Living for God Alone!

In today's first reading, Philippians 4: 10-19, St. Paul is grateful to the Lord and to the Philippians for being their for him, in good times and bad, in times of abundance and "famine."  Through the strength of the Spirit within him, St. Paul had learned to survive in any circumstance in which he found himself. Out of his abundance and his poverty, he served the people and they helped him. It was a receiving and a giving. Sometimes, Paul  needed the people to give to him out of their abundance and at other times Paul had to give from his abundance.

Like Paul, we are both needy and rich.  At times, out of our richness,  we are able to give and, at other times, in our poverty,  we are the ones who need others to share their riches with us.  We are to learn independence and interdependence, both materially and spiritually! When we learn to take care of ourselves in good times and in "bad," we are then able more efficiently and generously to give to others in their need.

In the Gospel, Luke 16: 9-15, Jesus warns us that, if we are serving "two masters", we will "either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot," Jesus says to us, "serve God and mammon."  We are here on earth to glorify God and to do good to and for others as a means to give glory to our God.  If we divide our attention to glorifying oneself or money, for instance, we will resent the single-minded and single hearted call to give glory to God alone!  As we journey through this life, we are on the way to the realization of our deepest union with God and to become more and more united with others in God!  Our ultimate goal is union with God for all eternity and living in the Kingdom of Eternal Love.

Oneness with God

In today's Gospel, John 17: 11b-19, Jesus, shortly before giving up His life to evil persons who killed Him, prayed for you and me.  His prayer, in part, was: "Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me."  You and I are included in the ones the Father gave to Jesus.  Jesus asked the Father to keep us in His name "so that [we] may be one just as [God the Father and Jesus] are one." Jesus reminded the Father that we "do not belong to the world any more that [He] belong[s] to the world. I do not," He said to His Father, "ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One....Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth....I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth."

There is no way that the Father said "no" to His Son, Jesus. Jesus' prayer, definitely, is being answered day by day as we journey through this "vale of tears," where Satan prowls seeking souls to   devour.  "[K]eep them from the Evil One," Jesus prayed. And God does just that in and for those who seek God, a seeking obvious in those who practice their faith and live by truth. As we look around we see men and women becoming one in love, a possibility made real because Jesus prayed: "May they be one just as we are one."   The ability to give of ourselves in self-sacrificing love each day and the courage to rise when we fall and ask forgiveness of each other is the effect of Jesus' prayer!

May you and I rejoice in the abundant love and mercy that is poured into our lives each day by a gracious God working through our family and friends, fellow religious and creation itself.

Peace of God Be with You

In today's Gospel for Tuesday of the fifth week of Easter, John 14: 27-31, Jesus says to his disciples, that is, to you and me, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid...I am going away and I will come back to you....I am going to the Father; ....I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me...."

"The ruler of the world is coming"!  The ruler of the world is Satan, who sows discord, jealousy, anger, prejudice, hatred, and division. Jesus says: "He has no power over me!" Neither does he have power over those who stay focused on Jesus, seek Jesus and follow Him unreservedly. We are able to do just that because  Jesus prayed for us.  He prayed that we would be one with Him as He and the Father are one and that we would carry on the work He did.  That is why He gave us His peace, saying: "My peace I give to you.....Do not let your hearts be troubled."  Filled with the peace of Jesus and of the Spirit, we are empowered to overcome fear and hatred, jealousy and anger and division.  Our union with others deepens as we foster our relationship with God in prayer and in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist. Our union with God also deepens as we give our ourselves in  self-sacrificing love to one another throughout a given day!

In God, With God, Through God

God “gives to everyone life and breath and everything…’In him we live and move and have our being,’…[f]or we too are his offspring,’”  we read in today’s first reading, Acts 17: 15, 22-18:1.   In the Gospel, John John 16: 12-15,   Jesus  tells us that when the Advocate “comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth….He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told y9ou that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.”

How awesome is the  relationship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have developed with us. God who made all that is, the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, God who  created man and woman in His likeness shares everything with us. The Spirit will bring us to this truth, in fact, to all truth:  the truth about our Creator, the truth about this universe, the truth about ourselves, the truth about a child in the womb, the truth about all men and women created equally in the eyes of God, truth about justice and love and mercy and all that has it origin in God and taught to us by Jesus.  We will come to realize that  God  “made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.” For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’”!

How do my behaviors/attitudes reveal that I have come to know that God has given me “life and breath and everything,”  that  I “live and move and have[my] being” in God?  Would I treat others differently if I live from the belief that they, too, have been given “life and breath and everything” from God and that they, too, “live and move and have [their] being” in God?

Profound Sense of Union

In 1 Cor 10: 14-22, one of the recommended readings for the Feast of the Sorrowful Mother, which we celebrate today, Paul asks us:  "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the Body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one Body for we all partake of the one loaf." 

The cup of blessing which we bless, we praise, of which we stand in awe, for which we are grateful: we are participants in that cup, in Jesus' Blood, His suffering and death.  It is through Jesus' shedding of His Blood that the world, that you and I, are/were redeemed, sanctified, made holy, made one with God and one another. All the blood shed in this world is Christ's Blood shed over and over again. Everything we suffer  and which Christ suffers by virtue of our dying and rising with Him in baptism, is transformed into a redeeming act. Why? because we are united with Christ by God's choice.  The potential of our behaviors/attitudes of being being purified  by what we suffer becomes a reality in Christ Jesus for those who believe. Jesus took our disobedience into His obedience, obedience even to death on the cross, making us one with Him and His Father for our salvation and that of the whole world.

Wow! "Take, Lord, receive; all is Yours now," we pray in a popular religious song.