Monday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 18, 2020

John 15:26-16:4

Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. I have told you this so that you may not fall away. They will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God. They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me. I have told you this so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you.”

The Gospel readings, this late in the season of Easter, prepare us for the celebration of Pentecost, giving us the Lord’s teaching on the Holy Spirit, which we find principally in St. John’s Gospel.  The Lord has already spoken of the Holy Spirit as the Unity of the Father and the Son.  Here, he speaks of him as “the Spirit of truth”.  He is the Spirit of truth because he proceeds from the Father and testifies to the Son.  He testifies to the Son through the holiness of the Church and the saints, through the holy teachings of the Church, which are the teachings of Christ, through the Holy Scriptures which are given to the Church to announce and interpret, and through the Sacraments, by which the Church’s members are sanctified.  The Lord tells his Apostles, “You also testify”, as eyewitnesses to his words and mighty works.  They do this through their Gospels, letters, and preaching, and through their holy lives, leading ultimately to their martyrdom.

It is of persecution and martyrdom that he next speaks.  He says, “I have told you this so that you may not fall away.”  The main verb here is in the perfect tense and refers back to a prior time: I have told you this (previously), “They will expel you from the synagogues, etc.”  Indeed, from the beginning of his ministry, as witnessed by St. Matthew, Jesus has spoken of the persecution and murder of believers.  Testimony to Jesus will inevitably lead to this since the world will feel threatened by it.  The fact that John quotes Jesus specifically saying that the faithful will be expelled from the synagogues is a clue that he wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians at a time when this was taking place, most likely before 70 A.D.  So horrible will this persecution be that “everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God.”  This was a particular trial for the early Jewish Christians in Galilee and Judea, that their own co-religionists, their own neighbors, were persecuting them. 

To this point the Lord had attracted large crowds and even some among the Jewish leaders believed in him.  Just a few days before, he had entered Jerusalem to great acclaim.  No sign pointed to the cataclysm of which Jesus spoke.  Perhaps the Apostles were startled and confused by these words and they put them aside at the time.  Later, in the weeks after Pentecost when they preached Jesus openly, the Jewish leadership would arrest them and beat them, but they would rejoice because they had suffered for Jesus, and because they saw his prophecy fulfilled in them.

Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2020

John 14:15–21

Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

Friday afternoon, Bishop Burbidge and, later, retired Bishop Loverde, called to congratulate me on the occasion of the twenty-first anniversary of my priestly ordination.  Bishop Burbidge calls each of his priests every year on their anniversaries to do this, which is very gracious.  Seven men were ordained that day in 1999 for the diocese of Arlington.  One has died, and six are still on the job.

Jesus says here, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate.”  The Greek word translated here as “advocate” is παράκλητον (parakleiton), with the accent on the second syllable.  Among this word’s meanings are: “one who speaks for another”, “a legal aide”, “a mediator”, “an intercessor”, and “a comforter”.  It would fascinate us to know what Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus actually used, but we only have the Greek word it was translated as.  We more commonly refer to this Advocate by another term Jesus uses for him, the Holy Spirit.  

St. Thomas Aquinas says that the Holy Spirit is the nexus of the Father and the Son.  This Latin word has the meaning of “connection” or “embrace”.  The Holy Spirit is the love which is the embrace of the Father and the Son, from both of whom he proceeds.  He is, then, the Unity of the Father and the Son.  Jesus tells the Apostles that the Father (and he) will send this Unity to them to be with them always.  The Holy Spirit will bind them to Christ as members of his Body, and thus to each other.  Jesus tells his Apostles this so that they may know that wherever they are, he is present with them.  On this occasion, at the Last Supper, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit “the Advocate” in order to assure them that even when he, the Lord, is not physically present with them, they are under divine protection.  Jesus will not leave them as “orphans”, lost, helpless, hungry, and entirely vulnerable to whomever comes near them.  The Holy Spirit continues as our Advocate in our own lives and in the life of the Church, ever speaking to us in daily inspirations to perform good works, ever protecting us from evil, at every moment helping us to persevere in faith.

Nor does Lord leave the Apostles to define “unity” for themselves.  The unity that he speaks of is very different from any unity of which they had heard or which anyone had imagined.  This is not a loose grouping of people with common interests — that is a “community” or association.  This is not even the harmony of hearts and minds devoted to a single purpose, a “brotherhood” or society, perhaps.  This unity affects the very being of the person and exists on the deepest level of intimacy possible.  Because it is unity with Jesus, he can say, “I live and you will live.”  We live because he lives.  Obedience to his commandments, then, conforms us to him and is, at the same time, a sign of this union with him.  It is a sign to us: when we obey his commandments, we know that we must be in union with him.  It is a sign to others as well, a mark of distinction that we belong to Christ in this intimate way, and not to the world.  

Saturday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 16, 2020

John 15:18-21

Jesus said to his disciples: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”

Our parish is set to reopen on May 31.  The bishop has given us instructions on what we must do in order to offer public Masses again, including limiting the number of congregants at Mass to half the capacity of the church and disinfecting the it between Masses.  We are now trying to figure out how to implement the required measures.  

Jesus says, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.”  St. Matthew’s Gospel, written for the persecuted Jewish Christians of Galilee, reminds us again and again that the world will hate us: “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake” (Matthew 5, 11); “You shall be hated by all nations for my name’s sake” (Matthew 24, 9).  Here, at the Last Supper, in St. John’s Gospel, he tells them this again, this time expanding on the reason why: “Because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.”  The world, that is, worldly people as well as our fallen human nature, “hates” the Christian because he lives his life scorning what it prizes.  He does not conform because the Lord Jesus has chosen us “out of the world”.  That is, he has instilled grace in us so that we value the virtuous life and look forward to the world to come.  The present world rejects Christ and service to him in its pursuit of that which gives selfish pleasure, and cannot bear Christians, the very sight of whom they feel as a stinging rebuke of their behavior.  In fact, the worldly are very quick to demand that people not “judge” them, making it plain for all to see that they know that what they are doing is wrong — they simply do not want to be reminded of it.  The just man, by contrast, is glad for correction: “The way of life, to him that observes correction: but he that forsakes reproofs, goes astray” (Proverbs 10, 17).

Consequently, Jesus explains, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”  The hatred by the world for those who do not conform themselves to it results in persecution.  Indeed, the normal relation of the world to the Christian and to the Church is persecution.  At various times and in various places there may exist an uneasy peace, but this is only for a short time.  We should not be surprised when the Church is opposed and ridiculed, or when living as a Christian is made more difficult by the passage of laws and the adoption of immoral norms by society.  We should expect persecution.  It is, in a way, a proof that the individual Christian and the Church on earth is on the right track.

Friday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 15, 2020

John 15:12-17

Jesus said to his disciples: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.”

“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”  This might have seemed like an odd commandment the moment Jesus gave it.  These men to whom he was speaking had followed him more or less harmoniously for three years.  There had been disputes here and there, but they had subsided.  These men understood that they were bound together in the fellowship of Christ.  However, the Lord immediately defines what “love” means and what he expects of his disciples: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Love, then, means the willingness to die for the other.  Love means sacrifice, or, at the very least, the willingness to sacrifice for another.  The image of love is the crucifix.  Christ desires unity among his Apostles after he leaves them, but he wants more than a general agreement on principles.  He wants them to love each other with the love with which he loved them.  This makes them Christians, men worthy of his name.

The Lord characterizes these men as his “friends”, so long as they do as he commands them.  This ought to sound like an odd qualification for a “friend”, for what person commands his friends?  But Jesus does not call them his equals.  Indeed, he says that he formerly called them “slaves”.  He has raised them up by his confiding in them as friends “everything I have heard from the Father.”  But it is he who has done the raising.  He is the undisputed leader, but he chooses to love his followers as his friends.  He emphasizes his primacy by reminding them that, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.”  At this reminder, each of the Apostles must have thought back to the dramatic moment in which he had heard the Lord call him: Peter and Andrew, and James and John, on their boats early in the morning; Matthew at his desk, collecting taxes; Bartholomew, who was sitting under a fig tree, meditating.

An important reason for Jesus reminding them that he had chosen them, not them him, is that this is the reverse for how movements develop.  That is, a person speaks or performs some action or lays out his beliefs in a manifesto, and people are attracted to him or to his beliefs and they begin to follow and even support him.  John the Baptist and the prophets of old acquired followers in this way.  But it is individuals  who make the choice to follow them.  Jesus, by contrast, calls people to himself.  He calls them as one who already knows them and what will be for their good.  Jesus actively desires these particular people.  They are not numbers to him.  And as he has called them and they have responded, he himself is the source of their unity.  This reality makes Christianity very distinct from any other religion or philosophical movement.  And it was not true only for the first followers of Christ; it continues to be true today.  Everyone who is a Christian is so because he or she has been called personally by Christ to be a member of his Body, and the person submits to baptism.  This is true whether the person is an infant or elderly.  Otherwise, a person could apply to be baptized and have his or her own ideas about what belonging to Jesus would mean.  Since Jesus calls first, we accept his invitation on his terms, or not at all.

The Feast of St. Matthias, Thursday, May 14, 2020

Acts 1:15-17, 20-26

Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers and sisters (there was a group of about one hundred and twenty persons in the one place). He said, “My brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand through the mouth of David, concerning Judas, who was the guide for those who arrested Jesus. Judas was numbered among us and was allotted a share in this ministry. For it is written in the Book of Psalms: “Let his encampment become desolate, and may no one dwell in it.” and: “May another take his office.”  Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day on which he was taken up from us, become with us a witness to his resurrection.” So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.” Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was counted with the Eleven Apostles.

From the Scriptures we know that St. Matthias followed Jesus from the time of St. John the Baptist’s baptism, which may indicate that both he and Joseph Barsabbas initially were disciples of John.  These two men, of all the disciples besides the Apostles, spent the full three years of the Lord’s public ministry with him, and they saw all his miracles and heard all his teachings.  Their knowledge, sanctity of life, and perseverance led them to be considered to fill the place among the Apostles left void by the defection of Judas.  This need to fill the place shows the care of the Apostles in the earliest days of the Church to preserve the order, one might say “hierarchy”, established by Jesus.  They use lots to determine God’s choice.  It is not clear what form this took.  Whatever the form, it is the equivalent of our “drawing straws”, but it is not actually random, since they pray first to God.  And this would not have been a hasty prayer rattled off, like we often do with Grace Before Meals.  This would probably have been somewhat lengthy, due to the solemnity with which they treated the occasion.  There is no dispute afterwards: both Matthias and Joseph Barsabbas accept the result.  Eusebius preserves a tradition that Matthias was celibate his whole life, and a few of the Church Fathers hand on words which they say he spoke about the need for self denial in order to grow in one’s faith. Barsabbas is said to have preached the Gospel in Judea and was made the bishop of a town southwest of Jerusalem.  He was later martyred there. 

This reading from the Acts of the Apostles raises the question of how to determine the will of God.  Are we to discern, pray and to cast lots as well?  In a real sense, yes we are.  Only God can fully know his own will.  We humans can look back at an event and suppose that it turned out according to God’s will, but we will only know for certain on the last day when everything is revealed.  Since we cannot directly access his will, we do very well in imitating the Apostles.  First, we recognize the need for a decision.  Next, we commit ourselves to conforming ourselves to carrying out God’s will as best as we can, with the help of his grace.  After this, we pray earnestly and humbly for divine guidance.  Then we carefully discern our options.  In this, we look for that which is just, that which is desirable, that which seems best to answer the question or solve the problem, and that which is most prudent or practical.  The option that we select may be difficult, but it must not be morally or physically impossible.  We make our decision with the understanding that we might discover that we have chosen wrongly and that we need to reconsider what we are doing or how we are doing it.  We may have to go through a period of trial and error.  This is how we “cast lots”: by trying different actions, by taking chances, based on the best decision we can make, and by being willing to go a different way if we find out we have erred.  It is not a sin to make an error in the good faith pursuit of God’s will.  It is only a sin to ignore his will or the need to follow it and to make it our own, or, worse, to act purposely against it.

Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 13, 2020

John 15:1-8

Jesus said to his disciples: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Jesus states here that he does not mere followers, as other leaders have followers; he wants “adherents”, that is, people who adhere to him and draw their life from his, for whom separation from him means something worse than physical death.  A “follower” is one who listens to a person and agrees with what that person says.  A follower may drift away and come back again, or even decide on the limits of following.  A follower may be a close follower or a distant one; he may imitate the leader’s behavior, or not.  But a human leader cannot give life to anyone, and if he asserts, as Jesus does, that “without me you can do nothing”, we would, if we were sane, consider him to be insane.  There were certainly those among the Lord’s hearers who considered him insane or possessed by the devil.  But those who listened to him and saw the works he performed believed or came to believe that he is God, and that therefore he can and must be able to say, “I am the true vine.”

When God created the heavens and the earth, he looked upon what he had made and he “saw that it was good” (cf. Genesis 1, 12).  All the good and beautiful things that God made, from the humblest to the grandest, is a sign of him and of his power.  The grapevine is such a sign.  Now, it is necessary to keep in mind that it is a sign of God, and that God is not a sign of it. Jesus says that he is the “true vine”.  Any other “vine”, therefore, resembles the true vine to some degree.  To call something else a vine is a mere equivocation, and a convenience for us.  So, as an earthly plant which we call a “vine” gives life to its branches, much more so does Christ give life to his members, his “branches”.  Now, we are not physically joined to Christ as the branches of an earthly vine are joined to it.  Our joining is much more substantial.  It is a spiritual reality.  How then can we tell that we are members of Christ?  The Lord says that because we belong to him we bear “much fruit”.  Our very fruitfulness shows that we belong to him.  And the fruitfulness of which he speaks is particularly evident in the form of those to whom we transmit the Faith.  That is to say, through our good example, our good works, and our words of preaching, prudently delivered, the life of Christ is extended to new members.  We cannot be fruitful on our own but it comes from Jesus and the grace he provides.  This fruitfulness is not just a sign of our belonging to him, as though it were a medal of commendation, but is necessary for our own continued life in him.  If we receive his life but do not let it flow from us into others — if we bottle it up, as it were, out of fear or sloth — we will die.  The Father, the Owner of the Vine, “takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,” Jesus warns us.

We are not left alone with the work of fruitfulness, however.  The Father “prunes” the branches that belong to his Son’s Body.  We see what this means when he hear Jesus tell his Apostles, “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.”  That is, Jesus has spoken to them, taught them, instructed them away from the crowds, answered their questions, shown them miracles close up, and they, for their part, have given up everything for the sake of his word, and suffered on account of it.  Their privations, the penitential lives they lead, free them to think deeply on what they have seen and heard, and to live the Lord’s word.  Fruitfulness is not labor for them; it is natural.  And at the end of time, we who are fruitful branches will be raised into heaven where our Vine already dwells.

Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 12, 2020

John 14:27-31a

Jesus said to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe. I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.”

Jesus offers real peace, which he insists is distinct from what the world offers.  When Jesus and, later, St. Paul and St. John, talk about “the world”, they are referring to everything that tugs at us and tries to compel us to look away from heaven.  It is the temporary, the sordid, the sensual.  It is secular society, from which God has been purged to allow greater individual “freedom”.  It is a siren luring us on to the rocks of sin and destruction.  The “peace” which the world offers is a lie: that if only we buy one more thing or pursue one more activity, our hearts will rest easy.  But in reality, the more we have, the more we want.  The peace of the world is not a swimming pool in which we can drift happily, but a raging whirlpool in which we must always struggle, and ultimately fail.  The peace the Lord offers is the cessation of every desire.  He alone is the true object of our yearning: our hearts were made for him alone.  We feel this increasingly as we practice self-denial and mortifications.  When we have cleaned out our hearts with the help of his grace, when we expel the world from them. they are capable of receiving him and he takes up his abode there.  Thus, the Prince of Peace reigns from our very interior.  There is nothing left to desire, no more ambition to fulfill.  Christ alone is our peace.  It is how we are made.  As St. Augustine famously says in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.”

The Church uses the Lord’s words at Mass, in the prayers following the Eucharistic Prayer: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”  After speaking them, the priest addresses the congregation, one of the few times during the Mass he actually does so: “The peace of the Lord be with you always.”  And the people respond, “And with your spirit.”  It is the peace of Christ that is offered through the priest.  This is not a good wish for someone’s well-being or success, it is a prayer for the spiritual growth of the Christian that Christ may fully dwell in him.  When the people exchange this with one another, it is likewise a prayer for the other person’s peace in Christ.  Unfortunately, the exchange of “the peace” at Mass has devolved into a purely civil ceremony and wishes for the other person to feel happy.  It has become a sort of recess period during which people turn their attention away from the God who is sacramentally enthroned upon the altar.  Ironically, in many places it has become a distraction from the Source of the peace which we allegedly desire for one another.  Still, this exercise is optional, and a person is free to continue to pray, directing his attention to the altar.

Let us cast aside the demands of the world, the itch of fallen human nature, to seek fulfillment and peace in false gods and to find complete joy and rest in the love of God alone.