22 Sat Weekday[Saint Paulinus of Nola, Bishop; Saints John Fisher, Bishop, and Thomas More, Martyrs;] 2 Cor 12:1-10/Mt 6:24-34
23 SUN THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST (Corpus Christi) Solemnity
Gn 14:18-20/1 Cor 11:23-26/Lk 9:11b-17
Our gospel readings, from Matthew’s gospel, the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5, 1-7,29) are meant for all of us, ordinary or extraordinary saints. They also indicate how Jesus lived his life and ministry. He lives what he teaches.
The readings from the letters to the Corinthians offer a picture of church life then and now.
The saints this week come from different times, Romuald, 11th century Italy, Paulinus of Nola, 5th century Italy, Aloysius Gonzaga, 16th century Italy, Thomas More and John Fisher, 16th century England. Holiness is found in every age and social condition.
The Church of England also honors Thomas More and John Fisher for their holiness.
If there were a Catholic version of Jeopardy there might be some questions we could ask about the Feast of St. Barnabas today, June 11. Did he die on this day? No. Were his relics brought to some church on this day? No. We celebrate his feast today because he’s a key figure in the Post Pentecostal church. He tells us something about the leadership of that church, especially, and also about church leaders today.
Leaders can disagree.
Barnabas and Paul were missionaries together, but a sharp disagreement occurred between them and they went their separate ways. (Acts 15, 36-41) Will disagreement always occur among Christian leaders?
Today the US Catholic bishops meet in Baltimore to deal with the crisis of sex abuse in our church. They agree the issue has to be strongly addressed, but they seem divided about how to address it. There are strong personalities involved; men holding on to positions they’re committed to.
We might like it to be different, but it was that way from the beginning. The Spirit leads the church, not human beings. “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”Then, completing their fasting and prayer, they laid hands on them and sent them off.” (Acts 13, 1-3)
From the beginning the Spirit brought human beings to lead who are different and will disagree.
Why? So that no one can boast?
The Spirit is our guide. Lord, send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth.
How about political leaders? Another story, or the same?
My guess is it’s the same. Beware of the one who knows it all.
JUNE 10 Mon The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church (Tenth Week in Ordinary Time) Memorial
Gn 3:9-15, 20 or Acts 1:12-14/Jn 19:25-34
11 Tue Saint Barnabas, Apostle, Memorial
Acts 11:21b-26; 13:1-3 (580)/Mt 5:13-16
12 Wed Weekday
2 Cor 3:4-11/Mt 5:17-19
13 Thu Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church Memorial 2 Cor 3:15—4:1, 3-6/Mt 5:20-26
14 Fri Weekday
2 Cor 4:7-15/Mt 5:27-32
15 Sat Weekday
2 Cor 5:14-21/Mt 5:33-37
16 SUN THE MOST HOLY TRINITY Solemnity
Prv 8:22-31/Rom 5:1-5/Jn 16:12-15
Mary, the Mother of the Church (Monday after Pentecost) is a new feast added to the calendar in 2018. The feast is inspired by the conviction of the participants of the Second Vatican Council that Mary is the Mother of the Church. It’s celebrated the Monday after Pentecost as the days of ordinary time, the season of the Holy Spirit, begin.
Mary stood by the Cross as her Son gave birth to the church. She’s a tender mother and caring guide standing with the people he redeemed, as they live the mystery of redemption day by day.
We’ll be reading from Paul’s 2nd Letter to the Corinthians for the next two weeks at Mass. A good way to go into Ordinary Time. The Corinthian church, diverse and contentious, is a favorite for historians seeking to know the early church. It’s a good way for us to understand our own church too.
“I sing of arms and a man” , words the Latin poet Virgil used to describe Aeneas, a founder of Rome. His fate was to take up arms and after much struggle found a great city. The words could also describe our generation. For most of the last hundred years, we have taken up the arms of war to achieve our various purposes.
Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of one of the great battles of all time–the sea born invasion of Normandy by175,000 Allied troops, which led to the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. The Second World War, which began in 1939 and ended in 1945 was followed by the Korean War (1950-51}, the War in Vietnam (1965-73) and the War in Iraq (2003-present). Other wars besides these have raged world wide.
Will the day come to lay down our arms? Not soon, it seems, and the arms in our hands become still deadlier. We don’t live in a peaceful world.
War over the years, with all its consequences, affects us in many ways. I’m wondering about the way it affects our theological imagination. Has it weakened our sense of hope in life and in God? Have the long years of war brought doubt about human life flourishing here on earth? Is personal flourishing now the only way to go? So let’s survive the best we can on our own, in a house or country surrounded by walls.
We take up arms to control land and resources. Has chronic war also affected the way we see our planet? Should we abandon our fragile and unsteady earth, and make heaven our goal? Or maybe survive the best we can on our own, here and now, without a thought of it?
The Feast of the Ascension points to heaven and tells us that’s our goal. But what about the world God created? Doesn’t it yearn for something new and needs our care? The Feast of the Ascension is linked to Pentecost and the promise of the Spirit who teaches us all things.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and renew the face of the earth.
I was on the F train coming in from Penn Stations late yesterday morning. The cars were moderately crowded, empty seats here and there. The usual mix of quiet mid-day travelers going or coming. Where? Always hard to tell, you can only guess.
Then suddenly at 5th Avenue two classes of chattering kids got on. City kids, for sure; not wide-eyed strangers to the underground world. They grabbed the empty seats and kept chattering away, filling the car with children’s voices. Some adventure in the city had stirred their sense of wonder. Their voices were bubbling over with excitement. I judged they were 5th or 6th graders, maybe 40 of them.
I noticed one of their teachers standing near me, a young woman. One, two or three kids turned to her like a magnet for some quick exchange. She had that pleased look that comes when something’s well done. She had just led these kids to unknown worlds by subway.
The first stop in Queens the door opened and they quickly flowed out, still chattering, kids, chaperones, teachers, in well attended lines, going back to school, then home.
Thomas Berry, a Biography by Mary Evelyn Tucker John Grim and Andrew Angyal, Columbia University Press, 2019 is available.
I was one of Fr. Thomas Berry’s first students. It was at Holy Cross Preparatory Seminary in Dunkirk, NY in 1950. Tom taught history to seminarians that year and I was in his class.
I remember the first day he came into class with a stack of booklets in his hands. “We have to know what’s going on today in the world,” he said, “and so we’re going to study The Communist Manifesto.”
Now remember, this was 1950. Senator Joe McCarthy had begun a witch-hunt to root out Communist sympathizers and The Communist Manifesto was on the church’s list of forbidden books. We studied it.
Tom never mentioned Joe Mc Carthy or the threats of a Communist takeover in Europe or what was happening then in China. No, he was interested in where the Communist Manifesto came from. Beyond Karl Marx and Lenin, he traced it back to the Jewish prophets and their demands for justice for the poor and human rights. The long view of history was what interested him.
After the Communist Manifesto, we studied St. Augustine’s City of God. Two loves are building two cities, Augustine said. Again, Tom didn’t dwell much on the historical events used by Augustine to illustrate his theory of history. It was the overall dynamic of the two loves in conflict over time that interested him.
From Augustine, we studied Christopher Dawson and his book The Making of Europe. Dawson, one of the 20th century’s “meta-historians,” wasn’t interested only in Europe; he was interested in the whole panorama of civilizations that came before it. That was Tom’s interest too.
As far as I remember, Tom didn’t speak of the universe and its evolution, his focus in later years, yet you could see him heading that way. He had a mind for the long view of things.
Pope Francis in Laudato Si also has a mind for the long view of things. The pope doesn’t quote from The Communist Manifesto, but he insists, more strongly than the manifesto, on the rights of the poor, to which he joins a strong insistence on the rights of the earth.
Can we also hear echoes of Augustine’s City of God in Laudato Si? I think so. The pope speaks of two loves in conflict. There’s the love that builds the city of man. How describe it today? How about blind consumerism; we love things too much. We love our vision of material progress too much. We love our technology too much. We love our control over the earth too much. We love ourselves too much. The result is “global indifference” to an environment falling apart. (Laudato Si, 9,14)
Opposing that love is a love the pope sees in Francis of Assisi, “who was particularly concerned for God’s creation, for the poor and the outcast…he would call all creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’… If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.” (LS, 13)
Berry, like the pope in Laudato Si, accepted science’s view of our environment, yet also like the pope he distanced himself from a major trait of the era of the Enlightenment which unfortunately causes us in the western world “to see ourselves as lords and masters of our environment, entitled to plunder her at will.” (LS, 2)
Science teaches us a lot about our environment and its perilous condition today, but knowledge is one thing and love is another. Two loves are at work. Love doesn’t always follow what we know, especially if our hearts are fixed on something else. Love is hard to change.
The evironment doesn’t seem to be a big issue in our churches, in the media or in the political world. We seem to be avoiding what the pope calls “an ecological conversion.”
It’s not going to happen overnight through some quick fix. We need to get ready for the long haul. And what does that mean? We need wise teachers and leaders to guide us, like Thomas Berry and Pope Francis.
“The present time is not a time for desperation, but for hopeful activity.” Thomas Berry, CP
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