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

Christ is Risen! So, Repent!

3^rd SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts3, 13-15, 17-19 / 1Jn 2, 1-5 / Luke 24, 35-48

We continue our Easter celebration.  “Christ is risen!”  We continue to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus.  But our readings today would have us add something to our Easter celebration.  What’s to be added?

In our first reading Peter is preaching in Jerusalem.  He’s preaching the resurrection of Jesus.  Loudly and publicly he proclaims:  “Christ is risen!”  And then he adds an invitation to his fellow Jews to join in the celebration by saying this: “Therefore, repent and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.”  As Peter would have it:  Christ is risen! – and so let us repent.  Peter adds repentance.

The gospel reading from Luke presents the Risen Lord appearing to his disciples.  He says to them: “Peace be with you.”  Then Luke continues: “…he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  And he said to them:  ‘Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.”  If our minds are open to the way Jesus understands the Scriptures, then Luke would have us hear Jesus saying to us:  I have suffered, and I am risen.  So, repent, for the forgiveness of your sins.  And preach – be witnesses to – the repentance that you do!

Easter repentance!  Resurrection repentance!  Repentance is what’s been added.  But I thought repentance was for Lent.  We’re into the Easter season now.  We’re supposed to be into joy and peace and love.  Someone’s raining on our Easter parade.  We need to look more closely at repentance.

Repentance is the New Testament word for total transformation, total personal change.  What Peter and Luke would have us realize is that the resurrection of Jesus is not merely a belief we have in what happened to Jesus.  Much more importantly it is an experience – an experience we can step into.  And when we step into Jesus’ resurrection experience, we know the forgiveness of our sins; we are totally transformed and changed.  We repent.

There’s an ancient Christian legend that I think captures what the Scriptures are trying to tell us.  The legend is about Judas.  After his suicide Judas finds himself at the bottom of a slimy pit.  For years crying about what he had done, he cried so much there were no more tears left to him.  Then he looks up and sees a glimmer of light and begins to climb toward the light.  But the walls are so slimy that again and again he slips back into the pit.  Finally, after many more tries, Judas manages to drag himself out of the pit.  Suddenly he finds himself in an upper room with twelve people seated around a table.  “We’ve been waiting for you, Judas” Jesus says to him.  “We couldn’t begin until you came.”

Judas had stepped into the resurrection experience.  He repented – was totally transformed in the forgiveness of his sins.

A theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote: “We are always tempted to stay in our sin because we do not dare to believe in the magnificent love of God.”  For us to enter into the presence of the Risen Lord – for us to step into Jesus’ resurrection – is for us to undergo God’s magnificently forgiving love – is for us to repent, to be totally changed.

We should note this.  The Risen Lord missions us to preach the repentance we undergo – to preach the forgiveness of sins by becoming ourselves vehicles of that forgiving love.  And we are to preach and be witnesses, Jesus says, “to all nations”.  We preach and bring the forgiveness of sins to all.  We may not diminish God’s magnificent love by reserving it only to some.  We may not preach to all – except to the Judases in our lives.  We may not preach to all – except to those who harm and ridicule us.  We may not preach to all in our church – except to those we disagree with.

We truly proclaim Jesus’ resurrection and our own resurrection – our own new, risen life in Jesus – when we are able to say to all the Judases – to all who have succumbed to life’s deadly elements, including those deadly elements we find in ourselves – when we are able to say, together with Jesus: “We’ve been waiting for you, Judas.  We couldn’t begin until you came.”

Christ is risen!  And so, let us repent and come to know the total forgiveness of our sins.  Then, joy undreamt of – peace unimagined – and love unmeasured – will be ours, ours unending.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Easter Vigil

Easter is our feast of feasts.  It celebrates our truth of truths.  Here we are standing at the very source of our Christian faith.  Here we say a basic yes to what the power of God can do.  On Easter we affirm and commit ourselves to this fundamental truth: God’s power can take what is dead and lifeless and raise it to new life.  Jesus, crucified, now lives!  He is the Living One.  And this living Jesus now brings us to new life.

Jesus lives and he is Our Lord by bringing us to new life.  He is our God by making of us a new creation.  That is the Easter proclamation.  We hear the proclamation.  We may even repeat and sing the proclamation.  But has the proclamation of resurrection reached deep enough into our minds and hearts so as to shape our real-life expectations – shape our expectations of life and of ourselves?  Above all, has the Easter proclamation reached deep enough to shape our expectations of Jesus?

It makes a big difference to our expectations whether we think someone is dead or alive.  When someone is dead – even someone we knew alive – we may be able to learn more about him/her as time goes by, but the information is about someone no longer here.  We are hearing an echo from the past.  And we expect nothing more.

But when we think someone is alive, we have a completely different set of expectations.  People who are alive are still capable of doing and saying new things.  They can show up at times, places and in ways different from how they used to show up previously.  They can surprise us.  When someone is living – and we are in relationship with that person – then our knowledge of the person can grow and change.  New data is always coming in – sharpening our understanding of earlier words and actions.  We are not limited to old data and past memories.  With the dead, on the other hand, their deeds are ended.  Their words are complete and their power to affect change gone.

The Easter proclamation raises for all of us who hear it this most crucial of questions: do we think Jesus is dead or alive?   Are our expectations of Jesus of someone who is dead or of someone who is alive?

For those who do not share our Christian faith – Jesus is another dead man.  His deeds, however wonderful in life, are now done, finished.  Now he does nothing more.  His words are complete.  Now he speaks nothing new.  His power is gone.  Now he brings on no change.  The non-Christian can always learn more about Jesus but can never learn more from Jesus.

For the Christian Jesus is alive.  The empty tomb calls on us to search for “the Living One”.  Jesus is not to be found among the dead.  His deeds continue – he does new things among us and within us.  His words continue – he speaks new words, new meanings into our lives.  His power continues – he affects change in our lives.  We find ourselves being changed – being transformed.  We receive his love by becoming his love.  Jesus is becoming our life-giving Spirit, as Paul tells us.

Jesus lives.  Jesus is Lord.  Jesus brings new life.  That is our Easter proclamation.  And while it raises for us a fundamental life-question, it also comes as amazing grace.  It is God’s own invitation to learn from the Living Jesus – to open mind and heart to Jesus’ life-giving Spirit.  This is my Son, my Beloved; learn from him [Mk 9, 7].  He is your way.  He is your truth.  He is your life [Jn 14, 6].

In the Book of Revelation we hear the classic Christian prayer spoken in Aramaic, Jesus’ own language: Marana-tha!  Our Lord, come! [Rev 22, 20].  Every liturgy acts out that prayer.  We here intend to address a real, living person fully capable of manifesting his presence ever more palpably, ever more clearly and closely.                                                              

As we begin the Easter season together as a parish, let us pray Marana-tha each day.  Let us look for and learn Jesus’ life-giving presence in our lives.  Our Lord, come!

Fr. Pat Earl, S.J.

The Delight of Acknowledging Our Sin

4th SUNDAY OF LENT

Josh5, 9-12 / 2Cor 5, 17-21 / John 9, 1-41

One of the blessings of Lent is learning to acknowledge our sin.  It’s a real grace – a gift.  The gospel we have just heard wants to guide us toward that grace.  The story of the man born blind wants to guide us into the light of Christ – and there, in the light of Christ, it wants to expose our sin.  It wants to expose us to the lies that blind and bind us.

A little background helps to understand what is really going on in this story.  Jesus heals the blind man on the Sabbath.  The Pharisees object this violates the law of Moses.  God rested on the Sabbath after completing the work of creation.  So, the reasoning goes, not to observe Sabbath rest is a refusal to imitate God and therefore is a sin.

But in the gospel of John Jesus explicitly denies that God’s work of creation has been completed.  He denies that God rests on the Sabbath.  For example, when Jesus cures an invalid on the Sabbath – and the authorities object – he counters:  “My Father is working up until the present, and I also work.”[Jn 5, 17]  God’s work of completing creation is ongoing – and it’s being done through Jesus.

In today’s story Jesus completes what is incomplete by curing the blind man.  Jesus completes God’s work of creation by making the blind man into a full human being.

In the gospel the man born blind represents each of us.  Each of us is incomplete.  Obviously we have physical limits.  Even more obviously we have personal, moral and spiritual limits.  Our humanity screams for completion.  The story’s point – the gospel’s point – is that our many limitations do not make up our sin.  Jesus will work with us – he will work within us and among us – to bring to fullness and completion what is incomplete and limited.  For Jesus our incompleteness is completely human – only to be expected.  He knows God will deal compassionately with it.

Sin for Jesus shows itself in how the Pharisees deal with human incompleteness – in how they deal with our obvious moral and spiritual failures.  In the story the Pharisees judge, censure and expel the man born blind.  And that – that for Jesus – is the presence of radical evil in our lives: when we exclude and expel others – others incomplete like ourselves - even as God is working within them to bring them to fuller life.

We said learning to acknowledge our sin is a grace.  For Jesus we receive that grace when we come to recognize the times we choose to exclude others.  In excluding people we are resisting God’s creative work in them.  We sin when we resist God’s life-giving, life-expanding energy at work in people by scorning those very same people – all in the name of some petty self-righteousness.  And we sin when we do the same thing to ourselves.  Self-scorn resists the power of God bringing us new life and energy.

This gospel would bring us to the grace and the freedom of admitting we are all blatantly incomplete human beings.  Now like the Pharisees we may want to fume against that incompleteness in ourselves and in others.  But it is precisely there – where we experience our own undeniable failure and weakness – that’s where God’s ongoing presence and work in us are to be found.  We run from our incompleteness only at the risk of running from where we can find God’s presence in our lives.  Honest self-knowledge brings us into God’s real presence – into God’s here and now presence to us.  For Jesus our shames and our failures become holy ground – our burning bushes where God announces to us “I am.”  “I am with you.”

But Jesus wants even more for us.  He wants the full force of this gospel to explode in our minds and hearts.  He wants us to come to the discovery that God is not a Pharisee.  God does not judge – or censure – or exclude.  God has nothing at all to do with our self-righteous mechanisms for scorning and expelling what is incomplete in others or in ourselves.

On this Laetare Sunday we joyfully call our church Catholic.  Katholikos in Greek means universal, all-embracing.  Our Catholic Church includes and embraces every sort of human incompleteness.  But how could it be otherwise in a church that calls itself the church of Jesus Christ.

It is here – here among our clearly incomplete selves – here within our obviously imperfect selves – here in our all too human church - that we will have the joy of coming to know the God who is not a Pharisee – the un-self-righteous God of Jesus Christ – the God who wants mercy, not sacrifice.  God wants mercy of us – not just our Sunday mornings.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Transfiguration

2nd SUNDAY OF LENT
Genesis22, 1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 / Rom 8, 31-34 / Mark 9, 2-10

We have just heard the story of the transfiguration in Mark’s gospel.  Matthew and Luke give similar accounts.  It is a strange story.  The disciples, who accompany Jesus up the mountain become confused, even dumbfounded.  Mark says they didn’t know what to say or how to react.

What does it mean for Jesus to be transfigured and to shine like the sun?  And what does it mean for this burst of brightness to bring on confusion and fear among the disciples?  What is really being said here in the gospel?

Scripture scholars call all three accounts of the transfiguration “apocalyptic visions”.  They mean that the gospel writers are trying to convey an experience the disciples had on the mountain.  In the experience the disciples gained insight.  That’s why it’s called a “vision”: they gained a deep insight.  And the insight was into Jesus’ fundamental reality – insight into Jesus’ true self, into Jesus’ depth.  That’s why the vision is called “apocalyptic”.  The vision or insight is revelatory.  What is seen into – the depth reached – sees into and reaches into God.

The movement toward insight was frightening for the disciples.  It was frightening because to get to Jesus’ depth and truth they had to move beyond all that had become familiar to them about Jesus – beyond his clothes – beyond his looks and moods – beyond his bearing and manner.

To come to the core of another person does involve giving up one’s own favorite expectations and projections.  Coming to know another person – as that person truly, deeply is – requires a profound self-denial on my part.  For biblical and mystical writers this movement to the core, to the heart of the person of Jesus requires a particular kind of self-denial.  It requires what they call “unknowing”.  It requires giving up all my comfortable presumptions and presuppositions about Jesus, and God.  “Unknowing” requires giving up the illusion that I really do know Jesus – really do know God.  These writers also speak of the necessity of entering into the “cloud of unknowing” in order to come to know Jesus and God – in order to come to the core of all reality.

Here in the transfiguration scene in the gospel the disciples enter into the “cloud of unknowing”.  There they learn by un-learning; they know by un-knowing.  In the cloud they learn Jesus is:  my beloved son – in him you see what pleases me – listen and learn from him what it means to be child of God – listen and learn from him what it means to be divine – listen and learn from him what I, God, am like.

And so the disciples must enter into the frightening task of un-learning all that they held dear and sacred – all that they thought godly and holy.  That truly is a fearful journey – to have your basic certainties called into question – to un-learn cherished notions of God.

In Jesus we learn God’s true image.  We learn that God is vulnerable – that God does not defend himself – does not protect himself.  In Jesus we learn God’s humility – God’s absolute need to be with us and in us – not above us.  We learn God does not know how to lord it over us.  In Jesus we learn God’s justice forgives and does good to the enemy.  God’s justice is to love – simply and generously – without measure and without condition.

On our journey in Lent we as disciples must accompany Jesus up the mountain.  We must enter into the cloud.  We must become confused and uprooted from familiar images and certainties.  As disciples and as a church we must learn by un-learning.  We must learn our God’s power is wielded through vulnerability.  As disciples and as a church we must learn our God’s power is wielded through a humble being with people and through a justice which only loves them.

Once we have learned by un-learning, then we – as disciples and as a church – will be able to teach others the ways and will of God.  Then we will have something to say even to a powerful nation become so full of itself.

 
But, first, we must unlearn.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

What Are You Giving Up For Lent?

1st SUNDAY OF LENT

Genesis9, 8-15 / 1Peter 3, 18-22 / Mark 1, 12-15

Growing up in Philadelphia it was a common question among Catholics this time of year: “What are you giving up for Lent?”  The typical answers were: candy, movies, dessert.  Adults would also list: cigarettes, coffee, alcohol.

Some husbands would say with a smile: “my wife’s cooking”.  And the less pious among us would say they’re giving up going to Mass on Sundays.

It is in the readings for our Lenten liturgies that the Church tells us what we should be doing in Lent – what expectations we should have of this season.  So, on this first Sunday of Lent, as we are beginning this season of grace, let us ask ourselves: “What should we be doing in Lent?”  And let’s see how the Church would help us answer that question.

Our first reading from the book of Genesis recalls the story of Noah and the flood.  Specifically we recall that wonderful scene where God points to the rainbow as the sign of the covenant.  The rainbow, spanning heaven and earth, is to remind us how heaven and earth – how God and man are linked together.  The rainbow tells us we are linked – bonded to God, and God is linked – bonded to us.

Christians use the sign and symbol of the rainbow and apply it to Jesus.  Jesus is our rainbow – our sign of the covenant – telling us how we are related and joined to God.  Our reading from the gospel of Mark talks about Jesus being tempted in the desert by Satan.  And that speaks to us about our relationship with God.  Jesus was tempted – so are we.  Our relationship with God will be tempestuous – with ups and downs – with times full of doubts and struggles.  Jesus was tempted – so are we.

Just think and reflect on this.  Just as no doubt, no struggle, no temptation could in any way make Jesus less beloved by the Father – less a Son to the Father, just so with us.  Our doubts, struggles and temptations cannot make us in any way less beloved by God our Father.  In fact, they only call forth his compassion and care for us.

The reading from the first letter of Peter brings together what we heard in Genesis and the Gospel of Mark.  Jesus – our rainbow – Jesus who shows us how we are joined to God and God is joined to us – this Jesus, Peter tells us, descends into hell.

Jesus’ descent into hell.  It is an article of faith in the Apostles’ Creed.  Hell is where God is not.  In his book on the Apostles Creed, Introduction to Christianity, then Cardinal Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict XVI describes hell as that human loneliness where not even love can penetrate.  And what Jesus’ descent into hell wants to tell us is that there is no such loneliness.  There is no human place – no human situation – no human shut-up-ness – no human isolation that Jesus’ love cannot and does not penetrate.

The early Anglo-Saxon Christians spoke of Jesus’ descent into hell as his Harrowing of Hell.  Harrow means to break apart and destroy.  Jesus breaks apart Satan’s special preserve – [that’s] our imagined impenetrability to God’s presence and love.  Jesus destroys and pillages hell; he empties us of our hells.

And that is how it is between God and us.  That is what the rainbow – what Jesus tells us.  There can be no separation between us and God except in our own contorted and twisted imagination.

So, what are you going to give up for Lent?  What should you be doing in Lent?  The Church’s answer is clear:  Give up hell!  Get real and give up hell!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ