 |
| "Jesus Goes up Alone Onto a Mountain to Pray," by J. Tissot. Brooklyn Museum / Public Domain. |
For the Fifth Sunday of
Easter
Christ’s earthly years:
ninety percent or more in silent
integrity & prayer, ten percent or less in public ministry; and even during
his years of public ministry, he was known to be a man who spent long hours in
prayer.
The risen
Christ, who sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, is waiting to
return for us, just as he tells us in his Gospel today.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
He wants
to take us home to the Father.
For the
time being we are away at work.
What is
our work, our mission?
Today
Christ tells us.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works
that I do....
We share
Christ’s work of giving glory to the Father and bringing the world to salvation
and fulfillment.
We are to
give glory to the Father by serving the authentic welfare of humanity.
However,
our worship and our private prayer are also a share in the work of Christ for
the glory of the Father.
Christ
himself regularly took time to be alone in prayer with his Father.
Christ
taught and wants us to pray.
He wants
us to be as close to the Father as he is.
How do we
do that?
We must
serve the best and highest interests of all whom God loves, both our friends
and our enemies.
In that
way, we are close to God by imitation.
Yet we
must also come close to him through worship and prayer.
Worship
and prayer that have a real place in our lives require the sacrifice of real
time spent on God alone.
Christ
wants us to be caught up with reverence for the Father’s name, respect for his
kingdom, and devotion to his will: hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
We ask
rightly in prayer for what we need, but we bear in mind that we need God the
most.
Because we
want to be close to him, and because he wants us close to him, we ask him to
forgive our sins— our trespasses— and we imitate him closely by forgiving those
who trespass against us.
We
ask to be kept faithful, to be led out of temptation, and we ask to be
delivered from evil.
We
pray because God is God, we have come from him, and are going to him.
In
today’s first reading from the Book of Acts, we saw the apostles themselves
insist on the primacy of prayer, while authorizing others for the bodily work
of justice and charity for the neglected poor.
The
apostles devoted themselves to the priority of prayer in their mission of
preaching the word of God.
As a
result, the Book of Acts testifies as we heard:
The word of God continued to spread,
and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly;
even a large group of priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
Worship
and prayer, by the measure of mere practicality, may not seem either to be work
at all or to be relevant or effective in doing good for others.
We tend to
measure the saving work of Christ by his open public ministry during the months
towards the end of his earthly life.
We tend
wrongly to exclude from his saving work those first thirty years or so— thirty
years of silent prayer, anonymous work and integrity.
Monks or
not, we all have the mission to worship and pray in silence and integrity.
Christ
himself did that for about ninety percent or more of his earthly years.
Only one
tenth or less of his earthly lifespan was public.
Yet even
during his final and public years, he was known to be a man who spent long
hours in prayer.
Today’s
second reading tells us we are a chosen race, a
royal priesthood.
A royal priesthood— we all are kings and
priests.
We all are
kings, because God sends us to lead the world in charity and justice.
We all are
priests, because God wants us to intercede, pray, and sacrifice for the good of
the world and in praise of God.
The words
of today’s second reading bear much repeating, since they tell our mission and
our happy destiny.
Beloved:
Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings
but chosen and precious in the sight of God,
and, like living stones,
let yourselves be built into a spiritual house
to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
You are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people of his own,
so that you may announce the praises” of him
who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Here in
the wonderful light of his Body and Blood,
Christ comes— the High Priest and King of the Universe.
In his
Body and Blood, Christ— in our name and in our human flesh and blood— offers
himself up as a thanksgiving sacrifice to the Father.
We are to
join him by offering ourselves up with him to the Father.
With his
Eucharistic Body and Blood, Christ feeds us with the life and goodness of God.
We in turn
are to be life and goodness for the world.
That is
the work that faith in Christ gives us, as he tells us in his Gospel today:
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes in me will do the works that I do....
Turn. Love. Repeat.
