Month: May 2015

6th Week of Easter, Saturday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord is not just preparing the disciples for life after his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, but also after his Ascension into Heaven. He is teaching them that their relationship, now and in the future, is not just knowing a guy who knows a Guy. The family is an icon of the Holy Trinity: a communion of persons, each loving and giving himself or herself completely to the others in that communion, and enjoying their unconditional love as well. A good friend to anyone’s son is likely to become a good friend to that son’s father too. The relationship to father and son never loses reference to either of them, but we can also say that thanks to one we’re drawn into a profounder respect and love for the other.

Our Lord has drawn the disciples, just as he’s drawn us, into a deeper knowledge and love of Our Father. We know we can count on God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for whatever we need; there are no forms to fill out, formalities to follow, exams to pass. Jesus has introduced us to the Father and with the Father will send us the Holy Spirit on Pentecost so that we can be a “part of the family”: adopted sons and daughters through the grace of Baptism, powered by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, worked in us through the Holy Spirit, and desired from all eternity by the Father.

Let’s thank Our Lord today for enabling us to be part of the family, and, as he teaches us today, let’s not be afraid to ask God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–for whatever we need to be truly happy.

Readings: Acts 18:23–28; Psalm 47:2–3, 8–10; John 16:23b–28.

6th Week of Easter, Friday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord uses a poignant image to illustrate the interplay between Lent and Easter that every Christian experiences: pregnancy. After a first trimester of congratulations, perhaps “happy hormones,” a glowing complexion, albeit with morning sickness and strange cravings, comes the second trimester of hormonal somersaults as the body strains to support itself and the new life it is helping to shape. The weight of the new life about to be born can be a heavy cross as the joyful day draws near, but all that suffering vanishes, or at least is put into perspective, at the sight of a newborn son or daughter, and not just any newborn: your newborn.

Christian life has moments of enthusiasm, especially when we start to take it seriously, but it also has moments of the weight of the cross, of feeling burdened by adverse emotions and sentiments that make it a struggle to even take one step forward in holiness. Temptations are like strange cravings, only harmful ones, or produce an aversion to living a virtuous life. Just as anyone who looks upon a newborn, even a complete stranger, feels an inner joy upon beholding a new life, so we too in our struggles must consider the Risen Christ and the saints, who promise us that a new life will be born thanks to our efforts and a joy that will never pass away.

Let’s ask Our Lord to help us bear the burden of our crosses today and just take one step further on the path of holiness, confident that it is a step toward the birth of a new and joyful life.

Readings: Acts 18:9–18; Psalm 47:2–7; John 16:20–23.

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

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On the Solemnity of the Ascension the Church celebrates Our Lord reaching the finish line. After forty days of being with the disciples after his Resurrection, which we have celebrated during these forty days of the Easter season, Jesus has crossed into Heaven to take His place at the Father’s right hand, as the prophecies foretold for the Messiah. The Father has crowned him with the glory he merited by his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and in turn he is eternally asking the Father for each of us–by name–to receive the graces we need to join him in eternity.

The disciples thought this was the end of the story. Every Jew in those days knew the Messiah was supposed to clean house and establish a kingdom that would last forever, which is why they asked Jesus right before his departure if he was going to restore the kingdom to Israel. We can think the same thing. Something’s not quite right with the world. There is a despair and decay and violence, and sometimes it seems evil is winning. We want God to come and clean house. We even expect it. Which is why we have to remember Jesus’ answer in the First Reading: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons.” We can’t blame them. We all want results and tidy endings. They were still in such shock that the angels had to come and tell them, “why are you standing there?”

We’re often so guilty of the same thing because we don’t realize that Christ reaching the finish line doesn’t mean that the race is finished: we still have to cross the finish line. Jesus is just the first runner across. We’re all in a race like an open marathon. Some run it, some walk it, some make it a family outing, but everyone is heading for the finish line. There are runners who train all year long, who’ve been running morning after morning, training for the hardest race of their life, striving to be the first across the finish line. In the race of life these runners are the saints, who suffered and sacrificed and beat their bodies into submission with their eyes fixed on the eternal prize. We all want to have that glory of blowing through the finish line tape. But we know to that there are those who have been longing for it, and at the end, battered, cramped, wheezing, just manage to drag themselves across. In this race getting across the finish line is what counts. The common denominator for all of us is that we have to set our sights on the finish line and keep moving. We shouldn’t wait for angels to come and ask us “why are you standing there?”

As we prepare over these next ten days for the Holy Spirit to be poured out on us on Pentecost Sunday, let’s ask the Spirit to show us that one thing in our lives that is an obstacle to uniting ourselves more closely to God; let’s ask the Spirit to help us pick up the pace in order to blow through the only finish line that really matters: eternity.

Readings: Acts 1:1–11; Psalm 47:2–3, 6–9; Ephesians 1:17–23; Mark 16:15–20. Author note: in some dioceses the Solemnity of the Ascension is celebrated on the Sunday before Pentecost Sunday instead of ten days before Pentecost, which is the traditional day for the solemnity. I have opted to reflect on the liturgy today, and on Sunday I’ll reflect on the Seventh Sunday of Easter.

 

6th Week of Easter, Wednesday

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In today’s Gospel we find an applied lesson in how hard it is to wrap our minds around one God in three Persons. If we trace the message heard and shared that Jesus refers to today, we see that the Father has shared something with the Son, who has it completely and shares it with the Holy Spirit, and with the goal of communicating it to us. There is one Gospel that the Father has entrusted to the Son and the Holy Spirit helps to be living and active in the lives of Christians and society.

Yesterday we saw the Holy Spirit as Advocate; today we see the Holy Spirit as the “the Spirit of truth.” Jesus had much more to say that he could put into words during his earthly mission, as he tells the disciples today. The Holy Spirit helps to keep communicating and to keep the message resounding down the centuries. The Spirit also ensures the integral transmission of that message, which is why the Spirit is a Spirit of truth that guides into all truth. In a world often obsessed with cover-ups, conspiracies, and the need for transparency, everyone is looking for the truth, the whole truth. The Holy Spirit wants to lead us into that truth, and is also the guarantor at times of truths we find hard to accept or to believe.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit today to help us embrace our harder truths, knowing, as Jesus promised, that the truth will set us free (see John 8:32).

Readings: Acts 17:15, 22–18:1; Psalm 148:1–2, 11–14; John 16:12–15.

 

6th Week of Easter, Tuesday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord describes the Holy Spirit as the Advocate, a legal term that goes well with the language of conviction and judgment that he uses to describe the Holy Spirit’s action in the world and in each one of us. The original Greek word that describes in this passage what the Holy Spirit does (ἐλέγχω) contains multiple meanings; it can mean “to convict,” as today’s Gospel translation puts it, “to convince,” as other translations use, “to rebuke,” or “to expose” something. When we consider all these meanings it gives us a better sense of what Jesus is trying to teach us today about the Holy Spirit.

When we struggle with moral decisions sometimes we don’t realize that we’re not alone in our conscience with just our thoughts and evaluations: the Holy Spirit is there too, and is always trying to shed light on the right thing to do in our hearts, and to inspire us to take the right path in our lives, even in the little day to day decisions we make. Depending on our response we too can say that the Spirit “convicts” us when we choose evil instead of good and “rebukes” us for it, or “convinces” us that we’ve got to do the right thing. The Spirit often “exposes” things about ourselves that we’d rather ignore. In order to make a positive impact on our lives and the lives of those around us we need to work with the Holy Spirit so that instead of being convicted we become convinced of Jesus’ message.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us resolve any decision we’re struggling with today, and to “convince” us about the right thing to do so that we don’t find ourselves “convicted” due to our actions.

Readings: Acts 16:22–34; Psalm 138:1–3, 7c–8; John 16:5–11.