Loyola University Maryland is happy to once again host the Annual CCET Conference. This year’s theme is on eschatology, entitled “Heaven, Hell,… and Purgatory?” The line up is excellent with presentations by David Yeago, Paul Griffiths, Isabel Moreira, Victor Lee Austin, Jerry Walls, Kyriaki Fitzgerald, and Ralph Wood.

Learn more about the Center and the Conference at www.e-ccet.org

See you there!

Texts:  Acts 7:55-60; Rev 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

Today, May 9, is Ascension Day: the commemoration of Jesus ascending into heaven forty days after his resurrection (Acts 1:1-11). In some respects, it might seem strange to celebrate the departure of the risen Christ from this earth. Why is this a day of celebration for the church rather than a day of loss?

After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples had forty days of joy, during which their incredulity and fear and doubt must have slowly transformed into the courage and confidence that enabled their costly witness and even martyrdom in the years to come.

The disciples had forty days of instruction, during which Jesus spoke to them about the kingdom of God. Imagine their chagrin when the One who opened these mysteries to them was taken away into heaven before their eyes.

In Acts, two angels chide the disciples for standing around and staring into the sky after Jesus’ ascension. Time to get their eyes back to earth – they have a mission to complete. And then they learn two important things about Jesus’ departure: he will come again (Acts 1:11; Rev 22:12, 20), and he has not left them alone.

Ten days after the risen Christ ascends to the right hand of God, as witnessed by the first martyr, Stephen (Acts 7:55), the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles in wind and flame and miraculous empowerment on the day of Pentecost. In the Gospel of John, Jesus promises that when he leaves the disciples he will not leave them alone, but will give them the gift of the Comforter, the Encourager, the Advocate, the Exhorter – the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit continues to make the risen Christ present to the disciples, reminding them of his teaching and empowering them to fulfill the mission given to them by their Lord (Acts 1:8). Jesus had already assured his followers that they were one with him and with the Father, bound together by divine love (John 17:22-23); in his “absence,” the Spirit is the “bond of love” that not only binds the Trinity together (as Augustine wrote) but binds Christians to one another and assures them of the risen Christ’s ongoing presence with his church.

The reassurance that the risen Christ will return, ushering in the kingdom of God that his ministry, death, and resurrection inaugurated, does not mean the disciples sit around and wait until he comes back. When they ask Jesus if now (now, please!) is the time he’s going to restore the kingdom to Israel, Jesus gently reprimands them (“it is not for you to know”) and then promises them the empowering presence of the Spirit. And empower them the Spirit does; throughout the rest of Acts, the disciples heal, preach, gather in transformed communities, bring good news to the poor, and joyfully take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And although Christ himself, in his resurrected body, has departed the earth, they are never left alone. They live in the Spirit, and they trust that the risen Christ who ascended to the Father will return to earth – this time for good.

Acts: 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118: 1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Col: 3:1-4;1 Cor: 5:6b-8; John: 20:1-9.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth

(1 Cor 5:6b-8).

Easter Sunday is the culmination of the Christian year. Although Jesus had been “put to death” by being “hung on a tree,” we celebrate the fact that God “raised him on the third day and made him manifest” (Acts 10:39-40) in a series of highly intimate acts. For here God has not only vindicated the poor and the oppressed by the resurrection of His beloved Son, He has brought them into His presence, even “eating and drinking with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:39-41). Indeed, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ we see the embodiment of the praise found in the Psalm: “O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His steadfast love endures for ever!” (Ps 118:1). Continue reading →

Reading I: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Responsorial Psalm: 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25; Reading II: Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; Gospel: John 18:1-19:42

The book of the prophet Isaiah has sometimes been called the “Fifth Gospel,” because Christians have mined it so thoroughly for prophecies of the Messiah. In it they have found passages that are illuminated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; in turn, these passages themselves have cast a light that has helped Christians interpret the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the “Servant Songs” of Isaiah (Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12). It is hard to imagine that these were not among “what referred to him in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27) that Jesus interpreted to the disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter evening. It is hard to imagine that the first Christians did not look to such passages as they began to tell the story of the passion and death of Jesus, finding in them a way to understand Jesus as the one who “was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed” (53:5). Continue reading →

Exodus 12.1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116 1-2, 12 – 19; I Corinthians 11.23 – 26; John 13.1-17, 31b – 35.

One way to think about these readings is to assume that we hear them at a Holy Thursday Eucharist, the first of the three central days of the church year, the first of the two central Eucharists of that year.   In this, as with all Eucharistic celebrations, we are gathered to listen to and proclaim God’s word as well as to thankfully call upon the Spirit to transform us and our gifts into Jesus Christ’s body and blood as unsurpassable nourishment for our journey toward God’s new heaven and earth.   In this light, how do the readings shape what we do here? Continue reading →

Liturgy of the Palms:

Luke 19:28-40; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Liturgy of the Word:

Isa 50:4-9a; Ps 31:9-1; Phil 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

I have a friend whose favorite Sunday is Palm Sunday, who experiences on this threshold of Easter the whole story of salvation rolled into one service. I must confess, on the other hand, that I often feel overwhelmed by Palm Sunday, liturgically and theologically. Perhaps I prefer Sundays with one main point, one obvious emotion: Pentecost, for example. Is Palm Sunday primarily a day of triumph and celebration, of children marching down the aisle waving palm branches, of shouts of praise lest the rocks cry out in our place? Or is it primarily a day of preparation, a somber recognition of the necessity of the coming passion, the gathering storm of the crucifixion, a rehearsal of the entire passion in nuce?

The appointed texts for the day neatly highlight the tension: the Liturgy of the Palms offers the triumphal entry texts, and the Liturgy of the Word pairs texts about suffering (Isaiah) and self-emptying (Philippians) with the full text of the passion narrative, from the Last Supper to the placing of Jesus’ body in the tomb, anticipating the holy days of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. So, which is it? Is it Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday?

After reading and reflecting on these texts for several days, and savoring their richness, I am not sure if Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday are two different things after all. In the Gospels, the responses to Jesus’ remarkable entry into Jerusalem foreshadow the events to come. In Matthew’s account, the whole city is thrown into turmoil. In Luke, the Pharisees tell Jesus to stop his disciples from shouting lines from Psalm 118 as Jesus enters the city. Also in Luke, as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, still accompanied by crowds and waving palm branches, he weeps over the coming destruction of Jerusalem. The disciples who have shouted Hosannas will very soon betray, deny, and desert Jesus, fleeing in pain and fear.

One more detail from the triumphal entry links Jesus’ entrance into the city with his coming suffering. All four Gospels report that Jesus enters the city riding on a humble creature – a donkey. Matthew and John make sure that we know why Jesus chose this particular mode of transportation: in order to fulfill the words of Zechariah 9. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” In Zechariah 9, as in the Gospels, the king comes to Zion bringing peace. But this peace is bought at great cost, at an unimaginable price: the death of the king, the death of God’s beloved only Son. Jesus’ entry into the city is a triumphal entry, but not at all in the way anyone thought it would be – not the disciples, not the Pharisees, not the crowds of festival pilgrims. If the disciples could have seen what Jesus knew, they might have paused and wept at the gate of the city, too. It’s an ironically, proleptically triumphant entry, a kenotic entry, the moment at which Jesus puts his foot onto the inevitable path of the passion and never turns back.

On Palm Sunday, we can only wave the palms and shout our Hosannas if we remember that it’s also Passion Sunday, if we remember why Jesus has come to Jerusalem. Jesus does not enter the city to be hailed as a king. He enters the city to die.

Hosannas dying on our lips, the resounding thud of the stone rolling across the face of the tomb echoing in the silence, Palm Sunday – Passion Sunday – leaves us waiting, in trembling and hope, for Easter.

The combination of Old and New Testament readings for this fifth Sunday in Lent at first seems an odd one.  You have Isa 43:16-21, the prophet’s divine oracle about God doing a new thing.  The “former thing” was the Exodus from Egypt (“Thus says the LORD, who opens a way in the sea and a path in the might waters. . .” )  But now God says “Remember not the former things and consider them not.   See, I am doing a new thing:  in the desert I make a way and in the wasteland, rivers.”  What is this new thing?.  When we turn to the New Testament passage, perhaps hoping that it will offer us a new answer (for the prophet, the new thing was the return from exile.)  But in John 8:1-11 we hear not of a new thing but of a rather old one.  First, there is a  woman caught in adultery.  Then, there are the male religious leaders who want to stone her.  These two passages seem at first to have nothing to do with one another.  And yet on closer inspection that is not quite true.  According to John’s gospel, in this desert of sin and condemnation a new thing does indeed spring forth:  “Woman. . .Has no one condemned you?” Jesus asks.  “Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and sin no more.” Continue reading →

Our department chair, Fritz Bauerschmidt, was on the tele last night, discussing the conclave’s process of selecting Benedict XVI’s successor. Watch it here

Is 55:1-9; Ps 63:1-8; Luke 13:1-9; I Cor 10:1-13

“My ways,” the Lord says, “are not your ways.” Indeed, they are not. Jesus finds himself confronted with horrendous evils, “evils the experience of which,” as Marilyn Adams puts it, “threaten to make us doubt our lives are worth living.” The Romans have slaughtered some Jews, even as they were worshiping the One whose promises, amidst the occupation, are so hard to believe. A tower, without warning and apparently at random, has fallen in Jerusalem, ending suddenly the lives of eighteen women and men who never would have guessed as they went about their lives, work and play, that this day would be their last. Evil – moral and natural – cries out for explanation. And the temptation, then and now, in the face of such suffering is to diagnose, to try to read off tragedy’s inscrutable, relentless face just what exactly it is that God is doing in letting it come to pass. Continue reading →

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

This week’s Gospel reading presents the memorable scene of Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. In Mathew this scene takes place inside the city, between Jesus’ entry and his Passion. In Luke, however, it takes place outside the city, just before Jesus enters. What might Luke be trying to suggest?

Käthe Kollwitz, "Die Klage" (Lament), 1938-1940, Bronze © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2005

Gillian Rose reminds us that some of art’s most searing depictions of grief and mourning take place outside city walls: Antigone buries her brother outside the palace gates of Athens, Phocion’s wife gathers the ashes of her husband outside of Megara. In both of these cases, such acts of mourning were forbidden. Antigone’s brother fought on the wrong side of Thebes’ civil war and his body was left for prey, while Phocion was accused of treachery and executed, his remains burned and scattered. Mourning in such settings can be seen as many things: a sign of loyalty to family, fidelity to the gods, or resistance to unjust laws. Regardless, there is a sense that such acts of grief are more than acts of private affection; they restore rights, redeem honor, re-establish order.  In other words, they are public acts. They are acts of justice. They are offered as much for the city as they are for their loved ones. Continue reading →