Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 31, 2020: The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness...

The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness…

What can the Spirit of God accomplish in us?

  In the Old Testament, the people of God are bound to God in covenant through the spirit of God that comes upon them; to break covenant is a sign of self-focus, an indication of a failure to give room to the spirit of God working within them.  We see this failure to recognize a need for God’s spirit at work in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, when the people look to the work of their own hands as sufficient to greatness; in Exodus, on the other hand, the people are bound to God and God to God’s people through the work of God’s spirit in covenant, visible to them in the form of peals of thunder and lightening, a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast .  The dry bones of Ezekiel are another example of a people dead to God through sin, but when God breathes spirit into them, they are lifted to new life.  God’s ability to transform us through God’s spirit is evident in Joel as well, when God says, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and all people with thereby coming to unity in God.  Lord, send out your spirit, and renew the face of the earth, we sing in Psalm 104 – this is God’s action in our lives, time and time again, from the beginning of time.

  Jesus is clear to his disciples on this point:  Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me, he tells the crowd at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles in John’s Gospel.  He is speaking in reference to the Spirit that we will receive once he has died and risen, a Spirit that will flow through us and from us to other.  That Spirit is the breath Jesus breathes upon the apostles in the upper room in John as well:  Receive the Holy Spirit, he tells them, receive, that is, the ability to do what I am sending you to do, to open yourselves to the Spirit in your life so you can understand those who need to be forgiven and forgive them.  It is the same Spirit that comes like a strong driving wind upon the disciples at the time for Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles – the tongues as of fire that come to rest upon them offer them enlightenment, a light they did not have previously, a kind of interior vision.  Henceforth, as Paul tells the Corinthians, all of our different gifts are given to us by the same Spirit, even our ability to proclaim Jesus as Lord.  It is the Spirit that makes it possible to come together in one Body, coming to the aid of our weakness as Paul notes in the Letter to the Romans, drawing us closer, ever closer to God, our faithful guide to perfect Love. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordcloud.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 9, 2019: We were all given to drink of one Spirit...

We were all given to drink of one Spirit…

How does the Spirit dwelling within us transform our world?

  Left to themselves, humans tend toward self-centeredness.  We read in the Book of Genesis the story of Babel, in which the people build an enormous ziggurat, not to deepen their relationship with God but to make a name for themselves.  The end result?  God scatters them over all the earth, and any hope for union is lost. 

  Paul recognizes the dangers of self-centeredness in his epistles to the Corinthians and to the Romans when he notes that if we remain in the flesh, self-centered, self-focused, our only concern is what we can accomplish ourselves, and we will remain disconnected, isolated, separate, without anything larger that connects us.  But if we drink of the Holy Spirit, and allow our existence to be defined in terms of God rather than of ourselves, then it is possible for love to be eternal.  For no one can say, Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.  Paul also notes that we know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now – we long for forgiveness, long for redemption, long for union, but have not yet found them, and so we wait for adoption.  But the Spirit allows us to transcend our own self-centeredness when it intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings and enables an ever more full relationship, and union, with God.

  All of this is only possible because Jesus, by his death and resurrection, promised to create an open passage between God and us, such that, as he says in John’s Gospel, rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes.  This is the work of the Spirit that those who come to believe in him were to receive at Pentecost and beyond.  Later in this same Gospel, Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room to transfer his mission to them:  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.  Receive the Holy Spirit.  The disciples are thus tasked with opening the way of salvation to all by going out and loving their world through a love facilitated by the Advocate, the Spirit.  It is the Spirit that will allow that love to flow from them, that they might renew the face of the earth (Psalm 104), fostering union among all peoples.  The Pentecost story as told in the Acts of the Apostles is different, but with the same ultimate result:  the apostles are filled with the Holy Spirit, which will dwell in them and flow from them as they proclaim the mighty acts of God.

  We are called to no less!  May we too be filled with the Holy Spirit every single day, that we might proclaim God’s manifold works and bring his forgiveness to all, fostering union as God’s love flows from us to the world.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 13, 2019: He saved us through the bath of rebirth...

He saved us through the bath of rebirth…

Why are Christians baptized?

  The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls baptism the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit.  It is through baptism that we enter into the Word and become members of the Body of Christ, restored to full relationship with God as original sin is eradicated.  It is a profound transformation of our very being, made possible because God wants more than anything to restore us to covenant relationship.

  In the time of the exile in Babylon, the prophet Isaiah gives comfort to the people of Israel, promising them that slavery will come to an end, and that their salvation will be a free gift from God, given out of God’s profound love for them.  Their guilt will be expiated.  They will be restored to relationship as a people made new, through the transformative and manifold works of God, who sends forth his spirit to renew the face of the earth, as Psalm 104 tells us.

  Jesus comes to make people new in a different way through baptism.  In Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist tells the people that one mightier than John himself is coming, who will baptize the people with fire and the Holy Spirit.  This baptism calls for a radical transformation in response to those questions the people are asking in their hearts; Jesus invites them to a conscious acceptance of God’s presence in their lives, of God’s grace within them, and joins them in a celebration of that grace through his own baptism by John.  This is why we are all baptized into the Body of Christ:  to become a mutually supportive community of faith.  Paul’s Letter to Titus, his co-worker in Crete, reminds Titus that Jesus’ coming is meant to train us to live differently, to live transformed, to live for the sake of community, of other.  How?  By acting with kindness and generous love, devoutly eager to do what is good.  That way of life, the essence of Christianity itself, is meant to inform everything we do, drawing us into the heart of God.  This is the life of the Spirit of which the Catechism speaks, a life built upon constant renewal and awareness of God’s presence with us here and now. 

  Finally, we are baptized into nothing short of hope – hope for the kingdom here on earth, hope for ongoing relationship with God, hope for an eternal dwelling, perfect union with the Lord, in heaven.  Comfort, give comfort to my people, God tells Isaiah.  Jesus is the ultimate comfort, our shepherd who brings us a bath of rebirth, the Lord who is our gateway into life in the Spirit, who is our salvation.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 20, 2018: Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me...

Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me…

Does God’s love flow from within you?

   At the time of the construction of what we call the tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis, the people were too thrilled by their own ingenuity in brick-laying to be paying much attention to God, and the resulting confusion of their languages is a sign of the barrier they have erected between themselves and the Lord.  No love flows from them, only arrogance, as they feed their own egos. That barrier will be eliminated with the coming of Jesus, who, in John’s Gospel, invites all to come to me and drink, that Jesus’ love will flow from within him who believes.  In the words of Psalm 104, Jesus, sending his Spirit, will renew the face of the earth.  Only then can the Spirit come to the aid of our weakness, as Paul tells the Romans, opening us, breaking down any boundary or barrier we have created, that we might be united through prayer to God, and through our actions, to other.

   John’s Gospel also tells us that, after his resurrection, Jesus breathes on his disciples, filling them with his Spirit, so that the Spirit of truth will guide them to all truth, that they might testify to his life, death and rising.  The Spirit will indeed fill the disciples in Luke’s account of the Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, reversing the confusion of Babel by the creative act of God’s Spirit, in the form of breath and wind.  It is a moment of profound transformation wherein the Spirit enters the disciples and then flows through them, is released by them, that they might proclaim the Good News.  As Paul tells the Corinthians, each may be given a different kind of spiritual gift, but we are all given to drink of one Spirit, that we might, as the Letter to the Galatians notes, know the fruit of the Spirit, that is, love, joy, peace, and more. And that love and joy and peace must flow from us to the world.

   We all thrist for depth, for love as God knows it.  To believe in Jesus is to come to him, so that that which you seek will flow from within you.  As we participate profoundly in the love of God, a life flows from us into the lives of others, and back into us.  The more we are connected, the more we recognize what flows between us, connecting us.  So let us, on this Feast of Pentecost, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and allow that Spirit to flow like a river from us, connecting us, one and all, in the love of God.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  http://www.wordle.net