Images of Our Hope

11^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Ez 17, 22-24 / 2Cor 5, 6-10 / Mk 4,26-34

In the reading from Mark Jesus speaks to us of images of the kingdom of God.  The “Kingdom of God” was Jesus’ central teaching.  It’s what happens when we allow ourselves to do God’s will – what things begin to look like when we allow ourselves to do God’s love.  The images Jesus uses to describe the arrival of the kingdom have to do with growth – growth happening of itself.  We just look on and see the growth happening – just as we see a stalk of grain growing.  First, the blade appears, then the ear, and then the full grain in the ear – all is ready for the harvest.

These are all images of hope.  The kingdom of God is a life lived in hope – where God truly is at work bringing about change and growth – and we are witnesses to what God is accomplishing.  But we must be honest here with ourselves.  Do our own images of hope faithfully reflect Jesus’ images of hope?  In his images God is bringing about what God wants, and we are the onlookers.  Let’s honestly reflect here.

I wonder what images come to mind when we hear the words of Psalm 50:  “To the upright I will show the saving power of God.”  What do we imagine God saving us from?  Much more importantly, what do we want God to save us from?  What do those images look like?

I am sure each one of us here has had those moments when in a bad, bad situation we pray to God to save us from it – to get us out of it.  That’s only normal for us.  We’re in a bad – a threatening place and we want out – to overcome the threat.  We want to be on top of the threat – to have it somehow behind us.  We want God to make us safe, secure.

Let’s go deeper.  What really threatens us?  What makes us feel unsafe, insecure?  I want to answer for myself – and you can see for yourself.  I want to say what makes me feel unsafe and threatened is anything that might undermine my sense of my own well-being – my health, my social and economic position in the community, and my self-regard before others, including God and church.  I want God to protect me – my body, my goods, my reputation.

But when I am honest with myself and my own life, I must say I have never experienced God working that way.  That’s what I want God to do, but honest reflection leads me to say I don’t think God does work that way.  I have had a false image of hope.  This false image has much too much of me at work – my images of success and well-being – of what is good and bad for me and others.  In this false hope I have ceased to be the onlooker at what God is doing and have become the orchestrator of what I think God should be doing.

Further reflection and prayer tells me God did not protect Jesus’ body, nor his goods, nor his reputation.  Jesus did not run from the cross nor come down from it.  I do not see God working that way in the lives of those who tried to follow Jesus closely – Peter and Paul, all the other apostles and disciples.  Nor does God seem to protect in that way the lives of those seeking to follow Jesus today.  Think of the many martyrs who have died just in our lifetime, close by – the nuns and missionary workers in El Salvador, the archbishop of San Salvador, the Jesuit martyrs at the University of Central America, Sister Dorothy Stang in Brazil – and many, many more all over the world.

Jesus’ life and his ongoing life in his followers – these provide true images of hope.  And what signs of growth do we see actually happening in their lives?  How do their lives yield up blade and ear and full grain – signs of God being at work?  Following Jesus’ parable, let us become simple, honest onlookers.  And what do we see?  We see people being freed or saved from the fears they have for themselves – for their bodies, their goods, their reputation and self-esteem.  We do see people being saved from self-preoccupation and even from the fear of death.  We do see people being freed up for a full life and a fully caring life with and for others.

God does not work the magic we want.  God does work the wonders, the miracles we see in the life of Jesus and his followers.  They are works of transformation – of conversion, that radical change which God alone works in our lives.  And God is working now to grow the mustard seed of our lives into large branches where others may delight to thrive and flourish.  But we must look – look for God’s action in our lives!

Let us hope in God!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Bread Shared & Life Poured Out

THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
 
Ex 24, 3-8 / Heb 9, 11-15 / Mk14, 12-16, 22-26

We celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.  That is the formal name of our feast today.  In fact, we are celebrating what we as church continually celebrate.  Today we are celebrating the Eucharist.  Because the Eucharist is so central and familiar to us as Catholics, I want to reflect on this sacrament which so clearly identifies us as disciples of Jesus.

I think it very important for us to remember and appreciate the context in which Jesus gave us the Eucharist.  It is our founding memory as a community of disciples.  Jesus takes bread – blesses, breaks and gives it to his friends saying: “Take this and eat it.  It is my body which is given for you.”  Also he takes a cup of wine – blesses and gives it to them saying:  “This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many.”  Then Jesus adds:  “Do this – as my memorial.”

The context is crucial to understanding what is being said here.  The community of disciples that Jesus had worked so hard to nurture is about to disintegrate.  Judas has already sold him out.  Peter, in whom he had put such special trust, will desert and deny him.  And Peter will soon be followed by all the other disciples.  In the face of denial, desertion and his own death Jesus chooses to share himself – to share his life.  And he chooses to give himself – to share himself with the very ones who will do the denying and deserting.  That first eucharistic assembly was a community of the unwilling, the unworthy and unbrave.

In Jesus’ understanding it was absolutely right that he entrust himself to sinners, to the weak and unreliable because he was acting in hope – hope in God – hope in what God can do working through our very human lives.  In Jesus’ understanding there’s more – much more to us – than what we do of ourselves alone.  There’s life in us.  There’s God’s own life in us.  There’s the Spirit of Life in us – the same Spirit of Life as in Jesus.

Contemporary images make blood a sign of gore.  Just watch TV to see how much blood is used to grab our attention.  But in Jesus’ Jewish imagination blood meant “life”, “haim” in Hebrew.  I’m sure you’ve heard the Jewish toast: “L’haim” “To life”.  In our first reading, when Moses sprinkles blood over the people at the reading of the covenant, he is sprinkling them with the sign of God’s life to which they are committing themselves.  So intimate was the association of blood with life that kosher rules for food preparation required the blood of animals be drained from them before cooking.  The fear was that taking in an animal’s blood would make one act like an animal.

When Jesus identifies the wine with his own blood, he is identifying it with his own life.  Drink in – take in my life – my way – my values – my attitude to life – my love.  Live as I live.  Love as I love.

We are the direct descendants of that first eucharistic community.  Today we make up the community of the unwilling, the unworthy and unbrave.  And again Jesus acts and speaks among us in great hope – hope in the Spirit of God already in us – hope in the life of God already acting within us.  Jesus’ life – Jesus’ Spirit moving, motivating and shaping us.

“Do this”, Jesus says to us.  “Do this – as my memorial.”  Do my way!  Do my life!  Do my love!  Do not withhold yourself from one another.  That is my way!  Pour your life into the lives of others – into the lives of sinners – into the lives of those who are weak and unreliable.  Let your love’s hospitality be like mine – shockingly expansive and shamelessly inclusive.

We celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.  But we must become what we celebrate.  We must become the holy body and blood of Christ by embracing the human completely and compassionately – all our brothers and sisters – with their joys and hopes – and with their sins and sorrows.

In the Letter to the Hebrews we read: “[Jesus] is mediator of a new covenant…”  He is that mediator through us – now becoming his body and blood for the life of the world.  Let us then recall the words of consecration we hear said at every Eucharist.  They are our words of consecration.  They tell us who we are.  “…blood of the new, eternal covenant… poured out… for the forgiveness of sins.”  Let us become what we recall and celebrate.  Let our lives be poured out to others in a love that forgives.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

The Way We Are

HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

Dt4, 32-34, 39-40 / Rom 8, 14-17 / Mt 28, 16-20
 
It’s Holy Trinity Sunday.  In celebrating this feast we joyfully recognize a reality that is fundamental to all that is.  As Catholic Christians we believe all creation somehow bears the imprint of God.  Somehow the way things are reveals the way God is.  The Trinity is a core revelation for us.  It reveals the basic way God is – God’s basic way of living.

Throughout the centuries Christians have used all sorts of words and images to try to get a handle on what the revelation of the Trinity is trying to tell us.  Our scriptures and creeds use the language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  St. Patrick used the image of the shamrock.  A Russian icon pictures three men seated at a table.  What these words and images are trying to convey about God and God’s way of life is this: God lives through complete sharing.  In God there is complete interdependence as the chosen way to live.  And so early Christian writers speak of the Father pouring himself into the Son and the Son returning and repeating that love.  They speak of the Spirit as the back and forth movement of their desire to pour themselves into one another’s lives. 

Basically the Trinity is telling us that in God there is lover and beloved – and no holding back between them.  In God there is loving and being loved – and no holding back.  Never, never in God’s way of life is there clinging to what is mine nor grabbing for what is yours.

The Trinity tells us the way God is.  But we bear the imprint of God.  And so the Trinity tells us the way we fundamentally are.  In Christian understanding – just as a rose cannot withhold its scent – just so, we are made for sharing and interdependence.  We are made to belong to one another.  We express this truth about ourselves sacramentally by being baptized “in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”  We are baptized into their life of sharing and holding nothing back – into their life of choosing to become interdependent on one another.  We are baptized into their divine refusal to live clinging to what is mine and clutching at what is yours. 

And you know, we have visions of the Trinity.  Visions aren’t just for the great saints and mystics.  We really do have visions of the Trinity!  We see – actually see the Trinity really present in the way we are.  We see the Trinity whenever we see people not withholding themselves from one another – but pouring themselves into the lives of others.  There we are seeing, actually seeing the Trinity.  We see the Trinity in married love, in families, in friendships.  We see the Trinity in any committed love – wherever we cling to one another and not just to ourselves.  Think here of the families and committed relationships in this parish.  Think of people standing with the poor, the immigrant, the stranger and outsider.  Wherever people are there for one another – there to help and be helped – there to heal and be healed – there to encourage and be encouraged – there we see the Trinity truly, actively present in the way we are. 

We have all had the experience of wanting respectful, considerate love.  We all want to give ourselves and receive others – tenderly, without force or control, just freely being with one another.  Isn’t that what we honestly, deeply want?  Isn’t that the way we are?  The mystery of the Trinity tells us to cherish, even more, to reverence those desires.  They are the very presence of the Holy Spirit within us.  These desires call us ever deeper and deeper into the way of God’s life.  So, if you yearn for love, recognize and reverence that yearning as holy.  It is a holy, sacred yearning.  Don’t run from it.  Don’t trivialize or sentimentalize it.  It is the mystery of God becoming present in you.

So the next time we find ourselves giving in to love – the next time we allow ourselves to become dependent on another person – let us rejoice with a holy joy!  We are behaving the way we are made – in the image of God.  God is having his way with us.  The Trinity is living in us and through us.  We are Holy! Holy! Holy!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Pentecost Sunday

Acts2, 1-11 / 1Cor 12, 3b-7, 12-13 / John 20, 19-23

At Pentecost we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit, and we celebrate the coming of the Church.  They happen together.

In our Catholic tradition there are many voices that would urge us to really celebrate this feast.  St. Augustine tells us: “Keep this day with joy, celebrate it …for in you is being fulfilled what was foreshadowed in those days when the Holy Spirit came.”  Augustine is saying what happened at Pentecost is being repeated in us.  We are a repeat performance of Pentecost!

A later voice out of our tradition is the theologian, Karl Rahner.  He tells us that Jesus’ resurrection – Jesus’ new life – achieves its greatest clarity and completion in what we celebrate today: the coming of the Church.  As Church we are Easter made clear!  We are Easter made complete!

These are grandiose things to be told about ourselves.  But let’s go back to what Scripture has to teach us about ourselves.  If you’ll remember back to Easter, on that first Easter morning two men dressed in white appeared to the disciples at the tomb asking them:  “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?  He’s not here, but has been raised.”  Jesus, the Risen One, is among the living – not the dead.  The Risen One is in the present – not the past.

And again, at the Ascension, the same two men appear to the disciples asking them:  “Why are you standing there looking up at the sky?  This Jesus … will return.”  Jesus, the Ascended One, is not up above in some heavenly space.  Don’t look up; he’s not there.

One thing the Scripture is telling us about ourselves is that we tend to look for Jesus where he is not to be found.  And Pentecost is there to tell us where to look for Jesus – among the living, not the dead – in the present, not the past – not above us but in our midst.  Pentecost points to the arrival of the Holy Spirit among Jesus’ disciples.  It marks Jesus’ Spirit beginning to inhabit the minds, hearts and bodies of the disciples.  Jesus returns through his disciples.  He did not leave us orphans.  We are his return.

I think the scene in John’s gospel conveys the coming of the Spirit most poignantly.  Jesus comes to his disciples saying: “Peace be with you!”  Jesus brings peace to the disciples who had denied and deserted him.  Jesus, their victim, returns as their blessing.  And then, John tells us, “Jesus breathed on them and said to the disciples: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them…’”  The Holy Spirit arrives in the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus’ real return – his real presence among us – happens when we accept his peace and bring his forgiveness to others.  Saints are sinners who know themselves to be forgiven and called to live with others out of that forgiveness.

We take shape as Church – as the church of the saints – as we allow ourselves to be inhabited by the Spirit of Jesus.  We take shape as Church – as where Jesus’ own living presence is most clearly seen – as we learn to bless, like Jesus, those who have denied and deserted us in any way – as we learn not to speak words of accusation but rather words that bring down barriers and cross over borders we have created.

We take shape as Church – when we simply refuse to mimic the ways of the hopeless among us – when we do not confuse anger for strength of character nor the accumulation of wealth for life’s purpose.  We do not stand ready to applaud the mindless pursuit of power nor do we play chaplain to any system or empire – to any political ideal or party intent on violence and domination.

Forgiveness is the fully human and Spirit-filled shape of the Church.  That is the Church we are called to be.  That is the Church the world needs to see.  And that is the Church we need to celebrate this Pentecost.

May the Spirit of Christ be with us all!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

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

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

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