Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Liturgy

  • The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

    The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate the great feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King of the Universe. It’s one of those feasts that I think we can say, yeah, okay, I believe that. But it really doesn’t affect me. I mean, we don’t even have the political reference of being ruled by a king; that’s never been part of the American way of life. Not only that, I think we as a society have pretty much bracketed the whole idea of authority. Basically if an authority gives us permission to do whatever we want, then fine, he or she can be in authority. But the minute that authority tries to limit us in any way, then whoa: hang on a minute.

    Yet there are times when we do want an authority. Whenever we are wronged, we want an authority to give us justice. Whenever we are in danger, we want an authority to keep us safe. Whenever we are in need, we want an authority to bring us fulfillment. But other than when we need something, we hardly ever seek any kind of authority. Certainly not as a society, and if we’re being honest, not as individuals. As an example, take the days after the tragedy of 9-11. Our whole world was shattered. I wasn’t here then, but I am guessing this church was filled to overflowing; I know my home parish was. In those days, we wanted an authority to bring us peace and comfort and rest. But now that we’re twenty-three years on the other side of it, look around. Not so many people in the pews, right? If Christ was the authority then, what makes him less of an authority now? We certainly did not come through those harrowing days with our own feeble efforts, but when we don’t have buildings crashing down around us, we don’t seem to remember that.

    Still, the Church gives us this important feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King of the Universe to remind us that there is an authority. Christ is king of the Universe and king of our own lives. And if that’s true, we have to be ready to live that way. So no, we can’t just do whatever we want. And no, just because we think something is right, that doesn’t make it truth. And no, the idea of living according to our conscience doesn’t mean that it’s okay as long as it works for me. The world would have us believe that, but the world will one day come to an end. If we want the possibility of eternity, then we have to be open to the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe!

    In today’s first reading, we have the promise of the king: one like a son of man with an everlasting dominion. This part of the book of Daniel comes from a series of visions. In these visions, particularly the one we have today, Daniel gives the Jews hope in persecution. This is a vision that is spoken to lift the people up and help them to know that their hope is in God. The Jews of his day have been being persecuted by the Greek tyrant, Antiochus Epiphanes IV. He and his henchmen were persecuting the Jews who insisted on living the Jewish way of life and following the Jewish laws. But what is even more evil and more disastrous to the community, is that some of the Jews were starting to think that giving up their way of life and instead worshiping the gods of the Greeks was a good idea. They figured if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So, why not give up their own faith to follow one that seems to be working better? The biggest danger they faced was losing their faith to the pagans by adopting pagan ways of life.

    Into this conundrum, Daniel prophesied that there would be one like a Son of Man who would triumph over Antiochus and others like him. This One would deliver them from the persecution they suffered and from the seduction that confronted them. This One would rule the world in justice and peace, and would lead the persecuted ones to a kingdom that would never pass away.

    The early Church identified this Son of Man with Jesus Christ. He is the One who has power to rule over all and he is the One whose kingdom is everlasting. He even referred to himself as the Son of Man, and made it clear that he was the Son of Man who would suffer for the people. He came to deliver those first Christians from persecution with the promise that he would indeed come again, and that same promise is made to us as well.

    But the problem was, he didn’t return right away. People lost faith, gave in to persecution, and just went with the powerful forces of the day. The delay in his return led some to believe that he was not returning, and so they should just do what seemed expedient. Why not go with the victorious pagan forces of the world? Just like the Jews in the first reading.

    Jesus told Pilate in today’s Gospel that his Kingdom was not of this world. So that needs to be the point of discernment for us. When we begin to worship and follow the forces of this world, we have to know that we are in the wrong place. The preface to the Eucharistic Prayer, which I will sing in a few minutes, tells us the kind of kingdom that Christ came to bring, and that we should long for, is a kingdom like this:

    …an eternal and universal kingdom
    a kingdom of truth and life,
    a kingdom of holiness and grace,
    a kingdom of justice, love and peace.

    Christ is the King, the Son of Man, who will lead us to a kingdom not made by human hands, a kingdom that will not pass away, a kingdom of eternal beauty and unfathomable joy. The choice is ours, though. Will we follow the pagan forces of this world, or will we follow Our Lord Jesus Christ the King to that perfect and everlasting kingdom, not of this world that will certainly pass away, but the kingdom of eternity and the life of heaven? There’s only one right answer here.

  • Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I just love this story about Zacchaeus! In particular, there are two main components of the story that really stand out for me as hallmarks of the spiritual life.

    The first is Zacchaeus’s openness. First, he is so eager to see Jesus that he climbs up a tree to get a look at him. We don’t have to go that far. All we have to do is spend some time in the Adoration Chapel, or even just some quiet moments reflecting on Scripture, or meditative prayer, even participating in Mass. All of those are ways to see Jesus, but like Zacchaeus, we have to overcome obstacles to get a look at him. For Zacchaeus, that meant climbing up a tree to overcome the fact that he was apparently vertically challenged! But for you and me, that might mean clearing our schedule, making our time with Jesus a priority. Zacchaeus’s openness also included inviting Jesus in, despite his sinfulness. He was willing to make up for his sin and change everything once he found the Lord. We might ask ourselves today what we need to change, and how willing we are to invite Jesus into our lives, despite our brokenness.

    The second thing that stands out for me is what Jesus says to those who chided him for going into a sinner’s house. “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” What wonderful words those are for us to hear. Because we know how lost we have been at times, and how far we have wandered from our Lord. But the Lord seeks us out anyway, because we are too valuable for him to lose.

    And all we have to do is to be open to the Lord’s work in our lives, just like Zacchaeus was. What a joy it will be then to hear those same words Jesus said to him: “Today salvation has come to this house.”

  • Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    You know, this Gospel reading is filled with all sorts of off-putting comments, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I bristle at the thought of comparing God to a dishonest judge! But that’s not the point here. Of course, Jesus means that God is so much greater than the dishonest judge, that if the dishonest judge will finally relent to someone pestering him, how much more will God, who loves us beyond anything we can imagine, how much more will he grant the needs of this children who come to him in faith?

    But people have trouble with this very issue all the time. Because I am sure that almost all of us have been in the situation where we have prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing seems to happen. But we can never know the reason for God’s delay. Maybe what we ask isn’t right for us right now – or ever. Maybe something better is coming our way, or at least something different. Maybe the right answer will position itself in time, through the grace of God at work in so many situations. Most likely, we just don’t have the big picture, which isn’t ours to have, really.

    But whatever the reason, the last line of the Gospel today is our key: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” And that’s why we have this particular Gospel reading at this late date in the Church year. As the days of Ordinary Time draw to a close, we find it natural to think of the end of time. We don’t know when the end of time will come; Jesus made that clear – nobody knows but the Father. But when it does come, please God let there be faith on earth. Let that great day find us living our faith and living the Gospel and loving one another.

  • Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So many religious people tend to get concerned about the end of time. Some years ago, there was a serious of books called Left Behind, and a couple of movies made from them. If you didn’t see them, believe me, you didn’t miss anything. The premise was that Jesus returned to take all the faithful people home, and “left behind” everyone else. It’s a notion known as the rapture, which is not taught by the Catholic Church, because it was never revealed in Scripture or Tradition. In fact, no Christian denomination taught this until the late nineteenth century, so despite being a popular notion, at least among those who clamored after that series of books, it is not an authentic teaching.

    I mention this because you might hear today’s Gospel and think of the rapture. But Jesus is really talking about the final judgment, which we hear of often in the readings during these waning days of the Church year. In the final judgment, we will all come before the Lord, both as nations and as individuals. Here those who have made a decision to respond to God’s gifts of love and grace will be saved, and those who have rejected these gifts will be left to their own devices, left to live outside God’s presence for eternity.

    So concern about when this will happen – which Jesus tells us nobody knows – is a waste of time. Instead, we have to be concerned about responding to God’s gift and call in the here-and-now. John tells us how to do that in today’s first reading: “Let us love one another.” This is not, as he points out, a new commandment; indeed, Jesus commanded this very clearly, and pointed out that love of God and neighbor is the way that we can be sure that we are living all of the law and the prophets.

    The day of our Lord’s return will indeed take us all by surprise. We’ll all be doing what we do; let’s just pray that we’re all doing what we’re supposed to do: love one another.

  • Thursday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Yesterday, I was reading an article about a Christian evangelical movement called the New Apostolic Revelation who claim that president-elect Trump is a leader in a spiritual battle against the forces of evil in our nation. The notion that any person would have that role is obviously blasphemous, anti-biblical, and at odds with centuries of Church teaching.

    But it also illustrates the point of today’s Gospel reading. I think there is this underlying ache in human nature that wants to know where everything is headed. We worry, understandably, about the future and what it holds for us. So we want to know that someone is in charge and want to know what that someone is doing to set all these things right.

    And so when someone says, “Look, there he is” or “Look, here he is” we want to believe that that’s the case and have our sense of security filled. But that’s not how this life works. We don’t get to see the big picture, we only see what God needs us to see right now. And I have to believe that that’s a good thing anyway, since I don’t think any of us could survive seeing what God sees, seeing that big picture.

    So we have to, I think, be scrupulously discriminating about what we hear and see, and especially about what voices we follow. We are easily led astray, but we never are if the only voice we are paying attention to is the voice of Our Lord, who, in his own words, is “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.” No one comes to the Father except through him.

    So, as Jesus advises in our Gospel today, do not go off, do not run in pursuit, don’t be led astray by voices of this world leading you one way or the other. Listen to the Gospel, live the Gospel, and by that Gospel come to know the Lord so intimately that you’ll never wander in the wrong direction. That’s the only answer to the uncertainty of our time, or of any time.

    Remember, the Kingdom of God is here, right now, and we need to be living in such a way that no one will see anything in us other than Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

  • The Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings
    Lectio Brevis because of a seminarian speaker at Mass.

    Today in our Liturgy of the Word we have an urgent call for us all to let go of the paltry things we are holding onto and go all-in for the kingdom of God.

    Look at what he said the widow did. She put into the treasury a small amount, but it was all she had: Jesus says, “but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” Not so different from that is the sacrifice of the widow of Zarephath in the first reading. Elijah had prophesied a drought over all of the Land, God’s punishment for the wicked acts of their kings. And so water and food were in scarce supply, and God sends Elijah to the widow. She’s just about to use up the last of her flour and oil to cook a final meal for herself and her son, when Elijah meets her and asks her to make him some food. He encourages her to trust God, and when she does by giving all that she has, she finds God faithful to feed all of them for some time.

    So I’d like to suggest that both of these widows had given everything for their relationship with God. They trusted Him with their very lives by giving everything had to give. It’s a super-scary thing to do, isn’t it? We are people who love to be in control of our lives and of our situations, and so giving up all of that gives us more than a little pause. But honestly, it takes that kind of a leap of faith to get into heaven. If we still are grasping onto stuff, then our hands are full, and we cannot receive from God the gifts and the grace he wants to give us.

    Look at the cross. That, friends, is the prime example of giving everything. And our God did that for us. Jesus gave everything he had by giving his life, suffering the pain of death that we might be forgiven of our sins and attain the blessings of heaven. God is faithful and so he will not leave us in our poverty when we give everything for him.

    But here’s an important message: the time is short. The Church gives us this reading very purposely on the third-to-last Sunday of the Church year for a reason. Because if we’re still hanging onto the stuff that keeps us bound to this life, we are going to miss our invitation to eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. To get to heaven, we have to choose our relationship with God over everything else in our lives. Everything. We have to empty our hands of all this earthly wealth so that we might obtain heavenly wealth. We have to give everything we have for our God who gave everything to us and for us, or we’ll be left out. Hell is truly having nothing, not even Christ, and that’s real poverty. So we need to model our lives after the example of the widows in our readings today, giving everything, so that we might have Christ who is everything we need.





  • Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings
    Mass for the School Children.

    There’s an old joke that one day, Jesus returned to earth, and was walking around the Vatican square talking to people. Some of the Cardinals noticed and they got together and decided they should probably tell the Pope what was going on. So they went to the Pope’s office in the Vatican and said to him, “Your holiness! Our Lord has returned to earth and he is walking around Saint Peter’s square talking to people! What should we do?” Without even thinking, the Pope said, “Look busy!”

    That joke came to mind when I was thinking about today’s readings. In our first reading, Saint Paul is talking about the people in the Christian community who aren’t living as Christians. They are doing whatever they want, getting right at other people’s expense, and doing all sorts of immoral, earthly things. He tells them the need to get busy about remembering that their true home is in heaven and that they need to live in such a way as to get there.

    In the parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel reading today, the steward thinks that he’s busy about all the right things, making money for himself, until the day he finds out he’s about to be fired because someone has reported him for squandering the rich man’s property. It’s a confusing parable, but we have to remember that in the parable, God is the rich man, and we are the steward who is about to be fired. We need to be smart about remembering that we are children of light, and that light is God. We have to be smart about remembering where we are truly going, and that is to the joy of heaven. We have to be smart about what giving ourselves fully to the right person is all about, and that person is to Jesus.

    And we have to get busy about doing all this because it’s urgent. Time is running short. The days are shorter now and the end of the year is coming. This reminds us that time as a whole is always running shorter, and the time for Jesus to really return and take us with him is getting nearer all the time. We want to go with Jesus, so we don’t dare squander our time doing all the wrong things and being loyal to the wrong sort of people who don’t care anything about our spiritual well-being. We have to do the things that get us closer to Jesus: taking up our crosses, spending time with him in prayer, reading about him in Scripture, serving him by serving others, loving him by loving all the people he puts in our lives.

    When Jesus finds us busy doing all the right things, he can lead us to the place we all want to go one day, and that is to the kingdom of his Heavenly Father. We can’t be distracted though, we need to be focused on where he is taking us.

    This can be hard work sometimes, I know. And that reminds me of a real story about a real pope that I once heard. This is about Pope Saint John XXIII. He was an old man when he was elected pope, but he didn’t waste any time getting things done for the Lord. He was always busy about making the Church better so that people could come to know the Lord. And, at the end of the day, when he was very tired, he would say to Jesus: “Okay Lord. I’m tired and it’s your Church. Take care of it while I sleep.” And Jesus did.

    So, today, let’s all look busy. Knowing that Jesus wants to take us to his Heavenly Father, and it could be time to do that any time. We don’t want to waste our time: we want to be ready.

  • The Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When I was in seminary, I had a Scripture professor who, when someone would make an insightful comment or answer a question correctly, would exclaim, quoting Jesus in today’s Gospel reading, “You are not far from the kingdom of God!” That comment, made to the scribe at the end of the reading, is an amazing thing to hear Jesus say, because he was always berating the scribes and Pharisees for not getting it, for being so concerned about dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” of the law, that they totally missed the spirit of the law. Jesus always maintained that they were going to completely miss out on the kingdom of God because of this blindness. So here is a scribe who actually gets it, who knows what the first of all of the commandments is. But somehow, in the tone of his congratulatory statement, I think Jesus is throwing in a bit of a challenge to the scribe: now that you know it, it’s time to live it.

    The way it plays out, of course, is typical of the way we see the religious establishment interacting with Jesus in the Gospel narratives. One of them approaches Jesus, most likely not out of an interest in actual dialogue or even to learn something, and asks a question to which they already know the right answer. The question “Which is the first of all the commandments?” is one that scholars had long debated, because there were so many commandments. Not, of course, just the ten that we are familiar with, but, throughout all of the Hebrew Scriptures, more than six hundred! But the answer that Jesus gives is one that is well-accepted. In fact, it is a part of scripture that Jews memorized and taught their children to memorize. One that boiled it down to what worshiping One God meant:

    Hear, O Israel!
    The Lord our God is Lord alone!
    You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
    with all your soul,
    with all your mind,
    and with all your strength.

    But here’s the point where it really gets interesting: Jesus goes him one better, saying:

    The second is this:
    You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
    There is no other commandment greater than these.

    The scribe hadn’t asked for two greatest commandments, but if he had, he probably would have picked that second one too. These two commandments boiled down all of the teaching of the law and the prophets into a neat, concise package: love of God and love of neighbor. This was foundational to the Jewish way of life, and having been quoted so quickly, without thinking, by Jesus, no one was brave enough to ask him any more questions. The scribe goes away close to the kingdom of God, if he will stop asking questions and start actually living the law and the prophets.

    That challenge is there for us, too, of course. Love of God and love of neighbor, loving the way God has loved us, this is the heart not just of the Old Testament law and the prophets, but also of the Gospel itself. God, who loved us enough to send his only Son, so that we might believe in him and have eternal life, also sent that Son to show us the way. So this Gospel interaction is foundational to our call as disciples. In order to be on course for the kingdom of God, a place we all want to be, we have to love God and love our neighbor. The kingdom of God is not a far-off distant thing or place to be achieved in the afterlife, but is in fact here among us, as Jesus proclaimed all through his time on earth. One gets to that kingdom by love of God and love of neighbor, by living the love that God has so freely given us. That is why living these commandments from our hearts is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. So love of God and love of neighbor, the heart of the Judaeo-Christian life, needs to be the center of everything we think or say or do. Love of God and love of neighbor needs to be the lens through which we see everything.

    So, friends, that means that we have to bring that lens with us to see the way through every interaction of our lives. Not just the ones that are easy and joyful, but also the interactions that are frustrating and painful. We have to love God and neighbor when the guy cuts us off on the highway; when the customer service agent puts us on hold for the fourth or fifth time; when we or a loved one get a frightening diagnosis and we have to navigate the healthcare system; when our coworkers drop the ball and make us look bad; when our children make poor decisions; when we disagree with a spouse or loved one; when a government official makes a terrible decision; and all the rest. Then it’s time, not just to say “okay, whatever, that’s fine” but instead to make decisions and corrections and advocate for the truth and do what is right, but do it all with love and grace, and with trust in God’s love and mercy. I recently saw a meme on social media that said: “You are made in the image of God. So is the idiot you’re arguing with.” That should give us pause to think and to love.

    The Liturgy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe, which we will celebrate in just a few weeks, calls on us to work with God to put forward, here on earth, a kingdom of love and peace, a kingdom of justice and truth. You’ll hear that quote in the preface to the Eucharistic Prayer that day. That’s what our life on earth is all about. We truly are not far from the kingdom of God. All we have to do is to love God, love neighbor, and enter in.

  • Thursday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a good one for us to hear. Think about it – how often are we beset by all the frustrations of the world, and all of the sadness that our own lives can sometimes bring? I’m not saying that every day is horrible, but we all go through times when it seems like it’s too much, like one more phone call with bad news and we’ll explode.

    And to all of that today, St. Paul advises us to “put on the armor of God.” You see, when things go wrong, we really have two choices. We can go to pieces, wondering where is God when we really need him, getting angry with God, ourselves, and others, and lashing out at anyone and everyone in our lives. Or, we can realize that what God allows isn’t always his will for us. In those times, we can join ourselves to him, and draw our strength and courage from the Lord himself, knowing that he walks with us in good times and in bad.

    And I am sure we all know which choice the devil himself would make for us, right? That evil one wants to use the trying times of our lives – trying times that every one of us has at one time or another – to drive a wedge between God and us. We absolutely need the strength of God to guard against that “evil day.” And so, St. Paul tells us, “In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the Evil One.” And that shield, he says, is prayer: He writes, “With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit.” Prayer and faith are the armor we need to get through the trying times of life without falling victim to the evil one.

    Sometimes life can feel like a war, but as the Psalmist says today, “Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war.” Our stronghold is that whatever life throws at us, we are never alone. Never.

  • The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    An often told, and completely correct, preaching of today’s Gospel reading about the healing of Bartimeus’s blindness would say that this story isn’t about his blindness at all. Yes, it tells of his physical blindness and healing by Jesus, but the reason we have this story today isn’t just to make us feel happy for the blind man; instead it is to point out some kind of pervasive blindness that the man had, and truly, we all have, and the real miracle is that he was healed of that, and that we should reflect on what blindness we have and pray to be healed of that. That would be a perfectly acceptable reading of this Gospel story,

    But that there’s this really interesting detail that caught my attention right at the end of the story. It’s a throw-away detail, almost, but it changed what the message was for me. It’s a bit of a play on words that comes when Jesus tells the man, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” And then it says that it the man received his sight and followed him on the way. So notice the difference: “Go your way” versus “followed him on the way.”

    If Bartimaeus had gone his way, as Jesus suggested, he would probably have returned to sitting on his cloak begging for alms. After all, that was all he knew, having done it his whole life. But he had cast that aside in the pursuit of Jesus, and having received sight, he clearly saw that that was the wrong way, and instead follows Jesus on “the way.” Now, it’s important to note here that “The Way” (capital “W”) was an early way that Christians, before they were called Christians, referred to themselves. They would be known as members of “The Way.” So here we see that the real miracle is that Bartimaeus clearly saw that his life lacked the meaning he needed and that the only cure was following Jesus.

    That coordinates well with the first reading today. The Israelites were in a bad situation: they had ignored God enough that he allowed their whole nation to fall and be taken into exile. Jeremiah’s message was that they had no one to blame but themselves; that God had punished them for turning aside from the faith, following false gods, ignoring the poor and the needy and the stranger in their midst, and allowing every kind of depravity in their lives. It’s not a very encouraging message, and one can see why Jeremiah was treated so poorly. In this reading, though, Jeremiah relates God’s promise that he would bring them back: back to Israel, back to the Temple, back to himself. Then, even though they departed in tears – as indeed they did – they would return shouting for joy.

    So the real miracle here is not one of blindness and seeing, at least not in the physical sense, but instead one of metanoia, which is the Greek word meaning a change in ones life – really a complete reversal – based on a spiritual interior conversion. The Israelites had been going the wrong way, so God gave them over to their persecutors, but because that penance produced conversion, he would bring them back. Bartimaeus had been going the wrong way living a perhaps-pointless life, but through giving himself over to Jesus and trusting in him, he found purpose in following him on The Way.

    So we need to come to see also. We have to see what’s going on in our own lives. Have we been going the wrong way? Have we paid little attention to our spiritual life? Have we chosen to live as though our spiritual lives didn’t matter? For me, it can be frighteningly easy to get distracted. It can be very easy to be so busy about the stuff of running a parish that I don’t see what God is doing in my life and in the life of this community. It was good for me to be on retreat this the week before last; in that precious time, I found much grace and rest and heard God’s call to make things new in me and in my ministry here. What is he doing in you right now? Have you been coasting in your spiritual life? Have you paid it little attention? If so, maybe God is calling you to forsake your own way, and give yourself over to following him on The Way.