Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Liturgy

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time: Let your mercy come to me, O Lord

    Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time: Let your mercy come to me, O Lord

    Today’s readings

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    I love that there were short verses for the psalm today, and we got to repeat this refrain from the Psalmist over and over.  If you think about it, and if you really enter into it, it becomes a kind of mantra, or Taize chant, or the Jesus Prayer, a way to center ourselves and open ourselves up to the Lord in this Eucharistic celebration.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    Because we are all in need of the Lord’s mercy, aren’t we?  Whether it is sinfulness, addiction, illness or infirmity, anxiety, worry about a family member, uncertainty about a job or the economy as a whole, we all have to realize that so much of the time we are in desperate need of the Lord’s love and mercy.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    And we come to the point that we know that the only thing that can help us is the Lord’s mercy.  We may have tried so many times on our own to cure ourselves or make the pain go away or focus on the positive or not cause waves, we know that of ourselves, ultimately, we are unable to fix the things that really vex us.  Sin takes hold, circumstances beyond our control confound us, powerlessness causes frustration.  And then, all of a sudden, we remember the One we were trying to hide from, or with whom we didn’t want to bother with our troubles.  But in the face of our own powerlessness, we must turn to the one whose power can overcome all.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

    And so that powerlessness eventually, inevitably intersects with the loving power of our merciful God, who desires so much more for us than we would settle for.  And then we really do let God’s mercy come to us.  Because it was always there in the first place; never withheld.  We had just to let it come to us, had to be open to it, had to be in the place where we could receive it and come to the point where we could acknowledge our need for it and our gratitude for receiving it.  And when we at last arrive there, and that mercy comes to us, how overwhelmed we can be, how transformed, how loved we can feel, how cared for.  God’s mercy is always there, we have just to let it come to us.

    “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

  • Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It was shortly after lunch that I finished this homily, and who could blame me?  With all this talk of “juicy, rich food” and wedding banquets, and even St. Paul saying that he knew what it was like to be well-fed and what it was like to be hungry, whose mind wouldn’t turn to food?  And that’s really okay, because all of us have come here [today / tonight] because we are hungry, but maybe hungry in a different way.

    Many people, when asked why they pick one church over another, say that they do it because it is at that church that they are “spiritually fed.”  And that is certainly one of the tasks of the church, to feed those who hunger with the spiritual food that comes from our Lord Jesus Christ.  And I think that’s the lens through which we have to see this rather curious Gospel parable today.

    When our modern ears hear this parable, there are surely things that seem odd about it, aren’t there?  First of all, as the wedding banquet is finished, the guests have to be summoned to the feast.  But in those days, they probably had received a formal invitation previously, and then had to be let know when the feast was ready.  But then we come to this very curious issue of the invited guests not wishing to attend.  What could possibly be keeping them away.  Even if they weren’t thrilled by the invitation and honored to attend, you’d think they would show up anyway because of who it is that is inviting them.  You would think they would want to keep the king happy.

    And many of us have been in the position of going to some social event because it is expected of us, I am sure.  I myself remember clearly attending events for work in my pre-priesthood days because clients or other VIPs were in the area.  Even in seminary, we were often “invited” to events that really were mandatory, which always used to drive me nuts.  But we can all relate in some way to attending some social event because it is expected of us, and not necessarily because we would choose to be there.

    And that makes what happens next even stranger.  Did they really think they could mistreat and kill the king’s messengers without any kind of consequences?  No king worth his salt would let such a disrespectful challenge to his authority go unpunished.

    But now the banquet is still ready and the guests are well, unavailable shall we say…  So the king sends the messengers out to all the public places in order to invite whomever they find.  And who are they going to find?  Well, probably pretty much what you’d expect: peddlers, butchers, beggars, prostitutes, tax collectors, shop lifters, the physically impaired and sick … in short, not the sort of people you’d expect to find at a king’s wedding banquet.

    So, to me, it’s not all that shocking that one of them is not appropriately dressed for the banquet.  What is shocking is that the rest of them are, right?  Some biblical scholars have suggested that perhaps the king, knowing who was going to show up, may have provided appropriate attire, and that one person refused to put it on.  Certainly if that were true, we could all understand the king throwing that person out.

    Putting the parable in context, the banquet is the kingdom of God.  The distinguished invited guests are the people to whom Jesus addressed the parable: the chief priests and the elders of the people.  These have all rejected the invitation numerous times, and would now make that rejection complete by murdering the messenger, the king’s son, Christ Jesus.  Because of this, God would take the kingdom from them, letting them go on to their destruction, and offer the kingdom to everyone that would come, possibly indicating the Gentiles, but certainly including everyone whose way of life would have been looked down upon by the chief priests and elders: prostitutes, criminals, beggars, the blind and lame.  All of these would be ushered in to the banquet, being given the new beautiful wedding garment which is baptism, of course, and treated to a wonderful banquet, which is the Eucharist.  Those who further reject the king by refusing to don that pristine garment may indeed be cast out, but to everyone who accepts the grace given them, a sumptuous banquet awaits.

    Can you imagine the hunger that those beggars, prostitutes, criminals, blind and lame people had?  Think about how filthy were the garments they had to be wearing.  Yet they are all washed clean in the waters of baptism, fed to satisfaction on the Bread of Life.

    If by now you’re thinking that the beggars, prostitutes, criminals, blind and lame are you and me, well, now you’re beginning to understand what Jesus is getting at.  Our sinfulness leaves us impoverished, and hardly worthy to attend the Banquet of the Lord.  It would only be just for our God to leave us off the invitation list.  But our God will do no such thing.  He washes us in the waters of baptism, clothing us in Christ, bringing us to the Banquet, and feeding us beyond our wildest imaginings.  We come here desiring to be spiritually fed, and our God offers us the very best: his own Son’s body and blood.

    [Today we join with our RCIA candidates for full communion, who are themselves answering the king’s invitation tonight.  They are one with us in baptism already, and in the days to come will complete the formation that will bring them along with us to the table of the Lord.  Their presence here stirs our own hearts, reminding us to keep that wedding garment pristine, and approach the Lord’s table with renewed love and devotion.]

    As we come to the Banquet today, we must certainly be overjoyed that our names are on the list.  We have been summoned and the banquet is prepared.  Now we approach the Banquet of the Lord with gratitude for the invitation, which is certainly undeserved, but just as certainly the cause of all our joy.  We sing this joy with our Psalmist today: “Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come.”

  • Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s homily is a bit of a mystagogy on this familiar experience we have of praying the Lord’s Prayer.  Mystagogy is a kind of reflecting back on the mysteries.  Once we have experienced the mysteries and practices and rituals of our faith, it is important for us to reflect back on them, to see what they mean, and how they have changed us.  We have all prayed the Lord’s Prayer thousands of times, and we continue to do so not because we delight in the multiplicity of words, but instead because we have been changed by our praying, as the disciples were changed when they were given this beautiful prayer for the first time.

    The opening of the prayer – “Our Father” – has in its time moved us into relationship with the One who made us.  We were created for God, and God earnestly desires us to be one with him.  Acknowledging this relationship by proclaiming “Our Father” tells us that we have come from God, will one day return to God, and that we daily exist in God.  It also reminds us that, by using the word “our”, the faith we have is one that is corporate.  We can only come to God together, because we were made to be in community every bit as much as the Holy Trinity is a community.

    The middle of the prayer has helped us to rely on God.  “Give us this day our daily bread.”  We accept what we need – not necessarily what we want – from God who is able and willing to provide for our sustenance day in and day out.  It might be a difficult road and daily we may desire much more than we need, but as we reflect on our past, we may in fact see the hand of God holding us up through bad times, and helping us dance through the good times.

    And finally we come to know the healing power of our God.  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation.”  When we let go of the things that have a hold on us, we can experience the loving embrace of Our Father.  When we release our hold on others, we find ourselves open to the grace of God.

    As we offer this beautiful prayer later in this Liturgy, may we all open our minds and hearts to reflect with joy on the Lord’s Prayer and its effect on our spiritual lives.

  • Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I reflect often these days on how much less I seem to know compared to what I thought I knew as a young adult.  In those late-teen and early-twenties years, I think so many of us think we have life all figured out and we know how things should be run.  Certainly, there is much to be said about the idealism of youth.  But that idealism can quickly turn to cynicism, and it’s amazing how much more clarity we gain with the passing of the years.  Yet the conflicts between idealistic, even cynical young adults and those wizened by the experience of years can reveal a less-than-healthy generation gap.

    So if you identify with that experience, multiply it by millions and you’ll know the gap in the knowledge between God and humanity.  But as certainly as we must know that, we humans tend to approach our relationship with God as if we had all the answers.  That’s what Job is being chastised for in today’s first reading.  Job is understandably upset by all that has befallen him, but God reminds him that God is in control and that God alone has the big picture.

    The Psalmist tells us that God’s knowledge even extends to how much he knows about us:

    O LORD, you have probed me and you know me;
    you know when I sit and when I stand;
    you understand my thoughts from afar.
    My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
    with all my ways you are familiar.

    And so, when we are frustrated by the way our life is going, and when we are angry that we cannot see the big picture, perhaps the best prayer is again from our psalmist: “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.”

  • Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes it’s hard to accept that something is in our best interest when we first hear of it.  I can remember often growing up not wanting to do something like go on a retreat or join the youth group, but my parents giving me that gentle nudge to do it anyway.  And then of course, when I went, I’d always have a really great experience, and then I had to admit to them that I liked it, which was harder still.

    I always think of that when I hear this week’s Gospel reading.  I think it’s a pretty human experience to resist what’s good for us, especially when it means extending ourselves into a new experience, or when it means having to inconvenience ourselves or disrupt our usual schedule.  We don’t want to go out into the field and work today, or go help at the soup kitchen, or go teach religious education, or go on that retreat, or get involved in a ministry at the church, or join a small Christian community, or whatever it may be that’s in front of us.

    I remember specifically an experience I had when I first started in seminary.  I became aware that some of the guys, as their field education experience, were serving as fire chaplains.  That scared the life out of me, and I said to myself that I’d never be able to do that.  Two and a half years later, one of my friends at seminary asked me to join him as a fire chaplain.  Figures, doesn’t it?  I told him I didn’t think I had the ability to do that, but he persuaded me to pray about it.  Well, when I prayed about it, of course the answer was yes, do it.  And so I did, and found it one of the most rewarding spiritual experiences of my time in seminary.

    People involved in ministries here at the Church can probably tell you the same kinds of stories.  Times when they have been persuaded to do something they didn’t want to.  They could probably tell you how much they grew as people, how much they enjoyed the experience.  When we extend ourselves beyond our own comfort level for the glory of God, we are always rewarded beyond what we deserve.  And that’s grace, that’s the work of God in our lives.

    We see in our Gospel today a God who is extremely patient bestowing his gifts of salvation.  He never closes the door on those who have turned away from him, but always makes it possible for us to find him, to go out into the field even though we’ve said no in the first place.  Much like last week’s Gospel story of the day laborers who began their work day at 5pm getting paid the same as those who had worked all day, it doesn’t matter when we respond to God, as long as we do.  Those who respond early clearly have more labor, but they also have more joy, more personal growth, more celebration in the Spirit.  But we all come together to the ultimate celebration in the Kingdom of our God.

    We all know people who have been asked to go into the field and have said no.  Today we hear that the door is still open.  Our prayer today is that ultimately, they will respond to their Father’s invitation.

  • Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our first reading this past week has been taking us on a kind of tour of the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament.  Today’s pearl of wisdom, from the book of Ecclesiastes, talks about the seasons of a person’s life.  In some ways, the book of Ecclesiastes can seem to be the most pessimistic of the books of Scripture.  Based on the conjecture that the book may have been written by wise king Solomon, some say this was the book he wrote late in life, looking back on where life has taken him with a tired and cynical heart.  You can get that feeling as you read through the book of Ecclesiastes, but if you stay with it, you often unearth some treasures like today’s selection.

    Today we hear that there is a time for everything.  And you can well imagine Solomon saying this at an old age, looking back on his life.  We all know that life takes us all sorts of places, some good and some bad, some pleasant and some unpleasant, some joy-filled and some laden with sorrow.  We need the one to appreciate the other, I think, and we pray for short times of unhappiness mixed with generous portions of joy.  Life ebbs and flows, and ultimately leads us to the God who made us.  I love the line toward the end of the reading: “He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts…”

    Jesus too realized that his own life would be mixed with joy and sorrow.  After asking who they said he was, he instructed them carefully that he would suffer, be rejected, would die and then rise.  Here he links the sorrow in his life and in ours with the Cross, and the joy in his life and in ours with the Resurrection.  We can’t have one without the other, and through it all God is glorified.

    The protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr summed it up aptly in his famous serenity prayer.  You’ve heard the beginning, but the ending is truly brilliant:

    God, give us grace to accept with serenity
    the things that cannot be changed,
    Courage to change the things
    which should be changed,
    and the Wisdom to distinguish
    the one from the other.

    Living one day at a time,
    Enjoying one moment at a time,
    Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
    Taking, as Jesus did,
    This sinful world as it is,
    Not as I would have it,
    Trusting that You will make all things right,
    If I surrender to Your will,
    So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
    And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

    Amen.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today we continue our week-long quest for wisdom.  Today’s pearl of wisdom has us thinking about the things that worry us.  Herod was worried about Jesus to the point of morbid curiosity.  He was afraid that Jesus was some kind of reincarnation of St. John the Baptist.  He worried about what people must be thinking, he worried about the possibility of losing the throne, he worried about everything because he was kind of a low-level leader, and he’d be the first to go if there was any kind of trouble.

    But don’t we worry about the same kinds of things?  We worry about what people are saying about us.  We worry about losing whatever control we have of whatever is in our lives, whether it is work, or family, or friends.  We worry about very real things like illness or the economy or the direction our loved ones are taking.  But what Qoheleth would have us understand in our first reading, is that this is all a handful of nothing.  It’s vanity, a chasing after the wind, a waste of the life we’ve been given.

    And that’s hard for me to hear today because I’m a worrier, and come from a long line of worriers.  When I don’t think I have anything to worry about, I worry that I’m forgetting something!  (And I usually am!)  But what we all need to hear – me included! – is that God has all of this in his hands.  And even if everything doesn’t go completely smoothly, or if it doesn’t go the way we’d like to see it happen, it will all work out in God’s time.  Maybe the way won’t be bump-free, but the way will ultimately lead us to God if we stop trying to veer off the path and go our own way.  Because that is truly vanity.

    Our prayer of submission to God’s will is the words of the Psalmist today: “In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.”  Amen to that.  There’s never a time when God lets us down or leaves us alone.  Even if the way is difficult, we are not alone on it.  God is always our refuge, in good times and in bad.  Thinking any differently in times of distress is nothing more than a chasing after the wind.

  • Monday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today we begin a little excursion into the Wisdom Literature of the Scriptures.  The first readings this week will be from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, two of the strongest pieces of Wisdom Literature in the Old Testament.  Our friends in CREEDS studied the Wisdom Literature last year, so this is a bit of a nice review.

    Wisdom literature in general was intended to praise God and heroic virtue.  For the Jews, the source of this wisdom was from God himself. Wisdom literature in general used several distinctive forms, such as the proverb, the riddle and fables.  But in Hebrew, it is mostly the proverb that is common.  The proverb could distill the wisdom of the ages into a practical, memorable, pithy line or two that had a bit of sermon in it as well.  The proverbs had to be memorable because it was by memory that most of them were handed down across the generations and perpetuated in the society.

    Today’s bit of wisdom is one that finds its praise in justice.  That justice consisted of concern for the needy among us.  “Say not to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come again,
    tomorrow I will give,’ when you can give at once,” we are told.  We are exhorted to keep peaceful lives, finding our path not in lawlessness but in uprightness and truth.

    The Gospel reading gives us some of Jesus’ own wisdom.  That truth will eventually win out and all that is hidden will be revealed.  Nothing will be hidden but instead will be revealed in the light of God’s kingdom as a lamp on a lampstand.

    So today finds us to be wisdom-seekers.  As we begin our study of the Wisdom Literature this week, we may indeed find that God is pointing out a path to us, one that perhaps we had not seen before.  May we all be open to follow that path to justice, knowing, as the Psalmist tells us, “The just one shall live on your holy mountain, O Lord.”

  • Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Ever since I can remember hearing this parable of the day laborers, it has rubbed me the wrong way.  Maybe it does that for you too, as you sit here having just had it proclaimed to you.  Yes, the landowner describes himself as “generous,” but it seems like he is only really generous to those who came in to work at 5:00, only to work an hour or so, and get paid the same as those who toiled all day long.  It all just seems so unfair.  Why work through the heat of the day and put forth our best efforts, if we’re going to get paid the same as those who have done nothing but stand around all day?  Those of us raised with the American work ethic just bristle at such crazy talk, don’t we?

    But when a Scripture passage rubs us the wrong way and makes us bristle, that’s really a good thing, because it’s usually an indicator that the Words have something important to say to us.

    What’s interesting is that this parable in some ways is pretty timeless.  It’s not like the concept of day laborers has come and gone; we still have them all over our world today.  In cities all throughout our country, men and women continue to stand around waiting for work.  They are, perhaps, undocumented immigrants, those who cannot find sustained work because they cannot provide a social security number.  This election year finds that issue an important one.  How do we protect our borders and uphold our laws and still provide safety for those who are in need?

    But whatever we may think about that particular issue, what we need to see is that the day laborer fills a particular need for handyman help and odd jobs, and helps those people to provide for their families.  But it is a precarious system.  The youngest and fittest among them will certainly find work early in the day – if there is work that day, but the more elderly among them might not get an offer that day at all.  And as much as we might feel justified in cajoling them for standing around doing nothing, we have to realize that they are really standing around worrying about whether they’ll be able to feed their families that day.  Would you rather work all day, or worry like that all day?

    And you don’t have to be a day laborer to have those kinds of worries in today’s economy.  Those at the bottom of the pay scale know with acute anxiety the need to be able to work every day.  Missing just one day can mean the difference between being able to feed their families, or not; or to be able to fill a needed prescription, or not; to be able to make rent, or not.  So before we judge day laborers and low paid workers, we have to ask ourselves if we’d be willing to accept their worries for even just one day.

    So think of all that anxiety and multiply it many times over, and you’ll understand the plight of the day laborer in Jesus’ day.  Poverty was severe, and about 95% of the people were desperately poor enough to be on the verge of starvation.  So those laborers standing around all day were quite literally worrying about whether they would feed their families that day.  For those still waiting for work at 5pm, the fact that no one had hired them could quite literally have been a death sentence.  What an incredibly extravagant gesture it was, then, for this landowner to have paid them for the whole day.  In that kind of poverty, a fraction of a day’s pay might have been too little to have met their needs.  But with the action of the landowner, they were given an incredible, wonderful gift.

    But lest we still bristle for those who worked all day long, let us be careful to note that not one of the workers was treated unfairly.  They were all given the usual daily wage.  That those who worked a partial day also received the full day’s wage was an act of generosity, but not an act of unfairness to the others.

    And maybe those full-day-working laborers should not have complained.  How strict an accounting were they really hoping to have from the landowner?  Had they worked their hardest all day long?  Maybe, maybe not.  Did they take an extra break, or slack off toward the end of the day?  Was the work that they accomplished of the highest possible quality?  We don’t know the answers to any of those questions, but the laborers and the landowner certainly would have.  And if their efforts were anything less than exemplary, maybe even their day’s wage was an act of generosity too.

    Many years ago now, I heard about the deathbed conversion of actor John Wayne.  I thought at the time, “Gee, that’s convenient.”  Here he may well have led a life of excess and who knows what all debauchery and only on his deathbed was he willing to form a relationship with God.  Here those of us disciples have been working hard at it all this time, and yet some can get it just at the last minute?  That makes me bristle with thoughts of unfairness.  But, as the prophet Isaiah tells us today, our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, and our ways are not God’s ways.

    The fact is, I don’t know what kind of life John Wayne led.  I haven’t walked a day in his boots.  I don’t know how long that deathbed conversion had been percolating in his mind or how much he had longed for it all through his life.  We disciples can be pretty inappropriately judgmental about those who don’t live the kind of life we think they should be, and that is just as off-base as the judgment of the earliest-hired day laborers in today’s parable.  The daily wage we are looking for is nothing less than salvation, and whether one receives that at baptism or on one’s deathbed, all the Church should rejoice that salvation was found at last.  Because that’s how God sees it.

    And maybe we don’t want to ask for too strict an accounting either.  Because we come here today with our sins heavy on our souls, knowing that our labor hasn’t always been of the highest quality and our efforts haven’t been continuously stellar.  We ought all of us to accept the gift of salvation when it is given, in this spirit that it comes to us, and not be concerned about when it finally comes to others.  As the Psalmist tells us today, “The Lord is near to all who call upon him” – whenever that call is made.  Today we are being called to accept and love and celebrate the generosity of our God.  And all of us more-or-less hard-working disciples are blessed to be able to celebrate that in the most generous way of all, by receiving the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our God to nourish us and sustain us on the journey.  Thanks be to God for his great generosity to us in every moment!