Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Fr. Jim Deiters
When I give a tour of our church, in addition to talking about our special art pieces, I like to point out the architecture itself as adding to our prayer. The choice of gothic arches came from our old church that we wanted to carry over into our new one. The architectural style of “gothic” first became popular in the 12th Century through churches built at that time like Notre Dame and others throughout Europe. When our immigrant ancestors first came to America they used these ideas but with their limited means built churches much simpler and smaller called “neo-gothic.” The basic concept is to have arches and stone pillars that represent the prayers of the people rising up toward God in heaven symbolized in the point at the top. The ceilings of gothic churches are usually some shade of blue representing the cosmos that is a part of our prayer. A beautifully designed church should help a person make a connection between my small life…in the immensity of the universe…and the life of God.
2000 years ago, before there existed Christian churches for worship, the Apostles depended mostly on words and the beauty of creation to help people make the connection between their life and God. And in our passage today from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we have one of the most beautiful poetic bible texts describing how Jesus is the ultimate connection between humans and God. I know that may sound obvious to some, but I want us to reflect on this Colossians passage today to especially help our young people see the real difference between Christians and other world religions and those who don’t believe in God.
I think part of the Church’s problem in losing so many young people is that for too long we reduced Jesus and the Gospel down to a series of moral principles, a set of rules to keep you good. This version mistakenly places all the emphasis on our worksand what we are ‘doing’ for God. With this kind of thinking, people can also easily walk away from “Church” since they can find other organizations to ‘do good things’ for others. We need to reclaim the center of our faith in the Person of Jesus…and help young people see how significant Jesus really is for the world and their personal life as our Savior! I think St. Paul’s short letter to the Colossians is a great tool for explaining Jesus’ uniqueness to people. I strongly encourage you to read it since it is only about 5 pages long.
What St. Paul does so masterfully in this Colossians passage is that he takes a cosmic view of Jesus…as someone who has influenced every aspect of the universe and holds it all together. Imagine for a moment one of those magnificent photographs of the universe from the Hubble telescope. Picture the endless stars and galaxies, the black holes, and brilliant colors, and then listen to Paul’s words once again: “Jesus is the image of the invisible God; through Jesus all things were created, visible and invisible; he is before all things and he holds all things together; in Jesus, all the fullness dwells...as he reconciles (unites!) all things on earth and in heaven.” St. Paul lived long before there were photographs of the magnificent cosmos…but if he saw those pictures today…he would simply use his Colossians letter and say to us, “Yes, Jesus is right in the middle of all that space…creating it AND holding it together! AND at the same time, Jesus lives inside of you!”
St. Paul begins his letter to the Colossians way out in space, describing Jesus as the Source and Beginning of all creation. Then he continues the letter by zeroing in more closely at how that same Jesus of the Cosmos also dwells in our own body! In the section following the one we hear today he tells us to stay focused on what really matters that helps you get to heaven; and then at the end of Colossians, Paul uses that one beautiful line to always remember, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Can you see how this thinking can help us see the value of our own life and the sacredness of every other person? Your life is WITH Jesus IN God!
I say this to all young people here today…as well as anyone who might be here with questions about life, God, or the Church: The Catholic Faith is not just a set of rules to make you a better person. The beautiful Catholic faith is meant to help you have a personal friendship with Jesus Christ. This Word and the Eucharist are Jesus’ tools to take your life INTO Him…and into the very life of God. In Jesus then, we are a part of God’s Trinity…one with God out in the cosmos…and at the same time God being right here in this room, mixing with our own bodies through the Body and Blood of Christ!
As St. Paul wants us to notice our part in the overwhelming beauty of God’s great cosmos, here in this sacred space where our prayers rise up to God, the Holy Spirit swoops down and takes our body and soul into the life of God! Are you ready to have such an intimate experience with Jesus?
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Fr. Jim Deiters
On Thursday, the world lost a great witness to the power of forgiveness when Eve Kor died. For those who do not know Eva’s story, she was a Holocaust survivor and chose to forgive the Nazi’s for their crimes and she traveled the world teaching about the power of forgiving others. What makes her story of forgiveness so incredible is that at age 10, Eva and her twin sister Miriam were taken from their parents at Auschwitz to be used, along with hundreds of other sets of twins, for horrific experiments by a Nazi doctor called Josef Mengele. The sickening details of what was done to these children is beyond imagining.
When the few children that survived were freed after the war, she eventually married a Jewish man and strangely ended up in Terre Haute, Indiana, where she founded an organization to help other Holocaust survivors. In one of her many interviews, Eva spoke of how she came to forgive those responsible for her torment. She said that she sat in her room and imagined Dr. Mengele who did the evils acts was sitting right next to her. Then she said, “I picked up a dictionary and wrote 20 nasty words, which I read clear and loud to that make-believe Mengele in the room. And in the end, I said: ‘In spite of all that, I forgive you. It made me feel very good, that I had this power over the Angel of Death of Auschwitz.’” In 1995, she returned to Auschwitz to actually meet one of the Nazi doctors who wanted to ask forgiveness. As they were standing by the ruins of one of the gas chambers, Eva publicly read a statement of forgiving all those involved. Afterwards she said this, “I felt a burden of pain was lifted from my shoulders. I was no longer a victim of Auschwitz. I was no longer a prisoner of my tragic past. I was finally free. So I say to everybody: "Forgive your worst enemy. It will heal your soul and set you free."
Eva’s powerful story comes to mind for me as I reflect on what Jesus said to his disciples as he sent them out for ministry, “I have given you a POWER …to tread upon the full forces of the enemy…” I think too many Christians are not in touch with the power of the Holy Spirit that has been given to each person at our baptism and renewed in us at every Eucharist. I especially like the way the Gospel story today tells us that those first disciples were actuallysurprised at their power when they came back to Jesus excitedly telling him that they even had authority over “the demons.”
Real discipleship – faithfulness to Jesus’ teachings and our commitments is hard work. To be Christ-like in each situation of life takes a power beyond our self, especially when it comes to forgiving someone who has hurt or offended us or not met our expectations. And this is the point of Christ’s commissioning lesson when he tells us that he gives us HIS power to do things we did not think we were capable of. In the first part of his commissioning ceremony, Jesus tells them to not to depend on “money bag, sack, or sandals.” Rather, the one thing he says to take with us is “PEACE.” Jesus says to take “peace” to every person and town you encounter. The Peace of Jesus’ Spirit that we are to carry with us through life is exactly the main tool we need for the many difficult situations and people we encounter.
Our false ego tries to sell us a false, short-term power one might feel from revenge, hate, and putting others down. But in reality those harmful toxins poison our heart and mind; and they are heavy bags to carry! There is true, deep-seeded power in being a person of peace and an animator of forgiveness that can only be experienced once you give it freely to someone; and when you do, you feel the surge of freedom it gives. This is what Eva Kor experienced which made her want to travel around the world to describe the power that comes from forgiving others.
I remember a sign in the office of my spiritual director in the seminary that had two questions: “Where are you going?” and “What are you taking with you?” Sometimes when I got in a quagmire about my vocation, he would simply point to the sign, stay silent, and let me wrestle with my questions. Jesus is our ultimate spiritual director who wants to use each of our lives for leading other people to God’s love and mercy. Every day in our spiritual path, Jesus wants us to get clear on “where we are going” and “what we are taking with us.” Here in the Eucharist, we are recommissioned to be his missionaries… as he gives us a power that cannot be found any other place in the world. In his Body and Blood, Jesus pours into us the powerful tools of his peace and forgiveness. People like Eva Kor, St. Maria Goretti, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Theresa of Calcutta, and so many others taught us much about the power of forgiveness…that sets us free.
I’m not sure what you are carrying around in your life journey…but Jesus invites us today to leave it all here at the Altar… and simply take with us his two powerful gifts… of peace and forgiveness. Always carry these with you.
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Corpus Christi
Fr. Jim Deiters
One couldn’t help but join in the excitement of the Stanley Cup win of our St. Louis Blues last week. It was interesting to read the news article that described all the varied ways that hockey players over the years have used the trophy for personal enjoyment since each player gets to take the cup home for a 24-hour period. My favorite was the player who chose to use histime with the Stanley Cup for his baby’s baptism in the pouring of water. With due respect for all sports, in the big picture of life, it is almost comical to observe our human behavior as people kiss and hug and cry over such things as baseballs, basketballs, footballs, and I even saw one person on TV genuflect before the Stanley Cup!
It seems like too obvious an association between our recent local ‘hoopla’ over a silver cup for athletics… and today’s feast about the most important Cup in the world, the Cup of Salvation…that brings us to our knees in worship of the Blood and Body of Christ. I’m just wondering what we Catholics can do to develop some new ‘hoopla’ over the Saving Cup we drink from at Mass…that would make it clear to our self, visitors, and our children that THIS Cup is God’s Gift to the world…for the unity and peace for which we hunger. I’m wondering what we need to do differently as a parish, parents, and grandparents, to instill in our children and youth how much THIS Cup of Salvation is a million times more valuable than any trophy or award they ever hope to win.
We all have family or friends who have stopped going to Mass for various reasons. Some tell me it’s simply out of laziness; others tell me they quit due to the issues of sexual misconduct or the Church’s teachings on homosexuality or abortion; or some young people tell me they just doubt God’s existence due to so much hate and violence in the world. Regardless of their reason, I always feel sad that they are willing to walk away from the Eucharist, the Cup of Salvation Jesus gave to the world. What do we need to do better as a Church and in our homes to help people treasure and cling to Jesus’ Body and Blood even through the muck of life’s challenges? We need to show and teach our young people a love of the Eucharist that goes beyond whether the preaching is good, the music fits my style, or when the leaders of the Church make mistakes. The Cup of Salvation that God gives us in the Mass transports us into the very life of the Risen Jesus…and is exactly the saving help we need for our questions, sins, hurts and differences.
There are many aspects of the Eucharist that keep you and me coming back here to drink from Jesus’ Cup of Blood week after week; but I want to focus on one saving element of the Eucharist that can speak new hope to our world and draw more people to it -- and that is the Eucharist’s purpose of UNIFYING people together. With so much division and angst in our world that has many young people anxious about their future, perhaps if we active Catholics promoted the Eucharist as God’s primary tool for unity and peace, it could entice people to want this gift to help themselves be peacemakers in a time of hate and violence. Because deep down, everyone wants peace and accepting love; and if everyone knew that God actually gives the Eucharist as the main ingredient to make that happen…they would be begging to drink from this powerful Saving Cup! Might people be willing to put aside their differences with the Catholic Church if they really knew that above whatever issue they have…this Saving Cup and Body of Christ will fill them with joy and peace? Jesus gave us the Eucharist to UNIFY us to God and one another! Could we perhaps “re-market” the Eucharist as Jesus’ GIFT to our world for unity and peace? Could our unique belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist draw a new generation to WANT this miracle of God’s unifying Presence? It COULD…if people around us SEE that this Eucharist is making our lives look different…and they notice us speaking and acting in ways of love and forgiveness that they don’t see anywhere else!
Listen closely and notice in the prayers at Mass all the words that speak of peace, unity, forgiveness, and our connection to all people of the world. The Eucharist unifies us to God, to one another, to the baby in the womb, to the prisoner on death row, and to the 870 million people in the world starving at this very moment! This is a POWER that no other ‘cup’ can give!
To make this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ not pass us by as just another Sunday at church, let us each really pray here at Mass and during our week…about how the miracle of Jesus truly coming into us through the Eucharist should make us noticeably different in the way we strive for unity…and are more loving, forgiving, gentle, and peace-filled.
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Trinity Sunday
Fr. Jim Deiters
Growing up in a large family with eight kids meant there were always going to be issues when crowded around the table for dinner. There was usually a spilt glass of milk or an argument about who got the last of the mashed potatoes or an aggravating sibling. But those were always mended by the family prayer we had together, required at the beginning and end of every meal. The other thing that stands out for me about our family meals was that there were often other people who joined us. In addition to a neighborhood friend occasionally joining us, at one point, we had some cousins living with us due to their father’s death and for a couple years we had a young man with no family living with us in our small house. I don’t think my parents realized how formative that was for us children as we simply grew up always making more room at the table.
Since this feast of the Holy Trinity is quite challenging to theologically talk about in a short homily, I propose an image – that of a TABLE – with the Trinity sitting around it, inviting us to join them. Actually, I’m borrowing the idea from a famous icon painted in the 15th Century by the Russian artist Andrei Rublev, which is the most reproduced popular image of the Trinity that many have seen. Rublev paints the Three Persons of the Trinity around a table, with the three of them in conversation, but leaving the front side of the table open for the viewer to come join them. In this sense, the artist wants us to think of the Trinity as a circle, around a table, but the circle is not closed! The Three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit are at a table conversation and in a relationship…that is open and inviting all to join them. Can you see how powerful this image IS of God?
It helps us understand God…not up in the clouds and seeming unapproachable…but instead places the Trinity around a welcoming table, just as Jesus revealed God to be in the many meals that he hosted inviting everyone, especially the poor and those feeling cast aside. Think about this…in Jesus, our God revealed himself as “sitting around a table with us.” With God, all are invited IN – that is INTO the life of the Trinity! Through Jesus, we now know God as being liberal with his love and welcoming attitude. And those who dine at the ‘open circle’ of God’s table…become more open and welcoming like God’s very self! I think that some Christians still have a long way to go in believing and living out this kind of “open circle” attitude…which Jesus modeled and calls us to.
The image of the Trinity around a table also helps us understand God as a relationship – in mutuality and dialogue. The challenge of this however is that we humans love autonomy and self-identity…while GOD loves an ever-expanding community and drawing people together INTO the life of the Trinity. Again this challenges any Christians who have grown up in a certain environment or learned that God is something other than the God who is portrayed in the scriptures as… what I’m calling an ‘open-table’ Trinity. We hear about the relationship of the Trinity in our beautiful scripture from Proverbs today in which the Spirit is described as God’s “craftsman,” and “playing” before God…as together they find “delight in the human race.”
We also see this in our Gospel today when Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit as sent from him and the Father…to guide us to all truth…and give to us what belongs to the Father and Son. What do the Father and Son want to give us? LOVE. The Holy Spirit simply wants to pour love into your life at every moment. What is served at the table of the Trinity? Love, mercy, beauty, joy, selflessness, mutuality, and a welcoming attitude. These are shared with all who choose to join God in his banquet of Trinity Life! And since globally, every baby conceived in the womb is God’s child, the circle around the Divine table is never closed…as God keeps creating, inviting, and welcoming every person as his son or daughter…and our brother and sister. Can you believe it… that you and I are special guests at this table of the Trinity?!! Can you believe it… that in this Eucharist we then have the unconditionally loving, welcoming Trinity living within us?!!
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ASCENSION
Fr. Jim Deiters
At the beginning of the summer months I usually give an assignment to all of you to be sure and make time to get over to the Botanical Gardens and immerse yourself into beauty of God’s Creation. People from all over the world come to this treasure in our backyard since it is known as one of the best in the world. The magic and mystery of the Gardens is that they can transport one’s mind and heart away from the phone and worries for a few hours and take you into the wonders of God’s creativity to refresh one’s soul. Especially in our culture of so many fake things, we need to spend time in the beauty of nature to remind us of what’s real and true…and teach our children to see and notice God’s Presence all around us.
I like to think of the feast of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven as a reminder of what is real and true…about God…and our relationship with Jesus. Through the centuries, the significance of the Ascension has not gotten the attention it deserves to help us better understand God’s closeness to us. Especially when the scriptures describe Jesus’ Ascension as being “lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight,” if read too literally, it makes Jesus seem separated and far from us. But in reality, Jesus’ Ascension actually makes him more presentto us than ever. When Jesus ascends into heaven, we can’t think of it as a material, spatial lift-off, but rather he ascends into a new dimension of reality that is not bound by time and place. Risen and Ascended, Jesus is no longer limited to First Century Israel but is now very REAL and present in the very space sitting next to us in the pew…and in our own home when we might feel alone or discouraged. With Jesus ascending into thesphere of God’s timelessness with no spatial limitation, he is now as present to us as he was with those first disciples. It may not be around a fire with fish at the Sea of Galilee, but even more powerfully now has a closeness with us while at the same time he is at God’s Right Hand. Stay with me as we go a bit deeper…as to how ‘real’ this is for our faith.
In other words, the Ascension is the next main piece of the puzzle of what it means that God’s plan for heaven and earth to come together! The first piece of the puzzle was God’s creation of the world and women and men made in his Image; then God actually entered our sphere of time and space in Jesus’ Birth; then in his Death and Resurrection, Jesus changes death into a transition into eternal life with God; and now in his Ascension he takes all of humanity INTO heaven with him as the realm of God’s world is now intersected with ours. Christ now reigns as the true Universal Christ, beyond time and space, united with people of every generation and place and all of Creation!
All of this may sound like ‘high theology’ but this is the “real crux” of our faith and religion that changes how we think of Jesus. I say this especially to our youth and young adults - this Jesus we talk about is very REAL for us here today; he lived in human flesh at a certain time and place but now transcends those limitations and is right here among us in Word and Eucharist; and because he is ‘ascended’ beyond physical limitations, Jesus is also able to live right in the middle of the refugee camps in Syria…and is walking in the middle of the migrants traveling to find an Emmaus safe place to live; similarly, in his ascended realm, Jesus is able to pray for and be present with each woman considering an abortion right now… and at the same time is at God’s right hand interceding for the conversion of any world leaders who is stuck in narcissism.
Do you see why Jesus’ Ascension into the realm of heaven is such an important part of SAVING ALL of humanity? Applying all of this more personally, because St. Paul reminds us that our life is a PART OFChrist’s risen and ascended Body…, in the Communion of Saints, we are already a part of the heavenly sphere of God’s peace and light! As the Mass prayers for this feast remind us, our real homeland is in heaven. Therefore, Jesus’ Ascension confirms that our life is not our own to do with as we feel…but a beautiful part of Jesus’ Life…meant for a special purpose in God’s Kingdom!
How does all this happen? The key element that we hear in all of our scriptures today is the working of the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit unites our life to Jesus. Listen again to these powerful phrases that are in our readings that help us see our life differently, in a very real way connected with God:
“You are baptized with the Holy Spirit…”
“You are clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit…”
“My Spirit gives you wisdom and knowledge…”
I need you to be “my witness…”
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Fr. Jim Deiters
Recently in the newspaper I read that one of the big tech companies is developing a device that people can wear to detect their emotions. As if friends, coworkers, and family can’t tell when our mood changes, the device tracks one’s tone of voice to supposedly let you know what you are feeling and improve relationship interactions. Way before such sci-fi ideas become reality, most of us would be happy to be assigned or hired as the ‘device’ that lets our mother, friend or spouse know what emotional state they are in. But I’m also wondering if the device will be more expensive for use by teenagers, whose emotions can sometimes change six times in an hour!
Two emotions Jesus knew that we humans struggle with the most are anxiety and fear. Anxiety is when we are facing unknown situations or threats; while fear is experienced when we know a danger is near. Jesus himself experienced fear and anxiety that we know about from the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed for his Father to help him when he was feeling such despair over what was about to happen. Jesus certainly saw anxiety and fear in the lives of many people who came to him seeking help or healing. So, in the Gospel we just heard, out of all the things Jesus could have focused on in his final words to the disciples, the prayer chooses for them is to not be afraid and to be at PEACE. Almost every time he appeared to the disciples after his Resurrection, the very first word out of his mouth is “Peace.”
Interestingly, this section of John’s Gospel we read today, takes place at the Last Supper when Jesus gives this long sort of “farewell address” to his friends before he is arrested. In the midst of his own emotions about what is going to happen, he selflessly assures them that he will send the Holy Spirit to bring God’s peace to their own troubled hearts. He knows that his followers, as faithful as they may be, will still experience anxiety and fear at certain times of life’s uncertainties. But Jesus’ Spirit of Peace, that he wants to breathe into us, can help us hold on to faith and trust in God even through those frightening times.
In this sense, the Holy Spirit can be considered more like a verb than a noun. God does not merely sit back and observe what’s going on in the world. God is both Creator and Participant in the ongoing process of the universe and our personal life. When God sees an upset or fear coming upon us, Jesus sends his Spirit of Peace to calm our troubled hearts. The challenge for us is to be mindfully aware of and invite the Spirit’s Peace INTO the very place in our body that is anxious or afraid. God’s gift of peace is exactly what our mind, heart, and body needs!
The goal of the spiritual life is to allow the Spirit of Christ to influence all parts of our life - our prayer, our emotions, as well as acts of service for others. Our role in this Spirit-Movement-Process is to provide the spaceor environment in our life, like an open heart, to enable us to live in tune with Christ’s Spirit of peace.
God’s Spirit of Peace is always present and available to us. Jesus himself calls the Holy Spirit our “Advocate,” meaning our helper who pleads our cause with God. Like a tuning fork for instruments, or an open window for the wind’s breeze, we have to dispose our self in prayer and meditation to sort of ‘meld into’the free-flowing Spirit of God that is simply waiting to be invited into whatever place is restless and needing God’s peace. When we are too scattered or busy to meditate and be quietly present to the Spirit, God cannot force his love and peace upon us; God patiently waits for us to say, “Come Holy Spirit, breathe into me your peace…”
I’m ending my reflection early to give us time to simply practice this…quietly disposing our self to the Presence of the Spirit’s Peace. I invite you to close your eyes for a minute and think about that place in your mind, heart, or body that is anxious or afraid or stuck in sin; now invite the Holy Spirit of Peace to come insideand enter into that place that God wants to heal and dissolve into his love and peace.
"Come Spirit of God’s Peace…and make your dwelling within us.”
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Fr. Jim Deiters
Last week, the world lost an amazing person when Jean Vanier died. Jean Vanier, if you aren’t familiar with him, was a single Catholic Canadian man, and founder of L’Arche community that cares for people with severe disabilities. He founded the first L’Arche home in a small village in France after he had this conversion experience when visiting an asylum for the mentally disabled. When he was there, one of the residents with a severe disability approached and asked him, “Will you be my friend?” He wanted to create a place with a home environment where the disabled are living with the caregivers in a playful and prayerful setting. Today there are more than 150 L’Arche communities in 38 countries. He named it L’Arche after Noah’s Ark, to have an image of people living together in hope, regardless of ability. In one of his books with the great title, "Becoming Human," Jean Vanier writes about how people with disabilities have so much to teach us about simply being human, since they have no need for pretentiousness or trying to impress people. He wrote about how much the rest of us NEED those with disabilities to become holier since they give us the opportunity to love the marginalized and helpless of this world as Jesus did and told us to do.
As we continue in the Easter Season reading from the Book of Revelation, we have this beautiful passage that makes me think of what L’Arche communities do in creating a new place for the marginalized...as we hear God say those encouraging words, "see, I make all things new for you." This section from Revelation is often read at funerals, but it also gives us a powerful Easter image of a “new heaven and new earth” which is exactly what we believe happened through the Resurrection of Jesus. In the author’s vision of a “new Jerusalem,” which is us the Church, we are to make “all things new” in how we treat one another. The author calls us to see life differently, from an Easter paradigm, when we hear God say “My dwelling is with the human race.” God now resides IN each person God created.
When you believe that Jesus really did rise from the dead, it changes our view of suffering... into a path to something new! This ‘new paradigm’ of the “new heaven and new earth” allows us to participate in God’s plan for the Garden of Eden to be recreated....where justice is restored, and all of humanity is meant to live in peace...with renewed reverence for all of God’s Creation.
People who don’t see themselves and others as part of Jesus Resurrected “new earth” way of living…usuallygive up hope in people’s inner goodness...and exclude people because they don't fit a certain mold. They think only of themselves and can’t see the bigger picture of God’s vision for our world...and thus are not willing to do the hard work of changing unjust systems. The problem we Christians face is that much of what we see in the media and movies…rarely give us any hopeful images that God IS MAKING all things new!
Our world has too few visionary leaders who truly believe in this Resurrection Truth that in God’s ‘new world order’ of things, every person is a son or daughter of God and is a sister or brother to you and me. Fortunately, visionaries like Jean Vanier and Pope Francis are modeling for the rest of us how to get down on our knees to humbly wash feet and speak out for those who are least valued in our society. We so need the Holy Spirit tomotivate more of us to be co-creators with God in forming new possibilities of light and hope in a world of so much darkness.
To be a baptized person… who shares in Jesus Resurrected life, we have to choose every day to SEE the world as already re-created in God’s Light. That means being actively engaged with God in helping create in our own times some kind of new heaven and new earth, that will especially help those who suffer or are looked down upon by our culture. People of the Resurrection never give up hope in people’s goodness… and believing that the world can be a better place if we work with God in making that happen. With Jean Vanier’s example, we each have to find our own way of reaching out and caring for people in need…as they help US become more human and holy.
We come to Jesus in the Eucharist, admitting that we all have some form of disability, addiction, or sickness. Here, God says to us our world, “Behold, I am making all things new” for you.
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Fr. Jim Deiters
In 2003 I was privileged to be on sabbatical in Rome for a few months that included participating in the Beatification ceremony for Mother Theresa who was later declared a saint in 2016. For Mass that day, I was honored to be a minister of Holy Communion f and was escorted to one of the furthest sections in St. Peter Square filled with over 100,000 people. I was assigned to stand in front of a barricade where there was no Communion line, but simply a crowd of about 5000 people in my section pushing forward in hopes of receiving the Body of Christ. The problem is that I had only a couple hundred hosts. It was a very emotional, holy moment for me as hands and faces of every color, age, and hunger were reaching out to me sort of begging to receive the Eucharist. In such a brief moment before my eyes was the Universal Church, as people from every continent of the world gathered to honor a single woman who was mother to millions; all of us were united in our hunger for God in the Eucharist to help us see like Mother Theresa, with eyes of love for every single person, regardless of skin color, religion, gender, or nationality.
Mother Theresa was graced with many special gifts, including a voice and ears like our Good Shepherd Jesus. She had an ability to speak softly to the deaf homeless… as well as use her hammering voice of justice to Heads of State; she could hear every cry by God’s sheep outcast by society…and gather into her arms every abandoned lamb whose stench of poverty was too much for others. Jesus sent her into this world as a Christ-like Shepherd for our own times…and we must never forsake her vision for a Church that keeps service of the poor, the abandoned, the refugee, a baby in the womb, and homeless migrant as our main priorities…as Jesus taught us.
I couldn’t get Mother Theresa’s example out of my head as I was reflecting on this Sunday’s scriptures that highlight the universality of the Body of Christ. Especially in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles during this Easter Season, we are learning about how the Early Christians spent their lives bringing the message of Jesus’ love and mercy way beyond their comfort zone. They heard Jesus’ command to take Christianity to “all nations” very seriously and St. Paul and the other Apostles traveled to such far places now known as Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Iraq, India, Spain, Turkey, Greece, and others. It was a time when the Church’s ‘skin’ was more brown, black, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern. The Early Christian’s genius was to use the ancient roads built by the Persians and Romans and go into the larger cities of the surrounding countries and start helping the poor and teaching them about this person Jesus who is Risen from the Dead andincludes them in God’s Kingdom! In the midst of terrible persecutions, the Church thrived…as people then (and NOW!) longed to hear about a God that loves and includes them no matter how awful the rulers of the day say otherwise!
It is amazing how the Apostles from farm-country Galilee walked to such places as Alexandria in North Africa and Antioch in Syria, maybe comparable in glitz as a place like Dubai today, and spoke boldly about God’s love and mercy and justice that won over huge numbers of people. It is a chapter in our rich Catholic historythat these Easter Scriptures beckon us to dust off, recall, and revive, as we must be the new generation to make these scriptures REAL for the needs of people today. Similar to last week, the Book of Revelation give us again a beautiful image of heaven as a time and place when people of “every nation, race, and language” will gather around the Lamb and Good Shepherd Jesus in praise together. We hear that heaven rewards those who are faithful to Jesus and do the hard work of the Gospel. The author assures us that in heaven there will be no more suffering or pain…and “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
We know too well that there is tremendous suffering in our world; beyond our aches and pains of health issues, there is immense suffering in the lives of those who have no home, no food, refugee orphans without parents, and other sufferings beyond our imagining. We so need the prayers and help of the saints like Paul, Barnabas, and Mother Theresa, to spark new flames of the Holy Spirit within us Christians here today. We must ask the Holy Spirit to help us step out of our comfort zone and be the ongoing voice of Jesus our Shepherd, especially reaching out to those who feel like lost sheep with no hope. We have to retrain our own ears to better listen to all the diverse sheep in God’s kingdom. If we are to model Jesus’ voice for all people of the world, we have to learn a new language that is as inclusive and welcoming as Jesus is. In God’s pasture, there is no place for voices of exclusion, hate, or separating people into categories.
As our Good Shepherd called each of us sinners to be here today and receive his healing mercy, so too must we become, through this Holy Eucharist, active agents of his love, especially to those who do not know or think that Jesus sees them as one of his beautiful sheep.