Tuesday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 23, 2023

John 17, 1-11

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.  I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”

We are living within a culture that prizes an individuality in which the needs or aspirations of the individual come before those of the community, and because this idea has become so pervasive, even written into our laws and constitutions, we may think that not only has the idea always existed, but that there is no alternative to it.  Yet, this is not so.  For much of human history, a human person was seen as part of an organic collective.  For instance, the people living in the ancient Near East, such as the Israelites, understood that a given human person’s ancestors and descendants were contained in him such that this was understood as his identity.  With only shadowy notions of an afterlife, the emphasis in living on after one’s death was in living in one’s children and their children.  The ancients understood from this that a person could be held responsible for his ancestors’ actions.  We see this in the Gospels on an occasion when Jesus confronted the scribes and Pharisees: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the just, and say: If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of them that killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers” (Matthew 23, 29-32).  It also helps us to understand the terrible cry of the people at the time of the Passion, “His Blood be upon us and upon our children” (Matthew 27, 25).

Here, Jesus prays for the unity of his followers with him and, through him, with each other.  This doctrine builds on the then current idea of solidarity with one’s ancestors and descendants to include people to whom one is not related at all, and this unity is not a physical one but one of grace.  St. Paul famously explains, speaking of the human body, “And if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it: or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ and members of it” (1 Corinthians 12, 27).  The human body itself is a figure for the reality of the Body of Christ.

We have set before us two very different ways of thinking: that of the supremacy of the individual, and that of unity.  Another way to put it is the idea of autonomy and the idea of solidarity.  A lady I knew some years ago and who has since died, once became angry at a sermon in which it was asserted that we Christians need to be helped by one another in order to be saved.  She asserted back that she did not need anyone’s help, but that she could save herself.  Not long afterwards, she was struck by cancer and she learned the truth the hard way.  The ideas of individuality and autonomy are rooted in nothing more than pride.  The individualist shouts to the world, “I am an island!  Everyone is an island!”  Even though with a little reflection on human experience, we know that this is clearly not true.

Our Lord prays for our unity in him, and the Holy Spirit makes it so.  We who are members of the Lord’s Body must help one another get to heaven, subduing our pride and adopting the humility of a good servant.  

 Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter, May 22, 2023

John 16, 29-33

The disciples said to Jesus, “Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of speech. Now we realize that you know everything and that you do not need to have anyone question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you believe now? Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone. But I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”

“Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of speech.”  It is not easy to discern to what exactly the disciples here responding.  If we read back a bit to their last point of confusion, we have only to see only verses earlier that they did not understand what Jesus meant when he said he was leaving them for a while and that he was going to the Father.  In the verses leading up to the first verse of today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord uses the figure of a woman in labor to help them understand what he meant, and he promises that the prayers of the Apostles would be answered.  And then the Apostles say, “Now you are talking plainly, etc.”  But the fact they do not understand that he is talking to them about his imminent Passion and Death is proven by the lack of alarm in their speech.  It is to them merely as if Jesus has unraveled one of his riddles or parables.  In this case, the Apostles seem to think that the Lord meant, by his talking about leaving them and going to the Father, that he was going off somewhere alone to pray. “Because of this we believe that you came from God.”  They believe that Jesus came from God on account of his devotion to prayer.  It is not a confession of faith that he is the Son of God.

“Do you believe now?”  The Lord knows how far from perfect is their knowledge of him and their belief in him.  He knew that they would flee from the scene of his arrest: “Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone.”  If they truly believed he was the divine Son of God, they would not flee, but because they believed he was only a man, they did.  If he was only a man, his arrest by the Jewish authorities would mean that he could not bring about a new kingdom of Israel and there was no need to support or fight for him (though Peter, just before the arrest, does resist and cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave).  The Apostles saw and heard so much and yet they did not grasp the Lord’s divinity.  The Evangelists emphasize this rather than downplay it in order to show how it is through grace that we believe that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, that he is true God and true man.  This is why we can debate with someone all day long and bring forth the most persuasive proofs, but unless we are praying for the other person, our attempts to convince him of the truth will fail.

“You will leave me alone.”  The Lord suffered terribly from the hatred of the Pharisees and the tortured of the Romans, but his abandonment by his Apostles hurt him very deeply.

“But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.”  The Lord Jesus speaks here of the intimate and eternal union he has with the Father.  

“I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”  The Lord consoles the Apostles beforehand for their grief and remorse at having abandoned — and even denied — him.  “In the world you will have trouble”, pertains, first, to the time between their abandonment of him and the announcement of the Resurrection.  They will suffer.  But they are to take courage and to be of good hope because even now, he has “conquered” the world.  That is, he foresees his conquest of sin and death, and their defeat is so near st hand that it seems to have already taken place.  His words also pertain to their life after Pentecost when they will endure much in order to spread the Gospel.  Through his conquest of the world he invites them to share in his victory.  We can understand this as encouraging us, who, at times, struggle to do the will of God in our lives and to obey his commandments.  By his victory over sin and death he has opened the gates of heaven for us.  Our longing for heaven and the Lord’s sweet company are enough to carry us through the hardest of times.

 The Solemnity of the Ascension, Sunday, May 21, 2023

Matthew 28, 16-20

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

In this region of the country the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord into heaven is celebrated, by order of the local bishops, on the seventh Sunday of Easter rather than on the Thursday before, the traditional day for it.

St. Luke tells us specifically that the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven from a location near Bethany.  Traditionally, he is thought to have ascended from a mountain there, though Luke does not indicate this.  In the Acts of the Apostles 1, 12, Luke does identify this mountain as the Mount of Olives.  The last few verses of St. Matthew’s Gospel do place the Lord on a mountain and speaking words which sound very much like a farewell, but Matthew does not tell us he ascended from that mountain, which, in any case was in Galilee, not Judea, as was Bethany.  It would seem odd and perhaps not fitting, then, to use Matthew 28, 16-20 as the Gospel Reading for this Feast.  However, in the words the Lord speaks in these verses he gives his Apostles, and all his faithful, a final command: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”  Having taught his disciples his commandments and formed them according to his will, he sends them out as his instruments through whom he works for the salvation of the world.  

We are all called to engage in this work of salvation and we do so not in the same identical way.  For instance, not all the Apostles wrote Gospels.  Not all the Apostles went to foreign lands.  Each did his own work according to his particular calling.  And that is true for us as well.  Not all the faithful are called to work overseas as missionaries.  Not all are called to work in organized religious communities, not all are called to be priests or religious.  But each of us is called to spread the Faith by the means God gives us, whether through active work in the world, through raising good Christian children, through prayer, through donations to missionary groups, and in other ways.  Even confined to our houses or beds we can make sacrifices and pray.  

We do not need to worry that our efforts, whatever they are, fall short, for we do not work on our own.  The Lord himself works with us and through us.  How do we know this? Because the one who can neither deceive nor be deceived tells us, “I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  He is not watching us from a distance or hovering over us in the sky.  He is within us through his grace and finishes the work we start, and perfects the work we cannot.  We know that he can do this too because he has said, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”  That is, by his Father.

The Lord departs from this world so that we will not “cling” to him and so will go into the world to carry out his command, but still he clings to us through grace.  He will always help us and console us.  And, at the end of the age, he will return for us.

 Saturday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 20, 2023

John 16, 23-28

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.  I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”. This promise by the Lord Jesus was included at the end of yesterday’s Gospel Reading although it begins a new subject and is connected to the words that follow it: “Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”  The Lord says that we should ask God for whatever we need for the accomplishment of his holy will, and that we should do so in the name of Jesus.  We accomplish this in the Mass prayers, as when in today’s Mass the priest prays for us that God grant that we may strive always to hold tightly to the Paschal mystery — that is, to the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.  The priest asks this of God the Father “through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.”  When we ask for something in someone’s name, it is as though that person himself were asking for it and would receive it.  Thus, when we ask for the grace to do God’s will and we do so in the name of Jesus, it is as though Jesus himself were asking this for himself of the Father — and of course the Father will grant such a request of the Son.  The Lord’s counsel to ask for what we need in his name draws us closer to his own divine Sonship in which we share as adopted children of God, as well as assures us of receiving a favorable answer.  “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”  Our joy is perfected or “completed” in performing the Father’s will, by which we are sanctified.

“I have told you this in figures of speech.”  The mistranslation here leads to a misunderstanding.  The text should read: “I have told you these things in figures of speech.”  That is, the Lord’s words about prayer are a parenthetical statement within the larger discourse.  We need to go back a bit in the discourse to recall what “these things” are: principally, that the Lord Jesus is departing for the Father but that the Apostles will see him again, and that he must depart in order to send the Advocate — the Holy Spirit — upon them, who will teach them all that they must know.  “The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father.”  This “hour” will arrive after Jesus rises from the dead and reveals to the Apostles all that the Scriptures had said about him.  He has spoken to them to this point in figures and parables to prepare them for that hour, when they would possess the faith and grace necessary to know the truth in all its fullness.

“On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.”  They will begin to pray to the Father in the name of the Son during the time between the Resurrection and the Ascension.  And Jesus assures them that the Father loves them so much that even if they did not ask in the name of Jesus or if Jesus did not intercede for them, he would grant it.  “I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”  The Lord tells the Apostles in what seems plain language to us that he is returning to heaven, but the Apostles would not have grasped from these words that the Lord was going to die on the Cross for the sins of the world.  Only later, with the Lord’s help, would they put his prophesies about his Death together with his speaking to them about returning to the Father.

The name of the Lord Jesus is powerful.  Let us speak his name with great love, as he speaks our names among the angels and with his Father, and let us pray for all that we need in it.

 Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 19, 2023

John 16, 20-23

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. On that day you will not question me about anything. Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”

“Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”  In order to understand this Gospel Reading we must understand what has just preceded it.  The Lord has spoken of his leaving his disciples and then of their seeing him again.  The disciples then asked one another, “What is this that he says to us: A little while, and you shall not see me: and again a little while, and you shall see me, and, Because I go to the Father?”  To which the Lord responds, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, etc.”  The Lord’s departure and his return can be understood in two ways.  First, in his dying on the Cross, his Resurrection from the dead, and his subsequent appearances to his Apostles.  Second, in his Ascension into heaven and his Second Coming at which he will judge the living and the dead.  The Apostles certainly did grieve and mourn over his Death and rejoice in his Resurrection.  And since his Ascension into heaven we may be said to grieve and mourn in our longing for him to return.  This grief and mourning will be turned into joy for those who have loved him and persevered in the Faith.  If we look forward to something then we rejoice when it happens.  The world, however, rejoice over the Death of the Lord, thinking him to be finished off forever.  This can also be understood of the world when the saints of God are martyred or there is any apparent stumbling in the progress of the Church in her mission to convert the world.  Certainly the world rejoices now at the disappearance of morality in the western world.  This rejoicing is spoken of in the Book of Revelation when the Lord’s two great witnesses are slain: “They that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them and make merry: and shall send gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth.”  We might think of the two witnesses as faith and reason.

“When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.”  The Lord compares the “anguish” of the Apostles to that of a woman about to give birth: “So you also are now in anguish.”  This image helps us to understand something of the tumult going on within the Apostles as they listened to the Lord speak to them, a tumult brought on by his definitively telling them that their dream of a new kingdom of Israel, which had seemed so close, was not to be, that he had not come to establish it, and that he was leaving them for some unknown destination.  Their world was shaken to its core and it seemed that after giving up everything they had loved and possessed, after the relentless, sleepless, hungry days they had endured for three years — was all for nothing.

“But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.”  The Apostles may not have heard or understood the words Jesus says now, as they reeled from learning that he planned to leave them.  We can also understand this as pertaining to the joy we shall have when the Lord comes again.  “On that day you will not question me about anything.”  On Easter Sunday evening, when the Apostles saw the Lord again, they did not ask him any questions but simply rejoiced.  At the great judgment at the end of the world, all of the questions we have now about why certain events happened in our lives or in history will be answered: no one will come away from the judgment without understanding.  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”  The Lord has said this before during his discourse.  Indeed, he has commanded the Apostles to pray in his name.  Here, he reassures them that what they ask for in order to carry out God’s will would be granted to them.  This promise is a sign to them and to us of the Lord’s continual care for us as we prepare ourselves for when he comes again.

 Thursday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 18, 2023

John 16, 16-20

Jesus said to his disciples: “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me.” So some of his disciples said to one another, “What does this mean that he is saying to us, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” So they said, “What is this ‘little while’ of which he speaks? We do not know what he means.” Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Are you discussing with one another what I said, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”

Traditionally, on the fortieth day after the Resurrection of the Lord we celebrate his Ascension into heaven.  This region’s bishops, however, have moved the celebration of this feast to the Sunday afterwards.  The present Gospel reading is from the Mass that is offered in place of that for Ascension Thursday.

When Jesus says, “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me,” he is speaking to the Apostles and to every Christian since that time.  In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus is saying this at the end of his discourse at the Last Supper.  At that time, he is referring to his Death and Resurrection: he will be arrested and will die on the Cross and be buried, and they will not see him.  But then he rises from the dead, departs his tomb, and appears to them, so they will see him again.  Afterwards, he will ascend into heaven and they will not see him.  After their deaths, the Apostles will see him in heaven.  Indeed, the beatific vision  constitutes heaven.

Note that in all this, Jesus only says that they will not see him.  He does not say that he will cease to be present with them.  His “departure” is physical only.  His divinity never “leaves” them.  We remember that he said to them at the point of his Ascension into heaven, “And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matthew 28, 20).  He disappears from sight, but he does not go away.

None of us have seen the Lord walk the earth, and yet we believe in him, taking comfort in the Lord’s words to Thomas: “Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed” (John 20, 29).  Yet we have felt his presence in our lives, sometimes for extended periods, and to different degrees.  He allows us this in order to console us, to strengthen us, and to help us imagine what it will be like to actually enjoy his embrace, which helps us to persevere.  In this way, we “see” him.  And we have all had the experience of emptiness in which we do not feel his presence.  That is, we do not “see” him.  He allows this too, in order to help us to grow in our faith, for if we only believe when it is easy, that is not much.  It is when we believe when there seems no reason to do so that we truly believe.  The same with love of him and hope in him.  Knowing this does not provide much help in the moment, however.  It is a grievous experience to be in love with someone and to not know when or if  we are going to see that person again. Yet this is the experience of the greatest saints.  Mother Teresa lived through this for years, and St. Therese of Lisieux writes very movingly about how this affected her, and how she suffered terrible temptations against the Faith during those times. By “disappearing”, the Lord calls forth greater faith from the ones he loves; and by remaining present, he helps them to increase in it.  St. Paul sums up this experience: “For whom the Lord loves, he chastises; and he scourges every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12, 6).

The day will come, if we hold firm now, when we will say with the forsaken Job, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my flesh, and in my flesh I shall see my God, whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom” (Job 19, 25).

Wednesday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 17, 2023

John 16, 12-15

 The Lord continues to prepare the Apostles for their life after his Resurrection by emphasizing the work of the Holy Spirit.  He has already spoken of the unity which will bind them to one another through Christ, and that he will enlighten their minds to the Lord’s teachings.  Now the Lord explains how the Holy Spirit will work.  The Holy Spirit will guide them to all truth; he will not speak independently of the Father as though he had his own mission or purpose, but the Father will speak through him.  He will tell the Apostles of “the things that are coming”.  He will glorify Jesus in that he will enlighten them as to the depths in his words.  Indeed, this is a description of the work of the Christian.  We note St. Paul in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles: Paul attempts to guide the people of Athens into the truth, showing them how God can be known from nature; he does not bring his own message or promote himself in any way, but God and his Son; he glorifies Jesus in teaching about his Resurrection.  We see clearly that Paul is of the Holy Spirit.  A graphic picture of what this means is provided us in the description of the coming of the Holy Spirit as Pentecost: a tremendous wind filled the room where they were praying, and flames appeared over their heads.  The Holy Spirit himself is Fire and the flames signify that the Apostles are now flames of the Fire.  They actually become more than “vessels” of the Holy Spirit, or, if you will, the wooden torches on which the Holy Spirit burns: their hearts are different now and they think and love in ways not possible before.  They are more confirmed to the mind of Christ than ever before, not just agreeing with him, but thinking with him.  

How radically does the Holy Spirit transform a person?  Let’s look at St. Paul again.  As Saul, he is described in the Acts as making “havoc of the Church, entering in from house to house: and dragging away men and women, committed them to prison” (Acts 8, 3).  He delivered Christians to torture and death.  He destroyed the lives of many men, women, and children because of their belief in Christ.  Not content with the horror he caused in Jerusalem, he was traveling to Damascus to do the same when Christ confronted him.  Years later, he could list his sufferings for the Lord, “”Many labors, in prisons, frequently, in stripes above measure, nearly killed, often. Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods: once I was stoned: thrice I suffered shipwreck: a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren: In labor and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, fasting often, in cold and nakedness” (2 Corinthians 11:23–27).  Here is a man changed into fire by the Fire.

It would aid in our salvation if you and I frequently recalled that we are baptized and confirmed with the same Holy Spirit as St. Paul.  Wherever God puts us, we can all serve him with Fire.