My little book with that title collected in its first part some essays on Lonergan and Ecclesiology. These were followed in the second part by the re-worked and developed lectures I gave as the St. Michael’s Lectures at Conzaga University in 1975.
The first part is Foundations JAK
The second part is: Foundations 2 JAK
Pentecost Sunday – May 11, 2008 – Blessed Sacrament
This wonderful feast brings our fifty-day celebration of Easter to its completion and its climax. The Church which had come to be in and because of its faith in Christ’s resurrection receives now the power from on high that Jesus had promised, the Holy Spirit. Our three NT readings spell out dimensions of that gift to the new People of God.
The description of the first Pentecost is a miniature of the story that the whole of the Acts of the Apostles tells. Tongues of fire descend upon the apostles and enable them to speak in such a way as to be understood in the various languages represented in Jerusalem on that Jewish feast day. Already the Church is catholic: speaking all the earth’s languages. The linguistic chaos that followed the building of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis is overcome, not, however, through the restoration of a single language but rather through the unity of message: “we hear them speaking in our own languages of the mighty acts of God.” It was the single message of the death and resurrection of Christ that now would make one people out of many peoples. This announces from the beginning that the Church’s unity will not be purchased at the price of her diversity, that the Church’s catholic character will be redemptive integration of the diversity of languages, cultures, peoples, nations that make up our human race.
The passage we have heard from St. John’s Gospel describes the same Spirit coming now as the peace which the risen Christ bestows on his disciples. (more…)
Here is a lovely image of Pentecost, ca. 1230 in England, from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Seventh Sunday in Eastertide – May 20, 2012 – St. John’s, Goshen
“We have come to know and to believe the love God has for us.” Another one of those simple statements heard so consistently in the First Epistle of St. John, plain and simple, as if out of an awe that words have trouble expressing.
But what a remarkable statement it is, too! “We have come to know and believe the love God has for us.” For all of history that we can recover, human beings have asked questions in pursuit of ultimate meanings. “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” “For what shall I live?” “Why is there pain and suffering?” “Is there something the other side of death?” “Why is there anything?” “Can the universe be trusted?” “Does it have meaning and value and purpose? Or is this a dumb and alien place so that we are the only ones who desire meaning and truth and value?”
Questions like this recur and recur in all the cultures known to us, and not just in religious works; (more…)
Feast of the Ascension – May 24, 2009 – Blessed Sacrament
In this archdiocese, this great feast, which used to be celebrated on a Thursday, has been transferred to this Sunday so that more people can participate in this further celebration of the victory Christ has won by his resurrection. The fifty days of this celebration will reach their climax next Sunday with the feast of Pentecost, the climax of Christ’s redemptive work and the initiation of the work of the Spirit in the life of the Church, a work that through all the generations that have succeeded to that of the Apostles has gathered us together here today.
In one sense the Ascension is not a distinct feast from that of the resurrection, but an explication of the Easter mystery. (more…)
