Tag Archives: Apostle

God saves a people

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On this day, 3 Jul 2012, when we honour St Thomas, Apostle of Jesus, Prince and foundation stone of the Church (Rev 21:14), it is good to reflect upon the place of the Church in our lives. St Thomas and all the other Apostles are at the throne of God right now interceding for the Church and for each member in it. As the feast days of the Apostles come around each year they remind us that the Christian life is not just ‘me and Jesus.’

Most Tuesdays, since we live on the ‘Pacific Rim’, my son and I sit down and watch an episode of The Journey Home from EWTN. This TV programme gives a testimony about how someone came into the Catholic Church. In recent weeks some of the guests have been talking about how the ‘just me and God’ relationship has the outcome of making the church community an optional extra. Almost everywhere you turn preachers are inviting people into a personal relationship with Jesus. Granted, seeing the life of someone with an active relationship with Jesus is the major reason why people think to themselves, ‘I want what he’s got, ‘I want what she’s got’, and this then becomes the gateway to become open to accepting the saving role of Jesus in their lives. As an evangelistic method, it works brilliantly. However this whole notion that only my personal relationship with Jesus matters isn’t how God sees it, and it isn’t how the Church through the centuries has seen it.

To be saved you have to belong to the People of God. He doesn’t save us as individuals but as a people. Our salvation rests upon the covenant with God, the ancient form of which is ‘I will be your God, and you shall be My people.’ Never in holy Scripture do you find ‘I will be your God, you shall be My person.’ That is why Baptism is so important, because it incorporates us into Jesus and into His Body, and gives us membership of the People of God.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches (169) : ‘Salvation comes from God alone; but because we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our mother: ‘We believe the Church as the mother of our new birth, and not in the Church as if she were the author of our salvation.’ Because she is our mother, she is also our teacher in the faith.’

The Covenant that God offers His people is something more than marriage, although marriage tends to be the best analogy we have to work with. Eph 5:25 ‘Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed Himself for her to make her holy.’ Take hold of that notion ‘Christ loved the Church’ ; it is not Christ loved the Individual. And as those who are married will attest, when you get married you don’t only marry your spouse, in a very real sense you marry his or her whole family as well. It is not possible to make a true commitment to Jesus unless you make a commitment to His whole body, the Church, as well. Can you see how very far this is from ‘me and Jesus’?

The problem is that this ‘me and Jesus’ paradigm takes the Church completely out of the equation. It means that a person will go church hopping ( or church shopping) until they find one that will assist and support their relationship with Jesus. With a mind set like that a person is unlikely to see service to the other members as an essential part of the Christian life. You see, other people are supposed to help them improve their own private personal relationship with Jesus. You might get them to help tell other people about Jesus, but they will be unlikely to help put out the chairs, serve on a committee or help with fundraising. Someone infected with ‘me and Jesus’ is not going to be capable of making a long term commitment to a parish community or denomination, and it takes a mighty lot of work to get them to see beyond ‘me and Jesus’. 

If you love Jesus truly, you will love His Church. The welfare of the other members of the Body of Christ for whom He has shed His Precious Blood will be of major importance to you. When we stand up on Sundays and profess our faith together, we say ‘I believe’ not just personally but collectively. Now I’m not knocking the importance of working on a personal relationship with God, but it can’t only be that, we also have to work on our relationships within the Communion of Saints – on earth, in heaven and in purgatory.

As has been said many times before, Catholicism is a ‘both / and’ religion : faith and good works ; pray and work ; fully human and fully divine ; saved and hope to be saved ; virgin and mother; etc. I’m sure you could recall many more. It is our Protestant brothers and sisters who often have an ‘either / or’ outlook on matters. This ‘me and Jesus’ stuff comes from the ‘either / or’ side of the camp. For us the Communion of Saints is a reality so essential we remind ourselves of it in the Creed on a frequent and regular basis, it’s not an optional fellowship extra.

May the good Lord get us back on track, so that when people see us they will want not only a personal relationship with Jesus, but also a vibrant relationship with each member of His Body the Church.

St Thomas, and all holy Apostles, pray for us, and please keep praying for the needs and welfare of holy Mother Church. Amen.

Gentle, patient and trustworthy

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Today, 30 Nov 2011, is the joyful day when we celebrate God’s gift to us of the Apostle, St Andrew. Today we thank St Andrew for his response to God’s amazing call to live as His Apostle, and for the fidelity with which he served his divine Master. We thank God for his good example and for all the intercession St Andrew has made for the Church and humanity before the throne of God over these last 1950 years or so.

It is the Gospel of St John that tells us the most about St Andrew and God’s call to him. Since the Gospel implies that Andrew was a disciple of St John the Baptist, we can infer that Andrew was already seeking to put God in the first place in his life. Going out into the wilderness to hear and see the witness of St John the Baptist would have awakened in Andrew desires for holiness and prayer and a hunger to meet the Messiah that John was preaching about. When St John the Baptist pointed Jesus out and said, ‘Look, there is the Lamb of God,’ many people must have heard him, but only two acted upon it, Andrew and one other. This tells us several things about St Andrew: firstly he believed that the message John preached came from God, secondly that he trusted John, and thirdly that he didn’t judge people by appearances. The most likely reason that more didn’t follow Jesus that day was that He was dressed in the clothes of a poor, uneducated workman.

Surely St Andrew also had sufficient curiosity to investigate the Person whom John had pointed out. As he walked behind Jesus, he must have been dazzled with the hope of being able to meet the One that all Israel had been waiting for. Yet both of John’s disciples followed behind respectfully, not doing anything to hasten or force the moment when Jesus would stop and meet them. Doesn’t this says a lot about how much patience and gentleness these two possessed!

Then Jesus turns, and asks them what they want. Before Jesus has ever preached about the kingdom of God in public, these two call Him Rabbi, ‘Teacher’, signifying that they want to learn from Him about God. They don’t make any huge requests in answer to Jesus’ question. They ask where He lives, only that they might be able to find Him again and not lose Him. To this Jesus answers, ‘Come and see’, and they both had sufficient courage to take Jesus up on His offer. Only a few hours of daylight were left, and they remained with Him every available minute.

As soon as daylight returned, the first thing Andrew did was to seek out his brother Simon and to tell him that he had met the Messiah, and that it was possible for Simon to meet him, too. We might guess that Simon initially thought that Andrew possessed an addled brain or had met a false Messiah. Sufficient sincerity, patient question answering on Andrew’s part and the holy loopiness of one who has met Love Incarnate must have convinced Simon to investigate – even if only to protect his brother from a possibly harmful new friend, fists at the ready. What a meeting that must have been between Simon and Jesus! Simon ends up with a new name, Peter, and knowing for himself that Andrew was right. Jesus is the longed for Messiah.

The first fruit of gentle, patient Andrew’s apostolic life is Peter, the one to whom Jesus will entrust His entire Church. What a lot we owe St Andrew! Even the Church acknowleges the fruitfulness of Andrew’s apostolate, not just to his brother but to countless souls by mentioning his name together with Peter and Paul in the first Eucharistic prayer. Should the priest not choose to announced all the apostolic names, he mentions these three always. Definitely his apostolic life wasn’t as visible and as full of responsibility as Peter’s, but it bore abundant fruit. To draw timid, shy and fearful souls to Jesus requires patience, gentleness and perseverance, and Andrew had those particular talents. Once such souls are won for Jesus they are won for ever, and filled with happiness. Only in heaven will we understand just how many souls St Andrew brought to Jesus in this way.

Together with the rest of the Apostles, St Andrew failed Jesus when the soldiers showed up to arrest Him, and fled. Yet Jesus entrusted St Andrew and his fellow Apostles with the mission to spread the good news of the Incarnation and Resurrection to the whole world. No longer a fisherman of fish, St Andrew obeyed his Divine Master and went successfully fishing for souls until the time he bore the ultimate witness to Jesus with martyrdom.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for choosing St Andrew as Your Apostle, and for his constant intercession for us before Your throne. Please raise up more like him in our troubled world today.

St Andrew, Apostle of Jesus, pray for us. 

 

Two of the Twelve

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Today, 28 Oct 2011, the Church rejoices in the feast day of the Apostles Simon and Jude and in a particular way prays for an increase in the number of those who believe in Jesus. Both of these Saints are barely mentioned in Scripture, but because they were personally called by Jesus to take on the mission of Apostle they must have been very special. What we do know is that their prayers on our behalf before the throne of God are constant and powerfully effective.

So today we rejoice and give thanks for the many answers to prayers that these two Apostles have obtained for us and for countless others – not just in our generation but in centuries of preceding generations. How visible they were in their Apostlic ministry compared to Peter, Andrew and Bartholomew is not important. What is important is their union with Jesus, the measure of which determines the successfulness of each human life.

We are fortunate to live in a time when it is possible to read private revelation about the years of Jesus’ public ministry. Some people take a very negative view of private revelation, but for me it has been a source of increased love for Jesus and a deeper love and affection for His apostles. Two sources I have found particularly valuable are ‘The Poem of the Man God’ by Maria Valtorta and ‘Through the Eyes of Jesus’ by C. Alan Ames. The purposes for which the revelations given to each author are different: of the immense number of events in the life of Jesus, only those that will give greatest help to the ‘scribes’ are shown to them. The Gospels will always be the purest well from which to learn about Jesus. As long as people view these private revelations with an appropriate degree of caution and don’t go about forcing others to believe without question what is written in them, they can be enormously spiritually fruitful.

The Poem is far more detailed and filled with lengthy descriptions, Alan’s book is more concise and suited to the training of those called to modern apostlic life. To give you a small taste, and hopefully a deeper appreciation of these two wonderful Apostles, I will try to condense an excerpt from The Poem of the Man God, Book 1 Chapter 56 as far as possible.

” ‘Peace to you!‘ There is the beautiful, unmistakable….clear, virile voice! ‘You too, Judas, My cousin, are here?’ They embrace each other. Judas is weeping. ‘Why are you weeping?‘ ‘Oh! Jesus! I want to stay with You!’ ‘I have been waiting for you all the time. Why did you not come?‘ Judas lowers his head and is silent. ‘They did not let you! and now?‘ ‘Jesus, I…I cannot obey them. I want to obey only You.’ ‘But I did not give you an order.‘ ‘No, You did not. But it is Your mission that gives it! It is He, Who sent You, Who is speaking here, in my heart, and says to me: ‘Go to Him’. It is She, who bore You, my sweet teacher, who with Her gentle look…says to me without uttering a word: ‘Be of Jesus!’ ”

“…‘And you, who are hidling shyly in the shade, come here. Do not be afraid.‘ ‘My Lord!’ The ex-leper is at Jesus’ feet. ‘Stand up. Your name?‘ ‘Simon.’ ‘Your family?‘ ‘My Lord..it was powerful…I was powerful too…but bitter sectarian hatred…and errors of youth damaged its power.’ ….  Jesus looks at him attentively. ‘Simon, you asked Me: ‘What shall I do for You? Now I say to you: Follow Me’ ‘I will, at once, my Lord…But..But I …let me tell You one thing. I am, I was called ‘Zealot’ because of the caste, and ‘Cananean’ because of my mother.’ …”

“….‘Look at the wide world….there are children everywhere…They are waiting for you, and many like you are also waiting….There is no solitude, no difference in My Sign. It is a sign of love, and it gives love. Come, My childless Simon. Come, Judas, who are losing your father for My sake. I join you in the same common destiny.’ “ 

St Simon, Apostle, pray for us

St Jude, Apostle, friend and intercessor for all those who need a miracle, pray for us