for May 20
Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

At the Areopagus, Paul introduces the Greeks to the vast power and majesty of “the God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth. . .who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.” His audience’s response, as reported by the author of Acts, is underwhelming: some scoffed, some put him off to ‘some other time,’ some did join him and become believers. No wonder, perhaps, that after this Paul left Athens. He’s proclaimed the full awesomeness of God and been met with not much more than a ho-hum.

It can be easy to lose sight of how (as the Psalmist says) “heaven and earth are full of your glory” especially in the middle of a miserable pandemic, especially in the grayness of the city. Yet the language of today’s gospel, too, reaches as far as words can go as Jesus takes leave of his disciples : “I have much more to tell  you. . .[the Spirit] will guide you in all truth. . .everything that the Father has is mine.” All of today’s readings invite us to consider the ‘muchness’—the transcendence—of God.

And how can we respond to all this? Well, certainly, with awe: we can contemplate the wonder of God, the Divine that has created and sustains absolutely everything, and the love that has chosen us and will never leave us.

And there’s still more possible responses:

We can meet beauty with beauty. We can imitate God’s creativity by making things beautiful or making things of beauty ourselves. We can savor beauty when we encounter it: in nature, in art, in people, and we can commit ourselves to protecting it. Even in the confinement of this cold spring, nature’s first green has blossomed and even lingered. Artists have shared their music through the internet. Beauty springs ups and blesses us, for as Dorothy Day was fond of quoting Dostoyevsky, “the world will be saved by beauty.”

We can answer abundance with abundance. We can be extravagant in our hospitality, building communities that include everyone who finds themselves on the edges or outside the boundaries of any circle that can be drawn. We can feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, welcome the stranger and protect the vulnerable. We can refuse to hoard the gifts of creation for the benefit of the few and powerful. In the last few months, mutual aid societies have sprung up across the country, and in both organized and quiet ways, we have come to one another’s assistance with generosity.

We can embrace fullness. We can insist on seeing the full picture, resisting a selective focus on particular lives and issues. We can broaden our perspective from narrow attention to the crisis at hand to considering its root causes. We can remember that our efforts contribute to the works of others, recalling the traditional wisdom that while we are not obligated to finish the work of perfecting the world, neither are we permitted to neglect it. Much of the work remains to be done, as we find ways to mend the social safety nets that so many have fallen through.

Perhaps Paul’s audience at the Aeropagus greeted the gospel not with indifference, but with an intuitive grasp of just how much it asks of them. Perhaps they feared the day when a God beyond their control would “judge the world with justice.” Perhaps sometimes we are tempted to do the same, and therefore must rely on Jesus’s promise that we will be guided by the Spirit of truth to accept all the love and strength that God has promised.
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings can be found at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.