I’ve been keeping my six year old grandson some and supervising his at-home kindergarten lessons. In my basement is a playroom with many of my now retired play therapy toys. We do morning recess in the playroom. One day last week Eli wanted to take a toy home, “just for tonight.” I wanted the toy to come back, so I made a one sentence contract and had Eli sign it. I told him, “Now, you must keep your word.”
He gave me one of those incredulous six year old looks. “What do you mean, Ann-Ann?” he said.
I explained, “When you sign this, you are giving your ‘word,’ your promise of truth. I am trusting you. I believe that you will keep your word and bring the puppet back. But I want you to promise, because it is important that you learn to keep your word so people besides me will know they can trust you.”
He said no more, but he signed his name. And the next morning the puppet came back.
Jesus said, “Keep my word.”
Perhaps it is because of the conversation with Eli, but the line in the Gospel that stands out to me today is Jesus saying to his disciples, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.”
What does Jesus mean, “whoever keeps my word?” Knowing that in John 1, Word means Christ himself, I did a little Greek study. Word is not capitalized here, but it is the same Greek word, ‘logos,’ as in John 1. Logos, like many Greek words, has multiple meanings. As I looked through resources, generally, when used in Scripture, it means “words that have meaning,” “divine logic,” or “design.”
I wondered about the word “keep,” too. The Greek word tereo, translated keep, means “to preserve,” “to guard carefully,” to “watch over.”
So John 14:23 could read, “Whoever loves me will preserve and guard carefully the design I have shown you and all that I have taught you. God the Father will love that person. We, God the Father and I—we will come to live in him and continue to live in the world through him.”
Then, later in today’s reading, Jesus promises, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
So, in a real sense, Jesus today is saying, “Follow my design, and we, the Holy Trinity, will live in you.”
The Mystical Body of Christ
I have just begun another Bishop Fulton Sheen book, The Mystical Body of Christ. It was mentioned in Bishop Barron’s video about Sheen. Bishop Sheen describes Christ’s life as being in three parts: his earthly life, his glorified life, and his mystical life. The mystical life is in his Church—and especially, in those within his church who “keep his word.” Sheen has such a beautiful way of writing. I quote him here:
“The new presence of Christ on earth in His Church is the third phase of the complete Life of Christ, and in order to demarcate it from His physical Life and from His Glorified Life, tradition has called it the Mystical Life. Just as in His earthly Life He took a human body as an instrument for the exercise of His office as Prophet, King, and Priest, so now on Pentecost He assumes a new body, His Church, through the instrumentality of which He still fulfills the same triple role of teaching, governing, and sanctifying. In His earthly Life, He had only one human nature united to Him; in His Mystical Life, He unites to Himself all those human natures throughout the world who receive His Spirit. In His earthly Life, He was redeeming; in His Mystical Life, He is bestowing the fruits of Redemption on the members of His Mystical Body. In His earthly Life, He possessed the fullness of the Godhead; in His Mystical Life, we receive of Its fullness. In His earthly Life, He was the Founder of the Kingdom; in His Mystical Life, He incorporates us into that Kingdom. In His earthly Life, He suffered and rejoiced in His physical body; in His Mystical Life, He suffers and rejoices in His Mystical Body. Then He was the Vine, now He is the Vine giving life to the branches; then He was the Leaven, now He is the Leaven in the Mass; then He was the Mustard Seed, now He is the Tree of Life; then He had a body taken from the womb of the Blessed Mother overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, now He has a Mystical Body, the Church, taken from the womb of humanity overshadowed by the same Pentecostal Spirit.”
Bishop Fulton Sheen, The Mystical Body of Christ. Originally published 1935, republished in 2015 by Ave Maria Press, p 18-19).
We Are That Mystical Body of Christ
It is four weeks since Easter and three weeks until Pentecost. Mother Church in her readings is turning our attention toward Pentecost. Pentecost—that’s when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles AND all the disciples of Jesus who were with them—translated: that’s when the Holy Spirit descended on the church leaders and the laity,. All Easter season our first readings have come from the Acts of the Apostles. We have read how THEY kept Jesus’ word: from Pentecost on they spoke, they baptized, they witnessed, they gradually understood the “whole world” meant the whole world, and they spread the Kingdom of God.
I don’t know if there ever has been a time when the world was as united as it is right now: across continents, creeds, religions, and cultures we are all battling a microbe.
What better time for a powerful celebration of Pentecost? May the Holy Spirit fall afresh on me and you and the whole church and, indeed, the whole world. And may we all “Keep Jesus’ word”.
Prayer:
Lord, help me to keep your word. Help me to guard it in my life—to know what IS YOUR WORD—and live it. Help me to love you-to give myself to you. Help me to be a part of a great groundswelling of fervor that enables your word to explode in power and joy this Pentecost. Help me be a part of your Mystical Body building the Kingdom of God. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
