Volume II - 5/4/08 (A)

The Gospel reading from Matthew this week contains the commissioning of the apostles, their new job description of sorts. Finally, they hear the call, straight and to the point. Not only are they to baptize all nations in the Name of the Triune God, but they are to teach them to "observe all " that Jesus commanded them. That very tall order was boosted and made possible by Jesus's promise "I am with you always, until the end of the age." We have that same commissioning, given at Baptism and re-confirmed at Confirmation, and perhaps strengthened through vows or promises within a religious Order or the covenant of marriage and parenthood. We also have the same promise of Jesus !

We know that when Jesus ascended to the Father that the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, making fulfilling their job descriptions a ton easier. We will hear accounts of the wonders that they preformed after the Descent in the weeks to come. The stories we hear of modern-day disciples are usually not as vivid . Most modern day disciples are everyday folks who preach with their lives rather than in front of assembies of people. Given the not-so- positive state of many things in the prosperous country of the USA, I can imagine that such holy preaching is even more difficult in other countries and places. How then do we go about our everyday lives, experiencing fully what is around us and within our many communities of family, parish, and country, and STILL hold fast to Jesus's promise... and even attempt to fulfill the enormous task that we have been given?

For me, the key is embedded in the prayer we read/hear in the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians. The writer prays that the people will have knowledge of God through the gifts of wisdom and revelation. He prays that "the eyes of your heart be enlightened" so they will know three important, no three crucial, things: (1) hope that belongs to the call, (2) the riches of glory that accompany our inheritance, and (3) the greatness of God's power.

God knows that hearing the call might get drowned out by the noises of everyday life. He knows that living the call is often surrounded by many other things on a too long to-do list. He knows that remembering what the call was in the first place can become one more thing that gets forgotten when one's life reverts to overload and automatic pilot, just so you can get through the day. We have all been in those situations, briefly or for a longer time; that is part of the Christian life. So is the promise of Jesus.

He IS still with us. He is with us in the kindness of a smile, the needed hug, the telephone call, the quiet presence of a friend, the lit candle, and the surprises that can only come from God. It is the power of God that transcends all the gloom of "bad things happening to good people" and the many difficulties that the people in our world endure.

The call is about the power of God, not about us. Through our faith and through the reminders that other people of faith contribute to our lives, we can live eternally on the everlasting fuel of God's power. We can see the glimmers of hope that God gives when we attempt to follow the call He has given, even through the clouds that may dim our sight temporarily. We can look forward to sharing in His riches by recalling that He has promised them to those who are faithful to Him.

In a world where we see so many promises shattered, we are blessed to be the brothers and sisters of the One who said "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me." He remains with us "always"... and always is not only a very long time but also is through all ways that we experience life. He Who is all-powerful has said that He is with us... and He is. Praise be to God!

MUSINGS AND OTHER ARTICLES AVAILABLE ON WEB SITE LINK LISTED AT BOTTOM Musings from Michael©

"Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you."

When I was growing up in my country, there was a very great leader of the Catholic church. His name was Cardinal Heenan. In every way, he was a big man 72 when I knew him. 6 foot 4, tall, broad and strong.

But the biggest thing about him was an enormous booming voice which filled every room he ever entered. And with this enormous voice, he pronounced absolute certainty on any issue you cared to mention. He knew exactly the right way forward for the Church, for the people and for anyone else he happened to be talking to at the time. To put it mildly, he was not often given to self-doubt. So, I was rather surprised when a long time after hhis death I came across a book he wrote in which he said that therre was once a time when he was not happy as a priest. He had come from a very wealthy background and he was sent to serve in a very poor parish. There he struggled as he discovered that he was in fact a little too used to the comfortable things in life and a little too used to the company of his own class. To put it more simply, he saw in himself a soft-living snob and he didn't like himself very much.

But one day he was sent to see a little old lady who had severe rheumatoid arthritis and was dying of cancer. She lived with her daughter in circumstances of great poverty. When he arrived, he found the place so smelly and dirty that he could not even bring himself to sit down. And there he met a truly holy woman. She was 92, had been bedridden for four years and she died that very night. He does not remember a word of what passed between them. All he remembers is that every motion, every gesture, every word that she uttered was filled with grace and serenity. He realized that he was in the presence of a Saint someone who was close to God in every way.

He has remembered that brief encounter throughout his life because it is a memory of how God can use us, wherever we are in life, to bring His love and healing into the lives of one another.

There is never a moment in the life of any true Catholic Christian when she or he is not obeying this final command of the Lord to be a missionary of the Faith. That does not mean shouting what we believe at other people. Nor does it mean knocking on their doors uninvited and trying to force our beliefs on them. It is those things that get Christian missionaries a bad name. What it means is showing in our lives what Christ has done for us. And offering to everyone who comes to us the peace and love of Christ, not just in our words, but in every gesture and every action. And let us hear for ourselves Jesus' last words on earth:

"Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you."

Jesus has gone and left us alone. That is the message of the readings the Church gives us today. On Thursday we celebrated the feast of his Ascension. Today, we hear in the Acts of the Apostles how his followers leave the mount of Olives and go back into Jerusalem to hide themselves away in an upper room, huddled together for support and praying constantly, more in fear than in hope. They don't know what is going to happen next. All they know is that Jesus has gone and - apparently - left them abandoned and alone. We know that Pentecost is coming when the Holy Spirit will come upon them and fill them with the grace to go out and preach the Good News to all the world. But they don't seem to know that. For them, Jesus - the light - has gone out of their lives. They feel entirely alone and helpless - threatened by an uncomprehending, uncaring and hostile world. Have you ever felt like that? I know I have.

As some of you may know, I only get to work as a priest at weekends; I still haven't given up my day job as a doctor. And one of the occupational hazards of being a doctor is that from time to time, you are called upon in an emergency. The worst time this ever happened to me was about fifteen years ago. I was standing on a platform in the Heathrow underground station waiting for a train. I had just come back from America and I was horribly jet-lagged; I'd been up all night; it was 7am in London; my body thought it was two in the morning and, more than anything else in the world, I just wanted desperately to go home, go to bed and go to sleep. Just then, as I was waiting, a young, rather well-dressed man in front of me suddenly collapsed to the ground. So I went to look at him. He was unconscious; blue, no pulse, not breathing. It was obvious that he had a heart attack and heart had stopped. So I began to try to resuscitate him. Now, resuscitating someone is an awful lot easier if there are two of you doing it. So I looked around to see if anybody was going to give me a hand. I reckon there must have been two-to-three hundred people on that platform. And every one of them had taken a sudden interest in the advertisements displayed on the other side of the platform. Nobody wanted to know. So I carried on doing my best on my own. It is the most lonely I have ever felt.

Now, the golden rule of this sort of resuscitation is that no matter what - come hell or high water - you just have to keep on trying for at least twenty minutes before you give up. Within that twenty minutes the person has a chance. So you can't give up on his chance. And in that twenty minutes, several trains came and went. And, because it was the rush hour, the trains were packed. So, hundreds of people were walking up and down the platform. Not one of them stopped. Nobody that I saw even looked to see what was going on. Quite a lot of people literally stepped over him. One woman - I remember - even stepped on him.

After twenty minutes, he had no pulse; he was still not breathing; he was dead. There was nothing more I could do except wait for the Police and the ambulance to come and take him away.

And when the Police did come, they gave me a really hard time. They asked me a lot of very detailed questions about what exactly had happened; where I had come from; what I had seen; what I had done; was there any possibility of foul play. And I explained as best I could. And after that I went home and went to bed.

I got up just in time for the early evening news. And I found out who he was. I won't tell you his name, but he was a well-known politician, a member of parliament and a member of the shadow cabinet. If he was still alive, he would almost certainly now be a cabinet minister. He was a rich and powerful man and he died lying down on the road with people walking over him.

Ever since then, I have often wondered what exactly must have gone through the minds of all those people who just walked past or walked over him. They can't all have been bad people. I do not believe that anyone would consciously and deliberately refuse to help a dying man. The only explanation that I've ever been able to think of is that they just didn't see him. When they noticed him, as they all must have done - he was right out in the middle of the platform; they couldn't miss him. But when they noticed him, they didn't see him; they only saw a problem, somebody else's problem and a problem they didn't want to get involved in.

For years after that, I was angry. I really didn't want to be part of a society that treats people like that.

And I think that is John the Baptist's message to us. There are many ways in which our world is not worthy of the Presence of Christ. There are many ways that the world we have made falls short of God's intention for our lives. And often we only see them by accident, when we are jolted out of the comfort zone what Douglas Adams in 'The Hittch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' calls the 'Somebody Else's Problem' zone.

The reason that we are here tonight is that we think there's something wrong with that. We think human beings can be better than that. We ourselves want somehow to be better than that. We believe that, with the Spirit of Christ among us, we can be better than that.

We want to make our own the prayer of St Teresa which she is supposed to have written on the Feast of the Ascension:

Christ has no body now but ours.

No hands, no feet on earth but ours.

Ours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on the world.

Ours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

Christ has no body now on earth but ours.

As Jesus says to us,

"I am not in the world any longer,

but they are in the world,

and I am coming to you."

Let us stand and profess our Faith in God, and in His presence in the world and in ourselves.

Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and insights on the next Sundays readings can influence the preaching you hear. Send them to jboll@preacherexchange.org. Deadline is Wednesday Noon. Include your Name, and Email Address.

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