Saint Matthias - 14 May

Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 20-26; Psalm 113; John 15:9-17

St John Chrysostom says that Peter could have appointed someone to take Judas's place but he chose not to and consulted the disciples. 'In any case he had not yet received the Spirit', Chrysostom adds. Thomas Aquinas says that it was acceptable to choose Matthias by casting lots because the Spirit had not yet been poured on the Church. After Pentecost, however, it is not appropriate to choose spiritual leaders in that way. Now spiritual leaders must be chosen through the reflection, conversation and decision of colleges of human beings because this is the normal way in which the Spirit works in the Church.

It is a politics of friendship, if you like. It is a fulfillment of the friendship with God which Jesus has established. From it arises also a new kind of friendship between human beings, all of whom share the same Spirit. It is not just a new friendship with God that Christ makes possible but a new kind of friendship among men and women.

No longer servants, we are friends of Christ and so friends of God. Friendship with God is another way of naming grace. It implies equality, mutuality, sharing, communication, loving. But it implies all those things understood Christologically. We can sometimes fall back into reducing the Christian faith to a kind of philosophy, a set of ideas which have a certain, abstract, truth, ideals that it is good to aspire to and to live by.

But the Christian faith is qualitatively different from even the best philosophy because it is centred not on an idea or even on an ideal but on a Person. It is about persons in relationship: the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit; the Father and the Son come to dwell in the disciples by the power of the Spirit; Jesus in the disciples and they in him; the Blessed Trinity abiding in the hearts and minds of those who love Him; human beings called to abide in the word and commandment and life and love of Jesus, and to bring all that into their relationships with each other.

Put much more simply, keep an eye out for the little word 'as' in the discourses of Jesus recorded in John's gospel. In today's gospel passage alone we find it a few times. As the Father loved me so I have loved you. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love as I have kept the Father's commandments and remain in his love. Love one another as I have loved you. Christ is the key, the link, the mediation between the Divine Love and Friendship and the human participation in that Love and Friendship.

An apostle is one who has been with Christ from the beginning. He has been in the community of formation that is the band of disciples and apostles, witnessing and hearing everything from the baptism of Jesus by John to his resurrection from the dead. It is not just a matter of time spent in the company of Jesus. It is about being one of the friends to whom Jesus has made known everything he has learned from the Father. One of the greatest blessings of friendship is the joy of knowing and being known, trusting enough to share oneself with one's friend, experiencing the security of entrusting oneself completely.

The Church is Apostolic in this sense, a community of men and women who have become the friends of Jesus, who have spent long years in his company, who have entrusted their lives and their hearts to him as he has entrusted his life and his heart to us. It is only ever through Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, experiencing things as He experienced them, knowing as He knows, seeing as He sees, doing as He does, being as He is, loving as He loves. And persevering in this friendship until we know even as we have been known, and then become capable of loving even as we have been loved.

Easter Week 6 Wednesday

Readings: Acts 17:15, 22-18:1; Psalm 148; John 16:12-15

Acts 17 shows us Paul preaching the resurrection of Christ to the Jews at Thessalonica and Beroea (17:1-15) and to the Gentiles at Athens (17:16-34). His arguments with the Jews are, not surprisingly, from the scriptures (17:2-3, 11) and his arguments with the Gentiles are more philosophical (17:17-18, 22-31). It is often said that his reception at the hands of the philosophers of Athens helps to explain Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians about arguments drawn from philosophy, as if he had received a bloody nose from the philosophers of Athens, but this speech is neither more nor less successful than others he gave (1 Corinthians 2:1-5; see Acts 18:1 and Romans 1:18-32). 

The sermon preached on the Areopagus is a rich and significant text. It shows us Paul engaging with the ‘intelligentsia’ of his day, the philosophers of Athens, and trying to present the gospel message to them in a way that would link with their way of approaching knowledge and truth.

The background to the speech is his experience of seeing the city full of idols, a fact which ‘provoked his spirit within him’ (17:16). He argued with anyone who happened to be there, including the philosophers and the cosmopolitan residents of Athens generally. They ‘spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new’ while at the same time, Paul says, being ‘exceptionally religious’ (17:19-22). For them Paul is a ‘babbler’ (literally a ‘seed picker’ or, as we would say, a ‘nit picker’) and a ‘preacher of foreign divinities’. But they were interested in anything that was new or strange, so they gave him a hearing.

The themes of Paul’s speech are central to the theological vision of the later father of the Church known as ‘Pseudo-Dionysius’. He was a 5^th century Syrian monk who published his writings under the name ‘Dionysius the Areopagite’, one of the people who was converted by Paul’s preaching at Athens. The later Dionysius had huge influence in Christian theology and spirituality right through the middle ages, and especially in the Latin West once his works had been translated.

So what are the themes of ‘Dionysian’ theology as Saint Paul presents it? One is the ‘unknown God’. ‘What you worship as unknown’, he says, ‘this I proclaim to you’ (Acts 17:23).  Thomas Aquinas, profoundly influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius, will later say that in this present life we are united with God as with one unknown. But this unknown God – the God of negative theology – is the creator of all things who made the world and everything in it. It is this God, says Paul, who gives to human beings life, breath and everything. God made all nations from one (literally ‘from one man’), determining the historical periods allotted to these nations as well as the boundaries of their habitations.

God placed in all human beings a ‘natural desire’ for God (though Paul does not use that precise phrase) since the Creator is to be sought in the hope of being felt after and found. It is a good description of any human searching for God, a searching that is perfectly understandable since God ‘is not far from any of us because it is in God that we live and move and have our being’. We are in fact God’s offspring, Paul says, quoting the Greek poet Aratus, and, at the same time, the works of human art and imagination cannot represent God. On the one hand Paul dismisses all idols that might be thought to represent God and on the other reminds his hearers that the only real image of God within the creation is the human being.

The unknown God will always be foreign, new, and young, a transcendent ‘God of surprises’, who cannot and will not be pinned down by the art, imagination or intelligence of human beings. ‘God does not live in shrines made by man nor is he served by human hands’ (Acts 17:23-24). Those who preach this God – God who is living and true, the unknown yet sought after Creator – will be breakers of idols, whether these are idols made by human craftsmanship from gold or silver or stone, or intellectual, artistic or spiritual constructions made by human reasoning and with which we would attempt to have and to hold God (images, ideas, experiences that we might be tempted to regard as naming or identifying or containing God).

Paul continues saying that the time of ‘unknowing’ is overlooked by God who now calls all to repentance in Christ, the one whom God has appointed to be the judge of the world. His audience becomes uneasy at this turn in the discourse – repentance? judgement? a single individual with a divine mission? And then Paul’s preaching breaks down completely at the next step: God has given assurance of this mission of Christ by raising him from the dead.

Inevitably the preaching of the gospel ‘breaks down’ as it comes up against the things that make faith difficult. Such things are many and varied. Some of Paul’s hearers in Athens had heard enough at this point: it was too foreign to their ways of thinking which might have considered the immortality of the soul but certainly not the resurrection of the body. Some promised to hear Paul again about his beliefs – a kind of damning with faint praise – and a few came to believe, notably a woman called Damaris and Dionysius the Areopagite. 

Paul’s speech at Athens is a wonderful example of how to preach to an educated and cultured audience. On the one hand build connections with their ways of knowing and thinking, travel the intellectual road together as far as possible. On the other hand be ready for the point of breakdown, a point that is inevitable, because the gospel calls all to conversion, to metanoia, to a renewal in our ways of thinking. This conversion is not just moral or religious but will always be intellectual as well.

At a time when many feel the weight of intellectual arguments against Christian faith – questions coming from science and philosophy particularly – Paul’s speech remains of great value as a first encounter between ‘faith and reason’. But its value is to be found not just in the success of his philosophical engagement in the early part of his discourse but also in the failure of the later part where the scandal of incarnation and resurrection provokes and troubles established ways of thinking.

Easter Week 6 Tuesday

Readings: Acts 16:22-34; Ps 138; John 16:5-11

John Lonergan was governor of Mountjoy, Ireland’s largest prison, for almost a quarter of a century. His account of his life in the prison service, The Governor, is a very interesting read. It seems that many of the good initiatives he took to promote the rehabilitation of prisoners were later reversed. The reason given was the shortage of funding in economically difficult times but one cannot help feeling that another reason motivating it was the view (surprisingly expressed to Lonergan by young people visiting the prison) that the things he was doing were ‘too good’ for prisoners. It seems as if society wants its prison walls large and secure, and does not much care what goes on inside them as long as it is not ‘too good’ for prisoners.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that punishment has three purposes: to protect society from people who are dangerous, to re-establish a balance of justice that has been disturbed, and to re-habilitate criminals so that they can return to living in the community.

Today’s readings invite a reflection on prisons and on the administration of justice. Paul and Silas, like Peter before them, end up in prison and are miraculously freed. One of the works of the Messiah is to set captives free and to lead out from the darkness of the dungeon those who languish there (Isaiah 42:7; 61:1-2). One of the ways in which human beings serve the Messiah is by visiting those who are in prison (Matthew 25:39,44). Peter’s  miraculous liberation recounted in Acts 12, and that of Paul and Silas recounted in today’s first reading (Acts 16), are thus signs that the messianic age has arrived. Along with the other wonderful works the Messiah does is the freeing of prisoners, and here it is, happening before our eyes.

There is a poignancy earlier on when the imprisoned John the Baptist asks about Jesus and is told that he is doing all those things foretold of the Messiah – the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them (Matthew 11:5). The striking omission from this list, which clearly echoes the texts of Isaiah referred to above, is the liberation of those in prison. It seems cruel, to say to the Baptist that the Messiah is carrying out everything foretold of him except the one thing in which John has the deepest personal interest. It gives added weight to Jesus’ concluding statement: ‘blessed is he who takes no offence at me’ (Matthew 11:6).

What might be going on here? The liberations of Peter, and of Paul and Silas, are presented as participations in the resurrection. Although not physically dead, the apostles are confined in places of darkness, removed from life, paralysed and held in chains. It seems that it is only after the Son of Man has himself been imprisoned, done to death, sent to the place of darkness, removed from life, paralysed, and has risen to glory from that place, that the full liberating power of the Messianic kingdom is unleashed on the world. Now the places of deepest darkness can also be visited and healed (he went to preach to the spirits in prison, we are told in 1 Peter 3:19).

In the freeing of Peter, and of Paul and Silas, we see dramatic  displays of power – foundations shaking, chains falling off, doors being thrown open. But it is a power that is only constructive, leading to reconciliation, freedom, and faith. Those who work with prisoners seek to establish the same things for them and in them. This is not to be naïve about crime or its consequences but simply to recognize that nobody falls outside the reach of God’s saving care.

The gospel reading today teaches us that the Advocate Jesus will send, the Spirit of Truth, is as much a counselor for the prosecution as he is for the defence. He will convict the world in regard to sin, righteousness and condemnation. He will establish justice, in other words. Only on such a basis – on the basis of truth – can human community flourish and progress. Faith and hope and love strengthen us in relation to Truth, convincing us of its supreme power, and re-assuring us that it illuminates even the darkest of prisons.

Easter Week 6 Monday

Readings: Acts 16:11-15; Psalm 149; John 15:26-16:4

The book that we call 'Acts of the Apostles' could just as truthfully be called 'Acts of the Spirit'. The journeys and miracles, the speeches and debates, the twists and turns that accompany the preaching mission of the apostles, clearly happen on a human level. But it is clear that they are also events to be interpreted on a divine level. If it is true, as it is, that the apostles become agents of evangelization in the days and months and years after the Resurrection of Jesus, it is equally true that the Holy Spirit is, first and last, the agent of evangelization.

So we read today that Lydia hears Paul speaking but it is the Lord who opens her heart. The apostles are, as Jesus said they would be, witnesses to the gospel in Jerusalem, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. But their preaching mission would have borne no fruit had it not been initiated and sustained by the Witness, the Holy Spirit, who is working in them, speaking with them, and acting powerfully through them.

We read in the First Letter of John about the three witnesses that confirm the preaching of the Gospel, the water, the blood and the Spirit, in other words baptism and the Eucharist, the sacraments of faith and charity, but always also the Spirit. In today's gospel Jesus says that the apostles will testify but that the Spirit of Truth too will testify. It is a joint enterprise, a work undertaken together: 'it seems good to ourselves and to the Holy Spirit' (Acts 15:28), Stephen is a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit (Acts 6:5), Simon wants to buy it when he sees the Spirit working through the Apostles (Acts 8:18).

With our ears we hear the teaching of the Lord's witnesses but it is only the Spirit working in our hearts who enables us to taste and embrace the truth of that teaching. With our eyes we see the good works of Christ's followers and the joy of their life together, but it is only the Spirit working in our hearts who enables us to understand and experience the divine origin of the love they share.

Easter Week 6 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; Psalm 66; 1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21

The prophet Isaiah says that the Messiah will be anointed with the Spirit and will have the gifts of the Spirit: wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, the knowledge and fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11.2). For Christians Jesus is this promised messiah and those who belong to him through faith and baptism are members of the messianic people. They share in these same gifts of the Spirit.

In writing to the Galatians Saint Paul speaks about ‘fruits’ rather than ‘gifts’ of the Spirit but the idea is the same: that those who live ‘according to the Spirit’ will lead lives characterised by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5.22-23).

If we want to see the Holy Spirit at work, then, we must look out for individuals and communities whose lives are characterised by these gifts and fruits. In today’s first reading, for example, the preaching of Philip unites the people of a Samaritan town just as the miracles worked through him fill them with joy (Acts 8.5-8). A community which is not united and which lacks joy is clearly not a place of the Spirit. Of course there are struggles to be fought and unity is sometimes not easily won. Likewise some forms of supposedly religious joy can be off-putting rather than helpful. But a community which, long term, cannot find unity or whose life is without joy does not show much sign of being a place of the Holy Spirit.

In the gospel reading Jesus speaks of the Spirit as the ‘spirit of truth’ who will be with the disciples and will be in them (John 14.17). He will enable them to live according to the way of Jesus, to understand what he has taught them and to love him in the way he asks. We can say then that fear of truth, or a culture of lies, or indifference to Jesus Christ, or the refusal to love, are all incompatible with the Spirit at work.

The Holy Spirit reveals his presence in these gifts and fruits. But we are taught something else about the presence of the Spirit in today’s first reading. Following the preaching of Philip, the apostles travel from Jerusalem to Samaria to pray for the newly baptised Christians. They pray for them to receive the Spirit and when the apostles lay their hands on them they do receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 8.14-17).

Sometimes people contrast ‘institutional’ religion with ‘spiritual’ religion as if these two are necessarily opposed. But this text from the Acts of the Apostles teaches that this is not so and that the work of the Church in the world is the work of the Spirit. At Confirmation when we receive the gift of the Spirit it is through contact with the bishop, successor of the apostles, who prays for us to receive the Spirit and lays his hands on us to that same end.

So the Spirit is at work not only in the virtuous and spiritual lives of Christians but in the preaching and sacraments of the Church. The sacrament of Confirmation gives each adult Christian a mission on behalf of the Church, to live as a witness or ‘soldier’ of Christ, bearing witness to his goodness and love in the midst of the temptations and difficulties of life in the world. Through the Church’s ministry the Spirit is at work in every faithful Christian encouraging justice, integrity, right living, kindness: all that goes with a life founded on truth and goodness. Of course we cannot restrict the work of the Spirit to the confines of the visible Church. But we can be sure of His presence there.

It can happen that we are presented with very clear evidence of the Spirit’s work, for example in the lives of holy people, in the heroism of prophets and martyrs, in the faithfulness of the elderly, in the courage and enthusiasm of the young – all kinds of ways in which the gifts and fruits of the Spirit work for the building up of the community and for the healing of the world.

But it must also be that much of the work of the Spirit remains hidden and unsung. The prayer and suffering of countless people down the ages is a spiritual reservoir at the heart of our world. One of the joys of the eternal kingdom will be learning how the Spirit has been at work in creation and its history.

Easter Week 5 Saturday

Readings: Acts 16:1-10; Psalm 100; John 15:18-21

The Spirit works always through human experiences: political, quasi-mystical, social, personal. We see it happening through all of these things in today's readings.

Paul's 'political' decision to have Timothy circumcised is puzzling. At the same time as he is communicating to the churches the decision of the meeting in Jerusalem that non-Jews becoming Christians would not be obliged to be circumcised, he arranges for Timothy to be circumcised. Although he is the son of a Greek father, Timothy is Jewish, taking his ethnic identity from his mother. With an eye to the Jewish party, Paul has him circumcised.

In other contexts, as well as in many of his letters (especially Galatians and 2 Corinthians), Paul speaks vehemently against the judaizers. He criticises Peter for giving in to them whereas here he ensures that the requirements of the law are fulfilled in the case of a Jewish man who has become a Christian.

Perhaps it is unfair to call his decision 'political' but how else are we to understand it? Coming from one who elsewhere describes circumcision as nothing, that it implies the observance of the whole law, and that it has now been replaced by a circumcision of the heart - well it can only be the overall good of his mission that moves him to do this, a decision that can only be called 'political'.

The unfolding of the mission is guided by the Holy Spirit, referred to here also as 'the Spirit of Jesus'. They were prevented or forbidden by the Holy Spirit from preaching in Asia which is why they went through Phrygia and Galatia. They journeyed towards Bithynia but turned away because 'the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them'. What is going on? At the end of Acts 15 we hear that Paul and Barnabas disagree about whether or not John Mark should travel with them this time (he had abandoned them during the first missionary journey). Paul and Barnabas have a serious falling out with each other and go their separate ways. We know from Paul's letters that there were other individuals and groups of 'apostles' preaching in the same places as he was preaching, sometimes trying to undermine what Paul was doing.

There is clearly another 'political' aspect to what is going on. We might be tempted to reduce the unfolding of Paul's mission to this horizontal, political level. Clashes of personality, disagreements about strategy, different emphases in the doctrine being taught: all of this is emerging, and emerging so quickly. But through it all the author of Acts - in this clearly following Paul himself - sees the Holy Spirit at work, the Spirit of Jesus, the primary evangelizer who is the real manager of the mission.

In a quasi-mystical experience a man from Macedonia appears to Paul in a dream and like the Irishman who asked St Patrick to come and walk once more among them, this Macedonian asks Paul to come and preach the gospel to them. This is the key to what is happening through the political, social, and personal disagreements. The apostles and the other preachers of the Gospel are merely instruments of the mission of Jesus. Their thoughts and struggles, desires and decisions, even their arguments and separations, are the physical realities through which God works out His purpose. So Paul moves across into Europe to preach the gospel there.

Even the negative reactions of the 'world', in hatred and persecution, are woven into the tapestry of the Church's mission. So they treat me, Jesus says in today's gospel, do not be surprised if you receive similar treatment. It can only happen in the world since the mission is for the world and the preachers live in the world. But the mission is not simply identified with worldly things - political, quasi-mystical, social, personal. Through all of those things something that is not of the world is being brought to bear on it. Something that does not belong to this world is given to the world and made present within it. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. In many different ways and in countless varied circumstances God continues to call preachers and apostles to strengthen those who believe and to preach the Good News to those who do not yet believe.

Easter Week 5 Friday

Readings: Acts 15:22-31; Psalm 56 (57); John 15:12-17

In the first reading we find the other New Testament reference to a man called 'Barsabbas'. Joseph called Barsabbas whose surname was Justus was the alternative candidate to take the place of Judas Iscariot in the college of the apostles. Matthias was chosen instead, by the casting of lots. Today we hear of another man with the same name, Judas known as Barsabbas, who along with Silas, is sent as an emissary from the church at Jerusalem to the church at Antioch. It seems as if Joseph and Judas may have been related, as cousins or even brothers. Or perhaps they were simply given the same nickname, 'son of the sabbath' (there is no consensus about what the name might mean), in the way that James and John were together called 'Boanerges', Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17).

Might it even be the same person, called Joseph in Acts 1 and Judas here in Acts 15? Judas is described as a leading man in the brotherhood as Joseph had to be also if he was considered a suitable candidate for the office of apostle. But the tradition is stronger that they were two different individuals.

It seems then as if the Church at this stage is still quite domestic even as it is being institutionalised. We have heard of converts in their thousands (Acts 2:41; 4:4) which would have required no little organisation. There are elders and leaders and teachers with authority not only in Jerusalem and in Antioch but in the churches founded by Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journey. Judas known as Barsabbas and Silas are delegates charged with carrying the decisions of a church 'council' to the community at Antioch.

At the same time it remains a movement of friends and family members, brothers and cousins, sisters and nephews, sometimes entire families and households are baptised together. All who share the same faith in Jesus become brothers and sisters to each other. Jesus had taught that anyone who does the will of his Father is his brother and sister and mother. The claim to be of one family now with Jesus is supported by all we are hearing from Saint John's gospel these days: the disciples are taken up into the domestic relations of the Blessed Trinity, made to be friends of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit who is God's transforming love. 

Today, in the first reading, we get that wonderful phrase, 'it has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves'. It might seem naive at best, presumptuous at worst, but it is simply taking seriously what Jesus had promised: 'the works I have done you will do also, in fact you will do even greater works because I am returning to the Father.' 'I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.' It is one of the characteristics of friendship, Thomas Aquinas says, that friends can reveal everything to each other. So the disciples received everything from Jesus. And the Spirit promised by Jesus 'will remind you of all that I have taught you.' You - we - are commissioned, sent as the Father sent Jesus, to bear fruit in the world as the sons and daughters of the heavenly Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus, collaborators of the Holy Spirit.

There is now just one commandment to remember. It is the 'great commandment' which in John's formulation is simply 'love one another as I have loved you'.  It is the new law of God's new Israel, the Church, a law which establishes us in the friendship of Christ, which makes all burdens light and all yokes easy to bear, even to the giving of one's life for one's friends. Love is the fulfilling of the law, Paul will say, a love that is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

The institutional concern of the Church must always be not to burden the family of God beyond what is essential. And the one thing necessary, according to Jesus, is to remain in friendship with him, listening to his word and keeping it, remaining in that word. Then by the gift of their Spirit, the Father and the Son will abide with us, they will make their home in us, making us to be, in truth and not just in name, the family of God in the world.