A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 8, n. 23)
5th Sunday of Easter, Year C – May 2, 2010 *
“All Things New”
BIBLE READINGS
Acts 14:21-27 // Rv 21:1-5a // Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35
(N.B. Series 8 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 C 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 2. For reflections based on the Old Testament reading, open Series 5.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
The Easter season is a feast of newness. It is a celebration of a life renewed and infused with hope here on earth. Jesus, on the night of the Last Supper, offered his disciples a radically new command: “Love one another as I have loved you” (cf. Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35). The sacrificial, life-giving love of Jesus is the absolute standard for the love we bear one another. It is the ultimate identity of Christian disciples. To love as Jesus did – he who died for the salvation of all – is therefore to love unconditionally, without restrictions.
According to the authors of the Days of the Lord, vol. 3: “Jesus’ love for all people is rooted in the love that binds him to the Father and reveals the Father’s love for us … This love appears as a way of life … To walk faithfully in this way is constantly to be a certain way, blossoming from day to day in the peace and joy that nothing can harm; it is to bear fruit for time and eternity. Happy the disciples of Christ whose charitable life, as Jesus, gladdens the heart of God and humanity!”
The “radically new” Christian love that the apostles experienced impelled them to go and preach the Easter tidings to all peoples of the earth (cf. Acts 14:21-27). They were efficacious instruments of God’s saving love that encompasses all peoples and creation. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and powered by the Easter experience of Christ “loving them to the end”.
Harold Buetow comments: “The apostles’ love, now grown to a height it never achieved in the Gospels, brought about the beginning of the new City of God. The instructions the Apostles were giving, the prayers the early Christians were offering, and the common life they were living were contributing to the development of the Church. Today’s reading reports that Paul and Barnabas, by the end of their first missionary journey of preaching a new power of good – the power of Easter – let loose in the world, had strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith … They learned that it was God’s will to open the Church to the Gentiles. The people saw the necessity of Christian fellowship, and to that end, with prayer and fasting, they appointed presbyters in each Church. For all that they did, the apostles never took credit, but reported what God had done with them. Through the traveling missionaries, God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, thus offering hope for the future.”
Saint John’s fascinating vision of “a new heaven and a new earth … a new city Jerusalem” (Rv 21: 1-5a) was meant to bolster the faith of people living through hard times and to foster confident hope in those facing grief and crisis. With the saving event of the Lord’s resurrection, a new age has dawned. Faith in the Risen Lord, the victorious Lamb-Shepherd, enables us to see God at work even in the here and now – transforming and renewing all things. The vision of the future “totally renewed” inspires today’s faith community to hope for the day when all signs of death are gone forever and to be themselves agents of cosmic renewal.
The biblical scholars Eduardo Aren Kuckerlhorn, et. al. explicate: “A new heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem; definitively all things are made new (21:5) is the joyous affirmation of having achieved the utopia (21:6). It is not John who assures us of its achievement, since he is but a witness of one who is more authoritative than he: the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (21:6). The old order has passed away and what is new has appeared. The precise nature of this newness is explained by the voice the seer hears. First there is a negative description there will be no death, or mourning, or wailing, or pain (21:4), and the sea (symbol of all that is agitated and unstable) no longer exists (21:1). But the reasoning for all this has to do with solidarity, the tenderness of God-with-us who came down to be with God’s people, to wipe away their tears and make them children of God.”
I met the Maryknoll missionary, Fr. Douglas Venne in the Philippines in the early 90’s when he went there for a visit. I was struck by his quiet, self-effacing way and gentle demeanor. He worked in the Philippines for some time. He then spent many beautiful years in Bangladesh, incarnating the renewing love of Jesus Christ through his ministry of presence. He was diagnosed with leukemia. On December 28, 2009, he passed on to the “new heaven and new earth”, to the “new city Jerusalem”, the eternal dwelling of God. In this special Year for Priests, we present some vignettes of Fr. Venne’s life as he gives witness to the exquisite tenderness of God and of the divine indwelling (cf. David Aguije, “To Live as Jesus Did” in MARYKNOLL, March 2010, p. 24-27).
The 81-year old missioner, reflective, jovial and deep, says his ministry is one of witness, of presence. “My desire is to be a man of silence and prayer”, says Venne of his ministry of more than 30 years in Bangladesh. Recalling his arrival there in December, the missioner says, “We were a group of Christians traveling on Thai Airways to a Muslim country. I’ll never forget that as the airplane landed in Dhaka, the song that played over the loudspeaker was Amazing Grace.” Inspired by the life of Charles de Foucauld, Venne came to Bangladesh to live a life of poverty among the Muslim and Hindu peasants.
Venne frequently travels to Dhaka to handle administrative details of the three Maryknoll priests, including himself, serving in Bangladesh. Once a month, Venne and Maryknoll Fathers William McIntire and Robert McHill visit with Maryknoll Sisters Miriam Perlewitz and Joan Westhues at the school the Sisters founded and have directed since 2001. There, the small community of Maryknoll missioners share their experiences in ministry, celebrate the Eucharist and enjoy a meal together, “a banquet”, in the priests’ words, that the Sisters prepare with care.
In Pouli, far from the chaos of the city, Venne invites visitors to his home, or shack, as he calls it. The simple hut is hidden among narrow roads flanked by trees that separate fields of crops and the small ponds where fish are raised. “Welcome to my shack”, says Venne. He explains that the 18-by-10-foot dwelling, with its mud floor that has to be repaired every two months, woven bamboo walls and tin roof was built in 1994 on the land of a Muslim neighbor, who doesn’t charge him rent. “My door is always open, except when I’m sleeping or praying”, he says.
Venne keeps his altar in a corner of the shack. His beddings hangs on one of the walls” a small rug, bed spread, sheets and mosquito net. Also hanging on the wall are his kitchen utensils: a frying pan and some small pots. He keeps medicines and children’s toys in two trunks, and spices and food in paint cans. He is thus prepared, he explains, to confront the three enemies that prowl around his house: rats, ants and termites. On another wall, a carton serves as a mural for photos of his family and friends. A shelf hanging from the ceiling holds his small library; he came up with this invention after termites ate through his two bookcases. Two skylights cut into the roof of the hut and covered with plastic keep the shack well lit during the day. An inflated globe hangs from the ceiling, and the missioner says he likes to think “all the people of the world live in my tiny shack with me”.
From that shack, the priest, who lost an eye in a car accident in 1968 while serving in the Philippines, carries on his ministry of presence. “I’m now something like the village grandfather”, says Venne, who for years worked shoulder to shoulder with local farmers, his only purpose to live and serve the poor as Jesus did in Nazareth, he explains.
Venne also visits neighboring villages, where he offers literacy classes, in Bengali, to women. The missioner, a Maryknoll priest for 50 years, is concluding a six-month course with a group of women that has gone on for four years. His friends, the Taize Brothers, who live in neighboring Mymensingh, say the important thing is that Venne is there, building relationships. Venne also serves as spiritual guide for two L’Arche communities in Mymensingh founded by the Taize Brothers. L’Arche communities are small communities in which people of faith live together with those who have developmental disorders.
Although he has gained the affection and appreciation of his neighbors, being the only Christian in Pouli has not been easy for Venne. Once, when he was working in the fields, the chief of a local village asked him, “Are you a Jesuit?” Venne answered no, but that he was something like a Jesuit. “Are you here to convert our people?” the man asked. “As far as I can remember, our prophet Jesus told us to go out and help the poor, and I have chosen to do that, and if someone draws nearer to Allah because I am working among them, then that is why I have come”, the missioner replied. “I can accept that”, said the man, who has remained Venne’s friend ever since.
Because of his option, Venne lives, dresses and eats like the poor in Bangladesh. “My aim is to help people with my own two hands, not by way of projects or subsidies; it is to be among the people as their brother; it is to want them to become better Muslims”, he says with humility. “My life is a life of prayer. I’m not very good at it, but I keep on trying.”
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
How do we respond to Christ’s love imperative: “Love one another as I have loved you?” Do we experience and manifest “radical newness” as we try to live it?
Do I have the apostolic zeal shown by Paul and Barnabas in spreading the Easter tidings of the radical salvation won for us by Jesus Christ, in the mystery of his death and rising? Am I energized by my own personal experience of the Gospel?
Do I allow the vision of the “new heaven … new earth … new city Jerusalem” to strengthen me through daily trials and struggles? Do I believe that the promise of God’s abiding, intimate presence among his people is already being fulfilled progressively in the “here and now”?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: Lord Jesus,
we thank you for your great love command.
May we have the courage, strength and the grace to love as you did.
We know that by the strength of the Holy Spirit,
it is possible to incarnate your transforming love in our “here and now”.
Paul and Barnabas was powered by the Easter experience
and energized by your life-giving love.
Open our vision to the “new heaven … new earth … new city Jerusalem”.
Let us be a healing presence in today’s wounded world.
Teach us to incarnate the tenderness of God-with-us
as you marvelously did.
Give us the grace to wipe away the tears of those who mourn
and to witness your promise: “Behold, I make all things new.”
You are the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end.
You are the victorious Lamb-Shepherd.
We adore you and love you;
we praise and glorify you, now and forever.
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.
“Behold, I make all things new!” (Rv 21:5a)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: Pray that the power of the Easter event may be experienced more and more in today’s world. By your acts of love and justice, by your ministry of presence and daily witness of Christian love, help the people to focus on the vision of “new heaven … new earth … new city Jerusalem”.
ACTION PLAN: That we may experience more fully the tenderness of God-with-us, 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 C, vol. 6, # 23).
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