Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter: Infectious Holiness

Readings:

Acts 11: 1-18
Psalm 42: 2-3

John 10: 1-10

See also:

Revelation 13: 1-18

St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit

Reflection:

In the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles, the story unfolds in two parts.  First, Peter has a vision in which “unclean” foods are made “clean”; then, Peter goes into the house of a Gentile and the Holy Spirit falls upon his household.  What God says to Peter regarding the food could also be said of the Gentiles: “What God has called clean you are not to call profane.”  The story is not primarily about the fact that Christians no longer had to keep kosher; the story is about God’s cleansing of a people, of extending His promises beyond the Jews and to all nations.  This is how Christ fulfills the law but does not destroy it.  This is not a story of the renunciation of the promises God made to the Jews, but a story of the expansion of that promise to all peoples.

This is also a story about God’s all-encompassing holiness – one might even call it an infectious holiness.  In the Old Testament understanding, the holy had to be kept separated from the profane; if the profane came into contact with the holy, the holy person or object was corrupted and had to be purified.  But Christ inaugurated a new order: the profane, when it comes into contact with the holy, does not render the holy impure, but rather makes the profane holy.  Thus, Peter argues that the early Christians need not worry about breaking bread with the Gentiles; as sharers in Christ’s infectious holiness, they will not be corrupted by the Gentiles’ “impurity” but will rather be bearers of holiness to the Gentiles.

Because God alone has the power to make things holy, and because Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, it is only through Christ that we can be made holy.  He is the only “gate” by which we can pass from our life of captivity to sin and into the freedom of love.  Only by coming into contact with Christ’s “infectious holiness” can we become free and pure.  How do we attain this contact? By following Him where He goes: through death to resurrection.  We come into contact with Christ by participating in the Paschal Mystery.  In Christ’s passion, suffering and death have themselves been made holy because Christ endured them; Christ’s contact with suffering has made suffering a means of salvation, and if we suffer well with Christ, our suffering can make us holy too.

The sacrament of baptism efficaciously symbolizes this death and rebirth; thus, passing through the gate is a metaphor for baptism.  But suffering is hard; we do not want to do it.  Suffering requires us to renounce the things we love most in this world –our material possessions, the people we care about, our health, our sanity, our preconceived notions about God, our understandings of justice and goodness.  None of us want to sacrifice these things; that’s why it’s so tempting to follow false shepherds, who come climbing over the fence illegitimately promising freedom.  The book of Revelation testifies to these false shepherds, who come with displays of power and promises of wealth and security.  But they are promising something they do not have the power to provide. The only way to freedom is through Christ, and to attain that freedom we must detach ourselves from what we hold most dear in order to attach ourselves more firmly to Christ.

Such detachment is inevitable, whether we choose it or not.  Suffering has a way of finding us all.  Death will ultimately claim our loved ones.  Disasters and war can claim our material possessions.  Disease and old age can claim the health of our minds and bodies.  If there’s a lesson to be learned from the post-modern era, it’s that the more we run away from suffering and try to shield ourselves from it, the more suffering tracks us down and knocks us off our feet.  Christ teaches us that we defeat suffering not by running away from it, but by confronting it, transforming it with the holiness that He has shared with us, and turning it into a source of new life and resurrection. 

As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit can give us the strength, courage, and grace to face this challenge.  And if we can face up to it, we can become bearers of holiness, of light and grace, to the whole world. 

Fourth Sunday of Easter: Seeking the Source of Goodness

Readings:

Acts 4:8-12

Psalm 118
1 John 3: 1-2

John 10: 11-18

Reflection:

Today Peter exhorts those who have seen the “good deeds” of the Apostles to recognize the source of the goodness: Christ Jesus, in whose name the healings have occurred.  It’s rather remarkable that Peter does not wish to take credit for the healings himself.  He does not set himself up as the amazing miracle-worker; rather, he humbly points to Christ.

It takes being “full of the Holy Spirit” to act with such humility – to recognize goodness, even our own, as coming from Christ.  When we behave badly, we always try to justify ourselves and blame someone else: “I didn’t mean to!” or “So-and-so made me!”  But when we behave well, we’re happy to take credit.  Similarly, when bad things happen to us we always want to know why: who’s to blame, what went wrong.  But when good comes our way, we accept it as if it is our due and often forget to seek its Source.

Recognizing goodness in the world as coming from God is a sign of wisdom: we are able to know the spiritual realities that lie within the things that happen to us and the things that we do.  We are able to see beyond the goods of this world to the true Source of Goodness: Christ Himself.  The world, as John’s letter tells us, does not have this wisdom, but we have it as children of God.  As his flock, we recognize the Source of Goodness, our true shepherd.

How lucky we are to have this wisdom!  Christ contrasts Himself as the Good Shepherd with the “hired man” who works for pay.  Worldly wisdom, which satisfies itself with goods and does not seek the Source of Goodness, tempts us to follow such treacherous shepherds – false shepherds and substitute shepherds, such as the desire for wealth, or acknowledgment, or admiration.  But Christ warns us that when we try to substitute these goods for the Source of Goodness, we will ultimately be betrayed.  In the time of crisis, those false shepherds will abandon us, and we will not know where to turn.  We must seek and cling to the Source of Goodness, the Good Shepherd, Christ Himself, if we are to be safe.

And what does the Good Shepherd teach us about goodness?  That in order to be good we have to be willing to sacrifice goods for the sake of others.  The Good Shepherd is good because He lays down His life – which is a good! – for His sheep.  This self-giving love is the source of all goodness in the world, and if we want to be good we have to participate in that love.  The choice is ours: we can spend our lives seeking goods, snatching them up greedily and hoarding them like misers – or we can spend our lives seeking the Source of Goodness, Who urges us to joyfully share our goods with others out of gratitude and love and the desire to draw all into His goodness.  One path leads to soul-withering selfishness; the other leads to a life-giving expansion of the soul.