7th Week of Easter: Readings and Feasts

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The readings and feasts of this week are a wonderful preparation for the Feast of Pentecost on Sunday.

The Apostle Paul, in Luke’s readings from the Acts of the Apostles, hurries through the Roman world in answer to the command of Jesus:  “Go out into the whole world and preach the gospel. ”  He’s inspired by the Spirit, like Jesus.

Like Jesus, Paul bids farewell to his followers, the elders from Ephesus, and urges them to continue the ministry given to them by the Spirit. ( Tuesday and Wednesday) “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock. And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them. So be vigilant.”

Like Jesus, Paul must go up to Jerusalem (then to Rome). “ Compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem. What will happen to me there I do not know, except that in one city after another the Holy Spirit has been warning me that imprisonment and hardships await me. Yet I consider life of no importance to me, if only I may finish my course.

Paul experiences the passion of Jesus as he clashes with the Jewish leadership and appears before the Roman tribunal where Festus, judging him innocent yet in a quandary over the religious issues that are raised, sends Paul, at his own request, to be judged by the Emperor in Rome. (Thursday and Friday)

In the gospel readings through the week  from John,  Jesus bids farewell to his disciples and promises to be with them, no matter what. “In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have overcome the world.” (Monday) He will send them his Spirit.

“I pray for them,” Jesus says.  “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you preserve them from the Evil One.” (Wednesday) “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.” (Thursday)

Friday and Saturday’s gospel readings from John takes us to the Lake of Galilee where Jesus commissions his apostle Peter to feed his sheep. Peter will stretch out his hands and be led where he did not want to go–“signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.” Paul too will be led to death like Peter. He will follow Jesus.

We’re called to go through our world and fulfill the mission God gives us, The Lord prays for us and helps us as we go.

7th Sunday of Easter

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For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

Today’s Readings: www.usccb.org

If we look carefully at our readings at Sunday Mass we can always find ourselves and the world we live in. . Today, for example, in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we see a church rebuilding after the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, rebuilding from a failure.

They’re rebuilding from a scandal created by Judas, who betrayed Jesus and then killed himself. Peter says to the early Christian community, that it’s time to deal with Judas,

“who was the guide for those who arrested Jesus. He was numbered among us and was allotted a share in this ministry. “ We need someone to take his place.

Judas must have been a problem for the early church. The gospels  put him at the end of the list of apostles and tell us  he’s the one who betrayed Jesus, but Judas must have been an important disciple, not one of the least. For one thing, the gospels indicate he was in charge of their money. Which means he was someone they trusted. He must have been a talented man.

He certainly knew what was going on at the time. He could see the handwriting on the wall. The enemies of Jesus were going to put him to death. Judas must have been a shrewd judge of the time, a smart man. Yet,  despite all the good he had seen Jesus do, despite all the words he had heard say,  whatever went on his mind, he betrayed Jesus. 

He wasn’t the only one. All of Jesus’ disciples failed him.  When his enemies arrested him and put him to death, they all left him and fled.  Peter, who in our first reading is calling for a replacement for Judas in our reading today, cursed and swore that he never knew Jesus.  He could have just as well call for a replacement of himself.

The other disciples also failed him.  They all knew they  were involved in the massive scandal of the Cross. I think that any corporation today experiencing a scandal like that  would fire its president and its board of directors and get somebody else. 

I wonder if we could see in the way they elected a successor to Judas the sense of  insecurity that all the disciples had.  They were all involved, they were all complicit, in the death of Jesus. They’re not sure who they should chose, so they cast lots.

But Jesus didn’t fire them, he gave them new life and new responsibilities and a new vision.

I said at the beginning, we can always find ourselves and the world we live in in our readings at Mass. This certainly can apply to our church with its scandals and failures.  

But also there are scandals and failures in our world and so many of the institutions in our world. Right now, for example, the world is spending trillions of dollars on arming itself with every kind of instrument of war and mass destruction. We’re perfecting the art of war and throwing peace away, while so many die of starvation and lack of the common supports of life. We are living in a world filled with scandals and failures.

That’s why it’so important to listen to our gospel today, another reading that tells us about ourselves and the world we live in.

Jesus prays for his disciples at the Last Supper, even as he knows they will fail him.  When he rises from the dead and ascends into heaven he still prays for them and for us and for all the world. When Jesus ascends into heaven he doesn’t forget us. “I will not leave you orphans,” he told his disciples and he tells us.  He remembers  the church he founded and the world he came to save. He prays and his restoring grace is given.

When we come to church to pray we enter into the prayer of Jesus. He is praying for us and the world we live in. He prays for us in heaven as he prayed for us on earth. 

“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me,

so that they may be one just as we are one…

I do not ask that you take them out of the world

but that you keep them from the evil one…

As you sent me into the world,

so I sent them into the world.

And I consecrate myself for them,

so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

Voice of the Faithful

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Apollos is mentioned  in Saturday’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (18,23-28).   He reminds us that Peter, Paul and the other apostles were not the only teachers in the early church. Others brought the message of Christ to the cities and towns of the Roman Empire. Apollos was one of them.

He’s an eloquent, learned teacher who came to Ephesus from Alexandria, one of the great centers of Jewish and Christian learning, and he drew a following by preaching about Jesus. But Apollos doesn’t know everything, so a Jewish couple, Priscilla and Acquila, “took him aside and explained to him the Way of God more accurately.”

They were disciples of Paul who supported him with a job in their tent business. They traveled with Paul and certainly listened to his teaching, but I don’t think they were ever considered teachers as he and Apollos were. They were considered “hearers of the word,” more likely. Well informed, for sure, but still among those we would call today “the faithful.”

Yet, let’s not forget what important teachers “the faithful” are, as Priscilla and Aquila remind us.

I remember a story a brilliant priest told me long ago about a baptism he was conducting for an infant born to a member of his family. His father was the baby’s sponsor and according to the rite then was expected to recite the Creed.

“Can you say the Creed, Dad?” the priest said to his father.

“Who do you think taught it to you?,” the father sharply replied.

Faith can’t survive in this world without the faithful, ordinary Priscillas and Aquilas explaining it and  passing it on. It begins with parents, godparents and family passing on the faith to children. It continues in daily life as ordinary Christians share their faith with others. The church today needs to strongly acknowledge this key mission of the laity.

Pope Francis is urging the laity to speak out in his call for a synodal church.

Seedtime in Our Mary Garden

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Springtime is a busy time in our Mary Garden. Birds fly in to the fountain to drink, a stray cat wanders through occasionally ready to pounce on one of them. Insects, a solitary butterfly, flit through the spring flowers. But seeds are our main visitors these days, seeds in abundance, mostly from the Norway Maples, oaks and conifers, but there are others. Small seedlings we didn’t plant and don’t recognize are showing up all over our garden floor.

“We live in a world of seeds. From our morning coffee or bagel to the cotton clothes we wear and the cup of cocoa we might drink before bed, seeds surround us all the day long.” Thor Hanson writes in his delightful book, “Seeds” (New York, 2016) 

Seeds are the way plants reproduce, and this is that time. Hanson describes a seed as “a baby in a box with its lunch.” They come in all shapes and sizes. Seeds from our Norway Maples have wings; the conifers send our their seeds in armored cars. They come in abundance. Some of these babies will be grow to be maples and conifers.

 

Here we are in spring, seed time, an abundant time. The seeds tell us that. Do we also learn from them about God, a Springtime God, a Seedtime God? 

Seeds nourish, unite, endure, defend, travel, Hanson says in his book. They’re traveling now. Grasses, like wheat and rye and others, travel most. They’re built to travel far, every where.

Early Christian commentaries often speak of the Bread of the Eucharist made up of so many grains of wheat. They’re seeds gathered into Jesus Christ, and then scattered again to bring life wherever they go, everywhere. Our gardens and the earth at springtime are a book to learn from.

These days were rogation days in our previous church calendar. Today we shouldn’t forget to ask for God’s blessing by blessing our fields, our gardens, our backyards. There’s a beautiful blessing prayer in the church’s Book of Blessings, which begins by recalling scripture readings, like the parables of Jesus- the sower, the mustard seed, etc…

From despair in time of drought… Deliver us, O Lord.

From wastefulness in times of plenty…Deliver us, O Lord.

From neglect of those in need…Deliver us, O Lord.

From blindness to your presence in our world…Deliver us, O Lord.

From hunger and thirst…Deliver us, O Lord.

Lord of the harvest, you placed the gift of creation in our hands and called us to till the earth and make it fruitful, We ask your blessings as we place these seeds and plants in the earth, May the care we show them remind us of the tender care you give your people. Amen.

Reinterpreting Life

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Reinterpreting life is at the heart of the Easter mystery. It calls us to see life differently. Like the artist who reinterpreted the Cross on Calvary and made it the glorious sign we see above, we’re called to reinterpret the Calvary of our world today. Listen to the 4th century Saint Ephrem the Syrian:

Glory be to you, Lord,
You raised your cross like a bridge to span the jaws of death, that we might go from the land of death to the land of the living.
Glory be to you, Lord,
You took on a human body that every human being might live.

You are alive. Those who killed you sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, and it sprang up and brought forth an abundant harvest of human beings from the dead.

Come, brothers and sisters, let’s offer our love. Pour out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered himself on the cross to enrich us all.”

Reinterpreting life through the mystery of the Cross is at the heart of the charism of my community, the Passionists. In our Mary Garden here at the monastery, Mary stands with her Son on the stump of a cedar tree. A dead tree, yet brought to life by the presence of Jesus carried in Mary’s arms.

The Cross of Jesus helps us see life in our world, a “Faithful Cross” it’s called in an ancient hymn. And it is.

There is so much death in our world today. We need to reinterpret our time by the light of the mystery of the Cross of Jesus.

The Ascension of Jesus into Heaven

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Homily

The firstborn of the new creation

Here’s St. Gregory of Nyssa, commenting on our feast today:

The reign of life has begun, the tyranny of death is ended. A new birth has taken place, a new life has come, a new order of existence has appeared, our very nature has been transformed! This birth is not brought about by human generation, by the will of man, or by the desire of the flesh, but by God. 

  If you wonder how, I will explain in clear language. Faith is the womb that conceives this new life, baptism the rebirth by which it is brought forth into the light of day. The Church is its nurse; her teachings are its milk, the bread from heaven is its food. It is brought to maturity by the practice of virtue; it is wedded to wisdom; it gives birth to hope. Its home is the kingdom; its rich inheritance the joys of paradise; its end, not death, but the blessed and everlasting life prepared for those who are worthy. 

  This is the day the Lord has made – a day far different from those made when the world was first created and which are measured by the passage of time. This is the beginning of a new creation. On this day, as the prophet says, God makes a new heaven and a new earth. What is this new heaven? you may ask. It is the firmament of our faith in Christ. What is the new earth? A good heart, a heart like the earth, which drinks up the rain that falls on it and yields a rich harvest. 

  In this new creation, purity of life is the sun, the virtues are the stars, transparent goodness is the air, and the depths of the riches of wisdom and knowledge, the sea. Sound doctrine, the divine teachings are the grass and plants that feed God’s flock, the people whom he shepherds; the keeping of the commandments is the fruit borne by the trees. 

  On this day is created the true man, the man made in the image and likeness of God. For this day the Lord has made is the beginning of this new world. Of this day the prophet says that it is not like other days, nor is this night like other nights. But still we have not spoken of the greatest gift it has brought us. This day destroyed the pangs of death and brought to birth the firstborn of the dead. 

I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God. O what wonderful good news! He who for our sake became like us in order to make us his brothers, now presents to his true Father his own humanity in order to draw all his kindred up after him. Gregory of Nyssa

Mary, the Dawn

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13 century England

Father Justin Mulcahy, CP, a beloved teacher and musician who taught generations of Passionists in my province, wrote a hymn anonymously “Mary, the Dawn” under the name “Paul Cross” – St. Paul of the Cross is the founder of the Passionists.

It’s a wonderful hymn and prayer for a Mary Garden describing Mary’s role in the life of Jesus through simple earthly images. She’s the Dawn, he’s the perfect Day, the root, he’s the mystic vine, the grape, he’s the sacred wine, the wheat, he’s the living bread, the rose, he’s the rose blood-red.

I hope we can sing this song in procession to our Mary Garden for the Feast of Mary’s Visitation. Here it is,, with a few added stanzas at the beginning. I’m adding an organ melody by Greg Martinez

Prayer

Mary, full of grace,
Mother of us all
All sing your praise,
Pray for us all.

Mother of Jesus,
Mother of us all
Show us your Son
Savior of us all.

Mother of seasons,
Earth and sky and sea,
In all our ways
Help us count our days

Mary the Dawn,
Christ the Perfect Day;
Mary the Gate,
Christ the Heav’nly Way!

Mary the Root,
Christ the Mystic Vine;
Mary the Grape,
Christ the Sacred Wine!

Mary the Wheat,
Christ the Living Bread;
Mary the Rose,
Christ the Rose Blood-red!

Mary the Font,
Christ the Cleansing Flood;
Mary the Chalice,
Christ the Saving Blood!

Mary the Temple,
Christ the Temple’s Lord;
Mary the Shrine,
Christ the God adored!

Mary the Mother,
Christ the Mother’s Son.
Both ever blest while endless ages run.
Amen.

Our Mary Garden

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We take for granted the ground we stand on. We live at 86-45 Edgerton Boulevard, Queens, Long Island, New York, USA, but the ground we stand on goes deeper than that. 

The monastery we live in stands on the highest point of a spine of volcanic rock that goes back at least 400 million years, when the continent was being formed. 

About 22,000 years ago the last glacier, the height of a skyscraper, came down from Canada and stopped here. Our monastery stands where the glacier stopped. As it receded and melted the glacier gave us the land we stand on now. 

Southeast of us the glacier formed clay flatlands and sandy beaches facing the Atlantic Ocean. The winding depressions in our area, like Midland Parkway next to us, were streams from the glacier bringing sand and clay and rocks to the flatlands east of us. 

North of us the last glacier left the waters that became Long Island Sound. The glaciers also left water in the aquifer that still provides drinking water for most of Long Island today.

About 12,000 years ago, the first humans arrived here. Small bands of Indians lived in settlements near streams and waterways where they fished and hunted for game.Then, we came here.

Pope Francis says in his encyclical Laudato Si that we need a long view of life for the days ahead, because we’re facing a world that will be radically transformed by climate change. To prepare, Pope Francis says, we need “an ecological conversion.” 

That certainly means knowing more about the physical world we live in, so that we can understand it and care for it. Some say since the time of the Enlightenment in the 17th century we have concentrated too much on the human world and prioritized it too much. We’ve neglected creation and the ground we stand on. 

That means also remembering that God created the heavens and the earth and God has a plan for the world. God must remain in the picture of the changing physical world, otherwise life becomes chaotic. We can’t depend on science alone.

Pope Francis, in Laudato Si, while accepting science and its findings, said that besides scientific knowledge, we should mine our own religious traditions for the wisdom and hope they give and he said to look at the Book of Genesis and our spiritual and sacramental traditions to face the future.  

Our location here in Queens, particularly our garden, on the edge of a spine of volcanic rock, offers a valuable place for cosmic reflection. Our Mary Garden, based on the garden of Genesis, sees creation with eyes of faith and also with eyes of earthy experience. Water creates the garden, bringing life to everything else. Four rivers flow to the four corners of the earth. The plants in the four quadrants of the garden represent the staples of life– beauty, medicine and food. 

Mary stands in our garden as the representative of redeemed humanity, holding in her arms Christ, the Redeemer. She rejoices in creation before her and presents the one, “through whom all things were made,” who blesses the world with hope. Mary also, as a witness to the resurrection of Jesus, knows he has promised a new heaven and a new earth. “Behold, I make all things new,” 

Mary’s statue stands on the stump of a large cedar tree, a tree whose roots reach deepest into the earth. At the base of the stump are rocks; most come from parts of our continent swept up by the ancient glacier and deposited here. We put some rocks from the Holy Land there, and a friend recently gave us a rock from Ireland to add to it.

The flowers in the Mary Garden bring the various colors and shapes of the world’s plant life here. Flowers are perhaps the most popular “immigrants” of the plant world, coming from everywhere, welcomed everywhere. Many of them, like the marigold, “Mary’s Gold”, are particularly associated with the Mother of Jesus.

Our Mary garden stands next to a grotto recalling Mary’s appearance at Lourdes in the 19th century when faith in France was eroding in an age of skepticism. Her appearances later at Fatima and the strong devotion to her that persists today remind us she is a permanent witness to Jesus Christ, who promised to remain with us “all days”, even days when the foundations of the earth are shaken. Mary’s a witness who comes when times are bad.

The concept of the Mary Garden developed in 13th century Europe when, during the “Black Death”,  people believed a cursed earth caused millions to die. Today as the earth enters its own “passion” the Mary Garden offers a rich resource of Christian wisdom and hope for the days ahead. 

God loves the world. It is good. 

St. Paul at Thessaloniki, Philippi and Athens

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We’re reading about the journeys of St. Paul from the Acts of the Apostles this week of the Easter season. Luke carefully notes the various places Paul and his companions set up churches as they go from Jerusalem to Rome. The gospel must be preached everywhere in the world, Jesus said. 

Paul’s journeys are often called travel journeys and our Bibles supply maps to help us follow them. But Paul’s journeys are more than journeys of travel; Luke sees the gospel being proclaimed to the world in many dimensions. There are twists and turns that reveal God’s surprising ways his plan for the church develops.

Look at the accounts this week. On Monday Paul speaks to women at their place of prayer along the water in Thessaloniki and he invites Lydia–or rather she invited herself–-to join him in his mission. Just as he does in his gospel, Luke wants us to see that women are meant to hear the Good News and have a role in bringing its message to others.

On Tuesday Paul and Silas are thrown into prison at Philippi. (Acts 17:22-34) Not only is the jailor and his household converted to the gospel, but Luke tells us the prisoners were listening as they prayed in the night. And so, as he does often in his gospel, Luke points out that the poor must hear the gospel. Most of these prisoners will never get to one of Paul’s house churches, but they must hear the gospel all the same.  

On Wednesday, Paul speaks to the intellectuals in Athens.The results of his preaching don’t seem promising, only a handful seem to respond. But the gospel has to be brought to places like Athens. The gospel has to be brought into the world of learning and science, a world often a showcase of human pride. Still, it has to be proclaimed to those searching for the truth.

The missionary journeys are more than careful, well-planned journeys from place to place conceived by Paul for establishing churches. They are God’s way for the spread of the gospel. His plan is not ours, and that’s why it’s hard for us to understand.