{"id":1065,"date":"2018-05-02T16:26:03","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T16:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/?p=1065"},"modified":"2018-05-02T16:26:03","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T16:26:03","slug":"homily-easter-season-week-05-03-yr-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/2018\/05\/02\/homily-easter-season-week-05-03-yr-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"HOMILY EASTER SEASON WEEK 05 03 – Yr II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abiding in Jesus and Bearing Fruit<\/em><\/p>\n

(Acts 15:1-6; Ps 122; Jn 15:1-8)<\/em><\/p>\n

****************************************<\/em><\/p>\n

In the Domano Retreat center in the Diocese of Prince George, there is a vine covering most of a wall that both clings to and reaches out. That vine is a metaphor for today\u2019s readings and message they hold out to us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We are to both cling to and reach out; pray and love; abide in Jesus and bear much fruit.<\/p>\n

Abiding in Jesus involves prayer. The Church breathes with two lungs \u2013 devotional prayer, such as the rosary, and the public prayer of Jesus Christ, or the Eucharist.<\/p>\n

While discursive prayer (prayer that we recite) has its value, I suspect the kind of prayer Jesus has in mind when he speaks of \u201cabiding in him\u201d is the prayer of contemplation he himself practiced communing with the Father. According to Fr. Thomas Keating, contemplation is a very mature way of praying. It involves listening to God\u2019s word, meditating on it, praying with it and finally, just resting in God\u2019s presence, trusting that God is doing whatever God wants to do deep within us. Keating reminds us God\u2019s first language is silence.<\/p>\n

Elijah in his cave in 1 Kings 19:11-13 experienced God in the \u201csheer silence\u201d of this kind of prayer, and not in the hurricane, earthquake or fire. Mary of Bethany is another biblical model for the prayer of contemplation. She was sitting at the Lord\u2019s feet, the posture of a disciple, not so much listening to the words Jesus was saying, but more so aware she was in the presence of the Word \u2013 a big difference \u2013 just soaking up his love.<\/p>\n

It is rather ironic the Christian world has largely given lip-service to this kind of prayer when tourist pamphlets advertise doing yoga on a beach to lure people to an exotic destination. The late Bishop Sheen attributed his success in preaching completely to the time he spent in contemplation during his morning \u201choly hour.\u201d Fr. Armand Nigro SJ taught us the importance of a \u201choly hour\u201d during a thirty-day retreat in Spokane before I was ordained a priest. It is a practice that I have continued ever since, into which I have inserted the four stages of Lectio Divina: lectio (reading), meditation (meditation), oratio (praying with the passage) and finally contemplatio (contemplation \u2013 just being in the Lord\u2019s presence like Mary of Bethany).<\/p>\n

In this holy hour I try not to think or feel anything but rather just trust that God is doing whatever God wants to do within me as I waste time with God. It is a real test of faith and a great way of praying for a recovering workaholic, as I am not doing anything for a whole hour! I can honestly say that my homilies very often mysteriously seem to form themselves during that special time. I would encourage us to make some time each day for contemplative prayer. As Franciscan Bob Mitchel used to teach, most people live busy days into which they try to insert moments of prayer. It should be the other way around \u2013 we should live prayerful lives into which we insert activity.<\/p>\n

The second part of Jesus\u2019 teaching on the vine is to bear fruit. The words that best describe this action are agape love and selfless service. A very pertinent question that we can ask ourselves is, \u201cWhat would Jesus do?\u201d and then proceed to do it, regardless of the cost.<\/p>\n

Bearing fruit is to be like Jesus, totally wrapped up in caring for others and sharing our selves with others in trusting fellowship. Like Jesus, we are to use our skills and talents in an unselfish way. I don\u2019t usually use negative examples but the weekly meditation by Ron Rolheiser describes what can happen, to my mind, when we don\u2019t abide in Jesus:<\/p>\n

“We don\u2019t turn the other cheek. We don\u2019t really love our enemies. We don\u2019t wish good to those who wish us harm. We don\u2019t bless those who curse us. And we don\u2019t genuinely forgive those who murder our loved ones.<\/p>\n

We are decent, good-hearted persons, but persons whose heaven is still too-predicated on needing an emotional vindication in the face of anyone or anything that opposes us. We can be fair, we can be just, but we don\u2019t yet love the way Jesus asked us to, that is, so that our love goes out to both those who love us and to those who hate us. We still struggle, mightily, mostly unsuccessfully, to wish our enemies well.<\/p>\n

But for most of us who like to believe ourselves mature, that battle remains hidden, mostly from ourselves. We tend to feel that we are loving and forgiving because, essentially, we are well-intentioned, sincere, and able to believe and say all the right things; but there\u2019s another part of us that isn\u2019t nearly so noble.<\/p>\n

The Irish Jesuit, Michael Paul Gallagher, put this well when he wrote (In Extra Time): \u201cYou probably don\u2019t hate anyone, but you can be paralyzed by daily negatives. Mini-prejudices and knee-jerk judgements can produce a mood of undeclared war. Across barbed wire fences, invisible bullets fly.\u201d\u00a0 Loving the other as oneself, he submits, is for most of us an impossible uphill climb.<\/p>\n

So where does that leave us? Serving out a life-sentence of mediocrity and hypocrisy? Professing to loving our enemies but not doing it? How can we profess to be Christians when, if we are honest, we have admitted that we are not measuring up to the litmus-test of Christian discipleship, namely, loving and forgiving our enemies?<\/p>\n

Perhaps we are not as bad as we think we are. If we are still struggling, we are still healthy.\u00a0 In making us, it seems God factored in human complexity, human weakness, and how growing into deeper love is a life-long journey.<\/p>\n

What can look like hypocrisy from the outside can in fact be a pilgrimage, a Camino walk, when seen within a fuller light of patience and understanding.”<\/p>\n

The Eucharist itself is an experience of abiding in Jesus through Word and Sacrament, that also mandates us to go out and bear fruit by sharing the love of God with all others. May our celebration deepen our intimate relationship with Jesus and empower us to live it out through selfless service.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abiding in Jesus and Bearing Fruit (Acts 15:1-6; Ps 122; Jn 15:1-8) **************************************** In the Domano Retreat center in the Diocese of Prince George, there is a vine covering most of a wall that both clings to and reaches out. That vine is a metaphor for today\u2019s readings and message they hold out to us. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1067,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}