Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Ordinary Time

  • 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.

  • Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It seems like just yesterday that John the Baptist was baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River.  Oh wait, it was just yesterday!  But today’s reading fast forwards a bit and takes us to a time after John has been arrested.  John isn’t dead yet, not yet out of the picture, but clearly he is decreasing, as he says in another place, so that Jesus can increase.

    And Jesus is certainly increasing.  His ministry is kicking into full swing, and he begins by preaching that the kingdom is at hand – a theme that will continue his whole life long.  And he begins to call his followers.  Simon and Andrew, James and John, two sets of brothers, two groups of fishermen, give up their nets and their boats and their fathers and turn instead to casting nets to catch men and women for God’s kingdom.

    You know, even though today is the first day of Ordinary Time, we continue some aspects of Christmas and the Epiphany right up until February second, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So today’s Gospel fits right in with that.  Today’s Gospel gives us a little more light to see what Jesus is up to.  He calls us all to repentance and to accept the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.  He says to us just as he said to Simon, Andrew, James and John: “Come follow me.”  The year ahead can be an exciting spiritual journey for us.  Who knows what Jesus will do in us to further the kingdom of God?  We just have to answer that wonderful invitation – “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

  • Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Jesus says to us today, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”  This includes all of us, past, present and future.  We will all live, in some way, to see the end of days, either here on earth, or from the joy of heaven.

    So what will we see; what things will take place?  We will see the signs of a new creation.  Just like the first buds of the fig tree and other trees that Jesus spoke about, all of which signaled the beginning of summer, so the signs of the new creation are evident among us.  Sins are forgiven, people return to God, miracles happen.  Granted, all these are imperfect in some ways now, given that they happen to us fallen creatures, but one day they shall be brought to perfection in the kingdom of God.  Then, we will see “the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

    And so, in these closing days of the Church year, we pray for the coming of the kingdom, and hope for the salvation of the world as Jesus promised.

  • Monday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Very often, when we hear this story about the widow’s mite, the story is equated with the call to stewardship.  That’s a rather classic explanation of the text.  And there’s nothing wrong with that explanation.  But honestly, I don’t think the story about the widow’s mite is about stewardship at all.  Yes, it’s about treasure and giving and all of that.  But what kind of treasure?  Giving what?

    I think to get the accurate picture of what’s going on here, we have to ask why the Church would give us this little vignette at the end of the Church year, in the very last week of Ordinary Time.  That’s the question I found myself asking when I looked at today’s readings.  Well, first of all, it’s near the end of Luke’s Gospel so that may have something to do with it.  But I think there’s a reason Luke put it at the end also.  I mean, in the very next chapter we are going to be led into Christ’s passion and death, so why pause this late in the game to talk about charitable giving?

    Obviously, the widow’s mite means something else than giving of one’s material wealth.  Here at the end of the Church year, we are being invited to look back on our lives this past year and see what we have given.  How much of ourselves have we poured out for the life of faith? What have we given of ourselves in service? What has our prayer life been like? Have we trusted Jesus to forgive our sins by approaching the Sacrament of Penance? Have we resolved to walk with Christ in good times and in bad? In short, have we poured out everything we have, every last cent, every widow’s mite, for our life with Christ? Or have we held something back, giving merely of our surplus wealth?

    In this last week of the Church year, we have to hear the widow telling us that there is something worth giving everything for, and that something is our relationship with Christ.

  • Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

    Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

    Today’s readings

    I wonder if this solemnity of Christ the King is one to which many people can relate these days.  In our day, many people don’t recognize or accept any authority outside of their own personal opinion of what is okay, let alone grasp the concept of a monarchical, top-down method of government.

    And even if we were looking for a king, what kind of king is this?  Our gospel reading today presents a picture of a king who, objectively speaking, seems to be rather a failure.  This is not a king who lived in a lavish palace and expected the blind obedience of all those around him.  This is not a king who held political office, or led a great army.  His message has always been quite different than that, and now we see him hanging on the cross between two hardened criminals.  That one of them thinks to ask Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom is almost laughable.

    This wasn’t the kind of king the Jews were expecting, of course.  They were, indeed, expecting and eagerly awaiting an Anointed One, but never one like this.  Their whole picture of a Messiah had been one of political greatness and military strength, one who would restore the sovereignty of Israel and reestablish Jerusalem as the great political and religious city that it had once been.  That was the Messiah they were looking for, but what they got was one who was so much of a suffering servant that he ended up on a cross.  Pilate’s inscription, “This is the king of the Jews” was sarcastic and completely offensive to them, which of course is exactly what he intended.

    So it’s easy to see why the Jews might not have noticed that this one was their king.  It’s easy enough to even see why they would have chosen to ignore his kingship.  But we can’t be like that: we have heard the Word proclaimed all year long and we know that this is the way that God chose to save the world.  We have to be the ones to proclaim that Jesus is the king of our reality, not of our fantasy, and we recognize that he is not ashamed to herald the cross as the gateway to the kingdom and the instrument of our salvation.  Indeed it was the cross that lifted him up to his kingship, and so embracing the cross is the way of life for all of us who want to enter into the kingdom.

    And we have to admit that we are a people who need a king like this.  We might want a king to give us greatness and rest from our enemies, but that’s not real.  What’s real is our suffering, whether it’s illness, or grief, or job dissatisfaction, or personal troubles, or family strife, or broken relationships, or any other calamity.  Suffering happens, so maybe that’s why Jesus chose the image of the Suffering Servant as the motif of his kingship.  Saint Paul says today in our second reading from his letter to the Colossians that “in him all things hold together.”  Even when the world seems to be falling apart for us, we can trust in the Suffering Servant to walk with us and hold everything together.

    And so, as preposterous as it may sound to others, we know that Christ is our King.  His Kingship, he says in another gospel, is not of this world.  No, he was not a king who came with great fanfare, oppressing peoples and putting down vast armies.  No, he was not the king who restored Israel to the Davidic monarchy that began in our first reading.  His power was not exercised over the political forces of this world, as much as it was exercised over the forces of evil in the world.  He is the King who conquered, once and for all, the things that really plague us: evil, sin and death.  His Kingdom was not defined by his mortal life, but in fact begins just after he gives up that mortal life.  Unlike earthly kings, his power is everlasting.

    In our day, this feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the universe has us reasserting Christ’s sovereignty over all powers of cynicism, relativism, and apathy.  Jesus Christ our King is, as he says in another place, “the way, the truth, and the life” and there is no other way to the Father, no other way to the kingdom, no other way to life eternal than to take up our cross and follow our King through the sadness of sin and brokenness, through the pain of death, to the glory of his kingdom.  And so we have to say with boldness and conviction on this day that one religion isn’t as good as another; that it’s not okay to skip Mass to go to your child’s basketball game; that Sunday isn’t just a day to sleep in, or shop the malls, but rather a day to worship our King who is the only One who can give us what we really yearn for; what this life is all about.

    And so this is how we wrap up our Church year.  Next week we begin anew, the first Sunday of Advent.  On this last Sunday of the year, it makes sense that we stop for a minute, and look back at the year gone by.  How has it been for us?  Have we grown in faith?  Have we been able to reach out to the poor and needy?  Has our faith really taken root in our lives, have we been people who witness to the truth with integrity and conviction and fearlessness?  Have we put our King first in our lives or have we been worshipping false gods, attaching our hopes to impotent kings, recognizing false powers, and wandering off the path to life?

    If we have been lax about our faith this year, if we have given ourselves to relativism and apathy, then this is the time to get it right.  On this eve of the Church’s new year, perhaps we might make new year’s resolutions to worship our King in everything we say and everything we do.  Because nothing else is acceptable, and anything less is offensive to our King who gained his Kingship at the awesome price of his own precious life that we might be able to live with him in his kingdom.  Maybe we can resolve to get to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of obligation, not just when it works out in our schedule.  Or perhaps we can resolve to reinvigorate our prayer lives, making time every single day to connect with our Lord, to seek his guidance in all our endeavors and plans, to strive to catch a glimpse of the Kingdom in the quiet moments of our prayer.  And certainly we must resolve to live the Gospel in its fullness: to reach out to the poor and needy, to live lives of integrity as we participate in our work and in our communities, to love every person God puts in our path.  On this “new Church year’s eve” we must resolve to be followers of the King in ways that proclaim to a cynical and apathetic, yet watching world, that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords and that there is absolutely no other.

    Our prayer on this glorious Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King must be the prayer of Saint Dismas, the “good thief” as he hung upon the cross: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!”

  • Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Right at the end of today’s first reading is one of the most chilling lines in all of Scripture: “and they did die.”  The people’s faith was sorely tested: would they give in and worship the false gods of the people around them so that they could have some kind of peace and security, or would they prefer to stand up for what they believed and more likely than not, give their lives for their faith?  Many gave up and gave in and worshipped the false gods.  But many stood their ground and clung to their belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

    But, let’s be clear about this: they all died.  In some way.  Those who were martyred literally gave their lives for the faith, we get that.  But those who chose to give up and give in brought about the death of their culture and the death of their souls.  Sure, they may have had some kind of peace and security now, but who would protect them if the people they allied themselves with were overtaken?  And that is to say nothing of their eternal souls.  They did die.

    The persecution never ends.  It would be easier in our own day to give in and accept abortion as a necessity, or to change Church teaching on the nature of marriage and the family, or to accept whatever special interest groups think is best for us, or keep our faith private and never share it or show it in any way.  Our culture would like that; they would appreciate our willingness to blend in and not give offense.  But that would be the death of our way of life and our spirituality.  It will surely cost us to witness to our faith, to challenge co-workers when a business deal blurs the lines of morality, to insist that our children attend Church on Sunday before they go to a weekend-long soccer tournament, or whatever the challenge may be.

    But better that we die a little for our faith than that we die without faith at all.

  • Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Can you imagine how we would feel if we came to Mass one day and found this beautiful Church demolished and in ruins?  I think we’d all be devastated and feel hurt, abandoned, and lost in some ways.  And that’s just exactly how the original readers of Luke’s Gospel felt.  The glorious Temple of Jerusalem, once stately and glimmering white and gold in the sunlight, now lay in ruins.  And the Temple may have meant something more for them, because in the Temple they found the symbol of their identity as a nation.  It was a sign that God favored them among all the nations on earth and had chosen them to be his own.  Jerusalem was no more, and a world ended with it.

    All of us maybe deal with that same sort of feeling in some way at some point in our lives.  We all at some point go through catastrophic times that make us feel like our whole world has come to an end.  Family, friends and our communities experience various forms of dying and they are never easy.  Cancer debilitates a formerly-vigorous and full-of-life friend or relative; a marriage breaks up; an injury makes it impossible to keep a job; aging diminishes a once-vibrant person.  And more.  Our churches offer more and more empty seats, our nation moves from one crisis to the next, we scratch our heads as legislatures seem incompetent or cantankerous or ineffective.  Or maybe we even think of devastating natural disasters like the recent Typhoon in the Philippines.  When we experience any of that, it can seem like the world is ending.

    And when things like that happen, it’s hard to find words to express our sadness, fear, pain, and desertedness.  It can even be hard to find words to raise in prayer.  But Jesus knows this will happen to us and promises that if we persevere, we will gain our lives and God himself will give us a wisdom in speaking that cannot be refuted.  In Christ, we can find wisdom to make painful circumstances occasions for God’s grace.  What we experience as difficulties and painful endings, he sees as opportunities to witness to our faith in him.

    Very often when catastrophic things happen, people read it as the coming end of the world.  Sometimes people even see these things as signs of God’s displeasure at the way humanity has been behaving.  But today’s Gospel doesn’t lend support to those ideas.  God alone knows the time for the world’s ending, and he’s not going to provide definite signs.  And catastrophe is the symptom of evil in the world, and not necessarily a sign of God’s feelings.

    As the Church year comes to a close, it may be well for us to look back at our lives over the past year and take stock of our growth in faith.  Has our relationship with Christ led us to a place where we can weather the storms of life, and hear his voice even when the world is falling down around us?  Have we grown in our ability to make God’s presence in our world known when the world around us seems rudderless and adrift?  If this year has not been a solid experience of growth for us, we can make that our prayer for the year to come.

    On the second-to-last Sunday of the Church year, it would have been wonderful for the Liturgy to tie up all the loose ends and give us a happy ending.  But that’s not what we have here is it?  Why?  Because life isn’t that way.  Jesus tells us as much today.  But the message that we have is that no matter how messy things may be, we can praise our God who is with us in good times and in bad, and promises to lift us up even when the world seems like it is coming to an end.

  • Saturday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

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

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

    But whatever the reason, the last line of the Gospel today is our key: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  It’s a good question, even if it is a tough one.  Faith is what leads us to continue the prayer until it is finally answered.  Maybe the situation will come to a peaceful resolution, or maybe it is we who will be changed.  But if we approach it all in faith, then we know we have to approach it all with the long haul in mind, because our faith tells us that God answers in God’s time and in God’s way.

    A delay could either bring us closer to God as we continue to pray in faith, or it can fracture our relationship with God when we give in to despair.  But let that not be so for us.  When the Son of Man comes, may he find us faithful ones busy in prayer.

  • Thursday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Let’s be honest; we want it to be easy, this spiritual life, this journey to the kingdom.  We look longingly for signs that we’re headed the right way; we want more than anything to know we’ll end up in the right place.  And so we pay attention, sometimes, when people say, “Look, there he is,” or “Look, here he is.”  We let ourselves get distracted by people who seem important or things that promise some kind of easy comfort.  But none of that is the Kingdom of God.

    And Jesus points out that this really should be easy; certainly easier than we’re making it.  The Kingdom of God is among us, if we would take the time to observe it, if we would open ourselves up to enter into it.  Even if the Kingdom seems cloaked from our current view, we must not give in to temptation.  We must stay the course, live in the moment, be true to our calling as disciples.  For then we cannot fail to enter into the Kingdom.

  • Friday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    As many times as we may hear the parable in today’s Gospel, I think we always end up scratching our heads and wondering what point Jesus was making, precisely.  It’s just so unlike anything we would expect him to preach, this idea of the steward basically cheating his employer and making friends with the customers in order to save his own neck.  Even the whole idea of money changing was so foreign to anything that Jesus ever took time to deal with.  So the question is, why now?  Why does Jesus suddenly have this interest in money, and dishonest wealth at that?

    I think the answer to that question is why the Church gives us this Gospel reading, from just past the middle of Luke’s Gospel, right here at what is just about the end of our Church year.  Jesus is telling us that time is running short.  We don’t know when the end will come, but we know that it will come some day, and is would be best for us to be hard at work for the kingdom so that we might enter into it.  Not that we should attempt to cheat God as the steward did his employer, but that we might seize the day and take advantage of the time we may have in order to assure the eternity we definitely want.

    Many scholars conjecture that the steward was basically writing off his own commission, and not really cheating his employer.  That makes sense if we think about it; what good is a commission he wouldn’t be able to collect anyway?   Better to have the good will of those customers to help him when he really needs it.  And for us, what good are the temporal things of this world?  We can’t take them with us.  Better to write them off and have an eternity to go to.

    The days are shorter now, aren’t they?  It’s dark way too early, and the days are getting colder.  Winter will be with us for a while, and so we turn our thoughts to the end of time.  As we do so, maybe it’s time for us to think about what are the things we need to write off so that eternity can be ours.  When we do that, our Lord may congratulate us too for acting so prudently.