Gospel Reflection Mark 10:28-31

At the end of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says “...many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.” God’s way of ordering things sometimes runs contrary to ours. And we do well to reorient ourselves. The sooner, the better. Those who are ‘last’, in the sense of not having worldly goods or pleasures, giving these things up for the sake of the Kingdom of God, or being deprived entirely because of injustice, will be ‘first’. The privation of goods now becomes seeds of abundance for later. 

Jesus asks us to trust in the cosmic justice of God. Our own sense of justice, while capable of latching onto the truly Just, is often skewed. Thus, we lean not on our own understanding when God has spoken for our benefit on a particular matter. Indeed, the Lord will render properly to each his or her due. One day everything will be properly ordered. Until then, disciples of Jesus are called to give things up for the Gospel. For some, this means committing to a religious life of poverty. For some, a life of chastity. For some, it means enduring persecution. And for others, it means a life of continual sacrifice of the self for the other. A thousand and one pangs of the soul, wrestling the ego into submission only for the battle to begin anew tomorrow. Whatever the Lord has called us to sacrifice, may the Holy Spirit strengthen us to do it with joy, peace, and hopeful hearts for a heavenly reward. 

Gospel Reflection John 17:1-11

Today’s Gospel reading continues with the Farewell Discourse. In these passages, from John chapters 13-17, we get a very intimate, first-hand account of the final hours of Jesus’ life and teaching. If you ever wondered what it would be like to be a ‘fly on the wall’ among Jesus and the disciples, the Farewell Discourse is a great place to start. 

In the passage today, Jesus says “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” The word ‘know’ in this verse intends to communicate a personal acquaintance or first hand experience. To have eternal life is to experience the life of God first hand. We are told in other places that this comes about through the life-giving power of the Spirit (John 3, et. al.). The mysterious and glorious interplay of Trinitarian relations is involved in each step of the Christian journey. This is but one reason why so much was at stake in the early Church over doctrinal matters concerning the nature of the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

To have eternal life is not to be a floating apparition. Eternal life is not an unending, mindless state. It is not going to someplace in the sky.  It is to have the “life of the Age’, to be a full participant in the age to come which is a remade and properly ordered cosmos. Eternal ife is a qualitatively different kind of life. It is elevated. Free from inordinate passion and malice. Free to worship and live in harmony as God intended from the beginning. 

Gospel Reflection John 16:29-33

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says “In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world." Time and again, Jesus tells His followers to expect difficulty and struggle in the world. The world is the kingdom and dominion of the fallen ones. It represents the order of those powers, principalities, people, and systems opposed to God. 

We should be wary when things are going well for us in the world. It means that either we are not doing things God’s way or that our opponents are operating in a subtle manner. We must not be fooled into thinking there is some safe quarter within the world. However, we do not need to walk on eggshells. We do not need to be anxious about when the shoe will drop. We can trudge on circumspectly. The proper attitude of the Christian life is one of the virtuous mean. 

The Christian knows their pilgrimage is a trail of tears. They know that life gives fleeting glimpses of heaven. And we know, as the Gospel today says, that Jesus has overcome the world. The system of evil and death is in its waning days. 

We cannot see far from our vantage point; thus, we cannot always see clearly how Christ has conquered. Yet, if we look closely, the signs of His victory come into focus. We see the newly baptized coming into the Kingdom. We experience the forgiveness of our sins. We nourish our famished souls in the Holy Eucharist. We elevate our souls to God when we hear the music of the heavens. We sing with the angels and saints “holy, holy, holy.” The victory of Christ is evident if we look for it by its own phosphorescent-like illumination, and not by the dingy bulb of the world. 

Gospel Reflection John 16:20-23

Life is rhythmic and cyclical. The book of Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for everything. Weeping and laughing. Mourning and dancing. We are from the dust, and to dust we shall return. Our existence in space and time is corruptible, insofar as we are composed, the breath of God and dust, and are then subject to decomposition. Joy is vain. It slips from our grasp the moment we gaze upon it. Grief is constant. We wade through the floodwaters of this valley of tears until we are eventually overcome by the crashing waves. 

Through the storm of life, with its respites of calm and monotonously blasting gales, Jesus speaks to us. He offers words of comfort in today's Gospel passage. Comfort that does not, and cannot, come from the world of ashes and decay. The Lord says that anguish will come before a joy that is not vain. Happiness, the quietude of our wills, can be snatched away from us now. But not forever. Our hearts will rejoice when they are no longer breakable. 

The Christian message has been fraught with tension from the beginning; the already-but-not-yet. Jesus is already Lord of all, but the instantiation of His Kingdom across the cosmos is not yet fully realized. Jesus is already raised from the dead and exists incorruptibly; we are not yet like Him. Creation groans in travail. Still, Jesus promises that our longing to be with Him is like the birth of a child. Agony will dissolve into bliss. Death will be swallowed up by life. 

Gospel Reflection John 16:5-11

Much of what Jesus says seems counterintuitive. He tells us to turn the other cheek instead of striking back in violence. He tells us to walk an extra mile if compelled to walk the first. He tells us that it is better for Him to leave His earthly ministry than to stay. As St. Paul says, the wisdom of God is deep and rich and unsearchable. 

How could it possibly be better for God among us to leave us? Perhaps only if God the Holy Spirit then comes to dwell among His people. We are not left without the presence of God within us and among us. Perhaps only if we can understand a shred of the divine plan for human redemption, seeing that, like a flower, each flower petal is slowly opening up toward the eternal sun. The first petal must give way so the innermost buds can be nourished. We see through the glass darkly now, but later…

Jesus unequivocally tells us the Holy Spirit is a ‘He’. “...I will send Him to you…He will convict the world…” The divinity of the Holy Spirit is given to us, if even somewhat opaquely, in these passages. But not only these. The early Church prayed and thought, and prayed and thought some more, before articulating what had God revealed for the sake of furthering the Kingdom and spreading joy far and wide. 

We behold the great mystery of the inner life of God with wonder and awe. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each at work in our redemption and deification. As the Spirit comes to convict the world of sin and righteousness and condemnation, He does so in perfect harmony with the Son who gives Himself and the Father who is glorified in the Son. 

Gospel Reflection John 15:26—16:4

In today’s Gospel, Jesus again tells His disciples to expect persecution. And this even unto death. Opposition to the Kingdom of God is fierce. The hostility is often much more than we can fathom. We read about martyrdom in our time. We know we should expect ill-treatment. It comes in ways obvious and subtle. What is unique about the Christian faith, and the call to radical discipleship, is that this state of affairs must not force an inward turn. 

Instead, Jesus still calls us to love our enemies. He calls us to bless those who persecute us. There is no chip on our shoulder. The other shoe will drop. But we do not walk in trepidation. Jesus tells us He has overcome the world. If we abide in Him, we abide in the life of God, the giver of all life. If we are grafted into that life, we have a life that cannot be taken from us. We have happiness and fellowship that is not fleeting. The Holy Spirit is our constant companion and often reminds us that we are pilgrims on a journey toward something greater. 

 

Gospel Reflection John 15:12-17

One of the things Jesus says in today’s Gospel reading is “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” Then, He says “You are my friends,” and “I have called you friends…” There is no greater love than what Jesus does in laying down His life for us. He calls us His friends. He gives Himself up for us, and continually gives Himself to us in the Holy Eucharist because we are joined to Him in friendship by grace. 

Because of the way He was killed and how our imagination works, our thoughts can easily drift to the idea that Jesus’ life was taken. We often speak of this way when a person passes away. We say they ‘lost’ their life or they were ‘robbed’ of life. This is not the case with Jesus. 

Jesus was indeed brutally killed by Romans at the insistence of the vocal Jewish religious leadership contingent in Jerusalem. Yet, we must always recall that He willingly came into the world and willingly allowed these events to transpire. Nothing forces God to act. Nothing extrinsically compels the Son of God to take on human flesh. Nothing and no one can mandate that Christ suffer and die for the sins of the world. The incarnation of the Lord Jesus, His life, and His sacrificial death are simply the overflowing divine love. The love that exists eternally in the Triune God infuses itself into creation. There can be no greater love than Jesus laying down His life because there can be nothing greater, and therefore no greater love, than God. 

Much is made of the difference between how the Church has defined love, willing the good of the other (as other), and how the modern world has perverted this definition into a reductionist, emotivist description of the concupiscible. The absurdity of the colloquial ‘love is love’ is sharply contrasted with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There is love, which is what Jesus does and shows, and then there is something else.