Do This in Memory of Me

How often have we said the Creed and breezed through the line “I believe in the Communion of Saints” without giving it much thought? Sure it’s a phrase that we have heard and repeated throughout our lives without really thinking about it as more than just a line in a prayer.

The early Christians referred to all members of the community as “saints,” not necessarily because they achieved moral excellence, but because they were made “holy” by belonging to a “group” whose lives were connected in serving God. In this sense community and communion are synonymous with church which goes beyond a mere place of worship. 

The Communion of Saints like the vine and the branches, connects all people in present time with those who came before, and those yet to be... it’s eternal. Love is eternal. God is eternal. God is love. We share love with one another. We share God with one another. 

Yet, when we think of Communion it’s only natural for us to think of the Eucharist, (Mark 14:12-16,22-26) the sharing of the Lord’s Supper with one another. When we recite the line in the Creed, "I believe in the Communion of Saints" we remember that we are sharing God’s love and when we receive and give the Eucharist we share His love... in memory of Him.

In this dynamic act of sharing, the presence of the Trinity becomes clear to us: Love is in us and shared through us for Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus name, Amen. 

It is more than just the line in a prayer, isn’t it?

The Great Commission

 

 

Let’s face it when many of us hear the "Great Commission" in (Matthew 28:16-20), we may not necessarily feel inspired or encouraged but instead just a little guilty. Why? Because day in and day out we somehow do not perceive ourselves as being called and sent to bear witness to our faith and, even more, do not feel equipped to do so. So when we hear Jesus' very clear instructions we are reminded of one more thing we should, but regularly do not, do – which as we know, is a sure recipe for guilt.

As adults, much of our identity is related to our areas of competence -- at work, at home, in volunteer activities or hobbies. When we find ourselves in situations where we do not feel competent, our anxiety shoots through the roof. (This, psychologists tell us, is why adults have a hard time learning a new language or musical instrument -- it's not that our brains are too old or hardwired to learn something new; it's that we don’t like feeling incompetent and so quit before making much progress.)

Now, think about how often we have been invited to make connections between our faith and our daily lives; to share that faith with others, or invite others to come to church. Perhaps it’s because we’ve rarely been asked, let alone shown how to do these kinds of things even in the relatively safe confines of church let alone in more threatening situations outside of church. It all means that we don't feel competent to fulfill anything remotely resembling Jesus' Commission.

These few short verses in today’s Gospel summarize our “Great Commission” and are such an important text in the context of Matthew's gospel that there is a danger that its use on Trinity Sunday will lead to too much focus on its links with the Trinity and dilute those pivotal themes around which are faith is centered: It clearly proclaims the supreme authority of Jesus, as being one with the Father and having no earthly equal; it reminds us that we are “commissioned” to love one another as Jesus did and remember that God through the life of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, is with us until the end of time.

Yet let's admit it, most of us feel a little guilty when we hear Jesus' instructions. More than that, most of us don't have the foggiest idea of what it would look like in everyday life to implement his instructions. So after acknowledging where we are, how can we go about gaining a sense of competence in these matters and thereby grow in our confidence to share our faith?

Perhaps it starts with moving to a more participatory style of Christian formation in which we reach out to one another, inviting our hearers to do more than just hear but to respond to the word proclaimed in our services and revealed in our daily lives. And maybe, over time we will be inspired to share these revelations and proclaim the Word with our own “gift of tongues,” and in and by our actions. How good are we at doing what we are told? How good are we at not allowing arrogance, negative patterns from the past, and doubts to hold us back from making disciples for Jesus Christ? We can't afford to wait until we are perfect and conditions are optimal to become and make disciples. Some people who call themselves Christians can't bring themselves to share their faith. They remain forever trapped on the mountain depicted in the scene from Matthew, mired in their doubts and excuses.

Come Holy Spirit...Fill the Hearts of Thy Faithful

Pentecost preserves the memory of Jesus through the Holy Spirit as our community’s faith is both restored and renewed in breadth and depth through our love for one another. God and Love cannot be contained and must be shared. God is love.

David Steindl-Rast writes in Deeper than Words that The Holy Spirit is the awe-inspiring power of life and love. We differ only by the degree to which we open ourselves to this power. If we patiently cultivate courage and openness, we will become more and more aware of the Spirit which allows us to know God within.

In our Creed when we proclaim our belief in the Holy Spirit, we acknowledge the Trinitarian God as the ‘Father,’ the ultimate mystery from whom we come and to whom we are on our way; the ‘Son,’ in whom we find our true Self; the ‘Spirit,’ the divine aliveness within our innermost life, Here we touch upon the very core of faith.

We are charged with remembering all that Jesus lived while he was with us. ( John 20:19-23)The Spirit is the ultimate power of the Gospel through which the Word becomes flesh in us, and are no longer just words. We become those words and they define who and what we are. We remember not as if it were yesterday but because it is today; we live the memory now and again and again.

“When we remember, we leave the present for the past. To say it better, we bring the past into the present and give it life alongside the tangible realities we are compelled to consider. Not physical presence but love leads us to live with this remembered person even in his/her absence. When love is strong, the memory of this may be even more dear and more real than the reality of those who are present. Our memory of another confers the present upon him, gives him further life in our life, and keeps a moment of the past from drifting away or fading into death.

We are fed and nourished by communion of life in which our lives intersect in memory and merge into a common experience. No lover forgets. No beloved is forgotten. The memory of love is life; the memory of another becomes ourselves. So when the communion of believers remembers Jesus, Christ is present and is brought into the present with his grace by the power of the Spirit…The gift of the Spirit is fidelity to the memory of life’s mystery and confidence in the mystery of its future.” (Anthony Padovano, Dawn without Darkness)



When you're awake, the things you think
Come from the dream you dream
Thought has wings, and lots of things
Are seldom what they seem

Sometimes you think you've lived before
All that you live to day
Things you do come back to you
As though they knew the way

 

That They May All Be One

 

 

John proclaims the Divine presence of God in Jesus in his very first Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God… And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And now, as he announces the end of his physical presence as the incarnation of the Father on earth, Jesus passes the baton to us. How beautiful it is to hear Jesus pray for his apostles, not alone in a garden or in the desert but in their very midst. It really is nothing short of astonishing to imagine this gospel as a beautiful model for us. In this Gospel of John (John17: 11-19) there is no request for Jesus to “teach us how to pray,” but rather a beautiful prayer for the protection of those Jesus loved as he was preparing to physically leave this world. This is the Lord’s Prayer according to John.

Holy Father, I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. 

Here John relies on mystical words that speak to us in a place in which personal images of reality and life itself reside. John invites us to picture what being in a relationship with God really means. Note, I did not say “understand,” but rather, I used the word “picture” in an effort to prompt our imaginations and all our senses to feel the words as a palpable experience, and know what being in a relationship with God actually feels like, tastes like, and smells like. It’s at the essence of what we know when we say “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God shared our humanity fully through Jesus as we through Jesus, share fully in God’s divinity. Anything less than this relationship would be considered to be a just a mere “acquaintance” of God.
 
Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me,
that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

When I think of you
I think about a night
When the earth smelled of summer
And the sky was streaked with white

There are new lovers now on the same silent hill
Looking on the same blue sea
And I know you and I are a part of them all
And they're all a part of you and me Oscar Hammerstein

 

You Are My Friends

 How beautiful is it to know that we are all connected to each other through the love of God. As Jesus prepares to leave his earthly realm, he speaks of our being connected with him and each other through his telling of the story of the vine. His juxtaposing himself with us and with the father creates an image of a vine that, in keeping by nature, becomes intertwined into itself as it goes on and on. If properly nurtured and cared for, tender growth becomes hardened branches and produces fruit. Throughout this chapter (John 15:9-17) Jesus wants us to know that God is not at the periphery of our being, he is at the center with us and Jesus. We are made to feel one with God and Jesus as he asks us to abide in him, remain with him, and be at home with him.

Jesus reinforces this connectedness by removing any sense of status or hierarchy between himself and his followers: “You are my friends…I know longer call you ‘slaves,’ because a slave does not know what his master is doing, I have called you friends because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. As friends we are equal with Jesus and with each other and have a solemn obligation to love…look out for and care for each other.” 

Whether we like one another or not, Jesus commands us to look out for each other's good - even to the point of giving our life. The point is not that we should be just friends but we are friends for a purpose to bear fruit - fruit that lasts.

We relive the experience of the vine and our connectedness in the celebration of the Eucharist with the solemn words that end the mysterious event of the consecration. Through him, with him, and in him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, for ever and ever. Through him, because only through Christ does humanity have access to the Father and because his existence as God-man and his work of salvation are the fullest glorification of the Father;
With him, because all authentic prayer is the fruit of union with Christ and at the same time buttresses this union, and because in honoring the Son one honors the Father and vice versa; 

In him, because the praying church is Christ himself, with every individual praying member as a part of his Mystical Body, and because the Father is in the Son and the Son the reflection of the Father, who makes his majesty visible. The dual meanings of through, with, and in clearly express the God-man’s mediation.

This prayer is the prayer of the ever-living Christ embodied during his human life. St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942): Before the Face of God