Anonymous – Christ as the Good Shepherd, Vatican Museum

As opposed to the good shepherd, the hired man is marked by two similar yet distinct traits: self-interest and disinterest in others.  A focus on self above all and a turning away from others.  When the wolf comes, our Lord says, the hired man runs away.  His one concern is about saving himself while he also has no concern for the defenseless sheep.

Yet Christ is the good shepherd who loves his sheep.  The good shepherd, in stark contrast to the hired man who works only for pay, is free.  The good shepherd is not imprisoned by the narrow confines of self-interest and therefore he has true concern for the others.  “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:14)

We can say that Christ is, indeed, the freest person that ever walked the earth.  Jesus’ freedom is not based in the grasping of pride (the sin of Adam and Eve) and the exerting of ones will over the other but in obedience to the Father.  “…the Father knows me and I know the Father…”  Jesus let go of the glory of God that was his due (Phil. 2:6-8) and, clinging to the guidance and movement of the Holy Spirit, aligned himself fully to the will of the Father. 

Jesus knew that true freedom that each one of us at our core and in those silent and alone moments in our lives both yearn for and know that we are indeed meant for.  This is the freedom that is able to say in regards to laying down ones own life, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.”  This is the essence of true freedom: the ability and willingness to lay down ones life on ones own.

How might we gain this true freedom?  How might we be freed from the twin imprisonments of self-interest and disinterest in others?  One word: “love” but here I want to make a qualification because this word is so bandied about in our day that it easily loses any real substance.  It is worthy of note that the word “love” is used only once in today’s gospel passage (John 10:11-18) and it is not used in designating Jesus’ action toward the sheep.  The words used in that regard are “knowing” and “laying down ones life”.  The word “love” in this passage designates the Father’s response to the Son, “This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.”

The action of letting go of self, the action of turning toward the other in his or her need begets love.  It helps to heal what is wounded within and it moves us toward that true freedom that is the defining characteristic of the good shepherd.  There is a tried and true spiritual principle in this: if we find ourselves imprisoned in self-interest and disinterest then perform an act of gratuitous love, even the simplest of things and for even the briefest moment.  In other words, for a moment turn your gaze away from yourself.

Love begets love and it brings healing and freedom.  It also brings hope.

There is a very contemporary portrayal of this currently playing in movie theaters across our country.  I have not yet read the books but last Thursday I saw the movie, The Hunger Games.  At the heart of the movie (at least as I saw it) there is a moment where a young girl is killed in this competition that pits child fighting against child to the death.  The heroine, who was trying to protect this young girl is heartbroken.  But even in her pain and grief she does a tender thing.  She gathers flowers and places them around the body of the young girl lying dead on the forest floor.  In the cold world depicted in this story where, I would say, the sense of God has been lost (a world that at best can only say, “May the odds continually be in your favor.” rather than, “God be with you.”) the heroine performs a corporal work of mercy.  She buries the dead and she does it in love.  Via video cameras the nation watches this and in response in an imprisoned part of the country a riot against the injustice of the oppressors breaks out all because the heroine performed this simple act of taking the time to acknowledge the humanity and the dignity of this young girl.  A humanity and dignity that all the “powers that be” were trying their best to negate. 

The act of love itself begets love which brings healing, freedom and hope.  “A good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”

This Sunday is Good Shepherd Sunday and a day when the Church asks us to pray in a special way for vocations to priesthood and religious life.  Our world needs all Christians to learn the love and the true freedom of the good shepherd and to be set free from the prison of self-interest and disinterest.  But our world and our church also needs men and women specifically willing to answer the call to love and lay down their lives as priests and men and women living the consecrated life.  To our young people in a special way I want to say this: know that this type of love and the freedom it brings is possible.  We can live free of self-interest and disinterest.

The act of love begets love.

Christ has loved us to the end and we live in the grace of that love.       

“Peter Preaching at Pentecost” by Benjamin West

When I was a college student at East Tennessee State University and just starting to come back to Church I took a college class on the history of Christianity.  When we got to the subject of the resurrection I remember our professor stating (much to the chagrin of the more fundamentalist Christian students) that the academic discipline of history could not make a conclusive statement either for or against the resurrection.  But what the discipline could say is that “something happened” that enabled those first disciples to move from remaining behind locked doors in fear as we find in today’s gospel (Lk. 24:35-48); “But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” to boldly proclaiming Christ as Messiah in the public square as we find Peter doing in today’s first reading (Acts 3:13-15, 17-19); “You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you … Repent, therefore, and be converted…” 

That class and I would say specifically that statement “something happened” was one of the key components of my returning to the Church and the active practice of the faith.  What enabled Peter (the one who had denied knowing Jesus) and those first disciples (the ones who had run away) the ability to move from fear to being bold proclaimers of Christ and the resurrection?  Was it just a hoax they cooked up in their minds to steal the body away and see how long they could ride the “Jesus as Messiah” train?  Hoaxes do not last so long (two thousand plus years) nor show such continued vitality.  Was it that the “spirit” of Jesus had risen – his vision of the world and living together in harmony – while his body remained dead.  But who willingly chooses martyrdom rather than denial for an idea (as we see throughout history beginning with those first fearful disciples)?

In today’s gospel we are given some specifics about the resurrection that are worthy of note.  Jesus again appears to his disciples.  Again he say, “Peace be with you.”  Knowing their fear and their uncertainty he says,

“Why are you troubled?  And why do questions arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.  Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones that you can see I have.”  And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.  While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”  They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.” 

Neither hoaxes nor ideas ask for a piece of fish to eat.

There are many ways to run from the scandal of the resurrection.  We are all quite adept at it; both without and even within the Church.  One such way (often touted as being an “enlightened” approach) is to see the resurrection as a nice idea – Jesus’ spirit continuing to live on.  But today’s gospel is quite clear.  Jesus is not a ghost.  Jesus is risen – body and soul.  He is the firstborn from the dead.  Jesus is risen and he has not risen in vain. 

If we are to be christian then we must be willing to encounter the fullness of the resurrection; that “something that happened” as my professor said so many years ago and in that encounter we must be willing to make a fundamental faith statement, “I believe”.   Only this will move us from fear to peace.

This encounter and the peace and courage it alone brings continues today.  Recently Pope Benedict (who is Peter in our midst) travelled to Mexico and Cuba.  In the face of the chaotic violence of the drug trade engulfing Mexico (estimates of around fifty thousand people killed) this eighty-five year old man proclaimed firmly and resolutely that drug trafficking is a sin and it is wrong.  Then going to Cuba at a Mass where the very Cuban government sat in the front rows, again this elderly man who has no armies behind him nor economic might called for greater freedom.  What enables him to do this?  If one reads his two books on Jesus of Nazareth or listens to any of his words one quickly realizes the answer.  This man has encountered Christ risen and alive – not an idea of Christ, not just the spirit of Christ – but Jesus Christ himself and he has made his faith statement.

The peace is there if we are willing to encounter and if we are willing to profess. 

Thomas was not a bad man nor was he a second-rate apostle.  Rather, Thomas was a man who had been hurt, a man whose hopes had been crushed.  Thomas believed in Jesus.  He had followed Jesus and had made the decision to set his life by Jesus.  Now, Jesus had been killed.  The weight and injustice of the world had crushed Thomas’ hope.  So Thomas says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my fingers into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:27)

Every Sunday when we gather for the Mass we profess the creed.  What Thomas says in today’s gospel, “Unless I see the mark of the nails…” is, in fact, a non-creed and it is a non-creed professed by many people in our world today – not necessarily evil people but people who are prisoners of themselves and of their own sensations.  Thomas, at this moment, was egocentric and lost in himself because he was lost in his own pain and crushed hope.  He was focused inward – solely on himself.  Even when the other disciples say, “We have seen the Lord!” he will not believe because he is so imprisoned within himself.  Thomas will not even entertain the possibility.  Egocentrism always leads one to unbelief – one becomes a prisoner to ones own sensations and cannot believe in anything else.

Many people in our world live this way.  We, ourselves, know the temptation to live this way.  The temptation is always there to shut the doors, to turn in on ourselves, to live egocentric lives and to allow the entrance of only a select few, if even that.  The danger is that egocentric lives easily become fear-filled and violent lives.  The “other” can quickly become the “enemy” and mistrust can settle in our hearts.  It is important to note that both times when the risen Lord appears in this Sunday’s gospel (Jn. 20:19-31) we are told that he easily passes through the locked doors and says, “Peace be with you.”  The resurrection demonstrates that there is now another way.  We do not have to live behind doors locked in fear.  We can know peace!

In the Divine Mercy apparition to St. Faustinia Jesus reveals his Divine Heart and the abundance of mercy which flows from it.  In today’s gospel the risen Lord frees Thomas from the prison of his egocentrism by touching Thomas’ heart.  Jesus does not craft a well-reasoned argument or lesson for the unbelieving Thomas; rather, the risen Lord shows Thomas the marks of evil on his own body in order that Thomas might learn to turn away from self in compassion and be moved both by his wounds and the wounds of the least of his brothers and sisters. 

We are believers when we are touched in the heart, when we are moved at the sight of the wounds caused by evil and when we learn not to trust in ourselves and be focused solely on ourselves but to trust in the truth and energy of the resurrection and the divine love and mercy the flows from the gospel and that heals and frees from evil.

Lord, we believe, help our little faith. 

Help us to open the doors of our hearts. 

Our Lord and our God!

(Parts of this reflection are inspired by and taken from the homily for the second Sunday of Easter given by Bishop Vincenzo Paglia as found in The Word of God Every Day.) 

Easter Sunday Mass at Cabrini Nursing Home in Manhattan, NY.

Hello everyone. 

Sorry that I have not been posting lately.  I have been on the road quite a bit between campus ministry work, vocation ministry and the Community of Sant’Egidio. 

I have just finished celebrating the Triduum and Easter with the the U.S. Community of Sant’Egidio at Mount Manresa Retreat Center on Staten Island, NY.  (Being at the ETSU Newman Center allows me to be present to the community in this regard.  The majority of the ETSU community head home for Easter so I can be present to the Sant’Egidio community.)  It means a lot that the Sant’Egidio community has a priest to celebrate these days with them who understands the spirituality and charism of the community.  It also means a lot to me and continues to nourish and strengthen my own discipleship. 

This year, after the Triduum celebrations those who were able journeyed to Cabrini Nursing Home in Manhattan for the Easter Sunday Mass.  The New York community has been serving and praying at Cabrini for twenty years and this was the first year that Easter Sunday Mass was able to be celebrated at Cabrini.  Sadly, it will also be the last as it was just announced that Cabrini has been sold to make room for condominiums.  All the residents (some two hundred and sixty persons) are being dispersed to different nursing homes.  We pray for all our friends at Cabrini and the New York community will continue to do what it can to stay in touch with our friends at Cabrini.  (I have attached a photo from the Easter Sunday Mass.)

Even in the sadness of Cabrini closing we know that Christ is risen and that Christ is Lord and we give thanks for all the resurrections experienced at Cabrini over the years!   

Recently I have been reading God in Action: How Faith in God Can Address the Challenges of the World by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.  I am finding it to be a good read and very enlightening on where we find ourselves in our culture today. 

At one point in the book Cardinal George writes about a discussion he had with a group of Chicago priests regarding what they might think is the source of the ills of our time.  Some of the priests suggested a forgetting of what sin is or a lack of morals or the breakdown of the family unit.  But one young priest suggested not a forgetting of sin but rather a forgetting of how to forgive.  The cardinal highlights this comment and carries it further in his book.  As a society we have forgotten how to forgive one another and because of this we have become locked in our selves holding on to and even intentionally nursing past hurts and wrongs.  Through this we are becoming turned in on ourselves and further isolated from one another.  We see this reflected in the growing violence within our society and the growing violence found within our foreign policy.  In forgetting how to forgive we become angry people and we are in danger of becoming an angry society.

The readings for the Sunday suggest a different way – a way that leads to life and not to death.

A couple of years ago (through the generosity of some friends as a Christmas gift) I was able to purchase the complete set of St. Augustine’s commentary on the psalms.  Now, I try (when time permits) to read Augustine’s thoughts on the psalm being used for the responsorial psalm in the next upcoming Sunday Mass as a way of preparing for the Sunday celebration and also trying to get some homily ideas going.  Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 51 is very insightful and beautiful I believe and demonstrates a mature awareness of the human condition.  We are all sinners before God and to deny this is a lie both about who we are and also the very nature of God.  “Create a clean heart in me, O God” is probably the truest petition any one of us can ever make to God.  Augustine cautions that we must avoid the temptation to thrust our own sins “behind our back” and pretend that they do not exist.  Rather, we must be honest and humble and keep our sins before our face because it is this humility that God recognizes and heals. 

This is how all those of upright heart conduct themselves.  Very different are the crooked who consider themselves upright and God perverse; when they do anything bad they rejoice, and when they have to endure anything bad they blaspheme.  What is more, when they find themselves in trouble and under the lash, they say from their misshapen hearts, “God, what have I done to you?”  the truth is that they have done nothing to God; all the harm they have done is to themselves.

Does this not ring true?

Elsewhere in his commentary the Bishop of Hippo encourages us to, “grip the root of deliberate love.”  God’s love for us in not haphazard and inconsistent (when often what passes for love in our world is).  God’s love in our life is deliberate, consistent and specific.  God wants nothing but what is best for us.  In the first reading (Jer. 31:31-34) we hear of this deliberateness of God: The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah … I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

To learn forgiveness is to learn to be honest before God, to hold our own sins before ourselves before we judge one another, to petition for a clean heart to be created within us and to trust in the deliberateness of God’s love.

In his commentary Augustine also points out that where sin often seems to thrive in the spectacle (think of rock stars who seem to get their kicks by mocking religion and morality on stage in the glare of the spotlight and the camera); forgiveness is content to be humble and work in the quiet of ones own heart and ones own conscience. 

Forgiveness does not need the spectacle because it is sure in itself.

In today’s Gospel (John 12:20-33) some Greeks come to Philip seeking to see Jesus.  It could be said that they are seeking a spectacle.  It is interesting to note that Jesus never really grants their request.  Rather, our Lord, begins a reflection on how the Son of Man is to glorified and therefore how true disciples are to glorify the Son of Man in their own lives.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  Who notices the falling of a piece of grain to the ground and dying?  This is the exact opposite of the spectacle.  Yet, in this humble and unnoticed act life is born which eventually leads to true nourishment.

We need to learn the way of forgiveness.  Forgiveness brings life and it liberates from isolation and anger.  The readings for this Sunday, the Gospel, the writings of the saints, the disciplines of Lent, the sacrament of reconciliation all help to teach us this healing truth.   

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Joseph.

In my Internet perusing today I came across two videos that I share below.  The first is a fine reflection by Fr. James Martin, S.J. on the hidden life of St. Joseph.  The second is a presentation by Susan Cain on the power and purpose of introversion.

In a time that has come to value personality over character the words of Susan Cain and the quiet witness of St. Joseph are a much needed corrective.

Today, on the first full day of the Catholic Center mission trip in El Salvador, our group was able to attend Sunday Mass at the chapel where Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed on March 24, 1980.  I was privileged with the opportunity to concelebrate the Mass in the chapel.  It was truly a humbling experience to stand where such a great man had so often stood and prayed and where he gave his life in witness to his faith in Christ and his desire for peace. 

Following the Mass a Carmelite sister of the community spent some time with our group as well as a group of El Salvadorian youth and told the story of Monsignor Romero’s life and the story of the day he was killed. 

At the beginning of her talk she asked all those present to give a one word description of Monsignor Romero.  Some words shared were, “faith”, “courageous”, “hope”, “humble”, “kind”, “compassionate” and the list went on.

The sister shared how the assassination took place.  During the weekday Mass a car pulled up and stopped before the open front doors of the chapel.  Archbishop Romero had just finished his homily.  A rifle pointed out a window of the car and a bullet was shot down the aisle of the church hitting the archbishop in the chest severing his aorta.  The bullet was of such kind that it exploded in his chest.  The archbishop died.

At the end of her talk the sister then asked each person to once more share their word and this time come to the main aisle in order to hold hands and form a line stretching from the altar to the front doors of the chapel.  (The sister asked me to share my word first so I was able to place my hand on the altar.) 

Once we were all in a line we were asked to reflect on the fact that this was the path of the bullet as it sped toward the archbishop.  It was in many ways a path of death but, as our words reflected, also a path of resurrection and hope.  It reflected both the way of the cross and the triumph of the resurrection. 

There is hope that one day Archbishop Oscar Romero will be officially canonized a saint of the Church but as sister told me later as we toured the Archbishop’s residence; he is already considered a saint by the people of El Salvador – the people he loved.      

One of my favorite Lenten images is the painting “Christ in the Desert” by Ivan Kramskoy (pictured above).  In the painting we have the “fully human” Christ.  He does not have a halo.  There is not a choir of angels around him.  He is not is some majestic pose.  Rather he sits alone in the hot desert.  There is a weariness and fatigue to his posture.  His shoulders are hunched and burdened.  In his expression it is easy to see that he is lost in his own thoughts.  The painting carries with it a sense of grave silence. 

I contrast this image with that of the superhero
Iron Man (image to the right). 
This figure does stand in a majestic pose.  He is all metal and strength.  His eyes gleam forth in vision and leadership.  His weak humanity is completely covered over by a suit of iron.  This is the superhero who rights wrongs and triumphs over evil … or so we are told. 

But Iron Man is a myth and not a savior and Jesus is real and never pretended to be a superhero. 

In Scripture we are told that Christ is like us in all things except sin.  In fact, Paul in his letter to the Philippians tells us that Christ emptied himself and took the form of a servant.  He humbled himself even being obedient unto death.  (Philippians 2:5-11)

If Christ is like us in all things except sin then he is not a man covered in iron but rather a man living in flesh and blood like all of us.  He knew limits and weariness.  He knew hunger and thirst.  He experienced disappointment, fear, anger and loneliness.  The whole gamut of human reality he knew even unto infinity as Pope Benedict XVI points out in his second volume of “Jesus of Nazareth” precisely because he experienced the full human condition in all its fears, uncertainties and limits without reverting to sin.  The “except sin” of Christ does not shield Jesus from the fullness of the human condition; rather it leads him ever deeper into it.  We are the ones who shield ourselves precisely through our sins. 

Our sins remain a running away from the human condition. 

Why not a superhero?  Why not a man covered in iron to save us? 

Here a poem entitled, Letter to Genetically Engineered Super Humans by Fred Dings might instruct us:

You are the children of our fantasies of form,
our wish to carve a larger cave of light,
our dream to perfect the ladder of genes and climb
its rungs to the height of human possibility,
to a stellar efflorescence beyond all injury and disease,
with minds as bright as newborn suns
and bodies which leave our breathless mirrors stunned.

Forgive us if we failed to imagine your loneliness
in the midst of all that ordinary excellence,
if we failed to understand how much harder
it would be to build the bridge of love between such splendid selves,
to find the path of humility among the labyrinth of your abilities,
to be refreshed without forgetfulness,
and weave community without the thread of need.

Forgive us if you must re-invent our flaws
because we failed to guess the simple fact
that the best lives must be less than perfect. 

Today we sit in the desert with the savior Christ – human like us in all things except sin.  He is not a superhero nor does he want to be.  In the fullness of the human condition, the much “less than perfect reality”, he turns again and again to God and he binds himself to the Father’s will.  This is what makes him both savior and brother to us.  In his grace we are now invited to also bind ourselves to God not despite of but through our imperfect human condition and to be restored in relationship to God, to one another and to our very selves. 

Now, as always, we need a savior rather than a superhero.