Month: May 2020

Images capture so much in so few words. The images of Pentecost Sunday abound: flames dance above the heads of the Apostles, or the widespread wings of a glowing dove hovers protectively above them. Those pictures resided unchallenged in my memory until I met a powerful presence in the form of a Poor Clare nun. She was actually incongrusously small. She was the first to suggest that while I had grown physically and intellectually, I failed to allow faith and religious belief to mature. With a conspiratorial wink and a soft chuckle, she invited me to new territory: faith as an educated adult. And at the time, her own prayer life was animated by her understanding of the third person of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. Conversation with her was beguiling: she touched on the presence , movement and gifts of the Spirit. I often left with only fragments of understanding and wondering about the more. But there was her consistent sense that these were moments of simply sewing seeds for understanding. At the time, I could not even imagine next steps. But now, in the midst of a pandemic, Pentecost Sunday has suddenly found new meaning in our suffering world.

Pentecost Sunday. What was it really about? Beginning again in the wake of traumatic loss and tumultuous change. Wrestling a heady freedom from the intense grip of fear. Finding forgiveness in the recognition of self in others. Taking action with certainty and trust. Pentecost. Pandemic. It is time to take the leap of trust that Pentecost intimates, to allow the reality of what it means to literally go forth.

For the Apostles and disciples, their worlds and lives were slowly reopening, tenderly present to the idea that Jesus may not always be with them. but would never leave them. The Spirit provides that reality, that comfort. Tucked in the passages of Scripture far from the complexities of theological constructs, this is the promise that God’s presence permeates life and opens new life experiences. It is about ordinary people finding extraordinary comfort in the acknowledgment of God’s love. In the first phases of re-opening, in the tentative apprehension and the layers of anxiety, Pentecost offers encouragement, empowerment: love is greater than fear. Through the months of quarantines and chronicling the curve, there have been countless acts of coming together: birthday trains, road signs, food and PPE drives, concerts and performances, nightly cheering the frontline workers. Coming together allows each one of us to enter into the “all of us”, to be more together than we were apart. The disciples walked that same path.

That very step requires a great deal of trust: trust that each of us will do what is best for all of us. Navigating the early phases of opening has proven to be demanding: the spread of the virus highlighted the social and economic inequalities in society, fueled unemployment and economic losses and has allowed the re-emergence of racism and abuses of power. Pentecost, on the other hand, profers the opportunity to take a step back. Pentecost is a celebration of the idea that we are, as Teilhard de Chardin suggests, collaborators in creation. Alive with the Spirit, the disciples set out to celebrate and share the presence of God in the world. Theirs was a conscious effort with clear intent. This year, as educated adults and people of faith, we share in that call to become collaborators in creation. We share in the call to trust and to trustworthiness; we are linked over centuries to the disciples whose trusting response to the Spirit made things happen. This year, animated by the Spirit, we too can make things happen.

Covid-19 has proven that we are terribly fragile and defiantly strong. Our world is one of incomprehensible dichotomies, dominated by contrasting views, and vested in divergent hopes. And yet, we are all here together, searching for ways to get through and somehow manage surviving what we cannot possibly control. As Catholics, today we celebrate the feast of the Ascension. In deference to the virus, we celebrate in our cars, in parking lots outside our churches, in makeshift fashion. Humbled, we gather to share the Eucharistic presence and re-name our truths. The truth is that we believe in the presence of God in the world and in the Eucharist. And celebrating it, even in cars and at home live-streamed, we are able to touch on the deepest reality of all: God is present with us, cares for us, and provides for us. In the midst of a pandemic, there is a palpable sense of the sacred.

The feast of the Ascension gives shape to the idea that those we love may not always be with us, but they will never leave us. That phrase, the whisper of the dying, the promise to those about to be orphaned, the acknowledgement of separated lovers and families, yeilds a deeper truth. The mystery of Easter unfolds with the Resurrection, but it becomes reality in the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost that follow. It is not about the feasts, of course, but about the presence of God in the world, the reality of an unconditional love that transcends human limitiations and defies human expectation.

In a world where physical contact is limited and presence often virtual, denial of the intangible is tempting. But the existence of love cannot be denied; its forms and ideations, even its distortions and misappropriations, are lived out in startling patterns with an alarming regularity. This Sunday, as Catholics, we are invited to consider a Love that is distinctively different. Unconditional Love is not bound by the measures of the human; it is the signature of the Divine. And here, in the weeks after Easter, the expression of Unconditional Love marches confidently into the territory of the mysterious and the sacred. Here is the story of those last experiences of Jesus among his disciples; here He confides the concept that physical presence is not necessary to the continuity of relationship. Here is the idea that his disciples are now charged with the task of sharing, somehow, the idea of Love and relationship that defies the parameters of human understanding.

In grasping for it, we must proceed as Pierre Teilhard deChardin SJ suggested…”as if limits of our abilities did not exist”. In living it, we must see ourselves as he said, as “collaborators in creation.” In hoping for it, we must believe as Teilhard de Chardin did, that “love is a scared reserve of energy”, the force that unites and recreates who and what we are. Love like this is the ultimate tool of creation. It is the kind of love that is born from trust and gives birth to the hope and strength needed to survive a pandemic, to navigate ordinary days and nights, to sculpt a lifestyle and grow into old age.

Sixth Sunday of Easter.  Ninth week of quarantine.  Rumblings and reopenings.  New beginnings.  And the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John whispering promises of a future bright with presence.

Gospel JN 14:15-21

In the midst of this pandemic, there is a certain poignancy to Jesus’ promise not to leave us, and to the idea that he is in us, and we are in him.  It is confided with the certainty of truth, and it dares us to face underlying realities.  Because Jesus is not talking about the worries that consume us or the fears that are devouring us.  Instead, he is talking about the idea of presence within each other, being for and about each other.  It is the mingling of the human and the divine, and he is promising that.

In a time overwrought with deaths and loss, with fear and divisiveness, Jesus is speaking of an idea so startingly simple it is genuinely profound.  Love transcends all the barriers, eliminates the conflcits, empowers possibility.  Love is real; it exists within each of us. Love is of God, sustained and nurtured by God.  Jesus does not labor here with promises of success or predictions fo achievements.  Instead, He promises presence, connection: love.  There is nothing more important than that.

Love lives because of the  Spirit of Truth.  Confined as we are to digital reality, it would be easy to choose what is virtual.  But this week, in this Gospel, Jesus is giving us much more than that.  He acknowledges that the Spirit of Truth belongs to the each of us, the very ordinary believers.   He cautions that the world cannot accept this because the world cannot accept him.  That opens the question of choice, of decision and choosing to look at Jesus and to consider the Spirit of Truth.  And perhaps that is the real challenge.

Stumbling through quarantine, through life itself, we can choose to forego the awareness of the divine, of love, of somehow being part of God and part of one another.  Love breathes hope into painful moments, comfort in devastation, clarity in confusion.  Love invites us beyond what is to what can be.  Dare to choose love.

 

There is a video, a father reading a book to his child.  The child begs for the story about the coronavirus; the father reads “The Great Realization”, a poetic tale of  the pre and post pandemic worlds.  It captures the hope that the suffering of all these months will yield to a world where values are more clear, actions and choices more deliberate, and delusions of wealth and grandeur no longer intrigue an unwitting populace.  And now, rolling into the third month of social distancing  and gliding towards summer, reality remains raw and unexpected.  Perhaps the secret is in how we perceive it all, what we believe it to be, and what we dare to name as hopes.

Right now, we occupy that transitional space between the pre and post pandemic worlds.  We are at that place where deep thinking and conscious choice come into play, but only if we allow it.  Amazingly, this week’s  Gospel speaks of the wealth of change that choice can bring.  John Chapter 14: 1-14 is alternately clear (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”), and mysterious (“I am in the father and the faher is in me”).  But the essential question is most evident: to believe or not to believe.  Jesus unveils the evidence, but he leaves the choice squarely in the hands of his audience.  Today, he speaks to the world in a time of panic and crisis, crumbling economies and failing systems.  But it is also a world of tender re-evaluation, of shared purpose and compliance, of new intiatives and beginnings.  Therein lies the divine spark, the interfacing of human and divine and the trust that there is something here worth visiting, exploring and investigating.  Jesus asks the same in the Gospel.  He is opening the door to the skeptical, creating different, personalized options for his audience, giving opportunities to see what is with greater depth and understanding.  In fact, He is suggesting that what we believe IS may have greater depth and breadth than we suspect.  His words, he says, are the Father’s; seeing Him is seeing the Father.  Then he raises that question:  How can looking not be really seeing?  Seeing not being understanding?

All of which brings us back to this moment in time: tentative reopenings, frightening models, divergence in reports, discord among us.  Uncertainties.  At the same time, an invitation to go forward, to see things differently.   Today, the Gospel meets us in this moment, and Jesus invites us to open eyes and ears and hearts to what is really happening here, to shape a greater good, a convergence of the divine and the human, a new beginning rooted in reality.   It is a chance to begin again with the knoweldge of what was resting against the knowledge of what can be.

To believe.  To begin.  To find the way, the truth and the life.  To be part of the Great Realization.

 

 

Once we lived in a land of abundance: goods, opportunities, employment and possibility. With one swift blow, the coronavirus changed all that.  Suddenly, the voices we noticed, heard, responded to and questioned were different.  And as the days wore into weeks, we grew weary of the ambiguity, of those voices and then of each other.  And yet, we were adapting the entire time, adjusting to circumstance and need, practicing gratitude and empathy in ways we had not quite envisioned.  Somehow, we are becoming better than we were before.  This is the space we are walking in as May unfolds, and this is the week that we’re invited to hear a new voice, to see the real gate to the future.

The Gospel for Sunday, May 3, 2020, is  from John 10, and it shares Jesus’s description of himself as the  shepherd, the familiar voice, and then the gate.  He uses metaphors and opens the venue for choice, expresses the importance of response, of movement.  He is speaking still as we wander into this new culture born of the pandemic and he is waiting as we find our way, there as a visible gate.  But the Gospel bears the comforting thought that He is here, with us, and we are not navigating alone.  The presence of a God who invites action, defines purpose, and empowers in the midst of confusion and change is an overhwelming testimony to God’s love and concern for us.  It is there, in the ackowledgment of who we are, that Jesus is most present.  This is not a god demanding tribute or adherence; it is a god re-defining what it means to be truly human.  His faithfulness, his guidance, his gentleness and steadfastness stream through the words straight into open hearts.  He will not abandon us even if we abandon Him.  The shepherd’s strength is sourced in the humility of believing that every sheep matters.

That message speaks to our time with a vibrant hope.  We are re-discovering who we are and what we are about; in doing so, we must dare to re-discover the voice of Jesus calling out to us.  Listening, in this time of odd and awkward silences, is a tool of the heart and the soul.  It is about the way we choose to use our time, the way we begin to believe that there is something beyond what eye can perceive and ear can hear.  Listening demands space in this new world, to hear the heartbeat of what our lives have become and trust what our lives can be for one another. Listening strengthens the resolve to take action,  to locate the gate. And that means discerning the difference between the familiar and the strange.  Jesus leaves that task in our hands.  It requires work, exploration, discussion, decision-making; it is about openness and flexibility and relationships.

It would appear, then, that even in the midst of the foggy brains of lockdowns and quarantines, it is necessary to spare the time to work at understanding what is happening, and why, and how we can make a difference.  Jesus looks after us as a shepherd; the least we can do is look after one another in the same way.