Feast of St. Matthias, Apostle
Fate, Freedom and Faith

Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 20-26; Psalm 113:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8; John 15:9-17

Life is uncertain. And recent events have continued to confirm us in this view. At one moment, you can be happily chatting with a friend at a bus-stop and at the next moment there’s a car barreling into you, sending you sprawling on the ground and headed to the hospital. Life is unpredictable. Not even the military might, the wealth and political power of the USA could predict or prevent the loss of life and property caused by those tornadoes that struck the Mid-West most recently.

And life’s uncertainty and unpredictability leads some among us to resign ourselves to fate. Whatever will happen has already been pre-determined. It is our fate. We see something of this view even in our first reading today, when it speaks of the fate of Judas, who abandoned his apostolic calling to go to his proper place. And yet, we may well wonder if fate is truly all there is. Was it only due to fate that those National Servicemen lost their lives when a fighter jet crashed into the storeroom in which they were working? Was it only due to fate that a media celebrity was sentenced to serve a term in prison and to pay a fine for drink driving? Is it all fate?

Some more modern minds would disagree. They would prefer to think in terms of freedom. We are free to determine our own fate, to forge our own destiny. And we bear the consequences of our choices. Planes will crash if they are defective. The courts will impose sentence if people are convicted of crime.

We Christians too recognize the reality of free choice. We do believe that Judas was free to choose whether or not to betray his Master. Just as the early Christian community was free to nominate those they thought were most suitable to succeed him. As we are told in the first reading, there were about a hundred and twenty persons in the congregation, but only two were nominated, and one finally chosen. Indeed, we believe that the chosen one, Matthias, was also free to choose whether or not to accept his appointment. We too believe in free choice.

But we also believe in something far more important, something that gives meaning to our choices, that guides us and gives us confidence in the exercise of our freedom. As Jesus tells us today, you did not choose me, no, I chose you… Above all, our faith is in a God who chooses us. And this is a choice made in love, a radical love expressed most poignantly and profoundly in the image of Christ on the Cross. This is a choice made for our ultimate well-being. It is also a choice made for others and for all creation. For not only are we chosen, we are also commissioned… to go out and to bear fruit… that will last… It is only in freely responding to this prior divine choice that we live our destiny to the full, that we come to take our appointed places around the table of the Lord.

Yes, life is indeed uncertain. But, clinging in faith to the certainty of God’s choice of us in Christ, we dare freely to choose to respond daily in love.

How do you choose today?

Friday in the 5th Week of Easter
I Have Told You Everything…

Readings: Acts 15:22-31; Psalm 57:8-9, 10 and 12; John 15:12-17

There is no denying the fact that, both as individuals and as a community, committed Christians are faced with a dazzling array of choices to make. Often these are difficult decisions without any clear-cut answers. It’s also often the case that whatever option one chooses it is impossible to please everyone. As is the case in the first reading today, although the story has a happy ending, we may yet wonder at the feelings of those, especially of the Pharisees’ party, who had been advocating circumcision for all.

What to do? Clearly, at least two extremes need to be avoided. On the one hand, when faced with a variety of differing opinions and options, we might be tempted to throw up our hands in despair and refuse to decide. This temptation may come in the subtle form of handing over the decision to experts of one sort or another. Let them decide. What do we know? Yet Jesus words to us today are shocking enough to stop us in our tracks. I have made known to you everything I have learned from my Father… Everything! However complex a situation or a decision might be, even if it does require consultation with experts, do we dare to believe that, in Christ, we have the capacity to make a good decision?

On the other hand, we must also resist the temptation simply to refuse to listen to anyone, especially those whose views might be considerably different from ours. Although it’s obviously faster and easier to decide in this way, don’t we run the risk of missing out on what God might be saying to us through these others? Again, Jesus’ words in the gospel should give us pause. I call you friends… If we were to take this seriously, can we afford to ignore what Christ might be saying to us through one of his other friends?

Clearly, it’s not easy to steer a middle course between these two extremes. And yet, this is exactly what we see the early Christians doing in the first reading. Yesterday we observed how their decision-making process was guided by Christ’s commandment of love. Today we see the fruit of this decision. The community most directly affected by the decision experiences a significant God-ward movement. Where, at first, its members were disturbed and unsettled, now they are delighted with the encouragement that is offered them. In heeding Christ’s command to love one another by courageously deciding on the difficult issue of circumcision the early church fulfills its commission and bears fruit that continues to last even down to our day.

What are we, in our turn, being called to decide in love today?

Thursday in the 5th Week of Easter
Freeing the Burdened or Burdening the Free?

Readings: Acts 15:7-21; Psalm 96:1-2a, 2b-3, 10; John 15:9-11

Continuing where we left off yesterday, the first reading again offers us a concrete illustration of what it looks like when a Christian community tries to follow Christ’s instruction to remain in my love. The Council of Jerusalem, as it is sometimes referred to, reaches its climax with several crucially important speeches. We are told that the discussion had gone on a long time. And we can probably imagine what this means. Do we not have experiences of such discussions – where many people speak and many things are said but no connection seems to be made, no meeting of the minds achieved, no satisfactory solution reached? And then Peter rises and speaks in a way that somehow silenced the entire assembly. Was this only because of who he was or the force of his personality? Was the silence only due to the fact that people respected and deferred to Peter the Rock? Perhaps. But more likely than not, it also had something to do with what Peter said.

Consider the gist of his speech. It’s really an appeal to go back to the basics, the bare essentials, of the Christian faith. Remember, says Peter, we believe that we are saved in the same way as (the pagan Christians) are: through the grace of the Lord Jesus. More than the observance of any religious regulation, it is through the grace of God in Christ that we are saved. And how has this grace been communicated to us in the past? Again, Peter invites his listeners to remember how God showed his approval of (the pagan Christians) by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as he had to us. The community should thus not make it more burdensome than necessary for them to come to and to remain in the faith. In effect, Peter shifts the direction of the debate from the drafting and enforcing of rules and regulations to the question of how God is continuing to love God’s people.

His speech also helps the assembly to listen with open ears and hearts to the experience of Barnabas and Paul, to their account of how God had been working through them among the pagans. And James then confirms the thrust of these speeches by highlighting how this is entirely in harmony with scripture.

This is what the love of Christ looked like in the Council of Jerusalem. For the early Christians, it meant recalling that, whether we are Jew or gentile, we do not save ourselves, but are instead saved by the grace of God in Christ. It meant remembering their own concrete experiences of God in the past so that they could better recognize God’s ongoing presence and work in the present, even when it manifested itself in surprising and unsettling ways. It also meant finding validation of such experiences from a Spirit-filled interpretation of scripture and so reaching a decision that freed rather than burdened others. This is what love looked like then.

What might it look like – who are the pagans – for us today?

Wednesday in the 5th Week of Easter
Clinging to the Vinedresser

Readings: Acts 15:1-6; Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4ab, 4cd-5; John 15:1-8

Recently I had a lunch date with a few old friends several of whom I’d not seen for many years. We had a delightful time catching up. And, as one would expect when there’s a person of the cloth present, several shall we say controversial issues were raised in our conversation. Here are some examples: Is it alright to do yoga? Or are you opening yourself to demonic influences? What about the recent move to decriminalize certain sexual offences? What is the church’s stand on this? What stand should a faithful Catholic take? And what about the recent change in the local church’s practice regarding abstinence on Fridays? Why the change? Can we still choose to abstain? Are we being too relaxed?

A brief weekday homily like this is probably not an appropriate occasion to address these issues adequately. But, in reflecting upon the Mass readings of today, we may at least find some guidance as to how we might go about seeking some answers.

The metaphor of the vinedresser pruning the vine and cutting off branches that bare no fruit is particularly helpful, especially when considered together with the controversy that is unfolding in the first reading. The issue facing the early church is clear: should circumcision be required of gentile Christians? And we all know the answer that was ultimately arrived at. But perhaps it is just as, if not more, important also to consider how the controversy arose and how it was resolved. We may first presume that both sides to the dispute have noble intentions. Both are concerned to do what Jesus is asking of us in the gospel today: to remain in me. Yet, both have very different ideas as to what this means. Does remaining in Christ require circumcision or not? Here we have a useful insight to remember: the desire and effort to remain in Christ can actually lead to legitimate differences of opinion and even to heated arguments between equally committed members of the faithful. And it is often precisely through such disagreements and negotiations that the Divine Vinedresser prunes his vine to make it bear more fruit. In this case, the branch that is the requirement of circumcision will eventually be cut off, thus paving the way for the spread of Christianity far beyond its humble Jewish origins.

But in order for such pruning to take place, all parties to the disagreement must at least be willing to listen attentively to the opponents and to consider the possibility that God might be speaking through them. Indeed, the fruitfulness of such debates depends very much on the ability to do this, which in turn depends on the answer to one crucial question. Are the parties attached above all else to the vinedresser? Or are they merely clinging stubbornly to their favorite portion of the vine?

As we negotiate the various difficult issues that come our way, to whom or what do we cling?

Tuesday in the 5th Week of Easter
Peace in Reverse?

Readings: Acts 14:19-28; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13ab, 21; John 14:27-31a

A peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you…

It often seems that the world approaches peace in much the same way that it does the many other things that it seeks, things like knowledge and development and democracy. The strategy, if there is one, is simply to marshal as many resources as possible and to forge relentlessly onwards with as much speed and acceleration as one can manage. The situation in Iraq comes spontaneously to mind. And isn’t this also the way in which, as individuals, we often seek peace in our own lives? Don’t we try to leave behind the unpleasantness of the past – and even of the present – and run ever more quickly towards the future in a kind of self-induced blissful forgetting? But even if we do manage to achieve an uneasy stillness, we know from experience that this is often simply the calm before an even bigger storm. Even if all the messiness seems to have disappeared from plain sight, don’t we have the nagging suspicion that it has only been swept under the carpet? And isn’t it true that all the things we try so hard to run away from simply accumulate to form a distinct bulge on the floor of our lives over which we continually trip and stumble even as we try our hardest to ignore it?

How then to dispose ourselves to receive this peace that is the gift of the crucified and risen Lord? The actions of Paul and Barnabas in the first reading may offer us a symbolic indication of what is required. The striking thing about the reading is the direction in which people seem to be moving. When Paul is stoned and left for dead, we are told that he stood up and went back to the town, the very place where people had tried to kill him. After both Paul and Barnabas have successfully completed their mission, we are told that they went back through Lystra and Iconium to Antioch where they gave an account of all that God had done with them to the very community that had commissioned them. Even as Paul and Barnabas move relentlessly onward to proclaim the good news, they also have the occasion to go back, to retrace their steps. In failure and in success alike, they make time to go back so that they can better move ahead.

Isn’t this something we need to learn as well, we who take justifiable pride in the speed at which we have now learnt to move ahead? Don’t we need also to learn to make time and space, if only in our imaginations and our prayer, to go back, to retrace our steps, to get reconnected with ourselves, with our communities and with our God? And so to receive the peace that Christ wishes to bequeath to us and through us to others?

How might we better receive Christ’s peace today?