Fourth Sunday of Easter

Happy Mother's Day.

I remember my mother as one of my best cheerleaders.

Moms encourage, mentor, teach, and patiently listen. And the most important thing a mother can give a child? Unconditional love! We can never fully measure their unconditional love, acceptance, and forgiveness of us.

Here are two things my mother taught me:

Logic. When I asked why I had to do something, she explained, “Because I said so! That’s why!” And Mom also taught  me about envy, saying” “Millions of kids are starving and don’t have the nutritional meal you have; so eat your spinach and tuna fish!”  Does that sound familiar?  I invite all mothers to stand for our applause. Thank you for all you do on behalf of family life.
 
The word of God takes us back to St. Paul’s first missionary journey through the country we know today as Turkey. The spirit-filled Paul and Barnabas first told the Jews the good news: Jesus Christ is gloriously alive.

But this good news outraged some in the synagogue. And so Paul and Barnabas went and proclaimed the Gospel to the Gentiles, the non-Jews. And God gifted them with faith in Jesus. They repented, were baptized and focused their lives on God. The author may be asking, do we endeavor to live a God-centered, other-centered life?

The book of Revelation describes a vision in which a symbolic number of people are glorifying God and enjoying God’s presence. Someone asks, “Who are these people?” The answer:
They are the ones who were martyred because of their faith in Jesus Christ. They stayed true to their faith and kept their baptismal promises.

This passage challenges us to stay true to our faith, especially when things are not going “our way,” when what is happening is the opposite of what we want to happen.

In the Gospel according to John, the author describes Jesus  as our shepherd who cares for us as we navigate toward our heavenly dwelling place. This pastoral image reminds me of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd” etc. The Gospel author may be asking whether we recognize God’s love and care for us in our daily lives.

During this Easter season, we have been meeting different biblical personalities: Thomas the questioner who finally professes his faith in Jesus. And Peter the impetuous disciple who, despite his dramatic failures, ultimately did the right thing.

This week, we meet Paul, also known by his Jewish name, Saul. Born in Tarsus, southeast Turkey, he was well educated in Judaism and Greco-Roman philosophy. He was by trade a tent maker. But he also was a firebrand, a rabid persecutor of Christians.

Suddenly, as he approached Damascus in Syria, Paul was struck by an amazing visionary experience of Jesus, gloriously alive. That experience turned Paul’s life upside down. He became God’s “chosen instrument” to the non-Jews, one of the greatest evangelizers. Often controversial but always confident, he lived a purpose-driven life.

This religious genius established Christian faith communities throughout the eastern Mediterranean, authored letters that shaped the history of Christian thought, and eventually was beheaded by order of the emperor Nero.

Yes, Paul and the apostles lived and died for their faith communities.

We stand on their shoulders. Without the generations of heroes and heroines before us in Catholic Christianity, we would not have our faith communities today. And our response is gratitude to God for our Catholic faith community: to which we belong, and which gives purpose to our lives.

Let me give you a few good reasons why I’m grateful:

     1.      We are a worldwide community of believers (over one billion three people, men and women of all shades of language, race, and color, rich and poor, American, European, Asian, and African, charismatic and traditional), a diverse family that celebrates the presence of the living Christ in our liturgies and especially in our Eucharist, in the signs of bread and wine. Yes, we have a relationship with God. The triune God abides in us, and we abide in God. We are living temples of God.

           We are the people of God, heralds of the good news, servants, called to wash the feet of one another. This is an awesome image of the church!

My favorite image of the Church is Peter’s fishing boat. Why? This early Christian image symbolizes all of us. We’re on a journey, with a map, stormy weather, people slipping overboard, survivors being pulled in, mutinies, sometimes off course, attacked.

And a boat of course needs a captain. He may not be ideal—too lax, too strict, too single-minded (like Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick)—but if everybody grabs the tiller, we’re all in trouble. Remember, for a time, Peter wasn’t ideal, yet what his crew managed to do has lasted two thousand years.

 2.         We are a community with splendid heroes and heroines. Consider the litany of saints. These men and women lived the beatitudes. They recognized who they were (mere creatures of an all-mighty Creator); they sought God in their daily lives; they forgave wrongs done to them; they were peacemakers, bridge-builders; and yes, they were always ready to do right. They challenge us above all to live the beatitudes.

3. We are a community moved to serve the basic needs of the poor. There’s an old hymn that I would like to paraphrase: Christ has no hands but our hands to do his work today. He has no feet but our feet to lead people to Him, who is the way, the truth and the life. He has no voice but our voice to tell people that He is gloriously alive.  Think of Jesus’s many examples and teachings, for example Matthew chapter 25: when I was hungry, etc. Yes, we are the mystical body of Christ attempting to meet the needs of people, especially the poor, through our many Catholic charities.

Alas we are also a community with saints and sinners. Some people behave scandalously; they make a mess out of their lives and the lives of others. So, we have to live with some messiness and muddle through as best we can and stay true to Jesus Christ, gloriously alive.

The word of God today, especially with its narrative about the missionary journeys of Paul, prompts us to thank God for the heroes and heroines before us who have built up this global Catholic community. The word invites us to give thanks for the faith community to which we belong, a community that calls us to be in relationship with God forever. For that is our ultimate purpose of life—to abide with God and God with us forever.