Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Monday of the Second Week of Lent

    Monday of the Second Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    These readings for the weekdays of Lent are especially challenging, aren’t they? They’re supposed to be. They speak of what it means to be a disciple and take up the cross, and they speak of it with urgency. We have to be willing to have our whole world turned upside-down; to do something completely against our nature; to let God take control of the life we want so much to control.

    “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty scary to me. Because there have been plenty of times when I’ve failed to give someone a break. The measure I sometimes use ends up being a bar set pretty high, and I would sure hate to have to leap over that bar myself. But that’s what Jesus is saying we will have to do.

    The real measure of compassion is the compassion of God himself. He is our model, He is who we are to strive for, His example is how we are to treat each other. But when we do that, it means we can’t judge others harshly. It means that we have to see them as God does, which is to say that we have to see Jesus in them and to see the goodness in them. And that’s hard to do when that person has just cut you off in traffic, or has gossiped about you, or has crossed you in some other way. But even then maybe especially then, we are called to stop judging others and show them the compassion of God.

    “Lord, do not deal with us according to our sins.” That is the prayer of the Psalmist today. We are given the promise of forgiveness, but we are also warned that if we do not forgive others, we will not be forgiven either. The measure with which we measure will in turn be measured out to us. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to try real hard to give people a break today.

  • The Second Sunday of Lent

    The Second Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    What would you give up for love?

    Today’s first reading puts poor Abraham in an awful position. Remember, he and Sarah were childless well into their old age. And it is only upon entering into relationship with God that that changes. God gives them a son, along with a promise, that he would be the father of many nations.

    And so put yourself in Abraham’s place. After rejoicing in the son he never thought he’d have, God tells him: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.” It’s not a suggestion, it’s not an invitation, it’s an order. Abraham knows that it’s only because of the gift of God that he has Isaac to sacrifice in the first place. But many of you are parents: what would you do?

    The reading omits a chunk in the middle that is perhaps the most poignant part. Abraham packs up his son, travels with some servants, and he and Isaac haul the wood and the torch up the mountain. Isaac asks him: “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” Can you even begin to imagine the anguish in poor Abraham’s heart? And yet he responds in faith: “My son, God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.” Which, of course is true. God had provided Isaac, who was intended to be the sheep. But Abraham couldn’t have known that God would intervene.

    We could get caught up in the injustice here and call God to task for asking such a horrible thing in the first place. Why would God test poor Abraham so? Why would he give him a son in his old age, only to take him away?  What purpose did that have? But we have to know that the purpose of the story is to illustrate that God does have salvation in mind. Yes, God would provide the lamb. It was never going to be Isaac; it’s not even the sheep caught up in the thicket – not really. We know that the sheep for the burnt offering is none other than God’s own Son, his only one, whom he loves. The story is ultimately about Jesus, and his death and resurrection are what’s really going on in today’s Liturgy of the Word.

    But let’s also be clear: Abraham trusted God and was willing to give up the thing he’d probably die for – his own son. So what are we willing to give so that we can demonstrate – to ourselves if no one else – our trust in God’s ability to love us beyond all telling? For Lent, we’ve given up chocolate, or sweets, or even negative thinking or swearing. Maybe we’ve not done well with them, or maybe we have even given them up.  But we need to see in Abraham’s willingness that our sacrifices are important; they mean something.

    Jesus goes up a mountain in today’s readings too – and he too sees that he is to become the sheep for the sacrifice – sooner rather than later. That was the meaning of the Law and the prophets of old, symbolized by Moses and Elijah. But knowing that, and knowing what’s at stake, he does not hesitate for a moment to go down the mountain and soldier on to that great sacrifice. He willingly gives his own life to be the sheep for the sacrifice, because leaving us in our sins was a price he was not willing to pay.

    There are a lot of things out there for us that seem good. But the only supreme good is the life of heaven, and eternity with our God. Think of the thing that means everything to you: are you willing to sacrifice that to gain heaven? Are you willing to give everything for love of God?

    Because, for you, for me, God did.

    God did that for us.

  • Friday of the First Week of Lent

    Friday of the First Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings remind us that Lent is no time for “business as usual.” It’s not enough for us to merely claim to be righteous, because righteousness, literally a right relationship, means that righteous actions must back our lofty words. And so today we are called to a righteousness that surpasses the scribes and Pharisees, a righteousness that goes beyond our words and our reputations and what we want people to think about us. The righteousness that Jesus calls us to today is a righteousness that starts where everything must, and that is in the heart.

    Today’s Gospel comes from the somewhat scary “but I say to you” section of Matthew’s Gospel. Here, Jesus reiterates the teachings of Moses and then “kicks them up a notch.” That means that harsh words, grudges, anger, backbiting, gossiping and slander share equal dishonor with outright murder. They all, Jesus tells us, violate the fifth commandment, because they all start with the same murderous inclination of the heart. The one who has harbored these evil thoughts and actions must repent of them and seek reconciliation before offering his or her gift at the altar, or the offering will be tainted, ruined, and ultimately rendered sacrilegious.

    Ezekiel’s prophecy in the first reading is good news for those of us who have gone astray. His prophecy holds out the possibility of a second chance for us sinners and calls us to a fundamental change of life. Even if we have been known for our wicked deeds, we have the opportunity to repent and change our hearts and lives. Just so, the one known for his righteousness may indeed turn from his righteous ways. But life or death depends on what we have chosen in the end. If we have repented, God will forget our wickedness and treat us with mercy. But if we have turned from righteousness, we will have forgotten God’s mercy and instead find everlasting death.

    The Psalmist today rejoices in God who is trustworthy with his mercy and forgiveness. In this time of Lenten repentance, we can have confidence in our God who longs to bring us back:

    For with the Lord is kindness
    and with him is plenteous redemption;
    And he will redeem [all of us]from all [our] iniquities.

  • Friday after Ash Wednesday

    Friday after Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    The prophets of the Old Testament were always pretty clear about the fact that God was sick and tired of people trying to claim righteousness but not really being righteous. The idea of keeping the letter but not the spirit of the Law, of fasting and praying with the express idea of getting these things over with so one could return to cheating the poor was repugnant – is repugnant – to our God. The prophets cried out full-throated and unsparingly that worship of God was not a part-time endeavor, that the time for “business as usual” was over.

    In Hebrew, the word for “righteousness” is tseh’-dek, which has the connotation of right relationship. This was the theme of the prophets: that right relationship, a relationship directed toward God and toward others, was the only thing that could ever deliver true peace.

    This is the call of Isaiah in today’s first reading. God makes it clear through Isaiah that showy fasting, mortification and sacrifice is not what God wants from humankind. God, who made us for himself, wants us – all of us, and not just some dramatic show of false piety, put on display for all the world to see. God doesn’t want fasting that ends in quarrelling and fighting with others, because that destroys the right relationships that our fast should be leading us toward in the first place.

    So, if we really want to fast, says Isaiah, we need to put all that nonsense aside. Our true fast needs to be a beacon of justice, a wholehearted reaching out to the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized. As we get into our Lenten practices these days, we too might find that our self-sacrifice ends up pushing us away from others, and ultimately from God. That’s not a sign to give it up, but maybe more to redirect it. If we give up something, we should also balance that with a renewed effort to reach out to God and others. Right relationship should be the goal of all of our Lenten efforts this year. And we can truly live that kind of penitence with joy because it comes with a great promise, says Isaiah:

    Your light shall break forth like the dawn,
    and your wound shall quickly be healed;
    Your vindication shall go before you,
    and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
    Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
    you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

  • Thursday After Ash Wednesday

    Thursday After Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
    and sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, long I stood
    and looked down one as far as I could
    to where it bent in the undergrowth;
    Then took the other, as just as fair,
    and having perhaps the better claim
    because it was grassy and wanted wear;
    though as for that, the passing there
    had worn them really about the same,
    And both that morning equally lay
    in leaves no feet had trodden black.
    Oh, I kept the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
    I doubted if I should ever come back.
    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
    I took the one less traveled by,
    and that has made all the difference.

    This poem, as you may recognize, is “The Road Less Traveled,” by Robert Frost, and it was always one of my favorites.  Today’s readings speak, more or less, to the same sentiment, but with a more radical and crucial twist.  Frost’s opinion is that both roads are equally valid, he simply chooses to take the one most people don’t.  But the Gospel tells us that there really is only the one valid path, and that certainly is the road less traveled.  We commonly call it the Way of the Cross.

    Moses makes it clear: he sets before the people life and death, and then begs them to choose life.  Choosing life, for the Christian, means going down that less traveled Way of the Cross, a road that is hard and filled with pitfalls.  And maybe the real problem is that there is a choice.  Wouldn’t it be great if we only had the one way set before us and no matter how hard it would be, that was all we could choose? But God has given us freedom and wants us to follow that Way of the Cross in freedom, because that’s the only way that leads to life; the only way that leads to him.

    Our Psalmist says it well today:

    Blessed the one who follows not
    the counsel of the wicked
    Nor walks in the way of sinners,
    nor sits in the company of the insolent,
    But delights in the law of the LORD
    and meditates on his law day and night.

  • 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.