Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Author: Father Pat Mulcahy

  • The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    My absolute favorite line from this Gospel reading is, “Then he put them all out.”  I can just imagine Jesus going into the house, encountering the mourners, seeing the lack of faith in all of them, and saying “Go on!  Get outta here!  I’ve got work to do!”  Or at least that’s how I’d say it!

    It might be a funny little line, but I think it makes a significant point, and sums up the point made by the Liturgy of the Word we have for today.  Faith is necessary in our relationship with God and in receiving God’s blessings and in living the life for which he has created us.  Those incredulous mourners were symptomatic of a people who had abandoned hope of God’s interest in them.  They were so abused by the scrupulous religious establishment, that they didn’t really even know God, nor did they believe that God cared about them.  So all that was left for them was to mourn, because, as far as they knew, there was nothing for which to look forward.  The only thing Jesus could do, then, was to put them out of the house, so that he could respond to the faith of Jairus, the synagogue official, the father of the girl, who had called Jesus to come.  

    That’s not so different from the situation with the woman who somewhat detained Jesus on the way to Jairus’s house.  This poor woman had placed her faith in “many doctors,” who apparently did nothing but increase her suffering.  She seems to have had a stirring of faith, or maybe it was even a last ditch effort, a “Hail Mary,” if you will, and that leads her to touch the garment of Jesus as he passes by.  She makes an act of faith: “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.”  And in this humble act of faith, in which she undoubtedly hopes to go unnoticed, she finds that no act of faith is ever unnoticed by Our Lord.  Even though the disciples laugh at him for wanting to know who in the pressing crowd touched him, Jesus, who surely already knew who it was, acknowledges this woman of faith and responds to that act of faith.

    “God did not make death,” as the wisdom author in our first reading tells us.  And because he did not make death, he has given us faith as a remedy for its effects on our lives.  Maybe we won’t be miraculously cured like the hemorrhagic woman, and maybe we won’t be raised from the dead like the daughter of Jairus.  But we absolutely will experience resurrection and new life when we join ourselves to Christ who has triumphed over death.  That experience requires faith, and we must make it our constant care to exercise that faith, live that faith, and to “put out” of our lives any negativity, any dependence on worldly remedies, anything, really, that interferes with that faith.  Each of us must be absolutely willing to “put them all out” and react in faith to all that God wants to do in our lives.  Because our lives depend on it.  They really do.

    And we can have that faith every day, because Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    There’s quite a bit of laughing and astonishment in today’s Liturgy of the Word, and I like it!

    “Lord, if you wish you can make me clean.”  In some ways, that is the biggest understatement in all of Scripture.  Of course God can make him clean, God can do anything God wants to do.  But for the leper, I think it’s less of an understatement than it is a statement of faith.  He seems to have heard of or maybe has even seen some of Jesus’ other mighty deeds, and he is expressing the faith that Jesus can help him.  The big “if” for him, though is the “if you wish” part.  And of course, Jesus does wish, and he is made clean.

    In our first reading, God wishes to heal Abraham and Sarah too.  They display far less faith than our leper, but in their defense, they are new to the whole experience of God.  They would be happy enough for God to just bless them through Ishmael.  While God does grant descendants to Ismael, he intends to do more for the aged couple: he will give them a child through Sarah.  Abraham can’t imagine that coming to pass, and he laughs in the face of such overwhelming blessing.  But it is God who has the last laugh: he indeed gives them a son through Sarah, whom they are to name “Isaac,” which in Hebrew means, “God laughs.”

    God can do anything God wishes. Nothing is an obstacle for God, except, of course, for our lack of faith.  If we have the faith that our leper had in the Gospel reading, we might well be amused to see what God can do in us and through us and among us.  That doesn’t mean every whim of ours will be God’s pleasure, but it does mean that the ways he blesses us might make us all laugh for joy.

  • The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate a feast that is a bit unusual for us.  When we celebrate a saint’s day, it is usually celebrated on the feast of their death, not their birth.  But today we celebrate the birth of a saint, Saint John the Baptist, and the fact that we’re celebrating his birth points to the fact that St. John the Baptist had a very special role to play in the life of Christ.  In fact, the only other saint for whom we celebrate a birthday is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

    In our first reading today, Isaiah says that he was given his name while in his mother’s womb.  The same was true of Saint John the Baptist, whose name was given to Zechariah and Elizabeth by the Angel Gabriel.  Names have meaning.  The names of the prophets we encounter in today’s Liturgy of the Word are particularly meaningful.  Isaiah means “The LORD is salvation,” which pretty much encompassed the meaning of Isaiah’s mission, proclaiming salvation to the Israelites who were oppressed in exile.  The name given to the Baptist, John, means “God has shown favor.”  And that was in fact the message of his life.  He came to pave the way for Jesus Christ, who was the favor of God shown to the whole human race.

    Ultimately, the purpose for Saint John the Baptist’s life was summed up in a statement he made about himself and Our Lord later on in the Gospel of John: “I must decrease, He must increase.”  And so it must be for us.  Sometimes we want to turn the spotlight on ourselves, at least unconsciously, when that is, of course, exactly where it should not be.  For John the Baptist, the spotlight was always on Christ, the One whose sandals he was unfit to fasten.  Just as the birth of Saint John the Baptist helped his father Zechariah to speak once again, so his life gives voice to our own purpose in the world.  Like Saint John the Baptist, we are called to be a people who point to Christ, who herald the Good News, and who live our lives for God.  We are called to decrease, while Christ increases in all of us.  We are called to be that light to the nations of which Isaiah speaks today, so that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

    Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

  • Tuesday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Listen to those words of Jesus again:

    “Enter through the narrow gate;
    for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction,
    and those who enter through it are many.
    How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life.
    And those who find it are few.”

    Those are pretty challenging thoughts, I think. But they are thoughts we can resonate with. Certainly Lot fell into the trap of going through the wide gate into the land of Sodom, the residents of which our first reading says “were very wicked in the sins they committed against the LORD.” And how true for us as well. Isn’t it always easier to take the easy road, the road everyone uses, despite the fact that that road doesn’t take you anywhere you want to go? We might very well take that easy road time and again, and end up, well, with Lot,  in a place like Sodom.  God forbid.

    But the narrow gate isn’t easy to find and is harder still to travel. Living the Gospel and laying down our lives for others is hard work, and may often seem unrewarding. We may have to set aside our desires for the pleasures and rewards of this life. We may have to give up our own preferences for the good of others. 

    So we may well fail to get through that gate by our own efforts, due to the brokenness of our lives and the sinfulness of our living and the limited nature of our goodness. We may, in fact, find it next to impossible to travel through that narrow gate by ourselves.

    But here’s the good news: we don’t have to. The one who is our teacher in this constricted way is also the way through it. Our Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and through him we can all find our way to the Father. He even gives us the key to that narrow gate: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the Law and the Prophets.” As we pledge to live our lives by considering the needs of others just as we would consider our own needs, we will indeed find that traveling that narrow road is the way that gives most joy to our lives. As the Psalmist reminds us today, “He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.”  Let’s make it our effort to live that Golden Rule today.

  • Monday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time (Beginning of Vacation Bible School)

    Monday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time (Beginning of Vacation Bible School)

    Today’s readings

    God is absolutely, always, faithful to his promises.

    In our first reading tonight, God makes a promise to Abram, later to be called Abraham.  God calls on him to make an act of faith and go to a foreign land to become a great nation.  This would be a great miracle, because Abram and his wife Sarai, were childless into their old age, and had given up hope of ever having a child.  God promised to give Abram descendants and a land to live on, and God, who is absolutely, always, faithful to his promises did just that: Abram’s descendants are numerous and they inherited the land as God promised.

    In our Gospel reading tonight, Jesus calls his disciples, including us, to stop judging, so that we might have forgiveness for our own sins.  If we are always looking for faults in our brothers and sisters, we can’t see the goodness of God in them, nor can they see it in us.  But if we admit our own faults, and forgive the faults of others, we are open to the forgiveness that Jesus promises.  And God, who is absolutely, always, faithful to his promises, does just that: he forgives us time and time again.

    Today we begin our parish Vacation Bible School, where we will travel with Mary to the many places that she has appeared to people over the centuries.  Mary was faithful to God’s plan for her life, and because of that, she gave birth to Jesus our Savior.  She was the first of all the disciples and a witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Over the centuries, she continued to bring God’s love and mercy to people all over the world, causing many people to come to believe in God and receive his grace through the Sacraments of the Church.  She has appeared to people in Fatima, Medjugorje, Lourdes, Knock, and Guadalupe, just to name a few!  And every time she appeared, she helped people to know that God loves them and forgives them and is absolutely, always, faithful to his promises.

    When I was in the Holy Land in 2019, I got to visit the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.  It was a wonderful place, because we know that is the house where Mary lived, where she heard God’s plan from the Angel Gabriel, and where she and Saint Joseph raised Jesus.  But all that is in the Basilica now are the interior walls of the house and the foundation.  The outside walls and roof are all gone.  You might think they caught fire or were destroyed in the centuries since, but that’s not the case. 

    Just on the eve of the house being destroyed by infidels during the Crusades, the house, which had survived similar attacks in the past, was picked up during the night, and brought by angels to what is now Yugoslavia.  Shepherds, who worked in the nearby fields, came one morning to see a house that had never been there before, and contained an altar, a statue of Mary, and a Crucifix.  The priest of the parish, who was crippled with arthritis, prayed to know where the house had come from, and Mary answered him in a dream:

    “’Know that his house,’ she said, ‘is the same in which I was born and brought up. Here, at the Annunciation….I conceived the Creator of all things. Here, the Word of the Eternal Father became man. The altar which was brought with the house was consecrated by Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. This house has now come to your shores by the power of God….And now in order that you may bear testimony of all these things, be healed. Your unexpected and sudden recovery shall confirm the truth of what I have declared to you.’”

    The priest was cured, and the house was venerated for three years, before it was once again moved by angels.  This time, people saw it getting moved, and ended up in the Marche region of Italy.  Unfortunately bandits surrounded the house, and Our Lord moved the house again, this time to Lecanati.  This caused a fight between the brothers that owned the property, and so the house was moved again, finally, to Loreto in Italy, where it remains today.

    During that time, scientists went to the Holy Land to examine the spot in Nazareth where the house had been.  They were able to confirm that the house is the same size as its foundation that remained in Nazareth, and that the building materials were all those used in Nazareth, and not in any of the places the house had moved to!  Over the years, of course, people came to visit and pray at the house, and many people were cured of illnesses there, just as the priest in Yugoslavia had been. 

    During this week of Vacation Bible School, you will learn that Mary has continued to make the love and mercy of God in Jesus known all throughout the world.  She is the first and greatest of all the disciples of Jesus.  And through her intercession, many miracles have taken place, and lives have been changed.  Because God is absolutely, always, faithful to his promises.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
    That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It amazes me when I think about all that the early Church had to go through and put up with. Saint Paul writes that he put up with persecution from all sides: from his own people as well as the Gentiles. He was beaten often, endured hazardous journeys and perilous weather, as well as every kind of deprivation. His experience was definitely extreme, but others who lived the faith in those days were also subject to persecution, torture and death. Our experience isn’t quite like that, is it? I mean, here we sit in this air-conditioned church and relatively comfortable surroundings. We came here freely to Mass this morning and it is unlikely that anyone will openly persecute us or torture us or put us to death for worshipping our God, although of course, it does happen occasionally in some parts of the world.

    But there is a subtle kind of persecution that we often must endure. We know that even if our society is not openly hostile to living the Gospel, it might be just one step short of that. Life is not respected in our society: babies are aborted, the elderly are not respected or given adequate care, children are not raised in nurturing families, people are hated because of their race, color or creed. Faith is ridiculed as the crutch of the weak. Hope is crushed by those who abuse power. Love is diminished by the world’s shabby standards of loving. Living the Gospel is costly to anyone who would want to be taken seriously in our culture.

    To all of us who come to this holy place to worship this morning and who hope to work out our salvation by living the Gospel, Saint Paul speaks eloquently. We know that he, as well as all of the communion of saints, is there to intercede for us and show us the way. He says to us today, “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?” He points us to our Lord Jesus who paid the ultimate price for the Gospel, and reminds us that in living that Gospel, regardless of its cost, we store up for ourselves incredible treasures in heaven, because it is in heaven that our heart resides.

  • The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I really don’t have a green thumb, but for a while when I was young, I was very interested in growing things.  My grandmother on my dad’s side had quite the green thumb: anything she planted grew to be quite prolific.  I have whatever the opposite of that is!  But still, I have always been fascinated by things growing from tiny little seeds to become large plants; no matter if they become beautiful flowers to decorate the landscape, or delicious vegetables to bring to the table.

    It’s really a miracle when you think about it.  A little seed, this tiny little dried-up thing, looks for all the world to be useless and dead.  But when it gets planted in the earth, and watered by the rains, new life springs forth from it, and a tiny sprout appears, which grows day by day to become a fully mature plant by the summertime.  Sure, we or the farmers might do a little work to nurture it and water it and keep the weeds and rabbits away, but we don’t make the plant grow: day by day, almost imperceptibly, growth happens.  One day, for all the grace given it, it becomes a mature plant that gives nourishment and delight and shade for the birds of the air.

    And this is the image that Jesus uses today to describe the Kingdom of God.  These parables are a lens through which we are to see life: the life of God, and our life, and how they all come together.  And it’s an encouraging message that we hear today.  Today, our Lord assures us that the Kingdom of God doesn’t come about all at once, in great power and glory, or in some kind of dramatic explosion.  The Kingdom is like those crops that grow to be fully mature plants and yield a harvest, but it happens little by little, almost imperceptibly, always growing, but we know not how.  And the Kingdom is miraculous like a mustard seed which one day is the tiniest of all seeds and eventually becomes a large plant that gives shelter to the birds of the air.

    Here’s why I think these parables are so encouraging:  We all want to be part of the Kingdom of God.  We all want to grow in our faith.  We all want that faith to sustain us in good times and bad, and eventually lead us to heaven.  That’s why we’re here today.  But the truth is, if you’re like me, you get frustrated sometimes because it doesn’t seem like there’s any real growth going on.  We commit the same sins despite our firmest resolve.  We take one step forward and two steps back.  But still, like the seed scattered on the land, being here for Mass today isn’t nothing.  Our prayers, however lacking they may seem to be, are still a manifestation of our desire to be in relationship with God.  And God takes those tiny seeds of faith and waters them with grace and the sacraments and the life of the Church, until one day, please God, our faith makes a difference in our lives and the lives of those around us.  And even if whatever we start with in the life of faith is as tiny as a mustard seed, in God’s hands, it can become that shrub that is a shelter for those who are flying around in life from one thing to the next, without any real hope except for Christ in us.

    And that’s an important thing for us to get.  Our faith life gets nourished and we grow in it from day to day.  That’s a gift to us, for sure: every step gets us closer to the life of heaven.  But it’s not for us only, friends.  We are called as we mature to become the shrub that gives shelter to the birds of the air.  We are meant to help others along the way of faith too.  Because we don’t go alone to heaven; we’re supposed to take as many fellow seekers along with us as we possibly can.

    We may not be perfect yet, friends, but we’re graced.  And grace will perfect whatever we sow and make our tiny little beginnings into great things, all for the Kingdom of God.

  • Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time: Votive Mass of the Precious Blood of Jesus

    Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time: Votive Mass of the Precious Blood of Jesus

    Today’s readings

    God’s blessings aren’t always things that might spring to mind when we think of blessings we would like.  For example, we might not think that those who are meek and those who mourn are blessed.  And we certainly wouldn’t celebrate the blessings of those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, would we?  It’s even more challenging when we remember that the word “blessed” in Scripture could also be translated as “happy.”  Would we think of those people as happy?  Probably not, but God does.

    Paul and Timothy in our first reading write to the people of the Church at Corinth that, when they are afflicted – as they surely were! – it was for the Church’s encouragement and salvation.  Paul knew well that following Christ meant going to the Cross.  Paul saw the blessing in suffering for the sake of Christ.  He realized that suffering, for him, it probably meant death, but for all of us, it means some kind of mortification, some kind of sacrifice.

    Today we celebrate a votive Mass of the Precious Blood of Jesus.  This Mass calls to mind the saving sacrifice of Jesus, in which his most Precious Blood was poured out for us.  That blood washes away the sins of the whole world, yes, our sins too, if we let him, if we join our sufferings to his.  The salvation won at the immense cost of the Precious Blood of Jesus is a blessing that should never be taken for granted.

    So it’s important for us to remember, I think, that while God never promises to make our lives free and easy, he does promise to bless us.  He will bless us with whatever gifts we need to do the work he has called us to do, the work for which he formed us in our mother’s womb.  We may be reasonably happy in this life, but the true happiness must come later.  Our reward, which Jesus promises will be great, will surely be in heaven.

    May the Precious Blood of Jesus keep us safe for eternal life.

  • The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate with great joy one of the most wonderful feasts on our Church calendar, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.  Through this greatest of all gifts, we have been made one with our God who loves his people beyond all imagining.  We experience this love in perhaps one of the most basic ways of our human existence, which is to say by being fed.  Learning to satisfy our hunger is one of the first things we learn; we learn who we can depend on to give us our daily bread, and we develop close relationships with those people.  Today’s feast brings this experience to a higher level, of course.  The hunger we’re talking about is not mere physical hunger, but instead a deep inner yearning, a hunger for wholeness, for relatedness, for intimate union with our God.  This is a hunger that we all have, and despite our feeble attempts to do otherwise, it cannot be filled with anything less than God.

    I think we have seen this most poignantly over the last fourteen months or so, because of the pandemic.  We have been dispensed from the obligation to attend Mass, but in talking to parishioners I can see that, in many cases, that dispensation hasn’t done them any spiritual good.  Going without the Eucharist for too long is not just an inconvenience, it is a deep sadness that has derailed spiritual lives and left many people wondering what has gone wrong in their lives.  We need Jesus.

    On this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, we see in our God One who has always desired deep union with his people.  Salvation began with the creation of the whole world, the saving of Noah and those on the ark, the covenant made with Abraham, the ministry of the prophets, and ultimately culminated in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the acceptable sacrifice which brings salvation to the whole world.  God never lost interest in his creation; he didn’t set the world in motion and then back off to leave everything to its own devices.  God has, time and again, intervened in human history, offering us an olive branch, seeking the renewal of our relationship with him, and bringing us back no matter how far we have fallen.

    God has repeatedly sought to have a covenant with us.  Eucharistic Prayer IV beautifully summarizes God’s desire. It says: “You formed man in your own image and entrusted the whole world to his care, so that in serving you alone, the Creator, he might have dominion over all creatures. And when through disobedience he had lost your friendship, you did not abandon him to the domain of death.  For you came in mercy to the aid of all, so that those who seek might find you.  Time and again you offered them covenants and through the prophets taught them to look forward to salvation.” 

    And unlike human covenants, which have to be ratified by both parties, and are useless unless both parties agree and commit to them, the covenant offered by God is effective on its own.  God initiates the covenant, unilaterally, out of love for us.  Our hardness of heart, our sinfulness, our constant turning away from the covenant does not nullify that covenant.  God’s grace transcends our weakness, God’s zealous love for us and constant pursuit of us is limitless.

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word shows us the history of the covenant.  The first reading recalls the covenant God made with the Israelites through the ministry of Moses.  The people agree to do everything the Lord commanded, and Moses seals the covenant by sprinkling the people with the blood of the sacrifice and saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.”  The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews makes the point that if the blood of sacrificed animals can bring people back into relationship with God, how much more could the blood of Christ draw back all those who have strayed.  Christ is the mediator of the new covenant, as he himself said in the Gospel: “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.”

    And so we, among the many, benefit from Christ’s blood of the covenant.  The preface for the Eucharist Prayer today says, “As we eat his flesh that was sacrificed for us, we are made strong, and, as we drink his Blood that was poured out for us, we are washed clean.”  God’s desire for covenant with us cannot be stopped by sin or death or the grave because his grace is mightier than all of that.

    We disciples are called then to respond to the covenant.  Having been recipients of the great grace of God’s love, we are called to live the covenant in our relationships with others.  Which isn’t always the easiest thing to do.  Sometimes people test our desire to be in covenant with them; sometimes they don’t even want to be in covenant with us.  But the model for our relationships with others is the relationship God has with us.  And so sometimes we have to unilaterally extend the covenant, even if the other isn’t willing, or doesn’t know that we care for them.  God wants to offer the covenant to everyone on earth, and he may well be using us to extend the covenant to those he puts in our path.

    God’s covenant with us is renewed every day, and celebrated every time we come to receive Holy Communion.  When we receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are renewed in the covenant, strengthened in grace and holiness, and brought nearer to our God who longs for us.  We who are so richly graced can do no less than extend the covenant to others, helping them too to know God’s love for them, feeding them physically and spiritually.

    The Psalmist asks today, “How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me?”  And the answer is given: by taking up the chalice of salvation, drinking of God’s grace, renewing the covenant, and passing it on to others.  May the Body and Blood of Christ keep us all safe for eternal life!

  • Friday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Angels are messengers that God sends sometimes to let us know his plans for us, or to guard and guide us, or even to help us to see what’s really important.  And it’s that last thing that the archangel Raphael does in today’s first reading.  If we remember all the way back to Tuesday, we heard about Tobit being made blind by cataracts caused by bird droppings, and later in that same story, he scolded his wife for accepting a goat as a bonus on her labor, because he did not believe her story.  In that part of the story, it seems that Tobit had to learn that charity – for which he himself was quite well known – begins at home.  His period of blindness gave him that very insight, I think, and in today’s story he rejoices in his cleared vision.

    Through the intercession of Saint Raphael the archangel, Tobit regained his sight and was able to see his son safely returned from a long and dangerous journey.  He saw also the return of his family fortune.  And he saw the union of his son Tobit with his new wife Sarah.  There was great cause for rejoicing in all that he was able to see and Tobit didn’t miss a beat in placing the credit where it belonged.  He said,

    Blessed be God,
    and praised be his great name,
    and blessed be all his holy angels.
    May his holy name be praised
    throughout all the ages.
    Because it was he who scourged me,
    and it is he who has had mercy on me.

    And so we praise God today for angels who help us to see what’s really important.  We praise God for angels who clear up our clouded vision and help us to see past the obstacles we’ve put in God’s way.  We praise God for angels who help us to overcome our pride and self-righteousness so that God’s way can become clear to us.  May we rejoice along with Tobit and Anna and all the rest that God has truly sent his angels to us often to bring us back to him.