Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We just finished hearing about the challenges and ministry of Jonah this past week.  Jonah, called to preach repentance to the Ninevites, finds that he would rather not, and so attempts to get away from God.  That, of course, doesn’t work because there is no where that God is not, so he ends up in the belly of a big fish for three days and nights, and is eventually disgorged in Nineveh to do the work he was called to do.  This he does, begrudgingly, and the people of Nineveh repent, to the praise and glory of God.

    And today we hear that no sign will be given to the people of Jesus’ time except this sign of Jonah.  And that is true.  Jesus is called to preach repentance just like Jonah was, although, praise God, he does it willingly.  Jesus too will be covered over for three days and three nights, but this time in the tomb and not a fish.  He then is disgorged in the glory of the Resurrection to give the way to repentance, which some have done, to the praise and glory of God.  This is the only sign we need.

    But Jesus berates the people because while the evil people of Nineveh repented, the Jews of Jesus’ day not so much.  The people of Nineveh didn’t have anything near as  great a prophet as Jesus is, and they repented, but the people of Jesus’ time did not.  And so history and eternity will be kinder to the Ninevites than to these people.

    The Psalmist today sings that the Lord has made known his salvation.  This he has done, to the Ninevites, to the people of Jesus’ time, and to us.  Today we pray for the softening of our hearts so that we might repent of our wickedness in the way that the Ninevites did, and so have eternal life.

  • Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s gospel reading is a rather heartbreaking story, to be honest.  The rich young man is obviously a follower of the law and a religious man, because he is able to talk to Jesus about his observance.  But when Jesus tells him to let go of what he has in order to gain eternal life, he walks away dejected because he has so much.  We don’t know what ultimately happens to the rich young man.  Maybe he did go and begin the hard work of letting go, selling his possessions and giving to the poor.  And maybe he just couldn’t do it.  But at least he knows what he has to do.

    I think that far more heartbreaking than this story of the rich young man is the story of modern men and women, rich and not-so-rich, young and old alike.  I am more heartbroken for these because as much as the rich young man in the gospel story asked what he had to do to gain eternal life, too many of today’s men and women have lost the desire even to ask the question.

    We too are rich men and women, young and old.  Maybe we don’t think we have much, but we have way more than most people in most parts of the world.  We live in one of the richest counties of the richest nation on earth, and what we have is considerable.  If we too were told to go, sell what we have, and give to the poor so that we could have eternal life, most of us wouldn’t even know where to start.  But to be honest, so many people are not even there yet.  So many don’t even bother to ask what it takes to gain eternal life.  Many more don’t bother to live the requirements of religion, and even more don’t even know what those requirements are.

    We may be rich in the things of earth, but, as the story tells us, we are so very poor in the things of eternity.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”

    I hope your heart is breaking too.  These are not words of joy and blessing that Jesus is speaking to us today.  They are words of challenge.  He wants to light a fire under us and smack us full force out of our complacency.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”  So many people are not with us here at Mass today.  Whether it’s soccer or football or work or sloth, they are missing, and our gathering is the poorer for it.  Many of them will feel guilty about missing, perhaps some of them will even confess it.  But far too many of them don’t care or don’t even know that they should care.  How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

    People today, even maybe some of us gathered here today, are so greatly focused on getting ahead, becoming rich in the things of earth, skyrocketing our careers, being well thought of – we are so embarrassingly rich in all these ways.  But none of those things are going to get us into heaven, into the kingdom of God.  We are all being told today to go, sell those paltry, fading glory things and give to those who are poorer, so that we can all enter the kingdom of God together.  Will we too walk away, like the rich young man in the gospel, dejected and depressed because we have too much to let go of it all?  How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

    In this respect life month, we might find we are too rich in other ways as well.  We may cling to the way that we’re thought of and so encourage or at least look the other way when a mother ends a pregnancy.  Or we’re so concerned about the value of our homes and the safety of our riches that we tolerate the death penalty.  Or the care of a loved one takes us away from our work so we don’t care for those loved ones the way we should.  But we are a people who are gifted with life from conception to natural death, and we are called to reverence that life and celebrate that gift.  We have to let go of anything that gets in the way of that.  How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

    Taking hold of the kingdom of God necessarily means we have to let go of something.  That is the clear message of today’s gospel reading.  What we have to let go of is different for all of us, but clearly there is a rich young man or woman in all of us, and we have to be ready to give up whatever gets in our way, or what we will end up letting go of is the kingdom of God.  And that would be truly, horribly, unforgivably heartbreaking.

    “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”

    And so what do we do?  Do we give up, throw up our hands, and walk away dejected because we know it’s all too much – that what we have to let go of is beyond our capacity to do it?  No.  For us, truly, it may be impossible.  But nothing is impossible for God.  God hears that desire for eternal life in us and opens up the way to salvation.  He gave his Son to live our life and die our death and rise to new life that lasts forever.  That same glory is intended for all of us too.  All we have to do is let go – as frightening as that may well be for us – let go, and let God worry about the implications of it all.

    And Jesus points out that this will not be easy.  Those who give up their riches to follow him will receive blessing, but also challenge: they will receive “receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters
    and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”  There will be persecution in this life.  Not everyone will get why we are letting go.  And that makes the letting go so much more difficult.  But the rewards of a hundredfold here and a googol-fold in the kingdom are worth it.

    And so yes, I come here heartbroken today.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”  But I know that God can make it possible in every person’s life.  All they and we have to do is let go of those things that are of fleeting and fading glory.  Because we’re going to need empty hands if we are ever to be able to hold on to the hundred-fold blessing that God wants us to have.

  • Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever been sure of the Lord’s call in your life and it just terrified you?  I have.  And for those of us who have been in this position, we can perhaps understand Jonah’s reaction in today’s first reading.  He had been called by the Lord to preach to the people in Nineveh.  Now the people of Nineveh were unspeakably evil and had long been persecuting the people of Israel.  And so for Jonah, this call was a bit like being called to preach to the people of Al-Quaida or something like that.  Not only did Jonah fear for his life in going to them, but, quite frankly, he also could not possibly care less if they repented and God had mercy on them.

    But it’s a little hard to run away from God.  He always catches up with you sooner or later.  If that weren’t true, I wouldn’t be standing here today, I can tell you that!  It would certainly be easier for us Jonahs if we would just give in to God’s will at the beginning and not have to do all this running.  But sometimes the human heart just isn’t ready for radical change.

    That was true of the scholar of the law in today’s Gospel reading.  I think he’s more testing Jesus here than really wanting to be converted, but he can’t help but get caught up in Jesus’ teaching.  The question is, is he ready to “go and do likewise?”  The reading ends before he can make that decision, but the implication is that it will be very hard for him to really love his neighbor in the same way that the good Samaritan loved the robbery victim.

    And so those of us who look a lot like Jonah or the scholar of the law today, need to pray for softening of our hardened hearts.  Will it take three days in the belly of a big fish for us to finally give in to God’s will?  Or can we just give in and trust?

  • Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It would probably come as no surprise to you that today’s first reading and a part of the Gospel were read at the wedding I celebrated yesterday.  Obviously we left out the part about divorce, but these readings are quite popular for weddings.  The reason, of course, is that the story is about how man and woman were created for each other.  The totality of the readings we have today, though, are challenging.  We do have that piece about divorce there, and it does present a challenge in these days when somewhere around fifty percent of marriages fail.

    Apparently, the people of Israel were unable to accept the fullness of the teaching of marriage – not unlike today, obviously – Moses gave the men permission to divorce when necessary.  In that society, a woman’s reproductive rights belonged first to her father, and later to her husband.  So adultery could only be committed against the husband whose rights had been violated.  Our modern sensibilities see this as completely wrong, and Jesus seems to agree.  Jesus says that the man who remarries is committing adultery against his first wife, because she has rights in the marriage too.  Jesus levels the playing field here by giving both spouses rights in the relationship, but also the responsibility of not committing adultery against one another.

    In our society, we have to contend with this painful reality still.  Each spouse has rights and also responsibilities, and while we are all ready to accept our rights in just about any circumstance, we are hardly ever ready to accept our responsibilities.  That has led us not only to the problems we have with divorce, but in so many areas as well.  We are a people very unaccustomed to the demands of faithfulness, not just in marriage but also in our work and our communities, just to name a couple.

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word rejects this lack of faithfulness.  Christian disciples are to be marked by their faithfulness to each other, to God, and to their communities.  Faithfulness is hard and very often inconvenient.  But for us, brothers and sisters in Christ, faithfulness is not optional.

    In wedding liturgies I always tell the bride and groom that faithfulness will make demands of them.  They will have to make a decision every day to be faithful to the promises they make at their wedding.  They will have to make a decision every day to love one another.  And sometimes this is easy, but sometimes it is hard to do, but either way, it’s still their calling.

    The same is true for me as a priest.  I have to renew my ordination promises every day.  I have to make a decision every day to be faithful to my God, be faithful to my ministry, be faithful to my promises, be faithful to my own spouse which is the Church, and my own family which is the people I serve.  Sometimes that’s a joy and the easiest thing in the world.  But then there are the days when we have a rough staff meeting, or I’ve celebrated the fourth funeral in the last ten days, or any number of challenging and frustrating things have happened.  Those are rough days, but I’m still called to be faithful.

    We are all of us called to be faithful citizens.  That is easy when our candidate wins the election or legislation we’ve been hoping for passes.  It’s not such a joy when he or she loses the election, or we don’t get to host the Olympics, or our interests aren’t being met, or the economy is plunging.  But we still are called to be faithful, doing our best to make things right, standing up for the poor, needy, and must vulnerable members of society, building the kingdom of God on earth whenever and however we can.

    One of the biggest challenges of our time is something of which we are mindful in a special way this month, and by that of course, I mean the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.  It’s easy to remain faithful to that call when we don’t have to make the decision, but harder to remain faithful when someone we know is having a difficult pregnancy, or has been raped.  It’s hard to defend life to natural death when a loved one is suffering, clinging rather tenaciously to life even when they’re unable to live it.  It’s hard to defend life when someone in our community has been murdered and the death penalty is on the table.  But we disciples don’t get to pick and choose the occasions during which we will be faithful.  If our witness to life is to mean anything to the watching world, we’re going to have to be faithful always, even when it’s hard, even when it stretches us.

    The little vignette at the end of the Gospel reading today almost seems out of place.  I use this story at every baptism I do, and it’s easy to see why.  But I also think it relates to our call to faithfulness today.  Jesus promises the Kingdom of God to those who are like children.  Obviously he isn’t extolling the virtues of being childish here.  He is getting at, as he often does, something much deeper.  He notes that children are dependent on their parents or guardians for everything.  They don’t yet have rights in the society, they are unable to provide for themselves.  So they depend on the adults who care for them for all of their needs for safety and care.

    This is the kind of faithfulness Jesus would ask of us.  We need to approach our relationship with God with childlike faith.  We need to depend on God for our safety and provision.  We need to be faithful to God in good times and in bad, even when we cannot see the big picture.

    Faithfulness makes demands on us.  The disciple is the one who is ready to accept those demands.  The disciple makes a decision to love God and the people in his life every day.  The disciple makes a decision to be faithful to his or her vocation, whatever that vocation is, every day.  The disciple makes a decision to be faithful to God and the teachings of God’s Church every day.  Some days those decisions are easy, and some days they are more than challenging.  But the faithful disciple, the one who accepts the Kingdom of God like a child, has the promise of entering into it.

  • Monday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    God’s salvation is radical.  Zechariah, in the first reading, is speaking to the broken Israel.  On account of its sins, it was taken into captivity and exiled to Babylon.  The fate they suffered was well deserved.  Generations had rejected the Lord’s covenant, had instead turned to the pagan gods worshipped by the people in the surrounding areas.  They had profaned the temple with the worship of foreign gods and every one of their kings led them to evil upon evil.  So why would the Lord ever care about them again?  Couldn’t he just throw up his hands and say, “I’m done”?

    But he doesn’t say that.  He’s not done.  He fully intends to restore the people, gathering them from the land of the rising sun and from the land of the setting sun, that is from the east to the west, everywhere over all the earth, and gather them back to himself, restoring Israel and making Jerusalem a holy city once again.

    All of this is a metaphor for our own need for salvation, of course.  How often have we as a culture rejected God’s covenant?  How much have we as individuals sinned?  How much have our leaders led us to the worship of foreign gods, like wealth and power?  We too have found evil upon evil and have rejected our God.  We would well deserve it if he threw up his hands in our midst and said to us, “I’m done.”

    But he doesn’t say that.  He’s not done.  He fully intends to gather us from wherever we have wandered.  No place is beyond the reach of our God who longs to bring us back to himself.  There is no place that we can go that is beyond God’s love.  Nothing is impossible for our God who made us for himself.

    God’s salvation is radical.

  • Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When we think about prophets and prophecy, I think our minds always take us to ancient days.  All the prophets we can think of lived many centuries ago: Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, Amos and all the rest, right up to John the Baptist who was the last of the prophets of old and the beginning of the prophecy of the new kingdom.  All of it culminating in the person of Jesus Christ, whose prophecy was the voice of God himself.  But I think our readings today call us to look at prophecy once again, and to be open to the fact that there are many more prophets than we can think of right away, prophets that have lived a bit more recently than Moses and Elijah and all the others.

    For Moses, prophecy was a huge task.  He bore the responsibility of bringing God’s message of salvation to a people who had become used to living without it.  He was to strike the covenant between God and his people who had largely forgotten about God, or thought God forgot about them.  So his prophetic burden was great, but God knew the challenges Moses faced, and offered to take some of his prophetic spirit and bestow it on the seventy elders. So seventy were chosen, a list was drawn up, and a ceremony was prepared.

    Two of their number – Eldad and Medad – were missing from the group during the ceremony, but the spirit was given to them anyway.  This had Joshua all bent out of shape.  How could they be prophesying when they had not taken part in the ritual?  So he complains about it to Moses, who clearly does not share his concern.  He accuses Joshua of jealousy and says to him, “Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets!  Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!”

    Moses’ vision for the ministry was bigger than himself, bigger than Joshua, bigger than even the chosen seventy.  And he makes a good point here.  What if every one of God’s people knew God well enough to prophesy in God’s name?  What if all of us who claim to follow God could speak out for God’s concern for the needy, the marginalized and the dispossessed?  The world would certainly be a much different place. Joshua’s concern was that the rules be followed.  Moses’ concern was that God’s work be done.

    And so there’s a parallel in the first part of today’s Gospel, of course.  This time it’s John who is all bent out of shape.  Someone was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, and even worse, that someone was apparently successful!  Jesus, of course, does not share John’s concern.  Jesus’ vision of salvation was bigger than John’s.  If demons are being cast out in Jesus’ name, what does it matter who is doing it?  If people are being healed from the grasp of the evil one and brought back to the family of God, well then, praise God!  Jesus even goes so far as to say that if people are bringing others back to God, which is the fundamental mission of Jesus in the first place, then they really are members of the group.  Anyone who is not against us is for us.  Anyone who heals a person in God’s name is accomplishing the mission, so praise God.

    I think the point here that we need to get is that prophets come in all shapes and sizes.  During the rite of baptism, there is an anointing with the sacred Chrism oil that anoints us in the image of Jesus as priest, prophet and king.  It is part of our baptismal calling for all of the people of the Lord to be prophets.  And so we really ought to be hearing the word of the Lord all the time, from every person in our lives.  God gives us all people who are prophetic witnesses to us: people who say and live what they believe.  They might be our parents or our children, the colleague at work, the person who sits next to us in math class, or even the elderly neighbor who seems to always want to talk our ear off.  At the basic level, one of the most important questions that arises in today’s Liturgy of the Word is, who are the prophets among us?  Who is it in our lives that has been so gifted with the spirit that they make us want to be better people and live better lives?

    But as much as we have those kind of prophetic voices in our lives, there are also the other voices.  These are the voices of our culture that drag us down to the depths of brokenness, debauchery and despair.  That, I think is what Jesus meant by all that drastic surgery he talked about at the end of the Gospel reading today.

    Maybe we don’t need to chop off a hand, but instead chop off some of the things those hands do.  Maybe it’s a business deal that is not worthy of our vocation as Christians.  Or it could be a sinful activity that we no longer should be engaged in.  We probably don’t need to lop off a foot.  But we may indeed need to cut out of our lives some of the places those feet take us.  Whether they’re actual places or situations that provide occasions for sin, they must go.  I’m not suggesting that you gouge out an eye. But maybe cut out some of the things that those eyes see.  Whether it’s places on the internet we ought not go, or television shows or movies that we should not see, they have to go.  Some people may find that they need to get rid of the computer or television, or put them in a more public spot.  It may be hard to do without these things, but better that than being so wrapped up in our own needs that we forget about God.  Better to live without these things than to be forever without God.

    When I read this section of the Gospel reading, I always think of the words of the Act of Contrition: The last words of that prayer say something like, “I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin.”  Or if you grew up a bit more recently, it says, “I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.”  Avoiding whatever leads us to sin, avoiding the near occasions of sin, that is what the prophets among us call us to do.  It might seem like radical surgery, but it’s best to chop these things out mercilessly so that we can fully partake of the mercy of God.

    Prophecy is a huge responsibility.  We might be the prophets, or we might be the ones hearing the prophets, but in either case we have work to do.  Prophets need to be faithful to God’s spirit, and hearers need to be open to the word and ready to act on it.  Prophecy nearly always calls us to a radical change.  May God help us to recognize the prophets among us, and make us ready to hear the word of the Lord.

    Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets!  Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!

  • Saturday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Fear is a bad thing.  Fear destroys discipleship.  In the case of the gospel story today, fear kept the disciples from understanding.  As well we know, Jesus was speaking to them about his passion and death, and they didn’t get it.  They didn’t get it because that was not their idea of what should happen to the messiah.  They were looking for a king who would bring Israel back to political greatness, not someone who was going to suffer and die.  So they didn’t understand it, but worse yet, they were afraid to ask Jesus what he meant.

    Why were they afraid?  Maybe it was because they had invested themselves totally in Jesus, and they couldn’t bear to think of what people might think of them if they had spent all this time following a man who clearly was not the messiah they were looking for.  That would explain why Judas made the deal for thirty pieces of silver, and ultimately why he took his own life.

    Or were they afraid to find out that if Jesus was to accept suffering and death, they would have to do the same?  Certainly that was true for most of them; they had to actually give their lives for what they believed.  Whatever the case, they didn’t want clarification or understanding right now.  They could not deal with the truth.

    It’s hard to blame them for that, because I strongly suspect that all of us avoid the truth at one time or another in our lives.  We think about something that is confronting us, and think: “I don’t want to know…”  But we disciples can’t avoid the truth.  It catches up with us someday, some way.  Fear merely keeps us from confronting that truth with our God, the God who was willing to take the cross for us and is therefore with us in all our sorrows and joys.

    The Christian disciple should never be afraid of the truth.  What we need to fear is what the world would be like if the truth were never spoken.

  • Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel is very interesting compared with yesterday’s.  Yesterday, Herod was trying to figure out who Jesus was; today Jesus is asking who people said he was.  What is most interesting is that the answers both times are the same.  The people advising Herod gave the same answers as the Twelve did today: John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the ancient prophets.  The question is a good one and it’s worth asking and answering.  Peter had the right idea, but didn’t fully understand it.  It’s easy for us to know the right answer but not fully understand it too.  Who is Jesus for us?

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    You know, I think Herod was asking the right question.  Sure, he was asking it for all the wrong reasons, but still, it is the right question.  And that question is, “Who is Jesus?”

    What Herod was hearing about Jesus is pretty much what the disciples told Jesus when Jesus asked, “Who do people say that I am?”  Elijah, or one of the prophets, or maybe even John the Baptist.  But Herod was the one who killed John so he knew that couldn’t be it, so who is he really?  Herod kept trying to see him, and of course, he’d have more than ample opportunity soon enough, after Jesus is arrested.

    So we have the question too.  Oh, we know well enough – intellectually – who Jesus is, but we still have to answer that question in our hearts.  Who is Jesus for us?  We know he is not just some prophet, that he is not like anyone who lived before or after him.  But have we lost the virtue of Herod?  Have we stopped being intrigued by the question, have we lost our fascination with Jesus?  Herod kept trying to see Jesus, and it’s the right instinct.  We have to keep trying to see him too, whether that takes us to a rereading of the Gospels or to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament or to contemplative prayer.  Whatever the case, fascination with Jesus is the right way to go, and we have to let ourselves be intrigued by the question again.  Who is Jesus for us?

  • Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I am an over-packer.  As hard as I try, I pretty much always pack way too much.  So I always wondered why Jesus ordered the disciples to take nothing with them for the journey.  No walking stick or second tunic or any kind of money.  Well, I think there’s two reasons.  The first is that this would bring the disciples closer to the people they were ministering to.  But the second, and far more important, is that they might learn to trust God more.  If they went everywhere with everything they wanted to take, they would never have need of anything, or anyone.  But taking nothing with them, they are vulnerable and in need of just about everything.  The question for us disciples then, is what do we need to take out of our travelling bags so that we might trust God more?