Inspiration and Reconciliation April 23

Prayer

Jesus, we so much want to get ahead. Teach us that the way to get ahead in your Kingdom is not the way of Survivor. Your Amazing Race is to vote people onto our islands. To help those who are not the fleetest to cross the finish line first. To serve those, not to compete and beat them.

To get ahead in your Kingdom, we need support. Send forth your Holy Spirit and the Cloud of Witnesses to inspire us in our work today.

To get ahead in your Kingdom, we need forgiveness when we stumble and stray. Send us your disciples of today to forgive us our trespasses and give us the grace and love to forgive those who sin against us.

Help us to put aside the rules of this world which fill us with doubts and tempt us to pursue false ideals. Instead, let us recognize you as our Lord and our God without having to put our hands in your sides because we see your body amongst us in close moments with the anawim – the least among us. Amen.

Study

Get to know Jesus through today's scripture for the Second Sunday of Easter. http://www.usccb.org/nab/042306.shtml

On this Second Sunday of the Easter season, we look ahead to Pentecost. With the Holy Spirit as companion and guide now that Jesus is preparing for his Ascension, Jesus sends the apostles into the world. At our confirmation, each of us also was likewise commissioned into this missionary spirit of the Church.

In addition, during this visit, Jesus institutes the sacrament of reconciliation and blesses the Apostles to forgive sins.

As Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit onto the disciples, we are reminded of God breathing life into Adam. As Thomas puts his hand in the wounds of Jesus, he[1] also harkens us back to the creation of humanity in God’s image and a companion for the journey formed from Adam’s rib.

In addition to the double sacramental close moment with Christ in the Upper Room, today’s first reading gives us a view of how Christian community was formed in the early days of the church. There was no Protestant work ethic. Each work according to ability and shared all with the church.

Friday we saw Jesus ask the disciples to bring all their fish to Him in a complete offertory. Today, we also are asked to give to the Church and to help those “least among us” in the persons of the orphans, widows and “anawin.” This communitarian society bring up images of women and men living in poverty, chastity and obedience to an order such as those started by St. Francis and St. Benedict. In addition, recalls the image of modern Christian communities of Catholic Workers or Bruderhof communities living in voluntary poverty to serve through hospitality and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy the needs of the poor. They also witness to the Gospel values daily in today’s society.

What we don’t see in today’s first reading from Acts 4 is capitalism at its best and worst. Sharing is the order of the community. Everything, every fish the early Church caught, was offered up for the good of all. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we even gave one-tenth as much?

Who are the anawim?

Anawim is the plural form of an Old Testament Hebrew word which is variously translated as "poor", "afflicted", "humble", or "meek". It is the Anawim, "the lost and the forgotten ones", to whom Jesus refers in his beautiful beatitudes on The Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven", and "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth". ( Mt5:3,5) What a revolutionary thought: God loves everyone!

In a wonderful foreshadowing of these blessings, the prophet Zephaniah (Zeph 2:3, 3:12-19) relays God's message that, even in the worst of times there will remain " a faithful remnant" in our midst. God's Remnant then, are the people who find their security and treasures, not in the trappings of the material world, but in God. This faithful remnant, the Anawim, guarantees the future survival of all God's people, by containing within themselves the very keys to the kingdom itself. For is it not in how we treat and welcome the Stranger at the Gate, "the least of these", which truly bring us into the very meaning and heart of The Cosmic Christ: "Love One Another".

In both The Great Commandment, and throughout Matthew 25, we are commanded by Jesus to aid our neighbors - to constantly strive to redress the grievances of those who are abandoned or alone, alienated and marginalized, to protect the dignity of the poor and to stand with the oppressed as they attempt to become free of that which oppresses them. Christ emptied himself and became poor, so that we might become rich. Jesus constantly ministered to the poor and the sick, to the outcasts of society.[2]

Action

It all starts with faith but can not die on the vine without our actions in the world that show the love of our enemies and those who persecute us.
[1] http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/john/john20.htm#foot15
[2] http://www.leeellis.com/Anawim.html