We are leaving Easter Season and going back to Ordinary Time. In our calendar the saints are muted in Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons in order to explore the mystery of Jesus Christ. Like Sundays, the saints do not take first place on these days.

The saints come marching in during Ordinary Time. Our yearly calendar features saints from different times and places because God works in different times and places, however it might seem. God works through saints.

Our recent celebration of the memorial of St. Philip Neri (May 25) is a good example. He lived a remarkably joyful life in 16th century Rome, a city engulfed in the scandals of the papacy and cries for reform. Along with other saints, like Ignatius Loyola, he brought hope and reform to the church of his time.

The trend in hagiography – the study of the saints – is to see them in the world that was theirs, which helps us live in the world that’s ours.“From their place in heaven, they guide us still.” (Preface of the Apostles) They shaped their world. We must do that too. 

Contemporary studies of the saints also  recognize saints weren’t perfect. They were part the political, social, intellectual and religious worlds they lived in. Still, more than today’s celebrities—the media darlings of our time, more than political or business figures, the saints shaped their world. We must do that too.

We need their wisdom and example today.

The saints point to an unfolding plan of God. In a few days we will be celebrating the feast of St. Justin, Martyr. (June 1) Justin was not only an early martyr for his faith, he was also a philosopher who enlisted reason to defend the faith. He’s a witness to God’s plan to embrace reason in our search meaning. A long line of philosophers follow him.

We celebrate St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, African martyrs, (June 3) who point to the expansion of the church in Africa in recent times. St. Boniface (June 5) was the apostle to the Germanic people and instrumental in changing the face of Europe.

There are many saints in our church. Those who revised our calendar of saints after the Second Vatican Council recognized there are some saints more important than others for understanding our developing church. So they designated the feasts of the more important saints as memorials. Others are optional memorials. For some nations or religious communities or individuals these remembered in optional memorials may be important, but saints honored by memorials need to be especially singled out and celebrated in our liturgy.  

In our liturgy now the saints are marching in.

Keep in mind the year 70 when reading the Gospel of Mark and the letters of James and Peter in this first week of ordinary time. In the year 70 Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and brought its treasures and many Jews as slaves in triumph to Rome. By the year 81 the Emperor Domitian built the Arch of Titus at the entrance to the Roman Forum to honor Titus, his brother, the general who crushed the Jewish revolt. Scenes of Titus’ army returning with the treasures and Jewish slaves–still visible on the arch today– would remind everyone of Roman might.

A few years before the year 70, Peter and Paul, leading figures of Christian expansion in the empire, were put to death under Nero. His persecution was unexpected. The years of Christian expansion described in the Acts of the Apostles– our readings during easter time– seemed over. Surely, Jewish and Gentile Christians experienced fear and questioned as a result of these crushing events?

The Gospel of Mark and the letters of James and Peter were written for Christians facing perilous times.

In Mark’s gospel Jesus tells his disciples:
“The Son of Man is to be handed over to men
and they will kill him,
and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.”
But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him“ (Mark 9)

The year 70 made Christians question the coming of the kingdom. Keep the year 70 in mind when reading the scriptures from Mark, James and Peter these weeks in the lectionary . We never know.

Ordinary Time resumes after Pentecost with the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, a recent feast that responds to the desire of many to acknowledge Mary’s role in the Church of Jesus Christ. Appropriately, the feast immediately follows Pentecost, when the Church was bornthrough the Holy Spirit. 

The readings for this feast are from the Book of Genesis and John’s gospel. Mary, the new Eve, stands at the Cross as life-giving blood and water flow from the side of her Son.

Mary will always be present in the Church, a woman of prayer, a mother proclaiming the promises of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

O God, Father of mercies, 

whose Only Begotten Son, as he hung upon the Cross, 

chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother, to be our Mother also; 

grant, we pray, 

that with her loving help, 

your Church may be more fruitful day by day, 

and exulting in the holiness of her children, 

may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

We’re back this week into Ordinary Time in the Church Year, after the Lent and the Easter seasons. We resume reading from the Gospel of Mark and begin the First Letter of Peter.

In chapters 10 and 11 of Mark’s gospel, Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem, a journey many do not understand. Like the rich young man, they decide not to join him. James and John also thought his journey would bring power and prestige, but it was not to be.

The First Letter of Peter is traditionally seen as written by the apostle Peter to Christians threatened by Nero’s persecution in the early 60s. Some modern scholars suggest the First Letter of Peter was written by a later author using Peter’s name.

We hear early baptismal teaching in this letter, reminding its listeners they are God’s own children: they have an inheritance that will never be taken away from them. Though the times be bad, don’t forget the treasure you have.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,
kept in heaven for you
who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith,
to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time.
In this you rejoice, although now for a little while
you may have to suffer through various trials,
so that the genuineness of your faith,
more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire,
may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-9}

When times are bad we need to remember the promises of God.

A feast of Mary occurs every month in the calendar. Tomorrow we have the recent feast of Mary, Mother of the Church. This month we also have the feast of the Visitation (May 31), placed in the calendar between the Feast of the Annunciation (March 15) and the Birth of John the Baptist (June 24) We’re reminded of Mary’s role as a bearer of good news to her older cousin Elizabeth, who will give birth to John. Mary always brings her Son to us too.

This year May 31st is Trinity Sunday. Might be good to celebrate the Visitation feast on Saturday, May 30th.

On May 25, Pope Leo will release his important letter on Ai, Magnifica humanitas.

The sending of the Holy Spirit

When the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.

  He had promised through the prophets that in these last days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them new life in Christ.

  Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first-fruits of all the nations.

  This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.

  If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.

Today’s the Feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples of Jesus. Our gospel describes the coming of the Holy Spirit, not at Pentecost, but Easter Sunday. The disciples of Jesus are locked in the upper room in Jerusalem in fear.  Jesus, risen from the dead, breathes on them: “Receive the Holy Spirit,” 

The Spirit brings not only  forgiveness and peace, but they leave the room and go out into the world they were afraid of. The Spirit is with them. 

 I think a lot of us today are like those disciples in the upper room–  afraid  of the world we live in. We may think our world is unmanageable. We’re closing our doors and shutting the windows. We’re afraid. We’re distancing ourselves from the world around us. 

The Feast of Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit, whom  Jesus promised, not just to his disciples but to the whole world. The Spirit helps us as individuals, but the Spirit’s sent to our world. “Come, Holy Spirit, and renew the face the earth.” 

We know the Holy Spirit differently than we know Jesus.  Jesus is God come  in human flesh; he’s like us. He’s born a child, lives as a human being, he reacts to events and people around him, he speaks in human words, he suffers and dies and rises. However distant our time is from his, we see and hear him as human like ourselves. 

It’s more difficult to describe the Holy Spirit, isn’t it? The scriptures use symbolic ways describing the Third Person of the Trinity. Our gospel today describes the Spirit as the breath of Jesus Christ. He breathed on his disciples and gave them the Spirit. He promises that the Holy Spirit will remain with us to “complete his work on earth and bring us the fullness of grace.”

Our first reading todays describes the Spirit is a driving wind, tongues of fire empowering those he rests on with wisdom, with new words. They reach out to the whole world and act bravely, not fearfully.

The New Testament describes the Holy Spirit in a number of ways.  The Spirit is a dove who rests on Jesus when he’s baptized in the Jordan by John. 

I find myself  particularly attracted that this image.

There’s a bird feeder outside where I live that’s attracts a lot of house sparrows, but some doves are regular visitors. I notice when a cat comes or a hawk flies over, the sparrows disappear immediately, but the doves are the last to go and first back at the feeder. Now, are they simple? 

 Could we say also they’re fearless? They’re not afraid of their enemies.

Think about the story of Noah in the ark. Noah wonders if the flood waters are gone, so what does he do ? He sends out a dove, who returns with a twig from an olive plant. There’s life there, you can get out of the ark. The dove is not afraid of floodwaters and dangerous places. 

The dove, the Holy Spirit, leads Jesus after his baptism  into the desert, the realm of Satan. The Spirit isn’t afraid of chaos or evil, but recreates the world.  The Holy Spirit is with us today. We don’t have to be afraid..

St. Gregory of Nyssa seems to allude to the fearlessness of doves in his Commentary on the Song of Songs:

“When love has entirely cast out fear, and fear has been transformed into love, then the unity brought by our Savior will be realized, for all will be united with one another through their union with the supreme Good. They will possess the perfection ascribed to the dove, according to our interpretation of the text “one alone is my dove, my perfect one.”

Gregory of Nyssa

The Church in its unity speaks in the language of every nation

The disciples spoke in the language of every nation. At Pentecost God chose this means to indicate the presence of the Holy Spirit: whoever had received the Spirit spoke in every kind of tongue. We must realise, dear brothers, that this is the same Holy Spirit by whom love is poured out in our hearts. It was love that was to bring the Church of God together all over the world. And as individual men who received the Holy Spirit, speaks in the language of every people.

  Therefore if somebody should say to one of us, “You have received the Holy Spirit, why do you not speak in tongues?” his reply should be, “I do indeed speak in the tongues of all men, because I belong to the body of Christ, that is, the Church, and she speaks all languages. What else did the presence of the Holy Spirit indicate at Pentecost, except that God’s Church was to speak in the language of every people?”

  This way is the way in which the Lord’s promise was fulfilled: No one puts new wine into old wineskins. New wine is put into fresh skins, and so both are preserved. So when the disciples were heard speaking in all kinds of languages, some people were not far wrong in saying: They have been drinking too much new wine. The truth is that the disciples had now become fresh wineskins, renewed and made holy by grace. The new wine of the Holy Spirit filled them, so that their fervour brimmed over and they spoke in manifold tongues. By this spectacular miracle they became a sign of the Catholic Church, which embraces the language of every nation.

  Keep this feast, then, as members of the one body of Christ. It will be no empty festival for you if you really become what you are celebrating. For you are the members of that Church which the Lord acknowledges as his own, being himself acknowledged by her, that same Church which he fills with the Holy Spirit as she spreads throughout the world. He is like a bridegroom who never loses sight of his own bride; no one could ever deceive him by substituting some other woman.

  To you men of all nations, then who make up the Church of Christ, you the members of Christ, you, the body of Christ, you, the bride of Christ – to all of you the Apostle addresses these words: Bear with one another in love; do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Notice that when Paul urges us to bear with one another, he bases his argument on love, and when he speaks of our hope of unity, he emphasises the bond of peace. This Church is the house of God. It is his delight to dwell here. Take care, then, that he never has the sorrow of seeing it undermined by schism and collapsing in ruins.