Homilies & Reflections / May 2021

Homily of May 31, 2021 (Feast of the Visitation)

“Blessed are you who believe.” Luke portrays Mary as a believer. Mary’s role as a believer in the Infancy Narrative should be seen in connection with the explicit mention of her presence among “those who believed” after the Resurrection, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. Faith is the answer to fear. Deep down, we are all afraid: of suffering, of dying, of God’s judgment, of the unknown, of our own weakness, of our lives slipping out of our control, of not being understood, of not being loved. We sin because we fear. Faith casts out fear as light casts out darkness. God has shone His light into our world, and it’s stronger than darkness. That light is Jesus Christ. Mary is our sure guide to faith and to her son, Jesus Christ.

Homily of May 30 , 2021 (Trinity Sunday and Graduation Mass for Class of 2021)

There is so very much I and all of us who love you would like to say to you graduates today, that you will be relieved to know I won’t try to say it all. But I will say a lot because this is an important moment in your lives.

Ladies and Gentlemen, today a promise to you will be fulfilled. Your long journey as students with us officially comes to an end. It is very appropriate that this graduation from Portsmouth Abbey occurs two weeks after the feast of the Lord’s Ascension, which event was for him the closest thing to a graduation he had; and one week after Pentecost, which was for the Apostles their graduation from disciples to men on a mission. And appropriate that it occurs on Memorial Day Weekend, when we remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Today you as a class, as a bonded community of unique individuals, will be lifted up out of our sight. As a community, you are a reflection of God’s face, for community is the face of God, the Trinity we celebrate today, but you are one reflection of God that after today we cannot keep and we will no longer see this same way. As a community, a class, you have been an inspiration to us, each one of you a unique manifestation of the divine presence and divine talent and beauty, working with and respecting the individuality of all the others. You have done what the great founder of communities, Saint Paul, urged his converts to do: “to live in a manner worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” For this we thank you and congratulate you. I personally thank you for being so brotherly and sisterly to each other and to me during my third and best year here. You made it a true joy and pleasure.

We hope and pray you will meet and recognize a new face of God in a loving community at the college or university you are going to. We hope too that while you were here with us at Portsmouth Abbey you came to better understand yourself, your best self and the God-ness within you. But most importantly, we hope you encountered that primary face of God – the One, The Only, The Holy, and the Totally Other, the perfect community of persons – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the Trinity whom we worship here this morning.

Now the Gospel of Mark says that after their graduation the Apostles, “went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.” Today you are going out from here, into new and separate parts of this country and the world, and you will carry signs of what you stand for. I hope you will take to the places you go and to the people you meet all that you have learned here. And you have learned more than you realize, as you shall soon see for yourselves. If you truly learned how to form and be a community, you have learned something truly important. This kind of unity and harmony does not come easy to people. You only need read the news to see that. You just have to look at the world to see how difficult it is for human beings to live and work together in community, in harmony and peace. The Risen Jesus always greeted his disciples with the words: Peace be with you. And how poignant that greeting is on this Memorial Day weekend.

Peace. As you and I briefly explored the religions of the world this year, we saw that the longing for peace is a universal characteristic of the human heart, a blessing all peoples and religions seek. If love is the way to happiness, peace is the landscape through which this way is straightest and surest. Jesus Christ has given us peace, and we experience Peace in Jesus Christ, celebrated in every Eucharist, moved by the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who at Pentecost graduated the Apostles and sent them to gather and unite the human family in peace. Those recipients of the Holy Spirit, the first Christian community, was open to all peoples, gathered together as one at the Eucharist to share in the body and blood of Christ. The Holy Spirit and the real sacramental presence of Jesus Christ have brought the hope of unity and real community to all people, to be united now through God's Spirit in the one Body of Christ.  

With the coming of Jesus Christ, God as man, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, God is alive and active in the world today. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, his last words to his disciples, behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age. As permanent and grinding as the problems of our time seem: a struggle for dominance by a few powerful economies; poverty shackling most of the world’s peoples; depletion of the earth's resources; destruction of the environment; continual violence, war and small genocides; disease, the displacement of millions of refugees…  - nevertheless, today we remember and celebrate God's continual presence with us as we work to heal and help forge a Spirit-inspired unity among all people, a unity you can help build. St Paul reminds us that grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. The world desperately needs you and your gifts, needs them to grow and blossom in a larger garden. As you have shared your gifts with us, and we have shared our gifts with you, share the gifts each of you has for the needs of the world that Jesus died to save. The world needs the gift of your faith, your witness to the eternal truth of God’s love, because the world needs true love more than anything else. 

And faith in that love, faith in God, is the best possible witness, because the world you are going into has little regard for what can’t be proven or demonstrated by science or utilitarian principles; and you cannot prove love or God in laboratories or by experiments. The greatest commandment is to love God with your whole being, and to love your neighbor as yourself, because your neighbor is the image of God. The world needs good, loving neighbors. The world needs you to confirm the word of God’s love in your lives.

The world needs your gifts in the sciences and the humanities, because science and the world are always in danger from and of inhumanity. The world needs your courage. There’s a very good reason that the nations of the world use young men and women to fight their battles; it is because you have courage, strong hearts. The world needs you not to give up your life for a cause but to live your life for a reason, beyond your self. That takes real courage. That’s the reason that the apostles were relatively young men, some very young, because they found the best reason to live and love for. Read the scriptures: young Jacob, Joseph, David, Samuel, Young Mary, Joseph her husband, Peter, Paul, and young Saint John had dreams which changed their lives and the world. Young John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela all had dreams too. The world has seen many dreams…and nightmares…come true. Nazism, Auschwitz, poison gas, biological warfare and nuclear weapons and the destruction of the World Trade Center were all dreams once. But so were Ecumenism, Civil Rights and racial equality, the EU, freedom in South Africa, antibiotics and airplanes, the United States, the Bill of Rights, a US President of African descent, and even this school. All once just dreams. The world needs your dreams and visions, because the dreams that individual men and women pursue are the dreams that come true and become reality for everyone. 

Now your time is coming as you enter college, to focus sharply your sights on your dreams, dreams which you will spend your lives in bringing to reality. I hope you find that the seeds of those dreams were planted or at least watered here at Portsmouth Abbey. My generation, the generation of your parents and your grandparents, all generations before you that have come of age faced similar challenges in a problematic world, always vexed by the apocalyptic four horsemen of war, lack of food, disease and premature death. You have earned the opportunity to better us, to build higher and stronger upon our foundation. May the words of this school’s motto now be your motto: Veritas, Truth. First and foremost, we stand for faithful adherence to eternal and enduring truth; to the truth of faith certainly, but to all truth, for all truth is of God. That word is unfortunately controversial in today’s world. Some do not think there is anything true in itself. Most others do not recognize or do not agree on what is truth. We hope that you recognize it and will continue to. 

One truth is that God and the world expect from all of us, and now you, in proportion to what we have been given. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells us: Everyone to whom much is given, of him much will be required. You do have so many gifts which you have nourished: may you bear much fruit. And so finally, we pray with St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, 
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call. So be men and women full of hope.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord let His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
And may you be happy, loving and beloved, and wise.

Homily for Trinity Sunday (Vigil Mass), May 29, 2021

Today is the first day of Memorial Day weekend and the Feast of the Holy Trinity, so today I am supposed to preach about the doctrine of the Trinity, but it is a mystery, and the more you talk about it the more likely you are, or rather I am, to say something wrong or even heretical.

So here goes. Both the Trinity and Memorial Day have to do with community. That’s something that gets a lot of lip service in our society, but not much life service. Unfortunately, we in the modern cultural west are not naturally inclined to community; it is not a part of us. We think of ourselves as a self, an individual first, before anything. We are a me before we become a we, if we ever do, and that would be a result of education and training. This makes it hard for us to understand others, like Muslims and Jews. Before anything a Muslim or Jew is a living part of a people with a specific faith and traditions that are bigger than the individual person. When there were cartoons in Denmark disrespectful of Muhammad, there was a world-wide response of the Muslim people. When Jesus, who is revered by Muslims as the 2nd greatest prophet, when Jesus is disrespected in our own media, there is little response, little outrage here, but there, they think we are faithless; Why don’t we do something? Here an individual has a right to spit on the crucifix, or worse, if you are familiar with Robert Mapplethorpe’s photo. Here we are rugged individualists, who choose to belong to or quit any community we want. Whether we know it or not, whether we agree with it or not, we need community, each one of us. It’s a law of nature bigger than us. The birds know it; the bees know it; elephants know it and fish know it. The Trinity, God, is a community of three persons. Moreover, God is community who invites us in, who invites us to join.

So we are not celebrating a doctrine of the church today, but the unfathomable mystery of one God who lives as 3 persons, who chose to live among us as a person, “fully human and fully divine.” We are celebrating the love of God who did not leave us orphans when Jesus ascended, but gave us a continual share in God’s life through the person of the Holy Spirit, whose coming we celebrated last Sunday. It is this Spirit that continues to connect us to God and one another in a community of love. 

The German Enlightenment philosopher Gotthold Lessing wrote: “The great religious truths were not rational when they were revealed, but they were revealed so that they might become rational.”: so that we might work to understand them. Theologians cannot adequately explain the Trinity, although they spend a lot of words trying. Theologians were (and still are) called upon to make for us the doctrine of the Trinity more understandable and more harmonious to reasoning ability. This God in 3 persons is the source and creator of all that exists. The 20th century Russian philosopher and theologian Nickolai Berdiaev stated “Wherever there is life there is the mystery of ‘three-in- oneness.’” Everywhere we look in creation we see the reflection of the Trinity in the how things are made up and of how things work. The essence of the Trinity is love, because God is love. The Father loves the son; the Son loves the Father. The Son is blueprint of Creation, so the Father loves creation. The Holy Spirit is this living love which flows through and from Father, Son to creation and back to God. The essence of love in humanity is the trinity of family: father, mother and child.

So our creation reflects the Trinity, the Father Son and Holy Spirit, and the engine of creation, the whole reason God created, is love. Jesus taught us by His own example: No one has greater love than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. In 1776, the founding fathers of America, having sworn to uphold the trinity of rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – concluded the Declaration of Independence with the words: with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. Life, Fortune and Honor, another trinity. I’m not sure how much our nation relies on Divine providence anymore, but I know I do, and I suspect you do too, or you wouldn’t be here. But as rugged individualists, our first instinct is always to rely on ourselves, or on those other individuals most closely connected to us. But our God is a God who wants us to rely on Him, who wants to give, and does give, good things to his children who ask. That is the message of the first reading. In the second reading Paul says, we are children of God and are led (“compelled”) by the Spirit. We are in relationship with God now because the same Spirit that led Jesus is also in us. Because of and through Christ we have become children of God. We can call our God “Father” the same way Jesus did, and we are assured God hears us.

In today’s gospel, Jesus commissions the Apostles, while they were still doubting, to go out “to all peoples and nations.” It is good to know we don’t have to have all the answers, that we too can have doubts and still we can speak and witness to our faith. What the still-in-process disciples have is the same power given to Jesus and to us – the Holy Spirit. Today’s passage presents the last words in Matthew’s Gospel. All through his gospel Matthew has told us what it means to follow the will of God and has shown us in Jesus’ life an example of total dedication to love of God and love of neighbor. Throughout his Gospel, Matthew has shown us the necessity of not just talking about God’s law, but doing it. And that is what Pope Francis reminds us of – “the great commission” Jesus gives us to go to the world. We are “sent” to go and proclaim the gospel by word and deed. There is a lot of emphasis in Matthew on Jesus’ teachings, like the Sermon on the Mount. But in this gospel Jesus is not only a teacher, he is a doer as well. If we know His teachings we can confidently ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” and come up with the correct answer. What does Jesus want us to do? He wants us not to live in isolation from others, but to live our faith in community, especiallly in the Church. 

Moses has reminded us in that first reading that God is present in history, in our world and our lives, acting out of love for us. It’s that love that has given us Jesus and it is that love we must proclaim to others and show to others. Through our words and actions we are to live the love we have been given and shown by God. If we attempt to show that love to others, especially the least, Jesus will always be with us, just as he promised, and the Holy Spirit will guide us. We have a whole team, The Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, at our back. It is not easy; it will not be easy.  But as St. Paul wrote to the Roman, If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rm 8:31)

homily of Friday, May 28, 2021

This is one of the many concerns that faced Paul VI after the council  - a rise of critical observations about the Eucharist, which tended to be and sometimes may be were heretical. And so he wrote, among other things, the Mysterium Fidei, the encyclical on the Holy Eucharist, in which he said: “To shed fuller light on the mystery of the Church, it helps to realize that it is nothing less than the whole Church which, in union with Christ in His role as Priest and Victim, offers the Sacrifice of the Mass and is offered in it. The Fathers of the Church taught this wondrous doctrine. A few years ago our predecessor of happy memory, Pius XII, explained it, and only recently the Second Vatican Council enunciated it in its treatise on the People of God as formulated in its Constitution on the Church. To be sure, the distinction between universal priesthood and hierarchical priesthood is one of essence and not merely one of degree, and this distinction should be faithfully observed. Yet we cannot fail to be filled with the earnest desire that this teaching on the Mass be explained over and over until it takes root deep in the hearts of the faithful. Our desire is founded on our conviction that the correct understanding of the Eucharistic Mystery is the most effective means to foster devotion to this Sacrament, to extol the dignity of all the faithful, and to spur their spirit toward the attainment of the summit of sanctity, which is nothing less than the total offering of oneself to service of the Divine Majesty.” (translation as from EWTN website)

Today, Pentecost, is a special day, a day the Church has been preparing for ever since Easter, a day which I hope you have been waiting for. Today we are just like the Apostles. After Jesus left them and ascended, they knew were supposed to do something, but they didn’t know what. They were apprehensive, afraid even. Maybe what happened to Jesus would happen to them. They might be arrested, tried and even executed like He was. So, they hid in the upper room and prayed and talked to each other about all they had experienced with Jesus. We too may well be apprehensive, worried about what is happening around us here in our nation, in our culture and in the world. We used to be worried about terrorists from the Middle East, like those who struck on 9-11. Now we attack ourselves, angry people with guns in schools, hospitals, stores, casinos, basketball courts, birthday parties, anywhere. In 2020 there were 615 mass shootings in the US, almost two a day. So far in 2021, thru April, there have been 178 in 120 days. There are reasons to worry and be afraid. Not only violence but social change is battering us from all sides, and behind all the rhetoric, there is downright hostility to people of faith, any faith, from the right, from the left and from the center. And, unfortunately, some people of faith are also hostile to those they don’t understand or agree with. Nobody seems really interested in the truth.

But we should take heart. The Holy Spirit came to the aid of Apostles in their time of need, and resolved their weakness and confusion. They were completely transformed. After the Holy Spirit came upon them, I don’t know if the apostles KNEW what they were supposed to do, but nevertheless, they DID something, they acted, they moved! The Holy Spirit moved them to do a very simple thing that took courage. They went out into the streets and told others – they shared with them how Jesus had transformed their lives and how He could transform them too.

So, here we are, gathered together. Among us - maybe - are children, whom Jesus told us that we should be like. And the rest of us are like the Apostles, also in need of transformation and courage. And just like for the apostles, the Holy Spirit is here for all of us too, to move us to engage our culture and society, not to condemn it or mindlessly accept it or shout angrily like everybody on CNN and Fox. Jesus and Holy Spirit want to move us to love our society and culture enough to rescue it and save it from its worst impulses, its selfishness, its violence, its sin. It is the same Holy Spirit that worked with Jesus, that came down upon Jesus at his Baptism and moved him to begin his public life, his saving work.

We are celebrating this coming of the Holy Spirit today by celebrating the Eucharist. The Holy Spirit guides us to truth. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can recognize that what we receive in the Eucharist is God-Jesus Christ-himself, not bread and wine. This is a great privilege we have. So, we must be thankful to God. “Eucharisto” means “Thank You” in Greek. So that is what we do in every Mass, every time we receive Jesus in the Eucharist. We say Thank You to God for our lives, for all the good things we have, for the eternal life he offers us, and for Jesus Christ, who saves us and made our eternal life possible.

Now whoever we are, young or old, someone has expectations of us. Husbands and wives of each other, mothers and fathers of their children, children of their parents, students of their teachers, teachers of their students, employers of their employees, and vice versa. Whoever you are – I am sure – you have expectations of your own, even expectations of your own selves and God has expectations of each of us too. He wants us to do something – but we don’t exactly know what. But whatever it is, it will surely somewhat take on the form of what the Apostles did that first Pentecost to share our faith, our persons and happiness with others. And the results of what we do should be a gradual transformation of our surroundings, to make it a better, holier, happier community, a better, holier, happier family, school, workplace. We are now the apostles of today. As we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we know that the Holy Spirit is already here among us and with us. 

Nothing has made that clearer to me than this last year. I am so very impressed and edified by how all of you have cooperated and worked together with faculty, administration and your fellow students to make this a successful school year, with no real discipline problems and no manifest discontent. I know it has not been easy for you to deal with this, nor has it been easy for the faculty or administration. But the Holy Spirit working in us has given us courage, wisdom, patience, understanding. Nevertheless, it has required us to cooperate with these gifts. For your cooperation and kindness I say “ευχαριστώ” – I thank you profoundly. The Holy Spirit is still working now – gradually – within each of us. It is our task to listen – watch – and look for the signs of what the Spirit wants us to do. I have always said that we should have a special relationship with, a devotion to – and we should pray often – to the Holy Spirit, because this time is His time. The Holy Spirit is the person of God the Trinity who followed Jesus into the world, the person who is especially close to children and teenagers, because it is they who will renew the face of the earth, after we older folks have done whatever we did.

We can’t look for the Holy Spirit among Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Liberals or Conservatives or any social/political group. They are all falling for that temptation Satan presented to Jesus at the parapet of the temple: power: power to impose good, power to command others. Power like that always corrupts. The Holy Spirit empowers hearts and transforms persons through love. The Holy Spirit IS love! The Holy Spirit is working within children and within teenagers, within you, as you dream and envision a better future, those dreams will become reality. So, we need you to have young people’s visions now to make it an even bigger and better reality. The Prophet Joel spoke for the Lord when He said: “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”

The dream was not and is not my dream, and the visions will not be your visions. They are not works of our making, but the work – the dream and visions – of the Holy Spirit working in and through us. But it takes us to do the dreaming and envisioning, to make it happen; it takes us, to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us. So, I urge you: allow yourself to be moved – inspired – by the Holy Spirit, today, tomorrow and the rest of your life. Let yourselves be moved and inspired by the Holy Spirit to be active in your faith and in your church. You were anointed by the Holy Spirit at your Baptism and received the Holy Spirit then. Now the Spirit is calling YOU to be Jesus Christ to people around you, calling YOU to be a savior, of each other, of your friends, of your family and relatives, of your fellow students at school, and of your coworkers at whatever work you do this summer. To do this, you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be what other people call holy; you don’t have to know everything. To do it, you just have to DO. The Holy Spirit makes up for your weakness, your mistakes and failures, and you WILL succeed with and through His power. Through you, rivers of living water will flow to our world.

We have each of us received all the gifts of the Spirit: wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel, courage, reverence, and wonder and awe in the presence of God, what used to be called fear of the Lord. These gifts are the currents flowing within the wide river which is life in Jesus Christ, life in the Church. This is our last Mass together this year. Today, this week, think about those gifts, and about that particular gift of the Holy Spirit that best fits you, as Saint Paul said, different gifts, but the same Holy Spirit. Think of how you have and how you can use this gift and the others you have to come closer to God yourself and to bring others closer to him. Think – of how you can be for us all a lifeguard to protect and save those who are drowning in their lives without the Jesus Christ that only you can be. I look forward to seeing you in September when we can all be together here, shoulder to shoulder, and face to face, unmasked.

(May 18/20, 2021)

I suppose that you have all had dinner. It is an important meal. And you may wonder, why are we here, celebrating the Eucharist tonight after dinner. There are a few reasons. First of all we are not all going to be together much longer. In a week and a half we will all be going our separate ways. So, we are together tonight to celebrate being together. And we are celebrating this in the Eucharist, which is a sacred meal, a sacred meal which follows the physically nourishing meal that I hope you had just an hour or two ago. We’ve heard it a thousand times, at least. You are what you eat. But there’s another truth about food: it’s not what you eat, but who you eat with. While it’s true that who you eat with affects how much you consume, and what you eat might depend on who you're eating with, its much deeper than that. Who we eat with says something about us as persons and about who we are in the process of becoming. We eat with those with whom we feel safe, have much in common, and with those with whom we want to have something in common. Eating with others is a form of bonding with them. If you sit down and have an informal, friendly dinner with someone like Adolf Hitler, if you can laugh at his jokes over wiener schnitzel, well, that says quite a bit about you. Tonight, we are celebrating this sacred meal with our family. The Church is our extended family, and Portsmouth Abbey is our nuclear family, for better or for worse. We are trying to make it better, but it needs all of us. If someone isn’t here, it hurts us.

Dan Buettner, the author of The Blue Zones Solution, posits three rules for a long and happy life, that our Eucharistic meal follows. 

-    Eat a predominantly plant-based diet. 
-    Have a clear purpose in life. People who can articulate their purpose live about seven years longer than people who can’t. 
-    Keep good company – if you surround yourself with active, happy people, you are far more likely to be active and happy yourself!

Now as far as being and becoming what you eat, that gets to the heart of the Eucharist. It is God that we are receiving and making part of us, literally incorporating Divinity into our body. Given that, our reception of the Eucharist should have a significant effect upon us, and it will if we allow it and intend it to. Jesus said at the Last Supper to his disciples: keep doing this to remember who I am and what I am doing. Receiving Holy Communion is not supposed to be a reward for our achievement of holiness, but a gift to make us into the gifted and unique individuals that each of us is and together are, a living image of Jesus Christ, the God-Man. So, celebrate each other tonight, and celebrate what God has done for you.

Homily of Thursday, May 20, 2021

“Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”: This phrase was invented and made famous by the eminent sociologist Christian Smith in his book on the religion of the young. But I think “moralistic therapeutic deism” is not only the religion of the young, but of all the churches, all religions, some more some less, but all of them. And what is this religion of the young, this religion that of all the churches, so-called Christian churches? Well, God exists. But he is only involved in so far as you want him to. He wants you to be happy, and well-adjusted and fulfilled. Which is good. And more or less all dogs go to heaven, as the phrase might be. This is the religion of the young, supposedly, by the eminent sociologist Christian Smith. And to some extent the religion of the vast majority of people, more or less. But it’s not Christianity. Well, there is no Christianity without Christ. And Christ came to this world for many reasons. And most certainly he came to reveal the true face of the Father, His own true face, his own true nature. And the power of the Spirit. By the power of the spirit we celebrate the Pentecost, this power that transcends the world, the natural. We come to know the Father and the Son, and to live in the Father and the Son, which is most extraordinary. This is not moralistic, therapeutic deism. It’s so much better. We could spend all day discussing how much this fails – this moralistic, therapeutic deism – to fulfill our human nature, our human condition. Which Christ does. So, let us spend this time before Pentecost, let us spend this time of Pentecost to live in the Spirit, to know the Father and the Son more and more so, the more we grow in grace, we grow in the Spirit, the more we are transformed, deified. We find true happiness. We are given real therapy, to be sure. But so much, much more. Moralistic, therapeutic deism is nice, as far as it goes. It is just so small, compared to the vast reality of God himself.

Homily of Tuesday, May 18, 2021

If you are not ready to accept trials, tribulations, difficulties. Temptations, defeats, sufferings and other evils, you’ve chosen the wrong religion. Look at the life of Saint Paul, that you heard about in the first reading, and in his epistles, you see this over and over again. One of the few things our Lord promises his disciples: trials, tribulations, etc. So how did Saint Paul deal with this reality, this difficulty? Because no one, I would hope, would like trials, tribulations, sufferings, defeats and difficulties. No one in their right mind would want this. They want success. They want victory, they want fullness of everything. He does it because they have great power, supernatural power. It comes to him in the difficulties that he deals with. And this power comes from the Holy Eucharist which our Lord created in the institution of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, which Saint Paul talks about very powerfully in his epistles. And the power and gift of the Holy Spirit, which Saint Paul also talks about a great deal, as we have seen in the Book of Acts this term. By the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Holy Eucharist, the power of Jesus Christ Himself, made manifest in the bread and wine, he has the power to do these things and more, and deal with these things and more, and suffer these things and more – more than we could ever imagine. 

Not just Saint Paul, but all Christians need these powers. That is certainly true of Saint Paschal Baylon, whose feast was yesterday, my patronal feast. He too suffered greatly, we know this. There is not a lot to know about his life, but in his life he suffered a great deal, particularly in his time in France, when he had to bring information to various other Franciscans. He was an Alcântaran Franciscan, very strict observance Franciscans from Spain. He is known for his great devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the true body and blood of our Lord, in the sacrament of the altar. What is not so well known about him is his devotion to the Holy Spirit. It is even in his name. His name was Paschal, from Pascua. Now you might think it was because he was born on Easter, but it wasn’t. He was born on Pentecost, the Pascua of the Holy Spirit. So by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Holy Eucharist, we can deal with all the things and more that life will throw at us. We can grow in strength and power, despite our failures, our defeats, our severe trials and tribulations etc. And they will most certainly come if we follow Christ. The great tragedy of so much of modern Christian life: our Catholic institutions produce very few practicing Catholics. It is a great trial, but it is a necessary one. Filling boxes is not sufficient being formally Catholic is not sufficient living by the power of the Eucharist, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that will produce real Catholics, both in time and in eternity.

Homily of Sunday, May 16 (and May 15 Vigil)

In today’s Gospel, taken from John, we hear a section of what is called the High Priestly Prayer, the prayer offered by Jesus for the Church at the end of the Last Supper. Immediately following this prayer, Jesus will go out to the garden, where he will be arrested, culminating ultimately in his sacrifice on the cross, where he, as the eternal High Priest, offers himself once and for all for our sins, a sacrifice that is re-presented during every celebration of the Mass. But he first needs to make preparations for the world created by His Crucifixion and Resurrection. He needs to prepare the Apostles so that they can establish the Church, the new People of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. 

    The first step of this preparation was the Gospel we heard about 45 days ago at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper when he washed their feet and instructed them to do likewise. Over the past few Sundays, we have heard some of the long discourse that follows. Finally, concluding his teaching of the Apostles, Jesus says the prayer from which we draw today’s Gospel. Central to this prayer are the characteristics that Jesus prays that His Church will have, characteristics that, through His prayer, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, the Church of Christ does have.

    The first characteristic is that the Church is one. Christ prays that the Church, those whom the Father has given Him, may be one, as He and the Father are one. This is not a oneness that can be defined as a kind of monotony where everybody is exactly the same, and indistinguishable. On the contrary, this oneness is unity within God. The meaning of this is elaborated on in St. John’s first letter, which we heard in today’s second reading. John tells us that we remain in God through our love for one another. This is a love that allows us to go beyond ourselves and to offer ourselves for each other in imitation of Christ. By remaining in God through our love for God and for our neighbors, we are also united as one in the Church. It is through this gift of ourselves, this sacrificial offering of ourselves, consecrated in the acknowledgement that Jesus is the Son of God, that the Church is truly the Body of Christ, and integrated with its head: Jesus Christ Himself, by whose grace we are made capable of this kind of love.
    The second characteristic that the Church is holy. Jesus prays for the Church, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.” Jesus asks that his followers be preserved from falling into sin, into the clutches of the evil one. Earlier, he said: “I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” These two aspects summarize what holiness means. Something that is holy is set aside from the world for God: it is in the world, but preserved from the decay created in the world by sin and the devil; something that is holy is in the world, but does not belong to the world and is not subject to the world. This is a characteristic of the Church of Christ: it is preserved from the decay of the world as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and is sanctified, that is, made holy, through the grace given by Christ, the eternal High Priest.

    The third characteristic of the Church is that it is catholic, that is to say, the Church is universal. Jesus prays to God for the Church, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” The Catechism discusses two different meanings of the word “catholic,” as applied to the Church, both of which are implied in this short prayer. The first way in which the Church is Catholic is that it has a mission that goes into the entire world, a mission to transform the world through the love of God. Although the Church is holy, and therefore set aside from the world, it remains in the world, and is called to bring Christ’s love and share it throughout the world, as well as to bring Christ’s truth and teach it to the entire world. This mission is universal: unlike the People of God in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel, a holy nation that was set aside by God to bring His Son into the world, the People of God in the New Testament, the Church are called from all lands and nations; the Church extends across the entire world.

There is a second way in which the Church is Catholic. This is that Christ is present in the Church, in an undivided way, as he promised before he ascended. This also serves as the origin of the oneness and holiness of the Church. Jesus consecrates himself so that the Church may be consecrated in the truth, he sets himself aside, offers himself as a sacrifice so that the Church may be filled with His Spirit, and set aside with Him for God. It is through this consecration that the Church is filled with Christ’s unifying and sanctifying love. It is through Christ’s love, and our participation in that self-gift of love that the Church is one, holy and Catholic.

There is one final characteristic of the Church, one implied in the Gospel, although it is more clearly stated in the First Reading. That is, the Church is Apostolic, the Church is founded on the Apostles, the chosen witnesses of Christ’s death and resurrection, the 11 men chosen by Jesus to be present for this prayer, which was said after Judas had left the 12 to betray Christ at the beginning of the Last Supper. In the first reading, we hear about how Judas was replaced. Peter leads the community in eventually selecting Matthias, one of the men who had accompanied them throughout Jesus’ ministry on Earth, and a witness of the resurrection, as one of the Twelve. This succession would continue as the Apostles, the witnesses of the death and resurrection of Christ, selected Bishops to succeed them, men who would pass along the witness that had been handed on to them, along with their roles sanctifying and leading the communities they are entrusted with. Peter, the head of the Apostles, who was martyred in Rome, would eventually be succeeded by the Bishops of Rome as the supreme pastors of the Church. This direct line continues through the present day, through Pope Francis and our Bishop Thomas, for whom we pray at every Mass.

These four characteristics are combined in the Creed. After proclaiming our faith in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we add, “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” We proclaim our faith that these four characteristics: Oneness, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity, define the Church of Christ. This creates some difficulty. We say that the Church is one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic, but we seem to see something entirely different. Instead of a Church that is One, united in Christ’s love, we seem to see a Church divided by mutual enmity. Instead of a Church that is holy, we seem to see a Church that is worldly, focused on the acquisition of money and goods, and stained by sins of every kind. Instead of a Church that is Catholic, universal, and encompassing all of Christ, we seem to see one that is provincial, full of individuals focused on their personal interests, ignoring everything and everybody else. Instead of a Church that is Apostolic, we seem to see one constantly refounded in the personal image of whoever happens to be in power, seemingly disconnected from all that came before and all that will come after.

So, where is this One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that we say we believe in? Is it purely theoretical? Have Christ’s prayers not been answered? Lumen Gentium, the second Vatican Council’s document on the Church tells us, “the one Church of Christ, which in the creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. This Church, constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, … although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structures.” It tells us that the visible structures, these structures that often seem corrupt, nevertheless contain the Church of Christ, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. How can this be? We must make a distinction between the sins committed by members of the visible Church and communion with the Church of Christ.

The many sins committed by members of the visible Church acting outside of their communion with the Church of Christ damage the oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the visible Church. Nevertheless, the life of Christ living within it, the Holy Spirit, the love that God is, and that remains in us when we acknowledge with our whole being that Jesus is the Son of God, keeps the Church of Christ truly alive in this world, although it can never belong to it. Like the other elements of the creed, this oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the Church, this Church of Christ, is something we have faith in: we believe that, in spite of some of the awful things that we see, behind and within the visible Church, is God, who keeps the Church of Christ one, holy, catholic and apostolic. This faith is not blind or based on nothing; the clear holiness of the saints who have lived their lives in the Church, a holiness not possible through purely human means, and the beauty the Church has produced, a beauty that points towards the transcendent reality of God, serve as evidence that behind the sins that cannot truly belong to it, in the visible Church subsists the Church of Christ, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
 

Homily of Saturday, May 15 (feast of St. Pachomius)

Saint Pachomius was an Egyptian. He died around 290AD, so it was very early in the church’s history. This is what Donald Atwater says about him: “He was the first monk not simply to bring hermits together in groups (like Saint Anthony) but to organize them with a properly communal life and a written rule, to be monks as the word is now understood (that is, in a monastery). Particulars of his life are uncertain, but he is said to have been a soldier in the imperial army who on being released from service became a Christian. He put himself under the direction of an anchorite named Palemon and around 320 went to live at Tabennisi on the Nile in Central Egypt with a few other monks. As the community grew, Pachomius gradually organized it on the principles of living in common. A second monastery was established at Pabau, and nine more followed, two of them for women, the first nunneries in Egypt. Saint Pachomius seems deliberately to have chosen the communal form of life as more desirable in itself and having a wider appeal than that of the solitents. Both Saint Basil the Great and Saint Benedict were influenced by his written life and the regulations which he drew up, but the original text of his rule is no longer exists.

We have just received word about the death of Carroll Carter, Sr., who was a great alumnus and benefactor of the monastery and School, that he has just died Friday evening. Eternal rest grant unto Carroll Carter, Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.

Homily for the Feast of the Ascension (May 12-13, 2021)

Today we celebrate Jesus’ Ascension into heaven. It occurs appropriately this time of year, every year, as colleges and high schools are celebrating their graduations. I have seen on Facebook that several students I taught in high school have now become doctors and lawyers, Masters in Engineering and Business Administration. It is interesting and gratifying to see how some struggling or unmotivated high school students afterwards find their niche, their motivation and become something great. It reminds me of something Maya Angelou, the wonderful poet and writer, once said: Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. It just takes the right light for us to see it, in others and in ourselves. For all the graduates this time of year, the actual commencement ceremony marks the completion of a great task, and the beginning of another.

The Ascension was like Jesus’ Graduation. He had accomplished a great deal, achieved our salvation. He was moving on to a new stage, out of this world, returning to his Father, where he could focus on being God with us without all the messy day to day complications of being a human being on earth. No more hunger, fatigue; no more off the wall questions from dense disciples or pugnacious Pharisees. Jesus was also showing us that his Resurrected body could move into and around this new dimension we call Heaven or the Kingdom of God; that was and is important because our bodies too will rise one day at our graduation from this earth and will live where He is…. Heaven….. unless of course we have earned our eternity in that other place, which I will not mention by name. Jesus was showing us that we too were born trailing wisps of His glory. Jesus again was showing us the way. I imagine the Jesus and the Apostles felt somewhat like I always did and do on graduation days. Every year the students I knew the best in St Louis who arrived as little boys of 12, whom had I been with for six years, who had finally grown up into adults that I could talk to as adults… and suddenly they were gone.

Jesus, who had worked so hard with the apostles, teaching them, molding them and scolding them, had finally gotten them to a point where it was all making sense to them, and suddenly He was gone from them. Now it would be all up to them, just as their lives are all up to students when they graduate, just as our lives are placed in our own hands when we grow up. Saying goodbye to people, places, life stages, and jobs we have loved and enjoyed is not easy. But it is the only way we can grow. Jesus knew, that just as the Apostles still needed help, he knows we need help. We cannot live our lives alone. And so Jesus and the Father will send the Holy Spirit, But something happens first before the Holy Spirit comes: there is a week of waiting. The same way that leave-taking and saying good-bye is a necessary part of life, so is waiting, and there is probably no other part of life that is so countercultural and unpleasant in the 21st century. I hate waiting, although I’ve gotten better at it in the monastery. supermarket lines used to drive me crazy. Slow lines at fast food places were even worse. It’s hard to imagine life before microwave ovens when a baked potato took 45 minutes. Waiting to get married is not so popular these days. But in life, waiting is also a time for growth, a time to make oneself ready to appreciate, to use wisely and correctly that which is coming. If you allow it, there is a particular and peculiar joy in anticipation.

In that waiting time between the Ascension and Pentecost, the Church was in a period of gestation. Now we are in that waiting time before the 2nd coming of Christ; now is our time to make ourselves ready for eternity. We will celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit two Sunday’s from now, on Pentecost. And the Holy Spirit will empower us, just as he did the Apostles and disciples of Jesus to preserve all that Jesus taught and said and did. The Holy Spirit empowers us, just as it did the Apostles, to preserve Jesus himself in the Church and in the sacraments. The Holy Spirit empowered the Apostles and disciples and the Spirit does empower us to start living in the kingdom of heaven right now. The Eucharist we celebrate here at Portsmouth Abbey, right now, is being celebrated right now, right here, in heaven. All the angels and saints, all our loved ones who have gone on before us are with us now, here, as our prayers and our timeless love ascend into heaven where Jesus and they are waiting for us. This is the communion of the Saints. With the Father, Jesus the Son and with the Holy Spirit, we are never alone, and we are never really separated or apart from those who have passed on and left us merely physically.

It does seem strange, but this is our faith. It does seem strange because we are so distracted by our time and its immediate crying needs, we are so distracted by our personal needs, especially the need for immediate gratification. But in Christ we are timeless. Eternity is timeless. Jesus awaits us in the fullness of eternity. Timelessness and unbounded love and being are our destiny there with him. And we can and we should begin living it now, here in this Church building today, there in the dorms, dining hall and classrooms as that community within the Church we know as the Portsmouth Abbey School. A young man or woman may graduate and leave high school here, or his or her college or university somewhere else; an adult may achieve an advanced degree at a more advanced age and graduate to a better life and a better, more fulfilling job… but the Church never leaves the people who graduate. The Church, like family, is forever. Your being here today bears witness to that. May you enjoy these ten days of waiting. May you grow in your capacity to enjoy eternity. May your trailing wisps of glory fill out into towering thunderclouds just waiting to discharge lightning bolts of righteous energy at the touch of the Holy Spirit. May God bless you richly as He shows you what is behind the doors to eternity.

Homily of Monday, May 11, 2021 (Feast of Holy Abbots of Cluny) 

The Abbey of Cluny in the Middle Ages was a center for the reform of the church and for the reform of Christian life throughout Europe at that time. One of the practices of the monks of Cluny was that whenever they went to Communion, they removed their shoes. In the Old Testament there are at least two incidents, of God telling Moses and Joshua, to remove their shoes because they were on holy ground. And this was a way that the monks reminded themselves that they were on holy ground, but especially when they approached to receive the body of Christ, the holiest thing on earth.

Homily of the Sixth Sunday of Easter (May 8-9, 2021)

The Easter Liturgical season, which began on April 4, is almost over. Thursday is the feast of the Ascension, followed two weeks from today by Pentecost, when the long haul of ordinary time begins. In the first Easter Season, in the time between the Resurrection and Ascension, Jesus was summing up with his Apostles, pulling everything together for them, so they could finally understand. It was sort of like the review time students go through this time of year just before exams. It was a lot of work. The Apostles didn’t go to a school like Portsmouth Abbey. They weren’t the brightest and the smartest. Even when school got out and Jesus the master teacher ascended to heaven, they sat around for a week, rather dazed and confused. But what this means is that those of us who did not have the benefit of the personal experience of being taught by Jesus every day for three years…. we have the great good fortune to have all his lectures from his review classes which is what the Church presents to us in the readings of the Easter season, the distilled essence of his wisdom, his truth & his message. And today is the climax of this season. Thursday is just the goodbye to the Apostles and good luck with the preaching the Gospel. Today is what it’s all about. 

God is love; stay in that love and love one another. That’s it. Stick with that and you can’t go wrong. And Jesus gives us the motivation to do this: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.”  Who doesn’t want to be joyful? Jesus word here for love is “agape” and that has nothing to do with instinctual feeling that is stirred up by something attractive in another person, or because that person is a family member. It doesn’t even necessarily mean liking another person. Rather, it means being willing to go out of the way for others;     acting for their good and well-being; coming to their aid when they need help – even at our own personal expense. Jesus showed how far agape can take someone when he gave up his life for us. God’s love for the world has nothing to do with our being intrinsically loveable or even likeable! Jesus’ death on the cross is a perfect reflection of how God feels about us. God loved us then and loves us now; God was willing to go out of the way to show us that love, and acted for our well-being. God’s love never fails.

Some people think the church has gone soft since Vatican II. They complain, all we hear now is talk about love. They would prefer we talk more about sin. They would prefer the stricter commands they remember from their childhood. But we are not children. The teaching about love goes back to Jesus our Founder and back even further to the very act of creation by the Father; it is not a recent innovation, or a new-age trend. However, Jesus does give us a rather strict commandment today: Remain in my love, and: Love one another. But he does so, he says, not as a master talking to servants, but as a friend talking to other friends. Servants have to be about following rules, their lives dictated by one who holds authority over them. But Jesus’ religion isn’t like this. Instead, is all about love. Love is the foundation of our faith. Jesus assures us that we already have God’s love, it is not something we must earn or even can earn by obeying rules or following a code of proper behavior.  

Jesus is asking us to live out of the realization of God’s love. We are his friends, he tells us, so now go out and live like friends with one another. “Friends,” in this context, means “beloved ones.” We need to live out of that description for we are his friends, the beloved disciples. We maintain our friendship with Him, like any personal human relationship, by communication; Jesus continues to pour out his Spirit upon us and we both receive and respond to the Spirit’s presence. The response Jesus mentions in this passage is complete joy. We may be in a world that confuses us and at times, seems to want to swallow us up; but remaining with Christ gives us the assurance of his presence and this produces joy, even in situations we would not describe as “happy” or “easy.” Just as the world did not conquer him, our remaining in Jesus assures us we will be able get through life’s stormy and difficult times. Our final exams come at the end of our life, so there is a long time between this final review session with our greatest teacher and the moment when we will be called to account for what we’ve learned. 

And not only do we have Jesus own words to guide us, not only do we have his very presence in the Eucharist, but we have as our helper The Holy Spirit. So, as we will pray in the mass in just a few moments, we should have no anxiety about this. Jesus tells us “I have called you friends, because I have told you everything.” Since that is so, Jesus who makes and gives the exam is our friend and He has told us everything, what is there to worry about? A friend would not try to trick or stump a friend on an exam, he would not make it too difficult. Our concern should be to keep up our friendship, keep it alive and active, keep it loving. This is difficult for us type A, hands on, wanting to be in control of things, 21st century people. We like to be in charge and set the terms. But God is God and we are not. God is God because He is love. It is not that we have loved God, but that God loved us. It was not we who chose Him, but He who chose us. 

So, our response should be… all He asks is… love in return. It is so hard for us just to trust in this unconditional love God has for us. It seems too good to be true, and it is in purely human terms. But that is what the Gospel, the good news, is all about. It IS good news, that if we love and maintain our friendship with God, then we are guaranteed to pass our lifetime final exams, that will be given to us by our friend, by our God.

Homily of Friday, May 7, 2021

Our goal is to put on the mind of Christ. And so, love as Christ loved us. The task, impossible to us alone, cannot be done without us. But it needs our cooperation in the power of God, a supernatural power. We must desire it, to be transformed into another Christ. And to love as Christ has loved us, to share his divine nature, to become his friend, as he says. It is not an easy thing, but it is not an impossible thing to God. And how do we do this? Well, the imitation of Christ himself, as that famous book, The Imitation of Christ is to show us how this is to be done; as the gospels, obviously, show us how this can be done. By prayer, virtue, self-emptying, asceticism, the sacraments, and so on. We have no power to love Christ as he loved us by ourselves. While we love what is good, much of us is not so good and much of the world is not so good. And Christ loved to the end. Christ loved completely, in ways that are impossible to us unless Christ gives us the power. He has chosen us because he chooses us. But if we do not cooperate, there is nothing to be chosen, there is nothing left, there is nothing there. Only God can make us the people we want to be. We must cooperate, we must do what we must do: we must imitate the Lord.

Homily of Wednesday, May 5, 2021

This is John Paul II on today’s gospel: “In the unity of the vine, every branch has its place. Yes, the life of Christ flows to each branch and nourishes it. When he says, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower,” he is also saying: “He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it yields more fruit” (Jn 15:12). Christ goes on to say: “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you” (v.3). When he says “you,” although in the plural, he is addressing every human “you” in the singular. He is teaching about each branch. The Lord continues: “Remain in me, as I remain in you” (v.4). And soon afterwards he says: “Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me”. Christ says “you” and he means “each one of you.” Also the image he develops centers on the one vine. In him alone to the branches find life. And they each find life in him. Multiplicity does not become mass. Each branch is sustained by Divine. It has its own unique point of contact. The same is true of the relationship between every person and Christ. In fact, through our relationship with Christ, we also come in contact with the Father.

Homliy of Monday, May 3, 2021

What is most striking in the apostolic age, the age of Philip and James, the apostles we celebrate today, the age described in the Book of Acts, are two things. First, a certain knowledge of the Father and the Son, that God was made present in Jesus Christ, truly, really, the Incarnation. And second, power, the power of the Spirit, the power to do “greater works than I,: as our Lord said in today’s gospel. And this was not just given in the apostolic age, as many people, especially Protestants, believe. The age of miracles, the age of spiritual power, the age of this massive reality of the Holy Spirit in its majesty, is not just for the apostolic age, it is for all ages. But it is up to us to manifest that power and that majesty, by being faithful to Christ. And insofar as we are faithful more of that power comes to us, more of those miraculous realities happen to us, more of the extraordinary reality of the apostolic church becomes real – but it’s up to us.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 2, 2021)

“I am the true vine…”

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells his disciples: “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower.” and “I am the vine, you are the branches.” A point Jesus intends to make is that of continuity; ours with him and his with the Father. One of the best examples illustrating this principle is that of the transmission of faith. Faith is the sense of our free assent to the truth revealed to us by God.

How is faith like this transmitted? What is its line of continuity? A story once told me by a colleague at work named Jan can tell us a lot. During her youth, each Summer, Jan attended a week-long Unitarian church camp with her friends. Included along with the outdoor activities and crafts was always a speaker from one of the world’s major religions briefly describing their beliefs and practices. On any given year the children might hear a Rabbi speak, or a Baptist minister or a Buddhist monk. One year the speaker was a Catholic priest. Approaching the microphone, he knelt down and said a short, silent prayer. After he had delivered his talk, he did the same thing as he left the stage. Jan confessed that she remembered nothing of what the priest had said, but his gesture of piety remained vividly in her memory for years along with the notion: “Whatever he has, I want it” The first step toward faith had been awakened in her heart. And it remained there quietly waiting for many years. In her mid-fifties she happened to mention the incident to a Catholic friend who then gave her a small catechism. Reading in it of God’s revelation, she discovered the priest’s secret and converted. Soon she was teaching religion classes to young people in her local parish.

There are three aspects of this story which relate well to Jesus’ words about the vine and its branches. The first is that faith is a gift. It is something we receive. It is never a result of our own effort or of our own reflection. ”…a branch cannot bear fruit on its own….” as Jesus says. God’s plan is that we receive it from outside ourselves. The second point is that faith is a gift from God. But it does not come like a lightning bolt out of the blue. We receive it through the grace filled words and deeds of others. And in turn God works through us as examples to others. “Faith comes from what is heard.” These words of St. Paul describe the abiding structural truth about what happens. Faith comes to us from others, and this very fact is fundamental to it. God invites his children to be co-laborers with him in his work of salvation. “Whoever remains in me will bear much fruit.”  Through our witness we join a two-thousand year line of faith transmission beginning with the apostles. The third point is that we Christians are all called to do the same. Since faith is a gift, by definition it involves both a giver and a receiver. Having received, we complete the circle by passing it on to others, as did Jan in her teaching. 

Being a Christian essentially means changing over from being for oneself to being for others. We do this best by openly and joyfully witnessing each day to our faith in our words and in our deeds.  “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit.”