The Cost of Peace

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” That sounds like something out of the mouth of a warlord or a conqueror. Something to strike fear into the hearts of those faced with the point of that sharp sword. A message of death and destruction. One certainly does not expect to hear such words from the Prince of Peace. Yet that is what our Lord says.

The world likes the baby Jesus. That Jesus is easy to handle. You can picture Him nursing at His mother's breast. You can imagine Him crying in the stable, under the watchful eye of the cattle and sheep. The world loves to sing carols like “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger”. This Jesus is easy to deal with because He is cute and cuddly and inoffensive.

This is the catholic Faith

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith.” With its opening sentence, the Athanasian Creed lays down the line regarding who will or will not be saved. Only those who hold the catholic faith can go to heaven. But what is the catholic faith? What does it mean to be catholic? To be catholic, in the true sense of the word, is much more than to be under the Bishop of Rome.

This is not a new question. In the fifth century, the Church was embroiled in a great many scandals and controversies, and a solution was sought as to what made one a part of the one holy catholic Church. What was the measuring rod that determined whether a teaching newly propounded was worthy of acceptance? To this question, St. Vincent of Lerins proposed an answer, accepted by the Church, which has been handed down to us under the name of the “catholic principle”. St. Vincent wrote, “In the catholic Church itself, every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”

Flowing Waters of Life

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pentecost was an event like none other. First, Jesus had told His disciples, “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” ( Luke 24:49). So they went back to Jerusalem and waited. But for what did they wait? They had no idea. Jesus gave no indication of what the “promise of my Father” was, nor did they know what it would mean to be “clothed with power”. The whole situation was rather odd.

And it only got more odd when the day of Pentecost actually happened. Luke records that a mighty wind swept through the house, and tongues of fire came to rest upon the disciples. Then they went out and began preaching about the resurrection of Jesus in the public square. Furthermore, they were preaching in every language of their hearers, languages they had never spoken before, possibly that they had never heard before. They experienced a “reset”, if you will, of the curse inflicted at Babel thousands of years before. And then the message - “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Salvation preached in the name of the man the Jews had murdered less than two months ago.

Kept in the Name

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

To be in the name of someone or something is no light matter. When the president of the United States of America speaks officially, he speaks in the name of 310 million Americans. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he speaks in the name of God, allegedly. When a lawyer enters a plea or brokers a deal, he speaks in the name of his client. In this spirit, the president of the Republic of Ireland is, by constitutional limitation, not allowed to speak officially or to leave Ireland without express permission of the Irish Parliament. To bear the name of someone is a weighty matter, and certainly even more so when it is the Name of God that you bear, which indeed you do.