Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion: Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12, Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9, John 18:1 – 19:42.
The sad and wonderful day is here. We must mourn with Mary because her most perfect Son has been tortured and killed, and this is a grievous wrong. But we must marvel at the willing act of charity that the Son carries out by offering himself wholly to the Father.
St. John makes no bones in today’s gospel account of the Passion and Crucifixion that Jesus is in total control and is offering himself without a struggle. He tells the most powerful secular ruler in the region, Pontius Pilate: “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above,” and “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.” Jesus has been consistent through his entire life that he comes from his Father above and does his will. As his faithful, let us truly take on the significance of this claim.
Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican (1498), Michaelangelo | Wikimedia Commons.
It has been in vogue for the past few decades to portray the gritty reality of Christ’s suffering. I’m thinking, of course, of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, but also books that try to know Jesus the man apart from Jesus the Lord. Yes, the bloody details of the Passion are important to remember, but they are not the point. Likewise, it is of supreme importance that he truly was a man, but it can never be separated from the fact that he is (and always was) also God. We did not invent this “extra layer” of divinity as non-believers would claim.
So if we are to spend our Good Friday time in fruitful reflections, let us take a cue from our great saints and spiritual teachers. In the collection of retreat conferences preached to his fellow Dominicans entitled Knowing the Love of God, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange orients us to the truly important aspects of the Passion. He helps me to understand why Christ submitted himself to the Passion and Crucifixion in the way he did:
Jesus took upon Himself the responsibility for all the sins of men, and He began to suffer for them as if it had been He who had committed them, as if He were impious, rebellious, frenzied, cowardly, ungrateful, and sacrilegious. He felt the divine anger and divine curse weigh on His soul while hell with supreme fury broke loose against Him. The horror of evil and all vices together seemed for an instant to suffocate Him. A cry burst from His lips on the Cross: “My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?” (Mt 27:46).
In this darkness, in this abandonment, Our Lord performed His greatest act of love. In the midst of this anguish He loved His Father above everything and He loved us even to the giving of His life for our salvation, only grieving that a greater number were not saved. This act of love makes abundant satisfaction for all hatreds. The obedience that it involves compensates for all rebellions in the eyes of God. The humiliations of the Passion redeem all acts of pride. The gentleness of Him crucified repairs all acts of anger and His sufferings pay for all sensuality.
This act of charity of the Incarnate Word has saved the world. (36).
In short, there is an entirely different sequence of events going on than just the physical one. The spiritual events are the important ones. What unites the physical plane with the spiritual one is Christ’s Blood. It is literally shed in whip strokes, puncturing thorns, nails, and a spear. But this is no everyday blood: it is divine blood. Do we realize this?
It’s not in vogue to talk about the supernatural value of Christ’s Blood; this seems like a 19th century, antiquated notion wrapped up in lace and the Latin Mass. But today is the day to re-embrace the importance of Christ’s Blood and how — because of its divine source — it accomplishes things that no mere crucifixion or sacrifice can accomplish.
Sanguis Christi (1670), Gian Lorenzo Bernini | Wikimedia Commons. On the left is the original drawing and on the right is a painting from the workshop of Bernini. Bernini’s biographer, Filippo Baldinucci, writes: “He sometimes deepened his thoughts and speeches with a very high esteem and concept that he always had of the efficacy of the Blood of Christ the Redeemer, in which (as he used to say) he hoped to drown his sins. To this object he drew with his own hand, and then had an image of Christ Crucified printed, from whose hands and feet flow streams of blood, which form almost a sea, and the great Queen of Heaven, who is offering it to the Eternal Father. This pious meditation also made him paint on a large canvas, which he always wanted to keep in the face of his bed in life and in death.”
Today’s second reading in the Office of Readings is from St. John Chrysostom’s catechetical teachings to those about to become part of Catholic Church. This is very appropriate since thousands are going to be baptized into the Church tomorrow night after having gone through their teaching, soul-searching, and vows. Chrysostom writes about the power of Christ’s Blood:
If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt. Sacrifice a lamb without blemish, commanded Moses, and sprinkle its blood on your doors. If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.
If you desire further proof of the power of this blood, remember where it came from, how it ran down from the cross, flowing from the Master’s side. The gospel records that when Christ was dead, but still hung on the cross, a soldier came and pierced his side with a lance and immediately there poured out water and blood. Now the water was a symbol of baptism and the blood, of the holy eucharist. The soldier pierced the Lord’s side, he breached the wall of the sacred temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own. So also with the lamb: the Jews sacrificed the victim and I have been saved by it.
There flowed from his side water and blood. Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolized baptism and the holy eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit, and from the holy eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam. Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh! As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after his own death.
Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.
As we reflect today on the great Passion and Crucifixion, specifically on the amazing gift Christ is giving humanity, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange can give us some final words to consider:
According to the definition of the Church, the redemptive act of Christ has infinite value and efficacy. It makes satisfaction for any guilt whatsoever, repairs any offense against God, even though its gravity is infinite. It satisfies for all the sins of men, and still more … It merits all graces for even the most degraded souls, provided they are not stubbornly fixed in evil. It is impossible to think of a limit to the efficacy of the redemptive act. The redemptive omnipotence of the act of Christ, who immolated Himself upon the Cross, derives from the fact that it is a perfect act of charity performed by a divine Person; the perfect act of the Incarnate Word. It is a supernatural act of charity towards God which makes Him forget all offenses. (Knowing the Love of God, 30-31).
What does this mean for you and me? It means that we should never be so low as to think we’re outside of the saving power of Christ. That would be a huge insult and underestimation of Christ’s redemptive act on the Cross. It also means that we owe everything to him and this act on our behalf. There is nothing that we have that was not given to us first by the Father and then, in order to make us perfect after we walk in the world in sin, by Christ.
As I contemplate Christ on the Cross, may I be filled with humility, thankfulness, and admiration.
The Crucifixion (1675), Bartolomé Estebán Murillo | Creative Commons, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Holy Thursday – Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-15.
The Easter Triduum begins tonight with the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper. As I consider the readings for tonight’s Mass, I am struck by the tightly knit, condensed sequence of action and meaning that Christ gives us. The readings can barely contain it, for he not only provides the full meaning of millennia of Jewish ritual practices, he also institutes new sacraments in his actions and self that have never existed until this moment.
Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (1445-1450), Rogier van der Weyden | Wikimedia Commons. On the left panel are baptism, confirmation and confession and on the right hand panel the ordination of a priest, marriage and the last rites. The central panel is dominated by a crucifixion in the foreground, with the sacrament of the Eucharist in the background. Angels hover over each sacrament with scrolls, with clothes color-matched to the sacraments, from white for baptism to black for the last rites.
This is the reason that the Easter Triduum is the high point of our liturgical calendar, that these three days are considered their own liturgical season, outside of Lent. The density of the mystery at work in the world, like a spiritual supernova touched down on the earth, is simply too great for humanity to take in. It took the Church centuries to unpack, appreciate, and codify the depth of what happened, all the while maintaining steadfast faith and devotion to the sacraments instituted by our Savior. Thankfully, the Church has always been guided by the Holy Spirit, as Christ promised.
I will try to lay out just the high points as I see them:
Jesus institutes our greatest sacrament, the Eucharist, which not only helps to make sense of the Passover rituals observed by the Jews since the time of Moses, but itself continues to unfold throughout the next three days, taking on its true substance only when his very Body is nailed to the Cross and his Blood is shed for humanity.
Jesus institutes the sacrament of confession and the importance of forgiveness as a participation in his own Spirit when he washes the feet of the Apostles.
Jesus passes to the Apostles these sacraments and instructions as part of the formation of the holy priesthood, which is developed as the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Jesus sets in motion the ways he will continue to commune with his Church after his Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Consider how he patiently goes about setting everything in order. Think about the to-do list here: giving his apostles one last great moment of teaching, instituting the Eucharist and Reconciliation, establishing the momentum for the Church to continue, leaving time to travel “to the mountain” (Mount of Olives) to have a prayerful encounter with his Father in anticipation of the Passion and Crucifixion ahead … all in a matter of a few hours! It’s remarkably, almost serenely organized.
I’d like to reflect briefly on these to better understand what today’s readings are telling us.
The Eucharist as the Passover Perfected
Regularity. The first reading recounts the prescription of the regularity of the Passover meal — it is the reason this is the first month of the Jewish calendar and it is held annually on the 14th of this month. For the Catholic Church, the Eucharistic meal is so central to our being that we celebrate it with every gathering (Mass), a regularity that has been instituted at least every Sunday.
Purity. God prescribes that “The lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish.” God was establishing a special place for the “unblemished lamb” in their cultural memory to be ready for the time when the Lamb of God, pure of sin, comes for his ultimate sacrifice. Purity is important because it is the state in which God, as pure goodness, exists. We do these things to be united with him, and therefore we must strive for purity in ourselves to become fitting children of God.
Ritual action. There is to be one lamb per family and it is to be slaughtered at twilight, at which point some of its blood is to be applied “to the two doorposts and the lintel of every house” where they “partake” of the lamb. What is the point of these prescriptive rituals? This is a continuation of the many animal sacrifices described in the Old Testament, and part of the challenge for the Jewish nation was to uphold these prescriptions in order to display their faithfulness to God. There is something essential to the ritual nature of religious, sacramental action: the words, gestures, and scope of action are particular and important, meant to be done faithfully and not sloppily. They display a faithfulness to the origin of the ritual: God Himself. All of this comes to a head when Christ tells his Apostles, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Mk 14:22, Lk 22:19, 1 Cor 11:24). The “remembrance” encompasses millennia of Jewish ritual and faithfulness, culminating in the remembrance of the new Passover, the Christ Event, that ushered in salvation and eternal life for humanity.
Last Supper (1308-1311), Duccio di Buoninsegna | Wikimedia Commons.
Food. The slaughtered lamb is not wasted, but used as nourishment: “That same night they shall eat its roasted flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.” The Word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ, establishes the full meaning of this ritual when he says, and “Amen, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). As Christians, we understand the Passover lamb as the precursor (easier to understand and easier to “stomach”) to the true Paschal Lamb, Christ Himself. Our Eucharist is real food, truly the flesh of the Lord present through the mystical action of the Spirit in our liturgy, made palatable through the unbloody sacrifice present at the altar.
Deliverance. The Passover rituals delivered the Jews from the wrath of God that ravaged “every firstborn of the land, both man and beast” in Egypt. Yet this only applied to life on the earth. How much greater is the new Passover given to us in Christ! Our life in Christ, possible because of his sacrifice and given to us as spiritual sustenance in the Eucharist, delivers us from the tyranny of death, opening up for us eternal life.
Transition. The idea of being on the move to something greater is central to Judeo-Christian faithful. God instructs the Jews to eat the Passover meal in a certain way: “with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you shall eat like those who are in flight.” This idea of being on the way to something greater, not tied to the things of this world, was embraced from the very beginning of the Christian Church. Jesus tells his apostles on this Holy Thursday, “but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you” (Jn 15:19). St. Peter calls the faithful “strangers and refugees in this world” (1 Peter 2:11), and St. Paul enjoins us, “Do not be conformed to this world” (Rom 12:2). In our thirst to follow Christ and be with the Father, Christians are “On the Way.” We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the earliest Christians referred to themselves as followers “of the Way” (cf. Acts 9:1-2).
The Washing of Feet as the Institution of the Sacrament of Reconciliation
Phases of one mystery. Jesus connects this act to the salvific acts that will come. First, he rises from the supper and takes off his outer garments — as an action, this reminds me of his Resurrection to come and the garments found in the empty tomb, and as such this act of washing the feet is a salvific act akin to the Resurrection itself. St. Augustine also notes that “When about to be crucified, He was indeed stripped of His garments” (Tractate 55 on the Gospel of John), so we see a parallel in the Crucifixion, too. Importantly, Fr. Jean Corbon notes that the Crucifixion and Resurrection “are not two events, but two phases or moments of the same mystery” (Wellspring of Worship, 46). This is a very complex and helpful way of viewing the events we celebrate during the Easter Triduum.
Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet (1852-1856), Ford Madox Brown | Creative Commons, courtesy ArtUK/Tate.
Servitude. He doesn’t ask for some water in a bowl, but pours the water into the basin himself. St. Augustine notes that this is like how he “poured His blood upon the earth to wash away the filth of their sins,” and I see a clear parallel to the endless pouring out of love, of the water of everlasting life, that flows continually between the three Persons of the Trinity. God’s love is apparent in the state of perpetual servitude of the other. It is only this type of love that is able to “wash away” sins and not allow any dirt to cling to our souls. The lowly act of washing feet as a servant is important for Jesus to model for his apostles, so much so that he tells Peter that he’ll tell him why he’s doing it after it is done, so as to not disrupt the action by discussing it. St. Augustine notes that he even deigns to wash Judas’s feet: “the greatness of His humility should be still further enhanced by the fact that He did not esteem it beneath His dignity to wash also the feet of one whose hands He already foresaw to be steeped in wickedness.”
The symbolic importance of feet. Jesus tells the Apostles, “Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over.” What can this cryptic message mean? If we have bathed and are “clean all over,” aren’t our feet clean, too? Clearly, the “bathing” Christ references is spiritual baptism, not mundane bodily bathing. Yet there remains a need to wash feet even after baptism. On a literal level, feet were often washed in the Holy Land because sandals were the footwear of choice, allowing feet to get dusty and dirty quickly. Washing feet was a sign of respect when entering a house and a sign of refreshment for a weary person. This act, therefore, already carried a symbolic meaning. But Christ imbues this with another layer of meaning, this time spiritual. Feet move us through the word — they are a reminder that we are grounded in the world and encounter sin here. Washing them provides refreshment — this time symbolic refreshment of the soul — and seeking to wash the soul is a respectful way of encountering God. St. John writes in his first epistle: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:8-9). Pope Benedict XVI talks about this passage in his Holy Thursday homily on March 20, 2008:
We are in need of the “washing of the feet”, the cleansing of our daily sins, and for this reason we need to confess our sins as St John spoke of in this Letter. We have to recognize that we sin, even in our new identity as baptized persons. We need confession in the form it has taken in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In it the Lord washes our dirty feet ever anew and we can be seated at table with him.
Pope Benedict XVI makes the connection between Jesus’s washing of the Apostles’ feet and the sacrament of Reconciliation crystal clear. These feet, doing the work of carrying us and our Christian message around the world, will of course get dirty and need to be re-washed.
The Foundation of the Church and the Priesthood
So much meaning condensed in such a humble act! When he is finished, Jesus signals that something special is going on: “Do you realize what I have done for you?” He brings the whole mystery of God’s descent into humanity into this act of a servant for his Apostles. He continues, “You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
On the most obvious level, Jesus is conferring upon his Apostles the Holy Priesthood in his name. He is handing over his teaching to his chosen disciples, marking a development in their apprenticeship to the master where they can begin doing work like him, in his name. Specifically, however, there is an injunction to be humble, to wash feet, not have them washed by others. This very specific Christian form of priesthood is shared by all of the faithful — it is the Way of God’s love.
Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles (1475), Meister des Hausbuches | Wikimedia Commons.
Continuing in this vein, there is the catechetical teaching that all of the faithful receive a share in a priestly vocation (CCC, 784). As Pope Benedict XVI also says in his Holy Thursday homily: “We must wash one another’s feet in the mutual daily service of love. But we must also wash one another’s feet in the sense that we must forgive one another ever anew.” Christ has given all of us this injunction to act humbly with forgiveness in our hearts.
And thus the Holy Thursday action of Christ in washing his apostles’ feet is a crucial part of establishing the Church as well as the special office of the priesthood. He gives the Apostles the words and gestures and experience that make up the Eucharistic feast, which they in turn share with all Christians. He has given them the special experience of having their feet washed by the master, which they in turn are told to share with all Christians. Here is the establishment of the priesthood as well as the Church.
But note how we can’t point to just this single moment, either. It carries no weight without the sacrifice on the Cross, which also contains no significance without the Resurrection. None of this has meaning without the Incarnation of God in human form. The point is that this one great mystery, this Christ Event, is made up of many phases as Fr. Corbon points out, and we must carry all of these in our hearts and minds as we contemplate what it means to be a true Christian. The Easter Triduum allows us the space for a concentrated moment of contemplation and prayer of thanks for this blessed gift given to us.
The Ascension of the Lord: Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1:17-23, Matthew 28:16-20.
What an incredible feast we celebrate today. It marks the end of the physical presence of Christ in the world (in this age, at least) as well as the divine mystery of the Trinity that God will unfold in a new and expanded way for us at Pentecost. For Christ tells us that He is always with us, despite the fact that His body ascends to heaven. What do we make of this paradox? How can He be “with us” while clearly He ascends out of this world? Is this just a cute phrase meaning “the memory of me will be with you”? No, definitively not, as Pentecost and the sacraments attest. Christ’s ascension is a necessary element of salvation history and the glorification of God; the ascension enables a new reality for the Church to operate “in Spirit and Truth.”
As we contemplate today’s readings, we’ll see that this new reality is a place where God has been yearning to meet us since Adam and Eve left the garden — perhaps a spiritual plane as much as a place, it can be examined through the concept of glorification.
Holy Trinity (1620), Hendrick van Balen | Wikimedia Commons. Today’s feast celebrates the day that Christ ascends to heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father, and our reflections reveal that the Holy Trinity is the great mystery central to our faith.
But let’s start with the Ascension and what we learn from the Acts of the Apostles. What’s odd about the Ascension is that it can almost be lost in the liturgical year, coming just a week before Pentecost, within the Easter Season. This may deceive us into thinking that it’s somehow not as important or at least less important than the Resurrection or Pentecost. Yet as we examine it, we find that it’s not only psychologically impactful for the Apostolic Church but also essential to usher in a new spiritual reality for the Church, a reality that persists until the Final Judgement. Its importance is signaled by the time frame; the author of Acts tells us that “he presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” Forty days marks spiritual preparation and purification, often before a new mission or calling. Notably, Jesus spends forty days in the desert just after being baptized by John and prior to starting His earthly mission. And here we are told that Jesus spends forty days with His apostles between His Resurrection and His Ascension. Luke and John tell us that He uses this time to explain how the Easter events fulfill scriptural prophecies as well as the meaning of many of His teachings that they were unable to comprehend before His Passion and Death. In other words, Jesus delivers the first full catechism to his Apostolic Church, the amazing Christology that defines the Church to this day.
So the purification of the Church during these 40 days exists in the physical presence of the risen Lord and His fully revealed teachings. And if the 40 days are also a preparation for a new mission and reality, what are they preparing for? Jesus explains that they’ve been preparing to be baptized in the Holy Spirit: “the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak; for John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” As we know, this comes at Pentecost, and, indeed, the Spirit comes with an intensity and impact that is totally surprising.
But why must Christ ascend? The answer comes in the question His apostles ask just before He ascends: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” With this question, they show that they have not yet seen the mystical connection that Christ serves as a “gate” for humanity (the Way) and they still see him as a Messiah who will accomplish all things physically Himself. Now, none of those things are technically wrong — Christ is the Messiah, and it is through His unique entrance into history that Israel is restored and the world is saved, and He will return physically at the end of time for the Final Judgement. But they’re missing the point that Christ came to establish a new relationship with God for humanity. They’re missing the point that the Church needs to exist as a way to draw people to God precisely through the spiritual presence of Christ within them, not the physical presence of Christ by Himself. Christ is the gate and the Way because He is the nexus where divinity and humanity were joined, sins were sacrificed, and a new relationship with God was made possible (we’ll call this glorification below). But He doesn’t come to simply take over and do everything for us. He comes with an invitation for us to go through Him to the Father; we must use our free will and our actions in this life to unite ourselves with God; we must do some work, too. (As a side note, I think this is a better way to think about salvation through faith and works: our “work” is not community service but the work of living out God’s commandments, the work of bringing God’s will to the world through our own actions.)
This is why Jesus’s answer to His apostles is: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” These are His last words as He exists bodily on the earth, before “a cloud took him from their sight.” Note that in His final words, He is giving them their Apostolic mission. They will receive power, they will be His witnesses to the ends of the earth. This is why He must ascend: so that the apostles no longer look to Him as a physical person to do this work. They must be imbued with the Spirit of God to exist with the mystical reality of the Trinity because God’s plan is that we are no longer called slaves, but friends. God wants theosis, divinization, for all of us. This requires faith, in which we are blessed if we “have not seen and yet have come to believe,” as Christ explains to St. Thomas. Christ provides salvation to us through the Cross and Resurrection, but that salvation takes on the specific characteristic of being a Way to our own divinization. That Way is one where He is not seen, where we must forge a relationship with God and see Him in the world through each other and the rest of creation.
The Ascension of Christ (1513), Hans Süss von Kulmbach | Creative Commons, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I find the depiction of only Jesus’s feet rising to heaven to be hilarious in a way, given the words of the angels.
The angels (“two men dressed in white garments”) accentuate this point when they say, “why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” In other words, the promise of the Final Judgement still stands, and Christ will once again be present on earth in bodily form, but we are not to just look at the sky as we await that moment. We have work to do. Our baptism in the Holy Spirit has given us a share in the divinity of Christ, and our job on earth is to get to know our wonderful, infinitely perfect and mysterious God, bringing Him and His will to this world.
This lens helps us better hear what St. Paul tells the Ephesians in the second reading:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
Note how St. Paul is praying for the gifts of the Spirit to come to this fledgling part of the Church: wisdom, revelation, enlightenment, and faith. They will need faith and spiritual gifts to truly become the Body of Christ. Paul knows that the purpose of the Church is to share in the great power that the Father gave to Jesus:
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Paul tells us here that the Church is “the fullness of him who fills all in all.” What an amazing destiny for us! Do we all comprehend that this has been entrusted to us? That our work in the world as Christians is not just being a good person and being nice to others, but to participate in the mystical relationship of love that is the Trinity, to bring God to the world and in the process be deified ourselves as we strive for perfection according to the Way of Christ? WOW! That’s a seriously awesome charge.
Let’s reflect for a moment on this concept of divinization, deification, or theosis, as the Eastern Churches call it. It’s not something that a paragraph or two in a blog post can do justice to, but let’s dip our toes into this deep water. Divinization is not the belief that we become gods in some sort of pagan pantheism. Divinization instead refers to the spiritual state of being united with God to such an extent that we are able to share in the holiness that characterizes God. The metaphor often used is that of a piece of metal thrust into a fire: it becomes hot, it glows, and it is malleable, taking on aspects the fire imbues upon it, but it is still metal. This is the true goal for all Christians on the earth: not just to “be good” like Christ, but to unite our human nature with the divine nature like Christ.
Coronation of the Virgin Mary (c.1340-1350), Jacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio | Wikimedia Commons. Our primary example of divinization is the Virgin Mary, the supreme example of how highly God seeks to raise humanity in communion with Him.
As you might imagine, the thought of divinization made theologians and churchmen in the Western Church somewhat uncomfortable over the centuries. Part of this is because of the fear that people would seek to be treated like gods (like the Roman caesar, who claimed to be a god). The word for this in Greek is apotheosis, not to be confused with theosis.
I think there is another, related concept to help us avoid this pitfall: glorification. We must constantly refer back to Jesus, the perfect union of the human and the divine. Jesus, despite His divinity, always pointed back to the Father and credited the Father for everything. He tells the Pharisees, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me” (John 8:54). Here is an important lesson about divinization: we must not seek glory for ourselves like secular heroes (what Aquinas calls vainglory), but instead remember that all glory belongs to and is bestowed by God.
So if glory is more than just fame or renown, what is it? St. Augustine calls glory clara notitia cum laude, or “brilliant celebrity with praise.” Augustine gives us the second part of the equation “with praise” to signal that we’re talking about how we humans interact with divine glory. A first step in glorifying God is praising the wonders of His creation, which are a partial reflection of his abundance, goodness, and perfection. But truly glorifying God must go beyond this. Here an excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia is particularly helpful:
This praise involves not merely intellectual perception, but also the practical acknowledgment by heart and will which issues in obedience and loving service. The endowment of intelligence with all that it implies — spirituality and free-will — renders man a higher and nobler image of the Creator than is any other being of this visible world. The gift of intellect also imposes on man the duty of returning to God that formal glory of which we have just spoken. The more perfectly he discharges this obligation, the more does he develop and perfect that initial resemblance to God which exists in his soul, and by the fulfillment of this duty serves the end for which he, like all else, has been created. (“Glory” by Fr. James Fox, 1909)
In other words, our intellect, spirituality, and free will enable us to glorify God in a much deeper way than the existence of creation being a testament to His awesomeness. The final sentence in this excerpt is worth examination. We can read “the more perfectly he discharges this obligation [of returning glory to God]” to mean the “goal of the Christian life.” And the object of that sentence is the divinization bit: “the more does he develop and perfect that initial resemblance to God which exists in his soul.” Thus we see how divinization and glorifying God are related: our whole-hearted glorification of God in our praise and loving work is what brings about our divinization. Like Christ, who glorified God in the most unimaginable loving gift of Himself on the Cross, we are called to glorify God and that is the Way to divinization.
With this connection in mind, some of Jesus’s words come into sharp focus. As He says in His final prayer for the Apostles before His betrayal in the garden:
Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed (John 17:1b-5).
Jesus’s prayer reveals how glory is a gift that marks divinity, that the Persons of the Trinity give glory to one another in order to better reveal the essence of divinity to humanity. Jesus asks the Father to glorify Him in order that Jesus may glorify the Father in return (through the Easter events). Why do they do this? As Jesus said, this instills in humanity the knowledge of the “only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Thanks to the events of Ascension and the coming Pentecost, we can understand this not as book knowledge but rather experiential knowledge. Jesus tells us that eternal life is “that they may know you.” The kingdom, the reign, of God is living in the reality of glorification. It is a constant, ever-gifting of glory among the Trinity that we get to participate in! Our praise of God: glorification. Our works of love: glorification. Our faith in the unseen yet perpetually active God: glorification. (The priest exhorts us at the close of the Mass: “Glorify the Lord with your life!”) With a constant focus on the glorification of God, just like Jesus in His ministry, we can live our lives with the realistic goal of divinization. This is a new reality that Jesus and the Holy Spirit bring about in the world. As St. Peter writes, “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you” (1 Pt 4:14). In other words, if our constant glorification of God through our works and words that spread the Gospel of Christ invite ridicule or suffering, our hearts can be glad in the knowledge of being blessed by the Spirit of Glory. And here we see why the Church Fathers insisted that the primary actor in divinization is the Holy Spirit. Since glory comes from God, it is the Spirit that glorifies the Father through us. Likewise, if any share of glorification comes to us, it is also through the Spirit.
The Ascension (1636), Rembrandt | Wikimedia Commons. I quite like Rembrandt’s visual emphasis on Christ and the Holy Spirit in this painting. Baby angels are cute, too.
And so we can bring this reflection to a close, hopefully better understanding why Jesus ascends to the Father. It is only in this way that our primary relationship with God is through the Holy Spirit and the sacraments Jesus institutes. The Holy Spirit is the author of our divinization. The Holy Spirit makes our glorification of God real and not just lip service, by stirring our hearts and uniting the divine soul within us with its Creator. Jesus tells his apostles in today’s gospel reading, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The more we reflect upon the mysteries of our faith, the more we see the undeniable and essential logic of the Trinity: that each Person is required for God’s mysterious saving plan for humanity. When Jesus says, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age,” we have the Father’s glorification of His Son as proof of this eternal existence, and we can expectantly await Pentecost, when we celebrate the sending of His Spirit to be with us until the end of time.
Monday and Tuesday the Fourth Week of Easter – Acts of the Apostles 11:1-26, John: 10:11-18, 22-30.
Yesterday’s and today’s readings are in sequence, both the first reading and the gospel. I’d like to think about them together because this provides a fuller look at how the Church first spread beyond the Jewish enclaves around Jerusalem and into the Gentile communities of the Near East. They also show us how Jesus is simultaneously fulfilling the specific promise of Israel’s Messiah yet defining the community of “sheep” to be saved by criteria that are not restricted to a Jewish heritage.
Good Shepherd, 5th-century mosaic from the tomb of Galla Placidia in Ravenna | image from flickr.com.
Let’s start with the gospel readings where Jesus uses the image of the Good Shepherd to describe Himself. The first aspect of the good shepherd He points out is self-sacrifice: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” This is in contrast to the paid worker who abandons the sheep in tough times because he only works for money. The second aspect is a hard-to-describe quality of knowing: “I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” How can we understand this? This type of knowing can only come from a few things: perhaps a long, close acquaintance such as one with a friend, family member, or co-worker with whom you interact every day; or another way to “know” someone comes through the bond of love and trust that transcends the physical aspects of the person. This second type of knowing we might see in a mother and child, forged through gestation, feeding, and care over years, present in their mental and physical attachments. Or we might see this in a husband and wife who have grown so close in love that they know what the other person is thinking, they anticipate the other person’s needs before they are spoken, they instinctively know when the other enters the room without having to look up. This is what I mean by a love and trust that transcends the physical aspects of a person — you don’t need to see them to feel their presence, you don’t even need to have them be present to hear them in your mind, how they might react to something. In this way, love and trust fuse people together in an altogether more-than-physical way. We might dare to call this way of knowing mystical because it belongs to the family of spiritual mystery that we encounter in the liturgy.
Jesus is saying that He knows His sheep and they know Him in this way. More than that, this is the same way that He and the Father are in relationship. How incredible! I’d definitely use the term mystical once we understand that this is a sharing in the Personhood of the Trinity. I don’t want to lose track of the first way I identified above, the close acquaintance gained by repeated interaction. This is displayed in Jesus’s constant prayer to the Father throughout His life — whether in the desert, on the mountain, before meals and miracles, or simply in His solo time. This way of prayer is an essential element of our mystical “knowing” when we have a hard time seeing the physical presence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus models for us the love and trust born of filial relationship as well as the prayer life that reinforces the companionship, love, and trust: these are our ways of knowing God.
The message of the Good Shepherd would have meant something specific to His Jewish audience. The Word of God first used this language with Ezekiel (see Ezekiel chapter 34), and the full message was that God Himself will come to replace the bad shepherds (i.e., chief priests and leaders) of Israel: “my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep … I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out” (Ez 34:8,11). Thus, when Jesus says that He is the Good Shepherd, by invoking Ezekiel He is telling them that they have fallen down on the job of shepherding God’s people and that He Himself is God, here to do the work Himself.
Initial M depicting the parable of the Good Shepherd from a French illustrated manuscript | Creative Commons, courtesy the Free Library of Philadelphia.
What’s more, the Word of God tells Ezekiel that His sheep are more than just those living in Israel: “I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. 14 I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture” (Ez 34:13-14a). Here we see a different and broadened definition of God’s people than “descendants of Abraham and Jacob” or “house of David” or “of the twelve tribes.” In other words, the genetic heritage that grants the Jews the status of Chosen People is not equivalent to the group of people who will be saved (here called “my sheep”). I make this point not to diminish in any way the important status of the Chosen People, but to point out that the eschatological end God envisions for humanity is not restricted to the Chosen People. God reveals Himself as the great “I AM,” the only God, to the Chosen People so that they can nurture this truth over the millennia and become a shining light for all of the nations. As He tells Isaiah: “I will give you as a light to the nations,that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Is 49:6). Thus, Israel as a light to the nations, is there precisely so that salvation may reach beyond it, “to the end of the earth.”
Jesus is the promised “light to the nations.” Remember, when he is presented in the Temple as a child, holy Simeon took him in his arms and declares Jesus to be, “a light for revelation to the Gentilesand for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). Thus, we can see the trajectory of these various threads. When Ezekiel relates that God will feed his sheep “on the mountains of Israel,” he is referring to the spiritual wisdom and revelation of Judaism. Those sheep from outside of the Jewish nation will be brought to “the mountain heights of Israel” to feed on the good pasture of their spiritual wisdom. In this manner, Jesus glorifies Israel while being a revelation for Gentiles. He does not create a new religion but fulfills all of the prophecies and promises within Judaism: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). He upholds Judaism while making way for the eschatological expansion of the faith to the rest of the world. So, yes, His ministry is primarily, overwhelmingly, focused on Jews, Jewish towns, and Jerusalem; His chosen twelve disciples stand as the chosen twelve tribes, and all of His Words and works are those that He seeded in the minds and mouths of the Jewish prophets over the millennia. But multiple times throughout the gospels we receive the message that the reign of God that He brings is open to non-Jews: the exorcism of the Canaanite woman’s daughter, healing of the Centurion’s servant, etc.
The story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew, chapter 15 is especially interesting because some people use one of Jesus’s quotes to show that He only came for the Jews: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:14). But that interpretation takes the quote out of context. This is actually His answer to his disciples who want Him to send the woman away — it’s a statement that reveals what they’re thinking and not a fulfillment of their request to dismiss her. In fact, after she shows perseverance in asking for His help, He commends her and grants her wish for her daughter. The lesson is clearly a contrast: the woman’s perseverance of faith stands out against constant skepticism and lack of acceptance from the Jews. Jesus makes abundantly clear that His saving work is open to all who have faith.
That’s why we have to pay special attention to His words in yesterday’s gospel: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Who are His sheep? “Other sheep that do not belong to this fold” may mean dispersed Jews in other lands, or — as we see fulfilled in the Acts of the Apostles — the “Greeks,” the Gentiles. Jesus establishes the fact that His sheep “know” him like He knows the Father, that they will “listen to my voice.” This spiritual, mystical knowing does not rely on genetic Jewish heritage. This is the knowledge that the Creator places in our souls at the moment of our creation. This is our response to God within us, cultivated as we listen to His call and by our prayers, our desire, our thirst.
In today’s gospel, Jesus repeats this language and makes even more clear that His sheep are not simply those of Jewish heritage. He says to the Jews gathered around Him: “you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” So, not only are the sheep to be saved and brought into this “one flock” open beyond those of Jewish heritage, some Jews will actually be excluded from the flock. The Chosen People kept the flame of God’s revelation to humanity alive, but the sheep to be saved are those who respond to God with all their hearts, minds, and souls — a different set of people not determined by the status of Chosen People.
I Am the Good Shepherd (contemporary), Jackson Studios | image from etsy.com.
Once again, we hear the Word of God before He is incarnated as Jesus telling Ezekiel these same things hundreds of years earlier: “I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, 22 I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.” Thus, the Jews themselves will be sorted according to their acts and their hearts.
This message was lost in the fervor of the Jews being astounded at Jesus’s claim that “The Father and I are one.” They want to stone Him right after He says this. And then, of course, this great “blasphemy” (aka truth!) is used as the rationale for His Crucifixion. Therefore, this message did not sink in right away for the first Jewish followers of Christ who made up the Apostolic Church. When evangelizing throughout the Near East, at first they went only to Jewish synagogues. Today’s first reading tells us that the disciples fleeing the persecutions in Jerusalem “went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but Jews.” But some preached Jesus Christ to the “Greeks” in Antioch (meaning non-Jews, aka Gentiles). This is the first record of deliberate evangelization to non-Jews. The author writes: “The hand of the Lord was with them and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.” What does it mean that “the hand of the Lord was with them”? Throughout the Bible, the hand of God signifies protection, blessing, and anointing. God tells Isaiah: “I will strengthen you, I will help you,I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Is 41:10b). Thus, those preaching to the Gentiles in Antioch are strengthened and protected by God in their efforts.
So, when the church in Jerusalem hears of this unprecedented work and sends Barnabas to investigate, he “saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart.” Let’s remember that Jesus promised, “I know mine and mine know me,” so Barnabas, filled with the Spirit, recognized that same Spirit of Christ alive in the work of the disciples preaching to the Gentiles. This mystical knowledge, so palpable at Pentecost, continues to pulsate through the early Church, calling the sheep who thirst for God, Jew and Gentile alike.
This is no small thing. As Peter tells us in the episode that yesterday’s first reading summarizes, “it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile” (Acts 10:28). But God provides Peter with a vision as he prays in which all of creation descends from heaven on a white sheet. It is a sign of the purification of Creation by Jesus’s great sacrifice. With Christ as the new Adam, Creation itself is re-sanctified and is no longer unclean. God’s voice tells Peter, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” The ripple effects of the Christ event in the fabric of history are making themselves felt in this revelation to Peter.
Peter Baptizing the Centurion Cornelius (1709), Francesco Trevisani | image from flickr.com.
Guided by the Holy Spirit, Peter ministers to Cornelius the centurion and his household of Gentiles. Thanks to his vision, Peter is beginning to understand what Jesus was saying when he said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Cornelius tells him that he was praying at his house when an angel appeared and tells him that his prayers were answered and he should seek out Peter. This is a man who is spending time with God, who yearns for Him; a man who is one of the sheep. So, Peter admits, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35).
Jesus promises his Apostles that the Holy Spirit will be sent to them after He ascends to heaven, and indeed this is what happens in the house of Cornelius: “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles” (Acts 10:44-45). This is another Pentecost moment, and here the Holy Spirit descends upon Gentiles! Even the grumbling Jewish members of the fledgling Church in Jerusalem are mollified when they hear that the Holy Spirit was present to the Gentiles in the same manner He came to them:
[Peter said]: “If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us
when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was I to be able to hinder God?”
When they heard this,
they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying,
“God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.”
The last two days’ worth of readings presents to us the growth of the Church beyond the Jewish community within which Jesus Christ came and ministered. It shows that the Spirit didn’t “force” a growth outside of the Jewish communities (as some scholars argue) but that this was a Spirit-fueled unveiling of a promise given to the Jews by Ezekiel and then Jesus. This idea of the eschatological sheep in God’s flock being defined outside of the strict genetics of the Jewish race was always present in God’s teaching. Just like the Holy Spirit came to infuse the Apostles in the upper room with the grace, wisdom, and courage to start their ministry in Jerusalem, the Spirit came to expand this grace to include Gentiles.
The growth of the Church unfurled precisely in the order promised by Christ, with the undeniable logic of the grain of wheat, dead to the earth but rising again in great bounty. No other gospel makes this as clear as the gospel of St. John, which is one of the reasons I find it so appealing. We find in the very first chapter, through the mouth of John the Baptist, that Jesus’s saving action would be for the benefit of the world, not just the Jewish nation: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). The first epistle from John also makes the scope of His mission crystal clear: “he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn 2:2).
In my mind, the move of some theologians to reduce the mission of Jesus to only gathering the nation of Israel to fulfill the prophecies pertaining to the Jewish God is too limiting and deaf to the revelation of the Spirit after the Resurrection. It is of the same ilk as writings that attempt to distill some version of a historical Jesus from the Christianity that developed after Jesus. Historical underpinnings are very important, as is the deep spiritual Jewish formation of the culture within which Jesus was born. But an attempt to find a Christ “before” or “outside of” Christology simply denies the fullness of God’s entry into the stream of human history.
Friday the Third Week of Easter: Acts of the Apostles 9:1-20, John 6:52-59.
Today’s readings are two incredibly important passages; one describes Saul’s transformation from persecutor to “chosen instrument” of Christ, and the other gives us Christ’s words that insist upon the literal ingestion of his flesh and blood, which we Catholics likewise insist is present in the Eucharist. What emerges as we hear these readings is a persistent focus on the need for the body, the flesh, to be purified and perfected as we are on our way to salvation.
In the first reading, we find “Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord.” He asks the high priest for letters to go to synagogues in Damascus that would give him the authority to arrest Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem in chains. He is zealous in his desire to stamp out the new Way of Jesus Christ. But, like prophets before him (Noah, Jonah), God has radically different plans for him. We are familiar with the story: a light flashes all around him and he falls to the ground (no horse is mentioned, but that has somehow crept its way into the story). He and his companions hear the voice of Christ: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”
The Conversion of Saint Paul, detail (c.1600), Caravaggio | Wikimedia Commons.
Paul’s conversion has a significant physical aspect: “Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus. For three days he was unable to see, and he neither ate nor drank.” Whenever we encounter blindness in our scriptures, we can understand it to signify spiritual blindness, which certainly can be applied in this instance. But note here how the physicality of the blindness reduces Saul from this puffed up, powerful persecutor so someone who must be led by the hand. He becomes absolutely dependent on people, like a child. This is undoubtedly part of the penance of his conversion, and by taking the time to explain this aspect of the story, the author of the Acts of the Apostles is taking on the same insistence of the physicality of our faith that we will encounter in the gospel.
His physical and spiritual dependence is again emphasized when he is told that Ananias, a follower of the Way, will be the one to heal him. Saul is made vulnerable, delivered into the hands of the very people he set out to imprison. And how do disciples of Christ respond to persecutors? They turn the other cheek, they offer love, and in this case, spiritual and physical healing. Again, we hear very physical details about the healing: “Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. He got up and was baptized, and when he had eaten, he recovered his strength.” The scales are a physical manifestation of the spiritual mire, the spiritual blindness of this man who was a primary witness of the martyrdom of St. Stephen. It’s as if his sin and self-imposed blockages to the Word of God were crystallized, precipitated out of solution, pulled out like a filter that cleans filthy water. Directly after he gets up, able to see, we hear that he is baptized. Even though this seems to be reported casually, this is no small matter. Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ marked a full conversion of a person to the new Way and a direct rebuke of the chief priests and scribes who had murdered Christ. By accepting baptism, Saul was making a 180-degree turn towards Christ and away from the high priest whose approval he had just sought.
Another aspect of Saul’s conversion is his self-imposed fasting. Fasting was an important aspect of having an appropriate “fear of God” in the Jewish tradition. The fast, or taʿanith, was specifically when atoning for sins, to accompany contrition in the heart, and in supplication during earnest prayer (see our reflection Esther: Model of How to Petition the Father). Any reader familiar with Jewish tradition (which continues in Christian tradition) would understand that Saul would be searching his heart in atonement over those three days and would be deep in supplication and prayer with God. As St. Isaac the Syrian wrote, “When a man begins to fast, he straightway yearns in his mind to enter into converse with God” (Homilies 37, in Ascetical Homilies, 171). Yet once again we are tuned into the physicality of Saul’s conversion, that the once virile man who dragged Christians to prisons in chains had been reduced to a weak, blind, and utterly dependent child. This is just the beginning of the Way of the Cross. As Jesus tells Ananias, “I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.” A more literal translation of this passage is “I will show him how much it behooves him to [or he must] suffer for my name.” But the point isn’t penance, it’s deliverance from the reign of death and into the salvation found in the reign of God. For Saul is cured of his blindness, he is made strong again at the hand of Jesus’s disciples, he is baptized into the inheritance of everlasting life. It’s simply that the Way of the Cross naturally involves suffering, which the one who suffers comes to understand is nothing more than purification in the Name of the Lord.
Ananias Restoring the Sight of St. Paul (1631), Pietro da Cortona | Wikimedia Commons.
Our Church Father Tertullian provides us with a nice way to think about a central truth in our faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes him as writing: “The flesh is the hinge of salvation” (CCC, 1015). The fuller context of the quote is as follows: “no soul can ever obtain salvation unless while it is in the flesh it has become a believer. To such a degree is the flesh the pivot [hinge] of salvation, that since by it the soul becomes linked with God, it is the flesh which makes possible the soul’s election by God. ” (De Resurrectione Carnis translated by Ernest Evans, 8). Written sometime around 220 AD, this passage summarizes a “take-home message” from Christ’s ministry and the scope of salvation history leading up to it. The flesh is clearly central — as Tertullian put it, a pivot, fulcrum, or hinge — to salvation, a phenomenon of the soul. Let’s unpack this. First, the soul is seamlessly united to the body in this life; the union of the soul (breath of God) and the body (clay or dust of the earth) is what makes me a person. The body is intimately entwined with the soul and thus it is part and parcel of our connection to God as defined at creation. Second, Christ spoke again and again about the importance of accepting God and the Way while alive here on earth, before the death of the body. More than just accepting God, we are called to act with charity towards our fellow humans (charity being a perfect reflection of the outpouring love that is God). In other words, what we do while we have these bodies matters. Our faith in God and our works of mercy and charity secure our salvation. Both faith and works happen while our personhood inhabits the bodies we have been given. Thus, “the flesh is the hinge of salvation” since without the actions of the flesh, salvation could not be secured.
I have to address one other item before we return to today’s readings. The title of Tertullian’s work is translated as “The Resurrection of the Flesh,” and the question inevitably turns to what happens after our death — if we achieve salvation, is our very flesh raised from the dead? This has been debated since the earliest days of the Church. St. Paul has a strong opinion that he relates to the Corinthians: “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42-44). He makes himself even more clear a few verses later: “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed” (1 Cor 15:50-51). But 300 years later, St. Jerome and St. Augustine insist that our bodies are indeed resurrected on the last day, and the medieval scholastics agree with them. So we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a quote from the Council of Lyons in 1274: “We believe in the true resurrection of this flesh that we now possess” (CCC, 1017). But this has been debated up through our contemporary times. St. Pope John Paul II wrote what is probably the most reasonable way to speak of our resurrection and eternal life: “It is always necessary to maintain a certain restraint in describing these ‘ultimate realities’ since their depiction is always unsatisfactory” (General Audience, 1999). In other words, we can affirm that whatever comprises our “person” will rise to have eternal life with God. In this life on earth, our “person” is understood to be a seamless union between soul and body, but will that be the same case (or the same body) at our resurrection? We will only know for sure on the Last Day!
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, engraving by unknown artist | Wikimedia Commons.
Back to our readings. I am struck by how Christ insists upon the fundamental physicality with which we live our lives “on the Way.” Saul is to become one of the great examples of a man beaten, imprisoned, starved, shipwrecked, and rejected repeatedly while at the same time joyously bringing the light of the Word of God to the world. How can we expect the flesh to endure such things? Who would want to endure such things?
Jesus gives us the answer in today’s gospel, the culmination of the Discourse on the Bread from Heaven: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Here is the great promise, the New Covenant. The one who feeds on me will have life because of me. What’s more, this bread that is His Flesh and Blood guarantees life forever. OK, pretty good reason to have our own bodies endure the Way of the Cross. Also, the promise includes a wellspring of life that we must understand extends to this life, not just life in Heaven. This food sustains and uplifts, rejuvenates and expands a person like no regular food can do.
The great question that has splintered groups from the Catholic Church is whether Jesus refers to symbolic flesh or literal flesh. We Catholics believe that He didn’t just stop at a symbolic or spiritual understanding of eating His Flesh and Blood. He says, “my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.” This is a response to the Jews saying, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” He doesn’t respond by saying “I am referring to my flesh symbolically,” but instead repeats Himself, rephrases Himself, never losing the stubborn physicality of the message. Of course, His Flesh and Blood is spiritual food, but He also insists that it is His Body, His Flesh and Blood, the same physical thing that He brings to the Cross.
Breaking the Bread at Emmaus, a mosaic by Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, SJ | image from diocesi.torino.it.
What are we to make of this? Should we be grossed out and turn away like “many of his disciples” after they hear this teaching? Certainly not! We are not cannibals who feast on bloody flesh for flesh’s sake. The Eucharist is an unbloody offering of the flesh, done sacramentally and reverently, where the Holy Spirit is the means and the goal. Christ’s way of giving the Spirit to us through his flesh is an orienting reminder to who we are as Christians, willing to sacrifice our very selves to the Father. It is an insistence that the flesh matters. Just like fasting and mortification of the flesh are ways to purify the body, not in disdain for it but in acknowledgment of its intimate union with the soul, we can see how Christ’s offering of himself as food is another acknowledgment of the importance of our bodies. The body must be nourished by the right food — spiritual food — if it is to be ready to walk the Way of the Cross.
As Tertullian writes, the flesh is the hinge of salvation. We must not hide that, we must exult in that. Our greatest sacrament embraces Christ’s sacrificed Flesh and Blood, brought to the Father with greatest reverence, Who in turn offers it back to us as the Bread from Heaven. Alleluia!
Monday of the Third Week of Easter: Acts of the Apostles 6:8-15, John 6:22-29.
In today’s readings, we encounter two men — filled with the Holy Spirit and dedicated to the Father — in the moments before they speak with great eloquence to those who do not understand or believe. In the gospel, it is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect union of mankind with God. In the first reading, it is St. Stephen, a perfect Christian, walking in the footsteps of Jesus and understanding that He is the “gate” to the Father (Jn 10:9 — “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved”).
Let’s start with the gospel reading. This passage occurs the day after the feeding of the 5,000; the crowds are looking literally all across the Sea of Galilee for Jesus and find Him at Capernaum. As is the way with Jesus’s ministry, He draws people to Himself but, once there, continuously challenges them to encounter a new reality that He is offering. Today’s gospel reading is the beginning of the great discourse on the Bread from Heaven, His own flesh. For many, it is the hardest of all of His teachings — we will hear at the end of this chapter from St. John that many followers will leave Him because of it. Let’s trace how Jesus begins this difficult teaching.
Corpus Christi Icon (unknown provenance) | image from catholicsteward.com.
When the crowds find Him, He cuts to the chase: “you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.” He is saying that they essentially want a free lunch, that they want to find Him to fill their bellies. He contrasts this to seeing “signs” of something greater. Then He encourages them to work for a different kind of food, a “food that endures for eternal life.” Let us not misinterpret Him as saying something along the lines of “don’t think of your physical needs, only think of eternity.” He never says in His ministry something like “let yourself die and join me in Heaven.” Remember, He is the Lord of Life, and living as a child of God in the world is central to His message. He is encouraging them to work for “food that endures,” in other words to feed their spirit as well as their body.
This is an interesting facet of Christ’s ministry. He is solidly focused on bringing salvation to the world (not just keeping it distantly away in Heaven). He bases His proverbs and analogies in the land (the mustard seed, the harvest, the wine, the water, the mountain) and the way people relate (the wicked manager, the thief in the night, etc.). At the same time, He always points to the Father, to the kingdom/reign of God, to a new reality and a new covenant. Thus, while He grounds His teachings in this world, He urges His followers to open themselves up to a greater reality, namely the reign of God.
This is not something foreign to the Jewish people; their life in the world has always been oriented towards God. But Jesus comes in a time when the law is fetishized by a few experts (scribes, chief priests) in a way that chokes off the saving power of God from the world. Just as they try to trap Jesus in legal arguments, they employ God’s law as a great weight around the necks of the Jewish people. The options available to Jews are to either live under the nitpicky legal codification of rituals or live in the shame of being unclean, impure, or outside of the favor of the experts. This is counter to all of salvation history, where God chooses a people upon whom He gives great favor in order for them to flourish and be a light to all nations. Jesus comes to break through this stalled state where the work of God in the world is stifled. He provides a new “Way” so that life can be lived in the way God intended, so that Israel truly can be a light to all nations.
Thus, Jesus is often trying to get his followers to break through a “dead” way of seeing things. In today’s reading, He wants them to look beyond the promise of simple food and see the “signs” His miracles represent, namely the creative power of God in the world. They pick up on his command to “work for” a different kind of food, and they respond by asking, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” A more literal translation that accounts for their repetition of the root word ἔργα (erga) is “What must we do, that we may work the works of God?” At first glance, this seems like a step in the right direction, perhaps even a noble thing. But remember that Jesus just pointed out that they understand the “work of God” to be feeding themselves. Their request to know “what must we do” still smacks of a limited, selfish drive to get an everlasting food supply. Their hope to “work the works of God” shows how they primarily see this as a type of conjuring.
Jesus Teaches the People by the Sea (Jésus enseigne le peuple près de la mer), 1886-1896, James Tissot | Creative Commons, courtesy Brooklyn Museum.
Jesus responds, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” While Jesus will expand upon this statement greatly in the following verses, it stands on its own as a fantastic, compact teaching. First, let’s ask ourselves if He answers their question of “what must we do.” He responds by telling them what the work of God is. There is a difference. They are not ready to be instructed on “what to do” when they don’t even know what the work of God is. They think God’s work boils down to miracles of food or healing — a series of supernatural interventions to ease the life we have on earth. They want to know what to do so they have this miracle-working power. He directs them instead to truly understand what the work of God is.
So what does He say the work of God is? He says it is “that you believe in the one he sent.” This is a remarkable saying: the Heavenly Father’s work in the world is to seed the belief in His Anointed One, His Son. The Father’s work is to act within each of us. And this action He accomplishes is belief, or better translated “faith.” The Greek word used is πιστεύητε (pisteuēte), which is a verb form of pistis (faith). So the work of God is that we have faith in Jesus Christ. Here we can see that our work and God’s work are united in the great activity of faith — faith is work, it isn’t easy, it requires help, in fact, heavenly help. In other words, we can glimpse how Jesus’s reply fuses multiple meanings of the “work of God”: it means both the work God accomplishes as well as the “work of God” that we do. These are united in the work of faith.
And what a remarkable claim out of the mouth of Jesus that God’s work is to believe in Him, Jesus! This is one of those moments when Jesus forces us to either think He’s a self-absorbed madman or, in fact, the Savior. And since He speaks with wisdom, grace, love, and always gives glory to the Father, being a madman doesn’t fit. But why is God’s work to have faith in this one man from Nazareth in 30 AD? This is where outsiders to Christianity often stumble and brush it off as a silly deification of a guy from a detested outpost of the Roman Empire. Let’s remember that when He said these words, there were no Christians yet, so the crowds of Jews who heard it may very well have been thinking the same thing: what an odd thing for someone to say! God’s work in the world is for us to have faith in this guy?
But in the same breath, He is clearly not just “some guy.” Apart from the signs and miracles He makes, there is something that draws crowds to Him, that draws people to give up their livelihoods, their pride, their earthly concerns to abruptly follow Him. In everything He does, from preaching to healing, He is set apart from everyone else. In fact, the word Jesus uses when He refers to Himself as “the one whom God sent,” ἀπέστειλεν (apesteilen), means to be sent forth (as in a mission), but also carries the connotation of being set apart. Strong’s Exhaustive Greek Concordance states that apesteilen is “From apo and stello; set apart, i.e. (by implication) to send out (properly, on a mission) literally or figuratively.” God the Father has sent Jesus into the world, has set Him apart from His fellow men, and the reason is to be revealed on the Cross and in the Resurrection.
So we come back to faith and work. God’s work, our work, is to have faith in the One He has sent. What does this mean to have faith in Him? It must mean that we believe the words that He speaks, but also the signs that he gives us: that feeding 5,000 people is a sign of the overflowing mercy and love of God active in the world, that Jesus Christ brings a new kind of nourishment, sacramental nourishment, that is the way for his followers to be a light for the rest of the world here, on earth, in this time.
Christ the High Priest Icon (contemporary), unknown icon writer | image from monasteryicons.com.
As we look back to the first reading in the light of Christ’s words in the gospel, we see that St. Stephen is the manifestation of the “work of God.” He shows us what it means to have faith in Christ. In today’s reading, while we hear of the arguments, resistance, and the false witness of his opponents, we encounter a thrilling serenity in the form of Stephen. “Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great wonders and signs among the people … [those arguing with him] could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.” He appears fully under control, yet filled with power. This power comes from God, not Stephen, and that is the difference. Despite the nasty public accusations, we hear that the Sanhedrin “saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” What a gift to be so united with the will of God, doing the work He calls you to do! It manifests visibly upon Stephen’s face.
We are told in the verses prior to today’s reading that Stephen is “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit (Acts 6:5). Here, then is the example and proof of what Jesus meant when he said the work of God is to have faith in the One He sent. This condition of having faith in Christ means that you believe in His Sonship with the Father, you believe in His work of redemption at Easter, in the new state of human history made possible by Him where we can live differently with one another under the reign of God. Stephen is graced by God to be an example for us.
Of course there are those who do not have faith in Jesus Christ, and those who allow evil to settle in their hearts. That is why there is persecution and suffering and why the reign of God is not yet complete. And Jesus gave us the way to encounter these people: to speak the truth of God’s love and plan for humanity and to leave open the door to repentance. This is what Stephen does in his great speech to the Sanhedrin in the following verses, which is an extended recounting of salvation history in the lives of the Jews, focused on times when they were deaf to God and turned their backs on his providence. He ends with the hard truth that these very men to whom he was speaking murdered the Son of God.
The Stoning of St. Stephen (1603-1604), Annibale Carracci | Wikimedia Commons.
The end for Stephen, as we all know, is his stoning at the hands of these enraged Jews. Yet lest we think that the way of the Cross is nothing but torture and suffering, we will hear in tomorrow’s reading how Stephen looks up to heaven and sees the glory of God and how he meets his end with a certain peaceful unity with God. The way is certainly hard, but when filled with the Holy Spirit, the saints can endure (even joyfully so) the hard way.
Let’s consider that this, too, is the work of God.
Friday of the Second Week of Easter: Acts of the Apostles 5:34-42, John 6:1-15.
Today’s readings place two disparate events in context with one another and reveal the ever-generative aspect of God’s reign. In the first reading, a member of the Sanhedrin is inspired to share some wisdom about the divine nature of the spread of Jesus’s disciples. Seen in the light of the gospel’s loaves and the fishes, this provides a glimpse into the here-but-not-yet-fully reign of God.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we read the bold teachings of Peter, John, and the other apostles, which quickly lead to the conversion of thousands and jail time for the apostles. After being captured then released, re-captured and released by an angel from jail, and yet another re-capture, today’s reading shows them standing in front of a Sanhedrin that is steaming mad and ready to put them all to death. But here God intervenes in the form of a Pharisee by the name of Gamaliel.
Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles (20th century), unknown icon writer | image from greekcitytimes.com.
Something makes Gamaliel speak up in the face of an enraged Sanhedrin. Perhaps it’s the apostles’ persistence in preaching in the temple despite repeated warnings and arrests. Perhaps it’s the boldness with which the apostles tell the Jews and the council that they are to blame for crucifying the Savior. Perhaps it’s their reply to the council, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29). It is likely a combination of these, but, as believers, we know that it is also the action of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit that has so inflamed the apostles with the truth and courage to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord is also active in the heart of Gamaliel. He, a Pharisee on the council, speaks with a wisdom and courage that mirrors the apostles.
He begins his appeal to the Sanhedrin with a secular logic: other false Messiahs had been put to death and their followers naturally dissipated. But then he presents a faith-based logic: “if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.” Certainly this logic was always in the back of the minds of the council as they took out one “Messiah” after another — what if one of those actually was the Messiah? Wouldn’t they be “fighting against God”? However, something is happening here that doesn’t just “feel” different but is different in substance. Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection have ruptured history and the liturgy is pouring into the world. The Spirit — the advocate, the Paraclete — is doing the work of the advocate, revealing in the hearts of those who have ears to listen the truth of this new reality. The action of the Spirit is more powerful than fear of disagreement, ridicule, or even persecution.
That’s why the Apostles react with joy after being flogged and told not to speak any more about Jesus. They leave the council “rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name. And all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.” How can we account for this? Are they just masochists? It would be a weird coincidence if the Apostles, as well as so many martyrs and saints, found masochistic pleasure in suffering in the name of Jesus Christ. We can only understand this as something other than personal “pleasure;” it is a sharing in the self-giving love that marks the reign of God.
Christ and the Twelve Apostles, from the base of an altarpiece (c.1400), Taddeo di Bartolo | Creative Commons, courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I bring up the idea of the reign of God because this is what is on display in the Acts of the Apostles. I borrow here from the writings of the contemporary theologian Gerhard Lohfink. Jesus’s miracles and message, his gathering of the Twelve and his sacrifice for all, these all point to the reign of God (also translated as the kingdom of God), which He promised was here, available, immanent yet not fully complete. In his book Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was, Lohfink provides an extended reflection upon what the reign of God means. One description that I think applies here is his interpretation of the story from the gospel of St. Mark when the poor widow gives her two copper coins and Jesus points out the value of her gift. Lohfink writes:
the reader of Mark’s gospel is meant to see the widow’s sacrifice against the background of the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus. The reign of God — that means that God turns to human beings totally and without any reservation in order to bring divine abundance to the world. This self-gift of God is a historical event: it is happening now, in Israel and in the new community life Jesus is creating. Therefore the reign of God attracts those who are able to experience God’s overflowing self-gift, so that they in turn give everything they have: their whole heart, their whole existence. The poor widow who gave her two copper coins becomes a sign, a symbol of this “totality” (220).
Of course the real “totality” of self-gift is Jesus Christ Himself. Many parables and comments throughout His ministry point to the gratuitous and overflowing gift of self that characterize the essence of our Three-in-One God, and characterize the reign of that God that is to be brought to humanity here within history. This is what the Apostles are talking about when they say “for the sake of the name.” The Name of Jesus Christ encompasses His self-gift, His divinity, and His message for the world to reach out and embrace the reign of God.
Yet Jesus didn’t just say “follow me,” but “take up your cross and follow me.” As Lohfink writes, “It was only in Jesus’ death that this message achieved its proper profundity … the reign of God does not come without persecution, without sacrifice … Ultimately, Jesus’ death lays bare all human self-glorification and thereby also every superficial and presumptuous notion of the reign of God” (38). Once people understand this, then they are able to “rejoice that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name,” because they know they are properly participating in the reign of God. Their persecution can become an opportunity to let go of their “selves” and desires as the ultimate truth of Jesus Christ shines forth.
Pentecost (detail). c.1600, El Greco | Creative Commons, courtesy Museo del Prado.
For me, it is very gratifying to read the Acts of the Apostles as the realization of the reign of God in the hearts of people here in the stream of time, acting on this earth. Lohfink, for one, feels that this aspect of the reign of God is too often overlooked as we concentrate on the last times and a reign of God that is purely consigned to Heaven. He argues persuasively that this is a reduction of Jesus’s message that leaves behind an important aspect of immanence. He explains that Jesus spoke of the reign being immanent, available, and yet not fully realized because not everyone was accepting the reign of God in their hearts and their lives. I feel that the Acts of the Apostles is a real gift — we get to glimpse how the reign of God, delivered to us with the very real historical sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, can live here and now on this earth. Of course, it is still incomplete because not everyone has accepted it and because a final judgment is coming.
As we turn our attention to today’s gospel reading, we can start to contemplate another aspect of the reign of God that we glimpse in the life of the Apostolic Church: the fact that it is everlasting.
The gospel is a familiar one. A crowd of 5,000 is gathered to listen to Jesus, and his disciples are incredulous that they could be fed. The meager gathering of a few loaves and fish is given to Jesus and after He blesses them, this small amount of food is passed to the crowd. It miraculously feeds everyone. In fact, in the end, 12 wicker baskets are filled with the leftovers. Much has been said about this episode (and woe to those who deny the miracle and claim that these people simply pitched in what they were hoarding in a type of mass generosity event). This scene is a precursor to the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist, the food that will never run out, the very sacramental Body and Blood of Christ. But here, Jesus is not as close to his Passion, after which the meaning of the Last Supper will become clear. Here, we can understand the miracle within the context of his proclamations about the reign of God, which happen in the prior chapter in Matthew’s account of the feeding of the 5,000.
St. Matthew reports a series of seven parables from Jesus that describe the reign (kingdom) of God.¹ Two of these describe the ever-generative nature of the reign of God: the mustard seed and the leaven. Like leaven, the reign is always actively growing and multiplying; like a mustard seed, it contains the growth potential to become “greater than the herbs and become a tree.” Two of the parables speak of the unsurpassable value of the reign of God: the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price. In both parables, the human who discovers these items (i.e., the reign of God) completely devotes himself to it, selling everything else to possess it. And the remaining three parables refer to the winnowing of the people who have accepted the reign into their hearts from those who have not: the sower, the wheat and the weeds, and the net. In each of these, there is a clear eschatological bent that speaks to the end times, but notably the reign does not wait until the end times to start: the seed on the good ground grows and multiplies, the wheat grows tall amid the weeds, and the net pulls in the good fish with the bad. The point is that the reign/kingdom is here and active for those who choose to claim it, and yet there will be a time of reckoning for people and their choices, so the reign is not yet fully “complete.”
Parable of the Sower icon (20th century), unknown icon writer | image from blessedmart.com.
So, how do these parables shed light on the feeding of the 5,000? We see the promise of the reign of God in action. We see the food multiply like leaven or a mustard seed becoming a great tree. What’s more, this is a gift that has been given (the aspect of the self-gift that is so integral to the reign of God), and a gift that was initiated by God (as we ask and give Him thanks). And the people recognize the amazing value of the gift, but their understanding is incomplete. As St. John tells us in today’s gospel, the people say “‘This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.’ Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.” With the feeding of the 5,000, we have the parable of the sower happening in front of our eyes. Let’s revisit Jesus’s own explanation of the parable:
When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty (Matt 13:18-23).
Jesus, as the Word of God, sows the seed of the reign of God through his miracle, and John shows us that it fell among some rocky and thorny ground. The people receive the Word, but will their immediate joy endure? Are they only concerned with wealth and power in the form of a king?
The Feeding of the Five Thousand (c.1560), Hendrick de Clerck | image from resourceforkidsministry.com.
The last aspect of today’s gospel I’d like to explore are the only words John ascribes to Jesus after the 5,000 are fed: “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” I’d wager that Lohfink would tell us how this displays Jesus’s “gathering of Israel” (which is the title of a chapter in his book). And indeed, His ministry was very deliberately the act of gathering the tribes of Israel to be that mustard seed where the reign of God starts, specifically so that it can then spread throughout the world. What’s more, I think Jesus demonstrates a few other important things: the overflowing generosity of God and his reign and His desire that no one is spared an invitation, that everyone is given a chance to “enter into” the kingdom. The reign of God starts in Israel, but it is meant for all — it is already inevitably spreading beyond the Jewish people (think of the Canaanite woman who says to Jesus, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table,” whereupon He heals her daughter). Jesus will not waste any of the fragments, for the Word is here, the reign is available to us, and it will not erupt into history in vain.
All of this brings me back to the Acts of the Apostles in a sort of breathless way. Here we have people who get it, who are the seed growing on good ground, who are living in the kingdom of God, under the reign of God. The power, boldness, courage, and joy of these people, even right after being flogged, is contagious! This is the Spirit who has been unleashed in the world in a new way now that the reign of God is at hand. Let us all participate in this wondrous new world!
¹ I am persuaded by Gerhard Lohfink’s argument about preferring “reign of God” to “kingdom of God.” He argues,
In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke every day, the Greek basileaia reflects the word malkuta. And malkuta is first of all the “king’s rule or reign,” and only secondarily the extent of the king’s rule or a particular territory. With Jesus the concept of “reign of God” has something utterly dynamic about it. The reign of God has an event-character. It is something that happens. It “comes” or “is coming.” For that reason also we should prefer the concept of the “reign of God.” But obviously the notion “kingdom of God” also reflects a certain aspect of the event, namely a realm within which God is establishing his rule. One can “go into” the basileia or “enter into” it (cf., e.g., Mark 9:47; 10:15). (Jesus of Nazareth, 24-25).
Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter: Acts of the Apostles 4:32-37, John 3:7b-15.
We encounter lessons about the Holy Spirit in both of today’s readings. The first is about the beginnings of the Church in the Apostolic age, an ideal community living in truth, trusting one another, and filled with the Holy Spirit. The gospel reading from St. John is one of those amazing passages from Jesus where He reveals truths about the Spirit, salvation, and our relationship with God.
Let there be no question that the ideal Christian community is one where trust creates an environment where the idea of “personal” property and money is anachronistic, and thus communal sharing of everything is the rule. This particular passage from the Acts of the Apostles makes capitalists shudder and fall over themselves to disprove any such “socialist” core within Christianity; likewise, it makes Socialists rejoice and attempt to employ it as Biblical justification for their ideology. Both camps are wrong, of course, because they concentrate on the end result (i.e., sharing all possessions) when they should be considering the means by which the first Church got there. In fact, the Apostolic Church shows us something much more radical than any form of capitalism or socialism: it’s a community living in full communion with and focus on the Father, inhabited continually by the Holy Spirit, and proclaiming the name of the Son boldly and loudly. In short, its a community fundamentally unconcerned about its fleshly needs. They are in full mystical union with God, who provides for them. They trust one another and their Lord implicitly.
Saint Peter preaching the Gospel in the Catacombs (1902), Jan Styka | Wikimedia Commons.
Contrast this with ideologies that try to construct markets and governments from nothing but human reason and intellect. These post-Enlightenment systems (capitalism, socialism, etc.) operate from a basis of broken trust. They all share a basic belief that people can’t be trusted without state-imposed rules, that there is nothing that unites people enough to overcome their self-interest. These are the fruits of the “Enlightenment,” which dissociated human reason from God, that pushed God out of our conception of self. If we cannot see the light of God within each other, we have nothing transcendent or universal that unites us. And if Jesus Christ is seen as one prophet among others (at best) or a fantasy for the feeble-minded (at worst), then we truly have nothing to raise humanity beyond the mire of sin and self-interest that dominates us. Well, people convince themselves that some “perfect” form of government, checks and balances, will balance our protections and freedoms perfectly. What a poor vision for humanity! Even at its best, this post-Enlightenment thinking delivers people an adult life of around 50-60 years where we retain a sense of self-possession and “freedom” within an uneasy network of other self-possessed and “free” humans who inevitably impinge upon our own bubble. That’s why we have lawyers and courts to fight and scrap over these collisions of perceived freedoms and self-possession. What a pathetic state of selfish, scrabbling people we’ve become.
So, back to the Apostolic Church. The difference here is their conception of self. They realize that their lives are dominated by the gifts God has given them: first, their own lives, but then the greatest gift of Jesus Christ, which entails everything from the baptism in water and spirit to the bearing of our sins to open the door for our salvation. What is the truth that Christ brings to the world, the reality that He uncovers? His great love liberates us from the selfishness and distrust that dominates humanity in its fallen state. This is freedom. Not something that we have to protect with laws and jealously guard (like our guns or “rights”). This one, true freedom, this love that fills us, comes from God — it is not something devised by humans, legislated by governments and protected by law. It is cultivated through faith, prayer, and proclamation, and it brings a panoply of gifts, as we see in today’s reading: “With great power the Apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them.” The gifts (the “great favor”) come from God and the result is that “there was no needy person among them.” This is not socialism, where the state is the agent of power (indeed, where ideology supplants God). This is not capitalism, where the individual’s right to exploit for profit is the golden calf. This is much more radical for today’s mind to comprehend because it forces us to question those assumptions about the inviolability of human reason that we inherit from the Enlightenment and modernity. Our passage today reveals that the perfection of the Apostolic Church lies exactly in the radical reliance on something unreasonable, something at first glance not apparent or logical, something mystical. The Church is perfect only because they rely upon and trust (i.e., have faith) not only in God’s desire to bring us to Him but the manifested action of his doing so through Jesus Christ. As a consequence of this, and only this, they are bathed in the Holy Spirit, they shed their destructive self-interest, they trust one another, and thus “no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common.” Why would they need to own possessions separately from this community of the Spirit? It becomes not just silly, but something against the will of God, the impulse of charity, and the movement of love in the world.
St. Peter Preaching in Jerusalem (1642), Charles Poërson | Wikimedia Commons.
In the gospel reading, Jesus attempts to teach the Pharisee Nicodemus about being baptized in this something unreasonable, this something mystical. Nicodemus comes to Jesus under cover of night, likely in part because the Pharisees were deeply distrustful of Jesus rocking the boat of earthly power they had established, so he couldn’t come to Jesus openly in the daytime out of fear of being chastised by his fellow Pharisees. Yet in the act of coming to Jesus at night, which is a breaking of ranks with the Pharisees, Nicodemus shows that he wants to come out of the “night” of unknowing into the light of truth that Christ is giving the world. In Judea, men would relax on rooftops at night, where the desert winds would provide cool after the heat of the day. So, here Jesus reclines with Nicodemus and in the verses before today’s passage tells him, “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Nicodemus is stuck in the reason and knowledge of earthly things that we see come to prominence in the Enlightenment; he doesn’t understand how people can be born again once they are born by their mother.
Today’s reading is Jesus’s answer: ” You must be born from above. The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” At first glance, this seems to be a non-answer, but Jesus, the great teacher that He is, uses the beautiful earthly phenomenon around them to draw an analogy. The wind, although we cannot see it or understand the directions it travels at any given moment, nonetheless exists and has great power and movement in the world. And so like this earthly phenomenon, there is the heavenly phenomenon of the Spirit that can move within those who are “born from above.” His lesson is one that is just as important today: don’t look to reason your way into knowing the ways of God and the Spirit. Don’t think that this is something that comes from your intelligence or even your effort of prayer or ritual. We must accept that, like the wind, the Spirit is active and powerful despite our inability to see it or understand it.
Jesus and Nicodemus (early 1900s), William Brassey Hole | Wikimedia Commons.
When Nicodemus says, “how can this happen?” he reveals that he is still stuck in his own head, in his own need to challenge and dissect the workings of God. Jesus’s answer is fantastic, “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this?” not because He is somehow shaming Nicodemus but because He points to the entire tradition of the Jews as His proof. He is saying, here you have the entire history of God’s miraculous intervention into the lives of your people, from Abraham, Noah, Moses, the prophets and up to today, and you’re asking “how?” with disbelief??
Jesus’s following statements are a good reminder to us that even if we have the gist of the wind analogy, we must remember that it’s just an analogy and the heavenly truth is incomparably deep in mystery. He says, “If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” In other words, the comparison between the action of the wind in the world and the Spirit in the people “born from above” is still just an analogic glimpse into what the Spirit might be. If we can’t grasp and believe that, how could we possibly handle a statement about the actual truth of the Spirit or the nature of God?
Jesus’s final statement in today’s reading does give us a glimpse of the mystery He brings to the earth, again in a type of comparison to something Nicodemus already knows. It undoubtedly mystified Nicodemus (who was already mystified by the wind analogy) because Christ had not yet entered into his Crucifixion and Resurrection: “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” We explored this passage in a prior reflection (see Bridging Salvation History with a Serpent), but suffice it to say that Jesus is pointing to this same paradigm of glimpsing reality-by-analogy. There is the analogy of Moses’s serpent staff and the Son of Man hung on the Cross, and there is a glimpse of heavenly meaning at the heart of both “liftings up.” They both provide salvation (Moses’s staff provides a remedy from deadly snake bites for earthly saving while Jesus provides eternal salvation) through the symbol of sin being sacrificed, which is but a glimpse of the eternal flux of love that God is. Christ is more than His Crucifixion, although it is fundamental to His saving mission. Christ is also the Way that brings the Living Spirit into the lives of his disciples. God is living, active love flowing constantly in the universe, a reality that we merely glimpse with our faculties, reason, and intellect. It takes our faith to truly live with the mystical reality of God in the world, and “blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” as Christ tells Thomas, presenting Hs hands and side to be felt.
The Incredulity of Thomas Altarpiece (1308-1311), Duccio di Buoninsegna | Creative Commons, courtesy the Divinity Library at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University.
I love contemplating the “community in Spirit” that the Apostolic Church managed to live. Even if it didn’t last in perfection that long, it is at the heart of the Church as the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ. It displays for us the perfection of living in the Spirit, boldly proclaiming the Word of God, and trusting one another. We should all hold this in our hearts as the true life for which we strive.
Some might say that this perfect community is impossible, that, practically speaking, humans just can’t be truly communal. I respond that this is indeed impossible without God at the center of each person’s existence. This is the basis of monastic life! Countless lay Christians have also committed themselves to intentional communities over the millennia. It is understandably hard, as any truly selfless act is, but it is definitely not impossible if the Apostolic spirit (and the Holy Spirit) is evident.
Friday in the Octave of Easter: Acts of the Apostles 4:1-12, John 21:1-14.
Today’s readings show us Peter and John revisiting places that were instrumental in Jesus’s ministry before His death. One scene is marked with despondency and ineptitude, while the other is filled with boldness and perfection. How do they manage to make this change from inept acolytes to masters in faith? The answer lies in an often-overlooked aspect of the gospels: Jesus’s ministry does not end in the Resurrection; He guides the fledgling Church in the days between the Resurrection and Ascension.
Fresco of the Miraculous Catch of Fish (unknown date and author) on the walls of the Church of the Holy Apostles, a Greek Orthodox monastery at Capernaum, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee | photo from reneeriley.wordpress.com.
First, let’s look at the gospel reading. We hear that the disciples are back at the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus first met them. This is curious. After the astounding fact of the empty tomb and the appearance of the risen Lord to the disciples in Jerusalem, what are they doing back in Galilee? For lack of something better to do, “Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’
They said to him, ‘We also will come with you.’” Is this the great work of evangelization that will grow the Church immeasurably? Not at all — they have retreated back to what they used to do, as if the reality Jesus brought into the world hasn’t changed them. Pope Francis notes,
They seem to take a step backwards; Peter takes up the nets he had left behind for Jesus. The weight of suffering, disappointment, and of betrayal had become like a stone blocking the hearts of the disciples. They were still burdened with pain and guilt, and the good news of the resurrection had not taken root in their hearts … This is the tomb psychology that tinges everything with dejection and leads us to indulge in a soothing sense of self-pity that, like a moth, eats away at all our hope. Then the worst thing that can happen to any community begins to appear – the grim pragmatism of a life in which everything appears to proceed normally, while in reality faith is wearing down and degenerating into small-mindedness. (Sunday Mass homily, May 5, 2019)
But, as Pope Francis notes, “it was at the very moment of Peter’s failure that Jesus appears.” They had caught nothing during an entire night of fishing, and there, Jesus on the shore asks them a double-edged question: “Children, have you caught anything to eat?” Of course, the original Greek is a bit more enlightening. Jesus first calls out their immaturity by calling them παιδία (paidia), which is a diminutive form of child, i.e., “little child” (the only time in the New Testament, incidentally, that Jesus calls his apostles paidia). He then asks if they hadn’t any προσφάγιον (prosphagion), which is properly translated as “anything eaten with bread” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon). What is He saying here? Clearly, there’s the literal meaning “haven’t you caught anything?” but the words He chooses point to something more. He notes that their development as his followers is not yet mature (they are paidia). Case in point, they are looking for something “to eat with bread;” this, coming from the Bread of Life Himself who had just instituted the great sacrament of Eucharist with them. All they need is the bread He gives them, but they don’t yet comprehend the power of His Spirit in the sacrament and in the world.
Appearance on Lake Tiberias (1308-1311), Duccio di Buoninsegna | Wikimedia Commons.
Evidently, they need another lesson, signified by the miracle of a net suddenly full beyond belief with fish. Once again, God bestows lavishly, both in patience and gifts for His beloved Church. John recognizes the man behind the miracle and Peter reacts. As St. John Chrysostom writes, “when they recognized Him, the disciples Peter and John again exhibited the peculiarities of their several tempers. The one was more fervent, the other more lofty; the one more keen, the other more clear-sighted. On this account John first recognized Jesus, Peter first came to Him” (Homily 87 on the Gospel of John, 2). Here, they are re-enacting their roles as we see them throughout the gospels but Jesus needs them to move beyond and become new people who establish the new Church.
They meet him on the shore and “saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread.” This bit of detail from John is important. It establishes that Jesus is truly a man resurrected, not a ghost or vision. He can partake in physical food. Symbolically, it presents something new with something familiar. We might expect to see the bread, through which Jesus sacramentally gives us His Body, but what to make of the fish over the fire? Let’s consider the other times Jesus refers to fish and fishing. The first miraculous catch of fish here on the Sea of Galilee happened when Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James and John to become His disciples. As St. Matthew writes, Jesus counsels an astounded Peter, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people” (Luke 5:10b). Fishing is the work of evangelization. Fish are people. Here, once again, the disciples catch an overwhelming quantity of fish when they obey Jesus, only this time his call is different — it’s not to follow Him throughout Judea but to bring Him fish. A second interpretive key for this passage comes from Jesus’s words recorded in the gospel of St. Matthew: “the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age” (Mt 13:47-49a). Jesus shows them that He is the purifier of men, He tends to the fire that purifies the fish, making them good food. Before the “end of the age” when the good will be separated from the bad, the apostles’ work is to catch fish in His name so that they can be purified in His love.
Detail from Breakfast at Dawn (2012), Mike Moyers | image from fineartamerica.com.
To move them beyond an incapacitating dependency upon Him, like the disciples in Emmaus who say, “Stay with us,” Jesus again chooses to accomplish this through a meal. We will read the verses after today’s gospel, “When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’” Jesus’s threefold questioning leads to the directive to feed his sheep (like Jesus) and to follow Jesus (in the way of the Cross). Jesus is passing a heavy baton to Peter, who will no longer wonder what to do with himself nor go back to his old ways.
The courage and the fire to accomplish Jesus’s directive comes to the apostles at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit, the One whom Jesus promised, descends upon them in the fervor of their prayer and immediately they are given the boldness and means to accomplish the work of Christ. This is, after all, Christ’s very Spirit, ushering them to the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
And it is after Pentecost that the events found in the first reading happen. We are in the midst of the great story of the Acts of the Apostles that is being read over consecutive days in the first reading at Mass. Note the difference in Peter and John. They heal a lifelong cripple in the temple like Jesus once did and they claim no credit, having done it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amazed Jews gather around them in Solomon’s Portico and Peter explains how the miracle of healing happened: “But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong” (Acts 3:14-16a). He establishes their culpability in the Messiah’s death, the fact of the Resurrection, and the fact of the unending power of the name of Jesus Christ the Lord. What’s more, Peter presents them with an open call to join His Body, the Church, “Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment and send you the Christ already appointed for you, Jesus” (Acts 3:19-20). In these moments, they have become the fishers of men that Jesus has asked them to be.
Healing of the Lame Man (c.1516), Raphael | image from artbible.info. Raphael’s design intended for a tapestry in the Sistine Chapel, painted on sheets of paper.
But their words garner the attention of the Sadducees, who do not believe in resurrection, and the chief priests, who had just “succeeded” in killing Jesus. Peter and John are arrested, but their fishing has begun: “But many of those who heard the word came to believe and the number of men grew to about five thousand.” The cast of evil characters is present again the next morning to interrogate them (thinking of you, Caiaphas and Annas), but “Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, answered them.” We glean not a speck of fear or apology in his words. He boldly proclaims not just the righteousness of their act of healing the crippled man but the name of the one these people recently crucified:
all of you and all the people of Israel should know
that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean
whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead;
in his name this man stands before you healed. He is the stone rejected by you, the builders,
which has become the cornerstone.
There is no salvation through anyone else,
nor is there any other name under heaven
given to the human race by which we are to be saved.
Just imagine them standing there, under temple arrest in front of the chief priests, proclaiming the divinity and power of Jesus, quoting scripture, and teaching about salvation of the world. We hear this brave and powerful voice of the Spirit emerge time and time again from the great martyrs in our tradition. We will see tomorrow that this bold elocution from “uneducated, ordinary men” will leave the leaders, elders, and scribes amazed and speechless. The power of the Spirit is the gift that Jesus gives His Church for which secular authorities have no answer. The Spirit dwelling within the Church enables its members to ascend to the Kingdom, to inhabit a world that dominates the world below in its love and power.
Wednesday in the Octave of Easter: Acts of the Apostles: 3:1-10, Luke 24:13-35.
Today’s readings display the natural desire to have Jesus with us, as He was before His death. They also show the dawn of a new, more potent way that Jesus is still with us. This is the advent of the Church, the mystical infusion of the risen Christ into the world.
Ivory panel with the scene from Emmaus (850-900), from Metz, France, then known as part of the kingdom of Lotharingia | Wikimedia Commons.
The gospel reading is Luke’s famous account of Jesus’s appearance to His disciples on the road to Emmaus. While walking, the two disciples were deep in conversation about the Passion, death, and entombment of Jesus. Note how casually and matter-of-factly Jesus makes his first appearance in Luke’s gospel after the Resurrection: “Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” The Greek text is very evocative. Their eyes (ὀφθαλμοὶ / ophthalmoi) can be understood as both the physical eyes as well as the mind’s eye, and the verb ἐκρατοῦντο (ekratounto) is used to describe how they are “prevented” from recognizing him — ekratounto properly means being seized or held. This sentence indicates that their minds were seized by their preoccupied thoughts and kept from being open to the possibility of Christ being with them.
They explain to Jesus all that has happened, their sadness at his passing, their dashed hopes that He would redeem Israel, and their confusion over reports of His Resurrection. In short, they explain the kerygma of our faith to their Savior, but from a perspective that doesn’t comprehend the very events that make up the kerygma. His response, understandably, is “How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!” This is a fantastic phrase,” slow of heart to believe,” in that it describes a momentum of love that accompanies faith. Jesus points out that the preoccupations “seizing” them have stuck them spiritually; they are not growing in faith, their hearts have slowed and love is no longer moving them. He wants them to expand their mind’s eye to the full scope of salvation history, and so, “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.” This is an incredible service that the Lord provides for His Church at this delicate moment after the mystery of His death and Resurrection has been accomplished.
Jesus and the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus (1571), Pieter Bruegel the Elder | Wikimedia Commons.
There are critics who accept most of the narrative in the gospels about Jesus’s life yet claim that Christianity was invented by his disciples after He died. Their claim is that the well-defined Christology that arose after His death is almost “too perfect.” They say that our beliefs about how Christ fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, is the Son of God, and the key to our salvation within the New Covenant were not established by Him during His ministry and only came from the mouths of His followers after He was gone. These critics clearly aren’t hearing what Luke tells us here, that Jesus “interprets” for his disciples everything that referred to Him in the Scriptures. Not just here on the road to Emmaus, but later He does the same for all the disciples in Jerusalem. In all four gospels, he speaks to His disciples after His Resurrection. Christology comes from Christ — His works and the reality of His Person as well as the interpretation of those works and the prophecies that spoke of Him. Christology was not something invented by the disciples. It was spoken to them by the Resurrected Christ and further given to them by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and beyond.
Today’s gospel reading marks the transition from the empty tomb to the mystical God made present in the Eucharist. This is the turning point when the Church is born, and it requires a shift from minds seized by preoccupation with his Passion to minds opened to the fullness of our faith and salvation history. See that Jesus did not expect us to make this transition on our own! Each of the four gospels testifies to His reappearance after His Resurrection, his instruction and interpretation of His Resurrection, and his visibility dissolving into the community that makes up the Church. Just like they testify to His parables, His Passion, His Death, and His Resurrection, they testify to this work of transition that Jesus Christ performs for us. He appears bodily, risen, specifically to show us that He still lives with us, but within our sacramental, mystical union with Him as a Church, not forever in human form. We will celebrate his Ascension in a few weeks, but now we celebrate this turning point when the Church is born and instructed in the Christology whereby Christ inhabits the earth until the end of time.
The Emmaus Disciples (1622), Abraham Bloemaert | Wikimedia Commons.
At different times in our lives and in different ways, we are all the slow-of-heart disciples in today’s gospel. As we struggle with faith and the true import of this Jesus of Nazareth, we can be seized by our preoccupations and thoughts about His life. Even after we hear the interpretation of his life within the scope of salvation history, as we do at Mass and when reading Scriptures, and as the disciples heard on their seven-mile walk to Emmaus, we can remain stuck. Like the disciples who arrive at Emmaus and say, “Stay with us,” we want to hold fast onto this historical wonder-worker. We have realized that this man speaks the Truth, but we still have to move into His reality. Finally, it is at our communal table, in our sacrament of Eucharist that Christ instituted, that we are able to live within the mystical reality given to us. As we hear today, “he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Their ophthalmoi were fully opened (their eyes and mind’s eyes) and they “knew” Him or “recognized” Him. Jesus the Resurrected man vanishes and the Eucharist remains. He shows them how He now dwells in the world, with His Church — in their gathering as a community, presided by priestly action and sanctified by His Spirit. It’s no coincidence that a meal marks Christ’s presence with His Church. It is the fulfillment of his greatest commandment to love God and then each other; He gives Himself to us, to nourish us, and we, in turn, give Him to each other. This physical action of receiving and passing along God’s agape encompasses the entire life of a Christian within the sacrament.
Supper at Emmaus (1601), Caravaggio | Wikimedia Commons.
In the light of the gospel, let’s look back at the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, which shows us how life after the Ascension is filled with Christ. It takes the form of a classic miracle as we see before Jesus dies. “A man crippled from birth” is carried and placed by a temple gate daily to beg for alms. Peter and John walk by and “looked intently at him,” and Peter asks him to “look at us.” What is the meaning of this intense gaze? What are we being directed to see? What is there? Peter poetically tells him he has neither silver nor gold, but “what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.” What is there? It is Jesus Christ! The Lord’s Spirit is alive and active in the world just as it was when He performed miracles Himself at the temple. It is there in the recognition between people, dwelling within them and ready to be a healing force in their lives. Importantly, Peter and John perform this miracle not just in the name of Jesus Christ, but with the intention of taking this man into their flock, their Church. We hear that he “went into the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God.” The work of the Church points back to its source, to God. Peter and John live in the overflowing love of the Trinity, the life-giving and healing font for humanity. The Spirit of the Lord fills them, they act in the name of the Son, and they constantly praise the Father — all of this displaying clearly the work of the Church.
