Breaking the Word: 05/01/2023

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Remembering to Breathe

Pentecost Sunday

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 103 (104): 1, 24, 29-31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-13; John 20: 19-23

Picture: By Kinga Howard on Unsplash

My dear friends, would you mind doing a very simple exercise with me? When I give the word, just gently take a deep breath and hold it in for a moment. Then slowly let it out. That’s it. Simple. Okay? Ready? Breathe in… Hold… Breathe out… How do you feel? What happened? At least three things, right? First, by flexing some muscles, we expand our chest. We make space for air to flow into us, for the breath to fill our lungs. But we don’t just keep the air to ourselves, we release it. As a result, we receive new life. Our bodies are renewed.

Inhalation, exhalation and renewal. Doesn’t something similar happen at Pentecost? For a start, it’s helpful to notice a word that keeps recurring in our Mass today. The word is fill. The entrance antiphon reminds us that the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world. In the opening prayer, we ask God to fill… the hearts of believers with divine grace. And in the first reading, not only does the noise of a wind fill the entire house, the disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit. And it’s worth recalling that the Hebrew word for spirit also means breath.

At Pentecost, the Spirit comes like a divine breath from heaven and fills the disciples. This doesn’t happen by accident. As we may recall from last Sunday’s reading, the disciples had prepared for it. They were praying steadfastly, and with one accord, in the upper room. And before that, the Crucified and Risen Jesus had been consoling, encouraging and guiding them. Helping them to release their guilt and grief, and make space for the Spirit. Teaching them to inhale the very Breath of God. All of which, by the way, has also been our experience throughout the season of Easter.

And just as inhalation naturally leads to exhalation, shortly after being filled with the Spirit, the disciples are led to share God’s Breath with others. Bearing witness to Jesus not just through their preaching, but also in the shared life they lead. Doing for others what Jesus does for them in the gospel. He breathes on them, and shares with them both his mission and the power to carry it out. A mission that benefits not just those at whom it is directed, but also renews the Church. Helping her become what she is called to be. Not just an accidental gathering of harassed weekend worshippers, but a single Body of Christ, made up of different parts, each uniquely gifted to offer fitting service to the Lord.

Inhalation, exhalation, and renewal. Isn’t this what the Spirit brings at Pentecost? Isn’t this how the Breath of God comes to fill and renew everything? And doesn’t our shiny modern world need this precious gift now, when so many of us often find ourselves either struggling to breathe, or even forgetting how? Too many still lack the most basic conditions for safe and dignified human living. While others are deceived into smothering themselves with the endless pursuit of superfluous things. Yet, amid it all, the Spirit continues to blow and flow, filling the world with God’s life and love. All we need to do is make space.

Sisters and brothers, how is the Spirit inviting us to breathe more deeply today?

Sunday, May 21, 2023

Beyond the Market

7th Sunday of Easter (A)

Readings: Acts 1: 12-14; Psalm 26 (27): 1, 4, 7-8; 1 Peter 4: 13-16; John 17: 1-11

Picture: By Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash

My dear friends, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word economy? Perhaps it’s money, or the stock market. Yet, as you know, the word economy actually comes from a Greek root, meaning house or household. And if we stop to think about it, this close connection between a house and a market or money makes a lot of sense, right? After all, isn’t the world our shared house? And what makes the world go round, especially today, if not money?

Even so, our scriptures invite us to ponder an alternative economy, a different kind of household. Consider this deep desire expressed so poignantly in the psalm: There is one thing I ask of the Lord… to live in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life. The psalmist longs to rest in the temple, the holy house where God dwells among God’s people. Yet when Jesus visits the temple, in the second chapter of John’s gospel, he ends up driving out the money-changers and sellers, telling them to stop making my Father’s house a market-place (2:16 [NRSV])! And when the authorities challenge him to justify his actions, he defies them to destroy the temple of his body, and in three days he will raise it up.

By his Dying and Rising, Jesus embodies an economy very different from that of the world. Today’s gospel indicates what this new economy looks like. One striking feature of Jesus’ prayer to his heavenly Father is the frequent appearance of the word give. It is the Father who gave Jesus his teaching and his mission, as well as all those who follow him. And Jesus, having given his disciples the Father’s teaching, now prays to be able also to give them eternal life, by asking the Father to give him glory through the Cross. Give… give… give… Unlike the world, the economy of God’s household is not that of buying and selling, but of solidarity and gift.

And isn’t this what the disciples in the first reading are preparing to receive? By persevering in prayer in one accord, they offer the Spirit a fitting place in which to rest. So that the Spirit might give them power to become, for the world, a life-giving household, with its own distinctive economy. And, as the second reading points out, the Spirit’s power enables disciples even to joyfully endure the inevitable persecutions that result from the radical following of Christ. To see these troubles as welcome signs that the Spirit of glory indeed rests on them, as it first rested on their Lord and Master.

Which is not to say that the market is all bad. Its benefits are undeniable. But it can also very easily turn into an idol, the worship of which brings death, especially to those most vulnerable, including the poor, our own children, and our planet as well. The market’s logic can pollute our homes and even our church, making it hard to find a safe enough place to rest. Isn’t this why Pope Francis often speaks of the need to transform an economy that kills into an economy of life?

Sisters and brothers, as we prepare to celebrate the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost, how might we embrace more wholeheartedly God’s life-giving economy 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