Reflection on the Sixth Sunday of Easter

I can remember clearly several experiences of my grandmother’s amazement at new technologies. She was born in 1909, and she learned how to drive late in life after my grandfather had a heart attack and it became necessary for her to do things for the first time. We taught her how to use an ATM machine, and she was delighted to have this machine give her money. “Just like a slot machine.” she said. No, Grandma, that is your money from your bank account coming out. But much of it was more than she wanted to tackle. Email, a cell phone, etc. The rate of change was becoming too fast for her. 

I also remember when the first Gulf War started and she said, “I have lived too long.” When I asked why, she said I have seen too many wars and don’t have the heart to live through another one. She did live through it, but with great sadness. 

These days I can have some of that same sense of sadness at the start of yet another war and some sense of my inability to keep up with the rapid rate of change in technology and elsewhere. AI and self-driving cars are filled with good and bad possibilities in my mind. 

And when I read today’s readings, I began to think about how it might have been for the Apostles and followers of Jesus in the first five to 10 years of knowing Jesus. The years of walking with Jesus, experiencing miracles and great crowds of believers, his death and resurrection and then his ascension into heaven must have required them to grapple with many things – civil and spiritual. Things changed drastically and quickly. Jesus would not be a civil leader for the Jewish people, not a king or a ruler in this world. Their faith in God and reading of the Old Testament had led them to a belief in One God who would save them, free them and be with them for all time. 

They lived in a world where many other cultures had multiple gods, but they had “One God.” And now they had God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son of God, who was both human and divine. And, as Jesus is getting ready to depart the earthly realm, he tells them, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth. … But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans.” In those early days I wonder how the notion of the Trinity, three persons in One God, seemed different from the multiple gods that other people had. I imagine this required a great change in the mindset of the early Christians as they reflected on all of this happening in a short period of time. These days we speak easily of the Trinity as a basic tenet of our faith.

As I thought about Peter wrestling with all of these things and leading this new group who were following Jesus, I could imagine him saying some of the very things that Father Nerinx said to our early Sisters. “You must all be united and pull the same way; you must consult with one another and carry on everything the best you can.” Or Peter might have said, “If you inquire whether I know what will become of you, this I cannot tell. But from my present experience, from the nature of things and from the condition of man, without pretending to any revelation or gift of prophecy, there is not a spark of doubt in my mind but you will undergo great changes from your present state, which the far greatest number of you looks upon as happy; you must only pray that what is to come may be for the better.”

And so the experiences of the early followers of Jesus, the early Sisters of Loretto and our experiences today have much in common. The advice of Peter to “always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence” is good advice for us today as we strive to be beacons of hope living Gospel values in a world that is filled with intolerance, suffering and injustice. 

The advice of Father Nerinx in the 1800s that says “know you will undergo great changes from your present state, which the far greatest number of you looks upon as happy; you must only pray that what is to come may be for the better” is as relevant today for us as it was when he spoke it.

And, like the early followers of Jesus and our early Sisters, we are facing great changes. I believe we have what we need to navigate those changes, adapt to a changing world and continue to carry out our mission in new ways for the sake of the Gospel and those in need.

I do not imagine that the early followers of Jesus had any image of the Roman Catholic Church as it exists today. I don’t know if the early Sisters of Loretto imagined a Community like ours in the early 20^th century with 1,600 Sisters serving in hundreds of schools, Loretto schools established and thriving, colleges started and supported by the Sisters of Loretto and some of our Sisters serving in the far corners of the world. These journeys have, at times, been “one step at a time.” We asked ourselves, “What is the next ‘best’ thing that we can do to serve God and God’s people?”

And our journey today is a continuation of that experience. We are asking ourselves what can we continue to do, what have we done that is coming to closure, and what are the “best” next steps to take to discern those answers, make decisions and move into the future.