FrNikola

World Day of Prayer for Vocations (4th Sunday of Easter, Cycle C)

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I’m happy to celebrate a special anniversary with you all today – the anniversary of a prayer answered. This Sunday we are celebrating the 53rd World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Twenty years ago, on April 28th, 1996 – the 33rd World Day of Vocations, I was the reader for Sunday morning Mass, sitting in the front pew of my home parish, and right before the Eucharistic Prayer the priest celebrating the Mass reminded everyone “let us pray today on this World Sunday of Prayer for Vocations that young men and women come forward to answer the Lord’s call to work in His harvest.”

I knew those prayers were pointed right at me.

It was a bucket of water in the face: so many ambitions and expectations were doused as illusions, and also a chord struck deep within my soul: that what I’d sought all my life, my deepest aspirations, would be found in God by following the path he traced out for me from all eternity. So I followed him. A year later I entered the Legionaries of Christ, and ten years later, on December 8th, 2006, I was ordained a priest.

Each of us has a dream for our life. We aspire and yearn for something greater, and in our hearts it becomes a dream we hope for and strive for whenever and however we can. God has a dream for us too, a dream he shows to John in the Second Reading today: that all be united to him and around his Son – the Lamb – for all eternity, washed clean, bearing the palm of victory, and rejoicing. The white garments in the reading show us kept clean by Baptism and kept clean by living a Christian life and receiving the sacraments, but it is all thanks to the blood that the sacrificed Lamb – Jesus – shed for us, taking away the sins of the world.

God’s dream is our dream, and answering his call is how we follow it and achieve it. In the First Reading Paul and Barnabas extend God’s invitation to follow the dream the People of Israel had long awaited – but many declined the invitation. We can fall into the same trap, thinking that making God’s dream a reality through living our life in this world is just the job of priests and monks and nuns and, forgive the expression, “Holy Rollers.” If that were true, Paul and Barnabas would have stopped right there when the Jews rejected their message. But God’s dream was bigger than the Jews’s or the Gentiles’ earthly expectations: Jew and Gentiles – everyone – are called to help God make his dream for us a reality in this world and through how we live our life in this world.

The Gentiles were eager and overjoyed to receive the dream and spread it. Following our dream broadens our horizons and opens us up to unimagined possibilities. How much more so is this true when we have faith that God’s dream and our dream are one and the same thing: God doesn’t just have any big picture in mind – he has the biggest picture in mind. Jesus, the Lamb in the Second Reading, shows us in eternity what Jesus, the Good Shepherd in today’s Gospel, shows us in history – both our history and his history. God became flesh and won our redemption because how we live this life does matter. If we heed the Good Shepherd’s voice, God’s call in each moment of our life, he will lead us to the Father and to our dream: eternal life, not just for ourselves – something good in itself, but incomplete – but for everyone we love.

God’s dream and ours – deep down – is that everyone get their dream, the dream that is really possible and really will make them happy: eternal life, the answer to all the aspirations and yearnings they have in this life.

Let us pray today on this World Sunday of Prayer for Vocations that young men and women come forward to answer the Lord’s call to work in his harvest. Let us pray for all those who’ve answered God’s call, that they may continue to follow it. Let us pray for all those discerning God’s will for their life, that they may receive clarity and courage to follow their true dream. Let us pray for each other, that we may all seek our dream by following God’s dream for our lives.

Readings: Acts 13:14, 43–52; Psalm 100:1–3, 5; Revelation 7:9, 14b–17; John 10:27–30.

3rd Week of Easter, Saturday

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Today’s readings provide a great way to take spiritual inventory of how we our living our lives when faced with adversity and difficulty in matters of faith. Today’s First Reading shows the blessed aftermath of the persecution that began with Stephen’s martyrdom and ended with Saul’s conversion. The Church was at peace, growing, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. Peter was performing miracles in Our Lord’s name just like Jesus did. It was a Church full of dynamism and enthusiasm that had weathered difficulties and remained strong in faith.

In contrast, we have today’s Gospel, years earlier. The teaching on the Eucharist was too much, and many disciples abandoned the life Jesus had taught them. Their faith when challenged was anemic, and Our Lord already knew who was welcoming grace into their hearts and who wasn’t. Those who did persevere in faith and in living as Christ taught were blessed in abundance. We can imagine what was going on in Peter’s heart in the First Reading today when he was kneeling before the corpse of  Tabitha and praying for the Lord to restore her to life. Who knows whether they had called him just to pray for their deceased friend or for a miracle, but a miracle is what they got.

Our Lord continues to work miracles through his Church. Just as Our Lord performed wonders, and Peter after him, he has entrusted his Church to continue teaching and breathing new life into believers. Today’s individualism often tempts us to try and work out spiritual matters on our own, a la carte, on our terms, and without anyone else’s “interference,” but as the First Reading reminds us today, the Church has been established so that believers can help believers. Let’s examine our life today and see whether we’ve drifted from what Our Lord has taught or doubted that his teaching now continues through his Church. Many times this results from a teaching difficult to accept. Like Peter in today’s Gospel, let’s believe first, in order to then be convinced through grace that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

Readings: Acts 9:31–42; Psalm 116:12–17; John 6:60–69. See also 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.

3rd Week of Easter, Friday (2)

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This week’s First Readings have shown a clear trajectory from witness, to martyrdom, to persecution. At Stephen’s martyrdom we see a young zealous Jew named Saul come onto the scene who goes from watching over cloaks to spearheading the persecution of Jesus’ disciples. Saul was zealous, observant, and organized, but his zeal was misguided. He strove to do what he thought was the Lord’s will, and that set him on a collision course with what the Lord’s will truly was and who Jesus truly was.

As Our Lord explained to Ananias today, he would put Saul’s talents to good use. Saul would go from pursuing minim (heretics) of his own religion to preaching the Gospel of Christ among the gentiles, all those non-Jewish people who, according to Jewish interpretation of Sacred Scripture, were second-class citizens at best in the Lord’s plan of salvation. Saul’s values were profoundly challenged: his fasting while suffering blindness was a spiritual means to process everything that had happened. When Ananias came for him to heal him and baptize him he really could see things clearly for the first time in his life, and his zeal for the Lord was put back on the right course.

The way we live our faith can put us on a collision course with Our Lord too; maybe we’re not blind, but an “astigmatism” due to our pride may be misguiding us. As the Lord today to help you see any wrong turns you make have taken. Saul had to work in a vacuum, since Christianity was something new and strange, but we have many resources and people who can help us regain our sight.

Readings: Acts 9:1–20; Psalm 117; John 6:52–59. See also Conversion of St. Paul, 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time,Cycle B, and 3rd Week of Easter, Friday.

3rd Week of Easter, Thursday (2)

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The question Philip asks the Eunuch in today’s First Reading could just as well be directed to us when we read Scripture: “Do you understand what you are reading?” Studies in Sacred Scripture can be complex: they can involve studying ancient languages and cultures, literary criticism, history, and other academic disciplines. The secret is that everyone who reads Scripture, if they’re intellectually honest, has to respond, just like the eunuch, “How can I, unless someone instructs me?” Experts may argue over what the human author had to say, and back it up with cogent arguments, but the understanding for which everyone really strives is what God is saying through Scripture, and the Lord wants us to seek help. Every Scripture scholar and ordained minister has received a catechism, and then instruction in interpreting Sacred Scripture. The eunuch knows he is missing something, which is why he “begs” Philip to answer his question about the prophecy of Isaiah because he knows there is something important to him there.

That kind of burning curiosity comes from something deeper than simple suspense or intellectual interest. The Holy Spirit sent Philip to meet this man and give him the answers for which he was looking, just as Our Lord has sent the Apostles and their successors, the bishops, to help us find the answers we seek, aided by the Holy Spirit. Interpretations of Scripture can vary, even contradict each other, but Our Lord has helped us with the guides he has appointed to break interpretative stalemates with the authentic interpretation, the Magisterium.

When’s the last time you dusted off your Bible and read it? Sacred Scripture always has something to say, and there are good commentaries out there and the Catechism to help answer the questions you find there. Hopefully they are burning questions, because that shows the Holy Spirit is at work and wants to reveal something amazing to you. Don’t be shy about asking for help.

Readings: Acts 8:26–40; Psalm 66:8–9, 16–17, 20; John 6:44–51. See also 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B, 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time,Cycle B, and 3rd Week of Easter, Thursday.

3rd Week of Easter, Wednesday (2)

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After Stephen’s martyrdom, recalled in yesterday‘s First Reading, the Christians are scattered due to persecution, but that, in God’s Providence, helps Christianity to spread. Stephen may be gone, but Philip heads up to Samaria and starts working signs and wonders as well. There have been many attempts throughout history to destroy Christianity; apparently they didn’t heed Gamaliel‘s advice to just wait and see whether Christianity would die off on its own. It won’t. The Lord made good come out of his Son’s crucifixion, and in moments of persecution he makes good come too.

Throughout the world today Christian’s are still being persecuted and murdered for their faith. Religious extremists are taxing them, terrorizing them, and beheading them. We should support them and religious liberty as well, but also ask ourselves whether we’re being complacent in countries where Christianity is tolerated, albeit, at times, ridiculed. It’s a question of spiritual life and death, even though it may not always be a question of physical life and death. Even veiled persecution should stoke our apostolic zeal to spread the Gospel and have the right to share our faith.

Let’s pray today for all persecuted Christians and thank Our Lord for all those who have given their lives for the Gospel, including him.

Readings: Acts 8:1b–8; Psalm 66:1–3a, 4–7a; John 6:35–40. See also 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time,Cycle B and 3rd Week of Easter, Wednesday.