Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Liturgy

  • Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    We Americans tend to believe that we ourselves have all the answers; and I don’t necessarily mean that all of us together have the answers, but rather that we individually have the answers.  We often hold relative truth, even if we wouldn’t say that we do.   We often insist on acting according to our opinions, instead of acting on consciences formed by Truth.

    It’s cold comfort to see, in our gospel reading this morning, that we aren’t alone.  Jesus’ generation was much the same.  John the Baptist came across too strict, and Jesus came across like a drunkard and a partier.  But the real problem was that they both proclaimed the truth; Jesus, obviously even stronger than John.  But the crowds dismissed them both, because both required them to change their lives and their ways of thinking.  If John and Jesus were right, then they weren’t, and that was unsettling.

    It’s unsettling for us too, but we have the benefit of centuries of Church teaching to help us.  And so we are called to leave behind our own opinions and think with the grace of Truth.  It’s time that we considered that perhaps our own point of view isn’t the be-all and end-all of wisdom.  Advent is about dispersing the darkness with the light of Christ, and the light of his Truth.  The psalmist said it best: “Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.”

  • Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s Readings

    Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.  This had been a traditional belief since about the eighth century, and had been celebrated as a feast first in the East, and later in the West.  So let us be clear that this celebration pertains to the conception of Mary, and not that of Jesus, whose conception we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation on March 25.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of theUnited States of America, and so this feast is always a Holy Day of Obligation, every single year.

    This feast celebrates the dogmatic belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was finally coming to fruition.

    The first reading paints the picture for us.  The man had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God noticed that, and asked about it – obviously he knew what happened, but he wanted to hear them say it.  He knew they had discovered the forbidden tree because otherwise they would not have the idea that their natural state was shameful.  Sin had entered the world, and God asks who gave the man the forbidden fruit.

    This leads to the first recorded instance of passing the buck, as the man blames not just the woman, but also God, for the situation: “The woman whom you put here with me; she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”  In other words, if God hadn’t put the woman there with him in the first place, he never would have received the fruit to eat.  The woman, too, blames someone else: the serpent.  As if neither of them had been created with a brain to think for themselves, they begin that blame game that traced its ugly path all through history and that we all participate in from time to time.

    This is a pattern we will see all throughout Scripture: God gives a road to salvation, human beings turn away, and so on and so on and so on.  And we still do it today, don’t we?  We have the Scriptures to show us the way, but we don’t take time to read and reflect on them.  We have the Church to lead us in the right way, but we choose to do whatever we think is right, as if we are smarter than two millennia of saints.  We have the Sacraments to fill us with grace, but some hardly ever partake of them.  As the Psalmist says, “The LORD has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.” How will we respond to that grace?  God is always pouring out his generous gifts, and we so often reject them and in doing so, reject the Divine Giver.

    This cyclic state of sin and rejection was never intended.  We are not defined as a people by our sins.  We cannot mess up and say, “hey, I’m only human,” because being perfectly human does not include sin.  The perfectly human One – Jesus Christ – came to show us the way out of the cycle of sin and rejection.  This grace was always intended.  AsSt. Paul says to the Ephesians today: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing for his birth through the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then ready to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming one of us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God.

    Our celebration today has special meaning for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

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

  • Monday of the Second Week of Advent

    Monday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    What the Pharisees were missing in this gospel story was that there is something that paralyzes a person much worse than any physical thing, and that something, of course, is sin.  And if you’ve ever found yourself caught up in a pattern of sin in your life, of if you’ve ever struggled with any kind of addiction, or if a sin you have committed has ever made you too ashamed to move forward in a relationship or ministry or responsibility, then you know the paralysis this poor man was suffering on that stretcher.  Sin is that insidious thing that ensnares us and renders us helpless, because we cannot defeat it no matter how hard we try.  That’s just the way sin works on us.

    We cannot just raise our hands and say, hey, I’m only human, because nothing makes us less human than sin.  Jesus, in addition to being divine, of course, was the most perfectly human person that ever lived, and he never sinned.  So from this we should certainly take away that sin does not make us human, and that sin is not part of human nature.

    And it doesn’t have to stay that way.  We’re not supposed to stay bound up on our stretchers forever.  We’re supposed to get ourselves to Jesus, or if need be, like the man in the gospel today, get taken to him by friends, because it is only Jesus that can free us.  That’s why the church prays, in the prayer of absolution in the Sacrament of Penance, “May God give you pardon and peace.”

    Freed from the bondage of our sins by Jesus who is our peace, we can stand up with the lame man from the gospel and go on our way, rejoicing in God.  We can rejoice in our deliverance with Isaiah who proclaimed, “Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy; They will meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee.”

  • Second Sunday of Advent [B]

    Second Sunday of Advent [B]

    Today’s readings

    When I was a teenager, some of us would climb up onto the roof of our house on the fourth of July so that we could see the fireworks.  It was by far the best seat in the house.  We could usually see the fireworks not only in our own town but in some others nearby as well.  Time has passed and the trees are taller and I am older and less okay with heights, so we don’t do that any more, but it was a beautiful view back then.  You’ve experienced that if you’ve ever been hiking somewhere beautiful and hilly or mountainous, and you get to the highest point along the way and take in a breathtaking view.  What wonderful things we can see when we’re up on the heights.

    That’s the challenge I take from today’s readings.  Isaiah urges Jerusalem to go up onto a high mountain.  From there they can see the Lord coming in power.  Us too, I think, if we’re open to going there.  I think the climbing is less literal than it was, perhaps, for them, but it is climbing all the same.  It means ascending in our spiritual lives, going up higher in our living of the Gospel and call to discipleship.

    The prophet Isaiah makes the case in our first reading:

    Go up on to a high mountain,
    Zion, herald of glad tidings;
    cry out at the top of your voice,
    Jerusalem, herald of good news!
    Fear not to cry out
    and say to the cities of Judah:
    Here is your God!
    Here comes with power
    the Lord GOD…

    Isaiah was speaking to a people in exile.  They had sinned, had not respected God’s commandments, they even rejected the prophet’s call to get their acts together, and now they’re paying the price.  After an initial message of comfort early on in today’s first reading, Isaiah now turns and gives them the way back.  Do they want to have rest from their enemies?  Well then, climb up high, see your God coming in power, and cry out at the top of your voice the message you should have been proclaiming all along.

    That is the charge we are all receiving in these Advent days.  The Israelites aren’t the only ones who need to get their acts together.  We do too.  We can look in the papers for signs of communal sin: world financial markets coming at least close to the brink of failure, corporate greed that makes the news time and time again, the effects of poverty run rampant resulting in increased crime.  But we almost don’t have to go that far to find our discipleship lacking.  We can look at our personal sin: the times we have neglected prayer or have been judgmental of others.  The times we have chosen not to help others when we could have, and so much more.  It is high time we climbed up onto that high mountain and started to live the life the Gospel calls us to live.

    Thankfully, Advent gives us the time to look at that in our lives.  That does mean, though, that among all our gift-buying and party-going, we have to make time for our God who gives us the reason for celebrating the season in the first place.  Maybe this Advent can see us creating even five minutes more time for prayer, reflecting on the scripture readings for the day, or the meditation in the blue books we have available.  Advent should see us repenting of our sins, going to confession even if we haven’t been in hears, and turning our hearts back to God.

    I want to be absolutely clear here.  This Advent, if you haven’t already been to confession, you should go.  We have many times available for you to do that.  Every Saturday, we are here from 4:00 to 4:45.  We have an Advent Parish Penance Service scheduled for Thursday, December 15 at 7:00.  There will be several priests here to hear your confession.  You can always also make an appointment with me or Father Steve.  We will also be publishing a list of local parishes’ schedules in case ours doesn’t work for you.

    Perhaps the more pressing issue is what happens if you haven’t been to confession in a long time?  What do you do if you don’t know what to do?  The answer is just go: tell the priest you haven’t been to confession in a long time, and that you need help.  It is our job to help you make a good confession, and we can help you do that.  For me, it is always a great joy to help someone come back to the sacraments.

    As we ascend that high mountain by confessing our sins and revitalizing our prayer life, we should also reach out in service to others.  Adopting a needy family for Christmas, or collecting food for the food pantry, or giving to Toys for Tots.  These and so many other opportunities are there for us this time of year to give of ourselves and help others in their time of need.  Giving of ourselves helps us to see others as God does, and gives us a heart that is like the heart of God.

    Isaiah says that we should climb that high mountain and announce the good news, the Gospel, crying out at the top of our voice.  It’s not like we need to stand on a soapbox on a street corner to do that.  We don’t even have to travel to a mountainous region.  All we have to do is to live the Gospel with integrity, because then everyone will see that.  Who knows if our small acts of faith, prayer and service won’t lead someone else down the right path in their own lives?

    Today, we celebrate the baptism of NNNNN.  This is an occasion of joy for HIS/HER family, but also for us as a parish.  Every time someone is baptized into the faith, our Church is one person stronger.  We need to be supportive of HIS/HER parents and godparents by being a parish that lives the faith and helps them to do the same.  Children need to be part of a community that takes its own baptismal call seriously, so that they can learn to do that too.  It is our responsibility as people of faith to help our children climb up onto that high mountain that Isaiah talks about, so that, knowing the Lord and having a relationship with him, they can one day enter with all of us into eternal life.

  • Monday of the First Week of Advent

    Monday of the First Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Could you do that?  You have someone close to you at home, and you know Jesus is near and one visit could heal her or him.  Yet, you realize the unworthiness that you have, that we all have, for him to come under your roof.  Would you have faith enough to tell him not to come, but just say the word.  Would you be confident enough that his word would heal your loved one?

    Interestingly, these words are so much clearer in the new translation of the Mass.  We pray these very words just before we all receive Holy Communion.  We acknowledge our unworthiness, and we also express our desire that our Lord would say the word so that our souls would be healed.

    That’s the faith we are called to have, and I wonder if we have that kind of faith when we pray.  Do we trust God enough to let him “say the word” and then know that we don’t have to set “Plan B” in motion?  Today’s Scriptures call us to greater trust as we begin this Advent journey to the house of the Lord.  In what way do we need to trust God more today?

  • The First Sunday of Advent [B]

    The First Sunday of Advent [B]

    Today’s readings

    To you, I lift up my soul, O my God.
    In you, I have trusted; let me not be put to shame.
    Nor let my enemies exult over me;
    and let none who hope in you be put to shame.

    Those are the very first words in our new Roman Missal’s Proper of Time.  This is today’s proper entrance antiphon, and with these words, the Church begins the new Church year.  We stand here on the precipice of something new: a new translation of our Liturgy, a new Church year, a new season of grace.  We eagerly await God’s new creation, lifting up souls full of hope and expectation.  We come to this place and time of worship to take refuge from the laughing enemies that pursue us into our corner of the world.  And yet we wait for God on this first day of the year, keenly aware that our waiting will not be unrewarded.  This is Advent, the season whose name means “coming” and stands before us as a metaphor of hope for a darkened world, and a people darkened by sin.

    I sure think Isaiah had it right in today’s first reading, didn’t he?  “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways,” he cries, “and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?”  What a wonderful question for all of us – it’s a question that anyone who has struggled with a pattern of sin has inevitably asked the Lord at one time or another.  He goes on to pray “Would that you might meet us doing right, and that we were mindful of you in our ways!”  We so much want to break free of the chains of sin and sadness, and turn back to our God, but so often, sin gets in the way.

    Whether it’s our own personal sin, which is certainly cause enough for sadness, or the sin in which we participate as a society, there’s a lot of darkness out there.  Wars raging all over the world, abortions happening every day of the year, the poor going unfed and dying of starvation here and abroad.  Why does God let all of this happen?

    On Thanksgiving, one of the topics of conversation at the dinner table was who was going to get up at what unheard of hour to go shopping on Black Friday.  I decided to forego those particular festivities.  We know, though, that many did go out and shop for the bargains, and it seems like this traditional shopping day gets worse all the time.  This year, the news spoke of skirmishes and violence in at least a couple of different stores.  What kind of people have we become?  Is this the way we should be preparing for Christmas – the celebration of the Incarnation of our Lord?  Why does God let us wander so far from his ways?  Why doesn’t he just rend the heavens and come down and put a stop to all this nonsense?

    There is only one answer to this quandary, and that’s what we celebrate in this season of anticipation.  There has only ever been one answer.  And that answer wasn’t just a band-aid God came up with on the fly because things had gone so far wrong.  Salvation never was an afterthought.  Jesus Christ’s coming into the world was always the plan.

    I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite Advent hymns this week.  One of my favorites is “O Come, Divine Messiah,” a seventeenth-century French carol translated into English in the late nineteenth century.  It sings of a world in silent anticipation for the breaking of the bondage of sin that could only come in one possible way, and that is in the person of Jesus Christ:

    O Christ, whom nations sigh for,
    Whom priest and prophet long foretold,
    Come break the captive fetters;
    Redeem the long-lost fold.

    Dear Savior haste;
    Come, come to earth,
    Dispel the night and show your face,
    And bid us hail the dawn of grace.

    O come, divine Messiah!
    The world in silence waits the day
    When hope shall sing its triumph,
    And sadness flee away.

    As we prepare to remember the first coming of our Savior into our world, we look forward with hope and eagerness for his second coming too.  You’ll be able to hear that expressed in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer today.  That second coming, for which we live in breathless anticipation, will finally break the captive fetters and put an end to sin and death forever.  That is our only hope, our only salvation, really the only hope and salvation that we could ever possibly need.

    We want our God to meet us doing right.  And so our task now is to wait, and to watch.  Waiting requires patience: patience to enjoy the little God-moments that become incarnate to us in the everyday-ness of our lives.  Patience to accept this sinful world as it is and not as we would have it, patience to know that, as Isaiah says, we are clay and God is the potter, and he’s not done creating, or re-creating the world just yet.  And so we watch for signs of God’s goodness, for opportunities to grow in grace, for faith lived by people who are the work of God’s hands.

    We wait and we watch knowing – convinced – that God will rend the heavens and come down to us again one day; that Christ will return in all his glory and gather us back to himself, perfecting us and allowing hope to sing its triumph so loud that all the universe can hear it, dispelling the night and putting sadness to flight once and for all.

  • Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Jesus says to us today, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”  This includes all of us, past, present and future.  We will all live, in some way, to see the end of days, either here on earth, or from the joy of heaven.

    So what will we see; what things will take place?  We will see the signs of a new creation.  Just like the first buds of the fig tree and other trees that Jesus spoke about, all of which signaled the beginning of summer, so the signs of the new creation are evident among us.  Sins are forgiven, people return to God, miracles happen.  Granted, all these are imperfect in some ways now, given that they happen to us fallen creatures, but one day they shall be brought to perfection in the kingdom of God.  Then, we will see “the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

    And so, in these closing days of the Church year, we pray for the coming of the kingdom, and hope for the salvation of the world as Jesus promised.

  • Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Right at the end of today’s first reading is one of the most chilling lines in all of Scripture: “and they did die.”  The people’s faith was sorely tested: would they give in and worship the false gods of the people around them so that they could have some kind of peace and security, or would they prefer to stand up for what they believed and more likely than not, give their lives for their faith?  Many gave up and gave in and worshipped the false gods.  But many stood their ground and clung to their belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

    But, let’s be clear about this: they all died.  In some way.  Those who were martyred literally gave their lives for the faith, we get that.  But those who chose to give up and give in brought about the death of their culture and the death of their souls.  Sure, they may have had some kind of peace and security now, but who would protect them if the people they allied themselves with were overtaken?  And that is to say nothing of their eternal souls.  They did die.

    The persecution never ends.  It would be easier in our own day to give in and accept abortion as a necessity, or to accept whatever special interest groups think is best for us, or keep our faith private and never share it or show it in any way.  Our culture would like that; they would appreciate our willingness to blend in and not give offense.  But that would be the death of our way of life and our spirituality.  It will surely cost us to witness to our faith, to challenge co-workers when a business deal blurs the lines of morality, to insist that our children attend Church on Sunday before they go to a weekend-long soccer tournament, or whatever the challenge may be.

    But better that we die a little for our faith than that we die without faith at all.

  • The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    Today’s readings

    The rather obvious and certainly oft-repeated application of today’s Gospel reading lies in the very literal interpretation of the word “talent,” at least as it appears in English.  That interpretation goes like this: we have been given many talents, and it’s up to us to use them wisely for the benefit of the kingdom of God.  Woe to the one who ignores his gifts and buries them out of fear.  And that’s a wonderful message.  I could go there, particularly on the heels of our time, talent and treasure campaign.  But it’s wrong – that’s not what Jesus meant, and I think we have to dig just a little bit deeper.

    The word we have translated “talent” here does not mean what we think it means.  When our English ears hear that word, we think gifts, we think of abilities, of things we can do.  But that’s not what it means in the original Greek.  “Talent” here does not mean gifts; a talent was a unit of money.  It was actually rather a large sum of money, equal to something like one thousand days’ wages, or what a poor person could have lived on for fifteen or twenty years.  So think about it, even the servant who only received one talent actually received quite a bit – he received what the average person would earn in a little over three years!  That’s a lot of money for anyone.

    The next thing we have to look at is who it was that was receiving such a large sum of cash.  On first glance, seeing what it is they have been given, we might think these are senior advisers to the master, people who would have been in charge of his estate and his business transactions.  But that’s not what it says.  It says he called in his “servants” – so we are talking here about slaves, slaves – not business advisers.  And so these slaves are getting ten talents, five talents, and one talent – all of them are getting a considerable amount of money!

    If we think of the master as God, and accept the talents simply as money, I think God comes off sounding rather harsh.  The poor servants differed in their ability; that’s pointed out in the story and certainly the master would have known that.  So why would God be so horribly harsh when a simple slave with limited capabilities does nothing with his gifts?  It makes us bristle, I think, to imagine God treating someone like that so poorly.

    So I think this raises a few questions for us.  Who is the master?  What do the talents represent?  Why would the master entrust such a large sum of money to common slaves?  Who are the slaves?  And what on earth was that third slave thinking when he buried such a wonderful gift in the sand?

    Well, first off, let’s suppose the master is God here – God the Father.  This isn’t supposed to be a perfect allegory, so let’s just bracket the harshness of the parable. And I think it’s our first reading that gives us a clue as to what’s really going on here.  That first reading speaks of the worthy wife whose value is far beyond that of fine pearls.  What, or rather who, could be that valuable?  Our theology teaches us that the husband in the first reading is Christ, the bridegroom, and the worthy wife is the Church.  So we are the ones called to be worthy, to be industrious, to take care of the poor and to fear the Lord.  Hold on to that thought for a bit.

    Now the talents, they’re not abilities or gifts, and they aren’t simply money.  The Gospel parable says the Master called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.  What we have translated “entrusted” here means, in the original Greek, something more like “handed over.”  In just the same way, God the Father “handed over” his only Son to us, for the salvation of the whole world.  What could possibly be worth more than that?

    Now the slaves of course are the disciples, they’re you and me, people of every time and place who Christ has come to save.  We are slaves to sin, and we need a redeemer.  Some are more open to redemption and to the work of Christ and the call of the Gospel.  They might get five talents or ten, or however many God chooses to give them.  These go forth into the world, pouring out those riches of Christ into a world that desperately needs salvation, healing and hope.  As that message goes forth, proclaimed and lived by disciples ready to embrace it, they are able to earn five more, or ten more, to double or even triple what they were given for the sake of the kingdom.

    But some are not as open to Christ’s life and work and Gospel.  There’s too much at stake.  They worry about what might happen if our world totally embraced Jesus’ teaching.  They can’t get past what discipleship might personally cost them.  And in Matthew’s Gospel, this is the cardinal sin, because in at least a dozen places, Jesus says “do not be afraid” in one form or another.  That was Jesus’ message in Matthew’s Gospel, and so this third servant, who was afraid of what the Master might be like, buried his treasure out of fear.  And the parable points out that that fear wasn’t even reasonable, since he dealt so wonderfully with the other two servants, rewarding their work by calling them to share in his joy.

    So today’s Gospel is a summary of the whole Gospel of Matthew that we’ve been reading with the Church this year.  We are told that the greatest gift is Christ, that we are called to live the Gospel, that we must take up the task before us without being afraid, that we are called to go out and invest Christ’s presence into a world that always needs to be renewed.  As we come here on this second-to-last Sunday of the Church year, we are brought to this little summary so that we might look back and see how we’ve done that this year.  Have we treasured Christ as the greatest of all that we have been given?  Have we taken on the mission without being afraid, knowing that the gift we have been given in Christ can make up for anything that we ourselves may lack?  Have we accepted that wonderful gift and invested it in the world, proclaiming the Gospel by the way that we live, challenging the corner of the world in which we live to take it up also, so that we might bring back another five or ten or a million talents?

    Or have we been afraid, thinking that the Master is demanding beyond reason, afraid to make a mistake, afraid of what living the Gospel would mean for us, afraid of what it might cost us?  Because if we have lived this way, we have failed the mission.  Everything we have will be taken from us.  There will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

    Here at the end of this Church year, we can renew our commitment, make a new year’s resolution, if you will, to live the Gospel and proclaim the kingdom in the year ahead.  It doesn’t have to be huge.  It doesn’t cost us anything, because everything that we need has been given to us.  Maybe proclaiming the Gospel means doing some kind of service for us.  Reaching out at a homeless shelter or at a soup kitchen or our own food pantry.  Maybe we’ll help teach a religious education class, or sing in the choir, or become a lector.  Maybe we’ll make an effort every day to put prayer in the course of our work day, and try to be people of integrity in our business lives.  Maybe we’ll read the Scriptures each day before we go to bed, even just a few verses, so that the Lord can change our lives and our hearts.  Throughout this Church year, we have received the greatest gift we’ll ever get – Jesus Christ the Lord himself.  Soon it will be time for us to bring back the gift with interest, taking a world of watching people with us. The Psalmist sings of our reward today: “For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork; blessed shall you be, and favored.”  Come, share your Master’s joy!

  • Monday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Increase our faith,” indeed! How often have you had that same reaction to the marvels of God happening in your life? I think about the many times I have had the Spirit point out something I should have seen all along because it was right there in front of my face. Increase my faith, I pray.

    Because, as Jesus tells us today, there are many things that cause sin, and they will inevitably happen. But how horrible to be tangled up in them, right? Whether we’ve caused the occasion for sin, or have been the victim of it, what a tangled mess it is for us. Maybe we have made someone so angry that their response was sinful. Or perhaps we have neglected to offer help where it was needed and caused another person to find what they need in sinful ways. Or maybe we’ve said something scandalous or gossiped about another person and those who have overheard it have been brought to a lower place. None of that makes anyone involved happy; everyone ends up deficient in faith, hope and love in some way. The same is true if we were the ones to have fallen into the trap of an occasion of sin. Don’t we just want to kick ourselves then?

    This is what the Psalmist was talking about when he prayed, “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.” Now, if those are the only words you utter in prayer some day, rest assured they are probably well-chosen. Maybe some days that’s all we can manage. I’ll translate it for you in an even shorter way: “HELP!” Because when we are tangled up in sin, or brought low by suffering of some kind, maybe those are the only words we can manage. But God hears those words and answers them, because we can never fall so far that we are out of God’s reach. Listen to some more of the Psalmist’s excellent words today:

    Where can I go from your spirit?
    From your presence where can I flee?
    If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I sink to the nether world, you are present there.

    Increase our faith, Lord, guide us in the everlasting way.