Daily Scripture

Scripture:

Acts 15:22-31
John 15:12-17

Reflection:

Measure of Love

Jesus said to his disciples:
“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:12

The Scriptures are all about the heart! The heart is talked about over 1000 times in the Bible! “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Deut 6:5 The Hebrew is explicit. kôl is the word for all. Augustine’s beautiful quote gives us the force of kol. “Christ is not valued at all, unless He is valued above all!”

The total love of God is deeply fused with love for others. “This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. “ Mt 22:39 In John’s Gospel the ante is up much more when Jesus tells us that we must love others much more than ourselves. “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” We must love others as Jesus loves them. To our weak human nature this seems impossible as Jesus gave His life for others in a most painful way!

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” The measure of our discipleship is the measure of our hearts. Some time ago I had a “myocardial-perfusion-imaging-mpi-test “ a non-invasive imaging test where you can actually see your heart pumping away on a screen in real time. It was a scary but awesome experience for me. The great push of the preaching of Jesus is on the inside of the heart, rather than the outside of appearances.

“So you also outwardly (exōthen GreekNT) appear righteous to others, but within (esōthen Greek) you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. “ Mt 23:28. The inside is the heart. How much heart do I have on the inside (esōthen). Do I have the courage to look at my heart?

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

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

I visited the family vineyard in California many times. I remember one year the plan was to graft the Merlot into Sauvignon Blanc. The process was extreme. A group of men with saws came and cut the merlot off at the knees. The ground was scattered with beautiful gnarly, pieces of the original Merlot stock. They were gathered and burned.

A week or so after they made the original cut, they made a small cut on the Merlot stock and placed inside that cut a small sapling of the SavBlanc vine. A couple of months later the new SavBlanc vines were growing out of the Merlot stock.

This image is what I think of every time I read this gospel of John. A branch cannot bear fruit on its own.

Once we encounter Christ, once we place our fragile sapling of a person into the stock of the Lord, we are forever changed. He becomes the vine and we the branches. We understand that all the nourishment that we need to thrive comes to us from the vine, through the vine.

“Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Kate Mims is the Retreat Center Director at Holy Name Passionist Retreat Center in Houston, Texas.

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
-John 13:34 – 35

Those of us who love Broadway musicals usually rave over Fiddler on the Roof. One the more memorial scenes takes place when Tevye, the main character, a peasant Russian Jew with daughters to marry off, realizes that the old ways of arranging marriages are not working. The daughters want to marry for love. As he talks over this unheard-of demand from his daughters with his wife, Golde, he asks her, “Do you love me?” Golde’s response resonates with many of us. She does not answer with a simple yes or no. She answers like so many of us would do. She lists the things she does for him every day, day in and day out, normal things, difficult things, even putting up with his faults. At the end, she says, “I suppose so.”

St. Paul, writing to the Romans, says, “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” (Romans 13:8) We all get it. “Love” as taught by Jesus and the Church is at the heart of our Christian life. It is the foundation of our Spiritual life. It is the basis of our ethical and moral life. No one has to interpret what Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.” And to even bring more clarity, he continues, “As I love you, love one another.”

Only if it were so easy to love as Jesus loves! Jesus loves us unconditionally. We generally love with conditions and strings attached. Jesus shows us how to love. We generally love selectively. Jesus expresses his love for us by dying on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. We struggle to connect love and forgiveness in real life. Loving others as Jesus loves is hard!

It is easy to look at real life as it unfolds and describe the realities of hate, exclusion, hoarding, unjust treatments of human beings, the passion of the earth, hateful words, lies that cover up crimes, homicides and genocides. Every time we make an examination of conscious, our list grows. Even the ones who say they make Jesus the center of their lives find themselves despising, dividing, lying, cheating (the list could go on), in plain sight. Loving others as Jesus loves us is hard!

Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean that we are to give up. When Jesus gave us the new commandment to love one another as he loves, he also gave us the resources we need to love one another as he commands. While we love as individuals, we belong to a community. The more we embrace the communities that we are members of, the more connected we are to the whole of humanity, the whole of creation. One Creator means one creation, and God is our common bond. The worshipping community, the Word of God, the Sacraments and all of the other sources of grace that surround us is what makes our commitment to love possible.

We can love the way Jesus loves because God has loved us first! Love is our redemption.

Fr. Clemente Barrón, C.P. is a member of Mater Dolorosa Community in Sierra Madre, California. 

Scripture:

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

Reflection

In reflecting on today’s gospel, the late Passionist priest and renowned scripture scholar, Carroll Stuhlmueller, wrote: “We are always on the way, seeking and looking beyond where we are, following a hope.” Fr. Stuhlmueller reminds us that to be human is to be on a journey. We are not idle tourists, flitting from one thing to the next, unsure of who we are or where we are headed, but pilgrims “following a hope,” men and women seeking the fullness of life with God. In perhaps the most trustworthy words in the gospel, Jesus says to every one of us: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” There are many possible paths we could pursue, many ways we could wander, but if we follow Christ we will not be deceived, and we will not be disappointed because Jesus is both the end of our journey and the way to that end. By walking with him—learning from him and doing our best to imitate his attitudes and his actions—we shall reach the end for which we hope. In fact, if we live both with and in Christ, we are already experiencing something of the joy that awaits us.

If the gospel shows us the path we must follow to the fullness of life, the passage from Acts tells us that as we make our way we should share with others the hope that inspires and guides our lives. We do that by seizing every opportunity to witness Christ every day. Paul tells those assembled in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia that he is “proclaiming this good news to you.” Like Paul, we know the good news that has come to us in Christ, the good news of God’s infinite love, mercy, and compassion. We are not to hoard this gospel of life but pass it on. The best way to do so is to live as Jesus did by seeking justice and peace, and by being sacraments of God’s love, mercy, and compassion to every person we encounter.

Paul J. Wadell is Professor Emeritus of Theology & Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and a member of the extended Passionist family.

Scripture:

Acts 12:24-13:5a
John 12:44-50

Reflection:

“I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.” These powerful words from today’s Gospel give us pause to reflect on light and darkness and good and evil in the world around us. As we pause, let us consider what happens when there is an absence of light. In a true absence of light we have no vision at all, we cannot see where we are going or where we have been, there is much anxiety, trepidation and caution, the mysteries of the dark are very unsettling and fearful to us, and we can say the same for any place where we sense an absence of good.

All that is good in the world comes from our Savior, Jesus Christ and all that is bad or evil comes from the prince of darkness. Each of us has a choice in whom we should follow of whom we should believe. When we follow temptation we lean toward the evil one; when we resist temptation, we lean toward our savior and the one who sent him. Jesus is pleading with us to make noble choices, to follow good and avoid evil, to take the narrow path that leads to salvation while avoiding the path of least resistance that can lead to ruin.

The good path, the high path, the narrow path is the path of a virtuous life it is the path of life and one who finds it finds a treasure.

Of course, this is a very simplistic way of looking at our lives day to day, but if we look at our lives, the choices that we make each day and break them down hour by hour day by day, it does become more simplistic. When we put our trust in Christ and the one who sent him, we become a beacon in a dark world, we become Christ-like in our own humble way and we become the light to lead a friend, a neighbor, even an enemy to the virtuous path. But the same is true when we turn our backs on Christ and venture into the dark, when we become distracted, when we follow the whims of the world when we follow the prince of darkness, and we find ourselves on the dark path. But the beauty of our faith and our role as people of God is the reality that all we have to do is believe and ask our savior to show us the way and that twinkling light, that beacon will find us and bring us to safe harbors.

Deacon James Anderson is the Administrator at Holy Name Passionist Retreat Center in Houston, Texas.