Jesus 102 - THe Gospel of John

For many Christians, this beloved passage from John is where they get their first taste of Christianity.  John the Apostle was the last of the apostles to be called home to heaven.  His Gospel is different than that of the other three evangelists. I believe that his Gospel is Jesus 102.  By this, I mean that the Book of John has to be read after you have a familiarity with the Synoptic Gospels. I do not mean that it does not stand on its own, it does.  I mean that its lessons are better understood after reading Matthew, Mark, and Luke and becoming conversant in the story of Jesus.  For example, you would not tell a new Christian to begin his journey with Christ by reading Revelation, would you? The symbolism would be beyond what they could understand. 

A reader could spend the rest of his or her life studying the Gospel of John and daily come up with fresh ideas to inspire their life.  The one chapter that gets the least amount of attention is John Chapter Six.  Protestant preachers just do not know what to make of this chapter that discusses in great detail Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. 

I've never understood why people who read Genisis and claim that the world was created in six days because it says so, do not believe that Jesus meant what He said about eating his Body and drinking His Blood.  Reading John 6 leaves no doubt as what the intent of Jesus was at the Last Supper when he took bread into His sacred hands and He blessed it and broke it and gave it to His disciples saying, "This is my Body."  He then took the cup filled with wine and passed it to them saying "This is my Blood."  He then said, "Do this in memory of me."  The word "this" refers to the action Jesus had just completed, changing the ordinary bread and wine into His Body and Blood.  The apostles were to do this over and over again. This was to be how Jesus would remain with His people through all generations until He returned at the end of time. 

It is in the Body and Blood that God demonstration how much He really loved his errant children on earth.  Not only would His Son take upon himself all of the sins of the world, but He would make Himself available to all of His people in the Eucharist.  To take the Eucharist is to absorb the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus into your body. In a most intimate way, Jesus is physically present in you!  It is difficult to understand why Jesus would choose to do this except that He loves us without end and it is his fondest desire to do this for us. 

May Jesus be adored, praised, and loved, in all of the tabernacles in the whole world and especially when He is with me as I receive him in the Bread and Wine at the table of the Lord.  Amen.  

It's good to be a Catholic! 

Looking for Alleluia

I grew up in the 1960's which was the period of time between the Old Church and the Vatican II Church. So I have seen Lent from both sides of the street. Early in my career at Saint Joseph and Saint Anne School, I was a good do-be.  I rose early enough to get to daily Mass to please God for my devotion to Him but more importantly to ingratiate myself to the good sisters of Saint Joseph who infested, ahh, I mean who taught us bright and willing baby boomers. We were all well trained and entered and exited the pews with military precision, each one of us genuflecting while the next child waited for his or her turn. After genuflecting we either moved to the end of the pew waiting for the sit-down signal or if we were exiting the pew we began moving towards the communion rail where we would kneel to receive communion or execute a smart about face, kid style, and make our way to the exit. There were a whole lot of other things the prudent student would observe.  First and foremost, of course, was the position of one's head. It was kept facing towards the altar. A kid's head facing left or right or God forbid facing backward was certainly not praying for the success of the mission of the Sisters of Saint Joseph or to pass that day's spelling test.  No! It was either preparing to talk or actually talking to one's neighbor.  The nun in charge of security immediately went to the offender and reminded him (it was never a girl) what he should be doing.  If the miscreant happened to be amongst the first three children in the row, the guard, I mean sister, might just assist the child by grabbing both of the kids ears and re-training his gaze onto the altar again.  The other thing the sisters insisted upon was good posture whilst kneeling. A boy with his butt resting on the seat of the pew while kneeling could expect quick rebuke and assistance from the sister who observed the sloppy posture. It was never a girl that would offend with sloppy posture because girls always did what was right, at least while sister was looking.  I think that the worst Catholic service to be at when you were a kid was the stations of the cross. I say this because first of all, they were so long!  Secondly, it was the closest thing at SJSA to a gym class because you knelt and stood and knelt and stood some more until you thought it would never end.  The only good thing about it was that we got out of school forty-five minutes early.  All eight grades participated in this ritual.  It was awe inspiring to see hundreds of kids silently participating in a troop movement that used all of the exits of the school, culminating with every grade silently in their places ready to go in five minutes.  I think the only boy that loved the stations of the cross was Jackie Gleason.  No, not the Jackie Gleason of the Honeymooners, this was a boy who did EVERYTHING perfectly. He walked with his hands out of his pockets. He had the straightest posture possible. He was always smiling. He ALWAYS got one-hundred on his spelling tests and he knew how to diagram sentences like a pro. He was forever volunteering for whatever would get him more brownie points. He always knelt straight and true and the sisters pointed out all of his good qualities when correcting a boy in need of correction. Needless to say, he was hated by all of the boys in class but was exempt from playground retribution because not even the worst bully in the school would want to bully a living saint, besides, he played all sports well. 

The thing that I remember about these pre-Vatican II days is how grim and solemn the mass and decorations were. I remember that we did not do much singing back then. Rather we had an organist with an adenoid issue slaughtering Gregorian chants that we could not understand. I remember thinking at the time that any minute an undertaker was going to be pushing in a casket and a funeral mass would be starting.  Back then, the word "Alleluia" was just another word in a foreign language and quite honestly I do not know if too many people noticed that it was missing.  I knew that the Gloria was missing because the mass was shorter and that was okay by me!

Vatican II came and went and during the Kumbaya period of the liturgy, I was taking my teenage sabbatical from church.  I guess that those early years of change were quite traumatic for some of the adult members of the Church back then. The quiet time where they could say their Rosaries now had become times where they were expected to participate, in English!  I can't get into how in some respects we went too far at that time and threw the baby out with the bathwater.  Imagine my surprise when I returned to the Church and found the priest facing the congregation, the old time choir that handled music was gone and we, the people, who were known now as "the people of God" participated in worship by raising our voices in song.   Can you imagine the first time I experienced the sign of peace?  I have to tell you, it was very hard for me to break years of discipline and turn around in the pew.

Okay, all of the above is the background to the subject of this post which is the word Alleluia.  I hope when you were at church this weekend you enjoyed singing the Alleluia before you heard the Gospel reading. It will be the last time you will hear the Gloria and the Alleluia until Lent is over.  Why is this?  The Gloria and the Alleluia are the songs of the angels in heaven and our singing them is a reminder that heaven has begun for us here on earth through the Church.  So, are we being punished?  No, the Church is not punishing us.  Rather, it is reminding us that while heaven begins on earth, we are still on a journey.  During Lent, we are to walk closer with the Lord in our life.  Over the next five weeks, we are called to think about our lives and how to bring ourselves closer to Christ and to more closely model His life in ours.  As the time goes on we want to shout Glory to God in the highest!  We want to let the Alleluia's ring out. But we can't and this longing increases as the time of Lent extends.  Then, on Easter, when we hear the joyful new proclaimed that Jesus has risen, our Alleluia's will be more heartfelt and more joyous than at any other time of the year.  So as the last alleluia fades from your ear, remember that when you complete your Lenten journey you will be able to praise God with the angels again.  

So, one more time for old time's sake let's sing, "Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!" 

Easter Sunday

They laid him in the tomb. It was getting late, the Sabbath was approaching so they did what they could in the time that they had and the women said they would come back and finish the job. They went back to Jerusalem and crept into their room and each of them seemed to exude the feeling of gloom.  The Master was gone, why had he died? They gave everything up to walk at His side. The Sabbath was over so the women got on the way.  Carrying spices and ointments to anoint the body of Jesus that day, to do to Him the last kindest act, for he lay there dead, they saw Him so they new this was a fact. As they walked to the garden where his body lay, they wondered who would roll the stone away. Finally they were there and thy could not believe what they saw, the stone was away, the body was gone, they were in awe. Two men dressed in dazzling white asked them why they sought the living among the dead the body was gone that is what they saw. The shroud was in a pile at the foot of the crypts cold stone bed and the cloth that covered his face was rolled up in another place. The men in their clothes of brilliant white told them the Jesus was raised late in the night. They told them to tell Peter, James, and John, that Jesus had returned from the great beyond.  To Galilee they must go and go there in haste for Jesus awaits them there and there is no time to waste. So the women left their burdens of spices, and ran to tell the the men of this wonder and they arrived in a trice. The men, they laughed and heaped up scorn, how foolish these women were on this Sunday morn. 

But Peter, James, and John remembered the word that they had received. Could it be as they now perceived that the Lord was risen? They ran to garden and looked in and saw the body was gone and they were in awe. They remembered he said to Galilee they must go so the picked up their cloaks and on the road they went. Their joy was so great that it was very hard to state, The Master had risen on this very date.    

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad!

Today we celebrate the victory of Christ over sin and death. Had Jesus just died, he would have been no more than another pious preacher. But he tore the veil away and turned death into life. Thank you for letting me tell the story, I know my poetry is bad at best but the story it tells will refresh your soul. You see, because of Jesus and his obedience to the Father, we now can enter heaven.   To all of you, Happy Easter.  Jesus is Risen, He is truly risen.

Where Have All The Ashes Gone?

Yesterday I had the honor of singing at 7:00 PM Mass and I have to tell you that the church was packed. All of us were at the very start of our yearly Lenten pilgrimage. For some of us it will be just a few weeks of trying to remember not to eat meat on Friday.  For some of us it will be a real growing experience.  But for one day anyway we were united.  Our foreheads were marked with the sign of the cross and everyone who care to look could say; "There goes one of those Catholics."  Today, the ashes have disappeared and we have become more or less anonymous, undercover, Catholic Christians again. 

It is okay to anonymous provided we take the time to do what we need to do to fulfill our duties as ambassadors of Christ.  As a matter of fact, the reading yesterday said we should not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing when we are doing something good for our neighbors.  So remain anonymous if you want to but do small acts of charity with great love and the beauty of God will shine through your deeds and maybe, just maybe, one of the people you share a kindness with will start to think more about their neighbors, about God, about prayer. 

But don't spend all of your energy on others,  Lent is also a time for you to get in contact with yourself and to deeply think about how God sees you.  It does not matter what the world thinks of you.  All of those in the world (you and me included) will someday pass away.  When we do we will stand before God and he will greet us as a friend or as a judge.  

When I was a child, lent was all about fish sticks and the stations of the cross.  I did not really like either of these things. Going to a Catholic school meant that meatless Friday's were rigidly enforced by the good sisters.  Lunch on Lenten Fridays usually consisted of two fish sticks, a lump of US Government cheese and a peach floating in heavy syrup.  After lunch around two in the afternoon we would silently march next door to the church.  We would endure forty minutes of the Stations of the Cross, standing, genuflecting, listening, and kneeling.  That is all Lent meant to me. 

Today I am happy for two things: First I am an adult and I do not have to eat fish sticks ! ! !  Secondly, I can use these precious forty days to become closer to Jesus.  I can use it to improve myself, and to be of service to the world around me. 

I suggest that you do not give up anything for lent. I suggest that you look for positive ways to grow your soul.  Remember what Mother Teresa of Calcutta said; "Do small things with great love."

God bless you on this second day of Lent.  Waste not a moment. Use this precious season to build yourself up so you can stand firm in the Faith.   

Christ The King - Can I Say it Better than John?

Jesus Christ is The Faithful Witness,
the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the Earth,
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood,
who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father,
to him be glory and power forever and ever Amen.
Behold, he is coming amid the clouds,
and every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him,
All the peoples of the earth will lament him.
Yes. Amen.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega." says the Lord God,
"the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty."

On this the last Sunday of the Church Year, I silence my voice, put down my pen, and adore the King of Glory.