Claire Smith

Scripture:

Acts 15:1-6
John 15:1-8

Reflection:

Like many others, I’ve experienced a lot of losses, disappointments, and instability in the past year or two, and the future remains uncertain in many ways. On my own, I can sink into fear and worry. I can get anxious about things, with churning stomach and restless sleep. I try so hard to control the life that I think I’m in control of, when clearly, I am not!

In the midst of it, I’ve turned again and again to my faith. When I sit in the presence of God, I am reminded that even though I am unworthy, imperfect, scarred and broken, I am perfectly loved in every moment and I always have been. I am held in warmth, and gently guided on my path. Even when there is death in its many forms, we have a God of resurrection and life, waiting to lead us out of the tomb. Isn’t that what this season of Easter is all about?

I’ve been reinforcing this belief by utilizing a breath practice I learned from James Finley. Sitting in stillness, I become aware of my breathing. Then I consciously and deeply inhale the unbelievable, undeserved, and total love that God has for me. When I slowly blow the breath out, I breathe myself in trust and surrender into the arms of that love. In and out, in and out. Over and over the cycle repeats, until my every breath is the giving and receiving of God’s presence and love.

It is such a calming and centering practice. I experience what Jesus taught – that I am the branch, and it is only by staying connected to the vine that I can bear fruit. It is only by turning over my fears and trusting in the vine-grower that I know I will be OK. No matter what happens, no matter what is taken away or given to me, no matter how I am pruned or what tomb I may have to enter, I am a beloved daughter of God and I, in the deepest and truest part of me, will be OK.

It is hard to maintain that level of trust! I keep coming back to wanting certainty, wanting control, wanting things to be how I wish them to be. I continually need to reconnect to the vine and draw life from there. God will not leave me alone. God has guided me, sustained me, and been at my side my entire life. So many little miracles surround me when I am willing to see.

How do you stay connected to the vine? What can you do to surrender the control that honestly you don’t really have anyway? As you look back on your life, where do you see God’s guiding hand and little miracles? Perhaps you can make one small change today to recommit yourself to knowing the love of God deep in your heart, and turning yourself over to the One in whom you live and move and have your being, the one true Vine.

Amy Florian is a teacher and consultant working in Chicago.  For many years she has partnered with the Passionists.  Visit Amy’s website: http://www.corgenius.com/.

Scripture:

Acts 6:1-7
1 Peter 2:4-9
John 14:1-12

Reflection:

Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me, Philip?” -John 14:9

I can totally relate to Philip’s disbelief. Jesus, you give me a nice home, a fancy car, and respect amid the powerful decision-makers of the world I live in and then suggest, that I if I want these, I had to freely share them with all those I meet, holding back nothing. What? Maybe that worked in the world 2,000 years ago, before double-entry accounting, computers and satellites that assure me of recognition and authority worldwide. At the same time, this technology shares the wars, the unimaginable destruction taking place in my world, people that think that they can have it all too. How do I go forward?

We can choose the right path at least for today. To go forward even when we are ‘enlightened’ by faith can be a risk. And so often the Christian journey calls us to go forward into what is not known. ‘What will happen if… I forgive the other or I trust in this moment or I dare to ask for forgiveness etc?”

I think I totally understand this father business, because I was so lucky to have a father who loved to sow seeds and tend them daily until he thought they were ready to go off and do the same, never losing contact with each other, but sharing with each other in the abundant life promised.

Dan O’Donnell is a Passionist Partner and a longtime friend of the Passionists.  He lives in Chicago.                                                                                                  

Scripture:

Acts 13:44-52
John 14:7-14

Reflection:

King Charles III is crowned today in Westminster Abbey in London. Years before this historic, long-awaited day, Charles, as Prince of Wales, was doing Great Things, including food distributions and energy bill relief for the neediest in Great Britain. He has used his wealth to promote protections for the environment, and advocated for preservation of cultural and architectural heritages. Farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa have benefited from his efforts to help them make necessary adaptations for survival as the climate and economies swiftly change.

Indeed, despite his human inadequacies, the King is doing Great Works.

In today’s Gospel Jesus talks about his oneness with the Father. No words can adequately describe the oneness he experienced with his “Abba,” his Daddy, but we know the oneness bore much fruit. Indeed, he did Great Works.

In today’s section of the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus makes a startling prediction: “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these…” We, his brothers and sisters in faith, will do Great Things? Greater things than Jesus did? Really?

Is this a divine guarantee that we, in our brief spans on earth, will leave legacies of buildings, projects completed, millions lifted from poverty, injustices made right? Will we be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom or the Nobel Peace Prize for our Great Works?

Probably not.

So, what did Jesus mean when he assured us we will do greater works than he, the miracle worker who changed the water into wine, raised Lazarus, gave the blind man sight, and cured the royal official’s son at Capernaum did?

His dazzling Great Works reflected his Father working in him to draw all of us to God, to abide in God.

The dazzling Great Works we do because we believe in Jesus are probably a lot subtler, more nuanced. Yet, the impact that our lives, lived in union with God, are having on others is probably more profound than we will ever know in this lifetime.

I think of a young mother who works for poverty wages at a dollar store in a section of town riddled with drugs, violence, prostitution, alcoholism and theft. She is committed to caring, as a single parent, to feeding, clothing and loving her five children in home unfit to be a chicken coup. Every day she is faithful in getting her children to school, paying bills and reporting to work. The influence she has on her family, her customers and on me, she will never fully know.

But I guarantee her influence is a Great Work. I am inspired by her faithfulness to God, which she often mentions to me, and to her commitments as a mother. When I experience a setback, a disappointment, a loss, I think of her and the profound grace God gives her each day to do the little things that she is called to do. This lifts me.

Believing in Jesus leads us to want to abide in him, to let him abide in us. This union, prayerfully experienced in moments of silence each day, opens our deepest selves to make room for the Spirit to fill us, to set us on fire, to act in amazing loving ways. These ways may not lead us to do Great Works as King Charles does. More likely we will be led to act quietly, behind the scenes, without fanfare, to be faithful to our daily responsibilities, done in love. Caring for a disabled or ill family member or neighbor, treating people with justice, compassion and love, being faithful parent, spouse, employee while opening our hearts, our homes, our neighborhoods, our country to our brothers and sisters who are hungry, lost, afraid, alone . . .these are all Great Works.

In your quiet moments of prayer today, ask God to do Great Works in you. And don’t be surprised if the answer to your prayer is: “just keep doing the little works you are doing, faithful one.”

Jim Wayne is a board member of the Passionist Solidarity Network (PSN), and author of The Unfinished Man. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Acts 13:26-33
John 14:1-6

Reflection:

Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  -John 14:5

Once in Rome, my wife and I were trying to find a particular landmark. We stopped and in our best broken Italian, asked a local which way to go. With great enthusiasm and many hand gestures he gave us a long string of directions to follow. We thanked him with a Grazie mille! (A thousand thanks) and continued on our way. Once we were out of earshot, I asked my wife how much of that she had understood. She replied, “I got the first part, keep going straight. Then he lost me!”

In today’s gospel Thomas is confused and asks Jesus for directions. Jesus says, it is simple: “I AM the way.” His direct answer is both heartening, and at times, difficult to understand. But Jesus asks us as he did His first disciples, “Follow me.”

How many of us start along the path towards the Father and then find ourselves distracted or discouraged, drawn this way and that, turned around and casting about, looking for the way? We may follow one of the paths the world offers: riches or fame, overstimulation or languor, wondering why we are still dissatisfied. And yet, Jesus is always before us, beckoning us onward, saying, “I am the way, follow me.” Unlike our Italian friend in the story above, Jesus doesn’t give us a series of complicated directions then send us on our way to fend for ourselves. No, He accompanies us every step of the way. As He teaches in Matthew 28:20: “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” We just need to pause and center ourselves, then turn once again to Him.

To finish off the story I began with, my wife and I realized we could go forward until we were lost again, then ask another person for directions. So it is on the path to the Father. We can (and should!) ask daily, if not minute by minute, “What is the way, Lord?” Jesus never tires of revealing to us, “I am the way. Follow me.”

Talib Huff is a retired teacher and a member of the retreat team at Christ the King Passionist Retreat Center in Citrus Heights, California. You can contact him at [email protected].

Scripture:

1 Corinthians 15:1-8
John 14:6-14

Reflection:

Even within the ‘bubble’ of a “lifetime faith” (a way of life one has known since early years), we sometimes need a ‘faith with a faith’ to hold fast to the fact that Jesus is the image of God.

Every time our mind is stretched in that direction, and we learn something new about Jesus as the revelation of God and thus gain some insight into the mystery of God, we can so easily slip backward. That is, when we relax or pause from being contemplative, we can easily tend to revert to deeply held and usually unconscious feelings about God that tend to reinforce old images. It is as if humankind has a default position when it comes to the divine, and it re-sets itself every time we pause our prayer or lose focus on Jesus himself.

Jesus is more than the image of God, true as that is. He shows us the dynamic life of God and the kind of life God wants to live with us. In his every word, deed, attitude, and teaching Jesus is revelation itself.  His life was and is with us in the Resurrection, lived in an ongoing dynamic of revelation, healing, compassion and compassionate leadership to bring us home to God.

It takes some faith to truly appreciate that everything we see, hear and feel when we contemplate Jesus is a revelation of God.

To be in a relationship with Jesus enables us to know God and is not so much about proofs (“show us the Father”), but rather it is to step out into life each day trusting that he is the way, truth and life. To adhere to his vision and to live like Jesus, as best we can, is to know God. It is as simple and as profoundly mysterious as that.

The challenge for each one of us, life-long followers as we may be or newly commissioned disciples, is to not take this relationship for granted, but rather to keep growing in faith.  “Have I been with you for so long a time, and you still do not know me?” asks Jesus of Philip.

The question can be a talisman-like one for us, one to keep close and ‘wear’ so that it can serve as a reminder and challenge us to greater depths. It is a question for us to take into this day and indeed, into life.

Fr. Denis Travers, C.P., is a member of Holy Spirit Province, Australia. 

Memorial of St. Athanasius, Bishop, and Doctor of the Church

Scripture:

Acts 11:19-26
John 10:22-30

Reflection:

St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in North Africa, has been recognized by the Catholic Church for his holy life and his profound theology, and is now revered as a “Doctor of the Church.” But in his lifetime, he was regarded as a troublemaker by the Roman emperors and even some of his fellow bishops. He was persecuted and threatened; and banished from his people in Alexandria five times. He spent seventeen of forty-six years of his episcopate in exile.

Although St. Athanasius lived in the fourth century, he experienced intimidation and displacement much like the earliest disciples, whose ministries are described in the Acts of the Apostles. And like Barnabas in today’s reading from Acts, “he encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord in firmness of heart” (Acts 10:23) despite all their obstacles.

In the fourth century of Athanasius, the obstacle was a heresy called Arianism, which taught that Jesus was not fully divine. There was bitter division in the Church on this issue. St. Athanasius taught that Jesus the Son of God, the Eternal Word through whom God made the world, entered the world in human form. This is the Incarnation, meaning to “take on flesh.”

St. Athanasius risked his life and his reputation to continue to preach the truth of Jesus’ Incarnation because he believed it so deeply. He challenges us to love our world because Jesus the Eternal Word entered our world in human form and shared our reality, loving it ALL. Our love for this world shows in our reverence for life on our planet: species of animals and plants that have evolved over millennia; as well as the diverse cultures, which are the result of human genius to survive and thrive in varied places around the world.

And so, we pray for courage to respond:

—when ecosystems are being destroyed and Indigenous people removed from their lands,   

—when people struggle to hold on to their cultural ways of life after they are displaced by climate change, war, or persecution,

—when we fail to see the face of Jesus in someone of a different ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

We ask for the graces of loving determination, clarity of thought, and reverence for life that we celebrate today in the life of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Doctor of the Church. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Patty Gillis is a retired Pastoral Minister. She served on the Board of Directors at St. Paul of the Cross Passionist Retreat and Conference Center in Detroit. She is currently a member of the Laudato Si Vision Fulfillment Team and the Passionist Solidarity Network.