Alive and Well

In July of 2009, I celebrated my 25th Anniversary as a priest. At the time I was working in Rome and so I had no parish assignment at which to celebrate my anniversary.  Thankfully, my successor at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Omaha welcomed me back there to celebrate this milestone in my life as a priest. It was during that Mass that Bruce Prenosil received a call from the Med Center that they had a heart for his long-awaited transplant. The parish had been praying for several months for this day to come.  Bruce had a congenital heart condition that affected others in his family, as well. He was steadily growing weaker and time was getting short. His heart was simply wearing out, lacking the strength to pump blood throughout his body and leaving his complexion with a pale and lifeless color. On the day of my anniversary Mass, Bruce and his wife had their pagers shut off, as they were in church. When they didn’t answer the Med Center’s attempt to contact them, they called Sarah, their daughter, who rushed up to Church to inform them of the good news. We stopped the choir that was singing during the preparation of the altar and announced, “Bruce Prenosil, go to the Med Center! They have a heart for you!” There was scarcely a dry eye in Church as people were on their feet and applauding Bruce’s good news for which they had been praying for so long. Fast forward to a couple days after his transplant. I went to the Med Center to visit him and simply could not believe how alive he looked. His face was the color of a child, as though he had been raised to new life. Physically, he was alive. Spiritually, he was thriving, rewarded for his faith.

We simply cannot imagine what resurrected life will be like when Jesus comes again in glory, but we get some sense of it from the gospel passages at Mass this week that indicate some extraordinary capabilities. Jesus spoke to Mary Magadalene, but she did not recognize him. He appeared to the 11 apostles behind locked doors, effortlessly.  Having a meal with the two men on the road to the village of Emmaus he broke bread with them whereupon he vanished from their sight. While all of this has a certain “wow” factor, it really serves to impress upon us the new vitality that will also be ours one day.

In these days of the Easter Season, we will be reading at Mass from the Acts of the Apostles – beautiful accounts of the life of Jesus and his disciples after the Lord’s Resurrection and after Pentecost. I would encourage you to read the entire book of the Acts of the Apostles between now and Pentecost Sunday.  In these chapters we learn of the power of faith that underscored the works of mercy and charity that the apostles carried out in the name of Jesus. By means of faith they, too, possessed the power to heal and bring new vitality to people in the name of Jesus.

So, think about what is draining the life out of you….not so much the physical life but the spiritual life of faith, hope and Christian charity. What fears, lies, doubts, patterns of ‘stinkin thinkin’, etc., leave you discouraged, lacking hope, and drained of the life of joy, peace, and confidence that is ours in Christ? So many times, we cannot get to an experience of Easter because we don’t believe a new vitality is possible. Recently, I served as the spiritual director for the Men’s CEC (Christians Encounter Christ) retreat weekend held at Camp Comeca, near Cozad. It was such a dynamic experience to see good Catholic men coming alive in their faith in a way they had never experienced before.

This was only a taste of what eternal life will be like for us. There’s was a deep spiritual joy at discovering the depths of God’s love for them to a greater degree and meeting other fine men who were doing the same. Yes, a more abundant life in Christ is possible. (See John 10:10 – “I’ve come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” ) Hopefully this Lenten season you have acquired a new thirst for spiritual abundance. To the degree that we are able to break with old ways of sin and self-rule, the Lord can offer us the fruits of our conversion and that abundance that comes from friendship with him.

Yet the evil one wants us to believe that a mediocre Christian life is good enough. The last thing the enemy of human nature wants is for us to go after the fullness of life in Christ. The temptation is to believe that insisting on life in my own terms is better than the dynamic life of faith that our Lord offers us. The more we live with ever growing trust in the Lord, the more we are able to bear witness to that abundance, inspiring others to let go of the control and let God amaze them. I’ve had some deeply moving examples of that in the lives of others who have shared their stories with me.

So, it’s now the Easter season! Ask the Lord to show you more of his loving desire for you in light of your Lenten conversion. Let us not go back to our way of living before Ash Wednesday. Perhaps there are aspects of our conversion that have some further development to undergo, but already, the Lord sees what no one sees and wants to take us further in our relationship with him. That can most easily be nourished by our frequent attendance at daily Mass.  Some of you may not be able to get to Mass because of your work schedule, but if you can, the power of Sacred Scripture and the grace of the Eucharist will surely nurture an Easter vitality in you.

Perhaps the easiest way to move forward in this vitality is to take up a daily reading of the Acts of the Apostles, which I mentioned earlier.  As you read each amazing story of the power of faith and the vitality of those who are alive in the Holy Spirit, let your response to each of them be: “Lord, I believe.” As you allow yourself to be affected by the testimony of the apostles in these eyewitness accounts, profess your own faith in the Lord and in the power of his Resurrection to “do a number on you” as well. The power of faith is real, and the Lord seeks believers who put their complete trust in Him.

Let me leave you with this...

“Now Peter and John were going up to the temple area for the three o’clock hour of prayer. And a man crippled from birth was carried and placed at the gate of the temple called “the Beautiful Gate” every day to beg for alms from the people who entered the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. But Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them. Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, [rise and] walk.” Then Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong. He leaped up, stood, and walked around, and went into the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God.” When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the one who used to sit begging at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, and they were filled with amazement and astonishment at what had happened to him.”

Acts of the Apostles 3: 1-10

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