What's in a Name?: Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter

 Acts 14:21-27

Ps 145

Rev 21:1-5a

Jn 13:31a, 34-35

 

The first reading from Acts gives us history  anchored in a specific time and place.  Among other things it suggests that Paul and Barnabas could have benefited from GPS or at least a good travel agent.  They certainly covered a lot of ground in the first missionary efforts of the Church.  At times Acts is a combination travelogue and introductory course in missiology. It describes the difficult work of spreading the message of Jesus crucified and risen from the dead to the world well-beyond Jerusalem.  Acts describes the challenge of sharing the Good News with those who would not have heard it otherwise.  

 

Much was happening as the community came together, growing in leaps and bounds.  It developed a unique identity such that in the reading on Tuesday we heard  “For a whole year they met with the Church and taught a large number of people, and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.”  

 

"and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians."

 

As Paul, Barnabas and the others spread out in their missionary efforts, what came to be known as the Church was gaining a foothold, and the believers were given a name. That name would serve as a concise description of these people. 

It was a name that would accrue more and more associations—both positive and negative—over the ensuing millennia. 

 

Associations to the word Christian emerged, and continue to emerge, from observations of how Christians conducted-- and continue to conduct--themselves 

in the public arena,  even when 'being a good Christian' is used to advance an immoral agenda. There is nothing Christian about the intentional taking of human life at any point from conception to natural death in old age.   

 

That religious belief has a profound effect on behavior was well illustrated in Rodney Stark's book: The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History.

The book considers the period covered by Acts and into the first two or three centuries of the Church, a rather narrow span of time given the two millennia of Church history. 

 

Stark described behaviors in the early Church that he contends drew many to embrace Christianity.  One of the most fascinating was the Christian community's response to plague.  From the very beginning Christians acted on the mandate 

to care for the sick.  Stark suggests that caring for the afflicted diminished the community's incidence of plague as a result of immunity developed from low-level exposure to the infectious agent; a primitive form of vaccination if you will.  In addition; the nascent Christian Church held, even then, absolute prohibitions against the taking of child-brides and against abortion.   

 

If the first reading from Acts gives us a history.  anchored in time and place,  Revelation indicates a point well-beyond the horizon anchored neither in time nor geography.  It hints at what is to come in veiled language.  The images are strange, but strange is the only way to describe that which we cannot know in this life.  The reading does not tell us the how or the when.  But it assures us 

that we WILL be transformed in that instant when vital functions cease and everything changes.  We are reminded of this in a preface for the funeral Mass: 

“Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended. . . . It is a great comfort knowing “there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain for the old order has passed away.”    Pain.  Suffering.  Sorrow. Those experiences that mark our lives on earth will come to an end in that final moment.  

 

The Gospel brings us back to the meaning of Christian, and associations people make upon hearing the word Christian.  Our identity as Catholics, is anchored in Jesus’ mandate.  “I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  Christian identity should be apparent in those who follow Jesus’ command.  But, because we are sinners, that identity is not always visible.

 

Back in the seventies, a time during which some truly awful church songs were foisted upon us, and which, alas, remain firmly implanted in cheap, ugly, disposable "worship aids" and loose-leaf lectionaries, one of the most annoying and wrongheaded featured a thumping marching chorus and the stunningly narcissistic self-aggrandizing lyric: 

“They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love.

They will knoow woooo  we are Christians by our love.” 

 

That last know-wo sometimes sounded like the communal passing of a kidney stone.  

Musical value:  close to zero

Theology:  little to none.

Narcissistic index:  like American Express, priceless

 

Perhaps if the verse read, 'they SHOULD know we are Christians by how we show our love,' the words would be less grating, the sentiment less condescending, and more descriptive of a goal which we should seek.  

There is nothing wrong with the conditional sense.  Rather than assuming 

that we manifest our love so perfectly that others will immediately see us as different it is more realistic—and humble—to admit that we have to work at it.  

Just because we proclaim ourselves Christians it doesn’t mean that the love part derives automatically, without effort, prayer, and self-examination.  

 

“The Lord is gracious and merciful, 

slow to anger and of great kindness. 

The Lord is good to all

and compassionate toward all his works.”

 

That is a great consolation even when we act in a way that prompted Dr. Rieux, 

in Camus' The Plague to observe: "as you know Christians sometimes say that sort of thing without really thinking it. They're better than they seem." 

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Spring has arrived in Boston as evidenced by the photos taken in the backyard of our three house grouping of satellite communities.  It is unfortunate I cannot transmit the aromas. 

The Actress and the Call: Homily for 4th Sunday of Easter (Vocation Sunday)

In the preface of her autobiography: The Ear of the Heart,  Mother Dolores Hart, OSB, a nun at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut gives an excellent definition of a religious vocation:  "Many people don't understand the difference between 

a vocation and your own idea about something.  A vocation is a call--one you don't necessarily want.  The only thing I ever wanted to be was an actress.  But I was called by God."  She could have added that it is never easy. 

 

She wrote about her first night in the monastery: "I undressed and got into bed.  

Suddenly I was consumed with overwhelming loneliness . . . I lay awake on the cot for a long time. . . I could touch the opposite wall with my hand. I lay there, terrified by the enormity of the step I had taken.  I began praying . . . I cried myself to sleep that night.  I would cry myself to sleep every night for the next three years."  

 

Many of us can identify with those feelings of isolation and the enormity of the step we took when we entered vowed religious life, sometimes asking ourselves, "What have I done?"

 

The word vocation derives from the Latin root:  Voco, vocare, vocatus: To call.  To name.  To summon. To invite.  To challenge. The various meanings overlap but also stand apart, each with shades of meaning that explain the uniqueness of a vocation.  After 25 years as a Jesuit (in August) and 15 as a priest (next month) I've heard many vocation stories and shared mine more than a few times. Some of the stories proceeded smoothly whereas others were marked by agonizing doubts, fits and starts, and almost paralyzing uncertainty.  

 

Mother Dolores' "yes" to God's call garnered headlines in the trade papers and movie magazines of the time.  Very few people knew she was going to enter until after she walked through the monastery gate and took her place behind the grille.  Most vocations do not attract that kind of attention except from friends and family. And not all family and friends are pleased or supportive though the vast majority are.  Indeed a semi-shrieked, "You're going to become a WHAT!?!?!?" is not an infrequent question when the news is shared.

 

Currently there is a buzz over the newly released biographical movie "Father Stu" 

that stars Dorchester's own Mark Wahlberg with Mel Gibson playing his father.  The movie tells the true story of the late Father Stuart Long who is described in one review as: an "unbaptized boxer from Montana with a foul mouth" and a troubled relationship with his parents. He was baptized after a conversion experience and later, to the consternation of many, entered the seminary.  It got more complicated after he entered.

The script writers played fast and loose with some of the facts but on the whole those who knew Fr. Stu  deem the movie accurate.  I'm amused that a few are put off by the language.  The man was a boxer.  Most of them don't say gee whillikers, drat, or you so and so, when angry, frustrated, or even in a good mood.

 

A religious vocation takes time to reveal itself and come to full flower. It also takes a long time after entering before a man or woman is to ready to make a lifelong commitment.  I don't know any order in which it is possible to count the number of years 

from entry to final vows using the fingers of just one hand. (With sixteen years between entering in 1997 and final vows in 2013,I had to use all four extremities). Only after years of prayer, testing, self-examination, observing, and being tested, can one be ready for that final commitment.  The course is not always easy.  

 

The late Mother Dorcas Roselund, also a nun of Regina Laudis, entered after practicing pediatric gastroenterology.  A small woman with a crushing handshake,  she described the challenges of living in a monastic community as, "The new martyrdom.  They used to throw Christians to the lions.  Now they make us live together."   

 

She got that right.  

 

Despite the drawbacks, regardless of the losses and 'give ups' that come with the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, many of us who have those vows for years can imagine no other way of life.  

 

Two elements are crucial for vocations to the religious life. The first is prayer, prayer for vocations, prayer for those discerning vocations,  and prayer for those who are living their vocations. The second is simply asking and listening. It is important that another person ask and then listen to the response.  That someone may be a parent or grandparent who sees something, a friend who recognizes a spark, or a religious with a certain intuition. The director my fellowship in consultation psychiatry at Mass General Hospital, George Murray, SJ, MD was that someone who, in mid-November 1922 asked the questions, "Are you thinking of entering becoming a Jesuit or a priest?"  

 

If someone indicates interest in religious life ask, "what brought you to this decision?" "have you begun the process?" "What attracts you to that particular order?" Listen to the answers.  And never ever answer the question, "Should I enter or not?" That is between the individual and God, no one else dare interfere with that dialog.  I never asked George that particular question.  I knew he never would have answered it. 

 

And finally pray that the young--or not quite so young--man or women, will say with Mary, 

 

"Fiat mihi secundum tuum."  

 

May it be done to me according to your will.  

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Among the great joys of a camera is wandering around a farmer's market shooting the food.  It looks so much better outdoors than in the sterility of an Acme or Stop and Shop.  I was always amazed in Ljubljana where there was an outdoor market six days a week almost year round (not on Sunday) that the vendors set up and broke down their stalls, including the wooden shelves etc, daily.  

+ Fr. Jack, SJ, MD