West Park Memorial 2007 Homily

REMARKS FOR WEST PARK MEMORIAL MASS SEPTEMBER 2007

We gather here each fall in West Park to do together that we do naturally every day. We mourn our beloved dead. We each know someone buried here. Some of us know many of these men. And we know many others who once were Christian Brothers and have died and whom we remember this day. So whether we are Christian Brothers or Associates or members of our extended family of Edmundians– all of us have some valued connection to those we came here to remember.

Many threads bind us living with those departed:
We are all members of Christ;
We are all connected to the charism of Edmund;
We are all united around the special graces of this place here on the Hudson River in one of God’s sweetest designs of water and woods and sky.
And so we have to be grateful today. We have the blessings of nature, the blessings of our shared charism and the blessings of each other in this prayerful company.

One way we might reflect today would be to contemplate for a moment the gentle music of these lives we commemorate--- to ponder the ways they contributed their lives down the years – each one a note of a great symphony being played still to this moment.

The theme of the piece can begin with Edmund. His sense of justice was aroused by what he saw in the streets of Waterford and he responded to the impulse and inspiration to do something to change things, and the theme developed in the gradual movement to vowed living in community. For his followers the music grew more varied as other places called out to the brothers and other nations and continents beckoned. The music swelled with the growth of membership and was enriched by new cultures. We may now be hearing music never contemplated by Edmund but still faithful to the gospel anthem he first responded to.

In all these years every note counted; every note made some contribution to the larger work; every note grew from a life given over to the greater thing, the symphony, if you will, of a charism. And today those notes, those melodies mean no less for having come earlier in the piece. Our efforts here on behalf of justice and the evangelizing of young people especially, add new measures and fresh melodies to the one composition. None that went before mean less; all contribute and make the music whole.

And still the symphony will have more movements, and the music will live on.

So this September afternoon we add we hope further grace notes to the larger work begun by Edmund but going on still. We know that others will be here in the coming years to celebrate and mourn but they also will be part of the same music. Nothing is lost to God’s ears.

Thank you and God bless you.
---Br. Kevin Cawley

New Perception of Jesus

New Perception of Jesus: The Eros-driven Jesus


The previous article described my newly discovered perception of the Holy Spirit as Divine Eros. Divine Eros is the Spirit of Love directing arrows at my heart to awaken it to the possibilities of love. For me that was a peak experience, seeing the Spirit as well as myself in a whole new light. Then I realized that our peak experiences may well reveal to us something about Jesus, for he was the most human of all human beings.

Could it be that Jesus too must have experienced the Spirit of Love as Divine Eros? I think so. Jesus was familiar with the Song of Songs from the Old Testament and the erotic love relationship described in that book. He understood that the Divine Lover was searching for the beloved and the beloved was searching for the Spirit of Love, and he was the beloved. What emerges from this perception is not the typical holy-card Jesus but the Divine Eros-driven Jesus, the fully alive Jesus who did everything with passion.

Further, the Spirit operated in Jesus’ life, just as the Spirit operates in our lives. The Spirit would have invited Jesus to ever deeper faith, ever firmer hope and ever greater love through gifts of consolations which would have produced deep, positive feelings in Jesus. These feelings would have been the Spirit’s prompts and signs of Divine Dialogue, signs of the Divine Lover calling Jesus to discern God’s will and direction for his life.

The difference between Jesus and ourselves is that he was deeply aware, deeply expectant of the Spirit’s continuous presence in his life, Most importantly, the difference is that he surrendered to the invitations and inspirations of Divine Eros to grow in radical love. Now let’s look at three major directions the Spirit drove Jesus.

Driven to Contemplation. It was the Spirit of Love, Divine Eros, who urged Jesus to enter into the contemplation of his Father, states Fr. Raneiro Cantalamessa, OFM, preacher in the papal household. If we think that the desire for contemplation came to Jesus without effort, we are overlooking some of the obstacles Jesus faced. Jesus was a public figure. When word spread that Jesus was in the vicinity, crowds gathered. When Jesus tried to escape the crowds by sailing across the Sea of Galilee, the crowds followed him on foot. He was a celebrity whom the people would not leave alone.

Further, Jesus’ compassion for the crippled, the sick, the deaf and those filled with unclean spirits drove him to be available to all those who needed his healing power. It was the Spirit of Love, Divine Eros, who kindled in Jesus the desire to move away from the crowds and seek solitude to discover through contemplation his relationship to the Father and to discover his identity and mission.

Driven to Holy Partnership. Jesus was a radical, an extremist. He questioned every sphere of life—political, economic, social and religious. Jesus turned upside down everything in the society of his times, states Fr. Albert Nolan in Jesus Before Christianity. Jesus showed that ideas about what was right and just were actually loveless and therefore contrary to the will of God. We might add that Jesus’ teachings are radical and extreme for our times, and for all times.

However, Jesus did not come with a blueprint for the ideal life and the ideal society. He had to discover it. His radicalism was the result of his holy partnership with the Spirit. Jesus was pursuing the wisdom of God, not human wisdom. He was driven to the Spirit to help him create a whole new life vision, a whole new world vision.

Another sign of his radicalism was his choice of disciples. His choice put Jesus on the road to Calvary right from the very beginning. For he snubbed the established religious authorities. How radical to choose as his disciples ordinary men, even a tax collector, when he could have chosen men like Nicodemus, a Pharisee, and thus break into the ranks of the religious establishment! But that was not the Spirit’s way. Jesus was responding to Divine Eros’ initiatives, invitations and inspirations to steer him, not in the ways of men, but in the ways of God.

Driven to Compassion. The Spirit of Love called Jesus into an entirely different mission from that of John the Baptist who strove to bring people to a baptism of repentance in the Jordan. Jesus did not continue to baptize. Instead, the Spirit led Jesus to understand that his mission should be directed at the poor, the sinners and the sick—the lost sheep of Israel. The Spirit inspired Jesus to liberate people from every form of suffering and anguish. His miracles were performed not to prove that he was the Messiah; they were performed out of compassion, states Fr. Nolan.

It was the Spirit of Love, Divine Eros, who helped Jesus prepare his heart for the ultimate sacrifice he was being called upon to make for others. In the end, Jesus would go to his death knowingly and willingly, out of deep love for others. St. Augustine said that Jesus went to the Cross as a bridegroom goes to the bridal chamber. The ultimate and crowning work of Divine Eros!

Send comments to: frankkit@sprynet.com
This article will soon appear in the Spiritual Development Program on the Cursillo website: www.nycursillo.org