The Quiet Corner

Archives: 8 January 2004AD -- 1 July 2004AD

       St. John the Baptist makes a clear distinction in today’s Gospel passage between his own ministry symbolized by water and the imminent ministry of Jesus Christ signified by the dynamic image of fire.   This water versus fire imagery is not to be taken as a hard and fast division between the two cousins.  After all Jesus would send his chosen Apostles out to baptize the whole world with water while the Baptist would view his own early role as warning mankind’s damnable chaff of the unquenchable fire to come.  The water and fire symbolism does overlap. Nonetheless, the work of St. John the Baptist is irrevocably linked with water while the vocation of Jesus Christ is described, in his own passionate words, as a consuming fire. 

       Both water and fire are images abundantly used in the Old Testament and are among the four basic elements, along with earth and air, appreciated even by pre-historic man.  The first creation outlined in Genesis was drawn from water.  The Spirit hovered over the waters and out of the watery abyss the universe was fashioned.  The Garden of Eden had four rivers, accounting for its lush resources.  The creation of God’s world anew at the time of Noah clearly evolved from water.  The flood destroyed the sinful world and water generated a renewed world.  Moses was born of water, snatched as an infant from the River Nile.  The Jewish nation was also born of water, led through the Red Sea by Moses and through the Jordan by Joshua. 

       Clearly water in the Scriptures speaks of new beginnings and such was St. John’s basic message: A new era is about to dawn.  A new world order is about to take shape.  A new creation is being effected by God.  Those Jews who thought that Christianity would mean business as usual, simply a continuation of the status quo, were to be sadly mistaken.  Christianity was a totally new enterprise, symbolized by both the water baptism of St. John and the later sacramental baptism from Jesus.  And for the believing Christian today, Christianity still cannot imply routine, habit or custom.  Authentic Christianity is always a new beginning, a fresh start, a repentance from the old ways and an embrace of a new way, God’s way.

       While water connotes beginnings, fire suggests consummation.  Scriptural imagery sees the world begin from water but end through fire.  Adam and Eve began their happy lives among Eden’s four rivers but concluded their sad lot blocked out of Paradise by the angels’ fiery sword.  Moses begin his career plucked from waters of Egypt but fulfilled his days by encountering God at the burning bush and amid the volcanic displays of Sinai.  Elias concluded his brilliant mission by being whisked to heaven on a fiery chariot.  Jesus’ public life commenced with his baptism at the River Jordan at the hands of his cousin John, united to the repentant sinners congregated there.  But Jesus’ mission was consummated at the Pentecost event, in which flashes of fire descended upon the heads of the gathered Apostles, a spiritual fire sent by Jesus who had returned to his Father precisely so the Spirit could arrive and bring the Church’s apostolate to its fulfillment.    

       The water ministry of St. John the Baptist was a work of promise.  His was a ministry of prophecy, bearing witness to the great events to come.  The shores of the Jordan were Christianity’s public starting line.  The ardent work of Jesus Christ would begin there and go on to ignite the spiritual fire that would guarantee final achievement.  In Christ, all promises would be realized, all prophecies fulfilled, all prayers answered.  In Christ, the end-times, often depicted as a consuming fire, would arrive.  After Christ, there are no new beginnings, just continued growth in the Holy Spirit, the fire of Divine love.

       Brittney Spears’ breathtaking fifty-five hour matrimonial experience was, to some minds, no more than a lark, a “been there, done that” escapade to be discounted as the fruit of Miss Spears’ immaturity or the result of her astute self-marketing.  To other minds Miss Spears’ misadventure is just another sad statement on the low estate into which marriage has devolved in this initial decade of the twenty-first century.  Alas, Ms. Spears is not alone in her disregard for the sanctity of marriage.  Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court has given its legislature six months to undue twenty-five hundred years of matrimonial practice in the Western world in order to accommodate same-sex couples who confuse mutual exploitation with complementary commitment.  And where would the entertainment industry be without marriage to abuse?  Today’s situation comedies are nightly variations on the themes of pre-marital, extra-marital, ineptly marital or not-even-close-to marital sex.  Nor does the average person get off the hook when it comes to the sorry state of contemporary wedded unions.  A divorce rate of over forty, perhaps over forty-five, percent in this nation does nothing to dispel the prevailing notion that marriage is no longer an institution but merely an individual choice, actually, an individual whim.

       This grim, post-modern depiction of matrimony stands in great contrast to the generous, abundant, profuse imagery that St. John employs in recounting the wedding feast at Cana.  Weddings in the ancient world were not the Mass at 3, reception at 6, home by 10 affairs current today.  Ancient marriage festivities continued for days, making any trip worthwhile.  The fact that Jesus, Mary and the “disciples” were present indicates a very extensive guest list.  And the consummation of all the wine provided is a further indication that this was no meager enterprise.  This was a lavish event.

       “There were at hand six stone water jars, each one containing fifteen to twenty-five gallons…” This would amount to one hundred and fifty gallons of wine or forty cases of wine by American standards.  Jesus is not being stingy.  Note too that when the waiters fill the water jars they fill them “to the brim.”  There is nothing tightfisted about Christ and his gifts.  Christ spares nothing when it comes to benefiting his clients.  The excellence of the wine should certainly be mentioned.  “You have saved the best wine until now!” the chief steward remarks exuberantly to the groom.  St. John concludes his vignette by observing that this was Christ’s first miracle and that “his disciples began to believe in him.”

      Every detail of this Gospel narrative – the extensive celebration, the excessive festivities, the compassion of Mary, the graciousness of Jesus, the abundant wine, the solicitous waiters, the excellent bouquet, the awed disciples -- connotes a deliberate liberality on the part of God in this new dispensation to be inaugurated through His Son Jesus.  “God does not ration the Spirit,” the New Testament reads elsewhere, and this is certainly the theme of today’s Gospel.  God is not miserly, mean or meager when it comes to his grace.  He is benevolent and bighearted, even extravagant, when it concerns His new dispensation.

       Since ecclesial and matrimonial metaphors are frequently coupled in the Scriptures, Christians should ponder St. John’s impressive nuptial imagery when they consider modern marriage and when they consider the modern Church.   God intends that neither matrimony nor the Church should fall on hard times.  God Himself established marriage “to realize in mankind His design of love”(Humanae Vitae).  And God Himself through Christ established the Catholic Church to realize in mankind His design of love.  God will not allow His own benevolent plans for these human institutions to be frustrated.  A believer’s continued respect for the tradition of marriage and a believer’s continued respect for the traditions of the Church, especially in challenging times, reflect this Gospel’s confidence in the abundant generosity of God toward these two divinely established institutions.    

       When I was a kid growing up on Highland Street in Woonsocket, there was one Protestant family living on my end of the street.  They faithfully attended the Baptist church on nearby Blackstone Street.  But during the months of July and August, there was no church service for them to attend.  Church actually shut down for the summer!  Even now I can recall the shocked disbelief that this seasonal cessation of Sunday services evoked in my keen Catholic conscience.  Not to go to church on Sunday was unthinkable in Catholic Woonsocket of the 1940s and 50s.  Attending Mass was simply part of life, like brushing one’s teeth in the morning or eating lunch at midday or going to bed at night.   Mass attendance was a given, never questioned and strictly observed.

       The sad and frankly embarrassing statistics revealed this past week regarding church attendance among Catholics and Protestants in the USA evoked the same shocked disbelief from my now senior Catholic conscience.  American Catholics were confronted with the scandalous report that Protestants now attend church with greater regularly than Catholics.  Slightly more than forty percent of Protestants go to church regularly while just over thirty percent of Catholic go to Mass at least twice a month.  Weekly worship among Catholics has slipped, or rather has cascaded, from a high of seventy-five percent in the early 1960s to the current low of thirty-five percent as the new century begins.  While recent scandals certainly have not helped to draw any believers into church, it would be a disservice to blame clerical abuse for current Roman Catholic propensity to stay in bed on Sunday morning.  Clearly the problem began mid-century and has worsened to the present sad state.

       Church attendance within the Christian community has varied tremendously over the twenty centuries since the Apostles first met for the breaking of bread.  At the time of the American Revolution only about ten percent of the population of the thirteen original states went regularly to church.  Church attendance and religion generally experienced a great revival around the time of the American Civil War.  And, of course, for America’s Catholic immigrants and their children in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Church provided a social as well as spiritual focal point for their lives in the New World.  Institutional loyalty among the American population grew apace from the Civil War to the Second World War.  Fidelity to labor unions, to political parties, to fraternal societies, as well as to local parishes, was a hallmark of our parents’ and grandparents’ world.  Now Americans are lucky if they can organize a bowling league let alone fill a church on Sunday morning.   Something happened to transfer the American center of gravity from the institution to the individual, from religion to spirituality, from the AF of L to the ACLU.

       Church going was always a middle class pre-occupation.  The poverty-stricken and the filthy rich were never the core of any believing community.   Consequently, as American Catholics grew more affluent, that is, as their need for social, parochial, ethnic and educational support lessened, the central role of the Church in their life diminished.  Early Catholic Americans understood the Church to be their best support against the Protestant, Republican, managerial establishment.   The Church offered institutional support in this life as well as eternal happiness in the next.   Affluence changed all that.  The Rhode Island businessman or politician who was glad to go to LaSalle now sends his own children to Moses Brown or Wheeler. 

       Catholic affluence fosters Catholic independence.  Catholic independence engenders Catholic individualism.  Catholic individualism isolates a person from the Catholic community, from Catholic teaching, and from Catholic tradition, leaving the modern Catholic with the faithless values of secular society which are at best indifferent to Christian practice.  The chief problem with Mass attendance is not abusive priests or boring sermons or bland music.  The chief problem with Mass attendance is the secular indifference of our affluent American society.

       If I get a call to Pawtucket Memorial Hospital on a cold or rainy or snowy night, I will often drive right up to the emergency room entrance -- which is clearly marked “Fire Lane – No Parking” – leave my car there and go about the business of anointing the sick and absolving the near dead.  This is a rather mild display of what commentators nowadays call “hubris.”   Hubris is an inflated sense of self-importance.  “Oh, I’m a priest. They won’t touch me,” thinks the busy pastor to himself as he sneaks through a yellow light or hardly slows down at a stop sign or sets his cruise control for seventy-five on Route 95.  Hubris is not quite as evident today among the clergy as it was in the days when police officers would glace at your license and remark, “Oh, I’m sorry, Father.  I didn’t know you were a priest.”   Those days are gone but hubris, overblown self-worth, is still very much a part of American life. 

       America has been struck lately by a number of very talented and successful and otherwise responsible people being indicted or nearly indicted for illegalities alleged or real.  Certainly Martha Stewart comes easily to mind.  Similarly, the officials at Enron and Halliburton and other large firms have a lot of explaining to do.  And the Rhode Island legislature obviously provides no end of eyebrow raising headlines – as does neighboring Connecticut’s governor.  Such corporate executives and distinguished legislators no doubt have much talent but they also have huge egos. 

       The common vice among these disparate people is, I believe, hubris.  These media celebrities and chief executive officers and public officials have undoubtedly done much good.  They have nurtured winning businesses and prospered large firms; they have transformed cities and strengthened communities.  But they also became victims of their own success.  Like the respected pastor who parks in the fire lane, they think they are untouchable.  They have such a litany of successes that they believe this dispenses them from the restrictions imposed on ordinary mankind.  “I’ve built up a multi-billion dollar business.  So what if I play fast and loose with a mere million.”  “I’ve been re-elected so many times that a shady deal here or there is of no account.”   Persons that fit this mold are important.  They are successful.  They deserve some credit.  But, when their sense of self-importance begins to outweigh their sense of responsibility, when their public status overshadows their personal accountability, then the trouble begins.

       Hubris, alas, is not limited to pastors, public officials, or presidents of corporations.  More and more a contagion of spiritual hubris seems to be infecting the average American Catholic.  Like the Pharisee in Christ’s parable, the average American Catholic can easily resist the more obvious sins of contemporary society:   “I’m not an abortionist, nor a pederast, nor a pornographer.  I don’t cheat on my wife or on my constituents.  I never skip the office or the factory or my route.”   These modest accomplishments, while valid and laudable, can become the seductive opportunity for the average Catholic to dispense himself from other responsibilities.  “Surely God will understand if I miss Mass just this once or twice.  And God won’t mind if my kids miss catechism this week or next.  And I’ve heard that talk on First Communion or First Penance or Confirmation a couple of times already. I won’t be missed. And I’ll go to Communion at this funeral even though I have been to Mass in six weeks.”  An exaggerated sense of one’s own importance, an inflated sense of one’s worth before God, an embellished appreciation of one’s own virtue, can lead the average Catholic to dispense himself from routine spiritual duties just as surely it can lead a CEO to fudge an expense account.

       “God will understand,” explains the average Catholic who occasionally misses Mass, who rarely goes to confession, who trifles with unsavory websites, who flirts with drugs, who overstates his insurance claims, who takes advantage on the road.  Good deeds and kindly gestures in certain areas of life seem to exempt a believer from total commitment in other aspects of life.  But virtue in some areas does not excuse vice in other matters.                                                                 COMPLETE

        The Creed is as old as Christianity itself.  In fact, the Creed actually predates the Scriptures.  If one reads the New Testament carefully, succinct synopses of fundamental beliefs pop up now and again as reminders that Christianity is not content-free.  There are indeed core beliefs that the earliest Christians treasured and around which they formed their liturgical and moral lives.  Doctrines and dogmas have been part of Christianity from the start.

       The very earliest creed might be those final words of Jesus Christ spoken to his Apostles as he left them for heaven on Ascension Thursday.  Instructing his disciples to go forth to teach and baptize all nations, he insisted that they do so “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  By the time St. Matthew came to write his version of the Good News this Trinitarian formula had become a handy expression of Christianity’s central beliefs.  To this day, the various creeds of the Church (there are about twenty official creeds) still follow this triple division:  “I believe in one God the Father the Almighty…I believer in one Lord Jesus Christ the only Son…I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…”  Even the latest creed of the Church, the Credo of the People of God, composed by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council, which fills six pages as a small pamphlet, still follows this three-fold outline.

       In the second reading for this Sunday from St. Paul first letter to the Corinthians, a portion of a creed, a brief formula about the Son of God appears.  “I handed on to you,” St. Paul writes to his converts, “ as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scripture, that he was buried, that he was raised in the third day in accordance with the Scripture, that he appeared to the Cephas and then to the Twelve.”  Anyone reading these lines would certainly hear an echo of the words so familiar to any Sunday-go-to-meeting Christian:  For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered died and was buried.  On the third day he arose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures…”  Both the Nicene Creed, quoted here and recited at every Sunday Mass, as well as the Apostles’ Creed, probably memorized as a child and now prayed before the Rosary, reaffirm the earliest beliefs cherished by St. Paul as unalterable faith convictions.  A previous generation had treasured these beliefs about Jesus the Son; St. Paul held them dear to his heart; and now he was reminding the Corinthians that they too should commit these words to memory, reflect on them often, and allow them to shape their eternal hopes as well as their daily lives.

       When the Roman Catholic Church proclaims each Sunday to be “apostolic,” it is her fidelity to these fundamental Christian beliefs valued by the Apostles that she is professing.  The Church acknowledges a kerygma (to borrow a word from the 1960s) which expresses the basic Good News found in the New Testament – the salvific death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The kerygma gradually evolved into the short creeds scattered throughout the Apostles’ writings, then into the already mentioned Apostles’ Creed, and eventually into the assorted Creeds developed during Christianity’s twenty centuries.  In spite of the obvious evolution, the message has remained the same.  As St Paul observed: “…I handed on to you…what I also received…”

       The core of Christian belief is, as St. Paul directs, an inheritance that is to be passed on to succeeding generations intact or augmented but certainly not diminished.    This spiritual capital, sometimes called the deposit of faith, when placed in the hands of wise investors returns a generous interest, guaranteeing, eventually, eternal life.   This treasury of Christian doctrine must be fingered, pored over, felt and appreciated by every believer.  Then it must be happily entrusted to subsequent ages enriching them in turn.

       The redefinition of marriage and the same-sex partnership debate that is raging in the press and in our courts is the best thing that has happened to the Catholic Church in decades.  After forty years of dancing around the essence of marriage – companionship or children, fidelity or fruitfulness, bonding or babies – the modern Church is going to have to decide the issue and clearly define marriage once and for all in its own mind.  Is marriage intended first and foremost for the “mutual consolation of the spouses” as modern thinking would have it?  Or is marriage about the pro-creation and education of children as traditional wisdom has known it?  Even to suggest that offspring are the primary focus of a Christian marriage seems peculiarly archaic nowadays.  But this is precisely the dilemma that the Catholic Church, as well as civil society, faces.  What do we as Catholics mean when we say “marriage,” and do we consistently apply our conclusions to daily life?

       The Book of Genesis offers two distinct accounts of creation in its first two chapters.  The first account is the familiar choral presentation in which God creates the word in six days and rests on the seventh.  On that sixth day he creates “man” in His own image and likeness, “male and female he created them.”  Then God gives his first creatures the clear commission: “Increase, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.”  The mandate to pro-create comes immediately from the lips of God.  Man is created to populate.  The second account of creation has Adam created first and the rest of creation is placed at his service.  Unfortunately no “suitable partner” is found for Adam at that early stage of creation.  So God uniquely creates woman from the side of Adam.  A delighted Adam is happy with his new companion.  “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, cling to his wife and the two shall become on flesh.”  The mutual satisfaction of the spouses is the undeniable theme of this second Biblical narrative. 

       For the past few decades it has become customary to view these twin ends of marriage as separate but equal.  The pro-creation and education of children (increase/multiply) and the happiness of the spouses (one flesh) are the double goal of marriage in the modern Catholic mind.  Engaged couples are asked, when filling out marriage forms, “Do you intend to have children in this marriage?” as well as “Do you intend to be faithful in this marriage?”  But, while these ends may be equal, they may never be separate.  Actually, bonding through babies is the true cornerstone on which Christian marriage rests. 

       Regrettably, both Catholics and society often divide these two ends of marriage.  Cannot a couple marry only for love and not a litter?  After all, the marriage of elderly couples who are beyond child bearing age as well as the marriage of couples who are sterile are recognized as valid by the Church and by society.   But these deficiencies are accidental.  Nature, not a personal choice, has denied them children.  Over the last half-century, children clearly have become secondary in the marital bond and the affirmation of the spouses has become central.   Individual fulfillment has replaced dedication to family.  Personal satisfaction now rules the day.  But for the true Christian, intimacy must imply offspring.  This is why the Church insists instructively that every act of spousal intimacy “be open to the transmission of life.”   Consequently the modern contraceptive mentality, which separates intimacy from offspring, defies the Church’s traditional understanding of marriage and diverts intimacy from its true goal.   So-called pre-marital sex, cohabitation, adultery, divorce, abortion, contraception, and now so-called same sex marriages proclaim loudly that the happiness of the individual, without regard to the care of children, is society’s supreme marital value. 

       Separating the prospect of children from the pleasure of marriage exalts recreation over responsibility and companionship over conscience.   Marital indifference toward children, which signals the triumph of individualism, also heralds the demise of the family.                       COMPLETE

       Last Sunday the Church’s liturgy consoled the faithful with the celebrated Parable of the Prodigal Son, which should actually be entitled the Parable of the Merciful Father.  After all, the Church does not simply want to titillate the congregation with tempting thoughts of the wayward son’s assorted dissipations.   The point of the parable is primarily the compassion of the father and only secondarily the compunction of the son.  Consider the recklessness of the father’s love that is not lost on the elder brother.  “I never disobeyed even one of your commands, yet you never gave me so much as a kid goat to celebrate with my friends.”  This is a point well taken.  Recklessness, foolhardiness, wildness as a quality of the father’s love is precisely the moral of this story.  It is not the prodigality of the son with his inheritance that should impress worshipper.  It is the prodigality of the father with his loving kindness that churchgoers should take away from last Sunday’s reading.   God is never grudging with his grace.  “God does not ration his gift of the Sprit,” St. Paul writes pointedly.  The Apostle observes that God is, in fact, “lavish’ in his generosity – a message that human beings, who can be so miserly in their estimates of one another, frequently neglect.

       However, in spite of all the evidence of Divine mercy, God is no fool.  The God who never abandoned the stiff-necked Jews in the wilderness and the God who sent his Son to the Cross while man was still in his sins is indeed a God of kindness and compassion.  But he is also the God of repentance and conversion.  And it is precisely because God is merciful and compassionate that he does not leave man wallowing in his sins but beckons man out of the pigsty of immorality and offers him a seat at the Master’s table.  God is sympathetic to man’s plight, but God also expects results when a man encounters the Gospel.  The worst favor God could do is to ignore man’s willful faults, to wink at man’s transgressions, to bless man’s sinfulness.  God is, after all, a Savior, a Redeemer, a Liberator.  Those who meet God should anticipate change, transformation and amendment.  To encounter God and be left in our sins would indeed be a cheat and a disappointment. 

       The incident of the woman caught in adultery, which forms this coming Sunday’s Gospel passage, is likewise a practical instance of God’s displaying mercy toward the sinner.  The self-righteous religious leaders are famously put in their place when Jesus remarks, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Clearly, harshness toward the sinner is not Jesus’ style – nor should it be the style of his Church.  Yet Jesus not only puts the religious leaders in their place.  Jesus also puts the apprehended woman in her place:  “’Has no one condemned you, woman?’ Jesus asked.  ‘No one, sir,’ she replied. ‘Then neither do I condemn you, you may go.  But from now on avoid this sin.’”  Plainly Jesus is not condemnatory.   He is not unduly critical or (God forbid!) judgmental.  Rather Jesus calls a spade a spade.  The master acknowledges the woman’s sin but he also recognizes in her the possibility of conversion.  In fact he invites her to conversion:  “From now on, sin no more!” 

       This meeting on the streets of ancient Palestine between a sinner and her Savior could have amounted to no more than a feel good encounter, a hail-fellow-well-met happening, a casual exchange.  But Jesus benevolently transforms a conversation into a conversion.  Jesus is firm but not stern.  He is sympathetic but not sappy.  He does not leave the woman in her sins but instills in her a new sense of self-worth, esteem and confidence.  Jesus reminds her gently of her own capacity for goodness, virtue and maturity – not in so many words but by his courage in taking on the prestigious crowd in her defense.  Jesus’ respect for her on his part generated a new respect for self on her part.  She left Jesus a changed woman. 

       Conversion is integral to the Christian life.  God invites each believer to leave behind man’s native sinfulness and advance into a life of virtue, goodness and communion with Him.  God is never judgmental; rather he judges sin for what it’s worth and graciously beckons every sinner to reformation, repentance and conversion.       COMPLETE

       It has been pointed out (by Brian Stoffregen, a Lutheran no less) that nowhere in his Gospel account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem does St. Luke mention palm branches.  In fact, the Gospel according to St. John is the only narrative that explicitly states palm was used to greet Jesus.  St. Matthew reads “branches of trees” and St. Mark suggests “leaves from the field.”  I recall from my youth in Woonsocket that the Ukrainian churches in the neighborhood always distributed pussy willows on the Sunday before Easter.  Palm branches must have been rare in Eastern Europe.  In St. Luke, the honor paid to Jesus is having cloaks placed on the dusty ground so that he can ride over them toward the holy city.  Another curious omission from the Gospel of St. Luke is the word “hosanna.”  Of all the tributes connected with our Lord, this Hebrew word is certainly the one most closely associated with the Master’s arrival in the Judean capital on Palm Sunday.  (I had a cat for a number of years that I named Hosanna because she arrived happily at the rectory on Palm Saturday.)  Instead, St. Luke chooses to re-introduce an old theme that first appeared in the infancy narratives of his Gospel.  The disciples, echoing the angels at Bethlehem, sing out with joy, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 

       Peace is one of St. Luke’s favorite Gospel themes.  And clearly, peace is a favored theme of the entire Scriptures.  Indeed, peace would be the first Messianic gift bestowed by Jesus on the world just saved by his death on the Cross.  Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the priest/prophet Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be ennobled as “the Prince of Peace.”   The Baptist’s father Zechariah looked forward to the “way of peace” that the Messiah would inaugurate.  The elderly Simeon can face death “in peace” because he has witnessed the arrival of the Christ.  The angels famously sing out “Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth,” as they break the news of Jesus’ birth to the Judean countryside.   Jesus would later weep over this beloved capital city because it did not know the things that were made for its “peace,” missing the time of its visitation. 

       St. John in his Gospel highlights the importance of peace as a Messianic gift by citing the very first words out of the mouth of the Resurrected Christ to his apostles:  “Peace be with you!”   These were also the last words out of Jesus’ mouth when he encouraged these same disciples at the Last Supper: “My peace I leave you.  My peace I give unto you.” These very phrases from St. John’s Gospel are incorporated verbatim into the Communion Rite of our Catholic Mass, singling out peace with God and neighbor as the indispensable quality needed for the worthy reception of the Eucharist. 

       The peace that St. Luke celebrates so profusely in his Gospel (that Lutheran clergyman lists fourteen occurrences) is not to be confused with tranquility, serenity, or even harmony.  Recall that Jesus himself said, “I have not come for peace but for division.”   The peace of Christ derives from the faith-based conviction that one is in total agreement with the Will of God.  Mankind lost this re-assuring peace when our first parents defied the Will of God and went their independent way.  Jesus rescued that gift of peace for a fallen world when he clung to the Will of God in the face of awesome difficulties:  “Not my will but thine be done.”   Jesus was never more at peace with God than when he was hanging on the Cross for the world’s salvation.  Still, there was no tranquility, no serenity, and no harmony on Mount Calvary.  Rather strife, enmity, and division were openly displayed there.  Yet Jesus knew peace there.  “In His Will is our peace,” Dante would correctly observe. 

      Inner peace is the fruit of obedience.  Mankind will never know peace as long as he flies in the face of God.  Jesus was the man of peace precisely because he embraced the Will of God without hesitation.  And his great gift to the world at Easter is the strength to know and follow the Will of God which will eventually lead mankind to peace – not the false peace or ease sought by the world but the joyous peace of conscience that comes from doing the right thing.                  COMPLETE

       One of the gripes leveled by the critics of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is that the popular film focuses on too narrow a portion of Jesus’ life.  The film is admittedly consumed by the last twelve hours of Jesus’ public life.  The action of the movie moves from Christ’s agony in the Garden of Olives to his last breath on the hill of Calvary.  It would have been beneficial, some critics suggest, if Mr. Gibson had added a few flashbacks of important incidents in Jesus’ life, giving a broader and truer portrayal of who this God-Man truly was. 

       Some reviewers propose that a substantial segment of the Sermon on the Mount should have been included in the production to convey the message of a compassionate and considerate Jesus.  Perhaps a shot of the transfigured Christ atop Mount Tabor could have been featured to underline the Divine Nature of the Master.  Or maybe a scene of Jesus enjoying himself at the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus in Bethany would assure the viewer that Jesus was genuinely human, susceptible to the pleasures of family life like any other individual.  Indeed a more significant miracle than the mere healing of the high priest’s servant’s ear could have been selected to depict Jesus’ exalted status as the Son of God.  The multiplication of the loaves and fishes in the wilderness would certainly fit this bill.  It was, after all, Jesus most popular miracle, the only one recorded in all four Gospels.  Alas, Mr. Gibson did not share the insights of his many critics and his detractors propose that his film is the poorer for it – at least in their opinion.

       The discussion here relates to the most significant moments in Jesus’ life that would deliver to the average believer the most accurate yet succinct revelation of who Christ was.  Let’s just suppose that Jesus himself had chosen a single moment in his own lifetime that would expose most concisely yet most completely his true nature and mission.  Would Jesus have selected any of the above-mentioned significant events, important as they were?  He actually did not opt for any of them.  The truth is that Jesus did choose a certain privileged moment in his life and left orders that this moment should be memorialized down through the ages as the crowning and climatic moment of his earthly existence.

“The day before he suffered, he took bread in his sacred hands and looking

up to heaven, to you, his Almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise.  He

broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said ”Take this, all of you, and

eat it:  this is my body which will be given up for you.  When supper was ended,

he took the cup.  Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples,

and said, ‘Take this, all of you, and drink from it:  This is the cup of my blood,

the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.  It will be shed for you and for

           all so that sins may be forgiven.  Do this in memory of me.’”

       Of all the precious moments in Jesus’ life the one he personally decided to ritualize was the moment of his death.  The moment His Body was given and His Blood shed, His moment on Calvary, was uniquely appreciated by Jesus beyond all other events.  By instituting His Body and His Blood at the moment of death in the Eucharist Jesus was making a personal statement about Himself and his mission for all time.   This is the matter in which He wanted to be remembered.   Jesus asked to be recalled as emptying Himself out of obedience to the Father, giving His Body, shedding His Blood, for the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of the world.  This sacrifice, Jesus knows, is the greatest work He will ever accomplish.  His passion and death leading to His subsequent exaltation by the Father on Easter are the entire Gospel message, the whole New Testament, the complete Good News captured in a single event.  To ponder Christ’s life-giving death is to realize the severity of sin, the value of grace, and the steadfastness of God.  Clearly then, Christ left His best statement about His life in the Eucharistic sacrifice.  The Eucharist is the entire economy of salvation captured in a single sacramental moment.  Perhaps Mr. Gibson was not so far off the mark after all.          COMPLETE

        Some nineteenth century philosopher remarked that if God did not exist, mankind would have to invent him.  It is true that having God around provides handy explanations.  How did we get here?  Where are we going?  What keeps everything orderly?  The same might be said of the Resurrection.  If Jesus had not risen from the dead, mankind would have to invent this return to life.  In fact, mankind invents the Resurrection regularly.  Society has all sorts of symbols of new life that it resurrects each springtime to re-assure itself that life is filled with hope.  The Easter egg is found nowhere in Scripture, yet we all understand the symbolism of the chick breaking out the eggshell just as Jesus broke out of the tomb.  The Easter bunny is another non-Scriptural affirmation of man’s desire for a new lease on life.  Apparently some bunnies loose the white fur that allows them to hide in snow in favor of a brown coat that lets them disappear into the shrubbery.   Spring flowers, of course, especially the Easter lily, are universal sign of new life, new hope, new beginnings.  A recent arrival on the New Life symbol scene is the butterfly.  Butterflies are never mentioned in the Bible, although Jesus does mention moths.  Yet the notion of a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon and flying off to an exalted life in nature does have its Christological overtones.

       Certainly Catholics do not have to turn to the harmless world of chicks and bunnies and butterflies for symbolism.  Clearly the Catholic Church’s favorite Easter symbol is the Paschal Candle.  The Easter Vigil is celebrated after sundown.  The world is enveloped in darkness.  The spark from a flint engenders a new fire.  The hefty Easter candle is lit.  Its flame is proclaimed throughout the church during a solemn procession.  The congregation passes the new fire from believer to believer.  The candle and its light are then celebrated in the impassioned Exultet.  Christ our light has dawned.  This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

       A true appreciation of the spiritual light which is Christ can only occur when one has a sincere appreciation of the moral darkness that envelopes the world.  Much of the world’s darkness is unmistakable:  terrorism, abortion, corruption in high places, drugs, violence, family abuse, pornography, the many forms of injustice and unchastity.  But there are other forms of darkness that do not always evoke a gasp from a believer.  Some forms of darkness masquerade as toleration, compassion and broadmindedness.  A specific darkness of this sort is the contemporary movement to eliminate God from public life.  Modern society would never insist that God has no place in one’s life.  That would be too obvious.  Rather God and religion are understood by modern American society as private undertakings, done in the seclusion of one’s home, celebrated within church walls.  Hence, prayers have not been said in public schools for some decades.  Sunday shopping is universal.  The Ten Commandments and manger scenes have become offensive to some eyes.  The phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance disturbs some consciences.  The Vatican’s delegation to the United Nations is considered controversial.  Some politicians insist that their religious beliefs will have no influence whatsoever on their governmental decisions.  Other politicians who speak from their Judaeo-Christian backgrounds are ridiculed as bigoted and intolerant.   A clearly secularist elite has successfully convinced many well-meaning Americans that public expressions of religion must be sacrificed on the altar of open-mindedness and tolerance.  Thus the devil, who also comes as an angel of light, has convinced many that the privatization of religion is the only compassionate stance in a pluralistic society.  “Thou shall not offend” is a new commandment that must never be broken, while the other ten may be ignored with impunity.

       While society assails religion from without, the Christian community assaults the faith from within.  Casualness toward the Names of God and Christ for entertainment purposes is shocking.  And no one complains.  Failure to observe the Sabbath in any fashion whatsoever is commonplace.  (Home Depot stayed open on Easter Day – anticipating few complaints.)  Mass attendance among many families is slipshod.    And this is all in the name of broadmindedness.  Believers must open their eyes to the outer darkness in order to appreciate the saving light which is Christ.       COMPLETE

       The appearances of Jesus to his disciples after his resurrection are often called “Church Founding” appearances.  Through these visits of the Risen Christ, any loose strings from the public ministry of Jesus were neatly drawn together to ensure that the Kingdom of God would happily continue to subsist in the Roman Catholic Church.   For example, last Sunday churchgoers witnessed the ministry of reconciliation being handed over by Christ to his Apostles.  This ministry of reconciliation, the ministry of peace, was established by Christ’s death on the Cross and is now exercised by his Church primarily through the sacraments of Baptism and Penance.  Again, the several meals that Jesus shares with his apostles after the Resurrection, whether at Emmaus or in the Upper Room or along the seashore, all have Eucharistic overtones.  Their reliance on the explanation of Scripture and on the sharing of food reflects a primitive outline of the Mass celebrated throughout the world today.

       Another loose end that Jesus wants to tighten before his return to the Father is the nomination of St. Peter as the visible head of the Church on earth.  It is persuasively clear to anyone reading the Gospels that Peter was singled out during Jesus’ public life for a role of leadership in the Church.  Peter, along with his brother Andrew and their co-workers, James and John, was the first disciple called by Jesus Christ at the beginning of his public career.  Peter, James and John witnessed alone of the Twelve the glory of the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and the final agony in the garden.  Invariably when a question is asked by Jesus or an action is demanded by some turn of events, it is Peter who takes the initiative.  It is Peter who bids Jesus to invite him across the water.  It is Peter who asks how extensive forgiveness must be: “Seven times?”  It is Peter who finds the temple tax in the fish’s mouth. It is Peter’s mother-in-law who is uniquely cured among the apostles’ relatives.  It is Peter with John who prepares the Last Supper room.  The denials of Peter are the only ones recorded in the Gospels even though all the disciples save John abandoned Christ.  It is Peter who impetuously strikes the servant Malchus’ ear.   It is Peter who rushes to the empty tomb.  And it is Peter who is single out by Christ for the first announcement of his resurrection:  “Go and tell Peter and the other disciples…”  And, most importantly, all four Gospel report the decisive confession of Peter in Jesus as the Messiah.  “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  (Mt.16); You are the Christ (Mk.8); The Christ of God (Lk.9); You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God (Jn.6).

       And now, after the Resurrection, Jesus chooses to confirm all that has gone before in his unique relationship with St. Peter.  In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus exercises his ministry of reconciliation when he invites Peter to renounce his recent triple denials of the Master and to re-affirm resoundingly his love for Christ.  Even in the phrasing of Jesus’ reconciling questions, Peter’s relationship with Jesus is viewed as superior.  “Peter, do you love me more than these?” Jesus inquires of his old fiend three times.  Peter is somewhat embarrassed by the triple insistence of Jesus and so he pleads that Jesus knows everything; he knows well that Simon Peter loves him.  And then Jesus rewards Peter with a corresponding triple commission: “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep, feed my sheep.”

       Jesus, himself the Good Shepherd, after the style of King David, the boy shepherd, now hands the ministry of shepherding over to St. Peter.  Peter is to shepherd the sheep (feed my lambs) but also to shepherd the shepherds (strengthen your brothers).  St. Luke reports the Master’s exact words to St. Peter: But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail: and when you are converted, strengthen your brothers.

       Clearly Jesus, and the sacred authors of Scripture, did not want to leave any doubt in anyone’s mind about the unique role that St. Peter and the Office of Peter would play in salvation history down through the ages.  Indeed it was in the mind of Christ Himself to make Peter, along with his successors, in the phrase of St. Leo the Great, “the primate of all the bishops.”  St. Peter’s unique and responsible role is irrefutable.  Certainly, there are no loose ends here.                            COMPLETE

       In 1968 Pope Paul VI issued his historic and prophetic teaching on the regulation of births known as Humanae Vitae.  The Pope taught authoritatively that every act of sexual intercourse had to be “open to the transmission of life.”   The Pontiff’s teaching was not well received especially in some academic circles in the United States.   A number of Catholic moral theology professors had anticipated the Vatican’s approval of the celebrated “pill,” invented by a Catholic ironically, but no such permission was given.  My own seminary professor, Father Charles Curran, formerly of St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester but then at Catholic University, took the lead in vocal protest against the Papal instruction and was bluntly censured by Washington’s Cardinal O’Boyle.  Father Curran was not alone in second-guessing Rome’s directive.  The hierarchies of Germany and France offered the suggestion that Roman Catholics should sincerely familiarize themselves with the official teaching of the Church and then follow their own lights in applying it to their daily lives.  The Pope is presenting Catholics with an ideal, they said, but some compromise in practical, day-to-day life is understandable.  In other words, let your conscience be your guide.

       This birth control controversy almost forty years ago resulted in the triumph of the individual Catholic conscience over the legitimate teaching authority of the Church.  There is no other way to state this.  Cardinal O’Boyle was ridiculed by the Catholic elite and abandoned by the Catholic mainstream.  Father Charles Curran was applauded by the press and supported by the public.  Since then, the Catholic conscience, relieved of official Church guidance, has been led down the secular path of birth control, abortion, cohabitation, divorce and remarriage, pre-marital sex, and now same-sex marriages.  And what is true of Catholic sexual morality is reflected in other areas of Catholic life:  notably the rules on Sabbath rest and Sunday Mass attendance are observed by fewer and fewer Catholics. To borrow the metaphor of this Sunday’s Gospel, every Catholic is now his or her own shepherd.  Our true shepherds, our bishops, have about as much authority as a parish council.  In the popular mind, they have become advisors, not teachers, and, even less, leaders.

       In spite of consistent and often repeated statements on the part of our present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, and his close advisors as well as the occasional utterances of the American hierarchy, the individual Catholic conscience is popularly understood to be the arbiter of right and wrong within the Catholic community.  The current controversy over politicians of Catholic background receiving Holy Communion when they adamantly propose and promote anti-Catholic practices, specifically abortion, highlights this misunderstanding.  Catholics might well discuss gun control, the just war, capital punishment, immigration law and environmental issues and arrive at disparate conclusions.  Catholicism has thrived on various schools of thought.  But the direct taking of innocent unborn life has never been tolerated by any authentic Catholic teacher and certainly not by any of the Church’s official shepherds.   The abortion issue – let’s be honest -- has become the litmus test of authentic Catholicism just as abortion is, sadly, the litmus test of secular feminism.   Abortion is the ultimate triumph of the individual over the community.  The aborting woman must triumph over her unborn child whose life she is about to take, over the child’s father whose contribution to new life she must ignore, over God who is author of every life, over the Church whose teachings are clear, over society of which this child would have been a member, and over history which until 1973 viewed abortion as an unspeakable crime.  Abortion is secular individualism in its profoundest sense. 

       Abortion is indeed anti-life, first and foremost.  But in today’s America, abortion is also anti-Catholic.  How any Roman Catholic can consider the ramifications of abortion and then present himself at the altar step as a member of the Body of Christ defies logic as much as it disregards the faith. And, personally, how a priest could hold a Host to the lips of someone who professionally, consistently and unapologetically favors abortion disgraces his faith as well as it demeans his logic.   

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       In this coming Sunday’s Gospel passage, Jesus utters what may be his most peculiar as well as his most profound words.   The scene is familiar to every Christian.  Jesus has gathered his twelve apostles together for the annual paschal meal.  The atmosphere is tense with the knowledge of imminent suffering and death.  St. John captures the ominous mood perfectly when he comments tersely: “Now it was night.”  Yes, indeed it was night, the dark night of satanic betrayal and devilish denial.  And yet, in the midst of this tragic supper as Judas steals out of the upper room to transact his nasty business, Jesus states clearly: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him.”         Jesus most surprisingly singles out this night of treachery as his moment of glory.

       Yet on further reflection, the history of salvation amply illustrates that it is precisely at those moments of challenge and even tragedy that the true glory of God is clearly manifested.   Abraham is today called “the father of believers” because he was the first man to comprehend the essence of our Judaeo-Christian faith.   God promised Abraham and his senescent wife Sarah that they would be the parents of a multitude of nations, as numerous as the sands of the seashore or the stars of the sky.  To anyone else, this promise would have been a cheat and a disappointment.  Abraham’s elderly spouse was well beyond her childbearing years and God’s pledge of progeny must have seemed very idle indeed.  Sarah is recorded as having laughed at the proposal.  Yet Abraham believed God in the face of this insurmountable challenge.   Abraham grasped that the God of our fathers was always the God who brought life out of death, light out of darkness and good out of evil.  From the beginning, there was a measure of irony in the Christian faith.  Thus the authentic Christian senses that it is always darkest before the dawn, so to speak.

       Abraham was not alone in “hoping against hope,” as St. Paul would later write.  Moses endured forty years of stiff-necked ingratitude as he led the Hebrew hordes through the wilderness.  Yet he kept faith in God who brings good out of evil.  An exhausted Elias stood in isolation before Jezebel and her pagan prophets as he tried to recall Israel to its original covenant with YHWH.  An angelic messenger fortified him with water and cakes so that he too could persevere in his faith in God who brings light out of darkness.  Jesus, on the night before he died, declared his faith, too, in God who would bring life out of death.  “Hope isn’t hope until the situation is hopeless,” wrote Chesterton with his perceptive irony, underlining the essence of Christian belief.

       A cursory survey of Church history confirms that, for the Christian, night inevitably leads into day.  The first three hundred years of persecution and martyrdom bore fruit in the conversion of the Roman Empire.  The four or five hundred years of barbarian invasions known as the Dark Ages solidified the monastic movement in the Western Church and led to a great age of learning.  The scandal of the Protestant Reformation evoked the Tridentine era of purification and discipline that lasted four hundred years.  The Church in our own day is experiencing the darkness of secularity as the Bible becomes a simple handbook, the sacraments mere festivities, the teachings of the Church meager opinions, and God a relic of another age. 

       Yet, with Jesus, the Catholic Church of the twenty-first century must squarely face abortion, same-sex marriage, diminished Mass attendance, political hypocrisy, ecclesiastical diffidence, religious indifference, racial unrest, commercialism, individualism and secularism and still be able to echo the words of her Master, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.”   Hard times have never meant Christian defeat; rather obstacles are the prelude to Christian victory.  Challenges foster authentic Christianity.  Trials have never diminished the faith in the past nor should they now.  God always brings good out of evil, life out of darkness, and life out of death.         COMPLETE

       The impression is sometimes given by Catholic art and folklore that the shepherds at the crib in Bethlehem understood the entire significance of Jesus’ humanity being united to his Divinity.  What later theologians would call the hypostatic union is reckoned self-evident to Jesus’ pastoral visitors.   Actually the full implication of two natures residing in one person was not sorted out for decades, even centuries.  Certainly the same is true of the Holy Trinity.  While the true Christian faith has always been Trinitarian and the framework of the Trinity is certainly found in Sacred Scripture, it would take centuries once again before accurate explanations were worked out to express in a popular manner the essential mystery of the Godhead.  The Apostles’ Creed, probably the most ancient Christian formulation of the faith, has a lot to say about Jesus, just a little to say about the Father and is satisfied with the mere mention of the Holy Spirit’s name.  Clearly the truths of the faith have not changed but they have significantly developed over the centuries.  And because these mysteries of our faith have been tested by theologians and the faithful alike over the centuries, the modern Christian can read with a clearer eye what to the earliest generations might have been just obscure Bible passages.

       In this coming Sunday’s Gospel the Church’s liturgy begins to prepare the faithful for the coming feast of Pentecost by mentioning the Holy Spirit for the first time.  And not only does the liturgy mention the Holy Spirit but it also mentions the Father and the Son!  The passage, taken from Jesus’ Last Supper oration, is a marvelous celebration of the diversity and unity found with the Trinity.  Consider the words of Jesus:

“The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my Name,

will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have told you.”

Jesus declares that the Spirit is sent by the Father to complete the work of the Son.  Observe that there are not three different missions, three different tasks, three different undertakings in the Trinity’s dealing with mankind.  Rather there is really only one eternal task.  The glory of the Father is the mission of all three Divine Persons and, consequently, the mission of the Church.  Jesus, the Son of the Father and the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, came into this world to reveal the Father to the universe.  The man Jesus Christ is the sacrament of the Father’s eternal love.  When one sees Jesus, when one studies Jesus, when one embraces Jesus, one surely encounters the Father as well.  The man Jesus is the image of the Father in human terms, just as Jesus in his eternal Sonship is the image of the Father in Divine terms.  From both the human and the Divine angle, Jesus is the perfect Son:  he refers all things to his Father.    “Not My Will but Thine be done,” was Jesus’ motto not only in the Garden of Olives but all throughout his public life and, truth to tell, all throughout eternity as well. 

The Spirit, for his part, faithfully continues the work of the Son.  Although Jesus credits the Spirit with teaching the Church “everything,” the Spirit does not introduce a new Gospel.  Rather the Spirit will simply “remind” the faithful of all that Jesus has already taught about the Father.   Just as the Son was totally oriented toward the Father in both his Divine and human natures, so the Holy Spirit is totally oriented toward the Son’s message when it comes to instructing the world.  In contemporary terms, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all on the same wavelength; they’re with the program.  Although they are distinct personalities, they operate out of a common Divine nature: Three Persons in One God, as the time-honored catechetical phrase celebrates it.  The work of Jesus and the work of the Spirit, although different, have the one common focus: the revelation of the Father to the world.  As followers of Jesus and as a Spirit-filled people, the Church has the same mission as the Divine persons, namely, to reveal the Father’s love to the world.  

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       Popular Judaism in the time of Jesus Christ defined itself in terms of the Mosaic Law.  If the believer kept the Law, then he was a good Jew.  Judaism was actually a deeper spiritual reality than the mere keeping of the Law.  The Sinai Covenant meant more than the Ten Commandments.  Yet, in everyday life, it was the observance of the Law that set the faithful Jew apart from the slacker.  Older Catholics can certainly identify with this phenomenon.  Time was when Mass on Sunday, no meat on Friday, fasting from midnight and a horror of divorce indicated the good Catholic.  The popular legalism of the pre-Vatican II Church clearly distinguished the conscientious Catholic.  The very first Christians, being largely converts from Judaism, faced a major decision as the Church began to attract Greeks and Romans into its membership.  Whether these new converts from paganism should be obliged to keep the old Jewish Law was a critical determination that rested on the shoulders of Christianity’s first generation.  The first reading from Acts of Apostles last week explained the early Church’s momentous decision not to burden the Church’s new members with the keeping of the old Mosaic Law.   This benevolence on the part of the early Christian community at Jerusalem was truly a radical commentary on the young Church’s self-identity.  The Mosaic Law, once imposed by God Himself, was now declared obsolete by the Church’s first leaders.  This self-confident manifestation of Church authority had monumental significance. 

       This month of May also boasts the feast of St. Matthias, the new Apostle appointed to take the place of the traitorous Judas.  Before Matthias’ election, only Jesus Christ himself had chosen and commissioned an apostle.  Now, with the election of Matthias, the early Church began to do what previously only Jesus had done.  The Church was indeed growing in self-awareness, in self-identity, in self-confidence.  The Church had the astounding courage to assume the role of Jesus Christ in history.  “He who hears you, hears me,” began to take on practical significance for our first ancestors in the faith.  Clearly the Church had been established to continue the work of Jesus Christ. 

       This coming Sunday worshippers will hear the fatal tale of the stoning of St. Stephen, the Church’s first martyr and one of the first deacons.  As an integral part of the sacrament of Holy Orders, the order of deacons made explicit in the first years after Christ’s death what was implicit in Christ’s establishment of the priesthood at the Last Supper.  The first Christian leaders believed that it was within their authority to appoint these first seven men to assist in the work of Jesus’ sacramental priesthood.  Again, what only Jesus had previously done, now the Church felt competent to do.  The Church was continuing the work of Jesus Christ down through the ages.

       The exemption of the Greco-Roam converts from the Mosaic Law, the appointing of a new Apostle, and the expansion of the priesthood into the order of deacons were all decisive and significant steps in the early Church’s self-development and inward maturity.   The early Church was not usurping the authority of Jesus Christ by making these vital decisions.  The early Church was actually acting on the authority of Jesus Christ by implementing in daily life the full meaning of the original Gospel message.  The Church is indeed the continuation of the Incarnation down through the ages.  The Church makes real in every generation the flesh and blood Kingdom of God originally announced and effected by Jesus Christ. 

       Ascension Day is not only the day of Christ’s leave taking, the commemoration of his happy return to the Father.  Ascension Day is also the day of the great commissioning, when Jesus would hand “full authority” over to his successors, the Apostles.  The Church must never shrink from exercising the fullness of this authority.    Today’s Church, like the early Church, must appreciate its own God-given power to teach, to serve, and, when necessary, to discipline the faithful.   It took courage for the first Christians to make critical decisions.  And it will always take courage for the Christian community to do the right thing.  Happily the resources are still available.           COMPLETE

       Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Luke the Apostle both write explicitly about Christ’s sending of the Holy Spirit into the lives of the first Christian community.  Yet the two sacred authors tell their similar stories in widely separate ways.  St. John has Jesus convey the Spirit to the Twelve Apostles on Easter Sunday night.  “Then he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them.  Whose sins you shall retain they are retained.”  Often these words are linked with the institution of the Sacrament of Penance – and rightly so.  Yet Jesus is speaking here as well of the whole ministry of reconciliation which he was entrusting to this Church.  On that Easter evening Christ first wishes his Apostles, “Peace,” the peace he has just won by his death on the Cross, the peace that reverses the unsettling sin of Adam and Eve.  Then he takes the fruit of the Cross, reconciliation, and entrusts it to his closest associates, commissioning them to dispense healing and forgiveness to the world.   In St. John’s Gospel account, the arrival of the Spirit connotes a restoration of peace through healing and reconciliation.

       St. Luke’s colorful account of the arrival of the Holy Spirit occurs fifty days after Easter coinciding with the ancient Jewish feast of Pentecost.   This ancient festivity commemorated the giving of the Law to Moses on Sinai.  Clearly the earthshaking arrival of the Spirit on the Jewish Pentecost was no co-incidence.   Just as the Law was at the heart of Judaism, so the Spirit would be at the very heart of Christianity.  And once the early Christian Church received the Spirit, a new ministry would take shape.  St. Luke is very clear concerning the nature of this new Spirit-driven ministry.  “…repentance for the forgiveness of sins…” should be preached to all the nations beginning at Jerusalem.  Pentecost was the beginning of this mission of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation.

       St. John and St. Luke, employing quite different details, arrive at the same conclusion.  The work of the Spirit is reconciliation.  The Spirit reconciles man to God and man to man.  The enmity that entered this world through the sin of Adam and Eve, alienating the creature from his Creator, is repaired by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The antagonism that arose in this world through original sin, dividing Adam the husband from Eve the wife – “The woman gave it to me and I ate it.” -- is mended by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  This first sin of Adam and Eve would cascade down through the ancient years until the tower of Babel with its confusion of tongues would distance every man from his neighbor.  Truly, sin rent all society asunder.  Pentecost would happily reverse the catastrophe of Babel.  The confusion of tongues would be replaced by the gift of tongues, by which the various nationalities – Parthians, Medes, Elamites – would unanimously respond to God present in St. Peter’s moving words.  “What must we do, brothers?”  asks the crowd eager for reconciliation.  Mankind’s alienation is overcome by Christ’s healing gift of the Spirit.

       Healing was always integral to the public ministry of Jesus Christ.  His healing miracles were acted-out parables, acted-out sermons, foreshadowing the arrival of the healing kingdom inaugurated in St. John’s Upper Room on Easter evening and in St. Luke’s Upper Room on Pentecost Day.  The mutes who later spoke, the deaf who then heard, the blind who finally saw, the halt who miraculously walked, were visual and audible foretastes of the marvelous gift of healing and reconciliation that, through Christ and through the Spirit and through the Church, now permeates the universe.  Jesus’ miracles of healing were a pledge of the spiritual healing that would effectively reconcile man to God and men to one another beginning at Pentecost.

       Reconciliation in our contemporary world usually takes place between equals.  Spouses reconcile after some unfortunate disagreement.  Siblings reconcile after a family quarrel.  Reconciliation in the modern world is the result of mutual give-and-take.   Christian reconciliation, on the other hand, is entirely the work of God.  Christian reconciliation is not the fruit of negotiation.  Christian reconciliation results from conversion not conversation.  The scene of Christian reconciliation is not the bargaining table but the confessional.  Man humbly submits and God graciously sets right.  Pentecost celebrates this gift of reconciliation, won by God’s saving Son and conferred by his healing Spirit.                                                                                                                        COMPLETE

       The solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, celebrated this coming Sunday, is the happy festival of God’s own inner life.  “God is love,” St. John writes simply and pointedly.   The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the believing community’s elaboration of this basic truth.  The Father loves the Son.  The Son loves the Father.  The Holy Spirit is this love between these two Divine Persons.  The Trinity then is an eternal communion of love, an unending giving and receiving within the Godhead itself, a total openness to and a total appreciation of the other’s perfections. 

       Bear with me as I describe the Divine Persons as “subsistent relationships.”  By this is meant that the Three Divine Persons do not make sense without one another.  The Father is entirely focused on the Son.  How could he genuinely be a Father if there were no Son with whom he could fully share his life?  The Son is totally focused on the Father.  How could the Son be truly a Son unless there were a Father for him to heed and obey?  The very fact that God through the Scriptures chose to reveal himself to mankind in relational terms like father and son confirms these observations.  God then consists of “subsistent relationships,” of enduring bonds, of eternal, mutual love.  The very words Father and Son substantiate this.

       The Spirit, for his part, is the relationship between the Father and the Son.  Just as the Father does not make sense apart from the Son, and vice versa, so the Spirit does not stand alone in the Trinity.  The Holy Spirit is the very love through which the Father reaches out toward his Son.  And the Holy Spirit is the very love by which the Son responds fully to his Father.  As Father John Randall often remarks in a folksy manner, “The Holy Spirit is the ‘WOW” between the Father and the Son.”  Indeed, God is love:  The Father loving the Son; the Son loving the Father; the Spirit being the channel through which this love is conveyed. Clearly God is love: a triple enduring relationship of Divine Persons.

       Human explanations for God’s inner life will always fall short of the Divine reality itself.  Mankind can describe God but he cannot define him.  God is always one step ahead of even the most insightful believer.  Quite generously, God himself has chosen the vocabulary with which mankind must work in his attempts to comprehend God.  “Father”, “Son” and “Holy Spirit” are Divinely inspired expressions which are ignored or dismissed at the believer’s peril.  It is certainly true that God is a Creator, a Redeemer and a Sanctifier.  These words, however, explain God’s nature, not his personality.  And it is equally true that the love of God has certain maternal qualities, like the mother hen gathering her chicks.  Yet to displace the Trinity’s venerable, traditional and inspired titles with fashionable and trendy nomenclature is, at best, naïve, or, most likely, rash, and, perhaps, even sacrilegious.   The authentic believer must daily ponder the relationship between Father and Son, and between Son and Father, reflecting on how human fatherhood and human sonship can shed light on the personhood of God.   Mankind’s insights into the Holy Trinity are chiefly the result of God’s self-revelation, never the mere consequence of sociological trends.

       The family of man, and especially the Christian Church, should particularly meditate on the place and role of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who became man in Jesus Christ.  The Divine Son’s personality never changed; he was and is always the obedient Son of the Father.  But after the Incarnation, after becoming flesh, the Son of God acted out his Divine Sonship in human ways.   The constant daily prayer of Jesus toward his Father, the conviction of being sent to do the Father’s bidding, the unfailing obedience to the Father’s Will even in the face of misunderstanding and death, the total respect for all of the Father’s work, even the least aspects of creation, Christ’s reliance on God’s providence, Christ’s eager return to the Father – these were all earthly manifestations of the inner workings of the Son, inner workings that the believer is invited to imitate.  The prayer, the mission, the obedience, the reliance of Christ on the Father are shared with each believer who bears the name of Christian.  For we are indeed “sons in the Son.”                        COMPLETE

       The multiplication of the loaves and fishes in the wilderness and the miraculous change of water into wine during the wedding feast at Cana share a number of common themes.  For Catholics, of course, the most obvious point of correspondence between the incidents is Christ’s use of bread and wine as the focus of these twin events.  Bread and wine would later become the sacramental emblems of Christ’s sacrificial banquet and his enduring Real Presence.  Although not much is made of the fish that Christ increased for the benefit of his numerous followers, the alert Christian will recall the post-Resurrection meals that Christ shared with his apostles on the beaches of Galilee.  These after-Easter meals are rich with sacramental and Eucharistic significance.  These meals became a sign of the Risen Christ’s continuing Presence within his Church.

       Beside the sacramental references that bread and wine connote to the believing Christian, there is another idea common to the multiplication of the loaves and the transformation into wine.  Generosity, abundance, liberality, munificence – call it what you will – the bounteousness of God through Christ is the most striking theme of these two miracles.  God’s largess is clear to one reading the Cana narrative.  It was a large wedding: Mary, Jesus and the twelve Apostles had been invited over and above relatives and friends.  The young couple’s liberality with their guests is obvious:  they ran out of wine.  The six stone water jars containing fifteen to twenty-five gallons speak for themselves.  They are, of course, filled “to the brim.”  And the wine turns out to be the best ever.  Every detail here bespeaks God’s generosity toward his people.  He is truly a God of plenty.

       The multiplication of the loves in the wilderness (the only miracle reported in all four gospels) underlines this notion of bigheartedness revealed at Cana.  First of all, the number of people involved is staggering by ancient standards.  Ancient demographics cannot be compared to modern population trends.  If Jerusalem had ten thousand inhabitants in the time of Christ, it would have been considered a major metropolis.  At best, Jerusalem was a small town and the villages of Galilee were even less populated. So gathering five thousand men (“not counting women and children” as the politically incorrect St. Matthew observes) was an outrageous assembly of people.  The event takes place not in the desertlike landscape of Judea but rather in the lush greenery of Galilee.  St. John notes descriptively that “there was much grass in that place.”  And not only are the men, women and children amply fed, but twelve baskets of fragments are gathered up after their refreshment.  Jesus’ careful instruction to his disciples to “collect the fragments lest they perish” is a further sign of God’s goodness.  Nothing goes to waste in the kingdom of God.  And finally the people are so impressed with Jesus’ practical concern for their well-being that they attempt to capture him and make him their king.  He characteristically eludes their grasp. 

       The two miracles together are an overwhelming endorsement of God’s generous benevolence toward his people.  The ancient Jews sang frequently of the “loving kindness” or “great love” of God the Father for his Chosen People.  The Hebrew “hesed ouimet,” that is, the kindness and mercy of God, is celebrated in psalm after psalm.  The deliverance from slavery in Egypt was God’s greatest act of benevolence toward his people and the Jews never forgot it.  To this day, the Exodus is the defining moment in Jewish history.  Recall that God fed the Jews during that long trek with the manna, the heavenly bread, and with the water from the rock.  Now Jesus will feed his followers with the true heavenly bread, his Body, and the true living water, his Blood.  God’s ancient generosity continues into modern times.

       It is surprising that, in spite of so much Biblical evidence, the generosity of God toward his people is a lesson poorly learned by believers.  Christians act as if they had to beg mercy from God rather than acknowledge that his abundant mercy is already available to the faithful.  The need to beg for Divine attention indicates a pagan more than a Christian mentality.  The true believer knows that he already has God’s kind attention and God’s generous assistance, amply confirmed by the preaching, ministry and miracles of Jesus Christ.         COMPLETE 

       The celebrated confession of St. Peter in Jesus as the long awaited Messiah is reported in all four Gospels.  St. Mark characteristically offers the briefest account.  He simply has St. Peter answer, “You are the Christ.”  But this does not indicate that St. Peter’s confession is unimportant for St. Mark.  St. Mark has St. Peter profess Christ as Messiah in the very dead center of his Gospel.  The eight chapters preceding the confession depict Jesus the wonderworker, Jesus the celebrity, Jesus the superstar.  Healings, exorcisms, and miracles abound to the amazement of the crowds.  After the confession, the Gospel takes a radical turn introducing St. Mark’s readership more and more to Jesus the Suffering Servant, Jesus the Crucified Savior, Jesus the Sacrificial Lamb.   With all due respect, St. Mark practices the old rouse of “bait and switch.”  Jesus’ miracles attracted the crowds; Jesus’ sufferings saved the crowds.

       St. Luke’s account of the confession of St. Peter is also fairly terse.  In this Gospel account, St. Peter responds to Jesus’ inquiry concerning his identity quite pointedly: “The Christ of God.”  As is typical of St. Luke, the incident takes place while Jesus was “praying alone.”  It is in St. Luke’s Gospel that Jesus is pre-eminently the man of prayer.  Such time spent in prayer is an indication of Jesus closeness to the Father.  Jesus and the Father were of one mind, one heart.  Placing the confession of St. Peter in this context of intimate prayer lets the believer conclude that Jesus’ dialogue with his disciples (“Who do you say that I am?”) was not just Jesus’ idea but also had the blessing of the Father in heaven.  As with St. Mark, this confession was a turning point for St. Luke as well.  St. Luke follows the confession of St. Peter with the memorable and thoughtful words, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me…Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”   Once one appreciates the true significance of Jesus Christ, he or she can expect challenges, trials, difficulties.  In this world, to know Christ is know suffering.

       Like St. Mark, St. Matthew locates the famous confession of St. Peter on the missionary journey to Caesarea Philippi, along the edges of Jewish influence.  But unlike St. Mark, St. Matthew posits a grand elaboration on St. Peter’s acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah.  For Roman Catholics, these words are among the most brilliant in the Biblical constellation.  “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” St. Peter declares proudly and enthusiastically.  Jesus, for his part, does not emphasize the challenges and trials of such a confession for the Church at large as occurs in St. Mark and St. Luke.  Instead Jesus in St. Matthew’s Gospel explains the significance that this confession is going to have personally for St. Peter.  “Blessed are you, Simon son of John, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my heavenly Father.  And I for my part declare that you are Peter and on this rock I will build y Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  This is the only time in all four Gospel accounts when Jesus blesses on individual:  “Blessed are you, Simon…” Surely anyone reading this passage with an open mind must conclude that words of tremendous significance are being spoken here.  Happily our Catholic Church takes these profound words quite seriously. 

       St. John, as might be expected, places the illustrious confession of St. Peter in a different but intensely appropriate situation.   Jesus has just finished his provocative sermon on the Bread of Life which constitutes chapter six of the Fourth Gospel.  The Jews as well as some disciples are horrified as Jesus’ proposal;  “How can this fellow give us his flesh to eat?”  A number of disciples abandon Jesus and his mission.  Jesus turns sadly to his closest friends and inquires, “Will you also leave me?”  St. Peter, speaking for the Apostolic band, proclaimed, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You alone have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Quite prophetically, St. John indicates that full acceptance of the meaning of the Eucharist, the Bread of Life, is the paramount test for accepting Jesus Himself.  A belief in Jesus that does not accept the full significance of the Eucharist is a disappointment, a cheat and an illusion.  COMPLETE

       Geography was very important for St. Luke, whose Gospel narrative is being read this liturgical cycle.  Both in his Gospel account and in his Acts of Apostles, a good grasp of the lie of the land is critical to appreciating the full significance of St. Luke’s writings.  While both St. Matthew and St. Luke begin their Gospels with the infancy of Jesus Christ, it is only St. Luke who squarely commences his narrative in “ a city of Galilee named Nazareth.”  St. Matthew does not mention Nazareth until after the return from exile in Egypt when Jesus was presumably a young boy.  That Jesus’ life journey should begin in Nazareth, about ninety miles north of Jerusalem, is critical to understanding St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ life.  For St. Luke, Jesus’ life will begin here in the womb of Mary in far away Nazareth (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”) and work its way inevitably and relentlessly to Jerusalem, the spiritual and cultural capital of Judaism. 

        In this Sunday’s Gospel passage, St. Luke notes carefully, “When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem…”   For St. Luke, and certainly for Jesus, Jerusalem connotes the fulfillment, the completion, the realization of Christ’s ministry.  Nothing would deter Jesus from reaching Jerusalem.  Nothing would prevent him from arriving in that capital city.  Nothing would discourage Christ from accomplishing his God-driven mission to suffer, to die and to rise again.  The geographical path from northern Nazareth to southern Jerusalem represents the spiritual journey that Jesus Christ would endure to achieve his Father’s Will.  “He resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.”

       Jesus’ inexorable and ultimately successful passage from Nazareth to Jerusalem must be appreciated with an eye to St. Luke’s other New Testament work: The Acts of Apostles.  Just as St. Luke’s Gospel begins in Nazareth and works its way unalterably to Jerusalem, so the Book of Acts begins in Jerusalem and works its way steadfastly toward the City of Rome.  Rome was, of course, the very center of the ancient world.  Indeed, it was the hub of the universe.  If the infant Church were to accomplish its mission, then it had to set its face toward Rome: it had to reach the center of the world.  

       The Gospel according to St. Luke and the history of the early Christian community recounted in the Acts are both success stories.  Jesus reached Jerusalem and Peter and Paul reached Rome.  Their journeys were challenging and difficult but, in the end, they achieved their goals.  St. Luke wrote his Gospel and his history book to inspire the early Church and successive generations of Christians in their spiritual journeys.  Every believer has his or her personal Jerusalem, his or her personal Rome.  The path can be tortuous and treacherous; the way can be stressful and demanding.  St. Luke’s advice to believers is to persevere.  Jesus did it.  The first Apostles did it.  And every believer can do, relying of course on the grace of God.

       Jesus re-enforces St. Luke’s travel imagery in a series of maxims featured in today’s Gospel passage.  “I will follow you wherever you go,” boasts one eager disciple to Jesus.  Jesus warns the recruit that the journey is difficult:  “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Follow me, Jesus says to the novice, but be prepared for hardships.  He would say the same to us.  Similarly Jesus admonishes, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  Once the journey to spiritual victory starts there can be no looking back. 

       St. Luke’s message is filled with promise.  The believer can reach Jerusalem.  The believer can reach Rome.  The believer can obtain spiritual success.  The road is rugged and dangerous.  The journey is long and arduous.  But Jesus’ advice remains: “Don’t look back!”         COMPLETE

Thoughts on Leaving St. Leo’s

       A few weeks ago, Father John A. Sistare, until recently my associate at St. Leo parish in Pawtucket, asked me what my most significant contribution to parish life was during my eleven years in Pawtucket.  I thought for a moment and then replied, “Installing air-conditioning the church.”    Perhaps there are times during the summer when parishioners think that raising the comfort level of the church in the hot months is my enduring contribution to church life in Darlington.   But this is a question that I have asked myself many times during my decade in Pawtucket.  And frankly it is an easy inquiry to answer.

       On the back wall of the church, over the main altar, is a near life size crucifix that has been in various locations in St. Leo Church over the decades.  In the early part of the last century and before, large crosses like this called Mission Crosses were frequently installed in churches as a focal point for the fiery sermons preached by visiting priests giving a parish Mission.  Tradition says that it was once at the front door of the church where parishioners would greet it with a kiss or pat of the hand as they entered church. At some point this Crucifix was removed to the lower church where a chapel was dedicated to accommodate the increased population of Darlington in the 1950s.  It hung quietly there until the mid 1990s.

       As soon as I saw this lifelike Crucifix in the lower church, I resolved someday to move it upstairs where it clearly belonged.  One year, just before Ash Wednesday, a local contractor made some adjustments to the sanctuary area and St. Leo’s Mission Cross was literally resurrected to where it shines now in spotlighted majesty.  The main altar, the tabernacle and this Crucifix are all in a line, each a reminder in different ways of the very heart of the Christian message:  “We preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified…”

       The Crucified Christ over the altar at St. Leo church enshrines in plaster two basic Christian beliefs:  the reality of sin and the goodness of God.  Society nowadays, to be blunt, has lost all sense of sin.  People miss Mass repeatedly and then when they do show up they trot up the aisle to receive Communion as if no impediment existed.  People will pay good money to send their children to a Catholic school but forget completely their Sunday obligation.  Young couples are shocked when a priest might question why they are living together before marriage.  People work and shop on the Sabbath at will.  Popular entertainment is beyond the suggestive; it is explicit.  Etc., etc.  Alas, whether Catholic or non-catholic, nothing bothers us anymore.   Everything is O.K.  The Crucifix is a reminder that in God’s eyes, everything is not O.K.  Sin exists, and it needs to be admitted, repented of, and forgiven.  As someone wrote, “If I’m O.K. and you’re O.K., then what is Christ doing up there?”   The Crucifix is summons to repentance and a pledge of forgiveness.

       The Crucified Christ is, as well, a reminder of the goodness of God.  In a representation of Christ crucified, the faithful see enshrined that solemn and celebrated moment of self-giving, wherein Christ gave his body and shed his blood for “us men and for our salvation.”  The Crucifix underlines the love of God made visible, made tangible, in Jesus Christ and specifically in Christ at his moment of greatest challenge.  The body given and the blood shed, sacramentally enshrined in the Eucharist, are symbolically enshrined in our crucifixes.  There is no greater love, Jesus himself reminds us, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  The majestic crucifix over the altar at the parish of St. Leo the Great is a constant and evocative reminder of this great love, inviting parishioners to take advantage of Christ’s self-donating love and, just as importantly, to share Christ’s generous love with others.