Before writing his wonderful letters Paul spent fourteen years in silent communion with God.

Tuesday/5/1/12

After St. Stephen was stoned to death in Jerusalem a general persecution of Christians broke out, and a good number of Christian Jews moved two hundred miles north to the Syrian city of Antioch. It was there that we came to be called Christians. Our first reading today tells us that Jews from the island of Cyprus and from the Egyptian port of Cyrene who had settled in Antioch had embraced the Faith. Following on that, those converts began bringing Gentile friends into the Church.

The Apostles in Jerusalem, on hearing about the new growth in Antioch, looked for a man who could represent them there. They settled on a man named Barnabas, and they had three reasons for that choice.  First, he had standing, since he was a Jewish priest. Next, as a man from the isle of Cyprus, he could mix with foreigners. Lastly,  although his real name was Joseph, he had been nicknamed Barnabas, which literally means “Son of kindness.”

On setting out for Antioch Barnabas thought of Saul of Tarsus as the perfect companion for him in dealing with a mixture of Jews, Gentiles, and men from many different ports.

The last we heard about Saul, or St. Paul, was the story of his conversion on the road to Damascus. However, recently in rereading Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, I came across his own account of the years between his conversion and that visit from Barnabas. I was surprised to read that after his conversion he spent three years around Damascus before going to meet Peter in Jerusalem. But what stunned me to read was that after visiting with Peter he returned to his father’s house in the Turkish town of Tarsus, and he spent fourteen years there.

In reading Paul’s letters I have come to regard him as perhaps the smartest man who ever lived. The depth of his ideas is matched with the beauty of his words. At first I was thinking of those fourteen years at his father’s house as a waste of a marvelous talent.

Now, though, I see those silent years as having been necessary for Paul. The depths of insights and the beauty of phrasing we find in his letters to the Corinthians and the Colossians were all carefully worked over hundreds of times in his ears of silent prayer.

It is the same with us. Our most productive hours are the ones we spend in silent communion with God.  

Before writings his wonderful letters, Paul spent fourteen years in silent prayer.

Tuesday/5/1/12

After St. Stephen was stoned to death in Jerusalem a general persecution broke out, and a good number of Christian Jews moved two hundred miles north to the Syrian city of Antioch. It was there that we came to be called Christians. Our first reading today tells us that Jews from the island of Cyprus and from the Egyptian port of Cyrene who had settled in Antioch had embraced the Faith. Following on that, those converts began bringing Gentile friends into the Church.

The Apostles in Jerusalem, on hearing about the new growth in Antioch, looked for a man who could represent them there. They settled on Barnabas, and they had three reasons for that choice.  First, he had standing, since he was a Jewish priest. Next, as a man from the isle of Cyprus, he could mix with foreigners. Lastly,  although his real name was Joseph, he had been nicknamed Barnabas, which literally means “Son of kindness.”

On setting out for Antioch Barnabas thought of Saul of Tarsus as the perfect companion for him in dealing with a mixture of Jews, Gentiles, and men from many different ports.

The last we heard about Saul, or St. Paul, was the story of his conversion on the road to Damascus. However, recently in rereading Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, I came across his own account of the years between his conversion and that visit from Barnabas. I was surprised to read that after his conversion he spent three years around Damascus before going to meet Peter in Jerusalem. But what stunned me to read was that after visiting with Peter he returned to his father’s house in the Turkish town of Tarsus, and he spent fourteen years there.

In reading Paul’s letters I have come to regard him as perhaps the smartest man who ever lived. The depth of his ideas is matched with the beauty of his words. At first I was thinking of those fourteen years at his father’s house as a waste of a marvelous talent.

Now, though, I see those silent years as having been necessary for Paul. The depths of insights and the beauty of phrasing we find in his letters to the Corinthians and the Colossians were all carefully worked over hundreds of times in his years of silent prayer.

It is the same with us. Our most productive hours are the ones we spend in silent communion with God.  

In seeing Since Jesus is the gate to the sheepfold we must be sure when we lead others that we come out through him, making all our teaching accord with what he teaches.

Monday, 4/30/12

In Chapter Ten of his Gospel John quoted two distinct parables that Jesus gave us. Yesterday we had the parable from verses from 10 to 18. There, Jesus compared himself to a good shepherd. Today we go back before that to verses 1 to 10 where Jesus compared himself to the gateway into the sheepfold.

What did Jesus mean by calling himself the gate to the sheepfold? Well, to start with we must have a clear picture of what their sheepfolds were like.

A sheepfold was a small corral next to every village in the Holy Land. Every family would have kept five to ten sheep, and a youngster in each family would have had the job of leading the family’s small flock out to the hills for grass and water.

At night all the families in town would keep their little flocks of sheep in the common sheepfold. I picture the sheepfold as being maybe fifty feet in diameter, with six-foot high clay walls topped with thorns that would discourage thieves from coming over the wall to snatch sheep. One older shepherd would be positioned in the gateway, guarding all the little flocks.

Mornings would be interesting. Each young shepherd would come to meet the gate keeper. The young shepherd, standing in the gateway would then let out his distinctive clicking sound that his sheep, and only his sheep, would recognize, then some to their feet, and follow the shepherd out to the hills.

In his parable Jesus was comparing himself both to the gate and the gate keeper. He allows only the real shepherds to pass out with their flocks.

The meaning of the parable could be that all of our teaching and the directions we give must be in accord with the teachings of Jesus.

Fathers and mothers are the true Good Shepherds.

Sunday, 4/29/12

Commonly we see the Good Shepherd as the model for our priests. They are called pastors, or assistant pastors, which is the same as calling them shepherds or assistant shepherds. Still, I think it wrong for priests to entirely appropriate the title of shepherd to themselves. In reality, fathers and mothers of families fit the model much better. Better than any priest knows his parishioners, parents know their children, and their children know them.

Parents never get the dramatic moment when they lay down their lives. It is more slow torture. They lay down their lives hour-by-hour, day-by-day, decade after decade.

A kid named Vince was two years behind me in grade school. A mailman all his adult life, Vince told me, “I used to like walking routes in choice neighborhoods, but now I don’t care where I walk. All I think about is making the money to keep the kids happy in school.”

I love bragging on my sister Peg. She and Joe had thirteen kids. Evenings you’d see them in their underwear at the kitchen table putting together and wrapping up the sandwiches for lunches.


In wedding scenes from English movies the parson says, “And forsaking all others you will cling to each other.” Peg and Joe never forsook anyone. They had a couch for visiting priests. For his last year they made my dad comfortable in their TV room. When a friend named Joe deserted his wife and kids, that wife, Audrey, and her kids moved in to Joe and Peg’s living room. 

Jesus said, “I lay down my life to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.” I love telling the story about how Peg said something like that. 


When I’d be visiting St. Louis I’d get up early with Peg, and we’d walk for half an hour. Then, we’d make the seven o’clock Mass.

Here is the part I like. I’d follow Peg up to Communion, and then I’d have to follow her toward the side door. She wouldn’t wait for the end of Mass. And people would be looking at us. I asked her, “Shouldn’t we stay for the end of Mass?

Only half turning to me as she pushed the door open, Peg said, “I’ve done enough.” No one took her life from her. She laid it down willingly.

Peter was filled with the Spirit because Jesus, as reward for his heroic death, had won him the right to pour the Spirit out on his followers.

Saturday, 4/28/12

In the first reading things were going better for people than they were in the Gospel. It seemed to be no problem for Peter in Lydia when he came on Aeneas who had been paralyzed for eight years. Peter just told him to get up, and Aeneas got up. It was just as easy in Joppa. Peter found Dorcas dead, and laid out for burial,but he told her to get up, and she did.

No such luck for Jesus in the Gospel. Addressing the five thousand who the day before had wanted to make him king, Jesus saw them turned away by the truth. And, seemingly, he had to let them go. He had said, “The bread that I will give you is my flesh for the life of the world.” They had replied, saying, “This saying is hard. Who can accept it?” they gave up on him.

Even the Apostles only hung on because they had no place else to go. The reason for that lack of belief in Chapter Six of John’s Gospel becomes clear when we read on to Chapter Seven. There, John explained the inability of those people to believe.

In Chapter Seven of his Gospel John quoted Jesus as saying, “If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink.”

Then John did something he did nowhere else. He turned to his readers to tell them what Jesus had meant by his words. John wrote, “He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him would receive. There was of course no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

In the first reading Peter was full of power and full of belief because it was Pentecost Sunday, and Jesus had filled Peter with the Holy Spirit.

The ability to fill anyone with the Holy Spirit is the gift Jesus received in reward for giving his life. Peter explained that in the Acts of the Apostles when he said, “Exalted at the right hand of God he received the promised Spirit which he poured out on us.”

Even now people cannot come to believe in Christ unless they are moved by the Spirit.

For us changes in belief are more gradual than what they were for Saul on the road to Damascus.

Friday, 4/27/12

St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus presents us with the world’s most dramatic reversal of religious beliefs. Making his way along the road, Saul was suddenly switched from being a persecutor of Christians to being their champion.

Such changes usually come slowly. I have seen this over the last five years. I have observed slow changes on a personal level and on a world-wide one. First, I wrote a 550 page book on my ups and downs as a Catholic over eighty years. With that published, I have been writing a church history I call my “take” on Christianity.

In my 550 page biography I saw how in my major seminary years I had taken  Rome’s rulings as my god. However, as a missionary in Korea I began looking for relief from Rome’s certainties. When Vatican II came along I was soured by the nuts it spawned. Then, in the seventies, Vatican II’s fine scholars made me a Vatican II man for life.

So far in my 225 page “take” on Christianity I have felt shame for the way we were  wedded to the nobility for centuries. The French Revolution was horrible, but at least it spoke up for common people. I am looking forward to writing about Vatican II documents that emphasize the dignity of all persons created in God’s image.

As the Curia’s delegate in Bulgaria, Turkey and France Archbishop Giuseppe Roncalli dutifully repeated the party line. Then, when he was elected as pope, he took it as a call from God to take the muzzle off two neglected elements of Christianity.

One element comes from Our Lord’s saying we must read the signs of the times. That need was encapsulated in the pope’s Italian word Aggiornamento.

The second essential Christian element is a demand for adhering to what was laid down by the Apostles. That is encapsulated in the French word Ressourcement.

That Italian and French word reverberated through the four years of Vatican II sessions. But now the Curia isn’t speaking of them. They say what makes for true Christians is obedience to authority. 

We believe that the bread is Our Lord's flesh.

Thursday, 4/26/12

Jesus said, “The bread that I will give is my flesh.” That leaves us wondering how the bread becomes the Body and Blood of Christ.

In 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council the Catholic Church obliged us all to believe in what they called “transubstantiation.” The word describes the disappearance of the substance of bread and wine to be replaced by the substance of the body and Blood of Christ.

In our day it is difficult to embrace that word altogether. For us a substance is the molecular make-up of anything. At Mass when the priest says, “This is my body” there is no change in the molecular make-up of what he is holding.

Our Lord’s DNA doesn’t suddenly becomes present.

Perhaps some Church scholars have a way for saying the word Transubstantiation still holds good, but I prefer letting the whole matter drop. Jesus said the bread becomes his body, so I believe it. I believe everything he said. I don’t care how it happens. I would agree with a verse from George Herbert where he says this.         

                                    I am sure, whether bread stay,

Or whether bread fly away

         Concerneth bread, not me.

Exactly half of Mark's Gospel show us that Jesus is the Savior. The second half of his Gospel shows that he saves us by suffering.

Wednesday, 4/25/11

Today we honor St. Mark. He was the one who, forty years after Christ’s death and Resurrection, wrote the first Gospel. Writing ten year later John and Luke wrote short clear sentences that explained their purpose in writing their Gospels. Mark did not explain his motives, but a reading of his seventeen chapters suggests what his motive might have been.

My guess is that with people saying that Jesus who was executed after suffering so much could not have been the Messiah, Mark set out to show that Jesus was the Savior, and his suffering. His suffering, far from being an obstacle, were actually the means by which he saved us.

 Mark split his Gospel into halves of equal length.

His first eight and a half chapters are filled with stories showing that Jesus was the Savior. He worked miracles, he fulfilled prophecies, he drove out devils who called him the Messiah. Those are things that convinced the Apostles that he was the Savior. They should also convince us readers.

That first half of Mark’s Gospel concludes just half way through Chapter Eight in verse 29 when St. Peter, after adding up al the evidence, said, “You are the Messiah.”

In the three verses from verse 29 through 31 of Chapter Eight we have the hinge from which the two halves of Mark’s Gospel turn.

We launch into the second half of Mark’s Gospel with verse 31 that states, “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly . . . and be killed.”

A likable thing about Mark’s Gospel is the way he brings us into intimacy with Jesus. He was a boy in Jerusalem when Jesus was executed. His mother Mary and his uncle Barnabas were Important Christians. Mark knew the blind man Bartimeus who followed Jesus up from Jericho. He knew Simon the Cyrenian and his sons Rufus and Alexander.  

Jesus wants us to become part of the Eucharist.

Tuesday, 4, 24

In the Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as the bread of life. In looking at our attitudes toward Holy Communion I detect two faults that I want to bring to your attention. The first fault is that we fail to see that in giving himself to us Jesus was giving up his life. The second fault is that in seeing Jesus in the Eucharist as calling for adoration we miss out on what the Mass is really calling for. Okay, let’s take those two points one at a time.one at a time.

Our first fault in regard to Holy Communion is that we fail to see that in giving himself to us he was sacrificing his life.

That point becomes clear for me in recalling a cute story that was going around a decade ago. It concerned a little boy whose brother’s life could only be saved by giving him a kidney. When asked to donate his kidney the little boy thought of it seriously, then said okay. Then, before the operation to remove one of his kidneys for the transfer, he said goodbye to everyone, and he scribbled a will, giving his bicycle to a friend. He had thought that he could only give a kidney by giving his life for his brother. The family straightened him out on that.

We tend to see Jesus giving himself to us as an operation that costs him nothing. In reality it is like what the boy thought was involved. Jesus said, “This is my body which is given for you.” He gives us his life only by accepting his death. When  receiving Communion we should bear in mind that it cost Jesus his life.

Secondly, in thinking that Jesus in coming to us mainly to be adored we are missing out on what the Mass is really about. There are words always said by the priest at Mass to remind us that Jesus said the blessing. That blessing is something we need to consider closely.

The traditional table blessing offered by Jesus had three parts. In the first part Jesus  called to mind the favors God had showered on the diners. In the second part he  asked for God’s Spirit to come down to unite the diners, and to empower them. In the third part he asked the diners to join him as part of a pleasing gift to God. The Greek words for pleasing gift were Eu and Charis.

WE could compare Jesus in the Mass to the host at a Thanksgiving meal. In the name of all the diners he presents the family’s thanks and needs to God. It is not a personal prayer for him. So, in the Mass, as Jesus makes a pleasing gift of himself to God, he earnestly begs each of us to become part of that pleasing gift, that Eucharist.  He doesn’t come to be turned into an emperor before whom we prostrate ourselves. 

The five thousand who had been fed with the five loaves wanted to know if Jesus could make bread fall out of the sky.

Monday, 4/23/12

The next day the five thousand who had been fed with the five loaves came around the top of the lake, catching up with Jesus in Capernaum, and they asked him what sign he could do.

What was behind that question was an old believe Jews had heard as children. They had been told that when the Messiah came he would imitate Moses by making bread fall from the sky. Jesus went on to tell them that he himself was the bread come down from heaven.

Now, let me repeat something I always say about that first reading from The Acts of the Apostles.

The young men who argued with St. Stephen, and who would later stone him to death, were identified as “members of the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen.” It is worth our while to know who those men were.

A number of Jewish people were engaged in trade in every port in the Roman Empire, and the Romans had a tricky way of keeping those scattered Jews from causing trouble. From every port they took a few young Jewish men, bringing them to Rome for five-year spells as hostages.

Though those young men were not very religious at first, through being in captivity for being Jews, they usually became quite religious. It often happened that at their release after five years as hostages they found going to Jerusalem to be preferable to going home. They established their own synagogue near the temple.

At the core of their strong Jewishness was the importance they saw in keeping kosher. That had them feeing antagonistic toward the followers of Christ who were eating with Gentiles, and making little of Jewish rules.

When those young men took off their cloaks for throwing stones at Stephen, a Pharisee named Saul watched over the cloaks for them. That man who would become the Apostle Paul, at that time felt he was doing the right thing.

This story should teach us to be respectful of those with political and religious views different from ours. 

Frustration comes from wanting things. Peace from not wanting things.

Sunday, 4/22/12

After Jesus rose from the dead he appeared to the disciples, and he said, “Peace be with you.” St. John, in his account of that appearance told us that Jesus twice said, “Peace be with you.”

Since Jesus has conquered death, what more do we have to worry about? We should be at peace.

In 1618 the Carmelite Order published our church’s finest book on leading the Christian life to its fullest. It was St. John of the Cross’s Ascent of Mount Carmel. In it St. John pictured the attainment of heaven on earth as climbing to the peak of Mt. Carmel where for thousands of years saints have sought God in solitude.

The first chapter in that book by John of the Cross was about our need for peace beyond all else. That chapter goes on to tell us how we can attain peace. Its message was simplicity itself. John of the Cross wrote that frustration comes from not getting what we wish for, so we can be free from frustrations by not wishing for anything.

Sixty-five years ago when I read The Ascent of Mount Carmel I tried out its theory. I nipped all my wishes in the bud. I wouldn’t let myself wish for easy exam questions, or for pitches I could hit, or for sunny days, or for creamed corn for dinner. It worked, and I began experiencing extra happiness with whatever just came along. I got good grades.

I only stayed that way for a short time, but I came to see that peace came from not wanting.

The notion of exhausting ourselves wanting things has me recalling a neighbor of a friend of ours in St. Augustine. The lady invited me down to her apartment to see her fine china. I went down, and I was amazed at the table, cabinet, and floor space loaded with the finest china from Japan, Holland, and France. Those stacks of dishes left not even a few feet of clear space not loaded with table settings.

The lady showed me her finest Noritake from Japan, her Limoges Haviland from France, but she said she would never have true peace of mind until she got her hands on a discontinued pattern of Irish Belleek.

I was hoping she wouldn’t get those pieces. I suspected that she would feel terribly empty after acquiring them. I knew she would feel cheated. She would be left asking, “Is that all there is? Oh, what a fool I have been!”

If we are faithful Jesus will come over the water to take us to the far shore.

Saturday, 4/21/ 12

Jesus walked over the water to the disciples who felt they were in the grip of death. This story is a parable that tells us Jesus will rescue us from death. He will take us safely to the other shore.

The meaning of the story becomes clear when we consider what body of water it was that threatened the life of the disciples. It was called the Sea of Galilee, but actually it was just a wide place in the Jordan River. (Much as a hundred miles south of Jacksonville a wide stretch in the St. John’s River is called Lake George.)

In the Book of Joshua, Chapter Three we have the story of the people wanting to pass over into the Promised Land after forty years of wandering in the desert. It was springtime, and the snows from Lebanon have turned the Jordan River into a mile-wide barrier.

The people who had survived those forty years in the desert were a remnant who had proved themselves obedient. Joshua had the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant take a stand next to the flooded Jordan. Then he had the people line up four abreast in a line back from the ark. At Joshua’s command the priests carrying the ark stepped into the flooded river, and as the people followed the waters backed up, clearing the river bed.

The priests carried the ark down to the middle of the riverbed, then, they took their stand there. The long line of Israelites passed by them, mounting the shore into the  Promised Land. For us in death Jesus on the cross will take the place of the priests carrying the ark. We will pass by, mounting the far shore. 

The storm at night in Chapter Six of John’s Gospel is a picture of our death. If we have been true to him Jesus will come, and take us to the far shore.

Jesus will come over the waters of death to take you to the far shore.

Saturday, 4/21/ 12

Jesus walked over the water to the disciples who felt they were in the grip of death. This story is a parable that tells us Jesus will rescue us from death. He will take us safely to the other shore.

The meaning of the story becomes clear when we consider what body of water it was that threatened the life of the disciples. It was called the Sea of Galilee, but actually it was just a wide place in the Jordan River. (Much as a hundred miles south of Jacksonville a wide stretch in the St. John’s River is called Lake George.)

In the Book of Joshua, Chapter Three, we have the story of the people wanting to pass over into the Promised Land after forty years of wandering in the desert. It was springtime, and the snows from Lebanon had turned the Jordan River into a mile-wide barrier.

The people who had survived those forty years in the desert were a remnant who had proved themselves obedient. Joshua had the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant take a stand next to the flooded Jordan. Then he had the people line up four abreast in a line back from the ark. At Joshua’s command the priests carrying the ark stepped into the flooded river, and as the people followed, the waters backed up, clearing the river bed.

The priests carried the ark down to the middle of the riverbed, taking their stand there. The long line of Israelites passed by them, mounting the shore of the  Promised Land. For us in death Jesus on the cross will take the place of the priests carrying the ark. We will pass by to the far shore. 

The storm at night in Chapter Six of John’s Gospel is a picture of our death. If we have been true to him, Jesus will come, and take us to the far shore.

In John's Gospel we see the parallel between the Exodus story and the Paschal Mystery of Christ.

Friday, 4/20/12

They say that every good story has a clear beginning middle and end. That was true of the ancient story of God leading the people out of Egypt’s slavery, though the desert years, and into the Promised Land.

For us the word Passover refers to the meal the Israelites ate before beginning that journey, but for Bible people the word Passover describes the whole three-part story: they passed out of Egypt; passed over the desert; then passed into the Promised Land.

Now, St. John, in writing his Gospel consciously took the story of what Jesus does for us, and he patterned it on the ancient three-part Passover story. He converted the old Passover story onto our Passover Mystery.

In Chapter Two of John’s Gospel when Jesus broke with the past we read, “The Passover of the Jews was near.”

Here in Chapter Six when Jesus gave bread from heaven to people in a deserted place we read, “The Passover of the Jews was near.”

In Chapter Eleven when Mary of Bethany anointed the feet of Jesus for burial we read, “The Passover of the Jews was near.”

The Greek word for Passover was Pasch. By our celebrating Easter we share in Christ’s Paschal Mystery.

It is the order in Nature that is God-like. As Beatrice said in the Divine Comedy: "All things among themselves possess an order, and this order is the form that makes the universe like God."

Thursday, 3/19/12

In the Gospel St. John quoted Jesus as making this statement:

“The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him.”

We see somewhat of the Father giving all over to the Son in two verses from the Epistles.

Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, 3:15, speaking of the Son, says, “He is the image of the invisible God.”

The Letter to the Hebrews, speaking of the Son, says he is, “The very imprint of the Father’s being.”

The Father-Son relationship is a mystery, but we can partially understand. The great scholar St.Thomas Aquinas used his mind and the Bible to explain something about the relationship between the Father and the Son.

Here is an oversimplification of the explanation we have from Aquinas. God, as an intelligent being always had a thought; and before anything was created his thought was a mental picture of himself. That picture was complete, and it was satisfying. It never left his mind. It became his “brainchild,” the Son.

In his First Letter St. John gave a simple definition of God. He wrote, “God is Love.” Not only does the Father love the Son, but the Son loves the Father.

Creation came about by God’s needing others with whom he could share his beauty and his love.

Everything in Nature is somehow a copy of what the Father sees in the Son. Now, if we ask what is the one element in nature that most directly comes from God. The answer is that it is the order in nature. We see that God-mimicking order in the unchangeable laws of science, in the harmonies of music, in the unchanging relationship between the molecules in our DNA. 

In the Divine Comedy Beatrice explained that. She said, “All things possess among themselves and order, and this order is the form that makes the universe like God.”

When we love this world so much that we don’t want to leave it, we should realize that the beauty we cling to is a meager sampling of the beauty that inspired it.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

Wednesday, 4/18/12

The readings today introduce us to two religious groups that could not be farther apart. The first reading introduces us to the Sadducees. The Gospel turns our thoughts to Fundamentalist believers whose religion is contained in John, 3:16.

To look at the tangled history of the Sadducees we must go back to 967 B.C.. King David was dying, and although he had promised the throne to Solomon, a stronger son named Adonijah was acting as though he were already king.

David told the priest Zadoc to ignore Adonijah’s bullies, and to anoint Solomon king. Believing he would be killed for doing it, out of reverence for King David Zadoc anointed Solomon king. Surprisingly, the whole nation got behind Solomon, and Zadoc became a hero. They chose Zadoc to be their high priest; and from that time on, for the next eight hundred years, only a direct descendent of Zadoc could be chosen as high priest.

Then, in 152 B.C. there was no worthwhile man among Zadoc’s descendents, and so the post was given to a national hero. He was Jonathan, the brother to Judas Maccabeus.

Although the nation welcomed Jonathan, the conservatives would not accept anyone who was not a descendent of Zadoc.

Now, Jonathan had a group of irreligious young friends who were very good businessmen. With their buddy Jonathan taking over as high priest, they used his position to gain valuable government contracts for themselves.

When conservatives  complained about Jonathan not being a descendent of Zadoc they had an answer: “Zadoc was the high priest back then, now Jonathan is the high priest. So, if not by blood, at least by his sharing the same office, Jonathan is Zadoc’s descendent.” 

They went further. They said, “Since Jonathan is the new Zadoc, we, his buddies, are the Zadoc-ites.” In time that title Zadoc-ites, morphed into the word Sadducees.

The Sadducees, who were rich from profits from the temple, did not want Jesus and the Apostles rocking their dream boat.

From the other extreme of religious personalities today’s reading have us looking at the people who live by John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

For years a man who swore by John 3:16 showed up a every sporting event, getting himself in front of the television cameras. The TV cameramen hated him, but he was clever about getting into their view. His hair was dyed eight colors, and he held high that sign: “John, 3:16”

I had a Baptist boy in my Religion classes at St. Paul’s. He kept giving me John, 316 as his answer to questions on Religion tests. 

Q. Why did God prefer David to Saul?

A. John, 3:16.

Prayer and grace are our connections to the heavenly internet.

Tuesday, 4/17/12

Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born from above.” 

To explain how one might be born from above Jesus said, “The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”

There, Jesus said that there is a hidden world of prayer and grace that surrounds us. Unless we become part of that hidden world we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus gave Nicodemus and explanation of that hidden world. He compared it to the warm and cool air currents that move invisibly about us, affecting every aspect of our lives.

If Jesus were making the same explanation to Nicodemus today, he might use a more modern example to explain the movements of prayer and grace.

When I ride the bus to church mornings most of the people on the bus are making use of invisible sound waves. Some bus passengers have ear-phones for music on their I-Pods. A passenger here and there is engaged in a too-loud conversation with someone at home or the work-place. Another reads electronically transmitted books  on a Kindle. They are electronically contacting the internet. When I am saying my Rosary on the bus I am prayerfully contacting heaven.

Sometimes I take my I-Pad with me. While I am on the bus I can’t get an image on it because the busses are not equipped with Wifi routers. But I can turn it on at Panera’s where they are Wifi equipped. The world of prayer and grace is like heavenly Wifi. Through it you can be born from above, and introduced into the heavenly kingdom.