Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter Acts 20:17-27 + John 17:1-11
“Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”
We are approaching the end of the Easter season. For seven weeks we have heard of the events surrounding the Resurrection, and how these events have touched the lives of those who encountered Jesus, such as Mary Magdalen, Peter, and Thomas. We have heard how the lives of these followers of Jesus were changed because they believed in the events they witnessed. The Church today is also made up of followers of Jesus, those whose lives have been changed by their encounter with the Body of Christ.
In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus speaks candidly to His Father about the mission He was given and how He had fulfilled that mission. What is it, though, that Jesus accomplished? He was a failure in the eyes of the world. It takes eyes of faith to see anything worth imitating in Christ Jesus. The sort of vision that sees in Jesus a Messiah, a Savior, is the vision that we acquire only slowly in life, and which along the way we might even lose at times.
Yet with those eyes of faith we can see that each of us has been given a mission in Christ. In various ways, we are to proclaim the good news of salvation to others. We hear much on the news of violence and despair in the world. Such news clouds the vision that Jesus wants us to have: that suffering and death do not have to have the last say in our lives.
How has the resurrection changed our lives? Coming to the end of this year’s celebration of Lent, the Sacred Triduum and Easter, are we more determined to live the message of Jesus? Are we more aware that He lives not only for us but in us? Will we make the necessary changes in our lives to mirror the life of Jesus?
“In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”
This coming Sunday’s celebration of Pentecost is the backdrop for all our weekday readings this week. Wherever we Christians are, we are united in the Mystical Body of Christ, and together we are praying this week for a greater openness to the Gift who is God the Holy Spirit.
However, we receive God the Holy Spirit not for our own plans and purposes. He comes to us in order to ‘equip’ us for the vocations that God the Father gives us. The providential plan of the Father, and the grace of the Spirit, cannot be separated: both meet in the life of Christ’s Mystical Body, within which we live.
Each of us is called first through Baptism to holiness. For most Christians, this baptismal vocation—the vocation to live as members of the “priesthood of all believers”—is deepened by a further call from the Father. The vocation to Holy Matrimony, or to Holy Orders, or to consecrated religious life, gives specific form to one’s baptismal vocation. Even more specifically, each Christian daily discerns the call of the Father to make small sacrifices with great love, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux teaches us. So we beg the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit.
PLEASE NOTE: In some dioceses, the Ascension is celebrated on the Thursday that is the fortieth day of Eastertide instead of being celebrated on the Seventh Sunday of Easter. This year’s Ascension reflection is found HERE.
The Seventh Sunday of Easter [B] Acts 1:15-17,20,20-26 + 1 John 4:11-16 + John 17:11b-19
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.”
Your life as a Christian resembles the life of each of the apostles, whom we’ve been hearing a lot about during the past six weeks of the Easter season. Like the apostles, we know that we are blessed as Christians to share in the life of Jesus. We know that we are blessed to have been redeemed by Christ, and to have the chance to enter Heaven by means of our faith in Jesus dying on the Cross.
Like the apostles on the day of the Ascension, though, we find ourselves in life not always sure what to do next. Whether in regard to a relationship with another person, a job situation, schooling, our prayer life, or our moral life, we’re often left wondering. These conundrums in life force us to turn to God for help, and—what’s even more difficult at times—they force us sometimes to wait for God’s answer.
“Waiting”. That’s the word that describes us during these days that stretch between the feast of the Ascension and the feast of Pentecost, which the Church will celebrate next Sunday. Following Jesus’ ascension to Heaven, the apostles weren’t exactly sure what to do, even though they’d been told by Jesus to go out and preach the Gospel to all the nations. Maybe the apostles wanted more of a blueprint than Jesus had provided. Like most of us, they probably wanted an exact road map telling them: “James, you go to this town and preach to these people. Peter, you go to this country and preach to this tribe.”
Your life as a Christian resembles the life of each of the apostles as they wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. They waited. And they waited. For nine days they waited in the Upper Room where Jesus had instituted the Holy Eucharist. Finally, on the tenth day, God the Father and God the Son sent God the Holy Spirit down from Heaven to fill the apostles’ hearts, minds, and souls. The Holy Spirit didn’t provide them with an exact blueprint for building the Church. But His gifts did help them speak when it was necessary, listen when it was necessary, and pray when it was necessary.
These three things—acting, listening, and praying—must be equally balanced in our lives, and all of them must be done for God. If this seems a tall order, we ought to remember that God has given us a blueprint of how to follow Jesus. In fact, this blueprint has a name. Her name is Mary.
Your life as a Christian resembles the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was and is the first and best disciple of Christ. Mary was with the apostles during those ten days following the Ascension of Jesus. She who had been full of grace—by the power of the Holy Spirit—from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception was not necessarily leading the apostles in prayer, but nevertheless she was guiding them, as only a mother can do.
Just as Jesus had entrusted Saint John to the care of His Mother Mary atop Calvary, all the others apostles in turn were entrusted to her maternal care at Jesus’ Ascension. There was Mary in the Upper Room where her Son had celebrated the Last Supper, the first Eucharist with them. By her words, by her silence, by the example of her life, and by her intercession, she cared for the apostles as their mother in Christ. Here was the woman who had given birth to their Lord. Here was the woman who had been faithful to their Lord even on the Cross, as most of them had not.
If we turn our minds back to the Cross, we recall how greatly our Lord Jesus was faithful to His mother. The occasion of His first public miracle was at the wedding at Cana. Jesus said, “my hour has not yet come”, but Mary told Jesus that there was someone in need, and Jesus listened to her.
Mary’s will is always God’s will. With a mother’s love she bore the weight of seeing her only son die on the Cross. Yet she knew that His death would bring about the salvation of mankind. Above all, it is at the Cross that we see Mary’s fervent intercession and spirit of waiting for God providentially to bring great good out of great evil.
Saint Matthias is mentioned by name only once in the Scriptures, on the occasion of his election to the office of apostle. By this we see how important this ministry is to the on-going nature of the Church.
It’s fitting that the Church usually celebrates this feast of Saint Matthias during the Season of Easter. Throughout the first weeks of the Easter season, we hear accounts of Jesus speaking to the apostles. These words are the Lord’s preparation for His Ascension, and for the Holy Spirit’s descent. These words are His preparation for the new life of the Church. His words reveal to us the nature of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.
Hearing about the election of Matthias to fill the vacancy left by Judas Iscariot, we recognize that God the Holy Spirit works through the acts of the apostles and their successors. Both the apostles’ human selection of two candidates, and the Holy Spirit’s election of Matthias to the apostolic office, are the means by which this vocation is given to Matthias. Both divine grace and human works work together in the life of the Church, and in the life of each Christian, to continue the saving work of the Lord Jesus.
PLEASE NOTE: In some dioceses, the Ascension is celebrated on the Thursday that is the fortieth day of Eastertide instead of being celebrated on the Seventh Sunday of Easter. This year’s reflection for the Seventh Sunday of Easter is found HERE.
The Ascension of the Lord [B] Acts 1:1-11 + Ephesians 1:17-23 + Mark 16:15-20
“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved ….”
Each of us has to go through the experience of leave-taking. Sometimes other people leave our lives. At other times, it’s we who have to leave others. The leave may be forced, or it may be freely chosen. When seniors graduate from one school to another, or when young people graduate from studies to a job, a familiar setting has to be left behind so that one can grow through new experiences.
As difficult as all this may be, the most radical form of “leave taking” in life—the most dramatic separation between people—is when someone leaves this earth. That’s one part of what the Church is celebrating on the feast of the Ascension.
The readings today proclaim Jesus Christ taking leave of His followers by leaving this earth: ascending to Paradise, and—in effect—leaving them behind in the dust. We hear on this feast the end of the Gospel according to Saint Mark, and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles.
For the followers of Jesus, the day of Jesus’ Ascension was filled with a great deal of fear and anxiety. In a way, the day of Jesus’ Ascension is like Good Friday. We might ask: why should we celebrate the end of a good thing? Why do we call the day of Jesus’ death “Good” Friday? Both the death of Jesus and His Ascension to Heaven point us to one of the central mysteries of our spiritual life: that those who are bound together by love do not have to grow weaker when they are separated from each other.
In the life of Christ and His Bride, the Church, these two events—Jesus’ Death and His Ascension—were necessary parts of God’s plan of salvation. In fact, God is never truly gone from our midst: not on Good Friday, and not today as He rises out of the midst of His followers.
Though Jesus departs, He wants now to appear in new ways. The Ascension of Jesus—His leaving this earth in bodily form—allowed his followers to assume their calling to be the Mystical Body of Christ: the Church. Without Jesus leaving this earth, there would be no reason for the Church to be the Body of Christ on earth.
In our own spiritual lives, we have to be willing to look for God’s presence as He wills to make Himself present. Back in Jesus’ day, the people of Israel had been demoralized by the Roman Empire. The nation of Israel had always prided itself on its military power, and then their nation was taken over by the Romans. “Where was God?” they asked. When Jesus walked this earth, He claimed to answer their question, and for His answer He was put to death through the acclamation of His own people. Then, the same question was asked to Jesus’ followers: “Where is your God?” On the third day Jesus answered that question by His Resurrection. But: He revealed this answer only to His followers. This is significant.
Why did He make His presence known only to His followers? Because it would be their job—as the Church—to answer this question to those outside the Church. It would be their job to speak in His Name as one Body. But for some days after the Ascension, the apostles and disciples weren’t sure about this great commission Jesus had given them. They were afraid, and they locked themselves into an upper room to spend the days in prayer. It wasn’t a coincidence that it was the same upper room where He had given them the gift of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.
Ten days after the Ascension—that is, 53 days after Jesus had given His Body and Blood through the Institution of the Eucharist—Jesus revealed His very Self in a new way. Through the Power of the Holy Spirit, God bound together the followers of Jesus into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church. By the Power of the Holy Spirit, God began on that day to speak through the followers of Jesus.
That day is the culmination of the Easter Season. That day is Pentecost Sunday, which the Church will celebrate with great joy a week from this Sunday.
“… you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”
Just as the earth has two poles, so the Season of Easter has two poles: the Resurrection and Pentecost. Both are solemnities of great joy for Christians. Yet each is preceded by an event of loss, of “grieving” even. The Resurrection is preceded by the Death of the Lord, and Pentecost is preceded by the Ascension of the same Lord. But to use the word “preceded” here is a bit lacking. The Death and Ascension of the Lord are the “events”—the sacred “mysteries”—that make the Resurrection and Pentecost possible.
Jesus refers to both sets of mysteries—the Death and Resurrection, and the Ascension and Pentecost—by His words in today’s Gospel passage: “you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.” Today’s Gospel passage is from the sixteenth chapter of John: part of Jesus’ Last Supper discourse. In the short-term, then, He is speaking about His Death and Resurrection. Yet in His divinity, Jesus also knew of His impending Ascension as well as the Descent of the Holy Spirit, so He is also speaking here about His Ascension and Pentecost.
Much of the world today celebrates the Ascension of the Lord. Some dioceses will transfer the Ascension to this coming Sunday, and celebrate today as a weekday of Easter. In either case, begin a novena today: nine days of prayer, longing for the Holy Spirit to come into your life more powerfully, and to help you live more fully your vocation within the Mystical Body of Christ.
“… when He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you to all truth.”
St. John Henry Newman, the nineteenth century convert to the Church from Anglicanism, is renowned for many theological works. One of the more famous is about the process of the “development of doctrine”. Newman had from boyhood been a keen student of history, and later in life he said that “to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant”.
To make an analogy: as fundamentalist Christians say that God created the universe, Earth, and mankind immediately (that is, within six days), so the same fundamentalists often say that God created the doctrines of the Church immediately. If a phrase is not found in the Bible—they insist—it cannot be admitted into mind of a Christian. Therefore, dogmas such as the “Immaculate Conception” and “papal infallibility” are clearly not Christian—they insist—because the apostles who composed the Bible never used these phrases, or spoke about these topics.
However, if beliefs cannot be accepted by Christians if they are not mentioned in the Bible, then these same people cannot profess a belief in the “Trinity”, since this word never appears in the Bible. “But,” these fundamentalists might argue, “the belief in the Trinity is in the Bible. It’s the word “Trinity” that came later, in order to dispel false interpretations of the Bible….” Yet such a defense supports Cardinal Newman’s teaching, which itself is simply an unpacking of Jesus’ words today: “when He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you to all truth.”
In addition to their divinity, the divine Persons of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were both sent by God the Father into this world, filled as it is by sin and death. Their missions differ, yet their missions converge as God’s Providential Will unfolds within salvation history.
Of course, before considering the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s missions within salvation history, we ought to reflect on their work “in the beginning”. God the Father created everything in the universe, visible and invisible, through His divine Word, and through the Power of the Holy Spirit. The creation narratives in Genesis are more suggestive than telling. Nonetheless, they point us towards contrasts that we ought to reflect upon as we approach Pentecost: contrasts, that is, between God’s work of creation “in the beginning”, and God’s work of redemption in the fullness of time.
Perhaps the most significant contrast between the missions of the Son and Spirit in creation, and then again their missions in the work of redemption, is that in the latter they manifest themselves incarnately. Their missions converge within the Mystical Body of Christ. “In the beginning”, the Word remained the Word. But in the fullness of time, “the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us”. “In the beginning”, the Spirit hovered silently over the face of the deep. But in the fullness of time, He is the soul of the Mystical Body of Christ, animating that Body’s members, so that the Christ’s saving work is carried out “unto the end of the age.”
“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify to me.”
Today Jesus—still addressing us from the Cenacle, at the Last Supper—proclaims the coming of the Holy Spirit. We note from Jesus’ words that—as we profess in the Church’s Creed—the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the God the Father and God the Son. Jesus Himself describes God the Holy Spirit as the One “whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father”.
In the Creed of the First Council of Constantinople (in A.D. 431), the first ecumenical council to describe at any length the nature of God the Holy Spirit, the council Fathers stated that the Holy Spirit is “the Lord, the Giver of Life [and] proceeds from the Father….” This council did not state that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The phrase “and the Son” (in Latin, filioque) was added by the Church to the Creed later. Controversy continues to this day as to the propriety of this addition.
Christians of the West accept the dogma of the Holy Spirit’s procession from both the Father and the Son. We see in the doctrine an expression of the closeness of the Father and the Son, while maintaining their distinction as divine Persons. God the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son because the Holy Spirit is the Love of the Father and the Son both for each other (not merely the love of one for the other). Saint Augustine explores the meaning of this great teaching in his very long, profound, and difficult work “On the Trinity” (De Trinitate). Pray for the Holy Spirit to enter your life more fully, and towards this end, plan to begin a novena to God the Holy Spirit this Thursday.
Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy 