Feast of St Bartholomew, Apostle
Readings: Revelations 21.9b-14 / Ps 145 (R/v 12) / John 1.45-51
We have traversed and traveled through this city this morning,
meandering through her streets and her parkways on our trolley car,
stopping at sights and places to see and to hear and to experience
her history and her people, her rhythm of life,
her je ne sais quoi…that special something…that spirit that is Boston.
But we have also been on a pilgrimage of sorts, have we not?
Beginning and ending at, and visiting along the way, parishes
holy spaces where stories were shared with us
of how good Christian men and women, young and old,
have for generations come, and still continue today to also come,
to worship, to share God’s goodness, to grow in God’s ways,
to be a community of God’s people.
And among all these stories
about Chelsea and Dorchester, about the Back Bay and the South End,
about the city of Boston and the local church,
weren’t there also stories about how Bostonians, particularly, Catholic Bostonians,
who having arrived poor from many faraway lands and made it good,
many decades ago and even today,
have reached out
to lift up their neighbors from poverty and hardship,
to protect the young from crime and drugs,
to provide others with shelter and opportunities,
indeed to welcome one and all into their amidst
as one like them, like you and me,
as God’s own?
If you and I glimpsed in these stories
the quiet presence of God laboring
to build this city over time,
to comfort her people and to raise them up,
to be in their midst and for their wellbeing,
then what you and I have been gifted with this morning
is the reality of what we ourselves voiced
as our response during the responsorial psalm:
“Your friends make known, O Lord,
the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.”
Indeed, we have had an experience of God’s Kingdom,
-- as we will keep on experiencing it in the coming months --
in this time and in this place you and I are called to:
to live and study, to pray and play,
to minister to others and to let them minister to us
in this city, in our community, in our school
and in our different mission fields.
And I’d like to think that we are being called into this experience
because this is what our years of formation in Faber Jesuit
can also be about:
about being formed as friends of the Lord and as friends in the Lord
to make known to one another first
and then to the many we will be sent to care for
the splendor of God’s kingdom
in our midst, in our lives, in our times.
And isn’t this, after all, what we are also celebrating today?
The feast of an apostle is not just a celebration of the apostle’s life and faith.
It also invites to us to joyfully remember the apostolic mission.
To joyfully remember that this mission is
-- as it is described in our gospel reading today --
what Philip does for Nathaniel:
to announce the good news of encountering Jesus
and to invite him to Jesus.
It is also to joyfully remember that this invitation only comes alive
when we help others do what Nathaniel does:
to meet and know Jesus, to believe in Jesus,
to grow in friendship with Jesus.
More significantly, today’s feast invites us
to trustingly believe
that this apostolic mission is what our life and studies
-- here in Boston, at the STM, with one another at Faber Jesuit --
will better prepare us for,
we who have long been in formation for this.
And perhaps, the grace of this kind of preparation
is rooted both
in our openness to keep on sensing God’s kingdom
breaking into our ordinary everydayness of our lives
at this time and in this place
and
in our generosity to share these experiences,
these stories of God’s kingdom in our midst,
to draw others to Jesus
and not hoard them like we sometimes do with material gains.
And so, my brothers,
as we look ahead to the next few months and years
of being together, of praying, studying and ministering together,
what stories will you and I tell
to the many at home about our time here
about the Boston we live in,
about our Faber Jesuit community we pray and play in,
about our studies that we will try to enflesh in our ministries,
about the daily lives you and I will live?
What stories about us that will give our families, friends and brother Jesuits
enough spiritual light and perhaps much delight to say,
“Yes, Lord, my friend, this Jesuit,
has made known
the glorious splendor of your kingdom”?
preached during orientation at Faber Jesuit Community
photo: boston in autumn from mount auburn by adsj
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