Remain in Him

January 2, 2009

Memorial of Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church

As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false; just as it taught you, remain in him. And now, children, remain in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not be put to shame by him at his coming. 1 John 2:27-28

John answered them, "I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie." John 1:26-27

Piety

The Lord gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who understand. He reveals deep and hidden things, for the light dwells in him. It is one and the same spirit who produces all these gifts, distributing them to each as he wills. He reveals.

Lord God, you bestowed upon your Church the radiant example and teaching of Saints Basil and Gregory. Assist us that we may humbly accept your truth and live by it in faithful love. This we ask of you through our fellowship with Jesus Christ. Amen.

(From Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary, Proper of the Saints.)

Study

The old folk song lyrics say, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

As the notes to the New American Bible explain, the ending of our first reading echoes this sentiment. Our actions reflect our true relation to Jesus and to the Father. Do we remain on His side or are we drawn to the world? Are we drawn to a relationship with Jesus or to a relationship with something else? Is it Christ versus the world? Or is it Christ versus the Church?

Some would ask, “How can we be friends of an institution?” We can not. We are in fact called into relationship with Jesus. In St. John’s account of the Last Supper, Jesus says that we have become his friends. “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.” John 15:14-16

Institutions are made by humans and sometimes they fail miserably. By some counts, the late Pope John Paul II issued more than 100 apologies for the actions or inactions of the Church. At the time, many churches were apologizing for their actions and inactions. The recent past has witnessed many statements of repentance by religious groups:

· The Southern Baptist Convention repented of their past support for slavery and racial segregation. They asked African-Americans for forgiveness of the denomination's past actions and for any residual racism left today.

· The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America apologized for the viciously anti-Jewish statements made by Martin Luther, the main leader of the Protestant Reformation.

· The United Methodist Church apologized for the brutality of a lay Methodist preacher who led a massacre of Native Americans during the Civil War.

· The Roman Catholic Church issued a document “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.” It recognized the relative inactivity and silence of many Roman Catholics during the Nazi Holocaust.

Today, the Church honors two saints who helped it through some rough times in the past. According to the Crossroads Initiative, these two men began their friendship while away at school and later became bishops who were the backbone of Catholic Orthodoxy during a period of doctrinal struggle and confusion. Gregory presided over the second ecumenical council, held at Constantinople, whose great achievement was the completion of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that the Catholic Church recites each Sunday and the definition of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. These Cappadocian Fathers, both Doctors of the Church, proved to be some of the greatest and most influential teachers of all time, honored by both East and West, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic. In a sermon by St. Gregory, he characterized their actions this way:

Our single object and ambition was virtue, and a life of hope in the blessings that are to come; we wanted to withdraw from this world before we departed from it. With this end in view we ordered our lives and all our actions. We followed the guidance of God’s law and spurred each other on to virtue. If it is not too boastful to say, we found in each other a standard and rule for discerning right from wrong.

Different men have different names, which they owe to their parents or to themselves, that is, to their own pursuits and achievements. But our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians.

Action

Have you included your Cursillo plan for Piety, Study and Action in your New Year’s resolution? Have you even made any resolutions?

If you have, write them down and look back on them every two months to see if you are on track.