English

4th Sunday of Easter (B) - Are you living your life as a vocation or a job?

This past week, a young man came to see me because he is discerning a call to the priesthood.  I could relate to the young man because he is now where I was about 30 years ago when I was discerning the priesthood.  He’s a college graduate who’s been working professionally for some years.  He’s had a variety of work experiences, and he’s developed certain skills and abilities through those experiences.  If he goes into the priesthood, he wondered, how would those gifts and talents and abilities be best used to serve the Church and for the spread of the Gospel?   I remember thinking in a similar way shortly before entering the seminary.  I was working in public relations before I entered the seminary.  I remember saying at the time to my friends, “I guess you could say in a way that now I’ll be doing public relations for God.”  Part of it is coming from a sincere desire to serve but also from the thinking that if the Lord let me get a degree in this or that or have this background or job experience, he must want me to use it for the Church.  We don’t want to see our past experience or skills “wasted” if we are going into the priesthood.  He was trying to figure out if it was his responsibility to find a way to make his work experience “work” for the good in the priesthood.  After more than 20 years as a priest, I’ve come to understand the ways of the Lord and the life of the priesthood in a very different way than I did when the priesthood was just an idea in those years prior to ordination.  We often think, especially during the time of initial discernment, in terms of what a priest does.  Are my skills and interests and abilities applicable to the priesthood?  Would they serve well the work of a priest?  But what I shared with the young man - what I invited him to see - was that, although there are certain things that a priest does regularly and certain skills and abilities that could be helpful in performing those tasks well, there is something much more essential regarding the priesthood and the way we should look at it.  The priesthood is a vocation, not a job or a career.  And the exercise of the priesthood should not be simply broken down into just the completion of certain tasks.  A vocation is about who you are rather than what you do; and what is defining about a vocation is that it is about a relationship with another.  My life is a response to the call of another - a response to the presence of another that has come into my life.  It cannot be reduced to my project or my work.  Motherhood, Fatherhood, and marriage, like the priesthood, are defined by relationship and are lived out and made fruitful by sharing one’s life with another.  We hear Jesus describe his vocation as he makes the distinction between himself as the “good shepherd” and the hired man paid to tend the sheep.  The good shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep.”  The sheep are “his own”  For the hired man, the sheep are just a means to an end.  For the hired man, it’s not about a relationship with the sheep.  He doesn’t work for them; he works for pay.  He’s not concerned for them other than as a source of income.  For the hired man, the work of the shepherd is a job.  And if the job becomes too risky or asks too much (“this is not what I signed up for”), or, as Jesus says, he “sees a wolf coming”, he leaves the sheep and runs away.  For the good shepherd, there is an intimacy between him and the sheep - a deep sense of belonging.  The sheep are his own - in a sense, one with him.  Their lives are united.  “I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”  The “work” of the good shepherd is to share with the sheep the relationship he has with the Father - to give the life that he has with the Father to the sheep.  The good shepherd reveals to the sheep his relationship of love with the Father in order to draw them into that same relationship.  The priesthood is not about doing things for people but fundamentally about sharing one’s life with Christ with others in the things that you do.  By being in relationship with the others - sharing one’s life with others, God’s love is revealed and a relationship with God is communicated.  This doesn’t happen if you don’t get to know the people and the people don’t get to know you, i.e., if the priesthood is lived simply as a profession with a divide between “work life” and “real life” - if your relationships with the faithful are seen as “professional” relationships in the way a doctor or a counselor sees his or her patients or a lawyer or business person sees his or her clients or customers.  There is a reason the priest is called “Father” - because the priesthood is about a personal, intimate familiar relationship of love that is meant to reveal and to communicate the love of God the Father.  The priesthood cannot be reduced to simply a service profession.  When it is, it leads to either burnout because what the faithful need is something greater than what just a man with his talents can give.  Or it is lived in a minimalistic or functional or formalistic way in order to “get the job done” so the priest can get on to his “real life”, whatever that may be.  What I’m saying about the priesthood applies equally to the Christian vocation - the vocation and mission of all the baptized.  Do we see our live as Christians as a vocation?  As a response to the presence of God in my life?  As a response to his love for me?  Or have we reduced our life itself to a job - a set of tasks to get done?  Marriages fall apart when one or both partners see marriage not as a vocation but as just a bunch of shared tasks that we have to get done.  And then those things are done and perhaps done well but without really sharing life together.  We can easily turn even raising a family into a “project” or work.  But we all can tell the difference between whether we are being loved or cared for for our own sake or if we are just a means to an end.  Does this person have concern for me?  Does the person love me?  We all want to be known and loved.  We are made for much more than a contractual or transactional relationship. 

          The way we keep our life from being reduced to a job is to stay in the flock of the Good Shepherd and to see and to receive the love that our heavenly Father has bestowed on us his children.  When Jesus says to the disciples, “I will lay down my life for the sheep,” he is referring to his crucifixion.  He told the disciples later at the Last Supper, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Normally, the shepherd would slaughter the sheep to feed himself, but Jesus the good shepherd will offer himself as the Lamb of God who is slain for us, to feed us with his body and blood.  Jesus gave us the Eucharist - the sacrament of his body and blood - his life laid down for us - at the Last Supper.  In this way, he gives us communion with himself, drawing us into the communion he has with the Father.  Jesus continuously shares his life with us in the Eucharist.  This week, I visited the 2nd grade class - the class that will receive First Holy Communion tomorrow/today at the 10:00 a.m. Mass.  I asked, “What is special about receiving Holy Communion?”  One girl said, “It is how we become friends with Jesus”.  And another said, “It is how we go to heaven.”  Our friends are not friends because they do things for us.  Rather, they do things for us because they love us and are our friends.  They want to be with us.  They want to share their life with us, even if we don’t have something to give in return.  As friends, what matters is not so much what you do together but that you are together.  It is in this relationship of love that Christ is revealed and the love of God is known.  It is in this communion of love that we “taste” heaven and find the path to eternal life.  We are saved in a relationship, not by completing certain tasks well or following certain rules or fulfilling the “program” of Christianity.  This is how God loves us and saves us and calls us to live our lives as Christians. 

          I advised the young man that when he has his interview with the admissions board at the seminary that he should not look at it as a job interview.  You are not there to tell them about your qualifications or what skills and talents you have that would make you a good priest.  Rather, let them know how Christ has touched your life - how you have come to know God’s love for you and how that love has changed your life.  That is the gift you are to share - living the newness of life you have received, so others can see what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.

English

3rd Sunday of Easter (B) - How do I know Jesus today?

The readings this Sunday in particular as well as the readings the Church meditates on throughout the Easter season help us to answer the question, “How do I know Jesus today?  How do I experience the resurrection, i.e., that Jesus is alive today?”  The resurrection is the central belief of our faith.  As St. Paul said, “If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain.”  The resurrection is the reason we are Christians, but the resurrection cannot be something that just happened 2000 years ago or it would have nothing to do with my life.  It would just be an idea - a pious thought.  If I cannot experience the resurrection today, then, really, “who cares?”  What difference does it make that Jesus rose from the dead?  As we see in the scriptural accounts of the resurrection and the witness of the New Testament writers, the disciples believe in the resurrection because something surprising happened to them that changed their lives.  It was something that they could touch and see. It wasn’t the figment of their imagination.  They encountered a fact, an event of a changed humanity.  We encounter the risen Lord in the same way today.  In the first paragraph of his encyclical “God is Love”, Pope Benedict writes: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (1).  The Gospel today begins with, “The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread.”  These two disciples are the two disciples who were on their way to Emmaus when a man they did not recognize began to walk with them.  That man began to explain the scriptures to them in a way in which their hearts came alive to the point of “burning” within them, as they would recall.  They were attracted to him and wanted him to stay with them.  Their eyes were opened to recognize Jesus when he shared a meal with them and broke the bread in the same way Jesus did at the Last Supper.  Because of this encounter, the direction of their lives was changed.  They return to Jerusalem and share what happened to them on the way.  Jesus then appears again to the gathered disciples in Jerusalem.  They experience the changed humanity of Jesus.  He invites them to touch and to see his body - that he is not a ghost.  They can tell from his hands and feet (still bearing the wounds of the crucifixion) that this man alive before their eyes is the same man who they saw die nailed to the cross.  As with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”  The scriptures are only understood by the disciples after an encounter with the risen Lord.  This is something very important.  We don’t come to know Jesus by studying the scriptures or the Bible.  Rather, the personal encounter with Jesus in our lives is what makes sense of the scriptures.  I only understand the scriptures to be true when what is recalled in the scriptures comes to fulfillment in my life - when what is recalled in the scriptures happens to me.  Faith, the recognition of Jesus alive, precedes understanding.  We can also say that one of the ways that I know that I have met Jesus is that what happens to me today bears the same marks or “traces” of what happened to the first disciples.  Something surprising happens to me today - I meet someone today - and because of that event or encounter, I am changed in a way that I didn’t expect.  It is often a change that is clear to me that didn’t happen because of my own strength or ingenuity. It happens usually because of an attraction to a life I see or a new life that I detect in myself, and I want to stay with it.  St. John puts it this way, “The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments.  Those who say, ‘I know him,’ but do not keep his commandments are liars, and the truth is not in them.”  Faith is not simply intellectual knowledge or knowing about Jesus but living differently - keeping his commandments.  When the word of God takes flesh in us, we know it is true.  It is a witness of the resurrection when his life is made visible in us - when we live differently because of who we have met. 

          Peter’s speech in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles that we heard in the first reading today is what Peter says to the people who are amazed and astonished when they witness the cure of the crippled beggar.  They saw the dramatic change in that man - how he was “raised up” by Peter.  How he began to walk and to jump and to praise God.  They see a new life in him.  He “clings” to Peter and John and the crowd is drawn toward the place where Peter and John are.  Peter calls to conversion the people who witness this new life.  You denied Jesus in the past.  You acted out of ignorance.  But your sins can be wiped away.  The new life that you see in this man before your eyes can be yours!  St. John, in his letter, gives testimony of what he and the disciples have seen with their own eyes, “what we looked upon and touched with our hands - “the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us”.  “He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.”  Peter and John and the other disciples were met by Jesus in the Upper Room the evening of Easter.  Jesus forgave them for denying him and abandoning him.  He met them with peace and not retribution.   And he gave them a mission to forgive sins; to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins in his name to all the nations.  They are to witness what has happened to them. 

          This past week, I met a young woman who was baptized Catholic but not raised in the faith.  As a teenager, she had a desire to go to Church, but no one in her family was practicing.  As a young adult a few years ago, she became curious about Christianity and bought a Bible.  She began reading the Bible and looking things up on the internet about the differences between the different Christian denominations.  She attended various Protestant churches but never really felt at home.  She was looking for both community and structure, and came to inquire about being fully initiated as a Catholic.  She wanted to know what she needed to do to receive the sacraments of the Eucharist and Confirmation.  I told her that the sacramental preparation classes for adults would begin in the Fall.  I asked her who she knew that was Catholic - who might be a sponsor for her.  Was there a particular person who she knew whose life of faith she found attractive?  She couldn’t name anyone.  Maybe her grandmother, but she really didn’t have any family or friends who were Catholic.  She was eager to learn more about the faith, and I said I would recommend some good materials for her to read, but the most important thing for her to do was to start going to Mass.  Until we participate in the life and worship of the Church and get to know personally people who are living the faith, Christianity is just an idea, an abstraction.  We can’t get to know Jesus - get to know the faith - simply by reading a book or the Bible.  Jesus is made known to us “in the breaking of bread” - in the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist where the community of faith gathers and he is made present.  The Body of Christ comes together to receive his Body.  Th Lord’s face shines upon us through the faces of brothers and sisters in the Lord who are following Him and living his life.  The celebration of the sacraments, especially the Mass, are one of the primary ways in which we encounter Jesus and our minds are opened to understand the Scriptures.  Without the Mass, we end up just knowing about Jesus but not knowing him, i.e., experiencing him in a way that can change our life.  May we allow ourselves to be surprised by the way Jesus appears in our lives today - through the persons that we happen to encounter that are living differently - that exhibit a newness of life.  That is the way the Lord calls us to conversion and lets his face shine on us. 

          In a particular way, I want to speak to the parents of our first communicants. Have you noticed a change in your children as they have gotten to know Jesus more over the last year?  Have you noticed a newness of life in them?  Has the change in them been something unexpected or surprising?  Have you been surprised by the simple and joyful way they often express their relationship with Jesus?  May what you see in them be a call to conversion to you and an invitation to make the Mass and the sacramental life more central in your lives.  Jesus is not known primarily in the Catholic school religion class or the PREP classroom.  Jesus is known to them “in the breaking of bread.”  Please bring your children to Mass.  If we don’t keep his commandments, especially to “do this in remembrance of me” by living the faith that they are learning, we don’t really know Jesus, and cannot share the faith.  We are “liars” and the truth is not in us.  That sounds harsh but that is what St. John said out of pastoral love for his flock.  The Beloved Disciple wanted his community to really know and to believe in the love God has for us.  That is what every pastor or father wishes for his children.  It is what I wish for you and all the families of St. Charles - that we will be witnesses to the life of resurrection here today.