Pentecost Sunday

There is a pious story I recall from childhood about St. Augustine walking along a beach one day pondering and reflecting on the Trinity. He finds a young child digging a hole in the sand. Repeatedly, the child takes a few steps to the ocean, fills a small pail with water, and dumps the water into the hole. When asked by St. Augustine what he is doing, the child casually explains that he is putting the ocean into the hole. St. Augustine laughs and tells the child he could never do such a thing in a million years. The child tells St. Augustine that neither could he ever understand the Trinity on which he is reflecting.

Yes, we cannot understand the doctrine of the Trinity. We can reflect on it and we can pray about it; we can find meaning in it for our own faith. But there is no way to explain it. On this feast of Pentecost we celebrate one aspect of our Trinitarian life - the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. Pentecost means 50. We are 50 days from Easter and our celebration of the second Person of the Trinity. We refer to today as the birthday of the Church. It is the end of the Easter season and tomorrow begins Ordinary Time. These are liturgical terms that signify change in the way we worship during this season. Pentecost is the culmination of the work of Jesus on earth. Just as he ended his time on earth by ascending to the Father, so now he Jesus sends the Holy Spirit who he promised would guide the Apostles in their ministry of preaching the good news about Himself.

We continue to receive this gift of the Holy Spirit specifically through the sacrament of Confirmation. Bishop Robert Barron identifies three ways in which this sacrament strengthens Christians: the Spirit strengthens us in our relationship to Jesus; the Spirit strengthens us in our capacity to defend the faith; the Spirit strengthens us in our capacity to spread the faith.

Yet if we associate this Spirit only with the sacrament of Confirmation, then we have missed much that is vital in our lives of faith. The Spirit is alive among us to guide us in our daily lives of faith, in the decisions we make, in the way we live.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, one of the Church Fathers, tells us that for the first believers it seemed that as long as Christ was with them they “possessed every blessing in him.” But “when the time came for him to ascend to his heavenly Father, it was necessary for him to be united through his Spirit to those who worshiped him, and to dwell in our hearts through faith.” St. Cyril continues, “Only by his own presence within us in this way could he give us confidence to cry out, Abba, Father, make it easy for us to grow in holiness and, through our possession of the all-powerful Spirit, fortify us invincibly against the wiles of the devil and the assaults of men.”

The Spirit is the active life of the Trinity within us that transforms us. We even hear of the work of the Spirit in the Old Testament. The prophet Samuel, for example, said “The Spirit of the Lord will take possession of you, and you shall be changed into another man.” St. Paul wrote, “As we behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, that glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit, transforms us all into his own likeness, from one degree of glory to another.”

What happened to the Apostles after the Ascension of Jesus? They hid away in that Upper Room spending time worthily in prayer and reflection, it is true. But they were afraid to go out of that room and face what is in the world. Is that not how we often carry our own Christianity? In its extreme, we are sometimes tempted to fill the moat around our castles, pull up the drawbridge, and withdraw from all that is taking place in our world because we fear being destroyed by it. We are often afraid to confront and face the world which is hostile to us and we try to remain closed up in our own upper rooms. Pope Francis calls us to be missionaries. Once the Apostles received the Spirit, they went forth to preach and to teach. They were strengthened in their relationship to Jesus by that gift of the Spirit. They were strengthened in their capacity to defend the faith. They were strengthened in their capacity to spread the faith. In St. Cyril’s words, the strength the Apostles “received from the Spirit enabled them to hold firmly to the love of Christ, facing the violence of their persecutors unafraid.”

In a word, the Apostles overcame the fear they had because the world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket. The world was a frightful place. And it can still be so. But it is all too easy for us as Christians to forget that God is running this show. He is the one in charge. It is human for us to be afraid of our own attempts to confront and change the world. Thomas Merton called this the spirituality of evasion. In 1963 Merton referred to this ‘spirituality’ as a “cult of other worldliness that refuses to take account of the inescapable implication of all men in the problems and responsibilities of the nuclear age.” This spirituality of evasion is not a spirituality at all. It is the extreme of what was happening to the Apostles after having been cooped up in the upper room for a while. They were afraid to go out and face their critics, their enemies, their accusers. But then the Spirit descended on them. And that changed everything. It changed the world.

It is no less true today. Jesus had to go to his Father so the Spirit could come to us and strengthen us to continue Jesus’ work through this Spirit. It is what each and every Christian is called t be. We are all witnesses of the truth of the life of Jesus. We cannot help but live a life of witness to his truth and to preach in his name if so called. Some of those who heard the Apostles on Pentecost thought them drunk. So be it! Whatever names we may be called, we are not free not to live as witnesses to the Gospel. We must speak the name of Jesus!

Two loves of the Apostle Peter

In the seventh chapter of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Letitia, Pope Francis addresses the education of children by their parents. The question he says is not where our children are physically, or whom they are with but where are they existentially, where they stand in terms of their convictions, goals, desires and dreams. "Do we seek to understand where our children are in their journey? Where is their soul, do we know? Do we really want to know?"

Saint John Paul II once proposed the so-called “law of gradualness” in the knowledge that the human being “knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by different stages of growth”.

Language is everything. We use language to communicate and we had better know what we mean to say lest we commit ourselves to something we'd rather not. Communication between parents and children can frequently be a battle zone.

In reading the Scriptures, complexities can trouble us or puzzle us or confuse us or just excite and enlighten us. Various feelings come forth in the gospel for the third Sunday of Easter. In the liturgical celebration, we are invited to read a longer form or a shorter form. The longer form, the whole of chapter 21 of the Gospel of John, has two sections. In the first section, the Apostles go fishing after the death of Jesus. From this source it would appear that they are trying to get themselves back to a kind of normalcy in which they return to their previous occupation and keep themselves occupied by doing what they always knew best. But Jesus appears to them and the simple task of putting food on the table turns into an instruction on faith.

The second section of this Gospel uses two different verbs in Peter's expression of love for Jesus. Anyone familiar with C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves knows there are at least four different Greek verbs for the English word ‘love.’ Storge, for example, is a word indicating parental love. Eros indicates passionate love. Philia is friendship and Agape is unconditional love. Scripture was first composed in the Greek language. When Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" Jesus uses the verb form agape. But Peter responds with the verb philia when he tells Jesus, “Of course, I love you.” Jesus repeats the question using agape again and Peter once again responds with philia. But then a twist. The third time Jesus asks the question he uses the verb Peter uses - philia. Jesus approaches Peter at his level. He meets Peter where he is. Peter is not ready to profess an undying commitment to Jesus. It has only been a short time since he betrayed him, after all. But Jesus knew he would give himself completely eventually.

What is going on? Peter is yet a child in his profession of faith. Peter is being reconciled with Jesus, but at a slower pace, a gradual one. Just as he denied Jesus three times so now Peter three times professes his love for Jesus. Jesus is calling Peter to a companionship with lots of strings, suffering and dying for Jesus. This demands unconditional love - agape.  But Peter only offers a lesser yet important kind of love - philia - however good and helpful it may be. Yet Jesus then tells him that someday he will indeed get there. Peter will indeed give his life for Jesus. 

What does this mean for us in pastoral ministry? We recognize the importance of suffering with Christ but we have to recognize that not everyone is ready to follow Jesus to the cross the first time they meet him. We draw one another into that suffering over time. We can't just be pushed or prodded into it. Jesus will welcome us when we are ready.

Friday Week 5 in Lent 2016

Jeremiah hears the whisperings of many. The whispers say, "Denounce him." Even Jeremiah's friends speak against him. They look for a way to trap him. He is the Lord's prophet and the people he addresses will have none of him. They will not listen to his words which are God's words. But Jeremiah is not cowed by their threats. Most of the selection for today's first reading in the liturgy is Jeremiah's threat to his enemies. He is very certain that God is with him, that God will protect him and save him.

God tests the just, he claims, which is why Jeremiah can speak so optimistically, so assuredly. He knows God so well. He knows God's desire that Jeremiah suffer is how Jeremiah is subjected to God's testing of him. The Lord probes the mind and the heart. Jeremiah lives in the knowledge that God knows him through and through. Thus Jeremiah can praise the Lord. He can rejoice in the Lord even though he is the object of persecution by his own countrymen. He recognizes himself having been rescued by God.

Jesus does not just hear whisperings in the Gospe reading. Men are actually picking up stones ready to destroy Jesus. Why, Jesus wants to know? You blaspheme, they tell him. You are making yourself God. There is some clever word play here on Jesus' part. Scripture says, "You are gods, so why can I not say I am the son of God?" But forget all that. "Recognize me by what I do if you cannot believe'" he tells his enemies. Not infrequently we ask one another to prove that we are who we say we are by demanding we act accordingly. "If I don't do the work of God," Jesus announces, "don't believe me. But if I do the work of God, acknowledge the goodness of the works. Thus, see God in me." God is in Jesus just as much as Jeremiah recognized what God had done in him.

So Jesus goes back across the Jordan and many come to him now because they do believe.

All of Lent has been a preparation for the coming week. All of Lent precedes Holy Week and the death of Jesus. Just as all of our lives are a preparation for our deaths, so with Jesus. Lent is very serious now. If we have paid attention to the Scripture, we have been aware that Jesus is stretching his disciples as well as the people of Israel. He is pushing the envelope. He is challenging us to follow him further. This is not just about saying our prayers and sticking with our petty Lenten 'sacrifices'. This is about following Jesus to the cross.

Have you ever sat with someone who is dying? One way to look at this week is to imagine yourself accompanying a dying person. Years ago I was called out of my sleep to anoint a parishioner in a hospital known to be dying of cancer but who had taken a turn for the worse. I was told he would not live through the morning. I went to see him, found him sitting up in bed, looking very alert and speaking as articulately and clearly as any two-person conversation might be. When he saw me, he asked me if it was as bad as that? I anointed him, chatted with him a bit, left, and he was dead within the next six hours.

Jesus is on his way to his death. Can we go with him and watch him die? Can we sit beside him and watch him as he goes through his suffering and death? We are going to want to look for things to do while we are waiting for him to die - check our email or the latest Instagram or Snapchat we've received. We are going to want to turn on some tunes with our headsets so we don't have to think about death. We are going to want to turn on the TV which is only a distraction to us and just noise to the dying. We are going to want to find excuses for leaving his bedside - I have to use the bathroom - I need a smoke - I need to eat. Anything to keep ourselves from watching Jesus die. And as horrific as the scenes of Jesus' passion were in the movie, it was, after all, only a movie, and the actors might have shown up at the end of the film to take their bows. But Jesus really died. And his desth was agonizing and ugly.

He invites us to die with him. Every time we are asked to live in His name, we are invited to die with Him. I resist that and I suspect you do too. As we look to Holy Week, would you seriously consider staying with this dying man? Would you willingly accompany him on his final journey and stay with him through the pain of his suffering and carry him to his place of rest?

Travel may not improve the mind

There is a travel program on PBS the narrator of which always concludes by quoting Mark Twain who wrote “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

That's good advice to any of us who have thoughts that we live on the only piece of ground worth living on. Even Jesus learned that as we see in the Gospel of Mark.

The Genesis accounts of creation explain to us that God is doing something new. Every day of creation was something new. In one of the accounts, God created man and woman, human beings. Something really new. 

God's creation ultimately resulted in the birth of his son who ministers first to his own people, the Israelites, the Jews. But in the Gospel of Mark we also see Jesus traveling to foreign territory, to Gentile territory. And while we know the Gentiles were pagans, it doesn't really mean much to us. If we put it in terms of today, we might understand it better if we saw the wall that divides Israel from the rest of Palestine. Like my generation did with the Berlin wall, the wall dividing Israel from Palestine has become something taken for granted by my generation. Or, when I was growing up there were parts of Indianapolis an East side white boy never visited because blacks lived there. Now it is frequently Latino populations. There are people different from us.

The human Jesus is at a period in his life when he has a bit of anxiety, uncomfortableness, uncertainty about who he is, about his mission. Today he is in pagan territory. Perhaps he had to pass through it to get to where he wanted to go but he is known as well here as he is on his home turf. And he is stopped by a woman seeking healing not for herself but for her daughter. 

Jesus is obviously edgey for he insults here. He shows absolutely no compassion at all. She is a dog. The Greek word here is puppy, but that still doesn't soften it. The woman is no better than an animal. But the woman is not cowed. There was grace here. The woman comes back at him and Jesus recognizes her and answers her for her persistence and courage. The woman will not give up because her need is desperate.

Is there not desperation among millions of people in our world? Refugees flood nearly every developed country in the world. There are also refugees who hide among us, the homeless, the unemployed. Did you see the video of Pope Francis making an unscheduled stop at the shantytown outside Rome on his way to visit a Rome parish? We may not think there are desperate people in this country but have you visited a nursing home recently?

What happens with Jesus? He talks with the woman and he responds to her desperation. In the Gospel of Mark it is the first indication that Jesus' ministry will not just remain among the Jews. Jesus has had a lesson in overcoming prejudice and bigotry. Jesus has talked with the woman and his anxiety lessened.

At a very simple level we too need to engage in dialogue with those we do not understand or dislike or don't want to know even here. We are in foreign lands when we feel the discomfort of a new situation. We have only to face it head on in order to deflate the balloons of prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

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Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

St. Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians reminds us our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. "Glorify God in your body" is Paul's admonition. "You are not your own."

In 1954 Flannery O'Connor published a short story titled "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" in which two 14-year old girls who attend a convent boarding school identify themselves as Temple One and Temple Two mocking the nun who repeatedly reminds them they are temples of the Holy Ghost. On a weekend visit with a distant cousin, the two girls attend a fair at which they see a hermaphrodite in a freak show. The hermaphrodite keeps repeating to the crowd that "God done this to me and I praise Him. He could strike you thisaway." Later it is the cousin who is most affected by this and who has a vision of the sun as "an elevated Host drenched in blood .. "

The two girls live in their own world until, for the sake of adventure, they go to see this freak show, something that is totally other than their 'teeny-bopper' selves.

The first reading for the second Sunday in Ordinary Time reveals the boy Samuel living in his own world. He is to be trained by his mentor Eli. Samuel is a boy who likes his sleep. Three times he is awakened by a voice and each time he believes it is Eli calling him. The third time Eli recognizes that God is calling the boy and he tells Samuel when he hears the voice again to reply, "Speak Lord, your servant is listening." Samuel lived in his own world and could not recognize God's call to him. He did not know he was a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Two disciples of John the Baptist in the Gospel today are told Jesus is the lamb of God. They immediately follow Jesus and one of them, Andrew, takes the news to his own brother Peter. These men all lived in their own worlds until they saw or heard Jesus calling them. What attracted them to Jesus? Scripture is never full of detail. We only receive basic information. Whatever it is, Jesus pulls them out of their own worlds and invites them into his world. He invites them to something new and different. Andrew and Peter are called in their own bodies to become temples of the Holy Spirit, to glorify God in their bodies now by following Jesus and living in a new way.

During his recent trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis identified three challenges for young people to the religious leaders of the University of Santo Tomas. One is integrity. He told them that learning to love was their greatest challenge and that in doing so they must maintain their own integrity. Learn to love and be loved. Secondly, he said, it is important to care for the environment. Thirdly, we must care for the poor.

Recent weeks have shown us so much violence in our world. Fear is corrupting each of us. As followers of Christ, we cannot allow ourselves ro be governed by fear. We are temples of the Holy Spirit and recognize that there is more to this life than what we find on any of our electronic devices, including television or the movies. Pope Francis also reminded us that we are accountable to Christ for our speech and our action.

We glorify God in our bodies and become temples of the Holy Spirit when we leave our own worlds and move out to follow Jesus, when we listen to his call to us, when we say yes to the one who calls us to live his life. Scripture readings in the liturgy this past week have shown us Jesus moving forward, moving beyond his own world, beyond his home at Nazareth. He cures and heals and he goes to pray. But then he moves on. Crowds want him to stay and get comfortable with him but Jesus must reach others. He must move on. He is not his own. Neither are we.

Saints and seminarians

Our seminarians at Bishop Brute visited the shrine of St. Mother Theodore Guerin at the end of their retreat this week. Following our four day experience at St. Meinrad, we trekked to Terre Haute and the few miles outside the city to St. Mary of the Woods College and the shrine on the grounds that now house the historical beginnings of the Sisters of Providence.

While still a priest of the archdiocese, I had frequent interaction with Sr. Ann Kathleen Brawley, who served many years as archdiocesan archivist. Sister Ann Kathleen would share much about Mother Theodore, the founding of the Woods campus and the process for canonization. She once showed me some translations of the correspondence between Mother Theodore and Bishop Hailandiere. Hailandiere became bishop of the diocese of Vincennes following the death of Bishop Brute who brought the Sisters of Providence from France to the wilderness of Indiana to establish schools and begin a mission of education. His death occurred before their arrival, however.

The relationship between the Bishop Hailandiere and Mother Theodore was contentious because Mother Theodore fought ferociously for her sisters against some of the unjust demands of the bishop. At one point he locked her in her room, removed her as superior, and began making assignments of the sisters much against the order's constitutions. He excommunicated her as well. What saved the day was the bishop's resignation and return to France where he lived another 35 years. Reconciliation did come between him and the order but not until after Mother Theodore died.

What struck me about the correspondence was the depth of emotion expressed. Both Mother Theodore and the  bishop were cultured and well-educated Frenchwoman and Frenchman living in a wilderness still untamed. They likely both understood each other very well. They both likely experienced a great deal of loneliness. Neither had others to whom they could easily relate. Their correspondence reveals this in indirect ways. Yet each was set on a course of dedication to a mutual cause expressed by very different interpretations. The correspondence is so revealing, in fact, that at the time I thought Mother Theodore will never be canonized. There is too much humanness in the correspondence. And yet it happened.

The shrine which just opened this past fall is a most impressive experience and well worth a day trip to St. Mary of the Woods. Artefacts used by Mother Theodore are present as is a lengthy timeline on the wall of one hallway revealing events in the life of Mother Theodore, the Church, and the larger history of the world. There are dioramas of life in the wilderness in 1840. Her remains have been moved to a shrine room and encased in a wooden coffin made locally from native trees. The room itself is quite prayerful. Our group was directed by Sr. Nancy Nolan, a former superior general, who was both welcoming and thorough in her presentation. A half hour film at the beginning of the tour covers the history of the American branch of the Sisters of Providence.

We ended our tour with a visit to the beautiful Blessed Sacrament chapel in the larger Church of the Immaculate Conception followed by Mass in that church. One of our students, who is from Effingham, Illinois, told me that when driving back and forth between Effingham and Indianapolis, he has often stopped at the Woods for a few minutes of prayer in that chapel.

The visit to the shrine was a fitting end to a week retreat. It is a truly exciting find in Catholic heritage in Indiana.

We've only just begun

Another year. The tenth semester of ministering to young college men aspiring to the priesthood is about to unfold. Like a book in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, I wonder what new adventures lie along the travels in Middle Earth as these men seek the answers to questions both imagined and real. Or are we beginning an episode more in the style of "Downton Abbey" in which melodrama often seems to overcome the good sense of people who otherwise move inexorably toward a future of love and sacrifice?

Working with this lot is not easy. The difficult part has less to do with the seminarians than it does with my peers. I am a priest from a generation designated by Andrew Greeley as a 'new breed.' Most young men today do not know who Andrew Greeley was and even less do they know that term - new breed. Neither can they appreciate the excitement that priests and especially laity felt at the time I was ordained for many things these young men take for granted were new or unknown to us at that time. The activity and responsibility of the laity alone are perhaps the most significant differences in the two ages. But it is difficult to explain to young men today.

Realizing that they too were a part of the Church was a concept that was totally new and unexpected for the laity. Young people today can't understand that before Vatican II the laity had only to show up to Mass on Sunday. That was basically the extent of their responsibility as a Catholic Christian. That's why the Council provoked such excitement. The laity discovered they too had a place in the Church. They were not simply receptors of what clergy offered, like feeding animals in a zoo. No wonder expectations ran high. It was like Zechariah's lips being opened on a large scale. But expectations could never be fulfilled. Clergy had spent little energy preparing the laity for acceptance of their rightful role in the Church.

Now there is frequently great disaffection between the Church and many of those Catholics who, though well-educated, counted themselves as members of a Church that had for so long kept them in the dark about so many things. These are my peers. They worry that the new crop of potential priests will withdraw the riches to which they have become accustomed like mean parents who tease their children with loss of a gift given and then taken away for reasons unexplained. They ask me, for example, how conservative the seminarians are. My peers often worry about seminarians' attachments to devotions. What my generation threw out, many of them have retrieved.

Seminarians are indeed often attached to non-essentials but they are young and inexperienced. It is only by encouraging their prayer and study that their focus begins to correct itself. The most important thing is not that there is a crucifix on the altar but that the altar is the place where the Eucharistic sacrifice occurs.

Still many of my generation have become moribund in their expectations because they keep making the same mistakes generations before them made. They presume future generations want the same thing they do. They have gotten used to thinking that the Church of 1965 should be the Church of 2015. All of us need to remain open to the work of the Spirit. God moves us forward to more challenge and not to places of rest and comfortability.