A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 9, n. 27)
6th Sunday of Easter, Year A – May 29, 2011 *
“Raised to Life in the Spirit”
BIBLE READINGS
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17 // I Pt 3:15-18 // Jn 14:15-21
(N.B. Series 9 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year A from the perspective of the Second Reading. For reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year C based on the Gospel reading, please scroll up to the “ARCHIVES” above and open Series 3. For reflections based on the Old Testament reading, open Series 6.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
The Easter liturgy not only makes us feel the intense saving initiative of our loving God, but also the deep demands expected of us as “resurrection people” and the inner strength we need to live up to it. In today’s Gospel reading (Jn 14:15-21), Jesus assures his disciples, “I live and you will live”. With it is the promise, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate”. Through the gift of the Spirit, Jesus continues to be present to his disciples, giving them hope and comfort. Despite his physical absence, Jesus remains powerfully alive among his followers through the Holy Spirit, the Easter gift.
Harold Buetow comments: “The Holy Spirit – the best gift in love God can give us – stands beside us, comforts us when we ask, helps us in difficult times, and speaks on our behalf when we are in need. Although people with no religious faith comfort one another, our fellowship with the Spirit is deeper and more awesome … All spiritual life, all holiness comes from the Father through Jesus by the action of the Holy Spirit. From time to time, if we have the sensitivity to perceive it, we are aware of what is happening as we truly share the Spirit with one another. The Spirit is present in our common kindnesses, our loving concern for one another, and bursts of inspiration … The Spirit’s coming will happen whenever we love God enough to keep his commands.”
In the First Reading (Acts 8:5-8, 14-17) we intuit the powerful energy by which the Holy Spirit propelled the first Christians to cross the threshold into the non-Jewish world and evangelize. Saint Luke’s account of Philip’s mission to Samaria demonstrates that the diffusion of the Gospel was linked to the Holy Spirit. Margaret Nutting Ralph observes: “Luke’s purpose seems to be to emphasize that under the guidance of the Spirit, new understandings and new growth occurred in such a way that unity with the apostolic witness and tradition (imposition by the apostles or the twelve) was maintained.”
This Sunday’s Second Reading (I Pt 3:15-18) delineates the need to participate in Christ’s redemptive suffering as well as the vivifying role of the Holy Spirit, “Put to death in the flesh, Christ was brought to life in the Spirit.” The biblical scholar Jose Cervantes Gabarron explicates: “Christ in his passion is the savior and model for Christians; it is he who brings us to communion with God and who shows us the level of love to which Christians are called by the will of God: he loved even to his passion, always doing good. (…) Christ, subjected by humankind, experiences a violent death, in the process he also experiences the vivifying force of the Spirit that rests on him and leads him to life and glory. This is the event that is at the origin of the salvation expressed and celebrated in the baptism of Christians.”
The following powerful testimony about some Church workers and martyrs in El Salvador illustrates what it means to suffer for “doing good” - in intimate participation in the redemptive passion of Christ, who was raised to life in the Spirit (cf. Madeline Dorsey, M.M. “Remembering Martyrs 30 Years Later” in MARYKNOLL, December 2010, p. 32-25).
The memory of the events of 1980 will always be painful yet beautiful, as the faith of our loved ones who died speaks out to us even today. That I survived will always remain a mystery to me. I was working with the poor and could very well have met death like my colleagues. No other Maryknoll Sister knew El Salvador’s complexities nor understood up close the government’s undeclared war on its own poor people as I did, having witnessed so much violence in the year I was alone serving 8,000 people in a poor colony in the Santa Ana Diocese. The newly founded death squad would come during the night and take away our youth and often their fathers. The poor, the youth and those working to help them meet their faith needs and basic economic necessities became the endangered species.
Lucky for me, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and Lay Missioner Jean Donovan, both on the Cleveland mission team, were serving an hour and a half away in La Libertad. They worried about me being alone. Jean would call and insist I not skip one of our regularly scheduled prayer/play days.
In 1979 when the Maryknoll Sisters leadership team asked for volunteers to join us in El Salvador, Carla Piette, Ita Ford, Terry Alexander and Maura Clarke responded. Carla arrived at the very moment Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot at the Offertory of his Mass on March 24. The shock was beyond description, not only in El Salvador but worldwide. Archbishop Romero had repeatedly denounced the violence. Now the voice of the poor was silenced. Terry Alexander joined us for the archbishop’s burial on Palm Sunday and Ita arrived a short time later to work with Carla in Chalatenango.
Death struck Carla first, on August 23. Ita had waited for Carla – gifted, lively, strong, funny – the only driver of the only jeep they had, to return from her work. It was the rainy season and the river might rise suddenly as they were returning a freed government prisoner to his home. Fording the river, the jeep was knocked over. Before drowning herself, Carla pushed Ita free. Ita, serious but with a dry sense of humor, was devastated by Carla’s death.
Maura generously joined Ita in the archdiocesan social work for internally endangered and displaced refugees. Gentle, thoughtful Maura, in El Salvador only three-and-a-half months, would go to her martyrdom with Ita, Dorothy and Jean.
Before going to our Maryknoll Sisters meeting in Nicaragua at Thanksgiving time, I sent a cable to Ita and Maura saying Terry and I would try to come back on the flight with them, since dangers were heightened with the recent murders of six Democratic leaders in San Salvador. Unfortunately the flight couldn’t be arranged. When Terry and I arrived at El Salvador’s airport, our dear friends, Dorothy, known as “an Alleluia from head to toe”, and Jean were there to pick us up. They talked about their dinner at the home of U.S. Ambassador Robert White the night before. We told them that Ita and Maura were coming on a later flight and would get to La Libertad by taxi, but they insisted on going back to the airport to pick them up.
Now I share our death, entombment and resurrection story, which is the only way I can think of those days of their being missing, the long search through prayer, phone calls, contact with Church and governments.
On Dec. 3 in mid-morning Father Paul Schindler, head of the Cleveland mission team, called Terry through our telephone-telegram office in Santa Ana to ask: “Where are the girls?” Jean and Dorothy were expected at a parish meeting and Paul had already checked with the Asuncion Sisters in San Salvador and Chalatenango. He asked us to come to La Libertad to help in the search.
As Terry and I surveyed the burned up minibus the missioners had driven, a man said, “This is the work of the guerrillas.” I promptly replied: “The opposition would never harm missionaries who are helping feed the hungry women and children caught in the fighting in the hills, and getting the little ones and the aged to refugee centers set up by the Archdiocese in San Salvador.”
The search went on until noon on December 4, when a farmer told his pastor that he had been forced to bury “four unidentified white women”. We “flew” in Paul’s jeep to the very concealed area where they were reported buried.
Then came the painful extraction of the four – piled one on top of the other. Jean was first, her lovely face destroyed. Dorothy had a tranquil look. Maura’s face was serene but seemed to utter a silent cry, and last little Ita. I went forward to wipe the dirt from her cheek and place her arm at her side. We Sisters fell to our knees in reverence. I felt it a Resurrection moment. Yes, their dead and abused bodies were there, but I knew their souls were with their loving Savior.
Annually, on Dec. 2 the churchwomen are celebrated with liturgies, dramas and processions. In the United States works named for the four women aid underprivileged students and adults. In El Salvador a project for women and children with healthy agricultural training bears their names – as do many young women.
They live, and I can only thank God for having known, loved and appreciated these wonderful women, and their total self-gift.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
Do we trust in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit, the other Advocate? Are we receptive to the action of the Spirit prompting us to carry out the Christian love commands?
Do we allow the Holy Spirit to animate us in the Gospel proclamation? Are our missionary initiatives linked with the sanctifying power of the Spirit, the Easter gift?
Do we participate in the redemptive passion of Christ Jesus, who was “put to death in the flesh, but was brought to life in the Spirit”?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: O gracious Father, our almighty God,
we give you thanks and praise
for the saving mystery that Jesus, your Servant-Son,
accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Easter event released the tremendous energy
of life in Christ and in the Spirit.
We believe in Christ’s affirmation,
“I live and you will live.”
We trust fully in the other Advocate
who unites our trials and sufferings
with your Son’s redemptive passion,
transforming them into moments of resurrection.
Make us truly an Easter people,
who are Spirit-filled and powerful witnesses of hope
in today’s troubled world.
Grant that we may always image in the here and now
the wonderful mystery of Christ Jesus,
who was “put to death in the flesh but was brought to life in the Spirit”.
He lives and reigns forever and ever.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit.” (cf. I Pt 3:18)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: Pray that we may courageously give witness to the saving hope founded on Christ’s death and rising. Resolve to make the power of the Risen Lord be felt more and more by fighting off injustice and by promoting the needs of the poor, the defenseless and the oppressed in today’s society.
ACTION PLAN: That we may experience deeply the mystery of “life in the Spirit” make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year A, vol. 7, # 27).
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US