Category Archives: Holy Spirit

Praying the Eucharistic Prayer

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Dear Folks,

Our readings today talk about the power of prayer. We know that praying better is not about building technique to be able to manipulate God (an unworthy enterprise that always fails

anyway), but about bringing more and more of ourselves to God, that we may be all His. Part of that is understanding and being more conscious of what we are praying. The Mass, of course, is

our central prayer, and it is good to understand it more and more. Today I’m going to unpack the third Eucharistic prayer. We pray it very often, but perhaps most people don’t give a lot of thought to what we are really saying.

The liturgy of the Eucharist begins with gathering and bringing forward the gifts which represent all we have done with what God has given us. As the bread and wine are placed on the altar, we

intentionally offer ourselves with them, that we may be consecrated.

We pray the prayer over the gifts, then there is the preface, with praises God for His gifts to us. Then comes the Holy, Holy, the hymn with which we unite with the heavenly liturgy (see Isaiah

6 and Revelation 4).

Then we start the Eucharistic prayer proper, and number three begins with praising God for His holiness and the work of creation, and then says how creation is meant to praise Him. God

gathers us to Himself so that “from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name (see Malachi 1:11).”

Then we ask for the Holy Spirit to “graciously make holy these gifts we have brought to you for consecration, that they may become the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is called the “epiclesis” the calling upon, and it is worthy of extra note.

Then we get to the words of institution, recounting what Jesus said and did at the Last Supper, giving Himself sacramentally as He would give Himself on the Cross. This is worthy of extra

special note, and we respond to the moment with proclaiming the mystery of faith.

Next, we speak of celebrating the memorial of the pascal mystery by which we are saved. We remember that in the Bible, remembering means something stronger than we are used to:

making a past event present and effective. (If you read Genesis 8:1; 1Samuel 1:19; Jeremiah 31:34; Luke 1:54 and 72 in that light, I think it will make sense). And we gratefully offer “this holy and living sacrifice.” Jesus died once and will never die again, but His sacrifice has an eternal power, and He allows us to unite ourselves to that sacrifice that we “make become one body, one spirit in Christ.” As we asked for the Holy Spirit to transform the bread and wine into

the body and blood of Christ, so we ask the Holy Spirit to transform us into the body of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12; and Ephesians 4:1-16). We seek to be ever more perfectly the Body of Christ, and the body that is offered to the Father (see John 17: 20-21; and perhaps 1Corinthians 15:25-28). We ask, “May he make of us an eternal offering to you so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect” and we mention the saints. Heaven is receiving God’s love and loving Him in return brought to infinity, and that is being an eternal offering to Him. “May this Sacrifice of our reconciliation, we pray, O Lord, advance the peace and salvation of

all the world,” and we pray that the power of Jesus’ Sacrifice continue to transform the people of the world, both those gathered and those scattered throughout the world. Then we pray for those

who have died. Finally comes the doxology: “Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever.”

Responding with the Great Amen, the people join in saying the whole prayer. We offer all to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

This is our faith: God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, gathers a sinful people to Himself by the power of Jesus’ sacrifice, and makes us a part of that union of self-gift, which is heaven

for all eternity, and we want everyone to share in it. To quote an old beer commercial, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Blessings

Fr. Jim

Pentecost and Peacemaking

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Dear Folks,

This is Pentecost, the great feast of the Holy Spirit, and the birthday of the Catholic Church.

The Holy Spirit came and brought people together, breaking down barriers between people, and enabling them to have relationships. This is a path to peace. This is the path to peace.

With the recent shooting that was in the news, I think it is good to talk about some violence in our society. There has been so much lately, such increases in different kinds of violence and cruelty, from shootings to rioting, to assaulting people on the subway, to suicide. What has caused this? I think as a society we need to put our collective energy behind building some values, some norms, and some habits.

On is empathy, an awareness and attentiveness to the state of another person. Often, we are focused on how things affect us, but deep awareness of what’s happening in others is precious.

This is built in good relationships, interacting sharing, and working together (texting is not enough). Essential is good fathering and good mothering. Could we agree that fathering and mothering are crucial, heroic vocations that should be honored and celebrated? Could we work to develop respect for people when we disagree, and try to understand them rather than insult them? This requires recognizing that the way things look to us in not always how they look to others, and we can’t just demand they see things our way.

Humans have a desperate need for agency. I have observed that we humans have a real need to make a mark in the world, ideally to do great and noble things, but if we feel we cannot, it is easy to make a mark by being destructive. We must nurture the potential greatness in each person, so they can see themselves as heroes and not victims. We must build the fortitude to keep going when that road gets harder than expected (which it will). We must focus on strategy and tactics for making changes large and small.

We need reverence for boundaries. Because we think we are right does not give us the license to use tactics that we would condemn in the other side (they think they are right too). We must measure violence by those on our side with the same scale we measure violence by our opponents. We need support and for law enforcement and consistent enforcement of laws.

Some people have been proposing what they consider the solution, and berating those who do not agree. They do not make a case for their solution but seem to presume it is obviously the thing to do, and they say that those who don’t follow their plan do not care and do not love children. I think this is the exact opposite of what we need. What if there are intelligent people of good will who do care very much, but believe that this proposed solution will not help, but will in fact do harm? This approach is guaranteed to fail. It completely neglects to look at other people’s point of view. It makes both sides feel more helpless and pushes people farther apart. No amount of browbeating is going to make me accept a solution that I think will just make things worse. Let people make a case for their proposed solution, recognizing that their other side has their case too. We need to go through how it would be implemented in practice. We need to recognize that we are all biased in favor of our own arguments, and we need to work harder on making our case than we think we do.

As a Christian, I believe that the starting point is Jesus, and I highly (very highly) recommend getting to know Jesus better. However, if anything I’ve said resonates with you, my efforts have not been wasted. Let’s move the conversation forward. Let’s make the situation better.

Blessings,

Fr. Jim

Easter People

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Dear Folks,

This is Easter! This is actually when we should be singing, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” This is the celebration of Our Lord’s great victory over evil, and that makes all the difference. The Easter season will continue until Pentecost. How should we respond? I suggest:

1. Rejoice! (obviously). Even if you are going through a very hard time, we remember that the hard times come to an end, and the victory of Easter is forever.

According to our capacity at the time, we can look defiantly at what is dragging us down and say, “your days are numbered, and we will get the last laugh.” We read in Scripture, “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared; for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10).” We can celebrate according to our capacity and show the world that just as we have done penance during Lent, now we party!

2. Get immersed in Acts of the Apostles. During the Easter season, the first reading is from Acts almost every day. It is the story of the Church in its beginnings and shows how to be an Easter people. If we follow those readings and reflect on them, it will give us a sense of what was their response to the Easter event and the Pentecost event. (You know you are allowed to read the daily Mass readings even if you don’t get to Mass that day?). As you go through Acts of the Apostles, I would encourage you to look for four things:

a. Telling the Gospel story

b. Working together as community

c. Worshipping God

d. Helping people in need.

I would suggest that those four things were how they made their mark on the world. Doing these four things, a small band of misfits changed the course of world history forever. I suggest if we grow in doing these four things, we can be as successful as they were. We have everything they had. We have the Gospel story, and we have the Holy Spirit working within us. During the Easter season, I’ll be unpacking more about how we might try to grow in these four things (actually, I plan to be doing that for the rest of my life, but one step at a time).

We remember that after the disciples encountered the Risen Jesus, the world was still a mess, and still very hostile to everything Jesus is about. Acts makes this clear. It also made clear that the Church had problems, and that it had flawed people in them from the beginning (that is made even more clear in the epistles). Despite that, a small band of misfits changed the course of world history forever. If we truly believe in the resurrection the problems in the Church now will not hold us back from doing wonderful things.

When people look back on this moment in history, what will they find? Let’s see how many reasons we can give them to know that we truly believed in the Gospel, that we believed in the power of the New Life that Jesus offers us.

Blessings,

Fr. Jim

Woman at the Well: a Surprise

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Dear Folks,

Today, Jesus meets a woman at a well. Brant Pitre’s excellent book “Jesus the Bridegroom” talks about gathering all the people of God to be the bride of the Lamb. The Bible has a couple of powerful images of meeting a bride at a well (Isaac, through a servant, with Rebekah in Genesis 24, Jacob with Rachel in Genesis 29, and Moses with Zipporah in Exodus 2:16:21). Pitre will point out various details in common between these stories and the story of Jesus at the well, which means that a Jewish audience who knew their Torah would instantly make the connection. A man meeting a woman at a well made them think of marriage.

Jesus talks about being the source of living water. We will see again that He will talk about living water in chapter 7 during the feast of tabernacles (the feast of booths): “On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed ‘Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says; “Rivers of living water will flow from within him.”’ He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7:37-39).” According to Gail Yee’s “Jewish Feasts and the Gospel of John”

she talks about the last and greatest day of the feast. “On the seventh day, the priests pass through the Water Gate and encircle the sacred altar seven times with the waters drawn from the pool of Siloam (p.79).” There would be other rituals with water during the feast. It would happen at the time of harvest, which was the beginning of the rainy season (there is no rain in Israel during the summer: rain happens in the winter, so imagine cisterns getting dry). In that context Jesus makes His declaration.

Pitre argues that when Jesus tells the woman at the well about living water, He refers to baptism, seeing how it follows from so much about baptism in Chapter 3 and the beginning of Chapter 4. Baptism gives the Holy Spirit (John 1:32 and 3:5) and the Spirit reminds us of the truth (John 14:26)

Jesus breaks down barriers between people. Jesus is about bringing people together. This woman was a Samarian, and very much an outsider. We don’t know the details of this woman’s story. She has had five husbands and was living a sinful lifestyle with a man with whom she was not married. Was she in her situation because she made some really bad choices, or because she was treated horribly and this was the only way she could find to survive, or maybe a combination of the two? The fact that she is coming to the well at midday suggests other women were shunning her. In Israel, you run errands early in the morning before it gets hot, and at mid-day you work inside. Jesus loves people regardless of their sins, but also takes their sins seriously (nowadays people assume it has to be one or the other). He doesn’t explore the state of her soul, but the basic facts of her situation. The fact that He knew that and didn’t treat her with contempt was probably a new experience for her. He did not berate her, simply told the truth, and she knew what the score was. Nowadays, it has the extra complication that many people, including many practicing Catholics, believe that many sins are not only not sins, but positive goods, and that calling them sins is actually hateful. Still, we are called to lead with love and respect, to trust the power of the Spirit given to us in baptism, and to point to the truth. Jesus offers a more abundant life (John 10:10) and it is for us to point to that life and show it in our behavior.

I suggest getting more and more deeply engaged in the Gospel of John will help us see how His truth all connects and how to point to it with our words and actions.

Blessings

Fr Jim

Trinity: Why Do We Care?

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trinity

Dear Folks,
Imagine, if you will, buying a car, but what they delivered was several crates with the
individual components and no instructions about how they fit together. I’m guessing you
would be less than thrilled. In the Great Adventure Bible Series, Jeff Cavins talks about
some people coming out of their religious education having a “heap of Catholicism.” They
know tidbits but have no idea why they matter.
One of the biggest occasions of this is the doctrine of the Trinity. Many people fought to
defend this doctrine for centuries. Basic Catholic religious education teaches this truth, and
we recite it in the creed on Sundays. But how many Catholics can explain why it matters?
How does this affect living the Christian life?
When we say “God is love” we are not just saying that God is loving, but that love is His
essence. The Father is eternally giving Himself in love to the Son, who is eternally
receiving and returning that love to the Father, and that love is so great it is Himself a
person, the Holy Spirit. Without creating anything, God is already the perfect community of
love, and has no need for anything, but love is fruitful, love is creative, so God created us
out of love. This defines for us the fullness of life: to receive love and give ourselves in
love. It also defines love: to give oneself. Jesus said there is no greater love than to give
one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13). In everyday practical terms it is to will the good of
another. The pursuit of holiness is both a personal and communal effort, and following
Jesus involves connecting to the community. To lose oneself in love is to become more
fully oneself.
Christianity is not only the greatest love story that has ever been told, but the only love
story that could ever be told. The Lord Himself, with nothing to gain, paid the ultimate
price for us, and we didn’t deserve it. If Jesus is not God, that that means God sent
someone else to do His dirty work, and then Christianity is just another religion. If Jesus
didn’t really become human, that means He didn’t really pay the ultimate price, but just
pretended to.
Different starting points make everything different. The materialists believe that we are just
a collection of chemical reactions in a temporarily self-sustaining system. Personhood,
consciousness, and love are just byproducts of chemical reactions. Love will then often be
defined as a feeling that can come and go, rather than a decision. That is going to affect
how we view the value of individual lives and how we respond when we are disappointed
by other people. That will affect how we view the concept of life fully lived. If love served
pleasure, it might be seen as a good thing but if one were disappointed too often, it could be
discarded as a value. I read one Hindu thinker that said the Absolute reality was not
personal, and that personhood is a result of a lapse from the Absolute. To achieve perfect
oneness, one needs to lose one’s individuality. Those who believed in many gods
envisioned them fighting amongst each other. In such religions, being good is not necessary
so long as you keep your god happy and your god happens to be winning.
All these truths fit together into the ultimate story, and no doctrine is expendable. Whenever
people teach something contrary, it will always result in something less. No one will ever
come up with a story as good as the one God weaves. The Catholic faith is the greatest gift
we can give. Knowing how it all fits together and why it is so good, so beautiful and so true
is part of being ready to share it with the rest of the world. And the rest of the world needs a
lot of God’s call to love.
Blessings,
Fr. Jim

Pentecost

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pentecost

Dear Folks,
This is the Solemnity of Pentecost the great feast of the Holy Spirit, the birthday of the Catholic
Church, one of the three biggest celebrations of the Church year. The story of Pentecost is in Acts
chapter 2, but the other readings in the lectionary give us a lot to flesh out the story.
We have a lot of choices for the first reading on the Vigil, but the most well-known one is the story
of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. It starts with people united, but then trying to attain heaven
by their own power (similar to the sin of Adam and Eve). Their pride winds up dividing them.
Their languages got confused and they couldn’t communicate anymore, so they dispersed. Such is
the power of sin. This is undone by the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which allowed
people of all different languages to understand each other. The Holy Spirit unites and heals
division. Such isthe power of the Holy Spirit.
There is more.
The other possible first readings for the vigil include Exodus 19, which shows God revealing
Himself in thunder and lightning, smoke and fire. Ezekiel 37 is the story of Ezekiel preaching to
the dried bones that came together, were covered with flesh and sinews, then came back to life.
This was a sign that the people of Israel, scattered by the exile, were considered dead as a people,
and God was going to bring them back home. Joel 3 talks about God pouring out His spirit “upon
all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young
men shall see visions; even upon the servants and the handmaids, in those days, I will pour out my
spirit.” No one is too humble to receive this gift. There is a sense that God is going to do great
things, greater than people would expect or imagine.
The second reading is Romans 8:22:27. St. Paul speaks of creation “groaning in labor pains (an
image used a number of times in the Bible, for example Romans 13:8 and John 16:21).” This
encouragement says to people that are going through overwhelmingly difficult times that the gift of
God will make it worth it.
The Gospel for the vigil is John 7:37-39, in which Jesus calls those who thirst to come to Him and
drink, and He will make rivers of living water flow from us (remember the conversation with the
woman at the well in John 4), and we are reminded that this refers to the Holy Spirit, which will
only be given after Jesus has been glorified. To a desert culture (in contrast to a dessert culture),
water was very powerfully seen as the power of life where there is otherwise death. Notice that this
speaks of us not only receiving this living water, but being a source of it for the world.
On Pentecost Sunday, the first reading is, of course, the story of Pentecost. The second reading is
the image of the Church being the Body of Christ, and we members of the Church are parts of this
body. We are connected, and share common traits (like needing a compatible blood type), but
must also be very different. It is very good that feet and livers are different. I’m not a biologist, but
I know they are not interchangeable. We, members of the Church, have all been given gifts from
God, and these gifts, though different, are all needed and valuable. Such is the power of the Holy
Spirit.
Finally, the Gospel is John 20:19-23, in which the Risen Jesus give the disciples the Holy Spirit to
enable them to forgive sins. I can’t imagine unity in the body without forgiveness. The Spirit that
unites us and makes us one is the one at work to heal sin and division. One of the signs that the
Holy Spirit is at work in our community is our ability to come together, work together, and get
along with each other. One of the signs that the community is not open to the work of the Holy Spirit is factions and divisions between people.
This should give us much food for thought on Pentecost, and I highly recommend taking some
time with some of these Scriptures. I also recommend Dove Bars.
Blessings,
Fr. Jim
And two extra notes:
With all that is happening now, I need to say that if people use others’ bad behavior to excuse their own bad behavior, things will not get better. We need them to get better. This is a time to build up and not tear down. Remember, two wrongs don’t make a right, but two Wrights make an airplane. Let us do what is Wright.
I am willing to learn from anyone who says something I find worth learning. I never expected to learn something prophetic from Wesley (no, not John Wesley, but Wesley from the Princess Bride): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HnvQM465zM

Preserving Us in Truth

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gifts of Holy Spirit

Dear Folks,
Jesus speaks of sending another Advocate. The word is Paraclete, meaning comforter or
advocate.
We find in Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Looking in the Greek, we find it says that they will be paracleted. However, Bible scholars
say in the text here in John, the meaning is an advocate, one who speaks for another, as a
prophet speaks for God. Jesus, of course, was speaking about the will of the Father (in the
Gospel of John, we see very strongly that Jesus was about doing the will of the Father), and
so He speaks about sending another Advocate who will keep them (and us) on track with
His teaching.
There is a very powerful reason to believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in the Catholic
Church: If you look at our history, it is very clear that there have been times of deep
corruption, terrible leadership, and awful decisions. Reading Karl Adam’s book The Roots
of the Reformation, a short book with a lot of information, we see a very bad situation at the
end of the Middle Ages. If the Holy Spirit weren’t keeping the Church together, the Church
would have shut down centuries ago. It probably wouldn’t even have lasted ten years. In
Acts 5:34-39, a respected rabbi named Gamaliel gives some provocative thoughts along
those lines. Lots of folks tried to start movements, but it’s not that easy to keep them going
for millennia, especially when so many things go wrong.
The fullness of truth about God, and the meaning of what it is to be human, was revealed in
Jesus. We believe it makes no sense that God would give such a gift at one moment in time
and then allow it to be lost by human error and corruption. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to
preserve the truth in the Church. Given the messy history, how that is done is not simple.
First, there is arguing, lots of it. We see that in the first century there was a huge dispute
about whether justification (being in right relationship with God) comes from following the
Law of Moses or from faithfulness to Jesus. This was decided in the Council of Jerusalem
(see Acts 15), which laid the pattern for later councils that clarified teaching (think of the
Council of Nicea in 325, which gave us the bulk of the Nicean Creed). The Holy Spirit does
not make things neat and tidy, but keeps us from going off track.
Secondly, doctrine develops over time. The word “Trinity” is not in the Bible. The Canon
of Scripture is not listed in the inspired text in the Bible (the footnotes, table of contents,
and the like are not part of the inspired text). This has led to much confusion, with some
thinking that if it’s not explicit in the Bible it can’t be true and others thinking that we can
change whatever we want when fashion of thought changes. G. K. Chesterton talks about
development in these terms: “when we say that a puppy develops into a dog, we do not
mean that his growth is a gradual compromise with a cat; we mean that he becomes more
doggy and not less. Development is the expansion of all the possibilities and implications of
a doctrine, as there is time to distinguish them and draw them out…(from his book on
Thomas Aquinas).” The Second Vatican council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation puts it
a bit differently: “This tradition which comes from the apostles develops in the Church with
the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the
words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study
made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (cf. Lk. 2:19; 51), through the
intimate understanding of spiritual things they experience, and through the preaching of
those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the
centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of
divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her (Dei Verbum 8).”
G. K. Chesterton was asked why he became Catholic. His answer was simple: “Because it’s
true.” That’s my reason for remaining Catholic. Others might have different starting points,
but for me, everything else follows from that.
As we await Pentecost, let us ponder the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in our work,
and in our history.
Blessings,
Fr. Jim