May 22, 2022

Sixth Sunday of Easter Cycle C

Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23; John 14:23-29

When Father Jacques Fabre-Jeune, or as we will now refer to him, Bishop Jacques, was announced as the successor to Bishop Robert, I will admit that I didn’t know anything about his order of priests, the Missionaries of St. Charles, or Scalabrinian Fathers, or about their founder, Blessed Giovanni Battista Scalabrini [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Scalabrini ]. Now statisticians will tell you that a lot of what we regard as amazing coincidences are actually quite common. Still I couldn’t help but feel that there was something remarkable about this man, beatified by Saint John Paul II in 1997, when seen in the light of today’s readings. Then again, the fact that readings from Scripture and the lives and teachings of holy people overlap substantially should not cause us to wonder.

Today’s first reading is the very first council of the Church, the prototype of what today is known as an Ecumenical Council. It occurred in the year 50, or about twenty years after the Ascension of Christ. The Council of Jerusalem that Saint Luke describes in chapter fifteen of the Acts of the Apostles was called to deal with the issue of what – if anything – should be adopted into Christian practices from the existing Jewish practices. Did the new Christians need to be required to perform all the ritual washings and the dietary restrictions of Mosaic law? Would the men be required to be circumcised? Would there need to be sacrifices in the Temple? This wasn’t a problem initially, since the Apostles and early disciples were Jewish and were doing these things anyway, but now many non-Jewish people were being brought into the ranks of the Christians, so this was a vital question that was tearing the newly formed community apart, pitting Jewish converts against Gentile converts. After much praying and emphatic appeals and speeches by many, especially Saint Paul, it was decided that the Gentiles only needed to comply with a few of the Jewish practices, the ones listed at the end of the first reading. And voila! We can today eat a pork hot dog or enjoy fatty carnitas at our Saint James parish picnic.

Well, fast forward to one of the last Ecumenical Councils, the First Vatican Council, in 1869. This is the first major church gathering after the famous reform Council of Trent three hundred years before. At the First Vatican Council, there was a young priest who spoke to the Church Fathers eleven times, and was so well received that he was elevated to be a bishop shortly afterward at the age of only thirty-six. The young priest was Giovanni Scalabrini, and the issue with which he was most concerned was the teaching the faithful, especially the youth, about their faith, what we call catechesis. Education was one of the two important causes in Blessed Giovanni’s life, the other being the condition of migrants. The First Vatican Council was called to deal with the issues that were affecting an increasingly industrialized world: anarchy, communism, materialism, and most importantly, at least to me since I see the root of these others in it, rationalism. Now rationalism is a complex topic that I don’t want to get into, other than to merely describe it simply and somewhat superficially as the belief that everything in the world can be proven rationally and tested by experiment. Being that I am speaking to a group of believers, I won’t have a problem in laughing at the silliness of this: like one could prove the beauty of a flower, one could experiment on the goodness of a kind word, or rejecting God because he doesn’t run around a maze like a lab rat. Rationalism is the illogical conclusion of many who study the sciences, the illogical conclusion of a delusion that the scientific method which works so well in sophomore biology class should be applied to the everything else in life. Blessed Giovanni understood that the problem was not education, but too little education, and that the solution was to truly educate people to get past the simple and understand the totality of the world, the scientific and the spiritual.

Now we return to the readings, this time the Gospel. What is Jesus teaching us? That we need to keep his word. And how can we keep his word if we don’t know it, if we don’t truly understand it. That is why we have education for our young, including religious education, catechesis. In just a few weeks, we will celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He is the Advocate that Jesus refers to in today’s Gospel, the one that will continue to teach the disciples what they need to know when he returns to the Father. Why didn’t Jesus just send the Holy Spirit at the beginning of his ministry, and just let the Apostles loose? Because Jesus knew that they were not ready, that he needed to teach them a lot of things, that the ground needed to be prepared so as to receive the seeds that the Holy Spirit will impart. We too must prepare ourselves through a lifetime of education in our faith to channel the energy and teachings of the Holy Spirit into wise and effective lives of service to the Lord, doing the will of the Father.

Last week, our parish intention was to pray for faith-filled youth, which is the prayer intention of Pope Francis for the month of May. Unfortunately, also last week we had an incident which has demonstrated the tragic results of a young man not being filled with faith but instead, in its absence, filled with the hate that seems to permeate the internet, killing ten people in Buffalo, New York. How could he have been properly educated in the ways of a civil society, let alone the teachings of Christ? This weekend at the Masses at nine and noon, we will honor the students who will graduate from one of the important levels of their schools, congratulating them on their achievement and wishing them success at their next stage of education or life. We must all pray for them, since they will need not only the education that they have received but also the support of a Godly people to help navigate the world and stay true to the teachings of the Father and the Son, and to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. For all young people reach a stage where they go out on their own and experience the freedom of living and the sense of accomplishment from being a self-sufficient adult. However, it is only when they realize that no one is ever truly autonomous – that they can never do it all by themselves, that they will always need the love of God and those around them to be truly human – that their education will transform into true wisdom that will make them the great people they are destined to be.

As we continue with our Mass, let us welcome the Son into our life in a tangible way through the Holy Sacrament. Let us be attentive to what the Holy Spirit is telling us through our prayers as we deal with all the decisions that we need to make in life. May the Holy Spirit turn all of our lessons from a lifetime of education, training, and experiences into the wisdom which allows us to lead a worthwhile and fulfilling life. Christ promises us that he will give us peace, not as the world understands it, but as the Father gives it to us – let us all resolve to prepare ourselves to be receptive to this seed by making ourselves fertile soil for it to grow.