Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Liturgy

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Simon the Pharisee committed a grave error in hospitality, and a serious error in judgment. In those days, when a guest came to your home, you made sure to provide water for him or her to wash their feet, because the journey on foot was often long and hot and dirty, and it was pretty much always made on foot. But Simon had done no such thing for Jesus.

    Simon’s intentions were not hospitable; rather he intended to confront Jesus on some point of the Law so as to validate his opinion that Jesus was a charlatan. That was the purpose of his dinner invitation. Then, in comes the “sinful woman,” who breaks an alabaster jar full of extremely expensive ointment and anoints the feet of Jesus while she is in tears for love of Jesus and sorrow for her sin. But Simon simply judged the woman to be a sinner, someone to be shunned and ignored, and reckoned Jesus guilty of sin by association. Jesus isn’t having any of that, because Jesus is about forgiveness. He didn’t care about the woman’s past; he already knew it well, but was more concerned that, presently, she had need of mercy. Her act of love and hospitality, her posture of humility, her sorrow for her sin, all of these made it possible for Jesus to heal her.

    But the one who doesn’t think he is in need of healing, symbolized by Simon the Pharisee, can never be healed. And so that’s our examination of conscience today. Are we aware of our need for healing, or have we been thinking we are without sin, without brokenness, without openness to God’s mercy? If so, our moments of reflection today need to guide us to honest and open acceptance of God’s mercy, and a pouring out of the best that we have in thanksgiving. Like the repentant woman, we need to humble ourselves, and pour out sorrow for our sins, and love for Jesus who wants nothing more than to heal us.

    We are offered so much mercy and forgiveness for our many sins. Let us love much so that we might receive the great mercy our Lord wants to give us.

  • The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Special Needs Mass)

    The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Special Needs Mass)

    Today’s readings
    Mass with special needs families.

    The Apostle Saint James in our second reading today attacks what is, to me, a very prevalent attitude that people can often have. “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” – we see that kind of thing all the time. When a tragedy happens, we will see people offering their “thoughts and prayers.” And not that that is a bad thing: thoughts and prayers are a great start. Certainly, we believe in the power of prayer and would hasten to encourage prayer as a regular habit.

    But Saint James makes it very clear that thoughts and prayers can’t be the end of our compassion and care for others. He says that, if you say that to the person, “but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” Our faith leads us to thoughts and prayers, that’s why it’s the first thing we think of when there is a tragedy, or someone in our community is going through a hard time. But if we don’t live our faith by working to help those in need then, says Saint James, our faith, “if it does not have works, is dead.”

    I had a priest professor in seminary who always used to tell us, “Brothers, the Christian faith looks like something.” And he’s right, people need to see that Jesus is Lord of our lives and sovereign in the world, and the only way they are going to see that is if Christians live their faith by getting out of the comfort zone, by going beyond thoughts and prayers to a living faith that, as Saint James says, is demonstrated from our works. A watching world isn’t going to see our thoughts and prayers; they are going to see what we do. They need to see by what we do that we are who we say we are, that our God is Lord.

    That’s going to call us to be a little uncomfortable sometimes. It’s going to call us to do what Jesus calls us to do in the Gospel today: to take up our crosses and follow him. There is suffering out there in the world, and if we don’t wrap them in our arms and suffer with them, adding works of mercy to our thoughts and prayers, then our faith is meaningless. We can’t be Catholics for just one hour a week. We have to lose our lives in service of our brothers and sisters. That’s a tough thing to do, but it comes with a promise from our Lord:

    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake
    and that of the gospel will save it.

    So let’s not stop thinking about and praying for those in need. But let’s stop saying, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” and then forgetting about our brothers and sisters. Let’s demonstrate our faith by our works, taking up our crosses and following Our Lord, losing ourselves for his sake and that of the Gospel that we might save it for eternity.

  • The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    What feels like a hundred years ago, now, when I was a young adult, I had a membership to a boxing gym that I would go to after work. The gym had a class at that time, and it was a group of people a lot like me, men and women my age who wanted to get some exercise and stress relief after a day of work. One of the things the trainer would do with us was some pad work. He would go around to each of us, and would work with us at our own level, calling out punches and we would have to throw those punches at the pads on his hands. There was a pattern to it, once you learned it, and then the challenge was to keep up with him. But sometimes, we would get ahead of him, and mess things up. Then he’d give us a tap on the arm with the pad, and would say, “You’re way ahead of me!”

    I thought about that with regard to today’s Gospel reading. After professing the fact that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, Saint Peter in classic Saint Peter fashion takes Jesus to task for teaching them that he, the Son of Man, “must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.” Peter was distressed at hearing that Jesus, the one who he just a few verses ago, said was the Christ, would talk about suffering, because they never expected the Messiah to have to undergo any such thing. Jesus turns around and says to Peter, “Get behind me…” Just like my boxing trainer, he is trying to teach them something, but Peter is way ahead of him.

    And that’s no place for a disciple to be. Because disciples don’t get ahead of their master, they follow him. When you’re ahead of the teacher, you can’t learn anything. When you’re following him, you can see what he does, hear what he’s saying, and learn things that lead to life. This is a very important observation, that I have to tell you, came from praying through the Gospel reading at this week’s staff meeting.

    Here’s why this is so important: because Jesus wants the disciples to follow, wants us to follow. He says quite plainly:

    “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
    take up his cross, and follow me.
    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake
    and that of the gospel will save it.”

    He’s making it very clear here that winning the kingdom, saving our lives for eternity, means suffering in this life. He was going to model that for them on the way to the Cross, and into the glory of the Resurrection. But if we are way ahead of him, we are absolutely going to be on the wrong road.

    So we are called, by the very words of our Savior, to take up our cross and follow him. That wasn’t just for Saint Peter and the other Apostles; it is for all Jesus’ disciples, including ourselves. There is no other way to the salvation for which we yearn. Following Jesus will ultimately lead us to glory if we do it faithfully. But following him will also lead us to the Cross. Yesterday we celebrated that mystery in the feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Yes, we will suffer in this life, in all sorts of ways, yes we will die, but that death will release us to the glory of the resurrection, if we embrace it in faith.

    In our world, suffering is looked upon as something to be avoided at all costs. Commercials on television and social media promise all sorts of relief if we will take this or that pill. Worse than that, people are legislating circumstances for when it’s appropriate to kill ourselves through euthanasia so that we won’t have to suffer, and pro-abortion people want to say it’s okay to abort a baby who has the wrong chromosomes or might suffer in any way. We avoid suffering in every way we possibly can, so it might be hard to get behind this Jesus who says that the way to heaven is to take up the cross, to suffer, to die, and to follow his lead.

    The psalmist sums it up for us today. Yes, the suffering in our lives leads us to experience the cords of death that encompass us. We often fall into distress and sorrow. But when we embrace that suffering and call on the Lord, we will find ourselves freed of death and able to walk before the Lord in the land of the living. We who have embraced and remembered and celebrated the mystery of Christ’s presence in our lives, in our Church and in our world, can approach suffering with great faith. Some years ago now, there was a contemporary Christian song that said “sometimes he calms the storm, and other times he calms his child.” God won’t always make our tears and pain go away. But he does promise that we will never go through them alone.

    The real truth of life in this world is that there is suffering, and none of us gets a free pass. Even Mary, full of grace, had to watch her Son suffer and die. Even Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and he himself suffered a terrible, painful, humiliating death. None of us gets out of this life unscathed. In some crazy sense, we all are united in the fact that we all suffer, some time and for something. And so it is in fact audacious and even offensive that Saint Peter rebukes our Lord for talking about suffering. Peter himself will suffer a similar fate as that of his Lord, being crucified upside-down. Every one of us, in some way, has to take up the cross and walk with it, because it is only in doing that that we can make our way to the Resurrection.

    And we have to acknowledge, friends, is that we have it a lot easier than our Lord did. We just bear our own suffering; he had to take with him the suffering of every person embroiled in sin in all of time. We have him to help us take up our crosses and to help make those crosses lighter; he had no one except for Simon of Cyrene who helped him begrudgingly. His death had to blast open the gates of heaven; we will just get to walk through it, if we follow him and live the gospel.

    And so, we weak ones who don’t love suffering, we must hear the words that Jesus spoke to Simon Peter spoken also to us. Don’t get ahead of me; take up your cross and follow me.

    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake
    and that of the gospel will save it.

  • The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Jesus’ ministry on earth was all about healing. Indeed, that’s what he came to do: to heal us, set things right, from the inside out, so that we would be able to enter the Kingdom. In today’s gospel, he heals a man who has been deaf and mute with the word of command: “Ephphatha!” – “Be opened!” I have talked about this kind of thing before. The healing is not here simply for the deaf and mute man. The healing he intends, the command, “Be opened!” is for those who were there with the man in the Decapolis, and for us too. Mark brings us this story in his Gospel because ephphatha is what Jesus is about. He is about healing, and opening up a way for those who have been at odds with God to be back in relationship with him. So whether the obstacle has been a physical illness or a spiritual one, he commands ephphatha, that the way be opened and the obstacle obliterated, and the illness of the broken one bound up and the way made straight for the person to be in communion with God.

    Saint James today invites us to take a look at the issue from another angle. Have we pre-judged people who are not like us when they come to the Church, or who come to us at any other time? Do we look down on those who don’t look like us, dress like us, don’t speak like us, or don’t act like us? Do these people have illness that needs to be healed? Or is it we that have the illness, being unable to see them as Christ does, as brothers and sisters and children of God? Racism, fear of others, and all kinds of stereotypes are such insidious illnesses in our society. We bring that illness, too, to our Lord: whatever the illness is today, whether it is ours or someone else’s, Jesus commands it: ephphatha, be opened, that nothing may be an obstacle to the love of God and the healing of Jesus Christ.

    Since the readings lead us to a place of healing, I want to take this opportunity to speak of one of the sacraments of healing, namely the Anointing of the Sick. I want to do that because I think it’s a sacrament that is misunderstood, one that we don’t think of much, until someone is near death, and that’s not exactly what the Anointing of the Sick is all about. In the days prior to Vatican II, that actually was the understanding of the Sacrament. It was called Extreme Unction, Latin for “Last Anointing.” But Vatican II restored the sacrament to a much earlier practice, in which the sacrament was intended for healing, and not just sending the dying person on their way to eternal life.

    The impetus for the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick comes from another passage in the letter of Saint James. It says: “Is anyone among you sick? He should summon the presbyters of the church, and they should pray over him and anoint (him) with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven.” (James 5:14-15) The sacrament is about healing: physical, sure, but also spiritual. Having God’s presence in the sacrament with us in our time of illness is of great value – just ask anyone who’s been through it! I myself received the sacrament when I was in the hospital for my heart issues last year; even Father needs the ministry of the Church in time of need.

    So I’d like to identify a few times when it would be appropriate to have the Anointing of the Sick. The first is before surgery that is either life threatening itself, or is for the healing of some illness or injury. Very often people will call, and they might come to a daily Mass before their surgery or the weekend before their surgery, and we will anoint them after Mass. This is a wonderful time to receive the sacrament, because they’ve just been to Mass and have received the Eucharist. The combination of those sacraments is a great source of grace and healing.

    Another time someone might be anointed is if they’ve come to the hospital with a life-threatening illness or injury, perhaps even after an accident. Or perhaps a patient is hospitalized for an addiction or mental illness. Very often there’s a priest on call at the hospital who can do that, or if it’s one of the local hospitals here, we will be called to go over. Being anointed at that time of crisis can be a great source of peace to both the patient and their loved ones.

    Another time for the Anointing is when a patient is home bound, or after they’ve come home from having surgery and there is going to be a long time of rehabilitation. Then a priest might come to the person’s home, anoint them, and then we can arrange for a parishioner to come give them Holy Communion each week. We have a number of parishioners who help us with that ministry, and it keeps the patient connected to the parish and to the Lord during difficult days.

    The final time for the Anointing is the one that most people think of, and that is near death. At the time of death, we have what is known as the Last Rites. The Last Rites are a combination of three sacraments: the sacrament of Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, and Viaticum, which is Latin for “bread for the journey,” one’s last Communion. If at all possible, it’s good if the patient is well enough to participate in all three sacraments, but very often that’s not the case. Then we just do what we can of them and entrust them to God’s mercy.

    It’s important that we know about the illness so that we can care for the patient. These days, that means a family member or the patient themselves, must call us. Hospitals can’t do that any more, due to privacy laws. So it’s very important that we know, and know soon enough that we can respond. In a large parish like this, it can be hard for us to respond at the spur of the moment because of other things going on, but we do our best to get there as soon as we can. And if, unfortunately, a patient dies before the priest can get there, there are still prayers we can do. Sometimes we don’t know that the patient is going so quickly. But if your loved one is declining, please call as soon as you can and don’t wait until the last possible moment.

    Here at Saint Mary’s, we also have a periodic celebration of the Anointing of the Sick at our healing prayer service, which is held on the first Sunday of the month, after the 12:15pm Mass. We had that just last Sunday. There are exceptions for times when Easter or another solemnity interferes, but we will tell you about that when it happens. This is a great time for all those who are preparing for surgery, or have a chronic illness, or are going through some worrisome tests or procedures to have the healing of Jesus who wants to walk with us on our difficult journeys.

    The healing that comes about as the result of the Anointing of the Sick isn’t always physical. Indeed, sometimes the illness remains, or the patient passes. But even in those cases, there is healing. That healing may be the forgiveness of sins, or re-connection with loved ones, or a spiritual strengthening that helps the person get through the difficulty of illness or preparation for death. The healing that happens is always up to God, who wants what is best for us. But there is always some healing; in that we can trust.

    The healing work of Christ is what the Church is all about. Today, Jesus continues to work through the Church to bring healing to all those who need it. He cries out “Ephphatha” that we might all be opened up to his healing work and that every obstacle to relationship with him might be broken down.

  • Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When I think about this Gospel reading, I wonder what’s really going on.  Were the Pharisees really concerned that the Sabbath was being violated, and that people were not experiencing sabbath rest from their labors so that they could grow in relationship with their God?  Probably not.  Contextually, we can see how the Pharisees were being pharisaical: they were concerned more about the minute aspects of the law than on bringing people to relationship with God.

    For Jesus, there wasn’t such a thing as a Sabbath rest from his mission of healing, and teaching, and bringing people to salvation.  So as he walked along with his disciples, it didn’t bother him that they were “working” by picking heads of grain to eat.  They were hungry.  And Jesus was all about feeding people’s hunger, no matter what kind of hunger it was, and no matter what day it was – Sabbath or not.

    He would be widely criticized for teaching on the Sabbath, but people were hungry for news of salvation.  He would be called blasphemous for calling God his Father on the Sabbath, but people were hungry for relationship with their God.  He would receive death threats for healing on the Sabbath, but people were hungry for wholeness, and relief, and new life.

    Jesus’ point here is that the Sabbath is never important just for itself.  The Sabbath was an opportunity for people to rest in God, and it was God, not the Law, that could decide how that happened.  The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.

  • Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings
    Mass for the school children:

    New stuff can be fun. We like to have new clothes or new toys. Adults like to have a new car. But some new stuff can be scary. Going to a new school can be scary. Joining a new team or a new activity can be scary. But after we get used to the new school, the new team, the new group of people, usually things work out just fine. Newness can be fun, it’s most often a good thing, but sometimes it might make us worry.

    The scribes and the Pharisees in the Gospel reading were the religious leaders back in Jesus’ time. They were very concerned about their religious traditions. They were so concerned about them, that anytime they saw someone doing something different, they would call them out and correct them. And they weren’t always nice about it.

    In the Gospel reading, they were complaining that their disciples fasted, but the disciples of Jesus did not. And that was true, even the disciples of Saint John the Baptist used to fast all the time. But Jesus points out that people don’t fast at a wedding feast, or any other kind of feast as far as that goes. And Jesus is the bridegroom who has married the world, so to speak. He is the one who, when he is with us, it’s always a feast, always an occasion for joy. But of course, the scribes and Pharisees weren’t feeling so joyful about Jesus being around.

    Jesus goes on to tell a little parable about newness to make this point a little clearer. He says people don’t take new wine and put it into old wine skins. Back in Jesus’ day, wine didn’t come in bottles like it does now. They used wine skins, which were made of animal hide, usually from goats, to store and transport wine. But they always put new wine into new wine skins. Because if they put the new wine into old skins, the skins would often break because they were old, and the wine would be wasted. It just wouldn’t work.

    In the same way, Jesus was doing something new. It wasn’t the same as the old Jewish religion. Jesus was calling people to have concern for the poor and needy, to live good lives, and to love every person in our path. Things needed to change, and he came to change those things. Sins needed to be forgiven, and he came to give his life so that forgiveness could happen. All of this was new, and it was so different from what the scribes and Pharisees had ever known. They wanted what Jesus was doing and saying to fit into their old ideas. Kind of like putting new wine into old wine skins: it just didn’t work.

    The thing is, Jesus never stopped doing new things. He came to make us new through Baptism and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He makes us new every time we participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He gives us new life and new grace every time we receive the Eucharist. Jesus doesn’t want us to to waste away with old ideas and old dusty religion. He wants to make us new every single day so that we can go out and make the whole world new.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary time

    Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary time

    Today’s readings

    You may have heard the saying that “If you want to hear God laugh, just tell him your plans.” It’s so easy for us in our arrogance to think we have everything all figured out. Frankly, maybe we like it that way; it’s comfortable. But then maybe God taps us on the shoulder, or whispers into our ear, and sends us in another direction. We’ve all had that happen in our lives, I am sure. And if we’re open to it, it can be a wonderful experience, but it can also be a wild ride at the least, and possibly even traumatic. This is the experience Paul is getting at when he says in our first reading, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.”

    Simon and his fellow fishermen must have been thinking that Jesus was a little foolish when he hopped into their boat, after they had been working hard all night long (to no avail, mind you!), and said, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” What foolishness! But something about Jesus made them follow his instructions: he tapped on their shoulders, whispered into their ears, and they did what he said.

    And not only were they rewarded with a great catch of fish, but they were also called to catch people for God’s reign. Talk about God laughing at your plans! They had only ever known fishing, and now they were evangelists, apostles and teachers. And we know how wild a ride it was for them. They never expected the danger that surrounded Jesus in his last days. They never expected to be holed up in an upper room trying to figure out what to do next. They never expected to be martyred, but all of that was what God had in mind for them. And all of it was filled with blessing.

    So what foolishness does God have planned for us today? How will he tap us on the shoulder or whisper into our ear? Whatever it is, may he find us all ready to leave everything behind and follow him.

  • Labor Day

    Labor Day

    Readings: Genesis 1:26-2:3 | Psalm 90 | 1 Thessalonians 4:1b-2, 9-12 | Matthew 6:31-34

    One of the things that I remember vividly about my childhood is how hard my parents worked. My Dad worked more than one job at a time for several years. And in his main job, he was with the company for well over forty years, finally retiring from the company he worked for since his late teens. My mother, too, worked outside the home, and did on a part-time basis until the pandemic started. They encouraged me to work as well, and the experience of the work I did in my late teens is something that I carried with me throughout my pre-seminary work years, and continue, really, to benefit from to this very day. And that’s how work is supposed to be: participation in God’s creation, enhancing our human dignity, bringing forth our gifts, and helping us to be better people. Work should also help us to sustain our lives and our families, and to provide for their needs, including health care and retirement. The Church has consistently and loudly taught these truths about work ever since Pope Leo XIII’s ground-breaking encyclical Rerum Novarum, published in 1891.

    Today, we’ve gathered to celebrate and bless human labor.  Human labor is a cornerstone of our society and our world, dating all the way back to the creation of the world, as today’s first reading shows us.  Indeed, our labor is a participation in the ongoing creation of the world, and is one of the strongest ways that we can be in communion with our Creator God.  We know that, at the completion of the creation of the world and everything in it, God sanctified the whole of it through rest.  That’s an important point that I think we maybe don’t get the way we should.

    Today is an opportunity to take a step back and look at our working and our resting.  We know that we don’t get enough rest.  We are sleep deprived, we take working vacations, we very often don’t take all the vacation we’re allotted, and some don’t take a vacation at all.  Even our children are so over-scheduled that they are sleep deprived as they go from one activity to the next, day after day.  And so our lives are out of balance and I think, very often, we don’t do our best work when we’re working.
    Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that this kind of thing is just crazy.  Worrying about work isn’t going to add a single moment to our lifespan.  In fact, it will more likely reduce them.  We are told very clearly: “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.  Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”  By “evil” here, Jesus doesn’t mean something sinister and dark, but just the daily worries and misfortunes that we deal with all the time.

    We are certainly required to work hard and always give the best that we have to our employers or employees and coworkers.  That’s a matter of justice.  We are also required to provide for our families and maintain a home for our loved ones.  That’s a matter or charity.  Work is sacred and always has been, because, as the Genesis reading today shows us, work was instituted by God who told us to fill the earth and subdue it, having dominion over every living thing.  We work because it is a sharing in what we were created for, the very imitation of God. But there is also that matter of balance.  And we do have to step back and realize that God did indeed sanctify the whole of creation by blessing it with that seventh day, with that day of rest.  And so we do our spiritual lives no favors when we ignore the commandment to observe the Sabbath through rest and worship.  So much of our lives is consumed in labor; may we never fail to sanctify that labor by observing rest and worship.
    I saw a social media post that said something to the effect that while you’re all playing and having barbecues on Labor Day, remember it’s not about that. It’s about the people that fought to create safer workplaces, fair wages, health care and other benefits. I mean, it’s a point well-taken, but I don’t think we have to be the party pooper and insist that parties and gatherings today are inappropriate. Actually, for those who are overworked and over-scheduled, we might need this day more than ever.

    Labor Day is in fact a wonderful time to step back and look at the meaning of work. Labor Day reminds us that we don’t have permission to write off human labor as some kind of necessary evil or a commodity to be bought and sold. We are reminded that the economy exists for the good of people, not the other way around. We must truly venerate all labor, that of our own efforts as well as that of others. We must vigorously defend the rights and dignity of workers, particularly of the poor and marginalized. We must always offer all of this back to our God who created us to be co-creators with him. And we must rest. May we pray with the Psalmist this day and every day, “Lord give success to the work of our hands!”

  • The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So often, when someone thanks us for something, we might say, “It’s the least I could do.” As if it were praiseworthy. Sometimes we want to do as little as possible, and have others feeling good about it.

    Well, I think it’s that kind of attitude that is behind today’s Liturgy of the Word. Certain things are expected of believers, and over the course of history, people have tried to get away with doing as few of those things as they absolutely had to do. The first reading sets the stage: Moses places the law before the people and tells them that they are a great nation, because they have a God so close to them, and who loves them enough to give them the whole law that they have received.

    Now the whole law is more than we might think. Perhaps when we hear that, we think of the Ten Commandments, to which we also are bound in our discipleship. But for the Jewish community back then, there were a total of six hundred thirteen laws and precepts that made up the law! Because of that, there was always this constant discussion over which of the laws was most important, and often people would be concerned more about a tiny little precept than about the whole big picture that God was trying to accomplish.

    This is the attitude Jesus came to address with the Gospel. He wanted the people to get it right. He wanted them to have concern for people more than for semantics in the law. He wanted them to love as God loves, because if we do that, we’ll be keeping the law anyway. But people didn’t always accept that teaching. If they did, Jesus wouldn’t have had to go to the Cross, and there would have been no need to preach the Gospel.

    So in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus makes a major correction. There was a law of purifying vessels before festivals, which is not unlike the way the priest washes his hands before the Eucharistic Prayer or the way that the vessels for Mass are purified after Communion. But somewhere along the way, the precept got mangled, and everyone was bound to scrupulously wash themselves and every vessel they owned before a feast. And Jesus chastises them for having more concern about a human tradition than about the real intent of the law.

    The real intent of the law was obviously something way more important, way more personal. The real intent of that purification was the purification of our hearts. Jesus gives a rather horrifying list of sins at the end of the Gospel reading and notes that these are the things that defile; not some dirt on the outside of a cup or hands that had not been scrupulously cleaned. If we want to really purify ourselves for the festival, which is to say the Eucharist, then we have to be cleansed of our sins. That’s why we have the Sacrament of Penance, right?

    Saint James, in the second reading, picks up on the theme. If we really want to be thought to be wise in regard to keeping the law, then we have to keep ourselves unstained by the world, which would be the same thing as Jesus was saying; but also to care for those in need, a precept with which Jesus would certainly not disagree! Indeed, that’s what was really at stake in the Gospel reading: people were more concerned about the minutiae of the Law than they were for securing justice for all God’s people.

    The thing is, we are hearers of the Word. We have experienced the love of our Lord in so many ways. Everything that we have is a gift to us. We have to be wise in regard to all that, and to be certain that we keep the whole of the law. Not just those little minutiae, but the very spirit of the law, the law of love which binds all disciples and all people of good will. Because when we lose sight of that, the whole Church can go off the rails. And we have certainly seen the rotten fruit of that in our recent past.

    So our reflection in these days has to be on where and how we need to realign ourselves with the Law of love and resolve to live it more faithfully. Because, as the Psalmist says today, it is they who do justice who will live in the presence of the Lord. And that’s just where we all want to be.

  • The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “So what?” I content that that is one of the most important questions in life, certainly in our spiritual life. Because after we have all taken time to absorb the information around us, after we have learned all that we have been taught, we have to decide what, if anything, that information and teaching mean for us as human beings. What is the impact of this information on our lives? What difference does it make to have come to know this? How will this experience change my life? So what?

    I mention that because I think today’s Liturgy of the Word gives us a “So what?” moment today. As you know, these past several weeks, we have been reflecting on the “Bread of Life Discourse” as presented in chapter six of the Gospel of John. It all began five weeks ago with Saint John’s telling of the feeding of the multitudes: how thousands of people were fed with just five loaves of bread and two fish. It was a great miracle of abundance: indeed, the leftovers were even more food than they started with: twelve baskets intended to feed those who couldn’t make it to the banquet, those who hungered throughout the whole world.

    Ever since that, in these last three weeks, Jesus has been unpacking the meaning of that miracle for the crowd. They wanted more food, but he wanted to feed them in much more important ways, in ways that touched the deepest hungers of their lives, in ways that could lead them to the eternal banquet of the Lord where no one would ever hunger or thirst again. He made a bold claim: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6:58) And now, the crowds grapple with that information.

    Some of them are offended by the notion that he, the carpenter’s son, the one they have known and whose family they have seen, could ever be anything eternal. How on earth could this common man, this one who is one of them, be the Son of God, the Bread of Life, the answer to all their eternal questions? Others are disgusted that the answer to these eternal questions involved eating his flesh and drinking his blood. How horrible that he would even suggest such a cannibalistic approach to eternal life! And in today’s passage, we see the impact of all that: some of them leave and return to their former way of life. Those who walked away weren’t just hangers-on or spectators – they were among his disciples. And then Jesus asks the Twelve – the Apostles – the question of all questions: “Do you also want to leave?” He might as well have said to them: “So what?”

    And, as usual, it’s Saint Peter who expresses the faith of these twelve men: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” For them, at least, the “So what?” moment had led them to recognize something deeper in this miracle of feeding and in the words of this uncommon common man, and that something was the possibility of an eternity, which would never be possible without Jesus. Of course, they couldn’t have known the full meaning of that statement of faith, or the cost of it, but they would certainly see it all unfold in the death and resurrection of Christ, which would solidify their faith: well, for all but one of them.

    For me, the prayer of Saint Peter: “Master to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” has played a particularly important role. It’s come up more than once in my journey of faith. I remember as a young adult, before I went to seminary, having a crisis in my own faith. Even though I was always going to Mass, for a time I had also been attending Willow Creek – the big megachurch up in Barrington – with my friends. The music was nice and the sermons sounded good. But along the way my pastor, Father Mike O’Keefe, of blessed memory, called me in and had a “come to Jesus” with me. It was irritating at the time, but now I couldn’t be more grateful. I remember he told me, “Patrick, I know you would never be able to go to the chapel and stand in front of the Tabernacle and say that Jesus wasn’t there.” I took a while to think about that, and one night when I went to Willow Creek they were having their monthly communion. They passed around bread and grape juice and I realized that Father Mike was right: Jesus was in the Tabernacle, not there at Willow Creek, and that I would never be able to live without the Sacraments of the Church. In retrospect, that moment was pivotal in my vocational call. Father Mike’s fatherly pastoring of me and gentle rebuke helped me to see that I couldn’t leave the Catholic Church: “Master to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

    A few years later, when I was in seminary, that prayer became important again. I started seminary in fall of 2001, and in the spring of that year, the clergy sexual abuse scandals broke open. Half of my class left seminary that year, and by the end of my time at Mundelein the 23 of us who started together dwindled to just eight of us who graduated. Plenty of times in those five years, I wondered if I should leave too. Why would I want to get involved in the priesthood at this moment in our Church’s history – this painful moment? As I prayed about it over and over, I kept getting the same answer, over and over: “Master to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

    In these days, during our nation’s Eucharistic Revival, following the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis this summer, we continue the revival with a view toward mission. And every one of us plays a part in that. Our mission is to reach out to those who don’t know how much Jesus loves them, or at least don’t give it a lot of thought. The ones who should be sitting next to us at Mass right now. Whether they are our loved ones, or people we come into contact with in our communities, schools, or workplaces, they need to know that Jesus desires to feed them too. And maybe the only way they will see Jesus is in you and me. We have to keep the door open in relationship with them, so that they will see in the way that we love them, that Jesus’ love for us is very real and very zealous. We need them to see our faith in such a way that the “so what?” that they ask means something like, “I’d like to have that faith too.”

    Witness to the faith by your love. Live the Gospel in everything you do. Keep the door open to relationship with the people in your lives. Gently guide them to Jesus and the Church. Those are the things that people of mission do. Those are the things Eucharistic people do. The answer to “so what?” for us is very clear: So go, be people of mission. Go, love people into the Kingdom. Go, and announce the Gospel of the Lord.