Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Ordinary Time

  • Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time: A People of Gratitude

    Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time: A People of Gratitude

    Today’s readings

    “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”

    Today’s Gospel is a reflection on our need for healing, our need for God’s presence in our lives, and perhaps most especially, our need for gratitude. Not gratitude for what we have done; rather, gratitude for what we have received, for what has been done for us, and for the many graces and blessings that we have in Christ Jesus. The Christian disciple is called to be a person of gratitude.

    Jesus is on a journey, and he enters a town where he is met by a group of wandering lepers. It’s important to know why they would be out wandering around. As you may know, leprosy was thought to be a horribly contagious disease which made the person with the disease completely unclean. That person could no longer remain with his or her family nor worship in the Temple. So this was a disease that not only made the person suffer physically, but also cut them off from the community and left them with no means of support, nor a place to stay. They had to be out wandering around.

    A Maryknoll priest who was in Korea about 40 years ago tells the story of lepers who were in the area where he lived. They were not allowed to be with their communities or families. Once a year they went to a playing field. Two ropes were stretched across the field about 50 yards apart. The lepers stood at one rope and their families at another and they called out to each other-across the erected chasm that separated them-it was their annual “family visit.” So you can see that being healed from leprosy was no small salvation.

    But we are not so different from this group of lepers, I think. The lepers in today’s gospel story are an unusual group. They consist of Jews and Samaritans, two groups that didn’t mix in usual society. But misery and affliction had united them. As someone once said, “Whatever our social ranking, we all shed the same tears.” We too are aware of our need for God, who alone can help us. We all have had our missteps and regrets and can feel separated from others. Our presence at Eucharist today says that we want Jesus’ company with us on this stage of our journey. We want him to show us the next steps and we want to stay close to him and one another as we travel through life’s journey.

    What’s very important for us to get, then, is that our gratitude must be the natural reaction that we have to that presence of God as we travel the journey. As we gather here for the Eucharist, we know that the word “eucharist” is Greek for “thanksgiving.” Our very gathering every Sunday is a celebration of thanks to our God who walks with us through the good times and the bad and sees us through the perils of this world to the joy of everlasting life. Our celebration must always overflow with gratitude for the salvation we have in Christ.

    But when we stop to think about it, how often are we really grateful for our gifts? Do we sometimes miss noticing the good things God has given us, simply because we forget to take the time to be grateful? What are the joys that God intended for us that we never had the opportunity to know because we did not have an attitude of gratitude? Are there times when we have not seen God’s hand at work in the hard times of our lives because we are not a basically grateful people?

    Like the lepers in today’s Gospel, we have been healed of lots of things. We have found ourselves healed when:

    • A person who loves us tells us a hard truth we need to hear about ourselves.
    • We experience, in a long relationship, opportunities for growth in generosity, forgiveness, patience and humor.
    • Parenting teaches us to give our lives for another in frequent doses of our time, energies, hopes and tears.
    • We suffer a broken relationship, go for counsel and the guidance we receive gives us hope for our future.
    • We seek help for an addiction and the group members offer us wisdom, support and helping hands when we fall and support us “one day at a time.”
    • We suffer the death of a loved one and family and friends are there to grieve with us and eventually there is light at the end of the tunnel.

    Not every gift of our lives is something that at first glance seems like a good thing. Sometimes the fact that God has helped us through a bad situation is grace enough to celebrate. Back when I was in my second year of seminary, just before Christmas, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. We got her through the surgery and started on chemotherapy and eventually managed so celebrate Christmas. Just after I returned to the seminary in January, my father was diagnosed with kidney cancer. I have to tell you, I didn’t know how to pray any more at that point. I didn’t have words to say to God. But some of my brother seminarians came to my room one night and sheepishly offered to pray over me. They had no idea how important that offer was to me. I invited them in and we talked, and they prayed over me. From that point on, I was able to pray again, for my parents and for myself, because they had been God’s grace to me. I’ve never stopped being thankful for that – not for the situation, but for the grace and for my friends, both of which were a gift from God.

    I want to offer you two gratitude tools, and I hope that you’ll use one of them in your prayer life. The first is the idea of a “gratitude journal.” Some of you may already be doing this. Basically, every time you find something to be grateful for, you make a note of it in a journal. It doesn’t have to be a long story, just a few notes about what you’re grateful for. And the idea is that you go back every so often and look at the entries to see how you have been blessed, and the many ways that God has been working in your life. There’s no way you can not be more grateful and more joyful when you do that.

    The second tool is a tool that I am borrowing and slightly modifying from St. Ignatius of Loyola. It’s called the “Evening Examen,” and St. Ignatius has required all of his Jesuit and Jesuit-influenced followers to pray it every evening. The way I do it is to ask myself three questions at the end of every day. It takes maybe five minutes, maybe an hour, it depends on the day. But If you do it every day faithfully, you will again see the grace of God at work in you and I believe you’ll find more joy in your relationship with God. Those three questions are:

    1. What are the blessings and graces I have received today? (Then give thanks for them.)
    2. What are the things I have said or done today that have not been a source of grace to others or to myself? (Then ask God’s forgiveness.)
    3. In what way or ways has God been trying to get me to move, or what has God been trying to do in me these days? (Then ask for whatever grace you need to move in that direction.)

    So just three things: How have I been blessed? How have I sinned? What has God been trying to do in me? That prayer has been a source of growth for me as a disciple, and I hope you’ll try it and keep it in your prayer toolbox for the future.

    Let us not be a people who leave the giving of thanks to others, like the Jewish lepers left the Samaritan to do in today’s Gospel. May we instead be a people marked by an attitude of gratitude, giving thanks for the many ways that God sustains us and blesses us. Then we can be a people, when asked, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God” can truly respond…

    “It is right to give him thanks and praise!”

  • Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

    Ouch. Jesus has just been given a great complement and he responds to it kind of brusquely. Earlier in this eleventh chapter of Luke, Jesus has taught the disciples to pray, teaching them what has become known as the Lord’s prayer. Then there is the discourse on the need for persistence in prayer that we heard on Thursday. Then a teaching on demons. And now this. From this point on in the chapter, Jesus will turn up the heat on the people’s prayer life. Nothing less is effective. Nothing else is acceptable.

    And so we hear the same invitation: “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” We have been taught how to pray. We have been given tools in Scripture and in the Church. So the question is, have we observed that teaching? Has our prayer become persistent? Is it the life blood of our relationships with God and others? Does prayer sustain us in bad times and give us joy in good times?

    Observing the word of God takes many forms. Most likely, we think of the service we are called upon to help bring about a Godly kingdom on earth. And that is important, make no mistake about it. But that same word calls us to a vital relationship with our God, a relationship that raises the bar for all of our other relationships. That relationship with God can be a blessing to us and to our world. But we can only get there by prayer. We have to make time for the one who made time for us.

    “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

  • Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    Listen to the voices of hope in today's Liturgy:

    "But for you who fear my name, there will arise
    the sun of justice with its healing rays."

    "For everyone who asks, receives;
    and the one who seeks, finds;
    and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

    "Blessed are they who hope in the Lord."

    "Give us this day our daily bread."

    The Divine Liturgist today is inviting us to find our hope in God, and inviting us to turn over our lives to God in hopeful anticipation that God will answer our needs. Sometimes I wonder how willing I am to actually do that. It's almost like I want to pray to God just in case I can't fix things on my own or work out my needs by myself. Kind of like a divine insurance policy. Maybe your prayer is like that too.

    But that can't be the way that the Christian disciple prays. We have to trust that God will give us what we really need. He certainly won't be giving us everything we really want . And he probably won't be answering our prayers in exactly the way we'd like him to. And we will certainly find out that he will answer the prayers of our heart in his own time. But he will answer. He will give to the one who asks. He will be present to the one who seeks. And he will open the door to the one who knocks.

    The Christian disciple must be willing to accept God's answer in God's time on God's terms. When we do that we might even find that when God gives us what we really need, instead of what we really want, our lives are so much more blessed than we could ever have imagined. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This homily is for those of us who sometimes have trouble on our spiritual journeys. All those who have achieved perfection and glory are excused. … It’s interesting that none of us left, isn’t it? If you’ve been attending our Amazing Gifts program here on the weekends, you heard this week that the spiritual life is a process and sometimes we fall, and sometimes we fly. Today’s Liturgy of the Word gives us the stories of some great saints who have those same trials.

    The story of Jonah that began yesterday and will continue for a few days is not at all about the great things Jonah did. It is more about the journey of discipleship that was Jonah’s life, and about the wonderful things that God did in and through the very unwilling disciple who was Jonah. Today’s reading has Jonah finally doing what God asked him to do yesterday. Fresh out of the belly of that big fish, Jonah finally realizes that God’s call in his life is not optional. So he does what he is told to do, and affects the conversion of the evil city Nineveh. But Jonah’s story is not done yet, and we’ll see this week the ups and downs he still has to endure.

    And then we have the story of poor Martha in today’s Gospel. I often think that Martha, as Luanne Roth said at last week’s Amazing Gifts, gets a raw deal in this story. Someone had to make the food! But I think the real message of this Gospel story is that neither Martha nor Mary had it all wrapped up. Because there are times when we definitely have to be Mary, sitting at the Lord’s feet in adoration, prayer and praise. But if we are never Martha, our faith is useless, as St. James says in his letter. There has to be a balance between our spiritual life and our service, or, in the words of St. Benedict, between our prayer and our work.

    So for those of us who haven’t yet achieved spiritual perfection, the message is that we have lots of saints in Scripture who are on the journey with us. The point is to keep moving on the journey, so that we will one day reach perfection in that kingdom that knows no end. And may God be glorified in the belly of the big fish or in Nineveh; in our Martha days and our Mary days, in our prayer and our work.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel reminds me of a sound bite for the evening news. Taken out of context, Jesus is denying his family. And not only that, but Jesus now has “brothers,” so what happened to the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary? Sound bites cause nothing but trouble because you don’t have the context to know what’s really being said. These sound bites take a whole lot of explanation, and the ones we have in today’s Gospel are certainly no exception.

    First of all, let’s tackle the idea of Jesus having brothers. Many ideas surround that issue and have developed over time, as I am sure you can appreciate. One idea says that St. Joseph was an older man, and had sons by a previous wife, now dead. These would be Jesus’ half-brothers. Another idea comes from the fact that the Greek word translated “brothers” here is general enough that it might also refer to cousins or some other close kindred. So the brothers here would be close family members, not necessarily brothers. In either case, the Church affirms the perpetual virginity of Mary and this Gospel is making a different point.

    The second sound bite is that Jesus seems to turn away from his mother and his relatives and claims that his family is those who hear the word of God and act on it. Well, Jesus certainly wasn’t turning away from his beloved mother or any of his close relatives. We know for a fact that Mary was the first of the disciples. Jesus seems to be more widening his family relationships than restricting them to just those related by blood. Which is good news for all of us who are now included in that family. Giving ourselves to the word of God, hearing it and living it, we are mother and brother and sister to Christ.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The little instruction of St. Paul to Timothy about bishops, women and deacons seems quaint. And it’s sure a relief to me because he doesn’t mention priests! Actually, he doesn’t mention priests because they were of course a later development. You can even see how the office of bishop has changed over time, with his reference to being married only once and managing his household well. But the real point here is that St. Paul is outlining the characteristics of the Christian disciple, for which all of us are responsible.

    We Christian disciples are the public face of Christianity. What we portray to the world is how others will come to see our way of life as a whole. We must be people without reproach, not conceited and well-regarded by outsiders. We must be not deceitful, not addicted to anything, and not in love with sordid gain. Really, what he is telling us is almost impossible, isn’t it? We all fall short of these standards in some way.

    Which is why we can be revived by Jesus Christ like the widow’s son on the way to Nain. Only Jesus Christ can help us in our weakness and fill in our lack. We might be tempted to weep over our sinfulness and unworthiness, but Jesus tells us not to weep and raises us up. Only with Jesus’ help can we do as the psalmist says: walk with a blameless heart.

  • Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The Kingdom of God is about mercy, and forgiveness, and repentance, and reconciliation. The task of the Church is to call people to repentance, and to bring God’s mercy, and forgiveness, and reconciliation to the world. The task of Christian disciples is to repent, and to receive God’s mercy, and forgiveness and reconciliation, and also to extend the mercy they have been given, to forgive as they have been forgiven, and to reconcile with everyone in their path. If we want to know the meaning for our lives and the purpose of our worship, we have heard it today.

    The problem is, as we well know, that we are a sinful people. That sinfulness goes all the way back to just after the creation, but we see it well in today’s first reading. The people Israel, having been led safely out of Egypt and having their enemies destroyed in the Red Sea, have soon enough forgotten the God who loved them into the desert and who longed to purify them in that desert for refuge in the promised land. When they lost sight of Moses and couldn’t figure out God’s plan, they fashioned a calf out of molten jewelry and began to worship its image. They had truly become stiff-necked.

    And would that it had ended in the desert, but it didn’t. We have inherited the stiff-neckedness that plagued the ancient Israelites. Whenever we lose sight of God, we are constantly prone to worship other gods. Think about 9/11, whose horrible sixth anniversary we observed this past week. In the days following that tragedy, you would have been hard pressed to find a seat in any church. Not so any more. Do we need God less now? What gods have we embraced in the days since then?

    And if we were pressed to admit it, I have to think we could understand God’s reaction to the Israelites and would have to admit it applied to us as well. We, just as well as they, have often been guilty enough to deserve being consumed by God’s blazing wrath. But that’s not the picture of God we get today, is it?

    No, we get a picture of God who relents in punishment, and who not only offers mercy and forgiveness, but actually also relentlessly pursues his fallen people so that they will accept it. God is the shepherd who will leave behind ninety-nine sheep-crazy as that may be-to pursue just one of us who has wandered astray. God is the woman who having lost just one of ten coins stays up all night, having lit a lamp, and sweeps the house carefully until the coin has been found. God is that prodigal father who sees the sinner returning at a distance and runs out to meet him or her. God doesn’t relent in his pursuit of us until all the wandering have been restored to the fold, all the lost are found, and all the rebellious have returned to the table.

    And God is not the one who stands there upon our return, arms folded, with a stern look on his face and says, “finally – what took you so long?” No, instead God calls together the neighbors and friends and begs them to help him rejoice and celebrate the lost lamb who has been restored to the fold and the coin that has been found. God is the father who kills the fatted calf, throws a fine robe around us, puts a ring on our finger and sandals on our feet, embraces us, and leads us to rejoice in our return. God is not content to simply treat us as one of his hired workers: he will not be satisfied until we are seated at his banquet table. God’s pursuit of us isn’t some kind of micromanaging megalomania, but instead a real longing expressed in action so that we can all join in the rejoicing that God always intended for us.

    So do not leave this holy place without hearing this message. Yes, you have sinned: we are all that stiff-necked people. Yes, you have embraced gods that were not genuine: we are all tempted daily. But yes, God is pursuing you relentlessly, waiting in eager expectation, and exercising incredible patience until that day you return to him, heart and soul. What is on your heart right now? Where have you turned from God and embraced the worship of something or someone that is not God? How long has it been? When will you repent, confessing your sin and receiving God’s gift of mercy? How long will you keep yourself from feasting at God’s banquet table?

    It’s as simple as approaching the Sacrament of Penance. In that beautiful Sacramental encounter, God waits for you, eagerly longing for your return. If you hear nothing else today, know that God has searched for you, lighting the lamp and burning the midnight oil, leaving the ninety-nine behind to reach out to you, peering out the window to see you on the road to your return. Those few Sacramental moments can be the beginning of new life and rejoicing in the way God always intended it.

    If you haven’t been to the Sacrament in years, just say that. The priest is there to help you, not to judge you. Ask for help if you need it to make a good confession. But never stay away simply because you feel like you’re not worthy, or it’s been too long, or you haven’t done anything that bad, or you don’t want the priest to think badly of you (we do forget what you’ve said when you leave, you know!). Whatever the reason, don’t let that get in the way of God’s pursuing mercy. You deserve so much better than that, and God won’t rest until you’ve received it.

    The Kingdom of God is about mercy, and forgiveness, and repentance, and reconciliation. The task of the Church is to call people to repentance, and to bring God’s mercy, and forgiveness, and reconciliation to the world. The task of Christian disciples is to repent, and to receive God’s mercy, and forgiveness and reconciliation, and also to extend the mercy they have been given, to forgive as they have been forgiven, and to reconcile with everyone in their path. If we want to know the meaning for our lives and the purpose of our worship, we have heard it today.

  • Monday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Do you ever wonder what St. Paul means when he says that he is making up in his own flesh whatever is lacking in the sufferings of Christ? I always thought that was kind of arrogant. After all, didn’t Christ’s suffering pay the price, once and for all, and fulfill all the justice of God tempered with God’s great mercy? So what could be lacking in the perfect sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ?

    Well, of course, the one thing that is lacking in Christ’s sufferings is our participation in it. Don’t forget that we are all the Body of Christ. That doesn’t just refer to the Sacrament we receive, nor is it a cute Church-jargon way of referring to the Church itself. Christ gave his body and blood for us, and so we too have become parts of his body. And as parts of his body, we must share in the bodily suffering that he endured for our sake.

    So we may have to suffer persecution for doing good, as Jesus did in today’s Gospel reading. And we may have to suffer the pains of illness. And we may have to suffer the loss of loved ones. We may have to endure sadness and pain on many levels. When we do, we can do so with the attitude of joining our sufferings to those of Christ and thus making up whatever may have been lacking in Christ’s own suffering.

    When we join our sufferings to Christ, we know that he is there with us. And though the suffering may remain, there can be a peace that comes from knowing that we are in God’s hands. The Psalmist says it best for us this morning:

    Only in God be at rest, my soul,
    for from him comes my hope.
    He only is my rock and my salvation,
    my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed.

  • Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s homily is lectio brevis because the youth of the parish were speaking today.

    Today’s Gospel is incredibly challenging, to say the least. Maybe I should say it’s incredibly unsettling. But we certainly know that Jesus who loved his mother and father very much, did not mean that we were to alienate ourselves from our families. But today’s teaching does remind us that following the Gospel on our own terms is not possible. The call to discipleship is one that calls us to step out of our comfort zone, leave behind whatever ties us to the world and separates us from God, and follow our Savior wherever he leads us. So if our only sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom of God is maybe getting out of bed and coming to Church on Sunday, then Jesus is telling us today that’s not enough. In our offering of gifts today, perhaps we can all offer our God the opportunity to guide us to take the steps he wants us to follow.