May 29, 2011 - Sixth Sunday of Easter
Reading 1 - Acts 8:5-8, 14-17
Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Christ to them. With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing. For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice, came out of many possessed people, and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured. There was great joy in that city.
Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.
Responsorial Psalm - Ps 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
R. (1) Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Shout joyfully to God, all the earth, sing praise to the glory of his name;
Proclaim his glorious praise. Say to God, “How tremendous are your deeds!”
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
“Let all on earth worship and sing praise to you, sing praise to your name!”
Come and see the works of God, his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam.
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
He has changed the sea into dry land; through the river they passed on foot;
therefore let us rejoice in him. He rules by his might forever.
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Hear now, all you who fear God, while I declare what he has done for me.
Blessed be God who refused me not my prayer or his kindness!
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Reading 2 - 1 Pt 3:15-18
Beloved: Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence,
keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good,
if that be the will of God, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit.
Gospel - Jn 14:15-21
Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
Reflection
The three vows taken by members of religious orders (for example the Franciscans, Dominicans, or Jesuits) are: poverty, chastity, and obedience. Most of us have an innate understanding of poverty—it’s the lack of any material possessions. For most orders, that means that individual members do not “own” any of the things they use, like cars or computers. Rather, these items belong to the larger religious community and are shared by the members. What many on the outside might see as a type of deprivation—not actually owning a cell phone or laptop or dvd player—most vowed religious would describe as a form of liberation. Freedom FROM material belongings is how many sisters, brothers, and priests, would characterize the vow.
Chastity, too, though itself not terribly well-understood, seems to make sense. By forgoing a family, one is able to give oneself unreservedly to an entire community, be it a religious sister who runs an orphanage for HIV-positive children in Kenya, or a Franciscan priest who performs innumerable tasks from sacramental prep to soup kitchen cleanup. By sacrificing one human good, i.e. the intimacy and fulfillment of marriage, one is “freed” to participate in another type of flourishing, i.e. ministering whole-selfedly to the people of God.
But of the vows that religious women and men take, perhaps least familiar to us is that of obedience. Generally, we Americans have a visceral negative reaction to the word, “obedience.” It takes us back to a time when we were younger, and our parents or school teachers would punish us for being disobedient, i.e. for passing notes in class or breaking curfew as a teen. Or, we may think of the military, picturing famous movie portrayals of apoplectic drill sergeants screaming violently at quivering recruits for failing to obey an order.
Imagine if a friend were asked to describe you using a few modifiers, and she said, “S/He is hard-working, perseverant, dedicated, and selfless. Oh, and s/he’s also very obedient.” That last one would probably cause you to raise an eyebrow. While we wouldn’t necessarily DIS-like being described as obedient… we probably wouldn’t be quite sure if it was a compliment, either. Indeed, many modern couples have chosen to eliminate the word, “obey” from their marriage vows, out of a sense that marital love should not entail one partner ever giving orders to, or having to obey orders from, the other. So why is it that Jesus, in today’s Gospel, asserts that, the way to tell if someone loves God, is if that person “keeps God’s commandments,” or as it’s rendered in a different translation, “is obedient to the Commandments of God”?
Here, it is helpful to re-visit the Jewish approach to the Law, i.e. the Commandments, since after all, Jesus was a devout Jew. For Jews, adherence to the Law is not a matter of simple, unquestioning obedience to a set of arbitrarily articulated and mercilessly enforced rules. Rather, the Law is given as a gift from God for humanity’s benefit. The 613 Commandments of the Mosaic Law were not perceived as suppressing human freedom, but as helping people live more fully human lives.
When a parent tells a child she must eat her broccoli and go to bed at a reasonable hour, it is not because the parent is reveling in her position of authority and delighting in the ability to order the child around. Rather, these rules are designed for the child’s sake, that is, that the child might get enough vitamins and sleep, and therefore be healthy and happy. Most children, at some point or another, will be disobedient—refusing to eat the vegetables or throwing a tantrum at bedtime. What the child fails to understand is that these rules are rooted in love and crafted in wisdom—the very fact that the parent is willing to absorb the child’s screaming and still insist on bedtime is evidence of how much the parent loves the child! If the parent truly did not care about the child—or simply did not love the child ENOUGH to consider it worth the while to deal with these nightly antics—then the parent would simply say, “Fine, eat brownies every night and go to bed at midnight,” which indubitably would result in the child getting sick. The testimony of a parent’s love is precisely the fact that s/he is willing to be “the bad guy” and insist on obedience to these “stupid” rules. And what many parents would prefer to receive on a birthday or Mother’s Day, far more than Hallmark cards or presents from Macy’s, would be for the children simply to obey when Mom says it’s time to go to bed. Imagine a parent saying, “I don’t need a new bottle of perfume… I just want you guys to stop battling me every night when it’s time to go to bed!” That is, the parent is essentially saying, “It’s nice that you kids sign pretty cards and buy me flowers, but if you really wanna show me how much you love me… just stop disobeying me! The rules are there for your own good!”
Even though we are adults, we remain children in the eyes of God, and God’s invitation that we call Him “Father” invokes the comparison of a parent who insists that we eat our broccoli and not text while driving. Jesus says to the disciples, “If you really want to show God how much you love Him, stop sacrificing birds at the Temple and singing hymns of effusive praise… just keep the Commandments! Stop disobeying!” Like young children who tell their parents, “I love you Mommy/Daddy!” on their Birthday, but then continue to break rules around the house, we, similarly, are all too eager to declare on Sunday how much we love God, by dressing up, going to Church, and singing songs. We show up on Good Friday and venerate the Cross, and we are sure to get a smudge on our forehead on Ash Wednesday, all of which are external signs we use to try to express to God that we love Him and appreciate all He has done for us.
And yet, what Jesus says, throughout the Gospels, is that God is far less interested in singing and sacrifice, than He is in us simply following the Commandments—which, like the rules of a parent, are rooted in love and designed for our own good! Once we recognize that the purpose of “the Law” is not to suppress our freedom and prevent us from having any fun… and acknowledge that they are supposed to be guidelines to help us live a happier, healthier life, then “keeping the Commandments” will no longer seem burdensome, but will give us great joy.
So what are the Commandments, and how do we keep them? Throughout the Gospels, Jesus teaches us to “love one another as I have loved you,” and explicates a way of following the Law that involves caring for the poor, the vulnerable, and the least among us. It requires that we consider how our behavior affects others and demands that we honestly survey the contents of our heart to root out anger, envy, and anxiety. But Jesus also recognizes that we cannot do this alone; that, like children who are just too tempted by the box of Oreos in the cabinet when we’re supposed to be saving room for the spinach at dinner, we require help to ward off temptation. And so Jesus describes the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who is sent to assist us in this process. The Greek word Jesus uses here is Parakletos, or Paraclete, which means “one who is sent in to assist.” It could be akin to a corporate consultant who is temporarily brought on board to help a company that is struggling; or it could be like a lawyer who is asked to provide legal counsel when one is facing charges. Regardless, the very notion of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, is that we cannot do it ourselves, and we will need help. Therefore, let us have the humility to acknowledge this need, and to ask the Holy Spirit for help!
