Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
As you enter into prayer with these readings, I encourage you to read Acts 17:16-21, also. I think those verses provide important context to the assigned passage. We find St Paul proclaiming the Gospel in Athens to a very tough audience. At that time, Athens was alive in its heyday as a center for philosophical thought, and a metropolis filled with idols, temples, and statues to the pantheon of Greek gods that people worshipped and consulted for guidance in their daily lives. The philosophers passed their time in the marketplace and on city streets debating with one another and listening to the ideas of the respected teachers.
These philosophers were the intellectuals of their day; highly esteemed thinkers. Paul begins by commending their religiosity: I see that in every respect you are very religious. In their zealous attempts to cover all their bases and not leave any gods out of their religious system (lest they incur the overlooked god’s wrath!), they even worshipped an “unknown god.” If Paul showed up to observe our lives today, would he find us to be “religious,” zealously covering our bases? Or would he find us to be alive in the power of the Gospel living lives consumed by the fire of Christ’s Word and Christ’s love?
The Greek philosophers received the Gospel intellectually. I believe today’s first reading calls us to examine the way in which we receive the Gospel. God is not looking for “religious” people who are intellectually stimulated by God’s Word and find it interesting. I believe God seeks passionate worshippers who receive the Word with conviction, allowing it to form us, define us, wreck us, transform us. On the day of Pentecost, the people listening to Peter’s preaching of the Gospel were “cut to the heart and said . . . ‘what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37). Every Mass we have the potential to be cut to the heart by the power of Christ and His Word. The writer of Hebrews declares, For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Heb. 4:12). As we pray these readings today, can we open ourselves to the penetration of God’s Word into our very being? Can we receive it, not just intellectually, but as the very power and presence of Christ? Later on, Paul would write, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16).
The fact that the Athenians erected an altar to an unknown god underscores the restlessness of their hearts. St Augustine wrote in The Confessions, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” What are the things in your life and mine that become idols as they consume our time, our attention, our worries, and even our “religious” practice? Today, can we throw open the doors to our restless hearts and invite the Holy Spirit to consume us more completely with God’s love? Paul quotes two different poets with whom his audience would have been quite familiar, coopting their poetic verse to describe the reality of our existence. For in him we live and move and have our being . . . We are his offspring. As we go about our ordinary lives today, we do so quite extraordinarily in God! Our physical existence, the entire realm of our emotions, our very essence, our will, our intellect – all of it resides in God. Confident that we are beloved children of God, can we allow God’s Word to shake us, move us, and transform us in new and remarkable ways this day?
In all their debates and conversations, the Greek philosophers sought to understand and define the virtues that should govern human life. Truth and justice were paramount among these virtues. In today’s Gospel text, Jesus promises that the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, will guide us to all truth. This promise is just as sure and certain for you and me as it was for Jesus’ disciples. When we pray the Gospel in our own homes or hear the Gospel proclaimed at Mass, we can be confident that the Spirit will guide us into all truth. Jesus has more to say to us! This truth is not merely knowledge of things to which we give intellectual ascent. This truth is knowledge of the Truth Himself – our Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whom we live and are moved and have our being! The Spirit continues Christ’s teaching by keeping the Word alive to us both in proclamation and in relationship. As we approach Pentecost in these next couple weeks, it’s a wonderful opportunity to make ourselves more receptive to the penetrating power of God present in the Word. In these last days of the Easter season, let us listen differently to the Gospel, with hearts, minds, souls, and spirits wide open to what Jesus is saying to us.
Come, Holy Spirit, have your way in me. Jesus, transform me by your Word. Thank you, Father, for holding me safely in your all-consuming love.
- Elizabeth Wourms