Tag Archives: Jesus Christ

The Story of Ann and Joachim

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Joachim 1
Joachim among the Shepherds

We celebrate the Feast of Ann and Joachim today, parents of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.  The New Testament says nothing about them, but an early 2nd century document called the Gospel of James tells their story,

Ann and Joachim lived in Jerusalem, the ancient source says, where Joachim, a descendant of David and a wealthy man, provided sheep and other offerings for the temple sacrifices. The two had ties to Bethlehem nearby and Nazareth in Galilee.

They were well off but for twenty years disappointment clouded their marriage: they had no child. Even after vowing to dedicate their child to God, no child came. And so, at a time when children were treasured, they were thought poor. Descendants of David, they were blamed also for failing to continue the line the Messiah would come from.

Stung by criticism, Joachim spent more time in the mountains, brooding among the shepherds and their flocks. As her husband distanced himself from her, Ann too grew sad. God seemed far away.

In the garden one day, noticing some sparrows building a nest in a laurel tree, Ann burst into tears: “Why was I born, Lord?” she said, “birds build nests for their young and I have no child of my own. The creatures of the earth, the fish of the sea are fruitful, and I have nothing. The land has a harvest, but I have no child  in my arms.”

At that moment, an angel of the Lord came and said, “Ann, the Lord has heard your prayer. You shall conceive a child the whole world will praise. Hurry to the Golden Gate and meet your husband there.”

At the same time, In the mountains an angel in dazzling light  spoke to Joachim, “Don’t be afraid, the Lord hears your prayers. God knows your goodness and your sorrow and will give your wife a child as he did Sara, Abraham’s wife, and Hannah, mother of Samuel. You  will have a daughter and name her Mary. Give her to God, for she will be filled with the Holy Spirit from her mother’s womb.  Go back to Jerusalem. You’ll meet your wife at the Golden Gate and your sorrow will turn into joy.”

Joachim and Ann met at the Golden Gate to the temple, the place of God’s presence. They embraced as they spoke of the angel’s promise. Returning home, Ann conceived and bore a daughter, and they called her “Mary.”

Joachim 4

When she was three years old, Ann brought Mary to the temple to learn the scriptures, to pray and take part in the Jewish feasts. She watched her father bring lambs to be offered in sacrifice. She grew in wisdom and grace in God’s presence.

Mary in temple Giotto

When Mary approached marriage age– then 15 or so–her parents arranged for her marriage as it was customary. They sought the high priest’s advice, tradition says, and Joseph of Nazareth was chosen as her husband. Nazareth was then their home.

The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced that she was to be the Mother of Jesus. By the power of the Holy Spirit she conceived the Child.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph returned to Nazareth where Jesus grew up. He was raised in a large extended family that included his grandparents, Ann and Joachim, who cared for him as a child.

No one knows just when or where Ann and Joachim died, but Jesus must have treasured them in life and on their passage to God.

The 2nd century Protoevangelium of James repeats a fundamental theme of  the Book of Genesis: God promises Adam and Eve many children who will enjoy the blessings of the earth. God repeats the promise to an aged, childless couple, Abraham and Sarah, and again to Hannah, who bemoans her childlessness to the priest Eli in the temple. In the same way, God gives a child to Ann and Joachim. Mary, their daughter, brings blessings to the nations through her son Jesus Christ, born of the Holy Spirit.

Giotto’s 14th century illustrations (above) from the Arena Chapel in Padua. helped popularize the story of the parents of Mary in Italy, Europe and the rest of the western world.

It’s an important story for grandmothers and grandfathers. Like Ann and Joachim they have a big role raising the next generation. More than they think.

The Martyrs of Daimiel

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Damiel

Civil wars are hard to understand. The American Civil War, the war in Rwanda in the 1990s, the war in Bosnia. That’s true also of the Spanish Civil War, which took place from 1936-1939 between forces of the left and the right. Great numbers of innocent people lost their lives. Outsiders from Germany, Russia and Italy made the war a testing ground for their own war machines. The scars are still there.

Many Catholic clergy were killed, especially in the early months of the war, including 13 bishops, 4,172 diocesan priests and seminarians, 2,364 men religious and 283 nuns in a period referred to as Spain’s “Red Terror.” Today the Passionists remember their Martyrs of Daimiel, Spain.

Between July 22nd and October 24th, 1936, twenty-six religious from the Passionist house of studies, Christ, the Light, outside the city of Daimiel, about eighty miles south of Madrid, died at the hands of anti-religious militiamen at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War

They were: Niceforo Diez Tejerina, 43, provincial superior, who previously served as a missionary in Mexico and Cuba after being ordained in Chicago, Illinois.; Ildefonso García Nozal, 38; Pedro Largo Redondo, 29; Justiniano Cuestra Redondo, 26; Eufrasio de Celis Santos, 21; Maurilio Macho Rodríguez, 21; Jose EstalayoGarcia, 21; Julio Mediavilla Concejero, 21; Fulgencio Calv Sánchez, 19; Honorino Carraced Ramos, 19; Laurino Proáno Cuestra, 20; Epifanio Sierra Conde, 20; Abilio Ramos Ramos, 19; Anacario Benito Nozal, 30; Felipe Ruiz Fraile, 21; Jose Osés Sainz, 21; Felix Ugalde Irurzun, 21; Jose Maria Ruiz Martinez, 20; Zacarias Fernández Crespo, 19; Pablo Maria Lopez Portillo, 54; Benito Solano Ruiz, 38; Tomas Cuartero Gascón, 21; Jose Maria Cuartero Gascón, 18; German Perez Jiménez, 38; Juan Pedro Bengoa Aranguren, 46; Felipe Valcobado Granado, 62.

Most of those killed were young religious studying for ordination and destined for missionary work in Mexico and Cuba. Others were priests who taught them and brothers who served in the community. Father Niceforo, the provincial, was visiting the community at the time.

Militiamen entered the Passionist house on the night of July 21st and ordered the thirty-one religious to leave in one hour. Father Niceforo gathered them in the chapel, gave them absolution, opened the tabernacle and said:

“We face our Gethsemane. . . all of us are weak and frightened, , ,but Jesus is with us; he is the strength of the weak. In Gethsemane an angel comforted Jesus; now he himself comforts and strengthens us. . .Very soon we will be with him. . .To die for him is really to live. . . Have courage and help me by your example.”

He then distributed the sacramental hosts to them.

The militiamen ordered the group to the cemetery and told them to flee. At the same time, they alerted companions in the surrounding areas to shoot the religious on sight.

The Passionists split into five groups. The first group of nine was captured and shot outside the train station of Carabanchel in Madrid on July 22, 1936 at 11pm.

The second group of twelve, Father Niceforo among them, was taken at the station at Manzanares and shot by a firing squad. Father Niceforo and four others died immediately. Seven were taken to a hospital where one later died. Six of them recovered, only to be shot to death later on October 23, 1936

Three other religious, traveling together, were executed at the train station of Urda (Toledo) on July 25th. Two gave their lives at Carrion de Calatrave on September 25th. Only five of the thirty-one religious were spared.

Numerous eye-witnesses testified afterwards to the brave faith and courage shown by the Daimiel Community in their final moments, especially the signs of forgiveness they gave their executioners.

They were beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 1989, who said of them: “None of the religious of the community of Daimiel was involved in political matters. Nonetheless, within the climate of the historical period in which they lived, they were arrested because of the tempest of religious persecution, generously shedding their blood, faithful to their religious way of life, and emulating, in the twentieth century, the heroism of the Church’s first martyrs.” (Homily: October 1, 1989)

Today their bodies are interred in the Passionist house at Daimiel, Spain.

Their feastday is July  24th.

St. Mary Magdalene: July 22

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Mary Magdalene, Fra Angelico

In 2016, Pope Francis raised the liturgical celebration of Mary Magdalene, July 22, from a memorial to a feast and directed she be referred to as an “Apostle to the apostles”. Today, the pope said, we must recognize more fully the dignity of women and their role in bringing the gospel to the world. Mary Magdalene is an example.

Gregory the Great, an early pope, got it wrong when he identified Mary Magdalene with Mary, the sister of Lazarus and the sinful women in Luke 7: 33ff, who washed Jesus’ feet. She is neither one. She was a star witness at his resurrection. Unfortunately, Gregory’s picture of Mary influenced the way western Christianity saw Mary. The eastern Christian churches, for the most part, have not seen her that way.

The composite view of Mary Magdalene in the western church could be found until recently in the Tridentine mass texts for her feast. The collect identified her as Mary of Bethany and the gospel was the story from Luke of the penitent woman anointing Jesus’ feet. That picture of her is often found in western Christian art.

Instead of the gospel of the sinful woman, our present lectionary offers John’s account of the appearance of Jesus to Mary after his resurrection. (John 20:1-18) 

Unfortunately some recently, using flimsy evidence from 3rd and 4th century gnostic writings, want to “de-mythologize” Jesus and romanticize his relationship with Mary. Some even claim he was married to her. Their claims have been sensationalized in the  media and unfortunately get a wide hearing.

Better to listen to the four gospels, especially St. Luke’s Gospel, and the evidence of the New Testament. They see Mary as a disciple among other important woman followers of Jesus who loved him. Their witness is older and more reliable. There’s also new archeological evidence about Magdala, Mary’s hometown, that helps us understand Mary Magdalene. Take a look.

Yet,  Gregory the Great’s description of Mary’s spirituality is right on. Here’s an excerpt from his beautiful sermon in today’s Liturgy of the Hours:

“We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.

“At first she sought but did not find, but when she persevered it happened that she found what she was looking for. When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires. Anyone who succeeds in attaining the truth has burned with such a great love. As David says: My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? And so also in the Song of Songs the Church says: I was wounded by love; and again: My soul is melted with love.

“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.

“Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognized when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognize me as I recognize you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself. And so Mary, once addressed by name, recognizes who is speaking. She immediately calls him rabboni, that is to say, teacher, because the one whom she sought outwardly was the one who inwardly taught her to keep on searching.”

Here’s Pope Francis on Jesus’ words to Mary in the garden, “Do not cling to me.”

“It is specifically in the garden of the resurrection that the Lord says to Mary Magdalene: “Do not hold on to me”. This is an invitation directed not only to Mary, but also to the entire Church, to enter into an experience of faith that surpasses any materialistic appropriation or human understanding of the divine mystery. A disciple of Jesus is not to seek human securities and worldly titles, but faith in the Living and Risen Christ! “

The article on Mary Magdalene in Wikipedia deals extensively, and generally fairly, with the interpretations of Mary in religious and popular culture through history. She is an importance reference for recognizing women’s role in the world and in the church today. An importance saint to know.

Traditions about St. Ann

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In my part of the world, novenas to Saint Ann have begun in churches and dioceses, like Scranton, PA. Where did the story of Saint Ann come from? From earliest times Christians wondered who the parents of Mary were and, as you would expect, that interest was particularly strong in Palestine. Ann and Joachim were first honored there as the mother and father of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ.

Around the year 550, a church in her honor was built in Jerusalem on the site where her home was said to be, near the Pool of Bethesda, where Jesus cured the paralyzed man. Since then, many churches honoring Ann and Joachim have been built throughout the Christian world; The saints appear frequently in Christian art.

Feasts of St. Ann

Feasts honoring Mary’s birth (September 8) and her presentation in the temple (November 21) – inspired by the Protoevangelium– were introduced into the liturgies of the Eastern churches in the 6th century. Feasts in honor of St.Joachim and Ann (September 9), the conception of St Ann (December 9), and St.Ann alone (July 26) have been celebrated from the 7th century in the Greek and Russian churches.

The western church, adopting the eastern traditions, has celebrated the feast of St. Ann on July 26 since the 16th century. In 1969 her feast was joined with her husband Joachim to become the Feast of Saints Joachim and Ann.

Why was the story of Ann and Joachim so popular?  Besides satisfying curiosity about the family background of Mary and Jesus, they supported traditional belief that Jesus is the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, a belief questioned by heretical elements in the church as well as outsiders of the faith from the beginning.

Ann and Joachim also offered inspiration to mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, grandmothers and grandfathers in their roles in family life.

Devotion to St. Ann in Europe

In the western church, devotion to St.Ann was fed by a popular belief that relics of her were brought to France by Mary Magdalen, Lazarus, Martha, and other friends of Jesus who crossed the stormy sea from Palestine to bring the Christian faith to the region around Marseilles.

Her relics were buried in a cave under the church of St.Mary in the city of Apt by its bishop, St. Auspice, the story goes. Barbarians invaded the area and the cave was filled with debris and almost forgotten, only to be unearthed 600 years later during the reign of Charlemagne. You can see why sailors and miners would be devoted to St. Ann.

Crusaders from Europe – many from France – went to the Holy Land in the 11th century, and they rebuilt the ancient church of St. Ann in Jerusalem. The date the crusader church was consecrated, July 26, is the day we celebrate the feast of Joachim and Ann in the western church today.

By the 14th century, devotion to St. Ann was on the rise throughout Europe as the Black Death struck the continent and raged everywhere for over 150 years, wiping out almost 30 percent of its population. Families bore the brunt of the catastrophe as they tended their sick and cared for the healthy.

They needed models like Mary and Joseph, Ann and Joachim, who supported their child and grandchild. Mothers and grandmothers were particularly important for raising children.

When the plague ended, Europe’s population expanded dramatically in the late 15th and 16th centuries; new towns and cities sprang up everywhere and families were uprooted from places and people familiar to them. Families needed help to stay together and survive.

Faith suggested Mary and Joseph, Ann and Joachim as models to be imitated.  Images of the nursing Madonna and the caring grandparents became important sources of Christian inspiration.

Christians joined Confraternities of St. Ann, dedicated to caring for widows, orphans and families under stress. Images of Mary and Ann, nursing their children, playing with the Christ Child and/or John the Baptist were more than pious pictures; they had a social purpose as well.

One picture from this era, still popular today, portrays St. Ann teaching her little daughter how to read.  Sometimes the words on the book are words of scripture; sometimes they’re basic numbers or letters of the alphabet: 1,2,3,4-A,B,C.

Playing with children, teaching them the ABC’s, passing on the mysteries of God to them are vital actions. Simple as they may seem, they’re holy actions and they can make those who do them saints.

The Feast of Peter and Paul

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The church of Rome considers Peter and Paul, who came to the city and preached and died  there during the persecution by Nero in the early 60s, her founders. Their burial places are marked by great churches, St. Peter at the Vatican and St. Paul Outside the Walls.

They could not be more unlike: Paul, the educated Pharisee from Tarsus was a latecomer  to Christianity but like a runner raced from place to place in the Roman world to plant the faith. In the end, he believed God would give him “a crown of righteousness”  for his efforts.

Peter,  the fisherman from Galilee, was named by Jesus  the Rock on whom he would build his church. Denying Jesus three times, he was called by Jesus  three times  to shepherd the flock. Warily, he went to baptize a Roman soldier, Cornelius, in Caesaria; then he went to the gentile cities of Antioch and Rome to tell of the One he had seen with his own eyes.

The church today prays for Paul’s zealous faith to bring the gospel to the world and for Peter’s deep love for Jesus Christ which he proved by his preaching and death.

Commenting on Jesus’  threefold call to Peter. St. Augustine says it conquered the apostle’s “self-assurance.”

“Quite rightly, too, did the Lord after his resurrection entrust his sheep to Peter to be fed. Not that he alone  was fit to feed the Lord’s sheep, but when Christ speaks to one, he calls us to be one. And he first speaks to Peter, because Peter is the first among the apostles.

“Do not be sad, Peter. Answer once, answer again, answer a third time. Let confession conquer three times with love, because your self-assurance was conquered three times by fear. What you had bound three times must be loosed three times. Loose through love what you had bound through fear. And for all that, the Lord once, and again, and a third time, entrusted his sheep to Peter.”

“Today we celebrate the  the passion of two apostles. These two  were as one; although they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, Paul followed. We are celebrating a feast day consecrated for us by the blood of the apostles. Let us love their faith, their lives, their labors, their sufferings, their confession of faith, their preaching.”

“May your church in all things

follow the teaching of those

through whom she has received

the beginning of right religion.”

St. Cyril of Alexandria (d.444)

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To be a saint doesn’t mean you’re perfect, Pope Francis says in his exhortation “Gaudete et exsultate“, on holiness in today’s world. That’s good to remember when we consider St.Cyril of Alexandria, the 4th century bishop of Alexandria and doctor of the church, whose feast is today, June 26th.

If you read his online biography in Wikipedia–where many today look for information about saints – you’ll find that he was deeply involved in the messy partisan politics of his time, when Christians, Jews and pagans fought and schemed to control over Alexandria, the city then probably the most important city in the Roman empire. Some called him a “proud Pharaoh;” “ a monster” out to destroy the church, an impulsive, scheming bishop in a riotous city. The Wikipedia biography mainly sees him that way.

He was a saint, other biographies say. Why a saint? Well, Cyril was absorbed in understanding and defending the Incarnation of the Word of God. How did the Word of God come among us? Who was Jesus Christ? Pursuing that mystery defined Cyril during life. It was at the heart of things for him, and the voluminous collection of sermons, letters, commentaries and controversial essays he left bears out that interest.

He thought and wrote extensively about this mystery. The way he came to express it was used at the Council of Ephesus (431) and became the way we also express it in our prayers. Mary was the Mother of God. The One born of her was not simply another human being. Her Son was true God, who would be truly human and eventually die on the Cross. God “so loved the world” that he came among us as Mary’s Son.

What we see as “the totality” of Cyril’s life, his “life’s jouney”, the “overall meaning of his person”, to use the pope’s words, is not his involvement in the violent politics of his day. Yes, that was there. But his abiding quest was to know Jesus Christ.

“‘The Word was made flesh’ [John 1:14], can mean nothing else but that he became flesh and blood like ours; he made our body his own and came forth man from a woman, not casting off his existence as God, or his generation of God the Father, but in taking to himself flesh remaining what he was. 

“This is the correct faith proclaimed everywhere. The holy teachers taught this and so they called the holy Virgin, the Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word or his divinity began from the holy Virgin, but because that holy body with a rational soul, to which the Word, personally united, was born of her according to the flesh.”

— St. Cyril of Alexandria, First Letter to Nestorius

“When poisonous pride swells up in you, turn to the Eucharist; and that Bread, which is your God humbling and disguising himself, will teach you humility. When the fever of selfish greed rages in you, feed on this Bread; and you will learn generosity. When you feel the itch of intemperance, nourish yourself with the Flesh and Blood of Christ, who practiced heroic self-control during His earthly life, and you will become temperate. When you are lazy and sluggish about spiritual things, strengthen yourself with this heavenly Food; and you will grow fervent. Lastly, when you feel scorched by the fever of impurity, go to the banquet of the Angels; and the spotless Flesh of Christ will make you pure and chaste.”

The Birth of John the Baptist

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June 24, three months after the angel announces to Mary that Elizabeth is six months pregnant (March 25) John the Baptist is born.

From his birth John the Baptist was destined by God, not to follow Zachariah his father as a priest in the temple, but to go into the desert to welcome the Messiah, Jesus Christ. John is the last of the Jewish prophets, the first to recognize Jesus. His birth and death are celebrated in our church calendar.

It may have changed, but there’s an interesting Sunday walk in Rome I’d recommend.  Go out the city gate at the Porta di San Sebastiano and walk south along one of the oldest roads in the world, the Via Appia, to the catacombs and church of San Sebastiano. Outside the city gates, you’re in what the ancient Romans called the “limes,” the limits, the world beyond the city, a different world altogether.

To the ancient Romans the “limes” was the end of civilized, reasonable life. No place to live, they thought. Get where you’re going as soon as you can. “Speed limit” comes from the word. Go beyond the limit and you can lose your life.

Few people today are usually on that road, deserted fields all around. The only sound  you can hear is the sound of your own breathing and your footsteps.

The last line of St. Luke’s gospel for today’s feast says of John:

“The child grew and become strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.”

How did John become strong in a desert? Centuries before, God told Abraham to go into a land he would show him. He led Jews from Egypt into the desert, and with no map or provisions, to a world unknown. They were in the hands of God, their strength.

Most of us stay within our limits; we don’t go to live in physical deserts. Yet, try as we may, we face them anyway in things we didn’t expect, like sickness or death or separation or divorce or the loss of a job or lost friends or lost places we know and love. The desert’s never far from any of us.

The Via Appia brings you to the catacombs, the great underground tunnels where early Christians buried their dead. They buried them there, I think,  not to hide them, but because this place was an image of a new unknown world.  The “limes,”  marked the end of this life and foreshadowed a new life. The dead no longer belonged in the city; they were going to  a new city.

Life holds its doubts, fears, uncertainty. But we don’t face limits alone. In the “limes” God alone has you in his hands. God gives you strength and brings you where you’re meant to be. God is there.  God is there.

Readings for the Feast:

Like other ancient church feasts, the Nativity of John the Baptist, June 24, is tied to cosmology. Three months after the angel announces to Mary that Elizabeth is six months pregnant (March 25) John the Baptist is born.John’s birth coincides with the summer solstice. He begins to decrease to make way for the one who will increase. Jesus will be born December 25. The Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist is celebrated by all the ancient Christian churches. The Orthodox Church celebrates it June 24.

Birth of John the Baptist. Orthodox Church of America.

Readings here.

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Matthew 6: 19-23. The Treasures We Bring to Heaven.

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In Matthew’s gospel today, Jesus speaks of treasures in heaven. Usually the treasures we think of are gold, silver, works of art, gems, degrees from school, signs of achievement. They’re the “treasures of earth” Jesus speaks of in the gospel. Thieves can steal them away; they can be eaten by moths and forgotten. They don’t last. (Matthew 6,19-23)

Other treasures are for heaven. St. Paul sees some of them in his trials for the gospel that we read today in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians. God won’t forget his sufferings: the beatings, imprisonments, brushes with death, the long journeys over seas, rivers, and wildernesses where robbers waited. Paul lists dangers he faced, both from enemies and his own people. God wont forget any of them, down to his sleepless nights and bouts with the cold.

He ends his list with what might be the biggest treasure of them all; “the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?” He’s tried to be responsible everyday with the people around him, whether they’re the weak or the trying. That’s the lasting treasure God holds in heaven. (2 Corinthians 11,18 ff)

We might not be able to match Paul’s of missionary travails, but let’s keep Paul’s last important achievement in mind. If we do what we have to do each day as well as we can, if we are faithful to our daily duty, if we bear our daily cross, if we bear with the weak and the difficult, won’t that be our treasure?

God counts it so.

Before he was executed St. Thomas More. wrote to his daughter Meg:

 “ I trust only in God’s merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me till now and made me content to lose goods, land and life as well, rather than swear against my conscience.  I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and being overcome with fear. I shall remember how St. Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray for his help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning. “

Praying in Jesus Christ

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Farewell Discourse of Jesus. Duccio

“I pray for them,” Jesus says in John’s gospel as he looks at his disciples in the supper room and also at us who are his own today. We’re so conscious how poorly we pray. We need to remember Jesus is praying for us and in us. 

Is it possible to speak to God, we ask ourselves? We’re so easily distracted, so weak in faith, so bound to life as it is. How can we approach God in prayer?

“Let the Son who lives in our hearts, be also on our lips,” St. Cyprian says in his commentary on the Our Father. Jesus joins our weak and stumbling prayers to his own. He prays in and for us and assures us we will be welcomed and heard.

“I pray for them,” Jesus said in the supper room. He prayed for his disciples there in the supper room. When they left they entered the Garden of Gethsemani where they fell asleep, forgetful of everything. A stone’s throw away, Jesus prayed. His prayer was not only for himself but for them as well.

“I pray for them,’ Jesus says in our liturgical prayers. We speak to God the Father “through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen.”

Whenever we pray, whether with others in public prayer or praying alone, he enters our prayer. “Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us,” we say as we begin the Our Father at Mass.

Our confidence in prayer comes, not from our own wisdom, or holiness or faith, but from Jesus who says “I pray for them.”


Saints Philip and James: May 3

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Saints Philip and James. Duccio

We celebrate a feast of the apostles each month. Why? Every family wants to find out how it began. Our church began with the apostles. Today, May 3rd, we remember two apostles together, Philip and James.They’re celebrated together because their relics were placed side by side in the Church of the Twelve Apostles when it was built in Rome in the 6th century.

Philip was called by Jesus to follow him the day after he called Andrew and Peter. (John 1:43-45) James, who is also called James the Less to distinguish him from James, the brother of John, was the son of Alpheus and a cousin of Jesus. He  later became head of the church in Jerusalem. His mother Mary, stood with Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalen beneath the cross of Jesus. (John 19: 25)  He was martyred in Jerusalem in the year 62.

On a feast of an apostle you expect to hear one or more heroic act or wise saying, but in today’s reading from St. John’s gospel  we hear an apostle’s clumsy question instead. During his Farewell Discourse, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father.”

“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Philip says to Jesus, who responds:

“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. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own.”

Can we hear exasperation in Jesus’ words to Philip ? Better, perhaps, they point out how slow  Jesus’ apostles were to understand him; how uncertain, fearful–even ready to betray him. Philip isn’t the only one who can’t fathom Jesus and his message.

 James, son of Alpheus, came from conservative Nazareth. He knew Jesus as the son of Joseph, the carpenter and probably played with Jesus as a child. He lead the Jerusalem church, while apostles like Peter and John embarked on missions to distant lands. James favored keeping the Jewish tradition as the Spirit’s means of spreading the gospel. James and his allies would certainly be early critics of Paul’s mission to the gentiles. He alienated Jerusalem’s leaders less than Stephen or Paul, but eventually he was put to death in the year 62, as the Jewish wars approached and Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Jewish Christians fled the city for the safety of another place.

Called by Jesus, all of his disciples were human. Their humanness and slowness makes us realize where our power comes from. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us be the glory!” The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ.

But before we dismiss an apostle like Philip, let’s remember he pointed Jesus out to Nathaniel at the Jordan River and he brought Greek visitors to Jesus as he was entering Jerusalem to die on a cross. ( John 12: 20-23) He never stopped pointing to the One whom he tried to understand. It’s an apostle’s gift.

The apostles make us realize the patience of Jesus, which is the patience of God. They  reveal the different gifts and weaknesses found in the followers of Jesus.

Church of the. Twelve Apostles, Rome. Wiki commons