The lens Jesus used was the lens of love, and He saw love in every person on the face of the earth.

 

Thirteenth Sunday in  OT  C  2022

 

The great journey begins.  Jesus resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.  Jesus has already set Jerusalem as the heart of the Gospel story.  In going to Jerusalem, Jesus was walking the road to his death and resurrection.  Jesus knew full well that in going to Jerusalem, he was opening himself up to the plan of His heavenly Father.

Those who journey with Jesus in every generation must make Jerusalem their goal.  For us to journey to Jerusalem is no simple travelogue but a vocation to discipleship and mission that will indeed take the rest of our lives. I have had the privilege of visiting the Holy Land a couple of times.   These have been most memorable and very inspiring for me.  But the Gospel imperative is even more than that.   For you and I to set our faces toward Jerusalem is the surrender we must make when we choose to follow God’s call in our lives – wherever that may lead us.  In other words, the Gospel invites us to reflect on the cost of discipleship.

To be honest, many of us, myself included, have a way of bargaining with God over the terms of our discipleship.  At various times, we give the Lord different responses to the Lord’s call to be a disciple.  Sometimes our actions suggest we are saying:  “No thanks.”  Sometimes our response is:  “Maybe later.”  Hopefully our response at other times is: “Be it done to me according to your Word.” – the response of Mary at the Annunciation.

But well before we examine our own whole or half-hearted response to Jesus’ invitation to discipleship, he sets us straight on how we are to judge others’ response to God’s call.   From the Gospel account, Jesus sent his messengers ahead of him.  On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”  Jesus turned and rebuked them and they journeyed to another village. 

Jesus is saying to James and John:  “It’s none of your business how others respond.”

 

 

Jesus’ decisive command to James and John that they express commitment to him through compassion for others.   St. Paul writes that we must abandon the violence of biting and devouring one another, choosing instead to serve one another through love.

You and I need to do an inventory of the judgements, the gossip, the stereotyping, and the negativity we have toward all those who get under our skin.  The message of Jesus is very clear:   Let go of your judgments about others; rather make the commitment to serve one another with love.

Our focus needs to be on ourselves.  How do we respond to our call to discipleship of the Lord Jesus?  Our Gospel question of the week was and is:  What stands in the way of you following Jesus more completely?  This is such an important question because from the Gospel perspective we must be “all in” our discipleship of Jesus.

True discipleship is a full-time job.  We   can’t be disciples at certain times but not at others.    It’s not like a project we can set aside and resume later.

To be a disciple of Jesus to live as Jesus, to love as Jesus, and to forgive as Jesus forgives us.  The heart of Jesus is filled with love and because the heart of Jesus was filled with the love of His heavenly Father, Jesus loved everyone because he saw the Father’s love in each and every person.

The lens Jesus used was the lens of love and he saw love in every person on the face of the earth.

There is such an important truth to be learned by the disciples of Jesus.  The world is as your heart sees it, not just as it is out there.  What do I mean by that?  When we look at life through the lens of love, we see God’s love in all of life.

What my life gets overwhelmed by fear, by anxiety, when I have trouble forgiving someone, when I get too stuck on myself, when my ministry seems like I’m

 

 

 

rearranging the furniture on the Titanic, when my view of the world is filled only with dark clouds, I am not looking at life through the lens of love.  My heart is not filled with the love of Jesus.  For when my heart is filled with the faith and love of Jesus, I see my future as full of hope and I see the love of God in all the people of my life.

What does it mean to be “all in” in our discipleship of Jesus?

To be a disciple of Jesus means discovering the way of love.   Disciples must learn how to love.  To be a disciple you must forgive one and all.  There can be no exceptions.  If you’re going to be a disciple of Jesus, you must be detached from everything but one thing and that is Jesus Himself.

How is it for you when your family isn’t all you want it to be; how is it when your job situation isn’t what you would like; how is it when the Church we live in and the world we are part of is all mixed up?

The world is as your heart sees it, not so much as it is out there[FJS1] .  If your heart is filled with the love of your heavenly Father, what you see will be filled with love.  I believe in the basic truth that we see life through the lens of our heart.  When our hearts are filled with the love of Jesus, we will see in the people of our lives the love that is in our hearts.   Jesus’ heart was filled with love for all people because he saw the love of God in all people.

Who in your life do you find most difficult to reach out to and love?  Perhaps it is the person who has hurt you deeply -- even a family member; or person whose views on life are completely different than yours.  The discipleship question for all of us is can we love as Jesus loves?  Can we forgive as Jesus forgives us?an undocumented immigrant; a person whose sexual orientation is different that yours; a fellow Catholic who lives out their spirituality in a way you disagree with;  and so on and so on.

If we have the heart of Je

As we transition to the Liturgy of the Eucharist, as we prepare to receive the Eucharist,s

Each time we receive Communion,  may we testify to the reality of our Catholic faith.  We are being nourished with the life and the love of Jesus.  Our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is sharing with others the love we have received from the Lord himself.

 

Have a Blessed Day.

 

---

 [FJS1]

Pope Francis: The Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect; it is medicine for all of us who stand in need.

 

Body and Blood of Christ  C 2022

 

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Eucharist; the Feast of Corpus Christi; the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.  At the in initiative of our National Conference of Catholic Bishops, we are beginning a three-year process of Eucharistic Renewal in which we seek to deepen our relationship with Christ Jesus by being fed and nourished at the Table of the Lord and continuously giving thanks to the Lord our God for the many blessings we enjoy.

May we ponder in faith and in awe the mystery that we celebrate.

Today as we receive Communion, as we receive the host in our hands at Communion, we are holding the Body of Christ.  We are holding Jesus who taught us his parables of love and forgiveness for one and all.  We are holding in our hands Jesus who walked on the water.  We are holding in our hands Jesus who died on the cross to save us from our sins.

What a profound privilege we have to receive the Body and Blood of Christ!

Regrettably we too easily take for granted this mystery of the Eucharist.

Sad to say, it is easy to neglect spiritual food.  It’s too easy to skip daily prayer and the weekly celebration of the Eucharist.  We often don’t seem any worse for the wear and tear.  But over the long haul, we can get out of touch with our deepest spiritual hungers.

The thing of it is with spiritual hungers; we can be spiritually hungry without being in touch with our deep hunger.  As the great St. Augustine, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.

Far from being a pit stop for fast food and entertainment in the journey of life, the gift of the Body and Blood of Christ is the necessary sustenance for the spiritual growth of each member of the community and for the community itself.

As we reflect on the mystery of the Sunday Eucharist, we are reflecting on the central prayer of our faith tradition.  We are part of a tradition that is nearly 2000 years old.  The Sunday Eucharist is our participation in the paschal mystery of Christ Jesus.  The Sunday Eucharist satisfies the deepest hungers of the human heart.

Today is Father’s Day.  We congratulate and bless all the fathers of our faith community.  You are a blessing to us all.

May the fathers of our parish community keep us in touch with the deepest spiritual hungers are for Jesus’ power to love and forgive his enemies rather than embarrass and crush them.  What we hunger for is Jesus’ power to be bighearted; to love beyond one’s own family, and to love poor and rich alike; to live inside of charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, despite everything in life that militates against these virtues.

Left to our own will power and our own desires, we get too easily trapped in self-centeredness.  The truth of the life of all of us is that we are deeply flawed by sin.

With great joy, we have recently celebrated two First Communion weekends in the parish.  The spiritual joy experienced in our First Communicants and in their families is so very precious.  The ritual of our First Communion celebrations is so inspiring.  It is a moment of joy for me as a priest to give First Communion to one of our younger parishioners.  In age-appropriate ways, they celebrate the life-giving presence of Jesus within them.  Thanks be to God.   

The challenge we have as a parish community is to sustain our Eucharistic faith and joy continuously throughout the year.  Even though our First Communicants won’t be wearing their communion dresses and suits Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, nonetheless the God whose love for us is unending continues to offer to us the Bread of Life and the Cup of salvation always.

As the congregation approaches the altar and receives communion, it is as if the Church is filling up with Christ.  We are not only in union with Christ, but we are also in communion with all those who receive him.  The Eucharist is a community affair, not simply Jesus and me.  We are not only in union with Christ; we are in communion with all those who receive Christ.  This is the meaning of Church.  The Church is a people of God who are in union with Christ in the mystery of the Eucharist.  We are also a people in communion with all those who receive Christ Jesus in the Eucharist.

There are some who want us to judge whether a person is worthy or eligible to receive Communion.  I am clearly not in that lane.  I believe that none of us are worthy to receive Communion as we pray before receiving Communion:  Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof but say but the word and my soul shall be healed.”  This is a profound truth that it is the love and mercy of Jesus that enables us to approach the altar.

As Pope Francis, the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect; it is medicine for the sick.

The Eucharist is our bond of communion with Christ who cleanses us our sins and unites in marvelous communion with God and gives our dignity to be God’s beloved sons and daughters.  Further, the Eucharist binds us together with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.  We are called to the Body of Christ – the bearers of hope and love to people who are sick in body and spirit.

The Mass is our greatest prayer; we gather to give thanks to the Lord our God.  Yet it is what we do outside the Mass that also determines the genuineness of the offering we make at the altar each Sunday.  By our mutual love and by our concern for those in need we will be recognized as true followers of Christ.  Go in peace glorifying the Lord by our lives in all that we say and do this day and every day.

As a Eucharistic community, we gather with an attitude of gratitude.  We gather to give, to give thanks to the Lord our God.  We give thanks because we have been fed and nourished at the Table of the Lord with a food that enables to live as Jesus lives, to love as Jesus loves, to forgive as Jesus forgives.  Amen

 

Have a Blessed Day.

 

 

 

Defensive Christianity is not a Biblical idea.

 

PENTECOST  C  2022

Pentecost arrived for the disciples after fifty days of uncertainty.  True, Jesus had risen.  Overjoyed, they had seen him, listened to his words and even shared a meal with him.  Yet they had not overcome their doubts and fears.  They still met behind locked doors.

This leads us to ask what fears do we have that we have not overcome and that keep us behind locked doors?  A fear I have is that parishioners who have been faithful members of Holy Spirit and St Joseph’s before the pandemic now have just gotten used to not coming to Church and no longer have a need or a desire to participate in our weekly celebration of the Eucharist. I wish to try to understand the spiritual journey of another but I fear we can lose sight that the heart and soul of our parish life is the weekly celebration of the Eucharist.  There is no substitute in the spiritual life to replace encountering the Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  In Eucharist we allow, we welcome the Lord deep within our spirit.

What makes the Church of the Holy Spirit our spiritual home is our sacramental life and most especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  It is the presence of Jesus within us that gives life to our parish community.  To lose sight of this reality is my fear I wrestle with.

But thanks be to God, In the great Feast of Pentecost, God is born again not in one body that was Jesus but in a body of believers that is the Church.  Pentecost is the Feast of the birth of the Church.  The Spirit of the Risen Christ is in the Body of believers, in the community of the baptized, in the whole Church.

The feast of Pentecost brings to a close the season of Easter because the gift of the Spirit is the inevitable outcome of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The church understood clearly that what happened to Jesus on Easter Sunday was not just an amazing miracle to prove that he really was the Son of God. It was rather the next step in God’s desire to heal, once and for all, the relationship between himself and a broken humanity. Now the outpouring of the Spirit of Jesus means that our relationship with God is fundamentally transformed. So, let’s celebrate of our new life in the Spirit and the birthday of the church as the new people of God.

Initially the disciples were locked in the upper room out of fear.  On the Day of Pentecost those locked doors were thrown open; the fear in the disciples was replaced with a Spirit-filled courage and enthusiasm.  They were now fearless proclaimers of the Word of God.

What had changed for the disciples?  They received the Holy Spirit.

The great truth of Pentecost – for the first disciples and for us as well – is that the Holy Spirit has the power to enlarge and expand the human heart if we allow the Spirit of Jesus to grow and enliven us from within.

In today’s first Scripture reading, we hear how the Holy Spirit was given to the followers of Jesus.   Listen again: “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.  And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.  Then there appeared to them tongues of fire, which parted and came to rest on each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled to proclaim.”

The great meaning of Pentecost is that it was time for God to be born again not in one body that was Jesus but this time in a body of believers who would receive the breath of life from their Lord and pass it to others.  We see how the growth of the Church took place with the influence of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles.  The Book of Acts is the story of the incredible growth of the first Christian communities.  The Acts of the Apostles is kind of like a Gospel of the Holy Spirit.  In the first four books of the New Testament, we learn the Good News of what God did through Jesus Christ in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  In the Book of Acts of the Apostles, we learn the Good News of what God did through the Holy Spirit.

The first and foremost attribute of the servant church is its daring openness to the Spirit.  It is our prayer that the Church make room for the release of the Spirit in the life of the community and the courage to act when it does.  We are not to fall back into being the safe and self-absorbed church, but rather a place of miraculous hope and extravagant hospitality.

God chose a young virgin named Mary to bear God’s Son, and Jesus chose a bunch of Galilean fishermen to share in His ministry.   God chooses you and me to hear his message of hope and promise and love in this place and in our world this day.

 Defensive Christianity is not a Biblical idea.  The posture of Christian disciples is not hiding in fear to protect ourselves.   No, the disciples are sent to proclaim the Good News of the love of Jesus to one and all.  St. Joseph’s and Holy Spirit are called to be sister parishes who help and serve and love one another.

In receiving the Holy Spirit, the first disciples received the gift of forgiveness.  They also were able to speak in tongues and so were understood by those listening.  There is a universal language in which everyone understands and embracing all difference: a language of forgiveness.  I think if we can forgive each other that action crosses all cultures and invites whoever is the Other to see us as brothers and sisters.

Now more than ever, we invoke the Holy Spirit to wipe away the darkness of anxiety allowing us to be guided by the light of Christ and to trust in God’s promise of new life.

Our Gospel today takes place on Easter evening.  On that first evening they were gathered in a house with the doors locked, because they were afraid – afraid of being killed, just as Jesus had been killed three days before.  But Jesus was among them, and He said: “Peace be with you.”  To this scared group of former followers, the Risen Christ begins by bringing the peace of God.

Filled with inner peace that only God can give, our hearts are like a deep sea, which remains peaceful, even when its surface is swept by waves.

On this day of Pentecost, may we pray for healing and unity for our Church and our nation as we now come to the Table of the Lord.  May we all commit ourselves to using our God-given giftedness in the service of one another. 

Have a Blessed Day.