Thursday in the Octave of Easter

Event Details

Date: 04/13/2023 5:30 am – 6:00 am
Venue: Sts. Sergius and Bacchus Chapel
Categories: Season of Easter
Tags: [Private]

Liturgy: Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Scripture Readings
Mass Intention: (TBD)

The Ascension and You

“As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.”
The Unity Prayer

Sixth Sunday of Easter (First Reading)Sixth Sunday of Easter (Second and Gospel Readings) This morning, we have in our gospel reading the second half of a prayer offered by Jesus himself as quoted by John. Many times throughout the gospels we’re told that Jesus prayed, but in only a very few instances are we given Jesus’s words: the Lord’s Prayer, the Agony in the Garden, and here. Of these, the Lord’s Prayer is arguably the closest text we have to Jesus’s exact words. Since it’s highly unlikely that there was a scribe at the Last Supper taking down Jesus’s prayer, what we have here in this passage is most certainly John’s theological reflections on the significance of this event, seeing that it was the last time Jesus and the twelve would be together prior to his offering himself on the cross the following day. At the beginning of chapter seventeen, John shifts his narration from Jesus’s discourse to his Apostles to this prayer itself. Scholars have seen in these words a prayer of consecration or even a eucharistic prayer. We know that there’s no mention of the eucharist at the Last Supper in John’s Gospel. Yet, here in this prayer, we find eucharistic concepts and elements that have led commentators to describe it as “Jesus’s priestly prayer.” It’s in two parts: in verses one through nineteen, Jesus extends the consecration to his apostles and himself to the Father; in verses twenty to twenty-six, Jesus is consecrating all believers—that is, the Church—and that includes you and me. That second portion of the prayer is what we find in the gospel today. Using a traditional prayer posture, looking up to heaven, Jesus prays to his Father for us—for the Church—who have received the Good News from the Apostles. What does he pray for? “That they may all be one.” As we survey the world and see the condition of Christianity today, we have to ask, “What happened?” Was Jesus’s priestly prayer in vain? If we were to list the attributes of contemporary Christianity, I’m not sure that “unity” would even make the list. If we were to gather together all those groups that self-identify as Christian, I’m afraid the only thing they’d have in common—when you came right down to it—would be the name. They may spend some energy fighting against other faiths or secularism, but I think they spend the majority of it fighting each other. That doesn’t sound like the kind of situation that Jesus envisioned for his Church. As we look at the words of this prayer for the Church, we notice right away that the unity that Christ prays for is not so much a unity of speech or even action, but a unity of being. “That they may all be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us…” And again, “That they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me…” This is then, par excellence, Jesus’s eucharistic prayer. It effects the Real Presence—the Real Presence of the Father in the Son and the Real Presence of the Son in the Church. When we consider the Real Presence in eucharistic terms, we speak of a consecration; and this prayer of Jesus’s is most certainly that. In the three verses immediately before this gospel passage, Jesus offers an explicit prayer of consecration for his Apostles. He prays, “[Father,] consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I send them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” What “truth” is it that Jesus refers to here? It’s nothing less than reality—the reality of the Incarnation—that God has become one with his creation and with his people who recognize and trust in him. Again, the Church is consecrated to be the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ alive in the world in us. Whatever is consecrated is set apart and dedicated to the service of God. Things are consecrated for specific purposes. People are consecrated for specific missions. But the Church is consecrated to be nothing less than the presence of God in Christ in the world. Has the Church failed to live out its consecration faithfully? Not entirely. Throughout its history, there have been slices of time and pockets of individuals where the Church, through its service, has shown that the Incarnation continues and that God has not abandoned his creation or his faithful people. However, hasn’t it, at the same time, profaned its consecration? Hasn’t it conflated unity with uniformity? Hasn’t it continually preferred uniformity of thought, word, and action, over the unity that comes from unconditional love and acceptance? Like the Jewish people, our forebears in faith, haven’t we preferred the security and neatness of legalistic conformity to the messiness of diversity? Unlike our Heavenly Father who sends the rain on the just and the unjust, we prefer those who think, speak, and act like we do to those who don’t. And then comes the blasphemous attempt to divide God’s family—the people to whom he came and for whom he gave up his life—into “us” and “them” based on criteria other than the only one that matters: are they children of God, or are they not? Are they seen as members of our spiritual family or are they considered to be something less than we are—something less than human? The world today mocks Jesus’s eucharistic prayer, consecrating the Church as the Real Presence. It wants to enforce uniformity of thought, word, and action, condemning and punishing those who cannot or will not conform. It wants to give preference and deference to those who are like them by choice or by chance while leaving others to fend for themselves. And they want to exclude and leave by the wayside the needy, the stranger, those less privileged or well-off, and […]
The Glory of God Manifest

“I give you a new commandment: love one another.”
The Shepherd’s Promise

“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
A Supplement for the Church

“So the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord.’”
Patron Saint of Skeptics

Second Sunday of Easter Scripture Readings These few verses, encompassing two appearances of the risen Jesus to his disciples, were meant to be the conclusion of John’s Gospel and a parallel to the Prologue that began it. As the Gospel began with the eternal Word of God’s presence within the creation of all things, so it ends with the Word’s presence in and through the new creation, Christ’s Church, in which he is all in all. The same Spirit that breathed upon the waters of chaos to bring forth God’s creation now is breathed upon the disciples as Jesus sends them out to heal the soul-sickness of the world. The disciples are given a mission, namely, to continue the work of creation, bringing light out of darkness, order out of chaos, life out of death, and they’re given power to accomplish this mission—the power of the Holy and creative Spirit of God himself. As always, John isn’t concerned with how many times the risen Jesus appeared, over what length of time, or to how many people. John wants us to experience the results of the Resurrection not just for Jesus but, more particularly, for us. For John, the entirety of Jesus’s Resurrection and Glorification happens in one day—the day of Resurrection, Easter. In his first appearance that morning, Jesus warned Mary Magdalene not to cling to him, because he had not yet ascended to his Heavenly Father. Yet now, in the evening of the same day, he’s there in his wounded body, bestowing the gift of the Holy Spirit—a gift he told them they could not receive until after he had returned to the Father. In other words, for John, the Resurrection, Ascension, and bestowal of the Holy Spirit were all accomplished on that same day. Here’s where we can encounter the true depth of the mystery expressed in the Gospel. Jesus appears to his followers in his human body, but transformed. It has all the features of a human body but taken to a higher level, unconstrained by the limitations we struggle with: energy and matter, space and time. Still, it appears ordinary…even more than ordinary…it appears damaged, wounded. Yet, it’s capable of exercising and bestowing on others the healing and creative power of the Spirit of God himself. If we can appreciate what John is telling us in this appearance of Jesus at the end of the day, we can see Jesus giving the Church its mission to bring to the world the healing power of God. The Church is sent to heal, but in human form: disfigured, wounded, broken, but raised up. The second appearance John describes is equally as significant as the first. We know the Apostle Thomas now as “Doubting Thomas,” but we’d do well to look at him differently. From the other evangelists, we know that Thomas wasn’t alone. Many of the disciples were skeptical of the news of the Resurrection. It was only their personal encounters with Jesus that convinced them. Is skepticism such a bad thing? Isn’t it true that, when skeptics are convinced, they become the fiercest of proponents? So it is with Thomas. His encounter with the wounded, risen Jesus leads him to the strongest profession of faith in all of the gospels: “My Lord and my God.” All our Scriptures speak of the Lord God, in Greek Κυριος Θεος (Kyrios Theos), in Hebrew יהוה אלהים (Yahweh Elohim). As long as our minds are open and as long as we haven’t contempt before investigation, a healthy skepticism can lead to a still more profound faith. In this secondאלוהיםappearance, we see the full progression of faith, only, as it were, in reverse. Jesus has been called “the sacrament of the encounter with God” because whoever encounters Jesus encounters the Father, as Thomas did. Yet, in reply, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” It is in his wounded body, the Church, the repository of God’s Holy Spirit breathed into it by Jesus himself, that we encounter him. It’s hard to see the image of the Father in the wounded Jesus—even the wounded Jesus raised from the dead. How much harder to see that image in the Church? We bring the full force of our skepticism to bear when we look for Jesus there. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in [its] hands and put my fingers into the nailmarks and put my hand into [it]s side, I will not believe.” How then can we see the Father in the wounded Body of Christ, the Church? John says to us, “But these [signs] are written that you may [be believing] that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.” In other words, it’s in the encounter with the Gospel—the Good News—that we come to see its source, the Body of Christ, the Church, as what it truly is, since the gospels are the expression of the presence of the Holy Spirit of God in the Church. And it’s through faith that the Church is, indeed, the risen Body of Christ, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It’s there that we encounter the wounded and risen Jesus and put our fingers in his nailmarks and our hand into his side. It’s in that faith, that trust that Jesus is the glorious image of the Father and the conduit of the Spirit of life and of love where we find the deathless love of the Father for us. There is the sure hope of our resurrection, not just from physical death, but from all our faults, failings, fears, and sufferings. It’s through the gospels that we come to see the image of the risen Jesus in the Church and the image of the Father in Jesus glorified, and we come to believe. That’s the metanoia Jesus spoke about, the change of mind and heart that comes from belief in the Good News: Christ […]