The Language of the Spirit

“What language do you speak?” 

I was asked that question a few years ago when I was traveling abroad in a country known for its multilingual citizenry. The lady working in the café was a bit amused at my poor attempts to speak French, the only one of the languages spoken there that I knew a little bit of. She looked at me quizzically and then asked me that question in English. Clearly, she was asking me to say whatever I was saying again, just in a different language.

Language is a funny thing. On the one hand, it’s essential to how we live, how we relate to the world. By language, we learn, we express ourselves, we communicate with each other. Language unites us; but it also can separate us. Because language shapes how we understand culture and history and daily life, it can lead to differences and even division. Certainly, we are all familiar here how in Northwest Arkansas, especially in our Catholic community, the fact that people speak different languages or come from different cultures creates challenges and sometimes even resentments, unfortunate as that is.

Language plays a very important role in the feast of Pentecost which we celebrate today. Gathered together in the Upper Room after Jesus’s Ascension, the Apostles, and the Virgin Mary, receive the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus had promised to send, descends upon them like tongues of fire and immediately they are empowered in a fascinating way. Filled with boldness, they begin preaching throughout Jerusalem, and though they are all from the same region of Galilee, people from all over the world – people who spoke many different languages – hear their words and understand.

The miracle of the gift of tongues, as it is called, would have had a special significance for the Jews of the time. Remember the Tower of Babel story from the Book of Genesis? The men and women of the time desired to build a great city, with a tower reaching into the heavens, to make a name for themselves. But because they did so apart from God, they were left confused and divided, separated from understanding each other because of language, their work unfinished. At Pentecost, the apostles’ gift of speaking in tongues understood by all peoples is a kind of reversal of the sin of Babel. The apostles spoke in strange tongues, and yet they were understood, they were united to those with whom they were different. The language of sin and division which had separated humanity is reversed by the language of the Spirit. 

William Congdon, Pentecost 4 (c. 1962)

Such is the meaning of Pentecost. Throughout the year, we celebrate the way in which God is revealed to us: through the Incarnation of Jesus, through his Passion and Death, through his Resurrection. Finally at Pentecost, we celebrate that God has not just been revealed to us but also given to us, individually and collectively. By means of our baptism, our confirmation, by means of all of the sacraments, the Holy Spirit has taken up a dwelling place within us: within the Church as a whole and within each of us by grace. Why? So that we can speak, in a sense, a new language, a language not of confusion and division but one of peace, forgiveness, and love that unites and speaks to all people.

In the Gospel today, the Risen Jesus appears to the disciples and tells them that he is sending them out into the world. Such is the life of every follower of Christ – to receive the Good News of Jesus’s victory over death, and then be sent forth to share it. To do so we rely not upon our own efforts and powers, like the people of Babel, but upon the grace of the inner gift given to each of us, upon the Spirit active within us. With his gifts – wisdom, understanding, right judgment, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord – we are sent forth as peacemakers, bridge-builders, healers, missionaries. We can converse in a language beyond mere human words and feelings and ideas; we communicate to each other the very presence of God.

So, my friends, what language do you speak? As we conclude this Easter season, take some time today to reflect upon the power of speech in your life. Think about how you use words at home, at work, to your spouse, to your coworkers, to your kids, to your friends. Try to look beyond the obvious. Ask yourself: “Am I someone who too often uses language for selfish, even sinful purposes?” – tearing down another, swearing, lying, complaining, participating in gossip? Think: “When others hear me, do they hear someone filled with the Holy Spirit?” – or do they hear negativity, fear and anxiety, bitterness? “Where can I be better in communicating the presence of God?” – by comforting another, by whispering a prayer, by teaching a child about Jesus, by gently correcting a friend who has started to gossip, by speaking words of kindness to someone who isn’t my favorite?

Jesus sends us out to share the Good News – just as the Father sent him, just as he sent his apostles. But we don’t have to travel to different lands and learn new languages to spread the Good News; we need only to begin speaking the language of love in daily life – the language of God’s love, the language of the Spirit who has been given to each of us and is active among us. Be a missionary for Christ – in what you say, what you do, how you live. “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.”

Surprised by Joy

The Last Supper (1886) by Fritz von Uhde

One of the challenging things about becoming an adult is the diminished capacity for surprise. Spend a little time around a child and it is hard not to be impressed, and often amused, by the sense of wonder they have for all that is around them: they are amazed by the phenomena of the natural world; the simplest game or trick can entertain them for hours. It is a bit hard not to be jealous of the simple wonder of youth.

The good news is that, while they are a bit fewer and farther between, surprises do not disappear completely with adulthood. I often find that spending a little time in nature reawakens in me a sense of surprise. Spend a little time gazing at a tree or a flower and you can’t help but be amazed at all of the wondrous things around us. You may have to look for them for a little harder, but life still offers plenty of surprises.

In the Gospel today, Jesus surprises his disciples. He calls them “friends.” We might gloss over these words and miss their importance, because we would tend to think, “Of course, the disciples are his friends!” It is true that Jesus lived with his disciples, spent his time with them, and shared everything with them. But it is also true that they were not until this point friends in the way we typically think of them; he was the Teacher, the Master, the Rabbi, and they were the disciples. For Jesus then to call him his friends implies a change in relationship. Their following him is no longer about following commands – it is about understanding the mind of the Master, and as his friends, doing what he has done.

Jesus says to them, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you, and your joy might be complete.” We might think that Jesus has come to teach us obedience, or devotion, or piety. But instead he says that his true purpose is to fill us with joy, and to make our joy complete. Indeed, he wants to give us his joy – the joy that comes from knowing the Father, and from being loved by the Father as the eternal Son. When Jesus invites his friends into his joy, it is a joy that cannot be taken away by any sadness or pain or suffering. Jesus spoke these words at the Last Supper, when he himself was at the brink of his own suffering and death – aware that in just a few moments one of these men whom he had called a friend would betray him and the rest would abandon him – and yet he was filled with joy because of knowing the Father’s love.

A few weeks ago, Pope Francis wrote a letter to every Christian entitled “Gaudete et Exultate” – “Rejoice and Be Glad”. I have been reading through it a bit lately. It is a series of reflections about the way in which God wants to inspire each of us to love, about the call to holiness that he calls each of us to. Pope Francis notes that too often we tend to think of holiness as piety, devotion, an overly strict sense of religiosity, when in reality it is simply living in authentic joy and holding on to that joy so that we can love more deeply. “Keeping,” he says, “a heart free of all that tarnishes love: that is holiness.”

As we come to the end of a semester at the university, perhaps it is a good time for each of us to reflect upon where our joy comes from. Do we feel the authentic joy that comes from knowing God, knowing of his love for us, and keeping that love free from tarnish? Or are we searching for something lesser? The Christian writer C.S. Lewis once wrote that the joy which comes from love is not the same as pleasure or contentment; those things are much more commonplace and unremarkable. True joy, he said, doesn’t come from “security or prosperity” or the satisfaction of any desire. Rather it is a feeling of childlike delight: it “jumps under one's ribs and tickles down one's back and makes one forget meals and keeps one (delightedly) sleepless o' nights.” True joy cannot be duplicated or bought or faked; it is authentic.

Friends, we may struggle at times to experience surprise as we get older, but there is one thing that should never cease to surprise us: that Jesus has made us his friends. Jesus invites us to share in his joy, to make our joy complete by the knowledge of the Father’s love. More than obedience of piety or devotion, the Lord wants our relationship with him to be one of friendship, one that is rooted in the joy of love. God’s love is given to us freely without cost, so that we can respond freely to love him. When we know the mind of Jesus as our Friend, then we can act as he did, and love as he loved. The holiness he calls us to is nothing other than loving, joyful friendship, and who does not want that? May the Eucharist that we will celebrate in a few moments be a confirmation of the Lord’s great love for us, and a foretaste of the authentic joy of the heavenly kingdom.
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The Fruit of the Vine

In the spirit of our university semester drawing to a close, here's a pop quiz! 

What was the first commandment God gave to human beings? Any guesses? Maybe some of you thought of one of the Ten Commandments, the Law given to Moses for the Israelite people on Mount Sinai. But it is before that. Or you might have thought of the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants, or God’s command to Noah to build an ark. But it is before that. Or maybe you even thought of God’s commandment to Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even then, you’d be wrong. 

The first commandment God gave to human beings was given to Adam and Eve, but it was not a warning about sin. Rather, he said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” I always tend to think of this fact about this time of year, when the weather has finally gotten nice, the flowers and trees are blooming, and all of nature seems to be singing. Springtime is an inherent reminder of God’s desire that all of his creation flourish.

Still, what about all of those commandments? Everyone knows that Christianity is a religion with commandments. “Honor your father and mother.” “Do not kill.” “Do not commit adultery.” Don’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent. No sex outside of marriage. Fast for an hour before receiving the Eucharist. And so on, and so on. If God’s desire for us is to flourish – not just to populate the earth, like Adam and Eve – but to prosper in every way, how do a bunch of commandments help us to do that?

We hear the answer in our second reading today. For the past several weeks, this reading has come from the First Letter of John. If you have never read is particular letter straight through, I would encourage you to do so. It is one of the more beautiful explanations of the Christian faith and a simple guide to how to live as a follower of Jesus. The author of the letter – who was most likely either the Apostle John or one of his close followers – speaks about how the apostles and disciples were privileged to follow Jesus in his earthly ministry: to hear him preach, to see him heal, etc. But it was only after his Passion, Death, and Resurrection that they came to understand there is an even more important way of relating to Jesus – through love. Love is the tie that binds every believer to God, whether we have seen Jesus or not. God is love, as St. John says, and we love God because we recognize that he first loved us in Christ. Jesus is the proof of God’s love and the one who has made us like himself, so that we are now called children of God.

Edward Burne-Jones, The Tree of Life (detail), c. 1888

How though do we love God? St. John tells us – by keeping his commandments. That is the heart of the message we have heard in this reading the last few weeks – that the proof of loving God is to do what he has told us. As we heard today, faithfulness is proven not merely in words and speech, through mere lip service. Rather faithfulness is shown by action – by what we do “in deed and in truth” as he says. At the heart of every commandment is the choice of whether to love God in that particular way, to acknowledge that he truly loves us and that apart from him we cannot flourish or prosper. Following the will of God, obeying his commandments – even the ones we don’t like! – are the way in which we remain in the love of God that sustains us.

In the Gospel today, Jesus tells us that apart from him we can do nothing. It sounds almost like an insult; but it is a reminder of how truly we depend upon God's goodness for everything. Think about what commandment of God you are having the most trouble following. Is there a rule of the Church that you don’t like? Is there a commandment that you constantly seem to break? Rather than dismiss that thing as unimportant, or resign yourself to it as something that you can’t overcome, think of it instead as precisely the place that God wants to lift you up and help you to flourish. The life of the Vine is extended to you precisely there, so that as a branch on the tree of God, you can be healed and made whole. Love is the tie that binds you to Jesus, but each of us must open ourselves to receiving the life-giving grace that he wants to communicate.

There is of course a flip side to the image of the vine and branches which is more challenging. As any gardener knows, there are some plants, and some parts of plants that do not flourish. They droop and sag; they do not use the nutrients given to them. They fail to truly bear the life of the Vine within them, and as such, they do not bear fruit. When we fail to keep the Lord’s commandments – when we say, “NO,” to what he asks, or ignore his commandments – then in doing so, we resist the very life that sustains us. The Lord’s command is for us to bear fruit; he wants our relationship with him to flourish so that our life grows and spreads beyond ourselves to touch the lives of others and to communicate to them the same life from the Vine that is within us.

Therefore, we must be pruned. The gardener knows that a plant only truly thrives when it has been formed in the correct way. At times, this means doing something which on the face is counter-intuitive – trimming it back, cutting away parts of its life that are easy and superficial but which prevent fuller and deeper growth. We are pruned as well. Whenever we encounter loss, challenge, grievance, disappointment, hardship, or insult, – in any wound that we suffer – there is a temptation to focus only upon it and upon the pain of that present moment. Instead, the Lord invites us to accept our pruning, to embrace the opportunity of letting go of something – even something good – so that we can cling more fully to him, and stay rooted in the divine life that comes from the Vine.

Friends, our faith does indeed have commandments, and commandments that we must follow, but Christianity is not ultimately a religion defined by rules. Instead, it is the full expression of what God first said to Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply.” How connected are you to Christ? Have you remained in him, so that he can remain in you? We are branches on the tree of God, but in order to bear fruit, we must be careful not to separate ourselves from the Vine. The fruit that Jesus expects us to bear is the fruit of faith, hope, and love, the fruit of charitable service, the fruit of self-denial, the fruit of Christian mission, the fruit of spreading the Gospel. May the Eucharist we will soon share – when we will partake of the fruit of the vine transformed into the Lord’s Heavenly Vintage to nourish us – help us to remain rooted in him, so that we can bear much fruit.

Jesus the Lawyer

A few years ago, a priest friend of mine sent me a few jokes. They were jokes about lawyers:

Q: How can a pregnant woman tell that she's carrying a future lawyer?
A: She has an uncontrollable craving for baloney.

Q: What do you call a smiling, courteous person at a bar association convention?
A: The caterer.

Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a trampoline?
A: You take off your shoes before you jump on a trampoline.

Now that I’ve offended any lawyer or law student out there, let me explain why I mention these. I received these as I was heading to Washington DC to study canon law, the law of the Church. Much like regular lawyers, canon lawyers often get a bad rap among priests, and I guess my friend wanted to remind me not to let my studies go to my head.

There was one joke that he sent which especially caught my attention.

Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and God?
A: God doesn't think he's a lawyer.

Now, for any lawyers in the room, the fact that they are in church is probably a pretty good indication that they don’t think they’re God. But that punch line – “God doesn’t think he’s a lawyer” – is that true? You might think, "Of course, it’s true." But if you know your Bible, you might actually start to think it’s not. You might say that God – or more precisely, Jesus – is a kind of lawyer. Let me explain better what I mean.

Throughout the Scriptures, the Bible uses imagery to explain the relationship between God and humanity. A lot of these images we are familiar with, and a lot of them come from Jesus. There’s the vine and the branches, the Good Shepherd and the sheep, the Master of the House and the servants who await his return, the owner of the vineyard and the tenants who work it. You can go on and on.

But there’s another imagery often used in the Bible, and that is legal imagery. The images of the law – judge and trial and sentence – are used especially in the Old Testament to symbolize what it is like when humanity falls astray. As the people of God, we are in covenant with him – bound to him in a heavenly contract, if you will – and when we sin, we violate that covenant, and we are held accountable before the law. We stand before God, guilty of our sins, and we deserve the punishment that is our due. God is infinitely merciful – but he is also infinitely just, and so he must hand down the sentence that the law prescribes.

But today, in the second reading, we heard something very important. In his first letter, the apostle John says, “My children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one.” The word “Advocate” there is deliberately chosen: it means “helper” and “intercessor,” but it also has a legal connotation. Jesus, it seems, is a kind of lawyer.

Now, we like to poke fun at lawyers, as I did at the start of the homily. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that lawyers are actually very important. They perform very important, very helpful tasks. For one, they interpret the law – judges and legal scholars tell us what the law means and how it applies in our lives. And other lawyers represent us when we run afoul of the law – these attorneys, or advocates, stand on our behalf to argue our case.

When St. John says that Jesus is our "Advocate", he means precisely that. Jesus stands before the Father on our behalf, arguing our case. As we will hear in the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer today, Jesus “defends us and ever pleads our cause” before his heavenly Father. He does so because he himself is righteous – that is, in the eyes of the law, he is blameless, without sin. We are not – we have sinned – but because a Righteous One takes up our cause on our behalf, we are made righteous too. Once guilty, we are shown mercy because of the righteousness of Jesus. Though we deserve to receive a sentence, we are made innocent instead.

The analogy goes even deeper. Jesus the Lawyer not only has made us innocent; he has himself borne the weight of the Law’s penalty on our behalf. Imagine a legal counsel who willingly accepts the punishment his client rightfully deserves – even the best lawyer would never do that! But Jesus has freed us from the sentence of the old law of sin and death and has written a new law within our hearts: the law of charity, the law of sacrificial love – his Law.

What does God ask in return? Faithfulness, and to be a witness to his great love. In today's first reading, Peter invites the people of Jerusalem to recognize that by their own sins they were responsible for the death of Jesus; but God has shown them mercy by raising him to new life, and so now he calls them to be a witness to this transformation by turning away from sin, embracing the new life that comes from the Resurrection, and bearing witness to the love God has shown us in Jesus.

James Tissot, The Appearance of Christ at the Cenacle (c. 1894)

In the Gospel we heard, the Risen Jesus appears again to his disciples. They are frightened at his coming: unsure perhaps of how he can be alive again, unsure of whether he will hold their past abandonment against them. Instead, he wishes them "Peace." He reminds them that all has happened according to the will of God – of how all that the Scriptures once foretold has at last been accomplished through his rising from the dead. The disciples, he says, are “witnesses of these things.”

So, too, does the Risen Jesus call us to be his witnesses in the world. To do so, we need to stand apart from the sinfulness we see around us. With our Advocate with us, made righteous by his free gift, we must be holy to such a degree that others take notice and are inspired to make Jesus their Advocate as well. That is the mission he has given to us. We should never let the times that we fall short from this calling discourage us from turning back to him – to trust again in our Advocate, who restores us to righteousness so that we can be good witnesses once again. 

My friends, in this Easter season, we remember that we have the universe’s best Advocate in our corner. Even the greatest defense attorney in the world would never do what Jesus has done for us, for he has borne our sentence on our behalf, and restored us to righteousness in the sight of God. But Jesus’s assistance didn’t come to an end with his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. He continues to aid us each and every day – indeed, every moment – interceding for us with the Father, pouring out his Spirit to us, sending us heavenly gifts of grace to inspire us to holiness. The Risen Lord has changed the world; he has changed our hearts; and he continues to lead us – and we are witnesses to these things. And that, praise God, is not a joke.

Easter: The Silent Victory

The American author F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.” While only he knew his exact meaning, his words can be understood in at least two ways. An optimistic interpretation is that every hero has a backstory, some tragic difficulty or challenge that they have overcome in order to become who they are. A more pessimistic interpretation is that every hero is a figure waiting to fall, victorious at one moment but destined inevitably for later decline or defeat. 

According to the values of the world, the life of Jesus of Nazareth was heroic in many ways. He upended narrow ways of thinking, he preached the importance of mercy and compassion, he paid attention to the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast. But as heroic as his life may have been, when viewed through the lens of this world, one cannot help but conclude Jesus’s story ends in tragedy, because despite his goodness he was finally rejected, captured, abused, murdered.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Two Disciples at the Tomb (c. 1906)

Of course, we are here today because as Christians we do not view things only through the lens of the world. We have because we believe in the Resurrection – that is, to make the claim in faith that after suffering a truly human death, this Jesus of Nazareth was then raised from the dead; not to live for a time and then suffer death again, like his friend Lazarus, but risen in such a way that death no longer has any power over him. For us he suffered the slings and arrows of human sinfulness, for us he shed his blood, but God has raised him to a new and eternal life.

Still, it might occur to us, “But where is Jesus?” In the Gospel from John that we just heard, we can feel this question implicitly in the story. Early in the morning, Mary Magdalene goes early in the morning to anoint the dead Jesus. But he is not there. Simon Peter and the other disciple come to see for themselves, and they too see that he is gone. The Easter account from Mark says that Jesus is not there, because “he has been raised.” How strange! We might expect that after his very public suffering and death, the Resurrection of Jesus would be an event that no one would possibly miss or mistake or fail to recognize. If we were writing the story, we would make certain that all would see that the Hero of God is not defeated, but victorious indeed! And yet the Resurrection of Christ happens silently, in secret. Just what is God up to?

We can summarize his purpose in one word: faith. Recently, I saw an interview with former President Jimmy Carter about a new book that he has written on faith. The interviewer asked him why faith was so important, and he said he thought faith was the key to existence. He referenced the eighteenth chapter of Luke, and Jesus’s words, “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth?” The former president then went on talk about it’s important to have faith in ourselves, in other human beings, in our ability to make the world a more decent place.

With all due respect to Mr. Carter, that is not the faith that Jesus was talking about. If there is one thing that Jesus desired to do throughout his life, it was to move us to faith – not faith in some abstract, general sense, but faith personally in him, faith that he was sent by God for our salvation. All of those things that he did in his ministry – reaching out to the marginalized, preaching compassion and mercy – those things which even non-believers can admire: all of them were intended to bring us to believe in him. Even his death on the Cross was an invitation to faith. Why? Because faith ultimately is what saves, faith is what reconciles us to God, faith is what gives us eternal life. Without faith in the Son of God, we could see the Resurrection itself happen and it would profit us nothing. What Jesus wants, then and now, for us to have faith in one thing: that he is Risen from the dead, physically, in the flesh, and that having Ascended he sits at the right side of his Father in heaven and continues to intercede for us. It is an extraordinary claim – something so amazing that it is almost unbelievable. But it is believable, with faith, and we are the ones who believe it.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Three Marys (c. 1910)

At the Easter Vigil last night, our church rejoiced to welcome into full initiation in the Christian mysteries those men and women who through months of discernment and prayer have come to have faith in the Risen Jesus and who have found a new and fuller relationship with him in our Catholic communion. By the power of Christ, they were sealed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit so that the faith that has brought them here will now move them, and us, to give witness to the Lord in how we live.

Like them, our presence in this church today is a sign that we stand ready to give testimony to this faith we possess. We have come to believe in the Resurrection; now we strive to bring others to the same faith. So many today are looking for a reason to hope; so many want to believe in a good and merciful God, who will answer the evil we see so evident; so many feel within themselves a longing that is unfulfilled, a desire to find something in life that really is momentous. To them and to all, we are ready to answer, to respond in faith that: “Death is not the final word! The Grave is not our final resting place! Oblivion is not the fate that awaits us! For the Tomb is empty; he has been raised, as he said.” There is no work we can do that is more important, more essential than continuing to share that Good News, which we have come to believe. And share it we must until the Day we and indeed all the world see the Risen Christ return in his Glorious Body at the end of all things.

So, “where is Jesus?” Right here. With eyes of faith we can see him – present in our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit, present in the midst of this assembly, and especially present in the sacramental signs which are instruments of his grace. We hear his voice in the prayers we offer through his Sonship; we see him in the works of charity we do in his Name, in the service we render to others out of love for him, in the daily living out of that vocation by which he has called each of us to holiness and newness of life. As we await his glorious Second Coming, we look for him not in some far-off place, but in faith, we recognize he is still here.

Friends, perhaps it is true like Scott Fitzgerald thought that every human story, even a heroic one, ends in tragedy. But in the divine story, announced by the mouth of God, and written anew upon our hearts in faith, there is no longer any tragedy. There is only the victory that our Hero has won. May the Risen Christ, truly here, present among us, strengthen us in our faith, that we may always announce his triumph to others, and by our manner of living point the way to his fullness of life.

Good Friday: The Atonement of "I AM"

When I was about eight years old, I saw Cecil B. DeMille’s classic film The Ten Commandments for the first time. The movie has come to be associated in my mind, as it is for many others, with the Easter holiday, probably because ABC has shown it on this weekend every year since the late 1960s. I remember though, the first time I saw it, how impressed I was by the visual artistry of that movie. Its special effects are certainly dated by modern standards, but somehow they still amazed me as a kid. 

The scene I remember best is the one in which Moses encounters God in the burning bush. The idea of a bush that was on fire but not consumed by it was one that impressed me, even as a child, just as it amazes Moses in the movie. If you recall the scene, Moses comes to realize he is in the presence of the divine. He removes his sandals, recognizing that he is on holy ground. The Lord tells him that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and commands Moses to go to Pharaoh and say to him, “Let my people go.” Before Moses departs, he asks the Lord what name he should give for the god who has sent him. The Lord responds, “I Am That I Am” … or as is more commonly said in our tradition, “I Am Who Am.”

Much has been written about that saying, that name, “I Am Who Am.” It is something of an enigma – a declaration of God’s identity as being equivalent to his power, his majesty, his infinite glory. God is he who IS – who exists, period – and nothing further needs to be said. In the Jewish tradition, this name was accorded such great respect to this name of God that it was never said or written; instead they used alternative descriptions, like Adonai, “Lord” or El Shaddai, “God Almighty.” Only the high priest of the Temple was allowed to pronounce the name of God, and only then once per year, on the Day of Atonement.

Mihály Munkácsy, Golgotha (1884)

In the narrative we just read from the Gospel of John, you might have noticed that something a little strange happens right at the beginning of the story. When Judas arrives with a group of soldiers to arrest Jesus, he asks them whom they are looking for. They respond “Jesus the Nazorean”, and he then responds two times “I AM.” The Gospel then says that those who heard him turned away and fell to the ground.

If Jesus is just saying that he’s the one they are looking to arrest, it seems strange for them to turn away and fall over. But of course, his response is more than that – his response, “I Am,” is composed of the same words as what Moses heard on the mountain, “I AM Who Am”. We can understand now why his listeners were so aghast; Jesus has used the personal name of God in reference to himself. At this critical moment of the story, on the verge of his arrest, Jesus forces those who hear him to make a choice – either he is God himself, as he has claimed, or he is not. If he is not, then he has committed blasphemy and rightly will be sentenced to death. If he is, then those arresting him are about to put to death God himself.

We are, of course, forced to consider the same choice. Good Friday is about the death of one man, a man who claimed to be God. If he was not, then this day is no different than any other, since thousands even millions die every day, some in ways as terrible as a crucifixion. But if he is God – and we as Christians certainly reaffirm today our act of faith that he is – then Good Friday is the day we solemnly remember that He who is Existence itself, whose very Essence is what it means “To Be”, offered himself up to death for our sins.

After the reading of the Passion Narrative, this Good Friday liturgy has three important elements, each of which is directly connected to the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross. First, we will pray the Solemn Intercessions, approaching the Father and daring to ask him to grant us what we ask, precisely because we have faith in his Son and in the sacrifice by which he reconciled us to God. Second, we will venerate the Cross, showing it a supreme reverence because of the Body of the One who used it to offer himself for our sake. If you notice, we priests will remove our shoes when we kiss the Cross, recognizing like Moses that we stand upon holy ground. Finally, we will receive in sacramental form the Body of Christ himself in the Eucharist, he who once was dead but now lives forever.

My friends, as we prepare to celebrate the Easter festivities once again, let us first pause and renew our faith today in the saving death of Jesus. Good Friday is our eternal Day of Atonement, the day on which, gathered in this temple, priests by our baptism, we utter with reverence and faith the Name which is above every name. Jesus the Nazorean was no mere man; he is the God-Man. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One who Is, whose Essence is Existence itself – and also the one who submitted himself to betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, and death, all for love of us, all to redeem us from our sin. With the fire of divine love, he hung upon the tree; but like the bush that did not burn away, he could not be consumed by Death. Rather he lives anew, and his death is the demise of Death itself for all who believe in him. So it is; so let us believe.

A Soliloquy on Suffering

At one time or another, every high school English student has to study the works of Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet – these works and more are classics of our English language and great studies also in the human condition. When I was in high school, each year we studied a different one of the Bard’s plays, and we always had to memorize a soliloquy – that is, a speech by a character who is alone or speaking only to themselves. Each of them remains etched in my memory somewhere: Romeo contemplating the beauty of Juliet; Macbeth grappling with his murderous desires; Hamlet pondering the pros and cons of continuing to live with his burdens and griefs.

Looking back, I realize that we did this for a few reasons. Certainly, we came to appreciate Shakespeare’s masterful use of language. We appreciated his ability to gain insight into human nature. Most importantly, though, studying those soliloquies gave us an insight into the stories themselves, into the character’s circumstances and motivations at that moment of the plot. Understanding the thoughts and feelings of those characters at a critical moment in the story helped us to understand better what would happen next.

In our Gospel today, we hear Jesus give voice to his inner thoughts and feelings. Like a Shakespearean character, he considers the circumstances of his coming Passion and Death and responds with the sentiments in his heart. Jesus, though, is more than a character; he also speaks with the authority of the Author, with the knowledge of God himself who has constructed the story. Like a good teacher, Jesus wants his students – his disciples – to understand more fully what is playing out before them, not on the page but in real life.

We might include ourselves also among the intended audience of Jesus’s words. It’s pretty rare in the Gospels to get a glimpse into the inner life of Jesus, but in John’s Gospel, these long addresses become more frequent the closer Jesus draws to the Passion. As his “hour” approaches, the tension in the story builds until the climax of the drama at last unfolds in the road to Calvary. Jesus does not want his disciples, nor us, to mistake what is truly happening – to miss the meaning of the story before us. As terrible as the sequence of Jesus’s Passion and Death is, it is also fully the will of Father, the love of God for humanity on display. As Jesus says, it is the purpose for which he has come into the world, the hour for which he was sent.

At times, we might ask ourselves, “Why did the Lord need to die? Was it necessary?” St. Thomas Aquinas responds to that question in a few ways which might be of help to us. He says that we should not think of the Lord’s suffering as necessary, in the sense that God was forced to make things that way, or as if Jesus himself had no choice in the matter. God is all powerful and could have chosen to accomplish our salvation in some other way; and Jesus had a truly free will and so could have rejected what his Father called him to. And yet this was always God’s plan; Christ’s suffering was necessary therefore in the sense that it most perfectly accomplished the redemption he desired to work for us. The word the Church Fathers use is “fitting” – the Passion and Death of Jesus fittingly show us both the true result of our sinfulness and also the total obedience that Christ shows to his Father out of love for humanity.

We would do well to keep these considerations in mind as we prepare to enter into Holy Week, with Palm Sunday one week from today. But I think they also can be helpful for us in approaching our own sufferings, our own invitations into sharing in the mystery of the Lord’s Cross. One of the great advantages of our faith is that the Lord has taught us how to understand our suffering, but too many Christians today seem to have forgotten what that lesson is or to have rejected its value. What we need perhaps is to study again the Lord’s own suffering as a lens through which we can view our own.

Notice in the Gospel today that Jesus has a certain heavy-heartedness as he looks ahead to the Passion. It is not that he goes to his death unwillingly; far from it. But he says that his heart is troubled, and understandably so. Jesus is in the prime of his life, not ill, not weakened, only some 33 years of age; to face an impending death seems almost impossible to believe. This sadness – at the necessity of dying, at the rejection he has encountered – does not, however, in any way diminish the resolve he has to fulfill the mission entrusted to him by the Father. He has trust in his Father’s will, and that through his act of obedient suffering “the ruler of this world [Satan] will be driven out.” 

Anatoly Shumkin, The Humility of Christ (2013)

In our own lives, none of us likes to suffer, and rightfully so. Suffering always involves something bad; whether it is physical pain, or emotional distress, or the suffering of loss, in some way or another, we encounter something in suffering that we would rather avoid. Jesus shows that suffering can also be transformative. Remembering Christ on the Cross, we can unite our own sorrows to his, and so make them offerings to God as recompense for our sins. The suffering may be particularly challenging at times, but it is always only temporary. Like grains of wheat, we anticipate a future transformation, and we believe that what we endure here will allow us bear fruit for what awaits us. In the meantime, we embrace the various “deaths” that are the passageway to newness of life – death to our desires and our ambitions, death to our grievances and our hardness of heart, death to our attachments to things, and to people, and even to this earthly life. But suffering, and even death itself, do not have the final word; God has proven that in Christ as well.

Friends, soon we will celebrate again the most important mysteries of our faith, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. These events are the story of our salvation, something far deeper and richer than even Shakespeare, and thus they are worthy of our study and reflection. But they are also mysteries to be entered into, performed so to speak in our own lives. Jesus knows well the sorrows we face and the sufferings we endure, and he invites us to share in his Cross, so that we might have a share in the glory of his Resurrection. His words to us in the Gospel today teach us patience, inspire in us obedience, and most importantly encourage us in perseverance, so that at each moment we may seek to follow after him. May our own sufferings be for us a further step down the road of discipleship, closer to Calvary, but closer also to heaven, so that where he is, we may one day be.

Herein Is Love

When was the last time you had a truly meaningful conversation? They say that the average American talks somewhere between three and five hours a day, women on average a little bit more than men, children a little bit more than adults. If you add in the conversations we have in other forms, like texting and email, then surely those numbers go up even more.

Most of this communication is not what we would probably consider all that meaningful. It serves a purpose in the moment – an exchange of viewpoints or information, or just a chance to catch up with someone we know. But it is ephemeral; once it is over, it doesn’t stay with us and we don’t return to it. However, there are times in life when we find ourselves engaged in a conversation that can be truly meaningful, even life-changing.

In the Gospel today, a man named Nicodemus has a meaningful conversation with Jesus. A little context for you for the passage we heard: Nicodemus is a Pharisee, who has been impressed by Jesus’s teaching and his miracles. He comes to Jesus to discuss things with him further, but he comes to him at night, under the cover of darkness, afraid of what the other Pharisees might think of him taking Jesus seriously. Nicodemus is interested to find out what Jesus means when he says that we must be “born again”. He asks Jesus, "How is it possible for a person to be born twice?"

Visit of Nicodemus to Christ (1880) by John La Farge

What results is a conversation that is anything but ephemeral. In fact, St. John the Evangelist records their dialogue as one of the key exchanges of his Gospel account, an insight into the purpose behind Jesus’s mission. In short, Jesus tells Nicodemus that human beings are sinful and headed for destruction because of our sin; however, God loved us, despite our sinfulness, even to the point of sending his Son. Jesus refers to himself in the third person, directing Nicodemus’s attention to the sacrifice on the cross that he will undergo as a sign of the profound love of God and as the remedy for human sinfulness. It is through faith in him and in what he will do that human beings are born again and can enter into the presence of God.

We have reached the Fourth Sunday of Lent, more or less the midpoint of this season of renewal and purification. Each of our readings today speak to us about the same theme: God’s love for humanity. The first reading, from the Second Book of Chronicles, reminds us that his love for us persists, even when we have sinned. The second reading, from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, tells us that it is a free gift, not one which we earn but offered out of sheer grace. And the passage from John’s Gospel that we just looked at states that God’s love must be accepted in faith for it to be salvific, that is, to save us from eternal death.

The Church gives us this theme of God’s love midway through this season for two reasons: first, to remind us why we are in this penitential season and second, to encourage us to be renewed in our efforts. After about a month of Lent – and the more intensive fasting, prayer, and almsgiving that this season calls us to – it can be easy to forget why we are doing this, or perhaps to be discouraged if our efforts have been lacking in some way. Rather than focus on our shortcomings though, the Church bids us “Rejoice” – remember God’s everlasting love, offered freely to us as a gift, and one that, accepted with faith in Jesus, merits our eternal salvation.

The question, of course, is whether we take this encouragement – this invitation – to heart. Too often, when Jesus bids us to come and be renewed by the knowledge of God’s love, we are hesitant to accept. For one, we can’t overcome our doubts that he really means what he says: "that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son," who took upon himself all of our sins and crucified them on the cross in order to give us life. We just fail in some way to really believe that that can be so. Others of us believe all of that in a half-hearted way, but it doesn’t really inspire within us anything in response; it fails to really ignite anything from us in return.

This was Nicodemus’s problem. The Church Fathers saw Nicodemus as a half-hearted disciple; he believed in Jesus, but he wanted to do so in secret only. He could have become as openly a follower of Christ as the Apostles, and yet the only time we see him again is after Jesus has died, when Nicodemus helps prepare his body for burial. We might say that Nicodemus is the first in a very long line of people, including many of us, who could be great followers of Jesus if only we weren’t so limited by what others might say in response.

What Nicodemus needed, and what we need too perhaps, especially at this point in Lent, is a reminder of the profound love of God. We’ve heard it in the readings, but we also must be convinced of it in our own hearts. The great writer C.S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, says that love is not so much something God does, but something that he is. This is seen most fully when we look at Jesus on the cross. He writes:

“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing… the buzzing cloud of flies about the Cross, the flayed back [of Jesus]…, the nails driven through…. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”

Lewis’s profound words remind us that God knew – before all time, from all eternity – that mankind would fall into sin, and so doom itself to death, and that to save it, he would send his Only Son, who also would be rejected, and who would be put to death in a terrible way. He knew all of that before he ever created a thing, before he ever said, “Let there be light…” He did it all anyway, because he loves us – because he loves you, personally, by name – with a love that is everlasting.

Friends, take a moment this week to have a meaningful conversation with God. Take a break from the busy grind of work or school, and get away for a little while, just yourself and the Lord. Speak to the Lord a bit about where you are at in your relationship with him, and let him speak to you. He went to the cross 2000 years ago out of love for you; with that same love, he desires to renew your spirit this day. In this Eucharist which we celebrate in a few moments, may we rush forward to meet the Lord, not with doubts or half-hearted conviction, but with confidence, with thanksgiving, and with rejoicing.

A Call to Arms

Godfried Guffins & Jan Swerts, The Temptation of Christ (c. 1870), Sint-Joriskerk, Antwerp

There has been a little tension in our church office over the last few weeks. Adam, one of our campus ministers, and Fr. Jason, our associate pastor, are both signed up to race in the Hogeye Marathon on April 14th. A bit of a friendly rivalry has developed in their preparations. Adam is training in a traditional way: running different mileages and slowly building up over time. Fr. Jason is taking a different approach: he’s working on sheer muscle strength and training with different martial arts techniques. It is almost as if he is training more for a fight than a race! I have even seen a pair of brass knuckles on his desk – he tells me it is just a paperweight, but now I am a little afraid to make him angry!

In the Gospel today, Jesus begins his public ministry with a fight. Following his baptism in the Jordan, he is driven by the Spirit out into the desert to encounter the devil. At its heart, it is a spiritual struggle. We know from the other Gospels that the devil is trying to tempt Jesus to betray his mission, to interiorly falter in his willingness to dedicate himself completely to the will of the Father who has sent him. There also, however, material aspects to this contest. It takes place in the wilderness of Judea, where Jesus is alone, fasting, submitting himself to the elements, surrounded by wild beasts. Mark’s account draws our attention to how there is truly a battle being fought: between Jesus, the Son of God, filled with the Holy Spirit and all of the forces of darkness, earthly and otherwise, everything that represents chaos and disorder and violence. These spiritual powers converge upon Christ, and he bests them all.

Each year, as we begin Lent, we hear about this testing of Jesus – this period of struggle that he undergoes in the desert and from which he emerges victorious. But only in the Gospel of Mark do we hear what happens next: that having defeated the devil and resisted his temptations, Jesus goes to Galilee and begins proclaiming the Good News. It is as if Mark is suggesting that Jesus’s proclamation of the Gospel is a continuation of what he began in the desert – an extension of the battle against the forces of sin and darkness.

The Church Fathers saw this very clearly. All of Jesus’s public ministry – his preaching, his miracles, the encounters with particular people – all of it is a battle to win back creation, especially humanity, from the darkness that has enslaved us through sin and dysfunction. At each turn, Jesus encounters the devil and at each turn he beats him back, healing this person, forgiving that one, casting out a demon from that one, and strengthening the faith of another. Jesus is on a mission of liberation, one ultimately that is headed for Jerusalem, where the last great battle must be fought and won on the hill of Calvary.

If we look at all of Jesus’s ministry in that way, then his words today “Repent and believe in the Gospel” also take on a new meaning. They are not mere moralizing; Jesus is not just admonishing us to be a little better, a little holier. Rather, he is issuing a call to arms – he is inviting us to come and join him in the battle and share with him in the victory over darkness. Unfortunately, our world still affords us many reminders, too many, that evil is real; we know from our newscasts, and Facebook feeds, and our gossip around the water cooler and dinner table that sin and dysfunction did not disappear with Jesus. Evil still must be confronted and defeated, and the first place to engage with it is in our own hearts. Repentance therefore is part of the rhythm of our Christian life – while we have a claim on the final victory to come, the battle still continues.

With what then do we fight? Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These weapons may not sound as fearsome as sword or steel, but the Christian tradition has long seen these penitential practices as the most effective ways of combating the forces of evil. They help sharpen our spiritual attention and heighten our moral awareness, and each of them contribute to making us more free. Prayer reminds us that it is our relationship with God that most truly defines who we are, not the circumstances or even the relationships of our day to day. Fasting reminds us that we are not slaves to our physical impulses and corporeal desires; we have a free will. Almsgiving and works of charity free us from being possessed by the things we own.

Often we tend to see Lent as something serious, and maybe a little gloomy, but really it should be a time that invigorates us and reawakens us our faith. Some five hundred years ago, Ignatius of Loyola encouraged the young men who wanted to join his new group, the Jesuits, to imagine themselves in the middle of a great plain. Assembled there are two great armies. Under the banner of Satan, are the proud, the self-serving, the self-reliant. Under the banner of Christ are the humble, the modest, those reliant upon God, the penitential.

It is a powerful meditation because it is so counter-intuitive. The side of Satan seems much stronger, and for that reason more inviting; the side of Christ seems weak and maybe even a bit pathetic. And yet we know that it is those under the banner of Christ that ultimately are victorious. What Ignatius wants to show us is that often what attracts us, what seems to us most appealing, is precisely what can lead to our ultimate ruin. Eternal life comes rather through self-denial, through penance – through a recognition that we must constantly be purifying ourselves from the desire for the things of this world so that we can be more attuned to the deeper longing for what is eternal.

Friends, as we begin Lent again, our Lord reminds us that we have a fight on our hands, one for which brass knuckles will not be effective. God still desires to cleans our world of its sin and dysfunction, but rather than act on a grand scale through a purifying flood as in the days of Noah, he now acts at the individual level through the transformative power of his Holy Spirit. Lent affords us a chance not just to tweak one or two things in our moral life, but above all to remind ourselves on which side we are fighting. Jesus offers nothing less than emancipation from all that holds us back, so heed his call! Invite the Holy Spirit to do battle in your heart. Arm him with the weapons of penance and spiritual discipline. Take up your stand anew under the banner of your Savior, and begin to share again in the victory only he can give.

Lent: A Love Story

What one word best sums up today? If you were to ask that question on campus today, you’d probably get a straightforward answer: love. It’s February 14, after all, Valentine’s Day. We know that behind all of the flowers and chocolate and jewelry and other commercializations, there is the simple idea of telling someone you care about that you love them. 

Believe it or not, that same single word – love – is also at the heart of our celebration of Ash Wednesday. Yes, it is the start of Lent, that season of penance and purification. We will mark our foreheads with ashes and ask for God’s forgiveness. We think about what penitential practice we might want to take on – giving something up that we enjoy, doing something charitable or sacrificial for another, or both. But beneath it all is the theme of love: God’s love for us and our love for God. 

It is precisely because God loves us that he calls us to repentance. “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Those words are from the Book of Genesis, spoken by God to Adam, reminding him that this life is finite, and that we must use this time well to prepare for our judgment. God wants nothing less than for us as his creatures to flourish, to thrive in every way, especially at the level of soul. Our sinful habits and attitudes hold us back from being the temples of the Holy Spirit he has created us to be, and so he calls us to repentance so that we might leave behind our old ways apart from him and embrace the new life that comes from Christ. 

Of course, as the old saying goes, the best intentions oft go astray. How often do we begin Lent with a firm intention to improve our relationship with God only to find that halfway through we have lost that determination altogether? Or worse, we simply never had it in the first place? In the Gospel today, Jesus knows that it can be hard to truly change, hard even at times to truly want to change. What we need is motivation – a reason to carry on with these things that are difficult. When the going gets tough, what will keep us going? 

David O'Connell, Stations of the Cross: Fifth Station: Simon Helps Jesus (c. 1960), St. Richard Church, Chichester, UK

The only answer is love. Only out of love for God do we endure that which is hard, that which needs perseverance. We may be tempted – when the going gets tough – to put on a good show for others, to appear pious and penitential on the outside without truly giving it our all on the inside. But as Jesus says, God sees through such a false pretense. The Lord judges the heart, not the exterior appearance. Ashes on our foreheads are not enough to claim repentance; they must be accompanied by a true recognition of how far we have fallen astray. Our deepest motivation must always be the love of God – remembering constantly his love for us and renewing at each moment our love for him. If we seek his mercy, if we desire to do penance not to impress others or to better ourselves in a self-serving way but merely out of love for him, then Jesus assures us our heavenly Father sees our contrition and forgives us.

Thus, it is out of love that we take up again the penitential practices of Lent, not because they are fun but because they help us to love well. Prayer helps orient us toward God, remembering our love for him. Fasting helps us to love ourselves properly, training us to look away from worldly delights and to yearn for what nourishes our souls. Giving alms, or works of charity in general, help us to love those around us, helping us to remember the duty we have to care for those in need.

Friends, the season of Lent reminds us again that the greatest love story ever told is not a story of romance, told with valentines, but rather the story of God’s love for us – told most fully in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of God’s Son for us. It is the celebration of that wondrous event, the Easter story, that Lent prepares us for. As we receive ashes on our heads, remembering the mortality of this body, may we also yearn to be enlivened by the power of Jesus’s love to hope one day for eternal life. May the Lord who loves us so deeply inspire in us a love to turn back to him, to be renewed by his grace in these forty days, to echo his love in all that we do.