Experiencing God 217 The Love That Makes Us Whole

To the one who returned with gratitude, Jesus said: "Stand up and go, your faith has made you well."

Gospel of Luke

Recently, the Archbishop met with the Deacons, Candidates, and their wives to discuss his third pastoral priority for the "year of faith".  This priority has to do with the New Evangelization as it relates to Christian Marriage and Family.  

Before he began any discussion on marriage and family, he spoke to us at length on faith.  What is faith, he asked.  Then he went on to explain that faith is a response from the heart.  It is an expression of gratitude, an expression of amazement -- an amazement at the unconditional love offered us by God through our connection with the person of Christ.  Through faith, we have the experience of being loved because we are accepted, we are forgiven.  He said that with faith, there is a "wow" factor which is really one of awe and amazement.  With God, everything changes for us.  Faith changes how we treat others.  It changes how we deal with the circumstances of our lives.  It changes who we are.  It shifts our priorities as to what is important.  With God, everything changes.

What is gratitude?  The ordinary definition is a feeling of appreciation and thankfulness.  It is something we normally feel when someone does something good for us, or it can be a general feeling that we have about life in general.  

In the Gospel quote above, Jesus, in His travels, has encountered ten lepers.  We are told that this group is made up of both Jews and Samaritans.  At a respectable distance away, the ten lepers begin to cry out:  "Jesus, master!  Have mercy on us!"  And Jesus sees them, and responds with compassion as to their plight.  He tells them to go show themselves to the priest.  

On their way to see the priest, they all discover that they are healed of their disease. As the story goes, only one returns to give thanks and praise for the healing.  And we hear that the one who returned is a Samaritan.  It was not the ones who were steeped in their Jewish faith tradition who returned, but the one who would be considered by the people of his day as an outsider.  

What did this one person have that the others seemed to lack.  I think we would all agree that he possessed the gift of gratitude, an appreciation and love for God's goodness to him.  He had a quality of the heart that resulted in gratitude and praise.  To this one who returned with gratitude, Jesus said:  "Stand up and go, your faith has made you well."

As the story goes, the faith of all the lepers led to a physical healing, but to the one with gratitude in his heart, this healing brought salvation through wholeness and a proper relationship with God.  

So what do we have to learn from this?  

To practice one's faith is a good thing.  We need to know things like our creed, our catechism, the teachings of the church, the rules.  We cannot discount the importance of these things.  However, it is equally as important and maybe even more important to have gratitude as the disposition of our heart.  Are you filled with gratitude for God's abundant love for you?  Are you overflowing with an appreciation and thankfulness for the abundance of God's blessings poured into your life; an abundance, though undeserved, is freely given?  Is your heart transformed by Jesus' personal love for you that finds its expression in many thousands of different ways each day?  Does your gratitude overflow to others that you encounter in your daily walk?

St Paul says to Titus:  "When the kindness and love of God for us was revealed, it was not because he was concerned with any righteous actions we might have done.  It was for no reason except His own compassion that He saves us and makes us whole.  

Experiencing God 216 The Truth That Makes Us Free

"If you make my word your home, you will indeed be my disciples, and you will learn the truth, and the truth will make you free."
Gospel of Luke

The "word", which is really Christ Himself, must be incorporated within our very selves.  It has to be more than an intellectual understanding.  We must be comfortable with living out that word in our day to day lives.  And when the "word" is deeply planted in our being, then as Christ promised, the truth will be revealed to us, a truth that results in our freedom.  This is not a future freedom.  It is a freedom in the here and now. 

So what is this freedom?

On my last ten or so retreats, I have followed Fr. George Maloney's retreat book called "Alone with the Alone". The forth day of this eight day retreat experience is called: "Jesus, the freest of all persons".  It starts out with the following:

"The work of Jesus is to bring us into greater and greater freedom as children of God.  Jesus still lives among us, touching us, freeing us by the love that He pours into our hearts through the Spirit.  He seeks to free us from our unreal selves by allowing us to know our real selves in loving relationship to Him and the Father." 

In our culture, false notions of truth and freedom are often presented to us.  In our culture, truth is often considered as something relative to the criteria that we may personally choose, and freedom has to do with doing whatever we please, regardless of what God or others may think.  

When we examine these false notions of truth and freedom, we discover that instead of being liberated, they become the opposite; they become enslaving.  There are probably many reasons for this, but the most obvious reason is that these false notions cause a separateness between our "true self" and the "self" we perceive ourselves to be.  Our interior "true self" begins to battle with the "self" we perceive ourselves to be which become reflected in our distorted exterior behavior.  

All of us have been made in the image and likeness of God.  It was St. Irenaeus who said: "The glory of God is a person, fully human and fully alive."  Jesus lived more fully human and alive than any other human person because in every situation, in every human encounter, He lived from His "true self". Jesus adapts wonderfully to each situation in life because He seeks always the loving presence of His Father in every event.  The Father is His guide and master, and Jesus seeks only to act and react insofar as he can glorify the Father. He is freed from self-absorption as He responds with the fullness of His Being to living each moment in accordance to that disposition that flowed from His "true self".  

Jesus proclaims:  "I do nothing of myself; what the Father has taught me is what I preach.  He who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself.  For I always do what pleases Him."  

This is why Jesus can say to the Pharisees:  "If you reject me, then you reject also the one who sent me."  

True freedom can never be found in doing what we please, when we please.  True freedom is found where Jesus found it: That is when we see ourselves and each of our life's encounters as being in living relationship and harmony the Father. 

Experiencing God 215 Transformed By Love

"I love because God loves me first."
Letter of John

I recall quite vividly an elderly lady whose name was Margaret.  She use to sit in the very front row of our church.  Often times when I greeted Margaret, she would tell me just how much she loved God.  Her love for God and God's love for her was something that was very real to her.  And often times, when she spoke to others, she would remark how special they were in God's eyes.  It was as if what she experienced personally in her own life was reflected in what she saw in others.

In the first letter of John, there is a powerful line full of meaning.  It reads: "I love because God loves me first."  This line has a particular significance to me because, until that moment I personally experienced God's love in a deep and personal way, I don't think I knew much about what love was.  But the moment that God's love broke into my life as an experienced reality, my life changed, and it continues to change as this realization deepens.  Change in what way?  My life changed in how I saw the exterior world.  The exterior world now seemed to be a reflection of what I was experiencing interiorly.  When I feel loved, the world seems to be a much more loving place. 

Two things are clearly evident from the Gospels:
1.  God's love for us extends to the point of Christ's willingness to die for us.  I wonder how much we fully experience the extent of this love.  And I wonder what our lives would be like if we did.  This love, when realized, has the ability to transform.
2.  Unfortunately, the Gospels also reveal that people generally prefer the darkness to the light.  They continue to live in and spread darkness.  I'm not sure if "prefer" is the right word.  Maybe there are those who just seem to prefer darkness because they have not yet experienced that deep penetrating encounter with the light, the light that can cut through all hardness of heart, and change one in an instant.  We cannot underestimate the power of Grace to work in the most unexpected places. and at the most unexpected times.  

Jesus tells Nicodemus:  "You cannot see God's Kingdom unless you are born from above, but the Spirit is like the wind; it blows where ever it pleases."  Our task is only to be a witness to the light, to be witness to God's love with its power to enlighten and change.  

Like my friend Margaret, are we not to reflect to the exterior world that which we experience interiorly?  What is that?  That through Christ, through this incredible mystery of His love for us, we are being saved, made whole. "We love because God loves us first."

Experiencing God 214 What Truly Is The Sign Of Jonah

"The only sign that will be given is the sign of Jonah."
Gospel of Luke

Usually when a new person begins to gain some attention on the world stage, whether it be a politician, a religious leader, or a business person, people become curious.  We ask; Who is this person? Is what they are saying really true?  Should we take this person seriously?  Should we respond to what they say?

Jesus has become such a person among the people of Israel.

In the gospel reading, Jesus is being challenged by the legal experts of the day to prove His credentials. Is He the anointed one?  "If you are who you say, show us a sign"  Jesus responds with the following two stories from the Hebrew Scriptures.

When rumors of Solomon's wisdom and wealth began to circulate around the world during his reign, the queen of Sheba came to investigate, to find out if what she had heard was true.  She saw, listened, and responded.  She changed

When Jonah appeared in Nineveh, that great pagan city outside the boundaries of Israel, the people of that city became very curious about this man and his message --"in forty days, unless you repent, you will be destroyed."  Would we also not pay attention if someone were to arrive with a message such as that.   Jonah's message was that unless the people listened and changed, the consequences would be dire for them.  They saw, listened and responded to his request.  

In the above gospel quote, Jesus is recalling these two past incidents as He responds to the demands that were imposed on Him by the people around Him: "If you are who you say you are, show us a sign.  Prove it."  Many people, particularly the religious leaders, were pressing Jesus to give them proof of His claims.  They were not content with what they saw and heard; they insisted on further signs.  They wanted more.  Probably in truth, they had already decided to reject Him and His message in their hearts, and only wanted to discredit Him.  

Jesus' message to them is really His same message to us today.  "The only sign that will be given to you is the sign of Jonah". The message of truth, the message of freedom from slavery from sin and hurtful desires is all out there now.  It requires only your response.  That response is to change. When you do, then God's Kingdom will be made visible to you.  What you are looking for is already evident, but your heart must first be open to receive it.  I can't force you to listen.  

This is an important lesson for us as we proceed with the New Evangelization initiatives that are so common today.  The purpose of these initiatives, of course, is to move towards meaningful ways to convey the message of Christ to those who are currently disengaged from faith and who have little or no  interest in faith practice. We cannot impose our views on others.  We cannot impose our rules and the message of the gospel on anyone whose heart is not open to listen and receive it.  It just does not work that way.  But we can and must propose the message of Christ in a way that hearts will be softened, that change will begin to take place.  It is then that the true message of Christ will break through, and the Kingdom of God will be revealed.   

The sign of Jonah that Jesus speaks about is the sign of seeing, listening, discerning, and responding by way of a change of heart.  

Our task is to propose the Good News of the Gospel to all who will listen, and for those who listen, engage them in meaningful ways to develop their faith.

Experiencing God 213 What is Christian Servanthood

Anyone who wants to be great among you must be your servant
Gospel of Matthew

This theme in Matthew's gospel is one that continuously runs through all four gospels.  It's a theme that the disciples had a very hard time to understand and implement in their lives.  It is also a theme that each one of us struggle with daily because it runs counter to our normal way of thinking and behaving.  It runs counter to the naturally born impulse that exists at the base of our human experience.  That impulse is to look after "self" first, and then consider others.  This impulse is reflected in our laws, in the ethics of our work places, in our culture.  Yet, it is not the stuff on which the Kingdom of God is built.

In Philippines, we read:  "Let each of you look not to your own interest, but to the interest of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ, who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave."

In the above gospel, Jesus first announces His ultimate act of self-emptying; dying on the cross; not a symbolic act of surrendering self like washing feet, but the real concrete action that would be impossible to turn back from or reverse.  To die for another requires a complete act of faith in God's underlying plan for humanity.

As any good mother would do, James and John's  mother steps forth with a request.  "Will you provide for my sons a special place of position in this Kingdom of yours -- one at your left and one at your right."  Would we want any less for our children?  But it shows that they do not understand.  Jesus is very kind in His response.  "What you ask for I cannot give!  Can they drink the cup that I am going to drink?  

Is He not speaking of His self-emptying?  Is He not speaking about moving beyond the flesh of the ego whose first concern is "self" and all that it implies?  

Putting oneself first is the natural response of the ego, but the Kingdom can only be discovered as we learn to pass by its demands to discover the domain that lies beyond it.  That domain is the Kingdom where God dwells.  

Jesus' response: "Anyone who wants to be the first among you, must be slave."  In other words, look not to your own interest but to the interest of others.  Empty yourself of "self".  Do that, be that, and the Kingdom of God is yours.

Perhaps another way of putting it is that this illusionary self, the ego self, that projects itself onto the world with its sense of importance and ambition blinds us to the true reality of God's Kingdom living and present among us, within us.  Deal with that and the Kingdom of God is yours.  

We can't be hard on the disciples without being hard on ourselves because we all suffer from the same inner impulse, but we can overcome this tendency by imitating Christ - "I have come, not to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many."

Experiencing God 212 Our Need to Wait

" I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now"
Gospel of Matthew

This is a very curious remark that Jesus said to His apostles in the upper room.  What does it mean?  Could it mean that the apostles have been overloaded with information and they cannot absorb anything else.  Could it mean that that if Jesus spoke in greater depth, it would just go over the apostles' heads. 

I think the true meaning of what Jesus is saying can be found in the statement that follows: "When the Spirit of truth comes, He will lead you to the complete truth."  In other words, before you can completely understand what I am all about, before you can attain that wisdom that comes from God, certain events must take place.  And what has to happen is Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension to the Father. It is only after these events that the Holy Spirit will come to open their minds as to the truth of what Jesus is all about.  In the meantime, they just have to wait.  

What is true for the apostles is also true for us.  We must wait on the Spirit. We are at an advantage over the apostles because we live in post resurrection times.  We have the knowledge and understanding all these events leading up to the ascension and the formation of the early Christian church, but in many instances, we still have to wait.  

I recall a time in my mid twenties after my baptism when I was really struggling with my faith. At that time, I could say that I knew Jesus was a person of history, and I believed He was God's son, yet a personal experience of Jesus in my life was absent.  And because Jesus was not a part of my experience, there certainly was an absence of what my faith was all about.  It was only after a time of waiting, a time of struggle, that I was able to personally surrender my life to the Lord,  It was then that I experienced in a real way this encounter with Christ.  And through this encounter, my inner eyes of understanding were opened.  I began to experience the fullness of the Gospel.  I saw the Holy Spirit as being present and active, not only in my life, but in the world.  It was as if the lights came on.
  
It was this encounter with the living Christ that led to my confirmation and discernment of Diaconate ministry.  

This waiting, this struggle with not knowing but wanting to understand, and eventual surrender to God's living presence is what this Gospel is all about. I would suspect that at the time when these words were shared by Jesus, the apostles were saying to themselves; What is He talking about?  But at Pentecost, when they received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they would proclaim; "Ah, now I understand.  Now I know."

Experiencing God 211 Fan Into Flame

"Fan into a flame the gift that God has given you when I laid my hands on you"
Timothy

This past weekend many of us attended the Transmission Conference at St. Mary's University.  This conference was the Archbishop's response to the further implementation of the New Evangelization process started two years ago.  You might say that this conference is a fanning into flame the gifts that God has given us as a result of our Baptism and the commitment we have made to be sharers of the faith.  

As with Timothy, we are reminded that God's gift is not a spirit of timidity, but a Spirit of power, love and self-control, and we are never to be ashamed of witnessing to the Lord.  

The question that came to my mind during the conference is: What is the church's primary role when it comes to the New Evangelization, and as a result, what is my role in this process?  If I am to "fan into flame" God's gift to me, then how am I to respond?  I think this is a valid question that each of us can ask ourselves.  

One thing became clear to me during this conference as I was listening to the Archbishop.  He said that for every weekend church service we attend, we say the creed.  The creed is an expression of our faith.  We say: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty; I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son; I believe in the Holy Spirit", and so on.  This word creed or "believe" in the original Greek text has a much deeper meaning then that used from an English context. Credo or believe in Greek is made up of two words: "to give" and "my heart".  So it means "to give my heart".  If we apply this to the creed, then we are saying:  "I give my heart to God, the Father Almighty; I give my heart to Jesus Christ, His only Son;  I give my heart to the Holy Spirit." 

The Archbishop continues:  "To give our hearts has a much stronger meaning than "I believe". It implies a surrender, a commitment, an intense love requiring a response of reverence and obedience. It is in this "giving of our hearts" that we experience God's Spirit of power in our lives.  

Although believing implies that we accept, giving of our hearts implies that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit have become the very substance of our being.  If we can make this transition from believing to the giving of our hearts, then this is probably the greatest response we can make to the New Evangelizaiton process. From that will flow a deep heart felt desire to share, in many different ways, the love that we have experienced from giving our hearts to the Lord.

With the giving of our hearts, we have at this moment the promise of salvation from Christ, and union with God for eternity."  

This fanning into flame, or giving of our hearts implies that as church, we are to embark on radical hospitality, passionate worship, intentional faith development, risk taking service, and extravagant generosity in order to make God visible in our somewhat darkened world.  We do this, not in timidity or fear, but by cooperating with God's power and love.