(Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34)
A farmer’s wife once told me that the only legalized form of gambling in her state was farming. Jesus, on the other hand, presents farming as an act of faith. The seed is planted and is mysteriously transformed as determined by the creator to produce fruit and shade. It is God’s work. Such is the Kingdom of God.
None of this would have been lost on the communities around La Salette in 1846. Farming was their life, and now more of a gamble than ever, with the failure of both staples of their diet: wheat and potatoes.
Scripture says:
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. [Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:19-23, Jesus appears to the Apostles).
When God created the first human, “the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). Here Christ breathes on his disciples to give them a new life – his own life through the gift of his Spirit. What we are witnessing here is a new creation, the birth of life.
(Pentecost: Acts 2:1-11; Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:26-27, 16:12-15)
Our title today is taken from 1 Corinthians 9:22, where St. Paul writes, “I have become all things to all, to save at least some.” But, compared to the Holy Spirit, St. Paul’s claim is empty.
After the second reading there is a ‘sequence,’ the poem, Veni Sancte Spiritus. Here the Spirit is described as “source of all our store,” meaning that all spiritual gifts come from him. In one verse, he is “grateful coolness in the heat;” later, we pray that he will “melt the frozen, warm the chill.” In other words, the Spirit comes always with the gift that is needed.
(Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31)
(Third Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jonah 3:1-10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1-14-20)Over the centuries, well over a hundred dates have been predicted for the end of the world, by an interesting variety of persons: St. Martin of Tours, Pope Sylvester II, the artist Sandro Botticelli, Martin Luther, Christopher Columbus, and a host of other famous or unknown prognosticators. Not one of those prophecies has been fulfilled. The most recent date predicted was just four months ago!