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  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 God. In this sense, community and communion are synonymous with church which in this context goes beyond a mere physical 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 who have 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 celebrate the Eucharist we consume the love of God through the Body and Blood of Christ and by extension share that love with one another. In so doing, "I believe in the Communion of Saints" is manifest. We do this in memory of Him.

In this dynamic act of sharing the presence of the Trinity becomes real to us: Love in us is shared through us in His name, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus name, Amen. It's an expression of a dynamic, intimate relationship that includes us in the Communion of God and man.

It is more than just the line in a prayer.

The Great Commission

 Matthew's Gospel, (Matthew 28:16-20) is often referred to as "The Great Commission." Maybe it's just me but I don't find the label particularly inspiring. I think  it's because it's not the way I see myself as it relates to my faith.  Don't get me wrong it's not that Jesus' words don't resonate with me because they do, Jesus' message could not be clearer and more to the point. It's just that He is asking each one of us individually to pick up where he left off  and spread His Word in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So, for me the label, "Great Commission," is just a little too impersonal and too lofty. 

As adults, much of our identity is related to our areas of competence...at work, at home, in volunteer activities or our hobbies. When we find ourselves in situations where we do not feel competent, our anxiety levels escalate. (Psychologists tell us, that this is why adults have a hard time learning a new language or a musical instrument; it's not that our brains are too old or incapable of learning something new; it's that we don’t like feeling incompetent and so we  quit before we even make any progress.)

More than we may realize, we  live  our faith in  what St. Theresa of Calcutta referred as the "pots and pans" of our lives each day. Our faith is not separate from who we are and how we live. It's the very essence of how we are known. Our faith informs our behavior and actualizez our identity. As Jesus tells us in John 13, "By this shall all men know you are my disciples." I think our reluctance comes from our confusing faith with church or religion? I'm going to bet that most of us do live, or at least try, to live through our faith in all that we do; it's just that we don't see it because it's embedded in our very being. For me "The Great Commission" is a phrase that actually misses the point and not likely the words Jesus himself would have used. We don't manifest our belief by or through a committee, (often a sure fire way to kill a good idea.)

These few short verses in today’s Gospel summarizes Jesus' earthly ministry and are pivotal to Matthew's gospel. Too often they are assigned, as they are this Sunday, as readings for Trinity Sunday and seem to get lost in the “dogma” of the "Mystery." However, they clearly proclaim the supreme authority of Jesus, as being one with the Father and having no earthly equal and remind us that we are "asked" not “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.

So, how can we go about gaining a sense of competence and thereby grow in confidence in living our lives through our faith for one another? My guess is we already do but don't see it for all the noise. Perhaps it starts with moving to a more participatory style of Christian formation in we reach out to one another in our own personal way. Not unlike the answer to one who asked directions to Carnegie Hall, "Practice, practice, practice," our faith requires the same attention. We can't afford to wait until we are perfect and conditions are optimal because as with the musician, that will never happen. 

It's Our Birthday

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've come and to whom we are returning; 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 no longer just words on a page or our lips. We become those words and they define who and what we are, thereby setting our compass to live a God/Love centered life as Jesus taught. 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

 

 

Cling Very Close to Each Other…

 

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 in (John 17:1-14), as he announces the end of the physical presence of the incarnation of God in Jesus…he passes the baton to us: All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me.  

 Once again John relies on mystical words to “speak” to us in that place the soul reserves for dissecting metaphor and non-verbal images more real than reality itself. John invites us to close our eyes and picture what being in a relationship with God really feels like. Note, I use the word “picture,” not “understand,” in an effort to prompt our imaginations and senses to feel the words as a palpable, sensory experience. This is at the essence of our being and what we mean when we say “and the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God fully shared our humanity through Jesus as we through Jesus, fully share in God’s divinity. Anything less than that relationship with God would be reduced to mere acquaintance.  

It is beautiful to hear Jesus pray for his apostles, not alone in a garden or in the desert but right in their midst. What a great model for prayer he provides us. In John there is no “teach us how to pray,” followed by the Lord’s Prayer, but rather it’s a prayer in which he asks the Father to bless us as we are called to follow him now, and invest our lives in one another as we glorify the Father.

It is, perhaps, the most relevant definition of what Pentecost means to us as his disciples. Jesus is no longer in the world. The incarnation is over. Jesus has been resurrected. He ascended to the Father. But we are still in the world and Jesus’ works are now in our hands. He is counting on us to be his presence to one another in his absence.

What if we imagined that the resurrection of Jesus was just the beginning and not the conclusion of the Gospel and that the promises of the resurrection are ours to fulfill? This prayer before parting is bitter sweet, after all Jesus is leaving his friends, but in many ways the sorrow of his leaving is replaced by the love he shares with us and we share with one another.

For some reason this Gospel conjures up for me the beautiful words that Oscar Hammerstein penned for Anna in The King and I, as she “prays” for young lovers and wishes for them, the love she once shared and continues to share with her deceased husband:  

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

And the soft mist of England
Was sleeping on a hill
I remember this
And I always will  

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

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, 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, but at the center of our lives. We are 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 to each other and have a solemn obligation to love…look out for and care for each other.”
Jesus implores us to look out for each other's good, even to the point of giving our life. The desire is that our friendship bears fruit, a fruit that is permanent and sustainable.

We relive the experience of the vine and our connectedness in the celebration of the Eucharist with the solemn words at the end 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;

With him, because prayer is in union with Christ and and by honoring the Son we honor the Father and Son;

In him, because in praying with the Mystical Body,  the Father is in the Son and the Son is the reflection of the Father, who makes his majesty visible in all things. The dual meanings of through, with, and in clearly express the God and man’s interconnectedness.

The following "linked" prayer is the prayer to Christ by St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942): Prayer Before the Face of God 

Abide in Me and I in You

The imagery of the vine and branches, (John 15:1-8),  depict a beautiful intimate relationship between the Father, Jesus, and us as an intimate dwelling place.

The "you" in the passage is always plural, because the connectedness associated in "lovingly abiding," enjoins us all with the Father and Son in one dynamic relationship that challenges a long-standing interpretation that would prefer to keep God at arms length.

Far from being a “thou shalt not God" of rules or a cosmic judge who exercises power as the preserver of conventional morality, an oxymoronic phrase, John reveals a different role for the Father than the way we may have been originally taught to believe. Instead, He offers us the promise of new life in the present as Jesus' words become flesh in us, and continue to dwell  within and among us. “And his commandment is this: believe in the name of Jesus and love one another as He commanded us.” (John 3:18-21)

In the imagery of the vine, God’s presence is underscored as abiding, nourishing, lasting, and permanent. Just as Jesus is intimately related to the Father, we, the branches, can do nothing unless we abide in relationship with Jesus, the means to the Father. When we relate to Jesus in all that we do, we are connected to the Father. As such, Jesus’ two-fold promise, I AM the vine, you are the branches…is not said as a command or in judgment, but rather as an invitation and a promise. This promise is emphasized as he repeatedly reminds us that without him in our lives, we are powerless and can do nothing.

The promise abiding in…living-in…Jesus is not for its own sake, or an end in itself. Jesus is revealing a dynamic and changing life for us. Vines are pruned and cleansed. Branches that wither and die are removed. We, as the branches in the vine, are a constantly changing community that is called to follow his word by actively living his word. And in keeping with the stewardship of good shepherds, we as branches grow and become vines are nourished and nourish…By this is my Father glorified that you will bear much fruit…

 All those who take refuge in Me, whatever their birth, race, gender, or caste, even those whom society scorns will attain the supreme destination…fill your mind with me; love me; serve me, and worship me always. Seeking me in your heart, you will at last be united with me.

 Chapter 9, Verse 32 – Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God – 

My Sheep Hear My Voice and Follow Me

I grew up in Brooklyn, NY in the 40's and ‘50s. We lived in a two–family house in the Bay Ridge area, It was a carefree time of life, a time in which doors merely marked certain boundaries. For the most part, we were not so afraid of others inappropriately crossing them. In the early years it was not always necessary to lock our doors, and when we finally did, my father kept a key in the Borden's milk box on the porch or left one with our upstairs neighbor. Even as children, we could safely come and go within the confines of our defined limitations. Playing in someone else's backyard or "alleyway" was common as there were no fences between houses on my block, just fences separating the houses on the street  around the corner, which didn't matter anyway since we were not permitted to leave our street without permission and letting our parents know. (I'm reminded of the current international crisis in Israel, Palestine, Iran and of course Ukraine...still looming but off the front page for a while. It's too bad the freedom we enjoyed in our neighborhood as children could not apply. I guess it all changed, even in our old neighborhood when people wanted what the other guy had, even if they weren't entitled because they had yet to earn it.)

Perhaps the only time in those formative years that I was aware of heightened concern for safety was during the polio epidemic. While as children, our need to process the true impact of this "plague" was limited and I suppose that was a good thing; the published photos of children in iron lungs were to this day, indelibly printed in my memory. It’s hard to contrast that time with today’s Covid19. For the most part our only news media were the radio and newspapers. In the early days of television, news broadcasts were relatively short and not very comprehensive. All in all, as long as we stayed in our “sheepfold” we, as children, went about our days without concern.

While gates and doors serve as boundaries to permit entry and exit and security, they also demarcate a safe place, home. In our Gospel (John 10: 11-18) Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is portrayed as a “gate” and a caretaker. Our frame of reference for a shepherd does not likely fit with the image of the shepherd in Jesus' time . Is there any more powerful artistic depiction of compassion in our Christian heritage than the image of Jesus the Good Shepherd ? For me it's the famous painting of Jesus with the lamb draped around his neck and over his shoulder that hung on the wall  of my grade school classroom, and depicted in our church’s stained glass window. Yet, when Jesus lived and John wrote his Gospel, shepherds were among the most disreputable and mistrusted outcasts of society. Shepherds were drifters with no fixed address and because of their occupation, they were perpetually unclean and, by definition, in violation of Jewish law. These outcasts are the very people John’s gospel is talking about. So comparing Jesus to a shepherd and then later calling this very shepherd “good” seems at the very least, a paradox.

When Jesus proclaims that “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me” he characterizes his role as a loving protector. There were no actual gate in sheepfolds; rather, the shepherd would stand, sit or lie down at the entrance to the pasture. In this way the shepherd could serve as protector of his sheep. He knew his sheep and they knew him. John purposely contrasted Jesus, the Good Shepherd, with disreputable religious rulers of his time who exploited their congregations.

Jesus clearly spells out his role as the Father’s steward when he says I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.