28 April 2024 - apart from me

Today's Readings

(Audio)

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 every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.

Divine life flows into us from Jesus who is the true vine. This life must not stagnate within us, but rather bear fruit. The Father won't allow the precious life flowing from his Son into the branches of the vine to be wasted. The Son himself does not cease to be fruitful by pouring his own life into the branches. The branches in turn must bear fruit or risk being taken away. The new hearts promised by the prophets and given by Christ through his Spirit, the power of the resurrection at work within us, cannot remain individual and isolated. The resurrection itself is a Trinitarian event, and the Spirit is the mutual love between the Father and the Son. We can't simply try to cling to these blessings for ourselves alone. We must become blessings to others. We can't truly possess mercy unless we become a people willing to show mercy to others. We should be able to recognize the vast difference between this life and practices of advanced meditation in some other tradition where the benefits could be held privately with no reference to the wider world. But the gift of life flowing from Christ Jesus refuses to exist outside of a deep relational commitment to God and neighbor.

Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,

because without me you can do nothing.

In other religious traditions we can easily imagine that to simply possess the teaching and master the practice is sufficient. There is no sense that such adherents need to remain in any kind of vital connection to the religious founder. And this would seem to track our experience more accurately, for we do in fact see people doing good things all the time without an obvious connection to Jesus. Many atheists are highly committed to loving others and improving the world. Many Christians, by contrast, seem to sit on our hands, ignoring the problems of the world, as we wait for heaven. We have seen that Christians who fail to love are at risk. But how are non-Christians apparently succeeding in what Jesus states is only possible in connection to him? Not to short change the merit of non-Christian love in the world we may yet recognize that it is something different than the fruit to which Jesus referred. The fruit here described was something that was inherently Kingdom building and life affirming. Apart from Jesus even the best good works were like returning again and again to a deep well with a small bucket. All who drank that water would thirst again. But Jesus desired to provide water that would sate the spiritual desire of the world. This doesn't necessarily mean that the fruit we bear consists only in the spiritual works of mercy. It means that the life of Jesus in us makes even the corporeal works of mercy something more and greater than they would be apart from him, changing hearts, building the Kingdom, and glorifying the Father in heaven.

You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.

Remain in me, as I remain in you.

The words of Jesus are powerful because they help remove those parts of us where the energy of his love stagnates and refuses to bear life. We are not asked to perform a complex surgical operation on our own hearts to remain in Jesus, nor to will ourselves into bearing fruit by gritting our teeth and exercising immense effort. All we are asked to be sure that we remain in Jesus and abide in him. He himself knows the plans he has for us and is more than capable of fulfilling them all.

for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything

John Michael Talbot - I Am The Vine

Maranatha! Singers - I Will Delight

Songs In His Presence - Abide, O Lord

27 April 2024 - you do know him and have seen him

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Jesus said to his disciples:

“If you know me, then you will also know my Father.

From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Jesus told his disciples that they were close enough to him that through him they could truly say they knew and saw his Father as well. But the Trinity was never conceptually easy to grasp, even when the relational reality was right in front of people. Hence Philip, although he in some sense beheld the Father already in Jesus, did not recognize him.

Philip said to Jesus,

“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”

Philip seemed to take Jesus words about what was in fact the case as rather to imply a future contingent possibility. Perhaps he wanted to see the Father as Moses was permitted to see the back of God as he passed him in the cleft of a rock (see Exodus 33:18-23). Maybe Philip was expecting something more manifestly glorious. But, whatever the case, Philip's incorrect expectations and his confusion caused him to miss what was already in front of him.

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time

and you still do not know me, Philip?

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

Similarly, we tend as Catholics to miss what is right in front of us because it is too close and has therefore become too ordinary. We hear promises and assume this must be found in distant glorious manifestations because we have become so good at ignoring that which we encounter so frequently. And yet the Son, present in his Church through the Holy Spirit, is constantly about the business of revealing the Father. There are a variety of works that he brings about in order to reveal his love for the Father and the Father's love for him, a love which, in both directions, now implicates everyone united to Christ as well. Yet, rather than that which can sometimes be too close for comfort, we prefer to look off in the distance to a more abstract and static and therefore less dangerous vision of glory. Looking at what is too close necessarily involves and invites us deeper whereas what is at a distance remains safe and unthreatening. But there is a reason why Jesus desires to reveal the Father to us and why the Father in turn will grant any prayer asked in the name of Jesus. It is all about their mutual glorification of one another. And all things they accomplish on earth are invitations for us to participate and share in that glory. The works Jesus and his disciples bring accomplish are not ultimately about their proximate ends, good as those ends may be. They are all meant to help us to know Jesus, and through him the Father. For this is eternal life.

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (see John 17:3).

Leeland - Way Maker

26 April 2024 - in my Father's house

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Jesus said to his disciples:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Jesus told his disciples not to allow their hearts to be troubled. Jesus never seemed to think that anxiety or fear should be allowed to have the upper hand in the hearts of his disciples. At another place he instructed them, "do not be anxious about your life" (see Matthew 6:25). Yet Jesus never insisted on a sort of naive outlook or an unrealistic optimism. In the passage just quoted the basis of confidence was the fact that their heavenly Father knew all of their needs. The Father knew and intimately cared about the disciples of Jesus to the degree that even the hairs of their heads were numbered (see Luke 12:7). In those passages the disciples reasons for confidence were in the Father. Here they are found also in the Son.

You have faith in God; have faith also in me.

In order for us, as disciples of Jesus, to not find our hearts overwhelmed by trouble we must actively exercise our faith. It is not as though once we take on the status of disciples we automatically cease to feel anxiety or fear. In fact, in feeling these emotions we may sometimes think we are failing as disciples. But it is normal to feel them. Yet our response is called to be more than normal, more than merely natural. We are called to live a supernatural life, and our response to such challenges is one example of how this is meant to manifest.

do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God (see Philippians 4:6).

We must learn to see the causes of our anxiety and fear in the greater context of our faith and the providence of God. When minds renewed by the Holy Spirit consider the potential challenges of daily life and the many potential pitfalls of quotidian existence they have an anchor of unshakable hope that these circumstances are unable to touch.

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.

If there were not,

would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you,

I will come back again and take you to myself,

so that where I am you also may be.

The fact of the matter is that Jesus isn't preparing a set of perfect earthly circumstances for his people. He has a greater goal and a better reward in store for us. His providential protection of his people in this world is designed to ensure that his plans to live together with us forever in the next world might be realized. 

Where I am going you know the way.”

Thomas said to him,

“Master, we do not know where you are going;

how can we know the way?”

On the one hand we don't know exactly what this life will have in store for us. We do know that even here we a privileged to experience a foretaste of heaven and a pledge of our future resurrection. But that there will also be storms is also a certainty. The way the events of this life will take shape is not ultimately something we can carefully map in advance, as though by doing so we could eliminate all surprises and temper our tendency to volatile emotional responses. And yet, even in the midst of the maze of circumstances we have a map that does provide the way, a compass the provides absolute assurance that allows us to head in the right direction.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.”

When the storms make navigation almost impossible let us follow Jesus. Let us remember that he is leading us to the only destination that is truly worthy of the journey. Other maps promise treasure but ultimately lead to those edges where, as the tropes of old adventure movies may have had it, 'Here there be monsters'. Only Jesus can provide the whole perspective necessary to one day arrive at his Father's house. In that place alone is perfect peace to be found. But we can nevertheless not lose ourselves to fear and anxiety when we recognize that is the journey to which we are committed.

Matt Maher - Run To The Father

25 April 2024 - marked for salvation

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Go into the whole world

and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.

The death and resurrection of Jesus had removed every barrier, and torn down all of the previously necessary divisions between peoples. As Paul wrote, there is now "neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (see Galatians 3:28). The temple had always been divided into different concentric spheres of access with the court of the Gentiles at the outside and then increasingly restrictive inner courts up to the Holy of Holies itself which could only be entered by the high priest once a year. But with the death of Jesus, "the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom" (see Matthew 27:51). The author of the letter to the Hebrews recognized that it was the tearing of the flesh of Jesus that truly opened the way for all the world to enter into the true spiritual sanctuary, "since through the blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil, that is, his flesh" (see Hebrews 10:19-20). It was now possible for all peoples everywhere to truly worship "in spirit and truth" (see John 4:24).

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;

whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Salvation did not require complex preparation nor did it require any sort of moral perfection in advance. It required merely faith, leading one to obey God in making use of his chosen means of giving grace, of which baptism was preeminent. Without faith such means of grace would appear to be empty rituals without purpose. But Jesus would himself do all that he could to help all peoples come to recognize the truth of his message. From his seat at the right hand of God in heaven he would continue to work with his Church throughout the ages to confirm the word with accompanying signs. Even to this day demons are subject to the power of his priests, the Spirit teaches many to speak in new languages, and the providential care of God for his elect, protecting them against all manner of deadly things continues to be evident. Physical healings that defy scientific explanation continue to be documented. All of these things are meant to make the message of the good news more credible so that all might come to believe and be saved.

And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (see First Corinthians 2:3-5).

Why do we ourselves not always see such signs? It is sometimes because we don't need them. Those who have faith aren't necessarily given signs merely to assuage emotional discomfort. They fit rather into a large and mysterious plan of God wherein they are beneficial for bringing people to faith. Very well, but should not such signs happen through us, if not necessarily for us? Of course we can't insist on being the self-important center of anyone's conversion. But are we really capable of the humility of Paul who was able to take a back seat and allow the power of the Spirit to take center stage? Maybe more will in fact happen through us if we learn to surrender more completely to God. But we aren't meant to fixate on the fascinating or get hung up on special effects. The advice given in Peter's letter this morning is always applicable:

So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,

that he may exalt you in due time.

Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.

Kutless - Take Me In

24 April 2024 - light in the darkness

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Whoever believes in me believes not only in me

but also in the one who sent me,

and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me.

To see Jesus with the eyes of faith was to see the Father. This was what Jesus told Philip when he said, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (see John 14:9). The visible human nature of Jesus was a living icon of the Father. But it was of course possible to see Jesus and yet not recognize the Father. It was possible to look, but without the eyes of faith. It was not the arrangement of his facial features, nor the proportion of his limbs, nor the radiance of his skin, nor any other particular feature that revealed his divinity. And it was not as though there was typically a halo visible for all to see. It was rather by his love for the Father that the Father was made manifest. His obedience was so complete that the Father was unhindered in manifesting himself  through Jesus. And in just the same way when Christians are obedient to Christ they manifest Christ to the world. No doubt this as why we are called Christians, which happened for the first time in Antioch, as we read yesterday.

I came into the world as light,

so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.

Jesus was the true light that darkness could never supplant. In this he was like wisdom itself, since "though night supplants light, wickedness does not prevail over Wisdom" (see Wisdom 7:30). He was the most perfect gift of the Father, the most exact reflection of his unchanging goodness. As James wrote, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (see James 1:17).

If we follow anyone other than Jesus we will not find the stability, peace, and life, that can be found in him alone. Other good things are subject to change and fluctuation. They come and they go. They cannot be held indefinitely and can therefore only provide happiness in a shadowy, transitory fashion. They are not necessarily evil, but they lack the permanence which we desire. They are not, finally, places where our hearts can come to rest.

Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words

has something to judge him: the word that I spoke,

it will condemn him on the last day

Jesus did not desire anyone to remain in darkness or come to condemnation. His work was to bring people into the light and his mission was to offer salvation to the world. He desired to give the gift of eternal life to all who would receive his word. But condemnation was nevertheless a possible reality for those who did not accept this invitation. This was not so much because he desired it as because it was the collision course on which humanity was already set apart from his saving help. His words described an offer of rescue and a way of escape. But those who would not avail themselves of the gift would eventually find the impending crash about which he warned to be all too real. Jesus came to save the world from where it was heading apart from him. In many ways much of our world and indeed even parts of our own hearts are still heading toward that disaster. May we all surrender ourselves more and more to him, allowing ourselves to be rescued, and no long insisting on sinking with the ship.

And I know that his commandment is eternal life.

The command of God sounds as though it might be arbitrary and burdensome. We tend to mistrust authority and to be suspicious of figures in authority. In some measure this jaded nature of ours stems from how we have been burned by the world and how authority has been, at best, unevenly administered. But it plays into a tendency we have because of the fall to mistrust God himself. And yet if we do not learn to trust him he will not have the scope of freedom in our lives and hearts to deliver us. He longs to give us something so good we can't quantify it, we can't even ask or imagine what it will be. And so, if the word of God is to continue to spread and grow in us and through us we need, by grace, to grow in trust. Jesus himself is an icon of how this trust should look and looking to him we can discern how we ourselves may grow, and eventually come to walk in the light.

Songs In His Presence - Prayer Of Augustine

23 April 2024 - in the hands of Jesus

Today's Readings

(Audio)

“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?

If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

From the beginning Jesus had been revealing his identity as the one sent by the Father to those open to the message. They were those who were drawn by the Father to recognize the identity of the Son. Yet the buzz around his identity also upset others who were not in such intimate relationship with him. His enemies looked for him to say too much plainly so that they would have an excuse to wield their authority against him. Mere spectators on the peripheries of the excitement of this potential messiah were hoping he would turn out to be a conquering hero like Judas Maccabeus at the time of the Dedication. They had no patience for the apparently subtle and spiritual in the message of Jesus. If he was going to do something about the Romans, well, they wished he would get on with it.

Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe.

The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.

From his very first miracles Jesus demonstrated that he was more than any prophet, that he had come to fulfill not only the promise of an anointed Son of David who would rule forever, but all prophecies. He revealed himself to be the victor, not primarily over military enemies, but over sin and death itself, the source of true light and life. It is hard to imagine being disinterested in miracles. But when the miracles didn't pertain to the peoples' immediate desires they experienced those miracles as mere distractions from what they perceived to be the important work of the messiah. Indeed there seem to be a wasteful focus on Jesus himself rather than on any particular problem he might have come to solve.

But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.

My sheep hear my voice;

I know them, and they follow me.

They did not believe and were not among his sheep. But they were invited to embrace belief and come into the sheepfold. At that moment, in their interaction with Jesus, they weren't particularly interested to hear his voice or to follow him. They were actually in some way trying to make him follow them and their ideas about the messiah. The only way the could be happy with something else was if they drew near enough to Jesus to hear his voice and follow his way. They could, if they chose, allow the Father to draw them near to the Son where his voice could eventually become familiar to them and they could learn to trust that his loving plans for them were greater than any which they might concoct themselves.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope (see Jeremiah 29:11).

What plans could be better than peace and political stability? Jesus told them: "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish". There was a greater security to be found in the hand of Jesus than in any confluence of ideal worldly circumstances. Indeed this was a security and peace that could be possessed even in spite of difficult conditions in the world, or even in the hearts of individuals still in the process of transformation. It was a peace that originated, not in chance, nor in the strength or merit of individuals, but in the heart of the Father and Jesus the Good Shepherd.

The Father and I are one.

Although Jesus constantly invited the crowds to go deeper, to draw nearer to him as the true treasure, the goal and the reward of human life, many were too impatient for their own ambitions to entertain this possibility. Yet even persecution factored into the plan of God. He was able to bring good even out of evil. For us, this means that there is never a reason to give up on anyone no matter how indifferent they might seem. They may yet one day be among "a great number who believed" and "turned to the Lord". When we see such wonders we can rejoice like Barnabas do our best to encourage them. One thing our Church definitely needs is for those with the gift of encouragement to put it fully into use just as Barnabas did.

When he arrived and saw the grace of God,

he rejoiced and encouraged them all

to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart

Newsboys - In The Hands Of God

22 April 2024 - gatekeeper

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Amen, amen, I say to you,

whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate

but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.

Other people claimed to fill the role of shepherds but they dared not pass through the gate which was the way by which the true shepherd came. The true shepherd was known by the gatekeeper because the Son came forth from the Father. It was safe to open this gate to this shepherd because, unlike others, he was neither a thief nor a robber. He did not shepherd for personal gain. One could even say that the self sacrificial style by which he gave himself to sheep was in some sense the gate that others dared not enter, as though the gate were the cross itself. 

But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice,

as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Jesus accepted suffering and even the cross for the sake of his sheep. The Father received the offering of his Son and unlocked the blessings of life and salvation. It made it possible for the sheep to follow where the shepherd led, through the cross and into the pastures of eternal life. No wonder, then, that the sheep would only follow a familiar voice on this journey. A stranger, one who might be a thief or a robber, could not be trusted when they made imposing demands, since he probably made them for his own benefit. Yet Jesus was a shepherd who knew individual sheep and called them each by name. This was the voice that called Lazarus from the tomb and which Mary Magdalene recognized after the resurrection. Where others were not persuasive, this voice was utterly compelling.

But they will not follow a stranger;

they will run away from him,

because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.

As Jesus implied, other voices do try to juxtapose themselves between us and our shepherd. They try to mislead and misdirect us so that they may use us for their own illicit gain. They do this by teaching doctrines that are false and ultimately by trying to lead us away from the narrow path proclaimed by Jesus. We are meant to know the voice of truth sufficiently that we are able to run from that of strangers when those strangers endanger our relationship with the shepherd.

Amen, amen, I say to you,

I am the gate for the sheep.

Jesus is both gate and shepherd because he is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the destination we seek and the path we take to seek it. Others in the time of Jesus and in our time try to lead the sheep in a direction that can only end in destruction. Whether they have thought things through this far, whether they even realize that they are thieves and robbers, or whether they are just proceeding to unreflectively seek there own self interest is somewhat beside the point. The point is rather to make sure we recognize that, compared to Jesus, they have nothing to offer.

A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy;

I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

The thieves and robbers promise something that superficially appears to be life but turns out to be death. Jesus offers something that looks at first to be death but turns out to be true and abundant life. We are meant to grow in our ability to recognize his voice, to grow in our trust of our shepherd so that he can lead us beyond our fears into the pastures of the blessed. 

As the hind longs for the running waters,

so my soul longs for you, O God.

Athirst is my soul for God, the living God.

When shall I go and behold the face of God?

Songs In His Presence - Psalm 42: Like A Deer