Unknowingly worshipping the one true God

In today’s first reading, Acts 17: 15, 22-18:1, Paul says to the citizens of Athens (and to us):  “You Athenians (substitute your nationality),  I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as  we walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.”    At the very core of our beings is an insatiable thirst for God. The more one denies one’s  thirst and hunger for the Sacred and fails to quench it at the Fountain of Living Waters and at the Living Word of the Eucharist and the Scriptures, the stronger and wilder that thirst and hunger become.  Addictions to anything and anyone grow stronger.  People frantically try to quench the human thirst and hunger for the Divine by that which is not God. Without realizing it, when we are compulsively seeking life apart from God we are, in fact, seeking God, who is the One in whom we live and move and have our being.

Patient Response to Life's Difficult Moments

In today’s first reading, Acts 16: 22-34,we read about Paul and Silas’ arrest, being beaten with rods and put in chained shackles.  They are treated cruelly, shamefully, disdainfully. It is night. No bed. No comforts.  They turn to their faith and spend the night singing, thanking and praising God. Suddenly an earthquake shatters the prison, breaks open their chains and they could be free men. However, they do not escape. The jailor is terrified of his fate when he discovered the prison doors wide open, the chains broken. In his desperation he  is about to commit suicide when Paul yells out: Don’t harm yourself!  God uses Paul and Silas’ heroic faith and love to save the jailor and his family, who turn to Christ, are baptized and minister to Paul and Silas, taking them to his home; treating their beaten, bruised bodies and giving them a meal.

As I reflect on my reactions to things in my life that are irritating, humiliating and distasteful on a much smaller scale than what Paul and Silas went through, I am humbled as I reflect upon their faith response.  I rant and rave at much smaller injustices, far from turning to the Lord in prayerful praise, as Paul and Silas had done.  When life throws me “a curve ball” or all hell breaks loose on my efforts, what if my response flowed out of my faith instead of my anger, my demand for just treatment or my insistence on being treated righteously.  What miracles the Lord could perform!

The "Spirit speaking beforehand"

 Today is the feast of St. Matthias, who replaced Judas.  In today’s first reading, Acts 1: 15-17, 20-26,  we are told that “…the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand….”  If in the time of the early Church, the “Spirit spoke beforehand, ” and God did, don’t you believe that God speaks beforehand in your life and mine as well? I believe that wholeheartedly, not that it is easy to accept God’s providence and designs for our lives, especially when we do not fully understand what God is doing or why God did what God did in the histories of our lives.  But, for instance, we know that when God met Adam and Eve in the garden after they failed to trust Him, He already had a solution for their disobedience, when He announced to Satan: “I will put enmity between you and the Woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head while you will strike at his heel”  (Gen. 3:15).  Satan’s head was crushed by Jesus from the Tree of the Cross, the Tree of Life that replaced the Tree of Good and Evil in the Garden of Paradise.  The plan of salvation is always active. As of old, we, too, move in and out of obedience to God, in and out of truly trusting God.  God does not cause the disasters in our lives, especially not those that are of our own doing, as in the case of Adam and Eve. But God does intervene. He has a plan for our salvation in every event of our lives and the life to the Church today just as in the past when Peter and the first apostles followed Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Rejoice! God is at work in you

The Entrance Antiphon for today's liturgy, May 12, 2012,  reads:   You have been buried with Christ in Baptism, through which you also rose again by faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead, alleluia" (Magnificat, May 2012, Vol. 14, No. 3, p. 147). That led me to say to the Lord:  "Lord, how great Thou art!  In my baptism, You buried me with You and raised me up to a new life of grace!  I was given faith in You, knowing that You are always  at work in me and in the world, transforming us into God's image.  God, who raised You from the dead, raises me each day to new life. Out of the ashes of yesterday, the smolderiung wicks of love dimmed by my selfishness or the reed broken by sin in me (cf. Mt. 12:20) , You recreate me as a stronger person as I sleep through the night. I wake up each morning resurrected by the power of Your Spirit working in me."   Why, O soul, should you ever wake up sad?

God has chosen you to be on His Team

It was not you who chose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain…” (John 15: 16). 

 Whenever I read this passage, I think of the delight a child experiences when chosen to play on a team and is sent out to help her/his team win games.  It’s like saying to the child: “I know that you will make us proud and will help put our name in the record books.”  Or think of a time when you received an acceptance letter to the college of your choice or to the job of your dreams and were welcomed as one who would do great things as part of that organization. 

In the case above, Jesus, the second person of the Blessed Trinity,  God, the all-knowing One, Almighty Goodness, has chosen you and me to be on God’s team.  God expects great things of us, that we will bear fruit that will last eternally.  We read in  1 Cor 13:13 that three things last forever—faith, hope and love—and the greatest of these is love.  Love extends into eternity. We need faith and hope here but not in heaven.  We need faith now, believing that God is with us. We need hope now, hoping as well as believing, that the graces we need to bear fruit that will last is at our doorstep for the asking!

Savor knowing that Jesus has chosen you to be on His team!

God awesome love and wanting to bond with us

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to us: “As the Father has love me, so I have loved you”  (John 15:9).          How has the Father loved Jesus?  Jesus, John tells us in John 1:3 is the one through whom everything comes into existence.  To involve the Son in the act of creation reveals God’s love, respect and confidence in Jesus. Jesus’ love of us is similar. In effect, He, too, says to us: “I love you so much that I invite you to be a co-creator with me.  I want to create new life, new hope and a deeper love in the world through you. In fact, I invite you to partner with me in reconciling differences, healing wounds, building bridges between the rich and the poor, the oppressed and the oppressor, the deaf and those who hear (those spiritually deaf), the blind and those who see (again more than physical blindness). Just as the Father said to me at my baptism in the Jordan:  ‘This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,' I say the same to you.  I want to share with you the bond and the love that exists between the Father and Me. We are one. I want to be one with you as well so that "your joy will be complete" (John 15:11).

Are you willing to be Jesus’ partner or do you want to go it alone?

I am the vine; you are the branches (John 15: 5)

“I am the vine and my Father is the vine grower” (John 15: 1-8).  As the vine grower, God cuts off dead branches—that in us that is not bearing fruit or that which impedes our growth in love, truth, compassion, forgiveness of self and others  and interior freedom. God also prunes “branches” that would interfere with the ability within us to function at our highest human potential, becoming one with Christ, being transformed by Christ in all that we do and say, so that we genuinely follow Christ’s  way of relating to those who are downtrodden, oppressed, treated unjustly and/or are scorned by society for any reason.    We are “pruned” so that we become the men and women God intends us to become, that is, persons through whom God’s glory shines, God’s wisdom is known, and God’s love is nurtured.