Breaking the Word: Between Road & River

Sunday, May 09, 2021

Between Road & River

6th Sunday of Easter

Readings: Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48; Psalm 97(98):1-4; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

My dear friends, do you know the difference between a river and a road? How about an escalator and a stairway? It’s quite obvious, right? In contrast to a river that flows, and an escalator that… escalates, both a road and a stairway remain stationary. We have to walk down a road, or climb up the stairs. But we can float down a river, and ride up an escalator.

It’s helpful to keep this contrast in mind, as we ponder our Mass readings today. Especially in the gospel, where we hear Jesus using those two big words beginning with the letter c: commandment and commission. This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you… I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit… that will last…

I’m not sure, but I think these words can sometimes make us feel like we are simply being driven to do something painful and burdensome. To love by consistently laying down one’s life, in little unseen, unappreciated, even resented ways. To bear fruit that, though lasting, may take so long to appear, that one doesn’t live long enough to see it. Where and how to find the courage to keep walking such a lonely road, to keep climbing such a steep stairway?

And yet, when we ponder them more deeply, our readings reveal another pair of images. Not so much a lonely road or a steep stairway, as a flowing river or an uplifting escalator. For today’s gospel reading is a continuation of that passage where Jesus describes himself as the true Vine, of which we are the branches. We bear fruit not by our own strength, but by remaining in him, by drawing from his life-giving love.

The second reading makes this clearer, when it tells us that the love we are meant to live is not, in the first place, our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. So the first step we need to take, in order to keep the Lord’s commandment, is to locate and to keep drawing from the living stream flowing from the pierced side of the Crucified and Risen Christ.

Isn’t this what is happening in the first reading? Although Peter may appear very busy, he really plays only a supporting role. The lead actor is God. It is God who helps Peter overcome his prejudice. It is God who anoints Cornelius and his family. It is God who keeps building up the early church. Peter’s part is to recognise and respond to God’s action, to remain in the flow of God’s creative and merciful love.

We may recall these words from an old hymn… Peace is flowing like a river; flowing out of you and me; flowing out into the desert; setting all the captives free… And the word peace is easily replaced with the words faith and hope, love and joy, grace and, yes, even God… God is flowing like a river…

Sisters and brothers, isn’t this the good news of Easter? That rather than a hard taskmaster, driving us down a stressful road, God is instead a reliable river of grace, carrying us all into fullness of life. What must we do to immerse ourselves ever more deeply in its powerful yet gentle flow today?

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Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. This is also the reason for the series of liturgical texts found in both the Roman Missal and The Liturgy of the Hours (Vol. III - IV), for Sundays and weekdays in this season. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, 43-44

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19

Sunday, May 09, 2021

Between Road & River

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