From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 18)

Parish School of Prayer, Pt 18: Living the Paschal Mystery

Well, what I am supposed to say now? As Our Lord says in the Gospel today, “My children, I will be with you only a little while longer” (Jn 13:33). And yet (remarkably, perhaps) “I still have much to tell you” (Jn 16:12)! 

These are the times in which our faith either becomes very real or is proven a sham. Several times a day we pray to Our Father that “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done” and many a time we ask Our Lady to pray for us now “and at the hour of our death.” Unless it is just lip service, we are praying that God bring us to participate in the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ. Most importantly, in the mystery of His passion and death. That mystery was the “hour” in which Christ inaugurated the Kingdom that He came proclaiming. His “will” is that we enter that Kingdom, aided by His Mother’s prayers. We do so at the ‘hour’ of every act of surrender to God’s will by which we become “united with Him through a death like His” (Rom 6:5).  And God wills we pass through many such “hours” in our lifetime, so that each time we might more deeply participate in the Kingdom-making sacrifice of Christ that saves the world. 

Your pastor is still in the wading pool, of course. My initial vocation was very much experienced as a death: a dying to my plans, hopes, desires, with nothing tangible attracting me to what lay beyond the narrow door that had opened before me into the religious life.  But the paschal mystery was truly at work there, because on the far side of that spiritual death there was new and more abundant life, not only for me but for many. 

Here, the waters feel a little deeper. Over these past ten years, St. Mark’s has become my home, my work, my family, and in these past two years and in a sacramental way, my very spouse. And if the loves, hopes, and dreams I had to sacrifice as a young man of twenty five were rather amorphous and vague, those I must lay upon the altar today are far more real and vividly present: plans and projects, yes, but more importantly the faces and the names; all of you, who have become so dear to me and who have made me feel so beloved these past few years in particular! 

“Abraham, take your son, your only son, your beloved… and sacrifice him as a burnt offering…” (Gen 22:2). The Lord also said to Abraham, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go into the land I will show you’” (Gen 12:1). And yet, “it is to your advantage that I go away” (Jn 16:7) and “when I am lifted up from the earth…” (Jn. 12:31) etc., etc. All these words have new meaning to me now. I am being asked to live them. Some might say that it is a tad conceited to see these words as having anything to do with someone as mean and coarse as myself. But I think this is exactly what we Christians are called to do: see our lives in the light of the life (and death… and resurrection) of Christ, interpret the paths by which God leads us according to the trail blazed by Our Lord, the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2), and realize that Jesus wants to repeat those great mysteries in the littleness of our lives, and thereby follow in His footsteps to the point of being able to say that it is “not I, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). 

And so, I don’t think it extravagant to find in my present path the sacrifice of Isaac (my beloved child, this parish!), or that of the one year old, spotless lamb at Passover (my pastorate, not yet 2 years old!), or the Agony in the Garden (no sweat of tears, but lots of “not mine but thine!”), and even something of what Jesus says to Peter in Jn 21:18-19. For that very reason, I think we have every reason to trust that this will also lead to resurrection, more abundant life (for all involved), and the greatest glory of God.

From the Heart of the Shepherd: Fourth Sunday of Easter