CALLED TO SHARE IN THE LIFE OF GOD, WHO IS LOVE AND COMMUNION

THE HOLY TRINITY - Ro 8:14-17

The Church gives us a special Sunday to celebrate the mystery of God, the Holy Trinity - a mystery that is present in everyday of our lives and in any kind of worship that we do. All Christians Churches give praise and thanksgiving to God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

One thing must be made very clear: we do not believe in three gods. The Christians, like all the Jews, are children of Abraham, believing like him and like all his descendents that there is only one God, the Lord Almighty, in whom everything lives and exists.

The mystery of God is a mystery that goes beyond our human capacity of explanation, no matter how hard we try; and this is so because of our smallness and limitedness in front of the greatness of God. About God’s mystery, Paul wrote:

“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

 “For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?”

 “Or who has given a gift to him,

to receive a gift in return?”

 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen” (Ro 11:33-36).

Using our human and limited reasoning, we can know some basic truths about God, but very little about his plan of salvation for humankind and much less about what kind of God he is. There is a Bemba proverb that can be applied to this: Munda ya mubiyo tamwingilwa, meaning: in the heart of a friend nobody enters, unless he opens the heart and reveals himself. God has revealed himself to us throughout history in his actions of salvation and he revealed his love and his plan of salvation in Jesus Christ, who is the beloved Son, the true image of the Father. In Jesus Christ, God reveals himself as relationship, a relationship of love that is total communion. In his actions of salvation, God reveals himself as the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, one God.

In the early Church, immediately after the end of the persecution, the relationship between the Father and the Son became the source of endless theological battles, which had repercussions even in the political arena. The greatest heresy that shook the Church to its foundations was Arianism, that is the doctrine of Arius, a priest from Alexandria in Egipt, who denied the divinity of Chist, teaching that he was created; thus being a creature like other creatures. According to Arius, Jesus Christ is Son of God, only by adoption, in a similar way as we become children of God by adoption. The teaching of Arius was condemned in the first ecumenical council, the council of Nicaea in 325, where the Nicaenean Creed was formulated.

Through a long period of the Church history, the pendulum of theological debate went from one extreme to the other. Some claimed that Jesus was not the Son of God; others claimed that he is not a trully human being.

Already in the apostolic times these two opposite propositions were being defended and both of them are condemned in the first letter of John.:

• “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also.” (1 Jn 2:22-23).
• “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” (1 Jn 4:2-3; see 2 Jn 1:7).

Jesus is the Son who became a human being sot that we may be adopted as children of God. And in Jesus we can share in the life of God, who is love and communion.  In the second reading of this Sunday liturgy, Paul makes it clear that we are called to share in God’s life: 

“Everyone moved by the Spirit is a son of God. The spirit you received is not the spirit of slaves bringing fear into your lives again; it is the spirit of sons, and it makes us cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we are children we are heirs as well: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory.” (Ro 8:14-17).

LIKE TONGUES OF FIRE

FEAST OF PENTECOST - Acts 2:1-11

For the Jews, Pentecost, celebrated fifty days after Passover, was a great feast, also called the Feast of Weeks, because of being celebrated seven weeks after Passover. It began as a harvest feast and then became a feast to celebrate the promulgation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. On that day, the disciples were gathered together, when they had an extraordinary experience that transformed them completely and which led to the beginning of the Church. It was on the day of Pentecost, that they received the Holy Spirit, and since then the Holy Spirit has been the driving force in the life of the Church, inspiring, guiding, strengthening, protecting and defending the Church. There can be no Church without the Holy Spirit, and without the presence and the action of the Holy Spirit, the Church would have disappeared long ago. It is the Spirit that leads us to faith in Jesus Christ and who works within us transforming us  and creating us anew to be like Jesus Christ.

The Spirit is like the wind, blowing “where it chooses”; “you do not know where it comes from or where it goes" (Jn 3:8). Both the Hebrew (rûah) and the Greek (pneuma) words mean at the same time wind or breath and spirit. On the day of Pentecost, they heard “a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” (Act 2:2). The Holy Spirit is the breath of God, which he breathes upon us.  He may come like a mighty wind, shaking everything and uprooting all that is evil, in order to make a new creation (Ps 104:30), or he may act like a little breeze, which soothes our hearts and heals our souls, bringing peace and joy. He inspires us and guides us towards the truth, which sets us free.

The Holy Spirit is the living water coming from the open heart of Jesus, so that our thirst for life may be quenched.

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” (Jn 7:37-38)

John explains that Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit (Jn 7:39). About this living water, St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote: 

“This is a new kind of water, a living, leaping water, welling up for those who are worthy. But why did Christ call the grace of the Spirit water? Because all things are dependent on water; plants and animals have their origin in water. Water comes down from heaven as rain, and although it is always the same in itself, it produces many different effects, one in the palm tree, another in the vine, and so on throughout the whole of creation. It does not come down, now as one thing, now as another, but while remaining essentially the same, it adapts itself to the needs of every creature that receives it.

In the same way the Holy Spirit, whose nature is always the same, simple and indivisible, apportions grace to each man as he wills.”

And the Holy Spirit is like fire, the fire that purifies and transforms. It is the fire of love, God’s love that he has kindled in our hearts. The Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles as tongues of fire and they were transformed from cowards into people full of courage and boldness to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.

May the Holy Spirit come upon each one of us, setting our hearts on fire with God’s love, the true love shown to us by Jesus Christ.

THE EXALTATION OF JESUS CHRIST

FEAST OF THE ASCENSION - Ephesians 4:1-13

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul quotes the Psalm 68:18, saying: “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives” (ESV), and then Paul goes on to explain that the one who ascended is the one who had descended “right down to the lower regions of the earth”. (Eph 4:9). The hymn in the letter to the Philippians speaks as well of this swing movement: coming down (descending) and going up (ascending):

“Though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

 but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

 he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

 Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

 so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

 and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.”

Ascension means the exaltation of Jesus Christ or the return to the glory of the Father, that belonged to him, since he is one with the Father. But we cannot forget that the celebration of the Ascension implies as well a proclamation of faith on the incarnation. We believe that Jesus is the Son of the living God, born of a woman, so that he may share our life and carry the burden of our sins. He shared our condition, in order to set us free and open the gates of heaven for us. As he passes through the gates of heaven, he leaves them open for us, so that being one with him, we may go in to share in his glory.

Paul says that Jesus ascended as a conqueror, entering the heavenly city with the whole horde of the enemies that oppressed us. Being victorious, Jesus Christ will flood us with his gifts, mainly with the greatest gift of all, which is the source of all other gifts: the Holy Spirit.

Let us celebrate this feast with great joy, because our Lord Jesus Christ has a place prepared for us and he will call us to ascend to him and to be with him in the glory of the Father.

CALLED TO UNIVERSALITY

VI EASTER SUNDAY - Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48

Since the beginning, time and again, the Church appears to be conformist and conservative, afraid of change. Before the coming of the Holy Spirit, there was just a small group of the disciples of Jesus, who lived in hiding, afraid of suffering the same fate of their master. The Holy Spirit had to come like a strong wind to force them out and bring them into the open. It was the beginning of witnessing to the resurrection of Jesus as Christ and Lord. However, their preaching of the Gospel  did not go very far. In fact, they remained in Jerusalem, where they frequented the Temple on a regular basis. All the members of the Church were Jews; it looked more like a new Jewish sect than the Church of Jesus Christ. They had to suffer persecution (Act 8:1), in order to be scattered and take the message of redemption to Samaria and beyond.

For a while, the Church was a Jewish Church, made up only of Jewish people, both Aramaic and Greek speaking. They were following all the Jewish traditions, keeping themselves apart from the non-Jews or gentiles. Once again, the Holy Spirit had to force them to change course. First, in a dream, Peter was made to understand that there are no impure foods and that he should eat whatever is put in front of him wherever he may go, meaning that he would be able to sit at the table of the gentiles and share their food. Then, he was called by Cornelius, an officer of the Roman army, who had gathered in his house a group of relatives and friends, in order to listen to the message of salvation. While he was preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Cornelius and the assembly gathered in his house, the Holy Spirit came upon them, to Peter’s great surprise, forcing him to recognise that “God shows no partiality” (Act 10:34), and that he addresses his offer of salvation to all. And so little by little the Church started spreading among the gentiles.

However, this journey of openness and inclusiveness was not an easy journey. The Christian Jews wanted at all costs to force the Christians of gentile origin to follow all Jewish traditions , and that caused so big an uproar in Antioch, that they had to appeal to the Apostles, who decided in favour of the gentiles, making it ver clear that the Church to be the Church of Jesus Christ has to be catholic, that is universal. The Church does not belong to any group, because she belongs to Christ, who is the head of the Church, and she is his body. 

In spite of the decision of the Apostles in the council of Jerusalem (Act 15), Paul suffered opposition and persecution everywhere. In the end, the universality (catholicity) of the Church became a reality, only because the Jewish people were defeated and the Temple destroyed, practically ending the influence of the Jerusalem Church and of the Jewish Christians. 

Throughout history, time and again, the Church is pushed forward by the Spirit, forcing her to change and to remain faithful to Jesus Christ and to the values of the Gospel. We must learn to listen to the Spirit and to allow ourselves to be guided by him.

LIKE BARNABAS

V EASTER SUNDAY - Acts 9:26-31

Paul of Tarsus was an extraordinary man who lived through extraordinary circumstances. He was a Jew from the diaspora, born in Tarsus, which was then an important harbour in what is now Turkey. He was a man of two worlds: a Roman citizen by birth, speaking Greek; and a Jew of strict observance, a Pharisee, most probably radicalised, as it happens nowadays with many Muslims who live in Europe. With his heart full of zeal for the Law and the Jewish culture, he committed himself wholeheartedly to destroy the emerging Church. For him, teaching that Jesus is Lord, the Christ and Saviour of the world was non-sense; and he realised that the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ had the potential to spread far and wide, and he had to stop it. 

Then, his life was turned upside down, when he had a deep personal experience of the risen Lord. And he considered everything else as a loss compared to “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:8). He did not waste time, but started immediately preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  However, when he went to Jerusalem, nobody trusted him, until Barnabas introduced him to the Apostles and to the community in general. After a discussion with the Hellenists, that’s Greek speaking Jews like him, they prepared a plot to kill him. When that plot came to the knowledge of the Christians, they sent Paul back to Tarsus. And there he remained, seemingly lost for the work of evangelisation, until Barnabas went to Tarsus to bring him to Antioch. Without Barnabas, Paul would have been lost and forgotten for ever. Barnabas never had the greatness of Paul, but he had this great ability of recognising true value when he saw it. First, he was ready to trust and then he was ready to humble himself and go for Paul.

In our communities, we are in need of people like Barnabas, who are able to spot those with qualities to become leaders.