May
13
2012
When I entered seminary, I was confident that I would become a hospital chaplain. In college, I had a very positive experience in a small hospital chaplaincy internship, and I thought this was the path for me. So my whole first year of seminary I eagerly looked forward to the summer for a full-fledged internship. I thought this would be a little step up from what I had done in college.
Instead it was a huge leap and huge disappointment. Not long into the program, I found I didn’t like it at all. I had an excellent teacher in a wonderful department and hospital. They weren’t the problem. I just didn’t fit. This wasn’t my path. It was the opposite of what I expected, a 180. My dream shattered. I was sad and confused. Why had I been so excited? Did I not hear correctly? Did I make a huge mistake? Should I return to seminary in the fall? If not, what in the world should I do next? Continue Reading »
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May
10
2012
Jn 15:9-11
“What is the essence of Christian belief?” That is a question we who are in the Church are sometimes asked. I think that today’s Gospel reading gives us as good an answer to that question as we might hope to find anywhere else.
At the Last Supper before his Passion and Crucifixion, Jesus said to his disciples “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (Jn 15:9-11) Continue Reading »
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May
08
2012
Hebrews 10:19-24; Psalm 27: 5-11; John 4: 23-26
“Do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love… So I was taught that love was his meaning.”
Words of Julian of Norwich, the 14th century English mystic whom we remember today. In her “Revelations of Divine Love”, the “Showings,” she recalls that “when she was young” she desired and prayed for “three graces by the gift of God”: 1) recollection of the Passion of Christ, 2) bodily sickness to the point of death, 3) the gift of three spiritual wounds. “When she was young” she wanted these things to happen at the age of thirty—and they did. Continue Reading »
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May
06
2012
I have the strange inkling that a few weeks ago I met the Risen Jesus. It happened again where it so reliably does that it shouldn’t be surprising and yet always seems to be. I was presiding at the Great Vigil of Easter in our cathedral in Chicago. It is a rather splendid liturgy and we often have folks from a number of parishes around the city and beyond who come. Many students from our campus chaplaincies are there too and so the whole thing is quite an event. This year I had the privilege of assisting with the baptisms of several adults and children. When the time came, in the semi-darkness I navigated my way through the crowd toward the font, trying to keep my sleeves away from errant candle flames. Thank God the deacons and vergers were well rehearsed because I couldn’t remember who was to come to the water first or which sponsors went with which baptismal candidate … Or who had the baptismal candles to present to them. Try as I might to stay centered, as usual in these big liturgies I was a little distracted. In any case, the candidates were washed in the font and I began to anoint them. I came to a young woman whose name is Scheherazade. I knew she had grown up in a Muslim household and that her journey to Christianity had been deliberate and difficult. As I began to anoint her she looked up at me with tears streaming down her face, really weeping — that doesn’t happen a lot at the Cathedral of St. James. I tried to smile reassuringly back at her and moved along to anoint the others. Later at the Peace I looked for Scheherazade in particular. I asked her if she was alright. She said to me, “I was crying because my family would not come tonight — they told me it’s like I have died. But I’m alive. I am crying because I have been born into a new family now. This is my family.” Continue Reading »
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May
06
2012
“Abide in me as I abide in you.” John 15:4
In these few words Jesus reveals the secret of the abundant life he is bringing into the world and which he offers to each of his disciples. This is the secret not only to our own happiness and fulfillment, but also to our fruitfulness, our ability to positively influence others by bringing them to share in the Divine Life. This is the abundant life he is offering us, a life lived in union with the Triune God, a life of untold blessings and riches, far beyond any abundance that the world can offer us.
When we pause to think of how desperately people in our world seek for happiness and of the ends to which they are willing to go to find personal fulfillment, we can wonder that such a simple path has been outlined for us. “Abide in me as I abide in you,” says Jesus. “Join your life to mine, and my life will be yours.” All that I am and have I give to Jesus, and all that he is and has he gives to me. And in this union there is joy and safety and happiness and riches beyond measure. “I came that [you] might have life,” he reminds us, “and have it abundantly!” (John 10:10) Continue Reading »
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May
03
2012
We Brothers often have occasions to listen to people speak about their life with God. It is not uncommon for those we see to begin by expressing regret or dissatisfaction about their inability to pray as frequently or as effectively as they feel they should. “My prayer life has really fallen away,” they say, or “I know I should be praying more but I just can’t find the time.” I am sure that they feel they are being summoned to prayer by God, but the God who is calling seems to be wagging a celestial finger and saying in a blaming tone, “You should be praying, more and better!” While I agree that God is summoning us to prayer, I believe that the finger is not wagging but beckoning. I now think of God as being like a friend I had in school who used to sit in the student lounge. Upon seeing any one of us pass by, he would pat the chair next to him and say, “Talk to me.” Prayer is likewise an invitation to conversation and communion, not a task or duty that we are obliged to carry out. As the author of First John puts it, “We love because he first loved us.” The invitation to pray is an invitation to love, generously given by the One who created us and loves us as no one else can. Prayer is not our gift to God, but God’s gift to us. Continue Reading »
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May
01
2012
John 14:6-14
In the calendar of the church we remember today Saint Philip and Saint James, both of them chosen by Jesus for his original circle of twelve Apostles. But here I must make a disclaimer: we know almost nothing about them. This Apostle James is not James, son of Zebedee, who, with his brother, John, had lobbied Jesus to sit at his right hand and left hand when Jesus came into power in Jerusalem.1 Nor is this James, brother of Jesus, traditionally known as the author of the Epistle of James and sometime Bishop of Jerusalem.2 This is James #3, son of Alphaeus, whom we know nothing about.3 This James is often called “James the Less,” which is not exactly flattering, but helps avoid some confusion with James #1 and James #2, about whom we know more. Continue Reading »
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Apr
29
2012
John 10:11-18
O my God, you are here… but always you are where we are, and always you love us, calling us each by name. Amen.
On this Good Shepherd Sunday Jesus tells us that he “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” Well, that’s a metaphor, no matter what sheep-like sounds we might make at odd moments or how much we might sometimes behave like sheep. It’s still a metaphor. We’re not sheep. I feel quite confident about that as an unequivocal statement. But though we are not sheep, we do respond to this picture of Jesus as our Good Shepherd. We respond because he says he has come so that we might “have life, and have it abundantly.” God really wants us to get the most out of life. If we love life, if we choose life, we respond with joy to the one whose deepest desire is to give us life in abundance. If we do not love life, if we choose death, then we respond more readily to the enemy of the Good Shepherd, the thief, who Jesus says, “Comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Continue Reading »
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Apr
27
2012
Jn 6:52-59
One of the things that I remember from studying the early centuries of the Church is the mistaken accusation in some parts of the world that Christianity taught cannibalism when the liturgy spoke of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
This was not the case in the controversy that the Jewish leaders were having with Jesus in the synagogue in Capernaum that we heard about in today’s Gospel.
Instead, Jesus was faced with simple incomprehension. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52) Continue Reading »
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Apr
25
2012
Mark 16:15-20
Mark’s Gospel is famously compact, moving breathlessly from one scene to another in rapid succession. Immediately he did this and straightway they did that.
Mark’s Gospel is also famous for having not one, not two, but three possible endings. Possibility #1 is the women fleeing trembling from an angel at the empty tomb because they were afraid. End of story. Possibility #2 is a later addition called the “Shorter Ending”: “And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.” End of story. (An odd detail: they “told briefly”.) Possibility #3 includes some very brief references to three resurrection appearances followed by what we heard a few moments ago about snakes and poison and such. End of story. Continue Reading »
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When I entered seminary, I was confident that I would become a hospital chaplain. In college, I had a very positive experience in a small hospital chaplaincy internship, and I thought this was the path for me. So my whole first year of seminary I eagerly looked forward to the summer for a full-fledged internship. I thought this would be a little step up from what I had done in college.
