Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
It can sometimes seem as though Jesus is far removed from our 21st-Century lives in Dayton, Ohio. His life and ministry on earth is certainly removed from us by many centuries. He lived in a time when the world was very different, and he lived and worked in a much different cultural context. I find that my own sense of being far removed from the historical figure of Jesus sometimes has the danger of allowing me to make excuses for myself: in particular it allows me to pick and choose the ways that I am willing to follow him. I find myself sometimes asking how Jesus expects me to follow him when he is so far away from my life. This in turn can make me less passionate about my faith and less certain of my role as a Christian in the world around me. The scriptures for today speak to these concerns and show that this way of thinking is mistaken. They remind us that Jesus remains very close to us, in many different ways but in particular through the operation of the Holy Spirit.
Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle
Several weeks ago, I was having dinner with a friend after work. We had not seen each other in about three months, so we had plenty of catching up to do. Among many other things, I was extremely excited to tell him all about my recent involvements with youth ministry and the upcoming meetings and events that we had planned for the months ahead. Knowing my passion for God and youth ministry, my friend told me, “Man, you should just start your own church already!” I shyly laughed off what my friend had meant as a well meaning compliment and we continued catching up and enjoying each other’s company. However, I was admittedly taken aback by his comment, mostly because “my own church” was the last thing that I wanted. It was the Church that Jesus, my Lord, had instituted that had captivated my heart. That is the Church that I want to serve as a disciple and that is the very same Church that we see in today’s readings.
Sixth Sunday of Easter
One of the greatest challenges of my ministry is funerals. To help families deal with the tragedy, I try my best to make the funeral as meaningful as possible. Especially the homily, I make it an opportunity to let people discover God in the midst of it all. I also focus on celebrating the deceased person’s life by engaging in a conversation with family members about the deceased. Sometimes after the service the family come to tell me how they appreciated what I said about the person and how I connected the scripture to the life of the person. My response often to them is that I did not have anything to do with the homily except to deliver it. I tell them that, the way we live our lives each day, we are writing our funeral homily. The people or the celebrant can only capture the essence of what the deceased person’s life stood for. They can only reflect of how they lived their lives. As the family thanks me, I often ask them to thank their loved ones for the life they lived.
Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter
There are several interesting elements in today’s three Readings that are worth noting, all of which link in some way to the Christian concept of discipleship.
In our First Reading, St. Paul encounters Timothy and decides to take him as a traveling companion. Timothy is himself both Jew and Gentile, having a Jewish mother (which is the general requirement for membership in the Jewish community) and a Gentile father. Through his parentage, Timothy seems to represent the Church of this period, which is growing community of both Jews and Gentiles. St. Paul, who will elsewhere argue vehemently against the need for Gentile Christians to become Jews, ends up having Timothy circumcised. This strange decision is presumably reached so that there will be no doubt about Timothy’s status within the Covenant, so that Timothy will be accepted by those to whom he is called to serve as a messenger. As these disciples travel about relaying the decisions of the Council of Jerusalem (that were reached in the previous chapter), the faith of the Christian community grows. The overriding theme of the First Reading, however, is following the lead of the Holy Spirit. According to Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Timothy intend to travel through one region and preach the Gospel only to be “prevented by the Holy Spirit” from doing so. Instead of allowing them to go where they have determined they should go, the Holy Spirit guides these disciples to preach to the people of Macedonia. They receive a vision, which is not necessarily the vision that they wanted, and begin to recognize that they are called in a different way than they have originally supposed. This does not mean that they will never make it to these other regions; it only means that they have other work to do that they must accomplish first.
Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter
I often get asked, "Why is Christianity so legalistic? Why are there so many rules?" This seems intuitively wrong to many, especially when they read that Jesus himself broke laws. For instance, Jesus broke the Sabbath in order to heal people (see Mark 3). He favors mercy over legalisms and love over obeying a rule that doesn't lead to more love.
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Some people see Christians as somber, miserable people who have no joy in their life. Do you have joy in your life? Do you want joy in your life? Sounds like a silly question. Who doesn’t want joy? I don’t mean fleeting happiness, or a denial of or even absence of suffering, but a deep joy and complete joy.
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
A few years back a tree died in my front yard. The yard seemed like it was missing something, so the hunt for new tree began. Although I liked the Silver Maple that was there before I really wanted to get a tree that flowered. In my search I came across the Bartlett Pair, crabapple and apple trees. But what really captured my attention was this combination Cherry tree. I had never heard of such a tree, but I thought it was worth try.
Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
It sometimes seems that one of the things most lacking from modern life is peace. I find that life can be very busy. I often find myself rushing from one thing to the next, without the ability to take everything in and to reflect on what I experience. At the same time, it is evident from the evening news that our world contains countless examples of conflict, war, turbulence, violence, and oppression. There are numerous ways that lack of peace breaks into our lives, including crime and interpersonal conflict.
Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter
I learned about the Ten Commandments when I was in grade school like most of us did. Our class went to Confession once a month and that is when we were supposed to confess our sins. I don’t remember many specific details about that whole process but I distinctly remember the intense feelings associated with it. I felt terror. After confessing my sins I do not remember feeling peace or joy, let alone experiencing the mercy of God. I only remember feeling intense relief at having lived through the experience once more. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood I figured out how that was related to my relationship with God.
Fifth Sunday of Easter
There is a story my second grade teacher told us in my catechism class that I still remember. One day, Michelangelo walking through a garden in Florence, saw a block of marble in a corner protruding from the earth. It was half covered by grass and mud. He stopped suddenly, as if he had seen someone. Then he said to his friends who were with him, exclaimed: "An angel is imprisoned in that marble; I must get him out." And, armed with a chisel, he began to work on that block until the figure of a beautiful angel emerged. Each of us is a work in progress too. Each of us is a disciple in the making; we are Christians in the making. And today's readings offer us ways that God can make us who are called to be.
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
“All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God” announces the response of today’s psalm.. We hear these words today immediately after we hear the story of Paul and Barnabas and the great mission to the gentiles. Gentiles, that is non-Jews, were generally regarded by Jews as outside of God’s saving power. Therefore, Jesus’ universal call, including Jews and Gentiles, is one of the most distinctive things about Him. He came from the Jewish tradition and He’s very clearly rooted in it, but His mission is universal.
Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter
This week, I've been reading a book called Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren Winner. Winner describes a mid-faith crisis as the realization that the newness, excitement and joy of faith has worn off and that the end goal of spiritual life (that is, life in God) seems quite far off. How do you make it through the middle of faith, when God seems far off, and nothing ever seems to change? Winner describes the slow, sometimes painful process of going through a mid-faith crisis - from her vantage point, it involves a lot of prayer (even when sometimes you're not sure that God is there), a lot of discussions with trusted spiritual friends, and a lot of simply being in the loneliness that a mid-faith crisis sometimes involves.
Feast of Saint Philip and Saint James, Apostles
Today the Church celebrates the feast of Saint Philip and Saint James, first century Apostles of Jesus. Last week we read about Philip and how the Spirit led him to baptize the Ethiopian eunuch, marking the beginning of the eventual spread of the gospel outside of the confines of Jerusalem. We also hear of Philip in today’s gospel (John 14: 6-14) with the other disciples and Jesus at the last supper, trying to understand Jesus and asking Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus then explains that if they know him, they know the Father because he dwells in him. (Keep in mind that even the first disciples, eventual saints, didn’t have it all figured out!)
Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Everyone knows that to have a good story you need to start with the words, “Once upon a time...”. The Bible, our collection of stories, has a similar phrase, “In the Beginning…”. This phrase is used to start out the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis and also to start the Gospel of John. On some levels, John calls us to remember Genesis by using these words. Yet where he goes after that can take us off guard. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) It is this Johannine understanding of the Word which echoed in my heart upon hearing the first reading.
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
In the recent daily scripture readings, we have been working through the book of Acts. This book has always intrigued me. It is full of lively accounts of the activities of the first Christians and their attempts to live out the gospel. It also recounts the astonishing ways that the Christian faith spread through the action of the Holy Spirit. Although I find this book fascinating, I also sometimes wonder what this book can have to say to us in our times, since our world is very different than the world which Jesus’ apostles and early disciples inhabited. It seems to me that the scripture readings for today provide an answer to this question.
Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Have you ever spent time thinking about your voice? Each of us has a unique voice that is like no others, and with your speech not only do you communicate words, but you also communicate emotions and personality. Some people even refer to our voice as our “auditory face”, since others can recognize who we are by just be hearing us speak. Researchers have discovered that even a baby in the womb can distinguish his or her mother’s voice in preference to the voice of other people. This ability to recognize another person’s voice allow us the opportunity to establish a relationship with the individual, since each time we hear that individual talk, we are reminded of our past memories of that person and the mutual experiences we have shared.
Fourth Sunday of Easter
One of the television shows that I have been intrigued by is Shark Tank. The show revolves around four filthy-rich entrepreneurs who at one time were themselves poor. They are the ‘sharks’ in the show. Each week amateur entrepreneurs appear before them with prospective business ideas. The game plan is to get ‘sharks’ to buy shares in their company in exchange for cash. If the sharks think that there is money to be made they negotiate with these amateurs to make a deal. But here is the thing – it is always about the money. For example, one entrepreneur wanted to keep his manufacturing unit in the country. The reason the ‘sharks’ did not invest in that project was because that would mean lower profits. The show in many ways is a reflection of society. I want to say that there is something evil about the dynamic at work. Self-respect, dignity, charity, patriotism, integrity – they are all expendable for money.
Saturday of the Third Week of Easter
“As a result of this, many disciples returned to their former life and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66). Jesus’ revelation of Himself as the Bread of Life, the one whose flesh we must eat and whose blood we must drink to gain eternal life, was not easy to swallow (no pun intended). Indeed it separated the deeply committed disciples from those who were on board only insofar as Jesus’ teaching seemed acceptable. This particular teaching shocked the latter group (John 6:61) and they returned to their former life. In response to their shock, Jesus remarks His words are “Spirit and life” (John 6:63).
Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Today’s scriptures cause me to reflect on the fact that Christianity is quite a bit strange. What we celebrate during the Easter season – Jesus’ resurrection – is odd in itself, but then add in everything else we believe: the virgin birth, the ragtag band of followers that wander around Judea, the disciples that proclaim Jesus in the face of persecution and death, all the various permutations of Christianity that exist in our world today. In the words of one of my students, “Christianity is entirely weird” and that is sometimes a stumbling block for people who find the weirdness to be anti-rational. But perhaps it is also the very weirdness of the Christian story that can cause us to have faith, as well.
Thursday of the Third Week of Easter
Don’t you wish, sometimes, that an angel or the Spirit of the Lord would give you such specific instructions as Philip receives in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8: 26-40)? “Get up and head south on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, the desert route.” It almost sounds like Philip has a spiritual GPS guiding him specifically where the Lord wants him to go. I sure would like to have one of those! And although it’s true that we don’t exactly have a spiritual GPS, we do have God’s Spirit within us, guiding and directing us if we but listen.