Easter

Monday, Seventh Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 19: 1-8, Psalm 68: 2-7, John 16: 29-33

He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”

They answered him, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

It is easy for us to have the same problem.

Historically the Catholic Church has emphasized the truths of our faith, the doctrines, the practices and the reasons to believe. It is, of course a story of Jesus, the one who lived among us. But that was an historical moment long ago. How are we to survive as believers or even come to be believers if the content of faith is so removed from our own history.

The answer is what Paul discovered the Corinthians needed, the Holy Spirit. We have the same problem because the Church didn’t always emphasize the things of the Spirit as much as it did the things we can see, smell, touch and reason to. Too often faith has been an intellectual challenge. It remains that for many people today. But faith is more a challenge of experience and being in touch with our own emotions.

Faith never could be explained logically or encountered as a rationally intelligent strategy. Even Jesus couldn’t do that. The disciples always misunderstood. We think they couldn’t see the big picture. But the problem is that faith is such a matter of the Spirit that even personally knowing Jesus, one on one, in the first century didn’t change people the way they were changed once he had died. Only then, after his death, could the experience of living with him be understood in terms that gave new life to people. A meal was just a meal until the Holy Spirit gave the transforming insight that it could mean union with God. Helping others was an obligation until the Holy Spirit made it a life giving act of love.

That new life is ours once the Holy Spirit enters the mix. That is what Jesus was promising those disciples. The peace he offered wasn’t possible without God’s own Spirit changing how we see the world, how we see each other, most importantly how we see ourselves. We are not just individuals living separate lives trying to “make it” day to day. We are individuals who participate in a life that is the abundance of God. The story of Jesus is the gateway to opening our lives to the winds of the Spirit that will fill us, each in our own specific way and take us to a life of joy and happiness.

The disciples couldn’t come to a full experience of God’s presence when Jesus was living with them. Jesus, while he was alive, was another person, a separate distinct individual. Once he died God’s Spirit could infuse each disciple with a reality that was far more intimate than a person standing right in the front of them. That presence of the Spirit gives peace, that Spirit gives hope and understanding of what Jesus did and how we are part of that work.

We are here today because the Spirit of God has so inhabited the lives of believers that each generation is a new creation. Each of us is born into a new life modeled by Jesus. A new life we each have come to know because his very Spirit lives in us and takes us to places we never would have known.

Tuesday, Sixth Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 16:22-34, Psalm 138: 1-2, 7-8, John 16:5-11

What struck me when I first read today’s readings was the part of the Psalm, “The Lord will complete what he has done for me.” I retired over ten years ago. The idea of completing the work a person has to do is a topic I have thought about a lot. Since retiring I’ve come realize I’m not done doing things even though my last job, as a Pastoral Minister in the Church is over. It feels good to know that God may well have more for me to do and even now after years in retirement I continue to discover what’s next as life moves on.

This, I believe, is the kind of real world peace and confidence that should be the result of the Spirit being present in our lives. The more dramatic example is the story in Acts today when Paul and Silas are freed from prison by an earthquake but don’t leave the jail. They probably didn’t know what was coming next but they believed that they were safe and that whatever was best to do next would emerge in the situation just like the earthquake. Contrast their calm demeanor with the jailor who apparently was completely unnerved and afraid he was at risk if the prisoners escaped.

This is also an example of what Jesus was trying to tell the disciples in today’s Gospel. They would be better off when the Spirit came to be part of their lives. Jesus, the historical human being could only function in his time and place, with his friends at the time. But the Spirit of Jesus is free to be a part of all of our lives and has led to our understanding the significance of Jesus who lived, died and is truly risen. He is still living with us, giving us courage and peace to take each day as a gift of God and to look forward to what is next.

Thursday, Fifth Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 15: 7-21, Psalm 96:1-3, 10, John 15:9-11

Let’s take a minute to look at the history behind our first reading.

The first believers in Jesus were Jews. They saw belief in Jesus as an extension of Judaism. They came to believe in Jesus from within their own context, which was the Jewish faith. Jesus was a Jew. He was the Messiah God had promised to the Jews. The assumption was if non-Jews were to believe in Jesus they would have to become Jews. There was a tradition of people converting to Judaism, so this wasn’t something totally new.

The issues involved were circumcision and the common table they shared at Eucharist. To become a Jew the gentiles would have to be circumcised. How could Jews eat with Gentiles when Jews didn’t accept some foods Gentiles ate routinely? The Church, through the experience of Paul and Peter came to understand that Gentiles could have faith without first being Jewish. That is what is reflected in this reading. Peter is saying, Gentiles don’t need to be Jews. They just need to follow some basic rules of respect.

I think today it’s easy for us to say, “Of course, anyone can be Catholic or Christian. Why wouldn’t we accept others who accept what we believe. We have centuries of history in which missionaries have literally traveled the globe to convert people to Catholicism.

The Gospel is trying to instill in our hearts that God loves all of us. The issue is who do we accept as us? Who is Jesus talking to when he wants our joy to be complete? Is he’s talking to everyone? Can we accept that?

It should be comforting to know this is not a new issue, as evidenced by the reading from Acts. Those first followers of Jesus expected you had to be a Jew to follow Jesus. But the issue is very real today for us too. It just takes shape around different people.

Can we share table, can we accept as brothers and sisters, people we really don’t understand or may even be afraid of? Perhaps we still have some misgivings about people of a different skin color. Today that may or may not be the most pointed problem. What about gays, immigrants from anyplace south of the border? What about people who aren’t very clean or don’t have a place to live? What about people whose politics is different from ours? What about people who voted for raising property taxes to build the new library or a new school or any public improvement.

Can we be a people who has a sense of our human community? These days, people in politics, Democrats and Republicans, don’t look like they could agree on anything. Groups seem less willing to compromise. The need to say who I am outweighs the need to understand who we might be together. Ultimately, we must recognize our need to get along and work together. We need to do that because we care about each other. If we are Christian, we are called to get along not out of expediency but out of love, because God loves all of us. That’s what Jesus says. “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” Jesus is trying to explain that there is a kind of unity that exists between God and us, between us all. If our joy is to be complete we will need to embrace that unity, to help make it actual in our lives. To see past differences and believe as Acts says, “God made no distinction between us and them.” The challenge to us is to consider who we still treat like “them” or “those people.” Otherwise we will be acting just like the first century Jews who expected Gentiles to be circumcised before they could become followers of Jesus.

Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 11:19-26, Ps 87:1-7, John 10:22-30

Christ is Risen, Truly Risen, Alleluia

We continue to celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. We have been hearing in Acts about the early days of the Church and how it spread beyond Jerusalem. Today’s reading marks a significant turn of events because belief in Jesus moves beyond the Jewish community and he is accepted by Greeks as well. In other words, people significantly different from the original believing Jews recognized Jesus in their lives.

Let’s remember that for many people who met Jesus personally they didn’t accept who he was. Jews who had a great tradition of being rescued by God, who were awaiting a Messiah, didn’t recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah. Jesus was doing all sorts of good things but his actions challenged some and confused others. We now know that his works were sometimes interpreted as the actions of demons or a prelude to political takeover. His death on the cross seemed to end the issue.

In today’s Gospel, we have religiously devoted people who simply don’t recognize Jesus regardless of what he is doing and they want some kind of blunt statement, some proof of who he is. Yet in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Jews who believed in Jesus and fled Jerusalem because of the persecutions find people in other countries, who never met Jesus, who had no tradition of a coming Messiah and yet they can accept the story of Jesus, the Risen One, and believe he is the Son of God.

I think that is really hopeful for us. Because we are in the same situation. We are never going to meet Jesus the person who lived in Nazareth and traveled the Judean countryside. Yet we also know that throughout history people have come to recognize Jesus, the Risen One, in their lives and to believe in him.

I want us to recognize that faith means different things for different people. In fact, faith often means different things for each us over the course of our lives. Our faith changes as we grow older, it changes when we are confronted with different situations in our lives. So I want to raise a question for each of us. What does our faith look like? Is our faith only about keeping all the rules? Is our faith just about saying our prayers, coming to a Mass or attending a religious service? Is our faith limited to what we have been told is God’s will? Is our faith more personal? I want to suggest that today’s readings are about a more personal faith that recognizes Jesus, the Risen One, as someone active in our lives.

I am reacting to the part of John’s Gospel today in which Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they know me.”  That is a statement of personal recognition, up close personal knowing. This is when you know a person because of a relationship that has revealed all sorts of little things, opinions, fears and desires about the other person to you and you to the other person. The Greeks in Antioch discovered this relationship with the Risen Jesus and so have other Christians for centuries.

What I want to suggest is that we can still hear and experience Jesus, the Risen One and recognize him. It may be in situations in our life, it may be in conversation with others, it may be in prayer or devotion, it may be in moments that take us out of ourselves, it may be by being totally wrapped up in an experience, but we should know that belief in Jesus can be very concrete, personal and involving. Just as Greeks came to know Jesus, the Risen One, from Jews who ran away from Jerusalem, we can come closer to Jesus when we talk about our faith with each other. Let’s be open to what happens each day and be willing to share those experiences with faithful friends. Maybe all the amazing things that happened in the early days of the Church happened simply because people were willing to share their experiences of God with each other.  Remember Christ is Risen, Truly Risen, Alleluia!

Thursday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ 2 Comments

 Acts 5:27-33, Ps 34:2, 9, 17-18, 19-20, John 3:31-36

There are several things going on in the readings today. So I think it’s important to focus in on one. The Psalm says, “the Lord is close to the brokenhearted; those who are crushed in spirit he saves.” If we hear nothing else today, that is worth taking deeply into ourselves and savoring.

Too often our lives are cluttered with activities, obligations … and things we really want to do. Here is a gift of peace that could change us when we are frightened and brighten our days when the pressure of those schedules and other’s demands overwhelm us. “Those who are crushed in spirit he saves.”

This, to me, is the heart of prayer. No doubt at some point you have read or heard about a study that is run by some scientist who is trying to find out if prayer is effective. They are trying to measure one person’s or a group’s prayer to see if it changes some outcome for someone else. The results are often inconclusive, because it is the wrong question. Prayer is an expression of our relationship with God and no doubt there are changes but they are in us. We who were sad or frightened or heartbroken have been changed. That is the reality of prayer. It is as John’s Gospel says, “He does not ration the gift of his Spirit.”

So we can be confident that no matter how disheartened or frightened we may feel, God’s Spirit can lift us out of it if we are open to it. We need to believe in God’s presence right here, right now. That’s what believing in Jesus means. God is available to us in the midst of today’s life, in the current moment and whatever is happening for us.

We also have to recognize that this uncertainty, not being sure what Jesus can do, is not new. In the reading from John, the testimony of John the Baptist is saying, Jesus, the one from heaven, tells people what he has seen and heard but “no one accepts his testimony.” Lots of people didn’t believe it when Jesus was standing right in front of them.

Now, thousands of years later with the advantage of Church history, generations of saints and our own life of faith, it can still be difficult to accept that God is here for us and will give us what we need to overcome hard times. Today’s Psalm is really quite explicit, “many are the troubles of the just man, but out of them all, the Lord delivers him.” It doesn’t say many are the troubles of bad people, but many are the troubles of the just, and I would add, holy people. There really isn’t any question that bad things happen to good people. The only question is, will we believe, especially when we are “brokenhearted and crushed in spirit” that God can make a difference?

Well … Jesus is Risen, He is truly risen. Alleluia!

That should be our answer.

Wednesday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 5:17-26, Ps 34:2-9, John 3:16-21

Today’s readings are all about escaping the fear and judgments that keep us from being ourselves, good and holy people.

We begin with Luke’s story in the Acts of the Apostles that tells of the Apostles being put in prison because the authorities were jealous of all the good things they were doing. That same night an Angel comes, let’s them out and tells them to go to the Temple and preach about the good life that Jesus has brought.

Our Psalm acts as a perfect summary and interpreter of God’s action in similar situations in life. The response is simply, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.” Followed by “I sought the LORD, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” No wonder the psalmist blesses and glorifies the Lord throughout these verses. Our fears and the judgments of some people can be a jail that imprisons us. Only a sense that we are loved and not judged can set us free.

Love and empowering non-judgment are exactly what Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus in John’s Gospel. You may well have heard this line quoted in television ads for various Christian groups. It is the core of the Christian message: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” This is almost a repeat of the verse that precedes it, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This is followed by a pretty simple statement of how people can choose Jesus and light or evil and darkness. This statement about believing in Jesus or not, seems to be at odds with the prior verse that says the Son didn’t come to condemn the world.

 Yet the Psalm says, “Look to him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame. When the poor one called out, the LORD heard, and from all his distress he saved him.” Also when the temple guards go to get the Apostles out of prison to face the judgment of the Sanhedrin, the Apostles are gone. They are gone even though the doors are still locked and prison guards still on duty. There’s no logical way they could have gotten out. However, they did.

 I don’t want to dismiss this as an obvious miracle that God performed a long time ago. I believe this incident is meant to send us a message now. No matter the prison we’re in, not matter whether we’ve chosen the light or the dark at this point. Situations and attitudes can change with no logical explanation. Sometimes there is no logical explanation for what God does. Why? Because I’m not sure God looks at the light and dark of this world the way we often do. I think God simply loves us and acts out of that love.

Tuesday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 4:32-37, Psalm 93:1-2, 5, John 3:7-15

Happy Easter. Jesus is risen. He is truly risen!

So as you know, it is the Easter season. We are celebrating this amazing event that no one really understands. Jesus died and yet we believe he rose from the dead and lives with us still today. We may have become so used to the idea in our religious selves that we have forgotten how absolutely outrageous that claim can sound. Someone died and yet is alive in a real way 2,000 years later.

Perhaps we are like Nicodemus trying to understand what Jesus is trying to do with us. For me that is why I have always been drawn to the part of this reading that talks about the wind and how we don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. I think that is also true of how our lives work. Don’t we think, at times, how did I get here? In the same way, don’t we often wonder, what’s next? These common experiences expose a real vulnerability and hopefully humility that is part of human life. Too often we try to cover that vulnerability with behavior meant to hide it, or deny it or worse avoid it.

We need to accept our inability to control or comprehend every facet of our life so we can accept the loving care of God and follow where God leads. Wherever that might be. So Jesus is telling Nicodemus, and us, to look to God. To look up like the Israelites did in the desert. Looking up at the serpent in order to be healed. Facing, in other words, those things that frighten us. We can only overcome what we are willing to look at and tackle head on. In our case, it is Jesus on the cross who is lifted up. So we can see that giving ourselves totally to the challenges in our lives is the way to go. Giving ourselves totally to the people in our lives is the answer. That inherently means that we are not alone. Like the ideal description in the Acts of the Apostles we too can contribute to the good of the whole community but then also receive what we need from others. Which, of course, brings us back to where we started. In order to receive the gifts, the care and love from others we have to admit we need it. We have to admit that like Nicodemus we aren’t entirely sure of everything. We aren’t in total control of what happens in our lives. We need the help of others, we need the help of God to find our way, and only then will we be born again.

Monday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 4: 23-31, Psalm 2:1-4, 7-9, John 3:1-8

Today let’s talk about the Holy Spirit. We live in the time of the Spirit. Easter represents that change from Jesus, a person of history, to Jesus, our Savior. Easter is the basis of our faith. Jesus, a living human being died and rose to new life. Since that happened, each generation, beginning with the disciples has had to figure out what Easter means for them.  Jesus is no longer physically with us but amazingly he is still present.  As Jesus promised we were not left alone. The Holy Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit if you will, is part of our lives in a way so intimate and personal that I suspect many of us don’t always recognize the Spirit’s presence with us. That is what our readings are about today: the amazing presence and life giving support of the Holy Spirit.

The first reading presents exactly what we need to know. Peter and John had been threatened by the Pharisees. So the first thing they did was go to the community and the first thing the community did was pray for the Spirit to strengthen them to do what needed to be done. What may not be obvious in this sequence is that the Holy Spirit was part of their understanding before they made that first move. Jesus says it best in the Gospel, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Peter and John and the community of faithful wouldn’t have known what to do unless they had already been “born from above.”  We might say they had been converted, or had faith, they already believed in the power of God to be part of what was happening around them.

In the Gospel, Jesus is trying to get Nicodemus to look at life so he can see how much more is at hand. He is saying there is something more to this life than the physical world taken at face value. There is more to everything.

Unless we move beyond the immediate physical world and all its limitations we won’t see the Kingdom of God either. I don’t mean going to heaven after we’ve died. I mean the Kingdom that can be created right here, right now. That Kingdom, that reality is only accessible through the Spirit, God’s Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit.

I think Jesus is talking about the possibility of overcoming life’s limitations, the things that threaten us. We all know and can think of examples: how about overcoming the fear that keeps us from taking on something new, overcoming hatred that separates people, overcoming ego that makes us righteous, overcoming ambition that keeps us from being generous? Wouldn’t that be a birth to new life? That way of living is beyond the physical it is the realm of the spirit. There is more to life than the physical but we have to be open to it. Jesus again, put it this way, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” We have to be willing to see the possibility, to have faith that the Holy Spirit can be a real factor in our lives.

Acts tries to tell us how real and concrete the action of the Spirit can be. It says, “As they prayed, the place where they were gathered shook” And the result of their prayer? “They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to proclaim the word of God fearlessly.” It says, fearlessly … wouldn’t we love to be without fear?  This is the Easter season, death has been vanquished, new life is everywhere. We should ask ourselves if Easter is going to have any effect on us? Perhaps, it is time for us to acknowledge our own need to be shaken up?

Thursday, Octave of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 3: 11-26, Psalm 8:2ab, 5-9, Luke 24 35-48

          Happy Easter! Jesus is Risen, have you seen him yet?

          Are you surprised by some of the Gospel stories about the Resurrection? I often find them a little confusing. I mean if you were God, and Jesus had risen from the dead don’t you think you would have handled it more dramatically? Wouldn’t there be flourishes and huge signs of the divine presence coming to demonstrate the victory over death? Jesus, the son of God has just been brutally killed by the Romans and the whole point is to show how God’s power is stronger than death and the travails of earthly living. And what happens? Do we have bursts of radiance or sparkling hallo’s or dramatic appearances before thousands? No, essentially we have an empty tomb.

          On Tuesday, in John’s Gospel after Peter and another disciple have left after seeing an empty tomb, Mary Magdalene, alone in the Garden, mistakes Jesus for the gardener. Yesterday, in Luke’s Gospel, immediately before what we read today. Two everyday disciples who are disheartened walk with him all the way to the next town without recognizing him until they eat together at night. Today, his disciples are all gathered together but Jesus has to show them the wounds in his hands and feet and eat some fish in front of them before they accept that this is Jesus the one they have been with for 3 years.

          How come nobody recognizes him? I would like to suggest to you that they don’t see him because nobody including Peter and Mary Magdalene knew what to look for. What Peter and Mary were looking for was the body of a dead man. The disciples going to Emmaus were downtrodden because of his death and were leaving because they thought it was all over. In today’s Gospel, even though the disciples are all gathered together hearing about Jesus’ appearances to others they’re not expecting him. In a very real sense, none of them knew what to look for. Nobody had ever risen from the dead. The risen Jesus is something so new they didn’t know what it was.

          In Acts Peter explains what has happened to the Jews. Peter recounts how God has promised salvation since the time of Abraham. He talks of Moses and Samuel and all the prophets. The Jews are the children of the prophets and with whom God made his covenant of salvation. And they missed it. They couldn’t see Jesus in their midst. They missed it even though it was part of their very own history. The very substance of their lives produced the Savior and they couldn’t see him. They didn’t know what to look for. They were waiting for fancy and powerful, they got something totally new, totally different and unexpected.

          Let’s remember for a moment that the Gospels were written at least 40 years after Jesus died. The Gospel writers are trying to tell Christians who never met Jesus what it means to see him, to have faith, as the first witnesses did. They’re not trying to report history. I think what they are saying is, don’t expect an obvious, convincing demonstration of divine power with recognizable bells and whistles. Look for him instead in the everyday course of life and expect to be surprised. He will be there if we are looking for the one who is alive in the Scriptures, the one who is with us when we gather and celebrate his presence in Eucharist. If we’re sailing through life confident of what to expect then we’ll miss him even if he’s standing right in front us. If we’re gathered with others worried and frightened about the world around us then we’re likely to miss his presence among us.

          Today 2,000 years later, Jesus has become part of our scriptures in much the same way he was available to the Jews of his time. The question remains, do we know what to look for? Will we keep looking? Even though each of these Gospel stories recount how people didn’t recognize Jesus at first. Jesus makes himself known in each encounter. It was however a reality they could not have expected.

Tuesday, Octave of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Acts 2: 36-41, Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22, John 20:11-18

Today’s readings explore the amazing depth of what Jesus’ resurrection means. In the Gospel, Peter has just recounted the history of God’s revelations in Hebrew Scriptures to the surprising recognition on the part of the assembled Jews. Crucially they were “cut to the heart” and in that recognition of who Jesus was they ask what should they do? Peter explains they need to repent of their sins and be baptized “in the name of Jesus.” They need to pledge their lives to Jesus as their Savior and Lord.

The part of this reading that strikes me as most significant is what Peter says next. Those who repent and are baptized will receive the “gift of the Holy Spirit” to fulfill “the promise made to you … and to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God may call.” This is massively inclusive. At the time it certainly was meant to include the Gentiles, non-Jews who weren’t Abraham’s descendants. For me it feels like a call to us today who are “far off” in time and not just heritage. We are being called to see the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection in our lives and not just as a religious belief but as an offer of presence.

What I mean by an offer of presence is what I think today’s reading in John’s Gospel is about. Peter and the disciples have just left the tomb after discovering it empty. But Mary Magdalene overcome by emotion remains and looks inside to find two angels who ask her why she’s crying. Mary replies that someone has taken Jesus body away and she’s trying to find him. In her loving search for Jesus, he appears to her but she doesn’t recognize who she’s talking to and repeats her plea that she will take away the body if this man will just tell her where Jesus is. Only when Jesus calls her by name, does she recognize him and he cautions her not to cling to him and tell his disciples he has not yet ascended to his Father. Now she goes to tell them, “I have seen the Lord.”

I think John has told us a story of what Resurrection means for us. As I have written in other reflections, recognizing God’s presence in our lives is not an obvious experience, it takes time to see the presence of God that is right there in our lives. When Mary first “turns” around she thinks she’s talking to a gardener. Remember Jesus is someone she knows really well, so you would think she’d recognize him immediately. But Resurrection means Jesus has been transformed in a way we don’t fully understand. Mary has no experience that will help her see a divine presence. So Jesus asks her to identify what is going on for her and what she wants. He asks her to think about who she is in this moment. Then Jesus addresses her by name. In these times a person’s name was considered to hold their whole identity. When Mary hears her name called, she recognizes who she is, and she recognizes Jesus. I believe this is the pattern John is trying to explain to us. God’s Spirit promised so long ago to Abraham and then through Jesus to everyone else is here if we take the time to look deep within ourselves and the life around us. Jesus’ death on Good Friday ended the history of human separation from God. Jesus Resurrection is the demonstration of a new life in which God’s Spirit is present to us as today’s Psalm says, “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.” We just have to learn how to recognize God’s presence as it exists in each of us and the lives we live.