Have you ever experienced the supernatural? Something you cannot deny, and cannot explain? Something that challenges what you know about the world?
That is very much what happened on Pentecost.
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Good Shepherd, Good Sheep
Do we believe Jesus is the good shepherd?
Do we somehow think that Jesus is going to, as the saying goes, “fleece us?” Sometimes we act like Jesus is our enemy. We act like he is trying to trick us or take something from us. He isn’t.
Sometimes, we are like Bilbo Baggins, at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings. He has this burden he carries, this… addiction… that he cannot release. Gandalf, an “angel” of that world, who appears as a wizard, offers to help, and Bilbo responds as if Gandalf were trying to rob him. “You want it for yourself…”
“Bilbo Baggins!” Gandalf replies, “do not take me for some conjurer of cheap tricks. I am not trying to rob you. I’m trying to help you. All your long years we’ve been friends. Trust me as you once did….”
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Do you know God?
(5th Sunday of Lent, Year B) On these five Sundays of Lent, we’ve been reminded of God’s covenants with us. These are the ways that God was made known to us, and was united with humanity. The first Sunday, God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants. The second Sunday, God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants, which would bless all the nations of the earth. The third Sunday, the covenant with Moses laws for the nation of Israel. The fourth Sunday, God’s covenant with David, who in many ways lived in the power of the Spirit of the Lord, as if our new covenant was already in place.
Today, God promises through Jeremiah a new covenant. A covenant in which God will write the law on hearts. A covenant where nobody has to know God for us (remember how in the desert, the Children of Israel asked for a human mediator who could talk to God for them? Not any more.), but each can know God for themselves. A covenant with all Israel and Judah, the whole people. A covenant from the least to the greatest. A covenant in which not only is our evildoing forgiven, but even forgotten by God entirely.
In each of these covenants, we learn a bit more about God, and we also become more familiar with God. This is God’s desire. Not just that we would know “about” God, but that we would “know” God. In Spanish, this is the difference between saber, to know facts and learned skills and information about a person, place, or thing, and conocer, to be familiar with a person, place, or thing. English is lacking in this area. Even in previous times, in English, we would say that Abraham knew his wife Sarai, and she bore a son. We know (saber) from the context, that Abram did not know (saber) his wife, but was intimately familiar (conocer) with her.
The point being… God desires that we desire and acquire an intimate knowledge of God. When God says “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” it is a direct reference to the marriage covenant: I will be your husband, and you shall be my wife. That is because it is not in knowing (about), but in “knowing” (as persons) that we are fruitful.
So. Do you know God?
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It is God who calls
(2nd Week of Lent, Year B) God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham! Take Isaac, your only beloved son and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a burnt offering on a height that I will point out to you.
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Leadership: Self-Giving Service
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 151
Jesus is giving a lesson about leadership and authority. He is telling us to claim no source of authority except God. Authority in the Church does not come from goodness, power, intellect, appointment by others, succession, longevity, or family. It may come through these things, but never from them. Authority is a gift from God, and is to be used in service.
God does not take lightly the abuse of power by those who are anointed to be servants of the people of God. Through Malachi, God promises to make their blessings into curses. He makes the priests contemptible and base before all the people. We even see this today, where the abuse of power by some clergy has brought contempt upon the whole Church. Jesus says it would be better to have a millstone put around your neck and be cast into the sea than to sin against one of his little ones.
That abuse of power is the problem in the first reading. When the Persian empire allowed the people of God to return to their homes, they were not allowed to appoint a descendant of David as their ruler, so priests assumed a leadership role. Godly leadership is self-giving in the service of others. Like the Pharisees in the Gospel, they were self-serving and self-promoting.
Christ is always self-giving and serving others. He says he did not come to be served, but to serve. He washes the feet of his Apostles. From his first miracle at the wedding in Cana until he ascends to heaven and sends his Holy Spirit, he is giving to us. He gives us his very flesh and blood as true food and true drink. His Eucharist is the new mana, a gift from God that we must bow down to receive, but that gives us life.
And his mother is the same. When the angel tells her she will give birth to the Messiah, she does not take this as something earned, or to be used for her own benefit. Her first action as mother of or Lord is to go into the hill country of Judea to serve her kinswoman Elizabeth. At Cana, she brings others joy by pointing them to Jesus, the source of all joy. At her apparitions, she assures us of her motherly love and constant intercession before the face of God. Saint Paul emulates her, sharing his very self with the Thessalonians, like a nursing mother gives of herself to her children.
And speaking of mothers, Jesus says that there is none born of women greater than John the Baptist, and what do we see from him? Not self-promotion. He is not on LinkedIn humble-bragging about how he’s the one foretold to make ready the way of the Lord. No, he says, “I must decrease, and he must increase.” He points everyone to Jesus.
Self-promotion is the work of the Devil. It’s real Satanism. Rarely is it explicit worship of a fallen angel or literal human sacrifice. It is always manifested in hatred of the person and work of Christ, in self-worship, and in using others to benefit oneself.
True leadership, Godly leadership, is self-giving in the service of others.
Christ is our master. Christ is the one who judges us. It doesn’t do any good to pursue the favor of others if we lose the favor of Christ. Our master says “the greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
These instructions have special significance for those called to positions of leadership in the church, society, and the family, but they apply to everyone.
We can all be a leader, even with no one following. God desires to exalt each of us to the pinnacle of holy sainthood, and the path to glory is to serve like the Blessed Virgin and John, by pointing others to Christ. It is to be willing, and even to seek to be humble – because humility is truth, and the truth is a person, who is Christ. To the degree we seek to become humble, we seek to become Christ, who is always self-giving in the service of others.