BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

Lk 9: 11B-17

Dear Friends,

For the early Christians, the event of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes was a very important part of Salvation History. It is repeated six times in the four Gospels. It is obviously connected to the gift of the mana in the Exodus event. It relates to several other events of God’s hospitality of sharing the bread of life in the Old and New Testaments. Most significantly, it foreshadows the great gift of the Eucharist.

The bread that is “broken” and shared reflects Jesus being “broken” on the Cross. This ultimate act of love is rooted in the past and calls us into the future. We experience this very same act of love in our liturgy today and every day. We are always challenged to go beyond the words and the routine in worship.

Ever since Vatican II we, as a Christian community, have worked to create a truly faith-filled experience of Jesus’ loving presence in our participation in the Eucharist. The renewal of the liturgy has been the driving force of our search for a communal transformation. In the active participation in the liturgy, we continually try to make the liturgical prayer the source and summit of our faith. Here we encounter Jesus as the first disciples did. This insight is part of the iconic statement from the Council’s liturgy document.

“The celebration of the Eucharist, as an action of Christ and the people of God…is the center of the whole Christian life, for the universal church, the local church and for each and every one of the faithful….the Liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all its power flows….All who are made children of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of the church, to take part in the sacrifice and to eat the Lord’s supper.” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 1963, #2, 10, 41)

In the Eucharist, true active participation means that we are asking God to make us an instrument of his peace and a contributor to God’s plan for salvation. Through the liturgy we are becoming the Body of Christ to continue the proclamation of the Good News to all humanity.

In the reception of Communion, we are energized in this call to continue Christ’s work. Jesus comes to us in the most intimate way possible to renew us into his image. This presence is first and foremost about Jesus calling us into a new reality. It is a time to share at the deepest level with One we know loves us. This conversation should be about God’s plan first. Then we can present our many concerns and worries. Love is the dominating dimension of the basic Eucharistic moment of grace and intimacy in the reception of Communion. Jesus is calling us into a new way. There should be less concern about ourselves and more concern about God’s presence in our brothers and sisters along with the needs of our family, friends, community and the world. This a very appropriate time for the prayer of our times. ”May God hear the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth!”

In the time of reception of the Eucharist we are never closer to the words of Teresa of Avila that describe prayer as a loving conversation with someone we know loves us.

The depth and beauty of this encounter with Christ cannot be more personal and intimate if we are truly aware, accepting and attentive to Jesus’ presence in the depth of our heart. Along with the personal experience of love, Jesus’ presence is always calling us out of ourselves and our petty concerns to the loving service for others especially in sharing the Good News of God’s love in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen.

We all would do well to examine ourselves to see how much effort and attention we give to this encounter with the living Christ at the time of communion.

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Trinity Sunday

Jn 16: 12-15

Dear Friends, Jesus said, “I have much more to tell you but you cannot bear it.” (Jn 16: 12).

Our celebration of this feast of the Blessed Trinity is the most profound and most simple expression of all reality. God is love. One clear aspect of this foundational truth is the relations of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are invited through the gospel to mirror this love in our lives.

Teresa of Avila, the great Carmelite Saint and Doctor of the Church, was one who learned how to hear this truth of God. Through a long process of purifying mystical experiences and a dedicated life of prayer and service, she learned much of Jesus’ hidden message about the mystery of God that we call the Trinity.

She reduced her insights into a simple truth, a truth that transformed her life. God is the Creator. We are the creature. God, the Creator, is a loving and merciful savior. We, the creature, sinful and broken, are, nevertheless, loved and forgiven. This led Teresa to transform her life to put God at the center and herself at the fringe. She came to understand her life as the story of God’s mercy. For Teresa, the Trinity was a love story that she encountered in the lived reality of her life.

A learned pagan philosopher described the Christians in the second century this way: They love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the person that has nothing; if they see a stranger, they take him home and are happy as though he were a brother. They do not consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God.

On this feast of Trinity Sunday, we recall that Jesus is the full revelation of God, a God of unlimited and unconditional love. All of Jesus’ teachings are anchored and contained in this command that we love as Jesus has loved us. This is how we share in the mystery of the Trinity. It is not information to be gained. It is the very foundation of reality that must guide our lives. It is love that must be lived.

The real message of the Trinity is not some profound super Jeopardy question. It is an invitation into the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This message of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as love is most clearly revealed in the Crucified Christ on the cross.

In the seventh dwelling places of The Interior Castle, Teresa has a simple message for us: embrace God’s will in good works and love along with forgiveness of your sisters and brothers. In the end, it is all about love. It is in this loving relationship with our neighbor that we manifest our deepest relationship with God. This life of love, in turn, reveals the saving action of God in our lives. Love makes this profound complexity become a simple entrance into the God who is love.

Jesus invites us into the mystery of love and life that is the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. The choice is ours. We can accept it or reject it.

This choice brings us into the great irony of life. Our brokenness drives us to think and act as if we have a better plan than God. Our choices make us think that we are seeking true happiness. In the process of our sinfulness, many just reject Jesus altogether. Others spend a lifetime placing side bets and trying to reconfigure Jesus into a more comfortable, watered down version. We want the price to be right according to our standards and not the gospel. Few have the openness to live as the early Christians described by the pagan philosopher.

The great joy of today’s feast and every proclamation of the gospel is that God never gives up on us. In Jesus, we are constantly called to accept Him as the way, the life and the truth. Slowly, life tends to teach us that Jesus really does have a better plan both for here and hereafter. We learn that our life, like that of Teresa’s, is the story of the mercy of God.

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PENTECOST

John 20:19-23

Dear Friends, Jesus had just experienced the most profound expression of evil ever in His Passion and Death. He had chosen to participate in all the horrors of violence and hatred in all of human history. This encounter with the consequences of sin and death had terrorized his disciples. They hid in confusion and fear that they would be next. Despair had conquered the most minimal element of hope. Faith and trust had fled with the arrival of the mob in the Garden.

They now huddled together in the naked vulnerability of their humanity. All of a sudden, Jesus is in their midst. His message is not vengeance. Amazingly, He does not even point the finger at their cowardly collapse. His bewildered disciples were too awe-struck to feel the shame. It was a “wow” moment to the thousandth degree.

His message was direct, clear, and simple: “Peace be with you.” (Jn 20:19) This peace is not a wishful hope. It is a divine declaration. This is the peace that had been won in the victory of love over hate, of life over death in the self-sacrificing death on the cross.

In addition to the peace, He renders the power of forgiveness. These two gifts of peace and forgiveness are in the context of His commissioning of the disciples. “‘As the Father has sent me, I send you.’ As He said this He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (Jn20:21-23)

Receiving the Holy Spirit is a symbol of a new creation. Just as God breathed life into Adam in the Garden, so too, Jesus breathed new life into the disciples that makes them holy and leads them to conquer evil. This is made possible by the love expressed in the gifts of peace and forgiveness.

Then follows a second declaration of peace. Jesus assures his gift of peace to the disciples and to us. With this second announcement of peace and the gift of the Spirit, the mandate is clear. The gospel must be proclaimed to all the world. This is a task that has continued in grace and sin, in human heroics and woeful neglect for over two thousand years even to the election of a new Pope from Chicago! In the midst of the weeds and the wheat, the Church has continued to grow. Even to this day, each of us still are called to share in the proclamation of love’s victory over a very broken world. This is some very good news indeed!

After the encounter with the Risen Jesus, the disciples’ story is very different. Fear gave way to courage and commitment. A new conviction led them to confront power with patience and perseverance and the overwhelming wonder of Jesus’ gospel message. The gospel was proclaimed in spite of conflict and confusion. Cultural barriers and native parochial narrowness opened up to a universal community that continues to grow in openness to this very day.

Just as in the Resurrection of Jesus, the transformed disciples, gifted with the Holy Spirit, witnessed to the victory of love over evil and death. The seeds of the new creation began in the renewed hearts of these very weak and pedestrian followers of Christ. They began an ever expanding community of faith that has survived and prospered over these two thousand years. It is our responsibility to continue that task to witness to God’s love in our daily lives.

Paul draws us into the beautiful mystery of how this new creation flows from the Spirit-filled hearts of the recipients of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians Paul writes: “I say live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desires of the flesh…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Gal 5:16, 22-23)

Today, on this feast of Pentecost, we are invited again to receive the gifts of peace and forgiveness. To do so, we need to turn away from sin which is a refusal to love. Like the first disciples, the Spirit beckons us to continually expand the horizons of our love. For most of us, this demands forgiveness with a risk wrapped in courage.

The peace of Christ comes at a price. The patience and gentleness along with the joy and kindness and the other fruits of the Spirit described by Paul are ever so precious gifts. They are possible only in a heart seeking reconciliation that brings the new life of Christ into a world ravaged by sin and death, division and exclusion. This is the call for us on this Pentecost: transform our lives by the gift of Christ’s peace and His call to forgiveness. Slowly, we must understand that for the Spirit there is no limit on forgiveness and the target of inclusiveness is ever expanding and dynamic. The numerous descriptions of “those people” in our heart have to give way a new definition of “us”. In this struggle to move out of our comfortable world, we will find the only way that leads to the prized gift of Christ’s peace.

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THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSION

Lk 24:46-53

Dear Friends,It is hard to count the times over the years the number of individuals, particularly young people, who came to me with the news that the world was coming to an end. They were sort of sure because they heard on TV or read it on the internet. They were coming to me to hedge their bets to find out what to do in case it was true.

In fact, it is true. The Bible tells us so! It is part of revelation. The world is coming to an end. The problem is we just do not know when. Our big concern should not be the question of “when” but the reality of “now”

Today’s first reading (Acts 1: 11-11) tells us how to handle thls truly decisive reality about our lives. The message of Jesus is both consoling and challenging. Jesus tells the disciples on the mountain of his Ascension that it is not our concern about the “when” of the world’s ending. God’s timetable will easily handle the end times. Our task is to use the gift of life and the gift of the present moment to preach the gospel.

Jesus has given us a task. We are to be witnesses to the Good News that Jesus has revealed in his life, his message and his final passage thru death to life. In Jesus, we have come to know God as a loving and merciful savior. Our goal as human beings is to enter into this mystery of love. This is the Good News. We are gifted with time and life to embrace this reward and to share it. We have the Spirit to draw us into this call to accept Jesus’ challenge.

At Jesus’ departure, the first disciples must have felt they had an impossible task ahead of them. Sooner than anyone thought possible, they were in a life and death struggle with the leaders of the Chosen People. Then, they had to face the reality of reaching out to the Gentiles.

The signs of the times and the pull of the Spirit were seemingly impossible tasks. Yet, they persevered. In their openness to the Spirit, they found a way, a way they would never have imagined on that hill where Jesus left the wondering and fearful in their confusion.

With the Spirit as their guide, and the eyes of their heart to open the way, they were set free to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth!

In the first reading from Acts, Jesus responds to the Apostles question about the end of the world in these words: “It is not for you to know the time or the seasons that the Father has established. …You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem…and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8) The angel asks, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking at the sky?” (Acts 1:11) In other words, get on with the task of living and proclaiming the gospel. The message of the feast of the Ascension that we celebrate today is that we share that task.

In the gospel today we read: “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Lk 24: 46-48).

The meaning of this beautiful feast of the Ascension is further captured in the words of the preface of the Mass:

Christ, the mediator between God and men

Judge of the world and Lord of all

Has passed beyond our sight

Not to abandon us but to be our hope.

Christ is the beginning, the head of the Church;

Where he is gone, we hope to follow.

The Christian response to the end of the world is not fear and anxiety. It is hope rooted in the reality that Jesus is with us all of the time. We are called to go beyond hopelessness and confusion. We are called to a simple commitment to live with faith and trust in a God who has a better plan. We are called to share the Good News. We called to tear down the barriers and build bridges. We are called to use the gift of time and life to let Jesus’ message of love and hope take flesh in our loving presence to our brothers and sisters.

We pray in the opening prayer of the Mass of the Ascension, “May we follow him into the new creation, for his Ascension is our glory and our hope.”

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-9

John’s Dark Night and Teresa’s Message

Part One

John and Teresa are clear on most basic points in their understanding of the spiritual life. Teresa, however, places the foundation on prayer while John identifies freedom of desire. There is much agreement beyond these two points.

This includes liberation from attachment, self-knowledge and realization of one’s true identity in God. Teresa considers the process of self-knowledge right from the beginning in her description of the spiritual journey. Since John says little about the beginning, his treatment commences with the opening to the contemplative experience in the Dark Night.

“The first and chief benefit of this dry and dark night of contemplation causes is knowledge of self and one’s own misery…the difficulty encountered in the practice of virtue makes the soul recognize its own lowliness and the misery which was not apparent in the time of prosperity.” (1.12.2)

John points out three critical blessings flowing from a newly acquired self-knowledge. The first is that self-sufficiency is an illusion. The truth of our total dependence on God becomes a source of true freedom. As we become open to the true consequences of our mortality, we achieve a more realistic relation with ourselves. Finally, the humility that self-knowledge generates, opens our eyes to new and beautiful truths about God and our brothers and sisters.

The purifying grace of the Dark Night experience opens up great possibilities to truly love our neighbor. In the stages of early prayer, propped up by consolations, the strong tendency is to be judgmental of our neighbor. We are strongly inclined to focus on their faults and lack of spirituality.

In the Dark Night’s healing experience of God, we are drawn into a great irony. The gift of humility leads us to embrace the publican by the acknowledgement of our sinfulness. We forsake the self-righteousness of the Pharisee that had been our operating mode. (Lk 18:11-12)

By keeping our eyes on Jesus and being faithful to prayer, we are gifted to see with a gospel vision. We begin to both understand and embrace the true beauty of God’s presence in our sisters and brothers. A newly self-critical vision, an empowering self-knowledge, gives us new eyes. Now we can accurately grasp Mt 25 and the least of our brothers and sisters. (Dark Night 1.12.7-8)

The great gift of the Dark Night’s healing in this early stage happens in this way. In self-knowledge, we experience our weakness and moral blindness. This frees us for the driven need to judge others. Now we become accepting and compassionate for their troubling human condition. This is a gift drawing us closer to God.

John concludes that we will not know God unless we know ourselves. Teresa sees the same truth from another perspective. She states that we will never know ourselves unless we know God. Whatever the order, self-knowledge and knowing God belong together.

Finding God Begins with Self-Knowledge

Self-knowledge demands an unremitting pursuit for a deeper and more extensive awareness of our personal reality. The burdens and advantages of self-knowledge will never be depleted in this lifetime. Learning what honestly is taking place within us is a task that is never completed. One way of getting insight into the search for self-knowledge is seeing the conflict in our lives as a struggle between the false self and the true self, between sin and grace.

The false self involves layer after layer of self-deception, delusions and a sense of self-grandiosity that places us at the center of our world. We tend to become blinded to our faults and failures and, more importantly, to the presence of God at the true center of our being. We emphasize the shortcomings of others.

Jesus put it ever so clearly when he pointed our blindness to a log in our eye rather than our stress on the splinter in our neighbor’s eye. (Mt 7:3) Self-righteousness controls our worldview. As we become aware of the false values flowing from our fragmented heart, we find ourselves facing a fork in the road.

We have a choice of life or death. We choose death when we double down on the clamoring of the false self for more attention. We choose life when we open ourselves to the mercy of God which draws us toward the true self. At the heart of this decision is the perennial challenge of knowing ourselves.

Teresa of Avila never stopped proclaiming the significance of self- knowledge for the path to God in the center of our being. In one of her many statements on self-knowledge she said: “Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering ourselves, reflecting on our misery and what we owe God and begging Him often for mercy.” (IC 2.1.11)

There are numerous gospel passages that point out this practice of leaving the false self of our self-centeredness and moving on to the true self which is seeking God at our center. In Mark we read: “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all.” (Mk 9:35) Matthew tells us: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39) Again, John says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (Jn 12:24) Finally, Matthew adds: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mt 16:24)

Conversion

The slow process of growing in self-knowledge leads to a gradual development of personal transformation called conversion. It is repeated at several stages of spiritual growth. The journey to discover and accept the true self, leading to God at the center, is only possible when we acknowledge our sinfulness and pettiness.

Once again, this process includes humility as essential to our growth in prayer and away from self-centeredness. To face ourselves with honesty is a challenging task. It is not a joyful part of our growth. The price tag for faithfulness to God drives away the timid and comfortable. All prayer must begin with a sense of the loving presence of God.

When we accept the challenge of the divine presence, there is the bridge between our heart and our life. This call to conversion always joins God’s loving call, our acceptance of our poverty and our determination move on to the true self.

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SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 14:23-29

The fifty days of the Easter Season offer us again the opportunity to penetrate the depths of our faith. We are invited to enter more actively into the most profound realities of a Crucified Christ and Risen Christ. The Pascal Mystery, the saving Death and Resurrection of Jesus is set out before us. There is no clearer message of love. We are asked to bring this experience of love into our hearts. In this encounter, we continue to answer the most fundamental question in our lives, who is Jesus for us?

In today’s gospel passage from John, Jesus is talking about his return to the Father and the double gifts of the Paraclete and peace. The teaching of Jesus is reduced to its simplest and most stark terms. It is all about the passionate call of a loving God even in the midst of our sinful brokenness.

The peace Jesus is talking about in not the absence of conflict or struggle with life’s steady encounter with evil. The peace Jesus offers is the presence of God bringing us salvation, a basic harmony within the depth of our being. It gives us the ability to live life to the full no matter the circumstances. Jesus’ peace, so different from the world’s sense of a peace rooted in an illusionary prosperity and indulgence, begins and ends in love. Jesus’ peace, energized by the Spirit, has the potential to create and empower humankind’s greatest good. This is the opening to love God and to love our neighbor. Even in the midst of tension and turmoil, love can pass through the dark valley and, even in the dark valley, bring peace.

Today’s gospel is taken from the message shared in the context of the Last Supper. Jesus is calling the disciples and us to trust in him in spite of the impending horror of the Passion and Death. He is telling us that love will win out. He will reveal the fullness of God’s love, God’s presence and God’s peace in the gift of the Paraclete. This Spirit will help us to both understand and embrace more deeply all that Jesus has taught us.

Through our openness to life, and with the guidance of the Paraclete, the truth of the gospel will unfold in our hearts. Jesus will truly become our way, our life and our truth. All of these gifts of the Spirit are ours for the asking. A commitment to deep personal prayer is the most reliable means to embrace the Spirit’s call to new life in Christ.

As the power of the Resurrection emerges in our hearts, we can take in the daily events of evil and corruption with an awakening sense of hope. Gun violence and denial of climate change, racial and sexual prejudice, the dehumanization of migrants and the isolation and neglect of the poor and ever-present trial of deep conflict with our loved ones will remain the stuff life. The unrelenting faces of evil will not leave the headlines any time soon. However, we have received the gift of God’s peace and the Paraclete. Now we can bring a heart energized by hope to these certainties. We will feel empowered to enter the struggle for a better world, the coming world of God’s kingdom. Our sense of meagerness will give way to an empowerment to take the next step for and for life, no matter how small.

Driven by the Spirit, in the footsteps of Jesus, we can face the challenges of a sinful church and a broken society even as we grow in awareness of or personal self-centeredness. We can indeed be the instruments of peace in the midst of the social upheaval of a broken immigration system, continuing racial change and white privilege, and the shattering of comfortable but often blind definitions of sexuality. We can honor and activate our hunger for justice no matter the depth or complexity of the forces of evil.

God has spoken in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen. Love will prevail! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-8

The Power of Silence

This is the eighth in a series of blogs on the Christian life, prayer and self-knowledge.

I

Christian Meditation is another, and mostly unknown, method of prayer. It is truly different in its approach from lectio divina and other forms of meditation where the mind is a vital component of the prayer. Christian Meditation is a contemplative approach to prayer that centers on silence. It hopes to eliminate, or at least quiet down, all thinking and the imagination during the period of prayer.

The silence invites God to be active in our prayer. The spirit of poverty is the goal. We simply seek to create an emptiness that is the best invitation to the Spirit, where God prays within us. “In the same way the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groaning.” (Rom 8:26)

The individual is asked to silently repeat the holy word, Maranatha, which means “the Lord will come.” The choice of the word is arbitrary and its meaning serves no purpose in the prayer. The simple and slow repetition of the mantra has a clear goal: the creation of silence that subdues the mind and imagination.

This happens by placing the focus on the holy word or mantra. The repetition connects to one’s breathing. The slow repeating of the word is the individual’s prayer. The mind and imagination are the source of the distractions. There is a fear on the part of the ego that the silence will mean the loss of the ego’s control.

The gentle reciting of the mantra liberates us from the captivity of the mind and imagination. We want to open space for God. Simplicity and emptiness need to be the goal. The repeating of the word symbolizes and encourages the trustworthy surrender to God. The important issue is to grow in purity of heart with openness to God’s Grace.

The prayer is experiential and practical. People need to start the journey and let the experience be the teacher. The purpose of the simple repetition of the mantra, Maranatha, is to clear the mind, to get beyond thinking. We want to move from the head to the heart. We need to pay attention to how we say the mantra. Our effort should be calm but firm in our prayerful repetition.

This clears the mind enough to make space for the Spirit. The highly recommended schedule for this prayer is twenty to thirty minutes in both the morning and evening. We must never forget that the final measure of effective prayer is a life more in tune with the values of the gospel, walking with Jesus.

The Mantra’s Opening to Self-Knowledge

II

When we begin to pray, we immediately encounter the obstacle of our human condition. We are selfish people. The ego wants to protect our comfort and control. Our operating pattern is deeply ingrained.

We have embraced the superficial and convenient. We are resistant to the more demanding depths of our spirit. We have been happy to float along, carried by a materialistic culture and a dominant consumerism. Prayer is threatening to this self-seeking agenda.

A serious commitment to prayer draws us into the immediate conflict with the chaos that has been operating under the surface. Personality traits, patterns of thinking, value systems and character limitations are some of the disruptive elements. Christian Meditation offers a simple but challenging option: a peaceful, silent approach centering on the mantra. The slow, steady repetition of the mantra of contemplative prayer will produce change. The task of the mantra is to isolate oneself from the ego and be free for God. The mantra’s assignment is to purify and to enlighten.

There will be a gradual withdrawal of emphasis on the ego controlled element of our personality. The measured passage to silence gently lessens the dominance of our self-centered desires and prejudices. The faithful practice of Christian Meditation creates new insights leading to gospel values and to self-knowledge. This is an overture to our true destiny: to be one with God.

With some growth in this form of contemplative prayer, we are on the journey that highlights self-knowledge. This is a sure passage that opens the way to a true and expanding knowledge of God. The mantra digs deep into the psyche and unveils hidden levels of brokenness and the driving power of selfishness. This is the beginning of personal purification and transformation. The task of the mantra, operating in silence, opens us to God’s healing grace in at special way. The real power is the silence.

The mantra draws us into the silence that is the true language of God. In the silence, God takes over the prayer. In the process of quieting the mind and calming our possessive desires, the mantra facilitates the emergence of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. There are vast areas of our personality and other internal influences emerging from our unconscious that now come into play. This new enlightenment most often happens outside the time of prayer.

All these changes lead to a new centering. The focus is away from ourselves. God emerges as our true center.

How to Meditate

III

The most important thing to learn about meditation is to meditate. It is extraordinarily simple. This is the problem. Few believe that something so simple is so effective and transforming.

To meditate, sit still and upright while seeking the awareness of God’s presence. As you relax, close your eyes. Slowly begin saying the mantra in four syllables. Do not think or imagine anything. As distractions come, return to the mantra softly but decisively. Even good thoughts are to be excluded.

The target is twenty to thirty minutes in the morning and evening. There are three simple goals to guide the two meditation periods each day: Say the mantra for the complete time of the meditation. This is a skill. It will take time to create a habit.

Say the mantra throughout the meditation without interruption. The task here is to continually return as soon as possible from the persistent distractions that are the ego’s hunger for control. In saying the mantra, let it draw you into the depths of your being, beyond thought, imagination, and all images. Rest in the presence of God dwelling in the depth of your heart.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-7

Part Two

I

As the disciples began to follow Jesus, they were far from the finished product. In fact, they saw in Jesus the answer to their ambitious dreams of power and prestige. It was a long, painful journey for them that gradually freed them from the blindness of their self-centered ways. Jesus was constantly calling them to a place they found unsettling. Jesus was relentless in disrupting their complacency.
The movement away from a worldview centered on them in the spotlight and God offstage as an emergency support was aptly called “the road to Jerusalem.”

When we truly encounter the Word of God in the Bible, we will have the same challenging experience. This is always the case when we address a self-knowledge rooted in selfishness. This is our universal inheritance from our original parents.

A steady dosage of God’s Word will produce a frontal attack on all superficiality and bogus values that prop up a false self. This fundamental internal distortion energizes an unyielding pursuit for comfort and control. The Word of God is indeed the two-edged sword. It opens up that part of our life that we would rather keep hidden. Everything about the Bible is geared to transform our self-knowledge. It helps us abandon selfishness and to build up a life of self-giving love and healing presence. This is a journey to the true self that places God at the center.

If the Bible is only a source of comfort for us, we are losing the real treasure. The true Word of God, revealed in Jesus, is about our personal transformation through our death to selfishness and our rebirth to love and service. Growing in true knowledge of ourselves is an essential element of this new life.

It is our commitment to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

II

When we enter a serious encounter with God’s Word in the Bible, we always bring extensive personal baggage. There are countless pitfalls in the sacred task of prayerful reading of the Bible. These three essential steps will be most helpful.

…..Listen to what God has to say to me;

…..Seek to learn God’s will;

…..Always be committed to walk with Jesus.

Exposing the hidden agenda of the disciples was a constant part of Jesus’ teaching. It is also part of our search for true discipleship. We are all caught in a cultural and economic captivity that pulls us constantly away from gospel values.

A prayerful reading of the Word of God clearly surfaces our internal conflict and turmoil. Deep personal change is set before us as a non-negotiable summons. This gospel call to conversion centers on self-knowledge. It is a process of seeing ourselves in a new way, the way that the light of Christ opens before us.

True faithfulness will slowly but steadily unveil a deeply entrenched selfishness and deceit. With gentle divine guidance, we will see things in a new way. We will be uprooted and set loose. The choices before us will slowly erupt with an enticing clarity. This will be the first step on a long journey.

It will eventually become evident that God’s plans never seem to be finished. Along the way, our self-knowledge will be slowly transformed as we embrace a new freedom.

Teresa of Avila never tired of talking about the importance of self-knowledge. She knew well that growing in honest self-knowledge transported us into a humble and totally life-giving presence to God. The key is humility, the ability to accept ourselves as creatures utterly dependent on an all-powerful, all-loving and all-merciful Creator God. This is the true passage from the dominance of the ego, and its destructive false self, to the true self.

“Oh, but if it is in the room of self-knowledge! How necessary this room is – see that you understand me – even for those who the Lord has brought to the very dwelling places where He abides. For never, however the soul may be, is anything else fitting for it…Humility, like the bee making honey, is always at work. Without it, everything goes wrong.” (IC.1.8)

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FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 13:31-35

Dear Friends, The Church gives us thirteen weeks to prepare for and then celebrate, ponder and pray over the reality of the Pascal Mystery, Christ’s Death and Resurrection. This event taps into the most basic human realities, life and death, sin and grace. Our tendency, after the beauty of Holy Week, is to float over this Easter Season and miss the profound message.

In today’s second reading from Revelation (21:1-5) we read this, “Behold God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.” (Rev21:3-4)

This is just one more way of expressing the beauty and the marvel of God’s love in the Pascal Mystery. God has spoken and the last word is not pain and suffering, but healing. The last word is not the injustice, poverty and war that so engulfs our life and world but reconciliation, peace and justice. The last word is not hate and division that surrounds us but love. The Lord has conquered death and called us to eternal life, a glorious state that begins when we love one another.

Today’s Gospel opens with these words of Jesus: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.” (John 13:31) This glory means the hidden God is revealed. Jesus goes on to state that this glory, this revelation of God, will happen when we love one another as he has loved us. This is his command. We are to love one another.

A perfect example of this new love is to wash the feet of one another which is, in effect, unlimited service and availability to one another. Jesus wants us to simply relate to our brothers and sisters in a spirit of self-sacrifice. In this way, we make Jesus present to the world even in his apparent absence.

Jesus is telling us the great witness of the Church should be the witness of love. The first step toward this witnessing love is be open and humble in the midst of Jesus’ love for us. The definition of a witness is one whose life speaks so loudly and clearly that we cannot hear what he or she is saying. In our day we have been blessed with the witness of Pope Francis.

This call to love and witness is an invitation to contemplate the Pascal Mystey of the Death and Resurrection. There is no greater expression of God’s love than the Crucified and Risen Christ. The Cross tells us that God is love, self-sacrificing love. The depth and breadth of this truth demands reflection, prayer and lived experience of love on our part. This is the only way to enter into the wonder of God’s call to love one another.

This lesson of love that leads to eternal life engulfs the entire Easter message. This is what the passage from the Book of Revelation and Jesus’ command to love one another as he loved us is telling us. We find it so hard to believe when we face the reality of our daily life and our world or just simply read our morning news source. This is why we have to move slowly and steadily into this great event of our faith, this great final expression of God’s love, this final word of life and love and healing. This is what we mean when we proclaim that Christ is risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Last week, we were invited in the Scriptures to embrace the greatest of the gifts of Christ’s victory, eternal life. Today, we are called to realize with new insight and wisdom this profound truth. A life committed to love is eternal life for us right now. When we love as Jesus did, we are living the Pascal Mystery of the Death and Resurrection. When we love as Jesus did, we break loose of the bonds of sin and death. When we love as Jesus did we express the seed of life that is Christ within us. We begin our eternity now when we walk in the way of love with Jesus. “As I have loved you, so should you love one another. (John 13:34)

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-6

The Bible is a privileged source of self-knowledge. It is God’s gift bringing light and wisdom to humankind to combat the sinful heritage of Adam and Eve. It is an invitation to move out of our broken condition of self-centeredness. It is a call to accept the simple overwhelming truth that our true destiny is to be one in love with God as the source and center of all reality.

Jesus is our special invitation into this journey. “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe, who is the refulgence of his glory, and the very imprint of his being.” (Heb 1:1-3)

In the Gospel of Mark, we have an outstanding example of the Word of God as an invitation to self-knowledge. This selection begins with the healing of a blind man. (Mk 8:22) and ends with healing of a blind man. (Mk 10 52) In between, Jesus announces his forthcoming Passion, Death and Resurrection three times.

Each declaration is followed by an event that shows that the disciples just do not understand. They are caught in a false self-knowledge. Jesus then offers a teaching of enlightenment that calls them out of their false consciousness. The first incident takes place in Mk 8:31-38. In this case, Peter denies the need for the passion and death. Jesus declares emphatically, “Get behind me Satan!

You are thinking not as God does but as human beings do.” (Mk 8:33) Jesus then proceeds with his teaching against the false consciousness of the disciples and us. True discipleship demands that we take up the cross and have true self-denial.

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever dies to his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” (Mk 8:35) This is a straightforward attack by Jesus of the false self-knowledge of the disciples’ desire for worldly success, power, prestige and wealth.

In chapter nine the pattern is repeated. Jesus’ second declaration of the Passion Death and Resurrection is followed by this announcement. “But they did not understand the statement and were afraid to question him.” (Mk 9:30)

Jesus’ teaching here begins with a question: “What were you arguing about on the way?” (Mk 9:33) With deep embarrassment, they admit their heated conversation was about who among them was the greatest. Jesus then pronounces, “If anyone wishes to be first, he should be last of all and the servant of all.” (Mk 9:35) Here again, we have Jesus attacking the disciples’ ambition rooted in worldly values.

Finally, in the third foretelling of the Passion, Death and Resurrection, the pattern repeats itself. James and John step forward expressing their ambitious resolve to be recognized as leaders. Jesus responds: “Whoever wishes to great among you will be the slave of all.” (Mk 10:34) The climax is in the healing of the second blind man. Here we have a true manifestation of discipleship. The text says, “He threw away his cloak…and he followed him on the way.” (Mk 10:50-52) His cloak symbolized all his possessions.

This freed him in total generosity to follow Jesus on “the road to Jerusalem!” In these passages from the Gospel of Mark we have a sparkling and clear presentation of how Jesus is attacking the distorted consciousness of his followers. At the same time, he is inviting them to see in his journey to Jerusalem, the true self-knowledge that leads to life and freedom. This repetitive pattern fills the Bible with the call to conversion away from self-centeredness to placing God at the center.

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FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Jn 10:27-30

Dear Friends. The Easter triumph of love gives us hope no matter where life leads us in its twisting journey. The Easter Season calls us to become an Alleluia People, people immersed in the hope flowing from the Risen Christ. For us, personally and as a faith community, Easter is an encounter with the triumph of love over all that is evil. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the decisive sign that nothing can overcome the love of God.

Today’ gospel displays this hope is in the role of Jesus as our Shepherd. This pastoral theme is in each of the Church’s cycles on the fourth Sunday of Easter. The image of the Shepherd draws us deeper into the Easter mystery.

The Easter message is one we grow into. We do not get it all at once. It is an incremental, step-by-step process. Our life experience is critical to making this great event of the resurrection meaningful for each of us. The Easter Season is a personal invitation to take that next step. We can only move forward from where we are. This is why today’s image of the Shepherd is so beautiful. Jesus is with us to protect and to guide us. In Jesus our Shepherd, we have the assurance of the deepest truth and the most authentic love. This is the call to be people of the Alleluia.

Jesus tells us, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me…no one can take them out of the Father’s hands.” (Jn 10:27-28) Jesus has our back no matter what the circumstances!

Jesus, as the Shepherd, offers us both security and guidance. This relationship is to one who shelters us and directs us. It touches a deep hunger in our heart. True self-knowledge of our brokenness leads us to long for deliverance. We want to cast off the ambiguity and confusion of our reality. We yearn for safety and clarity. Jesus, as our Shepherd, addresses that ache in our hearts. Jesus the Shepherd invites to know him by walking in his path. His voice sets us free from the crippling ambivalence and fear. He directs us with a caring presence in the midst of the daily wolves of violence, division, ignorance and injustice that are a constant threat to us.

Jesus, as our Shepherd, nurtures our sense of hope in this Easter Season. Jesus has shown us that there is no earthly power, no matter how dominant or seemingly invincible, that can overcome God’s love. This is the Easter message. This love becomes personal for us in the Shepherd. This love generates the Easter reality. It is our passage into eternal life when we are following our Shepherd. “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (Jn 10: 27)

Today’s gospel compels us to receive the protection and accept the direction of our Shepherd. It gives us hope leading to life eternal beginning now when we follow the Shepherd in our daily life.

We need to ask ourselves, are we open to this gift? Do we hear the voice of Jesus in our daily experience and responsibilities? Do we really accept, embrace and celebrate the wonder of the Alleluia which is our invitation into the great event of love that is the Risen Christ? When our yes to the Good Shepherd is true and honest we are on the way to becoming an Alleluia People.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-5

When we pray regularly we develop the habit of deep personal prayer. This sets us on the road to serious personal change. This personal transformation, however, comes at a price. God always wants more. This is the why we come up with so many reasons we cannot pray. At the top of the list is time in one way or another: need to work, need to relax, need to be present to loved ones, need to…. And also watch TV, football, shopping, politics etc. There are other reasons like being just too tired, sick and other heavy responsibilities. It all comes down to a question of determining what is important for us.

Since God is so insistent, regular prayer will always bring us to the challenge of changing our lives. Prayer points out what God wants in a way that confronts our blind spots. The nature of deep personal prayer is to draw us out of comfortable deceptions. The journey to the center and its encounter with our loving God in prayer is not the easy way. The issue of time and the other excuses hindering our prayer are rooted in a fear of moving away from our comfort zone, a personal space rooted in the selfishness inherited from or original parents. True self-knowledge is the necessary and demanding path rescuing us from these hidden and disruptive undercurrents within us. In the normal flow of events, blindness is the norm when it comes to self-awareness. Prayer is the path to enlightenment.

II

Merton’s definition of prayer is yearning to be aware of the presence of God, knowledge of God’s Word and personal understanding of God’s will and the capacity to hear and obey. It is that last phrase “to hear and obey” that invites us out of our self-satisfaction in a movement from our head to our heart to our life. Authentic prayer is always necessary in the quest for honest pursuit of God. Self-knowledge is a decisive component in this development.

Here are a few examples of this inward transformation. Many families are caught in the trap of a destructively addicted member. Everyone suffers. AL ANON offers relief but it comes at a price of self-knowledge. One needs to lose the illusion of control, a mindset that assumes one can alter the addictive person’s behavior. It also challenges the pattern of denial or being a victim.

The simple acceptance that one cannot change another person comes slowly and with personal sacrifice. The change in attitude, however, is life-giving. This is the sort of thing that God is always surfacing in our prayer: movement from death to life, from illusion to reality. It is an invitation to accept the gospel values and go beyond the superficial allegiance.

In the early 80’s, already a priest for twenty years, I was confronted about my blatant prejudice against homosexuals. I fought it. I rejected it. I became angry but I prayed and eventually began a journey to acceptance and repentance.

What is common in both of these issues, one personal and the other social or cultural, is that often in prayer a matter is brought to our awareness but we resist it. However, it is now in play in our consciousness and if we pray regularly we have to work hard to avoid it. The change evolving from our “hearing and obeying” sometimes is a matter of days or often months or even years.

God is patient but never stops calling us out of the darkness to the light. This always involves in a growth in self-knowledge. The “hear and obey” of Merton’s definition of prayer is the encounter of our total being with God’s word and will. This openness and acceptance of God’s call leads to personal transformation.

The message of the gospel is sown in our heart. These seeds of new life are always looking for the opportunity to blossom. This is the goal of prayer: to slowly but surely to create a new heart in the image of Jesus Christ. It is a gradual passage from self-absorption to self- giving that enriches self-knowledge.

III

Any serious commitment to deep personal prayer begins a movement involving personal change. This consistent prayer, this openness to God’s call, assaults our inherited disorder. It exposes fragile and damaged nature.

This prayer, when consistent and faithful, attacks the limiting boundaries of our self-knowledge. We are slowly challenged with a steady stream of new insights about ourselves. Compassion and gentleness, flowing from regular prayer, begin to replace a harsh and judgmental attitude. We gradually pull away from the hunger to “look good”. Now it is easier to accept our faults and limits.

Prayer generates a sense of trust that begins to identify and diminish our hidden fears. With regular prayer, we begin to see the true importance of forgiving. Even more, we start to open new horizons to expand our call to love our neighbor. There are many other healing factors, all directed to our original brokenness, all expanding our self-awareness.

This new self-knowledge is an influential part of prayer that brings us back to the road toward original innocence leading to God.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-4

SEARCH FOR THE GIFT OF CONTEMPLATION

Prayer plays a vital role on the Christian journey. This is especially true as we come face to face with the demands of gospel integrity. However, in the end, prayer only identifies and clarifies God’s presence in our life. Life is where we encounter God. Life is the greatest grace. Prayer enlightens, enables and draws us into this true mystery and goal of our existence, to be one with God.

One of the primary tasks of prayer is to enlighten us through the Word of God. This process slowly lets us see that our grasp of Jesus’ message in the Gospels is quite shallow. A few personal examples will help make this concrete.

As a young teenager I thought it was an outrageous sacrilege for girls to play sports. Likewise, I believed that the African Americans were perfectly happy in their neighborhood. There was absolutely no understanding of the intensity of the overcrowding, the poor and decrepit housing stock, the underfunding of the segregated schools, and the lack of medical services and a multitude of other expressions of racial injustice.

Faithfulness to prayer slowly expanded my awareness of my captivity to a culture that was intensely sexist and racist. That journey continues full speed into the present. This is one of numerous ways prayer enhances our self-knowledge by attacking our false consciousness.

II

Most often when people pray they have a plan. They want God to respond to their strategy for happiness. But God also has a plan. God wants us to respond to that plan. Here is the conflict: the two plans, God’s and ours. This is a significant problem with prayer. Growth in self-knowledge is a major factor in resolving this apparent discord.

For most people, a good part of their spiritual journey involves this transition from one’s personal plan for happiness to God’s plan for our happiness. We are clear with what we want and what we think we need. Most often it is dominated by the deceitful values of the false self. However, through the experience of life’s many trials, we gradually see the need to ease off of our agenda and let go. Little by little we come to see and embrace the need to let God! Our growth in a more righteous self-knowledge is a major contributor to this positive experience.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church there are several definitions of prayer. One from St. John Damascene states: Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.”

Our “good things” often conflict with God’s “good things”. A significant part of the Christian life is learning to discern the difference and importance of our self- perceived “good things” and the “good things” of God. More often than not, our “good things” are rooted in the false values of our materialistic and consumer driven culture rather than the values of the gospel. As we begin to break loose of the restraints of the false self, the light of gospel shines more brightly in our heart.

This is always a shift towards a more genuine self-knowledge. In the early stages of Christian growth, we are praying for the “good things” we feel are necessary for us. Authentic prayer demands that we change rather than God change. We grasp this very slowly, if at all. The irony often is that, in the very troubles and burdens that we want God to remove; we eventually will find the hidden blessing of life on the way to the “good things” of God’s Kingdom.

The growth in Christian maturity demands that we change our ideas of God and continue to deepen our self-knowledge. In maturing prayer, we move from asking God for our “good things”, the blessings that we think we need to bring peace and order into our own created kingdom.

On the contrary, when we repent and seek Jesus’ Kingdom, our heart moves to seek what God desires. We gently become aware that God is the Creator and we are the creature. God’s better plan calls us to change, to grow in self-knowledge. That change is personal conversion, a gradual and life-long process transitioning from ourselves as the center to God as the center. The eyes of our heart slowly begin to see the beauty of God’s “good things”.

III

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who was one of the great spiritual teachers in the 20th Century North America, spoke eloquently about a deep personal prayer. Merton defined it this way: “Prayer then means yearning for the simple presence of God, for a personal understanding of God’s word, for knowledge of God’s will, and for the capacity to hear and obey God.”

In Merton’s definition of prayer, God is at the center. We search for understanding and direction in our lives that need to open us to God. We find five helpful points for this goal in Merton’s definition of prayer:

1) All prayer must raise our awareness of God’s presence.

2) We need to encounter God’s Word. The most privileged way of this engagement is with the Bible but it also is in the experiences of life.

3) The encounter with God’s Word leads us to God’s will, a call out of selfishness to generosity toward God and others.

4) In this prayer, listening is the key.

5) New insight into the reality of God’s word and will guides our way of life.

Conclusion

It is clear that there is interdependence between self-knowledge and prayer. In this mutual dependence, we discover one of the many contradictions in the spiritual life. As self-knowledge increases, there is a startling awareness that we just are not able to fix all that is broken. The after-effects of original sin run very deep. This opens us to God’s mercy which, in time, moves us to a greater dependence on prayer.

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THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 21:1-19

Dear Friends in Christ, Today’s selection is the end of John’s Gospel. It is commonly seen as a later addition to the original text. It was written by a disciple of the author who was totally in touch with the special vision that permeates the original Gospel message. Most see it as a balancing effort to the classic teaching in the Gospel’s Prologue.

There are three clear and profound teachings for the early Church and the Church of today. First, there is a declaration of universality. Jesus wants the Church reaching out to call people of all times and places. This is the meaning from the exact number of fish. 153 was the number of different kinds of fish that the world was able to identify at that time. The Gospel makes it clear that God’s loving grace revealed in Jesus knows no limits. It is for all humanity’s incredible number of cultures and nationalities.

Secondly, in the tender scene between Jesus and Peter we have a profound display of the mercy of God. Once again, Peter finds himself next to a charcoal fire. Now, it is not a time of denial and rejection, but a testimony of love. This is the message of the depth and breadth of God’s mercy. It is without limit. It is without condition. It is for Peter and for all. We are all invited into the Kingdom as we respond to Jesus’ question: “Do you love me?” (Jn 21:16) We are invited to cast off our burden of guilt. The Gospel is reminding us that there is no more consequential reality for us than the question: Do we love Jesus? Can we accept his call to mercy, his call to share the Good News that we are forgiven and summoned to a new life? Thirdly, today’s Gospel tells us that there is a price to pay when we proclaim the Good News of Jesus. Jesus tells Peter: “When you grow older, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” (Jn 21:18)

Peter did, indeed, go where he did not want to go. This led to his crucified death in imitation of Jesus. It was the final and definitive answer to Jesus’ question, “Simon Peter. Do you love me?” (Jn 21:16)

We, too, will encounter many a sacrifice if we are faithful to walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

In answering Jesus’ question: “Do you love me?” we are entering into a new world of the Easter message. Death gives way to life when we are faithful to God. As we walk with Jesus, much sooner than later we will hear the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. Our heart will open up to move out of our comfortable world into a life of service and sacrifice for the values of the gospel.

We will move out of the captivity of indifference to injustice and human greed. We will enter into the utter joy of the Easter Alleluia. Our commitment to the gospel will open our heart to all, no matter the color or race, no matter the sexual orientation, no matter the status in society. Filled with joy in the Easter victory, we will embrace the gift of God’s mercy. It will make our sacrifice and struggle a joy as we respond like Peter: “Lord, you know that I love you.” Jn 21:17)

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SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 20:19-31

It was a truly fatal weekend for the disciples, a devastating seventy-two hours from the washing of the feet on Thursday to the visit of the Risen Christ on Sunday evening. Of course, Peter led the way in the trauma department.

He was a living poster child of the weeds and the wheat, of sin and grace. Wash my feet! Never! Then my hands and face also! I will be willing to die rather than deny you! I do not know the man! Peter “went out and wept bitterly.” (Lk.22:62) “The doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.” (Jn 20:1) It was a short trip from total arrogance to total devastation.

Fear and pain had shattered their dreams. Slowly, they realized the events of the weekend not only exposed them as losers for wasting three years of their lives chasing what now appeared to be a delusional ambition. At this moment, they were in danger of doing time in prison and maybe even losing their lives. Fear was a very reasonable response to their tormenting and alarming circumstances.

The urgency of crisis management did not give them much time to let the depth of their loss sink in. Likewise, they were unable to see with any clarity the extent of their personal cowardice in their flight and rejection after three years of intimacy at the feet of Jesus. Self knowledge does take a long time!

Then, in the midst of the pain, the fear, the loss and utter darkness and confusion they see Him and hear, “Peace be with you.” (Jn 20:19)

They had a lot of experience with the upside down world of Jesus. However, nothing prepared them for this. In an instant, defeat and failure are now victory and triumph. Darkness is now light. Abandonment leads to embrace. Sin and denial are washed away in love and mercy. Indeed, “Peace be with you.” It would take a long time for the consequences of this overwhelming experience to sink in.

The story continues in Acts to show us this frightful group of very ordinary broken men as transformed and fearless proclaimers of the gospel. Driven by joy and faith, they set the Church on its 2000 plus years of announcing and celebrating the Risen Christ.

No wonder the Church invites us to ponder and pray about this awesome mystery of the Resurrection for the next seven weeks. There is a lot to take in.

If we are willing to dig deep enough, we gradually will see the story of our lives in the vulnerability of the disciples. We will see the dominance and control of our fear and anxieties In the ordinary flaw of human events our fears are many. Personally, we are apprehensive about the fragile love with our closest relationships. Physically, among many threats, we see gun violence creeping ever closer to all of us. Likewise, Mother Nature is usually the leading story on the nightly news. If we are reasonable, we need to fear the ravages of climate change. Fear of aging can be denied for only so long. We are always anxious about the loss of our possessions. Each of us can add to the list.

An important part of the glorious Easter message is, “Be not afraid!” This command is spoken to us over three hundred times in the Scriptures but never more gloriously in the words of the Risen Savior in today’s gospel text.

Indeed, Christ is risen! Alleluia! When we let this glorious mystery seep into the depths of our heart, nothing will ever be the same again.

It is no wonder this is the day we so fittingly celebrate the mercy of God. Like the disciples, we are loved in our brokenness. We are accepted in our weakness and sinfulness. Slowly, we will get a glimmer of the love Jesus has for us. It is without limit or condition. The mercy of God is a treasure we can hardly grasp. No matter how gradually we seize this treasure, the goal of our spiritual journey in life is to let the power and beauty of this merciful love transform us. Just like the disciples, we are called to be a new creation. We are called to be the people of the Alleluia!

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