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Embracing the Great Commission

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In today’s Gospel, Jesus can be found giving His final instructions to the apostles before His Ascension. This is their great commissioning. Jesus has prepared them to continue His mission once He has returned to His Father in heaven. He has spent forty days with them since His Resurrection, opening their eyes to all of Scripture, preparing them for the day that He will no longer be with them. He has already died and risen from the grave; now it is time to return to the Father. They have spent the past three years with Him, learning from Him as they followed Him. But now they know that they will be on their own, and they’re scared. 

The apostles worship Jesus Christ, but they also doubt. What can they possibly doubt at this point? They witnessed countless miracles. They saw Jesus make the lame walk, the blind see. They were there when He raised Lazarus from the dead. They were there when He rose from the dead Himself after three days in the grave. What can they possibly doubt now? 

Maybe they doubt themselves. Maybe they doubt that they will be able to carry on Christ’s mission once He’s gone. Maybe they doubt that they will have what it takes to proclaim the Good News once they’re on their own. So Jesus offers His help. He tells them exactly what He wants them to do once He’s gone- “Go…and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Jesus tells them what He expects them to do once He’s gone. They are to go out and make disciples. They are to baptize these new disciples. And they are to teach them. They will be evangelists. They will be priests. They will be catechists. God has big plans for these eleven men, the first of their kind. Jesus Christ gives them the guidance they’ll need to continue His mission once He’s gone. But that’s not all He does for them. 

Before Jesus goes, He promises that He will remain with His disciples always. Even though He is returning to His Father, He will not abandon His followers. He will not leave us alone. He does this in two ways. First, He sends the Holy Spirit, which we all receive in Baptism. Second, He gives us His very Body and Blood, which we receive in the Eucharist. Because in the end, when He calls His apostles, He is calling all of us. He is calling all of His disciples. We are all called to go and evangelize. We can even baptize if the situation necessitates it. 

And Jesus Christ will remain with us always, to the end of time itself. That was the final promise Jesus made to us, and He does not break His promises. 

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Shannon Whitmore currently lives in northwestern Virginia with her husband, Andrew, and their two children, John and Felicity. When she is not caring for her children, Shannon enjoys writing for her blog, Love in the Little Things, reading fiction, and freelance writing. She has experience serving in the areas of youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, and marriage enrichment.

Featured Image Credit: II ragazzo, https://www.cathopic.com/photo/13491-iniciacion-cristiana

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We Were Made to Serve

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In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ talk of slaves and masters can seem a bit controversial- especially since He seems to suggest that slaves are lesser than their masters, rather than equal. In today’s world, we want to hear Jesus tell us that slaves are equal in dignity to their masters, or even better, that slavery is a reprehensible evil that must be abolished immediately. That would be the social justice Jesus that we all know and love. 

But Jesus is not talking about human slaves and human masters. He is talking about us and God. We are the slaves, and God is our Master. We are lesser than God. We will never be greater than our Master. We are called slaves because we are meant to serve. That is what we were made for- we were made to serve.

“Serve” is a beautiful word in the Hebrew language. It can also mean “work” and “worship.” Our work is our worship. Our service is our worship. We were made to worship God. We were made to love Him. We are slaves of love. Our entire being longs to worship God, to love Him with our bodies and souls. We are made to serve our Master, a Master who loves us enough to allow His only begotten Son to die for us. 

Jesus, the Son of God, came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). God became man, became a slave to show man what it means to serve. Jesus shows us all what it means to be a slave, what it means to serve. Jesus Christ, despite being God, got down on his hands and knees and washed the feet of his apostles. That’s what it means to serve. It means giving our lives for Love, whether that means living our life for Him or dying for Him. Our life and our death have the ability to be acts of worship. 

But there is more. Jesus calls us friends, not slaves. The Master became a slave so that the slaves might become like the Master. God became man so that man might become like God. Jesus Christ became human so that we might be friends. And not even just friends, but brothers, and therefore heirs of heaven like Christ Himself. That is Love in its truest, deepest, form. God came down to earth to show us what it would take to get to heaven. And now we just need to follow Him. Serve like Him. Worship like Him. Love like Him. So maybe being slaves for Christ isn’t so bad after all. 

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Shannon Whitmore currently lives in northwestern Virginia with her husband, Andrew, and their two children, John and Felicity. When she is not caring for her children, Shannon enjoys writing for her blog, Love in the Little Things, reading fiction, and freelance writing. She has experience serving in the areas of youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, and marriage enrichment.

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A Transfiguration of Body and Soul

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In today’s Gospel reading, we hear the story of Christ’s transfiguration on Mt. Tabor. Jesus brings his inner circle of followers, Peter, James, and John, with him as He heads up the mountain to pray. Then, before their eyes, Jesus Christ is transfigured, and they behold the glorified Body of Christ, a foreshadowing of the resurrection that is to come. They behold the risen Christ, but they are also given a glimpse of the eternal life they too will receive at the end of time. 

As they watch, Moses and Elijah appear before them. According to Scripture, Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, body and soul. And according to one Jewish tradition, Moses was assumed into heaven, body and soul, upon his death. So it’s appropriate that these are the two figures who appear with Christ at the transfiguration. They behold the splendor of the risen Christ and the promise of the resurrection of the body at the end of time. 

But Christ is not a mere mortal whose flesh has been transfigured. He is God made flesh, and as Peter, James, and John witness the transfiguration of Christ, they experience the desire to hold on to this moment. They beg Jesus to permit them to build three tents on the mountain so that they might remain with Jesus Christ, Moses, and Elijah. The Lord is the fulfillment of the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) of the Old Testament, the Old Covenant. The three apostles are in the presence of the New Covenant that is to come, and like any spiritual high, they do not want to leave. But Christ instead sends them down the mountain and back into the world. 

We might not have had the opportunity to behold the transfigured or risen Christ in the flesh with our own eyes, but we all know what that spiritual high feels like. We have all had our “mountaintop” experiences of God- on retreat, in Eucharistic adoration, or during the Mass. We have all felt that desire to remain, to rest in the presence of Christ. And the need for rest is real. We need to be spiritually nourished, filled with the Spirit. But we are not meant to remain. We can’t build tents on the mountaintop. We are called to descend, to receive Christ so that we can bring Him out into the world. We are filled up so that we can be emptied out. 

The Eucharist is our fuel. It is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC #1324). It is at the core of our faith and is our mountaintop experience. But we don’t receive Christ to hold Him within us, in the dark recesses of our soul. He comes into us to give us the courage and strength to go out, to be the light of the world. When we receive Him, we are transfigured. Our clothes might not become dazzling white, but our souls do. Our faces might not shine, but hopefully when people look into our faces, they see the face of Christ shining out. Christ was transfigured, and we are all called to be transformed by Christ, to become like Christ ourselves. That is the fundamental Christian mission and the vocation we were given in Baptism. That is our transfiguration. 

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Shannon Whitmore currently lives in northwestern Virginia with her husband, Andrew, and their two children, John and Felicity. When she is not caring for her children, Shannon enjoys writing for her blog, Love in the Little Things, reading fiction, and freelance writing. She has experience serving in the areas of youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, and marriage enrichment.

Featured Image Credit: dimitrisvetsikas1969, https://pixabay.com/illustrations/metamorphosis-transfiguration-church-1751376/

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The Coming of the Bridegroom

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Gaudate Sunday marks the halfway point of the Advent season. With the church and priest decked out in the color rose, the Church makes the shift from the second coming of Christ at the end of the time to His first coming in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem. We’ve spent the past two weeks preparing our hearts for the Last Judgment, when Christ will come and judge us according to the lives we have chosen to live. With Gaudate Sunday, we switch focus and begin to prepare our hearts to receive Jesus on Christmas morning.

Today’s reading comes from the beginning of the Gospel of John. Rather than providing us with one of the traditional nativity stories from Matthew or Luke, we hear about the beginning of Christ’s public life and ministry. This is why Christ came. He came to give sight to the blind, freedom to the captives, and joy to the downtrodden. Christ came to bring salvation to the world. And John came to make straight the path of the Lord.

John the Baptist was the voice crying out in the desert. He baptized with water, knowing that Jesus Christ would come baptizing with fire and the Spirit. As John himself said, he wasn’t even worthy to untie his sandal straps. And that’s quite the assertion. On a practical level, if someone was to take off their sandals, a servant would carry them. When John said that he was unworthy to untie Christ’s sandal straps, he was saying that he wasn’t even worthy to be his servant. Jesus is God, and John is not. Jesus is divine, and John is a fallen human being. John knew that he was unworthy. But that is not all there is to John’s statement about Christ’s sandal straps.

In Jewish tradition, the removal of a man’s sandals meant that he was unworthy or unwilling to become the new bridegroom of a widow. When John said that he was unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandals, he also meant that he was unworthy and unwilling to supplant Jesus Christ as the true Bridegroom (St. Gregory the Great). Israel had often been depicted as a bride, and often not a very faithful one. She had thrown herself into the sinful arms of the pagan nations, but then the true Bridegroom came to rescue her, and not just her, but the world. When Jesus came to earth, He came as the Bridegroom willing to give His life for His Bride.

The Church is His Bride. We are meant to be united with God, the lover of our souls. Christ came for us. He took on human flesh, took our sins upon Himself, becoming poor so that we might enjoy all the riches of heaven. This is what John proclaimed to all. The Bridegroom has come, and He wants to love us. We might be unworthy as the poor, sinful beings that we are, but Christ’s love makes us worthy. Christ’s love makes us lovable. And that is a great cause for joy!

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Shannon Whitmore currently lives in northwestern Virginia with her husband, Andrew, and their two children, John and Felicity. When she is not caring for her children, Shannon enjoys writing for her blog, Love in the Little Things, reading fiction, and freelance writing. She has experience serving in the areas of youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, and marriage enrichment.

Featured Image Credit: Dimitri Conejo Sanz, https://www.cathopic.com/photo/144-mosaico-bautismo-jesus

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Serving a Demanding God

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Today’s Gospel features one of the more confusing parables for our modern ears. Jesus tells us about a nobleman who leaves gold coins with some of his servants while he is away. When he returns, the nobleman demands an account of what each servant has done with his coins. The first servant, having received ten coins, hands over an additional ten. The second, with five, hands over an extra five. The final servant, who was given one, returns his one coin to his master. The first two servants are rewarded for their efforts; the third servant is punished for his lack thereof. The noble man’s actions seem unjust to us; it’s not like the third servant lost his coin or stole it. He saved it. Wasn’t that enough?

The answer is obviously no. Jesus casts the third servant in a poor light. Clearly, he did something wrong. But what?

At the bare minimum, the servant failed to complete his task. He was charged with the mission of engaging in trade with the coin to increase the nobleman’s profits, and he didn’t do it. The student who doesn’t hand in his homework fails the class. The worker who doesn’t complete his job gets fired. That’s simple justice. You reap what you sow. As the nobleman says in the parable, the least the servant could have done was put the coin in the bank to earn interest, and he didn’t even do that.

The servant also admitted that he was afraid. He let fear guide his decisions, and listening to fear is never a good idea. When we let fear take control in our lives, we often make choices prematurely, or without thinking through the consequences of our actions. Because the third servant was afraid of his master, he lacked the wisdom necessary to determine what would most please the nobleman.

The servant’s fear also caused him to disregard what he already knew to be true of his master. He even went so far as to admit that “you are a demanding man; you take up what you did not lay down and you harvest what you did not plant.” The servant knew what to expect, but he didn’t use that knowledge to his advantage. We have all been given gifts from God, but these gifts demand that we give thanks. Gratitude requires that we use the gifts we’ve been given to advance the Kingdom of God. We have all been given much through the grace of the sacraments, but God demands that we give the entirety of ourselves to Him in return. Fortunately, while He is a demanding God, He only asks us to give what we are capable of giving. We just need the courage to hold nothing back from the God who wants the whole of us, and wants to love every fiber of our being because He is Love Himself.

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Shannon Whitmore currently lives in northwestern Virginia with her husband, Andrew, and their two children, John and Felicity. When she is not caring for her children, Shannon enjoys writing for her blog, Love in the Little Things, reading fiction, and freelance writing. She has experience serving in the areas of youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, and marriage enrichment.

Featured Image Credit: Micheile Henderson, https://unsplash.com/photos/ZVprbBmT8QA

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Will You Be Found Ready When the Time for Reaping Comes?

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In today’s Gospel, Jesus issues a frightening warning to all those gathered around Him. He foretells eternal damnation for those who will not repent. Blood will be spilled. Souls will be condemned by their actions. People will perish. But He does not give His warning without also providing hope.

There is still time. Damnation is not inevitable. After issuing his warning, Jesus provides a parable that offers hope to those listening. He tells the story of a fig tree that would not provide fruit. When the owner of the orchard saw its lack of fruit, he desired to cut it down. But the gardener spoke up on behalf of the plant, asking for one year before the fig tree should be cut down. In that time, the gardener would cultivate the ground and fertilize it, giving the tree the best chance of bearing fruit. If at the end of the year fruit had not been produced, the gardener would cut down the tree.

We are each that fig tree in the parable, and the one year of cultivation is the span of years that we will live on this earth. That is the time that we have to be cultivated and fertilized. That is the time that we have to embrace our salvation. Jesus Christ is our gardener, our defender, but even He must work within the bonds of our allotted time. We must embrace our salvation while it is ours to accept. Once we have passed, there is no turning back. If we have not accepted our salvation by then, it will be too late. We will perish. We will be uprooted and cast away.

We don’t know how many years we have been given, so the time for conversion is now. Jesus Christ has already provided us the means to be saved. We just need to accept it. The ground has been fertilized and cultivated. Christ’s blood and water have been poured out from the cross, watering the ground. He has given us His Word in the Scriptures and His very Body and Blood in the Eucharist. We just need to take and read, take and eat, take and drink, and we will be saved.

Jesus Christ has provided the cultivation of the ground where we grow. Our souls can be fed. Now we must prepare for the harvest. We must bear fruit. We must open ourselves up to God’s Word, repent, and receive the Bread of Life. Christ is preparing us for the harvest. Will you be found ready when the time for reaping comes?

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Shannon Whitmore currently lives in northwestern Virginia with her husband, Andrew, and their two children, John and Felicity. When she is not caring for her children, Shannon enjoys writing for her blog, Love in the Little Things, reading fiction, and freelance writing. She has experience serving in the areas of youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, and marriage enrichment.

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How Will You Serve In The Body Of Christ?

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When Jesus traveled from town to town, proclaiming the Good News, He was rarely alone. In addition to His twelve apostles, who usually accompanied Jesus in His travels, women were also present. In today’s Gospel, we hear about the famous Mary Magdalene, as well as Joanna and Susanna. Their role in the group was two-fold: they were invited to listen to the preaching of the Master, and in exchange, they saw to the physical needs of the group, ensuring that everyone was fed and cared for.

Jesus Christ accepted all kinds of people into His group. It didn’t matter what kind of baggage you brought with you, or what you had done in the past. It didn’t matter what kind of job you had, or how much money you made. Tax collector? Not a problem. Made some poor life choices? Don’t let them stand in your way. Homemaker? There’s room for you here too. Formerly possessed by seven demons? Welcome home. All are welcome here, even you and me. Especially you and me.

There is room for all of us in the Body of Christ. Jesus knows what is on our hearts, and as long as our repentance is sincere, our past sins will never be an obstacle to walking with Christ. Christ’s love of us is transformative. He can turn a hotheaded fisherman into a leader, a possessed woman into a devout disciple, a tax collector into an evangelist. We are washed clean, our sins are erased, and we are born again in Christ. We are a new creation, and our spot in the Body of Christ is already paid for. We just need to claim it as our own.

In today’s Gospel, we see that Christ has called all people to follow Him. Men and women become brothers and sisters. Sinners become saints. The rejected ones become the redeemed. We are all children of God, and we are all called to be disciples of Christ. We are all invited to play our role in the Body of Christ. Some of us will preach and teach. Others will heal and protect. Still others will serve and nurture. There is a place for all of us, no matter what our talents and abilities might be, and no matter where we might have come from. We are all needed. We are all wanted. We are all loved. We are all called. The remaining question is, how will you serve in the Body of Christ?

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Shannon Whitmore currently lives in northwestern Virginia with her husband, Andrew, and their two children, John and Felicity. When she is not caring for her children, Shannon enjoys writing for her blog, Love in the Little Things, reading fiction, and freelance writing. She has experience serving in the areas of youth ministry, religious education, sacramental preparation, and marriage enrichment.