Paul's Reflections 23th May, 2010 Pentecost Sunday - C

23th May, 2010      Pentecost Sunday - C

 

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The Gospel today, from Saint John, tells us about the coming of the Holy Spirit.  It is clear again that these early followers were hiding behind closed doors, feeling very, very fearful.  The coming of the Holy Spirit takes their fears away.  These first followers seem to need peace, because that is the first greeting of the Lord to them:  Peace be with you!  May we (too) know the peace of Jesus in our own lives!  With peace comes the capacity to forgive the sins of others.  This forgiveness is clearly a gift of the Lord who loves us.  This gift is given to each of us individually and also to the Church, through its ministry. 

 

At the heart of our Christian life, fear is taken away, peace and forgiveness are given.  May we dispel the fears of others and proclaim the peace and forgiveness given to us in Jesus. 

 

In the first reading too…   the disciples were (again) described as being fearful……  They were still afraid to speak publicly and to proclaim Jesus to others… even though they now knew he was Risen and Ascended to the Heavenly Father.  They had to wait for the Holy Spirit to take hold of them and give them courage in the face of doubt, persecution, ridicule and rejection.  Perhaps at times we too may be shy about proclaiming our faith in the Lord Jesus.  Perhaps today we can pray for this Spirit to come on us and to give us courage so that our faith becomes so much a part of ourselves that its so natural and easy to speak of our faith, in an unforced manner.

 

Our gifts are different, each person having different gifts.  We need all the gifts that each person has so that we can continue the work of Christ in our world.  How different our world looks when we begin to recognize that each person brings his or her own gifts and that we need those gifts to live in the fullness of Jesus Christ. 

 

In the front of the newsletter..  I have placed one of my favourite quotes about the Holy Spirit…  there is something about this text that I do believe captures the truth about the power and action of the Holy Spirit in our lives…..   it is by the brilliant Jesuit writer, Karl Rahner……….  He writes:  “ Did we ever do a kindness to a person from whom we could not expect as much of a shadow of gratitude or appreciation, while at the same time we had not even the compensation of feeling that we had acted unselfishly or decently in doing so?  Let us look into our lives, then, and see if we can discover whether any such experience ever came our way. If we find that it did, we may be sure that the spirit was at work within us then, and eternity and ourselves had a brief encounter, that the spirit means more than an ingredient in the make-up of a transient world. That explains the remarkable lives of the saints… They know well that God’s grace can also bless the dull round of daily tasks well done, and bring the doers a step nearer to God…. When we Christians… experience the action of the spirit, it means that we are, in point of fact, having contact with the supernatural, although that contact may be scarcely perceptible.” (Karl Rahner SJ, 1904-1984, In Belief Today, 40-41).

 

 

I love that quote…. Because to me it says very powerfully, and in an example that is very ‘everyday’ and unexceptional, that we KNOW the Spirit is at work in our lives especially when the love and sacrifice we show is clearly coming from a loving hand bigger than our own lives and our own limited motives and actions 

 

When we do actions that are loving and unselfish, we are deeply aware that there is a power and a loving presence at work in us that is outside of just ourselves.  ….Transcending our limitations … and not explainable by our own actions… but bigger, ……. And “of which are just a cooperating part….” 

It is God, …. It is God’s Spirit at work in and through us.  At work in the world.   A power of unselfish, sacrificing love and service. Unconditional love. That is at the heart of creation.

 

Finally…  just an interesting insight that I hadn’t thought of before…  we often read this text about how (after the Spirit descended) people of different languages and cultures could all hear and understand….. but what is interesting is…   the people were not speaking the same language… they were still speaking in the language of those different cultures…..  but even so… they could understand….  This is a reminder that the Spirit brings not uniformity, but diversity and variety…. But we are all one in that diversity, because the common language we speak is the language of God… and that is LOVE….. 

 

 

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REFERENCES:

 

·       FR. PAUL W. KELLY

·       MISSION 2000  – PRAYING SCRIPTURE IN A CONTEMPORARY WAY. YEAR B. BY MARK LINK S.J.

·       SHARING THE WORD THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR. GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ.

·       MONASTERY OF CHRIST IN THE DESERT. ABBOT’S HOMILY.

 

 

Paul's Reflections 16th May, 2010 Ascension - C

16th May, 2010      Ascension - C

 

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Today’s feast of the Ascension is really the fulfilment of God’s ultimate promise to us……   and the hope of our final destiny….  To be WITH God in Heaven, forever……

 

Jesus, (ascending to Heaven to be with the Father, from whom he came) promises that he will come and make us part of his Father’s Heavenly house…. When our earthly life is completed…..  the Virgin Mary’s Assumption (body and soul into heaven)  is the echo of what Christ has achieved in his Ascension.

 

Today’s feast is really the assurance that, as followers of Jesus,  we are all in the same boat….. 

 

Speaking of boats….  There is a story of a shipwreck at sea…..   and the survivors got into the only remaining life-raft…… //… they were in the liferaft for SO LONG that the ones in the front started calling themselves ‘the front row’  and the ones in the back called themselves ‘the back row.’   And they started organising their day around this reality….    

 

One day, the boat got a hole in it….  And started taking on water….   A person in the backrow said, ‘thank goodness the hole sprung up in the front…and not here in the back…...  Otherwise we would have been in trouble…….  “ 

 

Crazy!!!!

 

They forgot that they were IN THE SAME BOAT….  Our needs and future are interlinked…… 

 

The good news today is that WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT…  and its Jesus’ boat!!   Jesus is the captain, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and he is taking us on a journey that will end with the Father in Heaven……   Jesus promises to lead us through the blessings and challenges of life….  To the Father’s Kingdom../..

 

Jesus is returning to the Father…  but he is still with us through the Holy Spirit.  .. He now calls upon his disciples… upon us…  to keep his work going …..  to keep spreading his message of good news  and keep living and proclaiming the good news…

 

We are indeed all on the journey to the kingdom in its fullness….. and each of us are in the same boat… we are all brothers and sisters in God’s family…..

 

We often pray, for example in the Lord’s Prayer…  that “Thy Kingdom come”…..    But we are not praying that the world ends…..   we are, rather, praying for a new world where Jesus’ values are fully and completely revealed and lived and experienced…..  We want all of creation to be renewed and recreated in accordance with Jesus’ vision for the world….  All we do and say is directed to helping God’s Kingdom to be established in its fullness… 

 

If Jesus had not returned to the Father, we would still have been saying…   there is is there… or here he is here……   but now…  by returning to Heaven and sending the Holy Spirit to us ….  Jesus is NOW “all IN all”     and Jesus makes his home in our hearts and in our world.    All the while, we work to make our homes, our workplaces and our town into places of Christian values and action…  

 

Through our faithful following of Jesus, the spirit can help us to make Jesus present in the midst of the a reality made of selfishness, of undue privileges, of arrogance .. or political and religious power…. Of indifference towards the poor and of hunger,,,, Jesus ascension tells us …  don’t stand looking up in the clouds..  there is work to be done…  there is no time but the present…  Jesus was in a hurry to bring his ministry to all people….  He now entrusts his ministry to and through us…  there is no time to lose…  God wants us to be about his business…  right now… with the help of the Spirit…

 

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REFERENCES:

 

·        FR. PAUL W. KELLY

·        MISSION 2000  – PRAYING SCRIPTURE IN A CONTEMPORARY WAY. YEAR c. BY MARK LINK S.J.

·        2010 – A BOOK OF GRACE-FILLED DAYS. BY ALICE CAMILLE.

·        SHARING THE WORD THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR. GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ.

 

Paul's Reflections 9th May, 2010 Sixth Sunday of Easter - C

9th May, 2010      Sixth Sunday of Easter - C

 

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This weekend, actually Saturday the  8^th May, its “VE Day”  anniversary….    In 1945, on the 8^th May, the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the enemy Armed forces in Germany…. // it is reported that greater than one million people took to the streets to celebrate upon the news that the end had come to the European part of the war.  One could hardly comprehend the thanksgiving, joy and relief on this date…  although also all too aware of the enormous job still ahead and the enormous cost of fighting for freedom and for the values that we all cherish…..   It is so important to mark this day’s such as this.

 

This reminds me of a parable I recently read…   a young man goes to visit the war memorial in Canberra…  and he goes in to see the many, many lists of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice….  When he goes in… he sees an elderly man who is weeping uncontrollably….   He gently stands beside him and, after the elderly man regains his composure, the young man asks him, “is one of these your?.....    to which the elderly man relies…  “no!  All of them.” 

 

‘’

 

That is quite a moving thought. Jesus PRAYS that all shall be one, healed of division, etc. he prays that we might love as he loved..  and will all to be saved…..  

 

We pray that the Lord, and particularly the Holy Spirit which makes all of what we do effective./..  that we might HAVE the peace that only God can give….  That God will bless and strengthen us…  and help us to love as Jesus asked….

 

This weekend at the different masses, we have our young ones who are continuing their preparation to receive their Confirmation and first holy communion …..  

 Jesus encourages us to walk the path of love, and loving service……..Jesus walks along with us on our life journey… he is always interested to hear us tell him of our hopes, our fears… our disappointments and our failures… and he is there to reassure us and give us strength and to assure us that if we keep trusting in him, the love of God has the final word in our life….    and it lasts forever…..

 

whenever we gather at Mass, we come together as disciples and friends of Jesus and we break the bread and drink from the cup….and we believe that this is not just a SIGN of our connection to Jesus, that God forgives us, renews us and commissions us… we believe that Jesus comes to us in what looks like bread and wine, that Jesus is really present in this sacrament,  and that Jesus comes into our hearts and we become more and more part of Jesus’ life…. and then we go out into our daily lives to live his commandments to show love and care for each other…    

 

 

 

 

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REFERENCES:

 

·          FR. PAUL W. KELLY

·          MONASTERY OF CHRIST IN THE DESERT. ABBOT’S HOMILY.