Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Ordinary Time

  • Friday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings
    Mass for the school children.

    The readings for daily Mass usually follow in a series.  So we read from a certain book of the Bible for a while, and then we move on to another one for a while.  So for the last couple of weeks, we have been listening to the story of the rise and fall of good King David, mostly from the books of Samuel.  Today’s is kind of a poetic summary from the book of Sirach, the wisdom writer.  Yesterday, in our first reading, we heard the story of his peaceful death and the transfer of the kingship to his son, Solomon.  Today, tells us about David in more poetic, and somewhat apologetic and glowing terms.  From it, we can see that, when David was at his best, he gave praise to God. 

    In our Gospel today, we hear about the end of Saint John the Baptist’s life.  Herod’s wife, Herodias, held a grudge against John because he opposed their marriage.  So she schemed to end his life.  Saint John the Baptist was one who lived his entire life pointing the way to the Lord.  With every fiber of his being, and until his last breath, he gave praise to God.

    So both King David and Saint John the Baptist did their best to give praise to God until their dying breath.  This is the role of disciples, which includes you and me.  We should always give praise to God and point others to him.  At our best, we should be an Assembly of holy people, helping all the world to find our God.  Whatever we do, and wherever we are, people should see Jesus in us.  In fact, we might be the only Jesus someone sees.  Let’s never get in the way of that.

    In the quiet times of Mass, spend some time thinking about how you might be Jesus to the people around you today, and ask God to give you the grace to do it.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    There’s a little line in the Gospel reading that could pass us right by, or at least puzzle us to the extent that we forget it and move on.  But I don’t think we should.  That line is: “Take care what you hear.”  It closely follows Jesus’ other hearing-related line: “Everyone who has ears ought to hear.”

    Sometimes we choose to hear just what we want to hear, sometimes we pick news sources and podcasts that are less than ethical and cause us consternation and detract from the Truth, and that is absolutely the opposite of what our Lord is counseling today.  Instead, we ought to be ready to hear the Truth, and to speak and witness to that Truth at all times, like a lamp on a lampstand.

    And so we might spend less time on the internet and in front of the television, and instead devote more time to prayer, reading and studying scripture, and activities that help us to grow in our faith.  The parish always has one or two Bible studies going on, and there’s even a class right now studying the Creed, that statement of Truth on which we base our faith. 

    It is much like the story of the conversion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who during recovery after injury in battle, read both romantic stories and stories of the saints.  He discovered that reading the romantic stories left him feeling anxious and empty, but reading the stories of the saints left him uplifted and wanting to hear more.  The Truth is like that.  Take care what you hear.

    We will be measured by our willingness to be people of Truth, and when we have courage to bring the Truth to a world in need of hearing it, still more graces will be measured out to us.

    Take care what you hear.

  • Saint Agnes, Virgin Martyr

    Saint Agnes, Virgin Martyr

    Today’s readings

    There are a lot of saints in today’s Mass, but then, honestly, there always are.  Father John and I have an ongoing joke, that when one of us has the early 6:30 Mass, we say to the other, “I woke up the angels and saints for you.”  Now, obviously the angels and saints aren’t sleeping in the church, but they are in the church, and especially whenever we celebrate Mass.  We can’t see them, but they are all around the altar, praising God for the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross that we remember at Mass, and helping us to lift up our own voices in prayer.  This is the “communion of saints” that we talk about when we say the Apostles’ Creed during the Rosary or sometimes at Mass.

    Today we have two mentions of saints.  The first is the saint we celebrate today, Saint Agnes, a Virgin and Martyr of the early Church.  That’s the reason for the red vestments today.  She lived probably around the third century.  Legend tells us that Agnes was a young girl, probably twelve or thirteen years old, and very beautiful.  Many young men longed for her, lusted after her, really, and one such man, having looked at her lustfully, lost his eyesight.  But his sight was restored when Agnes herself prayed for him.

    Because of her dedication to Christ, she refused the advances of the men who lusted after her.  And one such man, having been refused, reported her to the government for being a Christian.  She was arrested and eventually put to death, although the method of her death is unclear.  She was buried near Rome in a catacomb that was then named in her honor, and Constantine’s daughter later built a basilica in her honor.  Her witness is that her dedication to Christ was most important in her life, and she had vowed to live a life of virginity in honor of that.

    The second mention of saints comes in the Gospel today, in which Jesus, at the early point of his ministry, calls those who followed him, and Appointed the Twelve Apostles.  Mr. Hueg tells me that I can ask the seventh graders to list all of the Apostles because they just had a quiz on that exact topic!  Then again, I could probably ask the eighth graders because I’m sure they’ll remember from last year!  Seriously, though, we know the importance of the apostles.  Because they risked their lives to witness to Christ – all of them except John dying a martyr’s death – because of their witness, we have the faith today.  Because of their faith, we can live and witness to our faith too.

    Both Saint Agnes and Saints Peter, James, John and the others, all of them lived their lives for Christ and all of them gave their lives to witness to Christ.  That’s a good inspiration for the way we should live.  God has given us everything we have, and more than that, he has given us the opportunity to choose eternal life and come to be one with him one day.  Even if we never have the opportunity to actually die for Christ, we are called to give ourselves in love to him, and to witness to his Gospel no matter what it costs us.

    The other thing that Saint Agnes has in common with the Apostles is that they are all mentioned in the words of Eucharistic Prayer I, which I will be using today.  When I pray it, see if you can hear the names of Agnes, Peter, James, Andrew, Philip and the others.  And when you hear them, give God thanks that he allowed them to give their lives so that we might have the faith.  And thank God that he gave his only Son to show us the way to heaven.

    Saint Agnes and the Apostles, pray for us!

  • The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So we’ve taken down most of the Christmas decorations, and we won’t see the poinsettias and manger until next year.  Yet we’re not quite done with the Christmas season in the Church.  Traditionally, some aspects of Christmas joy and amazement remain in our Liturgy through February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  Today is an example of that.  I almost think this should be called the Third Sunday of Epiphany.  I say that because the Church has traditionally held that there are three traditional Epiphanies.

    We’ll back up just a bit here.  The word Epiphany, as we discussed two weeks ago on that feast, means a “manifestation;” we often think of it as a kind of “aha!” moment.  It is basically God doing a “God thing” so that we will sit up and take notice.  And so on the Feast of the Epiphany, we traditionally think of the first Scriptural Epiphany: the visit of the Magi to the Christ child.  The other two traditional Epiphanies are, first, what we celebrated last week: the baptism of the Lord in the Jordan River by his cousin, Saint John the Baptist.  And then the third Epiphany is what we have in the Gospel this week: the miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana.

    So in each of these Epiphanies, we learn something about our Lord.  In the first Epiphany, the Magi bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, which reveals that this is no ordinary child.  No, this is the Child come from God who is to be anointed priest, prophet and king.  Gold for a king; frankincense for a priest; and then the myrrh which foreshadows Jesus’ suffering and death on the Cross, all to pay the price for our sins and bring in the joy of God’s mercy and redemption.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who has come to manifest God’s love in an incredibly generous way.

    In the second Epiphany, Jesus is baptized.  John’s baptism was for the forgiveness of sins, which clearly was not necessary for Jesus.  Instead, his baptism consecrates the waters of baptism, so that every person ever to be baptized is washed with the same water that touched our Lord.  In our own baptisms now, we can inherit divinity because the Divine man, Jesus Christ, was washed in that same water.  Because Jesus humbled himself to be baptized, because he humbled himself to share in our humanity, we can be exalted to share in his divinity.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who claims all of broken humanity to be made new by God’s mercy.

    In the third Epiphany, today, Jesus, having gathered his disciples and on the verge of his ministry, changes water into wine.  But we know the symbolism of these things.  Whenever we see water in the Scriptures, the Church thinks of Baptism, and whenever we see wine in the Scriptures, the Church thinks of the Eucharist, the blood of Christ.  Here gallons of water, set aside for washing – another baptismal image – are miraculously turned into the best wine ever, poured out in superabundance to quench the thirst of those who gather for a feast.  Clearly these are Eucharistic images for us.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who provides life-giving blood, the best wine ever, for all those who are baptized, all those who follow him in faith.

    Over these three weeks, we have come to see who Jesus is in some very particular ways.  If we had never heard of him before, but came to Mass these three weeks, we would have learned of a God who cares enough for us, his creatures, to provide a way for them to be healed from their sinfulness, cured of their brokenness, and changed from profanity to divinity, from death to eternity.  If we had never before heard the Gospel, these three weeks would reveal very good news indeed!

    But, of course, we have heard the Gospel and been raised in the faith.  And so these three weeks are an opportunity for us to look once again at our precious Lord, in the great outpouring of God’s love that the Incarnation truly is, and see that he continues to reveal himself and his grace in so many ways among us every day.  Have you had an experience of Epiphany this week?  Has God given you what you need – probably through someone else – in just the way you needed it at some time recently?  Have you seen God’s love active in a new way this Christmas season?  If so, now is the time to give thanks for that experience.

    And we have to remember that Jesus wants us to be Epiphany as well.  God wants to use us in some way to reveal his love and grace to others.  It doesn’t have to be a big and incredible experience.  It might just be doing, as Saint Therese of Liseaux used to say, little things with great love.  Then others can see Christ at work in you and me.  Then we can be Epiphany and shine the bright light of Christ’s love in a world that is very dark and ponderous and weary.  How do we do that?  Mary’s instruction is all that we need to hear: “Do whatever he tells you.”

    That word of instruction from our Blessed Mother is one that was directed not just to the waiters, but even more importantly to us.  As we see who Jesus is in our lives, as he reveals himself and his will for us, we baptized believers, who are fed at the Table of the Eucharist with the Bread of Life and the Wine of Salvation, with his very own Body and Blood, must act on that Epiphany and do what he tells us. 

    Sometimes people struggle with this.  They hear the call, but are afraid, or uneasy, or unmotivated, and they let the call go by.  At the end of our lives, we never want to be wondering “what if” we had followed the call, “what if” we had done what he told us.  If we want to be happy, truly happy in this life and forever happy in the next, we have to take the leap of faith and follow our Lord.  Whatever happens as a result of that will be guided by the hand of our God who wants the best for us.  If we want to be happy, we have to live the Epiphany, be the Epiphany: “Do whatever he tells you.”

  • Thursday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s reading

    My grandmother used to say that, although she liked to read the Bible, she really didn’t like the Old Testament because of all the violence.  And certainly today’s first reading helps me to understand how she felt.  But it’s a reading that I think has very important things to say about the spiritual life.  I’m going to be clear though, as a pastor I approach this with fear and trembling, because I could well be judged in the same was as Eli and his sons.

    So we have been hearing the story of Eli and his sons this past week.  But there are significant parts of the story we haven’t heard, and that’s too bad, because they explain the massacre we get in today’s first reading.  Eli was the high priest at the time that Samuel was conceived, and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas assisted him.  His sons were also terrible human beings.  They would steal the peoples’ sacrifices off the altar while they were still boiling, and were known to be extremely promiscuous.  When Eli, their father, was made aware of this, his response was more or less, “Now boys, you can’t be doing that.”  So they ignored their father and did it all the more. 

    It’s easy to see the sin of Hophni and Phinehas, but Eli was actually more at fault.  In the theology of the Old Testament, the appropriate response from Eli would have been to put them both to death.  I know that sounds harsh, but we need to look at it from the spiritual perspective.  Anything that gets in the way of bringing people to God, anything that gets in the way of right worship, anything that gets in the way of taking care of those in need, has to be radically blotted out.  That’s why all those Egyptians pursuing the Israelites in the desert came to a watery end in the Red Sea.

    And Hophni and Phinehas were only part of the problem.  The problem is that Eli, as high priest, has been ignoring his duties in such a way that he allowed not only the sins of his two sons, but also the sins of the people.  More and more, they were turning away from the Lord.  All of this comes to a tipping point in today’s reading.  When they had been initially defeated by the Philistines, only then did they think to consult the Lord.  So they bring the Ark of the Covenant down like it was some kind of rabbit’s foot instead of the Holy Presence of God.  And so God gave them over to the hands of their enemies and allowed the Ark to fall into the hands of the Philistines.  Their depravity caused not just the fall of the nation, but also the fall of their religion.  The Ark was a sign of God’s presence in the community, a treasured holy vessel crafted by the hands of Moses, and they let it go.  I’ll tell you right now, friends, no one gets to this Tabernacle while I still have a beating heart, and I’m not the high priest.  But that’s how depraved things had become, all because Eli was asleep at the altar.  (Incidentally, he is frequently noted as sleeping in the stories that preceded this one.)

    None of this is ever going to get better for Israel until David is anointed king of Israel, and a type of messiah for the people.  Of course this foreshadows the actual Savior of the World, the Christ and Messiah who would be anointed by the Holy Spirit to break the power of the most insidious enemy and gain us all the salvation we need.

    So the moral of the story, if you want one, is to put to death whatever in us is keeping us from completely, freely, following God.  It’s not easy.  It wouldn’t have been easy for Eli to put his sons to death.  But if he had, he would have saved the lives of thousands of soldiers and prevented the fall of Israel and her religion.  There is too much at stake to let things go; we have to be ready to do whatever it takes to stay in relationship with our God.

  • Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It is always interesting to me how clearly the unclean spirits know who Jesus is.  For them, Christ our God inspires fear and rebellion.  But even these unclean spirits, hearing his voice, begrudgingly obey.  Jesus teaches with authority, as the people standing by admit of him.  This is a teaching that cannot be ignored. Each person may hear it and respond differently, but they do respond.  Many hear his voice and follow.  Others turn away.

    In these early days of Ordinary Time, we essentially have the continuation of the Epiphany event.  We continue to see Christ manifest in our midst, and continue to decide what to make of him.  Today we see him as one who teaches with authority and who has authority over even the unclean spirits within us.  Today he speaks to our sinfulness, to our brokenness, to our addictions, to our fallenness, to our procrastinations, to whatever debilitates us and saddens us and says “Quiet! Come out!”

    This Epiphany of Christ as dispossessor of demons is an epiphany that does more than just heal us.  It is an epiphany that calls us out of darkness, one that insists we come out of our hiding and step into the light, so that the light of God’s love can shine in us and through us.

  • Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our readings have been reminding us that the night is far spent and the day is drawing near.  We are called upon today to remain vigilant so that we do not miss the second coming of the Lord.  And it is well that we receive that warning today, on the cusp as we are of the new Church year.  This is the last day of the Church year and tomorrow, well even tonight, we will begin the year of grace 2022 with the season of Advent.  The day draws ever nearer for us.

    That day, our first reading tells us, will be a complete reversal of the power structure the world has known.  On that day, the power of the evil one, who has destroyed the kingdoms of the world, will be taken away by “final and absolute destruction.”  What is left, what will emerge, is an everlasting Kingdom of the people of the Most High.  Christ our King, who we celebrated last Sunday, will then present to his Father, “an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.”  (From the Preface of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe)

    That day might seem far off, but we cannot ignore the proclamation of Jesus from the beginning of his ministry that the Kingdom is here, among us.  So we need to be building that Kingdom through our acts of worship, repentance, and charity.  We cannot, as he warns in the Gospel today, have that day catch us by surprise like a trap.  No, we must be the vigilant ones, praying for strength to survive the tribulation we face every day in an anti-religious society and living the Gospel with integrity every moment of every day.

    Tomorrow is the New Year of the Church, so today might be a good time to make some New Church-Year’s resolutions.  How will we live differently in the coming year that the Kingdom might grow in our midst?

  • Friday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We have been hearing this week in our first reading from the books of the Maccabees.  All week long, the message we were getting was that this life is not all there is. Maybe eating a little pork, or tossing a few grains of incense on a coal in worship of an alien god would save one’s life for now, but upright Jews like Eleazar, and the Maccabee brothers insisted that that kind of life was not a life worth living. The something more to life is our relationship with God, and living without God is not really living at all. Living without God divorces us from who we are and forces us to live like the walking dead.

    Today’s reflection leads us to the conclusion that our identity as children of God is something worth fighting for, or even dying for. We give thanks with Judas and his brothers that God has called us to be his children, that he will not abandon us, and that he gives us the grace not to abandon him and abandon who we are. God is faithful and sovereign and if we persevere, we can rededicate the Temple of our lives to the God who made us and gave us life.

  • Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Well, the story we started to hear in yesterday’s first reading about Israel has festered a bit.  You may remember yesterday that king Antiochus Epiphanes began to lead the people to follow the ways of the Gentiles: covering over their circumcision, attending schools in the Gentile way of life, abandoning the holy laws.  In today’s reading, it’s getting real.  Eleazar the scribe, in his nineties, is being forced to eat pork in violation of the law.  When he refuses to do so, some of those who know and respect him urge him to pretend to eat it so as to escape punishment.

    But Eleazar is a man of wisdom, and he knows that if he pretends to violate the law to save his life, he will be leading others astray.  Those of lesser years than he would be led to scandal and sin because of him.  He may save his life, but theirs would be forever ruined on his account.  Not to mention, he would lose his life with God.

    What we are hearing in the book of Maccabees these days is that there is something more important than our own lives.  Life is sacred and a wonderful gift, but it is completely meaningless if we live it at the cost of our spiritual lives.  And when it comes right down to it, is that really living at all?

    Martyrs throughout the ages have given witness to the fact that there is something more, that this life is not all we have.  For Eleazar it was the law.  For Christian martyrs it is Jesus Christ.  But it is always, always about God who made us for himself, who created us to be reasonably happy in this life, but supremely happy with him forever in the next.

  • The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Why are we still here?????

    Have you ever thought about that?  Why is it that Jesus has been so long in returning?  Why hasn’t he come back to put all things to their proper conclusion?  Why do we still have wars being fought all over the earth?  Why is there still crime in our cities?  Why is there still terror, and death, and sadness, and pain?  Why do our loved ones still suffer illness?  Why do relationships still break down and why do people still hurt one another?  Why can’t God just wrap things up and put an end to all this nonsense?  Why can’t we all go home to be with our Lord and our loved ones?

    If you relate to those questions, then you probably can relate to the readings that we have from the prophet Daniel and from Mark’s Gospel today.  These are what we call “apocalyptic writings” which are usually written to give people hope in the midst of very hard times.  So you can see why they would be so important to us today.  Because we have hard times of our own, don’t we?  I would venture to guess that everyone sitting here is either affected in some way by the pandemic and the resulting economic downturn, or else they know someone who is.  Judging from the number of funerals we have had here lately, I would say that a lot of you have lost loved ones recently, or know about someone who has.  And that’s to say nothing of the day-to-day stuff like relationships ending, family difficulties, and the darkness of our own sin.

    When these things confront us, who among us wouldn’t call to mind the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel?  “The sun will be darkened,” he says, “and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”  It often seems like our whole world is falling apart, and we are desperately looking for some sign of hope.

    They are hard readings today, really kind of dark in nature.  They remind me of the darkness of the days that we have at the end of the year.  The sun sets a lot earlier than it did, and the skies are often cloudy.  It’s a darkness we can almost feel, especially when you add in the colder weather, and these readings that we have at the end of our liturgical year really echo that sentiment for me.

    But I think that’s the point.  Some fundamentalist folks have spent the greater part of their lives trying to figure out when all these things would take place.  They want a precise day and time when the end will come, they want to match up the events and prophecy of Scripture to events that are happening now, or have happened in the recent past.  And they sometimes tell us they have figured it out, only to have the time come and go, and they have to return to their lives, if they can.  But that’s not how any of this works; these readings aren’t supposed to be a roadmap.  They are supposed to accompany us when our lives are as dark as the coming winter nights.  The message they give us is one of hope.  No, we will not be spared the disappointments, frustrations, and sadness that can sometimes come in our lives, but we never ever have to go through them alone.

    God will be with us.  He will, as the Gospel tells us, “gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.”  As the prophet Daniel tells us, “At that time [God’s] people shall escape, everyone who is found written in the book.”

    And so, friends, I think that is why we are here today.  That’s why we are still here.  We are here to allow God to gather his elect, and we are here to help him do that.  That is why the Church actively pursues evangelization and welcomes people into the Catholic faith.  To that end, we have several adults and young people in our Order of Catechumens.  Catechumens are those being instructed in the ways of the faith.  This pertains specifically to those not baptized.  At the Easter Vigil Mass, they will receive all three of the Sacraments of Initiation: baptism, confirmation and first Eucharist.  

    If we take the readings today seriously, and I think we should, then these efforts are simply a nice start.  We know that one day, we won’t still be here, that Jesus will return to complete all things and initiate the reign of God’s kingdom.  And we want everyone to be there.  In many ways, we cannot any of us go if we all don’t go.  It’s not just “me and Jesus.”  Salvation is not an individual thing, it’s something we all receive together.  And that’s why we have the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.  That’s why we actively reach out to those not among us and call them to communion with us.  We need to gather up all God’s people so that, one day, we can all be seated around the banquet of God’s people in heaven.

    So back to my first question, then.  Why are we still here?  Well, we’re still here because there is work still to be done.  There are many more people to gather from the four winds so that their names can be written in the book of life.  God is still working salvation among us; we need to cooperate with that saving work.  It’s not going to be easy, and some days may seem oppressively dark, but we are never alone.  Heaven and earth might pass away, but God’s word is forever.