Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ June 3, 2018

Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ June 3, 2018

CorpChristiB18. Exodus 24:3-8. “When Moses came to the people and related all the words and ordinances of the Lord, they all answered with one voice, ‘We will do everything that the Lord has told us.’” To accept God as one’s God we must submit to his authority over us. This is not a horizontal relationship between equals but a vertical relationship between those who have been created and their Creator, between those who live in a state of absolute dependence and the One on whom we can utterly depend upon forever. A second time Moses reads to them the covenant and a second time they accept but this time he sprinkles half of the blood of the sacrifice on them and the other half on the altar to symbolize that God and the people are bound together by the covenant. Blood which symbolizes life or the life-giving force is used to indicate that the covenant is now operative as the life giving relationship between God and his people.

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26. At their celebration of the Passover, the last meal that Jesus was to eat before dying on the Cross, what we traditionally call ‘The Last Supper,’ Jesus establishes the new covenant that then super cedes that of Old Testament. Of the bread he shares with the Apostles, Jesus says, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he shared the cup with them saying, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.” This all precedes his actually offering up himself; body and blood on the cross as a once and for all time sacrifice to God the Father to atone for our sins. At Mass we re-present that same sacrifice on the cross, since he is not dying over and over again.

Hebrews 9:11-15. The offering up of the blood of goats and bulls was repeated endlessly in the old covenant to sanctify those who were defiled in any way. In the new covenant the blood of Christ once offered up, only needs to be re-presented to God the Father to cleanse us from our sins, since the one offering on the cross has infinite, endless value before God. Jesus is the “mediator of the new covenant,” who presents his sacrifice to his Father for our benefit. In Hebrews 9:24-26 we read, “For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf. Not that he might offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own; if that were so, he would have had to suffer repeatedly from the foundation of the world. But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice.” In Romans 5:8- 9, Paul writes, “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath.” Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Our reception of Jesus in the Eucharist enables us to go to the Father through the Son who is the only way to the Father, in other words, the only way to heaven.

Trinity Reflection May 27, 2018

TrinityB18. Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40.

Moses explains to the people how wondrous is their God, caring for them and looking after them like no other god. “This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.” He deserves your obedience to him and will reward you greatly, if you act as a people who belong to him.

Matthew 28:16-20. “They worshiped (him) but they doubted.” The doubt, I believe, was that they were unsure of what was to follow, after Jesus was to leave them, and that made them uneasy. Jesus said, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” I believe that Jesus, in announcing to them that he has received all power was saying that he is God and that what he was commanding them to do comes from him out of his authority as God and as the almighty God in his infinite power he will be with them without fail until the end of time in all the church’s work of making “disciples of all nations.” Jesus commands that they are to baptize in the name of the Triune God. The clarity of this statement makes it clear that God sees himself as three Persons but one God. In saying this, Jesus reveals, beyond what is given in the Old Testament, that the One God is, not only love, but a relationship of infinite love so giving of each Person to the other that the three become one. The three persons of the Trinity are so infinitely given to each other in love that they are not three gods but one God. This mystery can be so disturbing for many but we, who are human, finite or so limited in comparison to what is infinite, divine or without human limitations, are incapable of fully grasping, taking ahold of, comprehending or understanding the limitless, almighty God. It would be like trying to fit the whole ocean into a tiny cup.

Psalm 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19 20, 22. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” “He commanded, and it stood forth.” He is so almighty that with just a word the whole universe, the whole natural world is created by him. Nevertheless he deeply cares for us who are so insignificant. He “is our help and our shield. May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in you.”

Romans 8:14-17. “The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” The Holy Spirit joins himself to our spirit to proclaim that, as God is love and bound together as one by love, we are taken into God’s family because we are loved. All of the saints in heaven are God’s family able to call God, our Father, and one another, our brothers and sisters. In following Jesus to heaven, we must follow him, accepting our crosses of submission to his Will and dying to our own will, as we go with him to the resurrection. We are heirs to both his death and resurrection.

Pentacost Reflection May 20, 2018

PentB18. Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11. Jesus, the Love, the Center, the Light of their lives had ascended, gone away into the heavens. They were now without him. Jesus had promised the Spirit and so they waited. When the Holy Spirit came, he came in great power. “Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.” The Holy Spirit came to set their tongues on fire so that their words might instill a burning desire in their hearers to be devoted to Jesus as their life-giving God. The Apostles spoke to a crowd of vastly different languages, yet they heard “them speaking in (their) own tongues of the mighty acts of God.” The Spirit works today, ordinarily not with such a spectacular show, nonetheless with great, quiet power for those whose hearts welcome him.

John 20:19-23 & 15:26-27; 16:12-15. John’s gospel has Pentecost and Easter occurring on the same day. For John, Jesus comes on Easter to give the Holy Spirit to the Apostles so that they may go and bring to holiness those who wished to be saved from their sins. In the second Gospel option, Jesus says, “the Spirit of truth” “will guide you to all truth,” which he receives from the Son who had received it from the Father, the Trinity working together as the one God. In John’s gospel the word ‘truth’ is used 52 times, and yet even more times in the epistles. The ‘truth’ means that we belong to what is genuinely real for all eternity, not what people would like to call the truth but what is only invented to make them feel good, or what they would like to think, or what is in fashion today. That latter so called ‘truth’ are the lies which the devil uses to deliver us to his realm of darkness, away from the light that is God himself. The truth that the Spirit brings to us is a continuation of what Jesus had brought to his followers when he was on earth. God, the Holy Spirit uses the bible, the Church’s magisterium or teaching authority and all forms of teaching as instruments to guide us to all truth.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13. “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” All good that is truly good comes radically from God, the only true source of genuine goodness. All that we do, think or say that is good comes from the work of God. In Matthew 16: 16-17, “Simon Peter said in reply, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus said to him in reply, ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.’” In other words, Peter did not figure this all out on his own but God moved him to recognize the truth of who Jesus was. If the preacher preaches in such a way that we are moved to be a holier people, that is the work of the Spirit in the preacher and in those who hear his words and not something they do on their own apart from God. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. It is the work of the Spirit to build up the church by giving different gifts to different individuals. It is the “same God who produces all of them in everyone.” “We are all given to drink of one Spirit.”

Galatians 5:16-25. “Live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.” Here Paul is not writing about the necessary, nutritional demands our bodies make on us to live from day to day but on the illicit cravings that our bodily nature might tempt us to. The fruit of the Spirit are the good actions that God calls us to. “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.”

Ascension Reflection May 13, 2018

AscenB18. Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11. “He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days.” Jesus had truly died and truly arose from the dead. He proved that to his apostles in a physical way, visible to their eyes and palpable to their touch. However, the time of Jesus’ physical presence was shortly to end and Christianity was to enter into a spiritual phase that demands a faith in what we cannot see or touch but which is fostered by the divine work of the Holy Spirit. Through his powerful presence in the timid, previously fearful Apostles, Jesus’ salvific work was brought “to the ends of the earth.” Jesus ascended into heaven but some day will return just as he ascended. That will be Jesus, the divine King, at the end of the universe. When it will happen belongs to God, and God alone, to know.

Mark 16:15-20. “Jesus proclaimed to them, ‘go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” He “was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.” Through the Spirit, Jesus worked with his disciples, at first in a very visible, physical way but later, in a more spiritual and hidden way, demanding more faith on the part of the believer.

Ephesians 1:17-23. At first Paul calls upon us through the power of God to come to know what hope we have been given from the riches of his glory and infinite power for us who put our faith in him. Secondly, Paul says that we have put our faith in the Christ who is at the right hand of God the Father far above everything or anyone. “And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body.” As we receive the body and blood of Christ in communion, we, as church, become his body with him as our head. We have been given a deep intimacy of union with him, so much is he a part of us and we, a part of him. Jesus, filled with all goodness and love, fills us with all that is himself. What eternal joy we have!

Ephesians 4:1-13. The call or vocation that Christ has given us is to live in heaven one day. We need to start living now as though we were already in heaven, “bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of spirit through the bond of peace.” Through the Spirit he is equipping us for the work of the ministry by proclaiming the gospel to all in order to build up the church, which is the body of Christ. We are all called to be one, united in Christ. The depths of that union enable us to grow and develop as God’s holy ones, “to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ.”

Easter Reflection May 6, 2018

East6B18. Acts of the Apostles 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48. The Acts of the Apostles 15:1 states: Some who had come down from Judea were instructing the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved.” Today’s first reading helps to set the stage for debate that was to rage later in beginnings of Christianity. Was what Christ was establishing a new form or sect of Judaism or an entirely different religion that was rooted in Judaism? It is the latter. “Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him (Jesus),” Peter says. The Holy Spirit poured out himself on Jew and Gentile alike without any discrimination.

John 15:9-17 & 17:11b-19. (Since in the Wilmington Diocese we do the Mass for the Ascension on the second Sunday from now, thus leaving the readings of the Seventh Sunday without any coverage, I would like to bring the second and third readings from the Seventh Sunday into this reflection so that they get some attention. In John 15:9, “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” In other words, remain in and live in the divine love that I pour into you. We have always heard, “Love with all your heart, with all your mind and all your soul,” as if we ourselves create the love from within ourselves from our own resources that enables us to respond positively to this command. I believe that it is not our love with which we love but rather the love that God is always giving us that is the love that we bring to the commandments of love. In other words, I understand that on our own, apart from God, we cannot truly love. In John 15:5b, Jesus says, “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” It is only that we have received love from God that we have love to bring to anyone. In our second reading for this Sixth Sunday of Easter, we read, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” God is always at the center of our bearing any fruit. In John 15:16a, Jesus says, “ It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.” What we must ask for is true love in the midst of a world that all too often wants to love itself and a life in the flesh that only wants to love pleasures for the flesh. It is now as Jesus said in John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another,” and no longer, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Jesus who offered himself up as a sacrifice for our sins to open the gates of heaven to us showed us that love is what we do for the true unadulterated benefit of others and not for what we can get out of it.

In John 17:6, Jesus says, “I revealed your name (you) to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word” (lived by what they have been taught.) In John 17:9, Jesus says, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours.” Since we Christians belong to God, he protects and guards us from the evil one. The devil roams about the world trying to steal away from God those who have chosen to belong to God. We are in the world but do not belong to the world and the devil but to God and heaven. In John 18:36, in speaking to Pilate, “Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom does not belong to this world’.” In John 17:17, Jesus says, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” To be consecrated means to be given or devoted completely and totally to God who is the fullness of truth, of what is eternally divine and not just a temporary gloss or veneer that appears to be momentarily pleasing in the eye of the world.

1 John 4:7-10, 11-16 (the second readings of both the Sixth and Seventh Sundays of Easter). In 1 John 4:16, we read: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” When our life comes from the love that God is giving us every moment of our lives, then we remain in God and in his love. If we cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s work for our sanctification, then we build holiness within ourselves from the Spirit’s developing within us a sharing in God’s divine life that is the result of God’s endless act of loving us. The love that has been poured into us is what we share by loving one another as he has loved us. God demands to see the fruit of his work of love in us. Jesus says in John 15:16-17, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.” When we do God’s work of love, we do it with him. He never leaves our side, so to give us whatever we need to accomplish his Will, his work of love through us and in us.