A Love like God’s

What Paul the Apostle praises in our 1st reading today at Mass and Jesus urges in the gospel is a love that reaches out beyond our friends and those close by. Paul sees this love in the collection taken up by the Macedonians for the poor in Jerusalem. It’s a graced love, Paul says, expanding your care and your vision. Your love is like God’s.(2 Corinthians 8,1-9)

Jesus urges the same kind of love in the gospel. God’s love is like the sun that shines on everyone, life the rain that falls on the just and the unjust. It’s not an easy love, but if you wish to be perfect “Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5,43-48)

Today CNN carried a story of that kind of love. Paula Cooper was released from the Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana yesterday, a free woman. In 1985 as a young girl of 15 she decided to steal some money from a 76 year old bible teacher, Ruth Pelke. After smoking marijuana and drinking wine, she went to her home, hit Pelke with a vase and stabbed her in the stomach thirty times–for $10.

Leading the pleas for Cooper’s release, was Pelke’s grandson, Bill Pelke, who said he forgave her shortly after Cooper was sentenced to death.

Here’s the CNN story:

“’I became convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that my grandmother would have had love and compassion for Paula Cooper and her family,’ Pelke told CNN. ‘I felt she wanted someone in my family to have that same sort of love and compassion. I didn’t have any but was so convinced that’s what she would have wanted, I begged God to give me love and compassion for Paula Cooper and her family and do that on behalf of my grandmother.’”

“He said it was ‘a short prayer,’ but it was answered.
“’For a year and a half, whenever I thought about my grandmother, I always pictured how she died. It was terrible,’ he said. ‘But when my heart was touched with compassion, forgiveness took place. I knew from that moment on when I think about her, I would no longer pictured how she died, but I would picture how she lived, and what she stood for, what she believed in — the beautiful, wonderful person she was.’”

“Pelke tried to visit Cooper in 1986, but the two didn’t come face to face until eight years later. The two struck up an unlikely friendship over the years, exchanging messages through the prison e-mail system every week. And in 1989, the Indiana Supreme Court reduced Cooper’s death sentence to 60 years in prison.”

“Pelke said he would like to help Cooper with her transition to life outside of prison.
‘I hope that we’re able to go out and have a meal. I’ve told her when she got out of prison I’d like to buy her a computer and I have a friend that would like to buy her some clothes. Hopefully we’ll get together within the next few days and go shopping,’ he said.”

“Pelke said he’s never asked Cooper to explain her actions – ‘There’s not a good answer for that’ — but said she has shown remorse for the killing.
‘She would take it back in a heartbeat if she could, but she knows she has to live with it for the rest of her life,’ he said. ‘She knows she took something valuable out of society. She wants to try to give back. She wants to help work with other young people to avoid the pitfals she fell into.’”

There’s an example of perfect love, from yesterday.

The Sinful Woman

We’ve been reading from the Gospel of Luke most Sundays at Mass this year and for the last few weeks Luke speaks about women in the ministry of Jesus and of his church. Last Sunday there was the story of the widow of Naim, who was bringing her dead son to be buried. Jesus stopped the funeral cortege raised the boy to life and gave him back to his mother.(Luke7.11-17) This week there’s the story of the sinful woman of the town in a Pharisee’s house. Weeping, she pours an ointment over Jesus’ feet along with her tears. Then she dries them with her hair.(Luke 7,36-8,3)

Recall too the story from last Sunday’s Old Testament readings about a widow whose only son had died. Elijah raised her boy to life. (1 Kings 17,17-24)

Are these stories related? I think they may be. In Jesus’ day women who were widowed were especially vulnerable. Losing their husbands, they lost their support. If they lost their sons their plight was worse. In a society where men were the sole providers, women had nothing without them. It could happen in such a situation that women sold themselves, which leads us to the story for today. Was the woman in the gospel one of those women?

It’s a situation that exists even in our time. “Doesn’t he know what kind of woman she is?” Jesus’ host asks. Yes, he does. He understands her circumstances quite well. Luke’s gospel especially takes up their cause.

You notice how the gospel ends today with Luke’s summary of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem.

Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others who provided for them
out of their resources. (Luke 8,1-3)

Luke carefully notes that women followed Jesus. He had empowered them; then they empowered him and his gospel. That’s the way love and forgiveness works. Luke reminds the men of his church that women had an important place in the life and ministry of Jesus. For him women’s issues were not just women’s issues, they were men’s issues as well.

Today is Fathers’ Day. As we honor fathers, let’s remember that the scriptures expand the definition of father beyond biological terms. God is “Our Father in heaven”, “Father of the poor”, “Father of the widow”, “Father of orphans.” He the God of the vulnerable. Luke embraces this expanded understanding of mother and father in his gospel. Let’s make it our own too.

St. Anthony of Padua

You find a surprising range of pictures of saints, like St. Anthony, on internet search engines like Google. He’s pictured on some traditional holy cards blissfully holding the Christ Child in his arms, which is how someone reported seeing him one day towards the end of his life.  Sometimes he’s pictured holding a book in his hand. Some pictures and statues portray him holding the Child and the book together. 

I’m adding a picture of a statue Brother Angelo has down in the laundry room.

The pictures and statues say a lot about him.

Anthony was born in Portugal in 1195 and died near Padua, Italy in 1291, acclaimed by people of his time for his preaching and virtues.  Canonized shortly after his death, he’s invoked as a miracle-worker, especially good at finding something lost. But Anthony’s more than a miracle-worker.

His world was the complex, changing world of the 13^th century when Europe’s economy was expanding; military crusades against the Muslim powers were taking place in Spain, Sicily and the Holy Land, and new religious movements like the Franciscans were bringing reform and new vigor to the western church.

The young Anthony first entered the Augustinian community in his birthplace, Lisbon, and studied at the renowned theological center of Coimbra. Just decades before, Portugal had been re-conquered from the Moors but now, unfortunately, the victors were fighting among themselves for power and spoils from the crusades.

Anthony rejected the violence and avarice he saw in feuding leaders of the church and state; he was a crusader of another kind.  When the bodies of some Franciscan missionaries martyred in Morocco in 1219 for preaching the gospel were brought back to Portugal, Anthony decided to join the new community.  He became a Franciscan and went to Morocco, hoping to preach the faith to the Muslims there, but illness forced him out and he went to Sicily, then to Italy, where he began a new phase as a Franciscan missionary and teacher.

Only a few years before, in 1206 in Assisi, young Francis Bernadone stripped himself of his trendy, stylish clothes and put on the dress of a poor man, to follow the poor Man of Nazareth, Jesus Christ. Thousands followed him and the movement he began quickly spread through the Christian world, attracting people like Anthony, eager to bring the gospel “to the ends of the earth.”

The Franciscan movement began with a dedication to absolute poverty and a simple life, but as church leaders requested them to preach the gospel throughout the world its members needed books, education, training and places of formation. Anthony emerged as a model preacher and teacher for the Franciscans.

Through northern Italy, then through France, Anthony’s vivid, down-to-earth preaching stirred people’s hearts and minds and showed other preachers how to preach.  At the time, the Franciscan movement was not the only movement attracting the people of Europe. Through northern Italy and especially in France, Albigensian teachers were preaching a message of simplicity and release from the burdens of life to believers dissatisfied with the church. They denied that Jesus was divine, they questioned the gospels and painted the world as an evil place.

“Wise as a serpent and simple as a dove” Anthony disputed their message in his preaching. Gifted with an extraordinary memory for the scriptures and an ability to illustrate his talks with homey examples simple people understood, he spoke “with a well-trained tongue.” Thousands came to hear him. The world was not an evil, Anthony taught, Jesus, the Word of God, was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Artists capture Anthony’s spirit in their portraits of him. As a preacher and teacher, he carries of book, most likely a psalter holding the Jewish psalms. St. Augustine, whom Anthony studied as a youth, always carried this one book of the bible with him, as a summary of the scriptures.

Some say this book is also clue to Anthony’s gift for finding lost things. He probably kept his notes for teaching and preaching in it. If he lost it–some say one of his students stole it– he lost something valuable to him. He found it, so he knows what it means when someone loses something too.

The Christ Child Anthony holds in his arms was more than a momentary vision he had.  Anthony was deeply attracted, as St. Francis was, to the mystery of the Incarnation. The Word became flesh. God became a little child, who grew in wisdom and age and grace in the simple world of Nazareth. He died on a cross, accepting it as his Father’s will. Then, he rose from the dead.

Human life and the world itself has been blessed by this mystery. Because of it, we can’t see life as small and inconsequential. Even suffering and death have been changed. “The goodness and kindness of God has appeared.” We hold it in our hands.

I suppose this is why Anthony is down in the laundry where Brother Angelo is washing sheets and towels and clothes. He speaks to this world.

The Feast of St. Barnabas

We believe in the communion of saints. We share life with those in heaven and on earth. One way of sharing life with others is by recognizing their gifts.

That’s what St. Barnabas did. He recognized the gift of Saul of Tarsus. After his dramatic conversion on the way to Damascus, Paul preached the gospel in Damascus and then in Jerusalem, according to the Acts of the Apostles, but because of his past as a persecutor of Christians, there was suspicion of him. “They were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.”

“Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles, and he reported to them how on the way he had seen the Lord and that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.” (Acts 9, 25-27)

Barnabas recognized the grace of God in Saul.

As gentiles became increasingly interested in the gospel, especially in Antioch, the leaders of the Jerusalem church sent Barnabas there to see what to do.

“When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart, for he was a good man, filled with the holy Spirit and faith. And a large number of people was added to the Lord.
Then he went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a large number of people, and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.” (Acts 11,23-26)

Once again, Barnabas recognized Saul, who would become Paul, and sought him out to bring the gospel to the gentiles.

Previously, in the Acts of the Apostles the Apostle Peter encountered the gentile Cornelius in Ceasaria Maritima, whom he baptized with his household. But Barnabas knew Paul was better able to preach to the gentiles than Peter, so he brought him to Antioch.

The two embarked on a mission to the gentiles. The Acts of the Apostles refer first to “Barnabas and Saul” then gradually it becomes “Paul and Barnabas.” Paul emerged as the gifted apostle.

It was Barnabas who first recognized his gift.

Feast of the Sacred Heart

The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus falls on the Friday after the Feast of Corpus Christi because of its associations with the death of Jesus and the mystery of the Eucharist. Statues and symbols of the Sacred Heart can still be found in many churches, shrines and homes.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart, promoted especially by the Jesuits, was a favorite devotion of generations of Catholics. I think today of the beautiful church of the Sacred Heart in Springfield, Mass, where Father Theodore Foley, the saintly Passionist whose cause for canonization was recently introduced, grew up. That church and this devotion surely had a profound influence on him.

The devotion was strong in the pre-Vatican II church, but not so strong now. How do I know? I was listening on the internet to a little segment on church music from Vatican Radio featuring popular hymns to the Sacred Heart. Most of them you don’t hear today.

The devotion, however, points to a mystery that transcends popularity. Here’s an excerpt from St. Bonaventure for today’s Office of Readings:
“Take thought now, you who are redeemed, and consider how great and worthy is he who hangs on the cross for you. His death brings the dead to life, but at his passing heaven and earth are plunged into mourning and hard rocks are split asunder.
“By divine decree, one of the soldiers opened his sacred side with a lance. This was done so that the Church might be formed from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death on the cross, and so that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘They shall look on him whom they pierced’.
“The blood and water which poured out at that moment were the price of our salvation. Flowing from the secret abyss of our Lord’s heart as from a fountain, this stream gave the sacraments of the Church the power to confer the life of grace, while for those already living in Christ it became a spring of living water welling up to life everlasting.”

“Sweet Savior, bless us ere we go
thy words into our minds instill
and make our lukewarm hearts aglow
with lowly love and fervent will.
Through life’s long day and death’s dark night,
O gentle Jesus be our light.”

Corpus Christi

“I Love a Mystery” was a radio program I listened to as a young boy, long ago. It started, as all mysteries do, with something concealed. Someone, something was lost, someone was killed or was being hunted down and for the next half hour you would follow the various clues until the mystery was solved.

The Mass is a mystery too. A “mystery of faith,” we say, and it hides the treasures of our faith.

One of the earliest terms describing the Mass is “the Lord’s Supper,” referring of course to the supper that Jesus shared with his disciples the night before he died.  He spoke to them that night of his love and then gave himself to them under the signs of bread and wine. Then he said “Do this in memory of me.”

In every Catholic church we try to keep his command. Whether it’s St. Peter’s Basilica or a parish church or a small chapel off a busy city street, there’s an altar, a table, at the center of the place and the Lord’s Supper is celebrated here in memory of him.

Readings from the Old and New Testaments will be read here, because Jesus spoke from the scriptures to his disciples. Then the priest who represents Jesus takes bread and wine, gives thanks to God for the gifts of creation and life itself, then repeats the words of Jesus, “This is my body” “This is my Blood.” Then we all receive these gifts.

We gather around Jesus as his disciples did, not perfect disciples to be sure, but we’re among those “whom he loved till the end.” And he feeds us with his wisdom and life.

Our celebration of the Mass can be flawed by cold routine or lifeless participation. We who take part in the Mass–priest and people – may not bring the lively faith or spirit of thanksgiving that’s  “right and just” for this great act of worship. But still,  as a church we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. We have been celebrating it from the time of Jesus till now, and we will continue till its signs are replaced by the reality of the Kingdom they signify.

Ordinary time is when the Holy Spirit acts. It’s also the time when we know Jesus Christ through the signs he has left us, particularly through the Holy Eucharist.

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

According to Luke’s gospel, belief gives you life and faith always sends you on a mission. Mary is an example.

Mary believes the angel who announces in Nazareth the coming of Jesus and then leaves. The Spirit who comes upon her remains with her, and the Word of God dwells in her womb. She sets out “in haste” for the hill country of Judea to visit Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah, who also was with child. It’s not an ordinary visit. She hurries on because she’s filled with a sense of her mission. She hurries to Judea, where her relatives serve in the temple of God, to announce good news.

 “Blessed are you who believed,” Elizabeth says to Mary.

“You too, my people, are blessed,” comments St. Ambrose, “ you who have heard and who believe. Every soul that believes — that soul both conceives and gives birth to the Word of God and recognizes his works.

“Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let the spirit of Mary be in each one of you, to rejoice in God. According to the flesh only one woman can be the mother of Christ but in the world of faith Christ is the fruit of all of us.”

 

As with Mary so with us, believing brings life and sends us on a mission.

 

 

Trinity Sunday

A story’s told that St. Augustine, one of the great intellectuals of our western world, was walking along the seashore one day and saw a little boy playing on the beach, taking water from the sea in a small bucket and pouring it into a hole he had dug in the sand. Back the forth the boy went.

“What are you doing?” Augustine asked, “Do you think you can put the whole sea into that little hole?”

“No,” the little boy answered, “And neither can you put God into that small mind of yours no matter how smart you think you are.”

The story reminds us how limited our minds are before the mystery of God, even the smartest, most brilliant minds,   God is beyond us. The Feast of the Holy Trinity is a reminder of how incapable we are to know God completely.

And yet, this feast also reminds us that God has approached us and revealed  himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Father, God’s the creator of heaven and earth. All creation ultimately comes from God’s hand. The gift of life, the gift of all things. God, our Father and Creator, has given us everything. Through these same gifts we come to know him.

God has also made himself known to us in Jesus Christ, who was born of Mary over two thousand years ago, who walked this earth and died on a cross, who rose from the dead and remains with us in his church and his sacraments.  We have his words, his actions, his promises. He’s our Savior and Redeemer, a sign of God’s love;  he’s promised us life eternal..

The Holy Spirit also is God with us, within us, guiding us and our world to our common destiny.

Yet,  though we believe that God reveals himself to us, we’re still like the little boy on the seashore. We’re looking at an unmeasured sea that we approach with the little buckets of our minds. We can’t grasp it all.

You remember the story of the conversion of Paul the Apostle; one of the most dramatic stories in the scriptures. Saui, the unbeliever, was on his way to the City of Damascus to persecute the followers of Jesus, when suddenly a blinding light throws him from his horse. “Who are you, Lord?” Paul cries out. “I am Jesus whom you persecute, “ the voice from the blinding light says.

Jesus Christ is like the blinding light of the sun. He shares in the nature of God, who is brighter than sunlight, who blinds us when we try to see him. God dwells in light inaccessible, the scriptures say. So, even though we know so much about Jesus from the scriptures, even though great scholars can describe him, he is still beyond anything we can know.

Like the sun, Jesus is like a blinding light, yet, paradoxically a light that shines into the darkness of creation to give life and light. At the beginning of his gospel,  St. John says: “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.” (John 1,18)

As people of faith we’re not like those who say you can’t know God at all or like those who say God doesn’t exist because my mind cannot grasp him. Yet, as people of faith we know God little by little. That’s why we come to church week by week, that’s why we pray for our daily bread, that why we search for God in life as it unfolds day by day.

As we consider the mystery of God today we also have to recognize that we are children of the Enlightenment, that movement in our western world that tells us there’s no need to pay much attention to God. Pay attention to the world at hand. Pay attention to yourself.  That’s the important thing.

But, we should never leave the sea. We’re meant to stand before the mystery of God and reach out to him with our minds and to love him with our hearts, small as they are.

There’s a trivialization of the mystery of God today.  I think you can see it in the way the name of God and the name of Jesus Christ are tossed about in our ordinary talk. “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.”   You can see it in God’s absence from our culture, our schools, our media. our homes. You can see it in the belittling of our church and the signs of God’s presence. Even churches can become human gathering spaces, instead of holy places where we meet God.

The Feast of the Holy Trinity is a holy reminder of the mystery of God at the center of our life and the life of our world.

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The Wisdom of Ordinary Time

The readings in today’s Mass point to the wisdom of ordinary time. “Whoever is not against us is for us,” Jesus says to his disciples who complain there are others “who do not follow us” driving out demons. (Mark 9,38-40) Wisdom is not just in our tradition; it’s there everywhere in ordinary time.

I like the hand in the picture above of Bernini’s famous window in St.Peter’s. Who’s hand is it, anyway? A believer’s hand. Yes, for sure. But also the hand of all who walk this earth searching for truth.

“Wisdom breathes life into her children” (Sirach 4,11 ) Like much of the wisdom literature in the bible (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Psalms) the Book of Sirach, our reading for the beginning of ordinary time, draws much of its content from the culture of the middle east which influenced the Jews at home and in their exile in other lands.

As the gift of God breathed into ordinary time, the Holy Spirit “renews the face of the earth.” We can discover the Spirit’s wisdom everywhere.

Ordinary Time

The Easter season is over after the Feast of Pentecost and we’re into ordinary time in the church year. Unlike other feasts, Pentecost has no octave; ordinary time is its octave. Truth to be told, most of the church year, like most of life, is ordinary time, and that means it’s the time of the Holy Spirit.

The best place to look for the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives in ordinary time is probably the scriptures at Pentecost. Some of them recall the Spirit’s dramatic appearance, but others remind us that the Spirit comes quietly, when we’re hardly aware.

The Spirit dramatically came on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover, according to the Acts of the Apostles. (Acts 2,1-11) Strong winds and tongues of fire came upon the disciples gathered in the Upper Room, the Cenacle, and they were filled with energy and joy. Immediately, confidently, they preach the gospel to people from the ends of the earth gathered in Jerusalem for the feast. “Where did these Galileans get all this?” their amazed hearers ask.

“Their message goes out to all the earth,” to Asia Minor, to Rome, Africa, Asia. Occasionally, the Spirit works like this in the church and in the world.

But more often the Holy Spirit comes quietly as an everyday gift. We may prefer strong winds and tongues of fire, but the Spirit mostly comes quietly, in ordinary time.

John’s gospel, read also on the Feast of Pentecost, probably best describes the quiet coming of the Spirit. When the Risen Lord appears to his disciples on Easter Sunday, they’re locked in a room in fear, fallen and dispirited, expecting nothing except that things will get worse. Then, Jesus appears and wishes them peace and shows them the wounds in his hands and side. Then he breathes on them and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20,19-23)

What’s more quiet and ordinary than breathing? Yet in this simple act, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on them. Why does he show them the wounds in his hands and side? They’re signs that everything that evil could do to him was done to him, yet he conquered every evil, even death.

We’re tend to minimize ordinary time. So ordinary. Nothing’s happening, we say. Yet, day by day in ordinary time the Risen Lord offers his peace and shows us his wounds. Every day he breathes the Spirit on us. No day goes by without the Spirit’s quiet blessing.