May 26  2019 - 6th Sunday after Easter C
 

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

 OPENING IMAGE

The great St. Teresa (1515-1582), the one from Avila, Doctor of the Church, loved to use images - lots of images - when she wrote about growth and development in the spiritual life. One of her favorite images was that of water - lots of water.

Teresa of Avila says that when we begin to get serious about prayer and living a spiritual life, we’re like a plot of arid, uncultivated ground with weeds - lots of weeds. So we need to weed and plant. We also need to water our garden. At first all we have is just a bucket, so we find ourselves going back and forth and back and forth with just the bucket to get water for our garden. With God’s help we begin to change. We begin to grow spiritually.

As time goes on, we get smarter. We use a well with a crank that winds a rope around a barrel making it that much easier to get water. Slowly, we even get smarter. We find a river or a spring of running water. With work we are able to make it flow into our garden so as to irrigate it with much less trouble. By now we are really blossoming. Our garden becomes a favorite spot for the Lord to visit.

Those first 3 stages of growth and development in the spiritual life seem mostly our work, our doing. However, if we keep on praying, keep on growing, surprise, surprise, the day comes when we look out the window and it’s raining - pouring lots of rain. God really takes over. The heavens have opened and an outpouring of God’s love and God’s peace falls on us. We are flooded by God. There is so much rain, so much water, so much love, that we don’t know what to do with it. We stand there in the rain - becoming totally soaked and drenched in God’s love. As in the movie, “April in Paris”, we find ourselves like Gene Kelly dancing and “Singing in the Rain.”

If you have ever seen a picture of Bernini’s statue of “St. Teresa in Ecstasy”, she seems to be floating in space.  Rain like light is pelting down against her whole body. It’s like standing in a shower with the water pouring down upon us.

HOMILETIC REFLECTIONS

Today’s second and third readings capture that feeling  St. Teresa of Avila experienced: what it feels like when God showers down peace, joy and serenity into our life. Both readings give us rich images and rich theology of what it feels like to be loved by God.

Today’s second reading from the 21^st Chapter of the Book of Revelation is filled with poetic images. It gives a revelation in images describing the future - that final day when there will be total Resurrection, total Easter, total Transcendence for the whole of creation. On that day all will experience an outpouring of God’s peace. Jerusalem will finally live up to its name: “City of Peace.” It will be coming out of the clouds like a bride coming down the aisle on her wedding day. It will be a brand new city with brand new gates. It will shine like a precious jewel, sparkle like a diamond. There will be no need for temples in the new city, because every person will be a temple of God. There will be no need for sun or moon, “for the glory of God will give it light, and its lamp will be the Lamb.”

In today’s gospel [John 14: 23-29], John gives us the rich image of “dwelling place”. We are being called to be the dwelling place, the home, the house of God. St. Teresa of Avila in the 16^th century will describe it poetically as The Interior Castle. Any person who loves Jesus and is true to his word, the Father will love that person. They will make their dwelling place with that person always and forever. They will be filled with the Spirit of God.

And as we heard from St. Teresa of Avila, then there will be a downpouring, a showering of God’s peace. It will not be the kind of peace that the world gives. It will be a peace that is marbled with joy and serenity. It will be a peace that calls us not to be distressed or fearful. It will be a peace that comes out of a knowledge, an understanding, a rejoicing that God is dwelling within us.

What John is telling us then, is that we will feel great peace, great joy, great serenity. What a great trinity of gifts: peace, joy and serenity - gifts that come out of the great Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Now all this is a great dream. It’s a great hope. It’s a great vision for all of us who want to live a spiritual life. It’s a vision that we need to keep in mind as we work in the garden every day - especially in the heat of the day or when we struggle in the dark of the night, when like the Lord, we feel all alone with nobody wanting to be with us - not even for an hour (Mark 14:37). 

When we come to today’s first reading [Acts 15: 1-2, 22-29], we experience reality therapy. We have a very different story. We have a reading that brings us down to earth and out of the clouds of poetic imagination and visions. It’s a reading that brings us down to the nitty gritty of the everyday.

The scene is Antioch, the capital of the Roman province of Syria. It was a place where Christians from Palestine, Cyprus and Cyrene started an early Christian community (Acts 11:19). It took in new converts from both Gentiles and Jews. It was here in Antioch that people first began to be called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Both Paul and Barnabas visited the community there. It was to be the departing point for Paul’s first and second missionary journeys.

It was also to be the place of a major fight: the dispute that we hear about in today’s first reading. Rigorists wanted Gentile Christians to practice Jewish traditions. They wanted male Gentile converts to be circumcised. They seemed to forget Jesus’ words, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). They seemed to forget all those fights Jesus had with the Pharisees. Actually all this was taking place before the written gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Jesus’ fights with the Pharisees that we hear so much about in the Gospels are aimed more towards Pharisees here in the new Judaeo-Christian communities than the actual Pharisees that Jesus was fighting with in his lifetime.

The result was the need for a meeting, so that people could air their differences and try to straighten things out in the Antioch community. They met. Perhaps there was a stalemate. Whatever. They decided to send Paul, Barnabas and others to Jerusalem to meet with Peter and other apostles and elders there to try to settle the question. The result was what was called the “First Council of Jerusalem.” 

They met and tried to resolve the problem. They then sent  representatives from the Jerusalem community as well as Barnabas and Paul back to Antioch. They also sent the letter we heard in today’s first reading. “The apostles and the elders, your brothers, send greetings to the brothers of Gentile origin in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. We have heard that some of our number without any instruction from us have upset you with their discussions and disturbed your peace of mind.” Next they said that they were sending a delegation to state the following by word of mouth, “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and ours too, not to lay on you any burden beyond which is strictly necessary, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, and from illicit sexual union.” 

The First Council of Jerusalem had come up with a compromise. It was a practical solution. It didn’t solve the problem then and there, but it did set the tone for a developing theology and practice of the early Church. To make Jewish-Christians happy, they took four things restricted for aliens residing in Israel that are listed in the book of Leviticus: don’t eat meat offered to idols; don’t take blood; don’t take meat of strangled animals because they are not ritually slaughtered (not Kosher); and don’t not have intercourse with close kin, because that would be an incestuous relationship. To make the Gentile-Christians happy, males don’t have to be circumcised and various other Jewish practices did not have to be followed.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

We have in today’s readings some very real and some very practical things to reflect upon. Two stand out.

First, be aware and beware of rigorists and reformers. They are the type of people who like to think that the more difficult you can make life, the better your are. The more rigorous you are, the holier you are. More is better. The more time you spend in Church or in prayer, the better you are. And often they spend their time watching who isn’t doing what they are doing. They like to make life tougher for others. They forget Jesus’ words about his yoke being easy and his burden being light. Read the Gospel of Matthew. His church seems to have had a heavy dose of Pharisaism. Matthew is fighting it from Chapter one to Chapter twenty-eight of his gospel. Or as St. Teresa of Avila put it, “From frowning saints, good Lord, deliver us.”

Secondly, in the midst of the nitty gritty and the practical things of life, we need to keep our mind and our imagination on a vision - a dream - that God - Father, Son and Spirit, wants to dwell within us. We need to remember that God wants us to grow and develop spiritually. God wants us to become a City of Peace. God wants us to become a garden of delights - a garden of paradise - that is well watered - where everyone can come in and enjoy each other, walking together during the cool of the evening - a place where sometimes the skies open in a flooding downpour of rain on all of us - and like St. Teresa of Avila, we’ll have a glimpse of what it’s like to loved by God.