Claire Smith

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

“I am the vine, remain in me and you will bear fruit.”

I used to think these words of Jesus in John’s gospel were a simple admonishment to stay in a close relationship to God through prayer.  As I have aged and been challenged to grow beyond my Baltimore Catechism approach to prayer as a child, I have realized that the words “remain in me” have much more depth than a call to a simple supplication or prayer of praise.

I am one with God.  I am also one with my brother and sister “branches on the vine.”  (The elderly, very sweet woman sitting next to me in my wife’s physician’s waiting room just reminded me of this fact by loudly asking “What are you doing with that thing?  What are you writing?  I like to write too!”)

Being one with God, remaining in God, requires me now to set aside all my old constructs.  God is no longer my own creation of an old, benevolent white guy on a throne.  God is not out there, up there or over there.  I remain in God.  We are one thanks to my baptism in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  As Paul writes, I no longer live, Christ lives in me.

My reflection today once more leaves me with a question.  How do I remain in God?  It seems like any reflection on the words of Jesus leaves me more to think about.  This is good.

Terry McDevitt, Ph.D. is a member of the Passionist Family in Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Acts 14:19-28
John 14:27-31a

Reflection:

Easter seems a distant memory as our lives returned to regular routines of work, family life, and school. I have to remind myself that we are still in “the Easter Season,” a time when we are still trying to figure out what the Resurrection of Jesus means for us today.

A favorite line from the Resurrection narratives in the Gospels is when the angel at the empty tomb asks, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” It is such a great question, and one that always seems to stump me. Why do I so often hang out at the empty tombs of my life?

It helps that all around me trees are budding and crocuses are emerging from once frozen earth. The amazing – seemingly miraculous – reemergence of life all around beckons me to ask where else in my life is there new life and why do I spend so much time looking for life amidst the dead.

What books do I read? What news do I watch? With whom do I spend my time? How do I use my free time? The angel tells the women at the tomb that they will find Jesus in Galilee. They have to go find him. They are going to have to find him out there. In life. In work. In family. Not in the tomb or those places in our lives that are lifeless.

The tone of our public discourse, reports of growing despair and suicide rates, and incessant occurrences of senseless violence remind us that we are still in the Easter Season. We still need to learn what the Resurrection means for us and where we are called to find new life with the Risen Lord. One thing we do know, it’s not in an empty tomb.

 

Robert Hotz is a consultant with American City Bureau, Inc. and is the Director of The Passion of Christ: The Love That Compels Campaign for Holy Cross Province.

Scripture:

Acts 14:21-27
Revelation 21:1-5a
John 13:31-33a, 34-35

 

Reflection:

Speaking the Word

Of the 150 million works and books in the Library of Congress the most valuable is a Gutenberg Bible.   It is valuated between $25 and $35 million dollars!  Even individual pages will sell from $20,000 to $100,000!  Society values the Bible for its historical importance as the first printed book.   For us the Bible is far more valuable not for its historical importance but because it contains the explosive and loving words of God!

When the Capernaum man saw Jesus cast out an evil spirit with a word he said:  “what a word!”  And they were all amazed and said to one another, “For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” Lk 4:38

We prize Holy Scripture for two important reasons.   The first reason is that His word is powerful.   Right from the opening lines of Scripture God creates the world by the word.   All the beautiful realities of the cosmos around us are concrete realizations of His immaterial word!  They speak of His love, care, and wisdom!  “For the word of God is living and active “ Heb 4:12  The word for active is energas in the Greek NT.  It comes from work.   The word works wonders for us as we open our minds and hearts by listening to God’s speech.   The dead and corrupting Lazarus comes alive to the powerful words of Jesus: “Lazarus come here!”

The second reason we value the word of God is that it is the door to God’s Heart!  The closest we can get to another is by communication.  When I decide to converse with another I think in the deeps of my mind what I want to share.   Then my heart moves me to speak a word.   The word goes hopefully into the ear and to the mind and heart of the other.  What starts in the depths of my being, ends up in the heart and mind of another.   That is most intimate we can be.   When I welcome the powerful and loving word of God I can achieve a beautiful closeness to God.

At every Mass we correctly say:   “Say but the word and my soul shall be healed!” “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Jh 14:23   I love the words of St Gregory the Great: “To know the Heart of God through the Word of  God”

 

Fr. Bob Weiss, C.P. preaches Parish Missions and is a member of the Passionist Community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

Today’s Gospel reading is always a personal challenge because Jesus responds to Philip’s request to see the Father with a pointed question: “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip?” No matter how close I may be to Jesus, the relationship can always go a bit deeper.

Having a relationship with Jesus helps us understand, I think, some of the remarkable things that Jesus promises towards the end of our Gospel reading: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen , I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do greater ones than these because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (italics mine).

How is it possible for us to do greater works than what Jesus did? For me, I have understood this saying of Jesus in the context of what He did on earth outside of the great act of redemption for us. For instance, He did not go outside of Judea or Samaria, but His followers have. He reached thousands, but His followers have reached millions. Saints throughout the history of the Church have worked miracles, as He did, in the lives of people. But all this has been done in His name! Not in our own name; not by our own power! It is possible to do great things in Him!

If we have a relationship with Jesus, that will have an effect on what we ask of Him. Can I really ask for the destruction of my enemies in the name of the One who told us to love them? Can I really ask for material wealth in the name of the One who told us, “Blessed are the poor in spirit?” Can I really ask to always have things my way in the name of the One who said, “Not my will, but yours be done?”

But we can ask for guidance about how to deal with a difficult person, or how to persevere in times of crisis. We can ask for the grace and the ability to do what is needed, even when it may seem impossible. These are the kind of things I believe Jesus is talking about.

The more we get to know Jesus, the more we understand what is really important, and what is really possible.

Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P., is the local superior at St. Paul of the Cross Passionist Community in Detroit, Michigan. 

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

Here we are at the end of the fourth week of our Easter celebration.  Happy Easter – again!!!  Can there possibly be something more we are to ponder about Easter?  In the words of a famous politician, “You betcha!”

Our sacred scripture for today gives us an amazing insight.  Remember that the Christian Jewish believers have been thrown out of the temple and the synagogues.  They have been scattered and are following Paul’s lead in going out to other countries to bring the good news.  He is in Antioch today where believers were called Christians for the first time.  The heart of his message is the Crucified Lord has fulfilled God’s promise of salvation.  His message is simple but profound.  To become a believer, focus on the person of the Crucified Jesus, grab hold of Him and never let go.  Hold on to Him in every circumstance of life, in every moment of trial, in every shadow of darkness, in every confrontation with evil and in every celebration of what is good, happy, peaceful and holy.  In the words of the popular liturgical song, make the Lord Jesus the center of our life and keep Him there.

In our reading from Acts, Paul reinforces this stance in life by helping us to understand that we now have a new way of reading the Hebrew Scriptures.  We are called to read as believers in the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  All is seen and understood now through the prism of the Cross and Resurrection.    From Genesis through the Exodus and Passover, through the Mosaic Covenant, through the inheritance of  the Promised Land, through the prophets and Wisdom figures of old, through the Kingdom and its kings – all must now be seen and understood through the moment that it is all fulfilled in the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  This perspective on reading Scripture is another of the Lord’s Easter gifts to us and it stands alongside the gifts of eternal life itself, joy, peace, the Holy Spirit, baptism and so much more that flows from the font of the Resurrection.

Our Gospel reading from John makes it even clearer in case we missed it in the first reading.  God bless Thomas – he sets it up for us to hear and see clearly.  Where is this place to which Jesus is referring?  Where is He going?  How long a walk is it?  Are there any landmarks to expect along the road?  No Thomas, Jesus is not speaking of a geographical location.  There is no road.  There is no journey to a temple or a synagogue essential to life with God.  There is only a PERSON, the Lord Jesus.  He is the Way to life.  The Risen Lord is in the Father and the Father is in the Son.  Our Way to the Father is in the Son.  If we keep Jesus as the center of our life each minute, each day, week, month and year – always, we will know the Way; we will have the Way; we will be following the Way.  It is an inward journey which leads us to life choices and decisions which accurately reflect the mind and heart of the Risen Lord Jesus in our sense of self, in our relationships with one another, in our parishes, our Church and our world.

Can there possibly be anything more to discover about Easter?  Indeed there is!  The Lord’s Easter gifts continue to pour forth.  The Easter Mystery is like a diamond held up to rotate in the light.  The gleaming facets continue to be discovered long after we thought we had seen it all.

Fr. Richard Burke, CP, is a member of St. Paul of the Cross Province.  He lives at St. Ann’s Monastery in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Scripture:

Acts 13:13-25
John 13:16-20

Reflection:

There is a large medical program that is currently quite active and influential.  It goes by the name PRESENCE.  This name is now attached to familiar names of hospital and medical centers that had their own names, such as Holy Cross or St. Luke or Mercy, so that they now read: Presence: Holy Cross Medical  Center, or  Presence: St. Luke Medical Center.  In this new combination of names the effect is achieved of retaining the familiar while enhancing it with the addition of something new.

This mixture of the old and the new nicely combines memory of the past with a renewed sense of the present.  It captures two of the driving or impelling forces, not only of a medical system, but of major segments of our lives.  For we all operate in terms of memory of the past and hope for the future.  They are both compelling forces and energies in our lives.

As we listen to the scriptures assigned for our reflection today, we find ourselves engaging the same kind of factors that are operative in them.  St. Paul, for example, is given an opportunity to stand up in the synagogue in the town of Antioch in Pisidia, and to be invited by the officials in charge of the synagogue to go up onto the podium and to reflect, for the people present there, on the active presence of God in the history of the Jewish people—for all those he was addressing were Jews.

And he gives a great emphasis to the notion of PRESENCE, to which reference was just made.  That is, he talks about the presence of God to the Jewish people over a long time period of hundreds of years, first, in the land of Egypt, then during their long sojourn in the Sinai desert, then on the occasion they gained their long awaited goal of entering the Promised Land, and then of the series of notable kings that rose up from their ranks in the course of their long history.  In all of this time, stretching out over a period of several hundreds of years, the sense of God’s presence to them never left them, and provided an awareness of security and protection.  It was a pillar of their lives.

And Jesus too shows how much the sense of presence factors into His teaching.  He does this in terms of the servant/master relationship, and the messenger /sender relationship.  In each case, the presence of the one evokes a sense of the presence of the other.  Thereby He Implies this pertains to us, that is, if we understand and appreciate this kind of relationship, then we have gained the advantage of operating and acting under its umbrella.  It leads to the conviction that in dealing with the one, we are dealing with the other, so that the sense of presence pervades the interplay of these relationships.  This is foundational in appreciating what we are about in relating to Jesus Himself.  For it moves us beyond the sense of His presence now, in His human form, to the much more awesome awareness of another greater sense of the presence factor in situations other than just now.

These biblical readings bring to our attention a driving force operative in today’s biblical teaching, significant not just for other times and eras, but for all times and eras, ours included.  What drives the dynamism of the bible is that our sense of the present, the here and now, is the conviction that it is empowered and energized by the sense of PRESENCE.  The bible is the story of the driving force of God in our lives.  We often note how the Jews of old lived in the conviction of the coming of the Messiah into their lives.  It was a pervasive sense of divine presence operative at the roots of their history, and the driving force of their energy.  The Jews were on the move through the ages of time, awaiting the Promised One.  That is what intrigued them about Jesus.  Might He not be the long-awaited Messiah?  Was that not what Paul was driving at in his remarks in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia as he reviewed the remarkable history of these people to the Jewish congregation there?  Is that not what Jesus is trying to say His listeners: reception of Himself in the here and now is the reception of the One Who is the driving force of Jewish history?

So it leads us to a pivotal question about ourselves.  Are we in a position to put all this behind us because it has been fulfilled and taken care of, so that we no longer need a sense of PRESENCE to energize and empower us?  Does it mean that our engine has been turned on, and we are now empowered with a sense that God’s presence among us has been established, and we no longer have to wait for any further energizing impulse in our lives?  Has the presence of God among us been achieved, so that we simply sit back and relax as wait for it to work its effects in our lives?

The Passionists used to have the practice of fortifying their sense of God operative and active in their lives by forcefully recalling it, especially in their group settings when they were all together, as, for instance, at relaxation or recreational times.  We might be engaged in animated conversation, or in a game of cards, when someone would proclaim in a loud voice, audible to all: PRESENCE OF GOD!  And for a moment of time the awareness of this glaring truth would emblazon itself on our psyches, so that we not forget about it, but regard it as an ever present experience affecting each moment of the day.

Do the Jews have an advantage over us in centering their lives around their deep-seated conviction that the presence of God is a coming event being awaited by them, a coming event that empowers their lives?  On the other hand, have we Christians, convinced that the Messiah has already come, in the person of Christ, been resting on our laurels, no longer in need of any empowerment and energizer in our lives?  Have we gained His presence, so as to be able now to rest and relax?

The medical complex called PRESENCE shrewdly faced this challenge by calling to our attention that the old familiar hospital systems are no longer a thing of the past, but are an ever present factor in our lives, revivifying institutions of the past with a new PRESENCE that enhances their role as the continuous source of medical care and attention that we need as much now as we did years ago.

 

Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, C.P. is a member of the Passionist formation community at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago.