St. Justin demonstrated the logical appeal of Christianity.

Today we honor St. Justin, and although he lived a thousand years before Thomas Aquinas, we can pair Justin with Aquinas, because they both used the findings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to demonstrate the logical appeal of Christianity.

Four centuries before Christ, those three Greek philosophers laid down ironclad principles for logical thinking, and following those principles to their conclusion, they asserted that there is but one God, and he is all good and wise. 

Justin was a wealthy young man who put in years of study that earned him the right to wear the robes of a philosopher. He was about thirty in 130 A.D. when, walking on the beach, he fell in with an old Christian who spoke to him about the Hebrew prophets. By contrasting their writings with those of the Greek philosophers, the old man brought Justin to see that although philosophy could teach him about God, it could not bring him into personal contact with God. For that he would need to open himself to God through his Christian baptism.

Baptized a Christian, Justin established a school of Christian philosophy in Rome. There, he weighed every mention of Christianity in the speeches of the Roman Senate, and for some of them he wrote replies that he pasted on a wall outside the forum. In 165 he wrote a notable reply to a senator’s speech that had asserted that Christians in their gatherings worshipped a goat.

Justin gave a detailed description of what we do at our Sunday gatherings. It had a remarkably modern sound to it in the way it described our familiar readings and prayers. It even mentioned taking up a collection.

His account of the Eucharistic Prayers, following on the rule laid down for the host leading the diners in the Berakah at a Jewish meal, stipulated that the one presiding should use his own wording “as much as in him lies.”

And on that day which is called after the sun, all who are in the towns and in the country gather together for a communal celebration. And then the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read as much as time permits. After the reader has finished his task, the one presiding gives  an address, earnestly admonishing his hearers to practice these beautiful teachings in their lives.

Then together all stand and recite prayers, and bread and wine mixed with water are brought, and the president offers up prayers and thanksgivings (sic) as much as in him lies. The people chime in with Amen. Then takes place the distribution to all attending of the things over which the thanksgiving had been spoken, and the deacons bring a portion to the absent.

Today we honor St. Justin, and although he lived a thousand years before Thomas Aquinas, we can pair Justin with Aquinas, because they both used the findings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to demonstrate the logical appeal of Christianity.

Four centuries before Christ, those three Greek philosophers laid down ironclad principles for logical thinking, and following those principles to their conclusion, they asserted that there is but one God, and he is all good and wise. 

Justin was a wealthy young man who put in years of study that earned him the right to wear the robes of a philosopher. He was about thirty in 130 A.D. when, walking on the beach, he fell in with an old Christian who spoke to him about the Hebrew prophets. By contrasting their writings with those of the Greek philosophers, the old man brought Justin to see that although philosophy could teach him about God, it could not bring him into personal contact with God. For that he would need to open himself to God through his Christian baptism.

Baptized a Christian, Justin established a school of Christian philosophy in Rome. There, he weighed every mention of Christianity in the speeches of the Roman Senate, and for some of them he wrote replies that he pasted on a wall outside the forum. In 165 he wrote a notable reply to a senator’s speech that had asserted that Christians in their gatherings worshipped a goat.

Justin gave a detailed description of what we do at our Sunday gatherings. It had a remarkably modern sound to it in the way it described our familiar readings and prayers. It even mentioned taking up a collection.

His account of the Eucharistic Prayers, following on the rule laid down for the host leading the diners in the Berakah at a Jewish meal, stipulated that the one presiding should use his own wording “as much as in him lies.”

And on that day which is called after the sun, all who are in the towns and in the country gather together for a communal celebration. And then the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read as much as time permits. After the reader has finished his task, the one presiding gives  an address, earnestly admonishing his hearers to practice these beautiful teachings in their lives.

Then together all stand and recite prayers, and bread and wine mixed with water are brought, and the president offers up prayers and thanksgivings (sic) as much as in him lies. The people chime in with Amen. Then takes place the distribution to all attending of the things over which the thanksgiving had been spoken, and the deacons bring a portion to the absent.

The Feast of the Trinity calls on us to honor our God whom John defined as Love.

Sunday, 5/31/15

Today is the Feast of the Blessed Trinity. We all learned that “The Trinity is the mystery of three persons in one God.”

But, in saying we know that, just what do we know? Not much.

We would be better off trying to learn about the Trinity by consulting the answer of the second question in the old catechism. Remember: the first question was, “Who made you?” The answer was, “God made me.”

The second question was, “Why did God make me?” and the answer  was: “God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next.”  

So, before all else, we were put in this world to know God. And, unfortunately, we come a million miles short of knowing God when we are only able to recite that little jingle that says, “The Trinity is the mystery of three persons in one God.”

The mystery of the Trinity is a deep pool into which we must dive a hundred times a day, plunging ever deeper to reach a fuller knowledge of God.

St. Thomas Aquinas gave us a start into our plunging into the mystery of God. He explained that God from all eternity fixed his attention on his own being, and that resulting fixed Idea of himself is what we call the Second Person, or the Son.

The two Persons’ mutual unchanging love is the Third Person. That sounds odd, but St. John tells us, “God is love.”

(In speaking of the three Persons we should not consider those persons as distinct individuals. A Latin per-sona was a mask through which the actor would sound through in different roles.)

Then, too, we can know something of God by looking at ourselves and at the world God created.

That is because genuine love cannot be contained, and must be outgoing. God appreciates the beauty he sees in himself, and his generosity forces him to give us little shares of himself.

In looking at the world we are looking at what God’s goodness drove him to share with us.

When God said it was not good for his human to be alone he meant that we are social animals who need authority to enable us to work in unison.

Saturday, 5/29/15

In the Gospel Jesus disputed about authority with the Jewish leaders. Neither he nor they disputed the need to honor authority. They only questioned as to whether or not Jesus had authority from above.

Their dispute puts me in mind of a discussion I had on this subject with the young adult members of the parish choir. After a Saturday evening choir practice, we were all relaxing next to a swimming pool when the matter of obeying authority came up.  To express the Church’s view on authority, I quoted what St. Paul wrote in Romans, Chapter 13, verses 1 & 2.

“Let every person be subject to the higher authority, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. 

“Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment on themselves.”

I can still clearly recall one young lady’s voice as she said, “Well, I don’t believe that at all.” And, I remember others agreeing with her.

So, were they right?

I base my need for obedience to authority on something God said in Chapter Two of Genesis. When he had made his first human what he said was, It is not good for the man to be alone.”

We take that to mean that he saw a man’s need for a wife.

But it also meant that he created us as social animals who must act together. And for that, even when there are differences of opinions, we need someone to settle us on one course of action. I think  God was telling us to obey authority. 

We follow Jesus through two days.

Friday, 5/28/15

Let’s follow Jesus from the morning of one day to the morning of the next. On the first morning, after sleeping by the roadside out in Bethany, he and his disciples were making their way towards Jerusalem; when, saying he was hungry, Jesus stepped aside to pluck fruit from a fig tree.

On seeing no fruit on it, Jesus cursed the tree, saying may no fruit ever grow upon it. We know right off, that Jesus would not have cursed any tree that was his Father’s handiwork. We know rather, that he was using the fruitless tree to symbolize one of us humans who accomplishes nothing.   

With his moving on to the temple, Jesus used that morning to express God’s discontent with people changing God’s house of prayer into a market place. It’s very colorful to picture Jesus weaving cords into a whip, then swinging it over his head, driving mooing cows and bah-bahing sheep out the gates.

In teaching the Sixth Grade I always came to this story in May when the dozing students could think of nothing but lazy summer. At my front of the classroom I had a folding table carrying all by books, papers and notebooks. When I came to Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers, I would grasp the edge of my folding table, flinging it high, sending books, pencils, and notebooks flying out over the students. I wonder if those moneychangers had been amazed as our students were.

Passing out of the city to spend another night resting a Bethany, Jesus and his disciples passed by the fig tree Jesus had cursed the day before. They saw it all withered away. It all puzzled the disciples. They wondered if Jesus had not known that it was not the season for the figs to ripen. But, of course he knew. He wanted them to see that he had made the tree stand for any of his followers; and for them, and us, there cannot be a season when we don’t produce. We are always bound to bear fruit.

After Jesus takes away your blindness you should follow him up the road.

Thursday, 5/28/15

This Gospel reminds me of Michael Shona and of how much he disliked Jericho and the Jews. The house where Michael grew up in Jerusalem had plum trees in the yard, and for centuries his family had been known as the Plum Trees Family. Back in the thirties, and again after the war, Michael ran a Ford Agency in Jerusalem, a job that took him touring with customers who wanted to see Jericho, but Michael hated Jericho for all its horse flies.

When I read this story of blind Bartimaeus spending his days in the thick dust of that road with all the horse flies, my memory of what Michael said makes what I read about Bartimaeus seem all the more miserable.

Michael Shona’s reason for hating Jews was that when they took over Jerusalem in 1946 they deprived him of his home, his plum trees, and of the fine livelihood he had with the Ford people. His hatred of the Jews was continuously on his mind the last thirty-five years of his life. His sister Mary, however, over here found generous employment with a Jewish family she came to love.

I imagine that Bartimaeus, there in the dust, batting off the horse flies, had heard about Jesus the wonderworker; and when he heard that Jesus was passing through, Bartimaeus didn’t hesitate. He threw off his robe, then, blind though he was, he thrust his way through the crown, shouting, “Son of David, have pity on me.”

When Jesus asked him what he wanted, he said, “I want to see.”

Jesus gave him his sight, then saying, “Go your way.” But Bartimaeus didn’t go his way, instead he followed Jesus up the road.  

As we begin readings from the Bible's Wisdom Literature, we ask, "What is Wisdom?"

 Thursday, 5/27/15

With Easter season over, and our daily readings from the Acts of The Apostles behind us, our first readings from the Book of Sirach brings us to the Old Testament’s Wisdom Literature.

Pardon me, but let me ask your help in settling on what Wisdom really means.

The Old Testament, as in the Book of Proverbs, sees Wisdom as the opposite of folly. While Folly sacrifices eventual happiness for the sake of short term successes, of immediate pleasure; Wisdom guides us to make the efforts now that will bring us joy in the long run.

Wisdom must also been seen as the heavenly reward that comes from putting ourselves quietly in God’s presence, earnestly begging him to let us see the right course.

David Brooks in his “The Road to Character” quotes Montaigne as saying, “We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.” He goes on to say that Wisdom is “the moral quality of knowing what you don’t know and figuring out a way to handle your ignorance, uncertainties and limitations.”     

There is Wisdom in that. It begins by accepting all that you are lacking, then going on to make the best of what little you have. There was an old naval ditty that said, “If you have to take a licking, carry on and quit your kicking, don’t give up the ship.”

Philip Neri was a Happy Priest

Tuesday, 5/26/15

Philip Neri was among the most likable of our saints. Born in 1515 of a wealthy Florentine family, at eighteen he was sent to oversee family business interests in Naples. Then, suddenly he dropped his planned future, and going to Rome, he spent three years in advanced studies about his religion.

In three years, he completed that course with the Augustinian Fathers; then, to the surprise of family members in Florence and Naples, he took to the streets of Rome, combining the roles of a Socrates and that of a social worker. He would question people about their prayer life while he was working at relieving the sick and the homeless.

Philip’s likeable ways had upper class Florentine citizens happily aiding him in finding positions for the needy. Prominent among those were the women of Rome who were struggling to get out of prostitution. They all called him their father.

He attended Mass wherever it was available, he would stay on, lost in contemplating those words of St. John that “God is love.” Those hours of prayer had him tapping into the inner life of the Trinity.

While Philip was an apostle to the poor, he was also a delightful friend to Rome’s scholars. His ways were so appealing to young men that many of them joined him in serving the poor. Often spending their evenings with Philip, they took on enough of his feelings for the Trinity that they began calling themselves the congregation of the Blessed Trinity.

Philip’s street life made him so well known and liked by a circle of Rome’s pastors that in1551 when he was thirty-six they prevailed on him first to take minor orders. Then, on finding that his private Theology studies had supplied all that could be looked for, Rome’s pastors pushed him on to being ordained priest.

In 1556, those same friends provided him and his young scholars with an abandoned hall that they began referring to as their oratory.

As their oratory life took off Philip’s happy nature had him introducing music making into of those evenings at their hall of oratory. In 1559, Pope Pius IV, a Medici relative from Florence, gave formal standing to Philip’s group, calling them the Oratorians. For his Oratorians Philip made the rule that there were no bosses. Everyone took turns doing the dishes.

Should the Book of Sirach be in the Canon of the Bible?

Pentecost had been a farmers' feast from 5000 B.C. It had seen the birth of Judaism in 1250 B.C.. It saw the birth of Christianity in 30 A.D.

Sunday, 5/24/15

To appreciate Pentecost to the fullest, we might savor something of what it meant to people in 5000 B.C.; then, of what it meant to people in 1250 B.C., and finally what it meant to people in 30 A.D.

By 5000 B.C. farm people on the Nile had become well organized in their planting and harvesting of winter wheat. What they planted in late autumn was ready for harvesting from the day of the first full moon in springtime. On that day they would hand-harvest the first ripe grains of wheat, feasting on the cakes baked without leaven. 

Then, to get the grain in from the fields before the onset of late spring rains, they set themselves to complete harvesting in fifty days. By working from sunup to sundown for those fifty days they completed their work. On the fiftieth day, that they called Pentecost, they would have their wedding parties.

Jesus told a story about a rich man whose harvest was so great that he put off rejoicing, instead of rejoicing with his harvest, he worked hard building bigger barns. In Our Lord’s eyes the man was a fool for not getting the pleasure of God’s rich harvest. Pentecost is a God-given day for rejoicing.

In 1250 B.C. on the night of the first full moon of springtime the Israelites, who were still in Egypt, baked the first grain of the year formed into cakes of unleavened cakes. Then, they set out on a seven-week trek to Mount Sinai. On the fiftieth day, Pentecost, they made their covenant with God, with him becoming their God, and they becpming his people.

In 30 A.D. Jesus sat down with his Apostles on the feast of the unleavened bread. Then, it was fifty days later, on the ancient farming feat of Pentecost, and the Jewish, feast of Pentecost that the Spirit entered the disciples. Christianity came to life on that ancient feast day when the streets were filled with local farmers and with Parthians Medes and Elamites, and with people from Mesapotamia and Cappadocia. They were all celebrating the wonderful works of God.

We bring Easter to a close, joining Luke in saying goodbye to Paul, and joining John in saying goodbye to Jesus.

Saturday, 5/23/15

We say goodbye to this year’s Easter Season and to Luke's grand account of Paul's travels and preaching. Paul, awaiting his trial and execution, was at peace because he had remained true both to his ancestral customs and to his Christ.

A well, we say goodbye to St. John as he ends his days on the Island of Patmos. His  mind was joyfully going over the many things that he witnessed Jesus doing and saying.  He assures us that by believing  in Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God, we will share in his life.

What did Peter mean by saying he loved Jesus?

Friday, 5/22/15

After telling Peter, “Feed my lambs,” Jesus went on to telling him to tend and feed his sheep. Some people have surmised that the difference there was that by telling Peter to feed his lambs Jesus was telling him to educate innocent children, while in telling him to feed his sheep, Jesus was telling him to bring back older, straying Christians.

Jesus three times brought Peter to say he loved him; and we usually see that as Our Lord’s way of making Peter atone for those three times in the court of the High that Priest three times swore he did not know Jesus.

This might be a silly question, but just what could Peter have meant by saying he loved Jesus. Or, going beyond that question, what is meant by you or I saying we love someone?

What does a little girl mean when she says, “I love jellybeans?”  Or what does she mean when she says, “I don’t like my brother, but I love him, because I have to?”

A popular song maintained that although teenagers say they are in love, they don’t know what they are talking about.” The song has a syntactically neat lyric describing that inadequacy. It says that for teenagers: “Love is a word, a word they have only heard, and can’t begin to know the meaning of.”  

Getting back to the little girls who loves jellybeans, we say that is ridiculous. We see  love as a tribute we only pay to objects possessing some nobility. Then, the little girl does not like surface things about her brother, but she does love his parentage and his immortal soul.

So, love is a reaching out to a person that is prompted by the person’s high qualities. Our loving God is a reaching out to him prompted by our seeing high qualities in his Bible, in his creation, and in response to the love he shows us.

The night before his death Jesus prayed for his disciples, including us in that number.

Thursday, 5/21/15

Let’s give thought to one interesting aspect of what Paul did in the first reading, and then to an interesting aspect of what Jesus said in the Gospel.

Although Paul was perhaps our greatest Christian, that was not incompatible with his remaining a devout Jew. After he had made his final journeys through Turkey and Greece, he fulfilled a very Jewish vow that required him to shave his head and to spend days in Jerusalem’s temple. Two of his Gentile converts accompanied him to Jerusalem.

A group of anti-Christian Jews, on sighting him in the temple, hauled him before the Jewish Sanhedrin, making the false accusation that Paul had violated the courtyard of Israel by bringing two Gentiles in there. They wanted to put Paul to death, but since their Roman overlords would not allow them to do it, they brought Paul before the Roman governor, asking him to have Paul crucified.

The governor assembled Paul’s accusers, and that had Paul showing us that even a holy man might use slick methods. Seeing that half of his accusers were Pharisees who believe in life after death, while half of them were Sadducees who did not believe in life after death, Paul took the pressure off himself by getting his accusers to arguing between themselves.

Let’s turn to the Gospel.  Jesus, in his final prayer for his followers was saying, “I pray not only for these,” and then, lifting his gaze above the heads of the Apostles, and seeing each of us far off in the future, he continued his prayer, saying, “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their word.”

Religion ties God to us, and us to God.

Wednesday. 5/20/15

Our readings today continue with Paul and Jesus bidding farewell to their flocks, and they both utter warnings against those who will attempt to lead them astray.

Paul said, “From your own group men will come forward perverting the truth.” And in his prayer, Jesus begs the Father to consecrate us in truth.

Our word Religion originally meant ligaments back and forth. It is what ties God to us, and us to God.

And, it often happens that worldly laws become mistaken for God’s law. We saw that in Saudi Arabia last week when the website of the Ministry of Civil Service announced an opening for eight executioners for “carrying out the death sentence according to Islamic Shariah Law.” Men are needed to chop off the heads of serious criminals, and the hands off of thieves. Those practices of Sixth Century desert tribes have been permanently added to Islamic religious life.

We have something similar with our Old Testament. You will hear people quoting the Bible saying, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” That is from Exodus 21. That chapter says that after seven years a Hebrew slave should be set free; but if you have given him a wife, she and their children remain your property.

That same chapter gives rules for selling your daughters as slaves. Rules like those got into there because the ancients who compiled the Bible simply incorporated tribal laws into parts of it.

The composers of the ancient Bible books were prayerful men who wrote what they thought God wanted them to write; but they were restricted by their own limited knowledge.

Those of us who are fans of Vatican II, like to point out that the documents it produced came from the collaboration of 25,000 prayerful, educated, men who over four years leaned on each other’s wisdom. Their document on how we should read the Bible is a religious masterpiece, tying God to us, and us to God.    

Would your spiritual resume get you a good job in the afterlife?

Tuesday, 5/19/15

In our readings today, first Paul, and then Jesus, give a personal account of how he had fulfilled the mission for which God placed him in this world.

We could take their stellar self-assessments as challenges to us. Up to now, how have we fulfilled our duties to our God, our families?

Paul could confidently say he has finished the race, he has fought a good fight. Can we say the same?

Maybe, before it is too late, we should undertake some good works that would add luster to our spiritual resume.

Jesus put deep thought into his lessons, and it takes our deep thought to grasp those lessons.

Monday, 5/18/15

In today’s reading from John’s Gospel the Apostles complimented Jesus on talking plainly for a change. That has us sympathizing with them. Sometimes Jesus is a little too deep for us.

My thinking about that made me remember a set of lessons on John’s Gospel that I wrote for our Eighth Grade thirty tears ago . So, I got out those old lessons, and in the introduction I found something about this matter of Jesus saying things that are hard to understand. Let me quote two short paragraphs from the introduction to my lessons for John’s Gospel.

“It will be like digging clams where you have to grope a foot into the heavy sand – It’s no good just scraping around on surface gravel. But here we will not be digging clams, we will be digging for the deep meanings in John’s Gospel.”

“Take another example. All winter long people take shortcuts over a frozen pond, never once peering down at the swirling plant and fish life below. So too, we slide over John’s Gospel, without ever bending for a prayerful study of the hidden mysteries.”

Jesus put much thought into his lessons, and it takes much thought to grasp his meanings.

Our human nature ascended to heaven with Jesus.

Sunday, 5/17/15

The Feast of the Ascension is a happy day. We like imagining that we are standing there with the Apostles watching Jesus going up and up through the clouds.

That was easier for the Apostles than it is for us. They believed heaven to be about fifty miles above the clouds; but our scientific knowledge gets in the way. We know there are space stations orbiting above us, and we know that there are other galaxies thousands of light years up there.

We need to remember that Jesus did not need a physical harbor up there for his body. That was the body that came and went through closed doors.

In a way the Ascension is more about us than about Jesus. What ascended to heaven was our human nature. Just as our sinful nature was with Jesus on the cross, so our saved nature ascended with him to heaven.

Grey’s Elegy in a Country Church Yard stated, “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” That is not strictly true, with Jesus, our path to glory leads through the clouds.

Our second reading today speaks of our coming to hope for sharing in his glory.

“May the eyes of your heart be enlightened that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones.”

We learn from mixing with people quite different from ourselves.

Saturday, 5/16/15

Our first reading today deals with the town of Ephesus in Asia Minor. It speaks of  an occurrence there a few years after St. Paul had been there and left.

Ephesus was visited by an eager new Christian named Apollos. It seemed that he knew of the baptism of John the Baptist, but not of Christian baptism as such. A pair of Paul’s converts, Priscilla and her husband Aquila set him straight on that.

Mention of Aquila has me remembering a mistake I made in 1955. I had arrived as pastor in a Korean town, and the Catholics there recommended my turning my laundry over to a young mother who was studying to become a Catholic.  Her husband had been lost in the war, and she had a bright little son and daughter. She did such a beautiful job on washing and pressing my things, that it came as a surprise when I learned that the family of three were living in a cave left from a heavy bombardment of the town.

My mistake was that when the lady ready for Baptism asked me for a good Christian name, I baptized her Aquila, not realizing that it was a man’s name. 

I just bought and got into reading a new biography of Pope John XXIII. From age thirty to fifty he worked as Rome’s representative to Bulgaria and Turkey, and he later came to feel that his understanding of life was greatly aided by his association with those people so totally different from the Catholics he grew up with.

I suppose that Aquila, if she is still alive, would agree with that. Of course, if she has moved out of that cave her perceptions might be blunted by the easy middle class living she shares with us.  

Our readings have us feeling sentimental.

Friday, 515/15

You could be pardoned for feeling a touch of sentiment in today’s reading. His sadness at leaving his friends comes through in the Gospel where Jesus was saying, “I’ll see you again.”

For us who were around when Hitler for four years sealed off Parish from the rest of the world, we still get teary eyed when we hear Noel Coward’s song,, “I’ll see you again, whenever spring breaks through again.” Across the channel the Parisians, missing all of us, were singing, “Nous nous reveron.”  

Jesus gives rise to something like sentiment when he tells us he has many of his people even in Corinth, the most sinful port in the ancient world. Ports that cater to restless sailors tend to be wicked; but Corinth, placed on the Isthmus of Corinth--a port on both the Aegean and the Adriatic, was more so. There were up to a thousand girls in the temples to Diana. In that ancient world all prostituted were known as Corinthian girls.

But, Still!! Jesus had many people in that place. And, if he had many of his people in Corinth, he must have thousands more in Jacksonville.

The media feeds on sinfulness. The news channels don’t waste money on investigative reporters. They can get all the dirt they want off the police blotters. If you get out among ordinary people you will find many of them are above ordinary, giving their time and their means to help others. Our being able to count them as our friends is something more for us to feel a little sentiment.

Every Matthias has his own cross to bear.

Thursday, 5/14/15

Today should be Ascension Thursday, but our bishops, wanting to let a greater number take part in the feast, have transferred the feast day Mass to next Sunday. We today will offer Mass in honor of St. Matthias, the one chosen to take the place of Judas as one of the twelve Apostles.

We know almost nothing about the subsequent career of St. Matthias. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak about a priest friend of mine who was named Matthias. As a boy, Matty was charming, both in appearance and in sociability. However,  Matty was born with a hot temper. He tried very hard to keep it down ; but, poor boy, at times he couldn’t control it.

I first became aware of Matty’s temper when as kids we were playing against each other in soccer. Coming from behind, I took the ball from him, and headed with it down the field. As I was moving along with the ball, I heard heavy footsteps from behind. That had me passing off the ball; but even then, the footsteps kept coming. After they had chased me a good way off the field, I stopped, and turned, saying, “Matty!”

As though he were suddenly awakened, Matty’s anger fell away, and he said, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

A dozen years later we were stationed together in Korea. Matty’s bursts of temper made him unfit for parish work, and he became our diocesan book keeper. Watching him fight to control himself, I felt very sorry for him.

He tried hard to change his make-up, but as they say, it was the cross he was doomed to carry through life. It killed him before he was to turn fifty. If you have been born with an even temper, thank God for it, and help those not so blessed.

God is not far from, any of us, for in him we live, and move, and have our being.

Wednesday, 5/13/15

Today’s readings give us two wonderful statements about God, and our relationship with him.

The first reading tells the story of Paul making his first visit to the great city of Athens. Its tradesmen, in the world-wide travels had encountered devotions to all the gods worshipped in that century. And, not wanting to miss out on anything, in Athens they had erected a separate altar for each god honored in every locality  around the rim of the Mediterranean.  

Now the Athenians back then were as keen on philosophy as we today are keen on sports. That had them erecting a stadium just for, the Areopagus, where people with interesting ideas could hold forth. At his turn Paul spoke in admirations for all the local gods honored by the Athenians; then he used that opening to go on to describe our unlimited God. 

Of God he said, “He is not far from any one of us, for in him we live, and move, and have our being.”

That would incline one to compare God's presence with us to that of the air surrounding us. However Jesus lets us know that unlike the atmosphere that is silent and inert, God is always acting on our minds. Jesus , speaking of the Spirit of God, “When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”

Jesus said we are better off having the Holy Spirit than we would be having him.

Tuesday, 5/12/15

Jesus told the Apostles, “I tell you he truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.”

Applied to us, that means we are better off having the inspiration of the Holly Spirit, than we would be if we had Jesus physically with us.

Hard to believe, but when Jesus was here, many of his followers left him, and he  sadly had to watch them leave. He couldn’t get in to them to give their hearts a good shaking. Since we now have God’s Spirit at our beck and call we should take advantage of our situation.

In 1198 when Innocent III was elected pope, his old Paris professor, Stephen Langton, composed the hymn "Veni Sancte Spiritus" as a gift to him. Innocent sent the hymn to a  monastery where they did it in gold letters. Used on Pentecost Sunday, it is known as the Golden Sequence.

 Come, Holy Spirit, and send forth from heaven a ray of the light.

 Come, Father of the poor. Come, giver of gifts. Come, light of the soul.

Best of Consolers, sweet guest of my soul, sweet restfulness!

In labor you are my rest, in heat my coolness, in tears my comfort.

           

O blessed light, fill the inmost hearts, of all your faithful ones.

Without your willing it, there is nothing in then, nothing not harmful.

Cleanse what is sordid, moisten what is dry, tend what is wounded.

Bend the rigid, warm the frigid, straighten what has gone astray.

Give to the faithful confiding in you, all of your seven gifts.

Reward their virtue, give them a safe going forth, give them lasting joy.

Paul always remembered the generosity of the Christians at Philippi.

Monday, 5/10/15

If we mentally accompany Paul and Luke on their journeys, it will have us feeling that we are part of it all. Like, Luke mentions that Philippi was a Roman colony, and we wonder if he was thinking that it was there that  eighty-five years earlier Mark Anthony had caught up with Brutus, Caesar’s assassin.

Isn’t it charming the way Luke describes them taking a Sabbath walk along a river bank, looking for a place where people might gather for prayer? And, right enough, they came on a group using the pleasant scene to inspire their devotions. 

Luke wrote that Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth from Thyatira. Bible critics once pointed out that this whole story had to be fictional, since there was no source for purple dye in Thyatira that was an inland city. But Archaeologists have since turned up an original island city of Thyatira where the squid provided cloth merchants with purple dye.

Paul always prided himself in paying his own way by using the week days to work at his trade of tent making. Philippi, however, was the one place where Paul had to let the people take care of his needs. Lydia said that she had to repay Paul for bringing her the Faith, and you know how some women can be.