Monday, May 21, 2012

The Ascension of The Lord

7th SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts1, 1-11 / Ephesians 1, 17-23 / Mark 16, 15-20
 
The Ascension of The Lord

Jesus is ascended!  So the question is:  Where is he?  Where do we find Jesus?  Where do we personally find Jesus?  And we might seriously ask ourselves: are we disciples of a memory only?  Or, are we disciples of a living person?

Where do we find the living Jesus?  That’s the question Luke, the author of our first reading, is dealing with.  Quite graphically Luke portrays Jesus being lifted up and disappearing into a cloud.  The imagery wants to tell us Jesus is now with the Father.  That’s what the imagery of being lifted up into a cloud meant in Luke’s day.  It would be like our saying: “he is departed” or “he has passed on to his reward.”  So Jesus is now with the Father.  That’s one answer to our question.  Where’s Jesus?  He’s with the Father.

But Luke tells us something more.  As the disciples are looking up into the sky, two men all dressed in white appear to them and ask:  Why are you looking up into the sky?  Jesus is now with the Father – but he is also with you.  In the very same scene in the gospel of Matthew Jesus says to the disciples:  “Behold, I am with you always, every single day – day in, day out.”

These days we talk about “hybrids” – cars that run on gas and electricity.  This feast of Ascension is trying to tell us that Jesus is a kind of hybrid.  Jesus is with the Father – and he is with us.  Jesus kind of runs on the Father and he runs on us.

Just like we are used to thinking of a car running on gas – so we are used to thinking of Jesus being with the Father.  But we’re not as used to thinking of cars running on both gas and electricity.  And that’s a good way of understanding the New Testament.  All the Christian scriptures are about telling us how Jesus is with God and with us now.  And the clear emphasis is on how Jesus is with us now?  How do we find Jesus for ourselves?

Again the scriptures use all sorts of images to point to Jesus’ presence with us now.  One image that has stuck through two thousand years of Christian reflection is “body – body of Christ”.  St. Paul uses that image in our second reading.  The Church is the “Body of Christ”.  We are the “Body of Christ”.  Where do we find Jesus for ourselves?  We find Jesus in ourselves – in us and among us.  Somehow we are Jesus’ body.

Now I don’t think we can ever fully grasp what it means for us to be the “Body of Christ”.  But I do know that in this liturgy we believe we are fed the body and blood of Christ.  And – as in everything we eat – we become what we eat.

There are two people who have helped me understand a little more clearly what it means for us to be the “Body of Christ”.  The first is a woman, St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun and mystic.  Listen to her wise and beautiful words.

Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world.

Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good.

Yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.

The second person who helped me get a grasp on us as the Body of Christ is an archbishop, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero.  Listen to his challenging words.

Christ became a man of his people and a man of his time.  He lived as a Jew; he worked as a laborer in Nazareth.  And since then he continues to take on flesh in everyone.

If many have distanced themselves from the church, it is precisely because the church has estranged and distanced itself from humanity.

But a church that can feel as its own all that is human – and wants to incarnate the pain, the hope, the affliction of all who suffer and feel joy, such a church will be Christ – Christ loved and awaited – Christ present.

And that depends on us.

The question is: Where is Jesus?  Where do we find Jesus?  This feast we celebrate – the feast of Ascension – wants to answer:  in an awesome and utterly life-defining way, we are the Jesus we’ve been looking for.  We are the Jesus the world so desperately needs to meet.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Monday, May 14, 2012

What Jesus Wants for Us

6th SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts10, 25-26, 34-35 / 1Jn 4, 7-10 / John 15, 9-17

It has to happen sometime in every relationship.  There comes a time when each of us becomes very aware of our relationship with another person – with a wife or husband – with a friend – with someone we truly love and care for.  And there comes a time when we ask ourselves: what do I want – deeply, deeply want – for the other?  My attention is fully on the other person – his good, her welfare.  What do I want for my friend?

It’s that kind of a moment that is being described in John’s gospel today.  It forms part of what is called “Jesus’ Farewell Discourse” to his disciples – to those he calls friends, not servants.  Jesus knows he is leaving them.  Death will separate them.  And his love for them prompts him to tell them outright what he deeply wants for them from the very depths of his soul.

When you think about it, Jesus could have wanted so many good things for his friends and disciples.  He could have wanted great success and a warm welcome for them as they went about spreading the gospel.  He could have wanted for them an invulnerability that would shield them from life’s inevitable hurts and failures.  Or, he could have wanted for them the kind of power that would prompt others to quickly respect his disciples and really think twice about disagreeing with them.

But Jesus chooses none of these.  He chooses otherwise.  He tells them what he most deeply wants for them is quite simply God’s love.  He wants for them the way he had experienced God loving him.  But for Jesus we accept God’s love by becoming that love for others.  In his time spent with the disciples he had tried to show what it means to become God’s love for others – what it means to become the human vehicle for divine love.  Discipleship is learning to become that vehicle for God’s love.  And disciples must learn how to love in God’s own way.  That is our work as disciples.

We see that very process of learning how to love like God in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles.  Peter is doing the work of discipleship by learning not to limit – not to abbreviate God’s love into an all too confining human love.  At that time there was division in the church about who was fit to belong to the church.  Many were demanding that good Christians must submit to Mosaic law and observe the rules for ritual purity.  For them table-fellowship and therefore Eucharist was only for the fit.

But Peter learned by recalling Jesus’ attitude and practice of table-fellowship.  Jesus dined not just with close disciples but also with people vastly different from himself.  He openly contradicted all those purity and fitness regulations that would prevent him from sitting down with those considered sinners.  Simply put, Jesus ate with anybody and everybody.  Jesus ate with the “unfit”.  And Peter asks: should we be doing the very opposite of what Jesus did – all in the name of Jesus?

Peter is speaking also to us today.  We should come to the table of Jesus in order to learn how to love as God loves and to learn how to fail less at such love.  Eucharist – communion is not a reward for the spiritually fit and pure.  We are simply not doing the Eucharist in memory of Jesus when we demand of one another to have our religious act completely together.  If we did make such a demand, most of us, including myself, would not be here.

In today’s gospel Jesus says to us: “As the Father loves me, just so I love you.  Remain in my love.  ”We come to Eucharist – we come to communion – so that we may remain in the love that already dwells in our hearts – so that we may become the love we see the Father has for Jesus and Jesus has for us.  We come to Eucharist – we come to communion – so that God may fill us with the full force of his love.  And then – then we will hold and heal all those who cry out for love.  And then we will gather to ourselves all the un-reconciled – all the un-noticed – all the un-fit – whose homes and hearts are broken.  Then we will be becoming disciples of Jesus.

In the Eucharist we become ever more truly, ever more deeply who we are:  the Body of Christ given for the life of the world.
Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Jesus, the Wonderful Shepherd

4th SUNDAY OF EASTER
 
Acts4, 8-12 / 1Jn 3, 1-2 / John 10, 11-18

The image of shepherd that Jesus uses to describe himself comes from a long Old Testament tradition.  Abel was a shepherd.  Moses worked as a shepherd.  The young David was a shepherd.  And God, “Yahweh”, was called “the Shepherd of Israel”.  In John’s gospel Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd”.  That is a rather tame translation of what the gospel actually says in Greek.  There it uses the Greek word “kalos”, meaning beautiful, wonderful.  Jesus actually says: “I am the wonderful, the beautiful shepherd.”

But what makes him such a beautiful, wonderful shepherd?  He tells us.  “A wonderful shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”  That image and language of “laying down your life” is quite unique to Jesus.  It is not found elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Here Jesus is referring to a practice that his listeners would have been very familiar with.  In Jesus’ time, as evening was coming on, all the sheep in a village would be herded into a common corral or sheepfold.  Then, as night came on and the villagers were going to bed, one shepherd would stay the whole night at the corral.  This shepherd would lie down across the opening to the corral.  He’d stay there all night – till dawn.  Any sheep wanting to go out would have to do so over the body of the shepherd.  And any wolf seeking entry into the sheepfold would likewise have to come in over the shepherd’s body.  So, the good shepherd, the wonderful shepherd stayed there all night with the sheep.  He did not get up and run away at the sight of a wolf.  The wonderful shepherd literally put down – laid down his body, his life for the sake of the sheep.

We might reflect that at this liturgy Jesus continues to be a wonderful shepherd – for us.  In the Eucharist Jesus lays down his life, his body for us.  And he says to us: “Take, eat: my body for you.  Take, drink in: my life for you.”

But there’s something else here that I think is very important for us to appreciate.  Jesus says he lays down his life freely – but also that he had to learn how to lay down his life.  He had to learn how to be a wonderful shepherd.  And he tells us he learned that from the Father.  Jesus sensed the Father laying down his life for him.  He experienced the Father giving him his own life, his own love.  Jesus watches the Father sharing with him his own life, holding nothing back.  He sees that love and obeys its movement.  He receives life and love from the Father in order to give that same life and love further – to others – to us.

Something truly astounding is being proclaimed in this gospel.  When we watch and learn from Jesus as our Wonderful Shepherd – when we do as he did, laying down our lives and our bodies for others – then the Father’s own life and love is passing through us into others.

Now I find that truly astounding and awesome.  We are where God’s life and love take on concrete shape in our world.  I am not talking about some vague spiritual intentions.  I am not talking merely about some church prayer service or liturgy.  I am talking about when we give ourselves to one another concretely.  That is never vague.  It’s always specific, particular.  It means doing concrete, particular things: changing this diaper, getting up at that hour to go to work, working to get this grandparent into that retirement community.  And it includes making specific plans to come to church at a particular time.

In all of this the Father’s life and love is taking on real shape and substance.  God’s holy life and love happening in us and through us.  Giving our lives is giving life – giving God’s life – to others.  Our every act of love comes from the heart of God; it breathes God’s own breath – God’s own Spirit.

And Jesus further says that those who do not belong to the flock will see this love and be drawn into the flock.  There will be one flock and one shepherd – because in the end all of us, as human beings, will come to recognize the goodness of a love which gives itself away and will want to follow such love.  In the end, the prayer that we pray in the Our Father will be answered:  God’s will, God’s love will come down to earth and be done – be done by us all.

“Beloved, see what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.  And so we are.  We are God’s children now!”[1Jn 3, 1-2]
Fr. Pat Earl, SJ