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Daily Scripture

+ 7th Week of Easter

We are to be consecrated in truth.

Readings: Acts 20:28-38 Psalm 88:29-30, 33-36 John 17:11b-19

Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they may also be consecrated in truth. [John 17:18-19]

Read the Gospel very slowly and if possible, out loud and if necessary, three times! Although John’s literary style is quite complex, the farewell prayer of Jesus is as powerful as is Paul’s farewell message in Acts.

It is not likely that these passages are the actual words of Paul and Jesus. They are compositions that Luke and John or whoever wrote in their name and are based on the oral tradition of the sayings of Jesus and the preaching of Paul. They were written in the style of farewell addresses of prominent leaders of their times in order to win the attention of early believers to whom the message of truth was entrusted.

The ‘truth’ that is being proclaimed is not from a catechism nor is it a defined doctrine or dogma. It is the core truth about the God who spoke through the prophets and then through Jesus about the universality of God’s love.

During this time of immediate preparation for Pentecost, we are invited to think about our own responsibility to pass on the ‘truth’ of God’s goodness entrusted to us in Christ and how we are to live that truth in our daily lives, each in our own unique way. No one of us can do this alone and so we much join hands literally and figuratively within the community of believers everywhere.

To live the ‘truth’ is to live in the Spirit of Jesus Christ the fruits of which are charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, moderation, self-control, reverence, etc. I’m sure you memorized these ‘fruits of the Holy Spirit.’

These are the true ‘marks’ of our authenticity as believers.

Second Sunday in Advent 'B'

Saturday December 3, 2005

Always On the Edge of War or Peace

It was December 10th, 1965 in East Jerusalem, about two years before the six day war between Israel and Jordan. Taking a Christmas break from graduate studies in Rome, we were fully engaged in a very special pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Jerusalem was a divided city—the east belonging to Jordan, the west to Israel. We had landed in Amman, Jordan four days earlier and had traveled to all the holy places including Bethlehem, Nablus, and Jericho through what is now called the “west bank”. Traveling across the border from Israel to Jordan was not permitted. Crossing from Jordan into Israel required special visas and several security checks.

Soon it was time to cross “no man’s land,” a field of barbed wire and mines between the two disparate sections of Jerusalem. Cameras in view were confiscated. We could see guns perched through narrow windows atop thin towers with soldiers taking aim in case any traveler turn out to be an unwelcome intruder. It was my first experience in the heart of a cold war zone. I dropped my breviary accidentally along the path leading to the checkpoint pass and picked it up with great caution lest someone think I was chancing a false move. Dried mud is still visible on the edges of the pages. In hindsight, it was a pretty scary experience. Young people have more courage than common sense.

This was just a taste of the enmity that has divided Jews and Arabs for centuries, a forcast of the divisions that still exist throughout the Middle East and in the world at large between people of different ethnic origins. As we walked along the route of Jesus’ journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem, I thought how true that axiom: “ The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

But despite these divisions and the bitterness that endures between estranged governments, and which has continued through the centuries among many nations, there have always been people at the ‘lowest’ ranks of society, among the ‘little people’ – among you and me, yearning for concord, giving voice to a latent hope that one day peace will reign.

I reckon the callousness of the human heart is more difficult to overcome than the barbed wire and field mines that divide nations. Do not killing fields and ethnic cleansing camps begin with the self-hatred that blinds both terrorists and even righteous warriors to God’s indiscriminate acceptance and love of all people.

St. Mark places our second Advent preacher, John the Baptist, in an historical context in which worldly powers claim the absolute will to power. Returning from war, ancient ‘Caesars’ and emperors were acclaimed “Lord and savior!” But Mark wants us to name Jesus as Lord and Savior as he appeared in human form, and as he merged in the early Church and as he has appeared through the centuries in the continuing flow of divine love in human form wherever believers recognize God as the ground of their being.

There is comfort in the proclamation of the Advent prophets and preahcers as there is comfort in the heart of Christians who allow themselves to become powerless in the face of divine love but empowered to rise above human differences, putting on the compassion of Christ.

To “prepare the way of the Lord” is to challenge governments and corporations to integrity in the face of excessive politicizing, exploitation, deceit and a lack of transparency.

To “prepare the way of the Lord” is to overcome the bias and bigotry that infects even the human dimension of the Church with its latent clericalism and sexism to say nothing of its abuse of power. Our Church needs to hear from and listen to the ‘little people’ like you as me.

“In Christ there is no east or west, no difference between slave or free person; between Jew or Greek; between male or female, between gay or straight, because all have become one in him who has saved us.”

Perhaps the greatest challenge that we face as Christians is not so much what we say and do, but the manner in which we speak and act. It’s not that our case and cause have no merit in themselves but that we can easily slip into a script that belies what we believe that puts other people down rather than one that lifts them up. To challenge with love is much more difficult than fighting with weapons of mass destruction emanating from the human tongue.

John paved the way for Jesus. Our shepherds need to defer to Christ the true Shepherd.

And so let us pray:

Lord,
help us to accept this season of Advent
not as an opportunity to condemn the secular
but to consecrate the human.

There are so many hurting hearts
waiting for someone to fill the void and heal the emptiness
that comes from our hunger and our anger

Your son took on human flesh in Jesus
so that we might know the power of divine love
in human form.

Open our hearts to the grace of this season of giving,
may we find joy in knowing that our gift of self to those in need
will be our greatest blessing
when you come again in glory.

This is our Advent prayer but Lord,
may our concern for all our sisters and brothers
always be a reflection of your incarnate love
for all humanity.

Let God’s people say, “Amen!”