Father Stephen P. Kelley“Beloved: Rejoice to the extent that you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice exultantly.” In this quote from our second reading today, what does it mean to share in the sufferings of Christ? It can mean a lot of things. It can mean helping another person with their suffering, which is empathy. It can mean sharing in their suffering with them, which is sympathy. It can mean offering your sufferings to Christ on the cross to share in the grace of his passion, which is redemptive suffering. It can mean the suffering of doing a good thing when you don’t want to, like doing chores for your family. It can mean standing up against evil, such as political or social activism. It can mean volunteering to help minister to those in need, which is charity, which means love.
We can think suffering for our faith means going to Mass every single Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation even when we don’t want to. Or suffering for our faith means abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. Or suffering for our faith means not being able to receive the Eucharist if we have committed mortal sin. True, these things do cause suffering, because they require us to sacrifice; they require us to form our conscience in obedience to an authority beyond ourselves, which hopefully we internalize into the virtues of piety, reverence, and humility.
But if you want to see what suffering for our faith means, tell people that marriage is only between a man and a woman, irrevocably until death, and ordered to family and children, and that intending to use artificial contraception is a grave sin. Tell people that abortion and assisted suicide are grossly evil offenses against human dignity and the fundamental good of human life. Put that in your social media. Put them as bumper stickers on your car. Tell me how that goes.
Of course, you should also probably tell them that these things are true because God created us out of love and for love, for holiness, and everything we believe is to keep us away from false and superficial distortions of love and goodness and directs us to true and holy love and goodness. And of course, the teachings of the Church that are widely accepted are also true, such as the works of mercy, like generously supporting those in need.
But the point is that all this is fundamental and clear Catholic teaching, and not only is it persecuted by the world, it’s persecuted by those who are of the world, in the Church. Even we priests, who are usually by nature non-confrontational and want to keep our flocks together in peace, often don’t teach what might upset people, and so rather than being brave shepherds, we leave our flocks in the darkness of sin and error, rather than risk confrontation. Which is why our own people don’t know, don’t believe, and can’t share our own faith. And so, in a recent study, two-thirds of Catholics responded that abortion should be legal and widely accessible. Abortion is evil, and evil does not make for a moral and just society that is made of people made in the image of God. Say all that out loud and clearly, and you’ll get a taste of suffering for our faith. Now, personally, I have a soft spot in my heart for those who are post-abortive and suffering, as I’ve been part of post-abortive ministry for almost my whole priesthood. It is not the unforgivable sin, and healing is possible and available. And you can reach out for that help when you feel ready to do so.
St. Peter says, “Rejoice to the extent that you share in the sufferings of Christ.” We don’t usually rejoice at suffering. But when we lift up our suffering into the sufferings of Christ, suffering for others, suffering for love, for truth, for goodness, for unity, for peace, for the faith, for the vulnerable, for the struggle against disorder, temptation, and sin within you and around you, and we engage in this suffering as a way of uniting ourself to Jesus Christ suffering on the cross for the healing and restoration of all the world, then we also get the second part of the quote… “so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice exultantly.” When we unite our sufferings to Christ, they are infused with his grace, but we get his grace through the cross. Suffering is the only way to grace. The cross of Christ is the only door to the glory of Christ. But it goes both ways. True, you can’t have Easter Sunday without Good Friday, but also, when you find yourself in a Good Friday, have faith that it will proceed to be followed by an Easter Sunday. A crown of thorns leads to the crown of glory. That’s Jesus’ message in the beatitudes, and that’s Saint Peter’s message in our second reading.
Being holy is difficult. If it were easy, we wouldn’t need a savior, and we wouldn’t need commandments. But it’s difficult. It doesn’t come naturally to us. There’s a saying that heaven is upstream. Anyone can spiritually float downstream, like a dead fish. But it takes a living fish to swim upstream. It’s a fight against our lower desires, our downward habits. But by swimming upstream, by seizing on the good in ourselves, we unite ourselves more with Christ. Yes, we get to feel the cross a lot closer, but we also experience the glory, the grace, and the joy, as we bring a little more of the kingdom of God into this world by our growing in the love of Christ, growing in our suffering with Christ, and growing in appreciating the love of Christ, the life of Christ in our brothers and sisters.
Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows the Church waiting. in a period of waiting, a time of excited anticipation. Jesus commanded the Church to wait in Jerusalem until they “receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” It is interesting to contemplate this command. Why wait? Why didn’t Jesus just dispense the power of the Holy Spirit immediately at the Ascension? We can’t answer that with certainty. But we do know that waiting is an important part of the spiritual life. Sometimes, it is God’s mysterious will for us—at a particular time—that we just wait. Waiting is often an important part of our salvation, and God gives us enforced waiting in various ways and at various times. The Sabbath Day, for example, was a kind of enforced wait. Waiting is not necessarily inaction. In our First Reading, we see the Apostles, the Blessed Mother in a kind of “active waiting,” a waiting devoted to prayer, a preparation of their hearts for a new initiative of God. St. Augustine teaches us that God making us wait by delaying his answer to our prayer expands our hearts in anticipation of receiving his superabundant answer to our prayers. And so God makes us wait, like kids anticipating Christmas, so that it increases our desire to receive from him; it grows our hearts to receive an even greater gift than our prayers asked for. That’s God’s superabundant generosity. And for that, we have to exercise patience. To trust in God also means to trust in God’s timing.
Our Gospel reading is the grand finale of the Last Supper Discourse of Jesus in the Gospel of John. The culmination of 4 chapters of Jesus teaching and forming his disciples, meaning students, into apostles, meaning those who are sent. He has been speaking about giving the gift of the Holy Spirit, the advocate who will be with them to empower them to witness to their faith with courage, conviction, and love of God. We will see this especially in the transformation of Simon Peter, who goes from the headstrong yet weak Simon who denied Jesus three times, to Saint Peter, who will selflessly stand up to the Jewish leaders to defend Jesus and the Church at the cost of torture and eventually martyrdom.
Each year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would enter the most sacred place of the Temple, and one of the things he would do is offer the High Priestly Prayer. And this last chapter of the Last Supper Discourse of Jesus is called the High Priestly Prayer, because it follows the same structure of prayer. There are three parts to the prayer, and it’s a long and beautiful prayer.
As many of you might remember, the Church has a three-year cycle of readings for Sunday Masses. This is year A, we have the first part of the High Priestly Prayer. Next year, Year B in the three-year cycle, we’ll get the second part of the three parts of the prayer. And then the year after that, we’ll get the third part.
In the first part of the prayer, the high priest prays for himself. In the first part of Jesus’ prayer, which is our gospel reading today, our reading says, “Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you… I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.” Of course, whenever the gospels talk about the Son of God being glorified, it’s a reference to the cross, and through the cross, the glory of the resurrection. So this is Jesus readying himself, and his apostles who are listening to him, as he prays to the Father for the suffering and death he is about to endure, that through that he might receive glory, from the Father, for his obedience and love, and from us, as our savior and Lord.
In the second third of the high priestly prayer, the high priest prays for all the other priests of Israel, those who minister as priests under the authority, and as representatives of the ministry of the high priest. In the second part of Jesus’ high priestly prayer, he prays for his apostles. “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one… I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world… Consecrate them in the truth… As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” So we see more clearly this idea that the apostles are consecrated, set apart as holy by Christ, the same Greek word, hagiazo, used in the Old Testament for the ordaining of priests. And where the traditional prayer by the high priest intercedes for those who share in the priestly ministry of the high priest, Jesus puts the apostles in that position in his prayer, confirming his intent that they are understood has sharing his power and priestly ministry as his representatives.
And lastly, in the third part of the high priestly prayer, the high priest would pray for all of the nation of Israel, all of God’s people, sanctified and united by the covenant of faith, by the sacrifices offered in the temple, and by their family bond as brothers and sisters, children of Israel. And in the third part of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer at the Last Supper, he transitions from praying for the apostles into the third part by saying, “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.” As the high priest prayed for all of Israel, Jesus prays for all of the New Israel, the whole Church to the end of time, including us. Not only that we be united in divine love, but also so that the world may be believe that Jesus is the Son of God, sent by the Father. Our witness as members of the Church is not just for our personal salvation, but an instrument for the salvation of the world.
And so, my brothers and sisters, let us be one, as the Father and the Son are one, in the self-giving love of the Holy Spirit, that we may be a faithful witness that love overcomes temptation and sin, that unity overcomes challenges of division, and that grace overcomes all who believe and entrust themselves to Jesus. Amen.
(Father Kelley is the pastor of St. Patrick Parish in York and Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Spring Grove.)
By Father Stephen Kelley, Special to The Witness
