Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Ordinary Time

  • The Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Journeying from Fear to Faith

    The Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Journeying from Fear to Faith

    Today’s readings

    Getting ready for Mass today, I thought about my Dad. Not just because it’s Father’s Day, although that’s certainly part of it. But partly because of today’s Gospel. The story we have here today speaks about a journey, and I’ll say more about that in a minute. My Dad was great for journeys: he loved to drive and take the family to Wisconsin or to Disney, or wherever we needed to go. He’d have us up early in the morning so that we’d miss rush hour traffic, and we’d be on our way.

    Today, Jesus and his disciples set out on a significant journey. The reading we have today is at the end of chapter four, in which Jesus has been standing next to the sea, teaching the people by means of parables. He has told them the parable of the sower who went out to sow seeds, the parable of the mustard seed, and the lamp placed on the lamp stand. He is explaining the kingdom of God to them, but they don’t quite get it. Even the disciples have to have it explained to them. When he’s done the best that he can with them, he is ready to move on. There are other people that need to hear the Good News, others who need to know Jesus’ power and authority.

    And so he sets out on the journey, and the reading says that the disciples take him with them in the boat “just as he was.” That’s a curious detail, I think. But it makes me remember those trips with my dad. It’s time to get going, no time to change clothes or freshen up, just get in the car – or in this case, the boat – and let’s get started on the journey. But the journey isn’t always without its problems. On vacation trips we may run into traffic, or if in the air, perhaps turbulence. On the sea, the disciples experienced the raging waves of a fearsome storm. So they wake Jesus up, because apparently these storms don’t really affect him, and he rebukes the storm, and then rebukes the disciples for their little faith.

    We’re all on a journey. That journey, like that of the disciples, is from fear to faith. We very rarely have time to think about it; we just have to get in the boat and get moving, just as we are. The journey is not always smooth: storms arise, and when they do, it often seems like our God is sleeping, seeming not to care that we are about to perish. I’m not going to fill in the blanks for you – you can all do that well enough. You’ve been on many journeys in your life, and sometimes the ride has been bumpy. But if we stay on the journey, we definitely get to experience this One whom “even wind and sea obey.” Even when our God seems to be sleeping, he is never unaware of our situation, and his love for us is never on pause.

    The thing is, sometimes the storm doesn’t seem to stop so quickly as it does in today’s Gospel reading. Would that Jesus would stand up in the boat of our uncertainty and yell out: “Quiet! Be still!” But maybe he is. Maybe the “Be still” is directed at us and not at the storm. There was a contemporary Christian song a few years ago now, that had this wonderful line in it: “Sometimes he calms the storm, and other times he calms his child.” That song has given me peace in many situations. Because as frightening as the storms of our lives can be, they are no match for the grace of God. Even if God allows the storm to rage in our lives, if he is with us, calming us, we have nothing to fear. And maybe that is the occasion when we make progress on that journey from fear to faith.

    So as we leave this holy place today, we are on a journey to the most holy place, our true home in heaven. Along the way, we will have other destinations, and as we travel, we know that Jesus will be with us through it all. He may calm the storms that arise, or he may calm his children, whichever is most appropriate. And we know that the journey from fear to faith will lead us back one day to the place we really belong, at the banquet table in the kingdom of everlasting life. May all of our life’s journeys end up in that same, great place!

  • Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It amazes me when I think about all that the early Church had to go through and put up with. Saint Paul writes that he put up with persecution from all sides: from his own people as well as the Gentiles. He was beaten often, endured hazardous journeys and perilous weather, as well as every kind of deprivation. His experience was definitely extreme, but others who lived the faith in those days were also subject to persecution, torture and death. Our experience isn’t like that, is it? I mean, here we sit in this air-conditioned church and relatively comfortable surroundings. We came here freely to Mass this morning and it is unlikely that anyone will openly persecute us or torture us or put us to death for worshipping our God, although as we saw in the news yesterday, it does happen.

    But there is a subtle kind of persecution that we must endure. We know that even if our society is not openly hostile to living the Gospel, it is certainly just one step short of that. Life is not respected in our society: babies are aborted, the elderly are not respected or given adequate care, children are not raised in nurturing families, people are hated because of their race, color or creed. Faith is ridiculed as the crutch of the weak. Hope is crushed by those who abuse power. Love is overshadowed by sexual perversion and self-interest. Living the Gospel is dangerous to anyone who would want to be taken seriously in our culture.

    To all of us who come to this holy place to worship this morning and who hope to work out our salvation by living the Gospel, Saint Paul speaks eloquently. We know that he, as well as all of the communion of saints, is there to intercede for us and show us the way. He says to us today, “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?” He points us to our Lord Jesus who paid the ultimate price for the Gospel, and reminds us that in living that Gospel, regardless of its cost, we store up for ourselves incredible treasures in heaven, because it is in heaven that our heart resides.

  • Monday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel reading is from the very challenging portion of Matthew’s Gospel in which we hear Jesus use the formula: “You have heard it said … but I say to you…”  Basically, in all of these instructions, Jesus is taking the old Jewish law and cranking it up a notch.   He teaches that anger, vengeance and libel are as disastrous as murder; that lust is as morally reprehensible as adultery.   In today’s reading, Jesus takes on the concept of justice.

    In the days before Jesus, justice was met by inflicting on the one who had wronged you what they had done to you.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; you steal one of my sheep, I take one of yours, that kind of thing.  It’s a very primitive sort of justice, but to be honest, I think, one that still kind of resonates in our society.  People might not like to say they believe this sort of thing, but you see it all the time.

    Jesus isn’t into defining justice in this way.  For Jesus, true justice consists in rendering to God what he belongs to God; it means giving to others as God has given to us.  In a way, it’s the primordial form of the whole “pay it forward” idea.  If God has been generous to us, then, in justice, we need to be generous to others.  So we don’t argue about our tunic, but instead give our cloak as well.  We go the extra mile, and never turn our back on those in need.

    We believers have to get our heads around the idea of true justice.  We have to be willing to give without counting the cost.  We have to remember that in justice, we should be condemned for our many sins, but instead we have salvation in Christ Jesus.  Because God has been merciful and generous to us, then in justice we must do the same for others.

  • Saint Justin, Martyr

    Saint Justin, Martyr

    Today’s readings

    The greatest men and women who have ever lived have followed the example of our Lord Jesus Christ in that they have been willing to give their lives for the truth, for what they believed in, for what is right. In our first reading, Tobit risks his life in order to give a fallen kinsman a proper burial. Tobit and his family had been exiled to Ninevah, and the people there were hostile to the Israelites. Their hostility was so noteworthy, that in another book, Jonah famously refuses to go there and instead gets swallowed up by a large fish. So Tobit has previously narrowly escaped execution for showing charity to his fellows in exile, and he ignores the obvious lesson in order to do what is right.

    For Saint Justin, whose feast we celebrate today, he chose to stand up for the truth. He was born a pagan, and spent a good deal of his youth studying pagan philosophy, principally that of Plato. But he eventually found that Christianity answered the great questions of life and existence better than did the pagan philosophers, so he converted. He wrote famous apologies, defenses of the Christian faith, to the Roman emperor and to the senate. Because of his unwavering dedication to his faith, he was beheaded in Rome in the year 165.

    “The just one shall be an everlasting remembrance,” says the Psalmist today. All of us are called to live our faith with conviction, as did Tobit and Saint Justin. We might never be in the dire straits in which they found themselves, but we too are called to give our lives, our comforts, our standing in the community, our reputation among our peers, for the faith. Today we pray for the grace to live what we believe and to be an everlasting remembrance.

  • Memorial Day

    Memorial Day

    Today’s readings: James 3:13-18; Psalm 72; Matthew 5:38-48

    I was talking to one of our parishioners today who is on a local board that, among other things, hires police officers for their municipality. He was telling me how hard it is to find qualified people willing to serve these days. I wasn’t surprised to hear it. I’ve read a lot over the last several years about how people are not going into service-related professions any more. The priesthood is, of course, no stranger to that phenomenon.

    So maybe it’s a little ironic that we spend today honoring those who have given their lives in service to our country. It’s a little like we’re saying “thanks for doing that, but please don’t ask me to serve.” And our Lord would admonish us for that kind of societal attitude; he didn’t give us the Gospel so that we could do nothing about it.

    In today’s Gospel reading, we hear the famous “but I say to you” sayings of Jesus. He takes very familiar religious practices of his day, and then cranks them up a notch. Believers are not supposed to be on autopilot; we are supposed to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of others. If we’re asked to give, we have to do it expecting nothing in return. When we love, we are called to do it when it is completely inconvenient, and toward those who we might not prefer to love.

    Service is not optional for the Christian disciple. Laying down our lives is simply doing what our Lord has shown us how to do. If he could die on the cross for us, we can die to ourselves and give our lives in service to others, so they might know God’s love and mercy.

    We truly honor today those who have given their lives for our country. Without their sacrifice, we might not have the freedoms we enjoy today. If we would truly honor their service and their selflessness, then we have to set aside our selfish ambitions as Saint James encourages us in our first reading. To truly honor our fallen heroes, we have to make use of the freedom that they fought for in a way that frees others as well.

    Most of all, we have to work to change the attitude of our society. We have to earnestly set aside selfish ambition and entitlement or become a society that is not truly free. If we’re slaves to ambition, then we will accomplish little individually or as a society. We have to pray for religious vocations and also vocations of service to our country and community. We have to encourage our children and grandchildren to give of themselves in their profession. That is what will make us truly free.

    And that is what would honor our fallen service men and women most of all.

  • Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We’re still in the opening chapters of human history in our first reading, and in these opening chapters we see some of the less beautiful parts of human nature. The first reading reads like an exposition of deadly sins, and these sins have continued to plague humanity ever since.

    We start with envy, as Cain laments that his offering was not accepted with the same favor as was his brother, Abel’s. We move from envy to murder, with Cain committing the very first fratricide, killing his very own brother. From there, we go to apathy, as Cain rejects the opportunity to be his brother’s keeper. And then we meet false witness, as he lies about the murder that he committed. And if all of that isn’t enough, Cain then complains about his punishment as if it was something he didn’t deserve. If he’d only tried repentance, or expressed sorrow for his sins, or even accepted responsibility for what he’d done, maybe things would have turned out differently.

    But, in this opening act of human history, we see God’s mercy. God does not remit the entirety of Cain’s punishment, but promises that even his death would be unacceptable. Maybe we should think about that in regard to the death penalty: if even God doesn’t condone the murder of a murderer, then who are we to do that? So God marks Cain, as we all are marked with God’s presence at our baptism. So even in this very early story of our history, we can see that baptism was always intended for our salvation.

    The Psalmist this morning says that we absolutely cannot profess God’s commandments and sing his praises, without also accepting God’s discipline and following God’s word. A sacrifice of praise is a life lived with integrity, and that is the sacrifice that God wants of us in every moment.

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Blessed are those who fear the Lord,” the Psalmist tells us today.  And today as our example of those who fear the Lord, we have two women.  And we begin with the creation of the first woman.  God has created all the creatures of the earth: land, water and air, yet none of these are found to be a suitable partner for him.  And so it takes a new creative act of God, putting the man to sleep – putting things on pause for a moment, as if to make things right.  The only suitable partner for the man had to be someone who was made of his same flesh, and so one of his ribs is taken to form the basis of the woman.  How significant it is that his partner is made from a bone right next to his heart!  And only with this astounding new creation is all of creation complete.  In the present, the work of creation goes on all the time, of course, largely because man and woman were created to participate in that creation together with their Creator.

    The second woman we meet today is the Syrophoenician woman.  She is a woman of great faith – persistent faith even!  Not only does she want Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter, but she is convinced that he is the only one that can make it happen.  Her faith and her persistence give us a model for our spiritual lives. For us disciples, a strong faith in Christ means never questioning his ability to act for our good, and never letting anything – not even the technicalities of a perceived mission – get in the way of acting on that faith. We too are called to steadfast faith, and persistent prayer.

    The Nuptial Blessing from the Rite of Marriage prays for the bride: “May she always follow the example of the holy women whose praises are sung in the scriptures.”  There are many such wonderful examples, of course, and today’s are just two of them.  They give all of us a shining example of what our faith should be like.  May all of us – women and men! – follow their example.

  • Monday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings speak to us about the wonderful, spiritual quality of goodness.  We have the creation story, or at least the beginning of it, in which God is not only creating the world and everything in it, but also creating it in goodness.  And I think that we can relate to that in some way, because we find created things good all the time.  Think about a vacation or road trip you’ve taken and found some beautiful countryside.  Maybe you’ve seen mountains, or the vast ocean, or hiked some incredible trails through rich forested countryside.  When you’ve been there, looking at all that wonderful creation, perhaps stood there as the sun was setting or rising, maybe you’ve even said a prayer of thanks to God for creating such wonders and allowing you to see them.  You too see that it is very good.

    But there’s even more than that in it for us.  When we behold such wonders, such things that are very good, we can also see in them the One who is Goodness itself.  We see God in his creative genius, imparting some of his own Goodness into our world so that we might find goodness too.  In the mountains, we see God’s strength and might; in the forests, his embrace; in the waters, his refreshing mercy.  Our Good God has painted the world with his Goodness, so that we might desire the Good and come at last to Him.

    Goodness is all around us, because God created the world to be good.  Today, we can look around to see the good we might otherwise miss: good in people and good in creation – all of it bringing us back to our God who is Goodness itself.  The psalmist leads us today in the prayer that we are moved to pray when we are in the presence of such Good:

    How manifold are your works, O LORD!
    In wisdom you have wrought them all—
    the earth is full of your creatures;
    Bless the LORD, O my soul! Alleluia.

  • The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had sort of a bad feeling when I heard this Gospel reading. I mean, here Simon’s mother-in-law is sick with fever, and the minute she’s cured, they have her up waiting on them. But I love it when a piece of Scripture irritates me, because it means I probably just need to roll up my sleeves and dig into it a bit to see what the Lord wants me to learn. And this reading is no exception!

    The first thing we ought to remember here is that when Scripture tells us about someone who is healed, or even raised from the dead, we are not getting the story just because the author wants us to be edified by the healing. It’s not just to get us saying “well, how nice for them!” What we are supposed to be seeing in the healing is the healing of ourselves.

    And that brings us to the second thing we ought to remember. The story is about us, because all of us, to one degree or another, have some kind of spiritual illness. If that were not true, we would never have needed Jesus. The Father would never have had to expose his Son to ridicule, torture and death. But he did send his Son: to heal us of our sins, fix our brokenness, and make us more the people he created us to be.

    And then there’s a third thing we need to remember: God’s gifts are never for us only. Whenever he gives us grace, it’s grace for us, but it’s grace that we are called to share with others. When we have been forgiven, we’re not supposed to just sit and think about how wonderful we’ve become. We are supposed to learn from our forgiveness how to forgive others. When we’ve been healed, we are supposed to go out and help make others whole. And that’s why Simon’s mother-in-law is up waiting on them: she has been made whole and in gratitude for her healing, she is extending God’s mercy to others. Now I get it and I don’t feel so irritated by this Gospel reading!

    This week we’re talking about the Diocesan Catholic Ministries Annual Appeal. The theme for the appeal is, exactly, Extending God’s Mercy. Having been made whole time and again through God’s grace present in the sacraments, we are called upon to help extend God’s mercy to those in need. Our diocese does this through Catholic Charities, which provides service to those who need to know God loves them. These efforts help provide almost 137,000 nights of shelter and housing to the homeless as well as countless meals provided through the Shepherd’s Table soup kitchen to the hungry. The diocese extends God’s mercy by teaching the faith at 48 Catholic elementary schools and 7 high schools. There’s a lot more, and I know that you’ve received the mailing, and if not, the information is in today’s bulletin.

    Next week, we’ll be asked to make a commitment to the Appeal if we have not already done so. I absolutely promise not to take you through the process of “put your name on line one (pause), your address on the next line (pause)…” I know you know how to do that. But I do ask that you prayerfully consider a pledge to the Appeal, because so many people in need depend on what we do. If God’s mercy is to be known in the world, we may be the ones who make that happen. I support the appeal, and I hope that you will too.

  • The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Heaven knows there are a lot of experts out there, or at least people who claim to be experts. That’s why blogs and comments posted on news stories and facebook are so popular: everyone claims to know something about everything. Or at least it seems that way. Certainly, it should give us pause when we think about the quality of information we get from these sources. More than half the time I hear someone quote a weather report, I end up thinking, “Yeah, I’ll just wait, look out the window, and see.”

    So it should give us all the more pause when people give us their religious knowledge. So often it starts with words like “I think…” or “In my opinion…” and perhaps ends with “that’s what seems right for me.” But when it comes to faith and morals, it doesn’t matter what we think; our opinions are not truth, and the subjectivity of “what seems right for me” is completely useless. Faith and morals are about the Truth, and there is just one source for that knowledge, and that is our Lord.

    For Moses, that was life-giving. He had a relationship with the Lord. He had been up the mountain and seen the Lord face-to-face. So when he told the people what the Lord had said, they trusted him. In today’s first reading, Moses seems to know that that trust would dwindle after his death, and so he foretells that a prophet would come after him a prophet like Moses who would have the truth in him. He was foreshadowing Jesus Christ, of course.

    So Jesus arrives in Capernaum, and I can almost feel the anticipation. I imagine they had heard about Jesus and the things he said and did, and were probably eager to see what might transpire when he arrived in their town. In the midst of teaching the people, he encounters a man with an unclean spirit. And this is what illustrates the conflict. The scribes were there. These were the leaders of the people. It was their job to write out and interpret the Scriptures and to be the source of truth for their community.

    But they didn’t. For whatever reason, they had long since abandoned their vocation and focused instead on adherence to the rules and making profit on the Lord’s word. Thus, they were unable to cast out the spirit from the man, and in fact, would more likely have cast the man himself out so that he wouldn’t be a disruption. But in order to see what would happen, they didn’t cast him out; they left him for Jesus to deal with.

    And Jesus does. Only instead of casting the man out, he does what was more important and cast out the evil spirit. The people are then astonished that his teaching was able to cleanse them from the evil in their midst. This was a teaching with authority, and not the so-called teaching of their scribes.

    I think this is what we have to catch. There’s lots of teaching out there, but none of it with authority. Broken political promises, self-help gurus on television and in books, blogs that claim to know where the world is headed – none of this has authority. There is only one authority that can cleanse us of the evil amidst us, only one source of Truth and that is our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to do a little more listening to him than to the other noise that’s out there.

    If we would listen to his teaching, it would indeed help us deal to with poverty, crime, violence, drugs, lack of respect for life, and all the many other demons that are out there seeking to kill us. And so we have to tune in to the right message. We have to seek the Truth and turn off all the noise. Perhaps it’s time we made a retreat, or joined a Bible study or a book discussion, all of which we offer here at the parish all the time. If all we’re hearing is the lies, we’ll never get rid of the demons in our midst. But if we would listen to the Truth, we will indeed find ourselves healed.