February 9, 2014May 25, 2014: Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17: Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit. … Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 66: Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
1 Peter 3:15-18: Beloved: Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. …. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil.
John 14:15-27: Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
May is the Month of Our Lady.
Scripture Notes from the Sourcebook:
THE FIRST READING: There was a dispersion of the disciples after the death of the deacon Stephen recounted in Acts of the Apostles 7, due to the persecution of Christians spearheaded by Saul. Nevertheless, it was a time of new life for the community as the Gospel was proclaimed in new places where many believed. Today’s text focuses on the miraculous deeds wrought by Philip, another one of the deacons named in Acts of the apostles 6:5 (see last Sunday’s reading). The second part of the text highlights the subsequent ministry of Peter and John to the Samaritans, completing the initiation begun by Philip who had baptized the Samaritans in Jesus’ name. Through prayer and the laying on of hands, the Samaritans received the Holy Spirit.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 66: Today’s antiphon (and the first three stanzas of the psalm as well) echoes the joy experienced by the Samaritans as a result of Philip’s healing ministry. Were these not “tremendous … deeds” of the Lord (first and second stanzas) in their own right? An experience of personal deliverance comparable to the exodus of old (third stanza)? Are they not so in our own lives as well? Let us not neglect to give God the praise that is due (stanza four).
SECOND READING: What a powerful image in today’s reading – Christ suffered Death “that he might lead (us) to God” – are we following? Peter instructs us on one way to do that: by “sanctifying” – that is, reverencing Christ as sacred with our hearts. Or, we can also think of it as sanctifying the Christ who dwells in our hearts through our baptism. Our speech, our conduct, is to be marked by gentleness, reverence, and goodness.
THE GOSPEL: As in our Second Reading, we encounter once again the powerful image and the reality of Christ dwelling in our hearts, and as Christ is in the Feather, so too, are we in him. So, too, is the promised Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate on our behalf, who is with us always. Thse words from John 14 are Jesus’ parting words to his disciples – and to us – the night before he died. Can we even begin to grasp the magnitude of this reality?
PASTORAL REFLECTION: Fairytales are great ways to explore the inexorable depth of God. In your life, who is your Jiminy Cricket, the person helping to guide you through rough situations? God sends gifts, usually in the form of friends, family members, and even strangers. Name with thanksgiving t hose who have guided and continue to guide you. Choose a specific person in your life to pray for each day this week as you realize that you, too, are the voice of the Advocate (the Spirit) – an offering of strength, wisdom, and peace to someone on your path. Be conscious this week to allow your actions (not your words) to speak loudly as you follow the commandments and teach others in your walk..-- 2014 Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons & Weekends
“The wizard [of Oz] says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find [the Holy Spirit]. The first will get you to Kansas.
The latter will get you to heaven.
Take your pick.”
― Max Lucado
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Veni Creator Spiritus
Atributed to Rabanus Maurus, 780-856; translated from the Latin by John Dryden
CREATOR Spirit, by whose aid
The world's foundations first were laid,
Come visit every pious mind,
Come pour Thy joys on human kind;
From sin and sorrow set us free,
And make Thy temples worthy Thee.
O source of uncreated light,
The Father's promised Paraclete!
Thrice holy fount, thrice holy fire,
Our hearts with heavenly love inspire;
Come, and Thy sacred unction bring,
To sanctify us while we sing.
Plenteous of grace, descend from high,
Rich in Thy sevenfold energy!
Thou strength of His almighty hand,
Whose power does heaven and earth command.
Proceeding Spirit, our defence,
Who dost the gifts of tongues dispense,
And crown'st Thy gift with eloquence!
Refine and purge our earthly parts;
But, oh, inflame and fire our hearts!
Our frailties help, our vice control,
Submit the senses to the soul;
And when rebellious they are grown,
Then lay Thy hand and hold 'em down.
Chase from our minds th' infernal foe,
And peace the fruit of love bestow;
And left our feet should step astray,
Protect and guide us on the way.
Make us eternal truths receive,
And practice all that we believe;
Give us Thyself, that we may see
The Father and the Son by Thee.
Immortal honor, endless fame,
Attend the Almighty Father's name:
The Saviour Son be glorified,
Who for loft man's redemption died;
And equal adoration be,
Eternal Paraclete, to Thee.
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Gospel Commentary from the Irish Dominicans "The Lord is my shepherd," yes, familiar. How would you feel if you heard someone say "The Lord is my defense lawyer?" Yet that is the basic meaning of the word 'paraclete'. It has many different connotations, of course, in John's gospel: spokesperson, mediator, intercessor, teacher, comforter, consoler…. Everything except accuser. There is hope for us all.
If this sounds new to you, then you may have been thinking of God all along as your enemy and accuser. Don’t be surprised: millions are in the same boat.
"I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate," Jesus said; clearly, he himself is the first. He is explicitly called that in 1 John 2:1, "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just one." Sadly many Christians feel that Jesus too is their judge rather than their defence lawyer, spokesperson, mediator….
The other Advocate or Paraclete promised by Jesus is the Holy Spirit. He is a witness to Jesus; he will continue the work of Jesus, mediating the divine presence to the disciples; he will remind them of what Jesus taught them, he will continue to interpret Jesus to them.
At the end of volume 1 of his 3-volume book on the Holy Spirit, Yves Congar, one of the greatest of 20th-century theologians, has a section entitled 'Substitutes for the Holy Spirit.' He quotes the severe criticism by a P. Pare who claimed that the Catholic Church has three substitutes for the Holy Spirit: the Blessed Sacrament, the Blessed Virgin and the Pope. Congar writes, "This criticism is certainly exaggerated…. Nonetheless, Pare is criticising something not entirely fanciful." Congar then goes on to quote hair-raising statements by popes, cardinals and bishops of the past that gave rise to Pare's criticism. It shows clearly that when we leave the Holy Spirit out of the picture we damage not only that particular doctrine of the Faith but all the other doctrines as well. Congar continues, "Vatican II was explicit in giving the Holy Spirit his rightful place."
Pope Pius IX (pope from 1846 to 1878), wrote, "The beginning, root and indefectible source of the unity of the Church is the supreme authority…of Peter and…his successors in the Roman throne." But Pope Paul VI wrote in a very different vein, “It is the Holy Spirit who animates and sanctifies the Church. He is her divine breath, the wind in her sails, the principle of her unity, the inner source of her light and strength. He is her support and consoler, the source of her charisms and songs, her peace and her joy, her pledge and prelude to blessed and eternal life.”
What the soul does for the body the Holy Spirit does for the Church. “Without the Holy Spirit,” said Ignatius of Laodicea (Orthodox Metropolitan, at the third assembly of the World Council of Churches at Uppsala, in 1968) “God is distant, Christ is merely an historical figure, the Gospel is a dead letter, the Church is just an organisation, authority is domination, mission is propaganda, liturgy is only nostalgia, and the work of Christians is slave labour. But with the Holy Spirit, Christ is risen and present, the Gospel is a living force, the Church is a communion in the life of the Trinity, authority is a service that sets people free, mission is Pentecost, the liturgy is memory and anticipation, and the labour of Christians is divinised.” --- Donagh O’Shea, for Today’s Good News, the website of the Dominicans of Ireland-
________________________________________________________________________“It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us. -- Thomas Merton
MEDITATION on the GOSPEL: Do you know the love that surpasses all, that is stronger than death itself …? In Jesus' last supper discourse he speaks of the love he has for his disciples and of his Father's love. He prepares his disciples for his imminent departure to return to his Father by exhorting them to prove their love for him through their loyalty and obedience to his word. He promises them the abiding instruction and consolation of the Holy Spirit. St. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as if there were only one of us to love. God’s love for each of us is as real and tangible as the love of a mother for her child and the love of a lover who gives all for his beloved. God made us for love — to know him personally and to grow in the knowledge of his great love for us. How can we know and be assured of the love of God? The Holy Spirit helps us to grow in the knowledge of God and his great love. The Spirit enables us to experience the love of God and to be assured of the Lord’s abiding presence with us (see Romans 8:35-39). The Holy Spirit also opens our ears to hear and understand the word of God. Do you listen attentively to God's word and believe it? Ask the Holy Spirit to inflame your heart with the love of God and his word. "Lord, in love you created me and you drew me to yourself. May I never lose sight of you nor forget your steadfast love and faithfulness. And may I daily dwell upon your word and give you praise in the sanctuary of my heart, You who are my All." – The Gospel of John: a commentary & meditation, http://www.rc.net/
Why would we need to experience the Comforter if our lives are already comfortable? … I want to live so that I am truly submitted to the Spirit's leading on a daily basis. Christ said its better for us that the Spirit came and I want to live like that is true. I don't want to keep crawling when I have the ability to fly. ---Francis Chan, Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit
"Come Healing" / Leonard Cohen
O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow
The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart
O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The Heart beneath is teaching
To the broken Heart above
O let the heavens falter
And let the earth proclaim:
Come healing of the Altar
Come healing of the Name
O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
O let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
Reflection for May 25, 2014: This Sacrament, Confirmation
I don’t remember much about my own confirmation, except that it took place in Tampa, Florida, at a school and church called Most Holy Redeemer – which was the only Catholic School out of the nine or so such institutions I schlepped my way through. I was in sixth grade that year, and my father was in Vietnam, and I can remember taking my faith very, very seriously, though not necessarily understanding it in the least. I guess I figured that if I played my spiritual cards correctly, God would bring my Dad home safely, my mom would be light-hearted again, my older brother would be happier too, and my younger brother would finally shake off the illnesses that had troubled his whole short life. I don’t know if I thought God would give me a pony, too – actually, I was holding out for a real live horse, and a ranch out West to ride it on -- but you can see that there was a certain element of bargaining about my faith. “If I do this for you, Lord, you’ll do this for me, right?” I asked God – maybe not quite that directly, but it was generally the subtext of my prayer life. Still is, I’m afraid, even though I know better. It’s taken me most of my life to admit that when I pray “The Lord’s Prayer” and say, “THY will be done,” I really, truly, mean, or hope that MY will be done. At least I add, “please” nowadays, when I pray. But still, I know that’s not at all the way prayer works in real life. I just, umm, sometimes, sort of wish it did. …
Well, between my bargaining with God and my anxiety about doing Confirmation right, so that it worked – and believe me, those nuns took “doing” the sacraments pretty durn seriously – I was too busy to actually pause and think about what the thing itself actually meant. I think it may have been the service itself that finally broke through my self-absorbed trance. Because I do remember that part of it vividly, in a powerful but vaguely dreamlike way: Going up, all veiled and in white to the altar, in that big old damp and moldy Florida church, which I attended constantly but which had been completely transformed for this special occasion. It was at night, for one thing, so there were candles and incense everywhere and really serious holy music, and an actual, genuine Bishop with an entire battalion of priests and nuns in full Professional Religious Regalia. Suddenly, I realized I was doing a Very Important Thing, and even though I* was already a pretty serious kid when it came to God, somehow it struck me, really and truly, in a way that it never had before, that God was present, the Saints were watching, and the Bishop was asking me to acknowledge, in front of the entire world, whether or not I was willing to give my whole life to Christ. Not just a few of the slightly more pious leftovers or the kind of spiritual spare change you might find in the sofa: No, my whole life. Yikes.
Naturally, of course, I had spent a great deal of time fussing over my confirmation saint. Joan of Arc was my hero, naturally, because, obviously, how could she not be? She was beyond cool by any standards, she rode a big white horse and swung a sharp-edged sword and drove the bloody English out of France, and she made martyrdom seem so compelling that it took me years to realize how much it had to, you know, hurt to be a martyr. “I am not afraid,” she said as they prepared to burn her to death. “I was born to do this.” Wow. What would more inspiring? But alas, I wasn’t holy enough to get past the fact that I simply didn’t like the name “Joan.” It sounded too much like a character on a ‘50s TV show. And of course St. Francis, my other real hero, was a guy, which made the name rather awkward. (Although one of my favorite sisters was Sister John Elizabeth, who taught me to diagram sentences and inadvertently prepared for a career as a copy-editor.) “Clare,” maybe, Francis’ friend and fellow saint? But her life was a lot more boring than Francis’ was; no chatting with wolves and walking barefoot across the Mideast to try to talk peace to the Sultan; she basically just shut herself up in a tiny room and prayed, all day, every day. And that struck me as more than just boring; it also seemed like really hard work. Besides, my mother’s bitterly hated first name was “Clara” and choosing a similar name seemed somehow rude. So I decided to go with Teresa: But which one, the French or the Spanish? Therese the Little Flower was young and romantic, dying in a saintly way at an early age, and she also wrote, and even if I couldn’t swing a sword for France, I could be an inspiring writer, like her. But the more I learned about Teresa of Avila the more I liked her, too; she was also a writer and had marvelous religious visions, she tried to run away when she was 7 to fight the Moors, she was tough and strong and had a sense of humor. She wasn’t afraid, even, to talk back to God: When her horse bucked her off in the middle of a river, she said out loud, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!’
I think I ended up going with the Little Flower, largely at the advice of my religion teacher, who thought I could use a little more of Therese’s meek obedience and uncomplaining faith. But over the years I’ve kept faith with both Teresas, seeing these two saints as personal friends as well as spiritual heroes, two very different but equally strong, loving, wise, compassionate, courageous, determined women. One of my non-Catholic friends once told me that the thing she envied most about Catholic girls was that “we got to grow up with female heroes.” Which is pretty much what our confirmation saints, male or female, HEROES.
When our young people received the Sacrament a few weeks ago, Bishop Stephen would have said something like this: “Let us pray to our Father that he will pour out the Holy Spirit to strengthen His sons and daughters with his gifts and anoint them to be more like Christ the Son of God.”
Being more like Christ the Son of God. Talk about outsized ambitions. Some people are content to try to be billionaires or software moguls or powerful politicians or football heroes or singing sensations or Oscar-winning actors. You, whoever, are out to do something much, much harder, and much less appreciated by the world. Trying to be like Jesus Christ is really hard work.
And you can’t do it alone. Nobody can. Which is one of the reasons why we have sacraments and celebrate them communally, and one of the reasons why we ask God to send us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Because it is possible to live as we really believe what we say and sing at church. It is possible to live our lives like arrows aimed at heaven. It is possible to try to be more like Jesus. But it’s whole lot easier not to be like Jesus – and there’s a whole enticing world out there that is ready to tell you that it’s so. And it will keep on telling you so, louder and louder every year, as you get older and the memories of your Confirmation slowly fade.
One of the great things about Christianity – especially Catholic Christianity – is that it never pretends life is going to be easy. You don’t ask God to send the Holy Spirit to be your helper and guide, or pray for wisdom and courage and judgment and understanding, if life is going to be nothing more than a cruise down the Highway of Good Times in your brand-newLamborghini. You don’t ask for help if everything is already perfect. We live in the age of “I’m OK and you’re OK” – but I know that I’m not, and I’m guessing that neither are you. Even if we were, why settle for that? There is so much more to be than just “OK” – so much more to make of your single human life than a quest for jobs and success and security and good looks and great health and even romance. Not that these are bad things; they’re not. But there can be so much more to a human life. “Tell me” poet Mary Oliver writes,” what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
In one of Bob Dylan’s songs, he musically harangues us, as he does so well, bellowing: You gotta serve somebody! It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody. Exactly. And we choose who we serve every day, by the way that we live. How do we live our lives? What is it that we love and long for, what makes us laugh or cry or cringe? Every morning of every day we wake to work and worry and the passing of time; and every morning we wake to wonder and the sweet green beauty of God’s astonishing world. What do we do after we get out of bed? How do we find a way to move through our quick and lovely and difficult days?
There’s a story from the early days of the church and the Desert Fathers (and Mothers.) Abba Lot goes to Abba Joseph and says to him – a little smugly, one suspects, “Abba, I keep up with my religious duties; I fast a little, I pray a little, I do my best to purify my thoughts. What else is there to do?” And Abba Joseph stands up and stretches out his old gnarled hands to heaven, and his fingers become like ten blazing lamps of flame. “Why not,” he asks, “become all fire?”
Why not? the Holy Spirit hovers here, asking. Why not become afire with God?
To all of you in our Parish who have received the Sacrament of Confirmation this year, to Gratia and Sophia and Sherrie and Rachel and Megan and Mitchell and Andrew :
May this sacrament kindle your love of God anew and be brightness that will shine inside your memories. May it may it be a new beginning for your lives in the Church, and may it illumine your path outside as well. May God bless the paths on which you go, and bless the earth beneath your soles.
Bless, O bless, O God of grace, each day and hour of all your lives. Amen.
-- Diane Sylvain