Saints Peter and Paul

One thing I like about these two apostles is their unlikelihood as leaders:  Peter: brash, compulsive and often glib, who denied knowing Jesus shortly after his crucifixion, and Paul’s zeal for persecuting the early Christian community seem to create a perfect storm of apostolic inadequacy . But then again, the way God seems to reveal His purpose, all of this seems familiar. David, the first King, was chosen by God, and anointed by the prophet Samuel reluctantly when David’s older brothers would have made a much more reasonable choice. Also, there is Jacob’s call, just as late in life as his grandfather Abraham’s and after a life of deceit is given a new name by God: Israel. Moses, the one who leads his people out of Egypt replies to God’s call: “I am nobody. How can I go to the king and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” If God chose the next president from a list of ten highly qualified candidates, He probably would choose the overworked but loyal 60-something secretary in the outer office who has been passed over for promotion numerous times for her eccentric behavior and who is not a “team player.” What can we learn, then, through Peter and Paul that suggests God continues to work in the all too human institutional Church?

Peter and Paul’s lives were defined by passion, and a type of stubbornness that often led them afoul of the community, but it was this weakness that God transformed into strength. Peter’s glibness led him to speak what he felt to identify Jesus as the Messiah; Paul’s zeal at persecution was transformed to a zealous apostle. God took these weaknesses and transformed them into strength. Paul, in particular, writes about his sense of inadequacy in numerous places in his letters. Here is an excellent example in writing to the Corinthians where he describes himself as “…the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”(1 Cor. 15:9). But Paul’s humility wasn’t simply a moment of hopeless debasement, but one keenly tailored to the problems in Corinth with ego abounding and divisions rife throughout the well-heeled community. Paul uses his weakness as a source of his evangelization because his life was a display of God’s grace. Following this verse, Paul writes “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”

Our failings and weaknesses, keenly known and felt, too often are the proverbial “light under the bushel”.  Paul writes about one’s weaknesses being sources of great grace—good news! For it is often in our weaknesses that we are most vulnerable—open to God and to others. The great faith of the saints is often exemplified in their woundedness. Paul writes about God’s message to him through his weaknesses: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.  Both Peter and Paul continued to struggle with their personalities, but they lived lives keenly aware of God’s grace.

It is not despite our weaknesses that God’s grace is revealed to humanity, but through them, when our weaknesses are not hidden but shared as a source of God’s great love and grace.

The Body and Blood of Christ

Become What You Receive

St. Augustine’s famous admonition on the Eucharist, “Behold what you are; become what you receive”, reveals the dynamic between the taking and becoming the dynamic of the Eucharist. 

In the Eucharistic celebration, the priest’s actions are taking, blessing, breaking, and giving; the part that is often left out of the discussion is the taking and becoming of all who receive. But we who receive are also taking, and rather than blessing the bread, the bread becomes a source of blessing for ourselves so that we might be a blessing to the world—the world yet to be transformed by Christ. Also, rather than breaking the bread, we become broken in our blessing. In Augustine’s saying, “Behold what you are” comes before “Become what you receive”. Approaching the Body and Blood of Christ sacrificed for us, we behold our great need for God’s grace because we experience blessing. The image of brokenness works on two levels: to be shared, the substance must be divided, broken. In the sharing of ourselves, we freely distribute the blessing we have been given and have become. Broken also suggests the suffering of Christ’s sacrifice, the “way of the cross”. We must become true flesh, accept we are not gods, break our egoism to bless and celebrate our humanity.

We then, in our common priesthood, in our lives, do what the priest does at the altar: We take, bless, break and give, stripped of our false humanity, and reveal a great blessing that God has sanctified, what He has created and found very good.

Pentecost

The Language of the Holy Spirit

 

". . . they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language."

The first action at Pentecost had to do with the paradox of a single group of men from a particular region speaking so that others who spoke many other languages heard them in their own language.  Perhaps the message was one of universal salvation.  Scripture simply says the Spirit ". . . enabled them to proclaim. . . .  the mighty acts of God." What could be mightier than the gathering of all nations to the loving call of God?

Too often the call one hears in one's own language can lead one to assume God's call is exclusive to him or herself; that the others couldn't have got it right because God is speaking so personally to me! But the language of the Holy Spirit which is heard in all languages is the language of the Cross and the Empty Tomb.  The language of the Holy Spirit is loving sacrifice and triumph over death.

The Spirit's long embrace of love is "as a flame of fire".  This simile suggests it is a passionate, dynamic and living presence.  Candles, "eternal flames" of remembrance, the sanctuary lamp, all mirror this reality of a living, present God.  Each of us, born like an unlit candle, becomes a light with God's touch at baptism and is the sustaining presence that burns brightly in dark places where light is sorely needed.  As Jesus proclaimed "I am the light of the world"(John. 8:12), so too we are called to live as "Children of the light"(Ephesians 5:8-19). This light, as St. Paul reminds us takes the form of the many and various gifts of the Holy Spirit; yet, 

As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.(1Cor.12:12-13)

And in "this one body" we work out our salvation light's gift of God.  Too often diversity is looked upon with suspicion by the institutional church and among Christian denominations.  Instead of looking at one another with a sense of mystery and awe at the diverse workings of the Holy Spirit, we assume error because of the difference.  Very often this difference is mistaken for a lack of unity; what, in fact, it is is a lack of uniformity.  What living system exhibits uniformity?  When, then, is difference error?  The Spirit is also our teacher and what is not of God will always manifest itself as a force pulling people away from the peace, love, and hope of Christ.  St. Paul writing to the Galatians (Gal.5:22) declares: "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things, there is no law.”  

 In 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, after discussing the “many gifts, one Spirit”,  Paul writes elegantly of the primacy of love as evidence of the Spirit’s presence:

If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.



Love is the language of the Holy Spirit and the sure sign of God’s dwelling and the source of our comfort, instruction, healing light, and salvation. 


Originally published in May 2013