Tuesday, April 30, 2024

30 April 2024 - the peace of Jesus


Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.

Jesus is the only one able to promise peace and truly deliver it. Aside from him there are a wide variety of purported paths to peace in the world. And some of them may have some benefit, insofar as practicing virtue does help us be more free from the vicissitudes of the world than we would be otherwise. Others, however, advertise that we may find peace by destroying the parts of our humanity that long for joy and satisfaction. But this is not peace, but rather emptiness. And emptiness does not remain empty, but is quickly filled lesser and baser things. Only Jesus is able to give us something truly worthy of the name peace that is nevertheless not dependent on circumstances. It does not require us to ignore circumstances, nor always even to execute a perfect response to our circumstances. It is rather the gift from one who has conquered circumstances by conquering death itself. Jesus gives us his own way of thinking, rooted in trust of his Father, as a gift to renew our own minds. In no way does this gift depend on us except insofar as we must put it to use if it is to work in our lives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

Without care and prayer we can allow ourselves to slip into old ways of thinking which regard this world as ultimate and death as the final horizon of all striving. We are instead called to be transformed by the renewal of our minds (see Romans 12:2) so we can understand the genuine transcendent goods which are ours in Jesus, goods that neither time nor death can steal. Then we can set our minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right have of God and where our own life is, in some sense, already hidden with him (see Colossians 3:1-3). When our thoughts try to tell us that trouble and fear are the final world let us respond to them with the deeper truth that Christ has conquered death and he is victorious.

In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world (see John 16:33).

Part of the challenge for the disciples was going to be losing access to the visible presence of Jesus. He would be taken in death but return in the resurrection. He would be taken in his ascension but would come again in glory. Even after it became clear he was not defeated by death it nevertheless seemed surprising and difficult that the old familiar mode of his existence among them must end. Yet what he was doing by departing was something worth celebrating when properly understood. It was the glorification of his own humanity, and therefore in turn also that of all who were united to him. Hence all who loved him would truly rejoice that he went to the Father, for they were taken up together with him.
Wherefore He says, If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father; for human nature should exult at being thus taken up by the Only Begotten Word, and made immortal in heaven; at earth being raised to heaven, and dust sitting incorruptible at the right hand of the Father.

- Augustine
Jesus was on a mission to destroy the ruler of this present darkness, to disarm the principalities and powers (see Colossians 2:15), and to share the treasures they had previously horded with the world (see Luke 11:21-22, Ephesians 4:8). One sense of what the meaning of that treasure was that it contained precisely those fruits that we were meant to bear, the good works prepared in advance for us to do (See Ephesians 2:10). For these reasons and many others let us sing the victory of Christ.

Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your kingdom.





Monday, April 29, 2024

29 April 2024 - command performance


Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.

When we obey secular authorities we may express a variety of things, from fear to respect, depending both on our own maturity and on the deserving (or lack thereof) of the authority in question. At an earthly level it is probably only within the context of the family that we see that obeying commands can at times be motivated by love. But in the context of his relationship with his Father obedience is the primary way by which Jesus himself expresses his love. This is possible because of a deep trust that Jesus has for the Father wherein he recognizes that all that he has and all that he is come from the Father and that the Father is perfectly worthy of trust. He has no need to insert his own agenda to achieve some independent satisfaction since the only thing he desires is the love and approval of his Father. 

Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.

It is by keeping the commandments of Jesus that we override our fallen programming tending toward distrust and doubt and commit ourselves completely to God. In doing so we say, in effect, "not my will, but thine, be done" (see Luke 22:42). It is a statement strongly opposed to the act of Adam in the Garden of Eden in which he chose his own will over that of God opening all of creation to disorder and humanity itself to spiritual death. By contrast it is a statement perfectly in keeping with that made by the Mother of God when she chose to obey the word of God spoken to her by the angel. Our own obedience is a way of saying, together with her, "be it unto me according to thy word" (see Luke 1:38).

It delights the Father that his Son be glorified. And so he has made the Son the focal point of his plan of redemption and self-revelation. By obedience to the Son we find ourselves drawn into, not merely compliance or proper performance, but relationship. Just as the Son's own obedience to the Father is always in the context of their mutual love, so too does our relationship through the Son to the Triune God gradually transform us to make us more loving, more like that which we love. In fact, love comes to define our relationship to such a degree that it can no longer be described only at a distance or in the abstract. Rather, there comes a point when it can only be represented as mutual indwelling.

Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.

If one told the secular world that these are the heights to which obedience leads one suspects that he would find at best suspicion. Yet Jesus assures us that this is the way, indeed the only way, for us to draw as near to God as God desires us to come. The only alternative is in fact rejection and disobedience. Let us not be like past generations when the Gentiles wandered in their own ways. Let us recognize the ever present witness of the reality of the goodness of God and commit to living lives that respond to him in trust. Then we will find something even better than "nourishment and gladness for [our] hearts". We will find the gift of his own Spirit, dwelling within us, leading us into all truth.



Sunday, April 28, 2024

28 April 2024 - apart from me


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




Saturday, April 27, 2024

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


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).



Friday, April 26, 2024

26 April 2024 - in my Father's house


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.


Thursday, April 25, 2024

25 April 2024 - marked for salvation


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.






Wednesday, April 24, 2024

24 April 2024 - light in the darkness


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.






Tuesday, April 23, 2024

23 April 2024 - in the hands of Jesus


“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




Monday, April 22, 2024

22 April 2024 - gatekeeper


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?




Sunday, April 21, 2024

21 April 2024 - Good Shepherd


I am the good shepherd.
A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Jesus manifested his perfect goodness in his loving compassion for his sheep. In doing so he differentiated himself from hirelings, who were not shepherds, and whose sheep were not their own. They were always divided between their duties toward the sheep and their own needs. Since their own needs were the reason why they worked in the first place, since they worked for pay, there was an automatic limit in their concern for the sheep. Concern for themselves would always win out when the two came into conflict. Only Jesus stood in need of nothing and was therefore able to give everything. He was not in competition with reality but came precisely as the source of life in order to bestow his life on his creatures.

A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

It sounds a little hard for us to imagine that a shepherd would care so much about such creatures as to lay down his own life for them. But this, in the case of Jesus, was precisely the nature of the shepherd's heart. As the Father poured his own life out into Jesus so Jesus in poured that life out on the world. He manifested the way in which the Father loved him by loving us in a similarly and magnificently complete fashion.
The Father does not bestow His love on the Son as a reward for the death He suffered in our behalf; but He loves Him, as beholding in the Begotten His own essence, whence proceeded such love for mankind.

- Theophylact
Jesus did not lay down his lives for minerals, plants, or animals of creation except perhaps in a secondary sense (see Romans 8:21). Rather, he laid down his life for creatures who were not only known by him but also capable of knowing and loving him. His love for them was meant to awaken their own love for him. In laying down his life for his flock he did not do so merely so that the flock could continue as before having narrowly averted some danger. He did it precisely so that his relationship to the flock as shepherd could be amplified. This relationship of sheep and shepherd was actually the whole point. And it was for this reason that Jesus refused to allow any wolves, even the devil or death itself, to stand in the way. In revealing his love so completely he was drawing the sheep to a deeper understanding of himself, and in doing so, inviting them to be transformed into his own image.

Beloved, we are God's children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.


Saturday, April 20, 2024

20 April 2024 - Spirit and life


Many of the disciples of Jesus who were listening said,
"This saying is hard; who can accept it?"
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them, "Does this shock you?

The teaching of Jesus, particularly about the Eucharist, was always divisive. Here we can see it was not only his opponents or the crowds generally who murmured like the desert generation during the Exodus, but also even his own disciples. They were still trying to use fleshly modes of thinking to understand that which could be only understood spiritually. 

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual (see First Corinthians 2:13).

Spiritual understanding was not the same thing as saying that the discourse was actually only a metaphor. That sort of understanding was still a human way of thinking about a literary device. Spiritual understanding pertained to an unseen but nevertheless real and concrete facet of reality. 

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (see John 3:8).

It would have been easy to suggest that the need to eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of Jesus was just a symbol. Then it wouldn't have been any more problematic than when he said that he was the vine or that he was the gate for the sheep. But those teachings were never provocative causes of dissension in the way that the teaching about the Eucharist proved to be. Yet though this new teaching was shocking, Jesus did not clarify, but rather doubled down. The revelation of his own glory demonstrated by his rising and ascending to the Father would provide the eventual context for understanding more deeply how this was a part of the larger plan of God to give life to the world. Yet even before that event Jesus called people to put their trust in him. Even though it was in no way obvious and indeed highly provocative he still made it a lynchpin on which rested continued fellowship with him. If disciples didn't like it, they could leave. 

Jesus then said to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?"
Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.

Jesus, it seemed, was even willing to let his own beloved Twelve go if they wouldn't accept this teaching. And even they weren't entirely persuaded on the merit of the teaching itself, weren't happily accepting or readily convinced. Yet they had nevertheless come to believe more in the one who was teaching them than in their own ability to process or understand what was taught. They knew that the one who was truth itself could not lie. They were certain that the was who was goodness itself would have a good reason for this as well. They were not merely credulous, for Jesus had already demonstrated that he was absolutely trustworthy. Now he was able to lead them even through the darkness of faith when their human understanding failed. They possessed the core truth of who he was and that allowed them to accept all that he taught whether it was immediately intuitive to them or not.

We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.

The disciples who remained did so because they allowed the Father to draw them. They didn't insist on their own understanding when they approached a mystery that was too great for human reason unaided by faith to grasp. Yet others, and with them Judas the traitor, refused to accept this teaching. They instead asserted the centrality of their own understanding. They were in some way repeating the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, preferring their own judgment to that of the Lord. And the consequence for them would be the same. They would not receive the fruit of immortality from the tree of life.

For ourselves it is likely that not every aspect of the Christian revelation will be genial to our own intellect and will. We will probably think that if we were in charge we would have implemented some things differently or not at all. But hopefully by now we have come to trust even in those things which chaff against our flesh because we have come to trust in the identity of the one on whom the truth of all of the contingent teachings rests, Jesus himself, the Holy One of God. Let us pray for all of our separated brethren for whom the Eucharist is 'just a symbol' that they may find their way to something much greater, the rich feast of life at the table of the Lord. May we all be led by the Holy Spirit into a season of unity and peace like the one described in today's first reading.

The Church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria
was at peace.
She was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit she grew in numbers.


Friday, April 19, 2024

19 April 2024 - Flesh and Blood


The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?"

They grumbled with dissatisfaction at the bread Jesus desired to provide just as the crowds grumbled in the desert against Moses. They had remained somewhat patient with Jesus when he spoke of bread, allowing that this was simply a metaphor for wisdom with rich biblical precedent. They chaffed a bit when Jesus made himself central to this image, as if there were no way to attain wisdom that did not also even receiving Jesus. But they found intolerable this reference to consuming the Flesh of Jesus. It was simply too graphic, too physical.

Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood,
you do not have life within you.

The drinking of blood had been strongly prohibited by the Torah such that all animal sacrifices would need to be drained of blood before they could be consumed. The reason was that the life of the animal was in the blood and that life belonged to God (see Leviticus 17:14). But now it was precisely through the blood of his human body that Jesus desired to share his own divine life with the world. He was God, and this blood belonged to him to do with what he chose.

Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.

The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin (see Hebrews 4:10). The blood of the Paschal lamb in Egypt caused the angel of death not to slay the first born of the Israelites, but even marked by that blood they would all still die eventually. Only the blood of Jesus could truly take away sin and grant eternal life. There is so much we can learn from the deeply physical remedy Jesus provided to the problems of sin and death. Among them is how deeply ingrained into the material world that the problem of sin has become, affecting not just the souls of men and women, but also their bodies. But fortunately it also implies that the redemption Jesus desires for us is not merely to provide a Platonic escape route for disembodied souls. He desires to save bodies as well. The goodness of creation was compromised by sin, but not lost. It is in the Flesh and Blood of Jesus himself that it is restored. The further we distance ourselves from the reality of the Eucharist the more we also distance ourselves from the full reality, physical and spiritual, of our redemption.

Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.

We might have imagined that Jesus would have desired to establish a communion with us that was entirely spiritual, something utterly untethered to our material circumstances, available to us at any moment and in any place. But in just the same way that Jesus made himself the necessary locus of obtaining wisdom, so too did he make his Flesh and Blood the locus of the true communion. Widely available though it was to be it was nevertheless not going to be up to us to seek it anywhere we felt like seeking it. It was the oddly specific particularity of his offer that defined where salvation was to be found. To receive salvation and grow in communion we must learn to accept this offer, which no one would have guessed in advance, which sometimes seems strange even to those with faith in Jesus. Receiving his teaching requires thinking in a higher mode than the merely empirical and material perspectives that usually guide us. It requires, as he insisted, being drawn by the Father in the darkness of faith. The words Jesus spoke were Spirit and life, and only by the gift of the Spirit can we truly receive them.

Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me,
Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came,
that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

There is a real way in which we are blind to the things of faith until the Lord removes the scales from our eyes. In order to draw more deeply into the mystery of his life and love let us ask him to illuminate us, just as he did for Saul in Damascus. After he has done so we too may eat and truly recovery our spiritual strength. Then we too will be made strong as witnesses to proclaim Jesus, "that he is the Son of God".




Thursday, April 18, 2024

18 April 2024 - taught by God


Jesus said to the crowds:
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,

Why was Jesus insisting once again on the necessity of being drawn by the Father to come to him? Why not just proceed to teach, rather than first adding a disclaimer about what was required to receive his message? In a way, it seemed as if he were challenging the crowd, asking them to open themselves to the possibility that the Father was revealing divine truth to them. They knew how to learn from men. But he was asking them to be open to being "taught by God". And in this way the challenge was a bit of a provocation, since no one would want to miss what God was teaching.

Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.
Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God;
he has seen the Father.

Jesus was leading the crowds into the fullness of truth. And part of the difficulty in receiving that truth was the fact that he himself was the center of it all, the way, the truth, and the life (see John 14:6). It wasn't as it was with other religious figures where their teaching could stand independently of their own identities. Jesus was, in many ways, his own message. He had been conveying this at a spiritual level, presenting himself as the bread of true wisdom. But he was progressing to an even more dramatic revelation. He was attempting to build up the belief of the people so that they could accept that he was "the bread of life" not only spiritually, but indeed in his very "Flesh for the life of the world".

Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.

God provided manna to their ancestors in the desert. It gave them strength for their journey but it did not change the fate that awaited all women and men since the Garden of Eden. The food of immortality had been permanently sealed behind the flaming sword that forever banished humanity from Eden. But the bread that Jesus wanted to give was really food of immortality, given, as if from a new tree of life. God never delighted in the death of the sinner and always, from the first, had a plan to crush the head of the serpent who brought death into the world (see Wisdom 2:24). 

I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world.

The reason for the long run up preparing people to receive this teaching was precisely because Jesus knew that it was difficult to receive, indeed humanly impossible. Even his closest disciples did not understand. But they resolved to stick with the one who spoke the words of everlasting life. They were sufficiently open to the leading of the Father that even their own failure to understand wasn't going to make them abandon Jesus as many others did.

In the first reading from Acts we see another individual, an Ethiopian eunuch, who was open to being led by the Father and taught by God. This did not happen as he sat alone in his chariot, but rather through the instrumentality of the deacon Philip, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. From this encounter we can see the importance of being open to human guides who are led by the Holy Spirit when we lack understanding. It is still ultimately the Father drawing, and God teaching, but he nevertheless delights to involve human agency in the process. So we ought not be too proud to learn from others who are educated in truth and filled with the Spirit. Further, we should not use the fact that God will lead others as a way to excuse ourselves from involvement in the process. Just as the Spirit empowered Philip to help the eunuch so too does he subtly draw us into encounters where we can proclaim Jesus to others. And it isn't nearly so much about what we know in advance or bring to the encounter ourselves as it is to our willingness to be led. The Spirit is more than able to stage an encounter where the interesting thing we just heard is exactly what someone else needs to hear.

Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this Scripture passage,
he proclaimed Jesus to him.




Wednesday, April 17, 2024

17 April 2024 - one in Christ


Everything that the Father gives me will come to me,
and I will not reject anyone who comes to me,

The Father himself desires all to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth (see First Timothy 2:4). We can see him accomplish this in the confession of faith made by Peter, about which Jesus said, "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (see Matthew 16:-17). It was the same God who created all things and declared them to be good who now desired to redeem them in Christ. Unlike in the Garden of Eden, no one need be thrown out or permanently excluded. This was only possible because of Jesus was free of the sinful self-will that caused the inevitably boundaries between peoples and nations to form as they sought their own self interest at the detriment of their neighbors. Jesus was completely transparent to the will of his Father and so didn't need to include only those who met a limited set of personal preferences or to exclude those whom he found distasteful. He was so committed to the will of his Father that the rigid boundaries instituted between people by the law was not necessary for him to maintain his purity or holiness. He could fellowship with sinners and cleanse lepers with his touch. He was therefore, in himself, the basis of what the Father wanted to accomplish.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility (see Ephesians 2:14-16).

The trouble for us is that it is hard for us to enter or to desire to enter into this union and this peace because it involves, not only for Jesus, but especially for us, renunciation of our own will insofar as it is opposed to the will of God. This is not to say that we are forbidden to have any preferences or individuality of our own. But any time we prefer these to the will of God they become something more and worse than mere preferences. The Father is always trying to draw us and everyone closer to the heart of Jesus. But, as with the crowds who saw but did not believe, we too often prefer ourselves, the mirage of our preferences and predilections, to the true happiness that only God can provide.

And this is the will of the one who sent me,
that I should not lose anything of what he gave me,
but that I should raise it on the last day.

We sometimes feel as if the Christian life of holiness is a struggle where we ourselves are our own last resort. It is as though if we don't grit our teeth and strive, if we allow any measure of failure, there will be nothing left to catch us when we fall. Of course we might go to confession after, but that too seems to us to be a matter of our will. But Jesus is telling us that even when we fail and fall and forget about him he is still at work, willing that we not be lost, giving us the grace to rise up again. We don't ever fall back on ourselves alone. The hands of God always wait to catch us.

For this is the will of my Father,
that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him
may have eternal life,
and I shall raise him on the last day.

The Father desires that we learn to look upon the Son, not with interest or curiosity, but with faith. It is faith that makes the gaze transformative, helping us to become more and more what we behold, as John described:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (see First John 3:2).

This kind of attention is what allowed the crowd to receive the message of Philip in todays first reading. Let us too pay attention with one accord to what we hear and see of the mighty deeds of the Lord. May the whole world receive this grace of faith from the Father.

Let all on earth worship and sing praise to you,
sing praise to your name!


Tuesday, April 16, 2024

16 April 2024 - on getting satisfaction


What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?

Of course there had already been signs but they most of the crowd failed to recognize them. Yet some in the crowd were starting to suggest that Jesus was "truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world" (see John 6:14), the one fulfilling the promise of Moses, that "[t]he Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—" (see Deuteronomy 18:15). Others in the crowd were not ready to believe this. This insisted that if Jesus was the one promised by Moses he should do a sign significant enough to demonstrate it. That is why they provoked him by speaking of what happened by God through Moses:

He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

What those who said this seemed to fail to grasp was that the bread from heaven was not a work of Moses, but rather of the Father. There were asking Jesus to compete on a merely human level as if he were matching his own superpowers against those of Moses. But Moses was not in the same league as Jesus. Moses was involved in God providing sustenance that was only a sign pointing toward something greater. The Father was the one that gave that gift. And the greater gift toward which it pointed also originated in the Father's heart.

For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.

The crowd was briefly captivated by the promise of bread that, unlike the manna in the desert, gave life to the world. It seems that they would have been happy with anything they could have on their own terms, whether it was a sign that they could judge, or miraculous food that they could obtain. They would have been happy to concede that Jesus was greater than Moses if he would concede to these terms. However, Jesus was not only the giver of the gift but also the gift itself.

So they said to Jesus,
"Sir, give us this bread always."
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst."

Jesus was wisdom setting her table (see Proverbs 9:1-6). He longed to fulfill the prophesy made through Isaiah:

Why spend your money for what is not bread;
your wages for what does not satisfy?
Only listen to me, and you shall eat well,
you shall delight in rich fare.
Pay attention and come to me;
listen, that you may have life (see Isaiah 55:2-3).

He had been born in Bethlehem, the city of bread, and a trough from which animals fed, indicating from the very first that he was to be food for the world. But now, as he began to demonstrate that all of these threads pointed to him specifically the crowds took umbrage. The more concretely specific the revelation of God became, the harder it was for them to contain. The more Jesus revealed himself to be the fulfillment of every promise the more than came to understand that they could not have this fulfillment on their own terms. Yet, even so, Jesus still addressed himself to their desires. He promised an end to hunger and thirst, true spiritual fulfillment. The only question for the crowd would be whether their insistence on having it there way was so great that it would prevent them from having it at all any other way.

It is too easy to pay lip service to the great stories of salvation history and then find ourselves to stand in the shoes of the grumbling crowds or the persecutors of Stephen when such events play out in our lives. When their is no cost to our ego it is easy to affirm all that we are supposed to affirm about Jesus. But when there is the indication that it might require us to increasingly relinquish control of our lives to Jesus himself, what then? The secret that allowed Saint Stephen to stand fast, to be both bold and gentle, even during persecution was that he allowed the Holy Spirit to lead him. The one who was the bread of life had become the source of his own life to such a degree that his own death now mirrored that of Jesus himself.

"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
Then he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice,
"Lord, do not hold this sin against them";

May way also come to be so filled with the Spirit that we learn to live only for the bread which truly satisfies.




Monday, April 15, 2024

15 April 2024 - expiration dates


When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

These crowds were examples of people seeking miracles not wisdom, gifts, rather than the giver. At a certain stage of spiritual development there might be no other way to get our attention than to satisfy our physical hunger with loaves of bread. But these gifts are meant to point to the possibility of a more lasting form of satisfaction. Food that perishes is meant to give way to the one who is himself the bread of life.

Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.

The gifts that the Lord gives are themselves signs. If we come to understand them we will be led from temporary blessings to wisdom that is eternal.

Compared to light, she is found more radiant;
though night supplants light,
wickedness does not prevail over Wisdom (see Wisdom 7:29-30).

Wisdom may sound abstract and academic, but in the biblical parlance it is anything but. Wisdom is highly personal and directly impacts our lives day to day. The crowds asked Jesus, "What can we do to accomplish the works of God?" And we in turn ask, 'What homework do we have to do to have this wisdom?' in case we will be tested later. But what is being asked of us is actually something much simpler and more direct than we imagine.

Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”

The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture provides a good summary of the meaning of this statement that is worth quoting at length:
God’s work is the act that the Father performs in believers’ hearts, which enables faith in Jesus. As we will see developed in the discourse, this work has two aspects. Not only does “the work of God” refer to the work that God does in us, leading us to faith in Jesus (6:37, 39, 44–45, 65); it also applies to our work of yielding to God’s action in us. Our work is to yield to the Father’s work within us and so believe in his Son and receive him as the source of our eternal life.¹
What made Saint Stephen so compelling in his debate with the Synagogue of Freedman was not so much his in depth Scriptural knowledge, though this certainly played a part, much less an abstract syllogistic reasoning. It was rather the wisdom with which he spoke. That is why it seemed so much as though Jesus himself was speaking through him. It referred more to his openness to being led and used by Jesus rather than anything that he prepared in advance and brought to the situation. It was because of this that even in the midst of debate his face wasn't deformed with anger, but was rather radiant, "like the face of an angel". Our world needs more wisdom of this sort. And as James writes, if we are lacking, all we need to do is ask.

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you (see James 1:5)

1) Martin, Francis; Wright, William M. IV. The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture): (A Catholic Bible Commentary on the New Testament by Trusted Catholic Biblical Scholars - CCSS) (p. 121). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.