May 15, 2021
Click here to view this week's Mass. The video for the 4 PM vigil Mass will be available by about 7 PM on Saturday.
It was forty-five years ago. I had been a student in X-Ray Technology for 2 years. Part of our training was to go into hospitals and work alongside an experienced X-Ray technologist. We would accompany them as they performed X-ray studies on real people. By the end, we would have to do the X-ray studies on our own. I recall that it was frightening! The experienced technologist was no longer there. It was all on me. But at least I knew that they were right around the corner if I needed their help.
All of us, throughout our lives, have had people we could turn to: parents, family, schoolteachers, priests, religious sisters, employers.
I bring all of this up because it is what filled my mind as I read the readings for this weekend. Jesus had left the apostles - ascended to heaven. He had promised that he would send them a helper, the Holy Spirit to guide them, but that hadn't happened yet. Do you suppose they might have been frightened? Now it was all on them. And Jesus was not physically present for them to go to, like our teachers, parents, and mentors have been for us.
Jesus had told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit. But in Jerusalem they were surrounded by people who wanted any lover of Jesus dead. They are also faced with the challenge of establishing the Church throughout the world as Jesus commanded. Can you imagine the weight that would have been on their shoulders? How did all of this not crush them?
When we look at today's readings, we learn how. This should be important to each of us since we are often under the crushing weight of great difficulties in our own lives. We are often frightened. And we long for relief and the great joy that comes from accomplishing what Jesus has asked of us - the joy experienced by the apostles.
In our readings, the apostles are presenting what they experienced: That Jesus was MORE than an in-person reality that they could see, talk to, and hear. Jesus was not of this world! Listen to how they present Jesus speaking to God the Father about themselves and us as believers:
"They do not belong to the world." Don't you feel that way sometimes? That we are not part of this world? We see people with billions of dollars owning many multimillion dollar homes while there are people homeless. Do we really belong to that world? It turns out, we don't. The apostles go on to remember Jesus saying, "They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world."
It is as though the apostles are reviewing the situation now that Jesus had left. And they are not feeling abandoned or alone! They are concluding that he is with them now more than ever. They are concluding that the world does not own them and never will! It is Jesus who owns them. They are recognizing that Jesus is no longer in the world, but neither are they! They are already bound up together with Jesus and his Father in heaven!
Like the apostles, you and I are no longer owned by this world. We have one foot here, but our whole self is bound up with Jesus and his Father.
Like the apostles after Jesus left, we are not alone. For example, if you are unemployed and looking for a job, Jesus is searching with you. If you are struggling with a family relationship that has gone wrong, you are searching with Jesus for the answer. In all our difficulties, Jesus is with us and the solution, what brings joy to us, is often not of this world. For example, accepting a job that provides a service that is desperately needed by God's people, but pays less than we feel we are worth, may bring us a joy that is not of this world. And that family relationship that causes you so much pain, might become a source of joy when you take an action that is not of this world, and forgive the other person completely.
"As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world." The apostles saw that God sent Jesus into the world to fix it. They were filled with joy then, when they began to see themselves, not as part of the world that needed fixing, but as part of Jesus, being sent to fix it. May we recognize that as our place as well and rejoice, together with Jesus changing the world! Amen.
God's Peace,
Deacon Dave
