The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to contemplate the gift of being able to make daily choices about how we are to act in the Name of Jesus.
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| Acting in His Name |
The reading from the Book of Acts describes accusations against Paul before Gallio.
* [18:12] When Gallio was proconsul of Achaia: Gallio’s proconsulship in Achaia is dated to A.D. 51–52 from an inscription discovered at Delphi. This has become an important date in establishing a chronology of the life and missionary work of Paul.1
Psalm 47 connects to the Ascension of Christ.
* [47:6] God has gone up: Christian liturgical tradition has applied the verse to the Ascension of Christ.2
In the Gospel of John, Jesus urges us to ask anything of the Father in His Name.
ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you3
Scott McClure comments that to commit ourselves to Jesus and to trust in him is the way to joy. He offers the same hope in a vision to Paul in advance of Paul being accused and brought before a tribunal. Paul is unwavering in his hope in the Lord, even remaining for quite some time after this incident before departing for Syria.
We are made for joy. Soon, we will celebrate Pentecost, Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit. Let us welcome this gift and embrace with hope the joy that Jesus promises.4
Don Schwager quotes “Alleluia will be our whole joy,” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"I trust I will not weary you if I mention what you know already: that we say ALLELUIA daily and that we take delight in it daily. For you know that ALLELUIA means "Praise God" and by this expression we, agreeing in speech and thought, exhort one another to praise God. Only the one who displeases God in no respect praises God in security. Furthermore, in this time of journeying we say ALLELUIA for solace on our way. ALLELUIA is the song of the traveler for us; but we are advancing through a laborious path to a peaceful country where all our activities will be laid aside and nothing will remain for us except the ALLELUIA. Let us sing now, not for the delights of peace, but for comfort in our labor. Sing as travelers are accustomed to sing; comfort your labor by singing; do not love inactivity; keep singing and keep progressing. ...If you are advancing; progress in well-doing, progress in good faith, progress in good deeds. Keep singing and keep advancing. While we are here let us sing ALLELUIA though we are still beset with cares, so that in the future we may sing it there (in heaven) in tranquility. After the labors of this world there will be unceasing repetition of ALLELUIA. ..There ALLELUIA will be our food; ALLELUIA will be our drink; ALLELUIA will be our peaceful action; ALLELUIA will be our whole joy." [excerpts from Sermon 255 (1); Sermon 256 (1 and 3); Sermon 252 (9)]5
The Word Among Us Meditation on John 16:20-23 shares God knows that our feelings of grief and loss can be intense. Our pain may never go away completely, and even though we move on with our lives, we are never the same.
But God promises that as we lift our tear-stained eyes in faith, we can experience his consolation and mercy and live in the hope that we will see our loved ones again. Then we begin to look at heaven and the Second Coming of Christ—not just as something far-off and unrelated to our lives—but with a deep personal longing. We begin to long to be with the Lord as well as with the ones we love. We look forward to the day when there will be no separation ever again. And that’s when our sorrow turns to full joy.
“Father, I long for the day when you will bring all of us together again. Come, Lord Jesus!”6
Friar Jude Winkler explains the anxiety of Paul to preach to the ends of the earth. Luke is messaging Roman authorities to act like Gallio. Friar Jude reminds us that acting in the Name of Jesus is participation in a relationship with Jesus and the Father.
Saint Rita of Cascia is the saint of the day for May 22. Over the years, her austerity, prayerfulness, and charity became legendary. When she developed wounds on her forehead, people quickly associated them with the wounds from Christ’s crown of thorns. She meditated frequently on Christ’s passion. Her care for the sick nuns was especially loving. She also counseled lay people who came to her monastery. Beatified in 1626, Rita was not canonized until 1900. She has acquired the reputation, together with Saint Jude, as a saint of impossible cases. Many people visit her tomb each year. A post by Franciscan Media reflects on her approach to holiness.
Although we can easily imagine an ideal world in which to live out our baptismal vocation, such a world does not exist. An “If only ….” approach to holiness never quite gets underway, never produces the fruit that God has a right to expect.
Rita became holy because she made choices that reflected her baptism and her growth as a disciple of Jesus. Her overarching, lifelong choice was to cooperate generously with God’s grace, but many small choices were needed to make that happen. Few of those choices were made in ideal circumstances—not even when Rita became an Augustinian nun.7
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments it is only we humans who have been given the free will to choose not to be what God created us to be. Surprisingly, the environmentalist and author Bill McKibben finds hope in this unique freedom.
So, yes, we can wreck the Earth as we’ve known it, killing vast numbers of ourselves and wiping out entire swaths of other life—in fact . . . we’re doing that right now. But we can also not do that. . . .
We have the tools (nonviolence chief among them) to allow us to stand up to the powerful and the reckless, and we have the fundamental idea of human solidarity that we could take as our guide. . . .
Another name for human solidarity is love, and when I think about our world in its present form, that is what overwhelms me. The human love that works to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, the love that comes together in defense of sea turtles and sea ice and of all else around us that is good. The love that lets each of us see we’re not the most important thing on earth, and makes us okay with that. . . . [2]8
Fr Richard has witnessed many examples of this restraint, which Bill McKibben calls love. While the lives of our elders, our vulnerable, and essential workers are at stake during the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of millions of us across the globe have been restraining ourselves at home, choosing not to do many things for many weeks in order to protect those we love (and those others love as well). Surely the earth is breathing a sigh of relief for our reduction in pollution and fossil fuel use. This “Great Pause,” as some are calling it, gives him hope that we will soon find it within ourselves to protect our shared home, not only for our own sake, but for our neighbors across the globe, and future generations. Our relationship with Christ opens our eyes to the needs of people and the planet that we can address with our action.
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