-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 and 8:00am
Remain, stay, live!
The captivating phrase in this Sunday's gospel text for me is in Latin "manete" which is translated in several different ways: remain or stay or live on. Remain is the preferred English word and it is the one used to translate our scriptures for mass. However I prefer live. "Live on in my love" is the motto of Bishop Pilla who served along time as the Bishop of our church. To Live on in my love is a rather lively translation of the word to remain. There is more than one way to remain.
The translation of the word remain that I do not favor is stay. Staying is a very passive, undynamic, and deadly expression. Think of the many different ways that you might remain or stay somewhere. The inmate must remain behind bars. The patient in the doctors office must remain in the waiting room. The celebrity who is about to go onto the television or to the stage must remain in the green room. The athlete about to come up to bat must remain on deck and the skier about to come down the slope must remain in the shoot.
Many different ways of remaining. If we are instructed to remain in Christ the resurrected One we must have several options. How are you and I remaining in him? Is our remaining a sense of being trapped or imprisoned? Is our remaining waiting with dread of bad news about ourselves? Is our remaining the energized and excited anticipation of the actor or the athlete? Is our remaining that of the incurably ill persons confined to their bed awaiting or remaining in watch for death? Where you are remaining dictates how you will experience life.
Our faith, our life in Christ, our remaining will depend upon what we understand Christ is and what He's doing. What we understand it is supposed to be. Remember, they believed but did not yet understand. Isn't it possible that many of us are remaining in Christ with very little understanding, therefore, very little life in Christ, life animated in Spirit, life lived in the resurrection from the dead? I think so!
What do you think question?
