(Acts 7:55-60; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20; John 17:20-26.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fanaticism
is never free nor can it express its evil
mind through the true love of a Spirit-led heart: seeing nothing but an enemy
it can only seek the pseudo-self- satisfaction of rejection or hatred.
Let us
now look a little closer at the religious fanaticism shown in the first reading
and compare it with the teaching of both the second reading and the Gospel:
All who
sat in the council, cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at
him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him.
The
present attention of those in the council was fixed on their enemy, Stephen, and
at the back of their minds was the insistent problem of their own status with
regard to the Roman overlords; they were most certainly not responding to the
God they professed to represent. The
words of Stephen should have been answered, if indeed they were defenders of
the Law; but, in order to answer they would have had, first of all, to listen
to Stephen’s words, and that was something they were not prepared to envisage
let alone do:
They
cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one
accord.
In so
doing, they were in fact giving vent to, satisfying, their own feelings of anger,
apprehension and even fear, not defending the Law of the Lord their God.
Human
passions are no guide to God’s will: human anger does not serve divine justice
nor can human sentimentality transmit God’s goodness; and yet emotions are part
and parcel of our human nature, they are necessary for human actions, above all
for human love and divine charity:
You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind
and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. (Mark 12:30)
However,
such emotions need to follow the lead of, keep in tune with, a mind guided
by faith in Jesus and able, by the grace of His Spirit, to look at the
situation as a whole, not to indulge a mind that is exclusive in its
focus because of the weakness of its grasp.
Human emotions should neither be stoked up by prejudice nor smothered by
fearful self-interest.
If we now
turn to the second reading we can see how the Christian is called not only to
look to Christ, but also urged to long for, pray for, His coming:
I, Jesus,
have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the
Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star." And the Spirit and the bride say,
"Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" He who testifies
to these things says, "Surely I am coming quickly." Amen. Even so,
come, Lord Jesus!
The
Christian, therefore, can only be a truly living member of the Church (the
bride) under the inspiration of the Spirit and to the extent that he or she is steadfastly
looking and longing for Jesus. Sadly,
many nominal Catholics today are prepared to take scandal at supposed -- or
real -- human sins and failings, and I read recently of one such
(self-righteous, sanctimonious) young woman refusing Communion, that is, snubbing
Jesus, because she did not approve of the sermon preached by one trying to do
what he saw as his Catholic duty. People
of God, ‘the Spirit and the Bride say, “Come Lord Jesus”’, which means that in
all his or her activities, the heart and mind of the devout Catholic disciple
of Jesus should be relatively free and mutually respectful when involved in
recognizing what is true, appreciating what is beautiful, and responding to
whatever guidance God gives: that young woman I just mentioned allowed her
heart to totally break away from her faith-enlightened mind
I pray
that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they
also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
Earlier I
said that human sentimentality/emotionalism is incapable of transmitting divine
goodness, and there I was referring to the wide-spread habit of praising and promoting
popular causes by involving weeping women, excited children, apparently
repentant men who had been ‘forced’ into whatever they may have done wrong, as
though such presentations were the full truth or truly good, serving, that is, the
social and spiritual well-being of those targeted by such presentations;
in fact, however, they are often more well-suited to serve the worldly/personal
interests and preferences of those using
them than the social or spiritual well-being of the community as a whole.
In the
quotation I have just made from the Gospel you will see that Jesus had in mind
the eternal well-being of all mankind when He prayed that the Apostles might be
one, for He prayed with the express intention:
That the world may believe
that You sent Me.
His prayer
that:
They may
be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect
in one;
was not
for His Apostles alone, but primarily for all of us, because the way the world would
come to accept and believe in Jesus was not to be one sign-posted with
extravagant gestures or emotional declarations by the Apostles, but by those
same Apostles becoming ever more personally one-with-Jesus, and ever more
collegially one-in-Jesus, by their every word and deed for Jesus:
I in them and You in Me, may they be one in Us, Father.
For the
Apostles, their centre of attention, their whole-hearted desire, had to be fixed
on Jesus. Though they would give
their lives for those to whom they were sent, they would not overcome any
enemies nor would they convert any peoples of themselves: they had to be
centred on Jesus, so that He --
through His Spirit -- would direct the catch of fish for them, as of old. And our second reading, taken from the book
of Revelation, widened this spiritual attitude to the whole of God’s people
with the words:
The
Spirit and the bride (which is Mother
Church, inspired, guided and sustained by the Spirit) say, "Come!" And let him who hears (and reads) say, "Come!" Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.
Those whose
minds are ablaze and charred by the fire of religious fanaticism, those whose
eyes are blinded by the smoke of suspicion and hatred which such excitement begets,
seek to assure themselves of a place in a ‘heaven’ of their imagining or in the
hearts of men, by claiming to protect and promote what is right and good by
indulging themselves in the worldly pseudo-satisfaction of rejection and hatred.
We, on
the other hand, as faithful Christians, can have only one aim: by the Spirit, to live and die with and in Jesus for love
of the Father from Whom we aspire to accept both life and death as His most
gracious gift. We cannot, must not,
allow ourselves to be guided by human ideas of goodness; for the human heart
can be a veritable cesspit of intentions and aspirations, while human goodness at
its best is not good enough, it is too open to the corruptions of self-seeking
pride or pusillanimity, political correctness and popularity. We Catholics should seek to be guided and
determined in all things by the teaching
of Jesus as proclaimed by Mother Church (not by the personal outpourings of
individuals however highly regarded) and as inspired into our hearts and minds
by the Holy Spirit of Jesus working in
us through her Sacraments and with
us in our best endeavours to follow His light and our conscience. And the ultimate satisfaction we seek
should be that for which Jesus prayed on our behalf:
Father, I
desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may
behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation
of the world.
