There’s always something vague about the Holy Spirit. When described, nothing sounds concrete. This perhaps is the reason why the Holy Spirit is known to be the shy member of the Trinity. The Spirit is like a backstage manager who is behind all the scenes but never shows herself to the audience. Yet, those of you who enjoy movies, as well as their production process, appreciate all the hard work that unfeatured staff put together behind. Similarly, those of us who enjoy the presence of God are aware of keeping in mind the shy member of the Holy Trinity, and how we keep in mind and body is to pay appropriate attention to the breath.
The act of receiving the Holy Spirit doesn’t require one to behave hyper-religiously. Instead, it simply begins with our humble and curious attitude that doesn’t take our breath for granted. So, we pay heedful attention to our breath, the flow of the Holy Spirit. In our act of breathing in and out as a craftsperson works so skillfully in the details of a mantel clock, the presence of the Spirit is no longer visual or abstract. It’s as real as any object we can touch. What’s more real and even closer to our own breath? When we become one with the breath that we take, we’re gently led by the Breath of God, the Spirit who makes us her children. My hope for all of us is to experience this. The following poem is written by Donna Martin. I would like to invite all of us to reflect on it as we kindly and heedfully pay attention to our breath. THE BREATH IS LIFE’S TEACHER by Donna Martin Observe me, says the Breath, and learn to live effortlessly in the Present Moment. Feel me, says the Breath, and feel the Ebb and Flow of Life. Allow me, says the Breath, and I’ll sustain and nourish you, filling you with energy and cleansing you of tension and fatigue. Move with me, says the Breath, and I’ll invite your soul to dance. Make sounds with me and I shall teach your soul to sing. Follow me, says the Breath, and I’ll lead you out to the farthest reaches of the Universe, and inward to the deepest parts of your inner world. Notice, says the Breath, that I am as valuable to you coming or going… that every part of my cycle is as necessary as another… that after I’m released, I return again and again… that even after a long pause – moments when nothing seems to happen – eventually I am there. Each time I come, says the Breath, I am a gift from Life. And yet you release me without regret… without suffering… without fear. Notice how you take me in, invites the Breath. Is it with joy… with gratitude…? Do you take me in fully… invite me into all the inner spaces of your home? …Or carefully into just inside the door? What places in you am I not allowed to nourish? And notice, says the Breath, how you release me. Do you hold me prisoner in closed up places in the body? Is my release resisted… do you let me go reluctantly, or easily? And are my waves of Breath, of Life, as gentle as a quiet sea, softly smoothing sandy stretches of yourself….? Or anxious, urgent, choppy waves…? Or the crashing tumult of a stormy sea…? And can you feel me as the link between your inner and outer worlds… feel me as Life’s exchange between the Universe and You? The Universe breathes me into You… You send me back to the Universe. I am the flow of life between every single part and the Whole. Your attitude to me, says the Breath, is your attitude to Life. Welcome me… embrace me fully. Let me nourish you completely, then set me free. Move with me, dance with me, sing with me, sigh with me… Love me. Trust me. Don’t try to control me. I am the Breath. Life is the Musician. You are the flute. And music – creativity – depends on all of us. You are not the Creator… nor the Creation. We are all a part of the process of Creativity… You, Life, and me: the Breath. What would you say in your farewell prayer from this world? This might be felt like a mind-boggling question to respond but this is what we encounter in today’s lesson from St. John’s Gospel. What we hear this morning is the concluding part of what’s known as the Farewell Discourse of Jesus which includes Chapters 14 to 17. This is a different version compared to Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane from the Synoptic Gospels of Sts. Mark, Matthew, and Luke where he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want…My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” (Matthew 26:39b, 42)
Before we delve into his Farewell Prayer or sometimes known as the High Priestly Prayer, let’s remind ourselves of his farewell teachings because they continue in his intercessory prayer as well. In summary, as I understand it, he focuses on the two main themes: the coming of the Holy Spirit and his command of love of God and neighbors. These two themes for Christians are interconnected and interdependent in that one cannot be complete without the other. As we receive the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to love God and our neighbors. In this act of love with the help of the Holy Spirit, we become one with one another and God. Jesus’ farewell prayer precisely reflects this oneness through love. This also tells us what he would like to see for himself and leave behind for those he loves. This love is the way into the oneness with all which connects every single one of us, the living and the dead. This oneness created by love, however, does challenge us since it includes those we don’t want to be associated with for whatever reasons. We probably have good enough reasons to distance ourselves from them. Whether we like it or not, this love embraces all, and we genuinely desire to follow it and live it out. What should be dealt with first is how we understand love, which seems to be an obstacle to the way of love. Usually, we presume to know what it means and assume we all have the same understanding. If we follow a dictionary definition of love, it generally means to feel deep and tender affection for someone. As Nancy spoke about in her homily on 5/15, love is not merely a feeling. I would push it a bit further that it doesn’t even require any affectionate feeling at all, to begin with. Think of love in two ways. Suppose there are two requirements to be qualified as love. One requirement is to have goodwill and good intentions for someone and to wish that person the best. This means that we hope that person stops harming others and oneself but finds true joy and happiness that doesn’t depend on others’ suffering. The other requirement is to be open to the possibility of that person’s change of heart so that we can reconstruct and reframe our relationship with a changed version of that person. In other words, we keep our hope and longing for a reconciled relationship that is no longer harmful. These two requirements are applied from St. Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of love but are more specified in that the second requirement is not just our desire for union with the beloved. While we make ourselves open to a renewed relationship with someone who has hurt us, we expect that person to have a change of heart. This is indeed conditional but it is conditioned by the goodwill we have for that person because without that person’s own effort and action to change, we end up allowing harmful behaviors to continue, which would do more harm to others. Fulfilling these two requirements to concretely love someone doesn’t make our act of love any easier but certainly clearer. There are two steps to follow which would eventually lead us to be more loving and compassionate to others. How we take these steps then is our spiritual practice of contemplation. In this contemplation, we work with our breath for one biblical reason. As we breathe in and out mindfully, we receive the breath of God, the Holy Spirit breathing through us. We don’t merely breathe the air in and out but actively accept and allow the Holy Spirit to flow through our being. We’re consciously patterned and shaped by the flow of the Holy Spirit. This gives us the energy to have goodwill and good intentions for others, especially those who hurt us and to hope for a reconciled and renewed relationship with that person. As we breathe in and out the breath of God, which is the same breath Jesus breathed, we are opening ourselves to infinite possibilities of change in ourselves and others. In the moment of our human breath united with the divine breath, we are one with Christ. There’s no limit, no boundary, but the infinite goodwill and openness of God are available for all of us. Let’s not forget that we ourselves are included in Jesus’ farewell prayer. He continues to pray for us to be at one through the act of love. The way to join his prayer is to actively love and to train our minds by letting our breath dance with the breath of God. Jesus’ farewell prayer, after all, is an invitation to love without ceasing because he loves just like that even now. If there’s one question I believe every Christian should be able to answer while there are certainly more than one, it’s “What is the good news, the so-called gospel Jesus proclaimed?” To love God and neighbors as oneself is the greatest commandment, which is not the gospel itself. Jesus commands us to act on love which extends to teachings of no harm to others and oneself, forgiveness and reconciliation, compassion, etc. So, what’s our biblical response to the question? It is, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15; Matthew 3:2, 4:17) A more concrete version is St Luke’s: “The kingdom of God is among (or within) you.”
That the kingdom of God is within you isn’t just about God’s dwelling within every human being. While this inner focus of God’s presence in us invites us to contemplation and empowers our lives, this good news of Jesus has an external effect. This externally efficacious nature of the gospel is powerfully shown in the healing miracles of Jesus. This morning, we see Jesus curing a person who has been ill for 38 years and has no one to put him in the pool, Beth-zatha. What this miracle tells us about the gospel of Jesus is that God’s kingdom is also within this miserable person. Jesus’ gospel universally applies to every human being. Even if one’s circumstance is far from God’s indwelling, God is compassionately present. We can then think of the worst place or person. Even in that place or that person, God’s kingdom is within though it may not have been experienced at all there. This isn’t to say naively there’s something good in everyone but to expand our perception of God’s presence that God is ever-present in most undesirable, unlikeable places and persons. This divine presence becomes our hope for them. As Larry Gallick, SJ who is known as a special Jesuit, blind since childhood, provocatively said once, “Sometimes prayer is just letting God sit in the sh*t with you.” God’s kingdom, God’s presence, is too in the sh*t. Every healing miracle story points to the gospel of Jesus while we might easily get stuck in that miracle itself or the performer of that miracle. The latter view can foster a rather passive position, seeking supernatural support from God rather than doing our best to improve our social system better and more livable for people with disabilities or other psychosocial challenges. From our modern eyes, we should question why the man near the pool with 38 years of chronic illness, unable to move but lying down, has been neglected that long. This social, spiritual, and emotional neglect of the man continues in our time with the homeless who desperately need medical and psychiatric support. Yet again, the kingdom of God is within them. Our Christian goal would be to help them see it within themselves with their own eyes and encounter it within us. Jesus models us on how to point to the kingdom of God within the man lying near the pool. As we reflect on the dialogue between them, it’s brief and simple. Jesus asks the man’s intention to get well, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answers, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” It isn’t clear if he would like Jesus to carry him and put him into the pool at the right moment or if he would like Jesus to have compassion or pity on him for a miracle of cure. We at least know from his response to Jesus that he has either lost or depleted a sense of agency. There seems to be nothing left of his inner strength. Perhaps Jesus is an ounce of hope he’ll ever have. Jesus, however, too plainly says to the man near the pool, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." No sophisticated performance, no prayer, nothing. Jesus presumes that the man has the agency to stand up, take his mat, and walk on his own. In other words, Jesus believes that the kingdom of God is within the man. It’s like, “You have everything within yourself. Stop paralyzing yourself with chains of self-defeat, self-pity, lack of help and support from others, and despair. Stand up on your own. Take your mat since this is no longer your place. Walk and leave this place.” Two applications that we can take from the gospel lesson this morning: 1) Be painfully honest with ourselves to see what memories have chained us for 38 years or even longer. We can safely do this with our conviction of the gospel of Jesus that God’s presence is within us. This calls us into a persistent practice of contemplation. 2) Once we see God’s presence dwelling in us, which we can call the mystery of the incarnation, God becoming flesh, God embodying our flesh personally, our duty as Christians is to help those who are chained to experience God’s kingdom in themselves through us sharing our inner presence of God with them. My friends, where have you been lying down for 38 years? Where in your life have you been feeling powerless? Reframe how you connect with that wounded memory. Stand up, take your mat, and walk. And walk to those who are still lying down for 38 years. Do unto others as you would have Jesus do unto you. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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