Sunday Meditation: The Spirit of Truth

The Sixth Sunday of Easter—the second to last Sunday of the season—continues with Jesus’s Last Discourse, and, if you notice, these discourses are focused on the coming of the Holy Spirit.  These Gospel readings, then, set the stage for Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus tells the disciples that after He dies and rises and stays with them for a while (forty days) the Holy Spirit will come to them. 

I’ve been impressed with the Gospel reflections of Gina Hens-Piazza who provides reflections at America magazine.  She points out this week that Jesus in this passage is defining what love is.

 

Jesus, however, is suggesting a different relationship between love and obedience. He never threatens to withhold love, even when we turn away from the commandments. Instead, he makes obedience to the commandments the means by which we love one another. The concrete nature of love in human relationships becomes the means by which we love him. After all, whether they be mandates of commission or omission, commandments such as “Honor your father and mother” or “You shall not commit adultery” aim specifically at cultivating and preserving loving relationships among people. For Jesus, love is not contingent upon obedience but is the product of obedience. Divine commandments facilitate love of one another and result in love of Jesus.

Love in the Christian sense is certainly more complex than an emotional feeling.

Today’s Gospel:

 

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

And I will ask the Father,

and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,

the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,

because it neither sees nor knows him.

But you know him, because he remains with you,

and will be in you.

I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

In a little while the world will no longer see me,

but you will see me, because I live and you will live.

On that day you will realize that I am in my Father

and you are in me and I in you.

Whoever has my commandments and observes them

is the one who loves me.

And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,

and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

~Jn:14: 15-21

 

 

Today’s reflection comes from Fr. Greg Heille O.P. from St. Louis.  He is one of the Dominican friars from the St. Albert the Great Province that provides these “Know Before You Go” homilies.  Fr. Greg rightly emphasizes the foretelling of the coming of the Holy Spirit in this passage.

 

Fr. Greg:

Our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate a holiday that is called the Festival of Weeks which is held seven weeks and one day, or 50 days, after Passover…Well fifty days translates to Pentecost, and so we have in two weeks from now the solemn Feast of Pentecost, 50 days after our celebration of our Easter Sunday.  Early in our Easter season our celebration was all about “Alleluia, He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed!”  But now late in the Easter season our celebration has more of a spirit of “Veni Sancte Spiritus, Come Holy Spirit."

 

In a way the Gospel from John 14 looks ahead to the next four weeks of celebration in our liturgical cycle.  A week from now we will celebrate the Feast of the Ascension…Our Gospel today in a way gives a hint of ascension because as we think about Jesus ascending into heaven we can wonder where is He now.  And our Gospel today, John 14, says, “I will not leave you orphans.  I will come to you.”  “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.”  The word advocate in Greek is paraclete, and its etymology is “one who is called aside to help.”  A helper.

 

So as we approach Pentecost we ae being promised by Jesus a paraclete, one who will walk along side of us to help.  We will not be left as orphans…Jesus was brought to life in the Spirit.  The Spirit walked with Jesus as His helper.  He was raised to life in the Spirit…And we begin to realize that what God has done for Jesus so too He does for us.  He raises us up in the Spirit.  He walks along side of us as a companion, an advocate, a helper.

 

That is the heart of our lives in the Spirit.  We have a “vital connection to Christ and the Father through the Holy Spirit.”  Be sure to listen to the end to where Fr. Greg explains that synodality is a walking of us all together on the Way.

For the pastoral homily, Cardinal Blasé Cupich of Archdiocese of Chicago combined this Gospel passage with a link to today’s Mother’s Day holiday.

 

Archbishop Cupich:

We've seen some remarkable transformations in this group of disciples that formed the early church.  We have Philillip who now very publicly addresses the people and speaks of Jesus.  Philip was the one who wanted death to know from Jesus the way that he was going.  And Jesus said to him, "How long have you been with me and yet you do not know me?" But all of a sudden with the gift of the spirit, something changes in him dramatically.  And it occurs to me as we celebrate Mother's Day that there are many qualities that are reflected in mothers that we find in this early church that's transformed by the spirit.

 

The first thing is the way the the disciples take initiative. Jesus is no longer with them. They're on their own.  And yet they go out and they make a difference.  How often mothers are the ones in the home who have to take initiative to get things going. Maybe those times in which there are birthdays or celebrations of holidays. They're the ones who take the initiative. They're the ones who kind of learn on the spur of the moment. I remember my own mother who was married when she was uh a young 22 years old and by the time she was 30, she had six children and she had to learn how to balance her life and balance being a mother to all those children. She took initiative much like we see in that early church.  But we also see these early disciples being willing to adapt and be flexible to the point that there were new members of the community who were different. We hear about of course the formation of the deacons. When the Greek Christians felt that they were being overlooked, the disciples were able to adapt and create a whole new order within the church that of deacons.  They paid attention to the specifics of the different groups that were there.  I think my mother reflected that as well. She always said that each child was different. The being a parent is not an exact science simply because there are so many variables in each child that comes along. She was once asked, "Do you love any of your children more than the others?" And her answer was swift and clear. No, she said, but only if they need it.  I think that that's the way each one of us have experienced our mothers as well.  That they know us and they look for ways in which they're going to meet the needs of each one of us in our particular circumstances, much like the early church was able to do.

 

Mothers as well were the point of unity within a family. So often the ones who brought people together for healing, telling and encouraging us to have forgiveness, but also the kind of unity that stays with us in our life even when our man mothers pass from this life. Much like the unity that we hear about in the gospel where Jesus says, "Even though I will be away from you, I will be in you as my father is in me and I am in you." How often we are able to carry within us the voice, the image, the words of our mothers within us. In a way showing us that the unity within a family is being able to have a sensitivity to the lives of others but also a fond remembrance of each other no matter what the circumstances are in life. Even if we are separated by distance or even by death.

 

God bless our mothers.  They are the image of Jesus in our lives.

 

Sunday Meditation: "On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”

 

How can we not listen to “Veni Creator Spiritus” after Christ’s foretelling of the Holy Spirit? 

 

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, come

from thy bright heav'nly throne;

come, take possession of our souls,

and make them all thine own.

 

Thou who art called the Paraclete,

best gift of God above,

the living spring, the living fire,

sweet unction and true love. (...)

 

O guide our minds with thy blest light,

with love our hearts inflame;

and with thy strength, which ne'er decays,

confirm our mortal frame. (…)

 

Through thee may we the Father know,

through thee th'eternal Son,

and thee the Spirit of them both,

thrice-blessed three in One.

 

In Gregorian Chant!  Beautiful!

 

Sunday Meditation: Waiting For Jesus

Today is another long reading.  For the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A the Gospel reading is of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  This is such a deep and profound passage that most homilies cannot do it justice.  Homilists may focus on the delay that Jesus takes to go to Bethany, or focus on Martha’s greeting when Jesus arrives, or, of course, the raising of Lazarus.  We’ll get to those in the embedded homilies.  But here are a few details that seem to go unnoticed.  John tells us that “Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair.”  That is interesting.  That happened in a different Gospel; it’s from Lk 7:36-50.  Here’s another interesting detail.  When Jesus is warned by the apostles that the Jews will be trying to kill him, the Apostle Thomas, the same so called “Doubting Thomas,” says, “Let us also go to die with him.”  He may have been skeptical but he is willing to die for Christ.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,

the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil

and dried his feet with her hair;

it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.

So the sisters sent word to him saying,

“Master, the one you love is ill.”

When Jesus heard this he said,

“This illness is not to end in death,

but is for the glory of God,

that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

So when he heard that he was ill,

he remained for two days in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to his disciples,

“Let us go back to Judea.”

The disciples said to him,

“Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,

and you want to go back there?”

Jesus answered,

“Are there not twelve hours in a day?

If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,

because he sees the light of this world.

But if one walks at night, he stumbles,

because the light is not in him.”

He said this, and then told them,

“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,

but I am going to awaken him.”

So the disciples said to him,

“Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”

But Jesus was talking about his death,

while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.

So then Jesus said to them clearly,

“Lazarus has died.

And I am glad for you that I was not there,

that you may believe.

Let us go to him.”

So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,

“Let us also go to die with him.”

 

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus

had already been in the tomb for four days.

Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away.

And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary

to comfort them about their brother.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,

she went to meet him;

but Mary sat at home.

Martha said to Jesus,

“Lord, if you had been here,

my brother would not have died.

But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,

God will give you.”

Jesus said to her,

“Your brother will rise.”

Martha said to him,

“I know he will rise,

in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus told her,

“I am the resurrection and the life;

whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,

and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

Do you believe this?”

She said to him, “Yes, Lord.

I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,

the one who is coming into the world.”

 

When she had said this,

she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,

“The teacher is here and is asking for you.”

As soon as she heard this,

she rose quickly and went to him.

For Jesus had not yet come into the village,

but was still where Martha had met him.

So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her,

presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,

she fell at his feet and said to him,

“Lord, if you had been here,

my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,

he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,

“Where have you laid him?”

They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”

And Jesus wept.

So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”

But some of them said,

“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man

have done something so that this man would not have died?”

 

So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.

It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,

“Lord, by now there will be a stench;

he has been dead for four days.”

Jesus said to her,

“Did I not tell you that if you believe

you will see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone.

And Jesus raised his eyes and said,

“Father, I thank you for hearing me.

I know that you always hear me;

but because of the crowd here I have said this,

that they may believe that you sent me.”

And when he had said this,

He cried out in a loud voice,

“Lazarus, come out!”

The dead man came out,

tied hand and foot with burial bands,

and his face was wrapped in a cloth.

So Jesus said to them,

“Untie him and let him go.”

 

Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary

and seen what he had done began to believe in him.

~Jn:11:1-45

 

Dr. Brant Pitre provides a full explanation of the reading.

 

Dr. Pitre:

‘Martha said to him oh I know that he will rise again in the Resurrection on the last day.   Jesus said to her “I am the resurrection and the life;” he who believes in me though he die yet he shall live and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?  She said to him yes Lord I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God he who is coming into the world.’  Okay pause there notice what just happened?  Lazarus is dead; he's been dead 4 days.  When Jesus comes Mary says, ‘you know if you'd have been here this wouldn't have happened,’ which the reader now knows isn't true because Jesus knew about Lazarus sickness and that he was going to die but he stayed longer and allowed it to happen.  Why does Jesus wait two days longer to go to Judea?  Well this an interesting thing. John says very specifically that Jesus did this because he loved Lazarus and Mary and Martha.  That's a very mysterious thing.  I mean can you imagine a situation where let's say I'm giving a lecture in class at the Seminary and my wife calls and says you know your daughter is very sick right, very, very sick, I think she might be dying and I would respond okay well I'm going to stay here at work a couple of days longer because I love her.  I mean that's totally counterintuitive; it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but this Jesus isn't an ordinary man.  He doesn't have an Ordinary Love for Lazarus; he allows Lazarus his friend to suffer and die because he's going to bring him back from the grave and in the living.

What Dr. Pitre calls “counterintuitive” I would call a non sequitur.  There are several what strike me as non sequiturs in this passage.  For instance, when the apostles warn Jesus that the Jews will be looking to kill Him, he gives what strikes me as a non sequitur response: “Are there not twelve hours in a day?  If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.  But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” 

What’s with the non sequiturs?  Dr. Pitre continues:

 

St John Chrysostom said this about this quote: “He said many are offended when they see any of those who are pleasing to God suffering anything terrible.  Those who are offended by this however do not know that those who are especially dear to God have it as their lot to endure such things, as we see in the case of Lazarus who was also one of the friends of Christ but was also sick.”  So what Chrysostom is pointing out here is there's a mysterious reality about the Christian life, that those who are called to a special Holiness, those who in a sense God loves in a special way, he often frequently allows to suffer in a special way; he allows to suffer in a great way.

I have called this a non sequitur, but that’s not quite accurate.  What strikes as a non sequitur is identifying one of the paradoxes of Christianity and of human life.  Suffering and death actually has a purpose beyond common thought.  There is a mystery behind God’s logic.

 

I found Cardinal Blasé Cupich pastoral homily unique and insightful.

 

Cardinal Cupich connects Jesus’ delay in this Gospel passage with the time of World War II, a time of great tragedy.

Cardinal Cupich:

An Irish playwright by the name of Samuel Beckett wrote a play that became very famous called Waiting for Godot.  It was a play on words.  Waiting for God was something that he took up. How is it that these terrible atrocities could happen? What was God doing in all of this? God seemed to be out on a vacation, inattentive to the needs of humanity.  Today in this gospel text, Jesus gives us an answer about what God is doing and where God is.  We first of all see that Jesus finds out that Lazarus is dying and he waits until he dies.  It is in that waiting period, that time between the sufferings that we have and knowing what the result is that can be so anguishing.  Maybe as we wait for a diagnosis or we wait to see whether or not someone hurt in an accident is going to survive. or the waiting that comes just in therapy and healing where the end result is not certain.  Jesus tells us he's there in the waiting because the life that he gives is not just a matter of continuation of our existence but rather it's the word, “Zoe,” which is the breathing of God's life in us, that God wants to reveal in the waiting that he's present to us, that God is revealing himself in those moments and then we begin to see.

In those moments of waiting, hanging on the point of a needle to see how some tragedy turns out, God is breathing into us, revealing Himself.  “He's there with us in that moment in which the human frailty is so very present.”  Cardinal Cupich continues:

 

So today Jesus answers Beckett, Waiting for Godot, waiting for God is in fact exactly what we should be looking for in life. That God is present in the inbetweens of life. God is present in the smelliness, the stinkiness of life, the things that we would otherwise want to avoid. When everyone abandons us, God is present there.  And finally, God is present and has to be present in the community that does its best to make sure that the bonds of oppression injustice are untied.

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Untie him and let him go.”

 

Here is a wonderful hymn in the mode of a country song on this topic, “Jesus Raised Lazarus from the Tomb.”

 

When he's four days

And All hope is gone

Lord we don’t understand

Why you waited so long.

 

But His way is God’s way,

Not yours or mine.

And isn’t it great,

When He’s four days late

But He’s still on time.

 

Performed by the Frank Brownstead Choir. 

 

Sunday Meditation: The Struggle in the Desert

We are now into the First Sunday in Lent in this Year A of the lectionary.  Jesus has been baptized by His cousin John, and the Spirit leads Him into the desert.  I’m rather intrigued by the differences between the Gospel narratives on the forty days in the desert.  First there is no mention by the account in John’s Gospel, although there are indirect references to the three temptations (see Jn 6:26, 31, 2:18, and 6:15).  Mark’s Gospel is only two verses long (1:12-13), has no mention to the specific temptations, and interestingly is the only one who mentions Jesus among wild beasts.  Both Matthew’s and Luke’s (Lk 4:1-13) Gospels have full and similar accounts but they switch the order of the second and third temptations.  At the end of the temptations, Matthew mentions angels ministering to Jesus with a sense that Jesus has defeated the devil while at the end of Luke’s the devil departs to abide his time.

 

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert

to be tempted by the devil.

He fasted for forty days and forty nights,

and afterwards he was hungry.

The tempter approached and said to him,

“If you are the Son of God,

command that these stones become loaves of bread.”

He said in reply,

“It is written:

One does not live on bread alone,

but on every word that comes forth

from the mouth of God.”

 

Then the devil took him to the holy city,

and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,

and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.

For it is written:

He will command his angels concerning you

and with their hands they will support you,

lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Jesus answered him,

“Again it is written,

You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,

and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, ""All these I shall give to you,

if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”

At this, Jesus said to him,

“Get away, Satan!

It is written:

The Lord, your God, shall you worship

and him alone shall you serve.”

 

Then the devil left him and, behold,

angels came and ministered to him.

~Mt: 4: 1-11

 

Fr. Geoffrey Plant gives a full explanation of Matthew’s passage.

 

Fr. Geoffrey goes into great detail on the differences between Matthew’s and Mark’s versions.

Fr. Geoffrey:

“The Gospels of Matthew and Mark both make a striking claim about how Jesus

enters the desert.

Matthew tells us that Jesus “was led by the Spirit.” He uses the verb ἀνάγω

(anagō).

But Mark puts it far more strongly: “the Spirit drives him out into the wilderness.”

The verb Mark uses is ἐκβάλλω (ekballō). It is a word that normally means “to cast

out,” “to force out,” even “to expel.” It is the same verb Mark later uses for driving

out demons.

Mark wants us to feel the urgency — the Spirit thrusting Jesus into a place of

testing.

But Matthew wants us to see something different: He chooses a gentler verb,

ἀνάγω (anagō), which means he “was led up,” and he does this for a purpose.

He portrays Jesus entering the desert in calm, deliberate obedience. He shows

us a Lord who does not resist God’s call, nor hesitate before hardship, but

freely steps onto the path the Father has set for him. By softening Mark’s

forceful language, Matthew is not contradicting him; he is revealing another

facet of the mystery. Jesus is not pushed into the wilderness against his will.

He goes there willingly — with the same steadfast trust that once led Israel

through the desert. Matthew’s Gospel consistently presents Jesus as

composed, sovereign, and guided rather than driven. And that is why this

moment matters: the journey into the desert is not a detour but a chosen path,

embraced freely, as the beginning of his mission for our salvation.”

 

I think it’s important to note that Matthew’s account shows Jesus in full deliberative choice.

 

Cardinal Blasé Cupich gave a simple but yet insightful pastoral homily.

 

Cardinal Cupich:

“Notice that each one of these temptations begins with the word “if.”  If you are the son of God, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me, it is the way the evil one works to create doubt in us about God. the kind of doubt that was given to our first parents in the garden that in fac God really wasn't being straight with us, wasn't being honest with us. And so in each on of these temptations, there is a corresponding conversion that we're called to.”

 

“And so today, as we begin this Lenton season, let us not allow the evil one to create doubt in us by that if question, but rather have a conversion that allows our lives to be bred for others that gives us the patience to let God work in us and others by God's own time. and that rejects an illusion of

happiness and security by possessions, realizing that the Lord has always been with us and everything he has is ours.”

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Get away, Satan!  It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”

 

What better Lenten hymn than “Lord, Who throughout These Forty Days” performed by the Holy Childhood Schola Cantorum at the Church of the Holy Childhood, wherever that is.

 

Lord, who throughout these forty days

for us didst fast and pray,

teach us with Thee to mourn our sins

and close by Thee to stay.