Beating Hearts and Ringing Bells

(Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity-Year B; This homily was given on May 30, 2021 at the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Matthew 28:16-20)

This morning we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, “the central mystery of Christian faith and life” (CCC, #234).  What is it that we process and believe about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?  We believe that the Son of God draws His life from the Father from all eternity; the Son is ever receiving that life and love from God and returns it eternally.  From the love of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is forever emanating.  Before time began, or the earth or the world brought forth, God is this eternal exchange of love.  

We could never come to know this great truth by reason alone.  There is no way that we could discern the triune God and appreciate Him in our lives unless He were to reveal Himself to us.  That is precisely what He has done in the Incarnation.  When the Son of God became a man and took on our human nature, we could see this great love of God poured out for the Son.  In fact, many did see Him.  St. John the Evangelist writes beautifully in the New Testament:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.

—1 John 1:1-2

When Christ was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary and took on our human nature we saw this Son of God who received life from the Father.  The love of the Father beat within His heart as He walked our streets and preached the Good News to the poor.  He healed the sick and raised the dead, and in His great love for us He went to the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.  In that breathtaking moment on Calvary,  the heart of Christ ceased to beat as He died for our sins.  This act love was witnessed by those knew Him and by those who knew Him not. 

Three days later, Christ rose from the dead and appeared to His disciples before ascending to the Father.  Just last week we celebrated how Christ and the Father sent forth the Holy Spirit into the life of the Church at Pentecost.  This morning, we listen once again to that breathtaking moment when Christ sends out the Apostles to bring that teaching to the ends of the earth.  He says to them:

Go, therefore, and makes disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

—Matthew 28:19

This is our core identity as Christians and the very heart of the Christian life.  We have received life from the Father, and we live as sons and daughters of God.  We have this eternal life through the Son, and it is lived in Holy Spirit who dwells in us.  There is nothing ordinary about that amazing gift!

Yet today there is a crisis in the heart of the Christian life in many places in the world.  In Germany and in Belgium, and other parts of the world, there are entire groups of bishops that are confusing the Church’s teaching on family life or even teaching contrary to it.  This is a tragedy because the Church’s teaching on the family is not an obscure teaching!  We believe that the love of a man and a woman, physically and spiritually celebrated in the act of love that begets another human being is the very image on earth for the Holy Trinity!  To teach something contrary to this amazing reality is a scandal and signifies a crisis in the Church at a fundamental level.  

There is a crisis in the Church when so many of the faithful have come through the precarious global pandemic and are witnessing their churches opening up once again but are choosing not to come back to the Sacraments of the Church to give thanks.  There is a crisis in the Church when Europe and so many other places in the world are becoming increasingly secular and there are so many people that do not know how much God loves them or that they can be forgiven for their sins.  How is that possible when God died on the cross for the love of these souls?

It is not the worse crisis that the Church has faced, thanks be to God.  There have been worse moments in the Church, sadly.  In the 16th Century, right here in the City of Rome, it was worse.  Historically, there was a great malaise among the faithful.  Priests did not celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and many were ignorant of the great love God had for them.  

In the heart of that crisis, God called St. Philip Neri to re-evangelize the city.  He knew that God was calling him to this remarkable task and he was awed by it.  In 1544, one the eve of Pentecost, he entered into the catacombs of San Sebastiano and prayed for an increase of the Holy Spirit.  Nothing happened.  He continued in prayer and after several hours the Holy Spirit appeared before him as a globe of fire.  You can imagine that warm, bright glow in the darkness of that place.  Suddenly the globe of fire entered in to the mouth of St. Philip and as it surged through his body his heart began to beat with great velocity.  He would later recall that he feared death in that moment, not because of pain but because the love was so great that he could scarcely bear it.  After his death, his body was exhumed and examined, revealing that Philip’s heart had become physically enlarged in that experience.  In that supernatural moment he had broken two of his ribs, which were then closed back over in a wider arc to enclose his enlarged heart.  

As we reflect on this great “Apostle of Rome” this morning, we pray not that God would break our ribs but that He would break open our hearts and allow us to live the Christian life more fully and more completely in these days of crisis.  We need God, and He is calling us to a deeper relationship through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.  

I conclude this morning with a story about a Marian shrine about an hour away from the City of Rome called Mentorella.  St. John Paul II went there on is first visit outside the city when he was elected Pope and would frequently visit Mentorella during his papacy.  Outside the Church, at the top of a steep staircase, there is a bell tower with a long rope hanging loosely from the bells above.  There is a cautionary sign—or an invitation . . . depending upon how you interpret it—engraved on the outside of that bell tower that reads:

“Non far da campanaro 

se il cuor tuo non batte da Cristiano”

(“Don’t be a bell ringer if your heart doesn't beat as a Christian”)

We need men and women whose hearts beat as Christians in the world today.  We all need to allow the love of the Father to burn deeply in our hearts, to have that eternal flame burning in our hearts through the Son, and to let the Holy Spirit set us on fire for the Christian faith today.  The world around us desperately needs us to live our Catholic faith in a way worthy of all that we have received.  Friends in Christ, for the sake of the world around us, for the sake of the Christian life, and for the love of God:

Ring the bell.

Theophilus, and the Rest of the Story

(Solemnity of the Ascension-Year B; This homily was given on May 16, 2021 at the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11, Ephesians 4:1-13 and Mark 16:15-20)

One of the first things we learn in our education in the Christian faith—whether as children or as adult converts—is the list of the “four evangelists.”  All of us here this morning know who the four great Gospel authors are: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  This morning, for the Solemnity of the Ascension, we hear from two of them.    

St. Mark concludes his Gospel account this morning with the event of the Ascension of our Lord into heaven.  Jesus is taken up before them, just as He sends them out to proclaim the Gospel message to the ends of the earth.  

For St. Luke this morning, it is different.  He does not end with the Ascension, but begins the Acts of the Apostles with that same remarkable event.  He writes about how the Ascension concluded his first volume:

“In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught until the day he was taken up”

—Acts 1:1.2

Who is Theophilus?  We do not know exactly who this person is, but the word literally means “lover of God.”  St. Luke, therefore, can be writing to you or to me, and certainly he is.  We are Theophilus.  That “first book” he is referring to is the Gospel of St. Luke.  With his account now of the Ascension, where Jesus was “taken up,” there is not so much a conclusion as a transition.  St. Luke has every intention of continuing his story, but the Ascension marks a break in the account, and a new beginning.

What we celebrate this morning is the culmination of the great Pascal Mystery of Jesus Christ.  The Son of God, who reigns eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit descended into the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  He descended into our human nature to save us from sin and eternal separation from God.  Jesus Christ was born into poverty in Bethlehem and he walked the streets of Nazareth, Galilee and Jerusalem proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel to the poor and the broken.  He healed the sick and raised the dead.  In His human nature He could suffer, and He did suffer for you and for me.  He was crucified and died and he descended into the grave.  Three days later He was raised from the dead, and today we celebrate His ascension into heaven where He is seated at the right hand of the Father in glory.

That was volume one of St. Luke’s great story, his Gospel.  

Now we begin with volume two.  Are we ready?

The great French spiritual author Jean-Pierre deCaussade, in his 18th century classic, Abandonment to Divine Providence, reflects about how God reveals Himself in two complimentary ways.  Firstly and obviously, He reveals Himself in Sacred Scripture, in the Word of God and especially in the Gospels.  We find there, in these sacred pages, the great teachings of our faith and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit leading us to eternal life.  Nonetheless, writes deCaussade, those are simply a few drops in the ocean of time.  

St. John the Evangelist, at the culmination of his Gospel, says something similar.  He writes:

There are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

—John 21:25

What God has made known to us in Sacred Scripture is preeminent, sufficient, inspired and amazing.  Nonetheless, it is a drop in the ocean of time when we consider all the people God has touched and all of those to whom God has revealed Himself.  DeCaussade writes, “The written word of God is full of mysteries, and equally so is His word expressed in world events.”  The first book has already been written; we are still experiencing the second.

In our second reading for the Solemnity, St. Paul writes about the Ascension of our Lord and the effect that has on the history of the Church.  He says:

But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.  Therefore, it says: He ascended on high and took prisoners captive; he gave gifts to men.

—Ephesians 4:8

This is our story, most excellent Theophilus!  Jesus Christ has ascended and sits at the right hand of the Father in glory and majesty; He has captured the hearts of all and wants deeply to pour out His gifts on the Church that He died for.  All of us have received the gift of the Holy Spirit at our baptism.  God wants to give us a new outpouring of the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord.  We have all been given some specific mission in our own vocation, something that God has entrusted us with and that has not been given to anyone else.  On this Solemnity of the Ascension, do we truly believe that God is writing the Gospel in our own hearts, in our own time and place today?  Jean-Pierre deCassaude writes:

“We, if we are holy, are the paper; our sufferings and our actions are the ink.  The workings of the Holy Spirit are his pen, and with it he writes a living gospel; but it will never be read until the last day of glory when it leaves the printing press of this life.”

We need faith to live that Gospel, no different from the faith necessary to comprehend and surrender our lives to God in the teachings of Holy Scripture.  Today we ask for faith to know that God is continuing to tell the greatest story in and through us, and for the grace to cooperate fully in that living gospel.  

The Vine, Branches and Fruit

(Fifth Sunday of Easter-Year B; This homily was given on May 2, 2021 at the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See John 15:1-8)

Jesus uses a powerful image in the Gospel this morning, that of the vine, its branches and fruitfulness.  In order to truly appreciate the import of that image, it is essential to look back at the Old Testament.  There, the image of the vine is used over and over again to describe Israel and the fruitfulness that God desires.  

If we go all the way back to the Book of Psalms, Psalm 80 describes the vocation of the vine from the beginning:

Thou didst bring a vine out of Egypt; thou didst drive out the nations and plant it.  Thou didst clear the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.

—Psalm 80:8-9  

Clearly this psalm is making reference to God’s deliverance and how He set them free from slavery and death in the land of Egypt, bringing them into the Promised Land.  God had driven out the nations before them, giving them victory after victory, until they were settled in the land and began to thrive.

The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.  It sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to river . . . 

—Psalm 80:8-11

This is one powerful, gifted and enormous vine!  But the psalmist then breaks that description by asking a very direct question:

Why then hast thou broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?  The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.

—Psalm 80:12-13

The context and reference for that startling question is the Assyrian invasion, where the Northern kingdom of Israel was besieged and ravaged.  Why had God allowed that to happen?   Almost in answer to that question, we hear a reply in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.  Although this time it is not Assyria but Babylonia, nonetheless the background is the vine and the reason for the invasion and captivity is the infidelity of the people to the covenant of God.  Isaiah begins:

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.  He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes but what it yielded was wild grapes.

—Isaiah 5:1-2

So much care and attention the beloved had given to secure that vine, but in the end it did not bear the fruit that he wanted.  Isaiah then becomes very specific about the identity of the vine and what it produced:

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry!

—Isaiah 5:7

This is not the fruit that God desired!  And so the song continues, in the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  Time and again the same story is told about the fidelity of God and the inconsistency of Israel to produce good fruit.  In the New Testament Jesus will use that same image of the vineyard in the “Parable of the Wicked Tenants” in Chapter 21 of St. Matthew’s Gospel.  The owner of the vineyard carefully prepares the land for growth and then places it in the charge of tenants until his return.  At the season for harvesting the fruit, he sends out servants to see how things have gone but they seize and mistreat them, even killing some.  The owner then sends his son, thinking they will surely respect him, but the end is tragically the same.  It is the same story that has been told multiple times before, only now with a hauntingly prophetic reference to the death of the Messiah.  

It would seem clear enough that this story is now over!  The vine has simply not produced its proper fruit, and so that image has been spent.  We would consider there to be no longer any hope for God’s vine to bear fruit.   

And so it is astonishing that Jesus Christ announces to the disciples in this morning’s Gospel:  I AM the vine!  

It is not that there is no longer any place for Israel.  Far from it!  Jesus speaks to the gathered Apostles who represent the twelve tribes of Israel and says to them: “I am the vine, you are the branches.  Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).  

What makes this passage so breathtaking is the timing of the message.  Jesus is speaking to the apostles in the upper room on the night before He dies.  It is in the context of that Last Supper, when He is initiating the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, that He is speaking to them about fruitfulness and the vine.  As they await the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, He is preparing them for the moment when the Spirit of God will fill them with power and send them out as branches extending across the face of the earth.  We, of course, listen to this Gospel in the heart of the Easter Season as we await that same coming of the Holy Spirit.  The fruitfulness of this vine is far from over!

I would suggest three important points for our reflection on the Gospel this weekend regarding the vine and God’s desire for us to bear fruit.  The first is that we take seriously and literally the words of Jesus Christ this morning.  Jesus is not using hyperbole or exaggeration to make His point.  It is not the case that the words of Christ here are like the time he speaks about cutting off one’s right hand if it leads us to sin, or plucking out our eye if it is causing us to sin (see Matthew 5:29-30).  Jesus says: “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).  Here we take Jesus at His word and believe it.  

When I was a young man I used to volunteer at a homeless shelter because it seemed clear to me from the Gospel that this would be a good way to serve the Lord.  I was surprised to find out from many people in that place that not every volunteer or worker in the shelter was appreciated or welcomed by those who needed help.  Some of the guests told me that they felt poorly treated and regretted the visits of some people who volunteered in that place.  Over time I came to understand that not everyone was there to serve the Lord or even the poor.  Many were simply serving their own interests, and it showed!  

Not every international agency serving the poor is bearing fruit for God.  Not every group within the Church that claims to be helping others is always doing the work of the Lord.  No, if we want to bear the fruit that God desires, then we have to remain and abide in Him.  “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

The second point for reflection for us can be taken from the obvious emphasis that Jesus gives to the word “remain.”  When someone we love repeats themselves on some important point, we pay attention.  When the Son of God says the same word eight times in four verses, we should be taking notes!  This mantra is so common in the Gospels, this invitation to intimacy with the Lord.  He invites us to stay with Him, remain with Him, abide in Him, rest in Him.  There is no other way to fruitfulness than to remain deeply with Christ and allow Him to form and fashion us.  

I never tire telling the story of St. Teresa of Calcutta, who would ask her sisters to spend one hour minimum before the Blessed Sacrament each day before they went out to serve the poor.  One day a benefactor asked her why she insisted on this practice.  Her answer: “Unless my sisters can come to recognize Jesus here in the intimacy of this chapel, they will never be able to recognize Him in the poorest of the poor.”  The saints know.  We hope to.

Which brings us to our final point: bear fruit!  Jesus tells us in the Gospel this morning, “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John 15:8).  We are approaching the beautiful Feast of Pentecost and the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit.  It is St. Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, who gives us his list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  St. Paul says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control; against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).  These are the fruits that God desires!  There is no law against these, St. Paul makes clear.  We may do them whenever we want!  These are the fruits that mark us as disciples of Jesus Christ.  They are the foundation for every good work and word, because they are the hallmark of the Christian life.  Jesus invites us this weekend to fully participate in these fruits and to allow them to become the impetus through which we accomplish everything that He has given us to do.  

This week we seek to listen to the words of Jesus and remain in Him; we make every effort to abide in Him, rest in Him, come to know Him more intimately in the Christian life and in the teachings of our faith.   When we do, we allow the Holy Spirit to live deeply within us, and to bear great fruit.