Hermily for 6.5.25
why sure, girls can preach!
The new Pope has me thinking a lot about Vatican 2. I was born at the tail end of the Council, and so my childhood church years were very much colored by the reforms the council introduced. I didn’t necessarily understand that, but nevertheless the Church I came up in was one of creativity, openness, and love. My parish, built in the mid-70s, was natural wood instead of marble, colorful banners and vestments, and a resurrected Jesus on the wall, instead of the crucified Christ.
When I began professional ministry 25 or so years later, I wrote at the top of my resume “Margo Talbot, a Vatican 2 Minister” and applied to parishes whose bulletins read “A Vatican 2 Church.” Soon enough though, newly ordained priests began calling themselves “JPII Priests” and it seemed that the Church’s energy around the Council’s reforms began to drift away.
Now, in today’s Gospel Jesus is praying that everyone, from his disciples on through history to you and me, would be unified; one.
But the NT reading from Acts is a glimpse into the reality that division continued, and continued without a break, from the time of Jesus’ prayer and his last supper speech through to the time of Paul’s ministry.
Scholars have the story from Acts happening around 57CE; so, around 25 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. And it wasn’t the first sign that the unity that Jesus prayed for had not been achieved. In fact, although the first days of the Church are described as beautifully open and built on sharing and mutual care, it seems like it all fell apart pretty quickly.
Which makes me wonder; listening to Jesus’ prayer for unity, well.. did Jesus’ prayer make any difference at all? And now, 2000 years later, we are still divided on so many things; is unity a lost cause for our Church and for the world? Is it, as one scholar asks, that we are “to wait for God to perfect our unity? Or has our unity already been perfected by God and God is waiting for us to realize it?” And why would Jesus pray for something that God knows we clearly can’t very well achieve, despite our own best efforts?
I think that maybe both things are true at once, that this is an “already and not yet” tension; that God, especially in the relationship between Father and Son, Creator and Creation, offers us a model and invitation to perfect unity… but also waits for us to really accept that invitation, to fashion our relationships on the model of that perfectly unified one.
The Easter season is full of “already and not yets;” Jesus is already resurrected but yet still to come, the Church is brand-new yet eternal, salvation is ours and always has been, yet also something wait for, in joyful hope. There’s value in this in-betweenness—if not, why would Jesus pray for such a thing even while probably know it wouldn’t be happening anytime soon?
I’m hopeful for this Pope because I’ve seen pictures of him in homespun vestments from around the time of his ordination, the very picture of a Vatican 2 Priest. Maybe his papacy will crack open those windows again, and let in the fresh air that the Council was invoking back in those days. We shall see.
I think that, Jesus’ prayer is still for us to be unified; I think Jesus knows it’s possible, but patiently waits for it to be realized. And it’s only we who can ultimately answer his prayer, by the way we live our faith/ and our lives, in and out of the Church.
In the next few moments, let’s ask God; how can we be part of the answer to Jesus’ prayer for unity? How can each of us and our community carry forward the will of God and the action of the Holy Spirit? And let’s pray that when the Lord invites us to live in unity, we will accept that invitation.