words.

That is the next step into living the risen life. Do we choose to read the words of God?

Any comments? Share them with us through the COMMENTS link.

A Hesitant Step? — Easter Week Six, May 13 to May 19, 2012

Did you use the WIT prayer (see last week)? If you did, you had the mystical experience of growing in conscious awareness of the mystery of your lived union with God, the mystery of the “risen life.”

I have only heard one objection to using this prayer. A man in Tupelo, Mississippi, raised it during a parish mission: “If I say all day, ‘Lord, do this with me, do this in me, do this through me,’ I am laying it on myself to act like Jesus all day long.” He added: “That’s a pretty heavy load to carry.” And it seems to be.

On the other hand, this is exactly what Jesus accused the Pharisees of doing by insisting on their strict observance of all the Jewish laws: “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”

Of himself and his Way Jesus said: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

We can’t deny Jesus asks some pretty demanding things. But his “yoke is easy” because he is carrying it with us. That makes all the difference in the world.

We are the risen body of Jesus. Whatever he asks us to do, he will to do it with us, in us and through us. He promised before his death, “I will not leave you orphaned.” Or, in other translations, “I will not let you be without a friend; I will not leave you desolate or comfortless. I will come to you.” He will come with his Spirit:

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

To live constantly in awareness that Jesus is with us, filling us with his Spirit, acting with us, in us and through us in everything he asks or moves or challenges us to do, this makes all burdens light. His “yoke is easy” because he is carrying most of it.

We are talking about a mystical experience! Without the experience, the conscious awareness, of doing everything with Christ, living “in him” as a branch on the vine, as a limb of his body, and acting always through the power given by him, of course the Christian Way is impossible. It has to be a mystical experience.

Those who reduce it to law observance, who focus only on keeping the law in their own lives and in the way they preach to others, are a death virus in the Church. Those who experience only the burden of the Church’s laws, and the coldness of those who insist upon them, are leaving the Church. Or, if they remain, they are living with so little love, joy and peace that they drive others to leave.

Try the WIT prayer. Whatever you find difficult, say, “Lord, to this with me, do this in me, do this through me.”

And share the results with us in the COMMENTS link.